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A daily look inside Canadian politics and power. | | | | | |  | | By Zi-Ann Lum | Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Zi-Ann l Follow Politico Canada WELCOME TO OTTAWA PLAYBOOK. I’m your host, ZI-ANN LUM. The weather is on the balmy side of cold in Ottawa, but Conservatives are bringing the heat to the Hill today for the finance committee’s first meeting of the year to discuss Canada’s red-hot housing market. Former PM JEAN CHRÉTIEN gives Playbook a call on his birthday and podcast host FATIMA SYED shares what’s on her radar in the year ahead. |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | PM TWO CENTS ON UNVAXXED TAX — Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU is expected to comment this morning on Quebec Premier FRANÇOIS LEGAULT’s latest crackdown on unvaccinated Quebecers. Legault, who seems to have drawn inspiration from French President EMMANUEL MACRON’s vow to “piss off” the unvaccinated, said the “health contribution tax” would target a minority of unvaccinated adults, who don’t have a legitimate medical exemption, with a tax to pay for their “financial burden to hospital staff and Quebecers.” Jurisdictions around the world are looking for ways to address issues of equity brought to the fore by 22 months of pandemic, Legault said, and a health tax is one way to get at that. He blamed unvaccinated Quebecers for putting a “very important burden” on the province’s stretched health care system, now dealing with the impacts of Omicron. Legault said Quebec will continue looking to expand the adoption of a vaccine passport. “But I think we have to go further.” — What they’re saying: Former NDP Leader THOMAS MULCAIR nicknames it an “anti-vax tax” to CTV Power Play host EVAN SOLOMON … Ontario NDP Leader ANDREA HORWATH calls it a “slippery slope” … Black Health Alliance’s PAUL BAILEY warns the policy could backfire and further entrench inequities. FINA RIDES AGAIN — The House finance committee saddles up this afternoon for a meeting requested by four members, including Conservative finance critic PIERRE POILIEVRE. The topic: “Canada’s housing inflation crisis.” The housing-meets-inflation debate has been marinating for a while now. POLITICO’s ANDY BLATCHFORD pointed out to Pros the opposition have spent much of the past year arguing the government’s pandemic spending plans are fueling overall inflation. Housing is one tendril of blooming discussion about affordability that’s expected to find more air and screen time in 2022. The Bank of Canada played its part by setting expectations that inflation will remain high for the first half of the new year. The meeting throws attention to the activities of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Minister AHMED HUSSEN and Finance Minister CHRYSTIA FREELAND. The two ministers have been mandated by the PM to improve both housing access and affordability. Freeland promised the upcoming federal budget will contain “further action” on these policy fronts. — Prediction: The opposition have seized inflation as an issue to erode trust in the Trudeau government. Conservative Leader ERIN O’TOOLE told a Yarmouth, Bridgewater and Annapolis Valley business audience Tuesday that he anticipates interest rates “will likely go up four times this year.” O’Toole said, “One of the key things that we can do to drive down inflation is to actually get government spending under control.” — All politics is local: The housing issue is a talker in vote-rich regions such as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), southern Ontario and Vancouver where demand has put a premium on limited supply. The trend ranges regionally, Royal Bank of Canada economist ROBERT HOGUE wrote last month: “most of Atlantic Canada and the Prairies still look reasonably affordable.” — Over in the GTA: Longtime Liberal maverick MP JOHN MCKAY shared his observations about the issue in a webinar Tuesday when asked to ruminate on the long-term impacts of Covid-19. “Everyone in Toronto is a millionaire who owns a house — and it's absurd. And by virtue of the increase in value of assets over the period of Covid, it shut out a lot of people from actually owning homes. And that's, that's exaggerated wealth inequality,” McKay said. “When you do that, you create, in a certain segment of the population, a sense of hopelessness.” — Cause and effect: The Scarborough–Guildwood MP said wealth inequality among nations is another major issue to contend with in this pandemic era. He pointed to his government’s slow delivery of promised vaccine donations as an example. “Africa will climb its way out of Covid much more slowly than will the rest of the world, in part because vaccines are not readily available and in part because countries like Canada don't make them available — or treat their own populations first,” he said. — Playbook’s NICK TAYLOR-VAISEY breaks down Canada’s missing vaccine donations in POLITICO Nightly. — Early committee callbacks: Finance isn’t the only House committee slated to meet this week. The ethics committee has an emergency hearing scheduled Thursday to discuss members’ request to study the “collection and use of mobility data.” The House of Commons health committee will meet Friday where a discussion of “recent Covid-19 developments” is on the agenda including health care help for provinces, “ current advice regarding quarantine length” and availability/access to PPE and rapid antigen tests. | | AROUND THE HILL | | JOIE DE VIVRE — Tuesday marked JEAN CHRÉTIEN’s 