Tag Archives: Nominations

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: 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.”

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1176948777157984256

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.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1177041128991932417

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: Sweetening the newborn benefits

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It was another day of promises to families with young children, of course, and Justin Trudeau was out first this morning from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, to promise a more comprehensive package of benefits for the families of newborns – additional Canada Child Benefit payments, making maternity benefits actually tax free by removing the taxation at source as opposed to a non-refundable tax credit, and additional weeks of parental leave for adoptive parents. While most of the media stories didn’t really touch on it, the enhanced CCB payouts in the first month of a child’s life is approaching a basic minimum income for parents, as it doesn’t rely on EI benefits (which don’t apply for those who are self-employed or who weren’t working). While there are still a few questions about implementation (explained in this thread by Lindsay Tedds), most seem to agree that the Liberal plan is far more useful to parents than the one the Conservatives announced earlier.

Andrew Scheer was in Winnipeg, where he announced a promise to enhance the Registered Education Savings Plan benefits for those in lower income brackets, but it remains a fact that this is another promise that disproportionately benefits wealthier households, and does nothing for those who can’t afford to contribute to these RESPs. (Here’s a thread from Jennifer Robson on the efficacy of RESPs for low-income Canadians). Scheer also accused Trudeau of stealing his parental benefits idea and that he voted against it before and announced it now – but the Liberal plan is very different from the one Scheer proposed. (Here’s another thread from Robson comparing the Conservative and Liberal promises). Scheer also accused the Liberals of not being transparent about the costs of their promises, but Trudeau had already stated that a PBO-costing of them would becoming out once the whole platform is announced (which may provide a more holistic picture of their promises rather than them coming out piecemeal like the Conservatives are doing).

For Jagmeet Singh, he was in Ottawa to re-announce his party’s promise to build half a million new affordable housing units – but wouldn’t say how they would do it, which is kind of a big deal because the places where affordable housing is most acute are areas with either full employment or labour shortages, which is kind of a big deal if they want to get it built affordably.

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Roundup: Another candidate distraction

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While Justin Trudeau was making campaign stops in Quebec, with no announcements or stump speeches, the Liberals did release a new campaign ad voiced by Chrystia Freeland to talk about how they fought “tooth and nail” for Canadian workers in New NAFTA talks and got a good deal from the Americans.

Andrew Scheer was treating yesterday as the campaign’s “down day” (which is normally Sunday), but he did stop at an Ottawa-area event by one of his local candidates, and was confronted with questions about her past comments about Francophones, and her friendship with noted white supremacist Faith Goldy. (Said candidate apologised for the comments but said nothing about Goldy). She fled from reporters, and Scheer said the Liberals were simply trying to distract from their record, and another Conservative claim of Liberal anti-Semitism was circulated (though apparently the courts have stated that it wasn’t anti-Semitism regarding that case). Nevertheless, that’s the fourth candidate that the Liberals have found damaging information on when Scheer has visited their ridings.

https://twitter.com/AndersonBooz/status/1173022235931447296

As for Jagmeet Singh, he went to Oshawa to accuse the Liberals of not standing up for auto workers, which is a curious charge given how much they’ve given to the industry to date, but there we are.

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Roundup: Hostile territory and the first debate

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While it was a quieter day on the campaign because of the Maclean’s debate during the evening, there were still a few events to set the tone of the day. Jagmeet Singh was first up by staging a photo op in Brampton near the local hospital, where he had a bunch of candidates and supporters line up, and someone held up a sign that said “waiting for healthcare” before he talked about…building a new hospital in the city. Which is provincial jurisdiction. And then he claimed that it was about offering the provincial government money to build one, which again, isn’t how this works.

Andrew Scheer went to re-announce his policy on a tax credit for parental leave, falsely billing it as making those benefits “tax-free” (which it absolutely does not do, and here’s tax economist Lindsay Tedds to break it down), before he got sidelined because the candidate in the riding he was making the re-announcement was outed as being an anti-abortion activist who wants to build a “monument to the unborn,” and he had to again address the issue – and she talked about how great it was that Scheer would allow free votes on the subject.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1172224257142611968

