Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: A fresh obvious lie

Posted on by

As the messages start to sharpen as the election gets ever closer, boy howdy did Andrew Scheer decided to go all in on lying to Canadians. From a campaign stop in Fredericton, Scheer claimed that a Liberal-NDP coalition would hike the GST to seven percent, and then put out a press release claiming all kinds of other tax increases and cuts to social transfers to pay for their platform – a ridiculous figure he reached by adding the two total costs together, never mind that a) it doesn’t work like that, and b) IT WAS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL LIE. And sure, reporters called out that it was a lie, but Scheer shrugged and said it wasn’t misinformation because he didn’t trust Justin Trudeau. Erm, it doesn’t work like that. Meanwhile, the premier of New Brunswick was also at the rally, grousing that Quebec is the “favoured child” of Confederation because he wants an imaginary pipeline to flow to his province despite there being no actual economic case for it, and the inconvenient fact that his province gets far more equalization per capita than Quebec does. (Good luck with Scheer keeping most of his Quebec seats with rhetoric like this, by the way). Scheer’s tour later stopped in Beauce, where he chugged milk to troll Maxime Bernier, and Drummondville.

Justin Trudeau started his day in Whitby, where he had to refute Scheer’s latest lie, and then mumbled some stuff about maybe expanding abortion services in New Brunswick. He then made stops in Orillia, Barrie, and Vaughan. He’ll head to Calgary later tonight, so that could be interesting.

Jagmeet Singh held rallies on Vancouver Island – hoping to keep the Greens from gaining ground there – and started playing coy again about how he’d be in a hung parliament, and hand waved about the Trans Mountain Pipeline as a possible condition for support.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Voting and dreaming big

Posted on by

Despite it being the Thanksgiving weekend, most of the campaigns were in full swing. Andrew Scheer took the day off, but Justin Trudeau was undaunted by the security issue of the previous evening, and went to York to pack Thanksgiving hampers along with the coach of the Toronto Raptors and got his endorsement. During the media availability, Trudeau insisted that the security scare would not change the way he campaigns – even though the whole bulletproof vest was unprecedented in Canadian politics. Trudeau then went to Newmarket where the crowds were so thick they closed the streets, and ended the day in Richmond Hill.

Jagmeet Singh was in Surrey, BC, where he held a rally and told the crowd that strategic voting prevents people from dreaming big. (Counterpoint: Dreaming big is all well and good but implementation matters). Singh also said he’d be willing to enter into a coalition with the Liberals in order to stop the Conservatives, which seems premature at this point in the game.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Pre-negotiation and a better debate

Posted on by

In advance of the debate, Justin Trudeau held a photo-op with one of his sons in a pumpkin patch in nearby Manotick, while Jagmeet Singh was at a bistro near Parliament Hill to outline his party’s priorities were they in need of negotiating in a hung parliament, and conveniently, they were all planks of his party platform. Of those six enumerated, four were wholly or in part provincial jurisdiction, one involves building an entirely new tax system, and the final would drive out competition in the mobile phone sector, and then they also decided that electoral reform should be in there as well. (Look for my column on this coming later today). So there’s that. Andrew Scheer had no events, but his party did say that their full platform will be released today, now that the debates are over.

And then the final French debate, which was a far cry better than the hot, hot mess that was the English debate. Possibly learning from the experience, the format changed up considerably, so that there were better questions, more direct engagement, and far less cross-talk (though that did start to creep in during the second hour, when Scheer was trying to go after Yves-François Blanchet). Scheer and May were noticeably weaker in French, while Scheer and Singh in particular kept up their focus on getting their canned one-liners delivered, even if it was tortured to get them in. Nevertheless, while we once again didn’t learn too many new things, it was a far and above better performance for all involved than the English disaster. (Here’s Paul Wells’ take on the night).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Hand-waving through a plan doomed to fail

Posted on by

It’s the final debate day of the election, so expect a couple of brief photo-ops, then a quiet day as the leaders do their final prep. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer went to the Roxham Road irregular border crossing in Quebec to pledge that he would end said border crossings – and then hand-waved through just how he planned to do so, given that the Safe Third Country Agreement is a treaty with the Americans and we can’t do anything without negotiating with them, and they are not exactly big on taking in asylum claimants right now and would be happy to see them wind up in Canada. And their “other options,” such as trying to declare the entire border an “official point of entry” for the purposes of the agreement won’t work, and will simply drive more asylum seekers to more remote crossing points where there are fewer controls, and more likelihood of death or injury. In other words, he was misleading about his plans to address the issue, and more than that, he invoked the spectre of MS-13 (which is an American border issue, not a Canadian one), gave the false notion that these crossings somehow let migrants “jump the queue” unfairly (there is no queue for refugees, and they don’t impact those we are bringing in from refugee camps), made the ludicrous promise to move more citizenship judges to the border to process claims faster (proximity has nothing to do with it, and trying to speed up claims has failed in the past because we still need to have procedural fairness and adherence to Charter rights). Immigration and refugee experts have thus proclaimed that Scheer’s pledge today is doomed to failure. On a related note, Scheer keeps saying his full platform will be out in “plenty of time” for people to make an informed decision, but advance polls have already opened on university campuses, and for everyone else tomorrow, so that’s not exactly time for people to start making informed decisions – and leaving Scheer open to the criticism that he plans to replicate the Doug Ford tactic of not releasing a platform and preferring to coast in on anger instead. And while we’re on the subject of Scheer’s dishonesty, he claimed that Elections Canada gave the okay for his campaign director, Hamish Marshall’s ad company to also be producing election ads for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – but Elections Canada said that’s not true. So chalk that up to yet another lie on the tally.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1181961842291281923

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1181961052390600707

Justin Trudeau was in Markham, promising that the first thing he would do if re-elected would be to cut taxes for the middle class, which was essentially just a reannouncement of their basic personal amount cut. When answering questions, he offered some clarity to the situation around the spat between the Canadian Forces and provincial healthcare systems, which stems from the Canadian Forces being billed for higher rates than they would be normally for those services.

Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile, was in Montreal to address CUPE convention, with promise to fight privatization, in the hopes of winning back the labour vote.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Hypothetical subways and more traffic

Posted on by

It was a quieter day, post-debate, but the leaders were all back on the road, mindful that there is still another debate later in the week. Andrew Scheer in Markham to promise funds for two Toronto subway projects – while lying about the Liberal record on said funding (the funds haven’t been released because there isn’t an actual plan for those lines yet) – and to further promise that he would fund any infrastructure project designed to ease congestion. Erm, except that this is a promise to induce demand because all of the data show that if you build more traffic infrastructure, that traffic just grows to fill it. It doesn’t actually relieve congestion – it just contributes to making it worse.

Jagmeet Singh was in Toronto to talk student loans, and when pressed about Bill 21 by the media, he said that if it made it to the Supreme Court of Canada that the federal government would “have to” take a look at it then – which isn’t really true, and they could put arguments forward at any court case along the way. This makes Singh’s position to basically punt the problem down the road for a few years, for apparently little electoral gain.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, went to Iqaluit in Nunavut, where he spoke about the North being on the “front lines” of climate change, and to meet with elders in that community. It also lets Trudeau make the claim that he’s the only leader to have visited the North during the campaign, for a few hours in any case.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Get away from that hot, hot mess of a debate

Posted on by

The morning wasn’t quite as uneventful as one might have hoped – Justin Trudeau want to a school in Ottawa to talk about provincial cuts and how teachers feared federal ones, while Andrew Scheer announced that the Conservatives would make national museum admission free (which doesn’t really help with affordability, especially as most of these museums are in Ottawa), and that the RCMP Heritage site in Regina would be turned into another national museum. That said, he also took swipes about “political correctness” supposedly “erasing history,” which is false when there is a move to expand the historical record to include effaced minorities like Indigenous people. A few hours later, the Liberals held a press conference to point out that the Conservatives were planning a stunt during the debate to point to a website that would again recirculate the lie about a supposed “capital gains tax” on selling houses, which I will reiterate, is a lie. There is no such plan. That didn’t stop the Conservatives from sounding all-hands-on-deck over social media to circulate this lie over the remainder of the afternoon, and they even had a doctored version of the original recovered Liberal discussion document on their site to eliminate context (which they later had to remove to put the original up once they were called out on it).

And then came the Leaders Debate (not “Leaders’”), at a time slot too early for anyone west of Ontario to really get to watch it (likely so that the private networks didn’t have to unduly inconvenience their American programming). It was a gong show, where in order to accommodate six leaders, all of the exchanges were too short and the questions inconsistent, so most of the time the leaders focused on getting their canned lines out, to hell with the substance of it. And they all said misleading things. Maxime Bernier sucked up too much oxygen for someone who shouldn’t have been on the stage at all but was simply there to act as a spoiler. The whole way this was done, trying to please everyone, pleased absolutely no one, and we are all the poorer for it.

 

Continue reading →

Roundup: Confidence and throwing money at problems

Posted on by

While Justin Trudeau took the day off of campaigning, Andrew Scheer attended the grand opening of a Buddhist temple in Bethany, Ontario, before doing meet-and-greets in Peterborough and Newcastle. There, Scheer said that he was confident in the party’s vetting process, despite having to dump a candidate earlier in the week (given that her homophobic posts go well before the election period).

Jagmeet Singh visited Grassy Narrows, where the local chief is running for the NDP, and pledged more money for drinking water in First Nations communities (although it’s rarely an issue of not enough money, but other capacity challenges, which the current government is addressing – partially why it is taking as long as it is to get movement on some of these challenges, on top of the fact that they took responsibility for a number of drinking water outlets that used to be private and are addressing them as well).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Judicial review and missing nuance

Posted on by

There was a development regarding a First Nations court challenge, which I’ll discuss in a moment, but first up, the campaign news. Jagmeet Singh was in Saskatoon to essentially re-announce his plans to “immediately” implement dental care – again, omitting that it’s provincial jurisdiction and he has no way of forcing provinces to do the heavy lifting – before he headed to Thunder Bay.

Justin Trudeau didn’t announce anything but met with voters at a restaurant in Quebec City, followed by a media availability where he assured everyone that his views have evolved from when, in 2011, he said he was personally against abortion but was pro-choice. He says he’s now totally pro-choice because his previous stance didn’t really make any sense – something he probably felt he needed to make clear when it was remarked that his position and Scheer’s were very similar in personally opposing abortion. Later on, he was at a tree planting with a candidate in Saint-Anaclet, Quebec, where he addressed the lawsuit issue (and again, more on that in a moment).

Andrew Scheer was in Etobicoke, where he re-announced the party’s platform as regards gun control and gangs – and much like his foreign aid announcement, this one was also based on a series of lies about bail and sentencing. More to the point, Scheer pledged more mandatory minimum sentences – which the courts keep striking down – and pledging to fight for them in court tooth and nail, so he wants to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to fight for unconstitutional laws for the sake of symbolism, apparently. But this was overshowed by yet more questions about his dual-citizenship, including his need to file US taxes, and being registered for “selective service,” meaning the draft.

But back to the court challenge, which was news that the government had applied to the Federal Court for judicial review of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision that would award compensation to every First Nations child who had been apprehended by child and family services. Immediately there was a hue and cry, and plenty of outrage (some of it performative), and a lot of hot takes from journalists who failed to understand the nuances in legal stories. And while I’m not a lawyer, I have been on the law beat for several years now, and I can say that oftentimes, these kinds of appeals are made on technical grounds because in the law, precise wording matters, particularly when one is concerned about the precedents it sets. Both Seamus O’Regan and Trudeau did address this in the media saying that they agree that the government failed these children and that they are owed compensation, but they need time to determine how to do it right, but they can’t do that during a writ period (which is appropriate, given the Caretaker convention, especially as this is worth billions of dollars). Ah, but these clever reporters said, the documents say that they are opposed to the compensation award. Now, I haven’t had a chance to read the application because it’s not online, but the CBC describes it thusly:

The application says Canada acknowledges the finding of systematic discrimination and does not oppose the general principle of compensating First Nations individuals affected by a discriminatory funding model — but it argues awarding compensation to individuals in this claim is inconsistent with the nature of the complaint, the evidence, past jurisprudence and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Now, there are clues in here as to what the government is arguing, primarily that the Tribunal exceeded its authority to make this kind of compensation order based on the kind of human rights complaint that was brought before it, including exceeding their statutory authority. So that’s not a small thing if that’s the case. And it’s a hell of a lot of nuance in the story that deserves to be explained. Any government is going to be concerned if a Tribunal exceeds its authority to make these kinds of orders, because that will impact future cases with future governments – no matter that they feel this case is deserving of compensation. But this very important detail has been completely glossed over in the search for outrage takes, which means that the reporting is doing a disservice to all parties involved.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Concern trolling and dual citizenship

Posted on by

It was a quieter day on the campaign, and Justin Trudeau remained in Montreal to just hold a media availability rather than make any new announcements, and he reiterated the point from the debate on Wednesday that if his government would look to improve the medical assistance in dying legislation per the Quebec court decision. He also again defended using two campaign planes by pointing to the use of carbon offsets (never mind that this is a clear case of concern trolling by those who don’t actually care about climate change).

Andrew Scheer was in Kingsclear, New Brunswick, to promise an expansion of the volunteer firefighters tax credit (or “volunteer heroes,” as their press release stated because it was apparently written by a nine-year-old). He also finally stopped dancing around the abortion question to state – again – that he is personally “pro-life” but wouldn’t re-open the debate. Shortly thereafter, the story broke that Scheer holds dual-citizenship with the US, and within an hour stated that he had already started the process of revocation, but it remains exceedingly curious given that Scheer personally questioned Michëlle Jean’s dual-citizenship before she became Governor General, and the Conservative attacks on Stéphane Dion and Thomas Mulcair about their own dual-citizenships. Scheer also stated that he had never been asked about it which was why he never talked about it, which is unconvincing at best.

Jagmeet Singh headed to Toronto to hold another media availability to reiterate his same platform proposals.

And just to put another giant bomb in the election, a potential strike by school support workers could shutter schools in major school districts in Ontario by Monday, which could send the Ford government scrambling, and further cause blowback against Scheer as the lines between federal and provincial governments continue to blur.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Trying to draw in the Supreme Court

Posted on by

If this election could get any stupider, it did yesterday. Justin Trudeau started the day off in Sudbury, and after arriving by canoe, he promised not only to further expand the areas of land and waters that are protected areas as part of ongoing roll-out of green policies in advance of today’s “climate strike” rally, Trudeau also promised an expansion of the “learn to camp” programme, including bursaries of up to $2000 for low-income families. As someone who hates camping, this is borderline offensive – but it’s also one of the whitest of white people policies in the book. (Seriously – ask a person of colour how they feel about camping). I get that the idea is that it promotes connecting people with nature and the importance of conservation, but this was probably one of the dumbest campaign promises to date.

Andrew Scheer was not much better. From Trudeau’s riding of Papineau in Montréal, Scheer tapped into the Trumpian “Lock Her Up!” mentality by promising not only a judicial inquiry into the Double-Hyphen Affair, but also to pass a cartoonishly named No More Cover-Ups Act, which would empower the RCMP to go directly to the Supreme Court of Canada for access to Cabinet documents – all of it predicated on the lie that the RCMP are investigating the PMO (they’re not) and that they can’t get access to documents (because the Clerk of the Privy Council said no to a fishing expedition). It’s all very gross and unseemly. Not only do we not demand that the police investigate our political rivals (this isn’t a banana republic, and if the Liberals lose, then they will have faced political consequences for the Affair), but politicising judicial inquiries is a Very Bad Thing. Dragging the Supreme Court into one’s political vendettas is even worse (and I have a column on that very topic coming out later today about that very issue).

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was in Campbell River, BC to reiterate his promise to build half a million housing units, but to also flesh out his promise for income supports of up to $5000 per year for low-income renters. But again, this is provincial jurisdiction so the rental income supports will have to be a carefully designed policy, while he has yet to explain how he’ll rapidly build all of this social housing when the cities where it’s most needed are very tight labour markets, which means there likely aren’t enough construction workers to do the job, and that will drive up the costs of building these units by a lot. (Singh also completely mischaracterised the output-based system on carbon pricing as part of his trying to downplay the current government’s record, because he’s doing politics differently).

Continue reading →