Monthly Archives: June 2024

Roundup: Electoral reform tries to take the spotlight

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In addition to the constant wanking of pollsters and polling analysts, while the Elder Pundits continue to pronounce the end of Justin Trudeau’s political career, there has been an entire sub-category of commentary that is trying to tie this by-election loss to the failure to enact some kind of electoral reform, even though Trudeau has won two elections since then. Justin Ling wrote up a whole op-ed about this for the Star yesterday, given that the 84 candidates on the by-election ballot were because of a tantrum by electoral reform group to use the stunt to call attention to Trudeau’s broken promise. And Ling makes some wild assertions along the way.

This notion that MPs are more beholden to the party than to their constituents would not be fixed by changing the electoral system. In fact, the current system is the one that most empowers MPs to be beholden to their constituents, as most PR systems rely on party votes, and party lists to fill “proportional” seats, and that makes those MPs even more beholden to the leader because they don’t have the connection to a riding as a result. That’s an even worse outcome, and hands even more power to the leader to centralise, worse than they already do. The ability to be independent under such a PR system is even less than under the current system, so I have a hard time fathoming why anyone thinks that this solves any of those problems.

The current dysfunction that Ling complains about in the piece is not a result of the electoral system—it’s because of the perverse incentives that have developed, compounded by the Trump Effect, that have made rational discourse impossible because everything is about driving engagement over social media, not in the Houses of Parliament. Changing the electoral system wouldn’t change that—in fact, it could make it worse as parties fragment and fragile coalitions emerge that rely on extremists to play kingmaker, forcing parties to behave in even more outrageous fashions. Electoral reform doesn’t solve problems—it takes an existing set of problems and replaces them with a new set of problems. Resurrecting this debate in order to once again flog this dead horse is not helping anyone, and if anything, is just distracting from the actual frank conversations that parties need to be having amongst themselves with their members about how to meet the moment to solving the problems this country faces. PR won’t make that happen, and we have to stop entertaining the notion that it somehow will.

Programming Note: I’m taking the long weekend fully off of blogging, as well as a few days next week in order to work on another project.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that they have forced Russian troops out of part of Chasiv Yar. Some Ukrainian commanders are complaining that the Canadian-built Senator armoured vehicles aren’t built for off-road capability, break down too often, and aren’t well suited for the front lines. With the EU security pact now signed, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on European allies to fulfil their promises around arms and supports.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1806344642041917773

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1806321424446951489

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Roundup: Nothing to opt out of

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Breaking through the endless wank-a-thon of the pundit class declaring that Justin Trudeau needs to go was a story where Danielle Smith had sent a letter to Trudeau declaring that Alberta will “opt out” of the dental care plan, and that they want to negotiate “compensation” that they would apply to their own provincial low-income dental assistance programme, but this seems to completely misunderstand how the programme works. It is very literally an insurance programme. Dental offices bill Sun Life through a portal, and the federal government then reimburses Sun Life. Yes, the rollout was poor and confused (because the whole implementation of this programme has been a bit of a gong show, thanks entirely to the NDP), but this is not a federal transfer programme. There is nothing to compensate the province for because this is a 100 percent federal insurance scheme.

The reason it’s structured this way is because the NDP demanded, as part of the Supply and Confidence Agreement, that this needed to be a fully federal programme, and not cost-shared like early learning and child care, and because dental care is ostensibly provincial jurisdiction, it had to be structured as insurance, and the model they would up choosing was to get Sun Life to do it, and they just pay Sun Life, rather than stand up a federal bureaucracy to administer this. This should have been a federal-provincial transfer so that provinces could bolster their existing dental programmes to federal guidelines, but no. As a result, I don’t see just what Smith can “opt out” of, let alone be compensated for.

Of course, federal health minister Mark Holland didn’t help matters by going on Power & Politics and not explaining how the programme works, and instead suggested that she could opt out if she could guarantee the same or better coverage, but again, opt out of what? The province isn’t billing Sun Life. They are out of the equation entirely, and Holland should have pointed this out, rather than just trying to sound conciliatory and saying he doesn’t want a fight, and repeating the same lines about how many tens of thousands of seniors have availed themselves of the programme to date. Smith doesn’t appear to understand how the programme works, and has created a strawman around it to make it look like she’s standing up to Trudeau (at the expense of her population), and claiming they already have a great dental care programme and that this is duplicative (it’s not—the Alberta programme covers very few people and is a burden to administer).

There is an added issue here with how the media have covered this. CBC, CTV, The Canadian Press, all ignore the programme structure and just retype Smith’s letter, and then get comments from the provincial dental association about either their disagreement on the federal programme or some minor pushback about Smith’s comments about the existing provincial programme, but the fact that this is an insurance company where the dentists bill Sun Life and the province has no involvement at all is a pretty crucial part of the story, which nobody mentions. This should not be rocket science, and this would show that Smith is engaging in bad theatre, but of course they don’t do that, and readers are being given a disservice as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy is expected to sign a security agreement with the EU later today.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805883881356186102

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Roundup: Pledging to do things differently—really!

