Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Don’t bug the LG. Ever.

Posted on by

In a move that is as brazen as it is utterly galling, Jason Kenney’s government legislated the province’s elections commissioner out of existence, after he levied tens of thousands of dollars in fines over the UCP leadership shenanigans. To make it all the more gob-smacking, Kenney and the minister in charge of the bill claimed that this wasn’t politically motivated, which earns a “Sure, Jan.” But even more appalling was the response from opposition leader Rachel Notley, for which I am about to suffer a rage-induced stroke.

https://twitter.com/Jantafrench/status/1196555704200351744

No. No, no, no, no, no. No. You DO NOT involve the lieutenant governor in this. She does not have discretion to accept or reject bills. She is not the “boss” of Jason Kenney. She cannot reject bills on the advice of the opposition, or her own recognizance for that matter. Her job is to accept the advice of the first minister who commands the confidence of the legislature, which Kenney does – even if the bill is unconstitutional. Her job is to act as a constitutional fire extinguisher, and we are a long way from there. Here’s Philippe Lagassé with more:

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1196608180488482818

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1196609606220500992

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1196610409521930240

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1196612302348464130

I’m going to add an additional point about this being an appalling lack of basic civic literacy from the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the province, but it implicates the entire media ecosystem as a whole, particularly when they ignorantly act as though a vice-regal has discretion about things like government formation, as exemplified with the stories of the hung parliaments in BC and New Brunswick, and even when shows like Power & Politics wrongly said that Trudeau “asked permission” from Her Excellency, Julie Payette, to “form a government” when they were the incumbent and already had a government and didn’t need to form one, let alone the fact that her job is not to grant permission. But stories like that plant the idea in people’s minds that she or any other vice-regal has personal discretion and can decide who will or will not form a government and apparently allow or disallow legislation, much like the pervasive idea that you can write to the Queen and she’ll do something about whatever it is you’re complaining about. That’s not how the system works. This shouldn’t be rocket science, but apparently these very basics are not being understood by those who are supposed to know these things because it’s their jobs to.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Fair deal to direct anger

Posted on by

Jason Kenney was determined to swallow much of the news cycle over the long-ish weekend (depending on where you were in the country), first by announcing on Friday that he had appointed a “fair deal” panel to look at ways in which Alberta can assert more independence – but many of those items don’t make any sense, especially as they will be more costly in the long run (or look particularly suspicious, like replacing the RCMP provincial policing contract with an Alberta Provincial Police when the RCMP is deep in investigating the UCP leadership contest corruption). In fact, the former chair of the province’s “Firewall” panel from 2003 says that this is just an exercise in blowing off steam that won’t amount to anything that they didn’t learn back then, which will be amplified over social media into promises that could never be fulfilled – which is a problem. Kenney then doubled down with a lengthy speech at the Manning Centre conference in Red Deer on Saturday, where most of these items were further listed.

This all having been said, I’m hearing from my friends and family in Alberta that Kenney’s cuts are already starting to affect them, and that anger may start to hurt him sooner than later. (Family examples: I have a nephew with special needs whose school aide’s hours are being slashed, and my brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter, and their training budget has just been decimated). I fully expect that Kenney is going to go hard on trying to direct the anger to Justin Trudeau and Ottawa in order to deflect the anger from his cuts, and you can bet that he’s going to go to absurd lengths to stoke it.

Meanwhile, here are some reality checks into the kinds of things that Kenney is proposing for his “Fair Deal” nonsense, whether it’s for the creation of their own provincial pension plan, or to collect federal taxes on their own.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1193379952961277952

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194018713629904897

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194072739243446272

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194075167506386945

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194092599918944256

Continue reading →

Roundup: Judicially-determined science

Posted on by

One of the lesser-reported stories yesterday was the fact that a group of youths “launched” a lawsuit in Federal Court against the government to claim that their Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person are being violated by the lack of climate change action, and want the courts to mandate the government implement a climate plan “using the best available science.” Well, it wasn’t really the youths themselves, but a group of lawyers and activists who are using a group of children and teens as the face of their campaign, because teen climate prophetesses are so hot right now.

