Month: April 2019

TORONTO — Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen emerged from an intergovernmental meeting in Winnipeg on Friday pledging to fight the Ontario Tories’ “narrative of fear” when it comes to the issue of asylum seekers.

Speaking to reporters, Hussen noted the absence of Lisa MacLeod, the Ontario cabinet minister in charge of immigration, from the lineup of provincial and territorial counterparts behind him.

“The track record of collaboration between Canada and Ontario is being challenged by the new government,” he said in reference to the new political dynamic with Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford.

Watch: PM says he explained asylum-seeking system to Doug Ford

The topics discussed at the meeting went beyond asylum seekers, Hussen said, adding the agenda also covered economic and francophone immigration, as well as settlement and integration issues.

At one point in the meeting, a government source said MacLeod walked away from the table after her provincial counterparts piled on Ontario for its recent language surrounding asylum seekers.

Toronto Mayor John Tory made an appeal to the federal government last month for additional funding to help cover the costs of housing an influx of asylum seekers that has stretched the city’s shelters to capacity.

The underlying urgency is to find a temporary housing solution in Toronto before Aug. 9 — that’s when students return to Centennial College and Humber College, two campuses that opened their empty dormitories to house asylum seekers during the summer, potentially leaving up to 800 newcomers homeless.

Earlier this week, the Ontario government blamed an asylum seeker “mess” on Ottawa and said Toronto needs $72 million to cover unanticipated housing costs to support asylum seekers.

Hussen accused the PC government of “regurgitating” language used by the previous federal government under former prime minister Stephen Harper that, he says, was used to victimize and demonize asylum seekers and newcomers.

The minister challenged the province’s classification of the issue as a “crisis,” saying the number of migrants crossing irregularly into Canada is relatively low.

“On some days we have only 14 people crossing the border,” he said.

Hussen accused the Ontario government of pitting groups of newcomers against each other by irresponsibly hawking a “fake and false queue-jumping narrative which simply doesn’t exist.” He called it “really unfortunate” and pledged to “fight back against that narrative of fear with fact.”

Ontario minister says Ottawa now owes $175 million

MacLeod spoke to reporters immediately after Hussen and explained why she left partway through the immigration forum with her federal, provincial, and territorial ministers counterparts.

She said she had entered the meeting with a “great deal of hope” and shared her own experiences with helping Syrian refugees, emphasizing the need for more integration supports.

MacLeod said she raised concerns about the “exorbitant” cost of housing an influx of asylum seekers, citing conversations she’s had with the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto. Both have requested $11 million and $75 million to cover related costs, respectively, she said.

MacLeod offered a recalculated figure for the amount Ottawa owes Ontario, a number which she said amounts to “about $175 million on top of the $3 million that Ontario provided to the Red Cross.”

But when Hussen began lauding the immigration system, MacLeod explained that’s when she decided to leave.

Hussen earlier likened Ontario’s chosen tact on the asylum seekers issue to “fear-mongering,” adding that it’s “not Canadian” and is “very dangerous.”

MacLeod rejected the immigration minister’s remarks.

She characterized the minister’s criticism as an attempt to call her “un-Canadian,” an accusation she said she takes “great offence” to and asked the federal minister to reconsider his language.

“I think maybe the minister should just sit down, have a nice cup of tea, calm down a little bit and maybe phone me, and apologize for calling me un-Canadian,” she said.

Hussen did not use the word “un-Canadian” to describe MacLeod in his remarks.

The immigration ministers meeting ended with the provinces and territories signing a joint communique. Saskatchewan and Ontario did not sign the communique, citing an impasse over a request that the federal government pay for all housing, health, and social service supports for asylum seekers.

Irregular border crossers hit one-year low

Mathieu Genest, spokesman for the immigration minister’s office, reiterated that the government is committed to ensuring the safety of Canadians as well as the integrity of the immigration system.

“The conservatives continue to make claims to support their campaign of fear, even when those claims are not supported by facts,” Genest said.

“We are committed to upholding our international obligations and will continue to call out the conservatives for trying to create fear and division in Canadian communities.”

Hussen’s office did not directly respond to HuffPost’s request to comment on MacLeod’s accusation that the immigration minister made “mean-spirited” remarks about her.

There were 1,263 irregular border crossers who entered Canada to claim asylum in June, the lowest monthly number recorded in a year, according to government data.

Last month, the federal government promised Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba — the three provinces bearing the brunt of processing asylum seekers’ claims — an initial $50 million in funding to help with related housing costs.

Of that $50-million fund, $11 million has been earmarked for Ontario. It’s an amount MacLeod called “insufficient” to meet the province’s needs.

The money is expected to start flowing to provinces at the end of July.

