The News Rundown

NDP pulls out of supply-and-confidence deal with Liberal government

This week in a surprise to many the NDP and leader Jagmeet Singh ended the confidence and supply agreement with the Liberals.
The confidence and supply agreement was struck in March 2022 and saw an agreement that the NDP support the Liberals on confidence matters in exchange for a number of legislative ideas.
These included things such as pharmacare that covered a small share of drugs, dental care that covers at this point seniors, and labour legislation such as the passed anti-scab legislation.
We don’t know exactly how well these programs will age into the future but they are far from the NDP ideals of pharmacare for all and dental care for all Canadians.
Right now these programs are in their infancy and will require tons more money to expand. It remains to be seen if the governments of the day, Liberal and Conservative will fund and expand the programs.
The confidence and supply agreement was unprecedented in that every minority government since 1945 operated on a per-vote basis and had almost become a convention in Canada.
The NDP and Liberals while not in an official coalition government with cabinet ministers it would be foolish to say that the NDP and Liberals were not in a coalition of sorts.
Months after the 2021 election and freedom convoy protests the NDP and Liberals banded together to form what was effectively a majority government until this week. A majority government that Canadians denied Trudeau in the heat of a vaccine mandate filled campaign.
So while this agreement was unprecedented it primarily served the Liberals as a guarantee they would stay alive.
This gets to why the NDP pulled the plug.
The Liberal and NDP brands have become indistinguishable since the NDP has not been able to advance its own policy goals and capitalize on the discontent of the Trudeau administration.
Aside from what Singh has said in that the government has abandoned workers. The main reason they likely pulled out is that they need to create some space policy wise between them and the Liberals before the next election.
We see this in the video that the NDP produced and released announcing the end of the deal. The video aims to put the NDp back on the side of the little guy vowing to ensure that big corporations and CEOs will no longer have their day in government.
The video was well produced and the question is if the NDP will be able to pull away or if Singh’s connection to Trudeau and the decisions his party has made in Quebec post-Jack Layton can be reversed. If not, Singh will need to be replaced, an ideal replacement would be a pragmatic NDP leader like Rachel Notley or John Horgan.
Parliament resumes on September 16th and now the eyes will be open to see if there is a chance for the government to fall.
Hurdles that the Liberals now face include potential back to work legislation for rail workers and pilots that could be made into a confidence vote if Trudeau insists.
The fall economic statement normally tabled in November will be a confidence vote.
And then there are any opposition day non-confidence motions that the opposition, likely Conservatives, will table.
These are the most likely scenarios for the government to fall this session.
There’s also the chance that the Liberals will seek a new confidence and supply partner in the Bloc Quebécois.
Bloc leader Yves Francois Blanchet has already said that going forward in this coming session he will be looking to see what he can get out of the government for Quebec.
Ideas he had include giving more immigration powers to the province that Alberta would surely want, stopping subsidies to the oil industry, and stopping Ottawa’s involvement in Quebec with regards to language and secularism.
We’ll see if the Trudeau Liberals want to move this direction to try and cannibalize the Bloc in any form of unofficial or official agreement.
At the end of the day an election is more likely than it was last week.
Will it happen though?
Chances are that the NDP will continue to support the government ad-hoc while saying they are decoupled. The current predicament that Canada is in rests squarely with the NDP’s support. They have been Trudeau’s enabler.
There is also the chance that the Bloc will also now be able to extract concessions.
So an election might be more likely but it is our feeling here at Western Context that we’re going to see an election in the spring.
Supplementals:

The BC election is more than a month and a half away, and yet we're already seeing media narratives form ahead of the official campaign start. Last week we talked about the implosion of the BC United party's campaign, this week has seen a shaking out of which candidates will run as BC Conservatives, and which will run as independents.
While all the candidates get themselves sorted, the media have all been scrutinizing John Rustad's BC Conservative Party a lot more, now that they are the presumptive main rival to Premier David Eby's NDP.
The Tyee, a known left wing publication, has been taking NDP talking points and repeating them on social media, with the intent on spreading their propaganda so to speak.
Last week, Tyee legislative bureau chief Andrew MacLeod sent a question to the BC Conservatives’ communications team. Eby had said that morning in an interview with Macleod that Rustad had “committed to ban books on climate science from our classrooms.”
MacLeod asked the NDP to provide evidence for the claim. He did not get any evidence. But this still did not stop him from asking the Conservative team for a response.
MacLeod's email said: “Is that correct? I’ve asked Eby’s office for a source on it and will see what they say. If there is one, it wasn’t immediately at their fingertips. Any comment or an interview with Mr. Rustad would be welcome”
Anthony Koch, the campaign spokesperson for the BC Conservatives replied simply: "Look at this top quality 'journalism' from the folks over at the totally not left-wing rag Tyee. What would we do without them?"
Paul Willcocks, a senior editor at The Tyee wrote a long story about how this response was similar to Donald Trump and how it personally attacks journalists as a profession.
Willcocks wrote of Koch's response: "Donald Trump championed the tactic. Any story that set out facts he disagreed with was “fake news.” Media outlets and reporters were dishonest and “nasty.” Journalists were “enemies of the people.” This isn’t just the usual Trump petulance. It is a tactic designed to undermine accountability and sweep away the importance of facts in favour of emotional appeals — often to voters’ worst instincts."
Willcocks says that the day before the online attack, MacLeod reported on a study that found the NDP government was falling short in delivering two critical rental support programs. A week earlier he used freedom of information documents to report the NDP government had made recycling policy changes that pushed up the cost of milk for consumers by $22.9 million a year.
The issue with that, is it also conveniently leaves out the actual previous piece from Macleod, which is the previously mentioned interview he did with Eby, which leaves plenty of glowing praise for our premier: "Delivered with his hands in his pockets, it was the kind of speech Eby will give countless times over the next two months, reminding people what his party values and has tried to achieve in seven years in government, while at the same time raising fears about what his opponents would do if they were to win."
The article also mentions all the things Eby said he would tackle. No such piece is afforded to Rustad. The double standard by the media is showing its face once again, and in BC it's one we've seen many times before.
Supplementals:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2024/08/29/David-Eby-Interview/

Province pulling funding for Calgary's Green Line LRT project, letter says

A few weeks back on the podcast we talked about Calgary city council’s decision to drastically scale back the scope of the Green line LRT project.
This week the province has announced that they will be pulling their $1.53b share of the project.
And with that the province is also seeking to take control of the project and design a new alignment (read: route) by the end of the year.
In late July city council voted to cut 6 stations and increase the cost by $700m to $6.2b. It’s this continued with delays on building the project that has caused the province to step in.
On Friday Mayor Gondek met with Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen and Rob Anderson, a representative from the Premier’s office to explore the “costs, risk, and consequences” of shutting down the project in the words of Gondek.
These costs will be made public at a September 17th city council meeting.
And from what we heard, the province has requested a summary of all work and contracts to have a full picture of where the project is at.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of the ramifications of this and what, if any, political reasons there were let’s look at the history of the project.
In June 2015 the Harper government pledged $1.5b.
In 2017 the NDP government in Alberta under Rachel Notley also pledged $1.5b for the full 46km green line spanning north and south.
In 2020 due to delays and cost overruns the project was scaled back to a 20km run to the south east from downtown.
In 2022 construction began with utility relocation and demolition.
Now in July this year City Council approved a revised plan scaling back the number of stations with a new cost of $6.2b from the original $5.5b.
Former Mayor Naheed Nenshi, now Alberta NDP leader, posted a lengthy response on X lambasting the decision for the UCP to pull funding.
The reality of the situation is that a lot of the planning, initial delays, and decision making took place a time when Nenshi was mayor and he had willing partners to go along with the plans at the provincial and federal level.
Further issues of course also came up during Gondek’s tenure starting in 2021 with the big curtailing of the southern portion of the project with north nowhere in sight.
He called the decision reckless and a partisan issue for the UCP criticizing the new proposed alignment but as we learnt Friday that will come by the end of the year.
The bigger ramification of this though is that the UCP is considering the creation of a provincial body to develop and build mega projects both in and outside of cities.
This raises an interesting question and one that is on par for the Smith government: is there any other different way to do things?
Typically the city would lead projects within their borders unless they were big like highways but does it need to be this way and should it?
When considering that the province has a plan for rail in the province, maybe it makes sense.
Has this been done before? Is the Smith government being unreasonable? The picture painted presently is that the plan Smith’s government is pushing is unreasonable and a step into municipal jurisdiction.
It has been done before, in Ontario, with Metrolinx. That board is commissioned under the province’s infrastructure department.
The projects are developed outside of city hall and ideally the city provides support.
It’s not only Calgary: Edmonton had issues with he valley line in terms of cost overruns, delays, and even physical issues with cracking concrete before the line opened.
Edmonton is also having issues with the valley line west and construction surrounding businesses alongside a very ambitious project that will do little to encourage people to get out of their cars.
The valley line project will travel at 50Km/hr of less, will work within the flow of traffic, and on the whole provides little incentive for people to get out of their cars when bus rapid transit would be faster.
In Calgary there’s also the prospect of the blue line to the airport and a rail line to Banff.
Going forward this project will be political. The NDP and Calgary council will blame the UCP.
The UCP will blame the inefficiencies of council and look for ways to find efficiencies.
At the end of the day people have given up businesses, houses, and there has been work done that has been lost.
The end-goal now has to be for the project to deliver a compelling finished product, on time, on budget, and with a blueprint to get the cities of Alberta building again.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Canada is dangerously close to an eruption of social unrest

