While we may be past the halfway mark in this campaign, we’re also well into the territory when things start getting a bit…surreal. Or utterly nonsensical. Take your pick. All of it done in the breathless hyperbolizing that parties do in order to try and make their rivals look bad. If you take a look at any Conservative press release, the sections comparing “Justin and Mulcair” are full of ridiculous non sequiturs that have little or nothing to do with the topic at hand. The Liberals are trotting out Jean Chrétien to say that Stephen Harper has “shamed” Canada (never mind that the rest of the world really doesn’t care). And the NDP have been taking the cake for some of their criticisms, which are starting to sound more like grasping at straws. They held a news conference with Charlie Angus to decry Justin Trudeau for “smearing” small businesses when he pointed out that wealthy people self-incorporate to pay lower taxes. And then Angus admitted that it’s a problem and they need to “tweak” the system, but still tried to insist Trudeau was smearing. Their line of attack about not being able to trust the Liberals not to make cuts is predicated on the 1990s, never mind the fact that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is nowhere near what it was the. And now Thomas Mulcair is brushing off the concerns of the premiers for his plans, whether it’s Senate abolition (which most don’t support), or childcare (which the provinces are expected to pay 40 percent of), or even their balanced budget pledge, of which provincial transfers are an issue. But he’ll have a “mandate” he says. Never mind that he sounds like he’s already over-reading it when he hasn’t even been given one. Suffice to say, the talking points from all sides are getting ridiculous. And we still have a month to go.
Tag Archives: Public Service
Roundup: Harper’s Westminster mistake
It was a fairly combative interview, as Stephen Harper sat down with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, but there was a fairly important point to make, which is that the understanding of the Westminster parliamentary system that he espoused was totally wrong. Harper stated that he wouldn’t try to form government if his party didn’t win the most seats, which is an interesting political commitment, but his assertion that it’s the way the convention works in a Westminster system is wrong and has nothing to do with the actual way that governments are formed. What I will say is that this certainly seems to answer all of the paranoid delusions of the Harper Derangement Syndrome-types out there who insist that he’s going to try to hold onto power at all costs, and that even if he can’t win a majority that he’s going to still test the confidence of the Chamber and call a snap election immediately if he doesn’t get it, etcetera, etcetera. That’s certainly not the message that he’s been giving, and really, he’s not a Bond villain. Making him out to be such is counterproductive and simply wrong. Here’s Mansbridge’s behind-the-scenes look at the leader interview series, the biting satirical Twitter account Canadian Median Voter weighing in on Harper’s understanding, plus a reminder that Thomas Mulcair has said pretty much the very same incorrect things, and a reminder of how things actually operate.
The party who wins the most seats becomes the government. It is called responsible government.
— The Median Voter (@CanMedianVoter) September 8, 2015
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/641069383729741826
https://twitter.com/markdjarvis/status/640289615987929088
Roundup: Defining recession
While I fear this may becoming a quasi-economics blog over the course of the campaign, it’s numbers yet again in the national consciousness as we learn today whether or not we’re in a technical recession, though there’s a bunch of political dispute over what a recession means. Jason Kenney was on Power & Politics on Sunday trying to broaden the definition to say that it would need to be over a number of sectors rather than just the energy sector as we seem to be seeing in Canada, and while that may be a perfectly reasonable explanation if it was anyone else, it was however his own government who put the definition of two quarters of shrinking GDP into their “balanced budget” legislation just a couple of months ago. Oops. To that end, Rosemary Barton writes about deficit and recession politics on the campaign trail, while Mike Moffatt calculates the projected federal deficits for the next few years based on current economic indicators. And Stephen Gordon gives us some food for thought:
.. revenues to increase and/or expenditures to decrease. If so, you'd shift future income to finance current spending. /2
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) August 31, 2015
We want to shift current income to finance future spending, not the reverse. 4/4
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) August 31, 2015
Roundup: Targeting the NDP’s platform costs
With the fight over the economic planks of the campaign now well underway, we saw a weekend full of jousting over it. Up first was an op-ed in the Sun papers penned by Thomas Mulcair (possibly ghost-written by staffers, as these things go), where he gave a bunch of non sequiturs like provincial NDP records, and bizarre slogans like “politicians that give up on balancing the budget are giving up on Canadians.” Do you know what that means, because pretty much nobody else does? Later in the morning, Jason Kenney took to the National Press Theatre to hand out a 21-page booklet to prove that the NDP’s promises amount to an eight billion dollar hole in their budget, and a couple of hours later, John McCallum and a couple of other Liberals held their own press conference, where the number was $28 billion over four years. The NDP pointed out that a few of their promises didn’t have timelines attached, but I’m not sure how effective of a defence that is considering the magnitude of some of the promises. Meanwhile, economists like Nick Rowe are (quite rightly) complaining that partisan cheap shots about Harper being the “king of deficits” is distracting from the scope of the problems of the 2008 recession, and the actions Harper took during them. In other words, trying to balance the budget then would have been a terrible decision. (There are other criticisms one could make, like the fact that Harper created a structural deficit by cutting the GST by two points, but so far neither of the two opposition parties are making it, which renders it somewhat moot in this discussion). Rowe’s fear is that these cheap shots make fiscal policy more difficult going forward, and it’s a valid point that parties should be keeping in mind, but aren’t.
