Roundup: The PBO’s update won’t stop the disinformation

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s revised report on the distributional impacts of the carbon levy was released yesterday, and lo, it reconfirmed that indeed most households are better off with the rebates than what they pay—most especially the bottom 40 percent of households by income. It also showed a much, much smaller impact on the overall economic impact when broken out per household, which is a significant change from his initial report, and what the Conservatives in particular weaponized. They still are—Question Period was full of those same figures being mendaciously framed as costing individual households when it’s talking about the impacts on GDP when broken out into the abstract figure of per-household costs, which is not how the economy works, and yes, any climate action is going to have an impact on GDP, but inaction is also going to have an even larger impact. But lying liars are going to lie about what these numbers mean, because nobody will actually explain the difference to them.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402178200670530

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With that in mind, take a look at the varied headlines, and guess the outlets:

As you can gather, at least one of those headlines is incredibly misleading, and unsurprisingly, some were framing this in explicitly the same terms the Conservatives are.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1844551195257446581

As well, Yves Giroux went back on Power & Politics to talk about his updated report, and thankfully David Cochrane gave him the gears for it, because he continues to refuse to take responsibility for the state of confusion and disinformation that his previous report has left the country and the political discourse in. I was also struck by the fact that he kept saying that these are the government’s own numbers—so what exactly is his office doing if they’re not independently coming up with their own figures as is the whole gods damned point of why the office was created? It just keeps reiterated how Giroux is completely unsuited for this job, and needs to resign because he’s clearly making the case for why this office needs to be abolished.

Programming note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so have a good Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Overnight attacks by Russia and those into Thursday hit civilian and critical infrastructure in cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson. There is also fierce fighting in the strategic city of Toretsk as Russians increase pressure on the eastern front. Ukrainian forces hit an ammunition depot in a Russian airfield in the Adygeya region, about 450 km from the front line.

Good reads:

  • Amidst his meetings at the ASEAN summit, Justin Trudeau congratulated the prime minister of Thailand for legalising same-sex marriage.
  • Patty Hajdu appeared with AFN national chief Cindy Woodhouse-Neepinak to call on all parties to support the First Nations clean water legislation.
  • The pharmacare bill has now passed the Senate and received royal assent, and now the agreements with the provinces need to be made.
  • At the Foreign Interference Inquiry, Mélanie Joly said she was largely kept in the dark about foreign interference attempts, and that India is being uncooperative.
  • Also at the Inquiry, Marco Mendicino correctly noted that focusing on the implicated MPs from the NSICOP report will become a kangaroo court.
  • The Chief of Ontario have come out in favour of the child welfare agreement with the federal government.
  • The vice president of CTV news appeared at committee to say there was no “malicious intent” with the splicing of the Poilievre quote.
  • The Ethics committee is calling for enhanced privacy protection to keep personal data from being extracted by phones or computers.
  • Some Liberal backbenchers are starting to freak out because the party appears to have no plan in the event of a snap election.
  • Pierre Poilievre has again blamed Trudeau for the rise in antisemitism and is accusing him of being soft on terror, while prevaricating on his Iran strike remarks.
  • Poilievre also announced that he is in favour of mandatory, involuntary drug and psychiatric treatment for children and prisoners. (Hello Charter challenge).
  • Poilievre  now says he doesn’t rally support the Bloc bill to increase the OAS, and would rather find a different way to address affordability for seniors.
  • The Quebec government is looking to reduce the number of international students in the province, which is their right (but smacks of complete hypocrisy).
  • Jennifer Robson walks through the policy incoherence of the Bloc’s demand for enriched OAS benefits for all seniors.
  • Susan Delacourt suggests that maybe it’s time Justin Trudeau prorogue this toxic parliamentary session to take the air out of it for a while.
  • Paul Wells contrasts the remarks Trudeau and Poilievre made at an October 7th event, and delves into the utter nonsense Poilievre spouted in his remarks.
  • My Xtra column looks at how Danielle Smith plans to weaponize the tone of the upcoming debate on her anti-trans bill.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844467617597378694

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