Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: Not spelling out a non-binding motion

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The Conservatives spent their Supply Day yesterday calling for an “emergency” televised meeting with premiers on the carbon levy, which was full of the usual nonsense and false talking points about the effect the carbon levy is having on food affordability, or using the torqued numbers from the PBO report in a misleading way. Nevertheless, Pierre Poilievre was trying to make a point about Trudeau being somehow afraid to face the premiers, which is just more of his terminally online “Debate me!” energy going on, even though we all know this wouldn’t actually be a debate, it would be the premiers ganging up for the sake of them all gathering video clips for fundraising purposes.

This having been said, I find myself one again supremely irritated by how the CBC—and in particular a certain journalist in the CBC’s bureau—chose to write up the day’s activities, with the headline about the motion trying to “force” Trudeau to meet with the premiers. The motion is non-binding. It can’t force anything. All Supply Day motions are non-binding. But the headline seems to indicate that it could bind the government, and nowhere in the text of the piece does it point out that it’s non-binding. This is malpractice at this point, because it’s painting a completely false picture of what the debate was. The “debate”—and I use the term loosely because it was MPs reading twenty-minute speeches into the record—was posturing for the sake of gathering clips for social media. That’s all. And this particular writer has been on the Hill long enough that he should know this, but he has a habit of ignoring relevant facts about procedure or jurisdiction to try and lend weight to his pieces. It’s not cute, and it’s not doing anything for the CBC’s reputation.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine says that they downed 20 attack drones overnight, though there was still infrastructure damage in the west of the country. Ukraine is trying to repair and shield their power systems after the recent spate of attacks. A retaliatory strike inside of Russia hit an aviation factory in the Voronezh region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited fortifications in the Kharkiv region, while the Americans are offering to send seized Iranian weapons, and to sell them $138 million USD air defence upgrades.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1777666453950337220

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QP: Demanding a televised meeting

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Although he had not been initially scheduled to attend Question Period today, the prime minister updated his itinerary late morning to indicate that he would be here today after all, even though his deputy would not be. All of the other leaders were also present, as is usual when the PM is here. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, recited his slogans, accused the government of ramping up “generational inflation” (which is not what happened) and said the government was giving more to bankers than healthcare. Trudeau listed what they are investing in healthcare, as well as school food, and child care, but didn’t correct the disinformation about inflation. Poilievre again falsely claimed that they government’s programmes were inflationary and demanded a meeting with the premiers, and Poilievre insisted that they were there to work with the provinces, as opposed to Conservative austerity. Poilievre switched to English to once again recite his slogans, falsely quoted the PBO report, and demanded a televised meeting with the premiers. Trudeau said that if they really cared about people having a hard time, they would help to pass the rural top-up. Poilievre insisted that they could do so with the NDP’s support, and repeated his demand for the televised meeting. Trudeau noted that they did agree to carbon pricing before, and noted the upcoming the upcoming rebate payments to people. Poilievre repeated the same falsehoods as before and wondered why Trudeau wouldn’t meet with the premiers. Trudeau noted that Poilievre was spouting misinformation and disinformation and that he got an endorsement from Alex Jones.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about interference in Quebec’s jurisdiction, and that the federal government had no competence in healthcare, child care and education. Trudeau said that even though provinces have the competence, there are gaps that people are falling through so they are investing in the help people need along with provinces. Blanchet made a remark about not going to a dentist to fix his car, which gave Trudeau an opening to praise dental care.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP and railed about corporations delaying climate action, and oil and gas subsidies, to which Trudeau noted that they have eliminated those subsidies ahead of schedule and praised carbon pricing. Singh repeated the question in French, and got a paean about the costs of climate change, and the carbon rebates.

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Roundup: MPs deliver dumb eclipse tweets

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For Eclipse Day, we had an event where after Question Period, a lot of MPs all headed out of West Block to watch it happen.

The exception to this was the prime minister, who did so from the roof of the Building Formerly Known as the Langevin Block, and of course, made a dumb tweet about it.

Poilievre decided to be very classy with his tweet.

