Tag Archives: Bill Morneau

Roundup: The source of the complaints

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Carrying on with yesterday’s theme, Bill Morneau decided he would try and be too cute by half and release an open letter of his own, questioning Andrew Scheer’s promise to premiers to maintain the current health and social transfer system, and claimed that he was still advocating a cut. I’m not sure that it was quite right, but it was a novel attempt – and something Morneau rarely does, so there’s that. Scheer, meanwhile, keeps on his affordability message, claiming that he’s the only one worried about it while the Liberals keep raising taxes, etc.

The thing is, Scheer is wrong about that. He is fond of citing that Fraser Institute report that treats the cancellation of boutique tax credits as “raising taxes” – as it also ignores the tax-free Canada Child Benefit offered to most families as a replacement, and a more targeted one that will actually benefit low-income households at that – much like he’s fond of ignoring that the climate rebates will make most households better off in jurisdictions under the federal carbon pricing system. But beyond that, the data clearly shows that the federal taxes as a share of federal revenues also continues to decline under the Liberals. Scheer’s affordability narrative as it comes to taxes is bogus. Well, except for one particular group, who is not better off under the changes that the Liberals have made. And yet, as Kevin Milligan demonstrates with data and receipts below, it’s certainly not the average Canadians that Scheer claims to be fighting for. But then again, illiberal populists claiming to be looking out for average people while benefitting the wealthiest is getting to be a tired game by this point – and yet people still keep falling for it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157388641385062401

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157390752697085952

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Roundup: A real climate sham

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Andrew Scheer unveiled his long-awaited environmental plan yesterday, citing that it was a “real plan” because it was longer than the other parties’…but that was about it. After he listed a bunch of lies about the current Liberal plan, Scheer kept saying that carbon pricing didn’t do anything, which is both factually incorrect (as proven by peer-reviewed work), but it also completely ignores that the current plan hasn’t had a chance to sufficiently bend the curve. By removing carbon pricing from the market and instead forcing companies who exceed their emissions to caps, it is actually even less of a market-based plan than the Liberals’ plan, and there are no specifics in how any of it would work. Promising technological solutions without price signals to spur their development is just like counting on magic to lower emissions. It’s also like Scheer’s complete lie that this plan won’t cost Canadians – it will cost them, but those costs will be passed onto them and hidden, whereas the carbon price is transparent so that people can make better choices. Scheer also claims that his plan would have the best chance of meeting the Paris targets – without actually having targets, or articulating how they would be achieved. It’s replete with a bunch of boutique tax credits that are inefficient, and is generally a bunch of language that does very little. How he claims this is a “real plan” is somewhat of a farce.

And then there’s the global component, where Scheer says that Canada should be lowering global emissions by exporting “cleaner” Canadian energy like LNG – err, except that would grow Canadian emissions, and yet he wants us to get credits for those exports. And he says that China should use Canadian carbon capture and storage technology – except it’s hugely expensive, and is not really feasible unless you’re pricing carbon (not to mention that if the storage is not done properly, it can simply all be for naught). And Canada still has some of the highest per-capita emissions, which Scheer conveniently ignores in his arguments.

Amidst this, Scheer’s apologists are saying “it’s good that they’re admitting that climate change is real!” or “Look at how far the Conservatives have come since 2008!” Except that’s all spin. They can say they believe in climate change, but they also say that Canada’s contribution is so small that we shouldn’t do anything about it. Scheer and others tried to burnish themselves with the environmental reputations of previous conservative governments, except the old Conservative party is dead, and the current one is engaging in some egregious political necrophilia to cover for their own weakness. That those apologists could say these things with a straight face on television is astounding.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1141470545130729473

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Roundup: Less helpful suggestions to fix QP

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At this time of year, we’re starting to see a number of reflective pieces about the state of our democracy, and over on The Agenda, they gave a thinkpiece about the state of Question Period in advance of an episode on the subject. While the piece is geared toward the state of things at Queen’s Park, there is applicability to Parliament, and the suggestions that the polisci prof that they cite in the piece makes don’t really offer anything constructive, in my opinion.

