What we're talking about when we talk about Omar Khadr

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 1:26 AM - 71 Comments

CBC had a panel of MPs discussing Omar Khadr this afternoon. For the Conservatives, it was Pierre Lemieux, who quite successfully repeated his lines about “serious crimes” and the “process.” Martha Hall Findlay, from the Liberals, proceeded to smack him about until Lemieux noticed that Hall Findlay didn’t have an answer to the question of what to do with Khadr were he returned. The end result was probably a messy draw, though admittedly I zoned out in the cross-talk.

Anyway. Debate is fun, but information is generally important. Here is the U.S. Defence Department’s database for the military commission that was, until yesterday, hearing Khadr’s case. Here is the hub of Toronto Star’s coverage, built around the work of Michelle Shephard (whose book on Khadr is required reading in this regard). As well, Wikipedia’s Khadr page seems fairly thorough. (Wikipedia’s pages on Bagram and Guantanamo might also be helpful.)

Political language is sometimes destructive numbing, but perhaps no more so than when the story is as gruesome and complicated as this one. “Process,” for instance. It’s variously a term of biology, law, mathematics and science. It’s aseptic. It implies a sort of natural unimpeachability.

Take that word and keeping it in mind, read through the affidavit filed by Omar Khadr—the allegations contained therein unproven by due process as they are. A few excerpts. Continue…

Obama's first executive orders

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 10:55 PM - 3 Comments

Obama rolls back Bush’s push for greater executive branch secrecy and imposes strict new limits on lobbying.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release January 21, 2009

The President today signed two Executive Orders and three Presidential Memoranda.

Continue…

Upon further review

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 10:49 PM - 2 Comments

Say this much for Michael Ignatieff, whatever his previous position, he now is apparently quite okay with members of his caucus saying stuff like this:

“To all those brave men and women who have in fact objected to [the Iraq] war, we say bravo. We say welcome, you should be here in Canada. We’re asking again the Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney to do the right thing, to search his heart, to do what is right.”

To be clear, that would be Liberal MP Mario Silva applauding American soldiers who have chosen to leave the U.S. military as the result of a war the Liberal leader once endorsed.

The Games Begin

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 7:05 PM - 5 Comments

Being the opposition critic for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics hasn’t been the easiest of jobs for Harry Bains, a New Democrat MLA and former labour leader. Bains is regarded by the governing Liberals as, quite literally, a spoilsport for cocking a skeptical eye at the Games’ finances. Criticize the Olympics? You might as well trash the very spirit of British Columbia, and Santa Claus, puppies, and all things sweet and good. The opposition only “pretend” to support the Games, says B.C.’s finance minister, Colin Hansen. “In fact, they’re using so much misinformation and spreading so much fear among British Columbians that they are, in fact, doing the exact opposite.” Continue…

There Will Still Be Moments Of Zen

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:31 PM - 2 Comments

Variety just did an article on the question that every Daily Show viewer is asking: What happens after Bush? They interview two writer/producers for the show: Rory Albanese and Josh Lieb. (NewsRadio fans may remember that Lieb was a prolific writer for that show and became its showrunner in the final season.)

You don’t have to share my view that comedy will be better off without Bush to think that TDS doesn’t need Bush as much as some people seem to think. The show has had good patches and bad patches in the last few years, and it’s had less to do with the amount of material Bush gives them — some of the worst episodes revolve around seemingly can’t-miss issues — than with whether the writers can come up with a funny angle on the way these issues are covered in the media. As the article notes, TDS has people working round the clock compiling clips from the 24-hour cable news world and highlighting clips that could be used on that night’s episode; so much of the show depends on montages of TV talking heads saying stupid things, or Stewart reacting to the stupid things these people say, or the correspondents parodying the stupid things that cable-news gasbags say on a regular basis. So while TDS might be in big trouble if Wolf Blitzer or the Fox n’ Friends or Chris Matthews were replaced by sane people, they shouldn’t be too harmed by Bush. I think they were better in 2008, when there was relatively little Bush-related material, than they were in other years when Bush jokes were more plentiful.

