Tag Archives: Refugees

Roundup: Playing fast and loose with pluralism

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Another day, another eruption from Maxime Bernier, this time in advance of his party’s announcement on immigration policy, intimating that suddenly they’re interested in it now that he’s brought it up. Not actually true – rather than talk about restricting immigration levels or diversity, Michelle Rempel gave a litany of issues that the party wants to have consultations on over the coming months, some of them quite legitimate (others, less so), but in the end, Rempel noted that Bernier had not once come to talk to her about immigration issues, and that he needs to decide if he’s supporting Scheer, or if he wants to let Trudeau win again.

Amidst all of this, Ralph Goodale put an essay up on his website about some of the racist history of his province, particularly the political influence that the KKK once held, and warned about those who are playing fast and loose with pluralism in this country – which is something that I think needs to be called out, because while Rempel does have some legitimate criticisms about how this government has handled the immigration and refugee files (and it needs to be stressed that these are separate and should not be conflated), she also has a huge habit about concern trolling and then shouting that the government is undermining support for pluralism, which she is very much doing by lighting her hair on fire and declaring a crisis where one doesn’t actually exist. And when she offers cover to public racists by trying to frame their stunts as “asking a question about the budget” (which it absolutely was not), she too contributes to undermining support for pluralism – the very thing she says she’s trying to avoid. Add to that, by not explicitly condemning Maxime Bernier’s winking to white nationalists – winking that they’re picking up and amplifying – she’s further undermining the very cause she claims she’s trying to shore up.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert tries to divine what Maxime Bernier’s endgame is, while Andrew Coyne warns against the Conservatives using fear-mongering and soft-pedalling racists to try and score points on the immigration file. Matt Gurney sees the real crisis as falling support for immigration (if we can believe a single poll), which is exacerbated by perceived government incompetence on the file – and we can’t deny that this government’s perennial inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag is part of the problem.

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Roundup: Those pesky gasoline prices

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While avoiding condemning Maxime Bernier’s choice of language and engagement (moving from just winking at white nationalists to now trying to delegitimize the media), Andrew Scheer has resumed his practice of shitposting misleading statistics memes over Twitter, and yesterday it was in relation to gasoline prices. Yes, Statistics Canada reported that the inflation rate in June was 3.0 percent, which is the Bank of Canada’s upper bound for their target, and yes, it was fuelled in part by gasoline prices. (Core inflation, stripped of volatile factors like gasoline, remains closer to the 2.0 percent target, so it’s not really anything to worry about). But why would those gasoline prices be higher? Hmm…

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That’s right – the world price of oil has increased over the past year after its recovery from the price collapse nearly two years ago, and that’s an unambiguous good thing for provinces like Alberta, who rely on oil prices being on the higher side for their economies. Trying to cast this as a carbon tax issue – and that oh noes, carbon taxes will make this even worse – is a bit disingenuous considering how small of a fraction of the price that entails.

Meanwhile, with a number of voices (Jason Kenney and Scheer among them) calling for the revival of Energy East in light of the Saudi Arabia spat, energy economist Andrew Leach crunched the numbers on the economic case for that pipeline. Short version: there is no economic case. Stop trying to pretend there is one or blaming Justin Trudeau for its demise.

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Roundup: Extreme multiculturalism

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The fallout to Maxime Bernier’s latest Twitter missive on multiculturalism was more muted than one might have expected – no actual condemnation from Andrew Scheer, just a bland statement from his office that didn’t address Bernier’s words at all. And Erin O’Toole offered his own response which was basically just a reiteration that the various conservative parties in Canada’s history have had ethno-cultural firsts as a way of proving that they’re not all bigots or racists, but it missed the point that there was nevertheless a certain amount of tokenism in those firsts – that yes, they’ve got one of these different groups, but one is enough, thanks, and don’t talk to us about systemic barriers or discrimination. After all, these singular examples pulled up their bootstraps and made it – why can’t everyone else?

Bernier himself got huffy that he was described as saying he was against diversity – he insists he’s okay with some diversity, but not “extreme multiculturalism,” which is odd, because it’s like he missed the whole point of multiculturalism, which is about finding an effective way of integrating newcomers rather than alienating them further into ghettos. The fact that he doesn’t get that just adds fuel to the notion that this is all about winking to xenophobes and white nationalists, never mind the fact that it’s a nonsense proposition that there’s a Goldilocks zone of not too little, not too much, but just enough diversity that will magically keep Canada from disintegrating into some kind of ethnic hellhole. Never mind that the concern trolling about Liberal “identity politics” ignores the fact that in order to address systemic barriers facing women, sexual minorities, and people of colour, you actually to address what those barriers are, which is not about balkanizing – as Bernier seems to think.

