Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Suspension, and abrogation

Posted on by

In a week where the news was coming at you like a firehose, Friday was possibly triple that. I literally sent from one press conference to another for a period of five hours. But to start the day off was the news that the House of Commons was indeed going to be suspended for five weeks (really only the loss of two sitting weeks), and they had arranged to complete passage of the New NAFTA implementation bill first thing, which was fine, because they were already on the last scheduled day of debate and the Senate had already done pre-study. What was a problem was the fact that they proposed two – two! – supply bills worth tens of billions of dollars and rammed them through both houses at all stages with zero debate and zero scrutiny, because the House leaders came to an agreement on them. And while absolutely everyone fell all over themselves to talk about how great it was that the parties all came together to ensure that they acted responsibly in suspending parliament (though I think it was premature), the business of supply is the whole gods damned purpose of Parliament. Instead of it being taken seriously, they rolled over on it, and rammed it through, along with another bill to give the government any additional spending authority it needs without parliamentary oversight for the duration of the suspension. Oh, but don’t worry – they’ve ensured that the Auditor General will keep an eye on things after the money has already been spent. Good job on ensuring that the barn door closes after the horses bolt, guys. You’ve totally got the whole gods damned point of Parliament down pat. There were far better options than a wholesale suspension and abrogation of the fundamental responsibility of parliamentarians, but that’s where we are. You get the slowest of slow claps for this particular move.

From then on, it was one after another. Chrystia Freeland and several ministers held a press conference to announce further measures, such as cautioning against all foreign travel, news that they were going to ensure that all international travellers were routed through a smaller number of airports in order to maximize the available resources of CBSA, and the suspension of cruise ship season. Then Justin Trudeau held a presser from outside of Rideau Cottage to update his own situation and to reiterate some of the same messages that were just delivered. And then Bill Morneau, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and the Superintendent of Financial Institutions held a joint press conference to talk about immediate economic stimulus – including another surprise fifty-point basis cut from the key interest rate – and the promise of yet more fiscal measures to come next week (because they are likely operating flat out and need the weekend to pull the details together). Oh, and the budget date has been postponed until sometime after Parliament resumes, whenever that may be.

Meanwhile, Colby Cosh says that while we’re still awaiting the full impact of COVID-19, the rapid pace of technological development means that this could be the last major global pandemic. Chris Selley cautions about feeling too smug about our healthcare system under the current circumstances. Kevin Carmichael walks through some of the fiscal and monetary measures announced today, and offers thanks to the Bank of Canada for being the rock that Morneau and Trudeau have not been. Heather Scoffield is impressed by the coordination between Morneau, the Bank of Canada and OSFI in staving off “economic hibernation,” and hopes for similar cooperation in combatting COVID-19. Economists Armine Yalnizyan and Jennifer Robson have some suggestions for how to help workers affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Here’s a thread from Kevin Milligan on the use of EDC and BDC in these kinds of situation.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1238507963058438144

https://twitter.com/BrettEHouse/status/1238622110760800257

https://twitter.com/BrettEHouse/status/1238622115282157570

Continue reading →

QP: A day late to the concerns of the nation

Posted on by

After news that the prime minister was in self-isolation after his wife was sick, and Jagmeet Singh also stated that he was self-isolating after feeling “unwell,” the business of parliament carried on. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he gave his best wishes to the PM — for which he got applause — and then demanded more “decisive action” and claimed that passengers arriving from Italy were not screened, ignoring the pertinent information that everyone was screened before they were allowed to board. Chrystia Freeland addressed all Canadians to trust in the advice of medical experts, that things will get worse for it gets better, and that we are well prepared. Scheer raised potential shortages around equipment like ventilators, to which Freeland stated that the federal government was leading a bulk national procurement effort and they were working together with provinces and territories. Scheer lamented the lack of mandatory screening, quarantines or travel restrictions and demanded the evidence for those decisions. Freeland gave a bromide about our public health system, and assured him that enhanced measures were in place, and that they were following the advice of science. Alain Rayes demanded a plan to prevent large public gatherings, and Freeland repeated her first assurance for all Canadians in French. Rayes then demanded more “concrete measures” for workers who lose their jobs as a result of the outbreak, and Freeland read the changes to EI and promise for new measures as necessary. Christine Normandin led off for the Bloc, and after wishing the PM well, she demanded more resources for border screenings, for which Freeland addressed the PM’s situation, that he wasn’t sick but waiting for his wife’s results. Normandin again demanded “real” screening measures, and Freeland again read that they were following all public health advice. Peter Julian led off for the NDP, and again demanded that every worker who has to self-quarantine gets financial resort, to which Freeland reiterated the $1 billion COVID-19 package and that they were rolling out new measures. Rachel Blaney repeated the question with added condescension, to which Freeland calmly repeated the same response.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1238169023449268224

