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May 15, 2023

Ottawa, ON The Liberal Party of Canada has announced the four Team Trudeau candidates for the federal by-elections happening in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec on June 19, 2023.

Liberals are excited to welcome a strong team of by-election candidates ready to work with Justin Trudeau to continue delivering real results for workers and families in their communities, and right across the country, said Sachit Mehra, President of the Liberal Party of Canada. With diverse backgrounds and decades of combined experience in community leadership roles, our Team Trudeau candidates will continue that tireless work to connect with Canadians, share our positive plan, and bring their communitys voice to Parliament.

The four official Team Trudeau candidates are:

In the lead up to these by-elections, thousands of Liberal volunteers participated in 4 Days of Action this year to continue sharing our positive plan to Canadians in every corner of the country. And earlier this month, more than 4,000 Canadians from across the country took part in the 2023 Liberal National Convention, participating in innovative campaign trainings and policy discussions ready and focused on building winning campaigns, and shaping the ideas that will build a better future for Canadians.

In these important by-elections, Canadians have an important choice. While Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party have no serious plan and continue to promote reckless policies that would move our country backward, Justin Trudeau and our Liberal team remain focused on making life more affordable, delivering better public health care, creating middle class jobs, taking strong climate action, and building an economy that works for all Canadians.

By-election candidate biographies.

See the article here:
announces four Team Trudeau candidates for federal by-elections ... - Liberal Party of Canada

Speaker Kevin McCarthys demand that any deal to raise the debt limit must include stricter work requirements for social safety net programs and President Bidens hints that he might be willing to accept such a bargain has drawn a backlash from liberal Democrats in Congress, underscoring the tricky politics at play in bipartisan talks to avert a default.

The proposal has become a central issue in negotiations between Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy, which entered a new phase this week as the two offered glimmers of hope that they could reach a deal to increase the borrowing limit, now projected to be reached as early as June 1, and avoid an economic catastrophe.

House Republicans debt limit bill, approved last month along party lines, would impose stricter work requirements for beneficiaries of food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the speaker said this week that Republicans would insist on such a provision as part of any deal. Mr. Biden has pointedly left the door open to the idea, noting that he voted for work requirements as a senator.

Talk of such a compromise has set off a wave of anger among liberals on Capitol Hill, who have begun openly fretting that the president might agree to a deal they cannot accept.

I cannot in good conscience support a debt ceiling proposal that pushes people into poverty, said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania.

The pushback reflects the political crosscurrents at play in the talks between Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy, both of whom have to contend with slim majorities in Congress and uncompromising political bases that will find any agreement hard to swallow.

The hard-right Freedom Caucus called on Mr. McCarthy on Thursday to stop negotiating with White House officials until the Senate passed House Republicans debt ceiling bill legislation that would slash federal spending by an average of 18 percent over the next decade and is anathema to Democrats.No more discussion on watering it down, the group tweeted. Period.

The growing unhappiness in both flanks highlighted how difficult it will be for negotiators to cobble together a debt limit bill that can win the votes to pass both chambers. Lawmakers on both the hard left and right may end up withholding their support, with conservatives arguing thatthe deal does not go far enough in reducing spending and liberals arguing thatit goes too far.

Mr. McCarthy was unusually upbeat on Thursday about the state of the talks, telling reporters that negotiators could reach a deal in principle as early as this weekend.

Were not there, we havent agreed to anything yet, but I see the path that we can come to an agreement, he said.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly shown an openness to negotiating with Republicans on work requirements. The president told reporters on Wednesday before he left for Japan that it was possible he would accept some G.O.P. proposals on the issue, but that he would not agree to making changes of any consequence.

Im not going to accept any work requirements thats going to have an impact on the medical health needs of people, Mr. Biden said.

Mr. McCarthy has not been precise about what kind of work requirements he would demand, suggesting that he might be willing to narrow the scope of those included in the House Republican bill. Republicans have long pushed for more stringent work requirements, arguing that they lift Americans out of poverty and increasethe labor force participation rate, and there has been little in the way of bipartisan consensus on the issue since President Bill Clintons welfare overhaul.

While no agreements have been reached in the current round of debt talks, work requirements are among the issues negotiators on both sides have agreed to discuss, which also include capping federal spending, clawing back unspent funds allocated to address the coronavirus pandemic and loosening restrictions on domestic energy projects.

The bill House Republicans passed in April would make able-bodied adults without dependents who receive food benefits subject to work requirements until they are 55 years old, raising the current age from 49. It would require Medicaid recipients between the ages of 19 and 55 who are able-bodied and do not have dependents to either work, engage in community service or participate in a work-training program for at least 80 hours per month to remain eligible for benefits.

Liberal Democrat dismiss the idea as draconian.

