Thomas Mulcair spent the noon hour yesterday laying out three of his party’s economic planks for the coming election. (A reminder: it’s still nine months away). To that end, Mulcair promised a cut to small business taxes, an extension of the capital gains cost allowances for companies buying new equipment, and an innovation tax credit for businesses. The first of those is not new – the NDP have been going in this direction since the previous election, and the second is current government policy that is set to expire, but one wonders how much it has been taken up as the government already extended it, and we still hear that Canadian companies didn’t spend the high dollar years investing in this equipment to boost productivity at a time when it was advantageous for them to do so, and now the dollar is much lower and it’s more costly for these businesses to buy this new equipment. The third, geared toward research and development, again sounds suspiciously like what the current government has been trying to do as they retooled the National Research Council to help with commercialisation of technologies. There is, of course, debate on some of the utility of these points as well, with certain experts saying that those small businesses that would benefit from this kind of tax cut are already well off. (Also, small businesses are not the biggest job creators in the country – sorry, but that doesn’t make any mathematical sense). The final point is geared toward revitalising the manufacturing sector, but it’s pocket change in terms of dollars, and the sector has much more entrenched structural problems. Of course, there is no mention of how this is costed, on top of promises for their childcare spaces, restoring the much higher healthcare transfer escalator, and returning OAS eligibility to 65 – and no, raising corporate income taxes won’t get you that much, nor will going after offshore tax havens. Mulcair also added that the NDP would move to protect pensions from bankruptcy proceedings, which again is not new policy, for what it’s worth.
Tag Archives: Thomas Mulcair
Roundup: No, it’s not media apathy
The prime minister’s former director of communications writes that it’s perfectly natural that the government wants to create their own communications channels that bypass the media because We The Media are apparently “apathetic” to what the want to tell us. You will forgive me for saying, but I’m not sure there are words enough to express how big of a load of utter horseshit that this justification actually is. His definition of “apathy” is that the media won’t act as transcriptionists for their feel-good stories, which forces them to go around us. Fair enough – it’s not our jobs to retype your press releases and make you look good. But what is utterly galling is for him to turn around and declare that the media has a challenge function that’s important for democracy and that’s why they’re needed, when the very same government that he served is doing their level best to kneecap journalists from fulfilling that role. Whether it’s frustrating Access to Information laws, closing off all avenues of communication with ministers, not returning phone calls and delivering bland statements in lieu of answers to questions being asked, or simply dragging out responding to media requests until it’s well past deadline, it all amounts to choking off necessary information from the media because it fulfils its challenge function, and that challenge function makes the government look bad. When the media does write about the government’s use of their own distribution channels, it’s not because we’re sulking that we’re not the privileged distributors of information – it’s that we’re being denied the ability to do our jobs as we’re shut out of events, not allowed to ask questions at announcements, and that our independent photographers are not allowed to even capture those events and are instead being handed a staged photo to run instead that shows what the government wants us to see instead. That’s not giving us the space to perform our necessary challenge function – it’s trying to turn us into organs of propaganda. That he ignores those legitimate complaints and frames them as “sweating over” trivialities is part of what makes his whole construction utterly farcical.
Roundup: Hedging the messages
Justin Trudeau continued his tour of southwestern Ontario over the past couple of days, meeting with local mayors and touring a Ford plant, and so on. But while he was talking about moving away from traditional manufacturing while in London, his stop in Windsor spoke about the need to support the auto sector as a pillar to diversify around, which seems to me to be a fairly big hedge since much of the problem with the auto sector is that it pretty much requires the government to keep feeding the beast with ever larger cash subsidies lest those manufacturers relocate elsewhere, which they generally end up doing anyway, while not enough is being done to transition those communities away from the expectation that they’ll get a decent paying job at the auto plant with a pension and benefits. Also, he needs to stop saying that the government put all of their eggs in the oil basket, because it’s like four percent of GDP, so it’s just not true. Another curious statement Trudeau made was that carbon pricing should be up to the provinces, which seems like a fairly fraught proposition because one can rather easily imagine the headaches that having a patchwork of pricing schemes around the country will create – carbon tax in one province, a technology levy in another, and cap-and-trade in yet another, while the federal government tries to book the overall reductions with no real commonality between them.
