Tag Archives: Appointments

Roundup: Atwood on authoritarianism

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For a change, I’m not going to give you much in the way of musings, but rather to exhort you to watch this short video, narrated by Margaret Atwood, about how easy it can be for democracy to slip into authoritarianism from either the left of the right, because each has their own motivations for doing so. Knowing their tactics is one effective way of stopping them, because it robs them of their rhetorical power and punch. We need more of this, not less, as things in the Western world get increasingly pulled into the orbits of those justifying authoritarianism, or “illiberal democracy” as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán likes to describe it as. These same actors are on the move here in Canada as well, and we need to shine a light on them and their tactics.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have hit Kyiv and Kharkiv early Tuesday morning, killing at least three. Poland’s new prime minister visited Kyiv to meet with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and help smooth over the issue of Polish truckers and farmers blockading border crossings. Zelenskyy also said he is looking to make changes to the country’s constitution to allow for dual citizenships, except for those living in “aggressor countries.”

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1749686187516739639

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Roundup: MPP pay freezes serve no one

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There was a piece in the Star yesterday about how MPPs in Ontario have had their salaries frozen since 2008, with no plans to lift it anytime soon. This is the kind of thing that populist rhetoric engenders, and it’s terrible for the state of our politics. While nobody is in politics to get rich, particularly in Canada, we are pretty miserly about what we want to pay our elected officials, and every time there is some kind of economic downturn, we immediately demand that they either freeze or cut their salaries to “set an example” (which is ridiculous because I have yet to see any senior executives in the private sector freeze or cut their pay in response to bad economic times—they get further bonuses, especially if they manage to reduce payroll during said tough times).

It cannot be understated that we underpay our elected officials, particularly at the provincial and federal levels, for jobs that are fairly 24/7 in most instances—especially in the era of social media where they are expected to perform at all hours of the day and night, and where they can’t go to the store without being expected to be “on” and engaging with their constituents. And in a lot of cases, people take a pay cut to become an elected official, particularly if they are doctors or lawyers. We say we want to attract the best, but the longer this kind of thing goes on, the more it will only attract those who are already wealthy and can live with the pay cut. Oh, and Ontario killed their pensions for MPPs decades ago, so on top of being underpaid, they don’t get a pension out of it either, which just makes it all the worse proposition for someone.

Nevertheless, we already have the astroturfers at the so-called “Canadian Taxpayers Federation” griping that Toronto City Council and the mayor are getting a modest pay rise this year, and because legacy media laps up everything they put out, this feeds the hairshirt parsimony and cheap outrage that makes us look as petty and parochial as our worst instincts tend to be. (Tall poppy syndrome is absolutely one of our national neuroses). This isn’t good for democracy, but nobody wants to make that case, which is why we’re in the situation we’re in.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles hit an apartment building and a medical centre in Kharkiv early Wednesday; Russia claims it was precision-targeting a building housing “foreign fighters” that included French mercenaries. Ukrainian forces also downed19 out of 20 drones targeting Odesa. The fighting has intensified near Bakhmut, as Russian forces are making more offensive assaults.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1747574419994648962

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Roundup: No need to consult and launder accountability

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NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson tweeted her outrage at the US/UK air strikes against the Houthis yesterday, and Canada’s participation therein (solely in a planning capacity and not contributing any assets), but in her outrage, she decried that Parliament was not consulted before Canadian participation.

This is wrong. Parliament shouldn’t be consulted because it’s not Parliament’s decision.

This kind of decision is a Crown prerogative, and that’s actually a good thing for accountability, because that is the role that the House of Commons should be playing on these decisions—holding the government to account. That’s the whole point of Parliament. MPs don’t govern—they hold to account those who do. And it’s important that we don’t have MPs voting on these kinds of decisions because that launders the accountability. In other words, if the House of Commons votes on military actions, then if things go wrong, they can’t hold the government to account for them because the government can turn around and say “You voted for this, it’s your responsibility, not ours.” That’s how our Parliament is structured, and why it works the way it does.

