Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: Allegations and reactions to reports of targeting an MP’s family

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The big news that dominated much of the discourse yesterday was that Globe and Mail story that a secret intelligence document from two years ago says that the Chinese regime sees Canada as a priority target for foreign interference because we don’t have a foreign agent registry, and said that they were targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family in Hong Kong, and that a Chinese diplomat in Canada was working on the matter. This of course turned into the daily outrage—Chong decried that he wasn’t warned about this, and then we saw the dog and pony show in Question Period. Justin Trudeau said that after reading the Globe story he has asked his officials to look into this document, and called the matter unacceptable. Oh, and two of those so-called Chinese “police stations” appear to still be in operation in the Montreal area, in spite of the RCMP saying they’d shut them down. So, there’s that.

https://twitter.com/MichaelChongMP/status/1653044204438732803

But here’s the thing—Chong isn’t an idiot, even if he sometimes plays one in Question Period, and should have known that his family there did face risks. Activists from these diaspora communities here have been saying it for years, and many have pointed to the fact that they deliberately don’t have contact with their family members back home in order to try to protect them. Chong shouldn’t have needed a CSIS briefing to know if his family in Hong Kong was under threat—he should have put two-and-two together on his own, given how outspoken he is about the regime. (Update: Behold, two years ago he stated he was doing just that). Trying to blame the government sounds particularly disingenuous because I know that Chong knows better, even if he wants to playact shock and outrage for the cameras in order to score points. There is a better way to deal with these allegations of foreign interference without these kinds of drama camp antics.

Meanwhile, Canada’s self-appointed media critic is in full braying doofus mode, and has some thoughts about journalistic ethics around media outlets reporting (or not) on leaked documents that they haven’t seen or been able to verify. Aside from the fact that CBC’s politics page did run the Canadian Press wire story about Chong’s reaction, Scheer should know how this works, right? Does he think that CBC can just call up the leaker and say “Hey, can we have a look at those documents too?” Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did believe that, but seriously—if he bothered to think it through for half a second, he would understand why CBC isn’t reporting on it, but that’s inconvenient for his narrative and his rage-farming, so here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired another early-morning salvo of missiles at Ukraine, and of the 18 fired, 15 were brought down by air defences, leaving three to strike targets primarily in the eastern city of Pavlohrad, killing two and rounding 40; Kyiv did not suffer any strikes this time. Over in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces have pushed Russians back from several parts of the city, and US estimates are that 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the past five months (up to 20,000 of those killed), most of them in and around Bakhmut. Two Canadian volunteer soldiers fighting for Ukraine were killed in Bakhmut last week.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1653047560020414465

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1652911854501388290

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Roundup: Andrew Scheer, media critic

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In the wake of Bill C-11 receiving royal assent, Conservatives have been doing a full court press on social media to denounce this supposed “censorship” bill (which is nothing of the sort—it obligates web giants and streaming services to report Canadian revenues and pay into media creation funds based on a percentage of those revenues). And because he’s a wannabe fourteen-year-old shitposting edgelord, Andrew Scheer is taking shots at the media about the reporting on this.

What you might notice is that Scheer is calling The Canadian Press newswire “CBC’s news service” because CBC is one of CP’s clients and the content they buy from the wire funds its operations. This, of course, taints CP in the Conservatives’ estimation, and Pierre Poilievre bullied a CP reporter about this at a press event a couple of weeks ago, and tried to insinuate that this means that they somehow fit stories to the government narrative in order to get that CBC money. It’s a complete fabrication, but it’s intended to be—this is all about flooding the field with bullshit.

Scheer goes on to complain about how the story is covered—because he’s a media critic, don’t you know. The story doesn’t quote a Conservative source, but it cites their (misleading) position that the bill is “censorship” (again, this is a lie), but because it’s CP, it rather obsequiously both-sides everything. It doesn’t actually call out the Conservative position as the bullshit that it is, but because it’s not complete stenography of the Conservative line, it must be “bought media” and advances this farcical notion that the government is “shutting down dissent.” Hardly.

