Tag Archives: China

Roundup: A slacktivist declaration

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The Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day vote went ahead yesterday on declaring that China is conducting a genocide against the Uyghur population, and it passed unanimously – without anyone in Cabinet voting. Well, Marc Garneau was there to performatively declare that he was abstaining – which you can’t actually do, because Commons votes are strictly yay or nay (the Senate has an abstention option), but no one else in Cabinet was there, for what it’s worth.

Immediately, news outlets everywhere started declaring that “Parliament declared a genocide,” which, no, did not happen. It was a non-binding vote in the House of Commons – which is not Parliament – that essentially expressed an opinion. There is nothing official about said declaration, which is important, because an official declaration would have consequences. Essentially, the House of Commons voted to put a black square on their Instagram and call it action against genocide.

And there will be consequences, such as China attempting to impose further sanctions upon Canada in an attempt to try and warn other Western countries from making a similar declaration, because China doesn’t want to lose face. This is precisely why the government has been working with allies to do – ensure that all of their ducks are in a row before they make a formal declaration of genocide, so that they a) have a united front against China’s retaliation, b) that they can uphold the obligations under the Genocide Convention around preventing genocide and punishing those responsible – something that the Americans have opted themselves out of because they refuse to respect the authority of the International Court of Justice, which means that America declaring a genocide is largely a symbolic act, whereas Canada doing the same is not. (And it would be great if media outlets could actually articulate this point rather than ignoring it, because they all have. Every single one of them).

But the opposition parties – and apparently the backbench Liberals as well – are more concerned with making a statement and the kind of preening that comes with “showing leadership” rather than doing the actual hard work of getting our allies on-side so that we have a meaningful declaration and that we aren’t cheapening the term “genocide,” which is literally the worst crime against humanity. But political leadership in this country is decidedly unserious, so this is the kind of clown show we’re getting, complete with a cartoonish understanding of foreign policy. Go us.

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QP: Hotline blues

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Monday, and there were a mere two Liberals in the Chamber. Candice Bergen led off for the Conservatives by video, railing that vaccines were not being distributed fast enough, and demanded a plan from the government. Anita Anand reminded her that the plan is in place, and that over half a million doses are arriving this week. Bergen went two more rounds of the same, and got the same response both times. Gérard Deltell then took over in French, and demanded the government to declare how they would vote on the Uyghur genocide motion, for which Marc Garneau cited the government’s concern with the situation and their actions to try and get verification with international partners, but did not answer the question posed. Deltell cited that the Americans have made a declaration — which is meaningless because they don’t subscribe to the International Genocide Convention — for which Garneau repeated his response.

Alain Therrien rose for the Bloc, citing the hours-long wait times on the government’s hotline for hotel quarantines, for which Patty Hajdu praised their border measures and hotel quarantine making it more robust. Therrien then demanded stronger quarantine measures, for which he got the usual reassurances from Hajdu.

Rachel Blaney led for the NDP, and she complained that the UNDRIP bill had only received two hours of debate — ignoring the winter break and the shenanigans of the opposition in forcing debate on committee reports over bill debates. David Lametti reassured her that they felt the bill was important and hoped it would move along soon. Charlie Angus the railed about companies with poor track records getting contracts for First Nations water systems, for which Marc Miller pointed out that the First Nations choose the contractors, and the department works with them to get results.

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Roundup: Not calling out conspiracy theories

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Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant has been spreading conspiracy theories about the Liberals on her YouTube channel, and in conversations with campus conservative clubs, and how does The Canadian Press frame it? “Tory MP Cheryl Gallant accused of peddling ‘deranged conspiracy theories’ by Liberals.”

No.

Gallant outright peddled batshit lunacy, and CP went and both-sided the it rather than point out what Gallant was up to. “The Liberals say this. The Conservatives say this. Who’s right? You decide!” No, that’s not good enough. This is exactly the reason why political leaders realised that they could get away with outright lying to people – because they’re not being called out on it, since these outlets feel the need to be performatively “objective” and “fair,” and both-sides rather than be objective in pointing out that the kinds of things Gallant is saying are outrageous falsehoods in the headline and lead paragraphs. And speaking of leaders who lie, what was Erin O’Toole’s response when this was brought up? That this was just the Liberals trying to create a distraction. Seriously, that’s what he said. So, he’s tacitly endorsing that this is the kind of thing that’s okay in his party. Then again, he’s been fine with the outrageous lies being told by his MPs in Question Period and on social media, and has contributed more than a few of them himself, so I’m not sure why I’m surprised that he hasn’t drawn the line at behaviour like Gallant’s.

