Dispatch

How Canada’s progress on Afghanistan evacuations compares to other countries

Afghan people who were transported from Afghanistan to Madrid, walk towards an U.S. military airplane that will transport them to Germany, at the Torrejon military base as part of the evacuation process in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. Andrea Comas/AP Photo.

Welcome to The Hub’s Federal Election 2021 Policy Pulse, where we’ll be tracking all the policy announcements from the major parties, with instant analysis from our crew of experts.

With the election scheduled for Sept. 20, we’ll be monitoring 36 days worth of policy ideas, so watch out each morning for the day’s live blog where we’ll be tracking every announcement as it happens.

4:30 p.m. — How Canada’s progress on Afghanistan evacuations compares to other countries

The Hub’s associate editor Amal Attar-Guzman examines the evacuation mission underway in Afghanistan:

As of today, more than 2,700 Afghans, permanent residents, Canadian citizens, and other nationals have been evacuated by Canadian forces, according to a government press conference today.

At the moment, approximately 1,000 evacuees from Afghanistan have landed in Canada since leaving Kabul, and more than 300 evacuees have completed quarantine. In the last day, more than 500 people have been airlifted to safety.

With these new numbers, how is Canada faring in the evacuation mission in comparison to other G7 nations and others?

Below are the approximate totals of evacuees per country:

  1. United States: 82,300
  2. United Kingdom: 10,000+
  3. Germany: 3,000+
  4. France: 2,961
  5. Canada: 2,700+
  6. Australia: 2,700
  7. Italy: 2,659
  8. Turkey: 1,404
  9. Spain: 1,200+
  10. Japan: N/A

As shown by the numbers above, Canada is 5th out of 10 countries in total evacuations. But when it comes to G7 countries, Canada remains 5th place out of the seven countries, only just ahead of Italy and Japan, who have recently been accepted to send evacuation aircrafts and enter Afghanistan.

There has been some speculation that Canada will stop evacuating people ahead of the 31st deadline. In fact, an unnamed source told CBC that Canada could have just 24 to 48 hours left, since Canadian forces only have a limited number of flights remaining.

Since the evacuation started, criticisms on the Canadian government’s efforts have risen, as seen in opinion pieces from the Globe and Mail and the National Post. The situation also raises questions about Canadian foreign policy and Canada’s role on the global stage, as mentioned in a Hub viewpoint published earlier this month.

3:30 p.m. — Any plan for telecoms must recognize that developing infrastructure and reducing prices are at odds

Peter Menzies, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former CRTC vice chair, examines the NDP telecoms proposal announced this morning:

Internet and cell service access, particularly for remote, rural, and low-income households, is in fact a major problem, and it is good to see the NDP are interested in tackling it and bringing costs down to more reasonable levels. Unfortunately, their approach would likely raise costs indirectly, to be subsidized by taxpayers rather than by service users.

The reality is that price is not itself the problem. It is a signal of other problems informed by a number of factors, including the size and scope of the network in Canada, the lack of effective competition, regulatory factors, and yes, corporate profit motives. A price cap tackles the latter item but ignores all the former items, meaning that telecom providers will either stop providing services to remote markets or will reduce the quality of said services. It will also make the prospect of attracting competition more challenging. 

To cover this, the NDP propose that a Crown corporation would pick up the slack. Though this model does have some success, such as in Saskatchewan, it is unclear whether that is the right vehicle nationally. It risks being slow and inefficient, it would undermine competition, and risks stymying innovation, thereby raising the costs in the form of greater expenses on government.

After a quarter of a century growing competition in an industry previously dominated by provincial Crown corporations, moving back to a 1980s model hardly seems the progressive approach. Saskatchewan, for instance, doesn’t have the nation’s lowest mobile prices because it has a Crown: it has the lowest prices because its Crown is a strong, efficient competitor battling for market share with national private sector companies.

better approach would recognize and grapple with the fact that developing infrastructure and reducing prices are fundamentally at odds with one another. Moreover, a lack of competition, a regulator fixated on facilities-based competition at the expense of consumers and an inefficient regulatory apparatus must be fixed if we are to improve services and access without increasing prices. Thus, the government’s role is to create a balance based on a core set of goals that harmonize regulatory decisions with market forces.

1:50 p.m. — There could be inadvertent consequences in the Conservative bankruptcy plan

The Hub contributor Greg Boland examines a Conservative plan to protect pensions in the wake of corporate bankruptcies:

Yesterday Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole promised to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to give pensioners priority status over other creditors in the event of a corporate bankruptcy.

This issue has permeated federal policymaking for several years. High-profile bankruptcies such as Nortel and Sears have brought considerable advocacy and debate about such changes to Canada’s bankruptcy regime. Successive governments, however, have opted not to enact them.

Although pension security is highly important, there could be inadvertent consequences to the Conservative proposal that make it more difficult for distressed companies to ultimately come out of bankruptcy protection. These risks need to be weighed against the understandable concerns about the well-being of pensioners.

Let me highlight three specific risks that policymakers ought to consider:

1) Typically in an insolvency, a company needs quick access to capital to have a hope of recovering. Suppliers and service providers demand immediate payment and normal sources of capital are typically unavailable. This creates a sudden vacuum in liquidity that can halt operations of a company. Normally, a company can execute “debtor in possession” financing to keep the lights on and the business running while it restructures. Debtor in possession financings rank at the top of the capital structure in order to facilitate rapid execution in the face of great uncertainty. If eventual legislative amendments placed pensioners ahead of these rescue financings, there is a high probability that they would be unavailable, leading to sudden business closures.

