Roundup: Open Letters to Tiff Macklem

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BC premier David Eby decided he needed to be extra performative yesterday, and wrote an open letter to Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, urging him not to raise interest rates next month because of the “human cost” of these interest rate hikes—ignoring of course the counterfactual of the effects of unchecked high inflation and the “human cost” that it has over the short and medium term.

What is pretty galling in all of this is that Eby knows better. He was once a pretty good civil liberties lawyer, and he fully knows that the Bank is independent, and that they have a legal mandate that they need to fulfil when it comes to keeping inflation at two percent, and that their main policy tool is the blunt instrument of interest rates. His “I know the Bank is independent but…” spiel was frankly embarrassing, and should not have merited the attention it got from the media, but here we are.

Speaking of, Power & Politics was not only true to form in giving him a soapbox to make his point, and rather than doing their jobs of pointing to the irresponsibility of this kind of move, particularly at a time when you also have Pierre Poilievre warning that he’s going to fire the Governor (with what power?) and threatening the Bank’s independence. It would be great if CBC could do a single economics story properly and not just treat it like an issue to be both-sidesed, but they apparently have zero willingness to do so, and the fact that this Eby interview was that ignorant is a sign that they cannot be bothered to care about economics stories for anything than just trying to plug them into their established narratives, and it’s doing the country an extreme disservice.

Programming Note: I’m taking the full long weekend off, so I’ll see you early next week.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces have reported some success in the south and east, but I am also tickled by their latest video offering, telling all of those armchair generals to basically shut up because they’ve been doing the heavy lifting on their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has developed its own long-range weapons that can strike 700 kilometres away, which may have been a sly nod to the attack on Russian airbases that destroyed a number of fighters. The mayor of Kyiv wants to build more fortifications, because there always remains the threat from Russia.

Good reads:

  • The government has appointed former CRTC commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein as the interim ethics commissioner for the next six months.
  • Mary Ng is launching new challenges under the New NAFTA rules in regards to the latest US tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber.
  • Dominic LeBlanc has released an interim report on how the government is responding to the Emergencies Act Inquiry recommendations, with more next year.
  • Marci Ien is calling the Saskatchewan and New Brunswick safe schools issue “life or death” for trans students, but isn’t committing to court challenges at this point.
  • A procurement project for new surveillance vehicles for the Canadian army is years overdue, allegedly because of software and supply chain issues.
  • Months after the Rogers-Shaw merger was approved, Rogers is trying to fight the rate at which they were supposed to provide network access to Quebecor.
  • A delegation that included Senator Kim Pate visited the detainee camps in Syria, and are calling on Canada to finish repatriating its citizens from the region.
  • Michael Chong will be in Washington on September 12th to testify about foreign interference, particularly from China.
  • Jagmeet Singh wants the government to issue another $500 housing benefit payment for low-income people,
  • The woman accusing former NDP MP Romeo Saganash of sexual assault has gone public and is waiving a publication ban.
  • Ontario housing minister Steve Clark gave an insincere apology for the Greenbelt Scandal, but says the development is moving ahead even if the process was flawed.
  • Paul Wells reflects on government priorities, the ability to handle surprise, and the current government’s managerial competence with it all.

Odds and ends:

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