Tag Archives: Danielle Smith

Roundup: The transcript doesn’t show interference

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It turns out that the recording of that meeting of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki coming down on her Nova Scotia team in the wake of the mass shooting in Portapique was found after all, and lo, it doesn’t actually show political interference. (Transcript here). She does say that she told the minister’s office the information on the firearms used would be released (we know that she was contacted by Bill Blair’s chief of staff, not Blair himself), and when the information was not released, she said she had to apologise to the minister and the prime minister, but there is no mention of a promise to release that information. In fact, the only time the word “promised” was used was when Lucki said that she was promised a timeline of events and a map, and she didn’t receive those either, and spoke about feeling disrespected because she wasn’t given it. Lucki did at one point bring up “legislation” the government was working on around guns (it was actually an Order in Council), which Lucki said was supposed to help police, but again, there was no mention of pressure from the minister about it. She was politically aware of what was going on, because she would have been consulted in its development (which had been going on for months at this point), and it should be stressed that political awareness is not interference. Commissioners are supposed to be politically aware. That’s part of their job, just like the Chief of Defence Staff.

The Conservatives, however, took that same transcript, cherry picked a couple of lines about feeling the need to apologise, and took this as “proof” of interference, that either Lucki or Blair had lied, and demanded both of their resignations, and launched a point of privilege in the House of Commons to the effect of saying that Blair lied to them. Because this is what they do—take everything in bad faith, and generate a bunch of clips for shitposts, then fundraise off of them. It’s not even truthiness at this point—it’s out and out bad faith, lies, and deception. And you don’t see the media calling bullshit on it and pointing to what is in the transcript, they just both-sides it, and their talking heads will waffle around it. The talking heads also don’t try to follow all of the information and put it together, where they would see that the allegations of interference don’t actually make sense. I won’t recap the column, but suffice to say, there was no need to interfere because they had all of the information, and the people who claim they were are actually arguing for less transparency. It’s bizarre all around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 240:

Ukrainian forces have bombarded Russian positions in the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, targeting their resupply routes along a major river. Russians shelled the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1583430788468838403

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Roundup: A potential recruiting ground

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It was outgoing Ottawa mayor Jim Watson’s turn to present to the Emergencies Act public inquiry yesterday, and it sounds like he was also caught up in the thinking that the occupation would fizzle by the first Tuesday, as the previous protest convoy had done. The most interesting part was a transcript of a call between Watson and Justin Trudeau where Trudeau accused Doug Ford of hiding from his responsibilities, given that he checked out of this process early on, and that he was doing it for political reasons. There was also concern that the OPP and RCMP had not sent as many people as they promised. In response to the reported comments at the inquiry, Ontario’s current solicitor general sent a huffy missive to media outlets saying that they don’t interfere with police operations and ensured that they provided tools for Ottawa, which clearly, they did not. Of course, Watson also said that he feels the federal and provincial governments have “equal responsibility” for policing in the occupation context, which…is not how this works.

We also learned that CSIS didn’t believe the occupation had the involve of foreign actors, but they were concerned that this was going to be a recruiting ground for harder-edged, violent far-right groups (which is a pretty coherent concern that unfortunately seems to be growing).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 237:

Approximately one-third of Ukrainian power stations have suffered damage from Russian attacks, either from missiles or kamikaze drones, as the regime tries to demoralise the Ukrainian people.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1582285715970613248

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Roundup: Freeland’s non-contradictory position on energy

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On Tuesday, Chrystia Freeland gave a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, and she outlined some fairly ambitious economic policy that involves a retrenching of keeping our supply chains within fellow democracies, because relying on regimes like Russia and China can prove costly in the end—particularly if you look at what’s happening in Europe with their energy crisis. It also means accelerating the green energy transition, which is also happening at a faster pace. But what got a bunch of people in Canada curious was Freeland talking about fast-tracking energy and mining projects to help Europe with that transition. But there is nuance there, however.

