Intelligence articles from Stitcher

Britain’s prime minister is making a risky move by calling for a general election in December. Will it succeed any more than it did for his predecessor? In Japan, both the government and the people take a dim view of soft-drug use; we ask why. And tourists make a dangerous and defiant last-minute dash up Uluru, Australia’s most famous rock.

Vladimir Putin’s diplomacy regarding northern Syria is just one example of the Russian president’s widening influence. British Airways was once known as the world’s favourite airline, we ask why its popularity has fallen far faster than its profits. And why voters should be wary of politicians claiming to speak for “the people”.

Justin Trudeau will remain prime minister, but will lead a minority government. He will probably be able to continue with his progressive push, but his halo is a bit tarnished. It’s ten years this month since Greece’s financial implosion; we look back on a decade spent balancing the books. And, the surprising success of fun stock-ticker symbols.

Alberta Bitumen and Cars

Sandra Laville reports that global carmakers are among the leading opponents of action on the climate crisis.

A question of balance for the planet

This is according to an exclusive analysis of the way major corporations frustrate or undermine initiatives to cut greenhouse gases. The research, for the Guardian, revealed that since 2015, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Toyota and General Motors have been among the strongest opponents of regulations to help countries meet the 1.5C warming limit in the Paris agreement. The car industry in the US and Europe has attempted to block, delay and frustrate initiatives to regulate and reduce emissions from the transport sector and slow the move to electric vehicles, the report says.

Edward Collins, author of The Carbon Policy Footprint, said: “Corporations have a profound impact on the climate change agenda not only through physical emissions but through influencing of the climate change policy agendas being introduced by governments around the world.
“The sector has dug in hard to dampen rising vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards. Through their lobbying, auto companies have delayed the transition of a sector that sucks up a huge proportion of oil demand globally...”
Julia Poliscanova, the clean vehicles director for the Transport & Environment NGO, said the automotive industry was seeking to eke out the last profits of the traditional engine by frustrating emissions reduction targets and questioning every aspect of electric technology, from expressing apparent concerns about the affordability for consumers to querying if the infrastructure will be in place in time.
“The car industry has always maximised its profits from its existing models and products for as long as is possible to make their money and delay and work around the regulations,” she said.
“They have known for years – since 2013 – the standards coming in on emissions in 2021. They have had years to prepare but they didn’t. Instead they pushed their SUV market, maximised its sales reach to make profits from these high-polluting, high-margin vehicles for as long as possible and now they are scrambling to comply, claiming how difficult it is to meet the targets, but they only have themselves to blame.”1

Barry Saxifrage reports that Canadians and Americans currently drive the world's most climate polluting cars and trucks.

Canadian car, trucks, and GHG

On average they emit more than 60 tonnes of climate pollution (tCO2) each over their lifespan. To meet our Paris Climate Agreement goals, all our cars and trucks will need to quickly transition to nearly zero-emissions.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/04/analysis/canadian-cars-are-worlds-dirtiest-ev-age-essential 

If you look back at that chart, (MIT did the math and created an interactive chart on their CarbonCounter.com website.) you'll see that only electric vehicles are clean enough to meet future climate targets. And only then if they are also fuelled with fairly clean electricity.
I customized that chart to use the emissions-intensity of the super-clean electricity that most Canadians have access to: 20 gCO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). With electricity that clean, EVs meet future climate targets.
But if the electricity they use is too dirty, then even the cleanest cars no longer meet even the 2040 targets. This is the case with the current electricity supply in Alberta, Saskatchewan and many U.S. coal-burning states.
So the climate task ahead is two pronged. First, we need to stop buying new vehicles that burn gasoline. All new vehicles need to be able to run on zero-emissions energy. The cleanest option available today is a BEV.
Second, we need to clean up the electricity supply in regions where it is still too climate polluting. Let's take a quick look at each of these in turn.2 

Jason Markusoff reports that three of Canada’s oil sands giants ran full-page ads in newspapers across the country that made a bold claim that some of their operations are producing oil “with a smaller greenhouse impact than the oil average.” What’s more, the ad suggested, shuttering the oil sands could result in higher carbon fuels replacing their products. Trouble is, a close look at the leading comparisons of the world’s crude oil sources, assembled by governments, academics and private-sector analysts, shows that, overall, producing a barrel of crude from oil sands still emits more greenhouse gas than the average of all sources. The best or newest oil sands developments, whose emissions are below the mean, remain exceptions. “You have a lot of amazing trees here. But it is not the forest,” says Benjamin Israel, senior analyst at the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank.