In fact, a number of Conservatives were playing circulating this extremely stupid meme about Poilievre eclipsing Trudeau, but didn’t actually think through what that was supposed to mean—was Poilievre supposed to bring a period of darkness? Followed by Trudeau’s brightness returning? Like seriously, did they put any amount of thought into this at all? (Of course not. They figured this would “own the Libs,” which is all they care about, even when it results in a self-own).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1777348623874822613

But at least no one went blind (that we know of)!

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched 24 attack drones against Ukrainian targets (17 being destroyed) hitting critical infrastructure in the central city of Zvyahel, while attacks by missiles killed three in Zaporizhzhia, and guided bombs killed a woman in Bilopillia. Russia and Ukraine are trading accusations of just who launched the drone attack against the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant over the weekend.

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QP: Sniping in advance of the eclipse

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The first day back from the Easter break, and Eclipse Day, and neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present, having spent the morning in Trenton making the defence policy update announcement. Most of the other leaders were present today, for what it’s worth. After the introduction of Jamil Jivani as the newest Conservative MP, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, reciting his slogans and accusing government of being “pyromaniacs” fuelling inflation. (That’s not what was driving inflation). Jonathan Wilkinson read a statement about investing in Canadians. Poilievre recited a bank report to claim the government was stoking inflation, and Wilkinson read more talking points about those investments. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his pyromaniac line, and Wilkinson again read lines about investing in Canadians. Poilievre went on about a “carbon tax election,” and recited more slogans. Sean Fraser got up to scoff about the lack of seriousness of Poilievre’s supposed plan. Poilievre insisted that his plan would lower prices for farms, food and homes, and Fraser responded by listed Poilievre’s record a “housing” minister (even though he really wasn’t).

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he railed that the government was trying to tell Quebeckers how to build housing, and listed all of their supposed failures along the way. Pablo Rodriguez was incredulous that the Bloc was against housing, child care, or school food. Therrien railed that federal government was holding Quebec hostage, and Rodriguez reminded that that they were not the Quebec government. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and railed about corporate handouts, and went on a tangent about Conservative corporate handouts and if the Liberals would carry them forward. Wilkinson read more of his talking points about investments and fairness. Singh repeated his question in French, and this time Fraser got up to talk about some of their housing announcements from last week.

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Roundup: Pre-budget non-advice

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Because it’s pre-budget season, we’re starting to get some of the usual rounds of absolutely useless commentary on it once again, from some of the usual suspects. This week it’s Jean Charest and Bill Morneau, who insist the focus needs to be on “long-term” things like growth, and not “short-term” issues like inflation. But they offer no actual policy prescriptions—just vibes.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1776584499075187102

My dudes. Getting inflation under control was one of the most important issues over the past year-and-a-half, because if not addressed in the short-term, it becomes a long-term problem that nobody wants. That meant slowing the economy just enough to let the steam out of it (the “excess demand”) without going into a recession, and lo, they managed to do just that. Yes, growth is sluggish right now because that was the whole gods damned point. Once inflation is tamed for real, and signs are that it’s getting there very soon, then they can focus on real growth once again, and with a focus on productivity because that’s how we’ll get more growth without fuelling inflation, but nobody wants to put too much heat back into the economy before inflation is tamed, or it’ll become persistent, and nobody wants that. You would think a former premier and finance minister might appreciate those facts.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched two dozen attack drones overnight, targeting Ukraine’s south and east, and 17 were destroyed. Two Russian strikes on Kharkiv killed eight early Saturday, while a Russian shell hit a house in the village of Guliaipole in Zaporizhzhia region on early Sunday, killing three civilians. A drone strike against the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has the international community worried about the potential for an accident once again. Ukraine’s energy systems have stabilised in spite of the many attacks on Kharkiv in recent weeks, but president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning that they are running low on air defence missiles, and he continues to call on the Americans to get their act together and pass the support package.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1776965218146324857

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Roundup: Admitting defeat with 24 Sussex?

