Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: Buying the F-35s after all

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We are now somewhere around day thirty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there are claims that Ukrainian-forces have retaken a Kyiv suburb as well as another city further east. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is preparing for another round of peace talks with the Russians and sounds like he is willing to declare the country neutral and give up any hope of future NATO membership in exchange for peace and future security guarantees (NATO membership wouldn’t come so long as there are territorial disputes, meaning so long as Russia occupies Crimea and the Donbas regions, it would be impossible). Zelenskyy also briefed Justin Trudeau on the talks yesterday, because they are keeping each other in the loop.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1508520970516058121

Closer to home, the announcement was made that the government will finally be settling on purchasing F-35 fighter jets to replace our aging CF-18 fleet, leading to questions about whether the last seven years were wasted when the previous Conservative sole-sourced contract was cancelled in favour of a new competition. And if you read the 2015 election platform promise about cancelling the purchase, it was because it was sole-sourced for a high price, given that the goal of a competition is to get a better price, so we’ll see if that pans out. It’s still not a done deal—they now get to negotiate directly with Lockheed Martin to get the best deal possible—but we have to remember something of what happened with the previous announcement, particularly that it was done poorly, and the Auditor General called out how opaque it was, and that’s kind of a big deal.

We should also remember that the planes are a much more mature platform now, with many of their flaws having been worked out (though I haven’t heard yet whether the ejection seats will still kill you if you’re below a certain height and weight, because that was a real problem). It does sound increasingly like the biggest consideration was the interoperability with NATO and NORAD fighters, meaning we had to be fairly seamless with the Americans, rather than just the promise of regional job creation programmes (though Canada being a participant in the joint strike fighter programme the whole time means we’ve already had some of those industrial benefits throughout). We’ll have to see what more the government can extract from Lockheed Martin in promises as those negotiations carry on throughout the year to see whether that seven-year delay was worth the wait.

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Roundup: The emergency measures votes were a test

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I believe we are now in day thirty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there are fears in the northern city of Chernihiv that they may become the next Mariupol, as the city undergoes shelling from Russian forces. Meanwhile, those Russian forces seem to be shifting away from trying to encircle Kyiv, and are instead moving toward the eastern Donbas region to try and consolidate gains there, leading to fears that Russia may be trying to split the country. Elsewhere, the International Committee of the Red Cross is asking Canada not to lump its humanitarian promises in with sanctions and military aid, as it threatens the neutrality of their organisation. Here is a look at some more actions the West could be taking to help Ukraine that aren’t a no-fly zone. It has also been announced that Justin Trudeau and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will co-host an international pledging event for “Stand Up For Ukraine” on April 9th.

Closer to home, the weekend saw a couple of different versions of the “inside story” of the Liberal and NDP supply and confidence agreement, from both Susan Delacourt and Aaron Wherry. The two recounting largely align, talking about how initial talks post-election quickly ended as everyone was still too raw from the vote, how Trudeau reached out to Singh after the birth of Singh’s daughter, that most of the talks happened virtually and close to the vest to avoid leaks, and that their face-to-face meeting was at Rideau Gate, which usually hosts dignitaries (but was where Julie Payette lived when she was GG rather than in Rideau Hall, along with her Secretary, Assunta DiLorenzo). What was particularly interesting was how the vote on the Emergencies Act became the test for the NDP that they could be trusted in this agreement, and how the Liberals were willing to provide security briefings to secure that support, and that when the NDP proved themselves, the deal could go ahead.

On that note, it’s interesting (but perhaps unsurprising) that Elections Canada said that they got no prior notice about the portions of the agreement that call for the exploration of three days of elections, allowing people to vote at any polling place in the riding, or improving the process of mail-in ballots. Some of those may be unwieldy or impossible, but the agreement’s language does specify that they would “work with Elections Canada to explore ways to expand the ability for people to vote,” so these ideas are not iron-clad. On the reconciliation front, there are hopes that the promise of stability that the agreement provides will help accelerate some timelines toward progress.

