Another snowy day in Ottawa, and things got back underway in the new Chamber, with numerous statements of remembrance for the Quebec City Mosque shooting two years ago. While Justin Trudeau was present today, Andrew Scheer was not, preferring to tweet instead about Google search results he didn’t like. That left Lisa Raitt to lead off, raising the case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, and allegations that Scott Brison was withholding personal emails from the courts. Trudeau stood up to read that they were respecting judicial independence and would not comment. Raitt tried again, calling it a “concerning cover-up,” but Trudeau’s response did not change, only he recited the lines from memory. Raitt then moved on to a homily about affordability and wanted assurances that the government wouldn’t raise taxes. Trudeau assured her that they were cutting taxes for the Middle Class™ while they were growing the economy. Alain Rayes took over in French to demand a balanced budget with no tax hikes. Trudeau deployed his lines about growing the economy and helping the Middle Class™. Rayes tried again, and this time Trudeau insisted that they lowered taxes and would not raise them, while the Conservatives preferred tax cuts for the rich, when “trickle down economics doesn’t work.” Peter Julian led off for the NDP, accusing the PM of misleading the House on housing stats. Trudeau delivered some pat lines about their National Housing Strategy that has helped a million Canadians so far. Julian name-dropped the riding of Burnaby to demand new affordable housing, to which Trudeau cautioned him against maligning the refurbishment of existing housing which ensures Canadians have safe and affordable places to live, which is what they were ensuring. Brigitte Sansoucy went into a paean about personal debt and affordable housing, and Trudeau deployed more talking points about the investments they made. Sansoucy then said that he didn’t consider seniors in his response, to which Trudeau deployed his standard talking points about increasing the GIS.
Tag Archives: Pharmacare
Roundup: Another solution in search of a problem, by-election edition
The good folks at Samara Canada have penned an op-ed in the Globe and Mail to call for legislation that demand swifter by-elections than currently exists, and would seek to remove the discretion of the prime minister in calling them. To this I say nay, because much like fixed election dates, this is a solution in search of a problem. Indeed, the piece entirely ignored that fixed election dates are not only antithetical to our system, which is based on confidence, but that it created a whole host of new problems and solved none. It used to be the big concern that prime ministers would call “snap” elections when it was deemed politically suitable, and that it wholly disadvantaged opposition parties. Of course, that’s entirely a myth that doesn’t survive actual scrutiny (recall that governments in this country were punished when they called elections too soon because they had good poll numbers), and fixed election dates instead created interminable election campaigns that required even more legislation to crack down on spending and advertising in defined pre-writ periods – something that wouldn’t need to exist under the proper system of ministerial discretion.
Throughout the recent round of braying to call by-elections, none of the arguments has convinced me that this is anything more than a moral panic. While the op-ed does correctly point out that MP offices remain staffed and operational, reporting to the party whip instead of the departed MP, the op-ed laments that there is no MP to push files through the bureaucracy – something that is not only not an MP’s job, but is something we should actually be discouraging because it sets up a system that starts to look corrupt, when it becomes who you know that will get action on your files. If anything, parties should actually take advantage of the fact that when a by-election hasn’t been called yet, it gives the riding associations ample time to locate a good candidate, run an effective nomination process, and then start door-knocking. If parties got their act together, they’d have more time to do this, rather than waiting months, and trying to get a hint as to when the by-election might be called before they even start their nominations – something that is absolutely boggling. Jagmeet Singh should have used the time to do the door-knocking at every available opportunity, and yet that didn’t seem to be the case for the months he was complaining that the by-election hadn’t been called.
You don’t have to convince me that it’s important to run these by-elections in a timely manner, and that having an MP in place as soon as possible is the right thing to do. It absolutely is. But more legislative constraints on executive discretion won’t solve any problems, and only creates more of them. We keep seeing this time and again, and yet we keep coming back to yet more proposals for even more of them, creating a spiralling cycle of more rules to fix a problem that was never actually a problem in the first place. Time to step off this merry-go-round.
Senate QP: Bland assurances from Morneau (part eleventy)
Things got underway a few minutes early, as finance minister Bill Morneau arrived in the Senate for what promised to be a day full of pointed questions and pabulum answers – Morneau’s particular specialty. Senator Larry Smith led off, asking about the $9.5 billion budgeted in the fiscal update for “non-announced measures,” and Morneau responded with bland assurances about getting the right balance in the budget. Smith noted that he didn’t actually answer the question and that they needed to hold government to account, to which Morneau said quite right, but again didn’t answer, and offered more pabulum talking points about dealing with challenges while still trending the deficit downward.
