Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: The shuffle and the kabuki responses

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The Cabinet shuffle happened, and four ministers had a change in portfolio, with eight new faces joining the ranks. Nothing is too much of a surprise here—David McGuinty did get public safety, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith got housing as was expected and that means he is going to run again. Anita Anand is now solely transport but also got “interprovincial trade,” which is interesting. There is no minister from Alberta, as George Chahal remains tainted (and has been vocal in calling for a secret ballot in caucus on Trudeau’s future), so Terry Duguid from Winnipeg is pretty much it for the prairie representative. In some respects, this may be a “caretaker” Cabinet as the leadership question remains in the air, or it could have a short shelf-life, as threats of non-confidence circle ever-closer. It doesn’t solve any problems, it doesn’t really put a fresh face on government, and the only thing that can do that is for Trudeau to make as graceful an exit as possible, because the number of MPs who are publicly against him continues to grow, and he could very well be pushed by the next caucus meeting.

Trudeau does keep saying he wants MPs to be the "voice of their ridings in Ottawa"…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-20T16:36:01.558Z

Amidst this, Jagmeet Singh decided to publish an open letter to say that he was ready to vote non-confidence in the government, but…blamed them for things that are completely within provincial jurisdiction, like healthcare and building housing. But more to the point, this is more performance art after he got called out by absolutely everyone for his “all options are on the table” equivocation, and this letter also didn’t specify that he would seek to vote them out at the first opportunity, so he has wiggle room. Trudeau may yet prorogue (but most likely if he does decide to step down), and if a new leader is chosen before Parliament comes back, Singh can always prevaricate and equivocate yet again about giving said new leader a chance, or something else like that. This is just more of the kabuki theatre that Canadian politics has descended into.

And Jagmeet Singh wants to rush us into the Poilievre era. Great.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-20T17:53:04.092Z

And then to top it all off (and possibly to try and call Singh’s bluff), Pierre Poilievre called a press conference to say that he wrote a letter to the Governor General so that she can “reconvene” parliament and demand a confidence vote. Erm, except we’re not prorogued, so Parliament is merely adjourned and not suspended, and it’s at the call of the Speaker to recall the House on a non-sitting week, not the Governor General. Never mind that the government just survived a series of confidence votes, this is deliberate obfuscation and confusion of our system, and no doubt he will attack the GG if she doesn’t accede to his request (which she can’t, because it’s not in her powers to do so). Poilievre is deliberately misleading people about how our system operates so that he can claim that constitutional safeguards are illegitimate if anyone tries to use them against him. Aspiring autocrats love to weaken the guardrails, and Poilievre is engaged in a very concerted effort to do that right now.

Programming Note: This is it for 2024, barring some major news happening. Loonie Politics content will continue on its usual schedule, but the blog is on holiday because the burnout is real. Thanks for sticking with me all year, and we’ll see you in 2025.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck Kyiv in the morning rush hour, killing at least one person and damaging a historic cathedral. Ukrainian forces needed to pull back from two locations in the eastern Donetsk region, lest they become encircled. Here is a look at some of the people staying in Pokrovsk, in spite of Russia’s advance.

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Roundup: Cabinet Shuttle Day today

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau will be shuffling his Cabinet today, and you can bet that there are a whole lot of competing narratives about it. On the one hand, many of these appointments are necessary, because you currently have a few ministers who are doing double or triple duty with complex files, and they need to have some of the load taken off so that government can still operate smoothly, despite the political crisis around Trudeau’s political future. On the other hand, there is a sense that this is Trudeau buying time, that he’s trying to secure dissenting voices’ support, and that these carrots he’s been dangling can bear some fruit among a caucus who is turning against him. Then again, making the shuffle means he loses that last bit of leverage with backbenchers who are calling for his ouster, so we’ll see which narrative winds up winning.

