Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

QP: Fighting to claim who loves seniors most

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The first day back after an extended weekend, and the prime minister was in town but absent, while his deputy was there. Most of the other leaders were also away, and this was the Bloc’s Supply Day and the Conservatives were about to have the vote of their latest non-confidence motion, so that was going to set the stage for what was to come. Before things got underway the Bloc’s newest MP got introduced to the Chamber to take his seat. Speaker Fergus then gave another admonishment for MPs to behave, as though that was going to do anything.

Once things got started, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and rattled off some slogans that claimed to be in the defence of seniors. Chrystia Freeland said that seniors remember that Stephen Harper went off to Davos to raise the age of retirement, and that they government introduced child care for the benefit of their grandchildren. Poilievre then took a swipe at the Bloc before demanding an election. Jean-Yves Duclos pointed out that Poilievre picked fights with municipalities. Poilievre switched to English to spin a tall tale about Mark Carney, calling him a walking conflict of interest. Freeland said that they are glad to get advice from former central bankers like Carney and Stephen Poloz, while the Conservatives get their advice from Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson. Poilievre then raised Blaine Higgs’ doomed promise to try and challenge the carbon levy in the courts again (who will promptly tell him to pound sand), and demanded an election. Freeland pointed out their announcement from this morning about the small business carbon levy. Poilievre then switched topics again, this time other Israel’s right to defend itself. Mélanie Joly says that they condemn Iran’s attacks, which will only further escalate the region, that she contacted her Israeli counterpart this morning and other regional counterparts, and that the war needs to stop.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and listed seniors groups on the Hill before demanding support for their OAS changes. Steve MacKinnon listed all of the measures for seniors that they voted against, saying their hypocrisy was shocking. Therrien made the demand again, pointing out it’s International Seniors Day, and MacKinnon prevaricated by wishing seniors well on this day, before returning to the his points about what the Bloc voted against.

Lori Idlout appeared by video to demand more funding for First Nations, particularly things like fire services. Patty Hajdu says they have invested $136 million for First Nations self-determined fire safety priorities. Leah Gazan demanded better healthcare access for First Nations. Hajdu says that there were $2 billion in the recent transfers earmarked for Indigenous self-determined priorities.

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Roundup: A double standard on barring speeches

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There was a story in the Star yesterday that I hadn’t actually noticed happening, which is that Liberal MP Yvan Baker has been barred from speaking in the House of Commons until he apologises for saying that the “Putin wing” had taken over the Conservative Party on March 20th. Baker says he has no intention of apologising for what he considers to be the truth, and the Speaker, as usual, makes little tut-tut noises about what Baker said, never mind that there is a giant double-standard at play.

If Fergus is concerned about MPs alleging that their colleagues “stand four-square behind dictators,” it’s funny that the consequences only seem to apply to Baker. After all, Conservatives on a frequent basis have said that Trudeau is in the pocket of dictators, and that he allowed foreign interference on their behalf because it benefitted his party. (There is absolutely no public evidence of this). And most egregious was that Conservative MP Rachael Thomas has said on the floor of the Commons that Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and she faced absolutely no censure for saying it, which makes it really hard to see why Baker is being singled out for being hyperbolic—the point was about which elements of the party’s base that Poilievre is pandering to as opposed to saying that Poilievre is under Putin’s sway—when nobody else is. (I will note that Conservative MP Mark Strahl was barred from speaking for several weeks because he refused to withdraw the remarks that someone was lying, which is a big no-no under the rules of Parliament—rules which are now being absolutely abused—but he did eventually do so).

What is perhaps the most galling in all of his was the statement that Andrew Scheer gave to the Star, in which he says “Liberals should not whine and complain because they were caught spreading disinformation and lies to divide Canadians and cover for their own total failures on Ukraine.” Erm, serial liar and promoter of conspiracy theories Andrew Scheer is lecturing Liberals on the subject, when he faces zero consequences for lying in the House of Commons on a daily basis. We already knew he had absolutely no sense of shame, but it definitely extends to a complete lack of self-awareness as well. Just utterly ridiculous.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another bloody weekend in Ukraine which saw waves of drone attacks targeting Kyiv last night, the pounding of Zaporizhzhia with guided bombs earlier, the death of a top judge after an attack on Kharkiv, and an attack on a hospital in Sumy that killed ten. President Zelenskyy says that the front lines are “very, very difficult” as autumn descends on the conflict.

