Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Quieter protests, a few arrests made

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It’s day one-hundred-and-thirty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia is claiming victory in the Luhansk region after pounding Lysychansk to the point where Ukrainian troops finally withdrew. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces will be back with more modern weapons and will reclaim the territory. It looks like Slovyansk in the Donbas Region will be Russia’s next target, while Ukrainians fighting in the region describe it in apocalyptic terms. Meanwhile, Russia has attacked two cities in the western part of Ukraine, as well as near the port city of Odessa, but Ukrainian forces are also reclaiming territory as well, in some cases using the very tanks that they captured from the Russians. Ukraine’s prime minister is spending his time drawing up a $750 billion “Marshall Plan” to help the country recover, once they force out the invaders.

https://twitter.com/Rob_Oliphant/status/1543983733488992256

https://twitter.com/Rob_Oliphant/status/1544047876187234305

Canada Day wound up being fairly uneventful, as the protests on the Hill didn’t amount to much, though there was a heavy police presence and they weren’t playing around this time. 121 vehicles were towed, and there were a few arrests made, though in one case, it was after someone attacked a police officer. While some voices are saying that this time around there wasn’t a “perfect storm,” the fact that police did their jobs rather than being complicit was the biggest difference. For his part, prime minister Justin Trudeau was essentially trying to reclaim the flag from the protesters and the occupation earlier in the year, talking about representing our accomplishments and desire to improve, and that it stands for compassion, hope, and justice.

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Roundup: Papering over party divisions

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It’s day one-hundred-and-twenty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Severodonestk has fallen, mostly pounded into rubble the way that Mariupol was. Up next for Russian forces is across the river, to the city of Lysychansk, where they are now trying to once again encircle Ukrainian forces, while more civilians try to evacuate the area. Emboldened, Russians have also fired missiles again at Kyiv, killing at least one person. This is likely seen as a warning as NATO leaders are gathering early this week to reaffirm support for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1541103194184601601

Closer to home, all does not sound well in the Conservative caucus. Last week, in her blog post announcing she wouldn’t be running to lead the UCP, Michelle Rempel Garner noted that:

…in both parties there have also been squabbles that have erupted in the pages of national media, public meltdowns, nearly missed physical fights, coups, smear jobs, leaked recordings and confidential emails, lack of consensus on critical issues, caucus turfings, people harassed to the point where they resign roles, and hours long meetings where members have been subjected to hours of public castigation. There have been heated exchanges to get basic concerns addressed, unjustified insularity in decision making, shunnings, exclusionary cliques and more.

So of course, over the weekend, Candice Bergen was asked about this, and while she refused to say anything about it to the Star, she denied this was the case to CTV, seeming to imply that Rempel Garner is either making it up, or is “experiencing things differently.” Bergen is also talking a big game about party unity, and is going to spend Canada Day in Halifax with Peter MacKay, for some inexplicable reason, as though this makes a point about party unity. (Remember, MacKay was never really a Red Tory, given that he voted in lockstep with Stephen Harper on everything, and couldn’t vote for socially progressive issues when other former Red Tories would). Bergen is also denying that she has any safety concerns, and seems to pin blame for the level of harassment that MPs are facing onto Justin Trudeau because he made people get vaccinated, and called out far-right extremists for what they are.

Also over the weekend, former Conservative Senate den mother leader Marjorie LeBreton emerged to voice her concerns about the direction the party is heading in, particularly around their support for the occupation, which erodes their credibility as a law-and-order party. She’s so incensed about Poilievre’s support for the occupation that she resigned from her position as a member of his riding association over it, and worries that the party may be “fracturing beyond repair.” None of this is painting a promising picture of a party that Bergen is insisting nothing is wrong in, but perhaps she is not the most credible source for what his happening behind closed doors, because it’s not in her interest to tell the truth about it.

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Roundup: Home for the summer

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It is day one-hundred-and-twenty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and still no news out of Severodonetsk, but there is additional bombardment of the area including air strikes. The big news, however, was that the EU has granted the request to make Ukraine a candidate for membership—itself a years-long process that will require great reforms, most especially Ukraine cracking down on its problem of government corruption—but more than anything, this is a symbolic victory. It signals that Ukraine is moving more to the west, and away from Russia, and that further undermines Putin’s aims.

Closer to home, both the House of Commons and the Senate have risen for the summer, the latter being a problem because it was supposed to sit next week and they rammed through a bunch of legislation with little or no debate or scrutiny in order to make it happen. Below is a speech by Senator Paula Simons about one of those bills being expedited, and why that’s a problem (and you’d better believe I have an angry column about this coming out over the weekend).

Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry had an interview with the Commons’ Speaker, Anthony Rota, and frankly I wonder if we’re living in the same reality. Rota seems to think that his method of gentle chiding of MPs gets results, and that they change their behaviours when he hints that he knows who’s being disruptive (but won’t actually name and shame them). Except he doesn’t get results, and they continue to openly flout the rules, because they know that he’ll belatedly make some gentle comment that won’t actually do anything to enforce the rules that they broke, so it keeps happening again and again. But he thinks this is a good way, because things aren’t as bad as they were in the pre-2015 days before the Liberals largely stopped applauding and being as vociferous in their heckles. He’s not doing his job, plain and simple.

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QP: Responding to breaking news mid-QP

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The prime minister made his final appearance at QP for the session this morning, in person after his second bout of COVID, before he heads off to Rwanda for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting later in the week. All of the other leaders decided to show up as well, so that they could gather one last round of outrage clips before the summer. Candice Bergen led off, script in front of her, and she decried the sexual assault that Hockey Canada covered up had been known by the heritage department for four years, and accused him of being a bad feminist. Justin Trudeau lamented the situation, and insisted that the government pushed back against sexual misconduct in organisations around the country and that every needs to end the trivialisation of sexual misconduct in sport, which was why they ordered an audit of Hockey Canada. Bergen remarked that the government was either complicit or incompetent before she pivoted to hybrid sittings, and claimed that this was because Trudeau and his ministers don’t like to show up and would rather be on travel junkets. Trudeau proclaimed that hybrid sittings were vital and that Parliament was like “any other workplace,” adjusting to the ways of the future, and I nearly lost my gods damned mind. No, this is not like any other workplace. You are not middle managers in some office job. You’re elected representatives, and your job is in-person and in Ottawa, and trivializing this is incredibly poor form. Bergen tried again, demanding an end to hybrid sittings, while Trudeau went off about Conservative obstructionism. Luc Berthold took over in French and decried the lineups at passport offices, for which Trudeau read his lines about additional resources and employees work overtime. Berthold was not mollified and went off on this again, and got the same recited answer.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he too decried the lines and passport offices in slow, angry language, and Trudeau insisted that they believe the demand has peaked as they work through the delays. Blanchet wondered if Trudeau wanted to sleep in the rain for two nights to get a passport, and Trudeau insisted that they started hiring in January and that they were “accelerating solutions.”

Jagmeet Singh rose for the Bloc, worrying about the drinking water in Neskantaga, which has not had it for two decades. Trudeau paid mention to the fact that it was Indigenous Peoples Day, and that they have lifted 120 advisories when there were 109 when they took office, and for all remaining communities, there were plans and resources to complete their projects. Lori Idlout took over, and insisted that current investments in the Arctic were not sufficient for Inuit, and decried that NORAD was colonial and patriarchal. Trudeau noted his discussions with the premier of Nunavut, and his investments in the North.

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Roundup: A bill to swiftly pass?

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We’re at day one-hundred-and-fifteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Severodonestk is still contested territory, under constant Russian shelling making it impossible for civilians trapped under a chemical plant to escape. UK prime minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv for a second time, promising more arms as well as training for soldiers on a rotating basis. At the same time, the European Commission is recommending Ukraine for consideration for EU Membership. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian soldier who recorded the atrocities at Mariupol has been freed from Russian custody, while the Ukrainian Cabinet approved a resolution to bar Russian citizens from entering Ukraine without a visa.

Closer to home, the federal government tabled a new bill aimed at responding to the Supreme Court of Canada decision five weeks ago that allowed automatism as a defence in very narrow circumstances. The bill eliminates “self-induced extreme intoxication” as a defence, while leaving automatism out in those very rare cases where it would be unknowable that one might enter into this state, which points to the fact that in at least one of the cases before the Supreme Court that led to the provisions being struck down was that it was simply a bad trip that they didn’t know would happen as he had never done mushrooms before. David Lametti also indicated that he’s been in discussion with the other parties, and it sounds like this could be a bill that gets passed at all stages next week before the House of Commons rises for the summer (and likely leaving any actual scrutiny up to the Senate, if they have the appetite to do so before they also rise, way too early).

I also did note that during the press conference announcing the bill, minister Marci Ien had some fairly critical words for her former media colleagues in how the Supreme Court of Canada decision had been reported, where the headlines were that “extreme intoxication is a defence,” which isn’t what the judgment said, and the judgment very clearly differentiated between extreme intoxication and a state of automatism. Nevertheless, bad headlines led to disinformation that was making people afraid (and Ien cited her own daughter’s experiences reading social media about this decision, and she listed some of the figures that these disinformation posts got in terms of likes and shares). And I remember reading those headlines, and listening to the outraged questions in QP in the days that followed, and having to sigh and point out that no, that’s not what the Supreme Court ruled, and it would help if they actually read the gods damned decision because it was all right there. But sadly this seems to be the state of the media discourse these days, so good on Ien for calling it out, especially given the fact that she was herself a journalist.