Meanwhile, not every Conservative seems to be keen on Bernier’s pronouncements, but they seem concerned about how much influence he has among the base (somewhat mystifyingly). And with a convention coming up, we’ll see if these tensions spill out into the open.

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Roundup: Saudi spat

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So that diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia sure escalated quickly. To recap, Saudi Arabia took offence to Canada calling on the release of activists from their country, and expelled our ambassador, cancelled trade deals (which includes large exports of barley from Canada), and demanded that the 15,000 or so Saudi students in Canada return home within the next four weeks (which could have an impact on the Canadian economy). It remains to be seen if that LAV deal is still on the table, because that could also have a major impact on jobs in Southwestern Ontario. Both Chrysita Freeland and Bill Morneau are holding firm in their position, but what is potentially more worrying is the fact that the US and the UK aren’t taking sides. Peter MacKay thinks that the PM needs to get involved personally to clear this up, for whatever his opinion is worth.

Bessma Momani talks about what’s behind Saudi Arabia’s move in expelling Canada’s ambassador, and John Geddes interviews two other experts on the area. Kevin Carmichael looks at how political disputes are going to affect trade in the future, especially as authoritarian regimes dare Western countries to ignore rights.

Meanwhile, the dumbest take in all of this has to be the number of people who have started salivating about how this loss of Saudi oil imports on the East Coast means that we should resurrect Energy East. Not only does it not make economic sense, it doesn’t make practical sense since the refineries in Eastern Canada aren’t built to handle the heavy crude coming from Alberta, which puts a lie to the notion that Energy East would be used for domestic consumption rather than export. Even if it were economical to convert and extend the pipeline (and currently it’s not with both Trans Mountain being twinned and Keystone XL finally going ahead), you would need to retrofit or build new refineries in the East, at the cost of yet more billions of dollars, which doesn’t make any sense when we can find imports from countries other than Saudi Arabia that are still cheaper. (And for so-called fiscal conservatives to demand this pipeline happen in spite of economics for nationalist concerns makes their reasoning all the more suspicious).

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Roundup: A trifecta of constitutional buffoonery

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Yesterday was not a good day for the constitutional order in this country, as the Ontario government launched a constitutional challenge of the federal carbon price backstop legislation, arguing that it’s “unfair” and “unconstitutional” – which it absolutely isn’t, but this is about throwing a public temper tantrum in the name of populist outrage – but as David Reevely also points out, it’s about dragging this out in the courts, both Ontario courts and the Supreme Court of Canada well past the next election. Ontario’s two ministers insisted that they had legal opinions that said they had a solid case, but that’s almost certainly false, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what kind of novel argument they came up with that the courts will laugh out.

As if this big of constitutional buffoonery weren’t enough, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh also came out with a demand that the federal government immediately give cities the ability to ban handguns – which is constitutionally a non-starter, since cities are the creatures of provincial legislation, and criminal powers are federal. Delegating federal criminal powers to the municipalities is similarly a non-starter. (Singh is also a lawyer and should know this).

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But to cap off the trifecta of constitutional idiocy comes courtesy of the Toronto Star, who asked Ontario Attorney General Caroline Mulroney if she was prepared to use the notwithstanding clause to opt out of the federal carbon tax – which is not something that the notwithstanding clause could actually deal with. Compounding this was that Mulroney’s answer was that they were going to examine all legal options, which made it sound like she was considering it, rather than simply saying “that wouldn’t apply here” and possibly adding “you moron” because it was not only a bad question, it was an irresponsible question and one that was either designed to make Mulroney look stupid (which she kind of did with the answer she gave) or to demonstrate that the reporter in question had no idea what they were talking about. So well done, Star. Slow clap for making all of us look bad in the process.

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Roundup: Deleting the message

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The Conservatives decided to delete their tweet yesterday that depicted a black migrant crossing to Canada – over a bridge made of Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet, and through a broken chain-link fence. There was backlash that the tweet was racist, and it certainly was intended to stoke the xenophobic tendencies that they have been flirting with. I will point out once again that their continued reliance on the talking point that this is about the “orderly” asylum system would probably make most of Europe laugh and pat them on the head condescendingly, because it’s pretty precious that they think Canada should get the special status of an “orderly” system that no other country gets.

