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Month: February 2021
Rick Smith is Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute and co-author of two best-selling books on the impact of pollution on human health.
With the election of Joe Biden, Canada suddenly finds its neighbour and biggest global ally has gone from zero to 60 on climate change action almost overnight.
For a country like Canada that has mostly been playing at the pond hockey level of climate ambition, turning in one of the worst emission reduction performances among major nations over the last decade, this is like suddenly being called up to play in the NHL. Though a sudden change, it's an opportunity to show that Canada is finally ready to play in the big leagues of climate action, something that is eminently achievable according to a widely circulated report last week from the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.
Right out of the gate, the Biden administration has made it clear that the U.S. will not only be rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, but "will exercise its leadership to promote a significant increase in global ambition." The first step toward doing this will be hosting a Leaders' Climate Summit this spring where the U.S. will be laying out its new attitude to action on climate change. This would be a good moment for Canada to also do something new and meaningful to underline its own commitment. The federal Parliament adopting an improved version of the recently introduced Climate Accountability Act would be a useful place to start.
Our American friends will, if the Biden administration gets its way, have a zero-carbon electricity system by 2035. This is an area where matching ambition should be a slam dunk for Canada. We already have a significantly lower carbon electricity system, thanks to vast hydro power infrastructure in places like B.C., Manitoba and Quebec, and are well on the way to ending coal burning in Alberta. A little inter-provincial cooperation on trading clean hydro power while also using water-power systems to backstop fast growing solar and wind, could allow us to easily outpace the Americans on reaching this target.
Biden has also called for a doubling of offshore wind power production by 2030. For Canada, doubling offshore wind would consist of installing exactly one offshore wind turbine. Despite having one of the world's longest coastlines, Canada has completely missed the fast-rising tide toward deploying offshore wind. For example, while Canada lets the wind blow freely by on all three coasts (and the Great Lakes), Denmark is building an entire island to harness the wind.
But where Canada is really going to struggle to keep up with the newly ambitious Americans is not just with the deployment of renewable energy sources or new laws to make everything from appliances and lighting to buildings and vehicles more energy efficiency, it is with our neighbour's new overarching approach to embedding climate considerations in every decision taken by government.
Here the Biden administration's plan really is pace-setting, with the creation of a special climate envoy, the highly respected John Kerry, as the head of a new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy to oversee a "whole of government" mandate for action on climate. This is being operationalized through the National Climate Task Force, which brings together leaders from 21 federal agencies and departments to act on the president's already extensive climate directives.
One of the first marching orders for this new climate strike force is to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, something that Canada has been talking about for years while making little or no progress (in a recent scorecard, Canada ranked last among 11 OECD countries on progress in ending support for fossil fuels). The president's climate directive calls for all federal agencies to "take steps to ensure that . . . Federal funding is not directly subsidizing fossil fuels" and to "eliminate fossil fuel subsidies from the budget request for Fiscal Year 2022 and thereafter."
In the same vein, the president is calling for the U.S. to step up support for climate action in developing countries and to step down support for fossil fuel infrastructure and development outside the U.S.
Biden has a reputation as a details guy and it shows with another pillar in this government-wide approach. His directive contains an entire section on how government departments and agencies must start calculating the social costs of carbon, nitrous oxide and methane. As the directive explains, "It is essential that agencies capture the full costs of greenhouse gas emissions as accurately as possible, including by taking global damages into account. Doing so facilitates sound decision-making, recognizes the breadth of climate impacts, and supports the international leadership of the United States on climate issues." This is the kind of fundamental change in approach that is too often missing in political commitments to "do better."
In the same vein, the Biden administration is pointing to the importance of simultaneously addressing issues of climate and environmental justice. Its Justice40 Initiative sets a goal of delivering 40 per cent of the overall benefits of federal investments in things like renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate adaptation to disadvantaged communities. The administration will track performance toward that goal through an Environmental Justice Scorecard. Canada, meanwhile, is still struggling to deliver clean drinking water to many Indigenous communities and is likely to miss its current target for lifting all water advisories.
Whether it is "pausing" oil and gas leasing on federal lands and offshore areas or embracing climate action as a job creation and social justice opportunity, the Biden administration is not just talking—it is acting. Canada is going to need to significantly improve its climate game if it wants to keep up.
The post What Biden's climate leadership means for Canada appeared first on Macleans.ca.
During the lengthy interview with former prime minister Joe Clark on the CBC's West of Centre podcast over the weekend, there were a number of very interesting things that came up for discussion, but something that I find of particular interest was something that largely got overlooked in the write-up, which is what Clark diagnosed as one of the changes in the nature of political parties in this country, and what effect that has on national discourse within the country and it's something that we should be paying attention to.
