Category Archives: Political Roundup

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Roundup: A new Speaker in a toxic environment

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The day began with the speeches from the prospective candidates for Speaker—unserious Liberal candidate Stephane Lauzon bowed out before things got started, and the rest began their speeches as to why they deserved to get the job. There were also a few fulsome (in the proper sense of the word) expressions of thanks to Anthony Rota and claims that he was a “good Speaker” when he absolutely was not, which is why we were here today. The notion of respect and decorum got mentioned time and again, because they always do, for what little good it does (because the Speaker can only do so much). Elizabeth May once again said she was running (even though her being a party leader should have been disqualifying automatically, except for the fact that because the Greens don’t have official party status was the technicality that allowed it), but her running was yet again less about being a serious candidate than it was about giving herself the opportunity to make a speech about the rules, and why the Speaker needs to give up the lists provided to him or her and use their own judgment as to who should be recognised. (I actually agree, but this is one of those areas where if the Speaker did this unilaterally there would likely be a revolt). May also made the point that Rota apparently broke his own rules in recognising the Nazi-aligned veteran, however the Speaker’s office says that those rules didn’t really apply because it wasn’t an official sitting of the Commons, and Speakers have wide discretion in any case.

In the end, Liberal MP Greg Fergus was chosen, making him the first Black Speaker in Canadian history. The choice was a surprise to me because Fergus had never shown any interest in the role prior to this past week. In fact, he has always been a pretty notorious partisan (former leader of the Young Liberals, former national director of the party, former parliamentary secretary to the prime minister), and that raises questions for me, but that’s solely my opinion. Fergus did talk about subscribing to Hansard when he was 14, and being a House of Commons page, which puts him in good stead for his respect for the Chamber and the institution, but again, he’s coming into the position as a complete neophyte with no experience as a Chair occupant, which should be a little worrying given the particular state of Canadian democracy right now, and the rancorous mood.

That rancorous mood extended to the congratulatory speeches. Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s speech danced on the edge of being partisan in his talk about what were essentially government priorities, to which Pierre Poilievre decided to one-up him and go full-partisan, that included a bizarre false history lesson where he tried to wedge his “common sense” nonsense into “common people,” and the House of Commons, with a wrong history of the name and the institution itself, before trying to compare Trudeau to King John, who was forced to sign the Magna Carta. If the words “classless jackass” crossed your mind, you would be correct, which is all the more reason why the state of Canadian democracy is in trouble, and Fergus will be hard-pressed to do much about it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 29 out of 31 Russian drones and one cruise missile in overnight attacks, while falling debris tarted fires in Dnipro. Russia claims it downed a Ukrainian missile off the coast of occupied Crimea. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was visiting troops in the country’s northeast.

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Roundup: It’s Speaker Election Day!

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Today is the day for the election of the new House of Commons Speaker, which begins with speeches at 10 AM, a thirty-minute pause so that the candidates can lobby MPs one last time and answer any questions they have, and then they begin voting. It’s a preferential ballot, so we don’t know how long it will take to count (which will depend if someone wins on the first ballot or not), and then they need to go through the protocol with the Senate before the Commons can return to business. Depending on how long this takes, we may or may not have Question Period today, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here are some of the candidates for the position lamenting the current state of affairs in the Commons, but as I wrote in my weekend column, this is something that the Speaker alone cannot fix. He or she can help, particularly by applying the rules and not simply shrugging off when people break them (like Anthony Rota had a tendency to do), but real reform is going to require the cooperation of all MPs to change the Standing Orders to empower the Speaker to do more, and to give up the power of the party House Leaders to determine speaking lists (because they claim to need to have a “strategy,” which is both ridiculous and undermines the power of MPs). And more to the point, if a Speaker is too tough in enforcing the rules, then MPs may conspire to ensure they don’t win the Speaker election in the next Parliament (which is what happened to Geoff Regan, and why we wound up with the deeply unserious Rota).