But truth doesn’t matter to Scheer. He’s been trying to delegitimise mainstream media for years now (recall that he called True North (aka Rebel Lite™) and Post Millennial “credible” sources, which should tell you everything you need to know about Scheer’s media literacy skills and judgment). Even though the Conservatives have learned how to manipulate mainstream outlets with their persistent both-sidesing, and knowing that it lets them get away with lying, it’s not enough, because occasionally, that both-sidesing can showcase how much the Conservative narrative is full of falsehoods, and they couldn’t possibly have that. Best to have their own stenographers and ensure that only their narratives get out.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians made an overnight attack against civilian targets in a variety of cities, leaving at least five dead. Russian forces are also trying to cut off supply lines to Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian forces have managed to resist these attacks, and take back some other sections of the city that Russians have been occupying. Ahead of the spring counteroffensive, some 98 percent of promised NATO aid has arrived in Ukraine, amounting to over 1550 armoured vehicles, 230 tanks, and “vast amounts” of ammunition. Here’s a look at mental health supports available for Ukrainian soldiers.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1651785146142453765

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1651456287408832512

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Roundup: No breach of privilege for horse jokes

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Our long national horse-joke nightmare is over. The Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that said tweet didn’t impinge on Garnett Genuis’ ability to do his work, and was not a prima facie breach of privilege, and the matter is dropped. I’m just surprised that it took him three days to determine that, but here we are. I was able to return to the House of Commons without fear that I would be removed by security (because the privilege complaint got the Sergeant-at-Arms involved), and things went as they have for pretty much the past almost fourteen years. Sure, Andrew Scheer gave me a death stare, but he’s not going to keep me from doing my job.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1574767434145447940

With that in mind, a few notes and observations—while I might have preferred a stronger statement from the Press Gallery executive, I have come to learn that there was a lot of backroom pressure being exerted by certain Conservatives, so the Gallery didn’t relent to that, which is a positive sign, but still worrying about the overall implications. I am under no illusions—this was a targeted attack on me, and this was a test case for what the Conservatives hoped they could get away with in their attempt to go to war with the media. They figured that I was vulnerable, because I’m a freelancer without a corporation and a newsroom backing me up, and I’m gay, and they hoped it would count against me. It didn’t. The Gallery rebuffed their attempts, and I wasn’t about to let the Conservatives bully or intimidate me. But this was pure intimidation, and We The Media can’t kid ourselves. I was one of the first, but I will not be the last. We’re going to need to get a lot better at solidarity in the months and years to come. Am I going to recycle this horse joke yet again? Probably not. But I’m not going to stop calling out their bullshit, either in print or over Twitter.

The bigger warning sign is about what this says about the state of politics. For Scheer and Genuis, this is just a game, and they are more concerned with scoring points than they are in doing the work of being an MP, whether it’s actual accountability, or policy work, or any of it. And the sad reality is that this is where politics has been headed under the current generation for a few years now. Friends of mine who used to be staffers got so discouraged by this attitude about point-scoring—and this is from all parties, not just the Conservatives—that they wanted out. Their going after me was just another attempt to score a point, and that’s why I’m not going to laugh this off and say “It’s just politics.” Because it’s not “just politics,” and this is not a game. We need to break this mindset, and return to this being a serious place with serious people. Garnett Genuis and Andrew Scheer are not serious people. Oh, and if they couldn’t parse the grammar of that tweet, then they have no business scrutinizing legislation.

And finally, a big thank you to all of my supporters and followers over the past week. It was very heartening to get your messages of encouragement throughout, even as I dealt with an influx of trolls who apparently have nothing better to do with their time than stalk my Facebook, or click on my YouTube videos in order to down-vote them. (Guess what guys—the algorithm counts those clicks, down-votes and shitty comments as engagement in my favour).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 216:

Russia is claiming to have won overwhelming majority votes in their sham-referendums (conducted at gunpoint) in occupied regions of Ukraine as a pretext for annexation, which no Western country is going to view as legitimate. Meanwhile, Russian men at risk of conscription are fleeing the country, and a Russian-backed disinformation network trying to spread propaganda about the invasion has been shut down.

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Roundup: More year-enders, more bland assurances

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The year-ender interviews with the prime minster continue to roll out, so we’ll see how much in there is actually newsworthy. Still from The Canadian Press’ year-ender, Trudeau said that the government is trying to find “balance” with its ability to be transparent while still able to have no-holds-barred closed-door discussions like they do in Cabinet, all in response to questions about why the government is so slow at its promised reforms to the Access to Information system.

From the CBC, Trudeau said that the 500,000 Canadians who got “educational” letters from the CRA about their CERB payments won’t need to repay by the end of the year, as some had feared – never mind that the government created this problem when they weren’t clear about what the eligibility criteria were.

