Tag Archives: Bank of Canada

Roundup: More alike than unalike

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The NDP decided that the bilateral meeting between Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden was the perfect time to take to shitposting about it, in the form of a juvenile mock-up of the agenda items, and making their remarks on them. Because this is where we’re at in this country – our two main opposition parties have decided that the online tactics of shitposting are definitely the way to win the hearts and minds of Canadian voters.

In the NDP’s case, this is not only about trolling Trudeau, but also Biden, because they have made a concerted effort to appeal to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/Bernie Sanders fanbase – consistent with their lifting their policy ideas wholesale, no matter whether or not they have any relevance in the Canadian context. This tends to involve a certain amount of trying to “win the Internet,” whether it’s with Jagmeet Singh adopting TikTok memes, or the culmination of this attempt to co-opt American Democrat cred when Singh and Ocasio-Cortez played Among Us over Twitch as part of a fundraiser. As a more centrist, compromise candidate, Biden is seen as a betrayal of the progressive wing of the Democrats, and you can bet that the Canadian New Democrats trying to appeal to them is going to cash in on that as much as possible.

None of this should be too surprising, however – the NDP have long-since abandoned any real sense of ideology for the sake of being left-flavoured populists, running after flavours of the week and pursuing policies that don’t actually make sense for their own purported principles (like their demand to cut the HST off of home heating, which would only disproportionately reward the wealthy). In this way, they have been more like the Conservatives than unalike for a while now, but with this full-on embrace of shitposting (as opposed to simply the mendacious omission of jurisdictional boundaries in their demands) just drives that point home.

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Roundup: Trudeau’s transparent fiction about vetting

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his call to the Queen yesterday morning to update her on the situation with the Governor General and that the Chief Justice will be fulfilling his role as Administrator in Julie Payette’s absence, and then he went to face reporters and spun an elaborate and transparent fiction to them, claiming that there was a “rigorous vetting process” around Payette’s appointment. This was a lie, complete with the rote assurances that they are always looking to improve the process. You know what would have been an improvement? Not abandoning the perfectly good process in the first place because when you had a lieutenant governor position open up, you wanted to fill it with one of your former ministers because you owed her after siding with Jody Wilson-Raybould over her. And from there, he couldn’t abandon it just for that position – he had to abandon the whole thing. In fact, Dominic LeBlanc pretty much ratted him out to the Globe and Mail that the vetting was inadequate, so even if you haven’t been following this file like some of us have, you know this was a lie.

Where the rub in this is because Trudeau is refusing to apologise or take any responsibility for the appointment itself, which is entirely on him under the tenets of Responsible Government. He has to wear this appointment – especially because he abandoned an established consultative process that worked and got good results, then didn’t actually vet Payette when she was suggested to him by his close circle, nor did he call references. As one CBC reporter at the presser said, it took her almost no work at all to find out that Payette’s previous two workplaces showed this very same pattern of abusive behaviour – which again supports the fact that the “rigorous vetting” was a lie. This is something that Parliament should be holding Trudeau to account for, like how our system is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, Colby Cosh makes the salient point that part of our desire for putting celebrities into Rideau Hall stems from our watching the cult of celebrity in American politics and looking to replicate it here, whereas what we should be doing is finding someone competent and unassuming for the role. Paul Wells recounts some of the early red flags with Payette, like her refusal to sign government orders in a timely manner, before making the salient point that part of Trudeau’s problem is really bigger than him – that the impulse to try and make things new and shiny is bigger than just him, and that Trudeau needs to be reminded of the hard work that goes into making these appointments. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé providing a reality check as the cheap outrage brigade starts in on Payette’s post-appointment annuities.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352702547702800385

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352703435058065408

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352705240517251073

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352707613633425409

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Roundup: The politics of throwing tantrums

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The word of the day was tantrums. It started off with Ontario premier Doug Ford throwing one at the CEO of Pfizer when he called him up to demand answers on new vaccines. It seems, however, that it didn’t last long, because when Ford put out a press release – sans staged photo of him on the call – he didn’t say what he had been told. After his bluster about firecrackers the day before, it would certainly appear that he was chastened by said CEO that he couldn’t make magic happen, but Ford had to look tough for his audience.

