Tag Archives: Immigration

QP: Politicising a tragedy because of course he did

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For Wednesday, proto-PMQ day, the prime minister was indeed present, and had a binder full of prepared responses, not that he was going to need most of it given how utterly repetitive QP has become in the past number of weeks. Pierre Poilievre led off, and started with condolence for the murder of a police officer in Burnaby, BC, and wanted action on the “crime wave” gripping the country. Justin Trudeau agreed that they need to do more, and spoke about their plans to increase funding for mental health supports. Poilievre then moved to the inflation numbers, and food inflation in particular, accusing the government of raising taxes on food, which of course is not true, and the biggest driver of food price inflation is climate change. Trudeau disputed the characterisation, and raised their GST credit, and wanted support for their other measures. Poilievre cited the figure that average families will pay $3000 more in inflation and interest, and blamed inflation on deficits, which is not the driver. Trudeau repeated that the Conservatives are not supporting measures that will help the households that need it most. Poilievre repeated his questions in French, and Trudeau poked holes in Poilievre’s assertion that inflation is so high that they shouldn’t do anything to help people. Poilievre spouted a bunch of nonsense about food price inflation on things gown in Canada, ignoring that drought wiped out 40 percent of crops last year, and blamed the costs on carbon prices. Trudeau raised the climate rebates that people got on Friday, and that they need to take action on climate change.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised both the contracts for a lease near Roxham Road and wanted a better way to accept asylum seekers. Trudeau recited that there is no magic solution and that we need to work with the Americans to find a sustainable solution. Blanchet claimed that the government wanted to use Roxham Road to get cheap labour, and wanted African francophone students instead who are being discriminated against with their visas. Trudeau read a script about having no tolerance for racism and that the minister was looking into the issue.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and first gave condolences for the slain officer, then switched to French to accuse the government of doing nothing about inflation. Trudeau listed their actions and the plans still waiting passage. Singh switched to English, and blamed food price inflation on “greed-flation” (which is not a thing), and took credit for “forcing” the government to study the issue. Trudeau repeated his response about the GST credit and demanding support for dental care and rental supports.

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Roundup: The first witnesses at the inquiry

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The first day of witness testimony took place at the Emergencies Act Public Inquiry, hearing from citizen representatives about what they went through during the illegal occupation, as well as two of the city councillors whose wards were most affected, and representatives from affected BIAs. There was a common theme in there—people feeling afraid and terrorized by the collection of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theories and grievance tourists who made up the occupation; and more to the point, they felt abandoned by the Ottawa City Police, who were the police of jurisdiction.

Which brings me to my other point—that the NDP, and MP Matthew Green in particular, are trying to return to this bullshit narrative that the federal government “abandoned” the city and didn’t show leadership during the occupation, which is completely false. There was no jurisdiction that they could exert—the Ottawa police, as established, were the police of jurisdiction, and there is no mechanism by which the federal government can bigfoot them or assert jurisdiction. Even the Emergencies Act allowed for the RCMP to be deployed under the command of the Ottawa police, with expedited swearing-in that enabled them to do their jobs. There is nothing that the federal government could have done to “show leadership” up until they invoked the Act. I know the NDP like to pretend that there’s a Green Lantern ring somewhere, and that all it takes is “political will” to do something, but there is no “political will” section of the Constitution. Real life doesn’t work like that, and the NDP need to grow up and start criticising the government for things that are actually their fault, not the things that aren’t, because it weakens their credibility when it comes to the real problems.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 233:

Ukrainian forces continue to press their advantage in the Kharkiv region, as the Russians say they will have completed their mobilisation within two weeks. The first 200 Ukrainians have completed their training in the UK with British and Canadian trainers, which includes offensive tactics, not just defensive ones. Here is a look at the city of Lyman, and how much it suffered under four months of Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456

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Roundup: New sanctions on Iran, new enforcement resources

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Mid-afternoon, on the Friday before a long weekend, the prime minister and deputy prime minister hastily called a press conference and announced new sanctions against the Iranian regime—the top 50 percent of the IRGC will be permanently barred from Canada under powers in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which have thus-far only been applied to genocidaires from Bosnia and Rwanda. As well, more sanctions to other individuals have been announced, but even more importantly was the announcement of $76 million to establish a new sanctions bureau at Global Affairs so that we have the capacity to actually monitor and enforce these sanctions we’ve been applying.

Is this a declaration that the IRGC is a terrorist entity? No, because it would still be impossible to monitor and enforce, and would capture too many low-level conscripts. Will the Conservatives continue to yell and moan about it? Of course they will. There is some commentary that if applied properly, these measures could be more effective than listing them under the Criminal Code, but again, this depends on it being properly applied, and it will take time to build the capacity in the aforementioned sanctions bureau. It also bears noting that this all seems last-minute, reactive, and like this government doesn’t know how to get ahead of issues, so even if they do the right thing, it comes off as being pushed or shamed into it, which doesn’t help the narrative that this government is getting tired.

Danielle Smith

In the wake of her leadership victory, Alberta’s incoming premier Danielle Smith has agreed to run in a by-election for a seat of her own, and one of her MLAs is resigning to accommodate her (and had not planned to run again in the next election), and for Smith, it’s a mostly rural seat, because that’s her base. There is also a vacant seat in Calgary, but Smith would have a harder time there, and also plans not to hold that by-election in advance of next spring’s general election, which is indefensible under political norms. But hey, she’s willing to pretend the whole constitution is free to be ignored, so why should political norms matter? Yeah, this is a problem.

Meanwhile, here’s Jason Markusoff’s lengthy profile of Smith and her reinvention. Ken Boessenkool considers Smith to be a kamikaze mission into modern conservatism itself (and yet it’s almost like the bastardised way in which we now run leadership contests basically makes this an inevitability). Colby Cosh tries to put some context into Smith’s comeback and her outlasting all of her political rivals. Andrew Coyne sees storm clouds on the horizon with both François Legault and Danielle Smith looking to be constitutional vandals. My weekend column previews some of the absolute constitutional chaos, right up to the suspension of the rule of law, if Danielle Smith tries to get her own way.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1578497923016699904

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 226:

There have been explosions in the Kharkiv region, as Russia concentrates attacks on the city while they are being driven back elsewhere in the country. More mass graves have been found in the Kharkiv region, on top of those already found at Izium and in Lyman.

https://twitter.com/TetySt/status/1578462615994368000

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QP: Triple, triple, triple the bluster and the bromides

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The prime minister was present for the first time in a week, and it was nearly a full Chamber for a change. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he worried about stories of students accessing food banks, and blamed food price inflation on carbon prices, which is largely false, and demanded the “triple, triple, triple” carbon price be cancelled. Justin Trudeau responded with a warning about how serious climate change is, as we have seen up close. Poilievre switched to English to cite a farm family who was allegedly being crushed by carbon prices, and recited his “triple, triple, triple” line. Trudeau stated that clever slogans won’t help people, but his government had a plan to, and demanded support for the rental and dental supports. Poilievre reiterated his question, and Trudeau reminded him that he just returned from Atlantic Canada, and that these kinds of storms are going to become more frequent, before reciting the lines about not being free to pollute, and that most families get more back in rebates than they spend. Poilievre tried to turn this onto the prime minister using his “private jet” (it’s not a private jet) and that he was a “high-carbon hypocrite,” to which Trudeau lambasted Poilievre’s lack of a climate plan. Poilievre spun a ridiculous tale about the government driving food production out of the country, and Trudeau hit back that if Poilievre put as much energy into flighting climate change as he did spinning conspiracy theories, we would all be better off.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he demanded that all immigration powers be turned over to Quebec because French is under threat. Trudeau reminded him that Quebec has all the immigration tools they need, and if they want to increase Francophone immigration, they were welcome to. Blanchet repeated his demand, reminding Trudeau of the size of François Legault’s majority, and Trudeau repeated his answer.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he accused the government of protecting oil and gas profits, and Trudeau recited some pabulum about asking the rich to pay more to reduce taxes for the Middle Class™, which is why it was the very first thing they did. Singh repeated the question in English, and Trudeau stated that oil companies have been warned that they need to start paying for the green transition.

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Roundup: Marinating ideas or wasting precious time?

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As his weekend think piece, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry extolled the virtues of MPs who aim high with their private members’ bills, even if they don’t go anywhere. I am of particular mixed feelings about this, because while I can get behind the notion that sometimes the big ideas need to marinate in the public consciousness for a while, whether that was cannabis legalisation, single-event sports betting, or trans rights, we also need to be cognisant that a whole lot of private members’ business is, well, a giant waste of everyone’s time, particularly when you have MPs who table dozens of bills and motions in any single session that will never see the light of day, but consume time they should be spending doing their actual jobs of holding government to account, as well as media attention for something that is dead on arrival.

It’s hard not to conclude that PMBs aren’t being abused in the current iteration of the Standing Orders. We’re seeing a growing number of bills that need royal recommendations still get debated all the way up to the final vote, which essentially means that everyone’s time has been wasted because it’s not going to proceed, and that MP could have used their spot for something that could have gone somewhere instead, rather than hoping that the government was going to grant the recommendation that late in the game. There is a never-ending supply of bills to amend riding names and declare national days, weeks, or months about some ethno-cultural group or cause, individual tweaks to the Criminal Code that have distorted all semblance of proportionality in our sentencing principles, or attempts at tax expenditures that are a loophole to the prohibition against proposing spending (because the rubric is that you are forgoing tax revenue, as though that didn’t come with its own costs), and when you do get the big issues, I’m really not sure that two hours of scripted speeches being read into the void is really exercising the national consciousness on the issue.

Maybe I’m just horribly cynical, but I don’t see the benefits of this particular exercise like I would if there was an actual grassroots process to formulate policy that the party adopts (and I especially have a problem when MPs use their spots to put forward policy positions because it surrenders their rights and privileges as MPs for the party’s sake, most especially if it’s a stunt on the party’s behalf—looking especially at you, NDP). Time is one of the most precious resources in Parliament, and the amount of time and resources that gets wasted on these bills that will never see the light of day just makes a mockery of the process.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 221:

After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russians retreated from the city of Lyman, which has been a logistics hub for the Donetsk region. In the meantime, Russians have targeted humanitarian convoys, because of course they did. Meanwhile, ten torture sites have been found in Izium, which Russia controlled for six months, and at least thirty people found in the mass grave outside of the city bore marks associated with torture.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1576248108690079745

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Roundup: Demanding LNG with someone else’s money

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While the federal Conservatives continue to promote the fantasy notion that Canada can somehow supply Europe and Japan with LNG to displace Russian supply—something that was never going to happen because of the timelines for projects to be built and that they need to be in operation to make their money back—under the notion that Ottawa needs to “get out of the way,” again ignoring that there has been no market case for it, Jason Kenney is going one step further and demanding that the federal government to build LNG export infrastructure. Which is odd because the Conservatives howled with outrage when the federal government nationalized the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline in order to sufficiently de-risk it for it to complete construction. If there’s no market case, why not get the federal government to do it?

But let’s also remember that the proposed Kitimat LNG facility on the West Coast, fully permitted and approved, is not being built, because there is no market case. Hence why Andrew Leach is calling out Kenney’s nonsense below, particularly the fact that Kenney is calling on the federal government to spend their money rather than Kenney spending his province’s own money. You know, like he did with Keystone XL, and whoops, lost billions because he made a bad bet and the American administration didn’t restore its permits. Funny that.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 217:

UN human rights investigators have found that Russia has been violating international law when it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war during the invasion of Ukraine, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also asked for Canadian help in ridding his country of mines left behind by Russian forces. Meanwhile, there are reports that Russian conscription officers are at borders trying to intercept would-be conscripts from fleeing the country.

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Roundup: The allure of citizens assemblies

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Yesterday in the mother parliament in Westminster, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists “super-glued” themselves around the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons. Their demand—somewhat ironically, to “let the people decide” on climate change. Now, it would be ironic given that they are literally in the chamber where the people do decide, but no, what they are demanding is a citizen’s assembly, which is antithetical to democracy. There is a particular romance around these assemblies, which are composed of selected individuals from a perfect cross-section of society, and they are supposed to work by consensus to come up with some kind of solution, under the guidance of experts. Of course, therein lies the problem with this whole system—the people did not elect this assembly, and there is no way to hold them to account for the decisions that they make. As well, evidence suggests that they are fairly manipulable with the right “experts” guiding them, which is why groups like Extinction Rebellion or Fair Vote Canada are enamoured with them—because they are certain that with the “proper guidance,” these assemblies will come to the “correct” decisions, without the mess or compromises of democracy, or more to the point, going through the trouble of organizing that democracy requires to actually make change. This is no way to make big decisions, and politicians shouldn’t pander to groups whose aims are anti-democratic.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 191:

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency remain at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and hope to have a full picture of the situation at the plant by early next week. Here is an explanation as to why this IAEA inspection is so important.

https://twitter.com/CFOperations/status/1565396106577690630

Programming Note: Because it’s a long weekend, posts will resume Wednesday.

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Roundup: Getting better at plain-language explainers

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Because this is the age of disinformation, it’s good when institutions start recognising that and offering plain-language explainers to help dispel the falsehoods that are swirling—especially when those falsehoods are being spread by sitting MPs and leadership candidates for political parties. In this case, it’s the Bank of Canada, and the notion of whether they printed money during the pandemic. They didn’t, and they had explainers on their site before, but this is much more accessible, which is really necessary right now—particularly given that the government can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, which makes the job of defending institutions even harder (especially as the media is pretty much useless in this endeavour as well, too content to simply both-sides everything).

Of course, the replies to this thread are an absolute tire fire, so we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet, but it’s a good first step that needs to happen. (And listen to Captain Pike when you get tempted to read the comments).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 183:

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was knocked off of the Ukrainian power grid after a fire damaged a transmission line, raising fears that we could be headed toward another Chernobyl-like disaster. (Incoming power is needed for the reactors’ cooling systems, but there are some back-up power supplies). It was later re-connected, but this remains a problem, and radiation from such a meltdown could spread across Europe under the right conditions. Meanwhile, Putin is ordering a major troop replenishment after suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Ukraine.

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Roundup: Questions for the new SCC justice

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The parliamentary hearings around Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin’s appointment took place yesterday, which were the usual awkward affair that these things tend to be, as they’re mostly a get-to-know-you exercise where you can’t really ask too many substantive questions, and as is so often the case with our parliament these days, it was full of self-congratulation of MPs and senators who were so proud to be there for this historic moment. A lot of media outlets picked up on O’Bonsawin saying that she’s a judge first and Indigenous/a mother/a Franco-Ontarian afterward, which is probably the kind of answer you want in a Supreme Court of Canada justice, but it was interesting how many outlets made that their headline.

More interesting to me were some of the responses from justice minister David Lametti, and former PEI Premier Wade MacLauchlan, who ran the selection committee, given that their testimony is actually more relevant because Lametti in particular is the political actor who is responsible for this appointment (along with the prime minister). Regarding O’Bonsawin replacing the Court’s criminal law specialists, even though she is not one herself, Lametti said that it shouldn’t fall to one person on the Court as they all need to be aware of the issue, and I think that’s fair. But when it comes to the answers about encouraging more diverse candidates, I find it utterly mystifying that this government continues to insist on people applying for these positions rather than having their committees canvas the legal community for names, and then approaching them directly rather than waiting for applications. It’s been a problem that this government has had since day one, and it doesn’t encourage diversity because a lot of people from marginalised communities don’t apply because they are either discouraged already because of institutionalised racism and discrimination, or because they feel they have no chance because they don’t fit the established mould. This government knows this, and yet they persist with this inadequate model, for reasons unknown. It boggles the mind.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 182:

It was both the 31st Independence Day and six-months since Russia began its illegal invasion of the country. Russia marked the day by hitting a train full of civilians near the town of Chaplyne in Eastern Ukraine, killing 22 people. Here are some six-month retrospectives from the Star, CBC, and Associated Press.

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Roundup: Not calling out the obvious lies

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It seems that Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis have been hyping up a Substack post by a National Post columnist who has been falsely claiming that court documents say that vaccine mandates don’t work. It’s not surprising that they would amplify this garbage, or that said garbage completely misrepresents the studies in question, which provided proof that vaccine mandates do work. Of course, there has been little-to-no denunciation of said lies being propagated by these candidates, nor has the mainstream media done their own fact-checking on the claims (which was done by PressProgress, which is not actually a media organization but a partisan oppo-research outlet that masquerades as journalism). This is not a good thing. This is a sign that things are very broken, and that we are headed to a very dark place. Our media need to step up and start calling this stuff out for what it is, and to stop both-sidesing it out of an exaggerated sense of “fairness.” Lies are lies. There are not two sides. You don’t need to have their political opponents say that they’re lies because that simply provides fodder for the true believers to swallow the lies, because it’s their opponents denouncing them. This is corroding our democracy, but nobody seems to care enough to do something about it.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1557412067572858886

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 169:

In the aftermath of that massive explosion at a Russian base in occupied Crimea, nine Russian warplanes have allegedly been destroyed, and Kyiv continues to deny official responsibility (though it may have been the result of sabotage by Ukrainian partisans in the area). Meanwhile, Russians have been shelling the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, as well as continuing to shell the eastern city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainians have hit the city of Donetsk, which is controlled by Russian separatists.

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