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Roundup: The Bloc vs the Senate

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The Bloc Québécois are getting a taste of what the Senate does and why, and they’re not happy. The Senate has been slow-walking Bill C-282, which aims to forbid a government from negotiating any further reductions to Supply Management in trade negotiations, and it’s a bad bill. Nevertheless, it passed the House of Commons, because MPs are sometimes sentimental fools and will vote for things that they think are feel-good without actually thinking through the consequences. This was one such bill, where MPs voted on it nearly unanimously because they fell all over themselves to show how much they all loved Supply Management, neverminded that it’s a bad bill. Now that it’s in the Senate, with some actually knowledgeable former senior civil servants in the Chamber who know what they’re talking about have the bill in their hands, and they’re not giving it an easy ride.

The essential complaint is that the bill constrains the royal prerogative around trade negotiations, which could have serious consequences down the road. I’m not sure it’s quite as serious as that—you can’t really bind future governments and this bill, should it pass, could be easily repealed (say, in the next budget implementation bill), but there won’t be an easy passage on this, and for good reason. The Senate exists to put a check on the populist excesses of the House of Commons, which is why they have an absolute veto (only exercised in extreme circumstances, mind you), and who can say “Hey, you guys didn’t do your due diligence, so now we’re going to.” It is their raison d’être, whether MPs like it or not, and it’s especially important for private members’ bill because they are pre-time allocated under the rules and get very little scrutiny, even when they really need it.

The Bloc, however, are trying blackmail. In Question Period yesterday, they were demanding that the government tell senators to pass the bill, or they’ll topple the government. But the government can’t tell the Senate what to do, and as I mentioned in a previous post, there is no mechanism by which the Government Leader in the Senate could fast-track such a bill, even if they wanted to, because it’s a private member’s bill. Furthermore, with a Chamber of mostly-independent senators who have a job until age 75, they are not bothered if the government falls. The blackmail doesn’t really work on them because their seats aren’t in jeopardy, and I’m not sure what the Bloc thinks they’re doing, particularly in trying to blackmail the government into passing this bill as well as their OAS bill (which remains unvoteable as they are unlikely to get a royal recommendation). In either case, they are learning the hard way that the Senate is not a rubber stamp and they can’t expect to order it around as though it were.

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were killed in a Russian missile attack on the central city of Kryvyi Riv, and another three were killed in a drone attack on the southern city of Izmail. Nine children taken to Russia during the invasion have now been returned to their families in Ukraine thanks to help from Qatar.

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Roundup: A promise to interfere with media

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It was late in the afternoon yesterday that CTV announced that the two-person team responsible for the manufactured quote of Pierre Poilievre “are no longer with CTV News.” The breach of journalistic ethics in manufacturing a quote because you needed it to fit your narrative, despite the fact that the quote you had available wasn’t really useable, makes this understandable, and these are consequences that can happen. I’m less concerned about that as much as I am about the other signals that have been sent, particularly by the Conservatives.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1839452343596720522

The fact that Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri, a former journalist herself, is promising that Poilievre is going to “restore journalistic ethics and integrity” should be lighting up every single alarm around the country because that is a promise to politically interfere in the media and its independence. It’s not enough that they have successfully bullied and intimidated one of the largest media outlets in the country, but they are promising more of this, but they plan to ensure that media falls in line. And then there’s the hypocrisy—that they align themselves with PostMillennial, True North, and The Rebel, all of whom have demonstrated a lack of ethics, or commitment to things like facts. The fact that this is a party that has made outright lying their chief strategy shows exactly why this kind of war with legitimate media outlets is so dangerous for our democracy.