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Roundup: The non-retracted story and the myths around it

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It’s day one-hundred-and-fourteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Severodonetsk has not fallen yet. French president Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Premier Mario Draghi all visited Kyiv together, while Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, arrived on a separate train. They were there to show European unity, in spite of the fact that there have been many criticisms levelled at them in recent weeks for being slow to deliver promised aid, or trying to appease Putin. The fact that they could see some of the atrocities in Irpin, outside of Kyiv, may have given them some perspective on the conflict as well. They did also come with a message about trying to facilitate Ukraine’s entry into the European Union, which would have a great deal of symbolic weight in the conflict.

Meanwhile, NATO defence ministers met in Brussels to discuss ways to continue bolstering their Eastern flank, which will mean more forward-deployed combat formations.

Closer to home, there has been a pervasive bit of disinformation circulating, spread by certain media outlets, that CBC had retracted some of its reporting on the occupation, and in particular about its funding. That’s false—there was on radio correction, but the stories themselves stood, and are still there. Nevertheless, this notion that there was this retraction has been the basis of part of the Conservative attacks on Marco Mendicino in the justification for the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and in particular the financial tools that were used to freeze bank accounts of participants. While the Conservatives, citing these certain outlets, claim that the allegations of “dark money” fuelling the occupation was false, there was indeed foreign money coming in, though not as much as some people assumed. Of course, the Conservatives are also lying about just who this occupation was made up of, so any of their assertions what is true or false around the entire situation are suspect because they have a vested interest in protecting the occupiers, believing they can harness them to their own ends. (Spoiler: They really won’t in the end).

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QP: For love of filibusters

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While the prime minister remains in COVID isolation, he didn’t join QP virtually today, and his deputy was in Toronto to give a big speech on the government’s affordability measures when it comes to dealing with inflation. Most of the other leaders didn’t bother to show up today either, though Candice Bergen did show up for votes after QP, for what it’s worth. Luc Berthold led off, and he declared that everything the Liberals touch “goes south,” and he complained about passports, line-ups at borders, and delays for EI cheques. Karina Gould got up and empathized with the frustration people face, and noted that in the face of high demand, the government was responding by changing processes and hiring more staff. Berthold insisted that the government’s management was “chaotic,” listing a number of alleged ministerial sins, accusing the prime minister of abandoning Canadians. Gould again recited her empathetic talking points, and repeated the answer. Berthold then called Marco Mendicino’s struggles the “Pinocchio Affair,” before demanding his resignation (and the Speaker did not cut him off for doing so, but after he finished warned against name-calling). Pablo Rodriguez took this one, stating the opposition is divided and they can’t agree on anything, and called out the Conservatives for their love of filibusters. Dan Albas took over in English to first raise the cheap outrage story about the GG’s flight, then panned Chrystia Freeland’s speech before demanding that the government adopt their plans to fight inflation. Randy Boissonnault insisted that the Conservatives only had bluster, while the government had a list of affordability measures. Albas raised the escalators in user fees tied to inflation and demanded they be halted, but Boissonnault reiterated his same response. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and raised the problems at passport offices before redeploying the talking point that the federal government should mind its own business rather than “meddling” in Quebec’s affairs. Karina Gould assured him that they had hired new staff and were hiring more. Therrien then pivoted to the Information Commissioner’s report on the record number of Access to Information complaints, and Mona Fortier assured him that they were working to increase transparency and proactive disclosures (which is pretty much famous last words from this government).

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he worried that the increase in the GST credit would be $7, which was insufficient. Boissonnault listed the measures in the budget to help people. Singh repeated his question in French, and Boissonnault repeated his same response en français.

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QP: Still on repeat, again and again