It should come as no shock to anyone listening that things are not that great in Canada these days, and many people can point to any myriad of issues that have started or got worse since Trudeau came to power. At the forefront is the controversial expansion of the immigration system, which has seen a huge influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into a country that has not kept up with infrastructure progress at the same time.
People in Canada have watched with guarded interest as riots erupted in the UK over the summer, following misinformation released after the tragic and brutal stabbing of young girls attending a dance class in Cardiff, Wales. While the attacker was a 17-year-old born in Cardiff, Wales, fake news on social media and messaging apps falsely claimed he was a recently arrived Muslim asylum seeker, fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment, and emboldening far right groups and social media misinformation even further.
Faisal Kutty, a Canadian Muslim lawyer, writing in the Toronto Star, says: "This should serve as a cautionary tale for Canada, often perceived as a haven of multiculturalism. In reality, the conditions that fuelled the U.K. riots — rapid demographic shifts, rising hate and polarization, and the spread of misinformation — are present here too. If left unaddressed, they could easily ignite unrest in Canadian cities."
This is an interesting take, because it assumes that there aren't underlying causes that could also be fueling this sentiment of unrest, and Kutty calls the immigration problem a scapegoat, saying that "pointing fingers at foreigners is much easier" than "the decades of ignoring infrastructure, lack of any real national housing initiatives, failure of long-term planning and throwing money at short-term fixes by both successive Liberal and Conservative parties at all levels of government".
While this may be true, it still cannot be ignored that a rapid increase in the immigration system of all types has expanded by a crazy amount under Trudeau that has not been seen in Prime Ministers before him.
In 2003, Chretien’s final year in power, Canada allowed 469,000 newcomers in total. This was made up of 164,000 study permit holders, 32,000 refugee claimants, 34,000 foreign workers and 239,000 immigrants, according to data from Statistics Canada. In total, Paul Martin let in 488,000 people in 2005, Stephen Harper 678,000 in 2014. Justin Trudeau in 2023? He let in 1.84 million. This includes a doubling of the TFW program in the last decade, a fivefold increase in study permit holders to over 1M, and a seven times increase in refugee claimants.
This astronomical increase happened in a country where there’s a crisis around people finding housing, where inflation has shot up for food and other essentials, where many young people are struggling to find employment, and where hospitals and schools strain to meet needs.
And it's being noticed by Canadians as well. A new Angus Reid poll found that Canadians’ concern over immigration has risen four-fold over the last two years. And a new Leger survey showed 65 per cent believe the Liberals’ immigration targets are too high.
Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who under the Harper government held the job of federal immigration minister longer than anyone else in Canadian history, said that the immigration system under Trudeau is way less sustainable that any other point in Canadian history.
Kenney said: “All the lights on the dashboard are now blinking furiously that this has to be slowed down. The main overall problem is the massive numbers, the volume. Totally unmanageable. Total incompetence on their part to jack all of these categories simultaneously with no apparent regard for the overall impact it would have on Canada, the job market, the housing market, the health care system or anything else. It was literally reckless.”
Most of the pro immigration stories, like the Toronto Star piece written by Faisal Kutty, only talk about the numbers of immigrants who become citizens in order to say statements like "Canada has welcomed over 3.9 million new citizens since 2005". But that doesn't look at the real issue: temporary refugees, students and TFWs.
Almost all of the people who arrive here on a temporary basis have the hope, expectation and intention to stay permanently, but they are in line behind the huge number of new permanent admissions allowed by Trudeau. This will lead to hundreds of thousands staying here illegally.
This also harkens back to 6 months ago, when we detailed a story from a leaked RCMP report that said that Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are. Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”
Will Canada start to riot like we've seen in the UK? Maybe not, but we can't afford to ignore the possibilities, and the real causes. People on the left can't just pass off the increasing anti-immigration sentiment on misinformation and white supremacy like they have in the past, especially when it is this Liberal government in particular that has exacerbated so many problems in the last decade.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“All the lights on the dashboard are now blinking furiously that this has to be slowed down. The main overall problem is the massive numbers, the volume. Totally unmanageable. Total incompetence on their part to jack all of these categories simultaneously with no apparent regard for the overall impact it would have on Canada, the job market, the housing market, the health care system or anything else. It was literally reckless.” - Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney on Trudeau’s expansion of the immigration system

Word of the Week

Unrest - a state of dissatisfaction, disturbance, and agitation in a group of people, typically involving public demonstrations or disorder

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Show Data

Episode Title: The War on Media
Teaser: Jagmeet Singh pulls the plug on the supply and confidence deal, The Tyee compares the BC Conservatives to Donald Trump, and the UCP pulls funding from Calgary’s Green Line. Also, Canada may be susceptible to social unrest.
Recorded Date: September 7, 2024
Release Date: September 8, 2024
Duration: 1:00:02
Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX