Tag Archives: Access to Information

Roundup: TikTok tracking journalists

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One of those nightmare data scenarios seems to have occurred, where TikTok was found to have improperly accessed the user data of three journalists in order to try and find who was leaking information to them. It’s important to remember that the app aggressively hoovers up data, even more aggressively than apps like Facebook, and it can even gather data on people who don’t even use the app itself. This is precisely why governments around the world have banned it on their devices, and why the US is considering banning it outright, particularly because its owners are in China and subject to the country’s national security laws that can make all of that personal data vulnerable. While one person quit and three were fired in the investigation that followed this incident of improper access, it’s an important reminder that a lot of these kinds of apps are not as benign as they may seem, and for people to be very careful with what permissions they grant the app when they install it.

https://twitter.com/Dennismolin11/status/1605907809945542666

Programming Note: I’m taking the rest of the year off. Loonie Politics columns will still appear in the interim, but everything else is on pause until the New Year. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you in 2023!

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 303:

Ukrainian forces shelled the occupied city of Donetsk, injuring a former Russian deputy prime minister and a pro-Moscow official. Here is a look at how Ukrainian pilots are trying to spot incoming Russian missiles and either shoot them down or alert ground-based defences. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took the opportunity to meet with his Polish counterpart on his way home from Washington DC.

https://twitter.com/AndrzejDuda/status/1605984900275994625

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1605854337397301250

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Roundup: The Auditor General is not infallible

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I have to say that I am both amused and irritated by the number of stories out over the past couple of days about the Conservatives supposedly “defending” the Auditor General, or that there is a “battle brewing” between the AG and the Canada Revenue Agency because they didn’t agree with her calculations around some of the benefits or whom she believed were receiving them on a fraudulent basis. For one, the Conservatives didn’t come to her defence—it was a bit of cheap theatre for them to suddenly start screaming that the government somehow attacked her independence and therefore “democracy itself” (no, seriously, they said that) because the revenue minister said that the CRA didn’t agree with her calculations, and then cheekily added that it wasn’t her fault because the opposition was forcing her to do the audit (which is partially true—it was the compromise that they insisted on to pass the emergency COVID legislation back at the start of the pandemic, so the mandate was legislated, but because they demanded it).

My bigger problem is the fact that this disagreement is somehow scandalising because we have an unhealthy veneration of Officers of Parliament and the Auditor General most especially in this country. A virtual cult has been built around them, particularly by media, who love nothing more than watching the AG go to town on criticising the government of the day, no matter which stripe of government it is, and they will uncritically believe absolutely everything the AG says because they are independent, and therefore must be inherently credible. There are similar problems with this lack of critical engagement with the Parliamentary Budget Officer (and the current one has been a real problem around that, as he picks methodologies out of thin air), and again, his word is gospel. But they’re not infallible. The previous AG ballsed up the Senate audit really badly, and it was an absolute mess, but nobody wanted to talk about it because you can’t badmouth the Auditor General. It’s like a cardinal sin in this city. And departments should be allowed to have disagreements, because the AG isn’t going to get it right every time. That’s just a physical impossibility, and we should acknowledge that fact, but as we see, when it happens, it’s like heresy. People need to grow up, and media needs to be more critical of these Officers, because media is the only check they have.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 288:

Kyiv’s mayor is warning people that while there is no need to evacuate at present, it could become necessary if Russian strikes continue on critical infrastructure over the winter. There are some concerns around movements inside of Belarus, but it is also suspected this may be a decoy and an information operation to keep Ukrainian troops near that border rather than at the front lines. Elsewhere, here is the harrowing tale of a Ukrainian father who was separated from his children by Russians while trying to flee Mariupol, and his ordeal in getting them back from Russian hands.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1600404008463523841

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Roundup: Taking the blame, children’s cold medicine edition

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There has been a concerted effort to try and make the shortage of over-the-counter children’s cold and fever medication the federal government’s problem, even though they have precious few levers at their disposal. The Conservatives are trying to demand that Health Canada lift restrictions on imports that aren’t labelled in English and French, though I’m not sure that would really help if these shortages (which are due to high demand because COVID isn’t over!) are more widespread, and even there, that would require a lot of provincial coordination because pharmacies are also under provincial jurisdiction. But apparently the minister can’t just say that people need to talk to the provinces—that simply won’t do.

