Tag Archives: Bank of Canada

Roundup: An unequivocal no to interfering in an extradition

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau once again praised the wage subsidy, and highlighted yet another business who had used it to great effect – part of his ongoing campaign to convince more businesses to take it up and re-hire their employees as the economic restart continues to ramp up. By way of announcements, he spoke of new resources being made available for people and businesses who had questions about the re-opening, and then spoke about a $100 million investment in the Merit Functional Foods plant in Winnipeg as part of the “Protein Supercluster,” and creating more plant-based foods in Canada. Trudeau also spoke about a $94 million investment that Minister Karina Gould would be announcing at the SheDecides Conference, which would go toward the health, and sexual and reproductive rights of vulnerable women around the world.

During the Q&A, he was asked about the situation of temporary foreign workers from Mexico, to which he said that they were working with source countries and business owners to ensure that there were proper protections in place, and warned that there would be consequences for those employers that failed their workers, as three have now died in Canada. On the subject of airlines’ pleas to reopen international travel, Trudeau said that they needed to be very careful about reopening it, otherwise we would see a new spike in cases as they are experiencing in some other countries who opened sooner and not as carefully as most of Canada has. And then there were a raft of questions on the fraught questions of the arbitrary detentions of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, and Chinese officials sniping at Trudeau to stop making “irresponsible” comments that link the case, even though they themselves have done so.

If there was anything newsworthy out of that was the fact that when asked if Trudeau would consider making a deal to halt the extradition in exchange for releasing the Two Michaels, Trudeau gave an unequivocal no, that he would not make any deal that would undermine our judicial system. When presented with the notion that Kovrig’s family sought a legal opinion to say that the minister could indeed interfere, Trudeau again poured cold water on that suggestion, again citing the need to keep our judicial independence in place. It’s worth remembering that Trudeau was part of a G7 announcement about governments making a commitment not to pay ransoms in order to protect their citizens from being the targets of kidnappings around the world, and hostage diplomacy is just that. (And for all of the smartasses over social media who said “He already interfered with the judiciary with SNC-Lavalin,” he did not interfere with the judiciary – the charge was that he tried to interfere with the prosecution, which was not the same thing, and I remain unconvinced that it was what actually happened, no matter some of the unsavoury things that did happen with the deferred prosecution agreement legislation).

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Roundup: The safety of being in fourth place

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Ah, the safety of being the third and fourth parties in the House of Commons, where nothing you say really matters! Case in point with both Yves-François Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh, who spent yesterday lambasting prime minister Justin Trudeau for not badmouthing Donald Trump in public – Blanchet calling Trudeau “spineless,” and Singh condemning Trudeau’s silence. Because there’s nothing like demanding that the leader of our country insult the thin-skinned and erratic leader of our closest neighbour and trading partner, whom we rely on for economic security and military protection. Yeah, poking that bear will have no consequences whatsoever! One expects this kind of thing from Blanchet, who never has to worry about ever being in power, but for Singh, it seems to further prove that he has no interest in even pretending like he has a shot at forming a government, so he’s going to simply grandstand (badly) and look as unserious as he possibly can. And it’s more than just these kinds of declarations – it’s the demands that pretend that massive systemic change can happen with the snap of a finger, or that the federal government can just reach into provincial jurisdiction willy-nilly and using the incantation Canada Health Act as though it’s a justification or a blueprint for a federal role that accidentally forgot the part where you need to negotiate with the provinces first, and assumes that they’ll gladly sign onto whatever programme is being offered to them with all of the strings attached. Real life doesn’t work like that – but apparently you don’t need to worry about real life when you’re the fourth party.

Shameless self-promotion alert:

I’ll be appearing (virtually) before the Procedure and House Affairs committee this morning to talk about “hybrid” sittings and remote voting for MPs. (Spoiler: I’m against them). The fun starts at 11 AM Eastern.

