Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Danielle Smith will threaten your funding

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Danielle Smith’s Alberta is a place where Smith and her ministers will phone you up and threaten your funding if you have mask or vaccine mandates, it was revealed yesterday. Smith threatened funding for the Arctic Winter Games, and has been phoning film productions to threaten them if they have mandates, because of course she is. It’s an abusive, arbitrary exercise of power that is imposing conditions on these groups or productions that don’t have these obligations in their written agreements, but it’s not like she cares about things like legalities.

It was also revealed that she isn’t moving ahead with her plan to add protection for the unvaccinated in the province’s human rights legislation, and is instead going to focus on her so-called “Sovereignty Act,” but rumour is that it’s going to be something like “Sovereignty Within a United Canada” or some other similar bullshit to make it look like it’s not a full-on separatist movement that will spook investment, not that doing arbitrary things like phoning you up and threatening your funding will make anyone feel like they want to continue doing business in the province. I’m almost surprised that her caucus isn’t revolting already considering the absolute abuse of power on display.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 279:

Ongoing Russian strikes and power disruptions as a result are making it difficult for hospitals in Ukraine to carry out their work, and at times, surgeries are being performed with headlamps and flashlights. The US is expected to announce aid that will help with the restoration of electricity around the country. Meanwhile, 30 settlements in the Kherson region have been shelled 258 times in the past week, and Russia has kept up shelling at Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province as they try to make gains there.

https://twitter.com/DavidLametti/status/1597320883441319936

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Roundup: Botching the Asia-Pacific Strategy Rollout

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The federal government launched their long-awaited Indo-Pacific Strategy yesterday, which was, well, a choice. They launched it on a Sunday morning at the same time as Canada was playing in a World Cup match, and didn’t provide journalists with a technical briefing beforehand as the usually do (the technical briefing will be today, which is after the ministers have all made themselves available to the media), so they were basically flying blind about trying to figure out what’s in it as the media availability was happening. This should not have happened, and I suspect this was the old trick of trying to make announcements on a Sunday in order to try and set the agenda and tone for the week (the Conservatives used to be big fans of this, but the Liberals rarely did).

https://twitter.com/ChrisGNardi/status/1596943087930335233

What we know about it so far is that it’s two years after it was initially promised to be delivered, there’s a lot of back-patting about how this is a major foreign policy shift, and that they are going to re-engage through the region with some added spending, slightly more military engagement in the region (eventually), and maybe some intelligence operations in the area as well. I’m sure we’ll learn more later today, but yeah, the government made a lot of choices today in their communications strategy, and what do we say about this government’s communications strategies? That they can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and well, they proved that once again yesterday. Slow clap, guys.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1596925774044405760

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1596927851130851329

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 278:

There is a renewed evacuation of Kherson now that it has been liberated (though they are fleeing to Ukrainian-held regions and not Russian-held areas) as Russia has stepped up its attacks on the liberated city, while they deal with a loss of critical infrastructure. Power and water have been restored in Kyiv, but the mood is sombre as blackouts still continue because of the damage to infrastructure as winter is setting in.

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Roundup: Backseat driving healthcare talks

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I occasionally find myself amused by some of the backseat driving/armchair quarterbacking that happens in Canadian politics, and there was no more perfect example that Jagmeet Singh putting out a press release yesterday declaring that if he were prime minister, he would have sat down with the provinces and not left until he was satisfied that they have all the resources they need. On the one hand it’s kind of hilarious because most of the time, Singh can barely recognise that provincial jurisdiction actually exists, or he seems to think that a Green Lantern Ring and sufficient political will would actually solve federalism. On the other, I can’t decide if that means that he thinks he’s got amazing powers of negotiation, or if he’s declaring himself a chump who will fall for the provinces’ strong-arm tactics.

