Roundup: Ratifying the FIPA – everybody panic!

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The big news is that Canada ratified the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (FIPA) yesterday, after months of delays. Immediately the NDP freaked out, while Elizabeth May called it the worse day for Canadian Sovereignty since 1867 (never mind that Canada never actually got treaty-making powers devolved from the UK until the 1920s and control over foreign policy in the Statute of Westminster in 1931). Apparently ensuring fair treatment for Chinese companies in Canada, and perhaps more importantly Canadian companies in China – where the rule of law is not really the same as it is here – is a terrible, terrible blow to our sovereignty. Economist Stephen Gordon, however, is trying to remain the voice of reason:

More bad news about the government’s EI “tax” cut credit, as Economist Mike Moffatt shows how it bizarrely incentivises companies to either fire workers or reduce their wages, which an across-the-board EI premium cut wouldn’t. So you know, the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do. Oh, and the 2015 Actuarial Report on EI premium rate says that the break-even rate should be 1.62 percent (1.28 % in Quebec), whereas the government froze the rate at 1.88% (and hence the calls by opposition parties that it’s being kept artificially high in order to be used to pay down the deficit).

The Parliamentary Budget Officer is trying to hammer out data-sharing agreements with federal departments in order to get necessary information from them for his analyses. Failing that, he will have exhausted all options and head back to Federal Court to try and get orders for the release of that information.

The Royal Canadian Navy is looking to cut more civilian staff as well as reducing some of their readiness in order to cope with more budget cuts, while the majority of their actual budget is tied up in a shipbuilding programme that is years behind schedule. This should probably be raising some red flags because a) there will always be an impact on the loss of civilian staff positions, and b) they already have some major readiness problems, and probably can’t afford to lose any more capacity without just tying up our ships and not even bothering anymore. Oh, but the government is spending more on the military, and blah, blah, blah – even though we know that the cuts they’ve imposed means that it’s no longer the case.

The NDP want the Commons Speaker to look into how the Board of Internal Economy has been handling the disputes over their mailings and satellite offices, apparently alleging conspiracy between the Liberals and the Conservatives against them.

The RCMP have spent nearly a million dollars in their investigation of misspending in the Senate (and in particular Senators Duffy, Brazeau, Harb and Wallin) – misspending that was in less than half of that amount.

Apparently the government’s orders for the fall sitting of Parliament is that they don’t want to unveil anything big or new – just to clean up what’s left on the agenda from the Throne Speech, and a lot of it is consumer-related, like the pick-and-pay cable packages, or legislation to end charging for paper bills, or the more baffling one of trying to legislate away the Canada-US price gap, which nobody seems to figure out how they’re going to manage it other than reviving the old “Zap! You’re frozen!” mentality of the late 1970s. All of this leads to speculation of an early election, of course. Here’s the Ottawa Citizen’s back-to-Parliament lookahead.

John Baird took questions over the Twitter Machine this afternoon.

Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau both attended the opening of the new Aga Khan museum in Toronto.

Aaron Wherry interviews Brent Rathgeber about his new book.

Andrew Coyne laments the latest bout of changes to the Reform Act. Aaron Wherry, meanwhile, still has optimism about the bill and what it represents.

Tabatha Southey explores her pettiness in not wanting Harper to have been the PM who discovered the Franklin wrecks.

And Sonya Bell and Jessie Willms imagine eight rejected slogans before the Conservatives settled with “Better off with Harper.”