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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted Tuesday that his Liberal government has been keeping its promise to be fiscally responsible and blamed the previous Conservative administration for being at least partly responsible for higher-than-expected deficits.

Trudeau maintained the Liberals remained consistent with their 2015 election commitment to add about $10 billion in new spending for 2016-17, their first full year in office.

He argued, however, that the Liberals had to deal with a baseline deficit of $18 billion after coming to power, even though their Tory predecessors had predicted a balanced budget.

The Tories have long disputed Liberal claims that they left the country in the red at the time of their electoral defeat, which came part way through the 2015-16 fiscal year.

In trying to make his case Tuesday, Trudeau re-ignited the bitter political debate over the post-election state of the public books that raged between Liberals and Tories long after the election.

"We just went from a floor where the budget was balanced, because supposedly the Conservatives had balanced the budget, to what was the reality of our budget of being at about $18 billion in deficit at the end of that first year," Trudeau told a news conference.

"So, we've been consistent with our plan and our approach."

When asked about Trudeau's comments, a spokeswoman for Finance Minister Bill Morneau later said that, when the Liberals formed government, Ottawa's books were facing a baseline deficit of $18.4 billion for 2016-17.

The fiscal impact left behind by the Tories was a $1-billion deficit that affected the bottom line in 2015-16, Chloe Luciani-Girouard wrote in an email.

Earlier this month, Trudeau told Global's West Block that a combination of low oil prices and the "economic situation the Conservatives left us" left the Liberals facing a bigger shortfall than anticipated.

Each party held power for several months in 2015-16, a year marked by economic disappointment primarily linked to the weak global economy and low oil prices.

In fiscal 2015-16, which was partly under the Conservative government and partly under the Liberals, Ottawa ended up posting a deficit of $1 billion. The Harper government had projected a surplus of $1.4 billion for that year.

The Tories blamed the eventual shortfall on fresh spending by the Liberals.

On Tuesday, Tory MP Gerard Deltell pointed to testimony last fall by the parliamentary budget officer. Jean-Denis Frechette told a House of Commons committee that Ottawa would've posted a small surplus in 2015-16 instead of the slim shortfall had it not been for new Liberal spending measures.

Conservative MP Gerard Deltell questions where Trudeau's numbers on the deficit the Liberals inherited came from. "Did he find it in a Cracker Jack (box), or what? Because this is all wrong." (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

Deltell said he didn't know how Trudeau came up with the $18-billion deficit number.

"Did he find it in a Cracker Jack (box), or what? Because this is all wrong," he said Tuesday in an interview.

Deltell got personal in his criticism, which points to just how sensitive the debate over the Harper government's budgetary legacy has been.

"For me, it's no surprise because the guy said two years ago that the budget balances by itself, which was totally stupid," Deltell said.

"When we talk about numbers, the prime minister is not exactly the best person and the most accurate person in Canada to talk about it."

The Trudeau government has faced repeated attacks for a budgetary outlook that project several years of deficits, including a shortfall of $23 billion for 2016-17 and no timeline to balance the books. The final 2016-17 figures are expected in the fall.

This fiscal year, the Liberal government is predicting a deficit of $28.5 billion, including a $3-billion accounting adjustment for risk.

The Liberals have also been criticized for abandoning fiscal pledges from their election campaign.

They won on a platform that vowed to run annual shortfalls of no more than $10 billion over the first three years of their mandate and to eliminate the deficit by 2019-20.

A federal report, published on the Finance Department website in December, predicted that, barring any policy changes, Ottawa could be on a path filled with annual deficits until at least 2050-51.

On Tuesday, the prime minister refused once again, however, to say when the books would actually be balanced.

"We made the decision ... in the last election that instead of focusing on balancing the books arbitrarily, and at all costs, we would focus on the investments needed to grow the economy," he said, referring to the Liberal plan to run deficits in order to invest billions in areas such as infrastructure.

"We're always going to be fiscally responsible in the decisions we make."

