Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: A supposed “breakthrough” that amounted to nothing

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Federal documents, albeit heavily redacted, are starting to be made public as part of the court challenge around the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and thus far we can see that the Ford government in Ontario offered to meet with those blockading the Ambassador bridge (and were rejected), that the federal government had briefly considered negotiating with the occupiers in front of Parliament Hill, but did not go ahead with it (which is just as well considering their demands were the overthrow of democracy in favour of a ruling junta of occupiers, senators, and the Governor General). The night before the Act was invoked, the government was informed of a “potential breakthrough” with the negotiations happening with the city, which again, were unsuccessful, and the Act was invoked.

This has of course proven to be fodder for certain Conservative leadership candidates who insist that this is some kind of smoking gun that invoking the Act was unnecessary, but that’s not what it indicates, and frankly, you shouldn’t negotiate with a group of right-wing extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who think nothing of overturning democracy because their feelings got hurt. But this seems to be where we’re at, which is utterly boggling.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 170:

Analysis of that explosion on the Russian airbase in occupied Crimea shows that as many as twenty Russian warplanes may have been destroyed, which would be the largest single-day loss since World War II. (Kyiv still has not claimed responsibility for the explosion). The head of the International Atomic Agency is calling on Russia and Ukraine to halt shelling near the Zaporizechzhia nuclear plant, and to allow experts to evaluate the safety of the facility. Ukrainian forces have begun their counter-attack in the Kherson region, having recaptured 54 settlements (while 92 percent of the region remains under occupation). In Bucha, civilians murdered by Russians are being buried as numbers because they have not been identified by name. Meanwhile, in Denmark, Western countries pledged more support for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1557621932429819907

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Roundup: Not calling out the obvious lies

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It seems that Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis have been hyping up a Substack post by a National Post columnist who has been falsely claiming that court documents say that vaccine mandates don’t work. It’s not surprising that they would amplify this garbage, or that said garbage completely misrepresents the studies in question, which provided proof that vaccine mandates do work. Of course, there has been little-to-no denunciation of said lies being propagated by these candidates, nor has the mainstream media done their own fact-checking on the claims (which was done by PressProgress, which is not actually a media organization but a partisan oppo-research outlet that masquerades as journalism). This is not a good thing. This is a sign that things are very broken, and that we are headed to a very dark place. Our media need to step up and start calling this stuff out for what it is, and to stop both-sidesing it out of an exaggerated sense of “fairness.” Lies are lies. There are not two sides. You don’t need to have their political opponents say that they’re lies because that simply provides fodder for the true believers to swallow the lies, because it’s their opponents denouncing them. This is corroding our democracy, but nobody seems to care enough to do something about it.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1557412067572858886

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 169:

In the aftermath of that massive explosion at a Russian base in occupied Crimea, nine Russian warplanes have allegedly been destroyed, and Kyiv continues to deny official responsibility (though it may have been the result of sabotage by Ukrainian partisans in the area). Meanwhile, Russians have been shelling the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, as well as continuing to shell the eastern city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainians have hit the city of Donetsk, which is controlled by Russian separatists.

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Roundup: Spyware or mass surveillance?

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As summer showboat season rolls along, the Commons’ access to information, privacy and ethics committee continued their hearings on the RCMP’s use of spyware. And it was…odd. A senior RCMP member said that the RCMP has been using said spyware to break encryption since 2002 (while advocating for legislation to allow them to evade encryption). The former privacy commissioner said he was surprised to learn that the RCMP had been using this “intrusive” technology for years, and didn’t seek authorisation from his office, while the RCMP denied that they were using the “Pegasus” spyware system. And a former CSIS officer testified that they have monitored politicians at all three levels of government because they had concerns they were being paid by foreign governments. But Liberal MPs kept going on to questions about mass surveillance, which is not what this is about, nor within the capabilities of this spyware, and it makes me wonder if they were trying to put a neat bow on this to say “See, there’s no mass surveillance” without really engaging with the topic. And they tried to pass the motion to say “All wrapped up,” but that didn’t happen either. So I’m not really sure what’s going on other than more showboating from all sides, which is the given at this time of year.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 168:

There was much speculation about an explosion at a military airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, creating much buzz over social media about whether this was a long-range missile strike from Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian officials denied this, but it could mean that Russians may have to fortify their own positions behind the lines on that peninsula, further stretching their resources. Meanwhile, Russian forces shelled the town of Nikopol, near the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as Russians continue to shell the power lines leading from the plant in order to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid so that they can begin the process to link it to Russia’s grid instead.

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Roundup: A choice to keep injuring interpreters

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-fifty-five of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has captured the country’s second-largest power plant, as they are redeploying their forces to three southern regions in advance of an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the area. Ukrainian forces have used American-supplied rockets to take out a strategic bridge being used by Russians to supply their forces occupying the Kherson region, which Ukraine has stated they intend to re-take. It’s these weapons that have allowed Ukrainian forces to turn the corner on their counter-offensive, and they have pointed out that the sooner they can get more of them, the sooner they will be able to end this war. Meanwhile, ship owners are assessing whether the risk is worth it to travel through mined sea corridors to ship grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports (and it could take weeks or months to clear the mines from these ports).

Closer to home, translators in Parliament are continuing to sound the alarm about the plan to hire unaccredited and off-site interpreters to do parliamentary work, no matter that this could impair the quality of the translations. This is very important, because it’s Parliament. To make this worse, the Government House Leader, Mark Holland, is downplaying the effect that hybrid sittings have had in injuring the existing interpreters, claiming that this is because they were already facing shortfalls before COVID because of the “expanded work” of Parliament. The problem with this statement is that they simply made the situation worse with hybrid sittings and the fact that it injures the interpreters, and they keep making excuses to keep them going. This is not helping with the shortfall in interpreters, it’s actively making it worse, and they don’t care. And while the Conservatives are opposing this move, they have not helped their case by insisting on resisting COVID measures including masking. And while I had a Liberal staffer chirping at me on Twitter about this, the fact is that MPs have been aware of the problems for over two years now, and have chosen to do nothing about it. They chose to keep hybrid sittings going, knowing full well that it injures the interpreters and can lead to permanent hearing loss. Their refusal to take measures is a choice, and a deeply unethical one. There is no defending it.

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Roundup: The Pope arrives, and snubs Indigenous women

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We’re on or about day one-hundred-and-fifty-two of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and wouldn’t you just know it, the day after Russia signed a deal to allow grain shipments out of Black Sea ports, they attacked Odessa, killing civilians. Because that’s who Russia is. They don’t respect their own cease-fires, and they act with impunity at every opportunity. (One might note that Justin Trudeau stated immediately that he didn’t trust Russia to uphold their end of the deal, and lo, was proven right). Elsewhere, Russian forces are blocking people trying to flee the Zaporizhzhia region, and they struck an apartment building in the port city of Mykolaiv.

Closer to home, the Pope’s visit to Canada has begun as part of the apology for residential schools, and both the Governor General and prime minister were in Edmonton to greet him. There are a lot of questions about how substantive this apology is really going to be, and whether he’s willing to do substantive things, like rescinding the Doctrine of Discovery that justified colonial behaviours. AFN national chief RoseAnne Archibald has been told she won’t be part of the welcoming ceremony at Maskwacis today, and she notes there are no women in leadership positions in the event (but this is the Catholic Church we’re talking about—they’re not exactly in favour of women in any leadership positions, or really of women in general). There has also been some irony noted that these events are being translated into Indigenous languages that were forbidden in residential schools, for what it’s worth.

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Roundup: Jockeying for first-place ballot support

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-forty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces damaged a bridge that is critical to supplying Russian troops in southern Ukraine, where Russia is trying to consolidates its territorial gains, making it clear that their supposed aim of “liberating” the predominantly-speaking Donbas region was always a lie. Russians, meanwhile, bombarded the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, and killed more civilians there. On that note, here is a look at Ukrainian refugees being forcibly relocated into Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia has started up a sham tribunal to document “war crimes” from Ukrainians to justify the invasion, and they are using Westerners living in Russia, who are often promoters of conspiracy theories or who are known for being purveyors of disinformation, as their star witnesses. The whole thing is a thinly-veiled propaganda exercise to bolster support for the invasion in Russia, and to provide a counter narrative to the International Criminal Court proceedings against Russians who are involved in actual war crimes in Ukraine, but

Closer to home, the Conservative leadership race is reaching a critical juncture as ballots are being mailed out and candidates are asking for top billing on their ranked ballot. Jean Charest wants another debate, particularly now that Patrick Brown is out of the race, while Roman Baber is trying to make a plea for people to give him a second look and not simply rank him further down-ballot (though the policies he outlined simply remind everyone that yes, this guy is a moron). Speaking of, the National Post has compiled the various policy positions of the leaders, at which point I am force do once again remind everyone that this remains an abomination in our system—leaders are not supposed to be deciding policy and putting it forward in a leadership contest. That is supposed to be the job of the grassroots membership, who have biennial conventions to do just that, but we have so bastardised our system in order to create a faux-presidential primary that we’ve reached this debased state.

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Roundup: Inviting premiers to shift the blame

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-forty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and while Russian forces pound cities like Kramatorsk in the east, and targeted Odesa in the south, they are planning to begin annexing Ukrainian territory with installing proxy officials, false referenda, replacing the local currency and forcing people to apply for Russian citizenship. We know this because they did it in 2014 when they annexed Crimea, and they have a familiar MO.

Closer to home, there was a report out from Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer yesterday that showed how Doug Ford and his merry band of incompetent murderclowns have been under-spending in a number of significant areas like healthcare, education, social supports that include things like autism therapy. Now, put this underspending into the same context of Ford crying poor and insisting that the federal government pony up more cash for healthcare, but he’s not even spending his own current budget allocation, he hasn’t reversed his cuts to nurses’ salaries, and he didn’t do enough when it comes to testing or tracing when it comes to the pandemic. The same report shows he only spent 58 percent of the pandemic funds the federal government sent over, putting the rest directly onto his bottom line to reduce the province’s deficit. And you wonder why the federal government wants strings attached to future funding, to ensure that it actually gets spent on the things it’s supposed to be spent on, and not being used to pad bottom lines.

On a related note, reporters were asking Justin Trudeau yesterday about the strain that emergency rooms are under, and when Trudeau noted the money they’ve sent to the provinces and that those dollars need to come with results, those same reporters frame this as “punting it” back to the provinces.

No.

It’s not punting—it’s the provinces’ gods damned jobs. And while this was justified as Trudeau campaigning on hiring more doctors and nurses, no—the campaign promise was to send $3.2 billion to the provinces to hire doctors and nurses, and it’s not rocket science to understand that this is the kind of thing he’s trying to attach strings to before he sends those cheques to the provinces, so that he knows that they’re going to actually spend it to hire doctors and nurses (and one presumes actually pay them properly) and that it won’t wind up padding their bottom lines like we just watched Doug Ford do. And I’m not trying to insinuate that the reporters are playing gotcha or that they’re being partisan, because they’re not—they’re trying to do their jobs, but they’re doing it with a grave misunderstanding about how jurisdiction works, and this nonsense belief that nobody cares about it. The problem is that they have to care, because that’s how we hold people to account for the work they’re supposed to be doing, which the premiers aren’t. Because media keeps giving them this out and trying to pin things on Trudeau “because nobody cares about jurisdiction,” and the only lever he has is to try and attach strings to funding and nothing else—the federal government cannot hire doctors and nurses because they have no authority to do so—it gives the provinces an out so that they can shift blame when it’s their gods damned responsibility. We need the media to understand this and hold the right people to account for their failures, and right now, that’s the gods damned premiers.

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Roundup: Collapsing hospital care is a crisis for premiers

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It’s on or about day one-hundred-and-forty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have shelled the city of Toretsk in the Donestk region, smashing more buildings as they continue to try and take control of the area. Ukraine is also calling out Russia’s conduct when it comes to prisoners of war, citing illegal treatment.

Meanwhile, there are no assurances around weapons that Canada is sending to Ukraine that they’re being tracked so that they can ensure they won’t wind up on the black market. NATO partners are having discussion about this, but Canada is merely monitoring rather than participating. Ukrainian officials assure Canada that they are closely monitoring any movement of weapons, as are our allies, and are insisting that information to the contrary is likely Russian disinformation.

Closer to home, emergency rooms are closing in some parts of the country as hospitals are facing a severe staff shortage, particularly among nurses. And gosh, it’s quite a coincidence that Ontario gave nurses an effective pay cut that they haven’t reversed, or that Alberta tried to cut nurses’ pay because they said they were making too much relative to nurses in other provinces. No, seriously, that’s their case. This is while the premiers have mishandled COVID, refuse to do the simplest things like mask mandates at this point, and then wondering why the hospitals, which never recovered from the previous waves of the pandemic, are once again collapsing. A very cynical person might think premiers have created this situation, either to pressure the federal government to hand them more money without strings, or to set up the conditions to force more private delivery of care (which won’t actually do anything about staffing or resources other than distribute them toward those who can pay), but it looks clear that they aren’t prepared to give the necessary damn that the situation requires, and that’s a problem.

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Roundup: Summer showboat season has begun

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It’s day one-hundred-and-forty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a missile strike in the more central city of Vinnystia killed a four-year-old disabled girl, which was used by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others to demand that Russia be declared a state sponsor of terrorism as a result. There have been other strikes in Dnipro, near the centre of the country, and in Mykolaiv, which is closer to the front lines in the south. CBC has a video of the week in the war here.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is preparing a counteroffensive in the south, particularly to reclaim Kherson, which is a strategic objective that could give them control of the region, including of giving them the ability to strike Russian positions in Crimea. The fact that the Ukrainians have now accepted delivery of the American HIMARS rocket system is giving them a new advantage over the Russians, and could turn the campaign, which is in a “grinding” phase of attrition currently. There have been no Russian advances in the east part of the country for over a week now, so the supposition that Russia needs time to regroup seems to be proving true.

Closer to home, summer showboat—err, committee season has begun, with two emergency meetings yesterday, being the foreign affairs committee, and the industry committee. In the former, they have committee agreed to meet over the summer to discuss the return of those gas turbines to Germany, and will call ministers to testify. The latter used the day to plan meetings on the Rogers outage, where they plan to call ministers, Rogers executives, and the CRTC, and you can bet that MPs from all parties are planning who their best performers on camera will be in order to give some outrage and sanctimony clips that they can then use for shitposts and fundraisers. Because that’s what our Parliament has devolved to.

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Roundup: CSE posts a threat bulletin about Russia

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We’re on day one-hundred-and-forty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russians fired missiles at the central city of Vinnytsia, hitting civilian locations including a medical clinic. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his statement that the Russian regime is a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the leadership at the International Criminal Court in the Hauge is calling for an “overarching strategy” to bring perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine to justice, so that other countries contributing to the investigations can cooperate with their efforts.

Closer to home, CSE released a threat bulletin on Russia’s cyber-activities in Ukraine, and it was a doozy, saying that the scope and severity has almost certainly been more sophisticated and widespread than has been previously reported, and yes, that has repercussions for Canada as well. Stephanie Carvin has more in this thread:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547663710700728320

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547664718721994753

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547666383428718594

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547666393423757315

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547669128076374017

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547669143700131840

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