Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: It’s not logistically impossible

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For the past week-and-a-half, it has been nothing but handwringing over the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election results, and the demands that Justin Trudeau either step aside, or to at least meet with his caucus. I took a full week for Trudeau to finally take questions from the media and said that he’s “committed” to staying on the job. And in response to the demands for an in-person caucus meeting now and not in September, Trudeau said he’s having one-on-one conversations with members of the caucus, and some of them are saying he needs to change “key players.”

And then comes along Liberal caucus chair Brenda Shanahan, who insists that it’s “logistically impossible” to have an in-person caucus meeting before September, to which I call bullshit. MPs can all get on a plane to Ottawa at any point, even if it means they have to cancel a barbeque appearance at some point. It’s not impossible, it’s a choice, and that choice is to not respect the members of the caucus, because frankly the leader doesn’t feel the need to be afraid of caucus because we have trained MPs to believe the falsehood that they are powerless and that the leader can push them around. That’s not actually true, and the caucus collectively has the power to vote non-confidence in the leader if they actually had the intestinal fortitude to do so. But therein lies the problem.

I’m also going to point out that all of the breathless reporting on Thursday about Chrystia Freeland saying that the Cabinet is fully behind Trudeau—of course they’re fully behind him. If they weren’t, they’d be out of a job. This isn’t rocket science, guys.

In case you missed them:

  • My weekend column where I talked to the author of the book Theatre of Lies about the situation we find ourselves in Canadian politics and what to do about it.
  • My column points out that one of the problems the Liberals face is how they choose their leaders, and that a proper Westminster system would have solved this by now.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take wonders just what Danielle Smith thinks she wants to “opt out” of around dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down 21 out of 22 Russian drones overnight Thursday. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from one neighbourhood in Chasiv Yar after their defensive positions were destroyed, risking further casualties. A Russian missile strike in Odesa killed a woman, while a guided bomb in Kharkiv region killed a man. Russians have started targeting Ukrainian air bases in advance of the delivery of F-16 fighter jets. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán went to Kyiv for a frosty meeting as Hungary assumes the rotating presidency of the EU. Orbán then headed to Moscow, no doubt to get fresh orders from Putin.

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Roundup: Electoral reform tries to take the spotlight

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In addition to the constant wanking of pollsters and polling analysts, while the Elder Pundits continue to pronounce the end of Justin Trudeau’s political career, there has been an entire sub-category of commentary that is trying to tie this by-election loss to the failure to enact some kind of electoral reform, even though Trudeau has won two elections since then. Justin Ling wrote up a whole op-ed about this for the Star yesterday, given that the 84 candidates on the by-election ballot were because of a tantrum by electoral reform group to use the stunt to call attention to Trudeau’s broken promise. And Ling makes some wild assertions along the way.

This notion that MPs are more beholden to the party than to their constituents would not be fixed by changing the electoral system. In fact, the current system is the one that most empowers MPs to be beholden to their constituents, as most PR systems rely on party votes, and party lists to fill “proportional” seats, and that makes those MPs even more beholden to the leader because they don’t have the connection to a riding as a result. That’s an even worse outcome, and hands even more power to the leader to centralise, worse than they already do. The ability to be independent under such a PR system is even less than under the current system, so I have a hard time fathoming why anyone thinks that this solves any of those problems.

The current dysfunction that Ling complains about in the piece is not a result of the electoral system—it’s because of the perverse incentives that have developed, compounded by the Trump Effect, that have made rational discourse impossible because everything is about driving engagement over social media, not in the Houses of Parliament. Changing the electoral system wouldn’t change that—in fact, it could make it worse as parties fragment and fragile coalitions emerge that rely on extremists to play kingmaker, forcing parties to behave in even more outrageous fashions. Electoral reform doesn’t solve problems—it takes an existing set of problems and replaces them with a new set of problems. Resurrecting this debate in order to once again flog this dead horse is not helping anyone, and if anything, is just distracting from the actual frank conversations that parties need to be having amongst themselves with their members about how to meet the moment to solving the problems this country faces. PR won’t make that happen, and we have to stop entertaining the notion that it somehow will.

