[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

Meh.  It's not a real declaration of emergency, it's just passing a motion calling climate change an emergency.  We'll see if it gets much if any media attention.

[crazy canuck]

You are at least consistent in your view that global warming is going to be a minor issue in the upcoming election.  I think it is going to be a major issue and these upcoming Parliamentary debates reflect that fact.  No doubt we are both informed by our bias on this issue but given the constant stream of reports we are now receiving from the scientific community and the now obvious and significant effects of global warming in Canada, one has to have one's head firmly planted in the sand to simply say "Meh".

Viper, I agree this is a smart political move in the sense that it is going to smoke out the lack of commitment by the Conservatives on the issue.  But the Liberals have some explaining to do themselves.  An interesting question is whether Singh will finally find his voice and become an effective political leader or whether the Greens are going to take that vote.

[Barrister]

You are at least consistent in your view that global warming is going to be a minor issue in the upcoming election.  I think it is going to be a major issue and these upcoming Parliamentary debates reflect that fact.  No doubt we are both informed by our bias on this issue but given the constant stream of reports we are now receiving from the scientific community and the now obvious and significant effects of global warming in Canada, one has to have one's head firmly planted in the sand to simply say "Meh".

Viper, I agree this is a smart political move in the sense that it is going to smoke out the lack of commitment by the Conservatives on the issue.  But the Liberals have some explaining to do themselves.  An interesting question is whether Singh will finally find his voice and become an effective political leader or whether the Greens are going to take that vote.

"Meh" is directed to the political tactic involved, not the issue of climate change.

Scheer, if smart, should just vote in favour of the Liberal motion.  It reads:

That the House recognize that: (a) climate change is a real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity, that impacts the environment, biodiversity, Canadians' health, and the Canadian economy; (b) Canadians are feeling the impacts of climate change today, from flooding, wildfires, heat waves and other extreme weather events which are projected to intensify in the future; (c) climate change impacts communities across Canada, with coastal, northern and Indigenous communities particularly vulnerable to its effects; and (d) action to support clean growth and meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all parts of the economy are necessary to ensure a safer, healthier, cleaner and more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren; and, therefore, that the House declare that Canada is in a national climate emergency which requires, as a response, that Canada commit to meeting its national emissions target under the Paris Agreement and to making deeper reductions in line with the Agreement's objective of holding global warming below two degrees Celsius and pursuing efforts to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Canada commit to meeting its Paris Agreement target that it already agreed to, and maybe make deeper cuts.  Should be an easy "yes".

[crazy canuck]

Scheer, if smart, should just vote in favour of the Liberal motion.  It reads:

That the House recognize that: (a) climate change is a real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity, that impacts the environment, biodiversity, Canadians' health, and the Canadian economy; (b) Canadians are feeling the impacts of climate change today, from flooding, wildfires, heat waves and other extreme weather events which are projected to intensify in the future; (c) climate change impacts communities across Canada, with coastal, northern and Indigenous communities particularly vulnerable to its effects; and (d) action to support clean growth and meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all parts of the economy are necessary to ensure a safer, healthier, cleaner and more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren; and, therefore, that the House declare that Canada is in a national climate emergency which requires, as a response, that Canada commit to meeting its national emissions target under the Paris Agreement and to making deeper reductions in line with the Agreement's objective of holding global warming below two degrees Celsius and pursuing efforts to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Canada commit to meeting its Paris Agreement target that it already agreed to, and maybe make deeper cuts.  Should be an easy "yes".

If he did he would have to explain how opposing carbon taxes is consistent with supporting the motion.  I would be pleasantly surprised if he had a good answer to that.

[Barrister]

If he did he would have to explain how opposing carbon taxes is consistent with supporting the motion.  I would be pleasantly surprised if he had a good answer to that.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Personally, I think carbon taxes are a good way of going after CO2 emissions, but a strategy of regulating (even taxing) industrial emissions, while making regulatory changes to decrease residential emissions (increase fuel economy standards, that sort of thing) could work.

