Tag Archives: Refugees

Roundup: An odious historical comparison

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While crude prices in Western Canada continue to take a beating (in part because there is a global supply glut in the market and there are questions about why oil prices got as high as they did recently given market conditions), there are other concerns about investors fleeing the country. Not all, mind you – there are still a number of big-ticket energy projects being signed in the country which defies this narrative that’s going on, but I have to pause on some of the overheated rhetoric being bandied about here, because we need to inject some perspective into the conversation.

For one, the lack of infrastructure to tidewater is because there simply wasn’t an economic case for it until recently. It’s hard to complain that we don’t have it when there was no proper rationale for its existence. Same with refineries – it’s a low-margin exercise and refineries cost billions of dollars to build, and the economic case for building more of them has largely not been there. It’s not just because we have tough environmental regulations in Canada that these projects don’t exist – there weren’t the market conditions.

The other thing that really sets off my alarm bells is this pervasive talking point among oil industry boosters that Canada once built railways, so we should therefore be able to build pipelines. This kind of talk should be utterly galling to anyone who has a modicum of understanding of history in this country, because the railways were built by virtual slave labour from China, following the relocation of Indigenous tribes across the prairies due to starvation and inadequate government aid (while there is some debate over how deliberately starvation was used to force compliance). This is not the kind of thing you want to be touting when it comes to building pipelines, particularly if those opposing construction are other Indigenous communities. And as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, it’s not the high bar of environmental regulations that are killing projects – it’s the fact that successive governments and proponents have tried cutting corners to weasel out of their obligations, and that’s what hurts them, not the minimal additional work it would have taken to properly fulfil those obligations. I get that they’re looking for scapegoats during these trying times for the energy sector, and that nobody wants to look in the mirror, but honestly, trying to compare the railways to this current situation is borderline offensive to anyone who has a modicum of historical knowledge.

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Roundup: A policy reviewed and changed

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The government announced that their review of the transfer of inmates to Indigenous healing lodges is complete, and they made some changes to the policy to tighten the conditions. While they wouldn’t say directly, it was confirmed that Tori Stafford’s killer was reassigned from the healing lodge she had been transferred to back to an institution. Cue the self-congratulation from the Conservatives, who assert that the killer is back “behind bars.” But there are a few things we need to unpack here because some of this back-patting is disingenuous.

First of all, these healing lodges are still prisons. Said killer went from one medium-security facility to another medium-security facility. While Andrew Scheer kept insisting that she was moved to a “condo,” he is not only lying about what a healing lodge is, he is also misconstruing what conditions in women’s institutions in this country are like. There are no longer any of the kinds of cells and bars or high walls that you see on television – women’s institutions largely feature campus-like atmospheres, with apartment-like dwellings. Indeed, the facility she’s been transferred to post lodge is described as “a minimum security residential-style apartment unit and residential-style small group accommodation houses for minimum and medium-security inmates in an open campus design model.” So much for the crowing that she’s back behind bars.

There is also the self-congratulation in saying that they embarrassed the government into taking this action, and that this somehow disproves what the government said about not being able to act to transfer her. This is again disingenuous – when it came to light, the government ordered a review, and the policy writ-large was changed. They didn’t order an individual transfer, because that would be abusing their authority to do so. Now, there are some genuine questions as to how appropriate it is to change policies based on a single case, but insisting that they did what the Conservatives asked is not exactly true. Worse, however, is the unmitigated gall of the Conservatives demanding apologies and insisting that it was the Liberals who politicised the issue when they were the ones who decided to start reading the graphic details of Stafford’s murder into the record in the House of Commons. They’re still sore that they’ve been called ambulance chasers, which they insist is some kind of grievous insult, however their behaviour in the Commons around this issue was hardly decorous. An issue was raised, the policy was reviewed and changed, and the process worked. But trying to play victim over it is taking things a little too far.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1060641966776475648

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Senate QP: Looking tough and talking out the clock

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Following a lacklustre QP in the Other Place, the Minister of Looking Tough on Stuff, Bill Blair, headed for the Senate to take more questions related to his portfolio. Senator Larry Smith led off, asking about the financial pressure put on shelters in cities and provinces related accommodating irregular border crossers. Blair noted that he has been working with Ontario Minister Lisa MacLeod on the file, and noted that for the Toronto shelter system, the referred numbers are self-identified as refugees, which they arranged temporary housing for, and of the more than 400 that were referred to is now down to 35. Smith then laid out a number of facts related to irregular border crossers including the fact that the IRB wait time is around two years, and Blair gave a fairly broad statement about the increase in migration around the world, and that Canada saw similar spikes in irregular claimants in the past, and then veered off into talks about Conservative cuts to CBSB and the IRB that they have been forced to reinvest in, and from there went into the removals of failed claimants, before the temporary speaker cut him off for talking too long.

