Roundup: The scourge of billionaires

Posted on by

If you thought that the temptation to blame elites for everything was simply the crass tactics of Kellie Leitch – herself among the most elite of elites – then you’d be wrong. Yesterday Rona Ambrose decided to take a page from the very same playbook and rail in a speech open to media about how the Liberals were elites who were *gasp!* meeting with billionaires to talk about investment opportunities in Canada. OH NOES! The horror of it all! And not just billionaires – billionaires from Beijing and Dubai! Because it never hurts to get a bit of a protectionist/xenophobic twist to your moral panic. But then again, the Conservatives never could decide if they actually wanted to attract or shut down foreign investment, as they left rules deliberately vague so that they could indulge their protectionist, populist impulses when it suited their needs politically.

Part of what’s galling is the real lack of self-awareness that Ambrose is displaying in this kind of speech. While she’s trying to take a populist tack, her examples are all poor ones to prove her case about those darn elites being against ordinary working folks. Leaving aside that as MPs, they are the elites, the examples of things like cancelling the children’s fitness tax credit don’t even fit their rhetoric. Why? Because the Liberal not only replaced those myriad of tax credits with a broad-based income tax cut, but also with far more generous and untaxed child benefit payments, while those tax credits were non-refundable, meaning that they were generally inaccessible to low-income Canadians who needed them, but rather were far more beneficial to higher-income families who had the money to spend on the sports or arts or whatever to get the full benefit of said credits. In other words, trying to make a “regular families” argument in the “us versus the elites” narrative doesn’t stand up to logic or reality. The fact that they are willing to start indulging in this kind of rhetoric should be alarming, because the last thing we want to do is start trading in the politics of resentment like we’ve seen in the States. Only madness lies that way.

Good reads:

  • In Cuba, Justin Trudeau met with students and activists and made coded references to Canada’s “values” that we’re happy to espouse.
  • While the NDP have been banging on about CPP changes discriminating against women and people with disabilities, the minister has disputed this.
  • At least one new independent senator is chafing at Senator Cowan calling out Senator Peter Harder’s empire-building.
  • The Canadian Forces held an update briefing of the Iraq mission, including a look at how much they’ve been involved in fighting (but for defensive reasons, natch).
  • CSE declined to brief the Federal Court on their data collection activities, citing a current constitutional challenge to their mandate.
  • The NDP have opened the door to an electoral reform referendum if it means getting the rest of the committee to agree on proportional representation.
  • Here’s a look at how the Trumpocalypse doesn’t change the economics of climate change in Canada, and how well-designed carbon pricing is still needed.
  • Our Kurdish allies in Iraq are getting impatient for weapons that we promised them.
  • Here’s a deep dive into why Kellie Leitch is running the kind of campaign that she is.
  • Brad Trost says he wants to see Kellie Leitch’s “Canadian values” quiz, and wonders how many Conservatives would fail it.
  • Deepak Obhrai complains the “old media” is biased against them, while he continues to not put out releases or hold press events.
  • Here’s a look at the state of endorsements in the Conservative leadership race.
  • Scott Gilmore worries that with some good candidates in the Conservative leadership that the cynical opportunists will nevertheless get all the attention.
  • Robyn Urback calls out Leitch’s inauthenticity.

Odds and ends:

The government will be announcing changes to official languages rules to better service minority language communities – except Anglophones in Quebec.