Liberal MP says he must treat cancer for second time in two years

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POLITICS BRIEFING

By Chris Hannay (@channay)

Arnold Chan, the Liberal MP for the Toronto riding of Scarborough-Agincourt and the party's deputy house leader, says he must undergo another round of cancer treatment.

"A recent routine check-up revealed that my cancer has resurfaced. I have been working with my physicians at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre for the best course of treatment. I am confident that I will beat this challenge," Mr. Chan said in a statement.

Mr. Chan, 48, who first joined the House in 2014 after a by-election, was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer in early 2015. After months of treatment seemed to be successful, he ran for re-election last year and won.

The last few weeks in the House have been a reminder that the 338 members of Parliament often face the same challenges in their personal lives as the 36 million Canadians they represent.

The House of Commons adjourned early on Wednesday after Conservative MP Jim Hillyer, 41, was founded dead in his office. Mr. Hillyer had flown to Ottawa from his home in Alberta for the budget while recovering from surgery to remove an infection in his leg. While no cause of death has been announced, police said there was no foul play.

And many in the House were moved earlier this month when Mauril Bélanger took a seat as an honorary speaker. Mr. Bélanger, 60, was diagnosed with ALS right after winning re-election last year, which sidelined his bid to run as the full-time Speaker of the House. The disease has rapidly reduced Mr. Bélanger's mobility and taken away his voice – the Liberal MP had to use an iPad and text-to-speech program when he sat in the speaker's chair.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS MORNING

> The Liberals are continuing the budget sales pitch today, with both Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau out and about. A new forecast from TD Economics bolsters the Liberal view that a growing economy could make possible for the government to return to balance.

> Former prime minister Paul Martin, whose Kelowna Accord was scuttled when Stephen Harper won power, says he is "delighted" by the investments the new Liberal government are making for indigenous Canadians. Mr. Martin, who ended decades of deficits as finance minister in the 1990s, played down worries of Ottawa going back into the red. The "circumstances between today and 1995 are night and day, black and white," he said.

> Alberta and Saskatchewan politicians say they are unsure as to how the federal government chose some regions but not others for increased Employment Insurance benefits. "They have missed a big part of Saskatchewan's oil patch. The rest of our oil patch is in the southeast and southwest and it is excluded," said Premier Brad Wall, currently running for re-election.

> And there's at least one thing the governments of Edmonton and Ottawa can agree on, though: years of deficit financing. "It's just wishful thinking if you think you can identify that date [when the provincial budget will be balanced]," said Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci. "I think if I were to put a pin in a timeline and say this is when we're going to return to balance that it would mean some drastic cuts across the board in this province."

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WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals, it seems, are trying to undo 20 years of political conditioning against deficits. Stephen Harper ran deficits after the 2008 financial crisis, but he was careful to show that he would quickly dig out of the red. After all, running deficits has been the third rail of federal politics ever since the mid-1990s, when Paul Martin, as finance minister, used fears of a debt crunch as justification to revamp federal spending with tough cuts, slay the deficit beast, and turn red ink into political poison. Or so we thought. In fact, Canadians' deficit-aversion is only a millimetre thick." – Campbell Clark (for subscribers).

Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail): "Some future government will rue the day the Trudeau government reversed the Conservatives' decision and took Canada out of line with many other Western countries with aging populations." (for subscribers)

Tom Flanagan (Globe and Mail): "The dynamics of a [Alberta Progressive Conservative] leadership race are such that candidates will vie with each other in promising to rebuild the PC Party to its former greatness; anyone advocating merger with Wildrose will look like a weakling. After the race, it will be almost impossible for a new leader, coming into office only about two and a half years before the next Alberta election, to pivot quickly and start talking about co-operation with Wildrose."

Gerald Caplan (Globe and Mail): "Hillary Clinton is perhaps the best-qualified candidate for the American presidency since Thomas Jefferson and she will lose to Donald Trump in November. Few candidates have had her experience, knowledge and competence to be president, which is also one of the Achilles heels that will bring her down."

Chantal Hébert (Toronto Star): "Given a choice between slaying the sacred cow of a lower GST, or breaking with the doctrine of balanced budgets, Trudeau's Liberals determined that the path of least public resistance led to the latter."

Jennifer Ditchburn (Policy Options): "Without praising or condemning the Liberals' approach right out of the gate, it's a good thing we're seeing a vigorous debate over fiscal policy that involves a variety of voices (including social policy researchers) and doesn't revolve entirely around tax cuts. To give one small example, when was the last time there was a discussion around how investing in the country's cultural industries can actually produce a healthy return?"

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