Programming Note: I’m taking the long weekend fully off of blogging, as well as a few days next week in order to work on another project.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that they have forced Russian troops out of part of Chasiv Yar. Some Ukrainian commanders are complaining that the Canadian-built Senator armoured vehicles aren’t built for off-road capability, break down too often, and aren’t well suited for the front lines. With the EU security pact now signed, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on European allies to fulfil their promises around arms and supports.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1806344642041917773

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1806321424446951489

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Roundup: Nothing to opt out of

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Breaking through the endless wank-a-thon of the pundit class declaring that Justin Trudeau needs to go was a story where Danielle Smith had sent a letter to Trudeau declaring that Alberta will “opt out” of the dental care plan, and that they want to negotiate “compensation” that they would apply to their own provincial low-income dental assistance programme, but this seems to completely misunderstand how the programme works. It is very literally an insurance programme. Dental offices bill Sun Life through a portal, and the federal government then reimburses Sun Life. Yes, the rollout was poor and confused (because the whole implementation of this programme has been a bit of a gong show, thanks entirely to the NDP), but this is not a federal transfer programme. There is nothing to compensate the province for because this is a 100 percent federal insurance scheme.

The reason it’s structured this way is because the NDP demanded, as part of the Supply and Confidence Agreement, that this needed to be a fully federal programme, and not cost-shared like early learning and child care, and because dental care is ostensibly provincial jurisdiction, it had to be structured as insurance, and the model they would up choosing was to get Sun Life to do it, and they just pay Sun Life, rather than stand up a federal bureaucracy to administer this. This should have been a federal-provincial transfer so that provinces could bolster their existing dental programmes to federal guidelines, but no. As a result, I don’t see just what Smith can “opt out” of, let alone be compensated for.

Of course, federal health minister Mark Holland didn’t help matters by going on Power & Politics and not explaining how the programme works, and instead suggested that she could opt out if she could guarantee the same or better coverage, but again, opt out of what? The province isn’t billing Sun Life. They are out of the equation entirely, and Holland should have pointed this out, rather than just trying to sound conciliatory and saying he doesn’t want a fight, and repeating the same lines about how many tens of thousands of seniors have availed themselves of the programme to date. Smith doesn’t appear to understand how the programme works, and has created a strawman around it to make it look like she’s standing up to Trudeau (at the expense of her population), and claiming they already have a great dental care programme and that this is duplicative (it’s not—the Alberta programme covers very few people and is a burden to administer).

There is an added issue here with how the media have covered this. CBC, CTV, The Canadian Press, all ignore the programme structure and just retype Smith’s letter, and then get comments from the provincial dental association about either their disagreement on the federal programme or some minor pushback about Smith’s comments about the existing provincial programme, but the fact that this is an insurance company where the dentists bill Sun Life and the province has no involvement at all is a pretty crucial part of the story, which nobody mentions. This should not be rocket science, and this would show that Smith is engaging in bad theatre, but of course they don’t do that, and readers are being given a disservice as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy is expected to sign a security agreement with the EU later today.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805883881356186102

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Roundup: Provinces learned they can underfund disaster management

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The House of Commons’ national defence committee tabled their report on disaster management earlier this week, and one of its recommendations is for a permanent civilian federal disaster management force that can be deployed for wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters—but they stopped short of recommending a Canadian FEMA, which may not be possible given that this is constitutionally largely an area of provincial jurisdiction, and would require some kind of provincial agreement to operate, and because this is Canada, the provinces would want some kind of say in its operations but wouldn’t want to pay for it, because of course.

One of the problems we’re dealing with as a country is that we’re dealing with the Canadian Forces being at their capacity and they are constantly being asked to deal with disaster management across the country because provincial capacity maxes out too soon. But why does provincial capacity max out? Because they keep cutting funds or under-investing, and creating these situations because they know that regardless of what happens, they can simply call up the federal government to ask them deploy the Canadian Forces, and even more to the point, that they can do it for free because the federal government won’t ask for reimbursement even though they are entitled to. And this has wound up teaching the premiers that there are pretty much no consequences for their under-investing or even cutting the funding for this kind of emergency management, so they are incentivized to rely on the Canadian Forces to do the work for them for free, and now we have reached the end of that being possible.

