Canadian Politics Thread

Ha, I just double-checked this with my Mum who works at H&R Block. As I understand marginal tax rates, looking only at federal taxes and overlooking deductions/credits etc for the moment:

Right now, someone who makes $200k would:
- claim the basic personal amount of $11,138

- pay 15% tax on their first $44,701 of taxable income

-pay 22% tax on their next $44,700 (the portion between $44,701 and $89,401)

- pay 26% on the next $49,185 of taxable income (on the portion of taxable income over $89,401 up to $138,586)

-and pay 29% of taxable income over $138,586 (for the $200k earner: 29% of $61,414)

JT's plan is to create a 33% bracket for income in excess of $200k and to reduce the tax rate for the $44,701-$89,401 bracket to 20.5% from 22%. Everyone who makes over $44,701 will thus have a lower tax rate on this portion of their income. Someone who makes $200,000 would save $44,700*1.5%=$670.50 compared to the current tax regime. Since it is only the portion of one's income that is in excess of $200k that would be taxed at the higher rate, they would not actually be subject to the higher tax rate and would only end up paying more if they made over approx. $202k. Basically, this plan means that anyone who earns less than $44,701/yr (i.e. the majority of the population) will see no change and anyone who makes between $44,701 and $202k will see a tax cut.

A simple way to make a fair or progressive tax cut, if that's what someone wanted to do, would be to increase the basic personal exemption. The benefit would be more or less inversely proportional to one's income, I would think.

Basically, this plan means that anyone who earns less than $44,701/yr (i.e. the majority of the population) will see no change and anyone who makes between $44,701 and $202k will see a tax cut.

I mean, obv, if you make over $202k, you will see a tax raise, to be clear.

Great interview with Trudeau this morning on CBC.
The jist:
Why did you vote for C51 when you previously opposed it?
A: To keep Canadians safe and blahblahblah until we win the election then we'll change it and...look can we just talk about middleclass families or something?

http://www.cbc.ca/earlyedition/podcast/2015/05/13/liberal-leader-justin-trudeau/

yup. was leaning Liberal up until this C51 horseshit. looks like i'll probably be sticking with the NDP.

This comes out of nowhere (and is quite possibly unreliable).

Another WTF: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/alberta-politics/Joint+investigation+coming+into+alleged/11052314/story.html

Sooo Bill C51 passes with full support from the Liberals. It's all coming together for the NDP.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/new-poll-puts-federal-ndp-ahead-of-tories-and-liberals-suggesting-race-has-changed-drastically-after-alberta-election

Also ugh @ that JT interview

Yeeessssss! I'm wishing so hard right now that the NDP can catch another popularity wave because they damn well deserve it! Or rather, Trudeau and Harper don't deserve anyone's support.

Also, got a little inside gossip about the Trudeau interview. He threatened to pull out if he wasn't tossed a few soft ball questions about middle-class Canadian families etc but Rick Cluff refused saying it was just about C51. Drama ensued but Trudeau ended up doing it anyway, presumably thinking he could turn the conversation over to that at some point. Which he tried to do but failed miserably!

With PKP as leader, the PQ is dropping any pretence of being a left-leaning party, right?

Depends on what. I don't think the PQ will suddenly turn their backs on the LGBT and women rights. On the other side, they have always been more or less openly xenophobic. As for the economics, Bouchard is the one that introduced austerity to the province, he is the real Thatcher figure in the province, but that will be shushed by Le Devoir and other intellectual french-speaking news sources, who seem to keep that specific kind of bile for the Liberal party.

But yeah, I'm moving to Toronto in october and I'm very glad I won't have to deal with PKP. He is dangerous.

I hope the NDP wins a majority so that Quebeckers actually realize they aren't alone in the whole hating Harper thing.

Fun story, the Karl in Pierre-Karl is for Karl Marx, an idol of PKP in his Sorbonne's year.

Grenier suggests a type of proportional representation that sounds better than other versions of PR: http://www.threehundredeight.com/2015/05/a-proposal-for-electoral-reform.html

I still feel like FPTP with greater autonomy and accountability for individual MPs might be a good, and simpler, option.

that sounds way better than all the other alternatives i've heard.

but the chances it ever happens are so low.

