If only they could be stupid for free:
Passengers should not expect quicker airport screening with a 33 percent increase in mandatory security fees, says the National Airlines Council. Fees intended to cover security costs represent an annual profit for the Government of Canada, figures show: “I wish I could say these increases in fees would lead to better service.”
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Cabinet’s budget bill last night cleared the Commons finance committee after 29 days and 667 roll call votes in a month-long Conservative filibuster. MPs protested the omnibus bill introduced or amended 51 different Acts of Parliament: “The idea that omnibus legislation is acceptable is simply wrong.”
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Liberal and New Democrat MPs have opposed a budget amendment to cut the Governor General’s funding. Conservative MP Kelly Block (Carleton Trail-Eagle Creek, Sask.) sponsored the motion after accusing Rideau Hall of high living while Canadians turn to food banks: “The Governor General has shown a lack of respect for taxpayers.”
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The chair of the Senate agriculture committee yesterday would not comment on an Italian junket so costly other senators expressed unease with the expense. Senator Robert Black (Ont.) submitted a $66,940 budget to lead a four-member farm delegation to Italy in July for a study of “soil conditions in Canada.”
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Once upon a time, a big handout would at least buy you some time; many years would pass before a recipient came back, cap in hand. But as shown by Stellantis’ recent decision to halt construction of its Windsor, Ont. electric vehicle battery factory, after already getting about $1 billion from the Ontario and federal governments, the hostage negotiations are now starting before the jobs even materialize.
Some analysts suggest that new negotiations, currently underway, between the federal and provincial governments and Stellantis could cost taxpayers as much as $19 billion in new funding.
The catalyst for Stellantis’ brazen move appears to be the federal and Ontario governments’ decision in April to commit to an eye-watering $13 billion package of subsidies to Volkswagen for its own EV battery factory in St.Thomas, Ont.
You have to wonder whether it even occurred to anyone in the Trudeau or Ford government that the lucrative Volkswagen package might come back to undermine the Stellantis deal struck a year earlier. The fact that both governments seemed to be caught completely off guard — forced into a humiliating public ritual of finger-pointing, and ultimately offering up a deal even sweeter than the Volkswagen handout — suggests the answer is no.
Perhaps they were putting too much stock in Stellantis’ commitment to build the factory. But it’s hard to know whether there’s a loophole that permits Stellantis to duck out, since (surprise!) the actual terms of the deal were withheld from the public due to “commercial sensitivity” — a phrase which should always ring alarm bells since it inevitably trumps taxpayers’ rights to know how their own money is being spent.
That said, it’s hard to blame Stellantis for insisting on a level playing field, yet another reason why it was a colossal mistake for Trudeau and Ford to set off a subsidy bidding war. Of course they insisted that’s not what was happening; Trudeau even made a point of publicly warning other companies not to expect the same deal as Volkswagen. Yet here we are barely a month later, setting the table for a generous meal of crow and humble pie.
Besides achieving a massive payday for Stellantis, the company’s aggressive strategy also illustrates some broader lessons that will no doubt be lost on those still intoxicated by the delusion of bringing large-scale industrial policy back into fashion:
- that “designing” economies is beyond the capacity or competence of governments;
- that even obvious unintended consequences will escape their notice;
- and that the real result of these effects is considerable distortion and damage to our economy — all paid for at enormous cost to the public purse.
The only implicit expression of humility we are likely to see from an upsized handout for Stellantis will be the absence of another backslapping photo-op or stream of sycophantic stakeholder press releases. Rather than repudiate these destructive policies, Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford are doubling down on their colossal mistake.
Their embarrassing capitulation to pay billions more in ransom money will only embolden other companies to do the same.
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The Freedom Convoy was a “far-right extremist movement” that “terrorized” Ottawa, a Liberal-appointed senator said yesterday. Remarks by Senator Ratna Omidvar (Ont.) contradicted police evidence that Parliament Hill demonstrators were neither extremist nor violent: “What is the government doing to track this? Specifically, are you tracking how these extremists are influencing politicians in Canada?”
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No one takes orders at the Burger King in the rest stop offof Ontario’s Highway 401 near Port Hope. Instead, there’s a large touch screen that customers use to select and pay for their Whoppers and fries.
That is just one small example of how companies are choosing to adapt to falling unemployment, rather than griping about a labour shortage that is in large part a mirage. Unfortunately, such innovation seems to be the exception, with many business groups preferring to press for increases in cheap labour, in the form of temporary foreign workers.
Basic economics says that the price of something should rise if it is in short supply. But wages – in the middle of what business groups tout as an unprecedented labour shortage – have not even kept pace with inflation, and fretting over a labour shortage has mounted. Average hourly earnings have fallen since January, 2020, once inflation is taken into account. Translation: Businesses may be moaning about a labour shortage, but they aren’t willing to put their money where their moans are.
