Vaughn Palmer: B.C. wants federal housing dollars tied to immigration patterns

2023/04/01 Leave a comment

Good to see the discussion happening at the political level and that Don Wright’s assessment getting attention (https://www.theorca.ca/commentary/don-wright-will-trudeau-make-it-impossible-for-eby-to-succeed-6762001):

Finance Minister Katrine Conroy expressed disappointment this week that the federal budget did not respond to B.C.’s calls for more funding for housing.

“There doesn’t seem to be funding for the housing that we have been asking for,” she told reporters Tuesday.

Ottawa did allocate new money to an Indigenous housing plan, valued at $4 billion.

Conroy was “really happy to see more funding for that,” though she noted B.C. already funds Indigenous housing.

Based on what she didn’t see in the budget, it appeared to her that B.C. would be left on its own to fund other types of social housing as well as develop housing for middle income levels.

“We need to be in a partnership with the federal government, municipal governments and our provincial government to ensure that we have enough housing for people,” said Conroy.

However, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had a ready explanation for the apparent shortfall when she visited B.C. on Thursday.

There was no new money for the housing crisis in this year’s budget, because Ottawa is still rolling out the $10 billion commitment in last year’s budget.

“This was a multi-year plan,” Freeland told a news conference in Surrey. “You don’t deploy $10 billion in one month or in one year.”

The plan includes the $4 billion “housing accelerator program” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched in mid-March.

The goal is to accelerate construction of 100,000 homes over 10 years.

To tap the fund, municipalities must submit plans for fast-tracking housing units, with an emphasis on affordability.

“Tell us what your plan is to get more homes built,” said Freeland. “Tell us how some of that money can help you build those homes, and we will write a cheque. And $4 billion will mean we can write a lot of cheques.”

Premier David Eby, who shared the platform with Freeland, took a more conciliatory tone than his finance minister had done earlier in the week.

“There are very significant parcels of federal housing funding from the last budget that have yet to be deployed in a significant way in British Columbia,” he acknowledged. “B.C. needs to see our fair share of that funding. We have partnered with the federal government on many projects and many more to come.”

By way of a hint, the premier added: “If they have surplus from other provinces that is unspent, bring it to British Columbia, because we’re going to put it to work right here. We’re an excellent partner for that.”

On the fairness question, Eby was referring to his government’s argument that B.C. is entitled to a disproportionate share of housing funding because the province receives a disproportionate share of immigrants to Canada.

B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon made the case at the beginning of the year, and he’s reinforced it at every opportunity since.

“I’ve spoken to the federal ministers multiple times, urging them to consider tying their immigration numbers to both housing starts and affordable housing,” he said recently.

“We know it is going to be critical to build that stock for the amount of people that are coming, not only the new immigrants but also the temporary residents that are being approved to come to Canada.”

Kahlon’s concern was reinforced this week in an opinion piece from Don Wright, who headed the provincial public service in the first term of the John Horgan NDP government.

“B.C.’s success in addressing the public’s concerns here will be largely hostage to the federal government’s immigration policy,” Wright wrote in an article Monday in the online Orca publication that asked, “Will Trudeau make it impossible for Eby to succeed?”

His point was that the federal government’s ambitious immigration targets will add to existing pressures on the supply of doctors and housing, two challenges Eby is pledged to address.

Wright challenged the conventional wisdom that housing affordability is best addressed by the supply side of the housing equation.

“Demand matters too,” he wrote. “And as quickly as we have built new homes, the population in our major urban centres rises as well.”

“The federal government’s prescription for this? Ramp up immigration numbers!” said Wight.

“A story is spun that this will actually increase housing supply because we are going to bring in more trades workers to build the houses we need,” notes Wright, before knocking down the “heroic assumptions” in that statement.

“It is not going to work,” he wrote. “Of the 160,000 new British Columbians last year, more than 95% settled in the Lower Mainland, Southern Vancouver Island, and the Okanagan — where affordable housing was already acutely unavailable.”

Net result, concludes Wright: “Premier Eby is going to have even more difficulty in delivering more affordable housing.”

Wright did not conclude his piece with a call for Ottawa to slam the brakes on immigration.

In less judicious hands, it might come to that. But the New Democrats don’t want it to come to that.

Hence their argument that B.C. should get a greater share of federal housing dollars in recognition that the province also welcomes a greater share of Canada’s newcomers.

