Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: The Committee Zoom™

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For his Tuesday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau noted the reports of his mother being sent to hospital when her apartment building in Montreal caught fire, and assured everyone that he had spoken to her and that she is doing fine. There wasn’t much in the way of news to share – noting that new federal modelling numbers for the course of the pandemic would be released shortly (and they were, with the same obligatory dumb questions as though these were predictions and not tools for planning purposes), and that their federal guidelines would also be forthcoming later in the day (and they too were). The Q&A was mostly focused on attempts to get Trudeau to say whether or not he would make any potential COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, some obligatory Francophone outrage that some of the personal protective equipment coming into the country didn’t have French labelling, and several attempts for him to give his personal opinion on whether he would send his kids to school if they were reopened when Quebec’s intend to be (which he dodged repeatedly, talking about science and evidence).

And then came the Great Virtual Committee Meeting – which was not a sitting of the House of Commons as so many people kept calling it. I settled on Committee Zoom™ as what I was going to call it, for what it’s worth. It started off with a ministerial statement from Patty Hajdu, followed by each other party offering a response of equal length, none of which had any bearing on what she was talking about, because we don’t actually debate in this country any longer – we just read prepared speeches past one another. After a brief interruption for petitions, we got down to the questions – five-minute rounds started with Scheer (who was the only leader to ask questions; Jagmeet Singh was wholly absent from the entire day), and then distributed through the parties in what appeared to be the QP rotation list that included obsequious backbench suck-up questions from the Liberals. But it was glitchy – lots of mute button errors, interruptions when MPs didn’t mute properly, constant challenges with the translation channels and which channel the MP was speaking on (some of those points of order leading to huge digressions as points mounted), a couple of Ministers whose connections were poor and made for very bad sound (spare a thought for the poor transcriptionists in Hansard),

Of course, everyone’s takeaway seems to be just how civil the whole thing was, and that there was no heckling. The closest we got was when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner was fairly aggressively asking questions and interrupting the responses she felt were taking too long. But without the clapping (which needs to die regardless) and the heckling, everyone has taken up with the impression that this was somehow preferable to QP. It’s not. Sure, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has a point about the questions being generally better, but this was also the function of it not being on a 35-second clock, which QP needs to do away with as it is. That would help matters immensely. But the flip-side of this format is that ministers were able to give non-sequitur talking point answers that had nothing to do with what was asked of them (particularly the ones around tax havens), which is one of the places where heckling in the Chamber would actually help get that point across. Heckling doesn’t need to be just the jeering, hooting baboons that it can be (and yes, it absolutely can be). As well, there is a need for some theatre in politics, and I don’t see the long-term benefit of being robbed of it by trying to make this a more permanent feature as people are already salivating at the prospect of. The unintended consequences will be far worse than you can possibly imagine.

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Roundup: On Scheer’s silence over Sloan

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was all about science – specifically, a $1.1 billion package for research on vaccines and clinical trials, plus the launch of an immunity task force that will help to determine the spread of the virus within the population (as many may have been exposed and only ever experienced mild symptoms or had none at all), which will be necessary as we talk about re-opening the economy and how that will proceed. Trudeau also reiterated that the situation with long-term care facilities is untenable, that using soldiers to help the residents of those homes is merely a short-term solution that demands a long-term re-think. During the Q&A, Trudeau was not promising the billions of dollars that municipalities were demanding, but made some fairly vague commitments about working with provinces, given that cities are creatures of provincial legislation. He also said that provinces were going to take their own leads on re-opening their economies given that there are different epidemics playing out across the country and not just one nationally, though there is talk of federal guidelines.

The thing that had everyone talking throughout the day, however, was Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan making a fairly blatantly racist call for Dr. Theresa Tam to be fired while questioning her loyalty to Canada as he accuses her of following Chinese propaganda. And more to the point, that Andrew Scheer refuses to comment on what Sloan says insofar as the racism – he did say that as the opposition, they should be criticizing ministers who make decisions and not officials who give advice. Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising as the party has already been pursuing this notion of vilifying the WHO because they were too credulous about the information coming out of China and Canada followed WHO advice, and Sloan simply took it one step further. And more to the point, under Scheer, the party has offered succour to racists on more than one occasion (most notably after the incident when Trudeau called out the racist statements of an avowedly racist woman in Quebec at an event, after which the Conservatives insisted that she was merely concerned about the economic impact of “illegal” asylum seekers and that anyone who questioned the government would be called a racist – because being labelled a racist is apparently a worse crime than actual racism). A few other Conservative MPs did denounce Sloan’s comments, and local officials within Sloan’s riding called on him to be denounced by Scheer and expelled from the party.

