Parses captions for PM Trudeau's daily speeches and presents them in a more human readable format
Rosemary:
Hello, there. I’m rosemary Barton here in Ottawa. Thank you for joining us. We’re standing by as we do for the Prime Minister’s daily pandemic update. He is expected to talk more about a new government support plan for businesses impacted by COVID-19. It was released just over an hour ago by federal finance Minister bill morneau. Tor it is a programme geared to mid-size and much larger businesses. The government calls it leif, an acronym for a long, clunky name. The large employer emergency financing facility programme. Governments are good at that. Its cornerstone, though, in Minister morneau’s words to help insolvencies to try to keep these big companies alive until the economy is back. Of course, we will also take you to Quebec where it is a back-to-school day in most of the province. But in a very different way. For thousands of kids outside the greater montreal region, elementary schools and daycares are gradually re-opening starting today. I should mention it is not mandatory at this stage to send your kids back and we’ll talk to a couple of people strugling with that decision. Let’s go to this major piece of policy announced earlier this morning by bill morneau and navdeep Bains. I’ll bring in My colleagues, the cbc’s david Cochrane and the host of “power & politics”, Vassy kapelos. Good to see you both. So this is a major announcement done at 9:30 because of the markets and the impacts that this could have on the markets. and the question everybody sort of had was is this the so-called sectoral aid package that airlines and tourism had been asking for and how will it help those sectors? and I think the short answer is yes, sort of. This is what – this is what the government has come up with. Vassy, over to you.
Vassy:
Yeah. I think “yes, sort of” is the perfect way to put it. The way in which it is presented is not as an aid package direct little for the airlines or directly for the oil sector. But we know over the last six to eight weeks that those two sectors have been particularly hard hit. We know the entire economy is hard hit. When you look at the oil patch, for example, they have the double whammy of a price war combined with depressed demand and then when you look at the airline and a tourism industry, more largely, they have completely stopped for the most part operating. I think air Canada took a $1 billion loss on the last quarter and that is before everything really hit. That only involves about two weeks of this pandemic. So, the way in which it is being presented is not as direct support or directed towards those specific sectors. But more broadly speaking to big companies that need some liquid thety, that need some money to get through this. So it’s kind of like a bridge programme to get you to the other side of the pandemic, which is very much similar to the kind of aid offered so far to smaller and medium-sized businesses. I think there are, though, because of the nature of this, because of the fact that it’s big companies we’re talking about, a lot of questions for the government about how this is going to work. and My primary question is how transparent will it be? in the past, when there has been aid and obviously it has been different – quote-unquote – bailouts versus loans. This is a loan. But in the past, there has been a lack of transparency about how those loans were made, what the conditions attached to them were. There were some conditions, for example, in 2008-2009. But we still see things happening, like part of the loan being written off years later or a plant closing. I think for Canadians who are watching today, their primary concern is if you are going to use money, taxpayer money to help big companies, which have been at times very profitable weather this storm, please make sure they end up employing Canadians for a while. That they keep their business in this country. and that there is some level of accountability for the money that they are able to access. Now the government does say that there will be strings attached. For example, limits on executive pay, dividends, share buybacks. They can’t be already involved in insolvency proceedings so you can’t be facing bankruptcy and this is just pulling you out of that. They have to respect collective agreements with unions. So for example, pensions would be part of that. But there’s still a lot of fine print missing. You know, how much will executive pay be limited. You know, things like that. I think obviously it is going to be dependent on the specific terms of the loan and the specific company to a certain degree. But those questions, I think, are important ones for Canadians who are about to fork over a lot of cash.
Rosemary:
Yeah. It is notably different from the auto bail out plan that you wrote about over the weekend, Vassy , in that we will not end up having an equity stake in any of these companies so we won’t be able to influence them in the same way we did when it came to the auto bailout, even though there are all of those conditions and that will be interesting to see because that was sort of an incentive for auto companies to get the government their money back and get them out of their hair and their private business. In this case, they are really presenting it as bridge financing and, David, I know you’ve been watching this as well. One of things that struck me from navdeep Bains said, it’s not about one second, to but all sectors having the ability to navigate through this crisis.