(1/n) Re: @JustinTrudeau and GHGs: I've worked on GHG policies at fed and prov level – we need a new way to deal with fed/prov on GHGs.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(2/n) Federal regs end up pleasing the lowest common denominator – coal, autos, oil and gas, EITE, etc. and stringency drops for all.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(3/n) A new framework, in the spirit of healthcare where fed gov't sets the boundaries, directs traffic, etc, has some promise.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(4/n) but, in order for it to work, fed gov't needs clear def'ns for stringency, and a tasty carrot or a big stick to make provinces move
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(5/n) Without that, we're in the world we're in now – each province does what it wants to do, and the fed gov't does little else.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(6/n) So, let's see what details @JustinTrudeau puts on the policies, but this is a good/promising direction for Canada. #cdnpoli
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
Roundup: Two rulings and a report for the Mounties
The RCMP were in the centre of the spotlight yesterday, with two Supreme Court judgements and a fact-finding report on the Moncton shootings all having been released. Regarding the former, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the ban on RCMP from collectively bargaining was unconstitutional, which opens the door for them to form a recognised police association (though they seem to be shying away from a full-blown union). This ruling has further reaching consequences as it also resolved some of the problems in the existing jurisprudence around freedom of association, which has been in a fairly bad state for the past four years or so since a previous decision introduced a great deal of confusion into the law. The second decision related to a challenge of the government’s wage rollbacks imposed on the Force in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, but the RCMP lost that challenge because of the fairly narrow way in which it was constructed and argued. As for the Moncton report, much of it focuses on the lack of training and slow roll-out of new carbines, confusion among communications and problems related to body armour, many of which are problems that date back to the Mayerthorpe massacre of four Mounties. Where these two stories intersect, beyond the RCMP issue itself, is that police association members are saying that they could have addressed some of these problems and had timelines established as part of a collective bargaining process, which of course they don’t have.
Roundup: Confessions of a style watcher
In a sit-down interview with Canada AM, Lisa Raitt talked about her frustration with being a woman in politics, and so much attention is being paid to her appearance, particularly with things like weight gain and hairstyles. And absolutely, it’s part of the double standards that women face for a host of societal reasons, which is something that should be tackled in a variety of ways, including sauce for the gander – ensuring that much of the same language is applied to male MPs. That being said, I wanted to add a couple of observations as someone who is known for doing style critique of MPs (and occasionally senators). Number one – I don’t comment on weight or hair, because that’s not the point of what I’m doing. What I am doing however is commenting on the image that MPs put forward by their own conscious choice – do they project an image confidence that often comes along with looking your best? Or do they look like a fool because they make $160K per year and apparently still shop at Value Village, where nothing fits or coordinates? Add to that, I also look at how the men dress. It’s not just a suit and tie and there you go – for men it has a lot to do with the cut of the suit, and looking like they spent a moment to consider if those colours go together, or if they look like they got dressed in the dark in a rumpled suit that hangs like a used burlap sack? Image and appearance do matter, but only as a first impression, after which an MP needs to have substance to back it up. It’s sad that we have a number of MPs who have neither.
Roundup: Support for Charlie Hebdo
In the wake of the deaths at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris yesterday, we saw an outpouring of support from Canadian officials yesterday. Stephen Harper drew parallels to the attacks that happened here and in Sydney, Australia, in his statement, while Thomas Mulcair took the National Press Theatre to make his own statement, which also had the added symbolism of speaking to journalists in our own space after members of our profession were just gunned down. Justin Trudeau tweeted his support, but as he was flying off to the Arctic, wasn’t available for the media, and Marc Garneau was out in his stead. Editorial cartoonists around the world mourned the loss of their compatriots. Some of the better reaction pieces include Ishmael Daro, Colby Cosh, Scott Gilmore, Aisha Sherazi, Andrew Coyne, Matthew Fisher, and Terry Glavin.
Roundup: Find a new narrative for Mulcair
Michael Den Tandt writes that Thomas Mulcair is the most effective parliamentarian that we have today – which makes me weep a lot, mostly because it simply isn’t true. Den Tandt focuses on the three main party leaders, and tries to rate them on performance versus the attention that they get, and his thesis is that Mulcair may be the most effective but gets least attention for all manner of reasons. But in his construction of said premise, he gets a few things wrong. For one, he claims that Mulcair ditched his speaking notes, which is absolutely not true. What Mulcair did was ditch the mini-lectern on his desk, but not until the heyday of Duffy questions, which really was Mulcair’s moment. It was his “prosecutor-in-chief” moment, which lasted for about two days, and then petered out, and he has yet to re-create the moment or the energy since. He still has his notes – they’re just on his desk, and he still reads from them, and it’s evident in both the tone and substance of his questions – particularly as he rarely asks direct follow-ups, and may not ask a follow-up until 20 minutes later in QP, or not at all until the next day. The problem remains that much of the commentariat remains fixated on this vision of Mulcair as “prosecutor-in-chief” and “best performer in the House” even though it was a two-day experience that has not been repeated since. Of course, they don’t attend QP and one isn’t sure how often they watch the forced perspectives on CPAC, so they can stick with this image and not have it shaken by daily exposure to what Mulcair is really like as a performer. And there are far better parliamentarians as a whole – those who show up for debates, fully researched and able to speak off-the-cuff, to ask or take questions, and to do more than simply read speeches into the record. They’re few and far between, but they do exist. Mulcair is not one of those MPs – not by a long shot. But somewhere along the way, those couple of days during the Duffy heyday has given pundits a narrative that they refuse to be shaken from. And it makes me sad that after watching Bob Rae wipe the floor with his opponents during QP for nearly two years, for whom Mulcair was a non-entity in comparison day in and day out, that his far superior performance is so easily forgotten.
