Roundup: Promising a spending cut—for real this time!

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention, but word has come down that new Treasury Board president Anita Anand will be tasking other ministers to find $15.4 billion in spending cuts with a deadline of October 2nd, and they really mean it this time. For realsies. The Liberals have been promising programme spending reviews for years now, but haven’t seemed to show any progress on them, or at least not in any public or transparent way, and that’s generally a problem for any government, and particularly one who has been in power for as long as this one has. Anand’s expertise is in governance, so she might have a chance to pull this off, but the civil service has fought back against Treasury Board presidents trying to make reforms—Scott Brison tried to reform the Estimates process and bring it back into line with the budget cycle, and he lost that battle, and it doesn’t look like any of his successors have even tried since. The other thing here is that $15.2 billion is going to be hard to justify if the military is excluded, but can they actually make cuts (setting aside the lapsed funding they can’t spend because of capacity issues)?

The reaction has pretty much been predictable—public sector unions freaking out, Jagmeet Singh concern trolling that this means “essential services” will be cut, and Pierre Poilievre says the Liberals can’t be trusted to make cuts. (Erm, you remember the Chrétien-Martin era, right?) But for some more practical thinking, here’s Jennifer Robson, who teaches public administration:

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1691613225677144349

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have struck Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine, which is far from the fighting, including a factory in Lutsk. In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian drones have been spotted heading for the Izmail port on the Danube River, which threatens more grain shipments. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia to meet troops there. Meanwhile, farmers in Ukraine are facing the prospect of rock-bottom grain prices if they can’t ship it, which means it’s worth more to store than to sell.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1691510365304102915

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1691366868760829953

Good reads:

  • Dominic LeBlanc says the government will roll out its responses to the Emergencies Act Inquiry recommendations “within days.”
  • More proof that the government has been padding their numbers on their two billion trees promise, because why do the work when you can use messaging?
  • The government recently gave Irving Shipyards $463 million to help modernise their facility…which was supposed to have been a precondition for contract bids.
  • Six months later the government still hasn’t found a new Ethics Commissioner, because the criteria are too narrow and nobody wants the job. What a surprise!
  • Members of the military can now take complaints of sexual misconduct, harassment or discrimination to the Human Rights Commission instead of the internal process.
  • The Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise is launching an investigation into Ralph Lauren over possible use of forced labour in their supply chain.
  • Grassroots Conservatives are pushing policy resolutions around gender identity and “single-sex spaces,” which are topics Poilievre has been trying to avoid.
  • New Brunswick’s Child and Youth Advocate issued a scathing report on the changes  made to the policy creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students in schools.
  • Mike Moffatt, Tim Richter and Michael Brooks preview their new report on ways to help fix the rental housing crisis (which will help solve the other housing crisis).
  • My column notes the ways in which the Conservatives’ continued winking to conspiracy theories threatens our democracy.

Odds and ends:

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