Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Blaming Trudeau for rent hikes

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The Conservatives put out a press release yesterday decrying just how much rent has increased across the country. The problem? Landlord-tenant legislation is a provincial issue, and most of the premiers have resisted rent controls or price caps, mostly for ideological reasons. If indeed rent controls stifle new construction, well, removing them hasn’t spurred it either.

If this is about the market, the federal government hasn’t been in the business of building rental housing since the eighties, and I have seen zero indication that Poilievre would want to get back into that particular line of work. Worse, his release falsely calls the CMHC “Trudeau’s own,” which is a gross mischaracterisation of an arm’s-length Crown corporation that the federal government doesn’t dictate operations to. (This is a rhetorical device Poilievre has been employing a lot, which nobody ever calls him out on either, and that’s a problem). In fact, the government’s decision to remove the GST on purpose-built rentals has given more indications that this will spur development more than any other action so far, but of course, those will take time, which Poilievre is also dismissing with his shtick about people not being able to live in photo-ops.

There has also been the line that this goes back to government spending allegedly raising inflation (false), and that that has raised interest rates, which is what is driving up rental prices, but again, that’s not actually Trudeau’s doing given the global issues with inflation and raising rates to tame it. But Poilievre and his minions would prefer to lie about everything in order to make people angry, because that’s the goal. Facts don’t matter, and that’s a problem for everyone.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Recent Russian air strikes have been focused on Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, however the threat to attacks on energy infrastructure remains high. Ukraine is taking credit for destroying a Russian surveillance plane and an airborne command post. Ukraine’s ground forces commander confirms they are now engaged in “active defence,” but doesn’t rule out further counter-offensive operations. Switzerland has agreed to host a global peace summit at the request of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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Roundup: Frozen Alberta’s electricity woes

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Amidst the frigid cold-snap on the prairies over the weekend, Alberta started facing a crisis of its power grid, with emergency alerts going out to ask people to reduce consumption lest rolling blackouts start happening. People complied, and crisis was averted.

Nevertheless, this gave the opportunity for certain premiers to try and blame this on clean energy rules, or to misconstrue those rules in the face of what took place over the weekend in order to tout how great coal is in order to score points, none of which helps anyone. But when your only calculus is to score points, well, that’s what politics has become.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired 37 missiles and three drones at Ukraine early Saturday, and only eight of those missiles were shot down, likely because of a deficit of air defence ammunition, and as a result, Dnipro and Chernihiv were struck. Meanwhile, Russians have been spending big on infrastructure projects in occupied territories to both draw closer links to Russian territory, but to convince people that they can better rebuild the territories.

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Roundup: No need to consult and launder accountability

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NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson tweeted her outrage at the US/UK air strikes against the Houthis yesterday, and Canada’s participation therein (solely in a planning capacity and not contributing any assets), but in her outrage, she decried that Parliament was not consulted before Canadian participation.

This is wrong. Parliament shouldn’t be consulted because it’s not Parliament’s decision.

This kind of decision is a Crown prerogative, and that’s actually a good thing for accountability, because that is the role that the House of Commons should be playing on these decisions—holding the government to account. That’s the whole point of Parliament. MPs don’t govern—they hold to account those who do. And it’s important that we don’t have MPs voting on these kinds of decisions because that launders the accountability. In other words, if the House of Commons votes on military actions, then if things go wrong, they can’t hold the government to account for them because the government can turn around and say “You voted for this, it’s your responsibility, not ours.” That’s how our Parliament is structured, and why it works the way it does.

Oh, but you’ll say. There have been votes in the past! There have been, and they have largely been done for crass political calculations, particularly to divide opposition parties. Case in point was the extension of the Afghanistan mission, which Stephen Harper put to a vote specifically for the purpose of dividing the Liberals in opposition. It’s not how things are supposed to work. The government may announce a deployment or a mission in the House of Commons, and there might be a take-note debate on it, but there shouldn’t be a vote. If the opposition tries to force on as part of a Supply Day motion, as is their right, then it’s non-binding and is explicitly a political ploy, which makes it more transparent than a government’s attempt to launder accountability. And in this particular case, the fact that two or three Canadians are assisting in planning is hardly something that requires debate in the Commons.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine’s ground forces commander says they need more aircraft to make a difference in pushing back Russian forces. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak was in Kyiv to announce a new tranche of aid, and to address Ukraine’s parliament. A Ukrainian presidential aide says that the amended mobilization bill is expected to pass within days.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1745622690759606541

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Roundup: Chow chooses blackmail

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Toronto mayor Olivia Chow woke up and chose violence, as the kids say, when it comes to her budget proposals for Toronto. While the 10.5 percent property tax increase is long-overdue for a city whose property taxes remain well below the national average after years of austerity governments who have allowed the city to crumble so they can keep from increasing said property taxes (and this is not unique to Toronto either), she is also calling for an additional measure—federal blackmail. The proposal is called a “federal impacts levy,” or an additional six percent increase ostensibly to cover the costs of providing services for asylum seekers, and is basically holding the federal government at knifepoint, saying pay up or all your safe seats in this city are going to be in jeopardy.

The asylum seeker issue is rife with other levels of government falsely claiming that this is solely a federal responsibility, so they should foot the whole cost. It’s not actually true—the federal government is responsible for refugees once their claims have been approved, but before that point, they generally fall under the social services provided by provinces and municipalities, and the federal government will reimburse a portion of those costs. Of course, premiers like to wash their hands of this because of course they do (and there is a constant rhetorical battle happening in Question Period where the Bloc keep demanding that the federal government owes Quebec some $450 million for the provision of services, again falsely claiming sole federal responsibility), which leaves cities often bearing the burden, and Toronto and Montreal most especially as they get the lion’s share of asylum claimants. There remain questions around Toronto, if they have followed the proper channels to request federal funds for this (I believe there is a need for a certain provincial action to accompany it which may not have been undertaken), but again, they have been given millions of dollars this year for assistance with this.

My bigger concern is the Pandora’s Box that this kind of federal blackmail opens up. While some pundits will declare it to be genius, and on a strategic level, it is a clever way to back the federal government into a corner, but at the same time, this invites other cities or provinces to start adopting this kind of tactic, and even more to the point, it once again leaves the province—whose constitutional responsibility the city is—off the hook for their own underfunding and downloading of services to try and make their own bottom lines look good. We already have provinces who think they can just declare themselves exempt from federal laws, and others who are openly breaking those laws (or at least threatening to under the cover of legal fictions), while the pundit class says it’s the prime minister’s fault, that he made them break the law and behave this way. Chow is now pushing this envelope even further, and I worry about the long-term consequences for this country so that she can solve her short-term problem of being an adult around her city’s fiscal crisis.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel in Kharkiv, injuring eleven people, many of them journalists. Ukrainian forces have been shifting toward building fortifications and a more defensive posture in recent months. Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they have shown that Russia can be stopped, but that Ukraine still needs more air defence systems and ammunition. Zelenskyy added that there are “clear signs” of a slowdown in Russia’s defence industry as he called on allied nations to tighten sanctions.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1745019147065721141

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1745348642100109636

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Roundup: Not a free press issue, but a trap

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Because everything is stupid, we are being drawn into a dumb fight that is trying to de-legitimise legacy media, and legacy media is once again walking into the trap. To wit: On Tuesday, a Rebel “News” personality accosted Chrystia Freeland on the sidewalk outside of the PS752 memorial, and in the end was detained by police for an altercation. We can’t see exactly what happened because as soon as he was intercepted by the protective detail, his camera conveniently panned away, and returned to him as the police were arresting him for assaulting an officer. (He was later released without charge). There are legitimate questions if the police overreacted, and again, we can’t see what he did to them when the camera panned away, but this is not a free press issue.

To be clear: He is not a journalist. Ezra Levant and Rebel “News” keep testifying under oath in court that they are not journalists and not a news organization. And this particular performer, David Menzies, does this a lot—accost people, get arrested, and then Levant puts out a fundraising plea to their viewers, who dutifully shell out. This stunt was practiced, and the camera work seems to indicate just that. They’re already fundraising and claiming they’re going to sue Freeland and the police, because that’s their grift. And because everything is stupid and awful, Pierre Poilievre has decided to step in and claim that this is a freedom of the press issue.

Bullshit.

This isn’t about freedom of the press because Menzies is not a journalist, and Rebel is not a news outlet—by their own admission. But they pretend to be, and Poilievre is happy to go along with that fiction because this way he can try to de-legitimise reputable media outlets by saying that they are on the take from Justin Trudeau, and therefore suspect. It’s not really true, but Poilievre and his caucus have been engaged in this dystopian world-building to paint the picture that Trudeau is a despotic tyrant stripping away their freedoms who is telling the media what to write, and if they don’t, he censors and now arrests them (all of which is an absurd fabrication). And of course, Poilievre is data-mining and fundraising off of this, because again, he wants to get in on the grift.

He doesn’t care about the free press. He abuses legitimate journalists on the regular, and I have been at the receiving end of that. There was no concern about Menzies’ freedoms when he was arrested at previous Conservative events, having accosted both Melissa Lantsman and Andrew Scheer. But by trying to call out the Parliamentary Press Gallery for not condemning Menzies’ detention, and a bunch of mainstream outlets cluelessly not getting that this is grift and playing along, treating Rebel and Menzies as though they were legitimate, is doing the work of letting Poilievre de-legitimise them. It feeds his dystopian narrative, and creates the bifurcated reality where facts no longer apply. And this has the potential to get worse as Marilyn Gladu is trying to get the Commons’ heritage committee to take this up, meaning a full-on dog and pony show for the cameras that legitimate media won’t know how to handle themselves in, because they refuse to believe that they are the targets in this all-out offensive. This is actively damaging democracy, and by not being self-aware, legacy media are causing themselves more harm. This can’t end well.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The massive air assault Russia has launched against Ukraine is stretching their air defences, and they need more systems and ammunition, particularly of anti-aircraft guided missiles, some of which is being held up by the fighting in the US Congress. More than a thousand towns and villages have lost power because of winter storms affecting power systems that have been weakened by Russia’s assaults. Drone manufacturers in Ukraine are producing them faster than the country’s current budget can buy them.

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Roundup: Both-sidesing Moe’s legal fictions

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The playacting around Scott Moe’s threat about not remitting the carbon levy continues to play out in the media, and once again I will point to University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach calling out the media for how they are framing this, which is poorly.

Today’s example is the CBC, once again egregiously both-sidesing this in the construction of their reporting. On a plain reading of the law, the Saskatchewan government can’t engage in the legal fiction of registering as the distributor of natural gas in the province, and a competent journalist should be able to say as much, but they won’t. The demands of both-sidesing means that they have to get someone else—“some experts”—to couch it so that they can’t possibly be accused of bias or an agenda, even when it’s the plain reading of the law. And this is exactly why parties, particularly on the right in North America, have learned that they can get away with outright lying about absolutely everything—because they won’t be called out on it, and when your reporters couch the language in “some experts” saying it’s a lie, and your populist schtick is to denounce experts as being the enemy of the “common people,” then that expert commentary is immediately dismissed, and the lie carries on without consequence. You would have thought that the past few years, particularly given how the American media entirely shat the bed with trying to cover Trump, that they might have learned something, but nope. CBC and The Canadian Press in particular will continue to egregiously both-sides Poilievre and his myriad of lies, much as they are with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, and those same leaders will continue to lie with abandon because they will continue to get away with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched more heavy waves of missiles at Ukraine, killing four civilians early Monday.

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Roundup: Taking Moe a little too seriously

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As Saskatchewan’s little LARP into lawlessness continues, a number of credulous columnists in this country continue to take it seriously that the province thinks they know that they’re doing, or that they have found legal loopholes around said lawlessness. They haven’t, and they should stop pretending that Scott Moe or his minister, Dustin Duncan, are some kind of evil geniuses sticking it to Trudeau. They’re not, and it’s a little embarrassing how easily some columnists can let themselves get played like this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two people were killed in Russian shelling of Kherson in the south, and another killed in an air attack on Kharkiv in the northeast.

