Tag Archives: Jagmeet Singh

Roundup: The fallout from Freeland being accosted

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Much of the discourse this weekend was around a video of Chrystia Freeland being accosted at an elevator in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and all that it entails. While Freeland can handle herself—she ran circles around the KGB as a student in Ukraine—it’s the signal that this sends, particularly to women in public office, but most especially racialized women and those of other minorities or diverse backgrounds, who are routinely targeted in similar ways. While there were a number of denunciations of this, and Freeland called it out as wrong, the prime minister called for a united front from political leaders to call for an end to this kind of harassment and violence. Notably, however, a number of Conservative leadership candidates have not said anything, and when Poilievre in particular was asked, he quickly played the victim, that he too is harassed and threatened.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 186:

There has been more shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and the cities that surround it, over the weekend, because who cares about the risk of the cooling systems being compromised and a radiation leak happening? Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces say that they beat back the Russian advance on Bakhmut in the Donestk region.

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Roundup: Threats and compromises over dental care

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After spending the weekend talking tough on healthcare, Jagmeet Singh made some threats and shook his fist in the direction of Althia Raj yesterday, insisting that if the promised dental care programme doesn’t happen by the end of the year, that he was walking away from the supply-and-confidence agreement with the federal government. As this was hitting the wires, so was a leak that said the government was looking at a temporary cash transfer for eligible households in lieu of dental care this year, because it’s taking longer to implement (even though they insist they are on track). But the federal government hasn’t even decided on a delivery model yet, which is a problem, and premiers haven’t signalled any willingness to work with them on this either, and that’s a problem for all involved. Singh was naïve to believe this could happen in a few months, and the Liberals were stupid to promise that it could, knowing that this was going to be tricky because of the jurisdictional hurdles. And I suspect this is just going to drive cynicism on all sides, because new national social programmes can’t be done on the back of a napkin and rolled out in a few weeks, and everyone has set up expectations that will be nigh-impossible to meet. So good job, everyone. You’ve really helped.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 167:

There are international concerns after Russians shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, in what is believed to be an attempt to cut power to Ukrainian-held cities in the southern part of the country. We also got word that a Ukrainian grain ship has reached Turkey, but it seems there has been a dispute with the cargo’s buyers in Lebanon, so they may be looking for a new buyer for the corn haul. Because of course. Over the weekend, Russians targeted the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

In case you missed it:

  • My column on Michael Chong’s latest round of reform ideas, and some of them are actually good, while others may not be practical given current limitations.
  • For National Magazine, I wrote about the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision around condom refusal and how that can lead to a sexual assault trial.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on the (then-forthcoming) leadership debate and how you shouldn’t count anything out when there’s a ranked ballot in the mix.
  • My column on why we can’t keep ignoring the link between climate change and what it’s done to crops, and by extension, rising food inflation.
  • My Xtra column on this government’s poor record on HIV funding, while they were busy patting themselves on the back at the International AIDS Conference.
  • My column calling out Senator Dasko’s morally bankrupt poll trying to drum up support for the continuation of hybrid sittings, with no mention of the human toll.

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Roundup: Trying for a left-wing populist narrative

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It’s day one-hundred-and-forty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have been pounding Kharkiv, mostly by randomly shelling residential areas to inflict civilian casualties. But as this shelling takes place, the head of MI6 in the UK says that their analysis shows that Russia’s army is nearly exhausted, and that this will open up opportunities for Ukrainian forces to counter-attack in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Turkey says that Russia and Ukraine are about to sign a deal that will re-open Black Sea ports and allow grain shipments to pass through again, and hopefully avert the threat of famines (and likely lower world grain prices). There are still a lot of questions—including whether Russia can actually be trusted—but we’ll see what happens in the coming days.

https://twitter.com/AnitaAnandMP/status/1550193058809090054

Closer to home, Jagmeet Singh is trying to play the populist card, and it’s just laughable. It’s like the satire of a populist’s talking points (not that the NDP hasn’t morphed itself from a principled left-wing party to a left-flavoured populist one more than a decade ago). Like Singh and his inner circle looked at Pierre Poilievre’s traction and said “get me a piece of that action,” so they tried to ape his talking points. It’s risible, and it’s a sign of the intellectual vacuum at the centre of our political parties (and no, Liberals, you don’t get to be smug about this one either as your party can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag).

https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1550180051152404482

There are no “Ottawa elites” who are “enraged” by your suggestion. Yes, it got a bunch of scorn from, well, everyone because the last thing you want to do when you’re facing high inflation is to just give everyone even more money. Targeted help, sure, but social assistance and disability are provincial programmes, whereas the Canada Child Benefit is too broad a programme that it has been considered stimulus by the government and every credible economist, which is the last thing you want right now. The GST credit can maybe be a vehicle as it’s more targeted, but you need to be specific about that. As for the notion that corporate price gouging has caused inflation is flat-out wrong (even if it has contributed in a small way). Taxing oil companies won’t solve inflation, and an “excess profit tax” is a fraught move because it gets very tricky to come up with a workable definition of “excess,” particularly given the fact that a) the economy is overheated so of course businesses are going to be making more profit, and b) the world price of oil has more to do with supply constraints and capacity constraints for refining, so just taxing it more doesn’t actually solve any problems. But this kind of ham-fisted economic illiteracy does nothing for Singh’s credibility, and just drags the discourse even further down.

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Roundup: How to remove a central bank governor

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It is now approximately day seventy-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and war crimes trials are beginning in the country, hearing from one youth who whose father was murdered in front of him, and who was shot by Russian soldiers but who survived. Shooting at civilians—and children especially—is a war crime, and Russians will be hard-pressed to come up with justifications for them. As well, the UN is declaring a “child rights crisis” in the country, given how many children have been killed in the invasion. Meanwhile, here is a look at the “partisans” fighting on Ukraine’s behalf from behind Russian lines, which may or may not be the cause of all of those fires and explosions.

Elsewhere in Europe, Finland’s president and prime minister are urging the country’s parliament to vote in favour of making their application to join NATO, while Sweden is expected to follow suit days later. If Putin’s fig-leaf excuse for invading Ukraine was to stop NATO’s expansion, well, he’s just done the opposite, so good job there. There will be some sensitivity in managing the time between Finland applying for membership and when they are granted it, as they could be particularly vulnerable to Russian aggression during that period.

Closer to home, Pierre Poilievre’s attack on the Bank of Canada is not going unnoticed, but it helps for the rest of us to know just what he’s trying to suggest. To that end, Kevin Carmichael provides needed context to what exactly Poilievre is threatening to do to the Bank of Canada governor, and why he’s wrong on inflation. As well, this thread is a good take on the mechanism for the how governor is appointed and what it would take to remove him.

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Roundup: A “debate” spectacle sans substance

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It is now around day seventy-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like the Ukrainians have made some gains in the eastern part of the country, pushing Russian forces out of four villages near Kharkiv. Meanwhile, a team of Ukrainian soldiers has been tasked with revisiting recent battlefields around Kyiv to gather the dead, and have recovered the remains of around 200 Russian soldiers thus far. It sounds like they may try to return these bodies to Russia in exchange for prisoners, but we’ll see if those kinds of deals hold.

Closer to home, it was the first official English debate of the Conservative leadership race, and it was…an experience. While it was not the hostile snipe-fest that was the Conference Formerly Known As the Manning Conference debate, it was a strange format where they tried to have limited engagements between candidates, to control the temptation to talk over one another, and then insisted that the audience not clap or boo, which…defeats the whole point of a live audience, and it was a real choice to try and control their reactions. And it had a sad trombone sound. No, seriously. Not every segment was on policy—some of it were personal, asking candidates what they’re reading, or the kinds of music they like, which is fine and humanizes them a little. (But seriously, Roman Baber choosing Amy Winehouse? Has he ever listened to what she has to say in her lyrics?)

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1524548247456559104

Some observation on each candidate, in the drawn order of their opening statements:

  • Scott Aitchison: While he is aiming to be the reasonable, middle-of-the-road candidates, there are plenty of places where he displays the intellectual heft of the truck commercial he launched his campaign with. A lot of what he offered is not really credible, particularly on environmental or resource development files.
  • Roman Baber: I’m not going to mince words. Honestly, this guy is a moron. He says a lot of things that he’s picked up in the online discourse, but none of it makes any sense, most of it is contradictory, and he’s utterly vacuous—but nobody would call him on that.
  • Patrick Brown: While he kept insisting that he’s the only one who can deliver the suburbs like in the GTA, Brown also made some particular missteps, like insisting he would advance a no-fly zone over Ukraine (essentially committing Canada to a shooting war with a nuclear power), or that the point of reconciliation with Indigenous people is so that we can build more pipelines.
  • Pierre Poilievre: Aside from just using “freedom!” in as many answers as possible, he opened by outright attacking the Bank of Canada and saying he would replace the governor if he were to form government, which is a pretty big bomb to drop. He lied and prevaricated about his previous statements and positions, particularly during the Bitcoin portion of the evening. But the longer the evening went on, the more it became clear that he was just going down the right-wing populist checklist and name-checking every item on it, whether it was saying he’s reading Jordan Peterson’s book, or that he wants to fight “government censorship.” He displayed no principles, just virtue-signalling to the crowd he is courting.
  • Leslyn Lewis: Mostly said a lot of hyperbolic things about how “divided” the country is because of COVID, and that she is somehow going to heal the divides between people who believe in science and evidence, and anti-vaxxers who don’t care how many people they infect because they refuse to wear a mask or stay home. How does plan to heal those divides? Who knows?
  • Jean Charest: Charest was more pugnacious and was willing to break debate rules in order to how do you do, fellow kids?, and insist that he’s the only one who can unite east and west…but he too made a bunch of fairly questionable pronouncements. Like private healthcare delivery could have avoided lockdowns (erm, you saw the States, right?) or that he would cut income taxes to fight inflation (which is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline).

It was an event that begged for booze (which I did not imbibe in, because I had this post to write). But I will leave you with Paul Wells’ suitably acerbic take on the event, which sums the lunacy of it up nicely.

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Roundup: Manning says to ride that tiger

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It is now approximately day seventy-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and United Nations efforts to evacuate civilians from under the steel plant in Mariupol continue apace. Tales from the survivors who have been rescued and have made it to safety are pretty harrowing about life in the tunnels under the plant. Ukrainian forces are preparing a counteroffensive to push Russian forces away from Kharkiv and Izyum in the Donbas region. Amnesty International has been collecting evidence of Russian war crimes around the Kyiv region, including in Bucha. Meanwhile, it sounds like the Canadian “Norman Brigade” of fighters in Ukraine is being poorly led and under-equipped, and gosh, who could have seen this happening?

Closer to home, the conference formerly known as the Manning Conference is happening this weekend, and we’ve already seen the nastiness of the unofficial leadership debate that took place, and now we have Preston Manning himself insisting that their party can capture the “energy” and “enthusiasm” of the extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who made up the occupation in Ottawa, and that they can be “properly managed.”

No. Just no.

Manning has long held that you can ride the tiger of a populist mob and gain from it. Never mind that absolutely everyone who has tried has wound up being mauled by it, but golly, Manning still insists that you can do it. Gods know that Jason Kenney is certainly trying in Alberta, and has been trying to do what Manning has famously suggested about “tapping a relief well” and trying to direct that anger toward something that they can try and be productive with, but that’s not really working either, and all of those face-eating leopards that Kenney invited into the house, because he thought he could turn them on his perceived enemies, have realized that his face is right there and they want to eat it. You don’t try and work the mob up because you think you can use it to your advantage, and Manning keeps making this mistake over again, and encouraging his followers to do the same. What it’s doing is encouraging more extremism instead, and you can be damn sure that there will be repercussions for that.

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Roundup: Dubious procedural moves and political theatre

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We are now on or about day sixty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the big news is that Russia is cutting off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria, ostensibly because they refuse to pay in rubles as Russia demands. The real reason is, of course, blackmail over support for Ukraine, as well as an attempt to divide Europe, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Closer to home, there is some procedural bullshit going down, and I’m unimpressed. The government has put forward an omnibus motion that would give them the power to start implementing late-night sittings right away, rather than in the few weeks before the break, and even more curious is the notion that they would give ministers the ability to adjourn the Commons for the summer with no notice, and a simple vote call. The late-night sittings—with the added language that those sittings can’t be obstructed with dilatory motions—makes a certain amount of sense in that the procedural warfare that plagued them last year has made a comeback, and they haven’t even managed to pass the budget implementation bill from December, which is not good. This is in a sense make-up time for all of the time wasted on dilatory motions—actions have consequences. But that ability for a minister to pull the plug for summer at any point really sticks in my craw, and I’m not mollified by Mark Holland insisting that this is only intended for use during the final week. It feels to me a lot like the ability to give themselves a nuclear option to hold over the other parties, including the NDP, if they don’t want to play ball in getting bills through. If Holland really wants this only for the final week, the motion should be drafted to say so.

At the same time, Holland also announced that they were going to move ahead with creating a special security-cleared committee for those Winnipeg Lab documents, whether or not the Conservatives agree to join in. But…this feels like theatre at this point, because the Conservatives stopped boycotting NSICOP, and that’s exactly the kind of thing that committee exists to deal with. And the government already turned over the unredacted documents to NSICOP, so what really is the point here? Aside from political theatre? Why can’t we have grown-ups in charge?

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Roundup: Legitimizing lunatic narratives about inflation

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We are now around day fifty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like Russia is shifting more units to attacking cities in Eastern Ukraine, and what could be a battle to control the country’s industrial heartland. We also have satellite images that show Russians digging mass graves around Mariupol to try and hide evidence of their war crimes and atrocities against civilians in that city. In Russia, the regime is cracking down harder on its critics, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is being charged under the new law that criminalises spreading “false information,” and could be imprisoned for up to 15 years as a result.

Closer to home, I have about lost all patience with the way that the inflation numbers are being reported on, particularly because it’s primarily a lot of both-sidesing without actually reading the gods damned Consumer Price Index from Statistics Canada, even though it’s right there, and spells out what the drivers are. But because our media outlets—and both the CBC and The Canadian Press are especially bad about this—are more invested in the appearance of fairness for political messages than actually calling out falsehoods, simply give equal time to all of the messages. This particular piece on the CBC’s site yesterday, that goes and very gently debunks the messages that different political parties are spreading, is a lot more both-sidesing because it’s still giving equal weight to all of these messages, even if it’s getting experts to push back a little bit (but in some cases, still framing it as though some of these messages are still “a little bit right,” which is the cute trick that they’ve been relying on to not look like they’re biased against any party). And how much room is given to explaining the actual drivers? A single, small paragraph that lists a few of them in general terms, rather than laying out the issues of energy production and fuel shortages in certain countries, or the global supply shortage of semiconductor chips, or most importantly, the fact that we’ve had a lot of droughts in food-producing regions, including in Canada, and that is having a huge impact on food prices because the supply simply isn’t there.

Why this becomes even more important is because you have Pierre Poilievre saying flat out that the Bank of Canada’s economists are “financially illiterate,” because he learned better from the crypto bros on YouTube. It’s alarming, and if the mass media can’t push back against this utter lunacy, but instead soft-pedals it and frames it like “everyone is a little bit right” when they don’t actually bother to go to the gods damned statistical data, it lets this utterly bogus narrative gain traction and legitimacy. This is a problem for our democracy and our society in general, because they’re afraid that Poilievre’s bot army will be mad at them. They’re going to call you biased whatever you do, so why not show a bit of fortitude and call the lies what they are?

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1517525404126490624

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Roundup: Chalk up another Conservative disinformation campaign

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We’re now on or about day fifty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has been confirmed that Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, has sunk, which is a huge loss for Russia (particularly as Turkey is blockading the entrance to the Black Sea to military vessels, so there will be no replacement for it anytime soon), and it will no longer be able to support Russian ground forces, or to shell cities from afar. In the meantime, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to show that he is a master communicator for his country and his cause.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1514681561412780035

Closer to home, yet another pernicious bit of disinformation has started circulating, courtesy of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, who read the Emissions Reduction Plan (which was prepared by an arm’s-length advisory panel), found a reference to a proposal to add a surtax to certain kinds of gas-guzzling vehicles, and then wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Sun that declared this was the government’s plan. Jason Kenney picked up on this and decried it, as has the Conservative Party writ-large and several of its leadership contenders. Of course, there are no actual plans for such a tax, but why does the truth matter? This was the tactic they’ve been using on the supposed plans for a capital gains tax on primary residents, which doesn’t exist and never will exist (even if it’s actually decent public policy). This also compounds with the selective quotes they’ve been using from the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s recent report on carbon pricing, which has been torqued into more disinformation.

There’s so much disinformation and lies floating about, as though there weren’t enough actual things that you could absolutely excoriate this government for, and yet they resort to fiction. Utterly boggling.

Programming Note: I will be taking a long weekend off from the blog, because I am exhausted after the past few weeks. See you Tuesday!

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Roundup: The emergency measures votes were a test

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I believe we are now in day thirty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there are fears in the northern city of Chernihiv that they may become the next Mariupol, as the city undergoes shelling from Russian forces. Meanwhile, those Russian forces seem to be shifting away from trying to encircle Kyiv, and are instead moving toward the eastern Donbas region to try and consolidate gains there, leading to fears that Russia may be trying to split the country. Elsewhere, the International Committee of the Red Cross is asking Canada not to lump its humanitarian promises in with sanctions and military aid, as it threatens the neutrality of their organisation. Here is a look at some more actions the West could be taking to help Ukraine that aren’t a no-fly zone. It has also been announced that Justin Trudeau and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will co-host an international pledging event for “Stand Up For Ukraine” on April 9th.

Closer to home, the weekend saw a couple of different versions of the “inside story” of the Liberal and NDP supply and confidence agreement, from both Susan Delacourt and Aaron Wherry. The two recounting largely align, talking about how initial talks post-election quickly ended as everyone was still too raw from the vote, how Trudeau reached out to Singh after the birth of Singh’s daughter, that most of the talks happened virtually and close to the vest to avoid leaks, and that their face-to-face meeting was at Rideau Gate, which usually hosts dignitaries (but was where Julie Payette lived when she was GG rather than in Rideau Hall, along with her Secretary, Assunta DiLorenzo). What was particularly interesting was how the vote on the Emergencies Act became the test for the NDP that they could be trusted in this agreement, and how the Liberals were willing to provide security briefings to secure that support, and that when the NDP proved themselves, the deal could go ahead.

On that note, it’s interesting (but perhaps unsurprising) that Elections Canada said that they got no prior notice about the portions of the agreement that call for the exploration of three days of elections, allowing people to vote at any polling place in the riding, or improving the process of mail-in ballots. Some of those may be unwieldy or impossible, but the agreement’s language does specify that they would “work with Elections Canada to explore ways to expand the ability for people to vote,” so these ideas are not iron-clad. On the reconciliation front, there are hopes that the promise of stability that the agreement provides will help accelerate some timelines toward progress.

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