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Roundup: Accountability for transfers is not micro-management

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We are now in day thirty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and things are going badly enough for Russia that the Ukrainians are starting to counter-attack, not only pushing Russian forces further away from Kyiv, but also other areas, which has the possibility of making Russia pay a high enough price that they could be willing to accept some kind of negotiated settlement and withdraw. Maybe. We’ll see, but it’s a good sign nevertheless that Ukraine is able to take these measures. Elsewhere, it sounds like about 300 people were killed when the Russians bombed the theatre in Mariupol, and the city is digging mass graves, while some 100,000 people remain trapped there as the Russians turn the city to rubble.

Closer to home, the federal government announced a one-time special transfer of $2 billion to provinces to help them with their surgical backlogs as a result of COVID, but they want some conditions of a sort, and cited five areas of focus for upcoming healthcare talks: backlogs and recruitment and retention of health-care workers; access to primary care; long-term care and home care; mental health and addictions; and digital health and virtual care. And some provinces, predictably, are balking at this because they think this is federal “micromanagement” of healthcare when it’s nothing of the sort. They simply need assurances that provinces are going to spend this where they say they’re going to, because we just saw Doug Ford put some $5.5 billion in federal pandemic aid onto his bottom line, and giving out rebates for licences plate stickers in a blatant exercise in populist vote-buying rather than using that money where it was intended—the healthcare system.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1507478370300628996

More to the point, provinces are insisting that they are unanimous that hey want unconditional health transfers that will bring the federal share of health spending up to 35 percent, but that’s actually a trap. They are deliberately not mentioning that in 1977, provinces agreed to forego certain health transfers in exchange for tax points, which are more flexible, and that increasing to 35 percent will really be a stealth increase to something like 60 percent, because they’re deliberately pretending that they don’t have those tax points. On top of that, provinces were getting higher health transfers for over a decade—remember when the escalator was six percent per year, and what was health spending increasing at? Somewhere around 2.2 percent, meaning that they spent that money on other things. They should have used it to transform their healthcare systems, but they chose not to, and now they cry poor and want the federal government to bail them out from problems they created, and are blaming the federal government for. It’s a slick little game that doesn’t get called out because the vast majority of the media just credulously repeats their demands without pointing to the tax points, or the fact that they spent their higher transfers elsewhere, or that Doug Ford sat on that pandemic spending, as other provinces did to balance their budgets (Alberta and New Brunswick to name a couple). So no, they do not need these transfers to be unconditional, and the federal government would be foolish if they acceded to that kind of demand.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1507418761912983561

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Roundup: Displacing and dispersing Ukrainians into Russia?

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We are now on day thirty of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and while Kyiv remains safe, there are reports that as many as 400,000 Ukrainians have been forcibly relocated into Russia, where they are being dispersed to economically depressed regions in that country. The Russians are claiming that these relocations are voluntary, but Ukrainian officials worry they may be used as hostages. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the NATO summit happening in Brussels and asked for aircraft and tanks, but was mostly only promised more of the same kinds of aid that they have been receiving to date.

Closer to home, there are now two more prospective entrants into the Conservative leadership race—former floor-crosser-turned-deputy leader Leona Alleslev, who has launched a website and who has volunteers getting the necessary signatures required to launch a bid; as well, a failed candidate named Joel Etienne from York Centre, who has also put up a website and is collecting signatures. One of the other leadership candidates, Marc Dalton, seems to have enough self-awareness that he knows he’s a long-shot candidate, but seems to be pinning his hopes on the vagaries of preferential ballots as his salvation. Oh, and he still hasn’t lined up his entrance fee yet, so that’s probably a sign about his chances.