Industry leaders say they’ll continue to pursue ways to drive down the oil sands’ per-barrel emissions (also known as their carbon intensity) with a variety of promising innovations and huge sums invested in further research.3 

Oil that can be produced cheaply with low emissions can become more highly sought after. The oil sands have long struggled on both those scores. The energy source fueling the BEV’s will need to produce much less GHG emissions than the bitumen from the oil sands.

References

1	(2019, October 14). Exclusive: Carmakers among key opponents of climate action .... Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/10/14/news/exclusive-carmakers-among-key-opponents-climate-action
2	(2019, September 4). Canadian cars are the world's dirtiest | National Observer. Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/04/analysis/canadian-cars-are-worlds-dirtiest-ev-age-essential
3	(2019, October 16). Scrubbing the oil sands' record - Macleans.ca. Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/economy/scrubbing-the-oil-sands-record/

Who wants a minority government?

Aaron Hutchins of Macleans asks Who wants a minority government?

Some want a minority government

As a whole, 40 per cent of Canadians polled by Innovative said they’d rather the election end with a minority government,

“There are some voters within the base of every party that would be happy to see their party have a minority because they’re not completely sold on everything their party wants to do—which I think is healthy,” says Greg Lyle, the president of Innovative Research. “Leaders don’t get a blank cheque, even from their own people.”Based on current polling data, a minority government appears the most likely scenario for Canada’s next government, though which party has the most seats is still very much a coin flip. There’s a less than 20 per cent chance either Liberals or Conservatives manage to pull off a majority mandate (170 seats or more), according to 338Canada’s latest projection, with both parties currently projected to win 132 seats in Parliament.1

compared to 43 per cent who said they’d like a majority government. (The other 17 per cent are still unsure.)

References

1	(2019, October 17). Innovative Research poll: Who wants a minority government .... Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/innovative-research-poll-who-wants-a-minority-government-lots-of-liberals/

The party with the most seats doesn't always get to govern

Aaron Wherry of the CBC, reports that the party with the most seats doesn’t always govern.

Who gets first try at government?

Andrew Scheer is making a political argument about how Parliaments work - and implying that argument has the force of law. In an email to supporters on Wednesday, the Conservative Party warned of a plot to subvert democracy in Canada. The Liberals, a Conservative official wrote, were "already planning a way to take power without winning the election." It's the sort of language typically reserved for describing military coups and authoritarian movements. In this case, the Conservatives were describing a scenario which would see the Liberals govern with the support of other parties, even if they don't win the most seats next week.

But that is not a fact. The party with the most seats doesn't always get to govern. If Scheer's "fact" was a fact, John Horgan currently wouldn't be the premier of British Columbia….if there is an unclear result on Oct. 21 — and if that result inspires a loud partisan campaign to question the legitimacy of certain outcomes — Canadians will need to understand what history has shown us about how the Canadian political system actually works.1

If Scheer's "fact" was a fact, John Horgan currently wouldn't be the premier of British Columbia.

References

1	(2019, October 18). No, the party with the most seats doesn't always govern | CBC .... Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-trudeau-minority-government-2019-election-1.5324496

Writing on the wall for oil growth?

The players in this look at the economics of climate change and opportunities for investment include Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden and Warren Buffett.

