Monthly Archives: October 2023

QP: A committee chair tells on himself

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The prime minster and all other leaders were present today, which is nice to see. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he raised that the Parti Québécois “independent budget” and that they claim that Trudeau is leading Canada to financial ruin. Justin Trudeau said that he would get to the questions in a moment but took the opportunity to pay respects to the shooting in Sault Ste Marie. Poilievre insisted that separatism was off the table under the Harper years because of low taxes, which is risible, to which Trudeau shrugged it off and praised his government’s actions to help people. Poilievre switched to English repeated his same claim about separatists before pivoting to the carbon price and blaming it on inflation, shrinks-flatiron, and “skimp-flatiron.” Trudeau suggested that Poilievre was guilty of conflation, and noted the Conservatives only want to cut. Poilievre went on a tear about the RCMP Commissioner being shut down at committee and the ArriveCan investigation, and cried corruption. Trudeau said that if the Conservatives were digging up matters that were settled years ago, they were desperate. Poilievre then pivoted again and demanded to know if the PM believed Israel fired on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. Trudeau said that they needed to ensure they had the facts, and the best evidence was that Israel did not do it.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, praised Poilievre for bringing separatism back to the floor of the Commons, before turning to discussing with the US about a truce in Gaza. Trudeau said that he did speak to Biden over the weekend and they were working to a humanitarian solution. Blanchet wanted to know what happened to the idea of party leaders getting together to speak on this with a single voice, and Trudeau said that time will be set aside for such a meeting.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, raised the dubious story about the Calgary senior whose mortgage went from $1000 to $2600 per month (which is impossible), and demanded help for Canadians. Trudeau said that he was just in Singh’s hometown of Brampton to announce more housing plans. Singh switched to French to raise the tent encampment in Gatineau while the prime minister was hosting a fundraiser there, to which Trudeau praised the signature of a housing agreement with Quebec, details to be forthcoming.

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Roundup: Abusing authority to summon the RCMP Commissioner

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The abuse and beclowning of House of Commons committees continues apace, as the Conservatives tried to use the Access to Information, Ethics, and Privacy Committee to re-litigate the SNC-Lavalin scandal after Astroturf group Democracy Watch floated some bullshit last week about how the RCMP said they couldn’t investigate if a crime occurred because they were denied access to Cabinet-confidential documents. Never mind that no crime was ever alleged, but this was more than enough for the Conservatives to try to resurrect this dead horse, and they did so by the committee chair abusing his position to bring the head of the RCMP to testify at committee. The other parties at committee, however, were having none of this because of the abuse of procedure, and shut down the meeting, to howls of outrage by Conservatives who wanted their dog and pony show for the cameras.

https://twitter.com/MonaFortier/status/1716549067180736827

We’ll likely see said RCMP Commissioner invited back in a proper fashion in the next week or two, because the Bloc have stated that they want to hear from him, but with proper notice and preparation, so they’ll get their dog and pony show eventually. It won’t do them much good—the Commissioner told CBC on his way out of the building that there was nothing to tell, that the RCMP was satisfied that there wasn’t anything illegal once they did their due diligence, even if they couldn’t get those documents. It won’t satisfy the Conservatives or Democracy Watch, who will continue to allege conspiracies and dark deeds, and howl at the moon about cover-ups, because that’s how they get attention. (But seriously, media outlets—stop quoting Democracy Watch. They actually have no credibility and it’s a sign of lazy reporting if you rely on their quotes as a crutch).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they shot down 14 drones and a cruise missile attacking the country’s south and east, but falling debris damaged a warehouse in Odesa. Russian forces pressed their attack on Avdiivka in the east, and Kupiansk, further north.

