Tag Archives: Honours

Roundup: The thing about windfall taxes

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In the discussion over “pausing” the excise tax on gasoline and diesel, and the Conservatives’ demands that all other fuel charges be scrapped (including the clean fuel standard which is not a charge or a tax), versus the NDP’s call for a price cap and windfall tax, there hasn’t been a lot of discussion about what those will mean.

Enter economist Kevin Milligan, who has a good thread explaining the problem with windfall taxes, and why those advocating for them have a lot more explaining to do when it comes to just how they see them being implemented.

Adam asks a fair question here that has been bandied about. Let me offer two arguments against a windfall tax that I would wager FIN officials would make when advising cabinet on what to do. I'll also offer my own assessment of the two arguments.1/

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:15:37.601Z

Why would FIN argue against an oil/gas windfall tax?FIN Arg #1: Ideally we set taxes in advance and then let firms and people make their choices based on those taxes. Changing taxes <i>ex post</i> risks upsetting investors who would view this as a mark of an unstable unserious country.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:17:39.157Z

My response: Yes, ideally we set taxes ex ante and let firms/people decide what to do. Changing that ex post is like reneging. All true. But I do think FIN overindexes on this argument. Every time we change taxes we literally 'renege' on the status quo./3

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:19:52.099Z

If you took the 'no tax changes ex post' argument completely as sacrosanct, it essentially argues for no tax changes ever. That's silly.I also note the "no ex post changes because we're not a banana republic" argument only gets hauled out when it's a tax *increase*. Why not symmetric? Hmmm…/4

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:21:48.449Z

Why would FIN argue against an oil/gas windfall tax?FIN Arg #2: How do you define a "windfall"? What is this year's profit? What is last year's profit? You realize these are accounting numbers, subject to lots of choice variables for shifting between tax years, right? /5

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:24:09.737Z

Fin Arg #2 cont'd: The concern is that you'd end up with a lot of accounting gaming and not as much revenue as you'd think. A lot of time/effort/dollars spent on creating the tax law to minimize gaming. A lot of time/effort/dollars spent by firms avoiding a windfall tax law./6

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:25:51.216Z

My take on accounting and windfall taxes:I recall reading historical precedents around WW2 (?) that outlined how much effort it was relative to the revenue. I recall that being persuasive. (Don't have the source at my fingertips….)But I take the windfall tax accounting issue seriously./7

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:28:08.463Z

So, my advice to those who advocate for a windfall tax? The thing you could do to overcome government resistance is to look seriously at the accounting issues involved.Chanting slogans is one thing. Overcoming implementation barriers is maybe less fun, but necessary to gettin stuff done./end

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:31:43.152Z

It only boils down to 'let the rich have their way' if you assume that windfall tax advocates aren't capable of getting their accounting shit together. Why be so defeatist?I outlined a path for advocates. If the response is 'gee that sounds hard' that's not my prob.bsky.app/profile/open…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:40:14.904Z

I'm not here to blow sunshine and tell you that hard things are easy. Hard things are hard. If you're determined you can do them. But if you don't want to do the work then I'm not going to take the proposal seriously.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:42:31.333Z

It’s clear that Avi Lewis hasn’t actually thought any of this through. He was on Power & Politics last night and kept trying to handwave away the questions about this plan, and it just kept boiling down to “oil companies bad.” I do think it’s a problem that we’re not seizing on this opportunity to make long-term investments to get off of our dependence on fossil fuels like the French did with their transition to nuclear in the seventies and eighties (because so much European power relied on Middle Eastern fossil fuels up until the oil embargo in the seventies), but nobody seems to want to have that conversation, and Carney has been pretty adamant that he thinks there is a future in the fossil fuel sector. It’s too bad we have no grown-ups who can have a serious conversation about this.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia fired missiles into Kyiv early this morning, killing thirteen so far including twelve-year-old child and wounding several others. This was after more missile and drone attacks were made through the day, which included hitting an apartment building in Odesa. Ukraine’s army has been introducing new drone infantry capabilities, which has resulted in retaking more territory from Russian occupation.

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Roundup: Myth-busting the carbon price on diesel

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For months, we’ve been hearing the Conservatives blame the industrial carbon price and the clean fuel standard for rising food prices, often citing the so-called “Food Professor” as the source of these claims. They’re hilariously wrong, but just how wrong? Energy economist Andrew Leach does the math, and demonstrates where the “Food Professor” went so wrong. (Some of these are threads, so be sure to click through because they were too long to replicate in this post).

