How's Trudeau doing, Canada?

Politics & Elections
483

Trudeau has been pretty good with Covid. He took it seriously, accepted scientific advice, helped teach Canadians to social distance and (mostly) set a personal example, set some economic policies and radiated reasonably genuine concern and empathy. Doug Ford, the Ontario leader, has been equally responsible and displayed much common sense. Much of the world remains surprised by some American reactions, in particular those of its leader. Canada has also changed its reactions as more data becomes available.

It’s not been perfect. Canada shut down its Parliament, and the rationale has become increasingly specious. Money has been thrown around, but has not always been well spent, thoroughly discussed, transparent or applied with safeguards against fraud. Plans for reopening are probably overcautious given partial reopening has not led to increased cases. Some of this caution is due to a failure to balance education with reassurance. Despite much improvement and empty ICUs (only 40 patients in ICUs in Toronto, an area of 4m people), there is a push for increased masking. (I favour masking in certain close contact situations but feel it makes people overconfident and many do not wear them properly. I think social distancing and frequent hand washing are more helpful. People need to follow the law and local advice. Wearing a mask should be an individual decision and should not be a political statement.) Areas which have opened schools are not seeing big jumps in cases. Again, as I said from the outset, many will get Covid and more important than cases is deaths and hospitalizations, particularly ICU. But the goalposts have shifted, the American situation makes Canada very nervous, and Canada must learn the lessons of less foreign reliance and better preparation. This must include addressing the issues of long term care homes. But it looks like governments are finally taking this issue seriously.

484

(Reposted in error in wrong thread.)

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(My views on masks are limited to regions of Canada which have gone 24h without reporting any deaths from Covid and should not be taken as applying in the US or where local transmission is greater. Follow the local laws and practice, please. Also, don’t eat crayons or drink really hot coffee. You must also be this tall to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl.)

486

Oh, man. Next you’ll be telling me not to drink bleach or shine bright lights inside my body. Down with the Canadian nanny-state tyranny!

487

You can shine all the bright lights in your body that you want. Although bleach is delicious, I can not recommend drinking it. Partly since I lack Presidential gravitas.

488

Trudeau’s contention that WE was the only charity capable of handling a rollout ran into more difficulties today. There was a report Trudeau’s relatives had been paid several hundred thousand dollars by the charity. Morneau has also had family involvement. At least some involvement was reportedly without remuneration. At best, the optics would seem to lack hypermetropia.

489

In fairness, Trudeau has apologized. By American standards, this “scandal” is very small beer. I don’t think it will hurt much in the long run. And the Liberals are still the party to beat nationally. They have, however, squandered some goodwill built during Covid. And for what?

490

I can’t muster outrage for this scandal simply because I can’t imagine the Conservatives (or any other political party anywhere, anytime) doing anything differently. That is the whole purpose of politics, is it not? To provide favors to your friends according your power to grant them? If the Conservatives were in power the only difference would be that the charity on the receiving end would be the First Albertan Church of Jesus’ Eternal Tarsands.

491

I’m a solid Liberal voter, but no, I don’t think that’s fair. For one thing, corruption happens when voters don’t punish it. For another thing, I can’t think of any close equivalent under the Harper government—and this is probably the closest thing to a nice thing I’ve ever said about the Harper government.

That said, I’m certainly not going to be voting Conservative next election regardless of how this scandal plays out.

492

It really sucks that the federal Liberals seem intent on remaining so corrupt. It’s like they’ve completely forgotten why the Chretien/Martin governments lost to Harper in the first place. Conflict of interest? Never heard of it.

As a voter I find it incredibly frustrating. The Liberal platform matches my policy preferences to a greater degree than any other party’s, so if I want to punish them for corruption I have to vote in favour of policies I disagree with.

493

How is it conflict of interest? Senior Liberals raised funds for WE. WE hired their kids. WE promoted the party leader. The leader, once in power, directs public money back to WE. I don’t see your point.

Harper, though flawed, did not seem corrupt in this way. But this is what we have come to expect from any party. We deserve better. I don’t know about WE. Oui?

And I still like Trudeau!

494

You’re right, there’s no conflict between those interests at all. My bad. Actually the way you describe it, I’m not even sure we should be using the plural form of interests at all.

Is there a resigned sigh emoji available somewhere?

495

John Turner has died at the age of 91. A long-time Liberal heavyweight who will be missed. I understand he died of natural causes and not from eating one too many Kielbergers.

496

I ate at Wahlburger in Detroit in February and ended up with food poisoning. A Kielberger couldn’t be any worse, after all it’s only a bun for show with no meat.

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We are so boned. Canada had total federal revenue of $336 billion in 2018. This year so far, our deficit is $430 billion, and GDP is down 13.5% - more than most other countries fighting COVID (U.S. is -9.5%). In fact, our deficit this year is about to 1/3 of the country’s entire GDP, and the deficit almost 1/3 larger than the entire federal government revenue.

Trudeau’s answer to this: A new national daycare program, and a national prescription drug benefit. Two incredibly expensive entitlements. On top of that he’s going to spend money to ‘create’ a million ‘green’ jobs, expand unemployment insurance payments indefinitely, and essentially give everyone six more months of Covid benefits. And they are talking out replacing that with a universal income.

Another thing he’s doing is planning to spend billions on rural broadband, at a time when low Earth orbit satellite constellations are already providing cheap, high speed internet to rural Canadians. Canada is one of the only places where you can get Starlink right now, and two or three other satellite constellations are planned. Running physical wires or fiber around rural Canada is a ridiculous, antiquated idea. He should consider building a series of livery stables for rural horse travel as well.

Of course, he says we can afford to borrow lots more money to do all this and should in order to ‘lock in’ low interest. No word on what happens if interest is 5 points higher when we have to refinance a trillion dollars in debt, or what happens if our credit rating is degraded and our debt servicing gets more expensive, or what happens if inflation kicks in and we can’t use interest rates to fight it without blowing up the budget.

Mind you, to consider such questions it might be useful to have a finance minister who knew something about finance, rather than giving the job to an ex-reporter.

Reminder: A trillion dollars of debt costs the government $10 billion dollars per year in debt service for every point of interest on the debt. Trudeau once promised that the federal deficit would not go over $10 billion while he was Prime Minister. He blew through that promise long before COVID came along, and now the deficit is so huge the original $10 billion promise looks downright quaint.

It took us two decades to claw ourselves out from under the debt Trudeau senior left us. His kid is going to make his dad look like a piker by the time he’s done.

And of course since he prorogued parliament, all of this Canada-changing craziness is being done without any parliamentary debate or input from any other party except the NDP, which he clearly cut a deal with to save his ass. Both the daycare program and the pharmacare entitlement were NDP priorities.

500

Oh let’s not forget Mulroney as well. :slight_smile:

501

Do you realize the US is at almost 110% of GDP?

Do you know that Starlink is in private beta and only a small fraction of the birds are up? We’ve got a place 2 hours north of Toronto and I can’t get any fixed wireless, no good line of site to satellite, and if I’m lucky get 2 mbps on LTE? People either need rural broadband or to move to the city unless we do something about it.

I’m a business person - I employee more than 50 people that generates about $2m per year in payroll taxes alone, never mind corporate taxes. People who have good broadband and/or child care are people I can put to work.

You keep throwing out your western anger and have no answers of your own.

502

Internet access is really important. It is absolutely an essential service and should be treated as such. But there are probably better ways of subsidizing it, and smarter ways than physical wires in some cases.

I agree this is a bad time for being profligate, though some Covid debt was smart and unavoidable. But how often has there been much jaw jaw and little delivery on many of these issues before?

No mention of taxes. And benefits are taxable. But higher taxes are unavoidable. Wait until the election?