OTTAWA — Federal officials say there’ll be no problem adding Manitoba to the growing list of provinces where Ottawa will have to apply a carbon tax — but they’re still not ready to say exactly how the revenues raised by the tax will be given back to people in those provinces.

“We’re still completely on track to implement in regions where it is required by Jan. 1,” said an official in Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s office.

Manitoba did a sudden about-face Wednesday on its plan to start charging a $25 per tonne carbon tax this fall. Premier Brian Pallister said he was backing off because he could not get Ottawa to promise it wouldn’t force Manitoba to raise that price to $30 in 2020, $40 in 2021 and then to $50 in 2022.

Watch: Environment minister bemoans Manitoba ‘flip flop’

McKenna said she’s “perplexed” by Pallister’s move, since Ottawa is still in the middle of reviewing Manitoba’s plan to determine whether it meets the federal standard.

Under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, provinces that don’t have at least a $20-per-tonne price on carbon emissions by Jan. 1 will have such a price applied by Ottawa. All revenues from it are to be returned to people of the province where the money is collected but the details about how that rebate system will work have yet to be announced.

To avoid having the federal price imposed on them, all provinces had to submit their carbon pricing plans by Sept. 1 and McKenna told The Canadian Press recently that reviews of all those plans were ongoing. Speaking a few days before Manitoba’s pull-back, she said only Saskatchewan and Ontario were clearly lacking.

Saskatchewan’s government has rejected a carbon price from Day 1 and is planning to sue Ottawa over it. Ontario’s new Conservative government under Doug Ford cancelled that province’s cap and trade system almost before the ink on its swearing-in papers was dry.

Manitoba is now on that list, and it seems likely both New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island will be found lacking because their plans are to largely use existing programs rather than introduce new taxes.

Newfoundland hasn’t made public its plan. Nova Scotia has a cap-and-trade regime on its big industrial emitters and it’s not clear yet if that will meet Ottawa’s requirement for a broad-based carbon price.

Alberta will be fine for Jan. 1 but Premier Rachel Notley is no longer committing to raising her province’s carbon price in line with federal requirements because she is irritated that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is in limbo. Regardless, if Notley loses the Alberta election next year to United Conservative Party under Jason Kenney, he intends to kill the carbon tax in that province entirely.

A federal official speaking on background said the government needs to have all the reviews done and the plans in place by early December, if a Jan. 1 implementation date is to be met. She said an announcement on how carbon price rebates will work is likely come at the same time Ottawa announces which provinces have not met the federal standard.

McKenna reiterated that she would prefer provinces to have their own plans, but “if they don’t there will be a price on pollution across the country.”

When Ottawa first said it intended to force a national price on pollution, in the fall of 2016, it was at a time when the majority of governments across Canada were Liberal or carbon-tax friendly. While several of the Atlantic provinces were lukewarm at best to the idea of a carbon price, they still signed onto the Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

One of McKenna’s favourite talking points was to say “80 per cent of Canadians live in a province with a price on pollution.”

She can no longer say that.

Tory MP: Liberal plan is ‘clearly in shambles’

With several provinces backing away from carbon pricing the federal Conservatives are demanding the Liberals rethink their strategy.

“The Liberal carbon tax plan is clearly in shambles,” Alberta MP Mike Lake said during question period Thursday.

Ontario’s new premier, Doug Ford, is scrapping the province’s cap-and-trade program, designed to reward businesses that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, as part of his promise to make gasoline more affordable.

Where does carbon policy in Canada’s most populous province go from here?

Climate change isn’t going away by ignoring it and doing nothing. While Ford, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer all oppose carbon pricing, they do not offer any coherent alternative policies for mitigating climate change.

Under the current federal mandate, with no provincial policy in place, the federal government will enforce a backstop carbon levy on recalcitrant provinces. This levy, charged on all fuels that emit greenhouse gases, is due to rise to $50 a tonne by 2022, a carbon price almost twice the predicted price of carbon permits in 2022 under Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, linked with California and Québec.

The federal government accepted Ontario’s cap-and-trade system because the predicted carbon reductions under it were at least as large as those under a unilateral carbon backstop.

The theory is that California, with its older energy infrastructure and a larger industrial base, would supply a large number of cheap permits, allowing Ontario and Québec to reduce global emissions at a lower cost than if they instituted a provincial carbon tax.

But there’s uncertainty if the national carbon policy will succeed against populist politicians like Doug Ford, who has vilified carbon pricing as “the biggest rip-off I’ve ever seen.”

Jason Kenney promises to rid Alberta of its broad-based carbon tax if elected premier of Alberta. If that happens, there will be very little provincial support for the federal plan.

This political challenge is probably larger than the legal challenge launched by Saskatchewan against the federal carbon price. The federal government has broad powers to institute nationwide taxation under the Constitution.

