Roundup: Promising populist GST cuts

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In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh laid out a pre-election campaign pledge of removing the GST on certain “essential” items like ready-made food, diapers, home heating, and mobile phone and internet bills—all of which he would finance through an “excess profit tax” on large corporations. It is possibly the dumbest economic policy possible, but our politics are moving into an absolutely brainless phase of populism.

Removing the GST on these items will have a negligible impact, particularly for those in low-income brackets. If anything, most of those reductions will benefit higher-income households, such as the GST cut on home heating (because wealthier households have bigger houses that take more fuel), and it when it comes to apartment buildings, the cut has little impact, or for places with electric heat, how exactly do you disentangle how much of the hydro bill is heat versus other electricity usage? I know that the NDP have been pushing this policy for years now, long before Singh was leader, but has anyone thought about it for more than five seconds?

In addition, making more exceptions to the GST are hard to administer, and it will reduce the GST rebates that lower-income households rely on. And promising the “excess profits” tax is basically an arbitrary exercise in determining what they consider “excess,” and that will basically be how much they think they can soak out of these companies, who will inevitably engage in creative accounting to suddenly lower profit margins or incur paper losses to avoid paying said tax, and all of the things the NDP had hoped to spend that windfall on will blow away like ashes in the wind. This isn’t progressive policy, but the NDP are going to pursue it anyway because they think that they can get the populist win here, when it’s almost certainly going to fail.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2024-11-15T01:27:01.865Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A combined Russian strike hit a residential building and energy installations in Odesa, killing one on Thursday evening. As well, the Russian assault on Kupiansk in the northeast broke through the outskirts of the city, but were eventually repelled.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau is at the APEC Summit in Peru, and then heads to the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
  • The federal government has named an expert panel to advise on the path to universal pharmacare (never mind that path lies with provincial cooperation).
  • The government announced a $375-million Indigenous-led conservation effort in the Northwest Territories in cooperation with industry.
  • The RCMP are finally rolling out their promised body-worn cameras next twelve to eighteen months, with a lot of questions about Canadians’ access to that footage.
  • After six years of demolition work, excavation and abatement, the Centre Block restoration project is finally moving into the rebuilding phase, with a 2032 date.
  • The chair of the Liberal Indigenous caucus talks about the “complication” of the question as Randy Boissonnault’s past comments are under the microscope.
  • Some Conservative MPs are quietly grousing that they are being told to stop advocating for Housing Accelerator funds rather than embarrass Poilievre.
  • Conservative MP Jamil Jivani was spotted in Washington having lunch with his old Yale roommate, JD Vance.
  • Ontario has signed a $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink to provide internet to rural and remote areas of the province.
  • David Olive doubts that Poilievre can back up his tough talk around CEOs and corporate oligarchies in Canada.
  • Justin Ling gives a pretty good meta-analysis of the post-election analyses coming out of the US, and hits on some especially key areas (like authenticity in messaging).
  • Paul Wells looks ahead to the possible resurgence of the PQ in Quebec, and what that might mean for a future referendum and how it would play out.
  • My Xtra column looks to what lessons we should be taking from the last three provincial elections, as well as the US election.

Odds and ends:

Statement from the PM on the King of Canada’s birthday.(Note this is his birthday as a natural person. The official birthday of the King of Canada is Victoria Day). #MapleCrown

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T15:04:06.663Z

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