Tag Archives: First Ministers

Roundup: Carney and the premiers

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Mark Carney held a First Ministers’ meeting yesterday at the Canadian War Museum, which we’re given to understand was a bit of deliberate symbolism for the current moment, and most of the premiers arrived in person, save Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, and Andrew Furey (who is on a trade mission to Japan, and not in a fit of pique). The meeting ran long, and came out with a number of promises that the cynic in me feels are incredibly optimistic in terms of timelines and ambition. Not that we shouldn’t be ambitious, but oftentimes things are slow for a reason.

In particular, Carney is looking for complete internal free trade by July 1st (barring a few Quebec-specific carve-outs, which one assumes are mostly related to linguistic requirements). He’s also promising to temporary lift the waiting period for EI, to allow businesses to defer corporate income tax and GST/HST filings, creating a new Large Enterprise Economic and National Security Facility for financing, doubling the Indigenous Loan Guarantee programme, increasing funding for regional development agencies, and removing mobility restrictions for federally-regulated workers. The promise around “one window” approvals for major project assessments confuses me somewhat because we already have joint review panels—the whole point being that the federal and provincial assessment processes work together, hence “joint,” so there isn’t duplication. This has been the practice for environmental assessments for decades now, so I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. Carney was also talking about expediting projects like high-speed rail, but looking at their timeline, I have questions about how much they can realistically speed things without creating new problems. But hey, there’s great enthusiasm in the moment for doing Big Things, so we’ll see if they can actually get off the ground.

In response to questions, Carney clapped back at Trump’s suggestion that he’s the one who changed Canada’s political landscape (not untrue, but not for the reasons he is suggesting),  and gave a line about how Canadians will choose their own leaders. He clarified that yes, he intends to keep the emissions cap (and made the point that it’s an emissions cap and not a production cap), but wants to spur investments in emissions reductions (but really, the carbon price and cap should actually do that on their own). He also did not rule out future investments in pipelines but says he wants to clear the way for private sector investment.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia continues to hammer civilian targets in Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, but then gets all precious about a major pumping station that blew up as Ukrainians have been withdrawing from Kursk region, even though Ukraine says that Russia blew it up themselves as a provocation.

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Roundup: Moe looks to capitulate as well

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There was another virtual first ministers’ meeting yesterday to discuss ongoing preparations for dealing with threats from Trump, and yes, Danielle Smith was in attendance (virtually, from Washington), and most of the premiers are on board with the need for dollar-for-dollar retaliation. Most. Smith herself was trying to sound conciliatory and saying that things were “better” from her perspective this time, but now Scott Moe is starting to say that he’s not in favour of dollar-for-dollar retaliation, because he too is more interested in capitulation to Trump. Then again, Moe is one who has a history of capitulation, like the time he caved to the demands of the so-called “Freedom convoy” and then begged them not to blockade the border crossings in his province. That’s who Scott Moe is.

Meanwhile, Danielle Smith says that the premiers agreed that they need to build more east-west pipelines, and good luck with that, mostly because people in Eastern Canada aren’t really keen on paying the premium that shipping Alberta oil and gas would cost (particularly on the east coast), particularly if we are moving to a carbon-constrained future where it would probably be cheaper and better in the longer-term to simply invest in building up capacity for a faster adoption of EVs rather than spend billions on infrastructure for stranded assets. Oh, and don’t think that more pipelines to the west coast are going to mean a boon for LNG either, considering that there are numerous LNG proposals on the books that have all of their approvals, but haven’t been built because the market hasn’t found a case for them, either in terms of investments or a willingness to sign long-term contracts for these projects.

There is some hope that the current situation may finally let provinces see the wisdom of eliminating internal trade barriers, largely around regulation and credentials recognition, but then again, this has been an irritant since Confederation, and that kind of inertia is really hard to overcome.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian-installed officials claim that Ukraine launched a drone attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility.

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Roundup: Smith offside the first ministers

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Yesterday was the big day where the plans to counter Trump’s predations started to take shape in public. There was a briefing on the border plans, which includes two leased Blackhawk helicopters, sixty drones, and other new technologies, and statistics to show an 89 percent reduction in migrants crossing from Canada to the US. And then came the first ministers’ meeting and an agreement to have a common front to counter Trump, that everyone signed on except for one premier—Danielle Smith, who was on Zoom from her vacation in Panama. Smith refused to sign onto any agreement that didn’t take the possibility of export taxes of cutting energy flows to the US off the table.

