Monthly Archives: January 2023

Roundup: Releasing more F-35 deal details

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All of the talk yesterday was about the big F-35 announcement, which wasn’t actually about the decision around the F-35s, but rather some of the details around dates and costs. That didn’t, however, stop every media outlet from running clips of Trudeau in 2015 saying that he wasn’t going to buy F-35s because they weren’t the right plane for Canada and the price was astronomical. Well, some things have changed since then, but primarily it was the fact that the consensus among NATO allies has been to settle on the F-35 (as flawed as it is—no, seriously, last I checked, the ejection seats will literally kill a pilot who is below a certain height/weight), and interoperability is a key function, particularly when most of their use will be over North America. Ironically, now that Sweden is joining NATO, their Gripen fighters will have to become NATO compatible, which was the other choice for Canada in this procurement.

The other thing, which is being downplayed by certain circles, is that there was an actual proper procurement process, which the Harper government didn’t engage in when they sole-sourced the F-35s the first time, on dubious advice. There are going to be questions about the industrial benefits, but as participants in the joint strike fighter development programme, Canadian firms have been part of the supply chain for a while now, so the benefits are not like they used to be in previous procurement processes. But really, this was not the same kind of regional job creation programme that the shipbuilding process was, which is not really working out well for us.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 321:

Russian forces intensified their assault on Soledar, near Bakhmut, primarily with Wagner Group mercenaries. Ukrainian soldiers repelled the attempted advance.

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Roundup: Morneau has a few legitimate gripes

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There is a lot of media attention around Bill Morneau’s upcoming book, and he’s started to do the interview circuits, and lo, he did one with CTV at the end of last week that aired over the weekend. In what he describes around his time in office, some of it has to do with some of the frustrations he felt, and I will say that some of them are very legitimate. Things like how he could never have a private meeting with Justin Trudeau, and that there was always someone from his staff there—that’s very legitimate! And it’s something that I’ve heard from a lot of different sources, including the fact that this extends to the caucus room, where it’s supposed to just be MPs in attendance, and was under previous leaders. (There would also have been senators under previous leaders, but that’s a topic for another day).

But some of what Morneau describes also points out that after several years on the job, he’s still something of a political naïf who hasn’t quite grasped that Parliament Hill is not Bay Street (and that is a big reason why he got caught up in an ethics breach over the WE Charity issue). What may be the best policy in his opinion may not be politically saleable, and I don’t think he has ever really grasped that notion. I think some of his thoughts on the pandemic benefits packages are a little too clouded in hindsight bias, and the fact that he was overridden on the wage subsidy had a lot to do with the original proposal was not being seen to be up to the task at hand. I saw in another excerpt from the book that he complained that some ministers were being placated with amounts of money that he didn’t like, but I am curious what some of that programme spending was. In any case, I don’t think this will make too big of a wave, or that there is anything too explosive in all of the write-ups I’ve seen, and it’s likely to make too much of a splash, beyond him trying to rehabilitate his reputation before he goes back to Bay Street in a more visible way.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 320:

The “ceasefire” is passed, and Russian forces have been shelling in the Donbas region, as well as Zaporizhzhia. During the Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the incoming new package of military aid from the US. There was a prisoner swap on Sunday where both sides released 50 prisoners.

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Roundup: Those December job numbers

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The big, and well, only real news yesterday in Canada were the release of the job numbers from Statistics Canada, and they blew past expectations. Far beyond them. Analysts forecast somewhere between five and eight thousand new jobs in December, and instead there were 104,000, the vast majority of them full-time, and almost all in the private sector. The unemployment rate edged down further to five percent, which is just barely off of the record low of 4.9% we saw over the summer. This shows that the labour market is still incredibly tight, and the Bank of Canada’s estimation that this level is unsustainable and a sign there is still too much demand in the economy that it’s driving inflation, and it requires some rebalancing to ensure that those job numbers are more sustainable. There have been a lot of fairly torqued readings of Tiff Macklem’s comments, that unemployment needs to be higher to slow inflation, but I’m not sure that captures enough nuance in what he’s trying to say.

