Not up, not running: The plan to test all non-American travellers to Canada for COVID-19 has prompted confusion among passengers and airport operators alike, CBC reports. Few details are available about the federal response to the Omicron variant.
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Wednesday the new arrival testing program will take effect immediately. “That is starting today,” the minister told reporters. But there are no signs today that the program is actually up and running.
“One concern is just when this goes into effect … something even Air Canada and WestJet appear not to know,” Cameron Turner, a traveller from Victoria, B.C., asked CBC News. “Another concern is just where travellers are expected to self isolate while waiting for their test results.”
And on Thursday, the president of the Canadian Airports Council said he’s still not sure how the program will work.
Snowbird tests:Joe Biden announced a new testing regime on Thursday that will require all inbound travellers, including Canadians, to get tested no later than 24 hours before their departure, CP reports. That may complicate travel plans for snowbirds.
Unknown: Omicron’s impact on the world remains a mystery, the BBC reports, because although cases in South Africa are surging, it is weeks too soon to know what that will do to hospitalization rates.
Boost or share? As medical experts call on rich countries to share vaccine, Western countries considering doling out boosters at home, because of studies that indicate the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines might begin to wane after six months, Global reports. More than 10 million Canadians will reach that deadline by the new year
Tories were right: Speaker Anthony Rota ruled Thursday that the board of internal economy — the all-party committee that manages the parliamentary precinct — overstepped its authority by mandating vaccines on the Hill, CP reports.
Rota sided Thursday with the Conservatives in concluding that the all-party board of internal economy did not have the authority to impose a vaccine mandate. He said only the House itself can make a decision to restrict access to the chamber and other parliamentary buildings. However, Rota’s ruling changes nothing for MPs or anyone else wanting access to the precinct. Last week, Liberals and New Democrats joined forces to approve a motion to resume hybrid sittings, which also specified that anyone entering the precinct must be fully immunized against COVID-19 or have a valid medical exemption.
Lab compromise: The Liberals offered a compromise Thursday to end a stand off over secret documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada’s high security infectious disease laboratory, the Globe reports.
Government House Leader Mark Holland told the House of Commons late Thursday that the federal cabinet is now prepared to turn over all the documents to a special committee of MPs from the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc Québécois and New Democrats. Any dispute about whether to make public records would be decided by a panel of three former senior judges.
Federal opposition parties have fought for records that could shed light on why Ottawa expelled and then fired two scientists from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
Financial reckoning coming: The Liberals are asking Parliament to approve billions in new spending during a four-week sitting but have yet to release a financial accounting of how it spent more than $600-billion last year during Canada’s pandemic response, the Globereports.
Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, who is now president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, said he doesn’t see a reason why the government appears to be waiting to release key information, such as the public accounts and a fall fiscal update. “They should be at the front end [of the current four-week sitting],” he said in an interview, adding that committees should also be sitting to review spending requests. “That is the standard practice and a good practice and I’m not really sure there’s any reason not to have that. I’m sure that the work is done on the public accounts and there’s no reason not to table it. Finance [Canada] has had plenty of time.”
Update coming: Chrystia Freeland will release a financial update on Dec. 14, CBC reports.
Battle of wits: Speaking of Freeland, Aaron Wherry has an interesting column at CBC reviewing the parliamentary back and forth between her and Pierre Poilievre, and suggesting it could be just the beginning of a long battle of wits.
If O’Toole were to lose his tenuous grip on the Conservative leadership, attention would quickly focus on Poilievre — either as a potential candidate or as a potentially influential figure in deciding who leads the party next. Whenever Trudeau decides to step aside, Freeland will be foremost in the pool of possible successors.
O’Toole unpopular: In L’actualité, polling expert Philippe J. Fournier has an article (translation) on Erin O’Toole’s polling numbers, which are bad and getting worse.
Among his party voters, 70% say they still have a positive impression of him, a lower proportion than for Trudeau and Singh among their respective voters, but higher than the same measure by Abacus last spring (it was then 62%). However, we note that the Conservative leader scores anemic with voters in other parties: only between 8% and 13% of New Democrats, Bloc, Liberals and Green voters view O’Toole favourably.
Monarchy unpopular: A new poll, taken in the wake of Barbados becoming a republic, shows a majority of Canadians are in favour of cutting ties with the British monarchy, but it would not be easy, Global reports. There would be complicated implications for treaty relationships with Indigenous peoples, and also the constitutional amending formula makes a such change next to impossible.
Livestock deaths: Hundreds of thousands of livestock perished in floodwaters in British Columbia, Bloomberg reports.
Surprise move: Conservative justice critic Rob Moore moved Wednesday that a Liberal bill banning conversion therapy be adopted unanimously, which it was, which will ban the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation, CP reports. It was a surprise to see the Conservatives suddenly support the bill, because socially conservative Tory MPs had spoken against the bill, in a milder previous incarnation. The passage of the motion led to non-partisan hugging and dancing in the House.
Praise for O’Toole: The Globe’sJohn Ibbitsonwrites that it was a great day, and praises Erin O’Toole for handling it “beautifully.”
I suspect MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who has fought to advance LGBTQ rights within the party for years, and MPs Eric Duncan and Melissa Lantsman, who are gay, must have had some interesting conversations with their colleagues. They appear to have convinced the social conservatives within the caucus that they had already registered their opposition to the bill when they voted against its predecessor last spring, and that any further opposition would only typecast the party as intolerant.
See you in court: Elsewhere in the Globe, Robyn Urback writes, though, that the provisions of the bill that ban the therapy for adults likely violates the Charter.
Proponents of an outright ban will argue that it should not be legal to help people injure themselves. But in Canada it is legal for homeopaths, for example, to prescribe nosodes – which are essentially vials of water, infused with hope and dogma – in lieu of vaccines for illnesses such as whooping cough, measles and mumps. Health Canada even actually approves and regulates these “treatments,” though the agency has said that none are approved as alternatives to real vaccines. And there is real harm being done in these cases: Canadians are essentially being scammed into believing certain homeopathic remedies will protect them from a variety of illnesses, and as a result they leave themselves (and often, their children) vulnerable to infection. Yet the practice of offering, advertising and/or financially profiting from homeopathy has not been criminalized, even though it could cause lifelong, irreparable damage to those who voluntarily seek its service.
Test wait: Travellers arriving in Canada from outside the United States can expect to isolate for up to three days as they wait for COVID-19 test results, the Globe reports. The government announced the new testing regime on Tuesday in an effort to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
More boosters: The Globe also reports that Ontario and Alberta are planning to expand eligibility for third-dose COVID-19 booster shots.