This being said, it sounds like Chris d’Entrement may have soured his chances with the Liberals with his ruling last week in not admonishing Melissa Lantsman for her personal attack on Karina Gould during Question Period, and that may mean that Alexandra Mendès could win enough votes provided that enough Liberals rally around her as first choice, ensuring that we finally get our second female Speaker (finally), given that I really don’t think that Greg Fergus or Sean Casey are serious contenders for the job. Then again, ranked ballots are funny things, and sometimes crazy things happen as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces shelled the southern city of Kherson, killing two and wounding ten. In the northern city of Kharkiv, officials are building a fully underground school so that children can learn safely as Russian attack continue. Meanwhile, as shenanigans are taking place in the US Congress around funding for Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with EU ministers about continuing vital cooperation.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1708921746907111912

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Roundup: Notes on the Alberta pension proposal

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There was a brief return to the discourse over the proposed Alberta Pension Plan over the weekend after a Colby Cosh column managed to get the criticisms of the plan right. So, I’ll let Trevor Tombe to the talking.

As always, try to remember how the CPP actually works:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine says that they shot down 30 out of 40 drones in an overnight attack on Saturday, and 16 out of 30 dronesovernight on Sunday, when a grain storage warehouse in Uman was hit. In turn, Russia claims to have shot down six Ukrainian drones and two missiles over occupied Crimea on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the country will be partnering with western arms manufacturers to start localising production in Ukraine, with a focus on air defence and de-mining.

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Roundup: A cut or not a cut of the defence budget?

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Yesterday morning, the CBC had a story about the department of national defence looking to cut $1 billion from its books as part of the government’s ongoing spending review, and people lost their gods damned minds, both in Canada and in some international venues. The story was based on comments that were made at committee by the chief of defence staff and the deputy minister, and they talked about how it was going to be challenging to meet these reductions while worrying about capabilities. This was a bit of a surprise, because Anita Anand had previous said that defence was going to be exempt from her cost-cutting demands, but the comments from General Eyre and the deputy minister sounded like DND volunteered to do their share (which I always treat with suspicion—the previous Auditor General made his own pledge to do his part to make cuts as part of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan™, and lo, wound up delaying badly overdue IT upgrades that his successor needed to beg Parliament for more resources to deal with). And because this is not my first rodeo, I immediately presumed that what this likely means is the accounting game of shifting certain spending into future years or re-profiling some committed dollars that they can’t spend (because they simply don’t have the capacity to spend their current allocation), but a whole lot of people who should know better freaked all the way out.

This came up in Question Period, and Bill Blair was present, but he didn’t really answer the question—he took a swipe at the Conservatives for their record of cutting defence spending to below 1 percent of GDP (indeed, here’s a look back in history of Harper complaining to Peter MacKay that he didn’t cut the military enough) and then read some bland pabulum that didn’t even approach answering the question—because that’s what this government does. It wasn’t until nearly 4 PM that Blair posted a thread to Twitter about how they were still increasing the defence budget, and these $1 billion in savings were internal measures like cutting back on travel and consultants, but noted the spending commitments they’ve made like NORAD modernisation, and ships and planes, and so on.

It absolutely mystifies me as to how this message-obsessed government took almost eight hours to craft a response to this news story that when they could have shut down the hysterical reaction to it in mere minutes had they simply sent out a similar tweet first thing in the morning. There is nothing in there to demonstrate why it took eight hours. They could also have had Blair give a reasonable response during QP that would have simply said “This reporting is exaggerated, we are looking for some efficiencies, but overall defence spending is still increasing,” and it would have defused everything. But they didn’t, either because they’re inept, or it takes them that many hours to get sign-off from Katie Telford’s office, which is a sad sign about where this government is at. But nearly eight hours for this kind of response to the story is unacceptable, and it’s a real-time demonstration in why things need to change at the top with this government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The first American Abrams tanks are being delivered in the eastern front, in the hopes they will make a difference. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre by Nazi forces.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith threatens to use a magical incantation

