Tag Archives: Jagmeet Singh

Roundup: Political theatre over terrorist listings

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After Question Period yesterday, Jagmeet Singh rose to propose a motion that the government get serious about tackling white supremacy, which included listing the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization. After a brief interruption where Elizabeth May wanted the Soldiers of Odin added to that list – which was ruled procedurally out of order – Singh’s motion passed, and it was a big social media coup for him, which was also turned into a fundraising pitch so that they could “keep the pressure up” on the Liberals to actually go through with it.

The problem? This is all political theatre – and dangerous political theatre at that. The motion was non-binding, and does not automatically list the Proud Boys, but serves as political direction for the relevant national security agencies to do so, but they can’t actually do that, because there are clear processes set out in law to do so. The Conservatives tried this a few years ago with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and to have them listed – which still hasn’t been done, because there’s a process, and established criteria that it appears they don’t meet the threshold of under existing Canadian law.

To add to that, this kind of precedent should be absolutely alarming because it was a year ago that there were people demanding that Indigenous protesters blockading railways be declared “terrorists,” and if this were up to votes in the Commons (though, granted, this was a motion that required unanimous consent), that could turn bad very, very fast. There are established processes for terrorist listings for a reason, and they should be respected – not being used so that MPs can pat themselves on the back and virtue-signal that they oppose white supremacy. That doesn’t solve problems and can make the jobs of legitimate national security agencies more difficult, but hey, MPs get to make some hay over Twitter, so that’s what counts, right?

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Roundup: The weekend year-enders

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The main networks had their year-enders with prime minister Justin Trudeau air over the weekend, and I’m not sure that we’ve learned too much more that’s new, but nevertheless, here we are. To CBC, Trudeau said that they need to be ready for an election regardless, given that it’s a hung parliament, even if he doesn’t want one, but wouldn’t rule out calling one himself (which is fair, given that there may be a situation where he may not have a choice to clear a logjam in Parliament. Things happen). He also says that it’s possible that he did contract COVID when his wife had it, but he was asymptomatic the whole time and was in self-isolation throughout.

To CTV, Trudeau defended his vaccine strategy given the scramble for PPE early on, slammed the NHL trying to jump the queue for vaccines, gave some more explanation as to the rationale behind the planned stimulus spending once the pandemic ends (and again promised to balance the budget after temporary benefits programmes are wound down), deflected on his ethical blind spots, and stated that he wasn’t ready to decriminalise all drugs yet, despite some sectors calling for it as a way to deal with the opioid epidemic.

Meanwhile, the PM’s private photographer, Adam Scotti, offered his year-in-review, and there are some amazing photographs in there. Take some time to wander through them and it will take a while, because there is a lot to go through from the year that was. I think what I was most taken with were the photos of the full House of Commons from early in the year, and how strange that looks now given the current circumstances. Highly recommended overall.

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Roundup: Admission that deadlines will be missed

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The federal government announced yesterday that they weren’t going to be able to meet their deadline for fixing all of the boil-water advisories on First Nations reserves, in part because of delays caused by the pandemic. And while they should get some points for at least owning this rather than sending it down the memory hole like their predecessors did, this is yet one more file where they need to do a much better job of communicating what is going on with the file. And Marc Miller is better than many of his fellow ministers, but there needs to be a hell of a lot more candour that about these boil-water advisories, such as each case is unique so you can’t fit the same solution to all of them; it is a huge challenge to build major infrastructure in remote and fly-in communities, and that takes a lot more time to complete a project as a result; that in some communities, the bigger problem is capacity to maintain systems – and in some communities, the problem is that as soon as they train someone to maintain the system, they get a better offer and get poached. Miller did note that in some cases, the state of decay in some of these systems was not adequately appreciated, and that climate change and shorter winters make getting materials up to some communities on ice roads more difficult. The other aspect of note is that there is yet more funding attached to finish the job, as well as better ongoing maintenance and prevention of future advisories, which is all good, but again, they need to communicate what the challenges are, lest we get another round of people who live in cities not being able to appreciate that you can’t throw money at a problem like this and hope it gets fixed overnight.

This being said, there is already talk about broken promises, and the dangers of setting deadlines, and so on. I would note that there should be nothing wrong with setting ambitious targets, and there should also be nothing wrong with adjusting them, but that should be accompanied by candour that lays out why plans need to be adjusted. I think this government underestimates how much goodwill can be gained by frank and honest discussions of projects rather than just sticking to the happy-clappy talking points and other pabulum that they spout, but what do I know?

In pandemic news, the Alberta government has requested field hospitals from the federal government and the Red Cross, but they claim that this is just about contingency planning, and that they haven’t requested personnel for them. Given that infections are out of control in the province, and its hospitals are already at the point of being overwhelmed, you can be pretty sure that this line about it being for a “contingency” is bogus, that they know they need to do this because they refuse to lockdown, and this is just softening the ground.

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Roundup: Ford ignored advice in favour of uncontrolled spread

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Surprising nobody, we find that Doug Ford rejected advice from his public health officials in releasing his colour-coded guidelines, because it’s all about business over human lives. And while there have been calls for a while to try and determine just who is giving him advice, this reinforces the point that these remain political decisions, and that it is Ford and his Cabinet who are the ones to be held to account for what has been happening with infections in Ontario. The fact that Ford put his “red line” figure so far above public health advice, to a level where you are literally dealing with uncontrolled spread rather than trying to stamp it out early, should tell everyone that he is not taking this seriously.

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We’ve also been finding out things like Ford refusing to spend COVID funds on things like schools and long-term care homes, and have instead been sitting on the funds to pad the books – and we have the province’s Financial Accountability Officer confirming this. This should be no surprise. I mean, look at the autism programme, where Ford promised more money and then spent none of it, and the wait lists continued to grow and parents and families continue to suffer, and the long-term consequences of not getting early intervention therapies are going to balloon for years. But Ford doesn’t care. He cares about looking like he’s fiscally prudent because every gods damned pundit in this country still thinks it’s 1995 and will always be 1995 – and Ford desperately seeks their validation.

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And this need for validation has been a big part of why we’re at the state we’re in here in Ontario. Because Ford didn’t go full-Trump early in the pandemic, or throw tantrums at Justin Trudeau, everyone suddenly started giving him praise. He sounded avuncular, and suddenly everyone assumed he was doing a good job when he wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the COVID money and delaying any meaningful action about, say, getting schools back up and running, or increasing lab capacity for testing, or the contact tracing abilities of public health units across the province. None of it. But people still showered him with praise for how well he was behaving, and for striking up an unlikely friendship with Chrystia Freeland. And yet here we are, where he and his Cabinet have repeatedly lied about what is going on with the pandemic, about their response, and even the direction of the case numbers. Hopefully this piece in the Star that clearly demonstrates that Ford rejected the advice in favour of waiting for uncontrolled spread (because gods forbid he close down businesses) will start to open people’s eyes, but my optimism for that is waning because of all of the other scandals and distractions that his government has created only serve to scatter the attention necessary to force his hand.

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Roundup: Blustering through a climbdown

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It was a day full of bravado, as Erin O’Toole began the day with a bit of a climbdown, saying they would change the name of their proposed special committee from the blatantly inflammatory “anti-corruption committee” to the “special committee on allegations of misuse of public funds by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic,” which is exactly the same thing (and whose first four letters – which committees abbreviate to – would be SCAM, which is yet another one of their childish tactics). Government House leader Pablo Rodriguez was not mollified, quipping “If you write a book about Frankenstein and call it ‘Cinderella,’ it’s still a book about Frankenstein.” O’Toole then tried to say they would amend their motion to insist that a vote for it was not a vote for an election, to which the government said no dice – you’re saying you don’t have confidence in us, so you get to put your money where your mouth is as this is going to be a confidence vote. And then O’Toole tried to say that he doesn’t have confidence in the government, but doesn’t want an election, and sorry, that’s not how this works. You’re accusing them of corruption and misusing public funds – which is a loss of confidence in a system like ours – and then saying you don’t want an election? Yeah, no. You have confidence and the government governs, or you don’t, in which case the government falls and you go to an election.

There is going to be a monumental amount of chest-thumping and testosterone being hosed across the carpet between the aisles in the Commons today as this comes to a head, but frankly, the government is calling O’Toole out for his bluster and tough talk. The Bloc are also blustering about being in favour of an election, leaving the NDP holding the bag. Jagmeet Singh insisted that this was a “farce” and “stupid” to trigger an election in a pandemic over creating a committee – omitting that the title of the committee implied corruption, which should be a de facto loss of confidence, and the fact that said committee’s terms of reference would give it priority over all other government business, including having ministers, the prime minister, and civil servants being expected to drop everything and appear or produce documents at the committee’s beck-and-call, in the middle of a pandemic where everyone is already stretched. (There was also Conservative sniping that Singh didn’t seem to have a problem with John Horgan calling an early election in the middle of a pandemic). I know the NDP want to play the grown-ups in the room (somewhat ironic after Charlie Angus’ histrionics and theatrics on the WE Imbroglio file), but at least represent the situation for what it is.

Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column explains just how the motion on creating that special committee can be considered a confidence matter. Paul Wells offers some intense snark over the current confidence showdown, and how Trudeau may not be gambling if he’s likely to win another election. Heather Scoffield sees utility in the government’s proposed pandemic spending oversight committee – assuming that it is set up as advertised.

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Roundup: Taking credit for changing nothing

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It’s becoming a tale as old as time, where NDP leader Jagmeet Singh calls a late-afternoon press conference to declare that he has achieved a great victory of pushing on an open door and getting nothing new that the Liberals weren’t already going to do, to be followed by his supporters taking to social media to crow about it. And thus, late Friday afternoon, Singh held a press conference to say that he had struck a deal with the Liberals about paid sick leave, and that this, along with their previous decision to keep EI and the recovery benefit at CERB levels, meant that he was likely to vote confidence in the government, thus avoiding the election that was never going to happen anyway.

But let’s review – you can be assured that the Liberals didn’t decide to boost the EI and recovery benefit levels from $400 to $500/week because of Singh’s pressure, but rather because they can see the COVID case counts climbing like the rest of us, and with the second wave here earlier than anticipated. That’s likely going to mean more shutdowns, even if they’re not as bad as the initial one in March, and their commitment to having Canadians’ backs means that it was easier to keep the benefit levels the same. On top of that, they had already committed to paying for the sick leave benefit that the provinces would implement, based on negotiations that happened at the behest of BC premier John Horgan (as Trudeau assiduously assigned him the credit and not Singh). When Trudeau got this assurance from the premiers, Singh declared victory and his supporters crowed that it was all him that did this when it clearly wasn’t. And now, Singh is again taking credit for this benefit, even though nothing has actually changed.

And then we get supposed dunks like this one. Nothing changed. Nothing the federal government does will unilaterally change provincial labour laws that will actually implement this sick benefit, especially on the permanent basis that Singh wants it to be. Sure, the federal government says they’ll pay for those two weeks of sick leave, but does that mean that the person’s job is going to be protected? Nope. There are provinces, like Nova Scotia, who were reluctant about it because they felt it was up to collective bargaining between employers and labour to come to an agreement on this leave. Does this agreement that Singh got change that? Nope. Nothing has changed, and yet he’s suddenly the new Tommy Douglas. Girl, please.

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Roundup: Recovery benefit tabled

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The House of Commons resumed its first full day of “normal” operations yesterday, if you consider the abomination of hybrid sittings to be normal. While the topic of the day was the Bloc’s sub-amendment to the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne (because you don’t actually amend the Speech itself), we also saw the government’s first piece of legislation tabled, which lays out some of the post-CERB recovery benefits, particularly the creation of the new benefit for those who don’t qualify for EI.

The headline figure there is that the Liberals have decided to keep the benefit levels around $500 per week or $2000 per month, as it was under CERB, rather than the plan that they initially floated which was to cap it at $400/week, likely in response to demands that they don’t allow it to become a disincentive to finding work (which is really indicative of a problem in this country where wages are too low to attract workers). It also provides the 10-day sick leave benefit and amends the Canada Labour Code so that it’s accessible to federally-regulated employers, though provinces will still need to amend their own labour laws to accommodate it.

All of this means is that the demands that Jagmeet Singh was making for him to “consider” supporting the Throne Speech are essentially met, and he can start declaring victory and patting himself on the back for the onerous task of pushing on an open door. I mean, I rather suspect that the Liberals kept the levels at $500/week of their own accord once it became clear that we are now in the second wave and that further lockdowns, either province-wide or more targeted, are far more likely than they were before. But this particular detail won’t matter to Singh and his followers. Instead, they will insist that it was their pressure that made the Liberals cave, and the can consider themselves heroes – but Trudeau’s government will survive another day.

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Roundup: The creeping presidentialization of national addresses

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As far as Throne Speeches go, it was on the long-side – fifty-four minutes in total – while the scene was sparse owing to the pandemic. A common refrain from the commentariat was asking what exactly was new in the speech – much of it was a recitation of the Liberal Party’s greatest hits, with a newfound sense of urgency to some of those long-standing promises (most of which require negotiations with provinces who are reluctant to take on costly new social programmes), and the assurance to Canadians that this is not the time for fiscal austerity as we need to “build back better.” There were some relevant things about ensuring a green and inclusive recovery,

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The post-Speech responses in the press conferences that followed were pretty typical – the Conservatives hated everything about it, and complained about things that their leader has been shitposting the opposite of for the past couple of weeks. The Bloc have decided that it somehow violated the rights of the provinces, when it talks about negotiating national programmes with them. The NDP weren’t going to pan it outright, but Jagmeet Singh instead demanded that the government implement paid sick leave for every worker in Canada – something that the federal government can’t do because the vast majority of workplaces are provincial jurisdiction. So that’s fun.

And then, a short while later, were the big national addresses. Trudeau started off good, talking about the fight of our generation, and that Thanksgiving is now out of the question but we still have a shot at Christmas if we can get the second wave under control, which means get a flu shot, wear masks, wash your hands, and download the COVID Alert app. But then he started selling the Throne Speech, and it turned into an infomercial, in spite of the promise that this was going to be an urgent message about the pandemic and not about politics. That assurance was completely lost on Erin O’Toole, whose only nod to the pandemic was to say that his family’s situation shows that we all need to be extremely vigilant – before he pivoted to Western alienation, and complaining that Trudeau didn’t listen to any of his (performative) demands around the Throne Speech, and concluded by warning about Communist China. So that was something. Yves-François Blanchet, also in COVID isolation, addressed his reply to Quebeckers and Francophones, and then accused the prime minister of interfering in Quebec’s jurisdiction (he didn’t), and demanded unequivocal transfers to Quebec in a week or he’ll vote against the Throne Speech. Erm… And then there was Jagmeet Singh, who started off with the empathetic approach of “I know you’re worried and we’re going to fight for you,” but quickly pivoted to demanding a wealth tax. So…that was the “urgent” and “not political” use of prime-time airtime. The worst part of the whole exercise, however, was the creeping presidentialization of it – addresses that should have happened in the House of Commons were forced to dinnertime television in the hopes of getting a bigger audience, for messages that came off sounding like pre-election posturing. If Trudeau had stuck to his first couple of minutes – that we need to get our shit together and flatten this infection curve – then that would have been fine. But the sales job on the Throne Speech with him giving the clips and not Julie Payette was a complete misstep.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield finds good things for the economic recovery in the Speech, but hopes the government can gets its act together when it comes to implementing them. Economist Lindsay Tedds sees a lot to like in the Throne Speech, particularly the pledge around automatic filing of income taxes so that marginalized people who often don’t file will finally be able to get benefits they are entitled to. Susan Delacourt contrasts the two speeches on Wednesday, and what each’s tone is trying to convey. Paul Wells pans the whole thing, and notes that nothing has changed since before the prorogation. Jen Gerson puts the whole display in a wider context of a world in which real trouble is brewing, and Canadian politics is utterly unprepared for it.

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Roundup: Another brave demand for money without strings

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Four nominally conservative premiers convened in Ottawa yesterday to once again bravely demand that the federal government give them more money for healthcare and infrastructure, and to not attach any strings to it. In total, they demanded at least $28 billion more per year for healthcare, $10 billion for infrastructure, and retroactive reforms to fiscal stabilization that would give Alberta another $6 billion. Of course, two of those premiers – Jason Kenney and Brian Pallister – were in the Harper government when health transfers were unilaterally cut, to which we must also offer the reminder that the numbers at the time show that provincial health spending was not rising nearly as fast as the health transfer escalator, which means that the money was going to other things, no matter how much the provinces denied it. As well, most provinces have not actually been spending the current infrastructure dollars that are on the table for one reason or another (some of which have been petty and spiteful), so why demand more when they already aren’t spending what’s there.

As for Alberta’s demand for retroactive fiscal stabilization, one should also add the caveat that the current formula asserts a certain amount of moral risk for provinces who rely too heavily on resource revenues for their provincial coffers – that they should be looking at other forms of revenue (like sales taxes) so that they aren’t so exposed to the vagaries of things like world oil prices. Retroactively changing the formula means that the federal government becomes their insurance for the risks they undertook on their own balance sheets, which hardly seems fair to the other provinces in confederation, who have to pay higher provincial taxes.

And then Kenney dropped this little claim:

This is patently untrue. The province still has tremendous fiscal capacity because they still have the highest per capita incomes in the country and the lowest taxation. Sure, that fiscal capacity has diminished, but not that much. The province’s deficit is a policy choice because they refuse to implement a modest sales tax that could actually pay for the services that Kenney is now in the process of slashing, having ordered up a report to tell him that they have a spending problem instead of a revenue problem. Err, and then he spent billions on a money-losing refinery and another pipeline that will actually make said refinery an even bigger money-loser. So no, the quality of healthcare in his province isn’t being jeopardized by the state of his economy – it’s because he won’t stabilize his revenues (and because he’s launching an ill-conceived war against the doctors in his province in the middle of a global pandemic, because he’s strategic like that).

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Roundup: Blaming the wrong government

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It appears that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has decided to use his need for a COVID-test after one of his staffers tested positive in order to be performative about the whole affair. Despite there being a dedicated testing services available to MPs and their families (because yes, Parliament is an essential service), O’Toole and family apparently opted to attempt the public route, which in Ottawa has been backed up for days because of a lack of testing capacity. O’Toole then put out a press release to blame the federal government – not for inadequate capacity, which is the domain of the provinces, and O’Toole couldn’t possibly be seen to criticize Doug Ford and his lack of appreciable action on the pandemic – but because rapid testing hasn’t been approved by the regulators at Health Canada. Hours later, Michelle Rempel, the new Conservative health critic, doubled down and demanded that Cabinet force Health Canada to work faster (and misusing an analogy about the bourgeoisie and “let them eat cake” in the process).

There are a couple of problems with O’Toole’s demands, and one is that Cabinet should be interfering in the work of a regulator, which sets up all kinds of bad precedents – you know, like the one the Conservatives set when they fired the nuclear safety regulator because she refused to restart a nuclear reactor during a crisis of isotope production. The other is that Health Canada has good reason not to approve these tests as they are, because they produce false negatives more often than the regular tests, and that creates a false sense of security among people who may be spreading the virus. “Oh, but the FDA approved it!” people say, ignoring that it’s an emergency approval that relies on self-reported results and not independently verified ones, which again, should be concerning – not to mention that infections in the US are still spreading rapidly. The fact that Health Canada is doing the job that the FDA didn’t shouldn’t mean that we’re “falling behind” – we’re doing the due diligence that they’re not.

As well, I’m not exactly mollified by the notion that O’Toole attempting the public route when he had an option available already because it’s the kind of performative “We’re like real people” nonsense – especially if it took a spot away from another local family who doesn’t have access to the private test that O’Toole did. It’s not heroic or setting a good example – it’s political theatre that could hurt other people in the process.

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