April 2020 - Page 2 of 5 - Loonie Politics

Take a breath, everyone, before plowing yet more taxpayer dollars into the oil and gas industry.

The federal and provincial governments have built elaborate scaffolding to keep the ailing energy sector on its feet. The federal government bought the TransMountain Pipeline and the provincial government invested in the Keystone pipeline.

In light of the double whammy of COVID-19 and plummeting oil prices both governments put money into cleaning up orphaned oil wells.

Ottawa has promised $750 million to cut methane emissions and expanded credit lines for some small-and-medium-sized oil companies through Economic Development Canada and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

Alberta earlier temporarily waived fees companies pay to the Alberta Energy Regulator, amounting to an estimated $113 million.

But all that is not enough, says Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the oil patch executives in Calgary's wobbling glass towers.

As international oil prices slid into unheard of negative territory over last weekend Kenney was already tweeting about the urgent need for "significantly more action".

He has suggested the federal government should offer more credit backstop for the industry, somewhere in the range of $15 billion to $30 billion.

Some industry executives are proposing the federal government take preferred equity stakes in oil and gas companies, according to the Financial Post.

CPC Leader Andrew Scheer said the federal government should use broader financial tools to help the sector, without specifying which tools he has in mind.

The underlying argument for propping up private sector oil and gas companies is the familiar "too big to fail" position.

Kenney argues hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake in an industry that has paid more than $350 billion into government coffers.

"We simply cannot afford to see that industry permanently impaired," he proclaimed at a press conference this week.

But are government coffers up to saving Alberta's energy companies? Strained to the limit by the ongoing emergency programs to mitigate the economic and healthcare crisis of COVID-19, is this the most urgent priority for public dollars?

On Wednesday the futures market price for oil recovered slightly. And there seems to be some acknowledgement from OPEC and Russia that faster and more production curbs are necessary.

So despite the heightened shrillness of the call for an energy industry bail out, it would be prudent to see where prices trend over a longer period before government takes any more expensive action.

And should it take action that directly favours specific companies or groups of companies in the market? Picking winners and losers is a mug's game for any government.

Keeping the lions away from the weak members of the oil and gas herd is just not the responsibility of taxpayers.

The global economic slowdown is affecting just about all sectors of the economy. Retail, manufacturing, hospitality and the arts are all in drastic straits.

There is lots of precedent for government wading into helping the private sector. Kenney cites the whack of dough the feds gave General Motors in 2009 as an example. It's a pretty flawed example, given that General Motors has shrunk its Canadian presence drastically over the intervening decade.

Governments have also invested directly in oil and gas companies in this country. Progressive Conservative Premier Peter Lougheed created the Alberta Energy Corporation in the early 1970s to kickstart exploration and development in the province. Faced with artificial oil shortages in the same decade the federal government took a major ownership position with PetroCanada.

But investing tax dollars directly into the business of exploration and production in a sector which is clearly in its declining decades could be a huge political and fiscal liability.

Some companies will certainly go under because of the current upheaval. But the underlying resource the industry is built on will still be there, and it is owned by the people of Alberta. If oil and gas are still in demand when the dust settles, new players will arise.

Ultimately Jason Kenney, who cut his conservative teeth on a position with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, needs to adhere to the precept that government should be staying out of the private sectors' purview.

Photo Credit: The Canadian Press

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Maybe it's the slow grind of being in isolation. Maybe it's the miserable weather. I'm not really sure what it is, but my optimism for the what comes after this pandemic has worn away.

I wasn't coming into this with the idea that things were going to be great after this, but I had some hope we'd come out the other side with something better that what we went into it with.

It's only been six â€” seven? eight? â€” weeks, but I see now that was foolish.

The more I think about it, the more I see that we're going to come out of this with things just as they were before.

Take this brief column on CBC News, written by an anonymous 58-year-old grocery store worker. In it, the woman describes the day-to-day grinding misery working the cash in a pandemic.

Because of restrictions and limits placed on items because of, you know, the state of the world, some people aren't able to buy as much as they might like of this or that. So, those people will take it out on the cashier, the most visible of the staff, and also the least responsible for the state of things.

What is that like for our cashier? Really bad, actually:

"You get talking with the other cashiers and ask, why are we are doing this? Why are we risking our lives to get crapped on?"

"Yet the worst thing is knowing that others are safe at home, collecting their $2,000, while we get up, go to work, risk our lives and don't make nearly that much, even with the $2 per hour raise. I'm supporting my whole household on my lousy 20 hours a week."

And that's the thing, isn't it? While most of us are in the relative safety of home, stuck with the horrors of video calls and having to make our own coffee, much of the world is still out there working. And here we are, complaining we can only get two sticks of butter at a time.