Shortly thereafter, Erin O’Toole put out a press release demanding that Justin Trudeau also phone up the CEO to throw a tantrum about the temporary vaccine shortage, and then hours later, when it became confirmed that President Biden rescinded the Keystone XL permit by executive order, O’Toole put out a separate release that said that Trudeau hadn’t done enough to stand up for their energy sector, as though Trudeau needs to scream, cry, threaten, and hold his breath until he turns blue. And more to the point, I find it fascinating that the Conservatives keep insisting that Trudeau is all style and no substance, and yet the one thing they keep demanding of him is more political performance art. Then again, when you look back at their legacy in government, it was far more about optics over substance, whether that was over their unconstitutional tough-on-crime measures, or the GST cut – which went against all good economic sense. Signalling to their base seemed to be what they were really all about, to the detriment of sound governance.

And to top off the day of tantrums, Jason Kenney’s reaction to the Keystone XL cancellation was beyond precious, as he demanded that the federal government start imposing trade sanctions against the US for the move, which is utterly bonkers. It’s also pretty telling as to the state of delusion Kenney seems to occupy when it comes just what cards he has in his hand. Trying to start a trade war with the US would have far more devastating consequences for Canada, and Kenney should know that, but apparently the politics of throwing tantrums in public is too good to avoid. And this is the state of the discourse, apparently. I would very much like leaders who behave like adults to be in the room, but this is where we are.

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Roundup: Kenney would like his social licence

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Things are frantic on the energy file, as the Biden administration threatens to kill the Keystone XL pipeline project, and Jason Kenney is floundering. In one breath, he has been demanding that federal government do something – never mind that Justin Trudeau has been championing this project to his American contacts since he was first made Liberal leader, and brought it up on his first phone call with Biden after the election – and he’s insisting that this would damage Canada-US relations – as though it could be much worse than the last four years of inscrutable and random policy changes. But perhaps the most fitting of all is that everything that Kenney is now reaping what he has been sowing over the past number of years in terms of his insulting those close to Biden, and all of the environmental policies he has been denigrating and fighting in court are precisely the kinds of social licence that he needs to try and convince a Biden administration to keep the permit alive. Funny that.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1351220724921475074

Kenney has also threatened legal action if the permit is rescinded, but his chances of success on that venue look mighty slim.

The NDP and Greens, meanwhile, are cheering the planned cancellation, and insist that Canada should be focusing on creating green jobs instead – as though you can flip a switch and make it happen.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1351354379853467649

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Roundup: New mockdowns after Goldilocks failed

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Things in Ontario have reached the point where Doug “I won’t hesitate” Ford has finally enacted a province-wide mockdown…but not before he hesitated even further by not putting it into force until Boxing Day. You know, so that everyone can still flood the malls and box stores, and feel like they’re justified in “cheating” for Christmas gatherings. And by mockdown, it’s not a real lockdown – it’s a few added restrictions but most workplaces are still up and running, in spite of mounting evidence of outbreaks in them, so good job there.

Ford, meanwhile, was more than happy to blame the federal government for not properly closing borders, and insisted that they do more testing at airports…which they are. Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu had to counter that the rapid testing pilot at Pearson is ongoing – but that also doesn’t change the fact that only 1.3 percent of new cases can be traced to travel, which blows a hole in Ford’s narrative. Of course, that narrative is all about blame-shifting so that he doesn’t have to look like the bad guy in the “lockdowns,” never mind that these should have happened in September at the latest to have nipped the second wave in the bud, but they didn’t do that, because they tried the “Goldilocks approach,” and it failed. How many hundreds of people have died unnecessarily since?

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Roundup: Unnecessary, lethal delays

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The pandemic continues to accelerate in certain parts of the country, because that’s what exponential growth is – exponential. To that end, Dr. Theresa Tam is calling for stricter lockdowns, because the longer you delay, the worse it gets. So what is Doug Ford doing? Delaying until Monday to decide on extending lockdown measures in some regions of the province, and signalling that tougher measures won’t go into effect until Boxing Day – you know, so that there can be more holiday super-spreader events and the situation will spiral out of control that much faster. Good job! And no, there haven’t been actual lockdowns, which is why the measures that have been put into place so far haven’t been effective (and there is talk emerging that some of the hot spots are in large industrial workplaces, that the government is insistent on remaining open).

