Tag Archives: Constitution

Roundup: Healthy tensions made dramatic

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The Globe and Mail had one of those stories that sets the cat among the pigeons, where they got a number of sources to describe the tensions between PMO and the department of finance over their spending plans, and in particular that the PMO was adamant that they wanted to do that stupid GST “holiday”/rebate cheque programme, while Chrystia Freeland was trying to keep a lid on spending because she had fiscal anchors that she was trying to stick to.

As for those anchors, Freeland had her usual Tuesday economic good news press conferences yesterday, and very deliberately said that the Fiscal Update next Monday will show that the debt-to-GDP ratio fiscal anchor would be met—but steadfastly refused to mention the other two fiscal anchors she spoke of in the spring, being a cap on the size of the deficit, and a target for the deficit to be less than one percent of GDP by 2026-27. Freeland repeatedly said that the debt-to-GDP ratio was the one that mattered and that we would see on Monday that it was continuing to decline, but the interpretation of that statement is essentially that the deficit will indeed by higher than $40.1 billion, but that overall GDP grew enough that the higher number is less of an issue. We’ll have to see on Monday, but she very much appeared to be telegraphing lowered expectations.

As for those tensions, if anyone has been around Parliament Hill for any length of time, this should be normal. PMO wants to do things that are politically expedient, and that usually involves spending money, which finance tries to rein in as much as they can. This appears to be little different from that very ordinary standard operating procedure. This, of course, didn’t stop Pierre Poilievre from pouncing on this in QP as proof that the PM has “lost control” of his Cabinet (which is risible on the face of it), and every journalist was trying to get some kind of comment on it (when they weren’t trying to get a comment on Trump’s latest slights). Maybe I’ve been up here too long but “PMO wants to spend money, finance tries to say no” isn’t really news. That’s a day that ends in y. Maybe we don’t need to be so breathlessly dramatic about everything all the time?

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile hit a clinic in Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday, killing at least six and injuring at least 22. A missile attack also damaged an industrial facility in Taganrog the same night. President Zelenskyy says that he used his meeting with Trump in Paris to raise the issue of security guarantees.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1866509325197316109

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QP: Pouncing on alleged tensions between PMO and Finance

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Both the PM and his deputy were present for QP today, in advance of the Supplementary Estimates, as were all of the other leaders. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and cited the “weak” prime minister who has lost control of everything, and that he has now lost control of his finance minister, who wanted a big deficit but that Trudeau wanted an even bigger one, and wondered which of them would win. Trudeau said that when a government delivers dental care to seniors, or food to children’s schools, Canadians win, but they won’t if the Conservatives come to power. Poilievre insisted that his finance minister doesn’t agree and that he imposed the “inflationary” GST “holiday” plan on her. Trudeau said that the only one voting against Canadians is the leader of the opposition. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question and got much the same response, with a few added jabs that Poilievre was against growing the economy. Poilievre again quoted the Globe and Mail article from this morning, and wondered if they would meet their deficit target. Trudeau accused Poilievre of talking down Canada, while the Bank of Canada would likely cut rates again this week because inflation is on target, and then took another swipe at Poilievre controlling his caucus. Poilievre gave a tortured analogy about the finance minister driving a bus while a “lunatic” grabs control of the wheel, jerks it to the left and smashes through a guardrail down a cliff, Trudeau responded with a paean about the supports they have given Canadians, which Poilievre voted against.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and wanted the PM to denounce his immigration minister for calling out François Legault for attacking Muslims in the name of “secularism” while going to Notre Dame in Paris, to which Trudeau gave a rote line about Charter rights and diversity. Blanchet gave a torture definition of what equality means, and Trudeau reminds him that they should cherish individual rights and freedoms, and that the federal government will defend those rights.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and accused the government of siding with the Conservatives in voting against their GST cut proposal, and Trudeau said he was equally puzzled when the Conservatives voted against a tax break for Canadians—but didn’t say anything about the NDP’s plan (which was bad and disproportionately benefits the wealthy). Singh made a half-hearted jab about taxing (or axing?) the prime minister’s excuses, before switching to French to worry about private healthcare in Quebec. Trudeau said that they respect provincial jurisdiction but they have also invested billions in healthcare across the country and would defend the public system.