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If by some chance you managed to survive the complete and utter wank-fest of pollsters, poll analysts and Elder Pundits doing the media rounds yesterday without straining your eyeballs as they rolled endlessly, well, good for you. Just don’t expect anything but this to dominate the media landscape for the next several weeks to come, because going into this, the Elder Pundits declared that this was a sign that Trudeau needs to go, and they feel themselves perfectly vindicated, and they want you to know it. (Such a healthy media ecosystem we have in this country). So, while the entrails of this by-election get picked over, expect nothing but demands for a leadership review (which the Liberal Party’s constitution only allows for after a general election loss), for Trudeau to step down, and for successor chatter to spin up, with Mark Carney’s name all over the place in spite of all evidence to the contrary. (Gretchen, stop trying to make Mark Carney happen. It’s not going to happen).

Of course, Trudeau isn’t going to step down. He has convinced himself that he’s the one who can stand up to Poilievre, and that he wants to keep doing the work. Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould were all making the point that they have to listen more and work harder to regain trust, but the one that stuck out for me the most was Gould telling Power & Politics that they need to “do things differently,” but therein lies the problem with Trudeau. They don’t do things differently, starting with the fact that Katie Telford is still on the job and hasn’t decided that she needs to do something more with her life that just this, and being the central person by which everything flows (becoming part of the bottleneck of files this government needs to address). They are still communicating the same way after having been told time and again that it’s hindering them, and the most they’ve done is get some Gen Z staffers to put them in cringey TikToks (from their personal phones!) in addition to the same pabulum that they keep feeding us. They continue to pat themselves on the back for declaration over actions to implement those declarations. I get that they are trying to say the right things right now, but I have yet to see any desire on the part of Trudeau to do things differently, and maybe that should be the lesson here.

And in reaction, we have Susan Delacourt pointing out why this becomes a problem for Poilievre’s expectations management. Jen Gerson mockingly declares Trudeau to be dead in the water, because of course she does. Paul Wells also makes the observation that Trudeau will espouse making changes but won’t, and will just keep doing what he’s been doing the whole time.

Ukraine Dispatch

The shells obtained by the Czech initiative are starting to arrive in Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia exchanged 90 prisoners of war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed an International Criminal Court warrant for two more Russian military leaders.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

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Roundup: Getting Stuff Done?

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While everyone concerned themselves last night with the ice hockey and the by-election, I thought there was an interesting tweet out that deserved a bit more consideration.

Usher is not wrong here. The early focus on “deliverology” fell to the wayside and the Liberals stopped measuring the number of promises that they had fulfilled, and which ones they could not fulfil or which ones they were abandoning (such as the promise around electoral reform, which was a dumb promise to have made, and where the committee process around it resulted in a hot garbage report that was functionally useless other than to prove it was a dumb promise to have made in the first place). But it’s also cultural. Paul Wells has observed that the Liberals are increasingly made up of the kinds of people who go to leadership conferences, but who haven’t really accomplished much else. Once upon a time, they were people who had built things and a record of professional accomplishment, but now it’s mostly people who just talk about doing things without actually doing them. And it’s a fair observation, but also points to a broader malaise in Canadian culture, where as a country we’re building fewer things while MBAs manage what we have, and wealth funds acquire companies and then strip them for parts until they’re forced to declare bankruptcy. You can’t pin that entirely on the Liberals, but Getting Stuff Done is proving a challenge for this government, and they should put some energy on doing that rather than just churning out some more communications pabulum.

And to make the point about Pwning for Pwning’s Sake, here’s Andrew Scheer wishing the country had fallen into a full-blown recession, because reasons.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian missiles struck Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least five people and wounding at least 41 others. A Russian missile also struck a storage facility in Odesa, injuring three. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has hit over 30 Russian oil refineries and depots thus far. Zelenskyy also ordered a purge of the country’s state guard after an assassination plot was uncovered. And today is the day that the EU begins membership talks with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

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Roundup: A first step in breaking up the RCMP?

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RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme was making media rounds this weekend, and said something interesting about how the government is planning to make changes to the structure of the RCMP, and to separate out the federal policing role (which the RMCP has not been doing a very good job of) while leaving the contract policing with provinces intact (more or less). Having a separate and dedicated federal policing agency would be a good thing, because then maybe it can be properly resourced and staffed to do the work that they’re supposed to be doing, rather than the money and personnel all being sapped by the contract policing wings. This could mean a more specialised police force for those roles, which are different than front-line policing.

