Tag Archives: First Nations

QP: Fighting for Oshawa

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While Justin Trudeau was in town but meeting with the head of Unifor, Andrew Scheer decided to show up for the first time in almost two weeks. Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he read that he met with workers at the GM plant in Oshawa earlier that morning, before he concern trolled around “massive deficits,” before wondering if the support for workers was factored into the fall economic update (obviously it wouldn’t have been), or if it meant higher deficits. Navdeep Bains responded by saying that they stand up for workers, and touted their innovation fund. Scheer demanded they cancel the carbon tax to protect jobs, to which Bains praised the business environment and the auto sector in Canada. Scheer demanded a second time, and Bains noted new investment in the sector. Gérard Deltell took over to reiterate the demand in French, to which Bains read his bland assurances in French. Deltell listed the various other job losses in other sectors, to which Bains retorted in English about the good economic news that countered those individual challenges. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he worried about the Oshawa news, and got the usual reply from Bains. When Caron demanded that GM repay any funds that the government provided them, Bains assured him that all options were being explored to protect workers. Peter Julian was up next to reiterate the question in English, and Bains took exception to his characterisation of events before listing the economic figures. Julian insisted that the fall economic update was a giveaway to corporations, but Bains again pushed back against the rhetoric and proclaimed about their plans to invest created growth.

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QP: Concern trolling about the media

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While the PM was off to Calgary to sell his fiscal update, Andrew Scheer was absent yet again. Alain Rayes led off, proclaiming that the government was racking up “record” deficits (not sure that’s correct), and demanded a plan for a balanced budget. Bill Morneau insisted that they did have a plan for growth and investment, and that the level of debt was the best in the G7. Rayes tried a second time, and got the same answer. Pierre Poilievre got up next, and said that the Morneau was trying to rewrite history from his deficit promises. Morneau got up and said that Poilievre was repeating buzz-words from first-year economic textbooks, while his government was getting results with growth. Poilievre then concern trolled that the government was buying off the press, to which Morneau said that journalism was vital democracy and they were trying to help the sector in a manner that was independent. Poilievre stated that the government thinks that journalists should shower then with praise, to which Morneau replied that it was insulting to think that journalists could be bought off. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, decrying the tablet of back to work legislation for Canada Post, to which Morneau said that they tried to get a deal but the economy was starting to suffer. Caron railed that this was a gift not only to Canada Post but also EBay and Amazon, and Morneau responded with some pabulum about supporting small businesses. Karine Trudel and Irene Mathyssen further denounced the move on back-to-work legalisation, to which Patty Hajdu listed the ways they tried to get to a deal, and that the legislation may still give room for bargaining while getting the workers back to work.

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QP: Praising your own record

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While the PM was present once again for QP, the finance minister was over in the lock-up for the fiscal update, and Andrew Scheer was…elsewhere. Again. Lisa Raitt led off, and true to form, wanted to know when the budget would be balanced. Justin Trudeau stated that no government in history added more to the debt than Stephen Harper, and praised his own record on growth and employment. Raitt tried again, and Trudeau lambasted the Conservative record on deficits and noted the decrease in the debt-to-GDP ratio. Raitt accused Trudeau of being arrogant for breaking promises, and Trudeau listed off the Conservative record of cuts and low growth. Alain Rayes took over to ask again in French, and this time Trudeau picked up a sheet to talk about how many children in Rayes’ riding were being helped by the Canada Child Benefit. Rayes tried one last time, and Trudeau lauded his party’s record of economic growth. Guy Caron was up next, and he railed about the possibility that the government would legislate an end to the Canada Post labour dispute. Trudeau took up a script to read that they believe in collective bargaining, but that legislation was not a step they took lightly, but they were prepare to act. Caron switched to English to ask the same thing, and Trudeau read the French version of his script. Karine Trudel said the reported mail backlogs were exaggerated and that Canada Post was creating an artificial crisis, to which Trudeau remarked, without script, that they were working in partnership with unions, but they were ready to act if they couldn’t come to an agreement. Irene Mathyssen tried one last time in English, and Trudeau insisted that they transformed the relationship between the government and organised labour.

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QP: Lies versus pabulum, part eleventy-seven

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While Justin Trudeau was not present today, just off of a plane from France, Singapore and Papua New Guinea. That said, Andrew Scheer was not present today either, for whatever reason. Alain Rayes led off, worried that the budget would not balance in 2019. Bill Morneau responded with a question of his own — where are we now? He went on to extol the low unemployment rates and the investments to grow the economy. Rayes repeated the question, and Morneau responded that the Conservatives only wanted to make cuts while the Liberal approach was working for growth. Rayes concerned trolled that the budget was “collapsing” under the weight of deficits, but Morneau retorted with the Conservative record of debts and low growth, while they have turned the growth rate around. Candice Bergen took over to ask again in English, railing that the Liberals were irresponsible, to which Morneau repeated his pabulum points in English about low unemployment and high growth. Bergen tried one last time, and Morneau noted the reduction in small business taxes and the lowest level of debt-to-GDP in the G7. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he worried about the pressure to cut corporate taxes to follow the US example. Morneau said that it was necessary to strike a balance to ensure tax fairness and competitiveness, and that was the approach they were taking. Caron worried about corporate “dead money,” and Morneau reiterated his points about striking the right balance. Peter Julian worried about record levels of personal debt and demanded that they end “corporate giveaways,” to which Morneau assured him that they were investing in Canadians by means like the Canada Child Benefit. Julian demanded investments in pharmacare, to which Ginette Petitpas Taylor recited the implementation on the consultations that would produce a report in the spring.

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Roundup: An odious historical comparison

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While crude prices in Western Canada continue to take a beating (in part because there is a global supply glut in the market and there are questions about why oil prices got as high as they did recently given market conditions), there are other concerns about investors fleeing the country. Not all, mind you – there are still a number of big-ticket energy projects being signed in the country which defies this narrative that’s going on, but I have to pause on some of the overheated rhetoric being bandied about here, because we need to inject some perspective into the conversation.

For one, the lack of infrastructure to tidewater is because there simply wasn’t an economic case for it until recently. It’s hard to complain that we don’t have it when there was no proper rationale for its existence. Same with refineries – it’s a low-margin exercise and refineries cost billions of dollars to build, and the economic case for building more of them has largely not been there. It’s not just because we have tough environmental regulations in Canada that these projects don’t exist – there weren’t the market conditions.

The other thing that really sets off my alarm bells is this pervasive talking point among oil industry boosters that Canada once built railways, so we should therefore be able to build pipelines. This kind of talk should be utterly galling to anyone who has a modicum of understanding of history in this country, because the railways were built by virtual slave labour from China, following the relocation of Indigenous tribes across the prairies due to starvation and inadequate government aid (while there is some debate over how deliberately starvation was used to force compliance). This is not the kind of thing you want to be touting when it comes to building pipelines, particularly if those opposing construction are other Indigenous communities. And as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, it’s not the high bar of environmental regulations that are killing projects – it’s the fact that successive governments and proponents have tried cutting corners to weasel out of their obligations, and that’s what hurts them, not the minimal additional work it would have taken to properly fulfil those obligations. I get that they’re looking for scapegoats during these trying times for the energy sector, and that nobody wants to look in the mirror, but honestly, trying to compare the railways to this current situation is borderline offensive to anyone who has a modicum of historical knowledge.

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Roundup: An oil conundrum

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There’s an interesting conundrum happening in Alberta, where the premier and industry leaders are talking about production cuts owing to the supply glut and lack of refining capacity in the US being responsible for near-record lows for Canadian exports. The problem of course is whether the premier should use powers that haven’t been exercised since the days of Peter Lougheed, or if oil companies should voluntarily reduce their own production – and if they do, does this constitute price-fixing? There isn’t any easy solution to any of this, and it’s not just build more pipelines – they would only need to be pipelines to tidewater in order to find markets not hampered by the current refining shutdowns in the US, and that are prepared to take heavy oil and diluted bitumen. It’s also a bit on the unfair side to say that it’s simply “regulatory and political” challenges – as we’ve seen from successive court decisions is that attempts to take shortcuts and to weasel out of obligations is what’s causing delays and to have permits revoked. In other words, part of the problem is self-inflicted, and they try to hand-wave around it by crying “national interest” as though that makes it better.

Here’s a lengthy but good explanatory thread from Josh Wingrove, and it’s well worth paying attention to, because there’s a lot of demagoguery floating around about the issue, and it pays to be informed about why prices are low, and why it’s not something you can wave a magic wand to fix.

https://twitter.com/josh_wingrove/status/1062817943812218894

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Roundup: Parting shots after the furore

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As the furore around the transfer of Tori Stafford’s killer dies down now that she has been moved back to another medium-security facility (but not “behind bars” as there aren’t any in women’s institutions in this country), the Conservatives and Conservatives are trying to get parting shots in. While the Conservatives have been demanding apologies from the Liberals because they’re still sore that they were called ambulance chasers, the Liberals’ parting shot was delivered on Friday as Karen McCrimmon, the parliamentary secretary for public safety, let it be known on Power & Politics that other child killers were transferred to healing lodges under the Conservatives. Hold up, said P&P, and while McCrimmon couldn’t give any names, the show went and checked. And lo, since 2011, twenty people convicted of killing a minor have been moved to healing lodges, 14 of them under the Conservatives. Now, we don’t know any of the details of these transfers, and how along they were in their sentences, or anything like that, because the families of the victims didn’t come forward like Stafford’s father did. But it certainly blows the Conservative narrative that this is somehow a Trudeau/Liberal “soft on crime” policy out of the water.

So, a couple of observations: The Conservatives keep insisting that they weren’t the ones who politicised the issue, and yet they are simultaneously patting themselves on the back for “forcing” the government to act, when the government ordered a review within a couple of days of this transfer going public. That sounds an awful lot like politicising it. Their talking heads have also been going onto the talk shows to insist that the Liberals were the ones who started the “name calling” and “insults” first, when it was only after a day of sustained questions that got increasingly graphic and overwrought that Trudeau accused them of ambulance-chasing politics. In other words, they are trying to play victim. There is also a certain amount of utter shamelessness when they insist that things that happened under their watch (the aforementioned killer being transferred from maximum to medium security, or now these other child-killer transfers) are somehow different because we’re talking about the here and now. I get that this is politics, but at some point, one has to wonder why there is a lack of shame around any of what goes on.

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Roundup: A StatsCan privacy check

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While the ongoing issue of Statistics Canada looking for financial transaction data continues, the actual privacy practices in the institution aren’t being adequately explained to Canadians – and they certainly aren’t being represented accurately by the opposition. So with that in mind, here’s professor Jennifer Robson to explain just what she has to go through in order to access data for her research at StatsCan, in order to give you a better sense about how seriously they take this kind of thing.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1059641954021990400

This is why the complaints that the data won’t be secure as it’s being anonymized is pretty specious, and the pearl-clutching that StatsCan would have a person’s SIN is also overblown considering that they already have it – they matched up people’s tax returns with their census forms to ensure that they had accurate data regarding household incomes, and lo, nobody made a peep about that when it happened. Again, this overblown rhetoric around what is being planned about this financial transaction data is not only risible, but it’s actively mendacious (particularly when Conservative MPs keep saying things like this is a project by the Liberal Party or by Justin Trudeau himself). And yes, StatsCan has done a woeful job as to explaining what it needs these data for, and this government is largely too inept to communicate any of that information either. And yet here we are.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out that while the Conservatives have been spending years attacking StatsCan, the real privacy threat comes from the unregulated use of personal information by political parties, not the country’s statistical agency.

