April 25, 2021 - Loonie Politics

Two popular road trip pit stops, one a Horseshoe Bay café and the other a diner in Hope, just scraped by on the first weekend

of business following the introduction of new travel restrictions in B.C.

“Since Friday, it’s been really, really slow,” said Samantha Rosas, an employee at the Good Karma Cafe, which runs a take-away window inside the B.C. Ferries terminal at Horseshoe Bay.

It’s usually busy with passengers lining up to grab a coffee and fresh cinnamon bun after they have cleared the ticket booths, before they board a sailing.

“It’s the first time it’s been this slow. I would say it’s dropped by half or more than half of the customers,” said Rosas.

She said it’s just as well the café will close for a few weeks as a new wall gets installed between the business and the mountain cliff behind it.

B.C. Ferries said last Friday it will “deny travel to customers travelling for non-essential reasons on routes crossing regional zones” as defined in the public health order.

Customers travelling on routes that operate within the same regional zone will be reminded they should be avoiding non-essential travel.

Non-essential reasons include vacations, weekend getaways and tourism activities, visiting family or friends for social reasons and recreation activities, according to the public health order.

B.C. Ferries said it will have weekend traffic statistics to compare later. A quick scan of real-time information on its “current conditions” page on Sunday showed that for most of the sailings that cross regional zones, the total deck space available for cars about an hour before a midday sailing time was near 70 per cent for most, with slightly less availability, at 59 per cent, for the Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen route.

The new travel restrictions combine B.C’s five health authorities into three regions and prohibit non-essential travel between them. This shuffle moved the town of Hope from being in Fraser Health to Interior Health region.

It’s meant a big fall in customers who usually get off Highway 1 and head into Home Restaurant in Hope for a heaving plate of comfort food like beef dip or an open-faced turkey sandwich. The place is also known for its old fashioned-style lemon meringue, coconut cream and other pies.

“It’s been about a 50 per cent hit over this weekend,” said manager Lana Popp. “Normally, we rely on locals and travellers. We are getting the odd traveller, but it’s mostly locals now and they can only (come) so much.”

She’s laid off a dozen staff and is “trying to find other ways of making less of everything.”

Popp’s offering meals for sale in takeout containers as well as “take and bake” pies, but “people like them more when we bake them.”

Hope is where three highways meet and travellers either head north on the Coquihalla, east towards the Kootenays or west into the Lower Mainland. Popp said other business owners there are all lamenting the situation.

“It’s like a ghost town. We’ll just bunker down and get through this until May 25 (when the restrictions end), though I’m not counting on that date.”

jlee-young@postmedia.com

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In the 2019 federal general election, 67 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballot in Canada. Breaking down the election turnout by age group, we notice that, once again, older voters came out in much larger numbers than younger voters. For instance: 73 per cent of voters aged 55 to 64 years old and 79 per cent of voters aged 65 to 74 years old cast a ballot in that election, compared to only 57 per cent of voters aged 18 to 34 according to Elections Canada‘s data.

In fact, the Elections Canada estimates show a 25-point gap between the turnout of the 18 to 24 year old and 65 to 74 year old demographics. Had these younger voters cast ballots in similar proportions to their elders in 2019, a little over 400,000 additional ballots would have been cast from coast to coastâ€”roughly as many ballots cast in all of New Brunswick in 2019. Applying the same formula to the 25 to 34 year old demographic, about 900,000 more ballots would have been cast, almost as many as all of Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined, more than enough ballots to swing the election one way or another.

It is thus both a blessing and a curse for any party to poll in higher numbers with younger voters, as the federal NDP often does. As I have mentioned many times before, party support in polls is only theoretical support, and, on election night, only checked ballots in ballot boxes end up counting. Because of their significantly higher turnout, older voters therefore count for more than their share of weight in the final results.

As a general rule, right-of-centre parties often perform well above their general population average among older voters, and the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) at the federal level is usually no exception. In a LÃ©ger poll fielded in January 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic began in Canada, the Conservatives and Liberals stood at 32 and 31 per cent, respectively, at the national level. Among older voters (55+), the Conservatives were in first place with 35 per cent, but fell to third place with 23 per cent among younger voters (18-34). These results were similar to the final rounds of polling just before the 2019 election, when the Conservatives won the national popular vote by one point over the Liberals. Back in the fall of 2020, the CPC still routinely came in first place in federal polling among older voters, and generally trailed the Liberals by a handful of points because of lower support from younger demographics.