Money on the move

Jennifer A Dlouhy writes that an all-star lineup of economists, from Alan Greenspan to Paul Volcker, is endorsing a plan to combat climate change by slapping a tax on greenhouse gas emissions and then distributing the revenue to American households. All living former Federal Reserve chairs, several Nobel Prize winners and previous leaders of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers have signed on to a statement asserting that a robust, gradually rising carbon tax is “the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.”

common ground on carbon tax

Many economists have favored a carbon tax as the most effective strategy for discouraging greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. But the economists now are going further by stressing that the revenue should be rebated to citizens, instead of being used to reduce the deficit, fund government or pare income taxes.
“For the first time, there’s consensus among economists on what to do with the money, and the answer is to give it back to the American people,” said Ted Halstead, head of the Climate Leadership Council backing the plan.
That approach is key to ensuring it is a progressive tax that ends up helping the poor, instead of just hiking their energy bills. The premise is that periodic dividend checks could more than make up for the hike in costs for poor- and middle-income Americans.1 

Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov of Reuters report that Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) still sees abundant opportunity to make money from oil and gas in coming decades even as investors and governments increase pressure on energy companies over climate change, its chief executive, Ben van Beurden, said. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted from Shell’s operations and the products it sells rose by 2.5% between 2017 and 2018. A defiant van Beurden rejected a rising chorus from climate activists and parts of the investor community to transform radically the 112-year-old Anglo-Dutch company’s traditional business model.

Some common ground

“Despite what a lot of activists say, it is entirely legitimate to invest in oil and gas because the world demands it,” van Beurden said.
“We have no choice” but to invest in long-life projects, he added.
Shell and its peers have long insisted that switching away from oil and gas to cleaner sources of energy will take decades as demand for transport and plastics continues to grow. Investors have warned, however, that oil companies often rely on forecasts that underestimate the pace of change.
Shell plans to greenlight more than 35 new oil and gas projects by 2025, according to an investor presentation from June.2

The CBC reports that a Warren Buffett-linked company will build a $200M wind power farm in Alberta. The Rattlesnake Ridge Wind project will be undertaken by Calgary-based BHE Canada, a subsidiary of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy. The Rattlesnake Ridge Wind project will be located southwest of Medicine Hat and will produce enough energy to supply the equivalent of 79,000 homes.

chorus from climate activists

Berkshire Hathaway Energy also owns AltaLink, the regulated transmission company that supplies electricity to more than 85 per cent of the Alberta population.
BHE Canada says an unnamed large Canadian corporate partner has signed a long-term power purchase agreement for the majority of the Rattlesnake Ridge energy output.
The project is being developed by U.K.-based Renewable Energy Systems, which is building two other Alberta wind projects totalling 134.6 MW this year and has 750 MW of renewable energy installed or currently under construction in Canada.3

The “wise money” seems to be seeking long term investment in areas where carbon pricing is creating incentives to transition away from fossil fuel investment.

References

1	(2019, January 16). From Greenspan to Yellen, Economic Brain Trust Backs .... Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/from-greenspan-to-yellen-economic-brain-trust-backs-carbon-tax
2	(2019, October 14). Exclusive: No choice but to invest in oil, Shell CEO says .... Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-shell-climate-exclusive/exclusive-no-choice-but-to-invest-in-oil-shell-ceo-says-idUSKBN1WT2JL
3	(2019, October 15). Warren Buffett's firm to launch $200M wind power farm in Alberta. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/wind-farm-warren-buffett-alberta-berkshire-hathaway-calgary-1.5321345

Report Card on Climate Plans

Katharine Hayhoe, Canadian atmospheric scientist, and Andrew Leach an energy and environmental economist, have produced a report card on the climate plans of four federal parties for Macleans magazine.

October Report Card on Climate Plans

As a climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe knows that the climate system doesn’t care how we cut emissions: but the science is clear that the faster we do so, the better off we’ll all be. As an economist, Andrew Leach has spent a lot of time thinking about how we can cut emissions through climate policies. He likes to view Canadian policies through a global lens. If the world acts as we do, would we reach our global goals? Today, that answer is mixed. If everyone in the world implemented our current policies, we’d see significant emissions reductions. But if everyone lived and used energy the way we do, we’d be in much deeper trouble.

