Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: “True Blue” O’Toole

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Erin O’Toole made his official entry into the leadership race yesterday by way of a video that takes swipes at “cancel culture” and celebrity activists – the kinds of keyboard warrior buzzwords that are pretty much the domains of O’Toole’s new campaign staffer, Jeff Ballingall, of those “Canada Proud” etc. sites.

At a rally in Calgary later in the evening, O’Toole said that Peter MacKay would turn the party into Liberal-lite, which I have yet to see any actual evidence of (MacKay is not really a Red Tory, guys – he’s not. Stop pretending he is). It also struck me that he kept reiterating the kinds of comforting lies that the party likes to tell itself about issues like the plight of the energy sector, where the woes are blamed on the Trudeau government and not changing market forces (seriously, the shale revolution in the US is a pretty big driver of these changes). He did say that he would march in a Pride parade, and justified it with his military background, which is a bit funny given that he hasn’t marched in one to date, which makes his sudden conviction around it mighty suspect. His opposition to carbon pricing continues to dig the party into its current environmental rut, and his talk of deficits remains completely economically illiterate – all doubling down on the party’s current positions, because that’s apparently what will make him a “true blue” Conservative. I’m not sure how this grows the party’s base, but what do I know?

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QP: A conciliatory note, and then a lie

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And we’re back. While Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer were present, and most, but not all other leaders were as well. After a moment of silence for the victims of PS752, Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk as usual, and he asked for progress on bringing PS752 victims home and holding perpetrators to account. Trudeau thanked him for the question, and picked up a script to note that they were supporting victims, and what he told the Iranian President directly. Scheer thanked him, and then moved onto cancelled energy projects and lied about the cost of living versus wages and demanded that the Teck Frontier Mine. Trudeau reminded him that they were  growing the economy while protecting the environment. Scheer then stated that the government was destroying the energy sector — again, falsely — and lamented deficit spending, to which Trudeau reminded him that they made the choice to invest, and it was paying off. Scheer then switched to gang violence and claimed the government was taking the “lazy approach” of targeting lawful gun owners, to which Trudeau took up a script to list the measures they were taking. Scheer then moved onto the survey which stated that Canada dropped three spots on the transparency ranking (which is a self-reported metric), to which Trudeau listed ways in which Canada was strong on the international stage. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and raised a potential deportation case and demanded that the minister intervene. Trudeau, with script, to read a platitude about how they examine each case based on merit, and said that they were aware of the case but could not speak to it. Christine Normandin raised the question again, and Trudeau repeated his response. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and demanded did that the government immediately pay the compensation for First Nations children demanded by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Trudeau reminded him that they are working on reconciliation, noted the new approvals under Jordan’s Principle, and that they were still working on the issue. Singh then demanded immediate action on pharmacare and claimed he has a bill to immediately implement it (which a private members’ bill can’t do), and Trudeau took a script to list actions they have taken to reduce drug prices and noted they were negotiating with the provinces.

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Roundup: A likely missile strike

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It was another day of shocking revelations as Justin Trudeau held another press conference yesterday to confirm that intelligence from many sources – including Canada’s own – gave a strong indication that it was indeed a missile that brought down flight 752 outside of Tehran, though it may not have been intentional. He struck a very somber tone, and continued to call for Canada’s participation in the investigation – while Iran’s spokespeople are denying that it was a missile, and so far only limited access is being offered to Canadians (though they are apparently approving the necessary visas for consular access). It’s also important to note that Trudeau specifically referenced Canadian intelligence sources, because it’s less likely (historically speaking) that it would be manipulated for political purposes, than if we simply relied on American intelligence.

Another term cropped up several times yesterday, which was the call for a “credible” investigation – another important consideration as it is likely that Iran may be trying to obfuscate and obscure part of the investigation in order to ensure that they can avoid the culpability for the incident, though we are hearing that lessons learned from crashes like MH17 over Ukraine has helped investigators learn more when one side (Russia, in that case) is not cooperative – and Trudeau did note that he reached out to the prime minister of the Netherlands to learn more about how they dealt with the crash of MH17, as they were the lead investigators there. Maclean’s has a bit more here about investigations and what it may look like.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne glumly notes that there is little that Canada can actually do it if is proved that Iran shot down the plane (presumably deliberately as opposed to accidentally), in particular because we have outsourced our defence to the Americans for so long. Likewise, Matt Gurney goes into more detail about just how limited Canada’s options are when it comes to responding to the worst-case situation.

