Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: “Credible allegations” of an assassination on Canadian soil

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It was an unexpected moment after Question Period, when Justin Trudeau returned to the House of Commons, and took advantage of the Statements by Ministers slot in Routine Proceedings to speak on an issue of “national security,” and revealed that credible intelligence from Canadian agencies has found that an agent of the Indian government was likely responsible for the murder of a Sikh leader in British Columbia several months ago. Other opposition leaders expressed their shock, and support for the government in this—being unusually less dickish than usual (until they denied Elizabeth May her own opportunity to speak—the dickishness resumed at that point). It also sounds like the timing of this announcement was earlier than anticipated—the Globe and Mail got a leak and went to confirm it with the government, and were asked if they could hold off publishing for a week, and the Globe said they had 24 hours, so Trudeau was forced to do this now, and not after he returned from the UN General Assembly.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1703856088238416330

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1703879668842016904

Shortly thereafter, Mélanie Joly and Dominic LeBlanc scrummed in the Foyer and said that a high-ranking Indian diplomat was expelled from the country, and it sounds like the government is considering further measures in the near future. It also sounds like this was being discussed at the G20 meeting in India last week, as both the head of CSIS and Trudeau’s National Security Advisor were on the trip, and suddenly the frostiness with Narendra Modi and the cancelled trade mission make so much more sense, being as this was being pursued in back channels during the summit, not only with Indian officials but also with allied countries including the US and the UK.

For background, here is what we know about the victim, and the timeline of events surrounding the murder. India, predictably, refutes this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There have been Russian attacks on both Lviv in the west and Kherson in the south. Ukrainian forces say they breached Russian lines near Bakhmut in the east, and have reclaimed two more villages. Six deputy defence ministers were fired, possibly in relation to a corruption scandal.

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QP: Lying about the price of lettuce

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Before things could get underway, a whole batch of new MPs needed to be brought in to take their seats—Liberals Ben Carr and Anna Gainey, and Conservatives Arpam Khanna, Branden Leslie and Shuvaloy Majumdar. When things got underway in earnest, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, blaming the prime minister of causing “housing hell” and demanded action to fix it. Justin Trudeau recited some pat talking points about helping Canadians and calling grocery CEOs. Poilievre quoted John Manley in claiming deficits were driving inflation, and demanded the government end the so-called “inflationary deficits.” Trudeau read the talking points about helping to build more apartments while repeating his boast about the grocery CEOs. Poilievre repeated his first question in English, and this time Trudeau read some good-news talking points about the deal in London, Ontario, which was the first deal but not the last. Poilievre repeated his second question in English with an added factoid about housing starts being down, and Trudeau read some good-news talking points about Calgary agreeing to federal conditions for more dollars. Poilievre again demanded a balanced budget, and Trudeau accused him of empty slogans and cited his record of bungling housing when he was minister, and then recited some points about the policy convention votes.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, he demanded solutions and not “scapegoats,” and accused the government of withholding $900 million from Quebec. Trudeau praised their Accelerator Fund and removing GST on new apartments, but didn’t address the allegation. Therrien repeated the demand, and Trudeau said the Bloc are only there to squabble, and repeated his same pabulum points.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that the government was not punishing grocery CEOs, to which Trudeau insisted that they were making corporations pay their fair share, and Trudeau again raised the meeting with the CEOs and upcoming changes to competition legislation. Singh switched to French to accuse the government of allowing a loss of affordable housing units under their watch, and Trudeau repeated his same points in French.

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Roundup: Not a corporate workplace

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Parliament is back today, and while I would normally be fairly excited, it’s feeling less and less so these days, because this current parliament is a fairly terrible one overall, that feels increasingly toxic to be around. But hey, maybe we’ll actually talk about housing and food price inflation, and some things that matter! But who am I kidding—it’ll be a bunch of complete bullshit coming from Pierre Poilievre, some non sequiturs from Jagmeet Singh about “greedflation” and the like, while Justin Trudeua and his front bench will repetitively deliver some canned pabulum that is supposed to make you feel vaguely reassured and like they’re patting you on the head. Because that’s the state of the political discourse these days, and I hate it.

As with anything this time of year, we’re also getting the usual calls about ways to “reform the workplace” of Parliament, as though this were a corporate office and that MPs are all just middle managers. They’re not, and that’s the problem with framing discussions like this. They’re all elected. They are all equal under the constitution, and in the framework of power dynamics. You can’t impose HR standards because you can’t involve an HR structure like this because power is entirely horizontal.