The problem with this tactic, however, is the two-fold – one, that it’s going to be an exceedingly difficult argument that just because these specific youth had contracted ailments that could be climate-related (such as Lyme disease), it’s hard to make a generalized Section 7 argument as it relates to climate change; and two, this is public policy and should not be justiciable in the same way that Criminal Code provisions are where they touch social issues. Why? Because it shouldn’t be up to the courts to determine whether or not the government is living up to their climate change obligations. Are judges also climate scientists, or economists specializing in this area? The whole “best available science” line sounds good, but it’s hugely subjective as to how you reach those goals mandated by “science,” particularly when it comes to not devastating the economy and the livelihoods of millions of Canadians. How does a judge determine what the correct public policy should be? They don’t, but that’s what is being asked of them to determine here.

More to the point, this is yet another example of people trying to going to the courts when they lose at politics. Why I’m not surprised by this tactic being used by climate activists is because that Extinction Rebellion group is demanding the suspension of democracy to deal with the climate crisis, which should be alarming to anyone who follows their rhetoric. Trying to get judges to make policy determinations is just as much of a problem, and I eagerly await the Federal Court telling them to go drop on their heads.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Hand-waving through a plan doomed to fail

Posted on by

It’s the final debate day of the election, so expect a couple of brief photo-ops, then a quiet day as the leaders do their final prep. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer went to the Roxham Road irregular border crossing in Quebec to pledge that he would end said border crossings – and then hand-waved through just how he planned to do so, given that the Safe Third Country Agreement is a treaty with the Americans and we can’t do anything without negotiating with them, and they are not exactly big on taking in asylum claimants right now and would be happy to see them wind up in Canada. And their “other options,” such as trying to declare the entire border an “official point of entry” for the purposes of the agreement won’t work, and will simply drive more asylum seekers to more remote crossing points where there are fewer controls, and more likelihood of death or injury. In other words, he was misleading about his plans to address the issue, and more than that, he invoked the spectre of MS-13 (which is an American border issue, not a Canadian one), gave the false notion that these crossings somehow let migrants “jump the queue” unfairly (there is no queue for refugees, and they don’t impact those we are bringing in from refugee camps), made the ludicrous promise to move more citizenship judges to the border to process claims faster (proximity has nothing to do with it, and trying to speed up claims has failed in the past because we still need to have procedural fairness and adherence to Charter rights). Immigration and refugee experts have thus proclaimed that Scheer’s pledge today is doomed to failure. On a related note, Scheer keeps saying his full platform will be out in “plenty of time” for people to make an informed decision, but advance polls have already opened on university campuses, and for everyone else tomorrow, so that’s not exactly time for people to start making informed decisions – and leaving Scheer open to the criticism that he plans to replicate the Doug Ford tactic of not releasing a platform and preferring to coast in on anger instead. And while we’re on the subject of Scheer’s dishonesty, he claimed that Elections Canada gave the okay for his campaign director, Hamish Marshall’s ad company to also be producing election ads for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – but Elections Canada said that’s not true. So chalk that up to yet another lie on the tally.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1181961842291281923

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1181961052390600707

Justin Trudeau was in Markham, promising that the first thing he would do if re-elected would be to cut taxes for the middle class, which was essentially just a reannouncement of their basic personal amount cut. When answering questions, he offered some clarity to the situation around the spat between the Canadian Forces and provincial healthcare systems, which stems from the Canadian Forces being billed for higher rates than they would be normally for those services.

Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile, was in Montreal to address CUPE convention, with promise to fight privatization, in the hopes of winning back the labour vote.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Hypothetical subways and more traffic

Posted on by

It was a quieter day, post-debate, but the leaders were all back on the road, mindful that there is still another debate later in the week. Andrew Scheer in Markham to promise funds for two Toronto subway projects – while lying about the Liberal record on said funding (the funds haven’t been released because there isn’t an actual plan for those lines yet) – and to further promise that he would fund any infrastructure project designed to ease congestion. Erm, except that this is a promise to induce demand because all of the data show that if you build more traffic infrastructure, that traffic just grows to fill it. It doesn’t actually relieve congestion – it just contributes to making it worse.