Source: Vaughn Palmer: B.C. wants federal housing dollars tied to immigration patterns

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Bureaucrats assess impacts of policies on women — but results kept secret

2017/03/21 Leave a comment

Indeed. There should be a way to shed some light on the gender-based analysis involved without violating Cabinet confidentiality:

Canada committed to using gender-based analysis in 1995, as part of ratifying the UN Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, but the auditor general concluded last year that relatively few departments and agencies were using it, or that they were doing so in an incomplete and inconsistent way.

That is changing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is said to have pushed for more rigorous gender-based analysis around the cabinet table. Finance Minister Bill Morneau pledged to put the 2017 federal budget through the same process and publish the results.

The finance department plays a special role in gender-based analysis.

It puts many of its own policies through the process, but it also reviews the gender-based analysis done by other departments on any budget proposals before they can go to Morneau.

Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office, the other two central agencies, perform a similar “challenge function.” A template for the new due diligence document that must now be submitted with every memorandum to cabinet shows proposals must include a summary of findings from a gender-based analysis.

This is where the newly declassified memo comes in.

The report from the status of women committee had recommended all three central agencies “produce annual reports on the challenge function they play in promoting the application of (gender-based analysis).” It also recommended they share these reports with a commissioner for gender equality — another recommendation from the report.

This is what the part of the memo regarding the limits of transparency — contained in a heavily redacted section titled “considerations” — was responding to.

New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson, vice-chair of the status of women committee, said people need to know what questions the government is asking itself.

“We heard a lot of evidence that there is no transparency on the challenge function and nobody was able to really point to any examples of where legislation or a funding decision had been turned back at the cabinet level because they hadn’t done the (gender-based analysis) test,” Malcolmson said.

It is especially important for the finance department to find a way to shed more light on their decisions, said Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, who chairs the committee.

“They are the ones putting money to programs that may adversely affect women if not done well,” she said.

There is a sign the finance department is looking for a better way.

The government’s official response to the committee report, tabled in the House last October, included this line: “All central agencies will explore ways to better communicate publicly the role and value-added of their challenge function with respect to (gender-based analysis.)”

Jack Aubry, a spokesman for the finance department, referred to this line when asked about the memo, but said he could not give any more details.

Isabella Bakker, a political scientist at York University who has done research on gender budgeting, said the finance department should be able to find some balance. “They could develop some kind of internal measure that would get around the issue of secrecy, but would at least give a broad indication of what they were doing.”

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Add women, change budgets? Underused gender policy tool finds new fans in Trudeau’s cabinet

2017/03/14 Leave a comment

In contrast to the bleak assessment posted earlier (Ottawa’s gender-based analysis was predestined to fail : Lynda Gullason), there does appear to be some progress on GBA (requirement in MCs and TB submissions).

This not only sends a key signal but equally important requires background analysis in order to be mentioned in cabinet documents. We will only know how effective this requirement has been following the next OAG audit:

There’s a T-shirt for sale on the Liberal Party’s website that features the slogan “Add women… change politics.”

You can’t say self-described “feminist” Justin Trudeau isn’t trying.

First, he picked a half-female cabinet. Four of the five Liberal candidates in the by-elections now underway are women — including those in three ridings Liberals won in 2015 and look to win again.

But changing politics — or its politicians — is one thing. Changing policy is another.

That’s one of the reasons March 22’s federal budget will be worth watching.

The finance department will include something that’s never been offered before: a gender-based analysis for budget measures.

It’s the latest way Liberals are trying to walk the talk they campaigned on in the last election.

“We will consider the gender impacts of the decisions we make,” the Liberal platform promised. “Public policies affect women and men in different ways.”

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fall economic statement promised “more rigorous analysis” to “deliver real and meaningful change.”

But what does that mean?

Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos offered reporters a preview last Friday. One of highest-profile things his government introduced so far is a good example of more gender-sensitive policy, he said.

The Canada Child Benefit (CCB) is helping lift about 200,000 parents out of poverty, and about 70 per cent of those are mothers, he said.

“Almost half of the children that are being lifted out of poverty because of the CCB are in single-parent families. And 90 per cent of these single-parent families are headed by women,” the minister said.

Not just about women

Trudeau’s team didn’t invent gender-based analysis.

Canada made a commitment at the 1995 United Nations conference on women to “ensure that before policy decisions are taken, an analysis of their impact on women and men, respectively, is carried out.”

But progress in the 22 years since has been slow.

