Tag Archives: Emergencies Act

Roundup: More of a stage than an institution

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The House of Commons is back today after the Christmas break, and you can pretty much guarantee that there will be a level of awfulness to the discourse, because that’s where things are right now. In fact, when asked over the weekend, former prime minister Joe Clark correctly noted that the House of Commons is “more a stage than an institution” these days. You’ve heard me bang on about this more times than I can count, but it bears repeating—MPs are no longer debating ideas. They are reciting prepared talking points into the record, because those are being used to generate clips for social media. It’s not even for the benefit of news media anymore, like it used to be (which caused its own particular problems with how QP works), because they all think they can just bypass legacy media and speak directly to their own audiences over their socials.

It’s no longer politics—it’s theatre. Bad theatre. The kind where people can’t even memorise their lines, but are full-on reading the script in front of them during the performance, not even on cue-cards that are far enough in the distance, and most of them can’t even be ashamed of their own amateurishness as they adhere to their party’s message, do what is expected of them, and continue to pretend that this is all normal.

And that’s why our democracy is in trouble.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Security officials in Ukraine say that defence ministry officials conspired with employees from an arms firm to embezzle nearly $40 million that was earmarked to buy mortar shells. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has disclosed his own income as part of a drive for transparency and combatting corruption.

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Roundup: A singular call for a leadership review

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As the Liberals’ caucus retreat got underway in Ottawa (immediately after the Cabinet retreat), things got off to another rocky start as Liberal backbencher Ken McDonald told Radio-Canada that he thinks there should be a leadership review in the party ahead of the next election, and lo, the media leapt all over that story, and the rest of caucus spent the day insisting that no, they’re happy with Trudeau (though one anonymous Liberal praised McDonald’s bravery in bringing this up). The problem with this proposal? The party’s constitution has no mechanism for this.

The new constitution, which was adopted after the Liberals formed government, only has one avenue for a leadership review, which is that one is to be held if they lose an election. And fair enough—that’s really the only time they could hold one, because it essentially means running an entire leadership contest but with only the leader canvassing sign-ups and votes (because they no longer have paid memberships), and his or her opponents trying to organise a no vote. There is no way a sitting prime minister has the time or capacity to do this while running the country, and it’s one more reason why the way we run leadership contests is made to obscure accountability. It also guarantees that bellyachers like McDonald can’t get their wish because frankly there is no capacity for this to happen while they are governing.

This all points to reasons why we need get back to the system of caucus appointing and disposing of leaders. It restores accountability because the leaders are once again afraid of their own members, and must be more responsive to their concerns rather than doing things like threatening to withhold the signature from their nomination papers if they don’t toe the line. It also precludes these mini-leadership contests as a “leadership review” (where past examples such as Jeremy Corbyn and Greg Selinger were not great examples of the membership being able to get rid of problematic leaders). It would make for one quick vote and being able to put the matter to bed rather than this interminable grousing that we’re seeing now, and an immediate replacement of a leader rather than a months-long leadership race that includes egomaniacs who have never won a seat, let alone have any idea how politics works. But people who don’t know how the system works insists that this is somehow “anti-democratic” (which is bullshit), and so this bastardised status quo continues to make our system worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine shot down 11 out of 14 Russian drones targeting the southern part of the country in the early hours of Thursday morning. A Russian military plane crashed, and they claimed it contained 65 prisoners of war headed for a swap and that Ukrainian forces downed the plane, but couldn’t produce proof; Ukraine didn’t confirm or deny this, but made it clear that if Russia was transporting POWs this way without notice it was unacceptable.

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Roundup: Federal Court says Emergencies Act didn’t meet the threshold

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The Federal Court ruled yesterday that the invocation of a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act didn’t actually meet the threshold for such a declaration. (Full decision here). As a result, some of the uses of emergency powers were overbroad, such as the curtailment of freedom of expression in clearing the occupation, or that the police just kind of made it up as they went along as they froze the bank accounts of the owners of trucks participating in the occupation (and really, only about 57 individuals were affected). The federal government declared immediately that they were going to appeal this decision, citing in part the fact that the public inquiry didn’t come to the same conclusion. While I have a full story coming out later today on this, it’s important to note that the ruling was fairly narrow and technical, rejected a number of the complainants that were part of it, and largely affects future invocations of the Act, having little effect on what happened (because we can’t turn back time).

Amidst the various reactions, revisionism certainly was on display among the talking heads over the course of the evening, who insisted that the government had more “surgical” tools they could have used instead of invoking the Act, erm, except no, they didn’t. The problem was that Doug Ford washed his hands of the whole thing, and eventually the federal government had no other option than to invoke the Act because nobody else was getting control of the situation. And the Conservatives? They are eating up this decision and spreading shitposts far and wide over their socials about how this was a condemnation of Trudeau, and how “divisive” he was, and so on. This feeds directly into their dystopian world-building where they are pretending that Trudeau is some kind of jackbooted dictator taking away people’s rights, when that’s explicitly not what happened here, or any reflection of our objective reality whatsoever. But they want to create the illusion that this is true for their believers, because when you can get them to stop believing in our objective reality, people are so much easier to manipulate.

In commentary, Emmett Macfarlane makes a reasoned case for disagreement with the decision which is well worth reading, while Paul Wells makes more of a case for this decision over the public inquiry, though I suspect he too falls a little into the trap of revisionism because the existing tools weren’t working precisely because Doug Ford refused to act.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missile strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv have killed 18 people, which Russia claims are all hits on the military-industrial complex. It is more likely that Russia is probing Ukraine’s defences for weakness as they suffer from shortages because Western arms manufacturers are slow to produce new ammunition and equipment, and the US’ budget deadlock is not helping matters any. On the front lines, the reliability of drones used by Ukrainian troops is of varying quality because many of them are cheaply and hastily assembled.

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Roundup: Open Letters to Tiff Macklem

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BC premier David Eby decided he needed to be extra performative yesterday, and wrote an open letter to Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, urging him not to raise interest rates next month because of the “human cost” of these interest rate hikes—ignoring of course the counterfactual of the effects of unchecked high inflation and the “human cost” that it has over the short and medium term.

What is pretty galling in all of this is that Eby knows better. He was once a pretty good civil liberties lawyer, and he fully knows that the Bank is independent, and that they have a legal mandate that they need to fulfil when it comes to keeping inflation at two percent, and that their main policy tool is the blunt instrument of interest rates. His “I know the Bank is independent but…” spiel was frankly embarrassing, and should not have merited the attention it got from the media, but here we are.

Speaking of, Power & Politics was not only true to form in giving him a soapbox to make his point, and rather than doing their jobs of pointing to the irresponsibility of this kind of move, particularly at a time when you also have Pierre Poilievre warning that he’s going to fire the Governor (with what power?) and threatening the Bank’s independence. It would be great if CBC could do a single economics story properly and not just treat it like an issue to be both-sidesed, but they apparently have zero willingness to do so, and the fact that this Eby interview was that ignorant is a sign that they cannot be bothered to care about economics stories for anything than just trying to plug them into their established narratives, and it’s doing the country an extreme disservice.

Programming Note: I’m taking the full long weekend off, so I’ll see you early next week.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces have reported some success in the south and east, but I am also tickled by their latest video offering, telling all of those armchair generals to basically shut up because they’ve been doing the heavy lifting on their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has developed its own long-range weapons that can strike 700 kilometres away, which may have been a sly nod to the attack on Russian airbases that destroyed a number of fighters. The mayor of Kyiv wants to build more fortifications, because there always remains the threat from Russia.

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Roundup: Demands to recall Parliament to make more speeches

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The Cabinet retreat has wrapped, and there is no big announcement on housing policy other than to say that they know there’s not one silver bullet that will solve the housing challenges, so that means more work. Pierre Poilievre dutifully summoned reporters to the Foyer in the West Block to mock the lack of action and decry “What was the solution? More speeches, more photo ops…” And then he demanded that Parliament be recalled so that they can “take action” on housing, but without a legislative proposal, all this would mean is a take-note debate, which would be a bunch of twenty-minute speeches being read into the record. You know, exactly the thing that he was mocking Trudeau about. So that’s consistent.

