Roundup: A bad report and a bad debate

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer released another one of his highly dubious reports yesterday, this time on the incoming clean fuel regulations. Why is it dubious? Because it’s entirely one-sided and assumes no costs to climate change, and no adaptation on the part of industry in order to bring costs down to meet their obligations under the regulations, which is the whole gods damned point of these kinds of mechanisms. Oh, and this isn’t fiscal policy, so it’s not clear why he’s even doing this kind of report in the first place.

As you may have noticed during Question Period, the Conservatives jumped all over this report and its findings, and when they were questioned, their media staff were over social media accusing people of calling the PBO a liar. Well, it’s not that he’s a liar—it’s bad data, a bad report, and the numbers taken from it were used dishonestly and entirely in bad faith. And the PBO gets the attention he’s looking for, and around and around we go.

Rachel Notley vs Danielle Smith

For the purposes of researching my column last night, I subjected myself to the leaders’ debate in the Alberta election and it was…not great. Yes, lots of people gushed at how nice it was just to have two leaders going head-to-head and not four or five, but we don’t have a two-party system federally (and it’s a bad sign that Alberta has a de facto one provincially).

My not-too-original observations were that Notley was weirdly on the defensive most of the night, while Smith was pretending to be the upstart challenger rather than the incumbent, attacking Notley on her record at every turn when Notley wasn’t effectively throwing many punches herself. Yes, she did well on the healthcare and education portions, but was not effectively countering Smith’s confident bullshit throughout, and that’s a real problem in a lower voter-information environment, where that confidence plays well regardless of the fact that Smith lied constantly with a straight face. On the very day that Smith was found to have broken the province’s Conflict of Interest Act, Notley had a hard time effectively making this point, while Smith claimed vindication because it showed she didn’t directly call Crown prosecutors, while it full-out warned that Smith’s behaviour was a threat to democracy, and Notley could barely say the words.

Programming Note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so expect the next post to be on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There are reports of more air raids in Ukraine early Friday morning. Russians fired 30 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets in the early morning hours on Thursday, and Ukraine shot down 29 of them, with the one that got through striking an industrial building in Odessa, killing one and wounding two. There were also further gains made around Bakhmut, and even the Wagner Group’s leader says that they have bene in retreat. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy set up a reintegration council in order to provide advice for the restoration of Ukrainian rule when they liberate Crimean.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1659213321927794693

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau has arrived in Japan for the G7 leaders’ summit. He met with Italy’s prime minister and expressed concernfor changes to laws for LGBT parents.
  • Chrystia Freeland announced an agreement that Visa and Mastercard have made to lower interchange fees charged to retailers who accept credit cards.
  • The federal gun control bill has finally passed the House of Commons, and is on its way to the Senate.
  • The federal government previously gave funding to a Quebec charity that is now being accused of hosting one of the Chinese “police stations.”
  • FINTRAC is warning of Russians trying to hide or lauder their assets in order to evade the sanctions regimes in place.
  • Emissions from wildfires set a record in 2021 and was the biggest source of GHGs that year, but wasn’t included in the government’s GHG inventory.
  • It looks like that US Federal Judge is not inclined to shut down Line 5 in Wisconsin.
  • Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says inflation is still going down, but there is concern over the level of household indebtedness.
  • Dominic Barton was testifying at the Commons’ transport committee over a call he had with the former head of the Infrastructure Bank, who also met with McKinsey.
  • Pierre Poilievre’s “jail not bail” plan is entirely unconstitutional, but watch The Canadian Press egregiously both-sides it anyway.
  • Danielle Smith says that the UCP candidate who compared trans students to faeces in cookie batter would not  be allowed to sit in caucus (but I have my doubts).
  • Economists Lindsay Tedds and Gillian Petit find that the promised UCP tax cut in Alberta would mostly help well-off men. Imagine that!
  • Emmett Macfarlane lays out what is at stake in the Alberta election, which is nothing less than things like respect for democracy and the rule of law.

Odds and ends:

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: A bad report and a bad debate”

  1. I agree it wasn’t Notley’s best-ever performance. It’s a bit of a stretch, though, to suggest that she “could barely say the words” in bringing up the fact that Smith was found guilty of breaking Alberta’s Conflicts of Interest Act. Notley raised the matter at least four times, including in both her opening and closing statements. That being said, all too often the truth has shockingly little impact when it comes up against a shameless Trump-grade liar like Smith.

    • The report said that this was the kind of thing that happens in pseudo-democracies. It didn’t pull punches. Notley did.

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