Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Fiscally sustainable, in spite of the narratives

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-fifty-six of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and they have started shelling the Kyiv area once again for the first time in weeks. Russians are also pounding the northern Chernihiv region, which observers are linking to the Day of Statehood celebrations—something that president Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year to remind the country of their history as an independent state, and was celebrated for the first time earlier this week. Meanwhile, Ukrainian counter-attacks in the south have virtually cut-off the Russian forces in Kherson and have left their forces near the Dnipro River “highly vulnerable,” as Russians shift forces from the east to the south, putting them from an attack posture to a defensive one.

Closer to home, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has declared that Canada’s fiscal outlook is sustainable in the long term, even if some of the provinces’ outlooks are not. This amidst weeks and months of wailing and gnashing of teeth that the current government has spent us into oblivion (they haven’t) and that they have saddled future generations with so much debt (again, they haven’t, and that’s not how government debt works), and that this is fuelling inflation (it’s not). Anyway, here is economist Kevin Milligan to walk us through the report:

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1552671459797090306

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1552672685326491649

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1552674017588510727

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1552693987399667713

Programming Note: I am taking the next week-ish off while I have the chance. Loonie Politics columns will continue in the interim, but otherwise expect to see me back in the second week of August. Thanks everyone!

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Roundup: A choice to keep injuring interpreters

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-fifty-five of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has captured the country’s second-largest power plant, as they are redeploying their forces to three southern regions in advance of an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the area. Ukrainian forces have used American-supplied rockets to take out a strategic bridge being used by Russians to supply their forces occupying the Kherson region, which Ukraine has stated they intend to re-take. It’s these weapons that have allowed Ukrainian forces to turn the corner on their counter-offensive, and they have pointed out that the sooner they can get more of them, the sooner they will be able to end this war. Meanwhile, ship owners are assessing whether the risk is worth it to travel through mined sea corridors to ship grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports (and it could take weeks or months to clear the mines from these ports).

Closer to home, translators in Parliament are continuing to sound the alarm about the plan to hire unaccredited and off-site interpreters to do parliamentary work, no matter that this could impair the quality of the translations. This is very important, because it’s Parliament. To make this worse, the Government House Leader, Mark Holland, is downplaying the effect that hybrid sittings have had in injuring the existing interpreters, claiming that this is because they were already facing shortfalls before COVID because of the “expanded work” of Parliament. The problem with this statement is that they simply made the situation worse with hybrid sittings and the fact that it injures the interpreters, and they keep making excuses to keep them going. This is not helping with the shortfall in interpreters, it’s actively making it worse, and they don’t care. And while the Conservatives are opposing this move, they have not helped their case by insisting on resisting COVID measures including masking. And while I had a Liberal staffer chirping at me on Twitter about this, the fact is that MPs have been aware of the problems for over two years now, and have chosen to do nothing about it. They chose to keep hybrid sittings going, knowing full well that it injures the interpreters and can lead to permanent hearing loss. Their refusal to take measures is a choice, and a deeply unethical one. There is no defending it.

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Roundup: The freezing salary dog-and-pony show

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-fifty-four of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has targeted Odessa and Mykolaiv with air strikes, damaging private buildings and port infrastructure, because of course they were very serious about that deal to let grain shipments resume through those ports. Shelling also continues in the Donetsk region, as well as Kharkiv.

Closer to home, the Nova Scotia legislature was recalled yesterday to pass “emergency legislation” to freeze salaries, and cut the premier’s salary, as part of a dog and pony show about showing that they’re serious in the face of a cost-of-living crisis, and I cannot even. I absolutely hate this kind of politics, because the inherent message is that public life isn’t valuable, that the work elected officials do is worthless, and that they don’t deserve compensation for something that becomes a twenty-four/seven job, particularly at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to attract people to public life. It’s the kind of thinking that winds up ensuring that only people who are independently wealthy start seeking office, because they’re the only ones for whom it isn’t a loss for them to take the positions and give up their career paths (and in some cases pensions, as some provinces have disbanded theirs) to do so. This kind of attitude needs to be called out more, rather than fed into for populist reasons, and this goes for all parties.

I will also note that the premier, Tim Houston, is also trying to make the hybrid sitting option permanent for “things such as health reasons,” which again is a big no for me. While the province doesn’t have the issue of simultaneous translation that Ottawa does, it is nevertheless a bad idea because it normalizes the idea that elected office is some kind of middle-management position that can be done from home when it’s not. It’s a face-to-face job, and these things always start out with making it exceptional, for “health reasons” and such, but that quickly turns into parental leave, then work-life-balance, and then “I have so much work in my constituency I just couldn’t possibly,” and ends with populists taking it as a badge of honour to stay away from the “bubble” at the legislature or Parliament. It also creates an unrealistic and unsustainable expectation of presenteeism, rather than just letting MPs or MLAs have sick days and be done with it. It’s not a good thing, and people need to stop pretending that hybrid sittings are at all appropriate in a legislative context, because they are not.

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Roundup: Harper gives his predictable endorsement

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It’s day one-hundred-and-fifty-three of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s foreign minister openly admits that they want to topple president Volodymyr Zelenskyy because they consider his government “unacceptable” or some such nonsense. Russian forces continue to shell Ukrainan cities in the east and south of the country, as well as in the Kharkiv region. This while a lot of people who initially fled from the Donetsk region have returned home after either feeling alienated further west in Ukraine as Russian speakers, or because they ran out of money, only to be killed by Russian shelling once they’re back. Meanwhile, the push to prosecute Russian war crimes continues in Kyiv even while the fighting rages on, while Slovakia is considering giving Ukraine their fleet of Soviet-era MiG warplanes.

Closer to home, Stephen Harper came out with his endorsement of Pierre Poilievre yesterday, and no, this is not a sign that he’s worried about Charest. Quite the opposite—it’s a sign of his absolute enmity for Charest. Harper has bad blood with Charest, dating back to when Charest was Quebec premier. He had sold Harper on the fantastical notion that Quebec was suffering from some kind of “fiscal imbalance” with Ottawa, which was all bullshit, but it made a good talking point for Charest, and lo, Harper decided to be different from Jean Chrétien and buy peace with Quebec, so he gave Charest the money he was demanding to fix said fictional “fiscal imbalance.” And lo, Charest immediately turned around and turned that payment into a tax cut in the province, and Harper was furious. I mean, it shouldn’t be a surprise, and it’s exhibit eleventy-six for instances of provinces taking federal dollars and not doing what they’re supposed to with it (which is why Justin Trudeau is so insistent upon strings being attached to future healthcare transfers), but Harper has nursed a grudge ever since. His endorsement of Poilievre is just more of him nursing said grudge—he’s not actually worried about Charest winning.

And while we’re here, no, Harper is not still pulling all of the strings in the party. He’s a micro-manager. If he were, they wouldn’t be in as much disarray as they are now. Also, the IDU is not some kind of fascist plot—it’s a gods damned social club that Harper is the convener of. Yes, it’s comprised of small-c conservative parties (including Angela Merkel and her party), and yes, Harper has made some very, very questionable statements from it, but it’s a social club. It has no power, and it’s not pulling any strings. He’s not a Bond villain. He was a mediocre prime minister who now spends his time swanning around the globe pretending he used to be important. That’s it. Stop giving him any more credit than that.

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Roundup: Inviting premiers to shift the blame

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-forty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and while Russian forces pound cities like Kramatorsk in the east, and targeted Odesa in the south, they are planning to begin annexing Ukrainian territory with installing proxy officials, false referenda, replacing the local currency and forcing people to apply for Russian citizenship. We know this because they did it in 2014 when they annexed Crimea, and they have a familiar MO.

Closer to home, there was a report out from Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer yesterday that showed how Doug Ford and his merry band of incompetent murderclowns have been under-spending in a number of significant areas like healthcare, education, social supports that include things like autism therapy. Now, put this underspending into the same context of Ford crying poor and insisting that the federal government pony up more cash for healthcare, but he’s not even spending his own current budget allocation, he hasn’t reversed his cuts to nurses’ salaries, and he didn’t do enough when it comes to testing or tracing when it comes to the pandemic. The same report shows he only spent 58 percent of the pandemic funds the federal government sent over, putting the rest directly onto his bottom line to reduce the province’s deficit. And you wonder why the federal government wants strings attached to future funding, to ensure that it actually gets spent on the things it’s supposed to be spent on, and not being used to pad bottom lines.

On a related note, reporters were asking Justin Trudeau yesterday about the strain that emergency rooms are under, and when Trudeau noted the money they’ve sent to the provinces and that those dollars need to come with results, those same reporters frame this as “punting it” back to the provinces.

No.

It’s not punting—it’s the provinces’ gods damned jobs. And while this was justified as Trudeau campaigning on hiring more doctors and nurses, no—the campaign promise was to send $3.2 billion to the provinces to hire doctors and nurses, and it’s not rocket science to understand that this is the kind of thing he’s trying to attach strings to before he sends those cheques to the provinces, so that he knows that they’re going to actually spend it to hire doctors and nurses (and one presumes actually pay them properly) and that it won’t wind up padding their bottom lines like we just watched Doug Ford do. And I’m not trying to insinuate that the reporters are playing gotcha or that they’re being partisan, because they’re not—they’re trying to do their jobs, but they’re doing it with a grave misunderstanding about how jurisdiction works, and this nonsense belief that nobody cares about it. The problem is that they have to care, because that’s how we hold people to account for the work they’re supposed to be doing, which the premiers aren’t. Because media keeps giving them this out and trying to pin things on Trudeau “because nobody cares about jurisdiction,” and the only lever he has is to try and attach strings to funding and nothing else—the federal government cannot hire doctors and nurses because they have no authority to do so—it gives the provinces an out so that they can shift blame when it’s their gods damned responsibility. We need the media to understand this and hold the right people to account for their failures, and right now, that’s the gods damned premiers.

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Roundup: Premiers playing the deflection game

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-forty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have been intensifying their shelling of cities in Ukraine, and not just in the Donetsk region (and here is a look at what life is like in that region currently). Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired the head of the country’s security services and the prosecutor general, citing Russian collaborators within their departments.

Closer to home, there was some more discussion/whinging over the weekend about last week’s Council of the Federation meeting, and how it was mostly a gripe-fest directed at Ottawa. CBC’s Janyce McGregor wrote an excellent piece summarising the event and the arguments on both sides, but made a very salient observation in that the premiers were conspicuously silent on agenda items that were solely in their own wheelhouse, over things like harmonising regulations, or regulatory bodies, or interprovincial trade barriers. All of those require zero input from the federal government, and yet the premiers were silent on any progress made on these (intractable) issues in favour of simply a chorus of blame Ottawa. And it’s a very good point, because it points to the absolute deflection of the performance art that John Horgan and the others were engaged in. They’re not doing their own jobs. It was their lack of action during the pandemic that cratered the healthcare systems that they starved beforehand (particularly when they were getting higher federal transfers that they then spent on other things). Now they’re trying to deflect from their culpability by trying to rope in Ottawa, who has been sending them a lot of money, which many of those premiers have either not spent and just applied to their bottom line to pad their surpluses, or if they did spend it, didn’t track it so we know how it was actually spent. That’s on them. Trying to blame Ottawa is their way of avoiding culpability, and the media shouldn’t be simply acting as stenographers for them along the way.

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Roundup: The premiers think we’re all stupid

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It is now day one-hundred-and-forty of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces are claiming to have hit a Russian ammunition depot near the captured city of Nova Kakhovka in the south. At the same time, Russians continue their attacks on the cities of Sloviansk and Toetsk in the Donetsk province, killing at least nine civilians. Here is a look at efforts to train Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in combat first aid. Over in Russia, the government is poised to enact legislation that can force companies to supply the military, including making employees work overtime, as the country tries to replenish its supplies after depleting them in the invasion thus far.

Closer to home, the Council of the Federation meeting ended, and lo, the premiers were unanimous in demanding that the federal government come to the table with them to, well, accept their demands to give them more money with no strings attached. Only they had both a wounded tone, which quickly switched to sanctimony when they were challenged, particularly about the pandemic spending that couldn’t be tracked. Some premiers, Tim Houston most especially, seem to think that we all have amnesia about 2004 to 2014, when the bulk of those six percent health transfer escalators were spent on other things. Saying that they all want improved outcomes is one thing, but the federal government isn’t stupid—they are well aware that provinces would be just fine with status quo that the federal government paid more for, and that they spent less on. That’s why they want conditions—so that provinces don’t pull this kind of thing once again. Premiers were also pretending that they had no idea what kinds of outcomes the federal government is looking to achieve, because most of the is in last year’s election platform. It’s not hard to find. And frankly, federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos is right when he says that these outcomes should be agreed to at the ministerial level before the first ministers sit down to talk dollars, because you want to have a plan in place before you attach dollars to it, rather than the opposite, which John Horgan seems to think is how government should function. (You can find my thread as I was live-tweeting the closing press conference here).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1546912224148688897

On a related note, The Canadian Press devoted several hundred words of wire copy yesterday to the fact that the promised $2 billion to clear up surgical backlogs hasn’t flowed yet…because the budget only received royal assent a couple of weeks ago. And that premiers are complaining they haven’t received the money yet. I mean, premiers know how a budget cycle works. This is not a news story—it’s not even a real process story. It’s complaining for the sake of complaining. The only piece of interest in the story was that the government tabled a bill about the spending commitment, then abandoned it in order to wrap the spending in their budget bill a couple of weeks later. This isn’t the first time they’ve done so, and it’s a really annoying habit that they have, but again, not actually a news story.

