Mark Carney Will Give Tenants Money To Pay Rent

[Belleville lord]

Retaliation is one thing. Most Canadian politicians agree it’s a necessary weapon to fight a trade war against Donald Trump.

But how will Canada deal will the economic casualties? There are already stark differences on that.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford just won a landslide provincial election promising he’d go big to support affected workers. Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is sounding warnings about the cost.

When reporters asked Mr. Ford about supports on Tuesday, the Ontario Premier already seemed to have an image in his mind of what trade-war relief packages should look like. He said it should be “no different than the pandemic.”

It’s not that surprising. People are feeling vulnerable, especially in Ontario, the country’s manufacturing centre. Economists are predicting the trade war could lead to the loss of half a million jobs across the country, or even more. And Mr. Ford just won big promising to “protect Ontario” from the pain.

But Mr. Poilievre is on a different page. He gave his own press conference on Tuesday while Mr. Ford was still speaking, and said that he was in favour of some supports for affected workers – but warned about going big in pandemic style.

“We must not allow politicians to dishonestly use this crisis to once again launch a debt-fuelled, money-printing spending spree that will drive up inflation and further destroy the working class and hit the poorest people hardest,” he told reporters.

That’s pretty stark. And Mr. Poilievre’s reticence is not just about unrelated spending.

Unlike Mr. Ford, he doesn’t want to devote all the money Canada collects from counter-tariffs on U.S. goods on supports for companies and workers affected by the trade war. Mr. Poilievre thinks only a small part of the proceeds should be devoted to that.

“Almost every penny of the tariffs collected should go to tax cuts, with a small sum set aside for targeted relief to workers hardest hit by the trade war,” he said.

Tax cuts are always central to Mr. Poilievre’s rhetoric. He has promised “massive” tax cuts, although he hasn’t provided details.

The Conservative Leader apparently sees tax cuts as the chief tool to get Canadians through a trade war, too – rather than income supports for workers who have lost their jobs.

But that probably doesn’t offer the kind of direct reassurance that a lot of suddenly vulnerable workers will be seeking. It certainly isn’t the formula that just won Mr. Ford an election in Canada’s most populous province.

Mr. Poilievre is now at odds with the Ontario Premier on an issue that is at the top of voters’ concerns.

It’s also a different approach from the one taken by the person Mr. Poilievre is probably going to face in a general election: Mark Carney. The front-runner in the federal Liberal leadership race said he would introduce a tax cut, but that would be separate from trade-war income supports.

“It’s fundamentally important … to take the proceeds from our counter-tariffs and ensure that they go directly to those workers who are most affected by the American tariffs,” the former Bank of Canada governor told reporters in Calgary on Tuesday.

Even the deep damage of a lasting trade war shouldn’t require supports on the same scale as the roughly $210-billion the federal government poured out in wage subsidies and emergency benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the revenues from counter-tariffs applied to U.S. goods in a trade war won’t fill the government’s coffers with a huge windfall, either.

The current plan is to levy 25-per-cent tariffs on $155-billion in U.S. imports. But in practice, the tariffs will deter Canadian customers from buying many of those products.

If the tariffs bring in $15-billion, it won’t be enough to fully cover the costs of benefits for 500,000 unemployed workers. It wouldn’t fund a massive tax cut, either. Certainly, the proceeds wouldn’t pay for both.

For the moment, that’s still an abstract issue. But it could start to feel very real for a large number of Canadians very quickly. And Mr. Poilievre’s “small sum” for workers might seem a little skimpy to anxious Canadians. Certainly, Mr. Ford just won Ontario by promising he’d go big.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politic ... -supports/

I'm ok with this!

[D Dean - Student Landlord]

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