Tag Archives: Border

Roundup: Some of the misconceptions around C-10

Posted on by

The other day, I made a somewhat snarky comment over Twitter in response to an op-ed in The Line, because people are still making stuff up about Bill C-10. Like, out of whole cloth, complete fiction, because they do not grasp the basic mechanics of regulation in this country.

So, with this in mind, here are a few reminders. Start by re-reading my piece in National Magazine about the bill. Individual content uploaders are not being regulated – only the platforms themselves. The CRTC is not going to takedown YouTube content, and it’s not going to regulate news. If it regulates Facebook, it’s not regulating the algorithm of timelines – it’s only regulating if Facebook is acting like a broadcaster of scripted content, or when they livestream baseball games (which they have done). The reason why YouTube as a platform, for example, is being targeted is because it is the largest music streaming platform in the world, and this is why they want to bring it into the ambit of CanCon regulations, governing both discoverability (so that the algorithm shows more Canadian artists in suggested playlists), and contributing financially to the system that helps provide grants and royalties for Canadian artists. People keep mentioning Instagram and TikTok, but they’re not really broadcasting platforms.

So how does the CRTC determine what counts as CanCon? Well, they have a formula that assigns points to it, and 6/10 or 8/10 points gets particular CanCon status. These are all determined by regulations under the Broadcasting Act. Remember that legislation is the framework and policy direction – the nitty-gritty rules get determined by regulation, and it follows a process of development that involves stakeholder engagement and consultation, and is done at the bureaucratic level. It’s not Cabinet pulling rules out of their asses, nor should it be. You don’t want Cabinet to be putting its thumb on the scale, which is why there is an arm’s length regulatory body, being the CRTC. And it’s not just the cabal of commissioners who are making these regulations either, in spite of what certain people are claiming.

https://twitter.com/G_Gallant/status/1395427604107300867

This brings me to my next point – the very notion that the CRTC is going to police the whole of social media is completely crackers on the face of it. They barely have enough resources to do their existing job (and if you listen to some of the reasoning around this week’s telecom decision, they seem to think they can’t handle doing the work of wholesale internet prices). If you think they’re going to somehow hire an army of bureaucrats to police your tweets, you should be certifiable.

Now, this isn’t to say that C-10 is without problems, because they are there. For one, the Broadcasting Act may be the wrong vehicle for this, as it was about regulating the limited bandwidth for TV and radio. It will be on platforms to adjust their algorithms to make CanCon more discoverable, which is going to be the high-level work, but there are particular concerns around meeting the objectives under the Act, which involve things like “safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada,” and whether these platforms will moderate content to try and fit those objectives, and that moderation will likely involve the use of AI, which is where we have particular concerns. And those are legitimate concerns, but they have nothing to do with the Orwellian picture being painted of moderated tweets, and newsfeeds being monkeyed with, or “takedown notices.” The level of complete hysteria around this bill, rooted in a complete ignorance of how regulatory bodies work – and a great deal of partisan disinformation – is making the debate around this bill utterly loony (at least in English Canada). Yes, it’s complicated, but don’t fall for easy narratives.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A flawed way to fix the CRA’s mistakes

Posted on by

Remember the issue with self-employed Canadians applying for CERB, and being told they were eligible for gross income only to later be told that no, it was really net, and they may have to repay it? And then the government came to the realization that they were going to find themselves in serious trouble (such as a class action lawsuit) if they didn’t change course, and let those CERB payments go ahead? Well, for the people who made repayments, they can get that money back – but they have to apply for it. And that becomes the real trick.

With that in mind, here is Jennifer Robson raising some concerns with the whole thing, because CRA is not doing this very well. And that could be a problem for some of the people this is supposed to have been helping in the first place.