Around eighteen minutes into the interview, Clark made the following observation:
There's been a quite significant change in the nature of our political parties, and that has had a significant impact on the sense of participation and contentment in the nation. We're accustomed, political scientists in particular, to looking at countries in terms of our formal institutions. One of the realities about political parties when I first began to get involved, was that they were very important informal instruments of reconciliation in the country. They were parties that would, on the one hand, let anybody in they didn't distinguish ideologically. People were quite fierce in their affiliations but they were not closed-minded.
He went on to say that one of the greatest economic debates in our country's history happened within the Liberal Party itself, and pointed to the hard work of Progressive Conservative Party leader Robert Stanfield in defending the Official Languages Act in the parts of the country where it was difficult to do so.
"The parties were determined to not only welcome people, but to reconcile differences," Clark added. "Its deterioration coincided with the growth of interest groups in the country. Interest groups have made a lot of profound, positive change a lot of important issues, the rights of women, the environment, others were not getting enough attention until interest groups embraced them, but nonetheless, they have eroded the breadth of national political parties. People draw their own in."
And this, I think, is starting to narrow in on a definite change within parties that has weakened their ability to be useful vehicles of federalism, and of good governance through bottom-up, grassroots engagement in this country. But it's only part of the problem. It also goes hand-in-hand with the way in which parties undermined themselves the more they moved toward American presidential primary-style leadership contests, which centralized power within the leaders' offices and drew it away from the grassroots.
Clark has a very good point about interest groups, quoting Stanfield's warning that political parties are being replaced by interest groups, and citing that political parties reconcile interests, and interest groups insist on them. Clark cited the environment and women's rights as two successful interest groups that succeeded where parties failed in their traditional approaches to find some kind of consensus among their membership to drive policy, but I think it also speaks to how forces outside of the political system bolstered these interest groups. After all, if we look at what abysmal civics education we get these days, people are taught that the way to make change is to sign petitions and join these interest groups, rather than joining a party and agitating for change from their grassroots process. That has become self-reinforcing.
But this also couldn't happen without the power within parties shifting from the grassroots to the leaders, where bottom-up policy development has become top-down, and leadership contests involving full slates of policies that said leader intends to impose on the party. When your focus is on the leader, the grassroots imperative toward reconciling positions, policies, and even regional differences, withers.
It's also something that former Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray diagnosed in a 2011 interview when he heard about the horrific gong show in how Alberta's PC leadership contests were being run, where people were buying memberships between the first and second ballots.
"Where's the cohesion in that?" Murray asked. "Where is the commitment? If the membership of a political party at the constituency level is so fluid and so amorphous, how can that political party play its essential role of acting as an interlocutor of the people of that constituency and the caucus and government in Ottawa or Edmonton, or Toronto, or wherever? The short answer is that it can't."
This feeds directly into the problem that Clark diagnoses about the ability for parties to act as instruments of reconciliation. These leaders, sometimes interlopers to the caucus who have never held a seat before, come in without an agenda of reconciling themselves to their own caucus, let alone their positions with those of the grassroots. Their assumption is that the grassroots voted for them, and therefore their word is law within the party. And when Clark talks about how there used to be a stronger sense of "us" in a party, and that is now turning into a sense of "us" and "them" both within and outside of the party the ability to engage the country's points of division become strained.
To this end, Clark diagnosed part of the Liberals' problems in engaging with Alberta as part of this loss of an ability to reconcile within its own membership. In turn, he sees that Alberta's interests are exacerbated when they appear to be ignored (though I would argue that the Liberals have not ignored them, but they simply didn't tell many Albertans the lies they wanted to hear, and those Albertans turned to those who did).
"The Liberal Party in the past, much like the Progressive Conservative Party in the past, used to be much broader than that," Clark said. "It used to reflect the whole of the country. It was a reconciling instrument in a country that always needs reconciliation. I'm quite disappointed about all of the parties in that sense."
He's right in that this loss has impacted our political institutions, but when he said that our political system requires significant changes, he didn't really elaborate as to how. I think we do need change, but that change has to be getting us to the place where we used to be where leaders were not dominant, where the grassroots could engage, could reconcile, could have broad tents that drew in Canadians to the conversation. Simply doubling down on how things have devolved will only serve to further stress and strain our system.
