Quotulatiousness

April 25, 2011

Rational debate on tax policy MIA in this election

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Stephen Gordon wishes there was a way to disentangle sensible tax policy discussions from politics:

The Conservatives implemented two major tax cuts in the past five years: the two-point reduction in the GST, and the three-point reduction in the corporate income tax (CIT) rate. The GST cut was almost certainly a mistake, but no opposition party has challenged this decision in the election campaign.

On the other hand, every opposition party has promised to increase the CIT — the tax that is most harmful to economic growth. What is going on?

I see two answers to that question, and both are based on the presumption — possibly well-founded — that voters do not understand the concept of tax incidence. If you don’t understand how corporate taxes are passed onto workers, then the idea of taxing ‘wealthy corporations’ has a certain appeal: “I’m not a wealthy corporation, so it’s no skin off my nose.”

But of course, it is. So the only question is whether or not the opposition parties campaigning on increasing corporate tax rates understand who actually pays the CIT. If they do not understand that higher CIT rates reduce wages, then their competence as a government-in-waiting leaves something to be desired. If they do understand, then they are being less than honest about what the effects of their proposals will be.

The most efficient tax is broad-based and as close to non-distorting as possible. That is also the most hated form: the Goods and Services Tax. The Tory cut in the GST was terrible economics, but great politics. There, in a nutshell, is why stupid tax policies are the only ones on offer in the election campaign — because sensible policies require people to actually face up to the costs of the government they want. People much prefer the illusion that “someone else” is paying for the goodies.

April 24, 2011

Duceppe throws down the gauntlet: “This election is a battle between… Canada and Quebec”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:20

The rise of the NDP in Quebec is forcing Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe to take a much stronger line against Jack Layton:

The NDP’s newfound status proved jarring enough for Duceppe to make a strident, emotional appeal to his base Saturday:

“This election is a battle between… Canada and Quebec,” said a message Saturday from the Bloc leader’s Twitter account.

He later erased that note and replaced it with a toned-down appeal for all sovereigntists to back his party. The message is a clear departure from previous campaigns that saw Duceppe work to broaden his appeal beyond sovereigntist voters.

“This election is not a left-right battle, but a battle between federalists and sovereigntists,” said the later message from Duceppe’s account. “Between the parties of the Canadian majority and Quebec.”

There are even anti-NDP attack ads, including a new one from the Liberals featuring a yellow traffic light and the message, “Not so fast, Jack.”

The Liberals have been forced to pay more attention to the NDP than they had planned, especially with the parties in a statistical tie in the latest polls. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was even booed loudly at at hockey game last night, which has only been lightly mentioned in the media. His low personal popularity is starting to be seen as a big reason for the Liberals’ plight in the polls — although it can’t be the only reason.

The NDP’s financial promises are one area the Liberals can safely attack:

The Liberals are pointing out a series of alleged exaggerations in the NDP platform, saying the promises are based on invented revenues like a supposed $3.6 billion that would come in the first year of a climate cap-and-trade system. The Liberals call it, “fantasy money.”

The Liberals also heaped ridicule on the NDP promise to hire 1,200 new doctors and 6,000 nurses for the bargain-basement rate of $25 million.

They said the NDP promise to save $2 billion by slashing subsidies to the oil sands overstates the possible savings by four times, and that the math is similarly wonky on the NDP’s pledge to crack down on foreign tax havens.

“It’s time to take a close look at what Jack Layton’s saying to the Canadian people. The numbers add up and up and up,” Ignatieff said.

“Mr. Layton has got a platform that when you look at it closely has . . . $30 billion of spending, which we think is not going to be good for the economy and he derives it from sources we just don’t think are credible.

“He’s got a cap-and-trade system that’s going to deliver $3.5 billion in the first year. We don’t even have a cap and trade system. It’s science fiction.”

Latest poll shows Liberals in statistical tie with NDP

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:41

If you wanted an interesting election, this one is certainly shaping up as the most interesting in the last ten years:


April 21, 2011

News topic for today: the rise in NDP support in Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:04

It may be just another blip in the polling, or it could really be the NDP benefitting from weaker BQ numbers. Lots of trees will be consumed in this debate, and many electrons will be inconvenienced. The national numbers don’t show the pattern all that well, but the NDP may finally be close to that popularity breakthrough they’ve been hoping for since the brief taste of power they got in the Trudeau years. Instead of asking the Liberal leader how many NDP cabinet seats he’d need to give to Jack Layton, we might be asking Jack how many Liberal cabinet ministers he’d have in his coalition.

Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party has surged past Gilles Duceppe’s faltering Bloc Quebecois and is now in first place in Quebec, according to an Ekos public opinion poll released exclusively to iPolitics.