We can do better: In the Star, Bruce Arthurwrites that the booster change is “lightning fast,” and urges the province to do more, faster.
Hopefully the news on Omicron will be positive, but this pandemic remains a societal challenge, every day, and a personal one, too. A powerful public information campaign on boosters would be welcome. A more durable infrastructure on vaccine passports, mandates and delivery may be a must. We can do better to protect people.
Ban panned:Theresa Tam is defending Canada’s decision to ban travellers from some African countries but many experts aren’t buying it, Global News reports.
Same battle: In Le Journal de Montréal, Emmanuelle Latraversewrites that the battle against COVID bears a resemblance to the battle against climate change (translation).
In either case, the same phenomena are at work: scientific consensuses sacrificed on the altar of partisan politics and disinformation, not to mention the failures of an international community increasingly withdrawn into herself. Think of anti-vaxxers, those skeptics of science who ruin our lives with insults and stubbornness. They are a bit like the oil lobby against the climate.
Slow track: The Conservatives and NDP won’t agree to fast-track legislation to extend pandemic supports, insisting on a review by the House’s finance committee, CBC reports.
“The government is proposing new expenditures without accountability,” Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre told reporters Wednesday. “We’re setting conditions in order to get our support for this bill. These conditions must be met or we will oppose it.”
The Conservatives say they want to see four conditions met before they’ll support the bill: an independent investigation into reports that organized crime received pandemic supports; a complete study of the bill at the finance committee — with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland appearing for four hours of questioning; amendments preventing people who could take jobs from taking benefits; and amendments to prevent prisoners and criminals from accessing benefits. The NDP also want to see Bill C-2 go before the finance committee. NDP House Leader Peter Julian told CBC news that his party will not support the bill in its current form and wants specific amendments to address their concerns.
Clerk scrutinized: The CPC called for a parliamentary committee to probe claims of political bias made against Charles Robert, the clerk of the House of Commons, while Roberts was in the chamber, CBC reports. CBC News has reported three senior managers went on sick leave and left their jobs over concerns about Robert.
To seek compensation: Canadian telecom companies spent more than $700 million on Huawei equipment while the Liberal government delayed a decision on banning the company, Global News reports. With a rejection imminent, Global News has confirmed that the companies have asked the federal government for “compensation” if they have to replace Huawei equipment.
Tough Green: Interim Green Leader Amita Kuttnertells CP they will be ready to get tough on party members who “have been at each other’s throats.”
The astrophysicist, who identifies as nonbinary and transgender, said Wednesday they want to “listen and love” to “heal” the party, which has been riven by infighting and accusations of racism and antisemitism. But, if that does not stop a minority of Greens, Kuttner said they would “absolutely” be prepared to take tough disciplinary action under the party’s code of conduct.
COVID boondoggle: Ontario’s auditor general has found that businesses that weren’t eligible for pandemic relief programs received more than $200 million in provincial supports, CBC reports.
Deer with COVID: The National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease has detected COVID-19 in three apparently healthy Quebec deer, CTV reports.
Well deserved: Congrats to health columnist André Picard, who was awarded the 2021 Sandford Fleming Medal for excellence in science communication by the Royal Canadian Institute for Science on Wednesday!
Welcome to Ottawa: David Cohen, the new United States ambassador to Canada, has reported for duty.
Omicron measures: Canada announced Tuesday that air travellers from all countries except the United States will need to take COVID-19 tests when arriving in Canada, CBC reports, as the world braces for the Omicron variant.
The tests will be required of all travellers, regardless of their vaccination status, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said today. The requirement will also apply to Canadian citizens and permanent residents. Incoming travellers will have to self-isolate until they receive results of the test. Duclos said the new testing requirement will go into effect “as quickly and as much as possible over the next few days.”
The government also added Egypt, Malawi and Nigeria to its restricted list. Travellers from 10 countries will have to quarantine in designated facilities.
The world is waiting for scientists to figure out how effective vaccines are against Omicron. Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an expert at Toronto General Hospital, said we will have to wait to find out, but he thinks available vaccines will still prove useful in the fight against COVID-19: “It would be extremely unusual for a variant to emerge that completely erases the protective immunity of vaccines. It might chip away at some of the effectiveness but it would be extremely unusual that our vaccines, and or vaccine programs, are now rendered useless.”
May do more: Justin Trudeau told reporters the government may have to do more, Global reports.
Patience: In Maclean’s, Patricia Treblelays out what we know so far—not that much—about Omicron.
Omicron entered our lexicon at exactly 12 p.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 26, according to Google Trends, which recorded a massive spike in online searches. Since then, searches have only increased as people scour the web for news on the newest variant of concern. So new is the variant, however, that researchers are scrambling to unravel its secrets—likely for few weeks but possibly more—and pleading for patience.
Bans questioned: Even as Canada tightened travel restrictions, news was breaking that the variant had already spread to Europe before South Africa raised the alarm, raising questions about the fairness and efficacy of restrictions on African nations, the Globe‘s Geoffrey York reports from South Africa.
Over 60s stay home: The World Health Organization has urged those over 60 not to travel because of the increased risk posed by the variant, the New York Postreports.
Vaccines for poor countries: Opposition politicians and medical groups are urging the Liberals to support a global initiative to temporarily waive intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, CTV reports. The government says it will discuss the issue with the World Trade Organization.
Same spiel: The situation reminds Isabelle Hachey, writing in La Presse (translation), of the fight over AIDS drugs for Africa, and points out that Big Pharma can be expected to do whatever it can to prevent losing out on income.
The 168 member states of the WTO should take the opportunity to try to reach a consensus on the temporary lifting of patents protecting vaccines. So far, they have failed to come to an agreement. One can imagine that Big Pharma is doing everything to discourage them. The sums at stake are pharaonic. If we go by the past, it may be a long time before the member states come to an agreement. Millions of Africans died of AIDS before the WTO adopted the Doha agreement in November 2001, after years of intense activism.
Challenging times: In the Star, Susan Delacourtwrites that the variant presents a challenge for the political class, because polling shows Canadians are anxious and depressed because of the pandemic.
But all signs are pointing already to a large, looming morale crisis, which politicians are going to have to struggle to contain in the days and weeks ahead. Just when Canadians were starting to plan holiday gatherings and winter trips to sunnier climes—and a long-awaited return to normal — the threat looms again of more lockdowns and renewed travel restrictions. So what does the political class have left in its arsenal — after nearly two years of this pandemic — to head off what could be the biggest wave yet of COVID-19 fatigue?
No jab? No travel: Unvaccinated travellers over the age of 12 can no longer board a plane or passenger train in Canada, CP reports. A grace period ended Tuesday.