On another note, there were a number of stories yesterday about NDP MP Leah Gazan tabling a bill to make residential school denialism illegal, and that this was done in advance of National Truth and Reconciliation Day. The problem? Not one of the stories from any of the outlets (National Post, CBC or The Canadian Press) bothered to mention that Gazan has already used her private members’ business slot in this parliament for her cockamamie “basic income framework” bill, and it went to down to defeat earlier this week. That means that this bill is going to languish on the Order Paper and never see the light of day. The CP copy did note that “The chances the bill actually will be debated and pass into law are slim without it being adopted as a government bill by the Liberals,” but that obscures the fact that she used her spot, so the whole point of her tabling this legislation is performative.

Parliamentary procedure and rules matter, and if you ignore it, you wind up looking like a fool for spending your dwindling resources covering legislation that will never, ever see the light of day.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russians launched a five-hour aerial attack on Kyiv overnight, again targeting the power grid. There was also shelling of Kherson in the south that killed one, rockets launched against Kharkiv, and more shelling in the Donetsk region that killed three.

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QP: It wasn’t about sex!

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The prime minister was on his way to Montreal with Emanuel Macron, and his deputy was elsewhere, while the Conservatives were mid-Supply Day, moving yet another confidence motion that was doomed to fail (not that it matters because the whole point is to get clips for social media). Before things got started, Speaker Fergus said that per his ruling earlier, he offered the leader of the opposition an opportunity to withdraw words he spoke last week, and because he didn’t get such an offer to do so, he would remove three questions from him in the opening round. Poilievre got up and in French, read off their non-confidence motion, and asked the government to support it. Jean-Yves Duclos responded by chiding Poilievre for not even reading the first chapter of an Economics 101 textbook about the independence of the central bank. Poilievre read the slogan-filled motion again in English, and Karina Gould said the simple answer as to who was opposed to the motion was Canadians.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and wondered how the government could be opposed to increased support for seniors. Steve MacKinnon said that it was funny that the Bloc opposed all other measures to help seniors, including dental care. Therrien said that if the government didn’t want to fall, they should support that bill, and Duclos got back up to point out the supports the government has provided and wondered if they really wanted to support the Conservatives. 

Alexandre Boulerice read a letter purportedly to be from a constituent about the housing crisis, to which Duclos reminded him of how damaging Poilievre’s would be. Blake Desjarlais railed about the delay in providing promised Indigenous housing, and Patty Hajdu pointed to the millions of dollars that have flowed to communities.

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Roundup: Why the Bloc’s two-bill demand is actually impossible

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In advance of yesterday’s confidence votes, Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet laid out his new conditions for support ongoing—government support for Bills C-282 and C-319, and for them to pass by October 29th. The problem? These are both private members’ bills, and the government has little control over when either can pass, and you would think that as parliamentarians who know the system and who like to pretend that they are the adults in the room would know that such a deadline is an impossible ask, but we are unfortunately in the stupidest timeline.

For starters, Bill C-282, which seeks to protect Supply Management in future trade negotiations, has already passed the House of Commons and is in the Senate, but senators don’t seem keen on passing it with any alacrity because they want a better sense of how this will tie the government in the future. The truth is that it can’t—you cannot actually bind a future government with legislation, so this is little more than a handwavey gesture that a future government can repeal at any point, making this a giant waste of everyone’s time and resources. But more to the point, as a private member’s bill, there is no mechanism in the Senate to speed it along, and certainly not one that the Government Leader in the Senate possesses. In fact, when the Conservatives tried to change the rules of the Senate on this in the Harper years, there was tremendous pushback and the attempt was dropped.

The other bill, C-319, is the bill to increase the OAS for seniors aged 65 to 74, for which there is no reasonable justification for (there are other mechanisms to deal with the needs of low-income seniors), and would cost something in the order of $3 billion per year. It passed the House of Commons at report stage yesterday, but again, it’s unlikely to pass third reading by October 29th even if it gets a royal recommendation, which it needs to spend money (which PMBs are normally forbidden to do). So if the government gives it the royal recommendation, and if they get it passed the House of Commons before the 29th, once again, there is no mechanism to speed its passage in the Senate. None, for very good reason. The Bloc made a big show yesterday of insisting that their demands were reasonable and that the bills were sufficiently advanced to make the deadline reasonable (when it’s really chosen so that an election could theoretically be held before Xmas), but they are in fact impossible, and nobody actually pointed that fact out yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Star has gamed out other demands from both the Bloc and the NDP for potential support going forward, and how feasible or how costly they are, and most of it remains in the domain of fantasyland. Price controls? Giving Quebec full immigration powers? Nope and nope.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck Kramatorsk in the east, killing at least two and injuring twelve more. As well, 28 out of 32 Russian drones were downed overnight. Also in east Ukraine, Russian forces claim to have captured two more villages on the path to attacking the town of Vuhledar, considered a stronghold.