Jagmeet Singh was in Toronto to talk student loans, and when pressed about Bill 21 by the media, he said that if it made it to the Supreme Court of Canada that the federal government would “have to” take a look at it then – which isn’t really true, and they could put arguments forward at any court case along the way. This makes Singh’s position to basically punt the problem down the road for a few years, for apparently little electoral gain.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, went to Iqaluit in Nunavut, where he spoke about the North being on the “front lines” of climate change, and to meet with elders in that community. It also lets Trudeau make the claim that he’s the only leader to have visited the North during the campaign, for a few hours in any case.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Admitting the need for negotiation

Posted on by

With the policy-over-controversy reset now in full swing, Justin Trudeau was out first this morning in Hamilton to announce next steps in the government’s planned universal pharmacare programme, with a $6 billion “down payment” in the system, along with more funding for increased access to family doctors and mental health services. Unlike other campaigns – looking specifically at you, NDP – this one was honest in the fact that it would rely on negotiations with the provinces, and that it would be incremental (something the NPD promise handwaves over), though where Trudeau got into a talking point was where he kept bringing up Doug Ford in this, and asking who Canadians trusted to negotiate with Ford – Scheer, or him? And he repeated it over, and over, and over again, to the point of parody.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1176186227818549249

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1176188115616030720

Andrew Scheer was in Vaughan, Ontario, to announce a four-point plan to make housing more affordable, which included a plan to “fix” the mortgage stress test (erm, have you read anything the Bank of Canada has put out?), let first-time homebuyers take out thirty-year amortized mortgages (almost like the 2008 financial crisis didn’t happen!), launch a national enquiry into money laundering in real estate, and make surplus federal real estate available for developers. The first two seem to ignore the actual issues at play regarding bad debt and the past financial crisis, and has instead swallowed the arguments of real estate lobbyists wholesale – never mind that the housing market has come roaring back in recent months, showing that the stress test was not the issue, and it’s almost like these plans could have the effect of driving up housing prices again. Funny that. Like Trudeau invoking Ford, Scheer was also invoking Kathleen Wynne’s name as his own scare tactic, which seems like a poor choice considering that her government has already been defeated, and Ford was found to have mislead Ontarians on the size and scope of the deficit (while he spends more at the same time as cutting services).

Jagmeet Singh finally visited New Brunswick for the first time in the 23 months he’s been leader, where he announced a “star candidate” (very loose definition), apologised for not having visited sooner (offering no excuses), and repeating his plans for pharmacare – again, with no details about how exactly he’d get the provinces to sign onto a very expensive programme with disparate systems and formularies within a year.

In an interview broadcast yesterday, Singh also said that he would allow any province to have a veto over projects like pipelines, which is also ridiculous, goes against the whole notion of why we have a constitution, and also goes against his whole platform where he wants to impose federal programmes on areas of provincial jurisdiction (being pharmacare and dental care).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1176201384183685120

Continue reading →

Roundup: Gun control theatre

Posted on by

While there was suspicion that the announcement was timed as a pivot from the past two days of bad press – Liberals insisting that his has been planned for days – Justin Trudeau was in Toronto yesterday for a morning of meeting people on the streets before he announced his long-awaited additional gun control measures which are guaranteed to please nobody – a total ban on semi-automatic assault rifles (never mind that there’s no actual definition of an “assault rifle”) with a buy-back programme, and the ability for cities to make additional regulations around handguns (as in, allowing them to attempt to ban them), plus some additional offers around licensing and the ability to forbid the purchase of new weapons after certain red-flags. The measures are not enough for those who want a national handgun ban, too far for certain gun enthusiasts, and almost certainly going to be useless because the problem of illegal guns is that the vast majority of them are smuggled from the US, which these measures largely won’t address (I didn’t see any promise for more resources for CBSA in the backgrounder). In other words, it’s a political play, trying to balance the need to be seen to be doing more about gun control for big cities where it’s a problem, while not alienating their rural voters (again), while also being hemmed in by jurisdictional considerations (Doug Ford, for example, has said he won’t go along with any kind of handgun ban that would fall under provincial jurisdiction). Nevertheless, the symbolism of banning AR-15s is something they hope to capitalise on, while they castigate Andrew Scheer for his promise to relax some gun control regulations, so that may be enough for them in the election in any case.

