Tag Archives: Doug Ford

Roundup: New targets, same criticism

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It was Earth Day yesterday, and US President Joe Biden held a climate summit, which Justin Trudeau used as a platform to announce that Canada would be setting a more ambitious climate target of 40 to 45 percent reduction of emissions from 2005 levels, and naturally, that was panned from all sides. For the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens, it’s not enough, and for the Conservatives, it’s too much, and “empty words” that lack a plan (despite all evidence to the contrary). One of the spanners in the works here is the Americans announcing their own new targets, which sound more ambitious than ours – but are they really?

Enter economist Andrew Leach, who is offering a warning that we can’t commit to matching American emissions targets because our emissions mix is very different, so we’d be essentially making a different commitment than they are, which could hurt us. The Americans can get much further on reductions that we can with less stringent policies because of their emissions mix. Unfortunately, too many of our parties and party leaders seem to think that Canada is just a smaller version of America, and that we can simply copy their policies and divide by ten – but it doesn’t work like that, and we should call out this kind of thinking.

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Roundup: Flexibility and red lines on child care negotiations

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A day out from the federal budget, we are getting some reaction to the centrepiece proposal of a massive expansion to early learning and child care, particularly from provinces with whom this all needs to be negotiated. It sounds like several of them are welcoming the new funding, and Chrystia Freeland has signalled some willingness for flexibility, but is drawing a red line around keeping fees low, because the whole point of this is to reduce barriers to women getting in the workforce, and high fees are very much a barrier, even when there are available spaces (which is often not the case). And yes, there are already recalcitrant provinces, looking particularly to Alberta and Ontario, and some of their objections are grounded in the fantasyland that there is no such thing as constrained choice. Of course.

For some more context, here is a good interview with Don Giesbrecht, CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation, which gives a good lay of the land of the current system of bilateral agreements that the federal government has in place with provinces around childcare funding, and yes, there are strings attached to that funding. This new funding will build on those agreements, which is why it’s not entirely out of the blue and building something from the ground-up, but simply taking things up an order of magnitude from where they exist currently.

Meanwhile, my social media has been flooded with salty New Democrats who think that they’ve somehow caught me out in previously pointing out that this is an area of provincial jurisdiction whenever Jagmeet Singh would performatively demand “concrete action” on childcare or the like. For starters, at no time did I declare this Liberal plan a done deal – it has always been presented as being contingent upon negotiation with the provinces, but this time they’ve put money on the table that the provinces will find hard to refuse, especially because we have all seen the effect that this pandemic has had on women in the workforce. That’s a fairly unique set of circumstance that creates a hell of a lot more political pressure than could be applied previously. More to the point, Singh’s rhetoric, and those of his MPs, is largely grounded in Green Lantern Theory, that it’s simply a matter of willpower to overcome jurisdictional interviews, while they will only admit the need for negotiation in written releases or backgrounders and never out loud. This especially goes with making promises that they will “get it done,” as though they can put on their Green Lantern rings and just willpower it to happen, or drafting a federal bill and expecting the provinces to clamour to the sound of free money rather than doing the hard work of negotiation. Real life doesn’t work like that, which is what I have consistently pointed out. If New Democrats can’t understand that criticism, then I can’t help them.

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Roundup: Freeland’s first big budget

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The budget was released yesterday, and lo, the commitment to child care was huge – $30 billion over five years in order to build a national system of $10/day early learning and child care, which is huge money – money that will make it very, very hard for provinces to refuse. It’s not going to be immediate, but a process to build to that system, which they have already put work into over the past five years, but it’s a much more robust commitment than we have seen in the past. It means more negotiations with provinces, however, as well as an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec so that they can still get funding to augment their existing subsidised child care system.

While there is a good overview here, other items in the budget include:

  • Some $17.6 billion in new spending for GHG reductions.
  • New taxes on foreign investors in housing, with more commitments to the national housing strategy.
  • $18 billion over five years has been earmarked for Indigenous communities to close the socio-economic gaps.
  • There is a commitment for $400 million to combat sexual misconduct in the military, plus funds to revitalise NORAD and to cover our NATO operations
  • They plan to make it easier and cheaper to obtain a criminal pardon.
  • There will be new taxes on big global tech companies.
  • Here are twenty new or expanded benefits and taxes.
  • There is the usual pearl-clutching that the budget predicts some $686 billion in accumulated deficits over the next five years.
  • Here are ten smaller items in the budget that are of interest.

Something that did come up over the talking heads discussing the budget was pharmacare, and how there wasn’t a big song and dance about it, as that was largely reserved for childcare. I did read the section on pharacare in the document, and it notes continued investment in things like the catastrophic drug plan to help those who need it most, but we have to remember that they have been trying to negotiate this with the provinces, and the provinces have said no. There’s only so much the federal government can push them on this, so it may require waiting until a few provincial governments change hands before more progress can be made. That’s the thing about these kinds of programmes in provincial jurisdiction – you need to have willing partners at the table, or it can’t go anywhere.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield grouses that there is too much conventional thinking in the budget to deal with the problems exacerbated by the pandemic. Susan Delacourt looks to all of the promises that rely on federal-provincial negotiations to make them happen. Paul Wells offers a fairly sober assessment of what’s in the budget, and whether the enthusiasm for this child care spending will last the next couple of years.

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Roundup: Federal damage control while Ford playacts

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While Ontario continues to be on fire, Doug Ford spent much of the weekend walking back his ridiculous pronouncements on Friday, re-opening parks and playgrounds, followed by walking back the increased police powers (which was not helped by the fact that most police forces declared publicly that they would not use them – though stories of arbitrary accosting of people of colour did resonate over social media. This was then followed by news that Ford plans to shutter the legislature this week – apparently it’s the one workplace he doesn’t consider “essential” – while there is also talk about a Cabinet shuffle, because gods know this band of murderclowns needs to rearrange the deckchairs on their own personal Titanic one more time. (Speculation here is also that he is facing a very restive caucus, and closing Queen’s Park would make it easier to avoid them). And then, to make it look like he was doing something, Ford engaged in some performance art to phone up consulates and try to secure vaccines from international allies, as though they wouldn’t all laugh in his face. But he’s committed to the narrative that all he needs is more doses to vaccinate his way out of the burning building rather than doing the public health measures he needs to in order to stop the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, prime minister Justin Trudeau announced some additional help for Ontario, some of which will wind up bypassing the provincial government and go directly to municipalities and businesses with things like additional testing and tracing capacity. Even these measures, however, are little more than damage control because they can’t do the things that need to happen, like stopping the spread in industrial workplaces, because they don’t have the requisite jurisdictional authority.

As for the doctors in this province, they’re at a breaking point. Thank the murderclowns for that.

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Roundup: Ontario is on fire, and Ford offers performance art

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I will admit that I am currently vacillating between rage and despair right now, as Doug Ford and his band of murderclowns looked at the new modelling data that shows us still on a course for disaster, and decide to do the barest minimum effort to merely prolong the state of affairs, rather than to take meaningful action.

It’s not just half-measures – it’s theatre. Closing parks and playgrounds will do nothing to halt the spread of the virus, but workplaces deemed “essential” continue to operate with few protections for workers – which is where much of the new infections are happening, and then spreading when those “essential” workers return home, often to crowded, inter-generational households – and most of all, Ford is still not budging on paid sick leave. On top of that, he’s giving police the power to randomly stop people to ask why they’re not at home, and essentially reintroduced carding (which is unconstitutional), and will inevitably target Black, Indigenous and other minorities because that’s what police do. (Several police forces have pledged not to use these powers, but we’ll see if that holds). And then Ford lies and says that Ontario has had the toughest measures anywhere, and pats himself on the back while he blames ordinary people for not following rules – rules which change on a daily basis and are never clear to begin with – and blames the federal government for not magically providing vaccines fast enough when it is mathematically impossible to vaccinate our way out of this.

None of this needed to happen. That’s what is just so gods damned enraging about this whole thing. They were warned repeatedly back in February not to re-open until the reproduction rate of the virus was lower, and they didn’t listen. They rushed to re-open just as variants were starting to spread in the community, confident that they could let a little bit of COVID circulate and everything would be find (when it grows exponentially), because they needed to “protect the economy,” and lo, things got worse like everyone knew that they would, and we had to restrict again, and it will keep happening like this until they can finally squash the curve of transmission.

If there is one silver lining, it’s that we know that Doug Ford can be swayed, because Uncle Doug doesn’t like being the bad guy. He wants to be the fun uncle. And maybe now, people in Ontario will finally be outraged enough to stop being guiled by his folksy bullshit, and finally start demanding action in a consistent and coherent manner. That may be what finally spurs action, months and thousands of unnecessary later, assuming the anger is directed in the right way. That may, however, be easier said than done, but the possibility exists, and perhaps we as a province should seize it.

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Roundup: A broken system thwarting foreign agents

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Something in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) annual report, made public this week caught my eye, which talked about how the “critical election incident protocol panel” – the body set up in order to have some sort of way to help deal with any detected foreign interference during an election (given the whole Russian interference thing south of the border in previous of their elections) – needs to include more traditional espionage as part of their warning triggers. Why? Because, as NSICOP says, foreign agents could try to infiltrate political parties to exert influence, whether it’s in nomination meetings, or volunteering in campaign offices.

I will admit that I laughed.

Not because foreign interference isn’t serious – because it is – but because the joke would be on them, given that grassroots members no longer have any influence in our political system since we have made the system entirely leader-driven. Nomination meetings are being gamed by leaders’ offices to the point where it’s difficult to determine just how free and fair any of them are these days – that is, when leaders aren’t outright appointing candidates (as Justin Trudeau did with Marci Ien and Ya’ara Saks for the by-elections late last year). Trying to hijack nomination contests at the best of times is exceedingly difficult because of the requirement for the leader’s signature (or their proxies, thanks to the garbage Reform Act), which was part of why that requirement was created back in 1970 – officially to keep the Chief Electoral Officer from needing to adjudicate nomination disputes, but anecdotally about heading off pro-life groups trying to hijack Liberal nominations. Foreign agents trying to use the same tactics would have fairly marginal chances of success once their involvement became known.

This is less of an indictment of the use of party infiltration as a tactic of foreign agents, but rather of how our system has degenerated. Because we insisted on moving to leadership contests that became quasi-presidential primaries, we have upended the entire grassroots nature of our parties, and now everything is top-down, leader driven. It shouldn’t be this way, and yet this is where we are.

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Roundup: Stay-at-home again, complete with feigned surprise

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Ontario is now back under a “stay-at-home” order, issued its third state of emergency, and lo, there has been movement on vaccinations in that they are now going to start targeting high-risk neighbourhoods and essential workers, like they should have started weeks ago, so that’s positive. Oh, but still no paid sick leave because Ford and company continue to mislead people by claiming the federal sickness benefit is the same thing, which it absolutely is not. What most assuredly is not positive is the fact that the provincial government knew this was coming. They have been warned for weeks that this was going to happen, and they were explicitly told that loosening restrictions in the face of the new variants would be a disaster. There was that press conference on February 11th that said just that – and they didn’t listen, and now they have the gall to pretend to be surprised that the numbers are exceeding their worst-case scenarios? Sorry, but no. Get out of here with that bullshit.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1379884476054966272

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1379962777566085120

And here’s Supriya Dwivedi which lays out why Ford has completely ballsed this up and created this Third Wave and all of the illnesses and resulting deaths as a result.

Meanwhile, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization has decided to stick with their advice that second doses can be delayed for up to four months – and the “up to” is key – but given increasing vaccine supplies, that interval is likely to be less. And the reason why they’re saying this is because they are looking at the balance of ensuring that as many people get a first dose as soon as possible in order to have at least some level of protection. The problem is that this isn’t being effectively communicated by most media outlets (the Star piece linked here is actually doing a decent job) and even on Power & Politics last night, after the head of NACI patiently explained all of this, Vassy Kapelos still characterised it as NACI recommending a four-month delay, omitting the “up to” and creating a false impression of the advice, and it makes it easy for certain parties like the Conservatives to deliberately misconstrue NACI’s advice for partisan point-scoring. I do not understand what CBC thinks they are doing by reporting this way. It defies sense.

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Roundup: Asking for a “special monitor”

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As case numbers continue to rise alarmingly in most parts of the country, Ontario Premier Doug Ford tried to get into a pissing match with the federal government over vaccines, and the federal government wasn’t playing ball, simply tweeting vaccine delivery numbers in response. This on the same day that Ford insisted that schools were safe, and hours later, Toronto’s chief public health officer issued a Section 22 order and closed all Toronto area schools as of today, so that’s a good look. (In Alberta, Jason Kenney also had to issue new restrictions, while still trying to take swipes at the federal government for vaccines well – distraction from their own failure to contain the virus).

In the middle of this, Erin O’Toole decided that he was going to promise a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic – which, to be fair, the government has also said they would be willing to hold once things were in the clear, because everyone wants lessons learned – but O’Toole loaded his particular desire for such an inquiry full of easily disproven allegations and conspiracy theories. Things like how there weren’t any vaccines even being considered last spring because everything was too new; or CanSino (which the government never “put all their eggs in one basket” with, and the vaccine task force didn’t give them any priority when they started compiling the vaccine portfolio), which he keeps referencing as though saying it often enough will make it true. That, and by focusing solely on vaccines, he is very conspicuously trying to avoid blaming his provincial brethren for their massive failures, for which a proper national public inquiry would probably be needed to enumerate (because I doubt that most of those provinces will call inquiries of their own).

More to the point, O’Toole’s demand for a “special monitor” to be appointed from the Auditor General’s office to examine decisions “in real time” is literal parliamentary insanity. What exactly an accountant knows about public health decisions I’m not entirely sure, but frankly, having them looking over the government’s shoulders is literally O’Toole abdicating his own responsibility for holding government to account for their decisions. Trying to pawn the job off to a non-partisan Officer of Parliament (or their proxy) as a way of using them as both a cudgel and a shield is the height of cowardice and a refusal to do his own bloody job. It’s also why I keep warning against the proliferation of these kinds of Officers – pretty soon, MPs won’t have a job left to do. This is a mess all around, and O’Toole continues to prove that his attempts at showing he is relevant only reiterate that he is trying to make himself obsolete.

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Roundup: Not a tax but a regulatory charge

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The big news yesterday was that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 6-3 that the federal government’s carbon price backstop was indeed constitutional, and included in that ruling was that the price was not a tax, but a constitutionally valid regulatory charge. This is important for a couple of reasons – taxes go to general revenue, whereas regulatory charges must be cycled for specific purposes, and in this case, they are rebated to the provinces in which they are collected, and under the federal backstop, if a province doesn’t have a revenue recycling mechanism, these carbon charges are rebated at a rate whereby most households will get more back than they paid into it owing to the fact that institutions who pay the prices don’t get those same rebates.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it based on a bulk of the coverage in this country, for whom the common headline was “Supreme Court declares carbon tax constitutional.” CBC, iPolitics, The Globe and Mail, Global TV, the Postmedia chain – all of them using “carbon tax” throughout to describe the very ruling that says it’s not a tax. This matters for a couple of reasons – one of them is that calling it a tax is actively misleading as this charge does not go into general revenue. Why is that important? Recall that in the lead-up to the last election, then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer kept declaring that the federal “carbon tax” would keep increasing because the government needed the revenues to pay for their deficits – a lie because it’s not a tax, and those revenues got rebated to household. But he almost never got corrected on that, because people kept using “tax.” Erin O’Toole keeps offering the lie that this “tax” is punishing low-income households, again misleading because of the rebates, which again, few people correct him on.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1375152876641746947