The point in the report about record high employment levels for core-aged women, particularly those with small children, is particularly important because of this government’s focus on child care deals with provinces. This is one of the points of it—getting more women into the workforce, and the programme pays for itself with all of the additional revenue generated by those women in the workforce. It may be too soon to draw the straight line between the child care deals and those women going back to work, because in most provinces, the fees have only just started falling, but it does point to why early learning and child care is important, because the tight labour market needs those core-aged women right now.

And then there is all of the talk of the “looming recession.” It still may not happen, and there could be a “soft landing” of slower growth while the labour market rebalances itself, but not negative growth or a significant increase in unemployment. And if there is a recession, it’s not likely to be one with too many job losses because of the tight labour market, and that could reduce some of the pressure, again, while the economy starts to rebalance itself to a more sustainable place. We’re not in the same place we were in previous economic downturns, so things could be very different this time around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 318:

In spite of Russia saying they were going to enact a thirty-six hour ceasefire for Orthodox Christmas, they nevertheless carried on shelling parts of Ukraine, because that’s who they are. They then said Ukraine was shelling them, but Ukraine didn’t agree to the ceasefire, so…

https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1611345077871284227

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1611339196391882752

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Roundup: On tight camera shots in the Commons

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One of the particular sub-plots of the interminable Speaker election south of the border is the discussion around camera angles on C-SPAN, and how suddenly they’re dynamic during this process. There’s a good explainer here about how the usual rules around tight shots are relaxed because this is considered a special event and not usual proceedings, and it normally only takes two or three hours and not three or four days, but that’s why suddenly they get to be much more dynamic about what they’re seeing.

This problem of camera angles is a familiar one here in Canada, where the directive, since about day two of televised proceedings in the House of Commons, has also been on tight shots, with no wide shots or reactions. This is at the behest of MPs themselves, who came up with these rules, in part because they’re convenient for them, but if you watch the very first televised Question Period, you’ll see wide shots and reactions, and it’s much more dynamic and engaging, and it’s something we should see more of. MPs, however, don’t want that. They like being able to fill camera shots (and frequently play musical chairs to do so, most especially on Fridays), because they don’t like to show how empty the Chamber is during non-QP debates, or on Fridays. They don’t like camera operators and CPAC producers to have the latitude of choosing shots in real-time, so they don’t allow it. It’s really too bad, because it could make for better viewing. That said, it’s also one of the reasons why I attend QP in person—so that I can see the full picture of what’s happening in the Chamber and not just the tight shots that obscure more than they illuminate.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 317:

While the Russians are proposing a truce over Orthodox Christmas, the Ukrainians reject it, saying that this is simply a cover to bring in more ammunition and troops to try and halt Ukrainian advances in the Donbas region. Meanwhile, American analysts suspect that one of Putin’s allies is trying to gain access to salt and gypsum mines near Bakhmut, which is why they are trying so hard to take it over.

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Roundup: The mounting spending on McKinsey consultants

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There is a report out from Radio-Canada about the current government’s increasing reliance on consulting reports from McKinsey, with an explosion of contract spending on them. And it’s not good—it’s expensive, it’s corrosive to the capabilities of the civil service, and it undermines the ability for there to be transparency in these kinds of consultations. There is an attitude that anything coming from outside government is better, and the civil service (rightly) feels put out by it without also recognising that some of their own dysfunction has contributed to these attitudes.

I would note, however, that the story does leave out some of the context around the increasing use of external consultants and the history, particularly under the previous government. While the focus of this story was on McKinsey and how this government seems to be relying on them more, we have to also remember that a lot of this outsourcing of work that should be done by the civil service sharply increased under the previous government, particularly as they cut capacity and capability in the civil service, and then found it from external sources, where it was easier to be told what they wanted to hear. (That, and it was a tactic in their outright war on the civil service). This isn’t to say that the civil service is still a bastion of telling truth to power, because it hasn’t been for a while now, and the dysfunction of the relationship between government and the professional civil-service is a real problem that has no easy solutions. But it’s getting worse and not better, even under this government that promised to restore that relationship (though interviews I’ve done for other stories suggests that they didn’t have any idea about how bad things were in the civil service when they made that promise). It would be great if ministers could actually listen to their departments rather than hiring these outside consultants, but it’s not like this government is a fount of political courage in doing things all that differently when it comes down to it.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 316:

As Russian missiles have struck civilian targets in Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russia is planning a new mobilization in order to delay their inevitable defeat. Meanwhile, Canadian-made LAVs are now reaching the battlefield in Ukraine.

