Tag Archives: Pensions

QP: What is your inflation position today?

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Even though the prime minister was in town, he was not in Question Period, but his deputy was, so that was something. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and he worried about the news that the coming fiscal update would only have “limited information,” and worrying about them covering up spending. Chrystia Freeland stood up and recited O’Toole’s floundering position on whether inflation is a global problem or not. O’Toole retorted that she was the only politician to have been flagged on Twitter for misleading information, and demanded that she tell the Bank of Canada to get inflation under control. Freeland chided O’Toole for not realising that monetary policy is the role of the Bank, which is arm’s length from government. O’Toole started sputtering about small businesses suffering from inflation, and Freeland reminded him that their campaign documents promised even more government spending in the current fiscal year, and wondered what their position was today. O’Toole demanded to know then a budget would be balanced, and Freeland recited the Economist’s top-ten list of most expensive cities to live in, and noted that none were in Canada. O’Toole then switched to French to say that Quebeckers were tired of living paycheque to paycheque. Freeland repeated the same Economist list in response.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he worried that the prime minister didn’t raise softwood tariff while in Washington, and Freeland stated that while she could not match Therrien’s ability to play on words, but the file was important and they were continuing to defend the sector’s interest like they did for aluminium. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay demanded that the government insist on separate treatment for Quebec because their forestry rules are different, while Freeland assured him that they were defending sector.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he worried that the COVID rules were too confusing for travellers. Freeland said that they agreed that the fight against COVID was the most important issue for the country and vaccination was the way out, but noted that the current rules are a circuit-breaker to buy them time. Singh repeated the question in French, and repeated her response.

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QP: A rose-coloured paean to the Harper era

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There were a few more absences in the benches, but the leaders were all present, so that was something. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he loudly worried about the real housing crisis, and somehow blamed it on government spending. Justin Trudeau assured him that housing was a priority for the government, and that they would work with partners to get more housing built, while listing some of their proposed measures. O’Toole was unconvinced, and continued the specious correlation between government spending and housing prices, and Trudeau reminded him that the Conservatives plan would have raised prices further. O’Toole gave a rose-coloured revisionist paean to the halcyon days of Stephen Harper, and Trudeau batted it away. O’Toole switched to French to lament that the government wasn’t helping Canadians, and Trudeau repeated his assurances that they are there for Canadians and the way to get out of the economic situation is to end the pandemic. O’Toole then raised the labour shortage, accusing the government of doing nothing, and Trudeau listed measures the government is taking such as higher immigration targets and more money for training.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised the situation of French-speaking students from Africa being unable to get student visas to Quebec, and Trudeau assured him it was a problem and they were conducting a systemic review of the situation. Blanchet insisted that was meaningless, and wondered if the government was admitting it was racist, and Trudeau said that unlike the Bloc, they recognised that systemic racism exists and once identified they are working to eliminate it.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and demanded Canadian support to ensure that other countries can make vaccines in their own country, and Trudeau listed Canada’s leadership actions, including COVAX and working at the WTO to address the various restrictions, beyond just patents. Singh switched to French to repeat the question, and Trudeau chided Singh for using “literally” when he meant metaphorically, before repeated his answer in French.

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Roundup: Repurposed talking points with an inflation bow on top

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The Conservatives’ finance critic, Pierre Poilievre, was up to his usual bullshit over the weekend and held a press conference to demand that the government maintain the Bank of Canada’s inflation targeting regime – which was almost certain to happen anyway – but along the way, his line of reasoning became utterly absurd.

For one, Poilievre refuses to acknowledge the facts on the ground about what is driving the current bout of inflationary pressure – instead, it’s a lot of talk about the Bank printing money to finance government debt, which isn’t quite true. Quantitative easing isn’t actually “printing money” – and the Bank has an explainer on their website – and by buying government bonds when they did, they were able to keep interest rates low, rather than requiring them to drive up at a time when there were a lot of governments issuing bonds, as those higher rates could have hurt the economy (or by not issuing the bonds, the government wouldn’t be able to pay for the pandemic benefits people needed, and we would have had other problems instead). Meanwhile, his proposed solutions won’t actually deal with the current bout of transitory inflationary pressures – approving more energy projects will take years to come online, cutting taxes and “red tape” won’t necessarily improve productivity, and his “payroll taxes” are things like CPP and EI, which aren’t taxes, and again, won’t actually do anything about world energy prices or supply chain bottlenecks. Most of his demands are just the same Conservative talking points, repurposed with an inflation bow on top.