To CTV, Trudeau said that the target date of having Canadians vaccinated by September is something of a conservative estimate – it could happen faster, but it could also happen more slowly, depending on supply chain issues like those that have hit Pfizer already. He also said that he’s less concerned about the comparisons with the US as having plans to inoculate people at a faster per-capita rate, noting that they have much bigger challenges in their healthcare system, hinting that their estimates may be overly optimistic.

Monetary policy

Andrew Scheer is back at shitposting, this time spreading lies about the Bank of Canada and their use of quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Quantitative easing is not actually just “printing money,” and it’s not going to cause runaway inflation. In fact, we’re running so far below our inflationary targets that the Bank should be running expansionary monetary policy – and yes, the Bank has a helpful primer on quantitative easing for people like Scheer and Pierre Poilievre if they cared to learn. But they don’t, and are jeopardizing the independence of the central bank by keeping up this particular policy of lies and shitposting to try and score points.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339640374751596544

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339643586204348418

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Roundup: Scheer joins the sister-hiring brigade

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The saga of MPs hiring siblings exploded yesterday as several revelations came to light – that Andrew Scheer not only hired his sister-in-law, but that he also hired his sister to work in his office when he was both Deputy Speaker and Speaker. Granted, this was within the rules at the time, and those rules were changed at the end of the time Scheer was Speaker (and his sister was let go then – and then moved over to a Conservative senator’s office), but for someone who liked to give lectures to the prime minister on the optics and the appearance of ethical conduct, it does seem like a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, said that while these hirings were within the rules, he wants to set a higher ethical bar, so he would have a talk with Scheer about it, though he apparently let his sister-in-law go around the same time. No word yet on whether the Conservatives will call for his resignation.

Meanwhile, in the other sibling hiring drama, it turns out that now-former Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi’s hiring her sister was actually flagged to the Ethics Commissioner two years ago, and his office decided to take a pass on it, figuring that it was better dealt with by the Board of Internal Economy. Now he’s saying that maybe he should have taken a look then. Of course, this sounds to be about par for the course for Mario Dion, whose approach to interpreting his enabling legislation is…creative to say the least, from inventing new definitions under the Act, stretching the credulity of what it covers in some reports, and even confusing his Act with the MP Code – which are completely different – in another case. So, that’s going well. Incidentally, the Board of Internal Economy will be meeting later this week and will address the Ratansi complaints at that time about whether or not this hiring violated the rules, and they will determine the next course of action at that point. (And yes, this is an example of parliamentary privilege, where parliament makes and enforces its own rules, because it’s a self-governing institution, which is the way it should be).

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Roundup: Getting to COVID-zero

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The pandemic continues to grow exponentially, and people are wringing their hands about what to do, the notion of getting to COVID-zero is circulating again, after certain jurisdictions – Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia – managed it. So here’s Dr. Isaac Bogoch to explain it.

We can barely get premiers to institute some reasonably tough measures as it is, which is going to make anything required to actually crush the virus almost impossible – especially if we’re relying on their political calculus that closing businesses is worse for them than the hundreds or thousands of deaths that will happen otherwise.

For a bit of a reality check on the feasibility of this, Chris Selley explains why some countries’ systems for locking down COVID wouldn’t work in Canada, either because they were draconian or we are too far behind the curve to make it happen.

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Roundup: O’Toole hears the siren song of cheap outrage

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He’s barely a week into the job as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and Erin O’Toole is already starting to beak off about official residences, and my head is on the verge of exploding. When asked about the CBC story that Stornoway – the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition – is due to get $170,000 in needed repairs before O’Toole and family move in, O’Toole started going off about how he only wanted the very minimum of work done and that he doesn’t even want furniture in his kids’ bedrooms because he wants to use the furniture that their grandfather built in Nova Scotia, and I was both outraged and exasperated.

Let me be clear – the National Capital Commission needs to put work into upkeep of these heritage residences or else they will start to degrade. Everyone was so afraid of necessary upkeep at 24 Sussex for so long that it has literally become a crumbling shitpile, and nobody can decide what to do with it now. Stornoway managed to avoid that fate because when Preston Manning refused to move in, the NCC was able to do the heavy-duty renovations that the residence needed to bring it back up to spec, but 24 Sussex has never had that opportunity, and look where it got us. Nevertheless, this persistent politicization of official residences and casting them as “personal benefits” for political leaders is outrageous to the point of being offensive. These are not personal benefits – they are official residences who belong to the Queen in Right of Canada. And you can bet that a lot of journalists and Liberal partisans on Twitter dug up everything O’Toole said about 24 Sussex and the renovations to Harrington Lake to paint him a hypocrite, but dear sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this is such self-defeating behaviour. Stop it.

