Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: Fergus at the NDP’s mercy

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It looks like Speaker Greg Fergus may last another day, as the word from the NDP is that they’re going to demand a fine and another apology to the House of Commons for his lapse in judgment over that video he recorded, though I have to wonder what they think a fine is going to accomplish. That report from the Procedure and House Affairs Committee will be tabled in the Commons by Thursday, so we’ll see if there’s any kind of vote or concurrence debate at that point. And there may yet be, as Andrew Scheer is promising that he’s going to move a vote of non-confidence in the Speaker, possibly in the hopes that he can shake enough NDP MPs loose to oust Fergus. As for the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet said that perhaps it’s time for a woman in the position, as though Alexandra Mendès hasn’t been there as Assistant Deputy Speaker the whole time, and has twice now run for the position and not gotten enough votes for it.

On the subject of the Speaker, Carleton University’s Philippe Lagassé made some comments to the Hill Times about the fact that we do treat the neutrality of the Speaker in Canada as much more of an illusion than Westminster does. He also suggests we start adopting more Westminster practices like the Speaker running for re-election as an independent, and that past Speakers be appointed to the Lords/Senate where they can continue to serve in less partisan roles, rather than having them rejoin the party ranks (and absolutely not have them run for party leader, Andrew Scheer).

Ukraine Dispatch:

An overnight missile attack on Kyiv has resulted in 45 injuries, while nearly 600 shells and rockets rained down on the southern part of the country amidst a major cyberattack on the country’s largest telecom provider. A US intelligence report estimates that Russia has suffered 315,000 casualties, which is about 90 percent of the forces it began the conflict with. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington DC doesn’t appear to have swayed too many Republicans, while he continued to insist that asking to give Russia land concessions was insane because it meant abandoning families and children to terrorists.

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Roundup: Pre-approved housing plans?

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The federal government is planning to revive an old post-war CMHC programme to create a list of pre-approved housing designs as a way of speeding up the construction of new housing. The aim is to have these available for builders by the end of 2024, with various sizes and options available, in the hopes that it makes zoning and permitting decisions run smoother and faster.

One of the things this shows is that the government is listening to experts, who have been calling for this as a way for the federal government to use what levers they have to demonstrate leadership, and that’s a pretty good start. One would also have to wonder if this couldn’t also spur a movement to pre-manufacture components of these designs in order to make construction go even faster, particularly if there is an element of modularity to these designs. There does also need to be a recognition that these shouldn’t be limited to single-family dwellings, but to multi-family units including four-plexes, now that the rules around those are being relaxed in many municipalities as part of the Housing Accelerator Fund conditions, and rules around use of these designs could be conditions for future funds.

Meanwhile, check out this thread from Mike Moffatt on this particular policy move (which he was an early champion of), and we’ll see what elements the government announces as part of it later today.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1734354682837918043

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia attacked Kyiv with eight ballistic missiles before dawn on Monday, which were all shot down but debris did injury people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be in Washington today to try and convince Republicans to vote for the aid package as time runs out for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1734231565301895538

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Roundup: Some good news on emissions reductions

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As the end of COP28 approaches, and all of the ensuing insanity that surrounds it, there was a bit of good news closer to home, where Environment Canada says that the latest modelling shows that we are on track to meet our interim targets on the way to the 2030 targets. That’s not the enhanced targets, mind you, and there is still a log of work to do, but this is at least a bit of good news that yes, the emissions curve is bending downwards now, and it’s further proof that the Conservatives’ usual defeatist complaint that the government hasn’t reduced emissions (outside of the height of the pandemic) isn’t true, and that yes, the carbon price is working, so their demands to lift it would be even more self-defeating.

Ukraine Dispatch:

It appears that there has been another attempted Russian airstrike over Kyiv, but that air defences are working, but four people were injured by falling debris. There was also a drone attack in the southern Kherson region on Saturday that killed one civilian. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the presidential inauguration in Argentina (where he was sat next to Viktor Orbán and appears to have given him a talking-to).

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1733956509669716365

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Roundup: Another useless vote-a-thon over

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After about thirty hours, the vote-a-thon “filibuster” was complete (it wasn’t a filibuster), and MPs went home. Well, probably not home, as they all missed their flights, so a bunch will either be trying for a weekend flight only to turn around and fly back 24 hours later, or they’ll stay in Ottawa for the weekend, and fume about missing family and constituency events, and it’ll be Conservatives fuming as much, if not more so than anyone else. It bears noting that Justin Trudeau was present for much of the voting in person, and most of his front bench was as well—François-Philippe Champagne arrived directly from his flight from Dubai and immediately headed to the Chamber to vote, with some jokes that he didn’t know what time it was supposed to be after the flight. Pierre Poilievre, on the other hand, was absent for nearly all of it. After taking off for a Hannukah event in Montreal (there is a whole sub-plot of Conservative MPs going to Hannukah events where Liberals didn’t because these were confidence votes on a money bill) and then a fundraiser, he arrived late in the night bearing fast food, tried to move a motion to end the vote-a-thon if the Liberals would accede to his demands and “axe the tax,” which they wouldn’t, and then he took off again and was mostly absent the rest of the vote-a-thon. Because he’s a leader like that. (Coverage of the votes from The Canadian Press, CBC, the Star and the National Post, each making different observations).

This vote-a-thon technique has been done before, and it’s failed before, because it never connects to whatever the Conservatives are demanding. They are merely exploiting the fact that for Supply, they can engineer to vote on individual line-items, so they force these vote-a-thons as some sort of “punishment” for the Liberals, but this has all of the same logic as being mad at your partner and withholding sex. The end result is that you really only end up punishing yourself. The Liberals treated this as a big team-building exercise at a time of great caucus unrest and division, and according to all of the reports, morale was high throughout, while Poilievre is going to be hearing about this from his angry backbenchers. Not to mention, the whole logic of thinking that the minor discomfort of a thirty-hour vote-a-thon is going to force the Liberals to abandon a signature policy that they won three elections on and is supported by every other party in the Chamber is ludicrous. That the Conservatives are trying to spin this as a pressure tactic is risible.

And spin is what they are indeed trying to do. Scheer tried to spin this as a “victory” because they made the House lose a sitting day, even though that was a Friday, so not very many hours of debate were really lost. Poilievre has since been insisting that he’s going to prevent the government from going “on holidays,” but he has no power to do that. The Standing Orders have a fixed date to rise, and changing that would require a unanimous consent motion, which he’s never going to get. This was just an impotent exercise in wasting everyone’s time for a temper tantrum based on the lie that carbon pricing is what is driving unaffordability (that has been debunked so many times), but these are the times we live in, where this is all for performance and clips—which the Liberals have been making their own of, where Conservatives voted against line items about the very things they claim to care about, and in particular things like NATO exercises and support for Ukraine—votes that will be going into dossiers in the capitals of our allies, as they know just who Poilievre will be should he ever form government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians conducted missile strikes against the central part of Ukraine, with 14 missiles shot down outside of Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk, while they again pressed the attack at Avdiivka and Kupiansk. Media were invited to see Ukrainian troops training for winter combat at facilities in Poland. Here is a look at the attempt to get better casualty figures for the war, particularly from the Ukrainian side, where they aren’t published for fear of harming the war effort.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1733078163360477582

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Roundup: The “watered down” oil and gas emissions cap

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The federal government unveiled their oil and gas emissions cap while at COP28, and the predictable reactions happened—the Greens, Bloc and NDP decried it as being too weak and watered down (never mind that there are recent court decisions that the government has to consider when it comes to just how far they can go); Danielle Smith and Scott Moe were performatively angry, even though it pretty much aligns with Alberta’s existing targets; and the oil and gas lobby decried how much money this was going to lose them. Economists point out that this undermines the carbon pricing system even further.