Meanwhile, the debate about international students is picking up, with the government seems to want to deal with the problem of dubious private colleges at the same time, even though they don’t really make a dent in the housing crisis, and leads to problems of just how the federal government determines legitimacy (which is a provincial responsibility), and there a host of other problems with the programme that they may not have the capacity to deal with. Limiting international students could have other, longer-term repercussions, as they are quite easy to stream into permanent residency, and good for Canada in the long run—but again, there are problems in the system as it is.

With that in mind, Alex Usher’s thread has concerns about how the federal government could mess things up, while Mike Moffatt’s thread offers suggestions for things the federal government could do (or in several cases, undo) to relieve the pressure. This all having been said, a bit part of the problem here is that provinces have cut or frozen funding to these institutions, and limiting international students will be a huge financial blow to them, and that should be addressed somehow.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1694317541559066707

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians targeted Ukrainian grain facilities with drone attacks, destroying some 13,000 tons of grain at the Danube port of Izmail, while Ukrainians claim to have taken out a Russian air defence system in occupied Crimea with a drone attack of their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosted an international meeting about liberating Crimea from Russian control. And how to go about doing so.

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Roundup: Promising a spending cut—for real this time!

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention, but word has come down that new Treasury Board president Anita Anand will be tasking other ministers to find $15.4 billion in spending cuts with a deadline of October 2nd, and they really mean it this time. For realsies. The Liberals have been promising programme spending reviews for years now, but haven’t seemed to show any progress on them, or at least not in any public or transparent way, and that’s generally a problem for any government, and particularly one who has been in power for as long as this one has. Anand’s expertise is in governance, so she might have a chance to pull this off, but the civil service has fought back against Treasury Board presidents trying to make reforms—Scott Brison tried to reform the Estimates process and bring it back into line with the budget cycle, and he lost that battle, and it doesn’t look like any of his successors have even tried since. The other thing here is that $15.2 billion is going to be hard to justify if the military is excluded, but can they actually make cuts (setting aside the lapsed funding they can’t spend because of capacity issues)?

The reaction has pretty much been predictable—public sector unions freaking out, Jagmeet Singh concern trolling that this means “essential services” will be cut, and Pierre Poilievre says the Liberals can’t be trusted to make cuts. (Erm, you remember the Chrétien-Martin era, right?) But for some more practical thinking, here’s Jennifer Robson, who teaches public administration:

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1691613225677144349

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have struck Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine, which is far from the fighting, including a factory in Lutsk. In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian drones have been spotted heading for the Izmail port on the Danube River, which threatens more grain shipments. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia to meet troops there. Meanwhile, farmers in Ukraine are facing the prospect of rock-bottom grain prices if they can’t ship it, which means it’s worth more to store than to sell.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1691510365304102915

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1691366868760829953

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Roundup: Toronto Pride at a necessary time

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It was Pride in Toronto over the weekend, and one that is more necessary than ever given the rising levels of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred that is being directed toward queer and trans communities, as old libellous tropes about sexual predators resurface and are being used by politicians, including those in Canada, to demonise queer and trans people. Look at some of the things Blaine Higgs has been saying in New Brunswick—this is not a “parental rights” issue, it’s one where he is making it quite clear that he doesn’t want LGBTQ+ people to take up space in public. It has also been pointed out that even though conversion therapy has been banned in Canada, the ideology that underpins it continues to be strong, and the Conservative candidate in Portage—Lisgar was advocating for it during the by-election, so these fights are not over by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the parade, Justin Trudeau was absent as he was off to Iceland for a summit, but his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, did lead the Liberal contingent. Jagmeet Singh was present, but Pierre Poilievre was not, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. (Also, Singh didn’t tweet about Toronto Pride, nor did Poilievre even acknowledge it).