I will also add lay a certain amount of blame for this on the media, because the impulse is always to write these stories as cheap outrage. The CBC headline is quintessential cheap outrage: “Stornoway getting $170K in taxpayer-funded repairs before Erin O’Toole moves in.” This is the kind of thing that gets Canadians’ hairshirt parsimony and tall poppy syndrome riled up, and suddenly it’s a scandal – no matter how reasonable the costs, or necessary the work. And that’s exactly why 24 Sussex is a crumbling shitpile, and why our government aircraft are so old that they have to constantly refuel, and why the avionics on some of them are so old that they are banned from several major airports. It’s embarrassing, but cheap outrage is like crack to so many journalists’ brains that they can’t help themselves, and we collectively set ourselves back another decade on doing what needs to be done. We need to do better, and stop going for the cheap dopamine hits that these stories give because it’s self-destructive.

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Roundup: Getting the deficit vapours

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back making the media rounds yesterday, and one of the things he spoke about was the “ambitious green agenda” to be laid out in the Throne Speech, which has every pundit in the country clutching their pearls about the state of the deficit. Why? Because in Canadian punditry – and many government departments, finance especially – it is 1995 and will always be 1995. And some of that comes with the usual ridiculous assertions about comparing the nation’s finances to a household’s, or that of a business.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301527104383848449

And then there was one column in particular which doubled down on not only the usual deficit vapours, but the notions that somehow inclusive growth isn’t a real strategy, which credible economists – and not just those on speed dial for certain media outlets who have one answer for every problem – will tell you is a bogus argument. But hey, it’s 1995 and will always be 1995.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1301505825366773762

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301496695814004736

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301500044315693058

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Roundup: The inertia around solitary

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The story of what happened with the panel the government assembled to oversee its supposed elimination of solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries has been a slow-burning story this week, but indicative of some of the incomprehensible ways in which this government operates. The practice of solitary confinement has been declared inhumane and contrary to the Charter by courts across the country, and the government promised to reform it with these “structured intervention units,” but that was already dubious, and unlikely to satisfy the courts – and they knew that, but went ahead with it anyway. A year later, the panel that was supposed to oversee it quit in frustration because they couldn’t get any information they needed to do their work (and the Correctional Investigator gave Correctional Services a pass on this because apparently, they’ve been implementing new software and this has been a problem). But it was only when this story leaked thanks to Senator Kim Pate that Bill Blair sprang into action, promising to reappoint the panel and implement a “work plan” to get them the information.

Well, turns out members of that panel aren’t exactly keen to be reappointed because they’ve been jerked around for a year, and were doing this on a volunteer basis, which cost them a lot of time and money for nothing but headaches. But this all feels like another case of this government meaning well, and talking a good game without doing the actual work involved and then hoping that everything will be forgiven because they have good intentions. That’s not good enough, and yet they keep behaving like that’s all well and good. It’s not.

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Roundup: Taking a personal day

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Of all the possible misplays for Justin Trudeau to make at the height of a controversy around his poor choices, ethical blind spots, and insistence that he’s being open and transparent, the first day of a two-day recall of the House of Commons saw him absent with the only excuse on his daily itinerary being a “personal day,” which sent the opposition into a frenzy. It’s not like Trudeau chose this day for the Commons to be recalled and for there to be a proper Question Period – erm, except he did. And then wasn’t present. Way to read the room.

Andrew Scheer had his own attempts to make hay, insisting that if the Liberal backbenchers don’t oust Trudeau (without a mechanism to do so, it should be noted), that they were signalling that they were okay with his “corruption” – never mind that a conflict of interest is not actually corruption, and he’s not exactly someone who should be throwing stones considering that he was forced to resign his own leadership after it was revealed that he was helping himself to party funds to the tune of almost a million dollars.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are also pushing back against the bill being debated, objecting to the “complexity” of the wage subsidy changes, despite the fact that for there to be a proper phase-out and to ensure it’s more broadly encompassing than the programme was initially, there needs to be added complexity. Their objections won’t matter for much, considering that the Bloc has agreed to support the bill regardless so there are enough votes to go around, but it is a change from bills being supported unanimously at all stages, and something that resembles a sense of normalcy slowly returning to Parliament, which is a good thing.

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