The CBC in particular got excited because they claimed to see some kind of contradiction with what Freeland was saying with the fact that the government won’t do anything to fast-track LNG projects, and that we somehow sent German Chancellor Olaf Scholz packing when he came looking for LNG. Erm, except he didn’t, because he knows as well as anyone that we don’t have the infrastructure for LNG, and so he came looking for hydrogen, which he got. But the CBC’s Vassy Kapelos did an interview with Scholz, where she spent half of it badgering and hectoring him about LNG until he said that he would like Canadian LNG if we had it, and they kept bringing that clip up in isolation. But again, Scholz knows we don’t, that it would take too long to build, and frankly that the market case isn’t there. As I wrote in this column, the timelines for these projects don’t make sense, and frankly, the LNG projects that have been on the drawing table for decades never took off because they couldn’t get commitments from buyers for the project. And while Kapelos was hectoring and badgering natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson yesterday about LNG, and insisting that the Americans can get theirs to export and why not us, the difference is that they have been converting LNG import terminals for export, which we can’t do. We have one import terminal in New Brunswick, and it would take two years to retrofit, assuming they could get a steady supply of gas, which they don’t have without importing. That’s why it’s an import terminal. But apparently there are no producers at Power & Politics who can pick up the phone and call a gods damned energy economist who can explain these things before they talk to the minister and not waste everyone’s time.

So no, Freeland didn’t contradict anyone. They are putting a focus on mining critical minerals in Canada—Trudeau made such an announcement earlier in the week. They are focusing on hydrogen, some of which may come from natural gas, which again, is not LNG, but is an energy project. “Energy project” is not simply code for LNG, guys. It’s only slightly alarming that the gods damned public broadcaster can’t be bothered to do their homework to put things in context before they start hyperventilating, but this is apparently the era we’re living in.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 231:

Ukrainian forces say that they have recaptured five settlements in the southern Kherson region, while the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has lost external power for the second time in five days, which puts stress on the cooling systems.

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Roundup: Smith disqualifies herself on day one

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Her first day on the job, and Danielle Smith is already proving to be unsuited for public office. Shortly after being sworn-in as premier by the Lieutenant Governor, Smith held a press conference where she said that she wants to protect the unvaccinated, because they are the “most discriminated-against” group in her lifetime.

*deep breath, clenches fists*

No. Not even close. And let me tell you, it was a choice to say that on Coming Out Day. They are not discriminated against. There is no “segregation.” The unvaccinated are people who get to live with the consequences of making a selfish choice based on a bunch of junk “science” and conspiracy theories that they’ve consumed, and their reckless disregard for the vulnerable and immune-compromised. Those consequences? Not eating in restaurants or not getting to travel. A few lost their jobs because of the choice they made. Contrast this to actual discrimination that people suffer because of race, gender, sexuality, or disability. Consequences that include employment, housing, hate crimes, and even mass slaughter, and yes, this has all happened in Smith’s lifetime. This is her answering the grievances of the privileged, the entitled, and the selfish, and not having actually suffered discrimination, she lacks the basic self-awareness to know the difference between the two. This should be disqualifying.

Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan, Scott Moe unveiled his “white paper” on pushing back against so-called federal encroachment on the province, and well, I’ve read far more vigorous undergraduate papers in my day. The premise of said paper is that all environmental rules and regulations are just a ruse for keeping the province down, and controlling them, which is risible on its face. And the notion that Saskatchewan should somehow be a “nation within a nation” belies the fact that they don’t have a distinct language, culture, legal tradition, or pre-Confederation history. Calling hoodies “bunny hugs” is not a distinct culture. Resource extraction without concern for environmental consequences is not a distinct culture. Moe is doing some bad Jason Kenney cosplay, and it’s just pathetic.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579905716747661312

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907251221172224

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907677316345856

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 230:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with G7 leaders and asked for more air defences (to fend off future missile attacks like they faced this week), a price cap on oil and gas exports from Russia to cut off their funding, and an international mission at the Ukraine-Belarus border, presumably to keep any Belarussian forces out of the country. Some German air defence systems did arrive in the country yesterday, so they are starting to arrive as this ask is being made. Meanwhile, bodies are being exhumed from the mass graves outside of the city of Lyman, which was liberated from Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1579849665226629121

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Roundup: Backing away from the crazy now that the leadership is secured

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Now that she has won the UCP leadership and is about to be sworn-in as premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith is suddenly backing down from some of the things she’s been saying about her “Sovereignty Act,” and is telling media outlets that she’ll respect the rule of law when courts inevitably rule against it because it’s going to be blatantly unconstitutional. Which isn’t what was promised, and the whole point of the Act, based on the brain trust that invented the idea, was to force a constitutional crisis by disobeying the Supreme Court. Now Smith is saying otherwise, which is starting to look mighty cynical—that she sold her base on a false promise in order to get them to buy memberships and vote for her, and now she’s going to tone it down. It’s just so cynical and crass that you have to wonder what she won’t say or do in order to get her way now that she’ll have access to real levers of power.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 229:

The weekend began with an explosion on the bridge between Crimea and Russia, attributed to Ukraine, and on the day after Putin’s birthday, given how much of a vanity project this bridge was for Putin. By Monday morning, Russians shelled the city centres in Kyiv and nine other cities in Ukraine, all targeting civilian infrastructure, calling it retaliation for the Crimean bridge explosion, and trying to call it terrorism (while attacking civilian centres, which is actual terrorism). One of the cities hit was Zaporizhzhia, where apartment buildings were struck. As well, here are stories of survivors of Russians in liberated villages in the Kherson region, and a look at the looting Russians have undertaken of places like museums in captured regions.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1579530489802944512

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Roundup: New sanctions on Iran, new enforcement resources

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Mid-afternoon, on the Friday before a long weekend, the prime minister and deputy prime minister hastily called a press conference and announced new sanctions against the Iranian regime—the top 50 percent of the IRGC will be permanently barred from Canada under powers in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which have thus-far only been applied to genocidaires from Bosnia and Rwanda. As well, more sanctions to other individuals have been announced, but even more importantly was the announcement of $76 million to establish a new sanctions bureau at Global Affairs so that we have the capacity to actually monitor and enforce these sanctions we’ve been applying.

Is this a declaration that the IRGC is a terrorist entity? No, because it would still be impossible to monitor and enforce, and would capture too many low-level conscripts. Will the Conservatives continue to yell and moan about it? Of course they will. There is some commentary that if applied properly, these measures could be more effective than listing them under the Criminal Code, but again, this depends on it being properly applied, and it will take time to build the capacity in the aforementioned sanctions bureau. It also bears noting that this all seems last-minute, reactive, and like this government doesn’t know how to get ahead of issues, so even if they do the right thing, it comes off as being pushed or shamed into it, which doesn’t help the narrative that this government is getting tired.

Danielle Smith

In the wake of her leadership victory, Alberta’s incoming premier Danielle Smith has agreed to run in a by-election for a seat of her own, and one of her MLAs is resigning to accommodate her (and had not planned to run again in the next election), and for Smith, it’s a mostly rural seat, because that’s her base. There is also a vacant seat in Calgary, but Smith would have a harder time there, and also plans not to hold that by-election in advance of next spring’s general election, which is indefensible under political norms. But hey, she’s willing to pretend the whole constitution is free to be ignored, so why should political norms matter? Yeah, this is a problem.

Meanwhile, here’s Jason Markusoff’s lengthy profile of Smith and her reinvention. Ken Boessenkool considers Smith to be a kamikaze mission into modern conservatism itself (and yet it’s almost like the bastardised way in which we now run leadership contests basically makes this an inevitability). Colby Cosh tries to put some context into Smith’s comeback and her outlasting all of her political rivals. Andrew Coyne sees storm clouds on the horizon with both François Legault and Danielle Smith looking to be constitutional vandals. My weekend column previews some of the absolute constitutional chaos, right up to the suspension of the rule of law, if Danielle Smith tries to get her own way.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1578497923016699904

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 226:

There have been explosions in the Kharkiv region, as Russia concentrates attacks on the city while they are being driven back elsewhere in the country. More mass graves have been found in the Kharkiv region, on top of those already found at Izium and in Lyman.

https://twitter.com/TetySt/status/1578462615994368000

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Roundup: Tagging the misogynists to own the Libs

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News broke yesterday morning from Global that videos on Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube channel contained hidden tags including #mgtow (Men Going Their Own Way), which is considered so misogynistic that even Reddit has banned it. This anti-feminist movement includes incels who have perpetrated mass murder in this country. But it’s not like Poilievre hasn’t been playing footsies with other extremist elements in this country, right? Right?

