Tag Archives: Tough on Crime

QP: From solemn moment to clown show

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Following every party’s statements and a moment of silence for the anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique, things got underway in earnest. While the prime minister was absent, Chrystia Freeland was present. Candice Bergen led off, script on her mini-lectern, and she asked for an update on the government’s programmes to combat violence against women. Freeland highlighted the importance of the day, and spoke about the “unprecedented” investments in the budget, and then called on all women in the a House to rise for a moment to remember those women. Bergen then pivoted to the topic of inflation and wanted to know what was happening with the Bank of Canada’s inflation target, and Freeland assured her the decision was coming in due course. Bergen was not satisfied, and demanded action on rising prices—though she did not call for price controls. Freeland assured her that they understand the difference between fiscal and monetary policy, and have confidence in the Bank, and that they don’t disparage them like the Conservatives do. Alain Rayes took over in French, and demanded a “concrete plan” to tackle inflation. (Like price controls?) Freeland listed off global inflation figures in response. Rayes repeated his demand for a “concrete plan,” and Freeland responded with praise for the GDP growth and job numbers.

Claude DeBellefeuille also raised the anniversary of École Polytechnique and the current spate of gun violence in Montreal and demanded tougher gun control. Marco Mendicino assured her the are working together with different governments to ensure that everyone can live safely. DeBellefeuille accused the federal government of doing nothing, and Mendicino repeated his assurances and brought up his meetings last week with gun control advocates.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he raised the scourge of opioid deaths, and demanded decriminalisation of simple possession of drugs. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that they are working at several levels around things like safe supply and support for users, with more to be announced shortly. Gord Johns repeated the demand in English, and Carolyn Bennett repeated Duclos’ answer in English.

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QP: What is your inflation position today?

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Even though the prime minister was in town, he was not in Question Period, but his deputy was, so that was something. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and he worried about the news that the coming fiscal update would only have “limited information,” and worrying about them covering up spending. Chrystia Freeland stood up and recited O’Toole’s floundering position on whether inflation is a global problem or not. O’Toole retorted that she was the only politician to have been flagged on Twitter for misleading information, and demanded that she tell the Bank of Canada to get inflation under control. Freeland chided O’Toole for not realising that monetary policy is the role of the Bank, which is arm’s length from government. O’Toole started sputtering about small businesses suffering from inflation, and Freeland reminded him that their campaign documents promised even more government spending in the current fiscal year, and wondered what their position was today. O’Toole demanded to know then a budget would be balanced, and Freeland recited the Economist’s top-ten list of most expensive cities to live in, and noted that none were in Canada. O’Toole then switched to French to say that Quebeckers were tired of living paycheque to paycheque. Freeland repeated the same Economist list in response.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he worried that the prime minister didn’t raise softwood tariff while in Washington, and Freeland stated that while she could not match Therrien’s ability to play on words, but the file was important and they were continuing to defend the sector’s interest like they did for aluminium. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay demanded that the government insist on separate treatment for Quebec because their forestry rules are different, while Freeland assured him that they were defending sector.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he worried that the COVID rules were too confusing for travellers. Freeland said that they agreed that the fight against COVID was the most important issue for the country and vaccination was the way out, but noted that the current rules are a circuit-breaker to buy them time. Singh repeated the question in French, and repeated her response.

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QP: Trying to make “Justinflation” happen

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The Liberal benches were again about two-thirds full, and the prime minister was in attendance, so that was something? While Erin O’Toole gave a lengthy speech in the Chamber earlier, he was nowhere to be seen. That left it up to Gérard Deltell to lead off, and he moaned about inflation and worries in the US about persistent inflation—which is not Canada’s situation. Justin Trudeau said the biggest thing that they could do was end the pandemic, which would end the supply chain disruptions that were increasing costs. Deltell cited the “not thinking about monetary policy” quip and demanded limited spending—erm, which is fiscal policy—and Trudeau repeated that they needed to end the pandemic. Deltell selectively quoted a  countries with lower inflation than us, and Trudeau noted that this was a global issue because of supply chains. Michael Barrett got up after and took a page from Pierre Poilievre’s playbook in confusing land and housing stock to rail about inflation, and Trudeau noted that the question ignored the pandemic, and the way to end it was by vaccination, which Conservatives didn’t seem to get. Barrett countered that his riding has one the highest vaccination rates in the country and gave more wrong talking points about inflation, and Trudeau suggested that Barrett’s constituents help convince his Conservative colleagues to get vaccinated).

