National
Paul Wells on PM Trudeau’s cabinet shake up
Rechie Valdez teared up a bit taking her oath. It was nice.
Posted with permission from Substack author Paul Wells
The army you have
Exciting new combinations of Liberals and syllables
I skipped almost the entire cabinet-shuffle business on Wednesday. I think I’ve mostly managed to avoid getting jaded in this job, but there are days, boy howdy. Welcome, Minister Blah Blah Blah to the crucial office of Provision, Preparedness, Children and Popular Song. Congratulations, hug your kids. Next.
Then here was Rechie Valdez’s voice catching as she took the oaths (one for entry into the Council of the Elders and the other to join the Resonant Circle of the One, or whatever) and for just a minute, boredom took a holiday. The people who do these jobs should be emotional about them. Optimism is a good thing. Small businesses are definitely on the list of things worth caring about. Go get ’em, minister.
Paul Wells is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of days like this. During the 2021 campaign, when things were going badly, the official line out of the Trudeau brain trust was that the prime minister “doesn’t do shakeups.” And yet here’s one now. What’s changed?
There are always two ready answers to such a question. For one, the world has changed, as it always does. Previous shuffles addressed the astonishing 2016 votes for Brexit and Trump, and the less epochal but still significant election of Doug Ford as Ontario premier in 2018. In late 2021, when Trudeau was randomly firing one of the most experienced ministers in his cabinet, it might still have been possible to believe the PM’s third term in office wouldn’t be dominated by Russia, China, and the knock-on effects from a sharp increase in immigration. The misplaced optimism of that bygone era 20 months ago can no longer be maintained.
Second, the electoral context has changed. “We have all the time in the world before the next election” has become “We sure don’t,” and the readers who get cross when I link to horse-race polls are going to hate clicking on this.
I guess this shuffle is designed to address the Poilievre threat? Kind of? Listlessly? A year ago Trudeau was already getting advice to make sharp, noticeable changes in his team, message and style. (Yes, I just linked to myself.) Today he put Sean Fraser in charge of Housing and Marc Miller in charge of Immigration. Those might be the two most encouraging moves among dozens, both for Liberals who hope “good communicators” won’t turn out to be a sad joke, and for citizens who hope strong administrators might, even if only occasionally, be put in charge of challenging files.
The rest of the day’s news is puzzling. Seamus O’Regan to Labour? I thought the boss liked him. Pablo Rodriguez to Transport would seem to be yet another case of ministerial burnout on all those Web Giant-Killer bills that have become the torment of a succession of Heritage ministers. Pascale St.-Onge replaces him on the censorship ‘n’ subsidies beat, ringing a new variation on the eternal question: Why do they call it Canadian Heritage if only ministers from Quebec are allowed to do the job?
Gary Anandasangaree at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Arif Virani as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General are two cases of rookie ministers promoted to tough jobs. I’ve heard good things about both of them. Both have relevant committee and parliamentary-secretary experience. Virani was Jody Wilson-Raybould’s parliamentary secretary; she seems not to have kept many fond memories. (In her memoir she calls him one of the “talking heads” who were sent out “to make comments that evidence has now shown were not accurate or right.” In general, Trudeau, a non-lawyer mostly counselled by non-lawyers, seems to be chronically unsure why he should have a justice minister or what they are good for.)
Freeland, Guilbeault, Champagne and Joly remain in their previous jobs, evidence of their clout. On the other hand, I maintain that Rodriguez’s being shuffled was evidence of his clout. By now it’s clear that Freeland writes her own rules: she does the work she wants to do, to varying degrees of success, and nobody in this government can make her do anything else. Her fate is bound up with the prime minister’s. Probably neither of them expected it, but the stability of the tandem is now part of Trudeauworld’s game physics.
Cabinet shuffles defy confident prediction, or should. Will Jean-Yves Duclos make a difference as Public Services and Procurement Minister? He should. He’s a detail man in a detail job. But ministers are rarely better than they are permitted to be by circumstances and by the circle around the PM. Duclos will shine if this government wants to buy stuff, and not if it doesn’t.