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith has launched a new ad campaign trying to agitate against the federal government over the clean electricity regulations, trying to get other provinces to similarly fight back against them, claiming that people will freeze in the dark, and there will be rolling blackouts, and so on. None of this is actually true, and the fact that energy prices in her province have shot up have little to do with the clean electricity transition than the choices that her government made around how those prices are regulated. She has also lied and said that because the federal regulations use the criminal law powers that energy CEOs will be jailed in 2035 if they still use natural gas—an absolute falsehood that is not only lurid for the sake of scoring points, but ignores that not every criminal penalty is jail, but can mean large fines (because fines over a certain size become the domain of criminal law instead of administrative monetary penalties.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1707491205678858379

The most hilarious part, however, is that Smith is “threatening” to invoke her risible “Sovereignty Act” to fight these regulations, which will do absolutely nothing. She might as well threaten to use a magical incantation for all of the good it will do. Unfortunately, there are far too many credulous journalists and pundits who actually believe that this kind of magical incantation has any power, which is disappointing and allows Smith to continue with her nonsense.

Anyway, here’s Andrew Leach with some actual facts that Smith is missing.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Not a lot of news out of Ukraine yesterday, except for a visit from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who says that Ukraine is gaining ground in their counter-offensive, while president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to call for more air defences, given how many drone attacks they have been under in recent nights.

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Roundup: The Speaker election shapes up

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With the end of the sitting day last night, Anthony Rota was no longer the Speaker, and Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, the Dean of the House, became Speaker in his place, albeit temporarily. The too-clever-by-half motion that the House passed on Tuesday reads that he was “deemed elected” and is the Speaker to be “styled the Interim Speaker,” which means they’re trying to get around the Constitution for two days in order to run the election on Tuesday instead of today. As is joked, this means that Plamondon is entitled to a portrait (and a Scotch), but it remains mystifying why they couldn’t just swallow the two lost sitting days if they wanted to leave this until Tuesday (Monday is not a sitting day).

There are currently four declared candidates for the position—the Deputy Speaker, Chris d’Entrement, and the two Assistant Deputy Speakers, Alexandra Mendès and Carol Hughes, along with a surprise fourth entrant, Liberal MP Greg Fergus. d’Entrement has been somewhat acquitting himself in QP over the past couple of days, and seems to have been most vocal in the media, with some outlets ignoring Mendès completely, which they shouldn’t, considering that she came very close to defeating Rota last time. Fergus could be the spoiler this time for Mendès changes when it comes to getting enough votes from fellow Liberals, but it is a ranked ballot, so that could make things more interesting as the math works out. I also have it on good authority that Mendès would be interested in having a Speaker’s Port in addition to a Speaker’s Scotch (as she is Portuguese), and I would very much love to see that happen (as I am a port drinker and not a scotch drinker). I’ve also heard from colleagues to do drink scotch that Rota’s choice was a poor one, so his replacement ushers in hopefully a better one.

Meanwhile, the former Chief of Protocol was interviewed on Power & Politics last night, and unequivocally showed that everything Pierre Poilievre has been insisting over the past three days about the government vetting everyone in the building for a diplomatic event has been false. The government doesn’t vet the guests of the Speaker or MPs—only guests of the government, as it should be, because Parliament and the Speaker are independent of government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian officials say they destroyed 34 out of 44 drones launched by Russia overnight, whose main target was Odesa, and there have been no casualties. Meanwhile, they have also seen several hundred Wagner fighters returning to the fight in eastern Ukraine, but they don’t expect them to have much impact.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1707162952929866144

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1707153181002588185

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Roundup: Exit Rota, and the curious process for his replacement

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House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota announced his intention to resign yesterday, the effective date to be the end of sitting today, with the added caveat that he won’t preside over any further debates in the meantime (which is just as well considering how much of a hash that was on Monday). The timing of what comes next was somewhat up in the air—it would have sounded like the initial plan was for the election for Rota’s replacement would be on Thursday, but because that voting needs to be done in-person (it’s a secret ranked ballot—MPs can’t use their voting app for that), there were concerns about MPs who weren’t in town this week, and so on. That meant that the vote would have to be on Tuesday (because the Commons isn’t sitting on Monday), leaving two more days with no Speaker, and under the Constitution, they could not sit until they had a new one.