Ah, but don't worry, these grocery workers are the heroes of all this. Occasionally customers will give her a Tim Hortons or McDonald's gift certificate. This last line from her story nearly broke me:

"I actually had a lady today say to me, 'Wow, you guys realize you're going to be in the history books? You'll be in the history books that when this horrific pandemic came, you were one of those cashiers that went to work and risked your life.' "

That's what we've offering people as reward, the promise of eternal glory as a faceless mass of people. We seem to have contented ourselves as a society to call these people heroes and leave it at that. What more do they need?

The cashier says she's got her daughter and two young grandchildren at home, and she's just trying to get by on 20 hours a week. And this is the best we can do for her? A $2 raise and the possibility of a meal or a snack now and then. Maybe when it's all over, a tomb of the unknown cashier.

Ah, but let's check in on the corporate offices of our beloved grocers, shall we?

Metro Inc., one of the country's biggest grocers reported its quarterly earnings Wednesday. The company saw its revenue jump year-over-year by 7.8 percent when compared to the second quarter last year. Of the $287 million jump in sales the company saw, they attribute $125 million to the pandemic.

It's pathetic of us, of all of us. Because this is the way of things. The grocers and their shareholders see hundreds of millions of dollars roll in, and hand out paltry raises for everyone else.

Take this for an example, Anthony Longo, CEO of the eponymous Longo's grocery chain, talked to the Financial Post for a story on grocery executives spending time in grocery stores during the pandemic. Longo says he's been making in-person visits to stores, and even helping stock the odd shelf, to buck up the staff while COVID-19 has been rampaging through the country.

"We do have quite a number of people who don't feel safe, and that's an issue in the industry," Longo told the Financial Post. "We want people to know that it is safe. I'm out there."

Of course, that's easy for Longo to say. He's the head of the family that owns the business. His time dipping in and out of stores to raise morale isn't being paid at $14 or $15 per hour or whatever the rest of the staff is. He's an executive. And he's not there, day after day, being exposed to the virus just to make a living.

The Post story has a few other examples of executives putting in some time on the ground. And, sure, it's great a few sales executives returned to the store to work among the rest of the staff, but did they take a corresponding pay cut? Heh.

I hadn't really intended going into this to make this just about grocery stores. But they are so emblematic of the problems within our society, and lay bare how little we're willing to do to improve things for the person stocking the shelves or mopping the floors, filling our bags.

We could take a look at nurses and PSWs in hospitals and long-term care homes. Or delivery drivers. Or rent relief programs that give money directly to landlords. Or any number of people still out there, still working, while many of us are in the safety of home. Grocery stores are just one facet of the same shit-diamond.

We're trying to do just enough to keep them from being beaten entirely into the ground by unimaginable circumstances. A few bucks an hour is all these companies are willing to give the workers that they rely on â€” that we all rely on â€” to get groceries out the door. A Tim Hortons card here and there should keep them from the barricades.

And we seem okay with it.

So, when I say I've lost optimism, this is why. The massive burdens we've always put on the working class have only grown with the spectre of illness and death hanging over the people keeping our society working.

We should do better by them, but we won't. We never have. Why would I have expected it to be any different?

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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In the end, the Conservatives had to fold. Andrew Scheer had been calling for the resumption of debates in the House of Commons as of Monday, as provided for in a motion that was adopted unanimously five weeks ago. Scheer won that point and the House did sit on Monday.

For the Liberals, the least amount of time they have to spend in the House, the better. For, while Justin Trudeau may claim that our institutions must continue to operate not in spite of, but because of the crisis, it was fairly easy to argue there was no need to resume partisan debates at the expense of public health. For the Conservatives, three in-person sittings with a reduced number of MPs, about thirty, was the bare minimum.

All weekend, the pressure was one-sided against Scheer. The Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and the Green Party were all siding with the government and wanting to proceed with one in-person sitting each week, and "virtual" sittings to be conducted through videoconferencing.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Andrew Scheer of being "irresponsible" for wanting to force 338 MPs to sit on Monday. A blatant lie, of course, as that was never going to happen, which was proven by the NDP announcing that no matter what, they were sending only 3 MPs to Ottawa. The Green parliamentary leader Elizabeth May stated she was "distressed" by Scheer's push. Bloc leader Yves-FranÃ§ois Blanchet spoke of the Conservatives "tataouinage", which could be loosely translated as "screwing around".

Scheer's Conservatives were refusing to do what was expected during the current pandemic. They wouldn't stay home! Yet, there was a case to make about the importance of parliamentary oversight and accountability, certainly, but Scheer's sales pitch wasn't flying with the public opinion.

Since March 13, the proceedings of the House of Commons have been suspended. Without this unique arena, Conservative, Bloc and New Democrat MPs were unable to interrogate the government directly on its efforts to counter the pandemic and provide economic assistance. Sure, you can hold your own press conferences, in the hopes that journalists' will pick up on your efforts so that you can make your way into the daily coverage. But even that has its limit: too often, journalists will follow up on the opposition's points and raise them at one government press briefings or another, and the answer will generate the news, without much space given to the opposition party that first brought the issue forward.