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QP: Spiralling into a cavalcade of bullshit

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The prime minister was back from New York and in Question Period for his proto-PMQ day, and his deputy was then along with him, in advance of the confidence vote that was to happen right after. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and rattled off some slogans to demand an election. Justin Trudeau said that they only thing they have to offer are cuts and austerity, while the government was investing in Canadians and Quebeckers. Poilievre trotted out the lines about people in poverty already living in austerity, made claims about when he was “housing minister,” and demanded an election. Trudeau said that if Poilievre was so concerned about single mothers, he shouldn’t have voted against child care or the Child Benefit. Poilievre switched to English to rattle off his slogans again to preface the confidence vote. Trudeau dismissed this as a “clever little slogan” that disguises his self-interest rather than help for Canadians, before saying they would have an election “in the right time,” but the rest got drowned out by competing applause. Poilievre said that if he wants an election if he would call it today. Trudeau said that today, they would see that the House doesn’t have confidence in the leader of the opposition, before mouthing pabulum talking points. Poilievre again called for an election and made some swipes about politicians versus people deciding, while Trudeau rattled off the lines about eight out of ten families getting more back, before saying that Poilievre doesn’t understand science, math, or economics, and and that they can arrange briefings for him that won’t require a security clearance. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and asked if the government would agree to their demands on the OAS and Supply Management bills. Trudeau said that they have already shown a commitment to seniors and to protecting Supply Management. Blanchet again wanted assurances, but Trudeau took this as an opportunity to plug dental care, which the Bloc didn’t support.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and Jagmeet Singh complained that Trudeau wasn’t standing up to Danielle Smith on healthcare. Trudeau said that they stand up for universal healthcare, and that in those provinces, the NDP couldn’t stand up to conservatives in those provinces to protect healthcare. Singh demanded Trudeau use his powers to stop Smith (HOW?!), and Trudeau talked up their agreements to get accountability from provinces for the money that gets sent to them.

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Roundup: Add another boycott to the list

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The Conservatives have decided that they don’t accept CTV’s apology for reconstructing a Poilievre quote for a piece, and have decided to boycott them, which basically adds to the list, on the flimsiest of excuses, while Poilievre goes about trashing the company CEO and claiming that he somehow directed the journalists in the piece to mangle the quote for some unknown end (it certainly wasn’t “malicious” as they are whinging), because if there’s one thing the Conservatives love to do, it’s to drum up some elaborate but stupid conspiracy theory.

Some people have asked why exactly he’s doing this, and it’s not just rage-farming. It’s a very careful and systematic war against media outlets because one thing that authoritarians and wannabe authoritarians do is delegitimise media sources so that they can undermine the shared reality we live in. The Americans have long-since done this with Fox News being a separate and alternate reality to our own, with a whole set of separate facts and narratives that don’t correspond to objective reality. And as the joke goes, the Fox News of Canada is Fox News—people simply consume it over the border. Poilievre is taking this page out of the authoritarian playbook and is running with it to its fullest. This is deliberate, just as it’s deliberate that they want you to believe that Justin Trudeau is a censorious jackbooted dictator who has turned Canada into a communist hellhole, and they don’t want media to dispute that depiction through things like facts. Legacy media is hurting these days, but it remains important for these very reasons.

