While the prime minister was off meeting with big city mayors before heading off to Ethiopia, Andrew Scheer was indeed present, and he led off and he read a bunch of complete lies about the supposed plan to “license” media, to which Steven Guilbeault, who reminded him that the panel recommendations specifically excluded news media and the government would not regulate news media. Scheer insisted that wasn’t good enough and the report somehow would impact free speech, and Guilbeault repeated his answer in English. Scheer tried again, and Guilbeault said that he would be happy to sit down with the opposition when they tabled a bill. Scheer then moved onto UNDRIP, and claimed it was an effective veto on energy projects, to which David Lametti said that they were moving ahead with legislation that would be co-developed with Indigenous people. Scheer tried to use the scare tactics of veto powers, and Lametti suggested that Scheer look at BC’s UNDRIP legislation and see that it is not a veto. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and he railed about the Court Challenges Programme funding a challenge against Quebec’s “secularism” bill, for which Guilbeault said that the government doesn’t have any control over that funding, and that they Bloc should understand the notion of independence. Therrien asked if the government supported the challenge, to which Pablo Rodriguez said that the legislation is being challenged by Quebeckers and that the government was following with interest. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and demanded changes to the federal bankruptcy laws to prioritise workers, to which Navdeep Bains said that they had made some commitments in the last budget. Singh then demanded to know how much had been spent on legal fees for the challenge around the First Nations compensation, to which David Lametti said that reports of legal fees are calculated according to a set formula.
Tag Archives: Cyber-security
QP: Trying to make Orwell happen
Monday of the second week back, and for the anniversary of the great Centre Block fire of 1916, the wooden mace was on the table for the day. Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer were present, but most of the other leaders were not. Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he immediately raised the spectre of the torqued stories of government licensing media. Trudeau took up a script to say that the report stated that news was not to be licensed, that they believed in free media, but they continued to study the report. Scheer tried again, throwing out references to Nineteen Eighty-Four, China’s basic dictatorship, and Fidel Castro. Trudeau repeated the response, trying to be emphatic about it. Scheer then pivoted to the economy, talking down the figures, and Trudeau reminded him that they have made progress on tackling poverty and investing in growth. Scheer tried again, and Trudeau reminded him that they actually cut taxes. Scheer tried to then score points on the supposed $50 Million to MasterCard — really an investment in a cyber-security research centre — and Trudeau read back Scheer’s quotes about the importance of cyber-security from the election. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, worrying about the potential approval of Teck Frontier Mine. Trudeau picked up a script to read that they were evaluating the proposal and would come up with a response within a month. Therrien tried again, and Trudeau listed from memory the various measures they are taking to protect the environment. Alexandre Boulerice led off for the NDP, and he worried that the government was not calling out Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace plan” as it disadvantages Palestinians. Trudeau reminded him that the government’s long-standing policy is for a two-state solution negotiated by the parties involved. Brian Masse then railed about the Volkswagen settlement, and Trudeau read that the Public Prosecution Service made all decisions independently.
Scheer insists that wages are barely keeping place with inflation.
This is false. SatsCan data shows that wage growth is between 3-4% while inflation is steady at 2%. #QP— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 3, 2020
QP: Putting the heat on Blair
While Justin Trudeau fled the capital to go sell auto workers the merits of the New NAFTA over in Brampton, Andrew Scheer was elsewhere. Candice Bergen led off with the story of the murder of a sex worker of a person on parole, and demanded a denunciation of the Board’s actions. Bill Blair reminded her that an investigation has been launched into the matter. Bergen asked about MasterCard getting $50 million from the government, to which Mélanie Joly said that the government was investing into a cyber-security centre. Bergen said that MasterCard can afford to pay for their own cyber-security, and bashed the investment again, and Joly responded about the importance of job creation. Luc Berthold was up next to ask about the Auditor General’s budget, to which Jean-Yves Duclos effused about the Middle Class before citing that they would work with the Auditor General. Berthold asked again in French, and Duclos responded with the record on growth and job creation. Yves-François Blanchet was up next to worry about Teck Frontier Mine destroying the Paris Agreement, and Jonathan Wilkinson responded that they were still making their determination on the environmental assessment. Blanchet also worried that said mine would require new pipelines and wondered if they were afraid of saying no to Jason Kenney, to which Wilkinson repeated that they were still considering it. Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, to once again demand limiting the tax break in order to fund dental care, and Bill Morneau reminded Singh that their tax cuts have benefited 20 million Canadians. Singh asked again in French, and got much the same response.