Senator Batters was up next, and brought up the PM’s comments on social impacts of male construction workers to rural areas, citing that she only sees benefits. Morneau first cited that they look at employment on projects, and then noted gender-based lens for impacts, but didn’t elaborate on the construction worker issue.
QP: Demanding action for Oshawa
While the prime minister was present, on a day of tough news for Oshawa, Andrew Scheer was absent yet again. Because why bother showing up to Parliament when you’re the leader of the opposition? Erin O’Toole led off, and said there was a future for manufacturing in Canada if they fought for it, and wanted to know what the government was doing. Justin Trudeau read a statement about their disappointment in the news, and how they would support the workers. O’Toole said that they needed to hear that the prime minister hasn’t given up on the sector, to which Trudeau said that they were working with other orders of government to support the workers. O’Toole asked if GM asked him about trade and tariff concerns that were impacting their competitiveness, to which Trudeau said that the auto companies worked with them as part of the new NAFTA talks, and there was more work to do in eliminating steel and aluminium tariffs. Luc Berthold took over in French to ask again about fighting for the jobs, and Trudeau picked his script back up to read the French version of his first answer. Berthold read some further concerns about the workers, and Trudeau read some further assurances about the industry being solid. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he worried that GM was getting “tax giveaways” while cutting jobs, to which Trudeau read a script about support for the auto sector and how they worked to make it globally competitive and innovative. Caron switched to the Canada Post strike and worried that back to work legislation wouldn’t have resulted in the gains the union made, and Trudeau read a script about all of the measures they took to help get a deal. Karen Trudel asked the same question again, and Trudeau extemporaneously explained how they worked respectfully with unions but the time came to make difficult decisions. Irene Mathyssen read that Canada Post was a toxic environment, to which Trudeau read about his faith in the collective bargaining process.
QP: Lies versus pabulum, part eleventy-seven
While Justin Trudeau was not present today, just off of a plane from France, Singapore and Papua New Guinea. That said, Andrew Scheer was not present today either, for whatever reason. Alain Rayes led off, worried that the budget would not balance in 2019. Bill Morneau responded with a question of his own — where are we now? He went on to extol the low unemployment rates and the investments to grow the economy. Rayes repeated the question, and Morneau responded that the Conservatives only wanted to make cuts while the Liberal approach was working for growth. Rayes concerned trolled that the budget was “collapsing” under the weight of deficits, but Morneau retorted with the Conservative record of debts and low growth, while they have turned the growth rate around. Candice Bergen took over to ask again in English, railing that the Liberals were irresponsible, to which Morneau repeated his pabulum points in English about low unemployment and high growth. Bergen tried one last time, and Morneau noted the reduction in small business taxes and the lowest level of debt-to-GDP in the G7. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he worried about the pressure to cut corporate taxes to follow the US example. Morneau said that it was necessary to strike a balance to ensure tax fairness and competitiveness, and that was the approach they were taking. Caron worried about corporate “dead money,” and Morneau reiterated his points about striking the right balance. Peter Julian worried about record levels of personal debt and demanded that they end “corporate giveaways,” to which Morneau assured him that they were investing in Canadians by means like the Canada Child Benefit. Julian demanded investments in pharmacare, to which Ginette Petitpas Taylor recited the implementation on the consultations that would produce a report in the spring.
Roundup: Deleting the message
The Conservatives decided to delete their tweet yesterday that depicted a black migrant crossing to Canada – over a bridge made of Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet, and through a broken chain-link fence. There was backlash that the tweet was racist, and it certainly was intended to stoke the xenophobic tendencies that they have been flirting with. I will point out once again that their continued reliance on the talking point that this is about the “orderly” asylum system would probably make most of Europe laugh and pat them on the head condescendingly, because it’s pretty precious that they think Canada should get the special status of an “orderly” system that no other country gets.