The poll, conducted earlier this week, found the New Democrats have jumped 10 percentage points since the eve of the leaders debate to 31.1% while the Bloc has dropped like a rock by 7.4 percentage points to 23.7%.

The Liberals are steady at 20.6% while the Conservatives have dropped slightly to 16.9%.

While the margin of error is higher at the city level, in Montreal the NDP is at 32.9% while the Bloc is at 29.7%.

Nationally, the NDP is now in a statistical tie with the Liberals at 24.9% to 25.8%. Both lag well behind the Conservatives who were preferred by 34.5% of respondents.

Update: Jane Taber has more on the regional breakdown:

Atlantic Canada now is shaping up to be a three-way race, with the NDP gaining every day for the past seven days. The Tories are at 36.3 per cent followed by the Liberals with 33.1 per cent and the NDP at 28.3 per cent. (There is a margin of error of plus or minus 9.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 in the regional sample.)

In British Columbia, the Liberals have dropped significantly — Mr. Ignatieff has seen his support decrease from 33.5 per cent Monday to 22.7 per cent Wednesday night. The Conservatives have 43.5 per cent support and the NDP are at 29.6 per cent, up from 24.7 per cent the night before. (The margin of error in that province is plus or minus 7.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)

In Quebec, Mr. Layton remains strong although the Bloc is still in first place with 32 per cent support compared to 23.4 per cent for the NDP, 20.8 per cent for the Liberals and 17.5 per cent for the Conservatives. “At 32 per cent it would be the worst ever showing for the BQ in a federal election,” Mr. Nanos said, noting that their previous worst showing was in 1997 where they won 37.9 per cent of the vote.‬

If all of this isn’t just a blip, it’s terrible news for Michael Ignatieff. That grinding noise you hear is the knife-sharpening back at Liberal HQ.

Update, the second: If the initial news was promising for Jack Layton, the poll done for La Presse must have been like a big shot of adrenalin:

A new poll by CROP for La Presse suggests that the enthusiasm for Mr. Layton is such that the NDP has now overtaken the Bloc Québécois in voting intentions for the first time in Canadian history. The online poll suggested that the NDP is now first choice for 36% of Quebecers, compared to 31% for the Bloc, 17% for the Conservatives and a mere 13% for the once mighty Liberal Party.

Having heard the NDP boast about “historic breakthroughs” over the years, I’m loath to get too carried away until these numbers are confimed by other pollsters. In 2008, Mr. Layton was in a statistical tie with Stéphane Dion two weeks before election day but ended up trailing by eight points and 40 MPs.

Yet there are signs this time might be different. In Quebec in particular, the Liberal brand is damaged goods and the Bloc is looking like a tired, one-trick pony. There is nowhere else to go for left-of-centre voters.

Update, the third: Forum Research says that the NDP is already in second place nationally:

“The Tories are ahead everywhere except Quebec, it’s all going to come down to what happens in Quebec,” says Mr. Bozinoff, noting the tradition of Quebec voters to move en masse when they have sharply changed preferences in past elections.

The survey of 2,727 voting-age Canadians was conducted Wednesday evening. It was an interactive voice response survey with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 per cent 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for regional and provincial breakdowns is slightly higher, but in such a large survey, with 348 citizens reached in the GTA alone, it is a reliable indicator of election trend lines.

Nationally, the survey gave the Conservative Party support from 36 per cent of decided and leaning voters, 25 per cent for the NDP, 23 per cent for the Liberal party, and six per cent each for the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. A separate Forum Research analysis, based partly on ridings won and lost in the 2008 election, suggest the survey results would give the Conservatives 149 of the 308 Commons seats if an election were held today, with 71 seats for the NDP, 64 for the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois would have 24 seats.

My occasionally updated percentage tracker, now (thanks to commenter request) with a graph to match:


Why the headline inflation rate may not force the Bank of Canada to increase interest rates

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:00

Stephen Gordon explains why the spike of certain prices may not trigger interest rate hikes from the Bank of Canada:

The increase in the headline March CPI inflation rate is due to increases in a relatively small number of goods, and is best seen as a change in relative prices that will have only a transitory increase in the CPI. There are two ways that headline CPI can return to target. The first is that consumers adjust their spending patterns and substitute away from the goods whose prices have risen; the resulting fall in demand will bring prices back down. If this doesn’t happen, prices of other goods can fall — or at least rise more slowly — so that the rate of inflation of the broader index falls back to target.

The Bank of Canada is preoccupied with inflation, not fluctuations in relative prices, so the current increase in the CPI will only be a problem if firms and workers start using 3 per cent as a benchmark for increases in wages and the prices of other goods.