Reporter:
Yeah. One person’s bridge is another person’s bailout. But this is really designed to help big companies. We’ve put a credit floor under small companies with the $40, 000 credit line. There’s been up to $6 million in credit available to medium-sized companies. Now $60 million or more for large companies described in this programme as companies with annual revenue of more than $300 million. So, we’re talking about the biggest big players in the canadian economy who, despite their large size, their large profits in the past and the retained earnings, may still end up in the situation where they say shag it, we have to lay people off. We can’t keep going. So, loans of $60 million or more, to put it in context. The auto bailout 10, 12 years ago that was $13.7 billion just for g. M. and chrysler. It’s not even in that order of magnitude and it seems that this is sort of a credit bridge to try to avoid the bailout. To find a way for people to stay in operations and get to that insolvency level where a large-scale bailout is, in fact, required. I don’t know if this precludes it. One of the things we heard from navdeep Bains earlier this morning is they’re looing at the pain points in the economy. and they’re doing sector by sector analysis to see which sectors are doing worse than others. and I think in some ways the political conversation and the journalistic conversation about the need for sectoral bailout too narrow. We can talk about energy/oil, airlines and hospitality. Bill morneau mentioned a different one this morning that sliped our attention. Nonessential retail. If you are not allowed to operate and you can’t do curbside pickup, you are in a really tough spot right now and there are big chains who are siting with lots of inventory that they can’t move with employees to try to keep alive. So, this extension of credits to the big players stacked on top of the wage subsidy gives them the tools they need to keep the workforce in tact for the next little while. Because one of the other questions bill morneau was asked today is how long will this be in place for? nobody can give you any kind of a specific timeframe on any of these programmes because, as we’re seeing in other countries that are re-opening, they’re getting spikes in their cases so we don’t yet know what the canadian experience will be like going forward.
Rosemary:
and you’re right to flag the retail sector because 2.1 million Canadians work in that industry. It is not a small amount of people. Vassy, I want your thoughts about the oil and gas industry because there is inside what we’ve seen so far, we don’t know all conditions for how the tool works. But there is certainly a condition around climate change. It says that companies have published related disclosure and how future operations will support goals. There are lots of companies in Alberta that are commit ed to climate change and are actively doing things. I’m not sure that would be the case for all or what that would look like and given the things that Jason Kenny has said in the past number of weeks, I wonder if this is going to answer the demands of the premier.
Vassy:
Yeah. That is My biggest question, too. Estimates that the province had put on a kind of liquidity that bigger companies in the past needed was, you know, as little as – at least $20 million. So you’re looking at $20 to $30 billion. I’m not really sure, based on what the announcement was we heard today, if this fills that need. I don’t know, to be totally honest. But I think that is going to be the question that the patch is going to have. As far as the climate conditions, and that is for recipient companies. So not companies necessarily that are applying, but if you get the money, you have to disclose basically what you’re doing as far as climate change and if it fits into the government’s plan. That is a pretty Broadway to look a it. I don’t know, for example, how it is going to be analyzed. How do you know if – Ok. Does this fit into the plan. If it doesn’t five-years from now, does that mean you pull the money back? I don’t think the details of that are very clear. The one thing – the caveat I would add is actually with big companies, the big oil companies are way ahead of the game compared to the smaller ones. At least when it comes to transparency around climate change policies. Many of them, for example, were leading the charge for a carbon tax over the past couple of years. What they wanted was certainty, not there to be no punishment or no sort of pentization for carbon emissions. They just wanted certainty and those big companies and particularly let’s take suncorcenovus. Those are ones that, from My understanding in speaking with officials, were sort of being thought about when crafting this policy. So those are typical companies that would benefit from something like this, but politically speaking, there are going to be a lot of questions for this government, right? they ran on an agenda that, of course, was very climate-focused. It’s hard in this environment during a pandemic to tell these big companies that employ tens of thousands of Canadians no, sorry, you don’t qualify. I think this measure around disclosing climate plans is certainly meant to allay those concerns. Buff I can imagine that bailing out big oil companies – and I know it is not a bailout – but a big loan that will eventually tide them over is not necessarily going to go over with some of the constituencies that voted for the liberal in the first place. Clearly they have made the decision to do so. But there are, you know, there is a political con to*ex all of this as well.
Rosemary:
That is for sure. and I think the language around it is probably very intentional as well. The fact that no one is wanting to call it a bailout and the fact that it is a loan, probably David – I’ll get your thoughts on this – probably does incident – insulate the liberals a little bit with the criticism that they got that they were handing over money to the oil and gas companies, provided that they get it back.