Imagine for just a moment what Singh means when he says he won’t leave the table until he gives the provinces what they need. It sounds an awful lot like he’s going to give them a blank cheque and then pat himself on the back for having fixed healthcare. Meanwhile, the provinces take that money, put a paltry amount back into the system, continue on with privatizing as much as they possibly can (look at what Danielle Smith is up to in Alberta now that she’s fired the entire board of Alberta Health Services), reduce their own share of the funding because of the increased federal dollars, and then give tax breaks in the hopes of getting re-elected. And we know this because all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again if this funding doesn’t come with some pretty strict conditions and strings. And the sooner more people start calling the premiers on their bullshit, the faster we can get to a deal where they accept strings that will actually do something meaningful with those increased federal dollars.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 269:

Ukraine’s electricity grid operator is warning people that blackouts can last for several hours as Russians continue to pound the country’s electrical systems. Russians are also continuing their push toward Bakhmut with renewed intensity. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared at the Halifax Security Forum by video to ask NATO countries to assist with a ten-part peace plan, and that he hoped Canada would show leadership on one of those items.

https://twitter.com/kiraincongress/status/1593694607459717124

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Roundup: The full closure of 24 Sussex

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News that has been years overdue arrived yesterday that the National Capital Commission is finally—finally!—closing 24 Sussex to personnel, so that they can begin abatement of things like asbestos at the site, which they’d need to do even if they decide to tear it down at some point. But no, there hasn’t been an actual decision on its future, because of course there hasn’t been, but at least they have reached this step, seven years later. But who is still there if the prime minister and family have been at Rideau Cottage the whole time? Well, for one, the prime minister’s chef still operates out of 24 Sussex (and the food is transported over by staff), likely because the kitchen in Rideau Cottage is too small for both the chef and the family, based on what glimpses we got of it during the pandemic; one assumes likewise with any other household staff. They are being relocated to another NCC property, but they won’t say where.

When this news broke, my Twitter feed was full of people outraged that the leader of the opposition has a nicer house than the prime minister, and demanded that the PM take over Stornoway instead. The reason Stornoway is in better shape was because Preston Manning refused to move in when he was opposition leader, so the NCC took the opportunity to do needed renovations that 24 Sussex never had, and no, the prime minister is never going to take it over because the property is too vulnerable, and would be a security nightmare. Never going to happen. As for those who wonder why our opposition leader even has an official residence, I say that it’s because it reflects the importance of the position in a Westminster democracy like ours, and should have status appropriate to that importance. It doesn’t matter that other Westminster countries don’t also follow that—Canada chose to value its opposition leader in such a way, and it is important, so let’s treat it as such.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 268:

There were more Russian missiles targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving some 10 million people without power as winter sets in, while fighting intensified in the east as Russia tries to secure its hold on Donetsk. In liberated villages near Kherson, there are survivors talking about beatings and torture by Russians, and more graves have been found with bodies bearing signs of being tortured.

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Roundup: Counting votes is not a measure of the Senate’s health

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The National Post did an analysis of the “new, independent” Senate to see just what has changed since the prime minister Justin Trudeau began his bid to reform the Upper Chamber through the appointment process, and lo, the analysis misses the whole gods damned point. You don’t judge the effectiveness of the Senate by counting votes. It has never operated in such a way, and (quantitative) political scientists and journalists can’t get that through their heads. The Senate is not going to vote down government legislation unless it’s a dire circumstance, and usually they will only insist on an amendment once before they will let a bill pass. How many times they vote against the government is not a measure of independence either, because the objective of most senators is to let a bill get to committee where the real work happens, and they will try to amend any flaws (and even then, we’ve had a problem of this particular government needing to sponsor amendments to fix their flaws that they bullied through the Commons, until the more recent and destructive trend of telling them to pass it anyway and that they would fix the flaw in a future piece of legislation).

There are plenty of other measures by which we could talk about why the “new” Senate isn’t working from the fact that they can barely organise a picnic anymore because most of the Independent senators can’t stick to agreements on procedural matters, or the fact that the pandemic has gutted their ability to be useful aside from adding a few speeches to the record because legislation is being bullied through without time for scrutiny, or the fact that they no longer have the interpretation capacity to run many of their committees like they used to thanks to hybrid sittings burning out the interpreters. Those are all very real problems that are hurting the Senate, but it requires journalists (and academics) who know the place and what is going on, and what questions to ask, and those are almost non-existent. But hey, we counted votes, so that means something, right? Nope.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 265:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the recently liberated city of Kherson to declare it the beginning of the end of Russia’s invasion, but also notes that the city is laced with boobytraps and mines, and that they have a significant challenge ahead in repairing critical infrastructure so that people can get electricity and water.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1592179845311635463

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Roundup: A hospitalized interpreter should be a wake-up call, but probably won’t be