Photo Credit: The Chronicle Herald
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
If rumors swirling around Ottawa are correct, a federal election might be hitting us as early as this June, which means we'll all soon be treated to yet another round of that unique Canadian political game I like to call, "Who's the true Canadian?"
You know what I'm talking about, right?
It happens in virtually every federal election; one political leader (who always happens to be a Liberal) will dramatically claim that his rival (who always happens to be a Conservative) doesn't support or represent "true Canadian values."
It's just good old fashioned nationalistic drumbeating.
Of course, there's nothing unique about making nationalism an issue during elections; it happens in just about every country, with one side pushing an internationalist/globalist, hands-across-the-border vision, while the other promotes a more flag-waving, nationalistic "we need to look after our own country first" point of view.
But here's what makes the debate in Canada a little bit different.
In other countries, the side pushing nationalism is almost always located on the right side of the political spectrum and is often associated with populism, think of France's National Rally Party led by Marine Le Pen, or of Germany's AfD Party or of the Trumpian wing of America's Republican Party.
Yet, here in Canada, it's the left-wing-leaning, progressive, "postnational" Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Justin "I'm a global citizen" Trudeau, which adopts a strident nationalistic tone.
Mind you, it's not the sort of nationalism that's linked to anti-immigrant policies or to protectionism (though, lest we forget, the Liberals were once vehement economic nationalists), it's more of a nationalism that's linked to fanning the flames of anti-American feelings.
In short, during elections the Liberals love to demonize our neighbours to the south as a threat to our way of life, because they believe (probably correctly) that fomenting such an "us vs them" tribalism is a good way to win votes.
So, Liberals first paint America as a scary country packed full of gun-toting rednecks, bible-thumping evangelists and demon-eyed Trump supporters and then claim their Conservative rivals are nothing but American lackeys, who have a secret plan to drag Canada into the nightmarish American vortex.
The horror!!
Nor do the Liberals actually need any evidence to back up this serious charge.
All they need to do is put the words "American-style" in front of every Conservative policy proposal.
Hence, you'll regularly see Liberal warnings about Conservative Party plans to implement "American-style health care" or "American-style gun laws" or "American-style capitalism", all of which, they will claim the Conservatives promote with "American-style" election ads.
Meanwhile, the Liberals present themselves as the only true defenders of Canadianness.
Such attacks usually put the Conservatives on the defensive, as they constantly have to defend their loyalty to Canada.
Indeed, one of the Conservative Party's great weaknesses during elections is that, unlike just about every other right-leaning political party in the world, it can't properly play the nationalistic flag-waving card.
After all, it's hard for Conservatives to wave the flag, when (as the Liberals love to gleefully point out) they actually opposed adopting the Maple Leaf banner back in 1965. (For the early part of its history Canada's conservative party associated nationalism with extolling our place in the British Empire.)
Besides, nationalism in Canada is inextricably intertwined with left-wing policies.
So, unless you fully embrace socialist health care, the welfare state and just about any other government intervention in the economy, you risk being labeled a traitorous American sympathizer.
Basically, my point is, the Liberals have a monopoly on exploiting nationalistic feeling.
Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to solve this dilemma by creating a conservative-style nationalism, one that celebrated Canada's history.
Remember those War of 1812 celebrations?
Alas, it didn't stick because Canada's ruling elites have deemed that celebrating Canada's history is akin to endorsing white supremacy.
This is why statues of Sir John A. McDonald have to worry about more serious things than just pigeons.
Harper also tried to link Conservative nationalism with nationalist sentiment in Quebec, but unfortunately for him, Quebec's brand of nationalism is almost exclusively reserved for Quebecois.
Of course, if a federal election does occur in June, current Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole might try to whip up a bit of vaccine nationalism.
All he has to do is point to the Liberal government's horrendous record on vaccine procurement, and say something like, "We're in 38th place world-wide when it comes to vaccinating the public, that's embarrassing for Canada!!"
Might work.
Certainly, the Conservatives need to do something to thwart the Liberal nationalist attacks.
Otherwise, they'll always be at a disadvantage.
Even in this supposedly globalist age, voters like to put their country first.
Photo Credit: CBC News
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
It was supposed to be a relatively quiet election. Certainly, that was what Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey assumed and hoped for when, on January 15th, he called a snap general election for February 13th.
His Liberals were miles ahead in the polls, up by more than 40 points over Ches Crosbie's Conservatives, by more than 50 points over Alison Coffin's NDP. Other premiers who had gambled and rolled the dice on a pandemic election had won, and won big.