It was at this point that the House Leaders came up with a creative solution, that may be dubiously constitutional—they passed a motion by unanimous consent that declared that the Dean of the House, Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, is to be “deemed elected” and will act as interim Speaker until the election on Tuesday. Which is…interesting. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just swallow the loss of two sitting days (which could be a blessed relief considering how overheated things are right now over this whole debacle). There is also the question of Rota’s status once he has given up the office, and whether the Liberal caucus will want him back in their ranks considering what has happened, and the fact that the Conservatives would love nothing more than to call them all “Nazi sympathizers” or some other such epithet as a result. I’ve heard that Rota told a local radio station that he didn’t plan to run again in the next election, so perhaps he may need to consider getting an earlier start to those retirement plans.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are now pushing for some kind of committee study to “get to the bottom of what happened,” which is ridiculous because we know what happened—Rota didn’t do his job to politically vet his guest in the gallery. The notion that PMO should have vetted him is outrageous because it’s an assault on parliamentary sovereignty and the independence of the Speaker. It’s also little more than an attempt to set up yet another partisan circus where they can perform for the cameras, and gather a bunch more clips for future shitposts, because that’s what this parliament has become—little more than a clip factory. There’s nothing to study. We know what happened, and the fact that the Conservatives are deliberately conflating security screenings and political vetting is being done solely to score points, and they all know it. Hopefully the other opposition parties are smart enough not to fall for this (but I suspect they won’t be, because he have no serious MPs left).

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1706822083127234564

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone strikes against Odessa have not only damaged warehouses, but also have suspended service of a ferry that runs between Ukraine and Romania. Ukrainian forces are claiming success around villages near Bakhmut. Russian state television claimed to show a video conference attended by that the Black Sea fleet commander that the Ukrainians say they killed.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1706716260627616064

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Roundup: Rota’s apology for his fatal mistake

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The warm glow of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to Parliament has given way to a bitter aftertaste as it turns out that the Ukrainian veteran that Speaker Anthony Rota introduced in his concluding remarks turned out not to have been either a Ukrainian-Canadian fighter or a Ukrainian partisan (as Rota’s introduction could fuzzily be construed as) but rather, was a volunteer for a Nazi-controlled unit, and it has turned into an absolute shitstorm of groups, particularly Jewish groups, being rightfully outraged, and partisan actors trying to use this to score points.

Rota released a statement of absolute, unequivocal apology, and I suspect that he will make a statement in the House of Commons first thing today, but it nevertheless casts a pall over him and his judgment, particularly because he has brought Parliament as a whole, and the government, into disrepute, and has quite possibly created an international incident over this where it feeds the interests of Russian propagandists who deride Zelenskyy and Ukraine as a whole as being some kind of Nazi stronghold. And I wish that I could say that this was atypical, but Rota has spent his time as Speaker largely being asleep at the wheel, and being a genial idiot who is more concerned with being everyone’s friend than he is in doing his job, which is tremendously unfortunately. And his trying to be everyone’s friend and being asleep at the wheel has brought us to this point here, and I have a hard time seeing how he has any choice in the matter here other than to announce his resignation on Monday morning, because his job is to protect Parliament, and he has done the opposite. There should be no walking back from this, no matter how well-intentioned he was, or how inadvertent the mistake.

