Hello,
Even weeks out of office, Bill Morneau can’t escape getting political heat.
The former finance minister was the subject of a finding by the Commissioner of Canada Elections, released today, that he had violated elections law during the lead-up to last year’s campaign.
Mr. Morneau took part in two sets of events in his capacity as minister that also served to promote two local Liberal candidates. One, Anita Anand of Oakville, ultimately won a seat and was sworn into cabinet as Public Services Minister.
For the offence, Mr. Morneau and a local Liberal riding association paid back a little less than $2,000 in expenses to the government.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said he is concerned that job losses in the pandemic are falling disproportionately on women, young people and low-wage workers. “If these workers become discouraged and leave the labour force or lose valuable skills over time, their reduced economic participation will lower our potential growth, limiting living standards for everyone,” Mr. Macklem said in a speech today.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says federal health officers are not properly charging people for violating self-isolation orders.
WE Charity is winding down its Canadian operations and the Kielburger brothers are leaving the organization. The web of groups, including charitable and for-profit entities, has been under scrutiny in recent months after the charity was awarded a large sole-sourced government contract and over upheaval in its board oversight.
A United Nations panel has named Canada as one of the countries supplying weapons that are fuelling the war in Yemen.
And where once there was a certain consensus in political and business circles about federal aid during the pandemic, now the fault lines are developing. For instance, organized labour and business groups collaborated in the early day of the pandemic, but are now divided on whether and how the government should address unemployment.
Rita Trichur (The Globe and Mail) on the importance of addressing child care in the economic recovery: “That so many mothers contemplated dropping out of the work force just as the economy opened up is nothing short of a social failing. If a second wave of COVID-19 infections does materialize this fall, and women start leaving their jobs in droves because of a lack of affordable child care, it would derail Canada’s economic recovery.”
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on why COVID-19 continues to deal serious damage, even if deaths are down: “The theory is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus attacks the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, causing them to leak and blood to clot, provoking an inflammatory response. This hypothesis explains the strokes being observed in young adults with COVID-19, the multi-system inflammatory response suffered by some children and the acute kidney injury observed by many doctors and researchers, including a team of researchers at Mount Sinai in New York who found that almost half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 suffered acute kidney injury and almost 20 per cent required dialysis. Of those who were discharged, according to the researchers, 35 per cent had not returned to baseline kidney function by the time they left the hospital.”
Michael Smart (The Globe and Mail) on why Canada could decide to never pay back its national debt: “But what if we simply never pay it back? As the debt matures in future, it could simply be rolled over with new bond issues. The new debt now being issued would still have costs, since the bonds would pay interest forever. But in the current low-rate environment, those costs are much smaller than before. Because interest rates have been lower than economic growth rates for the past several years, Ottawa has been able to run modest primary deficits and still have the federal debt grow more slowly than our overall economy. That is reassuring to bond markets, and it makes permanent debt rollovers a sustainable policy.”
Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on the odds of a fall election: “The Liberals face obvious incentives to avoid a fall vote, given the unpredictable trajectory of a pandemic that continues to outrun the experts and an explosive U.S. presidential race that risks unsettling voters here more than any other typical American election campaign. Yet, many Liberals worry that the political landscape will be even more unfavourable for their party in 2021 and are pushing to go to the polls now rather than later.”
Andrew MacDougall (Montreal Gazette) on Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and populism: “In one sense, O’Toole’s populist case is already made. Even before the pandemic hit, it was getting harder to argue in favour of the status quo. The market and data dominance of the big tech companies is feeling robber-baronesque. And then there’s China, whose rise and outsized influence in the global economy, and the sabre-rattling it enables, are causing untold headaches. Add in Trump’s mercantilism and Britain’s complicated uncoupling from Europe and it’s hard to see where the classic case for free markets and unfettered trade can be made.”
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Chris Hannay