The buzz is that David McGuinty will be getting public safety, which may be a good fit because he may be in a position to implement the recommendations made from the NSICOP reports that he helped author as chair of the committee (but it is also a loss for the said committee with his departure, and the loss of Senator Francis Lankin as the other longest-serving member). It also sounds like Nathaniel Erskine-Smith will get housing, on the proviso that he will run again in the next election after previously saying he was going to bow out, but I also suspect that this will be tough because he can no longer be the maverick truth-teller he was in the backbenches, and will have to follow the PMO line (though he may also prove an effective communicator on the file to counter Poilievre’s bullshit). There is also talk that Rachel Bendayan, Terry Duguid and Darren Fisher will also be getting positions.

Amidst this, the Globe and Mail is reporting on contradictory rumours about Trudeau’s thoughts on his political future—one source saying he’s ready to go and is figuring out his exit plan, another source saying that he’s determined to stay put, with a third source saying he was ready to go but that Dominic LeBlanc and Marc Miller talked him out of it, and that Katie Telford is ensuring that he hears from supporters and not dissenters. It remains a chaotic mess, but one can only hope that the first source is correct, and that he is trying to figure out an exit strategy, because his remaining in office is untenable.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile killed three and wounded three more in Kharkiv, while another missile hit a residence in Kryvyi Rih, injuring five. Russia also carried out a massive cyberattack on Ukrainian government registries.

This has been clear for many months. If Putin wants to negotiate, he can stop fighting anytime. And negotiate. He is the obstacle to peace, not Zelensky, and has been since the beginning of the war. Still not heard Trump explain what leverage he will use to make him stop

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2024-12-19T11:01:48.050Z

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Roundup: On the policing of Trudeau’s feminism

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One of the sub-plots around the lead-up to Chrystia Freeland’s resignation was the continued policing of feminism by the Conservatives, because it’s in their interests to dismiss Justin Trudeau as a “fake feminist.” The CBC has a whole write-up about how gender was never mentioned in the letter but is being used as an attack line. I’m inclined to agree with University of Calgary’s Melanee Thomas, cited in the piece, who notes that the only real gendered element was the “frustration” that qualified women can experience when men in power dismiss their advice.

I have to say, though, that the piece lacks some of the specific comments that the Conservatives made, and chose some of the tamer quotes rather than the unhinged ones, where Freeland was belittled as someone who apparently had no agency in order to attack Trudeau, which seems like a really interesting way to defend her, but also not really defend her. My absolute favourite was Leslyn Lewis standing up to declare that she wasn’t a token, with the obvious implication that Freeland was, which again, is hard to square with defending her honour (but not really) by insisting that she had no qualifications and was only there as a quota. It was pretty grotesque, and also a little delusional, because if there is anyone who is more likely to be a token, it’s Lewis, who is a crazy conspiracy theorist who shouldn’t hold a portfolio and yet does, and sits in Poilievre’s camera shot for quite obvious reasons.

One of the most common refrains from the Conservatives as they have tried to denigrate Trudeau’s feminism, as performative as it might be, is that they keep insisting that women and minorities in their caucus all earned their places, but any in the Liberal ranks were all token diversity picks, which is incredibly dismissive, and just perpetuates the very notions that straight white men are the only ones who can really be considered “qualified” without question. It makes it really, really hard to take the feminism-policing from those who continue to push that kind of a narrative, whether they think that’s what they’re doing or not.

Ukraine Dispatch

South Korean intelligence suggests that at least 100 North Korean troops in the Kursk region have been killed so far, another 1000 have bene injured in combat, and that they are struggling with drone warfare. Here is a look at why Russia is so eager to take Pokrovsk. A combined Ukrainian missile and drone strike damaged an oil refinery in the Rostov region. Russia alleges that Ukraine has used white phosphorus in attacks, which Ukraine denies and says Russia is the one who used it.

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Roundup: Can you “reflect” without a sense of self-awareness?

