Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Singh’s suck-up to Sanders

Posted on by

While the Liberals are busy with their leadership race, Jagmeet Singh spent part of his Friday doing the biggest virtue-signal of all in NDP terms—having a meeting with US senator Bernie Sanders. It’s no secret to anyone who’s paid attention that the NDP have essentially turned themselves into a branch plant of the “justice” Democrats, and that a number of their policy proposals in recent elections have been irrelevant in the Canadian context, but because they didn’t bother to actually check if this is a Canadian issue, or they merely divided by ten and decided that’s enough to make it Canadian, when it’s irrelevant to our country.

This drips with Singh's desperation for praise from Sanders (and American Democrats in general). #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T01:28:05.702Z

This comes across to me as “Notice me, Senpai!” pleading from Singh, and looking for an obliging pat on the head from the figure that his party is currently drawing their inspiration from, no matter if Sanders’ prescriptions have little relevance for Canada. Even more hilarious is the part where Singh is seeking praise for pharmacare and dental care when neither programme is fully implemented, nor are they likely to be because he’s decided to start talking tough about bringing down the Liberal government, which will merely sign the death warrant for these plans that he is trying to take credit for.

Honestly, if it’s possible to die of cringe, Singh is in serious danger of doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 33 out of 50 Russian drones overnight Thursday, with damage reported in five different regions. A Russian missile killed at least four people and damaged an educational facility in Kryvyi Rih. Russia claims it retook 63.2 of captured territory in Kursk region. A Ukrainian drone set an oil depot ablaze in Russia’s Kaluga region, south of Moscow.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Poilievre’s revisionist history on energy exports

Posted on by

Pierre Poilievre held a media availability in Vancouver yesterday to promise that he would undo the changes to the capital gains taxes, spinning some bullshit provided to him by Jack Mintz about how this kills tens of thousands of jobs, when in reality it only provides a loophole for self-incorporated wealthy individuals to pay less tax—a fact that the Liberals were too incompetent to properly communicate. But this wasn’t the biggest whopper of the event. When asked by the media about where he stands on potential export taxes on oil exports as retaliation from Trump, Poilievre claimed that the Liberals blocked pipelines and LNG terminals, forcing Canadians to export more to the US, which gives Trump more leverage. Absolutely nothing about his is true. None of it. And with receipts, here’s Andrew Leach.

There’s more. In fact, another whole thread here about the history of Northern Gateway that Poilievre has memory-holed in order to create a false version of history to blame Trudeau rather than note the lack of action under the Harper government. (First tweet below)

And then Danielle Smith tried to start chiming in about an Alberta-first “Team Canada” approach grounded entirely in fantasy.

And just because…

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 34 out of 55 Russian drones overnight Thursday, but debris damaged energy infrastructure in Poltava region. There was a further drone attack on Kyiv as UK prime minister Keir Starmer was visiting. Ukrainian forces have begun using remote-controlled ground assault vehicles. Ukraine attacked a major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Sympathy work for the far-right

Posted on by

There are times when it becomes glaringly obvious that legacy media still has no idea how to cover the far-right, whether in the US or here in Canada, and once again, we have been let down precipitously. Yesterday, the CBC published a long sympathy piece about the two main ringleaders of the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” full of lots of photos, and it just once again goes back to how this continues to normalize these narratives. (And no, I’m not going to link to the piece for the sake of giving it hate clicks).

Big feature story by CBC doing sympathy work for those Convoy fucks, normalizing the far-right. Fuuuuuuck that.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-09T12:36:10.705Z

A lot of this falls back to the constant need by legacy media to both-sides everything, providing equal time and weight to narratives and concepts that don’t deserve or require equal weight, because it’s false or misleading, and doesn’t call anything out that can’t be couched in “opponents say” rather than just declaring that something is false, misleading, or batshit crazy. And this kind of sympathy work of showing that people who do very bad things are just misunderstood or are suffering because of the consequences of their actions just goes to make what they did more acceptable. It was the same with reporter who tracked down people who attacked them on January 6th and spent time with them, and did similar sympathy work, which just muddies the waters of the unacceptability of their actions, particularly if they feel a level of justification for their actions—in the case of these convoy organizers, they’re showing the boxes of thank-you cards they got from their adherents. Again, this is not only normalizing the far-right, but it is showing it in a sympathetic light. This is dangerous for legacy media to be doing, and there seems to be absolutely no critical thinking (or ethical considering) in what they think they’re doing, and what they inevitably end up doing is contributing to the erosion of democracy.

Meanwhile, the Star has a very good look at how far-right influencers have weaponized Canada as their cautionary tale, and how that has also in turn been changing perceptions in this country about ourselves, and most especially about the current government and the state of things. (I have a column on this later today). This was far better coverage of the far-right, but is still a bit tepid in the dangers of what these narratives can represent, particularly when it starts to normalize and excuse racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia, and how that is very much playing out in several provinces right now. This stuff needs to be explicitly called out, and nobody can do it effectively.

With a quick comment from me near the bottom. Canada has always been of a weird funhouse mirror for US politics. When Americans talk about Canada, they are almost always really talking about themselves. And some Canadian far-right influencers use that for their grift.

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T01:55:07.552Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2024-12-09T14:08:01.821Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he has approved increased funding for drone production for the war effort. Zelenskyy also says that Ukraine is open to having Western troops provide security once the fighting has stopped, provided that Ukraine is accepted into the European Union and NATO.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Tariff threats still inbound

Posted on by

There were a few bits of Canada-US relations over the weekend, starting with the re-opening of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, where François Legault secured an invite, and managed to get a few minutes with Donald Trump as a result, and allegedly spoke about the border issues and tariffs. (Incidentally, all of the people who complain about Justin Trudeau’s foreign travel also complained he didn’t attend this event, because of course they did). Trump then went on Meet the Press and extolled the virtues of tariffs, claimed that the trade imbalance somehow means that America is “subsidising” Canada (what?!) and he’s still talking about annexing Canada and maybe turning it into two states (huh?!), because of course he is.

My favourite thing that happened all week was when the premier of Quebec said he wanted to ban public prayer and then flew across the ocean to attend the re-opening of a church.

— Paul Wells (@inklesspw.bsky.social) 2024-12-09T03:21:45.529Z

Meanwhile, several Conservatives including Jamil Jivani went to the IDU conference in Washington DC, and Jivani had dinner with his old friend JD Vance, as well as UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. Poilievre insists that every Conservative is telling Americans that tariffs are a bad idea…yet they are also saying that Trump is right about the border and fentanyl, so do they not make Trump’s case for him? Again, does anyone think about anything they say these days?

And senior public servants are warning Trudeau that the size of America’s debt and deficit are going to have knock-on effects to our economy because they are so closely tied, particularly when it comes to interest rates on the bond market—higher interest on US treasury bonds also drives up the rates on Canadian government bonds. Take that for what it’s worth.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainians shot down 28 out of 74 drones Sunday night, with a further 46 “lost” likely from electronic warfare. No word yet on damage or casualties. Following a meeting with President Zelenskyy at the Notre Dame re-opening, Trump called for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict, along with usual schtick about making a deal, which meant that Russia has sent along their conditions. (Why does this give me a sinking feeling?)

Continue reading →

Roundup: A cynical grift vs actual xenophobic bigotry

Posted on by

Because apparently there isn’t enough stupidity right now in Canadian politics, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani has launched a petition about “protecting Christians from bigotry” in Canada. But it’s not a Parliamentary e-petition, given that the site leads to his own domain, so really, this is just yet another data-harvesting and fundraising exercise, and it’s the absolutely most cynical grift at that. Conservatives have long-ago learned that by appealing to the victimhood complex of self-professed Christians, that crowd will open up their wallets like there’s no tomorrow. And best of all, Jivani has roped in the support of his old Yale roommate, JD Vance, to shill for this as well (because that’ll get the MAGA crowd to open up their own wallets as well). I can’t tell you just how absolutely cynical this all is, and people are absolutely going to fall for it.

Meanwhile, François Legault is talking about new legislation, possibly invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, to ban prayer in public, but this is specifically meant to be targeting Muslims, and he’s not even being coy about it, or trying to couch it in some kind of universal secularist message. He’s literally saying he wants to send a “very clear message to Islamists,” which is absolutely outrageous. It’s also a fairly transparent play to xenophobia and scapegoating as he’s tanking in the polls and thinks that this will help him get ahead. This is the actual bigotry happening in this country, not whatever bullshit Jivani is trying to grift off of.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Riv have killed at least 12 and wounded over 40. Ukrainian officials have showcased a new locally-produced “rocket drone” that they say has twice the longest range attributed to the missiles supplied by western allies, while Ukraine’s bid to develop new missiles has been hampered by global supply chain issues.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Fiscal update when?

Posted on by

This year’s Fall Economic Statement is very late—it’s extremely unusual for it to happen in December—but these are not normal times, and the ongoing privilege filibuster hasn’t helped matters any. The government’s attempts to get shame either the Bloc or the NDP into finally voting with the government to pull the plug on it have all been in vain, because they all want to do their part to embarrass the government as much as possible. This being said, I’m not sure what the holdup is with the Public Accounts either, though they have insisted that they’re with the Auditor General and will be released soon. In any case, the government has refused to explain exactly why these releases are so late, because we’re back to the tiresome “If you’re explaining, you’re losing” schtick, so as usual, this government never explains.

Pierre Poilievre decided that he would pretend to be magnanimous and “offer” the government two hours from the Conservatives’ allotted day on Monday to present the update, but Chrystia Freeland rejected it out of hand, calling the offer absurd, and saying “This proposal from the Conservatives is like an arsonist who set the fire in the first place, saying, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll come with a fire truck for a couple of hours, but tomorrow I’ll be back again with matches’.” Procedurally, I don’t see how the Conservatives could offer up time to government business on an allotted day, but also procedurally, Freeland could use the daily Statements by Ministers slot during routine proceedings to deliver the update (though that may be somewhat more awkward for the associated media lockup because those statements tend to be earlier than budget or fiscal update speeches are traditionally delivered, in part because of any data from those lock-ups moving markets (which is why they are traditionally delivered after 4 PM). They could technically also deliver it outside of the Chamber (Paul Martin once read it at committee, and the Conservatives liked to deliver it off Parliament Hill entirely), but we don’t want to encourage a return to the practice of announcing things outside of Parliament (and the UK Speaker uses very strong language about this sort of thing).

If I had to guess, I would suspect that it’ll be delivered next Wednesday or Thursday, once the Supply votes are out of the way, which makes it extremely convenient for Freeland and every other minister to spread out across the country to deliver the “good news” about the programmes in the budget, whereas Poilievre would want to use the timing of the update to claim that he “forced” the government to “come clean about the numbers,” or some such bullshit like that. None of this is great, but we’re dealing with an exhausted government and a dysfunctional parliament, so nothing is as it should be right now.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is giving soldiers who deserted or went AWOL a second chance, particularly given the shortages they’re facing on the Eastern front, and lo, some six thousand soldiers have rejoined. News leaking out of the Trump camp indicate that his plan to end the war involve major land concessions, NATO membership being off the table, and cutting military aid, unless Putin refuses, in which case they would provide more. (Land concessions are not really his goal, guys).

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Speaker imposes the last of the Supply Days

Posted on by

Yesterday began with the government’s attempt to let the opposition parties have their remaining Supply Days (aka “opposition days”) that remain in the supply cycle before the Estimates votes next week, and even though the Conservatives had indicated they were going to move a confidence motion that would force Jagmeet Singh to eat his words about the Liberals, being one giant dare. But when the Government House Leader Karina Gould moved the motion that would let this happen, that would give them a chance to move this confidence motion, the Conservatives decided against it in order to continue the privilege filibuster.

Later in the day, Speaker Greg Fergus decided to step in, given that the ability for the parties to work this out for themselves had clearly failed. To that end, he has imposed that the Supply Days will run Thursday, Monday and Tuesday for the Conservatives, with the Friday for the NDP, and that because Tuesday is the last day of the Supply Cycle, the Estimates votes will happen then. This ensures that the parties get their allotted days (the Bloc already had theirs before the privilege filibuster began), and the Conservatives will have their chances to try and embarrass the other opposition parties into voting non-confidence, the NDP won’t oblige them, and the NDP’s motion will likely be something related to abortion in their own attempt to embarrass the Conservatives, because nobody can be mature about any of this.

I will say that I’m a little surprised that Fergus made this move, because he very well could have used this as something of a “learning opportunity” for the parties—that because they refused to come to a deal about these days that they would lose them because they didn’t use them. But that actually would have been the bigger surprise, because Fergus isn’t exactly a very strong-willed Speaker. As for the Conservatives, one suspects that they turned down the motion in order to push the envelope, so that they could cry foul and try and challenge Fergus if they did lose those days, and send out more fundraising emails that he’s being partisan (which is against the rules), and to try and play the victim. Andrew Scheer was already trying to denounce these moves, but nothing he says has any semblance of truth, so that’s no surprise. Nevertheless, there won’t be a crisis of Supply, government departments won’t shut down, and Canadian journalists won’t get the opportunity to excitedly write about a “U.S.-style government shutdown.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Another Russian drone attack on Trenopil has left it without electricity. And while president Zelenskyy is hoping for quick NATO membership as an avenue to ending the war, NATO members are unlikely to take him up on it.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1863186805463437571

Continue reading →

Roundup: Parsing the dinner at Mar-a-Lago

Posted on by

So much of the weekend was spent parsing what happened at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, particularly given that Justin Trudeau didn’t put out an official readout of the meeting (probably because Trump is not officially in government yet), while Trump posted about it on his social media where he called it “productive.” The takeaways appear to be that the tariffs threats cannot be avoided immediately, because Trump believes in them and wants to use them to balance the budget (good luck with that), but that we may be able to carve out exceptions. There was also talk about the border and fentanyl, according to Dominic LeBlanc, and talk about more drones and helicopters to patrol the border (but who knows where the helicopters and personnel will come from—we are not flush with excess capacity).

None of this was good enough for Pierre Poilievre, who took to the microphones on Sunday to claim that Trudeau went in a “position of weakness” (because that’s Poilievre’s go-to line these days), and lamented that Trudeau came home “empty-handed,” as though these things are done in a day, particularly with a mercurial chaos agent like Trump. Poilievre also says he wants a cap on asylum seekers, because he claims there are too many bad actors, and said he would allow a reprieve in the ongoing filibuster if there is a border plan that meets his approval on the table. But when asked what he would do different, Poilievre says he’s not the prime minister, and walked away. So…that happened.

In a fight between Canada and the US, with the incoming US President engaged in disinformation about the Canadian border, Pierre Poilievre sides with the US.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-01T19:19:43.012Z

Meanwhile, Doug Ford insists that the premiers are “unanimous” that they want us to accelerate defence spending to reach our NATO target sooner than later. No word yet on what fiscal demands they will give up from the federal government to reach that spending target faster (because the money has to come from somewhere).

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone hit a residential building in Ternopil overnight, killing one and injuring several others. Drones also targeted Kyiv the night previous, and killed three in a strike on Kherson. Russians claim to have overtaken the settlements of Illinka and Petrivka in Donetsk region. Ukraine says it will increase the use of unmanned ground vehicles over the coming year.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The GDP data and the “collapsing” economy

Posted on by

Yesterday was the day that Statistics Canada released the quarterly GDP figures, and they were middling. The economy is sluggish, but 1.0% annualized growth in the quarter is growth, and it bears repeating that we have avoided a recession after the inflationary spike, so this is the “soft landing” that the Bank of Canada was aiming for. And because growth is sluggish, there is plenty of talk that the Bank will likely make another 50 basis point cut in December rather than 25.

The Conservatives rushed to make hay of these numbers, particularly the fact that per capita GDP fell by 0.4% over the quarter, which was the sixth quarterly decline. (Yes, there was revised data that pushed up growth and made the quarterly decline less pronounced for the past two years). And why has there been a decline in per capita GDP? Because at the end of the lockdowns, we ramped up immigration to combat labour shortages, and all of those new workers pushed up our growth enough to avoid a recession, and because the denominator has been increased faster than the numerator, it’s a pretty solid indication that the growth could very well be much stronger once we get it back on track. To that end, the Conservatives’ press release compared our non-annualised figures to the American annualised numbers to make ours look worse (they later issued a correction), and put out misleading tweets that blame Trudeau and not the 2014 collapse in oil prices for the so-called “economic vandalism” that they believe that simple line graphs show.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1862538994221031782

And then there was the absolute mendacity in Question Period. Michael Chong said that the estimated effect of Trump tariffs was less than what Trudeau has done (which is both false and stupid), and Corey Torchor, unbelievably, claimed that the StatsCan data showed that the economy was “collapsing,” and I wish I was making that up. In no way did any of that data indicate that there was anything resembling “collapse.” Sluggish, yes. Collapsing? How? Either the Conservatives are just outright lying with statistics, or they have no clue how to read GDP data (or maybe both). And the funny thing is that all of this concern about declining per capita GDP is a pretty de facto way of saying that they are cheering for an actual recession, which we would have had if we hadn’t juiced immigration the way we did. I wish this wasn’t so stupid, and I wish we had more journalists calling this out, but we don’t because “I was told there would be no math.”

This is incredibly mendacious framing.GDP per capita largely declined because of the influx of immigration, which staved off an actual recession. Saying that Trump tariffs would do less damage than the current government is both stupid and wrong.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T21:15:09.167Z

Tochor claims that StatsCan reported that our economy is “collapsing.”Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. He doesn’t know how to read GDP data and is going to just lie. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-29T16:37:05.538Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drone attacks hit residential buildings in Kyiv and Odesa, injuring eight. Ukrainian forces are facing a desertion crisis because of overstretched forces, psychological scarring, and the management of the war. Ukraine’s army chief is pledging more troops on the eastern front after visiting there. Here is a look at Ukrainians dismantling a thermal power plant before the Russians can advance on it.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1862448598702596345

Continue reading →

Roundup: “Identity politics” on both sides

Posted on by

As the facile analysis of the Trump victory continues across the political talk shows, there was one particular exchange on Power & Politics last night that I felt deserves a bit more attention, because I think it’s important to call bullshit on, which is the discourse around “identity politics.” There has been a lot written about, particularly over the past two days, about how the left has been too scoldy about said “identity politics” and pronouns, and it caused the public to turn against it, which is both ridiculous given the broad-based rage-and-resentment campaign underway, but it also excuses the very identity politics that the Trump campaign (and the current far-right) play into themselves, particularly with race.

Nevertheless, after this diatribe about identity politics, columnist Emilie Nicolas, who was on that panel, objected and pointed in particular to what is happening right now with young men, who are being raised on a diet of Andrew Tate podcasts and their similar ilk, along with some allusions to the gamer-to-fascism pipeline, who are being taught an absolute load of horseshit about alpha men, male dominance, and rank misogyny. And Nicolas pointed out that this is identity politics, and to insist that it’s only coming from the “left” makes this particular kind of identity politics invisible when that’s exactly what it is.

Trying to dismiss anti-racism, anti-misogyny and anti-homophobia/transphobia as “identity politics” that the general population doesn’t care about (as though the general population consists entirely of white men), while racism, misogyny, and white supremacy are given a free pass and not being called “identity politics” when in fact that is at the core of what they are, is actually kind of damning to those who think the “left” needs to cool it. I do get that the whole “scolding” aspect is something that does need to be re-thought as a tactic, but to pretend that “identity politics” is the domain of the left alone is both wrong, and intellectually dishonest in the extreme.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb attack hit Zaporizhzhia, killing four, wounding at least 33, destroyed houses and damaged an oncology centre. Energy facilities in the northern Zhytomyr region also suffered damage in a drone attack. President Zelenskyy told a European summit that “peace through strength” is what is needed (which is in part what he is hoping to flatter Trump with), and also said that North Korean forces have suffered casualties when fighting Ukrainian forces in Kursk.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1854554730325787106

Continue reading →