DEVELOPING 120 active fires burning across Canada, 30 are 'out of control'
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
After dozens of standoffs with U.S. Congress over government spending in recent decades, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that in her personal opinion, the United States should adopt a different system for national finances.
Emphasizing that it was her own opinion, not U.S. President Joe Biden's, Yellen said there are various alternatives for avoiding situations where the Treasury lacks the funds to pay its bills.
In January, the U.S. government ran up against its legal borrowing limit of US$31.381 trillion, and the Treasury Department began implementing "extraordinary measures" to avoid missing payments on its bills.
It's a predicament that has occurred nearly 80 times since 1960, she said. The Treasury Department has warned the U.S. could default as soon as June 1 if there is no deal.
"Personally, I think we should find a different system for deciding on fiscal policy," Yellen said when asked about the issue. Congress could repeal the debt ceiling or handle it differently. The president could decide to raise the debt ceiling and inform Congress, which could vote to override that decision, and the president could veto that, and it would take a supermajority of two-thirds of Congress to override the veto.
Congress votes on taxes and on government spending and "those decisions imply a path of deficits," Yellen said. Bills come due because of those decisions and that makes the Treasury responsible for paying for goods and services already contracted.
Biden wants the debt ceiling raised. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling for trillions of dollars in spending cuts over the coming decade in return for an increase.
The debt ceiling then creates a situation where "we can't pay all the government's bills, and I don't think that's any way to run the government," she said. The U.S. Treasury note is the most important asset in global financial markets, and a loss of confidence in its value would put financial markets in turmoil.
"To go through this every couple of years is tremendously damaging," Yellen said.
For now, raising the debt ceiling to avert a default on the national debt remains the only short-term solution, she said.
Speaking ahead of a meeting in Japan of finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven advanced economies, she said she did not want to discuss what she might do if the debt ceiling is not raised in time to avoid a default.
"There are choices," she said, but "the answer is there is no good alternative that will save us from catastrophe."
"The only reasonable thing to do is to raise the debt ceiling and avoid the dreadful consequences that will come if we have to make those choices," she said.
A White House analysis has found that a "brief" default would cost the economy 500,000 jobs, while a longer one could cost 8.3 million jobs, almost as many as were lost during the 2008 financial crisis.
"I'm very hopeful that the differences can be bridged and the ceiling will be raised," she said.
One idea being discussed would be invoking the 14th amendment of the Constitution, which states that the "validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, and shall not be questioned."
That would justify issuing the debt needed to pay the all government's bills and ignore the debt ceiling, Yellen said. But she added that it's not a short-run solution and it's "legally questionable whether that's a viable strategy."
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a six-year-old boy who died from blunt-force trauma in 2018 to 15 years in prison.
The Speaker of the Saskatchewan Legislature Randy Weekes has severed ties with the Sask. Party after accusing some members of harassment and intimidation tactics, including a situation he claimed saw the Government House Leader bring a hunting rifle to the legislative building.
Kevin Spacey is pushing back on the 'rush to judgment' against him and is being backed by some big names as he seeks to reclaim his acting career.
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A father has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 34-year-old daughter in southern Quebec.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assailed New Brunswick's premier and other conservative leaders on Thursday, calling out the provincial government's position on abortion, LGBTQ youth and climate change.
Canada's new $10-a-day child care program is expanding, but there's growing evidence that demand for the program is rising even faster, leaving many parents on the outside looking in.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.