Roundup: Questions on regulatory efficacy

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The Environment Commissioner released a series of reports yesterday, and I have some questions about a couple of them. His first report looks into the plan to plant two billion trees and states that it won’t be achievable unless there are big changes, citing that last year’s targets weren’t met, and that the agreements with provinces and territories around this are still being worked out. While I did notice that his graph about the plans for planting these trees does backload much of it because it will take time to grow enough saplings to plant, I’m not sure that one year’s data is enough to declare imminent failure. Maybe I’m just being optimistic.

One of his reports also criticises that the government can’t track which regulations reduce how many emissions, which makes it hard to assess their efficacy. I’m just not sure how a government would go about doing so, because there are so many overlapping measures including the carbon price, and emissions have started to bend, so that we’re slowly dropping below pre-pandemic and 2005 levels, particularly as the economy is growing, which is a good sign that measures are working overall, but there is more to do. And while I appreciate what he’s trying to say, I’m just not sure how someone goes about calculating how much the inventory changed for each regulatory measure. He did also talk about how many missed targets there were, but didn’t differentiate between which stripe of government was in power, and how the previous government set targets that they deemed “aspirational,” meaning that they did nothing to attempt to meet them, while the current government’s targets are for 2030, and they could very well still meet them if they continue their current trajectory. I’m sure he doesn’t want to get into that difference as part of his role as non-partisan quasi-Officer of Parliament (he is not a standalone officer but is part of the Auditor General’s office), but it is relevant to the state of the discussion.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces had a misfire, and accidentally bombed their own city of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border. Oops. Meanwhile, the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, visited president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and declared that Ukraine’s future is in NATO (but that can’t happen under NATO rules so long as they have Russians occupying their territory). Ukraine has trained eight storm brigades worth 40,000 troops for the upcoming counteroffensive. Treason charges are being laid against several Ukrainian servicemen for giving away information to Russian force during an unauthorised mission, and those Russians damaged a Ukrainian airfield as a result.

https://twitter.com/minpres/status/1649093237632647179

Good reads:

  • The federal and Ontario governments are set to announce a deal with Volkswagen to build an EV battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, for up to $13 billion in subsidies.
  • Chrystia Freeland insists the government’s offer to striking civil servants is fair and won’t unduly burden the treasury.
  • Mélanie Joly is advising Canadians in Sudan to shelter in place as fighting has destroyed the airport, making evacuation by air impossible.
  • Mary Ng says the government supports a Bloc bill that will make it harder to make concessions around Supply Management in the future.
  • The government approved the expansion of a container port terminal in Vancouver, pending 370 “binding” conditions.
  • Former employees of the embassy in Kabul are suing the government around delays in evacuating and resettling them in Caanda.
  • Here’s a look at the status of changing our currency to reflect the new King.
  • Google executives returned to the Heritage committee to talk tough about being forced to pay news providers.
  • At the Commons’ health committee, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s bill on a pandemic review and future preparedness is being debated.
  • The head of Imperial Oil told the Commons’ environment committee that he’s “deeply apologetic” for not reporting the leaking tailings pond for nine months.
  • MP Han Dong’s defamation suit against Global is for $15 million in damages.
  • Indigenous groups in Quebec are going to court over the province’s recent changes to language laws.

Odds and ends:

Uganda’s president is refusing to sign the recently-passed anti-gay bill and is requesting changes to it, calling for “rehabilitation” measures. (Yikes!)

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