As for Trudeau, things were already off to a bit of a rough start after the media bus managed to damage the wing of his campaign plane on Wednesday night after they landed in Victoria, forcing them to get a new, un-branded plane for their day’s travels to Victoria – where he announced tweaks to the first-time home-buyers plan that was announced in the budget, but with new measures to assist those in hot housing markets along with a national speculators tax. His campaign later went to Kamloops, and then to Edmonton for a rally. There, he framed everything around his team, and minimized the talk about himself, but he also acknowledged the economic anxiety in the province, saying that the rest of Canada would be there for them, saying that he was holding to his promise never to pit regions against each other. I’m sure that will be disputed by some, but it was interesting. Also interesting was the tactical choice for Trudeau to campaign in Edmonton – specifically the vacant riding of Edmonton Strathcona, which the NDP held – on day two of the campaign, in a province whose premier is working hard to try and topple the government. It does send a message that Trudeau chose to be there rather than the debate – but we’ll see if that message resonates.

And then the debate. It was…not all that illuminating. While Elizabeth May was Elizabeth May – speaking extemporaneously on all things, and some of those things made sense and other things were complete lunacy – it was the first test of Scheer and Singh in that kind of a format. Singh turned to the others to make his interventions, and kept bring up people that he met who expressed concerns about whatever the topic was, while Scheer kept looking straight at the camera, and trying to wedge in his memorized talking points about Trudeau at every opportunity, no matter how inopportune or inappropriate to the discussion. Both Singh and Scheer stuck to scripted points, but a couple of more robust discussion did break out, and Paul Wells managed to get each of the leaders to expound on their tepid responses to Bill 21 in Quebec. The biggest…surprise of the night was when Scheer had a complete meltdown on the subject of UNDRIP and Indigenous consultation with resource projects, which could very well work against him as those communities mobilize to vote.

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Roundup: Agenda-setting out of the gate

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With the proclamation signed by the Governor General to dissolve parliament, the 43rdgeneral election started, with Justin Trudeau emerging from Rideau Hall to have a ready-made human backdrop assembled for him. After a mention of the anniversary of 9/11, he launched into his election pitch about the record of economic growth because they rejected the austerity of the Conservative years, and yay Middle Class™ And Those Working Hard To Join It®. He listed accomplishments, and the choice of investing in Canadians, and the choice to move forward or go back to the “Harper years.” The questions afterward were dominated by two themes – the latest SNC-Lavalin news from the Globe and Mail, and Bill 21 in Quebec, and the linguistic duality on the two questions was quite evident. On the former, Trudeau simply said that he trusted the Clerk of the Privy Council’s judgment with regard to the cabinet confidences, and on the latter, he said that he opposed the bill but that now wasn’t the time for the federal government to interfere legally.

Jagmeet Singh held his launch minutes later in London, Ontario – one of the regions where they are looking to save the seats they have. Singh spoke about his personal connection to London, as he lived there when he attended Western, then launched into the tales of woe he heard from people there about pharmacare and healthcare costs – and lo, he has a pitch about expanding coverage around them. He then said that what his party had was the “courage” to take on lobbyists, corporations, money launderers, speculators, Big telecom, big polluters, and “fossil fuel subsidies” – a long list to be sure. He then moved on to claiming that “Trudeau charmed us with pretty words and empty promises”, and that Scheer was not the answer, then turned to the human backdrop and said “These are the people I’m in it for.” Like his slogan. In the questions, he was asked a local question about the General Dynamics plant which is building those LAVs going to Saudi Arabia, and have basically saved the local economy. Singh insisted that they could still have those jobs selling equipment to the Canadian Forces and to “non-oppressive regimes.” Err, except they have their own local suppliers, so he clearly has no idea what he’s referring to.

The Bloc’s launch in Quebec City was largely a laundry lists of exaggerated grievances and talk of a renewed Quebec nationalism, and one of the phrases that leapt out at me was talking about “people who will be like you,” which seems like a dog whistle, but perhaps it was a translation issue.

Next up was Elizabeth may in Victoria, where she brought local “climate striking” children on stage, and then launched into a speech about holding the line on climate change, decrying the Trans Mountain pipeline, and touting her “Mission: Possible” climate plan. She also demanded that parties “jettison partisanship” to solve climate change – never mind that she herself is partisan, and it’s become a Green tendency to pretend that sanctimony is non-partisanship. When faced with questions about vote splitting, she asserted that “Greens don’t split votes, Greens grow votes,” and when pressed about Pierre Nantel’s declaration of separatist sentiments, she prevaricated and assured us that “we’re all Earthlings.”