Its absurd to come up with a proposal that will result in children being thrown off of child care, off of health care, be devastating to elderly people, said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. We cannot be blackmailed into balancing the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable and leaving the most affluent alone.

Instead, progressives have increasingly rallied around the idea that Mr. Biden should invoke the 14th Amendment, which says that the validity of the United States public debt shall not be questioned, to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others even if Congress fails to extend the governments borrowing authority when the limit is reached.

A group of 11 senators led by Mr. Sanders wrote to Mr. Biden on Thursday urging him to prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment.

Republicans unwillingness to consider one penny in new revenue from the wealthy and large corporations, they wrote,along with their diminishment of the disastrous consequences of default, have made it seemingly impossible to enact a bipartisan budget deal at this time.

That would amount to a constitutional challenge to the existence of the debt limit, arguing that language in the 14th Amendment overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion and requires congressional approval to raise or lift.

If members of his hard-right flank balk at voting for a deal he negotiates, Mr. McCarthy would need Democratic votes to pass the bill in the House.

Russell T. Vought, the former Trump administration budget director who now leads the far-right Center for Renewing America and has become a guru for Freedom Caucus lawmakers, has begun to show signs of unease with the talks. Any deal that tosses the Houses first year cut to 22 spending levels ($150 billion cut to nondefense spending) is unacceptable, he wrote on Twitter.

Democrats, too, threw cold water on the negotiations, saying their side should not compromise given that Republicans would need their votes to pass any final compromise.

McCarthy has nowhere near the votes for a deal and therefore cannot negotiate debt ceiling, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, wrote on Twitter. You need 218 votes. GOP has maybe ~150. They will need anywhere from 50-100 House Dems to pass anything.

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

Originally posted here:
Liberals Balk at G.O.P. Push for Stricter Work Requirements in Debt Limit Talks - The New York Times

The federal Liberals 2019 election pledge to plant two billion trees in 10 years has barely sprouted.

A recent audit found the program has missed its targets to date, with less than 3 per cent of the promised total in the ground, and far too many are ending up in single-species tree farms, rather than future forests.

Tellingly, the endeavour is expected to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it captures until 2031.

The 2 Billion Trees program is an important commitment, and Ottawa needs to make adjustments to succeed. As auditor Jerry DeMarco, the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, noted, there is no solution to climate change and biodiversity loss that does not involve our forests.

To plant a tree or two billion is an action for future generations. But like so many Liberal promises on climate action, ambition has not been matched by sufficient action. This initiative is supposed to use the power of nature to help fight climate change: New forests can absorb carbon, and they can enhance biodiversity. In urban areas, tree canopies can mitigate against extreme heat, improving human health.

The $3.2-billion program formally launched in 2021 and although it was expected that it would take time to line up land, seedlings and tree planters, even the modest targets for the first two years have not been reached.

The targets were not unreasonable: In the time since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his plan, British Columbia has planted about one billion trees, separate from the federal initiative. With the massive forest losses owing to beetle kill and wildfires, the provinces land base could easily accommodate far more. Before this seasons wildfires began, B.C. had about 2.7 million hectares waiting to be replanted half the size Nova Scotia, and close to the same as burned in 2017 and 2018, two of B.Cs worst-ever fire years.

The vast wilderness in B.C., waiting for replanting, is just one province. There are opportunities across the country.

The federal plan hinges mostly on cost-shared partnerships, and that has proved to be a vulnerability. To achieve its goals, Ottawa needs co-operation from provinces, territories, local governments, Indigenous communities, plus farmers and other private landowners. The key partnerships are with the provinces, and those have been slow to blossom. B.C. and Alberta have recently signed on. Ontario and Quebec are among the holdouts, a major risk to the programs success.

In the best-case scenario, the audit found, the program was only expected to reach 2.3 per cent of its overall goal after the first two years. And the delays will just compound. Canadian nurseries told the auditors that they would require up to two years of preparation before planting seeds, and one to eight more years before seedlings would be available for planting. They need commitments before ramping up.

Once in the ground, it takes another decade before the new trees start to deliver net benefits to Canadas greenhouse gas reduction ambitions. Ottawas targets, set at the beginning of the program, were to reduce emissions by up to two megatonnes annually by 2030. Since then, Natural Resources Canada has concluded the program would be a net greenhouse gas source until 2031, because of initial emissions caused by site preparation and planting activities. The goal by 2050 is to cut emissions by 12 MT a year 1.8 per cent of Canadas current level of 670 MT.

Since nature can be capricious, the audit called for more consistent monitoring to be sure that seedlings are thriving after planting.

Finally, plantations of a single species of tree are handy for the forest industry if the intent is to cut the trees down in the future. But one of the goals of this program is to preserve and protect biodiversity, and that means Canada needs to be more thoughtful about what it is planting.