Of course, the politics at play here have already spun all the way out of control, with Pierre Poilievre claiming that Trudeau met with said individual, while everyone else says that he hasn’t. People are insisting that Trudeau and the PMO should have known that this individual was invited, which I can’t see as possibly being the case if the Speaker, who is independent and does not run everything past PMO or PCO, had his own allotment of guest seats that he filled. I think that this will nevertheless obligate Trudeau to issue some kind of public apology, possibly in the Chamber, either before or after QP (assuming we have one if the Speaker resigns and they don’t have to suspend until a new permanent Speaker is chosen), and to offer a public assurance to Zelenskyy that he was unaware and that this situation is dealt with by Rota’s resignation. Unfortunately, this is going to play into so many propagandists’ narratives, and everyone is damaged by this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian airstrikes killed two and wounded eight in the southern city of Kherson on Sunday, and early this morning, they launched a drone and missile attack against Odessa. New Western weapons are exacting a significant toll on Russian forces in the fighting near Bakhmut. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered two Polish volunteers awards on his return to Ukraine, as the two countries are in a major dispute over grain shipments. Here’s a look at an airport in Poland which serves not only as an arrival point for Ukrainians badly injured and in need of care, both civilian and military, as well as a transfer point for military equipment.

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Roundup: Zelenskyy’s trip to Canada

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It was Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s big day in Ottawa, his first since the war began, and he began the day paying a visit to Governor General Mary May Simon. She taught him the Inuktitut word “Ajuinnata,” meaning perseverance in the face of adversity, and it’s a message Zelenskyy took with him. (Simon also taught that word to the Queen when she was first appointed, and has been something of a calling card that she leaves with those she interacts with).

From there, Zelenskyy arrived on Parliament Hill and did the official greetings within the West Block before having an extended bilateral meeting that included signing new economic agreements and pledges of another round of economic and military support from Canada. And from there, to the House of Commons to address a joint session of Parliament, giving an excellent speech (that was far better than the one Joe Biden delivered a few months ago).

From there, Zelenskyy was off to Toronto to meet more business groups and supporters in Canada. The CBC has photos from the day here, and here is a summary of what was agreed to between the leaders.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While the cat’s away… Ukrainian forces launched a missile strike against Russian forces in occupied Crimea, and destroyed the headquarters of Russia’s navy in the region. On the eastern front, Ukrainian troops are vowing to fully re-take Bakhmut, but know that it’s going to be a challenge.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1705219158013522222

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1705273496157192520

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Roundup: The credible intelligence gets a lot weightier

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At the UN General Assembly, prime minister Justin Trudeau reiterated what he said about credible intelligence pointing to Indian agents responsible for the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, and said that he is calling on India to help with the investigation. But what we have since learned is that the credible intelligence includes both human sources and signals intelligence from Five Eyes allies that includes Indian diplomats’ communications, and that is certainly lending a lot more heft to these allegations—on top of the fact that the director of CSIS and the National Security Advisory made trips to India to deal with government sources there, and sources are saying that behind closed doors, the Indian government isn’t denying the existence of this intelligence. That’s a pretty big deal, particularly as members of the Pundit Class in this country are trying to insinuate that this is really about Trudeau ginning up controversy to create a distraction (which doesn’t follow this government’s pattern at all).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1705084748823961930

In the meantime, India has stopped processing travel visas from Canada under the transparently ludicrous excuse that their facilities face security threats, which affects a lot of people here hoping to visit family. Trudeau didn’t say if he would respond in kind, but it seems unlikely if he is serious about saying he’s not trying to provoke or escalate this with India, but to actually get to the bottom of this. (The fact that India doesn’t want to cooperate in public does appear to be something of a tell).

Zelenskyy Visit

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy landed in Ottawa last night. He will be visiting Governor General Mary May Simon this morning, followed by a visit to Parliament Hill, where he will be greeted my parliamentarians in advance of an address to Parliament that will take place around 1 PM Eastern.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1705081288808403189

Ukraine Dispatch:

While president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington, Russian forces pounded more Ukrainian cities, with more deaths being reported in the southern city of Kherson. There has been more shelling of Kherson early this morning. Here is a look at the Ukrainian soldiers fighting their way back to reclaiming Bakhmut.

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