As a member of the Atlantic bubble, the pandemic was under control: Newfoudland skated over the holidays without any significant outbreaks. "The past month was a period of great risk," Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province's chief medical officer of health rejoiced on January 13th. "You all stepped up your efforts and it is paying off." Two days later, an election was called. A month later, it is a complete fiasco.
Early on during the election, opposition leaders denounced Furey's election gambit as an unnecessary risk, motivated by the Liberals' appetite for uncontrolled power. The argument didn't have much traction then. But suddenly, in the dying days of the campaign, COVID-19 cases were on the rise on the Avalon peninsula and a sense of panic had set in. Something had to be done about the election!
Chief Electoral Officer Bruce Chaulk certainly made a mess of it all. At first, Chaulk was passing the buck on his responsibilities, stating that the authority rested with Dr. Fitzgerald to postpone the election. Chaulk then tried to get the leaders to act, pleading with them on February 11th to meet with the Lieutenant Governor to find a "constitutionally sound mechanism" to address the rising problem. Whatever that meant.
A few hours later, Chaulk was postponing unilaterally the election in 18 districts on the Avalon peninsula, creating in effect a two-tier election as the campaign would keep going in these districts while the rest of the province voted. The next day, Chaulk, faced with polling staff revolts and walkouts, decided he had no choice but to cancel in-person voting across the entire province and move toward mail-in ballots, prolonging the election past the extra two days allowed by law in case of an emergency. Indeed, all of these actions seem beyond the powers given to him by Law, something Chaulk himself was arguing a few days before! Think about it for a second: the election happening right now in Newfoundland and Labrador is illegal. There are no statutory, regulatory or legal provisions of any kind for what is happening now.
Worse, Chaulk made the province-wide postponement announcement on CTV News Channel not to local media without first informing the party leaders and without a real plan on how to proceed. One would think that, in a pandemic, contingency plans would have been put in place to ensure the integrity of the election, come what may. It would appear that 'fingers crossed' is not a sustainable plan.
So Elections NL is left scrambling, changing procedures and rules on a daily basis, putting the onus on confused voters to request, receive and return mail-in ballots. Many remote communities are worried about vote suppression as a result of these decisions. Bruce Chaulk should not remain in his position: his days at the head of NL elections are numbered.
The last week has been a week of complete and utter chaos, putting at risk the integrity of the election. It might be beyond repair, and may lead to many legal challenges. While Chaulk bears some responsibility, ultimately, this whole mess is on Andrew Furey's head. Politically, the prolonged election rests squarely on the Premier's decision to go ahead with the early election call. The unnecessary risk argument put forward by Crosbie and Coffin carries more weight with voters now. If I was a Liberal strategist, I would be worried.
Perhaps voters will be magnanimous and reward Andrew Furey nevertheless. Everybody is rewriting the rulebooks on the fly during the pandemic, even a year in. But the courts might not be so kind, if challenges are brought forward. Whatever happens, the conditions are set to create political instability in Newfoundland and Labrador for the foreseeable future. Elsewhere in the country, Blaine Higgs, John Horgan and Scott More are counting their lucky stars. And Justin Trudeau might now think twice about forcing a Spring election.
Photo Credit: CTV News
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Process.
That's what lawyers always say to judges: the solution to process, Your Honour, is even more process.
Now, Justin Trudeau is no lawyer, as everyone knows. His mauling of the Rule of Law during the SNC-Lavalin scandal his obstruction of justice therein made that pretty crystal-clear. But he sure has a lawyer's enthusiasm for process, doesn't he?
Actual results? Nope. Not his thing. Trudeau prefers to over-promise and under-deliver. Always. It's stamped on his DNA.
Proof of this is found in Canada's blossoming vaccination fiasco. At every turn, on every day, the Liberal leader's response to the growing vaccination crisis has been to offer up sunny bromides about things that don't matter. Process stuff.
So, Trudeau wheezes we don't have a domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity (false). He shrugs, and says we should be comforted by the fact that we've purchased but not actually received lots of vaccine doses (also false). He says the big problem is the provinces being slow on coronavirus testing (false, false).
The actual problem is really simple: we don't have vaccines, and the rest of the developed (and undeveloped) world mostly do. Canadians have noticed, too.
An Angus Reid survey released Friday said this: "Fifty-seven per cent of Canadians now say the government has done a poor job of securing COVID-19 doses for the population. This represents a near tripling from the number who said the same thing in early December (23 per cent)."
Among other things, that means we aren't going to have a Spring election in the country. Good. But it also raises a rather important question: with his approval numbers in a free-fall, why does Justin Trudeau insist on prattling on about process, instead of actual results?
