Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Listening to diasporic communities

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Because we’re still talking about the allegations of foreign interference in elections, journalists are now officially in the “badger and hector” stage of demanding the government call some kind of independent inquiry, which Trudeau refuses to do (for good enough reasons), and he’s getting a bit exasperated and even snappish in his replies to the same questions, over, and over, and over, and over again. (Oh, the memories of journalists demanding he invoke the Emergencies Act every single day at the start of the pandemic). More to the point, Trudeau did make a point of saying that it’s often diasporic communities, and the parliamentarians who come from them, that are at greatest risk of this foreign interference, and there has been a fairly tremendous silence in the media from those voices. It’s not just Chinese influence we need to be on guard for, but Hindu nationalism is also becoming a worrying force within Canada. Nevertheless, Power & Politics did get one activist on the air yesterday, and actually did some critical self-reflection and media accountability along the way, which is virtually unheard of, so please do check out that interview.

Meanwhile, Morris Rosenberg is now doing interviews about his report, and he talked about the recommendation to lower the threshold for making public these attempts at interference. Also, a reminder that we can’t assume that the leaks being fed to media are from CSIS—merely someone who has access to their reports.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1631670700338446336

Meanwhile, there is a very good point being made that while NSICOP should be the venue by which these issues are being discussed, the government has not exactly acted on their recommendations in the past, and that remains a problem.

https://twitter.com/Dennismolin11/status/1631779724841066506

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian Forces claim that they have nearly encircled Bakhmut, and are blasting bridges out to the west, but Ukrainian forces have not given up their positions just yet. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his call with American and European officials that Russia needs to face war crimes prosecutions for is actions during its invasion of Ukraine. On a related note, a village outside of Kyiv is still digging up bodies from their brief Russian occupation.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says an Indigenous Commissioner of the RCMP is an “excellent idea,” and no. It’s the same toxic structure and culture and would change nothing.
  • Mélanie Joly and her Chinese counterpart had a testy exchange at the G20 meeting in New Delhi over the allegations of Chinese interference in elections.
  • The government plans to finally—finally!—start debate on their digital privacy bill after letting it languish on the Order Paper for the past nine months.
  • An autopilot software glitch has been identified as the cause of a military helicopter crash in 2020, and a fix has not yet been implemented across the fleet.
  • The Senate Speaker and two other senators are facing criticism for meeting with the Speaker of Israel’s parliament, who is a far-right figure in that country.
  • Surprising nobody, Google’s CEO is not accepting the summons to appear at the Commons’ heritage committee, but will send his country manages instead.
  • The Northwest Territories is calling out Alberta for not notifying them of an oil sands tailings pond spill into their shared waterway.
  • That BC company is walking back some of their claims about getting a licence to produce and sell cocaine commercially.
  • Stephanie Carvin gives a primer on what we’re talking about when we talk about intelligence (and why it’s not evidence, since people have difficulty with that).
  • Jessica Davis gives an explainer on just what constitutes foreign interference, and lists three recent examples of what does and doesn’t qualify.
  • Shannon Proudfoot imagines Pierre Poilievre through the lens of the Mr. Men books, and how he went from Mr. Mouth to Mr. Nothing to See Here.
  • Chris Selley points out that as of yet, nobody has bothered to challenge Quebec’s blatantly unconstitutional law to opt out of the Oath to the King.
  • My Xtra column wonders why the government hasn’t appointed a special envoy for LGBTQ+ issues, as many of our contemporaries have.
  • My weekend column points out that we shouldn’t need a public inquiry into election interference if MPs would be grown-ups and use NSICOP like it is intended.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Barton deflates his critics

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I’m sure that in the minds of MPs, yesterday’s meeting of the Government Operations committee was going to be the high point of the calendar. Dominic Barton was coming to testify, and boy, were they going to blow open the case about how McKinsey got so many contracts with the federal government, or about what Barton knew about the Perdue Pharma scandal, and if they were really good, they could draw some kind of line between Perdue, Barton, Justin Trudeau, and the opioid crisis, and then dine out for weeks on the clips.

It really didn’t turn out that way. I mean, sure, opposition MPs were showboating for all they were worth, whether it was Stephanie Kusie being obnoxious, Garnett Genuis trying to pick fights, or Gord Johns’ unctuous sanctimony. Yves-François Blanchet personally turned up to try and get answers about what McKinsey allegedly told the government about immigration levels. But all of it was pretty much for naught.

Barton largely shut down most of their lines of attack. No, he’s not a close personal friend of the prime minister—they don’t go to dinner, he doesn’t have his personal phone number, they don’t hang out. There was no personal relationship so it didn’t win McKinsey any government contracts, and he wasn’t involved in any of those contracts regardless because he had been in Asia since 1996. He also denied knowing what McKinsey was doing with Perdue Pharma, because it wasn’t his area of responsibility, and he asked several times if they understood how a company like McKinsey operates. Really, he was asked to serve his country, and he did because he wanted to give back, is how he tells it. He also made the point that the civil service’s human resources systems are week, and need to be revamped with better training for civil servants if they want to cut down on the reliance on outside consultants, and he’s absolutely right about that (and yes, I have talked to people who study these things about that).

In all, it was just another example of how our Commons committees are largely dysfunctional and are nothing but theatre that we were unfortunate enough to be subjected to for two solid hours of bullshit. Because our Parliament is such a serious institution these days.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 344:

Russian forces shelled Bakhmut and ten towns and villages surrounding it, as they continue their advance on the strategically important city. (There are a couple of accounts of life in Bakhmut currently, here and here). As well, they destroyed an apartment building in Kramatorsk, because you know, they’re totally not targeting civilians. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s crackdown on graft continues, with a raid carried out at the Tax Office and the home of a former interior minister.

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Roundup: Ford getting huffy about his Greenbelt plans

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There was a hint of defensiveness from Ontario premier Doug Ford yesterday when he was asked about comments that the federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault made about the plans to develop parts of the Greenbelt. Guilbeault had pointed out that the plan goes against plans for dealing with climate change, and that he could look at potential federal tools to stop those projects, though later his office clarified that there are currently no projects proposed, so this was about potential legal processes to protect nature, which is fair enough, but is really getting up to the line on what he can actually do there.

Doug Ford, however, got a bit huffy and insisted that this is his jurisdiction, and then blamed the federal government’s immigration targets for needing to open up new spaces for housing development, which is bullshit because Ford has the tools to force cities to end exclusionary zoning that prevents densification, but he chooses not to use them. As well, much of the Greenbelt is on watersheds so you really don’t want to build housing there because it’ll be at high risk of flooding, and good luck getting those properties insured. It’s really not the place you want to build housing, so Ford is really not making any good case there for carving up those protected areas.

Of course, Jagmeet Singh also chimed in and demanded that the federal minister use his “tools” to stop the development, citing both the Species at Risk Act and the Impact Assessment Act as possibilities, but that’s on some pretty thin ice. To use the Species legislation, well, you need to prove there is endangered habitat there, which may not be a relevant consideration in those particular places. And the Impact Assessment Act would be going out on a very big limb to try and assert jurisdiction there because there is unlikely to be an interprovincial federal effect to hang it on (such as increased GHGs or mine runoff). Yes, the minister currently has the power to add any project in exceptional circumstances, but I’m not sure this would qualify, if those powers are around much longer, because they’re being challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada in March, and this is far less of a sure thing than the carbon pricing legislation. Once again, there are very few ways for the federal government to swoop in and assert jurisdiction, and they may not have the ability to come to the rescue of the Greenbelt (and yes, Ontarians are going to have to organise if they want to stop the development).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 339:

Renewed Russian shelling in the east and south killed ten Ukrainian civilians and wounded twenty others. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russians are focusing on Vuhledar and Bakhmut, methodically destroying towns and villages as they go. Meanwhile, here’s the tale of Canadian medic serving on the front lines near Bakhmut in Ukraine.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith and prosecutorial independence

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Because it never ends in Danielle Smith’s Alberta, we learned last night that members of her staff were indeed calling up Crown prosecutors to totally not pressure them on cases, only it wasn’t around public health order rule-breakers—it was around those arrested as part of the blockade at the Coutts border crossing. Remember that? Where they arrested Diagolon members for their plot to murder RCMP officers, where they had a hit list? Yeah, totally normal for the premier’s office to be calling them up and totally not pressuring them by asking if those prosecutions are in the public interest, over and over.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/1616209929165213696

When news broke, Smith denied that she was in contact, or that anyone in her office was…except there are emails, and her story around totally not pressuring those very same Crown prosecutors around pandemic rule-breakers kept changing, depending on which media outlet she was talking about, so her denials are pretty hard to believe, especially since she didn’t seem to understand how pardons work in Canada until earlier this week, by which point her story had changed about six or seven times (and is probably still changing).

Of course, I don’t expect that anyone is going to resign or be fired for this, because that would mean that someone would need to possess enough self-awareness, or have a shred of humility, or even be capable of feeling shame for their actions, and that’s pretty much a foreign concept in Smith and her cadre. And all of those voices who were having meltdowns about the Double-Hyphen Affair and the alleged pressure being applied to Jody Wilson-Raybould (which my reading of the situation seems to have largely come from Bill Morneau’s office) are strangely silent about what happened here, because I’m sure it’s totally different.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 331:

Ukraine is awaiting the decision of allied governments and particularly Germany about providing them with modern tanks, especially Leopard 2 tanks (which Germany controls the export licences for) as they meet at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Meanwhile, here are some testimonials from Ukrainian soldiers who are big fans of the armoured vehicles we have sent them so far, with another 200 on the way.

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Roundup: The slow pace of judicial appointments

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In what is a fairly perennial story, there are complaints that delays in the justice system are being caused, in part, by the slow pace of judicial appointments by the federal government. One should probably also point to the fact that provinces continue to under-resource their court systems, but the federal government can wear much of the blame around these vacancies, in large part because of the system that they have chosen to set up in order to make these appointments.

In order to de-politicise these appointments as much as possible, the process involves independent judicial advisory committees vetting applications from lawyers who want to become judges, and those who are highly recommended get passed onto the minister’s office for another round of vetting (which has a political element because the prime minister remains politically accountable for all judicial appointments), before the appointments are finalised.

While this sounds all well and good, the problem is twofold—that the government has a stated desire to appoint more diverse members to the bench, but at the same time, they insist on self-nominations. The problem there is that a lot of people from the diverse communities they draw from don’t feel either qualified to apply, or they simply feel like they won’t get it because of the persistent image of judges as being old white men, and that it will keep replicating itself so they don’t apply. This draws out the process while they wait for more diverse applications, and on it goes. What these committees should be doing is more outreach and going out to nominate lawyers who they feel would do well on the bench—particularly as there is an observed difference in people who are nominated for an appointment like this, and those who apply and get it. But this government refuses to do that kind of outreach work, even when it would net them better, more diverse results, and here we are, with a slower process for these appointments, and mounting complaints that the government is shuffling their feet when it comes to ensuring the benches are filled so that they can deal with the backlog in the courts.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 324:

Days after Wagner Group mercenaries claim they took the town of Soledar, Ukrainian forces continue to insist that they are holding out, and that it’s a “bloodbath,” with them having killed over 100 Russian troops so far, and that the Russians are just walking over their own bodies to keep fighting.

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Roundup: On tight camera shots in the Commons

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One of the particular sub-plots of the interminable Speaker election south of the border is the discussion around camera angles on C-SPAN, and how suddenly they’re dynamic during this process. There’s a good explainer here about how the usual rules around tight shots are relaxed because this is considered a special event and not usual proceedings, and it normally only takes two or three hours and not three or four days, but that’s why suddenly they get to be much more dynamic about what they’re seeing.

This problem of camera angles is a familiar one here in Canada, where the directive, since about day two of televised proceedings in the House of Commons, has also been on tight shots, with no wide shots or reactions. This is at the behest of MPs themselves, who came up with these rules, in part because they’re convenient for them, but if you watch the very first televised Question Period, you’ll see wide shots and reactions, and it’s much more dynamic and engaging, and it’s something we should see more of. MPs, however, don’t want that. They like being able to fill camera shots (and frequently play musical chairs to do so, most especially on Fridays), because they don’t like to show how empty the Chamber is during non-QP debates, or on Fridays. They don’t like camera operators and CPAC producers to have the latitude of choosing shots in real-time, so they don’t allow it. It’s really too bad, because it could make for better viewing. That said, it’s also one of the reasons why I attend QP in person—so that I can see the full picture of what’s happening in the Chamber and not just the tight shots that obscure more than they illuminate.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 317:

While the Russians are proposing a truce over Orthodox Christmas, the Ukrainians reject it, saying that this is simply a cover to bring in more ammunition and troops to try and halt Ukrainian advances in the Donbas region. Meanwhile, American analysts suspect that one of Putin’s allies is trying to gain access to salt and gypsum mines near Bakhmut, which is why they are trying so hard to take it over.

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Roundup: TikTok tracking journalists

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One of those nightmare data scenarios seems to have occurred, where TikTok was found to have improperly accessed the user data of three journalists in order to try and find who was leaking information to them. It’s important to remember that the app aggressively hoovers up data, even more aggressively than apps like Facebook, and it can even gather data on people who don’t even use the app itself. This is precisely why governments around the world have banned it on their devices, and why the US is considering banning it outright, particularly because its owners are in China and subject to the country’s national security laws that can make all of that personal data vulnerable. While one person quit and three were fired in the investigation that followed this incident of improper access, it’s an important reminder that a lot of these kinds of apps are not as benign as they may seem, and for people to be very careful with what permissions they grant the app when they install it.

https://twitter.com/Dennismolin11/status/1605907809945542666

Programming Note: I’m taking the rest of the year off. Loonie Politics columns will still appear in the interim, but everything else is on pause until the New Year. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you in 2023!

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 303:

Ukrainian forces shelled the occupied city of Donetsk, injuring a former Russian deputy prime minister and a pro-Moscow official. Here is a look at how Ukrainian pilots are trying to spot incoming Russian missiles and either shoot them down or alert ground-based defences. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took the opportunity to meet with his Polish counterpart on his way home from Washington DC.

https://twitter.com/AndrzejDuda/status/1605984900275994625

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1605854337397301250

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Roundup: Refusing to aid so-called “illegal refugees”

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MPs from the Liberals, NDP and even the Bloc are condemning the actions of Conservative MP Richard Martel as he refused to assist asylum seekers in his riding who face possible deportation to El Salvador, where they are threatened by gang violence. More than that, Martel called them “illegal refugees,” which is not a Thing, but is certainly drawing from American and far-right rhetoric.

What I find most interesting in this, however, are the people who think that Pierre Poilievre should intervene if he wants to show that he’s sincere about his outreach to newcomer communities, and should send the message to “treat all refugees equally.” But this ignores that Poilievre has been following the Jason Kenney “curry-in-a-hurry” method of ethnocultural outreach, which was predicated on using these communities in wedging others, whether it was going to socially conservative communities and saying things like “You hate the gays? Us too! You should vote for us!” Even more to the point, Kenney constantly turned different newcomer communities against one another, creating an artificial division between the “good” economic immigrants who “went through the queue,” versus the asylum seekers whom he termed “queue-jumpers,” never mind that there is no queue for asylum seekers or refugees, but that it is a separate process entirely (and no, refugees are not economic migrants. Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian project, and people need to get that through their heads). Getting one group of immigrants to resent asylum seekers was what Kenney was constantly trying to do.

Mind you, he wasn’t all that successful—his efforts never really netted much of a result when you looked at the election data, but the myth of his so-called success has been cemented in the imaginations of conservatives (and a not-inconsiderable portion of the media), so of course Poilievre is going to take inspiration from it. So I don’t expect he’ll take too much exception to the “illegal refugee” line, because it’s right out of the Jason Kenney playbook.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 301:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the front lines in Bakhmut and met with soldiers there. Zelenskyy is expected to head to Washington today, his first trip since the invasion began, to address Congress as it debates further aid for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine are removing signs of Russian influence form public spaces now that the Russian-speaking lobby in the country has largely evaporated.

https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1605101789677867009

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Roundup: The passing of Jim Carr

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Just before Question Period was about to start yesterday, the news broke that Liberal MP Jim Carr, who had been dealing with cancer for the past three years, had died. Proceedings were cancelled for the day, and tributes have been pouring in.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 293:

It appears that Russia has burned through so much ammunition that they are now using decade-old stockpiles with high failure rates. Ukrainian forces say they have repelled Russian advances against four settlements in eastern Donetsk, and on eight settlements in Luhansk. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met virtually with G7 leaders about the need for modern tanks, artillery, shells, and natural gas to help their situation.

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Roundup: The ideas guy versus the kludge

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The rules around the kludge that is being called dental care are released, and lo, it’s about as bad as was expected, possibly even worse, because the CRA was always the worst way possible to deliver this benefit (particularly after some of the trust-but-verify problems surrounding pandemic benefits that the Auditor General illuminated earlier in the week), and ye they bullied ahead with it because the NDP didn’t care about implementation, so they put an unrealistic timeline in their agreement with the Liberals to prop up the government, and an expectation that this should be a federally-administered programme rather than an agreement with provinces like every other federal programme (most recently with early learning and child care).

And no, this is not something that could simply be added into existing healthcare systems because that would require provincial buy-in, and every premier who was asked about this balked, some of them because they have existing programmes for low-income households, and all of them because they really, really do not want another federal programme to manage and contribute to, or be on the hook for when a new government comes to power and starts to axe it.

But remember, the NDP are the “ideas guy,” who never worries about implementation, and who takes credit for the work the other guys did, because he came up with the idea, don’t you know? This is all going to go so badly because it was rushed and had really stupid conditions imposed on it, but they can crow that they got dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 290:

It looks like Russian forces may have kidnapped two senior employees of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as part of ongoing pressure tactics to get them to sign the plant over to Russian authorities, which they have refused to do. Meanwhile, Belarus told the UN it would allow passage of Ukrainian grain through its territory to Lithuanian ports without conditions, but given that Belarus is a Russian puppet stage, we’ll see how much they actually uphold the deal.

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