This being said, I’m not sure that this is a solution to much, because maintaining the RMCP for their contract policing duties is not going to solve many problems because the Force is toxic and broken, and needs a radical overhaul that I don’t think is going to be possible from within the organization. Part of the problems that it has are because of its centralised nature, and sending officers fresh from training at Depot to parts of the country they have absolutely no familiarity with, and that creating its own source of problems. I get why the federal government wants to keep it around (aside from the branding of the Red Serge), which is that they basically subsidise the police forces of those provinces that use them, but that’s part of the problem, and it’s part of a hard conversation that should be had federally.

Incidentally, Duheme also says he hopes that no MP releases any names of possibly compromised MPs from the NSICOP report under the cover of Parliamentary privilege, for what it’s worth.

Ukraine Dispatch

At least one person was killed and eleven wounded in a Russian aerial attack on Kharkiv, while Russian authorities are claiming dozens of wounded from debris from a Ukrainian missile shot down over occupied Crimea. Russians also attacked a residential area of Kyiv, and energy facilities in the country’s southeast and west. Here is a look at midsummer festivals in Ukraine, with their pagan roots, and how this is seen as resistance as Russians try to erase Ukrainian culture.

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Roundup: Provinces learned they can underfund disaster management

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The House of Commons’ national defence committee tabled their report on disaster management earlier this week, and one of its recommendations is for a permanent civilian federal disaster management force that can be deployed for wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters—but they stopped short of recommending a Canadian FEMA, which may not be possible given that this is constitutionally largely an area of provincial jurisdiction, and would require some kind of provincial agreement to operate, and because this is Canada, the provinces would want some kind of say in its operations but wouldn’t want to pay for it, because of course.

One of the problems we’re dealing with as a country is that we’re dealing with the Canadian Forces being at their capacity and they are constantly being asked to deal with disaster management across the country because provincial capacity maxes out too soon. But why does provincial capacity max out? Because they keep cutting funds or under-investing, and creating these situations because they know that regardless of what happens, they can simply call up the federal government to ask them deploy the Canadian Forces, and even more to the point, that they can do it for free because the federal government won’t ask for reimbursement even though they are entitled to. And this has wound up teaching the premiers that there are pretty much no consequences for their under-investing or even cutting the funding for this kind of emergency management, so they are incentivized to rely on the Canadian Forces to do the work for them for free, and now we have reached the end of that being possible.

So, what is the solution? I am wary of the notion of building up a federal force because even if they can manage to get provincial agreements, staff it up (because you would be drawing from the same pool as the Canadian Forces, which has a recruitment and retention crisis), and even if they paid for all of it (which they shouldn’t), this will exacerbate the existing problem of provinces not funding or bolstering their existing forces that are their constitutional responsibility because there will still be a federal backstop. And if the federal government starts asking for reimbursement, either for the use of the Canadian Forces or this hypothetical future force, then the media will be aghast that the federal government is making the province pay in their time of need, completely ignoring that the provincial under-funding created the situation in the first place. We’re at a bit of a rock and hard place, because we have let federalism break down like this, and that’s not good for the country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck the Eastern settlement of Selydove, killing two. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian “barn” tank that has been modified to protect against drone attacks. Ukraine launched a drone attack that struck three Russian oil refineries overnight.

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Roundup: Spooking the oil sands companies

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The “Pathways Alliance” consortium of oil sands companies scrubbed their website as the bill that expands the Competition Bureau’s powers around investigating greenwashing gets royal assent, which seems to be suspiciously like a tell. I’m aware that they have been subject to particular legal claims around greenwashing, and when you add to that the parts in that Deloitte report that Alberta commissioned around the emissions cap, there was some specific language in there around the fact that carbon capture and storage is likely just an expensive money pit that won’t do much to lower emissions, it feels like Pathways is feeling the pressure, and that perhaps the oil and gas industry has reached its put-up-or-shut-up moment, that they can’t keep pretending that they can carry on as usual with the promise that CCS will come sooner than later, and we’ll have no more emissions problems (while the industry also makes up specific “cleanest” claims around oil and gas production, which also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny).

This being said, I will acknowledge that Andrew Leach has some specific reservations around the legislation and the enforcement of all green claims, because some of the burden of proof, even with companies that are actually doing clean or green things. It’s an issue to keep in mind in any case.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack in Donetsk killed three and injured four, while overnight missile and drone attacks have damaged yet another thermal power plant. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced new plans to mitigate those attacks, and part of it is transitioning to greener sources of electricity .