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Roundup: Summoning Sunwing and VIA to committee

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The chair of the Commons transport committee says he is looking to call a meeting shortly in order to summon the heads of airlines like Sunwing and of VIA Rail to get them to explain how they handled the travel chaos over the holidays. Which is all well and good, even if it’s more about a public expression of anger and accountability. The wrinkle here is that the Conservatives also want the minister to be summoned to explain why he didn’t “fix the system.”

Sigh.

Aside from the risible press release that the Conservative transport critic, Mark Strahl, put out over the holidays that essentially blamed Justin Trudeau for the weather, we have to remember that the government has very few levers at their disposal here. They don’t run the airlines, and while VIA Rail is a Crown Corporation, it is operated at arm’s length from the government specifically so that they can’t tell them what to do. (The minister can select the board of directors and give general policy directives, like they are doing with the pursuit of high-frequency rail, but he cannot direct operations). We all watched over the summer as airport operators conveniently blamed the ArriveCan app for their failures to do things like hire enough ground crews, or airlines blaming the app for their decisions to schedule flights that didn’t have flight crews, and that credulous media organisations lapped it up without calling them on their bullshit, and lo, nothing actually got fixed (which, again, the minister cannot direct because those are private companies), so when these problems persisted and were amplified by the inclement weather over the holidays, they can no longer blame ArriveCan or anything the federal government has or has not done. They should face some actual accountability for their failures, rather than just have the opposition parties repeat their bullshit to try and pin the problems on the government.

Of course, the government could and should do something about the Canadian Transportation Agency, like shaking up its membership so that it’s no longer subject to capture by the industry, or giving it additional resources to deal with the backlog of complaints, or strengthening its governing structure, or any number of other things that could hold industry to account. That would be a better use of their time than having Strahl give a performance for the cameras at committee, where he can invent new constituents like “Briane” to give fictitious sob stories about, but this government has shown little interest in doing that work. Perhaps the committee could expend some of their time and resources to provide that pressure?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 315:

Russia says that 89 service members were killed in the Ukrainian attack on a position in occupied Donetsk region, and cited the unauthorised use of mobile phones from their soldiers that allowed their location to be determined. (They also claim they retaliated and killed 200 Ukrainian soldiers and four HIMARS launchers, to which Ukraine says two people were injured in an attack on a hockey arena in the area attacked). There is also talk that the increasing use of drones in this conflict could bring about the dawn of the “killer robot” as they become more autonomous.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1610371348874031104

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Roundup: The disinfo is coming from inside the house

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Happy New Year!

I’m going to ease us back in with a reminder that yes, the far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who occupied Ottawa last winter were not an imported phenomenon, but have firm roots in Canada and the discourse here. Yes, some of it does get imported, where it finds fertile soil, but we do export our share of it too, which is one of those fundamental things that our policy-makers are going to have to grapple with in the coming year.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1609902285156646913

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1609902289443229698

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1609906080389423110

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1609908494853103623

In case you missed it:

  • My column on the problems with the federal ethics regime and why the Liberals have such a problem with it.
  • My column on the government being very slow to pass bills over the past session, as their ambitious agenda stalls.
  • My column on why decades of austerity is one of the reasons for why people are complaining that Canada is supposedly “broken.”
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on why Bill C-22 is one to watch over the New Year.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 314:

Russian forces did not slow their attacks on Ukraine over the Christmas and New Year period, and president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russia is planning a protracted drone strike campaign to “exhaust” Ukraine. Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions in Donetsk, which Russians claim killed 63 soldiers, one of the deadliest attacks since the invasion began, as ammunition stored at the area of the strike exploded.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1609268349447331840

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