(Meanwhile, can I just point out that of course JP Tasker, who wrote the CBC piece, went to Peter Menzies for comment. Menzies recently wrote an op-ed in The Line that we need to validate the feelings of white supremacists if we want to avoid race riots like we saw happen in the UK. There were so many more qualified people to speak to the situation of journalism and politicial parties going to war with outlets, and Tasker chose him. Honest to Hermes…)

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs hit an apartment block in Kharkiv, and Russian attacks on two other towns in the eastern part of the country, filling three more. Ukrainian forces say they dislodged Russians from a processing plant in Vovchansk after hand-to-hand combat. At the UN, president Zelenskyy called for support for their actions with their “peace plan” rather than just talks with Moscow.

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QP: Griping about the Colbert appearance

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The prime minister was still in New York, but his deputy was present once again, while the Conservatives were revved up because this was their Supply Day, and they were busy gathering clips from their prepared speeches in favour of their non-confidence motion. With that in mind, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he immediately demanded that the Bloc vote against the government. The Speaker warned him about questions being related to administrative responsibilities of government, but Jean-Yves Duclos stood up anyway to denounce that Poilievre told people dental care doesn’t exist. Poilievre again listed the government’s supposed failures to demand the Bloc vote against them, and Soraya Martinez Ferrada decried that Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer got a trip paid for to Florida from a pro-life church. Poilievre switched to English to recite slogans and demand an election, and Mark Holland listed things the Conservatives would cut. Poilievre accused Holland of coming unglued before saying completely untrue things about pharmacare and demanded an election. Holland pointed out his scare-mongering before saying that free diabetes medication and contraceptions are actually freedom. Poilievre again claimed that pharmacare would “ban women” from using their existing drug plans before trotting out the “nuclear winter” line to demand an election. Karina Gould got up to say that freedom doesn’t look like trips to Florida to meet with anti-abortion groups.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded “justice” for seniors via enhancing OAS, and Steve MacKinnon listed efforts to help seniors and that the Bloc voted against it. Therrien declared that seniors deserve better than partisanship, and again demanded the OAS enhancement. MacKinnon again noted that the Bloc has always voted against more help for seniors, including dental care.

Jagmeet Singh demanded the Liberals stand up to Doug Ford around private health care, and Mark Holland said that if he wants to talk courage, the NDP capitulated to the Conservatives when bullied. Singh switched to French, and swapped François Legault for Ford, but asked the same thing. Holland urged parliamentarians to stand up to what the Conservatives would do to the healthcare system.

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Roundup: An own-goal that makes it worse for everyone

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It was an own-goal for the media today as CTV was found to have spliced a Poilievre quote in a news story and was forced to apologise for it. Of course, this had every single Conservative salivating and insisting that this was “proof” of “fake news” and that media were trying to be unfair to Poilievre, and that this was in service of their government funding (which television outlets like CTV don’t get), and other ridiculous accusations of bias. Because that’s where we are now.

While I don’t personally know what happened, what is likely to have happened was you had someone trying to fit the story into their both-sides narrative frame and needed a short quote, and took the long paragraph from Poilievre and extracted words to come up with what they were looking for to fit the piece. It’s bad practice, but it’s almost certainly not done with malevolent intention, but because they’re overworked, under-resourced, and lacking proper editorial supervision, as with nearly every outlet these days. Because that’s where every media outlet is at, and it’s not sustainable, and things are going to continue to deteriorate if we try to keep doing what we’re doing.

This being said, the Conservatives’ war against the media is only going to get worse, and this incident, plus others, shows that they have a vested interest in catching out every single mistake from media, or to invent problems where they didn’t actually exist. For example, Poilievre likes to go on about the three corrections that The Canadian Press made to a story about his remarks, but the “corrections” were because the writer had spelled out what Poilievre was only referring to obliquely (quite deliberately) and Poilievre complained that he didn’t say what the story says he did, even though he actually did if you thought about it for more than five seconds. But this is the kind of petty, bad-faith bullshit that they’re going to engage in, and most of our media outlets are unprepared to deal with it. Legacy media is in serious trouble in this country, and it’s only going to get worse as this campaign against them from Poilievre intensifies.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian forces made a new series of strikes on Zaporizhzhia, killing one. At the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, Ukraine is accusing Russia of trying to illegally seize control of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. President Zelenskyy is in the US, not only to attend the UN, but to discuss his “victory plan” with the American government.

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