I had a bit of a debate over Twitter about this last night, and I will concede that part of this is a problem with the government’s inability to message and get ahead of these kinds of issues, or leverage some righteous anger and direct it to the provinces to do their gods damned jobs for once—but this government doesn’t like to do anger, and it really doesn’t like to blame the provinces for the things that the provinces aren’t doing when they should be, because they want to be “nice,” and “cooperative,” and “not divisive.” But that’s not helping anybody, and so we get more platitudes and feel-good pabulum that doesn’t actually make anyone feel good. I do have real problems with everyone—particularly media—trying to make every problem the federal government’s, but the government need to get better at messaging around this tendency, which they steadfastly refuse to do.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 224:

As Russia’s president signed papers that purport to annex territory in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces continue to press ahead in their counter-offensive in both the east and the south, collapsing Russian lines even further. And those new troops Russia has been conscripting to send to Ukraine? Much of them come from the country’s ethnic minorities, which is a calculated move. Ukraine, meanwhile, is making a bid for the 2030 FIFA World Cup as a way of survivors of the invasion healing from the war.

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Roundup: Threats only matter when it’s your family

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The chatter yesterday morning was that the Diagolon crew talked on their online show about raping Pierre Poilievre’s wife just to prove that they could, and lo, Poilievre got angry, referred this to the RCMP, and called the Diagolon crew dirt bags and insisted he had never heard of this group before, even though he very clearly had, and had been playing footsie with them like he has with a bunch of other far-right extremists. And yes, it’s horrifying that they would make these kinds of comments—which they insist were just “a joke” and that they meant no harm (far-right extremists are always “just joking” until they’re not), but Poilievre only seemed to care about rape threats when they were directed as his family, and not, say, the female journalists who reported on his connections with Diagolon, for whom Poilievre decried as a “smear” and sent his flying monkeys after them, who were again subjected to all manner of graphic rape and death threats, which he has never denounced. You see where this is going?

https://twitter.com/TedFriendlyGuy/status/1574412812574769152

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 215:

It is apparently the last day of Russia’s sham referendum in occupied regions of Ukraine, while their forces have conducted drone airstrikes on the port of Odessa.

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QP: For love of filibusters

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While the prime minister remains in COVID isolation, he didn’t join QP virtually today, and his deputy was in Toronto to give a big speech on the government’s affordability measures when it comes to dealing with inflation. Most of the other leaders didn’t bother to show up today either, though Candice Bergen did show up for votes after QP, for what it’s worth. Luc Berthold led off, and he declared that everything the Liberals touch “goes south,” and he complained about passports, line-ups at borders, and delays for EI cheques. Karina Gould got up and empathized with the frustration people face, and noted that in the face of high demand, the government was responding by changing processes and hiring more staff. Berthold insisted that the government’s management was “chaotic,” listing a number of alleged ministerial sins, accusing the prime minister of abandoning Canadians. Gould again recited her empathetic talking points, and repeated the answer. Berthold then called Marco Mendicino’s struggles the “Pinocchio Affair,” before demanding his resignation (and the Speaker did not cut him off for doing so, but after he finished warned against name-calling). Pablo Rodriguez took this one, stating the opposition is divided and they can’t agree on anything, and called out the Conservatives for their love of filibusters. Dan Albas took over in English to first raise the cheap outrage story about the GG’s flight, then panned Chrystia Freeland’s speech before demanding that the government adopt their plans to fight inflation. Randy Boissonnault insisted that the Conservatives only had bluster, while the government had a list of affordability measures. Albas raised the escalators in user fees tied to inflation and demanded they be halted, but Boissonnault reiterated his same response. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and raised the problems at passport offices before redeploying the talking point that the federal government should mind its own business rather than “meddling” in Quebec’s affairs. Karina Gould assured him that they had hired new staff and were hiring more. Therrien then pivoted to the Information Commissioner’s report on the record number of Access to Information complaints, and Mona Fortier assured him that they were working to increase transparency and proactive disclosures (which is pretty much famous last words from this government).

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he worried that the increase in the GST credit would be $7, which was insufficient. Boissonnault listed the measures in the budget to help people. Singh repeated his question in French, and Boissonnault repeated his same response en français.

