Tag Archives: F-35 Fighters

Roundup: Ford opts for more private clinics

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As expected, Doug Ford announced a plan to move more outpatient surgeries to private clinics. While I have a column on this coming out later today that goes into my thinking on this in greater depth, I did want to share some of the more salient tweets on this through the day, because they’re asking the right questions.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1615014400385077251

We should note the interview that provincial health minister Sylvia Jones did Power & Politics, where the question of these clinics upselling to patients was raised, and Jones dismissed any concerns as this being about “choice,” which is a red flag.

Jagmeet Singh was, of course, demanding that Justin Trudeau swoop in to save the day, in spite of not really having any particular federal levers to deploy.

Meanwhile, Chrystia Freeland was busy subtweeting the whole thing.

And of course, the Beaverton had one of the most salient responses to Ford’s announcement, as they are wont to.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 328:

The death toll from the Russian missile strike on the apartment building in Dnipro has risen to 40, as rescuers continue to sort through the rubble. There was also Russian shelling in Kherson, killing three people. Meanwhile, Russians may have finally taken Soledar, though it remains unconfirmed, though that came at a horrific cost of thousands of dead or wounded Russians—a tactic where the Ukrainians are trying to exhaust the Russians leaving them vulnerable in other areas.

https://twitter.com/tpyxanews/status/1615112061951909894

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Roundup: The hypocrisy around McKinsey concerns

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It was a little weird yesterday, that with Justin Trudeau off in Mexico City, that a number of MPs from all opposition parties descended on the Hill to hold press conferences and send out a raft of releases, as though they all just got back to work after the holidays. (I know, they were working in their ridings, but it was just an interesting turn of events). One of the things that all of the opposition parties demanded was a parliamentary inquiry into the use of McKinsey contracts by the government. Which is fine, if a week after the raft of stories on them, and the minister of procurement says she’d be happy to turn over documents if the right committee requests them, which they haven’t, but then Pierre Poilievre, who deigned to show up in front of microphones, wondered why civil servants weren’t being allowed to do their jobs.

Ahem.

Poilievre was a former minister in the Harper government, which imposed cuts on the civil service and a lot of their capabilities, while their use of outside consultants exploded. This story from 2013 shows the rapidly increasing use of those consultants, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. This study from 2011 documents the ballooning use of these consultants to create the “shadow public service” that is being decried currently. And there can be legitimate uses for outside consultants, but the fact that Poilievre is calling on the government to let the civil service to the work is the height of hypocrisy. The utter lack of shame in his saying that is…frankly unsurprising and telling, but it’s also completely galling at the same time.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612937741523881984

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612938363685806080

Meanwhile, Poilievre wouldn’t answer questions about his MP who refused to aid asylum seekers in his riding, but instead derided them as “illegal refugees.” Instead, he went on a rant about how the government hasn’t fixed the problems of irregular crossings, or that they haven’t renegotiated the Safe Third Country agreement with the Americans, and demanded that the government close Roxham Road, as though that wouldn’t force these asylum seekers to other, more dangerous crossing points where they wouldn’t be processed upon arrival.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 322:

Wagner Group mercenaries hired by Russia claim that they are now in control of the salt mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut, but Ukraine says their forces continue to hold out. Russians want to control the underground tunnels around Soledar. A vocational school in Kramatorsk says that no, the Russian strike against them didn’t kill “hundreds of Ukrainian troops” as the Russians are claiming. Here’s a bigger-picture look at the fighting around Bakhmut, which is now described as a “meat grinder.”

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Roundup: Releasing more F-35 deal details

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All of the talk yesterday was about the big F-35 announcement, which wasn’t actually about the decision around the F-35s, but rather some of the details around dates and costs. That didn’t, however, stop every media outlet from running clips of Trudeau in 2015 saying that he wasn’t going to buy F-35s because they weren’t the right plane for Canada and the price was astronomical. Well, some things have changed since then, but primarily it was the fact that the consensus among NATO allies has been to settle on the F-35 (as flawed as it is—no, seriously, last I checked, the ejection seats will literally kill a pilot who is below a certain height/weight), and interoperability is a key function, particularly when most of their use will be over North America. Ironically, now that Sweden is joining NATO, their Gripen fighters will have to become NATO compatible, which was the other choice for Canada in this procurement.