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If there’s a theme in the fallout from Chrystia Freeland’s resignation, it’s a complete lack of self-awareness as to what is going on. While Justin Trudeau apparently spent the day “reflecting,” he gave a speech at the big Liberal Christmas party that…was basically his usual stump speech, prefaced with the line “Like most families, sometimes we have fights around the holidays. But of course, like most families, we find our way through it.” It’s completely tone-deaf for what just happened, and pretends that he didn’t reward his deputy with betrayal and telling her that he was going to replace her with Mark Carney when that apparently wasn’t even fully lined up (which would have been incredibly unworkable as Carney doesn’t have a seat, and would be waaaaaay too busy as finance minister at this particular moment to run in a by-election, particularly given that the Liberals no longer have safe seats). Trudeau is bad with contrition, but this is next level. Oh, and then he cancelled all of his year-end interviews with news outlets, so he doesn’t want to face any questions for everything that went down either, whether that’s because he wants to convince himself that everything is still fine, or he knows it’s not and doesn’t want to he reminded of it. Either way, it’s just one more sign of how the wheels have come off, and it’s time to go.

Meanwhile, there are MPs and former party operatives who think that Freeland should be the leader, because she is an intellectual heavyweight, and while I don’t disagree that she has the brains, she has proven to be a charisma black hole, and lacks the retail politics instinct that leadership requires. (And for the record, I don’t think that Mark Carney possesses the retail politics qualities either, or the patience to lead the party through the wilderness of opposition years and rebuilding).

And it wasn’t just Trudeau and the Liberals who are without any self-awareness. Poilievre held a press conference in Mississauga, and gave the line “if you hire clowns, you get a circus.” I mean, has he looked at, or listened to himself or his caucus? Ever? We are so screwed as a country.

Refers to pretty much everyone right now in #cdnpoli.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T15:50:37.076Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has been intensifying their attacks both in the parts of Kursk region that Ukraine occupies, and along Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Ukrainian intelligence apparently killed a Russian general responsible for the use of chemical weapons in a “special operation.” Ukraine also says they uncovered twelve agents working for Russia trying to determine the locations of their F-16 fighters and other air defences. And NATO is taking over coordination of military aid for Ukraine from the US, before Donald Trump comes to power.

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Roundup: Freeland drops a grenade

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The day began with a grenade. Chrystia Freeland published her resignation letter on social media, pulled the pin, and let it explode in Trudeau’s lap. Just hours before she was supposed to deliver the fiscal update, she very publicly disagreed with his “political gimmicks” and the fact that it became clear that he was looking out more for his political survival than the good of the country, and said that he told her he wasn’t going to keep her in the portfolio but offered her another one, which she decided to decline.

It’s hard to fathom just how absolutely boneheaded Trudeau’s move was, to have her accept a demotion but still read a political document whose direction she had concerns with. And as for the portfolio he was going to give her, it was apparently a “Canada/US relations” portfolio with no department attached, meaning no levers of power to actually do anything in the role—it would be strictly ceremonial, and she was perfectly within her rights to reject that as a slap in the face after everything she has done for Trudeau, and been loyal this whole time.

Minister without Portfolio & no officials / no levers is not a real jobYou are being asked to bake the cookies for the team retreat.

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T17:36:13.151Z

Big #cdnpoli vibes today.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T01:16:13.508Z

Her departure, and the way she did it, sent the government scrambling. There was supposed to be a lock-up for journalists for the Fiscal Update, but it ended up being postponed while the Cabinet figured out what the hell to do, and if someone was going to read the document in the Commons. The rumours were that the back-up finance minister (according to the Order of Precedence), François-Philippe Champagne refused, as did Anita Anand, but I’m not sure what to think of those. In the end, there was no speech, merely a document tabled by the House Leader (who had just spent 45 minutes eating shit on Trudeau’s behalf in QP), and Dominic LeBlanc was shuttled over to Rideau Hall for an emergency swearing-in to add finance to his already too-long list of portfolios. From there, Trudeau went to an emergency caucus meeting as several of his MPs were renewing vocal calls for him to step down. In the end, he didn’t, but apparently the question remains open and he plans to “reflect” over the holidays. Oh, and all that talk about Mark Carney? Yeah, it’s not happening (because it never made any gods damned sense), so maybe stop talking about him already.

I have to wonder how Poilievre/Scheer/Hallan, et al., are going to spin the fact that Carney is not, in fact, taking over in finance. Do they claim credit, saying that they successfully warded him off? Do they pretend they never insisted this was a done deal? Which lie will be the lie they tell?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T04:14:25.455Z

And as if that wasn’t enough, Trudeau then headed to the annual holiday party of the Laurier Club—the party’s top donors—and somewhat shrugged off the day’s events, repeatedly saying that Canada is the best country in the world. We’re in for some rough waters ahead, and I don’t know how Trudeau can possibly stay on at this point.

