Ibbitson: Pierre Poilievre makes his case for dismantling what the Trudeau government has built

2024/07/30 Leave a comment

Of note and very likely (employment equity excerpt):

…Mr. Poilievre said he wanted to live in a country where people pay lower taxes and are burdened by fewer rules, but also where they “have freedom of speech, where they’re judged on their merits, not their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., where parents have ultimate authority over what their kids learn about sexuality and gender, where we go after criminals not after hunters and sport shooters, where we rebuild our military to have strong standing in the world.”

The Liberal agenda of promoting diversity within the public service – gone. Protections for gender-diverse youth – gone. Efforts to combat discrimination in the criminal justice system – gone.

Pretty much every major element of the Liberal environmental, social and justice agenda – gone….

But there is a reason the Conservatives are so far ahead in the polls. Things don’t feel right. Even the most fervent supporter of open immigration (and I am one) is alarmed by the out-of-control flood of people coming into the country. Inflation and high interest rates have lowered the standard of living for millions of people. The regulatory environment has become far too complex. And the Liberals have failed to persuade most of us that they get all this and are working to fix it….

Source: Pierre Poilievre makes his case for dismantling what the Trudeau government has built

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Poilievre wades into Middle East conflict during speech to Montreal-area synagogue

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

More fulsome account of CPC leader Poilievre’s views on Israel, Palestine, Gaza/Hamas that let to the CP analysis of political fall-out with Canadian Muslims (‘We won’t forget’: How Muslims view Pierre Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war):

It can be one of the thorniest issues for Canadian politicians — highly divisive and filled with decades of fighting, with potential for political blowback from one side or the other.

While conflict has raged in the Middle East in recent months, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has tended to focus on bread-and-butter domestic issues, such as inflation and the Liberal government’s carbon tax.

In the House of Commons, Poilievre has referred to Israel or Gaza only a handful of times.

However, during a speech at a Montreal-area synagogue last week, Poilievre provided one of the most comprehensive glimpses since becoming Conservative leader of his relationship with Israel, his views on the conflict in the Middle East and the history of the Jewish people.

His speech at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation — an Orthodox synagogue in Côte Saint-Luc, Que. — also potentially foreshadows the approach a Poilievre government would take on issues such as the Middle East, which he described as a difficult question, and antisemitism.

Officials from Poilievre’s office have not yet responded to requests from CBC News for comment.

The synagogue is located in Liberal MP Anthony Housefather’s riding of Mount Royal. Housefather, a longtime Liberal who is Jewish, is currently reflecting on his future in the party after most of his fellow caucus members voted on March 18 in favour of a controversial but non-binding NDP motion to work toward the recognition of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution.

Conservatives, three Liberals, including Housefather, and independent MP Kevin Vuong voted against the motion.

Speech gets standing ovation

At the March 26 event at the Quebec synagogue, Poilievre was introduced as the “next prime minister of Canada.” A video of the event that was shot by a member of the audience, who allowed CBC News to view it, shows Poilievre’s 33-minute speech peppered by applause and standing ovations. Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, the party’s deputy leader, later posted video of the speech to YouTube.

The event provided a showcase for Poilievre’s knowledge of Jewish religion and culture. He recounted the story of Purim, where the Jewish people refused to relinquish their religion, and sprinkled his speech with familiar expressions, referring to himself as “a simple goy from the Prairies.”

Poilievre recounted his hitchhiking trip to Israel in his youth and the impressions it left on him — such as participating in a Shabbat in Betar and hearing songs being sung in Hebrew.

“The Jewish people are the only people I know of who, in the same language, worship the same faith on the same land in the same country as they did 3,000 years ago. That is a true indigenous people,” Poilievre said to applause and cheers.

Israelis and Palestinians both maintain that they are indigenous to the area.

Poilievre talked about staying in a kibbutz near Ein Gedi, a historic site and nature reserve located near Masada and the Dead Sea — then standing in the Golan Heights in the north, watching missiles being fired from Lebanon.

“We literally witnessed with our own eyes Hezbollah lobbing missiles into northern Israel and the courageous IDF forces flying back into south Lebanon to retaliate against the attack,” he said.