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2033225831443816578

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2033324064933347805

And the longest explainer thread is here:

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2033309960902426664

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 430 drones and 68 missiles at Ukraine on Saturday, and six people were killed, five of them in Kyiv. President Zelenskyy says that Ukraine wants money and technology in return for the anti-drone assistance they are providing to countries in the Gulf region.

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Roundup: Trying to politicize the Order of Canada

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Because everything needs to be stupid all of the time, Conservative MP and obnoxious windbag Andrew Lawton started circulating a petition in support of his nomination of Don Cherry to the Order of Canada. The Order of Canada advisory board does not respond to petitions. It is an arm’s-length body chaired by the Chief Justice in order to apolitically weigh the nominations for the Order. I make this point because the honours system in Canada is held by the Crown in order to keep it apolitical (which is one reason why constitutional monarchy is superior). Lawton circulating this petition, which is being signed and championed by members of his caucus, including his leader, is the very definition of politicising these honours for the sake of culture war bullshit—after all, Cherry eventually lost his lucrative CBC gig because of racist commentary.

But because Lawton was so keen to gin up the culture war grift, he inadvertently pissed off members of his own caucus—specifically, most of the Quebec members, who are not fans of Cherry because Cherry also spent his career insulting Quebec and European players, and they are not looking to forgive and forget. And now this is spiralling because culture war grifting is by its very definition stupid and self-defeating. But when your political fundraising is tied to this same grifting complex, is it any wonder that this kind of self-own happens? And will they learn any lessons from this? Of course not.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-13T13:24:01.664Z

Carney-versary

It’s the one-year anniversary of Mark Carney being sworn-in as prime minister, so there are a few retrospectives. The National Post takes stock of what we know and don’t know about him, and the fact that there are still a few mysteries. JDM Stewart enumerates the expectations placed on Carney that he will need to deliver on. Althia Raj talks to 33 sources about that first year in office, and it’s a pretty honest assessment of the trends both good and bad he has demonstrated.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one and wounded six in Dnipropetrovsk region, and an attack in Zaporizhzhia region injured four. President Zelenskyy warned that pausing Russian oil sanctions will only prolong the war.

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Roundup: Alberta is run by children, example eleventy-four

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If you needed any more proof that Alberta is run by a group of petulant children, look no further than finance minister Nate Horner’s appearance on Power & Politics yesterday. While in the midst of grousing that during the (virtual) meeting with Chrystia Freeland earlier in the day on the subject of Alberta’s threats to pull out of the CPP (threats which are fairly transparently a pressure tactic to try and get out of other environmental obligations), and that Freeland was not entertaining any other carbon price exemptions, Horner said that he was going to launch a programme to subsidise anyone who wants to convert to heating oil in order to get the same break on carbon prices.

Heating oil generally costs about three-to-four times the price of natural gas for the same output. That’s the whole reason the “pause” was put into place as a stopgap to get more people switched over to heat pumps, along with a bunch of incentives to do so. If Horner actually thinks that people will pay more for heat in order to avoid paying the carbon price, and coming out at a net loss, for the simple thrill of “owning the libs,” well, that’s pretty much him telling on himself. And it’s so stupid because as the government has belatedly explained, there are actually more people who use heating oil outside of the Atlantic provinces than inside (mostly in northern communities), and they too get the “pause” in order to facilitate the switch over to heat pumps. The problem there, however, is that most of those provinces haven’t come to an agreement with the federal government in order to give the heat pumps for free to low-income households. So that may yet come, but right now, they’re still in full-on tantrum territory.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians launched a new wave of overnight attacks across ten of Ukraine’s regions, and the Ukrainian air defences were able to intercept 24 of 38 drones plus a cruise missile. Here is a snapshot of the counter-offensive on various fronts, while Ukrainian troops battle exhaustion as winter approaches.

https://twitter.com/defensiemin/status/1720176662942253228

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Roundup: More apologies for past honours

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In the wake of the black eye that Canada collectively received after former Speaker Anthony Rota’s embarrassing blunder in recognising the Nazi-aligned veteran in the House of Commons, there has been some more soul-searching institutions around similar figures that that particular veteran. The University of Alberta returned a donation from said veteran to be used for their Ukrainian Studies programme, but more problematic for the institution was their former chancellor, Peter Savaryn, who was in the same Waffen-SS Galacia Division unit, and now Rideau Hall has apologised because Savaryn had also been granted the Order of Canada back in 1987, citing limited information sources at the time.