[crazy canuck]

If he did he would have to explain how opposing carbon taxes is consistent with supporting the motion.  I would be pleasantly surprised if he had a good answer to that.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Personally, I think carbon taxes are a good way of going after CO2 emissions, but a strategy of regulating (even taxing) industrial emissions, while making regulatory changes to decrease residential emissions (increase fuel economy standards, that sort of thing) could work.

This isn't a question of choosing one option among many. The vast majority of people who have thought about solving this issue support carbon taxes as being part of the solution.  In fact it is often referred to as an integral part of the solution as evidenced by the findings of fact in the recent Saskatchewan reference.  So why are the Conservatives opposed?  Carbon taxes were a conservative idea after all.

Remember when carbon taxes were a conservative idea? It seems like it was only yesterday.

But that recent past has been shoved so far down the memory hole that, when reached for comment, spokespeople at the conservative ministry of truth insisted that, so far as they knew, Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Carbon taxes are now a thought crime on the Canadian right, the doubleplusungood subject of doublethink and duckspeak, and the main focus of conservative Twitter's daily Two Minutes of Hate.

George Orwell had nothing on Canadian politics.

Read more: Canada's carbon tax: A guide to who's affected, who pays what and who opposes it

April 1 was Day 1 of the federal carbon-tax backstop, imposed on the four provinces that have failed to bring in their own carbon taxes. The four – Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Ontario – are run by conservative governments. Canadian conservative parties now practise uncompromising opposition to carbon pricing; they insist that it's a plot to spark a recession and destroy your family's finances.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government did not declare April 1 as a day of mourning, but that's only because "Ontario's Government for the People" is visibly gleeful at the arrival of Trudeau's Tax. They think attacking it is a winner. So do Andrew Scheer's federal Conservatives.

On the evening of March 31, nearly all of Mr. Ford's MPPs dutifully drove to gas stations and took photos and videos of themselves filling their cars. Then, just in time for Easter, they tweeted out their take on the (service) stations of the cross: the last day before carbon taxes; the last hour before carbon taxes; the moment at midnight when carbon taxes were loosed upon the world, the price of regular unleaded went up by 4.4 cents a litre, and Armageddon began.

But back to where we started: Carbon taxes, today's conservative bugbear, began life as a conservative idea.

They're an economically logical, pro-market way of lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. A way of using prices – the basic mechanism of free markets – to reduce pollution. A way of putting billions of small environmental decisions in the hands of millions of people, rather than handing them over to a big government bureaucracy. And a way to tax something societies need less of, namely pollution, while lowering taxes on things we all want more of, like business investment and personal income.

And it wasn't just egghead economists or cranky right-wing think-tankers who favoured carbon taxes. In 2008, the government of British Columbia – the Liberal Party, a.k.a. B.C.'s conservative party – brought in carbon taxes on fuels such as gasoline.

It was and still is a model for the rest of the country, since it was intended to be revenue-neutral – with every cent raised by the carbon tax going back into people's pockets, mostly through tax reductions. Thanks in part to carbon taxes, lower- and middle-income earners in B.C. pay the country's lowest income taxes.

Then in 2014, Preston Manning, the godfather of Canada's modern conservative movement, came out in favour of carbon taxes.

In Ontario, the pre-Doug Ford version of the PC Party was all for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Until Patrick Brown's leadership imploded a little over a year ago, that was the Ontario PC platform. Higher taxes on pollution were going to pay for lower taxes on everything else.

Conservatives are usually in favour of remembering and honouring history but, on this topic, not so much. What happened to the Ontario PC's pre-Ford platform? It's now the Trudeau government platform.

In Ontario, gas prices went up by 4.4 cents a litre on Monday, thanks to Ottawa's carbon tax. But the feds are returning every cent raised at the pump to the people and businesses of the province. The average person will receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes.

The carbon tax, however, will bite a little. It's supposed to. The whole point of raising the price of gasoline is to push people to think about how to avoid those costs coming out of their left pocket, while enjoying the carbon-tax rebate in their right pocket. A slightly more fuel-efficient car? Driving less? Taking public transit to work sometimes? The idea is to leave it to people to decide for themselves if they want to lower their carbon costs, and how to do so.

