In this fight I developed a deep level of loathing for the two regulatory bodies – the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB).  Created by federal-provincial accords and legislation, these bodies have a mandate to expand offshore oil and gas. They also decide who gets the permits. But ever since Stephen Harper (C-38 in 2012), with mild tweaks, Catherine McKenna (C-69 in 2019), they also assess the environmental impacts of the projects they have a mandate to promote.  The empirical problem of conflict of interest aside, my loathing comes from dealing with the CNSOPB and finding them actually dishonest.

My daughter’s summer job in 2013 was as an intern with Sierra Club in Halifax.  She asked her god-father, Farley Mowat, to become a spokesperson for the effort to stop the drilling of a deep-water oil well in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (yup, as deep and for the same stuff as the BP Deep Water Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico). The site for the proposed drilling was dubbed “Old Harry.”

Farley told the media, “The oil companies mistakenly – and I think this is wickedly sardonic – have called it Old Harry because they liked the sound of Old Harry. It has such a familiar, pleasant, uncle-y name.” Farley knew the term was used by sailors as the devil himself. He said. “They don’t realize that, what they are doing, is they are calling their company after the devil’s own domain.”

The off-shore boards have approved seismic testing in the most sensitive time of whale migration.  Whenever a fossil fuel company wanted some accommodation, they obliged. This week a coalition of groups, including my old organization, won an unprecedented victory against the CNLOPB.  The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador agreed that the CNLOPB did not have the right to extend the length of the permit for exploratory drilling for many years more at the request of the company.  The victory should also help similar efforts to extend license terms in the Arctic as well.  Score one for Farley – always on the side of the angels!

Sierra Club Article and Times-Colonist Article

As previewed in last week’s message, Bill Morneau provided his economic “snapshot” this week.  No surprises. Huge deficit. Huge debt.

So far, Greens are the only ones in Parliament suggesting really large scale changes so that we are not mired in debt forever.  As I call for us to really embrace Modern Monetary Theory, I have had a lot of questions about what that means.

What the proponents of Modern Monetary Theory argue is the same debate that has raged in Canada for years. That there is an alternative to borrowing from commercial banks and paying that billions in interest to banks. Many Canadians want to revisit the role of the Bank of Canada. Monetary policy could shift to reduce the high levels of interest-bearing debt. The counter- argument has always been that a country printing its own money is inflationary, and potentially dangerously so.  But in our current situation, we are at close to zero risk of inflation. We face a much larger risk of deflation.

The call for countries to be able to transfer assets within a domestic economy, much as a family can borrow and re-pay loans over time, is gathering strength.  The notion fits neatly among much of our ecological economics. For years we have talked about the “circular economy.” (As described here by the European Union)

We can also look to making human well-being and ecological sustainability the highest goals of a society – measuring genuine progress instead of GDP.  We can imagine an economy aiming for a steady-state condition of prosperity. We can look to the “doughnut economy” described by Kate Raworth.

The current leading voice for MMT is Professor Stephanie Kelton. She argues that as long as the practice does not become inflationary, a country can print more money.  What Morneau has been doing to create needed liquidity is borrowing to buy bonds.  Kelton would say, no need. Just print more money.

(Read more here)

It is certainly provocative, but is it wrong?  I cannot see how it is wrong as long as the central bank is carefully monitoring to ensure that if inflation becomes a risk, the brakes are applied. As I said this week in the House, humanity cannot re-write the genetic code of the COVID19 virus. Nor can we re-write the laws of physics and atmospheric chemistry that tell us we are perilously near the tipping point to unstoppable, self-accelerating global warming. We have to live within those laws.  But we can re-write the rules that govern the economy. Greens are calling for a new global evaluation along the lines of the post WWII Breton Woods Conference,

It’s about time.

Have a great Sunday wherever you are. Stay safe. Stay Well. Be kind.

Elizabeth

PS This week in the House, I had a lot of speaking time and held two press conferences.  Find them at these links.

This weekly newsletter is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

• Elizabeth May: Full response to the federal Economic Snapshot 

• Elizabeth May: We need a federal inquiry into the “wellness checks” that are killing BIPOC Canadians
• Elizabeth May: Will the Prime Minister waive Cabinet privilege in the SNC Lavalin inquiry?
• Elizabeth May: When will the government allow electronic voting?
• Elizabeth May: Will CBSA prevent Americans from crossing the border for non-essential travel?

