Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Yet more questions about the WE contract

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The whole situation with the sole-source contract for WE Charities continues to spiral, as one of the co-founders was found to have claimed that PMO reached out to them shortly after the April announcement on the creation of the student grant programme – only for him to have since retracted and said that he was over-enthusiastic, and it was really a senior bureaucrat from Employment and Skills Development Canada. PMO has also since denied making contact, and senior bureaucrats have stepped up to say it was them, but while that may in fact be the case, it’s still the minister who is responsible for the decision, and I don’t see any minister stepping forward on this. It just goes back to this government’s complete inability to manage their own crisis communications without stepping on six more rakes along the way. It’s complete amateur hour.

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On top of this, it sounds like part of the way in which WE is managing this programme is to offer $12,000 payments to teachers who can recruit 75 to 100 students, and to be their mentors and managers along the way, which is unusual. It also raises the question of how this was what was so imperative about how this organization was the “only one” capable of administering the grant programme if this is how they’re running it. All the more reason for MPs to call an emergency committee meeting and haul the responsible minister and deputy minister before them to answer questions and provide documentation that proves that WE was the only outfit that could meet their criteria – you know, like it’s their job to.

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Roundup: Developing an app

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The day’s presser began with prime minister Justin Trudeau congratulating the winners of the UN Security Council seats, and gave an articulation of why it was important to Canada to try, and a promise that he would keep working to these laudable foreign development goals, even if we weren’t at the table. From there, he announced that the Canadian Digital Service, in cooperation with BlackBerry and Shopify, had been creating a mobile app to assist with contact tracing that was soon to be tested in Ontario, and this was a system that would collect no personal or location data – that it had a database of anonymized identifier numbers that could be triggered if someone tests positive – and that unlike other contact tracing apps, this one simply needed to be installed on the phone and it would run in the background, and not need to be open, which would drain the battery. (And Trudeau got really into it, because he is a geek about these kinds of things). Closing off, he spoke about new applications for the cultural industry and funds for national museums.

During the Q&A, Trudeau said that the late start to the Security Council race hurt us (and he’s not wrong there – many countries need the full eight to ten years to make a successful bid), for what it’s worth. He also made some fairly vague promises around trying to rein in the RCMP when it comes to their use of force, particularly against Black and Indigenous people. He also refused to condemn Jagmeet Singh’s outburst on Wednesday, saying it wasn’t for him to judge how a racialised leader perceived what happened.

On a completely different note, I was pleased to hear that the MPs in charge of the Centre Block renovations have decided to keep the existing footprint of the original Commons chamber, and didn’t take up the options to either expand into the lobbies behind or completely move the West wall and expand outward from there. They also say that the renovated Chamber could accommodate up to 420 MPs, but it also sounds like they may be leaning toward using benches, which would be terrific because desks are an Americanism, and simply encourage MPs to be doing work other than paying attention to the debates (and we’ve all seen the piles of Xmas cards that start showing up in the fall). I am less keen on the talk about physical distancing as part of the renovations, because they won’t be done for a decade, and we are likely to be over this pandemic by then, and we can work with the existing chamber and set-up perfectly well if we really wanted to.

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Roundup: Pandemics and aid packages

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It was a day yesterday, where COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Justin Trudeau announced a $1 billion aid package to deal with the outbreak, Donald Trump announced travel restrictions from European countries, and the NBA suspended their season (if you care about such things). More and more events are being postponed or cancelled, and the markets have entered Bear Market territory.

(Note: Maclean’s has an updated COVID-19 Q&A here).

As for that $1 billion package the government announced, one of the missing pieces are measures for workers who can’t access EI or sick leave when they are forced to self-isolate, which the government says they’re working on. As for Parliament, it does indeed have a pandemic plan, but it’s still early when it comes to deciding what portions of it need to be activated, and that can include suspending the Chamber’s sittings, but that would require some kind of negotiation with the other parties as to when to pull that trigger, and its duration.

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Meanwhile, Supriya Dwivedi worries that we aren’t warning people enough of the risk coming from the US, given how much of a gong show their healthcare system is. Susan Delacourt takes particular note of Trudeau’s language in asking Canadians to play their part to “flatten the curve” of the spread of the virus. Colby Cosh delves into some of the failure of the US’ centralized Centres for Disease Control in the early stage of the COVID-19 transmission. Heather Scoffield says that adequacy of Trudeau’s $1 billion COVID-19 package won’t last given the state of the economy.