So, what is the solution? I am wary of the notion of building up a federal force because even if they can manage to get provincial agreements, staff it up (because you would be drawing from the same pool as the Canadian Forces, which has a recruitment and retention crisis), and even if they paid for all of it (which they shouldn’t), this will exacerbate the existing problem of provinces not funding or bolstering their existing forces that are their constitutional responsibility because there will still be a federal backstop. And if the federal government starts asking for reimbursement, either for the use of the Canadian Forces or this hypothetical future force, then the media will be aghast that the federal government is making the province pay in their time of need, completely ignoring that the provincial under-funding created the situation in the first place. We’re at a bit of a rock and hard place, because we have let federalism break down like this, and that’s not good for the country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck the Eastern settlement of Selydove, killing two. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian “barn” tank that has been modified to protect against drone attacks. Ukraine launched a drone attack that struck three Russian oil refineries overnight.

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Roundup: Clearing the decks before summer

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It’s the last Wednesday of the spring sitting, and the big question is whether they’re going to pull the plug today or not. The government says there is still work to do—in particular, they want to push the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission bill (Bill C-40) and the budget bill over the finish line, but the budget bill is up for a vote after QP tomorrow, leaving only C-40 at third reading debate, which is what is on for government orders tomorrow, and that’s the only bill they’re planning to bring forward for debate. This would make it pretty easy for them to pass a motion at unanimous consent to say something to the effect of it’ll pass on division or deemed pass at the collapse of debate at the end of the day, or some such if they really wanted, or to simply hold a vote at that point, and rise for the summer after that.

Of course, the Conservatives have been putting on a big song and dance about wanting to sit through the summer to “fix” the country, but we all know that’s all for show because that would mean nothing but more time for the government to keep passing bills and implementing their agenda, and that’s not what they want. They’re also trying to insist on committees sitting through the summer, but there are only two government bills at committee stage right now, so most of those meetings would likely be for private members’ business or for studies, and you can bet it’s going to be more of the latter, which would be little more than dog and pony shows to serve as clip factories while the House of Commons has risen. And if the Conservatives don’t agree for the House to rise tomorrow? Well, on the agenda are report stage debates on the cyber-security bill, the ports modernization bill, the (controversial) Métis self-government bill, and they have been debating the Elections Act changes, which the Conservatives and NDP are opposing because of bullshit objections to moving the fixed date back a week to avoid Diwali.

And then it’s up to the Senate to pass the number of bills on their plate, including the budget bill, and if they are true to recent form, they will race through their Order Paper until Friday, pass everything with little scrutiny other than maybe a few questions of the relevant minister at Committee of the Whole, and then rise by Friday, rather than stay another week or two to actually give things a proper review like they used to, back in the “bad old partisan days.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is claiming responsibility for a drone attack causing a massive blaze at an oil reservoir in Russia’s Rostov region. Ukraine is investigating the suspected beheading of one of its soldiers by a Russian in the Donetsk region. Reuters has some photos of combat medics on the job on the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1802984596122034588

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QP: Who cares about the woodland caribou?

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For the final Tuesday of the spring sitting, the prime minister and his deputy were both present, as were nearly all of the other leaders. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and said that the environment minister is threatening jobs in Quebec’s forestry sector with an Order-in-Council, not mentioning that it’s because Quebec has not lived up to their obligations to protect woodland caribou. Poilievre vowed to undo such an order as government, and worried that there would be an increase in lumber costs and lost jobs until then. Justin Trudeau said that for decades, the federal government has had a responsibility to protect species at risk, and in this case, it’s the woodland caribou, and they are working with the province to protect the environment and jobs. Poilievre blamed the Bloc for keeping the government in power, and that they were letting the federal government kill jobs in the forestry sector, and Trudeau reiterated that you can’t build a strong economy without protecting the environment. Poilievre switched to English, and quoted Scott Brison’s comments about the capital gains changes, and Trudeau shrugged this off as a “partisan” attack and explained this was about $250,000 in profits, and asking them to pay a little more. Poilievre cited a Food Banks Canada report that claimed 25 percent of Canadians were now in poverty, and called the government’s programmes “whackononics,” and Trudeau pointed out that the Conservatives keep voting against help for people. Poilievre tried to tie in the nonsense conspiracy about the so-called secret carbon price report to discredit the government’s points on the capital gains, and Trudeau taunted that Poilievre hid for eight weeks in order to come up with an answer on the capital gains changes.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and wondered why Trudeau was not sharing foreign interference warnings with provincial premiers, citing comments by David Eby. Trudeau insisted that they were working to get more information to provinces in a timely manner. Normandin demanded that the step up and give provinces the information they need. Trudeau said that Bill C-70 would do that, once it passes the Senate.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he playacted tough in trying to call out the PM for not doing anything about suspected MPs in his caucus, and the Conservatives for being incurious on the NSICOP report. Trudeau gave some platitudes about taking more actions than any other government. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same response.