Continue reading →

QP: Confusing rapid and PCR tests

Posted on by

For a Thursday with no ministers in the chamber, we had not one but two Liberals on the government benches — Mark Gerretsen, and Francis Drouin. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he complained there wasn’t a national rapid testing regime like Taiwan has, and then complained about the contract with Switch Health at the border. Patty Hajdu reminded him that he was conflating rapid tests – which they sent to provinces – with the PCR tests that Switch was contracted to perform at the border, and that if was worried about rapid tests, he should talk to premiers. O’Toole complained that Switch was missing its timelines in one in six cases, and 5000 cases that failed. Hajdu noted that those tests take longer because they’re PCR tests, and they were bringing on more corporate partners. O’Toole accused the government of changing the law rather than the company when it came to missing certain days, and Hajdu insisted this was incorrect, and that they were doing full due diligence to ensure travellers were protected. O’Toole then switched to French to repeat his first question, and Hajdu reiterate that O’Toole was conflating rapid tests with PCR tests, and that they are used differently. O’Toole then condemned the lack services in French at the border with Switch Health, and Hajdu agreed that this was essential, which is why Switch doubled their French capacity and they added another supplier.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she complained that the motion on Bill 96 didn’t pass, and wanted assurances that the province could use Section 45 of the constitution to make the changes — which is a trap. Mélanie Joly assured her that they were working to protect the French reality in Canada. Normandin assured her that this wasn’t a trap, and wanted those assurances, and Joly again would not give her the assurance she was looking for.

Jagmeet Singh led rose for the NDP in French, and he demanded the federal government stop banks from raising fees, for which Chrystia Freeland went into an assurance about the taxes on luxury goods. Singh repeated in English to add emphasis to the same question, and Freeland repeated the same talking points under the rubric of people paying their fair share.

Continue reading →

QP: Unchallenged misinformation around inflation

Posted on by

For the first day back after a week away and the Victoria Day long weekend, the prime minister was present, along with Liberal placeholder Mark Gerretsen as the only other MP present on the government benches. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and Erin O’Toole led off citing misleading statistics about inflation, for which Justin Trudeau recited some platitudes about having people’s backs. O’Toole complained that housing was becoming unaffordable, and Trudeau listed actions they took, like raising taxes on the top one percent and the Canada Child Benefit as ways they are making life more affordable. O’Toole then raised the American tactic to raise softwood lumber tariffs, which doesn’t really affect the Canadian market (as it will only make it more expensive for Americans as there is a lack of supply in the market), and Trudeau wondered where O’Toole had been the last five years as the government stood up against American trade measures. O’Toole repeated his misleading inflation question in French, fo the same platitudes in French, and the repeated the softwood lumber tariff question in French. Trudeau repeated that they have delivered for the past five years.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he raised Quebec’s Bill 96, and wanted Trudeau to praise it. Trudeau reminded him that they want to protect French while also protecting linguistic minorities and that he looked forward to working with the government of Quebec on it. Blanchet took this as a yes, and wanted a more positive explicit endorsement. Trudeau reminded him that he works with the premiers, and he would meet them again later this week.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he accused the banks of “stealing” from people by raising fees and that the federal government could stop them but haven’t. Trudeau listed the measures they are taking to make the wealthy pay their fair share. Singh switched to English to quote the deputy minister of National Defence on the lack of progress on the Deschamps Report, for which Trudeau recited that the institution isn’t living up to its goals, and listed the actions they have taken, calling them “first steps.”

Continue reading →

Roundup: Justice Abella’s farewell to the Court

Posted on by

Yesterday was a bit of a sad day at the Supreme Court of Canada, as Justice Rosalie Ahella, the senior puisne justice on the court and the longest serving judge in Canada, heard her last case before her mandatory retirement date on July 1st. She will have another six months to finish writing up any judgments that she sat on before the retirement date.

As her final speech, she spoke of being born a refugee, her parents Holocaust survivors, and they moved to Canada, in order to give their children a better life. Abella went to law school, was the youngest judge appointed to the provincial bench at age 29, and went on to have a very influential career chairing commissions and a royal commission, before she was appointed to the Supreme Court – the first Jewish woman appointed, and the first refugee – where she has been for 17 years. And it was a lovely speech. (You can see the video here).

It’ll be interesting to see who the government chooses as her replacement. Because it’s an Ontario seat, there will be an increased focus on finding a more diverse candidate, given that we have yet to have a person of colour on the Supreme Court, and there is more likelihood to find one who can also meet the bilingualism requirement that this government has deemed so important.

Victoria Day

As a reminder, Victoria Day is the official birthday of the Queen of Canada, so be sure to raise a glass in her honour (gin and Dubonnet being Her Majesty’s favoured tipple).

https://twitter.com/Canadian_Crown/status/1395810388319539200

Continue reading →

Roundup: From ombudsman to officer?

Posted on by

The current military ombudsman is trying to pitch the notion that the government doesn’t need to create a new independent body to investigate complaints about sexual misconduct – rather, he is pitching that his office can do it, if only parliament would loosen his shackles and let him report to them directly rather than to the reporting to the minister of defence. I am dubious, and a little alarmed.