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Roundup: The crash and the cries for stimulus

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It was a tough day on the markets yesterday as stock markets plunged at record levels over panic-selling because of COVID-19, and oil prices cratered while Saudi Arabia and Russia got into a pissing contest. Bill Morneau held a post-market-closing press conference to assure Canadians that there was fiscal room to deal with the situation, but he spoke in frustrating platitudes and generalities as he so often does (because this government is largely incapable of communicating their way out of a wet paper bag), but it needs to be acknowledged that his budget challenge has become a lot more complicated, particularly as the oil shock is going to impact federal revenues as well as Alberta’s. But seriously, the whole Conservative “spent the cupboard bare” narrative is bogus and economically illiterate, and they are actively spreading misinformation about it.

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Around the same time, Jason Kenney held his own press conference, saying that all options were on the table for dealing with the downturn on the province’s economy – and then immediately ruled out a sales tax, which would stabilize the province’s revenues. Because that might make sense. Rachel Notley says that he should scrap the budget and re-do it, given that its assumptions are now proved to be useless, but other economists say it’s likely not worth it at this point, and it would be better to have a fiscal update in the near future.

And then come the demands for some kind of fiscal stimulus plan, but one of the things they’re pressing is that measures need to be timely. Maclean’s talks to four economists about what they think such a plan could look like for the best impact.

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Roundup: Caution – plummeting oil prices

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Oil prices started plummeting Sunday night as a price war opened up in the midst of declining demand due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and this is going to have a huge impact in Canada, not only with Alberta and Saskatchewan, but most especially with Newfoundland and Labrador, whose government relies very heavily on resource revenues. Add to that, this is going to put even more pressure on Bill Morneau and the federal government when it comes to how to deal with reforming fiscal stabilization in the upcoming budget, particularly if it’s also going to mean any kind of rebate for previous years’ stabilization (as Jason Kenney in particular has been demanding, under the misleading term of “equalization rebate,” even though it’s no such thing).

This may also touch off a new round of blaming Justin Trudeau for Alberta’s woes, when the oil prices are going to make things so, so much more painful for the province as they budgeted a ludicrously high amount for oil revenues. One might suggest that it would be a good impetus for the province (and the federal government) to redouble efforts toward diversification and a “just transition” away from the oil economy in that province, because the hopes for “just one more boom” get even further away, or even for the province to finally reform the revenue side of its equation and finally implement a modest sales tax that would stabilize its finances – but I have a feeling that Kenney won’t even contemplate those things. Blaming Trudeau is too easy, and lying to the public is so much easier.

Speaking of lying to the public, as certain other political figures fill the op-ed pages with a bunch of bullshit about how Alberta is “treated like a colony” as the Buffalo Declaration did (and no, I won’t link to the egregious op-ed in question), here is a great thread from professor Melanee Thomas as to why that kind of comparison is not only wrong, but wrong to the point of being actively racist.

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Roundup: The Teck Frontier drama for naught?

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There is a lot of agitation around the Teck Frontier oilsands mine, with the Alberta government and their federal counterparts howling for it to be approved immediately, and environmentalists, and certain other parties (like the Bloc) demanding the federal permits be denied. The problem? That even if it were approved, the CEO says they may not be able to build it because oil prices are too low for it to actually make any money, so this could all be for naught.

Meanwhile, here is Andrew Leach with a thread on its economics, and pushing back on the rhetoric around its emissions profile, wherein Jason Kenney and others have misconstrued what the company has actually said in order to make the project look less emitting that its plans say it will be.

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Roundup: No metric to measure success

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The inevitable has happened with this government’s too-clever-by-half branding of their associate finance minister, and she has essentially been caught out by the easiest trap imaginable. The Conservatives submitted an Order Paper question asking for a definition of “middle class” by which the government could measure the success of its efforts at ensuring their prosperity, and lo, they were told that there is no measure that the government uses. Which is kind of embarrassing for a government that prides itself on data and metrics – that’s one of the reasons why they actually bit the bullet and decided on the Market-Basket Measure of poverty as their official definition, because that allowed them to track the success of their programmes in alleviating it (and yes, programmes like the Canada Child Benefit have had a measurable impact using these kinds of data). But what they can do for poverty, they can’t do for the Middle Class™.