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Roundup: Freeland on tour

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For the past two days, Chrystia Freeland has been in Alberta to talk to the mayors of Edmonton and Calgary, as well as premier Jason Kenney, and she is continuing her tour there today, heading to the north of the province, where she grew up. There have been a couple of themes emerging from her tour from those she’s visited – from the mayors, it’s a sense that it’s great that she’s there to listen and hear their concerns, and from Kenney, it’s a bit of a sense of impatience that there haven’t been enough “concrete” actions yet.

I was struck after the meeting with Edmonton’s mayor on Monday about the talk of his trepidation that Kenney’s “Fair Deal” plans would make it harder for cities to deal with the federal government to address their priorities, and that he was looking for some particular assurances – and indeed, we’ve heard for the past couple of years that cities were frustrated that federal dollars weren’t flowing because the provinces were holding things up in what appeared to be some partisan pique (given that most of those provinces now have conservative governments). The federal government has been looking at more ways to deal with cities directly, and this appears to be more confirmation of the need to do just that.

This having been said, I am curious as to when Freeland is going to start further calling Kenney’s bluffs with regard to his “demands” and his threats around them. Justin Trudeau fairly effectively cut the legs out from under Scott Moe’s equalization fairy tales, and one imagines that it’s a matter of time before Freeland starts to – very diplomatically – do much the same with Kenney and some of his utter nonsense. Those “concrete actions” Kenney wants – retroactive fiscal stabilization funds, unrealistic demands related to the former Bills C-48 and C-69 (which are now law) – will eventually need to come to a head and Kenney will huff and puff and claim separatist sentiments will explode, but he doesn’t have too much room to manoeuvre himself – his cuts have proven very unpopular, and the patience of his constituents is going to run out, no matter how much he tries to distract them by fomenting anger at Ottawa. Freeland knows this, and I’ll be curious to see how she manages it.

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Roundup: Convention confusion

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The Conservatives announced over the weekend that their policy had convention had been postponed to November in order to give more time to their leadership contest – but then had to spend the rest of the day explaining that no, this didn’t mean that the leadership was going to be held in November, and no, they hadn’t made any final decisions on the leadership, and so on. Because it would have been great if they’d actually said that in their press release.

With this in mind, I figured I would do my best to clarify what part of the problem is here, which is that they don’t actually have leadership conventions anymore, but “leadership events” where all of the mailed in ranked ballots get counted up in a dramatic way to try and replicate the fun and excitement of a delegated convention. One might assume that they might try to kill two birds with one stone and have both events at the same time, but we’ll see if that is actually the case.

This having been said, we also need to remember that so long as we have a system where there is direct election of party leaders by their membership, and that those leadership candidates are running on policy slates as though this were an American presidential primary, it starts making party policy conventions into a bit of a farce. Why? Because so long as leaders feel empowered to move ahead with the policies that they have a “democratic legitimacy” to enact, then what does the grassroots policy preferences matters? We’ve seen this erosion across parties for years, and it will continue apace under this Conservative system just as it has with everyone else so long as we keep up this bastardized system of membership votes for leaders.

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Roundup: Lethal overwatch?

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There’s been some chatter about a story in the Guardian that purports to show BC RCMP communications that would have allowed for “snipers” and “sterilizing” of Indigenous protests in the province over LNG pipelines – which the minister of Indigenous services wants some answers to, and which the RCMP denies is actually legitimate, citing that the terminology used isn’t consistent with their own, or that some of it is being misinterpreted (in particular “lethal overwatch). To that end, here’s Justin Ling with a bit of context and nuance to consider before you get agitated at what’s being reported, as it may not necessarily be correct.