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There is a rumour circulating in Ottawa, put in print, that former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper are offering to lead a charitable exercise of collecting donations to renovate 24 Sussex in the hopes that this will finally depoliticise the whole affair, and the work can finally get done. It’s absolutely discouraging, however, because if it’s true, it’s a giant admission of defeat when it comes to the ability for political decision-making and frankly our ability to have…not even nice things, but useful, official things in this country.

This is supposed to be why we have the gods damned National Capital Commission to deal with the official residences, so that it takes it out of the hands of the government of the day, but even then, it doesn’t exactly work because if the government doesn’t give them the budget allocations to do the work, it doesn’t get done. And they got the allocations for necessary repairs at Harrington Lake, or doing routine work at other residences like Stornoway, but 24 Sussex keeps being punted, as they do yet more studies about what possible alternatives could be, each more wildly fantastic or implausible than the last (such as converting the National Research Council building on Sussex into a quasi-White House with residences and offices, which is absolutely bloody ridiculous), and with the RCMP security wish list driving up the costs every time.

It’s an official residence. It should have the capacity to host a couple of working dinners (not state dinners—that’s why we have Rideau Hall or the Sir John A Macdonald Building across from the West Block), but that’s about it. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but I do think it should retain period features (which in my estimation should mean restoring the original façade with the turret) because this is a heritage property and we are a city of a lot of neo-gothic architecture. But we shouldn’t need a fundraising drive if everyone behaved like adults, which unfortunately seems like too much to ask these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired five missiles at Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing four, and a drone strike early Saturday morning on Kharkiv killed six and injured at least ten. Russians claim that they have taken control of the village of Vodyane in the east, but Ukraine denies the Russian reports that they have reached the suburbs of Chasiv Yar, one of their strongholds in the east. Ukraine did stage a strike against Russia’s Morozovsk military airbase, destroying six Russian warplanes.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1776278198684201137

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Roundup: No, a foreign power can’t install a prime minister

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One of the unfortunate things about certain people I follow on the Twitter Machine constantly retweeting sludge is that sometimes I see something that is so outrageous that it sets me off. This, from former Global journalist Sam Cooper, is just such an egregious thing.

Setting aside the torqued use of Michael Chong’s testimony, this has all of the credibility of those racist emails that used to circulate, usually at the hands of someone’s relatives, where people worried that the changing Canadian demographics could mean that we might *gasp!* have a Muslim prime minister! As is unsurprising in racist emails like those, the internal logic was deeply flawed and the understanding of our system was non-existent, and was likely repurposed from American racist content worrying about a Muslim president, but that aside, this worry from Cooper is about the same quality.

To wit: If a party held a leadership contest while during a prime minister’s term, the fear expressed here is that, somehow, a foreign government would be able to swamp party memberships (either sales or sign-ups, depending on the party) and install a preferred candidate, who would then become prime minister without an election (which, I should not need to remind anyone, is perfectly legitimate in a parliamentary system). The hole in this logic is that pretty much every party has a weighted point system as part of these elections, so that highly populated regions of the country don’t swamp the more sparely-populated ones. In order for a foreign government to therefore take over a leadership contest, they would need a critical mass of voters in the majority of ridings in the country, particularly ones like small rural ridings in Quebec or Atlantic Canada. That’s simply not a possibility for any foreign government to engineer. The fact that Cooper doesn’t have a clue how these things work should be (another) warning sign about his judgment. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone attacks on Kharkiv struck residential buildings and cut power supplies. A Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle (larger than a drone) was used to strike deep inside Russian territory, striking an industrial site.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775913487300002262

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Roundup: Erin O’Toole’s revisionist history

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It was MP Day at the Foreign Interference Inquiry, and the big star of the day was former Conservative leader and serial liar Erin O’Toole, who has come to believe that as many as nine seats may have been lost as a result of foreign interference, mostly from China. That’s…an interesting number, considering that the party’s internal polling had long since concluded that their position on vaccine mandates was what cost them the election (though O’Toole being caught out in as many lies as he had been really didn’t help him any, one of the most egregious examples being on gun control).