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QP: Harvesting carbon and capital gains clips

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As the final sitting week of the spring begins, with a heat wave starting, neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present, but most of the other leaders were. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he worried about Bloc having concerns about the capital gains changes, and that their hoped-for amendments wouldn’t happen next week when it comes into force. Anita Anand praised the plan the government put forward for the economy, which the Conservatives don’t have. Poilievre kept needling the Bloc, claiming they were taking Quebeckers’ money and giving it to Ottawa. Jean-Yves Duclos asked Poilievre to explain why people who make half a million in capital gains should pay less tax than a nurse making $50,000 in a year. Poilievre switched to English to worry about the so-called “cover up” of the costs of the carbon levy, claiming it costs the economy $30 billion per year, and wondered what else they were hiding about their other tax hikes. Steven Guilbeault pointed out the reductions in emissions while the Conservatives want to let the planet burn. Poilievre tried the same again, insisting the carbon levy won’t change the weather or stop a single forest fire, to which Jonathan Wilkinson wondered if Poilievre was a climate denier. Poilievre turned back to the capital gains changes, and cited the “Food Professor” about it (seriously?!), and Anita Anand praised…housing starts. Come on!

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he worried that the government would discredit the Hogue Commission if she didn’t come to the same conclusion as the government. Dominic LeBlanc said that he was pleased that Justice Hogue had agreed to look into this. Therrien railed that the prime minister has slept on the foreign interference file for months, and LeBlanc insisted that they have taken this seriously since the get-go.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that progress on the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action were taking too long to be implemented. Patty Hajdu insisted that they have been working, and that she just stood with the National Chief to announce funding for a Northern Ontario hospital. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same response.

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Roundup: Disagreeing with NSICOP’s interpretations

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From the G7 summit, Trudeau wouldn’t confirm or deny whether any current Liberal MPs are implicated in the NSICOP report, but also mentioned that there was some disagreement with the conclusions that the committee drew in their report, but again, wouldn’t point to what those disagreements are. His foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, said that if there were “traitors” in the Liberal caucus, they would have been booted by now. So there’s that.

More to the point, if you listen to some of the Elder Pundits chirping away over the Twitter Machine, it’s like they’re allowed to have disagreements. “Oh, Trudeau said that he thinks NSICOP is the right place to do a review but then he disagrees with them! Hmm!” I’m not sure why disagreements are such a scary prospect for these people. CSIS isn’t a magical arbiter of what is true and what isn’t. They get wrong or misinterpret things too. That’s why we need more holistic views, but certain politicians and the Elder Pundits demand absolute clarity, and an authoritative voice that can never be wrong (so long as it confirms their priors, because if it goes against what they believe, in which case all bets are off). But also, NSICOP hasn’t done itself any favours by not really defending their work in public, or by the chair being cute about the conclusions (when he has a record of being overly dramatic in some of his conclusions in order to get attention).

The fact that members of the government aren’t really spelling out the disagreement is frustrating. Is it the murky line between diplomacy and foreign interference? It sounds like it, reading through the lines, but maybe actually saying so would be helpful (and no, unlike what certain Elder Pundits have tried to assert, the difference between the two is not actually a bright line). And deflecting questions on this by trying to change the channel to the “good economic news” has not helped their credibility or the ability of the public to find a shred of reassurance hasn’t helped either. We’re talking about other party leaders needing to be gown ups, but the Liberals have a little work to do on this space as well, and that means stop trying to feed the public pabulum on this issue, and to be as frank as security concerns allow.

Summer sitting?