Coyne on fire:
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-peter-mackay-was-a-politician-of-many-titles-but-little-achievement
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-we-have-the-form-of-a-parliamentary-democracy-but-not-the-substance

LOL at this Mulcair story. Executive Director of the Conservative Party Says Mulcair Wouldn't Work With Us.

It's unclear how this is supposed to do anything but make Mulcair look even better.

O I C. He's Eve Adams's fiance. Phewf.

Yeah, an obvious leak to the media from the Libs. Now this must be a major milestone for the federal NDP...

Great to see those figures. Feels like the NDP will increase their support even more as it becomes clearer that he is the best bet to get rid of Harper. (He's a great candidate for PM apart from that too.)

https://www.rt.com/news/311315-tpp-deal-canada-cbc-profit/

lot of ppl freaking out about this but like... kind of hard for me to imagine singapore suing the cbc for... not cancelling republic of doyle?

Mulcair totally won the Clarity Act exchange, as someone who has been ambivalent about the Act. May was surprisingly impressive earlier imo.

Justin Trudeau is a cliche-machine

He should be in the NHL

lol

He actually did a little better than I expected but that probably says more about my expectations.

OK wow these closing remarks. "You need to feel it in your bones"?

"Canada is what it is" - Justin Trudeau

haha classic

Back to the ol' Duffy trial then...Anyone got anything to say? I get the fraud, I get the cover up but I'm not sure I understand who Duffy was bribing.

Just read this good piece by Sandy Garrasino. Too much to hope for that this is going to cook Harper's goose once and for all?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html

That article represents the strongest apparent force in the election (the same as the last two elections btw): that Harper needs to be removed. That tactic is not going to work unless a larger amount of Canadians rally around something that is more than an alternative to Harper.

I doubt I'm the only one that is sick of seeing anti-Harper memes going around. They often play into his hands. eg. you'll often hear complaints about him insisting on calling the government "the Harper Government". But his most vocal enemies portray it that way also. It takes away from the Conservatives' horrible policy decisions etc. to make it all about this man who is actually very popular with a huge amount of Cdns.

some ppl i know say the ndp has moved to the centre and is now indistinguishable from the liberal party

but i talked to my dad and he says it's the libs and the cpc that are indistinguishable

what do u think?

Back to the ol' Duffy trial then...Anyone got anything to say? I get the fraud, I get the cover up but I'm not sure I understand who Duffy was bribing.

I didn't think Duffy was accused of bribing anyone. My understanding is that he is being accused of accepting a bribe.

some ppl i know say the ndp has moved to the centre and is now indistinguishable from the liberal party

Third time I'm having this conversation in the last couple of days but I honestly don't see how Mulcair's NDP is further to the right of Layton's NDP. They're a little more pro-Israel and they've moved a little away from green politics towards a more traditionally pro-labour social democratic platform but I don't see that as a move to the right per se. (I may well vote Green though.) They're certainly distinct from the Liberals on a bunch of things: the Senate (where I disagree with the NDP), child care (where I don't think now is the time for it), C-51 (thank God), taxes (where I prefer the NDP but wish they'd be more willing to scrap more of the Tories' BS tax breaks), the Clarity Act (I tend to prefer the NDP on this), seeking a stronger role for labour/unions.

xpost. I think I found my answer. Charges 29 is about Duffy accepting Wright's cheque. But they have to establish that Duffy did something in exchange for the cheque. In his testimony Wright is trying to make it seem like charity. But if the police think it's a bribe then why hasn't Wright (or anyone else) been charged also?

That's the strangest aspect of this whole thing for me.

Hmmm. I did a bit of googling and:

1. The part of the criminal code used for charge 29 is for transactions between government employees and non-government organisations/individuals. So maybe it doesn't apply because the are BOTH government employees.

2. RCMP commissionair Bob Paulson said that the public would soon know why Wright wasn't charged. That was in April 2014.

It takes away from the Conservatives' horrible policy decisions etc.

i don't think the average voter cares about policy, sadly.

