Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: The frustrated Commissioner was part of the problem

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The outgoing Ethics Commissioner is starting to do exit interviews, and he’s expressing frustration that these kinds of ethics violations keep happening, despite the law being in place for 17 years now. To that I say two things:

1) No matter how many rules you put in place, it won’t matter because the Liberals under Trudeau fundamentally believe that so long as they mean well, the ends will justify the means, and that it’s better to simply apologise after having broken rules than it is to scrupulously and slavishly adhere to them in the first place. You can’t just put new rules to stop them from that particular belief, and no amount of training from the Commissioner’s office is likely to shake them from such beliefs.

2) Our ethics regime sucks, in large part because so much of it is predicated on the whims of the Commissioner, and this Commissioner had a lot of whims. His predecessor had a habit of reading her mandate so narrowly that nothing ever applied, except for a small handful of cases, one of which was Trudeau’s vacation with the Aga Khan, in which she made up rules around what a family friendship entails. The current Commissioner has been the opposite, reading his mandate very, very expansively so that things it should not encompass, it does (like the SNC-Lavalin issue). He has made up statutory interpretation from whole cloth, such as the definition of what constitutes “family” under the Act, and capturing relatives through marriage that no other statute in the country captures in its definitions (the issue with Dominic LeBlanc). There is no consistency, and even when they believe they are within the law, he will make up a rule that says they’re not.

I’m not suggesting the Liberals are blameless, because they’re not (see the part about them not caring about rules), but the statue itself is a problem, as are the perceptions around it, and the apocalyptic language being used to describe minor transgressions. They keep talking about the transgressions making it hard to have trust in politicians, but when the system itself fails them because it’s poorly designed and poorly administered, it’s just one vicious circle that nobody wants to show a way out of.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 359:

Russia launched 36 missiles early in the day and struck the country’s oil refinery, while also shelling two dozen settlements in the east and south of the country.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1626479351045804032

https://twitter.com/denys_shmyhal/status/1626151901686337538

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Roundup: Opposing amendments at committee

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I find myself amused by the ongoing stories that some Liberal MPs may vote against the official languages bill when it comes out of committee as amended, and the constant oh noes! Trudeau is losing control of his caucus! narrative that accompanies it. This said, there are egregious amendments that I have a hard time believing that they’re in order, because they reference provincial legislation in Quebec. For example, the change to the preamble of the bill to acknowledge Quebec’s Law 96 should have no place in federal legislation. There is also an amendment that says that if federal and provincial language laws come into conflict, the provincial law (especially Quebec’s Law 96) takes precedence, which is against every single constitutional practice and statutory interpretation principle in this country, and beyond that, it sets an absolutely terrible precedent for other areas of the law where one level of government tries to impose something on another jurisdiction, and because this one went unchallenged its okay. Yeah, we don’t want that to happen.

As mentioned, these are a result of Conservative and Bloc amendments, and the Conservatives are back to pandering to Quebec voters (and François Legault) by being as shameless as possible in trying to out-bloc the Bloc, and in some cases, they are being supported by the NDP’s Niki Ashton. It stands to reason that if the government objects to a number of these amendments, they can vote them down during report stage debate, and that would mean the whole chamber is voting, not just the Bloc and the Conservatives, so it could be enough votes to ensure that these amendments are left out of the final bill, which would mean this “rebellion” by a few Liberal MPs has done its job. There are still a couple of meetings left for this bill in committee, so we’ll see what the final shape of the bill looks like.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 358:

Russian troops are mounting constant attacks, and are claiming to have broken through two fortified lines in the Luhansk region (but they make lots of claims that aren’t true), while the regional governor denies that Ukrainian troops are in retreat. The Russians have been changing their tactics at Bakhmut, moving in smaller groups, without the support of tanks or armoured personnel carriers, and the Ukrainians are adapting to the new tactics. Reuters has a photo essay of one family’s evacuation from the area near Bakhmut, during which their grandmother died in the van.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1625861957549948929

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Roundup: An upcoming vacancy that will be impossible to fill

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The report was expected after the complaint had been made, but yesterday, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner released a report that confirmed that Liberal MP Greg Fergus did break the rules by writing a letter of support to the CRTC for a constituent, given that he is a parliamentary secretary and that position could be construed as trying to exert pressure on a quasi-judicial body. Fergus owned up to the mistake and apologised, and the Commissioner suggested that perhaps ministers and parliamentary secretaries would benefit from additional training from his office.