The other reason it matters is because using “tax” fits it into a particular ideological framing device for which “taxes” are a bad thing. “Taxation is theft,” and all of that particular bullshit, but this is a particular frame that serves those narratives. Journalists should be under no obligation to carry water for those interests, and if anyone says “calling it a tax is just easier,” then you are party to misinformation. And I am starting to wonder how many of my journalist colleagues either didn’t pay attention or skipped the class in journalism school where we discussed framing devices and how they influence coverage. A few outlets were able to get the nomenclature correct – that others couldn’t is a problem.

Meanwhile, Jason Markusoff makes note of what certain premiers did and did not say about the result, given that this is now a reality that they will be forced to contend with. Heather Scoffield considers the decision the stake to the heart of governments’ ability to drag their feet on tackling climate change. Colby Cosh takes a deep dive into the ruling’s exploration of the Peace, Order and Good Government provisions of the constitution.

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Roundup: Closure, and false hope

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The government followed through on their plans to invoke closure on the assisted dying bill yesterday, and with the support of the Bloc, they had final debate and a vote, which passed, sending the amended bill back to the Senate. (The NDP, incidentally, voted against it simply because they refuse to recognise the legitimacy of the Senate). Because the government only accepted a couple of the Senate amendments, and modified others, it will require another vote in the Other Place, but it is most likely that they will allow the bill to pass in time for the court-imposed deadline.

There have been a lot of disingenuous comments about this bill. Certain disability advocates have insisted that this makes it easy to kill them, which it doesn’t, and these advocates ignore that other people with disabilities have requested assisted dying and won in the courts – which is why this bill exists. Many of those advocates are trying to re-litigate the case they lost at the Supreme Court that allowed for the assisted dying regime to be created in the first place, which isn’t going to happen – that decision was unanimous and the Court is not going to revisit it. As well, one of these amendments puts a two-year time limit on the mental health exclusion so that more guidelines can be developed. That exclusion is almost certainly unconstitutional, and the government knows it – but again, there is a cadre of disingenuous commentary, including from some MPs, that this would allow anyone with depression access to assisted dying, which is unlikely in the extreme, and more to the point, it conflates other mental illnesses with depression, and it stigmatises mental illness by excluding it, effectively undoing years of trying to treat mental illness like any other illness.

When I tweeted about this last night, I got a lot of pushback from a certain segment that coalesced around the narrative that the government would not provide supports for people with mental illness but would let them kill themselves; and furthermore, they tried to further say that the government that voted against pharamcare was doing this. There is a lot to unpack in those statements, but there are a few things to remember. One of them is that most disability supports, as well as treatment for mental health, are both in provincial jurisdiction, so the federal government can’t offer more supports for them. Hell, they can’t even simply send $2000 per month to people with disabilities – as the NDP are demanding – because they don’t exactly have a national database of people with disabilities (and they had a hard-enough time kludging together a special pandemic payment through use of the flawed disability tax credit). They do have jurisdiction over the Criminal Code, which is what this legislation covers.

As for the pharmacare bill, we’ve already covered repeatedly that it was unconstitutional and unworkable, and would not have created pharmacare, as the NDP claimed (while the government is already at work implementing the Hoskins Report). But as we’ve seen here, they sold a bill of goods to these people, and gave them false hope as to what they were doing. They lied to vulnerable Canadians to score cheap political points. The sheer immorality of that choice is utterly shameful, but this appears to be what the party has reduced itself to. I sometimes wonder how their brain trust sleeps at night.

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