Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: No single point of failure

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It was another big day at the Procedure and House Affairs committee as both the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas, appeared, as did Bill Blair, both on the subject of what they knew about the “threats” against Michael Chong and his family. What we got was a bit more of the corroboration from the Johnston report that the process of pushing intelligence up to senior levels hasn’t been working, which is why these things weren’t noticed or acted upon earlier. Blair in particular offered more clarity about the issue with the top-secret emails and how it’s being misconstrued that he didn’t have passwords to it. No, it’s that he doesn’t have access to that system period, and CSIS prepares a package from him and brings it to him physically. He did also take a bit of a swipe at CSIS, saying that the Chong information was determined to be something that they didn’t think the minister needed to know, which is a bit petty.

What stood out for me the most was Thomas saying that there wasn’t one single point of failure here, or one link in the chain, but a flaw in the process, which is consistent with what Johnston put in his report. This is why I can’t believe that anyone who says that the report is some kind of cover-up has actually read the report because it’s quite clearly pointing to these appalling failures on the part of senior levels of government, and that is on the government to have done something about. They are responsible, and they need to fully own it in order to make the necessary changes.

I would also add that while this testimony was good to have, I still don’t see how this relates to Chong’s privileges supposedly being breached, and what remedies should be applied. There seems to be an effort to make this into a bigger issue around foreign interference, and not on the specific issue of Chong, and what the House of Commons should do if his privileges as an MP were specifically breached,  and I’m not seeing much of that.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired over 30 missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight, and all appear to have been shot down. The Russians also claim that they destroyed Ukraine’s “last warship” in a strike on Odessa, but Ukraine won’t talk about whether it’s true or not. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Moldova for the NATO meeting, calling for security guarantees if Ukraine can’t get NATO membership until the war is over. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against Ukraine in denying same-sex marriage licences, which is going to need to be part of Ukraine’s hoped-for European integration.

https://twitter.com/internewsua/status/1664252937156059140

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1664311594858299402

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Roundup: Johnston carries on with the job

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As expected, all of the opposition parties voted for the NDP’s motion to call on David Johnston to step aside and for the government to call a public inquiry, and it passed. It’s a non-binding motion, and so it doesn’t have much weight, and Johnston put out a reply shortly thereafter saying that his mandate comes from government and not Parliament, so he’s going to keep doing his job. (Of note, only government and not Parliament can call a public inquiry as well, so the notion that Johnston is “not independent” because his mandate comes from government is stupid, illogical, and made in bad faith). The NDP motion also ignores one other crucial bit of reality, which is that there is almost zero chance that there would be a suitable replacement who would actually want to subject themselves to ongoing character assassination and harassment, whom every party leader can also agree to because they have no conflicts of interest, real or invented (and there are a hell of a lot of invented ones at play).

I will note that David Cochrane put these questions to Jagmeet Singh on Power & Politics last night, and Singh just flailed and kept repeating his talking points about the “appearance of bias,” and accusing Johnston’s lawyer of being biased because she has been a Liberal donor (never mind that she doesn’t actually make any decisions here), and kept saying that he wasn’t casting aspersions on Johnston when he obviously was by repeating the false accusations of bias.

Meanwhile, here’s Jessica Davis on how untenable this situation has become, which is why Johnston unfortunately remains the best-placed person to finish the job (click through for the whole thread).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have kept up their air attacks on Kyiv, and at least three people were killed overnight as a result. Russians are claiming that Ukrainians shelled one of their towns, and that their drones struck two oil refineries (the veracity of said claims remains untested).

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1663786012164734977

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Roundup: O’Toole claims privilege over foreign interference

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Yesterday in the House of Commons, Erin O’Toole rose on a point of privilege to say that his briefing from CSIS warned of “active” campaigns against him from China in four categories—that they are funding operatives to build propaganda campaigns against him, funding networks to amplify it, using WeChat for that purpose, and run voter suppression against his party and one MP in particular. His claim is that the government’s inability or unwillingness to act on the intelligence of foreign interference impacts his privileges as an MP.

I’m dubious that this constitutes an actual breach of privilege, because frankly, if disinformation campaigns, social media amplification and voter suppression are happening, well, his own party is just as guilty as the Chinese regime of doing exactly the same thing. I also fail to see what the House of Commons can do about addressing this supposed breach of privilege other than vote on sending a strongly-worded rebuke to the regime in Beijing. I also don’t necessarily trust that O’Toole is giving us all of the relevant details because he seemed to be very selective with what he wrote about his meeting with David Johnston on his Substack, and I cannot stress this enough, Erin O’Toole is a serial liar. Unfortunately, because he does it with a solemn tone and not, say, a clown nose and a unicycle, he manages to bamboozle a swath of the pundit class who are convinced that he’s the upstanding guy that they all want him to be rather than who he proved himself to be during his leadership, and that somehow, now that he’s no longer the leader, he’s gone back to being the guy they all want him to be. I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, the NDP used their Supply Day to call on David Johnston to step down so that the government will call a public inquiry. This while Pierre Poilievre is daring Singh to bring down the government, and Singh saying he won’t until trust is restored in elections (which is tactically stupid). The government insists they have confidence in Johnston, but it does raise the point that if everyone but the Liberals vote for this, it becomes politically untenable for the government to maintain the current course of action, even if it’s the right thing to do (because I remain unconvinced that a public inquiry will do absolutely anything more in this situation other than take three years, cost $180 million, and create a media circus with a daily drip of “revelations” that will amount to nothing but will nevertheless fuel said media circus). But this may wind up backing the Liberals into a corner and forcing them to call an inquiry, lest the damage get worse.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith stays, Alberta still a one-party state

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Well, Alberta has decided that it remains a one-party state, no matter how corrupted that party is, or how completely awful the leader is, and just how utterly unsuited Danielle Smith is for office, and that she has embraced all manner of conspiracy theories, or behaved in ways that imperilled democracy. While I have a full column on this coming out later today, there are a couple of things not mentioned therein that I did still want to mention.

One is that I cannot fathom how the whole “Take Back Alberta” narrative persisted. Take it back from whom? From what? You’ve been a one-party state for nearly fifty years, minus the four-year NDP interregnum that came about as a result of a perfect storm that in no way could be replicated this time around.

The NDP ran a weak campaign, and they are now comforting themselves with the fact that they have the largest official opposition in the province’s history, for what little it matters because Smith still has a majority, and they have no actual leverage to make any particular difference in the legislature. I am feeling some flashbacks to 2011 when the federal NDP formed official opposition and felt like they won the election, when they also handed the Conservatives a majority and they had no actual ability to make change or have leverage.

There is also still a particular ugliness in this election, as exemplified by the fact that the UCP candidate who compared trans children to faeces in cookie batter won by a landslide. Smith claims that she’s out of caucus “for good,” but I don’t actually believe her, and I have no doubt that after a few months in that penalty box, she’ll be welcomed back into the party because Smith believes in forgiveness, or some bullshit like that. And not nearly enough people will do any soul-searching over this, and this ugliness will fester.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Another night, another massive air raid against Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine, with more than 20 drones shot down as of this writing, and at least one high rise is being evacuated as falling debris has caused a fire. The constant nightly air attacks against Kyiv are taking a toll on its citizens (which is of course why the Russians are doing it). Russians did also allegedly hit a Ukrainian air base, plus port infrastructure in Odessa. There was also a Russian attack on the city of Toretsk in the Donetsk region, which killed two and injured at least eight.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1663350609385254912

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1663176973793861633

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Roundup: A rare Harper appearance

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Former prime minister Stephen Harper was recently at a Fraser Institute event in Vancouver, where he said that Chinese foreign interference is probably “far worse than we think,” and is calling for an end to what he calls “naïve globalism,” which is a pretty loaded term. On the former, one has to ask just what exactly Harper did about said foreign interference when he was prime minister, because all indications are that it was probably close to zero, as he weakened oversight over national security and intelligence agencies and put no electoral safeguards in place (as he was trying to make it harder for groups like students to vote), while he went over to Beijing to grovel before Xi Jinping for the sake of opening up trade after his earlier tough-guy stance on China wasn’t getting him anywhere. And hey, he got a panda out of it (for a little while, anyway).

On the latter, this whole “globalism” thing is pretty cringey because that’s frequently code-word for “the Jews,” and falls into a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Harper was a big fan of the whole “somewheres” versus “rootless cosmopolitans” view of the world, but again, the “rootless cosmopolitans” also falls into those same antisemitic tropes. This fear over “globalism” or “globalists” is pretty big in far-right circles, and Harper is using those same dog whistles.

I would also point out that in the same speech, he mentioned that his activist investment fund is located in Florida because “Florida is booming,” citing its “low taxes, low regulation, lots of spending on police and falling rates of crime.” Again, red flags because Florida is also engaging in fascistic behaviour, targeting minorities and most especially the LGBTQ+ communities, and it’s particularly alarming that he’s glossing over this while offering praise to Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith, who has also been praising Ron DeSantis as part of her campaign. (And no, the IDU is not a fascist organization, and Harper is not some Bond villain, so don’t even think about commenting on that, because I have zero patience for it).

Ukraine Dispatch:

On the anniversary of Kyiv’s founding, Russia launched its largest air assault yet on the city, with 58 out of 59 drones being shot down, the debris causing some damage including to an institute for the blind. Meanwhile, Russian attacks have eased in and around Bakhmut, possibly because of the Wagner Group handover.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1662337489334419458

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Roundup: Claims O’Toole also was a target

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It is being alleged that Erin O’Toole has been briefed by CSIS that Chinese agents had been targeting him during his time as party leader because of his bellicose language about the regime. While there is no indication his family was also being targeted, his sister did live in Hong Kong for a number of years. Of course, I am taking the language in the article with a few grains of salt because the Johnston report pointed out that threats weren’t actually made to Michael Chong’s family, but that there was an indication that the agent in Canada was trying to gather information, so what exactly this “targeting” of O’Toole consists of I am keeping my powder dry on.

This has, of course, given rise to another round of cries for a public inquiry. Not one of them has articulated just how such an inquiry would make any iota of difference from the current process being undertaken by Johnston (aside from taking three years and costing a few hundred million dollars). How exactly does this situation require additional subpoena powers when the government has willingly turned over all of their documentation? If most of it will need to be behind closed doors because of the nature of the information, how exactly does this build trust? Nobody has yet articulated this, and “it just will” is not an answer—especially when the media and the opposition have been undermining trust in how these matters are being reported and discussed, and I fail to see how a public inquiry will change any of this.

Meanwhile, David Johnston took to the op-ed pages of the Globe and Mail to defend his decision to carry on with the review in light of the criticisms of his involvement, which has been pointed out seems to misunderstand the nature of how the political game is played these days. Of course, Johnston is hoping that he can get MPs and party leaders to be grown-ups and work together on this problem, but that’s unlikely to happen in the current climate and especially with the current players, and in that same token, writing an op-ed in the Globe seems a bit like that same kind of naïve hope that people will treat this as they did a couple of decades ago.

On a related note, the CBC has one of the worst examples of both-sidesing the supposed controversy around Johnston’s alleged conflict of interest—two professors who say it’s probably not a conflict, all things considered, but Democracy Watch (which has no actual credibility other than they are a reliable quote generator for lazy journalists) says it is, so it’s up to Canadians to decide. Seriously? This is exactly the kind of thing that has allowed misinformation and disinformation to flourish, because they refuse to call out bullshit when they see it. This is killing democracy, and they absolutely refuse to engage in any self-reflection about it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck a clinic in the city of Dnipro, killing two and wounding 30, after Ukrainian forces shot down ten missiles and twenty drones targeting Dnipro and Kyiv overnight. Meanwhile, the disaffected Russian group has allegedly shelled more targets in Belgorod region in Russia. Ukraine’s defence ministry is warning that Russia plans to simulate a major accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in order to thwart the coming counter-offensive.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1662024887731474432?s=61&t=P3QULyv63iAc0o1A98RiWQ

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1661975921455161344?s=61&t=P3QULyv63iAc0o1A98RiWQ

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Roundup: Arguing over an appearance already scheduled

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It’s not even a sitting week, and yet we were treated to another instalment of the parliamentary clown show that has infected our House of Commons. The Procedure and House Affairs committee held an emergency meeting to demand that David Johnston appear before them to explain his reasons for not recommending a public inquiry. But the moment they got there, the chair said that Johnston was already scheduled to appear at the committee on June 6th, and that this had been arranged previously, and it just confirmed that this insistence he appear right away was just really, really bad theatre.

And then it went downhill from there, as MPs spent the next four hours debating a motion for Johnston to appear even sooner than the 6th, for no less than three hours, alone, because remember, they need to put on a bit song and dance about how they’re so serious! about all of these allegations. As I said, bad theatre. And then, the Liberals and NDP decided to try and be clever about this, and include a recommendation in the motion that all party leaders go through the security clearance process in order to read the full report and all of its classified evidence used to compile it. Well, that didn’t go over very well, and in the end, the Conservatives voted against their own motion because they didn’t want to be called out for refusing to actually read the full documents.

Spending four hours to try and sound tougher about a pre-scheduled meeting, to give themselves the last word, is just one more reason why our Parliament is no longer a serious institution. It’s appalling that they have wasted everyone’s time and resource like this, because Michael Cooper needed to make himself look like a tough guy. Inexcusable.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Wagner Group mercenaries are preparing to turn over control of their positions in Bakhmut to Russian soldiers, while Ukraine says that Wagner is only turning over positions on the outskirts of the city, and that they have drawn Russian forces into the city, where they are inflicting high casualties and weakening Russian defensive lines elsewhere. A prisoner swap took place for 106 Ukrainian soldiers, some of them captured in the fighting in Bakhmut. Russian control of one of the dams along the Dnipro river is causing flooding because they haven’t been working to level the water flow with the other dams in the network.

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Roundup: Why read when you can have a dog and pony show?

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The morning after the David Johnston report and his recommendation not to hold a public inquiry, and the day was largely just more people demanding one anyway. Yves-François Blanchet decided to team up with Pierre Poilievre to declare that any ability to give them classified briefings was a “trap” to shut them up, which is a) patently ridiculous, b) a test of being adults that they both failed, and c) an admission that they would rather make hay than actually do the work of accountability that their job requires of them, which again, goes to the fact that ours is no longer a serious Parliament.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1661329685546975232

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1661383973488975872

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1661372432676954118

As if to prove that Parliament is not serious, opposition members on the Procedure and House Affairs committee are now demanding that Johnston appear before them to explain his decision not to recommend a public inquiry. I mean, those reasons are all in his report if they bothered to read it, but that’s not what this is about. Rather, they want a dog and pony show, a chance to mug for the cameras while they hurl either invective or sanctimony toward him (depending which opposition party we’re discussing here) so that they can take those clips for their social media.

Meanwhile, two of the journalists reporting on the leaked documents were on Power & Politics last night, an as expected, there was zero self-reflection or acknowledgement that they might be getting played, particularly after Johnston debunked things they have written about. Instead, we got self-justification and rationalization, and trying to insist that Johnston wasn’t the expert while their leaker was—never mind that we can see that what was leaked was done in a way to craft a particular narrative that appears to have partisan ends. And lo, the same pair produced one of the laziest stories I’ve seen in weeks, where they got two former commission counsel to insist that a public inquiry would “restore confidence” without actually saying how.

Ukraine Dispatch:

All the news appears to be about those Russian dissent groups crossing into Belgorod region in Russian, denying reports that they were “crushed” by Russian forces ad saying that they’ll keep up the incursions, which is likely to stretch Russia’s forces even more than they are already over-extended maintaining their invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Norway will also help train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets (but I haven’t heard who will be donating the aircraft just yet).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1661405030388310018

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1661249400281202688

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Roundup: Johnston says no public inquiry

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It was David Johnston Day, as his first report was delivered, and he did not recommend a public inquiry for very good reasons—particularly that it could not be necessarily public given the nature of the information, and that it would be window dressing at this stage of the game, considering he had already done a lot of the heavy lifting, and planned to do public hearings as part of his final report. You can read the full report here, but here are the five key takeaways. There was plenty of scathing material in there, particularly to the system of information dissemination within government, but also to the way media stories torqued partial information into falsehoods (the Han Dong allegations were discredited in the report). There is a problem with information culture within government, and while this government has done a lot to fix some things, they are not adapting fast enough to the changing environment, and that is on them. (Check out some of the threads linked below as well).

