Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: A flawed way to fix the CRA’s mistakes

Posted on by

Remember the issue with self-employed Canadians applying for CERB, and being told they were eligible for gross income only to later be told that no, it was really net, and they may have to repay it? And then the government came to the realization that they were going to find themselves in serious trouble (such as a class action lawsuit) if they didn’t change course, and let those CERB payments go ahead? Well, for the people who made repayments, they can get that money back – but they have to apply for it. And that becomes the real trick.

With that in mind, here is Jennifer Robson raising some concerns with the whole thing, because CRA is not doing this very well. And that could be a problem for some of the people this is supposed to have been helping in the first place.

Continue reading →

QP: Unchallenged misinformation around inflation

Posted on by

For the first day back after a week away and the Victoria Day long weekend, the prime minister was present, along with Liberal placeholder Mark Gerretsen as the only other MP present on the government benches. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and Erin O’Toole led off citing misleading statistics about inflation, for which Justin Trudeau recited some platitudes about having people’s backs. O’Toole complained that housing was becoming unaffordable, and Trudeau listed actions they took, like raising taxes on the top one percent and the Canada Child Benefit as ways they are making life more affordable. O’Toole then raised the American tactic to raise softwood lumber tariffs, which doesn’t really affect the Canadian market (as it will only make it more expensive for Americans as there is a lack of supply in the market), and Trudeau wondered where O’Toole had been the last five years as the government stood up against American trade measures. O’Toole repeated his misleading inflation question in French, fo the same platitudes in French, and the repeated the softwood lumber tariff question in French. Trudeau repeated that they have delivered for the past five years.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he raised Quebec’s Bill 96, and wanted Trudeau to praise it. Trudeau reminded him that they want to protect French while also protecting linguistic minorities and that he looked forward to working with the government of Quebec on it. Blanchet took this as a yes, and wanted a more positive explicit endorsement. Trudeau reminded him that he works with the premiers, and he would meet them again later this week.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he accused the banks of “stealing” from people by raising fees and that the federal government could stop them but haven’t. Trudeau listed the measures they are taking to make the wealthy pay their fair share. Singh switched to English to quote the deputy minister of National Defence on the lack of progress on the Deschamps Report, for which Trudeau recited that the institution isn’t living up to its goals, and listed the actions they have taken, calling them “first steps.”

Continue reading →

Roundup: Quitting over a municipal issue

Posted on by

News came down yesterday that Liberal MP Bob Bratina announced, in a bit of a huff, that he wasn’t going to run again in the next election because the government decided to fund an LRT project in Hamilton – where his riding is, and where he used to be mayor – because he’s personally opposed to the project. A certain Postmedia columnist picked up on this and insisted this was dire news for the Liberals, because they’re not even listening to their own MPs. There are counterpoints to this argument.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1394439822748659719

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1394441891937140741

This having been said, yes, we know that sometimes Trudeau and Cabinet can be deaf to caucus concerns, but in this case, Bratina is throwing a tantrum, insisting that they didn’t consult “the Hamilton guy” when the Labour minister’s riding is also in Hamilton, and the infrastructure minister, Catherine McKenna, grew up there. In other words, the voices at the Cabinet table are just as qualified to talk about Hamilton issues than the “Hamilton guy,” especially because he’s personally opposed to a project that is basically what his own party is standing up for right now – mass transit options as part of the oncoming rapid decarbonization we need to engage in if we’re going to get our GHG emissions below catastrophic levels. He should be well aware of this given it’s the party he ran for two elections in a row. If he wants to run for mayor again to oppose the project, he’s within his rights to do so.

As for said the aforementioned columnist’s coded language around “common sense” and “silent majorities,” it’s hard to square that with the current incarnation of the Liberals. In other words, it’s probably pretty safe to consider his dire warning about this as an example of concern trolling, for what it’s worth.

Continue reading →

Roundup: On not electing first ministers

Posted on by

There was something going around the Twitter Machine yesterday regarding past prime ministers, and Kim Campbell in particular, and it appealed to my sense of pedantry/exactness in our civic discourse – no, Kim Campbell was not “elected” as prime minister, but no prime minister is actually elected in the Westminster System.

She was not the first prime minister not to have been appointed to the position without leading their party to victory in a general election. We had two early prime ministers who were sitting senators and not MPs. John Turner didn’t have a seat in either Chamber when he was sworn in as prime minister. At least Campbell had a seat and had led several high-profile Cabinet portfolios (first female justice minister and defence minister), and she made significant reforms to the structure of Cabinet upon her appointment as PM, many of which have been lasting. She did not have to face Parliament as prime minister, but neither did Sir Charles Tupper, not John Turner. Trying to somehow insist that because her appointment did not follow a general election victory as somehow denigrating or making her lesser-than as a prime minister is ahistorical and ignorant of how Westminster parliaments work.

Part of this, however, is tied up with narratives that our pundit class keeps importing from the US, and which our media stokes out a sense of general ignorance of civics. We recently saw in places like Nova Scotia, where they just appointed a new premier, that the media are jumping up and down for him to get “his own mandate” – meaning going to a general election – which goes against how our system works. In Newfoundland and Labrador, their premier was appointed without a seat, which he promptly won in a by-election, and then called an election “to get a mandate” and lo, it turned into a gong show because they had a sudden outbreak of COVID. But this false notion about “mandates” keep cropping up, because media and pundits keep feeding it. It’s not how our system works, and it places false expectations on new first ministers, and creates unreal expectations for those, like Campbell, who did everything according to our system’s actual tenets. It would be great if we had a better sense of civics in this country to counter this ongoing nonsense.

Continue reading →

QP: Getting the minister to stick to his talking points

Posted on by

While we had a couple of leaders present in the Chamber today, the Liberal benches remained largely empty, with only Mark Gerretsen and Francis Drouin present. Erin O’Toole led off, his scripts on his mini-lectern in front of him, and in French, he quoted the Globe and Mail by saying that it was amateur hour on Bill C-10, and selectively quoted Michael Geist’s concerns about freedom of expression, and demanded the bill be withdrawn. Steven Guilbeault read a script that C-10 forces web giants to invest in Canadian and Quebec creators, and the Conservatives, by blocking the bill, were merely shielding web giants. O’Toole repeated the question in English, and got the same answer in English. O’Toole claimed that Guilbeault doesn’t understand his own bill, and he tried to conflate this with media funding, and called it a direct attack on free speech (something none of the experts have actually said), and Guilbeault suggested that O’Toole actually read the bill, because Section 2.1 states that individuals who upload content are not considered broadcasters. O’Toole the switched to French to complain that it was taking longer to approve immigration files in Quebec than in the rest of the country, and Marco Mendicino recited some reassuring lines about the value of immigration and reaching the right levels. O’Toole pivoted again, and in English, demanded action on Line 5, for which Seamus O’Regan noted the importance of the pipeline on both sides of the border, and why they were making that case.

Rhéal Fortin led for the Bloc, and he raised the General Vance allegations, and wondered if the prime minister considered it a problem that his defence minister didn’t alert him. Harjit Sajjan insisted that he followed the right procedures, and that they were committed to culture changes in the military. Fortin raised the notion of seeking Sajjan’s resignation and replacing him with a female defence minister, and Sajjan, naturally, disputed this.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he demanded the government commit to waiving COVID vaccine patents, to which Mary Ng recited that they would participate in these negotiations at the WTO. Singh repeated the question in English, and Ng repeated her response.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The good and the bad of Star Wars Day tweets

Posted on by

It was Star Wars Day yesterday (May the Fourth be with you…), and as happens every year, various government departments put out Star Wars-themed tweets, and some of them are good, and some of them are…not so good. For example:

Some really missed the mark.

As you can imagine, I am a pedant over social media about naming Grogu.

Some of the better ones were these:

As for party leaders, Erin O’Toole’s was…bad. Not quite as bad as last year’s shoddily-animated Grogu video (for which the person who was in charge of it needs to have their ass removed), but still bad, especially because it’s not done in good fun, but is trying to spin the notion that the government is trying to turn the CRTC into a personal Twitter censorship bureau. (There are issues with Bill C-10 – this is not one of them).

Jagmeet Singh’s was painfully earnest.

Justin Trudeau, being a true fan, hit a pitch-perfect note.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The meltdown over NACI

Posted on by

There was a collective meltdown yesterday as the National Advisory Committee on Immunization delivered its most recent recommendations, saying that they recommended that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine be deployed for those over 30 (even though the current supply in the country is currently on hold pending a review of its quality control), and then cited that mRNA vaccines remained their preferred candidates – and everyone lost their minds.

This is not really unexpected if you have been paying attention, where the chair of the committee in particular has said that because of the “safety signal” attached to AstraZeneca related to the particular blood clots (which are very serious – there is a reasonably high fatality rate related to them) that it would be preferable to get mRNA vaccines, but if someone could not wait for them, then they should get the first available vaccine, even if it’s AstraZeneca. In their minds, it’s about being transparent around the risk factors associated, and they’re right. It’s just that this makes it harder for governments and public health officials to carry on with message that the best vaccine is the first one you are offered. Both are correct, and NACI has a lot of nuance in their guidance that is difficult for people to parse effectively, which is a problem, but it’s a question of whether the problem is NACI’s in how they communicate their guidance, or a problem in particular with media who are supposed to be able to take complex issues and translate them to the public, and yet are not very good at it (often walking away from these releases citing that they are “more confused than before,” which they shouldn’t be if they paid attention). It especially isn’t helped when certain journalists, talking heads, and especially certain MPs conflate the very different roles that NACI and Health Canada have, and try to assert that they should always be “on the same page” when they have different roles. Health Canada determines the safety of the vaccines, NACI offers guidance on the best way to deploy them, factoring in the current local epidemiology and vaccine supplies – guidance which provinces can accept or reject. It’s also why that guidance is always changing – they are reacting to current circumstances rather than just offering a simple recommendation once and being done with it, which most people are not grasping. And they have operated pretty much invisibly for decades, because there hasn’t been the kind of public attention on new vaccines up until now, which is why I really dislike the calls by people to “disband NACI” after yesterday’s press conference.

I get that people want clear binaries, and simple instructions, but that’s not NACI’s job, really, and expecting them to change their way of communicating after decades is a difficult ask. There is a lot of nuance to this conversation, and I will point you to a couple of threads – from professor Philippe Lagassé here and here about this kind of advice and how it’s communicated to the public; as well, here is hematologist Menaka Pai, who talks through NACI’s advice and what it means.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Playing chicken with the variants

Posted on by

It’s been such a long and dispiriting week, as many of us in this country live under the rule of murderclown premiers who simply refuse to do their jobs when it comes to this pandemic, and keep trying to blame the federal government for their failures, or to at least distract from their inaction. We’re going through that especially in Ontario right now, where Ford and his ministers keep up this song and dance about the borders, without once recognising their own culpability in the spread of variants.

Dwivedi is absolutely right about the role of the media in this, constantly framing this as “squabbling” or “finger-pointing,” and not “there is clear jurisdictional authority for the province and they refuse to exercise it,” which means that these premiers (and Doug Ford most especially) get to escape being held to account. This is why I object so strenuously whenever I hear another journalist or TV host say “nobody cares about jurisdiction in a pandemic.” Sorry, but that’s not how real life works. There’s a division of powers in the constitution that doesn’t care about your feelings.

Meanwhile, Andrew Leach has a few observations about the situation in Alberta that are just as trenchant as the ones in Ontario.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Ford’s sick days deception

Posted on by

The issue of paid sick days went completely sideways in Ontario after the murderclown government, thinking they were clever, tried to propose that the federal government simply double the payout of the federal sickness benefit programme, promising that they would cover the difference, and leave it at that. Not surprisingly, the federal government said no, because the federal sickness benefit is not paid sick leave, and everybody knows it. Doug Ford knows that, because he repealed the paid sick days that were legislated in the province, at the behest of business owners (because when Ford says he’s looking out for “the little guy,” he means the business owner). Reinstating them is a simple fix in the province’s labour code, unlike “fixing” the federal benefit, which is an impossibility because a) it’s not their jurisdiction, and b) they are limited by their back-end IT infrastructure, which in no way could allow them to have seamless paid sick days the way amending the provincial labour codes would allow. (The federal government could do more when it comes to the sick leave provisions in federally-regulated workplaces, but they are not starting from zero like provinces are).

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387006526406209538

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387007565285011459

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387072092491894790

While on Power & Politics, Ontario’s labour minister, Monty McNaughton, did let slip that they didn’t want to implement actual paid sick days because it would be a burden on businesses, which were already suffering from the pandemic – as though having an outbreak in their facility won’t hurt them even more, or having their employees die of COVID. That, and they have options available to them, such as using the wage subsidy to pay for their employees’ sick leave – that’s one of the reasons it’s there. The whole gods damned point of the federal sickness benefit is for those who don’t have employers, like the self-employed, who could need some kind of income support if they can’t work because of COVID. It was never supposed to replace actual paid sick leave, but premiers decided that they could try to get around their own obligations with it.

Meanwhile, BC premier John Horgan is putting on a song and dance of reluctantly implementing paid sick leave in BC – fourteen months later – and making a theatrical production of trying to claim they wanted to make this a national programme. This, dear readers, is horseshit. Labour codes are provincial jurisdiction in 94 percent of workplaces, and if the federal government had tried to come up with a national paid sick leave programme pre-pandemic, every single premier would have cried jurisdiction and refused on principle. For Horgan and other premiers to now try and claim they want a federal programme is a lie, and an attempt at giving themselves cover. They are trying to avoid the wrath of the business lobbies, and the small business lobby in particular, and trying to use a federal programme designed primarily for the self-employed as their fig leaf.

Even more to the point, I cannot abide how pretty much every single media outlet has framed this issue, painting it as either federal-provincial “finger-pointing,” or even worse, claiming that Ford’s proposal as being some kind of “compromise.” It is not a compromise – it’s more deception that these media outlets are spooning up. And they keep offering Doug Ford political cover. I cannot stress this enough. By trying to be “neutral” and both-sidesing the issue, they are providing Ford with more ability to try and pin this on the federal government when it’s his issue, in his jurisdiction, and he needs to own it.

Continue reading →

QP: Believing a phone call could solve it

Posted on by

On a fairly lovely day in the nation’s capital, the prime minister was present in the House of Commons, with the usual Liberal in attendance, Mark Gerretsen, a couple of rows behind him amid otherwise empty benches.  Erin O’Toole led off in person and in French for a change, and he listed the people who knew about the allegations against General Jonathan Vance, and whether he knew. Justin Trudeau said that they knew there was an allegation but were not privy to details. O’Toole tried again in English, and Trudeau repeated the answer before he embellished with the talking point that when O’Toole himself heard a rumour of allegations against Vance, his staff went to Privy Council Office, and the same process had been followed, while the current government had done more about changing the culture in the armed forces. O’Toole tried yet again, insisting that emails showed that the phrase sexual harassment was used, and Trudeau more forcefully insisted that they did try to investigate but could not go further which was why they were putting more measures into place. O’Toole tried yet again, with more bluster, for which Trudeau started sermonising about doing more for women and marginalised people in the military.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and insisted that the prime minster could have personally picked up the phone and stopped the Port of Montreal strike, for which Trudeau insisted that if the Bloc wanted to take action on behalf of Quebeckers, and pass the bill so that they can set up a neutral mediation process. Blanchet again insisted that the prime minister needed to pick up the phone, and Trudeau stated that they tried negotiating for two-and-a-half years, and it was for naught, and he demanded support for the bill.

Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he demanded the government withdraw the back-to-work legislation for the Port of Montreal, and Trudeau insisted that they did try negotiations, and that this bill would not impose a contract but rather neutral mediation. Singh then switched to English to demand the government improve the federal sickness benefit — oblivious to what that entails — and Trudeau reminded him that the best leave is the one from employers and that the NDP voted against them implementing it for federally-regulated sectors.

Continue reading →