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A daily look inside Canadian politics and power. | | | | |  | | By Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Zi-Ann Lum and Sue Allan | Editor’s Note: We’re resending today’s newsletter after technical issues inserted code and made our earlier version generally hard to read. We apologize for any inconvenience. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Nick l Follow Politico Canada Welcome to the Ottawa Playbook. I'm your host, Nick Taylor-Vaisey with Zi-Ann Lum and Sue Allan. OMG, it's budget day. Your hosts are eating their Wheaties. We'll have lots to say about the doorstopper of a plan in tomorrow's Playbook. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Here's everything you need to know going in.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | FREELAND'S INDEX — As POLITICO's Ottawa bureau prepares to spend hours behind closed doors, poring over the much-anticipated Liberal budget, we've memorized key metrics that tell the tale of the Trudeau government's budgetary bona fides. Here are some of the numbers we've jotted down in advance: 47.5 percent: The debt-to-GDP ratio for 2020-21, as reported in CHRYSTIA FREELAND's December fiscal update. 44 percent: The projected debt-to-GDP ratio for 2026-27 in the same document. (All eyes will be on the government's updated projections.) 13.4 percent: The unemployment rate in May 2020. 5.5 percent: The unemployment rate in February 2022. 52.1 percent: The employment rate in April 2020. 61.8 percent: The employment rate in February 2022. 5.7: The annual inflation rate in February, its strongest pace since 1991. 100,000: Estimated number of new Covid cases in Ontario each day now, according to the head of the scientific advisory table. (That may be a low estimate.) 11 billion: The dollar figure the Parliamentary Budget Office attached to the NDP’s pharmacare plan during the 2021 election. 58 billion: The target Canada's defense budget would have to reach to hit NATO’s target of 2 percent of GDP. 1.5 billion: Average annual cost, in dollars, of a federal dental care program proposed by the NDP and costed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. 816,720: The average price of a home in Canada, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. (The MLS Price Index, which measures major markets, pegged the average at C$868,400 — an oft-referenced number on PIERRE POILIEVRE's stump.) 431,645: The number of new permanent residents projected to enter Canada in 2022. That figure rises to 451,000 in 2024. 4: Number of budgets until 2025. BUDGET LEAKS — March 14, CBC: Back to basics.… April 2, Globe: Three themes: the green economy, housing affordability and Canada’s role in the world.… April 5, CTV: Surtax on big banks' pandemic profits.… April 5, Reuters: $2B for electric vehicle battery development.… April 6, Globe: Money for cybersecurity to combat foreign disinformation campaigns.… April 6, CTV: Ban on foreign home buyers, billions for housing.… April 6, CBC: Defence getting billions in new money. ... April 6, Globe: Federal budget 2022 to include $10-billion for affordable housing. ... April 7, CBC: Freeland's budget is expected to focus on the soaring cost of housing. — Econ brain: Economist KEVIN MILLIGAN is seeing three trends: reduced debt-to-GDP, minimum new spending, and a plan for growth. — Student views: CIVIX released the results of its annual survey of intermediate and secondary students. Top priorities: "addressing climate change, building more affordable housing and creating more jobs." SOLE QUESTION — Time for a moment of levity. It’s become tradition for finance ministers to wear new shoes on budget day. Why this is a tradition, we cannot tell you. Neither can the Library of Parliament, whose staff has diligently tried to find an explanation themselves. No luck. “Its origin remains mysterious.” Here’s video from Freeland’s shoe-shopping outing in Ottawa on Wednesday. To many, it’s much ado about nothing. To a niche group of readers, there’s symbolism to be read in those shoes, or so government public relations’ teams would like people to think. In 1955, WALTER HARRIS was the first finance minister to sport “almost” new shoes for that year’s budget. Some have worn used mukluks (JOHN CROSBIE in 1979), black square-toed $250 Ecco shoes with polyurethane soles (RALPH GOODALE in 2005), and resoled brogues (JIM FLAHERTY) in 2008 to demonstrate fiscal prudence in a recession year. JOE OLIVER’s New Balance sneakers, and that year’s finances, put an extra spring in his step in 2015. In recent years, BILL MORNEAU ’s annual awkward photo-op and freewheeling discussion about the “strange tradition” with indifferent school children has made for fabulous daytime television. Like a Veep bit, but real life.
