Roundup: Getting the deficit vapours

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back making the media rounds yesterday, and one of the things he spoke about was the “ambitious green agenda” to be laid out in the Throne Speech, which has every pundit in the country clutching their pearls about the state of the deficit. Why? Because in Canadian punditry – and many government departments, finance especially – it is 1995 and will always be 1995. And some of that comes with the usual ridiculous assertions about comparing the nation’s finances to a household’s, or that of a business.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301527104383848449

And then there was one column in particular which doubled down on not only the usual deficit vapours, but the notions that somehow inclusive growth isn’t a real strategy, which credible economists – and not just those on speed dial for certain media outlets who have one answer for every problem – will tell you is a bogus argument. But hey, it’s 1995 and will always be 1995.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1301505825366773762

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301496695814004736

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301500044315693058

Good reads:

  • While on the media rounds, Trudeau said that voters can judge his ethical record during the next election, and insists he’s “focused on the right things.”
  • Because of added precautions at CRA after the hack and other fraud, CERB payments this week were slightly delayed, but expected before the weekend.
  • The government agreed to the certification of two class-action lawsuits related to First Nations child welfare, and they have headed directly to settlement talks.
  • The government has appointed senior bureaucrat Lisa Campbell as the new head of the Canadian Space Agency, the first woman to hold the position.
  • The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that changes made to the equalisation rules in 2009 meant that many provinces weren’t given revenues they could have used.
  • An environmental monitoring agency says they have evidence to show that oilsands tailings are seeping into groundwater.
  • Surprising nobody, the whistleblowers to the harassment going on at Rideau Hall are mightily unimpressed with Trudeau calling Payette an “excellent” GG.
  • The Liberals and Conservatives say they’re off the wage subsidy, and the Conservatives say they’ll repay theirs. The NDP remains on it.
  • Here is an attempt to ascertain Erin O’Toole’s seriousness about Indigenous reconciliation, but one suspects “economic development” = MOAR PIPELINES!
  • The Conservatives want the Official Languages Commissioner to investigate the WE Imbroglio as WE didn’t have an adequate Quebec/Francophone presence.
  • Andrew Scheer and two other Conservative MPs tried to stage a counter-protest at Regina’s Sir John A. Macdonald statue, and Scheer’s argument was nationalism.
  • Maclean’s has an overview of the eight finalists for the Green Party leadership.

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One thought on “Roundup: Getting the deficit vapours”

  1. O’Toole isn’t serious about Reconciliation if he’s such a Johnny Mac fanboy. And of course he means pipelines, pipelines and moar pipelines. He’s Kenney and Harper’s tool, after all. As for Trudeau, good on him for not getting distracted by all the blaring noise. He *is* focused on the things that matter to people’s real lives, rather than this Hillary’s Emails scandal-mongering being pushed by the media to smear his reputation and sabotage his agenda. They’re terrified of what the throne speech entails and it shows.

    The worry that I have, though, is those same media outlets getting enraged about the deficit are the same ones that push the scandal-mongering, because they *want* a Conservative government installed that would roll back his agenda. Then again, he won in spite of SNC, because at the end of the day it became apparent that for whatever controversies or blemishes on his record, the Conservatives DGAF about people or about making a better world. For that matter, neither do their enablers of the NDP and BQ, the latter of which is shielding a leader credibly accused of sexual assault while the NDP continues to play a dangerous game of horseshoe politics, attack women (including the PM’s mom) and fire at the wrong “enemy.”

    Trudeau’s heart *is* genuinely in the right place, and it infuriates me to see him get attacked by those who only want power to benefit themselves. IDGAF about the CoI Act. It’s meaningless bureaucratic red tape and Ottawa bubble nonsense that doesn’t save a single life or put food on anyone’s table. It’s just noise and wasted ink to sell papers and generate fundraising appeals for parties that suck.

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