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The inevitable has happened, and a parliamentary interpreter collapsed during a Senate committee meeting after an acoustic shock and was sent to hospital as a result, when the committee chair decided to go ahead with a meeting despite the fact that two witnesses appearing by video did not have appropriate headsets. And to add to matters, this interpreter was a freelancer and not in the union, so they won’t be getting sick pay for this injury either, given that they were filling in for the full-time, unionised interpreters who are on leave for the injuries they are all facing because of hybrid sessions and meetings, and the fact that the vast majority of MPs and senators simply do not care about their well-being, or the fact that these kinds of acoustic injuries can lead to permanent hearing loss. They don’t care because it would mean giving up the luxury of staying in their ridings rather than coming to Ottawa when they don’t want to, even if it means treating the interpretation staff like furniture. (And as we’ve established, they cannot simply hire more interpreters because there aren’t any more to hire—they’re not even graduating enough to meet the level of attrition from retirements and those quitting from injuries).

To add to this was Government House Leader Mark Holland appearing at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee, where they are debating extending hybrid sittings, possibly permanently, and he spoke about his suicide attempt after his 2011 election loss and used that tale as justification for extending hybrid. And as brave as Holland is to share that story, I find myself deeply disturbed by the fact that he is using it to push for a morally bankrupt proposition around making hybrid sittings permanent when he knows the human cost to them. I am also appalled that the lesson is trying to be “when an MP is struggling, let them work from home” rather than “when an MP is struggling, let them take the time they need to get better and not create an unrealistic and dangerous expectation of presenteeism.” MPs are allowed sick days and leaves of absence. They do not need to be on call 24/7, or to vote on every single issue. There were rules about pairing for absences for decades, and they worked just fine. It’s the same with the groups who keep appearing at PROC, such as Equal Voice, who insist that we need to make hybrid permanent to let more women with children participate in Parliament—it ignores the human toll on the interpreters (and when you raise it, they simply handwave it away with the magic words “we need to find a solution”), and frankly these MPs have the luxury of options when it comes to arrangements they can make. Hybrid or virtual sittings injures interpreters. If there is a technological solution, Parliament has been ignoring it. It is frankly morally reprehensible that they continue to have this debate at the expense of the health of these interpreters. It would be great if this publicised injury and hospitalisation were a wake-up call, but I am frankly too cynical at this point to believe that is going to happen.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 244:

Russia continues to claim that Ukraine is planning to use a “dirty bomb,” which sounds increasingly like pretext for Russia to detonate one, and that they have been using their occupation of the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear plant to build it.

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Roundup: Ford tries to escape testifying

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Some drama is emerging from the Emergencies Act public inquiry, as we find out that Doug Ford and Sylvia Jones, his then-solicitor general, have refused to be interviewed by the Commissioner, and have refused to testify before it. Recall that just last week, Doug Ford said that he hadn’t been asked to testify when asked (because it makes no sense that he and Jones were not on the list). Well, today, we found out that they were asked, they refused, and now the Commissioner plans to summon them, but Ford intends to challenge that summons under the rubric of parliamentary privilege, which would seem to me to be abusing it, but there you have it.

https://twitter.com/SkinnerLyle/status/1584624171598086145

Meanwhile, the acting Ottawa police chief was testifying, and it was a lot more of the same when it comes to police not taking the threat of an occupation seriously, and them essentially ignoring the intelligence that was being forwarded to them, and lo, these “protesters” turned into an illegal occupation. There was also an email filed from RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki who said that they hadn’t exhausted all tools before the Act was invoked, for what that’s worth.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1584574961339203586

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1584612932595638275

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 243:

Ukrainian officials are claiming greater success in shooting down drones attacking electrical infrastructure, but worries are now that Russia will try to detonate a “dirty bomb” within their territory as they have essentially announced the intention to do so and blame it on the Ukrainians doing it to frame Russia. If it wasn’t such a terrifying prospect, it would be really, really stupid. Meanwhile, doctors in the country are worried about spending the winter months in the basements of hospitals as electrical systems are under attack.