For starters, I am not certain that he is actually the best-placed person to field those complaints, rather than a centre that specializes in it, that is properly trauma-informed and so on. There is a reason why the Deschamps Report called for an independent body to do this kind of work, and I’m not sure that the military ombudsman is independent enough (especially as many of those who fill the role have military backgrounds, and are just as likely to be inured to the highly sexualized culture in the Forces that is part of what needs to be changed). It also detracts from other work that the ombudsman should be doing around other aspects of military life than just this particular aspect of it.

The bigger part I am reticent about, however, is because the very last thing we need is yet another unaccountable Officer of Parliament, as we already have far too many, and some of them are problems. Look no further than the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is turning himself into a media darling and who is going far beyond his legislative mandate, but because he is accountable to no one – and because he is being encouraged to keep going beyond his mandate by the media – he is really pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. As for a military ombudsman, you don’t have to go too far in history to see others who held the role who were also becoming problematic – one of whom was also becoming a media darling, and who got increasingly erratic as time went on (especially once he was no longer in the job). It’s not the kind of person who should be in a role that has no accountability, and if it’s happened once, it’s likely to happen again, particularly in the current environment. I’m not unconvinced that the current reporting mechanism of the ombudsman’s office isn’t a problem, but there needs to be another solution than creating another Officer of Parliament.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Not taking constitutional amendments seriously

Posted on by

During his press conference yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau said that according to his legal advice, Quebec can unilaterally modify part of the federal Constitution that applies specifically to them – which is either untrue, or appeasement to the Legault government, because every party is trying to suck up to Legault and his overwhelming popularity.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394692157001412612

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394692818644393991

A plain reading of Section 43 of the Constitution states that where language rights are involved, the federal Parliament needs to have a say in the constitutional amendment, and it’s very much invoked in these proposals from Quebec. That Trudeau – or apparently the lawyers in the Justice Department – can’t see this is a problem, and raises some real questions as to the quality of advice the government is receiving from the department. (Hell, even other Liberal MPs are questioning it).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394762687410753539

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394763319932764166

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394800378013790211

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394801217029746688

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1394693812568694787

But what were people riled up over instead of an egregious violation of our constitutional norms? A photo of Trudeau at a laptop which was clearly an HP machine, with the logo covered over with an Apple sticker. The scandal!

Continue reading →

Roundup: Blanchet thinks he knows when an election will be called

Posted on by

The constant assertion that we are just around the corner from another election is tiresome, and yet it keeps rearing its head, sometimes in very novel ways. Yesterday, it was Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet telling a virtual meeting of Quebec municipalities that he believes an election is going to be called on August 16th, in order to avoid a federal election interfering with municipal elections in Quebec this fall – assuming, of course, that the pandemic is largely under control by then.

No, seriously.

The logic of this assertion, however, does not hold. First of all, there would be no reason for the prime minister to go to the Governor General (assuming we have a new one installed by that point – otherwise, it would be to the Chief Justice in his role as Administrator, for which the optics are very bad), and request dissolution in the middle of August. Remember that we still have fixed election date legislation, and while it’s largely useless, it does create a situation of poor optics for prime ministers or premiers who pull the trigger early. Yes, we are in a hung parliament, so a confidence vote could be lost at any point, but the Commons won’t be sitting in August. In fact, it is not scheduled to be back until September 20th, and I doubt we’re going to be having the same kinds of summer sittings like we did last year, where there was a sense of urgency, particularly around rapidly passing new pandemic spending measures. That is unlikely to be the case this summer given the place that we’re in with the pandemic. This means the government couldn’t even engineer its own defeat over the summer without a hell of a lot of effort, which seems tremendously unlikely given the circumstances. Given the poor optics of just requesting dissolution, this seems highly unlikely.

To add to this, Bill C-19 – which would allow Elections Canada to hold a safer election in the pandemic setting – only just got sent to committee this week in the Commons. Next week is a constituency week, so even if it did pass both committee and third reading the following week (unlikely), and passed the Senate the week after that (a better possibility given the speed at which they seem to be operating these days – not that it’s necessarily a good thing) then it still has a 90-day implementation period for those changes to take effect, so it wouldn’t reach that threshold until mid-September at the earliest. Again, this makes a call for an August 16th dissolution unlikely, because Elections Canada couldn’t be prepared, and even if most of the country gets their second dose by the end of September, that both cuts it uncomfortably close for when an election would be held following an August 16thdissolution, if at all given the need for more advanced voting days and so on.