Ah, but that’s part of the issue. The Conservatives, if you recall, voted to adopt certain provisions of Michael Chong’s (garbage) Reform Act which ensures that the full caucus must vote to expel a member, that the leader alone can’t do it. It would be mighty awkward for Scheer to pull that trigger regardless, considering that he’s in an interim, outgoing position and not really the leader any longer, and that Sloan is vying to replace him (and it will be a doomed effort), but I will say that regardless of the circumstances, I have long been uncomfortable with both leaders expelling members, and with the more recent notion that MPs (and senators, where applicable) should be expelled at the first sign of trouble, rather than managing them better from within the fold, or leaving it up to their riding association to decide whether or not to keep them in the party, being as they are really the ones who should be deciding.

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Roundup: Uploading their environmental liabilities

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For his Friday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was again laden with a myriad of announcements that he needed to unburden himself of. First it was the announcement that 125 medically-trained personnel from the Canadian Forces would be headed to Quebec to assist with their situation in long-term care facilities, with more assistance to come from the Canadian Red Cross and the banks of volunteers assembled by Health Canada and within the province itself. From there, it was that the government would spend $1.72 billion to remediate orphan wells in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan, and more money for oil companies – particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador – to deal with their methane emissions. And then, it was money to help artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs. And finally, it was remarking that it was the anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And if you’ve caught your breath, during the Q&A, there was discussion about Parliament meeting in person one a week (the Conservatives want four times a week), that Finance Canada is looking at some kind of financial aid for provinces who can’t get access to cheap credit.

During the ministerial briefing afterward, there it was made clearer that there was going to be more money for regional development agencies so that they can help out local companies when they have difficulty getting commercial loans to bridge them through this period. Navdeep Bains said that they are still looking into technological solutions for contact tracing (and the Privacy Commissioner has issued guidelines if that is the case). Oh, and Canada Day is going to be virtual (which saves them from having to deal with not having access to Parliament Hill anyway because of construction).

But back to the energy sector. I find myself annoyed that the federal government has opted to go the route of paying billions of dollars to remediate these orphan wells because it means the sector – and the province itself, who set the deficient regulations that allowed the situation to spiral out of control – have successfully managed to upload those environmental liabilities to federal taxpayers. And I get that Trudeau has a political incentive to both be seen to be helping Alberta, and to patting himself on the back that this is an environmental measure, but it’s deeply frustrating because it’s only a little over a year ago when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that companies, and in particular trustees in bankruptcy, can’t just offload these liabilities to the government to salvage the assets. (This, as the sector says that the measures aren’t good enough because it’s not targeted to their liquidity issues, and their boosters keep calling for a freeze to carbon pricing and environmental regulations, because of course they are.)

The province has made a lot of money by punting its environmental liabilities to the future. They didn’t properly ensure that these wells had securitized their remediation, because making companies pay upfront would hurt investment. And in the oilsands, they just trusted that the tailings ponds would act like regular mining tailings, and when they didn’t, they kept expanding and hoping that someone in the future would figure the problem out, and now they’ve got a giant problem on their hands, but hey, they needed to ensure the money flowed fast and immediately, which they then didn’t properly tax or charge sufficient royalties on, and now that the bill has come due, they’ve successfully ducked it and made sure the federal government pay it for them – all while shouting that they’ve paid for everyone else all this time so now we owe them (not true, and not how equalization works). Add to that, you have people like Elizabeth May saying that she opposed oil and gas subsidies but supports this kind of orphan well remediation in spite of the fact that it’s a giant subsidy, I can barely even. I’m an Albertan – I get that the sector is hurting, and yes, it’s hurt my own family, but I also get that it’s now a structural problem and that the boom days are never coming back because nobody has a time machine and can go back to stop the development of shale oil. Demanding the federal government bail them out – particularly after the province chose to put themselves in their current fiscal situation by refusing to properly tax their own wealthy and ensure a reasonable consumption tax because they instead chose to spend their oil resource revenues – just feels a bit rich.

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Roundup: Trying to blame the WHO

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Andrew Scheer was again out first yesterday morning to repeat his call for in-person sittings in the House of Commons (which Elizabeth May somehow claims is mere partisanship, which I don not grasp), before Scheer went off on tangents about the WHO, because apparently he thinks that following Trumpian logic is a winning plan. (The Conservatives on the Commons health committee have also been aggressively trying to “get answers” on misinformation from China laundered through the WHO).