The New York Times, of all newspapers, came up with an answer last week. Self-appointed progressives, the Times wrote, always prefer process. It's their emotional support animal.
Here's what the Times wrote. It's worth quoting.
"Early in the pandemic, countries with populist, right-wing governments were suffering some of the worst outbreaks. Their problems all stemmed partly from leaders who rejected scientific expertise. More progressive and technocratic countries [like Canada] were doing a better job containing the pandemic. Politicians who believed in the ability of bureaucracies to accomplish complex jobs were succeeding at precisely that."
Then something weird happened, noted the Times.
"But over the last few weeks, as vaccination has become a top priority, the pattern has changed. Progressive leaders in much of the world are now struggling to distribute coronavirus vaccines quickly and efficiently."
The European Union vaccination effort has "descended into chaos," said the Times. Democratic states "are below the national average." And Justin Trudeau's Canada is "far behind" the United States, the Times stated.
"Far behind" is right: the National Post published an extraordinary front page this week, listing the number of countries ahead of us on vaccines, in headline-sized fonts: 37 of them. THIRTY-SEVEN.
The reason, suggested the previously-Trudeau-fans at the New York Times? Process.
"Why?" queried the Times. "A common problem seems to be a focus on process rather than on getting shots into arms. Some progressive leaders are effectively sacrificing efficiency for what they consider to be equity."
And therein lies the best explanation of all: Justin Trudeau is just being who he is. He prefers process over results. Talking over doing. Sizzle over steak. Always.
Missing from the New York Times' sober assessment of our vaccination failure? A pithy summary of Canada's situation. So here it is, gratis.
We are so, so screwed.
Photo Credit: CBC News
More from Warren Kinsella. @kinsellawarren
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author's alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
As Erin O'Toole starts outlining his vision for a post-COVID economic recovery, there are signals that he is sending out, too loud to be ignored, that he has taken none of the lessons that this pandemic has offered. The current economic crisis is not your typical recession or economic slowdown, and it has shown to have a disproportionate impact on women and visible minorities because of the ways in which industries they overwhelmingly work in have been hit. But does anything O'Toole proposes deal with the actual economic damage we've seen, or those who have been impacted by it? Of course not. O'Toole is bound by particular ideological guideposts, and his plans to address the "she-session" is to focus on a bro-covery.
Since he was made Conservative leader, O'Toole has been laying out a vision of re-shoring manufacturing in Canada in part out of an embrace of protectionism, but also out of a sense of trying to foment a paranoia about Communist China. This isn't to say that there aren't problems with China, because there are, and this pandemic has shown us that there is a legitimate need for some level of domestic production of strategic supplies including PPE but it's going to be incredibly difficult to disentangle much of our commercial manufacturing from China. We are a society that worships on the altar of cheap telling people that we're going to deny Walmart and Dollarama their ability to source cheap goods from China is going to be an incredibly hard sell.
O'Toole's other focus has been on natural resources doubling down on Alberta's failed policy of providing false hope that there is another oil boom just around the corner that will solve all of its fiscal ills. There isn't the shale revolution killed that dream, along with the impending rapid decarbonization of the economy, and Alberta needs to seriously transition, which O'Toole seems oblivious to. Nevertheless, the focus on these two sectors is not exactly looking at where the actual hurt in our economy is these days, which is in services something that O'Toole has been entirely silent about.
O'Toole has also been silent about the need for childcare as a cornerstone of the recovery. We've seen the effect that this pandemic has had on women in the workforce, as too many of them have had to either take leave or quit their jobs to take care of children who have been kept at home from school or childcare because of the spread of COVID. And this isn't just because of the pandemic we knew this beforehand, and it was integral in the plans for "inclusive growth" that those radical ideologues at the Bank of Canada were talking about as being necessary for sustained economic growth. Getting more women and marginalized groups into the workforce is key to our sustained economic growth, and for that to happen, there needs to be actual childcare which is a supply-side problem in Canada at the moment.
O'Toole, however, has been dismissive of talk of both a green recovery and inclusive growth as being "ideological," and "risky experimentation" with the economy that will somehow hamper people getting jobs, which he claims are his driving motivation. The irony here, however, is that he is being ideological himself in his dismissal of these plans, because they conflict with his established notions about job creation. O'Toole's rhetoric is about getting back to normal, but the Old Normal is what led us to this place, and is why the pandemic has hit us as hard as it has. A desire to get back to Old Normal is as ideological as is the desire to "Build Back Better," as cringe-worthy as the term may be, because the pandemic exposed the cracks in our economic foundations that too many successive governments have simply papered over in the hopes that they would go away. The focus on manufacturing and natural resources is also indicative of a belief in the kinds of trickle-down economics that supposes that these jobs will be what supports the rest of the service economy around it, when the service economy is in part of what is driving us now. For instance, IT services now makes up a larger share of our GDP than mining and oil and gas combined.
