Politics Briefing: O’Toole shares his economic vision

by · The Globe and Mail

Hello,

A Conservative government would take about a decade to eliminate the massive deficits created by the COVID-19 pandemic, new leader Erin O’Toole says, and it would do so without steep austerity cuts.

Mr. O’Toole spoke to The Globe about his vision for how to steer the economy if his party took government in the future.

He also said he would increase the number of immigrants through the family reunification program, as a way to help residents here with childcare and those who are running small businesses.

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TODAY’S HEADLINES

A senior Chinese government official says that “dozens” of countries declined to follow the U.S. extradition request for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested at a Vancouver airport by Canadian authorities in 2018. Canada was the only one that helped the United States “in this kind of dirty game,” Chinese Foreign Ministry official Lu Kang alleged. He offered no evidence for the assertion. The U.K. said it does not answer questions about extraditions, and other countries did not get back to The Globe when asked.

The Canadian economy added a quarter of a million new jobs in August, meaning that about 64 per cent of the jobs lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been replaced so far.

Update on which political parties are taking the federal wage subsidy: the Liberals say they have stopped, the New Democrats say they will continue, the Conservatives say they will stop and pay back what they were given, and the Bloc Québécois never took money from the program in the first place.

If a federal election is called this fall, there is a sort of pilot project going on right now in New Brunswick as the province prepares to vote in a few weeks. Elections New Brunswick says it is getting far more requests for mail-in ballots than it ever has before.

And Facebook, which has long resisted governing political speech on its platform, says it will ban new election ads from being purchased in the week leading up to the Nov. 3 vote in the U.S.

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s positions: “He is bullish on immigration, especially through reuniting families. He would end the ban on blood donations from gay men. He’s prepared to take a decade to balance the budget. He actually understands and cares about foreign policy. Erin O’Toole is unlike any Conservative leader you have seen.”

Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on Liberal government spending and debt: “A prudent person might suppose that if rates are lower now than they have ever been, they are also lower than they are likely to be in future. But the basis of the government’s plan is that they will stay this low forever, or at least until the next election, which amounts to the same thing.”

Eugene Arcand (The Globe and Mail) on the government’s recognition of the history of the residential-school system: “We are not sharing these experiences because we want Canadians to feel the same guilt and shame we carried for years – feelings we did not understand. We share these experiences because we want all Canadians to confront the truth of this country’s history. Reconciliation requires acknowledging the truth and ensuring that the truth is never forgotten.”

Hooman Katirai, Rida Bukhari and Sahanna Alphonsus (The Globe and Mail) on how to fix some of the hurdles to delivering COVID-19 vaccines: “We have already sought to bring back retired nurses and physicians to fight the pandemic, so the logical next place to look is the pharmacists, which are already the most accessible healthcare providers. But unlike physicians and nurses, pharmacists must complete additional training before they can administer injections. It is estimated that about a third of pharmacists lack this training.”

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