I get Smith’s objections that export taxes or cutting off oil and gas to the US would have an outsized impact on Alberta, and she has a domestic political constituency and a bunch of face-eating leopards in her political house who are looking for an excuse to eat her face the way they did Jason Kenney’s. I do get that. But by publicly disavowing the nuclear option, and threatening a national unity crisis over it, Smith is undermining the negotiating position of the country as a whole, and giving opportunities for Trump to exploit that weakness—and it looks especially bad after she already started to obey in advance and couldn’t wait to start licking his boots, and headed over to Mar-a-Lago at the behest of Kevin “It’s totally not annexation—really!” O’Leary. It makes it hard to see whose side she is on here.

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Amidst this, I did find myself absolutely incredulous at the response that Doug Ford was getting because he wore a cap that said “Canada is not for sale,” and he was saying things like “Canada comes first.” And suddenly people were praising him left and right, and one columnist went so far as to say that at that moment, he wished Ford was prime minister. Doug Ford. “Fun” uncle Doug. Whose corruption is out in public. Who was pulling this folksy schtick on a day where there was a news story about how one community saw people line up down the block in the wee hours because a new doctor had come to town and would take the first 500 patients, which is a system that Doug Ford allowed to collapse because he was more interested in putting federal dollars toward his deficit than he was to doing anything about the system. And once again, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Come on, guys.

Ukraine Dispatch

A massive Russian aerial attack which featured more than 40 missiles and over 70 drones forced preventative power cuts in Ukraine. 25 POWs from each side were exchanged in a deal brokered by the UAE.

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Roundup: First ministers meet about the Trump threats

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Justin Trudeau will be meeting with (most of) the premiers today, to talk about the border plans in advance of Trump’s inauguration. Some premiers will be virtual, however, such as PEI premier Dennis King, who is currently on a bus trip to the northeastern states with a number of officials from the province. And it has already been noted that there are separate media availabilities after the meeting is over—the federal government in one location, the premiers moving to a hotel to have theirs.

In advance of the meeting, we’re hearing more pledges for “border officers” from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec, and Doug Ford was once again chirping about the supposed absence of federal leadership until he had a meeting with Dominic LeBlanc yesterday at Queen’s Park, after which he suddenly changed his tune. At that point, he praised the federal plan as “phenomenal,” which pretty much goes to show that the federal government has been working on it, and that in not responding and lighting their hair on fire with every Trump utterance that they are keeping their powder dry.

I get why Trudeau and the government have been keeping their heads down, but they have also created a problem for themselves. They should probably have been sending stronger signals to the provinces that they are working on said plan and to shut up in public rather than undermine the country’s position, but it’s not like they’ll all listen—particularly those premiers who are keen to suck up to Trump. Nevertheless, if this PMO’s persistent problem is their inability to communicate, they appear to be making no effort to change that on their way out the door. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian air defences shot down 58 out of 80 drones in an overnight attack on Tuesday, while Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched a major missile and drone attack into Russian territory, destroying a storage facility holding guided bombs and struck a chemical plant making ammunition. Ukrainian soldiers are also being forced to deal with suicide attacks by North Korean troops.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1879180179613872494

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Roundup: Healthy tensions made dramatic

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The Globe and Mail had one of those stories that sets the cat among the pigeons, where they got a number of sources to describe the tensions between PMO and the department of finance over their spending plans, and in particular that the PMO was adamant that they wanted to do that stupid GST “holiday”/rebate cheque programme, while Chrystia Freeland was trying to keep a lid on spending because she had fiscal anchors that she was trying to stick to.

As for those anchors, Freeland had her usual Tuesday economic good news press conferences yesterday, and very deliberately said that the Fiscal Update next Monday will show that the debt-to-GDP ratio fiscal anchor would be met—but steadfastly refused to mention the other two fiscal anchors she spoke of in the spring, being a cap on the size of the deficit, and a target for the deficit to be less than one percent of GDP by 2026-27. Freeland repeatedly said that the debt-to-GDP ratio was the one that mattered and that we would see on Monday that it was continuing to decline, but the interpretation of that statement is essentially that the deficit will indeed by higher than $40.1 billion, but that overall GDP grew enough that the higher number is less of an issue. We’ll have to see on Monday, but she very much appeared to be telegraphing lowered expectations.

As for those tensions, if anyone has been around Parliament Hill for any length of time, this should be normal. PMO wants to do things that are politically expedient, and that usually involves spending money, which finance tries to rein in as much as they can. This appears to be little different from that very ordinary standard operating procedure. This, of course, didn’t stop Pierre Poilievre from pouncing on this in QP as proof that the PM has “lost control” of his Cabinet (which is risible on the face of it), and every journalist was trying to get some kind of comment on it (when they weren’t trying to get a comment on Trump’s latest slights). Maybe I’ve been up here too long but “PMO wants to spend money, finance tries to say no” isn’t really news. That’s a day that ends in y. Maybe we don’t need to be so breathlessly dramatic about everything all the time?