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Roundup: A cynical grift vs actual xenophobic bigotry

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Because apparently there isn’t enough stupidity right now in Canadian politics, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani has launched a petition about “protecting Christians from bigotry” in Canada. But it’s not a Parliamentary e-petition, given that the site leads to his own domain, so really, this is just yet another data-harvesting and fundraising exercise, and it’s the absolutely most cynical grift at that. Conservatives have long-ago learned that by appealing to the victimhood complex of self-professed Christians, that crowd will open up their wallets like there’s no tomorrow. And best of all, Jivani has roped in the support of his old Yale roommate, JD Vance, to shill for this as well (because that’ll get the MAGA crowd to open up their own wallets as well). I can’t tell you just how absolutely cynical this all is, and people are absolutely going to fall for it.

Meanwhile, François Legault is talking about new legislation, possibly invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, to ban prayer in public, but this is specifically meant to be targeting Muslims, and he’s not even being coy about it, or trying to couch it in some kind of universal secularist message. He’s literally saying he wants to send a “very clear message to Islamists,” which is absolutely outrageous. It’s also a fairly transparent play to xenophobia and scapegoating as he’s tanking in the polls and thinks that this will help him get ahead. This is the actual bigotry happening in this country, not whatever bullshit Jivani is trying to grift off of.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Riv have killed at least 12 and wounded over 40. Ukrainian officials have showcased a new locally-produced “rocket drone” that they say has twice the longest range attributed to the missiles supplied by western allies, while Ukraine’s bid to develop new missiles has been hampered by global supply chain issues.

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Roundup: Turnabout is fair play in procedural warfare

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If you needed yet another example of how the state of the current parliament continues to degrade, yesterday was yet another example. It was the first of the allotted Supply Days (aka “opposition days”) that the Speaker had to intervene in order to schedule, and it barely happened at all. Why? The NDP used procedural shenanigans to delay the debate on the confidence motion that used Jagmeet Singh’s words as the fodder by calling for concurrence debate on a committee report that dealt with abortion access, and the Liberals played along, which meant that the Conservatives’ debate didn’t end up happening until after QP, meaning they only had a couple of hours’ worth of clip-gathering instead of a full day, and boy were they put out about it. But that’s the thing with procedural warfare—if you wage it against others, eventually they will wage it against you.

There were other shenanigans that happened after QP—Liberal MP Jaime Battiste tried to move a unanimous consent motion to get the First Nations water bill out of committee and over to the Senate, but the Conservatives refused. As they did, Battiste took his water glass and started shouting at the Conservatives, and went into the aisle, apparently planning to throw the glass at them before he thought better of it. And then Andrew Scheer tried to move a motion that would have had the same effect, but with language that denigrated the government, and of course that too was shut down, and Scheer had the audacity to play the victim after that stunt.

It’s good that there’s only one sitting week left, because my tolerance for this kind of bullshit is at its end.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Americans have been pressuring Ukraine to lower the conscription age to 18 in order to bolster their fighting force, which is creating dilemmas for those teenaged boys.

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Roundup: Fiscal update when?

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This year’s Fall Economic Statement is very late—it’s extremely unusual for it to happen in December—but these are not normal times, and the ongoing privilege filibuster hasn’t helped matters any. The government’s attempts to get shame either the Bloc or the NDP into finally voting with the government to pull the plug on it have all been in vain, because they all want to do their part to embarrass the government as much as possible. This being said, I’m not sure what the holdup is with the Public Accounts either, though they have insisted that they’re with the Auditor General and will be released soon. In any case, the government has refused to explain exactly why these releases are so late, because we’re back to the tiresome “If you’re explaining, you’re losing” schtick, so as usual, this government never explains.

