April 29, 2021 - Loonie Politics

OTTAWA – With a new surge of vaccines set to come in May, Quebec and Ontario announced plans Thursday to open appointments to people of any age group within just a few weeks.

Quebec’s Health Minister Christian Dubé said in French that “victory is within our reach” as he announced the plan Thursday, which will see age groups who can book vaccine appointments drop every two days beginning on Friday.

It will begin with people aged 50 to 59 and then descend in five-year age brackets every two days until May 14, when all Quebecers over 18 years of age will be eligible.

Ontario made a similar announcement with its plans to open up appointments to everyone over the age of 18 around May 24. The province’s Health Minister Christine Elliott said with supply finally becoming significant and stable, Ontario could start broad vaccinations.

“The way out of the pandemic is vaccines, and the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter every day,” she said.

Ontario’s plan has vaccine age brackets moving down on a

week-by-week basis

, starting with people over 50 the week of May 3, followed by those over 40 the week of May 10, over 30 on May 17 and then open to all adults on May 24.

Assuming Ontario and Quebec’s target is followed by other provinces, Canada will reach the milestone where vaccines appointments are available to everyone, of any age group, about a month after the target was reached in the United States on April 19.

Ontario is also diverting half of its vaccine supply to hotspot areas over the next two weeks. Ontario’s science panel had advised a four-week focus on hotspots in a move to control rising cases there. The provincial Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said they’re confident this will have an impact on the high rates in areas like Peel region, west of Toronto.

“The belief is that by doing it for two weeks, very aggressively, not taking any vaccines away from the other public health units, we can actually really beat down the positivity rates within those communities.”

Jones said she is also confident the province can administer the surge of new vaccines.

“We are confident that because of the many pathways we have, and opportunities for people to access the vaccine, we will be able to get it into people’s arms very quickly.”

Ontario will receive about 780,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine per week and has about two million people in their 50s and 1.8 million in their 40s. Many of the people in those age groups have been vaccinated already, either because of medical conditions, jobs, or they live in hotspot communities or with with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

There are roughly 1.7 million Ontario residents in their 30s and about the same in their 20s. The government expects to offer a first vaccine to everyone by late June.

Elliott said she also hopes they will be able to move up second shots for people who have already receive a first dose.

Quebec will receive about 450,000 doses of Pfizer per week and has about 1.2 million people in their 50s and approximately one million in each ten-year age bracket under that.

Both Quebec and Ontario are using projected shipments of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as the basis of the new schedule. Beginning next week, Canada is set to receive just over two million doses of Pfizer a week, which will rise to 2.5 million doses in June.

Moderna delivered a shipment of 650,000 doses this week, which are now being sent to the provinces and Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is overseeing the federal vaccine rollout, said the government expects another one million doses the week of May 10.

Moderna’s 650,000-dose shipment was delayed and also nearly half the size it was expected to be as the company deals with manufacturing challenges. It is contracted to deliver 12.3 million doses before the end of June, but even with the mid-May shipments it will have only delivered 2.5 million doses.

Fortin said the company has assured the government they will make up most of the lost ground and should be ready soon to provide large, consistent deliveries.

“They assure us now that they’re coming out of this strong. They’ve increased their production. They’re aiming to provide as many doses as possible,” he said.

Fortin said they were working out the details with the company and hoped to have more information soon about future Moderna deliveries.

“We’re looking at increasing frequency and having predictable quantities on a regular basis so that we can plan and execute effectively the immunization plans.”

Neither province is factoring in Johnson & Johnson, which delivered 300,000 doses of its one-shot vaccine on Wednesday or AstraZeneca which has delivered about 2.3 million doses so far. While Canada expects more deliveries of both those companies’ vaccines in the months ahead, there are no firm delivery dates.

• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty

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The reception that greeted last week’s federal budget from fiscal conservatives was predictable. If you agree with American tax reduction advocate Grover Norquist that government should be shrunk down to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub, you probably didn’t appreciate a budget that will send federal net debt levels to $1.4 trillion within five years.

The Trudeau government can brush off such criticism as ideological and partisan. It will find it harder to discount the reaction from an officer of Parliament and from respected economists who have been allies and colleagues in the past.

The critique coming from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux; from two former Bank of Canada governors – David Dodge and Mark Carney, and from former senior Liberal adviser, Robert Asselin, is that a budget that claims to build prosperity for the future

overstates the amount of growth

it is likely to generate.

