Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: More of a stage than an institution

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The House of Commons is back today after the Christmas break, and you can pretty much guarantee that there will be a level of awfulness to the discourse, because that’s where things are right now. In fact, when asked over the weekend, former prime minister Joe Clark correctly noted that the House of Commons is “more a stage than an institution” these days. You’ve heard me bang on about this more times than I can count, but it bears repeating—MPs are no longer debating ideas. They are reciting prepared talking points into the record, because those are being used to generate clips for social media. It’s not even for the benefit of news media anymore, like it used to be (which caused its own particular problems with how QP works), because they all think they can just bypass legacy media and speak directly to their own audiences over their socials.

It’s no longer politics—it’s theatre. Bad theatre. The kind where people can’t even memorise their lines, but are full-on reading the script in front of them during the performance, not even on cue-cards that are far enough in the distance, and most of them can’t even be ashamed of their own amateurishness as they adhere to their party’s message, do what is expected of them, and continue to pretend that this is all normal.

And that’s why our democracy is in trouble.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Security officials in Ukraine say that defence ministry officials conspired with employees from an arms firm to embezzle nearly $40 million that was earmarked to buy mortar shells. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has disclosed his own income as part of a drive for transparency and combatting corruption.

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Roundup: Debunking Singh’s dunks

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NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s political comms lately have been a little bit…cringey. Not like that TikTok in the shower staring blankly cringey, but saying ridiculous things that he should have thought about for thirty seconds before posting cringey. Like this housing development in Edmonton, that he’s denouncing as “luxury condos.” Except they’re not, that whole concept is dated, any market housing that increases supply helps push down prices, and oh yeah, it’s a Métis-led development that is geared largely for affordable housing, and most of them are to be pegged at below-market. Yikes.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748311506620428422

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748313113206636842

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748314188756251009

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s pretending that Poilievre will cancel rent control, which, erm, doesn’t exist federally, and then goes on a conspiracy theory about being beholden to developers who contributed to his campaign, in the low thousands of dollars, because remember, this is Canada and we have campaign contribution limits. If you think you’re buying a politician for $1200/year, you’re out to lunch.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1749125638961652148

Of course, this is what happens when as a party, you crib all of your ideas from the “justice Democrats” in Washington, and ignore that we’re two separate countries with different laws, demographics, and circumstances. Unfortunately, this keeps happening, and it makes our politics in this country dumber as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia had to suspend operations at a Baltic Sea fuel terminal after what appeared to be a Ukrainian drone strike caused a major fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is concerned by Trump’s rhetoric of unilateral action and claiming he could end the conflict in 24 hours, and wants Trump to visit Ukraine so he can see the situation for himself.

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Roundup: A ridiculous court appeal

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There is a court case in Ontario, now being appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal, filed by election reform advocates claiming that the existing single-member plurality voting system is unconstitutional because it violates Charter rights. It was rightfully dismissed by the Superior Court judge, because obviously, but there is something I did want to remark on. No, I’m not going to go into another rant about why I’m not a fan of proportional representation systems, or how most of their arguments deliberately misconstrue how single-member plurality works, but rather about how this is yet another attempt to use the courts when you lose at politics.

Beyond this kind of challenge being just on this side of lawfare, what gets me is how these kinds of groups seem to have zero conception of just what they want the courts to order in terms of a remedy, because that’s a pretty big deal. You want the courts to declare that the current system violates the Charter? Ignoring for the moment that their arguments are specious and jejune, what exactly do they think the courts are going to do? Order the federal government to implement a PR system? Which one? Because that’s kind of a giant sticking point. One of the main reasons why the electoral reform committee in Trudeau’s first parliament failed is because the recommendations in that report were hot garbage—design a bespoke system with a bunch of factors that rendered it virtually impossible to achieve without some major constitutional changes. PR is not one system you can just plug-and-play—there are so many variations of it that can wildly affect outcomes that it’s not inconceivable that it would degenerate into a major fight for years, while the court’s declaration of invalidity hangs over them. How does that work, exactly?

There are similar problems with other court challenges, such as the ones purportedly launched by youth over climate change. What exactly do they think the courts are going to propose as a remedy in that kind of a situation—and if you say “follow the science,” you deserve a smack upside the head, because science is a process, not a declaration. Science is not policy. The courts cannot impose policy, which is why it’s a really dumb idea to resort to the courts when you lose at politics. But that’s what we’re getting a lot of, and it means using the wrong tools and wasting a lot of time and energy to attack the problem in entirely the wrong way.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage depot in western Russia, causing a massive blaze, as a way of unsettling voters ahead of their presidential election.

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Roundup: Official silence around Lewis’ most recent nuttery

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There has been some attention paid lately to the fact that Leslyn Lewis is promoting a House of Commons e-petition that calls on Canada to withdraw from the UN, in the name of our “sovereignty.” Which is ridiculous, because the UN doesn’t impact on anyone’s sovereignty (which is partially why it’s such an ineffective body), but not unexpected. Lewis has peddled many a conspiracy theory around the WHO, or the World Economic Forum (which is a particular conspiracy theory that leans heavily into antisemitism), and has not only not received any rebuke from her party, but they actively encourage some of these same conspiracy theories—particularly those around the World Economic Forum (and then turn around and wonder about the rise in antisemitism. Gosh).

This largely went unmentioned in legacy media for a few days (but hey, a lot of people are still on vacation), but I do find the absolute silence from the Conservatives to be interesting. Some of their former staffers have tried to offer a bit of polish to this, but you can’t actually polish this. (And no, she’s not even data-mining on this kind of petition because it’s through the House of Commons’ portal, not her own or a party website). The simple fact of it is that the Conservatives are more than willing to engage in this kind of nuttery because they think that these are accessible voters in the next election, because these have tended to be people who didn’t used to vote, but then Maxime Bernier offered them something to vote for, and they flocked to his banner, and now Poilievre wants them under his, so he’s willing to entertain this dangerous nonsense and to keep shifting the Overton window in order to try and win those votes, even though it’s almost certainly a fool’s errand because they can see how hollow he really is. Nevertheless, he won’t stop trying, and we can expect more of this kind of nuttery going forward, because that’s who they are these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While there has been little movement on the front lines, long-range attacks back-and-forth carry on, with the Russians having acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea, while Ukraine has launched drone attacks both against military targets in occupied Crimea and the around the Russia city of Belgorod. A Ukrainian parliamentary committee is debating changing the rules around mobilisation, and increasing sanctions for draft evasion.

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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: NSIRA spanks Global Affair’s intelligence program

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A long-delayed public release of NSIRA’s report into the activities of the Global Security Reporting Program—the “intelligence” arm of Global Affairs, which has diplomats openly engaging with persons of interest abroad—was finally released, and it’s making some waves. In particular, for a programme that isn’t actual covert intelligence gathering has some governance problems, with a lack of coherent policies or training that has led to some lines being blurred, which can make some countries believe this is an actual foreign intelligence service (it’s not, and we don’t have one).

So, with this in mind, here are four threads from some very reputable sources. Stephanie Carvin walks through the report, and breaks down its components, as well as the government’s responses.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1737569161042096138

Jessica Davis has a shorter walkthrough (with paragraph numbers!) about her own concerns about what she reads in it.

Leah West has a few legal observations about the report.

And Thomas Juneau gives a much more generous read, and places some of the GSRP’s work into better context.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed journalists’ questions about whether Ukraine is losing the war, but acknowledges challenges of being in a country under siege. Ukraine’s forces appear to be moving to a more defensive posture, likely because of the artillery shortage.

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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: Scheer throws stones at Fergus from his glass house

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The saga around Speaker Fergus’ fate is starting to become farcical, as Andrew Scheer brought up more “proof” that Fergus has been engaged in partisan activities, because he went to a party event…for a Quebec Liberal MNA, which, again, is not the same party or the same league. (Honestly, there are a bunch of former Quebec Liberal MNAs currently sitting in the Conservative caucus, much like there are a bunch of former BC Liberal MLAs in the Conservative caucus.). Scheer’s urge to keep finding this “proof” and tattling is becoming ridiculous.

But then, a twist—CBC found out that Andrew Scheer was fined by the House of Commons for filming a partisan video in support of a by-election nomination candidate in his Hill office, which isn’t allowed, and then had that successful candidate pay for the fine out of his campaign expenses, which may run afoul of Elections Canada rules (but those returns haven’t been audited yet because the by-election is too recent). The NDP have also been finding instances of where Scheer attended party fundraisers when he was the Speaker, but Pierre Poilievre’s spokesperson insists this was totally different, while also falsely saying that the provincial party event was a “fellow Liberal’s fundraiser.” But the fact that Scheer is not only a liar but a hypocrite (to say nothing of being a braying doofus) is no surprise to absolutely anyone.

And because the stupid twists don’t stop, we also learned that Fergus had a conversation with former MP Glen Pearson, who went on to write an op-ed in Fergus’ defence shortly after he took the role (before the drama happened) about the decorum in the Chamber. I’m starting to get very tired of this particular back-and-forth, and hope this doesn’t carry into the New Year.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians launched 42 drones and six missiles at southern Ukraine overnight Wednesday, which killed one person. Ukraine and Molodova got the green-light to start fast-tracking their bid to join the European Union, but Hungary remains an obstacle as they held up new aid funding for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1735378672029167827

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Roundup: Government land isn’t a slam dunk

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You have probably heard a lot of talk from both Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh about the federal government not doing enough about housing with the lands that they own. Poilievre is making grandiose promises about all the houses they’ll build on it, and all of the office towers they’ll convert, never mind that conversions are difficult and in many cases impossible because of how those buildings are structured, while Singh is demanding that any government-built housing on public land be “affordable,” never mind that there is still a need for market-priced housing, because otherwise wealthier households are competing for the same “affordable” spaces as low-income households if your supply is constrained. (Singh also believes that the federal government can build all of this housing on their own, as if they’ll hire the planners, architects and contractors on their own—not really feasible).

Meanwhile, just building on government-owned land is actually easier said than done. Why? Mike Moffatt lays out a lot of those reasons here:

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1726576778532340046

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1726577611722355121

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1726578211533054284

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1726578825230971074

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1726579784661242205

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces have been focused on containing attempted Russian advances near Bakhmut, while two people were killed in Russian shelling on Kherson. There was also a grenade blast that killed two in Kyiv, the cause of which remains unclear. Ukraine’s two top cyber defence officials have been sacked as an investigation into alleged embezzlement is ongoing in the cybersecurity agency.

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Roundup: A conspicuous lack of self-reflection

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It has not gone unnoticed that while Conservatives have been decrying the rise in antisemitism, there has been absolutely zero introspection about the kinds of deeply antisemitic conspiracy theories that they have been promulgating in an attempt to win the far-right fringe votes that they think will push them over the edge to electoral victories.

 

It wasn’t that long ago that there was a song and dance about how Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s tweets about how “shocking” it was that Chrystia Freeland interviewed George Soros when she was a journalist, were supposed to result in some kind of apology to Jewish groups, but nothing really came of it. Findlay is now the caucus whip, and the party is still sending out mailers about the dangers of the World Economic Forum, which Poilievre himself has denounced for incredibly stupid reasons. And yet, there is absolutely zero self-awareness that their pushing conspiracy theories is helping to feed this. And while there is a tonne of equivocating about how it’s really the “left” that is antisemitic and dangerous, they refuse to look at themselves in the mirror. This all remains so deeply stupid.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck an apartment block in the eastern town of Selydove, killing two and wounding three. Ukrainian forces have confirmed that they have established a beachhead on the eastern banks of the Dnipro River, which is a milestone in the ongoing counter-offensive. Civil society groups in Ukraine estimate that the death toll on their side is around 30,000 troops.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1724784115210428863

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