Implementing a carbon tax differently

If the Justin Trudeau government wishes to reassert its green credentials, it will have to implement its backstop policy even in the face of vociferous opposition from Ontario and Saskatchewan. But to keep broad support for the plan, it might also have to change the way it implements it.

British Columbia’s carbon tax survived political changes because it was conceived as revenue-neutral: Tax revenue is returned through low-income climate action tax credits and other reductions of personal and corporate income taxes.

As currently written in the legislation, all revenue generated from the backstop should remain in the province. However, instead of returning it to the provincial government, the federal government should return it directly to taxpayers (Trudeau also hinted at this after his first meeting with Ford).

Each person, young or old, could receive an annual “carbon dividend” cheque. It would be impossible to denounce such a policy as “yet another tax grab.”

A carbon dividend also mitigates the most significant economic objection: That a carbon levy burdens poorer households disproportionately. Returning the revenue on a per-capita basis will correct this undesirable distributional effect. It is also a family-friendly policy, if children receive the same amount as their parents.

Family of four could get big dividend

In 2016, Ontario emitted 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. If a carbon price of $20 a tonne was applied to those emissions, the $3.2-billion revenue could be divided equally among Ontario’s 14.2 million residents. An Ontario family of four would receive an annual $900 cheque that could climb to over $2,000 in 2022 when the levy reaches $50 a tonne — an approximation because as the tax rises the tax base will shrink over time.

Canada has committed, through the Paris Agreement, to reduce carbon emissions to limit the increase of the global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That is a highly ambitious goal, and to meet Canada’s pledge, all provinces have to do their fair share to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon pricing works, as our own research shows. Per-capita fuel consumption decreases in response to permanent increases in fuel and carbon taxes. Much of the traction comes from purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles, and some from driving less or switching to other modes of transportation. Industry and households adjust likewise.

But the economic logic of carbon pricing is lost on voters if they only see what they will pay and not what they will get in return. A “carbon dividend” is Canada’s best hope to defend a much-needed climate change policy against resistance from antagonistic provincial governments.

Werner Antweiler, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia and Sumeet Gulati, Professor, University of British Columbia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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TORONTO — Facebook and Instagram will charge the goods and services tax on online advertisements purchased through their Canadian operations, but other technology giants said they aren’t ready to follow suit just yet.

The U.S.-based social media networks said they decided to apply the taxes by mid-2019 in an effort to “provide more transparency to governments and policy makers around the world who have called for greater visibility over the revenue associated with locally supported sales in their countries.”

The federal government has long faced pressure to force foreign online services to apply sales taxes to their work, but has shied away from such measures, despite its international trade committee urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make online services pay the taxes so small- and medium-sized businesses don’t lose customers to larger firms based abroad.

The decision to charge the taxes could create a windfall for the federal government and bring it closer to the 2020 deadline it set with other G20 countries to develop an international tax plan to address companies that are based in one country but have the potential to pay taxes in another.

In the wake of Facebook and Instagram’s announcement, a spokesperson for Twitter Canada said it does not currently charge sales taxes on ads and a representative for Uber Canada said it already applies sales taxes on all of its rides and food delivery orders in the country.

Google referred The Canadian Press to statements the company made back in May indicating that it would comply with legislation, should the federal government create regulations to require the collection of such taxes on digital sales.

The company noted that it already plans to comply with similar legislation Quebec passed around its sales tax.

Meanwhile, streaming service Netflix said only that it “pays all taxes when required by law.”

Short-term rental company Airbnb previously asked the federal government for regulation around taxes.

“We think as a platform our hosts should pay taxes. I know people get shocked when we say that, but we do. We think we should be contributing,” Alex Dagg, Airbnb’s public policy manager in Canada, said in an interview.

“We just need to figure out what are the appropriate rules in place to do that and how can we facilitate that.”

With files from Jordan Press in Ottawa

The new Ontario government’s decision to roll back the province’s sex education curriculum from the version updated in 2015 to the 1998 curriculum has been inspiring a lot of push back.

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives say the old curriculum will be in place until they can draft a revamped version after consultations with parents.

The 2015 sex-ed curriculum sparked controversy, particularly among social conservatives, when Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government first introduced it. Scrapping the updated curriculum was one of the election promises made by the Tories during the campaign.

New content in the 2015 curriculum included warnings about online bullying and sexting. But social conservatives weren’t happy about discussions of same-sex marriage, gender identity and masturbation.

Supporters of the updated document rallied in Queen’s Park on Saturday to protest its repeal.

They also gathered on Sunday in Ottawa to fight for the updated curriculum and used the hashtag #SexEdSavesLives to push back against the government’s decision online.

Here are some of the best signs from the Ottawa rally:

Twenty years really is a long time. A lot has happened since the old curriculum was put into play.