https://twitter.com/CochraneCBC/status/1175047467265642497

Speaking of, Andrew Scheer was in Saint John, New Brunswick, to promise that a Conservative government would spend $1.5 billion to get provinces new MRI and CT machines in an effort to reduce wait times (structural issues? What structural issues?) – never mind again that it’s provincial jurisdiction and he may have a hard time getting them to actually spend dollars that he’s earmarked for said purchases. Scheer also clarified that oil and gas subsidies would not be part of those he plans to eliminate – try to look surprised, everyone!

Jagmeet Singh was in Windsor to talk up the party’s pharmacare plan, and answer yet more questions on the Blackface issue, citing that he didn’t want to be complicit in Trudeau’s public exoneration. (And yet, the media is demanding this kabuki theatre to play out).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Agenda-setting out of the gate

Posted on by

With the proclamation signed by the Governor General to dissolve parliament, the 43rdgeneral election started, with Justin Trudeau emerging from Rideau Hall to have a ready-made human backdrop assembled for him. After a mention of the anniversary of 9/11, he launched into his election pitch about the record of economic growth because they rejected the austerity of the Conservative years, and yay Middle Class™ And Those Working Hard To Join It®. He listed accomplishments, and the choice of investing in Canadians, and the choice to move forward or go back to the “Harper years.” The questions afterward were dominated by two themes – the latest SNC-Lavalin news from the Globe and Mail, and Bill 21 in Quebec, and the linguistic duality on the two questions was quite evident. On the former, Trudeau simply said that he trusted the Clerk of the Privy Council’s judgment with regard to the cabinet confidences, and on the latter, he said that he opposed the bill but that now wasn’t the time for the federal government to interfere legally.

Jagmeet Singh held his launch minutes later in London, Ontario – one of the regions where they are looking to save the seats they have. Singh spoke about his personal connection to London, as he lived there when he attended Western, then launched into the tales of woe he heard from people there about pharmacare and healthcare costs – and lo, he has a pitch about expanding coverage around them. He then said that what his party had was the “courage” to take on lobbyists, corporations, money launderers, speculators, Big telecom, big polluters, and “fossil fuel subsidies” – a long list to be sure. He then moved on to claiming that “Trudeau charmed us with pretty words and empty promises”, and that Scheer was not the answer, then turned to the human backdrop and said “These are the people I’m in it for.” Like his slogan. In the questions, he was asked a local question about the General Dynamics plant which is building those LAVs going to Saudi Arabia, and have basically saved the local economy. Singh insisted that they could still have those jobs selling equipment to the Canadian Forces and to “non-oppressive regimes.” Err, except they have their own local suppliers, so he clearly has no idea what he’s referring to.

The Bloc’s launch in Quebec City was largely a laundry lists of exaggerated grievances and talk of a renewed Quebec nationalism, and one of the phrases that leapt out at me was talking about “people who will be like you,” which seems like a dog whistle, but perhaps it was a translation issue.

Next up was Elizabeth may in Victoria, where she brought local “climate striking” children on stage, and then launched into a speech about holding the line on climate change, decrying the Trans Mountain pipeline, and touting her “Mission: Possible” climate plan. She also demanded that parties “jettison partisanship” to solve climate change – never mind that she herself is partisan, and it’s become a Green tendency to pretend that sanctimony is non-partisanship. When faced with questions about vote splitting, she asserted that “Greens don’t split votes, Greens grow votes,” and when pressed about Pierre Nantel’s declaration of separatist sentiments, she prevaricated and assured us that “we’re all Earthlings.”

