Tag Archives: Refugees

Roundup: Huawei, Trump, and the rule of law

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The issue around the arrest of Huawei’s CFO in Vancouver last week took a number of turns yesterday, and is proving to be an utter gong show, thanks entirely to Donald Trump. So, to recap, the US ambassador to Canada stated that there was absolutely no political motivation behind the request for the arrest and extradition to the US, but meanwhile in China, a former Canadian diplomat who now works with International Crisis Group was arrested in China for no apparent reason, and there is no confirmation as to whether this is in retaliation for the Huawei arrest. Back in Vancouver, said CFO was granted bail for $10 million with five guarantors while she will await extradition hearings – and she has to surrender her passport, be under 24/7 surveillance and wear an ankle monitor, because she is considered a high flight risk. (Here’s a good backgrounder on all of the issues).

And then, it all went pear-shaped. Why? Because Donald Trump suddenly said that he’d intervene in the case if it helps to get a trade deal with China, which undermines the rule of law that Canada has been operating under and trying to assure Beijing that we’re operating under, and that because we have an independent judiciary with processes to be followed (which they can’t get their heads around because their judicial system is politicised), and all of the evidence around the criminal activities, allegations of fraud and of violating sanctions is apparently all for naught, because the US president has put his foot in it. And lo, Canada is relatively screwed by the whole thing. Hooray.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1072642206756990978

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QP: Taking allegations outside

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While the PM took a personal day after his return from the G20, Andrew Scheer was off in Winnipeg to talk guns and gangs. Pierre Poilievre led off concerned about the PM’s supposed “celebrity lifestyle” that referred to the pre-planned tweet around funds for women and girls’ education, before he suddenly pivoted to Bill C-69, demanding it be scrapped. Amarjeet Sohi reminded him that the system the Conservatives put into place that wasn’t working, so they were working to get a one project-one-review process. Poilievre railed that the PM was at the G20 talking about how there were negative consequences when male construction workers went to rural communities,  before returning to the demand to scrap C-69. Sohi reiterate his response, and when Poilievre went for another, more boisterous round of the same, he got much the same answer. Alain Rayes took over to ask about the report in the National Post about a potential investigation on a land deal that might involve Navdeep Bains and Raj Grewal, to which Bains told him the allegations were false and invited him to repeat them outside of the Chamber. Rayes tried to insist on Liberal connections to the situation, to which Bardish Chagger read a statement that functionally repeated Bains’ response. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, railing about high-protein milk under Supply Management, to which Lawrence MacAulay deployed his usual lines about defending the system. Caron then turned to the Oshawa closure and demanded action by the government, to which Bains read that the sector was strong, that they had the auto innovation fund if GM wanted to use it. Tracey Ramsey demanded action on Oshawa, to which Bains reiterated his previous response. Ramsey then railed that steel and aluminium tariffs were still in place, to which Mélanie Joly read that the NDP celebrated the deal behind closed doors.

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Roundup: Ginning up the Grewal resignation

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As the stories on Raj Grewal’s gambling debts and intended resignation continue to trickle through, a number of them have taken on a vaguely conspiratorial tone. A lot of facts that shouldn’t be out of the ordinary are treated as suspicious for absolutely no reason at all. For example, people keep wondering why he was reassigned from the finance committee in September “with no warning.” Gee, what else happened in September that would have affected committee memberships? Could it have been the fact that the parliamentary secretaries all got shuffled, so committee assignments need to be rejigged? Maybe? And whoa, he asked questions on catching money launderers to law officials and FINTRAC agents during a study on – wait for it – “Confronting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: Moving Canada Forward.” Such an amazing coincidence that is totally suspicious. And the latest “revelation” is that Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais says that a retired Mountie told him a year ago that he heard Raj Grewal was under investigation, and he therefore thinks PMO should have known then. Erm, except that neither the OPP nor the RCMP tell the PMO what they’re investigating because they operate at arm’s length, and more to the fact, Grewal was a backbench MP, which I cannot stress enough.

To that end, Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at the issue of parties policing MPs’ off-hours, considering the Clement and Grewal situations, while Susan Delacourt cites those same two cases, and wonders if we need to do a better job of screening backbenchers. And I’m pretty dubious because backbenchers are not ministers. They don’t have access to secret materials (Clement, I remind you, is a former minister and thus a member of the Privy Council, and his activities on NSICOP are outside of the usual activities of a backbencher), nor are they public office holders. Their job is to hold government to account – they are not part of the government, and it doesn’t matter what committees they’re on. Treating them as the same thing is not only a gross overreach, but frankly it will give MPs a wrongheaded sense of their place in the system, which is already suffering because of civic illiteracy.

Are Grewal’s debts concerning? Yup. Is it a crisis that he was mentioned in passing as part of an investigation into other suspicious characters? Maybe, but we don’t know enough to say whether it is or not, and the baseless speculation and ginned up allegations aren’t helping. Should Trudeau and the PMO have been more candid from the start about the reasons Grewal was resigning? Probably, and given this government’s inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, their approach once again blew up in their faces. But treating this affair with clickbait headlines and spinning random facts out of context in order to make them seem sinister is bad reporting.

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QP: Grewal and false border numbers

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While Justin Trudeau was off to Argentina for the G20, Andrew Scheer was elsewhr, as was Guy Caron, more unusually. Mark Strahl led off, worrying about new revelations about investigations that Raj Grewal may have been swept up into, to which Bardish Chagger responded that last week he made them aware of his serious challenges and treatment, and they hoped he got the help he needed. Strahl didn’t believe her, but Chagger reiterated the response. Strahl got even more incredulous, but Chagger’s response varied only by saying the RCMP operates independently. Luc Berthold tried again in French, and got the same answer in French, and then they went yet another round of the same. Ruth Ellen Brosseau led for the NDP, demanding that the government take action. Patty Hajdu said that it was troubling, but this was a global decision affecting plants in the US and elsewhere, so they were going to help workers where they could. Brosseau then demanded the government not sign the New NAFTA until an oversight clause around milk classes was removed, to which Lawrence MacAulay deployed his well-worn points about defending Supply Management. Tracey Ramsey was worried that we didn’t know what was in the deal and demanded that it not be signed, to which Mélanie Joly stood up to assure her it was a good deal for Canada. Brian Masse, whose rant about the auto sector didn’t reach the question before he got cut off, and Hajdu recited some talking points about their support for the industry through the auto innovation fund.

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Roundup: A sudden dilemma for Singh

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Liberal MP Raj Grewal made a surprise announcement last night, that he’s resigning his seat because of “personal and medical reasons,” which the PM later called “serious personal challenges” – a phrase that only raises the number of questions about what it could be. Aside from losing one of the best-dressed MPs on the Hill (Grewal is a frequent recipient of sartorial snaps on this blog), where this announcement gets very interesting is the bind that it places on NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

Singh had initially stated that he wanted to run in Grewal’s riding during the next election, given that it was his riding provincially (note to non-Ontarians: in this province, the federal and provincial ridings are identical with a couple of exceptions in Northern Ontario), and for almost a year, he kept stating that he was “comfortable” not having a seat and waiting to run in that same Brampton riding in 2019. That is, until his party’s poll numbers started tanking and he realized that he needed to actually be present in Parliament if he hoped to regain any traction. (Also of note, his brother now holds the seat provincially.) But in August, Singh committed to run in Burnaby South, and has been spending some time there campaigning, and recently announced that he found a rental property there.

So this leads us to wonder – will Singh abandon Burnaby South, where he has already expended some effort and expense, or will he decide that since Brampton is now back on the map, that it’s the smarter decision to run in given his roots and history in the riding? This just as Singh learned that he’ll get the byelection in Burnaby South that he’s been (belatedly) demanding in February. So there’s a choice to make, and we’ll likely hear all about it in the coming days. (Also, expect the Conservatives to push conspiracy theories about just how “convenient” it was for Grewal to suddenly resign now, and how this must mean the Liberals really want him in the House because they think it’ll give them some kind of advantage; this line of baseless speculation was proffered on Power & Politics last night and I expect to hear it repeated in the coming days).

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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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