Tag Archives: Cyber-security

Roundup: Electricians gathering lightning

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We’re still in “extremely slow news day” territory, so the discourse yesterday revolved around video clips of Pierre Poilievre praising electricians who “capture lightning from the sky” and run it through copper wires to light the room that he’s in—and that he’s used this particular turn of phrase on at least four occasions, one of which was in the House of Commons (though nobody said anything at the time). While all of his reply-guys on Twitter are insisting that he’s being “lyrical” or what have you (one of them tried to tell me this was “anthropomorphism”—it most certainly is not, and yes, I do have a degree in English literature), I do suspect that this is possibly some kind of troll, so that he can claim that the people laughing at him are really laughing at the blue collar electricians, whom he has been praising as “extraordinary” for their apparent superpowers. And yes, stoking grievances is his schtick, so let’s keep that in mind.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine and Russia had the largest single exchange of prisoners since the start of the invasion. Here’s a look at the losses faced by those whose apartments have been hit by Russian missiles. Türkiye has blocked the passage of two minehunters donated by the UK to Ukraine, citing the 1936 Montreux Convention.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1742484948349575331

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Roundup: The empty threat to sit over the holidays

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Yesterday began with Pierre Poilievre announcing at the start of his caucus meeting that the Conservatives would keep the government from going on their Christmas holidays—because they had allegedly ruined the Christmases of Canadians—unless the government lifts the carbon price from “farmers, First Nations, and families,” which is pretty nebulous, and would seem to mean the consumer carbon price and not the industrial one. Their method of warfare? Thousands of amendments that would force round-the-clock votes on things like their budget implementation bill or the bill to amend competition laws.

The problem is that, despite the threats that Conservatives like Melissa Lantsman are making, is that they can’t actually force the House to sit past December 15th. MPs long ago put the fixed calendar into the Standing Orders, and it would take a unanimous consent motion to change that date, which they’re not going to get. And if they think they’re going to exploit the loophole of keep voting going for days on end (which would technically be one sitting day that lasts beyond twenty-four hours), well, Poilievre is going to find his own MPs are going to start getting pretty upset with him because they have families, and constituency business to attend to, and this kind of thing gets pretty tiresome really quickly.

It’s an empty threat, and it’s the same kind of thing that happens every June, and every December without fail. The opposition parties start thumping their chests because it’s their last chance to flex their muscles and look like they’re being tough on the government, and without fail, they go home on time, if not a day or two early, because everyone is tired, cranky, and just wants to get the hell out of there. I would be incredibly surprised if the House didn’t rise for the holidays by the end of the 14th. Of course, this will be a different matter for the Senate, who will once again complain bitterly that these amendment vote-a-thons will delay their getting the bills, which will mean rushed passage, and that same song and dance will play out yet again, as it does at the end of every session.

In short, everyone needs to grow the hell up, and frankly, MPs need to go home sooner than later and think about their atrocious behaviour.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 41 out of 48 Russian drones in a major overnight attack. Russian forces pressed again on Avdiivka, with both sides each claiming they made gains. It was Armed Forces Day in Ukraine yesterday, with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisting they would win a fair peace “against all odds,” while his defence minister was in Washington to try and secure more aid from the Americans, who are holding it up to try and force concessions around their border. A former Ukrainian MP who was regarded as a traitor was shot dead outside of Moscow, and sources say that Ukraine’s security service was responsible.

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Roundup: Clawing back disability benefits

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Because the provinces continue to be the absolute worst level of government in the country, we see from the briefing binder of Ontario’s social services minister that the province is looking at ways to “mitigate costs” by clawing back provincial disability support payments once the federal Canadian Disability Benefit gets underway. As you might have guessed, this is entirely the outcome that the federal government has been trying to avoid, and why Carla Qualtrough spent months trying to negotiate with provinces in the lead-up to the framework legislation being passed.

This happened a lot during the height of the pandemic, when certain provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan clawed back any kind of social supports when people accessed CERB, because of course they did. It’s kind of perverse the way that provinces are in the business of literally legislating poverty for vulnerable groups like people with disabilities who generally cannot work (which I should point out is not the same as the programme in the US, where “disability” tends to have a different connotation than in Canada). There is a kind of meanness to it that goes beyond the judgmental protestant work ethic that this seems to stem from.

