In spite of the fact that Bill Morneau strongly hinted on Thursday that there would be a “fall” fiscal update this week (and technically it is still autumn for another couple of weeks), the Conservatives dispatched Pierre Poilievre yesterday to performatively demand one – along with a bunch of the usual demands for tax cuts and “cutting red tape” (as though governments haven’t been trying to do just that for years). The tax cuts are coming – at least, the planned increase to the basic income exemption, targeted at lower-income brackets – which the government has stated repeatedly will be their first order of business, thought the Conservatives demand more tax breaks for “entrepreneurs,” while the NDP want that income exemption to phase out earlier so as to pay for dental care – ignoring, or course, that such a programme would rely on negotiations with the provinces, just like pharmacare. But hey, once you’re on a talking point, best to stick with it, right?
Meanwhile, the first confidence vote of the new Parliament will likely be tomorrow, as it’s the final Supply Day of the year, and when the Supplementary Estimates need to be passed, and we can imagine that it’ll be a long day of votes and Committee of the Whole to deal with them, before they head off to the Senate, where they might – might – get a bit more scrutiny than they’ll get in the Commons. But a vote on the Speech From the Throne is unlikely to take place until after the Commons comes back from their break in January, just looking at the math on the calendar.
Good reads:
- Elections Canada says that 24 expat voters weren’t able to exercise their franchise due to a “technical glitch.”
- CSE is helping secure the UK election from cyber threats and interference.
- Canadian detainee Michael Spavor’s employer says that they hear he’s surviving by way of his sense of humour, but doesn’t understand why China has detained him.
- Jagmeet Singh visited Fredericton to see the private abortion clinic that is threatened with closure because of a loss of funding.
- After Saturday Night Live parodied the “Hot Mic” video as the NATO cafeteria, Stephen Saideman explains how it’s closer to truth than we might think.
Odds and ends:
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— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) December 3, 2019
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I’m getting fed up with Singh. He threw in his lot with Trump and Scheer on the “Trudeau two-face” insult, and keeps accusing him of pulling up the Charlie Brown football on pharmacare even though he keeps being reminded that it requires provincial negotiations. You’d think a onetime Ontario MPP would have more awareness of the different levels of government. Now he’s making semantic nitpicks about the throne speech. The NDP loves to accuse Trudeau of behaving like a dictator, and then they want him to wave a magic wand and impose policies on obvious partisan intransigents like Ford and Kenney. Why doesn’t he put blame — or credit — where it’s due?
Is this going to set up like when the purity progressives in the USA pouted about Obamacare, sabotaging him when he didn’t give them everything they wanted on a silver platter because he had to reach a realistic compromise with people who hated his guts? Seems to me the people who are angriest at Trudeau aren’t the lost-cause Conservatives but the doctrinaire left who are upset to find out that, lo and behold, he isn’t really Fidel Castro’s son. Their jaws just dropped to the ground.