You may have heard the Conservatives making a big push over the past couple of weeks about promising that they would bow to Quebec’s wishes and let them have a single tax return (as in, surrender the federal authority to collect income tax in the province, as opposed to Quebec returning to the system that every other province uses by which the federal government collects all taxes and turns over their provincial share). While the Conservatives portray it as a simple administrative change, and that there wouldn’t even need to be any job losses – just put those 5000 CRA employees in Quebec to work on tax evasion! – it’s really a lot more complicated than that. While Alan Freeman wrote about the history and why it’s naked pandering to Quebec, tax economist Kevin Milligan walks through the complexity, and quite tellingly, notes that this is a Brexit-like proposal from Scheer – bold idea, no proposal of how to implement it. And yes, that is a problem.
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093194511260442624
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Good reads:
- Ahmed Hussen says that Canada has begun resettling 150 people rescued from slavery in Libya, and plan to resettle another 600.
- Hussen also found out his identity was being used over fake social media platforms to try and scam refugees out of “resettlement fees.”
- Cabinet committees got shuffled up, so here is a bunch of staffers reading into Jean-Yves Duclos being made vice-chair of the Treasury Board committee.
- Canadian diplomats who were stationed in Cuba are suing the government for $28 million regarding their mystery symptoms. (But what it really is mass hysteria?)
- Groups are asking the government to extend their security infrastructure fund for vulnerable religious sites to be extended to training in the event of violence.
- A former CIA analyst testified before a Commons committee about cyber-security vulnerabilities, as Canada is an “attractive target.”
- Among NSICOP’s planned studies will be a look at foreign interference in Canada, and how our military collects and uses the private information of Canadians.
- The first day of hearings on Bill C-69 were at the Senate’s energy and environment committee, hearing from the bureaucrats.
- Conservative MPs are hoping the Senate can kill the gun-control bill (which almost certainly won’t happen given that they don’t want to provoke a crisis).
- Liberal MP Scott Brison announced that he’s vacating his seat next week. His speech is found here (video here).
- Robert-Falcon Ouellette has been forced to apologise after his calendar featuring “Notable Canadians” featured no women. Oops.
- The NDP want the Commissioner of Elections to investigate fake news articles showing up about Singh owning a mansion or being wanted on terrorism charges.
- The NDP’s foreign affairs critic, caucus chair and Jagmeet Singh are all giving contradictory positions with regard to Venezuela.
- NDP MP Murray Rankin wants an investigation into allegations that the RCMP were spying on one of their own as part of a harassment probe.
- Amendments to Georgina Jolibois’ bill to make Indigenous Peoples Day a statutory holiday would also make September 30th a holiday to remember residential schools.
- Maxime Bernier is standing by his advisor after an investigation commissioned by B’nai Brith says that he’s an apologist for conspiracy theorists and racists.
- After Doug Ford’s government unveiled a new autism funding policy, one of their top staffers quit, calling the policy a terrible mistake.
- John Ivison suggests that the Liberals are going to start calling Andrew Scheer the “Six Million Dollar Man” as a reference to his accumulated public salary and pension.
- Colby Cosh looks at how Flat Eartherism is often used as a means of intellectually softening up people to believe all manner of other conspiracy theory.
- Similarly, Paul Wells finds it interesting that flat earthers, a PM who believe in cupping and an opposition that peddles conspiracy theories all “do their research.”
Odds and ends:
Former NDP MP Paul Dewar passed away from brain cancer yesterday. He left a final letter on Facebook.
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