Tag Archives: Mark Carney

Roundup: Not spelling out a non-binding motion

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The Conservatives spent their Supply Day yesterday calling for an “emergency” televised meeting with premiers on the carbon levy, which was full of the usual nonsense and false talking points about the effect the carbon levy is having on food affordability, or using the torqued numbers from the PBO report in a misleading way. Nevertheless, Pierre Poilievre was trying to make a point about Trudeau being somehow afraid to face the premiers, which is just more of his terminally online “Debate me!” energy going on, even though we all know this wouldn’t actually be a debate, it would be the premiers ganging up for the sake of them all gathering video clips for fundraising purposes.

This having been said, I find myself one again supremely irritated by how the CBC—and in particular a certain journalist in the CBC’s bureau—chose to write up the day’s activities, with the headline about the motion trying to “force” Trudeau to meet with the premiers. The motion is non-binding. It can’t force anything. All Supply Day motions are non-binding. But the headline seems to indicate that it could bind the government, and nowhere in the text of the piece does it point out that it’s non-binding. This is malpractice at this point, because it’s painting a completely false picture of what the debate was. The “debate”—and I use the term loosely because it was MPs reading twenty-minute speeches into the record—was posturing for the sake of gathering clips for social media. That’s all. And this particular writer has been on the Hill long enough that he should know this, but he has a habit of ignoring relevant facts about procedure or jurisdiction to try and lend weight to his pieces. It’s not cute, and it’s not doing anything for the CBC’s reputation.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine says that they downed 20 attack drones overnight, though there was still infrastructure damage in the west of the country. Ukraine is trying to repair and shield their power systems after the recent spate of attacks. A retaliatory strike inside of Russia hit an aviation factory in the Voronezh region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited fortifications in the Kharkiv region, while the Americans are offering to send seized Iranian weapons, and to sell them $138 million USD air defence upgrades.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1777666453950337220

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Roundup: More of a stage than an institution

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The House of Commons is back today after the Christmas break, and you can pretty much guarantee that there will be a level of awfulness to the discourse, because that’s where things are right now. In fact, when asked over the weekend, former prime minister Joe Clark correctly noted that the House of Commons is “more a stage than an institution” these days. You’ve heard me bang on about this more times than I can count, but it bears repeating—MPs are no longer debating ideas. They are reciting prepared talking points into the record, because those are being used to generate clips for social media. It’s not even for the benefit of news media anymore, like it used to be (which caused its own particular problems with how QP works), because they all think they can just bypass legacy media and speak directly to their own audiences over their socials.

It’s no longer politics—it’s theatre. Bad theatre. The kind where people can’t even memorise their lines, but are full-on reading the script in front of them during the performance, not even on cue-cards that are far enough in the distance, and most of them can’t even be ashamed of their own amateurishness as they adhere to their party’s message, do what is expected of them, and continue to pretend that this is all normal.

And that’s why our democracy is in trouble.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Security officials in Ukraine say that defence ministry officials conspired with employees from an arms firm to embezzle nearly $40 million that was earmarked to buy mortar shells. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has disclosed his own income as part of a drive for transparency and combatting corruption.

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Roundup: One great backbencher

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Following his unsuccessful run to lead the Ontario Liberal Party, Liberal backbencher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has confirmed he’s not running in the next election, which is a very big shame. Erskine-Smith has been the kind of backbencher that we need a lot more of in this country, which is to say someone who’s not afraid to rock the boat a little, and to vote against his own party from time to time on matters of principle. That’s exceedingly rare in Canadian politics, and mostly happens only among the Liberals in recent parliaments—Conservatives have a desire to show they’re in lockstep, and the NDP will quietly punish MPs who don’t show continued “solidarity” (and you’d better believe they have an internal bullying culture).

This being said, I’m was not sure that Erskine-Smith would have made a great party leader provincially. While he brought great ideas to the campaign, my concern would be whether someone like that, who wasn’t afraid of rocking the boat from a backbench position, could maintain that energy sustainably in a leadership role, particularly because of the number of compromises that leadership in politics entails. It makes it harder to maintain the kinds of principled positions that he has been able to take, particularly on areas where sitting governments can find themselves getting uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps he could have made it work in leadership and brought a fresh energy to provincial politics the way he’s managed to make a particularly necessary contribution federally. Regardless, I hope he has inspired other backbenchers to take more changes and go against the party line from time to time, because we desperately need it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 22 out of 33 Russian drones launched overnight Thursday, which hit residential neighbourhoods in the southern city of Kherson, and the nearby community of Beryslav. Ukrainian forces also claim to have hit targets in St. Petersburg, which travelled 1250 km to get there. Russian forces claim to have taken over a settlement called Vesele in Ukraine’s east. Meanwhile, six settlements are being rebuilt under the rubric that economies win wars, but they are only building essentials like housing and hospitals, and not libraries or museums.

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Roundup: Keeping up the blame-shifting

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Another day, another reminder that the premiers are engaging in blame-shifting around rising crime rates, while they pretend that this is all the fault of the federal government allegedly making changes to the bail system a couple of years ago. It’s wrong—the uptick started before that bill passed, and that bill merely codified Supreme Court of Canada rulings while actually increasing conditions and added a reverse onus for domestic violence accusations.

The federal justice minister, who has committed to some targeted changes to bail laws, keeps pointing out that this is a more complex issue, much of it revolving around mental health. And guess whose job that is? The provinces! Not only have they been under-funding it, but they largely didn’t use the last mental health transfer, negotiated by Jane Philpott, on mental health, which is why Carolyn Bennett has seen the promised mental health transfer be part of the bilateral agreements with provinces on increased health spending that will have more strings attached. To add to that, provinces are also under-funding their justice systems, and you have provinces like Manitoba where the Crown prosecutors are grieving with their employers because they’re short-staffed, over-worked and under-paid. That’s not the federal government’s fault.

But premiers don’t like to be reminded that this is their failure. They’re eager to try and cast the blame elsewhere and count on credulous media to both-sides their claims so that they won’t actually be called out on their bullshit, and the federal Conservatives are happy to amplify their blame-shifting because it gives them an issue to fundraise on. We have problems in our system, but we also have solutions, but those responsible for implementing them would rather pretend it’s not their problem. We shouldn’t let them get away with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles are again being fired at Ukrainian cities early in the morning, and Ukrainian air defences around Kyiv appear to be holding. Over in Bakhmut, Russian forces are claiming four more blocks of territory, but Ukraine still controls the key supply route into the city. Two Ukrainian drones destroyed the fuel depot at Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, giving another sign the counter-offensive is near. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that he carries a pistol with him, and was prepared to fight to the death if Russian forces had taken his headquarters.

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Roundup: Singh has a list of demands

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In the wake of his party’s post-election first caucus meeting, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh held a press conference yesterday to do a bit of chest-thumping and pretend that he holds some kind of balance of power in the forthcoming parliament, or that he can play kingmaker. If anything, he undermined his own position with his list of demands, because he doesn’t have any real leverage. His party is substantially weakened after the election, particularly given that they spent all kinds of money and gained a single seat out of it, and they are likely in debt once again and in no shape to go to another campaign anytime soon – especially if they want to figure out what they did wrong and have time to course-correct.

As for his list of demands, we are back to a lot of the usual nonsense where Singh doesn’t seem to grasp implementation – or jurisdiction. To wit:

  • Paid sick leave – that is being expanded to ten days for federally-regulated workers, but that’s only six percent of the workforce. The rest is provincial.
  • Halting clawbacks from GIS for seniors who accessed CERB – the GIS is means-tested and meant for the poorest of seniors, so it’s not surprising that CERB or other benefits could impact the means test.
  • Clean drinking water in Indigenous communities – this is in progress. Willpower won’t make it go faster.
  • A federal vaccine document for internal travel – this cannot happen unless provinces sign on, and until a couple of weeks ago, there were provinces still hostile to the very notion. The federal government cannot unilaterally create such a document because the provinces control vaccination data.
  • Dropping the appeal of the Human Rights Tribunal decision in the First Nations Child and Family Services case – this may yet happen given how completely the Federal Court decision against them last week was, but there were legitimate issues being litigated regardless that compensation is already being negotiated, irrespective of a further appeal.
  • Demanding higher health transfers – the federal government fully plans to negotiate those, but it won’t be without strings, especially as certain provinces sat on the pandemic-related transfers and put them towards their bottom lines rather than spending them on the pandemic.

As for Singh’s threat to “withhold votes” if he doesn’t get his way, it’s a bit curious what he means. Does he mean he would vote against bills including the budget implementation bill for the fall economic update, which would have plenty of additional pandemic supports or items he supports? Or does he mean he’d simply not vote, which would mean the Liberals wouldn’t need to get Bloc support to pass their measures (which they would likely get as the Bloc also are in no position to go to another election). Because if it’s the latter, then he’s basically made himself irrelevant for the foreseeable future.

Programming note: I am taking the full long weekend off from blogging. See you next week!

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Roundup: Carney out, no need to panic

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To the dismay of the bulk of the pundit class, Mark Carney says he has other climate-related commitments and won’t be running for a seat in the next election. In response, Pierre Poilievre tweeted that Carney is afraid of running because Trudeau will cause a financial meltdown, and Carney will try to blame it on Freeland. It’s just so stupid, and yet this is the state of public discourse in this country.

To be clear, there is no financial meltdown going to happen. Yes, there are challenges that need to be addressed, but let’s be real here.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1417623876880588800

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1417625158450225153

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Roundup: Exit McKenna

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It’s now official – Catherine McKenna is bowing out of federal politics, citing that she wants to spend more time with her kids while she can (the oldest is off to university next year), but insisting that she still wants to do her part to fight climate change in other arenas. This was immediately met with questions about whether this is a signal that it can’t get done in government, which she flat-out denied, but we should remember that the federal government is limited in what it can do, because it only has so many policy levers at its disposal (which we should all realise after living through those limitations in this pandemic).

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1409621322649440256

McKenna, who also stated flat-out that she’s not going to run for mayor, dismissed the attacks against her as “noise,” and that they weren’t successful because she did the work of getting the carbon price in place, and made more tangible progress on the environment file than we’ve had since the Mulroney era. But we can’t forget that the abuse was real, it was horrific, and she needed police protection because the threats were so bad. This should be one of those moments of reflection about where we are as a society that these kinds of misogynistic are able to keep happening with little to no recourse for the victims, and few consequences if any for the perpetrators. McKenna did note that she does still want to work with social media companies to address this, but we’ll see if anything actually happens.

https://twitter.com/cathmckenna/status/1409522139380785157

Of course, this has entirely been overshadowed by the spectre of Mark Carney entering the political arena, which he categorically should not, because even if he’s been out of the Bank of Canada for seven or eight years, it still has the possibility to taint the institution by association, and him declaring himself to be sympathetic to the Liberal cause is not helping either – especially given that Pierre Poilievre is currently attacking the institutional independence of the Bank by positing that they are somehow in cahoots with the government, and that they are simply “printing money” to finance the government’s deficits which will drive up inflation – entirely ridiculous notions given that quantitative easing is not actually “printing money” and that their whole mandate is to control inflation at around two percent, which they have been very good at. Nevertheless, people are believing Poilievre’s bullshit (especially as other media won’t actually call it out as such), and this will only get worse if Carney actually enters the political arena. And because the media and the pundit class have decided that they like this narrative of Carney being some kind of heir apparent and saviour, they are trying to make it happen, damn the consequences. It’s not a good look, and yet here we are.

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Roundup: A flawed way to fix the CRA’s mistakes

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Remember the issue with self-employed Canadians applying for CERB, and being told they were eligible for gross income only to later be told that no, it was really net, and they may have to repay it? And then the government came to the realization that they were going to find themselves in serious trouble (such as a class action lawsuit) if they didn’t change course, and let those CERB payments go ahead? Well, for the people who made repayments, they can get that money back – but they have to apply for it. And that becomes the real trick.

With that in mind, here is Jennifer Robson raising some concerns with the whole thing, because CRA is not doing this very well. And that could be a problem for some of the people this is supposed to have been helping in the first place.

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QP: Confusing rapid and PCR tests

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For a Thursday with no ministers in the chamber, we had not one but two Liberals on the government benches — Mark Gerretsen, and Francis Drouin. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he complained there wasn’t a national rapid testing regime like Taiwan has, and then complained about the contract with Switch Health at the border. Patty Hajdu reminded him that he was conflating rapid tests – which they sent to provinces – with the PCR tests that Switch was contracted to perform at the border, and that if was worried about rapid tests, he should talk to premiers. O’Toole complained that Switch was missing its timelines in one in six cases, and 5000 cases that failed. Hajdu noted that those tests take longer because they’re PCR tests, and they were bringing on more corporate partners. O’Toole accused the government of changing the law rather than the company when it came to missing certain days, and Hajdu insisted this was incorrect, and that they were doing full due diligence to ensure travellers were protected. O’Toole then switched to French to repeat his first question, and Hajdu reiterate that O’Toole was conflating rapid tests with PCR tests, and that they are used differently. O’Toole then condemned the lack services in French at the border with Switch Health, and Hajdu agreed that this was essential, which is why Switch doubled their French capacity and they added another supplier.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she complained that the motion on Bill 96 didn’t pass, and wanted assurances that the province could use Section 45 of the constitution to make the changes — which is a trap. Mélanie Joly assured her that they were working to protect the French reality in Canada. Normandin assured her that this wasn’t a trap, and wanted those assurances, and Joly again would not give her the assurance she was looking for.

Jagmeet Singh led rose for the NDP in French, and he demanded the federal government stop banks from raising fees, for which Chrystia Freeland went into an assurance about the taxes on luxury goods. Singh repeated in English to add emphasis to the same question, and Freeland repeated the same talking points under the rubric of people paying their fair share.

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Roundup: Contrasting convention speeches

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The Liberal and NDP conventions went ahead “virtually” over the weekend, and from the sounds of it, the Liberals’ went smoothly, while the NDP’s was derided as glitchy, and delegates complained there was little opportunity for actual debate. For his convention speech, Justin Trudeau went hard at Erin O’Toole – befitting the partisan nature of the event – calling the Conservatives “disconnected,” going after their use of disinformation to score points, and pointing out that they would not have been willing to use government resources to help people get through the pandemic through mechanisms like CERB. He also encouraged people to reach out to neighbours, and tell them the Good Word of their lord and saviour Justin Trudeau about the plan the Liberals are building. As for policy resolutions, the party voted for several propositions around Basic Income, but also rejected policy planks to raise certain taxes, so that says a lot about where the party is at in their thought process.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1380926399725371398

For the NDP, after their policy resolutions (including $20 federal minimum wage) were dealt with – with much grumbling from the membership – Jagmeet Singh gave his speech, wherein he claimed that the only reason that the Liberals helped people in the pandemic was because the NDP forced them to (which would only be believable if you paid no attention at all to the Liberals’ willingness to spend any amount of money), and then made a bunch of false claims about pharmacare, and imported some American Democrat talking points about the ultra-wealthy. So, pretty standard for Singh.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert tries to tamp down some of the leadership speculation around Mark Carney by pointing out some realities of what that contest could look like. Susan Delacourt noticed that Justin Trudeau’s speech at their convention was much more embracing of Liberal history than he has been in the past. Delacourt also tried to divine what kinds of electoral priorities were to come out of the convention speeches by the two leaders. Paul Wells remarks on the lack of discussion about actual choices at the Liberal convention – which is a very important point, because parliamentary time is finite, as are money and resources, and if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority, and it seems to be the case that Liberals are not getting that message.

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