Prime minister Justin Trudeau was up next for his daily presser, wherein he laid out plans to expand the CERB to those who make less than $1000 and seasonal workers, as well as those whose EI has run out, and promised wage top-ups for those essential workers who make less than $2500/month, but still no news on help for students and commercial rent (which one assumes is in partnership with the provinces). He also noted the assistance that the Canadian Forces as providing in Nunavut and in Northern Quebec. During the Q&A, Trudeau refused to get involved in the WHO debate, for what it’s worth.

Meanwhile, the issue of long-term care in Ontario was getting much more scrutiny, and it turns out that out of 626 facilities in the province, a mere nine got an inspection last year. Nine. Because the province moved to a “risk-based” system, which apparently means that there is only an investigation after a complaint is filed. So that’s totally fine, and one more sign about the complete mismanagement of the Ford government (that people seem to be forgetting when they praise Ford “stepping up” to the current pandemic challenge).

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Roundup: Long-term care and quarantine

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Andrew Scheer was out first this morning, saying that he was trying to get some kind of a deal with the government on how to bring parliament back next week as they are scheduled to, and that he wants in-person sittings of some variety to ensure ongoing accountability (and he’s right). But when asked about bringing his family on that flight when they weren’t planning on them being there (and apparently Senator Don Plett had to get a different flight because it was suddenly full with Scheer’s family), he brushed off said questions. He then spent the rest of the day raising “serious concerns” about the WHO and its recommendations (recall that Jason Kenney on Monday accused Dr. Theresa Tam of repeating talking points from the People’s Republic of China), because what the world needs right now is to hew to the Trumpian instincts to undermine international institutions.

Next up was prime minister Justin Trudeau for his daily presser, in which he announced that four planes full of N95 masks have arrived and are in the process of being validated and distributed, before he brought up $130 million of new funding for the northern territories, including more money for healthcare, for Nutrition North, for northern air carriers, and money for the CanNor development agency. He also noted that they were working to enhance the Canada Emergency Business Account programme and were looking into something about commercial rent (though that’s provincial jurisdiction, so not sure what the federal government could do). As if that weren’t enough, he also raised that they were strengthening some of the measures under the Quarantine Act, as well as boosting the capacity of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, particularly when it comes to ensuring there are more inspectors on the line. Oh, and he didn’t offer any apologies for his trip to Harrington Lake on the weekend, so there was also that. When asked about the issue of long-term care facilities (which is provincial jurisdiction), Trudeau did say they were working with the provinces to see about sending some additional funds to bolster salaries, so there’s also that.

Meanwhile, Vancouver’s city council tried to meet “virtually,” and here’s how that went down, in case anyone thinks it would actually go any better with 338 MPs in parliament.

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Roundup: Playing gotcha with the leaders

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Yesterday had no presser from prime minister Justin Trudeau, but did have a ministerial presser featuring Marie-Claude Bibeau and Deb Schulte. Bibeau laid out additional measures and funding for employers of temporary foreign workers in the agri-food sector so that they can properly quarantine those workers when they arrive, and eventually properly explained the measures taken with the arrivals that the Bloc lit their hair on fire about on Saturday (which the government could have done three days ago had they been more competent in their communications). Schulte spoke about the new federal guidelines for long-term care facilities, but because it’s provincial jurisdiction, they’re hoping the provinces implement said guidelines (but no, they don’t really have any levers to force them because of the constitutional division of powers).

Of course, all anyone could talk about today was the fact that Justin Trudeau *gasp* went to see his wife and kids at Harrington Lake (where they have been staying since Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s recovery) over the weekend, which people claim is in contravention to public health dictates. Erm, except that’s not really true because Harrington Lake is an official residence that is 20 minutes outside of Gatineau. It’s a gods damned suburb where people live year-round. It’s not cottage country where you have small populations and poor public health services that people are attempting to flee to and exposing the locals when they raid the area store on the way up. That was the behaviour that Public Health was warning against, but hey, let’s try to play gotcha.

And then there was Andrew Scheer, who decided to bring his wife and kids with him back to Ottawa on the government jet sent to pick him up for the Saturday sitting. It was supposed to be Elizabeth May, Carla Qualtrough and Scheer, where they could each physically distance on the plane, but with Scheer bringing his family (to spend the rest of the current pandemic period at Stornoway rather than in Regina, where they had been) at the last minute, and May and Qualtrough opted not to be dicks about saying no. (May and Qualtrough were flown back to BC after Saturday, for the record). It may say something about Scheer’s particular sense of entitlement, and that perhaps he should have made arrangements clearer beforehand so perhaps a different plane could have been sent, but the accusations between partisan camps over this is about as mature as we’ve come to expect during a global pandemic.