Continue reading →

QP: Amateur hour conspiracies in the face of a pandemic

Posted on by

Wednesday, caucus day, and while all of the leaders were present, the benches were not nearly as full as they usually are on caucus day. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he immediately blamed Justin Trudeau for the weak economic growth figure, listing a bunch of disingenuous items that counted as “proof.” Trudeau stood up to talk about investing in Canadians, lifting a million people out of poverty while having the strongest balance sheet in the G7. Scheer listed a bunch of things that the government spent on what were framed in a disingenuous way, to which Trudeau reiterated his previous points. Scheer listed yet more false points about Harper’s record versus this one, before demanding tax cuts and the elimination of “red tape,” and Trudeau got a bit indignant in defending the Canada Child Benefit while calling out Scheer for petty politics. Scheer raised the Berskshire Hathaway pullout from the Quebec LNG plan, to which Trudeau reminded him that the very same company just invested in a wind farm in Alberta. Scheer changed to French to then accuse him of striking a secret deal with the Bloc go keep them from re-opening the Double Hyphen Affair in committee, to which Trudeau stated that he defended jobs while standing up for the legal system. Yves-François Blanchet stood up for the Bloc, and stated that they blocked the committee study to prevent another round of people screaming that all Quebeckers were corrupt, before he switched to COVID-19 measures, to which Trudeau reminded him that they have been taking all measures that their scientific advisors stated. Blanchet demanded more border restrictions, daily press briefings and more purchasing power for seniors, and Trudeau reiterated his reassurances. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, worrying about workers who can’t access EI, and Trudeau assured him that they are working on additional measures. Singh repeated the demand, and Trudeau reiterated that they would be there for all Canadians.

Continue reading →

QP: Keeping some fiscal room

Posted on by

Tuesday, and while Justin Trudeau was present today, both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh were away for whatever the reason. Gérard Deltell led off in French, worrying about the deficit and the loss of jobs in the energy sector, and the general direction of the economy. Trudeau started that they did the work of things like poverty reduction, but they knew to leave room for situations like COVID-19. Deltell worried that they spent the cupboard bare, to which Trudeau reminded him that the Conservatives cut services to veterans and other vulnerable groups while his government has room to manoeuvre. Pierre Poilievre took over in English and listed a number of false metrics around our economy and the state of the deficit, to which Trudeau repeated his answer. Poilievre listed some cherry-picked facts about Conservative budgets, and Trudeau noted that the Conservatives neglected to invest in Canadians. Poilievre then listed a number of disingenuously framed investments by the current government, and Trudeau listed the ways in which Conservatives cut services for Canadians. Yves-François Blanchet was up for the Bloc, and he worried about poor seniors, to which Trudeau listed the measures that his government has taken to date. Blanchet repeated his demand to increase seniors’ purchasing power, and Trudeau reiterated that they have taken plenty of measures. Peter Julian led for the NDP, and he worried about measures for vulnerable workers in the gig economy, to which Trudeau assured him that they would be announcing new measures. Jenny Kwan forcefully read a demand to delay cruise season, to which Trudeau stated that they were working with provinces and sectors to support them in difficult times.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Pallister makes a gamble

Posted on by

Manitoba premier Brian Pallister announced yesterday that he was going to implement a carbon price after all – sort of. In a dare to the federal government, Pallister says he’ll stick with his originally planned $25/tonne price, and not raise it like he’s supposed with the rest of the country, but he would also reduce the province’s PST to compensate. Revenue neutrality can be a very good thing, but the point of having a common carbon price across the country is to have a level playing field so that provinces don’t undercut one another – which Pallister frequently ignores as he instead battles straw men about the efficacy of the province’s environmental plans (many of those mentioned having nothing to do with reducing GHGs).