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Roundup: That 21-second pause

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Sometimes the news out of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily pressers is unexpected, and yesterday was no exception. After first acknowledging that he would be speaking more on the situation with anti-Black racism in the House of Commons later, Trudeau turned to the subject of the government’s efforts to procure more personal protective equipment and the industry retooling to supply it domestically in Canada. But none of this was the actual news. It was during the Q&A that, after a question on Hong Kong (Trudeau: We are very concerned because there are 300,000 Canadian citizens there), he was put on the spot about what Donald Trump is doing in the US, and what Trudeau’s silence in not denouncing it says. And then Trudeau paused. Gathering his thoughts, for twenty-one seconds, there was uncertainty as to what was going on in his mind, when he finally spoke about the “horror and consternation” of what was going on in the US – but he was very diplomatic and not calling out Trump on anything specifically. There is a relationship to manage there, especially during this global pandemic. When asked about Israel, Trudeau reiterated the support for a two-state solution and that he is “concerned” about annexation plans into Palestinian territory and that he told both prime ministers of that country (because there are now two) about it personally. He was also was asked about the MMIW Inquiry report and its finding of “genocide,” and Trudeau prevaricated somewhat, using the term “cultural genocide” before talking about the need to do better and work on the road to reconciliation, but wasn’t going to allow himself to be drawn into using other language.

A short while later in the Commons, Trudeau stood to give his speech on racism, and made sure that he had MP Greg Fergus and minister Ahmed Hussen in the frame behind him – because it’s always about optics. Nevertheless, he stated that he didn’t want to be another white politician lecturing about racism, and said that not being perfect is not an excuse for not doing anything, before he listed actions his government had taken in engaging the Black community, for what it’s worth.

Andrew Scheer gave a far more predictably milquetoast denunciation of racism, name-checking convenient names for his narrative along the way, like Lincoln Alexander and John Ware. But in his denunciation of racism – including anti-Asian racism and anti-Semitism along the way in light of a recently vandalized synagogue, he kept going on about peaceful protests over riots, and the importance of freedom, singling out economic and religious freedom. There was zero awareness from Scheer about structural racism, or self-awareness in how his party’s “tough-on-crime” fetishism contributes to over-policing at the heart of these protests.

Yves-François Blanchet was less equivocal than Scheer, going on about the anthropology of there being no such thing as race and that racism was about othering – but then stated that the Canadian and Quebec governments “weren’t racist” (erm, you do know what Bill 21 in Quebec was all about, right?) before saying that there may be “traces” that create systemic barriers. And then this shifted to a demand to process the claims of certain asylum seekers (because there’s nothing like the reliance on low-wage and untrained labour that is a direct beacon to the systemic barriers that these very minorities face) before citing that peaceful protests were legitimate and violent ones were not.

Jagmeet Singh kept saying that the government needs to make concrete action instead of making “pretty speeches,” and that the prime minister has the power to do things beyond words, demanding things like ending racial profiling, ending the over-policing of Black and Indigenous bodies, subsequent over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people, and the need for race-based data. But as Singh can’t even grandstand properly, when he was up to question Trudeau several minutes later in the special committee, he seemed to indicate that things like ending racial profiling could be done with the snap of a finger, and when he demanded that boil water advisories be lifted in First Nations communities, Trudeau reminded him that they are on schedule for doing just that.

Elizabeth May closed out the speeches by naming as many Black and Indigenous deaths at the hands of police that she could recall, before talking about the cyclical nature of these kinds of denunciations every few months, acknowledging her white privilege, denounced Trump, and called on the government to root out white supremacist groups as a terrorist threat, particularly within police forces in Canada.

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Roundup: Not the provinces’ cash cow

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Everything got off to an earlier start yesterday, beginning with the ministerial presser, during which Marc Miller announced another $650 million being allocated to Indigenous communities for healthcare, which would also include added income supports for those living on-reserve, as well as some $85 million to build new shelters for women on reserves. Marc Garneau also announced that the ban on cruise ship docking in Canadian waters was going to be extended to October 31st, which will impact the economies of these communities, but also limits potential vectors for the pandemic. When pressed about the issue of airline ticket refunds, Garneau reiterated the warning that the sector could fail if they were forced to refund all of the tickets, though later on, prime minister Justin Trudeau indicated that there were talks ongoing.