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Roundup: Disconnected speeches before swift passage

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The daily routine of our pandemic times got a bit of a shake-up this morning as the ministerial presser took place at 11:15 instead of the prime minister’s, and topics included questions on temporary foreign workers being quarantined (or not), and discussions with the provinces about taking action on long-term care facilities, which have been hit hardest by this pandemic.

Shortly thereafter, the skeleton parliament met for its emergency legislation deliberations, if we can call it that. Justin Trudeau led off, raising the history of Vimy Ridge, his own grandfather’s service of going to war while still serving as an MP, and talking about how we needed to protect the Greatest Generation who are now in these long-term care facilities, vulnerable to the pandemic. Andrew Scheer followed with his own address, raising the spectre of the size of the deficit before patting himself on the back for all of the suggestions he’s offered the government this package. The other leaders followed in turn, before the Commons resolved itself to committee of the whole to question ministers in a quasi-Question Period for a lengthy period (the only real news being that Carla Qualtrough stated that they were looking at how to ensure that seasonal workers would also be able to benefit from the CERB), followed by speeches which seemed terribly disconnected from the substance of the bill. In fact, when the speeches ended, and they passed the bill at all stages by unanimous consent, it could be quite noticeable that they didn’t actually debate the bill itself – merely the current pandemic situation.

https://twitter.com/AdamScotti/status/1249050364864856065

The bill then headed to the Senate, where the only minister that Senators grilled for a couple of solid hours was Bill Morneau and his senior associate deputy minister, again largely on the generalities and not the specifics of the bill. Once Morneau left, they adopted the bill at Second Reading and then moved to the speeches during Third Reading, and it seems to me that pretty much every senator present got their own turn, some of them more disconnected from the bill than others. Eventually it too passed, and went on for a swift royal assent. The Senate did come to an agreement on two committees to meet virtually to provide some oversight – now that they allow non-affiliated senators to sit on them – as well as agreed to strike a special committee later on to provide a definitive post mortem on the pandemic.

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Roundup: Framing models as data

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau started off by saying that the government had signed an agreement with Amazon Canada – and not Canada Post – to manage the distribution of personal protective equipment to the provinces and territories when it is received by the federal government, but one imagines that this also involves warehousing and logistics than just simply delivery. He also announced $100 million being diverted to help meet food insecurity needs, through Food Banks Canada, as well as a variety of other breakfast clubs and other food organizations. He also mentioned his teleconference with the other premiers and their devotion to data sharing and projections, and that they were working to verify the latest figures that were being put online. During the Q&A, he confirmed that Canadian Forces – in the form of Rangers – have been dispatched to the Nunavik region of Northern Quebec, and addressed the news that the American president had ordered 3M to stop sending N95 masks to Canada and other Latin American countries (3M’s president pushed back citing humanitarian concerns and retaliation), and Trudeau stated that he has warned the Americans not to block access to needed supplies – particularly as Canada has many supplies and healthcare workers the Americans need, such as the 1000 nurses who live in Windsor but work in Detroit. It does highlight the need for more domestic production of these masks as competition for procurement gets more intense globally.

And then, Ontario released its modelling of some potential COVID-19 morbidity scenarios in the province, and the media went crazy. Despite the fact that this modelling is not data and that they are mere possible scenarios that are used for planning purposes, it was framed as “data” and in the language of how many people “will die,” as though this was mathematical certainty (though a handful said “could,” as though it were any better). And lo, all of the headlines used both this framing and sensationalism, they buried the new restrictions that are being imposed in Ontario as a result. And when some of the doctors that were being interviewed about these projections, and those doctors pushed back that this wasn’t data, self-righteous journalists threw tantrums about how this was information the public had a right to know, and so on.

But here’s the thing – part of this is a transparent attempt by Doug Ford to justify his further crackdowns, which I get. (Thread from Scott Reid here for context). But at the same time, there is no nuance to reporting of these models, they are incorrectly framed, and it’s throwing a lot of big numbers and timeframes out there without sufficient context. It’s not only disaster porn, but I fear that it will not actually have the desired effect of scaring people into compliance with lockdown measures. Instead, I am reminded of the aphorism that a single death is a tragedy, but a thousand deaths is a statistic – and numbers like these (the wild range of 3000 to 15,000) will have the real possibility of becoming a statistic in people’s minds, which may do more to undermine the whole reason why this modelling was released in the first place. And that worries me more than anything else.