Ukraine Dispatch:

In spite of the ongoing attacks against Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainians were enjoying the prospect of the attempted mutiny/coup that was taking place in Russia.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1673028522971987974

As for Russia and the Wagner mutiny/coup that wasn’t, it fizzled out as they reached the outskirts of Moscow, with rumours that Bularussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had to broker the deal to end it, and that the Wagner leader will head to Belarus now, but we’re missing a lot of independent reporting on what may have happened, so we’ll see in the days ahead.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1673116584674754561

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Roundup: The leaker comes forward (sort of)

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The big Friday bombshell from the Globe and Mail in their continued series of allegations of foreign interference was an op-ed from the primary leaker, who gave a self-serving justification for doing so, insisting that they were tired of the problem of foreign interference going ignored, and that they hoped to  ignite a conversation and that they didn’t intend for things to get this ugly. Erm, seriously? You leaked to Bob Fife, and you didn’t think he would torque the absolute life out of it? That seems dangerously naïve for an intelligence official. Even more to the point, their frustration with the pace of work is not justification for violating their oaths to secrecy (and comparing themselves to Jody Wilson-Raybould seems to be particularly ill-considered). There is an attitude of “I know best,” which former senior intelligence official Artur Wilczynski called “narcissistic,” and I did take that tone from the op-ed.

One of the things I’ve really come to recognise and have been building a series of columns around is that there is a pervasive normalcy bias in our governments at all levels. It’s why provincial governments inadvertently allowed their healthcare systems to collapse. It’s why we are now in a housing crisis nation-wide. It’s why our military was allowed to degrade, and it’s why successive governments of all stripes have not taken foreign interference seriously enough. We disbelieve and downplay threats and warnings because we’ve been sheltered for a century now under the wing of the Americans, and very little bad has happened to us in comparison to most other countries. We got lazy and complacent. That’s hard to shake, but I would say we’ve made more progress in the last five years than we have since the ned of the Cold War. And unfortunately, it’s probably going to take crises to shake us from our complacency (like what is happening in healthcare). Unfortunately, the crisis that this leaker precipitated has likely made the situation worse and not better because it’s now become a partisan battleground.

Speaking of partisan battlegrounds, yesterday we had the prime minister accusing Pierre Poilievre of “ginning up a partisan circus” and trying to take a flamethrower to our institutions in order to win power (not untrue), and Poilievre saying that the intelligence community is in full revolt because of Trudeau (and hey, it turns out it’s largely one narcissistic leaker). Trudeau also defended Johnston against the “horrific” partisan attacks, though Trudeau does deserve a measure of criticism for putting Johnston in this position. Johnston, incidentally, provided a statement saying he was working to finalise the details around his role and the mandate, so it looks like he is going ahead with it, concerns notwithstanding.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces continue to resist the Russians’ attempt to encircle Bakhmut. While this is happening, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, for his war crimes but most especially for his programme of forcibly relocating Ukrainian children and working to re-educate them and place them with Russian families—a hallmark of a genocide. Meanwhile, Slovakia has now pledged their 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine after Poland got the ball rolling.

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Roundup: Still not finding the right tone

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Justin Trudeau continues to struggle to find the right tone to respond to the allegations of Chinese interference in the previous couple of elections, and still hasn’t managed to find it. Yesterday he made the point that this is serious, and that’s why it shouldn’t be made a partisan issue of, and that doing so is doing the work of these autocratic countries for them because it weakens trust in democratic institutions…but he’s not exactly doing much to engender that trust either, because the response is once again some feel-good bromides that don’t worry, they didn’t actually affect the election outcome. Okay, but you’re asking people to take your word for it, and doing so with the same pabulum that they shovel in everyone’s direction for absolutely everything, so it’s hard to take these assurances seriously. It’s time to drop the feel-good talking points and be utterly frank, as much as can be allowed given the nature of the situation, and that’s what they’re not doing.

And because they’re not being frank, the Conservatives are shrieking “collusion,” and “you turned a blind eye because you benefitted” (as though a hung parliament is the real benefit here). But part of the problem is that the Liberals never think that they’re partisan, even when they are, and while Jennifer O’Connell may not have been wrong in saying that the Conservatives sure sound like they want to build this up as a “big lie”/illegitimate election campaign, it wasn’t the right tone to strike. At all. I did find it interesting that a former Conservative candidate did talk to the Star, and said that he didn’t think that this alleged interference did much with the Chinese-Canadian population because Conservatives themselves were doing their best to alienate that community.

