Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: A failed vote, a policy pretzel

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It was not unexpected that the Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day motion on removing the carbon price from all forms of home heating failed, because the Bloc had no interest in supporting it, and lo, none of the Liberals broke ranks and voted for it either. (Liberal MP Ken McDonald, who had voted for such motions previously, “scratched his head” with two fingers as he voted, which the Conservatives took to be giving them the finger, and lo, cried victim about it). And once the vote was over, Conservatives took to social media to call out all of those Liberal MPs they had been targeting in advance of it, because this is the bullshit state of where Canadian politics have degenerated to.

In advance of the vote, Jagmeet Singh was in the Foyer, twisting himself into a pretzel to say that he didn’t really agree with the Conservative motion, but he was going to vote for it anyway to send a message to the Liberals that he disagrees with them, but he also wants to push his boneheaded “cut GST on all home heating” policy, which is as dumb as a bag of hammers. (No, seriously—it would be impossible to disentangle the heating portion of certain sources of heating, such as electric heating, or what natural gas goes to heating and what goes to hot water tanks, or natural gas barbecues; plus, the policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy, who have bigger houses). There is no policy coherence, because this is all about posturing and performance, and Canadians are ill-served as a result.

While this was going on, the premiers met in Halifax, ostensibly to talk healthcare but it would up being another gang-up session where they all demanded that the federal government remove the carbon price on all home heating out of “fairness” (never mind the problems of energy poverty, that heating oil is four times as expensive as natural gas, and that some of those premiers should have been doing more about this problem years ago). They also groused that the federal Housing Accelerator Fund was being negotiated directly with municipalities and not them, which, again, forgets that they have studiously ignored the housing problem in their own provinces for decades and now they’re getting put out that the federal government has had to step up after they refused to. But that’s the state of our federation, and it’s a

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721622048345149688

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721628581921509676

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian air strikes on Odessa late Sunday night struck the city’s principal art gallery and wounded eight. A criminal investigation has been launched into the decision to hold a troop-honouring ceremony in Zaporizhzhia which was easily detected by surveillance drones, allowing the Russians to target it; around the same time, the top aid to Ukraine’s commander-in-chief was killed when a grenade was hidden inside a birthday present.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1721649238642245908

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Roundup: No, that’s not how inflation works

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Because some of you at the back still don’t get it, no, carbon pricing does not contribute 16 percent of inflation. It contributes 0.15 percent, because inflation is a year-over-year measure, and when the increase is steady and holding, the actual impact on inflation is negligible, because that’s how inflation works. But several of you you keep insisting that your math is correct when it’s not, and so here’s economist Trevor Tombe to try and get it through to you:

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1720919364172697678

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian missiles struck a shipyard in occupied Crimea, damaging a Russian warship there. There are conflicting reports about the state of the counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Russia claims they have halted any advance, while Ukrainians say that they continue to advance, albeit slowly. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushes back against the notion that they have entered into a stalemate, and says they need more air defences so that Russia can no longer dominate the skies. Here’s a look at Ukrainian soldiers who have turned to jiu-jitsu after losing limbs in the war.

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Roundup: Alberta is run by children, example eleventy-four

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If you needed any more proof that Alberta is run by a group of petulant children, look no further than finance minister Nate Horner’s appearance on Power & Politics yesterday. While in the midst of grousing that during the (virtual) meeting with Chrystia Freeland earlier in the day on the subject of Alberta’s threats to pull out of the CPP (threats which are fairly transparently a pressure tactic to try and get out of other environmental obligations), and that Freeland was not entertaining any other carbon price exemptions, Horner said that he was going to launch a programme to subsidise anyone who wants to convert to heating oil in order to get the same break on carbon prices.

Heating oil generally costs about three-to-four times the price of natural gas for the same output. That’s the whole reason the “pause” was put into place as a stopgap to get more people switched over to heat pumps, along with a bunch of incentives to do so. If Horner actually thinks that people will pay more for heat in order to avoid paying the carbon price, and coming out at a net loss, for the simple thrill of “owning the libs,” well, that’s pretty much him telling on himself. And it’s so stupid because as the government has belatedly explained, there are actually more people who use heating oil outside of the Atlantic provinces than inside (mostly in northern communities), and they too get the “pause” in order to facilitate the switch over to heat pumps. The problem there, however, is that most of those provinces haven’t come to an agreement with the federal government in order to give the heat pumps for free to low-income households. So that may yet come, but right now, they’re still in full-on tantrum territory.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians launched a new wave of overnight attacks across ten of Ukraine’s regions, and the Ukrainian air defences were able to intercept 24 of 38 drones plus a cruise missile. Here is a snapshot of the counter-offensive on various fronts, while Ukrainian troops battle exhaustion as winter approaches.