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile hit a clinic in Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday, killing at least six and injuring at least 22. A missile attack also damaged an industrial facility in Taganrog the same night. President Zelenskyy says that he used his meeting with Trump in Paris to raise the issue of security guarantees.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1866509325197316109

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Roundup: The virtual meeting with the premiers over Trump

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau had his virtual meeting with the premiers yesterday evening, and it has been a really interesting divergence in reactions. Jagmeet Singh is panicking and demanding performative forcefulness, while Pierre Poilievre is trying to leverage the moment for his own political ends, claiming that the solution is to do everything he says (conveniently!). Premiers have been all over the map, going from caution to outright boot-licking (looking at you, Danielle Smith), and this was one of the messages that emerged from that meeting. I also find it particularly crass the number of premiers who set up American flags for their backdrops before their media availabilities before and after the meeting. Seriously, guys?

Chrystia Freeland met with reporters and spoke about the need for a united front and not to be seen to be squabbling with one another, but premiers with their own agendas haven’t really seemed to warm to that necessity, because they’d rather score points against the current government with boneheaded accusations that they were “blindsided” by the threats, and that they don’t have a plan. (They’ve had a plan for over a year, guys. You might want to actually pay attention). And after the meeting, most of the premiers made their own individual points about how they want so many more resources poured into their province (such as more RCMP members that don’t exist because they can’t recruit and train them fast enough, or retain them in the toxic culture of the Force), but Smith remains particularly stubborn in trying to leverage this into foregoing the emissions cap and trying to say that Trudeau shouldn’t be leading the effort to defend Canada (again, to her benefit).

Meanwhile, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took a much more aggressive stance with threatened retaliation (which Trudeau has thus far not threatened, preferring a “methodical” approach). Sheinbaum had a call with Trump and basically pledged to keep doing what they were already doing, and Trump declared victory, so maybe Canada will do the same? Trudeau has talked about strengthening border measures, which has been an ongoing process, particularly since the amendment of the Safe Third Country Agreement, so maybe that too will be enough to get Trump to declare victory? I guess we shall see, but in the meantime, we’ll see how many premiers can keep their cool.

Ukraine Dispatch

Explosions were heard in Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne and Lutsk amid reports of a cruise missile attack last night. Three were wounded in a drone attack on Kyiv the night before. Russian forces claim to have taken the settlement of Nova Illinka in Donetsk region. Germany’s intelligence chief says that Russian sabotage in NATO countries could trigger Article 5.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1861772687229501452

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Roundup: Telling the premiers no

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The prime minister met with the premiers (virtually) yesterday, and while there was talk about the vaccine roll-out and that kind of good stuff, there was also a discussion about healthcare transfers – or more specifically, the premiers’ demand for some $28 billion in permanent new transfers with no strings attached. Justin Trudeau, to his credit, said no – or more specifically, he does see a role for the federal government to pay more, but now is not the time to discuss how much, and you can bet that it’s going to come with plenty of strings for new programmes that the federal government wants to launch, like pharmacare and national standards for long-term care.

There are a few things to remember about why there need to be strings attached to this money. One is that we can’t trust that provinces will actually spend this on healthcare, and lo, we have precedence for this. Prior to the Harper government capping the health transfer escalator at three percent or GDP growth (whichever was higher), healthcare spending increases by the provinces were far below what the health transfer escalator was – meaning that the provinces were not spending healthcare money on healthcare. Additionally, some of you may remember when Stephen Harper fell for Jean Charest’s bogus demands to address a “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and Quebec, so when Harper – desperate for Quebec votes – turned over a pile of money to Charest to address said bogus “imbalance,” Charest turned around and turned that into tax cuts, burning Harper in the process. On top of that, we have seen plenty of provinces during this pandemic alone just sitting on the money the federal government gave them to deal with it. So no, we should not trust that provinces will spend it wisely.

As well, the premiers have been misrepresenting the history of health transfers, citing the “it used to be 50-50” line, without acknowledging why it changed, which was to give the provinces tax points that they could use for healthcare or other programmes. There is a great thread here that you should all read that spells it out, and why we should take these provincial (and Bloc, NDP and now Conservative) talking points with a shaker of salt, because they’re misrepresenting history.

