Tag Archives: Citizenship

Roundup: Narratives about radicalization ahead

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One of the sub-plots from the 2015 election is about to get a rerun as the UK decided to revoke citizenship from “Jihadi Jack” Letts, who has joint-UK and Canadian citizenship. That essentially leaves him with only Canadian citizenship – dumping their problem on our laps (likely in contravention of international law, incidentally). And that means a return to Trudeau’s decision to revoke a Conservative law that would have had a similar effect in Canadian law, because as you may recall, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”

Where this will be compounded with the Conservative talking points that Trudeau thinks that returning fighters are “powerful voices” that can be reformed with podcasts and poetry lessons – which is a gross distortion of both Trudeau saying that people who were de-radicalised (not returning fighters) could be those powerful voices in their communities, and de-radicalisation programmes themselves, which again, are not for returning fighters but preventing people from taking that step once they’ve been radicalised. And lo, they will talk about how “naïve and dangerous” the notion that returning fighters can be de-radicalised is, when all of the things they point to are about de-radicalising people before they leave the country or do something violent here. But why should they let truth get in the way of a narrative?

Meanwhile, Letts’ parents are imploring the Canadian government to do something, and they are prepared to move here if that helps, but it also leaves questions as to what Letts may be charged with – though there is no evidence he was actually involved in any fighting. Nevertheless, it’s a problem the UK dumped on us that will become a partisan election issue, with all of the nonsense that entails.

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Roundup: A few straw men and some rhetoric about immigration

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Andrew Scheer gave another one of his “economic vision” speeches yesterday, this time on the subject of immigration policy. And while it was all “yay economic immigrants,” there were still a few questionable pronouncements throughout. It should be pointed out that off the top, he made a big deal about how they don’t want racists or xenophobes in the party (in apparently contradiction to the succour they gave avowed racists when they thought they could use them to paint the Liberals as the “real” intolerant party), and invoked his belief that we’re all God’s children so nobody is inferior regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation, and if they didn’t like that, the door was that way. So there’s that.

As for the policies, they were not only deficient when it comes to detail, but there was some of his usual problems of straw man arguments and hollow promises. For example, he repeated his usual argument that privately sponsored refugees do better than government-sponsored ones, but nobody is disputing that, and nobody is arguing against private sponsorship, but there is a place for government sponsorship which has to do with the most vulnerable who need more timely relocation and who may not have private sponsorship lined up. And yet, it’s part of his dichotomy about private groups being better than government. He also vowed to stop irregular border crossings, and good luck with that, because it’s always going to happen, and unless he can also stop Donald Trump from threatening immigrants and refugees in his own country, it’s not going to stem the flow coming into Canada irregularly – it’ll just push them to more dangerous crossings. He also didn’t stop the usual rhetoric that pits immigrants against asylum seekers that this kind of vow just exacerbates, so that’s not exactly turning over a new leaf. He also promised that economic migrants would get their credentials recognised in Canada faster, but good luck with that because credentials recognition is a provincial responsibility, and the federal government has precious few levers there, and successive federal governments have tried to deal with this situation in the past and not had much success, ensuring that his promise is empty. But what was perhaps most frustrating was his talk about intake levels – and while he took a dig at Maxime Bernier for calling on them to be reduced, he also said that the level should change every year based on “Canada’s best interests,” which is a giant loophole for that same kind of talk about reducing levels for bogus reasons.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1133506929442131971

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1133508491438624769

Meanwhile, the IRB says they need more funding if they’re going to tackle the asylum claimant backlog (which again, they inherited from the Conservative government) rather than just stabilize growth, which is what they’re projecting currently – but the real kicker here is that they’re still relying on faxes and paper copies rather than emails or electronic files, because they can’t share information effectively with CBSA, which should boggle the mind. And this problem was identified a decade ago (as was pointed out by Liberal MP Alexandra Mendès at Public Accounts), and it’s still a problem. I’ve talked to immigration and refugee lawyers who say that it’s a huge frustration for them that until recently, they couldn’t even schedule hearings by email. The IRB say they’re seized with the issue, but cripes, this should be embarrassing.

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Roundup: A weekend of Norman

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Over the course of the long weekend, there was another push about the Vice Admiral Mark Norman story, but there were some problems in how this has all been unfolding. The National Post had a longread that was the first to interview Norman and his family about the ordeal, but in the process, in focusing on making Norman a martyr to his cause, I’m not sure that they did him any favours because it did seem to make it look like he did what he was accused of doing – this, while everyone kept tweeting about how enraging this story was on Norman’s behalf.