Pierre Poilievre decided that he would pretend to be magnanimous and “offer” the government two hours from the Conservatives’ allotted day on Monday to present the update, but Chrystia Freeland rejected it out of hand, calling the offer absurd, and saying “This proposal from the Conservatives is like an arsonist who set the fire in the first place, saying, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll come with a fire truck for a couple of hours, but tomorrow I’ll be back again with matches’.” Procedurally, I don’t see how the Conservatives could offer up time to government business on an allotted day, but also procedurally, Freeland could use the daily Statements by Ministers slot during routine proceedings to deliver the update (though that may be somewhat more awkward for the associated media lockup because those statements tend to be earlier than budget or fiscal update speeches are traditionally delivered, in part because of any data from those lock-ups moving markets (which is why they are traditionally delivered after 4 PM). They could technically also deliver it outside of the Chamber (Paul Martin once read it at committee, and the Conservatives liked to deliver it off Parliament Hill entirely), but we don’t want to encourage a return to the practice of announcing things outside of Parliament (and the UK Speaker uses very strong language about this sort of thing).

If I had to guess, I would suspect that it’ll be delivered next Wednesday or Thursday, once the Supply votes are out of the way, which makes it extremely convenient for Freeland and every other minister to spread out across the country to deliver the “good news” about the programmes in the budget, whereas Poilievre would want to use the timing of the update to claim that he “forced” the government to “come clean about the numbers,” or some such bullshit like that. None of this is great, but we’re dealing with an exhausted government and a dysfunctional parliament, so nothing is as it should be right now.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is giving soldiers who deserted or went AWOL a second chance, particularly given the shortages they’re facing on the Eastern front, and lo, some six thousand soldiers have rejoined. News leaking out of the Trump camp indicate that his plan to end the war involve major land concessions, NATO membership being off the table, and cutting military aid, unless Putin refuses, in which case they would provide more. (Land concessions are not really his goal, guys).

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Roundup: Lies about Brookfield to own the Libs

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For the past couple of days, the Conservatives have been trotting out new talking points about Mark Carney, and the fact that Brookfield Asset Management plans to move their head office to New York, but absolutely everything the Conservatives say about the move is false. The move is because they want easier access to New York stock indexes, but it remains incorporated in Canada, it’s not changing its operations, strategic plans, or tax treatment. Everything that Poilievre and his MPs have said about this is a lie, and they are utterly brazen about it.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429076470083823

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429080404341190

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429083327836651

Meanwhile, the Conservatives keep trotting out claims of the Liberals’ so-called “economic vandalism,” particularly in the resource sector. But again, this is utter bunkum.

It’s lies all the way down. But does legacy media say absolutely anything? Nope. The Elder Pundits? Are you kidding? They just keep shrugging it off, but when the Liberals stretch credulity with their own talking points? Well, that’s a scandal. Honest to Zeus, you don’t need to recreate what’s happening in the US. There is no “good parts only” version. Stop pretending there is.

Has Poilievre said a truthful thing ever? Nope.Have the Liberals stretched credulity with their recent talking points. Yup. Has the Post ever freaked out about the former as they have the latter? Of course not. There are two standards being applied.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-02T02:30:49.830Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile attack on Kharkiv killed a police officer and injured 40 others. Over the course of October, Russia attacked Ukraine with 2,023 drones. Ukraine’s ability to produce more mortar shells is being stymied by a global shortage of explosives. President Zelenskyy is calling on allies to take action to tackle the presence of North Korean troops in Russia before they engage in combat. From Ottawa, South Korea’s foreign minister said that all scenarios are under consideration for aiding Ukraine because the North Koreans have entered the field.

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Roundup: Another committee demand

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The Conservatives are demanding yet more “emergency” committee hearings, but because it’s a committee they don’t control, they are getting in front of the cameras to make performative demands. Case in point, yesterday Andrew Scheer called a press conference to demand that the NDP and Bloc agree to recall the public safety committee to examine how a suspected terrorist was able to immigrate and obtain citizenship when he may have been videotaped dismembering a prisoner in 2015.