The other thing that we need remember here, however, is that MPs need to divorce Question Period—which is theatre—from the every day, and I see a lot of that in these complaints, and it goes around and around. Why do people do it and get away with it? Because it’s performance, and it’s confrontational for a reason. Heckling has a place, and some of that is to knock MPs and ministers off of their talking points. And that’s why I have a hard time qualifying all of it as “bullying” or “intimidation” because while that does happen, QP is a different beast and we all need to remember that. We also need the Speaker to do his gods damned job, but that’s also the fault of MPs for consistently choosing weak Speakers and ensuring that he has weak Standing Orders to enforce, because they like it that way.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have again hit the grain port at Odessa, while another strike at Kharkiv was allegedly targeting a plant where armoured vehicles undergo repairs. Ukrainian forces have apparently carried out a “special operation” in Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, and reclaimed another village near Bakhmut. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian farmer was killed when his plough hit a landmine, while Norway is reporting that the number of Russian forces staged along their borders are now just twenty percent or less than what they were before Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Roundup: Barely a first step

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With the excitement around Thursday’s announcement on removing HST from purpose-built rental homes, there is a lot more work to do, most of which needs to be done at the provincial and municipal level, but the federal government is starting to step up with more than some funds, which is something. I do worry that a number of provinces will decide that because the federal government is doing something, that they can step back—you know, like a number of them did with healthcare spending where they reduced their own spending by the same amount as an increased federal transfer, which defeats the whole purpose.

So yeah—I’m not popping any champagne just yet that we have some incremental moves. Meanwhile, here’s Mike Moffatt on what needs to happen next.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1702652572899619115

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1702653469880975742

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1702654065715384432

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1702655085388452163

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones attacked the central Khmelnytskyi region, likely attempting to hit the Starokostiantyniv air base, where the attack on the shipyards in occupied Crimea had been launched. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian sea drone damaged a Russian missile ship off of occupied Crimea. Meanwhile, a pro-Russian former government minister has been detained for 60 days with no option of bail for suspected treason.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1702649870736105582

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Roundup: Some long-awaited policy announcements

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The Liberals finally came out yesterday with a suite of policy announcements at the end of their caucus retreat, with a bunch of measures that some have been calling on for a while. Removing the GST on purpose-built rentals was actually an idea they ran on in 2015 then didn’t implement after further study (credit to Rachel Aiello for finding that), but have now gone ahead with in light of all of the calls to do so. As well, a number of people were treating the warnings to municipalities about not getting Housing Accelerator Fund dollars if they continued exclusionary zoning as though it were new, when it was part of the policy design in the 2021 platform all along.

One of the more interesting announcements was around upcoming changes to the Competition Act, but while Jagmeet Singh will take credit for it, the government has been consulting on this for over a year. The big news is the proposed elimination of the “efficiencies defence,” which would be a sea change in Canadian competition law.

There were also warnings to the grocery oligopolies that they have until Thanksgiving to stabilise prices (meaning return them to the headline rate of inflation), but I have a hard time seeing how this is going to work considering that the bulk of price increases are because of supply issue, such as yields being reduced for climate-related droughts or floods. Margins have been consistent throughout, so this policy is going to need a lot more finessing, and the price issues related to a lack of competition in the sector is going to be as difficult to fix as the supply issues. They also said they would extend the loan repayment period for CEBA loans after an outcry, btu extending the deadline for most means forgoing the partial forgiveness portion, meaning they will have more to repay.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian shelling killed a six-year-old boy in the village of Novodmytrivka in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian forces have retaken the village of Andriivka in the east, as they continue to press on toward Bakhmut.

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Roundup: Stupid polls about the monarchy

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It appears to be the season for reporting on really stupid polls, because there was yet another one yesterday, saying that an increasing number of Canadians want to “reconsider” our ties to the monarchy, which is already a misleading turn of phrase because we have a domestic monarchy, and have since 1931. Yes, we time-share their natural persons with the UK and thirteen other realms, but the Canadian monarchy is a Thing, and it’s not a gods damned foreign imposition.

What makes this kind of polling even more irresponsible is the fact that there is simply nothing in there about what they expect to replace it with, because there are myriad options, and absolutely no exploration of any of them. It’s also extremely relevant because that’s how Australia’s republican movement faltered—voters were not in favour of the appointed head of state option presented in the referendum, and since its failure, support for the monarchy in that country has increased. (Better the devil you know, and all of that. On top of that, getting rid of the monarchy would require a wholesale rewrite of our constitution (because it’s the central organizing principle), and would abrogate all of the treaties with First Nations, because they are all with the Crown, which would add a whole other layer of complexity for our relationship and reconciliation. (In fact, there is a compelling argument that ending the monarchy would simply mean completing the colonial project).