Reporter:
I think, quite frankly what has been happening every day since the 13th of March s a canadian-wide bailout that’s being built piece by piece by piece. Whether it’s for families, small business, all of it taken in its totality, you will be north of $300 or $400 billion in direct spending or loans or deferred taxes once all of this is done. I do think, yes, there was an acute sensitivity to be seen to just put money into large-scale oil companies given the makeup of their caucus or voting base that the liberals appeal to. Go back to the teck frontier decision where there was massive divisions inside the liberal caucus over whether to approve a project from a proponent that was playing ball with all of the climate requirements that the liberals were kind of putting on the table. But a largely urban and eastern environmental caucus had great discomfort with it. Already you’re seeing some reaction to this from people like jagmeet singh, the NDP Leader, who is taking particular aim at the idea of tax evasion and tax havens where the government has said if you’ve been convicted of tax evasion, you will not qualified for this. That’s fine. But maybe they are structured in a way that they move to a low-tax state in the United States so they can be full participants of nafta and still participate in the canadian economy, buff they a– but they avoid paying the higher canadian taxes, or whatever jurisdiction they move to. Whatever programme they put out, it is going to be attacked and criticized for who it leaves out or who it puts in, based on the outlook and the political viewpoint of the critic that is speaking. But this is a big move for big companies and I think, rosie, it shows us the vulnerability that exists throughout the canadian economy. It was obvious to see the small and medium-sized businesses would have trouble. There are still a lot of issues to be resolved around commercial rents, the programme that has been rolled out is clunky and not getting exactly rave reviews the way some of the more streamlined and coherent aid programmes are. But this one, there’s a lot of big companies that will qualify for aid that a lot of people are just not going to like. You know, when you’re trying to put a floor under a g-7 economy and have enough capacity that when things do start to lift, you can come back and keep people employed, there are some choice you have to make that are going to carry with them some political unpopularity and making this as universal as possible certainly insulates them from that specific criticism that they’re doing this specifically for the fossil fuel industry.
Rosemary:
Yeah. and it helps, I think, in some ways as the Prime Minister has said every day, that they decided to help individual Canadians first with the CERB so there was a sort of ramp-up of how they would deal with all of this. I’m not sure if we’re two minutes away. But I’m going to try to squeeze in a guest, if I can. Jodie breckenridge is a bhaornl lives in sherbrook and she’s decided not to send her son back to school. Jodie, good to see you. How are you?
Fine. How are you?
Rosemary:
I’m good. I may cut you off for the Prime Minister. Forgive me if I do. Tell me why you decided not to send your son back to school today.
Simply because there is not enough proof out there that we can form our antibodies naturally to fight this disease. It’s just plain and simple.
Rosemary:
and even with the measures that the school has put in place, or is required to put in place around physical distancing, 15 kids per room, that was not enough to re-assure you that your son – I’m not sure how old he is, he’s younger – but that he would be able to follow those rules?
I don’t have an issue with him following the rules. He is 11 so he knows, you know, kind of the – and he’s educated about what’s going on. It’s more – it’s more – there’s not going to be any kind of, you know, new materials taught or anything else and he will be better off at home. This way he’ll get physical activity and more stimulation here than he would back in a classroom.
Rosemary:
I guess that means you are in a position to keep him at home, though, I guess. Right?
Yes, we are. We’re very fortunate. To be able to stay at home and become more involved.
Rosemary:
Do you think it makes sense for kids to be going back at all?
Look at – given the timeframe, no, I don’t. They’re not going to be in school for very long, only a few weeks. and as I mentioned earlier, there’s – they can’t teach any new material. So it’s just going to be basic cognitive stimulation from what I understand. and they can’t really socialize, they can’t go out and play, they can’t do the stuff that they normally do with their friends. So, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense.
Rosemary:
By September, we might be doing better, but still not where we need to be. We certainly won’t have a vaccine. What will it take for you to feel safe enough to send your son back to school?
Well, first of all, the numbers have to drop. You know? people, new cases, deaths and so on and so forth. Also I think given more time to the school system so that they can come up with better measures. I feel that everything was rushed for the teachers, for the students, for all staff involved in our education system.
Rosemary:
Ok. I need to cut you off because the Prime Minister is speaking. I hope you don’t mind. [laughter]he’s P.P.E. on. My best to you and to your family and to your son. Take care of yourselves. Thanks for speaking with us.