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QP: Pushing back a little against mendacity

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While the prime minister was in Montreal to meet with business leaders, Andrew Scheer was also absent, which is becoming increasingly common of late. Candice Bergen led off, concern trolling that the Statistics Canada plan to gather transaction data could endanger trade with Europe (which I am dubious of). Navdeep Bains thanked her for the thoughtful question, and reminded her that this was a pilot project that had not yet started, and they were working with the Privacy Commissioner to ensure it was done properly. Bergen tried again, and this time, Bains called out her mischaracterisation and read the portion of the Statistics Act that spelled out that nobody could compel the release of that personal information. Alain Rayes took over to ask the same question in French, and Bains reiterated the point about pilot project. Rayes then switched topics to inquire about what the “secret mission” assigned to missing MP Nicola Di Iorio was, and Bardish Chagger read that the member is responsible to his constituents and he is reflecting on his work. Bergen got back up to ask the same question in English, and Chagger read the same in English. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and demanded that Canada follow Mexico’s suit in order to refuse to sign the New NAFTA until the steel and aluminium tariffs were lifted. Marc Garneau stood up to express come confusion that the NDP were praising the deal in some venues, but attacking it in others. Caron changed topics to ask about the star of the Paradise Papers, but Garneau ignored the question in order to read more of the NDP’s praise for the agreement. Tracey Ramsey reiterated the Paradis Papers question in English, and Mélanie Joly a stood up to praise the reinvestment in CRA’s resources. Ramsey then repeated the demand to not sign the new NAFTA as long as the tariffs were in place, and Garneau repeated his confusion about the NDP’s position in English.

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Roundup: Di Iorio’s bizarre tales

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The tale of absent MP Nicola Di Iorio got even more bizarre yesterday as he started talking to the media, but remained secretive about what he’s been up to since he stopped showing up to Parliament. Di Iorio claims that when he announced his intention to resign in April, there was an outpouring of support from the riding that had him reconsider. Fair enough. He then disputed the reporting that an issue had arisen because he wanted to hand-pick his successor rather than run an open nomination…and then basically confirmed it by saying he wants a hand in picking the successor in the riding and not wanting it to be an open nomination, casting aspersions on the nomination process and claiming the nomination is the election (because it’s a pretty safe seat). So, points for that own-goal.

But wait – it gets even more bizarre. Di Iorio claims that he is on a special assignment from the prime minister that has work that keeps him busy in the riding – too busy to be in Ottawa. And he won’t say what that work is, other than it has something to do with “road safety.” And to add to that, PMO confirmed that he “agreed to continue his work to ensure a smooth transition in his riding and to work on specific files that are in line with his work experience and expertise,” and that he’s expected to announce his decision regarding his future in the coming days. I’m…unconvinced by this. In my ten years covering the Hill, I have never seen any MP disappear for months on a “special assignment” that is so demanding that they can’t show up in Ottawa. I’ve seen plenty of sick leaves, and one or two stress leaves, but never a “special assignment” that has them ignoring their actual duties in Ottawa, where they should be. And why the PMO is being vague about this as well is all the more odd, and smacks of trying to save some kind of face for the situation that Di Iorio has caused. I’m not convinced that any of this is legitimate, so we’ll see what he has to say in the “coming days.”

Meanwhile, here’s Katie Simpson talking about her interview with Di Iorio yesterday.