• Canadians need answers: Parliamentarians launch inquiry into Wellness Checks
• Greens demand a full inquiry into the RCMP

• Greens and Senator Kim Pate announce Senate inquiry into wellness checks
• Green Party reaction to federal economic snapshot

The post Good Sunday Morning – July 12 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

This Sunday finds me finally out of the 14 day isolation from the last trip to Ottawa and on my way back.  The House will sit this coming Wednesday July 8^th, and I’ll arrive tomorrow for the Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau will provide the first economic update since the pandemic began.  It will not be a budget. In case you were wondering if you missed the budget, you haven’t.  The planned tabling of the 2020-2021 budget was originally scheduled for March 30.  It was postponed due to COVID-19 without a new date chosen. The coming economic statement from Bill Morneau is not an economic update.  He has described it as a “snapshot.”

In anticipation of whatever he thinks Canada’s finances look like at the moment of this snapshot, despite all the other critical and urgent issues demanding attention (systemic racism, police killings of unarmed people – indigenous and of colour, the climate emergency), I will take the rest of this Sunday missive to try to put some context around a sea of red ink.

I am not fundamentally worried about our economy.  True, if alone in the world, for no particular reason our government had set a loony course to balloon the debt and deficit, I would be plenty worried.  I would be calling for Morneau’s head – or at least his resignation.

But Canada is responding to the biggest single global economic hit since the Great Depression. And we are acting in lock step with what most major economies are doing. As reported by the International Monetary Fund, all central banks around the world are basically taking the same three steps –  significantly easing  monetary policy, slashing interest rates, focused on increasing liquidity in the markets, and buying billions and billions of dollars in bonds: “To date, central banks have announced plans to expand their provision of liquidity—including through loans and asset purchases—by at least $6 trillion and have indicated a readiness to do more if conditions warrant.”

Canada, like most industrialized countries, concentrated in getting money into the hands of its citizens as fast as possible in order that people would heed the public health warnings and stay home.

The programmes were not perfect and far too many are still struggling. I am not at all pausing efforts to get help to people, institutions and businesses that need help. But billions of dollars in spending was approved in record time for a wide range of new programmes. Nothing was perfect. And everything would have been better if delivered sooner, but without these Herculean efforts, our economy would be in much worse shape and far more Canadians would have succumbed to COVID-19.

The roll-out so far deserves more praise than damnation. Restarting the economy, re-opening businesses and borders must continue to be done carefully. We know we are not out of the woods yet.

The question I hear a lot is how are we going to pay for all this?

I take a lot of comfort from the April report of the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).  PBO looked at how much fiscal headroom do we have for the announced spending.

The PBO emphasized two things:

1) That we went into the pandemic in relatively good shape. Pre-COVID-19, our debt to GDP ratio was 30.6 %.  The best in the G-7 and we had nearly full employment. In other words, like a healthy person getting COVID-19, a healthy economy getting the economic whallop of the pandemic, we will do relatively better than others.

After all this spending due to COVID-19, debt to GDP ratio will rise to 38.1%.  But this is not a worst-ever debt to GDP problem.  In 1995-96, it stood at 66%.  That was what led to the, admittedly quite painful, slashing of spending under former Finance Minister Paul Martin.

2) The PBO stressed that this spending is all temporary.  In that, the PBO compared it to spending in the Second World War.

“For example, the measures that were implemented during the peak years of World War II resulted in massive deficits (e.g., averaging 21 per cent of GNP per year over 1942 to 1945 ; however, they were not permanent in nature. Indeed, shortly following World War II, the federal government registered the largest-ever budgetary surplus as a share of the economy (5 per cent of GNP in 1947).”  (PBO’s estimate of federal fiscal room in Fiscal Sustainability Report 2020, March 20, 2020)

I can predict the blistering questioning in Parliament from the Official Opposition.  To listen to Andrew Scheer and his Finance critic Pierre Poilievre you would swear there was no pandemic.  Yes, this is a minority parliament, but the spending was approved through motions that required unanimous consent.  Back in March, the first version of the bill for new spending included some outrageous over-reaching, such as giving the minority government the power to set taxation and spending rates unilaterally until the end of 2021!  That draft (embargoed and never tabled) lasted less than 24 hours.  All the opposition parties were all over it and a lot of Liberals were shocked as well.