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Liberals meeting fiscal goals, but inherited $18B baseline deficit, Trudeau says - CBC.ca

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch a reactionary who dresses up his cruel views in folksy charms. Above, Gorsuch in the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 1.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

On Monday, Justice Neil Gorsuch revealed himself to be everything that liberals had most feared: pro-gun, protravel ban, anti-gay, antichurch/state separation. He is certainly more conservative than Justice Samuel Alito and possibly to the right of Justice Clarence Thomas. He is an uncompromising reactionary and an unmitigated disaster for the progressive constitutional project. And he will likely serve on the court for at least three more decades.

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Although Gorsuch has barely been on the bench for two months, he has already had an opportunity to weigh in on some of the most pressing constitutional issues of our time. In each case, he has chosen the most conservative position. On Monday, Gorsuch indicated that he opposes equal rights for same-sex couples, dissenting from a ruling that requires states to list same-sex parents on birth certificates. (Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined his dissent.) That, alone, is startling: In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution compels states to grant same-sex couples the constellation of rights, benefits, and responsibilities that the states have linked to marriage, including birth and death certificates. Obergefell, then, already settled this issue. Gorsuchs dissent suggests he may not accept Obergefell as settled law and may instead seek to undermine or reverse it.

Gorsuch also joined Thomas in dissenting from the courts refusal to review a challenge to Californias concealed carry laws. California grants concealed carry permits for good causenamely, a particularized need, substantiated by documentary evidence, to carry a firearm for self-defense. Gun advocates challenged this rule, alleging a violation of the Second Amendment. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the California regime, and on Monday, the court declined to reconsider its decision. Thomas and Gorsuch dissented vociferously, essentially declaring that the Second Amendment grants individuals a right to carry loaded firearms in public. Not even the archconservative Alito joined their bizarre opinion. It appears Gorsuch is eager to strike down almost any law that limits the right to keep and bear arms in any way. If adopted by the court, Gorsuchs theory would effectively bar state and local governments from passing almost any kind of gun safety legislation.

Monday also revealed Gorsuchs deep hostility to the separation of church and state. He joined Chief Justice John Roberts opinion for the court in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, holding that a state may not constitutionally refuse to subsidize houses of worship. The court, joined by Gorsuch, held that, when a state declines to fund a churchs improvement project, it somehow violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her vehement and impressive dissent, Roberts opinion held for the first time that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church. Roberts decision is especially noteworthy for its complete rejection of originalism: As Sotomayor painstakingly proved, the United States has a rich history of laws preventing the government from directing taxpayer funds to houses of worship. Never before has the court found that these laws somehow interfere with the free exercise of religion.

Gorsuch joined Roberts opinion, although he parted ways with the chief justice when it came to a critical footnote that limited its holding. Trinity Lutheran involved playground resurfacing: The church wanted a state grant for a special rubber substance it wished to pour onto its play area. In a footnote, Roberts wrote that this case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination. (Emphasis mine.) Gorsuch, as well as Thomas, rejected this footnote; both justices wrote separately to declare that theyd go further, holding that any disparate treatment of religious organizations likely runs afoul of the Constitution. That seemingly benign statement implies that both justices would force states to funnel more taxpayer money to churches and religious groups. To their minds, the government discriminates against religion when it refuses to subsidize it.

Then, finally, theres the travel ban ruling. In a compromise decision, the justices allowed Trumps executive order to take effect but exempted foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. The order gives the Trump administration most of what it wants, while ensuring that individuals with significant ties to the U.S. will not be turned away at the border. Yet Gorsuch, joined by Thomas and Alito, opposed this compromise: He wouldve let the travel ban take effect in its entirety, as he believes it to be lawful. So much for the fantasy of Gorsuch standing up to Trump.

When Trump first nominated Gorsuch, I was relieved he hadnt picked an outright lunatic, and I felt cautiously optimistic that Gorsuch might be less of a hard-line conservative than liberals believed. I was wrong. Gorsuch is the worst kind of justice. He is a reactionary who dresses up his cruel, antediluvian views in folksy charm; who professes restraint while espousing extreme, sweeping views; who has no sympathy for vulnerable minorities but believes Christians are being oppressed. And he will guide the course of the law for the next 30 years or more. He is a catastrophe for proponents of civil rights and equal justice. And his influence over the court only stands to grow.