Of course, the Conservatives’ case and rationale is largely hyperbolic, and their blaming the current government for crime rates is both specious and done entirely in bad faith. But then again, Scheer is a lying liar who lies constantly, so he’ll say anything to get attention, and that’s all this is really about—attention. The Conservatives need to get fresh clips for their socials, and summer committee meetings are precisely the kind of thing that they think makes them look good, so that’s why they have been trying to run committees over the summer, and claiming that the other parties want to be “on vacation” rather than doing work in their constituencies. (This becomes one of those areas where you could accuse the Conservatives of projection in that they treat constituency time as “vacation” or a “break” rather than simply doing other kinds of work in the riding).

This is just one more demand for a dog-and-pony show. I’m not sure what exactly a parliamentary committee could do here.

In case you missed them:

  • For National Magazine, I look at BCCLA’s fight to try to see secret documents to hold CSIS to account for possibly improper spying on environmental groups.
  • Also for National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on annuities the Crown owes for several Ontario First Nations for treaty breaches.
  • My weekend column conducts a thought experiment on how the Liberals could possibly hold a leadership contest under their current rules anytime soon.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the performative hairshirt parsimony on display as people lose their minds over the purchase of the diplomatic condo.
  • My column goes through some of Poilievre and company’s recent deceitful claims when it comes to drug decriminalisation and safer supply.
  • My feature story in Xtra looks at queer diplomacy in Canada, and how we’ve made great strides in the past decade, but we still have a lot more to do.
  • My weekend column on Jagmeet Singh’s continued announcements that are either economically illiterate, or entirely the domain of the provinces.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that their forces downed four Russian missiles and 15 drones overnight. Nevertheless, a missile did strike the Kharkiv region, killing one and injuring twelve. The first group of F-16 fighters are now in Ukraine, and ready to be deployed.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1820400963833958849

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1820799395371110697

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Roundup: Anecdotes about emigration

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It was a CBC story that caught the attention of Pierre Poilievre, and which his deputy leader brought up in Question Period, being one centred around census data showing a growing number of Canadians who are relocating to the US, and which tries to focus the attention on those who insist that they’re moving because Justin Trudeau has been so terrible. But this is also a story from a particular usual suspect, so it’s thinly sourced and written by a certain usual suspect who had a habit of this kind of sloppy work (and no, it’s not because he has any particular political agenda—it’s because he thinks he’s being edgy and that he’s tackling “big” things, even though he’s been relatively terrible about it.

To be clear, the story has no breakdown in the data to show much of anything useful about just who is moving, particularly from certain age groups and demographics, nor where they are moving to. This could be a case of retiring Boomers heading to Arizona and Florida and saying farewell to Canadian winters for good, but we don’t know. It does point out that a third of those who emigrate to the US were themselves Americans by birth returning home, and less than a third are immigrants to Canada from elsewhere who have since decided to move to the US, but for some of them, that could have been their plan all along. One of the profiled couples are fairly young and say that housing prices are an issue, but given how restrictive their immigration policies are, it’s hard to see how that many people are able to move just because housing is cheaper. This could also be a largely Ontario-driven phenomenon, but again, we have no breakdown in the data.

This is a big issue, but there is no attempt to get more clarity in the data. Instead, the focus is on getting anecdotes about how they hate Trudeau and want to move because of it, which is both an attempt to make this a federal story instead of a provincial housing one (and the usual suspect writing this piece has a history of doing that), but also because he thinks it’s going to get attention to the piece, and that’s exactly what it did, no matter how thin those anecdotes are, and the plural of anecdotes is not data. We shouldn’t need to remind a reporter at the gods damned public broadcaster of this fact, but things are off the rails there, and this is the kind of bullshit we get as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles hit three sites in Kharkiv overnight, as Ukrainian forces work to shoot down seven missiles and 32 drones. While Russians continue aerial attacks on Kharkiv, they have also increased their troop concentration in the region, looking like they will make a push toward the city. Word is coming out that president Joe Biden has quietly given the okay for Ukraine to use American-made and supplied weapons to strike military targets inside of Russia.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1796418752411840609

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Roundup: Another failed attempt to oust the Speaker

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Because everything is so stupid right now, the first day of the final stretch started with yet another call for Speaker Greg Fergus to resign for a “very partisan” invitation to an upcoming event in his riding, and of course, the Conservatives tied this to Poilievre’s ejection from the House of Commons two weeks ago because he challenged the Speaker’s authority in refusing to withdraw unparliamentary language when invited to, falsely insisting that he gave the prime minister a pass on similar language. Because playing the victim is part of their playbook, and they have to insist that the system is against them.