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Roundup: Immigration concern trolls

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Amidst the other disingenuous, fear-based campaigns going on in the political sphere right now – Statistics Canada, and the carbon price, in particular – the issue of immigration is also threatening to get worse, in part because the simmering issue around irregular border crossers is being conflated with the government’s announcement of new immigration targets. And we need to drill this into people from the start – immigration and asylum are two very different things, and shouldn’t be treated or conflated. We don’t accept refugees because we think they’ll fill out our workforce – we accept them for humanitarian reasons, which is why the expectations that they’ll find work right away is also problematic, as usually they’re traumatized upon arrival. That’s why it’s especially problematic when you have partisan actors like Michelle Rempel standing up in Question Period to decry the new immigration targets as having some form of equivalency with the irregular border crossers – they’re not the same thing, and conflating them is using one to demonize the other. Even more problematic is the kind of concern trolling language that we’re seeing from other conservatives – that they “support immigration” but are concerned about the “confidence in the system.” There is a certain dogwhistle quality to those “concerns” because it implies that the “confidence” in the system is undermined by all of those bad newcomers arriving. It’s subtle, but the signals are still there.

To that end, the government decided to launch a pro-immigration ad campaign, which the Conservatives have immediately derided as an attempt to paper over the irregular border-crosser issue, despite the fact that they’re separate issues, and they’re actively undermining confidence in the immigration system that they claim to support by conflating it with the asylum seekers they’re demonizing. And this cycle of conflation and demonization gets worse when the federal minister pushed back against the Ontario minister’s politicizing of the issue and attempt to blame asylum seekers for the city’s housing crisis (and more importantly pushed back against her claims that “40 percent” of shelter residents are now irregular border crossers and that they used to be 11 percent as being fabricated because the shelter system doesn’t track that kind of data). The Ontario minister responded by calling Hussen a “name-calling bully” (he didn’t call her any names), and on it goes. Would that we have grown-ups running things.

Meanwhile, The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ checks the government’s claim that they’ve reduced irregular border crossings by 70 percent (it was one month’s year-over-year data), and Justin Ling gives an appropriately salty fact-check of the political memes decrying the planned increase in immigration figures.

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Roundup: Proposing a debate commissioner

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Yesterday the government unveiled their plan to establish an election debate commissioner, who would set about coordinating leaders’ debates during the next election, along with proposed around which party leaders could participate – rules that would give Elizabeth May an in, but could exclude Maxime Bernier unless he gets an awful lot of candidates in place, and his polling numbers start to rise. The proposed Commissioner is to be former Governor General, His Excellency the Rt. Hon. David Johnston, who is a choice that nobody is going to want to dispute.

Of course, that hasn’t eliminating the grumbling and complaints. The NDP are complaining that they weren’t consulted before Johnston was nominated (not that they’re complaining it’s him), and the Conservatives are calling this a giant affront to democracy and add this onto their pile of complaints that Justin Trudeau is trying to rig the election in his favour. (Not sure how this does that, and it seems pretty cheeky to make these claims when their own unilateral changes to election rules in the previous parliament were panned by pretty much everyone). And Elizabeth May is overjoyed because the proposed rules would include her. Of course, Johnston still needs to be approved by Parliament, and he will appear before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee, but all of this having been said and done, there remain questions as to why this is all necessary. Gould went around saying that this was because Harper didn’t want to do debates in 2015, except that he did debates – he simply didn’t want to do the same “consortium” debates that are usually done and decided by the TV broadcasters, and he most certainly didn’t want to have anything to do with the CBC. The key point they seem to be making is that the 2015 formats saw far fewer viewers than the consortium debates typically attract, for what it’s worth. Is this a reason to implement a new system, that neither compels leaders to participate or broadcasters to air? Maybe, and people will point to the debate commission in the United States.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1057344603861397506

To that end, here’s Chris Selley asking some of those very questions, looking at some of the problematic behaviour from broadcasters in response to the changed formats from the 2015 debates, and offering some suggestions as to how this all could be avoided.

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Roundup: Debating the future shape of the Commons

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In a piece for Policy Options, Jennifer Ditchburn worries that there hasn’t been enough public discussion about the forthcoming renovations to the Centre Block, and what it means for our democracy. Part of the problem is the structure by which these decisions are being taken, and much of the decision-making is being put off until after the building is closed and the workers have a better sense as to the deterioration and what needs to be done as part of the renovation and restoration, which seems problematic. That said, it’s not like there hasn’t been any debate over the whole project, lest anyone forget the weeks of cheap outrage stories over the price tag of the “crystal palace” that has been created in the courtyard of the West Block to house the House of Commons on a temporary basis.