Giroux told the finance committee on Tuesday that a chunk of the $101 billion the government touted as economic stimulus was in reality a continuation of existing COVID-19 support measures.

Dodge told the Globe and Mail this week that a budget which positioned itself as being pro-growth does not invest much in growing Canada’s economic capacity at all. “My policy criticism of the budget is that it really does not focus on growth,” he said. “To me it wouldn’t accord with something that was a reasonably prudent fiscal plan, let me put it that way.”

He said that of the $100 billion billed as being a catalyst for growth, he estimates that only $25 billion adds to public or private investment, with the rest increasing consumption.

Those will be painful words for Chrystia Freeland to hear, given Dodge has been something of an intellectual godfather for the Trudeau Liberals. His endorsement of the use of temporary deficits to finance productivity-enhancing infrastructure investments were emblazoned on the Liberal policy platform in 2015.

The finance minister might have expected a more ringing endorsement from Carney, the godfather to one of her children and someone who appeared at the recent Liberal convention saying he would do what he could to help the party. The former Bank of England governor appeared on the Herle Burly podcast this week, with former Paul Martin adviser David Herle, and damned the budget with faint praise.

He talked about how COVID has accelerated “the digital and sustainable revolutions” and how the budget did “some things” to push the economy in that direction. “But it’s going to take more than one budget. I don’t think the government would pretend otherwise that this is job done,” he said. “In my judgment, this was a hybrid budget, in that it had to conquer COVID by doing important things on the social side and to start growth. What we are seeing in some other jurisdictions is that the focus is more squarely on the growth. And when the focus is more squarely on growth, more and more spending is direct government investment or the type of taxes and other measures that encourage private investment to (create) the growth in jobs and income that we need down the road.”

Even with Carney’s fancy footwork, it’s plain he would have preferred more investment and less spending.

Asselin, a former budget and policy adviser to Trudeau’s first finance minister, Bill Morneau, is more blunt in his assessment. He labelled the short-term stimulus as “a political solution in search of an economic problem” in an article in The Hub, a new online commentary website.

He pointed out that the budget assumes economic growth of 5.8 per cent this year, four per cent next year, before moderating to two per cent for the rest of the forecast horizon. He criticized the lack of a coherent growth plan, with the bulk of innovation funding going into a Strategic Innovation Fund that has been neither strategic nor innovative. “Does it drive business investment and make our firms more competitive? Nobody has ever tried to answer this question seriously in Ottawa,” he said.

Asselin spoke from experience when he said the most likely outcome of the stimulus spending is “long queues of ministers and their senior officials in line at Treasury Board meetings with their budget submissions.”

The budget has added “layers of duplication and bureaucratic complexity to a system that was not known for its nimbleness and agility,” he said.

In addition to the prospect of disappointing growth numbers, all four economists acknowledged the inherent risk of soaring debt loads.

Giroux pointed out that, even with a new fiscal anchor that aims to reduce debt to GDP levels from a high of 51.2 per cent, there is no intention to reduce that ratio to pre-pandemic levels in the low-30s. He said the government has decided to effectively stabilize the federal net debt ratio at a higher level through to 2055, with all the implications that follow for future fiscal room.

Dodge said that, while the rising debt burden is a concern, it is not yet a problem – and won’t become one as long as interest rates remain lower than growth.

On the rising debt level, Carney said “just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it is optimal.” He pointed out if the growth strategy is successful, it will force interest rates to rise, which will have a knock-on impact on debt servicing costs. The PBO has estimated that a one per cent rise in interest rates would cost $4.5 billion more in the first year and an increase of $12.8 billion by year five.

But while most economists agree the debt is manageable, there is a sense of missed opportunity in the budget. Asselin accused the government of contriving a false economic premise to justify spending on “unfocused and unimaginative structural spending.”

All would clearly like to see more public capital investment, more incentives for private investment or, ideally, both.

Instead, we have a federal government that is failing to create the conditions needed to make Canada the best place in the world to do business.

Just three days after the budget, Canadian chip maker Alphawave decided to move its headquarters to the U.K., and issue shares on the London Stock Exchange to fund a new research centre in Cambridge, England.

That’s not Ottawa’s fault necessarily but it isn’t helping.

An additional $12 billion to bolster Old Age Security in the budget is good news for seniors but it does very little to catalyze long-term growth.

• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

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Opinion polls show the patience of Canadians towards their elected officials is growing thin. Although some leaders in this country are faring better than others, the overall tendency of the past months is crystal clear: Satisfaction of the handling of the pandemic is trending downward virtually everywhere, according to the bi-weekly LÃ©ger tracker for The Canadian Press.

Let us start with satisfaction towards the federal government. While roughly two-thirds of respondents claimed to be satisfied with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals back in the fall of 2020, the latest numbers show a statistical tie between satisfied (49 per cent) and dissatisfied (47 per cent) voters. Yet, outside of Atlantic Canada (65 per cent satisfied), the data shows only modest regional contrast between most satisfied (QuÃ©bec and the Prairie provinces at 51 per cent) and least satisfied. As is often the case, it is in Alberta where the poll measures the highest dissatisfaction towards Ottawa: 44 per cent satisfied and 52 per cent dissatisfied.

Perhaps it is a direct consequence of the how intense this third wave of virus has hit certain parts of the country. LÃ©ger measures significant contrasts in satisfaction towards provincial governments. Once again Atlantic Canada comes out on top with 79 per cent satisfaction on average (Atlantic provinces are merged together in these polls because their individual sample size would make the data not statistically relevant). West of Fredericton, only Quebec and British Columbia show net positive numbers for their handling of the pandemic this week:

At the bottom of this list are the conservative governments of Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Let us take a closer look at the progression of satisfaction ratings for premiers of the four most populous provinces.

The case of Doug Ford is especially intriguing. Before the pandemic reached our borders, the numbers clearly showed Ford was a polarizing and unpopular premier, with approval ratings stagnating in the low to mid-30s. Then, as COVID-19 infections started spreading in the spring of 2020, polls indicated many Ontarians rallied around the leader, and Ford’s approval numbers skyrocketed. While his approval remained high throughout Year One of the pandemic, Ford’s numbers showed a gradual decline throughout the fall and winter, but still with scores still above 50 per cent mark:

[On the graph below and above, the dots indicate the poll results; the shaded areas depict simple rolling averages.]

But then, just as the province saw a dramatic spike in cases in early April and was forced to go back to another lockdown, the wheels came off for Ford. The premier’s misguided decision to forbid several outdoor activities deemed low-risk by public health experts was clearly not well received by many Ontario voters: Ford’s approval fell by 17 points in the span of two weeks, and the latest numbers show he has not yet recovered. (Ford later walked back some of these measures and offered a tearful apology.)

FranÃ§ois Legault remains once again near the top of the list with 70 per cent of Quebecers satisfied with his handling of the pandemic. While most of Quebec is still to this day under the strictest restrictions in the country (here in Montreal, we have been almost a full three months under an 8 p.m. curfew), Legault continues to be among the most appreciated premiers in the country. Legault’s handling of the pandemic has not been without bumps on the road, but the very fact that his satisfaction rating still hangs in the high 60s and low 70s one full year into the pandemic is testament to his and his team’s communication skills (and to a weak opposition at the National Assembly, but more on this in a future column).

British Columbia Premier John Horgan is one of three premiers in Canada who took his party from minority rule to a majority during the pandemic. Horgan’s numbers have remained high throughout 2020 (often only second to Legault). In July, Horgan’s approval was a stunning 87 per cent. Just after his re-election in October, 72 per cent of B.C. voters approved of his handling of the pandemic. The numbers have been slowly slipping since, but still a majority of British Columbians (55 per cent) approve of his work according to LÃ©ger’s latest tracker:

In Alberta, although Jason Kenney’s approval numbers hung around those of fellow premiers for the first months of the pandemic, many Alberta voters have soured to his premiership since. In fact, Rachel Notley’s NDP has even led Kenney’s UCP in every opinion poll in Alberta since December (see full list here).

As for Albertans’ satisfaction of his handling of the pandemic, Kenney has found himself near or at the bottom of the premier list on several occasions since December, with a satisfaction rating hovering near the 30-per cent mark. After a modest recovery in March, his score fell back down and now sits at 30 per cent approval.

However, unlike other provinces in Canada, dissatisfaction with Alberta’s provincial government comes from all sides of the political spectrum. According to the latest numbers from the Angus Reid Institute, 45 per cent of Alberta voters believe the current restrictions “go too far”, and 42 per cent believe they “don’t go far enough”. Only 12 per cent Albertans believe the restrictions are just right.

Nevertheless, vaccination is picking up speed in Canada. Infection rates among the vaccinated population remains incredibly low, so there is ample empiric evidence that the vaccines, so far, do work. By summer, it is not unlikely that polls will study the opinion of Canadians not on their leaders’ handling of the pandemic, but on their post-COVID recovery plan.

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The B.C. government will provide relief to businesses hit by the speculation and vacancy tax on the airspace above their premises.

Finance Minister Selina Robinson unveiled the government actions Thursday morning, three weeks after

Postmedia News revealed

some small businesses in Vancouver were facing the speculation and vacancy tax because the unbuilt development potential above their heads had been reclassified from commercial to residential space. Small businesses and their advocates decried the unfairness of what they dubbed the “air tax.”

“We will temporarily remove the speculation and vacancy tax liability for 2020 for property owners that meet certain conditions,” Robinson said in a statement Thursday.

The B.C. NDP introduced the speculation and vacancy tax in 2018 to target empty and underutilized homes and residential properties. But the tax also applies to the airspace above some small businesses, whose commercial landlords had, years ago, reclassified the unbuilt development potential to “residential,” in order to reduce property taxes, which are typically paid by the tenant businesses. In May 2019,

Postmedia first reported

it appeared the design of the tax meant it would eventually apply to this airspace.

The B.C. government has estimated only about 60 properties in the province are affected.

“The purpose of the speculation and vacancy tax is to bring much-needed residential housing supply to the market,” Robinson said. “We encourage property owners who have reclassified their properties with unbuilt airspace as ‘residential’ to continue in the development process to deliver needed housing supply in dense, urban areas.”

But while the tax relief is welcome, Robinson’s call for the redevelopment of these properties was “concerning,” said Paul Sullivan, a Vancouver-based property tax expert who has advocated on behalf of the affected property owners and tenants, first helping some of them reclassify their airspace through the courts in 2014.

Most of these properties are one- or two-storey shops and restaurants on commercial streets, such as longtime West 4th Avenue eatery Las Margaritas. If Robinson wants these landlords to redevelop those properties to build housing that will presumably mean the closure of existing businesses such as Las Margaritas, said Sullivan, a principal with global property tax firm

Ryan

. “Her interpretation of the intended outcome will wipe out a lot of our community retail as we know it.”

Still, with this tax relief, the NDP government “did the right thing,” Sullivan said. “That’s the bottom line.”

To apply for the tax relief, eligible property owners or commercial tenants should contact the Ministry of Finance at 1-833-554-2323.

dfumano@postmedia.com

twitter.com/fumano

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Joe Biden says China is coming for the U.S. and the Politburo thinks democracies can't match the focus of tyrannies. Which is true. If only he understood why they're wrong.

As you can imagine, I'm going to give Biden the knucklebone shampoo here. But first let me praise him for being old-school. Which progressives despise. But one thing I like about Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972, is that he's about the last Cold War liberal left standing.

On domestic policy he's not so much liberal as all-in woke socialist. (Hey, I said I was going to heckle him.) But on foreign policy he still has those Henry Jackson instincts that America is better than its rivals and if they want a fight he's ready.

He's warned Putin on cyberwar. And he claims he told Xi Jinping the U.S. will stay strong in Asia as in Europe "not to start conflict but to prevent one." Which rather echoes President James Garfield's splendid phrase "Of course I deprecate war, but if it is brought to my door, the bringer will find me home."

By the way Garfield, a successful Civil War general and according to Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic a splendid human being, was elected in 1880. (And tragically assassinated by a lunatic in 1881.) Some ideas don't grow old. Including freedom.

Still, I'm quite concerned about what Biden thinks it means. "China and other countries are closing in fast. We have to develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future," Biden declared. And then, in what the National Post said "drew some of the strongest applause of the evening" added "There is simply no reason the blades for wind turbines can't be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing."

If that's your idea of American exceptionalism we're badly off track. Not because wind turbines are ugly and don't work very well. But because they're a classic emblem not of freedom but of big-government, centrally-planned, heavily-subsidized stupidity. Let the Politburo win that race, I say. America didn't become a world leader in cars, the film industry or high tech because of central planning.

Ah but that was then, some say. So at the risk of annoying progressives, Biden's concern that Xi Jinping "and others, autocrats, think that democracy can't compete in the 21st Century, with autocracies," is not about the 21^st century. It's old news. Stalin and Brezhnev thought so, and it worried conservatives and excited liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Samuelson who both proclaimed the Soviet economy a success in the 1980s and wished our governments would be more activist too. Wuk wuk wuk.

This idea was also the subject of Friedrich Hayek's splendid if largely impenetrable 1944 The Road to Serfdom, dedicated rather pointedly to "the socialists of all parties". Hayek warned that the Anglosphere was abandoning the liberty that had made it dynamic, prosperous and secure in the deluded belief that central planning was a better way to achieve key priorities. And is that not Biden's credo?

As the Post also noted, "Seeking a historic reshaping of the U.S. economy, Biden laid out plans to tax wealthy Americans and corporations, in order to fund massive investments in infrastructure, education, and low-income and middle-class families." And at one point in the speech he groused "When you hear someone say that they don't want to raise taxes on the wealthiest 1% and on corporate America ask them: whose taxes are you going to raise instead, and whose are you going to cut?" Uh, I'd cut spending. Did that thought never cross his mind? Even FDR had some serious concerns about a swollen state and welfare dependency.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Biden's pledge that "America will stand up to unfair trade practicesâ€¦ like subsidies to state-owned enterprises and the theft of American technology and intellectual property". When Trump started trade "wars" people said it was bad, and not without reason. But something needs to be done especially about the theft. Still, let us not get distracted.

On the vital mission of preserving America's strength, let me quote another president addressing Congress nearly two centuries ago: John Quincy Adams. I realize he was so far behind the times he could write English with one hand and Greek with the other simultaneously and his vice-president was a man. (Far worse, it was John C. Calhoun.) But JQA wasn't a total idiot. And in his First Annual Message on Dec. 6, 1825, he said with penetrating insight that "liberty is power".

Xi Jinping doesn't think so. But I'm not sure Biden does either. And that way lies decline.

He may claim, with bloated arrogance, that "Now after just 100 days I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setback into strength." And after lunch, world peace. But consider how liberty made the small, foggy British Isles the jest of tyrants from Philip II to Napoleon to Hitlerâ€¦ and then their scourge.

From Louis XIV to Lenin, the enemies of freedom thought limited government and personal liberty brought chaos, selfishness and weakness. And they were wrong every time. But once the socialists got control in the UK after 1945, on the same idea, they did what no autocrat ever managed, draining Britain of economic vitality, cultural confidence and geopolitical strength with stunning speed.

If the same happens to America, we're all in huge trouble regardless of Biden's feistiness.

Photo Credit: ABC News

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Joe Biden’s first presidential speech to Congress was heavy on symbolism. The crowd was deliberately thinned for social distancing; the faces flanking him were covered by cloth masks. The president’s speech focused on uplifting but familiar generalitiesâ€”hope over fear, millionaires paying their fair share, the benefits of big government, America in motion. But one symbol was novel, and impossible to ignore: two women, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sat on either side of the oldest man elected to the office. Pelosi has been a familiar feature of these speeches, noted for her meme-worthy applause and acts of defiance. But this is the first time she’s sat next to another woman. This imageâ€”itself captured by a female photographer who wrote a book about female politiciansâ€”tells the story of a new normal in the United States, one with different standards and expectations. The number of women in Congress has grown steadily and consistently since the 1970s, reaching its current record of 144, comprising 27 per cent of the House. At this rate, the faces of Harris and Pelosi are more than just symbolsâ€”they’re part of a tangible movement that’s permanently changing American politics.

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Early in April police sent invitations to city councillors to take unannounced tours of the city's big temporary homeless shelter in the Edmonton Convention Centre.

The homeless charities managing the downtown centre sent up red flags. And well they might. Whatever the intention of the visits, the optics were bad. At a time when society is taking a hard look at how police interact with vulnerable populations, this type of initiative looks pretty suspect.

A staffer in councillor Aaron Paquette's office summed it up.

"Councillor Paquette has no interest in participating in an act to catch encampment residents and shelter workers 'off guard' or by surprise, which in our opinion, puts Edmontonians and front line workers at unnecessary risk for COVID-19 transmission. We would caution against this proposal as action like this borders dangerously on poverty tourism."

Mayor Don Iveson also protested the tours, firing off a letter to the police commission, saying the shelter "cannot become a place where vulnerable people feel unsafe because of surprise inspections by political entourages escorted by armed EPS members in uniform."

He also charged that the attendees arrived without proper PPE and the distraction further stressed workers at the shelter already overstressed by managing pandemic safety.

The police association fired back saying they wore Covid masks and felt the tours offered politicians with an opportunity to see what was really happening in the shelter. The association demanding an apology from the mayor. The councillors who took the tour argue they need to know how a facility, which cost taxpayers $10.7 million, is managed, particularly in the face of reports that the centre had become unsafe and was rife with crime.

The debate addresses the privilege of members of the police force who came up with this idea in the first place. It speaks to their respect for the social workers trying to manage the shelter and their respect for the privacy of the residents.

Not addressed was the much bigger question about the fate of the homeless in the city and whether all of Edmonton's leaders, whether political or law enforcement, have failed the most vulnerable members of society.

The conditions in the convention centre shelter are a moot point since the facility closes at the end of April. The 24-hour space was always meant to be temporary, addressing the worsening crisis for the homeless precipitated by the pandemic and the need for safe space through the bitter Alberta winter.

Come May, still a chilly month in the city, the residents will need to find places to stay at smaller facilities and churches scattered through the city.

A plan to have a daytime service shelter open in a city-owned building on the northern edge of downtown was voted down after an uproar from already stressed businesses in the area. Instead, council gave more money to two already operating inner city agencies to increase their hours.

In the past year, as Covid took up all the political and fiscal oxygen, homelessness has increased in Edmonton. The city's homeless have been dislocated several times, with large tent encampments mushrooming and then being dismantled by the authorities during summer months, and indoor shelter spaces opening, closing and moving around through the winter.

While council and inner-city agencies put loads of effort and money into keeping up, they largely are failing the most vulnerable, who are struggling to stay safe during the pandemic while they are pushed from facility to facility.

There has been some success with transitional housing initiatives, but that takes time, doesn't address the needs of all the homeless and won't offer the supervision that is needed for some residents, particularly those with addiction issues.

Police are understandably frustrated by having to deal with continuing crises in the shelters. But trying to shake council members into taking some action with spot tours was poorly conceived as a tactic.

Practical solutions which address the safety, stability and human rights of Edmonton's homeless are what's needed. Politicians, police and social agencies need to face the issue with compassion as well as common sense.

Photo Credit: Global News

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At public meetings launching the Cullen commission into money laundering, some denounced former provincial solicitor-general Rich Coleman as if he were a Great Satan — an avatar of all the Liberal failures.

After two years of investigation, Coleman on Wednesday left the commission’s online witness window having proven why he was re-elected often and a senior minister for so long. His critics must have been deflated.

Forget about no smoking gun, Coleman sounded confident, forthright and in command of the issues he confronted as a cabinet minister for nearly two decades — especially about dirty money.

The former deputy premier from 2013 to 2017 said it was ridiculous that anyone believed his party was willfully blind to criminal activity in casinos, or that the government was more concerned about revenue.

“There was never a discussion that we need to do this for the money,” Coleman insisted. “The need for revenue was never a driver on anything we did on this one.”

Former Premier Gordon Campbell appointed Coleman solicitor-general after the 2001 Liberal victory and gave him responsibility for gaming, liquor, consumer protection, prisons and policing.

Coleman said he didn’t ask for gaming, didn’t know much about it, and didn’t know why he got it.

A former RCMP officer, Coleman spent 16 years in real estate consulting and development before running successfully in 1996 for the Fort Langley-Aldergrove seat.

He remained a top minister from the party’s 2001 victory until the NDP returned to power in 2017. Coleman did not run in 2020.

He was responsible for gaming off and on between 2001 and 2012, but not when the tide of suspicious cash truly flooded casinos in 2013 and 2014, hitting a high-water mark in 2015.

When he took over in 2001, Coleman said policing and gaming were both dysfunctional. There hadn’t been an increase in the policing budget for nine years, and the RCMP was operating with a provincial complement short more than 100 officers, he said.

Coleman took credit for getting more funding, the number of officers back up to where it should be, and other significant changes.

Gaming was more problematic.

The Liberals were elected with a no-expansion-of-gaming plank in their platform, he explained, but the previous NDP government had initiated a transformation of existing primarily charity-run gaming operations — “smoke-filled, low-ceiling rooms with little activity and no slots” — into a modern business.

A casino scandal and its fallout complicated that and Coleman became midwife to the new industry.

A Gaming Control Act had to be written, the B.C. Lottery Corp. had to transition from selling tickets into a gaming company contracting with casino service providers, regulations adopted…

In the early years, money laundering was a concern, of course, but Coleman said he wasn’t alerted to large suspicious cash arriving in bags.

Police told him they were dealing with small-time loansharks and thieves in parking lots.