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And this is the thing – all of the signs are pointing to the fact that while the 4.4 percent headline number sounds scary at first, if we look at where we are trend-wise, we’re not over the target range by much, and we also have to remember that interest rates can be a pretty blunt instrument, and raising them too quickly to tackle inflation that is transitory in nature could have bigger consequences in the economy, and weaken the recovery. Not that these guys pay attention to the counter-factuals, or the facts at all. No, it’s a bunch of talking points that are at least twenty years out of date, if not more, but the problem is that people believe it. (The inflation truthers in my reply column are the worst). And I’m not sure that this government has the rhetorical ability to counter any of it with their happy-clappy pabulum talking points, and that is a problem.

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Roundup: A headache over added and subtracted seats

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The question of seat redistribution and the allocation – and subtraction – of seats has been simmering, and the premier of Quebec is demanding that the prime minister step in and guarantee that Quebec not only retain the seat it is slated to lose, but also to guarantee that because of the notion that Quebec constitutes a nation within Canada, that they must be guaranteed that their share of seats never drops even if their population grows at a much slower pace than other provinces. The problem with that? It would require a constitutional amendment to do, using the 7/50 formula (seven provinces representing 50 percent of the population). And that could be the tricky part.

Of course, the obvious solution is to tinker with the seat distribution formula, which the Conservatives introduced (fully intending to screw over Ontario for new seats along the way). But as I stated in my column a couple of weeks ago, we would probably be better served adding far more than just four seats – something more like 40 would be better for everyone, especially because it would mean better populating committees and keeping parliamentary secretaries from voting positions on them. Mike Moffatt and I discussed this over Twitter:

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Furthermore, if we stay at the current redistribution formula, that sole new seat in Ontario is going to cause a lot of problems with redrawing boundaries (which will then have provincial reverberations, because Ontario provincial ridings mirror their federal counterparts, with the exception of an additional seat in Northern Ontario for better representation. Once this reality starts to sink in, perhaps the government would start considering boosting that formula to avoid these kinds of headaches.

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Roundup: Alberta is broken, part eleventy-seven

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Things are increasingly broken in Alberta, and I’m not referring to the province’s horrific case rates, collapsing ICUs, and Jason Kenney’s continued refusal to take appropriate public health measures in the face of this. No, I’m referring to the fact that a group of MLAs including the gods damned Speaker and deputy Speaker came out as quasi-separatists yesterday with a looney-tunes “Free Alberta Strategy” which is 100 percent handwaving and pretending that they can simply opt-out of federally-imposed laws by sheer force of political will, and the mistaken notion that Quebec did it and they can too. (Spoiler: Quebec didn’t actually do it, and what few things it did do pretty much devastated their economy). This thread helps to clarify a lot of what they’re asking for and why it’s eye-rollingly ludicrous.

There are a few things to unpack here. Much of this stems from Kenney’s farcical referendums that will take place next month, the central of which is to demand a renegotiation of equalisation, which is where these quasi-separatist loons are drawing their inspiration from. It encouraged this kind of magical thinking that somehow Alberta could just stamp its feet and hold its breath and the federal government would somehow surrender its jurisdiction over things. That’s not how this works. But it’s also about Kenney’s entire attitude toward governing, and how he was building anger toward Trudeau in particular so that it would distract the population from his own failings. I have tended to liken Kenney to an arsonist who would set fires and get far enough ahead of them to put them out so that he can look like a hero – but he hasn’t put them out. He poured a glass of water on them and demanded a medal, while the very fires he set are spreading. Everything that is happening in this province all started with a match that has his name and fingerprints all over it. It’s not just trying to pretend that there’s a “good parts only” version of populism that he’s cherry-picking, or that he is somehow “tapping a relief well” to keep it from blowing up in his face. It blew up. The province is in a crisis, and he keeps lighting more fires because he can’t help himself. Things are going to get even worse in the coming weeks, and try as he might, Kenney has nobody to blame but himself.

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And then there’s the whole issue with the Speaker and his deputy. This is the second time now that said Speaker has compromised the avowed neutrality of his position, and he needs to be removed by the Legislature at once, as well as his deputy. It is unacceptable that they remain in their positions any longer, as they cannot be trusted to be neutral presiding officers in the Legislature.

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Roundup: Cherry-picking and one-upping policy

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There was a definite whiff of cynicism with the Liberals’ latest announcement, this time around housing, and it is starting to look like their election platform is to cherry-pick what the other two main parties have done and try to either one-up those policies, or extend the existing Budget 2021 framework with these rival policies in mind. So that’s going well.

