Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Cutting through Pallister’s bluster

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With the Cabinet meeting in Winnipeg, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland took an opportunity to meet with premier Brian Pallister yesterday, and boy howdy, was his tone in interviews afterward a hugely problematic mess. Pallister kept insisting that the province wasn’t getting the “respect” they deserved for their environmental plans, while ignoring the legitimate concerns that the federal government has – to the point where he was deliberately obscuring the actual issues at play.

One of the main issues in contention is the federal carbon price, which Pallister has famously waffled on (to the point where Paul Wells has referred to him as “Canada’s tallest weather vane”) – first he was going to implement one, then got huffy and stopped the plans because he didn’t want to increase it every year as is the plan, and because he saw momentum with other conservative premiers in challenging it in the courts. With those challenges coming down squarely in the federal government’s favour, Pallister is again floating the idea of implementing it, but doesn’t want it to increase, saying that a low price will let them meet their Paris targets. The problem, of course, is that there needs to be a common carbon price across the country so that provinces don’t undercut one another, which Pallister (and others) continue to ignore, as though the fact is a triviality when it’s the crux of the whole issue. All the while, Pallister is swearing up and down that he’s not asking for a special deal, when he is in fact demanding just that. I’m not sure how else you would describe being exempted from increasing the carbon price in line with the rest of the country as anything other than a special deal.

Add to that, Pallister is demanding a cookie for past emissions reductions when there is a hell of a long way for the country to go to meet our current targets. Ontario is trying this tactic as well, when the Ford government has completely derailed the province’s planned reductions, and insisting that you’ve already done your bit just puts even more pressure on Alberta and Saskatchewan, which I’m not sure Kenney and Moe would appreciate terribly. Pallister was also on TV grousing that he’s not getting credit for exporting cleaner electricity to Saskatchewan and the United States, which is funny because the reward for that is money, which presumably they are earning for doing so. Suffice to say, all of Pallister’s excuses are amounting to a pile of bullshit, and it would be great if our media brethren could do better at calling him out on it.

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Roundup: When lower carbon is not lower carbon

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As the various interests trying to promote the continued development of Alberta’s energy sector amidst changing global markets and the need to move to a carbon-constrained future, one is bound to find a number of arguments that are inherently self-serving and containing falsehoods (such as the fiction that Andrew Scheer and Jason Kenney keep trying to promote that somehow Alberta energy can reduce the environmental footprint in China and India, and that we can take their emissions credits for it). Energy economist Andrew Leach found another one promulgated by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (which I will remind you is an organization that has gone so far to the one side that major players like Royal Dutch Shell have withdrawn from the group, because they understand the need for mechanisms like carbon pricing).

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Roundup: Orphan well alert

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A story that did not get enough attention yesterday was out of Alberta, where the organization that is tasked with cleaning up abandoned oil wells is sounding the alarm that the provincial regulator’s rules are not sufficient to prevent the creation of more of these “orphan” wells – at a time when more companies are offloading assets to smaller companies. This is the kind of practice that usually results in the orphaning of these wells in the first place – that the smaller companies start losing money when the price of oil tanks, and they can’t live up to their obligations to clean up the abandoned ones with the money they’re making from the active ones they’ve bought along with them.

This issue was the subject of a Supreme Court of Canada decision last year, where the court said that bankruptcy trustees who take up these companies with the orphan wells can’t simply abandon these obligations under their bankruptcy proceedings as they’re trying to sell the active wells to new buyers – that their environmental obligations can’t be jettisoned because it’s inconvenient for them. (More on the underlying issues here). This also reinforces the polluter-pays principle, which governments say they’re in favour of – except when it’s inconvenient. Like right now, for Jason Kenney.

Why this issue deserves more attention is because Kenney (and to a lesser degree Scott Moe, who is following the pattern set out for him by Brad Wall) has been demanding that the federal government spend their dollars on cleaning up these orphan wells under the rubric of it being job-creation, or good for the environment. Kenney’s demand for retroactive stabilization funds as an “equalization rebate” (which is ridiculous) has been cited on more than one occasion as a means of using the funds for this purpose, which would essentially be offloading the responsibility onto the federal government because the regulator hasn’t been doing an adequate job when these sales happen, and the provincial government hasn’t created strict enough regulations to prevent these wells from being orphaned in the first place. That’s something that we should be holding him – and the industry – to account for, but that means cutting through the obfuscation. There should be no reason why the federal government should be taking on this expense, but this is what they are being asked to do.