| | HALLWAY CONVERSATION | | NO SURPRISES — Everybody and their dog knows the Liberal-NDP deal means Freeland’s budget is likely to sail through the Commons. Given the total lack of brinkmanship, Playbook asked two budget-watchers: Where are you looking for drama in this no-drama budget? — CHRIS BALL, principal at Earnscliffe and former Ontario NDP comms guy: Isn't it refreshing? No surprises? Stability even? And a big commitment to dental care and help for renters negotiated by the NDP. That might not be "drama" in the old Ottawa sense, but it will certainly make a dramatic impact on a lot of people's lives. In the coming days, partisans, pundits and journalists will be looking for points of tension, testing the strength of the confidence and supply agreement like political velociraptors poking at the Jurassic Park fence line. We can assume the government won’t go far enough on elements of its climate plan (shame!), and an increase in defense spending to meet NATO targets will be met with resistance in some corners. But as the first budget in the context of this new NDP-Liberal agreement, I’m expecting good ol’ fashioned stability to be the new political norm — for now, at least. That's dramatic after two years of pandemic and political chaos. — CAROLINE BROUILLETTE, national policy manager for Climate Action Network Canada: On budget day, Climate Action Network Canada will be partaking in the Great Fossil Fuel Subsidy Hunt. The government has promised to cut fossil fuel subsidies by the end of 2023. But will it be truly ending those subsidies, or just moving them towards credits for carbon capture, utilization and storage? The government should be phasing-out all fossil fuel subsidies — including funding for short-term solutions that will require retooling at greater expense and time down the road. They should follow the advice of an IPCC working group and increase investments in clean energy, efficiency, transport, agriculture and forests by up to six times. Did someone forward Ottawa Playbook to you today? Are you ready to be a forwarder, not a forwardee? Click here to sign up to this pretty good (but definitely free) newsletter.
| | CONSERVATIVE CORNER | | ROOM FOR 1 MORE — LEONA ALLESLEV is in. The former Conservative deputy leader and MP returned to West Block on Wednesday to formally announce she wants to lead the party she famously left the Liberals for. Alleslev is branding herself as the not-career-politician candidate. "Real world experience matters," she said during her announcement. Waiting in the wings was her husband TED KROFCHAK. Her campaign manager STEVE GILCHRIST wasn’t able to join in person. The former Tory MP lost her seat in last year’s election, losing to Liberal LEAH TAYLOR ROY by less than 1,500 votes. It didn’t take long for the former Royal Canadian Air Force logistics officer to begin plotting ways to return to federal politics. Alleslev, who has worked in the private sector at IBM and Bombardier, said her late entry into the race is because she’s an “old school logistician” who believes that “time is saved in planning.” She told Playbook in a Q&A that it was around the end of February and beginning of March when she started planning her leadership bid. How do you differentiate yourself from everyone else — and PIERRE POILIEVRE in particular? “They've spent their career learning how to be in politics. I have spent, since I was 14 years old, learning how to be a leader. I trained at military college to be a military leader. I have trained in corporate Canada to be an executive leader — and I have been responsible for big projects and delivering on those projects, leading large teams. We need good ideas but we also need to be able to get them done.” You mentioned a couple times when you were in office, and also in your speech, that you were drawn to the party because of principles. Can you describe what those specific principles were that drew you to cross the aisle in September 2018? “Yes. Listen, when it comes to honor, integrity, character — those things are a broad perspective. So it's not one principle. It's principled. And so it's the whole ball of wax.” Does the party still uphold that ball of wax? “A party is made up of the people who are in it at the time. So really in any group there are some who do and some who may not. The question is, what is the value of the majority? What is the value of the institution of the party? And yes, the Conservative Party majority, and as an institution for 150 years, stand for those values and uphold those values.” WESTERN ROAD TRIP — "Fly somewhere, rent a car, start driving." That's how LESLYN LEWIS's campaign manager, STEVE OUTHOUSE explains her approach to meeting people all over Canada. Nobody is yet drawing crowds like Poilievre, but two-time leadership candidate Lewis is gaining steam. On a swing from Winnipeg to Vancouver, Lewis's campaign is drawing larger crowds by the day. She spoke to at least 130 people in rural Steinbach, Manitoba last weekend. A province over, more than 100 gathered for a midday event, on a workday and short notice, in Moose Jaw. Swift Current drew 260 RSVPs. More than 300 came out in Lethbridge, Alberta. — What's next: Lewis is in Calgary for a couple of days, Red Deer and Edmonton before crossing the Rockies. She'll take Sunday off ahead of events in Kamloops, Kelowna, Chilliwack, Langley, Abbotsford and Vancouver. That takes the campaign to an Easter break. On the other side of a short rest, she's planning a Maritime swing and more events in Quebec. — The differentiator: In a leadership race bursting with candidates, Outhouse lists a few of Lewis's standout attributes: she's a lawyer; she knows how to run a business in the private sector; she's got environmental bona fides; and she can reach new voters. MOAR POLICY — End blockades. That's the gist of JEAN CHAREST's latest platform plank on protecting critical infrastructure. — What counts as critical? Charest served up a list of things: pipelines, utilities and telecom infrastructure, mines, energy production and refining facilities, railways, ports, interprovincial highways, border crossings, airports. — Go negative: The former Quebec premier took a shot at an unnamed leadership rival — hint: the one who's all about freedom, which we wrote about here — who offers kind words to illegal blockaders (say, a trucker protest that creates misery in downtown Ottawa). "The rule of law and the Canadian legal system are not a buffet," said Charest. "Parliamentarians can’t pick and choose when to follow them." — Charest gets action: Mere hours after he called on the feds to approve the Bay du Nord offshore oil project, the government made it official. Not that he's strutting. (That'd be a bad look given that climate activists who make a lot of noise fiercely oppose the development.) WORLD CUP POLITICS — Poilievre is at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver at 8 p.m. local time. A reader reminds us that Canada will take on Croatia in the World Cup in November. Tread carefully, Pierre.