We also cannot ignore the other signals that O'Toole has been sending out about just whose jobs he cares about. When Statistics Canada's job numbers were released on Monday, citing that the brunt of the job losses were among women and visible minorities because they were largely concentrated in wholesale and retail trade, as well as accommodation and food services, O'Toole and his comms team chose to illustrate his concern with a stock photo of a young white guy in a hoodie as though they felt that this was the face that would garner more sympathy from his voter base. A day later, he tweeted about championing Canada's workers, and illustrated it with a stock image of a white guy on a construction site never mind that the very same StatsCan figures released this week showed that there were actually job gains in the construction sector. But these images showcase just who O'Toole thinks needs his help.
It was also telling that in the week that O'Toole shuffled up his Shadow Cabinet, he created a new post of critic for COVID economic recovery and made the face of this recovery James Cumming, an otherwise bland, middle-aged white guy. For an economic crisis that has hurt women and minorities the most, O'Toole has exclusively focused on male-dominated sectors, and on showcasing the plight of white guys like him, while dismissing the concerns of getting women and minorities into the workforce. For a party that likes to brand itself as good economic managers, they can neither read the concerns of the marketplace, nor see the direction that the market is heading in terms of a green recovery. This is tone-deaf and they aren't even fighting the last war they are fighting three, maybe four wars past. If a bro-covery is the best that O'Toole has to offer, he shouldn't be surprised by the fact that his polling numbers are so low in the demographics he needs to reach out to.
Photo Credit: Saltwire.com
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
An engaged populace is surely a good thing. Unless, perhaps, you run a government focused on reigniting the economy by cutting red tape and making friends with all and any potential business partners.
The Alberta government found out in recent months just how scary an engaged and enraged populace can be. By throwing open doors to coal miners intent on scouring out a few mountain tops in previously protected lands, the UCP landed itself deep in a populist uprising of ranchers, farmers, environmentalists, country singers and town councillors.
This week Energy Minister Sonya Savage reinstated the provincial coal policy put in place in 1976 pending wider public consultations on a new policy.
"An important part of being a responsible government is to admit when you've made a mistake and to fix it," Savage said.
The government may have admitted its error but it certainly hasn't fixed the mistake.
In concrete terms, existing coal leases and those approved in the seven or eight months between the rescinding of the 1976 policy and now are not cancelled. Exploration on some of those leases in ongoing. And lease holding companies are still waiting in the wings for the new coal policy the government still plans to institute after it conducts some unspecified consultations.
The initial decision to try to sneak one past the people of southern Alberta also created some unintended consequences. By messing with the policy, the government drew attention to coal mines that weren't even covered by the 1976 document.
A massive mine proposed for the Crowsnest Pass area is already at the provincial-federal regulatory stage, with a possible construction start date this fall. It isn't in any way affected by Savage's announcement this week, but the controversy has put a huge spotlight on opponents who fear the affect the Grassy Mountain mine will have on water supplies coming out of the mountains.
Suddenly the average man on the street in Lethbridge, Alberta, is familiar with the potential water-tainting affects of selenium pollution from mine sites.
The federal-provincial regulators are now operating in a more charged environment than they might have been before the provincial government's misstep.
There is also a coal-development court challenge with rancher and First Nations involvement which isn't likely to be derailed by Savage's announcement.
The entire controversy has also given a voice to disgruntled municipal governments. There has been a raft of irritating tax and funding issues chafing at the relationship between the UCP government and rural and urban councils. But the possible fouling of drinking water and purple mountain majesty has galvanized councils even in traditionally rock-ribbed conservative regions to speak out.
Calgary City Council voted the day Savage issued her apology to demand cancelation or suspension of the coal leases that were granted between the revocation of the 1976 policy and its reinstatement.
Just to pour a little salt in the wound, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, not a favourite at any time of the provincial government, said the entire coal affair was "a good lesson" for the UCP on transparency and consultation.
Meanwhile, it's a safe bet that the international mining community is keeping a sharp eye on proceedings. If the government buckles further to pressure and starts cancelling leases, companies will expect some compensation.
Suddenly doing business in Alberta, rather than an exercise in laissez-faire capitalism, has become a risky venture, replete with image-damaging environmental campaigns and protests.