For his presser, Trudeau started off by talking about his teleconference with the premiers and spoke about sick leave being one of the items on the agenda, and it was later in the Q&A that he said that he was offering for the federal government to assume most of the responsibility for the costs, rather than putting it on business owners, but it sounds like some premiers remain rather cool to the idea. After reiterating the earlier Miller/Garneau announcement, Trudeau took questions, which included mention that he was trying to get premiers to agree to some modified orders at the Canada-US border that would allow family reunification, such as cases like the Canadian woman who was trying to get the American father of her unborn child into the country before she gave birth – but again, there are premiers who are not keen. After the questions, Trudeau then gave an unprompted statement on anti-Black racism as a result of what’s going on in the US – that there is a need to stand up as a society, that there needs to be more respect, and that we have work to do as well in Canada. He called on all Canadians to stand together in solidarity, as they know how deeply people are being affected by what we are seeing on the news.

Something else raised in Trudeau’s Q&A was a letter sent to him by five of his Toronto-area backbenchers, calling on him to lead the country in national standards on long-term care, and to press Ontario for a full public inquiry into what happened with the breakdown in care (which I maintain won’t tell us anything we don’t already know). Trudeau praised them for their efforts, and talked about the ongoing talks with provinces, but two of those MPs were on Power & Politics later in the day, and something that I was also glad to hear was Judy Sgro saying that while they wanted federal leadership, they both were respecting that this is provincial jurisdiction and they also didn’t want the provinces treating the federal government like a “cash cow” when you have premiers like Ford demanding more federal funds to fix their own long-term care mess. My own patience for provinces crying out for federal funds to fix the problems in their own jurisdiction is wearing mighty thin, particularly as most of those provinces have broad taxation powers at their disposal (though some of those provinces have less tax room available to them – Ontario, however, is not one of them). Premiers don’t want to have anything on their books and would rather it come from Ottawa’s, so that they don’t have to look like the bad guy when it comes to paying for their own programmes – never mind that there’s really only one taxpayer in the end.

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Roundup: Selling out parliament for a press release

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If there was any more sign of crass politicking than Jagmeet Singh starting the day by declaring that he would only agree to the government’s plans regarding continued special committee hearings in lieu of actual parliamentary sittings if the government ensured there was access to two weeks of paid sick leave available to Canadians, I’m not sure what else it could be. To predicate kneecapping the House of Commons in exchange for something you can count as a win is…quite something. Not quite the petulance of Andrew Scheer’s short-lived declaration that he would only wear a non-medical mask if regular House of Commons sittings resumed, but certainly brash.

To that end, Justin Trudeau held his daily presser and, in reference to the hipster jamboree at Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods park on Saturday that social media spent the rest of the weekend litigating, said that the variety of local rules can be confusing but people should pay attention to what their jurisdiction’s rules are, and to keep physical distancing. Then then announced that the commercial rent assistance programme was now accepting applications, and outlined that half of the provinces would accept applications on that day, listed the provinces that would accept applications Tuesday instead, and that those with ten or more tenants were to apply Wednesday. Trudeau then said that he had spoken to Singh, and assured him that he was in discussions with the provinces to ensure that people got access to those ten paid sick days per year, but in the Q&A, gave the credit to BC premier John Horgan. That didn’t stop Singh from putting out a self-congratulatory press release immediately, as though this were a done deal and not negotiations that were ongoing because it’s mostly provincial jurisdiction. Trudeau also defended his party’s use of the wage subsidy, but because he can’t answer these questions like a real human being, it was mostly a lot of platitudes and verbal pabulum.

In the wake of this, a bunch of my Twitter critics felt like Trudeau’s discussions with the province on this sick day policy was some kind of an own to my constant reminders that this is provincial jurisdiction, which is bizarre because nothing has been agreed to. Trudeau can’t force the provinces to do anything, and even pointed out that the mechanism to make this happen is complicated – particularly if the provinces are going to expect the federal government to pony up for those paid days instead of forcing employers to pay for it themselves. But again, this isn’t something Trudeau himself can do on his own – he can try to get the provinces on board, but that’s not always a winning proposition. Look at the dog’s breakfast that the commercial rent subsidy managed to be, which is because it’s what the provinces could agree to, while Trudeau takes the blame. And even if the provinces get on board with this paid sick leave, it’ll still be months before that comes to fruition, but hey, Singh got a press release out of it, so he can declare victory to his base.

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Roundup: A campaign of lies to demand Parliament’s return

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau opened with an announcement of some $75 million in additional support for off-reserve First Nations people, Métis and Inuit, primarily those in urban situations that require additional supports. He also said that provinces – most especially Ontario and Quebec – were being offered additional federal supports for testing and contact tracing as they open up their economies, which was later confirmed in the readout of the first ministers’ teleconference that took place later in the day. During the Q&A, Trudeau also referred to China not understanding the notion of what a rule of law country is after certain comments about the detention and determination of the extradition of Meng Wanzhou (and the BC court will make its determination next Wednesday).