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Roundup: Di Iorio’s bizarre tales

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The tale of absent MP Nicola Di Iorio got even more bizarre yesterday as he started talking to the media, but remained secretive about what he’s been up to since he stopped showing up to Parliament. Di Iorio claims that when he announced his intention to resign in April, there was an outpouring of support from the riding that had him reconsider. Fair enough. He then disputed the reporting that an issue had arisen because he wanted to hand-pick his successor rather than run an open nomination…and then basically confirmed it by saying he wants a hand in picking the successor in the riding and not wanting it to be an open nomination, casting aspersions on the nomination process and claiming the nomination is the election (because it’s a pretty safe seat). So, points for that own-goal.

But wait – it gets even more bizarre. Di Iorio claims that he is on a special assignment from the prime minister that has work that keeps him busy in the riding – too busy to be in Ottawa. And he won’t say what that work is, other than it has something to do with “road safety.” And to add to that, PMO confirmed that he “agreed to continue his work to ensure a smooth transition in his riding and to work on specific files that are in line with his work experience and expertise,” and that he’s expected to announce his decision regarding his future in the coming days. I’m…unconvinced by this. In my ten years covering the Hill, I have never seen any MP disappear for months on a “special assignment” that is so demanding that they can’t show up in Ottawa. I’ve seen plenty of sick leaves, and one or two stress leaves, but never a “special assignment” that has them ignoring their actual duties in Ottawa, where they should be. And why the PMO is being vague about this as well is all the more odd, and smacks of trying to save some kind of face for the situation that Di Iorio has caused. I’m not convinced that any of this is legitimate, so we’ll see what he has to say in the “coming days.”

Meanwhile, here’s Katie Simpson talking about her interview with Di Iorio yesterday.

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Roundup: On MPs’ sanctimony

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My patience for self-aggrandising bullshit is at an all-time low, so you can image just how hard my eyes rolled when I heard that Justin Trudeau was telling a school group that was touring Parliament that his side is “serious and respectful” and the other guys like to shout, and how it was because when a there isn’t a lot that they can go after the government on, they make noise instead. Trudeau’s capacity for sanctimony is practically legendary, but this was gilding the lily more than a little. Now, I will grant you that since he’s been in charge, the Liberals have been far better behaved in QP than they used to be, and the clapping ban has lowered the level of din in the chamber by a great deal (though said ban is not always honoured). And yes, the Conservatives do yell and heckle a lot, but some of it is deserved when you have ministers or parliamentary secretaries who read non sequitur talking points rather than doing something that resembles answering a question. (They also yell and heckle to be childish and disruptive as well, but it bears pointing out that it’s not entirely undeserved). It’s also cheap theatre, and there is a time and a place for that in politics, and if we didn’t have it during QP, then I daresay that there might be an outbreak of narcolepsy on the Hill. But as with anything, it should be done judiciously and cleverly, and that’s not something that these guys are any good at, and so we return to the sounds of jeering, hooting baboons no more days than not, but that’s no excuse for sanctimony. There are no saints in that chamber.

With that in mind, my tolerance for the whinging and crying foul over the removal of Leona Alleslev as chair of the NATO Parliamentary Association is also mighty thin, for the sheer fact that when she crossed the floor, she wouldn’t be able to chair a parliamentary association. The way these things work is that a government MP chairs, and an opposition MP vice-chairs, and lo, the Conservatives already had a vice-chair on said association. Her removal was not retaliation, but it is a consequence. Now, there are definite questions that can be asked about the timing of said removal – two weeks before a NATO meeting that she has worked toward, and weeks after she crossed the floor (but I don’t know how often this association meets, so this may have been the first opportunity) – but that is far different from the caterwauling from the Conservatives about how the “supposedly feminist” prime minister was being mean to a woman and a veteran. (As an aside, could we please stop with this policing of the PM’s feminism? 99 percent of attacks attached to said policing have nothing to do with feminism). This attempt to claim the moral high ground is exasperating.

To add to all of this, the meeting where the removal happened was met with a bunch of disruptive, juvenile behaviour by Conservative MPs and staffers that included butchered singing, and *gasp!* drinking! Oh noes! Nobody behaved admirably in this situation, and nobody has any high ground to claim, so maybe we should all behave like adults around this.

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