It’s a day that ends in y, so the NDP are demanding programmes that are under provincial jurisdiction. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 30, 2020
Roundup: Coronavirus case in Canada
We can expect a bunch of questions around the first two suspected cases of coronavirus being treated in Toronto when the Commons returns for Question Period tomorrow, and it’s a question of how much we’ll see any kind of politicking being played around it. The line is that we’re not expecting an outbreak in the country – but we’re already at a situation where the suspected case was symptomatic on a flight so that means tracking down the other passengers.
Statement from Patty Hajdu over the presumptive case of coronavirus. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/oVH7JeEOb7
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 26, 2020
1/3 The #GoC is working closely with provincial, territorial and international partners such as the @WHO to ensure our country is prepared to detect and quickly prevent the spread of the #2019nCoV #coronavirus in Canada. Canada is ready. For updates: https://t.co/Ch0n0sRqt7
— Canada's CPHO (@CPHO_Canada) January 26, 2020
3/3 Measures are in place at #YUL (VAN), #YYZ (TOR) and #YUL (MTL) intl airports, reminding travelers to inform @CanBorder officers if they have flu-like symptoms. Additional health screening questions on electric kiosks are in place for international travelers.
— Canada's CPHO (@CPHO_Canada) January 26, 2020
Over the past week, we’ve seen a lot of interviews with former officials, political or bureaucratic, who dealt with SARS and MERS, and they insist that lessons have been learned in Canada, even though we don’t know how this coronavirus will compare. That said, the Ontario government already slashed Toronto Public Health’s funding, so that just may come around to bite them in the ass.
Amidst this, Matt Gurney is decidedly more pessimistic about the preparations and says that the facts we know around this suspected case mean that the system didn’t work, and that’s going to be a problem going forward. He has a point, but we’ll have to see how the response changes in the days ahead.
Roundup: Capitalizing on the climate strikes – or not
It was a slightly less ridiculous day on the election campaign for a change, and first up of the day was Jagmeet Singh was in Ladysmith, BC, to announce that he would spend $40 million to protect the coast line, which includes protecting salmon stocks and clearing derelict vessels, as well as cancelling Trans Mountain and stopping that tanker traffic. He then went to the climate strike march in Victoria.
In Montreal, in advance of the Climate Strike, Justin Trudeau met with Greta Thunberg before announcing that he would ensure that two billion trees would be planted over the next decade, which would also create 3500 seasonal jobs (and it includes urban forests), and it would be paid for by the profits of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Folks who think “you bought a pipeline” is a super clever dunk on Canada’s current climate policies today would do well to take a minute and read this. I’ve been covering climate policy for nearly 20 years. If there’s an easy way to do it, I haven’t found it yet https://t.co/RmUoLWShPA
— Chris Turner (@theturner) September 27, 2019
We've also, in the last 2 yrs, seen new govts repeal important action provincially, here in Alberta and in Ontario in particular. Federally, we've got a choice: continued, concrete action on climate change vs promises that, while repealing policies, we'll still make progress. 2/
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) September 27, 2019
We're also being offered promises of deeper cuts, faster, with little consideration of consequences. US Rep Inhofe said he believed in climate change until he found out how much the solutions cost. We see the opposite: solutions must be easy because the problem is serious. 4/
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) September 27, 2019
At another point, when talking about AB's coal phase out, I remember a senior official asking, "are we really prepared to do this? Are we going to be the ones closing and locking the gates at the end of the last shift and saying that there's no longer a job here for you?" 6/
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) September 27, 2019
I hope that our leaders, whether they're speaking at #climatestrikecanada or elsewhere today, make it clear what they're betting on when it comes to climate change. Are they betting on a world that acts on climate in a coordinated way? A scattered way? Not at all? Not now? 8/
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) September 27, 2019
Finally, congratulations and thank you to all the kids standing up for what they believe in today, both those striking and those not. We'll all be better off for your engagement, your interest, and your push for better policies. /end
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) September 27, 2019
Andrew Scheer went to Coquitlam, BC, to announce more infrastructure plans for roads and bridges, cancelling the Infrastructure Bank calling it a “boondoggle” (reminder: These kinds of things take time to get up and running, and they did more than the Conservatives’ P3 Canada in its entire existence). Of course, on a day where everyone else was focused on climate change because of the strikes and protests, Scheer was pushing for more traffic infrastructure, and had the utter gall to say that it would help reduce pollution because people wouldn’t be in traffic as long. This of course is completely wrong, because traffic fills the available volume – it would create more traffic, and higher emissions (and congestion would be just as bad within a short period of time).
https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1177669904566292480
Roundup: Underlying concerns amidst good numbers
It was hard to miss all of the talk about the job numbers yesterday – particularly as pretty much every Liberal minister, MP and candidate started sharing pre-generated memes about how great the economy is doing under this government (with the caveat that there’s still more work to do). This, like news of much higher than expected GDP growth, are good headlines with some underlying weakness being masked, and as economist Trevor Tombe explains, those good numbers are masking some very real problems in Alberta.
