News roundup, 20 March 2024

- Pierre Poilievre plans to introduce a non-confidence motion against the Trudeau government based on the carbon tax. This is largely symbolic as it is not expected to pass, but a signal that the Tories are going to be making this the centre of their campaign. Sadly, it's highly probable that it will work; Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne sums it up neatly as follows:

As for the Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, I suppose he is to be congratulated. The Liberals won three elections on a promise of taking action on climate change, which had become equated with the carbon tax. Many people concluded this meant the public wanted action on climate change, and were willing to pay the carbon tax.

But Mr. Poilievre saw through the public. He understood that the public are deeply, almost perversely, hypocritical on this as on most things: they want something done about the climate but they want someone else to pay for it. Or, perhaps: they are prepared to pay for it, if they have to, but they want to be lied to about it.

They want to pretend that a tax that applies only to “the big polluters” would not be passed on to them, or that they would not also pay the costs of whatever regulations and subsidy schemes Mr. Poilievre eventually proposes, if he does. They know it is a lie. They know that nothing is free. They just don’t want to have it rubbed in their faces. Which is more or less the point of a carbon tax.

Or perhaps it’s simpler than that. It may simply be that the public were all for action on climate change as long as the economy was strong, but as soon as inflation began to climb, they lost all interest.

Either way, Mr. Poilievre correctly read their ambivalence, understood that they were every bit as cynical as he is and is about to be rewarded for it. To the victor the spoils and all that.

Cynical indeed, but in the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister, a cynic is what an idealist calls a realist. I do have to take issue with one thing Coyne says here, however:

What if, instead of receiving the occasional opaquely labelled “climate action incentive payment” – too small to notice, too far removed to make the connection – Canadians had been compensated with offsetting income-tax cuts, something they would have seen and felt every two weeks on their paycheques?

A far better approach, to my mind, would be to apply the offsets to sales taxes, not income taxes. You see, one of the things about a carbon tax where the critics actually do have a valid point is that carbon taxes are somewhat regressive, all other things being considered. And offsetting a regressive tax by cutting a progressive tax like income tax is the wrong way to do it; if you offset carbon taxes by a reduction in the GST, you have no net increase in the regressiveness of the tax regime, and people will see the savings every time they buy something. Yet I never see this idea brought forward, even to later dismiss it. Why, I wonder?

- New York Attorney General Letitia James appears to be preparing to seize property owned by Donald Trump in the state due to his failure to cough up the bond money to allow an appeal of the civil fraud case.

- The British government is planning to conduct a review of the takeover of the Daily Telegraph by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. This is expected to delay the deal long enough for a new piece of legislation to stop the takeover entirely.

- The Manitoba NDP is moving forward with plans to create an independent seniors' advocate; the Tories, for their part, plan to use their limited power of delay on this legislation. Not clear why they'd choose this hill to die on, except maybe that such a position could make things awkward for them once they're back in power.

- A majority of Winnipeg residents now favour reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians. Most of the owners of buildings at the intersection, though, are opposed, the exception being the Manitoba Métis Federation which owns the former Bank of Montreal building at the southeast corner.

- The recall campaign against Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek seems to be backed by a rightwing organization called Project YYC that uses a lot of buzzwords like "common sense". Some of you may recall that back when the campaign started I said in this very blog that it reeked of rightwing populism; I'd say this new information supports this.