Tag Archives: Tiff Macklem

QP: Getting shouty to build their narratives

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It being Wednesday, the benches were largely full, and the prime minister was present for his designated day to answer everything. Pierre Poilievre led off partly in French, and worried about the shortage of children’s Tylenol, and switched to English halfway through to reiterate. Justin Trudeau started talking about Health Canada taking action and there were challenges to supply chains around the world, but was shouted down and needed to reiterate his answer when it quieted down. Poilievre then moved onto his bog standard inflationary nonsense and “triple, triple, triple” ear worm, and demanded that tomorrow’s fiscal update have a spending freeze. Trudeau noted that they have supports for Canadians as the GST rebate comes out on days, and other supports are on the way. Poilievre repeated his question in French, and Trudeau noted that the Conservatives only want austerity and cuts. Poilievre returned to English to claim only he was protecting pensions from inflation, and repeated his demand to cap spending and taxes. Trudeau called Conservatives cold-hearted if they considered dental care for children to be pouring fuel on the inflationary fire. Poilievre tried to turn over the “cold-hearted” accusation with his tripling nonsense, to which Trudeau reiterated that in spite of Conservative misinformation and disinformation, the climate rebates give more back to most Canadians than they pay.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he accused the federal government of starving the healthcare system (which is utter bunkum), and wanted more funding without conditions. Trudeau reminded him that Quebeckers and Canadians expect results from the system, but if systems don’t work as expected, they want to work with provinces to ensure that more money gets better results. Blanchet accused the federal government of micromanaging, and Trudeau reiterate that the systems are not working, which is why they are trying to get provinces onside to improve things for that money.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he attacked Doug Ford’s preemptive use of the Notwithstanding Clause, and demanded the prime minster do something about it. Trudeau denounced Ford’s actions, and called out Poilievre for not denouncing it. Singh repeated the question in French, and got the same answer.

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Roundup: Internet troll and wide-eyed naïf

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The occupation leaders started their turn to testify at the Emergencies Act committee yesterday, and it’s quite an interesting picture that they are painting of themselves. Chris Barber, for example, admits to being a racist internet troll who “saw the light” thanks to all of the love and hugs during the occupation (sure, Jan), but also tried to present himself as this wide-eyed naïf who couldn’t possibly understand the MOU about overthrowing the government, or who believed all the honking was just these truckers being excited. Yeah, so believable. There were, apparently, power struggles between the different groups and organisers, and things started to spiral out of their control. Gosh, you think? And when Barber was presented with an email with an assassination threat targeting Chrystia Freeland, he insisted he had no knowledge of this—because, you know, it was all peace and love. (Credit to Shannon Proudfoot for the troll/naïf descriptor).

Elsewhere, Doug Ford’s lawyers were at Federal Court to argue that the rule of law would be “irreparably harmed” if Ford and Sylvia Jones were forced to testify at the public inquiry or deal with any subsequent contempt proceedings, which…is a bit much. The judge in the case noted that the parliamentary privilege relates to criminal and civil courts, but does not specify public inquiries (because the basis of the privilege stems from a time when the Crown controlled the courts). Said judge also said he expects to have a decision by November 8th, which is two days before Ford and Jones are supposed to testify at the inquiry.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 252:

Russian authorities in occupied territories have ordered the evacuation of civilians in an area near Kherson, which the Ukrainian government considers a forced depopulation, which is a war crime. Russians also fired missiles into an apartment building in the port city of Mykolaiv, and have destroyed about 40 percent of the country’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches.

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Roundup: The wrong way to humanize politics

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I see that Government House Leader Mark Holland was making the media rounds over the weekend about his call for more “humanity” in politics, as he continues to plead for hybrid sessions to continue indefinitely. The problem, however, is that the two are fundamentally incompatible. Do you know why? Because what humanises politicians to one another is to spend time together, face-to-face. Hybrid sittings will keep MPs in isolated bubbles where they have fewer and fewer interactions with their fellow MPs in person, making it harder to see them and treat them as human beings, and we know this because we have seen the decline in civility in real-time since the 1990s when they ended evening sittings in the House of Commons to be “family friendly.” It used to be that three nights a week, MPs would go upstairs at six PM, and all have dinner together in the Parliamentary Restaurant, and at 8 PM, they’d go back to the Chamber, and debate some more. And lo, there was a lot more civility and treating each other in a friendly manner, Question Period theatrics aside, because they spent time with one another as human beings, doing that basic human thing of bonding over food (and yes, booze, because we cannot deny that it was a big part of the culture up until that point, for better or worse). But when they ended those sittings, and MPs no longer ate together, the acrimony got worse, and disagreements got more personal.

I cannot stress this enough—hybrid makes this worse. I know that there is a school of thought that it lets MPs spend more time at home, which gives them more work-life balance, and so on, but to be perfectly frank, the job is in Ottawa. The job is not to be a social worker for constituents filling out passport forms and doing immigration paperwork—the job is to hold the government to account, and doing so by controlling the public purse, meaning scrutiny of the Estimates and the Public Accounts, and debating their legislative proposals along the way. We are straying far from this path, and taking this hybrid makes the slide worse. The job is also face-to-face, because it relies on building relationships, and that doesn’t happen over Zoom. You have heard me time and again saying that the real work happens on the side-lines of committee rooms, in hallways and lobbies, and when you’re talking to ministers while you’re waiting for a vote to happen. This is all in danger of falling away the more MPs move to hybrid (and “virtual” voting is becoming an absolute disaster for MPs being able to approach ministers), and that is not a “more human” approach to politics. It is in fact the opposite, and people need to wake up and realize that fact.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 250:

Russia pulled out of the deal with the UN to allow Ukrainian grain shipments over the Black Sea, likely because their ships were hit by attacks over the weekend, but the UN and Turkey say they are going to ensure those shipments still happen, essentially daring Russia to attack them, so we’ll see how that goes.

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1586779214069407745

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Roundup: CSE posts a threat bulletin about Russia

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We’re on day one-hundred-and-forty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russians fired missiles at the central city of Vinnytsia, hitting civilian locations including a medical clinic. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his statement that the Russian regime is a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the leadership at the International Criminal Court in the Hauge is calling for an “overarching strategy” to bring perpetrators of war crimes in Ukraine to justice, so that other countries contributing to the investigations can cooperate with their efforts.

Closer to home, CSE released a threat bulletin on Russia’s cyber-activities in Ukraine, and it was a doozy, saying that the scope and severity has almost certainly been more sophisticated and widespread than has been previously reported, and yes, that has repercussions for Canada as well. Stephanie Carvin has more in this thread:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547663710700728320

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547664718721994753

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547666383428718594

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547666393423757315

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547669128076374017

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1547669143700131840

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Roundup: Questions on the inquiry terms

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It is now on or about day sixty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there were missile strikes throughout the country as Russian forces targeted Ukraine’s rail infrastructure, with a particular eye toward disrupting the ability to move weapons coming in from allied countries in the west toward their positions in the eastern part of the country. (This is the kind of operational security that is at stake when our government won’t give specifics about their weapons shipments). As well, the American officials who just visited Kyiv have said that more weapons are on the way, and that they are hoping to resume activity in their embassies within the country within the next few weeks, and hopefully in Kyiv itself, which would be a major symbolic move (and yes, Canada is making its own considerations for resuming activities, depending on the security situation).

Closer to home, the government waited until the very last moment to launch the public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, as the Act stipulates. Justice Paul Rouleau of the Ontario Court of Appeal will head the inquiry, and has 300 days to table his final report in Parliament. While I have a column that delves further into this, I did want to put a few comments here, from national security experts Jessica Davis and Leah West, about particular observations they have about the terms of reference for this inquiry:

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Roundup: Legitimizing lunatic narratives about inflation

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We are now around day fifty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like Russia is shifting more units to attacking cities in Eastern Ukraine, and what could be a battle to control the country’s industrial heartland. We also have satellite images that show Russians digging mass graves around Mariupol to try and hide evidence of their war crimes and atrocities against civilians in that city. In Russia, the regime is cracking down harder on its critics, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is being charged under the new law that criminalises spreading “false information,” and could be imprisoned for up to 15 years as a result.

Closer to home, I have about lost all patience with the way that the inflation numbers are being reported on, particularly because it’s primarily a lot of both-sidesing without actually reading the gods damned Consumer Price Index from Statistics Canada, even though it’s right there, and spells out what the drivers are. But because our media outlets—and both the CBC and The Canadian Press are especially bad about this—are more invested in the appearance of fairness for political messages than actually calling out falsehoods, simply give equal time to all of the messages. This particular piece on the CBC’s site yesterday, that goes and very gently debunks the messages that different political parties are spreading, is a lot more both-sidesing because it’s still giving equal weight to all of these messages, even if it’s getting experts to push back a little bit (but in some cases, still framing it as though some of these messages are still “a little bit right,” which is the cute trick that they’ve been relying on to not look like they’re biased against any party). And how much room is given to explaining the actual drivers? A single, small paragraph that lists a few of them in general terms, rather than laying out the issues of energy production and fuel shortages in certain countries, or the global supply shortage of semiconductor chips, or most importantly, the fact that we’ve had a lot of droughts in food-producing regions, including in Canada, and that is having a huge impact on food prices because the supply simply isn’t there.

Why this becomes even more important is because you have Pierre Poilievre saying flat out that the Bank of Canada’s economists are “financially illiterate,” because he learned better from the crypto bros on YouTube. It’s alarming, and if the mass media can’t push back against this utter lunacy, but instead soft-pedals it and frames it like “everyone is a little bit right” when they don’t actually bother to go to the gods damned statistical data, it lets this utterly bogus narrative gain traction and legitimacy. This is a problem for our democracy and our society in general, because they’re afraid that Poilievre’s bot army will be mad at them. They’re going to call you biased whatever you do, so why not show a bit of fortitude and call the lies what they are?

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1517525404126490624

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Roundup: Fears over a fire at a nuclear plant

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At the start of day nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was a lot of tension and drama as Russian forces shelled the nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia, leading to concerns that a fire could lead to some kind of Fukushima-style meltdown, particularly after firefighters were also fired upon. In the end, it turns out that the fire was a separate building and that the reactor was fine, with no changes to radiation levels, but it was nevertheless a huge concern for a few hours, and which president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to proclaim that Russia has targeted their nuclear reactors as a form of blackmail. It’s really, really a bad situation.

In terms of Canadian contributions, new shipments of lethal aid were announced yesterday morning, along with new punitive measures against Russia and Belarus, removing their “most favoured nation” status (they now join North Korea as the only countries without it), and slapped tariffs of 35 percent on all of their products (though as was pointed out, this is still less than tariffs that our dairy cartel forces upon imports from out allies and trading partners). Canada is leading calls to have Russia’s membership in INTERPOL suspended. On top of this, new streamlined immigration and refugee processes were announced that will take two weeks to fully implement, during which time those wishing to come to Canada can get their biometric data sorted at consulates in countries surrounding Ukraine, as they had beefed up their capabilities ahead of time. Of course, this also raises questions as to why this kind of expedited process hasn’t been made for other refugee groups (though the obvious reply is that Ukrainian refugees are making it to European countries with more resources).

The Toronto Star’s editorial board caught up with Mélanie Joly between her visit to Poland and meetings in Brussels, where she reiterates once again that no, a no-fly zone is not going to happen, particularly because Putin is an irrational actor. Elsewhere, Chrystia Freeland warned that there could be severe consequences if any Canadian heads over to Ukraine to join the fight as it may not be legal to do so (and this is a fight over the international rules-based order), and Anita Anand added that if they want to sign up, they should enlist with the Canadian Forces (which has a 10,000 person shortfall at present).

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Roundup: Proposing to ignore the virus

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In the wake of the demands by extremist-led “protests” to lift all vaccine mandates around the country, nowhere as this demand been capitulated to as fast as in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where both provinces are pretty much eliminating their mandates as soon as possible, with no consultation, and while their hospitals are still full. Federally, the Conservatives are making the same demand for this capitulation, and they’re using a bunch of specious arguments, like listing countries that are lifting their restrictions already, never mind that in most of those countries, they have better healthcare capacity than we do, and they are further along in their omicron waves than we are. Fortunately, Ontario is not rushing to join them for a change, so that’s one small favour.

What is more concerning, however, is this talking point about “learning to live with COVID,” but in abandoning all public health measures, including mask mandates, they’re not actually planning to live with COVID—they’re planning to ignore it, to let it rip, to capitulate to the virus as much as they are eager to capitulate to the extremists claiming to protest. Learning to live with the virus would mean adequate and sustainable precautions, better focus on indoor ventilation, ongoing mask mandates in indoor spaces, and so on—and the ongoing insistence on vaccination, because that’s what will save us in the long run. But that’s not what they’re proposing, because they are so keen to return to the old normal, never mind that said world no longer exists by any measure. And it’s not “following the science” to take the notion that we need to just let the virus rip at this point—it’s being intellectually dishonest and pandering to selfish instincts.

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Roundup: Feeling like March 2020 all over again

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It’s definitely starting to feel like March 2020, as provinces all started increasing restrictions in advance of Christmas—some of them insufficient, and too late, but they are taking some actions nevertheless. (That, and they’re not all honest about what has been happening with rapid tests—looking most especially at the incompetent murderclown Doug Ford). Federally, the border measures are getting even tougher with negative PCR tests being required even for trips that are less than 72 hours in duration (and those PRC tests need to have been done out-of-country), while the travel ban on those ten African countries is now lifted as omicron has already achieved community spread in Canada and such a ban is now useless.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau is trying to offer some reassurances that we have the benefit of knowledge that we didn’t have during the first wave, and that Canadians know enough to do what it takes to curb the spread of the virus. I suspect that may be a bit overly optimistic considering that too many people will do what the government allows them to, so don’t take all of the precautions necessary to actually curb the spread.

Meanwhile, here’s an exploration of some of the psychological reactions that are being seen and felt to the rapid onset of omicron, where fatigue of the “new normal” is starting to overtake compliance to health measures, and the need to start thinking about what the world looks like if we have COVID forever now.

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Roundup: Not pushing back on referendum disinfo

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I’m going to call out Power & Politics once again for completely dropping the ball, this time on the bullshit “referendum” happing in Alberta. They hosted Bill Bewick, who heads a group in favour of the referendum, and gave him a pretty uncritical interview, with only the barest hints of pushback. Because both-sidesing.

Host David Common pushed back on a mere couple of points – that the referendum won’t actually do anything because it doesn’t obligate the federal government to negotiate anything; and the fact that without equalisation, PEI would need a 30 percent HST to make up the same funding. He even went so far as to egg on Bewick about how much equalisation Ontario pays, as if it was relevant, because no province actually pays equalisation, which is a pretty big thing that Bewick and his bullshit ever got called on. Equalisation is simply federal taxes that come off everyone’s paycheque – that a fraction of those funds get redistributed to some provinces who need help in offering comparable levels of service when they don’t have adequate fiscal capacity. And the key thing to remember is that Alberta may pay more federal taxes because they have the highest salaries in the country – by far – even during the pandemic. Crying that the province has a deficit has nothing to do with equalisation and everything to do with the fact that the provincial government refuses to raise their own revenues by means of a modest sales tax like other provinces have, and the fact that they chose to rely on resource revenues instead. Their deficit is a choice.

I am forced to wonder whether Bewick didn’t get any pushback because the host and/or the producers simply don’t have a clue about the truth, or because they feel bound by the need to both-sides everything and plan to have someone credible on to refute the points in a separate interview later today – because heaven forbid that the host actually push back lest he or she be called out as being biased or partisan. But calling bullshit and pointing out fact shouldn’t be considered bias or partisanship – it should be simple fact-checking, which they can’t seem to be arsed to do at the best of times, let alone in a referendum that is fuelled by misinformation and disinformation coming from official sources trying to make a political wedge out of this. In a case like this, it’s especially incumbent upon the media to play their role in pushing back against a government that is lying to its citizens, but this timidity to do so is a very real problem for our media.

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