The auditor general has scolded the government twice for its tepid embrace of gender analysis, most recently after an audit completed in the final year of the former Conservative government.

Among over 100 federal departments and agencies, only 30 had committed to it by early 2015, and six of those hadn’t fully implemented it.

Four departments that were doing gender analyses were examined by the auditor general, who in 2015 found incomplete work that lacked enough evidence for decision-makers.

The Liberal platform promised to do better. “We will also ensure that federal departments are conducting the gender-based impact analyses that have been required of them for the past 20 years,” it said.

It’s not only about advocating for women. Status of Women Canada says the government’s current requirements go beyond gender-based analysis: analyzing not just gender, but also age, education, language, geography, culture and income to find ways some aren’t equal to others.

“Have you or someone you know taken parental leave, been treated for heart disease or recently immigrated to Canada?” its website says, offering examples of policy shaped by studying inequalities.

Equality equals economic growth?

Officials admit things aren’t fully in place across every department this spring. But starting from the top and trickling down, it’s clear this way of thinking is the new intended normal.

The privy council office is asking for gender analysis when policy proposals are prepared for cabinet.

Duclos said gender parity among ministers making those decisions has already had “tremendous value.”

“It’s been extremely satisfying to see both the level of actions and the attitudes, how that changes,” he said.

Asked for examples of policy from his shop now shaped by gender analysis, Duclos names two areas: housing and child care.

The budget will offer more details, he said, following recent work with the provinces.

Duclos, an economist before entering politics, is on a pre-budget tour this week, putting down markers for how Morneau’s budget will promote economic growth.

He laid out three things Liberals are focusing on — innovation, public and private capital, and labour, or human capital.

Making it easier to start or return to work — offering training or child care, for example — improves labour force participation rates and in turn, overall productivity. And more people working improves economic growth.

“We’re sensitive to both economic inclusion and social inclusion,” he said. “It involves all characteristics beyond income that make it difficult sometimes for Canadians to feel included in our society. And gender is one.”

Spending proposals submitted to the Treasury Board now must include proof that gender was considered.

A form available online that civil servants use for Treasury Board submissions asks for evidence and data sources, as well as a plan for monitoring what happens after a program starts.

That fits with the Trudeau government’s affection for “deliverology” — measuring results, not just the initial splash of an announcement.

Widespread compliance with bureaucratic processes isn’t the end goal. Equal opportunities are.

Source: Add women, change budgets? Underused gender policy tool finds new fans in Trudeau’s cabinet – Politics – CBC News

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Can the Liberals resist omnibus bills? – Adam Dodek

2016/04/05 Leave a comment

Will be an early test of the Liberal government and more independent Senators (and the Senate):

Until recently, budget bills were a rather drab affair. Parliamentary expert Ned Franks found that between 1995 and 2000, the average length of budget bills was 12 pages. In 1994, Reform MP Stephen Harper complained about the omnibus nature of the Liberal government’s budget implementation bill, which was 24 pages.

Omnibudget bills began under the minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin with bills of more than 100 pages and grew to mammoth proportions under Prime Minister Harper: The most egregious topped 800 pages. The Harper government went beyond the accepted understanding of an omnibus bill by tacking on subjects to its budget bills that had nothing to do with the budgets (such as changing the Supreme Court Act in the face of the challenge to the government’s nomination of Marc Nadon in 2013).

These bills are an affront to parliamentary democracy because they prevent the House and the Senate from doing their job to adequately scrutinize legislation. The bills arguably infringe on the privileges of individual MPs, despite rulings to the contrary by successive speakers of the House. Instead of standing up for the rights and responsibilities of individual parliamentarians, successive speakers have allowed omnibus bills to persist and grow to offensive proportions.

Fortunately, unlike many other desperately needed democratic reforms, fixing omnibus bills is relatively easy: It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, a referendum or even a law. All that is required is for the government to take the initiative and change the House of Commons rules of procedure to restrict the use of omnibus bills.

That’s the easy answer. But there is also a brave solution and a bold one as well.

The brave solution would be for a speaker to stand up for the rights of parliamentarians and draw a line in the sand at omnibudget bills and rule them out of order. The bold solution would be for a newly independent Senate to assert its independence and refuse to consider omnibus House legislation that cannot be properly scrutinized. I doubt that is the sort of independence the Trudeau government desires from a reformed Senate. However, it may be reason enough to spur the government into acting, sooner rather than later.

Source: Can the Liberals resist omnibus bills? – The Globe and Mail

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