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Roundup: Competing economic illiteracy

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As someone who covers a fair bit of economic stories, the absolute inability of this government to come up with a definition of “middle class” is exhausting – and those of you who read me regularly will know that I will instead use Middle Class™ as a means of showcasing that it’s a meaningless branding exercise. And lo and behold, when challenged to offer up a definition during one of his year-ender interviews, Justin Trudeau said that “Canadians know who’s in the middle class and know what their families are facing and we focus more on the actual issues.” And I died a little bit inside. For a government that keeps insisting they’re all about data, and evidence-based policy, their refusal to offer a meaningful measure of what their core narrative is all about is entirely about branding. By not offering a definition, they don’t have to exclude anyone – because everyone believes they’re middle class (whether they had ponies or not). And more to the point, by not offering a metric, they can’t measure whether they’ve succeeded for failed – it’s only about feelings, which makes their talk of data and evidence all the more hollow.

And then there’s Pierre Poilievre, who, when challenged about the definition of a recession, makes up a bullshit response and thinks it makes him clever. It’s as economically illiterate as the Liberals’ Middle Class™ prevarication, but the fact that the Conservatives keep cheerleading a “made-in-Canada recession” that no economist sees on the horizon, and which they can’t even fit into the actual definition of what a recession is (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) sets a dangerous path of spooking markets. It’s all so stupid, and reckless, but the party’s current path of pathological dishonesty makes them blind to the danger of it all.

On perhaps a related note, Trudeau’s director of communications, Kate Purchase, is leaving to become a senior director at Microsoft, and good luck to her – and she really is one of the nicest staffers and was actually helpful to media in stark contrast to the Harper crew. But I also hope that perhaps this means that her replacement can start ensuring that this government can start communicating its way out of a wet paper bag, because cripes, they have done themselves zero favours over the past four years.

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Roundup: Payette’s personal contributions

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With some adjustments to the pomp and ceremony to accommodate Parliament’s new dual-building status, the Speech from the Throne went ahead yesterday, and the speech itself was not all that exciting. There was a big focus on the environment and climate change, a whole section on reconciliation with Indigenous people, and this government’s watch words of “middle class prosperity,” and the government sprinkled just enough hints that could mollify the other opposition parties if they were looking for something to justify their support, though both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh came out to puff their chests out and declare that they weren’t happy with what was in the speech.

More concerning was the fact that the Governor General herself contributed to writing the speech, which is unusual, and dare I say a problem. Her role is to read the speech on behalf of the government, and there are centuries of parliamentary evolution as to why this is the case, but her having an active hand in writing the speech – even if it’s the introduction (and in particular the notions of everyone being in the same space-time continuum on our planetary spaceship), it’s highly irregular and problematic because it means that Payette is once again overreaching as to what her role in things actually is, and that she’s unhappy with it being ceremonial (a failure of this government doing their due diligence in appointing her when she is not suited to the task). While one of my fellow journalists speculated that this may have been what was offered in exchange for her having to read a prepared speech (something she does not like to do), it’s still a problem with lines being crossed.

And then there was the reporting afterward. When Andrew Scheer said that he was going to propose an amendment to the Speech during debate, Power & Politics in particular ran with it as though this was novel or unusual, and kept hammering on the fact that Scheer is going to propose an amendment! The problem? Amendments are how Speech from the Throne debates actually work. It’s part of the rules that over the course of the debate, the Official Opposition will move an amendment (usually something to effect of “delete everything after this point and let’s call this government garbage”) to the Address in Reply to the Speech, and the third party will propose their own sub-amendment, and most of the time, they all get voted on, and the government carries the day – because no government is going to fall on the Throne Speech. There is nothing novel or special about this, and yet “Ooh, he’s going to move an amendment!” Get. A. Grip.

And now, the hot takes on the Speech, starting with Heather Scoffield, who calls out that the Speech neglected anything around economic growth. Susan Delacourt makes note of how inward-focused this Speech is compared to its predecessor. Chris Selley lays out some of Trudeau’s improbable tasks in the Speech, as well as the one outside of it which is to play a supporting role to Freeland and her task at hand. Paul Wells clocks the vagueness in the Speech, but also the fact that they are setting up for games of political chicken in the months and years ahead.

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Roundup: That Video and worst instincts

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For well over the past two days, the news cycle has been consumed with That Video, and the interpretations of what was said on it. And because so many members of our media act feel the need to be tattletales, narcs, and scolds, what was an interesting tableau turned into an international attempt to get someone – particularly Justin Trudeau – in trouble.