MUSIC: Excuse me, there's a hot young conductor on your iPod

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:28 PM - 2 Comments

Or there will be if you download Alborado del Gracioso, by Ravel, for free, as played by the Rotterdam Symphony Orchestra under the direction of its musical director-designate, Montreal’s own Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whom the Scottish Herald recently called “gold dust.”

Charest: Back on top, and rubbing it in

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:08 PM - 7 Comments

As Stephen Harper exited the press room at the end of last week’s First Ministers meeting, he passed close to Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Neither acknowledged the other, and a moment later Charest was at the podium, bluntly conveying his displeasure with the prime minister. “Quebec is profoundly disappointed,” he said.

Two years ago, delivering the federal budget for 2007, Jim Flaherty declared that “the long, tiring, unproductive era of bickering between the provincial and federal governments” was over. But now, amid financial chaos, there is a new disagreement over equalization, and it adds a prominent name to the prime minister’s list of hectoring opponents. Continue…

A Very Special DVD Review/Interview: BLOSSOM and Mayim Bialik

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:05 PM - 2 Comments

Next Tuesday (Jan. 27), Shout! Factory is releasing seasons 1 & 2 of the popular ‘90s show Blossom in a 6-disc, 37-episode set. As part of the promotion, they’ve been offering interviews with the star of the show, Mayim Bialik. And when I mentioned that I had the chance to interview Blossom, the reaction from women in their ‘20s or early ‘30s was as follows: “Blossom? I remember Blossom. I loved Blossom. You’ve got to talk to her.” What I’m saying is, for anyone who watched it as a teenager, Blossom is a beloved viewing memory, and a very immediate one considering that it had next to no life in syndication after it was canceled in 1995.

I’ll say first of all that if you ever liked Blossom, this DVD is worth the money. You’ve got two seasons that include many of the best-remembered episodes – the very first show is about Blossom getting her first period – and plenty of work on the special features. But I’ll get to the review portion in a bit. For those who were not teenaged girls in the ‘90s, Blossom, created by Don Reo, is about Blossom Russo (Mayim Bialik) a 14 year-old girl who lives in an otherwise all-male household. Her father (Ted Wass) is a struggling musician who’s still bitter about his recent divorce; her oldest brother (Michael Stoyanov) is getting over his drug and alcohol problems; and her other brother (Joey Lawrence) is a horny idiot who, true to the tradition of “Dumbening,” gets steadily dumber over the course of these 37 episodes. The second season added a new regular in the form of Nick’s ex-father-in-law (Barnard Hughes); the ‘90s are the last time any show would feel it needed to add an older character. With her mother far away, Blossom’s only female confidante is her best pal, the fast-talking Six (Jenna Von Oy). “We were trying to show a regular slice of life in a struggling family,” Bialik says, “and also to show a divorced family, where the mom had run off because she wanted to have her own life and didn’t want to be a mom any more. That was unusual.”

The show was produced by Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, who had done Soap (also with Ted Wass), The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, It’s a Living, and as a drama change of pace, Beauty and the Beast. They usually did ensemble shows that combined broad comedy with some dramatic moments, and that’s the case with Blossom. Two things made it different from their other shows. One, it frequently incorporated fantasy sequences, and some fairly wild ones at that: the first episode has a dream sequence where Clair from The Cosby Show explains the ovarian cycle, and another episode is a full-length Madonna parody. (Some of that probably came from Reo’s own wild side: he created the cult adventure-comedy Wizards and Warriors, a deadpan parody of the medieval fantasy genre.) Two, and more importantly, it took the smart, spunky teenage girl, usually the second banana in any sitcom, and made her the star. Not that there had never been a show about a teenaged girl before, just not many, and certainly not many that made her problems the centre of the universe. Remember, we’re talking three years before My So-Called Life made teen-girl angst artistically respectable.

Bialik thinks that the very fact that Blossom had her own show, and wasn’t just a character on someone else’s, was what made Blossom connect so strongly with teenaged girls:

For a girl to have her own show meant something special for girls in the early ’90s: that they weren’t the sister, they weren’t the girlfriend, that they could see themselves personified as the main character, the main issue.

And you know, most teenagers, whether they’re male or female, think that the world revolves around them. So here we were giving girls an opportunity to see a girl that the show revolved around. And so I think that was special.