On the other side, you have both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh proclaiming that Trudeau had that six years could fix the housing affordability crisis, because apparently, it’s that easy to solve – and while Justin Trudeau did call them out in saying that anyone who thinks it can be solved in a snap doesn’t understand the depth of the crisis, and he’s right. He’s also right to point out that they had a big hill to climb when it comes to re-engaging the federal government on housing with agreements with the provinces, and they’ve been getting there, and accelerating a lot of that funding through the pandemic, but there has been little acknowledgement that the biggest bottlenecks to building more housing is coming from the municipal governments. It’s one of the reasons why the federal dollars for housing aren’t getting spent – projects can’t get approved at the municipal level. Now, the Liberals do have something to address this in their platform, which is a $4 billion fund that essentially seeks to bribe these councils into approving projects, but it is being argued that this won’t help those municipalities where this is a problem by very much, and it may be easier to go to the provinces to amend their own municipal parent legislation to remove some of these regulatory barriers from their end. Of course, that’s another case of “working with provinces,” though in this case, they may be more motivated than on other files.

This being said, nothing any of the parties are going to do is likely to help affordability anytime soon – especially because the problems for increasing the housing supply are dependent on eliminating those bottlenecks, and ensuring there is sufficient labour to build the houses, and in the major markets where this housing is most needed, that may be a problem in and of itself (especially if you want to attract that labour from other provinces, but they can’t afford a place to live when they arrive). And especially because nobody wants to piss off existing homeowners, who want their current home equity to keep appreciating, never mind that it just continues to make the problem worse. But politics is about tough choices, so we’ll see who can make reasonable ones.

In the meantime, here’s Jennifer Robson in this long thread recounting the last time a federal government tried a home buyers’ savings account, and Mike Moffatt gives his take on these announcements.

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QP: One last kick at the hybrid can before summer

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For the final sitting day of the spring, the Liberal benches were once again empty save for Mark Gerretsen, the prime minister planning to appear by video from quarantine. Erin O’Toole led off in person, script on his mini-lectern, and he worried that over five years the government has grappled with Operation Honour, and wanted the prime minister to confirm that the defence minister had never hired someone who was found to previously dismissed from an employer for sexual misconduct — obviously laying a trap because he has something he plans to unveil. Trudeau gave praise to Sajjan for his service. O’Toole noted that Trudeau didn’t really answer and gave him another opportunity, and Trudeau praised their work in changing the culture in the military. O’Toole gave him yet another opportunity in French, and Trudeau repeated that they were taking concrete action make this culture change. O’Toole then raised the contracts to Tom Pitfield’s data services company, and wondered if he had been given any other contracts, and Trudeau noted that the casework database their MPs use, it has strict separation from the party database, and warned against cheap attacks. O’Toole raised two other contracts to Pitfield, noted that they were going to crack down on corruption, and wanted the same from the prime minister. Trudeau dismissed the “baseless personal attacks,” and raised the work they were doing for Canadians.

Yves-François Blanchet, in a somber tone, asked the prime minister to reflect on their choice to create two classes of seniors by giving additional benefits for those over 75, and Trudeau recited that they are always there for seniors and that older seniors have greater needs. Blanchet then wanted the prime minster to increase health transfers to promises, and Trudeau reminded him that they have sent billions to the provinces for help in the pandemic, and that eight out of every ten dollars of assistance were federal dollars, but discussions on increasing transfers were coming in the future.

Jagmeet Singh complained that the ultra rich were not being prosecuted for tax evasion while the government was cutting pandemic benefits, for which Trudeau praised the actions they have taken to help Canadians. Singh then decried that the remaining boil-water advisories on First Nations could take five more years and accused this of not being a priority to the government, and Trudeau reminded him of how many advisories they have solved, and that pretending they did nothing was just misleading and cynical politics.

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QP: Not a question, but a direct plea

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On what promises to be the second last QP of the spring sitting, the three opposition leaders were all present, while Justin Trudeau as only available remotely, being in quarantine, once again leading only Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, in French, where he read a script about the military ombudsman’s comments on ministerial interference in investigations. Trudeau assured him they were working on the structural and cultural change necessary, including appointing Louise Arbour to reviewing the situation. O’Toole repeated the allegations in French, but didn’t phrase it as a question, but turned it into a plea to Canadians to vote out the Liberals. Trudeau repeated his same response in English. O’Toole then turned to the non-story about the Liberals paying for data services to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister. Trudeau stated this was for constituency casework, which was kept separate from political databases, and all rules were followed. O’Toole tried to turn this into an expansive statement about Liberal “corruption,” and demanded to know if any other contracts were given to Tom Pitfield, and Trudeau talked around the Conservatives slinging mud and hoping to see what would stick. O’Toole produced a document that claims that a contract was given to Pitfield, and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were only focused on narratives and not facts, that all parties use case management databases, and all rules were followed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, in person, and complained about the new border measures announced yesterday, complaining they were arbitrary. Trudeau insisted this was part of a gradual reopening and more stages would be announced soon. Blanchet complained there were more rules than variants, and Trudeau said that while the leader of the Bloc may want simple answer, but they needed to ensure that Canadians were kept safe. 

