Roundup: Cauliflower concerns

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The NDP put out a press release yesterday, which was essentially an object lesson in precisely what not to do when trying to make hay out of a political issue. The issue – rising food prices, and in particular, the rising cost of fruits and vegetables, and the lament that cauliflower is now a “luxury item.” Err, except that it’s not. And worse, that its “inexplicable” rise in price is entirely explicable – there’s a drought in California, and then there was a frost, which reduced the supply, and the increased demand lately (because it’s a trendy food right now) means that, thanks to the basic laws of supply and demand, the price spiked for a few weeks. And lo, it’s come back down again. And let us not forget that fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter is actually a luxury that our parents pretty much never had. They attempted to use the release to highlight inequality – Mulcair put out a release a couple of days previous, lamenting that Trudeau didn’t bring up inequality during his speech at Davos – but most of the claims in the cauliflower release were spurious. Transportation costs are not increasing – the crashing price of oil means that the cost of fuel is coming down by quite a lot. And the lament that the December rate of inflation was 1.6 percent? Um, target inflation is two percent, so unless they have another target in mind, that might be a policy they want to put out there. Rising food costs also have a lot to do with the lower dollar, and if memory serves, the NDP were lamenting that the dollar was too high (no doubt because they felt it was depressing the manufacturing sector, never mind that there are deeper structural issues than just the dollar alone), and that’s the thing about a low dollar – that it reduces your purchasing power, particularly if the fresh fruits and vegetables that don’t grow in this country in the winter have to be imported. To cap it off, the release offers no actual suggestions for what they’d like to see – only a vague statement that the upcoming budget is an opportunity to do something about inequality. So what, pray tell, is up for offer? Socialist wealth redistribution? The government is already raising taxes on the wealthiest one percent and offering more transfers to poorer families. So in totality, one has to ask if there as any adult supervision in putting out this hot mess of a press release, because the evidence before us makes that assertion unlikely in the extreme.

Good reads:

  • That shooting in La Loche, Saskatchwan, has left four dead and three injured, and will likely re-ignite calls for gun control despite it being in a hunting community. Here are the political reactions to the shooting.
  • Parliament is back on Monday, so here’s a look at some of the issues it faces, while Kady O’Malley peruses the Notice Paper.
  • Conservatives and Naheed Nenshi want the Trudeau government to make a “definitive” statement on pipelines…except he has already, repeatedly.
  • Trudeau is meeting with the head of the European Parliament while at Davos, in advance of the Canada-EU trade deal going for ratification later this year.
  • Trudeau, incidentally, pushed back a little at the reporters questioning all of the celebrity encounters at the summit.
  • Senator Wells is doing the job of playing opposition for his province, and wants to ensure that Newfoundland & Labrador also gets oil-shock stimulus money.
  • The previous government’s millionaire investment immigration programme attracted just seven applications when they were hoping for at least 60.
  • Ruh-roh! Our sinking dollar is going to put another big hole in the defence procurement budget.
  • Susan Delacourt makes a slightly odd plea to change the tone of politics so that it’s more like “real life.” I’m not sure it should be like any other workplace.

Odds and ends:

Conservative group LGBTory is trying to get the party to finally remove its anti-same-sex marriage policy from the party’s official platform.

The Canadian Forces has a perception problem with an officer who retired and went to work for a company bidding on mobile headquarters tents.