Tag Archives: Tiff Macklem

Roundup: Tiff Macklem goes to committee

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Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem appeared before the Commons’ finance committee yesterday, and reiterated that a decision on a rate cut is getting close, which should be good news to (most) everyone—most especially the government. There were a couple of other interesting things he said, which is that we’re not beholden to matching the US’ rate, but at the same time, we can’t diverge too much, or we would face currency devaluation.

The Conservatives have been clipping his appearance at the Senate’s banking committee the day before, claiming that he said that the federal budget and its deficit are fuelling inflation, which isn’t what he said. He said that the budget won’t have any impact on inflation, because any increased spending is balanced out by higher revenues—but they clipped the part about revenues off, because deceit is their current modus operandi.

https://twitter.com/jasrajshallan/status/1786033120690544860

And because of where the discourse is at, Macklem had to once again point out that the carbon levy is not having an impact on inflation, and that if you “axed” it, there would be a small one-time drop in inflation that would disappear the next year (because inflation is a year-over-year measure), and it wouldn’t really change much—a message that Conservatives don’t like to hear, or who like to fudge, because it messes with their narrative that said levy had driven people into poverty (which is not true). But seriously, how many times does he need to say this?

Ukraine Dispatch:

Guided bombs hit close to a sports complex in Kharkiv, injuring eight children. The tally is that Russia fired more than 300 missiles, around 300 drones, and over 3200 guided bombs against Ukraine in April. Russia has massed its forces, and they are making a concerted push along all of the front lines in Donetsk, though Ukraine is holding them off for the time being, though they are forced to be judicious with their ammunition until more can arrive. Here is a look at the state of minefields in Ukraine, where they are now one of the most mined countries in the world.

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Roundup: Back to challenging the Speaker once again

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Not unexpectedly, a number of MPs have renewed the call to oust Greg Fergus from the Speaker’s chair after Tuesday’s dramatics during Question Period. For the Bloc, who soured on Fergus shortly after his election and his recording a video in his robes, they’re complaining that he can’t control the room, which is a bit unfair because MPs themselves have hobbled the Speaker’s ability to enforce decorum by giving him narrow powers in the Standing Orders. This logic also ignores the culpability of those who are making the noise—the Speaker isn’t making them behave like that. And for the record, Fergus says he’s not stepping down.

For the Conservatives, however, they are playing the victim, as is a common far-right tactic these days, and claiming that he had a double standard on Tuesday. Their proof—that prime minister Justin Trudeau wasn’t forced to retract or get named when he referred to Poilievre’s “spineless leadership” in not denouncing far-right extremists and Alex Jones. Note that the language Trudeau used was that the leadership was spineless, he did not call Poilievre that. And he was warned about inflammatory language, and he rephrased. Poilievre called Trudeau “whacko,” which was is a direct attack, and then refused to withdraw the word when instructed to—and again, the prevarication and wheedling of trying to replace the word is not respecting the Speaker’s authority, especially when invited to simply withdraw four times. There is a difference between what each leader said and how each responded, and if Conservatives can’t tell that difference, then they have a real problem with their critical thinking skills, which isn’t a good thing for an MP.

There was added drama when Conservative MP Rachael Thomas, who now claims that she withdrew her remarks yesterday but was ejected anyway, and more to the point, says that Hansard was edited to justify Fergus’ decision. Recall that Fergus was cautioning her for yelling at him during an outburst, to which she shot back “I have big problems with the Chair.” Fergus told her to withdraw that, to which Thomas’s response was “Mr. Speaker, I stated that the Chair is acting in a disgraceful manner,” and then says that she added “I withdraw,” which is also in the Blues (meaning the unedited transcripts before they go for final polish). But I was sitting right above her, and didn’t hear her say “I withdraw,” but even if she did, you can’t challenge the Speaker again and then just say “I withdraw” and expect no consequences. That’s not even like a qualified apology, it’s openly challenging a second time, and then trying to give yourself a fig-leaf of cover. That’s bullshit, and she knows it.

To put a cherry on top of this, CBC dug up video of then-Speaker Andrew Scheer saying you can’t challenge the integrity of the Speaker, which includes allegations of partisanship, and lo, what are they doing now? Rules for thee but not for me is very much their modus operandi, and it’s not great for democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian ballistic missile struck a postal depot in Odesa, injuring fourteen and starting a huge fire, and Russians claim to have struck Ukraine’s southern command post in the same attack. There was also a guided bomb attack in the Kharkiv region, killing two in an attack on the village of Zolochiv, while there was also an attack on the town of Hirnyk near the front lines, which killed at least two more people. Drone footage shows the way that Chasiv Yar has been devastated by Russian bombardment as the move toward it, while Ukrainian forces in that area say they badly need more ammunition. The US is accusing Russia of breaking international chemical weapons ban by deploying choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.

