Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

Roundup: Projecting demagoguery

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Pierre Poilievre held a press conference on Parliament Hill yesterday, and said a number of bizarre things such as personally blaming Justin Trudeau for the housing crisis and as the reason why prices have doubled, but then used an example of how a permit was being held up at Ottawa City Hall by a planner who was on holiday for two weeks. The federal government has precisely zero levers when it comes to the human resources practices of Ottawa City Hall and the vacation days of its planners. Furthermore, he insisted that Canada is the only place in the OECD where this kind of thing happens, as though the whole of Europe doesn’t exist, and most especially France where nothing gets done in the entire month of August. But remember, this is entirely Justin Trudeau’s fault.

What as perhaps more telling was when he was asked about immigration levels and if he would make any changes if he were to form government. Poilievre said that Trudeau—whom he has just personally blamed for the housing crisis—“wants Canadians to forget all that and blame immigrants; he wants to divide people to distract from his failings,” and then said that “this is what demagogues do.”

Apparently, irony died, because Poilievre has been behaving like a demagogue this entire time, and has raised immigration before as part of the crisis—and has refused to elaborate or give any targets, nor will he denounce any of his followers who have been treating the immigration issue as a dog whistle and excuse to concern troll about immigration. He has done absolutely nothing to curtail that, except to project it onto Trudeau, and then on top of that, claim that it’s the Liberals who are “nasty” and “mean” on issues like climate change and gender identity. No looking at his own followers, who spend their days online taunting Catherine McKenna as “climate Barbie,” or calling gay people “groomers” or “paedophiles.” Nope, that’s all the Liberals and their supporters. It’s projection, and it’s bullshit, because that’s what the discourse has degraded to.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian authorities say that they have repelled Russian attacks in the East around Kharkiv, and reclaimed some ground as well this week. As Russian missiles have been falling on the northeast region of Kupiansk, there are orders to evacuate civilians but many don’t want to leave. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Denmark to thank them personally for their support, and for the future transfer of F-16 fighter jets. He then headed to Greece to thank their government, and will attend a summit of Balkan leaders. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau says that ending corruption is no longer just a crime, but a matter of national security, especially because Western partners need assurances around military aid and reconstruction dollars. Kyiv is filling up with destroyed Russian tanks as the city prepares to celebrate their second wartime Independence Day this week.

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Roundup: Trying to use guilt on Meta

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As the wildfire situation intensifies, and more states of emergency are declared, Canadian heritage minister Pascale St-Onge has decided to try doubling down on using guilt to try and get Meta/Facebook back to the table to talk about the Online News Act, insisting that blocking news links puts lives in danger. I’m not sure I buy that—you can still directly access news sites, and they are easy to find, particularly the CBC and its local affiliates.

This, of course, led to yet another vapid re-litigation of the Act, and repeating many of the dumb arguments that don’t actually hit on the heart of the matter. There was the hand-wringing about “we trained people to go to Facebook for news,” which makes me wonder why we just don’t then retrain people to go directly to news sites or apps, while the discussion in the piece returns to the red herring about compensating for links. It’s not about compensating for links. It’s about compensating for Google and Facebook monopolizing the ad tech space and siphoning revenues from all links along the chain, and the Act providing transparency and fairness to the deals and negotiations that were already taking place. Which is also why stories about local media demanding the government capitulate to Meta’s bullying are particularly troublesome, because not only are they getting the narrative wrong (and the government needs to take a LOT of the blame for that one), but they’re saying that we should let web giants threaten sovereign governments if they don’t like what they’re seeing, and that’s especially troubling because these companies operate monopolistically and with impunity.

