I keep hearing about these changes that Carney is making, but I have yet to see a real smoking gun.

Yes, the changes he’s bringing in could cause real problems. But they also could be exactly what he says he’s doing—making it easier for the government to actually get stuff done. A lot of regulation that’s come down the pipeline since the 1960s has been about giving various parties the ability to oppose and slow down action by both business and the government. The problem with this type of regulation is it has the opportunity cost of making everything more expensive and a lot slower to do—even if it is meant to, and actually could be a good thing for everyone.

The most obvious example of this is housing. We’ve made it really easy for existing home-owners to get Councils to refuse new housing construction. The result is a housing crisis. I suspect it’s much the same thing with regard to environmental regulation and working with the First Nations too. It’s understandable, there has been a lot of bad-faith bargaining by both business and government. But this adds a lot of costs to everything in society–and that’s money that doesn’t end up in social programs or worker’s pockets. (Yes, and profits too. But they can–at least in theory–be taxed. But that’s another issue.)

If we are going to build a carbon-free, sustainable, and just society, we aren’t going to do it by slowing everything down to a crawl and giving lots of people a veto. We shouldn’t go back to the capitalist free-for-all either. But there needs to be some sort of ‘third option’ on the table. I don’t know if Carney’s the person to do it—but I still don’t see anything from him that says for sure he isn’t.

The tone of Gilmore’s comment was pretty hot. But the interview with Guilbeault seemed a little less—he is still a Liberal MP after all. I’m still waiting to see more from Carney before I make up my mind about him.

I get accused of being too easy on Carney. But I wonder if the Strait of Hormuz is already enough inducement to get people to become more efficient and pivot away from fossil fuels. I’d suggest that the trickle of Chinese EVs that he negotiated to allow into the country might have a more positive effect than a higher industrial carbon tax. The fact that solar panels and wind turbines are the cheapest electricity sources also enters into the equation. If the need for taxes is waning, I think it would make sense for Carney to bargain some of it away so he can get concessions from Alberta.

I don’t know what specific campaign against Section 239 you are referring to, but it strikes me that it has pretty much been allowed to gut laws against libel, hate speech, truth-in-advertising, election financing, etc, much to the detriment of our society. It may be the case there could be frivolous lawsuits, but if so, I’d suggest the problem there would be the frivolous lawsuits, which could be dealt with without gutting hundreds of years of regulations that tried to curb the worst excesses of publishing. For example, there are anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws that have been passed in various jurisdictions. There is also the Fair Dealing provision in the Copyright Act. Both of which are meant to prevent frivolous lawsuits from harming people.

I don’t think the response to wrong-headed attacks on the Internet is to support the status quo. There are an awful lot of very bad things happening on line, and governments need to reign in the worst abuses. But it has to be done by people who know enough to preserve what is good while limiting the bad.