There were other threads – General Jonathan Vance, the Chief of Defence Staff, gave a somewhat exasperated sounding interview to state that the decision to suspend Norman was his and his alone, while the Globe and Mail reported that it was the former National Security advisor to the prime minister and the former Clerk of the Privy Council – both Harper appointees, it should be noted – that called in the RCMP to investigate the leak after their own internal investigation was inclusive. This blows up the narrative of the Conservatives that it was somehow a personal vendetta to destroy Norman’s career, or that the prime minister was personally directing this – though that narrative is also about trying to match up Trudeau’s stupid misspeaking about the Norman case likely winding up in court before charges were even laid that had them trying to spin a narrative about interference. (The Conservatives, meanwhile, keep hoping that there will be more embarrassing revelations, but they don’t seem to be coming). Likewise, the attempts to insist that the government was orchestrating the withholding of documents hasn’t actually matched up with the realities of the processes involved.

But while the Post story was curious enough, I found this analysis piece by the CBC’s Murray Brewster to have its share of framing problems, in saying that the allocation of responsibility was throwing people under the bus – like Vance (never mind that he admitted it was his decision). Brewster also seems to confuse the arguments that Crown prosecutors were making with those of “senior government officials” framing the prosecution, because I have never read anything about senior officials framing the prosecution – nor have I read anything coming from government or officials framing the allegations against Norman as an issue of civilian control, which is why I always found it odd because that’s at the heart of what was being alleged. Beyond that, Brewster wonders why the Liberals aren’t asking questions of the Conservatives about how they rewrote the rules on that procurement in the first place, or why the former Conservative ministers didn’t speak to the RMCP after the charges were laid, or why Norman would stake his career on this procurement – all questions that I don’t know why the Liberals would ask. They’re a little past holding the Conservatives to account because the Conservatives aren’t in power any longer, and it would seem to me that it would be more the role of journalists asking these kinds of questions of the Conservatives, as opposed to the government – perhaps more than trying to curry sympathy for Norman.

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1128335527785193472

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Roundup: Pausing the birth tourism hysteria

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You probably heard last week about the recent report that incidents of “birth tourism” in Canada are higher than previously reported, owing to collecting data from hospital sources rather than local statistical agencies. Given that this became a flashpoint at the Conservative policy convention a few months ago, it’s probably safe to assume that this will become a topic of debate in Parliament in the coming weeks (though it depends on whether or not Andrew Scheer decides this will be the next issue he decides to chase down a rabbit hole, as is his wont). One does hope, however, that we may have a reasonable debate around this, and while Chris Selley may point to the fact that we may want to do something (that won’t violate human rights and create stateless persons), economist Lindsay Tedds has another view that may also be worth considering, especially if we look at the issue over the longer term.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1066763395578253312

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1066766469545975808

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https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1066770215784996864

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Roundup: Immigration concern trolls

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Amidst the other disingenuous, fear-based campaigns going on in the political sphere right now – Statistics Canada, and the carbon price, in particular – the issue of immigration is also threatening to get worse, in part because the simmering issue around irregular border crossers is being conflated with the government’s announcement of new immigration targets. And we need to drill this into people from the start – immigration and asylum are two very different things, and shouldn’t be treated or conflated. We don’t accept refugees because we think they’ll fill out our workforce – we accept them for humanitarian reasons, which is why the expectations that they’ll find work right away is also problematic, as usually they’re traumatized upon arrival. That’s why it’s especially problematic when you have partisan actors like Michelle Rempel standing up in Question Period to decry the new immigration targets as having some form of equivalency with the irregular border crossers – they’re not the same thing, and conflating them is using one to demonize the other. Even more problematic is the kind of concern trolling language that we’re seeing from other conservatives – that they “support immigration” but are concerned about the “confidence in the system.” There is a certain dogwhistle quality to those “concerns” because it implies that the “confidence” in the system is undermined by all of those bad newcomers arriving. It’s subtle, but the signals are still there.

To that end, the government decided to launch a pro-immigration ad campaign, which the Conservatives have immediately derided as an attempt to paper over the irregular border-crosser issue, despite the fact that they’re separate issues, and they’re actively undermining confidence in the immigration system that they claim to support by conflating it with the asylum seekers they’re demonizing. And this cycle of conflation and demonization gets worse when the federal minister pushed back against the Ontario minister’s politicizing of the issue and attempt to blame asylum seekers for the city’s housing crisis (and more importantly pushed back against her claims that “40 percent” of shelter residents are now irregular border crossers and that they used to be 11 percent as being fabricated because the shelter system doesn’t track that kind of data). The Ontario minister responded by calling Hussen a “name-calling bully” (he didn’t call her any names), and on it goes. Would that we have grown-ups running things.

Meanwhile, The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ checks the government’s claim that they’ve reduced irregular border crossings by 70 percent (it was one month’s year-over-year data), and Justin Ling gives an appropriately salty fact-check of the political memes decrying the planned increase in immigration figures.