But that wasn’t all—the commissioner, Mario Dion, announced that he would be retiring in a few days because of persistent health issues. While Dion has not been a great Commissioner (some of his rulings have been highly dubious because he over-interpreted his mandate or his enabling statute), the real problem is going to be in finding a replacement, because the legislation about who can apply for the job is, well, nearly impossible to meet. The previous Commissioner, Mary Dawson, needed to keep extending her tenure because they couldn’t find anyone to replace her, and now Dion is leaving without a replacement in the wings. And like I said, the criteria are nigh-impossible, because there are vanishingly few retired judges in this country who want the aggravation of this job with its modest pay, and the other option is the head of an administrative tribunal (which is how Dion got the job), and again, there are only so many of those. So good luck, MPs—you’re really, really going to need it.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 357:

Russian forces were concentrating their artillery on Bakhmut and the surrounding settlements. Meanwhile, NATO defence ministers met in Brussels to discuss getting more firepower to Ukraine as quickly as possible, now that Russia’s new offensive has begun. Germany has signed a deal to produce more ammunition for the anti-aircraft guns provided to Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/lyla_lilas/status/1625525076182310912

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Roundup: A baffling way to fast-track a bill

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The House of Commons began their fast-tracked debate on Bill C-39 yesterday, which is the bill to delay the onset of making mental disorder the sole criteria for accessing Medical Assistance in Dying, but even before debate got started, the government moved their motion to fast-track it in the most unusual and frankly unserious way possible. The motion extends sittings to midnight Monday and Wednesday (they sat until about 10:30 last night), all in the service of second reading debate. At midnight or collapse of debate on Wednesday, the bill is deemed to have been adopted at second reading, deemed to have been send to committee of the whole, deemed adopted and reported back, deemed to be adopted at third reading, and sent off to the Senate. The same motion also authorized the justice committee to sit as long as they need to today to consider the bill, and to be given priority of resources (i.e. interpreters) from any other committee for their study. But they don’t actually report back to the Commons (remember it is deemed to have gone to committee of the whole), so I’m not sure what the point of the exercise is.

Procedurally, this is bonkers, and furthermore, it just exacerbates the fact that we have a completely broken understanding of what second reading debate is supposed to be in this country. It’s where you debate the overall purpose of the bill, and it should last a single afternoon, with a handful speeches and some debate, and then be sent off to committee where they can do the real work. But instead, our Parliament has decided that second reading debate needs days upon days of canned speeches—particularly on a bill like this where everyone can stand up and say how “deeply personal” the issue is, and where a large number of Conservatives in particular can decry it and repeat a bunch of false assertions and misinformation about what this is supposed to be about. None of how they went about this makes any sense (and I remind you that the bill is one line). If all of the parties decided to fast-track this, there should have been a single speech from each party, and then to send it to committee for actual consideration today, so it can be sent back on Wednesday for final consideration. They didn’t need to contort themselves in this way in order to give everyone speaking time (like they did with the interminable speeches for the invocation of the Emergencies Act).