Another case in point of how media is doing active harm has been the way the COVAX Facility has been framed, as every single outlet calls it a way to give vaccines to poor countries as though it’s some kind of charity. It’s not, and that framing is wrong, and actually undermines the programme. (Case in point here). The whole gods damned point of COVAX is for wealthy countries like Canada to sign up and get doses from them so that it encourages them to invest and use their capital to leverage vaccine manufacturers to scale up production, and gives heft to the bulk purchases so that low-income countries can get equitable access. Yes, it has a separate arm that is solely about donations, but the main programme relies on countries like Canada to buy doses from there, not just donate money. And yet you wouldn’t know it ready or listening to any media outlet in this country. (And seriously – the reason other G7 countries have not taken their doses is because the only vaccine available through COVAX at this point is the AstraZeneca vaccine, which those countries are apparently producing for themselves so they don’t need that vaccine.) But hey, there is an established narrative that the media consensus has decided to feed into rather than taking ten minutes to read the gods damned GAVI website to understand how it works so that they can describe it properly, and we must service the narrative, right?

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Roundup: Making progress on mandatory minimums

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It only took six years and two justice ministers, but the Liberals have finally started making good on their promises for sentencing reform, and eliminating a broad swath of mandatory minimum sentences – many of which had already been struck down by the courts – particularly those related to drug offences. The goal of these reforms is to reduce the over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people, as opposed to dealing with the opioid epidemic. With that in mind, there is an emphasis in the bill on conditional sentences, as well as not prosecuting a number of drug-related crimes, but rather making them ticketed offences, but again, this leads to a great deal of discretion on the part of police and prosecutors. Prosecutors have been given direction to avoid prosecuting a lot of simple possession drug cases, but again, we’ll see how effective that is in practice.

Here’s criminal defence lawyer Michael Spratt – a frequent critic of the government – giving his read of the bill:

Certainly, one of the aspects around the conversation about decriminalisation is that there is certainly some suspicion that this is as far as the Liberals think they can go at this point in time, because there isn’t a broad national consensus on the issue like there was around legalising marijuana, but that may be accelerating given the kinds of conversations we’re having around the opioid deaths that are happening in this country, and how much they’re affecting people of all walks of life. I’m somewhat sympathetic to this notion – this government has been moving the needle on a lot of social issues, and there is a fine line to be walked, lest it give ammunition to the Conservatives who can prey on cultural unease about these kinds of things. Not that their position hasn’t moderated slightly, but it’s still fairly contradictory in that they think people with addictions need treatment – but they oppose harm reduction that helps people survive until they are ready to seek treatment, and still support mandatory minimum sentences, which don’t do anything about addictions or treatment, and can exacerbate them. Change – particularly societal change – doesn’t happen overnight, and these are good first steps that will hopefully pave the road for greater change as time moves along.

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QP: Selectively quoting reports to one another

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There were only three Liberals in the Chamber today, which remains a problem, but they keep telling themselves they’re setting a “good example.” They’re not. Pierre Poilievre led off, and he lamented a Canadian Federation of Independent Business report citing that up to twenty percent of small businesses may close because of the pandemic. Appearing by video, Chrystia Freeland quoted this week’s IMF report that praised the federal government’s quick action in providing supports. Poilievre then gave a mendacious comparison of unemployment figures, to which Freeland responded with comparisons of the participation rates in the labour force. Poilievre railed about people not getting jobs, but Freeland repeated her IMF quotes. Pierre Paul-Hus was up next, and he gave a fictitious version of the CanSino deal, to which Freeland read the talking points on the vaccine portfolio. Paul-Hus demanded a back-up plan for vaccinations, to which Freeland haltingly read talking points about the breadth of the portfolio as being Plans A, B, C, and D.

For the Bloc, Sébastien Lemire quoted that experts did not agree with the CanSino deal and falsely quoted the “putting all our eggs in one basket” notion, for which Freeland read assurances that the government always listens to expert advice, before repeating the assurances about diversifying the portfolio. Lemire then complained about the Laval candidate not getting funding, for which Freeland read that the researcher got a million dollar subsidy from the government.

Rising for the NDP, Jagmeet Singh complained in French about the federal sickness benefit, and demanded it being improved — though in 94 percent of workplaces, sick leave is a provincial responsibility. Freeland read that the sickness benefit was an important programme, and that provinces have put protections for employment in place. Singh repeated his demand in English, and Freeland agreed that paid sick leave is important, which is why they provided the benefits they could.

