Tag Archives: NSICOP

Roundup: Competing nonsense lawsuits

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It’s now approximately day ninety-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk says that Russian forces are advancing from all sides. Another 200 bodies have been found in Mariupol, where Russian forces have been pounding the city to rubble.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1529206361338396672

There is also talk about Vladimir Putin having survived an assassination attempt after the invasion began, and Kremlin insiders are discussing a possible successor to Putin as discontent grows with the course of the war. So that’s going well.

Closer to home, I think the situation in New Brunswick is about to do my head in, as two competing lawsuits are colliding—the challenge to the appointment of a unilingual lieutenant governor, and a frivolous lawsuit challenging the fact that the premier violated the “fixed election date” in calling an election. The lieutenant governor suit is going down on appeal because the reasoning in the original decision is a constitutional impossibility (one part of the constitution cannot override another, which the ruling does). And the challenge to the election call is a dead letter because simple statute cannot bind the Crown prerogatives in this way, and Democracy Watch keeps losing this suit every time they attempt it, not to mention that you cannot undo an election. When a legislature is dissolved, it’s dissolved (and no, the UK ruling on prorogation is not the same thing). This is all nonsense and eating up court time unnecessarily, but this is where we’re at.

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Roundup: Exit Kenney

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It is now around day eighty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and more than 260 fighters have left the Mariupol steel plant, into Russian custody, where their release will be negotiated. But there will be demands for them to stand trial, just as Russian soldiers are currently—one of them pleading guilty to killing civilians yesterday.

Closer to home, Alberta premier Jason Kenney announced that he will step down after receiving only 51.4% support in the UCP’s leadership review. It’s quite something, and he’s also the sixth premier in the last decade because it has become such a poisoned chalice, so good luck to his potential successors. I’ll write more about this in the next day or two, but it’s certainly a sign of how things are going in the province.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1527088935725412354

As for the royal tour, day two was spent in Ottawa, starting with a ceremony to lay a wreath at the National War Memorial, a service at a Ukrainian church, a visit to the Byward Market, the RCMP Musical Ride, a round table discussion on climate finance, and finally a reception at Rideau Hall. There were good crowds for all of them, and it’s a very different reception than the attention of certain other tours this year. At the reception, AFN national chief RoseAnne Archibald raised the notion of an apology from the Queen (which is a bad idea), for what it’s worth. Meanwhile, here is an in-depth look at the first day of the royal tour and its broader context after William and Catherine’s Caribbean royal tour.

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1526989787332214784

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https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1527044125639512064

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1527053388428484608

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Roundup: Dubious procedural moves and political theatre

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

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

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

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Roundup: A confidence agreement in the works?

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We are now on day twenty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine has refused to surrender the strategic port city of Mariupol to the Russians. As well, Russian shelling destroyed a shopping centre in Kyiv killing eight, which is escalating the attacks facing the capital. Also of note was a possible leak of Russian casualty figures, citing 9,861 killed and 16,153 injured over the course of the invasion, which contradicts Russian propaganda figures to date, and which could turn up the pressure on Putin by the Russian people.

Back in Canada, news started spreading over the evening that the Liberals and NPD had reached a tentative agreement to a supply-and-confidence agreement that would see the NDP agree to support the next four Liberal budgets so that they can stay in power until 2025 in relative stability, and in return, the Liberals will make “real progress” on national pharmacare and dental care. I’m a little confused why those would be the conditions, given that they’re wholly dependent upon the provincial governments signing on, and while the current federal government put a framework in place for national pharmacare, thus far only PEI has signed on (and I haven’t seen the NDP publicly haranguing John Horgan to sign on either). And while people ask why they can’t do what they did with early learning and child care, part of that answer is that the reason why provincial governments are gun-shy about these programmes is they are concerned that if they set them up, a future federal government will cut funding and leave them holding the bag for very expensive programmes. While Quebec has shown that child care will pay for itself once more women are in the workforce and paying taxes, I’m not sure the calculation is quite the same for the other two, or will at least take much longer for the fiscal benefits to work their way through the system. So could the government come to the table with a lot more money—maybe. But that doesn’t eliminate the trepidation that once 2025 hits that their fears won’t come true. There are also reports that the deal could include more for housing, reconciliation, and some form of wealth taxes, so we’ll see what gets announced this morning.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are touting this as evidence of a “coalition” and that it’s “backdoor socialism,” which doesn’t make sense. It’s not a coalition because there are no Cabinet seats for the NDP, and these kinds of confidence agreements are easily broken (see: British Columbia and the deal with the Greens, which Horgan’s NDP tore up when the polls looked good enough to get a majority, which he did). It’s not socialism because they’re not going around nationalising the means of production. They’re still going to wail and gnash their teeth, and pretend that this is somehow illegitimate when it’s one hundred percent within how hung parliaments work under our system, but I’m not going to say it will last the full four years. It will however alter the narrative of the Conservatives’ leadership contest, and could be read either as Trudeau giving himself enough runway to make a few more accomplishments before turning it over to a successor, or for him to try and build the case for re-election. Either way, it’s fairly unprecedented at the federal level in this country, and could make for interesting days ahead.

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Roundup: Emergency orders lifted before the Senate votes were cast

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By late afternoon, yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau ended the emergency orders, at a time when the Senate had not yet voted to confirm them. This, of course, led to numerous cries from opponents that they had helped to end it (declaring victory for pushing on an open door), and accusations that Trudeau knew he would lose the Senate vote so pulled the plug beforehand. And then there were the questions about what changed between Monday and yesterday that made it okay to lift the restrictions, of which the official line is “advice from law enforcement,” but one also suspects was that they might have felt it inappropriate to lift it before it had even been brought to a vote, but conversely didn’t want to keep the orders for too much longer after that. I’m not sure. Suffice to say, it’s over, and all of the cries of “tyranny!” and “Trudeau is doing this to increase his own power!” seem pretty stupid right about now.

Speaking of the Senate, they were progressing through a second full day of speeches with no end—or vote—in sight, when the order was lifted and they simply adjourned debate. This is something of an indictment on how the Senate handled this matter in terms of their schedule. They should have recalled the Chamber as soon as the Act was invoked and the emergency orders declared, so that they could receive them on the same day as the House of Commons and debate them concurrently, as it’s not a piece of legislation that has to pass one Chamber before the other, but they didn’t, and their planned Friday recall was cancelled by the police action, further delaying the debate. And then some of the same problems that the House of Commons saw presented themselves in the Senate as well—that absolutely everyone wanted to have their own speech on the record, no matter that having something new to say diminished with each passing speech, but this is what the “new” Senate is becoming—a debating society rather than a deliberative legislative body. And while sure, there were some good speeches, there were also some doozies that repeated the same falsehoods and info ops that the occupation organizers were counting on, so well done everyone.

Meanwhile, Matt Gurney calls for more information as to what constituted the continued use of powers in advance of their being lifted. Andrew Coyne puts the nine days of the emergency orders into perspective versus how it has been portrayed by bad faith actors across social media and certain political parties.

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Roundup: Senate debate continues on emergency orders

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The Senate spent the day debating the emergency orders, but did not reach a vote by end of day. (This doesn’t really meet the Act’s requirement that the order be debated “without interruption” either, much as the House of Commons’ Speaker made a bad ruling around statutory interpretation). We heard many of the same concerns from Conservative senators as from their Commons counterparts, and a lot of questions as to why the orders are still needed if the occupation in Ottawa and the border blockades are over, plus questions about the special committee of MPs and senators that the statute demands, and the fact that while they are probably going to be sworn to secrecy, it won’t have them sworn in like they would be for NSICOP, so they likely won’t get particularly sensitive intelligence. That committee was still being negotiated between the party leaders in the Commons and Senate caucus leaders last I heard, but is likely waiting for the Senate to confirm the emergency orders, before it can be established, and at this pace, the orders may be lifted by the time we get there. It is worth noting that the Government Leader in the Senate, Senator Marc Gold, spent some five hours answering questions from other senators, like he should be in this kind of a situation. It’s just too bad he’s not a member of Cabinet like he should be, because this is the kind of situation where that really matters.

Elsewhere, the Commons’ Finance committee heard from department officials about the freezing of the bank accounts of occupation organizers and some of its participants. It was reiterated once again that they did not have donor lists, the RCMP did not turn any over to banks, and that with the occupation ended, the RCMP was working with the banks to “unfreeze” those accounts, given that the whole point was to make it uncomfortable or difficult for them to remain. So what of the fictional “Briane” and other supposedly small-time donors for whom it is claimed that they had their accounts frozen? That it’s “very unlikely” they would be, given the data the banks are working with. Not that this has stopped the continued insistence that accounts are being seized (untrue) or frozen retroactively (also not true), not only from Conservative MPs, but also some talking heads and columnists acting credulously echoing these made-up allegations, because they are sold on the narrative that Trudeau wants to punish dissenters.

In the meantime, Rideau Hall to go to the extraordinary step of putting out a release to tell people to quit contacting them because they don’t have anything to do with a declaration of non-confidence in the government, despite what a disinformation meme going around social media claims as it encourages people to call them and demand a non-confidence vote. (Seriously, guys—only MPs can vote non-confidence). And to add to that, DND was flooded with calls demanding military protection to the occupiers from police, under the lunatic notion that they were part of some covert United Nations invasion force—because remember, this occupation was packed to the gills with conspiracy theorists. And going around social media were claims that the Sûreté du Québec officers (the provincial police force) were “proof” of New World Order forces because they had different uniforms and “didn’t speak English.” These occupiers are so credulous about such absolute nonsense, but refuse to believe in science, vaccines, civics, or democracy. It’s enough to make one despair about where we are headed as a society, especially as we have a political party that is desperate to earn their favour.

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Roundup: Exit the police chief

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It never rains, but it pours, and yesterday the twist in the plot was that the police chief suddenly resigned his position. And while the immediate thought was that hey, someone is actually taking responsibility for their failure, it turns out that no, this was a “human resources issue,” likely related to bullying, harassment, and volatile behaviour around senior police leadership the longer this occupation drags on. And now we have an acting police chief at a time when the Ottawa Police Service is the police of jurisdiction during a crisis situation and under the aegis of the Emergencies Act, coordinating with the OPP and RCMP.

The other plot twist was that the mayor’s contact for his “backchannel negotiations” with the occupier leadership was Dean French, the lacrosse-loving chaos agent who used to be Doug Ford’s chief of staff. Mayor Watson said that French approached him about making contact, and Watson figured “anything to help,” rather than seeing the giant red flag and telling French to take a hike and never come back. So yeah, it’s like everyone is making the worst possible decisions, or we keep invoking Tucker’s Law.

Emergencies Act

Because we are still trying to sort out what all is happening around the invocation of the Act, here are some explainers from Naomi Claire Lazar and Lyle Skinner. As well, some observations about how it is being employed by the government, law professor Paul Daly has questions about some of the legal language.

The actual orders weren’t finally posted until 9 PM last week, which is when the rules actually went into effect, so good job on your timeliness there, guys. We now know that they are using the thread of political violence as their test for what meets the Act’s threshold, essentially calling it terrorism, which then raises the question of how this meets that particular threshold. The orders prohibit bringing food, fuel or children to the protest site, under threat of a $5000 fine or up to five years in prison—but we’ll see if police actually enforce that, as they have not been around the fuel convoy to the site.

As for the financial provisions brought into force, there are concerns that they could be a serious overreach, particularly if it affects an occupier’s ability to obtain financial services ever again. The occupiers, meanwhile, are trying to pivot to cryptocurrency, as though that will put them beyond the reach of government. (It won’t).

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Roundup: O’Toole out, Bergen in

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It wasn’t even a close vote—Erin O’Toole has been deposed as Conservative leader on a vote of 73 to 45, and he is done for. He says he’ll stay on as an MP, but we’ll see how long his appetite for that lasts now that is ambitions have been dashed. But rather than face the media, O’Toole put out a six-minute statement over social media that tried to claim the party was the founding party of Canada (nope—his party was created in 2003), and a bunch of other things to try and burnish his image on the way out the door. “This country needs a Conservative party that is both an intellectual force and a governing force. Ideology without power is vanity. Seeking power with ideology is hubris,” he recited. Erm, except the pandering to populism is not an intellectual or governing force, he couldn’t even identify an ideology given that he kept flopping all over the place, depending on who was in the room with him at the time. And he keeps floating this notion that Canada is “so divided!” but this has been his go-to talking point for a while, trying to intimate that there is a “national unity crisis” because Alberta didn’t get its own way and get a Conservative government (that would take them for granted and ignore their concerns), never mind that it’s not actually a national unity crisis, but mere sore loserism.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1488987184241811458

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1489082431936372742

Later in the evening, out of seven potential candidates, the party voted for Candice Bergen to be the interim leader, which is a curious choice given how much she swings to the angry populist side of the party, from her unapologetically sporting a MAGA hat, to her full-throated support for the grifter occupation outside of Parliament Hill currently. It makes one wonder about both the upcoming leadership and what that says about unifying the different factions of the party, or whether the party will splinter because these factions may prove irreconcilable. And perhaps it should be a lesson that hey, maybe you shouldn’t just lie to each faction saying you really belong to them, and hope the other side doesn’t find out.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells enumerates O’Toole’s failures, and worries about the direction the party is headed now that it seems to be tearing down the few firewalls it had to keep the worst of Trumpism out of its playbook.

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Roundup: New NSICOP line-up, sans Conservatives

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Because the issue of NSICOP/Winnipeg Lab documents refuses to die, yesterday’s iteration was that the prime minister announced the new composition of NSICOP, and it didn’t include any Conservatives, either MPs or senators, because they refused to put any names forward. Erin O’Toole then tweeted that this was because it was somehow hiding documents, which is a complete and utter falsehood.

To recap: those Winnipeg Lab documents were released in an unredacted form to NSICOP to review. The Conservatives withdrew from NSICOP because it didn’t suit their needs to actually review the documents—the whole point was the song and dance about a “cover-up.” If, during the years that NSICOP has been operating, any of its reports were unfairly redacted and information was being hidden from the public that its membership felt was important, they would have resigned in protest. That did not happen because it was working. And even if it were a full parliamentary committee, redactions still happen because it’s still national security.

O’Toole is acting in bad faith so that he can wink and nod to conspiracy theorists and put on a show that doesn’t reflect reality. He knows it, and he should be called out on it.

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Roundup: Holland breaks out the passive-aggressive open letter tactics

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The drama over the Winnipeg Lab documents took another turn yesterday as Government House Leader Mark Holland sent a four-page open letter to the Conservative House Leader, urging him to reconsider rejecting the government’s offer to create a new ad hoc panel to have the documents vetted behind closed doors with a panel of three former judges to adjudicate any disputes. In said letter, Holland name-checks nearly every national security and intelligence expert who has weighed in on the topic of the past few weeks, with a couple of exceptions.

While Holland didn’t name Philippe Lagassé’s piece, it’s fairly irrelevant to the concerns at hand. Whether NSICOP gets turned into a full-blown committee or not, it won’t make a material difference because the Conservatives’ objections are not based on any particular matter of principle or specific objection. As I point out in my column, they are merely acting in bad faith in order to be theatrical and try and score points by winking to conspiracy theories in order to paint the picture that the government is hiding something for the benefit of the Chinese, or some other such nonsense.

I don’t expect Holland’s letter to do anything other than look passive-aggressive and ham-fisted as the issue continues to fester—not that there is an order to produce documents any longer, and the committee that made said order no longer exists either (though O’Toole has been under pressure to restore it, as though it actually did anything meaningful other than be yet another dog and pony show). We’ll see if the other two opposition parties come to some kind of agreement, but so far this issue continues to just make everyone look like our Parliament is amateur hour. Which it kind of is.

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