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Roundup: Electricians gathering lightning

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We’re still in “extremely slow news day” territory, so the discourse yesterday revolved around video clips of Pierre Poilievre praising electricians who “capture lightning from the sky” and run it through copper wires to light the room that he’s in—and that he’s used this particular turn of phrase on at least four occasions, one of which was in the House of Commons (though nobody said anything at the time). While all of his reply-guys on Twitter are insisting that he’s being “lyrical” or what have you (one of them tried to tell me this was “anthropomorphism”—it most certainly is not, and yes, I do have a degree in English literature), I do suspect that this is possibly some kind of troll, so that he can claim that the people laughing at him are really laughing at the blue collar electricians, whom he has been praising as “extraordinary” for their apparent superpowers. And yes, stoking grievances is his schtick, so let’s keep that in mind.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine and Russia had the largest single exchange of prisoners since the start of the invasion. Here’s a look at the losses faced by those whose apartments have been hit by Russian missiles. Türkiye has blocked the passage of two minehunters donated by the UK to Ukraine, citing the 1936 Montreux Convention.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1742484948349575331

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Roundup: Legal fictions around the carbon levy refusal

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While we all emerge from our holiday slumber, the big story domestically remains that Saskatchewan is planning to move ahead with their plans to stop collecting the carbon levy on heat, and hoping that they won’t suffer any repercussions for it. This includes trying to put forward some legal fictions like trying to register the Government of Saskatchewan that’s the seller of natural gas and electricity rather than Crown corporations like SaskEnergy, which the federal government would be well within their rights to reject outright because it’s a fig leaf attempting to protect those Crown corps for breaking federal law. And to add to that, the provincial minister has been spinning the falsehood that the federal “pause” on heating oil won’t reduce the rebate, and that the rebates in his province should be secure if they stop collecting the levy, which is also false–the rebates will be reduced because that money comes from collecting the carbon price—it’s not a federal entitlement programme out of general revenue.

Here’s University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach with more:

In case you missed it:

  • My Xtra story on the Ontario court decision that ruled that calling queer people and drag queens “groomers” is a slur and is not protected speech.
  • My weekend column on an NDP private member’s bill initiative on a Middle East peace plan that looks like a Kickstarter, but is promising things it cannot deliver.
  • My column on the complete lack of serious responses in any of the Conservatives’ year-ender interviews (and the ongoing attempts to justify their Ukraine votes).
  • My year-ender column traces how the shift and fragmentation of social media turned the our politics into an even more toxic snake pit than ever.
  • My latest column on Poilievre’s “debt bomb” disinformation documentary and why it’s just hysteria to rile up the Boomers and Gen-Xers.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on the way the housing issue is going to dominate the political scene for the foreseeable part of 2024.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Kyiv and Kharkiv have come under heavy bombardment in the past several days, in particular striking apartment buildings. There have been Ukrainian drone strikes in the Russian province of Belgorod.

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Roundup: NSIRA spanks Global Affair’s intelligence program

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A long-delayed public release of NSIRA’s report into the activities of the Global Security Reporting Program—the “intelligence” arm of Global Affairs, which has diplomats openly engaging with persons of interest abroad—was finally released, and it’s making some waves. In particular, for a programme that isn’t actual covert intelligence gathering has some governance problems, with a lack of coherent policies or training that has led to some lines being blurred, which can make some countries believe this is an actual foreign intelligence service (it’s not, and we don’t have one).

So, with this in mind, here are four threads from some very reputable sources. Stephanie Carvin walks through the report, and breaks down its components, as well as the government’s responses.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1737569161042096138

Jessica Davis has a shorter walkthrough (with paragraph numbers!) about her own concerns about what she reads in it.

Leah West has a few legal observations about the report.

And Thomas Juneau gives a much more generous read, and places some of the GSRP’s work into better context.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed journalists’ questions about whether Ukraine is losing the war, but acknowledges challenges of being in a country under siege. Ukraine’s forces appear to be moving to a more defensive posture, likely because of the artillery shortage.

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