This has led Jewish groups in particular to call for the government to open up the archives related to the Deschene Commission, which looked at potential war criminals who resettled in Canada after the war, but a great many of their findings were redacted and kept secret. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that senior bureaucrats are reviewing the Commission report, and considering making more of it public. But this is also being used as a political wedge. Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman is demanding the government take action on this, but meanwhile, one of her own MPs, Gérard Deltell, was saying in the media that he doesn’t think they need to revisit this history, that the past should remain the past.

But this isn’t necessarily a black-and-white issue, particularly for some Ukrainian communities in this country because they saw those people as nationalists who were using any means necessary to fight the Russians, who had already invaded and subjected them to a genocide—the Holodomor—and one suspects that Cold War considerations meant that it was in our interests to focus on the anti-Soviet aspect of their records during that period. But there are also a number of monuments to those Waffen-SS Galacia Division units across this country, particularly in private Ukrainian cemeteries, because of that complicated history, and it’s something we should have a national conversation and perhaps reckoning about sooner rather than later. But we need to be aware that this is fraught territory, and will be difficult for some.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine has carried out a drone strike on a Russian defence complex over the border in the Belgorod region, which is a rare admission of such an attack. This as Russians are claiming that they shot down a major Ukrainian drone offensive on their border regions. Meanwhile, the IMF says that Ukraine’s economy is expected to keep growing next year.

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Roundup: A Canada Day fail in Ottawa

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It’s Canada Day, and we are having festivities again this year, and included in them will be astronaut Jeremy Hansen, whom The Canadian Press has interviewed here. There will be an Indigenous ceremony ahead of the main show at noon, so the attempt to balance things carries on.

Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa continues to embarrass itself by deciding that the brand new LRT station they built near LeBreton Flats, where the festivities are being held (because there is no room on Parliament Hill with the construction), is suddenly deemed to be too small to handle the crowd, so they’re telling people to get off at the station before and walk a kilometre to the site. Absolutely ridiculous, but that’s been the story of everything with this LRT.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1674860701804814346

Programming note: I’m going to try to make this a quasi-long weekend, so no roundup post on Monday. See you Tuesday and enjoy Canada Day!

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a school in a village near the front lines in Donetsk region, killing two and injuring six, and only because students were not in school at the time. Defence officials say they continue to advance in all directions along the front lines both in the east and the south, including around the flanks of Bakhmut. Here is another look at how the Ukrainian army is trying to wear down and outsmart Russian occupiers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered the northern border to be strengthened given that Wagner Group forces are moving into Belarus, while it sounds like Russia is reducing the number of their personnel at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which increases fears that they could be attempting sabotage of the plant.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1674798244579221504

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Roundup: A plan to tax the unvaxxed

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By all accounts, it sounded like Quebec premier François Legault was spit-balling policy when, at the press conference to announce the province’s new chief public health officer, he proposed that the province impose additional costs on the unvaccinated in the form of some kind of surtax that would be “significant,” meaning more than $100. There were no details, which is kind of a big deal, but you immediately had other political leaders worried about “slippery slopes,” as though we don’t have other sin taxes on things like alcohol and cigarettes which impose their own significant public health burdens, as well as concerns that this will further disenfranchise those who are already marginalised. And fair enough.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1481062196314624000

The concerns about whether this somehow contravenes the Canada Health Act seem to be overblown, as it’s not charging for healthcare services, but other concerns about just how this might be implemented remain, as professors like Jennifer Robson articulate below.

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Roundup: Badmouthing the CBC for grift

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I will mention that piece circulating from former CBC producer Tara Henley, who made a splash by quitting her job and starting a Substack blog (with paid subscriptions!) by badmouthing the CBC on her way out the door. While I was initially planning on not mentioning this, because the complaints she makes in the piece merely reflect poorly on her rather than the CBC, but it attracted some bizarre traction yesterday, from the likes of Jody Wilson-Raybould, and Erin O’Toole, who invited her to call him about plans to reform the CBC (as he promised to slash its budget).