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While Justin Trudeau was isolating, he had once again pledged to appear by Zoom, and lo, he did, and all of the other leaders were present as well. Candice Bergen led off, her script in front of her, and she raised Bill Blair’s testimony at committee yesterday, insisting that this was a contradiction to what Marco Mendicino had previously said. (Not really, because apparently there is no room for nuance in politics). She insisted that Mendicino was “misleading” Canadians and demanded his removal from the portfolio. Justin Trudeau reminded her that police do not give themselves emergency powers, that the government does, and that these measures were debated and voted upon in the House of Commons after police and municipalities said they needed more tools to end the occupation and blockades. Bergen listed the supposed misinformation that led to the invocation, torquing what was actually stated at the time and in the confusion of the events. Trudeau noted that the Bergen and the Conservatives were scrambling to make people forget their support for the occupation. Bergen insisted that Mendicino must be covering for the prime minister’s problems, which makes no sense, but nevertheless Trudeau noted the job losses and factories being closed as a result of the occupation and the other blockades at borders. Bergen went off on a tangent about Trudeau supposedly firing strong women who stand up to him but keeping weak ministers (and had Chrystia Freeland been in attendance, I would have been curious to see her gestures in response), and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were trying to cover that they were in the wrong. Bergen tried to extend that tangent, bringing up other weak ministers like Harjit Sajjan, and Trudeau repeated his asserting that this was about the Conservatives deflection from being on the wrong side.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he too insisted that Mendicino had misled Parliament because police did not request the Emergencies Act, and Trudeau reminded him that police don’t request powers and that it is up to governments to make those decisions, which they did after police said they needed new tools. Blanchet reiterated that someone wasn’t telling the truth, and Trudeau repeated his response.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the Bloc, reciting dubious statistics about how inflation is hurting Canadians, and insisted that the government was refusing to give direct support to families who need it. Trudeau suggested he talk to families who had their childcare costs cut in half thanks to federal intervention, and that the indexed benefits would be rolling out in weeks. Singh repeated his question in French, demanding support for their proposal to increase the GST credit and Canada Child Benefit, and Trudeau said that he CCB was already going up in weeks because of indexing. 

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QP: Freeland in a fighting mood

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With the prime minister still away at the Summit of the Americas, his deputy was present once again, though none of the other leaders were. Luc Berthold led off, and he noted that mask mandates were being lifted as were vaccine mandates, except for federal ones, and insisted this was not following science. Chrystia Freeland thanked Canadians for their collective action during the pandemic, noting the second-lowest morality rate from COVID in the G7, and the lowest unemployment in over 50 years, and vaccines were responsible for this. Berthold railed that that she didn’t answer his question, to which Freeland pointed out that it was because of vaccines that the number of hospitalisations and deaths were lower in Canada than the US. Berthold then pivoted to gun crime and complained that the mandatory minimums bill was being “rammed through” Pariament, and Freeland insisted that they were taking concrete actions to limit guns in Canada, and it was absurd to listen to Conservative complaints about it. John Brassard took over in English to say that they agree on measures in the gun control bill around domestic violence and asked to split the bill so that those can pass quickly while they rework the rest of the bill, and Freeland cited that as a member from downtown Toronto and a mother of teenagers, she would never water down their measures. Brassard said they would be putting forward a motion in good faith to split the bill and wanted cooperation, but Freeland called out their false concern for victims of gun crime, and insisted they were not interested in helping them.

Claude DeBellefeuille lead for the Bloc, and she said that the Quebec has a binder full of amendments to the official languages bill because they are the experts in French, but Freeland was not moved to capitulate to the provincial government. DeBellefeuille insisted that the federal government needed to listen to Quebec about protecting French. Freeland agreed that it was an existential issue, that she understands as a Ukrainian-Canadian when it comes to language and culture, but the bill as it stands was “excellent.”

Alexandre Boulerice appeared by video to lead for NDP, demanding action to make life more affordable for families. Freeland agreed that this was an issue, which is why they had concrete measures in place. Jenny Kwan took over in English to make the same demand with added demands around co-op housing, and Freeland noted the government’s investments in co-op housing, before repeating her points about affordability measures. 

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Roundup: Advice versus requests

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It’s day one-hundred-and-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine has filed eight more alleged war crime cases to court, while Ukrainian troops are holding out in the ruins of Severodonetsk as Russian forces advance in the region. Further south, Russians have been targeting agricultural sites including warehouses, because it seems they are deliberately provoking an international food crisis in order to gain some kind of leverage. Here is a look at the situation in the eastern city of Bakhmut, who feel abandoned by Kyiv. The Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament has made a plea to the European Parliament to speed the process to name Ukraine a candidate for European membership, as that declaration could send a strong signal to Russia.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1534633310651047936

Closer to home, there is a great deal of discussion as to whether or not Marco Mendicino lied when he said that he acted on the advice of law enforcement in invoking the Emergencies Act, in light of the clarification of his deputy minister. I’m probably going to write something longer on this, but I will make the point that police chiefs saying they didn’t request it is fully appropriate because they should not request it—that would be outside of their bounds as it is a highly political act to invoke it, and the minister needs to wear it. But Mendicino has been hidebound to pabulum talking points and bland reassurances, which is where the confusion is creeping in, and is compounding to weaselly behaviour. In any case, this thread by Matt Gurney lays out a lot of what we know, with some interventions along the way which add further shades of grey to this whole affair.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1534528096828809217

https://twitter.com/thomasjuneau/status/1534617515158122498

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1534539298363654144

https://twitter.com/davidreevely/status/1534541264791773188

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