That used to be a conservative idea. Yes, really.

So now what are the Conservatives left with as an idea?

[Barrister]

So now what are the Conservatives left with as an idea?

Well, the option I suggested (regulation) is admittedly more of a left-wing solution - which is why I think carbon taxes are the better way to go.

[crazy canuck]

So now what are the Conservatives left with as an idea?

Well, the option I suggested (regulation) is admittedly more of a left-wing solution - which is why I think carbon taxes are the better way to go.

I am not asking what you think.  You have already admitted what you think is out of step with most Conservative supporters.  I want to know what Scheer thinks, and that is the problem.  He seems not to think about this at all beyond opposing carbon taxes for petty political gain.

[viper37]

This isn't a question of choosing one option among many. The vast majority of people who have thought about solving this issue support carbon taxes as being part of the solution. 

That is the problem. It's part of the solution.  Not THE solution.

Either the Liberals have some hidden plan they never shared in 4 years only waiting for the election, or they don't have any plan at all.

There is no such thing as a revenue neutral taxation.  In theory, yes.  In practice, no.

Governments will find a way to spend that money and the returns will diminish as the tax increases.

I dislike it, but I think the regulatory arm of the government will be needed.  Start by banning oil heating for new residential, commercial and industrial building.  Establish a realistic time table for existing building to get rid of their oil furnace.  That kind of things.

The Quebec government, for whom the environment is apparently not a priority, has announced a plan to phase out diesel generators from northern quebec's power generation in isolated communities.  Where's the plan for this by the Feds?  Wasn't the environment a priority 4 years ago?  Last I checked, the territories where under Federal supervision, it should be fairly easy to do.  That is a relatively simple measure to vote.  I doubt there would be any opposition.

As much as cars are concerned, that is mostly a provincial responsibility, Quebec is on its way to electrify most of the vehicle park by 2040-2050, a sensible measure given the current lack of choice of electric vehicles of all sizes.

I saw that Germany is electrifying its highways for truck transportation, a system similar to tramways.  Seems impractical to me over here, too large a territory to electrify.  But maybe Via Rail should be given funds to develop new high speed rail, a seperate railtrack from CN/CP to avoid delays due to non passenger trains and increase the number of trips offered from there between large cities.

[crazy canuck]

Ok, but is that an argument for not also instituting carbon taxes?

[viper37]

Ok, but is that an argument for not also instituting carbon taxes?

I still don't like it, but I have a hard time figuring out any alternative.

[viper37]

No one talks about the Mark Norman case?  I guess it wasn't as popular in English Canada as in Quebec

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-mark-norman-has-been-vindicated-but-the-navy-procurement-crisis/

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.

The truth about Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is finally coming out, with his breach-of-trust charge over allegedly leaking cabinet secrets to affect the leasing of a supply ship having been stayed. His trial has been spiked; the focus is now on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who reportedly initiated the request for an RCMP investigation in 2015, a highly unusual ask that he denies making. He also publicly predicted a trial, even before any charges were laid.

But this affair is about more than injustice and allegations of political interference. At its root, it is about a procurement system that left the Royal Canadian Navy unable to operate freely overseas – and that problem remains nearly as acute now as it was before.

A strong navy needs supply ships to enable warships to undertake long deployments without stopping in foreign ports or relying on allies. During an armed conflict, a supply ship can be the difference between victory and defeat. But Canada's Navy lost both its supply ships in 2015 after a fire on one and serious corrosion on the other. All of a sudden, it could no longer form a task force – an independently deployable group of warships – despite this ability being central to its function as a blue-water navy, that is to say, a force that can operate across the deep and open oceans.

The Navy had foreseen a need for new supply ships before that, however. In 2004, it persuaded Paul Martin's Liberal government to initiate a procurement process. But the projected costs quickly exceeded the assigned budget, and Stephen Harper's Conservative government halted the process before restarting it one year later and then rolling it into the 2011 National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS). By 2015, it was apparent that the NSS was broken, and that the new supply ships would take a decade or more to arrive.

Enter Vice-Adm. Norman, appointed as commander of the Navy in 2013, who saw a solution to the intractable process: converting a second-hand container ship into a refuelling vessel.