For example, he wants more questions from more members and no supplementals. I disagree, because if we were running things properly, supplementals offer decent back-and-forth exchanges where you can get better accountability by drilling into answers (or non-answers) provided. And as demonstrated in Parliament, especially on Fridays, just having more MPs asking questions doesn’t necessarily improve things because they’re all reading the same scripts, so you just get more MPs asking the same questions – which in turn becomes fodder for them gathering clips to be distributed over social media. He suggests that the parties determine who asks questions for the first two thirds and then the Speaker determine for the final third – well, that doesn’t actually help with the ability of the Speaker to “not see” frequent misbehaving MPs, as they will be the ones the party puts on their list. It needs to be all or nothing. Having the Speaker rule on the relevance of answers and to police friendly backbench suck-up questions? Nice in theory, and if we could get MPs to give the Speaker the power to the determination, all the better, but if we’re not careful, it just creates an opportunity for parties to whinge about the Speaker. (I’m kind of in favour of empowering the Speaker in this way, but it needs to be done very carefully). Banning applause? Yes, absolutely.

What’s missing in this is the reliance on scripts, which we need to do away with entirely. Parties argue that they need to come up with plans and narratives and tactics, but to be frank, that’s bullshit. Plans and tactics don’t enhance the accountability function of QP – it just ensures that it will be theatre, and not good theatre at that. Banning scripts plus empowering the Speaker to choose who asks questions for the whole of QP (and sure, he can continue to divvy them up according to a set formula in the interests of fairness) is going to be far more effective than most of these suggestions – but the trick is to convince MPs to move to that system, which would involve their leaders giving up their powers to direct the show, and that is part of where the bigger problem lies.

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Senate QP: Morneau explains…and explains

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Just minutes after the Commons QP ended, Senate Question Period got underway with special guest star finance minister Bill Morneau, for what was likely to be forty minutes of Morneau’s trademarked pabulum, but in slightly longer form. Senator Larry Smith led off with a completely question about how Canada can’t get pipelines built while we help China build theirs (not true), and demanded to know when the Trans Mountain expansion would be built. Morneau noted that there were a number of questions in there, but stated that by buying the existing pipeline, they wanted to get it built but we engaged in a meaningful process of engagement with those along the line, and that they planned to make the decision by June 18th. On Smith’s other questions, the decision to be part of the Asian Infrastructure Bank was part of our global economic engagement, which has a positive impact on the Canadian economy, and on Bill C-69, they looked forward to the amendments from the Senate. On a supplemental, Smith asked whether his office was working with Catherine McKenna’s about amending Bill C-69, and her acknowledged that they were engaged, but the amendments were up to the Senate.

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Roundup: Anger over vilified legislation? Shocking!

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Over on the Financial Post’s op-ed pages, Senator Richard Neufeld worries about all of the angry Canadians the Senate’s energy committee is hearing from over Bill C-69. I have no doubt that they are hearing from angry people, because there has been a massive disinformation campaign around this bill from the start. The Conservatives and their provincial counterparts in Alberta have dubbed it the “no more pipelines” bill, even though it’s nothing of the sort. Neufeld worries that the bill means that we can never have any more major projects in this country, which is absurd on the face of it, but hey, there are narratives to uphold.

I’ve talked to a lot of environmental lawyers about this bill, and the potential amendments that it could merit. It is certainly not a bill without flaws, and the government seems to have acknowledged that (and apparently there is some kind of gamesmanship being played right now, where the government has a list of amendments they want to introduce at the Senate committee via one of their proxies but they won’t release them ahead of time for some reason). This having been said, there seems to be no acknowledgment of a few realities – that the current system that the Harper government put into place isn’t working and has only wound up with litigation; that we simply can’t bully through projects past Indigenous communities anymore, because Section 35 rights mean something; and that the bill sought to eliminate a lot of heavy lifting by putting more consultation on the front end so that projects could be better scoped, and that it would mean not needing to produce boxes of documents that nobody ever reads in order to check boxes off of lists as part of the assessment process. This is not a bad thing.

But like I said, there are problems with the bill, and Neufeld lists a few of them in passing while trading in more of the myths and disinformation around it. But so long as that disinformation campaign goes unchallenged – and this includes by ministers who can only speak in talking points and can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag because they’re too assured of their own virtues that they don’t feel the need to dismantle a campaign of lies – then the anger will carry on, and when this bill passes in some amended form (and it’s likely it will), then it will simply become another propaganda tool, which should be concerning to everyone – including those who are weaponizing it, because it will blow up in their faces.

