Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: A corridor to nowhere

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While the Liberals took the day off of the campaign, Andrew Scheer headed to Edmonton to campaign alongside Jason Kenney in Amarjeet Sohi’s riding, where Scheer reiterated his previously announced vision for a “trans-national energy corridor” which he imagines would create a right-of-way for all manner of pipelines across the country and they wouldn’t need to do additional environmental assessments on those projects or have jurisdictional challenges, or anything of the sort. Erm, except it’s going to involve expropriating a lot of land from private landowners (which is expensive and contrary to what Conservatives claim to stand for), and it will be long, complex, and expensive negotiations with the various First Nations and Inuit along those lands, because you can be assured that they will be asserting rights title over that territory. (For more, I wrote a column on this when the subject was first broached in May). It’s nice in theory, but practically has little chance of getting anywhere off the ground.

On the topic of Scheer, the Globe and Mail found that while he says that he was an “insurance broker” for six months in Saskatchewan as his private sector experience, he was never licenced and didn’t actually work as a broker. So that’s something.

Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile, was in Burnaby, BC, to promise $30 million in federal funds to reduce the cost of BC ferries. It’s worth noting that this was five days straight of campaigning in the vicinity of his riding, which could easily be interpreted as a sign that he’s worried about saving the seats he has in the area.

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Roundup: Capitalizing on the climate strikes – or not

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It was a slightly less ridiculous day on the election campaign for a change, and first up of the day was Jagmeet Singh was in Ladysmith, BC, to announce that he would spend $40 million to protect the coast line, which includes protecting salmon stocks and clearing derelict vessels, as well as cancelling Trans Mountain and stopping that tanker traffic. He then went to the climate strike march in Victoria.

In Montreal, in advance of the Climate Strike, Justin Trudeau met with Greta Thunberg before announcing that he would ensure that two billion trees would be planted over the next decade, which would also create 3500 seasonal jobs (and it includes urban forests), and it would be paid for by the profits of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Andrew Scheer went to Coquitlam, BC, to announce more infrastructure plans for roads and bridges, cancelling the Infrastructure Bank calling it a “boondoggle” (reminder: These kinds of things take time to get up and running, and they did more than the Conservatives’ P3 Canada in its entire existence). Of course, on a day where everyone else was focused on climate change because of the strikes and protests, Scheer was pushing for more traffic infrastructure, and had the utter gall to say that it would help reduce pollution because people wouldn’t be in traffic as long. This of course is completely wrong, because traffic fills the available volume – it would create more traffic, and higher emissions (and congestion would be just as bad within a short period of time).

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Roundup: Trying to draw in the Supreme Court

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If this election could get any stupider, it did yesterday. Justin Trudeau started the day off in Sudbury, and after arriving by canoe, he promised not only to further expand the areas of land and waters that are protected areas as part of ongoing roll-out of green policies in advance of today’s “climate strike” rally, Trudeau also promised an expansion of the “learn to camp” programme, including bursaries of up to $2000 for low-income families. As someone who hates camping, this is borderline offensive – but it’s also one of the whitest of white people policies in the book. (Seriously – ask a person of colour how they feel about camping). I get that the idea is that it promotes connecting people with nature and the importance of conservation, but this was probably one of the dumbest campaign promises to date.

Andrew Scheer was not much better. From Trudeau’s riding of Papineau in Montréal, Scheer tapped into the Trumpian “Lock Her Up!” mentality by promising not only a judicial inquiry into the Double-Hyphen Affair, but also to pass a cartoonishly named No More Cover-Ups Act, which would empower the RCMP to go directly to the Supreme Court of Canada for access to Cabinet documents – all of it predicated on the lie that the RCMP are investigating the PMO (they’re not) and that they can’t get access to documents (because the Clerk of the Privy Council said no to a fishing expedition). It’s all very gross and unseemly. Not only do we not demand that the police investigate our political rivals (this isn’t a banana republic, and if the Liberals lose, then they will have faced political consequences for the Affair), but politicising judicial inquiries is a Very Bad Thing. Dragging the Supreme Court into one’s political vendettas is even worse (and I have a column on that very topic coming out later today about that very issue).

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was in Campbell River, BC to reiterate his promise to build half a million housing units, but to also flesh out his promise for income supports of up to $5000 per year for low-income renters. But again, this is provincial jurisdiction so the rental income supports will have to be a carefully designed policy, while he has yet to explain how he’ll rapidly build all of this social housing when the cities where it’s most needed are very tight labour markets, which means there likely aren’t enough construction workers to do the job, and that will drive up the costs of building these units by a lot. (Singh also completely mischaracterised the output-based system on carbon pricing as part of his trying to downplay the current government’s record, because he’s doing politics differently).

