Tag Archives: Anita Anand

Roundup: Asking about Canadian LNG like it’s a free cookie

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Once again, CTV’s Vassy Kapelos asks a visiting European leader if they’d like Canadian LNG, and spins a whole story out of the fact that they say yes, while absolutely ignoring all of the many reasons why it’s never going to happen. This has happened with at least three leaders now, the latest being the president of Poland, who was visiting Canada last week (the taped interview aired over the weekend), and predictably, the story is making rounds with people insisting that Trudeau is wrong to say there’s no business case for it.

To wit: There is no ready supply of natural gas to be liquified on the East Coast, because they get it shipped from the north-eastern US. Blaine Higgs’ ambitions aside, nobody wants to be fracking in New Brunswick (not the First Nations, not the people who live in the region), and that would mean either paying even more to import American gas to liquefy, or build a pipeline from Alberta (and just as a reminder, Energy East was killed by the proponent because they didn’t have enough contracts to fill it and Keystone XL, and the latter was the surer bet at the time), and it costs money to ship gas across the country in a pipeline like that, which would increase the selling price. Then they would have to build a new export terminal to liquefy said gas, (there is one existing import terminal that could theoretically be converted), but all of this takes years, billions of dollars, and would need guaranteed operations for about 45 years to pay off, which is going to put them past the 2050 Net Zero date for a rapidly decarbonizing Europe to still want the LNG—which would be at a higher price than they can get it from Algeria or the Persian Gulf. That’s why there is no business case. There have been proposals to build terminals on the east coast before, and nobody in Europe wanted to sign a contract to make it a worthwhile investment to pursue. Hell, there are plenty of fully permitted projects on the west coast not moving ahead because nobody wants to sign contracts for the product.

But Kapelos and the CTV team keep ignoring all of these issues when they ask this question, which as one reply on Twitter stated, is like asking someone if they want a free cookie. The most the story says about the feasibility of east coast LNG is “There has been political debate for years around whether Canada could or should plan to export to European countries, as well.” That’s it. Seriously? This is malpractice at this point, and no, this is not because she or anyone is “in the pocket of Poilievre,” or anyone. It’s just lazy journalism, plain and simple. It’s not serving anyone, and frankly, is distracting from the actual issues.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones struck a hotel in Mykolaiv on the Black Sea, severely damaging it and local energy infrastructure, but fortunately there were no casualties. Another Russian oil refinery has suspended operations after a Ukrainian drone attack. While Ukraine waits on the arrival of more American aid, their forces have had to fall back from three more villages northwest of Avdiivka.

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Roundup: NSIRA spanks Global Affair’s intelligence program

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A long-delayed public release of NSIRA’s report into the activities of the Global Security Reporting Program—the “intelligence” arm of Global Affairs, which has diplomats openly engaging with persons of interest abroad—was finally released, and it’s making some waves. In particular, for a programme that isn’t actual covert intelligence gathering has some governance problems, with a lack of coherent policies or training that has led to some lines being blurred, which can make some countries believe this is an actual foreign intelligence service (it’s not, and we don’t have one).

So, with this in mind, here are four threads from some very reputable sources. Stephanie Carvin walks through the report, and breaks down its components, as well as the government’s responses.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1737569161042096138

Jessica Davis has a shorter walkthrough (with paragraph numbers!) about her own concerns about what she reads in it.

Leah West has a few legal observations about the report.

And Thomas Juneau gives a much more generous read, and places some of the GSRP’s work into better context.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed journalists’ questions about whether Ukraine is losing the war, but acknowledges challenges of being in a country under siege. Ukraine’s forces appear to be moving to a more defensive posture, likely because of the artillery shortage.