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Roundup: A barometer we should pay attention to

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It is now day one hundred-and-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine says that they have reclaimed a large chuck of Severodonetsk, foiling Russia’s attempt to move further into the city. There are concerns that Russia is trying to dig in and stay in those eastern cities for the long haul.

For that one hundredth day of the war, here’s a look back at Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s nightly video addresses, and what they have done for his people. Here is a timeline of the events of the invasion, as well as an attempted accounting of some of costs that this war has taken on the people of Ukraine. As well, a museum in Kyiv is collecting materials left behind by Russian forces and making art out of it.

Closer to home, the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the extremely low turnout from the Ontario election continues, and that has Turnout Nerds and Proportional Representation fanboys out in force, to little avail. Most corrosive were the rounds of people who insisted that because the turnout was so low, that Ford had formed a majority government with something like 20 percent of eligible voters and that this was somehow illegitimate and that they should petition the lieutenant governor to deny him the ability to form government (erm, except that he is already in government, and simply has a new legislature). While you have some people trying to explain this low turnout as frustration and disengagement, where people were told time and again by media polls what the outcome was going to be so they never bothered, I do think there is something to be said about this being a measure of where we’re at, and it’s not good—and that mandatory voting would simply paper over that indicator. Of course, what this should do is prompt parties to get their acts in gear and present something that can actually excite voters and get them out to the polls, but we’re seeing cynical moves by parties who capitalise on low turnout (Ford’s Progressive Conservatives), or who try to game their so-called “vote efficiency” to have just enough turnout (federal Liberals). It’s not healthy, and we should do more about it, but the parties didn’t seem interested this time around.

https://twitter.com/Honickman/status/1532847527975915521

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Roundup: The showboat special committee

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It’s now around day sixty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia is waving around the threat of nuclear action if NATO members don’t stop arming Ukraine, which some are taking as mere talk. But still. There have also been more attacks over the border in Moldova, which Russia is trying to blame on Ukraine. Allied defence ministers met in Germany, and more weapons are on the way to Ukraine, so that warning by Russia isn’t dissuading them too much.

https://twitter.com/rafaelmgrossi/status/1519031867642728450

Closer to home, the special joint committee on the Emergencies Act (which is not the inquiry) held their first major meetings last night, hearing from two ministers, and ostensibly the commissioner of the RCMP and the head of CSIS, but those latter two barely got any questions, because like I predicted seven weeks ago, this was really just about showboating as opposed to substance. And yeah—showboating and demands to release documents that we have no idea if they’d actually be relevant (but still operating under the assumption that the government is engaged in some sort of cover-up), while Conservatives still went to bat for the far-right extremists, grifters and conspiracy theorists who made up the occupation.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1519079631042789378

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1519081717126074369

What we did hear from Marco Mendicino included the fact that the Ottawa Police being the police of jurisdiction created challenges, and that that they had no choice but to invoke the Act in as limited way as possible. The head of CSIS did manage to get a question, in which he said that the agency is spending about fifty percent of their time currently on ideologically-motivated violent extremism, and that extremist content in the occupation didn’t surprise him. You can read Rachel Aiello’s livetweeting thread here for more, but it was pretty ridiculous overall. It’s a sad indictment of the fact that we are no longer a serious parliament made up of serious people, taking the business of the nation seriously.

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Roundup: What open nominations?

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Do you remember when the Liberals considered themselves the party of open nominations? And how they were always going to uphold the democratic right of riding associations to run fair, open and transparent processes to select the candidates that would appear on the ballot for them? Because apparently the party has put this particular bit of democracy, openness and transparency down the memory hole as they continue to acclaim candidates from across the country. In two of these cases, the acclamations came a mere day after the incumbents announced that they weren’t running again, and in one of those ridings – Kanata-Carleton – there was the making of a contested nomination as rumours swirled that Karen McCrimmon wasn’t going to run again, and the riding association was frustrated that they couldn’t get any kind of answer from the party on how and when to run said contested nomination.

Now, the party is going to defend its honour by pointing out that their rules state that they can declare a state of “electoral urgency” to bypass the nomination process, but this is more of the Liberals’ penchant of letting the ends justify the means. They created the rules that were easily gamed, and frankly, the “electoral urgency” clause is a load of bullshit because they were using it in 2019 in the months before the election when they knew they had four years to have this process ongoing because there was a fixed election date under a majority parliament, so there were no surprises. Yes, the pandemic has made nomination races tougher because of public health restrictions, and the party has come under fire for using a verification system that includes facial recognition technology (which BC’s privacy commissioner is investigating, per that province’s laws), but again, these were things that the party should have been cognisant of and dealing with rather than simply wringing their hands and pulling the “electoral urgency” alarm to fast-track their hand-picked candidates, thwarting local democracy, and accountability.