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Roundup: Data-sharing and demanding models

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For his morning presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau noted that he was planning a teleconference with the premiers that evening to talk about coordinating their efforts, and better data sharing. He also stated that they had received 1 million new N95 masks the night before, and that they were working to validate the 10 million other masts they got over the past several days and were distributing those to the provinces as well. He got more questions on modelling the pandemic, saying that it was still coming because the data wasn’t there yet, and said that those returning to Canada from abroad posted a “real risk” to the entire country if they didn’t follow the rules and immediately self-isolate.

During the ministerial briefing that followed, Patty Hajdu wouldn’t entertain questions on whether or not she trusted the data coming out of China, saying that they relied on WHO data, and dismissing some of those concerns as conspiracy theories, which had the pundit sphere in a tizzy the rest of the day. Mark Miller also said that they were considering requests from a couple of different First Nations about military field hospitals being set up in their regions, while more money for pandemic preparedness was flowing. Bill Morneau had a separate appearance before a teleconference of the Commons finance committee (which was a bit of a gong show), where he stated that they went with hard-and-fast rules for compensation that could mean that there are gaps in coverage because that was the fastest way to get compensation out the door. (Of course, he didn’t spell out the capacity challenges, which just leaves him vulnerable to more baseless criticism).

[Maclean’s has updated their Q&A on symptoms and where to get testing]

As for the debate over producing the modelling, we’re seeing some provinces promising to roll theirs out – Doug Ford promising it’ll be today – but I’m having a hard time trying to see what it’s going to do at this point that will be of any real help. I am very convinced that we don’t have enough good and consistent data right now (and there are several experts who say we don’t have enough to do proper modelling just yet), and if people want to see how bad it can get, just look at Italy or Spain. I also don’t trust in the capacity of the majority of my fellow journalists to interpret any of this modelling data anywhere near correctly, given that they have proven to be proudly innumerate already during this pandemic (and a good many of them can’t handle basic civic literacy when they cover politics), so I am largely convinced that they are demanding the models for the sake of easy narratives, such as a screaming headline about worst-case scenario death counts. (Seriously – I have been in this industry long enough to know that’s exactly what’s coming). And I also fail to see how it would offer any kind of reassurance to the public, especially as they can see the death counts in other countries as well as they could a headline about worst-case scenario modelling in Canada – add to that the additional confusion of the disputes over methodology that would follow. Models aren’t data, and according to one data analyst I know, no one will read the technical quotes associated with any released modelling, and it will serve as disaster porn – and she’s right. I mean, certain outlets who shall not be named relied on dial-a-quote outrage from certain familiar sources to bolster their case for demanding the numbers be released, in the face other outlets getting opinions from specialists who are saying it’s too soon to have good data on this. But maybe I’m just pessimistic.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1245825513072951297

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Roundup: A need to recall the House again

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The day began not with Justin Trudeau, but rather Andrew Scheer, who pre-emptively held a press conference to say that the emergency legislation passed last week wouldn’t cover the new wage subsidy, before he both took credit for things that I know for a fact he had nothing to do with, and demanded that the government cancel the increase in the federal carbon price (never mind that gasoline prices are at decade lows at the moment and the additional $10/tonne wouldn’t even be noticed) and that the CRA refund all GST and HST collected in the last six months.

When Trudeau held his own presser a short while later, he talked in large generalities about their three-point plan for the economy, with the CERB available as of Monday – and warned that people could get either the wage subsidy or the CERB, but not both – before saying that they were going to have to recall parliament again to pass yet more measures. (Reminder: I’ve been calling on Parliament to keep sitting as a skeleton crew this whole time). During the Q&A portion, Trudeau was again asked how long this was expected to last, to which Trudeau – and later his minsters – repeated that how long this lasts depends on everyone following directions and abiding by physical distancing (which apparently people are having difficulty with as Toronto is enacting even more measures to enforce it). At the ministerial press conference, Patty Hajdu stated that it looks like the federal stockpile for pandemics may not have been adequate in part because successive governments didn’t allocate enough funds to it – as said stockpile is now being distributed to provinces who are facing shortfalls in protective equipment while the government scrambles to source more of it both domestically and from abroad.

Bill Morneau and Mary Ng held their own presser with the details over the wage subsidy programme later in the afternoon, and said that it could be three to six weeks before this gets up and running (and it would have been nice if they could spell out the reasons why rather than just platitudes). The costs of this programme are also going to be very large, and you can bet that fuel calls for people to “restart the economy” sooner.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1245436895250632707

[If you’re following the mask debate, Dr. Theresa Tam outlined some clearer guidelines yesterday].

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