References

1	(2019, October 3). The best and worst federal party climate plans, graded .... Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/society/environment/the-best-and-worst-federal-party-climate-plans-graded/

Is US Safe third country?

Justin Trudeau stressed that there are no "shortcuts" in Canada's immigration system and everyone is subject to the same rules.

making a point

Trudeau said Canada continues to work with partners in the U.S. and around the world to spread that message, and talks continue on a possible update to the Safe Third Country agreement. That agreement requires asylum seekers to make their claim for protection in the first safe country they arrive in. The agreement makes an exception for those who arrive in Canada outside of official border points. 

The question has been asked by Haitian asylum seekers who faced threats of deportation in the United States whether the Great Republic is really a Safe Third Country.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is promising to end illegal border crossings by asylum seekers entering Canada outside official points, and says his government would focus on economic immigration and helping to protect the refugees in greatest danger.1

Singh is answering reporter questions.... he says he would suspend the safe third country agreement responding to Scheer's immigration announcement today #cdnpoli

— David Thurton 🇹🇹🇨🇦 (@CBCDavid) October 9, 2019

Brian Hill of Global News reports that experts say Scheer’s plan to close border loophole ‘doomed to failure’

Sharry Aiken, a Queen’s University law professor, says any plan to scrap the loophole in the STCA without agreement from the U.S. is “doomed to failure.”
Meanwhile, she says expanding the agreement to cover the entire border is nonsensical because Canada does not have the resources to enforce this type of mass “securitization” of the border, nor is this type of strategy effective.2

References

1	(2019, October 9). Scheer vows to stop illegal border crossings. Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://ca.news.yahoo.com/scheer-vows-stop-illegal-border-144718304.html
2	(2019, October 9). Scheer vows to stop illegal border crossings. Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://ca.news.yahoo.com/scheer-vows-stop-illegal-border-144718304.html

Western Canadian jobs more secure than eastern jobs in climate emergency

The tension between those who support aggressive GHG emission reductions and those who favour gradual phase out while Canada continues to emit GHG in the oil and gas industry may point to an underlying concern for jobs.

Keeping jobs in the fishery

CBC interviewed Boris Worm, a professor of marine biology at Halifax's Dalhousie University, contributed science that was assessed in the new report of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate that emphasized the ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive.

When Stuart Beaton started fishing for lobster in 1971, the ocean waters off the northern coast of Nova Scotia and the marine creatures that lived beneath the waves behaved differently than today.
There is now less ice coverage in the spring, new species have arrived and lobsters are flocking to more northern waters amid rising ocean temperatures. His family, with three generations of lobster fishermen, have watched the changes in real time over half a century.
"In our business, we're very exposed to what happens. If two degrees kills the oceans..." said his son, Gordon Beaton, during an interview on a wharf in Ballantynes Cove, N.S., before his father added: "We're going to be the first to know."1

The Guardian offers a report on the climate crisis explained in 10 charts. The level of CO2 has been rising since the industrial revolution and is now at its highest for about 4 million years. The rate of the rise is even more striking – the fastest for 66m years – with scientists saying we are in “uncharted territory”.

Increasing GHG

Greenland has lost almost 4 trillion tonnes of ice since 2002. Mountain ranges from the Himalayas to the Andes to the Alps are also losing ice rapidly as glaciers shrink. A third of the Himalayan and Hindu Kush ice is already doomed.

Greenland ice disappearing

Sea levels are inexorably rising as ice on land melts and hotter oceans expand. Sea levels are slow to respond to global heating, so even if the temperature rise is restricted to 2C, one in five people in the world will eventually see their cities submerged, from New York to London to Shanghai. As heating melts the sea ice, the darker water revealed absorbs more of the sun’s heat, causing more heating – one example of the vicious circles in the climate system.