https://twitter.com/defensiemin/status/1720176662942253228

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Roundup: Paying too much attention to one senator’s opinion

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Sometimes the way the media cycle operates in weird ways in this city, and yesterday was no exception. On Wednesday, Senator Percy Downe wrote an op-ed that said that the Liberal Party should be having discussions as to whether they think Justin Trudeau should lead them into the next election, and a few people started frothing about it, but a day later, it got particular traction because Pierre Poilievre was using it in Question Period to attack Trudeau, as though Downe was a big name or had a network that was significant.

And that’s the part that mystifies me. Once upon a time, Downe was a chief of staff to Jean Chrétien, but senators haven’t been part of the Liberal caucus since 2014, when Trudeau famously expelled them as pre-emptive damage control in advance of the Auditor General’s (massively flawed) report on the Senate’s expenses, and claimed it was to give them more independence. Furthermore, Downe jumped ship to the fledgeling Canadian Senators Group right after he helped the Senate Liberals transform their caucus into the Progressives, which alienated him from the remaining Liberals in the Senate (who no longer call themselves such in the current environment). I fail to see how he has any kind of sway or influence at all. And when Trudeau was asked about Downe’s comments on his way into Question Period yesterday, he gave a classic “I wish him well” response and laughed it off.

Meanwhile, the attempt to make Mark Carney happen aren’t stopping either, as the Globe and Mail cornered him a climate summit in town this week to demand to know his leadership ambitions and *gasp!* he didn’t say no! Let’s gossip about this more! Never mind that Carney would likely mean the second coming of Michael Ignatieff for the party, if you ignore that he has no political machinery around him that could even support a bid (which he should avoid at all costs because it damages the Bank of Canada and its current governor, whether he likes to believe it or not). But seriously, this whole thing is ridiculous, and I cannot believe how much air time and digital space has been used up on it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones have hit civilian targets in Kharkiv region, but no reports of casualties as of when I’m writing this. Ukrainian forces repelled a new Russian assault on Vuhledar in the east.

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Roundup: A focus on heat pumps

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There has been a lot of attention paid to the subject of heat pumps and just what they are over the past few days in light of the government’s “pause” on carbon prices on heating oil in a bid to give people more time to make the conversion, particularly in places like Atlantic Canada. So what are they and why is the government subsidising the transition, going so far as to make them free for low-income households (in provinces where they have an agreement with the provincial government)? The Canadian Press has an explainer on what they are for starters.

There is an issue that the detractors keep raising which is that in particularly cold weather they may be insufficient and a secondary heat source would be necessary. In many places, they use electric heat as that secondary source, particularly given the simultaneous push toward clean electricity generation in this country (some eighty percent already comes from non-emitting sources). We should take heed that Nordic countries, which also have very cold winters, have been making the move to heat pumps for a while now, and the newer models can deal with far colder weather than earlier models, but that doesn’t mean that the transition doesn’t have complications.

https://twitter.com/robtpublic/status/1719579403427213557

You can bet Scott Moe and others will be concern trolling on this, and some of the criticisms do have merit, but it will become a real task to sort out just what is legitimate criticism, and what is being stated in bad faith (because look where it’s coming from). By the same token, the government shouldn’t oversimplify things here, or the scope of the challenge that this conversion may present itself to people who will need more assistance in navigating the other government retrofit programmes that can help them with that transition.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian drone attack hit an oil refinery in the central Kremenchuk region, while Russia also dropped explosives on the Black Sea shipping channels that have been used to transport grain. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief says they are entering into a static and attritional phase of the war, and they need new capabilities including more air power if they want to break out of it. Since the start of the war, more than 260 civilians have died from stepping on landmines, which is more of the lasting damage that invasion like Russia’s leaves behind.

