Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Roundup: Target 2032

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The government’s slow rollout of NATO announcements continued apace yesterday with the formal announcement that their roadmap to meeting the defence spending target of two percent of GDP was expected by 2032, at which point that would include not only the submarines, but some other air defences as well. But because the details on that roadmap remain scarce, it allowed the usual narratives to carry on, while the Conservatives took to their socials to insist that the government had no intention of really following through on this promise, with no evidence at all (unless it was an admission that they have no intention of sticking to any of these plans, because they have already admitted that they have no intention of meeting the two percent target, merely “working toward it.”)

There was also an announcement that Canada and the US would work with Finland on icebreaker capability, with the details to be worked out in the next six months.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched two missiles and six drones at Ukraine, mostly at the Sumy and Mykolaiv regions. US intelligence reports that Russian agents tried to assassinate the CEO of a German arms manufacturer sending weapons to Ukraine. And Ukraine’s former army chief, who clashed with president Zelenskyy, has begun his new role as ambassador to the UK.

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Roundup: New subs on the menu

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We all knew it was coming, but the day finally arrived—the announcement that yes, Canada is officially embarking on a new submarine fleet, that we’re planning for up to twelve (from the current four), and that they will be conventionally powered and not nuclear (so no, we won’t be getting into the AUKUS nuclear subs club).

This is going to push us past the two percent spending target for NATO, but it does amaze me that the government waited until this long at the NATO conference to announce it, after they spent the past two days being punching bags for American congressmen and senators who want to look tough and make a point, while also feeding the bullshit narrative back home that the Elder Pundits have decreed we must follow. You would think that the supposed communications geniuses that this government purports to employ would get ahead of the entire situation, but no, that is apparently beyond their capabilities. Hermes wept; this government is so gods damned incompetent at these kinds of things that should be absolute gimmes. Cripes.

Meanwhile, the CBC tried to pin down the Conservatives on their totally serious plan to both “move toward” meeting the NATO target (note the hedging language that does not say they promise to meet it—remember, the Conservatives love “aspirational” targets that they can pay lip service toward with no intention of ever meeting), while cutting the budget overall (that means cuts at defence because that’s the easiest target and most able to push back capital expenditures). Unsurprisingly, the Conservative wouldn’t actually give direct answers, nor would they say what they mean by restoring “warrior” and not “woke” culture in the Forces. Of course, that’s generally code for the culture of toxic masculinity that got the military into so much trouble in the first place, with both sexual misconduct and abuse of power, but these guys are up late watching bro culture videos on YouTube, so they know all about “warrior culture.”

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile strike in the Mykolaiv region has killed one and injured eight including a local mayor. A combined drone and missile attack on Odesa has killed two and damaged port infrastructure. Russian forces also claim to have taken control of Yasnobrodivka in the Donetsk region, which Ukraine won’t confirm. Ukraine’s top prosecutor alleges that Russians killed two prisoners of war from the Zaporizhzhia region. Here’s a look at why the incoming F-16 fighters likely won’t have an immediate impact on the war.

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Roundup: Provinces learned they can underfund disaster management

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The House of Commons’ national defence committee tabled their report on disaster management earlier this week, and one of its recommendations is for a permanent civilian federal disaster management force that can be deployed for wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters—but they stopped short of recommending a Canadian FEMA, which may not be possible given that this is constitutionally largely an area of provincial jurisdiction, and would require some kind of provincial agreement to operate, and because this is Canada, the provinces would want some kind of say in its operations but wouldn’t want to pay for it, because of course.

One of the problems we’re dealing with as a country is that we’re dealing with the Canadian Forces being at their capacity and they are constantly being asked to deal with disaster management across the country because provincial capacity maxes out too soon. But why does provincial capacity max out? Because they keep cutting funds or under-investing, and creating these situations because they know that regardless of what happens, they can simply call up the federal government to ask them deploy the Canadian Forces, and even more to the point, that they can do it for free because the federal government won’t ask for reimbursement even though they are entitled to. And this has wound up teaching the premiers that there are pretty much no consequences for their under-investing or even cutting the funding for this kind of emergency management, so they are incentivized to rely on the Canadian Forces to do the work for them for free, and now we have reached the end of that being possible.

So, what is the solution? I am wary of the notion of building up a federal force because even if they can manage to get provincial agreements, staff it up (because you would be drawing from the same pool as the Canadian Forces, which has a recruitment and retention crisis), and even if they paid for all of it (which they shouldn’t), this will exacerbate the existing problem of provinces not funding or bolstering their existing forces that are their constitutional responsibility because there will still be a federal backstop. And if the federal government starts asking for reimbursement, either for the use of the Canadian Forces or this hypothetical future force, then the media will be aghast that the federal government is making the province pay in their time of need, completely ignoring that the provincial under-funding created the situation in the first place. We’re at a bit of a rock and hard place, because we have let federalism break down like this, and that’s not good for the country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck the Eastern settlement of Selydove, killing two. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian “barn” tank that has been modified to protect against drone attacks. Ukraine launched a drone attack that struck three Russian oil refineries overnight.