And so the UCP government, with one ill-considered decision in May to spur the province's economy, has eroded the trust of many of its most stalwart supporters, given ammunition to its many detractors, and damaged the province's business reputation on the international stage.
That's a whole lot to fix.
The government needs to be very careful now how it makes good on its promise to start all over again on a new coal policy. The public consultation must be truly open and transparent and its communication clear and devoid of the UCP's usual obfuscating spin.
Photo Credit: Alberta Venture
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
You may, like I have, wondered what has taken the government so long in announcing it would forgive CERB repayments for self-employed people it misled into applying for benefits. Why, exactly, did it take so long to backtrack, especially after it became clear the government had given people bad information.
If you'll allow me a quick decent into cliched hackery: Unless you're Loblaws or SNC-Lavalin, this government doesn't care about you. Regular people don't actually rate inside the halls of the PMO.
Is that too trite? Perhaps, but what other excuse could there be?
Let's go back to the beginning, shall we? At issue is the plight of some 400,000 self-employed Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) claimants. When the CERB was extended to self-employed people — quite belatedly, I gotta say — it came with a minimum income requirement. You had to have made at least $5,000 in 2019, or in the previous 12 months.
People were unsure exactly how this applied to them, whether it meant gross income (money earned before deducting expenses) or net income (money earned after deducting expenses). So, they did what anyone would do: they went to the government's websites, where they didn't really find much clarifying information. So, they called.
What the heard when they called really seems to have depended on who they ended up getting on the other end of the line with. But, generally speaking, it boiled down to: use your gross income, and apply for the CERB.
At some point later, in the halls — or probably the homes — of the CRA, it was decided that, actually, the requirement was for net income, no matter what people had been told. Sometime in mid-April, according to a Toronto Star report from the time, the CRA updated its Q&A to reflect this, without actually announcing the change. (Always a good sign when a news organization has to give a possible range of dates for when a change could have been made.)
Then in early December, people started getting letters in the mail telling them they owed the CRA all the CERB money they received back, in some cases as much as $14,000. The letters also gave the impression to many of the recipients that they needed to pay it back by the end of the year, though the CRA insisted in press statements that wasn't the case.
Anyway, a government responsive to the needs of its citizens, particularly in the midst of a generational economic and health crisis, might try and soothe the fears of people suddenly finding out they owe a huge sum of money.
Instead, they got this in a statement from the CRA to the Star after, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the department had been caught out for changing what its website said the eligibility requirements were: "there has been no change to this position during the life cycle of the CERB. This requirement was publicized on Canada.ca since the beginning." (Again, it had not been publicized.)
Days later when the union for the call centre workers called the government out, saying its workers had been provided incorrect information to give to people calling in with questions, the agency said it would work out repayment plans for people on a case by case basis.
And since then, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough has been steadfast that no debt would be forgiven and the government would not make exceptions for any CERB recipients.
Finally — finally — after two months of this, the government reversed course. If you applied and received the CERB based on your gross income, and you met all the other requirements, you don't have to pay back your benefits. And if you've already paid back your benefits in the last couple months, that money will be handed back to you.
So, we must come back to this question of what took so long.
And I can't help but dip back into this well, but when SNC-Lavalin needed an out from bribery charges — charges they have since admitted guilt to in a settlement — the federal government led by the PMO moved mountains, to the point the government nearly destroyed itself, to get SNC what it wanted.
In this case people were facing a bill of more than $10,000 on incomes, you'll remember, that amounted to less than $5,000 over a year after expenses. These people were left hanging from months.
The power disparity is obvious, and so is the effort put into solving the problem.
It is surely a coincidence the government waited until a credible class-action lawsuit had been filed to change course and do the right thing.
The incredible thing is how incredibly stupid this is politically. It's not much of a secret the government is itching to fight another election and win back a majority in Parliament.
On one hand you have corporations hovering up hundreds of millions in federal COVID wage subsidies, making gigantic profits, increasing their dividend payouts to shareholders totalling billions of dollars, and still laying off their workers. On the other you have a group of individuals who had received a few thousand dollars in relief after losing most or all of their meagre incomes having that money demanded back. The constituency for this specific balance of corporate generosity and individual miserliness must be so small as to only constitute the federal Liberal caucus.
But that's the way it works with this government. Lethargy and waffling will always be the response to an issue brought about by people without a lobbyist on retainer.
So it goes for the party of the ruling class, and those working hard to pull the ladder up behind them.