Throughout all of this, Jagmeet Singh took the opportunity to beclown himself, by demanding that Trudeau step down, but when asked if he would vote non-confidence, stated that “all options are on the table.” In other words, his party is not ready for an election, and will swallow themselves whole to prevent one while they try and look tough while they shit-talk the government at every opportunity. It’s farcical, but what do you expect from the current state of Canadian politics?

The fiscal update

After all of the drama, the update was released, albeit with no speech in the Chamber, which the Conservatives caterwauled mightily about. There weren’t many surprises, other than the fact that last year’s deficit was larger than expected because the government booked a bunch of legal settlements—primarily for the Indigenous communities—onto last year’s books (which is probably also why the Public Accounts have been delayed). These were one-time costs, so that means the deficit can continue to decline in the future, and economist Armine Yalnizyan noted that this was essentially a gift to the next government because it’s off their books, and they can make it look like they were more prudent managers when that’s not necessarily the case. Nevertheless, the government didn’t try to tease or hint that this was coming, which really makes you wonder about whoever is trying to decide on their communications strategy.

The Logic has a good summary of the document, and it is confirmed that Terry Fox will be on the new $5 banknotes, while Laurier will be shuffled up to the $50 (and I believe Sir John A Macdonald will take over the $100). The NDP, meanwhile, are disappointed there are no new social programmes in said budget, because of course they are.

How great is this, Terry Fox will be on the 5 dollar bill.#Canadianlegend

— Rick Dhaliwal (@dhaliwalsports.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T00:33:46.874Z

The biggest ticket item in the FES is the extension of the Accelerated Investment Incentive. This is a huge deal. This allows companies to save taxes when they invest, and only when they invest. It will cost $17.9B in foregone revenue over the next 6 fiscal years.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T21:44:13.179Z

Next, debt to GDP. We put on some debt during the pandemic. (Which was the right thing to do!) We have now knocked a few points off it. (Which is the right thing to do!). I'm hoping to see this trend continue in the FES. (It's the right thing to do!)We are nowhere near 1995 levels. This is fine.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T19:00:55.197Z

Finally, here's the deficit to GDP. As a rough line, I'm pretty comfortable so long as the defict is under 2% of GDP. (We can run deficits of that size forever and still have Debt/GDP fall. Sustainable fiscal policy is about Debt/GDP.)

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T19:14:29.334Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian and American intelligence both say that North Korean troops have been killed alongside Russians in fighting in the Kursk region. A Ukrainian drone has destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the occupied parts of Donetsk region. Ukraine is claiming that they have a laser weapon that can down aerial weapons at a range of 2 km.

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Roundup: A grubby way to extend a non-story

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The Globe and Mail’s ongoing pursuit of this story of alleged “tensions” between Chrystia Freeland and the PMO amidst the courting of Mark Carney continue to confound. While none of the substance of these stories actually make sense if you think about it for more than twenty seconds, as I point out in my weekend column, what I find particularly grubby is the way the Globe has been carrying on the story.

To recap, they started with this rather bullshit non-story about these “tensions,” which weren’t actually news because there are always tensions between a PM or Cabinet and a finance minister, because they have to say no to all kinds of grand spending plans. It as a non-story based on gossip and some “strategic” leaks that don’t actually serve any purpose, but they insisted this had ten sources, so it must be credible, but it’s hard to get a sense of what they actually said that would make this something that is actually news. The Globe then followed up with a story saying there’s a fresh attempt to recruit Mark Carney amidst these “tensions,” and the Conservatives put two and two together, and created this delusional scenario about Trudeau somehow throwing Freeland “under the bus” before he replaces her, which was not in the story, but they created this fever dream while simultaneously policing feminism, belittling Freeland while claiming Trudeau was bullying her (and also claiming that they don’t do tokenism in their party, which is laughable). It was pretty gross to watch.