Last sitting day

Given that this is the last sitting day of 2020, I suspect that we may see a unanimous consent motion to pass a number of bills in one fell swoop before the Commons rises, being the UK trade deal bill, the Elections Act bill, and quite possibly the fiscal update implementation bill. Why those three? There are worries about trade disruptions if the UK trade implementation bill doesn’t get passed by December 31st, and this essentially just rolls over the existing CETA with the EU, so there would be very little that is contentious in this bill. With the elections bill, it is also relatively uncontentious, based on Elections Canada’s input that would allow for a pandemic election to have three voting days and extra advanced polling, plus some other changes for things like long-term care facilities and increased mail-in ballots – and since it needs 90 days from royal assent to come into effect, parties will want it to pass as quickly as possible. And as for the implementation bill, it contains both a fix for a flaw in the commercial rent assistance programme that they didn’t amend, plus has other pandemic supports, and again, they will want it passed as soon as possible. Of course, this means once again that there is plenty of spending that didn’t get scrutiny, and it jams the Senate by pushing a bunch of bills on them without time to give it proper study or the ability to move amendments, but this is becoming a hallmark of this parliament.

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Roundup: A reasoned amendment

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Something very usual happened in the Senate yesterday, in that Independent Senator Kim Pate decided to move a reasoned amendment to the government’s supply bill. A reasoned amendment is basically a procedural move to decline to give a bill second reading, meaning you don’t even agree with the bill in principle. This is a very rare move, and the fact that this is being used on a supply bill is a sign that this is a senator who is playing with fire.

You don’t mess around with supply bills. This is about money the government needs to operate, and if it fails, they can’t just keep funding government operations with special warrants. It’s going to be a giant headache of having to recreate the bill in a way that isn’t identical to the one that just passed (because you can’t pass two identical bills in the same session), go through the process again as the House is set to rise for the holidays (the Senate usually lags a few days later) is going to be a giant headache that is going to lose this senator any of the support she’s hoping to gain. Now, because the Senate isn’t a confidence chamber, defeating a money bill won’t make the government fall, but this is still a very bad precedent to try and set, or worse, given other newer senators ideas about how they should start operating.

There are plenty of objectionable aspects of this stunt of Pate’s – and yes, it is a stunt – but part of it is misunderstanding what that the supply bill is not about new pandemic aid programmes – it’s about keeping the civil service functioning. Her particular concern that 3.5 million people remain the poverty line is commendable, but Pate has been advocating for the government to implement a basic income for a while now, and a lot of people have been misled by the way in which the CERB was rolled out into thinking that this is a template for a basic income, which it’s not. And implementing a basic income – of which certain designs can be useful, but plenty which are not – is a complex affair if you talk to economists who have been working on the issue for years, not the least of which is that it’s going to require (wait for it…) negotiation with the provinces, because they deliver welfare programmes. And if Pate thinks that this kind of a stunt is going to force the government to suddenly implement one, she’s quite mistaken. I am forced to wonder who is giving her this kind of procedural advice, because she’s operating out of bounds, and asking for a world of procedural trouble. It’s fortunate that the Senate adjourned debate for the day shortly after she moved this motion so that others can regroup, but this is a worrying development for the “new” Senate.

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Roundup: The greater danger of spending too little

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Chrystia Freeland unveiled her first economic update yesterday, and much of it was predictable, from the size of the deficit (which every single news source focused on immediately, as though it were still 1995), to the lack of a fiscal anchor while we remain in the pandemic, to the promises for how to build back in a more inclusive and greener manner. One of Freeland’s major points was that there is a greater danger in not spending enough than there is in spending too much – particularly at a time of record low interest rates – and we saw this borne out in the last recession, where the Harper government withdrew stimulus too soon, and the Bank of Canada was forced to keep rates lower for longer and we had a consumer debt crisis as a result. There were “down payments” for the work of getting to national childcare, long-term care and the meeting climate targets, but those are also all areas where they need provincial buy-in, so that’s going to get interesting very fast, especially given the number of hostile premiers that are currently in office. There were also new programmes rolled out for tourism and live events, and plans to extend GST/HST to web giants.

Predictably, the opposition parties were unimpressed. Erin O’Toole spent his response speech lying about what has been done to date, set up a completely false revisionist history of the pandemic, and went on TV to moan that the government “overspent” on CERB – apparently not grasping that the point was to keep people at home so as not to spread the virus (ergo, the Conservative plan is apparently to force people back to work in unsafe conditions so that they can facilitate the spread of said virus). The NDP were also predictable in their demands for wealth and “excess profit” taxes, never mind that they are inchoate concepts that largely don’t work out in practice. This means that we get to go through yet another round of election speculation as people wonder if the opposition will gang up to bring the government down over the inevitable implementing legislation.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield remarks on the ambition in the fiscal update, and whether or not the government will have the ability to deliver on any of it. Kevin Carmichael bemoans the lack of a fiscal anchor, but does admit that Freeland is right in that there is a danger of spending too little, or withdrawing stimulus too early (like Stephen Harper did). Paul Wells is disquieted by the lack of details on big items in the update, as well as this government’s propensity to farm out tough decisions to people not in government – which is a problem.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1333534144752537600

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https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1333536562450055169

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1333537658740514819

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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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