“Hindsight is always 20:20,” Coleman agreed, but he “didn’t have better information,” so government worked on the best information received from the professional public service and experts.

Coleman believed it was near impossible to launder money through the casinos because cash used to buy chips could not become legitimate via a cheque or other financial instruments.

He said he played no role in killing the Integrated Illicit Gaming Enforcement Team in 2009, and denied earlier accusations by the former RCMP officer in charge, Fred Pinnock, who claimed Coleman tried to intimidate him by trying to crush his hand while shaking it, and was rude to Naomi Yamamoto, then a Liberal MLA, now Pinnock’s wife.

Still, in 2010, the issue of suspicious currency coming into casinos had Coleman’s attention, and he said one of his first questions was why it wasn’t being seized under the civil forfeiture law. He was told that wasn’t possible because police didn’t know whether cash was legitimate or illicit, a necessary element for confiscation.

Coleman asked the province’s then-civil forfeiture director Robert Kroeker to investigate, but was not responsible for gaming when his report finally arrived in 2011. Nine of Kroeker’s recommendations were adopted quickly, but the last — the creation of a dedicated police force — was delayed until the effect of the other measures was evaluated.

In 2010, the RCMP also launched their only probe of cash in casinos, but shut it down in 2012 without determining the origin of the money.

In a January 2011 media report, RCMP officer Barry Baxter complained that common sense suggested it was illicit, but no one was doing anything.

Coleman ignored the comments.

“I was never involved in investigations,” he asserted, before challenging those who said police lacked resources or funding. “At no time did I have the police in B.C. tell me to my face they were under-resourced. I can tell you the funding for police in B.C. has been very good for two decades.”

After the 2013 election, Finance Minister Mike de Jong took over gaming.

At the urging and lobbying of the B.C. Lottery Corp., the Mounties finally agreed in 2014 to establish another investigation that became Project E-Pirate.

In mid-2015, the Mounties told BCLC, the regulatory Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, and the government that they finally had evidence the cash gamblers picked up from a money service business was proceeds of crime.

That conclusion has not been tested in court as there was no prosecution.

Nevertheless, by the end of 2015, because of police action and more aggressive anti-money laundering measures, suspicious cash was on a steep decline.

De Jong told the commission the revelations of that summer were so alarming he quickly found funding to create a dedicated police unit — the Joint Illegal Gaming Investigation Team.

Commissioner Austin Cullen should consider that team the implementation of Kroeker’s final 2011 recommendation, Coleman said.

The inquiry continues.

imulgrew@postmedia.com

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VICTORIA — After passing up earlier opportunities to criticize the federal government over inadequate vaccine supplies and lax border controls, Premier John Horgan waded into the Ottawa blame game on paid sick leave this week.

Horgan said B.C. had been lobbying the Justin Trudeau Liberal government for months for “a genuine national plan” to fix the gaps in its “unwieldy” sick leave plan introduced last year. The province was caught off-guard when no fix was included in the April 19 federal budget.

“We identified those gaps as did others,” the premier told reporters Tuesday. “We had hopes that their budget, the day before our budget, would have done something to address those issues. We were disappointed to see no progress.”

Ottawa’s failure to act prompted the province to resume work on a made-in-B.C. plan for paid sick leave, which was already in the drafting stage last summer.

“Obviously we weren’t able to amend our budget documents which came the next day,” the premier continued. “But we’ve gone back to the shelf and taken the programs that we were working on here in B.C. and we’re trying to get those up-to-speed to fill in the gaps at the federal level.”

Not an easy task to do at the provincial level, according to Horgan.

“There are a lot of challenges here,” Horgan continued. “I believe those could have been addressed through the unemployment insurance program, where the federal government has access to all of the names of the people who pay taxes in Canada. We (meaning the province) do not. We can use our tax information for tax purposes, not for creating other programs.”

Hence the anger and frustration with Ottawa, which came pouring out in the premier’s media conference Tuesday.

“They’ve done a lot of great things over the past 14 months but this is not one of them,” said Horgan. “We had commitments and growing support through industry, labour and communities that this (national fix) was the way to go. Everybody gets that, but we didn’t get the program we needed at the time we needed it from the federal government … We’re going to have to fill those gaps.

“I don’t want to sound overly whiny about this,” he said, by way of framing his comments.

Actually he did sound a bit whiny, given what he knew or ought to have known about the circumstances that prompted Ottawa to hold back on a universal paid sick leave program.

Ottawa implemented paid sick leave for national transportation companies and others in federally regulated economic sectors the year before the pandemic hit.

