Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: A new tone in communications? Maybe?

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After some two years of the Conservatives rolling out three-to-five-minute disinformation videos on the regular, the Liberals have finally responded in kind, with something that has reasonable production values, snappy pace, and delivers messages to counter the Conservatives’ message with a bit of a punch at the end. One has to wonder why it took them so long, but they didn’t spare any effort in getting every single one of their MPs and proxies to blast it over their socials over the weekend.

What I will add that was fairly notable was that they didn’t rely on slogans in the video, or on entirely happy-clappy pabulum as they normally do. I’m hoping that perhaps this will finally—finally!—mark a turning point in how they approach their communications, but I’m not going to get my hopes up there either. Until proven otherwise, I suspect this may be a one-off, or Sean Fraser in particular, rather than an overall trend in how this party communicates.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck Mykolaiv on Sunday, killing one and wounding at least eight. Ukrainian drones damaged another oil refinery in Russia, and disrupted electricity supplies in order areas.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1768642103968485561

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Roundup: Eby calls out Poilievre’s baloney factory

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Because the clown show never ends, Pierre Poilievre sent a letter to BC Premier David Eby yesterday, calling on him to not increase the carbon price on April 1st in line with the federal expectation. This after he has been spending months claiming he’ll “axe the tax” in BC if he forms federal government, never mind that it predates the federal system and has frequently been higher than the federal price, and very few have balked at it. Along the way, Poilievre also claimed that BC was just “administering” the federal levy, which again, is not true.

Eby, for his, part, laughed at Poilievre, pointing out that he doesn’t live in Poilievre’s “campaign office and baloney factory,” that BC has long had the price and that if they did stop the increase, it would mean less money for people in the province (who get the rebate back mostly as tax credits and not cash transfers). But seriously, this has broad-based political support in the province, it was brought in by the then-BC Liberals (who are mostly conservatives, some of whom now sit in the federal Conservative caucus), and nobody has time for Poilievre’s performative nonsense.

More to the point, Poilievre likes to play fast and loose when it comes to jurisdiction—he keeps telling Justin Trudeau to butt out of areas of provincial jurisdiction and leave the premiers to run their own provinces (especially around things like odious anti-trans policies), and how he’s writing premiers and trying to get them to do things his way and stand against valid federal laws? How exactly does he think this is going to play if he ever forms government federally? But then again, he’s counting on the cognitive dissonance that he’s training people to accept for them to not notice his inconsistencies or his complete reversals, or when he swallows himself whole, and that remains a very big problem within the population.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a residential area in Odesa and at least twenty people have been killed and more than seventy wounded; President Volodymy Zelenskyy has promised a “fair response” against Russia for it. Ukrainian authorities are also evacuating communities in the northern Sumy region after extended periods of shelling. Ukrainian drones damaged another Russian refinery, this time in the Kaluga region. Russians claimed that they repelled another cross-border incursion by Russian rebels in Ukraine. A UN report has found evidence that Russia systematically tortures Ukrainian POWs.

https://x.com/ukraine_world/status/1768642103968485561

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Roundup: Making a provincial problem a federal one—child care edition

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The CBC continues to go out of its way to provide cover for delinquent premiers who can’t live up to their promises, in an attempt to make provincial problems federal ones. Yesterday is was on the early learning and child care system—fewer than half of the promises spaces have been created, and they want to make this a federal problem. It’s not, however—the federal government did their part, and delivered the promised funding, and what is left is for the provinces to live up to the agreements that they signed, and put their own money into the system. Several provinces are not doing that, and yet demanding more federal funding, because of course they are, and because they know they will get away with it.

The federal government did not force or strong-arm provinces into this system. Why? Because every single premier who signed up knew that this was a) popular, and b) economically necessary. We have labour shortages in this country and one of the most fundamental things they can do is to increase the labour force participation of women by providing subsidised child care. Quebec learned this years ago, and also learned that this pays for itself once the tax revenue from those women in the work force rolls in. The federal government wanted to get the ball rolling and provided a certain level of funding, and attached particular strings and metrics to it so that there is uniformity around the country, and some fundamental standards, particularly around things like improving pay for workers, and standards of care, and the choice was made to subsidize not-for-profit spaces because they’re less likely to cut corners for the sake of juicing their profit margins. But there are provinces who haven’t been investing in the system like they agreed to, or those like Ontario who cut the provincial funding they were supposed to invest, and then complain that there aren’t enough spaces being created.

We need to stop giving the premiers a pass on this. This is their problem, because they signed on and now are refusing to live up to their obligations. But the media doesn’t like holding premiers to account for some unknowable reason, so you get this CBC piece that continually frames this as a federal problem where the solution must be more federal dollars. No, the solution is the provinces living up to their obligations, and they have just as many revenue tools as the federal government does—and this will make their money back. But they don’t like to raise their own revenues, and when they get federal funding, don’t like to spend it on the things they are supposed to spend it on. And like Ontario is doing here, they get federal funds, cut their own share, and then demand more federal funds or the programme will suffer. It would be great if legacy media could actually hold them to account for this rather than trying to once again make this a federal problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone and bomb attacks killed four people overnight in the Sumy and Donetsk regions. Ukrainian drones damaged more Russian oil refineries in a second day of attacks. Here is a look at the Russian rebel groups attacking from Ukraine. The artillery purchase arranged by the Czech government should start arriving in Ukraine by June.

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Roundup: Premiers concern trolling on the carbon levy

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A number of premiers have been writing letters to the prime minister, imploring him not to increase the carbon price on April 1st, citing the cost-of-living challenges that people are having. Unmentioned, of course, is the fact that the rebates are also increasing, and they’re front-end loaded, meaning the higher rebates already come into effect as the carbon levy increases, so if you pause the increase, the rebates will have already increased, which is going to cause a problem down the road for the federal books.

Nevertheless, this is largely concern trolling from the premiers, and yes, that includes Newfoundland and Labrador premier Andrew Furey, whom everyone has been making a big deal of because he’s currently the last Liberal premier standing, and he too is making the call. “Oh, just hold off on the increase while rates are still high!” they say, but rest assured, it will never be a good time to raise the price, and it will stall climate action, while the premiers mouth that they still believe in fighting climate change so long as it doesn’t cost them anything or that they don’t have to take any action, or that they’ll solve it through magical technology that hasn’t been invented yet, and never will be, especially not without adequate price signals that the carbon levy provides as it increases. Also, we’ve been down this road before with the price of oil. When it rises, people buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, and when it comes down, they go right back to buying SUVs and ridiculously oversized pick-up trucks that drive on suburban roads and never haul anything (especially because the box sizes in newer models are tiny).

If I were advising the government (and clearly, I’m not), I would insist that they hold the line on the increases, make the point about the rebates as much as possible—especially as they are delivering more to those who need it the most—because they can’t afford to show any further weakness on this file if they want to have any credibility left. They shouldn’t have caved on the home heating oil (but should have come up with a better temporary rebate for those in that particular situation), and they most especially shouldn’t have made the announcement in front of every single Atlantic MP (which was the single dumbest thing they could have done, so of course they did it). Maintaining the credibility of the programme may be its best hope for staying put, particularly when compared to all other options.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles hit two apartment buildings in Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday, killing three people. Ukraine’s security service says it broke up the largest pro-Kremlin “informational sabotage” networks it has found to date. Russia says they fought off “incursions” coming from Ukraine in the Belgorod region, while Ukraine fired drones and missiles at a major refinery in Russia, inflicting serious damage.

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Roundup: A couple of notes on Campbell’s record

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The weekend was full of conservatives and other right-leaning commenters chirping about Kim Campbell’s record after her (verifiably true) assessment that Pierre Poilievre is a “liar and a hate-monger” who doesn’t believe in the urgency of climate change. Some of them—such as a certain self-aggrandising independent MP—have been utterly dismissive of Campbell and her record, but most people don’t really understand what happened in 1993, and why the fact that the PCs went from a majority to two seats was hardly her doing.

The thing to remember about Brian Mulroney’s massive majorities was that he had managed to build a particular coalition of conservatives in the Prairies, and that he was won over Quebec, which is incredibly difficult for any conservative to do, and no doubt a lot of this was premised on the (somewhat hubristic) promise that he was going to finish the constitutional project that Pierre Trudeau wasn’t able to complete and bring Quebec “into the fold” (which is mostly hyperbolic nonsense anyway). By 1993, that coalition has collapsed, in part because of the failure of Mulroney’s constitutional projects, being Meech Lake and Charlottetown, the latter referendum failing.

Conservatives in Quebec has largely fallen away to the Bloc, which was formed in part by Mulroney’s old friend and confidante, Lucien Bouchard. To this day, the Dean of the House, Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, was first elected in 1984 as part of Mulroney’s PC landslide, and in 1990, crossed to the nascent Bloc. Meanwhile, the prairie conservatives had defected to the nascent Reform Party under the banner of so-called “Western alienation,” in part because of decisions that Mulroney had made, not only in areas of the constitutional reforms that failed, but also because of things like CF-18 maintenance contracts that were supposed to go to a Winnipeg firm were instead given to those in Montreal, and it exacerbated the existing grievances that the Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Programme had inflamed (though he was largely blamed for things that were not his fault, like the collapse in world oil prices that the NEP didn’t cause, but were blamed for regardless).

Campbell inherited a PC party that had lost its voter coalition, thanks to Mulroney’s actions. The election went from three parties to five, with two very different regional parties at play. Trying to pin the blame for that collapse on Campbell is classic glass-cliff logic, where she was handed a bag of dogshit and when she didn’t perform a miracle, was given the blame for it. Did she make mistakes in that campaign? Indeed she did. Could she have resurrected the party’s fortunes with the voter coalition disbanded? Certainly not in the time allotted. For modern conservatives to say that her “record speaks for itself” don’t seem to understand what actually happened in the early 1990s, and instead are showing a particularly misogynistic streak in how they are choosing to attack her and her record.

Ukraine Dispatch:

One woman was killed in Russian shelling in the Kursk region on Sunday. Two people were killed, including a teenager, in Russian artillery attacks on the Dnipropetrovosk region on Saturday, and Russia claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet. Here is a horrifying look at the rapes and torture that Russians have subjected Ukrainian prisoners to, particularly in occupied areas.

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Roundup: An investment in more artillery

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Bill Blair made an announcement yesterday related to Canada’s ability to produce more artillery, both for our domestic stockpiles and to be able to send more to Ukraine, to the tune of $4.4 million to go to two defence contractors to come up with plans to increase their production. Our inability to produce enough artillery domestically at a fast enough pace has been a problem for a while, but there has been this resistance within those same contractors to scaling up production without guaranteed, long-term plans signed with governments (as though the need and market for said artillery wasn’t obvious enough).

There are problems with some of this, however—a new production facility would need to be built, to the tune of $400 million, and you can bet that they’re going to demand that the government subsidise invest in such a facility, and it could take as long as three years to come online, which means it won’t be much help to Ukraine in the meantime. But it also makes one wonder why the company didn’t start investing on its own two years ago when the writing was on the wall, and why they have been so insistent on needing deals and funding from the government when there has clearly been a demonstrated need that they should be addressing.

It’s great that Bill Blair finally announced this kind of investment, but it feels too little and too late, but also like he’s caving into industry pressure to have the government pick up costs that they should be absorbing for their own growth and future profits, because they’re pretty much guaranteed.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian attack in Kharkiv region killed two civilians, and another in the Chernihiv region. There seems to be consensus that the Russian strike on Odesa on Wednesday was aimed at port infrastructure and not president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but it reiterates how very real the stakes are. Zelenskyy has named the former top general, whom he recently dismissed, to be the next ambassador to the UK. Zelenskyy also issued a decree allowing for conscripts currently fighting to be discharged into the reserves in the next two months, in order to give them some respite. The Czech president says that their multilateral plan to buy 800,000 rounds of ammunition for Ukraine has secured enough funding.

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Roundup: Another NDP budget demand

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The NDP’s latest budget demand is a national school food programme, which is a) provincial jurisdiction, and b) something already under negotiation with provinces. This was a Liberal campaign promise, and as with many a file like this, they’ve been doing the heavy lifting in the background. For Jagmeet Singh, however, this isn’t happening fast enough, because in his conception of how governing works, the prime minister simply needs to put on his Green Lantern Ring and use enough willpower to make whatever he wants happen, and in the NDP’s conception, that generally means something that obliterates the federal and provincial jurisdictional boundaries.

I suspect a couple of things are at work—one of them is that if the federal government does come to an agreement with the provinces, Singh can try and claim victory for it, as he does with most things that he has done absolutely no work towards other than throwing a public tantrum. If this is a matter of the provinces looking for more federal money, then it will take time to ensure that the agreements are drawn up in a manner that has strings attached because we know that we absolutely cannot trust provinces to take the money and put it entirely where it is supposed to go (bitter experience with health transfers and pandemic supports), because as we’ve seen in child care, where there are agreements with strings, that some provinces have not been spending the federal funds where they are supposed to go, which remains a very big problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A man was killed in a Russian missile strike in the Kharkiv region, while five people were killed when a bus struck a mine in Luhansk region. One of Ukraine’s top commanders says they will stabilize their defensive position shortly, with the aim of returning to counter-offensive actions later in the year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Odesa with the prime minister of Greece when a Russian strike exploded nearby the pair. Here is a look at Europe’s attempt to get more ammunition to Ukraine, including a Czech initiative to deliver stockpiles until production can ramp up.

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Roundup: A stunt at committee everyone fell for

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The Conservatives, and Michael Chong in particular, pulled a stunt yesterday where they tried to call for an emergency meeting at the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee to study the Winnipeg Lab documents. Liberal and NDP members on the committee said that this isn’t the right committee and this isn’t an emergency, and shut it down. This was the Conservatives’ plan, so that they could take to social media and scream and caterwaul about the “cover-up coalition,” and just like they planned, virtually every single pundit and media outlet did their bidding for them.

To wit, this is that particular committee’s mandate:

“Under Standing Order 108(3)(h), the Committee’s mandate is to study matters related to reports of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, and the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner pursuant to the Conflict of Interest Act (matters related to the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons are studied by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs). The Committee can also study any legislation or regulation or propose initiatives that relate to access to information and privacy and to ethical standards relating to public office holders.”

This study has absolutely nothing to do with it, and while there should be some kind of parliamentary scrutiny, it belongs most likely at the Health Committee, as PHAC would fall within their remit, and possibly Public Safety and National Security, but not Ethics. The NDP think this should go to the Canada-China Relations committee, but I also find that one to be a bit of a stretch (because I also think that committee is little more than a sideshow). But again, it was wholly appropriate for the Ethics committee to shut this down, because it was only meant to be a stunt.

It’s absolutely maddening to see how many media outlets and pundits walked right into this trap and let themselves get played. The CBC, for example, both-sided it, with the headline of “Conservatives accuse,” and the Liberals pointing out this was the wrong committee halfway down the piece. The Canadian Press both-sidesed it more concisely, and didn’t provide any context about the committee. The Globe and Mail, somewhat predictably, downplayed the Liberals and NDP pointing out that this was the wrong committee, gave over plenty of space to the Conservative argument that it should be without actually checking it against the statutory remit of the committee, and privileged Michael Chong’s comments, when he is not on the committee and was 100 percent pulling a stunt.

The thing is that this keeps happening—Conservatives have been regularly proposing studies on issues that committees have no remit over (such as trying to get the Public Accounts committee to go after the Trudeau Foundation), and then crying foul when they don’t play along, and then drive social media engagement off of the faked outrage. Rules matter. Parliamentary procedure matters. It’s not a “process story” you can dismiss, it’s bad faith actors playing the media, and the media going along with it when they should know better.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they stopped a Russian advance near Avdiivka, but that Russian troops appear to be regrouping further south.

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Roundup: Brian Mulroney passes away

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News came down last evening that former prime minister Brian Mulroney had passed away after some health challenges.

The Star has a pretty good obituary here, as well as some of the reactions to his passing, and the CBC has a series of photos over the course of his life.

https://twitter.com/yfblanchet/status/1763346642294411713

Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, who was first elected as a PC MP in 1984 along with Mulroney, reflects on Mulroney.

In reaction, Susan Delacourt notes that it’s hard to imagine a Canada without the larger-than-life Mulroney given his lasting legacy, and also reflects on the political lessons that she learned in covering him during his time in office. Ian Brodie praises Mulroney for his strategic sense in global affairs at a time of great upheaval.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces are pushing hard against the front lines in the east and southeastern parts of Ukraine, which Ukraine has repelled, and they do keep shooting down Russian warplanes, downing another three on Thursday alone. Ukraine is using more domestically-manufactured military equipment, as they strive to move more toward self-sufficiency and away from faltering Western aid.

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QP: Escalating histrionics about the two fired scientists

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The prime minister was off in Thunder Bay, and his deputy otherwise absent as well, leaving only one other party leader present. Michael Chong led off in French, and he went on a tear about the Winnipeg Lab documents, and the lack of responsibility for it. Mark Holland said that the health agency is independent, and the government created a process to release the information, and that there was an RCMP investigation. Chong switched to English to insist that the Canada-China committee could have done the work of the ad hoc process (erm, not really), and demanded an end to any collaboration between the Lab and China. Holland said that any foreign interference was unacceptable, and that this was about two Canadian citizens who lied, and they faced the consequences. Chong went on a tear about sensitive information being sent to China and biological weapons, and Holland disputed this characterisation of this, and that this was an example of the government going beyond usual transparency requirements. Stephen Ellis repeated the biological weapons accusation and gave a swipe about the prime minster admiring China. Holland said that there was plenty of legitimate collaboration around Ebola at the time, and that they shouldn’t weaponise national security for partisan purposes. Ellis read an even more fictional version of cover-ups, to which Holland reminded him that the government shouldn’t be redacting the documents of an independent health agency. 

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and demanded that the federal government stay out of any Supreme Court of Canada appeal of Quebec’s “secularism” law. Arif Virani said that he is still reading the decision, but the federal government will stand up for Charter rights before the courts. Normandin repeated her demand, and Virani repeated that they will defend the Charter.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and tried to needle the government about how one of the ArriveCan consultants was actually a civil servant. Bill Blair said that as soon as they found out the contractor was a DND employee, they suspended the employee and the contracts. Singh switched to French to raise the plight of a family who lost their housing in Montreal, and Soraya Martinez Ferrada noted that they doubled funding for communities to fight against homelessness.

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