A flurry of federal polls was released just before and after the federal budget, and the 338Canada projection shows the Liberals slowly widening the gap between themselves and the Conservatives. Regionally, numbers show steady leads for the LPC in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, whereas in Quebec the gap between the Liberals and the Bloc QuÃ©bÃ©cois has been growing in favour of the Liberals of late. As for the CPC, it still leads in the Prairies by wide margins, although its numbers in Alberta are closer to the 50 per cent mark rather than the 69 per cent it won back in 2019.

However, it is not the regional numbers as much as the generational voting intentions that really caught my eye last week.

In the latest LÃ©ger/CP tracker poll released in mid-April, the Liberals held first place with 35 per cent of vote intentions among the poll’s entire sampleâ€”a notable, but still modest, 5-point lead over the Conservatives. However, among the older voter demographic (aged 55 and over), it was the Liberal Party that lead the Conservatives by a 9-point margin, 40 to 31 per cent:

Could this be an outlier? We naturally must use caution with a poll’s subsamples because of their higher uncertainty, but the unweighted sample of voters in that age group was a respectable 517 respondents, which, with a probabilistic sample, would have yielded a ±4 per cent margin of error in the 95 per cent confidence interval. So, at best for the CPC, it would be tied with the Liberals among older voters; At worse, the Liberals would hold a 15+ point lead.

Other recent polls show similar data. In the latest federal survey from Mainstreet Research (for iPolitics), the national numbers were mostly in line with the current averages, with the Liberals at 37 per cent and the Conservatives at 30 per cent. However, among voters aged 50 and over (total sample of 647), the Liberals jumped to a crushing 15-point lead over the CPC, 44 to 29 per cent:

Mainstreet’s numbers for voters over 50 years old were also consistent with Ipsos’ latest federal numbers for Global News: 44 per cent for the Liberals and 29 per cent for the Conservatives in the 55 and over age group. Ditto with Nanos Research (data paywalled here) whose latest tracking had the Liberals leading by 13 points among voters aged 60 and over.

Here below is a graph of voting intentions for voters 55 years old and over for the LPC and CPC since October according to LÃ©ger’s tracker. The dots show the poll data, and the shaded areas are simple rolling averages:

[Source data: LÃ©ger / Canadian Press polls from October 2020 to April 2021]

So, this raises the question: Why are older Canadians suddenly keener to support Trudeau’s Liberals than in recent months? As Occam’s razor rule of parsimony wisely states, sometimes the simplest and most obvious explanation is the correct one. From the graph above, it appears that the Liberal Party started distancing itself from the Conservatives in February, which coincided with many senior voters in Canada getting their first jab.

As of this writing, over 79 per cent of Canadians aged 70 to 79 years old and 87 per cent Canadians over 80 years old have received at least a first dose of the vaccine, according to the Public Health agency of Canada. After a slow start to its vaccine rollout in February and March, Canada now has one the fastest vaccination rates in the world, and trails only the United Kingdom and the United States among G7 countries (see graph below).

[Source: Official data collected by Our World in Data.]

The latest 338Canada federal projection has the Liberals at an average of 175 seats, just above the 170-seat threshold for a majority in the House of Commons. However, the projection’s uncertainty ranges ±37 seats in the 95 per cent confidence interval. Should the Liberals hold or even grow their lead among the older electorate, they could suddenly become the favourites in several key close races, ridings where party turnout could be the ultimate determining factor. The bell-shaped projection below is the seat projection probability density for the LPC (the darker the bars, the likelier the outcome):

A few additional points from older voters in key ridings could transform a razor thin 175-seat majority into a 190-seat blowout.

Naturally, let us keep in mind this is merely a snapshot of the political landscape using current data. It appears that Chrystia Freeland’s first budget as finance minister will get the approval of the House of Commons, mostly likely with the approval of the NDP caucus, and so no election should be called in the short term.

Nevertheless, looking at the numbers above, we certainly can understand and appreciate how tempting a late-spring election call must have been for Liberal strategists. However, a slower-than-expected start of the vaccine rollout and the rise of the third wave most likely all but shattered the May or June election window (and probably for the best).

Obviously, history shows one should never underestimate the possibility of the Liberals tripping over their own shoelaces. Nevertheless, should the Liberal-polling-higher-with-vaccinated-voters hypothesis be confirmed in the coming weeks, Canadians could inevitably be called to the voting booths before this 43rd Parliament blows its second candle next Octoberâ€”once most Canadians are fully vaccinated and find themselves ready to return to some levels of normalcy.

Follow 338Canada on Twitter. For details on the 338Canada federal projection visit this page.

