Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

Roundup: Silence on some un-apologies

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After Friday’s dubious denunciation of visiting far-right extremist MEP Christine Anderson by a proxy of Pierre Poilievre, and notably not Poilievre personally, either in front of a camera or on social media, and Colin Carrie’s completely insincere apology and lies that he didn’t know who Anderson was, well, the other two MPs doubled down. Despite the party-written apology, Leslyn Lewis used whataboutery in order to defend her meeting, while Dean Allison told a known white nationalist that he wasn’t consulted about the apology and didn’t agree with it, and found Anderson to be a “good lady.”

And Poilievre? Well, he was tweeting about a Black History Month event with Lewis, after she defended her meeting with Anderson, and has not distanced himself from Lewis’ meeting or her whataboutery in any way. So, it sounds like there’s a problem here.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives appear to be content to wink and nod to these extremists, and will simply issue more insincere apologies every time they get caught out, because that’s the whole game these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While battles continue to wage around Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for yet more sanctions on Russians, in order to keep ratcheting up the pressure on them. But with any sanction regime, compliance is key. Ukraine’s energy minister says half of the country’s energy infrastructure has been damaged by Russian attacks since October. And here is a look at how the war is impacting children in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1629796414816415746

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Roundup: Feigning ignorance of far-right figures

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It’s another day of Canadian politics covering itself in glory, starting with the Conservatives starting to backpedal when pressure mounted after three MPs—Leslyn Lewis, Colin Carrie and Dean Allison—attended an event with German MEP Christine Anderson, who is part of the far-right AfD party. As the pressure mounted, Pierre Poilievre issued a denunciation saying that he disavowed her racist rhetoric, and the three MPs gave a half-hearted apology, claiming they didn’t know who she was.

And that’s bullshit.

They knew exactly who she was. Carrie even quoted her in the House of Commons because she gave a speech denouncing Trudeau in the European parliament, and Canadian conservatives and far-right figures were lapping it up. (Carrie is one of the MPs who refused to get vaccinated, and has said that public health officials should be prosecuted. He can google all kinds of conspiracy theories but not the woman he’s quoting? Bullshit.) And yes, her trip to Canada included meeting with leaders from the Ottawa occupation from last year, whom the Conservatives also have associated themselves with. Even more interesting is the fact that the Western Standard asked her about Poilievre, and she said she had spoken with him a couple of times and he seemed like a decent guy, which Poilievre’s office disavowed and insisted that he had never spoken with her. But there is a pattern of behaviour here, with these faux apologies when they get caught, because they know there aren’t any actual consequences, and their followers lap it up.

Justin Trudeau got a few minutes of getting to rip into Poilievre and the Conservatives for their pattern of behaviour before he was struck with another bombshell, in which it is alleged that CSIS warned the Liberals to rescind the nomination of their now-MP Han Dong before the last election, citing that he was too close to the Chinese consulate. The PMO says that there was so much false information in the questions put them that they couldn’t answer, which doesn’t help things. But nobody is confirming anything, so this is likely to drag on into next week (where there may be some lawsuits in the works).

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Chinese government has decided they want to get involved in resolving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and proposed a “peace plan,” but it doesn’t say anything about returning the land Russia currently occupies (including Crimea) or have any mention of accountability. To that end, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’ll await more details (but I wouldn’t hold my breath). Zelenskyy did say there will be no peace talks until Russia leaves all of Ukrainian territory, so that’s probably China’s answer. Meanwhile, drone footage is showing how badly the eastern part of the country has been smashed by Russian forces. CBC talks to some people about their recollections of when the invasion began.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1629142902776512513

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Roundup: Showboating at PROC over allegations of Chinese interference

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee met yesterday to vote on a motion around expanding their study on election interference to include the recent revelations from the Globe and Mail about alleged Chinese interference in the past two elections. Despite some arguing, particularly with Conservatives demanding both the appearance of Katie Telford (once again, for those of you at the back, you do not summon staff to committee because ministers are responsible!), and they were going to demand classified documents, which is becoming just part of the show these days, but they were eventually talked out of both of those demands and have instead summoned a few ministers, plus CSIS, the RCMP, and Elections Canada to discuss these particular allegations.

But of course, there was showboating. And the Liberals, who usually try to pretend that they’re the grown-ups in the room, were all-in on it as Jennifer O’Connell responded to the allegation that the Liberals were covering up what happened because it benefitted them (allegedly), saying “This is the same Trump-type tactics to question election results moving forward,” and that created a giant stir. She’s not entirely wrong, and the Conservatives have dealt in enough bad faith that they could start going down that particular road (and still might), but she wasn’t helping.

Amidst all of this, the Star obtained documents from the Conservatives showing that they were considering going public about the alleged interference over Chinese-language social media they were seeing during the last campaign but decided not to for fear of political backlash. Instead, they sent it to the committee overseeing the integrity of the election, but didn’t get much response from them at the time, who are now complaining that their concerns weren’t taken seriously.

Throughout this, I keep going back to my misgivings about the way in which the original Globe and Mail story was framed, particularly in giving the impression that the Chinese were trying to engineer a minority parliament, which is impossible to do. The piece should have simply stated that the Chinese preferred it because of chaos, but there is no interference they could do, short of stuffing ballot boxes in certain regions, to hope to achieve it, and that’s not going to happen in our system. Likewise, with the allegations around campaign financing, which don’t make any sense as written. Of course, the Globe has a well-known tendency of producing a lot of smoke for very little fire, but all of that smoke is just fuelling the MPs’ showboating, and it’s making it difficult to demonstrate that we have a serious parliament as a result.

https://twitter.com/mrmubinshaikh/status/1628216781901905922

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 364:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are holding positions on the front lines in the east, while Russia claims that they are advancing in the Donbas region toward Bakhmut. Here is a look at five significant battles over the past year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is asking Canada to lend rail expertise and parts to help keep its crucial system running (but seriously? We’ve not been good to rail in this country).

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1628044033321848833

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628137356556439585

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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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QP: Crossing a line around MAiD access allegations

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The prime minister was allegedly in town, but didn’t show up for QP today, while his deputy was out of town, and most of the other leaders were absent as well, save Pierre Poilievre. And he led off QP in French, worrying about how much mortgage costs have risen, rent increases, and blaming this on “inflationist policies” of the government (which is completely contrary to economic data). Pascale St-Onge, who is apparently now the designated French responder during the leaders’ round when Trudeau is away, gave the back-patting that Canadians know the government is there for them when times are tough. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same question, demanding that the prime minister take responsibility for pricing working-class youth out of a home. Ahmed Hussen praised their measures such as the rent-to-own programme, the tax-free savings account for first-time buyers, and that the Conservatives voted against these kinds of measures. Poilievre insisted that they voted against inflationary policies, and complained about how much housing prices have gone up in markets like Toronto, demanding the federal government take responsibility for this failure (never mind that these are clearly municipality and provincial responsibilities). Randy Boissonnault reminded him that mothers who took CERB and parents who take their kids to the dentist don’t create inflation, and that the Conservatives dealt in nonsense economics. Poilievre insisted that the government created that inflation, and blamed government spending for inflating the housing market (which is lunacy), and Hussen got back up to demand that Poilievre take responsibility for voting against housing supports. Poilievre took on a tone of faux gravitas and drew a specious link between people at food banks and asking for Medical Assistance in Dying because poverty has them depressed, and accused the government of being more in favour of them accessing MAiD for depression rather than helping them (which is frankly outrageous, particularly since the expansion of MAiD for mental illness is explicitly not about simple depression, no matter what its opponents will falsely claim). Carolyn Bennett tried to dispute this and point out that the eligibility criteria screens out suicidal behaviour, but she was shouted down and the Speaker didn’t allow her to start again from the top.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc and demanded the resignation of Amira Elghawaby, because of course he did. Hussen read that she already clarified and apologised for her past comments and invited Therrien to read that statement. Therrien insisted that the position itself was a problem and that it was only about demonising Quebec, and demanded the position be abolished. Hussen got up to talk about his attending the memorial for the Quebec City mosque shooting and how many people attended it, before reiterating that she already clarified and apologised for her past comments.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the Bloc, and he yelled about use of consultants as privatisation and decried that they were being too cheap with public servants at the bargaining table. Mona Fortier recited some pabulum about good jobs for Canadians. Gord Johns read the English version of the same question with added sanctimony, wanting a full investigation into government outsourcing. Helena Jaczek said that she looked forward to answering their questions at committee. 

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Roundup: A lack of enthusiasm

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The House of Commons resumes today, and normally at this time I would have started to miss them all, and would be eagerly awaiting the first Question Period back, but this year? I’m having a hard time summoning the enthusiasm, which may be a reflection of just how tired I still am, or possibly because there isn’t a lot to get excited about right now. We are in this kind of holding pattern of outright lies coming from certain opposition parties, and a government that just carries on responding to absolutely everything with a mountain of pabulum. It also doesn’t help that almost nothing is getting done, because of dilatory motions on every single piece of legislation, and the fact that they passed only two non-budget-related bills in the fall doesn’t really give any confidence that they’re going to get stuff done.

With that in mind, I’m going to point you in the direction of this piece I wrote a few weeks ago about what is on the Order Paper, and it’s a lot, and considering how long some of the bills have been on there (carrying over from previous sessions or parliaments), one has to wonder just how they plan to get things done, and I suspect we’re going to be in for a lot more time allocation, closure, and other procedural tools to finally get these bills moving.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 341:

Russian missiles struck Kosyantynivka and an apartment building in Kharkiv, and the town of Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defence minister says that now that they have secured modern tanks, they are now looking for new fighter jets, and the president’s aide says that talks for planes and missiles are being fast-tracked.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1619040069490442241

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1619295582878834688

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Roundup: Ford getting huffy about his Greenbelt plans

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There was a hint of defensiveness from Ontario premier Doug Ford yesterday when he was asked about comments that the federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault made about the plans to develop parts of the Greenbelt. Guilbeault had pointed out that the plan goes against plans for dealing with climate change, and that he could look at potential federal tools to stop those projects, though later his office clarified that there are currently no projects proposed, so this was about potential legal processes to protect nature, which is fair enough, but is really getting up to the line on what he can actually do there.

Doug Ford, however, got a bit huffy and insisted that this is his jurisdiction, and then blamed the federal government’s immigration targets for needing to open up new spaces for housing development, which is bullshit because Ford has the tools to force cities to end exclusionary zoning that prevents densification, but he chooses not to use them. As well, much of the Greenbelt is on watersheds so you really don’t want to build housing there because it’ll be at high risk of flooding, and good luck getting those properties insured. It’s really not the place you want to build housing, so Ford is really not making any good case there for carving up those protected areas.

Of course, Jagmeet Singh also chimed in and demanded that the federal minister use his “tools” to stop the development, citing both the Species at Risk Act and the Impact Assessment Act as possibilities, but that’s on some pretty thin ice. To use the Species legislation, well, you need to prove there is endangered habitat there, which may not be a relevant consideration in those particular places. And the Impact Assessment Act would be going out on a very big limb to try and assert jurisdiction there because there is unlikely to be an interprovincial federal effect to hang it on (such as increased GHGs or mine runoff). Yes, the minister currently has the power to add any project in exceptional circumstances, but I’m not sure this would qualify, if those powers are around much longer, because they’re being challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada in March, and this is far less of a sure thing than the carbon pricing legislation. Once again, there are very few ways for the federal government to swoop in and assert jurisdiction, and they may not have the ability to come to the rescue of the Greenbelt (and yes, Ontarians are going to have to organise if they want to stop the development).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 339:

Renewed Russian shelling in the east and south killed ten Ukrainian civilians and wounded twenty others. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russians are focusing on Vuhledar and Bakhmut, methodically destroying towns and villages as they go. Meanwhile, here’s the tale of Canadian medic serving on the front lines near Bakhmut in Ukraine.

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Roundup: Fire which gatekeepers?

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It sounds like Pierre Poilievre is back on his bullshit again (do the kids still say that?) with his “gatekeeper” nonsense, as in releasing another one of his cringey videos where he promises to “fire the gatekeepers” in order to build housing. Except I’m not sure exactly which gatekeepers he’s proposing to fire, because the biggest impediments to building housing are NIMBY homeowners and neighbourhood associations that oppose any kind of densification, not to mention the elected city councillors who enable said NIMBYism. How, pray tell, does Poilievre propose to “fire them”? I’m sure he’ll tell you that he’ll threaten to withhold federal transfers to municipalities that don’t comply, but then you’ve got elected councillors beholden to voters in conflict with the dictates of a federal leader, so that’s going to be fun.

Poilievre also held a press event in Vancouver yesterday where he unveiled plans to consult on a proposal that would allow First Nations to keep more federal tax revenue from projects on their lands—which sounds like a great policy! But it’s vague, has no details, and is almost certainly going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than he’s making it out to be, especially if he’s going to insist that provincial royalties and taxes won’t be affected either. Listening to the language he used, it also sounds like he hopes that this will be the kind of thing that will ensure projects get built, as though the money from this tax revenue will make concerns over environmental or social impacts evaporate, and I suspect he’ll be surprised when they don’t.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 336:

While Russian forces increase pressure around Bakhmut and Vuhledar, it is expected that Germany will announce today that it will send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and allow other countries to transfer them as well. Meanwhile, more officials have been named and fired in relation to corruption allegations, as Zelenskyy’s government continues their pledge to clean up the graft in government so that they can attain EU membership.

https://twitter.com/cfoperations/status/1617887130625413123

https://twitter.com/uasupport999/status/1618043593285062656

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Roundup: On Trudeau’s feeling re-energized

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The CBC’s Aaron Wherry has a longread out right now about Justin Trudeau’s time in office, and the sense that he’s feeling re-invigorated and is almost certainly going to run for a fourth election, likely in 2025, which some of us (myself included) have not been so sure about. But there is a lot of observation from insiders and observers that he does seem to have the fight back (indeed, I heard from some people in the know of the funk he found himself in at one particular point), and that it’s not necessarily Pierre Poilievre’s presence that is doing it, but that he has a sense of unfinished business, of promises yet to be fulfilled.

To that end, the piece notes that Cabinet and caucus have been told to focus on four Cs: competence, confidence, contrast and campaign-readiness (in that order), of which the first is going to be incredibly important when it comes to trying to dispel this notion that “everything feels broken,” particularly when there is a pervasive sense that government can’t even get the little things right (though I would note that some of the “little things” are more complex than they may appear on the surface, and a lot of what people are complaining about is not the job of the federal government to fix, no matter that they may try to claim some kind of policy ownership, such as investing in housing when those funds are the only policy lever they have available). And yeah, some of it is their own fault (see: judicial appointments), where they decided on processes that hampered them more than it helped them, and absolutely their inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag is one hundred percent one of their biggest own-goal problems, which they seem resolutely unwilling to do anything about.

I know there is also a lot of talk about the “smell of death” on this government, and I will probably write something longer about that elsewhere, but nevertheless, it was interesting to read Wherry’s piece and put some of it into the context of these conversations that are being had around the pundit sphere. There are a lot of things to consider about this government, and little of it can fit into some of these fairly facile narratives.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 327:

There was a fresh round of Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine on Saturday, and one missile struck a nine-story building in Dnipro, killing at least twelve people, while another 30 to 40 people are still missing and could be trapped under rubble. The missile—the kind used to strike warships—may have been aimed at a nearby power station. This as Ukrainian officials continue to insist that the battle for Soledar is not lost, and this certainly takes the attention away from that. CBC also heard from a Russian conscript who was at the site of the Makiivka counter-attack, which struck Russian barracks.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1614351103637991424

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Roundup: Encouraging noises on health transfers

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There seems to be a noticeable shift in tone coming from several premiers when it comes to the federal government’s demands that there be more strings attached to future federal health care transfers, and that they seem to be realizing that their time-old tactics of simply blaming the federal government isn’t working as well as it used to. In part, I think that Justin Trudeau has stepped up his game on communication around this issue more than he usually does, and made effective use of his round of year-end interviews on this file, and showed that he was willing to give them more money, but that there needs to be changes rather than putting money into a broken system that won’t get meaningful results. I also think that shit is getting real for the premiers as we are now seeing an increasing number of deaths in ERs that should have been preventable, and that the patience of the population when it comes to children’s hospitals in particular is now gone, and they are being forced to wear it more than they would normally have had to in the past.

So, this sounds like an increased willingness to rebrand federal strings as “shared priorities,” and that’s a climbdown that premiers seem to be increasingly willing to live with. But then again, I wouldn’t trust all of the premiers, and in particular Doug Ford, whose math about new beds is false advertising, and who is hilariously claiming that new private surgery clinics won’t cannibalise hospital staff or resources, because of course they will. That’s the whole gods damned point. His “safeguards” will be as effective as toddler gates whose latches can be figured out and overcome within seconds. So, while it’s good to hear the shift in tone, I wouldn’t count any unhatched chickens just yet.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 325:

Russians are once again claiming that they are now in control of the remains of Soledar, but the Ukrainians continue to say their units are still there and still fighting.

https://twitter.com/bachyns/status/1613939963237732365

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