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Roundup: Morneau’s sore hindsight bias

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As he tries to rehabilitate his reputation after his book was largely ridiculed and lambasted, Bill Morneau is back out there asserting that the pandemic spending programmes were too generous, went on too long, and are one of the causes for high inflation. This is clearly hindsight bias—economist Stephen Gordon resurrected a couple of tweets to push back against these kinds of assertions because they ignore the gravity of the situation at the time, and just how many unknowns they were dealing with at the time. And I do recall that Morneau was proposing measures at the time that were clearly inadequate and were politically unsaleable, which he didn’t seem to understand and then got huffy when PMO override his judgment—likely for the best, because we wound up with the actual desirable outcome. Higher inflation was the good outcome scenario. The alternative was deflation that would have spiralled into a depression, which was what everyone worked to avoid. Morneau just continues to be sore that he was overridden, and possibly that people aren’t taking his post-political attempts at reputation rehabilitation more seriously.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1692258336815624347

Some additional data from Jennifer Robson:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces are claiming progress on the south-eastern front as they push toward the Sea of Azov, which would split Russia’s forces in the occupied south; there has been fierce fighting in the north-eastern front in the Kharkiv region. The defence ministry is telling military-aged citizens to update their data at enlistment offices and to “overcome their fear.” The US has approved sending F-16s from Denmark and the Netherlands to Ukraine, once their pilots are fully trained—probably early in 2024. Meanwhile, Russia claims that two of their warships repelled drone attacks near occupied Crimea, and that a drone attack damaged a building at the centre of Moscow.

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Roundup: Promising a spending cut—for real this time!

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention, but word has come down that new Treasury Board president Anita Anand will be tasking other ministers to find $15.4 billion in spending cuts with a deadline of October 2nd, and they really mean it this time. For realsies. The Liberals have been promising programme spending reviews for years now, but haven’t seemed to show any progress on them, or at least not in any public or transparent way, and that’s generally a problem for any government, and particularly one who has been in power for as long as this one has. Anand’s expertise is in governance, so she might have a chance to pull this off, but the civil service has fought back against Treasury Board presidents trying to make reforms—Scott Brison tried to reform the Estimates process and bring it back into line with the budget cycle, and he lost that battle, and it doesn’t look like any of his successors have even tried since. The other thing here is that $15.2 billion is going to be hard to justify if the military is excluded, but can they actually make cuts (setting aside the lapsed funding they can’t spend because of capacity issues)?

The reaction has pretty much been predictable—public sector unions freaking out, Jagmeet Singh concern trolling that this means “essential services” will be cut, and Pierre Poilievre says the Liberals can’t be trusted to make cuts. (Erm, you remember the Chrétien-Martin era, right?) But for some more practical thinking, here’s Jennifer Robson, who teaches public administration:

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1691613225677144349

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have struck Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine, which is far from the fighting, including a factory in Lutsk. In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian drones have been spotted heading for the Izmail port on the Danube River, which threatens more grain shipments. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia to meet troops there. Meanwhile, farmers in Ukraine are facing the prospect of rock-bottom grain prices if they can’t ship it, which means it’s worth more to store than to sell.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1691510365304102915

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1691366868760829953

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Roundup: Smith can’t get her story or timeline straight

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Danielle Smith took to the microphones yesterday to thump her chest about the proposed clean electricity regulations, but what wound up happening was a series of wrong facts about her government’s “pause” on approvals for new clean electricity projects. Smith claims that the moratorium came at the request of the Alberta Utilities Commission and the Alberta Electric System Operator, except neither requested it, the timelines don’t add up, and it looks a lot like Smith’s government has been going out of their way to screw with clean energy stakeholders.

Receipts are all below.

Smith also refused to say whether our record wildfire season across the country is related to climate change, but insisted that most of the fires in her province were set by humans. That’s also a lie, but that’s Smith’s modus operandi.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched a large-scale air attack against western Ukraine including the city of Lviv, which was the largest attack on the city since the start of the war. There were missile and drone strikes against Odessa which wounded three in the early hours of Monday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops near the eastern front line yesterday.