The Canadian government does not recognize permanent Israeli control over the Golan Heights.

Poilievre said when he returned to Canada, he helped launch “a full-scale campaign to criminalize Hezbollah.”

Palestinians ‘a chess piece in an evil chess game’

As he has done in recent months, Poilievre blamed the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel on Iran, saying it has been occupying Gaza through its intermediary, Hamas, and wanted to prevent peace accords.

About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and about 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during Israel’s military response since then, health officials in the territory say.

“It was the fear that discord would come to an end and that hope would take root that most terrified the regime in Iran,” Poilievre told the audience. “And so, they orchestrated the attack. The Hamas leaders travelled to Tehran. They got funding and weapons from Tehran and ultimately co-ordination.”

Duration 1:17Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, asked about civilian deaths in Gaza, said Israel has the right to defend itself and Hamas is ‘in violation of international law by using human shields.’

“I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that rag-tag terrorists in Gaza were able to accumulate all of those weapons and all of that intelligence and co-ordination on their own,” the Conservative leader said to applause. “This was an outside job.”

Poilievre repeated his past call for Canada to ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, saying it was responsible for the downing in 2020 of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that killed 55 Canadian citizens and 30 Canadian permanent residents.

“This group operates legally on Canadian territory,” he said. “It can recruit, co-ordinate, mobilize, fundraise legally on Canadian soil over three years after they murdered 55 of our citizens.”

Poilievre said his heart goes out to the families of dispossessed Palestinians, saying the “Palestinian people have been made by the Iranian regime and other dictators in the regime, in the region, into a chess piece in an evil chess game.”

“I understand why the political pressures are high, and I understand why our Muslim friends and neighbours are suffering and are legitimately speaking out for the suffering of their loved ones in Gaza and in the West Bank.”

Poilievre told the audience he says the same things in mosques as he does in synagogues: “I love meeting with the Muslim people. They are wonderful people. When the issue of Israel comes up, I say, ‘I’m going to be honest with you. I am a friend of the State of Israel, and I will be a friend of the State of Israel everywhere I go.'”

Poilievre wants UN relief agency to be defunded

Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of delivering different messages to different groups for political gain.

“He sends one group into synagogues to say one thing, and then he sends another group of MPs into mosques to say precisely the opposite.”

Poilievre said he believes in a negotiated two-state solution, with Palestinians and Israel living in peace and harmony. He said a Conservative government would stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and would reject any motions or resolutions at the United Nations that it believes unfairly target Israel.

The Canadian government should defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and ensure that “Canadian aid actually goes to the suffering Palestinian people and not to those promoting terrorism in UNRWA,” he said.

“We, as a rule, around the world, common-sense Conservatives under my leadership will be cutting back foreign aid to terrorist dictators and multinational bureaucracies and using the money to rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Poilievre pledged to “remove the bureaucracy and streamline the funding” for the federal government program that funds security infrastructure for places of worship and to “defund antisemitism.”

“We will go line by line through all the groups that get dollars from the federal government, and we will defund every single one of those that promote antisemitism in our country.”

Poilievre recalled a trip he made to Auschwitz, a concentration and extermination camp primarily for Jews that was run by Nazi Germany in Poland during the Second World War, and said it left him in tears. In April 2009, when he was parliamentary secretary to then-prime minister Stephen Harper, Poilievre attended the Conference Against Racism, Discrimination and Persecution in Geneva, and also visited Auschwitz and Birkenau to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

He praised the resilience of the Jewish people.

“I don’t know what the world will bring tomorrow. I don’t know, much less 100 years from now. But I do know this, that a thousand years from now, whatever is going on, on Fridays, as the sun goes down, there will be a Shabbat in Israel,” Poilievre said to a standing ovation. “Those songs will be sung. The Jewish people will go on.”

