U.S. President Joe Biden has announced a massive infrastructure plan intended to accelerate the transition to clean technology in a sprawling eight-year program that costs $2 trillion.
The plan also touches roads, bridges and broadband access; social policy, like public housing and funding for day care spots; and it raises and rearranges corporate taxes to pay for it.
But at its core, it’s a climate plan.
With the U.S. increasingly unlikely to impose a nationwide carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, Biden’s focus has shifted to spending record sums of public money on next-generation green technology — from 500,000 vehicle charging stations to a zero-carbon power grid to consumer incentives for electric cars and home retrofits.
“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said in a Pittsburgh speech Wednesday to promote what he’s calling the American Jobs Plan.
“It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America — unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the Interstate Highway System, and the space race decades ago. In fact, it’s the largest American investment in jobs since World War Two.”
An effort this size will inevitably have effects beyond the U.S., and this one has a number of implications for Canada — some good, some bad and some to be determined.
Biden isn’t talking about a carbon tax or cap-and-trade. The centrepiece of his climate plan aims to spend huge sums to transform American energy, including building 500,000 new electric car-charging stations. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
First comes a caveat typical for any legislation proposed by an American president, and it’s that there’s no guarantee this will ever become law.
A bill hasn’t even been introduced in Congress yet and it already faces stiff Republican opposition, leaving one likely path to success, and it’s the narrowest one imaginable: if Democrats bypass the Senate’s normal 60-vote rule, they could try passing it through a budget process known as reconciliation, and that would require all 51 Democrats in the Senate, progressives and centrists, to unite around the bill.
This process will likely take months. In the meantime, here are some potential effects of the bill.
Economic stimulus hits the neighbourhood
When someone plows $2 trillion into your neighbourhood, the economic effects tend to spill onto your property.
For the neighbourhood of North America, there’s a general rule of thumb, according to Brett House, vice-president and deputy chief economist at Scotiabank: one percentage point of growth in the U.S. economy causes a half per cent increase in Canada.
In other words, enjoy the stimulus, Canada.
“Biden’s stimulus plan will not only benefit the U.S. economy but will also make Canada’s economy great again,” said Derek Holt, vice-president and head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank.
“There will be significant leakage of U.S. stimulus into Canada as [U.S.] businesses and consumers buy more from America’s trading partners regardless of [Buy American rules],” said Holt.
Now, a word about Buy American.
Buy American: reality and rhetoric
There’s bad news for Canadian companies hoping to land some of these big U.S. government contracts.
Buy American provisions are inevitable in this bill.
Biden promised during the election campaign that public contracts under his infrastructure plan would go to U.S. companies — and he doubled down on that Wednesday.
“Not a contract will go out that I control … to a company that is [not] an American company — with American products all the way down the line, and American workers,” he said.
Let’s see the fine print first.
Biden has been promising Buy American measures since the campaign, as seen in this stop in Michigan in September. (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press)
The actual bill hasn’t been introduced yet, and only when we see those details will it become clear whether the reality matches the rhetoric.
For example: Will the bill address existing trade agreements? Under the World Trade Organization agreement on procurement, free trade is guaranteed for some types of public contracts.
There are other question marks.
What about the WTO’s anti-discrimination rules? A skeptical former U.S. trade official suggested it would be a flagrant violation of those provisions for the U.S. government to hand out subsidies for buying only American-made cars.
Then there’s the challenge of disentangling what even counts as an American car, for example, versus a Canadian and Mexican one. Vehicles are built in cross-border supply chains, with pieces regularly moving back and forth.
But make no mistake that Buy American provisions are coming.
Canada’s chief trade negotiator, Steve Verheul, all but conceded this the other day when he said Canada is simply hoping for exemptions for some sectors, like clean energy.
Energy and climate: Good news, bad news
The plan would certainly reduce U.S. carbon emissions, which are the second-highest in the world, after China. Biden wants the high-polluting U.S. energy grid converted to zero-carbon by 2035.
In the meantime, his plan would establish a clean-energy standard for power utilities to meet. This could mean new sales for Canadian hydro and alternative-energy companies.
For the oil sector, the news is less positive.
The U.S. is the world’s second-highest greenhouse gas emitter. Here, chunks of ice float inside of meltwater pools on top of the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, in 2018. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
On the heels of cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, Biden would scrap an existing credit in the tax code for U.S. companies that produce oil abroad.
One oil industry analyst in Canada, Rory Johnston, expects that to have, at most, a minor impact in the Alberta oilpatch. Not only has American investment there already dropped, but the sums involved in the credit are small.
The U.S. Environmental and Energy Study Institute cites one federal estimate that says ending the policy would be worth $12.7 billion, over 10 years, to all American oil companies operating around the world.
“[That’s a] very, very small amount in the overall scheme of things,” said Johnston, managing director at Toronto-based investment firm Price Street Inc.
But he said it’s yet another symbolic blow to the sector, revealing the political winds shifting against it.
A tilt in tax competitiveness
Could Canadian companies soon find themselves more competitive against their American peers, in terms of tax burdens?
This plan will push U.S. power utilities to adopt cleaner energy, which could mean more hydro sales from Canada. The two countries promised to co-operate last month on a clean energy transition. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Biden’s plan would raise U.S. corporate taxes seven percentage points, to 28 per cent, undoing some of the Trump-era cuts.
This would bring the U.S. back to its former international ranking: with higher marginal rates than Canada and almost every other developed country.
Jack Mintz, a tax expert and president’s fellow at the University of Calgary, said this is a long-term threat to U.S. companies.
He said they would be hit with a double whammy — first with a tax hike, then with the post-2023 phaseout of writeoffs built into the 2017 law signed by Donald Trump.
“There’s going to be almost a 50 per cent hike on the overall effective tax rate on capital in the United States between those two items,” Mintz said. “It’ll certainly make the U.S. less competitive.”
It’s not clear yet whether this helps investment in Canada, Mintz said. Because there’s another stick built into Biden’s plan — one designed to whack American companies that shift operations abroad.
Biden’s plan would have major tax implications, undoing a large part of former president Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts, a signature achievement of his tenure. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Biden wants to end some tax exemptions for American companies drawing foreign profits and impose a new minimum international rate of 21 per cent.
Mintz called it a “Trump-like, America First-type strategy.”
Whether or not a U.S. company winds up facing a higher tax burden in Canada than back home will depend on other specifics of the tax code, and we’ll know more once we see the bill.
As for his general economic takeaway on Biden’s proposal, and its effect on Canada, Mintz said: “It’s hard to say whether it will be positive for Canada or not.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
