Will the NDP be able to influence the economic statement?

What we’ve seen in a lot of the projects that have been announced they announced a project in Edmonton for example uh about 5411 homes only 133% of them are affordable and this is on public land so they’re using public land to build homes which is a great idea but only 133% are

Affordable so then what do you want them to do differently we want 100% of the homes to be affordable if you’re going to build land or build home on public land every single one of them should be affordable NDP leader jug me singing this morning

Uh laying out some of what he hopes to see in the government’s upcoming fall economic statement a mini budget of sorts his wish list carries a lot of weight with the NDP propping up the minority liberal government right now which also helps avoid an election at a

Time when the Tories are seeing surging support in the polls but the feds have also promised to exercise fiscal restraint next week with this fall economic statement take a listen we have to be sure that we make the Investments Canadians need provide them with the support they need but do

It within a fiscally responsible framework we won’t we won’t be able to do everything let’s bring back the front bench to talk about that Christy Clark John T and Tom mare Tom I’ll start off just asking you about the political Dynamics here because just like this

Time a year ago Mr Sing is able to come out talk about how we’d like to see rent subsidies and more action on housing for example and a year ago all the things he talked about lo and behold turned up in the fall economic statement How likely

Do you think that is this time around too well I think I would listen to that last statement by Chris deer Freeland very carefully we can’t do everything of all the things that are on the table there’s one that’s crucial to this debate and it’s whether or not Mr

Trudeau is going to respect that part of his deal with M Mr Sing forward legislation to provide for pharmacare now it can be a framework and Mr chudo is certainly going to have a partly private partly public system Mr Singh Is insisting that it’s going to be an

Absolute fail unless it’s fully public uh no the best and most complete system in Canada is a hybrid system it’s in Quebec and it works so Mr Singh can say that because he works closely with the public sector unions and of course pleading for more public sector jobs is

Part of his role but I I don’t think that that’s a deal breaker what would be a deal breaker though is if they don’t bring forward that legislation so keep an eye on that because it really could be trick one thing that I would add and everybody

Tends to forget this we saw it on the carbon tax it was a big issue it could almost have been called a confidence question what happened the BL kqu back Mr trudo quv can say that it’s a you know it’s a deal between the separatists and trudo he’ll score a political point

On that but it is a simple fact that the block has more than enough seats has a lot more seats than the NDP has more than enough seats to prop up the Liberals on any confidence vote and by the way the BL has no interest whatsoever in going to an election so

Whether or not the deal between sing and Trudeau gets torn up and I don’t think it will but if it ever were the Block’s going to prop up the Liberals for as long as it takes Trudeau’s going to be the one to decide the day of the next

Election he crosses the lawn or the snow from RTO Cottage too Hall and he gets a RIT that’s how it’s going to happen yeah I don’t have any sense Christie that the NDP is laying any of the groundwork for being able to say at the at the end of the Fall economic

Statement it’s not enough we’re leaving it seems as though they don’t even expect the pharmacare legislation to come in the fall economics stent that it will likely come after and like Tom said it’s just legislation they need to introduce they don’t need to even say when it’s going to be implemented or

Attach the money to it at this point in order to satisfy the deal to me the signals right now are that things stay status quo I’m not sure what is your sense well I think Jag me Singh has a problem fundamentally in that the Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau is

Basically like the NDP not the NDP that was led by Tom mare something a little bit more interventionist and bigger spending than he would probably um than he would probably imagine if he was the Prime Minister of Canada so I think that’s a you know that’s a that’s a

Political problem for them if their Mount voters are going to go and support you know kind of the deao um sort of left leftwing party in Canada which is now uh Justin Trudeau’s party so there’s that I do think though um I think Tom’s political analysis is absolutely spoton

About when the election will be called I think uh prime minister Trudeau is going to hang on for as long as he can until he feels it’s it the time is opportune for him to run again and I also but I also think you know in answer to your

Question about fall economic statement it’s a real problem because Canada is has seen our our um GDP growth ratio stagnate for the last six years we’ve seen our uh standard of living compared to other oec countries just drop precipitously we are seeing all kinds of really terrible statistics that suggest

Canada needs to get a hold of the debt and the spending and the growth in government and the growth in taxes if we don’t have a fall economic statement that really decides to hit those things head on I don’t think Canadians are going to find themselves better off next

Year than they are even this year at the micro level though John and you’ve spoken about this before there’s also a lot of pressure on the government to address the affordability crisis at a more individual level right and uh you can hear that in the way that people are