2) Pensions entitlements are typically granted over time as a result of negotiations between the company and its employees. It is impossible to say what they might be years in the future. Pensions are also valued using relatively complex math that incorporates market inputs such as interest rates and asset prices. Finally, the methodology of valuation is prescribed in law and subject to change. As a result, a potential lender has little visibility to how large a pension might be when it comes time to get repaid years or decades in the future. If pensions rank ahead of other lenders, this uncertainty will raise the cost of capital or in some cases prohibit access to capital at all.

3) Finally, many larger or older companies have pension obligations that are close to or even exceed the entire value of the company. These companies can continue to operate and pay wages and benefits to their workers, but they often need operating loans. Again, these loans would be unavailable if they couldn’t be ranked ahead of the pension obligations to some degree.

Every restructuring is different and it’s hard to generalize the impact of this proposal. However, if these legislative amendments were made, it will definitely lead to higher capital costs for many companies and ultimately contribute to more sudden business closures.

12:50 p.m. — Trudeau announces corporate tax hike on big banks

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in Surrey, British Columbia today to announce a plan to raise the corporate tax rate by three percentage points on banks and insurance companies with more than $1 billion in revenue.

Trudeau said the plan will raise about $2.5 billion and the revenue will go towards paying for the party’s housing plan that was announced Tuesday.

12:40 p.m. — It’s true — Canada is a huge outlier when it comes to mobile data rates

The Hub’s content editor L. Graeme Smith examines mobile data rates around the world:

A report released this summer from the Sweden-based mobile analytics firm Tefficient examined mobile usage trends in 2020 and during the pandemic from 44 countries in all regions of the world. Included are figures on affordability. 

As Tefficient highlights, mobile data usage has never been higher, and mobile data has never been cheaper. 

And yet, Canada is an extreme outlier when it comes to how much consumers have to pay for mobile data. It is a sobering document for Canadians, emphasizing just how expensive our rates are compared to global averages. 

Canadians, in fact, pay the highest total revenue per gigabyte in the world (utilizing data from 2019), at 14 Euros in mobile service revenue per gigabyte, or about $20 CAD. In comparison, most other countries that were studied paid in the range of zero to seven Euros, or about $10 CAD at the most.

Jagmeet Singh spoke this morning on the affordability issues consumers face when accessing telecom services. The NDP platform promises to remedy this imbalance in respect to mobile plans with several proposals earlier this morning.

The Conservative platform, likewise, seeks to address affordability through increased competition, promising to allow foreign telecommunications companies to provide services to Canadian customers provided that the same treatment is reciprocated for Canadian companies in that company’s country.

11:45 a.m. — O’Toole highlights mental health action plan in Ontario

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was in Brantford, Ontario this morning to discuss his party’s “Canada mental health action plan.”

The program includes $150 million over three years in grants to non-profits and charities that are delivering mental health services. It also includes a plan to encourage employers to add mental health coverage to employee benefits plans with a 25 percent tax credit.

The Conservative plan would also create a nationwide three-digit suicide prevention hotline.

O’Toole said a Conservative government would also encourage the provinces to devote a “significant portion” of health funding to mental health.

11:30 a.m. — NDP unveils plan for affordable telecom services

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was in Windsor this morning to highlight his party’s plan for affordable telecom services.

Singh has promised to put a price cap on cell phone and internet bills that would keep rates below the global average. The NDP leader would also declare high-speed internet an “essential service.”

The NDP would also require providers to offer a basic plan for these services that is “comparable with the affordable plans… in other countries.” The NDP platform also contains a plan to create a Crown corporation to delivery telecom services to every community and another plan to introduce a “Telecom Consumers’ Bill of Rights.”

10:15 a.m. — The real key to fixing long-term care is higher wages

Johanna Lewis and Brian Dijkema explored the NDP proposal from Day 10 of the campaign to ban for-profit long-term care providers last year for the Cardus think tank. Here’s what they found:

Blaming “greedy profit-driven corporations” for long-term care’s problems is easy and makes for a politically popular sound bite, but banning for-profit providers from LTC is a simplistic response that fails to solve the underlying, structural issues with LTC and its labour-market challenges.

In a healthy market, diversity of options and competition between them would hold all players accountable. Different homes (including for-profit, non-profit, and public) would compete to attract residents by offering better care and to attract skilled workers by offering better compensation. These positive forces have been stifled by a bloated wait-list that deprives seniors and their families of real choice in where to receive care and by structural distortions that have prevented the LTC labour market from responding as it should to a severe labour shortage in a competitive environment: with higher wages.

Even if Ontario had unlimited funding for an overhaul of this magnitude, throwing money at these groups would not be enough to develop thriving homes from scratch.

The NDP’s plan recognizes that preserving seniors’ communities is critical. And one of the major strengths of non-profit and charitable homes is the connections many of them maintain with their local communities. Cultivating a sustainable base of social, financial, and volunteer support is an organic process that takes time, patience, and the right people; government is severely limited in its ability to create an engaged community of care.

7:00 a.m. — Where the leaders are today

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will be Surrey, British Columbia to make a housing announcement at 9 a.m. local time (12 p.m. ET).

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole will be in Brantford, Ontario to make an announcement at 11:30 a.m.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh will be in Windsor, Ontario to make an announcement on affordability at 10 a.m.

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