| | ALSO FOR YOUR RADAR | | PABLO'S TO-DO LIST — The heritage minister's legislative plate is positively brimming with controversial bills. It'll fall to PABLO RODRIGUEZ to shepherd a rewrite of Canada's broadcasting laws through Parliament at the same time as he champions an effort to force social media platforms to compensate news outlets for linking to their content. Rodriguez will also front a bill meant to curb hate speech online. — What's one more thing? CBC's AARON WHERRY broke the news that Rodriguez would also sit on a working group of Liberal and NDP MPs tasked with keeping an eye on the two-party pact's parliamentary progress. The other members: DOMINIC LEBLANC and RUBY SAHOTA for the Grits, and New Democrats BLAKE DESJARLAIS, LAUREL COLLINS and DANIEL BLAIKIE. The gang of six will convene for monthly "stock-take" sessions, Wherry reports.
| | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | 4 p.m. Budget 2022 will be introduced to the House of Commons, courtesy of Chrystia Freeland.
| | ASK US ANYTHING | | WHAT ARE YOU HEARING that Playbook needs to know? Send it all our way.
| | MEDIA ROOM | | — Words of warning in POLITICO’s Washington Playbook: ‘This Town’ becomes Covid Town. Familiar words to almost anyone who's touring Ottawa's cocktail circuit. — ICYMI: Decoding the freedom-loving firebrand who wants to be Canada's next PM. — Here’s SADIYA ANSARI in The Walrus: Child care revolution: What Canada can learn from Germany. — DANIEL MUNRO writes for the Centre of International Governance Innovation: If humanity is to succeed in space, our ethics must evolve. — “Never again is happening again — documented nearly in real time by cell phone cameras, with the graphic images shared within moments around the world and first-person accounts published even with the dirt filling mass graves still freshly turned,” DAVID M. HERSZENHORN writes for POLITICO.
| | PROZONE | | For s, here’s our Pro Canada PM memo: Budget 2022: Leaks, warnings and wish lists. In other headlines for Pro readers: — FDA meets with states over stalled Canada drug import plan.
— ‘Unbearable’ food crisis could hit Africa’s Sahel by June, EU and African leaders warn.
— U.S. declaration on internet freedoms expected April 28.
— Are Microsoft’s days as the ‘friendly’ tech giant over?
— Pinterest bans climate deniers' posts from its platform.