There is some more promising vaccine news, in that it looks like there will be scheduled 125,000 doses of the Pfizer delivered per week in January, while more freezers are being delivered to provinces to store the doses. As well, the Moderna vaccine is nearly ready for approval (apparently Health Canada is waiting on some more manufacturing data), and new guidance is suggesting that it won’t need to be frozen as initially indicated, which makes it even more versatile for delivery in rural and remote communities.

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Roundup: More year-enders, more bland assurances

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The year-ender interviews with the prime minster continue to roll out, so we’ll see how much in there is actually newsworthy. Still from The Canadian Press’ year-ender, Trudeau said that the government is trying to find “balance” with its ability to be transparent while still able to have no-holds-barred closed-door discussions like they do in Cabinet, all in response to questions about why the government is so slow at its promised reforms to the Access to Information system.

From the CBC, Trudeau said that the 500,000 Canadians who got “educational” letters from the CRA about their CERB payments won’t need to repay by the end of the year, as some had feared – never mind that the government created this problem when they weren’t clear about what the eligibility criteria were.

To CTV, Trudeau said that the target date of having Canadians vaccinated by September is something of a conservative estimate – it could happen faster, but it could also happen more slowly, depending on supply chain issues like those that have hit Pfizer already. He also said that he’s less concerned about the comparisons with the US as having plans to inoculate people at a faster per-capita rate, noting that they have much bigger challenges in their healthcare system, hinting that their estimates may be overly optimistic.

Monetary policy

Andrew Scheer is back at shitposting, this time spreading lies about the Bank of Canada and their use of quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Quantitative easing is not actually just “printing money,” and it’s not going to cause runaway inflation. In fact, we’re running so far below our inflationary targets that the Bank should be running expansionary monetary policy – and yes, the Bank has a helpful primer on quantitative easing for people like Scheer and Pierre Poilievre if they cared to learn. But they don’t, and are jeopardizing the independence of the central bank by keeping up this particular policy of lies and shitposting to try and score points.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339640374751596544

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339643586204348418

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Roundup: Telling the premiers no

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The prime minister met with the premiers (virtually) yesterday, and while there was talk about the vaccine roll-out and that kind of good stuff, there was also a discussion about healthcare transfers – or more specifically, the premiers’ demand for some $28 billion in permanent new transfers with no strings attached. Justin Trudeau, to his credit, said no – or more specifically, he does see a role for the federal government to pay more, but now is not the time to discuss how much, and you can bet that it’s going to come with plenty of strings for new programmes that the federal government wants to launch, like pharmacare and national standards for long-term care.

There are a few things to remember about why there need to be strings attached to this money. One is that we can’t trust that provinces will actually spend this on healthcare, and lo, we have precedence for this. Prior to the Harper government capping the health transfer escalator at three percent or GDP growth (whichever was higher), healthcare spending increases by the provinces were far below what the health transfer escalator was – meaning that the provinces were not spending healthcare money on healthcare. Additionally, some of you may remember when Stephen Harper fell for Jean Charest’s bogus demands to address a “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and Quebec, so when Harper – desperate for Quebec votes – turned over a pile of money to Charest to address said bogus “imbalance,” Charest turned around and turned that into tax cuts, burning Harper in the process. On top of that, we have seen plenty of provinces during this pandemic alone just sitting on the money the federal government gave them to deal with it. So no, we should not trust that provinces will spend it wisely.

As well, the premiers have been misrepresenting the history of health transfers, citing the “it used to be 50-50” line, without acknowledging why it changed, which was to give the provinces tax points that they could use for healthcare or other programmes. There is a great thread here that you should all read that spells it out, and why we should take these provincial (and Bloc, NDP and now Conservative) talking points with a shaker of salt, because they’re misrepresenting history.