Mariners see sea level rise

Scientists think the changes in the Arctic may be responsible for worsened heatwaves and floods in Eurasia and North America.2

Arctic Sea Ice shrinking

The CBC reports on the attitude of some oil industry executives to the climate strikers. Gary Mar, CEO of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada and a former Alberta Progressive Conservative environment minister, said some of his three grown children have taken part in environmental protests before and he supports their right to do so.

He said if one of his children wanted to skip school to attend the strike Friday he would "be OK with that."
However, he said it's unrealistic for the climate change strikers to demand the immediate end of oil and gas production.
"We're not opposed to the environment," Mar said of the energy industry.3

The concern on the Atlantic and in the West about jobs may be connected to the problem of which workers are well trained to transition to energy jobs and which are going to have a more difficult training for the jobs of the future. The National Post reports that new research says job growth from clean energy will dramatically outpace that from fossil fuels over the next decade — as long as future Canadian governments maintain or increase attempts to fight climate change. "The clean-energy sector is a good-news story that no one's talking about," said Merran Smith of Clean Energy Canada, a think tank based at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. "There is nothing to fear about moving forward on climate action."

Smith said the data shows clean energy employment could reach nearly 560,000 by the end of the next decade. That's 160,000 new jobs, more than enough to make up for the 50,000 jobs which fossil fuels are expected to shed.
The study also forecasts money flowing into clean energy will grow 2.9 per cent a year. Fossil fuel investment is expected to shrink.4

Perhaps the strategy has changed since April when the United Conservative Party notes Jason Kenney said that many other changes proposed by the UCP would also help kickstart the industry, especially the Job Creation Tax Cut, carbon tax elimination, the Red Tape Reduction Action Plan, and the Open for Business Act.

“However,” he concluded, “to get Alberta back to work, and to create jobs in our energy sector, it is necessary for Alberta to move from a defensive, passive, and apologetic approach to a strong, assertive, and strategic defence of our economy, our workers, and our way of life. And with a United Conservative Party government in office, that is what we will do – get pipelines built, fight back against foreign-funded special interests and stand up for a fair deal in Canada.”5 

Choices and important questions

The campaign to Vote Energy highlights the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) promotion of an Energy Platform for Canada to define a strategic, long-term vision for oil and natural gas growth. That policy includes:

• Support completion of currently proposed major pipeline projects and actively support development of additional projects.• Supply Canada’s domestic oil and natural gas needs with domestic production, in particular by facilitating transportationof oil and natural gas from Western Canada to markets in Central and Atlantic Canada.• Increase the participation of Indigenous communities and businesses in Canada’s oil and natural gas sector.• Double current investment in the sector within four years, to return to or surpass 2014 investment levels.• Grow Canada’s contribution to global oil and natural gas supply.+ Canada becomes the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, surpassing Iraq and China.+ Canada becomes the world’s third-largest natural gas producer, surpassing Iran and Qatar6

The continuation of the emission of GHG, in Canada, and worldwide, will cause the oceans to become warmer and more acidic.

Sea level rise in Nova Scotia

Decline of the fishery in Canada will impact the livelihood of many people who are less prepared to retrain for energy jobs than those men and women who already have energy work experience in the western petroleum industry.

References

1	(2019, September 25). Fishermen feel effects of climate change as world ... - CBC.ca. Retrieved October 6, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/un-climate-change-report-nova-scotia-lobster-fishery-1.5296635
2	(2019, September 19). The climate crisis explained in 10 charts | Environment | The .... Retrieved October 3, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/20/the-climate-crisis-explained-in-10-charts
3	(2019, September 27). Climate strikers naive but have right to protest, say ... - CBC.ca. Retrieved October 6, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/climate-strike-protest-energy-petroleum-oil-global-1.5301009
4	(2019, October 3). 'Job intensive:' Study says clean energy fast track to .... Retrieved October 6, 2019, from https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/job-intensive-study-says-clean-energy-fast-track-to-employment-growth
5	(2019, April 2). UCP Launches Plan to Bring Oil and Gas Jobs Back to Alberta .... Retrieved October 6, 2019, from https://www.albertastrongandfree.ca/ucp-launches-plan-to-bring-oil-and-gas-jobs-back-to-alberta/
6	(n.d.). Vote Energy. Retrieved October 7, 2019, from https://www.voteenergy.ca/

A moral cost to more money in the pockets of Canadians

The current election campaign has highlighted tension between increasing individual wealth and the needs of the disadvantaged and between social action by government or through the privatization of services.