We’ll see what kinds of safeguards the federal government tries to build into the system as the regulations for these payments—which they point out are intended as an income supplement and not a replacement programme—are rolled out (eventually). But because of the division of powers, there may not be any legislative or regulatory mechanism they could use to protect these payments from clawbacks, and it may rely on negotiations and signed agreements, which is probably easier said than done (particularly as many of these premiers are the absolute worst).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Five people were wounded as part of the largest attack on Kyiv since the start of the war, timed for the commemoration of the Holodomor. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told an international food security conference that Ukraine needs more air defences in order to protect its grain exports, as Russia has been targeting them in recent months.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1728719618317910451

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Roundup: Long on speeches and imported culture wars

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The Conservative convention this weekend was long on speeches—Poilievre’s speech very much needing an editor as it went on for well over an hour—and was full of praise for the so-called convoy occupiers (from Poilievre’s wife as well as the wife of the “anti-woke general”). Said “anti-woke general” proved himself to be so fragile that he thinks that things like racial equality and gender equality are “destroying” Canada. There was also the Brexiteer from the House of Lords who also showered Poilievre with praise, so some real talent on display there.

Policy resolutions were not focused on things like housing or affordability, but instead prioritised things like vaccines, and culture war bullshit that extended to two separate resolutions attacking trans people (which the party could have used mechanisms to de-prioritise but didn’t, meaning they wanted them to come up for a vote). The Canadian Press has compiled five take-aways from the convention.

https://twitter.com/dalybeauty/status/1700974631468052754

In pundit reaction, Althia Raj looks at how the Conservatives used their convention to woo Quebeckers, and how they are going after the Bloc along the way. Aaron Wherry notes that claims of “common sense” are easier said than done, particularly as Poilievre painted an idyllic 1950s picture of the future he wants. Shannon Proudfoot hones in on the feeling of “enough” that permeated the convention, and the swinging of the pendulum, but also cautioned about who limiting that can be.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces staged early-morning drone attacks against Kyiv on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the counter-offensive has made more advances along the southern front, as well as near Bakhmut in the east.

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Roundup: The torqued six attendees

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The National Post’s series on judicial appointments continued apace yesterday, with the torqued and misleading headline that “High-level judges may have paid to meet Trudeau before their appointments,” and members of the pundit class and commentariat swooned with disbelief, and social media was blanketed with caterwauling about “corruption” and “bribery” and so on. Some of the excitable far-right fanboys started ranting about the whole judiciary being corrupted and needing to be bulldozed (because how better to enable fascism?)

But if you read the piece, and put it into context with the previous work, it says that as many as six out of 1308 lawyers who later got judicial appointments may have attended Liberal fundraisers that the prime minister or other Cabinet ministers attended. Which is…nothing. And yet, the framing and the headline suggests that they paid for access and that said meeting resulted in their appointment to the bench, in absence of any evidence to the contrary—just innuendo and correlation that has no relation to causation. This kind of journalism tends to be bullshit.

I have made this case before, and I’ll re-up it again—we absolutely do not want or need purity tests to be applied to applicants to the bench, and we should not bar anyone who has ever donated to a party from receiving an appointment. Donation is a necessary form of civic engagement, and lawyers tend to be more engaged in their communities, and often have the means to donate. This is important—we need people engaged in the system, and if we bar them from promotion because they have donated at one point in time or another, we are losing talent from the judiciary. The process as it stands is working (albeit slow for other reasons), and we don’t need concern trolls dismantling it for the sake of purity tests.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Three Ukrainians were killed in an overnight Russian attack on Poltava, and two others were killed in shelling later in the day in the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials have confirmed that they have liberated the strategic settlement of Robotyne in the country’s south, as they are pushing further in the area as part of the counteroffensive. Russians are claiming that they scrambled jets in response to two US drones flying near occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: Games of inflation denialism

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As opposition parties continued to shitpost about the inflation numbers and the interest rate decision, it got intensely stupid. To that end, Emmett Macfarlane has coined the term “inflation denialism” to characterise these kinds of responses, and he’s completely right about it.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/1681741904797466624

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/1681743338532134912

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/1681744204223979524

As well, economist Stephen Gordon has spent the day calling out “greedflation” theorists, and it was fun to watch.

