Monday's federal budget was expansive the largest on record, and it had both a focus on getting the country through the rest of this pandemic, with supports extended to through to September, and a blueprint for how the government plans to guide the recovery from the current economic downturn in a way that doesn't simply return us to how things were before the pandemic struck, because the aim is to fix some of the structural problems in our economy that were not only exposed but magnified over the past year.  Part of this recovery is about inclusive growth, which means ensuring that more women and minorities can fully participate in the economy but for that to happen, the barriers to that participation need to be dealt with.

One of those barriers is, of course, child care.  It's hard to underestimate the significance of what is being put on offer here, with $30 billion over five years to establish a national early learning and child care system with an average cost of $10/day.  Of course, this is contingent upon negotiation with provinces, given that this is an area of provincial jurisdiction, but rather than presuming that this can be achieved by simply putting on Green Lantern's ring and willpowering it into existence, it's clearly making the economic case for it.  It's a big number because it needs to be in order to give the provinces an offer that they can't refuse, and given the political composition of several of our largest provinces, that is a very real danger.

Part of the reluctance by any province is the creation of permanent spending programs that they are forced to administer, no matter how much the federal government plays an upfront role.  The obvious cautionary tale that many provinces like to cite is healthcare, where they talk about the initial 50-50 cost-share with the federal government, and then they portray it like the federal government walked back from that commitment, which isn't the case at all.  In 1977, provinces renegotiated the deal so that the federal contribution would be 25 percent cash transfers, and 25 percent of the value of tax points transferred from the federal to provincial governments, so that they would become responsible for 75 percent of healthcare costs, but with a greater ability to raise their own revenue.  With child care, there is a clear and direct economic benefit from this kind of spending program.

While the $30 billion in federal funds is new money that doesn't need to be matched by provinces, the goal as stated in the budget is 50/50 federal-provincial cost-sharing by 2026 in the area of $8.3 billion per year, to be guided by "principles" rather than "national standards" (as with their plans around long-term care funding).  The thing to remember, however, is that Quebec's model has proven that it will pay for itself thanks to the tax revenues of having more of these women in the workforce.  This is the kind of thing that brings down barriers for women, and it's 50 years too late, given what was written in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in their December 1970 final report.

This pandemic has shown that the barrier of child care is a very real one, as women's participation in the workforce has been set back by decades after the lack of child care due to COVID drove any women to quitting their jobs.

"Long-standing gender inequities have only been amplified over the course of the pandemic—and it has put decades of hard-fought gains for women in the workplace at risk," the budget states.  "Today, more than 16,000 women have dropped out of the labour force completely, while the male labour force has grown by 91,000.  This is a she-cession."

The budget has other commitments to breaking down barriers than just childcare, and another one of those is getting more minorities into the workforce through training programs.  One of those is $960 million over three years to help deliver training geared for small and medium-sized businesses, that aims to connect 90,000 Canadians to employers looking for skilled workers.  Of those 90,000, they have set a goal of ensuring that 40 percent of those are visible minorities, women, Indigenous people, and people with disabilities.  There are also plans to boost incentives for employers in the Red Seal trades if they hire from underrepresented groups.  There are plans to better protect those gig economy workers who fall under areas of federal jurisdiction, as well as personal support workers, many of whom are racialized women.

The budget also recognizes problems in the entrepreneurial sector, which is largely dominated by and geared toward white men.  To that end, there are separate programs for both women entrepreneurs, and Black entrepreneurs, which include supports for financing (one of the biggest problems both groups face from traditional lenders), as well as dedicated support through regional development agencies, export development, and federal procurement opportunities.  This recognition by the government, and an attempt to identify and lower barriers, is one of those hallmarks that shows that, despite their tendency for big proclamations and back-patting, there are people within this government that get what the problems are and are trying to do something about eliminating those barriers.

Most of the narratives in this budget will be around the size of the planned spending, and the size of the projected deficits and debt over the next five years, but one of the most important ways to get out of those fiscal crunches is to grow the economy, and inclusive growth needs to be part of that strategy.  We saw before the pandemic, when we were at a period of statistical "full employment," that in many regions of the country, employers were going to need to make choices about finding ways about bringing more of these under-employed women and minorities into their workforces if they planned to grow and thrive.  The government here is giving these employers those tools to make that happen, so that we will see a better economy on the other side of this than we had going into it.