Finished fight: In Maclean’s, your correspondent takes the temperature of the anti-carbon tax foes, who once looked like they might win, and concludes that the fight seems to have gone out of the main players, having lost in court and in several elections.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who won support from grassroots Ontario Tories by opposing a carbon tax, was happy to fight too. Manitoba’s Brian Pallister, who had a carbon tax plan of his own, joined in after Trudeau stood next to him and used him as an example of a co-operative premier. Behind the scenes, Stephen Harper was cheering the premiers on. “Let the other guys do a carbon tax, because we can all win the next federal and provincial elections on that issue alone,” he said in speeches. It did not seem far-fetched: in 2008, the Liberals lost an election built around Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift (a mix of carbon taxes and tax cuts). Today, Pallister is gone, Kenney is setting new records for unpopularity, Ford is no longer talking much about the carbon tax he once loved to attack and Moe is complaining. “They’re complaining but complying,” says Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, about the carbon tax.
Make it work: In the Post, Tasha Kheiriddin ponders the pandemic hybrid Parliament and concludes that it might be fine.
Virtual participation might even enhance productivity in certain contexts, such as committees, which could continue sitting even when Parliament is not. The ability to hear witnesses remotely could expand connection between legislators who would otherwise not be able to present themselves in person. The reality is that, with the work-from-home revolution, some form of hybrid Parliament is probably here to stay. We had better make it work.
More cases in Canada: Two people in Ontario and one in Quebec have been infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, CBC reports, in addition to the two Ottawa cases announced on Sunday. Patricia Treble, writing for Maclean’s, has a roundup of what we know now. Cases are being detected daily around the world, CNN reports.
High risk: The World Health Organization warned Monday that the variant poses a “high infection risk,” the BBC reports: “Omicron has an unprecedented number of spike mutations, some of which are concerning for their potential impact on the trajectory of the pandemic,” the WHO said.
Alarm bells: In the Globe, André Picard explains that it is too soon to know whether Omicron is more dangerous than earlier variants.
Despite its ominous moniker – Omicron, the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, sounds like the name of a bad guy in a superhero movie – it’s not a given that the newest variant will be dramatically worse than previous ones, nor that it will displace Delta, the now-dominant variant. The reason Omicron has scientists worried is its “Frankenstein mix” of mutations. Viruses mutate, but usually do so fairly slowly. The new variant has set off alarm bells because it has 32 mutations on its spike protein alone. The spike protein is what coronaviruses use to enter human cells, so that raises fears (at least theoretically) that Omicron could spread more easily and circumvent immune protections, both those from infection and vaccination. But none of this is clear yet.
Reluctant Ontario: In the Star, Bruce Arthurargues that Doug Ford’s government should ponder the uncertainty and get more serious.
Israel moved hard on ventilation, contact tracing, boosters, and border restrictions, because Israel knows an emergency when it sees one. If Omicron is a real leap — and many virologists say its 25 to 30 mutations are at least hypothetically suited to potential immunity evasion, transmission and virulence — then the rules of the game will change. Some would likely stay the same, too. This government has set certain boundaries at this point which will influence the vulnerability to whatever Omicron or any other variant might be. It’s a broken record at this point, but this government has been truly reluctant to push vaccination from the premier on down. The result is about 1.4 million unvaccinated Ontarians over the age of 12, including some 350,000 over the age of 50. Every one is a walking alarm bell.
Why only Africa? The Globe has an opinion piece from U of T prof Ambarish Chandra, who argues that our travel restrictions are poorly thought out.
The speed with which the latest travel bans have been imposed on southern African countries suggests yet again that Canada is quick to impose harsh measures on the developing world but reluctant to do so with wealthy, Western countries. Multiple reports suggest that the Omicron variant was already present in Belgium and the Netherlands at the time these bans were imposed, but there is no discussion of extending measures to those countries.
Not vaccine apartheid: In the Post, Rupa Subramanyaargues that vaccine hesitancy and logistical problems, not access to vaccines, are behind slow uptake in the global south.
There is no doubt that the purchasing power of rich countries makes it easier for them to procure vaccines, yet it is not true that poorer countries don’t have access to vaccines, as they can purchase them at concessional rates from the pharmaceutical companies, or draw from the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility. Rather than a lack of access, much of the disparity in vaccination rates in the developing world results from logistical problems and vaccine hesitancy, sometimes coupled with outright COVID-19 denial.
Conversion therapy ban: The Liberals tabled a bill Monday to ban conversion therapy, and not just for children, the Starreports.
The bill goes beyond the government’s previous attempt at a ban on conversion therapy. Bill C-4 would make it a crime to make anyone undergo conversion therapy, regardless if they consent. That was a key demand from survivors and advocates, who said the government’s previous attempt at a ban, Bill C-6, still allowed for conversion therapy to be provided to adults who consented. Advocates have said a person cannot consent to what amounts to fraud and torture.
Minister, CDS to apologize: Defence Minister Anita Anand, deputy minister Jody Thomas, and Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre will apologize to victims of military sexual misconduct on Dec. 13, CTV reports.
“As part of our efforts to restore relationships with those harmed, we will offer a public apology to all current and former members of the Defence Team who have been affected by sexual assault and sexual misconduct, including harassment, and discrimination, “ the release states.
A prop bike? Conservative MP Ed Fast accused Steven Guilbeault of using a bicycle as a prop during a session of hybrid Parliament on Monday, CTV reports.
Fast raised a point of order following question period, arguing that Minister Steven Guilbeault hung the bike behind him to “make a statement about his environmental cred.” “Mr. Speaker, the point is, there’s a rule that you cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly. What the minister has done is blatantly use a prop because he’s now doing it from the safety of some other office,” Fast said.
Guilbeault responded on Twitter: “The bike has been there long before we started doing virtual Parliament. In fact, it has also been there for months as I was taking questions as heritage minister. Strange that after almost a year, it’s become an issue,” he said.
In a related story, the deputy speaker warned MPs appearing from home to keep their garb professional, CP reports, but he didn’t say anything about bikes.
Tech tax: The Liberal government intends to proceed with plans to implement a digital services tax targeting tech giants, the Postreports. Critics in the business community think the government should wait for an international agreement before acting.
Nomination survey: Some Conservatives think a membership survey is laying the groundwork so that Erin O’Toole can centralize the nomination process, the Hill Timesreports.
Confront dissidents! Also in the Hill Times, former CPC MP Tom Lukiwskiargues that O’Toole should call a leadership review so that he can silence internal critics.
Still fighting: Green Party officials are still engaged in a damaging internal feud, CBC reports.