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Roundup: A primer on inflation calculation

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Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem testified at the Commons finance committee earlier in the week, and a whole lot of people, including a certain “Food Professor” charlatan and numerous Conservative MPs, demonstrated that they don’t understand math or inflation as they all misconstrued the numbers that Macklem gave. And they’re the same number he has given before—that the carbon price has had a 0.15% effect on inflation, and if you removed it, going from $65/tonne to 0, it would have a temporary effect of reducing inflation by 0.6%.

A whole bunch of people–said charlatan, those MPs—insisted that because 0.6% is 16 percent of the 3.8% of headline inflation, that it means that the carbon price is responsible for 16% of inflation, which is wrong and not how inflation is calculated. Removing it wouldn’t actually mean inflation would go from 3.8% to 3.2% because the carbon price is not driving it. Energy and food prices are doing a lot of the driving there (and food prices are being hugely affected by climate change), and even if it did move to 3.2%, the Bank isn’t going to start lowering interest rates until it reaches the two percent target. Essentially, you’d be killing the carbon price and undoing the work it’s doing to lower emissions on the basis of a bad lie that it has made life unaffordable.

Meanwhile, here’s economist Stephen Gordon breaking down how inflation is calculated, with the inevitable conclusion that the carbon price is just noise—it’s not driving inflation, and it’s better to focus on the things that are.

A threat to democracy

A bunch of people got the vapours yesterday when Mark Miller called Pierre Poilievre a threat to democracy. Apparently these same people have convenient amnesia, or wishful thinking that he’s only kidding in what he’s doing and saying, because nobody learned a gods damned lesson from the Trump years.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While rallying Ukrainian troops, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy counselled patience and not to expect instant success (the latter comment directed primarily toward Western allies). A UN report says that 40 percent of Ukrainians need humanitarian support as a result of the conditions brought about by Russia’s invasion.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1719348496640200777

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Roundup: Scott Moe challenges Trudeau to a (metaphorical) duel

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Because the fallout over the decision to pause the carbon price on heating oil gets dumber by the day, Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe has decided that if he doesn’t get other heating sources similarly treated that he’s going to order the province’s provincial Crown Corporation that delivers natural energy to stop collecting the federal carbon price, which would be illegal, and which would expose the CEO of said Crown corporation for some potentially serious liabilities including possibly jail time, so one has to suppose that’s not going down very well. Nevertheless, this was entirely predictable and Trudeau should have chosen another course of action with the heating oil transition, but he didn’t, and this bed he made is getting really, really uncomfortable for him to lay in.

Of course, this has ramped up a bunch of other stupidity from political leaders, like Jagmeet Singh reviving his party’s long-time call for GST to be removed from home-heating, never mind that it would be impossible to disentangle for those who have electric heat, and that this kind of policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy who have larger houses. BC premier David Eby also wants relief for heating bills, but the province has their own carbon price separate from the federal one, so complaining to Ottawa isn’t going to help.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian shells killed a 91-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region when it struck her apartment building, while two others were killed in shelling in the region when a shell struck a bus. Ukrainian forces say they are switching from defensive to offensive positions around Bakhmut. Russians claim that they shot down 36 Ukrainian drones in the eastern part of the country.

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Roundup: Hutchings made everything worse

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The Liberals’ capacity to be their own worst enemy continues apace, that in the wake of Thursday’s ill-considered plan to “pause” the carbon price on heating oil (note that this is for the entire country, but the benefit is primarily felt in Atlantic Canada), rural economic development minister Gudie Hutchings made it all the worse with an appearance on CTV’s Question Period (taped Friday, and aired Sunday, but the news story went out on Friday evening). In it, Hutchings tried to defend the policy saying that Atlantic caucus was particularly vocal, and maybe if the Prairies voted in more Liberals, they “could have that conversation as well.” Oof.

Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives had an absolute field day with this over the weekend and claimed that this was “proof” that the carbon price was simply about punishing Western Canadians for not voting Liberal (which doesn’t make any logical sense, but this is about anger and not logic). Yes, there is a constant in Canadian politics that all of the parties pander to Quebec because they have a lot of seats and their votes are up for grabs, whereas the prairies reliably vote mostly Conservative so it doesn’t really pay for the Liberals to pander to them while the Conservatives take them for granted. But this was not the way to make that argument in relation to this carbon price issue, and it just made everything worse, so well done there.

Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, says he’ll support any motion to remove the carbon price on all heating, which is going to be the constant demand now because the Liberals did such a poor job of coming up with a fix for the Atlantic Canada problem (and there were much better options available). But now they’ve undermined their signature policy, opened the door to more exceptions that will just corrode the whole system, and yes, the Conservative still have their propaganda victory. The Liberals couldn’t have handled this any worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Not much news from Ukraine this weekend, other than the fact that they are hoping to hold a global peace summit of world leaders later this year, following talks held in Malta over the past couple of days.

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Roundup: Conservative MP is trying to get journalists killed

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Conservative MP Rachael Thomas is doubling down on her accusation that CBC is somehow “complicit in the blood bath of Hamas” because they don’t use the word “terrorist,” and I just can’t. It’s a not that this is just deeply unethical, and grossly immoral, and it’s unconscionable that she has been making a career out of not just outright lying to the public, but engaging in this weird and dystopian world-building where she talks straight-faced about the prime minister being a “dictator,” and that the kinds of garden-variety CanCon regulations that have dominated the Canadian media space since the 1960s at least is some kind of evil censorship regime. This particular sociopathic accusation goes beyond all of that, and has entered into the ghoulish territory of looking to get someone killed, while she does her damnedest to undermine their independence and the freedom of the press in this country.

The Conservatives have been expending a great deal of energy in recent years into de-legitimising legacy media, primarily the CBC, but really anyone else who might challenge them on any of the mendacity that pervades everything they do now. Part of this is because they are trying to replicate the kinds of divergent media ecosystems that now pervade the US, where you have wholly separate realities between what’s on Fox News, and what’s on CNN or MSNBC. This is what they’re after. It’s dangerous, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s already causing serious damage to our country.

And the worst part? That legacy media doesn’t know how to deal with this threat, so they just both-sides harder. We’re already so far down this path and we keep ignoring the exit signs because we think that it be as bad as it is in the US. We need to wake up. This isn’t going away, and the Conservatives aren’t going to suddenly get reasonable during or after the election.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the Russians have lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops trying to advance on Avdiivka (which could be anywhere between 1500 to 8000 troops, depending), and it’s believed that losses of this magnitude could undermine Russian offensive capabilities elsewhere. Meanwhile, US defence contractors are starting to ramp up production—and revenues—as a result of Ukraine, and now Israel.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1717894154233974970

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Roundup: A “pause” on carbon prices that hands Poilievre a victory

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday afternoon that the federal government would be implementing a “pause” for three years on the carbon price on home heating oil, predominantly used in Atlantic Canada, because he’s in some serious electoral trouble in the region. He also said that enriched carbon price rebates for rural dwellers would be on the way, as well as more incentives for people to switch to heat pumps. The problem? This undermines the whole carbon price scheme, ensures that it no longer is in compliance with the rules that they established, and it hands a propaganda victory to the Conservatives who are crowing that this “proves” that the price is making life unaffordable, and that they’ll kill it outright.

This also handed ammunition to Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, who will now be demanding that natural gas for heating be exempted, because now the programme is explicitly unfair. They’re not wrong, even if they’re acting entirely in bad faith over it. The NDP have joined in, also insisting that all home heating should be exempt from the price, which further undermines it. And you’d better believe that there are problems around the implementation of the heat pump programme, particularly how it rolls out to low-income households who need it the most.

The most galling thing of all, however, is that this is a victory for Irving Oil (and enabled by the provincial price regulators). They deceptively increased prices on their home heating oil and said this was for the “clean fuel standard,” which is bullshit. That standard is not a price—it’s an emissions standard that comes into place gradually, and any increased costs would be what the refineries need to do to meet those standards. This, however, wasn’t well communicated by the government, and of course the narrative got swallowed by the Conservatives calling it “Carbon Tax 2” and a poorly done report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer who framed this like it was a price, and so Irving was able to act in the way it did. And because it’s Irving, and they are more powerful than any of the provincial governments in Atlantic Canada (which is an enormous problem in a democracy), nobody challenged them on this deceptive price increase, and they successfully jammed the federal government into undermining the carbon price, so now it can be picked away at until it’s well and truly dead. Well done, everyone. You’ve just screwed yourselves, your credibility, and ultimately the planet. Slow clap.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Wednesday’s drone attack near the nuclear power plant in Khmelnitskyi region was likely targeted. Ukrainian officials say the Black Sea corridor is working, particularly now that they’ve chased away the Russian Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. Ukrainian businesses are preparing for the possibility of another winter of attacks on the power grid.

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