As the Conservative leadership race starts to heat up, we’re hearing Erin O’Toole reiterate his neo-colonial “CANZUK” nonsense, and aspiring narcissist Rick Peterson has been all over talking about his “flat tax” proposal without giving any concrete numbers or context as to the trade-offs of that plan. And of course, some UK media has picked upon on O’Toole’s proposal in the wake of Brexit, giving it undue credibility – which is a problem in and of itself.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1223959683528101889

So economist Kevin Milligan actually crunched the numbers for the aspiring narcissist Peterson, and lo, it’s not pretty.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1224011123009249281

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1224103928096182272

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1224144132873961473

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1224146058088865794

The only thing the federal government would do would be to send cheques to individuals and other levels of government. And presumably the people in charge of sending them out would work for free.

— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) February 2, 2020

In other words, it’s not novel or a “bold idea” – it’s hokum that we’re giving a free pass. Let’s do better than this.

Good reads:

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was out at Lunar New Year celebrations on the weekend to call out racism against the Chinese community related to coronavirus.
• Later this week, Trudeau will head to Senegal, Ethiopia, and Germany to “deepen relationships” with the African countries.
• There is speculation that the trip may also be about bolstering Canada’s fortunes for the upcoming UN Security Council seat vote.
• The current plan for evacuees out of Wuhan province in China are for them to be quarantined at CFB Trenton for two weeks upon return to Canada.
• Government sources are saying that approval of the Teck Frontier mine could be dependent on Alberta being carbon neutral by 2050 (and good luck with that).
• Briefing notes prepared for Dominic LeBlanc warn that foreign powers are targeting Canada with increasing frequency, outside of election periods.
• There is currently a lot of freaking out over the Broadcast panel recommendations around licencing media companies, and the minister hasn’t helped matters any.
• Excise taxes on cannabis aren’t bringing in as much as the government had estimated (but then again, the rollout has been largely disastrous, so…)
• Surprising nobody, major government computer systems are “rusting out” and replacement projects are taking longer than expected.
• Five years later, RCMP documents on what happened the day of the Parliament Hill shooting have been released.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.