Another clue that claims of a widespread labour shortages aren’t quite what they seem came in a Statistics Canada report last week that looked at job vacancies, which were 2½ times greater in 2022 than in 2016.
There were stark differences in the rates, depending on a job’s education requirement. For positions requiring at least a bachelor’s degree, there was no general labour shortage.
But there were a large number of vacancies for jobs that only required a high-school diploma, or less. For those lower-skilled jobs, there were many more vacancies than unemployed workers. Even if all those workers were instantly hired, there still would have been 131,000 vacancies in the fourth quarter of last year, for instance.
Despite that apparent shortage, wages are not rising in response. That could be explained in part by a lack of pricing power by some employers. They may not be able to increase their own prices enough to absorb the cost of higher wages.
The heart of the answer, however, is the rise in the number of temporary foreign workers who are willing to work for cut-rate wages and are not as able to shift jobs nearly as easily as Canadian residents. The number of such workers has exploded since the pandemic, jumping to 120,000 at the end of 2022 from 73,360 at the end of 2019.
Economist Jim Stanford thinks there could be deeper structural issues at play, including the ubiquitous use of job-hiring sites. It doesn’t cost much to post a job electronically, and automatic sorting reduces the administrative burden dramatically. Some of those vacancies may be placeholders.
Then there is the less-than-pleasant nature of some low-skilled workplaces, where low pay and high turnover go hand in hand. Mr. Stanford says some employers likely find it more advantageous to deal with high turnover than pay their staff enough to dissuade them from quitting.
Add those two factors together and that glut of job vacancies may in fact be illusory listings that anticipate gaps that will emerge from the next wave of quitters, rather than a sign of a genuine labour shortage.
Still, there’s no doubt some employers are struggling to find workers – and are pressing the federal government to boost the number of temporary foreign workers. Ottawa has bought into that narrative wholeheartedly: The immigration department referred to chronic labour shortages as the justification for revised rules rolled out on Wednesday.
That narrative obscures an uncomfortable reality in which the rapid increase in temporary foreign workers is little more than a subsidy that allows firms to avoid paying higher wages – and, just as bad, reduces the pressure to invest and innovate to adapt to the needs of today’s labour market. In turn, that dampens productivity growth.
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Some people are, well, special:
Eighteen years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Quebec’s prohibition on private medical insurance to be unlawful. Wait times in the public health-care system put people at risk, the majority said, and they have a right to seek private care if the public system can’t deliver. In 2009 a challenge was commenced against similar laws in British Columbia. When the case reached the B.C. Court of Appeal 13 years later in 2022, the court upheld the prohibitions. People can be prevented from obtaining private medical care, the court said, even if waiting in the public system may kill them. In April, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, denying B.C. residents the same rights it earlier gave Quebecers. All good, nothing to see here.
But how can Quebecers have more rights to medical freedom than other Canadians? The Quebec case was not decided under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but under Quebec’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, a mere provincial statute. Four of seven Supreme Court judges held Quebec’s prohibitions to be inconsistent with this act. Three of those four found that the prohibitions also infringed the Canadian charter, but the fourth didn’t say one way or the other, and the three dissenting judges said no. So the case did not establish that the Quebec law violated the Canadian charter.
Because Quebec socialism is better than Canadian socialism.
Also:
Duclos finally broke his silence in a November letter to ask the board to “consider pausing the consultation process” to work “collaboratively” with stakeholders on the proposed changes. That apparently drove a wedge between Forcier, who was willing to agree to the minister’s request, and other PMRB leaders who wanted to let the consultation process run its course, and had grown to mistrust Duclos’ motives.
The situation culminated in Clark, the executive director, accusing Forcier in an email sent on Dec. 3, 2022 of legitimizing “false allegations” by the pharmaceutical industry, and throwing board members and staff “to the wolves.”
The proposed changes to price policy that the PMPRB was consulting on included rejigging the list of countries it compares Canadian drug prices to, introducing new economic factors to determine whether a price is deemed “excessive,” and requiring drug manufacturers to report “confidential rebates” to third parties, such as public or private insurers.
The last two elements were deemed unconstitutional by the Quebec Court of Appeal last year, following court challenges from the pharmaceutical industry, and the federal government opted to not appeal the decision before the Supreme Court of Canada.
The PMPRB went ahead with drawing up a new list of comparative countries last year, but the board’s work has raised concerns that the PMPRB is overstepping its role, and that the new formulas could lead pharmaceutical companies to determine some new medicines aren’t worth offering in Canada, leaving patients without access to them.
The PMPRB still had to consult on its proposed new guidelines regarding the administration of the price review process last fall.
Duclos told the House of Commons health committee last month that he had never received a formal request for a meeting from the board, nor did he seek to obtain one, in order to keep the PMPRB at arm’s length from his ministry.
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It's not like it isn't true:
These images are not from a faraway third-world country.
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) May 30, 2023
This is Kelowna.
After eight years of Trudeau & the NDP. pic.twitter.com/Oj9M2WtujO
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