In the meantime, mendacious narratives about the legislation are also growing and becoming utterly grotesque, but between Poilievre and his Conservatives outright lying about the law, referring to it as government censorship and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the government’s own false narratives about the bill and the supposed theft of content (not true), we’re sinking into a morass that is seeing disinformation players taking the already distorted narratives and turning it into a funhouse mirror. This is all very, very bad, but none of the players in this want to describe things with a modicum of accuracy and reality, and that’s a very big problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck Chernihiv in the north on Saturday, killing seven and wounding at least 129 people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to the Netherlands for talks, and for confirmation that the Netherlands and Denmark would be turning over F-16 fighters to Ukraine at the appropriate time. Zelenskyy has also been talking to Sweden about acquiring Gripen jets as well.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1693253258200981998

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Roundup: The ugly discourse that won’t be disavowed

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As the housing debate rages on, there is a particularly ugly strain of the discourse that is revealing itself throughout, which has to do with the rapid immigration increases in relation to the housing crunch/crisis, and that there is no real way for there to keep pace. This has led to some people lamenting that it’s too bad that the decades long, multi-party consensus on immigration is unravelling because governments haven’t been serious about housing. I’m not really buying it, though. My sense is that a lot of this is just dog-whistling and concern trolling—that these are largely the people who opposed immigration to begin with and who are taking the opportunity of the housing crisis to have a “legitimate” reason to blame immigrants for something.

Mark Miller is pushing back on this narrative, at least somewhat, pointing out that demographically and economically we can’t really cut back on immigration levels, adding that “The wave of populist, opportunist sentiment that does at times want to put all of society’s woes on the backs of immigrants—I think we need to call that out when we see it.” And he’s right. But he also needs to be far more vocal on the kick in the ass to provinces and municipalities about building more housing (which is their jurisdiction), because they also need these immigrants and have the responsibility of ensuring they have places to live.

What I think has been particularly telling is that Pierre Poilievre has been hinting at this, saying that the immigration system is “broken,” but he also won’t say what he would do differently, or what he would adjust the levels to. It’s the same kind of stupid game he’s trying to play on all of his files—saying just enough about a particular issue that the loudmouths and far-right extremists can read into it the awful things they think, and Poilievre will do almost nothing to dissuade them, so as to get them to think he’s on their side (even though, deep down, he’s not really, and some of them have already figured that out) and to hopefully cash in on their votes. And when you try to corner him on these issues, he will fight straw men or make the attacks personal instead of answering. It’s some of the most cynical of ploys, it’s absolutely corrosive to democracy, but he seems to think the ends justify the means, so he’s going to go for it, consequences be damned.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones have pounded grain storage and facilities at the Danube river ports in western Ukraine, which puts further grain shipments in jeopardy. Ukrainian forces say that they have reclaimed the village of Urozhaine in the southeast, but are admitting that the front in the north eastern region near Kupiansk is becoming more difficult.

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Roundup: Image, data-mining, and conspiracy theories

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Everyone wanted to talk about Pierre Poilievre this weekend—about his quest to “soften” his image, particularly for women voters, which is why he has plenty of new ads featuring his wife and children; the way in which he’s data-mining and populating his voter identification database using online petitions on sites that he personally owns (and therefore all of the data as well); and the fact that he continues to mainstream certain conspiracy theories (which is a problem for a democracy).

This last one had the Conservatives outraged over the weekend, railing that the piece could not be “professional journalism” because one of the sources had previously donated to the Liberal Party (which is a bullshit purity test and any Conservative talking head who brings it up should be told to where exactly to stick that test), while Poilievre himself tried to call this a hit job and tried to somehow insinuate that The Canadian Press, the national wire service, is somehow an arm of the CBC (again, creating a straw man and a dangerous attack on CP’s integrity when it’s so neutral that it’s biggest problem is that it egregiously both-sides things that should not be). But this pushback is because it hits a nerve—Poilievre and his talking heads know that paying lip service to these conspiracy theories undermines democratic processes, corrodes fact-based reality and drives social divisions, but that’s exactly why they want to use them—to attract a particular voter base who often doesn’t vote, and they think they can cash in on this polarization.