This country is in terrible trouble.

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Supreme Court Breakfast Table - Slate Magazine

OTTAWA The federal government's long-promised counter-radicalization centre is now open, but the appointment of a special adviser to shape a national strategy could be months away.

The government says the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence will provide national leadership, co-ordination and support to stop young people from heading down a dark path.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says the new centre will help society do as much as humanly possible to prevent radicalization to violence before tragedy strikes.

The centre's community resilience fund will put money toward intervention programming and research.

Special adviser to be named in coming months

Officials are launching a call for proposals beginning July 6, and an initial 10 projects have already received money.

In the coming months, a special adviser will be appointed to meet with young people, community leaders and experts across Canada to identify priorities and shape a national strategy on countering radicalization to violence.

The 2016 budget provided $35 million over five years and $10 million annually thereafter to prevent extremism from taking root.

The resilience fund will have $1.4 million available for projects in 2018-19. For 2019-20 and beyond, it will have $7 million each year for existing and new projects.

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Liberals Launch Anti-Radicalization Centre Without Special Adviser - Huffington Post Canada

Malcolm Turnbull has told Melbourne radio station 3AW there will be no legislation to legalise same-sex marriage until a plebiscite has been held. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Malcolm Turnbull has killed a push to bring forward a new private members bill on same-sex marriage, saying legislation wont be brought on until there has been a vote of the Australian people.

The prime minister told 3AW on Tuesday the government would not allow a new private members bill to be considered until a plebiscite on the question had been held. That is our position. That is our policy.

There has been open talk around the government for months that moderates have been preparing another legislative sortie on marriage equality. That activity is the backdrop to covertly recorded comments made by Christopher Pyne over the weekend.

Pyne said at a Liberal party function that marriage equality would happen and, I think it might even be sooner than everyone thinks. And your friends in Canberra are working on that outcome.

Pynes indiscretion triggered a fierce backlash from conservatives, and prompted the prime ministerial shutdown on Tuesday.

Turnbull said MPs were entitled to bring forward any matter in the Coalition party room and marriage equality will be considered by the party room in the run-up to the next federal election.

But he said the government had no plans to change the current policy. Im just saying to you that the government has a policy, we have no plans to change it, full stop.

A recent Senate inquiry paved the way for a Coalition private members bill.

Government moderates who have been preparing new legislation believe the Coalitions position on marriage equality must now default to a free vote, because the plebiscite has been defeated, and Tony Abbott said publicly the 44th parliament would be the last to be bound to the plebiscite commitment.

That position is rejected by conservatives. Tasmanian Eric Abetz said on Tuesday morning the plebiscite policy stood, and it was particularly important that cabinet ministers defended party room policy.

Pynes bout of plain speaking on marriage equality, and his declaration that party moderates are in the winners circle has triggered another factional brawl within the government, and the public airing of hostilities.

Abetz took exception to Pyne undermining the governments policy on marriage and his statement of long time support for Turnbull. Pyne told his colleagues at the Liberal party function over the weekend he and the attorney general, George Brandis, had voted for Turnbull in every ballot he had stood in.

What Mr Pyne regrettably did was provide a verbal selfie to the Australian public and I dont think it was a very pretty picture, Abetz said, describing the outburst as divisive and hubristic.

Abetz said cabinet ministers who lost confidence in the party leader were duty bound to report their disloyalty to the leader, and then resign.

With his MPs in open dispute, Turnbull said on Tuesday the party room was very harmonious, very united.

The prime minister said unity was evidenced in the government dealing with difficult issues including schools funding and energy policy. We have come to very solid landings on that.

Asked whether there was bad blood inside the government, Turnbull said the government was united, although he conceded people could rub each other up the wrong way.

Look, people in politics, individuals, get scratchy with each other, and thats human nature. But the fact is the government is delivering.

