Roundup: Morneau’s sore hindsight bias

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As he tries to rehabilitate his reputation after his book was largely ridiculed and lambasted, Bill Morneau is back out there asserting that the pandemic spending programmes were too generous, went on too long, and are one of the causes for high inflation. This is clearly hindsight bias—economist Stephen Gordon resurrected a couple of tweets to push back against these kinds of assertions because they ignore the gravity of the situation at the time, and just how many unknowns they were dealing with at the time. And I do recall that Morneau was proposing measures at the time that were clearly inadequate and were politically unsaleable, which he didn’t seem to understand and then got huffy when PMO override his judgment—likely for the best, because we wound up with the actual desirable outcome. Higher inflation was the good outcome scenario. The alternative was deflation that would have spiralled into a depression, which was what everyone worked to avoid. Morneau just continues to be sore that he was overridden, and possibly that people aren’t taking his post-political attempts at reputation rehabilitation more seriously.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1692258336815624347

Some additional data from Jennifer Robson:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces are claiming progress on the south-eastern front as they push toward the Sea of Azov, which would split Russia’s forces in the occupied south; there has been fierce fighting in the north-eastern front in the Kharkiv region. The defence ministry is telling military-aged citizens to update their data at enlistment offices and to “overcome their fear.” The US has approved sending F-16s from Denmark and the Netherlands to Ukraine, once their pilots are fully trained—probably early in 2024. Meanwhile, Russia claims that two of their warships repelled drone attacks near occupied Crimea, and that a drone attack damaged a building at the centre of Moscow.

Good reads:

  • From his vacation in BC, Justin Trudeau convened a  meeting of the Incident Response Group to discuss the wildfire and mass evacuation situation.
  • Mélanie Joly says the government is working on potential game plans should the US take a hard-right authoritarian turn after their next election.
  • Anita Anand insists that the planned $15 billion in spending cuts won’t mean job losses beyond “normal attrition or redeployment.”
  • Arif Virani says he remains open to criminalising coercive control as part of combatting gender-based violence.
  • Bill Blair says he is ready to order a military airlift of residents of Yellowknife within a couple of hours’ notice if it becomes necessary.
  • Here is a look at items in ministerial mandate letters that don’t seem to have made progress yet (though they insist consultations have been ongoing).
  • Canada’s social housing stock lags behind other comparator countries, so naturally the cries are for the federal government to fix it (while it’s really a provincial issue).
  • While access to electric vehicle charging is improving across the country, it’s not fast enough to keep it from becoming a barrier to more widespread adoption of EVs.
  • Jagmeet Singh proposes only allocating student visas to post-secondary institutions with credible housing plans.
  • Former Ontario Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman passed away.
  • Doug Ford appears to have personally intervened to keep the chief of staff at the centre of the Greenbelt scandal from being fired, which makes him complicit.
  • Evacuations have begun in Yellowknife because of approaching wildfires, as well as properties west of Kelowna.

Odds and ends:

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