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Roundup: Duelling policies degenerating to stupidity

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It was a day when the competing pledges went a bit…dumb, as the two main parties put out competing policies on the same issue, this time being energy efficiency home renovations. Andrew Scheer was out first in Jonquiere, Quebec, where he fleshed out the previously promised tax credit for said renovations. As a way of reducing GHGs, there is very little bang to be had for the bucks being expended on it, and when pressed by a CBC reporter, Scheer couldn’t give any answers in terms of megatonnes of carbon emissions reductions that need to happen for the Paris targets to be reached (which he still mouths that he’s interested in). Add in the fact that he’s promising to cut the HST on home heating is a signal for people to use more fuel (prices are incentives, remember), so the tax credit pays for people to cut back, which makes no economic sense. (But this is a right-flavoured populist party, so don’t expect market solutions any longer). Above all, the plan is simply to let people who are wealthy enough to own houses and pay for the renovations simply add value to said homes at the taxpayer’s expense, which puts a lie to the narratives about “affordability.”

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Shortly thereafter, Justin Trudeau was in Port Coquitlam, BC, to showcase their green energy retrofit programme, which involves interest-free loans, free energy audits, cash incentives and grants, and would also be eligible for renters and landlords as opposed to just landlords. One of the more expensive elements of Trudeau’s pledge was for national flood insurance and enhanced EI benefits for natural disasters, which he says still need to be devised – but flood insurance is going to be costly. The Conservatives then attacked this plan by saying that people can’t necessarily afford the loans…but their plan requires people to pay for the renovations up front in order to get the tax credit, so it makes no sense. It’s starting to feel like we’re living through the stupidest election yet.

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Jagmeet Singh was in Burnaby to promise that he would bolster the RCMP’s efforts to combat money laundering as a way to make housing more affordable, particularly in British Columbia, plus a 15 percent foreign buyer’s tax on properties.

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Roundup: Red tape and legislating targets

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It was a fairly boggling day on the campaign trail, starting with Andrew Scheer in St. Catharines, Ontario, to push his small business promises. Scheer pledged to reduce “red tape” regulations by 25 percent – a completely meaningless figure which means nothing when it comes to the value of regulation, and then told a completely misleading anecdote about a girl with a lemonade stand who needed to fill out all kinds of forms because of “bureaucracy.” (The real story is that said girl opened up her lemonade stand on National Capital Commission land, which is why she needed a permit, and has absolutely zero to do with small business regulations). Pledges about two-for-one rules around red tape (getting rid of two old regulations for every new one) has been federal practice since the Harper years, and his notion of a Cabinet-level “red tape reduction minister” like Alberta has is basically promising a job to someone for uselessness as Alberta has proven. (Seriously – the current government has a division in Treasury Board not only having success in streamlining regulations, but they have been working with the provinces on harmonizing regulations so as to eliminate non-tariff barriers). Scheer also complained that the tax code was too complex for these small business owners – apparently lacking any self-awareness that he’s the one who keeps proposing ever more tax credits that further complicate the tax code, so well done there. Then, after repeating the lie that Trudeau called small business owners “tax cheats,” he promised to undo the Liberals’ small-business tax changes, which has absolutely nothing to do with actually helping small businesses and restores a loophole for the wealthiest who create personal corporations to avoid paying taxes. There was a verifiable problem that the Liberals worked to solve (somewhat ham-fistedly because Bill Morneau is incapable of communicating like a human being) and Scheer has pledged to undo it for no apparent reason – certainly not one that benefits the everyday people he claims to be helping trying to get ahead. (Read through this epic thread from Justin Ling).

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Scheer later skipped a planned campaign event in Cambridge as there were protesters at the site (while denying that the protesters were the reason).

Jagmeet Singh was in Winnipeg to reiterate elements of his party’s climate plan, promising an east-west energy corridor (never mind the prohibitive costs or the fact that line loss is a real thing and much of that “green energy” wouldn’t survive the vast distance between Manitoba and central Ontario), a $15 billion “climate bank” and electrifying public transit.

The Liberals had a two-part environmental rollout, starting with Catherine McKenna in Ottawa to promise that a Liberal government would get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and that there would be five-year legislated climate targets to get there (but wouldn’t give any details on how, or what the consequences for failing to meet said targets would be). Later in the day in Burnaby, BC, Justin Trudeau promised to half the corporate tax rate for companies that develop or produce zero-emission products as a way to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Because apparently there are no other mechanisms than to continue to dicker with the tax code.

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Roundup: Reviving a failed tax credit

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Day three of the campaign, and in the post-debate glow, there was some damage control on a part of a couple of leaders. Justin Trudeau was in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, to promise new measures to help small business, including the “swipe fees” that those businesses are charged for transactions.