Open nominations are one of the most important and fundamental building blocks of our democratic system. When parties flout those rules, it hurts the entire system – especially as it cements even more power in the leaders’ offices. That the Liberals are so blatantly ignoring their own supposed values in this crucial stage of the democratic process is a sign that the way the party rewrote their constitution to fit the Trudeau era is a very real problem that they are going to have to do a lot of soul-searching to address, especially when that age comes to its inevitable end.

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Roundup: Just the Speaker doing his job

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We got our first glimpse at the court documents related to the challenge of the House of Commons’ order demanding the production of secret documents related to the firing of the two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, put in his submission that the case should be tossed because of Parliamentary privilege, and there was no explicit waiving of parliamentary privilege under the Canada Evidence Act, which is what the Public Health Agency is following in refusing to turn over unsecured documents. As a reminder, they have turned over the documents, both in redacted form to the committee that requested them, and in unredacted form to NSICOP, which has appropriate security clearances and safeguards, so it’s not like this is a blanket refusal to defy Parliament – it’s that they have their own obligations to follow. It’s also somewhat problematic that the committee wants the Commons’ Law Clerk to then redact the documents on his own, without appropriate training or context, so they ultimately claim they’re not looking for unredacted documents – only for someone else to do the redacting, at which point this is just becoming absurd.

The way this is being spun is also somewhat irritating – because this was a Canadian Press wire story, outlets who ran the piece sometimes did so with altered headlines that stated that it was the Liberals interfering with the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commons rather than the government, which is not really true. This isn’t a partisan issue – it’s different parts of the government acting according to the laws that Parliament passed. When the demands were made, PHAC was bound in legislation to inform the Attorney General, and while it is the same physical person as the minister of justice, under his Attorney General hat, he had obligations to follow the law and test these demands in Court.

The other commentary that is somewhat maddening is people pointing out that the Speaker is somehow going against his party in doing his job as Speaker in defending the Commons’ privileges. Again, this isn’t actually a partisan issue on either side (well, the Conservatives making these demands for the documents, with the support of the other opposition parties, are behaving in an extremely partisan manner and trying to embarrass the government, but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of what we’re discussing). Trying to make it a partisan issue when everyone is doing their jobs is just degrading the discourse and muddying the understanding of what is going on (which is what certain parties would like to happen because it makes it easier for them to lie about the state of play). We shouldn’t be doing their dirty work for them.

Programming Note: I’m taking the next week off (as much as I am able), because it’s probably my only opportunity in advance of the possible election, and I really don’t want to have to deal with election coverage while battling burnout. Take care, and I’ll see you on the far side of the long weekend.

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Roundup: Getting called out by your deputy minister

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This government’s problems with cleaning up the culture of sexual misconduct in the military continues to roll along, and the calls are definitely coming from inside the house. In the latest installment, the deputy minister of National Defence has taken to the radio waves to point out that the government didn’t make an effort to push the military on implementing the Deschamps Report, who wound up treating it like a kind of checklist that they could do the bare minimum with rather than actually implementing the systemic changes that it called for. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given everything we know, but the fact that the deputy minister is saying this is damning.

We also got another harrowing tale of harassment, and retribution when the civilian employee who was subjected to it complained. This isn’t a surprise given the culture, and as the piece points out, one of the reasons she was targeted is because she upset the status quo – which is part of why the military made a conscious effort not to really implement the Deschamps Report, because it called for systemic changes, and that is a definite upset of the status quo. That the government didn’t really recognize this or push back against it is an indictment.

Which brings me back to the key point – that the government, and in particular the minister, needs to wear this. The deputy minister called him out. That’s not good. And part of the problem is also that Sajjan was part of that culture, which is may explain why he was either blind to the problems, or was fine with not actually bothered that they weren’t upsetting the status quo. It’s one of the reasons why actual civilian control of the military is so important, and we haven’t had that under Sajjan. Regardless, this is his problem to wear, and he needs to take actual ministerial responsibility, and offer his resignation. There is no other option.

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