Look, I was 14 when the show started, I was also watching television at that time, and a lot of the females I saw on television were either the bimbo or the nerd, and really nothing in-between. I think what we tried to create with Blossom was closer to the actual female teenage experience, which is that sometimes you’re a little of this, and sometimes you’re a little of that. You want to look great at the prom, and have a nice date, but you also want to do well in school and be respected for your brains.

But you don’t get to be a show on TV for five years with only girls watching you. We had boys watching. The old adage is that girls will watch boys or girls on television, but boys will only watch boys. I think we broke that down to some extent. We also followed Fresh Prince of Bel Air in a lot of areas, and I think that helped too. We had adults watching too. We had families watching this family grow up on television.

The Show

I didn’t watch Blossom much when it was on, and had not seen it since; I actually think it holds up surprisingly well. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the episodes that find humour in serious Continue…

Alternatives to reading Obama's inaugural poem

By John Geddes - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 3 Comments

There’s been a bit of discussion of the poem read at Barack Obama’s inauguration by Elizabeth Alexander. I wasn’t moved, and haven’t heard from anybody who was (although I have to guess Jack Layton liked her line about “the figuring it out at kitchen tables”). Still, I think it’s great that a poem was read at all.

Continue…

Obama's cabinet – the greenies to watch for

By Alex Shimo - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 4:56 PM - 2 Comments

Obama’s cabinet is said to be full of intellectual heavyweights. On climate issues, there are several key people to watch out for. (Luiza Savage’s article on this is very good on this and other cabinet issues, if you haven’t already read it.)

1) Henry Waxman – the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The tenacious democrat blasted the Bush administration on everything from tobacco to loosening standards on toxins like arsenic in drinking water. He is said to be one of leaders of the campaign against “dirty oil”, i.e. oil from Alberta’s oil sands.

2) Steve Chu – the Nobel Prize winner is the new energy secretary and climate czar. Chu has devoted much of his career figuring out a way to wean people off fuels.

3) Tom Vilsack – the Agriculture secretary is the former governor of corn-growing Iowa, where ethanol subsidies are considered a golden goose, bringing jobs and revenues to the state. However, his support isn’t unwaivering – he has suggested lowering the tariff on greener, more efficient Brazilian sugar-based ethanol, which might bring more competition to the industry.

4) Jane Lubchenco – a marine biologist at Oregon State University, is the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the government agency responsible for marine life and studying the climate. Dr. Lubchenco has been critical of the Bush’s inaction on greenhouse-gas emissions and marine pollution, including the species die off in ocean dead zones.

5) John Holden – an expert in the fields of energy, the environment and nuclear proliferation is Obama’s top scientific adviser. When he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2007, he argued publicly for swift action on climate change, arguing that otherwise we were headed for disastrous changes that would affect all life on earth. Continue…

Not safe for work

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 4 Comments

Maybe this is why Dave MacKenzie’s not feeling very hopeful.

Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie’s former website has been taken over by an adult entertainment site. It turns out davemackenziemp.ca ‘s domain-name registration had expired and before someone from the MP’s camp could renew the name, it was picked up by passion dot com. MacKenzie says people have been working to get his domain name back for a few weeks. For now, MacKenzie has adopted davemackenzie.ca as his new domain name. 

Consistency

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 4:15 PM - 4 Comments

The Prime Minister’s spokesman was on the television just now arguing that the current government’s position is unchanged from that of the Chretien and Martin governments.

Interesting to note here that in Sept. 2002, our embassy in Washington sent a letter to the U.S. state department alerting the American administration to the fact that the Canadian government thought it “inappropriate” for Khadr to be transferred to Guantanamo.

Interesting too, as Michelle Shepherd reported recently, that, according to federal lawyers, “Canada considers that Omar Khadr’s juvenile status should be taken into account in all aspects of his detention, treatment, proceedings and possible sentence.”

What is this government's position on Guantanamo?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 4 Comments

Asked directly about it at today’s briefing, the Prime Minister’s Office declined comment.

Last June, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development tabled its report on Omar Khadr. Included in that were seven recommendations, as follows. Continue…

Accountability, American Style

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 3:41 PM - 10 Comments

It’s no secret that ITQ is somewhat passionate about her preference for the parliamentary system, but she has to admit that this whole ‘I’m the president; make it happen’ government-by-memorandum thing does seem more efficient – well, faster, anyway – than bringing in omnibus legislation like the Federal Accountability Act. (The potential for abuse is definitely too high for our liking, however.)