While Pallister is confident that the Supreme Court of Canada will rule against the federal government on the upcoming carbon price challenges – which is a pretty risky gable to take – he’s daring the federal government to do what they said they would, which is to continue making up the federal carbon price with a separate carbon levy on top of the provincial one, which would continue to be rebated to taxpayers by the CRA. None of this makes much sense as a strategy other than the fact that it lets him proclaim that he’s lowered the PST in order to get the plaudits for that.

Meanwhile, here’s Dylan Robertson with some additional context:

Continue reading →

Roundup: Putting Freeland on the case (again)

Posted on by

With more attention turning to what’s happening around COVID-19, prime minister Justin Trudeau has created a new Cabinet committee to handle the situation, and he’s put Chrystia Freeland in charge of it. An important addition to the committee is Kirsty Duncan, who may no longer be in Cabinet but is nevertheless sworn in as a privy councillor, and the fact that she has expertise in pandemics and once studied the Spanish Flu epidemic, so chalk one up for bench strength there. Freeland says the response has to be both “whole of government” and “whole of country,” and her role as intergovernmental affairs minister is certainly part of that – given that provinces deliver healthcare for the bulk of the country – but one suspects this is also about having a reassuring communicator on the issue (because as we all know, this government can’t communicate its way out of a wet paper bag).

To that end, while certain opposition voices are demanding travel restrictions (which are proven not to work) or enhanced screening measures at airports, what we’re hearing from the health minister and the Chief Public Health Officer is largely that containment can only delay an outbreak – which is not a bad thing, because if it can be delayed by six weeks or so, that would get our healthcare system past peak flu season, which frees up beds and resources. And thus far, we have been lucky that all of the cases in this country can be traced to travel-related causes and not community transmission, which means that the measures taken to date have been working, but again, delay is the watchword. It should also be noted that we have largely avoided panic, which is pretty good (torqued headlines about demanding people start stockpiling notwithstanding).

With that in mind, the military has been ordered to being pre-pandemic planning out of an abundance of caution, given that they need to be able to continue to operate in the case of a crisis.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Party positions and individual agency

Posted on by

The weaponization of private members’ business continues unabated in Parliament, as the Conservatives put out an attack yesterday that claims that the Liberals want to “legalize” hard drugs because maverick backbencher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith tabled a private members’ bill that calls on the decriminalization of small personal amounts in order to better treat addiction as a public health issue and to not criminalize people with addictions – something that has worked in some countries. The lie, of course, is both in claiming that this was official government policy, and that it was calling for legalization – because who cares about truth or facts when there is fear to be mongered?

The bigger problem here? What it does to how private members’ business is treated in the House of Commons, and more to the point, there is a very big potential for this to blow up in Scheer’s face because of Cathay Wagantall’s sex-selective abortion bill currently on the Order Paper. And yes, let’s not be obtuse about this – the media feeds this particular weaponization, both in how they made this kind of abortion bill an Issue during the election, and how we both demand that MPs be both independent and yet castigate the leader for “losing control” when any MP shows any glimmer of independence. (And for the record, Scheer has not said anything about Wagantall’s bill, other than to have his spokesperson say that he “discouraged” such bills).

https://twitter.com/althiaraj/status/1234901634272178182

I know that everyone is going to be cute about these bills, and how if they get tabled the party “must” support the position because everything is so centrally controlled, and so on, but this is part of what poisons the system. Insisting that everyone be marching in lockstep from other parties ensures that the same insistence is made about your own party, and it removes any agency from MPs. They’re MPs, not gods damned battle droids. If we want drones to simply read speeches into the record and vote according the leader’s office, then why do we even bother with MPs? Why bother with parliament at all? The Conservatives’ release is embarrassing, and they should be ashamed of themselves for it (which of course would imply that they’re capable of shame, but I have my doubts about that one too).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Rights, title, and ratification

Posted on by

We got a few more details yesterday about the agreement reached with the Wet’sutwet’en hereditary chiefs on Sunday, despite a few TV hosts somewhat obtusely demanding to know what it meant for the Coastal GasLink pipeline – despite the fact that it was stated over and over again that this agreement did not have anything to do with that, and that the matter was unresolved. The crux of the agreement was an agreement on how rights and title would be extended for the Wet’suwet’en going forward, meaning that with any future projects, there would be clarity as to who would need to be consulted – which means the hereditary chiefs – and given the new impact assessment process that the Liberals instituted (under the infamous Bill C-69), those consultations begin at the earliest possible moment for these project proposals so that affected First Nations can be brought in from the get-go. What I found especially interesting was that Carolyn Bennett said that this was in accordance with UNDRIP principles, as free, prior and informed consent (which again she stressed was not a veto). And one imagines that this kind of agreement would be a template for others when it comes to unceded territory across the country.

