Tag Archives: Doug Ford

Roundup: Not the first real test

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We’re around day forty of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces have retaken more territory, but that has come with some awful discoveries. In Bucha, outside of Kyiv, they have found mass graves and the bodies of civilians who were simply executed by Russian soldiers. At least 410 bodies have been found, traumatising witnesses, as they must now work with investigators who will put together the case for war crimes tribunals. In the meantime, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian obsession with capturing Mariupol has given them needed time in other parts of the country, where forces have had time to build up defences, and now reclaim areas where Russians have been though. Nevertheless, the human toll is staggering, and the atrocities are only now being uncovered, which may further spur more aid from Western countries given how graphic the scale of these atrocities are.

Closer to home, it’s budget week, so expect a veritable slough of thinkpieces about how this week is the “first big test” of the NDP-Liberal supply and confidence agreement, and its sub-variations of environmental policy, or defence spending. But that’s actually a little absurd, because this budget was always going to pass (it’s been too close to an election, and nobody is in shape to let the government fall), and frankly, the budget was already baked in and probably on its way to the printers when the confidence agreement was signed, so it’s not like Chrystia Freeland was going back to the drawing board to redraft the whole thing in light of the agreement. That was never a serious question (and frankly, most of the agreement is just about doing things the Liberals had already promised anyway).

The real test will be next year’s budget, when everyone has had a year to simmer, the Conservatives will have a new leader, and the NDP will have received the pushback from their own base. We’ll be out of the too-close-to-the-last-election safe zone, and the NDP will have a decision to make whether they think this still serves their purposes (because this agreement is only good as long as the either the NDP or the Liberals think they can still get something out of it). This budget was always a gimme—it’s the next one that things will start to get interesting.

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Roundup: Accountability for transfers is not micro-management

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We are now in day thirty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and things are going badly enough for Russia that the Ukrainians are starting to counter-attack, not only pushing Russian forces further away from Kyiv, but also other areas, which has the possibility of making Russia pay a high enough price that they could be willing to accept some kind of negotiated settlement and withdraw. Maybe. We’ll see, but it’s a good sign nevertheless that Ukraine is able to take these measures. Elsewhere, it sounds like about 300 people were killed when the Russians bombed the theatre in Mariupol, and the city is digging mass graves, while some 100,000 people remain trapped there as the Russians turn the city to rubble.

Closer to home, the federal government announced a one-time special transfer of $2 billion to provinces to help them with their surgical backlogs as a result of COVID, but they want some conditions of a sort, and cited five areas of focus for upcoming healthcare talks: backlogs and recruitment and retention of health-care workers; access to primary care; long-term care and home care; mental health and addictions; and digital health and virtual care. And some provinces, predictably, are balking at this because they think this is federal “micromanagement” of healthcare when it’s nothing of the sort. They simply need assurances that provinces are going to spend this where they say they’re going to, because we just saw Doug Ford put some $5.5 billion in federal pandemic aid onto his bottom line, and giving out rebates for licences plate stickers in a blatant exercise in populist vote-buying rather than using that money where it was intended—the healthcare system.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1507478370300628996

More to the point, provinces are insisting that they are unanimous that hey want unconditional health transfers that will bring the federal share of health spending up to 35 percent, but that’s actually a trap. They are deliberately not mentioning that in 1977, provinces agreed to forego certain health transfers in exchange for tax points, which are more flexible, and that increasing to 35 percent will really be a stealth increase to something like 60 percent, because they’re deliberately pretending that they don’t have those tax points. On top of that, provinces were getting higher health transfers for over a decade—remember when the escalator was six percent per year, and what was health spending increasing at? Somewhere around 2.2 percent, meaning that they spent that money on other things. They should have used it to transform their healthcare systems, but they chose not to, and now they cry poor and want the federal government to bail them out from problems they created, and are blaming the federal government for. It’s a slick little game that doesn’t get called out because the vast majority of the media just credulously repeats their demands without pointing to the tax points, or the fact that they spent their higher transfers elsewhere, or that Doug Ford sat on that pandemic spending, as other provinces did to balance their budgets (Alberta and New Brunswick to name a couple). So no, they do not need these transfers to be unconditional, and the federal government would be foolish if they acceded to that kind of demand.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1507418761912983561

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Roundup: Three weeks into the invasion

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We’re now in day twenty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—three weeks, when Russia considered it a mere matter of marching. Talks appear to be making some slight progress, and in a curious statement, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated publicly that Ukraine would not be seeking NATO membership (but worth noting that NATO does not accept prospective members who are engaged in an active territorial dispute, which Ukraine has been with Russia, not only with the annexation of Crimea, but with the “breakaway” regions in its east). While Mariupol continues to be shelled, some 20,000 citizens were able to flee, which is progress. Zelenskyy will address the US Congress later today.

And there was Zelenskyy’s address to the Canadian Parliament, where he and Justin Trudeau addressed each other on a first-name basis, Zelenskyy referring to “dear Justin” on several occasions. While he continued his appeals to “close the skies,” he knows it’s not going to happen, but he has to ask—it’s his job to do so. And at the very least, it could spur other actions that have not yet been attempted that won’t consist of essentially declaring war on Russia, which is important. In response to the speech, the Putin regime put Trudeau and some 300 other Canadians, including MPs and Cabinet ministers, on the blacklist from being allowed into Russia, for what that matters. (For what it’s worth, Chrystia Freeland was blacklisted years ago).

Meanwhile, as all of this was happening, Governor General Mary May Simon got to have tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, as well as meet Charles and Camilla at Clarence House. Unfortunately, it looks like the era of future Governors General spending the weekend with the Queen and family at Balmoral in advance of appointment seems to be at an end, but glad that this meeting was able to take place at long last.

https://twitter.com/MajestyMagazine/status/1503795709463650316

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Roundup: Complacency versus the hard work of democracy

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Things are fraught in Ottawa, tempers are short. A lot of stuff that has been barely under the surface is blowing up. David Reevely has some thoughts about where we find ourselves, and why, and he’s pretty dead-on about it.

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Roundup: Ford wakes up after letting Ottawa suffer

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After being content to let Ottawa suffer under occupation by grifters, extremists and conspiracy theorists for the past two weeks, Doug Ford woke up and got serious now that the Ambassador Bridge is threatened. He declared a state of emergency and promised permanent legislation about blocking critical infrastructure, with fines of up to $100,000 and up to a year imprisonment, but that didn’t seem to help motivate police any. It was an injunction in Windsor that seems to have had more of an impact (and I find the notion that police will enforce an injunction but not uphold the laws on the statute books to be a concerning development with the rule of law). They were promising enforcement, but we’ll see, given that the crowd only grew once the injunction came into effect.

Meanwhile, I find myself a bit at a loss about the demands that Justin Trudeau “show leadership” in this situation. Every time I ask someone just which federal levers he should be deploying, I get static in reply. When pressed on the topic on Power & Politics the other day, Jagmeet Singh flailed and handwaved before resorting to a Jaida Essence Hall and trying to make a bunch of erroneous statements about healthcare funding. Trudeau cannot simply assert authority in this situation—it frankly does not meet the test for the Emergencies Act, and I’m not convinced this is a situation that requires it. I fail to see the utility of trying to get the RCMP to bigfoot the Ottawa Police as a) they don’t have the expertise in this situation, and b) they don’t have the numbers, particularly in the area. He’s not going to call in the military, because that is a very, very bad idea and more to the point, it’s the premier or his attorney general who needs to make the request for the aid to civil power under the National Defence Act. What else should Trudeau be doing? He told the convoy to go home on the first Monday (meaning, day four) during Question Period and elsewhere (you know, when members of the media accused him of being “in hiding” when he was in COVID isolation and still attending the House of Commons virtually). He’s been making calls the whole time, though not necessarily as performatively as is being demanded. So how else should he be “showing leadership”? What other powers should he be deploying? And even more to the point, why should he be playing into the trap that Ford and the extremist organizers themselves are laying out for him that is trying to put him at the centre of this?

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Roundup: From one rebel to another

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With all of the tongue-wagging in Parliament over Joël Lightbound going rogue in his dissent on vaccine mandates, there have been a lot of questions about his place in caucus, and what the other caucus “rebels” think of the situation. So, the most famous of said rebels, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, tweeted a thoughtful thread on the subject.

Meanwhile, a third Liberal was thought to be joining Lightbound and Yves Robillard in their dissent, but it turns out that no, that they merely misrepresented Anthony Housefather’s position. So there’s that.

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Roundup: Proposing to ignore the virus

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In the wake of the demands by extremist-led “protests” to lift all vaccine mandates around the country, nowhere as this demand been capitulated to as fast as in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where both provinces are pretty much eliminating their mandates as soon as possible, with no consultation, and while their hospitals are still full. Federally, the Conservatives are making the same demand for this capitulation, and they’re using a bunch of specious arguments, like listing countries that are lifting their restrictions already, never mind that in most of those countries, they have better healthcare capacity than we do, and they are further along in their omicron waves than we are. Fortunately, Ontario is not rushing to join them for a change, so that’s one small favour.

What is more concerning, however, is this talking point about “learning to live with COVID,” but in abandoning all public health measures, including mask mandates, they’re not actually planning to live with COVID—they’re planning to ignore it, to let it rip, to capitulate to the virus as much as they are eager to capitulate to the extremists claiming to protest. Learning to live with the virus would mean adequate and sustainable precautions, better focus on indoor ventilation, ongoing mask mandates in indoor spaces, and so on—and the ongoing insistence on vaccination, because that’s what will save us in the long run. But that’s not what they’re proposing, because they are so keen to return to the old normal, never mind that said world no longer exists by any measure. And it’s not “following the science” to take the notion that we need to just let the virus rip at this point—it’s being intellectually dishonest and pandering to selfish instincts.

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Roundup: The desperate flailing of provincial governments

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We are at a stage of the pandemic when we are seeing a number of provincial governments reach the stage of just flailing. Saskatchewan is a basket case where the premier, who has COVID (and found this out after giving a maskless press conference) refuses to institute lockdown measures so that businesses forced to close because their staff are all sick can’t access federal benefits. In Quebec, that’s François Legault spit-balling major policy with no clue about implementation, and trying to distract from the fact that his polling numbers are plummeting as a result of the latest round of curfews that have been ineffective at curbing spread, as the province’s death rate continues to be the highest in the country (in part because of the horrific first wave continues to skew numbers)—and it’s an election year. It’s also an election year in Ontario, much sooner than in Quebec, and lo, we’ve seen a spate of resignations, many of the MPPs not even bothering to wait for the spring election. Case in point was Doug Ford’s long-term care minister, who resigned abruptly, and plans to resign his seat next month. And because Ford is flailing (on top of being an incompetent murderclown), the portfolio has been handed to Paul Calandra. No, seriously. Paul gods damned Calandra, who was the clownish apologist for Stephen Harper’s government, whose job was to stand up and obfuscate. And he’s now in charge of reforming Ontario’s long-term care system.

Meanwhile, Ford has sent his MPPs to use misleading charts to “prove” that Ontario is doing pretty well, which it’s not. But lying to cover up their incompetence is how his government operates, and they’re only going to get worse, the more desperate they get as the election looms ever closer.

https://twitter.com/HNHughson/status/1482041262639353859

https://twitter.com/HNHughson/status/1482053619700666370

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Roundup: Fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies

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Erin O’Toole has apparently decided he’s going all-in for the unvaccinated, and wants “reasonable accommodations” made for them while they continue to flood the healthcare system and push it to the point of collapse, and lo, he wants the federal government to halt their vaccine mandate for truck drivers citing the fragility of the supply chain. (Erm, so when the virus rips through the unvaccinated drivers, that won’t further disrupt the supply chain?)

Logic doesn’t seem to be penetrating O’Toole’s rhetoric—nor the simple fact that premiers are responsible for the management of the pandemic, not the federal government. There are no “reasonable accommodations” because rapid tests are not actually passports that allow the unvaccinated free licence to go out in public (unlikely to be masked either, because the Venn diagram of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers is nearly a perfect circle). All it does is prolong the pandemic and the strain on the healthcare system which is leading to the mockdowns across the country—which again, O’Toole is trying to pin on Trudeau because the federal government continues to offer pandemic supports, and he claims that this is “normalizing” them. (He also calls them lockdowns when they are nothing of the sort). He’s tried to claim that the federal government should have been able to increase bed capacity in hospitals (physical beds are not the problem—the problem is trained staff to tend to the patients in those beds). It’s just a bunch of fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies, and O’Toole knows it, but he’s decided that this is the path that he can exploit politically, and there frankly aren’t enough people, particularly in the media, calling him on his bullshit (because both sides! *jazz hands*).

Meanwhile, O’Toole is also calling for emergency meetings of the health committee to examine the “critical gaps” in the federal government’s ability to manage the pandemic in the omicron wave. Which is…not the federal government’s fault. They provided the vaccines, and the rapid tests when asked, and are deploying military help across the country when provinces ask (never mind that the military is stretched beyond capacity and they can’t do their actual jobs right now). No, what O’Toole has decided we all need is a dog and pony show to deflect from the failures of the premiers so that he can try and pin this all on Trudeau. It would be risible if we hadn’t already seen the Conservatives abuse that very same committee in the previous parliament, for the sake of a few headlines.

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Roundup: No, an electoral agreement won’t work

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Because Doug Ford and his merry band of incompetent murderclowns have decided to make Ontario miserable again with eleventh-hour changes and nonsensical measures (sorry, guys, but I am going to be insufferably bitter about the gyms being closed down again), there is once again talk about how the provincial Liberals and the NDP need to come to some kind of agreement in order to get Ford out. Which is insane.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478063212281085953

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478064242985246720

The Liberals and NDP, provincially and federally, are not the same party, don’t have the same positions, and even if they both err on the side of progressivity, and frankly, it’s a major betrayal of local democracy if you’re telling your riding associations not to run candidates because of some cockamamie plan that involves dubious polls or results from an election three-and-a-half years ago with other factors in play which are irrelevant to the current context. Sorry, but no. The opposition parties need to come up with a coherent message and plan to sell to the people of Ontario, and to be steadfast in holding Ford to account rather than letting him get away with his folksy aw-shucks routine. It means the parties need to organise their ground game. It means a proper electoral contest, not a theoretical exercise based on bullshit reasoning.

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