Oh, but you’ll say. There have been votes in the past! There have been, and they have largely been done for crass political calculations, particularly to divide opposition parties. Case in point was the extension of the Afghanistan mission, which Stephen Harper put to a vote specifically for the purpose of dividing the Liberals in opposition. It’s not how things are supposed to work. The government may announce a deployment or a mission in the House of Commons, and there might be a take-note debate on it, but there shouldn’t be a vote. If the opposition tries to force on as part of a Supply Day motion, as is their right, then it’s non-binding and is explicitly a political ploy, which makes it more transparent than a government’s attempt to launder accountability. And in this particular case, the fact that two or three Canadians are assisting in planning is hardly something that requires debate in the Commons.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine’s ground forces commander says they need more aircraft to make a difference in pushing back Russian forces. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak was in Kyiv to announce a new tranche of aid, and to address Ukraine’s parliament. A Ukrainian presidential aide says that the amended mobilization bill is expected to pass within days.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1745622690759606541

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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: Making excuses for the Ukraine votes

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You will have seen in Question Period yesterday, and over social media last night, the Conservatives are starting to backtrack juts at tiny bit on Ukraine, but it all rings pretty hollow. In QP, the only tangible thing that Pierre Poilievre could point to their supporting Ukraine was that they called for lethal aid to be sent over before the invasion began (whereas the federal government held off until the invasion happened, and then suddenly started sending it). The rest were all non sequiturs that dated to the Harper era.

Later in the evening, Michael Chong listed a bunch of historical things Conservatives have done to support Ukraine, but concluded that they couldn’t support the free trade agreement because of carbon pricing. Yes, the same Michael Chong for whom carbon pricing was the centrepiece of his leadership campaign. It’s horseshit and Chong knows it, but he sold out his morals, ethics, and credibility long ago to curry favour with the party, and here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Wednesday missile attack on Kyiv has upped its casualty total to 53 injuries, including several children, but fortunately no deaths. Ukraine’s largest mobile carrier says they are restoring voice services after the Russian-linked cyberattack that crippled their operations.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1734886178149503279

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Roundup: The “watered down” oil and gas emissions cap

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The federal government unveiled their oil and gas emissions cap while at COP28, and the predictable reactions happened—the Greens, Bloc and NDP decried it as being too weak and watered down (never mind that there are recent court decisions that the government has to consider when it comes to just how far they can go); Danielle Smith and Scott Moe were performatively angry, even though it pretty much aligns with Alberta’s existing targets; and the oil and gas lobby decried how much money this was going to lose them. Economists point out that this undermines the carbon pricing system even further.

The cap is only on the pollution, not the production, because that would be provincial jurisdiction, so theoretically these companies could continue to increase production if they better control and capture emissions. (Also, refinery emissions are not in these because that’s part of the clean fuel standard). There is also a cap-and-trade system attached to this emissions cap, so that if a facility goes over their targets, they can buy offsets from a company below their cap, as well as pay into a decarbonisation fund.

Now we wait for the inevitable court challenges, and those dragging their feet to comply because they hope that the polls stay true and that Poilievre will form government in two years and they can ignore all of this then, as though climate change isn’t still the biggest threat to our lives, well, ever.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the Danube River port infrastructure once again, killing a driver and damaging grain infrastructure. Ukrainians are starting to use rail to bypass the blockade by Polish trucks at their border. And the Ukrainian government has come to an agreement with two American firms to jointly manufacture 155 mm shells in Ukraine, but it could be two or three years before that production can come on line.

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Roundup: Speaker Fergus is in trouble

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The incident over the weekend where Speaker Greg Fergus appeared in a video at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention, in his robes, in his official office, blew up in the House of Commons today, and it wasn’t wholly unexpected. Fergus led off the day with an apology and a promise to be more careful in the future, but also an insistence that this was a personal message to outgoing interim provincial Liberal leader John Fraser, for whom he las a long-standing friendship, and non-partisan.

