Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Trying to allay diaspora concerns

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After two diaspora groups pulled out of the foreign interference inquiry, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released a statement yesterday outlining precautions that are being taken to protect witnesses and sensitive information, which is hoped will allay their concerns (though some of those concerns have to do with the three politicians being given standing and the ability to cross-examine other witnesses).

It should probably be noted that this was probably inevitable. David Johnston warned as much of this in recommending against a public inquiry, but hey, politics took over and here we are.

https://twitter.com/chercywong/status/1760726555259752568

Ukraine Dispatch:

There has been a drone strike in Odessa, killing three. It is hoped that examining the debris of the North Korean missiles that the Russians have acquired and are using against Ukraine will offer clues as to how they are avoiding sanctions. Here’s a look at two years of conflict through the eyes of one Ukrainian soldier who has seen it all. Here is a look at those whose relatives have gone missing in combat and their bodies not yet found. Reuters has a photo library from the first two years of the war.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1760766644995887429

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Roundup: Poilievre punches down

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Pierre Poilievre made a lot of statements yesterday, and they were all alarming in their own ways. First up was expressing support for Bill S-210, which aims to require ISPs to ensure age verification for any online porn sites, or face massive penalties—a bill that passed the Senate and is now headed to committee with opposition support in the Commons. It’s a hugely problematic bill that is going to be a privacy nightmare and cause more problems than it solves. Poilievre also said he doesn’t want this implemented by way of a government digital ID or that prevents people from access legal materials, and his MPs keep handwaving and insisting that there must be some kind of technological solution here. There’s not, this is bad, and frankly is pretty Big Government/gatekeeping, which Poilievre claims to hate. What it does, however, is tap into the moral panic over porn being the root cause of a bunch of social ills, and Poilievre loves getting in on that action.

He was then asked by Rebel Media about trans people and washrooms—because of course the far-right remains obsessed about this—and Poilievre stated that he was against trans women in changing rooms, washrooms, or women’s sports, which is an outrageous egregious overreach and is Poilievre punching down in order to appease the Rebel Media audience. (I will note that you had pundits on Power & Politics baffled by this, believing that Poilievre has this demographic “locked down.” Not true—he needs to actively court them because they see him as being too soft and establishment—see Christine Anderson referring to him as “Pussyvere”—and he has to constantly prove himself to them). It’s also worth noting that for Poilievre’s press conferences, which are limited to five questions and no follow-ups, Rebel and True North are often at the front of the line for questions, which is another particular sign of who he’s speaking to. Justin Trudeau did respond and push back about this making trans people unsafe, which is true, but this is another moral panic Poilievre is trying to cash in on.

The last bit was perhaps the ugliest, where Poilievre was asking about the upcoming online harms bill, and he said that Trudeau shouldn’t be the one to bring it in, claiming this would be censorship, misquoting the line about “those with unacceptable views” (again, playing to the “convoy” audience who took up this misquote with great aplomb), and then launched into a tirade about how Trudeau needs to look into his heart about his past racism and Blackface. And then, because of course, a certain CBC journalist wrote this up (which I’m not going to link to) and devoted half of the story to rehashing the Blackface history including photos, because they didn’t learn a gods damned thing about how Trump got in (and this goes beyond just egregious both-sidesing). None of this is good.

Ukraine Dispatch:

With the loss of Avdiivka, Ukrainians are expecting more advances from Russians. This has spooked enough of the elderly in villages in the area, who are now heading for safer regions, worried that their towns are going to be the next to be ground to dust. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is downplaying the loss of Avdiivka as he calls for more western arms and support, but it has been relentless grind for Ukrainian forces. This said, western intelligence suggests that Russia doesn’t have the domestic capacity to manufacture the ammunition it needs either, so we’ll see how long they can keep up their current pace. Meanwhile, anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine are investigating more than sixty cases involving the defence sector.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1760235411987980541

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Roundup: The wrong people taking credit for disinflation

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Statistics Canada released the January Consumer Price Index data yesterday, and lo, it shows that inflation is dipping back into the control range at 2.9% annualized, which was lower than anticipated, and fairly broad-based including food prices decelerating to just above the headline number, meaning prices are stabilising finally, and yet somehow, with carbon prices still in place, and the grocery oligopolies not having been subjected to punitive windfall taxes. Imagine that!

In all seriousness, because there were month-over-month price drops in fuel prices in Manitoba thanks to Wab Kinew’s decision to pause gas taxes, and Saskatchewan not collecting the carbon levy, we got a bunch of people who should know better saying stupid things about carbon prices and inflation. Kinew, who has economics training, should especially know better.

Inflation is a year-over-year measure. Carbon prices have a negligible impact on it because it rises at the same level every year, so it’s not inflationary. A one-time drop in prices is also not deflationary or disinflationary because it’s a one-time drop, not sustained or pervasive. If you need a further explainer, economist Stephen Gordon has resurrected this thread to walk you through it.

On the subject of things that are unfathomably dumb, it looks like the CRA has decided to buy Saskatchewan’s transparent legal fiction that the provincial government is the natural gas distributor for the province, in spite of it being against the clear letter of the federal and provincial law, which means that consequences for the province not remitting the carbon levy on heating will be borne by Cabinet and not the board of SaskEnergy. What the hell?

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian attacks on the northern part of Ukraine killed seven on Tuesday, while Ukraine’s forces say they destroyed 13 out of 19 drones launched by Russia on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials are investigating the Russians shooting three soldiers captured on Sunday. Here is a look at the shattered ruins of Avdiivka. Ukraine’s state arms producer has signed an agreement with a German arms manufacturer to help produce more air defences domestically.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1759942168989360468

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Roundup: Blaming the wrong government for the shortage of doctors—again

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I turn to the big piece on the weekend the CBC ran about family doctors, and which its author, JP Tasker, pursued while in the fill-in host’s chair on Power & Politics yesterday. This is something Tasker has been on for a while now, and he seems to think he’s on a righteous crusade about the shortage of doctors in Canada, and yet his article misses almost all of the important parts of the discussion, while he kept trying to set up this dichotomy on P&P between more doctors and pharmacare, getting that wrong as well, as it too will rely on provincial governments.

Reading the story, you wouldn’t know that healthcare is a provincial responsibility. There are mentions of the deals that the federal government has been making with provinces, but the focus remains on this somehow being a federal issue when its not. And the main cause of the shortage of doctors traces back to the cuts in the 1990s, when provinces cut the number of medical school and residency spaces as part of their cost-saving measures after the federal transfer cuts. While this isn’t mentioned, what is also not mentioned is that when the Martin government re-invested in health transfers, the provinces didn’t similarly reinvest. They didn’t significantly re-open training or residency spaces like before. And as the health transfers were rising at six percent per year, health spending by the provinces were certainly not, and a lot of that money that was supposed to go to healthcare went to other things (often lowering taxes or reducing provincial deficits). And now here we are reaping what has been sown, but are the provinces being blamed for the problems they created? Of course not.

These were their choices. It’s their jurisdiction. They should be the ones who shoulder the blame here, but in this country, legacy media is allergic to holding premiers accountable for pretty much anything (except maybe education), and once again, they get to skate after shitting the bed, while the federal government is being given all the blame. If there’s a chef’s kiss of just how terrible Tasker’s article is, he got a quote from someone who said the ArriveCan money should have been spent on hiring doctors, as though that was something the federal government could do. Slow clap.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces say that they have crushed the last pockets of resistance in Avdiivka now that the Ukrainians have pulled back. Those Ukrainian forces are now digging in to new positions just outside of Avdiivka to repel further advances. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the front lines in the north-eastern part of the country.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1759625711353053426

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Roundup: A choice of passive voice

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The reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny triggered reactions around the globe, and especially at the security conference underway in Munich, where Navalny’s wife spoke shortly after the news. Reaction from Canadian figures was pretty swift. Justin Trudeau was on CBC radio and was quite blunt: “It’s something that has the entire world being reminded of exactly what a monster Putin is.”

And then there was Pierre Poilievre, who passive-voiced the whole thing.

Between this and his votes regarding the Ukraine trade agreement, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he is winking and nodding to a certain online audience. And while certain pundits have been “We think the initial vote was a mistake and he can’t take the L so he doubles down,” I suspect it’s more like “Sure, some Ukrainian diaspora communities are going to be pissed off, but what are they going to do? Vote Liberal? Hahaha.” They have hitched their wagon to the far-right PPC-voting crowd because they think that’ll get them the votes they need to win, and this is a crowd, that is mainlining Russian disinformation online, and believe that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a money-launderer buying yachts, that Putin is just trying to shut down “biolabs,” and throw in some antisemitic conspiracy theories about “globalists,” and it’s all stuff that Poilievre is willing to wink and nod to. Passive-voicing this statement was a choice.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1758543572578484364

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Roundup: Leaking an MP’s private conversation

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There were plenty of tongues wagging yesterday as a private phone conversation that parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs Rob Oliphant had with a constituent about the situation in the Middle East was leaked to the media, showing how he disagreed with some of the positions the government has taken for political reasons, and how they have badly communicated on some of the particulars. It’s a little bit grubby to have leaked the conversation, because it makes it harder for more MPs to be frank in their interactions for fear of this exact thing happening, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the leaders of other caucuses in particular used this as an object lesson in message discipline and never straying from it. (And before anyone says anything, the NDP tend to be worse than the Conservatives about this sort of thing).

When asked about the leaked comments, prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t go off, and talked about how it’s great how much diversity of opinion there is in the Liberal caucus, so it sounds like Oliphant’s job is safe, but then again it’s also possible Trudeau was saying this and that Oliphant will be dropped in a week or two, once the spotlight isn’t directly on him, because he broke message discipline, even if this was supposed to be a private conversation.

Regardless, Oliphant says he sticks by his words and says there’s nothing he wouldn’t say publicly, and if anything, he’s probably conveying the delicate tightrope that the government is being forced to walk on this better than the government is doing, in particular because he has a deep knowledge of the region, and can express it better. If Trudeau and his inner circle have any brains, they would get him to do a better job of crafting their messaging for them, but we all know that the communications geniuses in this PMO are allergic to taking any lessons, so I have my doubts that they’ll turn to Oliphant to up their game.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched new missile and drone attacks against several Ukrainian cities, air defences taking out half of them. At least three civilians were killed in an airstrike on the Kharkiv region; in spite of the constant attacks, the people of Kharkiv keep on. Ukraine is withdrawing some of its forces from Avdiivka in order to get them to more defensible positions while one of their special forces heading to the region. France will be signing a security assurances agreement with Ukraine in Paris today.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1758143268313870473

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Roundup: A dubious Federal Court decision, but right about judicial appointments

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The Federal Court ruled yesterday that the federal government must start filling judicial vacancies faster because, which is true, but the judgment itself is something of a mess. It’s hard to see how the Court has jurisdiction here, and the judge seems to have invented a bunch of justification and has handwaved around constitutional conventions, and in the end, declared that the government must fill most of those vacancies “in a reasonable period of time,” which is vague and of little value other than the declaration. Emmett Macfarlane has promised a post on this soon, and Leonid Sirota has a thread here taking issue with the reasoning (though not the underlying issue of not making sufficient appointments—everyone is agreed on that point).

I have been writing on this government’s problems with appointments since probably their second year in office, possibly even sooner than that. While you can look up the myriad of columns I have written, the short version is this: The government wants to make diverse appointments (which is good! This is a good thing!) but they insisted on a system of self-nominations rather than going out and nominating people. We know that women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ people routinely don’t apply for positions like this because society has drilled into them the message that only straight, old white men get positions like this. Even the Liberal Party itself gets this in their candidate selection process, where they set up systems to be persistent in getting women and diverse people to seek nominations. And even with that, the federal government has utterly dropped that ball and thinks that they can simply say “We’re accepting diverse applications!” and expecting those applications to flood in. They seem to act like the Sesame Street sketch where Ernie simply goes “Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!” and the fish leap into the boat. That’s not how this works, and when they don’t get enough applications, it slows down the process tremendously. And after seven years, they have absolutely refused to learn this lesson. Refused! It’s some kind of giant ideological blinder that they cannot get their collective heads around, no matter how many times the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court warns them, or the Auditor General sounds the alarm about vacancies on port authorities or the boards of Crown corporations, or even their process for appointing senators. They absolutely refuse to learn the lessons of their failures.

It does bear mentioning that there has been an uptick in the pace of appointments in the past few months, and filling vacancies for provincial chief justices and associate chief justices has also picked up speed (and yes, I have been keeping an eye out for this). That said, making federal judicial appointments faster won’t solve the problems with our justice system because a lot more of them involve provinces not properly resourcing provincial courts or superior courts, where you have a lot of cases where there are no court rooms or court staff available, and that causes as many if not more problems. The issue of federal appointments, however, is low-hanging fruit so it’s taking a lot more attention than it should, and once again, premiers are being allowed to skate because of it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have struck a hospital and apartments in Selydove in eastern Ukraine, killing three people. Here’s a look at how Ukrainians are decoding Russian battle communications to save lives on the front lines. Russia is pulling old tanks out of storage and refurbishing them after having lost more than 3000 in the fighting in Ukraine over the past two years. Ukraine’s military intelligence is now saying that Russia has been buying Starlink terminals by way of “Arab countries.”

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Roundup: It’s auto theft summit day

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It’s the big auto theft summit happening in Ottawa today, and it’s more than just federal and provincial governments and police who are meeting—it’s also insurance companies and auto manufacturers, because part of the problem are the ways in which auto companies have made unsecured RFID technology with key fobs and so on part of the recent lines, which means thieves can capture the frequency of your fobs and steal your card by cloning said fobs. Insurance companies could wield their might in insisting on these changes, which could make a measurable impact. As a down-payment of sorts, Dominic LeBlanc announced a $28 million boost to CBSA’s ability to detect stolen vehicles with more detection tools and analytics.

Meanwhile, as Pierre Poilievre tries to insist that this problem can solely be attributed to Justin Trudeau because of certain legal changes around conditional sentencing and bail (which were in response to Supreme Court of Canada decisions, it must be stated), he’s also made a bunch of specious correlations about how car thefts were lower in the Harper era in order to back up this claim. Except, that’s mostly not true either. But then again, facts, logic or honesty are never really in play when Poilievre is speaking, and this is no different.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 11 out of 17 drones in the early morning hours of Thursday. Russia launched massive attacks on Kyiv and other cities over the day yesterday, which killed five and wounded more than thirty. The mobilisation bill has now passed first reading. Here’s a look at the corps of retired Colombian soldiers fighting for Ukraine

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Roundup: The King’s cancer diagnosis

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There were some shockwaves as news was released that King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer that was found while he was undergoing his treatment for a benign enlarged prostate. The palace insists that it’s not prostate cancer, but have been extremely vague otherwise, and the King will withdraw from public-facing duties over the course of his treatment, though he will still keep up his state duties such as dealing with the Red Boxes daily, and signing things that need to be signed in them.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1754565735655887066

In terms of Canadian reaction, we saw messages from the Governor General and Justin Trudeau, along with a cursory if casual statement from Pierre Poilievre, but nothing from Jagmeet Singh or from Yves-François Blanchet, though that was to be expected. Still, poor form from Singh on this silence for the sovereign of the country he insists he wants to lead.

Meanwhile, Patricia Treble has some added context to this announcement both in terms of the history of the royal family disclosing medical information, and what it is likely to mean for things like the planned upcoming royal tour of Canada, which was supposed to take place in May, but is now likely to be postponed again. Here is some added detail about the Counsellors of State which could act in his stead if he becomes incapacitated due to his illness.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Some of the soldiers fighting near Bakhmut fear that they will be there until the war is over, as mobilization legislation continues to be debated including provisions that would allow those who have been fighting over three years to de-mobilise. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that he is considering a high-level military shake-up, which has some soldiers concerned. Journalists in Ukraine say that the country’s domestic security service has put them under illegal surveillance; president Zelenskyy has ordered an investigation.

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QP: Quoting the Criminal Code to one another

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Neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present today, in spite of both being in Ottawa, though most of the other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, fresh from his press conference earlier this morning in Brampton, and he tied the Bloc to government legislation around bail conditions and conditional sentencing, blaming them for the rise in auto thefts (which is pretty specious at best), before asking the government to reverse those positions. Steven MacKinnon says that the Conservatives were pretending to care about auto theft like they pretended to care about grocery prices, and tried to connect Poilievre’s campaign chair, Jenni Byrne, with lobbying Loblaws. (She wasn’t the lobbyist, and they were only lobbying about beer and wine sales, for the record). Poilievre declared that he announced “common sense” solutions for ending auto thefts, most of which are unconstitutional. MacKinnon repeated the insinuations that Poilievre had made promises to Byrne, who is advising the caucus. Poilievre switched to English to again claim that “catch and release” bail was to blame for the rise in car thefts, and MacKinnon repeated his claim that the Conservatives were only pretending to care, and made the insinuations about Byrne in English. Poilievre insisted that Byrne’s advise was the slogan he repeated, and once again blamed the government for increasing car thefts and touted his “common sense” plan. Arif Virani reminded him that mandatory minimums for auto theft are already on the books, so he’s demanding a policy that already exists. Poilievre insisted that bail reform didn’t apply to auto theft so he should have read his own legation. Virani responded that he listens to police and noted that this isn’t an issue of individual crime but organised crime, and that the Conservatives are blocking measures to combat money laundering.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and railed that Quebec is owed $470 million for asylum seekers, no less. Marc Miller said the money they have sent is not nothing and that they are working with the province. Therrien listed grievances related to immigration and asylum seekers, to which Miller accused them of being “armchair managers,” and cherry-picking statistics.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and took credit for Manulife walking back their decision to only fill certain prescriptions at Loblaws, and demanded the government stop working for Big Pharma. Mark Holland pointed to actions they have taken to lower drug prices across the board. Singh switched to French to complain that the government met with Loblaws lobbyists 60 times—which means nothing—and Holland repeated his response in French.

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