From the Globe:

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama announced on his first day in office Wednesday that he is freezing the pay of the about a hundred White House employees who make over $100,000 a year.

He also imposed strict new rules on lobbyists in his White House administration and banned any gifts from lobbyists to his staff.

The freeze would hold salaries at their current levels. It is part of a presidential memorandum being issued Wednesday when Mr. Obama attends a swearing-in for staff at the White House.

His pledge to reassess was quickly reassessed

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 28 Comments

Peter MacKay, commenting today on the latest developments in regards to Omar Khadr. “Clearly Canada, Mr. Khadr’s counsel and everyone involved in these cases will be reassessing their positions.”

The Prime Minister’s office, commenting shortly thereafter on same. “There’s no change in our position.”

(Discussing this in the bureau, Paul argues, quite plausibly, that it’s possible to reconcile these two statements.)

It's his budget and he'll not show up if he wants to*

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 1:43 PM - 23 Comments

Guess who won’t be holding the his traditional pre-release press conference during next week’s budget lockup?

Continue…

Frank Rich, The Clean-Shaven James Lipton

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 1:41 PM - 0 Comments

This account of the recent “Conversation with Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich” at Avery Fisher Hall makes it sound like a pretty unenlightening evening (and one of the commenters, who was there, indicates that there wasn’t much more to the evening than is covered in this blog post). Sondheim tells a few stories, most of which he’s told before, and the only big revelation is that The Wiz is one of his favourite musicals and he went back to see it six times. (Seriously, liking The Wiz better than My Fair Lady and South Pacific?) And I liked his explanation of why the 1964 bomb Anyone Can Whistle turned out so disappointingly: as Peter Shaffer told him, the authors’ contempt for the audience was all too obvious. But other than that, it doesn’t seem like the best use of the time.

Perhaps there would have been more interesting discussions if the moderator were someone other than Frank Rich, who is well-known as the greatest Sondheim sycophant among New York theatre critics. In 1984 Rich plugged Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George — which still strikes me as a dull show with a few good songs, some really bad songs (“We Do Not Belong Together”), and dialogue that sounds like it’s been poorly translated from the original Sanskrit — so frequently, and praised it so incessantly as the solution to all of the musical theatre’s problems, that he almost single-handedly kept the show running for a year and a half. There’s a famous story that the day after Sunday in the Park With George won the Pulitzer prize, the editor of the paper complained to his staff that they hadn’t won any Pulitzers that year. “Sure we did,” someone said. “Frank won the drama award.”

Since Follies, Sondheim’s best show, was one of the few musicals they didn’t mention, here’s a video clip to compensate. The 1971 production is legendary because it was enormously expensive and lavish — a huge cast, two directors (producer Hal Prince and choreographer Michael Bennett shared directing credit), a big orchestra, many big dance numbers (unlike Sondheim’s later shows, which cut dancing to a minimum) — but used that lavishness in the service of a small story, making it a unique amalgam of two kinds of musicals, the lavish spectacle and the angsty small-scale musical. (Bennett’s A Chorus Line had a similar style and structure, but while it was much more successful than Follies, it wasn’t anywhere near as good.) The cast album was heavily cut, there was no movie or taping of the show, and none of the subsequent revivals have been fully satisfying, so the original production, with its great cast and expensive, money-losing production, lives in legend.

All that’s left is some very scratchy footage shot from the wings, overdubbed with sound from the soundboard. So when you see this footage of Gene Nelson (Oklahoma!) singing “The Right Girl” with Michael Bennett’s choreography, you have to accept that you can’t see or hear anything very clearly — but at least you can get an idea of the original staging and of the way it combined song, dance, design, lighting and the unique abilities of each performer (in this case, Nelson’s dancing abilities). And even with the bad sound, you can hear the great orchestrations in the dance sections, a reminder why there’s no substitute for a real, full orchestra in a musical (shut up, John Doyle).

It's here! The CBC Radio 2 Obama Playlist!