Once again, this is another signal of how unserious our Parliament is, and that it has devolved into little more than an exercise in reading canned speeches into the record. Nobody is actually being served by this, and our MPs need to grow up and start actually engaging with the material before them.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 356:

Bakhmut and its suburbs are being subjected to heavy shelling as Russia’s new offensive has begun, and Ukraine says that they have fortified their positions in the area. Russians have also struck in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, and have been fortifying their own positions in the south of the country. Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of NATO warned that Ukraine is using ammunition faster than allies can provide it, and is trying to put pressure on Western defence industries to ramp up production as Russia is with its own industries.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1625178486926196740

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Roundup: Four balloons and counting

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Apparently Chinese balloons are all the rage right now, as Justin Trudeau ordered NORAD defences to shoot down a balloon over Yukon (and recover operations are now ongoing), and now another “object” has been shot down over Lake Huron in coordination with continental defences. Yes, an American F-22 did the job, but it sounds like that was because it was closer launching from Alaska, whereas our CF-18s launched from Cold Lake, which is much further south (though some have said the F-22 can fly higher than a CF-18, but that doesn’t sound like the reason). This makes a total of four likely balloons being shot down in North American airspace in the past several days. From what I’ve been given to understand, much of the NORAD systems have been calibrated for planes and missiles, so many of these balloons may not have been noticed, but now that we’re noticing them, well, we’re really noticing a lot of them, and shooting them down sends a message to China—assuming that these are theirs, because that is still an open question.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1624886714257879040

If nothing else, this has been a teaching moment about NORAD, because some people don’t seem to understand how it operates.

https://twitter.com/andreacharron/status/1624941399119388675

There are plenty of questions as to why balloons, and the fact that they may have gone undetected by NORAD systems may be a clue, but it’s been a whole weekend of this.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 355:

Russian forces spent the weekend shelling the eastern part of the country, and in particular Nikopol and Kharkiv, but it also looks like they are having a hard time getting their planned new offensive off the ground. President Volodymyr Zelenzkyy has praised the country’s efforts in restoring their electrical grid after repeated Russian attacks, but says it’s too early to declare victory just yet. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukraine’s cultural diplomacy, and their calls for cultural sanctions against Russia, which would include banning their athletes from the Olympic Games.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Nice History of Canada

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith took the opportunity to shoot a video on Parliament Hill when she was in town earlier this week, and it’s a doozy. It’s so bad. Some of it is outright revisionist history—Danielle Smith’s Nice History of Canada, where the Indigenous People and settlers got together to “tame an unforgiving frontier.” No, seriously. She actually said that. And there was so much nonsense about the energy industry and market. We know that the people she listens to engage in outright residential school denialism, but this is just galling.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 353:

Kyiv and Kharkiv were among the cities hit by a renewed Russian attack on critical infrastructure, particularly on the country’s power supply. Zaporizhzhia has faced a relentless barrage, as have the front lines in the east, where they are continuing their concerted push toward Bakhmut. Meanwhile, here is a look at the “drone hunters” trying to bring down those Iranian-made drones as best they can.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1624078327664242692

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Roundup: The UCP can’t even get capitalism right

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The Alberta government’s plan to move ahead with RStar—a particularly boneheaded scheme by which oil companies can keep a portion of their royalties to clean up orphan or abandoned wells which they already have a legal obligation to do, is getting pushback from some fairly surprising sources, like those tree huggers at Scotiabank, who point out that this kind of a programme goes against fundamental capitalist principles. It’s also indicative out outright corruption, because premier Danielle Smith was lobbying on behalf of certain companies for this kind of subsidy before she got elected. This whole thing is just a giant flashing red flag of what is wrong with Alberta politics.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 352:

As Russian forces continue their assault in the Donbas region, there are concerns that SpaceX has started limiting use of Starlink satellites for use by Ukraine’s military to control drones (which are mainly used for reconnaissance). Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Brussels to both look for more aid and to plead for EU membership, even though that process can take a decade. He also said that Ukraine intercepted Russian plans to destroy Moldova, which Moldovan intelligence confirmed, a plan that mirrored what Russia had planned for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1623609001580560384

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Roundup: The PBO has opinions to share

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer appeared at the Senate finance committee this week, and seems to have unloaded a litany of complaints about the government. I’m just not sure that the things he was complaining about were actually his purview to do so. You see, in spite of the media terming him a “fiscal watchdog” or a “budget watchdog,” he’s not actually a watchdog of any kind. He has no authority to be opining on how government is operating their programs, because that’s the Auditor General’s job. His job is to provide analysis of macro-economic and fiscal policy, and promoting greater budget transparency. I’m not sure how any of what he said at the Senate had to do with that.