Source: Poilievre wades into Middle East conflict during speech to Montreal-area synagogue

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Raj: Why Canada’s consensus on immigration is fraying

2024/02/26 Leave a comment

The unfortunate all to common mistake of conflating concerns over unbridled temporary migration with overall permanent resident migration, as well as the distinction between concern over the practicalities of housing, healthcare etc to a rapidly increasing population, driven more by temporary immigration. Raj completely misses the point (and I suspect Poilievre understands the distinction).

Abacus in its regular polling also appears to ignore this distinction:

Money quote:

Anti-immigration sentiment used to be politically taboo. Election after election, a majority of voters told party leaders they wanted more immigrants, not fewer. That vision of a Canada welcoming newcomers with open arms, however, is increasingly challenged. Unless governments address a growing perception that unbridled migration is making the country worse off, we may be walking towards a darker, more divisive path, one that makes us less wealthy in the long run.

Source: Why Canada’s consensus on immigration is fraying

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John Ivison: Poilievre signals he’s willing to take a hatchet to runaway immigration levels

2024/02/23 Leave a comment

Still vague but signals. But as I have argued, a Conservative government will face some of the constraints and pressures that have resulted in the current mess, What changes a Conservative government might make to Canada’s immigration policies:

…Poilievre, on the other hand, has resisted pressures to demonize immigrants, even as Canada has witnessed a significant increase in the number of people who think the country accepts too many newcomers.

That said, at a press conference in Kitchener, Ont. on Wednesday, Poilievre gave his clearest indication yet that he will crack down on the number of new immigrants if he forms government.

He said a Poilievre government would apply a “mathematical formula” that links population growth to the growth in the supply of housing. “It’s the only way to eliminate the housing shortage — adding homes faster than we add population,” he said.

It’s not clear what he means exactly, but the facts are that Canada brought in nearly 1.3-million newcomers last year: 471,550 permanent residents and around 800,000 new non-permanent residents (students and temporary foreign workers). At the same time, Canada built 223,513 new homes, a 10-per-cent drop from the previous year thanks to expensive materials and a shortage of labour.

A logical mathematical formula would be two newcomers for each house built, given units usually accommodate two adults. That would almost account for the Liberal immigration target of 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025, but it would mean a new government would have to freeze work and student visas — unlikely, given the economic constraints.

One way or another, Poilievre is going to have to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants far beyond the 364,000 new student visa cap imagined by the Liberal government….

Source: John Ivison: Poilievre signals he’s willing to take a hatchet to runaway immigration levels

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David | Crier au loup

2024/02/23 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on Quebec immigration politics, criticism of CAQ contradictions and the relationship with federal politics:

Le gouvernement Legault réussit si rarement à obtenir quoi que ce soit d’Ottawa que près d’un an après la fermeture du chemin Roxham, le premier ministre n’en finit plus de s’en féliciter et de fustiger ceux qui doutaient qu’il arrive à convaincre Justin Trudeau.

Il est vrai que les sceptiques étaient nombreux, mais il y en avait autant qui pensaient que cela n’empêcherait pas les migrants de continuer à affluer au Québec, à commencer par sa propre ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette.

« Le chemin Roxham, s’il est fermé, il va simplement s’en recréer un autre quelques kilomètres plus loin. Ça ne règle absolument rien, de le fermer », disait-elle, avant d’effectuer un virage à 180 degrés après s’être rendu compte qu’elle contredisait son patron.

M. Legault peut toujours continuer à se péter les bretelles, mais le problème demeure entier. Les demandeurs d’asile ont découvert qu’il est encore plus simple de prendre l’avion. « Finalement, la fermeture du chemin Roxham n’a pas donné grand-chose », relevait déjà l’automne dernier le ministre responsable des Relations canadiennes, Jean-François Roberge.

Cela a donné si peu de résultats que M. Roberge en est rendu à dire non seulement que les services publics sont saturés, au point qu’une « crise humanitaire » serait imminente, mais aussi que l’identité québécoise elle-même est menacée. Bien entendu, le grand responsable demeure le gouvernement fédéral, qui a fait des aéroports canadiens, surtout celui de Montréal-Trudeau, de véritables passoires.