Meanwhile, in the special COVID-19 committee, Conservative MPs engineered outrage by demanding the government answer questions on the Harrington Lake renovations, and when they were called out for the fact that the agreement between all parties was that the special committee’s ambit was on the pandemic, they tried to justify the question by saying that if the government was granted extraordinary spending powers, they needed to ensure that it wasn’t going to these renovations – which is disingenuous bullshit because the spending for those would have been approved of years ago. Nevertheless, they bundled their outrage clips and started putting shitposts around social media to claim that because we don’t have proper parliamentary sittings right now that they weren’t allowed to ask questions that the “government doesn’t approve of” – again, which is disingenuous bullshit. Those questions weren’t in the ambit of the committee, which is why they were objected to. I’m also incredibly pissed off that they are trying to make an issue out of these renovations, calling them “secret renovations” to “mansions for the prime minister’s enjoyment,” which is out of bounds. These are official residences, and every time they get weaponised like this in order to score political points, it means that we can’t maintain them properly. That’s the reason why 24 Sussex was allowed to turn into a crumbling shitpile, and yet here they are, carrying on the same kinds of accusations that led to this situation. They refuse to learn, and we all pay the price for it.

At the same time, I am exasperated by the fact that the Conservatives are now trying to use yet more lies and disingenuous bullshit to bolster their case to bring back regular sittings of a skeletal parliament. Nobody wants these sittings more than me, but the fact that they are trying to drum up fake outrage against Trudeau, claiming he is trying to permanently sideline parliament in favour of daily press conferences (where they falsely claim that he hand-picks the journalists asking questions), is really beyond the pale. But this is what the party has become under Andrew Scheer – a haven of liars who will say anything, no matter how outrageous, in order to try and score points. The fact that people saw through this and kept him from forming government should be a lesson, but no. They are barrelling ahead with this tactic, and it boggles the mind why they think this a winner for them. Poisoning the well hurts everyone in the end – most especially Parliament as an institution, which they suddenly claim they cherish and are trying to defend.

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Roundup: LEEFF details and mask recommendations

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As is becoming the norm on days when there is a special committee sitting, it was the ministers who were out first – specifically Bill Morneau, who was announcing more details for the Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF), and how that was going to work – including more of the attached conditions such as ensuring that there was some kind of beneficial arrangement for the government in the form of warrants, and the possibility of a government observer on boards of directors.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau was up next for his daily presser, wherein he repeated his pleas to employers to use the wage subsidy to re-hire their workers, and for commercial landlords to take advantage of the rent subsidy programme, which would begin taking applications on May 25th. He also said that more assistance for large retailers would be coming.

What made no sense was the Thing that journalists made of the fact that Trudeau has increasingly been seen with a non-medical mask in certain public situations, followed by Dr. Theresa Tam making an “official recommendation” that people wear such masks when physical distancing is difficult. Erm, except she’s been saying that for weeks now, so why this was such a big deal that journalists needed to play up and then dissect the “evolution” of her position is boggling. Nothing has changed – the message has always been that these masks won’t prevent you from contracting the virus, and that you still need to maintain physical distancing and proper hygiene (and more to the fact that these masks can instill a false sense of confidence, and that people are more likely to touch their faces more with them on). But hey, our de facto parental authority figure is telling us this “officially” now, so that obviously has some kind of psychic weight, or something. (Seriously, guys).

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Roundup: Pearl-clutching over fraud

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While he didn’t show up at the “virtual” special committee yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless held his daily presser, during which he announced that they were creating a $470 million programme to support fish harvesters, which would include grants for those businesses who needed a bridge, and EI application rules for those who would have to miss the season because it wasn’t safe. As well, there was another $100 million for an agriculture and food solutions programme through Farm Credit Canada. Trudeau also noted the upcoming long weekend, and said that as of June 1st, some national parks and historical sites would be re-opened to the public – provided the province they are in would allow it – and that there were new restrictions for pleasure craft, with the intention that they not be allowed to head to places where they could infect local populations, particularly in the North.