First, despite the fact that the scene was spotted by a CBC producer from the NATO pool feed, people started circulating that this was some kind of illegally obtained footage from Russian spies and circulated as disinformation on their Sputnik network. (Nope). Then came everyone interpreting it as some kind of mockery or high school gossip, when it turned out to simply be an animated recounting of the unscheduled press conference, and the surprise announcement that the G7 meeting was to be held at Camp David. And because everyone is a tattletale and a narc, they brought it up at Trump’s press conference with Angela Merkel, he responded by calling Trudeau “two-faced” and that he was just sore because he got called out for not spending enough on defence (that’s not how NATO works), and then he cancelled his closing press conference and went home – but not before remarking before reporters that the whole “two-faced” thing was a big joke to him. Meanwhile, all of the Canadian commentariat is having a meltdown, and all of them went on the air with fantasy versions of just what the conversation was in That Video, and everyone describing it as “disparaging” or “gossip,” when they simply didn’t have the context that Trudeau provided to them the next day when he was pressed about it in his own media availability. So, any serious conversation about the future of NATO was basically overshadowed because a bunch of excitable journalists watched a video, jumped to conclusions, and let their narc instincts get the better of them – and then wouldn’t shut up about it.

And then come the scolding pundits, as night follows day. Like Matt Gurney, who characterized Trudeau as “mocking” and “gossip” and who said that Trump was right about our not spending enough. (Reminder: DND can’t actually get all of the current spending out the door because they don’t have the capacity or manpower, and it will take years to get enough people trained up). Or Heather Scoffield, who is concerned that this could mean Trump will tear up the New NAFTA or start imposing new tariffs – as though he needed excuses anytime in the past. Much more sensible was Susan Delacourt who said that it was about time that world leaders didn’t walk on eggshells around Trump, and that world leaders should stop simply looking on silently as his constant rule-breaking goes on around them.

On top of this incident was the complete mischaracterization of a video of Princess Anne, the Queen, and the Trumps. While there was a longer video where Anne escorts the Trumps to the Queen’s receiving line, and at one point the Queen looks over to her and she shrugs – no one left in the line but me – and everyone carries on. But a shortened clip started circulating and certain journalists falsely characterised it as the Queen chastising Anne for not greeting the Trumps and Anne didn’t care. And yet the false version went viral.

We don’t need Russian disinformation bots. We’re perfectly capable of distributing all manner of breathless disinformation without them. Cripes.

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Roundup: Contemplating compromised committees

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As the summoning of the new Parliament draws ever closer, we’re seeing more stories about the procedural intricacies of the first few sitting days, and the coming confidence vote on or before the 10th because of the Supply cycle and the need to pass the Supplementary Estimates before that date. Fair enough – those can be expected to pass pretty handily because nobody is going to want to head right back to the polls (and I wouldn’t expect the Governor General to grant an immediate election either – the developing convention is waiting at least six months, providing there is another viable governing party, though that would be the real trick given the current seat maths).

This all having been said, there was something in this interview with Pablo Rodriguez, the new Government House Leader, which sticks in my craw, and that’s the talk about possibly undoing the rule changes that prevent parliamentary secretaries from being voting members on Commons committees, and I. Just. Cannot. Even.

While the chances of this happening are fairly slim, given that it would require opposition support and they are unlikely to get it, it’s still crazy-making. This reflex to go super political in a hung parliament is understandable but deeply frustrating because it undermines the whole raison d’être of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account, and committees are one very big piece of the accountability puzzle. Parliamentary secretaries should have no business even being near committees because it undermines their independence. It’s bad enough that under the previous parliament, they were still on the committee in a non-voting capacity, but it still allowed ministers’ offices to attempt to stage manage what went on (to varying degrees, depending on which committee it was). Having the parliamentary secretaries as voting members simply turns committees into the branch plants of ministers’ offices, and we saw this play out for the better part of a decade under Stephen Harper. Committees are not there to simply take orders from the minister and waste everyone’s time, and it would be hugely disappointing if the Liberals returned to that way of thinking simply because it’s a hung parliament. If we think that the only time to let Parliament function properly is if there’s a majority for the government, then it’s a sad state of affairs for our democracy.

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