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | Birthdays: HBD to Longueuil mayor CATHERINE FOURNIER (3-0!), former Cabinet minister BERNADETTE JORDAN, Alberta MLA THOMAS DANG and former MPP DAVID ZIMMER. Spotted: Ahead of QP in THE HOUSE on Wednesday afternoon, a moment of silence in remembrance of the lives lost in the Humboldt bus crash. “On the fourth anniversary, we remember our Humboldt Broncos and I ask everyone to leave some sticks on the porch tonight just in case they need a spare one upstairs,” said Saskatchewan MP WARREN STEINLEY. PAM DAMOFF, giving a shout out in the House to Raptors superfan NAV BHATIA … KIRSTY DUNCAN, recognizing Tartan Day: “We celebrate the contributions of Scots and their descendants” … Canada’s ambassador to the U.N. BOB RAE, at Carnegie Hall to take in the National Arts Centre Orchestra. FRANÇOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE, testing positive for Covid … DAVID HERLE in Ottawa, walking up Elgin in a blue suit and not a Roughriders jersey. JONATHAN WILKINSON recycling his Exeter College crested tie at natural resources committee Wednesday. He wore the same tie during his March 2 appearance. (Ministers, they’re just like us.) Spotted at the Met — Wednesday's marquee event was a book launch for "Trump, Trudeau, Tweets, Truth", by former journalist and BRIAN MULRONEY dcomm BILL FOX. Attendees: BONNIE BROWNLEE, STEPHEN AZZI, ALLAN THOMPSON, JAMES CALDWELL, DAVID HERLE, MONA FORTIER, ANTHONY WILSON-SMITH. Movers and shakers: Congrats to the authors shortlisted for the 2022 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize:MIKE BLANCHFIELD and FEN OSLER HAMPSON (The Two Michaels), JOANNA CHIU (China Unbound), FLORA MACDONALD and GEOFFREY STEVENS (Flora!), STEPHEN POLOZ (The Next Age of Uncertainty) and JODY WILSON-RAYBOULD ("Indian" in the Cabinet). Coming November 2022 from WILSON-RAYBOULD and McClelland & Stewart: True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change. Proof Strategies is bringing on former NDP MP MATTHEW DUBÉ as a senior associate. The "collegial consensus builder" joins the Ottawa GR team.… Former Liberal MP ADAM VAUGHAN, who recently got dunked on for accusing Poilievre supporters of photoshopping rally photos, joined Navigator as a principal. Media mentions: TRAVIS DHANRAJ is joining CBC Marketplace as program host. Farewells: PAUL OLENIUK, who held the pen on many of ERIN O'TOOLE's (and then CANDICE BERGEN's) speeches and press releases, is leaving the Hill after more than a decade . Former Ontario premier KATHLEEN WYNNE will give her farewell speech at Queen’s Park today. “What I’m going to say to my colleagues in the legislature is that our job is to shine some light,” she told MARTIN REGG COHN of The Star. “The extent to which we divide, rather than shine that light, is the extent to which we fail.” She was an MPP for 19 years. Cohn reminds us: “Wynne made history as Ontario’s first woman premier and (openly) gay leader in 2013.” In memoriam: Former Canadian Space Agency astronaut BJARNI TRYGGVASON has died at the age of 76. “He was the smartest engineer I ever met and a supremely skilled pilot,” MP and former astronaut MARC GARNEAU said in a statement. “He taught me how to fly and patiently corrected me when I got it wrong. He was a fine human being. I miss him." DAVID KILGOUR, a former Cabinet minister and MP for almost three decades, has died. “He was one of Canada’s finest advocates for human rights in China,” shared MARGARET MCCUAIG-JOHNSTON. “I once watched him meet complete strangers (a couple and their newborn) on a street in Montreal, chat with them for close to an hour, and then very genuinely invite them to Sunday dinner at his house in Ottawa,” lawyer and professor KAVEH SHAHROOZshared on Twitter. “This type of interaction happened so often that my wife and I jokingly adopted the verb ‘To Kilgour’ to mean ‘to immediately become the best of friends with someone.’” Kilgour’s family told the CBC he had suffered from a rare lung disease.
| | On the Hill | | Here’s what’s on the roster so far. Keep up to the latest House committee schedules here. Find Senate meeting schedules here. 11 a.m. The House immigration committee hears from the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and others as it considers outcomes in citizenship decisions. 11 a.m. The House public safety and national security committee will hear from more experts on Canada’s security posture in relation to Russia. 11 a.m.The House public accounts committee will hear from Auditor General KAREN HOGAN on the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund. Read the AG’s report here. 11 a.m. The House procedure committee continues its study on the inclusion of Indigenous languages on federal election ballots. 11 a.m. The British Columbia government and the Shipping Federation of Canada are among the witnesses as the House fisheries and oceans committee studies marine cargo spills. Check out POLITICO Pro’s calendar for additional committee activity, events and more.
| | TRIVIA | | Wednesday’s answer:ANGUS MCLINTOCK, accidental Member of Parliament, stars in a series of books by novelist TERRY FALLIS. “What a great story: 10/10!” LUCAS BORCHENKO writes to Playbook. Props to ROBERT MCDOUGALL, PIERRE PILOTE, JOHN GUOBA, DOROTHY MCCABE, GUY SKIPWORTH, NICK MASCIANTONIO and GEORGE YOUNG. Thursday’s question: Who first said: “Government must not live in the past.... Every day there are new needs to be met. If inflation is to be fought, unemployment countered and something done, and soon, to get Canadian prosperity back into its stride, the government must begin to plan ahead — not timidly, not tentatively — but boldly, imaginatively and courageously.” For bonus marks: Tell us who repeated those same words in the House almost 40 years later. Send your answers to ottawaplaybook@politico.com 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. Playbook wouldn’t happen without Luiza Ch. Savage, Ben Pauker and editor Sue Allan. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |  |