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Roundup: The committee goes after McKinsey

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The Commons’ government operations committee met and, as expected, launched a study into those McKinsey contracts, but because the Liberals decided to be tricksey about it, they got consent to amend the terms so they’re going to review contracts going back to 2011, which means they’ll also be reviewing Conservative-era contracts. But it’s all pretty stupid because McKinsey does very little in the way of government contracts overall (especially compared to a number of other big firms), and this is just about politics and the Conservatives trying to accuse McKinsey of being a “Liberal-friendly firm” because of Dominic Barton, not to mention the fact that McKinsey has had a lot of bad press of late. But this doesn’t touch the overall issue of use of outside consultants by government, and is mostly going to be about showboating, because why do actual valuable work in committee when you can spend all of your time scoring partisan points.

With that in mind, I will point you to my most recent YouTube episode, where Carleton university professor Jennifer Robson and I discuss the rise of the so-called “shadow public service,” and it’s a lot more nuanced than you think. Additional context from Robson below:

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 330:

The major news out of Ukraine was a helicopter crash, killing the country’s interior minister, senior staffers, and one child when it crashed into a kindergarten in a suburb of Kyiv. What we know and don’t know about the crash can be found here, but there is no indication yet if it was downed by Russian missiles. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency is placing teams in all four of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of accidents as the fighting carries on.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1615719966820507684

 

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Roundup: End of the 2022 fall sitting

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Yesterday was the last sitting day of 2022 for the House of Commons, and as is common at this time of year, everyone is cranky and ready to go home and have a nap, and this year is no different. This being said, Question Period has been pretty sedate overall the past few weeks, and there have been pre-Xmas QPs in years past that were rancorous, and we haven’t had that. Nevertheless, the government is in definite need of time to go regroup after the way they utterly ballsed-up their own gun control legislation, as well as some of the other problems with bills like their broadcasting and online news legislation. Hopefully some time away will help them get their priorities straight, and to fix the mistakes they made by either being too clever by half, or by sheer incompetence (and sometimes it’s a tossup as to what the problem was indeed).

I will note that there was an outcry over Twitter from members of the disability community that the Canada Disability Benefit legislation didn’t pass before they rose, and an NDP MP tried to pass a motion to give emergency funds in the interim, as though that were remotely feasibly and wouldn’t result in provinces clawing back their own meagre benefits. (Seriously, CERB was not magic.) The thing that needs to be remembered is that the CDB bill is just a framework—even if it passed yesterday, it wouldn’t pass the Senate in time, and when it does pass, it needs to go through a massive regulatory process to fill in the benefits, which also needs to be done with provincial negotiations so that we don’t wind up in a situation where provinces either claw-back benefits or funding so that these people are worse off than they were before, or where things wind up in a situation where other supports are withdrawn because they were means-tested and the federal benefit moves them out of reach of those thresholds, which again, will disadvantage those who need it. None of this is happening overnight, and it’s a process. So frankly, the fact that the bill didn’t pass before Xmas this year is not surprising, and wouldn’t have an immediate impact in any case.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 295:

Ukrainian authorities say that they intercepted and destroyed thirteen explosive-laden drones headed for Kyiv yesterday, but the wreckage still damaged five buildings. Meanwhile, Russia has said there will be no Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine, which isn’t surprising (though the only thing even less surprising would be them agreeing to it and then reneging). In the meantime, they have shelled the regional administrative centre in Kherson, because.

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Roundup: Supply cycle reaches its peak

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We’re now in day one-hundred-and-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has nearly seized the entirely of Luhansk, one of the two main Donbas regions. Thus far, Russia has turned over 210 bodies from fighters in the steel plant in Mariupol, exchanging them for Russian bodies.