So parliament has been functioning and we have held government to account.

We will hear a lot from the Conservative ranks about Canada losing our triple A credit rating from the New York-based bond rater Fitch. The ability of Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch to boost or cripple economies around the world is one of the key reasons Greens do not like debt. We particularly do not like debt held by commercial banks. Moving from triple A to AA+ means that as interest rates rise again, more of our public dollars will have to go to banks, debt charges, and not to health care and public spending.  These bond raters are outrageous. They played a key role in the triggering of the 2008 crisis by continuing to give AAA credit ratings to derivative products not worth the paper they were written on. Regulatory reform of these bond raters is long overdue.    I am including a number of links here to the on-going critique of Fitch and their lot.

The Indisputable Role of Credit Ratings Agencies in the 2008 Collapse, and Why Nothing Has Changed

Ratings agencies suffer ‘conflict of interest’, says former Moody’s boss

This brief summary, from an academic review, makes the key points:

“The three dominant international credit rating agencies – Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch – have been accused of many faults including:

• false ratings;
• flawed methodology;
• encroaching on government policy;
• political bias,
• selective aggression;
• and rating shopping.”

Read more here.

For now, the costs of borrowing are very low.  We will likely rebound and get back the AAA rating as long as the government does not listen to voices calling for austerity. We will need continued financial stimulus spending to bring our economy out of its medically-induced coma.

We do need a real economic update. We do need the Auditor General’s budget to be boosted to keep track of the effectiveness of government spending.  We do need to take the advice of former Auditors General, Sheila Fraser and Michael Ferguson, and direct CRA to go after the off-shore money.  We will also need to have a conversation about the role of Modern Monetary Theory to ensure we can do all of this, including fixing those things that the pandemic has revealed as fundamentally unjust.

We also need a minority parliament to hold on to the ability to make decisions together to keep spending. Otherwise, we risk a deep Depression.  And, as a country, we need to play our role in a global effort to contain a pandemic, act on the climate emergency and get people back to work – safely.

Some days, I am glad I am not the Finance Minister.

Have a great week,

Love,

Elizabeth

This weekly newsletter is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

The post Good Sunday Morning – July 5 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

A mixed week (March 29, 2020)

The post Good Sunday Morning – March 29 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

It certainly would, as the hon. member stated, affect people who have no idea whatsoever that they could be caught in this broad ambit of people who are considered U.S. persons, people like me who were born in the United States but have nothing to do with the United States, who in my case has never lived there as an adult, but purely as a Canadian citizen and renounced U.S. citizenship.

This could apply to me, or my daughter. Then the information is handed over to the IRS without our knowledge.

Now, I want to draw attention to the charter argument, specifically section 15 of the charter, which says “Every individual is equal before and under the law…”. As my hon. colleague mentioned, the leading constitutional law experts of Canada have said that this will violate the charter.

So, as with other legislation, it will get pushed through this place. As in the case of the Nadon appointment or with some of the mandatory minimum sentence laws that were passed, we have clear evidence that we are being asked, as parliamentarians, to push through a piece of legislation that would be offensive to our fundamental rights of equality under the law, under section 15. I ask for the member’s comments.

Scott Brison: Mr. Speaker, this speaks to the challenge of these omnibus bills.

We were denied the opportunity at the appropriate committees to consider all aspects of these changes in a more thorough, methodical, and thoughtful way. There are legal and constitutional issues to consider.

Members of the justice committee, for instance, ought to have been more engaged on the changes to the Supreme Court Act in the last omnibus bill, but instead we ended up getting into an embarrassing fiasco around Justice Nadon’s appointment. This was embarrassing not just for the Conservatives but our citizens as well.

There is some expertise at the finance committee studying FATCA, but there is also a need to work with other committees.

Parliament could be mobilized and engaged more thoroughly if we did not have these kinds of disparate measures lumped together in one budget omnibus bill.

I would agree with the hon. member.

