Tag Archives: Canada Job Grant

Roundup: Weak sauce mea culpa

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It only took a hundred days, but the NDP membership finally got some kind of a public mea culpa from leader Thomas Mulcair over the way the last election went down, and good news – he takes full responsibility for what happened! But much as Rebecca Blaikie’s interim report goes soft on what Mulcair did wrong, Mulcair’s own reckoning of events is still going pretty soft on things that happened as opposed to some of the myths that are being built up. Things like the balanced budget pledge, which Mulcair said overshadowed the “social democratic economic vision” where they thought they could squeeze all kinds of money out of corporate taxes, CEOs and tax havens, which any competent economist will remind you that you certainly can’t get the kind of money they’re talking from any of those sources. Mulcair goes soft on the observation that they lacked an over-arching narrative that could be easily communicated, when problem was less of a lack of an overall message, but a really poor message that they settled on, which was then badly communicated because, well, the message was poor to begin with. The message, of course, being “good, competent public administration,” and after Canadians had put up with a prime minister who had all of the pizzazz of dull wood varnish, Mulcair would show up to debates, smize like his life depended on it, and proceeded to look like someone on Valium because he was more intent on controlling his temper than he was in engaging with real ideas to present rather than some tired – and in come cases baffling – talking points. And this is what they sent up against most dynamic and charismatic political leader in over a generation. Couple this with some pretty disastrous policy rollouts – recall the initial release of their “costed platform” that didn’t actually have any breakdowns of numbers, but had some nonsense headings like “helping Canadians in need” that journalists rightly questioned, and when we did get numbers, they were based on some wrong assumptions. Campaigns matter, and both Mulcair and Blaikie have been downplaying that it was a poorly run campaign. Mulcair’s letter also contained some rather cryptic references to “overhauling the way caucus works,” but it’s vague, and isn’t owning up to their over-centralization that made the Conservatives’ centralisation efforts look elementary. That centralization has been carrying on to this day, which, when compared to the Liberals’ governing by cabinet rather than the leader’s office, and where their ministers are answering the bulk of their questions off-the-cuff and on their feet while the NDP (Mulcair included) have their scripts in front of them every time they rise in the Chamber, it looks stifling and controlling. So far, I’m not seeing much of a willingness to confront these truths so that they can do something to change them, which the party membership is going to have to weight when the leadership review comes in April.

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Roundup: 28 instances, fewer charges

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The RCMP say they have disrupted or intervened in 28 instances where people have been involved in high-risk travel, be it people returning after fighting with radicals abroad or when they plan on heading over. No word on how many people have had their passports revoked, and there have apparently been no new names added to the no-fly list, and there have been very few charges under anti-terror legislation. The government will likely try to use this low figure to say that we need even more anti-terror laws, and yet it makes one wonder about the actual scope of the problem. Andrew Coyne wonders about the threat that ISIS poses to Canada directly, and if people should be shrugging it all off. (Spoiler alert: no).

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Roundup: Dubiously non-partisan advertising

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The government is enlisting the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the College of Family Physicians to put their logos on a Government of Canada, non-partisan ad campaign designed to talk about the dangers of marijuana. Where this becomes problematic is because the Conservative party has been making a lot of hay attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their policy around marijuana decriminalization, and it starts to look like a partisan ad using the government and tax dollars as a shield. It’s bad optics, and even if the three medical associations want to sign on because they have genuine concerns with teenagers using pot (as well they should), the timing and the current environment does taint the whole exercise.

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Roundup: Four by-elections today

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It’s by-election day in four ridings across the country – two in Alberta and two in Toronto. Despite the usual lazy story ledes about how this is somehow yet another “test” for Trudeau, it would seem to me that this is more of a test for Mulcair with the two Toronto ridings, as to whether or not he can hold the one seat he had there or make gains with the other, while in Alberta, it’ll be a test as to how much Harper can retain his own base – something he has had trouble with in the past few by-elections, whether in Calgary Centre or Brandon–Souris, where significant leads were lost and their wins were narrow and marginal compared to resurgent Liberals who had not had traction in those regions in decades. And Fort McMurray will be a very interesting race to watch, not only because of the amount of attention that Trudeau in particular paid to the region, but because of the deep unhappiness with the industry there to the changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers programme, which they rely on heavily because of an overheated market with no labour available. That may be the biggest upset if they decide to punish Harper at the ballot box. All of which is a far more interesting lede than whether the Liberals are being “tested” once more.

