Tag Archives: Israel

Roundup: No need to consult and launder accountability

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NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson tweeted her outrage at the US/UK air strikes against the Houthis yesterday, and Canada’s participation therein (solely in a planning capacity and not contributing any assets), but in her outrage, she decried that Parliament was not consulted before Canadian participation.

This is wrong. Parliament shouldn’t be consulted because it’s not Parliament’s decision.

This kind of decision is a Crown prerogative, and that’s actually a good thing for accountability, because that is the role that the House of Commons should be playing on these decisions—holding the government to account. That’s the whole point of Parliament. MPs don’t govern—they hold to account those who do. And it’s important that we don’t have MPs voting on these kinds of decisions because that launders the accountability. In other words, if the House of Commons votes on military actions, then if things go wrong, they can’t hold the government to account for them because the government can turn around and say “You voted for this, it’s your responsibility, not ours.” That’s how our Parliament is structured, and why it works the way it does.

Oh, but you’ll say. There have been votes in the past! There have been, and they have largely been done for crass political calculations, particularly to divide opposition parties. Case in point was the extension of the Afghanistan mission, which Stephen Harper put to a vote specifically for the purpose of dividing the Liberals in opposition. It’s not how things are supposed to work. The government may announce a deployment or a mission in the House of Commons, and there might be a take-note debate on it, but there shouldn’t be a vote. If the opposition tries to force on as part of a Supply Day motion, as is their right, then it’s non-binding and is explicitly a political ploy, which makes it more transparent than a government’s attempt to launder accountability. And in this particular case, the fact that two or three Canadians are assisting in planning is hardly something that requires debate in the Commons.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine’s ground forces commander says they need more aircraft to make a difference in pushing back Russian forces. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak was in Kyiv to announce a new tranche of aid, and to address Ukraine’s parliament. A Ukrainian presidential aide says that the amended mobilization bill is expected to pass within days.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1745622690759606541

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Roundup: Not a free press issue, but a trap

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Because everything is stupid, we are being drawn into a dumb fight that is trying to de-legitimise legacy media, and legacy media is once again walking into the trap. To wit: On Tuesday, a Rebel “News” personality accosted Chrystia Freeland on the sidewalk outside of the PS752 memorial, and in the end was detained by police for an altercation. We can’t see exactly what happened because as soon as he was intercepted by the protective detail, his camera conveniently panned away, and returned to him as the police were arresting him for assaulting an officer. (He was later released without charge). There are legitimate questions if the police overreacted, and again, we can’t see what he did to them when the camera panned away, but this is not a free press issue.

To be clear: He is not a journalist. Ezra Levant and Rebel “News” keep testifying under oath in court that they are not journalists and not a news organization. And this particular performer, David Menzies, does this a lot—accost people, get arrested, and then Levant puts out a fundraising plea to their viewers, who dutifully shell out. This stunt was practiced, and the camera work seems to indicate just that. They’re already fundraising and claiming they’re going to sue Freeland and the police, because that’s their grift. And because everything is stupid and awful, Pierre Poilievre has decided to step in and claim that this is a freedom of the press issue.

Bullshit.

This isn’t about freedom of the press because Menzies is not a journalist, and Rebel is not a news outlet—by their own admission. But they pretend to be, and Poilievre is happy to go along with that fiction because this way he can try to de-legitimise reputable media outlets by saying that they are on the take from Justin Trudeau, and therefore suspect. It’s not really true, but Poilievre and his caucus have been engaged in this dystopian world-building to paint the picture that Trudeau is a despotic tyrant stripping away their freedoms who is telling the media what to write, and if they don’t, he censors and now arrests them (all of which is an absurd fabrication). And of course, Poilievre is data-mining and fundraising off of this, because again, he wants to get in on the grift.

He doesn’t care about the free press. He abuses legitimate journalists on the regular, and I have been at the receiving end of that. There was no concern about Menzies’ freedoms when he was arrested at previous Conservative events, having accosted both Melissa Lantsman and Andrew Scheer. But by trying to call out the Parliamentary Press Gallery for not condemning Menzies’ detention, and a bunch of mainstream outlets cluelessly not getting that this is grift and playing along, treating Rebel and Menzies as though they were legitimate, is doing the work of letting Poilievre de-legitimise them. It feeds his dystopian narrative, and creates the bifurcated reality where facts no longer apply. And this has the potential to get worse as Marilyn Gladu is trying to get the Commons’ heritage committee to take this up, meaning a full-on dog and pony show for the cameras that legitimate media won’t know how to handle themselves in, because they refuse to believe that they are the targets in this all-out offensive. This is actively damaging democracy, and by not being self-aware, legacy media are causing themselves more harm. This can’t end well.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The massive air assault Russia has launched against Ukraine is stretching their air defences, and they need more systems and ammunition, particularly of anti-aircraft guided missiles, some of which is being held up by the fighting in the US Congress. More than a thousand towns and villages have lost power because of winter storms affecting power systems that have been weakened by Russia’s assaults. Drone manufacturers in Ukraine are producing them faster than the country’s current budget can buy them.

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Roundup: Electricians gathering lightning

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We’re still in “extremely slow news day” territory, so the discourse yesterday revolved around video clips of Pierre Poilievre praising electricians who “capture lightning from the sky” and run it through copper wires to light the room that he’s in—and that he’s used this particular turn of phrase on at least four occasions, one of which was in the House of Commons (though nobody said anything at the time). While all of his reply-guys on Twitter are insisting that he’s being “lyrical” or what have you (one of them tried to tell me this was “anthropomorphism”—it most certainly is not, and yes, I do have a degree in English literature), I do suspect that this is possibly some kind of troll, so that he can claim that the people laughing at him are really laughing at the blue collar electricians, whom he has been praising as “extraordinary” for their apparent superpowers. And yes, stoking grievances is his schtick, so let’s keep that in mind.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine and Russia had the largest single exchange of prisoners since the start of the invasion. Here’s a look at the losses faced by those whose apartments have been hit by Russian missiles. Türkiye has blocked the passage of two minehunters donated by the UK to Ukraine, citing the 1936 Montreux Convention.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1742484948349575331

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Roundup: The deafening silence around that antisemitic cartoon

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As you probably saw, on Wednesday, the Toronto Sun published a political cartoon from an American syndicated source that was both deeply antisemitic and Putin propaganda, and in response to criticism, the Sun initially doubled down before finally withdrawing it hours later and giving an apology with no accountability for what had happened.

Justin Trudeau criticized the cartoon during his media availability in Toronto, but there was pretty deafening silence from Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, and Michael Chong. The closest it got to condemnation was Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish, retweeting Brian Lilley calling the apology the “right move,” and later wrote that antisemitism is gross in political cartoons, universities, unions and school boards. Her fellow Jewish Conservative MP Marty Morantz was also completely silent on this. What were Conservatives vocal about? Falling for that Hamas troll-bait video, which they continued to fall all over.

It’s not an accident. They know full well that a segment of their audience here in Canada, not just the US, where the cartoonist is from, believe this propaganda and are on board with the antisemitism, and they pandered to it, much like Poilievre has been trying to skate that line in sending signals to this crowd with his Ukraine votes while paying lip-service to his party’s past support, or trafficking in antisemitic conspiracy theories while denouncing antisemitism—sucking and blowing at the same time. The silence from the Conservatives on this incident was deafening, and it should ring alarm bells for the Jewish community that for all of their constant bluster about being friends of Israel as a signal to the Jewish community that talk is cheap, and their actions (and inaction and silence) have spoken for them.

Programming Note: That’s it for me for 2023. I’m taking the next week or so off to recover, and will be back early in the New Year. Thanks for reading, and wishing all of my readers a happy holiday season.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched around 7400 missiles and 3700 attack drones against Ukrainian targets over the course of the 22-month invasion. Here is a look at four factors that have stalled the counteroffensive. And Ukraine’s parliament voted to legalise cannabis in the country, citing the stress of the war on the population.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1737958416302133568

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Roundup: The inflation and population figures

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There were a couple of important figures released from StatsCan yesterday, and the first was the November inflation numbers. While some analysts were predicting it to fall, it held at 3.1% for a second month, showing that this is the part where it’s starting to get sticky, and why the Bank can’t let up measures and start reducing interest rates just yet. One of the upsides is that food price inflation continues to come down, which means that prices are stabilising, so that’s very good news (and it has nothing to do with carbon prices). And don’t forget to check out this thread from Trevor Tombe, as he digs into the numbers.

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1737111583002923039

The other figures released were the population figures, and it was the fastest growth of any quarter since 1957. The thing to keep an eye on here is that a lot of this seems to be driven by non-permanent residents, whether international students (and the big problem there are a couple of colleges in Ontario turning themselves into abusive degree mills), and other temporary foreign workers, some of whom may have been hired in an abusive way. Some of this are also asylum seekers who have not yet received status (because “closing” Roxham Road didn’t really do much for this situation other than push it underground).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737106801617703236

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737109349477310976

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737112568286855177

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737136794938884329

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv for the fifth time this month, but this attack was intercepted and no damage was reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is boosting its domestic production capacity and will produce one million drones next year. Zelenskyy is also dismissing talk that there is a rift between him and the head of the army. Here’s a look at the work judges are doing to keep the justice system going in a country under fire.

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Roundup: Opening the Canadian Drug Agency

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There was an announcement yesterday that went under the radar of what appears to be every major news organization, which is that the Canadian Drug Agency is now fully operational. This has been in the works for a couple of years now, first as in a transitional form while the government consulted with the provinces and territories on what shape this would take, and it has now emerged from transition status into a full office.

Why is this important? Because this is the kind of actual policy work that is going to contribute to future national pharmacare in this country, not the ridiculous legislation that the NDP are insisting upon, under the mistaken belief that this is something that provinces can join one-by-one like with healthcare. It’s not—if national pharmacare is to work, it needs to be all or nothing, because it won’t be economically feasible otherwise. That means you need the premiers at the table from the start, and they all need to negotiate the national formulary together, not just let Ottawa decide and join up if they feel like it.

So, while Jagmeet Singh and Don Davies put on this dog and pony show about the pharmaracare legislation that hasn’t happened yet, and say boneheaded things like “The Liberals are on the side of Big Pharma,” the government has been putting in the actual work, and not the performative part, for what it’s worth.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A shortage of artillery shells is forcing Ukraine to scale back some operations, while the Russians are changing their tactics in their bid to overtake Avdiivka. Ukraine’s military chief is now saying that the war isn’t at a stalemate as he previously asserted (to which president Volodymyr Zelenskyy contradicted him). Said military chief found bugs in one of his offices, and hints that more devices have been found. He has also been critical of Zelenskyy’s decision to fire all regional military draft officers in a corruption crackdown.

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Roundup: Exploring a national emergency response agency

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Something that caught my eye over the weekend was an interview that Harjit Sajjan had with The Canadian Press over the weekend about building up some kind of national emergency response agency, so that we don’t have to constantly rely on the military for each event as we have been. It would likely be a network of local and regional agencies, but have some kind of federal coordinating role, but we do have some models domestically to draw on, such as the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The issue there is that it’s only geared toward one kind of event, whereas floods and hurricanes or tornadoes require different responses.

To that end, Sajjan is looking at different models and how different countries manage their agencies, so he’s not immediately jumping on an American FEMA model, but if there is one particular note of caution to sound it’s that we can’t rely on the premiers not ballsing this up or making ridiculous demands because none of them want to spend money on this kind of thing if they think they can get away with forcing the federal government to spend instead, while at the same time not willing to cede any jurisdictional sovereignty so that the federal government can actually do anything other than just give them money that they totally promise will be spent on this and not on tax cuts (really, we promise this time, for reals!)

There’s a reason we’ve come to rely on the military for this kind of work, which is that provinces don’t want to spend the money, and the federal government has so far refused to make provinces reimburse the Forces for doing the work (because they would be massacred in the headlines if they did), and provinces know that. It doesn’t help that the NDP think that this is really the only kind of thing that the military should be doing either. But something has to give, and let’s hope the federal government, of whichever stripe is in power if this gets off the ground, doesn’t simply roll over for the premiers’ usual nonsense on this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians launched a massive drone attack on early Sunday aimed at the southern and western Ukraine, while Ukraine launched a drone attack against a Russian airbase in Russia’s Rostov province. As Russia presses to try and capture Avdiivka, Associated Press has seen drone footage in the area that shows at least 150 bodies in Russian uniforms littering the treeline.

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Roundup: End of the parliamentary year 2023

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With a flurry of more nonsense motions, another apology from Speaker Greg Fergus, and a few more hours of sterile speechifying, followed by a royal assent ceremony, Parliament—both chambers—has gone home for the holidays.

This has been one of the most toxic, rancorous sittings I’ve lived through in my fifteen years on the Hill full-time, and I’ve watched it devolve in realtime to something where the clip-gathering was more selective to it being every single interaction on camera, and because they want to boost the engagement on those clips, they torque things and are now outright lying about absolutely everything, and now the place is a toxic swamp. The incident with Anthony Rota’s ouster just made everything worse, because the partisan rancour around that dialled up to eleven, and there was an actual attempt by the Conservatives to let Rota to escape responsibility by trying to falsely pin the blame on Trudeau and making false insinuations about the PMO essentially running the Speaker’s office, which is both wrong and dangerous. And it just gets progressively worse, the more that Greg Fergus keeps doing things that get pounced upon (no matter that provincial parties are not federal ones, particularly in Quebec).

And because the Andrew Scheer vs Greg Fergus fight keeps getting dumber, the NDP want to summon Scheer to the ethics committee over the use of his office for a partisan video. Meanwhile, people keep digging up more instances of Scheer going to fundraisers when he was Speaker, and lo, they were fundraisers for his own party, not events for provincial parties, which are the accusations being levelled against Fergus. Which do we think is the actual partisan activity here?

Ukraine Dispatch:

There is a strange story out of Keretsky in western Ukraine, where a village council member showed up at a meeting and detonated three grenades, injuring 26 including the person responsible, whose motive is unclear. Ukraine has signed “dozens” of contracts for joint production or technology exchanges with Western defence firms. As the EU struggles to get aid to Ukraine in spite of Hungary blocking it, here’s a look at what Ukraine needs to do in order to continue on its course for membership.

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Roundup: Making excuses for the Ukraine votes

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You will have seen in Question Period yesterday, and over social media last night, the Conservatives are starting to backtrack juts at tiny bit on Ukraine, but it all rings pretty hollow. In QP, the only tangible thing that Pierre Poilievre could point to their supporting Ukraine was that they called for lethal aid to be sent over before the invasion began (whereas the federal government held off until the invasion happened, and then suddenly started sending it). The rest were all non sequiturs that dated to the Harper era.

Later in the evening, Michael Chong listed a bunch of historical things Conservatives have done to support Ukraine, but concluded that they couldn’t support the free trade agreement because of carbon pricing. Yes, the same Michael Chong for whom carbon pricing was the centrepiece of his leadership campaign. It’s horseshit and Chong knows it, but he sold out his morals, ethics, and credibility long ago to curry favour with the party, and here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Wednesday missile attack on Kyiv has upped its casualty total to 53 injuries, including several children, but fortunately no deaths. Ukraine’s largest mobile carrier says they are restoring voice services after the Russian-linked cyberattack that crippled their operations.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1734886178149503279

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QP: Fighting over a mushroom farm

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The prime minister was present today, while his deputy was off to the Senate to testify there on her bill. Most of the other leaders were present, but Jagmeet Singh was once again absent, as he has been for a couple of weeks now. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, worrying about household debt, and complained about supposedly inflationary deficits. Justin Trudeau produced a list of Quebec-related items that the Conservatives voted against last week. Poilievre complained that government spending hasn’t achieved results, and Trudeau continued listing things the Conservatives voted against. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question, and Trudeau took a swipe about Poilievre having a lack of vision and needing his glasses while pointing out they just cut. Poilievre gave an exaggerated complaint about the school food programme framework they voted against, and made a pitch for passing Bill C-234. Trudeau said that Poilievre wanted to let the world burn, which also meant that food sources would go with it. Poilievre raised the mushroom farm in his riding, and whether the prime minister reached out to the about their rising carbon prices, and Trudeau said that officials did reach out to that “very successful” farm and offered then advice on lowering their emissions.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and commended him for changing this vote at the UN, and wanted legislative changes to eliminate loopholes around hate speech laws. Trudeau gave some reassurances about fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia. Blanchet repeated his call for these changes, and Trudeau noted that this was a delicate situation because balancing freedom of speech and and religion.

Peter Julian rose for the NDP in French, and wondered where the “wartime effort” on housing was over the past eight years. Trudeau read a script about the pre-approved housing designs as a policy they are working on. Jenny Kwan demanded national rent control, which is provincial jurisdiction. Trudeau noted that this was something they were working on with provinces, but that they had a multi-faceted approach to tackle housing.

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