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1578020907876249600

In the wake of the revelation, Poilievre was forced to address it in Question Period, where he denounced the “organisation,” which isn’t an organisation, and said that he denounces misogyny, and then began engaging in whataboutism and trying to attack the prime minister instead. There was no actual apology, and his insistence that because he ensured that the tags were removed and he denounced misogyny, that’s enough. His caucus was telling media on their way out of the West Block that Poilievre “took responsibility” and that was more than Trudeau ever did, which is wrong on both counts. There was no responsibility taken—mere hours later, Poilievre’s office said they weren’t going to investigate and basically shrugged about who could have possibly done this (the answer is starting to look pretty obvious), and he has done zero work of trying to remedy his tendency of flirting with these extremist elements, whereas Trudeau has put in the work when it comes to combatting racism.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 225:

Russian forces shelled an apartment block in Zaporizhzhia, in spite of the fact that they “annexed” the territory, while the Ukrainian counter-offensive continues. Sweden, meanwhile, has found evidence of detonations along the Nordstream pipelines, pointing to Russian sabotage.

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Roundup: Some context around the defection

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While Danielle Smith continues to declare victory as she defends her defection, insisting that the Wildrose had held two premiers to account and that they had managed to shift the PCs to their position under Prentice, there are one or two things worth noting. While I spoke to other day about the problems with calling this defection a “reunification” of conservatives in the province, I think there are a couple of other facts to consider that the pundit classes keep overlooking in their handwringing about the state of democracy in Alberta now that the official opposition has been decimated. The first is that even in a Westminster democracy, there are no guidelines about the strength of the opposition. We’ve even had cases (New Brunswick, I believe) where there were no opposition parties elected, and they had to find a way of including that balance. The other fact is that nowhere in the country is there an opposition so closely aligned ideologically with the government of the day, where you have a nominally right-wing government and an even more right-wing official opposition. That puts a whole lot of context into the unprecedented move of an official opposition leader crossing to join the government ranks, as there is less of a gap to actually cross.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s problematic tales

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The Danielle Smith/Wildrose drama continued yesterday, as details about her decision to defect to the ruling Progressive Conservatives started spilling out, and Smith herself started giving interviews. Interviews that, well, didn’t offer a whole lot of clarity to the issues at hand. The shift in tone from when two of her former MLAs crossed the floor just weeks ago, the statements about the party culture of the PCs, about leadership changes not being the answer – all blown out of the water as Smith equivocated about all of it. There were some tantalizing hints, however, in some of what she said, talking about how the party was already self-destructing, as the grassroots membership voted against policies that would have moved them into the social mainstream rather than keeping them squarely as a protest movement of cranks and what Heather Mallick dubs “angry pyjamas.” As a leader who was increasingly disconnected from her party, she had choices of her own to make. Then comes in revelations about talks with the centrist Alberta Party to merge – in Smith’s estimation to help get an urban base for a rural protest party – and that Preston Manning had a hand in convincing the other Wildrose MLAs to cross the floor. It’s incredible to read, but I still find myself unmoved by this notion that it’s a kind of “reunification,” and that it’s all about the conservative movement as a whole. The problem with that is that it’s hard to consider the PC party as conservatives to a great extent because they’re more populists than anything, and that’s what allows them to remain as amorphous as they are and keep reshaping themselves to allow the One Party State™ to continue carrying on. That it merely absorbs the more strident fiscal conservatism of the Wildrose members is merely a sign of the times. By that same token, the federal Conservatives are also more populists than they are conservatives, if you judge by their fiscal policies, so it’s hard for me to swallow this narrative around the merger. It’s also hard to see how nine MLAs would cross out of the sake of careerism, but again, I go back to Smith’s comment about the party in a state of self-destruction. I’m sure more stories will continue to tumble out, but it’s a lot to try to wrap your head around. Kathleen Petty offers some thoughts, while Jen Gerson pitches for the leadership of the merged party – in 2042.

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Lord and Smith Commission, Episode 4

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My friend Destine Lord and I have a new video up, in which we talk about the underlying issues with a potential vote on a new Afghan deployment, and the Alberta election.