Tag Archives: Foreign Policy

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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Roundup: Not recognizing one of our most important events

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Yesterday was Statute of Westminster Day, but you wouldn’t actually know it given how little attention it receives. My Apple calendar does mark the occasion, but how many people understand its significance? And they should, because it was probably the most significant development in our country’s constitutional history—arguably more significant than confederation itself, or of patriation in 1982. Why? Because the Statute of Westminster in 1931 was the creation of the Crown of Canada, as a separate and distinct entity from the Crown of the United Kingdom.

https://twitter.com/Canadian_Crown/status/1601987723476275202

This matters because it gave us control of our own foreign policy, and domestically, it centred the Governor General as taking advice only from the Canadian prime minister, no longer reporting to the UK’s foreign office like they used to do. There are fewer developments that are more important in how we have been able to operate independently as a sovereign country with our own sovereign at the head. So how did the various political parties mark the occasion, particularly in a year where the Crown of Canada has been in focus because of the transition to the new King?

Only the Conservatives put out a statement, and it didn’t even mention the Crown of Canada. So, that’s where we are. One of our most important constitutional developments as a country, left by the wayside. It’s a sad indictment of our history and civics knowledge that this happens year after year.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 292:

Odessa is mostly in the dark after Russian attacks, and it could take a month to restore their power grid. As the battle in the eastern part of the country grinds on, the city of Bakhmut is essentially destroyed. And a month after being liberated, Kherson is still in the process of clearing the booby-traps Russian forces laid for civilians in the area.

https://twitter.com/strategywoman/status/1602012251543982080

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Roundup: Botching the Asia-Pacific Strategy Rollout

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The federal government launched their long-awaited Indo-Pacific Strategy yesterday, which was, well, a choice. They launched it on a Sunday morning at the same time as Canada was playing in a World Cup match, and didn’t provide journalists with a technical briefing beforehand as the usually do (the technical briefing will be today, which is after the ministers have all made themselves available to the media), so they were basically flying blind about trying to figure out what’s in it as the media availability was happening. This should not have happened, and I suspect this was the old trick of trying to make announcements on a Sunday in order to try and set the agenda and tone for the week (the Conservatives used to be big fans of this, but the Liberals rarely did).

https://twitter.com/ChrisGNardi/status/1596943087930335233

What we know about it so far is that it’s two years after it was initially promised to be delivered, there’s a lot of back-patting about how this is a major foreign policy shift, and that they are going to re-engage through the region with some added spending, slightly more military engagement in the region (eventually), and maybe some intelligence operations in the area as well. I’m sure we’ll learn more later today, but yeah, the government made a lot of choices today in their communications strategy, and what do we say about this government’s communications strategies? That they can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and well, they proved that once again yesterday. Slow clap, guys.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1596925774044405760

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1596927851130851329

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 278:

There is a renewed evacuation of Kherson now that it has been liberated (though they are fleeing to Ukrainian-held regions and not Russian-held areas) as Russia has stepped up its attacks on the liberated city, while they deal with a loss of critical infrastructure. Power and water have been restored in Kyiv, but the mood is sombre as blackouts still continue because of the damage to infrastructure as winter is setting in.

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