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QP: Random accusations and incoherence

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For the day’s proto-PMQs, prime minister Justin Trudeau was present, along with three other Liberals — still a pathetic turnout and contemptuous of Parliament. After a late start, Erin O’Toole led off, mini-lectern and script in front of him, and he accused the prime minister of being out of step with allies and his own caucus on China, and demanded that Canada remove itself from the Asia Infrastructure Bank — as though that would do anything. Trudeau stated that they continue to express their concern about China’s activities and human rights record, solidarity with the two Michaels, and that more discussions were happening in next week’s virtual G7 meeting. O’Toole tried to wedge Canadian job numbers with the Asia Infrastructure Bank, and Trudeau took the opportunity to pat himself on the back for the measures they rolled out to help those who lost their jobs because of the pandemic. O’Toole then worried about our vaccination rollout, and the lack of domestic production capacity, and Trudeau read about their investments in Canadian bio-manufacturing, and how the vaccine plan was on track. O’Toole switched to French to repeat the question and got the same answer, before he demanded to know how many Canadians would be vaccinated next week — as though he can answer for the provinces, but Trudeau listed what deliveries we were expecting this week,

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and stated that the Quebec government was investing in that Laval vaccine candidate, to which Trudeau listed what investments that particular researcher was given by the federal government. Blanchet was not mollified, and he continued to rail that multinationals got contracts instead of Quebeckers, for which Trudeau chided that we can hear the frustration in the Bloc leader’s voice because Ottawa was delivering for Quebec.

For the NDP, Jagmeet Singh got up, and in French, demanded a promise from the government that they would not call an election in the pandemic, and Trudeau took the opportunity to call out the Conservatives for stalling the latest pandemic aid bill. Singh repeated his demand in English, and Trudeau noted that in a minority parliament, the government doesn’t have the sole determination of that, before praising their efforts today.

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Roundup: Aping the Americans for the sake of chaos

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I frequently chide NDP leader Jagmeet Singh for his propensity to create jurisdictional confusion with the intent of making promises he can’t keep, and trying to make the Liberal government look unwilling to help (when they simply don’t have levers at their disposal), and yet, he keeps it up, again and again, and refuses to be called out on this particular brand of bullshit. And yesterday was case in point, yet again, as he laid out how an NDP government (post-election) would handle the vaccine distribution – using the military, and setting up federal vaccination sites.

As you can expect, this particular pledge is just more bullshit masquerading as a solution to which problems don’t actually exist. Oh, and yet another example of Singh simply lifting what the American Democrats are doing and insisting that it’ll also work for Canada. Never mind that in the US, where they don’t have public health care, the need for military intervention in the problem is more acute, especially as the rollout is a complete gong show in many states. This is not really a problem here, even though certain provincial governments are less than competent – but it’s certainly not the problem that the Americans are facing, so we don’t need their solutions. This having been said, while Singh thinks that federal vaccination sites will speed up delivery, the problem is not human resources, for which provinces have plenty of trained people and access to Red Cross volunteers, but it’s largely logistics. The notion of setting up federal sites in parallel to existing provincial ones, where it’s unlikely that their IT will communicate well (seriously, every province has their own IT systems and health record formats), and they will only create back-end confusion that will simply cause chaos in trying to determine who has been vaccinated with which product, and whether they’ve had both doses, and how to contact people who need second dose appointments if you have two systems that don’t interface well. There is no world in which this ends well. He should know this and ensure that the federal role is to ensure provinces have all the support they need, but no, he needs to keep trying to inflate the federal role (probably so that he can look like the hero).

His particular demands for publicly-owned vaccine and PPE manufacturing is also problematic in a number of ways. We can all see the need for some domestic manufacturing capability of PPE, it would seem to me that public ownership is a solution in search of a problem, particularly given that federal management of emergency stockpiles was not exactly stellar. As for publicly owned vaccine manufacturing, which particular platform would this entail? It’s highly unlikely that a publicly-owned vaccine manufacturer would have invested in mRNA technology while it was still unproven for wide-scale vaccinations, which wouldn’t do us any good in the current environment. I get that they have an ideological bent to public ownership, but articulate the problems you’re trying to solve – something that they refuse to do when called out.

