Statistics Canada released their fourth quarter GDP data yesterday, and it was surprisingly not bad – it far exceeded expectations for growth, with an annualized increase of 9.6 percent, and the estimates of January’s GDP numbers are that they will grow, in spite of renewed lockdowns/mockdowns across much of the country, which is good economic news. Comparatively, OECD data shows that Canada ranked second out of G7 countries in terms of GDP growth over the quarter – only Japan beat us. This should give rise to some cautious optimism about the direction of our economic recovery.

https://twitter.com/PhilSmith26/status/1366746936825548801

Erin O’Toole, however, declared that these figures just will not do, and that the country needs “economic leadership.” As proof, he cited that the country’s annual GDP fell a record 5.4 percent – the most since comparable data began being kept in 1961 – never mind that the economic shock was brought on by the global pandemic, plus the false notion that we have the “highest unemployment in the G7,” as well as high pandemic spending levels. The Conservatives keep trotting out these unemployment figures, but every country measures unemployment differently, so they are effectively lying with statistics. Even if we measured our unemployment by the same way the Americans do, the gap is consistent with the gap in figures that always exists between our countries. Meanwhile, we still have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and our pandemic spending has insulated the economy so that it will be more resilient once we’re able to open – and hey, we also managed to have a much lower death count than most other G7 countries because we paid people to stay home. But part of the problem is that O’Toole (and most especially Pierre Poilievre) never gets called out for essentially lying with statistics, because the CBC has essentially given up on economics reporting, and the Financial Post largely sticks to getting their commentary from Jack Mintz and the Fraser Institute (with one or two exceptions). So O’Toole can stand at the lectern in the current ad hoc press theatre in the West Block and lie with statistics unchallenged, and media won’t call out the misinformation because they will either both-sides it, or just report it verbatim because they don’t know enough about the numbers to challenge it. It’s a sad state of affairs.

You mean the quarterly GDP numbers that Canada grew the second fastest in the G7 in Q4? https://t.co/U6qc8JWCby

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) March 3, 2021

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1366872106806349825

Meanwhile, in more news that O’Toole is unwilling to have an honest discourse, his staff penned an op-ed in his name in the National Post calling on the government to turn to India instead of China for future economic growth – but the piece was deafeningly silent on Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism, which has turned into pogroms against Muslims and mistreatment of Sikhs in the country. It’s a lie of omission to simply call India the world’s largest democracy and ignore the flagrant human rights violations going on there as well – but this is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from O’Toole and company, because We The Media have enabled them the whole way.

and Sikhs! the fact that he would write this in the midst of everything going on in India rn is nuts to me

— Supriya Dwivedi (@supriyadwivedi) March 2, 2021

Good reads:

• Anita Anand is confident we’ll get AstraZeneca doses from the US (despite “America First”); the recommendation of its use may mean younger age groups will get it.
• Omar Alghabra is rejecting a petition calling for the government to rename Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport in Montreal.
• Apparently EDC is facing delays in processing more business loans that the government promised months ago.
• Our country’s top trade negotiator says a blanket exemption to Buy America is likely politically unfeasible, but sectoral exemptions are probable, such as green energy.
• Canada needs to find another senior officer to run a NATO deployment because the officer slated for the post was pulled after he had a relationship with a co-worker.
• The Procedure and House Affairs committee produced a unanimous report calling on Trudeau not to call an election in the pandemic (which only bored pundits want).
• Conservatives are afraid that Erin O’Toole will pull a Patrick Brown and embrace carbon pricing – and his Western base won’t give any ground for gains elsewhere.
• Brian Pallister’s government has tabled 19 bills but won’t make them public, which is absolutely unconscionable in a Westminster democracy like ours.
• Kevin Carmichael delves into the quarterly GDP data, and sees the points of underlying vulnerability in the otherwise positive numbers.
• Andrew Coyne tallies all of Erin O’Toole’s various re-invention attempts, and notes the absence of any actual leadership, especially in setting a policy direction.
• Colby Cosh explains how America’s intractable protectionist laws are cratering Alaska’s economy, and how they are begging Canada for a workaround.
• My column suggests that there is a fundamental immorality with MPs continuing hybrid sittings when 70 percent of interpreters are facing injuries as a result.

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I looked further into potential Canadian approaches to getting Facebook and Google to pay for news content.

Maclean’s profiled the guy running Ottawa Public Health’s excellent Twitter account.

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