There is no simple yes/no choice for the future of the monarchy in Canada—it’s yes/which model to replace it with (because you can’t not have an organizing principle for executive power, and you really want to have some kind of a constitutional fire extinguisher available), and how to go about doing it, and stupid poll questions like this just elide over that reality in a completely misleading way.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Ukrainian attack on a shipyard in occupied Crimea has damaged two Russian ships undergoing repairs at the facility and caused a fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vetoed an anti-corruption bill that contained a loophole that allowed people to forgo disclosing assets for another year. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also praised Ukraine’s progress toward EU membership, but said that they still have more work to do.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1701984458960765381

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1702012801131102435

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Roundup: Credulously repeating the 20-year line

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The big story that everyone was credulously repeating yesterday was the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on the Stellantis-LG Energy Solutions electric vehicle battery plant, and what he termed to be the “break-even” for the subsidies provided by the federal government and Ontario. To hear the two governments tell the tale, it would have earned back the subsidies within about five years, provided you factor in all of the indirect benefits from it. The PBO says that break-even would take twenty-years, but that didn’t take into account indirect benefits, just the revenues from the plant’s output. While I don’t trust the government’s five-year figure because it’s based on a lot of optimism and fuzzy math, I also don’t trust the PBO’s figures, because he and his office have a demonstrated history of just pulling methodologies out of their collective asses, and calling it a day, no matter how puzzling the results or the presentation.

Legacy media, however, takes the PBO at face-value, every time. “Oh, but he’s politically neutral so he’s credible!” is usually the cry, even though credible economists will tell you that his numbers don’t make sense much of the time (to say nothing of the fact that many of his reports are well outside of his legislated mandate). And if you look at the reporting, The Canadian Press, The Star, and the National Post all just quote from the report in full credulity, with some quotes from MPs or the minister in reaction. Not one of them appeared to try to get a second opinion. The CBC, however, decided to take things one step further and engage in actual journalistic malpractice by getting a quote from Ian Lee—a business studies professor with no expertise or credibility other than the fact that he answers his phone and provides bullshit answers about every topic under the sun—and the gods damned Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an Astroturf organization that exists solely to provide outraged quotes to the media. That’s what passes for getting a second opinion at the national public broadcaster.

Officers of Parliament are not infallible, and this PBO is especially a problem. In fact, one economist I was chatting with yesterday referred to him as the “Ian Lee of PBOs,” which pretty much says it all. It would be great if legacy media would actually take his utterances with a grain of salt, but they won’t, because nobody dares to challenge Officers of Parliament, and that is a problem that has a corrosive effect on our democratic institutions.

Ukraine Dispatch:

No news on the wires about any Russian strikes or the progress of the counter-offensive, but there was talk of Sweden considering donating some of its Gripen fighters to Ukraine. As well, Ukraine’s Antonov, which primarily has been in the business of building cargo planes, has been shifting their focus to building drones as the war carries on.

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Roundup: Losing faith in the justice system because of provincial choices

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The CBC has a story out about how a retired corporal from the military has lost faith in the justice system because court delays stayed the trial of her alleged attacker, and you can bet that pretty much everyone is going to take absolutely the wrong lessons from this, most especially legacy media.

The administration of justice—courts, Crown prosecutors, support staff—are all firmly within provincial jurisdiction. And for decades, provinces have been under-funding their systems while whinging that the federal government isn’t doing things like making bail harder to get (which is, frankly, unconstitutional). There is a story out of Toronto on the very same day about how staffing shortages—because of the province—have caused closures in courtrooms which led to a different sexual assault trial being tossed because they can’t get a trial within a reasonable time for the rights of the accused. And in the case of the corporal, it was because the Crown prosecutors (again, provincial responsibility) couldn’t get their shit together to push the case forward. And no, this has nothing to do with the federal government not filling judicial vacancies fast enough (which I have condemned this government for). These are all problems that are squarely within the provinces’ responsibilities.