Already in these dangerous times, governments are pretty much getting all the ice-time. Daily updates from the Prime Minister, federal ministers, public health officials, you name it. Add to that premiers, mayors and the international stage. The voices of the opposition parties were already considerably weakened. Hence why the Conservatives were hoping to reopen Parliament.

And the Conservatives were right about wanting to hold the government to account. The opposition should have questions and demand answers. There is always a risk that when you criticize the government, you will be in turn criticized for not participating in the collective effort. But if you give the government a blank cheque, you are not challenging it to do better. So it won't.

It is too bad that Parliament cannot reopen fully, because opposition parties must be able to hold the government to account. Parliament is an essential service. Questions should be asked. Answers should be provided. And it can be useful, as proven by the two Question Periods that were held Monday.

But since the beginning of the pandemic, the Conservatives' tone has felt out of place. Scheer has been incisive and critical. CPC leadership candidates Peter MacKay and Erin O'Toole have been time and time again strident and vociferous on social media. While Conservative Premiers, especially Doug Ford, have been publicly gracious towards the federal government, the federal Conservatives seemed, at times, tone-deaf to what was going on. Team Canada? Forget about it.

That, more than anything, is why the Conservatives failed to secure more in-person sittings. The CPC has been dropping in the polls for weeks now. They were not getting traction on the issue of parliamentary oversight, people were not listening. Andrew Scheer was isolated from his fellow opposition leaders. As a lame-duck leader, Scheer doesn't have the full support, let alone control of his party.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Mother of Parliaments Westminster, will meet three times a week, with 50 MPs in person and the 600 others able to do so virtually. In Canada, the House of Commons has formally adjourned until May 25th, the Senate until June 2nd. A special committee, with every MP a member, will meet once weekly in person but not all at once, of course. Virtual meetings will occur online twice a week once technological and procedural issues have been worked out. Which could take weeks.

Of note, the Conservatives gave their unanimous consent to allow a minister of the Crown to move a motion concerning the proceedings of the House and its committees. A motion they knew they would lose. Seems like they figured it wasn't worth dying on that Hill anymore.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The past week has seen the debate over how exactly MPs should return to the House of Commons during the current global pandemic to ensure that we still have a functioning parliament while still maintaining good practices like physical distancing, and most of that debate has been ridiculous. The dance between the Conservatives insisting on a greater number of in-person sittings in a skeleton parliament and MPs from other parties presuming that somehow virtual sittings will be the solution that everyone is looking for has not exactly been illuminating, particularly as accusations fly back and forth that this is simply about political theatre and partisanship, or that other parties are trying to cover for the prime minister ducking public accountability.

The demand for virtual sittings rests on the assumption of both their feasibility and desirability. These calls are bolstered online by ranks of meathead partisans and overconfident tech bros, where their argument consists of "Surely in the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand-and-Twenty we can teach MPs to use Zoom," simultaneously believing that virtual sittings will be paragons of civility, while also fomenting conspiracy theories that the Conservatives only want in-person sittings in a skeleton parliament for the sole purpose of dropping a surprise non-confidence motion while they sneakily fill the Chamber with their own MPs after everyone else kept theirs to a minimum.

Rest assured that no surprise non-confidence motions can happen under the rules of parliamentary procedure this isn't The Phantom Menace. And while outgoing Conservative leader Andrew Scheer may alternate between being a smirking doofus and a braying doofus, unable to read a room with any hint of political judgment, he's also not politically suicidal. Nobody is going to force an election in the middle of a global pandemic, especially as it would mean they would be decimated at the polls for being so nakedly opportunistic.

As for virtual sittings akin to the kind of "hybrid" ones being piloted in Westminster, they remain something of a pipe dream at present technological capacity is challenged by our need for simultaneous interpretation, while many parts of the country have spotty internet that would make connection difficult, leading to immediate questions of privilege regarding the ability for MPs to participate. And if you've seen what kind of a gong show a teleconference with a dozen people can turn into, multiply that to nearly three hundred MPs at once. And then, realize that any ability for virtual proceedings made now will be demanded to be continued after this crisis is over, which will lead to the eventual depopulation of Parliament as MPs prefer to stay in their ridings and dial in. This will be the demise of our Parliament.

If we will get some in-person sittings in the weeks to come, as has been agreed to, what about the looming spectre of political theatre that these "accountability sessions" will entail? While they won't include Question Period the sessions are to be treated as a kind of special committee rather than a regular sitting I would argue that some political theatre is still necessary, even in serious times like these. Why? Because they give voice to some of the sentiment that is in the public mood, whether that's the naivetÃ© of demands that the government simply cut cheques for the nation, the more toxic need to find a villain for the pandemic, or the frustrations of people who want to re-open the economy. It becomes incumbent upon the government at that point to deftly communicate why those positions are wrong and we know that this government's inability to communicate is their Achilles' Heel.