Ditchburn goes on to lament that we haven’t had any kind of public debate over how we want the House of Commons to look, and if we want to keep the current oppositional architecture (though she later tweeted that if forced to decide, she’s probably want to keep it). I will confess to my own reluctance to open up a debate around this because it has the likelihood that it will go very stupid very quickly, if the “debate” over electoral reform is any indication. We’re already bombarded by dumb ideas about how to reform the House of Commons, with ideas like randomized seating as a way to improve decorum, but that ignores both tradition and the fact that our system is built to be oppositional for good reason, as it forces accountability, and a certain amount of policy dynamism. I’m especially leery of the coming paeans to semi-circles, and people who think that the circular designs of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut legislatures as being at all replicable in Ottawa (which they aren’t).

If I had my druthers, I’d not only keep the current oppositional format, but would get rid of the desks and put in benches like they have in Westminster, thereby shrinking the chamber and doing away with means by which MPs have for not paying attention to debate as it is, where they can spend their time catching up on correspondence or signing Christmas cards, or playing on their iPads. Best of all, it does away with the mini-lecterns, which have become a plague in our Chamber as the scripting gets worse. The reasons for why they had desks have long-since vanished into history (as in, they all have offices now), and if we want better debates, then benches will help to force them (even if it means we’ll have to learn faces instead of relying solely on the seating chart to learn MPs’ names).

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Roundup: Not the right by-election

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Justin Trudeau called a by-election yesterday – but only in the riding of Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands, and not Burnaby South, where Jagmeet Singh has declared that he wants to run – and now the NDP are sniping about it, calling it “petty and manipulative,” and even more curiously, griping that Canadians from that riding are being deprived of representation.

A couple of things: First of all, Singh has had several opportunities to run for a seat before now, and has turned them all down. The fact that he has suddenly realised that his being “comfortable” with not having a seat until his poll numbers started plunging doesn’t mean that the Liberals have an obligation to get him in the House as soon as possible – he already made it clear it wasn’t a priority. As well, it they were so concerned about a lack of representation, they should have said something to their MP who vacated the seat in the first place – and not only that, who waited until the last minute to vacate it after spending the summer campaigning for another job. Likewise with Thomas Mulcair in Outremont and now Sheila Malcolmson in Nanaimo – they chose to leave before the current parliament expired.

Add to that, the time to call this particular by-election was running out, and with the other current openings, Trudeau may be waiting on Malcolmson to give a date as to when she officially plans to leave her seat, and for Liberal MP Nicola Di Iorio to officially vacate his own seat in Montreal (given that he suddenly started having second thoughts after declaring he was going to resign) before Trudeau calls the other by-elections, so that they can “cluster” the by-elections in those regions. I’m not convinced that there’s a crisis here. Singh made his bed, and now he gets to lay in it.

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Roundup: Dredging up deficit panic

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We’ve seen a return of questions in the past few days about the federal deficit – while the Public Accounts have shown that it was a little smaller than projected, it’s still there. The Conservatives hope to make hay over this in the next election, and as part of his “one year to go” speech over the weekend, Andrew Scheer repeated the lines that Stephen Harper mockingly performed over the election about how the Liberals promised just a “tiny little deficit” and well, it doesn’t look like they’ll make balance next year like they initially promised. Mind you, Scheer and his crew also ignores the fact that the Liberals were handed a $70 billion hole in GDP when they took over, so their spending promises are pretty much in line with their promises, but they made the choice to simply borrow to make up the difference – and yes, governing is about choices. Kind of like how the Conservatives chose to underfund a number of major projects in order to achieve the illusion of a balanced budget, that the Liberals had to then pick up the pieces on (Phoenix, Shared Services), and that’s also part of why they’re in the red. But you know – details.

In light of all of this fear-mongering, Kevin Milligan does the math on deficits, and well, it’s not quite the doom we’ve been thinking, as the debate remains trapped in the nineties and isn’t catching up to current realities.

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Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne worries about the deficits, with the recall about how the not-so-big deficits of the seventies suddenly metastasized out of control in the eighties, but he doesn’t math out his fears either.

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