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Roundup: Skills shortages versus wages

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After Jason Kenney suspended the temporary foreign workers programme for restaurants, Alberta restaurants are warning that they are going to have to start closing due to labour shortages, given that they already have a hard enough time retaining staff when the oil and gas sector snaps up relatively unskilled labour in short order. Kenny has said that more employers should try to hire Canadians, but that will likely mean raising wage rates. But will people accept the increase in how much it’ll cost them to eat out? We have become a culture that worships on the altar of cheap, after all.

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Roundup: Sticking to the sidelines

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A number of Quebec senators are also shying away from getting involved in the provincial election there, though some are saying that they will play whatever roles they can along the sidelines. The mayors of a number of smaller towns in the rest of Canada are alarmed that their local newspapers are owned by QMI, which in turn is owned by Pierre-Karl Péladeau, especially considering just how concentrated his ownership of that media is. Michael Den Tandt notes that Pauline Marois has been articulating Jacques Parizeau’s vision, where it was “money and the ethnic vote” that lost them the last referendum, and that Marois is sidelining those ethnic minorities with her values charter and trying to bring money on her side with Péladeau. Economist Stephen Gordon writes about the desirability of a monetary union with an independent Quebec, and how Quebec’s debt load would make it a risky proposition for them. Marois tried to insist that it would be “borderless” and would welcome Canadian tourists. No worries, see!

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Roundup: Shenanigans and filibusters

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It was a day of procedural shenanigans in the House, with the government trying to tie up the debate around the Brad Butt privilege issue, while in committee, the NDP were continuing their filibuster around the issue of holding cross-country hearings on the elections bill. In the end, closure came down and the Butt issue went to a vote, majority ruling not to send the matter to committee (most Conservatives insisting that his apology was enough and that he really didn’t mean to mislead the House – though nobody had explained how exactly that was the case), and the NDP got concessions on the elections bill at committee – more hearings would be held, but only in Ottawa, while the party decided to hold their own hearings across the country on their own.

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Roundup: Wall denies ambitions

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From the Manning Networking Conference, we saw presentations by Brad Wall, who wants the country to be both a food and energy superpower (and he insists that he has no federal ambitions, which makes one wonder all the more about his motivations as to why he’s constantly carrying Stephen Harper’s lunch among the premiers), by Jim Prentice, who said that there needs to be stronger environmental connections to achieve their energy goals like Keystone XL, and Jason Kenney announced progress on his Canada Job Grant plan before saying that he not only supports income splitting, but he made a somewhat impolitic statement about “stable families” being the best way to help youth find economic success in adulthood – but then couldn’t answer about his apparent abandonment of kids from “unstable families.” (Also, one supposes that such a statement was also a sop to the social conservative base that he’s courting). The party’s pollster gave grave warnings about how the party’s numbers are doing, and it’s not good, as the Liberal brand has rebounded, something that happened even before Trudeau became the leader. He also found that there’s just no interest in a discussion on marijuana on either side, and suggested that they drop it. Andrew Coyne notes that the Conference is like the real Conservative convention – as opposed to the Harper Party one that happened last fall, and that we’re seeing more people starting to disassociate themselves from Harper and his way of doing politics.

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Roundup: Inconvenient evidence

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When asked about why his concern over the “stagnating” middle class and how it doesn’t fit with the trend lines in the data, Justin Trudeau said that he’s looking at the data since the 1980s – just before two massive recessions – and cited that ESDC report that said that the middle class dream is “more myth than reality.” It certainly raises questions about the supposed commitment to evidence-based policy when it doesn’t fit with the narrative that they’ve decided to fight the next election on.

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QP: If a comedy show can do it…

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A couple of hours after the speech in the Commons by the Aga Khan, things had quieted down considerably, and most of the leaders had fled. Thomas Mulcair was still around, and he led off by by asking about the elimination of vouching at the polls. Pierre Poilievre responded that in some 40 percent of cases of vouching, there was no way to contact the voucher to ensure there was no fraud. Mulcair wondered about cases where fraud by vouching was prosecuted and why not fix the system. Poilievre said that the Neufeld report showed that even when they tried to fix the vouching system and better monitoring it, there were still irregularities in more than 20 percent off cases. When Mulcair pressed, Poilievre reminded him that there were documented case of someone using the voter ID cards to vote more than once in his own hometown. Mulcair accused them of trying to make it harder for people who don’t vote Conservative, but Poilievre stuck to the facts around those documented cases, as part of a comedy show or not. Dominic LeBlanc led off for the Liberals, and thrice asked about the cuts to infrastructure spending and called their announcements little more than “creative accounting.” Peter Braid responded, and insisted that they’ve tripled investments in infrastructure.

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