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1661045080705187842

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1661080153122848781

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/1661211717924188161

Johnston’s decision was necessarily a no-win scenario, and everyone is unhappy, but nobody has exactly explained how a public inquiry was going to restore trust in the democratic system—particularly as it comes under attack by bad faith actors who spent the day trying to discredit Johnston and his report (never mind that he did address the alleged conflicts and consulted with a former Supreme Court of Canada justice before accepting the job), and that no matter who would lead either the Special Rapporteur process or a theoretical public inquiry, there would be the same bad faith attacks because they don’t actually want to restore faith in the process. They want people to distrust because they cynically hope to leverage that in the next election. Pierre Poilievre in particular has refused to strike any kind of statesmanlike tone and refuses to be briefed because he knows that the moment he actually knows the intelligence and can’t talk about it, he can’t outright lie and make accusations with wild abandon, and that’s his entire shtick. But this is a fairly classic Canadian problem, where MPs don’t want to know the actual secret information, because then they’d have to stop talking, which they don’t want to do. Remember, ours is no longer a serious Parliament.

There is a conversation to be had about the role media is playing in undermining the faith in democracy, but you can rest assured there will be no self-reflection around it. Rather, there will be self-justification and rationalization, and sniping that Johnston expects us to take the intelligence he’s seen at face value, which is ironic considering that the media outlets reporting on these leaks are expecting us to do the very same thing, even though there are agendas at play within that reporting.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661050997936996356

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661051520018706432

In pundit reaction, Justin Ling gives a fairly balanced summation of the report with some insightful commentary. Susan Delacourt is sceptical of Johnston’s assertion that politicians and media can play their parts in restoring faith in democracy. Andrew Coyne is unhappy with the notion that we are expected to just trust Johnston (ignoring the contradiction made above), and while he credits Johnston with inviting NSICOP and NSIRA to review his findings, the same secrecy problem remains. Matt Gurney despairs at the picture of incompetence the report paints.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Following his return to Ukraine after meetings at the G7 in Hiroshima, Japan, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visted marines on the front lines in the country’s east. Over the weekend, the Russians claimed they overran Bakhmut over the weekend, which Ukraine denies, particularly as they have been reclaiming territory surrounding it. Russians are also claiming Ukrainian “sabotage groups” are crossing the border into the Belgorod region, but it sounds like these may be disaffected Russians, as Ukrainans deny involvement. Russians later claim to have “crushed” these groups.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1660291196030271490

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1660884230174560256

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Roundup: A bad report and a bad debate

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer released another one of his highly dubious reports yesterday, this time on the incoming clean fuel regulations. Why is it dubious? Because it’s entirely one-sided and assumes no costs to climate change, and no adaptation on the part of industry in order to bring costs down to meet their obligations under the regulations, which is the whole gods damned point of these kinds of mechanisms. Oh, and this isn’t fiscal policy, so it’s not clear why he’s even doing this kind of report in the first place.

As you may have noticed during Question Period, the Conservatives jumped all over this report and its findings, and when they were questioned, their media staff were over social media accusing people of calling the PBO a liar. Well, it’s not that he’s a liar—it’s bad data, a bad report, and the numbers taken from it were used dishonestly and entirely in bad faith. And the PBO gets the attention he’s looking for, and around and around we go.

Rachel Notley vs Danielle Smith

For the purposes of researching my column last night, I subjected myself to the leaders’ debate in the Alberta election and it was…not great. Yes, lots of people gushed at how nice it was just to have two leaders going head-to-head and not four or five, but we don’t have a two-party system federally (and it’s a bad sign that Alberta has a de facto one provincially).

My not-too-original observations were that Notley was weirdly on the defensive most of the night, while Smith was pretending to be the upstart challenger rather than the incumbent, attacking Notley on her record at every turn when Notley wasn’t effectively throwing many punches herself. Yes, she did well on the healthcare and education portions, but was not effectively countering Smith’s confident bullshit throughout, and that’s a real problem in a lower voter-information environment, where that confidence plays well regardless of the fact that Smith lied constantly with a straight face. On the very day that Smith was found to have broken the province’s Conflict of Interest Act, Notley had a hard time effectively making this point, while Smith claimed vindication because it showed she didn’t directly call Crown prosecutors, while it full-out warned that Smith’s behaviour was a threat to democracy, and Notley could barely say the words.

Programming Note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so expect the next post to be on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There are reports of more air raids in Ukraine early Friday morning. Russians fired 30 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets in the early morning hours on Thursday, and Ukraine shot down 29 of them, with the one that got through striking an industrial building in Odessa, killing one and wounding two. There were also further gains made around Bakhmut, and even the Wagner Group’s leader says that they have bene in retreat. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy set up a reintegration council in order to provide advice for the restoration of Ukrainian rule when they liberate Crimean.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1659213321927794693

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