***

On peut discuter de la proportion exacte de demandeurs d’asile qui se retrouvent au Québec et de la compensation qu’Ottawa devrait verser au gouvernement provincial, mais le fardeau qu’il doit supporter est indéniablement excessif et inéquitable.

Le moins qu’on puisse dire est que ce nouveau cri de détresse n’a pas semblé inspirer à Justin Trudeau un plus grand sentiment d’urgence que la précédente lettre de M. Legault, datée de la mi-janvier, dans laquelle il évoquait une situation devenue « insoutenable » et un « point de rupture ».

Pour toute réponse, Québec a eu droit à 100 millions sur les 362 millions qu’Ottawa a accordés à l’ensemble des provinces pour loger les demandeurs d’asile, alors que le gouvernement Legault présente maintenant une facture d’un milliard.

Il a peut-être raison de s’alarmer, mais ce n’est pas la première fois qu’il crie au loup sans prendre les mesures qui s’imposent si le danger est aussi grand. Devant une telle urgence, les fins de non-recevoir à répétition d’Ottawa devraient l’avoir convaincu que ses réclamations sont peine perdue. Sinon, ce ne sont que des paroles en l’air et Ottawa a raison de l’envoyer paître.

Au printemps 2022, le premier ministre soutenait qu’accueillir plus de 50 000 immigrants entraînerait la « louisianisation » du Québec. L’automne dernier, son gouvernement a pourtant prévu admettre environ 65 000 immigrants au Québec en 2024. Quand le Parti québécois en proposait 35 000, dont il exigerait une connaissance suffisante du français à l’arrivée, M. Legault disait la chose impossible, mais cela est apparemment possible s’ils sont 65 000. Il y a de quoi être perplexe.

***

Chercher un bouc émissaire sur lequel rejeter la responsabilité de ses échecs est un réflexe naturel en politique. Un gouvernement qui détient 89 sièges sur 125 peut difficilement faire porter la faute à l’opposition. Bien sûr, il y a les syndicats, les médias, Trump… mais cela a aussi ses limites.

Mardi, M. Legault a trouvé un autre coupable. « À quoi ça sert, le Bloc québécois ? » a-t-il demandé. Que doit-on lui reprocher au juste ? Les demandes du Québec en matière d’immigration semblent plutôt bien défendues par ses soins à la Chambre des communes.

Pas plus tard que la semaine dernière, il y a fait adopter une motion réclamant la convocation d’une réunion des premiers ministres des provinces et des ministres de l’Immigration pour qu’ils fixent des seuils tenant compte de la capacité de paiement et d’accueil du Québec et des autres provinces.

M. Legault n’en est pas encore à unir sa voix à celle de Pierre Poilievre, qui accuse régulièrement le Bloc d’être le complice de Justin Trudeau, mais faut-il comprendre qu’il croit le Parti conservateur plus apte à représenter les intérêts du Québec à Ottawa ?

M. Poilievre a déclaré mercredi que « le Québec est au point de rupture à cause de la décision de Trudeau d’enlever le visa du Mexique que les conservateurs avaient mis en place ». Quelle coïncidence, n’est-ce pas ?

Il est vrai qu’avec la montée du Parti québécois, qui peut compter sur l’appui du Bloc, et vice versa, la Coalition avenir Québec et le Parti conservateur ont des ennemis communs aussi menaçants pour l’un que pour l’autre. Aux yeux de bien des Québécois, Pierre Poilievre est cependant un loup au moins aussi dangereux que Justin Trudeau.

Source: Chronique | Crier au loup

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Pierre Poilievre pledges to tie immigration levels to homebuilding – Financial Post

2024/01/15 Leave a comment

Given current housing starts, less than 250,000, and for illustrative purposes, 3 persons per housing unit, this would mean a total of 750,000 permanent and temporary residents, less than half the current amount.

An easy understandable slogan but, like so many by all parties, more complex than presented given the various interested groups and the hard decisions around trade-offs:

The Conservative politician who’s trying to take down Justin Trudeau said that if he’s elected, he would link Canada’s immigration levels to the number of homes being built.