Syrup to flow: The people behind Quebec’s strategic reserve of maple syrup said Monday they will release 50 million pounds of maple syrup–worth about $150 million–onto the market by February, responding to rising international demand, CP reports.
Ontario Premier Ford once got a lot of mileage out of attacking the carbon tax but now seems to be easing off the gas (Nathan Denette/CP)
Scott Moe is so unhappy with the policies Justin Trudeau is bringing in to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions that he declared in November that Saskatchewan “needs to be a nation within a nation.”
The Saskatchewan premier had called into a talk radio station to propose building “provincial autonomy” after Trudeau said he would put a cap on emissions from the oil and gas industry. The Prime Minister made the announcement at a climate summit in Glasgow, without consulting Moe or Alberta’s Jason Kenney, the premiers of the two provinces most affected by the cap.
Moe denounced Trudeau and said Saskatchewan will consider seeking Quebec-style deals to give it greater control over immigration and childcare. “We’re going to flex our autonomy, flex our provincial muscle, if you will, within the nation of Canada.”
The inspiration for this play may be generations of Quebec nationalists, but it’s not clear that there is a consensus around the need for greater provincial autonomy in Saskatchewan, as there is in Quebec.
Still, in taking up the nationalist cause, Moe is following in Kenney’s footsteps. In October, Albertans voted in favour of a referendum to demand changes in the federal equalization program, which Kenney promised would give him a mandate to stand up to Ottawa. Kenney is also threatening to withdraw Albertan workers from the Canada Pension Plan, and replace the province’s Mounties with a provincial force.
Moe and Kenney will no doubt cause Trudeau headaches with their nationalist challenges in the year ahead. At their heart is the debate over how to balance climate and energy policies. Less clear is whether voters are prepared to man the jurisdictional ramparts—in the recent federal election, disenchanted conservative westerners cast ballots for the People’s Party, led by a Quebecer, and not the quasi-separatist Maverick Party. Moe and Kenney may also not find eager allies in the less rectangular provinces.
The situation was much different three years ago, when Kenney put together a four-province coalition to fight Trudeau’s carbon tax. That war ended with a whimper after a series of failed court battles, most recently on Oct. 26, when Justice Richard Mosley ruled in federal court that Manitoba’s latest constitutional challenge was a dead end.
It seems unlikely that Manitoba will launch a nationalist crusade, and it’s hard to imagine Ontario doing so. The provinces can be expected to complain about climate measures, equalization and health-care funding levels, as they always do, but the fight over carbon pricing ought to finally end in 2022. “I suspect that we will end up adopting either our own consumer carbon tax or going along with the federal consumer carbon tax within the next year, kind of subject to negotiations,” said an official with one Western province, who was not authorized to speak for his government on the matter. “Having lost the case, there really isn’t another play.”
It is hard to remember now that the outcome was once in doubt, and an embattled Trudeau was facing provinces ready to fight him in court and at the ballot box to prevent him from imposing a carbon tax. “We had Jason Kenney losing his mind over carbon pricing,” recalls Catherine McKenna, Liberal environment minister from 2015 to 2019. “And on the flip side, we had Greta [Thunberg] coming to visit Canada, and young people marching in the streets, and we bought a pipeline. So I was concerned.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who won support from grassroots Ontario Tories by opposing a carbon tax, was happy to fight too. Manitoba’s Brian Pallister, who had a carbon tax plan of his own, joined in after Trudeau stood next to him and used him as an example of a co-operative premier. Behind the scenes, Stephen Harper was cheering the premiers on. “Let the other guys do a carbon tax, because we can all win the next federal and provincial elections on that issue alone,” he said in speeches. It did not seem far-fetched: in 2008, the Liberals lost an election built around Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift (a mix of carbon taxes and tax cuts).
Today, Pallister is gone, Kenney is setting new records for unpopularity, Ford is no longer talking much about the carbon tax he once loved to attack and Moe is complaining. “They’re complaining but complying,” says Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, about the carbon tax. Gray had a front-row seat for the struggle. His organization had intervenor status in the legal battles, although it opted not to bother with Manitoba’s most recent case. He doesn’t see what moves remain open to Trudeau’s provincial critics. “It’s a bit like public health care. You’re not seeing anybody who wants to get elected in this country putting in their policy platform ‘Elect us! We’re going to get rid of public health care.’”
Federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole seems to have recognized that Conservatives can’t keep fighting carbon pricing. After the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on March 25 that Trudeau’s carbon tax law was constitutional, opponents thought it could be overturned by voters. But the following month, O’Toole announced his “low-carbon savings account,” a convoluted arrangement where consumers would accumulate carbon credits they could spend on green purchases. The idea looked gimmicky and unworkable. “Do you have a credible plan?” asked a senior Conservative. “That’s what voters want to know. No one reads the plan.” It was designed to neutralize the issue, not to be implemented.
Gerald Butts, who helped design the carbon tax plan when he was principal secretary to Trudeau, thinks the writing is now on the wall. “The direction of travel is pretty clear for everybody, even Scott Moe,” he says. But Butts is not sure the Tories won’t backslide. He points out that the grassroots of the party remain opposed to carbon pricing. “I wouldn’t skate around the ice with the cup yet,” he says. “I’ve seen lots of moments in this debate where it felt like it was over.”
McKenna worries that if an internal rebellion topples O’Toole, his party will go back to fighting carbon pricing, but thinks the Conservatives would then lose more elections. “You can’t win an election by talking about revoking carbon pricing, which is why it’s kind of hilarious that you have a number of leading Conservatives who want to relitigate it,” she says.
One big difference going forward is the importance of the oil and gas industry to the Western provinces, as opposed to Ontario. Ford has moved on. “The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court, and that’s it,” says a Ford adviser. “It’s done. We have to accept it. What the carbon tax looks like going into the future, that’s up for debate now.”
Unlike Kenney and Moe, Ford—facing an election this spring—has to recognize that many of the people who vote for him voted for the Liberals federally, particularly in the suburbs of Toronto that are crucial for both parties. That overlap in support means that Ford and Trudeau need to work together, unlike Kenney and Moe, who don’t count federal Liberals in their provincial coalition.
It looks like the war is over, and the environmentalists will have won. Kenney and Moe are not going to sit down and shut up, but both are less popular now than when this battle started, having alienated voters with poor pandemic responses. Neither looks to be in a position to lead a successful nationalist uprising.
This article appears in print in the January 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “The last gasp.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.
Worrying news: On Sunday, Ontario announced that the Omicron COVID-19 variant was detected in Ottawa in two patients who recently travelled to Nigeria. CBC has a story. These cases will likely be just the first.