Roundup: An unconstitutional promise
Over in the francophone media, Thomas Mulcair has been talking about his promise to never ever appoint senators ever if he were to become PM and form government. Of course, that kind of talk is beyond ridiculous and is in direct contravention to the constitution – the same sections that the Supreme Court gave a whole lot of clarity on in the recent Senate reference decision. Mulcair claims he would try to push the provinces to abolish the institution, but good luck with that – all of which tends to put a lot of doubt into just how seriously Mulcair would take is constitutional obligations should he ever assume the position. The interview did give rise to this post, which speculated on the conditions by which a Governor General might reasonably start appointing senators without waiting for advice from the PM, if said PM was obstinately refusing to put forward names for appointment. While we are going to start hearing from the courts on this matter sooner than later, with an active challenge now underway in BC, I’d have to agree with both Emmett Macfarlane and Philippe Lagassé on this one – having the GG make direct appointments would put us into a constitutional crisis because it would violate the principles of Responsible Government, but said GG could also note that the PM was refusing to act within his or her constitutional duties, and dismiss them, inviting someone else to form government instead. It would still be a bit of a crisis, mind you, and there would be all manner of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media about it, but it would be much more in line with the principles of Responsible Government than making the appointments without advice. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t come to that, and that our current and future prime ministers start taking their jobs of making these appointments far more seriously.
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/551049830416777216
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/551050184713838593
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551049183608967169
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551050993983848448
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551051201836777473
Roundup: Attendance under the microscope
As one of those fun little articles to fill the pages over the holidays, the Ottawa Citizen looked at party leaders’ abysmal QP attendance records. What it showed was, predictably, pretty abysmal, with the Prime Minister coming in with the worst attendance record, and Justin Trudeau not far behind. As someone who attends QP regularly, I could have told you as much, but it’s nice to see some recorded figures and percentages, though when you think about it, Mulcair’s increase is really means he’s there one more hour per week. The piece also treats Friday QP as a regular day, which it hasn’t been as long as I’ve been covering it, but perhaps we should pay more attention to it and treat it as more than just a rump where those MPs who aren’t jetting off back to their ridings stay behind to hold the fort. There is one thing in the piece that did bother me, which was the load of nonsense that Peter Julian said about Michael Ignatieff, because it’s completely false. Ignatieff was there for QP on most days – far more than Harper was. The “not showing up for work” figure that the NDP used in the last election was based on voting records, and it was misleading because Ignatieff made a policy not to vote on private members’ business whenever possible in order to free his caucus to vote as they chose rather than to take direction from him. That meant he attended fewer of these votes, but the NDP falsely treated that as an attendance record. For them to continue to spread disinformation about Ignatieff’s attendance is shameful (but not surprising, alas).
Roundup: A vow to do away with message control
In his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Justin Trudeau has promised an end to message control if he were to form government, and the unmuzzling of bureaucrats. It’s a bold promise, and one that we’ll have to see to believe because we have to remember where many of these directives come from, which is largely because Conservative candidates were making boneheaded statements to the media during campaigns, which sunk the party’s chances until message discipline became the order of the day. Once media could no longer jump on their every utterances, people weren’t exposed to what they were saying, and the Conservatives eventually got into power, where the discipline continued in order to keep their place. Likewise, after the 2011 election when a busload of accidental NDP MPs got elected, that party went into message lockdown in order to ensure that they didn’t have any particular bozo eruptions. If more Liberal candidates start saying things that causes the party some embarrassment – especially as We The Media can jump on said quotes and run with them rather mercilessly – then we’ll see how long they go without message control. Trudeau makes a point about the fact that you can’t be a government from a single person, and he has made a concerted effort to showcase the team around him, probably to mask any perceived weaknesses he has on the policy front (though I would say that most people underestimate his intellectual capacity). I also think that Harper’s spokesperson disputing Trudeau’s assertions and claiming that ministers are available to speak to the media is utterly precious. The last time a minister responded to my phone calls was pretty much never, and I’m not the only one who has to make do with a bland talking point from their spokesperson rather than getting an actual quote from said minister, let alone a briefing on a new piece of legislation.