Pierre Poilievre took aim Friday at Trudeau’s housing minister, Sean Fraser, arguing that when Fraser was immigration minister, he oversaw soaring numbers of new arrivals without ensuring the country could properly accommodate them.

“We need to make a link between the number of homes built and the number of people we invite as new Canadians,” Poilievre said, speaking at a news conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba.He said his Conservative Party “will get back to an approach of immigration that invites a number of people that we can house, employ and care for in our health-care system.” He cited data showing that Canada is now completing fewer homes than it did 50 years earlier, when its population was around 22 million. It’s close to 41 million today

There were 219,942 new homes completed in Canada in 2022, the most recent year for which complete data is available, compared with 232,227 in 1972, when the country was going through a construction boom.

Poilievre did not say whether he would roll back Canada’s permanent resident target or curb the number of temporary newcomers, such as foreign students. In the past, he has declined to say that he would scale back immigration.

Canada accepted about 455,000 new permanent residents in the 12-month period to Oct. 1 while bringing in more than 800,000 non-permanent residents, a category that includes temporary workers, students and refugees. Canada’s population growth rate of 3.2 per cent means it’s growing faster than any Group of Seven nation, China or India.

Many economists have also criticized the government for failing to ensure services have kept pace with Canada’s immigration targets.

Trudeau has fallen far behind Poilievre in public polling, and the high cost of housing is likely part of the explanation. His government has unveiled several measures meant to boost home construction, and they’ve pledged to examine reforms to programs that allow temporary immigrants.

The prime minister told reporters in Guelph, Ont., on Jan. 12 that there’s no “magic solution” to the housing shortage and touted his government’s program to transfer millions of dollars to cities that speed up development approvals.

“Construction workers and availability of labour is a challenge we’re facing, which is why we continue to have ambitious immigration targets,” he said.

Source: Pierre Poilievre pledges to tie immigration levels to homebuilding – Financial Post

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Douglas Todd: Canadian taboo against debating migration policy is basically over

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Yes, having been another of the earlier questioners:

Seven years ago, Simon Fraser University political scientist Sanjay Jeram perceptively said that Canada was one of the last countries in the world where it is not permitted to discuss migration policy.

“The hidden consensus in Canada is that we don’t talk critically about immigration. The taboo against discussing it is very real,” said Jeram, who has a PhD from the University of Toronto, the city in which he was born and raised.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on openness to immigration without limits,” Jeram said at the time. “I have never heard him talk about the potential consequences that immigration has for overcrowding, housing, opportunities for domestic-born workers, or the welfare state.”

The Canadian housing squeeze was on the top of Jeram’s must-be-discussed list in 2017, since many in Metro Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and other cities were enduring an escalating affordability crisis. They still are.

The difference is that in the past six months the unspoken taboo against openly talking about migration issues has been mostly broken in Canada.

That is judging by what’s coming from prominent housing analysts, mainstream media coverage, and new polls by Leger, Environics and Abacus. We’re starting to become like most other nations.

Canada’s population grew by almost three per cent in the one-year period ending July 1, 2023 — bringing in 1.2 million, causing catapulting population growth that far exceeds earlier projections.

Many of the newcomers are among this year’s batch of almost 500,000 permanent residents, but most are temporary students and guest workers. The number of such non-permanent residents in Canada now totals 2.2 million.

Even Trudeau’s Liberal government, which was always quick to silence migration skeptics with often-unfounded accusations of xenophobia, is showing hints it might reduce its record-high migration rates, at least in regard to study visas.

Polls confirm most Canadians believe new arrivals offer advantages to the country, which shows they are not concerned about immigrants themselves. The issue, instead, is Ottawa politicians’ actions on migration, which are unilaterally decided without debate in the House of Commons, and which lack any sort of coherent plan.

A new Abacus poll is among those showing the number of Canadians who believe immigration rates are too high has jumped to 67 per cent, up seven percentage points from July.

This negative view is shared by 62 per cent of residents born outside Canada.

Overall, women were most worried. And even 61 per cent of Liberal voters said rates were too high. Just two per cent of Canadians believed migration levels were “too low.”