As these entrants keep lining up, Candice Bergen is warning them not to call those in the race that they disagree with as “not Conservative” because that’s “identity politics,” and they don’t want to wedge, divide and polarize, because that’s what they accuse the Liberals of doing—which is kind of hilarious when you think about it. They’ve explicitly framed this contest as one for the “soul of the party,” and the contest is going to entirely be about whether they find a leader who can appeal to enough of the moderate Canadians in the suburbs who can deliver them an election victory, or whether they retrench into their “values” and electoral consequences be damned because they’re acting like Conservatives and not Liberals. And when you set up the contest as one about what constitutes those “values,” with a purity test or two thrown up around them, who is and is not a Conservative is going to be a bigger sticking point in this race the longer it goes on.

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Roundup: One month into Russia’s invasion

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It’s now day twenty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or one month since it began. To that end, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on people to gather in public around the world to show support for Ukraine to mark the occasion. NATO is estimating that somewhere between 7000 and 15,000 Russian troops have been killed to date (as many as 30,000 to 40,000 if you count killed or wounded), and to put that in comparison, Russia lost 15,000 fighting in Afghanistan over the course of a decade. And on that note, here’s a look at what went wrong for Russia (beyond Ukraine’s resilience).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1506790177364131846

Closer to home, many more questions are being asked of some of the plans outlined in the Liberal-NDP supply and confidence agreement, especially around the areas of pharmacare and dental care. NDP MPs like Don Davies are already talking tough, insisting there should be a “phased in” approach, but the timelines for the Canadian Drug Agency to do their work are pretty much what was already being planned through the Hoskins Report, but the biggest obstacle remains the premiers. So far, only PEI has signed on, and I keep saying this, but the NDP have not been publicly haranguing their provincial counterparts in BC to sign onto the system, so that can’t be a good sign. Likewise with dental care, the expectation seems to be some kind of national insurance plan which builds on the system used for First Nations and Inuit people, who call under federal responsibility, but there are a lot of complicating factors to extending that approach, as Jennifer Robson points out in this thread. Right now, it’s a lot of handwaving and wishful thinking, which isn’t helpful.

And then there are the premiers, who are none too happy with these proposals as they consider them to be intrusions in areas of provincial jurisdiction (which they might be if done incorrectly). Of course, they would rather the federal government just turn over more cash to them with no strings attached, which should never happen considering how many provinces just took the federal pandemic money and applied it to their bottom lines, and then praised how low their deficits were this fiscal year (while their hospitals remain overloaded, and in plenty of cases, their health care workers are leaving in droves from burnout and low wages).

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Roundup: Wondering who the real winner of the confidence agreement is

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We are now on day twenty-eight, four weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like Russia’s attempts at occupying Mariupol continue to be thwarted, though the city is being reduced to rubble. As well, Ukrainian forces retook a strategic suburb of Kyiv, so that is as good of news as can be hoped for in the situation. Remember how Russia thought it was a matter of marching?

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1506296240438452232

Back in Canada, the supply and confidence agreement between the Liberals and NDP was made official, and boy were there a bunch of reactions. Some of them were expected, like the Conservatives abusing the term “coalition” (it’s not a coalition) and claiming it’s a “power grab” rather than a legitimate exercise of cooperation in a hung parliament as happens not infrequently in Westminster systems. Oh, and she said that this ultimately benefits Putin. No, really—she said that. Even more problematic were certain CBC reporters pushing this bizarre notion that Canadians “elected a minority government” and that this agreement somehow violates it, which no, is not how things work. We don’t elect governments, and there is not majority/minority option on the ballot, and it’s been just as much a recurring narrative in the past two parliaments that a hung parliament means that “Canadians want us to work together” (which is just as silly a notion, frankly), but honestly, I expect better from the CBC than to push this kind of nonsense, and it’s embarrassing for them as the national broadcaster to be pushing this nonsense.

