Tag Archives: Fisheries

Roundup: More doses, and a witch hunt

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It looks like we’re going to end the week on yet more talk about COVID vaccines, because that’s all we can talk about anymore. The news yesterday was that Canada has upped its orders for the Moderna vaccine (which we are near the front of the line for), which is also significant because these ones, while also a two-dose vaccine, don’t need the same ultra-cold chain that the Pfizer one does, so that will make distribution much easier. As well, the federal government offered some further refinement of the priority advice, to say that residents and staff of long-term care facilities should get the first doses, as well as Canadians over the age of 80, followed by healthcare and personal support workers in contact with patients, followed by Indigenous communities (who are especially susceptible to the virus given the living conditions in many of those communities).

On a similar vein, here is a further exploration of the delays to the National Research Council’s planned vaccine production facility, including the fact that even when this is completed, it’s not built to manufacture mRNA vaccines so again, it won’t help with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines – but perhaps it can with the AstraZeneca vaccine if it gets approval.

Meanwhile, the Commons ethics committee hauled former MP Frank Baylis before them to answer questions about his company being subcontracted to help build ventilators, and lo, he had perfectly reasonable explanations for all of the things the opposition parties deemed suspicious, and the actual contractor for the ventilators is a Conservative donor, and didn’t even know that Baylis was a former MP when he contacted the company because they had the kind of clean room he needed to assemble the ventilators. But this whole affair has been a ridiculous witch hunt from the start, full of lies and disinformation because they could make the facts line up in a way that looked damning even though they aren’t. But this is the game we’re playing, where truth is the first casualty to cheap point-scoring.

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Roundup: Setting up the failure narrative

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The Conservatives spent Sunday trying to pre-position the narratives for today’s fiscal update by setting it up to fail, saying it needs a testing and vaccine roll-out plan to be effective – which are both areas of provincial jurisdiction and he knows it. The provinces have been given millions of rapid tests, and it’s up to them to roll them out (which most haven’t been, preferring to sit on them and wait instead) – and no, rapid at-home testing is still pretty much a figment of the imagination because the technology to make them like a pregnancy test still doesn’t exist. Likewise, we are still at a point where there are too many unknown variables with vaccines to make any definitive plans, which again, O’Toole knows but is pretending otherwise. O’Toole also tried to make the case that the government put “all their eggs” in the CanSino vaccine candidate basket, which was never able to leave China for testing, but absolutely nothing bears that out, given the massive investments in other local vaccine candidates, and ensuring that Canada would be positioned for access for other vaccine candidates that we couldn’t produce domestically.

To that end, the chairman of Moderna says that Canada is actually near the front of the line with their vaccine – which doesn’t require the same cold-storage chain that the Pfizer drug does – because we pre-ordered early. Of course, they can only produce so many vaccines so fast, so of course early doses are going to be lower than everyone would like, but they’re getting there (once they get approval). But then comes along Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who demands that the federal government get more doses faster – somehow. Apparently, they can wave a magic wand, or send bribes, or something. In reality, this is just Moe’s rather transparent attempt at making the federal government’s efforts look insufficient, so that it can distract from his own poor attempt to control the spread of the virus in his own province (and expect to see more of this from other premiers, particularly conservative ones).

In other pandemic news, the Alberta government has started listed co-morbidities with their death counts, as a rhetorical way of trying to lessen the actual impact of COVID deaths, trying instead to show that the people died of other complications and not COVID itself – which is bullshit, and a way for Jason Kenney to absolve himself of responsibility for his lack of action. And make no mistake, this is classic Kenney behaviour – and there is no small amount of irony that the man who keeps preaching “personal responsibility” in this pandemic is the one who refuses to take any measure of responsibility for his decisions.

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QP: A moral panic competing with hysteria

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While the prime minister was in the building, he was not at QP today, though his deputy was, fortunately. Michael Chong led off, and he worried that Canada voted against Israel at the UN General Assembly earlier in the day, insisting this was contrary to policy. Chrystia Freeland said that Canada stands with Israel, and with Jewish Canadians in the face of rising anti-Semitism. Chong tried again, and Freeland spoke of the worrying rise of authoritarianism in the world, which Canada is standing up against. Richard Martel would took off and listed a number of judicial appointments in New Brunswick which have a connection to Dominic LeBlanc, to which Freeland read a statement about their recent appointment process. Martel raised another appointment who is connected to the justice minister — which media reports show that he was cleared for — and Freeland assured him that the process put into place was transparent and sound. Martel raised another name, who he claimed was denied an appointment because she was married to a Conservatives candidate. Freeland disagreed with the question and reiterated that the process is open and has increased diversity on the bench. Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he demanded support for the Bloc’s bill on requiring knowledge of French for citizenship in Quebec, to which Freeland said that they agree that the state of French in Quebec and Montreal is fragile and that they all need to work together to preserve it. Mario Beaulieu asked the same again, and Freeland reiterated her response, and added an example that they fought for cultural exemptions under the New NAFTA. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he lamented that it took so long for climate accountability legislation, to which Freeland praised their bill’s commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Singh switched to English to repeat the question, to which Freeland asked in return whether they would support the bill.

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Roundup: A question of political accountability

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An issue that I am getting tired of writing commenting on over, and over again, is this story about the supposed political vetting of judicial candidates. The reporters on the story fail to mention the crucial constitutional details underpinning the story, Erin O’Toole lies about what the justice minister has said in response to the constant allegations, and now the president of the Canadian Bar Association is writing to the government to express his concerns that this whole thing threatens public faith in the judiciary. And here I go again.

For the eleventieth time, let me reiterate that the prime minister is politically accountable for judicial appointments under our system of Responsible Government. That means that if another bad one gets through the selection process, he has to wear it politically if things come to light – kind of like what happened around now-former Justice Robin Camp (who you may remembered wondered why a sexual assault complainant didn’t keep her knees together). This is one of the reasons why once the candidates have made it through the initial non-partisan vetting process, that they are subjected to a political screen – to ensure that nobody is aware of any particular skeletons in these potential judges’ pasts that could come around to bite them in the future. Some of the confusion here is because one of the ways in which the government has been doing this vetting has been through their voter identification database, which has been interpreted as seeing if they are donors or had lawn signs – which is a false reading of what these databases do, which is to build voter profiles, and they consume vast amounts of data to do so (which is also why there are concerns that they are not subject to federal privacy laws). But this is being deliberately framed as looking for partisan manipulation. (This is not to suggest the motives of these reporters is partisan – only that they are looking to embarrass the government, and it wouldn’t matter which party is in charge).

I am more concerned by the fact that someone is leaking to the press, and the French press especially seems to be targeted about revelations concerning a particular staffer, which suggests to me some internecine fighting within the Liberal ranks that they are willing to do damage to themselves in order to hurt this staffer in particular. But why worry about motive or the fact that you are being played when you have a potentially embarrassing headline?

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QP: Reminder that it’s a novel virus

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It was Thursday, and neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present, which generally means a less exciting day. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and poked out inconsistencies in the story around the Global Public Health Information Network, to which Patty Hajdu related early actions by the government and Dr. Theresa Tam, as well as citing that she would say more about the GPHIN soon. O’Toole tried to call out inconsistencies in early pandemic advice, to which Hajdu reminded him that it’s a novel virus that we are still learning about. O’Toole called the decision around GPHIN politically motivated, to which Hajdu said that when she was alerted to the changes, she ordered and external investigation, and she would have more to say about that soon. In French, O’Toole accused the government of losing control of the pandemic, and Hajdu listed federal actions. O’Toole then concern trolled about testing, to which Hajdu listed the rollout of new rapid tests. For the Bloc, Stéphane Bergeron trolled the prime minister about his call with the president of France, to which François-Philippe Champagne pointed out what was wrong about the premise of the question, and reminded him that Canada defends freedom of expression around the world. Bergeron asked when there was going to hold a debate on acceptable limits to freedom of expression, to which Champagne rebutted his assertions. Jagmeet Singh was up next to lead off for the NDP, and in French, he worried about the record profits of web giants, to which Steven Guilbeault reminded him at they are now treating web giants the same as traditional players in the creative market. Singh switched to English to rail about the Westons making profits in the pandemic, for which Sean Fraser said that they were supporting front-line workers, and that they raised taxes on the top one percent, which the NDP voted against. 

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Roundup: Mischief with a reasonable goal

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It may be a bit of mischief, but it’s certainly well-deserved, as the Alberta NDP are moving a motion in the legislature to have the government condemn separatism. The ostensible goal for the denunciation is because talk of separatism is bad for the economy – it drives away investment, no matter how low corporate taxes are (and you only have to look to Canadian history to see how the two referendums in Quebec saw the country’s financial capital move from Montreal to Toronto, even though Montreal was a more tax-advantageous environment). If Alberta hopes to diversify their economy, they need to ensure that they aren’t driving away investment in a similar way.

It’s also about jamming Jason Kenney to an extent, because while he has stated in the past that he’s not a separatist, he’s also winked and nodded to them in a fairly constant fashion, and used his own rhetoric to fuel their arguments, up to and including his ridiculous “Fair Deal Panel.” But with the rise of separatist parties, both federally and provincially in the prairie provinces, there are concerns about them gaining political traction – particularly as the so-called “Buffalo Party” gained a fair number of votes in last week’s Saskatchewan election, and it may have some people in Alberta worried. Granted, the Conservatives in the province should likely be more worried because they’re likely to peel voters away from the Conservatives, which may allow the NDP to come up the middle provincially, but there should also be no doubt that letting these separatists get any kind of political traction – even a handful of seats – would be sending the wrong signals to markets. Having Kenney denounce them in a way that they can’t spin as winking or nodded to them may be a way to take some of the wind out of their sails – but it could also expose divisions in Kenney’s own caucus (which is partly where the mischief comes in). Nevertheless, even if the movement is headed by a bunch of swivel-eyed loons who have no chance of success, they can cause a lot of damage along the way, and should be taken down at every chance.

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QP: A minister for divination?

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Justin Trudeau was in town and on another “virtual” tour while his deputy was in the Commons in his stead. Erin O’Toole led off with his script on a mini-lectern, and he tried to tease out a contradiction in the status of the pandemic early warning system, to which Chrystia Freeland slowly and calmly stated that it was the time to focus on the second wave, but post-mortems should come later as one should not change the plane’s engine after taking off. O’Toole was not mollified, and tried again, but Freeland was not dissuaded in her calm dismissal. O’Toole tried to delve into news reporting about Freeland disagreeing on closing borders earlier in the pandemic, and Freeland calmly walked through the history of the Canada-US border closure. O’Toole switched to French to decry the terrorist attack in France earlier this morning and accused the prime minister of not taking it seriously, to which Freeland corrected him and said that all Canadians are horrified by the attack and they show solidarity with France. O’Toole wondered what happened to the promised de-radicalisation centres, to which Freeland calmly stated that they never failed to step up and show leadership, and that Canada stands with France. Stéphane Bergeron led for the Bloc, even though Yves-François Blanchet was present, and he demanded an official apology for the October Crisis, to which Freeland reminded him of the period in question and of the family of the Quebec politician who was killed by extremists. Andréanne Larouche tried again, and Freeland gave a paean to democracy and the space for disagreements. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he decried the situation in long-term care facilities but wondered where the national standards were, and Freeland slowly explained that they need to work with provinces and territories as the second wave has hit. Singh switched to English to decry that the worst problems were in for-profit homes, and made an allusion to the falsehood that the federal government owns some of these facilities. Freeland agreed that they can’t turn a blind eye to the conditions in long-term care facilities, and that the country needs to do better.

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QP: Demanding an answer on provincial measures

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With the prime minister in town but not in the Chamber, his deputy was, which tends to be better in any case. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he decried that the government announced the appointment of a special representative for the fisheries dispute in Nova Scotia. Chrystia Freeland assured him that they want a peaceful, constructive solution, and that everyone wants to assure the rights of First Nations people as well as conservation, O’Toole then pivoted to boil water advisories on First Nations and Neskatanga in particular, to which Freeland noted that they are working hard to solve the advisories, but there was shared responsibility as the Conservatives didn’t solve the issues either – but she didn’t offer anything in the way of candour about the particularities of the situation. O’Toole then decided to thump his chest on China and their dubious numbers early in the pandemic, to which Freeland reminded him not to lecture her on authoritarian regimes because she lived in one and reported on them extensively, and she listed concerns Canada has with China’s actions and human rights abuses. O’Toole went again in French, got the same answer, and for his final question, he went on a paean about democracy and transparency versus Chinese dictatorship, and in a very slow and calm tone, Freeland cautioned O’Toole that they draw very careful lines about what is permissible in democracies, and that he is engaging in the most base partisanship. Alain Therrien got up for the Bloc to decry businesses suffering in “red zones” in Quebec, to which Freeland assured him a bill was coming in days. Therrien stated this was too little too late, to which Freeland listed measures they have provided to businesses so far. Jagmeet Singh was up next by video, and in French, decried the Neskatanga situation, and insisted that Trudeau had no intention of keeping his promise on boil-water advisories. Freeland disagreed, and stated they we working to address it and had made progress. Singh switched to English to repeat the question, and got much the same answer. 

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Roundup: Self-harm by way of platitude

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I try not to make a habit of re-litigating my Twitter disputes in this space, but in this particular case, I find it’s a perfect illustration of how this government’s inability to communicate its way out of a wet paper bag, and why that harms them. To wit: A Global News piece declares that Trudeau won’t commit to ending boil-water advisories on First Nations by 2021 as is the current promise. It uses the recent evacuation at Neskatanga First Nation as an illustration of problems with boil-water advisories. It quotes Trudeau giving a bland talking point about “more work to do,” and way down at the bottom of the story is reference to the fact that in Neskatanga, not only has money been approved and delivered, but the new water treatment facility is nearly completed construction.

