Parses captions for PM Trudeau's daily speeches and presents them in a more human readable format
In My colleagues David Cochrane and Vassy kapelos to talk about that. They are going to try to garner a seat at the u. N. security council. That vote has already gotten under way. We’ll get results later today. Two seats up for grabs and three contenders. Canada being one of them. All right. I’m going to bring in My colleagues right away because we’re expecting the Prime Minister to come out shortly and I’ll start with David Cochrane today. If you don’t mind. Because, David, you were the one that broke this news about an economic update coming soon.
David:
Yeah. We’ll get a fiscal and economic update of some sort in July. This is something that the Prime Minister has been under pressure to deliver. The finance Minister has been under pressure to deliver. and pressure that they have dismissed so far saying things like it would be an exercise in invention and imagination. Now it is going to be an exercise in parliament in July when the finance Minister will give us a fiscal update. Now what we don’t know is just how robust or how significant this fiscal update will be because there hasn’t been a budget. That was supposed to happen in late March. That got shelved as the coronavirus spread around the world and the country went into lock down and plans kind of got sideswiped by this global public health emergency. There isn’t a budget to update. The question is, how robust will this fiscal update be? the government has been adamant that there is too much uncertainty and too much inability to give the sort of clear kind of really detailed the update that we normally see in the fall of the year with the spring budget. I’m looking for two things from the Prime Minister when he confirms this news in his public statements. When exactly it will be and just how thorough and significant it will be and what changed from a week ago when you said this was impossible to do in any kind of a meaningful way.
Rosemary:
I think his other words were highly unreliable are words he used in the past. a fiscal update is not even required to happen in parliament. If they don’t want to do it on one of the days that parliament is supposed to come back, they certainly don’t have to. Vassy, what are you hearing about what this picture might show. and Saskatchewan has done a budget recently and Quebec has an update coming toward the end of the week.
Vassy:
It’s interesting. I’m told it will be toward the beginning of July because that is a question for a lot of people, given that parliament is kind of coming to an end or what parliament looks like right now is coming to an end. It’s interesting that you bring up Saskatchewan. I talked to premier Moe last night and interviewed him on the show. His government was receiving a lot of criticism from the opposition in that province for not painting a long-term enough picture. Basically his budget only goes to the end of March next year and the opposition was saying you’re not really laying out here how you’re going to deal with all of this increased spending. Do you plan on raising taxes? he said he doesn’t. How are you going to tack this will? and I imagine, what I’m told or at least being telegraphed to me is that this will be more of a snapshot. I don’t know if it will fit into the construct of a normal fiscal update. Obviously it won’t because it will present a range of scenarios and there is uncertainty. I’m told that it might not necessarily please the opposition. It is not going to satisfy what they have been asking for. So I, too, like david, AM looking to see from the Prime Minister a bit more detail about what exactly they might present. I’m guessing those details will probably come from the finance Minister, bill morneau, who will probably speak a bit later today on the same subject. But I think, you know, given the amount of pressure on the federal government, what they have said about why they can’t do this, I think they’re not going to be able to do a total 180 and say things aren’t uncertain anymore. Because it would certainly be very different than what they said in the past. I expect that to inform exactly what they present at the beginning of July. I should also mention that bloc quÉbÉcois leader yves franÇois blanchet signaled earlier this week that he was predicating some of his support today. There isn’t just one vote at the u. N., there is a couple of big votes in the house of commons, too, and he would – it doesn’t sound like he would support them anyway. But he was saying you have to have a fiscal update in order for you to consider supporting the government on their estimates today. The confidence votes today. a lot of political pressure as well as people like former budget watchdog kevin page, the former parliamentary budget officer saying that there should be some sort of update. Give us a range of scenarios but give us something s.
Rosemary:
a fiscal update can be as little as here’s what we spent today and here’s what we authorized in spending today. Here’s what we estimate the deficit to be at which the current p. B.o. Said at least $260 billion. Here’s where the federal debt is at. Here’s what the debt-to-g. D.p. Ratio looked like. It doesn’t have to be here’s all of our spending for the next 12 months. It can be here’s what things look like in the current context. and here’s why we are worried or aren’t worried. It doesn’t have to be a vast document is what I would say. I’ve had economic updates that are like eight pages long.
David:
Rosey, one thing they might be able to do is you’ll have a line of demarcation, a split when the emergency support money will be included in this and then the stimulus recovery money will be recorded afterwards. So you can look at it and see how much of this is because of the emergency and how much is because of the recovery. We have long-term fiscal analysis.
Rosemary:
Ok. Here’s the Prime Minister now and that confidence motion is happening later this afternoon.