Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Another brave demand for money without strings

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Four nominally conservative premiers convened in Ottawa yesterday to once again bravely demand that the federal government give them more money for healthcare and infrastructure, and to not attach any strings to it. In total, they demanded at least $28 billion more per year for healthcare, $10 billion for infrastructure, and retroactive reforms to fiscal stabilization that would give Alberta another $6 billion. Of course, two of those premiers – Jason Kenney and Brian Pallister – were in the Harper government when health transfers were unilaterally cut, to which we must also offer the reminder that the numbers at the time show that provincial health spending was not rising nearly as fast as the health transfer escalator, which means that the money was going to other things, no matter how much the provinces denied it. As well, most provinces have not actually been spending the current infrastructure dollars that are on the table for one reason or another (some of which have been petty and spiteful), so why demand more when they already aren’t spending what’s there.

As for Alberta’s demand for retroactive fiscal stabilization, one should also add the caveat that the current formula asserts a certain amount of moral risk for provinces who rely too heavily on resource revenues for their provincial coffers – that they should be looking at other forms of revenue (like sales taxes) so that they aren’t so exposed to the vagaries of things like world oil prices. Retroactively changing the formula means that the federal government becomes their insurance for the risks they undertook on their own balance sheets, which hardly seems fair to the other provinces in confederation, who have to pay higher provincial taxes.

And then Kenney dropped this little claim:

This is patently untrue. The province still has tremendous fiscal capacity because they still have the highest per capita incomes in the country and the lowest taxation. Sure, that fiscal capacity has diminished, but not that much. The province’s deficit is a policy choice because they refuse to implement a modest sales tax that could actually pay for the services that Kenney is now in the process of slashing, having ordered up a report to tell him that they have a spending problem instead of a revenue problem. Err, and then he spent billions on a money-losing refinery and another pipeline that will actually make said refinery an even bigger money-loser. So no, the quality of healthcare in his province isn’t being jeopardized by the state of his economy – it’s because he won’t stabilize his revenues (and because he’s launching an ill-conceived war against the doctors in his province in the middle of a global pandemic, because he’s strategic like that).

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Roundup: Blaming the wrong government

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It appears that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has decided to use his need for a COVID-test after one of his staffers tested positive in order to be performative about the whole affair. Despite there being a dedicated testing services available to MPs and their families (because yes, Parliament is an essential service), O’Toole and family apparently opted to attempt the public route, which in Ottawa has been backed up for days because of a lack of testing capacity. O’Toole then put out a press release to blame the federal government – not for inadequate capacity, which is the domain of the provinces, and O’Toole couldn’t possibly be seen to criticize Doug Ford and his lack of appreciable action on the pandemic – but because rapid testing hasn’t been approved by the regulators at Health Canada. Hours later, Michelle Rempel, the new Conservative health critic, doubled down and demanded that Cabinet force Health Canada to work faster (and misusing an analogy about the bourgeoisie and “let them eat cake” in the process).

There are a couple of problems with O’Toole’s demands, and one is that Cabinet should be interfering in the work of a regulator, which sets up all kinds of bad precedents – you know, like the one the Conservatives set when they fired the nuclear safety regulator because she refused to restart a nuclear reactor during a crisis of isotope production. The other is that Health Canada has good reason not to approve these tests as they are, because they produce false negatives more often than the regular tests, and that creates a false sense of security among people who may be spreading the virus. “Oh, but the FDA approved it!” people say, ignoring that it’s an emergency approval that relies on self-reported results and not independently verified ones, which again, should be concerning – not to mention that infections in the US are still spreading rapidly. The fact that Health Canada is doing the job that the FDA didn’t shouldn’t mean that we’re “falling behind” – we’re doing the due diligence that they’re not.

As well, I’m not exactly mollified by the notion that O’Toole attempting the public route when he had an option available already because it’s the kind of performative “We’re like real people” nonsense – especially if it took a spot away from another local family who doesn’t have access to the private test that O’Toole did. It’s not heroic or setting a good example – it’s political theatre that could hurt other people in the process.