https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/638149264946827264
Roundup: The other ruthless dictator
NDP-turned-Green MP Bruce Hyer is warning that Thomas Mulcair will be as dictatorial of a Prime Minister as Stephen Harper if elected. To which I would reply “quite possibly.” While some of Hyer’s criticisms are that Mulcair will say anything to get elected, that’s fairly standard practice across a host of different parties and even leaders – and don’t think the Greens are much better, if you looked at how Kevin Milligan eviscerated their election platform’s costing over the weekend. But Hyer does have a point in that Mulcair’s NDP has been a very tightly controlled ship. Iron-fisted in many respects, but it does go back to the 2011 election, when Jack Layton was still in charge. The moment the election was over and they had accidentally won that wave of Quebec seats, with all of those paper candidates, the party went into communications lockdown and messaging became even more tightly controlled than that of the Conservatives. The NDP went so far as to centralise their communications media relations – something even the Conservatives hadn’t done, with their famous control from the centre. This carried on through the leadership and was adopted by Mulcair when he became leader, so it’s not just him that’s doing it – it’s the party’s entire apparatus. And it’s not like the NDP was this bastion of free voting even when Layton was in charge – MPs were routinely punished for stepping out of line with their votes, be it with QP slots taken away, or what have you. Solidarity was enforced, much as it continues to be under Mulcair. While I find José Nunez-Melo’s sour grapes at his nomination not being protected to be a bit rich, it does bear reminding that there is a darker side to the NDP that they don’t like to show or talk about, but it is there if you pay attention, even if Hyer is trying to pin it on Mulcair personally.
Roundup: The PMO’s invisible levers in the Senate
One of the big things that emerged from the Duffy trial yesterday was a raft of new emails released from Nigel Wright, along with Wright’s testimony. While none of it was particularly damning to the prime minister, a number of pundits and journalists were baying over the Twitterverse and elsewhere that “this proves that the PMO is controlling the Senate! Where’s the independence?” and so on, I’m going to get everyone to take a deep breath and calm down. Yes, the PMO has been playing the Senate leadership – not the Senate itself – like its own private pawn. I’m not going to dispute that fact. But I am going to offer some context. First of all, Stephen Harper broke the Senate with his petulant refusal to make appointments from 2006 to 2008, and then made mass appointments, which damaged the chamber. (Refresher read here). He had a Senate leader who did his bidding without question, which is a problem. Because said Senate leader had so many newbie senators under her wing who did her bidding without question, it set up a power dynamic that allowed the PMO to exercise power levers that don’t actually exist. Wright complained about this lack of levers at times in his correspondence, and we also know that the Senate staff, including committee clerks, were pushing back against this PMO control, even to the point of threatening legal action. (And to that point, this BuzzFeed headline is wrong – they weren’t “rogue staffers,” they were Senate staffers instead of political ones). This makes it a problem of actors instead of institutions. As it is designed, the Senate is already a bastion of institutional independence – appointed Senators have absolutely nothing preventing them from speaking truth to power, because they are protected right up to a retirement age of 75, which in turn protects them from needing to curry favour with the PM to get a post-Senate appointment to a board or tribunal. The system is designed to ensure that they can be fully independent – the problem is that the current crop of Conservative senators has chosen not to be, whether it’s out of ignorance of their role, sentimentality for the prime minister who appointed them, or the fact that they sincerely believe he knows what’s best, so they’ll do what he asks. I can’t think of any way to tinker with the system to prevent that. As a rule, senators get better with age, and when a party leadership changes, they tend to get really independent in a hurry, but until that point, this remains a problem of political actors instead of institutions.