https://twitter.com/SusanDelacourt/status/1506273770176188427

In the meantime, there is a bunch of pearl-clutching that this agreement somehow means that we won’t be increasing defence-spending, even though the NDP has no veto on budgets, and the fact that we can’t even spend the current allocation so it’s way too soon to worry about this. The early indications of the outlined dental care plan could help millions—but it’s light on details and the actual mechanism that will be used given that this is an area of provincial jurisdiction (but some good perspective threads from economist Kevin Milligan here and here). The consensus seems to be that the Liberal are the real winners here and not the NDP, but others argue that the Conservatives could be the real winners because it will give the next leader time to rebuild the party and establish themselves given that the next election will be more than three years away (maybe). And then there is the question about whether this agreement gives Trudeau the runway to accomplish a few more things before turning it over to his successor, though he says otherwise when asked (which of course he will, because saying he won’t run again makes him lame duck instantly). It does make for a different dynamic for the next couple of years in any case, so we’ll see how it shapes up.

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Roundup: A confidence agreement in the works?

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We are now on day twenty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine has refused to surrender the strategic port city of Mariupol to the Russians. As well, Russian shelling destroyed a shopping centre in Kyiv killing eight, which is escalating the attacks facing the capital. Also of note was a possible leak of Russian casualty figures, citing 9,861 killed and 16,153 injured over the course of the invasion, which contradicts Russian propaganda figures to date, and which could turn up the pressure on Putin by the Russian people.

Back in Canada, news started spreading over the evening that the Liberals and NPD had reached a tentative agreement to a supply-and-confidence agreement that would see the NDP agree to support the next four Liberal budgets so that they can stay in power until 2025 in relative stability, and in return, the Liberals will make “real progress” on national pharmacare and dental care. I’m a little confused why those would be the conditions, given that they’re wholly dependent upon the provincial governments signing on, and while the current federal government put a framework in place for national pharmacare, thus far only PEI has signed on (and I haven’t seen the NDP publicly haranguing John Horgan to sign on either). And while people ask why they can’t do what they did with early learning and child care, part of that answer is that the reason why provincial governments are gun-shy about these programmes is they are concerned that if they set them up, a future federal government will cut funding and leave them holding the bag for very expensive programmes. While Quebec has shown that child care will pay for itself once more women are in the workforce and paying taxes, I’m not sure the calculation is quite the same for the other two, or will at least take much longer for the fiscal benefits to work their way through the system. So could the government come to the table with a lot more money—maybe. But that doesn’t eliminate the trepidation that once 2025 hits that their fears won’t come true. There are also reports that the deal could include more for housing, reconciliation, and some form of wealth taxes, so we’ll see what gets announced this morning.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are touting this as evidence of a “coalition” and that it’s “backdoor socialism,” which doesn’t make sense. It’s not a coalition because there are no Cabinet seats for the NDP, and these kinds of confidence agreements are easily broken (see: British Columbia and the deal with the Greens, which Horgan’s NDP tore up when the polls looked good enough to get a majority, which he did). It’s not socialism because they’re not going around nationalising the means of production. They’re still going to wail and gnash their teeth, and pretend that this is somehow illegitimate when it’s one hundred percent within how hung parliaments work under our system, but I’m not going to say it will last the full four years. It will however alter the narrative of the Conservatives’ leadership contest, and could be read either as Trudeau giving himself enough runway to make a few more accomplishments before turning it over to a successor, or for him to try and build the case for re-election. Either way, it’s fairly unprecedented at the federal level in this country, and could make for interesting days ahead.

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Roundup: Three new entrants for the Conservatives

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I believe we are now on day twenty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s list of alleged war crimes continues to add up as the shelling of Mariupol continues, and it sounds like there is no immediate military solution to the crisis in that part of the country. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is calling on members including Canada to increase spending, which we’re doing, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Indeed, as my weekend column points out, we literally can’t spend any more right now until we fix the structural problems inhibiting it. And sure, Greece is spending 3.2 percent of its GDP on the military, but how much are the contributing to NATO operations right now? Very, very little. Closer to home, HMCS Halifax departed for a six-month tour in the North Atlantic as part of NATO operations in the Baltic region.