As for Coastal GasLink, work apparently resumed on aspects of the project, but given that some of their permits were pulled by the province’s environmental assessment agency with a demand for more consultations, one supposes that the work is on areas that are outside of Wet’suwet’en territory. Meanwhile, one of the elected chiefs who is in favour of the project was doing the media rounds in Ottawa yesterday, and he said that while his people were discussing the ratification of the new agreement, he said that he was also willing to give up the economic benefits of the pipeline is that was what his people decided that they wanted as part of those discussions. We do know that matriarchs who were in support of the project were also in the meeting between Bennett, her BC counterpart and those hereditary chiefs, so the discussion within the community is very much alive, and we’ll see in a couple of weeks when the ratification process is supposed to be concluded, what the future holds for the pipeline.

Continue reading →

Roundup: See you at the Supreme Court

Posted on by

In the wake of the Alberta Court of Appeal reference decision on the federal carbon price, both Jason Kenney and his justice minister have been performing a particular song and dance for the media’s consumption, demanding that the federal government immediately remove said “unconstitutional” price, and demanding a rebate for all Albertans under threat of personal lawsuit.
Couple of things:

  1. This was not a court order. It was a reference question, so there is no actual weight to the finding of unconstitutionality. And federal justice minister David Lametti said as much in a letter responding to his Alberta counterpart telling that he would see him at the Supreme Court of Canada.
  2. There is already a rebate. In fact, most people get more back than they pay into it – and they are scheduled to receive the biggest rebates in the country. Demanding refunds is actually a bit gross, because it’s wilfully misrepresenting how the system works.
  3. Suing members of the federal Cabinet is not how the system works. And we actually saw said provincial minister’s old law professor take to Twitter to say that she taught him better than that. So there’s that.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1232874850563260416

Meanwhile, Manitoba is threatening to continue with their challenge to the federal carbon price if they don’t get a deal on the very same thing from the federal government. While the federal government says that they haven’t received a new proposal from Manitoba, you can bet that the province wants to continue pitching a price that won’t rise, which isn’t going to be on because it’s about ensuring a level playing field across the country, and not letting premiers undermine one another in a race to the bottom.

Continue reading →

QP: Asking for psychic predictions

Posted on by

While the prime minister was in town, he opted to take a pass on Question Period today, as did a couple of other leaders. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he led off by praising overinflated praise for Teck Frontier, and he wanted to know how the PM personally felt about the “cancellation,” which was actually a withdrawal. Chrystia Freeland responded by stating that it was a difficult decision for the company, before listing the projects they support and have been getting built. Scheer accused the prime minister of not having the strength to stare down radical activists, to which Freeland that reconciling climate action and resource projects is challenging and not helped by extreme rhetoric. Scheer breathily accused the government of sitting on Teck’s approval since July, to which Freeland took exception to the rhetoric, and stated that the country needed to find a path forward on getting projects built while combatting climate change, and it was a complex task. Alain Rayes took over in French to decry Trudeau’s lack of leadership, and demanded the rail blockades be ended, to which Freeland read that Trudeau showed leadership when he said that the injunctions needed to upheld before mentioning that Carolyn Bennett was on the ground meeting with the hereditary chiefs. Rayes demanded a date for all of the blockades would be down, to which Freeland reiterated her response. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and accused the lack of leadership from the PM for creating the rail blockades in Quebec, for which Freeland underscored that they were all working together to combat the challenges, and thanked the Bloc for their constructive suggestions on the New NAFTA. Therrien tried to “I told you so” on the meetings with the Wet’suwet’en, to which Freeland repeated that Trudeau showed significant leadership and That Bennett was on the ground. Jagmeet Singh was up for the Bloc, and demanded that the prime minister personally meet with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, to which Freeland somewhat didactically stated that this was a BC problem, and the government was working closely with them. Singh listed dates Trudeau met with corporate lobbyists but not the hereditary chiefs, to which Freeland stated that the PM has worked harder and more sincerely toward reconciliation than any prime minister in history, before touting Bennett’s meeting.

Continue reading →