One issue stood out. Abacus found seven in 10 respondents felt the number of immigrants was having a negative effect on “the cost and availability of housing.”

A smaller cohort, 53 per cent, believe the high volume was having a negative affect on “access to health care,” and 51 per cent felt that way in regard to “congestion and traffic.”

In most countries, there is little migration debate, but not for the reasons many Canadians may think. The relative silence is because most countries take virtually no immigrants — including Japan, China, Turkey and Brazil.

Shelter costs are the main concern behind rising migration concerns in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and even France, with all these governments instituting major policy changes recently.

This week, Australia’s ruling Labor Party said the country’s immigration system is “broken” — contributing to a growing housing crisis and soaring rents. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will slash record intake levels to 250,000. Visa rules for international students and low-skilled workers will be tightened, and fees on foreign investors in housing will triple.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has also said his country’s migration totals are “unsustainable.” And British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this month took to social media to announce cutting future intake by 300,000 people a year, saying, “Immigration is too high. Today we’re taking radical action to bring it down. These steps will make sure that immigration always benefits the U.K.” The French government of Emmanuel Macron, in addition, is engaged in a high-profile legislative attempt to better integrate newcomers.

What of Canada? The nation’s new immigration minister, Marc Miller, was talking tough last week against a backdrop of nationally soaring rents.

He promised to require foreigners applying to study in Canada to have double the amount of funds currently required. He also threatened to shut down “unscrupulous” educational institutions. We can only wait to see if anything comes of Miller’s pledge.

Despite all this political action on the migration file, however, some observers say the taboo against criticism might not have completely vanished.

Their example is the way Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre this month launched a 15-minute video titled “Housing Hell,” which has been viewed by more than four million people. It lambastes the Liberals on housing unaffordability, but doesn’t mention the demand pressure caused by population growth.

Why dodge the obvious? Riding high in the polls, it’s possible Poilievre didn’t feel it necessary to directly cite what observers in the past called Canada’s “third rail” of migration. When ahead, why would Poilievre take even the increasingly small risk of handing opponents a wedge issue?

Poilievre’s reluctance, however, has definitely not stopped the country’s most listened-to housing analysts — such as Ben Rabidoux, Steve Saretsky, John Pasalis, Ron Butler, Stephen Punwasi, Mike Moffat and others — from leading the way on scrutinizing the evidence on the impact of migration.

And even though bank economists are among the most cautious in the world, in the past year many have had said affordability will not return without big changes. “Unless Ottawa revises its immigration quotas downward, we don’t expect much relief for the 37 per cent of Canadian households that rent,” said economist Stefane Marion of the National Bank.

Every week, responsible economists, scholars, pundits and even some politicians are now making similar statements. If that doesn’t turn migration policy into a valid issue for respectful discussion in Canada, what will?

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadian taboo against debating migration policy is basically over

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Keller: Pierre Poilievre’s housing movie: What it gets right and wrong, and what was left unsaid

2023/12/09 Leave a comment

Indeed. While I understand his fear of being labelled xenophobic by the Liberals and others, this may be less of an issue that immigrants are also suffering from high housing costs and availability issues and Focus Canada indicated that immigrants have higher levels of cancer over immigration levels than non-immigrants:

Which brings me back to the elephant in the room, which Housing hell never mentions: immigration.

In the long run, over decades and centuries, Canada can match housing supply to housing demand, regardless of whether the national population is 40 million or 400 million. But in the here and now, a surge in new arrivals, particularly since the pandemic – with one million new residents in 2022, and likely more this year – has introduced housing demand at a far faster pace than supply can be built.

It’s simple math. There’s no getting around it. And both the Prime Minister and the man after his job would rather not talk about it.

Source: Pierre Poilievre’s housing movie: What it gets right and wrong, and what was left unsaid

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Articles of interest: Government and politics

2023/12/08 Leave a comment

More of a grab bag:

Wernick: The pay-as-you-go proposal on cutting federal spending not as simple as advocates say

Michael continues to provide interesting commentary based up his experience in government:

There are two interpretations of what pay-go legislation could mean in Canada. One is that the proponents know it is just for show – a form of fiscal virtue signalling – and they have no intention of applying it with any rigour. The future would be full of exemptions, waivers and extensions. It makes the base happy and looks like decisiveness. But it isn’t serious.

