Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: New mockdowns after Goldilocks failed

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Things in Ontario have reached the point where Doug “I won’t hesitate” Ford has finally enacted a province-wide mockdown…but not before he hesitated even further by not putting it into force until Boxing Day. You know, so that everyone can still flood the malls and box stores, and feel like they’re justified in “cheating” for Christmas gatherings. And by mockdown, it’s not a real lockdown – it’s a few added restrictions but most workplaces are still up and running, in spite of mounting evidence of outbreaks in them, so good job there.

Ford, meanwhile, was more than happy to blame the federal government for not properly closing borders, and insisted that they do more testing at airports…which they are. Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu had to counter that the rapid testing pilot at Pearson is ongoing – but that also doesn’t change the fact that only 1.3 percent of new cases can be traced to travel, which blows a hole in Ford’s narrative. Of course, that narrative is all about blame-shifting so that he doesn’t have to look like the bad guy in the “lockdowns,” never mind that these should have happened in September at the latest to have nipped the second wave in the bud, but they didn’t do that, because they tried the “Goldilocks approach,” and it failed. How many hundreds of people have died unnecessarily since?

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Roundup: Some vaccine doses arriving soon

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The prime minister was out this morning with a significant announcement about the vaccine roll-out, in that Canada could see its first 249,000 doses being delivered within about a week, pending Health Canada approval. As well, the box from Pfizer that will serve as the “dry run” of the roll-out plans also left Belgium and was heading for Canada for the exercise. The whole vaccine roll-out is going to be taxing to supply chains for things like dry ice, and there is already talk about lowering some expectations for how soon some long-term care residents can receive doses, because the Pfizer vaccine loses effectiveness if it is jostled too much, as it is with transport, so that may mean trying to find ways of getting those residents to vaccination centres instead of the other way around. We’ll see how this goes.

There is an interesting story in the Globe about a private vaccine manufacturer in Montreal, which is right next door to the National Research Council facility that is currently under construction, which is believed to be capable of manufacturing at least one of the potential vaccine candidates, but they appear not to have been asked by the government, or engaged in any meaningful way. I have questions, however, because it doesn’t really specify which type of vaccines could be manufactured (and yes, this does matter), so it may be a case of waiting to see the viability of one of the later candidates for approval before they go too far with licensing or engaging.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has the audacity to blame the Liberals for the anti-vaxx petition that his MP, Derek Sloan, has been sponsoring. O’Toole says that because the Liberals have been so lacking in transparency that these kinds of things are bound to happen – which is some grade-A horseshit if I ever heard it. This as O’Toole spent the morning shifting the goalposts on what he deems to be sufficient transparency from the government. Of course, O’Toole doing the bare minimum and saying he doesn’t support the petition Sloan is sponsoring, but doing little else to stop the misinformation that he has had an active hand in spreading is quite something. Then again, there does seem to be a tendency among many conservative leaders to shift blame and deny that they are responsible for anything, and we apparently are seeing that again here.

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QP: The PornHub panic

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While the prime minister was on the Hill and just gave a press conference to announce that vaccines would likely be arriving in a week following Health Canada approval, neither he nor his deputy were at QP. Candice Bergen led off, giving selective information about vaccination roll-outs in other countries, and then said that the announced first batch of the Pfizer vaccine wouldn’t be enough. Anita Anand insisted that this was a wonderful day, and that the light at the end of the tunnel was clear. Bergen then moved to the PornHub story in the New York Times, saying he was allowing rape and sexual exploitation to happen in his own backyard, to which David Lametti reminded her that there are laws in place, including for Internet service providers, and that they were taking this seriously. Bergen insisted that there has been no action, as though there was a magic wand that was not being used, and Lametti repeated his points before declaring his pride in the Digital Charter. Stephanie Kusie then took over in and French to demand refunds for airline consumers, to which Chris Bittle stated clearly that there would be no sector-specific aid without refunds. Kusie worried that any plan would bar executive compensation, and Bittle reiterate the importance of ensuring refunds. Claude DeBellefeuille led for the Bloc to demand increased health transfers with no strings attached, to which Patty Hajdu read in halting French about how much the federal government had transferred to the provinces since the pandemic began. DeBellefeuille was not mollified, and repeated her demand, for which Hajdu read another set of talking points. Jenny Kwan demanded more safe places for women in Vancouver’s downtown east side, to which Maryam Monsef said that she has been working with the advocates in the area. Leah Gazan demanded action on the report from the MMIW inquiry, to which Carolyn Bennett assured her that they were working on this with a new $751 million funding commitment.

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Roundup: Admission that deadlines will be missed

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The federal government announced yesterday that they weren’t going to be able to meet their deadline for fixing all of the boil-water advisories on First Nations reserves, in part because of delays caused by the pandemic. And while they should get some points for at least owning this rather than sending it down the memory hole like their predecessors did, this is yet one more file where they need to do a much better job of communicating what is going on with the file. And Marc Miller is better than many of his fellow ministers, but there needs to be a hell of a lot more candour that about these boil-water advisories, such as each case is unique so you can’t fit the same solution to all of them; it is a huge challenge to build major infrastructure in remote and fly-in communities, and that takes a lot more time to complete a project as a result; that in some communities, the bigger problem is capacity to maintain systems – and in some communities, the problem is that as soon as they train someone to maintain the system, they get a better offer and get poached. Miller did note that in some cases, the state of decay in some of these systems was not adequately appreciated, and that climate change and shorter winters make getting materials up to some communities on ice roads more difficult. The other aspect of note is that there is yet more funding attached to finish the job, as well as better ongoing maintenance and prevention of future advisories, which is all good, but again, they need to communicate what the challenges are, lest we get another round of people who live in cities not being able to appreciate that you can’t throw money at a problem like this and hope it gets fixed overnight.

This being said, there is already talk about broken promises, and the dangers of setting deadlines, and so on. I would note that there should be nothing wrong with setting ambitious targets, and there should also be nothing wrong with adjusting them, but that should be accompanied by candour that lays out why plans need to be adjusted. I think this government underestimates how much goodwill can be gained by frank and honest discussions of projects rather than just sticking to the happy-clappy talking points and other pabulum that they spout, but what do I know?

In pandemic news, the Alberta government has requested field hospitals from the federal government and the Red Cross, but they claim that this is just about contingency planning, and that they haven’t requested personnel for them. Given that infections are out of control in the province, and its hospitals are already at the point of being overwhelmed, you can be pretty sure that this line about it being for a “contingency” is bogus, that they know they need to do this because they refuse to lockdown, and this is just softening the ground.

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Roundup: Bracing for bad numbers

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Because COVID numbers continue to climb, and more provinces are moving toward stricter measures to try and control the spread of the virus (but not too strict for most – they still have to think about businesses, natch), the prime minister took the opportunity yesterday to meet with the opposition leaders to brief them on the situation in advance of new federal modelling numbers being released this morning, which paint a dire picture of people don’t stay home and limit the number of people they come into contact with. Of course, Erin O’Toole took the opportunity to immediately come out of the meeting and slam the prime minister for the fact that a global pandemic is bad for the economy, while also apparently ordering Trudeau to step into areas of provincial jurisdiction with a “real plan to test, trace, and isolate those who are infected.” Seriously?

With regard to provincial measures, BC has finally made masks mandatory as part of their new series of restrictions, along with trying to restrict non-essential travel while the Quebec premier put forward a “moral contract” for the coming Christmas holidays, which extends the province’s lockdown measures and tries to build in a kind of buffer around Christmas as a way of trying to avoid telling people not to meet up with family at all. And we’re expecting Doug Ford to also announce more “tough” measures today, which one suspects still won’t actually be tough because his sympathies continue to lay with business owners.

And while infections continue to climb and hospital resources get increasingly stressed, we are going to have to watch out for how doctors and nurses are going to start burning out, presuming they don’t get infected themselves, which will make things even harder going forward (and made even worse in some provinces where the government is going to war with their doctors – looking at you, Alberta). Things are serious, and we need to be even more vigilant about this virus.

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Roundup: Pretending there’s a shortcut

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The NDP spent the day yesterday trying to make hay of their private members’ bill, which purports to create a national pharmacare programme. Unless the party has been secretly negotiating with the provinces, it will do no such thing, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that the bill is unconstitutional, both on the grounds that it delves into areas of provincial jurisdiction and the fact that it is inherently a money bill, which would require a Royal Recommendation – which they’re not going to get. Beyond that, this is performative grandstanding that seeks to short-circuit the actual work of implementing a national pharmacare programme that the government is already doing.

Because seriously – I was inundated with replies over Twitter about how the Liberals also promised pharmacare, so how was this different? It’s different because the Liberals a) promised negotiations with the provinces, and b) already have a roadmap to implementation through the Hoskins report, whose steps they are following and have invested money toward. I was also reminded constantly that this bill was modelled after the Canada Health Act, so everything should be fine – err, except that the CHA was the end-product of federal-provincial negotiations, not the starting point to be lorded over the provinces, nor does this address the fact that it is inherently a money bill, which Private Members’ Bills are forbidden from being.

I am also somewhat tickled by the fact that the NDP are considering this bill to be some kind of fait accompli, and in a press release, they claimed that this bill would “guarantee” coverage for Canadians. But that’s a lie,  because none of it can happen if provinces don’t come to the table, and several of them are balking at it because it’s expensive (and the expected savings over the longer term won’t be realised right away), and we are already going through the usual hoops of Quebec saying their provincial plan is good enough and if the federal government wants to go ahead with a national plan then they should be able to opt out with full compensation – and you can bet that Alberta will make the same demand if Quebec is. This bill will not be a shortcut to those negotiations, as much as they might like it to be. The government is moving ahead with the Hoskins Report, which may be slower, but that’s how things get done. Trying to claim they’re not living up to their commitments is one more falsehood that the NDP have become adept in promulgating in order to score political points.

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Roundup: Scheer joins the sister-hiring brigade

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The saga of MPs hiring siblings exploded yesterday as several revelations came to light – that Andrew Scheer not only hired his sister-in-law, but that he also hired his sister to work in his office when he was both Deputy Speaker and Speaker. Granted, this was within the rules at the time, and those rules were changed at the end of the time Scheer was Speaker (and his sister was let go then – and then moved over to a Conservative senator’s office), but for someone who liked to give lectures to the prime minister on the optics and the appearance of ethical conduct, it does seem like a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, said that while these hirings were within the rules, he wants to set a higher ethical bar, so he would have a talk with Scheer about it, though he apparently let his sister-in-law go around the same time. No word yet on whether the Conservatives will call for his resignation.

Meanwhile, in the other sibling hiring drama, it turns out that now-former Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi’s hiring her sister was actually flagged to the Ethics Commissioner two years ago, and his office decided to take a pass on it, figuring that it was better dealt with by the Board of Internal Economy. Now he’s saying that maybe he should have taken a look then. Of course, this sounds to be about par for the course for Mario Dion, whose approach to interpreting his enabling legislation is…creative to say the least, from inventing new definitions under the Act, stretching the credulity of what it covers in some reports, and even confusing his Act with the MP Code – which are completely different – in another case. So, that’s going well. Incidentally, the Board of Internal Economy will be meeting later this week and will address the Ratansi complaints at that time about whether or not this hiring violated the rules, and they will determine the next course of action at that point. (And yes, this is an example of parliamentary privilege, where parliament makes and enforces its own rules, because it’s a self-governing institution, which is the way it should be).

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Roundup: A promise to fight back against federal action

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Another day, more record-breaking COVID cases in this country. In Ontario, new modelling suggests that if we don’t get this under control that we’ll be seeing 6,500 new cases a day by mid-December, which should terrify everyone. And Doug Ford? Well, he called the reports that he ignored public health advice “inaccurate,” and “one doctor’s opinion,” and insisted that he’s trying to find a “balance.” Because the needs of businesses outweigh human lives.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1326965295941099521

In Alberta, where the pandemic is starting to overwhelm a couple of hospitals, Jason Kenney was back in isolation for the second time after another close-call with a positive COVID case (which he tested negative for) – because he’s totally taking it seriously. Kenney decided to “toughen” measures, which means that he…reduced hours in restaurants and bars, stopped indoor sports, and limited weddings and funerals. Because he still refuses to do a proper lockdown to get infections under control, and he refuses to do anything to inconvenience businesses. Hell, he’s still telling people to go out to restaurants and bars – just not as late, which also has the added effect of ensuring more people will be in these establishments during the compressed hours, which would seem to increase the chances of infection rather than decrease it. After all, Alberta’s public health insisted that people should socialize in a “structured setting” (i.e. restaurant or bar) instead of at home, so they’re really taking it seriously.

As for those who still insist on calling on the federal government to enact emergency legislation, Ford stated yesterday in no uncertain terms that he would not stand for it, and warned that other premiers would also fight back because they want to guard their own jurisdiction. So yeah, unilateral federal action would not fly (not that it really could under the terms of the Emergencies Act anyway), and we’d simply wind up in court over it. In other words, stop waiting for Trudeau to act (because he can’t) and pressure the premiers instead to quit worrying about businesses – especially since they have the power to help them out – and worry instead about the hundreds of deaths that are happening every week.

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Roundup: Hopes and fears for Biden

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And there we have it – it has been declared that Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the presidential election in the United States, and with that declaration, Canadian leaders of all stripes sent their congratulations over the weekend. While our foreign affairs minister hopes for some more stability and predictability in the new administration, the energy sector in this country is nervous that Biden had pledged to rescind the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (thought it has been held up in American courts).

But as much as everyone is celebrating and sending out clips from the end of Return of the Jedi over social media (an odd choice considering that the Empire didn’t fall after that battle, but kept on kicking for another year, and its remnants metastasised into the First Order that decimated the New Republic), I feel the urge to be a bit of a wet blanket to point out that some 70 million Americans still voted for Trump and everything that he stands for, including racism and the march toward a fascist state, and he’s still in office for nearly three more months. The American impulse tends to be that politics is to be treated as a spectator sport, where they cast their ballots once every four years and then watch the show in between, rather than actually grappling with the real issues that face their country – particularly given that their Congress is largely unable to as the real likelihood that the Republicans have maintained their hold on the Senate will mean that virtually nothing will get done for the next couple of years. Not to say that civic engagement in Canada is a whole lot better, but at least our Parliament is actually built to move things through rather than for gridlock, as evidenced most recently by the fact that we could get pandemic supports for people and businesses out the door, whereas they are stalled in the US Senate. The lure of Trump and his ethos is not far gone, just because Biden won the White House, and that should remain the cautionary tale rather than people thinking the problem is solved and returning to complacency.

To that end, Susan Delacourt warns about Trumpism and the lure of “ordered populism” in Canada, as it is not a phenomenon contained solely to the United States. Likewise, Aaron Wherry notes that it was not a landslide for Biden, that Trumpism is still around, and that America needs to reckon with itself on this fact. I will note that Chris Selley did try to grapple with what Trumpism is without Trump, but I think that when Delacourt quoted pollster Frank Graves about “ordered populism,” that it may be the more accurate handle once Trump is out of the picture.

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Roundup: Expediting another bill

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If you were to judge by the mainstream political shows in Canada, there wasn’t anything happening here – well, unless you count the budget in Ontario, which got a brief mention, but these are federal politics shows. But hey, it turns out there was something pretty major happening, which was an extended debate on the new pandemic relief bill.

In order to pass it by tomorrow, the parties agreed to skip committee hearings and have a four-hour Committee of the Whole session instead, where Chrystia Freeland got to field questions for the duration, and wouldn’t you know it, Pierre Poilievre was consumed with questions about the state of the deficit and how the government planned to repay it once the pandemic was over. Never mind that the point of this spending is to bridge businesses so that fewer of them fail, which will ensure that when the pandemic ends, we will have a faster and stronger recovery, and that economic growth will help deal with the deficit, but that’s not Poilievre’s schtick.

The Bloc, for their part, haven’t been without their own shenanigans, as they are proposing an amendment to the bill that would ban political parties from using the wage subsidy. (The Conservatives have pledged to repay what they used, for what it’s worth). I doubt it’ll pass, because the Liberals, NDP and Greens have also availed themselves of the subsidy, but the Bloc will make their point – and it likely means additional votes which will probably keep the Commons later than usual tomorrow as a result (as the agreement was to have it passed before end of day). Even though the point of this was for swift passage, neither Chamber is sitting next week because of Remembrance Day, but the Senate’s national finance committee has agreed to meet over the week to do what amounts to pre-study of the bill (even though pre-study is technically before the Commons passes it so that they can pass along amendments before it is agreed to), but that will expedite it somewhat so that it will almost certainly get royal assent before the 19th, and then we’ll see how long it takes to actually implement so businesses can get their rent subsidy in place.

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