Programming note: I am away for the next week and a bit, so blog posts are on pause until August. Behave in my absence, and don’t make turn this car around.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There was an early morning Russian strike on the port city of Mykolaiv that wounded 18. Russians have been targeting ports and grain infrastructure in particular in recent days, deliberately targeting it in Odessa, as well as Chornomorsk. Meanwhile, Russia pulling out of the Black Sea grain deal is worrying Ukrainian farmers, some of whom still have last year’s crop stockpiled because they couldn’t get it to market.

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Roundup: It’s “grocery rebate” day

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Today is the day that the federal government’s so-called “grocery rebate” gets deposited in Canadians’ accounts, but it’s not really a grocery rebate, and once again, a defensible policy gets given a dumb and confusing label for marketing purposes, because that’s what this government does. This is just another GST rebate top-up like the one that happened last year to help deal with the rising cost of living for those who are on the lower-end of the income scale, but of course the government gave it a new name this year just to try and be cute about it.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1676243078833926145

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1676243669685506048

You may also have heard complaints that this particular rebate is going to fuel inflation (which is coming down! It’s nearly at the outside band of where the central bank wants it to be!). This is also nonsense, because of how the programme is targeted, and Jennifer Robson has all of the receipts and data to prove it in the thread below.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians attacked a military funeral in Pervomaiskyi in the Kharkiv region, wounding 38 including twelve children.  Ukrainian forces targeted a Russian military formation in occupied Makiivka, which Russian officials say killed a civilian and injured others. Previously over the weekend, Russia launched its first overnight drone strike against Kyiv in twelve days, while a drone attack on the city of Sumy killed two and injured 19. Elsewhere, the reports from the counter-offensive are that it has been “particularly fruitful” over the past several days, with yet more gains around Bakhmut. There have been yet more warnings that the Ukrainians believe that the Russians will detonate something at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, while the Russians are also claiming the Ukrainians will do so in order to blame them (as though that makes any sense whatsoever).

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1676258705422053378

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Roundup: Google joins the bully tactics

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Following Facebook’s particular tantrum over the online news bill, and their announcement that they will remove Canadian news links from their site, and end some of their media fellowship programmes, Google has stated that they will do the same, and lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s absolutely a bully tactic, but so far the government is holding firm. It has been pointed out that when these web giants tried this in Australia, they lasted four days before they returned to the table, so we’ll see how long this lasts.

This having been established, a couple of things: Despite the media narrative, the bill is not a “link tax.” Links are nowhere in the spirit or the text of the bill. These companies were not supposed to be paying for hosting links on their sites, but rather, this was supposed to be an exercise in trying to rebalance the marketplace. Facebook and Google have so distorted the advertising market and destroyed it for media companies that this was supposed to be a way of essentially trying to compensate the public good of journalism for how they distorted the ad market. What the law is supposed to do, once it’s in force, is create transparent conditions for those negotiations to take place, with the oversight of the CRTC as an arm’s-length regulator. Again, this is not paying for links. There is no prescribed tariff rate for these links, but it was about addressing a market failure in a way that is as arm’s-length from government as possible. But web giants don’t like transparency (the deals they signed with media companies previously were all secret), and they don’t like to be held accountable. And the distance from government is also why the government didn’t just tax them and redistribute those revenues—never mind that web giants are expert at evading taxes, and the howls of government funding journalism from those revenues would be worse than the existing funds that the government already provides print journalism (which, again, they tried to keep as arm’s-length as possible through advisory boards making the qualification determinations).

I’m less inclined to be angry at the government, because they were largely being responsive to what the news industry was asking of them, even though that is tainted by the self-interest of certain zombie media giants. We should, however, absolutely be angry that these web giants are throwing their weight around and bullying sovereign governments like this, and it makes the case even more that these companies have become too big and need to be broken up. The fact that they are beating up on Canada won’t endear them to other jurisdictions, like the EU, but that’s in part why they’re doing it—they don’t want other countries to do what Canada is attempting here. But this may very well be a case that they are overplaying their hands, and those other countries or jurisdictions they are trying to scare off won’t be deterred.

Meanwhile, the opposition parties are having another normal one about this. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

No news from the front-lines of the counter-offensive, but emergency workers in the four districts surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are conducting drills in preparation for the event of a nuclear incident or leak involving the plant, as they are convinced Russia will stage. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Greta Thunberg to discuss the ecological impacts of war, including of the burst dam. Zelenskyy also met with former US vice president Mike Pence, for that matter. Human Rights Watch says that they have evidence that Ukraine has also been using illegal landmines as part of their operations.