One of things in particular that is of concern is his attack on the CRA around recovery of possible CERB and CEWS overpayments, and the fact that they said it wasn’t worth it to go after every possible overpayment. The way Yves Giroux describes this however was that they weren’t going to follow up on any of it, which isn’t what they said. Additionally, I find it really interesting the way that absolutely everyone is just taking the Auditor General’s word that it’s $15.5 billion in potential wage subsidy overpayments because the CRA says that her methodology for arriving at that figure was flawed, and that it’s not nearly that high. Ah, but in this country, we worship the Auditor General and believe her to be a flawless entity from a higher plane of existence who is infallible. That’s not actually true, but nobody is ever willing to stick their necks out to dispute her figures, and to push back when she’s wrong, which she very well could be this time. The fact that nobody is willing to challenge those figures, including the PBO, is concerning (and frankly, given how much he enjoys inserting himself into other spaces where he doesn’t belong, it’s difficult to see why he didn’t do so here as well).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 351:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited London and Paris to make his plea for more weapons, and most especially fighter jets. He’s off to Brussels today to continue his pleas to EU leaders. Zelenskyy also seems to be disputing accounts that he is shuffling his defence minister, so we’ll see what happens.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1623335580074377219

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Roundup: A ten-year health “deal”

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Before the big meeting between Justin Trudeau and the premiers, Trudeau had a one-on-one meeting with Alberta premier Danielle Smith, and it was…awkward. From her limp handshake to her hectoring about the “just transition” term, it was certainly something.

When the big meeting did happen, Trudeau and his ministers kept the attention on the big number: $198 billion over ten years, of which $46.2 billion is new funds, beyond planned increases in the Canada Health Transfer, and other promised funds for things like boosting the pay of long-term care workers and to hire front-line health workers. I am curious about this immediate $2 billion with no strings attached, intended to help meet things like surgical backlogs, but which you know premiers are going to use elsewhere (at least two of them have imminent elections) because they will immediately cry that this is one-time funding and not stable, long-term predictable funding. The increase to the transfer is tied to better data and increased digitization (which, frankly, was supposed to have been completed by now), plus $25 billion for the one-on-one deals with each province to meet specific needs, and finally another $2 billion over ten years for Indigenous health outcomes.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1623077585847726080

Of course, premiers aren’t happy because it wasn’t as much money as they wanted, and there are strings. Some, like Doug Ford, kept trying to spin this as “a down payment” when the federal government was pretty quick to say this money is it. And then you get former premiers like Jean Charest coming out of the woodwork to insist that strings attached is “risky,” while he repeats the straw man arguments that the federal government is trying to “run emergency rooms,” which absolutely nobody has ever stated, while the federal government just wants health dollars to be spent on healthcare. Nevertheless, the message from the federal ministers is that they expect these one-on-one deals with provinces to be signed in weeks, not months, because they want this all done before the federal budget. The Star has a look at how the logjam broke down, a little at a time.

“Losing control”

One of my perpetual pet peeves of mainstream media in this country is this insistence that we want MPs to be more independent, but the moment they show a glimmer of independence, we rend our clothes and wail that the leader is “losing control” of his or her caucus, and lo, it’s happening again. The story is about a group of Liberals, mostly from Montreal, who have taken exception with the preamble of the official languages legislation which recognises Quebec’s provincial language laws, which they object to both because it restricts anglophones in the province, but because a federal bill shouldn’t enshrine a provincial law in federal statute, and it was a dumb move by the federal drafters to put that in the bill. And one of the Liberals’ Franco-Ontarian MPs is pushing back. OH NOES! Trudeau is “losing control” of his caucus, as opposed to “he drafted a sloppy bill,” or “the minister didn’t consult her own gods damned caucus first.” The narrative is “losing control.” Zeus wept.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 350:

Ukrainian forces are claiming to have killed 1,030 Russian troops overnight on the front lines in the eastern part of the country. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked parliament for approving his new cabinet picks as he shuffles up his ministers, including the defence minister.