Some pundits, like Susan Delacourt, decry this need for theatre, and seem to believe that there is such a thing as an apolitical democracy. She points to the daily teleconferences that MPs have with government officials, as described by Elizabeth May and Pierre Poilievre during the emergency sitting to pass Bill C-15, as what is needed right now.

"This sounds an awful lot like democracy and accountability â€” all managed without theatrics and tiresome political potshots," Delacourt wrote, apparently forgetting that these calls are not public, and that we have no transparency as to what these MPs are bringing forward to the government, or how responsive the government is. But hey, they're done without theatre.

"As long as anyone is talking about Question Period as an essential service, with the parties locked in their same old ways, we can assume that we're going to be stuck with polarized politics long after the pandemic is over," Delacourt concludes.

I get that her lament is that the golden age of accountability in QP is gone, but thus far, we have actually seen these "polarized" parties rise to the occasion in the current situation. During Monday's skeleton QP, done without applause or heckling, we saw some actual substantive question-and-response exchanges (mostly), including the odd definitive rebuttal to some of the concern trolling that the Conservatives have been engaged in when it comes to issues like the shipments of that personal protective equipment to China when the global effort was centred around trying to contain the virus in Wuhan. This was the kind of QP that most people dream about, but it is dismissed out of hand as "non-essential."

Politics needs to be seen to be believed and to be held to account. That's going to mean theatre, even if Canadian MPs are terrible at it. Would that we could have witty, self-deprecating repartee like they do in Westminster, however we lost that ability because of decades of perverse incentives. Regardless, relying on MPs to work things out behind the scenes because it avoids the louder, shoutier bits, is the first step in losing accountability. Witness PEI, where the leader of the opposition has been cutting backroom deals with the government in the name of "civility," but insists that he's still holding them to account but you just can't see it. That's not how democracy works, and we should beware those who lament the exercise of accountability, even if some of the people exercising it are braying doofuses.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The main job of pundits these days, it seems, is to speculate on what the world's ideological make up will be like once the COVID-19 crisis has finally passed. (If it ever does!)

And from what I've read and heard so far, the conventional punditry wisdom is that the world is going to be a lot more socialistic: there'll be massive splurges in government spending, the scope and power of bureaucracy will expand, higher taxes on the "rich" will be imposed, nationalization of certain companies might occur, etc.

It's a take that's hard to argue with; indeed, given how things are going right now, I can definitely see how such a Marxian future could come to pass.

Yet, conservatives should not totally despair, since it's possible the aura of fear and anger, that will undoubtedly dominate the planet in the months and years ahead, could also help conservatives achieve some of their long-standing goals as well.

What do I mean by that?

Well, conservatives can take advantage of what I suspect will be the general public mood for a long time, i.e. the populace will demand a type of socialism that caters to the needs of regular people rather than to the needs of the country's elites.

In other words, conservatives will be able to score political points whenever they expose and oppose government programs that seem misallocated or more specifically, that seem to help the ruling classes rather than the struggling classes.

Of course, such an approach would be conservatism with strong dash of populism, but it would work.

For instance, I could see conservatives mounting a massive campaign to de-fund or to privatize their main media arch-enemy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Heck, such a campaign would write itself.

Conservatives could say something like, "At a time when Canadians are begging the government for more social assistance payments to help them makes ends meet, why are the Trudeau Liberals continuing to pump a billion dollars a year into the CBC? It's a network nobody watches but the smug downtown elites, so why not divert that money to average Canadians."

Nor is the CBC the only target for conservatives.

They could also go after arts funding.

After all, even in the best of times, the public is not crazy about their taxes going to subsidize oddball art projects, so when times are bad, their opposition would grow exponentially.

For example, here's a real life example of government art funding: Back in 2003 the Ottawa art gallery spent a whopping $72,000 in government money subsidizing something called, Scatalogue: 30 years of crap in contemporary art.

Believe it or not, this particular program featured such exhibits as "freeze-dried, vacuum-packed 'completely biologically correct' excrement."

Yup, your tax dollars were literally spent on crap.

Now imagine such a project being subsidized when government is scrambling to make EI payments?

Anyway, my point is, it'd be an easy sell for conservatives to argue that tax dollars should be going to Canada's poor and not to pretentiously wacky artists.

What's more, conservatives will also have an opportunity in the post-COVID-19 world, to ferociously go after parliamentary perks and privileges.

I could certainly envision groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation mounting an aggressive campaign to end the "gold-plated" pension plan currently enjoyed by Members of Parliament, while also calling upon MPs to cut their salaries.

The group's argument would be simple and persuasive: why during these dire times, when we're all making sacrifices, should our elected officials continue to isolate themselves from economic reality?; they should feel some pain too."

OK, do you see where I'm going here? And I'm only scratching the surface; believe me, there's lots of other angles conservatives will be able to take to whip up a frenzy of taxpayer anger and resentment.