Not only that, but O’Toole went on to claim that the member of the party’s national council who initiated the petition calling for a leadership review, who is Taiwanese, may have had motives based in foreign interference, which is also ridiculous. It also bears remembering that around the same time, O’Toole began in imperious streak of subverting the (garbage) Reform Act rules the party signed onto in order to punish those in caucus who were standing against him, resulting in him pushing out Senator Denise Batters, and this kept escalating until caucus called for a vote, again according to the (garbage) Reform Act, and at that point, he was done for. (This is all without anything related to the calls for his ouster from the collection of grifters, conspiracy theorists, and grievance tourists who were occupying downtown Ottawa at the same time). Trying to invent foreign interference motives for his demise is not just cry baby behaviour, it’s outright historical revisionism and fabulism to soothe his wounded ego, but I guess if you have no problem lying to everyone all the time, you’re probably pretty used to lying to yourself as well. Meanwhile the pundit class praises him for showing restraint in not using Trumpian “Big Lie” language. Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, as Kenny Chiu, Jenny Kwan and Michael Chong also testified, we have learned that the RMCP investigation into allegations of attempted Chinese intimidation of Chong has hit a dead end.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles struck Dnipro on Tuesday, damaging an educational facility. There was also a drone attack against Kharkiv early Thursday that stuck apartment buildings and homes, killing at least four. In all, Russia launched 3000 aerial bombs, 600 missiles and 400 drones against Ukraine in March. Here is a look at the security arrangements that over 30 countries have now signed with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775410021712494814

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Roundup: Another tranche of housing money

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As part of his pre-budget announcement tour, Justin Trudeau was in Halifax yesterday to announce a new tranche of housing funding, which comes with strings attached for provinces to access it, and if provinces don’t, well, it’ll get rolled into the municipal stream to let them access it instead. Some of this is an extension of the existing Housing Accelerator Fund, but they also have some new conditions around densification to be able to qualify for that funding, which is really about overcoming the NIMBYism that prevents a lot of it currently.

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/1775245369128939654

This having been said, there will be implementation issues, and for that, Jennifer Robson has some thoughts.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they downed two out of three Russian drones overnight on Monday, and that so far this year, Russia has fired five Zircon hypersonic missiles at Kyiv. Ukraine continues to make its own drone attacks against Russian refineries, with the latest strike against the country’s third-largest refinery. After much debate, Ukraine has lowered its draft age from 27 to 25 as they need to replenish their troops. Ukraine’s largest energy grid operator says that recent attacks have damaged the power system, but that total collapse is unlikely.

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Roundup: Promising rental protections that are provincial jurisdiction

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Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland made a pre-budget announcement yesterday geared toward Millennial and Gen Z voters and their particular frustrations with the housing market, with some particular promises around rentals—some Legal Aid funds for tenants fighting unfair evictions, a “Renters’ Bill of Rights,” and a voluntary mechanism where paying rent on time can help with your credit score. The problem here? This is all pretty much provincial jurisdiction.

The political calculus here is a little bit of a Kobayashi Maru—any help that they want to offer renters has to essentially be done through the provinces, and yet the federal government is constantly being badgered and hectored—and blamed—for rental issues. Hell, the NDP have been screaming that they want help for renters in the budget, even though it’s provincial jurisdiction. So, this becomes something of a handwavey gesture to make it look like they’re listening and doing something when they really have almost no levers, particularly at a time when premiers are far less keen to work with the federal government on anything (and are in most cases undermining them wherever possible). Meanwhile, the number of files they need provincial cooperation with keep mounting, whether it’s healthcare, dental care, pharmacare, the early learning and child care agreements, a possible school food programme, and the Canada Disability Benefit (where the biggest danger is provinces clawing back their own supports when additional federal dollars are introduced). What’s adding one more thing to that list? Cripes.

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1773160710274527466

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1773172941573812385

As always:

Programming Note: I’m going to take the full long weekend off, because we’re about to head into a very, very busy and nasty time of year, so I’m going to take as much time as I can, while I can. Have a good one!

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has struck Kharkiv with aerial bombs for the first time since 2022, resulting in at least one civilian death.

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