Tag Archives: NATO

Roundup: Poilievre tries out new tough-on-crime disinformation

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As evidenced in Question Period yesterday, the Conservatives have found a new lie to suit their narrative around the transfer of Paul Bernardo, and it’s citing the former Bill C-83, which allegedly eliminated solitary confinement in Canadian prisons on favour of “structured intervention units.” We can pretty much be assured that the legislation did not do what it said it would, and “structured intervention” is largely still solitary confinement, and the actual problems haven’t been solved, but the underlying notion here was that this bill was in response to the finding of the courts and international human rights bodies that solitary confinement is a violation of human rights. Nevertheless, this is being blamed for the conditions that allowed for Bernardo’s transfer, which again, is not true. It’s not the first time they’ve done this tactic—they also did it with the former Bill C-75 on bail reform, which was about codifying Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence around bail, and actually created several more categories where a reverse onus was needed, which made bail tougher to get. That didn’t stop the lies then, and it isn’t around C-83 now.

In the meantime, here is the Alberta Prison Justice Society with some important context around prison transfers and security classifications, which a lot of people should know (and in some cases, do know but are lying about it in order to drum up outrage, because politics is all about rage-farming and shitposting these days).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the settlement of Novoberyslav in the Kherson region, killing a married couple when their house was bombed. The Ukrainian advance continues in the south, while Russians are trying to trying to dislodge Ukrainian positions in the east. Meanwhile, a group of African leaders are visiting Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s “peace formula” to end the war.

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Roundup: No single point of failure

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It was another big day at the Procedure and House Affairs committee as both the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas, appeared, as did Bill Blair, both on the subject of what they knew about the “threats” against Michael Chong and his family. What we got was a bit more of the corroboration from the Johnston report that the process of pushing intelligence up to senior levels hasn’t been working, which is why these things weren’t noticed or acted upon earlier. Blair in particular offered more clarity about the issue with the top-secret emails and how it’s being misconstrued that he didn’t have passwords to it. No, it’s that he doesn’t have access to that system period, and CSIS prepares a package from him and brings it to him physically. He did also take a bit of a swipe at CSIS, saying that the Chong information was determined to be something that they didn’t think the minister needed to know, which is a bit petty.

What stood out for me the most was Thomas saying that there wasn’t one single point of failure here, or one link in the chain, but a flaw in the process, which is consistent with what Johnston put in his report. This is why I can’t believe that anyone who says that the report is some kind of cover-up has actually read the report because it’s quite clearly pointing to these appalling failures on the part of senior levels of government, and that is on the government to have done something about. They are responsible, and they need to fully own it in order to make the necessary changes.

I would also add that while this testimony was good to have, I still don’t see how this relates to Chong’s privileges supposedly being breached, and what remedies should be applied. There seems to be an effort to make this into a bigger issue around foreign interference, and not on the specific issue of Chong, and what the House of Commons should do if his privileges as an MP were specifically breached,  and I’m not seeing much of that.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired over 30 missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight, and all appear to have been shot down. The Russians also claim that they destroyed Ukraine’s “last warship” in a strike on Odessa, but Ukraine won’t talk about whether it’s true or not. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Moldova for the NATO meeting, calling for security guarantees if Ukraine can’t get NATO membership until the war is over. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against Ukraine in denying same-sex marriage licences, which is going to need to be part of Ukraine’s hoped-for European integration.

https://twitter.com/internewsua/status/1664252937156059140

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1664311594858299402

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Roundup: Angst over a poor metric

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A lot of ink (or, well, pixels, I supposed) has been spilled over the past week about those leaked documents where Justin Trudeau allegedly told NATO leadership privately that Canada will never reach the two percent of GDP defence spending target, which shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who has paid a modicum of attention. And while we get these kinds of analysis pieces that try to dig more into the two percent target and its significance, we have to remember that it’s a lousy metric. Greece has been above it for years because of a stagnant economy and including military pensions in their calculations—and you can easily get to 2 percent of GDP by tanking your economy, while growing your economy makes that spending target increase impossibly. The other thing that the two percent metric doesn’t capture is engagement—Canada routinely steps up to meet its NATO commitments even without reaching the spending target, while certain European countries may meet the spending target but don’t participate in these missions (again, looking at you, Greece, but not just Greece).

Part of the problem is that while this is a conversation that requires some nuance, the two percent target is too easy for journalists to focus on, and that becomes the sole focus. It’s a problem because We The Media keep reducing this to a single binary “are we meeting/not meeting that two percent” rate, which doesn’t help advance the conversation in any way, but most of us refuse to learn because a simple binary is easier to understand/convey.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Fighting continues in the western part of Bakhmut, as Wagner Group mercenaries are worried about the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive. Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation says that new technologies are going to help them win the war, particularly as they enhance the accuracy of modern artillery.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1649397099300093954

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QP: A special kind of incompetence to read the same script over and over

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Neither the prime minister nor his deputy was present today, but neither were any of the other leaders, so that didn’t necessarily bode well from the start. Pierre Paul-His got things started in French, and he repeated Pierre Poilievre’s lead talking points from yesterday—that the prime minister has a “special kind of incompetence” for increasing the cost of the bureaucracy while still allowing them to go on strike, and demanded he fix what was broken. Mona Fortier praised the work of civil servants, and that they continue to bargain in good faith for a fair agreement. Paul-Hus demanded to know why the prime minister wasn’t answering, speculating that it was because he was too busy planning his next vacation, to which Mark Holland somewhat crankily responded that for the third day, yes the prime minister took a vacation with his family, and they stayed at the home of a family friend. Jasraj Hallan took over in English, and repeated the same “special kind of incompetence” talking points with an angrier tone, and Fortier repeated her same points about praise and good-faith negotiations. Hallan then insisted that the only people getting ahead are “crony insiders,” blamed the government for inflation, and turned this into a rant about the “scam” of the carbon price. Holland noted a lot of hypocrisy in the question, then listed the ways in which the leader of the opposition avails himself of government funding—house, car, office, staff—before he talks on the phone with American billionaires to try and destroy the CBC, and wondered if Poilievre should have a Twitter label that notes he’s 99 percent government-funded. Hallan got indignant, and said that nobody believes the government, before he completely mischaracterised the PBO’s report on carbon prices, and Holland needled back and wondered how the Conservatives are trading in conspiracy theories on Reddit and 4chan.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he tried to insist that appointing people who have connections to the Trudeau Foundation could mean that the prime minister has nothing to do with it. Holland got up and recited that Trudeau has not been associated with the Foundation for ten years. Therrien went on a tear about Beijing-backed donations and demanded a public inquiry. Holland insisted that foreign interference is concerning for everyone in the Chamber.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and ranted about contracts to consultants rather than giving civil servants a good deal. Helena Jaczek stated that there is a need for flexibility but they are keeping an eye on contracts. Gord Johns repeated the same accusation in English, and Jaczek stated that the budget had plans to reduce that kind of consultant spending.

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Roundup: Impressing the Scots

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The Speaker of the Scottish Parliament paid a visit to Ottawa’s Parliament earlier in the week and was apparently so impressed with our Question Period that she plans to write a report to take suggestions from it. I’m frankly a little dumbfounded, because our QP is pretty gods damned terrible in pretty much every respect, but let me first take what her observations are.

One of them is that ours operates bilingually fairly seamlessly. Well, she didn’t see the seams, in any case. In Scotland, they have translation available for those who speak Gaelic, but it’s not automatically provided like English/French is here. But she didn’t seem to see the stress that the pandemic has caused our simultaneous interpretation abilities, from the injuries to interpreters, or the strains to resources that are now severely limiting the function of our Parliament because MPs didn’t care enough about those interpreters as they abused them over Zoom, and lo, we’re staring down a crisis.

She was impressed with the “brevity” of our QP, where it operates in thirty-five second questions and answers. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, frankly, because it has largely just created a demand for talking points, both in asking and answering questions, and so much of the exercise is useless—the questions must contain key phrases (and that’s getting worse), while the answers are frequently non-sequiturs or just bland pabulum that is disconnected from what has been asked. I’m not sure what she saw that was so impressive. The fact that it happened at a rapid pace and bilingually looks impressive from afar, but spend more than a day here, and the uglier underside quickly becomes apparent. Yes, ours can be more dynamic than Westminster’s because we don’t require questions be asked in advance in order for briefings to be prepared, so the PM must be nimble when answering, but again, most of those answers are going to be vague and superficial.

It’s kind of flattering that they’re seeing the good we have to offer, but these days, our rules and system has given rise to an increasingly unserious Chamber, and that’s not something we should be exporting to anyone.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the border with Poland and Belarus, citing a need to be ready in case Belarus became another invasion route for Russia.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1648688637670830083

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Roundup: An abuse of parliamentary privilege

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I’m going to start off with the caveat that I don’t know a lot of what is happening in Nova Scotia politics, but I came across this story yesterday that is pretty concerning for the practice of parliamentary democracy across Canada. During debate on a bill around use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual assault cases, an independent MLA (formerly a Progressive Conservative but was ejected from caucus in 2021) tabled a document that she claimed was a non-disclosure agreement that a former female staffer had been coerced into signing with the PC Party. (To make things more interesting, said staffer died last year, and was working for this MLA at the time, and she says the document was found in the staffer’s effects—and, the party’s former leader was forced out over inappropriate behaviour toward a female staffer, so I’m not sure how many of these factors actually connect).

A government minister has since moved a motion to force her to retract her comments about the incident, and if she doesn’t, that she should be ejected from the Chamber until she does. And that’s a capital-P Problem. Said independent MLA has since complained to the province’s justice department that the move is unconstitutional…but the justice department can’t do anything about it, because this is clearly a matter that is within parliamentary privilege. But it absolutely violates all of our constitutional norms, and should be a warning sign about the lengths to which parties will abuse their majorities in legislatures to silence or bully opposition members. It sounds like the provincial Liberals and NDP will be opposing this motion, but the PCs do have a majority, so they may not be able to do much in the long run. I would not be surprised if the Speaker finds that the motion is out of order, but this is genuinely frightening about how much they are willing to abuse process and parliamentary privilege like this.

Don’t get me wrong—parliament or the legislatures do have the power to eject members, but it needs to be for very serious wrongdoing, such as being convicted of a serious crime, and if the member refuses to resign gracefully, then they can order the seat vacated. But those are extreme circumstances that have yet to be actually tested (because in virtually every case, sanity prevails and they resign with a shred of dignity still intact). But this is an unconscionable abuse of that power, an abuse of a parliamentary majority, and sets a very dangerous precedent for the future, and the PC members who thought this was at all appropriate should not only be ashamed, but should probably consider tendering their resignations for this debacle.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they repelled 45 Russian attacks around Bakhmut over a twenty-four-hour period, continuing to grind down the Russian forces while they await more arms from allies like the US in order to begin the spring counter-offensive.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1643326962226585604

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Roundup: An easy way to close a loophole

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While Ontario continues to go full-steam ahead toward trying to divert more surgeries to private for-profit clinics (that bill the system), we need a reminder yet again that solutions exist within the existing system, using existing staff and personnel, if only they had the funding and support to do more. Dr. Warner here has a great example of how more can be done with existing facilities and staff that could have the same outcomes or better than these private clinics are purporting to offer.

Of course, that’s inconvenient for Ford, so I doubt he’s going to take this into account going forward. I also saw another news story yesterday about another clinic that is offering access to a nurse practitioner if you pay a monthly subscription fee, because there is a loophole that it exploits. Provincial governments could close this loophole immediately by declaring that visits to a nurse practitioner are billed to the system in the same way that visits to a doctor are—and provide said billing code—which would once again make it illegal to use this kind of loophole. We’ll see if they are committed to doing so with any haste, or if they’re content to accept more of this creeping privatisation because it serves their interests to do so.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces trying to capture Bakhmut are trying to encircle Ukrainian defenders, hoping to cut off their supply lines in the process. Ukrainians say they repelled over sixty attacks by Russians in the past week.

https://twitter.com/lyla_lilas/status/1629906366163742720

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Roundup: Opposing amendments at committee

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I find myself amused by the ongoing stories that some Liberal MPs may vote against the official languages bill when it comes out of committee as amended, and the constant oh noes! Trudeau is losing control of his caucus! narrative that accompanies it. This said, there are egregious amendments that I have a hard time believing that they’re in order, because they reference provincial legislation in Quebec. For example, the change to the preamble of the bill to acknowledge Quebec’s Law 96 should have no place in federal legislation. There is also an amendment that says that if federal and provincial language laws come into conflict, the provincial law (especially Quebec’s Law 96) takes precedence, which is against every single constitutional practice and statutory interpretation principle in this country, and beyond that, it sets an absolutely terrible precedent for other areas of the law where one level of government tries to impose something on another jurisdiction, and because this one went unchallenged its okay. Yeah, we don’t want that to happen.

As mentioned, these are a result of Conservative and Bloc amendments, and the Conservatives are back to pandering to Quebec voters (and François Legault) by being as shameless as possible in trying to out-bloc the Bloc, and in some cases, they are being supported by the NDP’s Niki Ashton. It stands to reason that if the government objects to a number of these amendments, they can vote them down during report stage debate, and that would mean the whole chamber is voting, not just the Bloc and the Conservatives, so it could be enough votes to ensure that these amendments are left out of the final bill, which would mean this “rebellion” by a few Liberal MPs has done its job. There are still a couple of meetings left for this bill in committee, so we’ll see what the final shape of the bill looks like.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 358:

Russian troops are mounting constant attacks, and are claiming to have broken through two fortified lines in the Luhansk region (but they make lots of claims that aren’t true), while the regional governor denies that Ukrainian troops are in retreat. The Russians have been changing their tactics at Bakhmut, moving in smaller groups, without the support of tanks or armoured personnel carriers, and the Ukrainians are adapting to the new tactics. Reuters has a photo essay of one family’s evacuation from the area near Bakhmut, during which their grandmother died in the van.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1625861957549948929

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Roundup: A ten-year health “deal”

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Before the big meeting between Justin Trudeau and the premiers, Trudeau had a one-on-one meeting with Alberta premier Danielle Smith, and it was…awkward. From her limp handshake to her hectoring about the “just transition” term, it was certainly something.

When the big meeting did happen, Trudeau and his ministers kept the attention on the big number: $198 billion over ten years, of which $46.2 billion is new funds, beyond planned increases in the Canada Health Transfer, and other promised funds for things like boosting the pay of long-term care workers and to hire front-line health workers. I am curious about this immediate $2 billion with no strings attached, intended to help meet things like surgical backlogs, but which you know premiers are going to use elsewhere (at least two of them have imminent elections) because they will immediately cry that this is one-time funding and not stable, long-term predictable funding. The increase to the transfer is tied to better data and increased digitization (which, frankly, was supposed to have been completed by now), plus $25 billion for the one-on-one deals with each province to meet specific needs, and finally another $2 billion over ten years for Indigenous health outcomes.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1623077585847726080

Of course, premiers aren’t happy because it wasn’t as much money as they wanted, and there are strings. Some, like Doug Ford, kept trying to spin this as “a down payment” when the federal government was pretty quick to say this money is it. And then you get former premiers like Jean Charest coming out of the woodwork to insist that strings attached is “risky,” while he repeats the straw man arguments that the federal government is trying to “run emergency rooms,” which absolutely nobody has ever stated, while the federal government just wants health dollars to be spent on healthcare. Nevertheless, the message from the federal ministers is that they expect these one-on-one deals with provinces to be signed in weeks, not months, because they want this all done before the federal budget. The Star has a look at how the logjam broke down, a little at a time.

“Losing control”

One of my perpetual pet peeves of mainstream media in this country is this insistence that we want MPs to be more independent, but the moment they show a glimmer of independence, we rend our clothes and wail that the leader is “losing control” of his or her caucus, and lo, it’s happening again. The story is about a group of Liberals, mostly from Montreal, who have taken exception with the preamble of the official languages legislation which recognises Quebec’s provincial language laws, which they object to both because it restricts anglophones in the province, but because a federal bill shouldn’t enshrine a provincial law in federal statute, and it was a dumb move by the federal drafters to put that in the bill. And one of the Liberals’ Franco-Ontarian MPs is pushing back. OH NOES! Trudeau is “losing control” of his caucus, as opposed to “he drafted a sloppy bill,” or “the minister didn’t consult her own gods damned caucus first.” The narrative is “losing control.” Zeus wept.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 350:

Ukrainian forces are claiming to have killed 1,030 Russian troops overnight on the front lines in the eastern part of the country. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked parliament for approving his new cabinet picks as he shuffles up his ministers, including the defence minister.

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Roundup: End of the 2022 fall sitting

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Yesterday was the last sitting day of 2022 for the House of Commons, and as is common at this time of year, everyone is cranky and ready to go home and have a nap, and this year is no different. This being said, Question Period has been pretty sedate overall the past few weeks, and there have been pre-Xmas QPs in years past that were rancorous, and we haven’t had that. Nevertheless, the government is in definite need of time to go regroup after the way they utterly ballsed-up their own gun control legislation, as well as some of the other problems with bills like their broadcasting and online news legislation. Hopefully some time away will help them get their priorities straight, and to fix the mistakes they made by either being too clever by half, or by sheer incompetence (and sometimes it’s a tossup as to what the problem was indeed).

I will note that there was an outcry over Twitter from members of the disability community that the Canada Disability Benefit legislation didn’t pass before they rose, and an NDP MP tried to pass a motion to give emergency funds in the interim, as though that were remotely feasibly and wouldn’t result in provinces clawing back their own meagre benefits. (Seriously, CERB was not magic.) The thing that needs to be remembered is that the CDB bill is just a framework—even if it passed yesterday, it wouldn’t pass the Senate in time, and when it does pass, it needs to go through a massive regulatory process to fill in the benefits, which also needs to be done with provincial negotiations so that we don’t wind up in a situation where provinces either claw-back benefits or funding so that these people are worse off than they were before, or where things wind up in a situation where other supports are withdrawn because they were means-tested and the federal benefit moves them out of reach of those thresholds, which again, will disadvantage those who need it. None of this is happening overnight, and it’s a process. So frankly, the fact that the bill didn’t pass before Xmas this year is not surprising, and wouldn’t have an immediate impact in any case.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 295:

Ukrainian authorities say that they intercepted and destroyed thirteen explosive-laden drones headed for Kyiv yesterday, but the wreckage still damaged five buildings. Meanwhile, Russia has said there will be no Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine, which isn’t surprising (though the only thing even less surprising would be them agreeing to it and then reneging). In the meantime, they have shelled the regional administrative centre in Kherson, because.

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