A report by the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, released in March, warned that almost one in four tree species in Canada is now at risk. The threats include pests and diseases, land development, and the growing impacts of climate change. This only underscores the urgency to get this program right.

This week, much of Western Canada is facing extreme wildfire hazards, with smoke from numerous out of control fires choking the skies in Calgary and thousands evacuated from their homes. There is work to be do. Ottawa needs to motivate the provinces to start putting shovels in the ground.

The Decibel: The missing two billion trees Trudeau promised

Tree-planting drones seed the dangerous places where human planters cant tread

Read the original here:
Globe editorial: The Liberals promised two billion trees by 2030. Only 2 per cent have been planted. What's going ... - The Globe and Mail

Riley Gaines, the former college championship swimmer who competed against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, said Wednesday that her advocacy in support of womens sports has earned "amazing" support among liberals.

"I have gotten messages from women and men who are lifelong liberals, who once prided themselves, especially women, on the original feminist movement, who are seeing what's happening with the Democrat party now," Gaines, a spokeswoman for Independent Women's Voice, told Fox News Digital.

"Just a few weeks ago, all [Democrats] in the U.S. House voted no on protecting women and girls in sports," Gaines said. "And these women, they're seeing this and they're fed up."

"The amount of support that I've had from liberal women who, again, consider themselves feminists, is amazing. These are women who are sick of their own party. These representatives are not listening to their constituents, and these women have had enough," said Gaines.

RILEY GAINES URGES FEMALE ATHLETES TO BOYCOTT COMPETING AGAINST TRANS GIRLS: DONT RUNDON'T SWIM'

Riley Gaines said Wednesday that her advocacy in support of womens sports has earned "amazing" support among liberals. (Reuters/Go Nakamura)

Gaines also accused Democrats in Washington of "ignoring" women over the Biden administrations pro-transgender inclusion policies in schools.

"The people in charge, the governing bodies, the representatives, the senators, especially on the left, they are ignoring the demands of women," Gaines said. "We're asking for the bare minimum. We want fairness, we want privacy, we want safety, and we want respect, and they're ignoring that."

Gaines was on Capitol Hill for the unveiling of House Republicans Women Bill of Rights legislation. During a press conference Wednesday morning, she explained the bill would define the word "woman" in federal law in order to bolster other bills like the Houses recently passed Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.

KATIE PORTER, PIERS MORGAN CLASH OVER RILEY GAINES' EFFORTS TO KEEP WOMEN'S SPORTS FAIR

Gaines famously tied with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in an NCAA competition. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

"It doesn't prevent any laws from being passed for any other protected group, it doesn't change any pre-existing laws. It simply defines the word woman, codifies the term," she said.

As an example, she said the House-passed Fairness In Women's Sports Act was "phenomenal," but asked, "what longevity does it have if we cant define the word woman? And that's what this does. It gives longevity to bills such as the sports bill."

The House bill is unlikely to get through the Democrat-controlled Senate, and if it did, President Biden is likely to veto it. He said last month that he would veto the womens sports bill if it came to his desk.

RILEY GAINES CALLS ON FAMOUS FEMALE ATHLETES TO CHOOSE A SIDE IN TRANS DEBATE. HERE'S WHO SHE'S STARTING WITH

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., the Womens Bill of Rights lead sponsor, acknowledged this likelihood as she introduced Gaines.

Rep. Debbie Lesko is leading the bill in the 118th Congress.

"It's a frustrating place We don't always get our legislation through, but this is really an important issue," Lesko said.

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Throughout the event, multiple Republicans called on Democrats to take up the bill.

"We call on the House, the Senate, and the Democrats who care about the future of women to come together and pass this bill," said Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla.

See original here:
Riley Gaines says liberals are supporting her activism to protect womens sports: Sick of their own party - Fox News

On Wednesday night, Sen. J.D. Vance (ROhio) took the stage at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and declaredto the astonishment of many who subsequently read the quote onlinethat "there is no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the American regime."

The remark came during a panel discussion about Regime Change, a new book by the "post-liberal" Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, in which Deneen argues that classical liberals and left-progressives are all pushing the same agenda and need to be "replaced" by a new conservative elite. (Keep an eye out for a review in the August/September issue of Reason.)

A longer version of the Vance quote gives the context:

One of the really bad hangovers from that uniparty that Patrick talked about is this idea that there is this extremely strong division between the public sector and the private sector. You know, the public sector is the necessary evil of government. We want to limit it as much as possible, because to the extent that we don't limit it, it's going to do a lot of terrible things. And then you have the private sector, that which comes from spontaneous order. It's organic. It's very Burkean. And we want to let people do as much free exchange within that realm as possible. And the reality of politics as I've seen it practiced, the way that lobbyists interact with bureaucrats interact with corporations, there is no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the American regime. It is all fused together, it is all melded together, and it is all, in my view, very much aligned against the people who I represent in the state of Ohio.