So cheer up conservatives, you can still thrive even in a socialist world.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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I found myself in self-isolation boredom this week re-watching my favourite Fawlty Towers episodes, and aside from realizing how racist that show was at times I cannot stop thinking about this exchange:

"Manuel: What is Nitwit?

Basil Fawlty: It doesn't matter. Look, it doesn't matter. Oh, I can spend the rest of my life having this conversation. Now, please, please, try to understand before one of us dies."

This exchange sums up my feelings related to a certain lame-duck, tone-death, light-weight Conservative leader who has decided to make clamouring for in-person meetings of Parliament into his swan song.

Andrew Scheer is a nitwit.

He's like one of those conservative Republican pastors in the US who insists on having in-person church services, and then is himself admitted to ICU.

Canada can figure out a sensible way to conduct parliamentary business mostly virtually â€” and Scheer standing in the way is wasting valuable time on a stunt.

Scheer is engaging in irresponsible, nonsensical behaviour. Westminster has figured out how to host Parliament virtually, and the UK has nearly double the number of MPs, and â€” shall we just say â€” more than a passing fancy for traditionalism. (And yes, they do translation in that multinational country, too.)

Nonetheless, Premier Jason Kenney was quick to point out that the British Parliament sat during the Blitz â€” as if a nighttime aerial bombardment was remotely comparable to a virus pandemic with asymptomatic spread.

For his part, Tory puerile pit bull, Pierre Poilievre, tweeted this week, "Gov says opening Parl would mean massive influx of staff. FALSE: -We don't need political aids there. They can communicate w MPs by email/text." I'm not sure conceding parliamentary business can be done by email/text helps his point, but no matter.

More to the point â€” I cannot imagine this grandstanding is good politics. Other than Conservative MPs and their staff cosplaying as latter-day Churchills, the average Canadian could not care less about this as an issue.

My mother, a Red Tory with more than a passing interest in politics, asked me this week if Scheer was kicking up a fuss to ensure he received his regular per diem expenses, because she could not fathom another reason why he would repeatedly relocate his family across the country during a pandemic. I do not believe that is the case, but it just goes to show how incomprehensible Scheer's antics are to even engaged citizens (and how lethal his scandal having all his expenses paid for by others actually was).

I do not, for the life of me, understand why the Canadian Tories would seize on such a self-serving issue, one that has no actual impact on everyday people. My only conclusion is it is some perverse combination of taking their cues from the Republican approach in the States, plus a desire to get to engage in some cheap amateur dinner theatre under the auspices of the Westminster system. That, and getting to be on TV more equally to the PM.

I also firmly believe that this is yet more evidence political lifers are destroying our politics. Scheer has never had a real job (see, scandal about faking being an insurance broker).

Which leads me to the one Tory whose stock has risen during this crisis: Doug "I tells it like it is" Ford. Ford's business-like, workmanlike, blunt approach is rightly winning kudos. He quickly jettisoned his policies that would look, well, bad in a pandemic, and is working to get along well with all levels of government.

It's almost like he's "running it like a business": cooperative, focused on results, not grandstanding. I'll even allow him the occasional photo opp picking up PPE.

Speaking of photo opps, my hometown MP, Scot Davidson, also a Tory business guy, is showing how a quiet, get-stuff-done approach can work: he'll drop off congratulatory anniversary plaques at peoples' homes, deliver food to the Food Bank, bring coffee to the fire department. It's small things but productive things â€” and I am here for it.

Andrew Scheer, Pierre Poilievre and their ilk could learn something from their businessmen Tory brethren: cut the crap, and focus on results.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The familiar voice at the other end of the line laughed, a bit.

"They're making fun of the way I look and sound, again," he says, sounding not at all upset. "I love it when they underestimate me."

The voice belonged to the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, naturally, and the call had come in early Fall of 2000.

For the ruling Liberal Party, it was an uncertain time. Rumours were circulating that finance minister Paul Martin was not going to run again. Newspaper baron Conrad Black was threatening to use his newspaper chain to punish Chretien for denying him a knighthood. Meanwhile, the nascent Canadian Alliance was surging in the polls, and some of the Grit caucus members were grumbling that Chretien should resign.

But Chretien was unfazed. For nearly 40 years, his opponents had mocked his looks, his language skills, and his mental acuity. For years, he had been wallpapering his home with his political obituaries. And, for years, he kept winning.

It happened again in 2000, too when Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day had dared him to call an election.

So, he did. He captured many more seats than he did in the previous election, in 1997.

Surveying the political landscape Down South, during a devastating pandemic some 20 years later, I'm reminded of that "chit chat," as Chretien refers to his telephone calls to friends.

And I'm reminded of it, particularly, when I hear what Trumpkins on both sides of the border have to say about Joe Biden. Namely: that he has dementia. That he's senile. That he acts inappropriately. That he has too many scandals. That he's yesterday's man.

Because that's exactly what Conservatives used to say about Jean Chretien. Word for word.

