Tag Archives: Transfer Payments

QP: Memory-holing past indifference

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The prime minister was elsewhere, meeting with the president of the Slovak Republic, who is currently on a state visit to Canada, but his deputy was present for a second day in a row (which is a rarity these days). Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and mocked the prime minister saying that all spending has been absolutely necessary, but noted that a large percentage of consultants hired for ArriveCan resulted in no work done, and demanded the money be recovered. Chrystia Freeland said that Canadians understand that when Conservatives talk about spending, they want to cut things like dental care and child care. Poilievre said that the ArriveCan app was an example of “corruption,” and then railed that the Bloc did an “about face” on their support for Bill C-234, and demanded the government pass it in its original form. Freeland insisted that while she can’t speak for the Bloc, the nation of Quebec understands the need to combat climate change. Poilievre switched to English to repeat that number of ArriveCan contracts were not fulfilled and demanded the money be recouped. Freeland insisted that the Conservatives only want to cut services. Poilievre then pivoted to Trudeau’s vacations, and demanded to know if he paid the “full carbon tax” on each ton of emissions. Freeland asked if he knows how much the heating of Stornoway costs, and that the government was helping people with climate rebates. Poilievre insisted that he pays for his own vacations, and demanded that the government undo the amendments to Bill C-234 and pass it. Freeland pointed out that Poielivre also doesn’t pay rent on Stornoway, and that he wants to take away the climate rebates people rely on.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and decried Quebec’s settlement capacity for immigrants and refugees, and railed that this was impacting housing. Sean Fraser praised the agreement that they came to with Quebec to build more houses. Therrien railed that immigration levels were still going up, and demanded the targets be lowered. Marc Miller pointed out that they already have an agreement with Quebec to manage its immigration levels.

Jagmeet Singh blamed the Liberals for the housing crisis in Toronto, and demanded they capitulate to Olivia Chow’s blackmail. Freeland praised Toronto, and said they were having “constructive conversations” with the city and the provinces, and that they have given more than any previous government. Singh switched to French to decry that the government has called for another investigation into grocery chains rather than taking action. François-Philippe Champagne said that the best solution is for more competition, and that he has asked the Commissioner to use his new powers for this.

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Roundup: Chow chooses blackmail

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Toronto mayor Olivia Chow woke up and chose violence, as the kids say, when it comes to her budget proposals for Toronto. While the 10.5 percent property tax increase is long-overdue for a city whose property taxes remain well below the national average after years of austerity governments who have allowed the city to crumble so they can keep from increasing said property taxes (and this is not unique to Toronto either), she is also calling for an additional measure—federal blackmail. The proposal is called a “federal impacts levy,” or an additional six percent increase ostensibly to cover the costs of providing services for asylum seekers, and is basically holding the federal government at knifepoint, saying pay up or all your safe seats in this city are going to be in jeopardy.

The asylum seeker issue is rife with other levels of government falsely claiming that this is solely a federal responsibility, so they should foot the whole cost. It’s not actually true—the federal government is responsible for refugees once their claims have been approved, but before that point, they generally fall under the social services provided by provinces and municipalities, and the federal government will reimburse a portion of those costs. Of course, premiers like to wash their hands of this because of course they do (and there is a constant rhetorical battle happening in Question Period where the Bloc keep demanding that the federal government owes Quebec some $450 million for the provision of services, again falsely claiming sole federal responsibility), which leaves cities often bearing the burden, and Toronto and Montreal most especially as they get the lion’s share of asylum claimants. There remain questions around Toronto, if they have followed the proper channels to request federal funds for this (I believe there is a need for a certain provincial action to accompany it which may not have been undertaken), but again, they have been given millions of dollars this year for assistance with this.

My bigger concern is the Pandora’s Box that this kind of federal blackmail opens up. While some pundits will declare it to be genius, and on a strategic level, it is a clever way to back the federal government into a corner, but at the same time, this invites other cities or provinces to start adopting this kind of tactic, and even more to the point, it once again leaves the province—whose constitutional responsibility the city is—off the hook for their own underfunding and downloading of services to try and make their own bottom lines look good. We already have provinces who think they can just declare themselves exempt from federal laws, and others who are openly breaking those laws (or at least threatening to under the cover of legal fictions), while the pundit class says it’s the prime minister’s fault, that he made them break the law and behave this way. Chow is now pushing this envelope even further, and I worry about the long-term consequences for this country so that she can solve her short-term problem of being an adult around her city’s fiscal crisis.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel in Kharkiv, injuring eleven people, many of them journalists. Ukrainian forces have been shifting toward building fortifications and a more defensive posture in recent months. Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they have shown that Russia can be stopped, but that Ukraine still needs more air defence systems and ammunition. Zelenskyy added that there are “clear signs” of a slowdown in Russia’s defence industry as he called on allied nations to tighten sanctions.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1745019147065721141

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1745348642100109636

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Roundup: The deafening silence around that antisemitic cartoon

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As you probably saw, on Wednesday, the Toronto Sun published a political cartoon from an American syndicated source that was both deeply antisemitic and Putin propaganda, and in response to criticism, the Sun initially doubled down before finally withdrawing it hours later and giving an apology with no accountability for what had happened.

Justin Trudeau criticized the cartoon during his media availability in Toronto, but there was pretty deafening silence from Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, and Michael Chong. The closest it got to condemnation was Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish, retweeting Brian Lilley calling the apology the “right move,” and later wrote that antisemitism is gross in political cartoons, universities, unions and school boards. Her fellow Jewish Conservative MP Marty Morantz was also completely silent on this. What were Conservatives vocal about? Falling for that Hamas troll-bait video, which they continued to fall all over.

It’s not an accident. They know full well that a segment of their audience here in Canada, not just the US, where the cartoonist is from, believe this propaganda and are on board with the antisemitism, and they pandered to it, much like Poilievre has been trying to skate that line in sending signals to this crowd with his Ukraine votes while paying lip-service to his party’s past support, or trafficking in antisemitic conspiracy theories while denouncing antisemitism—sucking and blowing at the same time. The silence from the Conservatives on this incident was deafening, and it should ring alarm bells for the Jewish community that for all of their constant bluster about being friends of Israel as a signal to the Jewish community that talk is cheap, and their actions (and inaction and silence) have spoken for them.

Programming Note: That’s it for me for 2023. I’m taking the next week or so off to recover, and will be back early in the New Year. Thanks for reading, and wishing all of my readers a happy holiday season.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched around 7400 missiles and 3700 attack drones against Ukrainian targets over the course of the 22-month invasion. Here is a look at four factors that have stalled the counteroffensive. And Ukraine’s parliament voted to legalise cannabis in the country, citing the stress of the war on the population.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1737958416302133568

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Roundup: The inflation and population figures

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There were a couple of important figures released from StatsCan yesterday, and the first was the November inflation numbers. While some analysts were predicting it to fall, it held at 3.1% for a second month, showing that this is the part where it’s starting to get sticky, and why the Bank can’t let up measures and start reducing interest rates just yet. One of the upsides is that food price inflation continues to come down, which means that prices are stabilising, so that’s very good news (and it has nothing to do with carbon prices). And don’t forget to check out this thread from Trevor Tombe, as he digs into the numbers.

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1737111583002923039

The other figures released were the population figures, and it was the fastest growth of any quarter since 1957. The thing to keep an eye on here is that a lot of this seems to be driven by non-permanent residents, whether international students (and the big problem there are a couple of colleges in Ontario turning themselves into abusive degree mills), and other temporary foreign workers, some of whom may have been hired in an abusive way. Some of this are also asylum seekers who have not yet received status (because “closing” Roxham Road didn’t really do much for this situation other than push it underground).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737106801617703236

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737109349477310976

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737112568286855177

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1737136794938884329

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv for the fifth time this month, but this attack was intercepted and no damage was reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is boosting its domestic production capacity and will produce one million drones next year. Zelenskyy is also dismissing talk that there is a rift between him and the head of the army. Here’s a look at the work judges are doing to keep the justice system going in a country under fire.

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QP: A bizarre false version of reality with a draconian coalition in place

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The prime minister was present today, which has become unusual for a Thursday, but since he wasn’t here yesterday it was good that we at least got a second appearance in the week. Not every leader was present today, and neither was the deputy PM, for what it’s worth. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and name-checked Catherine McKenna, Mark Carney, and Senator Percy Downe in pointing out people disappointed with Trudeau, and pounced on Downe’s call on Trudeau to resign, as if Downe’s opinion carries any weight at all. Justin Trudeau stood up and recited prepared lines that they are focused on helping Canadians while tackling climate change, and that the team is togetherness. Poilievre noted that he didn’t answer the question, and accused the government of not caring about Canadians who need heating. Trudeau listed things that the Conservatives would cut if they got into power. Poilievre switched to English to say that Trudeau hadn’t denounced the things Gudie Hutchings said about people voting Lineral, and demanded a yes of no answer to whether they would support his supply day motion whether his MPs would have a free vote. Trudeau rambled about phasing out heating oil and called on provinces to sign up to the heat pump programme. Poilievre noted he didn’t answer the question and wondered if the NDP would also get a free vote, which should have been out of bounds. Trudeau instead talked about how many people in Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC use heating oil and called on those provinces to partner about heat pumps. Poilievre asked if they would make his Supply Day motion a confidence vote, but Trudeau again rambled about heat pumps and said that Poilievre was making a mistake if he thought Canadians didn’t care about the environment. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised the issue of immigration levels, and consulting Quebec on them. Trudeau read that Quebec has their own targets and that the federal government provides resources to the province for integration. Blanchet again demanded proper consultations before firm targets were set, but Trudeau repeated his response.

Peter Julian rose for the NDP, and in French, he called on support for their call to take the GST off of home heating (which, again, is unworkable administratively and disproportionately benefits the wealthy). Trudeau responded that the thousand of people in BC who rely on heating oil should take advantage of the heat pump programme. Taylor Bachrach took over to relay a constituent’s problems with the heat pump rebate and wanted the same programme for Atlantic Canadians extended to the whole country. Trudeau said they wanted to, but provinces need to partner with them.

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Roundup: Scoring cheap points in a tragedy

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The past few days have been preoccupied by the Hamas attack on Israel, which has killed as many as a thousand, including attacking villages and killing the elderly and infants. We know that so far, two Canadians have been confirmed killed, while others have been kidnapped and taken hostage. After refuting claims that the embassy in Tel Aviv was closed for Thanksgiving, the federal government is preparing airlifts for Canadian citizens and permanent residents out of Tel Aviv, likely using military aircraft. Ahmed Hussen has also stated that humanitarian aid will continue to flow to the Palestinian people, particularly in light of the humanitarian crisis that is to come as the Gaza strip is under siege, with assurances that there are robust controls to ensure that Hamas doesn’t see any of this funding (as they are listed as a terrorist organisation under Canadian law).

Back home, there has been pretty universal condemnation of Hamas from political leaders, but that doesn’t mean that politics haven’t been played. After Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre were at the same event over the weekend to show solidarity with the Jewish community, Poilievre decided to immediately return to his dickish self and try and score points on the non-scandal that Canada was not included in a communiqué between the Americans, the UK, France, Germany and Italy. A number of pundits and talking heads clutched their pearls and cried that we were excluded, some news reporters incorrectly framing this as the G7 (which was also minus Japan), when it turned out that this was a meeting of the Quint, which is a separate, nuclear-armed organisation that Canada is not a part of. While most reporters and outlets quickly clarified this, Poilievre decided to use it to rage-farm and claim that Trudeau has “side-lined Canada,” which is bullshit, but you’ve got a bunch of pundits on their fainting couches over this when they should know better, and Poilievre couldn’t resist the urge to score points over this, which should be unconscionable, but he likes to keep proving that there is no bottom with him.

Matt Gurney points out that this conflict has given us a pogrom in realtime over social media, but that most people aren’t seeing it because of how news outlets sanitize the graphic elements that would inevitably galvanize them.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia’s latest drone attack targeted the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, with Ukraine’s air defences downing 27 drones. The counter-offensive continues to make gains in the east and the south. Ukrainian officials are investigating 260 instances of abuses at military recruitment offices, much of it related to bribery. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced the country’s territorial defence forces commander, before he left to visit neighbouring Romania to strengthen ties and talk regional security.

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QP: Just the number, please

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Following his first procession as Speaker, and the usual bout of Members’ Statements, things got underway in earnest. Pierre Poilievre led off, worrying that 63 percent of Canadians are suffering from high grocery prices and demanded to know if the prime minister would bring prices down by Monday as promised—erm, which was not the promise. Justin Trudeau said that they tabled a bill to increase competition, but the Conservatives have been obstructing it, so they need to walk the talk. Poilievre repeated his demand, and have a list of specific demanded price reductions. Trudeau repeated that the Conservatives are playing political games by holding up the bill. Poilievre gave a rare third question in French and declared that they can ram through anything they want with their “coalition” with the NDP, and railed about the carbon price, and repeated again a demand to bring food prices down (which was not the promise). Trudeau listed things that the Conservatives have tried blocking with parliamentary tactics, while the Liberals were working to help Canadians. Poilievre switched to English to complain that the prime minister was blaming everyone but himself before repeating his demand for price reductions by Monday. Trudeau said that this was just a political game as the Conservatives were not working with them to move their bill through before Thanksgiving. Poilievre repeated his itemised list of price reduction demands, and Trudeau repeated for a fifth time that the Conservatives have been delaying and obstructing their bill.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and complained that there are 500,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec and claimed that the province couldn’t provide necessary services, and demanded the government reduce their targets. Trudeau said that immigration is a shared responsibility between the federal government with Quebec, and that they are trying to fill labour market needs while they are working to help the provincial government. Therrien insisted that the federal government was being irresponsible and demanded targets be set according to capacity to integrate them. Trudeau disagreed that this was viable, and said that they would work with provinces and municipalities to build more houses to settle more newcomers.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he praised Wab Kinew’s victory in Manitoba, but his question got drowned out by Conservative uproar, until Fergus brought order. When Singh restarted this time he got drowned out by applause before he demanded the government deal with healthcare needs in that province. Trudeau said he was happy to see Manitobans reject the politics of fear and division before saying that he was looking forward to sign health accord with the new government. Singh hammered about the refusal of the former provincial government’s refusal to search the landfill, and demanded a “Red Dress Alert,” Trudeau read that they released new funds to work on next steps with the landfill search and they were moving forward with the Alert.

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Roundup: May sees some, but not all, of the documents

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Green Party leader Elizabeth May held a press conference yesterday to talk about the unredacted documents she saw related to foreign interference, and in particular what David Johnston had written during his brief tenure as Special Rapporteur. It wasn’t, however, quite what she had hoped and stated that she was disappointed that she could only read David Johnston’s unredacted report, rather than the documents that supported his conclusions, which were all footnoted, but not actually there to read.

It is worth noting that May was quite generous and believes this to be something of a mistake on PCO’s part, and if not a mistake, it’s part of their usual pattern of being overly secretive and disclosing the bare minimum, even if May had been properly vetted and given clearance to read the documents. And she makes an extremely valid point that if the point is to be reassured in the quality of Johnston’s work, then you also need to see the documents that he was seeing in order to determine if he had arrived at the right conclusion or not. And I suspect that she will be able to see those documents before too long, because someone at PCO must know just how bad it will look if she can’t see the supporting evidence, and that it will look like they have something to hide, which is counter to the entire point of this whole exercise.

With this in mind, it bears mentioning that Jagmeet Singh is planning on seeing the documents as well as soon as he can schedule the time in Ottawa (as he’s busy on the summer barbecue circuit), while both Pierre Poilievre and Yves-François Blanchet have refused, insisting that this is some kind of “trap” where they wouldn’t be able to talk about what they’ve seen and be unable to criticise the government. That’s not true, and there is plenty they could say about the documents without revealing specifics, but they would rather play the game of insisting the government is hiding something nefarious when the truth is so much more mundane than that.

Ukraine Dispatch:

American sources are saying that the number of casualties in the war are reaching nearly 500,000, but that number needs to be taken with a shaker’s worth of salt because Russia routinely undercounts its killed and wounded, while Ukraine doesn’t publicly disclose their official casualty figures (though I do note that they do very much use tributes to dead soldiers for propagandistic purposes). Russians are claiming that a Ukrainian drone smashed into a downtown Moscow office building, while Ukraine denies it targeted a civilians or civilian infrastructure.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1692492507878224375

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Roundup: Plans to half-ass maternity leave

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A piece that caught my eye over the weekend was an interview with new Government House Leader Karina Gould about how she plans to deal with her maternity leave on the second time around, and how it’ll be different from the first time (when she was the first Cabinet minister to give birth while in office). Significantly, she doesn’t want to come back as quickly as she did the last time, where she only took ten weeks off, and then returned with her husband in tow to help with child care duties while she did her job.

What Gould says she wants to do differently this time is to not travel to Ottawa, but attend virtually from her constituency office, while the government whip assumers her duties during her absence. But this gets back to what I have been repeatedly warning about when it comes to remote and hybrid sittings, which is that this is going to create an expectation of presenteeism that is unrealistic, particularly for new parents. And while they absolutely should take the time they need off, it should actually be time off in a proper leave of absence, rather than constantly hovering by their computers to follow proceedings along over Zoom, and being ready to vote using their remote app at a moment’s notice. That, frankly, not only doesn’t help anyone, but creates even more stress on the MP or minister while they’re on leave.

More to the point, it will be exceedingly difficult to do House Leader duties remotely, because part of the job is stage-managing answers in Question Period, and directing who should be responding (though not always effectively as we have seen). That can’t be done remotely, and indeed, Mark Holland got into trouble a couple of times for trying to do it over hybrid format at the height of the pandemic, because he was trying to do so with a phone, and that was forbidden. The best thing is for her to simply take the time she needs, and resume her duties from Ottawa when she’s ready, because she won’t be doing anyone any favours trying to half-ass it from her constituency office when she should be spending time with her newborn.

In case you missed them:

  • My column on the Conservatives preparing a “stolen election” narrative by deliberately confusing basic Westminster parliamentary dynamics
  • My Xtra column on why conservatives posing with “Straight Pride” and “Leave Our Kids Alone” t-shirts are no accident—and a sign of their moral cowardice.
  • My column on the signal that Chrystia Freeland has sent to premiers and mayors when it comes to their plans to beg Ottawa to bail them out.
  • My piece for National Magazine about how competition law has failed the media sector in Canada, and why Bill C-18 was a flawed attempt to deal with it.
  • My column on why a public inquiry into Canada’s COVID response may actually prove impossible, because federalism.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles slammed into an apartment complex and a university building in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, killing six and wounding 75. Russian drones also hit Kharkiv, partially destroying a college dormitory. Ukrainian forces say they have reclaimed 15 square kilometres of occupied territory in the past week, while describing that the fight has been tougher than expected because the Russians have fortified themselves. Meanwhile, a drone struck an office building in Moscow’s financial centre, which Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for, and Russians claim that they destroyed three Ukrainian drones headed for their ships in the Black Sea.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1685580157254307840

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Roundup: Misguided “free-rider” complaints

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The Wall Street Journal had an unsigned editorial board op-ed yesterday that denounced Canada as a “military free rider,” but then did little to actually back up their assertions, omitted a bunch of facts, and went on a tear about the current government’s mission to fix the toxic culture within our armed forces, citing “See how that cultural manifesto works on the Ukrainian front lines.” Um, considering that our soldiers are successfully training the Ukrainians into a fighting force that is nimble and not just throwing bodies at the enemy like the old Soviet system did, it’s working fairly well? And how is Russia’s toxic masculinity doing on the battlefield anyway? Oh, right. In a similar vein, the editorial rages that we don’t spend enough on defence while we “shovel money into public unions and social-welfare programmes.” Like our health care system, which even in its current broken state is still far superior to the Americans? I mean, really?

To add to Steve Saideman’s comments, where the paper seems to fall into that same basic trap of not understanding how NATO works, which is that it requires participation from countries, and we participate. We may not spend to the same percentage, but several high-spending countries don’t actually participate, and because the two percent target is a really stupid metric, it ignores that the denominator is far higher in Canada than in a lot of these higher-percentage countries. Could our spending be better? Yes. Is our procurement system completely screwed? Yes. Have we been something of a free-rider in continental defence because we know the Americans will be there regardless? That’s fair. But trying to assert that it’s because we’re too “woke” is just puerile.

Oh, and about their seeming to prefer Poland, who is sliding into illiberalism and who has a major problem with homophobia, there was this gem on the wire yesterday about how that government broke EU law by suspending a judge who for criticising the government. Yeah, that’s totally who should be replacing Canada at the G7 and in a leadership position in NATO. Well done, WSJ. Slow clap.

Ukraine Dispatch:

At least 20 Iranian-made drones attacked mostly the Kyiv regions early Thursday, with debris wounding two people. American intelligence suggests that Wagner mercenary forces are no longer participating militarily in Ukraine in any significant capacity. Russia appears to be detaining thousands of Ukrainian civilians without charges, and appear to be planning to create even more prison colonies.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1679477329804902401

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