Back in Canada, the Conservative leadership race got three new entrants—Scott Aitchison, Marc Dalton, and Joseph Bourgault. Aitchison, whose video announcing his intention to run was indistinguishable from a truck commercial, is giving the tired line that “Ottawa isn’t working” but has the self-awareness to know that his party has played a part in the divisive nature of the rhetoric. Oh, and he opposes carbon prices but doesn’t think that should be a “purity test” for the party. Dalton wants to launch a national inquiry into the pandemic response, including the supposed contracts to benefit “Liberal friends” (which has been repeatedly disproven) and on the so-called Charter breaches and apparent cover-up of vaccine injuries and deaths. *sigh* And Bourgault is a nobody businessman from rural Saskatchewan who is part of an organisation claiming the government and “globalists” are using the pandemic to “justify the great reset.” This is what the party has to offer?

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Roundup: Joly on a charm offensive?

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We are now in day twenty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and things continue to be in the same holding pattern—though there are continued air strikes, some now hitting Kyiv, one hitting an aircraft repair facility outside of Lviv. Some 6.5 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and considering how many have headed to Lviv, the air strikes there are all the more concerning. In the meantime, negotiations with Russia continue, and there seems to be a bit of a shift in some of the tone. Meanwhile, President Biden had a two-hour video call with Chinese president Xi Jinping to sound out where China stands on this conflict, and to essentially warn the Chinese that there will be consequences if they side with Russia in this. As well, Russian and NATO commanders appear to be in constant communication to ensure that any mistakes made don’t wind up touching off a larger conflict by accident.

Elsewhere, in the wake of her comments about Canada being a middle power who was good at convening others, Mélanie Joly had a conversation with Janice Stein of the Munk School of Global Affairs yesterday that generated a number of pieces. In it, Joly acknowledged that the Canadian Forces need to be better-equipped, which tends to spiral into the trap of taking the NATO two-percent goal seriously (when it’s a terrible measure). But she’s not wrong about the equipment, as the pivot from Cold War tactics to fighting the Taliban has left the Canadian Forces largely under-equipped for the kind of situation facing Ukraine right now. As well, she praised the role American intelligence has played in helping Ukraine to thwart the Russian advance, and in uniting the West. Joly also says that she wants to position Canada as a leader in combatting propaganda and disinformation starting with social media, which is going to be a very big fight if the way that the conversations around amending the Broadcasting Act last year were any indication.

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Roundup: Mary May Simon’s tea with the Queen

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As we carry on through day twenty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we had a glimmer of good news yesterday in that the bomb shelter under that theatre in Mariupol held, and it sounds like a lot of people survived and are being dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, it sounds like about 80 percent of Mariupol is now rubble, but Ukrainians and allies are vowing to rebuild.

Meanwhile, Canada’s mission at the UN sent out a tweet yesterday marking up and annotating a Russian resolution before the UN about the invasion that doesn’t mention the invasion, only the need for protection of civilians in “vulnerable situation.” The tweet attracted a lot of mixed reviews, but most of them fairly negative because it seems to betray a particular lack of seriousness in how we conduct our foreign affairs (and that it looks like they’re aiming for Twitter dunks).

On a different note, Her Excellency Mary May Simon told CBC that she and the Queen discussed reconciliation and the need to better teach history so that Canadians get a true history of the relationship with Indigenous people. She also said they spoke about the grifter occupation in Ottawa (which the Queen was already briefed about, because the Queen of Canada knows what is going on in her realm), and the situation in Ukraine. It was also revealed that May Simon had requested briefings from officials about the Indian Act and efforts to reform it—which is fine and not a sign that she is overstepping her role. If she wants to make reconciliation a theme of her time in office, then it’s good to have a knowledge base about the intricacies of the history of it (as an Inuk, she was under a different government system than the Indian Act). And frankly, given the expectations that were being heaped upon her to be activist when she was nominated to the position, I think that implied tone of the story of these briefings was some kind of activist move is perhaps as much of a problem as those expectations. May Simon is now on a state visit to three countries in the Middle East, starting with Dubai.

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