Finally we had Andrew Scheer, from Trois-Rivières, Quebec – one of those seats he’d love to gain. His 9/11 mentions included the plot of Come From Away as an example of why he loves the country. Using the Harper-esque prefacing of all statements with “friends,” his pitch was that it was time to elect a government that would elect a party that would improve peoples’ daily lives, while he claimed that Trudeau would raise their taxes (err, except that the record is the opposite). And then it was a laundry list of lies and disingenuous framing of issues, hammering on the Globe story about SNC-Lavalin – again, exaggerating what the story actually said. His message to Trudeau was that “starting today, recess is over” – part of his constant attempts to infantilising Trudeau (remember the constant claims that Trudeau is busy colouring in the House of Commons, or that he “wrote” a colouring book). For his Quebec audience, he added a few references about “open federalism” and Quebec being a nation within Canada, while slamming the Bloc as being ineffective in Ottawa.

This all having been said, I did want to touch on that Globe and Mail story for one other aspect, which is the fact that they deliberately published the story about “sources saying” the RCMP has been asking questions about “possible obstruction of justice” in the SNC-Lavalin case – which is not an investigation – on the eve of the election, because they are trying to set the agenda. Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t ask these questions, but agenda-setting – particularly where your stories are thinly sourced and with torqued headlines that give a misleading impression of what the story actually says – is of dubious ethical practice, and it’s something we should be cognisant of and think critically about.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Cheap outrage over MPs’ spouses

Posted on by

Long-time readers will know that one of my pet peeves is the propensity for my media colleagues to push cheap outrage stories, to trigger the hairshirt parsimony and tall poppy syndrome of the Canadian public, and lo, they did it again with the screaming headline that taxpayers footed the bill for $4.5 million in MP spousal travel over four years. Which is actually not a lot, particularly when you consider that we’re a big country, and that airfare is expensive here because of our duopolistic air carriers and lack of population density.

Of course, when I tweeted this out, I had all kinds of people yelling at me that Bill Morneau’s millionaire wife shouldn’t be eligible for sponsored spousal travel. The problem with this kind of qualifier is that it when you start qualifying who is and isn’t eligible for the benefits based on personal circumstances, you start running into the mentality that plagued the UK for centuries – that MPs were poorly compensated and essentially needed to be independently wealthy before they stood for office. We’ve seen enough people suggest that the Canadian Senate be run this way, with the ludicrous suggestion that it be a volunteer position. I would also add that the divorce rate for MPs is several times above the national average – if we start begrudging their ability to travel with their spouses to Ottawa and back, particularly if the distances are fairly large ones – we’d see even more divorces, or a pervasive belief that people with families shouldn’t run for office. I’m not sure who that would benefit.

Throughout this bit of cheap outrage, Jody Wilson-Raybould’s spousal flights were singled out in a separate piece about cabinet ministers and their spouses’ travel costs. That a Vancouver MP’s costs would be higher should be no surprise, and it could very well be that they are higher because they may have been booked last-minute rather than in advance (given that they are simply treated by the MP and their spouse as points rather than being given a dollar figure as their expenses limit). Suffice to say, these kinds of stories are pretty gross when you stop and think about it, and the performative outrage over taxpayer dollars that are packaged in a way to look big and without sufficient context is one of the biggest problems we have in Canadian politics, and why we make the lives of our MPs so miserable.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Kenney’s McCarthy-esque quest

Posted on by

Over in Alberta, Jason Kenney’s McCarthy-esque Committee on un-Albertan Activities received its terms of reference and will begin taking submissions, and just like the MacKinnon Report, it was gamed to specifically look at anything that was being mean to the oil and gas sector while studiously avoiding any falsehoods used by the oil and gas lobby to state their own case. And it’s all going into feeding their “war room” to “fight back” against those un-Albertan activities. Because this is totally normal for a democratic government in the western world.

Continue reading →