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 42 Comments

And much of it won’t make you cringe. Some will. It’s here. Back-seat driving:

• Tunes that were always going to be on this playlist, because they are the national anthems of Canadians wishing Americans would pay attention to them: American Woman, Democracy, Canadian Railroad Trilogy, The Hockey Song.
• Tunes that were always going to be on this playlist because they really are at the dead centre of Canadian culture, like it or not: Both Sides Now, Four Strong Winds, Goldberg Variations (he gets the whole thing?), If I Had $1,000,000, La complainte du phoque en Alaska, Mon pays, Quand les hommes vivront d’amour, Swinging Shepherd Blues, Suzanne, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
• Actual good tunes: A Case of You, Departure Bay (note to Diana: Go ahead and write more tunes! The ones on that album were good), Ordinary Day, Place St. Henri, Rebellion (Lies), Wondering Where the Lions Are.

Odds of the new President listening to maybe 10 of these tunes: high. Odds of him learning to love all 49: zero.

Literally leaping off the page

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

The English-speaking world’s favourite foreign novelist can hardly wait to have a look at Stephenie Meyer’s vampire novels, and especially the film version of Twilight. Although Cornelia Funke’s two teenage children have seen the movie 18 times between them, the German-born, Los Angeles-based author hasn’t been able to go. She always avoids other writers’ fantasies when she’s immersed, as she is now, in a work-in-progress. It’s not just her kids’ enthusiasm that makes her curious, Funke explains: “Everyone who has seen Twilight and chapters in my new book says my main character is just like Edward,” Meyer’s vampire heartthrob, even if he shares his name—Jacob—with Edward’s rival for heroine Bella’s affections. Most intriguing for Funke, though, is the way Twilight screenings, by leading off with the trailer for Inkheart, have ramped up even further fan buzz about her own potential $100-million blockbuster, set to open on Jan. 23.

It does seem an odd pairing of audiences, at least at first glance: Twilight’s swooning vampire romantics seem a world away from those liable to be drawn to Funke’s magical tale of 12-year-old Meggie and her father, Mo. Also known as Silvertongue for his extraordinary ability, Mo can bring characters to actual living, breathing life when he reads from a book. He discovered this power when Meggie was a baby, reading so eloquently from Inkheart—Funke’s novel-within-the-novel of the same name—that the book’s chief villain, Capricorn, ended up snarling on Mo’s cottage floor. Worse, Silvertongue simultaneously read in to the book—meaning into Capricorn’s terrifying medieval world—Resa, his wife and Meggie’s mother. The story opens with Mo still seeking a way to bring back Resa, on the run from Capricorn, who wants to turn Mo’s talent to his own uses.

Continue…

Will Iggy support the budget?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 12:41 PM - 11 Comments

Showing his typical flare with the English language, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is trying to quell fears of a spring election. “We need an election in February,” he said today in Montreal, “like a hole in the head.” Of course, as Jack Layton would probably point out, a new election isn’t the only alternative to a Conservative government.

The Toronto Star

It’s all about you

By Lianne George and Steve Maich - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 13 Comments

An exclusive excerpt.

Let’s face it, debt never was our friend, even though it pretended to be (No money down! Don’t pay ’til spring!). We wanted to believe it, and did, to the tune of $1.1 trillion (our national household debt). In 1980, the average Canadian was $5,470 in the hole, including mortgage debt. By 2007, that number had swelled by more than six times to $34,523. During this time, our perception of debt was transformed: once a bogeyman to be avoided at every turn, it’s now more like a member of the family, albeit a nagging one, who simply needs to be managed. Most often, this explosion of personal debt is chalked up to years of easy access to capital and low borrowing rates—and that certainly played a major role. But how do we account for our own increasing willingness to submerge ourselves in liabilities? Over the past quarter-century, we somehow warmed to the idea that the travesty of not living the life we imagined far outweighs the consequences of borrowing more than we can reasonably hope to repay. What changed?