The Conservatives are once again putting on the dog and pony show to claim that they want to sit through the summer, and are trying to call out the NDP to join them, even though that’s not how this works, they know it’s not how this works, and this move would only advantage the government. This didn’t work at Christmas, it won’t work over the summer, and if they want to run committees through the summer, more power to them, but that doesn’t actually change anything.

Ukraine Dispatch

The 78 of the countries at the peace summit in Switzerland agreed that peace must include the territorial integrity of Ukraine, though not every country attending did sign on. (Full text here). LGBTQ+ soldiers in Ukraine marched in Kyiv’s Pride parade over the weekend, calling for the kinds of partnership rights that would allow couples to make medical decisions or claim bodies killed in the conflict (and also further differentiate Ukraine from Russia).

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Roundup: A possible reluctant partial briefing

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Because we’re stuck on this story, the Globe and Mail has heard that Pierre Poilievre has now said that he will accept a briefing if CSIS has any particular concerns about his caucus or party—but that’s it! Nothing more, because he keeps falsely insisting that his hands would be tied, when they actually wouldn’t be. Nevertheless, there is more to intelligence than just CSIS, and the NSICOP report is drawn from various sources, who sometimes disagreed with one another, and that matters in this kind of thing too, so it is baffling why Poilievre keeps insisting on tying his own hands.

Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh was on Power & Politics to discuss his reading of the classified version of the report, and it was just more evasion and going around in circles rather than answering anything, and some of this was the continued attempt to take shots at the Liberals and Conservatives without actually spelling out what he thought should have done differently. He did say that the Liberals should keep Han Dong out of caucus, but that was as much as he would say, but kept insisting that the government has done nothing, but couldn’t say what they should do, or even acknowledged that there wasn’t really actionable intelligence that they could have acted upon, so again, what has really been the point? Incidentally, Elizabeth May does say that she is just as concerned about what is in the report as Singh, but her relief was that there were not current MPs implicated, which Singh won’t even say.

The only smart thing that Singh has said to date is that he isn’t going to pull the plug on the government over this because it would make no sense to go to an election if there are still questions about how it might be interfered with. To that end, they are in the process of passing the Elections Act updates, and the foreign interference bill, which should hopefully provide new tools to combat any attempted interference. Once those are passed and implemented it’ll probably get us closer to the fixed election date, so that may be the one thing that keeps the Supply and Confidence Agreement going until then.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine shot down seven of eleven Russian drones targeting critical infrastructure on Friday. Ukraine has been adopting an “elastic” defensive posture while they wait for the arrival of more western weapons to shrink the munitions gap between Russia and them. Vladimir Putin said he would call a ceasefire if Ukraine turned over the four regions his forces partly occupy plus forswear any NATO membership in the future, which Ukraine flatly rejected. The International Criminal Court is investigating Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure as potential war crimes.

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Roundup: Terrible capital gains narratives

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The communications around the capital gains changes have been atrocious. Chrystia Freeland is painting an apocalyptic picture of what will happen to Canadian society if we don’t make these changes, and the talk about fairness, where workers pay more taxes than those who can earn it on investment income is missing the key component of the discussion which is around the unequal treatment of different types of income that allows people to engage in tax arbitrage—picking and choosing which revenue models will net them the least taxation, which is a real problem for fairness that is not being discussed at all.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801021913738698941

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801022109172256818

In amidst this comes Calgary economist Jack Mintz, whose sole entire schtick is to cut taxes to solve every problem under the sun. And of course, Pierre Poilievre was quoting him in Question Period, calling him the greatest economy in the country, which is pretty risible. It didn’t help that Poilievre made the basic mistake of believing that the tax rate is going up rather than the inclusion rate (the point at which it kicks in on the profit you’ve made), but he has doomsday scenarios to unleash into the world to make his case that this is a Very Bad Thing, when it’s nothing at all like he seemed to believe.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801086926696415384

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801088499522937017

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801096926227497107

Everyone has handled this whole situation poorly, media included, and this has been al lost opportunity to try and have a proper conversation about these kinds of tax measures and changes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missile attacks have left much of Kyiv without power and water. Russian missiles also struck an administrative building and an apartment block in Kryvyi Rih in the south, and killed nine and injured 29. The American government says they are aware of credible reports that abducted Ukrainian children are being put up on adoption websites.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1800901662820704467

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