Tag Archives: Procurement

QP: Demanding an admission of failure

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As rain threaten outside, Justin Trudeau was back in the House of Commons for another day of Question Period, with one other Liberal behind him, and you would be right if you guessed that it was once again Mark Gerretsen. Erin O’Toole led off by pointing to other American outlets which are concern trolling about the situation in Canada, and blamed the rollout of vaccines for the third wave — which is a huge falsehood — and demanded and admission of failure. Trudeau called this out as disinformation, citing our place in the rankings and that delivery schedules were rolling along even if Moderna is occasionally a day or two behind. O’Toole quoted the head of Toronto’s university health network saying this is the worst place in the pandemic and he blamed the slow rollout of vaccines instead of murderclown premiers, to which Trudeau stated that they were doing what they could to support provinces. O’Toole switched to French to repeated his first question, got the same answer, and then repeated the question on doctors in French, and again got the same answer.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised the bailout of Air Canada, accusing the government of trying to break regional airlines, for which Trudeau insisted there will be further assistance for the aerospace industry. Blanchet was not mollified, but Trudeau replied with further assurances that they are supporting the sector. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he decried the current state of the pandemic, and demanded a new plan to fight it, for which Trudeau stated that in some areas of the country it is bad and that they are doing what they can to help affected provinces. Singh switched to English to decry the cancellation of vaccinations appointments in Scarborough, which is a question of provincial jurisdiction, not federal. Trudeau stated that things were bad in Ontario and that they were trying to offer what assistance they can to the Ford government. 

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Roundup: A broken system thwarting foreign agents

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Something in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) annual report, made public this week caught my eye, which talked about how the “critical election incident protocol panel” – the body set up in order to have some sort of way to help deal with any detected foreign interference during an election (given the whole Russian interference thing south of the border in previous of their elections) – needs to include more traditional espionage as part of their warning triggers. Why? Because, as NSICOP says, foreign agents could try to infiltrate political parties to exert influence, whether it’s in nomination meetings, or volunteering in campaign offices.

I will admit that I laughed.

Not because foreign interference isn’t serious – because it is – but because the joke would be on them, given that grassroots members no longer have any influence in our political system since we have made the system entirely leader-driven. Nomination meetings are being gamed by leaders’ offices to the point where it’s difficult to determine just how free and fair any of them are these days – that is, when leaders aren’t outright appointing candidates (as Justin Trudeau did with Marci Ien and Ya’ara Saks for the by-elections late last year). Trying to hijack nomination contests at the best of times is exceedingly difficult because of the requirement for the leader’s signature (or their proxies, thanks to the garbage Reform Act), which was part of why that requirement was created back in 1970 – officially to keep the Chief Electoral Officer from needing to adjudicate nomination disputes, but anecdotally about heading off pro-life groups trying to hijack Liberal nominations. Foreign agents trying to use the same tactics would have fairly marginal chances of success once their involvement became known.

This is less of an indictment of the use of party infiltration as a tactic of foreign agents, but rather of how our system has degenerated. Because we insisted on moving to leadership contests that became quasi-presidential primaries, we have upended the entire grassroots nature of our parties, and now everything is top-down, leader driven. It shouldn’t be this way, and yet this is where we are.

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QP: Making CNN a national issue

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It being a lovely Tuesday in the nation’s capital, the prime minister was indeed present and in the Chamber for Question Period, with only one other Liberal – Mark Gerretsen, of course – with him. Erin O’Toole led off in person, with his scripts in front of him, and he raised that sensationalised CNN report saying Canada was desperate for vaccines. Trudeau reminded him that Canada was third in the OECD for vaccinations and people needed to keep up public health measures. O’Toole insisted that no, the government’s rollout was too slow and confused, to which Trudeau pointed to the UK where higher vaccinations did not mean they had to let up lockdowns, and that while Conservatives don’t like masks and social distancing, people needed to keep it up). O’Toole then raised the American travel advisory — that was months old and applied to every other country in the world — for which Trudeau called out the bullshit for what it was, that the advisory was from last March, and that the Conservatives were only interested in making things up. O’Toole then repeated his first question about the CNN report in French, got the same answer, then he pivoted to vaccine rollouts in Quebec, and claimed that Trudeau said everything was on track yesterday and then we just learned there would be a Moderna delay. Trudeau castigated him for making things up after their conversation yesterday, stated what he told O’Toole about shipments and yes, Moderna may have a day or two delayed here and there.