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Roundup: Common ground on “secularism”

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There was some small respite in news coverage yesterday and a chance for all of the federal party leaders to come to agreement on an issue – their mutual disdain for Quebec’s now-tabled “secularism” legislation that forbids the wearing of religious symbols for anyone in a position of authority, which includes teachers and police officers. Never mind that it’s not actually about secularism and that it specifically targets minority communities – this is about “solving the problem” in Quebec about their not knowing how to accommodate these minorities, so says one particular Quebec MNA who went on English Canadian television to try to sell the plan. It was as distasteful as it sounds, because hey, who needs to protect minority rights when the majority of voters feel uncomfortable with them?

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1111319646475423744

As for the reactions of party leaders, they may have been uniformly opposed to the bill, but they did it in very different ways – Trudeau forceful in denouncing laws that legitimize discrimination. Jagmeet Singh gave personal perspectives on being othered as a child because he was different and how this legislation reinforces that. Andrew Scheer, however, was true to form and gave an insipid line about freedom of religion and individual rights, but didn’t actually denounce discrimination. Oh, and he promised he wouldn’t introduce similar legislation federally, which I suppose is small progress from the moral panic over veiled voting that his party stirred up while in government.

Chris Selley, meanwhile, brings some fire to this “debate,” and finds hope in the province’s youth, who are rejecting the underlying anxieties that led to this kind of legislation in the first place.

The interminable Double-Hyphen fallout

Yesterday’s Double-Hyphen Affair fallout stories included The Canadian Press following-up on the story of that wrongful conviction that Jody Wilson-Raybould sat on for 18 months. Documents were also obtained to show that SNC-Lavalin indeed told the Public Prosecution Service that if they didn’t get a deferred prosecution agreement that they would move their headquarters to the US, cut their Canadian workforce to 3500 and eventually wind-up their operations here. Justin Trudeau told the media that he condemned the leaks about the Supreme Court of Canada appointment process and insisted that his office “would never leak.” Jody Wilson-Raybould’s submission to the justice committee is expected to be ready for public release later this afternoon. In advance of this, the Stargot a copy of a legal opinion from the justice department to Wilson-Raybould saying that any decision regarding remediation agreements haven’t been tested in Canada and that she could get outside legal advice on it – and it meshes with the timeline of what we know.

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Roundup: Traps and tantrums

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Budget Day was a giant production, for a variety of reasons yesterday, starting with the long-awaited showdown at the Commons justice committee. Given that the Liberal members had released that letter the night before, we knew that they were going to wrap it all up – without a report, I might add – and on their way in this morning, they handed to the media a copy of the motion they were planning to move to start a new study on hate crimes (because this increasingly seems like what the Liberals want to fight the next election on). Well, this caused the opposition to storm out because that motion was supposed to be in camera (and we all know how much they’ve respected the notion that committee business be handled in camera of late), and then they came back and had their meeting, and the committee (read: Liberal majority) decided to end the study of the Double-Hyphen Affair.

This set the Conservatives off, and they warned that they would ensure that the budget was going to be delayed, mark their words, and they set up all manner of procedural trickery in which to do so. Except that the Liberals outplayed them, tabled the document just before 4 PM, right before the vote was being called that was intending to delay the budget speech, and then Bill Morneau marched out to the Foyer to start talking to all of the assembled media outlets and get his message out, while the opposition stayed in the Chamber to carry on their procedural shenanigans, to the point where they essentially held themselves hostage. When Morneau was able to give his speech, well over an hour later, the Conservatives did ensure that he was drowned out with noise so that he couldn’t be heard and that no clips were able to be captured for news media, but given how Morneau was doing the media rounds and Scheer wasn’t – indeed, after the fact, when he and his caucus marched out to the Foyer, they denounced the budget as a distraction from the Double-Hyphen Affair, and had nary a substantive comment on it. (Jagmeet Singh, incidentally, had the usual NDP talking points about how it wasn’t enough, but couldn’t really respond when pressed about specifics or implementation of their vision). So, take it for what you will, I’m not sure how well the Conservatives came across in the end yesterday, especially as Scheer walked right into Trudeau’s very obvious trap that about the Conservatives not wanting to talk about the economy.

