The road less taken on Trump and trade...
What if we had taken a different view on what we now call a trade war?
I’ve been thinking about this since Friday, ever since I watched U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer answer questions at the Iowa State Fair. Despite this being an American bureaucrat at a very American institution, all the questions were about Canada and seemingly from Canadians or Canadian politicians.
Hat tip to CBC Watcher on X for capturing this video from CBC and posting it.
The road less travelled…
My column for the Toronto Sun today was about how Greer’s words that they don’t view this as a trade war really stuck with me.
He’s not the first American official to say that. I’ve had several different American officials say it to my face.
They don’t think we are in a trade war, they view it differently, perhaps, if we had viewed it differently we would be a different position now.
That’s the crux of my column with a few things added in for context, I hope you give it a read.
Cash bail? Why yes, thank you…
The Ford government announced on Friday that they will require cash bail, starting today, for criminals in the justice system.
In my view this is good news and was the third win the Ford government had last week after changing regulations so that illegal immigrants can’t get welfare and winning at the Court of Appeal of Ontario on the ridiculous idea that there is a Charter right to bike lanes on specific roads.
Of course the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Criminal Lawyers Association have already launched a challenge against this.
“The cash bail provisions encroach on exclusive federal jurisdiction over criminal law. Even if Ontario could legislate in this area, the cash bail provisions conflict with the Criminal Code, which expressly requires courts to favour promises to pay over cash deposits. What Parliament made the exception, Ontario has made the rule.”
Yes, I know that grammatically, the last sentence should have a question mark at the end, but I didn’t write the legal brief.
Here is the strange thing about the issue of criminal law in Canada. The federal government sets the rules, but the provinces administer justice.
When the provinces were rightly claiming that Justin Trudeau’s bail reforms had resulted in a revolving door - remember the federal law said people should be released as quickly as possible under the least onerous conditions - the feds tried to blame the provinces. The changes happened due to federal law being altered, but they wanted to say the provinces were to blame.
Will Carney want to pick a fight with Ontario on this matter?
If I was Carney, I wouldn’t.
What about access to health care…
Of course the Carney Liberals showed up in the Toronto Star expressing concern about Alberta’s Bill 11 to allow doctors to split time between public and private care. This is the de facto situation across the entire country and in Health Minister Marjorie Michel’s home riding of Papineau, Quebec, there is even greater access to private health care thanks to the 2005 Chaoulli decision where the court turned itself into a pretzel to say that Quebecers had the right to private health care if public care was denied but the rest of the country did not.
I’ve been annoyed at the Chaoulli decision for more than 20 years, but most Canadians don’t know it exists.
“Where lack of timely health care can result in death, the s. 7 protection of life is engaged; where it can result in serious psychological and physical suffering, the s. 7 protection of security of the person is triggered,” former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote back in 2005.
Unfortunately, due to political reasons, the full court claimed that the access to care via private delivery only applied to Quebec. Now, we have a Quebec health minister telling Alberta that what is legal in Quebec is not legal in Alberta.
I’m sure people could find small differences in the cases, but the overarching issue is the same. So too is the fact that Quebec is allowed greater leniency by Liberals than the rest of the country.