And in Alberta specifically, the disappointing trend continues. Unemployment up in August to 7.2%. In past year and a half, the unemployment trend has increased a half point. #ableg pic.twitter.com/iTX3c15vf3
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
Another way to see it is here (one of the starkest illustrations of the age/gender differences). Still no recovery for young men; but now older men (55+) have seen systematic deterioration. Employment rate fallen by over 4 points since Oct 2014 (same as worst point in recession) pic.twitter.com/GU8upAJdoP
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
So, broad weakness remains the key feature of Alberta's labour market recent recovery. To see this even more clearly, I want to unpack this province's unemployment rate a little bit…. pic.twitter.com/CDfQYzzY1r
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
(Note: have to look at prime-age here since 15+ graph heavily distorted by aging/retiring population that naturally pulls down the participation rate.)
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) September 6, 2019
The issue of young men in that province is one that I’m not sure enough levels of government are paying sufficient attention to, as the Alberta government seems to think that all that’s needed is for the oil patch to revive and it’s problem solved, but with world oil prices depressed and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, that means the prospect for these young men – many of whom are under-educated because of the lure of high-paying oil patch jobs – are not going to be good in the shorter term. That’s additionally a problem when you have a government that feeds the people a diet of lies and snake oil to keep them angry at imaginary reasons why they’re being kept down (currently Justin Trudeau), because angry young men can be a dangerous thing if allowed to fester. And for the federal government’s part, I wonder just how much their retraining programming is penetrating given that jobs they could be retraining for couldn’t necessarily match the promised paydays of oil jobs in a boom – but that becomes a problem of waiting for the next boom (where the money will get pissed away, like it does every time no matter how often they promise that this time it will be different – really!).
Some of this will come up in the election – not just the lies that Kenney and company are pushing, but the NDP and Greens are trying to make some hay here, as both want to retrain these workers for the “green economy” in some vague way, while the Greens in particular think they could put them to work capping old orphan wells as both an environmental and job-creation measure, but it’s also one that is both expensive, and if the government just starts doing this on its own, it essentially lets the industry off the hook and demonstrates that the “polluter pays” principle is for naught. Add to that, the promises of green jobs retraining falls back to the issue of some of them waiting on the promises of the bigger paydays in a future oil boom, so there is no guarantee that green jobs will be attractive to this cohort. Nevertheless, it’s good that there are at least some ideas, and we should ensure that it’s something that does get discussed during the election.
Roundup: Enumerating promises
CTV had a two-part look at the government’s record yesterday, both in terms of what they accomplished that changed Canada, and what they did not accomplish as promised. The accomplished list is not quite as interesting – gender balance, more refugee resettlement, restoring the long-form census, legalising cannabis – I’m not sure their “reforms” to the Senate are as much of an accomplishment as people may think given the broader unintended consequences.
The other list, however, strikes me as requiring a bit more nuance than was really offered in some cases. For example, not balancing the budget was in part because there was an oil crash at the beginning of their mandate that affected their figures, and it wasn’t really balanced when the Conservatives lost power (particularly given that they booked a bunch of fictitious savings for things like the Phoenix pay system and Shared Services Canada, which the Liberals had to clean up). That said, they did increase spending once revenues increased, so it is a bit more complex than the piece offered. Electoral reform? It wasn’t one of their biggest campaign promises, but one of a myriad that was simply overblown in many instances, but that aside, it again doesn’t quite capture that the attempt to explore consequences resulted in a hot garbage report that was unworkable at best, and was based on a stupid promise that evidence showed was not feasible (leaving aside that the Liberals stupidly didn’t bother to promote their own preferred system until it was too late). The Indigenous file is still rocky? If anyone thinks that centuries of colonisation can be reversed in four years, well, that’s fantasyland, but it’s not as though there hasn’t been significant progress. The final, more nebulous point about scandals and “doing politics differently” is one of those unicorn promises that lets people’s imaginations run wild. For the most part, he did things differently than Stephen Harper did, but it wasn’t different enough or utopian enough for some people, and it qualifies as a failure, which I’m not sure is fair to anyone.