So why is this a problem for the government? Because if they had the slightest bit of candour, they could have explained that capital projects like these take time, particularly in the kinds of remote and fly-in communities like these particular First Nations. Twitter is filled with people who are seriously asking why the government hasn’t solved these issues if they’re showering money around, without having the slightest clue about what he actual problems with these boil water advisories are, and accustomed to situations where they can simply throw money at a problem and it will go away. That’s not the case, and not understanding the logistical and capacity issues at play means that we get this ongoing confusion. For example, many of these reserves are only accessible to bring equipment up with ice roads for a couple of months of the year, which slows the ability to make timely solutions. (This is also an issue with housing on many reserves – small windows by which to bring in building supplies, and those windows are getting ever shorter because of climate change). This has been made even worse in the pandemic, because many communities won’t let the people who are building these new facilities into the community in an attempt to keep COVID out (which Trudeau made vague reference to, but folded it into his platitude so it gets lost). In some communities, it’s not a question of the equipment but of maintenance – as soon as they find and train someone local to do the work, they get headhunted and given a better offer, and the community has to start over again, as the equipment once again breaks down. And it would be great if Trudeau or one of his ministers could actually articulate these challenges, but they won’t. Instead, they fall back on their platitudes about “doing better,” and not giving people a clue about what the actual challenges are.

The government also assumes that these reporters will do the work to find out what the challenges are, but they won’t. Pressed for time, and under the constant pressure to produce, most of them will only both-sides the quotes and move on (as happened in this particular case). Most don’t understand the background or the actual challenges, so it doesn’t get reported – only the platitudes in face of the complaints. Actual candour from Trudeau and the Cabinet would fix this – easily! But they won’t do it. It’s maddening, and they’re just shooting themselves in the foot, over, and over, and over again.

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Roundup: Confidence maintained, control wrested

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the government survived the confidence vote – it was very much an example of Wells’ First Rule – and the NDP and Greens voted to keep parliament going. Of course, the narrative that both the Conservatives and NDP adopted was that the Liberals were pushing for an election – the Conservatives (and Bloc) claiming it was because the Liberals really wanted to cover something up, and the NDP self-righteously declared that they weren’t going to give Trudeau the election that he wanted, but would keep parliament going to get things done for Canadians. Of course, if Trudeau really wanted an election (which he doesn’t), he could just head next door to Rideau Hall on any given morning and ask Julie Payette to dissolve Parliament, but he won’t, because that’s not what today was about.

Part of what has irked me in this is the way in which the Conservatives’ motion was being described, which is innocuously. One writer went so far as to call it a “pedestrian motion,” which it was anything but, and I highly suspect that nobody actually read through it except for the two other procedural wonks in the Gallery. Aside from the inflammatory title of “anti-corruption,” or the proposed alternative whose four-letter abbreviation would have been SCAM (both instances that demonstrate that it’s a group of juvenile shitposters running O’Toole’s office who are treating the Order Paper as a game of who can be the most outrageous), the proposed committee’s terms of reference would have put the government at a structural disadvantage with three fewer members (generally committees in the current parliamentary composition are split, and on committees where the government chairs it, the opposition has the votes to outweigh the government), but it would have given the committee first priority for all parliamentary resources, and compelled production of all documents they wanted and witnesses to appear, no matter who. This essentially means that both ministers and the civil service would be at the committee’s beck and call, and that they would have to drop everything to attend it – which is what Pablo Rodriguez meant by the committee being meant to “paralyze” government. They could go on unlimited fishing expeditions with little to no ability to push back, and given the fact that there aren’t any smoking guns here, it would be constant wild goose chases while Parliament was unable to get anything else accomplished. More than that, it would also have enshrined that the prime minister’s extended family – meaning his mother and brother – would be considered legitimate targets, and have their financial information put into the open for no good reason. And funnily enough, not one story from yesterday mentioned these facts – not the Star, not the National Post, not CBC, nor The Canadian Press. Yet this seems like some pretty vital context for why the government would so strenuously object to this “pedestrian” motion.

There was another consideration, that former Paul Martin-era staffer Scott Reid expounded upon, which is control of the agenda. That’s a pretty important thing in a hung parliament, and under the current circumstances. Trudeau hasn’t been able to make much progress on any file (admittedly, much of this is his own fault for refusing to bring parliament back in a sensible way, followed by his decision to prorogue), but being hamstrung by that motion was going to make things moving forward near impossible. Now that he’s stared down O’Toole, I suspect he has some breathing room again.

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