Simply put, C-19 should have passed months ago in order to ensure there were proper safeguards in case something happens in this hung parliament, and a confidence vote didn’t go quite the right way. But nobody is suicidal enough to want an election right now, and that will continue to be case for much of the fall, until we can be sure that we’re out of the grip of the pandemic. Blanchet is spouting nonsense and should be called out as such.

Continue reading →

QP: Freeland vows to protect free expression

Posted on by

The Commons was a little emptier than the new normal of late, but as our rock of stability, Mark Gerretsen was again the only Liberal on the Chamber. Again. Candice Bergen led off in person, with a script in front of her, and she complained that Americans were getting together and attending packed sports stadiums while most Canadians were still “locked down,” and blamed the federal government’s inability to procure vaccines out of thin air. Chrystia Freeland reminded her that over twenty million doses have already arrived, and more were on the way. Bergen then read a bunch of blatant falsehoods about Bill C-10, for which Freeland assured her that as a former journalist, she understands the importance of freedom of expression and they would never endanger it, which this bill does not do. Bergen then raised Guilbeault’s blunder about “Net Neutrality,” and accused the government of trying to control speech, and Freeland repeated her response. Gérard Deltell carried on raising Guilbeault’s many blunders, and Freeland reassured him that everyone was against censorship, but they were concerned with the cultural sector. Deltell raised that Guilbeault keeps needing to correct himself, and Freeland repeated that as a former journalist, she would never limit freedom of expression, which the bill does not do.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he crowed about the Quebec government tabling a bill on protecting French, and Freeland read that the federal government recognises that the situation of French in Quebec is unique, and that they would study the bill in depth. Blanchet was disappointed that Freeland was insufficiently thrilled with the bill, and demanded a promise that the federal government would not challenge that bill in court. Freeland would not give him such an assurance.

Jagmeet Singh raised the blood deferral for men who have sex with men, and demanded to know why the prime minister would promise to overturn the ban and then not do it. Freeland assured him they support overturning the deferral, but they respect the authority of independent decision-makers and science. Singh complained in French that this didn’t make sense, but Freeland repeated her answer.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Refusing to enforce quarantine orders

Posted on by

There were a couple of notes around the border and quarantines yesterday that I thought bear some additional note, particularly in light of the rhetoric we’re hearing. The first is that it looks like as many of a third of air travellers are able to avoid hotel quarantine and the Public Health Agency of Canada won’t provide a breakdown of figures as to why. There is a fairly obvious answer to this, which is that as part of the hotel quarantine programme, the government also allowed for a metre-long list of exemptions that are applicable to these travellers, because remember that there is ostensibly very little non-essential travel happening right now – I heard a figure that travel volumes are about five percent of what they were pre-COVID. Given how many of these hotel quarantine exemptions have to do with certain essential travel reasons, it should not be a surprise that as many as a third of these travellers are able to bypass that system. The fact that there are as many exemptions as there are should be up for debate, however, because it does undermine the whole point of quarantine, but it’s hard to have that discussion when every time you turn around, someone else is demanding another exemption – and it really doesn’t help when the party in the Commons howling that the border is too lax is at the very same time trying to get an exemption for returning snowbirds.

And then there is the question of enforcing the Quarantine Act, and we find that Alberta hasn’t signed onto the Contraventions Act, which makes it easy for their police to do the enforcement, and to issue fines for those who break it. (Saskatchewan also hasn’t signed onto the Act, but there are no airports currently open to international travel in that province). And this is completely baffling, because you would think that the provincial government would want to empower their peace officers to do the enforcement work if they are so concerned about variants coming in over the borders that they would want to ensure that they are actually enforcing quarantine orders in the province, but apparently not. This makes it all the more difficult to swallow Jason Kenney’s insistence that the federal government hasn’t done enough about the border – they have clamped down as much as they are really able to under the constitution, and they have empowered the provinces to enforce quarantines, but oh, Alberta refuses to take responsibility for doing so, while they complain.

I will also note that the fact that Ontario has signed onto the Contraventions Act means that their own complaints about quarantines and lax borders are all the more hollow. They have all the tools they need to enforce the orders, and they are also largely refusing and blaming the federal government. And worse, nobody is holding them to account for their failures to exercise their own powers in their own areas of jurisdiction to do so – especially not the media. This is a problem, but hey, keep writing stories about “finger-pointing.” That’ll help.

Continue reading →