Even though the target is the headline CPI inflation rate, it is the Bank’s opinion that the core CPI inflation rate is a better predictor for future inflation. The components of core CPI are generally those whose prices are set infrequently and whose increases reflect expectations for future inflation as well as market conditions. If expected inflation starts to rise, it will be more visible in the core rate than in the headline number.

April 20, 2011

Michael Ignatieff as a modern Kaiser Wilhelm II?

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, History, Politics, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:00

This is a fascinating article. I’m not sure I agree, although we’ll find out in less than two weeks if this is the “Black Day of the German Army Liberal Party”:

The Liberal party, like the Kaiser’s Germany, is stuck in the middle. (An analogy I do not expect any Liberal to use in public, ever.) To the right is the Conservative party. To the left, the NDP. Every election campaign is a two-front war.

To deal with this mortal peril, the Liberals have traditionally followed their own Schlieffen Plan.

In the event of electoral war, the Liberals move swiftly to the left. Taking ground from the NDP ensures vote splits go their way but also creates the perception that the NDP is out of the fight. Voters whose primary concern is stopping the barbarians in the East — the Conservatives, naturally — are thus forced to support the Liberals.

Now, here comes the part of the column Michael Ignatieff won’t like.

One size rules don’t fit all

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:14

Dentists who have their spouses on their patient list are running the risk of losing their licenses:

Dentists are permitted to treat their spouses — but they better not have sex.

Put another way, dentists who have sex with their spouses better not be messing around with their teeth.

This is the current law of the land in Ontario, one that many dentists are secretly flouting and calling “dumb” and “stupid.”

In an interview with the Star earlier this week, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews conceded the dentists may have a point and has agreed to review the restriction.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link.

April 19, 2011

This is why the delays at the US border are so important to Canadians

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

Stephen Gordon says that the additional costs to the Canadian economy for slower border crossings rival (or possibly even exceed) the savings due to NAFTA:

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Canada-U.S. trade flows: roughly one-quarter of what Canada produces is exported to the United States, and the volume of imports from the U.S. is only slightly smaller.

The increased border security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks may be only a minor irritant in the context of a single border crossing, but a small cost multiplied by a large number of crossings can still end up being a very big number. Even a small perturbation in trade flows of this magnitude can have a significant effect on the Canadian economy.

A recent study by Trien Nguyen of the University of Waterloo and Randy Wigle of Wilfrid Laurier University and published in the March 2011 issue of Canadian Public Policy provides some estimates for the economic costs of border crossing delays. These costs can be startlingly large, especially in the auto sector. Parts and subassemblies of cars produced in North America crisscross the border several times during production, so custom rules and border delays can add an extra $800 to the cost of production. In contrast, cars imported from overseas only have to pass through customs once.

Things that keep on rising in price … like healthcare costs

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Kevin Libin points out that Michael Ignatieff may have been even more accurate than he himself realized:

The politicians are finally talking about it, but if you listened to what Mr. Ignatieff said during last week’s English-language debate, you might have found yourself feeling a bit depressed. Perhaps because the Liberal leader effectively argued that if Canadians wanted to keep getting decent medical treatment, they were going to have to learn to live without lots of other things.

“This comes down to a moment of choice,” Mr. Ignatieff intoned. Canadians could either vote for personal income tax breaks, planned corporate income tax cuts, new equipment for the Canadian Forces, all promised by the Conservatives, or, he said, “you can support health care.”

To be accurate, he used language that was far more politically loaded (“multi-million dollar expenditure on prisons … big gifts to upper-middle class Canadians”), but his message was the same: affording public health care means sacrificing other possible priorities.

There’s certainly much to suggest he’s got a point.

If our healthcare costs keep rising, unbounded by any kind of cost control, it will either consume the economy, or cause its collapse. And, of course, the large number of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers are about to need much higher health spending as the natural aging process starts taking its inevitable toll. Fun times ahead, folks.

Already, nine out of 10 provinces spend the majority of their own source revenues (which excludes federal transfers) on health care, according to the Fraser Institute’s report “Canada’s Medicare Bubble.” Only Alberta is just barely under 50%; Nova Scotia spends 88%.

With all the good will in the world, the government can’t keep increasing their healthcare spending . . . they’re almost out of money already.

April 18, 2011

Toronto area gas station boycott

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

Chris Greaves (who doesn’t even own a car) looks at the possibility of using weekly boycott targets in an attempt to force oil companies to lower the retail price of gasoline in Toronto:

Consider therefore a web site for the GTA which announced as the next boycott period approached that the new target was “Shell”.

Those drivers who subscribe to the mass-boycott idea would avoid buying gas at Shell and, being evangelical, would tell their friends and colleagues that “Shell” was the target this period.