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Roundup: One last beclowning before summer

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On the final sitting day before summer break, our deeply unserious MPs decided to beclown themselves once again. No, I’m not talking about the absolutely shameful display after Question Period with the litany of points order and unanimous consent motions, but rather the decision by Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux to write to the Speaker to file an “official grievance” that Taylor Swift didn’t announce any Canadian dates on her Eras Tour, and that two other MPs, one Liberal, one Conservative, seconded it.

I wish that this was Beaverton-level satire, but no, it happened—hours after the Beaverton joked about it.

As has been pointed out, this isn’t even original beclownery, because it’s just copying something an Australian MP did. I’m also not sure what they think they’re going to accomplish, other than making themselves look like absolute fools. Do they want the Speaker to write a strongly-worded letter to Swift? Summon her to the bar of the Chamber to explain herself? I’m sure if they had planned a little further in advance, they could have arranged for a unanimous consent motion to express their “profound sadness” in her decision. This used to be a serious institution populated mostly by serious people. It is no longer that, and the denizens of the Chamber should reflect on this over the next couple of months. What a gods damned embarrassment.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is admitting that the counter-offensive is happening slower than anyone would like, but reminds everyone that this is not a Hollywood movie, and that it takes as long as it does because there are lives on the line. Russia is claiming they shot down two drones near Moscow and are blaming the Ukrainians for it.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1671589133003759628

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Roundup: Exit David Johnston

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Around 5.30 PM on a Friday evening, the Rt. Hon. David Johnston tendered his resignation as the special rapporteur on foreign interference, citing that the political firestorm around him has reached a point where his job of trying to restore confidence in our electoral system is now impossible, and while he does not counsel a public inquiry, he did urge consultation on choosing a replacement, for what it’s worth. Of course, what this really means is that instead of doing the work of the actual process part of this issue, sorting out what happened in the senior levels of bureaucracy and how to fix it going forward, we now get to spend the next six months fighting over a name that will be acceptable to all parties, whether it’s to continue the existing process or a public inquiry like everyone thinks they want.

In response, the Conservatives crowed and declared that this “proves” that Johnston was flawed from the start, and that his determination that we don’t need a public inquiry was also wrong, so launch a public inquiry, with a lot of Trudeau Foundation conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. The Bloc were insisting that the head of an inquiry be chosen by Parliament (which is wrong and insane), while the NDP were declaring victory and patting themselves on the back because Johnston, in their estimation, heeded their motion to resign, never mind that he said nothing about that in his resignation letter, and repudiated their performance while at committee. (Peter Julian insisted that by his action of resigning, he took the NDP’s position, which is the most self-aggrandising bullshit this side of Pierre Poilievre). But the underlying notion that Parliament choose the head of an inquiry is both contrary to the law, which clearly states that the head of an inquiry is a Governor-in-Council appointment, and it also launders accountability going forward, which of course MPs can’t get their heads around because almost none of them understands that their role is about holding government to account.

None of this solves the underlying problem that a public inquiry is not magic. Everyone demanding one seems to think it can be wrapped up in the space of a few months, and that can be broad enough in scope to fully understand how deep Chinese infiltration goes into our country, while also providing concrete recommendations for protecting the next election. That’s not going to happen in a few months—that kind of scoping takes years, and is not going to get to the fundamental issue here, which is that this is ultimately a process story about the machinery of government, dealing with classified information, and that a public inquiry can’t hear most of it. That is, if they can find someone to head it who meets everyone’s satisfaction and who is willing to put themselves through the character assassination that will follow. This is one giant mess, and there’s more than enough blame to go around to absolutely everyone, and it’s not going to get any better.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian authorities claim that they have repelled a Ukrainian advance into Zaporizhzhia, and inflicted heavy casualties, but there is no confirmation of these claims. Meanwhile, more Ukrainians are being evacuated from flooded homes after Russia destroyed the dam on the Dnipro river.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1667133462787047425?s=61&t=OQl-ixPj-I_27b0NFGeMZg

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1667094711994052609?s=61&t=OQl-ixPj-I_27b0NFGeMZg

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