Full response from @CPC_HQ spox Cory Hann #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/iP4c7874dn
— Laura Stone (@l_stone) July 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1019323971274248193
Meanwhile, Maclean’shas a look at the history of the Safe Third Country Agreement, and how it’s basically just waiting for Donald Trump to blow it up if he actually learns about what it is and what it does. Chris Selley, on the other hand, points out the ways in which both the federal government and the new Ontario government are mishandling the whole file, which is fair criticism. But I do think we can’t take our eye off the fact that the Conservatives are flirting with xenophobic populism for partisan gain, and playing cute with it, pitting one group of newcomers against another, and patting themselves on the back for their “compassion” for certain groups of refugees that they use solely as props to hammer away at the regime they’re fleeing. This has been their modus operandi since Jason Kenney was immigration minister, but they’ve poured it on a little thicker since they saw that this kind of populist rhetoric worked for Trump and Brexit (never mind the fact that we have solid proof of election interference in both, and definitive proof of broken rules in the Brexit referendum). This is worrying for our democracy, and we should be very wary of their adopting these techniques.
Roundup: Senate constituency office?
Independent Senator Dan Christmas has opted to open a “constituency” office in his local Mi’kmaw community in Nova Scotia in a bid to be more accessible. Which is all well and good, but the CBC piece that reported on this is atrocious. Embarrassingly so.
The article refers to Christmas as a “member of the Canadian government” which he explicitly is not. Being a member of government means being part of Cabinet, which Christmas certainly is not. In fact, as a senator, his job is to hold government to account. That’s not talked about in here at all. I’m also not sure what he hopes to use the office for, because senators traditionally don’t do the kinds of constituency work that MPs do, such as acting in an ombudsman-like capacity for constituents having trouble dealing with the civil service (particularly with immigration files, which is a huge problem). And it’s not like he’s the first senator to do so – I recall Senator Mike Duffy making a big deal about doing the same thing in PEI (which I can’t recall if he ever got around to actually doing, or if it was simply a stated intention that some of the usual pundits went around congratulating him for), and Senator Bob Runciman had a constituency office as well. Regardless, the article doesn’t really give much of a sense of his plans for the office – just that he wants to be visible in his community and that he wants to be a kind of “ambassador” to Ottawa from the Mi’kmaw, which again, not really an apt analogy because he doesn’t represent that government in any capacity. I am forced to wonder if this is a result of a lack of understanding of his role because, as an Independent senator, he lacks much in the way of proper mentoring from established senators, but again, I remain mystified, and we’ll see how long this lasts before he realises he could better spend his office budget doing things that are of more utility.
Roundup: Barriers and non-solutions
As part of a discussion on Power & Politicsyesterday on barriers women face in politics, there were a few well-worn tropes thrown out there, but I wanted to poke into a couple of the items discussed (much of which I’ve already written about in my book, but a refresher course never hurts):
- This needs to be an issue addressed by the parties at the grassroots level and shouldn’t be legislated top-down. Parties are already too centrally controlled, and if you want empowered MPs that are women and those who are from diverse communities, they need to participate from the ground-up rather than be appointed top-down.
- The side-effect of quotas, be they de facto or de jure, tends to be that women and minorities are nominated in “no-hope” ridings. We’ve seen this time and again, even from the NDP, who have their “no nomination can be run unless the riding association has exhausted the possibility for an equity-seeking candidate” rule. That rule is often conveniently broken if they think they have a winnable straight, white male candidate, and 2011 is a perfect example of how they loaded a lot of women and racialized candidates in “no hope” Quebec ridings that got swept up in the “orange wave.” Most were not good MPs, and some had never been to their ridings before winning, which is the opposite of how nominations should be run.
- The voting system is not the problem – it’s entrenched barriers in the nomination system where not enough encouragement is given to women to run (i.e. until this last electoral cycle, they didn’t recognize that women need to be asked several times before they will consider running, and they may have things like childcare issues that need to be sorted when running). A PR system usually creates some manner of list MPs, where your women and minority MPs come from lists rather than having had to run and win ridings, which creates two-tiers of MPs. This also manifests itself in countries with quotas, and women MPs in places like Rwanda have seats but little power as a result.
- We can’t do much more to make our parliament more “family friendly” without hollowing it out even more than it has been. While there are issues with childcare, MPs are not without resources to address it (like hiring nannies) rather than forcing the institution to hire precariously-employed childcare workers for part of the year with no sense of numbers on a daily basis. While 60-day parental leave is not objectionable, remote voting and Skyping into committee meetings is very much a problem that we should not encourage in any way.