That 2021 bit of campaign spin wasn’t entirely false. In some ways this prime minister really doesn’t do shakeups. He keeps his chief of staff, his indispensable deputy, his own way of thinking and talking about his government. Everything else swirls around. He came to office promising real change. Increasingly what’s real is what doesn’t change.
Paul Wells is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Invite your friends and earn rewards
Alberta
Punishing Alberta Oil Production: The Divisive Effect of Policies For Carney’s “Decarbonized Oil”
From Energy Now
By Ron Wallace
The federal government has doubled down on its commitment to “responsibly produced oil and gas”. These terms are apparently carefully crafted to maintain federal policies for Net Zero. These policies include a Canadian emissions cap, tanker bans and a clean electricity mandate.
Following meetings in Saskatoon in early June between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Canadian provincial and territorial leaders, the federal government expressed renewed interest in the completion of new oil pipelines to reduce reliance on oil exports to the USA while providing better access to foreign markets. However Carney, while suggesting that there is “real potential” for such projects nonetheless qualified that support as being limited to projects that would “decarbonize” Canadian oil, apparently those that would employ carbon capture technologies. While the meeting did not result in a final list of potential projects, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said that this approach would constitute a “grand bargain” whereby new pipelines to increase oil exports could help fund decarbonization efforts. But is that true and what are the implications for the Albertan and Canadian economies?
The federal government has doubled down on its commitment to “responsibly produced oil and gas”. These terms are apparently carefully crafted to maintain federal policies for Net Zero. These policies include a Canadian emissions cap, tanker bans and a clean electricity mandate. Many would consider that Canadians, especially Albertans, should be wary of these largely undefined announcements in which Ottawa proposes solely to determine projects that are “in the national interest.”
The federal government has tabled legislation designed to address these challenges with Bill C-5: An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility Act and the Building Canada Act (the One Canadian Economy Act). Rather than replacing controversial, and challenged, legislation like the Impact Assessment Act, the Carney government proposes to add more legislation designed to accelerate and streamline regulatory approvals for energy and infrastructure projects. However, only those projects that Ottawa designates as being in the national interest would be approved. While clearer, shorter regulatory timelines and the restoration of the Major Projects Office are also proposed, Bill C-5 is to be superimposed over a crippling regulatory base.
It remains to be seen if this attempt will restore a much-diminished Canadian Can-Do spirit for economic development by encouraging much-needed, indeed essential interprovincial teamwork across shared jurisdictions. While the Act’s proposed single approval process could provide for expedited review timelines, a complex web of regulatory processes will remain in place requiring much enhanced interagency and interprovincial coordination. Given Canada’s much-diminished record for regulatory and policy clarity will this legislation be enough to persuade the corporate and international capital community to consider Canada as a prime investment destination?
As with all complex matters the devil always lurks in the details. Notably, these federal initiatives arrive at a time when the Carney government is facing ever-more pressing geopolitical, energy security and economic concerns. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that Canada’s economy will grow by a dismal one per cent in 2025 and 1.1 per cent in 2026 – this at a time when the global economy is predicted to grow by 2.9 per cent.
It should come as no surprise that Carney’s recent musing about the “real potential” for decarbonized oil pipelines have sparked debate. The undefined term “decarbonized”, is clearly aimed directly at western Canadian oil production as part of Ottawa’s broader strategy to achieve national emissions commitments using costly carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects whose economic viability at scale has been questioned. What might this mean for western Canadian oil producers?
The Alberta Oil sands presently account for about 58% of Canada’s total oil output. Data from December 2023 show Alberta producing a record 4.53 million barrels per day (MMb/d) as major oil export pipelines including Trans Mountain, Keystone and the Enbridge Mainline operate at high levels of capacity. Meanwhile, in 2023 eastern Canada imported on average about 490,000 barrels of crude oil per day (bpd) at a cost estimated at CAD $19.5 billion. These seaborne shipments to major refineries (like New Brunswick’s Irving Refinery in Saint John) rely on imported oil by tanker with crude oil deliveries to New Brunswick averaging around 263,000 barrels per day. In 2023 the estimated total cost to Canada for imported crude oil was $19.5 billion with oil imports arriving from the United States (72.4%), Nigeria (12.9%), and Saudi Arabia (10.7%). Since 1988, marine terminals along the St. Lawrence have seen imports of foreign oil valued at more than $228 billion while the Irving Oil refinery imported $136 billion from 1988 to 2020.