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Roundup: It’s all coming back to me now

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As Jason Kenney continues his bellicose demands for a revival of the Energy East project, it seems that his arguments have a certain familiar ring to them. Wait for it…

Anyone who has paid any attention to the Energy East demands for the past few years will note that there is a definite NEP 2.0 sensibility to them – especially the notion that in the name of “energy security,” we should repurpose this pipeline/build a new segment to the port of Saint John, where there is a single refinery that can handle limited amounts of heavy crude, and that the Irvings should either be forced to accept said Alberta heavy crude at a cost of an additional $10/barrel than they can currently import cheaper, lighter crude from abroad that their current refinery can handle, and that consumers in Atlantic Canada should be made to pay more for their gasoline for the privilege of it coming from Alberta – because I’m not sure that Alberta is going to accept the $10/barrel discount on their crude when they already are suffering from low global oil prices that have made many new oilsands projects economically unviable. Never mind the similarities of this scheme to the original NEP, for which Alberta has created a grand myth about the Great Satan Trudeau (even though the resulting closures in the industry had more to do with the collapse in global oil prices and global recession that happened at the same time) – the cognitive dissonance will not hold.

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Roundup: The Energy East distraction

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After wide reporting that Jason Kenney’s poll numbers have been tanking and that he’s currently tied with the provincial NDP, it was predetermined that Kenney was going to have to start coming up with something new to blame the federal government about in order to whip his voter base into a new round of irrational anger. He also, apparently needed to provide some cover to his friend Erin O’Toole after O’Toole’s meeting with the Quebec premier, and so Kenney’s distraction of choice was going to be Energy East, and blaming the federal government for its demise. Of course, that’s not true at all, and energy economist Andrew Leach has the receipts.

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Roundup: Liberal caucus boards the BI train

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Ever since the creation of CERB at the beginning of the pandemic, the Basic Income crowd has believed that this is their chance to finally get what they’ve been asking for. Most of it remains in the realm of lollipops and unicorns, with a lot of handwaving away the difficulties associated with a basic income, but here we are. To that end, it seems that the Liberal caucus has made this their top priority for the party’s upcoming policy convention, which means that it has a fairly good chance of getting adopted as party policy. Of course, in the current day and age, a party’s policy book isn’t really worth the paper that it’s printed on because the leader’s office now controls everything, most especially the campaign platform (you know, what the party’s policies are supposed to inform), so I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it’s certainly an indication of where their heads are at.

To that end, economist Lindsay Tedds, who has been studying the implementation of Basic Income programmes, is unimpressed with this turn of events. Why? Because there are a lot of things in the federal government’s wheelhouse when it comes to better implementing current social supports programmes that they’re simply not doing, because of the ways in which they rely on the current tax system – which is a problem when a significant portion of marginalized people can’t access those benefits because they don’t file taxes. And if you’re going to implement a Basic Income, you would think you’d want to get these kinds of things sorted first so that it becomes easier to do any kind of BI.

Economist Mike Moffatt also makes the point that there are far more effective things that the federal government could spend money on that would get better outcomes than spending it on basic income, because of the supply side problems that adding more money into the system won’t fix, but will simply drive up things like rental costs.

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Roundup: O’Toole hears the siren song of cheap outrage

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He’s barely a week into the job as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and Erin O’Toole is already starting to beak off about official residences, and my head is on the verge of exploding. When asked about the CBC story that Stornoway – the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition – is due to get $170,000 in needed repairs before O’Toole and family move in, O’Toole started going off about how he only wanted the very minimum of work done and that he doesn’t even want furniture in his kids’ bedrooms because he wants to use the furniture that their grandfather built in Nova Scotia, and I was both outraged and exasperated.

