Roundup: New sanctions on Iran, new enforcement resources

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Mid-afternoon, on the Friday before a long weekend, the prime minister and deputy prime minister hastily called a press conference and announced new sanctions against the Iranian regime—the top 50 percent of the IRGC will be permanently barred from Canada under powers in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which have thus-far only been applied to genocidaires from Bosnia and Rwanda. As well, more sanctions to other individuals have been announced, but even more importantly was the announcement of $76 million to establish a new sanctions bureau at Global Affairs so that we have the capacity to actually monitor and enforce these sanctions we’ve been applying.

Is this a declaration that the IRGC is a terrorist entity? No, because it would still be impossible to monitor and enforce, and would capture too many low-level conscripts. Will the Conservatives continue to yell and moan about it? Of course they will. There is some commentary that if applied properly, these measures could be more effective than listing them under the Criminal Code, but again, this depends on it being properly applied, and it will take time to build the capacity in the aforementioned sanctions bureau. It also bears noting that this all seems last-minute, reactive, and like this government doesn’t know how to get ahead of issues, so even if they do the right thing, it comes off as being pushed or shamed into it, which doesn’t help the narrative that this government is getting tired.

Danielle Smith

In the wake of her leadership victory, Alberta’s incoming premier Danielle Smith has agreed to run in a by-election for a seat of her own, and one of her MLAs is resigning to accommodate her (and had not planned to run again in the next election), and for Smith, it’s a mostly rural seat, because that’s her base. There is also a vacant seat in Calgary, but Smith would have a harder time there, and also plans not to hold that by-election in advance of next spring’s general election, which is indefensible under political norms. But hey, she’s willing to pretend the whole constitution is free to be ignored, so why should political norms matter? Yeah, this is a problem.

Meanwhile, here’s Jason Markusoff’s lengthy profile of Smith and her reinvention. Ken Boessenkool considers Smith to be a kamikaze mission into modern conservatism itself (and yet it’s almost like the bastardised way in which we now run leadership contests basically makes this an inevitability). Colby Cosh tries to put some context into Smith’s comeback and her outlasting all of her political rivals. Andrew Coyne sees storm clouds on the horizon with both François Legault and Danielle Smith looking to be constitutional vandals. My weekend column previews some of the absolute constitutional chaos, right up to the suspension of the rule of law, if Danielle Smith tries to get her own way.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1578497923016699904

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 226:

There have been explosions in the Kharkiv region, as Russia concentrates attacks on the city while they are being driven back elsewhere in the country. More mass graves have been found in the Kharkiv region, on top of those already found at Izium and in Lyman.

Good reads:

  • The Star has a deeper dive into the #mgtow community that Poilievre targeted his videos to with those hidden tags.
  • Sean Fraser has “temporarily” removed the 20 hours/week cap on international students’ ability to work as a way of alleviating the labour shortage.
  • The federal government is still working on a programme to provide permanent residency to up to 500,000 immigrants in the country without legal standing.
  • Ahmed Hussen says it took over a month between when he was alerted to Leith Marouf’s antisemitic tweets and cutting off funding because of legal consultations.
  • Health Canada has approved use of Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of omicron.
  • Health Canada also says that manufacturers of children’s cold and pain medications are working at double and triple capacity to meet unprecedented demand.
  • Canada has entered into a partnership with the French government to lease land on Juno Beach, to prevent a condo development near the museum there.
  • After a decade-long process, the Canadian Forces have signed a deal to procure new pistols for the Canadian Army—the same model involved in a misfire incident.
  • The CRA says it has identified $76 million in unpaid taxes from Canadians named in the Panama Papers, but refuses to say if they have collected any of it.
  • An external audit of the Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada call centre in Montreal shows problems, and didn’t look into reports of racism and discrimination.
  • Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is using his private members’ business spot to put forward a bill on a comprehensive pandemic review.
  • After a career of grievance politics and being a snide bully, Jason Kenney is suddenly very precious about the emergence of “populism with a snarl.” Oh, come on!

Odds and ends:

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