The other thing, which is being downplayed by certain circles, is that there was an actual proper procurement process, which the Harper government didn’t engage in when they sole-sourced the F-35s the first time, on dubious advice. There are going to be questions about the industrial benefits, but as participants in the joint strike fighter development programme, Canadian firms have been part of the supply chain for a while now, so the benefits are not like they used to be in previous procurement processes. But really, this was not the same kind of regional job creation programme that the shipbuilding process was, which is not really working out well for us.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 321:

Russian forces intensified their assault on Soledar, near Bakhmut, primarily with Wagner Group mercenaries. Ukrainian soldiers repelled the attempted advance.

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Roundup: A few notes on the hybrid quotes

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Because the hybrid parliament debate will resume in the New Year, CTV has a collection of quotes from MPs both here and in comparable Parliaments abroad about the format, and I find some of the commentary to be lacking. A few notes:

  1. Lots of talk about being able to participate while stick, while ignoring that this is setting up an extremely unhealthy system of presenteeism. MPs should be allowed to take sick days or leave if they require treatment for something like cancer, and not be made to feel guilty about it.
  2. There was some talk about party whips setting up rules for when MPs can appear virtually, but there seemed to be a lot of “when they feel like it” happening, particularly since Niki Ashton only appeared in Ottawa for two days the whole fall sitting, which should be absolutely unacceptable.
  3. Our committees are in crisis because of how they have been limited by hybrid sittings and the lack of interpretation staff. Only two government bills that were not budget-related got passed in the fall. Two. Some bills were in committee the entire thirteen sitting weeks that they sat, and are still not out of committee. Additionally, there are some committee chairs who are only appearing virtually (while not sick or infirm), which should not be allowed because it’s impossible to moderate a room you’re not in.
  4. The piece did quote the interim head of the interpretation service, but absolutely none of the MPs raised a single concern for the injuries that they are telling the interpreters to suffer so that they can appear remotely when they feel like it. The continued lack of basic awareness or concern about this remains unconscionable, and it’s absolutely shameful that MPs can’t arse themselves to care.
  5. Only the Bloc raised the concerns that ministers aren’t accessible because they are moving increasingly remotely, and allowing virtual voting is even worse for that. It used to be the time when MPs could get a chance to catch a minister’s attention about a matter that requires their attention, because they were all in the Chamber at the same time. Now most ministers run out of the Chamber when votes begin and vote on their phones from their cars, and they are no longer accessible, and that is a very big problem. Similarly, the more MPs and ministers are remote, the less they are able to be button-holed by journalists, making them even less accountable than they already are (especially because the architecture of the West Block makes it too easy for them to avoid media, even when they are there).

I don’t care how convenient MPs find hybrid sittings or remote voting, it’s degrading our institutions and it needs to come to an end immediately.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 302:

I could find no stories on the situation on the ground in Ukraine because absolutely all of the coverage was about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington DC. During Zelenskyy’s visit with President Joe Biden at the White House, we got confirmation that the US will be sending Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine. Zelenskyy then headed to the Capitol, where he met with Nancy Pelosi (who enthused that this was just like when her father met with Winston Churchill in Congress 81 year ago), before Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress. His message—that aid for Ukraine isn’t charity, but an investment in democracy and security, at a time when a number of US representatives are publicly doubting the “blank cheque” that has been given to Ukraine.

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Roundup: Refusing to aid so-called “illegal refugees”

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MPs from the Liberals, NDP and even the Bloc are condemning the actions of Conservative MP Richard Martel as he refused to assist asylum seekers in his riding who face possible deportation to El Salvador, where they are threatened by gang violence. More than that, Martel called them “illegal refugees,” which is not a Thing, but is certainly drawing from American and far-right rhetoric.

What I find most interesting in this, however, are the people who think that Pierre Poilievre should intervene if he wants to show that he’s sincere about his outreach to newcomer communities, and should send the message to “treat all refugees equally.” But this ignores that Poilievre has been following the Jason Kenney “curry-in-a-hurry” method of ethnocultural outreach, which was predicated on using these communities in wedging others, whether it was going to socially conservative communities and saying things like “You hate the gays? Us too! You should vote for us!” Even more to the point, Kenney constantly turned different newcomer communities against one another, creating an artificial division between the “good” economic immigrants who “went through the queue,” versus the asylum seekers whom he termed “queue-jumpers,” never mind that there is no queue for asylum seekers or refugees, but that it is a separate process entirely (and no, refugees are not economic migrants. Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian project, and people need to get that through their heads). Getting one group of immigrants to resent asylum seekers was what Kenney was constantly trying to do.