It goes back to what I’ve been writing about before—that they have this mistaken belief that there is some kind of “good parts only” version of right-wing populism that they can get all of the good things (fundraising, volunteers, energy, votes) from without the bad parts (racism, misogyny, homophobia/transphobia, white supremacy, fascism), but it doesn’t work like that. They need to stop deluding themselves because they have poured kerosene all over the floor and are now playing with matches. There is no future in which this can end well.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Seven people including a baby were killed during Russian shelling of Kherson in the south. There was also another attack on Russia’s Crimean bridge over the weekend, and Russia is again vowing revenge for it (as though they are the victims). The Ukrainian military is making some unspecified claims about progress reclaiming territory in the south of the country. Meanwhile, a Russian warship fired warning shots at a cargo ship on the Black Sea in violation of international law.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1690386659878240256

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Roundup: What our diverse Cabinet isn’t thinking enough about

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It’s one of those mid-August “let’s quote a random academic” stories, but this piece on the added diversity in the Cabinet shuffle did get me thinking about a slightly more serious topic than perceived tokenism and need to ensure that these new ministers are adequately supported. Part of my thinking was simply the fact that I have interviewed some of the previously-new Cabinet ministers from after the previous election, and a recurring theme was that having more diverse voices around the Cabinet table is a net benefit, and that they have a lot of really enriching conversations as a result. Which is fair!

But the other thing I got to thinking about was intersectionality, and how such a diverse Cabinet should be getting better at it—but this is still a PMO with a strong central impulse (because the PM’s circle of trust is so small and too many things funnel through his chief of staff, Katie Telford). This is something that they should be better at, and should be more aware of, but perhaps this is one more of Trudeau’s blind spots, where he believes that simply paying lip service to the existence of intersectionality is enough, rather than actually doing the work.

And with that in mind, here’s economist Lindsay Tedds, who is actually doing the work of intersectionality, and is calling on the government to get their act together.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1689841585746579456

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1689841590423224321

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1689841594617434112

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1689841599197671426

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1689843815614664705

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a house not far from the Polish border, killing an year-year-old boy. Meanwhile, all of the heads of regional army recruitment centres have been fired as part of ongoing battling of corruption within the country, after audits found abuses within those centres.

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Roundup: Ford’s Greenbelt corruption

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The long-awaited Auditor General’s report into the Greenbelt scandal was released yesterday, and it outlined some utterly bald-faced corruption as Ford’s sudden desire to develop the Greenbelt saw the chief-of-staff for the housing minister meeting with developers who had just bought these un-developable tracts of land and persuaded him to make those tracts developable, to the tune of an $8.3 billion benefit to them. That’s billion with a b. The process was flawed and contravened pretty much every rule. (The ten take-aways are here). But this all having been said, the Auditor General seemed to also credulously believe that Ford and the minister had no idea that this was going on—which…is hard to believe, considering how many of these developers were at events related to Ford’s daughter’s wedding. And while I can see Ford not knowing the details, because he’s a retail politician and doesn’t care about details, he’s nevertheless responsible for this as premier, and that responsibility absolutely extends to chiefs of staff when they “go rogue.” The report makes fifteen recommendations, which Ford says they’ll follow—except the one about stopping the process of developing the Greenbelt, because apparently his mind is made up.

But in spite of the outright corruption that happened, don’t expect any particular consequences—at least not in the near future. While the OPP’s anti-racket division is looking into this, the “rogue” chief of staff is keeping his job, and so is the minister, because we no longer care about ministerial responsibility when you have corruption to the tune of $8.3 billion. Ford says the buck stops with him, but he spent the afternoon rationalizing and insisting that this is necessary for housing (it’s not), and then blamed the federal government for high immigration numbers (which Ontario has been crying out for), never mind that Ford and company have been ignoring the recommendations of the very task force that they set up to look at the housing situation. And Ford will skate, because he’s not only Teflon-coated, but possesses the Baby Spice Effect™, except instead of her cute smile, he just says “aw, shucks, folks,” and everyone’s brain melts and he gets away with murder. (Well, negligent homicide as the pandemic showed).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1689294359441604608

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1689323838343979031

In pundit reaction, David Moscrop demands resignations, firings and further investigations for this blatant corruption. Martin Regg Cohn points to the bitter irony of Ford riding into office alleging corruption everywhere only to be engaging in it much more blatantly here.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There was a Russian missile attack against Zaporizhzhia that hit a residential area, killing at least two. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they have reached an agreement to get more Patriot systems from Germany.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1689329656481103872

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Roundup: The temporary, temporary House of Commons

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Something that caught my eye over the long weekend was a look at the “just in case” temporary, temporary House of Commons Chamber that has been assembled inside the Parliamentary ballroom in the Sir John A Macdonald Building. It seems that while maintenance is happening in the actual temporary Chamber in the West Block, and the threat of a possible recall over the BC ports issue, they decided to do some contingency planning and assemble this contingency Commons. This being said, I wouldn’t expect all MPs to attend it—a good many of them would avail themselves of the hybrid sitting rules (because they have so many things happening in their ridings *jazz hands* that they couldn’t possibly attend), with the exception of the Conservatives, because they would attend in person to prove a point. My biggest complaint is that the configuration shown in the CBC piece would have two lecterns at the end of the Chamber, rather than be arranged as despatch boxes like they do in Westminster, which would certainly be how I would have preferred it.

Meanwhile, new Government House Leader Karina Gould is taking on the perennial promise to make Question Period better, which…isn’t really her call. And, frankly, the one thing that the government could do to make it a serious exercise would be to ban talking points, pat lines and happy-clappy pabulum in favour of making ministers answer questions properly…but they won’t do that, because PMO would never allow it because it goes against the whole ethos of message control that has rotted politics but they insist on following.

So, with the greatest of respect, all of the platitudes in the world about making Question Period something Canadians can be “proud” of is empty rhetoric unless the government is committed to doing the hard work and communicating like human beings, which they absolutely won’t do. And so, our Parliament will continue to slide into a place of irredeemable unseriousness, because that’s apparently the way they like it by adhering to that ethos.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Following missiles strikes on the city of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian authorities are accusing Russians of deliberately targeting emergency workers by drawing them to the scene of a missile strike, and then targeting that scene with a second strike a short while later. Russians launched a massive air attack, largely on western Ukraine, on Sunday, purported in retaliation for a Ukrainian drone strike against a Russian tanker delivering fuel to its forces. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities say they prevented a Russian hack on their armed forces’ combat information system. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief says that they are putting in place the conditions to advance on the battlefield.

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Roundup: A stupid fight over housing jurisdiction

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There is a really, really stupid fight brewing around whose jurisdiction housing is, and I am very nearly at the end of my patience for this. On Monday while in Hamilton, the prime minister said—correctly—that housing is primarily not a federal jurisdiction, but that they are trying to do what they can to support municipalities. And so yesterday, Pierre Poilievre held a press conference to insist that it must be a federal responsibility because immigration, infrastructure and taxes affect housing, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is federal (erm, except it’s an arm’s-length Crown corporation). But while there are federal policies that can affect housing, that’s not actually a federal responsibility. He knows this, but is trying to muddy the waters in order to blame Trudeau for the problems that provinces and municipalities have created for themselves.

And to put a cherry on this particular sundae, the gods damned CBC comes along and simply both-sides this stupid fight without actually pointing out that under the constitution, housing is a gods damned provincial responsibility. And there is a certain other outlet that shall not be named running a piece about how Trudeau says that housing’s not a federal responsibility while standing behind a lectern with a sign about building houses faster as though that’s some kind of smoking gun and not simply the federal government patting itself on the back for dispersing money—which is not actually an indication of constitutional responsibility. This shouldn’t be rocket science, and yet they also do this with healthcare. Nor is this new—provinces have been shrugging off this responsibility since at least the 1950s, because they know they can get away with it because credulous media outlets in particular let them.

This being said, I am also rapidly losing patience with the whole thing about people angry that Trudeau has correctly pointed out that he is not primarily responsible, and that he should somehow “show leadership” through handwavey means. This makes as much difference as people getting angry that Trudeau hasn’t fixed healthcare. Yes, there are things the federal government can do around the margins to affecting housing, but again, they cannot force municipalities to zone for density. There are stories about how hundreds of millions of federal dollars for affordable housing are languishing in cities like Vancouver because the municipalities can’t get their permitting through. Trudeau doesn’t have the constitutional levers to change that, or a Green Lantern ring to willpower more housing construction. Meanwhile, the premiers sit back and let Trudeau take that blame while they continue to do nothing about the problems, and the media won’t hold them to account. Isn’t federalism just grand?

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1686292418344239104

Ukraine Dispatch:

In the early morning hours, drone debris has hit Kyiv as attacks were thwarted. There were also more attacks on the port city of Odessa and the grain storage there. Russians also shelled a hospital in Kherson, which killed one doctor. Meanwhile, that same office tower in Moscow’s financial centre got hit by another drone attack (and again, Ukraine is not claiming responsibility).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1686410208338464768

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Roundup: Another rate hike, more nonsense talking points in response

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Not unexpectedly, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates another quarter point yesterday because inflation is becoming sticky, particularly in the core measures that they use to strip out the highly volatile measures like gasoline prices. If you read through the Monetary Policy Report, which shows the state of the global and Canadian economies, economic growth in Canada remains stronger than expected—too strong to tame inflation—and there is still too much demand in the system, particularly for services as opposed to goods, which is keeping those prices higher, as they are especially sensitive to the tight labour market. To that end, the Bank is now expecting inflation to last around three percent for most of the next year before finally getting back to the target of two percent, which is later than they anticipated because economic growth is still too strong.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre continues to spout absolute nonsense about the causes of this inflation—it’s not government spending, and that isn’t indicated in the MPR anywhere—and lo, media outlets like the CBC simply both-sides his talking points rather than dismantling them. He’s talking about how he’s going to cut taxes, which would actually fuel inflation rather than do anything to tame it (and no, carbon prices are only marginally inflationary and cutting them would do nothing to slow it). And then there’s the NDP, who think that the Bank should lay off and instead use windfall taxes, as though “greed-flation” is what’s driving inflation (again, not indicated anywhere in the MPR). But as economist Stephen Gordon has pointed out, this kind of promise of painless measures to fight inflation are the provenance of quacks and faith healers. It won’t help, and it will make things worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

It was a third consecutive night of Russian drone attacks directed to Kyiv, and falling debris has killed one person. Elsewhere, Ukrainian troops are reporting “some success” around Bakhmut.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1679340673357557761

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1679031785764659201

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Roundup: The usual NATO meeting tropes

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In advance of the NATO summit happening today in Latvia, Justin Trudeau was in Latvia to announce that Canada would be doubling our military presence in that country by 2026, which is actually easier said than done with the current state of our Forces. This was, of course, superseded by news that Turkey has agreed to drop their objections to Sweden joining NATO (leaving Hungary as the last to sign off, though they insisted they won’t be the last). Here’s Stephen Saideman to parse what this means.

Of course, as with any NATO meeting, we get the usual lazy tropes about Canada supposedly being a “freeloader,” because we don’t spend the minimum two percent of our GDP on defence. But that analogy doesn’t actually work because NATO isn’t a club where members pay dues and then it does stuff with them—it’s a military alliance that depends on the participation of member countries, and Canada participates. We participate more than a lot of other countries who have a higher percentage of defence spending than we do. And it bears reminding yet again that the two percent target is a stupid metric, because the fastest way to meet the target is to tank your economy and have a recession, and it’s easier for countries with a smaller GDP denominator to meet. But hey, the two percent target is easy fodder for media because they can make hay about it with little regard for the nuance, which is why it has been a fixation for years now.

And yes, one of our biggest issues when it comes to our military spending and capacity to spend is our ability to recruit, which we have had a hard time doing—it’s a very tight labour market, and it can take a long time for applications to be processed, by which time potential recruits are likely to have found new jobs. It also seems to me that the military has never adapted to the changes that happened about two decades ago, when they could no longer rely on economically-depressed regions (such as the Atlantic provinces) because of the rise of the oil sands and the ability for people to fly out to Fort McMurray on two-weeks-in-two-weeks-out shifts, that changed their fortunes. We’ll see if they can fix their recruiting now that they are allowing permanent residents to apply, but that is one of the major challenges they need to address.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched 28 drones over Kyiv and Odessa in the early morning hours, 26 of which were downed. Ukrainian forces also say that they have trapped Russian occupation forces in Bakhmut and that they are pushing them out. A statistical analysis shows that as many as 50,000 Russian men have been killed in the fighting to date.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1678651881185243137

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1678332390052098048

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