88th trip around the sun. The former PM chatted with Playbook on his birthday to share how he marked the milestone. “Let me put it this way, I am in the countryside and I took a good one-hour walk in cold weather. And I'm in good health and happy to be with members of my family,” Chrétien said on the lunchtime phone call. “And I spent hours on the phone receiving phone calls and messages and good wishes.” Not only receiving, but making phone calls, too, your Playbook author pointed out. “Of course,” he responded. “People are calling me and I'm taking most of them. But now I’ve done it for hours. So that's enough now. I'm stopping.” OTTAWA ONBOARDING — New U.S. Ambassador to Canada DAVID COHEN has been sprinting through some notable high-profile meetings in the past week including with Eurasia Group vice chairman GERALD BUTTS, ex-Trudeau cabinet minister turned Climate and Nature Solutions principal CATHERINE MCKENNA, Brookfield Asset Management vice chair, transition investing head MARK CARNEY — a trio whom he called “Canadian climate leaders.” | 
U.S. Ambassador David Cohen presents his credentials to Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon on Dec. 7, 2021. | Cpl. Valerie Mailhot, Rideau Hall © OSGG, 2021 | — Also in Cohen’s meeting minutes: Face-time with Trudeau’s former foreign affairs adviser turned UOttawa public and international affairs professor ROLAND PARIS, ex-Harper chief of staff now-UCalgary associate professor IAN BRODIE, Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s BRIAN LEE CROWLEY, and Carleton University associate professor/Westminster parliamentary system encyclopedia PHILIPPE LAGASSÉ, Conference Board of Canada CEO SUSAN BLACK, Business Council of Canada President and CEO GOLDY HYDER, Deloitte Canada’s TREVIN STRATTON and former Bank of Canada senior deputy governor CAROLYN WILKINS. Cohen’s office did not answer Playbook’s questions asking which meetings were requested by the new envoy — and which were a product of external requests. An U.S. embassy spokesperson referred to one of Cohen’s tweets saying he intends to meet with “Canadians from all walks of life.” THE OPPO IN OPPORTUNITY — Conservative Leader ERIN O’TOOLE and his party’s comms team went to town over Environment Minister STEVEN GUILBEAULT’s omission of the word “subsidies” in one of two mentions of the Liberal platform policy in an interview with The Narwhal. — The gotcha moment: Guilbeault told the publication: “We have a commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2023.” “Subsidies” slipped in his second mention of the policy promise. Sharing items on his to-do list over the next 18 months, Guilbeault mentioned “obviously phasing out fossil fuels” to be one of them. — Applying torque: Despite Ottawa buying a pipeline, and Trudeau telling leaders at COP26 how “as a world we continue to need fossil fuels, and will for a few more years,” Conservatives pounced. “As extreme cold grips Canada, Trudeau Liberals commit to phasing out Canadian energy in two years,” O’Toole tweeted Tuesday. The Liberals have never made such a pledge. He repeated the lie in a video, saying Guilbeault “wants to end fossil fuel usage in 18 months.” — Other attacks: O’Toole on Canada-U.S. relations, in his Tuesday speech to members of Nova Scotia’s business community: “We have never in modern Canadian history seen Canada-U.S. relations at such a low point.” On the Biden administration’s controversial EV tax credit, the Conservative leader tipped his hat to Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.). “Thankfully, the Build Back Better plan was held back by one U.S. Senator,” O’Toole said, adding the proposed EV tax credit “would have devastated our auto sector.” | | PERSPECTIVES | | | 
Fatima Syed is host of The Backbench podcast and a reporter for The Narwhal. We asked her what she’ll be watching in 2022. | Tiffany Lam | WHAT TO WATCH IN 2022 — Playbook has invited some of your favorite political podcasters for their thoughts on the year ahead. Today, we welcome FATIMA SYED, host of The Backbench podcast. I really hope 2022 is the year politicians prove to the people why politics matters. As an almost 30-year-old, I’ve felt myself losing faith and trust in the political will to create good change and the political machine for being able to accomplish good change year by year. The last two years of the pandemic have especially spotlighted just how deeply lacklustre Ottawa can sometimes (ahem: often) be. I have a laundry list of things I’d love for the federal government with everything you’d expect but none of it matters if politicians can’t prove they have the ability to tackle any of it with gusto and commitment. I’m told a lot that change always comes slowly, that big things take time. (To which I say: bull—-, quietly in my head.) I’m tired of hearing that, along with all the non-answers we’ve heard of late in the face of problems, big and small. I’d love this to be the year politicians start talking realistically and working hard to deliver meaningful solutions to reconciliation, to climate change, to health care, to foreign relations, to immigration, to hate, to access to information, to digital infrastructure, to economic struggle, to criminal justice reform, to Charter rights … It’s no secret the road maps for all our problems are there. It’s the political will we’re all waiting on. As idealistic as it may sound, in 2022 I’d like to see politicians choose to govern seriously, thoughtfully, genuinely. But that’s just what I think. The Backbench tries to