Meanwhile, the breathless pearl-clutching fraudulent CERB claimants continues unabated, as the National Post procured yet another government documents that allegedly says to grant it even to people who have quit their jobs or been fired with cause, which shouldn’t be allowed. But as Trudeau stated under questions after his presser, the goal was to ensure rapid delivery for the 99 percent of people who were claiming this benefit for legitimate reasons, and that if they had insisted on more robust checks at the beginning of the process, the money still wouldn’t be flowing. This of course hasn’t stopped some of the usual suspects from tweeting bullshit about how the programme is being abused, with zero evidence and using examples that could not actually work. But let’s create a moral panic about it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1260960640480407552

We also had some observers fanning themselves and reaching for their fainting couches when Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who chairs the finance committee, remarked to Bill Morneau at yesterday’s finance committee meeting, that he wanted a stronger statement from the government that they were going to deal with fraudulent cases. Imagine – an experienced backbencher taking a tough tone with his own party in government! Suffice to say, the message from this government has consistently been that if there is misconduct, it will be caught and dealt with at the appropriate time (and now is not that time). I’m not sure how much more explicit they can actually get, but maybe that’s just me.

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Roundup: Eliminating the staffer excuse

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The day got off to a slightly different start – the prime minster didn’t have a daily presser because he was off to CFB Trenton for the repatriation ceremony for the crew of the downed Canadian Forces Cyclone helicopter (which is a whole issue I plan to write more on in another place), and there were no announcements in the ministerial presser before the special COVID-19 committee met in the House of Commons chamber for more ministerial questions, followed by a take-note debate.

While the “virtual” special committee reconvenes today, I wanted to draw attention to this piece in the Hill Timesthat shows the impact these meetings are having on the support staff, and in particular the interpreters, who are burning out and suffering cognitive injuries as a result because these meetings are harder on them, when they’re already at a reduced capacity because many are stuck at home without childcare. Why this is particularly important is because leading up to these meetings, we were inundated with a bunch of chuckleheads and tech bros with a superiority complex who were going around shouting “Teach MPs how to Zoom!” and “Okay, Boomer,” and so on. Turns out that it’s more complex than that, and the people we can’t see are paying the price for it.

It’s also a sign of just how disingenuous the government was when they kept insisting that in-person sittings were going to expose all of these staffers in the West Block to potential exposure to COVID-19. But the problem is that even when the MPs aren’t there to meet, these staffers still need to be there to run the daily press conferences, and to run the virtual meetings, and no, they can’t do it from home. And if the workload is more difficult for some of them, like the interpreters, if the MPs are doing this “virtually” instead of having a smaller number of MPs sitting on a regular basis, then their justification is completely blown out of the water. There is no reason why they shouldn’t have proper skeletal sittings three days a week, and we now see that it would be better for these staffers than these “virtual” meetings are.

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Roundup: Supply councils and stalled approvals

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After a very welcome day off from daily pressers, prime minister Justin Trudeau was back at it on Sunday, in his weekend uniform – jeans, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a blazer – but no sweater because it was actually nice out in Ottawa for a change. And while some weekend pressers are merely greatest hits packages, this one had a few substantive announcements – $240 million for online health and mental health tools that people can access, $175 million for a Canadian company doing promising research using COVID-19 antibodies; and launching a “national supply council” for dealing with personal protective equipment – more of which was elaborated upon in the ministerial presser that followed – and a reminder that enhanced Canada Child Benefit payments were on the way. During the Q&A, Trudeau also reiterated that the promised legislation that would allow municipalities to further restrict handguns in their jurisdictions would be coming once Parliament returned to normal.

Something that Trudeau and Dr. Theresa Tam were asked about in their respective pressers were the news that Health Canada had ordered a pause on those Spartan Bioscience portable testing kits because while the tests themselves worked, it turns out that the swabs didn’t go deep enough into the nasal cavity to get good samples, so they risked giving false negatives. That becomes a setback that some provinces – and remote communities in particular – will definitely feel because they had already ordered thousands of those kits as part of their plans.

Meanwhile, I see that Jason Kenney is back making noises that the federal government isn’t doing enough for the oil and gas sector, and brings up the auto sector bailout of 2008-09 as a comparison of “unfair treatment.” He should be careful what he wishes for – I’m not sure he’s advocating for the same thing at all.

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