I'm very scared of the conservatives getting in again, for some reason I feel it's the most likely outcome of this election. don't think it's an unfounded fear: they've seemed to alternate with the NDP at the top of the polling numbers the last couple of months, and they're the incumbents - which always makes things easier.

i would take anyone but harper. trudeau is glib, and the liberals have been very opportunistic of late - their stance on C-51, their stance on electoral reform (a complete U-turn). But if they got in and provided electoral reform I'd be delighted. First past the post is bad enough at the best of times, but in Canada with the three party race it makes no sense, and in fact is sort of shockingly shitty and undemocratic that a party that receives around a third of the vote will likely form a majority government.

im an environmentalist, and so neither of the 3 parties really promise enough for me. but canada's wealth is so based on resource extraction that it sadly simply isn't possible for a mainstream party to have a radical approach to emissions imo :/ at least trudeau and mulcair aren't climate change denialists, unlike steve.

mulcair's ndp is centrist and personally im not that excited at the prospect of them governing (know lots of ndp supporters who have inflated, pollyannaish expectations of an ndp government), but i will be as happy as i can expect to be from an election if they win.

the problem is that harper and the conservatives aren't that unpopular with a huge amount of the populace. while the kind of people i hang out with are spewing over c-51, and the xenophobic anti-muslim bent of the current government, i don't think the average canadian gives too much of a damn (maybe im wrong). also for all the talk of the economy being screwed, and i suppose it is, there's still a lot of contented, wealthy people who are quite happy with how things are going.

xxp I find that confusing too. Here's an older article addressing the question: http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/why-mike-duffy-is-facing-charges-and-nigel-wright-isnt/

Rob Walsh, the former House of Commons law clerk and counsel, who has been closely following the Duffy file, says it is possible the RCMP are preparing to argue that ill-intent existed on only one side of the transaction. The bribery charge—section 119—hinges on the word “corruptly,” Walsh notes. “It says ‘corruptly gives’ and ‘corruptly gets’. You have to look at the context here.”

Derek Lee, a lawyer and former Liberal MP, says he can envision a scenario in which Wright acted without knowing the full story. “It happens in politics. You get bad advice, you trust the wrong people,” says Lee, who spent 23 years in Ottawa and is now counsel to the Toronto firm Sun & Partners. “As far as I can see, Nigel Wright received no benefit from any of this. In fact, it was a major interruption in a great career.”

I'm curious how often this happens. There'd have to be some odd miscommunication going on for a transaction to be a bribe on one side and a gift on the other.

My gut feeling is still that the NDP will win in October, but it's mostly just a feeling. I think people are fatiguing of neoliberalism, even on a global scale (looking at e.g. the AB election and the surge in popularity for Bernie Sanders, which would have been unthinkable five years ago), and I think Canadians are fatiguing of the CPC, many of whose leading lights have departed now. Tory posters on other boards don't even seem all that enthused about Tory policy as much as they dislike the opposition parties.

mulcair's ndp is centrist

Centrist relative to what? We have had neoliberal governments at the federal level for over two decades now, with Liberals slashing programs and cutting taxes as much as or more than the Tories, with maybe a brief shift in 05 with the Lib minority. I think the NDP would at least begin to move away from this trend.

And, to be clear, I think the NDP platform leaves much to be desired! I was much more inspired by May in the Maclean's debate so, uh, maybe I agree with you?

yeah I really didn't need to write that, and it's not a very important or pertinent aspect to argue over.

yeah, the only thing that kept me from voting green was that i knew it'd make a bigger difference if i voted strategically. it's the same problem as always, though. i know that voting for the green party would help them get more seats, but that may mean getting a government like the tories, which is what happened last time i voted.

What constituencies are you in? I'm in Van East. Voting Green here would not help the Green Party at all and would hurt NDP. Our NDP candidate Jenny Kwan is about as good as I could hope for and the Green candidate is not someone I'd vote for at this point.

i feel like everyone should vote tactically, unless youre in a constituency - such as Van East - where there's no chance of the conservatives winning. i know this is a stance a lot of people balk at.

I just moved to the US two weeks ago but my riding is Ottawa Centre. The riding is almost guaranteed to the NDP so a Green vote would be safe. However, it is guaranteed to the NDP because Paul Dewar is a pretty strong MP who would likely get a cabinet seat if the NDP formed government. And, yeah, the Green candidate doesn't seem nearly as strong.

I think I also disagree with the Greens on GMOs, although it's something I could overlook, seeing as how they won't form government.

xp