Tag Archives: Omar Alghabra

Roundup: Those December job numbers

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The big, and well, only real news yesterday in Canada were the release of the job numbers from Statistics Canada, and they blew past expectations. Far beyond them. Analysts forecast somewhere between five and eight thousand new jobs in December, and instead there were 104,000, the vast majority of them full-time, and almost all in the private sector. The unemployment rate edged down further to five percent, which is just barely off of the record low of 4.9% we saw over the summer. This shows that the labour market is still incredibly tight, and the Bank of Canada’s estimation that this level is unsustainable and a sign there is still too much demand in the economy that it’s driving inflation, and it requires some rebalancing to ensure that those job numbers are more sustainable. There have been a lot of fairly torqued readings of Tiff Macklem’s comments, that unemployment needs to be higher to slow inflation, but I’m not sure that captures enough nuance in what he’s trying to say.

The point in the report about record high employment levels for core-aged women, particularly those with small children, is particularly important because of this government’s focus on child care deals with provinces. This is one of the points of it—getting more women into the workforce, and the programme pays for itself with all of the additional revenue generated by those women in the workforce. It may be too soon to draw the straight line between the child care deals and those women going back to work, because in most provinces, the fees have only just started falling, but it does point to why early learning and child care is important, because the tight labour market needs those core-aged women right now.

And then there is all of the talk of the “looming recession.” It still may not happen, and there could be a “soft landing” of slower growth while the labour market rebalances itself, but not negative growth or a significant increase in unemployment. And if there is a recession, it’s not likely to be one with too many job losses because of the tight labour market, and that could reduce some of the pressure, again, while the economy starts to rebalance itself to a more sustainable place. We’re not in the same place we were in previous economic downturns, so things could be very different this time around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 318:

In spite of Russia saying they were going to enact a thirty-six hour ceasefire for Orthodox Christmas, they nevertheless carried on shelling parts of Ukraine, because that’s who they are. They then said Ukraine was shelling them, but Ukraine didn’t agree to the ceasefire, so…

https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1611345077871284227

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1611339196391882752

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Roundup: On tight camera shots in the Commons

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One of the particular sub-plots of the interminable Speaker election south of the border is the discussion around camera angles on C-SPAN, and how suddenly they’re dynamic during this process. There’s a good explainer here about how the usual rules around tight shots are relaxed because this is considered a special event and not usual proceedings, and it normally only takes two or three hours and not three or four days, but that’s why suddenly they get to be much more dynamic about what they’re seeing.

This problem of camera angles is a familiar one here in Canada, where the directive, since about day two of televised proceedings in the House of Commons, has also been on tight shots, with no wide shots or reactions. This is at the behest of MPs themselves, who came up with these rules, in part because they’re convenient for them, but if you watch the very first televised Question Period, you’ll see wide shots and reactions, and it’s much more dynamic and engaging, and it’s something we should see more of. MPs, however, don’t want that. They like being able to fill camera shots (and frequently play musical chairs to do so, most especially on Fridays), because they don’t like to show how empty the Chamber is during non-QP debates, or on Fridays. They don’t like camera operators and CPAC producers to have the latitude of choosing shots in real-time, so they don’t allow it. It’s really too bad, because it could make for better viewing. That said, it’s also one of the reasons why I attend QP in person—so that I can see the full picture of what’s happening in the Chamber and not just the tight shots that obscure more than they illuminate.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 317:

While the Russians are proposing a truce over Orthodox Christmas, the Ukrainians reject it, saying that this is simply a cover to bring in more ammunition and troops to try and halt Ukrainian advances in the Donbas region. Meanwhile, American analysts suspect that one of Putin’s allies is trying to gain access to salt and gypsum mines near Bakhmut, which is why they are trying so hard to take it over.

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Roundup: Priority but not a priority

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There are officially three sitting days left for the House of Commons before they rise for the summer, and lo, the bill to reform mandatory minimum penalties is nowhere to be seen, in spite of the government saying it’s a priority. In fact, it’s still at second reading stage, meaning there’s no chance they’ll get it through at this point, in spite of their professed need to do this as a way of combatting systemic racism in the justice system. Nor has there been any debate on the bill to make some of the modernisation plans forced upon the courts by the pandemic to be more permanent (some of it very needed, other aspects a little less so).

The government, meanwhile, is introducing another bill today on a new disability support credit, after they tabled their bill to make changes to the Official Languages Act last week, and you can read this as either promises for an election platform, or a sign that they have plans they want to get to work on in the fall. This being said, it’s been deeply weird to have a sitting of Parliament go by without their being a metric tonne of justice-related legislation in the process, churning its way through both Chambers (and I was remarking in a forthcoming column that the fact that the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee isn’t already overloaded is virtually unheard of).

