Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: Mendicino’s future in doubt

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The political future of Marco Mendicino is in the balance as the revelation has circulated that his office was aware of the potential transfer of serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security facility (designed to treat violent sex offenders) for months but didn’t inform him until it happened, made worse by the fact that the prime minister’s office was also informed, and they kicked it to Mendicino’s office to deal with. And by deal with, we’re not talking politically interfering with an arm’s length body, but at least doing something, whether it’s ordering a review or coming up with a communications plan to get ahead of it. But they didn’t.

There is a lot of talk about ministerial responsibility and accountability, and what that means in a situation like this. The assumption is always that every offence is a resigning offence, which is wrong, and Mendicino says that he’s taken “corrective action” in his office, but as the minister, the buck stops with him, and in this case, it’s a pattern of incompetence coming home to roost, and it’s not the first time, and he’s been a terrible communicator on a number of the files before him, to the point of framing things in a manner that could be construed as misleading, such as issue of “police advice” on the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Mendicino says he won’t resign, but it’s getting hard to see how “corrective action” in his office can be handled without a head rolling, or someone falling on their sword, and at this point, we are getting to the point where Mendicino should probably consider doing so in order to get ahead of things, and looking like he still has some principles left.

The other thing to consider is that he may be out of this job sooner than later, because the rumours of a Cabinet shuffle are pretty loud, and his name is at the top of the list as someone who isn’t performing well and needs to be out of their portfolio. (Also on that list are Omar Alghabra and Joyce Murray). We are at a point in the life of the government where they need a shake-up in order to try and throw off some of the fatigue that is weighing them down, and to get some new blood in some of their portfolios in order to get fresh perspectives. There’s also a major rotation of staff happening in a number of offices, which is also needed at this point. We’ll see if this situation accelerates Trudeau’s plans for when this shuffle is going to happen, which Mendicino could force by doing the honourable thing. (That said, it might mean that Bill Blair might be tasked with taking Public Safety back on, at least until a new minister can be appointed, and that wouldn’t be a good thing because he shouldn’t have that portfolio for very obvious reasons).

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Russian strikes against Odessa and Donetsk early Wednesday morning killed six and damaged dozens of homes. Ukraine’s counter-offensive is still testing Russian defences, largely in the south, as they have thus far only committed three of their twelve battalions to the operation so far.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1668981197693648898

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1668957867301302275

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1668878494762250241

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Roundup: O’Toole’s farewell hypocrisy

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Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole gave his farewell speech to the House of Commons yesterday, and it’s been a while since I’ve heard something as grossly hypocritical as that. Using his sombre voice (which has the benefit of completely beguiling the pundit class), he decried “performance politics,” where they chase social media algorithms, using the Chamber to generate clips, and fuelling polarisation, and replacing discussion with “virtue signalling”—which is his way of whataboutery to insist that the Liberals and NDP are just as bad. He also decried the use of conspiracy theories around things like the United Nations.

The problem? He hired a professional shitposter, Jeff Ballingall, to chase those very social media algorithms he is decrying. He fully used the Chamber to generate clips, he fully endorsed a number of conspiracy theories, whether it was about the firing of the scientists at the Winnipeg Lab, or around the United Nations when he was pretending to be a “true blue conservative” during the leadership. And while this has been seen by some as a rebuke of Poilievre, there was absolutely no contrition about any of what he did, from the serial lying, to his autocratic power games at the end of his leadership. The most he said was “too many members on all sides of this Chamber, and from time to time I have been guilty of it myself, are becoming followers of our followers when we should be leaders.” That was it. That was his contrition to how much he has done all of the things he is decrying as he exits, the bravery of someone who no longer has to live with the consequences of his actions.

https://twitter.com/dwjudson/status/1668484357089099777

It amazes me that the pundit classes, who have been falling all over O’Toole’s speech, keep memory-holing the entire tenure of his leadership and what an absolute lying, tyrannical disaster that he was throughout. Ignoring who he proved himself to be in favour of the image that pundits so desperately want him to be is a choice. And as he heads off to spend more time in his basement podcast studio, it would be great if we could be clear-eyed about just who O’Toole is, instead of just falling for his sombre-voice trick.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine says it has liberated seven villages in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces, as the counter-offensive gets underway. Russians, meanwhile, have been shelling Kharkiv, as well as nine towns and villages in Donetsk. They also launched an overnight attack against the central city of Kryvyi Rih, and there are reports of dead and wounded.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1668246754540630017

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Roundup: LeBlanc wants the opposition to put up

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In the wake of David Johnston’s resignation (and because it happened on a Friday evening when the prime minister was out of the country, we are counting this as being done with spite), Dominic LeBlanc held a press conference on Saturday to try and turn the tables. Yes, they will consider a public inquiry, but the opposition parties need to get together to determine a commissioner, a timeline, and terms of reference, and godspeed to them in doing so. The theory is that the opposition wanted to be in this so badly, and they blew up the last process, so now they need to show up and do the work. I’m…dubious. I mean, I get that he wants to make the opposition leaders eat their words, and it may yet happen, but I’m not a fan of the government just taking their hands entirely off the wheel here because the Inquiries Act determines that this is a government process, and turning over these decisions is laundering the accountability for them, which is always a very bad thing.

Pierre Poilievre said on Sunday that he would be willing to work with the Bloc and the NDP on doing said work, in order to ensure that a commissioner is “independent and unbiased,” but good luck finding someone who is acceptable to everyone, and who is willing to take on the job, considering how much the opposition parties have fouled the well with the spate of character assassination and willingness to outright lie in bad faith about everything in order to score points. (Note that the government is not blameless in that they never should have picked Johnston in the first place, and should have taken more responsibility around the decision of whether or not to hold an inquiry at all instead of outsourcing the credibility responsibility). I expect these negotiations to drag on, and for the government to find the eventual outcome to be so poisonous as to reject them outright, because we are not dealing with serious people who act in good faith any longer.

Meanwhile, Andrew Scheer continues to be the klassy parliamentarian he has always proved himself to be. I would say it’s unbelievable, but sadly, this is who he is, and it’s all too believable.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to have indicated that the counter-offensive has begun, but offers no details at this particular time, while the Russians counter with disinformation. Ukrainian forces did report recapturing a south-eastern village on Sunday, with reports that Russian forces opened fire on a boat carrying civilians evacuating from flooded areas. Ukrainian forces also advanced some 1400 metres near Bakhmut. Also over the weekend, Russian strikes killed three in Odessa, and killed and wounded others attacking Kharkiv.

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Roundup: Exit David Johnston

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Around 5.30 PM on a Friday evening, the Rt. Hon. David Johnston tendered his resignation as the special rapporteur on foreign interference, citing that the political firestorm around him has reached a point where his job of trying to restore confidence in our electoral system is now impossible, and while he does not counsel a public inquiry, he did urge consultation on choosing a replacement, for what it’s worth. Of course, what this really means is that instead of doing the work of the actual process part of this issue, sorting out what happened in the senior levels of bureaucracy and how to fix it going forward, we now get to spend the next six months fighting over a name that will be acceptable to all parties, whether it’s to continue the existing process or a public inquiry like everyone thinks they want.

In response, the Conservatives crowed and declared that this “proves” that Johnston was flawed from the start, and that his determination that we don’t need a public inquiry was also wrong, so launch a public inquiry, with a lot of Trudeau Foundation conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. The Bloc were insisting that the head of an inquiry be chosen by Parliament (which is wrong and insane), while the NDP were declaring victory and patting themselves on the back because Johnston, in their estimation, heeded their motion to resign, never mind that he said nothing about that in his resignation letter, and repudiated their performance while at committee. (Peter Julian insisted that by his action of resigning, he took the NDP’s position, which is the most self-aggrandising bullshit this side of Pierre Poilievre). But the underlying notion that Parliament choose the head of an inquiry is both contrary to the law, which clearly states that the head of an inquiry is a Governor-in-Council appointment, and it also launders accountability going forward, which of course MPs can’t get their heads around because almost none of them understands that their role is about holding government to account.

None of this solves the underlying problem that a public inquiry is not magic. Everyone demanding one seems to think it can be wrapped up in the space of a few months, and that can be broad enough in scope to fully understand how deep Chinese infiltration goes into our country, while also providing concrete recommendations for protecting the next election. That’s not going to happen in a few months—that kind of scoping takes years, and is not going to get to the fundamental issue here, which is that this is ultimately a process story about the machinery of government, dealing with classified information, and that a public inquiry can’t hear most of it. That is, if they can find someone to head it who meets everyone’s satisfaction and who is willing to put themselves through the character assassination that will follow. This is one giant mess, and there’s more than enough blame to go around to absolutely everyone, and it’s not going to get any better.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian authorities claim that they have repelled a Ukrainian advance into Zaporizhzhia, and inflicted heavy casualties, but there is no confirmation of these claims. Meanwhile, more Ukrainians are being evacuated from flooded homes after Russia destroyed the dam on the Dnipro river.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1667133462787047425?s=61&t=OQl-ixPj-I_27b0NFGeMZg

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1667094711994052609?s=61&t=OQl-ixPj-I_27b0NFGeMZg

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Roundup: Empty threats to sit into the summer

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Because this whole thing is nothing but really bad theatre, Pierre Poilievre went back before the microphones yesterday morning, declared victory from his fauxlibuster that didn’t accomplish a single gods damned thing, and then said that he was prepared to sit through the summer to make sure that the he got his budget demands. But that was another empty threat, because he doesn’t have the votes to block anything.

And lo, after Question Period, the budget bill passed as it was expected to, and is off to the Senate. Poilievre says his senators will try to stall or stop the bill there, but again, they don’t have anywhere near enough votes for that to make a difference, even if they do have a few more procedural opportunities to slow it down a little. Of course, this is a government bill so the Leader of the Government in the Senate can attempt time allocation if he thinks he has the votes to pull it off (and he probably does), so the delays will likely be fairly minimal.

This being said, the Government House Leader also said that he won’t let the House rise for the summer until they pass his motion to make hybrid sittings permanent, which is an abomination that is going to hasten the decline of our already weakened Parliament. (And yes, I have a full column on this coming out later today).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1666830949420609537

Ukraine Dispatch:

While evacuations are taking place in Kherson as a result of the flood caused by the breached dam, Russians are shelling the area, including evacuation hotspots, because of course they are. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the area to see the flood devastation first-hand. Russians launched another overnight air attack, killing one person in Uman in the Cherkasy region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1666798523793244162

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Roundup: The “filibuster” that wasn’t

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A particular level of self-aggrandisement seems to be taking hold in the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, as he describes things that are not reflective of reality. Yesterday morning, he summoned the media to a speech he delivered to caucus—something that is not uncommon for the last caucus meeting before the summer break, but we are still two weeks away from that. There, he promised that he was going to rise in the House of Commons at 7 PM and begin a filibuster of the budget bill, and that he wouldn’t stop until the government backed down and acceded to his demands.

Except it was all bullshit.

There wasn’t going to be a filibuster. The House had already passed a programming motion, thanks to the NDP, that laid out just how many hours left of debate there were before the final debate, and Poilievre couldn’t just talk and talk past he expiry of that clock. It was already set in stone. So, after another attempted abuse of remote voting as a procedural tactic (which the Deputy Speaker lost all patience with), Poilievre got up to give his five hours of allotted time. But again, this isn’t actually a filibuster because the leader of the opposition gets unlimited speaking time to certain items on the Order Paper, and this was one of them. He wasn’t filibustering anything. He was showboating.

While Conservatives flooded social media with effusive praise about how he was standing up for defenceless Canadians against the predations of the government, and they kept praising how long he was speaking, he wasn’t actually accomplishing anything other than playing to his own backbenches. It’s not like anyone other than a few shut-ins and reporters who drew the short straw were watching. He didn’t stop the budget bill, because it was already the subject of a programming motion. He just talked for the sake of it, and was even finished before midnight hit, when the time would have expired automatically. There was nothing heroic about this action, and it accomplished exactly nothing at all.

https://twitter.com/a_picazo/status/1666653154694266880

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for international assistance in dealing with the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, as they continue to evacuate people from floods, and local authorities rush things like drinking water to the affected area. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have gained more ground around Bakhmut, but insist that this is not part of any ongoing spring offensive.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1666417873776959489

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Roundup: Johnston’s day at committee

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As expected, David Johnston’s testimony at the Procedure and House Affairs committee was largely a three-hour exercise in partisan showboating, most especially typified by the fact that Jagmeet Singh decided to make a personal appearance at committee so that he could get clips of himself haranguing Johnston, like he tried to do with Galen Weston (and looking like a fool for the most part considering he made the big song and dance about getting thousands of questions from Canadians and asking none of them). In fact, there were almost no actual questions on foreign interference over those three hours, because of course there weren’t.

Once again, Johnstone disputed the claims that he is biased, or in any number of conflicts of interest, and further made the point that he believes the vote in the House of Commons about him was based on false information. (Also, the House of Commons has been known on several occasions to hold these votes on risible matters, especially if they think they can embarrass the government, while the only votes that really matter are confidence ones, and that’s not going to happen). He said that he didn’t reach out to MP Han Dong before he cleared him in the report, in part because of Dong’s lawsuit and because he read intelligence that countered what had been reported. (I’m also not sure why that would have been necessary if the point of the exercise was to review the intelligence). He also made it clear he didn’t see every single document, because that would be impossible, but that the intelligence services were entirely forthcoming.

One of the things we ultimately need to grapple with in this story, which media outlets are incapable of doing, is that this is a process story. It’s almost entirely a machinery of government issue in terms of intelligence dissemination and consumption, and that’s unsexy and difficult to explain, so instead, the focus remains on Johnston himself, and making details about what the government did and didn’t know as lurid as possible, helped along by the fact that the leaker(s) is shaping the narrative in a particular way, using draft documents that contained items not found in the final documents that were pushed up the chain, and there is almost certainly intention behind that, which again, there has been absolutely no self-reflection around on the part of the media organisations doing the reporting. Instead of stopping to ask if they’ve been played, they rationalise and justify. And because this is a process stories, and mainstream outlets are allergic to those, this whole affair just spins further into both-sidesing the meathead partisanship on display.

Ukraine Dispatch:

With the explosion at the Kakhovka Dam, there is now an evacuation effort underway as the region begins to flood, with 22,000 people in areas in most danger. It could also have repercussions for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which uses that water for cooling operations. There is concern that this could forestall any Ukrainian counter-offensive in the region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the dam attack is an “environmental bomb of mass destruction,” and  has already approached the Hague about the incident. Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine is awaiting the final agreement on acquiring F-16 fighter jets. Russian, meanwhile, have been shelling an ammonia pipeline in the Kharkiv region, which has been part of the Black Sea deal around exporting grains and fertilizers.

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Roundup: Declaring war on the budget for no reason

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The Conservatives have declared war on the budget, and have begun a campaign of procedural warfare over it. It began on Friday, with the abuse of remote voting, where they abandoned the Chamber for a vote and instead all voted remotely, after which they claimed there was a “technical problem” and each of them requested that their vote be verified, thus slowing down the process immensely. (Seriously, end remote voting. It’s anathema to our system).

Yesterday they announced that they had a campaign of hundreds of amendments and other tactics at their disposal unless their demands were met—balancing the budget, and ending increases to “all carbon taxes,” meaning the federal carbon price and the clean fuel standard (which is not a carbon price, and may never see an increase in the price at the pumps if the minister has his way). Their justification for this—that these deficits are inflationary and driving up interest rates—is illiterate nonsense, and the kinds of misinformation/disinformation that we have come to expect from them. And yet, we have a bunch of pundits who insist this is “good politics.” I’m not sure how, but here we are.

More than anything, one has to wonder why they are going nuclear over this. These kinds of tactics are generally reserved for when the government crosses a line, does something that attacks Parliament, or seriously undermines Parliament or democracy. Using them for bullshit theatre continues this pattern of all tactics, no strategy that the NDP became famous for during their stint as official opposition, and it’s just abusing Parliament more than anything the government is doing. I simply cannot fathom how they feel this is going to help them, rather than simply looking like they are wasting everyone’s time.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces appear to have blown up a dam on the Dnipro River near Kherson, which could lead to mass flooding. Ukrainian forces appear to be attempting to punch through Russian lines in the south-eastern part of the country, which could be a sign that the counter-offensive is underway. Russians also launched yet another early-morning attack on Kyiv, where air defences have shot down at least 20 missiles so far.

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Roundup: Involving Elections Canada?

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The Chief Electoral Officer is talking about approaching parties about monitoring nomination races, which I have some mixed feelings about. While the impetus around this is of course the ongoing paranoia about foreign interference and the notion that Chinese agents are trying to stage-manage these contests, that’s really the least of our concerns, because more often than not, the real problem is party leaders gaming these races in order to get their own preferred candidates on the ballot. Mind you, that is increasingly becoming a quaint notion as many parties are increasingly just foregoing nomination races entirely, and the leader is simply using their powers to appoint people to nominations, which betrays the whole mechanism of grassroots politics, and the Liberals have become some of the absolute worst about this.

But seriously—Samara Canada did a study on this a couple of years ago, and it’s shocking just how much parties have put their thumbs on the scales of these contests. (It’s actually worse than the report describes because the researchers credulously believed the NDP around their own claims around open nominations, ignoring everything that had been printed about all of their paper candidates who won in 2011, who absolutely did not even visit the ridings they had been assigned to beforehand, let alone face an actual nomination battle). The drama with the current by-election in Oxford is because the retired Conservative MP is outraged that Poilievre and Scheer put their thumbs on the scale to get their friend parachuted and nominated against someone from inside the riding, which is why he’s now supporting the Liberal candidate.

The big drawback, however, is that Elections Canada monitoring these contests is likely to become even more intrusive, because parties are essentially private clubs, which is not an especially bad thing. But we also have a huge volume of registered parties in this country who will never win a seat, and if Elections Canada has to monitor all of their nominations as well, that could be a giant swelling of their bureaucracy in order to have people who can monitor every one of these contests, particularly in advance of an election call, and in the time between the election being called and the cut-off date for names to be on the ballot. I’m not sure how feasible that’s going to be. The way our laws are currently structured were done in a way to explicitly keep Elections Canada from getting involved (which is why we developed a system of leaders signing off on nominations, which in turn became abused and a tool of blackmail). So while I’m cognisant that we have a problem with nominations in this country, I’m not sure that involving Elections Canada is the right solution.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There was another round of fire against Kyiv early on Sunday, which was largely repelled in the city but a regional airfield was hit. Russian forces struck the city of Dnipro, killing a child and wounding at least 25 others in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says have been five hundred child deaths so far. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces keep up their operations around Bakhmut, preventing Russian forces from solidifying gains in the city itself. Russians claim to have thwarted Ukrainian attacks in Donetsk province. This as Zelenskyy says that they are ready to begin the spring counter-offensive. Elsewhere, that survey of air raid shelters across Ukraine found that a quarter of them were locked or unusable, which is resulting in some charges.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1665267153778401280

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Roundup: Proactively calling in Navigator

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There was some late-in-the-day excitement in the political sphere last night as it was confirmed that David Johnston has hired crisis communications firm Navigator to help with his media relations, because of course he has. Now, there is some context here in that he hired them off the start and not only in the last week as the toxic bullshit that surrounds his report has been cranked up to eleven, but that would also mean that they were likely the ones who advised him on how to handle the allegations of the conflict of interest, which doesn’t actually exist, but the fact that he spent so much time on it during his press conference didn’t seem to help matters any.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1664764909974896640

Yes, Navigator has become something of a punchline in Canadian politics, particularly of late, and someone remarked over Twitter that it’s on par with people hiring former Supreme Court of Canada justices to burnish their reputations. (And lo, Johnston did just that as part of his ensuring he didn’t have an actual conflict of interest). And if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that this blind spot that people in politics seem to have around Navigator’s waning reputation is in part because of their clubbiness with the people who work there. It’s full of people who spent a lot of time in politics and who are still actively involved, and everyone knows them, so they feel they can trust these people they know, never mind that their reputation as a whole has taken a beating. And yeah, that blind spot is a problem.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure this news changes anything. Johnston pretty much has to keep on working because frankly, there is no one else who can take over at this point. The field has been flooded with bullshit, and the opposition attacks have made this poisonous for anyone to step into the role, either to take over from Johnston as a special rapporteur or to head a public inquiry. (I have a column on this that should be out later today).

Ukraine Dispatch:

The total air barrage countered overnight on Thursday was 15 cruise missiles and 21 drones, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ordering an audit of air raid shelters after three people died after being locked out on the street during a raid. Zelenskyy has also acknowledged that NATO membership is impossible until after they win the war against Russia (for reasons that should be immediately obvious). Meanwhile, top US military officials say that Abrams tanks and F-16 jets are long-term plans for Ukraine, and training is being organised, but they won’t happen for the upcoming spring/summer counteroffensive.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1664615530215485443

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1664600643305193472

https://twitter.com/anitaanandmp/status/1664582278897434627

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