Tag Archives: Iran

Roundup: Pandemics and aid packages

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It was a day yesterday, where COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Justin Trudeau announced a $1 billion aid package to deal with the outbreak, Donald Trump announced travel restrictions from European countries, and the NBA suspended their season (if you care about such things). More and more events are being postponed or cancelled, and the markets have entered Bear Market territory.

(Note: Maclean’s has an updated COVID-19 Q&A here).

As for that $1 billion package the government announced, one of the missing pieces are measures for workers who can’t access EI or sick leave when they are forced to self-isolate, which the government says they’re working on. As for Parliament, it does indeed have a pandemic plan, but it’s still early when it comes to deciding what portions of it need to be activated, and that can include suspending the Chamber’s sittings, but that would require some kind of negotiation with the other parties as to when to pull that trigger, and its duration.

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Meanwhile, Supriya Dwivedi worries that we aren’t warning people enough of the risk coming from the US, given how much of a gong show their healthcare system is. Susan Delacourt takes particular note of Trudeau’s language in asking Canadians to play their part to “flatten the curve” of the spread of the virus. Colby Cosh delves into some of the failure of the US’ centralized Centres for Disease Control in the early stage of the COVID-19 transmission. Heather Scoffield says that adequacy of Trudeau’s $1 billion COVID-19 package won’t last given the state of the economy.

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Roundup: Rights, title, and ratification

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We got a few more details yesterday about the agreement reached with the Wet’sutwet’en hereditary chiefs on Sunday, despite a few TV hosts somewhat obtusely demanding to know what it meant for the Coastal GasLink pipeline – despite the fact that it was stated over and over again that this agreement did not have anything to do with that, and that the matter was unresolved. The crux of the agreement was an agreement on how rights and title would be extended for the Wet’suwet’en going forward, meaning that with any future projects, there would be clarity as to who would need to be consulted – which means the hereditary chiefs – and given the new impact assessment process that the Liberals instituted (under the infamous Bill C-69), those consultations begin at the earliest possible moment for these project proposals so that affected First Nations can be brought in from the get-go. What I found especially interesting was that Carolyn Bennett said that this was in accordance with UNDRIP principles, as free, prior and informed consent (which again she stressed was not a veto). And one imagines that this kind of agreement would be a template for others when it comes to unceded territory across the country.

As for Coastal GasLink, work apparently resumed on aspects of the project, but given that some of their permits were pulled by the province’s environmental assessment agency with a demand for more consultations, one supposes that the work is on areas that are outside of Wet’suwet’en territory. Meanwhile, one of the elected chiefs who is in favour of the project was doing the media rounds in Ottawa yesterday, and he said that while his people were discussing the ratification of the new agreement, he said that he was also willing to give up the economic benefits of the pipeline is that was what his people decided that they wanted as part of those discussions. We do know that matriarchs who were in support of the project were also in the meeting between Bennett, her BC counterpart and those hereditary chiefs, so the discussion within the community is very much alive, and we’ll see in a couple of weeks when the ratification process is supposed to be concluded, what the future holds for the pipeline.

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QP: Some clarity on a willingness to meet

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After a number of statements about the need to stop bullying in support of Pink Shirt Day, things got underway for proto-PMQ day. Andrew Scheer led off, and he read a bunch of concern trolling about Teck Frontier, pretending that the project was economically viable when it was not. Justin Trudeau calmly responded that Teck pulled their own application and that they pointed to the need for credible environmental plans. Scheer then made up some bullshit about global commodity prices not bring an issue, to which Trudeau stated that you can have a jobs plan without an environmental plan. Scheer scoffed and stated that Trudeau had no plan, and blamed Trudeau for the problems in Western Canada, to which Trudeau responded that the statistics showed that they helped created a million new jobs, and lifted a million people out of poverty. Scheer blustered about how that couldn’t possibly be true, before switching to French to call Trudeau weak over the rail blockades. Trudeau stated that they needed to find a peaceful but sustainable resolution, and that aggressive and simplistic solutions like those the Conservatives proposed would not help. Scheer returned to English to claim that the Wet’suwet’en people really wanted the project and that Extinction Rebellion was listed as a terrorist organization (which is false), to which Trudeau said he was concerned that Scheer described the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs as “radical protesters,” which the Conservatives shouted him down over twice. Yves-François Blanchet wondered if Trudeau would unilaterally implement UNDRIP, to which Trudeau read that he was disappointed that the Conservatives stopped UNDRIP legislation in the last parliament. Blanchet reiterated the desire to immediately move ahead with such legislation, and would get Bloc support, to which Trudeau said they would table such legislation soon, before listing their accomplishments toward reconciliation thus far. Jagmeet a Singh was up next, and he demanded that Trudeau commit to meeting with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, to which Trudeau noted that the NDP was focused on simplistic solutions when it is complex and that the minister is willing to meet him at any point. Singh repeated the demand, and Trudeau stated that there is a diversity of voices in the Wet’suwet’en community, and he didn’t want to influence the community’s internal discussions by only sitting down with one group.

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QP: Demanding to end the blockades

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In the wake of the statements in the Commons earlier this morning on the ongoing protests and blockades across the country, the benches were full and all of the leaders were present for QP. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he read some of his same condemnation for the government not dealing with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in favour of those who support Coastal GasLink. Justin Trudeau noted that they are concerned with dialogue, and that he invited other parliamentary leaders to discuss the matter but not Scheer because he disqualified himself after this morning’s statement. Scheer insisted that Trudeau was elevating “professional protesters” with those Indigenous communities that wanted these projects, and demanded a date for the blockades to come down, and Trudeau reminded him that they need solutions for the long term. Scheer decried the lack of action, and Trudeau said that they needed to ensure there was long-term partnership so that Canadians could rely on their transportation network rather than short-term violent action. Scheer again tried to insist that Trudeau was pandering to activists, and Trudeau reminded him that the Conservatives couldn’t get projects built because they would pick and choose who they would engage with. Scheer got increasingly breathy and high-pitched as he demanded action, and Trudeau reminded him that five years ago, Canadians chose parties who were committed to reconciliation. Yves-François Blanchet was up next for the Bloc, and he expressed his concern that Québec and Canada’s image was one where Indigenous communities were opposed to development, and wanted some clarity on the timeline for when blockades would be lifted. Trudeau stated that they were still committed to dialogue, and that was the first step to lifting the barricades. Blanchet asked for future meetings on the issue, and Trudeau said that he was open to that — for parties that wanted to engage constructively. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and demanded to know when the federal government would meet with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, but they were waiting on them. Singh wanted concrete action now, but pivoted to record-keeping on Indigenous kids in care, go which Trudeau reminded him that child and family services were provincial jurisdiction and they were working to devolve that to First Nations themselves.

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Roundup: Call in the Incident Response Group

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Given the ongoing protests and rail blockades, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has opted to skip the Caribbean leaders’ summit next week, and will instead be remaining in Ottawa to convene with his Cabinet ministers and the Incident Response Group over the ongoing situation. Layoffs have already begun, and there are concerns about shortages along the supply chains as the blockades continue. On Saturday, minister Marc Miller met with Mohawk leaders in Ontario, responsible for the blockade there, and after a day-long meeting reported “modest progress” and items that he would have to discuss with his Cabinet colleagues as a result. Minister Carolyn Bennett, meanwhile, is holding conversations with chiefs in BC, and is awaiting a meeting between them and the province’s Indigenous affairs minister, but it all may be for naught as the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs insist that they won’t allow the pipeline regardless.

Meanwhile, when it comes to that pipeline route, here is a look at some of the backstory involved – particularly why the alternate routes that those hereditary chiefs proposed were deemed unsuitable by the company (and there is a lengthy thread here where the journalists shows his work). This will be an interesting question around duty to consult, attempts at offering accommodations, and what the legal paths are in light of the police actions to enforce court orders (which led to the sympathetic protests and blockades).

At the same time, the calls continue by certain voices that the police need to step in and enforce the “rule of law.” Except that the government can’t actually order them to do anything. Here’s Jennifer Robson with an explanation as to why not.

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Roundup: Checking Scheer’s privilege

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The solidarity protests with the Coastal GasLink protesters continue across the country, and police continue to hold off on enforcement while dialogue continues – Carolyn Bennett is slated to meet with chiefs in BC, while Marc Miller will be meeting with the Mohawk protesters in Ontario today using the protocols of the covenant chain. And amidst this, Andrew Scheer decided he needed to get involved. It didn’t go well.

Scheer’s tone deafness over the “privilege” remarks likely stem from the belief that the Conservatives have convinced themselves of, that it’s just rich, foreign-funded radicals who are protesting while the First Nations want the projects to proceed because jobs – which some do, but it delegitimizes the legitimate grievances and differences of opinion within Indigenous communities (even if all of the protesters aren’t themselves Indigenous). Add to that, Scheer’s insistence that ministers should be directing the operations of the police is wrong-headed (and dangerous – this is how police states happen), which forgets that even if Bill Blair could get on the phone and direct RCMP to enforce injunctions, the ones in Ontario that have shut down the rail network are squarely within the jurisdiction of the OPP. Oops. There may be some debate over how much authority that governments have to direct enforcement in cases like these, but Scheer (and Scott Moe, who has also been echoing his comments) should know better. That they don’t is a bad sign for the governance of this country.

Meanwhile, Chris Selley decries the ongoing blockades but makes some interesting points about the way in which the male hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs displaced the female hereditary chiefs who were in support of the project. Colby Cosh is bemused at how threatening commuters in Central Canada is the kind of leverage that Alberta could only dream of having. Matt Gurney recalls Christie Blatchford’s book on the Caledonia crisis, and how the Ontario Progressive Conservatives apparently didn’t learn anything from what happened then, given their absolute silence over what is happening under their jurisdiction.

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Roundup: A sledgehammer solution

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Talk about the sexual assault training for judges bill has continued, and the Conservatives have continued to float the idea that it should be expanded to include Parole Board officers. The problem there, of course, is that the bill deals with amendments to the Judges Act, which has bugger all to do with the Parole Board, and this too-cute-by-half tactic of the Conservatives betrays how boneheaded their tactics are.

Meanwhile, Gib van Ert, former Executive Legal Officer to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (who heads the Canadian Judicial Council), has some thoughts on the bill and why it’s very problematic.

Some scholars have shrugged and say “Big deal if it means they get more training,” but the original legislation was far more insidious in that the reporting requirements were a threat do the administrative independence of the court as well. But I’ve spoken to former judges who say this is unnecessary. Another one responded to van Ert. Part of the problem is that there have been high profile cases where the judge has been very wrong on sexual assault law, and that tends to be overturned at the appellate level – but much of the time, the most infamous cases have been provincial court judges, which this doesn’t deal with.

So why are they doing this? Optics. MPs want to look like they’re doing something about the problems or perceived problems, and they’re taking the sledgehammer approach because it looks effective, even when it may not actually be. But that is so much of politics these days, which we need to start breaking out of.

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Roundup: Ginned up outrage over accounting rules

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My tolerance for ginned-up outrage is mighty thin, and it was exceeded yesterday as a certain media outlet ran a completely bullshit story about how in the last fiscal year, $105 million of Veterans Affairs’ budget went unspent and was returned to the consolidated revenue fund rather than simply kept in the department for the following year as the government “promised” to do following a completely inane NDP Supply Day motion a year previous. The story is one hundred percent not worth anyone’s time, and we have a media outlet who has decided to waste precious resources into putting a disingenuous framing mechanism around an NDP press release and calling it accountability.

To be clear: the whole premise of this “outrage” is the fact that the NDP have deliberately ignored how accounting and budgeting rules work in order to dial up a fake controversy for the sake of scoring outrage points in the media. The unspent money from Veterans Affairs is because they’re a demand-based department – they estimate how much they’ll need to deliver services to veterans every year, and if the funds don’t all get spent, then the law states that money goes back to general revenue, and reallocated in the following year’s budget. This does not mean there is deliberate under-spending – it means that they overestimated what the demand for services would be in an abundance of caution. And yes, there are backlogs in the department, but when you have capacity issues because they can’t hire enough qualified staff at the drop of a hat (after the previous government let hundreds of them go), you can’t just throw that “leftover” money at that problem. Pretending that it works otherwise is frankly dishonest.

One of the journalists at said outlet took exception to my calling out the disingenuous framing and insisted that the government shouldn’t have promised not to keep the funds in the department if they didn’t intend to keep the promise – and I would almost accept that as a valid argument except for the whole promise in and of itself was the result of shenanigans. The NDP’s whole Supply Day motion last year was illusory outrage, and government explained over and over how accounting rules and demand-based departments work, but if they voted against the (non-binding) motion, they would be voting against veterans and it would be bad optics. The path of least resistance is to vote for it and just keep following the rules. Because what is the alternative – vote for it, and then bring in new legislation to contort the accounting rules for this one-off bit of faux outrage over a non-scandal that is the direct result of a party that deliberately misstated how said accounting rules work in order to try to generate headlines? How is that a productive use of anyone’s time or energy? It would be great if we could get certain media outlets to engage in some critical thinking and not fall for this kind of transparent spin, and then gin it up as though it were a real scandal. We all have better things to do.

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Roundup: “True Blue” O’Toole

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Erin O’Toole made his official entry into the leadership race yesterday by way of a video that takes swipes at “cancel culture” and celebrity activists – the kinds of keyboard warrior buzzwords that are pretty much the domains of O’Toole’s new campaign staffer, Jeff Ballingall, of those “Canada Proud” etc. sites.

At a rally in Calgary later in the evening, O’Toole said that Peter MacKay would turn the party into Liberal-lite, which I have yet to see any actual evidence of (MacKay is not really a Red Tory, guys – he’s not. Stop pretending he is). It also struck me that he kept reiterating the kinds of comforting lies that the party likes to tell itself about issues like the plight of the energy sector, where the woes are blamed on the Trudeau government and not changing market forces (seriously, the shale revolution in the US is a pretty big driver of these changes). He did say that he would march in a Pride parade, and justified it with his military background, which is a bit funny given that he hasn’t marched in one to date, which makes his sudden conviction around it mighty suspect. His opposition to carbon pricing continues to dig the party into its current environmental rut, and his talk of deficits remains completely economically illiterate – all doubling down on the party’s current positions, because that’s apparently what will make him a “true blue” Conservative. I’m not sure how this grows the party’s base, but what do I know?

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QP: A conciliatory note, and then a lie

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And we’re back. While Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer were present, and most, but not all other leaders were as well. After a moment of silence for the victims of PS752, Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk as usual, and he asked for progress on bringing PS752 victims home and holding perpetrators to account. Trudeau thanked him for the question, and picked up a script to note that they were supporting victims, and what he told the Iranian President directly. Scheer thanked him, and then moved onto cancelled energy projects and lied about the cost of living versus wages and demanded that the Teck Frontier Mine. Trudeau reminded him that they were  growing the economy while protecting the environment. Scheer then stated that the government was destroying the energy sector — again, falsely — and lamented deficit spending, to which Trudeau reminded him that they made the choice to invest, and it was paying off. Scheer then switched to gang violence and claimed the government was taking the “lazy approach” of targeting lawful gun owners, to which Trudeau took up a script to list the measures they were taking. Scheer then moved onto the survey which stated that Canada dropped three spots on the transparency ranking (which is a self-reported metric), to which Trudeau listed ways in which Canada was strong on the international stage. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and raised a potential deportation case and demanded that the minister intervene. Trudeau, with script, to read a platitude about how they examine each case based on merit, and said that they were aware of the case but could not speak to it. Christine Normandin raised the question again, and Trudeau repeated his response. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and demanded did that the government immediately pay the compensation for First Nations children demanded by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Trudeau reminded him that they are working on reconciliation, noted the new approvals under Jordan’s Principle, and that they were still working on the issue. Singh then demanded immediate action on pharmacare and claimed he has a bill to immediately implement it (which a private members’ bill can’t do), and Trudeau took a script to list actions they have taken to reduce drug prices and noted they were negotiating with the provinces.

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