Yves-François Blanchet raised Quebec’s Bill 99 having been found to be justifiable by the Auebec Court of Appeal, to which Trudeau dissembled about working well with the Quebec government. Blanchet noted that the Quebec bill would clash with the Clarity Act, and one of them had to go, and Trudeau dismissed this as posturing, that the Bloc would rather talk about sovereignty than fighting the third wave.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and in French, lamented that Canada was losing the race against the variants, to which Trudeau praised the number of doses that have arrived in Canada. Singh switched to English to demand “real action” by improving paid sick leave, for which Trudeau reminded him that they put in the programme months and they were working with provinces to boost their measures. 

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QP: Blaming the lockdowns on vaccines

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With Ontario back under a “stay-at-home order,” the numbers in the Chamber are again back to bare-bones, with the Liberals once again resorting to only keeping Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber and no one else, with only two NDP MPs present, and four Bloc MPs. Additionally, those Bloc MPs stayed out of the Chamber until after the moment of silence for the death of Prince Philip was over, because they really are that petty about our constitutional monarchy. Candice Bergen off for the Conservatives via video, and she recited the party’s bullshit assertion that the lack of vaccines was responsible for the current round of “lockdowns,” which serious people know was never the way out of the second or third waves. Anita Anand replied by pointing out that Canada surpassed their targets for receiving vaccines by over 3.9 million doses. Bergen then lied and claimed that the Americans issued a travel advisory to Canada last week — that advice had been in place for months and is the same as every other country — for which Patty Hajdu reminded everyone that now is not the time to travel. Bergen complained more about “lockdowns,” to which Hajdu reminded her that even with vaccinations underway that people still need to adhere to public health measures, and that the federal government doesn’t determine local advice. Gérard Deltell then took over in French to proffer the ridiculous complaint that the Americans have fully vaccinated ten times more people than Canada has, and insisted the federal government failed. Anand repeated her response about vaccines delivered, and when Deltell condescended to her about the quality of her French before complaining she didn’t answer the question, Anand repeated that vaccines were ahead of target.

For the Bloc, Alain Therrien complained that the government was practicing “predatory federalism” by attaching strings to future transfers in the budget, which Sean Fraser refuted with listing increased transfers to the provinces. Therrien was not convinced, but Pablo Rodriguez discounted his concerns as rumours, as they were working well with the provinces.

Jagmeet Singh led the NDP, and in French, he complained that the third wave was getting worse, and that the federal government needed to improve paid sick leave — which is provincial jurisdiction in 94 percent of workplaces. Rodriguez again responded by reminding him of federal supports and working with the provinces. In English, Singh declared that Ontario is “on fire” and made a pitch for Green Lantern Theory, including so-called federal support for vaccinations, to which Hajdu reminded him that the field hospitals set up in provinces that need it are from the federal government.

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Roundup: Waiting for the modelling to show up

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If you weren’t convinced up until now that Ontario is being run by a group of incompetent murderclowns, there was a tacit admission yesterday from Solicitor General Sylvia Jones that the government held off on increasing restrictions because they wanted to see the modelling show up in hospitals first.

Let that sink in. Fourteen gods damned months into this pandemic, they still don’t understand that the modelling is a warning, not a prediction. They decided to wait until the lagging indicators – hospitalisation – was prevalent before “locking down” (but not really), which means that by this point, the spread of the virus is out of control. How they could not understand this fourteen gods damned months later is a sign that they are either wilfully ignorant, or they just don’t care. They were content to let people die because they couldn’t be arsed to stop the spread of the infection that they knew was coming for some wrong-headed notion about trying to “balance” the economy rather than ensuring people wouldn’t die – never mind that the economy would come back faster if they squashed the spread of the virus and it we wouldn’t any more lockdowns.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1380194055112511490

I’m still mad about this. I was mad about it all day since the interview hit social media. I would say it’s unbelievable, but given this particular posse of murderclowns and everything they’ve done in this pandemic, it’s unfortunately all too believable.

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Roundup: The third wave is accelerating

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The third wave is accelerating, and targeting younger populations, and the affected provinces are seeing record levels of hospital strain, and the number of positive cases has now topped one million since the beginning of the pandemic. School boards are starting to shut down in-person learning in several Ontario regions, and it’s getting really, really bad. But the province is keeping on with its current mockdown rather than imposing actual tough measures, and I’m sure we’ll hear another round of blame being laid at the federal government (never mind that the vaccine rollout is ahead of schedule, with another 2.2 million doses arriving this week).

One thing we are hearing a lot about is workplace spread, and most of it with “essential workers” (even though that definition is so broad these days). This is causing a number of infectious disease experts to call for the province to shift its vaccination plans from simply going by age to targeting areas where more of these essential workers live, or even vaccinating at workplaces. I’m not confident, however, that the affected provinces will do so, because a) they are being run by incompetent murderclowns who are incapable of pivoting to where there is greater need, b) they want to cater to boomers because that’s where the votes are, and c) they have an in-built ideological inability to doing the kinds of things that are needed to halt workplace spread, such as paid sick days or simply paying people to stay at home to avoid spread, and this is allowing things to get progressively worse.

To that end, here’s Robert Hiltz, who quite rightly points out that the current mockdowns will remain useless because the provincial governments have decided that these workers are expendable to keep the economy chugging along, while tut-tutting at the rest of us, and yes, that should make us all furious.

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Roundup: A refusal to admit failure in the face of the third wave

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Ontario is once again going back into a four-week mockdown because the province walked right into the third wave of the pandemic, despite being warned repeatedly that they were headed for disaster, but they barrelled ahead anyway. And because the murderclowns who run this province want to keep things as confusing as possible for everyone, decided to brand this one a “shutdown” instead of a “lockdown” or a “stay at home” order.

But what remains galling is the fact that nobody wants to take responsibility for the current state of affairs. Most concerning is that the province’s chief medical officer of health insists that it hasn’t been a failure, because hey, the modelling said we’d be at five or six thousand cases a day if they didn’t make any interventions, and we’re only at 2000, so mission accomplished. No, seriously – that’s his argument. It’s utterly bonkers, and they’re getting away with it because all of Doug Ford’s folksy sing-song pronouncements keep blinding people to what is going on, and the bulk of the media in Queen’s Park is not going hard enough on him for it.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1377376033729511425

Of course, this isn’t simply confined to Ontario either. Alberta is seeing some its highest case numbers, and the variants are in full-blown community spread, and what does Jason Kenney do? Refuse to impose tougher measures, trot out his failed “personal responsibility” schtick, and blame the federal government for not making enough vaccines appear from thin air by way of magic. No, seriously. How people stand for it, I just don’t understand.

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Roundup: Cheering on an attack on institutional independence

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Yesterday, Senator Claude Carignan tabled a bill that seeks to strip Julie Payette of her pension, and would strip any former Governor General of a pension if they don’t serve at least five years (never mind that nine of our 29 past Governors General did not serve at least five years). It’s an attack on the institutional independence of an office that can serve as a check on government, and needs to be called out as such.

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But just how was it discussed on Power & Politics last night? Over several segments, each of them with different pundits, the common consensus that this was great populist politics to go after an unpopular figure like Payette, and digging into the issue of their other benefits – because nothing sells in Canadian media like cheap outrage and hairshirt parsimony. The most we got to the cautionary tale was to beware unintended consequences, and that a future GG may have to invent a medical reason for a resignation (which the bill states that Cabinet would have to approve, which is entirely bonkers). Not one person – not one – raised the issue of institutional independence, and why it’s a Very Bad Thing to open the door to governments being able to threaten their financial well-being as a way to hold power over them, most especially when the beneficiaries of this independence (not only the GG, but also senators and Supreme Court justices) provide a check on the power of government. This is the level of discourse in this country? Seriously? And even more to the point, the host of the show kept steering the topic to this kind of populist, vindictiveness rather than the actual consequences of making an action like this. It is absolutely boggling, but it gives you a sense as to why things have degenerated as they have. This bill represents an existential threat to our parliamentary system, and it’s being played for petty drama and populist cheap shots.

We need better pundits in this country, and better politics shows. This is horrifying.

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Roundup: Kabuki theatre around the Elections Act changes

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There are days when the state of our parliament achieves the level of farce, and we appear to be having another of those moments. Minister Dominic LeBlanc sent a letter to opposition party leaders – which seems to be a more common occurrence the days – urging them to pass the bill that would allow for pandemic-related changes to the Canada Elections Act per the request of the Chief Electoral Officer. This bill was tabled back in December, and we have just exhausted the sitting weeks in March, and it still has not even made it to committee, in part because the Conservatives have spent weeks using procedural tactics to delay debate on most every piece of legislation on the Order Paper.

LeBlanc apparently mentioned the upcoming budget in the letter, because that is a confidence measure and this is a hung parliament, so it is possible that the government could face a non-confidence vote and trigger an election at pretty much any point. And so during what debate there has been on this bill, the opposition MPs keep saying that there’s no imminent election unless the Liberals plan on calling one, and the NDP are going so far as to say that they simply need to work together to avoid one. Essentially, they get to accuse the government of opportunism for trying to do their due diligence at the request of the Chief Electoral Officer, which is cute for everyone involved.

But here’s the real kicker that makes this all a farce – the bill has an implementation period of 90 days after royal assent. The House isn’t sitting for the next two weeks, and even if they managed to have a Second Reading vote, speed it through committee and rush it to the Senate, I don’t image that it could be passed both chambers before the 23rd of April at the earliest, and only then would that 90-day clock start. That means that the changes couldn’t be fully implemented until the very end of July, meaning that even if the budget were the crux by which the government could fall (those votes would likely happen sometime in early May), there is no way that these changes could pass before a spring election could be called (considering the usual writ period of about six weeks). Any party pushing for an election without these changes would be suicidal. The government really has no interest in calling an election (seriously, and I’ve spoken to ministers who lament the number of items they have on the Order Paper that they need to see passed), especially because we are now into a Third Wave of this pandemic and there is no possible way we can vaccinate our way out of it without a time machine, so all of this chest-thumping by parties (and pleading by bored pundits) is for naught. This is all a bunch of Kabuki theatre for the sake of scoring points. We are not a serious country.

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Roundup: Not a tax but a regulatory charge

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The big news yesterday was that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 6-3 that the federal government’s carbon price backstop was indeed constitutional, and included in that ruling was that the price was not a tax, but a constitutionally valid regulatory charge. This is important for a couple of reasons – taxes go to general revenue, whereas regulatory charges must be cycled for specific purposes, and in this case, they are rebated to the provinces in which they are collected, and under the federal backstop, if a province doesn’t have a revenue recycling mechanism, these carbon charges are rebated at a rate whereby most households will get more back than they paid into it owing to the fact that institutions who pay the prices don’t get those same rebates.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it based on a bulk of the coverage in this country, for whom the common headline was “Supreme Court declares carbon tax constitutional.” CBC, iPolitics, The Globe and Mail, Global TV, the Postmedia chain – all of them using “carbon tax” throughout to describe the very ruling that says it’s not a tax. This matters for a couple of reasons – one of them is that calling it a tax is actively misleading as this charge does not go into general revenue. Why is that important? Recall that in the lead-up to the last election, then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer kept declaring that the federal “carbon tax” would keep increasing because the government needed the revenues to pay for their deficits – a lie because it’s not a tax, and those revenues got rebated to household. But he almost never got corrected on that, because people kept using “tax.” Erin O’Toole keeps offering the lie that this “tax” is punishing low-income households, again misleading because of the rebates, which again, few people correct him on.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1375152876641746947

The other reason it matters is because using “tax” fits it into a particular ideological framing device for which “taxes” are a bad thing. “Taxation is theft,” and all of that particular bullshit, but this is a particular frame that serves those narratives. Journalists should be under no obligation to carry water for those interests, and if anyone says “calling it a tax is just easier,” then you are party to misinformation. And I am starting to wonder how many of my journalist colleagues either didn’t pay attention or skipped the class in journalism school where we discussed framing devices and how they influence coverage. A few outlets were able to get the nomenclature correct – that others couldn’t is a problem.

Meanwhile, Jason Markusoff makes note of what certain premiers did and did not say about the result, given that this is now a reality that they will be forced to contend with. Heather Scoffield considers the decision the stake to the heart of governments’ ability to drag their feet on tackling climate change. Colby Cosh takes a deep dive into the ruling’s exploration of the Peace, Order and Good Government provisions of the constitution.

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