And you can bet that people are going to try to both-sides this military issue because the provinces have been whinging that the military turning over cases to the civilian system is leaving them under-resources, even though it’s a handful of cases and the provinces have consistently made the policy choice over decades to under-fund their system. Trying to shift the blame to the federal government or whine that they’re not getting enough money is a well-worn pattern that we shouldn’t let them get away with. Unfortunately, that’s not in legacy media’s playbook, and you can bet that we’ll get more rounds of angry accusations that the federal government “let this happen” when clearly the failure was provincial the whole time.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they have reclaimed even more territory in the east and south parts of the country, as well as off-shore drilling platforms near occupied Crimea. Ukrainian forces have also been collecting Russian bodies along the “road of death” that they retook in June, so that they can exchange them for their own comrades, living and dead. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on his country to remain focused on the war, with warnings that a “wartime budget” is coming, meaning this could go on for longer than many have hoped.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1701223223440928994

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Roundup: Long on speeches and imported culture wars

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The Conservative convention this weekend was long on speeches—Poilievre’s speech very much needing an editor as it went on for well over an hour—and was full of praise for the so-called convoy occupiers (from Poilievre’s wife as well as the wife of the “anti-woke general”). Said “anti-woke general” proved himself to be so fragile that he thinks that things like racial equality and gender equality are “destroying” Canada. There was also the Brexiteer from the House of Lords who also showered Poilievre with praise, so some real talent on display there.

Policy resolutions were not focused on things like housing or affordability, but instead prioritised things like vaccines, and culture war bullshit that extended to two separate resolutions attacking trans people (which the party could have used mechanisms to de-prioritise but didn’t, meaning they wanted them to come up for a vote). The Canadian Press has compiled five take-aways from the convention.

https://twitter.com/dalybeauty/status/1700974631468052754

In pundit reaction, Althia Raj looks at how the Conservatives used their convention to woo Quebeckers, and how they are going after the Bloc along the way. Aaron Wherry notes that claims of “common sense” are easier said than done, particularly as Poilievre painted an idyllic 1950s picture of the future he wants. Shannon Proudfoot hones in on the feeling of “enough” that permeated the convention, and the swinging of the pendulum, but also cautioned about who limiting that can be.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces staged early-morning drone attacks against Kyiv on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the counter-offensive has made more advances along the southern front, as well as near Bakhmut in the east.

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Roundup: A foreign interference inquiry after all

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The announcement finally came down yesterday that the government will be launching a public inquiry into foreign interference, with terms of reference that include China, Russia, and any other state or non-state actors whom they see fit, and that this will be expected to have an interim report by the end of February next year, with a final report at the end of the year. Leading the inquiry will be Quebec Court of Appeal justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who has no national security experience, but says she is “honoured” to lead the exercise (though that is not what I would be feeling). The choice of judge and the terms of reference are apparently all unanimously agreed to by the government as well as the three main opposition parties, which is in part why it took so long, but there are still a few red flags, particularly around the timeline. It doesn’t seem either remotely possible or even plausible that the bulk of the work can be completed in five months (Hogue doesn’t start until the 18th), considering how much time it will take to stand up the inquiry’s infrastructure, and for her and her staff to be properly briefed on how to read top secret information and how to contextualise intelligence. This having been said, Dominic LeBlanc says the government will turn over any Cabinet documents she needs, and Justin Trudeau says he’ll willingly testify before said inquiry when asked to, so they’re certainly making a big show about cooperation.

As expected, the opposition parties fell all over themselves to take credit for this, and chided the government for why this took so long to get to this point, as though they weren’t a big part of the problem, most especially in trying to find someone to lead this process who was willing to do the job and subject themselves to the likelihood of daily character assassination in the process (because as much as they say they’re all in favour of this, the moment they think they can score points off of what is happening, they will have zero hesitation in being ruthless in doing so). Already Twitter was abuzz with her political donation history (Conservative), who appointed her to the bench (Peter MacKay), and her previous law firm (which has Liberal and China connections), so you can bet that there will be those who won’t hesitate to move into character assassination at a moment’s notice.

In related news, LeBlanc says he’ll be meeting with MP Han Dong in the near future to discuss his future and whether he’ll be able to re-join the party given the allegations against him, which David Johnston found to lack credibility in his report. It sounds like LeBlanc hasn’t had the time to deal with this with everything else going on over the summer, so we’ll see where that leads.

Programming note: It’s my birthday this weekend, so I’m going to make it a long-ish weekend on the blog. See you next week!

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians attacked the Danube port of Izmail for the fourth time in five days, damaging more grain silos and critical infrastructure. Ukrainian forces are gearing up air defences in preparation for another winter of attacks on their energy systems and power grid. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tasked his new defence minister with rebuilding trust after a series of corruption allegations in the defence forces, particularly around procurement. Ukraine is also calling for more international pressure on Russia to return the children they have taken from Ukraine over the course of the invasion.

https://twitter.com/billblair/status/1699740567435915664

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