This didn’t mollify the Conservatives, who immediately launched into a point of privilege, led by Andrew Scheer, while the Bloc immediately decided that Fergus needs to resign over this, while the Conservatives also came around to this demand. The NDP, for their part, said that this needs to go to a committee for study, but all the while, Fergus recused himself from this discussion (as well he should have, which as something that Anthony Rota didn’t do after his particular incident), but the Deputy Speaker, Chris d’Entrement, indulged. It was quite clear that this was really more of a dilatory tactic from the Conservatives, who put up speaker after speaker to this point, for hours on end, which again, d’Entrement indulged when he shouldn’t have. But this is what they’re doing at this time of year, to run out the clock, like they do at the end of every sitting, and this was just today’s excuse rather than insisting that they really, really needed to debate a three-line committee report from eighteen months ago.

A couple of observations here:

  1. This wasn’t necessarily a breach of non-partisanship because this was at a provincial and not a federal event. Scheer tried to use the analogy of an NHL referee giving a pep talk in on team’s dressing room while in uniform, but that doesn’t hold—this would be an NHL referee giving a note of congratulations to someone in the OHL. But Scheer is a serial liar, so of course he’s going to turn out a work of fiction on this.
  2. Fergus should have known better, and while Fraser is trying to take the blame for this, Fergus should have had better judgment than to appear in his robes, in his official office, regardless of the circumstances. As a friend of mine noted, the Liberals can’t seem to help themselves with this kind of thing, and Fergus has been a little too proud of his new post and to be showing off his robes at every opportunity, and that’s going to get him in trouble. Well, more than he already is. Did he learn nothing from the fact that Rota was a genial idiot using his position to pose for photos in his uniform at every opportunity, and it led to his downfall? Seriously.
  3. If people want to get precious about what is and isn’t non-partisan for a Speaker, Rota would be making government funding announcement in his riding all the time, which he shouldn’t have done because he’s not a minister, and he’s the Speaker and shouldn’t have been there for them. And yet, nobody said boo about this practice, which they really should have.

Bottom line is I don’t think Fergus should have to resign over this, but man oh man, what terrible judgment so early in his time in that office.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they have successfully attacked oil depots in Russian-occupied Luhansk, while the deputy commander of Russia’s 14th Army Corps was killed in fighting in Ukraine. The death toll from the strike on the eastern town of Novohrodivka has risen after more bodies were found in the rubble of a residential building.

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Roundup: A focus on heat pumps

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There has been a lot of attention paid to the subject of heat pumps and just what they are over the past few days in light of the government’s “pause” on carbon prices on heating oil in a bid to give people more time to make the conversion, particularly in places like Atlantic Canada. So what are they and why is the government subsidising the transition, going so far as to make them free for low-income households (in provinces where they have an agreement with the provincial government)? The Canadian Press has an explainer on what they are for starters.

There is an issue that the detractors keep raising which is that in particularly cold weather they may be insufficient and a secondary heat source would be necessary. In many places, they use electric heat as that secondary source, particularly given the simultaneous push toward clean electricity generation in this country (some eighty percent already comes from non-emitting sources). We should take heed that Nordic countries, which also have very cold winters, have been making the move to heat pumps for a while now, and the newer models can deal with far colder weather than earlier models, but that doesn’t mean that the transition doesn’t have complications.

https://twitter.com/robtpublic/status/1719579403427213557

You can bet Scott Moe and others will be concern trolling on this, and some of the criticisms do have merit, but it will become a real task to sort out just what is legitimate criticism, and what is being stated in bad faith (because look where it’s coming from). By the same token, the government shouldn’t oversimplify things here, or the scope of the challenge that this conversion may present itself to people who will need more assistance in navigating the other government retrofit programmes that can help them with that transition.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian drone attack hit an oil refinery in the central Kremenchuk region, while Russia also dropped explosives on the Black Sea shipping channels that have been used to transport grain. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief says they are entering into a static and attritional phase of the war, and they need new capabilities including more air power if they want to break out of it. Since the start of the war, more than 260 civilians have died from stepping on landmines, which is more of the lasting damage that invasion like Russia’s leaves behind.

