Tag Archives: Lebanon

Roundup: Dollarama Trumpism back on blast

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I regret to inform you that Pierre Poilieve is back on his MAGA-lite™ bullshit, and he’s going after DEI in order to “bring back merit.” It’s Dollarama Trumpism where they think that they can harness the “good parts only” energy of authoritarian populism without the overt racism—but they’re still going to wink to that racism. And it’s been pretty relentless, whether it’s deciding to target “DEI” or “wokeness,” the recent decision to go hard after immigration—sorry, “Liberal immigration policy” *wink*— or birthright citizenship. I’m not sure who they think they’re fooling, other than maybe that segment of the party’s base that Poilievre wants to keep on-side ahead of his leadership review.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3m3bgx3sgek2d

The thing with insisting you want to focus on “merit” is that we have empirical proof that “merit” is only ever applied to straight white men who don’t have to fairly compete with women or minorities. They can’t get a fair shake because of ingrained prejudices, but if they get their positions entirely based on merit, they are dismissed as “DEI hires.” (It’s even more hilarious when women in the Conservative caucus insist that they got their positions due to merit, but any women in the Liberal Cabinet are just “DEI hires.”) All of this is entirely well-founded, but they have decided that they’d rather wink to racists and claim that they’re doing it to avoid “bloated bureaucracies” and “checkboxes” when it really just boils down to racism/misogyny/homophobia, every single time, but they insist on lying to themselves about it.

Hits harder than any legacy media outlet.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-15T14:37:40.489Z

Meanwhile, Poilievre is ramping up his “get out of the way” bullshit, and has his caucus not only repeat it to absurd lengths, but also try to force it into situations that don’t make any sense. For example, one Conservative MP was on Power & Politics and trying to insist that if government “got out of the way” that we would have spent the past decade building critical mineral mines and pipelines to tidewater and that would have given us leverage over Trump. And while David Cochrane pushed back on this, none of it makes any sense because you would think that American dependence on our oil/aluminium/steel/softwood lumber/electricity would already give us leverage, but that doesn’t actually matter with Trump. Nobody was in a rush to build pipelines to tidewater because the Americans were a captive market. We weren’t in a rush to build critical mineral mines because the market was being well-supplied by China, and nobody builds mines overnight. And frankly, putting aside the fact that these projects were in fact advancing, this notion that governments should just abandon all environmental regulation, property rights, or Indigenous rights and title for the sake of letting industry loose, so that they could line their own pockets while forcing the environmental and social devastation in their wake onto governments to take care of—at a time when CO2emissions are spiking because of wildfires—is frankly just incompetence and lunacy.

I mean, who cares about things like the environment, or property rights, or the rights of Indigenous people whose land these projects are on? We should just let it all burn and watch the dollars flow in (to the pockets of a few select rich people).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T02:31:38.710Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks hit power infrastructure in seven regions across Ukraine. Russian drones are getting more precise, and are increasingly targeting Ukraine’s rail infrastructure.

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Roundup: A Pollyanna about Tuesday’s outcome

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I have not said much about the American election because not my circus, not my monkeys, and I really can’t get worked up about a contest I have no say in, however, comments made by the US ambassador to Canada this weekend have utterly boggled my mind. “I firmly believe that regardless of the outcome of the election, the United States is going to remain the most durable democracy in the world,” David Cohen said, and went on about how democracy will “easily” survive whatever the outcome of that election.

No. America has been teetering on the brink of autocracy for a while now, and while I get that his job is to be blandly reassuring as the ambassador, this just smacks of being a giant Pollyanna. And for Canada, where so much of what happens in the US leaks over the border and affects our politics here, those autocratic impulses are not far behind either. We already have provincial governments using tactics lifted directly from the authoritarian playbook, as is Pierre Poilievre, and he’s not shy about it either. And if America stops defending other democracies around the world under an autocratic regime, things are going to get very difficult indeed as these democracies are under threat from Russia and other autocratic actors who want to break them in order to show their own populations that democracy doesn’t work, so better to suck it up and live with the corruption of their autocratic states. And then there is Trump’s vision of NATO as a protection racket, that he fully intends to upend, and already Viktor Orbán is salivating at the thought of a Trump victory handing Ukraine to Russia, destroying a democracy the way he has been doing in Hungary.

There will be consequences, and I don’t think it helps anyone for Cohen to shrug it off like that.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv, injuring at least five. Ukrainian forces destroyed 66 out of 92 Russian drones sent into the country overnight Saturday, and fortunately, no casualties were reported. Russians have also taken control of the village of Vyshneve in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces hold back one of the most powerful offensives since the start of the invasion.

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Roundup: So he is hiding something?

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Over the past couple of days, Justin Trudeau and Karina Gould have been intimating that Pierre Poilievre has “something to hide” by not seeking his security clearance. It’s a stupid talking point, it trivialises the seriousness of the issue, and it descends to the same childish accusations that the Conservatives are lobbing at the government over the refusal to turn over certain unredacted documents related to SDTC as part of a banana republic production order (as the subject of the current privilege filibuster). It’s not cute, and it doesn’t make them look like the adults in the room.

And then along comes Michael Chong, who gave this cockamamie story to the Globe and Mail that because security clearances can involve invasive questions like sexual partners or past drug use, and that Trudeau is “so desperate” that he would use that information to publicly undermine Poilievre. But, and former CSIS director Ward Elcock made the point in the same piece, CSIS would never turn that information over to the PM, no matter the political pressure, so not only is Chong just making up conspiracy bullshit (as he has been wont to do increasingly of late), he is actually adding fuel fire by making it look like Poilievre does indeed have something to hide. Like, my dude, did you even think about your stupid conspiracy for five whole seconds before you blurted it out to Bob Fife? Honestly.

Remember when Michael Chong was a man of principle and didn't just constantly make up shitty conspiracy theories to suck up to his leader? #cdnpoli www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-24T17:20:23.744Z

We all know that the reasons Poilievre won’t get the clearance is because it would require him to lie slightly less than he does currently. Poilievre even tacitly admitted this when he declared in QP “This prime minister will not gag me!” (Phrasing!) But by trying to take this “hiding something” schtick across the board is just tiresome when everyone should be striving to be grown-ups about this.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched a thermobaric ammunition attack on Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, while Ukrainian forces shot down 40 out of 50 drones overnight. Russian forces have been making a fast advance into the town of Selydove, which they have been trying to take control of. Ukrainian intelligence suggests that North Korean troops are already in the Kursk region.

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Roundup: Inappropriate behaviour but no traitors

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Of the testimony at the Foreign Interference committee yesterday was the prime minister’s current National Security and Intelligence Advisor, who spoke about the allegations surrounding MPs in the NSICOP report. She stated that, having seen that intelligence and its updates since the report, she’s seen no indication of “traitors” in our Parliament. What she saw in the intelligence was inappropriate conduct and a lack of judgment in certain individuals, but no espionage, sabotage, or putting of Canadian security at risk.

This brings us back to the next steps in terms of any bad behaviour by MPs or lack of judgment, and what should be done about it, and once again, the answer is and always has been that the party leaders need to get involved. That means security clearances, and full briefings on the materials, so that they know what has been alleged, and that they can take corrective action in some fashion. (And before you say anything, yes Poilievre has a clearance as a former minister, but he has refused to be briefed under the specious reason that if he gets briefed, he’ll be “gagged,” which is nonsense and he knows it).

But as Philippe Lagassé points out, the chair of NSICOP also should have done more to be transparent than simply say what was in the report is enough, and leave it at that. Most people didn’t and won’t read the report, and media outlets taking those two or three sentences without context elsewhere in the document didn’t help either. Elizabeth May demonstrated that he could have gone further and said more without breaching any kind of confidentiality, but he chose not to for his own reasons, and so we’ve had months of suspicion for little reason.

#cdnpoli, all day every day.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-09T13:27:43.894Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile hit the port in Odesa, killing six, injuring eight, and damaging a Panamanian-flagged container ship. A further drone attack in the same region hit an apartment building, injuring another five. A Ukrainian drone strike has hit another Russian arms depot, which includes arms provided by North Korea.

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Roundup: Unserious about monetary policy

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Amidst party leaders making boneheaded tax promises in the three provincial elections going on right now (no, BC, you can’t forgo taxes on tips without trying to change federal tax authorities), economist Stephen Gordon has decided to revisit Pierre Poilievre’s promise to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada—something he doesn’t have the power to do—and looks at the supposed reasons why. Unsurprisingly, they don’t add up.

In other words, Poilievre is performatively trying to once again blame inflation on someone other than the global supply chain crunch, or the climate-related droughts that impacted food prices (to say nothing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), and has been pursuing bullshit attacks as a distraction. Those attacks included trying to bring the Bank under the purview of the Auditor General so that they could order her to do “performance audits” on their decisions during COVID (something she has no expertise in doing), because they are not serious people, and get all of their ideas about macroeconomics from crypto bros on YouTube. It’s really, really depressing that anyone thinks they are remotely qualified to govern.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one person and injured six in the eastern city of Sloviansk. A Russian missile also struck near a major Ukrainian airbase, while Russians fired missiles at two grain vessels on the Black Sea. Russian forces have also entered the outskirts of Toretsk, which is another frontline settlement. Ukrainian forces took credit for the strike on an oil depot in occupied Crimea, which has been fuelling Russia’s war effort, as well as sabotaging a Russian minesweeper in its Black Sea fleet.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1843234630754836742

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Roundup: Filibustering their own motion

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The current privilege fight has ground business in the House of Commons to a complete halt, thanks to the tactics of the Conservatives, and they are trying to use this as some form of blackmail on the government, particularly as the government has been unable to move the legislation around the capital gains changes. Andrew Scheer even tried to be cute during the Thursday Question yesterday and said that if the government can’t conduct its own business, then they should call an election. Because of course he did.

While I won’t relitigate why this is an abuse of privilege that sets a terrifying precedent, it has been called out by the Government House Leader that the Conservatives are filibustering themselves because the whole point of this is that it’s supposed to go to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee so that it can be decided upon what should happen, but that’s inconvenient for the Conservatives. They would rather put up every single MP to speak to this issue to run out the clock, and so that they can all recite prepared scripts that scream “Liberal corruption!” even though that’s not what the Auditor General found. (Yes, there were conflicts of interest, but the government was not implicated in this at all). Gould asserts that the Conservatives are trying to keep it away from committee because the moment that committee starts calling witnesses, legal experts will point out the abuse of the parliamentary privilege powers and that this is banana republic behaviour, and she’s not wrong, but the bigger issue here is that the plan  of the Conservatives is to make the House of Commons as completely non-functional as possible through abuse of this privilege debate (which again, should have been over in a couple of hours at most with the matter sent to committee) so that they can claim further justification for an election.

If the other opposition parties wised up and stopped playing along with the Conservatives in their desire to embarrass the government for their own partisan aims, Parliament could be functioning a lot more smoothly and things they want to get passed could, but none of them seem to care much about the long-term implications of their actions (like the banana republic precedents) because scoring points is too much fun. There also remains that the government could prorogue Parliament for a day or two in order to kill the privilege motion, but that could set them up for bigger headaches, particularly as they want certain bills out of the Sente and prorogation would reset the clocks on them. In any case, the dysfunction is intentional, and the Conservatives need to be called out on the lies they are spreading to justify this behaviour.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a major drone attack over Ukraine, targeting 15 regions; casualties included two adults and a child after a drone struck a fuel truck in Chernihiv. Ukraine did hit Russian radar stations inside the country with long-range missiles, while Ukraine’s top commander has ordered defences bolstered in the east after the loss of Vuhledar. New NATO secretary general Mark Rutte visited Kyiv as his first trip in his new role.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1841746253052321929

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Roundup: A promise to waste millions of dollars

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There are a lot of stupid, performative things being said right now, particularly in those three provincial elections, but one of the dumbest yesterday was courtesy of incumbent New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs, who promised that if re-elected, he will mount a new legal challenge of the federal carbon levy. And to make that worse, several Conservative MPs picked that up and declared during Question Period that the challenge was already underway (it’s not), as though it were a devastating argument for their demands to “axe the tax” or to call an election.

Higgs’ promise is premised entirely on bullshit. There is no basis for him to mount a new challenge because nothing about the programme has changed since the Supreme Court of Canada already ruled that it’s constitutional and within the powers of the federal government, particularly because of the existential challenge that climate change poses to Canadians. The fact that the price is increasing or that we have been though a bout of higher inflation—which has already stabilised and returned to target, and for which the carbon levy did not actually cause any of said inflation because that’s not how inflation works—don’t change any of the legal bases or arguments around the levy. And because the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled, any lower court that Higgs tries to mount a new challenge in is going to tell him to go pound sand.

Higgs is essentially promising to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, because you know that when the courts tell him to go pound sand, they’ll also tell him to reimburse the legal costs of the federal government because they wasted everyone’s time and money in bringing such a frivolous suit in the first place. But there is a political calculus, particularly on the right, where they are prepared to waste millions of dollars in doomed legal challenges because they think that it’s good electoral calculus to show that you’re fighting. Federally, Conservatives have made this argument a number of times when the government didn’t pursue doomed appeals and just made changes, and no doubt Higgs figures that this will work the same way for him. But then again, I guess they’re not bothered by the cognitive dissonance of “we need to balance the budget” and “we need to waste millions of dollars on a doomed legal crusade,” because that might require introspection or self-awareness, both of which are in incredibly short supply in politics these days.

Pretty much all of #cdnpoli. It's really hard to be optimistic about any of it right now.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-01T14:21:44.377Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Six civilians were killed and more wounded when Russian artillery struck a bus stop in Kherson. Russian troops have also reached the centre of Vuhledar, a Ukrainian bastion in the strategic high ground of the Donbas region, which is significant because of where it borders and the supply routes it controls. Ukraine is also investigating an apparent shooting of sixteen POWS by Russian troops.

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Roundup: A double standard on barring speeches

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There was a story in the Star yesterday that I hadn’t actually noticed happening, which is that Liberal MP Yvan Baker has been barred from speaking in the House of Commons until he apologises for saying that the “Putin wing” had taken over the Conservative Party on March 20th. Baker says he has no intention of apologising for what he considers to be the truth, and the Speaker, as usual, makes little tut-tut noises about what Baker said, never mind that there is a giant double-standard at play.

If Fergus is concerned about MPs alleging that their colleagues “stand four-square behind dictators,” it’s funny that the consequences only seem to apply to Baker. After all, Conservatives on a frequent basis have said that Trudeau is in the pocket of dictators, and that he allowed foreign interference on their behalf because it benefitted his party. (There is absolutely no public evidence of this). And most egregious was that Conservative MP Rachael Thomas has said on the floor of the Commons that Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and she faced absolutely no censure for saying it, which makes it really hard to see why Baker is being singled out for being hyperbolic—the point was about which elements of the party’s base that Poilievre is pandering to as opposed to saying that Poilievre is under Putin’s sway—when nobody else is. (I will note that Conservative MP Mark Strahl was barred from speaking for several weeks because he refused to withdraw the remarks that someone was lying, which is a big no-no under the rules of Parliament—rules which are now being absolutely abused—but he did eventually do so).

What is perhaps the most galling in all of his was the statement that Andrew Scheer gave to the Star, in which he says “Liberals should not whine and complain because they were caught spreading disinformation and lies to divide Canadians and cover for their own total failures on Ukraine.” Erm, serial liar and promoter of conspiracy theories Andrew Scheer is lecturing Liberals on the subject, when he faces zero consequences for lying in the House of Commons on a daily basis. We already knew he had absolutely no sense of shame, but it definitely extends to a complete lack of self-awareness as well. Just utterly ridiculous.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another bloody weekend in Ukraine which saw waves of drone attacks targeting Kyiv last night, the pounding of Zaporizhzhia with guided bombs earlier, the death of a top judge after an attack on Kharkiv, and an attack on a hospital in Sumy that killed ten. President Zelenskyy says that the front lines are “very, very difficult” as autumn descends on the conflict.

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Roundup: The Bloc vs the Senate

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The Bloc Québécois are getting a taste of what the Senate does and why, and they’re not happy. The Senate has been slow-walking Bill C-282, which aims to forbid a government from negotiating any further reductions to Supply Management in trade negotiations, and it’s a bad bill. Nevertheless, it passed the House of Commons, because MPs are sometimes sentimental fools and will vote for things that they think are feel-good without actually thinking through the consequences. This was one such bill, where MPs voted on it nearly unanimously because they fell all over themselves to show how much they all loved Supply Management, neverminded that it’s a bad bill. Now that it’s in the Senate, with some actually knowledgeable former senior civil servants in the Chamber who know what they’re talking about have the bill in their hands, and they’re not giving it an easy ride.

The essential complaint is that the bill constrains the royal prerogative around trade negotiations, which could have serious consequences down the road. I’m not sure it’s quite as serious as that—you can’t really bind future governments and this bill, should it pass, could be easily repealed (say, in the next budget implementation bill), but there won’t be an easy passage on this, and for good reason. The Senate exists to put a check on the populist excesses of the House of Commons, which is why they have an absolute veto (only exercised in extreme circumstances, mind you), and who can say “Hey, you guys didn’t do your due diligence, so now we’re going to.” It is their raison d’être, whether MPs like it or not, and it’s especially important for private members’ bill because they are pre-time allocated under the rules and get very little scrutiny, even when they really need it.

The Bloc, however, are trying blackmail. In Question Period yesterday, they were demanding that the government tell senators to pass the bill, or they’ll topple the government. But the government can’t tell the Senate what to do, and as I mentioned in a previous post, there is no mechanism by which the Government Leader in the Senate could fast-track such a bill, even if they wanted to, because it’s a private member’s bill. Furthermore, with a Chamber of mostly-independent senators who have a job until age 75, they are not bothered if the government falls. The blackmail doesn’t really work on them because their seats aren’t in jeopardy, and I’m not sure what the Bloc thinks they’re doing, particularly in trying to blackmail the government into passing this bill as well as their OAS bill (which remains unvoteable as they are unlikely to get a royal recommendation). In either case, they are learning the hard way that the Senate is not a rubber stamp and they can’t expect to order it around as though it were.

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were killed in a Russian missile attack on the central city of Kryvyi Riv, and another three were killed in a drone attack on the southern city of Izmail. Nine children taken to Russia during the invasion have now been returned to their families in Ukraine thanks to help from Qatar.

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Roundup: A promise to interfere with media

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It was late in the afternoon yesterday that CTV announced that the two-person team responsible for the manufactured quote of Pierre Poilievre “are no longer with CTV News.” The breach of journalistic ethics in manufacturing a quote because you needed it to fit your narrative, despite the fact that the quote you had available wasn’t really useable, makes this understandable, and these are consequences that can happen. I’m less concerned about that as much as I am about the other signals that have been sent, particularly by the Conservatives.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1839452343596720522

The fact that Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri, a former journalist herself, is promising that Poilievre is going to “restore journalistic ethics and integrity” should be lighting up every single alarm around the country because that is a promise to politically interfere in the media and its independence. It’s not enough that they have successfully bullied and intimidated one of the largest media outlets in the country, but they are promising more of this, but they plan to ensure that media falls in line. And then there’s the hypocrisy—that they align themselves with PostMillennial, True North, and The Rebel, all of whom have demonstrated a lack of ethics, or commitment to things like facts. The fact that this is a party that has made outright lying their chief strategy shows exactly why this kind of war with legitimate media outlets is so dangerous for our democracy.

On another note, there were a number of stories yesterday about NDP MP Leah Gazan tabling a bill to make residential school denialism illegal, and that this was done in advance of National Truth and Reconciliation Day. The problem? Not one of the stories from any of the outlets (National Post, CBC or The Canadian Press) bothered to mention that Gazan has already used her private members’ business slot in this parliament for her cockamamie “basic income framework” bill, and it went to down to defeat earlier this week. That means that this bill is going to languish on the Order Paper and never see the light of day. The CP copy did note that “The chances the bill actually will be debated and pass into law are slim without it being adopted as a government bill by the Liberals,” but that obscures the fact that she used her spot, so the whole point of her tabling this legislation is performative.

Parliamentary procedure and rules matter, and if you ignore it, you wind up looking like a fool for spending your dwindling resources covering legislation that will never, ever see the light of day.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russians launched a five-hour aerial attack on Kyiv overnight, again targeting the power grid. There was also shelling of Kherson in the south that killed one, rockets launched against Kharkiv, and more shelling in the Donetsk region that killed three.

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