Speaking of the budget, it was far more stimulus-heavy than I would have expected, but then again, targeting both seniors and millennials, and going some distance in doing more for skills training, though their housing affordability measures were weak sauce and will likely do nothing about the supply side of the issue (especially as they keep the focus on buying a home rather than simply having affordable housing writ large).

With that in mind:

  • The deficit will grow this year before shrinking again, but there is no path back to balance in the immediate future. (Debt-to-GDP continues to decline).
  • Here are the highlights for five key demographics.
  • Here are 23 key measures in the budget.
  • There was the start of Pharmacare, beginning with the Canadian Drug Agency to facilitate bulk buying – next steps coming with the Hoskins report.
  • Municipalities got a chunk of new funding (with shots taken at premiers who are holding up infrastructure agreements).
  • There are more funds earmarked for Indigenous services, not only with water but also child and family services.
  • The budget also outlines a plan to start targeting stock options for taxation as another way of soaking the wealthy.
  • There is a plan to start taxing cannabis products by the potency of their THC.
  • The budget has money to help veterans transition to civilian life, but doesn’t seem to have anything to deal with the disability backlog.
  • There was a big commitment on rural broadband, but implementation details remain fuzzy.
  • Here are ten things that may slip under the radar.
  • Here’s a fact-check of Morneau’s speech (but the sources could have been better selected).

In budget hot takes, Chris Selley calls it the budget of a government that is no longer selling utopia – just buying votes, whereas Alan Freeman simply calls it a “do no harm” budget. John Geddes details the spending surprises in the document, while Andrew Coyne grouses about the how there seems to be more concern over the quantity of spending over the quality of it, given there is nothing in the budget about things like productivity. Heather Scoffield takes note of the Liberals’ attempt to frame the budget as a response to anxieties – economic or otherwise – that Canadians are feeling. Kevin Carmichael cautions that there budget leaves very little wiggle room for economic downturns, given how sluggish growth already is. Paul Wells notes the sprinkling of spending throughout the document, and the big bomb for political journalists in there. There are also worthwhile threads from economist Kevin Milligan here and here.

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Roundup: In the testimony’s aftermath

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Yesterday was the day for performative outrage, as the Conservatives demanded – and got – an “emergency debate” on their call for Justin Trudeau to resign. Of course, given the reality of how our parliament works these days, “debate” is a term to be used very loosely, and it was more like several late-night hours of stilted speeches being read to one another for the sake of looking tough. Woo. On the committee front, Gerald Butts offered to testify on his own behalf, which was accepted, and both Michael Wernick and the deputy minister of justice are on their way back for another round, though none of the other staffers mentioned by Wilson-Raybould are (though that is also because they shouldn’t appear before committee, under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility – it’s for ministers and deputy ministers as accountability officers to appear as they are responsible for them). Ministers of the Crown were also doing the media rounds, including Bill Morneau and Chrystia Freeland, and most of them were offering variations of the line that while they thought that Jody Wilson-Raybould was telling the truth as she saw it, they also believe the PM in that he would never be inappropriate or cross a line, which made most of the pundit class’ heads implode – never mind that the crux of this whole matter is that it’s a subjective test as to what kind of pressure is or is not appropriate. (On a related note, the Liberals really, really need to put Carla Qualtrough out more. She is easily one of the best communicators that they have in Cabinet, but she never gets out there enough on items other than Phoenix, which is too bad because they desperately need someone with her communications skills out in public). And we’ll see how this continues to play out in the caucus as well, given that the usual suspects are not remaining so silent, and the not-so-usual suspects have openly stated things like “sour grapes” (before being made to apologise).

https://twitter.com/WayneLongSJ/status/1101160075023011840

For context, here is a comparison between what Wilson-Raybould said, and what Michael Wernick testified before the committee. Here’s a look at whether the Ethics Commissioner really can get to the bottom of this whole mess. Here’s the who’s who of everyone Wilson-Raybould named in her testimony. Here’s a roundup of how the Quebec press is treating Wilson-Raybould’s testimony.