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QP: Cracked crystal balls and shifting goal posts

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While the prime minister and his deputy were both in town, neither were present for QP today, while most of the other leaders were. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, accusing the prime minister of doubling housing costs and the report on the rise in the used of alternative loan services, which charge higher interest rates, and in turn wanted lower spending. Diane Lebouthillier, surprisingly, got up to decry that the Conservatives only want to chop, chop, chop, particularly programmes that people need, claiming they are like a shark that claims to be a vegetarian. Poilievre raised the story of a senior who had to sell his house and could not afford to rent anywhere, and demanded the government cut spending. Lebouthillier went on a tear about cracked crystal balls, Conservative cuts, and that they couldn’t tell the future. Poilievre switched to English to worry that people we going to alternative lenders to get mortgages, which charge added interest, and demanded the government cut spending to bring down interest rates—which doesn’t logically follow. Sean Fraser for up to denounce the Conservatives’ housing plans as doing nothing. Poilievre claimed that the government hasn’t built any housing, and that they only want to cut taxes on luxury penthouses. Fraser trotted out that when Poilievre was minister, his $300 million programme only built 99 houses. Poilievre tried to speciously claim the National Housing Strategy increased housing prices before pivoting to complaints from restaurant owners. Rechie Valdez stood up to read a script about what help the government has offered small businesses.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded the government extend the CEBA repayment period for another year including the non-repayable portion. Valdez read a script in French that they have offered more flexibility to these businesses. Therrien insisted that this wasn’t what they were asking for, and this time Sonya Martinez Ferrada recited that businesses appreciated that the government kept them in business during the pandemic.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, to which Ahmed Hussen rose to read that the government continued to work with allies to call for humanitarian law to be respected and that they were the first to provide aid. Singh read his same demand in French, and Hussen repeated his same points, still in English.

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Roundup: Stop ignoring the premiers’ role in pharmacare

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Over the weekend, the Star ran a brief interview with Dr. Eric Hoskins, former Ontario health minister and the person that Justin Trudeau initially tasked with writing a report on getting to pharmacare, about the current situation between the government and the NDP over getting to just that. Hoskins says he’s trying to have high-level engagements with both parties, because this could be the last opportunity to get this to work in a long time, but some of that means getting the NDP to back down on their arbitrary timelines (which is more than reasonable considering how much their stupid timeline demands has meant a poor rollout of dental care, because proper implementation can take time).

This having been said, I was struck by the fact that the story completely left out the role of the premiers in this, and I cannot stress this enough, because healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility, you cannot in any way, shape or form, get to national, universal pharacare without the provinces on board. And no, this isn’t something that they can just opt-in to over time, like the NDP seem to think—they need to be in on it from the ground floor, so that they can shape the direction of the Canada Drug Agency, and negotiate a national formulary rather than just the federal government pulling it out of their asses and, again, expecting the provinces to sign onto it (again, like the NDP seem to think). Hoskin’s whole report premised on the provinces being active participants in the process, because this affects them fundamentally. And it’s the provinces who have been the biggest hold-up for moving forward with this—only PEI has moved ahead, and thanks to the gradual build-up they’ve implemented with the federal government, they have a low-cost co-pay system running in the province, which is a wild step-up from the virtually nothing they at the provincial government level before.

The way that media keep talking about pharmacare is that this is something the federal government will do on high, and will somehow pay for entirely themselves, which again, is not how this would work. The PBO’s report cites a figure that the federal and provincial governments together would be paying (using whatever a methodology that may or may not survive reality), but doesn’t have any breakdown about what the cost-share would be, because of course that would need to be negotiated. It would be great if the national conversation, particularly that is happening in media, could actually include the crucial role of the provinces, but we all know that legacy media is allergic to the issues around jurisdiction, and it means a much worse discourse as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces intensified their push toward Avdiivka in the east, and Kherson in the south, while six people were killed in a Russian missile strike on a postal distribution centre in Kharkiv. Russian forces claim that they foiled several attempts by Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro river near Kherson over the past day. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukrainians preparing for another winter of attacks on the electricity grid, as they prepare firewood and candles.