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried that they softwood lumber tariffs were doubled after the Three Amigos summit and wondered what they talked about. Trudeau listed off items discussed including softwood and PEI potatoes. Blanchet made a jab at the potatoes, and mused that Quebec would be better able to negotiate on their own, but Trudeau insisted that they were defending the sector like they did aluminium (another Quebec export).

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and demanded immediate action on the housing crisis, but Trudeau disputed his characterisation and listed measures in the Speech from the Throne. Singh switched to French to repeat the question, and got the same answer.

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Roundup: Enter Omicron

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If it all feels like a little bit of history repeating, the World Health Organization declared a new variant of concern, B.1.1.529, designated Omicron, yesterday, and in the lead-up to that decision, there was a lot of the same kinds of usual behaviours from the usual suspects. The variant was detected in South Africa (where there is apparently good surveillance), and has been spotted in seven southern African countries thus far. Conservatives demanded travel advisories and wailed that the border needed to be closed – never mind that there are no direct flights between Canada and South Africa – and gave some revisionist history about their demanding the borders be closed with the original COVID outbreak (when they demanded the borders be closed to China, whereas the vast majority Canada’s infections came by way of Europe and the United States).

But by mid-afternoon, the government did lay out new restrictions, but we’ll see how much of it is effective, or how much of it is pandemic theatre.

This is happening at a time where COVID cases have been ticking back upward across much of the country, prompting fears of a fifth wave being on the horizon as people get lazy with public health measures and start taking masks off indoors, or the like, while those who refuse to get vaccinated remain petri dishes for new variants to emerge or for it to enter into new animal reservoirs where it can mutate yet again. Essentially the way out of this remains getting vaccinated and keeping up good public health measures – most especially masking because we know that this is airborne – and maybe we can keep this fifth wave blunted and the Omicron variant largely tamed. But people are idiots, so things could get a lot worse once more.

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Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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Roundup: Taking his sweet-ass time to meet caucus

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The Liberals are starting to get restless – members of caucus are feeling put out that they haven’t actually had a formal caucus meeting yet post-election, and many of them are champing at the bit to have a closed-door drag out session about what went wrong in the election, and why their own leadership seemed unprepared for it when they called the blood thing in the first place. And telling the Hill Times that they want to know why the party leadership is taking their “sweet-ass time” to call this meeting was the icing on this particular cake.

I’m having a hard time fathoming why it’s taking Trudeau and company so long to get their collective acts together post-election. They made a whole song and dance about how urgently they needed to act while on the campaign trail, only for them to turn around and take said sweet-ass time in both finalising the Cabinet shuffle (and no, the recounts do not account for how long the delay is) as well as their decision to further delay summoning Parliament – and even his planned international travel does not excuse this. They could have had Cabinet sworn in before the Governor General went on her state visit to Germany, and could have summoned Parliament this week, in advance of Trudeau’s planned travel. That would have given them actual time to get committees up and running, and legislation in the system – particularly around the changes to the pandemic benefits – as soon as possible, as opposed to the current trajectory of a three-week sitting that will accomplish very little before they head back to their ridings for the Christmas break.

Additionally, not having a proper caucus meeting by now has reached the point of disrespecting their own MPs. They have things they want to say after the campaign trail, and they should be able to say it – that’s how this system works. It’s a very bad signal that they are being kept away from the leadership like this, because even aside from it betraying all of Trudeau’s talking points about being open and accountable within his own party, that kind of thing will start to fester if it’s not taken seriously. I’m not sure that’s a situation Trudeau wants to go out on in his final tour-de-force as leader.

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Roundup: Sitting on money, waiting for ICU to collapse

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In case it had escaped you that the incompetent murderclowns who run Ontario are incompetent, we learned yesterday that Doug Ford and his merry band of murderclowns sat on the entire $2.7 billion additional health transfer from the federal government that was supposed to go toward the COVID response, and, well, didn’t. This was during the second and third waves, which didn’t need to happen, and they were explicitly warned that reopening would mean disaster, and they did it anyway. They had money to help them improve testing, tracing, and doing things like improving ventilation in schools, and they didn’t. They sat on it to pad their bottom line.

Is there a lesson here? Yes – don’t give provinces more money without strings attached. You would think that this should be obvious, given that before Jim Flaherty unilaterally changed the transfer escalator from six percent to a minimum of three or GDP growth, we know that provinces were not spending that health transfer only on health – the growth in health spending was far below the growth in the health transfer. For them to demand yet more money with no strings attached – particularly for outcomes – while we have examples like Ford here, who are using the money to reduce their deficit in spite of all the lives that could have been saved it was actually deployed meaningfully, there should be no argument. If they want the money, they need to have metrics and outcomes to ensure that it’s being spent on what it’s supposed to be.

Meanwhile in Alberta, the COVID situation has been allowed to deteriorate so badly that ICUs could be overrun in ten days, forcing doctors to triage who gets ventilators and who will be allowed to die. With this in mind, Jason Kenney finally relented and started re-imposing public health restrictions, but in a byzantine and complex manner, and has said they will allow vaccine certificates or a “restriction exemption program,” because they can’t actually call it a vaccine passport or certificate. Kenney also both apologised for the situation and then did not apologise for lifting the restrictions when he did, so that clarifies things. I’m curious to see if this ricochets through the federal campaign – some Conservatives seem to think it will. In either case, Jason Kenney, his health minister and chief medical officer of health all should be resigning for letting this foreseeable tragedy happen on their watch, but we all know that they won’t, because what does accountability matter any longer?

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Roundup: A promise of extra-illegality

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On a day of more organized protests outside of hospitals around the country, prime minister Justin Trudeau has decided the way to deal with this is…more criminal sanctions. Which is ridiculous, because there are already criminal sanctions around nuisance, harassment, and intimidation, and creating a law specifically for healthcare workers is kind of ridiculous and merely clogs up the criminal code – and I don’t care that they think they’re sending some kind of message. There are existing laws and police should enforce them. Of course, the NDP are saying that this was their idea first, while in more technical terms, Singh says that the victims being healthcare workers should be considered an aggravating factor during sentencing, but the effect is largely the same – this is virtue signalling using the Criminal Code rather than a useful exercise in enforcing existing laws.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1437477651225133056

In Alberta, however, premier Jason Kenney has been warning that he can use the province’s recent law about critical infrastructure – designed to criminalise Indigenous protesters who blockade railways or pipelines – and how they can apply to this situation because the law is so broadly worded. That alone should be concerning about how this law was intended to be applied, but nevertheless, this does appear to be an unforeseen use for this particular piece of legislation.

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1437470976472666116

Meanwhile, Althia Raj worries about Trudeau inflaming “divisions” in the country as the PPC gains more followers among these protesters and the anti-vaxx crowd, but this is a  credulous take if I ever heard one. These are not rational actors we are dealing with. They are part of an embrace of conspiracy theory that is happening across the Western world, for whatever the reason, and this is a very big problem. I’m not sure I see the utility in appealing for Trudeau to be soft-peddling to these conspiracy theorists, but I will note that there has been one party who has been winking and nodding to these conspiracy theories, and even going to far as to promulgating them in the House of Commons, and that party is not the one that Trudeau leads. There are consequences for O’Toole and company for doing so, and we are reaping what they’ve sown. It’s too bad that people in the media are not calling it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1437467693934854149

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Roundup: Grading the parties’ sincerity on climate

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One of the great things about the policy landscape in Canada are the number of professors out there who are willing to devote their time and energy to providing advice to political parties, or who will be willing to evaluate their proposals. We had an example of this as professor Mark Jaccard at Simon Fraser University went and checked over the parties’ environmental platforms and did the modelling on them, and then graded them – and the Liberals came out ahead by quite a margin (and in the interest of trying to look “balanced,” the CBC declared that the Conservatives were “not far behind,” though it was literally the difference between an A- and a D).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1433770709730344962

The full study not only evaluates the targets, but the policies and costs as well – because there are economic costs to some of these plans. Interestingly, he also tests the sincerity of those plans, which is not only a sense of how feasible they are, but also their history as a party of a willingness to do the heavy lifting, and that’s a pretty important measure. “Beware of politicians who promise big but have not subjected their promises and plans to assessment by independent climate policy modellers. In this regard, the NDP and Greens are suspect,” Jaccard writes, and it’s worth reading through why he gives them the scores he does. The economic damage that the NDP plan promises to do would never be agreed to by their union base, and the fact that it would require a police state for them to set the kinds of binding carbon budgets that they propose are demonstrations about how unserious the policies are.

What is disappointing in this is that the NDP in particular started making personal attacks against Jaccard, and trying to build lame conspiracy theories that he is somehow being paid off to pump up the Liberals and talk down the NDP, which is both ridiculous and is the kinds of sore loser tactics that we’ve come to expect. (Seriously, my reply column on a daily basis is full of Dippers with hurt feelings because I have the temerity to point out the reality of things like jurisdiction or the fact that you can’t willpower things into existence). Elizabeth May was among those who took swipes at Jaccard, for the temerity of being an economist and not a climate scientist – which is also ridiculous because economics is literally the science of allocating scare resources, and the fact that climate scientists are not offering policy solutions. Science is not policy, and that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the two and how they complement one another – providing that you’re willing to listen and not get in a huff because someone pointed out that your implementation plans don’t belong in the real world.

https://twitter.com/MarkJaccard/status/1433891783524720641

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QP: Not a question, but a direct plea

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On what promises to be the second last QP of the spring sitting, the three opposition leaders were all present, while Justin Trudeau as only available remotely, being in quarantine, once again leading only Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, in French, where he read a script about the military ombudsman’s comments on ministerial interference in investigations. Trudeau assured him they were working on the structural and cultural change necessary, including appointing Louise Arbour to reviewing the situation. O’Toole repeated the allegations in French, but didn’t phrase it as a question, but turned it into a plea to Canadians to vote out the Liberals. Trudeau repeated his same response in English. O’Toole then turned to the non-story about the Liberals paying for data services to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister. Trudeau stated this was for constituency casework, which was kept separate from political databases, and all rules were followed. O’Toole tried to turn this into an expansive statement about Liberal “corruption,” and demanded to know if any other contracts were given to Tom Pitfield, and Trudeau talked around the Conservatives slinging mud and hoping to see what would stick. O’Toole produced a document that claims that a contract was given to Pitfield, and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were only focused on narratives and not facts, that all parties use case management databases, and all rules were followed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, in person, and complained about the new border measures announced yesterday, complaining they were arbitrary. Trudeau insisted this was part of a gradual reopening and more stages would be announced soon. Blanchet complained there were more rules than variants, and Trudeau said that while the leader of the Bloc may want simple answer, but they needed to ensure that Canadians were kept safe. 

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he railed about that military ombudsman’s report, and Trudeau read that they have been committed to structural and cultural change, and that they have taken more concrete actions recently, including some new appointments and $236 million in the budget. Singh switched to French to complain that some benefit were being reduced, and Trudeau recited that they were there for as long as Canadians needed them, and pleaded with the NDP to pass the budget.

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