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QP: Demanding new national plans

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With the stay-at-home order lifted in Ontario, we had a whole five Liberals in the Chamber, including Justin Trudeau, for what that’s worth, Erin O’Toole led off, worried that the government had no plan for the economic recovery, to which Trudeau replied that the best economic recovery plan is a healthy population, which they were doing everything to support. O’Toole then raised the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s new economic recovery task force, demanding a national strategy for rapid testing — never mind that this is a provincial responsibility. Trudeau reminded him that they delivered some 19 million rapid tests to provinces, and that O’Toole himself was opposed to a national strategy on long-term care, so he wasn’t exactly being consistent. O’Toole then pivoted to vaccinations, complaining Canada was lagging, to which Trudeau reminded him of the hundreds of thousands of doses arriving this week and every week, and that we were well on track to six million doses by the end of March. O’Toole repeated the question in French, got the same answer, and then demanded a plan for three hundred thousand doses delivered per day, to which Trudeau gave his rote assurances on the portfolio and everyone being vaccinated by September.

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised a Quebec scientist who developed a potential vaccine but did not get federal funding, calling it a slight against Quebec, to which Trudeau reminded him that they took the recommendations of science. Blanchet then demanded the full contracts were published, and Trudeau chided him, saying that he knows full well that there are confidentiality agreements, and they were transparent with the contracts, and the delivery dates.

Jagmeet Singh then rose for the NDP, and in French, he demanded leadership on vaccinations, and that all resources would be deployed into it, to which Trudeau assured him that it was what they were already doing. Singh switched to English to demand that the prime minister stop “hiding behind jurisdictional issues” and demanded funding for federal vaccinations sites. Trudeau chided Singh and the NDP for not understanding the constitution.

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Roundup: CSIS has a warning and a request

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The head of CSIS gave a rare speech yesterday, in which he did two things – called for more modernisations to the CSIS Act in order to let the organisation collect more digital information, and to warn about state actors who are targeting the country’s economic secrets, often though partnerships that they then take advantage of (pointing the finger on this one specifically at China).

Meanwhile, here’s former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis’ assessment of what she heard in the speech, which has a few interesting insights.

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1359213965851697154

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1359213967906865152

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1359214670624792576

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1359215146657341441

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1359215476224704512

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Roundup: Nuancing the discipline debate

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Over the weekend, Aaron Wherry wrote a piece about party discipline, comparing Derek Sloan’s ouster from the Conservatives in Canada, with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s censure in the US. While I think Wherry makes a few interesting points, he misses a boatload of nuance that should probably be included in there – including the fact that I’m not sure that control over nominations is necessarily an issue of party discipline per se, and I fear that the piece suffers a bit of conflation as a result.

What I thought in particular was his point where parties can exert more control over who can and cannot get nominations in Canada, where party influence is much weaker in American primaries. The ability for party leaders to be able to veto nominations is a fairly recent development, dating back to the Canada Elections Act reforms in 1970, when they needed an accountability mechanism when party names appeared on ballots for the first time, and in the interests of not burdening Elections Canada with intra-party disputes over nominations, they gave party leaders the ability to sign off on nominations. At no point in the debates (and I did read the Hansards and committee transcripts when I was researching for my book) was the possibility of this being used as a tool of party discipline raised. Nevertheless, this became essentially a tool of blackmail, where leaders could threaten to withhold signing the nomination papers of any MP who wanted to run again if they didn’t toe the party line. But this is only a tool of discipline for an incumbent, not someone who has never run before, which is more what Wherry is talking about with Sloane and Greene.

In either of those cases, these were newbies to the party, and control over who is and is not running is part of the argument he is making – that it’s tighter control in Canada than in the US, and maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think there is more elegance to the argument than that. When it comes to the more substantial difference between Canada and the US when it comes to quality control of who winds up on the ballot is how the grassroots mechanisms different. In Canada, it is ostensibly a matter for the riding association, which can be hundreds of thousands of members – especially if there is a membership drive for a contested nomination – but that’s not the same as a primary, which is many, many times larger. There is a more robust intra-party green-light process in Canada that has grown up over time, but the bigger problem right now is it is being abused, and parties are gaming the nomination process, in many cases to favour candidates that their leader would prefer, and this is a problem that very much needs to be solved as soon as possible. While yes, it may be preferable that we have a bit more quality control over our candidates (emphasis on “bit” – plenty of people get elected who never should have made it past their green-light process), it should still be a more grassroots driven process, and not be the sole discretion of the party leader. That is the part that is harming us more than helping us, and the happy medium won’t be found until we get back to a place where we aren’t selecting party leaders through membership votes, and the grassroots has their proper role in ground-up democracy restored.

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