Let me be clear – the National Capital Commission needs to put work into upkeep of these heritage residences or else they will start to degrade. Everyone was so afraid of necessary upkeep at 24 Sussex for so long that it has literally become a crumbling shitpile, and nobody can decide what to do with it now. Stornoway managed to avoid that fate because when Preston Manning refused to move in, the NCC was able to do the heavy-duty renovations that the residence needed to bring it back up to spec, but 24 Sussex has never had that opportunity, and look where it got us. Nevertheless, this persistent politicization of official residences and casting them as “personal benefits” for political leaders is outrageous to the point of being offensive. These are not personal benefits – they are official residences who belong to the Queen in Right of Canada. And you can bet that a lot of journalists and Liberal partisans on Twitter dug up everything O’Toole said about 24 Sussex and the renovations to Harrington Lake to paint him a hypocrite, but dear sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this is such self-defeating behaviour. Stop it.

I will also add lay a certain amount of blame for this on the media, because the impulse is always to write these stories as cheap outrage. The CBC headline is quintessential cheap outrage: “Stornoway getting $170K in taxpayer-funded repairs before Erin O’Toole moves in.” This is the kind of thing that gets Canadians’ hairshirt parsimony and tall poppy syndrome riled up, and suddenly it’s a scandal – no matter how reasonable the costs, or necessary the work. And that’s exactly why 24 Sussex is a crumbling shitpile, and why our government aircraft are so old that they have to constantly refuel, and why the avionics on some of them are so old that they are banned from several major airports. It’s embarrassing, but cheap outrage is like crack to so many journalists’ brains that they can’t help themselves, and we collectively set ourselves back another decade on doing what needs to be done. We need to do better, and stop going for the cheap dopamine hits that these stories give because it’s self-destructive.

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Roundup: Trudeau backs Payette

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While making his media rounds, mostly on Vancouver stations yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the situation in Rideau Hall, and whether there would be any chance he’ll replace Her Excellency Julie Payette anytime soon, especially given that there is currently a workplace investigation after more than twenty current and former employees have come forward with claims of bullying and harassment, not to mention the revelations about how her habits – especially her attempts to evade her own police protection – have cost additional millions of dollars unnecessarily. Trudeau responded that we currently have an “excellent” Governor General, and that the country is currently dealing with a health crisis and didn’t need a constitutional crisis to go with it.

It was a bit of a slow boil, but rest assured, dear reader, my head did explode.

Payette has not been an “excellent” GG. Far from it. She is a brilliant and accomplished woman, but is wholly unsuited for the role that is largely ceremonial, and where the exercise of her powers is 99.95% automatic. A big part of her job is to act as patron to a number of Canadian organizations – something she balked at (and for which I have argued we should start getting actual members of the royal family involved instead), in some cases causing problems for those organizations. She has tried to take an active hand in things like Order of Canada nominations, where she is supposed to act, again, in a ceremonial capacity. Her insertion of her own talk about the “space-time continuum” in the last Speech from the Throne was a problem. And this is on top of the problems having the dubious honour of overseeing the most toxic workplace in official Ottawa.

The notion that there would be a “constitutional crisis” is also completely insane. It is literally a matter of advising the Queen to name a new GG to replace Payette – that’s it. Trudeau is not in the midst of a confidence crisis in his government. There is no question as to the legitimacy of his advice to the Queen for such a replacement. There would be no crisis. Trying to pretend otherwise is disingenuous, plain and simple.

But Trudeau can’t acknowledge any of this, because that would mean owning the fact that he once again screwed up in not doing the actual work of due diligence required with the appointment – having disbanded the vice-regal appointments committee – and that it was a bad appointment. Beyond that, there is some speculation in certain circles here that Trudeau is not put out by the fact that Payette won’t do her job, because it allows him to step in and do more of the ceremonial stuff, which he’s not supposed to do as head of government, but something he has nevertheless tried to do more of. That’s a problem, and one that I suspect we can’t solve so long as Trudeau remains in office. (Chrystia Freeland, on the other hand, seems far less taken with Payette, and has moved to distance herself, so there’s that).