The other possibility is that it is serious and would at regular intervals create a hot mess for future governments and for future fiscal choices. It isn’t going to deliver more effective government to let an algorithm stack the deck, distort the options, create unnecessary and artificial crises, and stealthily erode those parts of government that don’t have political and media champions.

So, which is it – empty virtue signalling or a hot mess of fiscal distortion? We can do better, either way.

Any political party that wants to take real action on restraining spending should do it in a serious way: Let Canadians know before the election what it considers cuttable and what it considers a priority. Once in office set up a deliberative process. The 1990s program review would be my starting point for designing the next one.

What is essential and what is discretionary in government spending is a political judgment informed by ideologies and values – a judgment that must be responsive over time to new facts and realities.

There are many better ways for democratically elected politicians to approach spending restraint and to achieve it. Pay-go legislation isn’t a good one and should be discarded before the platforms for the next election are written – after which it will be difficult to turn back.

Source: The pay-as-you-go proposal on cutting federal spending not as simple as advocates say

Buruma: Geert Wilders may have shock value, but he harbours an ‘outsider’ rage we’ve seen before

Of note:

Mr. Wilders may not be a fascist, but his obsession with sovereignty, national belonging, and cultural and religious purity has a long lineage among outsiders. Ultra-nationalists often emerge from the periphery – Napoleon from Corsica, Joseph Stalin from Georgia, Hitler from Austria. Those who long to be insiders frequently become implacable enemies of people who are farther away from the centre than they are.

Source: Geert Wilders may have shock value, but he harbours an ‘outsider’ rage we’ve seen before

Kurl: Pierre Poilievre needs to choose his words much more carefully

Yes, the risks are there:

The last six weeks have brought out the worst in us. Bomb threats and shootings at Jewish schools. Calls for doxxing, censure and harassment of students and faculty who sympathize with Palestinians and ceasefire calls. In Toronto alone, police are reporting 17 incidents of Islamophobic or anti-Palestinian hate crimes since Oct. 7 (compared to just one in the same period in 2022). Antisemitic hate crimes numbered 38 (last year it was 13 in the same period) and now comprise half of all hate crimes reported to Toronto police since Oct. 7.

At such a fraught time, leadership from Poilievre would see his words about these highly sensitive issues focused on appealing to Canadians’ better natures, not further driving them into suspicion and division.

But will the opposition leader and his strategists do this? We are not so far removed from the failed Conservative campaign of 2015, notorious for its “barbaric cultural practices” tip line. The director of that disastrous campaign is reportedly tipped to direct the upcoming one.

Poilievre and the Conservatives for now, anyway, have the support of a plurality of Canadians. They need to start acting like it means something to them.

Shachi Kurl is President of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.

Source: Kurl: Pierre Poilievre needs to choose his words much more carefully

May: Chief information officer Catherine Luelo resigns from job revamping federal tech

Doesn’t bode well:

Private sector executives, unfamiliar with the culture and complexity of operations, have historically had rough time making the adjustment, said Michael Wernick, a former clerk of the privy council and now the Jarislowsky chair of public sector management at the University of Ottawa.

He said the government has never resolved how technology should be managed. Is it a single service with common standards, interoperability and cybersecurity? Or is it a loose federation of 300 departments and agencies where deputy heads and managers have autonomy? It now operates with both philosophies, depending on the agency.

Source: Chief information officer Catherine Luelo resigns from job revamping federal tech

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Delacourt: Is Canada’s housing crisis about to take a very dark turn?

2023/09/05 Leave a comment

I am less concerned than Delacourt given that it is possible to discuss levels of permanent and temporary migrants and their impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure without being xenophobic. After all, both immigrants and non-immigrants are affected and with the exception of the PPC, all parties understand the need to be careful.