Still really really grappling with the cost of living here and the government is sort of sending two signals that at times seem at odds with each other right the the message we heard from Minister Freeland about we can’t do everything and then also at the the same time

Talking frequently about uh we’re going to do more on affordability more on housing think about rents H how can you do both of those things at once or how do you communicate around that I don’t know first of all I should say I think chrisy is 100% right about the fact that

What you’d wish this economic statement might do is focus a little bit on how we can get our economy back on track because that will help Canadians with affordability if they’re doing better U and if the economy is doing better and there’s more and better jobs uh but I

Think look I think we have to also look at the fact if you read carefully the words of what Jag be sing is said he wants leaving aside the pharmaceutical uh program which you know may or may not be a litmus test in this statement he said he wants things like price fixing

Address to bring down grocery prices well I don’t know how much price fixing of any there is going on but that’s a fairly straightforward thing for the government to deal with in some way or other it’s not going to really affect grocery prices though you know the price

Of oranges in California is going to have more to do with that um and the same to is true uh on the housing issue where he talks about how we should be putting more of the money the rent Finance uh assistance and so on went into nonprofits and cooperatives and

They actually have some money in the National Housing strategy so I think you’ll see that get announced or reann anced uh as part of saying okay we’re satisfying some of what he said there’s no way you’re going to have buildings that are going to be 100% affordable

Unless the government comes up with a lot more money but I think then the other side they have kind of addressed nothing happens by accident where they made that announcement even though we talked about it here and said it was a drop in the bucket which it is of $500

Million in savings so I think they’ll trumpet that cancel a couple of things that we haven’t heard about and make it sound like they’re in their belts which they’ve made it almost impossible for themselves to do Tom from a Communications perspective or maybe a more political perspective you’re sitting around in the prime

Minister’s office over the next few days or over the past few weeks with the Finance Minister are you hoping that you can land something that resonates with Canadians that sort of draws a few headlines that that are not uh about the carbon tax for example or something like

That or are you hoping it just flies under the radar no I mean competency and in public administration and the ability to manage the public purse are a couple of the weaker spots for Mr Trudeau and his team and they’ve got to start answering that criticism by PF they’ve

Got to have a better answer than the one that they have right now so this is an opportunity to do just that I mean balanced budgets you know I remember running on balanced budgets in 2015 boy that sounds like it was a century ago because we’re hundreds of billions of

Dollars now in new debt since the pandemic and Mr Trudeau had already blown you know the budget by a 100 billion before the the the pandemic K so the public is doesn’t have a detailed sense of what this mean but they have an overall sense of what it means and it

Comes in at a time when you know inflation is high the cost of living is high people are worried economically they want to sense that the government’s got to handle on this it’s not been one of the strengths of Mr Trudeau and I think that he’s got to begin answering

That I think that’s part of their Communications plan to answer your question come next week I just have uh time for one last uh question and one last answer Christie just just to you know play devil’s advocate for a second the government has blown past their initial uh you know

Promises of small and modest budgets in many different instances right off the B and then further so through the pandemic and they keep getting reelected albeit with you know a smaller portion of the popular vote but they do keep getting reelected is it maybe not the most politically important thing to Canadians

In the immediacy I know we’re all talking about the long-term impact of that debt and of those the deficits but are maybe when Canadians vote they are not as concerned about it as as the three of you well I mean federal government spending and its impact on

The economy has a long leg so being irresponsible with the Public’s money growing government raising taxes is all kind of you know well and fine or lost in the debate as long as people are still doing okay but then eventually that starts to really bite that that irresponsible government management a

Lack of control of the public books it and this is what we’re starting to see now is we’re starting to see stagnating wages stagnating productivity our standard of living going down compared to the rest of our our peers in the world that is the result of 10 years of

Mismanagement and it takes a while to catch up and you know to what John said a little earlier the federal government can do some things to try and improve people’s uh people’s sense of of being able to keep up they can cut taxes they can cut regulation they can make sure

That we’re attracting more investment and cutting taxes is probably the single most uh important and uh quickest thing the federal government can do to make Li people’s lives a little bit easier every day and the rest of the stuff will take longer to fix that’s something they

Could do in the statement if they decided to do so well I look forward to reconvening next week to evaluate what happens I’m so sorry John I have to I have to take the commercial break but I appreciate the discussion tonight thank John Tory tumlare and Christy Clark our front bench

Will the NDP’s wish list for the economic statement be granted by the feds? The Front Bench panel weighs in.

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