In a statement released Sunday, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the confirmation of two omicron cases is a signal that the country’s monitoring system is working but to expect more cases of the variant. “As the monitoring and testing continues with provinces and territories, it is expected that other cases of this variant will be found in Canada,” Duclos said.
It is not yet clear if Omicron is more virulent or transmissible than previous variants, or if it has developed vaccine resistance. Moderna’s chief medical officer told the BBC, though, that the company could roll out an updated vaccine early in 2022 if necessary, CNBC reported.
Bans disputed: On Friday, Canada imposed travel restrictions on foreign nationals who had visited southern Africa. WHO has complained about the bans, calling them unscientific and unhelpful, and some Canadian experts agree, Global reports.
Not racist: In the Toronto Sun, Lorrie Goldsteinreminds readers that travel bans were once considered racist.
Not Ottawa’s fault: Don’t blame inflation on stimulus spending, former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloztold CTV Sunday: “In fact, what the stimulus did was to keep the economy from going into a deep hole in which we would have experienced persistent deflation.” (Video)
Inflation has reached 4.7 per cent, according to the latest numbers released by Statistics Canada in October. The Bank of Canada expects it to peak at the end of this year and start to decline in the latter half of 2022.
Conservative Finance Critic Pierre Poilievre blames the Trudeau government for causing inflation, and recently got into a Twitter debate with Even Solomon about CTV’s coverage of the question.
ICYMI:Maclean’sJason Markusoff has a good explainer on inflation in our January issue.
Culture change: New Chief of the Defence Staff Wayne Eyre promised to change the culture of the Canadian Forces, to get rid of the idea that it’s an “old boys’ club,” he told CTV on Sunday, the Globereports.
General Eyre said there are many aspects of military culture he wants to keep – such as protecting others and service above self – but he wants to address the “exclusionary aspects” and bring in the values of inclusion as the “face of Canada is changing.” “So if we want to be able to attract and retain the best talent from all segments of Canadian society, we have to embrace that value of inclusion,” he said on the television program. Gen. Eyre said that over the next few weeks, the Canadian Armed Forces will be announcing a number of initiatives in greater detail around culture change, support for survivors of misconduct, and the complaint reporting system.
Not only women: In an interview on Global, Eyre pointed out that more than 40 per cent of the nearly 19,000 claims submitted by survivors and victims of military sexual misconduct are from men.
ICYMI: In the Globe on Saturday, Andrew Coyne has a persusasive column arguing that a patchwork of policies aimed at reducing emissions is dramatically more costly than simply raising the carbon tax.
Relying on carbon pricing alone to hit our target, the Trudeau government says in the 2016 Framework, “would require a very high price.” Very high, compared with what? Compared with the current price, undoubtedly. But compared to alternative measures? What the government really means is that the price would be visible to the public and therefore politically toxic. Whereas the cost of subsidies and regulations, though higher – and though the public just as surely pays for them – is invisible.
Not as efficient: In the Star on Saturday, Robin Searswrites that, in comparison with Germany, where a businesslike new coalition government has just released “a 177-page set of specific policy pledges, with detailed agendas and time frames,” Canada’s government takes a “dilatory approach to governing by legislation.”
ICYMI: Ryan Reynolds received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and got a musical tribute from Steven Page, Global reports.
A helicopter prepares to make a water drop as smoke billows along the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, B.C., on July 2, 2021 (James MacDonald/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Crises have a habit of blotting each other out, given that most of us can only put out, or even focus on, one fire at a time. But while the last two years were given over to coping with COVID-19, another emergency of existential scale has been implacably gathering strength.
With the acute phase of the pandemic finally in the rear-view mirror, and with growing and terrifying evidence that the other threat is immediate, not on the far side of some hazy future horizon, climate change—its effects, its economic and social costs and its potential solutions—is set to be the defining issue of 2022, and dauntingly far beyond the new year. The issue is still often framed merely as a political hot potato, given the regional tensions and economic realities in Canada—and dealing with it will require deft management because of that complicated context, to be sure—but the implications of climate change mock the idea of treating it as mere gamesmanship.
There is rapid change happening, on multiple fronts. Public opinion is shifting dramatically on the importance of the issue and the acceptable range of solutions; the Trudeau government appears to be leaning in on the file—the chicken-and-egg relationship between those two developments is open to debate—and the real world we all live in is now a steady trickle of calamities ripped from the opening reel of a disaster movie.
The ticking is getting louder, and the costs of both action and inaction rise by the second. This will be the year when no one can stick their fingers in their ears anymore, hum and hope someone else will deal with it.
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Early indications are that Justin Trudeau is willing to spend serious political capital attempting to tackle the problem. This year, he will have been Liberal leader for nine years and Prime Minister for seven. Both his government and the man himself have oxidized from the shiny uplift that won them a majority in 2015 to the bedraggled dourness that comes from three terms in power. As the time for political legacy tallying draws nearer, Trudeau has sent multiple signals that, along with attempting to establish a national childcare program, he intends to make climate change policy a centrepiece of what could be his government’s final chapter.
When his new cabinet was revealed and sworn in six weeks after the election, the previous minister of environment and climate change, Jonathan Wilkinson—a former tech executive who was regarded by industry as relatively non-frightening—was shuffled to Infrastructure, and Steven Guilbeault was named to the portfolio in his place. Guilbeault landed a file in which he is a true believer: in his 20s he co-founded Équiterre, a Quebec environmental non-profit, then spent a decade as a Greenpeace activist. His most infamous stunt—the one cited in all the news stories about his cabinet promotion, among them a Washington Post piece that claimed he was known as “Green Jesus”—was scaling the CN Tower in 2001 to unfurl a “Climate Killers” banner, for which he was arrested and charged with mischief.
And so, depending on who’s assessing it, Guilbeault’s appointment will either be seen as a signal that the Trudeau government is all-in on the fight against climate change or the ministerial embodiment of a middle finger flipped at the oil patch and the Prairies. “I don’t have a secret agenda as environment minister,” he said on the day he was sworn in, in response to the inevitable grilling about whether he was some sort of tree-hugging anarchist. (“Do people react this way when, say, a Bay Street executive becomes finance minister?” one Twitter user asked.) “It’s a government effort to tackle what many consider one of humanity’s greatest challenge[s], which is climate change.”
Given the long-standing animosity between Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the Trudeau government, it was a bit of a feat that Kenney managed to look betrayed in describing Guilbeault’s appointment as “very problematic.” “His own personal background and track record on these issues suggest somebody who is more of an absolutist than a pragmatist,” Kenney said. “It’s important for him to send a signal that he doesn’t see the government of Canada as a special interest group to impose a radical agenda.” Kenney’s constituents were appalled by his pandemic management, and he faces a leadership review within his United Conservative Party this spring, so regardless of what Guilbeault does, expect Kenney to aim politically useful bellows at the smouldering tensions between Ottawa and his province’s oil and gas industry and identity.