But the piece itself (which I’m not going to link to, but I did read when the National Post reprinted it) was not the stunning indictment she claimed it to be, or the usual cadre of CBC-haters have been touting it as. When you get through all of her prose, it seems that her biggest complaint is that the CBC asked her, as a producer, to ensure there were more diverse guests on panels or interview segments. In Henley’s recounting, this was the booming klaxon of “The Wokes are coming!” and how this is some kind of Ivy League American brain worm/neural parasite import that has destroyed the CBC’s reporting over the past 18 months. Reality is most likely that what she considered “compromising” to the reporting was being asked not to use the same six sources on all of the panels or packages she was responsible for—because that is a very real problem with a lot of Canadian news outlets, where they have a Rolodex of usual suspects who have a media profile because they answer phone calls and make themselves available. There are a number of people, whose credentials are actually terrible and who have zero actual credibility or legitimacy, but because they are easy gets for reporters or producers, and they say provocative things, they are go-to sources time and again. That the vast majority of them are heterosexual white men is problem when a news outlet has had it pointed out to them repeatedly that they need more diverse sources. Henley appears to have balked at that.

There are a lot of problems with CBC’s reporting these days—much of it is either reductive both-sidesing, or its credulous stenography that doesn’t challenge what is being said, even if what is being said is wrong or problematic but has a sympathetic person saying it. There are a lot of questionable editorial choices being made in terms of who they are granting anonymity to and who they are not, particularly if it counters the narrative they are trying to set with the particular story (and there was a lot of this in their reporting on the allegations around House of Commons Clerk Charles Robert). There are problems with its mandate creep around their web presence, and yes, they have made very questionable decisions around some of their editorial pieces—and attempts to alter them once published. None of its problems have to do with the fact that Henley was asked to get more diverse voices. But Henley also knew that there is an audience for her recitation of the “anti-woke” platitudes, and she has a book she wants to sell, and figured that a paid Substack was more lucrative than the Mother Corp. And the fact that O’Toole and others are reaching out seems to indicate that she gambled on media illiteracy for this particular grift, in the hopes it might pay off.

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Roundup: Expired election-rigging accusations

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Over the past few days, there has been a bit of uproar over a Conservative Party webpage that decries attempts by the Liberals to “rig the next election in his favour,” in light of everything that we are seeing in the US. The page has since been taken down, but most people have forgotten that this pre-dated the last election in 2019, when the Conservatives objected to the last round of Elections Act changes, because of the pre-writ limits that imposed, while claiming the government could keep spending and advertising and that only the opposition was hobbled. That’s not actually correct because governments can’t be doing partisan activities (such as wearing a Conservative Party t-shirt to a government announcement, like Pierre Poilievre would do when he was briefly a minister of the Crown), and using government or even House of Commons resources for partisan activities is prohibited.

Nevertheless, it is a reminder that we are not immune to these kinds of accusations in this country, even if they are in a slightly different form or context from the Gong show that is the US post-election, and the utter mendacity of those who claim that it was “stolen.” Meanwhile, here’s CTV reporter Glen McGregor on what election law breaches have been like in Canada over the past decade, and lo, they have been from the Conservatives.

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Roundup: Absent other measures

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Yesterday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report that unsurprisingly states that the federal carbon price will need to increase significantly, absent other measures. This is not news. We all know this is the case. We also know that the government is finalising all kinds of other non-price measures as part of their plans to exceed our 2030 Paris targets, including the Clean Fuel Standard, and we have Jonathan Wilkinson on the record stating that they are nearly ready and should be out before the end of the calendar year. Why the PBO and others feel the need to keep repeating that absent other measures the carbon price would need to increase significantly to meet those targets, I’m not sure, because all it does is start a new round of media nonsense about how awful the current prices are (they’re not), and that this is all one big socialist plot, or whatever. And there are more measures on the way, so the question becomes fairly moot.

Speaking of the Clean Fuel Standard, there was a bunch of clutched pearls and swooning on fainting couches over the past couple of weeks when a former MP and current gasoline price analyst indicated that said Standard would be like a super-charged carbon price, and a bunch of Conservatives and their favoured pundits all had a three minutes hate about it. What I find amusing is that these are the same people who a) claim to believe in the free market, b) oppose the carbon price which is a free market mechanism to reducing carbon emissions, and c) are calling for more regulation, which the Clean Fuel Standard is, even though regulations are opaquer as to the cost increases that will result. There is an argument to be had that the government should focus on increasing the carbon price over other regulatory measures (though I would disagree with the ones that say all of said measures should be abandoned in favour of the price), but getting exercised because the very regulatory measures you are looking for cost more money means that you’re not really serious about it in the first place.

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