Andrew Scheer was in the GTA, and he announced his plan to revive the Harper-era transit tax credit, but to rebrand it as “Green.” The problem, of course, was that it’s a nigh useless measure that disproportionately benefits the wealthy. (Fact check here to show that Scheer’s rhetoric is misleading, plus a thread from economist Lindsay Tedds). He also had to defend himself and do damage control over his meltdown during the debate on Indigenous issues and his contention that they hold major projects “hostage,” but he nevertheless refused to back down from the basic contention even if he tried to say that he didn’t mean to use those exact words. So that’s something.

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Jagmeet Singh was in downtown Toronto to promise to cap cellphone bills – a policy that has no actual specifics as to how he would do it and what the impacts would be – before giving a speech to the Canadian Club to tell them that if he forms government, it won’t be “business as usual” in Ottawa.

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Roundup: Underlying concerns amidst good numbers

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It was hard to miss all of the talk about the job numbers yesterday – particularly as pretty much every Liberal minister, MP and candidate started sharing pre-generated memes about how great the economy is doing under this government (with the caveat that there’s still more work to do). This, like news of much higher than expected GDP growth, are good headlines with some underlying weakness being masked, and as economist Trevor Tombe explains, those good numbers are masking some very real problems in Alberta.

The issue of young men in that province is one that I’m not sure enough levels of government are paying sufficient attention to, as the Alberta government seems to think that all that’s needed is for the oil patch to revive and it’s problem solved, but with world oil prices depressed and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, that means the prospect for these young men – many of whom are under-educated because of the lure of high-paying oil patch jobs – are not going to be good in the shorter term. That’s additionally a problem when you have a government that feeds the people a diet of lies and snake oil to keep them angry at imaginary reasons why they’re being kept down (currently Justin Trudeau), because angry young men can be a dangerous thing if allowed to fester. And for the federal government’s part, I wonder just how much their retraining programming is penetrating given that jobs they could be retraining for couldn’t necessarily match the promised paydays of oil jobs in a boom – but that becomes a problem of waiting for the next boom (where the money will get pissed away, like it does every time no matter how often they promise that this time it will be different – really!).

Some of this will come up in the election – not just the lies that Kenney and company are pushing, but the NDP and Greens are trying to make some hay here, as both want to retrain these workers for the “green economy” in some vague way, while the Greens in particular think they could put them to work capping old orphan wells as both an environmental and job-creation measure, but it’s also one that is both expensive, and if the government just starts doing this on its own, it essentially lets the industry off the hook and demonstrates that the “polluter pays” principle is for naught. Add to that, the promises of green jobs retraining falls back to the issue of some of them waiting on the promises of the bigger paydays in a future oil boom, so there is no guarantee that green jobs will be attractive to this cohort. Nevertheless, it’s good that there are at least some ideas, and we should ensure that it’s something that does get discussed during the election.

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Roundup: Profiles in courage

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After avoiding the media for over a week while questions about his personal positions on abortion and LGBT rights were being debated, Andrew Scheer called a press conference yesterday to say that Justin Trudeau was lacking in courage for not agreeing to the Maclean’s and Munk debates (well, he hasn’t agreed yet, but he also hasn’t said no). Mind you, the guy talking about courage and showing up has been avoiding the media for the past week, so that’s no small amount of irony. Oh, and he also accused the Liberals of trying to deflect from their record by dredging up Scheer’s statements on “divisive social issues.” That said, Scheer hewed strictly to talking points that continued to make cute distinctions between a hypothetical future Conservative government and backbenchers, and essentially said that they could put forward any bill they wanted and he wouldn’t stop them – only he wouldn’t say so in as many words. To that end, it’s also worth reminding people that as Speaker, Scheer went out of his way to ensure that anti-abortion MPs got speaking slots when the Conservative leadership was trying to keep them under wraps, so that might be a clue as to how he’d treat possible future private members’ bills.

This having been said, I now wonder if the strategy for the Liberals isn’t to just bring social progressives and Red Tories to their side, but to try and goad Scheer into painting himself in enough of a corner with trying to assure Canadians that no, he would squelch any anti-abortion or anti-GLBT private members’ bills – really! – in the hopes that it would discourage the social conservatives in Scheer’s base into staying home, thus driving down their voter turnout. It would be novel if that’s what it was, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives put out a fundraising video yesterday featuring Stephen Harper, which is kind of ironic considering that they keep accusing the Liberals of dredging up Harper, only for them to do the very same thing. And with this in mind, I will often note that political parties these days have pretty much all hollowed themselves out into personality cults for their leaders, but with the Conservatives, they remain a personality cult for their former leader, Harper – that Scheer has had such a lack of personality or willpower to change the party to reflect him (though he did campaign on being Harper with a smile in the leadership, so that’s not too unsurprising). Nevertheless, bringing out the old leader in advance of the election is an odd bit of strategy that can’t speak too highly of the current leader.