bring a cacophony of perspectives together to make sense of Canadian politics. Here’s what some of our cast is hoping to see in 2022: TIFFANY LAM, producer, The Backbench: I'm always curious to see if parties will articulate (read: politicize) Canada's China policy; now that the Two Michaels are home, 2022 could be the year! Also, since we've been told hospital beds/ICU capacity is one of the reasons why pandemic restrictions continue, I'd love to see how our federal government will work with provincial ones to improve that going forward. JASKARAN SANDHU, strategist, State: This is a big political campaign year for Ontario, between a provincial election in June and municipals in October. How will the pandemic play a role in selecting a new premier, as well as new mayors and councils? Is this going to be a referendum on Covid response, or will issues relating to the economy, such as rising costs and the out-of-control real estate market, take over? Also, how involved will federal politicians be considering they are relatively fresh off their own election and still in a minority government where every friend matters? EMILIE NICOLAS, columnist, Le Devoir: I’m looking at how so many Republican states have been adopting legislation to weaken voting rights and how American democracy might just not really exist anymore by the midterms? What will that mean for Canada? DREW BROWN, editor-in-chief, The Independent: Is 2022 the year that Ottawa finally fleshes out (and implements) a solution to Newfoundland and Labrador's Muskrat Falls problem? We're still waiting for the behind-schedule-and-over-budget megadam to finally come online — and with it, some kind of federal arrangement that keeps our electricity prices from skyrocketing. Just before last year's election the provincial government and the feds struck an agreement in principle; now we're waiting to see how the rubber meets the road. JASON MARKUSOFF, Alberta correspondent, Maclean’s: The subtle/unsubtle power struggle between PIERRE POILIEVRE and ERIN O’TOOLE. It’s not just for infectious disease prevention that they probably won’t appear at the same news conference together. In previous Playbooks: COREY HOGAN of The Strategists, ERICA IFILL from The Bad + Bitchy podcast and WYATT SHARPE from The Wyatt Sharpe Show. Want to weigh in? Reach us here. | | On the Calendar | | SAVE THE DATE: On Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. ET Playbook will present our second virtual trivia night with Outside The Box Trivia — a chance for you to show off just how much you know about #cdnpoli. THE BLUESKY STRATEGY GROUP and TEAM LPC OF THE 80s are back for round two. THE WALRUS is in. The trivia platform allows you to gather teammates from all over — and, we discovered last time — mingle with other teams during the evening. You can play and collaborate with up to six team members at the same virtual table, as long as you all have access to WiFi. RSVP with your team details to ottawaplaybook@politico.com. Registration is free. We’ll send sign up details. | | ASK US ANYTHING | | What are you hearing that you need Playbook to know? Any questions about the next session of Parliament? Send it all our way. | | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | | 
The Canadian Parliament building. | Getty Images | — Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU holds an 11:30 a.m. press conference with Health Minister JEAN-YVES DUCLOS, International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development MARY NG and Public Services and Procurement Minister FILOMENA TASSI. — Innovation, Science and Industry Minister FRANÇOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE has a “major science and research announcement” involving Canada’s academic community at 10 a.m. — NDP MPs DON DAVIES and DANIEL BLAIKIE have a 11 a.m. press conference scheduled “to talk about the steps needed to help keep Canadians safe in this new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.” — Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Minister AHMED HUSSEN, Tourism Minister RANDY BOISSONNAULT and Edmonton Mayor AMARJEET SOHI hold a press conference at 10 a.m. EST. — Saskatchewan Premier SCOTT MOE delivers a Covid-19 update at 11 a.m. EST. — Ontario Education Minister STEPHEN LECCE and the province’s top doctor KIERAN MOORE make an announcement at 1:30 p.m. EST. | | MEDIA ROOM | | — You might think Senate Democrats are trying to axe the filibuster to pass election reform. It’s not quite true. POLITICO’s MARIANNE LEVINE explains what’s up for debate. — Should there be a public inquiry into Iqaluit's water crisis? CBC reporter NICK MURRAY reports from Iqaluit. — CIGI’s BLAYNE HAGGART illuminates the unstated assumptions in digital policy debates. — POLITICO’s HANNAH ROBERTS reports from Rome: Tough new rules that came into force Monday mean anyone without a health pass showing they have been vaccinated or recently recovered from Covid-19 can no longer use public transport. Meanwhile in London, POLITICO reports that Boris Johnson’s staff were invited to a drinks party in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street during a lockdown, according to a leaked email. — Journalist ANGELA STERRITT crowdsourced tips for teaching on Zoom. The answers should be required reading for anyone required to do so. | | PROZONE | | If you’re a POLITICO Pro , don’t miss ANDY BLATCHFORD’s PM Pro Canada memo: Quebec backs no-vax tax. In other headlines for Pros:
— Decoding what Biden health officials told Congress about Omicron.