Here is the tale of a fifteen-year-old Ukrainian boy who helped destroy an advancing Russian column by using a drone and alerting the Ukrainian forces of where to aim their artillery. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been trying to get its grain to markets by other means than by ship, but it is being beset by logistical problems, as their silos are full and a new planting season is already underway. Even if they could get their ships out of port, it will take at least a month or two to de-mine the corridors these ships travel.

https://twitter.com/UKRinCAN/status/1534287413304037376

Closer to home, it was the final day of the Supply cycle yesterday, meaning that the Conservatives got their last Supply Day, and then the House passed the Supplementary Estimates, which ensures that departments have money to function, and that it’s more aligned with the budget, because we have a mis-match between the budget cycle and the Estimates cycle that has grown over the past few decades, and when Scott Brison tried to align them when he was at Treasury Board, not only did the civil service resist, but the opposition accused him of trying to create a “slush fund” when he was trying to allocate funds to better align the Estimates and budget, and certain proposed programmes didn’t have their submissions delivered in time. Suffice to say, Brison tried, and when he failed, the government seems to have given up on fixing this very obvious problem that goes to the heart of why Parliament exists in the first place. Suffice to say, now that the Estimates are passed, the House of Commons could theoretically rise at any point. They likely will wait until at least the end of this week so that they can get the budget implementation bill passed, as well as Bill C-5 on mandatory minimums, but considering the filibusters or other dilatory motions going on around the broadcasting bill, the official languages bill, and the gun control bill, I would not be surprised if the House Leader decides to just go home a few days early and let everyone cool down over the summer.

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Roundup: A middle power and a convenor

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We are on day twenty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the shelling and air strikes against civilian targets continue—an apartment building in Kyiv, a theatre where children were sheltering in Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the US Congress yesterday, invoking Pearl Harbour and 9/11 as part of his demand to close the sky” (which isn’t going to happen), and added that if America can’t do that, then to at least give Ukraine the planes so they can do it themselves. That was obviously a demand he couldn’t make of Canada (no, seriously—third-hand CF-18s would not be of much use to them), so we’ll see if that gets him any further aid from the US—hours after his address, Joe Biden signed an order authorising another $800 million worth of lethal aid, including anti-aircraft systems, so that presentation may have done its job.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1504186533791870984

Meanwhile, closer to home, Mélanie Joly’s comments that Canada isn’t a military power, but a middle power whose strength is convening to make sure diplomacy happens and convincing other countries to do more is rubbing a bunch of former military leaders the wrong way. We do contribute militarily, oftentimes more so than other allies who meet the stated NATO spending targets (which is one more reason why those targets are not a great measurement of anything), though our ability to do more is being constrained. That’s one reason why I’m getting mighty tired of the number of articles and op-eds over the last few days calling for more spending, while none of them address the current capacity constraints, particularly around recruiting.

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Roundup: Questions about Putin’s motives

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It’s now day twelve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it appears to remain fairly stalled, but shelling continues. There had apparently been an agreement with Russia for a ceasefire to allow the evacuation of Mariupol, which they did not then live up to, making civilian evacuations all the more difficult in the area. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy worries that Odessa will be the next city to be targeted. And because Ukraine is considered Europe’s breadbasket, this is going to drive up the price of grain, further fuelling inflation, and there seems to be little idea of how this conflict could end considering where we are at currently.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1500103479687360520

Something else we’ve seen over the weekend are a number of analyses of what Putin might have been thinking when he made the decision to invade. While I would recommend you read this post from Dan Gardner, there is also this thread by a former Russian foreign minister which also sheds a bit of insight (not fully replicated below, but just some key highlights).

On a related note to this conflict is the hope or at least speculation that this will mean that we’ll finally be serious about our defence spending in this country, but that relies on some poor assumptions, one of which is that the current government hasn’t been spending. They have, and they can’t actually spend any more because of capacity constraints within the Forces, not only in terms of our fairly broken procurement process, but mostly because they simply don’t have enough personnel. We have a major recruitment shortfall, and that severely limits their ability to actually spend their budgets. But let’s hope this doesn’t derail the efforts to fix the culture within the Forces that is proving a detriment to recruitment and retention, because you know there will be voices calling for it.

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