The post 338Canada: The Liberals are winning over olderâ€”normally Conservativeâ€”voters appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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As Vancouver navigates a time of unprecedented uncertainty, the city’s new top boss aims to be less a disrupter and more of a steady hand.

In a city grappling with overdose and housing crises and a world still in the throes of a pandemic, some stability and predictability — maybe even a little boredom — sound appealing.

In his first media interview since taking over as Vancouver’s chief bureaucrat last week, new city manager Paul Mochrie told Postmedia he sees himself as a behind-the-scenes administrator, quietly overseeing the organization’s $1.6 billion operating budget and 7,700 employees, and, hopefully, not making too many public waves himself.

“Boring is good,” Mochrie said. “I’m definitely happy to be boring. I’ll take effective and boring over the alternative.”

Mochrie’s

appointment to the city's top job

was announced this week, but came as little surprise. As acting city manager since former city manager Sadhu Johnston’s departure in January, deputy city manager for almost six years before that, and four years as Vancouver’s general manager of human resources, Mochrie is a known quantity around city hall, well liked by staff and council, and seemed a relatively safe bet for the top job.

After Johnston announced his planned departure last year, the city retained executive search firm

Pinton Forrest Madden

to conduct what they called “an extensive six-month international candidate search and recruitment process” for his replacement. But rather than headhunting from another organization or part of the world, as the city has done for other senior positions in recent years, council opted to promote Mochrie from within.

The circumstances of Mochrie’s appointment, under independent Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his mixed council, stand in stark contrast to the first city manager hired under Vancouver’s previous mayor. In 2008, after former mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party swept to their first council majority, one of their first acts was to replace veteran

city manager Judy Rogers with Dr. Penny Ballem, a highly accomplished physician, corporate director and ex-deputy health minister, but with no experience at city hall. At that time,

CBC reported

, Robertson said Rogers was asked to leave because of his new council’s “agenda for change.”

When Ballem was brought in, from outside, to run the City of Vancouver, Postmedia reported she was “no stranger to headlines.”

Mochrie, meanwhile, is more of a stranger to headlines — at least, as much as he can help it.

Mochrie is eager to tackle the city’s hardest problems, from homelessness to the permitting backlog. But when asked what Vancouverites should know about him, he said: “My general instinct, to be honest, is that I do not want to be the story here. That’s one of the things I think is distinct about local government in particular in the City of Vancouver, is the extent to which we as bureaucrats often are the story or are part of this story.”

“It’s an element of the job, it’s unavoidable. But I really do see council as the ones who should be in front. They’re the ones setting the direction the vision for the city, and our job is to help them deliver.”

After growing up in Victoria, the son of a career civil servant, Mochrie came to Vancouver to attend the University of B.C., and has worked in the Lower Mainland for most of the past three decades, including for the provincial government, regional health authorities, and employers’ associations. He was hired at the City of Vancouver in 2011, during Ballem’s tenure as manager.

While Mochrie had nothing critical to say about either Ballem or Johnston, his two immediate predecessors, he did say the three of them were “all very different people, and we come from different backgrounds.”

When Johnston was recruited in 2009 from the City of Chicago to become Vancouver’s new deputy city manager, he was, like Ballem, in the headlines, arriving with a bit of a splash. Veteran city hall reporter Frances Bula called him a “whiz kid” in the

Globe and Mail

, writing that “Vancouver’s unusual move to hire a renowned innovator from the third-largest city in the United States speaks to the new Vision Vancouver council’s desire to brand the city as a green leader.”

Johnston, like Mochrie, was promoted to city manager from the deputy role, after Ballem was fired in 2015. At the time of Ballem’s dismissal, former Vancouver Sun city hall reporter

Jeff Lee described her

as “a tough-as-nails manager,” with a “top-down style.”

Mochrie described his own managerial style as focused on empowering and supporting staff.

“The core element of it for me is getting the right people in the right spots, making sure that we have the right team members and they’re in roles where they can really succeed,” Mochrie said. “We’ve got a very, very talented group of people that work here, and they don’t need me to tell them how to do their job.”

Mochrie’s description of how he envisions the city manager role sound like a throwback to an earlier time, said Sandy James, a city planner who worked at the City of Vancouver for almost 30 years. “It sounds like a return to the old style.”

James worked under

a series of "apolitical" city managers

who ran the city “quietly and efficiently,” she said, from the 1980s until the Vision-majority council suddenly installed Ballem in 2008. James left the city in 2012 during Ballem’s tenure, when, she said, the city “was run in a much more hierarchical way.”