In the case of the Conservatives, it is partly the fear of being labelled as racist or xenophobic by the Liberals but of greater importance is the 51 ridings in which visible minorities are the majority, many who are immigrants themselves.

As I argued in Has immigration become a third rail in Canadian politics?, I believe it is possible to have such a discussion and would argue that we court greater risks by not having this discussion. But we shall see:

If politicians in this country are going to be seized with housing in the coming months — as they are all promising — they’re going to have to learn to tread carefully around the minefield of immigration.

Blaming immigrants for the housing crisis in Canada is something that all political parties say they’re keen to avoid, yet there have already been risky remarks on that score, across the board. And there will probably be more.

New Housing Minister Sean Fraser embarked into that perilous territory a few weeks ago when he said Canada might need to crack down on universities attracting foreign students without the means to house them properly.

Fraser, to be clear, said he wasn’t blaming the students and indeed stressed: “we have to be really, really careful that we don’t have a conversation that somehow blames newcomers for the housing challenges.”

That didn’t stop Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre from accusing Justin Trudeau’s government of whipping up resentment against immigration.

“I think Justin Trudeau would love Canadians to blame immigrants for the housing crisis that he has doubled. But immigrants are just following the rules that he put in place. So how can we blame them and not him?” Poilievre told reporters.

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford continues to pin the housing crisis in his province — not to mention his Greenbelt scandal — on the desperate need to accommodate Ottawa’s abrupt increase to the number of newcomers to Canada.

“I didn’t know the federal government was gonna bring in over 500,000 (newcomers),” Ford said at a testy news conference this week.

“I didn’t get a phone call from the prime minister saying, ‘Surprise, surprise. We’re dropping these many people in your province and by the way, good luck, you deal with them.’”

To hear Ford tell it at that news conference, most of the unhoused people in his province are people who weren’t born in Canada. He talked of a phone call he got from a new Canadian in danger of losing his house and about the refugees and asylum seekers sleeping in church basements.

As my Queen’s Park columnist colleague Martin Regg Cohn put it, “if tolerance is truly his goal, the premier is playing with rhetorical fire … It’s not a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn being blown from Ford’s bully pulpit.”

Much has been made over recent years about how Canada has avoided the anti-immigration backlash that has arisen during the Brexit debate, not to mention Donald Trump’s rise to power in 2016 in the U.S.

It is a testament to tolerance in this country, most certainly, as well as to the fact that political success has often hinged on who best can attract the cultural communities in Canada. That was part of Stephen Harper’s big break from opposition to power and then a majority from 2006 to 2015, and it was the flirtation with anti-immigrant sentiment (barbaric cultural practices) that helped get the Conservatives booted from power.

Little wonder, then, that Poilievre walks quickly backward from any argument with the Liberals over immigration numbers. The current Conservative leader hasn’t minded lifting a few pages from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada — globalist conspiracies included — but he hasn’t joined the “no mass immigration” chorus of the Bernier crowd.

Trudeau was asked at the cabinet retreat last month in PEI whether he was worried about the housing crisis taking a dark turn into anti-immigration sentiment. He said the housing crisis also includes a labour shortage; that for every suggestion that Canada doesn’t have enough homes, there is the reply that Canada doesn’t have enough people to build them. “That’s why immigration remains a solution.”

Most Canadians, or at least many of them, would say it’s possible to have a political debate this fall about housing without reopening a conversation into how many is too many when it comes to newcomers.

But the foreign interference fixation, which dominated political debate in the first half of this year, bodes ill for that kind of optimism. At many points in that debate, one could well have concluded that Chinese interference was the only kind of meddling we should be worried about. Some Chinese Canadians expressed justified concern that the whole foreign meddling conversation was going to make any kind of political involvement from them suspect. I continue to wonder why there wasn’t similar outrage being voiced about Russian meddling or even Americans messing around in Canadian politics.

This is all to say that when political debates get intense, as the housing one is shaping up to be, it can create collateral cultural damage. Right now, all the politicians are saying they can keep anti-immigration talk out of the housing crisis. We’ll see whether they’re up to that this fall.

Source: Is Canada’s housing crisis about to take a very dark turn?

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