Finally we had Andrew Scheer, from Trois-Rivières, Quebec – one of those seats he’d love to gain. His 9/11 mentions included the plot of Come From Away as an example of why he loves the country. Using the Harper-esque prefacing of all statements with “friends,” his pitch was that it was time to elect a government that would elect a party that would improve peoples’ daily lives, while he claimed that Trudeau would raise their taxes (err, except that the record is the opposite). And then it was a laundry list of lies and disingenuous framing of issues, hammering on the Globe story about SNC-Lavalin – again, exaggerating what the story actually said. His message to Trudeau was that “starting today, recess is over” – part of his constant attempts to infantilising Trudeau (remember the constant claims that Trudeau is busy colouring in the House of Commons, or that he “wrote” a colouring book). For his Quebec audience, he added a few references about “open federalism” and Quebec being a nation within Canada, while slamming the Bloc as being ineffective in Ottawa.

This all having been said, I did want to touch on that Globe and Mail story for one other aspect, which is the fact that they deliberately published the story about “sources saying” the RCMP has been asking questions about “possible obstruction of justice” in the SNC-Lavalin case – which is not an investigation – on the eve of the election, because they are trying to set the agenda. Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t ask these questions, but agenda-setting – particularly where your stories are thinly sourced and with torqued headlines that give a misleading impression of what the story actually says – is of dubious ethical practice, and it’s something we should be cognisant of and think critically about.

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Roundup: Cheap outrage over MPs’ spouses

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Long-time readers will know that one of my pet peeves is the propensity for my media colleagues to push cheap outrage stories, to trigger the hairshirt parsimony and tall poppy syndrome of the Canadian public, and lo, they did it again with the screaming headline that taxpayers footed the bill for $4.5 million in MP spousal travel over four years. Which is actually not a lot, particularly when you consider that we’re a big country, and that airfare is expensive here because of our duopolistic air carriers and lack of population density.

Of course, when I tweeted this out, I had all kinds of people yelling at me that Bill Morneau’s millionaire wife shouldn’t be eligible for sponsored spousal travel. The problem with this kind of qualifier is that it when you start qualifying who is and isn’t eligible for the benefits based on personal circumstances, you start running into the mentality that plagued the UK for centuries – that MPs were poorly compensated and essentially needed to be independently wealthy before they stood for office. We’ve seen enough people suggest that the Canadian Senate be run this way, with the ludicrous suggestion that it be a volunteer position. I would also add that the divorce rate for MPs is several times above the national average – if we start begrudging their ability to travel with their spouses to Ottawa and back, particularly if the distances are fairly large ones – we’d see even more divorces, or a pervasive belief that people with families shouldn’t run for office. I’m not sure who that would benefit.

Throughout this bit of cheap outrage, Jody Wilson-Raybould’s spousal flights were singled out in a separate piece about cabinet ministers and their spouses’ travel costs. That a Vancouver MP’s costs would be higher should be no surprise, and it could very well be that they are higher because they may have been booked last-minute rather than in advance (given that they are simply treated by the MP and their spouse as points rather than being given a dollar figure as their expenses limit). Suffice to say, these kinds of stories are pretty gross when you stop and think about it, and the performative outrage over taxpayer dollars that are packaged in a way to look big and without sufficient context is one of the biggest problems we have in Canadian politics, and why we make the lives of our MPs so miserable.

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Roundup: Campaign launch and promises

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As we wait for the writs to be drawn up – and I wouldn’t hold my breath on it happening until at least Wednesday, because they want to ensure that the Manitoba election is over first – we’re ready to start seeing the official campaign launches. The NDP were supposed to have theirs on Sunday, but cancelled it out of respect for Hurricane Dorian hitting Nova Scotia and PEI, only to turn around and then do a “bus unveiling” in Toronto and then head to Ottawa to “open” the campaign headquarters – which was essentially launching the “official” campaign anyway. All of which is a bit of a fiction because the campaign has really been going on for months, because fixed election dates are garbage. (Side note: in the week following the point being made that Singh has not yet visited New Brunswick, and the high-profile defections, that he still hasn’t bothered to make a stop in that province).

Meanwhile, because the NDP have already released their platform, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is starting to cost some of their promises, and the first one was released regarding their pledge to eliminate interest charges on current and future federal student loans.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1170671191629037569

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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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