Asked how he could combat voter disengagement, Turnbull said the antidote was truth-telling and delivery.

Asked by his host Neil Mitchell about impressions that he was a Labor lite prime minister who didnt believe in anything, Turnbull said: These are headlines written by clickbait journalists.

You are better than that, Neil. You are better than that.

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Malcolm Turnbull kills off moderate Liberals' push for marriage equality bill - The Guardian

Posted June 26, 2017, at 7:41 a.m. Last modified June 26, 2017, at 11:26 a.m.

When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the citys minimum wage up to $15 per hour, they hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.

The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. Theyve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found.

The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.

On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 per month because of the hike in the minimum.

The papers conclusions contradict years of research on the minimum wage. Many past studies, by contrast, have found that the benefits of increases for low-wage workers exceed the costs in terms of reduced employment often by a factor of four or five to one.

This strikes me as a study that is likely to influence people, David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research, said. He called the work very credible and sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds.

Yet the study will not put an end to the dispute. Experts cautioned the effects of the minimum wage may vary according to the industries dominant in the cities where they are implemented along with overall economic conditions in the country as a whole.

And critics of the research pointed out what they saw as serious shortcomings. In particular, to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large employers with locations inside and outside Seattle in their calculations. Skeptics argued that omission could explain the unusual results.

Like, whoa, what? Where did you get this? Ben Zipperer, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, asked.

My view of the research is that it seems to work, he said. The minimum wage in general seems to do exactly what its intended to do, and thats to raise wages for low-wage workers, with little negative consequence in terms of job loss.

Economists might not readily dismiss the new study as an outlier, however. The paper published Monday makes use of more detailed data than have been available in past research, drawing on state records of wages and hours for individual employees.

As a result, the paper is likely to upend a debate that has continued among economists, politicians, businesses and labor organizers for decades. In particular, the results could exacerbate divisions among Democrats, who are seeking an economic agenda to counter President Trumps pitches for protectionism, reduced taxes and restrictions on immigration.

Meanwhile, states and cities around the country are continuing to implement increases in the minimum wage. In November, voters in Washington approved an increase in the statewide minimum to $13.50 per hour by 2020. The idea is popular in conservative states as well. In Arizona, for instance, the minimum wage will be $12 per hour in 2020 after voters there cast ballots in favor of a hike.

If I were a Seattle lawmaker, I would be thinking hard about the $15 an hour phase-in, Autor said.

Economists have long argued that increasing the minimum wage will force some employers to let workers go. In 1994, however, economists David Card and Alan Krueger published research on minimum wages in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that contradicted this theory, motivating dozens of studies into the issue over the coming years.

Card and Krueger conducted a survey of fast-food restaurants in the two states while New Jersey was implementing an increase in the minimum wage. They found that restaurants in New Jersey had, in fact, added more workers to their payrolls more than restaurants in neighboring Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage remained constant.

Since then, economists have brought better data and more sophisticated statistical methods to bear on the question of the minimum wage, but without resolving the debate.

Their studies examined the overall numbers of workers or their annual incomes, but lacked precise information on how much workers were being paid by the hour. As a result, past research might be less reliable because the results might reflect many workers who are not paid low wages, said Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the new study.

Their research, using detailed records from the state of Washington, addresses that problem.

Thats really a step beyond what essentially any past studies of the minimum wage have been able to use, Jeffrey Clemens, an economist at the University of California, San Diego who was not involved in the research, said.

When the authors of the study took the same approach as Card and Krueger, measuring overall employment in the restaurant industry, they found similar results. The minimum wage did not substantially affect how many people were working in the industry or how many hours they were working.

The data, however, shows that about seven in 10 workers in Seattle restaurants make more than $13 per hour, suggesting that the overall level of employment in the industry might not be a reliable guide to how the minimum wage affects workers with low pay.

Indeed, while employment overall did not change, that was because employers replaced low-paying jobs with high-paying jobs. The number of workers making over $19 per hour increased abruptly, while the number making less than that amount declined, Vigdor and his colleagues found.