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Roundup: Premiers want unconditional money

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The premiers are at it again. They’ve written yet another letter to Justin Trudeau to complain about the budget, and all of the ways that it infringes on their jurisdiction, and to call for a return to a “cooperative approach” that means just giving them “unconditional federal funding.” (It was also hilarious to watch certain premiers complain about federal spending as though they also weren’t running their own deficits, while simultaneously demanding more money from the federal government). And I get that they’re concerned that the costs of these new programmes will be downloaded onto them if a future federal government cuts their funding—it’s a legitimate concern. But at the same time, most of these programmes will have longer-term payoffs, whether it’s child care (which Quebec has proved will pay for itself), or pharmacare or dental care, which has the potential to reduce overall healthcare costs—costs the government is going to have to pay when they could have avoided doing so with proper investments.

Nevertheless, it’s not lost on me that we’ve spent years of people saying “nobody cares about jurisdiction,” and demanding the federal government do something—including some of the premiers—and when the federal government not only does something but attaches strings so that the money has to go to particular outcomes, those same premiers immediately go “No, not like that.” But once burned, twice shy—the federal government learned the hard way during the height of the pandemic when the billions they sent to the provinces largely went unspent but went toward their provincial deficits—so they’re going to very much demand strings attached to those dollars. So, of course the federal government is going to do what they can seeing as they’re shouldering the blame anyway, while the premiers continue to be precious about it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles destroyed grain storage facilities in Odesa, as well as the foodstuffs they contained that were bound for Asia and Africa. Ukrainian forces say they shot down a Russian strategic bomber, while Russia claims it crashed due to a malfunction. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the command post used by the troops defending Chasiv Yar in the east.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1781227417404600676

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Roundup: No, east cost LNG won’t happen (redux)

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Because we never seem to learn, and because certain interviewers in legacy media refuse to take a hint or to learn about how this works, we got yet another incident of a European leader being asked about Canadian LNG, this time the prime minister of Greece, who is in Canada for a couple of days. “Of course,” they’d be interested, if it was available “at competitive prices.” Which is the real trick, isn’t it? Because that’s not going to happen, particularly on the east coast where there is no ready access to a supply of natural gas to liquify, and where on the west coast, plenty of fully permitted projects are not moving ahead because nobody wants to sign commitments to buy the product if they build the project. That’s kind of a big deal.

So, here’s University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach with some necessary sarcasm for this latest round.

And because Alberta decided to enter the group chat…

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched new missile barrages that have gone as far into western Ukraine as Lviv, and one missile appears to have entered Polish airspace. Ukraine has launched its own attack on occupied Crimea, and hit two Russian warships and a communications centre in the process. Meanwhile, the weekend was spent disavowing any connection to the ISIS attack on the theatre in Moscow, which Russian officials keep trying to draw.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1771864087267291183

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Roundup: It’s auto theft summit day

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It’s the big auto theft summit happening in Ottawa today, and it’s more than just federal and provincial governments and police who are meeting—it’s also insurance companies and auto manufacturers, because part of the problem are the ways in which auto companies have made unsecured RFID technology with key fobs and so on part of the recent lines, which means thieves can capture the frequency of your fobs and steal your card by cloning said fobs. Insurance companies could wield their might in insisting on these changes, which could make a measurable impact. As a down-payment of sorts, Dominic LeBlanc announced a $28 million boost to CBSA’s ability to detect stolen vehicles with more detection tools and analytics.

Meanwhile, as Pierre Poilievre tries to insist that this problem can solely be attributed to Justin Trudeau because of certain legal changes around conditional sentencing and bail (which were in response to Supreme Court of Canada decisions, it must be stated), he’s also made a bunch of specious correlations about how car thefts were lower in the Harper era in order to back up this claim. Except, that’s mostly not true either. But then again, facts, logic or honesty are never really in play when Poilievre is speaking, and this is no different.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 11 out of 17 drones in the early morning hours of Thursday. Russia launched massive attacks on Kyiv and other cities over the day yesterday, which killed five and wounded more than thirty. The mobilisation bill has now passed first reading. Here’s a look at the corps of retired Colombian soldiers fighting for Ukraine

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Roundup: The muted federal response to Danielle Smith’s latest policy

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As expected, there was a federal response to Danielle Smith’s draconian anti-queer/trans policy video, but it was mostly just words of condemnation. Marci Ien and Randy Boissonnault had a scrum about it, but basically said that because they don’t have any document from Smith—the legislature isn’t sitting, and Smith herself said later in the day that nothing would be formally in writing until autumn—they don’t know how best to respond to this, so in the meantime, they’re going to consult and come up with ideas at the Cabinet table as to what the federal government can do, but one supposes that something like a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada of this policy, along with those of Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, may be in the works. We’ll have to see, but it’ll take time, so for the moment, it’s a lot of words of affirmation.

Smith did hold a press conference, nearly twenty-four hours after her video was released, and in it, she kept repeating that she was trying to protect youth from “irreversible medical decisions,” which both conflates the purpose of any social transitioning that they may do beforehand, and buys holus-bolus into the moral panic that kids are being indoctrinated into being trans and then “mutilating and sterilizing” themselves, even though there are vanishingly few “top” surgeries for minors, and no “bottom” surgeries at all. But dubious and discredited reporting that echoes through the right-wing media ecosystem has convinced parents that it’s happening (thus the outsized concern for their “right” to know), along with the pre-existing notion that if they’re told, they can stop their kids from being queer or trans (in other words, de facto conversion therapy). But nobody wants to talk about this moral panic. (More analysis about Smith’s move here).

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre’s office has instructed his MPs to say nothing, especially to the media, and to report all requests to his office, and if they are to say something, it’s to emphasise “parental rights over decisions related to their children,” which a) is not actually a legal right in Canada, and b) has been the dog whistle for anti-queer and anti-trans rhetoric for a long time now. And of course, he wants them to stay quiet, but not because he’s worried about another homophobic eruption from someone like Cheryl Gallant, but rather he doesn’t want anyone coming across as too sympathetic because he needs to keep demonstrating to the far-right, reactionary crowd that he thinks is going to win him the election that he’s not too “woke” or small-l liberal, because that would doom their support. It’s little different than Smith keeping this up because she doesn’t want the leopards in her party (like the “Take Back Alberta” crowd) to eat her face like they did Jason Kenney. When you let your party get taken over or be entirely beholden to the crazies, you lose control, and that’s exactly what is happening here.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say that seas drones were used to sink a small Russian warship in the Black Sea, while Russia claims that Patriot missiles fired from Ukraine brought down the plane that was totally carrying POWs and wasn’t a psy op (really). Ukraine’s army chief published a series of priorities and challenges are rumours of his rift with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continue to circulate.

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Roundup: End of the parliamentary year 2023

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With a flurry of more nonsense motions, another apology from Speaker Greg Fergus, and a few more hours of sterile speechifying, followed by a royal assent ceremony, Parliament—both chambers—has gone home for the holidays.

This has been one of the most toxic, rancorous sittings I’ve lived through in my fifteen years on the Hill full-time, and I’ve watched it devolve in realtime to something where the clip-gathering was more selective to it being every single interaction on camera, and because they want to boost the engagement on those clips, they torque things and are now outright lying about absolutely everything, and now the place is a toxic swamp. The incident with Anthony Rota’s ouster just made everything worse, because the partisan rancour around that dialled up to eleven, and there was an actual attempt by the Conservatives to let Rota to escape responsibility by trying to falsely pin the blame on Trudeau and making false insinuations about the PMO essentially running the Speaker’s office, which is both wrong and dangerous. And it just gets progressively worse, the more that Greg Fergus keeps doing things that get pounced upon (no matter that provincial parties are not federal ones, particularly in Quebec).

And because the Andrew Scheer vs Greg Fergus fight keeps getting dumber, the NDP want to summon Scheer to the ethics committee over the use of his office for a partisan video. Meanwhile, people keep digging up more instances of Scheer going to fundraisers when he was Speaker, and lo, they were fundraisers for his own party, not events for provincial parties, which are the accusations being levelled against Fergus. Which do we think is the actual partisan activity here?

Ukraine Dispatch:

There is a strange story out of Keretsky in western Ukraine, where a village council member showed up at a meeting and detonated three grenades, injuring 26 including the person responsible, whose motive is unclear. Ukraine has signed “dozens” of contracts for joint production or technology exchanges with Western defence firms. As the EU struggles to get aid to Ukraine in spite of Hungary blocking it, here’s a look at what Ukraine needs to do in order to continue on its course for membership.

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Roundup: More reactions to the economic update

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Reactions to the Fall Economic Statement continue to roll in, so I figured I would highlight a couple of them. On the subject of housing, pretty much everyone is unhappy with what was on offer, in spite of the fact that the federal government didn’t have a lot of room to manoeuvre as they try to avoid juicing economic growth too much, which would put upward pressure on inflation (and the provinces are already doing just that).

To that effect, here’s a thread from Mike Moffatt on things the federal government could have done that won’t impact the inflation situation.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1727301177833132254

Kevin Milligan delves into the debt and deficit figures in this thread, and provides a dose of perspective sauce for all of the hyperventilating that is coming from certain quarters and voices, particularly as debt servicing charges have risen. As well, I’m highlighting this one tweet about just how big the increase is in relative and historical terms, because again, perspective.

As well, Lindsay Tedds explains in this thread why she thinks the government’s plans to limit short-term rentals is going to be far easier said than actually done (and that they may not have thought it through).

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1727491807834177690

Ukraine Dispatch:

The death toll from the Russian strike on the hospital in Selydove has risen to three. The Russians are reported to be sending fewer troops and less equipment to Avdiivka after failing to capture it in a major assault. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of a “difficult defence” on the eastern front as the winter cold sets in. Ukraine’s coal industry has had to start hiring women and overturning policies that barred them from working underground because of the war.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1727376980851486836

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Roundup: A focus on heat pumps

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There has been a lot of attention paid to the subject of heat pumps and just what they are over the past few days in light of the government’s “pause” on carbon prices on heating oil in a bid to give people more time to make the conversion, particularly in places like Atlantic Canada. So what are they and why is the government subsidising the transition, going so far as to make them free for low-income households (in provinces where they have an agreement with the provincial government)? The Canadian Press has an explainer on what they are for starters.

There is an issue that the detractors keep raising which is that in particularly cold weather they may be insufficient and a secondary heat source would be necessary. In many places, they use electric heat as that secondary source, particularly given the simultaneous push toward clean electricity generation in this country (some eighty percent already comes from non-emitting sources). We should take heed that Nordic countries, which also have very cold winters, have been making the move to heat pumps for a while now, and the newer models can deal with far colder weather than earlier models, but that doesn’t mean that the transition doesn’t have complications.

https://twitter.com/robtpublic/status/1719579403427213557

You can bet Scott Moe and others will be concern trolling on this, and some of the criticisms do have merit, but it will become a real task to sort out just what is legitimate criticism, and what is being stated in bad faith (because look where it’s coming from). By the same token, the government shouldn’t oversimplify things here, or the scope of the challenge that this conversion may present itself to people who will need more assistance in navigating the other government retrofit programmes that can help them with that transition.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian drone attack hit an oil refinery in the central Kremenchuk region, while Russia also dropped explosives on the Black Sea shipping channels that have been used to transport grain. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief says they are entering into a static and attritional phase of the war, and they need new capabilities including more air power if they want to break out of it. Since the start of the war, more than 260 civilians have died from stepping on landmines, which is more of the lasting damage that invasion like Russia’s leaves behind.

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Roundup: A “dull as hell” House

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Jean Chrétien gave an interview yesterday to mark the 30th anniversary of his election win to form government in 1993, and there’s one part in it that sticks out for me in particular, which was about his time in politics, pre-dating his becoming prime minister, which has to do with the use of television in the Chamber:

“When I became a member of Parliament, there was no TV… In the House of Commons, we had no television. In those days in the House of Commons, we didn’t have the right to read anything. We had to get up and speak. It was fun. Today, they all come with speeches prepared by kids in the office and it is dull as hell, rather than have a real debate like we had in those days.”

This is spot on. It wasn’t just the arrival of the cameras that changed things, it was the relaxation of the rules around prepared speeches. It used to be that you weren’t allowed them, with very limited exceptions—the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne, the budget, and if you needed some particular help with specific facts or figures or translation (because simultaneous interpretation was a later arrival into Parliament). When they relaxed the rule around prepared speeches, it meant MPs started reading speeches into the record; time limits started to mean that they didn’t just speak up to that twenty-minute mark, but they were expected to fill the time entirely, which again, makes for very bad prepared speeches. There’s no actual debate either—during “debate” on a bill, the period for “questions and comments” is usually reserved for recitations of established talking points, with no actual exchange. One question, one response is not actually debate. Without relying on prepared speeches, and actually being allowed to debate, it would have made for actual tension or frisson between them, and to force them to know their material.

The other thing with the arrival of television is how it changed the nature of Question Period. It became very much about trying to a) get on TV, and b) providing clips for the evening news, which is one reason why parties started to do things like asking the same question in English and in French, so that they could get clips for both news services. With the advent of social media, however, the incentives changed again, and it was about creating content for those social feeds, which could include bad behaviour to drive up engagement. This is where we’re at now. It’s not exciting, and like Chrétien says, it’s “dull has hell” because you’re just watching badly scripted performances meant entirely for the consumption of clips. Politics should not be about this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A civilian was killed in the Kherson region early Wednesday after Russians bombed the area. Russians are ignoring their losses and pressing on at Avdiivka, Debris from downed Russian drones downed power lines near a nuclear plan in the western part of the country, knocking out power for hundreds of people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine will strike back if Russia attacks their power grid again this weekend. Here is a look at some Ukrainian sappers who have returned to the job of de-mining after they lost limbs doing the work.

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