— CDC lifting cruise ship restrictions despite 30-fold increase of Omicron cases.
— Bipartisan tech antitrust bill to get Senate markup Thursday.
— Germany spells out ‘gigantic’ effort to cut emissions and boost renewables.
— French press publishers lodge new copyright complaint against Google. | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Birthdays: HBD to HILARY WESTON, 80 today … CBC meteorologist IAN BLACK is 60 … Former mayor, premier and high commissioner GORDON CAMPBELL is 74 … Conservative MP KERRY-LYNNE FINDLAY is 67. Spotted: MARC GARNEAU, making progress on his new left hip. “Will be skydiving again before you know it.” GINELLA MASSA, back at work after a Covid exposure and celebrating the anniversary of her prime-time show. Former governor general JULIE PAYETTE, spared from having to return her Order of Canada. Summa’s TIM POWERS — all in on marathon training … Former Cabinet minister JODY WILSON-RAYBOULD, lacing up for Vancouver Marathon in May. NDP MP BLAKE DESJARLAIS, sharing a word cloud … AILISH CAMPBELL, ambassador of Canada to the European Union, explaining how she works in multiple timezones. JORDAN RAY, sharing communication advice: “Dear political staff from all parties: First, you're great. Overworked and underpaid. Second, when you're tweeting for your boss, make sure it's in their voice, not in yours. More specifically, ask yourself: Would my boss use this many emojis?” Unrelated bonus tip from STEPHEN MAHER: “Please stop overusing acronyms. If it is not as well known as, say, NATO, write it out.” Movers and shakers: Journalists ETERNITY MARTIS and SHARI OKEKE join X University as j-school assistant professors … SHIREEN AHMED has joined CBC Sports as a senior correspondent … NATASHA KORNAK joining Crestview Strategy as a public affairs intern … The City of Ottawa welcomes MARC ROY as its new transit services director of strategic communications and external relations… MICHELLE YAO starts a new jobs with Juul Labs as director of external affairs in Canada. Farewells: The CBC features an obituary of GLENDA SIMMS, first Black president of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. “She spoke empowerment, and lived empowerment, and demonstrated women's empowerment," ELCHO STEWART, founder of the Network of Black Business & Professional Women, tells the CBC. Condolences to MICHAEL GRANT, assistant deputy minister for the Americas at Global Affairs Canada, on the loss of his father. George G. Grant, aka “The George,” died Jan. 9 at the age of 91. STEPHEN JEFFREY, editor of The Lobby Monitor, shared that he’s lost an uncle to Covid-related complications. “I've spent today trying to say something profound: that you can take every precaution and still get it, how hard it is being 15,000 km away, or some sort of call to action. But there's nothing profound to say.” | | TRIVIA | | Tuesday’s answer: Lots of readers guessed MP and musician CHARLIE ANGUS. In fact, Liberal MP TIM LOUIS was the host of Jazz Sessions. The transplanted American is a professional singer, songwriter and performer who studied under jazz great KENNY BARRON. Props to DAVE EPP, HARRY McKONE, DOROTHY McCABE, BRENDAN PARSLEY, MICHEL BREAU, ALAN KAN, ANNE-MARIE STACEY, BOB GORDON, ROBERT McDOUGALL, LEIGH LAMPERT, GANGA WIGNARAJAH, NICK MASCIANTONIO, BOB ERNEST, BRAM ABRAMSON and BRANDON VAN DAM, who writes: “He has to be one of the nicest people in politics. … Tim is well loved in his community, but his music is certainly missed.” Here’s Louis performing Snowflakes in Bloom. Wednesday’s question: What now-sitting MP took part in a Halifax leg of the torch relay leading to the 2010 Winter Olympics? Send your answers to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Playbook wouldn’t happen without Luiza Ch. Savage, editor Sue Allan and Nick Taylor-Vaisey. Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness amongst this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Alejandra Waase to find out how: awaase@politico.com.
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