This is a federal government with a penchant for both well-scripted symbolism and treating its ministers like you can pull a string on their backs to hear one of four pre-recorded phrases, so in spite of his personal commitment to fighting climate change, 2022 will be revealing in terms of how Guilbeault will handle the file (or be allowed to handle the file). But the very fact that the government believes climate change warrants a dramatic gesture at the moment is both telling and meaningful.
During the election campaign, the Angus Reid Institute found that climate change was the top issue of concern cited by voters, ahead of other obvious candidates like improving health care, taxes and ongoing pandemic management. That environmental anxiety was most pronounced in adults aged 18 to 34, but it ranked high across all age and gender groups. The trajectory the pollster has seen in the importance people have placed on the issue over the last two years looks like a ball dropped from a great height—a near-vertical plunge in attention over the early months of the pandemic, followed by a steady bounce back up the personal bandwidth scale.
And if the summer of 2022 unfolds anything like the way the summer of 2021 did, it will serve only to focus a more urgent spotlight on the issue. Last year saw flash flooding in Europe that killed hundreds, drought, wildfires and, perhaps most dramatically—and most viscerally close to home for Canadians—a “heat dome” that descended on the West Coast in late June. Great swaths of British Columbia spent days on end punished by record-breaking heat; the temperatures were apocalyptic, boiling shellfish alive on beaches. The village of Lytton, B.C., spent three consecutive days suffering under the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Canada, peaking at 49.5° C on June 29. And then, as if the universe really had a point to make and was not particularly interested in narrative restraint, a wildfire charged down the valley and burned Lytton, which had been home to 250 people, to the ground.
The B.C. coroners’ service would eventually report that 526 people in the province died as a direct result of the heat. About two-thirds were people over age 70, and nearly all died as they overheated inside a house or hotel in a province where air conditioning is not common. The devastating heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change caused by human activity, analysis from World Weather Attribution, a collaboration of scientists, later determined.
Indeed, the scientific group calculates that, at current emissions levels, global warming by 2040 would make those extreme temperatures one degree hotter, and such events will occur every five to 10 years. Extreme rainfall like that which killed five people in Texas in 2019 has become up to 2.6 times more likely thanks to human-caused climate change, and with a 2° C rise in temperature—not an unlikely scenario—the conditions that caused the wildfires that devastated Australia three years ago will be four times more likely than they were in 1900.
All of which helps to explain why the window of discourse has changed so decisively on climate change in such a short amount of time, and is destined to shift further in the year ahead. Less than two years separated the 2019 and 2021 elections. Yet in 2019, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer trotted out a climate policy that ostentatiously contained no carbon tax, and then in 2021, Erin O’Toole crafted a climate policy that contained a carbon tax he had realized was politically necessary, while ostentatiously refusing to call it that. Tory strategists called climate change “a hygiene issue” for their party and decided that they simply needed a plausible plan to print on pamphlets or rhyme off on doorsteps. But the general electorate is now beginning to insist that political parties really scrub behind their ears. Over the coming year and beyond, the floor of what voters will demand in terms of action and thoughtfulness is going to rise, and so is the ceiling in terms of what they are willing to see it cost, by any metric.
Steady, predictable increases in the price of carbon, and the certainty of knowing that the system will stay in place no matter who wins the next election, will be crucial for encouraging greener decisions on both a household and industrial level. This is particularly true of “lumpy” consumption decisions around big expenditures made only once in a while, like a new car or furnace, says Jennifer Winter, scientific director of the energy and environmental policy research division at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. Paying for a pricier electric vehicle or energy-efficient furnace is more palatable if you know the price of carbon is headed to a place that will save you money over the long term, she explains. “It’s similar, but at the industrial level, you’re not thinking about buying a car that you will replace in five to 10 years; you’re thinking about building something that’s going to last 30 or 40 years,” she says. “With that time horizon, and with the amount of money they’re spending, policy certainly matters a lot.”
For new technologies like carbon capture and storage, where the only reason to invest is to reduce emissions, that’s especially the case, Winter says. “Businesses are generally not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts,” she says. “It relies on an economic incentive.”
The incentives appear to be working. In 2019, Royal Bank of Canada committed to providing $100 billion in sustainable financing by 2025, but it saw so much demand from companies that it surpassed that goal in less than two years and has upped the amount to $500 billion. “We’re seeing a significant shift underway in investor interest,” says John Stackhouse, senior vice-president in the office of the CEO at RBC, adding that the shift is “not binary” but favours both newer sustainability innovations and established companies with serious transition plans. “The price of capital for organizations that have a clear net-zero strategy and can demonstrate progress is going to go down relative to the cost of capital for others,” he says. “There’s just more supply of capital for those opportunities.”
Flooding in Toronto’s Don Valley in 2013 (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
If the announcements at COP26, the UN climate change conference held in Glasgow in November—billed as “the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control”—are any indication, the fossil fuel industry isn’t going anywhere imminently, but it is simply not where the sure bet is anymore. By the end of 2022, the Trudeau government, among a list of 24 countries including the United States, will stop funding the operations of oil and gas companies overseas and redirect the money to clean energy projects. Wilkinson presented the move as a first step toward ending funding for the oil patch domestically—though he was carefully non-specific about a timeline for that. The federal government eschewed the Beyond Oil and Gas Coalition led by Denmark and Costa Rica, which calls for placing a hard deadline on the production of fossil fuels, but announced it would impose a hard cap on emissions from the sector, with the specifics yet to be determined. The oil and gas sector accounts for 26 per cent of Canada’s emissions, with the transportation sector right behind, at 25 per cent.
COP26 saw the release of a study that found Canada stores one-quarter of the world’s soil carbon, mostly in peaty wetlands filled with millennia worth of decomposing plant matter, and keeping that sequestered in the ground will be crucial to fighting climate change. Canada committed, along with other countries, to ending the sale of cars that run on fossil fuels no later than 2040, eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from some international shipping routes and making heavy trucks and buses zero-emission within two decades.
While Canada is a relatively small contributor to global carbon emissions, Canadians have a big per capita carbon footprint, driven in large part by transportation and heating their homes. Canada’s big-picture commitments are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement to keep global warming to 1.5° C to avoid irreversible catastrophe. But the perpetual criticism of the big, splashy targets that get trotted out at international meetings like COP is that there are scant details about exactly how to reach those goals, so it’s a road map that contains only a starting point and an endpoint with no path between them.