Mind you, he wasn’t all that successful—his efforts never really netted much of a result when you looked at the election data, but the myth of his so-called success has been cemented in the imaginations of conservatives (and a not-inconsiderable portion of the media), so of course Poilievre is going to take inspiration from it. So I don’t expect he’ll take too much exception to the “illegal refugee” line, because it’s right out of the Jason Kenney playbook.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 301:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the front lines in Bakhmut and met with soldiers there. Zelenskyy is expected to head to Washington today, his first trip since the invasion began, to address Congress as it debates further aid for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine are removing signs of Russian influence form public spaces now that the Russian-speaking lobby in the country has largely evaporated.

https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1605101789677867009

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Roundup: Rota’s “Justinflation” problem

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The Speaker of the House of Commons has a “Justinflation” problem. Having too laxly enforced the rules around using first names and MPs mocking one another for too long, Anthony Rota finds that he is having a hard time getting Conservatives to stop using it. This past week in Question Period, he tried a few times to get Conservatives to stop, or to at least put a pause in between the two portions, but quickly realised that the exaggerated pause wasn’t doing anything either, and he tried to get them to stop that as well, but that mostly didn’t work either. And lo, it’s no wonder, because he doesn’t really enforce the rules. Same with repeated mentions last week about the prime minister being absent, both for the Queen’s funeral and to attend the United Nations General Assembly, which MPs are not supposed to do, and yet did anyway with no word of warning from Rota.

Rota, who tries very hard to show that he’s such a nice guy, relies on gentle chiding when MPs don’t follow the rules, and shockingly, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work to stop things like “Justinflation, “and it doesn’t stop MPs from abusing Zoom to the detriment of the health and safety of the interpretation staff (for over two gods damned years). Gentle chiding doesn’t work. Do you know what does? Refusing to call on MPs when they break the rules. He doesn’t need to actually follow the speaking list that the House Leaders have given him. He can enforce the rules by not calling on MPs who break them, and when they shape up, then he can call on them again. These are powers that are completely with in his disposal if he cared to actually enforce the rules. But he doesn’t seem to want to, so here we are, and the “Justinflation” references continue apace. Slow clap all around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 219:

As Russia “formally” declared they were illegally annexing two more Ukrainian provinces, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally signed a declaration that Ukraine will be seeking NATO membership, hopefully through an accelerated process, but so long as there are Russians occupying territory in Ukraine, that may not be able to happen—but it could force more NATO members to provide more support in the interim.

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Roundup: Manning says to ride that tiger

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It is now approximately day seventy-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and United Nations efforts to evacuate civilians from under the steel plant in Mariupol continue apace. Tales from the survivors who have been rescued and have made it to safety are pretty harrowing about life in the tunnels under the plant. Ukrainian forces are preparing a counteroffensive to push Russian forces away from Kharkiv and Izyum in the Donbas region. Amnesty International has been collecting evidence of Russian war crimes around the Kyiv region, including in Bucha. Meanwhile, it sounds like the Canadian “Norman Brigade” of fighters in Ukraine is being poorly led and under-equipped, and gosh, who could have seen this happening?

Closer to home, the conference formerly known as the Manning Conference is happening this weekend, and we’ve already seen the nastiness of the unofficial leadership debate that took place, and now we have Preston Manning himself insisting that their party can capture the “energy” and “enthusiasm” of the extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who made up the occupation in Ottawa, and that they can be “properly managed.”

No. Just no.

Manning has long held that you can ride the tiger of a populist mob and gain from it. Never mind that absolutely everyone who has tried has wound up being mauled by it, but golly, Manning still insists that you can do it. Gods know that Jason Kenney is certainly trying in Alberta, and has been trying to do what Manning has famously suggested about “tapping a relief well” and trying to direct that anger toward something that they can try and be productive with, but that’s not really working either, and all of those face-eating leopards that Kenney invited into the house, because he thought he could turn them on his perceived enemies, have realized that his face is right there and they want to eat it. You don’t try and work the mob up because you think you can use it to your advantage, and Manning keeps making this mistake over again, and encouraging his followers to do the same. What it’s doing is encouraging more extremism instead, and you can be damn sure that there will be repercussions for that.

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Roundup: Lower-tier leadership candidates

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It is now on or about day fifty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like the fighting in the eastern part of the country, around the Donbas region, has intensified as has been signalled for a couple of weeks now. At the same time, more missile attacks have hit western cities in the country like Lviv, which has mostly been out of the fighting, so that is keeping everyone on edge, particularly given that Lviv is hosting a lot of the people who have fled from other parts of the country.

