Tag Archives: Foreign Policy

Roundup: Another committee demand

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The Conservatives are demanding yet more “emergency” committee hearings, but because it’s a committee they don’t control, they are getting in front of the cameras to make performative demands. Case in point, yesterday Andrew Scheer called a press conference to demand that the NDP and Bloc agree to recall the public safety committee to examine how a suspected terrorist was able to immigrate and obtain citizenship when he may have been videotaped dismembering a prisoner in 2015.

Of course, the Conservatives’ case and rationale is largely hyperbolic, and their blaming the current government for crime rates is both specious and done entirely in bad faith. But then again, Scheer is a lying liar who lies constantly, so he’ll say anything to get attention, and that’s all this is really about—attention. The Conservatives need to get fresh clips for their socials, and summer committee meetings are precisely the kind of thing that they think makes them look good, so that’s why they have been trying to run committees over the summer, and claiming that the other parties want to be “on vacation” rather than doing work in their constituencies. (This becomes one of those areas where you could accuse the Conservatives of projection in that they treat constituency time as “vacation” or a “break” rather than simply doing other kinds of work in the riding).

This is just one more demand for a dog-and-pony show. I’m not sure what exactly a parliamentary committee could do here.

In case you missed them:

  • For National Magazine, I look at BCCLA’s fight to try to see secret documents to hold CSIS to account for possibly improper spying on environmental groups.
  • Also for National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on annuities the Crown owes for several Ontario First Nations for treaty breaches.
  • My weekend column conducts a thought experiment on how the Liberals could possibly hold a leadership contest under their current rules anytime soon.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the performative hairshirt parsimony on display as people lose their minds over the purchase of the diplomatic condo.
  • My column goes through some of Poilievre and company’s recent deceitful claims when it comes to drug decriminalisation and safer supply.
  • My feature story in Xtra looks at queer diplomacy in Canada, and how we’ve made great strides in the past decade, but we still have a lot more to do.
  • My weekend column on Jagmeet Singh’s continued announcements that are either economically illiterate, or entirely the domain of the provinces.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that their forces downed four Russian missiles and 15 drones overnight. Nevertheless, a missile did strike the Kharkiv region, killing one and injuring twelve. The first group of F-16 fighters are now in Ukraine, and ready to be deployed.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1820400963833958849

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1820799395371110697

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Roundup: Watering down a non-binding motion

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Much of the sitting day was consumed with a great deal of nonsense, some of it procedural, as the NDP moved a Supply Day motion that, among other things, called for the immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood. This was supposed to have been debated on the previous Friday that the House sat, before they decided to suspend because of the death of Brian Mulroney, and it got picked up today.

From the start of the debate, Mélanie Joly corrected pointed out that you don’t change foreign policy with an opposition motion (and one could argue that matters of foreign policy should perhaps be confidence measures), but behind the scenes, Liberals spent the day trying to negotiate amendments to the motion in order to find some shared language that more of them could support, because this was going to divide the Liberal caucus one way or the other (and one suspects that the NDP was fully trying to create some mischief and sow some discord, if only to try and claim a self-righteous position in the matter of Gaza). And at the very last minute, they did come up with an amendment that softened the NDP’s motion a lot, including the removal of the call for an immediate declaration of statehood, but it all went sideways at that point, as the amendment was moved before French translation had been provided, and there were howls of protest from both sides as MPs felt blindsided by them. Andrew Scheer got all huffy saying that the amendments were out of order because they essentially changed the fundamental nature of the motion, but the Deputy Speaker eventually decided that since the NDP, who moved the original motion, didn’t object, then the motion could be considered in order. There were then subsequent votes to adopt the motion, and when that passed, to vote on the amended motion as a whole, and it too passed.

In the aftermath, the NDP declared victory, and Jagmeet Singh crowed about what they “forced” the government to do. Erm, except it’s a non-binding motion and nobody is forced to do anything, and pretty much everything in the amended motion were things the government was doing already. Of course, the NDP watering down their motion in order to claim a hollow, moral victory is pretty much 100 percent in keeping with how they roll, particularly lately, while the Liberals dodged yet another bullet on this particular file where they cannot win no matter what they do.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian defences shot down 17 out of 22 Russian drones yesterday, but there was still damage to Kryvyi Rih from those that got through. Ukrainians continued to target Russian refineries, as drone warfare remains one of Ukraine’s best weapons against Russia. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are alarmed that Putin’s talk about creating a “buffer zone” inside of Ukraine means a likely escalation in the conflict.

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Roundup: The Capital Pride 2023 observations

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It was Capital Pride this weekend, and the government once again took the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for the first anniversary of their 2SLGBTQIA+ Action Plan™, and to offer some grants to local organisations from the Action Plan’s budget—so money is flowing, at least.

This having been said, it was a pretty poor turnout from federal politicians for the parade itself. The PM was absent, but he had only just returned from touring wildfire sites and evacuation centres out west, and he did just visit Edmonton’s Pride on Saturday, so I will give him that. But the Liberal contingent was smaller than usual this year, and local MP Yasir Naqvi was absent (which is unusual for him), whether that was because he was on a provincial leadership tour somewhere, or for some other reason. Marci Ien was present, having just made the announcement hours before, and new minister Jenna Sudds was present, as were Mona Fortier, Greg Fergus, Marie-France Lalonde and Francis Drouin, but while I saw photos of many of them early on in the parade, I didn’t see most of them along the route.

https://twitter.com/JennaSudds/status/1695944518036509165

This having been said, I didn’t see a single NDP MP, though I think I spotted a couple of MPPs (and I didn’t see the one whose seat the riding is in), and the Conservatives didn’t march at all, federal or provincial PC party. Make of that what you will.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian authorities are investigating a mid-air collision between two training aircraft in the western part of the country, which killed there pilots. Russians have meanwhile been targeting the central and northern regions of the country with cruise missiles overnight. They have also been shelling the north-eastern city of Kupiansk, in what may be a push to recapture the area, after it was already liberated by Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian forces have broken through one of the most difficult lines in the south and appear to have momentum in the region. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is telling American critics that Ukraine could hold wartime elections next year, but they’ll need financial assistance from the US and Europe, particularly for reaching electors abroad, and to send election observers to the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1695803020947165468

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Roundup: A Canada Day fail in Ottawa

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It’s Canada Day, and we are having festivities again this year, and included in them will be astronaut Jeremy Hansen, whom The Canadian Press has interviewed here. There will be an Indigenous ceremony ahead of the main show at noon, so the attempt to balance things carries on.

Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa continues to embarrass itself by deciding that the brand new LRT station they built near LeBreton Flats, where the festivities are being held (because there is no room on Parliament Hill with the construction), is suddenly deemed to be too small to handle the crowd, so they’re telling people to get off at the station before and walk a kilometre to the site. Absolutely ridiculous, but that’s been the story of everything with this LRT.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1674860701804814346

Programming note: I’m going to try to make this a quasi-long weekend, so no roundup post on Monday. See you Tuesday and enjoy Canada Day!

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a school in a village near the front lines in Donetsk region, killing two and injuring six, and only because students were not in school at the time. Defence officials say they continue to advance in all directions along the front lines both in the east and the south, including around the flanks of Bakhmut. Here is another look at how the Ukrainian army is trying to wear down and outsmart Russian occupiers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered the northern border to be strengthened given that Wagner Group forces are moving into Belarus, while it sounds like Russia is reducing the number of their personnel at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which increases fears that they could be attempting sabotage of the plant.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1674798244579221504

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Roundup: Toronto Pride at a necessary time

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It was Pride in Toronto over the weekend, and one that is more necessary than ever given the rising levels of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred that is being directed toward queer and trans communities, as old libellous tropes about sexual predators resurface and are being used by politicians, including those in Canada, to demonise queer and trans people. Look at some of the things Blaine Higgs has been saying in New Brunswick—this is not a “parental rights” issue, it’s one where he is making it quite clear that he doesn’t want LGBTQ+ people to take up space in public. It has also been pointed out that even though conversion therapy has been banned in Canada, the ideology that underpins it continues to be strong, and the Conservative candidate in Portage—Lisgar was advocating for it during the by-election, so these fights are not over by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the parade, Justin Trudeau was absent as he was off to Iceland for a summit, but his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, did lead the Liberal contingent. Jagmeet Singh was present, but Pierre Poilievre was not, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. (Also, Singh didn’t tweet about Toronto Pride, nor did Poilievre even acknowledge it).

Ukraine Dispatch:

In spite of the ongoing attacks against Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainians were enjoying the prospect of the attempted mutiny/coup that was taking place in Russia.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1673028522971987974

As for Russia and the Wagner mutiny/coup that wasn’t, it fizzled out as they reached the outskirts of Moscow, with rumours that Bularussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had to broker the deal to end it, and that the Wagner leader will head to Belarus now, but we’re missing a lot of independent reporting on what may have happened, so we’ll see in the days ahead.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1673116584674754561

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Roundup: Ad hoc panel assembled to review documents NSICOP should have handled

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After months and months of delay, the government has finally unveiled the ad hoc panel that will examine the Winnipeg Lab documents, and that panel will comprise of four MPs and three former judges—two former Supreme Court of Canada justices, and one from the Federal Court of Appeal. Allegedly it took so long to set up because they needed to convince the judges, and then it took forever to get the Bloc and finally the Conservatives on board.

Of course, this whole exercise is completely unnecessary because this should have all been done by NSICOP. This is exactly the kind of thing that it was created for, but the Conservatives have been bad actors about this entire affair (and Michael Chong being among the worst of said bad actors), turning this whole thing into a needlessly drawn-out affair that has involved the government suing the House of Commons over a production order, and years of absolutely unhinged conspiracy theories as to what happened (again, with Chong being among the worst offenders).

I can pretty much guarantee you that this committee is going to find nothing to write home about. There has been plenty of reporting as to what happened. It wasn’t Chinese espionage. It was almost certainly a policy breach related to intellectual property, but this being a highly secured facility, you can imagine that has complicated matters. In any case, this whole thing is going to wind up being one giant waste of everyone’s time and resources because they decided to make a dog and pony show out of it for the sake of trying to embarrass the government rather than being responsible and just letting NSICOP read the unredacted documents that were provided to them in the first place.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There have been more early-morning missiles fired at Kyiv, and falling debris has set fire to one non-residential building, while at least one person was killed in a missile strike on Odessa. While Ukrainian forces continue to make gains around Bakhmut, the Russians are still sending people into the fighting, and there doesn’t appear to be any ammunition shortage, in spite of those Wagner Group videos.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1658751950165356544

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1658800755946528774

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Roundup: The campaign leaders testify

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Yesterday was the big day when top campaign officials from the Liberals and Conservatives appeared at the Procedure and House Affairs committee to talk about foreign interference allegations in the previous two elections, and we learned a couple of things. One of which is that Fred DeLorey, the Conservative campaign director, is eminently reasonable and acknowledges they don’t know if there was any actual interference in those ridings they lost, or if it was the result of other factors, like their hard-line rhetoric on China, or gun-control measures (as the Liberal campaign insists). Another thing we learned is that the reporting on the CSIS “warnings” about MP Han Dong were not described accurately, and that they didn’t insist the party drop him as a candidate—which never did make sense if you listened to the actual intelligence experts who said at the time that that didn’t sound right.

There was also talk about how it takes an incredibly high threshold for a party to be able to drop a candidate, so if intelligence agencies had concerns, they would need to come up with something pretty tangible for the parties to exercise that kind of power (and don’t forget that their spending caps are determined by how many candidates they’re running, so if they need to drop one after the cut-off point to replace a name on the ballot, that creates even more headaches). There was also talk about how there needs to be more ongoing dialogue between national security agencies and parties, particularly between election cycles, because these agencies didn’t seem to understand how parties operated, which makes it hard for them to be making determinations about how any interference might be happening (and again, considering that the reported leaks had a bunch of details that didn’t make any sense, this could be the reason why).

Suffice to say, these were the people who should have been testifying the whole time rather than the dog and pony show we had with Katie Telford, which was just a waste of time and resources.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a museum in Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, killing one civilian and wounding ten others. As well, a woman died from shelling in nearby Dvorichna, and two others in the eastern Donetsk region. Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces staged raids on the east side of the Dnipro river in order to degrade Russian capacity, particularly in their shelling of Kherson, in a sign that the counter-offensive is near. Ukraine is planning on a “complete transformation” of six war-torn cities that were badly damaged in the invasion, to be rebuilt under an experimental programme according to “new principles.”

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1650769182286331905

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Roundup: Impressing the Scots

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The Speaker of the Scottish Parliament paid a visit to Ottawa’s Parliament earlier in the week and was apparently so impressed with our Question Period that she plans to write a report to take suggestions from it. I’m frankly a little dumbfounded, because our QP is pretty gods damned terrible in pretty much every respect, but let me first take what her observations are.

One of them is that ours operates bilingually fairly seamlessly. Well, she didn’t see the seams, in any case. In Scotland, they have translation available for those who speak Gaelic, but it’s not automatically provided like English/French is here. But she didn’t seem to see the stress that the pandemic has caused our simultaneous interpretation abilities, from the injuries to interpreters, or the strains to resources that are now severely limiting the function of our Parliament because MPs didn’t care enough about those interpreters as they abused them over Zoom, and lo, we’re staring down a crisis.

She was impressed with the “brevity” of our QP, where it operates in thirty-five second questions and answers. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, frankly, because it has largely just created a demand for talking points, both in asking and answering questions, and so much of the exercise is useless—the questions must contain key phrases (and that’s getting worse), while the answers are frequently non-sequiturs or just bland pabulum that is disconnected from what has been asked. I’m not sure what she saw that was so impressive. The fact that it happened at a rapid pace and bilingually looks impressive from afar, but spend more than a day here, and the uglier underside quickly becomes apparent. Yes, ours can be more dynamic than Westminster’s because we don’t require questions be asked in advance in order for briefings to be prepared, so the PM must be nimble when answering, but again, most of those answers are going to be vague and superficial.

It’s kind of flattering that they’re seeing the good we have to offer, but these days, our rules and system has given rise to an increasingly unserious Chamber, and that’s not something we should be exporting to anyone.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the border with Poland and Belarus, citing a need to be ready in case Belarus became another invasion route for Russia.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1648688637670830083

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Roundup: Climate policy gains

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How many times have we been told in Question Period that the Liberal haven’t met any of their climate targets, or that their carbon price hasn’t reduced any emissions, or the “it’s not an environment plan, it’s a tax plan!” bullshit? Setting aside the fact that the Liberals’ targets aren’t until 2030, and it’s Harper’s targets (that he had zero intention of actually meeting) that haven’t been met, it turns out that actually, the Liberals’ climate plans are having an effect, and it’s not just the economic slowdown and stay-at-home orders from the pandemic that are causing it. Imagine that!

Ukraine Dispatch:

During his visit to Krakow, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is prepared to take “corresponding action” if their positions around Bakhmut are about to be encircled, but they are not at that point. He also said that Poland would help form a “warplane coalition” to help get planes to Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1643702530541486081

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1643639486205575169

Programming Note: I plan to take a full four-day weekend, so regular posts should resume on Wednesday morning.

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Roundup: The leaker comes forward (sort of)

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The big Friday bombshell from the Globe and Mail in their continued series of allegations of foreign interference was an op-ed from the primary leaker, who gave a self-serving justification for doing so, insisting that they were tired of the problem of foreign interference going ignored, and that they hoped to  ignite a conversation and that they didn’t intend for things to get this ugly. Erm, seriously? You leaked to Bob Fife, and you didn’t think he would torque the absolute life out of it? That seems dangerously naïve for an intelligence official. Even more to the point, their frustration with the pace of work is not justification for violating their oaths to secrecy (and comparing themselves to Jody Wilson-Raybould seems to be particularly ill-considered). There is an attitude of “I know best,” which former senior intelligence official Artur Wilczynski called “narcissistic,” and I did take that tone from the op-ed.

One of the things I’ve really come to recognise and have been building a series of columns around is that there is a pervasive normalcy bias in our governments at all levels. It’s why provincial governments inadvertently allowed their healthcare systems to collapse. It’s why we are now in a housing crisis nation-wide. It’s why our military was allowed to degrade, and it’s why successive governments of all stripes have not taken foreign interference seriously enough. We disbelieve and downplay threats and warnings because we’ve been sheltered for a century now under the wing of the Americans, and very little bad has happened to us in comparison to most other countries. We got lazy and complacent. That’s hard to shake, but I would say we’ve made more progress in the last five years than we have since the ned of the Cold War. And unfortunately, it’s probably going to take crises to shake us from our complacency (like what is happening in healthcare). Unfortunately, the crisis that this leaker precipitated has likely made the situation worse and not better because it’s now become a partisan battleground.

Speaking of partisan battlegrounds, yesterday we had the prime minister accusing Pierre Poilievre of “ginning up a partisan circus” and trying to take a flamethrower to our institutions in order to win power (not untrue), and Poilievre saying that the intelligence community is in full revolt because of Trudeau (and hey, it turns out it’s largely one narcissistic leaker). Trudeau also defended Johnston against the “horrific” partisan attacks, though Trudeau does deserve a measure of criticism for putting Johnston in this position. Johnston, incidentally, provided a statement saying he was working to finalise the details around his role and the mandate, so it looks like he is going ahead with it, concerns notwithstanding.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces continue to resist the Russians’ attempt to encircle Bakhmut. While this is happening, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, for his war crimes but most especially for his programme of forcibly relocating Ukrainian children and working to re-educate them and place them with Russian families—a hallmark of a genocide. Meanwhile, Slovakia has now pledged their 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine after Poland got the ball rolling.

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