The Trudeau government has, to this point, insistently talked about tackling climate change as an undiluted win-win that will save the environment while providing a boost to the economy and good jobs for anyone who wants them. That might be the case while we are still in the early stage of plucking the low-hanging fruit—and even then, it’s almost certainly wishful thinking—but the scale of action and change that will ultimately be needed to save us from ourselves was never going to be painless, or free.
It is a near certainty that 2022 will bring more devastating evidence that climate change is not a problem for other people in another era but a here-and-now crisis, which, in a darkly fortunate way, means that when the costs of fixing it become unmistakable, the government will find itself facing a citizenry that is increasingly willing to pay the bill. What choice do we have?
This article appears in print in the January 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Hot and bothered.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.
It’s not often that a Throne Speech has made me hit pause and rewind. This week’s, like many others before it, was packed with dull pageantry and endless platitudes—“go further, faster”, “no worker or region will be left behind”, “build back better”. There was nothing glaringly out of the ordinary about the speech either, except the fact that it was delivered in three languages by Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General.
But then there was this one tiny tidbit: “A changing world requires adapting and expanding diplomatic engagement.”
For foreign policy wonks, it was like an oasis in the desert. Could it be? After decades of neglect, could a Canadian government at last be waking up to the fact that Canada’s foreign service is in crisis? Or is it just another Liberal government mirage?
The statement didn’t actually commit to “adapting and expanding” the foreign service, though one presumes more diplomatic engagement means more foreign service. And more may sound nice, but in and of itself it is not a solution, in the same way throwing money at a problem may not produce the intended results.
But let’s pretend for a moment that the Liberals may indeed be planning a serious foreign policy overhaul. What would it look like?
According to Daniel Livermore, a retired diplomat and senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Public and International Affairs department, more doesn’t mean more money. “The problem isn’t funding,” he wrote in February last year. “It’s [Global Affair’s] byzantine structure and management incompetence, which defy almost any modern precepts of public administration. Mismanagement of human resources for two decades has destroyed much of the Canadian foreign service, and GAC now finds itself weak on analytical capacity, woefully lacking in linguistic and regional expertise, and virtually incapacitated by a propensity for endless meetings, consultations and discussions, where issues are talked to death without decisions.”
Staffing shortages, Livermore tells me, have left embassies scrambling to fill positions. “You can’t develop competence when you’re constantly trying to cover gaps at missions,” he says. “Ideally, you would have a Russia expert stationed in Moscow, and then re-assigned to eastern Europe and then maybe sent to Brussels or the UN. There needs to be continuity and a logic to how postings develop a person’s skills. Instead, you have an agriculture expert suddenly posted to an embassy in a major capital where Canada has no agricultural interests, simply because that embassy is short-staffed.”
The world is complicated, and becoming more so every day. A foreign service staffed by people with a passion for the work they do, and the skills needed to do the job well, is more important now that has been since the Cold War. The Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP) is a fascinating model, developed in response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 to quickly adapt to a world that had suddenly changed. The goal then was to send the most talented diplomats, the ones who possessed the language skills and creative thinking to dive deep into their postings, to regions of particular strategic interest to Canada.
These were, theoretically, the top guns of the foreign service. As one GSRP officer once told me, their job was “intelligence gathering by other means”—i.e., all open source—which meant going out beyond the blast walls and concertina wire surrounding diplomatic compounds and engaging with “unusual suspects.”
The program has had its challenges, not least of which was an institutional clash with CSIS, which accused GSRP officers of treading on its territory. But it has survived and remains a powerful tool in Canada’s foreign policy toolkit.
It was the GSRP, for instance, that exposed Canada’s disastrous strategy in Iraq in 2016 under the leadership of Ambassador Bruno Saccomani, Stephen Harper’s former bodyguard. The Liberals were able to change course because GSRP officers spoke up.
Since then, the world has changed again. The War on Terror has failed; the U.S. has spectacularly lost the war in Afghanistan; the U.S.-led world order is fragmenting into a multipolar free-for-all premised on transactionalism and increasingly led by authoritarians; and climate-related disasters, with all their attendant consequences (starvation, migration, war), are on the rise.
Canada, meanwhile, has not carried out an extensive foreign policy review in more than half a century (the last one was ordered by Justin Trudeau’s father in 1968). Over its six years in power, the Liberal government has appointed six foreign ministers, including an astronaut, a businessperson, and now a commercial lawyer. Only the businessperson makes any modicum of sense, though his previous posting as trade minister was more in his lane. Shifting him to foreign minister only demonstrated that the Trudeau Liberals still clung to the fantasy that a trade-based foreign policy would somehow produce a better world, or at least a better world for Canada. China put the kibosh to that foolish notion.
So, what then would “adapting and expanding” look like? A foreign policy review is obviously the bare minimum, though Livermore is skeptical of the impact such a review could have. “We already know what the problems are,” he says. “Doubling the number of GSRP officers would help, but it wouldn’t solve the problem either. The GSRP is a specialized program looking at economic and security issues. What’s needed is a major overhaul of how human resources are handled at Global Affairs. The foreign service has been decimated over the last two decades. It will take years to rebuild it.”
Back in 2016, Sven Jurschewsky, one of the architects of the GSRP, lamented the sorry state of affairs at the foreign service, which he said had become such a bureaucratized mess that it had ceased to attract talented people. He hailed from a much more romantic diplomatic past, from the Kenneth D. Taylor generation and the Canada Caper. He idolized men like Peter Bakewell, the Canadian diplomat in Communist Prague who risked his life to help Charter 77 dissidents.
“Being a diplomat used to mean something back then,” he told me. “We were engaged with the world, and we believed deeply in what we were doing. These days, too many diplomats … reach their positions by keeping their heads down and not causing any waves. Those types should not be in leadership positions. They’ve created a culture of incompetence that is driving away the best talent at the bottom. And I’m telling you: Canada will suffer for it.”
Sadly, Jurschewsky passed away in 2018. I have no doubt he would have rolled his eyes at this week’s Throne Speech—he was never one for pomp and circumstance, and platitudes made him bristly. But like so many other former diplomats, he may have perked up at even the intimation of a more robust foreign service. For those who have been out in the world, Canada has lost its way, and there is growing concern over whether it will ever find its way back.
No bueno: Good morning. The U.S. isdoubling its tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, despite efforts at the recent Three Amigos summit to lobby against the proposed change. Though figuring this out is a “top priority” for Liberals, per trade minister Mary Ng at yesterday’s Question Period, the government is taking heat.
