Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Unable to read the signs about Freeland

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Just a quick note because a lot of talking heads have been mentioning it over the past few days, which was about that Globe and Mail article from a couple of days ago (which I’m not going to link to) that proclaimed Chrystia Freeland’s leadership ambitions because…she is the subject of an unauthorized biography, and she wrote that letter to the board of Air Canada. No, seriously—that was the sum total of the Globe’s evidence.

And yet, on Power and Politics, The Line and other places, everyone is treating this biography as though it were a) an autobiography, which is what many party leaders will release ahead of an election, not ahead of a leadership vote; or b) a book that she commissioned herself, when in fact someone else is writing it, and Freeland has apparently not even agreed to be interviewed for it, or cooperate with it in any way. Nevertheless, the conflation by all of these outlets continues to paint a picture that is not actually there.

As for the letter to the board of Air Canada, the federal government is one of the largest shareholders with six percent of the company’s stock, which Freeland mentioned in the letter. Add to that, Air Canada is a repeat offender when it comes to violating their obligations under the Official Languages Act, so as finance minister, Freeland has particular obligations to remind the Board of this when their CEO did something as impolitic (and frankly stupid) as the comments he made. This wasn’t something that she did on a whim because she wants to build up her Quebec cred for the (eventual) leadership bid.

I get the desire to stir the pot and create some drama, but come on. Yes, Freeland no doubt has ambitions, and she is likely going to be the next prime minister. But if you’re a serious news outlet, at least get your basic facts and context right before you start making these kinds of proclamations. You don’t look very credible with this kind of nonsense.

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Roundup: Who they gave succour to

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Cast your minds back to summer of 2018, when prime minister Justin Trudeau attended a Liberal rally in rural Quebec and encountered a woman heckling him about refugees crossing the border at irregular points of entry. As part of this, she demanded to know when Trudeau would support “Québécois de souche,” a term tinged with racism as it applies only to those who descended from the early French settlers, essentially considering anyone without those particular roots to be some kind of contagion upon the state. Trudeau called out her intolerance, and she tried to sue for defamation.

A Quebec Superior Court judge dismissed her case, and pointed out the fact that she had tried to use the incident to make a name for herself among far-right circles, all while claiming that she has empathy because she’s a nurse, and will treat anyone. More to the point, the judge pointed out that she was deliberately trying to provoke the prime minister, and was thus the author of her own misfortune, and in dismissing the case, ordered her to pay legal fees.

So why bring this up? Because if you also think back to when the House of Commons returned shortly after this incident, the Conservatives all rushed to give succour to this woman, and tried to frame her aggressive questions and demands as though she was “just asking about the budget.” No, seriously. Conservative after Conservative stood up in the House of Commons to whine that “if Trudeau doesn’t like your questions, he calls you a racist.” Because in their minds, being called a racist is a worse crime than the actual racism that the woman was displaying. And it goes to show what the party is willing to stand up for, and who they are willing to protect if they think they can score points from it.

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Roundup: Some more inflation fact-checking

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Because you know it’s going to come up yet again during Question Period today and through the rest of the week, here are a couple of reality checks around inflation, first from former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz, who will give you all of the reasons why the pandemic spending and stimulus is not what is causing the current bout of transitory inflation.

Next, from economist Stephen Gordon:

So when Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre start sounding off on inflation again, I know whose economic judgment I’ll be listening to (and it won’t be theirs).

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Roundup: Enter Omicron

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If it all feels like a little bit of history repeating, the World Health Organization declared a new variant of concern, B.1.1.529, designated Omicron, yesterday, and in the lead-up to that decision, there was a lot of the same kinds of usual behaviours from the usual suspects. The variant was detected in South Africa (where there is apparently good surveillance), and has been spotted in seven southern African countries thus far. Conservatives demanded travel advisories and wailed that the border needed to be closed – never mind that there are no direct flights between Canada and South Africa – and gave some revisionist history about their demanding the borders be closed with the original COVID outbreak (when they demanded the borders be closed to China, whereas the vast majority Canada’s infections came by way of Europe and the United States).

But by mid-afternoon, the government did lay out new restrictions, but we’ll see how much of it is effective, or how much of it is pandemic theatre.

This is happening at a time where COVID cases have been ticking back upward across much of the country, prompting fears of a fifth wave being on the horizon as people get lazy with public health measures and start taking masks off indoors, or the like, while those who refuse to get vaccinated remain petri dishes for new variants to emerge or for it to enter into new animal reservoirs where it can mutate yet again. Essentially the way out of this remains getting vaccinated and keeping up good public health measures – most especially masking because we know that this is airborne – and maybe we can keep this fifth wave blunted and the Omicron variant largely tamed. But people are idiots, so things could get a lot worse once more.

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Roundup: Setting more dangerous precedents to justify hybrid sittings

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With a vote of 180 to 140, hybrid sittings will be returning to the House of Commons, which is bullshit and absolutely unconscionable, but the Liberals and NDP have managed to convince themselves of a lot of nonsense in order to justify this. For the Liberals, it was weaponizing a lot of nonsense about MPs feeling “unsafe” in the House of Commons with potentially unvaccinated Conservatives in their midst, which may be a theoretical danger at this point, but it’s not outside of what everyone else has to contend with – and in fact, we expect a lot of essential workers to put themselves in a lot more danger on a daily basis than MPs have to by being in the Chamber with nearly everyone double-vaxxed and everyone wearing masks. For the NDP, it was a lot of the usual handwaving about “work-life balance” and parents of small children, but they already have a lot of accommodations being made for them, and that excuse is getting thin.

What is especially egregious is that this debate over hybrid sittings and remote voting has created an artificial standard of perfect attendance which has never existed, and there is no reason why it needs to exist now. One or two votes won’t bring the government down, and being dramatic about it isn’t helping matters. If anything, creating this impossible standard of perfect attendance in order to justify hybrid sittings is irresponsible and downright dangerous, and sets a way worse example to the rest of the country. Allowing this standard to flourish will mean that MPs will never be allowed sick days or necessary leaves of absence in the future because they will be expected to attend virtually or to continue voting remotely, and it will be used as justification to keep hybrid formats going in perpetuity (which is very, very bad for the health of our Parliament). Perpetuating it will encourage MPs to remain in partisan silos because they don’t have to attend in person and interact face-to-face, and the toxic atmosphere of the last session will become the new norm.

There is also the accountability problem, which the Conservatives and Bloc have been absolutely right to highlight. Allowing attendance by Zoom allows ministers to escape accountability, and it allows all ministers and MPs to escape the accountability of the media because they will simply absent themselves from Parliament Hill, where they cannot be button-holed on their way in and out. Accountability is already suffering in this country, and the government has given themselves a free pass to let it slide even further, and their apologists are clutching their pearls about the pandemic still being on. This is no way to run a country.

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Roundup: Casting doubt as a smoke bomb

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As I was just saying about Canadian political leaders focusing on American issues and culture wars, we are seeing yet another instance in this country – this time over the upcoming riding redistribution hearings. The Conservatives have decided that they want to go all-in on American culture wars and are fundraising to fight these redistributions, citing that they don’t trust the Liberals to run the process fairly – never mind that the process is arm’s length, and the fact that the Speaker of the House is involved in the process is supposed to ensure neutrality. The fact that he was elected as a Liberals should not be a factor – and it’s especially rich from the Conservatives, seeing as it was their votes that ensured that Rota got into the post during Tuesday’s election (and I know enough about where votes were going for certain candidates that the maths work out that the Conservatives were voting for Rota).

We really, really do not want to go down this path of making a partisan issue of riding redistribution, because only madness lies this way. Aside from outright partisan lunacy in thinking that this is an effective way of fundraising never mind the corrosive effect that this has on our political system, it’s also a simple admission of sore loserism. If they think they’ve been losing because of riding redistribution (with “rurban” seats largely being split up into actual rural and urban seats), the most recent redistribution happened under their watch, and frankly, “rurban” seats were pure gerrymandering because they didn’t make sense and were trying to use rural votes to outweigh urban ones and never made sense in terms of “communities” like they are so concerned that ridings encompass. If they think that they won’t get a fair shake this time around, it’s pure projection.

Of course, this isn’t actually about riding redistribution – it’s about throwing another smoke bomb into the mix in order to distract from the party’s internal problems and the challenges to Erin O’Toole’s leadership. The fact that they are trying to discredit a process that is meant to be removed from political considerations and partisan gamesmanship is pretty gross, especially because that is meant to be a pure distraction (and fundraising grab). This process is important to our democracy, and for them to cast doubt for selfish reasons is a sign of the party’s continued moral decline.

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Roundup: Parliament is summoned, a Speaker elected

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The 44th Parliament has been summoned, and nearly all MPs were back in the House of Commons yesterday – the exceptions being the one Conservative MP who tested positive for COVID and a BC MP or two who stayed in their ridings owing to the flood situation, but otherwise, they are back, and all in the Chamber for the first time in nearly two years. The government is trying their best, mind you, to do away with this – Government House Leader Mark Holland is trying to use the black box of unknown “medical exemptions” by some Conservative MPs to bring back hybrid sittings (the motion for that is on the Order Paper), scrupulously ignoring the injuries suffered by interpretation staff as a result of the Zoom format. The Conservatives and the Bloc are opposing the return to hybrid sittings for good reason – it allows the government to escape accountability, both because they can’t be seen face-to-face in the Chamber, and they can’t be questioned by journalists when they leave, and while I’m sure that the government finds this to be a feature and not a bug, it’s an intolerable situation.

Holland also laid out the government’s four legislative priorities that they want passed before the House rises in three or four weeks, which is going to mean cutting corners as there’s no way that standing committees will be up and running by then. The four were new pandemic benefits for businesses and workers affected by lockdowns, ensuring ten paid sick days for workers in federally-regulated sectors, criminalising anti-vax protesters who harass healthcare workers or hospitals, and the conversion therapy ban. While the new benefits could be rolled into a budget implementation bill for the fall economic update (which they would have to bully through without any committees in place), as could the legislation on paid sick days, but I fail to see the need for new criminal measures for anti-vax protesters. Simply enforcing existing laws against criminal harassment and trespassing should be enough, and a specific bill would be mere theatrics. The conversion therapy bill, while important, has been promised to be “tougher,” which will slow down progress because it means it won’t be the same bill that they can claim already passed once – a new bill would demand new scrutiny, and with no committees in place, it’s a much more fraught notion to ram it through.

The Speaker election also took place, and Anthony Rota remained in the position, which is a little disappointing because he wasn’t the best Speaker, particularly as he allowed a lot of the problems with the hybrid format to carry on by gently chiding MPs when they did things that cause injuries to interpreters rather than laying down the law with them. I suspect that part of the calculation on the part of the Conservatives was some mistaken notions around what happened with the demands for those Winnipeg Lab documents – Rota’s name was on the court challenge because he was the Speaker, as a function of his office rather than any personal conviction, but he was lionized for it nevertheless (much like the Attorney General’s name was on the court challenge as a largely automatic function that was triggered under provisions in the Canada Evidence Act rather than a partisan effort – remember that the government did provide documents to NSICOP). Rota also made mention of “fine-tuning” decorum, which he has shown precious little interest in actually enforcing, again relying on gentle chiding, so I’m not sure why he was to be believed, but here we are.

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Roundup: COVID is not done with Parliament

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There was sad news over the weekend that Senator Josée Forest-Niesing passed away from COVID. Forest-Niesing had been recently discharged from hospital after being in for nearly a month after complications – while she was double-vaxxed, she suffered from an auto-immune lung condition that both made her extremely vulnerable, and the vaccines less effective, which is why we need more people to be vaccinated, so that it can’t spread to vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives announced that their MP Richard Lehoux tested positive (in spite of being fully vaxxed), which raises questions because Conservatives were all in town for caucus last week, and it’s very possible that this may have been a spreader event, as there are questions about the actual vaccination status of all Conservative MPs, (and I have some serious doubts about the veracity of some of the medical exemptions that are being claimed, especially as they are being claimed by those expressing anti-vax or vaccine-hesitant views).

The worst part of all of this is that this just gives the Liberals more ammunition to demand hybrid sittings, which need to end immediately, both for the health of our parliamentary democracy, as well as the health of our interpretation staff who are suffering injuries that we would not ask anyone else to endure so that MPs could stay at home while other essential workers have to be on the front lines – and Parliament is essential, and the government has been sending the absolute wrong signal in keeping MPs at home – the Liberals most especially if we have a repeat of last session, where Mark Gerretson would be the only MP in the Chamber and the rest of those benches were empty. There are ways to keep Parliament safe, especially now that everyone is doubly vaccinated (so they assure us) and can wear masks indoors at all times. It’s not difficult, and it keeps the business of the nation going. Let’s do this the right way.

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Roundup: Some shocking civic illiteracy stats

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I generally make it a policy not to talk about polls, but this one was just so disheartening that I feel the need to say something about it. Abacus Data asked a series of questions about federal government and governance, and it’s just…depressing to see the rate of responses that clearly show a lack of interest and a lack of education in how our system works.

These are the very basics of Responsible Government, and it’s important to understand what that means. But I recall that when I was in school, we talked about achieving Responsible Government as a recommendation in the Durham Report, and that Canada eventually got there, but they never explained what it actually meant, or what it entails in practical terms. And that’s a problem, especially when we are inundated with American popular culture about their politics, and their conception of how the UK’s system works (the rate of them who believe that absolute monarchy still exists is high. It’s very high) bleeds over to our popular understanding as well, and it’s a problem. That’s why I wrote The Unbroken Machine.

Some of these responses are simply an indication that people aren’t paying attention to the news, and that the way in which media communicates things can be unhelpful and confusing in how things are discussed. Abacus didn’t make sides for other questions in the survey, such as which level of responsibility does education fall under – which was better at 83 percent correctly answering that it falls under provincial jurisdiction, but again, this is the kind of ignorance that leaders like Jagmeet Singh like to exploit in order to drive cynicism. Civics education is vitally important, as is media literacy, and we are failing Canadians fundamentally because we refuse to teach them correctly in this country.

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Roundup: Three Amigos without much outward progress

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Well, that was the Three Amigos summit, and it doesn’t sound like there was any outward progress on Canada’s biggest request, which is getting rid of that electric vehicle tax credit that would essentially crater Canada’s auto sector (and the nascent electric vehicle industry) in spite of decades of cross-border integration of our supply chains. But that progress may yet happen because the Canadian delegation was not solely focusing on the White House – where Biden was non-committal – but also engaging congressional leaders who have the real power in this situation, so there remains time to see if that credit will survive the tortuous and nonsensical budget bill process in their system.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have declared that Trudeau’s approach to relations with the American administration “isn’t working,” and I’m not quite sure what they’re really on about, because there is a massive power imbalance here, and we can’t forget that we are largely an afterthought to the Americans, who are far more concerned about their southern border than the northern one. Softwood lumber has been an irritant for decades, and I distinctly recall the sector was unhappy with the agreement that the Harper government signed (which has since expired). Buy American? Again, this happens under every administration, and is not unique to the current government. Measures targeting agricultural exports? Erm, some of us recall the problems with country-of-origin-labelling that the Conservatives couldn’t make any progress on. Action against pipelines? Seems to me that Harper didn’t have any luck there either, even after plastering Washington DC with billboards and posters declaring that Keystone XL was a “no brainer.” Yeah, that didn’t work.

So what exactly does Chong propose? Performative temper tantrums for the benefit of the media? That seems to be the Conservative demand for most files, but there were two former diplomats on Power & Politics last night who basically said that if you want progress with the American government, you need to do it behind closed doors and not be seen to be pinning someone down, because they don’t respond to that well at all. But we also need to remember that the Conservatives also seem to think that diplomacy is the cookie you get for good behaviour rather than how you deal with problems, so it’s not unsurprising that this demand for performance is how they think this needs to be dealt with.

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