Photo Credit: Saultonline.com
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls of all ages! Gather 'round, as I'm going to tell you a story about a political leader who's made many mistakes with an important issue. Some people are furious, while others have suggested it could be part of a cunning plan.
Let's dig into The Whimsical Tale of Faux Justin Trudeau and the COVID-19 Vaccines.
We find ourselves in Ottawa. It's a city rich in history, art, architecture, music, food and political gossip at the local watering holes.
Trudeau has ruled the roost in our nation's capital since becoming Prime Minister in 2015. Alas, the 49-year-old boy-king of progressive politics has frequently bumbled, fumbled and stumbled in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. It's become a running joke, both domestically and internationally.
Trudeau once praised China's "basic dictatorship" because it helped them "turn their economy around on a dime," although he later claimed it was a joke. He told an Edmonton town hall meeting to use the term "peoplekind" instead of "mankind," which was another knee-slapper.
The PM released a media statement that lavishly praised the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and forgot to name Alberta during a Canada Day speech. These two gaffes may seem funny, but they were distinctly serious.
Trudeau has also had public battles with (mostly) female MPs and cabinet ministers, including Jody Wilson-Raybould. He's already made two trips to the Ethics Commissioner related to a vacation on the Dalai Lama's island and SNC-Lavalin, which were both ruled as violations and WE Charity will likely be the third. We can't forget those three older instances of wearing blackface, too.
"Oh, Prime Minister. You mess up so!," the townsfolk say.
"I know, I know!," says Trudeau.
The newest bumble, fumble and stumble is with COVID-19 vaccines.
Canada has procured 398 million doses, but more than 70 percent are linked to vaccines that haven't been approved yet. Pfizer reduced its vaccine shipment by more than two-thirds since mid-January, which will take several weeks to sort out. Moderna announced last week that only three-quarters of its vaccines will arrive in our country, which is an overall reduction of 50,000 doses.
The PM also misspoke during a Feb. 5 COVID-19 briefing about the (hopefully forthcoming) AstraZeneca vaccine. Trudeau claimed the company's CEO reassured him it would fulfill its order and send 20 million doses to Canada by late June. But according to Ottawa's 680 News, "officials with public service and procurement [said] that is not the case" and the timeline "will not be announced before Health Canada approves the vaccine."
"Oh, Prime Minister. You messed up so!," the townsfolk said.
"I know, I know," acknowledged Trudeau.
Or did he?
Maclean's columnist Paul Wells recently suggested this may be something quite different. The PM "comes out and reassures Canadians in the morning, and then over the course of the day, the substance of his reassurance is walked back by other ministers, or by the public service," he said on CBC's Power and Politics on Feb. 5. "He made claims about the AstraZeneca delivery that were disowned before lunch by the public service."
"The misstatement is always reassuring," Wells said, "and carried live on television by this government's most spectacular public relations asset. And then it is denied later by people you've never heard of, who aren't on camera. It's becoming a pattern."
Is it possible Trudeau's COVID-19 vaccine screw-ups are strategic? Is he supposed to make Canadians feel good by using public forums to present impressive-sounding statistics, only to have less visible figures quietly discredit them and leave the initial impact in place?
"Wait, Prime Minister. Don't you mess up so?," the townsfolk queried.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!," laughed Trudeau.
Oh, please.
While Wells presented an interesting theory, it's highly unlikely Ottawa has mapped out this intricate strategy. Using it a time or two is possible, but consistently? Not a chance.
Canadians, like most people in western democracies, want their leaders to be intelligent, confident, strong, consistent and reassure them everything will be OK. The only way to accomplish these lofty goals is to present information, ideas and policies to a national audience that is accurate and attainable. The more times Trudeau fails to deliver, the less confidence most Canadians will have in his leadership.
The occasional screw-up is par for the course with Trudeau. We all know this. Multiple screw-ups with COVID-19 vaccine distribution which are planned rather than spontaneous would be one of the most insane political strategies in recent memory.
The more likely reason?
Trudeau is obviously being briefed on this important file, but can't keep all his facts straight when speaking to the public. He's done things like this over the years, although not nearly as frequently as what we've seen during the COVID-19 vaccination distribution plan. While it's impossible to know what the PM takes with him to the lectern, or is being fed during media prep, something isn't connecting and it needs to be fixed, fast.
As this whimsical tale comes to a close, our national leader living in the cottage next to 24 Sussex is forced to address a difficult proposition.
"Prime Minister, Prime Minister. These screw-ups are real, and not faux," the townsfolk exclaimed.
"Oh, no," Trudeau said. "They know."
Photo Credit: CBC News
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