The procedural shenanigans that have dominated this sitting have been more acute than I’ve seen in all of my years on the Hill, and it’s meant a lot fewer bills making it over the goal line than we’ve seen in a very long time. The fact that you have private members’ bills outpacing government legislation is also virtually unprecedented. This whole session has been nothing but procedural warfare, and it’s only bolstered the narrative of the need for an election. I’m still not convinced anyone actually wants one (other than bored pundits), but the narrative is there if the government wants to grab it, and doesn’t look too nakedly opportunistic in doing so (which is probably easier said than done).

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Roundup: Delays for new doses

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The pandemic continues to trend poorly, and new modelling suggests there could be as many as two thousand deaths in the next ten days, and if the current restrictions don’t curb people’s interactions, spread could triple as our hospitals are already out of space. It’s grim. And to compound it, news came down yesterday that Pfizer’s plans to retool part of their vaccine production facility in Europe means that for the next few weeks, shipments could be reduced by as much as fifty percent – shortfalls that will likely be made up once production is up and running because they’ll be able to increase their output capacity, but it’s still disappointing. It’s also funny (in a black humour sort of way) to watch premiers struggling to deliver this message without taking shots at the federal government because they know that it’s beyond their ability to do anything about.

Part of why this is a problem that needs to be communicated is because there seems to have been a brewing sense that vaccines are here, so we’ll be able to start lifting restrictions soon, and that’s not actually the case. Even once everyone gets vaccinated, we’ll probably still have restrictions and mask-wearing for the time being because we don’t yet know if people can transmit the virus once they’re vaccinated, and it will take time for everyone’s immune response to sufficiently build even after they’ve had their second dose. And then we don’t know how long the immunity will last either, while the virus is starting to mutate. So seeing this delay to vaccinations (and it’s mostly a delay on the early phases and less likely to be so for the general public, who will still likely get their shots at the same time as was planned) as a delay for returning to the old normal is just not something that anyone should be counting on, and we should be communicating that effectively.

As for international travel, prime minister Justin Trudeau hinted that they are looking at tighter restrictions, but this comes with a host of other problems, not the least of which is the fact that mobility rights are Charter rights, and trying to define what travel is deemed “essential” is going to require some actual definition (unlike what Ontario has done with its current stay-at-home order). But with unchecked community spread already happening, and variants identified in the UK and South Africa also having been identified here, it may already be too late. The better tactic may be better enforcement of quarantine orders, but that may also be a question of resources. Nevertheless, there are no easy solutions to the problem.

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Roundup: Essential incoherence

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The provincial stay-at-home order is now in effect in Ontario, and it’s already a gong show because the province refuses to define what is “essential” for travel or items, leaving it up to police to interpret for themselves – and we all know that that’ll never end badly, or disproportionately targeting marginalised communities, right? Yeah, and it’s so typical of Ford’s government, where they lack the basic self-awareness that they are the ones in charge and have to make the rules.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1349390384938450944

So what is the Ford government doing instead of their gods damned jobs? Why, they’re picking even more fights with the federal government over vaccines, insisting that their capacity to administer outstrips supply (not so far, it hasn’t), and I fail to see how a number of premiers think that if they’ll bellyache loud enough that they can magically make Pfizer produce millions of more doses in the blink of an eye, at a time when they are dealing with global supply chain issues. But we all know that this is performative, and attempts to distract from their failures to control the spread of this pandemic. To add to that, their constant focus on the vaccines and the fact that it takes time for deliveries to ramp up is an attempt to shift the blame on the ongoing uncontrolled spread to the federal government – that they would have been able to control it if only the feds had acted faster (when Canada was pretty much the third country in the world to approve it and accept deliveries). That was never going to happen – vaccines don’t work like that in the middle of an outbreak. But these premiers need to wash their hands of culpability, so that’s where we are.

https://twitter.com/SusanDelacourt/status/1349483284707868673

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Roundup: More pandemic theatre

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The horror show of COVID infections continues apace in Ontario, and premier Doug Ford has decided to get really serious and issue a “stay-at-home” order, which amounts to little more than the mockdown that is currently in place already. In spite of his promises of an “iron ring” around long-term care facility, there are now outbreaks at forty percent of facilities. Ford won’t do anything about the sick days that are necessary for people to stop spreading infections at workplaces, and he won’t do anything about evictions from commercial landlords. So he’s totally handling this with aplomb.

So really, what Ford is offering is more pandemic theatre – the close cousin of security theatre. And most of the restrictions and exemptions don’t actually make sense. They’re not going to do enough to curb transmission – especially as newer variants start making their way into the community – because he won’t do the hard work of closing the large workplaces where spread is happening, because that would be harming the economy – as though rising infections and deaths won’t do worse economic damage. Ford continues to shirk his responsibilities and let this pandemic get worse, and more deaths to pile up, as he tries to shift blame and try and to get people to blame one another than acknowledge his own culpability. The “Uncle Doug” schtick isn’t working, and he keeps hoping it will, and here we are, waiting for things to get worse before he institutes more half-measures. Welcome to Ontario – yours to discover.

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