The truth is, debt is only a symptom of a much more fundamental shift. Turn on any television set, read any magazine or newspaper, or venture online for even five minutes and you’ll begin to notice the language of entitlement. Everywhere we turn, it seems someone is confirming our inherent worthiness to us. Dell Computers, for instance, says in its “Purely You” campaign: “We don’t make technology for just anyone.We make it for only one. You.” Burger King tells us to “Have it your way.” Ford fawns, “Everything we do is driven by you.” Air Canada offers you the “Freedom to fly your own way.” AT&T transmits “Your true voice.” YouTube advocates that you “Broadcast Yourself.” Microsoft asks, “Where do you want to go today?” Pier 1 Imports reminds you, “It’s Your Thing.” TimeWarner Cable promises to unleash “The Power of You.” The Home Depot cheers you on with, “You can do it. We can help.” And Alpo, looking out for your beloved four-legged friends, asks, “Doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?” The desired response to these slogans is always a variation on the same theme: Yes, I am. Yes, I can. Yes, I do. Yes, my dog does, too.

Continue…

Trudeau on Obama

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 16 Comments

The son of Helen Thomas’ favourite prime minister considers the new president’s inaugural.

We’ve long known that the massive, global challenges facing our economies, our environment, our quest for social justice and our desire for peace would require the participation of everyone. With his first speech, President Obama just reminded us all that our efforts can only be successful if they begin in our hearts and minds.

For the next four years, the most powerful man on the planet will be so not because he can affect our lives and world, but because his words can touch our souls. And we’ve never needed it more.

Rock hard

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 4 Comments

When John Morris, a member of Kevin Martin’s world champion curling team, played the Continental Cup in Camrose, Alta., last month, he was forced to take part in one of the less glamorous rites of today’s elite athlete—handing over a urine sample to the drug testers. Random drug tests are becoming commonplace in curling. Morris has been tested three times this season. Martin, the team’s skip, and his second, Marc Kennedy, have each been tested twice. This month, the drug tests are being ramped up even more: new rules state that curlers have to submit to random tests at any time, not just at major competitions.

Curlers juiced on performance-enhancing drugs might seem a bit laughable—traditionally, the only drug abuse in the sport has been Labatt-related. But the strict anti-doping measures are part of the quiet transformation the sport has undergone in recent years. Long gone are the days when beer-bellied curlers threw stones with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Nowadays, the sport is teeming with professional trainers and sports psychologists. The winningest teams train 12 months of the year, building muscle to help them sweep harder and increasing their stamina to play gruelling 10-game tournaments. Believe it or not, curlers are starting to look a lot like actual athletes.

Continue…

From the Office of the PBO: Deficits for Dummies

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 11:57 AM - 12 Comments

As promised, the Parliamentary Budget Office – which now has its very own RSS feed — the very first parliamentary site to do so –  has released its latest pre-budget briefing note for parliamentarians. 

It’s worth reading the whole thing, especially if, like ITQ, you’re still a little bit fuzzy on the difference between a structural and cyclical deficit, but here are a few highlights from the introduction: 

·       Governments across the world are being called on to provide economic stimulus measures to counteract the on-going global recession.  However, it is important to keep in mind that:

·       Relative to many other countries, Canada is expected to experience a milder recession.  As a result of its healthier fiscal position going into the recession, Canada’s status quo budget deficits, relative to the size of its economy, are projected to be much smaller than those in many other industrialized countries.

·       Further, rough estimates indicate that the Government has a structural surplus of about $6 billion — though more work needs to be undertaken in this area.  Thus, any permanent fiscal actions (e.g., permanent tax cuts or permanent spending increases) exceeding $6 billion annually would likely result in structural deficits, limiting the Government’s ability to manage future cost pressures due to, for example, population ageing.

According to the PBO, when we finally get a peek at next week’s numbers, parliamentarians – and, presumably, the rest of us too – should keep the following questions in mind: 

Is there a single, or set of over-arching fiscal policy objectives that the stimulus package will aim to achieve?

As the PBO’s November 2008 EFA report highlighted, and a concern that is even more acute now, the weakened global and Canadian economic outlook poses a significant challenge for the Government to achieve its stated short-term and medium-term fiscal targets. Which of these targets will be re-stated, will some be re-affirmed, or replaced with new policy targets?

Will the Government provide a transparent medium-term fiscal plan that addresses the projected weakness in the economy and supports a meaningful recovery towards the economy’s potential level of activity without limiting the Government’s fiscal capacity to respond to future spending pressures arising from population ageing?