Speaking of stupid promises, the Ontario government is having to walk back on their promise to end “hallway medicine” in twelve months, and yeah, that’s not going to happen and it’s hey, it’s a complex and intractable problem that not even shovelling money at the problem is likely to solve. But it’s not like people believed anything Ford promised because it was only about their anger at Kathleen Wynne, right? But that’s what you get with populist blowhards – snake oil promises pulled out of their asses with no ability to implement them, but hey, so long as you keep them angry about the other guy/woman, then that’s all that matters, right? And nobody ever seems to learn.
Roundup: Frivolously calling in CSIS
Because there is nothing that the current strategic geniuses in the Conservative leader’s office won’t do to turn an issue into some kind of cartoonish conspiracy or a theatrical production, they decided yesterday to write an open letter to CSIS to demand that they open an investigation into John McCallum, citing that he was trying to direct the Chinese into interfering in the Canadian election. No, seriously.
https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1149729121230045185
To not put too fine of a point on this, calling in national security agencies over a partisan issue is not only highly unserious, it’s dangerous because it not only politicises CSIS, but it also fuels the current rage by those on engaging in illiberal populism of accusing those who engage in legitimate political disagreement of being treasonous. And while Lisa Raitt would take to Twitter to try and defend this with overly cute legalistic justifications, the broader point stands. Leave CSIS out of your political theatre. This should be a no-brainer. And yet…
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1149745283825315840
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1149748705395904517
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1149819453124894721
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1149819454878035968
Roundup: Attacking his own plan
Andrew Scheer’s sudden denunciation of the planned clean fuel regulations got some reaction yesterday, partly from the government, and partly from economists who deal with this kind of thing for a living. Scheer’s labelling it a “secret fuel tax” is more than a little odd, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he’s proposing by removing the transparent federal carbon price and replacing it with more costly regulations, which would get passed onto consumers in a hidden way without any of the rebates that the current federal backstop programme provides – in other words, doing exactly what he’s accusing the Liberals of doing. The government noted that Scheer’s 4¢/litre figure are just a guess because the regulations haven’t been finalised yet (though some economists say it’s about right based on current projections), but again, it needs to be driven home that this is exactly the kind of thing that Scheer himself is proposing, but without the added “technology is magic” sheen attached.
Mid-June: "We are pretty close to being able to achieve zero-emissions natural gas. (…) If Alberta’s oilsands producers used zero-emissions natural gas they would have a lower greenhouse gas profile than their competitors"
This week: "Oh my goodness, a clean fuel standard!"
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) July 9, 2019
Here's a record of the 3+ years of consultation, engagement, and regulatory filings associated with the CFS. https://t.co/8wvFGlp6So
Included is an opportunity for comment on the cost-benefit analysis framework https://t.co/yt6QvrHe9b which includes assessment of costs. https://t.co/UvkmB0NSHk
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) July 9, 2019
To that end, here’s economist Andrew Leach’s mock open letter to Scheer.
On June 19th, @AndrewScheer announced a secret fuel tax that will increase the cost of gasoline and home heating fuels, we just don't know by how much. Today, I sent him this letter demanding he come clean about the cost. #cdnpoli #ableg pic.twitter.com/d9KVxQltRB
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) July 9, 2019
Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield points out that this latest attack by Scheer risks boxing him in, and attacks his credibility on the climate file.
https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1148609609424429057
Roundup: Intelligence and context
There was a lot of flurry yesterday about supposed revelations made in Federal Court that CSIS has been spying on peaceful environmental groups. Except, people who used to be at CSIS, will tell you that’s exactly not the case. And the reporting on this hasn’t exactly helped either because it’s in a very defined frame with tropes that somewhat credulously take what these groups are saying and putting it with the redacted documents and drawing conclusions, that again, people who used to work there, will dispute, and those voices aren’t in the reporting. So here’s Stephanie Carvin and Jessica Davis, both of who used to work at CSIS, offering some proper context for what those documents say.
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148217645986131969
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148217647852642304
https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148233105825812480
https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148235622529818625
https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148235624580833283
https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148235626380181505
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148301752770408448
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148222236832215040
https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148230145968418817