Roundup: Agitating for a political document

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Unable to score points on the vaccine procurement in a meaningful way, now that sufficient quantities have arrived, Erin O’Toole has recently tried pivoting to the federal budget, or the fact that there hasn’t been one in some 700 days. Given that the party is losing its lustre in public opinion polls as being “good fiscal managers” – a bit of branding that rarely, if ever, actually proved itself to be true, O’Toole is trying to bolster their street cred. The problem, of course, is that many of his arguments are, well, not actually sound ones.

For starters, no federal budget is like a household – not even close. It’s a bogus populist argument that just refuses to die, but everyone keeps repeating it and buying into it. More to the point, O’Toole is trying to claim that nobody knows how government money is being spent, which is a falsehood. Any money that the government spends has to come through the Estimates process, which gets voted on in Parliament after going through committee study. Afterward, how that those appropriations wound up being allocated get reported in the Public Accounts, which are released every year. All of this spending is being accounted for.

What O’Toole is looking for is a political document that lays out spending plans in broad strokes. It does not on its own showcase how that money gets allocated and spent. In fact, there has been a disconnect between the budget and the Estimates going back a few decades now, because governments and civil servants preferred it that way, and when the Liberals tried to better re-align those processes in the last parliament, it did not go very well thanks in part to institutional inertia pushing back. Suffice to say, it is not true that money is being spent blindly. MPs have ostensibly been in control of the process the whole time – but whether they have paid attention to what they were voting on is another matter entirely.

Good reads:

  • The US has agreed to “loan” some 1.5 million AstraZeneca doses to Canada, as they haven’t received FDA approval, and Canada will repay out of future allocations.
  • Atlantic premiers are planning to re-establish the Atlantic Bubble by April 19th.
  • Survivors and family members of the École Polytechnique massacre say that Trudeau won’t be welcome at their memorials unless he fixes his gun control bill.
  • The Transportation Safety Board got their turn to pan the Iranian report on the downing of Flight PS752, detailing its shortcomings.
  • Maclean’s interviews Kevin Garratt, a Canadian who had previously been wrongfully convicted of espionage in China, as the trials of the two Michaels get underway.
  • More Conservative insiders are complaining about the lack of coherent policy from Erin O’Toole, as they convince themselves a June election is on the way.
  • At the start of the Conservative convention, we heard that the party considers its war-chest ready for an election – but they still haven’t repaid the wage subsidy.
  • The Line has a really interesting interview with Professor Allan English about the military culture in Canada, and why it makes it hard to deal with sexual misconduct.
  • Heather Scoffield makes the case for a federal budget sooner than later (though I think she may be wildly optimistic about its actual utility).
  • Susan Delacourt cautions people against writing Erin O’Toole off because his polls numbers are currently low, as Trudeau was once in that same position.
  • Robert Hiltz tries to determine what kind of guy Erin O’Toole thinks he is, as he presents himself all over the map, scoring own-goals along the way.

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: Agitating for a political document”

  1. I don’t care who leads the Conservatives their policies and anything else that they have put out there is regressive and not good for the majority of Canadians.

  2. I feel bad for the Polytech lady but to say that Trudeau “broke his promise,” or that he’s a disingenuous and performative sociopath who doesn’t care, because the gun bill *in its present form* is not to the group’s standards, seems absolutist to me. It’ll have to get approval from at least one other party, and since the Conservatives just want an American style Second Amendment free-for-all it won’t be through them, which leaves the NDP and/or Bloc. I mean look at all the changes C-7 went through before it reached royal assent. Also maybe there’s some kind of constitutionality issue they’re working through? Either way I think it’s a real stretch to say “Trudeau doesn’t care and he’s feigning crocodile tears” and it’s extreme to say the least. Something is better than nothing. Let’s let cooler heads prevail before we start jumping to conclusions or making assumptions about the PM’s state of mind. Polytech affected him tremendously and he’s doing what he can.

    • Totally agree! Those accusations are ridiculous. A more tempered, reasonable approach is needed here. No government is perfect but this one has demonstrated that it cares. Especially the Prime Minister.

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