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Roundup: Fantasy readings of court decisions

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In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Impact Assessment Act, there has been a lot of fantasy being projected on what the decision said (hint: it’s not what most everyone says, no matter which sentence they’ve cherry-picked). There’s a lot of blame on the Act for projects not moving forward, as even though many of them had approvals in hand already and the economics for those projects didn’t make sense with current oil prices (as many were conceived of when there was a belief that we were reaching peak oil and that prices would start to skyrocket as a result—oops), or as with certain LNG projects that never got off the ground, they couldn’t get buyers to sign contracts for what they hoped to produce. That’s why the handwringing over Qatar supplying Europe with LNG is particularly funny, because we just don’t have the LNG capacity on the east coast—there is no ready supply of natural gas to liquefy, so without another massive pipeline project, it would mean importing product to liquefy and re-sell to the Europeans, which is not exactly a cost-savings for them when they can get it much cheaper from Qatar.

Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach calling out these kinds of fantasies, particularly when they’re coming from the Alberta government.

As a bonus, Leach also calls out the excuses for inaction on the energy transition:

Ukraine Dispatch:

No word on any fresh attacks against Ukrainian cities. Meanwhile, artefacts that were stolen from occupied territories were confiscated when they were attempted to be smuggled into the US, and have now been returned to Ukraine.

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Roundup: Another diminished Auditor General Day

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and she had five reports that weren’t terribly complimentary of the government and its efforts, especially as some have been in the works for years and are making progress that is far too slow for the task at hand.

  1. In spite of working to make changes to the processing, there is still a massive backlog of permanent resident applications at Citizenship and Immigration, as well as a major problem with asylum claims that are taking years to be processed.
  2. The efforts to combat racism in government departments and the RCMP are falling short (which is not a huge surprise because this government has a particular problem of saying “intersectional” and “GBA+” and assuming that it will magically fix things rather than doing the actual hard work).
  3. The work to modernise the critical IT infrastructure of the government, particularly when it comes to delivering services Canadians rely on, is getting worse and Treasury Board doesn’t have plans yet on how to replace some of it (which should be alarming).
  4. Modernising the delivery of benefits like CPP, EI, and OAS is behind schedule and facing cost overruns, because of course it is.
  5. Canadians can’t get access to critical antimicrobial drugs as drug resistant strains get worse, and while data collection is improving, there remain gaps in access, which the Pandemic made worse.

You might also note that only three of those five items had news stories attached to them, and not all five. Even more to the point, two were Canadian Press wire stories, one came from the Globe and Mail, and that was it. The National Post had their own version of the immigration story, but of the major outlets, that was all that got covered. It used to be that on Auditor General days, the lock-up room at the OAG was packed, and each outlet sent several reporters to ensure that most of the reports got adequate coverage (some of the special audits of Crown corporations excepted). What we see now is a sad indictment of just how diminished our media capacity is, and how little value we are placing on these reports, which is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

New overnight attacks focused on both the north and south of Ukraine, but no casualties have been reported yet. Russian forces resumed their onslaught of the eastern city of Avdiivka, which Ukrainian forces continued to hold at bay. Russians have also stepped up their bid to re-take the city of Kupiansk, which was liberated late last year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is looking to fill 2000 judicial vacancies (and we thought it was bad in Canada), while also looking to vet the current roster of judges for malfeasance as they work toward cleaning up corruption in order to meet the conditions for acceptance into the EU.

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QP: Questions about French castles