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1803435004866826530

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Roundup: Back to the constituencies

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At long last, the children—and by “children,” I mean MPs—have gone home for the summer. Finally. Not before there wasn’t another last-ditch effort by Conservatives to try and demand more committee hearings over the summer, because they need clips for their socials, after all. I also find it particularly strange that the Conservatives have been phrasing their condemnations that the other parties want to go back to their ridings to “vacation” for the summer, because normally MPs are extremely precious about the fact that this is not a break because they have sO mUcH wOrK tO dO in their constituencies and that if they had their druthers they’d do even more work in their constituencies and less in Ottawa, so this feels like the Conservatives making a tacit admission that they don’t do work in their constituencies. (I know they’re not, but this is what happens when you make dumb arguments to score points).

This being said, MPs are absolutely behaving like children over all of this, and they all need a gods damned time out, not that I expect things to get much better in the fall because the incentives for this kind of behaviour remain—it’s all about getting clicks and engagement on their socials, and acting like children gets them that, apparently. It’s too bad the incentives aren’t there for them to act like adults, but the world has gone stupid.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians resumed air attacks on Ukrainian power facilities. (Timeline of such attacks here). The fire at the oil terminal in southern Rostov burned for a second day after Ukraine’s drone strike. Here’s a look at how Russian glide bombs have accelerated the time it takes for them to destroy front-line settlements in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1803342727267885346

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QP: Last chance to get clips before the summer

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It’s a sweltering, muggy Wednesday, and everyone hopes the final day before the House rises for the summer. The prime minister was present, while his deputy was not, and the other leaders al deigned to attend for on last go-around to gather some clips for the summer break. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he lamented that the country is broken, and took a swipe at the Bloc, and demanded an election right now. Justin Trudeau said that if the leader opposite was really concerned about affordability, he would help pass their measures to help people rather than play petty partisan games. Poilievre worried that the government is threatening to “shut down” the Quebec forestry sector (not true), and Trudeau responded that unlike the Conservatives, Quebeckers know they need to protect the environment and the economy at the same time. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his assertion that everything  is broken and demanded an election, and Trudeau repeated his same assertion that the Conservatives should support their programmes. Poilievre expounded on just how much the country is a living hell thanks to his “whackonomics,” and Trudeau shot back that the Conservatives are only concerned with protecting the wealthiest, particularly over the capital gains changes. Poilievre claimed the Middle Class™ doesn’t exist anymore, and Trudeau reiterated that Poilievre only cares about himself. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and complained about anglophone mail carriers in Quebec, and Trudeau praised the government’s support for French, including in Quebec, and promised to follow up on it. Blanchet accused the government’s programmes of harming French, and Trudeau dismissed this as “identitarian” squabbling.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he accused the government of coddling CEOs, to which Trudeau patted himself on the back for raising taxes on the wealthiest, and took a shot at the Conservatives in the process. Singh tried again in French, and Trudeau listed the programmes they have delivered.

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Roundup: Clearing the decks before summer

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It’s the last Wednesday of the spring sitting, and the big question is whether they’re going to pull the plug today or not. The government says there is still work to do—in particular, they want to push the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission bill (Bill C-40) and the budget bill over the finish line, but the budget bill is up for a vote after QP tomorrow, leaving only C-40 at third reading debate, which is what is on for government orders tomorrow, and that’s the only bill they’re planning to bring forward for debate. This would make it pretty easy for them to pass a motion at unanimous consent to say something to the effect of it’ll pass on division or deemed pass at the collapse of debate at the end of the day, or some such if they really wanted, or to simply hold a vote at that point, and rise for the summer after that.

Of course, the Conservatives have been putting on a big song and dance about wanting to sit through the summer to “fix” the country, but we all know that’s all for show because that would mean nothing but more time for the government to keep passing bills and implementing their agenda, and that’s not what they want. They’re also trying to insist on committees sitting through the summer, but there are only two government bills at committee stage right now, so most of those meetings would likely be for private members’ business or for studies, and you can bet it’s going to be more of the latter, which would be little more than dog and pony shows to serve as clip factories while the House of Commons has risen. And if the Conservatives don’t agree for the House to rise tomorrow? Well, on the agenda are report stage debates on the cyber-security bill, the ports modernization bill, the (controversial) Métis self-government bill, and they have been debating the Elections Act changes, which the Conservatives and NDP are opposing because of bullshit objections to moving the fixed date back a week to avoid Diwali.

And then it’s up to the Senate to pass the number of bills on their plate, including the budget bill, and if they are true to recent form, they will race through their Order Paper until Friday, pass everything with little scrutiny other than maybe a few questions of the relevant minister at Committee of the Whole, and then rise by Friday, rather than stay another week or two to actually give things a proper review like they used to, back in the “bad old partisan days.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is claiming responsibility for a drone attack causing a massive blaze at an oil reservoir in Russia’s Rostov region. Ukraine is investigating the suspected beheading of one of its soldiers by a Russian in the Donetsk region. Reuters has some photos of combat medics on the job on the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1802984596122034588

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