A short while later, the Liberal Party came forward to take the blame for this, and insisted that the wrong text had been put on the website that was “auto-populated” with “standard-language” (decrying Poilievre), and that this was being organised by the riding association, not Fergus’ office. A short while after that, the party’s national director issued a public apology to Fergus and take full responsibility.

This didn’t placate the Conservatives or the Bloc, while the NDP were satisfied with the explanation and apology, so they’re not going to vote out Fergus (while they busily pat themselves on the back for being the “adults in the room”). Nevertheless, I will note that as media outlets rushed to tabulate all of the controversies Fergus has allegedly been involved in the past six months, they conflated a bunch of the bullshit ones with them, such as the remarks he made in Washington DC about the time he’d spent as a young Liberal with a retiring Democrat, which is hard to actually qualify as a partisan speech. Nevertheless, it got included, unfairly, because legacy media outlets are incapable of exercising judgment and will simply include the bullshit allegations with the real ones (the video he recorded in his robes and office) as a form of both-sidesing. While Fergus hasn’t been a great Speaker (albeit, better than his predecessor was), the constant attacks for bullshit reasons are starting to look suspicious.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 28 of 29 drones overnight Monday, with the remaining drone hitting private residences in Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces are finally getting new artillery shells on the front lines in order to repel the Russian advance near Kharkiv. Ukrainian drones attacked more Russian oil refineries, and purportedly sank a Russian missile cruiser stationed near occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: Aborted merger talks?

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I will be the first to admit that I don’t follow BC politics too closely, but I cannot help by roll my eyes at some of the narratives starting to leak out across the border around a supposed attempt to “unite the right” in that province. It sounds like it’s all talk, as the rumours that a particular mayor is being touted as a possible candidate lead a merged party, but the leader of the BC Conservative Party is throwing cold water over the whole thing, not unexpectedly.

As a quick refresher, the province used to have a single centre-right party, the BC Liberals, which was not the same as the federal Liberals, but a merger between the “free enterprise” Liberal and Conservative parties in the province to counter the NDP, and that was successful for a number of years, but they were insufficiently conservative for some, especially because they were relatively socially progressive and were environmentally conscious—they were the first jurisdiction in the country to bring in a carbon tax (and it’s an actual tax that largely offsets income taxes). And so the BC Conservatives were born, and the BC Liberals changed their name to BC United (sounding like a European football team), and they have largely tanked since.

This talk of mergers is usually what starts to happen when people start huffing poll numbers (hello the recurring “Why don’t the federal Liberals and NDP merge?” bullshit), but who don’t think about anything underlying, such as policies, beliefs, or underlying culture, because that stuff does matter. A lot. Case in point was Alberta, where Jason Kenney decided to ride in with his blue pick-up truck to “unite the right” in that province without doing any of the soul-searching about what any of it actually means, and what they would have to offer. No, it was just important to them to have a banner with “conservative” in it that could oppose the NDP, and sure, the “united” party did beat the NDP, but it has been nothing but internal chaos, who turned on Kenney at the first opportunity because he brought in the ungovernable, swivel-eyed loons into the fold to give him the numbers he felt he needed. As I’ve said before, he invited the face-eating leopards into the house and made them a nice warm bed, with the intention of turning them on his enemies, but they quickly realised that his face was right there and so they ate it instead. I can pretty much promise you that the exact same thing would happen in BC if they attempted such a merger, which would end up serving nobody.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces have taken control of two more villages in the Kharkiv region, and possibly another one in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south, as their offensive pushes forward. There have also been injuries from Russian air strikes on the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson. In light of the deteriorating situation, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is postponing all foreign travel, starting with his planned trips to Spain and Portugal, because of the situation on the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1790735262978326589

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