Roundup: Dubious travel bans
As a new policy announcement yesterday, Stephen Harper said that if the Conservatives were to continue to form government after the election, they would introduce legislation to curb “terrorist tourism,” all of which is an entirely ridiculous plan, whether it’s as an issue of mobility rights, of letting the RCMP or CSIS determine who is a “professional journalist” or humanitarian organisation, or the fact that this betrays any shred of libertarianism that the Conservatives profess to hold. (But then again, we already knew that they’re not an ideological party, but rather right-flavoured populists, right?) Justin Trudeau says this is just a distration from economic issues and that Harper has to answer more questions about limiting rights, while Thomas Mulcair doubted the move’s efficacy (while continually repeating that they’re not going to be against any move that reduces terrorism). Anyway, Paul Wells demolished the whole thing in a series of tweets.
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630499372606877696
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630499578689814529
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630500563919204352
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630502075395346433
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630503234944241664
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630505023206752256
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630509157045661700
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/630509646487359488
Roundup: A contraction and a rate cut
While he didn’t use the word itself, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz essentially said that Canada is in a recession, and he cut the interest rate by another quarter of a percent, leaving prime at 0.5 percent. Poloz said that we are in a contraction, but there should be growth in non-energy sectors in the second half of the year. Nevertheless, shrinking the growth outlook for the year by a full percentage point of GDP blows billions of dollars out of the projections that were built into the government’s budget, which almost certainly will push it into real deficit territory (as opposed to the paper surplus that it was sitting in after raiding the contingency reserve and EI fund in order to pay for those family tax breaks and still make it look like there’s a surplus). Where the real kicker could come in is the fact that the Bank of Canada is trying to use monetary policy to stimulate the economy to help it grow, while the government is cutting in order to achieve its balanced budget rather than stimulating at a time of contraction to prime the pump, as it were, and there was talk about how it meant the government was basically undoing the work the Bank was trying to do. So there’s that. Also not helpful is the government then coming out to attack Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair as a means of trying to distract from their economic record, so that they can make the pitch to be allowed to stay in office after the election. Maclean’s assembled an expert panel to discuss the rate cut, while Andrew Coyne fears the damage that all of the election promises will end up causing the economy by the time the vote is over.
Roundup: Wai Young, Conservative fabulist
Yesterday it was revealed that Conservative MP Wai Young spoke at a church congregation to tell them that Harper was doing things in the same vein as Jesus, and used Bill C-51 as an example. Because Jesus was really concerned about giving inordinate powers to intelligence agencies without any kind of oversight, and about preventing terrorist attacks – oh, wait. No he wasn’t. While Young’s terrible theology sparked the usual ridicule over the Twitter Machine, it was her other statement that was perhaps most alarming, which was her claim that CSIS knew there was a bomb on the Air India flight 30 years ago, but were forbidden from sharing that information with the RCMP, and 400 people died as a result. Except no, none of that is true, they didn’t know and they could share information. Oops. Young later claimed that she “misspoke,” but that seems to be code amongst Conservative MPs for making stuff up. You know, like when that other Conservative backbencher apologised to the House for “misspeaking” when he claimed that he has directly witnessed people taking voter identification cards out of the recycling bin with the intention of casting fraudulent ballots. Turns out that one wasn’t true either. But hey, political fabulism is apparently okay so long as you apologise for “misspeaking” when you get caught. Truth and debating on the strength of your ideas doesn’t matter – no, you can just invent things out of whole cloth, repeat complete fabrications against your opponents (income splitting for seniors, anyone?) and say it often enough in the hopes that people will start believing it’s true (Hello, 2011 election). Why wouldn’t a backbencher like Young think it’s okay if this is the behaviour that she’s watching get rewarded by everyone else around her? It’s a sad indictment of the state of our political discourse.
Roundup: Spinning deficit financing
It should be no surprise that a government that likes to re-announce the same funds over and over again are now re-spinning old funds with a new purpose. As previously discussed, they’re going full-speed ahead on rebranding their childcare benefits as economic stimulus – because apparently only families with children should be stimulating the economy. (Singletons, we’re being shafted – again). As well, Scott Brison noted that these cheques are essentially being deficit financed, after the budget raided both the contingency reserve and the EI fund to pay for them while still claiming balance (not to mention their projections for oil prices). And hey, you know what would be a good thing during a recession? A full contingency reserve and an EI fund that’s ready to help any layoffs and job losses that result from said recession. But things were going to be rosy, and there was nothing to worry about – except now there is, but Harper insists it’s all external factors (never mind that he still takes credit when things go well even though it had nothing to do with his government). What great economic leadership…
Same can be said for NDP's daycare plan. https://t.co/jF6vGQMcGw
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
As far as childcare plans go, the LPC's is hard to beat: channelling $$ to families with low incomes.
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
My feed is filling up with NDP supporters who oppose giving $$ to low-income families.
Apparently the reason involves beer and popcorn.
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
"Why give low-income families $$ if they won't spend it on what I want them to spend it on?"
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015