I would also like to note that poll analyst Éric Grenier was on Power & Politics yesterday to provide a bit of a reality check to these ongoing allegations, and how the ridings that the Chinese diplomats allegedly targeted had no bearing on the election. For the Liberals, they didn’t get a majority because of Quebec, thanks to debate moderator Shachi Kurl playing into Yves-François Blanchet’s hands and phrasing her “tough question” to sound like Quebeckers are racists, and it gave Blanchet the ammunition he was looking for. For the Conservatives, the GTA remains elusive to them, and that’s why they couldn’t win. None of the alleged Chinese interference did anything to change that, and the Globe and Mail should have included this kind of analysis in their original story, but they didn’t, because they wanted this to be as sensational as possible. This continued narrative that the Chinese government attempted to engineer a minority parliament remains frustratingly moronic because you can’t do that. It’s as dumb as when the Globe endorsed the Conservatives but not Stephen Harper in 2015. It doesn’t work like that, but hey, why should the so-called newspaper of record understand how our gods damned political system works?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 365:

Russian shelling of Kherson in the southern part of the country has killed two civilians, with two civilians injured by missile strikes in Kharkiv. Meanwhile, the CBC talks to front-line Ukrainian soldiers about the training they got from Canadians, and the praise is coming particularly for battlefield medicine, as well as leadership for junior officers learning to take the initiative (unlike the old Soviet system).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628470688725053440

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628484262994362370

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Roundup: Showboating at PROC over allegations of Chinese interference

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee met yesterday to vote on a motion around expanding their study on election interference to include the recent revelations from the Globe and Mail about alleged Chinese interference in the past two elections. Despite some arguing, particularly with Conservatives demanding both the appearance of Katie Telford (once again, for those of you at the back, you do not summon staff to committee because ministers are responsible!), and they were going to demand classified documents, which is becoming just part of the show these days, but they were eventually talked out of both of those demands and have instead summoned a few ministers, plus CSIS, the RCMP, and Elections Canada to discuss these particular allegations.

But of course, there was showboating. And the Liberals, who usually try to pretend that they’re the grown-ups in the room, were all-in on it as Jennifer O’Connell responded to the allegation that the Liberals were covering up what happened because it benefitted them (allegedly), saying “This is the same Trump-type tactics to question election results moving forward,” and that created a giant stir. She’s not entirely wrong, and the Conservatives have dealt in enough bad faith that they could start going down that particular road (and still might), but she wasn’t helping.

Amidst all of this, the Star obtained documents from the Conservatives showing that they were considering going public about the alleged interference over Chinese-language social media they were seeing during the last campaign but decided not to for fear of political backlash. Instead, they sent it to the committee overseeing the integrity of the election, but didn’t get much response from them at the time, who are now complaining that their concerns weren’t taken seriously.

Throughout this, I keep going back to my misgivings about the way in which the original Globe and Mail story was framed, particularly in giving the impression that the Chinese were trying to engineer a minority parliament, which is impossible to do. The piece should have simply stated that the Chinese preferred it because of chaos, but there is no interference they could do, short of stuffing ballot boxes in certain regions, to hope to achieve it, and that’s not going to happen in our system. Likewise, with the allegations around campaign financing, which don’t make any sense as written. Of course, the Globe has a well-known tendency of producing a lot of smoke for very little fire, but all of that smoke is just fuelling the MPs’ showboating, and it’s making it difficult to demonstrate that we have a serious parliament as a result.

https://twitter.com/mrmubinshaikh/status/1628216781901905922

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 364:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are holding positions on the front lines in the east, while Russia claims that they are advancing in the Donbas region toward Bakhmut. Here is a look at five significant battles over the past year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is asking Canada to lend rail expertise and parts to help keep its crucial system running (but seriously? We’ve not been good to rail in this country).

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1628044033321848833

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628137356556439585

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