Roundup: Carbon tax figures in context
The Parliamentary Budget Officer released his latest economic and fiscal outlook yesterday, which included some not unexpected things like warnings that the deficit might be larger than anticipated, or that debt servicing charges might start to increase, or that some government programmes may wind up costing more than stated in the budget. All fair game. But it was his analysis of the federal carbon price that really go the Conservatives (and their mouthpieces) excited – and as usual, it was an exercise in cherry-picked numbers that ignored the context of what was actually said.
Parliamentary Budget Officer calculates the Liberal carbon tax will reduce GDP by $10 billion/year by 2022. https://t.co/FUsaUKmZMF
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) April 23, 2018
In this particular case, the headline number was that by 2022, when the full $50/tonne price is implemented, the price could – and one has to stress could– cost the economy 0.5 percent of GDP, or $10 billion. And this had the Conservatives, and Pierre Polievere in particular, whooping at the government about how this was going to kill the economy. The problem is that the report goes on to say that if provincial governments actually recycle those revenues through reducing corporate or personal income taxes, for example, it would nullify that effect. Not that things like context or nuance, or even truth will dissuade a political talking point. University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe explains more here:
Also, the effect on GDP of using regulations and technology subsidies to achieve an equivalent emissions reduction will come at a *larger* cost. If CPC opposes pricing, they're implicitly preferring more than 0.45% in costs since they agree with the target.
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) April 23, 2018
Paging @kirst_nicole. Despite the #kirstengraphs nature of this graph, the absolute gap is also larger than most other estimates I've seen. Wonder what's different. @enviroeconomics? pic.twitter.com/GvhAKKhRCO
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) April 23, 2018
Yes, seeing that now. I first read it as 0.5% lower gdp growth, which led me to believe maybe they weren't recycling revenues or something. Thanks.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) April 23, 2018
Digging deeper into the footnotes, the PBO didn't construct their own estimates, they just used the results in 'Choose Wisely' and scaled up the effect of moving to $50.
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) April 23, 2018
Also in the PBO report: recycling carbon revenues by reducing income taxes "would essentially offset the impact of the carbon levy on the Canadian economy in 2022." #cdnpoli
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) April 23, 2018
1) They're using estimates from @EcofiscalCanada. So, not new.
2) Using CTax rev to lower income taxes, "would essentially offset the impact on #cdnecon". To ~0.1% instead of 0.45%.
3) Regulations and tech subsidies (your preferred tools) tend to have *higher* costs. https://t.co/5tpoVSYfcI
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) April 23, 2018
Tombe also found this bit of the report overlooked by other media reports:
PBO also releasing updated estimate of TPP+CETA https://t.co/k2Qg8fpcuw Fully phased-in, the two deals are a ~$1.8-1.9 billion tax cut affecting 23% of #cdnecon imports.
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) April 23, 2018
QP: Borders and carbon prices
On a warm and sunny Monday in the nation’s capital, all of the leaders were present, so it was either going to be a really good day…or an insufferable one. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he noted the unfolding situation of an alleged attack in Toronto with a white van running down pedestrians. Justin Trudeau noted that his thoughts were with those affected, and he would update the House as he learned more. Scheer then asked about the number of irregular border crossers affecting those who “wait in line” — except there’s not a line for asylum seekers, there’s a process, and he’s conflating it with immigration. Trudeau noted that Canada is signatory to international conventions, and that any arrivals are processed and that they go through proper security checks. Scheer tried again, and this time Trudeau wondered if Scheer was suggesting that they violate their international obligations. Scheer then turned to the PBO report on carbon pricing, and he cherry-picked one figure that portended doom (where the report stated differently). Trudeau gave a weary sigh, and reminded him that the economy and the environment go together. Scheer tried to insinuate that there was some kind of cover-up about the “economic damage” that a carbon tax would do, and Trudeau hit back that if Scheer was so concerned about secrecy, he should stop censoring Maxime Bernier. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and after he made a quick statement about the situation in Toronto, he demanded the immediate implementation of a universal pharmacare programme. Trudeau took up a script to say that the system can be improved and they are consulting on a national pharmacare programme — note that he didn’t say universal. Caron asked again in French, detailing previous Liberal promises, and Trudeau said that the NDP wanted to set up something without a clear plan, which is why his government set up an advisory committee to study and evaluate a universal pharmacare programme (not sure if universal was just a translation issue this time). Rachel Blaney took her own turn to demand pharmacare, and Trudeau repeated his answer about needing a plan, emphasising the digs at the NDP in the process. Blaney tried again, and got the same answer.