The attacks on Biden will be as ineffective as the attacks were against Chretien, for the same reason: both men are cut from the same cloth.

Joe Biden kicked off his winning campaign in a comparatively low-key way: he released a video on YouTube. He said he was running to beat Donald Trump, because he was the only candidate who could. And, in the interim, successive polls have shown that Americans know who Joe is, they like who he is, and they like him way more than Trump.

He's competitive with multiple demographics: African-Americans, older Democrats, Independents, the true working class.

Joe Biden has what it takes to win, mainly because he never forgot his roots. He never stopped boasting about his hardscrabble Scranton, Pa. youth. He grew up in a big, poor Irish Catholic family in Scranton in a crowded apartment, not a gilded Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment and the Bidens were forced to move to Delaware when Joe was ten, where his father secured a job as a used car salesman.

He got into law school only because he got a scholarship. He participated in anti-segregation sit-ins. He struggled for everything he got.

Joe Biden isn't just like Jean Chretien: some days, he seems like he is Jean Chretien.

They'll keep underestimating him, however, just like they did Chretien.

Like Chretien, Biden didn't win the top job the first time he ran for it. But he won it and is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee at precisely the right time. When his country is hurting, and when it desperately needs healing.

Like Chretien, Biden has an Everyman appeal that cuts across demographic categories which is why Biden won the overwhelming support of African-Americans in the South Carolina primary at the start of March, and why he never looked back.

Like Chretien, Biden often doesn't seem to speak any of the official languages but he has an innate ability to connect with voters, at a gut level, that conservative politicians too often don't.

Like Chretien, too, Biden's timing is just right. Chretien returned to politics when Canada was being riven by endless Constitutional wars, and the growing threat of separatism, and he helped keep us together.

Biden has returned to politics at a similarly historic moment after too many years of the racism and madness of Donald Trump, and a deadly pandemic that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.

If Jean Chretien were to have one of his chit-chats with Joe Biden, I'm pretty sure I know what he'd say.

"They're underestimating you again," he'd say. "And that's always good, for guys like you and me."

Photo Credit: The Globe & Mail

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The personal income tax filing deadline is approaching fast and, contrary to last year, the Federal government has not shown any flexibility about pushing it back because of the pandemic.

As the third wave hits some areas hard, a lot of people are following stay-at-home orders. The sanitary measures, especially in hot zones in Quebec and Ontario, have created a situation similar to last year. The pandemic is slowing things down.

Parents are struggling with organizing their papers, having to handle their own teleworkload and deal with their kids' online schooling. Accountants are also not able to be as productive, partly because many taxpayers continue to hand over paper documents. Many will not send by e-mail or snail mail, fearing for confidentiality. They want to deliver them by hand. But they won't get out of the house! Is tax return production essential? It's not exactly like buying groceries.

For accountants, it is difficult to deal with the volume as the perfect storm of tax deadline and confinement measures are hitting simultaneously. In a teleworking environment, business equipment is not readily accessible to scan and make copies. Add to that the complication created by the different support programs, teleworking credits and other measures, it actually takes longer for each report to be produced.

All that to say that many will miss the tax deadline and will face penalties and interest. That number is lower than last year, but it doesn't matter. Governments need to give people and workers a break instead of adding to their current stress level.

In that sense, many Canadian municipalities have announced they would not impose penalties or interest for missed delays. The United States has extended its deadline to May 17, an additional month.

In Quebec, after initially saying no, following an inquiry from Liberal MNA AndrÃ© Fortin, Revenu Minister Ã‰ric Girard announced on April 15th that Quebeckers who file their tax return after the April 30 deadline would face no late filing penalty and no interest charged on a 2020 tax balance from May 1-31, 2021. To his credit, Girard did his homework after Fortin's questions: while tax filings were on a good pace early in the year, he checked with his officials and the new data showed the pace had dropped rapidly after Quebec imposed stricter measures. The same is no doubt true elsewhere.

However, the Government of Canada is dragging its feet on the issue. The word is that CRA is refusing to extend the deadline because people are going to have to pay a lot of taxes after receiving CERB. They don't want to drag out the outcry. If true, this is short-sighted. And it's not like getting this money now will make any dent in the current deficit.

CPA Canada, the organisation representing accountants, has made its case for extending the deadline with the feds. To no avail. Even though there is a clear need for many firms, especially smaller ones, and for their clients, to see that deadline extended, they are hitting a wall. "If relief was needed last year, then it is difficult to understand why it is not needed again this year, especially for those (â€¦) in areas with heightened variant risks and case counts," CPA stated. Hard to argue with that.

After the Quebec government's announcement, one would have thought the Federal government would have followed suit shortly after. Both governments coordinated their tax return relief efforts last year. The silence meant the issue was raised in the House of Commons the very day Quebec made its announcement.

First, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh brought it up: "On top of this third wave, tax season is upon us. People need help, as they risk losing the benefits they need. We need to help people. Will the Prime Minister commit to giving Canadians more time to file their taxes, as he did in the first wave?"

Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier answered in a murky fashion, by reading a prepared statement:

"Our government understands that this tax season is stressful for Canadians. We will continue to be there for them every step of the way. In February, we announced that recipients of the emergency and recovery benefits would be eligible for interest relief if they filed their 2020 tax returns. The Canada Revenue Agency has also put in place robust taxpayer relief provisions that grant them relief from penalties or interest incurred for reasons beyond their control. These measures ensure that Canadians who need help during tax season will get it. "

So if you miss the deadline, do people lose their benefits? Are the 3rd wave and the sanitary measures in place reasons beyond their control? Who knows?

CPC MP Jacques Gourde was not satisfied. After pointing out administrative problems the Canada Revenue Agency is currently having, which adds to the slower pace, Gourde picked up on Singh's line of questioning: "Canadians will have a hard time producing the necessary documents to file their 2020 tax return by the April 30 deadline. Can the government extend the filing deadline without penalizing Canadian taxpayers?"

Lebouthilier answered, again:

"Our government understands full well that this is a stressful tax season for all Canadians. We will continue to be there for them every step of the way. In February, we announced that recipients of the emergency and recovery benefits would be eligible for interest relief if they filed their 2020 tax returns. The Canada Revenue Agency has also put in place robust taxpayer relief provisions that grant them relief from penalties or interest incurred for reasons beyond their control. These measures will ensure that Canadians who need help during tax season will get it."

You get a prize if you find the six differences in Lebouthiller's answers. A robot would be more creative. What you will not find, however, is any sense of compassion for people, any sense of clarity and certainly not a much needed extension after 400 days of pandemic.

And that is a real shame.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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While the Conservatives are clamouring for a return to Parliament next week for "accountability sessions," there are nevertheless some warning signs that perhaps what kind of accountability they are looking for is a bit suspect. While there is little doubt that some of this demand for a quick return is a desire to get some screen time and to start replenishing their stockpiles of angry clips for social media that they can deploy in future shitposts once it's no longer considered quite so crass as to attack a government that is up to its neck in trying to keep the economy afloat from a global pandemic there is a need for parliamentary accountability, provided it's done properly.

Part of why we need a skeleton parliament to be sitting is to pass emergency measures as they come up, and they have been coming up practically weekly. It's important that the original proposals and the amendments be made in public, so that there is a record, even if the negotiations for those changes happens behind-the-scenes. That's fair, but there needs to be a public record and a proper legislative process rather than to pass all stages in one fell swoop. That's doing a disservice to the democracy that prime minister Justin Trudeau keeps insisting he respects.

"Conservatives are not asking for full Parliament to sit April 20," Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen tweeted late Thursday evening. "We want a reduced number of MP's for a reduced number of days each week to ask the [government] questions and offer solutions to help Canadians deal with the COVID-19 crisis."

Asking questions is important. Being seen to offer solutions is slightly more performative than what has been happening during the daily teleconferences between MPs and government officials, which Elizabeth May assured Canadians during her C-15 speech last Saturday was getting results, but I can understand why the opposition wants to be seen to offer these suggestions in public, beyond their daily press releases that make the same demands over and over again. That said, if we had seen the original text of the emergency bills that had passed, we would have a better idea of what the opposition parties had offered as amendments and what kind of deal was hammered out in back rooms (be they real backrooms or virtual ones over a teleconference).

This having been said, I have concerns about where the search for accountability is going, based on what the Conservatives has been raising, particularly when it comes to the World Health Organization and the information it received from China. The Conservatives have been going two-fold on this particular line of attack and some of it has very much been an attack. One of the lines is an attempt to find a villain behind this, which is both foolhardy when we're dealing with a novel virus that we had very little information on three months ago, and smacks of Trumpism, which you would think the Conservatives would want to run far away from. (Unfortunately, as we saw with erstwhile leadership candidate Marilyn Gladu this week, repeating his false claims about cures and demands to open up the economy, Trumpism does exist within the party).

The other reason for the line of attack is to try and make it look that they had been right all along when they made demands for measures that were against sound public health practice at the time, starting with closing the borders to certain countries. The problem with this kind of revisionist history and it very much has been revisionist history as they have absolutely claimed that the government "listened" to them, albeit belatedly, when they did eventually close the borders to non-Canadians is that it doesn't track with what actually happened with the infection in Canada. Had we closed the borders to China when the Conservatives demanded (a fairly useless gesture considering that Wuhan had already been locked down by Chinese authorities and Canada was negotiating to get our nationals out and back to Canada), it wasn't until there were outbreaks in Iran and Italy that the whole world was alerted to the severity of the disease. Closing the borders to China would not have helped those who were exposed in Iran, Italy, or elsewhere, and then brought it back to Canada asymptomatically, before anyone in the world quite grasped the scope of the problem.