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Roundup: Flashbacks about prorogation

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It was a day of flashbacks to 2008, as Boris Johnson asked the Queen to prorogue the Parliament in Westminster, and social media had erupted with cries of “coups,” “dictatorships,” and wannabe constitutional scholars ignoring nearly two centuries of Responsible Government as they tried to implicate the Queen in granting Johnson’s request. Of course, there are some fundamental differences between now and the 2008 prorogation, such as the fact that there will still be a “washing up period” of a few days, as is traditional with UK prorogations, and time where the opposition can still try to move some kind of motion to try and stop a no-deal Brexit, though I’m not sure what mechanism they would use. A private member’s motion would be non-binding (and would carry only the symbolic weight of the Chamber), while a private members’ bill would try to impose some kind of negative obligation on the government – even if it could be sped through in those final days – and if there is no no-deal option on the table, it would then impose the necessity to have some kind of deal, which the Commons has already rejected. There is also the option of moving a non-confidence motion in those remaining days, which could topple Johnson’s government, ostensibly. The prorogation is also for a couple of weeks, and will return Parliament by October 14th, which still leaves it time to do something about Brexit before the October 31stdeadline. Johnson’s move may be dubious – and a dick move – but it could have been much worse. It’s not a coup. It’s not demolishing democracy. And it’s not eliminating parliament as an obstacle to Johnson – in fact, it may have only made it worse, as the move signals his desperation.

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All of this being said, we need to also remember that some of the received wisdom of the 2008 prorogation crisis needs to be challenged. For example, people keep insisting that Michaëlle Jean was wrong to grant Harper the prorogation (ignoring that if she refused the advice of her prime minister, he would have been obligated to resign, which would have created a whole other constitutional crisis), that an opposition coalition would have been able to take over. The problem is that said coalition was never really viable, and pretty much everyone knew it. And this was proven correct by the fact that it did not survive the prorogation period. Had it done so, had they banded together and moved a motion of non-confidence, then formed a coalition, then sure, it would have proven that it was viable, and it would have reinforced that the system was working (as it did in when Sir John A Macdonald did not survive a prorogation to avoid a confidence vote around the Pacific Scandal). But the coalition fell apart, proving that Jean was right to simply grant the prorogation – making Harper stew about it for a few hours – and doing her job in acting on the advice of a first minister. But you’re going to hear a rehash of the coalition fanfic of the day, and we need to remember that it was only that – fiction.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt offers her thoughts on the prorogation, the disconnect between parliaments and the outside world, and the idle speculation about whether Stephen Harper’s 2008 prorogation may have inspired Johnson.

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Roundup: Dubious studies on populism

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A study out of Simon Fraser University shows that a rising number of Canadians are only “moderately convinced” that we should be governed by a representative democracy – nearly 60 percent, which is up 15 percent since 2017. As well, 70 percent of those surveyed don’t feel that government officials care about the concerns of “ordinary Canadians,” along with rising support for populism and anti-immigrant sentiments. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to what is going on in the world, but let’s first of all get out of the way that these percentages are fairly shoddy reporting once you dig into the study, which finds that Canadians are still very much in favour of democracy, and that the representative democracy still figures better than the other alternatives (direct democracy, rule by experts, strong ruler, military rule), and much of the reporting on the anti-immigrant sentiment is fairly torqued.

To be clear, I have a great many concerns about the methodology of the study, which offers some fairly torqued binaries for participants to choose from and then tries to draw conclusions from that, leaving no room for the kind of nuance that many of these positions would seem to merit. As well, their definitions of populism are too clinical and don’t seem to really reflect some of the attitudes that those who respond to the sentiments, so I’m not sure how much utility this methodology actually has in a case like this (or in this other study which looks at pockets of “forgotten workers,” which at least admits there are no obvious answers to stemming the tide of this sentiment). Nevertheless, there is some interesting regional breakdowns in where certain attitudes are more prevalent than others, and which identified populist sentiments register more strongly in some regions over others.

This having been said, the questions on people feeling frustrated with how democracy works are pretty much why I do the work that I do, particularly with the book that I wrote, which is all about identifying where things are breaking down (reminder: It’s not structural, but rather the ways in which people are not using the system properly), and showcasing how it should be operated, which is with the participation of voters at the grassroots levels. But if we’re going to get back to that system, that requires a lot of people at those grassroots demanding their power back from the leaders’ offices, and that also means needing to get out of the thrall of the messianic leader complex that we keep falling into, going from one messiah to another once the current one loses their lustre (which I do believe also feeds into the populist sentiments, who also latch onto messianic leaders). This can’t just be people complaining about the quality of the leaders out there – it’s about how we feed the system. If we input garbage, we get garbage out of it, and this hasn’t connected in the brains of enough voters yet. One day, perhaps, it might, but we don’t appear to be there yet, and the torqued binaries of a survey like this don’t help us get any better of an understanding of what it will take for people to wise up and get serious about our democratic system.

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