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Roundup: Building the Teck narrative

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While some of Jason Kenney’s usual mouthpieces and apologists start agitating for the Teck Frontier oilsands mine, it seems we need yet more reality checks about the project – particularly the economics. Because we have seen on more than one occasion where a project that wasn’t economically viable still achieves mythology status because certain people who think the idea of it is great will lie about its fate in order to suit their narratives *cough*Energy East*cough*. Anyway, here’s Andrew Leach with more.

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Roundup: Competing economic illiteracy

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As someone who covers a fair bit of economic stories, the absolute inability of this government to come up with a definition of “middle class” is exhausting – and those of you who read me regularly will know that I will instead use Middle Class™ as a means of showcasing that it’s a meaningless branding exercise. And lo and behold, when challenged to offer up a definition during one of his year-ender interviews, Justin Trudeau said that “Canadians know who’s in the middle class and know what their families are facing and we focus more on the actual issues.” And I died a little bit inside. For a government that keeps insisting they’re all about data, and evidence-based policy, their refusal to offer a meaningful measure of what their core narrative is all about is entirely about branding. By not offering a definition, they don’t have to exclude anyone – because everyone believes they’re middle class (whether they had ponies or not). And more to the point, by not offering a metric, they can’t measure whether they’ve succeeded for failed – it’s only about feelings, which makes their talk of data and evidence all the more hollow.

And then there’s Pierre Poilievre, who, when challenged about the definition of a recession, makes up a bullshit response and thinks it makes him clever. It’s as economically illiterate as the Liberals’ Middle Class™ prevarication, but the fact that the Conservatives keep cheerleading a “made-in-Canada recession” that no economist sees on the horizon, and which they can’t even fit into the actual definition of what a recession is (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) sets a dangerous path of spooking markets. It’s all so stupid, and reckless, but the party’s current path of pathological dishonesty makes them blind to the danger of it all.

On perhaps a related note, Trudeau’s director of communications, Kate Purchase, is leaving to become a senior director at Microsoft, and good luck to her – and she really is one of the nicest staffers and was actually helpful to media in stark contrast to the Harper crew. But I also hope that perhaps this means that her replacement can start ensuring that this government can start communicating its way out of a wet paper bag, because cripes, they have done themselves zero favours over the past four years.

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Roundup: Fiscal update and actuarial context

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Finance minister Bill Morneau released his fall economic update yesterday, and it showed that while the economy was doing well – fairly strong growth, very strong job creation (November’s numbers notwithstanding) and wage growth – the deficit was going to get a lot bigger unexpectedly. The reason for it, however, was largely ignored by all of the commentariat, both media and partisan, because the kneejerk response in Canada about any finance story is about the size of the deficit, end of story. The real reason – that low interest rates had forced a hefty actuarial adjustment for government pension plans – was inconvenient for them to force a narrative onto, so they just ignored it and clutched their pearls some more, crying “The deficit! The deficit!” and the Conservatives continued to cheerlead a “made-in-Canada” recession by cherry-picking some very selective economic data that was to the exclusion of the broader trends, because narrative. Here’s economist Kevin Milligan to explain some more.

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I would add that while the Conservatives like to rail about how our unemployment figures compare poorly to other countries, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand because we don’t all measure unemployment the same way, and not all of our economies work the same way. Canada has had record low unemployment in recent months, to the point where economists say we are have been at what is essentially “full employment” – in a statistical sense, not to dismiss that there are regions where it’s still a problem, but essentially there’s not a lot of room for more job growth in the economy. But hey, why let reality get in the way of the narrative, right?

In terms of analysis, John Geddes delves into the notion of “endless deficits” and finds that, shockingly, it’s not a cut-and-tried issue, but the real issue is complacency. Certain bank economists think that because the shift in the deficit is on pension obligations, it could force the Bank of Canada to act sooner if there were an economic downturn. Heather Scoffield wonders what kinds of budget promises that Morneau will have to abandon given the bigger deficit figures if they don’t want to lose their debt-to-GDP anchor.

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Roundup: Considerations for Teck

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the proposed Teck Frontier oilsands mine in northern Alberta lately, and demands by Jason Kenney and a number of Conservative MPs that its approval be fast-tracked as close to immediate as possible. Energy economist Andrew Leach has a few thoughts on the matter, particularly of how to reconcile Teck in the broader scope.