This isn't to let China off the hook it very much looks like they provided false data to the WHO in an attempt to make things look better than they were, but we also have to remember that it's not like there were comparator countries that the WHO could turn to, and that most of their recommendations were in line with established public health recommendations that were developed post-SARS. Closing borders were proven not to work, and we know that people get around those border closures and then don't report when they're symptomatic because they're afraid of getting in trouble for evading the border closure. There were good reasons to follow the WHO's guidelines, and even if they were insufficient, we can't ignore the context that this virus was unlike anything we have been used to in previous outbreaks over the past century.

With this in mind, we need to remember that when we do get a resumption of Parliament in whatever form it is preferably a skeleton parliament because a "virtual" one is not desirable and would be one giant gong show it will be important to hold ministers accountable for decisions that were made, not public health officials for the advice that they were giving. And while it may be tempting to try and call for blood as a way of satiating the frustration that everyone is feeling for the situation we're in, let's remember that we are in an unprecedented circumstance, and that accountability doesn't have to mean demanding resignations. We can be mature about the exercise if we choose to be.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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Last Thursday afternoon, Global Affairs Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne held a press conference to address the release of one the government's most recent policy statements.

This statement, issued by both Champagne and Finance Minister Bill Morneau, confirmed that the Canadian government had lifted its suspension on arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Not only this, but the government noted that it had renegotiated its 14 billion-dollar contract on behalf of Ontario-based General Dynamics Land Systems, to continue the export of its light armoured vehicles (LAVs) to the Saudis.

Rather tellingly, the press conference and the subsequent policy statement was made public only a few hours before the start of the long weekend.

Evidently, the Trudeau Liberals were able to grasp, in their all-knowing wisdom, that this new change in government policy might not be too warmly received.

After all, most Canadians probably wouldn't be thrilled to know that their seemingly benevolent government is exporting arms to a regime which has carried out an onslaught of violence against neighboring Yemen since 2015.

Nor would they be too elated to know that their government is helping fuel this conflict through the selling of its arms. Or that their "feminist" Prime Minister is only providing greater credibility to the murderous Saudi monarchy, notorious for committing human rights abuses against its own citizens, by maintaining such robust trade dealings.

Heck, just the other day the Saudi regime carried out its 800^th execution since 2015 under the current reign of King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

Nevertheless, the Trudeau Liberals persisted.

And they did so in a particularly convoluted manner.

For instance, at the beginning of their policy statement, Champagne and Morneau appeared to deflect responsibility for the arms approval. On two separate occasions, the ministers cited how the arms deal in question was signed not by they themselves, but their Conservative predecessors.

That's true enough.

But what the ministers conveniently forgot to mention was that it was their government who made the "crucial approval of the first export permits for the LAVs," not the Conservatives.

Once Champagne and Morneau had finished playing the blame game, they then went on to justify their decision, referencing both the potential for financial losses and job layoffs if they had not moved ahead with the deal:

"We can confirm that the cancellation of this $14-billion contract â€” or even the mere disclosure of any of its terms â€” could have resulted in billions of dollars in damages to the Government of Canadaâ€¦ This would have put the jobs of thousands of Canadians at risk, not only in Southwestern Ontario but also across the entire defence industry supply chain, which includes hundreds of small and medium enterprises."

Finally, once all the deflections and justifications had been made, Champagne and Morneau chose to pivot even more, boasting of the "significant improvements" they had made to the deal.

According to them, the inclusion of an advisory panel of experts to oversee the approval process of arms exports, as well as the new measures to protect Canadians from financial risk if there is "an infringement of the permit's end use assurances" made the deal worthwhile in pushing ahead with.

Perhaps these measures do indeed represent an improvement for Canada's humanitarian credentials when exporting arms. Well, at least as far as selling arms can ever be reconciled with humanitarianism.

Yet in this current situation, these changes do nothing to address the fundamental and immoral issue of selling arms to one of the world's most repressive regimes. A regime which, let us not forget, is responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Yemenis civilians and the displacement of millions more.

Champagne and Morneau can clamor on all they like about how Canada's armored vehicles are not at "substantive risk" of being used to violate human rights. But in the face of overwhelming evidence cited by arms control advocates like Cesar Jaramillo, the government's decision appears more like an "exercise in willful blindness."

Instead, Canada should take heed of countries like Belgium, Germany, Greece and Norway, which, according to Amnesty International, have all either partially or completely suspended their arms exports to Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies.

To be clear, the potential loss of jobs in southwestern Ontario, as well as the financial hit taken by the government in the event of a cancelled deal would indeed be lamentable.

But even more lamentable, and far more unforgivable, is for Canada to continue to enable the war crimes perpetrated by the Saudi regime. By continuing with this arms deal, that is exactly what the Canadian government is complicit in doing. To say that this is utterly disgraceful would be an understatement.

Canada can, and must, do better.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star