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Roundup: The transcript doesn’t show interference

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It turns out that the recording of that meeting of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki coming down on her Nova Scotia team in the wake of the mass shooting in Portapique was found after all, and lo, it doesn’t actually show political interference. (Transcript here). She does say that she told the minister’s office the information on the firearms used would be released (we know that she was contacted by Bill Blair’s chief of staff, not Blair himself), and when the information was not released, she said she had to apologise to the minister and the prime minister, but there is no mention of a promise to release that information. In fact, the only time the word “promised” was used was when Lucki said that she was promised a timeline of events and a map, and she didn’t receive those either, and spoke about feeling disrespected because she wasn’t given it. Lucki did at one point bring up “legislation” the government was working on around guns (it was actually an Order in Council), which Lucki said was supposed to help police, but again, there was no mention of pressure from the minister about it. She was politically aware of what was going on, because she would have been consulted in its development (which had been going on for months at this point), and it should be stressed that political awareness is not interference. Commissioners are supposed to be politically aware. That’s part of their job, just like the Chief of Defence Staff.

The Conservatives, however, took that same transcript, cherry picked a couple of lines about feeling the need to apologise, and took this as “proof” of interference, that either Lucki or Blair had lied, and demanded both of their resignations, and launched a point of privilege in the House of Commons to the effect of saying that Blair lied to them. Because this is what they do—take everything in bad faith, and generate a bunch of clips for shitposts, then fundraise off of them. It’s not even truthiness at this point—it’s out and out bad faith, lies, and deception. And you don’t see the media calling bullshit on it and pointing to what is in the transcript, they just both-sides it, and their talking heads will waffle around it. The talking heads also don’t try to follow all of the information and put it together, where they would see that the allegations of interference don’t actually make sense. I won’t recap the column, but suffice to say, there was no need to interfere because they had all of the information, and the people who claim they were are actually arguing for less transparency. It’s bizarre all around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 240:

Ukrainian forces have bombarded Russian positions in the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, targeting their resupply routes along a major river. Russians shelled the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1583430788468838403

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Roundup: The first witnesses at the inquiry

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The first day of witness testimony took place at the Emergencies Act Public Inquiry, hearing from citizen representatives about what they went through during the illegal occupation, as well as two of the city councillors whose wards were most affected, and representatives from affected BIAs. There was a common theme in there—people feeling afraid and terrorized by the collection of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theories and grievance tourists who made up the occupation; and more to the point, they felt abandoned by the Ottawa City Police, who were the police of jurisdiction.

Which brings me to my other point—that the NDP, and MP Matthew Green in particular, are trying to return to this bullshit narrative that the federal government “abandoned” the city and didn’t show leadership during the occupation, which is completely false. There was no jurisdiction that they could exert—the Ottawa police, as established, were the police of jurisdiction, and there is no mechanism by which the federal government can bigfoot them or assert jurisdiction. Even the Emergencies Act allowed for the RCMP to be deployed under the command of the Ottawa police, with expedited swearing-in that enabled them to do their jobs. There is nothing that the federal government could have done to “show leadership” up until they invoked the Act. I know the NDP like to pretend that there’s a Green Lantern ring somewhere, and that all it takes is “political will” to do something, but there is no “political will” section of the Constitution. Real life doesn’t work like that, and the NDP need to grow up and start criticising the government for things that are actually their fault, not the things that aren’t, because it weakens their credibility when it comes to the real problems.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 233:

Ukrainian forces continue to press their advantage in the Kharkiv region, as the Russians say they will have completed their mobilisation within two weeks. The first 200 Ukrainians have completed their training in the UK with British and Canadian trainers, which includes offensive tactics, not just defensive ones. Here is a look at the city of Lyman, and how much it suffered under four months of Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456

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Roundup: The fiscal stance is tight

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer was doing his actual job of providing alternative fiscal forecasts for Parliamentarians, and his projection of the economic situation is that growth will slow over the second half of this year, which isn’t a bad thing because it will help to tackle inflation, particularly as the Bank of Canada continues to raise rates. The deficit continues to shrink, as does the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which shows our fiscal stance is not too loose.

Here’s economist Kevin Milligan putting things into more context, but the bottom line is that the Conservatives’ assertion that government spending is fuelling inflation is not true, and they need to come up with some more credible talking points. (Yeah, yeah, good luck with that one, I know).

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580598737906597894

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580602979140632576

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580605473476476929

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 232:

It was another day of Russian strikes against civilian targets, including by Iranian-built kamikaze drones, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to request more air defence systems to protect the country. Ukrainian forces boasted that they took down four Russian helicopters in the space of eighteen minutes.

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