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While the prime minister was entertaining Caribbean leaders for the CARICOM summit, his deputy was on her way to Washington for other meetings, and only a couple of the other leaders were present in the Chamber for QP. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and recounted the story of a couple from Ontario who wold their home and bought a castle in France, and wouldn’t be able to afford to move back to Ontario and buy a new home there. François-Philippe Champagne took this up and launched into a demand that the Conservatives support their bill on affordability. Poilievre pivoted and said that they warned the government that the clean fuel regulations would impose higher costs on lower income Canadians and wanted it cancelled, and Steven Guilbeault noted that the Conservatives campaigned on the same standards, but the difference is that the Liberals actually did it. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the story of a couple with the castle in France. Champagne got back up to deploy the “take no lessons” line and exhorted the Conservatives support their bill. Poilievre claimed this was Champagne saying “let them eat cake,” and this time Karina Gould got up to point out that Poilievre won’t explain why he won’t support a bill to increase affordability measures. Poilievre returned to the question on the clean fuel regulations, and this time Guilbeault read a survey of small businesses owners impacted by weather events and pilloried the Conservatives for ignoring climate change. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and decried that only 20 trucks of humanitarian aid have been allowed into Gaza, and wanted to know if the government has been on the case. Mélanie Joly says that they have been constantly asking to deliver humanitarian aid, and that they are engaging with the different countries in the region. Therrien insisted that Canada needed to show humanitarian leadership, to which Ahmed Hussen red a script about their commitment to getting humanitarian aid to civilians. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that Toronto hasn’t received the promised $97 million in aid for housing, particularly around asylum seekers. Mark Miller said that they are engaging with the city and the province, and that they have been asking the city for the receipts which they will pay for once they receive them. Singh switched to French to recount a story of someone who was evicted and needed to find a smaller, less adapted home. Champagne exhorted him and all of the opposition to vote for their affordability measure.

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Roundup: Picking a fight over the CPP

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau decided to get into a new federal-provincial scrap yesterday by releasing an open letter to Alberta premier Danielle Smith on the issue of her proposal to withdrew from the Canada Pension Plan and create their own provincial one. Trudeau said that he would fight for the stability of pensions in the country, and that his Cabinet would ensure that people are aware of the risks of Smith’s plan—which is wise enough considering that the whole thing is premised on fantasy math that everyone knows is not ever going to fly, and that Smith’s whole pitch is premised on that fantasy math (and that without it, the whole thing falls flat). But this is also the same federal government that is unable to have a frank conversation about absolutely anything, so it’s hard to imagine that they would start now, on this particular file, and would instead just trot out a bunch of feel-good pabulum about the current system, which is not going to help absolutely anyone, and it certainly won’t counter Smith’s lies and fantasy math, but this government can’t help themselves.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714644819807809638

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714645765002510598

Smith naturally responded saying that Trudeau’s comments were unhelpful and if he wanted to be constructive, he should have shown up with a number of what the actual withdrawal figure would be. And it’s true that Trudeau’s letter had no figures in it at all, whether that’s because he relied on the platitudes about the stability of the existing system, or because he’s waiting to have a watertight analysis from his departments, and that’s going to need more time. The cynic in me says it’s the former, but it may be the latter, because there may be a serious effort happening to come to a realistic figure—which of course would raise the question of why Trudeau would release his letter today and not wait until that was in hand? In any case, Smith wants this fight with Ottawa, and the whole premise of this fight and the fantasy math is to use it as a cudgel to threaten the rest of Canada so that she can demand they back off on environmental legislation and regulation (which, again, she has been consistently lying about and the government hasn’t come up with a half-decent counter to). Given the state of play, I’m not confident this will wind up in anything but a giant clusterfuck.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1714691053083582798

Ukraine Dispatch:

The death toll rose after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, while Ukrainian forces have been making some progress around Robotyne in the south. Near Kharkiv, a farm worker was killed when his tractor hit a mine.

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QP: The first attempt to publicly undermine Speaker Fergus

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The prime minister and his deputy were in town but away, hosting CARICOM meetings instead, while the other leaders were all present. Speaker Fergus wanted to make a statement about decorum before things got underway, Pierre Poilievre decided to throw a tantrum because he started right now, and had Andrew Scheer fight on his behalf. There was a back-and-forth on the rules and consultation with the Table Officers, and Fergus trying to assert his authority as the Conservatives tried to undermine him publicly. Eventually, Fergus did get to his speech, and faced attempts by the Conservatives to interrupted him with points of order, and eventually he got to the point about excessive and loud heckling, while recognising that there is a place for witty comments as a feature of our system; the use of “provocative” terms that lead to tense exchanges, such as calling one another racists or shouting obscenities; and the tendency to the make personal attacks, including coming up with fake titles, or drawing attention to absences. He promised to use what tools he has to limit those attacks, reinforcing that he has the authority to preserve order and decorum. That would include refusing to recognise a member, or to name a member.