The post Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I have previously mentioned to the House Peter Hogg, one of Canada’s leading constitutional experts, who warned the Minister of Finance that this bill would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I also want to draw the attention of the House to the opinion of Allison Christians, who is the H. Heward Stikeman chair in tax law at McGill, and Arthur Cockfield, a professor at Queen’s University. I want to put their opinion on the record:

Further they state:

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bruce Stanton): We have run out of time. I know we have a 10-minute timeframe for questions and comments, but we need some time for other members.

The post Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I thought the language used here was unusual. This had to do with having to dispose of breeding stock “…due to drought or excess moisture conditions”. It is on page 149. By that I think it means floods.

This budget, throughout, has many measures dealing with increased levels of natural disasters. There is a whole section on residential floods and having to deal with the insurance industry to try to get better protection.

There is an acknowledgement through this document, including at page 149 on help for farmers who have increased droughts and increased floods. Yet the document, despite spending money addressing the costs hitting Canadians and hitting our economy due to climate change, refuses to acknowledge that the climate crisis must be addressed.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary has any comments on that.

James Bezan: Mr. Speaker, definitely things are difficult, as always in western agriculture. My grandparents lived through the dirty thirties, trying to farm. We adapt and we change.

Talking about excess moisture, sometimes excess moisture is not just overland flooding. Sometimes it is just heavy rainfalls at the wrong time, and crops do not mature properly. In the case of bees, they cannot get to the flowers and pollinate because of all the moisture, or the alfalfa field will just not even go into bloom.

Excess moisture covers flooding, yes. It also covers excess rainfall, and other conditions will occur from time to time, which seems to be more of a norm.

Growing up, we always dealt with extremes. As a former farmer-rancher still living on the farm today, I can tell the House that we have to deal with the climate. As farmers, we understand and appreciate that, and we really appreciate it when the government steps forward and helps us to deal with those difficulties.

The post The Budget – Financial Statement of Minister of Finance appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I will start with this quote, “…perhaps the greatest threat to confront the future of humanity today”, describing climate change. That is a quote from the Prime Minister, in 2007.

Another quote is from the Secretary General to the World Commission on Environment and Development, Jim MacNeill, a Canadian, a global diplomat, who said the single “most important environmental…statement” from any government is its budget.

Here we are in 2014. The Prime Minister said it was the single biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today. He said that seven years ago. Environment Canada now reports that, against the Copenhagen target—a commitment to reduce by 130 megatonnes of greenhouse gases by 2020—we will reduce by three megatons. This target was not taken on by a previous Liberal government, but taken on by the Prime Minister in Copenhagen in 2009. That is a complete failure.

Would the parliamentary secretary explain how the government can put forward a document, in 2014, that does not use the words “climate change”, “carbon”, or “greenhouse gases” and has no measures to reduce them?

Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, I will not agree with the Green Party to say that we are going to put a carbon tax out here. No, we are not.

However, the Minister of the Environment has stated quite clearly on many occasions that, yes, we are addressing the issue of climate change. We always attend all the conferences where climate change is on the agenda.

However, it is a global issue that everybody should be part and parcel of it, not just Canada. So, we will continue working with our allies, the rest of the countries, to address the issue of climate change.

The post The Budget – Financial Statement of Minister of Finance appeared first on Elizabeth May.

One of the consequences of these deep cuts across Canada has been that Parks Canada’s infrastructure is crumbling. The money in the budget for Parks Canada, which I am glad to see, it is not to protect national parks but to protect Canadians who are trying to drive through national parks. It is to repair the roads, the bridges, and existing dams. There is nothing new in the budget to repair the damage done to Parks Canada in previous budgets.

The post The Budget – Financial Statement of Minister of Finance appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Would the Prime Minister tell us why he chose to go after live retirees instead of dead money?

Stephen Harper: Mr. Speaker, of course, we maintain tax rates for corporations. We expect them to pay their taxes and we go after them when they do not pay their taxes. However, the question that was asked here concerns the voluntary supplemental health benefits for retirees.

What we are saying is that we believe it is still a subject of discussion at a bargaining table. We have been very clear that we believe that when it is a voluntary plan like that, a Cadillac plan, retirees should pay their own fair share, which would be 50% of the plan. It would still make it one of the best plans one could get in this country.

The post Oral Questions – The Budget appeared first on Elizabeth May.