What are the policy and cost implication of Carney’s call for the “decarbonization” of western Canadian produced, oil? It implies that western Canadian “decarbonized” oil would have to be produced and transported to competitive world markets under a material regulatory and financial burden. Meanwhile, eastern Canadian refiners would be allowed to import oil from the USA and offshore jurisdictions free from any comparable regulatory burdens. This policy would penalize, and makes less competitive, Canadian producers while rewarding offshore sources. A federal regulatory requirement to decarbonize western Canadian crude oil production without imposing similar restrictions on imported oil would render the One Canadian Economy Act moot and create two market realities in Canada – one that favours imports and that discourages, or at very least threatens the competitiveness of, Canadian oil export production.
Ron Wallace is a former Member of the National Energy Board.
From the Fraser Institute
Canadians continue to endure long wait times for health care. And while waiting for care can obviously be detrimental to your health and wellbeing, it can also hurt your pocketbook.
In 2024, the latest year of available data, the median wait—from referral by a family doctor to treatment by a specialist—was 30 weeks (including 15 weeks waiting for treatment after seeing a specialist). And last year, an estimated 1.5 million Canadians were waiting for care.
It’s no wonder Canadians are frustrated with the current state of health care.
Again, long waits for care adversely impact patients in many different ways including physical pain, psychological distress and worsened treatment outcomes as lengthy waits can make the treatment of some problems more difficult. There’s also a less-talked about consequence—the impact of health-care waits on the ability of patients to participate in day-to-day life, work and earn a living.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, wait times for non-emergency surgery cost Canadian patients $5.2 billion in lost wages in 2024. That’s about $3,300 for each of the 1.5 million patients waiting for care. Crucially, this estimate only considers time at work. After also accounting for free time outside of work, the cost increases to $15.9 billion or more than $10,200 per person.
Of course, some advocates of the health-care status quo argue that long waits for care remain a necessary trade-off to ensure all Canadians receive universal health-care coverage. But the experience of many high-income countries with universal health care shows the opposite.
Despite Canada ranking among the highest spenders (4th of 31 countries) on health care (as a percentage of its economy) among other developed countries with universal health care, we consistently rank among the bottom for the number of doctors, hospital beds, MRIs and CT scanners. Canada also has one of the worst records on access to timely health care.
So what do these other countries do differently than Canada? In short, they embrace the private sector as a partner in providing universal care.
Australia, for instance, spends less on health care (again, as a percentage of its economy) than Canada, yet the percentage of patients in Australia (33.1 per cent) who report waiting more than two months for non-emergency surgery was much higher in Canada (58.3 per cent). Unlike in Canada, Australian patients can choose to receive non-emergency surgery in either a private or public hospital. In 2021/22, 58.6 per cent of non-emergency surgeries in Australia were performed in private hospitals.
But we don’t need to look abroad for evidence that the private sector can help reduce wait times by delivering publicly-funded care. From 2010 to 2014, the Saskatchewan government, among other policies, contracted out publicly-funded surgeries to private clinics and lowered the province’s median wait time from one of the longest in the country (26.5 weeks in 2010) to one of the shortest (14.2 weeks in 2014). The initiative also reduced the average cost of procedures by 26 per cent.
Canadians are waiting longer than ever for health care, and the economic costs of these waits have never been higher. Until policymakers have the courage to enact genuine reform, based in part on more successful universal health-care systems, this status quo will continue to cost Canadian patients.
Mackenzie Moir
Senior Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
Anti-Trump protests planned across the country on Saturday as LA violence continues
Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposes crackdown on digital privacy in Tucker Carlson interview
Carney’s Promise of Expediting Resource Projects Feels Like a Modern Version of the Wicked Stepmother from Disney’s Cinderella
