{"id":98768,"date":"2020-10-27T17:54:46","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T14:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/is-canada-actually-adrift-without-a-fiscal-anchor\/"},"modified":"2020-10-27T17:54:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T14:54:46","slug":"is-canada-actually-adrift-without-a-fiscal-anchor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/is-canada-actually-adrift-without-a-fiscal-anchor\/","title":{"rendered":"#Is Canada actually adrift without a fiscal anchor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Is Canada actually adrift without a fiscal anchor?<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Politics Insider for Oct. 27: Trudeau won’t commit to a key fiscal progress metric, the Liberals won’t commit to massive document disclosure, and is Parliament broken?\n <\/div>\n
\n Welcome to a sneak peek of the\u00a0<\/em>Maclean\u2019s\u00a0Politics Insider\u00a0news<\/a>letter.\u00a0Sign up to get it delivered\u00a0straight to your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFiscal anchor\u201d<\/strong> is a phrase only an economist could love. But when Canada eventually starts to emerge from the pandemic morass, the feds will need all the talented economic forecasters they can get\u2014and they\u2019ll need a benchmark of some sort to measure the country\u2019s progress<\/strong>. Enter the fiscal anchor, which for the last few years was the debt-to-GDP ratio<\/strong>. As long as that number remained steady or fell, the Trudeau cabinet offered some stability to markets.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the Canadian Chamber of Commerce<\/strong> that he\u2019d establish no such benchmark<\/a>\u00a0before an expected fiscal update before the end of the year.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of uncertainty still around where we\u2019re going to be at the end of this pandemic and I think it would be premature to be locking things down,\u201d he said. All<\/a> of<\/a> these<\/a> analysts<\/a> will<\/a> be<\/a> disappointed<\/a>. But not\u00a0every<\/em> analyst<\/a>. \u201cFiscal rules do not substitute for good policy,\u201d argues Lindsay Tedds<\/strong>, a University of Calgary economist who says the feds should \u201cfocus on pandemic response and recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over at Queen\u2019s Park, Finance Minister Rod Phillips<\/strong> set a date<\/a> for his own pandemic budget: Nov. 5<\/strong>. \u201cHaving a financial plan is important,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially when things are uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pandemic scrutiny:<\/strong> Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, MPs voted in favour of a Conservative mega-motion<\/strong><\/a> that demands all and sundry government records\u2014\u201call memoranda, emails, documents, notes and other records\u201d\u2014on every aspect of pandemic response. The vote passed 176-152<\/strong><\/a>. The Liberals spent the morning constructing an argument<\/a> against the motion\u2019s demands; namely, that organizing those files would require the work of way too many people who are otherwise preoccupied with the actual pandemic.<\/p>\n

Procurement Minister Anita Anand<\/strong> claimed the Commons law clerk doesn\u2019t have the expertise to properly redact, for example, contracts with myriad confidentiality clauses. She also pointed critics to a website that discloses some information<\/a> about billions in signed emergency response contracts. Tory MP Michelle Rempel Garner<\/strong>, the mover of the motion, accused the Liberals of fear-mongering and attacking the law clerk. It\u2019s worth noting that next year\u2019s auditor general<\/a> reports<\/strong> will focus on several aspects of the pandemic response<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think this Parliament is broken:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you have when a governing party that insists it cares about transparency (except when it doesn\u2019t) mixes with opposition parties that lose any sense of the scale of what they\u2019re demanding? Well, writes\u00a0Paul Wells<\/strong>, one thing you get is a House of Commons that\u2019s stuck in the mud with nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

So where are we? We\u2019re in a fix. On one hand, a government that is shocked at the news that anyone would believe it capable of doing the sort of things it does all the time. On the other, an opposition that advertises its incorrigible frivolousness with its grandest gestures. The rest of us at least have the luxury of ignoring them. They\u2019re stuck with one another. But not for much longer. Sooner or later, and sooner than I would have expected even a few weeks ago, they\u2019ll be back on the campaign trail<\/strong>, demanding that we settle their differences for them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The slow return to federal offices:<\/strong>\u00a0Ottawa\u2019s downtown core is quieter than usual as tenants give up office space. At the end of September, the\u00a0Ottawa Business Journal<\/em> reported the vacancy rate in the city\u2019s core rose to six per cent<\/a>. But what of the scads of federal tenants whose employees might some day return to a physical workspace? The\u00a0Hill Times<\/em> combed through a list of departmental back-to-work plans and found it\u2019s going to be slow going<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Space Agency is gung-ho about getting more men and women to the Moon<\/strong>, and eventually sending human travel<\/a>lers to Mars. Now, the agency wants to hear from the rest of us. If you think you hold the key to \u201csafe and sustainable\u00a0space exploration for decades to come,\u201d send your\u00a0cosmic wisdom<\/strong><\/a> to the government.<\/p>\n

Four Moe years:<\/strong>\u00a0First, New Brunswickers gave Blaine Higgs<\/strong> his first majority win. Then, British Columbians offered John Horgan<\/strong> the same courtesy. Last night, the most predictable campaign of 2020 gave Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe<\/strong> his own first majority. Of course, that\u2019s no surprise to anyone who actually\u00a0lives in<\/em> the province. Brad Wall<\/strong> romped in three elections before this one, so that makes four in a row for the Sask Party<\/strong>. Jason Markusoff reserved a rare moniker for lack of diversity in the Prairie province\u2019s electoral preferences.<\/p>\n

The Sask Party, whose colour is the same green as the province\u2019s much-worshipped CFL Roughriders, has proven its stranglehold over provincial politics can easily outlive Wall. This contest was never in doubt; nor was the expectation that whatever Moe promised was bound to become government policy. So it goes in a one-party province<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The stakes were lower in two federal by-elections<\/strong> in Toronto, but the drama ran high on Elections Canada\u2019s\u00a0live results page<\/strong><\/a>. In Bill Morneau\u2019s old downtown riding of Toronto Centre, former CTV broadcaster\u00a0Marci Ien<\/strong>\u00a0scored a semi-comfortable win<\/strong>. But Green party leader Annamie Paul<\/strong>, who captured only 7 per cent of the riding\u2019s vote in 2019, vaulted into second<\/strong> with nearly one-third of the vote. Her gain was everybody else\u2019s loss. The Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives all shed votes to Paul.<\/p>\n

A truly nail-biting contest went down in the city\u2019s north end, where Liberal candidate\u00a0Ya\u2019ara Saks<\/strong> hoped to retain the York Centre riding after Michael Levitt<\/strong>\u2018s retirement earlier this year. With most of the ballots counted, Saks app<\/a>eared to have the edge over Tory candidate\u00a0Julius Tiangson<\/strong>, leading by about 700 votes with 99 per cent of polls reporting. Those last polls were very strong for Saks, because the margin had earlier dropped to just a single vote\u2014a football rouge<\/strong><\/a>\u2014for a brief moment.<\/p>\n

Max Bernier<\/strong>, the People\u2019s Party leader attempting another run for Parliament, failed to generate almost any momentum in suburban Toronto. But Bernier did appear to siphon almost enough votes<\/a> from Tiangson\u2014about 3.6 per cent\u2014to allow Saks to run up the middle for the victory<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A footnote worth noting:<\/strong>\u00a0John Turmel<\/strong>, whose nickname is \u201cThe Engineer,\u201d was also on the ballot in York Centre. The perennial candidate who claims to run \u201cthe world\u2019s oldest blog<\/a>\u201d\u00a0lost his 101st election<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0last night, a streak stretching back to 1979. He holds the world record<\/a>\u00a0in that department.
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