However, this idea put the entire NSS at risk, and with it, entire careers. The NSS has grown into a complex institution with procedures, committees, personnel slots and budget lines involving three different government departments, and a workaround threatened overturning the cart. The conversion would also imperil decades of profits at Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax and Seaspan Shipyards in Vancouver. In 2011, the two companies had been selected to build all of Canada's large ships because Davie Shipbuilding in Lévis, Que., was under creditor protection at the time. But by 2015, Davie was back, with the facilities, workforce and experience needed to build large ships. It even had a container ship, the MV Asterix, ready for conversion.

Mr. Harper understood that urgent measures were needed. So he gave Vice-Adm. Norman the authority to deal directly with Davie and get the job done. It was an unusual move that sidelined the rest of the bureaucracy, but the prime minister had Vice-Adm. Norman's back – that is, until he was no longer prime minister.

Mr. Trudeau became a particularly easy mark for senior civil servants, especially given their propensity to always try and take advantage of new governments. It might not have been too hard to wind Mr. Trudeau up about Vice-Adm. Norman's dealings with Davie, which included allegedly "leaking" cabinet information concerning the new government's doubts about the deal Mr. Harper had struck on MV Asterix.

We don't know whether Mr. Trudeau's behaviour amounted to political interference in the justice system. What we do know for the moment, though, is that Vice-Adm. Norman's legal fight against the breach-of-trust charge came at a heavy handicap. Someone told the media that the RCMP were searching Vice-Adm. Norman's home in 2017. The Department of National Defence refused Vice-Adm. Norman's request for government assistance on legal fees, even though doing so is normal practice. Thousands of documents were withheld, some of which would have revealed what a former Conservative cabinet minister later confirmed: that Vice-Adm. Norman was reporting directly to Mr. Harper.

Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance was particularly unhelpful, suspending and then replacing Vice-Adm, Norman while publicly expressing a lack of confidence in him. He must go: At best, he failed to protect Vice-Adm. Norman, and at worst, he set him up.

But none of that deals with the actual problem at the core of this affair: The Navy has only one supply ship, the one that Vice-Adm. Norman secured. And this country's geography demands supply ships on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as a third ship to stand in during maintenance and refits.

Seaspan will not be able to deliver new supply ships any time soon, even though it recently rearranged its construction schedule so as to start one but not both of the vessels before several Coast Guard builds. The firm ran into serious problems with the first ship built under the NSS, a Coast Guard fisheries science vessel, including faulty welds that had to be redone last year, and a damaging collision with a breakwater during a Seaspan-conducted trial earlier this year.

Fortunately, no full construction contract for the new supply ships has yet been signed. There is still time to cancel the planned second ship at Seaspan and to have Davie refit another container ship instead.

But this assumes rational decision-making, unaffected by interests and bureaucracy. Yes, Vice-Adm. Norman was vindicated – but don't expect this government to change course.

[viper37]

The fight of your life: Mark Norman tells his side

[Grey Fox]

It's always about protecting the Irving business, once that is done Davie can get some contract, especially if Seaspan can't actually help.

[Barrister]

So, I've mentioned before I am friends with Steven Fletcher from way back.  He hit a moose and became a quadriplegic, but went on to become a Conservative MP and Parliamentary Secretary under Harper.

He went on to lose his Federal seat, then became an MLA in Manitoba.  He then went on to get kicked out of the Manitoba PC Party because he questioned Premier Pallister on some fairly legitimate grounds.

But now... he announced on Facebook he was going to become a candidate for Bernier's People's Party of Canada in Manitoba.

I've generally been pretty proud of my voting history, even in hindsight, but I think I can recognize that twice I voted for the wrong person.  First was back in 2000 when I backed Stockwell Day for Canadian Alliance leader... and then when I backed Bernier for Conservative Party leader.

So I really don't understand what Fletcher is doing.  I get he's not going to be re-elected as a MLA in Manitoba, but he's certainly not going to be elected under the PPC banner either.  And this is just going to harm his political brand in case he might some day rejoin elected politics.