So, what does the Globe do? Write up these fevered delusions as though they’re actually news, and then sends reporters to Freeland’s presser to have her respond to these bizarre, delusional accusations the Conservatives dreamed up, extending the non-story even further. In essence, they set the cat among the pigeons and then spend days writing about the aftermath, all of which is chasing phantoms, rumours, delusions, and frankly, misogynistic outbursts. I have a really hard time with this kind of “journalism,” which feels more masturbatory than it does ethical or in the service of educating the public. I get that they’re doing this for clicks, but it’s pretty icky, especially given how much misogyny has flowed from it.

Surveying the #cdnpoli landscape:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-13T14:33:23.449Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a massive aerial attack on Ukraine on Friday, with 93 cruise and ballistic missiles, and more than 200 drones, targeting more critical infrastructure. Russian forces are also continuing their march toward strategic city of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian drones hit a fuel storage facility in central Russia, while the new head of Ukraine’s ground forces says he plans major improvements to troop training, management, and recruitment to help deal with manpower shortages. Ukraine also announced it was planning to send food aid to Syria because Russia has cut them off from the aid they were providing.

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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: Sympathy work for the far-right

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There are times when it becomes glaringly obvious that legacy media still has no idea how to cover the far-right, whether in the US or here in Canada, and once again, we have been let down precipitously. Yesterday, the CBC published a long sympathy piece about the two main ringleaders of the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” full of lots of photos, and it just once again goes back to how this continues to normalize these narratives. (And no, I’m not going to link to the piece for the sake of giving it hate clicks).

Big feature story by CBC doing sympathy work for those Convoy fucks, normalizing the far-right. Fuuuuuuck that.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-09T12:36:10.705Z

A lot of this falls back to the constant need by legacy media to both-sides everything, providing equal time and weight to narratives and concepts that don’t deserve or require equal weight, because it’s false or misleading, and doesn’t call anything out that can’t be couched in “opponents say” rather than just declaring that something is false, misleading, or batshit crazy. And this kind of sympathy work of showing that people who do very bad things are just misunderstood or are suffering because of the consequences of their actions just goes to make what they did more acceptable. It was the same with reporter who tracked down people who attacked them on January 6th and spent time with them, and did similar sympathy work, which just muddies the waters of the unacceptability of their actions, particularly if they feel a level of justification for their actions—in the case of these convoy organizers, they’re showing the boxes of thank-you cards they got from their adherents. Again, this is not only normalizing the far-right, but it is showing it in a sympathetic light. This is dangerous for legacy media to be doing, and there seems to be absolutely no critical thinking (or ethical considering) in what they think they’re doing, and what they inevitably end up doing is contributing to the erosion of democracy.

Meanwhile, the Star has a very good look at how far-right influencers have weaponized Canada as their cautionary tale, and how that has also in turn been changing perceptions in this country about ourselves, and most especially about the current government and the state of things. (I have a column on this later today). This was far better coverage of the far-right, but is still a bit tepid in the dangers of what these narratives can represent, particularly when it starts to normalize and excuse racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia, and how that is very much playing out in several provinces right now. This stuff needs to be explicitly called out, and nobody can do it effectively.

With a quick comment from me near the bottom. Canada has always been of a weird funhouse mirror for US politics. When Americans talk about Canada, they are almost always really talking about themselves. And some Canadian far-right influencers use that for their grift.

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T01:55:07.552Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2024-12-09T14:08:01.821Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he has approved increased funding for drone production for the war effort. Zelenskyy also says that Ukraine is open to having Western troops provide security once the fighting has stopped, provided that Ukraine is accepted into the European Union and NATO.

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Roundup: Parsing the dinner at Mar-a-Lago

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So much of the weekend was spent parsing what happened at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, particularly given that Justin Trudeau didn’t put out an official readout of the meeting (probably because Trump is not officially in government yet), while Trump posted about it on his social media where he called it “productive.” The takeaways appear to be that the tariffs threats cannot be avoided immediately, because Trump believes in them and wants to use them to balance the budget (good luck with that), but that we may be able to carve out exceptions. There was also talk about the border and fentanyl, according to Dominic LeBlanc, and talk about more drones and helicopters to patrol the border (but who knows where the helicopters and personnel will come from—we are not flush with excess capacity).