Can I get a Q? Can I get a P? We’re two very noisy QPs into the pre-holiday sitting (during yesterday’s, Speaker Rota had to chide MPs after hearing something “not very parliamentary”). Aside from the softwood lumber issue, Conservatives have clearly identified cost-of-living woes as their main line of attack. Aaron Wherry, at CBC, has a column that tries to poke holes in their argument that inflation is Justin Trudeau’s fault. And in case you missed it, our Jason Markusoff has a detailed explainer onwhat exactly is going on—and why the problem will get worse in 2022.
Global economic trends have a way of mocking predictions. But on inflation, we’re down to choosing between illness and cure, and nothing in the past points to a pleasing outcome. We either pay more in the future to borrow money and service our public debt, or we pay more to do just about anything else. Something’s going to give in 2022, and perhaps for years to come.
Missed opportunities: A scathing new report from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Jerry DeMarco, gives Canada poor grades on its climate change mitigation efforts.Read it here. Per DeMarco, in a statement to media:
Canada was once a leader in the fight against climate change. However, after a series of missed opportunities, it has become the worst performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in 2015. We can’t continue to go from failure to failure; we need action and results, not just more targets and plans.
Worth it? Erin O’Toole’s teamspent more than $1 million in party funds to set up the hotel-based broadcast studio from which he did much electioneering, per reporting from Alex Boutilier over at Global News. The kicker, of course: this year’s pandemic-era campaign tour cost a couple of million less than in 2019. Pretty modest next to the $600 million election figure the party is still bandying about innew ads that promise O’Toole is now ready to win against PMJT (despite, of course, his very recent loss).
That’s Gen., not Jane: General Wayne Eyre istaking over as Chief of the Defence Staff after nine months of doing the gig in an interim capacity—despite his predecessor trying tohang on to the role. Sez new minister Anita Anandin a tweet: “General Eyre and I will continue to work together to build a military where all members feel safe, protected, and respected, wherever they are, whatever they are doing.” Internal culture change was the lead theme of herrecent speech at the Halifax International Security Forum, where Canada was asked to up its military gamefarther afield—something beingactively considered, reports the Globe and Mail, as Russian military buildup continues at the Ukrainian border.
In other job news: Congratulations to Dr. Amita Kuttner, who is thenew interim leader of a beleaguered federal Green Party looking to start fresh after thedeparture of Annamie Paul. Kuttner, 30, is the first nonbinary person, and the first person of east-Asian descent, to lead a national party, per the Greens. They are also an astrophysicist with an expertise in black holes. Maybe that, uh, puts them in a good position to stop the party from slipping into one?
Oh hey! It’s Friday! Press play on a new mainstay in the podcast fray (or is it more of a melee?). “Eh sayers” debuted yesterday. We pray they slay. Okay. Okaaaay. That’s enough rhyming for now. (And for actual poetry, see Maclean’s fortakes on the year ahead from poet laureates across the country.) The pod is from Statistics Canada and promises “the stories behind the numbers.” Episode one digs intodisability statistics and discusses activity limitations and COVID-19. Happy listening!
Next Up? The Globe and Mail notes that a new Chrystia Freeland biography in the works “will feed into a growing perception” that the finance minister will gun for the top job whenever Justin Trudeau steps aside. Myriad unnamed sources cite other possible cues in the form of Freeland’s greater responsiveness to backbenchers and a letter she wrote scolding the CEO of Air Canada for crowing that he’d lived in Montreal 14 years without managing to learn French. Other leadership possibilities trotted out include Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and, of course, Mark Carney.
Kids without enough: A new report from the national coalition Campaign 2000 warns that the battle against child poverty in Canada stalled during the pandemic, and the poverty rate of Canadian kids is likely to be even worse now than the latest available tax data shows. As of 2019, 1.3 million Canadian children, or 17.7 percent, were living below the poverty line. “That’s a pretty significant number of kids who are suffering from the harms and the effects of missing meals, not having the right kinds of clothes and parents working really long hours,” Leila Sarangi, the Campaign 2000 national director, told CBC news. Progress on child poverty was one of the big accomplishments of the Trudeau government’s first term, with Statistics Canada estimating that the Canada Child Benefit lifted 278,000 kids above the poverty line in the first full year of the program. But Campaign 2000 is calling on the government to significantly increase the CCB, warning that at the current pace, it will take 54 years to raise all Canadian kids above that bar.
Help wanted: Following through on one of their Throne Speech priorities, the Liberals introduced a bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday that would target specific industries and workers with more precise financial support coming out of the pandemic. The hard-hit tourism and hospitality sectors will get a boost if this measure goes through, and it is one of four pieces of legislation the government hopes to pass in a hurry, before MPs head out on their winter break in mid-December.
Enough is enough: British Columbians have barely caught their breath from the flooding that devastated their homes, infrastructure and lives, and now more severe weather is predicted over the next several days that could make things even worse. Up to 80 mm of rain was forecast for certain areas, along with high winds, snow and fluctuating temperatures that have officials worried about river levels and further flooding. Some highways remain closed, clean water supplies have been interrupted and residents have been warned against non-essential travel as the province braces for more punishing conditions.
Thumbs Down: Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, unsurprisingly, was not a fan of the government’s Throne Speech delivered on Tuesday. In a “fiery speech” to caucus on Wednesday morning, O’Toole vowed to fight what he portrayed as Trudeau’s assault on prosperity, national unity and the oil and gas industry. O’Toole accused the Liberals of being in cahoots with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on a left-wing coalition, and, in keeping with Tory messaging over the last few months, took aim at inflation and the rising cost of living, which he and his MPs have blamed on Trudeau’s pandemic spending.
“What is Justin Trudeau’s response? Instead of standing up for Canadians, we have a prime minister who always puts his own needs ahead of yours,” he said, as CBC reported.
Cost of isolation: A new analysis from the parliamentary budget officerestimates the cost of keeping federal prisoners away from the general population in “structured intervention units” that are supposed to mitigate some of the worst effects of solitary confinement. The PBO says that with the 15 units that already exist, the annual cost of operation will be $42 million in five years, but with up to 32 units needed, the price tag could rise to $91 million a year.
In other PBO news, former PBO Kevin Page, now CEO of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, talked to Power & Politics about the factors driving inflation in Canada. In his estimation, high energy costs driven by supply and demand issues, low housing stock and heightened demand as a result of the fiscal supports pumped into the economy during the pandemic are what’s behind Canada’s inflation rate, which is “on the high side” among G7 nations but dwarfed by that of the U.S. Page is sanguine about the potential for things to smooth out if the government winds down pandemic supports soon in order to avoid over-stimulating the economy. “The market is going to have to adjust from a 100-year shock from the pandemic,” he said.