In punditry, Susan Delacourt looks at how nervous the Liberal caucus seems by this whole affair, and what that disaffection may be doing to the party in the longer term. Robert Hiltz suggests that Trudeau take a long, hard look at himself and his government, given what this situation has revealed about them. Chris Selley points out that the Liberal treatment of not being Stephen Harper as a virtue is going to be something that ends up costing them.

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Roundup: Starting the Big Move

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Yesterday was the final day that Centre Block was officially in operation. As of today, the big move starts happening, starting with the House of Commons chamber, and will be followed by the other major offices, like the Speaker, the prime minister and leader of the opposition, with the heritage furniture that will continue to be in use. And once that’s done and the building is empty, they can start to open up walls and ceilings to figure out the state of the building, and determine what needs to be done in terms of renovations and restorations, and from that point determine a price tag and timeline. At present, everything is just a guess, so we’ll have to stay tuned. (Here’s a photo gallery of the current House of Commons and Senate, and the new Commons).

The Senate, however, is a different story. Recent testing of the new chamber brought to light the fact that there are acoustic problems related to sound leakage that were first identified two years ago, and despite assurances from Public Works, it wasn’t addressed. That means they have to install new sound baffles which will delay the move by several weeks, which means that there will be even fewer weeks for the Senate to address its full Order Paper in the New Year. Committees can still meet in the meantime, but it seems the Conservatives have decided to engage in some gamesmanship over Bill C-69, which has the Independent senators are complaining about stall tactics.

Meanwhile, here is a lengthy thread looking at the new Senate building, and six facts about the building, its history, and the new renovations.

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Roundup: Complaints without suggestions

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In the wake of the First Ministers’ meeting last week, we’re still seeing a lot of narratives in the media about how the prime minister hasn’t yet taken any steps to help the province in the short term – a take that is ignorant because it fails to comprehend what the situation about the price differential is. At its core, it’s a supply and demand problem, with too much supply and not enough demand, which drives prices down. Nothing the federal government can do will fix that in the short term. Buying rail cars is medium-term at best, but may simply being throwing money away given that once the Line 3 pipeline is up and running, it’ll outstrip the capacity of those trains right away – and I can’t stress enough that we are again in the midst of a global supply glut, so putting more product into a full market isn’t going to help matters.

And while this happens, we see more nonsense like this column from former Alberta MLA Donna Kennedy-Glans, which incoherently rambles about Trudeau not respecting the nation and inciting Western alienation. Which is ridiculous, because there is not a single fact in the piece, nor is there any suggestion of anything Trudeau could do about Alberta’s situation. It’s just angry flailing. Part of the problem that people – and Albertans especially – keep ignoring is that what’s happening with their prices right now is the result of decades of structuring their oil export market on the assumption that the Americans would be perpetual customers, which didn’t see the shale oil revolution that upended those assumptions, and they haven’t managed to pivot to overseas markets on a dime because obviously pipelines take a long time to build, and people don’t necessarily want them going through their backyards. It’s hard to blame Trudeau for that – any prime minister (or premier for that matter) would have a hard time dealing effectively with this state of affairs, and no, carbon taxes have nothing to do with this situation, nor does the desire to change environmental assessment legislation, because the current system isn’t working either. But Albertans – and I speak as one – both tend to be allergic to self-reflection (recall how they recoiled at Jim Prentice suggesting they take a look in the mirror, and elected Rachel Notley as a result), and a they like to blame Ottawa for their problems – especially if there’s someone named Trudeau in charge. We should be better than this.

https://twitter.com/aradwanski/status/1071506885877133312

Meanwhile, the Globe posted a nonsense story about equalisation – again – in that Quebec still gets it while Alberta is in a deficit, and I can’t even. You would think that a national newspaper could get the basics of equalisation right, but apparently not. To remind the rest of us: Equalisation is about fiscal capacity, not your province’s budget balance. Provinces don’t sign cheques over to have-not provinces, but rather, this is all money that comes from income taxes. The reason Alberta pays more is because they have the highest incomes in the country. Grievance politics, along with lazy reporting that confirms narratives rather than challenges them is largely what keeps this myth alive, and it should be stamped down.

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