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QP: Cheerleading a recession

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After this morning’s surprising announcement that Andrew Scheer was resigning as Conservative leader, the PM was in his office but not present for QP (even though he had been in the House to respond to Scheer’s resignation just a couple of hours earlier). After a lengthy ovation, Scheer lamented last month’s job numbers, which I remind you was 100 percent bullshit, particularly his warnings about a “made-in-Canada recession.” Bill Morneau reminded him that while monthly job numbers are important, they would continue to invest in Canadians as that created over a million jobs. In French, Scheer demanded an economic update, and Morneau responded was that one would happen in the coming days. Scheer switched back to English to carry on his lament for the stage of the economy, giving misleading G7 job stats, to which Morneau repeated that their plan to invest was working, and that the economy was on track for the second-highest growth in the G7. Leona Alleslev was up next, and in French, concern trolled about the New NAFTA, and demanded impact assessments for it. Chrystia Freeland reminded her that the existential threat to our economy was now past, and endangering ratification was simply threatening the economy. Alleslev switched to English to worry about “repairing” our relationship with the US, and Freeland stated that the most important thing was ratifying the agreement. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and he spun a sad tale of steel workers in Ontario being protected but aluminium workers in Quebec were not, to which Freeland reminded him that they got the tariffs repealed, and that the new agreement had 70 percent North American aluminium content requirements. Blanchet sang the praises of economic nationalism, and Freeland warned of the dangers of partisanship. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and demanded the government stop the judicial review of the Human Rights Tribunal compensation order, to which Marc Miller started that they were engaging partners to see that there was the fairest and most comprehensive compensation offered. Singh tried again in English, and Miller listed new measures they are in compliance with, and said that they were sitting down to get compensation right.

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QP: Demanding a special committee on China

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With Chrystia Freeland in Mexico City for the New NAFTA signing ceremony, and Justin Trudeau in town but elsewhere, Andrew Scheer was present today and led off by mentioning the first anniversary of the two Canadians being detained in China, and asked for an update as to the efforts being made to secure their release. Karina Gould assured him that they are the government’s absolute priority, and expressed thanks to the allies who have spoken up as well. Scheer then lamented that the government waited six months to file a complaint with the WTO over China over the canola issue, and Marie-Claude Bibeau listed efforts they have made. Scheer was not mollified, and railed that the government was still investing in the Asian Infrastructure Bank, to which Bill Morneau assured him that the Bank benefitted Canadians as much as the countries they invest in. Alain Rayes took over in French, who worried that China was too interested in the Arctic, to which Gould Assured him that they always defend Canadian sovereignty. Rayes returned to the question of the two detained Canadians, and Gould repeated her question in French. Yves-François Blanchet, after being chastised for pointing out the prime minister’s absence, worried about the New NAFTA and that aluminium was not protected under it, to which Gould assured him they were proud of the agreement, and the new NAFTA had strict regulations around the industry. Blanchet railed about workers in Quebec, somewhat rhetorically, to which Gould reiterated that they were defending market access for Canadians. Jagmeet Singh was up next, to repeat his latest demand to target the tax cut different to fund a dental care programme, to which Patty Hajdu said that the dental care idea was worth exploring, and she wanted to work with all members on it. Singh accused her of just saying nice words, and Hajdu reminded him that such a programme would be delivered by the provinces which was why you couldn’t just say you would do it.

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QP: New measures not mentioned in the Speech

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The first Monday of the new Parliament, and the prime minister was present but Andrew Scheer was not. That left Leona Alleslev to lead off in French, and she lamented the reported job losses from last month, and demanded a new economic statement with new measures and a balanced budget. Justin Trudeau responded that the first thing they did in 2015 was cut taxes and they were doing so again, and they were supporting Canadians and the economy. Alleslev read the same question in English, and got the same response. Alleslev read more doom, saying that the country was on the verge of recession (reminder: Not according to the Bank of Canada), and Trudeau reminded her of the plan to invest in Canadians, which is what they would continue to do. Erin O’Toole was up next, demanding retaliation against China for the two detained Canadians, being the one-year anniversary of their captivity. Trudeau assured the House that they were continuing to engage the Chinese, and that he had spoken to President Xi directly. O’Toole then raised the protests in Hong Kong, and Trudeau spoke about their support for the one-country two-systems principles and reiterated their calls for de-escalation. Yves-François Blanchet asked about healthcare, and Trudeau responded in general platitudes about the system, and they went for a second round of the same. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in his new style of alternate French and English sentences, demanded that the upcoming tax cut be more targeted in order to use the savings to pay for national dental care, and Trudeau reminded him of how many people the tax cut would help. Singh demanded increased health transfers, to which Trudeau reminded him that they had worked with the provinces to target specific needs in the last parliament and they would continue to do so in this one.

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