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Roundup: A (likely) electoral false alarm

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There were a few eyebrows raised in the Parliamentary Precinct yesterday when news came from the Procedure and House Affairs committee that the Chief Electoral Officer said that they intend to be ready for an election by the end of April, never mind that the fixed election date is October, and suddenly there was a renewed (but brief) round of election speculation fever (which was then suffocated by the Kavanagh hearings south of the border). Stéphane Perrault noted that they can basically run an election anytime under the previous contest’s rules, but they need lead time for future changes, which puts a clock on the current bill at committee if they want to have a chance for any of the changes to be implemented by next year’s election – and that assumes fairly swift passage in the Senate, which they may not get (particularly if the Conservatives are determined to slow passage of the bill down in committee as it stands).

Of course, I’m pretty sure that a spring election is not going to happen, simply because Trudeau’s agenda still has too many boxes without checkmarks – which is also why I suspect that we haven’t had a prorogation. And looking at how Trudeau has organised his agenda, so much of it has been backloaded to the final year, with plenty of spillover for him to ask for re-election in order to keep it going. (Things are also delayed, one suspects, because NAFTA talks have derailed things in the PMO, and sucked up much of the talent and brainpower. Suffice to say, I’m not taking any talk about an early election with any seriousness.

Meanwhile, more eyebrows were raised when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel claimed that she was being told to prepare for a fall election, which we’re 99 percent sure is just a new fundraising ploy, for what that’s worth.

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Roundup: Negotiations and narratives

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It was another day of NAFTA developments, or rather the hints thereof, since Chrystia Freeland repeatedly said that they weren’t going to negotiate in public – just that they were making progress, and that they would go all night if they had to. Justin Trudeau said that they could reach a deal by Friday, but kept insisting that Supply Management would not be given up, and on the campaign trail in Quebec, Premier Philippe Couillard warned of “serious political consequences” if it was touched. Trudeau, meanwhile, will have a call with all of the premiers today in order to discuss what’s going down with the deal, so it may actually be getting close. Maybe. Of course, the Friday deadline appears to be more bluster, so we’ll see how it all plays out.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Conservatives have tried to ramp up their narrative, and are insisting that all of the talk about the Canadians having been “sidelined” in NAFTA talks, and that we were now cornered into accepting a bad deal was indicative that Trudeau had “failed” – somehow, based on no information on mostly Trump talking points that don’t match reality.

You’ll notice a couple of things – one is that the “Trudeau” + “failed” in every tweet is part of their overall ham-fisted narrative-building strategy, and I’d imagine that every time they deploy it, campaign director Hamish Marshall gives them a cookie. Scheer is also going to town on this line from his convention speech about needing to be the “grown-ups in charge” again, which is tough to swallow given how little foreign policy depth their bench actually has, or even had in the previous government. And while there is room for the opposition to critique a government’s performance and holding them to account, coming up with false narratives, snide commentary, and shitposts in the middle of trade negotiations don’t exactly scream “grown-ups in charge.” And speaking of false narratives, the data show that the Conservative doomsaying about investment fleeing the Canadian economy isn’t holding water. Shocking, I know.

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Roundup: A sudden focus on birth tourism

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So that was the Conservative policy convention. There wasn’t a lot of drama, post-Bernier, and most of the reactionary and social conservative policy resolutions got voted down in the end, including those related to abortion. What did wind up being contentious was a resolution around stopping automatic birth citizenship, which was supposedly aimed at stopping “birth tourism” but would have the alternate effect of creating stateless individuals, which is contrary to international law. Mind you, the Liberals didn’t help any when they started talking about how this meant revoking existing citizenships (which it wasn’t), and then certain Conservative partisans started complaining that this was being unfairly cast as xenophobic (I’m not sure that’s really an unfair assessment), but there you have it. Incidentally, MP Deepak Obhrai came out against this. There was a bit of other drama when opponents of supply management stole the briefing binder for dairy lobbyists and found proof therein that regardless of what was decided, Scheer would use his prerogative as leader to ensure the policy was untouched. When this hit social media, his people insisted that no, that’s erroneous information, they had it wrong, but remember that leaders’ prerogative is pretty much how every party operates since we’ve started privileging leadership over the grassroots, but people seem to keep forgetting that.

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https://twitter.com/cforcese/status/1033757371338772480

Here’s a sit-down interview with Scheer to get his thoughts on policy positions that the convention was debating over the weekend, and another where he refuses to say if the Bernier split worries him. Scheer does complain that it’s hard for ordinary people to learn his name because he’s not suave and photogenic like Trudeau (never mind that a lot of what people in other countries remark about Trudeau is regarding his stances and policies, not just his looks). That said, it’s his party now, and it remains to be seen what his mark will inevitably be on it.

Meanwhile, the first poll about how people would vote with a theoretical Bernier-led party in the mix is out, and it would take enough votes away from the Conservatives and NDP to give the Liberals a bigger margin of victory. But remember, it’s early days and it’s pretty much the equivalent of putting “a pony” as the choice in the polls and people will immediately respond to it based on what they’re projecting rather than the reality, but that’s not unexpected.