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Roundup: Warning signs ignored by the RCMP

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Monday morning was kicked off by a very good story over on Global about a lawsuit launched by former employees in the RCMP’s intelligence unit regarding the bullying of alleged spy Cameron Ortis, who awaits trial for allegedly stealing state secrets with the intent to sell them. The suit alleges that Ortis was bullying out anyone from his office that he didn’t like in order to install friends and people who would be pliant. While the government says they are going “look into” the matter – the fact that this was raised long before Ortis’ arrest and apparently ignored by the RCMP’s management is concerning.

Meanwhile, here’s former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis putting these allegations into perspective – and painting a worrying picture of our national security institutions in the process.

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Roundup: Trading in NWO conspiracies

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On Saturday, Conservative MP and former minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay retweeted a shitpost put up by a QAnon follower that contained a video of a pre-politics Chrystia Freeland interviewing George Soros, and worried that Soros was trying to get China on board with the New World Order – a particularly pervasive conspiracy theory which goes back to the anti-Semitic tropes of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Findlay’s quote-tweet – since deleted – had her proclaiming that Freeland was “listening carefully to him like a student to teacher. The closeness of these two should alarm every Canadian.” When called out, Findlay insisted that it was “about economics,” before she finally deleted her tweet, apparently after Liberal MP Anthony Housefather (who is Jewish) reached out to her to explain why the Soros/NWO conspiracy theories are inherently anti-Semitic. Findlay then made a qualified apology, claiming she “thoughtlessly shared content” and that she doesn’t endorse hateful rhetoric, but didn’t explain her won statement about why Freeland interviewing Soros should be “alarming.”

Why does this matter? Because other Conservatives including Pierre Poilievre were retweeting Findlay uncritically, which means that this kind of conspiracy theorism and anti-Semitism is getting more normalized. And then there’s the fact that Andrew Scheer spent his farewell speech promoting sites like True North and The Post Millennial which also trade in these kinds of narratives, and was touting them as credible and “objective,” when they are not. What this is saying about where the Conservative party is at in terms of what kind of narratives they trade in should be alarming, especially when you think of the fact that fourteen percent of the party voted for Derek Sloan’s outright parroting of Trump talking points, which includes the racism, misogyny and homophobia.

Over the rest of the weekend, Erin O’Toole was silent on the tweet, as were the other Conservatives who retweeted Findlay. That should also be concerning, especially because it means they are either ignorant of the anti-Semitic tropes they were trading in, or they were complicit in them. That’s not a direction that we want Canadian politics to be heading down, and Findlay owed an explanation of why it was “alarming” that Freeland interviewed Soros as a journalist, and O’Toole owes an explanation for his silence in not shutting this down when it happened.

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Roundup: The inertia around solitary

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The story of what happened with the panel the government assembled to oversee its supposed elimination of solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries has been a slow-burning story this week, but indicative of some of the incomprehensible ways in which this government operates. The practice of solitary confinement has been declared inhumane and contrary to the Charter by courts across the country, and the government promised to reform it with these “structured intervention units,” but that was already dubious, and unlikely to satisfy the courts – and they knew that, but went ahead with it anyway. A year later, the panel that was supposed to oversee it quit in frustration because they couldn’t get any information they needed to do their work (and the Correctional Investigator gave Correctional Services a pass on this because apparently, they’ve been implementing new software and this has been a problem). But it was only when this story leaked thanks to Senator Kim Pate that Bill Blair sprang into action, promising to reappoint the panel and implement a “work plan” to get them the information.

Well, turns out members of that panel aren’t exactly keen to be reappointed because they’ve been jerked around for a year, and were doing this on a volunteer basis, which cost them a lot of time and money for nothing but headaches. But this all feels like another case of this government meaning well, and talking a good game without doing the actual work involved and then hoping that everything will be forgiven because they have good intentions. That’s not good enough, and yet they keep behaving like that’s all well and good. It’s not.

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