Tag Archives: Public Health

QP: Preferring grandstanding to accountability or oversight

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While the prime minister remained in quarantine, we actually had three Liberals in the Chamber, for a change — Mark Gerretsen, Francis Drouin, and Marc Serré. Erin O’Toole led off in French, and read his scripted list of Sajjan’s alleged sins with a lot of conflation rather and random elements thrown in, and demanded his resignation. Chrystia Freeland started off by saying no woman should be subject to sexual misconduct, especially in the Forces, and added that they were committed to eliminating the toxic culture in the military. O’Toole switched to English to call on Liberals to vote for their motion to censure Sajjan, and Freeland repeated her response in English. O’Toole insisted that the toxic culture started with the prime minister, and wondered what Freeland knew of the Vance allegations, and Freeland responded by listing the great things on Sajjan’s record as minister. O’Toole then switched back to French and demanded the unredacted documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings, and Freeland assured him that they take national security seriously. When O’Toole then ratcheted up the politicisation of NSICOP and stated that Conservatives would withdraw from the committee, and Patty Hajdu, a little flat-footed, said that she was disappointed to hear O’Toole say that.

Marilène Gill led for the Bloc, and she gave a rather torqued reading of what the vote on yesterday’s Supply Day motion on provinces amending their constitutions, and demanded the federal government apply Quebec’s Bill 101. Mélanie Joly assured her their legislation would protect French. Gill pushed the matter, and Joly accused her of pushing a sovereigntist agenda.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded the further extension of pandemic benefits, for which Carla Qualtrough listed the benefits in Bill C-30, which was why they needed it to pass. Heather McPherson repeated the question in English, and Qualtrough repeated her response.

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Roundup: Lies about inflation and the central bank

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For weeks, the Conservatives (and Pierre Poilievre in particular) have been making a bunch of bogus and nonsensical attacks against the government and what they term the “inflation tax,” which makes absolutely no sense, but is predicated on the wild notion that the Bank of Canada is allegedly printing money to finance the government’s “out of control” deficits, and that this is going to drive up inflation and turn us into Venezuela. It’s bullshit – the Bank of Canada is independent from government (and it should be shocking that the Conservatives are suggesting otherwise given the history of the independence of the central bank in this country), quantitative easing is not “printing money,” and given that a year ago, in the early days of the pandemic, we were facing deflation as a country, an expansionary monetary policy was the right move to make. We’re still in need of stimulus, because the recovery has been so uneven, but the Bank of Canada knows this, because it’s their job.

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1405250437838610432

With this in mind, it was no surprise yesterday that when the inflation figures were reported, the fact that it clocked in at an annualized 3.6% had the Conservatives, and Erin O’Toole in particular, trying to make hay of this – and media outlets didn’t help with their headlines that this was the highest rate in a decade, without putting that in proper context. Now, part of that is the base effect of last year’s massive drop, which is going to take time to work itself out in the data; but it’s also in part based on factors from right now, the most important of which is housing prices, which have skyrocketed as demand has outstripped supply. None of this is a surprise, and none of this has anything to do with the size of the federal deficit or the Bank of Canada’s quantitative easing, and yet that is the narrative being painted. It didn’t help that O’Toole’s examples lacked any logical consistency, such as blaming increases in post-secondary education on the federal government, when that’s a provincial jurisdiction. Not that truth matters.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1405152487821168642

Compounding this, however, is the completely irresponsible way in which this was being spun by shows like Power & Politics, where the framing was “the cost of everything is going up!” followed by asking panellists if the government should do something about it. And to their credit, most of those panellists said no, leave it for the Bank of Canada, but the fact that the host kept torqueing this notion about “prices are rising!” and trying to constantly get people to say something – anything – inflammatory about inflation, was not only irresponsible, but shows actual contempt for proper economics reporting by the gods damned CBC. They don’t care about actual information or reasonable discussion, they want the false balance of opposed partisans battling it out, and the “drama” that creates. It does such a disservice to everyone that it amazes me that they can get away with it.

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QP: No, that’s not what the inflation data show

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While the prime minister moved from hotel to at-home quarantine, his deputy was available instead. While there were fewer Conservatives in the Chamber than yesterday, the sole Liberal in the Chamber started out as Marie-France Lalonde instead of Mark Gerretsen, but they swapped places a short while later. Erin O’Toole led off in French, with a script in front of him, and he blamed federal spending for the decade-high inflation figures released this morning — which is not actually what those data showed. Chrystia Freeland declared that the biggest threat to economic stability was Conservative partisan games. O’Toole switched to English to focus on the rise in housing prices, and again seemed to think that the federal government has magic levers that can lower housing prices, to which Freeland repeated her assertion, given that they are blocking the budget bill. O’Toole retorted that the Conservatives had a Five-Point Plan™ to save the economy, and Freeland repeated that the Conservatives were standing in the way of the economic recovery. O’Toole then pivoted to a torqued reading of Harjit Sajjan’s record as minster, for which Sajjan robotically read that he won’t take lessons from the Conservatives and he was doing better. O’Toole then declared that he would speak directly to the voters in Sajjan’s riding, exhorting them to vote for Conservatives, and Sajjan stated that he was proud of his service, and raised the Conservatives’ record on abortion and Islamophobia.

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised the new federal bill on Official Languages and how it counters Quebec’s Bill 96, and Mélanie Joly said that they were asking all parties to support their bill. Blanchet insisted that Quebec’s bill was threatened, and Joly stated that they would strengthen Official Languages and protect French.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and after railing about big banks in French, he complained that the government was cutting pandemic supports. Freeland stated that unless the budget bill passes, all supports will end. Singh switched to English to reiterate the question with some additional meandering around big corporations. Freeland asked in response why he was stopping supports by not helping to pass the budget.

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Roundup: C-10 keeps stumbling

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If there is any bill in recent history that is an object lesson in fucking around and finding out, it’s bill C-10, on amending the Broadcasting Act. Indeed, after the government, with Bloc support, moved time allocation while the bill was in committee, the five hours allotted to finish clause-by-clause consideration was apparently not enough, as it seems yet more MPs on the committee wanted to waste time fighting about things this bill doesn’t actually do. And lo, amendments that were passed after the five hours were up were deemed null and void by the Speaker, so once again, MPs found out.

This doesn’t mean that those amendments are necessarily gone for good – they can certainly be moved at report stage, where the bill is currently, though that may require extending the time allocation that was imposed on the current stage in order to be able to move and vote on said motions – and that leaves yet more opportunity for dilatory actions such as slow-voting and another point-of-order-palooza around remote voting. Barring that, the government can move them in the Senate, though that will be very uncomfortable as it will probably mean having to recall the Commons in a couple of weeks to pass the amended bill, which will be a gong show all around. Or, with any luck, it will be stuck on the Order Paper over the summer, and possibly smothered if the election call that the pundit class is so hell-bent on getting happens. Nevertheless – there is plenty of blame to go around for this state of affairs, not the least of which belongs to the minister for his singular failure to offer coherent communications around this bill at every opportunity, and most especially at committee.

I would add, however, that I have no patience for this notion that the bill saw “no real debate,” as certain individuals are claiming. It got more debate than most budget implementation bills – more than any bill I can remember in recent memory. Granted, we have no guarantee of the quality of debate, and considering that this bill has been the subject of a campaign of conspiracy theories (Internet Czar, anyone?), straw men, red herrings, and outright lies, while substantive and existential problems with the bill have largely gone unremarked upon, I can see a critique that the months of debate were short on substance. That said, I’m not sure how even more debate would have helped, other than to prolong the agony.

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QP: Green Lanterning the price of houses

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With the prime minister still in Belgium, there were a lot more Conservatives than usual in the Chamber, which made for a louder day. As for the Liberal ranks, Mark Gerretsen was joined by Kate Young for possibly the first time since the Hybrid sittings began, but the imbalance between both sides of the Chamber was very noticeable. Erin O’Toole in led off in French, and from his script, he read about how Trudeau was apparently so preoccupied with becoming the “Dean of G7” and apparent celebrity meetings (of which there haven’t been any) while he ignored the job losses back in Canada. Chrystia Freeland replied by pointing out that the Conservatives have been using procedural tactics to delay debate on the budget implementation bill. O’Toole switched to English, to decry that a Toronto developer snapped up housing, thus driving up prices, for which Ahmed Hussen reminded him that the current government was doing more for affordable housing than the Conservatives ever did. O’Toole demanded that the government somehow lower housing prices before the summer — maybe using a Green Lantern ring? — and Hussen repeated that he had no lessons to take from the Conservatives. From there, O’Toole started slamming Harjit Sajjan, accusing him of stolen valour, and of being “buddies” with General Jonathan Vance, and Sajjan brushed off the allegations. O’Toole put on a performance of theatrical anger to demand Sajjan’s resignation, and Sajjan hit back by reminding O’Toole that his government still appointed Vance while he was under active investigation. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he demanded support for a motion to validate Quebec’s plan to unilaterally amend the constitution, for which David Lametti noted there are amending formulas and their proposal needed to ensure other rights were protected, which he got assurances about. Therrien railed about Section 45 — which is what the Quebec government has largely proposed — and Lametti spoke about clarifying the motion about Quebec being a nation in a United Canada.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP in French, and he demanded that the government not cut pandemic supports, to which Carla Qualtrough reminded him that the budget implementation bill will extend benefits. Singh switched to English to rail that there was still a cut to supports, and Qualtrough noted there are other supports available.

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Roundup: Not just a golf game

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The top brass of the Canadian Forces shot themselves in the foot – metaphorically – yet again this weekend as both the outgoing vice-chief of defence staff and the head of the Royal Canadian Navy both went golfing with former CDS, General Jonathan Vance, while Vance is under active police investigation. To call it tone-deaf is an understatement – rather, it highlights the old boys’ club mentality that still pervades the upper ranks of the Forces, and sends the wrong message to the victims of sexual misconduct, who remain the subordinates of these officers. And to make the optics even more nightmarish, the vice-chief technically has the power to issue orders to the Provost Marshall, who controls the military police.

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1404114717405286401

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1404192298905264128

You can get that there was an outcry, including from numerous Cabinet ministers, and in short order, there were apologies from those involved, while the minister of defence, Harjit Sajjan, said that he would be evaluating “next steps” in this particular situation.

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1404262974504812545

To the point that West (who was drummed out of the military because of the double standard around sexual misconduct) is making in her tweet, there is very much a growing trend of professionally-crafted apologies going around given where things have gone over the past year or so, and I have to agree with this take that we need to take this into account as yet more of them are delivered over the coming days.

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Roundup: C-10 shenanigans have poisoned the well of our parliament

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Because things around Bill C-10 couldn’t get any more ridiculous, we now have news stories about Michael Geist getting the vapours about how amendments are being rushed through committee in a “secretive” manner, as though he’s never witnessed a clause-by-clause debate before. And to an extent, what has happened with that committee is the result of a complete breakdown of how it should be operating, forcing the government to impose time allocation on the process – a rare manoeuvre at the committee stage – because it has become so toxic. And with the whips intervening, this turned into essentially a forced meeting that the chair himself objected to, but again, this whole process has become so toxic because of partisan gamesmanship.

First things first ­– Geist’s vapours are more or less melodramatic, because there are still several other opportunities to see what amendments have been agreed to – the final committee report, which goes to Report Stage debate in the Chamber, where the full Commons can vote to accept or reject those amendments. And then there is third reading. If anything, particularly egregious is in there, it can still be caught and amended, and while rare at those stages, it is possible. And then there is the entire Senate process, where they can hear from yet more witnesses in their own committees on the amended version of the bill, and given that this particular iteration of the Senate is far more activist and interventionist, we can bet that there will be more impetus for amendments there (which could force an awkward contest of wills around those amendments given that they’d have to go back to a Commons that has risen for the summer, and at a time when nobody in this city can shut up about election speculation). Nevertheless, the point stands that there are several avenues yet for more amendments to this bill than what happened at the Commons committee.

The bigger point here, however, is that the reason this process became so toxic was because the Conservatives took a fundamentally – nay, existentially – flawed bill, and decided that instead of engaging its actual flaws, they would invent a whole litany of straw men and red herrings, and try to get the country up in arms over fictional provisions that they pulled out of their asses and held them up as effigies to be burned in protest. It’s a bad bill – it never should have placed under the Broadcasting Act because that statute deals with the assumption of the limited bandwidth of TV and radio, and trying to apply it to the internet is largely unworkable. This is a legitimate criticism that should have been debated, but instead, we got this fabrication of an Internet Czar who is going to be vetting your tweets and Facebook posts, and dark visions of Orwellian censorship at the hands of the CRTC, which is not even remotely plausible. But they went full-tilt with this insanity, and just completely poisoned the well of parliament along the way.

The government is not blameless here either – the minister’s communication around the bill has been nothing short of a disaster in English Canada, and his stumbles have been extremely damaging, but he’s been given a long leash because this is playing well in Quebec (where discoverability is a huge vote-getter because they do have difficulty finding Quebec and Canadian content in French – pointing to how the debate on this bill has been hugely built on what I’m going to dub “Anglophone privilege.”) We could have had a constructive debate around this bill. But we didn’t. A mountain of lies was countered by communications incompetence, and after six weeks of absolute shenanigans at committee, the government had enough and brought the hammer down. None of this needed to happen, but apparently we don’t have enough grown-ups in our parliament, and that’s just a sad, sad state of affairs.

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Roundup: Ford turns to the Notwithstanding Clause – again

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The sudden comfort with which premiers are deciding to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause is getting a bit uncomfortable, as Doug Ford decided he needed to invoke it after a court struck down his attempts to limit third-party spending in provincial elections in a somewhat arbitrary fashion (given that unions get together to form American-esque political action committees in this province). While you can find a great explainer on Ford and his particular legal challenge in this thread, the more alarming part is the apparent need to reach for the “emergency valve” of the Clause before even appealing the decision to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada.

There is a perfectly legitimate reason why the Notwithstanding Clause exists, which as to do with keeping a certain amount of parliamentary supremacy in lawmaking, and it gives governments an avenue of recourse if there is a fundamental disagreement with a court’s interpretation of legislation. But lately, it’s being invoked by premiers who know they are trying to push through objectionable legislation – François Legault did it with Bill 21, which the courts have essentially said blocks their ability to strike down any portion of the law, and he’s doing it again with his Bill 96 on trying to obliterate any bilingualism in the province (the same bill that seeks to unilaterally amend the federal constitution). Ford had threatened to invoke it to ram through his unilateral changes to Toronto City Council while they were in the middle of an election, but ultimately didn’t because of a court injunction, and his decision this time is similarly dubious. This willingness to invoke the Clause at the first sign of court challenge or on the first defeat is a very big problem for our democracy, and we should be very wary about this abuse of power, and punish these governments appropriately at the ballot box during the next elections for these decisions.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402715067083280387

In the meantime, here’s Emmett Macfarlane with more thoughts on the court decision that led to this turn of events.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402711628978720772

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402712563960455173

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402713058913525761

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QP: Alleging a national security breach

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For what was possible the last time in person for the spring sitting, Justin Trudeau was present in the Chamber, with only Mark Gerretsen on the Liberal benches with him. Erin O’Toole led off, and he immediately launched into the National Microbiology Lab firings, accusing the government of hiding the truth. Trudeau refuted this, and said that they we looking to share the information in the right way, which was why they were asking NSICOP to look into it, and that unredacted documents had already been provided to it. O’Toole tried to make the case that the government broke national security laws around the Lab, but Trudeau repeated his response. O’Toole threw out a bunch of possibly non-sequitur facts about the Wuhan lab in China and tried to tie them to the Winnipeg lab, and Trudeau chided the Conservatives for ignoring oversight of national security, which is why they created NSICOP. O’Toole tried to accuse Trudeau of advancing China’s interests, and Trudeau gave the somewhat tired response that the Conservatives were focused on political games while he was working for Canadians against foreign threats. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, and Trudeau repeated his response about NSICOP.

Yves-François Blanchet was up for the Bloc, and he complained that Trudeau mused about COVID masks and Quebec’s “secularism” law, and Trudeau remarked that he supports Quebeckers’ rights to challenge that law in court. Blanchet was irate that people were linking Bill 21 with the rise in Islamophobia, but Trudeau instead spoke about the importance of the Court Challenges programme, which was why his government restored its funding.

Jagmeet Singh appeared by video for the NDP, and in French, demanded an end to the lawsuits related to Indigenous children. Trudeau said it was false, they were not suing the children, but acknowledged that they deserve compensation and were negotiating it — but didn’t explain the purpose of the litigation. Singh repeated the question in English, and Trudeau repeated his answer, and once again did not explain the litigation.

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Roundup: Craven for Quebec votes

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The day was marked by reflection on the part of political leaders on the hate crime that took place in London, Ontario, that killed a Muslim family, along with vows to do better. Of course, within each of those was their own particular issues. As much as Justin Trudeau insisted that this was a “terrorist attack” before such a designation could be applied by means of police investigation, he also vowed to keep dismantling far-right groups, patting himself on the back for the designation of the Proud Boys as a terror group, even though that really just drove its membership underground. Erin O’Toole steered clear of his party’s recent history of dog-whistling and the absolute histrionics they engaged in around M-103, which you may recall was to have a parliamentary committee deal with the issue of Islamophobia in Canada. (Conservatives and their defenders will point to a similar motion on systemic racism that the Liberals voted down, ignoring that the motion was essentially the parliamentary equivalent of “all lives matter”). Jagmeet Singh loudly wondered how many more attacks needed to happen before the government did something about it, though there are limits to what the federal government is able to do, and they have been putting resources into their anti-racism strategy.

But the part that really reflects poorly on Trudeau is the fact that at his media availability afterward, he was asked if he thinks that Quebec’s Bill 21 (dubbed their “secularism” law but really disproportionately attacks Muslim women) fosters hated or discrimination, and he said no. We’re not sure if he was simply saying no about the hatred part, given that he has called out the discrimination inherent in said bill before – but he also still hasn’t taken any moves to combat it, apparently waiting for it to reach the Supreme Court of Canada before he’ll intervene. Which is more than the other leaders would do (well, Singh has reluctantly said he also might intervene at the Supreme Court if he were prime minister, but that’s after being pressed). Trudeau also mused that perhaps all of the mask-wearing in the pandemic will change Quebeckers’ opinions on religious symbols and face-coverings, but apparently François Legault is not moved. Either way, it’s a sign that every federal leader is way too craven to stand up to Legault on this because they’re all eager for Quebec votes, and that’s pretty gross all around.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1402432194564526080

To that end, Susan Delacourt calls out Trudeau, O’Toole and Singh for their refusal to discuss Bill 21 (or in O’Toole’s case, acknowledge their past dog-whistles about “veiled voting” and “barbaric cultural practices tip lines”), and praises the courage of that former PC candidate who acknowledged the racism of his community that he shrugged off at the time.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1402313600602157058

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