Poilievre finally led off in French, and he decried “inflationary deficits” with a couple of bespoke mentions of Quebeckers. François-Philippe Champagne trotted out the “take no lessons” line and decried the cuts the Conservatives would make cuts to services. Poilievre switched to English to worry about the “middle-class homeless,” and demanded an end to deficits, to which Anita Anand recited the points about the country’s Aaa credit rating and that the government invests in Canadians. Poilievre shrugged off the “incompetent ratings agencies” before worrying about homeless seniors with a specious connection to deficits. Mark Holland said that cuts to social programmes like Poilievre was peddling would make people worse off in the long-run. Poilievre boasted that the previous government balanced the budget will increasing healthcare (false), and Anand got back up to insist that they won’t balance the budget on the backs of Canadians. Poilievre retorted that the government runs massive deficits on the backs of people before turning to the hospital in Gaza, and demanded that they denounce terrorists for inflicting it. Karina Gould said that their hearts were broken for the innocent Palestinians affected and that they have denounced terrorism while they stand with Israel.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he demanded Canada work with allies to get humanitarian aid to Gaza. Gould insisted that they were calling for a humanitarian corridor and to protect the lives of civilians. Blanchet was incredulous that Trudeau had not apparently spoken to Joe Biden since the attack in Israel, and Gould reiterated that they are in contact with allies and stakeholders. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and mocked Champagne’s inability to get answers on how the grocery chains were lowering prices, and wanted support for a motion to call them to committee. Champagne insisted that his summoning those CEOs was unprecedented. Singh got back up ask the question in French—because he needs clips in both languages—and Champagne says that he wrote to the chair of the committee to ask him to summon the CEOs, so he was glad the NDP was on board.

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Roundup: Openly pursuing creeping illiberalism

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You may have heard mention of a lavish trip that Conservative MPs took to London courtesy of a Hungarian think tank, but as you might expect from Canadian legacy media, the focus remains on the costs of the trip, and the stupid little partisan games in trying to get the ethics committee to look into it. What isn’t being mentioned is the fact that the think tank, the Danube Institute, is closely tied to the Orbán regime, and that is a worrying problem because of what it signals about right-wing parties in North America cosying up to Orbán.

Why this matters is because Orbán is undermining the rule of law and public institutions in Hungary, and is praising greater illiberalism. By cosying up to Orbán while has-beens like Stephen Harper try to sanitise his image through his IDU social club is because it creates a permission structure for right-wing parties like the Conservatives to start normalising the same illiberalism, pretending that this is all standard stuff for small-c conservative parties these days. The “don’t say gay” legislation in the US all came from Orbán’s playbook, and that is crossing over into Canada as well, with Conservatives openly winking and nodding to it, while you have conservative premiers invoking the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of gender-diverse youth. This is the canary in the coal mine.

On the subject of creeping illiberalism, Conservatives (and MP Rachael Harder in particular) tried to get the public accounts committee to haul the CBC executives before them to “explain” why they don’t use the term “terrorist” when referring to Hamas, never mind that this is a practice shared by other news organisations like the BBC and The Associated Press. This kind of attempted intimidation is absolutely out of order, and represents political interference in the public broadcaster, which would be bad enough it Harder wasn’t the one always screaming about so-called “government censorship” with the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act, as though that were a credible problem. It’s not, but it also seems to be both projection and an admission, that they want to control the news and programming, while accusing the Liberals of doing so (even though they absolutely are not). This is extremely dangerous for our democracy, and we should absolutely beware what they are trying to get away with.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While the attacks on Avdiivka continue, Russians struck an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia and killed two people. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for an attack on two Russian airfield in occupied areas using longer-range ballistic missiles quietly provided by the Americans, which is an unusual admission for them, but also signals that they can now hit Russian supply lines in more protected areas.

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