The question is “Who picks the target?” and the answer is simple: torontogasprices already announces the highest and lowest price for gas in the GTA. Score +1 against that company with the highest gas price at a random time each day. Then pick the company with the highest score. Over a short period, the company with the highest prices would float to the top of the list and be ready for a boycott.

In order to avoid any hint of collusion and legal attack, the web site would be hosted as a private web site, a blog perhaps, with the views expressed being solely those of the individual. There can be no legal complaint against an individual blogging and/or tweeting a disarmingly simple statement “This week I am boycotting Shell”.

April 17, 2011

Ilkka lets his anti-pedestrian flag fly

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Ilkka is usually a pedestrian/public transit rider, so it’s quite a surprise when he looks at the world from the driver’s perspective:

It’s always good to see things from the other guy’s perspective, and today we went on errand to the city on a car, very different from my usual public transit and pedestrian viewpoint. I understand not just the complaints of drivers much better now, but also the notion of “high cost of free parking”. I thought it was absurd how the city of Toronto, by allowing curbside parking, effectively turns its perfectly good four-lane streets into narrow two-lane bottlenecks that massively throttle the traffic. And then all those freaking pedestrians crossing the streets wherever they feel like, something I basically never do. It actually wouldn’t be a bad idea to impose a law that not only is it never a crime to hit a pedestrian who is on the street anywhere else than the sidewalk or a crosswalk, but the city would actually pay a small reward for this service to society, bit like the “kill money” bounty that hunters traditionally get for putting down pests. The problem of pedestrians running around in the traffic would vanish within a week.

I think he’s kidding . . .

Steve Paikin on moderating the leaders’ debate

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:55

Everyone is watching the debate to hear what the leaders say. Nobody tunes in to watch the moderator, so the best moderator is the one who manages to keep the debate moving smoothly but remains mostly invisible to the viewers. Steve Paikin was the moderator for the leaders’ English language debate this time around. He has a post on his experiences:

I’ve had the honour of moderating two previous federal leaders’ debates, and both times, the four minutes of waiting for the top of the clock can be agonizing. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in 2006 — the first time I ever participated in a leaders’ debate at any level — I felt like vomiting during those four minutes. Yes, I was that petrified.

So I cracked a joke.

“I don’t know what you guys are so nervous about,” I said to them. “You’ve all done this before. I never have.”

For all the criticism that he’s wooden and humourless, it was actually then opposition leader Stephen Harper who had a funny comeback.

“Yeah,” he said, “but you’ve got someone talking in your ear to help you. We’ve got nothing.”

So how about that whole “being invisible” part of the moderator’s role?

For some reason, I always seem to mess something up. The first time in 2006, I had forgotten to turn off my BlackBerry. As I was reading the introduction, I felt it buzz. How embarrassing was it going to be to have my phone ring as I was 30 seconds into my script. Somehow, I reached down and silenced it as I was reading the intro. Then the TelePrompter broke, so I quickly had to find my place in the script and keep reading, trying to make it all look seamless. Was someone trying to give me a heart attack?

This year, I somehow managed to kick the wiring out of the monitor on my desk, again, while reading the intro, meaning I spent the entire two hours flying blind. I couldn’t see the videos of the questions and couldn’t see what shots were being used during the broadcast. I spent the first five minutes of the debate playing with the wires, trying to reattach them, hoping the camera wasn’t catching me trying to play technician. Ultimately, I gave up.

Was the debate a good television experience? I don’t know. I never saw it.

Latest polling data

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:38

April 15, 2011

Steve Paikin interviews Rick Mercer

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:26

April 14, 2011

Scott Feschuk is one of those “ethnic voters” for the Harper photo-op

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

Scott Feschuk is delighted to have the opportunity to have his photo taken with the prime minister. He’s overjoyed:

What a moment.

I never thought that I — a regular, ordinary Canadian — would get the chance to have my photo taken with the Prime Minister of Canada.

But as luck and crass political calculation would have it, he’s eager to be seen with me! All I have to do is attire myself in such a manner as to flamboyantly display my heritage, thereby rendering me a subhuman prop that Stephen Harper can exploit to woo more of my kind.

Needless to say, I’m in.

As is true of much national folklore garb, it can take quite a while to get into my ethnic costume. Each item has been carefully selected to represent a historic and sacred element relating to my suitably exotic but non-threatening culture.

Join me, won’t you, as I get dressed.

I think I can speak for all of us about our deep gratitude that this blog post is not illustrated.

It’s also nice to see that the Conservatives have not yet figured out how to avoid handing their opponents such wonderful opportunities for mockery.

Original tempest-in-an-ethnic-teapot here. 680News reported yesterday that the staffer who wrote the letter is no longer working for the candidate.

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