None of this was good enough for Pierre Poilievre, who took to the microphones on Sunday to claim that Trudeau went in a “position of weakness” (because that’s Poilievre’s go-to line these days), and lamented that Trudeau came home “empty-handed,” as though these things are done in a day, particularly with a mercurial chaos agent like Trump. Poilievre also says he wants a cap on asylum seekers, because he claims there are too many bad actors, and said he would allow a reprieve in the ongoing filibuster if there is a border plan that meets his approval on the table. But when asked what he would do different, Poilievre says he’s not the prime minister, and walked away. So…that happened.

In a fight between Canada and the US, with the incoming US President engaged in disinformation about the Canadian border, Pierre Poilievre sides with the US.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-01T19:19:43.012Z

Meanwhile, Doug Ford insists that the premiers are “unanimous” that they want us to accelerate defence spending to reach our NATO target sooner than later. No word yet on what fiscal demands they will give up from the federal government to reach that spending target faster (because the money has to come from somewhere).

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone hit a residential building in Ternopil overnight, killing one and injuring several others. Drones also targeted Kyiv the night previous, and killed three in a strike on Kherson. Russians claim to have overtaken the settlements of Illinka and Petrivka in Donetsk region. Ukraine says it will increase the use of unmanned ground vehicles over the coming year.

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Roundup: The GDP data and the “collapsing” economy

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Yesterday was the day that Statistics Canada released the quarterly GDP figures, and they were middling. The economy is sluggish, but 1.0% annualized growth in the quarter is growth, and it bears repeating that we have avoided a recession after the inflationary spike, so this is the “soft landing” that the Bank of Canada was aiming for. And because growth is sluggish, there is plenty of talk that the Bank will likely make another 50 basis point cut in December rather than 25.

The Conservatives rushed to make hay of these numbers, particularly the fact that per capita GDP fell by 0.4% over the quarter, which was the sixth quarterly decline. (Yes, there was revised data that pushed up growth and made the quarterly decline less pronounced for the past two years). And why has there been a decline in per capita GDP? Because at the end of the lockdowns, we ramped up immigration to combat labour shortages, and all of those new workers pushed up our growth enough to avoid a recession, and because the denominator has been increased faster than the numerator, it’s a pretty solid indication that the growth could very well be much stronger once we get it back on track. To that end, the Conservatives’ press release compared our non-annualised figures to the American annualised numbers to make ours look worse (they later issued a correction), and put out misleading tweets that blame Trudeau and not the 2014 collapse in oil prices for the so-called “economic vandalism” that they believe that simple line graphs show.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1862538994221031782

And then there was the absolute mendacity in Question Period. Michael Chong said that the estimated effect of Trump tariffs was less than what Trudeau has done (which is both false and stupid), and Corey Torchor, unbelievably, claimed that the StatsCan data showed that the economy was “collapsing,” and I wish I was making that up. In no way did any of that data indicate that there was anything resembling “collapse.” Sluggish, yes. Collapsing? How? Either the Conservatives are just outright lying with statistics, or they have no clue how to read GDP data (or maybe both). And the funny thing is that all of this concern about declining per capita GDP is a pretty de facto way of saying that they are cheering for an actual recession, which we would have had if we hadn’t juiced immigration the way we did. I wish this wasn’t so stupid, and I wish we had more journalists calling this out, but we don’t because “I was told there would be no math.”

This is incredibly mendacious framing.GDP per capita largely declined because of the influx of immigration, which staved off an actual recession. Saying that Trump tariffs would do less damage than the current government is both stupid and wrong.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T21:15:09.167Z

Tochor claims that StatsCan reported that our economy is “collapsing.”Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. He doesn’t know how to read GDP data and is going to just lie. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T16:37:05.538Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drone attacks hit residential buildings in Kyiv and Odesa, injuring eight. Ukrainian forces are facing a desertion crisis because of overstretched forces, psychological scarring, and the management of the war. Ukraine’s army chief is pledging more troops on the eastern front after visiting there. Here is a look at Ukrainians dismantling a thermal power plant before the Russians can advance on it.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1862448598702596345

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