The common good

Katherine Scott of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social, economic and environmental justice, has produced a federal election primer looking at investing in public services. Scott reports that much of the current debate is narrowly focused on individual gain.

What proponents aren’t saying is that these strategies are just another form of privatization—leaving families to cope on their own with illness, job losses and caring responsibilities—all at huge personal expense. (An OECD report estimates that poor families would have to spend three-quarters of their income on essential services if they had to purchase them directly). 
What we do need is a more equitable and sustainable way of meeting our common needs and tackling the pressing threats of poverty, precarity and climate warming together.1 

Cristina Richie, an adjunct professor of Health Care Ethics at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) University in Boston, MA., writes that to be sure, the flagging interest from secular media is not too surprising: the Pope didn’t present the world with groundbreaking scientific claims supporting anthropogenic climate change, nor did he unveil a large-scale policy to reach sustainable energy by 2050. Rather, the most influential Catholic–the Bishop of Rome–the leader of the largest denomination in the world, issued a statement at the highest level of authoritative teaching, on one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, urging the participation of all in pursuit of the common good. And this, I believe, will be the lasting legacy and primary contribution of the encyclical “Laudato Si”.

The notion of the common good is clearly taught in paragraph 93, where the Pope writes, “the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone.” Attention to the whole person within a society is foundational for the functioning of the common good, that is, individual flourishing, but in service to the group. The common good is disrupted when one cannot participate in society due to lack of opportunity, education or ability, or when others dominate society with self-centered interest; both are currently at play in ecological politics, and therefore Francis implores us to think of “one world with a common plan” (#164, emphasis in original).2 

Common good

Austen Ivereigh, a Fellow of Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, Oxford, relates a recent encounter of Pope Francis with Greta Thunberg.

On April 16, 2019, Francis met a pigtailed Swedish teenager with Asperger Syndrome in St. Peter’s Square. The sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg, inspiration of climate protest strikes across the world, had become the conscience of a new generation demanding from adults that they act. The old pope was beaming, and had just one message to her: “Go on, go on, continue,” he told her. Thunberg was overjoyed. “Thank you for standing up for the climate, for speaking the truth,” she told him. “It means a lot.”3 

According to Pablo Canziani, an Argentine atmospheric physicist who studies climate change, Francis’s genius was to discern the moment when science and religion were reaching out to each other, ready for a partnership that could enable new ways of seeing among the mass of citizens of the world, and so halt the hurtling train of consumption and destruction.

That new lens starts with the anguished realization that something vital has been lost and leads to a conviction that things have to be done differently to get it back. The old-fashioned word for this is “conversion.”3 

In Episode 13 of his video series “Understanding Laudato Si” Fr. Daniel P. Horan, OFM explores the theme of Ecological Conversion.

The moral aspect of care for the planet and care for the poor is one that is worthy of consideration by Canadians as they prepare to vote.

References

1	2019, August 1). Federal election primer: Investing in public services edition .... Retrieved October 2, 2019, from http://behindthenumbers.ca/shorthand/federal-election-primer-investing-in-public-services-edition/
2	(2015, June 26). Laudato Si': Participatory Action for the Common Good .... Retrieved October 3, 2019, from https://politicaltheology.com/laudato-si-participatory-action-for-the-common-good-cristina-richie/
3	2019, August 1). Federal election primer: Investing in public services edition .... Retrieved October 2, 2019, from http://behindthenumbers.ca/shorthand/federal-election-primer-investing-in-public-services-edition/