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Roundup: Brown’s whistleblower goes public

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We’re now in day one-hundred-and-thirty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Russia might be taking an “operational pause” to regroup before they return to hammering Donetsk province…though there was still some shelling in the region. The Ukrainian flag is once again flying on Snake Island, which is a strategic access point to ports like Odessa. For his part, Putin says that he’s just getting started, and is daring the West to meet him on the battlefield, so that’s going well.

Closer to home, the Patrick Brown saga continues, as the woman who was in his camp and reported the alleged financial misdeeds to the party came forward and said she blew the whistle, and detailed the allegation that a company was paying for her work on the campaign and that Brown knew about it (which he and his camp have denied). As this goes to the Commissioner of Elections, the Liberals, keen to make some mischief, sent in their own complaint to the Commissioner, asking him to investigate the Conservative Party as a whole in the event that they benefitted financially from any memberships the Brown camp sold that may have been done improperly. So that’s going well.

The party is also contending with how they will count votes for Brown that are received, given that they’re not reprinting ballots, and don’t want to just not count his votes in any way in case that alters the maths of the preferential ballot in some way, so…they’re consulting. And we’ll see what that says. Meanwhile, members of the Conservative committee vetting leadership candidates apparently warned the organizing committee not to approve Patrick Brown’s bid, but were overruled, so that’s also interesting.

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Roundup: Brown tries to defend himself

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It’s day one-hundred-and-thirty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Ukrainian forces have held off any Russian advances in the north of Donetsk province, as Russians shell the city of Sloviansk and other nearby populated areas. Russians are also trying to seize control of the highway linking the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Meanwhile, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is warning against trying to punish Russia for the invasion, with thinly-veiled threats about nuclear conflict, so that’s some nightmare fuel for you.

Closer to home, the day was largely consumed with Patrick Brown trying to refute the allegations against him, insisting that he wasn’t given any details he could substantively repudiate to the party brass, and that this was all the work of Poilievre loyalists on the leadership committee who were afraid that he wanted to take the party in a different direction with the help of members signed up from ethno-cultural communities (with some unspoken allegations of racism there). But beyond this, he was also contending with allegations from mismanagement from his own city council, and the memories of questionable conduct when he was Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader around certain loans (and this is without even bringing up the even older sexual assault allegations that ended said leadership). Brown, incidentally, dismissed those city council allegations as well, citing that they are from the faction of council that opposes him, and that everything has already been cleared up.

For the party’s part, they didn’t do themselves any favours by rushing the meeting and then putting out the disqualification release close to midnight, and it really just gave ammunition to Brown to claim that this was all a conspiracy of Poilievre-loyalists against him, and the fact that it was a reputed 11-6 decision also gave him fodder to work with. But the party president was doing media rounds as well, and insisted that the allegations didn’t come from the Poilievre camp, but from inside Brown’s own tent—the call is coming from inside the house. And while the party president also said there was no route to appeal, Brown has hired a very good law firm to try and overturn this decision, so we’ll see where this goes. Nevertheless, if he remains disqualified, this could have the effect of unmotivating the members Brown signed up, and giving Poilievre a better chance of taking the race on the first ballot, which he would need, otherwise the ranked ballot starts doing unexpected things (and no, they aren’t reprinting the ballots, so Brown will still be on it, but his votes not counted and the down ballot support redistributed).

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Roundup: Patrick Brown disqualified?

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We are on day one-hundred-and-thirty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the governor of Donetsk province is urging some 350,000 residents to evacuate in order to both save lives and make it easier for the Ukrainian army to repel Russian advances. This being said, the Russians have been using up so many personnel and equipment on this advance that they may be forced to stall later in the summer, though they still have abundant resources that the Ukrainians don’t have at this point. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukrainians struggling in towns and villages outside of Kyiv, as their homes have been bombed out and they don’t know when they might get new ones.

Closer to home, the Conservative Party’s Leadership Election Organising Committee has taken the decision to disqualify Patrick Brown on the basis of “serious allegations of wrongdoing,” and that they are planning on turning the file over to the Commissioner of Elections. Brown’s campaign responded a short time later saying this is all based on anonymous allegations they haven’t been able to respond to, and that their lawyers are now involved. So, it’s going well. Nevertheless, it’s one more reminder of just how bastardised this whole process is because our parties keep trying to ape American presidential primaries, while filling their coffers and databases rather than worrying about things like accountability, or parliamentary leadership. These races are a mockery of our system, and we really, really need to return to a system of caucus selection of leadership, so that MPs are empowered, leaders are held to account, and that the party isn’t just a hollow vehicle for a personality cult.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1544519706127831041

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1544531763254411265

Oh, and while we’re at it, one of Peter MacKay’s staff from the last leadership contest is now suing Erin O’Toole for alleging he was behind a hacking theft, so there really is no end to the drama here.

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