Of course, we all know that it’s because “middle class” isn’t an economic definition to this government, but a feel-good branding exercise. It’s the Middle Class™ And Those Working Hard To Join It, because we all know that everyone thinks they’re middle class (whether or not they have ponies), and most especially people on the wealthier end of the scale in this country. It’s all about a feeling, or a hand-wavey metric about having kids in hockey (an upper-class pursuit in this country). And this lack of a definition is exactly why this minister is the Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity®, because it means nothing. It’s a trademarked slogan, transparently winking to Canadians about how this is how they plan to address the discontent underlying the populist movements taking place across the government – hoping that if they can reassure these voters that they’re being care of and not left behind, that they’re being heard, that somehow, it’ll keep the populist forces at bay. I’m not sure that it will work, but it’s blatantly happening, so we should all be aware that this is part of their plan.

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Roundup: The reality of negotiation

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As was ever thus, the Twitter Machine erupted with fury and disingenuous outrage when health minister Patty Hajdu told reporters that she couldn’t guarantee that a national pharmacare programme would be in place at the end of the current parliament (for which we don’t know when that will be, as a hung parliament rarely lasts beyond two years.

“Some of that will be predicted by, predicated by, the responses of the provinces and territories,” said Hajdu, because *mind blown* healthcare is largely the domain of the provinces and any pharmacare system would have to be negotiated with them – in particular, a national formulary, which is going to be extremely complicated to ensure that existing plans don’t get left behind or that the new national plan isn’t worse off than any existing ones that it would replace.

What is especially irritating are all of the voices crying out that this just means the Liberals were lying on the campaign trail, which is false and ridiculous – Trudeau spent the campaign not overpromising on this file, but rather kept saying that it was contingent on negotiation with provinces, which is why their fiscal plan only called for a “down payment” on such a programme rather than the whole thing, but nevertheless, the promise was to go by the principles of the Hoskins Report, which they have bene doing thus far. The NDP, by contrast, insisted that this could be done by 2020, and whenever anyone brought up the fact that the provinces may object, the line was largely that why would anyone say no to federal dollars? It’s absurd, of course, because provinces are rightfully afraid that they would be stuck with an expensive programme to run if the federal government suddenly cut out transfers or funds to it because they suddenly had other priorities (which has happened in the past).

And to that end, we have a bunch of premiers who are balking at it, Quebec and Alberta want to be able to opt-out with compensation, and Ontario is instead insisting that the federal government pay for drugs to treat rare diseases – the most expensive kind, and the ones where costs are rapidly escalating. So of course they want the federal government to pay for them rather than to share the burden. It’s predictable, and for anyone to be shocked and appalled that the Liberals have to deal with this reality is really, really tiresome.

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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: Contemplating compromised committees

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As the summoning of the new Parliament draws ever closer, we’re seeing more stories about the procedural intricacies of the first few sitting days, and the coming confidence vote on or before the 10th because of the Supply cycle and the need to pass the Supplementary Estimates before that date. Fair enough – those can be expected to pass pretty handily because nobody is going to want to head right back to the polls (and I wouldn’t expect the Governor General to grant an immediate election either – the developing convention is waiting at least six months, providing there is another viable governing party, though that would be the real trick given the current seat maths).

This all having been said, there was something in this interview with Pablo Rodriguez, the new Government House Leader, which sticks in my craw, and that’s the talk about possibly undoing the rule changes that prevent parliamentary secretaries from being voting members on Commons committees, and I. Just. Cannot. Even.

While the chances of this happening are fairly slim, given that it would require opposition support and they are unlikely to get it, it’s still crazy-making. This reflex to go super political in a hung parliament is understandable but deeply frustrating because it undermines the whole raison d’être of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account, and committees are one very big piece of the accountability puzzle. Parliamentary secretaries should have no business even being near committees because it undermines their independence. It’s bad enough that under the previous parliament, they were still on the committee in a non-voting capacity, but it still allowed ministers’ offices to attempt to stage manage what went on (to varying degrees, depending on which committee it was). Having the parliamentary secretaries as voting members simply turns committees into the branch plants of ministers’ offices, and we saw this play out for the better part of a decade under Stephen Harper. Committees are not there to simply take orders from the minister and waste everyone’s time, and it would be hugely disappointing if the Liberals returned to that way of thinking simply because it’s a hung parliament. If we think that the only time to let Parliament function properly is if there’s a majority for the government, then it’s a sad state of affairs for our democracy.

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