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Roundup: Abdicating responsibilities and calling on Justice Hogue instead

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The reverberations from the NSICOP report continued over the weekend, with the rhetoric still as ridiculous as ever. For example, everyone keeps shouting the word “treason” about what these MPs are alleged to have done (with the exception of the one former MP in the report), and lo, it doesn’t actually meet the Criminal Code definition of “treason,” which means that it’s unlikely anyone is going to face charges for what is alleged to have happened (if indeed any of it was in fact foreign interference and not actions undertaken as part of diplomacy, and the jury is still out on that).

And rather than continue to use this opportunity to behave like adults, the Bloc and the Conservatives now want to turn this over to Justice Hogue so that she can make some sort of determination rather than put on their big-boy pants and get their classified briefings. Turning this over to Justice Hogue would be an absolute abdication of responsibility by both the Bloc and Conservative leaders, and soon it could just be the Conservative leader since Yves-François Blanchet is now considering getting a classified briefing. That hasn’t stopped Michael Chong from going on national television to literally claim that he knows better than former CSIS directors about this, and saying that if Poilievre gets briefed, his hands are tied. That’s wrong, that’s bullshit, and that’s fabricating excuses so that he can continue to act as an ignorant critic rather than an informed observer.

This is not new. This is a long-standing problem in Canadian politics that opposition leaders don’t want to be briefed because if they do, then they have to be responsible in their commentary, and they don’t want to do that. They want to be able to stand up and say inflammatory things, and Poilievre is not only no different, but that’s his entire modus operandi. He can’t operate if he has to act like a responsible grown-up, where he would have to get the information and do something with it internally in his party, but he doesn’t want to do that when he can continue screaming that the prime minister is hiding something. But it’s hard to say that the prime minister is hiding something when he is quite literally offering Poilievre the opportunity to read the classified report, so instead he lies about what that would mean, and he gets Michael Chong to debase himself and also lie about it. This is the state of politics, and it’s very, very bad for our democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians appear to be making headway in their attempt to capture the strategically significant town of Chasiv Yar. Ukraine says that it struck an “ultra-modern” Russian aircraft six hundred kilometres from the front lines. The Globe and Mail has a longread about of Ukraine’s most elite special forces units, on the front lines of the war with Russia.

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Roundup: The PBO immolates what little credibility he had left

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It looks like the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, decided to extend his “winning” streak and cover himself in glory at the Commons’ finance committee yesterday, and once again immolated what credibility he has left. Defending his report, claiming he had access to a confidential report from Environment Canada that he was “gagged” from releasing (which the Conservatives jumped on and launched a thousand shitposts about, because committees are now only about content generation), lamented that the government doesn’t publish more climate modelling of their own, and how he hates how his reports are politicised, even though he’s been at this job for years and knows full well that PBO reports are always politicised, because that’s why MPs like them—so that they can both wield those reports as a cudgel, while hiding behind the shield of the PBO’s non-partisan “credibility” to keep the government from attacking it.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1797780078203671008

https://twitter.com/prairiecentrist/status/1797691621708054916

While this Tony Keller column lays out four major problems with the original carbon price report that the PBO produced—which again, Giroux continues to not really apologise for—energy economist Andrew Leach has some additional comments, driving home both how shallow the analysis is, and the fact that it’s not replicable because the PBO studiously refuses to explain his methodology, relying on “trust us, that’s our job.” But as we saw on P&P and again at finance committee, he complained that the government should be doing this kind of modelling work when it’s literally his one statutorily legislated job to do.

And to be helpful, Jennifer Robson provides some unsolicited advice on how the PBO could make his methodologies more transparent, if he actually wanted to do that (which I doubt, because so many of his reports rely on his pulling a novel methodology out of his ass, according to the many economists I’ve interviewed in the past). But that’s also part of the point about why he has no credibility left, and why he should start drafting that resignation letter.

https://twitter.com/lindsaytedds/status/1797817128483254759

Ukraine Dispatch:

A civilian was killed in a Russian strike on a recreation facility in Kharkiv. Here’s a look at what to expect from Ukraine’s peace summit to be held in Switzerland next week.

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Roundup: A choice to be dickish about pensions

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Over the past few days, the NDP have put on a big song and dance about the bill to update the Elections Act, which they had a hand in drafting with the government as a part of the Supply and Confidence Agreement. They now claim that they were blindsided by the provision to move the “fixed” election date by one week so that it doesn’t clash with Dwivali, because the knock-on effect is that it will qualify a number of MPs for their pensions in that extra week because they’ll have had their six years of service then. So they are now moving an amendment to the bill to return the election date to its original schedule, because who cares about Dwivali, right?

This is actually a new low for the NDP, who are trying to play populist politics but are doing it very, very badly. And if the intention is for this to come off as mean-spirited at the expense of Hindus, Jains and Sikhs who are celebrating and can’t vote of campaign on that day, well, who cares? As I believe Emilie Nicholas pointed out on Power & Politics, if the bill is to eliminate barriers to voting, why would the NDP then put up a new barrier for Hindus, Jains and Sikhs, so that they can try and outdo the astroturf charlatans in the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation? Because that’s the only group not actually is going to derive any joy from this. And media framing this as tAxPaYeR dOlLaRs is complicit in this kind of base thinking.

Frankly, we shouldn’t begrudge MPs their pensions because they put their lives on hold for years to serve the public in this way. (Whether they serve effectively is another story). We underpay them for the work they are doing (well, the work they are supposed to be doing—the current crop is not exactly doing themselves any favours), and to make these MPs lose out on the pensions they’ve earned because they are a few days shy of the cutoff is actually kind of cruel, and is the sort of thing that makes people rethink ever wanting to run for office, and to come out of it at the end with nothing for the time they put into public service when they could have made much more money and gotten a pension in the private sector. Instead of being gracious enough, every opposition party now wants to be dickish about it, which is pretty much fitting for the moment we’re in.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile attack overnight destroyed a power facility in Kyiv and damaged the electricity grid. Ukraine struck an oil terminal in Kavkaz in Russia thanks to missiles fired from their navy. Both Germany and the US have now said that Ukraine can use their weapons to strike inside of Russian territory, so long as it’s for the defence of Kharkiv. A prisoner swap with Russia took place on Friday, exchanging 75 people on each side. Ukraine has had four thousand prisoners apply to join the army in exchange for parole. And the factory in Ukraine that makes Oreo cookies is back online after two years of rebuilding after being damaged by the Russians.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1796518606832017524

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1796445849683419207

 

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Roundup: Hoping to master the algorithm

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As I often rail about terrible government communications and Parliament being reduced to a content studio for social media clips, I was struck by two stories over the weekend. The first was a look into the Liberals’ trying to use social media more effectively to bring back Millennial and Gen Z voters, which means staffers are directing their ministers to tailor content more specifically to these platforms, and ministers using influencers more to get their messages across. While I’m less concerned about the latter because I do think that can be helpful and savvy, it’s the former that concerns me more because we have too many politicians chasing the algorithm as it is, and the algorithm is bad and fickle. If you listen to Aaron Reynolds of Effin’ Birds fame talk about using social media to build his business, he will warn that tailoring your business to specific algorithms is doomed to fail because those algorithms change and can wipe you out, and politicians chasing the algorithm is not only cringe-worthy, it’s frankly bad for media literacy and democracy in general.

The other story was that Conservative MP Branden Leslie produced a Facebook video chock-full of fake news clips that purport to show a future where Trudeau has resigned, but amidst the complaints that using news branding for this kind of deep-fake content is problematic and deeply unethical, Conservatives are defending it as perfectly justified because “nobody could mistake it for reality.” This from the party that is actively building a dystopian alternate reality built on disinformation for their followers to believe in, because they want them to forgo things like critical thinking in order to simply swallow whatever falsehoods the party wants to tell them, and now they’re asserting that people won’t be taken by the very falsehoods this video perpetuates, after they have been training that same audience to swallow falsehoods? Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. This is nothing good, and a sign that there is no moral compass in the party whatsoever.

Throughout this, I am reminded of something Paul Wells said last week that really struck a chord with me:

I think the social-media revolution has constrained government’s attempts to explain themselves, and radicalized citizens’ responses, more than it’s helped anyone do anything good. And I think most political organizations’ attempts to master these tools end up looking like the tools are, quite thoroughly, mastering the organizations.

This is exactly right, and it’s why I worry that the Liberals trying to push more to social media to reach those Gen-Zers is going to make this actively worse, while the Conservatives are already using the worst features of these platforms to their most unethical extent. This is the state of political communications these days, and it’s very, very scary, and it’s dragging democracy down with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians bombed a big box store complex in Kharkiv on Saturday, killing 14, wounding 43, with 16 others still unaccounted for, even though Ukrainian forces are pushing them back from areas outside of the city.

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Roundup: More misleading over opioids

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The weekend discourse appears to have been much of what last week’s was, which was the Conservatives lying about the state of the opioid crisis in BC, lying about Justin Trudeau’s culpability, and lying about…well, pretty much everything. I feel like I need to keep saying this, but the decriminalisation project in BC is not what caused people to start using drugs openly in public places. That is happening everywhere. It is happening right now on the streets in Ottawa, where there is no decriminalisation, because there is currently a prevailing ethos that if you use in public places and overdose, you have a better chance that someone will come across you and get a Naloxone kit to save your life. It’s not about decriminalisation. That also didn’t cause users to leave needles in parks—that’s been happening for decades in some urban centres. We’re now fully into moral panic territory.

Meanwhile, Toronto Public Health’s hopes for a similar decriminalisation programme don’t seem to be going anywhere, and Justin Trudeau stated last week, in QP that they only work with provinces and not individual cities on these kinds of projects, which is why they didn’t accept Vancouver’s proposal earlier, and why they’re not contemplating Toronto or Montreal now. And frankly, that shouldn’t be unexpected because public health is a provincial responsibility, so it would make more sense for the federal government to work with a province rather than an individual municipality that may be at odds with the province in question. Federalism matters, guys.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 23 of 24 drones overnight on Sunday, with more airstrikes on Kharkiv during the day on Sunday. There was also a drone attack on power supply in the Sumy region early Monday morning. Drone footage shows how the village of Ocheretyne is being pummelled by Russians, as residents are scrambling to flee the area, as Russia claims they have captured it. Problem gambling has become an issue for a lot of Ukrainian soldiers dealing with the stress of combat.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1787172469100478665

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Roundup: The First Hogue Report

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On a very busy Friday, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the first report of the foreign interference public inquiry, to some moderate fanfare. Much of it was broadly what was in the Johnston report, but with some more nuance, which left some of it open to degrees of interpretation, some partisans claiming it proves there was meddling, others leaning on the parts where she said that what there was wasn’t enough to amount to changing an election outcome, and there certainly wasn’t some grand effort by China to win the election for the Liberals. At most, it might have cost Kenny Chiu his seat, and there remained questions about Han Dong’s nomination, but even there, there wasn’t a lot of evidence to prove or disprove anything one way of the other.

To that end, key points, and five things from the report. It wasn’t just China, but India, Pakistan, Iran, and a few others. Some candidates in the 2019 election “appeared willing” to engage in foreign interference, with more staff members implicated, around advancing the interests of China, but there weren’t any firm conclusions about who much any foreign interference actually tipped the scales in any one riding. The government also announced that they are tabling legislation on Monday, which is likely to include the foreign agent registry, and possibly some updates to CSIS’ mandate and powers.

Justice Hogue did make a couple of comments about nominations being a possible gateway for foreign interference, but that’s something that would be hard for governments or agencies to do much to involve themselves in because of how parties operate as private clubs, by necessity. That said, as I wrote in this column a couple of weeks ago, open nominations are practically extinct in the current moment so perhaps there isn’t that much danger after all.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Debris from destroyed drones fell on Kharkiv, injuring three and starting a fire. Russia says it has pushed Ukrainians back from 547 square kilometres so far this year, as Americans delayed their crucial aid shipments.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1786364727032971377

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QP: The provocation and the restraint

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After all of yesterday’s drama, it was a real question as to what was going to go down today, with the prime minister present, and there to respond to (but not necessarily answer) all questions. His deputy was absent, but all other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, worrying about the public health director suggesting decriminalisation in Montreal and Quebec, and demanded the government deny the request. Justin Trudeau said that they should take a moment to reflect on what happened yesterday, and said that the government takes the tragedy in BC seriously and they work with science and compassion, and will work with BC on adjusting their pilot project. Poilievre demanded to know if he would reject a request from Quebec, and Trudeau said that they worked with BC when they made the proposal, and he has received no other proposals. Poilievre switched to English, dropped the Montreal angle and demanded he reverse course on BC’s decriminalisation. Trudeau repeated that they will work with BC to adjust their pilot project. Poilievre insisted that Trudeau still hasn’t answered the question, and went into six British Columbians dying every day, and Trudeau repeated that BC approached them with the pilot project, and they worked with them to develop the project, and they looking into the modifications of the project they have asked for. Poilievre very slowly demanded that he reverse decriminalisation, and Trudeau again said they were working with BC.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, needled the Bloc for declaring they will support the budget, before going on about Amira Elghawaby making comments about the challenge to Quebec’s Law 21. Trudeau said that they build bridges by funding infrastructure and by helping communities come together. Blanchet railed about Elghawaby and halal mortgages, somehow, and insisted that some communities were getting other privileges. Trudeau said that in a pluralistic democracy, it’s important to talk to communities in order to meet their concerns.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he raised the Loblaws boycott, and the fact the grocery task force has done no work. Trudeau says that they are concerned with Loblaws not signing onto the grocery code of conduct, and they have given the Competition Bureau new powers. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same answer.

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