Other news from Ukraine over the long weekend:

  • Thus far, the invasion has damaged about 30 percent of the country’s infrastructure, at a cost of about $100 billion.
  • There were further attacks on Kyiv over the weekend, possibly in retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva
  • Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol are defying Russia’s surrender-or-die orders
  • Here is a look at the situation LGBTQ+ Ukrainians find themselves in during the war.

Closer to home, Power & Politics interviewed Conservative leadership candidate Roman Baber yesterday, and it was…painful. He is not a serious person. At all. He kept speaking in facile talking points about “restoring democracy,” as though we didn’t just have free and fair elections, based on his nonsense reading of public health restrictions and what happened during the Ottawa occupation, with a dose of facile catch-phrases about “cancel culture.” And, bless her, Vassy Kapelos did gently try to push back against some of what he said, but wow. I would be very surprised if he manages to get his $300,000 in fundraising and all of his signatures to become a verified contestant because he offers nothing original, and even if this about trying to rebuild his profile after being booted from the caucus provincially, it’s a very difficult way to go about it, with not much in the way of reward.

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QP: Exasperation with housing talking points

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A bright and sunny Tuesday in the Nation’s Capital, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was present for QP, and for the first time in weeks, so was every other leader, all together. Candice Bergen led off, script in front of her, and she complained that the Liberals had moved away from “moderates” like John Manley and Anne McLellan—because it’s 1995 and will always be 1995—and she worried the budget would be an NDP document. Trudeau recited that they made the choice two year ago to support Canadians through the pandemic, and that led to the economic growth that we are seeing now. Bergen complained that out-of-control spending led to out-of-control prices and insisted that Canadians were worse off than six years ago—which I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually track. Trudeau insisted that they made the choice to prop up Canadians in the pandemic, and were working to make their lives better. Bergen again insisted that every budget made Canadians worse off, and demanded that Trudeau listen to “moderate” Liberals and produce a “responsible” budget, to which Trudeau produced a list of supports that they introduced or enriched, which the Conservatives opposed entirely. Luc Berthold took over in French, and he too insisted that these big-spending budgets led to inflation (never mind that we know the cause of the current bout of inflation and it’s not government spending), and Trudeau recited that they would be there for Canadians, which is why the economy has boomed. Berthold quoted Paul Martin to demand that they cut spending now that the economy is growing, to which Trudeau countered that they enhanced supports for Canadians to help them with rising costs, where the Conservatives wanted austerity.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he insisted that nobody believes in the emissions reduction plan, and wanted the prime minster to admit that his plan failed. Trudeau took a script and read off that the Montreal and Quebec City mayors supported their plan. Blanchet insisted the plan was “scientifically unacceptable” and listed fossil fuel subsidies as proof, and demanded the Bay du Nord project be cancelled. Trudeau instead lamented that Blanchet badmouthed the mayors.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and after reciting a lamentation about rising prices, he wanted assurances that their shared priorities were in the budget. Trudeau responded with a rehearsed paean about how their investments in Canadians have grown the economy. Singh switched to French to demand that the ultra-rich pay their fair share starting with big banks—which was a Liberal platform promise—but Trudeau merely repeated his same paean in French.

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Roundup: Insufficient consequences for an abuse of power

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We are now on or about day thirty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the promise that they were pulling back from Kyiv and other places to give peace talks room to breathe were, well, not true. But nobody actually believed Russia in the first place, so nobody is exactly shocked here. Maclean’s features photos from Ukraine from Canadian photographer Philip Cheung on the ground there.

Closer to home, former Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges, and admitted to all the various things that he flatly denied previously. But the galling part in all of this is that got off on a conditional sentence that included community service, rather than face a criminal record. And even more appalling was the fact that his lawyer was trying to argue that Vance was going to suffer enough because his reputation had been stained enough that he wasn’t going to be able to cash in on the promises of future defence spending, whether that’s with some kind of government relations gig, or consultancy.

The bigger picture in all of this is not just that there is a highly sexualized culture in the military that this is a mere hint of, it’s that there is an abuse of power crisis within the military that the lack of meaningful consequences here simply emboldens. This obstruction of justice charge, and the admission of it all, is a demonstration of the abuse of power that Vance was trying to wield, and got caught doing. That he gets to avoid the serious consequences of this abuse, and that the notion that he can’t cash in is punishment enough, is a sign that this is a rot that runs deep and we need to be serious about this problem and acknowledging that it exists before we can get to work on tackling it as part of the culture change that the Canadian Forces desperately needs to undergo.

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