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Meanwhile, Maclean’shas a look at the history of the Safe Third Country Agreement, and how it’s basically just waiting for Donald Trump to blow it up if he actually learns about what it is and what it does. Chris Selley, on the other hand, points out the ways in which both the federal government and the new Ontario government are mishandling the whole file, which is fair criticism. But I do think we can’t take our eye off the fact that the Conservatives are flirting with xenophobic populism for partisan gain, and playing cute with it, pitting one group of newcomers against another, and patting themselves on the back for their “compassion” for certain groups of refugees that they use solely as props to hammer away at the regime they’re fleeing. This has been their modus operandi since Jason Kenney was immigration minister, but they’ve poured it on a little thicker since they saw that this kind of populist rhetoric worked for Trump and Brexit (never mind the fact that we have solid proof of election interference in both, and definitive proof of broken rules in the Brexit referendum). This is worrying for our democracy, and we should be very wary of their adopting these techniques.

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Roundup: Recalling the committee

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Yesterday was the day when the Commons immigration committee returned to town for an emergency meeting on the irregular border-crossing situation, and in the end, they agreed to hold two more meetings in the next few weeks to get a better sense of what is going on, and what the government’s plans are. There’s partisan gamesmanship happening on all sides of this, and each party wants a different outcome from these hearings, but they’re going to happen, and despite the fact that Michelle Rempel tries to spin the fact that she “forced” the Liberals to pay attention to this, she was apparently pushing on an open door as they were happy to do it, as their position is that this gives them an opportunity to correct the spin and misinformation that Rempel and her compatriots are putting out there.

Meanwhile, the government also made it clear that they were going to give funding directly to the City of Toronto to deal with their housing situation for migrants (only a few of which are actually irregular border crossers) because the provincial government has abdicated their responsibility to do something – while other communities outside of Toronto are willing and able to house and resettle more of them, and are actively seeking to do so. David Reevely gives more context here, and in particular notes that while the number of migrants is relatively small, the bigger problem is that they’re being put into a system that is already stressed.

But the rhetoric carries on, and Andrew Coyne takes it on in this piece – that, despite the claims, this isn’t actually a “crisis,” and treating it as such isn’t helpful, nor are the suggestions that the Conservatives are throwing out there. And worse, the Conservatives have put out a particularly problematic Twitter campaign that is being decried as racist, basing itself on a headline from a Diane Francis column in the Financial Post which is full of outright misinformation (particularly the notion that irregular border crossers aren’t screened – they absolutely are), torque, and reheated Conservative talking points. Coyne went further in a twitter thread, but regardless, the Conservatives continue to walk a fine line around pandering to xenophobic anger while still insisting that they support “orderly immigration,” as though we that were feasible 100 percent of the time. Real life doesn’t work like that, and Canada has been fortunate in that we’re protected by three oceans and American paranoia, but now we have to deal with a fraction of the migrants that other countries do. Maybe it behoves us to act like grown-ups about this.

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Roundup: Senate constituency office?

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Independent Senator Dan Christmas has opted to open a “constituency” office in his local Mi’kmaw community in Nova Scotia in a bid to be more accessible. Which is all well and good, but the CBC piece that reported on this is atrocious. Embarrassingly so.

The article refers to Christmas as a “member of the Canadian government” which he explicitly is not. Being a member of government means being part of Cabinet, which Christmas certainly is not. In fact, as a senator, his job is to hold government to account. That’s not talked about in here at all. I’m also not sure what he hopes to use the office for, because senators traditionally don’t do the kinds of constituency work that MPs do, such as acting in an ombudsman-like capacity for constituents having trouble dealing with the civil service (particularly with immigration files, which is a huge problem). And it’s not like he’s the first senator to do so – I recall Senator Mike Duffy making a big deal about doing the same thing in PEI (which I can’t recall if he ever got around to actually doing, or if it was simply a stated intention that some of the usual pundits went around congratulating him for), and Senator Bob Runciman had a constituency office as well. Regardless, the article doesn’t really give much of a sense of his plans for the office – just that he wants to be visible in his community and that he wants to be a kind of “ambassador” to Ottawa from the Mi’kmaw, which again, not really an apt analogy because he doesn’t represent that government in any capacity. I am forced to wonder if this is a result of a lack of understanding of his role because, as an Independent senator, he lacks much in the way of proper mentoring from established senators, but again, I remain mystified, and we’ll see how long this lasts before he realises he could better spend his office budget doing things that are of more utility.