Mochrie’s approach to the role, James said, has her “feeling very positive, and, I have to say, relieved.”

“The city needs stability,” she said. “But I wouldn’t call him boring. I would call him a facilitator.”

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The only housing mention that caused any buzz in this week’s federal budget was Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s promise to bring in a tax on foreign-owned property.

The pledge gave Freeland a chance to get off one of her more quotable, more populist lines: “The idea here is that homes are for Canadians to live in,” she said. “They are not assets for parking offshore money.”

But her pseudo-nationalistic response to skyrocketing prices — a commitment to bring in a country-wide tax on “non-resident, non-Canadian owned residential real estate” deemed vacant — is almost entirely puffery.

There are at least six ways that Freeland’s supposed pledge, which takes up less than half a page of the 724-page budget, undercuts itself.

The first is it’s pretty well a

repeat of a promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made

on the campaign trail in B.C. in 2019, when he said he would bring in a one-per-cent tax on property purchases by “non-resident, non-Canadians.” Nothing happened.

The second cause for doubt is Freeland’s version of the pledge wouldn’t even take effect until Jan. 1, 2022, which would likely be after this year’s expected federal election, which many pundits suggest could be held by late summer.

The third sign that this is mere optics is Freeland said she would study it further, which sounds responsible, but also signals it’s an afterthought — and a classic way to make sure it will get watered down or forgotten.

The fourth problem is that, despite sounding like it’s taking a stand for Canadians, a one-per-cent tax on non-resident-owned property would have only a minor impact.

“If you’re looking for the Bank of Canada or the government (in Ottawa) to cure high house prices, sorry it’s not happening,” says Vancouver

housing analyst Steve Saretsky

The B.C. NDP has already brought in a speculation and vacancy tax and a foreign buyers tax of 20 per cent. Ontario also has a foreign buyers tax for big cities. While the taxes probably helped level-out prices for a few years in B.C., they have not stopped the run-up during this pandemic.

“This national foreign owner tax has no teeth, and it was designed as such,” said Saretsky. The budget, which included

musings about subsidizing affordable housing

, offers nothing to those who would like see a downturn, since prices have jumped a stunning 20 to 30 per cent during COVID.

The fifth reason to believe Freeland’s would-be commitment is window-dressing is it appears to be a counter to the dubious publicity that came this month with the Liberals’ secretary of housing, Adam Vaughan, admitting Canada is “a very safe market for foreign investment, but

not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing

.”

Whatever was going on in Vaughn’s mind, the reality is the Liberals believe they must push housing prices higher to drive the economy. That has pleased privileged

wealthy foreign investors

and directed billions to Canada’s politically powerful development lobby. At the same time, it has undermined local families waiting to shift into owning.

The sixth ground for skepticism about Freeland’s promise is it distracts from the Liberals’ inaction on the big things that have recently ramped up prices — particularly the Bank of Canada’s decision to virtually print money, along with drastically lowered interest rates.

After this budget, the cynicism out there about Ottawa when it comes to housing is extreme. And it doesn’t come from partisans of the left or right.

It comes from housing analysts who have spent years studying the intricacies of Canada’s giant housing industry.

“Nothing in the federal budget will help cool Canada’s housing market. (It’s) further proof the 20-plus per cent increase in house prices was welcome, not just by the Bank of Canada but our own federal government as well,” said

John Pasalis, a prominent analyst.

Raymond Wong

, a Vancouver housing activist, said the concerted efforts of Ottawa and the Bank of Canada to stimulate housing show Freeland is not serious about fixing the reality Vaughan acknowledged — that Canada’s system is specially designed to appeal to offshore speculators.

“The current mode does not work for the working class or middle-income earners. This includes new immigrants who arrive without money,” said Wong, who is with HALT (Housing Action for Local Buyers).

Vancouver realtor Barry Magee concurs. “If the goal of this government is to price a generation out of real-estate ownership and create a class of permanent renters, they are well on their way to achieving that.”

The idea of taxing a relatively small number of properties owned by people who make their money offshore, Magee said, “won’t do anything when the Bank of Canada is adding $4 billion a week to the mortgage market.” Ottawa’s policies, Magee said, are battering even his well-off clients, including “highly skilled new immigrants.”

The verbiage coming out of Ottawa has grown so empty that Saretsky is in despair when it comes to hoping for a sane housing market.

“You might not like the rules, but you have to play the game. Housing is the economy,”

Saretsky said on Twitter

. “The sooner you figure out how corrupt the system is, the easier it gets. You can lean against it, but you won’t win.”

Dtodd@postmedia.com

@douglastodd