Photo Credit: Al Jazeera

After months of touting how much better his climate plan was going to be, and how it was going to replace the Liberals' "carbon tax," Erin O'Toole delivered a damp squib on Thursday morning, declared it a masterpiece, and that he would like a cookie, please.  While I understand why certain people in the climate community are gritting their teeth to praise the Conservatives for finally coming to the table with a carbon price and offering a proposal with actual modelling that shows it might be effective if taken at face value, I am under no such obligation to offer Mr. O'Toole any cookies for his efforts because in order to make it look like he's not swallowing himself whole and have no doubt, he absolutely is he has to lie about what he's doing.  And he has to lie a lot.

The first lie is to pretend that the status quo, the Liberal government's carbon price backstop, is a tax, and by tax, we mean something that goes into government revenues.  Andrew Scheer liked to say that the government's carbon price kept rising because they needed to pay for their "out of control spending," and O'Toole hasn't deviated from that talking point.  Of course, that's not how the system works in those provinces subject to it all revenues get returned to those provinces, and if the province has not designated a method of recycling the revenues (such as income tax cuts), it is returned to households in the form of rebates.  For most households, they get back more than what they pay into it because they also capture the revenue from commercial and industrial emitters.  The remaining funds are distributed to schools, hospitals, and so on in order to fund green upgrades.  None of this money goes to federal coffers, and Conservatives will lie by omission when it comes to rebates and low-income households.

Why this matters is because O'Toole and his party are going to try to sell people on the notion that theirs isn't a tax, it's a levy, or a "mechanism of mandatory savings for a particular purpose," as they have already tried to peddle.  Of course, because they are using the very same pricing mechanism as the current system, they can't call it a tax and theirs not the only difference is where the revenues are recycled.  It's also hilarious because they have also tried to call the Canada Pension Plan a "payroll tax" and not mandatory savings program or deferred wages which it really is and when this is pointed out to them, they play semantic games about it.

And their revenue recycling system?  Hoo boy.  They are proposing that instead of households getting rebates, all carbon prices paid will be funnelled into "Low Carbon Savings Accounts," which will operate like Air Miles points, which you can redeem for "green" things like bus passes, bicycles, energy-efficient furnaces, or electric vehicles.  The more carbon levies you pay, the more you get back, but conversely, if you have very few expenditures, you get very little back, which doesn't provide an incentive to reduce your carbon the way the current rebate system does.  It also doesn't help low-income households, but really rewards high-income and high-spending households, unlike the current system.  O'Toole insists that the government won't administer these LCSAs, but a private sector "consortium" will, like how Interac operates but this should be absolutely alarming to everyone.

The amount of data that is going to be collected from consumers to make this happen is enormous, and aside from basic privacy concerns, that kind of consumer data is extremely valuable to the market.  There's a reason why Air Miles and Aeroplan has such a high valuation the value of the data on consumer purchases is enormous.  Does the government of Canada get to control that data?  Does the consortium?  Additionally, it only captures direct costs when supply chains are an issue, and landlords could be collecting points that really their tenants are the ones spending the money.  It would require a huge expansion in the bureaucracy to administer, especially when they are promising carbon points on things like locally-grown foods, and determining what does and does not qualify would be an enormous logistical challenge to manage.  And because this system may wind up being too unfeasible to manage, we may yet see O'Toole have to quietly scrap it and keep a form of the current rebate system with his own particular tweaks to insist that it's different no really!

In many places, O'Toole's new plan simply adopts measures currently in place, like the output-based pricing on large industrial emitters, or the clean fuel standard which, oops, Conservatives were deriding as a "hidden carbon tax" very recently.  Looks like another place where they have swallowed themselves whole!  In other places, the plan is way more nonsensical, particularly around the insistence that this plan will definitely work with the provinces, and that this will be a plan of national unity.  That promise of "unity" will be hard to square if he keeps his promise about going harder after heavy emitters, because that means targeting Alberta and Saskatchewan to do more, which is where O'Toole's voter base is.

More than anything, their promise to replace a transparent, market-based pricing system with one that is opaque, heavily regulatory, won't incent change, delves into industrial policy, and which will have worse outcomes (because they insist on keeping the carbon price low) is a very curious choice and one that they will try to sell with yet more lies.  As much as certain people are saying that this plan is serious (through gritted teeth), it's really not it's a bit of theatre that is designed entirely to try and take the issue of climate off the table at the next election by pretending they have a comprehensive plan, so that they can attack on other fronts like jobs, and the economy.  And as much as O'Toole is hoping for cookies for this plan, he may wind up with a number of knives in his back from his own party who was promised repeatedly that he was going to kill the "carbon tax," and he even insisted that Peter MacKay was going to pull a Patrick Brown and accept a carbon price.  Looks like that was another lie too.  Funny that.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star