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Roundup: The big health summit is today

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Today is the day, where the prime minster is meeting with the provincial and territorial premiers to lay out the future of health transfers, and from the sounds if it, it’s not a negotiation. The Senior Liberal Sources™ are pointing to a ten-year deal with an expansion to the main Canada Health Transfer, as well as individual deals with provinces that focus on their priorities, and yes, there will be strings attached to that money. Trudeau is framing this conversation in a way that talks a lot about data, but the more unspoken part of that is the fact that the point of that data is so that there can be outcomes that can be compared across jurisdictions, and not have it in a format where it takes six months or a year for researchers to compile the data in a way that’s usable, because each province reports their data differently. People often don’t realise that it’s one of the reasons why we have such poor statistical data in this country, which is because provinces (who are responsible for vital statistics) don’t report in a way that is consistent, and it takes StatsCan or other agencies like CIHI time to make the data work.

The other reason for strings, of course, is that provinces have a demonstrated history of not using health transfers on their healthcare systems. For the decade that health transfers rose at six percent annually, health spending in most provinces rose by somewhere around 2.2 percent annually, meaning a lot of that money got spent elsewhere. Andrew Coyne tweeted data going back 20 years, and it’s very noticeable the gap between what the federal government sent to provinces for healthcare, and what actually got spent on it. Given how much additional pandemic spending went directly to provinces’ bottom lines during the pandemic, there is no longer an appetite for this to continue, which is why strings are not only important, but need to be in place, and it looks like the premiers have finally run out of room in the court of public opinion to operate otherwise.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1622760959977656321

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 349:

Russian forces have been keeping up the pressure in the eastern part of Ukraine while they prepare for a new offensive, likely around the anniversary of the start of the invasion, and there are worries they could be putting that pressure in Donetsk so that they can launch a surprise attack in the south. As well, there has been shelling around Zaporizhzhia.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says that Canada is ready to assist allies with aid they need around the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria.
  • François-Philippe Champagne and Pablo Rodriguez gave the new chair of the CRTC her marching orders in a public letter.
  • Marco Mendicino says that any foreign agent registry will need the buy-in from cultural communities in Canada lest it turn into a tool of stigmatisation.
  • As part of the government’s Ocean Protection Plan, there is investment in deep sea research; coastal First Nations chiefs have endorsed the marine protected area plan.
  • Canada is expanding its temporary work permit programme for Hong Kong residents.
  • The deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement says that McKinsey’s global record isn’t enough to disqualify it from Canadian government contracts.
  • The new Indigenous languages commissioner says he hopes to have his office fully operational by summer.
  • A labour tribunal has found that Parliament hasn’t been protecting the health and safety of its translation staff. Gosh, you think?
  • A man has been arrested for making death threats against the Liberal MP for Kichener—Conestoga, Tim Louis.
  • Former Liberal MP Raj Grewal wants the breach of trust charges laid against him during his time in office dismissed for lack of evidence.
  • The Conservatives are calling on the Auditor General to probe the McKinsey contracts, for no reason other than they’re building a conspiracy theory.
  • All opposition parties are peformatively demanding answers from the government about the Chinese “spy balloon.”
  • Quebec’s immigration minister is freaking out after reports that New York City is providing free bus tickets to asylum seekers trying to reach Roxham Road.
  • Matt Gurney explains why the gun control changes were an impossibility and a trap of the Liberals’ own making, which is why they had to walk them back.
  • Colin Horgan notes the Conservatives building conspiracy theories and trying to use the Unreal in order to tap into dark impulses in voters, as QAnon has done.

Odds and ends:

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