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he railed about that military ombudsman’s report, and Trudeau read that they have been committed to structural and cultural change, and that they have taken more concrete actions recently, including some new appointments and $236 million in the budget. Singh switched to French to complain that some benefit were being reduced, and Trudeau recited that they were there for as long as Canadians needed them, and pleaded with the NDP to pass the budget.

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QP: Leaning harder into the Winnipeg Lab conspiracy theory

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It was the prime minister’s first appearance in the Chamber since the discovery of the mass grave in Kamloops last week, and he was joined once again by Mark Gerretsen. Erin O’Toole led off, and with his script before him, he asked for swift action on the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission around the residential schools. Justin Trudeau gave some platitudes about reconciliation and mentions their investments in those Calls to Action. O’Toole then moved onto the National Microbiology Lab, and deliberately conflated the issue around the two fired scientists with the global demand for answers around the origin of COVID, for which Trudeau reminded him that there are mechanisms to review national security matters. O’Toole dismissed NSICOP as the prime minister’s “secret committee” and tried to conflate the issue around those scientists, for which Trudeau hit back about the secrecy of the Harper government and their refusal to subject national security agencies to independent oversight. O’Toole switched to French to repeat his first question on the two scientists, for which Trudeau reminded him of the oversight mechanisms. O’Toole switched back to English to try and tie in this with approvals for foreign investment from China and Huawei, and Trudeau replied that the Conservatives never hesitate to play politics with national security, before he returned to his praise of the creation of NSICOP.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and pressed for the swift passage of Bill C-10 in spite of Conservative opposition, for which Trudeau praised the cooperation of other parties in trying to pass the bill, and that they hoped to pass it before summer. Blanchet warned that if it did not pass by summer, there would be a heavy political price to pay in Quebec, and Trudeau reminded him that they have been there for artists since the beginning, starting with reversing the Harper-era cuts, and that it was the Conservatives blocking culture.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he raised the court challenges around Indigenous children and residential school survivors (which are about narrow points of law and not compensation). Trudeau stated that every survivor deserves compensation and they are working on that, and they have also been guiding “transformative change” around Indigenous child and family services. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same answer.

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QP: Promulgating microbiology lab conspiracy theories

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The prime minister was indeed present for his Wednesday proto-PMQs, in spite of it feeling kind of like a Tuesday because of the holiday Monday. Of course, the only other Liberal present was once again Mark Gerretsen. (We really, really need this pandemic to be over). Erin O’Toole led off with his script on mini-lectern, and he asked how a person with “deep connection” to China were able to get high-level security clearance to work in the National Microbiology Lab, and Justin Trudeau simply stated that the scientists were no longer employed by the government. O’Toole went on a tangent about the government’s “failure” in granting them clearance and demanded and end to all partnerships with China, and Trudeau read a statement about the research security working group. O’Toole kept insinuating that the two scientists in question were Chinese when they were in fact Canadian citizens, and Trudeau read more statement about national security agencies reaching out to research organisations to ensure that security was being taken seriously. O’Toole raised the supposed “cash for access” fundraisers Trudeau had with supposed Chinese agents early in his time in office, threw a bunch of non sequiturs against the wall, and then again demanded an end to all partnerships with China’s military medical institute. Trudeau read yet more talking points about the development of guidelines that take into account national security issues with research projects. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, and got another scripted response about how the government takes espionage seriously and that Public Safety and CSIS were working with universities.

Yves-François led for the Bloc, and he wanted support for a motion coming to the House around support for Quebec’s bill 96, and Trudeau stated that he looked forward to it, reminding him of the 2006 Harper motion. Blanchet waxed poetic about the motion, and Trudeau stated that he will work to protect French and that they already declare Quebec to be a nation in a untied Canada.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and decried that cuts to the Canada Recovery Benefit were on the way, and demanded the decision be reversed, and Trudeau reminded him that they would be there for Canadians, and that would not change. Singh then railed about banks raising fees, and Trudeau noted that they have been clear in discussions with these institutions that Canadians are going through a tough time which is why it’s important that everyone have their backs.

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