Then last year’s national stopgap program — emphasis on “gap” — provided cash payments to cover sick leave in all sectors. But to collect, workers who booked off sick had to apply and wait, no small burden for those at the lower end of the wage scale, living from paycheque-to-paycheque. A permanent change for provincially regulated employers would have to be implemented through provincial employment standards law.

Last year’s Safe Restart agreement indicated a role for provinces in providing sick leave: “To encourage workers to stay at home and seek public health advice if they are showing symptoms, the Government of Canada will fund a temporary support program at an estimated cost of $1.1 billion. The new program will support workers who do not already have access to other paid sick leave. Where not already available, provinces and territories will establish a job-protected sick leave, through legislation that allows workers to take up to 10 days of leave related to COVID-19.”

At that point B.C. had already established unpaid sick leave. But it didn’t act on paid sick leave, perhaps because it was already deep into preparations for the snap election. In any event, the province kept lobbying for improvements in the federal plan.

One key improvement was forthcoming on Feb. 19 of this year. The Trudeau government extended coverage for another two weeks for workers who have to isolate but have no access to paid sick leave. The move prompted the Canadian Labour Congress to praise the federal government and remind the provinces of their obligations to workers as well.

“It is good to see the federal government fulfil its promise to take care of workers (by) extending the duration of the federal sickness benefit for those who aren’t covered through their workplace,” said CLC president Hassan Yussuff. “The provinces must step up and offer workers universal paid sick leave. Experts have repeatedly said such access would help slow the transmission of COVID-19 and keep workers safe. It is long overdue.”

Despite the prompting from organized labour that provinces should step up with their own plans for paid sick leave, Horgan still did nothing. The premier stalled until the federal budget, then expressed surprise and indignation that it didn’t contain a federal plan to cover the bases that the province itself should have been covering.

“Now we are stepping up,” Horgan said this week. “I believe we will get there as quickly as we can.”

In the legislature Wednesday, the premier suggested the enabling legislation could be ready as early as May 10, when the House resumes following next week’s break. But the bill could have been on the order paper weeks ago, had Horgan heeded the signs that there was a role for the province to play in providing paid sick leave for B.C. workers.

vpalmer@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA – The Conservatives want former PMO and Finance senior staffer Elder Marques to testify in front of the ethics committee on the WE Charity scandal.

The Tories hope to summon Marques — who left his job as chief of staff to former Finance Minister Bill Morneau soon after the latter’s resignation last summer — “to testify to his knowledge of conflicts of interest and lobbying,” according to a copy of the motion obtained by National Post.

There is no date set for his summon, but if it collects enough support from committee members as written, the motion says that Marques should testify within one week of its adoption.

According to the Conservatives, the idea is to give Marques a chance to explain his perspective of the WE Charity scandal as former top staffer to Morneau.

Morneau resigned from government late last summer amid growing tensions between himself and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over COVID-19 economic policies as well as his involvement with WE Charity.

The Conservative motion comes only days after Marques created shockwaves in front of the federal defence committee by revealing that he’d told Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, about allegations against former Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance.

The Conservatives also want to grill Marques on reports by Vice and National Post last summer that Telford’s husband Rob Silver had repeatedly pushed the Trudeau government to make changes to the federal wage subsidy in a failed bid to make his employer eligible for the multi-billion dollar aid program.

At the time, sources said that Silver contacted Marques and another staffer at Morneau’s office multiple times in April to express his frustration about his employer’s — private mortgage company MCAP — ineligibility for the aid program.

MCAP has denied any wrongdoing in the affair.

“Given Mr. Marques’s previous role as Chief of Staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, and his recent testimony that revealed new details about the role the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff played in the cover-up of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, Mr. Marques may also have details about the accuracy of Ms. Telford’s public comments regarding the WE scandal and the lobbying activities of Rob Silver,” Conservative MP and ethics critic Michael Barrett said in a statement.

Last fall, the ethics committee launched a study that has largely focused on the Liberal government’s — and both Justin Trudeau’s and Bill Morneau’s family’s — close ties to WE Charity, to which Ottawa sole-sourced a $912-million student volunteer grant program last summer before the charity organization pulled out of the deal.

The study has recently hit a standstill though, as Liberal members have been filibustering opposition member’s attempts to call senior government staff to testify. Instead, the government have sent unrelated ministers to speak on their behalf, citing “ministerial responsibility”.

• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi