Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: Trudeau takes a knee

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The day began with a federal response to the death of an Indigenous woman in New Brunswick at the hands of police during what was described as a “wellness check.” Mark Miller, the Indigenous Services minister, very bluntly stated that he was “pissed” and outraged and wanted answers as to what happened. He also demanded answers on the video of RCMP in Nunavut using a truck door to knock down an intoxicated man, calling it out as “disgraceful” and “dehumanizing.” And while the prime minister later said that he would be speaking to Cabinet and the RCMP Commissioner about these incidents, Miller was correct in pointing out that there continues to be this pattern of behaviour. (Commissioner Lucki put out a statement later in the day that was long on platitudes).

Trudeau was up next with his daily presser, making some fairly vague mention of those police incidents before moving onto the day’s announcement – a $600 disability payment for those who qualify under the federal disability tax credit (because, again, most disability supports fall under provincial jurisdiction), as well as announcing an accessibility stream for employers to tap into. He also announced that he has put $14 billion on the table for provinces as part of their safe restart plans, to assist with more personal protective equipment for front-line workers and businesses, as well as for child care, support for municipalities, and made mention of the attempts to get that sick pay into place using federal dollars. (That isn’t going well either, as premiers like Doug Ford say that they don’t want the sick leave, but want even more money than what’s on offer – with no strings attached, obviously). During the Q&A, he was asked repeatedly about what he would do about police violence and systemic racism, but he would only offer his usual generalities and no specifics. He also again committed to collecting race-based disaggregated data, but put in a few digs about the quality of data that some of the provinces are providing because that’s who we are relying on to collect it. (Ontario’s health minister says she’s working on it).

Later in the day, as a number of Black Lives Matters protest marches took place peacefully all across the country, Trudeau showed up at the Ottawa protest and took a knee on a couple of occasions while holding a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, flanked by minister Ahmed Hussen and MP Anju Dhillon. (Catherine McKenna was also in the crowd but not with Trudeau). While Hussen said the image of the head of government taking a knee and clapping when people say “Black lives matter” is powerful, it does raise questions about just what is being said. Taking a knee was a form of protest about the government (of the United States, granted), but if Trudeau takes a knee, who is he protesting? Himself? I would charitably say that this is Trudeau showing solidarity, but it does open himself up to criticisms about doing this for the sake of appearance over substance.

Senate selection committee

I did want to mention the CBC story about senators getting pay increases for sitting on the Selection Committee when it’s only met twice. It’s yet another story in the vein of never-ending stories about how the Senate is full of grasping drains on the public purse, but as so many of these stories go, it ignores the mechanics of the situation. Selection committee meetings are meant to formalize the work that caucuses do internally to allocate committee seats – they don’t make those determinations in committee meetings. They do the work beforehand in whatever assignment process the caucus uses, and it can be a fair amount of work and one could make the argument that any kind of work like that deserves additional compensation. But it is work done that even if the actual committee meets very infrequently, that is the tip of the iceberg of work. The only thing that is particularly unusual in this circumstance is that ISG leader Senator Yuen Pau Woo named himself to the Selection Committee. Normally, it was the caucus whips who were on the committee because they usually did the bulk of the work of allocation committee assignments (and arranging for alternates if a senator couldn’t be present for their scheduled committee meeting for whatever the reason). Considering that Woo has been agitating for changes to the Parliament of Canada Act because as a caucus leader who is not leader of either the government or the opposition, he doesn’t get an additional stipend, so perhaps this was his way of trying to earn himself some additional compensation. This being said, Senator Pierre Dalphond, who recently defected from the ISG to the Progressives, took the opportunity to unload on Woo for this in a press release, which makes me wonder just what happened between the two that has apparently caused this drama.

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QP: Focusing on the May 14th timeline

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For a second day in a row, a skeletal sitting of the Commons convened, and we were treated to a proper Question Period once again. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern in front of him, and read his concern that the government allegedly sat on the report from the Armed Forces on the conditions in long-term care facilities for nearly two weeks. Trudeau clarified that the full report was brought forward on Thursday, and they passed it along to Ontario the following day. Scheer changed to French to pass along that a second report was being prepared on the Quebec homes, and Trudeau reiterated that they received that report on Thursday and passed it along. Scheer worried about what happened between May 14th and Thursday, and Trudeau said that Thursday was when the Chief of Defence Staff passed it along. Scheer then brought up the question from this morning’s prime ministerial presser about Joyce Murray supporting a fundraiser to sue a journalist, and Trudeau said that the staffer who posted it was not working for them. Scheer tried to tie this to the Chinese government, and Trudeau repeated the previous response before he read some support for Hong Kong. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and he railed about political parties accessing the wage subsidy, and Trudeau spoke about the aims of the programme to help workers retain their jobs. Blanchet tried again, and got the same response. Jagmeet Singh then got his turn, and he demanded federal action to end the privatization of long-term care, and Trudeau replied that they can’t tell the provinces what to do in their areas of jurisdiction but that the federal government would be there to support them. Singh made a paean for national leadership in French, and Trudeau again reiterated that they have to respect provincial jurisdiction.

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Roundup: The House un-suspends

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The House of Commons is to resume ordinary sittings today, with the suspension motion having expired, but how long this state of affairs lasts remains an open question as the parties are negotiating new motions on what comes next for the next few weeks and possibly months, as we adapt to these pandemic times. The Conservatives want a resumption of regular sittings with a maximum of 50 MPs present, along with some kind of mechanism for electronic voting and for all committees to have their full powers restored – as they are especially keen on getting powers to summons back. The Liberals, however, are proposing that they extend the special COVID-19 committee to four days a week until June 17th, when they would rise for the summer, but come back four times in July and August. And it’s going to come down to which other parties either side can convince to join them.

I think the Conservatives are half-right in their proposal – the problem being the system of electronic voting, because that is a Pandora’s box that we do not want to open. Where the Liberals are going wrong is the fact that they think that the special committee’s remit of essentially holding extended QP-like sessions is good enough, when it makes a mockery of what Parliament is. Parliament is not Question Period, and yet they are acting as if that’s all it is, and it’s almost certainly a cynical calculation that preys on the popular perception that it is. But one of my biggest bugaboos is the fact that we’ve now had five pieces of emergency legislation that haven’t had anything resembling proper legislative scrutiny, haven’t had witnesses called, haven’t had any outside commentary or evaluation, and where everything is agreed to behind closed doors, and the government seems to think that’s good enough. It’s not, and we have more bills on the way. For them to carry on and pretend that this special committee and endless questions are going to satisfy the demand that we have a functioning parliament is frankly insulting.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at how the West Block has been adapting to pandemic life as MPs and staffers still show up to work – and yes, those “virtual” sittings still require staff to show up, and in fact require twice as many staff as in-person meetings, in case anyone thinks that “virtual” is somehow safer for all involved. It’s not, and people should stop pretending otherwise.

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Roundup: Commercial rent relief on the way

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For his Friday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau at long last unveiled the details of the commercial rent relief programme, now that they have ironed out the details with the provinces (considering that it’s their jurisdiction), which is essentially that commercial landlords (for properties where the rent is below a certain threshold) need to offer 75 percent discounts on their rent from April to June, and the federal government would provide non-repayable loans of up to fifty percent of said rents. From there, he mentioned that they were deploying Canadian Armed Forces personnel to certain long-term care facilities in Ontario and Quebec, and that they were working to beef up the salaries of existing long-term care workers. He also said that they were working with provinces and territories to establish guidelines for when they re-open their economies, but that people need to pay attention to the local rules and not those in other jurisdictions, because the outbreaks are different in each region. (During the First Ministers’ weekly teleconference later in the day, there was some agreement to this, and apparently each province and territory will be submitting their plans to the federal government).

Of course, with the news that there was an agreement on commercial rents, we got some fairly usual voices caterwauling that all rents needed to be dealt with, not just commercial ones. The response to that, of course, is to talk to one’s premier, because that’s where the responsibility lies – Trudeau can’t just swoop in because landlord and tenant legislation is strictly provincial, and the mechanisms they employed for the commercial rent relief are not necessarily suited for residential properties. And there was word today that Doug Ford wants the federal government to step in on residential rents – after he has been spectacularly unwilling to do anything and tells people to work it out with their landlords – so if there is more uptake with his fellow premiers in the next few days, they may try to design something, though I’m not sure exactly what, because I worry that there may be a bigger domino effect throughout the banking sector, but there are no quick fixes. And no, the national housing strategy does not give federal jurisdiction over rents, nor does the Canada Health Act provide a template for rent either, because there are no funding agreements with the provinces, nor would the federal government simply be transferring a pot of money to the provinces for residential rents. It’s complex, there are big jurisdictional issues, and Trudeau can’t and shouldn’t do everything. The provinces have a role to play and they should play it.

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Roundup: On Scheer’s silence over Sloan

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was all about science – specifically, a $1.1 billion package for research on vaccines and clinical trials, plus the launch of an immunity task force that will help to determine the spread of the virus within the population (as many may have been exposed and only ever experienced mild symptoms or had none at all), which will be necessary as we talk about re-opening the economy and how that will proceed. Trudeau also reiterated that the situation with long-term care facilities is untenable, that using soldiers to help the residents of those homes is merely a short-term solution that demands a long-term re-think. During the Q&A, Trudeau was not promising the billions of dollars that municipalities were demanding, but made some fairly vague commitments about working with provinces, given that cities are creatures of provincial legislation. He also said that provinces were going to take their own leads on re-opening their economies given that there are different epidemics playing out across the country and not just one nationally, though there is talk of federal guidelines.

The thing that had everyone talking throughout the day, however, was Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan making a fairly blatantly racist call for Dr. Theresa Tam to be fired while questioning her loyalty to Canada as he accuses her of following Chinese propaganda. And more to the point, that Andrew Scheer refuses to comment on what Sloan says insofar as the racism – he did say that as the opposition, they should be criticizing ministers who make decisions and not officials who give advice. Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising as the party has already been pursuing this notion of vilifying the WHO because they were too credulous about the information coming out of China and Canada followed WHO advice, and Sloan simply took it one step further. And more to the point, under Scheer, the party has offered succour to racists on more than one occasion (most notably after the incident when Trudeau called out the racist statements of an avowedly racist woman in Quebec at an event, after which the Conservatives insisted that she was merely concerned about the economic impact of “illegal” asylum seekers and that anyone who questioned the government would be called a racist – because being labelled a racist is apparently a worse crime than actual racism). A few other Conservative MPs did denounce Sloan’s comments, and local officials within Sloan’s riding called on him to be denounced by Scheer and expelled from the party.

Ah, but that’s part of the issue. The Conservatives, if you recall, voted to adopt certain provisions of Michael Chong’s (garbage) Reform Act which ensures that the full caucus must vote to expel a member, that the leader alone can’t do it. It would be mighty awkward for Scheer to pull that trigger regardless, considering that he’s in an interim, outgoing position and not really the leader any longer, and that Sloan is vying to replace him (and it will be a doomed effort), but I will say that regardless of the circumstances, I have long been uncomfortable with both leaders expelling members, and with the more recent notion that MPs (and senators, where applicable) should be expelled at the first sign of trouble, rather than managing them better from within the fold, or leaving it up to their riding association to decide whether or not to keep them in the party, being as they are really the ones who should be deciding.

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Roundup: Bullying through a motion on a false promise

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau once again began his daily presser talking about the tragedy in Nova Scotia, and recounted some of his conversations with RCMP members and Senator Stan Kutcher (who not only represents the province but has a background in mental health). He then turned back to the global pandemic, noting that it has made inequalities more pronounced, and with charities spread thin trying to provide support, he announced that $350 million was being set aside as part of an emergency community support fund. He then announced that the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy would be available as of Monday, and starting today, a calculator would be available on the CRA website for employers to calculate what they would be able to apply for. He also talked about the kinds of contributions that the innovation superclusters have been making to the current situation, for a bit of good news. During the Q&A, Trudeau had more information about the reports of the two planes that returned from China empty that he wasn’t able to answer during QP on Monday, this time noting that because of the severe restrictions in China as for how long they were able to remain on the ground, while supply lines to the airports have been frustrated with checkpoints and delays, it forced them to take off empty for the time being. Trudeau also said that the promised gun control bill was nearly ready to be tabled before Parliament was suspended for the pandemic, but wouldn’t promise that it would be tabled before regular sittings resumed. As well, regarding that meat plant shut down because of an outbreak, Trudeau said they were trying to ensure domestic supply though it could affect prices.

Meanwhile, the Procedure and House Affairs committee was meeting (remotely), and we found out that the Clerk of the House of Commons says that there’s no way they’ll be able to facilitate any kind of “remote” sittings until mid-May at the earliest, and that he told the Government House Leader this before the government bullied through their motion on Monday about one in-person sitting a week and two-virtual ones. In other words, they knew that the virtual ones couldn’t happen, but they acted as though they were, so they can say “Oh dear, looks like we can’t hold those sessions,” and stick to the one in-person sitting per week at a giant waste of resources to keep flying MPs in and out for a single day, rather than at least having the three in-person sittings per week which was perfectly reasonable. And no, this isn’t saving any of the staff exposure, because they would need to be in the West Block whether the MPs were there in person or “virtually” (which will include some MPs in the Chamber). Add to that, they only have the capacity to run at maximum ten “virtual” committee meetings between the Commons and Senate in a week, as the government also likes to pretend that they’ve been trying to ensure that as much of Parliament is functional under the circumstances. That’s not true, and even their planned “accountability sessions” for the next month are not actual sittings, but “special committee” sessions, even though some MPs have tried to paint them otherwise. It’s been one big exercise in preening that only makes the Conservatives look like they were right.

The Queen

Just a quick note to add that yesterday was the Queen’s birthday in her natural capacity. The Queen of Canada’s official birthday isn’t until Victoria Day, for the record. But the Queen and Prince Charles did send condolences to Canada for the tragic deaths in Nova Scotia.

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Roundup: Back-end accountability and second guessing

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Even though Good Friday is normally a day where the whole of Ontario shuts down as owing to its strong Protestant roots, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless carried on with his daily presser, talking about how the CERB and the Canada Emergency Business Accounts were now online, and that the wage subsidy was on the way. He also said that his Saturday address would be in the House of Commons instead of at Rideau Cottage, and then he would be spending Sunday and Monday with family, so there will be a brief respite from daily pressers (which have been solid for nearly a month now). He also spoke about his teleconference with the premiers, and upon questions about it, stated that no, they were not looking to invoke the Emergencies Act, and it was the very last thing they wanted to do (so maybe stop asking about it). During the Q&A, he was asked about the G20 energy ministers’ meeting and noted that there had been a decision around production cuts, and with regards to the next Bank of Canada governor, the process was ongoing and they had made no decision on next steps.

During the ministerial briefing shortly thereafter, employment minister Carla Qualtrough said that CRA would deal with the issue from there end where some people got double payments (apparently because they may have applied twice out of confusion) rather than relying on people to call in, and that the accountability measures in this programme were built in on the back-end, in order to speed through the processing of these benefits to those who need them. As well, Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller said that the additional funds to Indigenous communities for the pandemic were flowing, and that they will work together with individual communities and First Nations about what they need.

I’m also concerned with the burgeoning proliferation of stories questioning how quickly the government moved early on – particularly around things like travel bans and quarantine measures. One of there reasons, illustrated by the video here, is that this novel virus has proven to work faster and much deadlier than other epidemics we’ve seen in our lifetime. We’re still in the early phases of this pandemic, so it may be a bit early to second-guess things, given that we were following best practices, and travel bans are generally ineffective because people skirt them and don’t report when they are symptomatic because they don’t want to get in trouble for skirting the ban. This pandemic is unlike any we’ve had before, so it’s hard to start demanding why we weren’t better prepared, given that we were prepared for what we were used to expecting, and that should be something we should keep in mind.

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Roundup: Trudeau in isolation

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The pace of COVID-19 news was relentless yesterday, culminating in the news that Sophie Grégoire Trudeau had tested positive for the virus following her trip to the UK, and that the prime minister would be isolated for the next two weeks as a result. He’d already announced earlier in the day that he was self-isolating while his wife was undergoing testing, and that he would be working from home, but it also meant the cancellation of the First Ministers Meeting – to be held later today by phone – and the indefinite postponement of said first ministers meeting with Indigenous leaders. Not to be outdone, Jagmeet Singh also announced that he was self-isolating because he was feeling “unwell.” And while more events get cancelled, Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole have stated they will suspend public campaign activities for the time being (though one suspects that this will simply escalate into a shitpost war online as they battle for votes in that space).

The big question now is whether or not Parliament will suspend for the coming weeks, and there are moves afoot – the Senate has been recalled to sit tomorrow (they usually don’t sit Fridays), and the talk is that the Commons will pass the New NAFTA tomorrow morning, and send it to the Senate immediately for passage so that if there is a decision to suspend, that will be out of the way. And it should be noted that the Senate did to pre-study on the bill while it was still in the Commons, so that will expedite the passage in the Senate, provided that twelve different senators don’t feel the need to give useless Second Reading speeches (because that’s a real danger these days).

Once again, Maclean’s has resources on symptoms and how to get tested.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells gives a decent reading of the year to date, and makes the case that First Ministers’ meetings are pretty useless these days so the cancellation of this one is not a big loss. Heather Scoffield ensures that you know where to place the blame for the markets crashing and wiping out retirement savings. And here’s infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch on what we can expect over the next two weeks.

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Roundup: The crash and the cries for stimulus

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It was a tough day on the markets yesterday as stock markets plunged at record levels over panic-selling because of COVID-19, and oil prices cratered while Saudi Arabia and Russia got into a pissing contest. Bill Morneau held a post-market-closing press conference to assure Canadians that there was fiscal room to deal with the situation, but he spoke in frustrating platitudes and generalities as he so often does (because this government is largely incapable of communicating their way out of a wet paper bag), but it needs to be acknowledged that his budget challenge has become a lot more complicated, particularly as the oil shock is going to impact federal revenues as well as Alberta’s. But seriously, the whole Conservative “spent the cupboard bare” narrative is bogus and economically illiterate, and they are actively spreading misinformation about it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1237104005425139712

Around the same time, Jason Kenney held his own press conference, saying that all options were on the table for dealing with the downturn on the province’s economy – and then immediately ruled out a sales tax, which would stabilize the province’s revenues. Because that might make sense. Rachel Notley says that he should scrap the budget and re-do it, given that its assumptions are now proved to be useless, but other economists say it’s likely not worth it at this point, and it would be better to have a fiscal update in the near future.

And then come the demands for some kind of fiscal stimulus plan, but one of the things they’re pressing is that measures need to be timely. Maclean’s talks to four economists about what they think such a plan could look like for the best impact.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1237235733762473984

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Roundup: Putting Freeland on the case (again)

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With more attention turning to what’s happening around COVID-19, prime minister Justin Trudeau has created a new Cabinet committee to handle the situation, and he’s put Chrystia Freeland in charge of it. An important addition to the committee is Kirsty Duncan, who may no longer be in Cabinet but is nevertheless sworn in as a privy councillor, and the fact that she has expertise in pandemics and once studied the Spanish Flu epidemic, so chalk one up for bench strength there. Freeland says the response has to be both “whole of government” and “whole of country,” and her role as intergovernmental affairs minister is certainly part of that – given that provinces deliver healthcare for the bulk of the country – but one suspects this is also about having a reassuring communicator on the issue (because as we all know, this government can’t communicate its way out of a wet paper bag).

To that end, while certain opposition voices are demanding travel restrictions (which are proven not to work) or enhanced screening measures at airports, what we’re hearing from the health minister and the Chief Public Health Officer is largely that containment can only delay an outbreak – which is not a bad thing, because if it can be delayed by six weeks or so, that would get our healthcare system past peak flu season, which frees up beds and resources. And thus far, we have been lucky that all of the cases in this country can be traced to travel-related causes and not community transmission, which means that the measures taken to date have been working, but again, delay is the watchword. It should also be noted that we have largely avoided panic, which is pretty good (torqued headlines about demanding people start stockpiling notwithstanding).

With that in mind, the military has been ordered to being pre-pandemic planning out of an abundance of caution, given that they need to be able to continue to operate in the case of a crisis.

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