Vigdor said restaurateurs in Seattle along with other employers responded to the minimum wage by hiring more skilled and experienced workers, who might be able to produce more revenue for their firms in the same amount of time.

That hypothesis has worrisome implications for less skilled workers. While there those with more ability might be paid more, junior workers might be losing an opportunity to work their way up. Basically, what were doing is were removing the bottom rung of the ladder, Vigdor said.

There could be another explanation for the results, however: the fact that large employers are not included. It could be that even if employers with only a single location cut payrolls, large firms expanded at the same time, giving low-wage workers other opportunities to earn money.

Other researchers have found that large employers are better able to raise wages in response to changes in the minimum. Liberal economists often argue workers have less bargaining power when negotiating their contracts at larger firms, and that as a result, employees at those companies are often underpaid in the absence of a wage floor.

I think they underestimate hugely the wage gains, and they overestimate hugely the employment loss, said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley who was part of a group that published its own study of the minimum wage in Seattle last week.

Reichs study uses more conventional methods in research on the minimum wage, relying on a publicly available federal survey. His groups data did not allow the researchers to distinguish between high- and low-wage workers at a given firm, but they were able to separate large firms locations in Seattle from those outside the city.

Their results from the University of California accorded with past research. The minimum wage increased wages for workers in the restaurant industry, without reducing employment overall in contrast to the findings from the University of Washington.

Their results are so out of the range, Reich said.

One way of explaining the disagreement could be that small businesses in Seattle have been forced to downsize in response to the increased minimum wage, while larger firms have expanded.

Yet when Vigdor and his colleagues examined the overall number of workers at small firms with a single location, they did not find that employment had decreased. That fact could could suggest that small businesses have responded to the increase not by downsizing but instead by hiring more experienced workers.

Theres another explanation for the growth in high-paid jobs and the decrease in lower-paid ones. The authors of the study argue that thats occurring because employers are focusing on high-paid workers and leaving low-paid workers out, but its possible that something far more positive is happening.

Seattles economy is booming, and in a booming economy, more workers are likely to get raises or find jobs that pay better, and it may be that phenomenon of workers getting raises, promotions or better paying jobs that explains the shifts in the labor market the researchers see in Seattle.

Vigdor and his colleagues sought to address this problem, in essence, by constructing an index based on data from other parts of the state of Washington where local economies performed similarly to Seattles before the increases in the hourly minimum.

Low-wage employment declined in Seattle relative to this benchmark. Even compared to parts of the state with similar economies, there was less low-wage work in Seattle, suggesting that the minimum wage might have forced employers to cut some of those positions.

The method Vigdors group used to develop this index is on the cutting edge of economic research, but it is not perfect. It is possible that Seattles economy simply took a different direction at the same time as the minimum wage began to increase even compared to economies in other places that seemed similar to Seattles before the vote.

EPIs Zipperer argued that was the best explanation, given how pronounced the gains were for workers making more than $19 per hour.

Youre just seeing an independent shift in the Seattle labor market toward higher wage employment, he said, calling the figures for better-paid workers a red flag.

The broader national economy could have an effect on the results as well. In the past, noted San Diegos Clemens, increases in the minimum wage have occurred when the economy was expanding rapidly and prices are going up. Employers could expect to ask consumers to pay more and to give their workers wages anyway. Increases in the minimum wage might just have been part of the cost of doing business.

Currently, though, inflation is at historically low levels, and the minimum wage in Seattle will be indexed to inflation after it reaches $15 per hour, forcing firms to plan for the long term.

Vigdor agreed the effects of increasing the minimum wage could differ by time and place.

The effect of the minimum wage depends on a lot of things. It depends on where youre starting from. It depends on what kind of economy youre raising it in, Vigdor said. There is no one the effect of the minimum wage.

That means future research on the question could come to different conclusions. Vigdor said he looks forward to receiving criticisms of his groups paper and suggestions for improving their approach.

Its really important to emphasize its a work in progress, he said.

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'Very credible' study on $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberals - Bangor Daily News