The cap is only on the pollution, not the production, because that would be provincial jurisdiction, so theoretically these companies could continue to increase production if they better control and capture emissions. (Also, refinery emissions are not in these because that’s part of the clean fuel standard). There is also a cap-and-trade system attached to this emissions cap, so that if a facility goes over their targets, they can buy offsets from a company below their cap, as well as pay into a decarbonisation fund.

Now we wait for the inevitable court challenges, and those dragging their feet to comply because they hope that the polls stay true and that Poilievre will form government in two years and they can ignore all of this then, as though climate change isn’t still the biggest threat to our lives, well, ever.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the Danube River port infrastructure once again, killing a driver and damaging grain infrastructure. Ukrainians are starting to use rail to bypass the blockade by Polish trucks at their border. And the Ukrainian government has come to an agreement with two American firms to jointly manufacture 155 mm shells in Ukraine, but it could be two or three years before that production can come on line.

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Roundup: The empty threat to sit over the holidays

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Yesterday began with Pierre Poilievre announcing at the start of his caucus meeting that the Conservatives would keep the government from going on their Christmas holidays—because they had allegedly ruined the Christmases of Canadians—unless the government lifts the carbon price from “farmers, First Nations, and families,” which is pretty nebulous, and would seem to mean the consumer carbon price and not the industrial one. Their method of warfare? Thousands of amendments that would force round-the-clock votes on things like their budget implementation bill or the bill to amend competition laws.

The problem is that, despite the threats that Conservatives like Melissa Lantsman are making, is that they can’t actually force the House to sit past December 15th. MPs long ago put the fixed calendar into the Standing Orders, and it would take a unanimous consent motion to change that date, which they’re not going to get. And if they think they’re going to exploit the loophole of keep voting going for days on end (which would technically be one sitting day that lasts beyond twenty-four hours), well, Poilievre is going to find his own MPs are going to start getting pretty upset with him because they have families, and constituency business to attend to, and this kind of thing gets pretty tiresome really quickly.

It’s an empty threat, and it’s the same kind of thing that happens every June, and every December without fail. The opposition parties start thumping their chests because it’s their last chance to flex their muscles and look like they’re being tough on the government, and without fail, they go home on time, if not a day or two early, because everyone is tired, cranky, and just wants to get the hell out of there. I would be incredibly surprised if the House didn’t rise for the holidays by the end of the 14th. Of course, this will be a different matter for the Senate, who will once again complain bitterly that these amendment vote-a-thons will delay their getting the bills, which will mean rushed passage, and that same song and dance will play out yet again, as it does at the end of every session.

In short, everyone needs to grow the hell up, and frankly, MPs need to go home sooner than later and think about their atrocious behaviour.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 41 out of 48 Russian drones in a major overnight attack. Russian forces pressed again on Avdiivka, with both sides each claiming they made gains. It was Armed Forces Day in Ukraine yesterday, with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisting they would win a fair peace “against all odds,” while his defence minister was in Washington to try and secure more aid from the Americans, who are holding it up to try and force concessions around their border. A former Ukrainian MP who was regarded as a traitor was shot dead outside of Moscow, and sources say that Ukraine’s security service was responsible.

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Roundup: Who “axing the tax” really benefits

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Economist Trevor Tombe and the CBC have come up with some modelling of the federal carbon levy, and lo, there remains yet more proof that for most households, the price and rebate system do in fact leave people better off. And more to the point, it also proves that removing the price—the “axe the tax” that Pierre Poilievre has been touring the country to promote, would only benefit people making over $250,000/year, which is pretty much the top one percent of income earners in the country.

This should be nothing new—back when they were in government, the Conservatives kept producing boutique tax credit after boutique tax credit that they kept claiming would help “ordinary” Canadians, when in fact they were structed in such a way as to really only benefit the wealthiest households. It’s not an uncommon trick from right-wing parties, particularly as they convince people to vote against their own best interests, but once again, they have created a massive disinformation campaign to claim that the carbon price is what is driving inflation and in particular food price inflation, when it’s simply not true, and that killing it will “make life affordable,” or that people will be able to “eat and heat their homes” again, which again, are not really being made unaffordable because of the carbon price, but other factors at play. And even with this data to prove that they’re lying, they’ll insist that it’s wrong, or that Tombe and the CBC are the ones doing the disinformation (which is why they attack academics and the media), but we need to be calling out that the Conservatives have been lying to the public as a way of rage-farming to drive votes and engagement.

Meanwhile, Tombe has also collaborated on another analysis of carbon prices in BC (which is separate from the federal system, but at the same price level), and finds that lo, they contributed a whole 0.33 percent to the price of food, which is of course what the Conservatives keep claiming is driving up food costs. It’s not—climate change is. Just this week, Statistics Canada released this year’s crop production data, and thanks to drought on the Prairies, crop yields are down this year—not as bad as it was in 2021, but wheat is down 6.9%, barley yields down 10.9%, and oat yields down 49.6%. This is the kind of thing that is affecting food prices, not the carbon price, but Conservatives will keep lying to you.

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1732071690480562570

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian authorities say that they downed ten of seventeen Russian drones in an overnight attack, that hit targets in both the west and east of the country. As aid for Ukraine from the US is under debate, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to cancel a planned virtual meeting with US lawmakers, as the Republicans are trying to tie that aid to border measures. Zelenskyy is slated to meet virtually with G7 leaders today.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1732084917708759146

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Roundup: Speaker Fergus is in trouble

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The incident over the weekend where Speaker Greg Fergus appeared in a video at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention, in his robes, in his official office, blew up in the House of Commons today, and it wasn’t wholly unexpected. Fergus led off the day with an apology and a promise to be more careful in the future, but also an insistence that this was a personal message to outgoing interim provincial Liberal leader John Fraser, for whom he las a long-standing friendship, and non-partisan.

This didn’t mollify the Conservatives, who immediately launched into a point of privilege, led by Andrew Scheer, while the Bloc immediately decided that Fergus needs to resign over this, while the Conservatives also came around to this demand. The NDP, for their part, said that this needs to go to a committee for study, but all the while, Fergus recused himself from this discussion (as well he should have, which as something that Anthony Rota didn’t do after his particular incident), but the Deputy Speaker, Chris d’Entrement, indulged. It was quite clear that this was really more of a dilatory tactic from the Conservatives, who put up speaker after speaker to this point, for hours on end, which again, d’Entrement indulged when he shouldn’t have. But this is what they’re doing at this time of year, to run out the clock, like they do at the end of every sitting, and this was just today’s excuse rather than insisting that they really, really needed to debate a three-line committee report from eighteen months ago.

A couple of observations here:

  1. This wasn’t necessarily a breach of non-partisanship because this was at a provincial and not a federal event. Scheer tried to use the analogy of an NHL referee giving a pep talk in on team’s dressing room while in uniform, but that doesn’t hold—this would be an NHL referee giving a note of congratulations to someone in the OHL. But Scheer is a serial liar, so of course he’s going to turn out a work of fiction on this.
  2. Fergus should have known better, and while Fraser is trying to take the blame for this, Fergus should have had better judgment than to appear in his robes, in his official office, regardless of the circumstances. As a friend of mine noted, the Liberals can’t seem to help themselves with this kind of thing, and Fergus has been a little too proud of his new post and to be showing off his robes at every opportunity, and that’s going to get him in trouble. Well, more than he already is. Did he learn nothing from the fact that Rota was a genial idiot using his position to pose for photos in his uniform at every opportunity, and it led to his downfall? Seriously.
  3. If people want to get precious about what is and isn’t non-partisan for a Speaker, Rota would be making government funding announcement in his riding all the time, which he shouldn’t have done because he’s not a minister, and he’s the Speaker and shouldn’t have been there for them. And yet, nobody said boo about this practice, which they really should have.

Bottom line is I don’t think Fergus should have to resign over this, but man oh man, what terrible judgment so early in his time in that office.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they have successfully attacked oil depots in Russian-occupied Luhansk, while the deputy commander of Russia’s 14th Army Corps was killed in fighting in Ukraine. The death toll from the strike on the eastern town of Novohrodivka has risen after more bodies were found in the rubble of a residential building.

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Roundup: Overselling “soft populism”

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It was quite the weekend for uncritical media for Pierre Poilievre, after he had a bad couple of weeks of being called out for a series of egregious lies that could no longer be spun or both-sidesed. Nevertheless, the National Post was there to gush about his so-called “soft populism” that was full of comments of people insisting he was really within the mainstream and which studiously ignored his attempting to normalize far-right actors in order to capture the PPC vote, or his shifting the Overton-window to make their particular pronouncements acceptable discourse when they remain radical. Nobody wants to talk about his attempts to take MAGA Republican populism and just use the “good parts only” in the hopes that he can ignore the bad stuff that comes with it, but that’s not how real life works, and these are things we should be discussing.

Meanwhile, Poilievre released a fifteen minute “documentary” on housing over the weekend that the usual pundit suspects gushed over, not because it contained anything true, because it didn’t—it’s the exact same pseudo-intellectual “economics” that he got from crypto-bros on YouTube, but it’s done with higher production values and data-visualization crimes, conspiracy claims, internally inconsistent arguments, and the inability to distinguish between correlation and causation, but hey—it looked slick, so that’s what everyone is going to glom onto. And while I get that it’s the weekend, the Post wrote-up a recap with absolutely no critical pushback to any of its claims, while the CBC couched it in poll numbers and some government talking points, again, with no actual pushback to any of Poilievre’s misleading claims.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have been shelling Kherson, and killed at least two people over the weekend. Russian advances appear to be easing off on Avdiivka, while their claims of having captured Maryinka remain unsubstantiated. Former president Petro Poroshenko was denied permission to leave the country (because of martial law) when it was found out that he was planning to meet with Hungarian prime minister and Putin apologist Viktor Orbán. Ukrainian officials are investigating claims that Russians shot surrendering soldiers, which is a war crime.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1731338721583079724

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Roundup: Letting delay tactics happen

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The childish games continue in the House of Commons, as the Conservatives have been using dilatory tactics to avoid debating the Ukraine trade treaty implementation bill. It’s back from committee and was ready for report stage debate yesterday, but the Conservatives decided that instead, they really needed to debate an eighteen-month-old committee report on food security, and insisted that this wasn’t delaying at all. *cough*bullshit*cough* The Liberals were performatively outraged, Mark Gerretsen marching out to the Foyer to decry the move to the camera stationed there (I was the only reporter around, mostly because I was socialising with Gallery staff). There wasn’t a vote called before the Conservatives proceeded with this dilatory debate, meaning I’m sure the Liberals let them go ahead with it so that they could further bludgeon the Conservatives and question their support for Ukraine, and talk about how they’re playing into the hands of the Kremlin, or MAGA Republicans, or what have you. Because remember, everything is now for clips.

Meanwhile, can I just point to how ridiculous the both-sidesing is in that Canadian Press piece? The other parties “accuse” the Conservatives of stalling, and quote the party spokesperson as denying that they’re stalling, while getting reaction from the other parties. It’s an obvious, transparent stall tactic. The spokesperson is obviously lying. And I get why CP thinks they need to both-sides this so that they can be supremely neutral about it all, but this is why the Conservatives learned that they can get away with lying all the gods damned time. They know they won’t be called on it, because performative neutrality demands it, rather than doing the job of simply pointing out the truth.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have claimed to have captured the villages of Khromove as well as Maryinka, though Ukraine’s government won’t confirm anything. Here is an explainer about what is at stake with Avdiivka. Ukraine’s spy agency says that the successfully staged two explosions along a rail line in Siberia that serves as a key conduit to China. Associated Press had a fairly wide-ranging interview with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he talks about what they need in order to win the war.

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