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Roundup: Asylum claimant dust-up

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So there was a bit of a testy exchange yesterday as federal and provincial immigration ministers met in Winnipeg, and Ahmed Hussen got into a bit of a spat with Ontario’s new minister, Lisa MacLeod. Hussen objected to MacLeod (and Doug Ford) using the rhetoric of “illegal border crossers” and ginning up the same rhetoric of the Federal Conservatives that somehow refugee claimants take make it harder for legal immigrants (despite the fact that they’re separate processes and systems). This objection is not new either – Hussen has been saying this for weeks, so for MacLeod to get offended about it yesterday is being performative in the extreme – which is what she wants. With Kathleen Wynne no longer in the picture for her party to pit themselves against, they now need to make Trudeau their straw man. And when Hussen called the behaviour “un-Canadian,” MacLeod and her defenders accused Hussen of “bullying,” which is childish. But wait – it gets better. MacLeod loudly announced that the federal government should pay for these asylum claimants, while Hussen has been saying for weeks that they need Ontario to step up and find places elsewhere in the province than just Toronto to house them, and hey, they’re providing money to do just that. And then, because this wasn’t theatrical enough, Saskatchewan’s minister also refused to sign onto the communiqué from the meeting and demanded that the federal government not only pay for these asylum seekers (of which Saskatchewan has received zero), but that they should pay the full cost of all other government-sponsored refugees. Couple of things: 1) This is starting to get alarmingly close to the kinds of xenophobic populist rhetoric we’re seeing south of the border, and we should be very alarmed by that; and 2) Remember how the federal Conservatives just a few years ago cut refugee health benefits as a “deterrence” mechanism (which the courts later called “cruel and unusual”), which simply downloaded those costs onto the provinces? These are your political brethren.

Also released yesterday were the latest figures for the number of irregular border crossers, and it has plunged again. Because it’s a “crisis” that the government has “done nothing about.” Err, except they have been doing something about it, trying to stem the migrant flow at the source, and lo and behold, it seems to be working. For now, in any case. But the Conservatives continue to press for a meeting of the Commons’ immigration committee next week to rail about it.

Meanwhile, Martin Patriquin calls out the divisive and inflammatory language because it misses the actual issue at play, treating it as a permanent burden rather than a temporary state of affairs.

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Roundup: A “quiet” housekeeping bill

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Do bills get passed “quietly”? There was a bit of debate over the Twitter over this fact yesterday, where it was conceded that a bill was passed with little fanfare, but I wanted to dissect this a little bit. The bill in question was one that was a technical housekeeping bill that legislated that several Minister of State positions were bumped in status, salary and precedence to full ministers, and that they had line departments split out from the previous departments they existed under the envelope of. It had been on the Order Paper since 2016, and signalled that it was happening since the Cabinet was first unveiled in 2015, with Orders in Council doing effectively what the bill did on an interim basis. It garnered attention yesterday because amidst the Cabinet shuffle speculation, it was noted that the bill allows for a couple of more seats to be added to the Cabinet table under this new framework, so Trudeau could theoretically increase the size of his Cabinet (and he yet might). But regardless, because this was passed without fanfare, it was termed as being passed “quietly.”

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Part of why I have a problem with the use of “quietly” – not just in this circumstance but in others – is because it implies that that there was intent. A recent egregious example was the renewal of the equalization formula – something that was in the budget document, in the bill (clearly marked), and came up at committee, and on top of that, was the subject of discussions between the federal and provincial governments for months. But nobody batted an eyelash until the Globe and Mail said it was passed “quietly” (apparently because they didn’t report on it, which is like a tree falling in the forest). And like I said with that equalization issue, it’s not the media’s job to flag every little thing for MPs – they can do their own homework.

My other issue with this is that not every bill is going to get fanfare – a lot of it is technical and relatively uncontroversial, there are a number of bills that are financial measures that are eye-glazing that most MPs don’t pay attention to (though they should) and simply pass of to the PBO to do their homework for them on. This particular bill was, as I said, on the Order Paper since 2016. There was nothing really controversial about it because it purported to fix inequities that would otherwise have ensured that a number of the women in the gender-equal cabinet were not equal in status or pay because they were in portfolios that had previously been relegated to “junior” positions, and a few reporters tried to make hay out of that fact when the Cabinet was first announced in 2015. This is not a bill that deserved fanfare. Expecting it is unrealistic and frankly comes off as a bit whiney when reporters can track these things on LegisInfo like everyone else. It didn’t pass “quietly” – it was a technical bill that passed like all technical bills do. And it’s time we struck “quietly” from the political lexicon.

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