Last sitting day

Given that this is the last sitting day of 2020, I suspect that we may see a unanimous consent motion to pass a number of bills in one fell swoop before the Commons rises, being the UK trade deal bill, the Elections Act bill, and quite possibly the fiscal update implementation bill. Why those three? There are worries about trade disruptions if the UK trade implementation bill doesn’t get passed by December 31st, and this essentially just rolls over the existing CETA with the EU, so there would be very little that is contentious in this bill. With the elections bill, it is also relatively uncontentious, based on Elections Canada’s input that would allow for a pandemic election to have three voting days and extra advanced polling, plus some other changes for things like long-term care facilities and increased mail-in ballots – and since it needs 90 days from royal assent to come into effect, parties will want it to pass as quickly as possible. And as for the implementation bill, it contains both a fix for a flaw in the commercial rent assistance programme that they didn’t amend, plus has other pandemic supports, and again, they will want it passed as soon as possible. Of course, this means once again that there is plenty of spending that didn’t get scrutiny, and it jams the Senate by pushing a bunch of bills on them without time to give it proper study or the ability to move amendments, but this is becoming a hallmark of this parliament.

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Roundup: A reasoned amendment

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Something very usual happened in the Senate yesterday, in that Independent Senator Kim Pate decided to move a reasoned amendment to the government’s supply bill. A reasoned amendment is basically a procedural move to decline to give a bill second reading, meaning you don’t even agree with the bill in principle. This is a very rare move, and the fact that this is being used on a supply bill is a sign that this is a senator who is playing with fire.

You don’t mess around with supply bills. This is about money the government needs to operate, and if it fails, they can’t just keep funding government operations with special warrants. It’s going to be a giant headache of having to recreate the bill in a way that isn’t identical to the one that just passed (because you can’t pass two identical bills in the same session), go through the process again as the House is set to rise for the holidays (the Senate usually lags a few days later) is going to be a giant headache that is going to lose this senator any of the support she’s hoping to gain. Now, because the Senate isn’t a confidence chamber, defeating a money bill won’t make the government fall, but this is still a very bad precedent to try and set, or worse, given other newer senators ideas about how they should start operating.

There are plenty of objectionable aspects of this stunt of Pate’s – and yes, it is a stunt – but part of it is misunderstanding what that the supply bill is not about new pandemic aid programmes – it’s about keeping the civil service functioning. Her particular concern that 3.5 million people remain the poverty line is commendable, but Pate has been advocating for the government to implement a basic income for a while now, and a lot of people have been misled by the way in which the CERB was rolled out into thinking that this is a template for a basic income, which it’s not. And implementing a basic income – of which certain designs can be useful, but plenty which are not – is a complex affair if you talk to economists who have been working on the issue for years, not the least of which is that it’s going to require (wait for it…) negotiation with the provinces, because they deliver welfare programmes. And if Pate thinks that this kind of a stunt is going to force the government to suddenly implement one, she’s quite mistaken. I am forced to wonder who is giving her this kind of procedural advice, because she’s operating out of bounds, and asking for a world of procedural trouble. It’s fortunate that the Senate adjourned debate for the day shortly after she moved this motion so that others can regroup, but this is a worrying development for the “new” Senate.

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Roundup: Goodbye, Bubble

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Farewell, Atlantic Bubble – we hardly knew you. With growing spread in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, both PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador decided to pull out of the Bubble, and impose quarantines for any arrivals on their respective islands, effectively bursting it (despite some saying that this is only “temporary.” There can be little doubt that much like every other province, even those within the Bubble started to get cocky, and some of the spread can be traced back to restaurants, which remain open in the region. It nevertheless demands that even with border measures, you can’t let your guard down when it comes to taking measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Further west, Alberta premier Jason Kenney remains MIA as the province posts higher raw numbers than Ontario, but a Cabinet meeting was being held yesterday afternoon that is supposed to result in new measures being announced this morning – but we’ll see if a real lockdown gets proposed, because given the math, they are now far beyond what a two-week “circuit-breaker” lockdown could achieve. Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is now self-isolating after a close contact, while Manitoba premier Brian Pallister insists he didn’t wait too long to take increased measures, and yet also insists that his province doesn’t have a backlog in contact tracing when facts show otherwise. So there’s that.

Meanwhile, we’re getting more MPs who can’t seem to grasp jurisdictional issues. The Conservatives are blaming the federal government for not doing things that were clearly the responsibility of premiers to do, while the NDP are demanding that Trudeau reach down into provincial jurisdiction and do something when premiers don’t, which isn’t how it works. It’s all becoming very tiresome, and exasperating, because there are things that they can legitimately criticize this government for, rather than flailing about and trying to blame him for things that he has no control over. But the current political reality is that truth and jurisdiction don’t matter in the face of the narrative they’re trying to spin.

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