Good reads:

  • Trilateral NAFTA might resume this week, but without Chrystia Freeland as she is on a diplomatic tour in Europe until Friday.
  • There are concerns that Shared Service Canada is gearing its procurements to favour multi-nationals over home-grown companies for contracts.
  • Families of fallen soldiers want public access to the rebuilt Afghanistan war cenotaph.
  • CRA’s tax evasion tip line netted some 32,000 leads last year.
  • Kevin Carmichael doesn’t think that there will be another interest rate hike in September.
  • Susan Delacourt sees problems with the conservative coalition that Andrew Scheer should be cementing at this point in his leadership.

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Roundup: Bozo eruptions coming from the top

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Given some of the “bozo eruptions” over Twitter over the past couple of days by Conservative MPs and senators, I have to wonder about both the mindset behind this strategy of posting, and the adult supervision that underpins it. Obviously, the latter is lacking given what we’ve seen this week especially, but we also can’t deny that there is an attempt at strategy behind it, even if it’s a strategy that’s been kluged together in service of a narrative. That narrative is to put “Justin Trudeau” and “failed” in as many sentences together as possible, but it’s also about a deliberate campaign of lies and misdirection in service of creating that narrative. But even with this in mind, some of it is just really, really dumb.

Take this tweet from Shannon Stubbs – who is a pretty decent MP, it should be stated, but seems to have lost her ability to be credible over Twitter. Part of what is so gross about this tweet is that it basically undermines our entire criminal justice system, which requires that the accused have advocates in order to have a fair trial. And she knows this – the party knows this (while they go about fetishizing victims of crime and altering the entire vocabulary around them in order to tilt the playing field against the accused so as to deny them fairness). But the temptation to be shamelessly partisan is just too much for some of them to withstand. And in the end, I have to think that it’s this mindless partisanship is often to blame – and it is mindless. It robs them of their intellect and critical thinking capacity, and makes them focus solely on scoring cheap points.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1028043707788996610

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028049573279948800

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028052339914104832

I’ve seen a lot of the chatter about the tweet from Senator Denise Batters about Omar Alghabra, to the point that the woke crowd is referring to as a “white nationalist,” which I’m quite sure she’s not – she’s just partisan to the point of being mindless, and that includes making ill-suited attacks to the point of dogwhistling, because it becomes reductive and about scoring points. She should know better. (As for Blaine Calkins and his tweet, well, I’m not sure I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows better, so I’ll leave it at that). But there needs to be a recognition that this kind of point-scoring is actually doing damage to their own brand, and as we’ve seen this week, has blown up in their faces more than once. You would hope that this would be cause for some reflection and that they’ll think twice before continuing to engage in this kind of behaviour – but I’m not holding my breath. So long as the official line from the leader is to lie over Twitter as often as he thinks he can get away with it, he’s set a low bar of an example for the rest of his caucus to follow, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing these kinds of bozo eruptions.

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Roundup: Get off that former diplomat’s lawn

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For the past couple of days, we’ve been bombarded by this suggestion that the Saudi Arabia spat has been all because the Liberals spend too much time doing their diplomacy over social media rather than in person – which is utterly ridiculous, and smacks of a bunch of retired diplomats railing about kids today before they yell at them to get off their lawns (while they hike their pants up to chest-level). If you actually look at the tweet in question, versus the kinds of vacuous press releases that governments issues on diplomatic issues all the time, about how they “strongly condemn” this or that, there is no actual difference whether it’s a press release or a tweet, except for the character limit (and even then, sometimes no difference at all). There’s a term for this – moral panic.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1027338409768087553

Meanwhile, the opposition has gotten in on the “diplomacy by tweet” game, which is awfully rich. Some of these same voices have been ones who would rant and rail that the government didn’t issue tweets condemning one government or another fast enough, or who’ve issued their own foreign policy missives by Twitter on their own. And then there’s the fact that they’ll rail about any diplomacy done behind closed doors with other countries, but when it’s done in the open like this? Terrible. Just terrible.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1027247475135008769

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1027248707467702273

The other thing I would mention is the fact that while there are demands that diplomacy be done either in the open or behind closed doors – take your pick on what the outrage du jouris – the assumption that Chrystia Freeland doesn’t know what she’s doing here is also puzzling and not borne out by history. Remember not that long ago, with the pogrom against LGBT people in Chechnya, and there were voices on all sides howling for Freeland to make some grand public gestures about what was going on. As it turns out, she was personally working behind the scenes to get some extremely vulnerable people out of the country and to safety before they wound up in a concentration camp, which she very well couldn’t do while making grand public gestures. All of which to say is that this posturing around Twitter diplomacy is absurd and helps no one.

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