Tag Archives: GLBT

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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Roundup: Danielle Smith will threaten your funding

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Danielle Smith’s Alberta is a place where Smith and her ministers will phone you up and threaten your funding if you have mask or vaccine mandates, it was revealed yesterday. Smith threatened funding for the Arctic Winter Games, and has been phoning film productions to threaten them if they have mandates, because of course she is. It’s an abusive, arbitrary exercise of power that is imposing conditions on these groups or productions that don’t have these obligations in their written agreements, but it’s not like she cares about things like legalities.

It was also revealed that she isn’t moving ahead with her plan to add protection for the unvaccinated in the province’s human rights legislation, and is instead going to focus on her so-called “Sovereignty Act,” but rumour is that it’s going to be something like “Sovereignty Within a United Canada” or some other similar bullshit to make it look like it’s not a full-on separatist movement that will spook investment, not that doing arbitrary things like phoning you up and threatening your funding will make anyone feel like they want to continue doing business in the province. I’m almost surprised that her caucus isn’t revolting already considering the absolute abuse of power on display.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 279:

Ongoing Russian strikes and power disruptions as a result are making it difficult for hospitals in Ukraine to carry out their work, and at times, surgeries are being performed with headlamps and flashlights. The US is expected to announce aid that will help with the restoration of electricity around the country. Meanwhile, 30 settlements in the Kherson region have been shelled 258 times in the past week, and Russia has kept up shelling at Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province as they try to make gains there.

https://twitter.com/DavidLametti/status/1597320883441319936

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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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Roundup: A nightclub shooting and sportwashing

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There was another shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub over the weekend, this time in Colorado Springs. It comes after a marked increase of far-right groups targeting drag queens and trans people, and make no mistake that such rhetoric is very much leaking into Canada, and was present in the election through the People’s Party, and featured in some of the discourse coming out of the occupation in Ottawa back in February. It is having an impact here—I’ve spoken to out gay MPs who say they haven’t faced these kinds of threats in years, but now they’ve made a comeback, and this is going to mean a concerted effort to take this seriously in our politics. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much I trust that it’ll happen, given that our current government talks a better game than they do in following through, and the Conservatives are hoovering up the far-right tactics and propaganda as a way of trying to use the far right to win votes rather than playing to the centre, and Poilievre has insulated himself from criticism on this by putting his two out MPs in his leadership team, including making Melissa Lantsman one of his deputy leaders.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1594362156547547145

https://twitter.com/carl_s_charles/status/1594358215226990598

With this in mind, and Trudeau’s words especially, I am curious why he and his government then chose to send a delegation, led by Harjit Sajjan, to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a country that criminalises LGBTQ+ people, and which is essentially a modern slave state where hundreds of migrant workers died in order to build the facilities for these games. By choosing to send the delegation (as opposed to letting Team Canada participate), they are actively participating in the sportswashing happening. Not to say that Canada hasn’t done its share of sportswashing (thinking especially of the Vancouver winter Olympics), but this is egregious, and incredibly disappointing that they made this choice.

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