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Roundup: A primer on inflation calculation

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Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem testified at the Commons finance committee earlier in the week, and a whole lot of people, including a certain “Food Professor” charlatan and numerous Conservative MPs, demonstrated that they don’t understand math or inflation as they all misconstrued the numbers that Macklem gave. And they’re the same number he has given before—that the carbon price has had a 0.15% effect on inflation, and if you removed it, going from $65/tonne to 0, it would have a temporary effect of reducing inflation by 0.6%.

A whole bunch of people–said charlatan, those MPs—insisted that because 0.6% is 16 percent of the 3.8% of headline inflation, that it means that the carbon price is responsible for 16% of inflation, which is wrong and not how inflation is calculated. Removing it wouldn’t actually mean inflation would go from 3.8% to 3.2% because the carbon price is not driving it. Energy and food prices are doing a lot of the driving there (and food prices are being hugely affected by climate change), and even if it did move to 3.2%, the Bank isn’t going to start lowering interest rates until it reaches the two percent target. Essentially, you’d be killing the carbon price and undoing the work it’s doing to lower emissions on the basis of a bad lie that it has made life unaffordable.

Meanwhile, here’s economist Stephen Gordon breaking down how inflation is calculated, with the inevitable conclusion that the carbon price is just noise—it’s not driving inflation, and it’s better to focus on the things that are.

A threat to democracy

A bunch of people got the vapours yesterday when Mark Miller called Pierre Poilievre a threat to democracy. Apparently these same people have convenient amnesia, or wishful thinking that he’s only kidding in what he’s doing and saying, because nobody learned a gods damned lesson from the Trump years.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While rallying Ukrainian troops, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy counselled patience and not to expect instant success (the latter comment directed primarily toward Western allies). A UN report says that 40 percent of Ukrainians need humanitarian support as a result of the conditions brought about by Russia’s invasion.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1719348496640200777

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Roundup: A “pause” on carbon prices that hands Poilievre a victory

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday afternoon that the federal government would be implementing a “pause” for three years on the carbon price on home heating oil, predominantly used in Atlantic Canada, because he’s in some serious electoral trouble in the region. He also said that enriched carbon price rebates for rural dwellers would be on the way, as well as more incentives for people to switch to heat pumps. The problem? This undermines the whole carbon price scheme, ensures that it no longer is in compliance with the rules that they established, and it hands a propaganda victory to the Conservatives who are crowing that this “proves” that the price is making life unaffordable, and that they’ll kill it outright.

This also handed ammunition to Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, who will now be demanding that natural gas for heating be exempted, because now the programme is explicitly unfair. They’re not wrong, even if they’re acting entirely in bad faith over it. The NDP have joined in, also insisting that all home heating should be exempt from the price, which further undermines it. And you’d better believe that there are problems around the implementation of the heat pump programme, particularly how it rolls out to low-income households who need it the most.

The most galling thing of all, however, is that this is a victory for Irving Oil (and enabled by the provincial price regulators). They deceptively increased prices on their home heating oil and said this was for the “clean fuel standard,” which is bullshit. That standard is not a price—it’s an emissions standard that comes into place gradually, and any increased costs would be what the refineries need to do to meet those standards. This, however, wasn’t well communicated by the government, and of course the narrative got swallowed by the Conservatives calling it “Carbon Tax 2” and a poorly done report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer who framed this like it was a price, and so Irving was able to act in the way it did. And because it’s Irving, and they are more powerful than any of the provincial governments in Atlantic Canada (which is an enormous problem in a democracy), nobody challenged them on this deceptive price increase, and they successfully jammed the federal government into undermining the carbon price, so now it can be picked away at until it’s well and truly dead. Well done, everyone. You’ve just screwed yourselves, your credibility, and ultimately the planet. Slow clap.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Wednesday’s drone attack near the nuclear power plant in Khmelnitskyi region was likely targeted. Ukrainian officials say the Black Sea corridor is working, particularly now that they’ve chased away the Russian Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. Ukrainian businesses are preparing for the possibility of another winter of attacks on the power grid.

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