I will give you a couple of examples here. One, when I talk to sort of more traditionalist economic conservatives, what Patrick would call economic liberals, when I talk to these guys about, for example, why has corporate America gone so woke, I see in their eyes this desperate desire to think that it's all just coming from the [Securities and Exchange Commission]. That there are a couple of bad regulations at the SEC, and that in fact [BlackRock CEO] Larry Fink would love to not be a super woke driver of American enterprise, and that Budweiser has no desire to put out a series of advertisements that alienate half their customer base. They're just being forced to do it by evil bureaucrats. And there is an element of truth to that. The element of truth is that the regime is the public and private sector. It's the corporate CEOs, it's the H.R. professionals at Budweiser, and they are working together, not against one another, in a way that destroys the American common good. That is the fact that we are dealing with.

There are, of course, countless ways that the public sectorgovernmenthas its tentacles in private sector affairs. Through taxation and regulation; through the subsidies and targeted benefits that are a mainstay of the industrial policy that so many on the New Right want to double down on; and, yes, through insidious pressure campaigns like those uncovered through the Twitter and Facebook Files, state power is routinely brought to bear to nudge or compel private actors into doing what those holding the power want. Needless to say, we should be skeptical, if not hostile, toward all such efforts.

Interestingly, this does not appear to be what Vance is referring to. If anything, he's saying it's naive to focus on instances of state coercion. Instead, Vance seems upset that some business executives share the same "woke" values that government actors express. (They are, after all, highly educated fellow members of the professional managerial class!) And because they believe in radical environmentalism, trans-inclusive politics, and all the rest, according to Vance, these private sector leaders are all too happy to collaborate with lawmakers and federal bureaucrats to put those values into practice.

Vance here is channeling the neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, who has popularized the idea that "all the modern world's legitimate and prestigious intellectual institutions, even though they have no central organizational connection, behave in many ways as if they were a single organizational structure" with "one clear doctrine or perspective." He calls this decentralized entity "the Cathedral" and argues that the only way to combat it is by replacing America's liberal democratic regime with an absolute monarchy or (benevolent, one hopes) dictatorship.

But Vance goes further even than Yarvin, who defines the Cathedral as consisting of the mainstream media and the universities; Vance insists that government officials are also implicated. This step is critical, because the New Right, rejecting the classical liberal commitment to limited government and rule of law, openly calls on conservatives to wield state power against their domestic political "enemies," among whom it counts lefty corporations, universities, and nonprofits.

I've made this point almost ad nauseam by now, but if you need a refresher, look no further than this illustrative quote from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: "This is our moment," he recently told The American Conservative, "to demand that our politicians use the power they have. This is the moment for us to demand of companies, whether they're Google, or Facebook, or Disney, that you listen to us, rather than ram down our throats and into our own families all of the garbage that you've been pushing on us. This is our time to demand that you do what we say. And it's glorious."

For an even more concrete example, consider the time Vance went on live TV and proposed targeting left-wing institutions such as the Ford Foundation and Harvard for their political views. "Why don't we seize the assets," he asked, "tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open borders agenda?"

This is obviously contrary to the laws of our land. The American constitutional system "protects private actors," says Notre Dame law professor Richard W. Garnett, while constraining how government officials can exercise their power. "Private actors have free speech rights. The government doesn't. Private actors have freedom of religion. Government doesn't. Private schools can train kids for their sacraments. Government schools can't. The whole landscape of our constitutionally protected freedoms depends on this conceptual distinction between state power and the nonstate sphere."

But that distinction is an obstacle preventing post-liberals such as Vance from using the government to punish private entities who express views or implement policies that they, the post-liberals, dislike. And so, to give themselves permission to do what they want, they have to get people to believe that the distinction is already obsolete.

It's not. In fact, the "collusion" that Vance would use as justification to strip private actors of their rights consists of some of the very activities named in the First Amendment: voicing political opinions and advocating for changes to public policy. That some business executives happen to agree with some federal bureaucrats on some topics does nothing to transform private entities into public ones or to erase the distinction between the two spheres. (And that assumes Vance et al. are correct about the scope of the overlap, which they've thus far made little effort to demonstrate.)

None of this means you have to like the way companies use their rights. "If there are large private entities that are engaging in speech that some might find offensive," Garnett says, "you can boycott them, you can not patronize them, you can criticize them, you can set up your own businesses" to compete with them. But the New Right appears to be "impatient" with these remedies.

"It seems to me that it's perfectly appropriate to point out, as Deneen and Vance are doing, that a lot of corporate America seems to be going outside of its lane in very ideological ways," Garnett says. "But it doesn't follow from that that the government can silence them or punish them."

Read more:
Post-Liberal Authoritarians Want You To Forget That Private Companies Have Rights - Reason