Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: The first witnesses at the inquiry

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The first day of witness testimony took place at the Emergencies Act Public Inquiry, hearing from citizen representatives about what they went through during the illegal occupation, as well as two of the city councillors whose wards were most affected, and representatives from affected BIAs. There was a common theme in there—people feeling afraid and terrorized by the collection of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theories and grievance tourists who made up the occupation; and more to the point, they felt abandoned by the Ottawa City Police, who were the police of jurisdiction.

Which brings me to my other point—that the NDP, and MP Matthew Green in particular, are trying to return to this bullshit narrative that the federal government “abandoned” the city and didn’t show leadership during the occupation, which is completely false. There was no jurisdiction that they could exert—the Ottawa police, as established, were the police of jurisdiction, and there is no mechanism by which the federal government can bigfoot them or assert jurisdiction. Even the Emergencies Act allowed for the RCMP to be deployed under the command of the Ottawa police, with expedited swearing-in that enabled them to do their jobs. There is nothing that the federal government could have done to “show leadership” up until they invoked the Act. I know the NDP like to pretend that there’s a Green Lantern ring somewhere, and that all it takes is “political will” to do something, but there is no “political will” section of the Constitution. Real life doesn’t work like that, and the NDP need to grow up and start criticising the government for things that are actually their fault, not the things that aren’t, because it weakens their credibility when it comes to the real problems.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 233:

Ukrainian forces continue to press their advantage in the Kharkiv region, as the Russians say they will have completed their mobilisation within two weeks. The first 200 Ukrainians have completed their training in the UK with British and Canadian trainers, which includes offensive tactics, not just defensive ones. Here is a look at the city of Lyman, and how much it suffered under four months of Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456

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Roundup: The fiscal stance is tight

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer was doing his actual job of providing alternative fiscal forecasts for Parliamentarians, and his projection of the economic situation is that growth will slow over the second half of this year, which isn’t a bad thing because it will help to tackle inflation, particularly as the Bank of Canada continues to raise rates. The deficit continues to shrink, as does the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which shows our fiscal stance is not too loose.

Here’s economist Kevin Milligan putting things into more context, but the bottom line is that the Conservatives’ assertion that government spending is fuelling inflation is not true, and they need to come up with some more credible talking points. (Yeah, yeah, good luck with that one, I know).

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580598737906597894

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580602979140632576

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580605473476476929

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 232:

It was another day of Russian strikes against civilian targets, including by Iranian-built kamikaze drones, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to request more air defence systems to protect the country. Ukrainian forces boasted that they took down four Russian helicopters in the space of eighteen minutes.

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Roundup: Freeland’s non-contradictory position on energy

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On Tuesday, Chrystia Freeland gave a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, and she outlined some fairly ambitious economic policy that involves a retrenching of keeping our supply chains within fellow democracies, because relying on regimes like Russia and China can prove costly in the end—particularly if you look at what’s happening in Europe with their energy crisis. It also means accelerating the green energy transition, which is also happening at a faster pace. But what got a bunch of people in Canada curious was Freeland talking about fast-tracking energy and mining projects to help Europe with that transition. But there is nuance there, however.

The CBC in particular got excited because they claimed to see some kind of contradiction with what Freeland was saying with the fact that the government won’t do anything to fast-track LNG projects, and that we somehow sent German Chancellor Olaf Scholz packing when he came looking for LNG. Erm, except he didn’t, because he knows as well as anyone that we don’t have the infrastructure for LNG, and so he came looking for hydrogen, which he got. But the CBC’s Vassy Kapelos did an interview with Scholz, where she spent half of it badgering and hectoring him about LNG until he said that he would like Canadian LNG if we had it, and they kept bringing that clip up in isolation. But again, Scholz knows we don’t, that it would take too long to build, and frankly that the market case isn’t there. As I wrote in this column, the timelines for these projects don’t make sense, and frankly, the LNG projects that have been on the drawing table for decades never took off because they couldn’t get commitments from buyers for the project. And while Kapelos was hectoring and badgering natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson yesterday about LNG, and insisting that the Americans can get theirs to export and why not us, the difference is that they have been converting LNG import terminals for export, which we can’t do. We have one import terminal in New Brunswick, and it would take two years to retrofit, assuming they could get a steady supply of gas, which they don’t have without importing. That’s why it’s an import terminal. But apparently there are no producers at Power & Politics who can pick up the phone and call a gods damned energy economist who can explain these things before they talk to the minister and not waste everyone’s time.

So no, Freeland didn’t contradict anyone. They are putting a focus on mining critical minerals in Canada—Trudeau made such an announcement earlier in the week. They are focusing on hydrogen, some of which may come from natural gas, which again, is not LNG, but is an energy project. “Energy project” is not simply code for LNG, guys. It’s only slightly alarming that the gods damned public broadcaster can’t be bothered to do their homework to put things in context before they start hyperventilating, but this is apparently the era we’re living in.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 231:

Ukrainian forces say that they have recaptured five settlements in the southern Kherson region, while the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has lost external power for the second time in five days, which puts stress on the cooling systems.

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Roundup: Smith disqualifies herself on day one

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Her first day on the job, and Danielle Smith is already proving to be unsuited for public office. Shortly after being sworn-in as premier by the Lieutenant Governor, Smith held a press conference where she said that she wants to protect the unvaccinated, because they are the “most discriminated-against” group in her lifetime.

*deep breath, clenches fists*

No. Not even close. And let me tell you, it was a choice to say that on Coming Out Day. They are not discriminated against. There is no “segregation.” The unvaccinated are people who get to live with the consequences of making a selfish choice based on a bunch of junk “science” and conspiracy theories that they’ve consumed, and their reckless disregard for the vulnerable and immune-compromised. Those consequences? Not eating in restaurants or not getting to travel. A few lost their jobs because of the choice they made. Contrast this to actual discrimination that people suffer because of race, gender, sexuality, or disability. Consequences that include employment, housing, hate crimes, and even mass slaughter, and yes, this has all happened in Smith’s lifetime. This is her answering the grievances of the privileged, the entitled, and the selfish, and not having actually suffered discrimination, she lacks the basic self-awareness to know the difference between the two. This should be disqualifying.

Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan, Scott Moe unveiled his “white paper” on pushing back against so-called federal encroachment on the province, and well, I’ve read far more vigorous undergraduate papers in my day. The premise of said paper is that all environmental rules and regulations are just a ruse for keeping the province down, and controlling them, which is risible on its face. And the notion that Saskatchewan should somehow be a “nation within a nation” belies the fact that they don’t have a distinct language, culture, legal tradition, or pre-Confederation history. Calling hoodies “bunny hugs” is not a distinct culture. Resource extraction without concern for environmental consequences is not a distinct culture. Moe is doing some bad Jason Kenney cosplay, and it’s just pathetic.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579905716747661312

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907251221172224

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907677316345856

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 230:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with G7 leaders and asked for more air defences (to fend off future missile attacks like they faced this week), a price cap on oil and gas exports from Russia to cut off their funding, and an international mission at the Ukraine-Belarus border, presumably to keep any Belarussian forces out of the country. Some German air defence systems did arrive in the country yesterday, so they are starting to arrive as this ask is being made. Meanwhile, bodies are being exhumed from the mass graves outside of the city of Lyman, which was liberated from Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1579849665226629121

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Roundup: Backing away from the crazy now that the leadership is secured

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Now that she has won the UCP leadership and is about to be sworn-in as premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith is suddenly backing down from some of the things she’s been saying about her “Sovereignty Act,” and is telling media outlets that she’ll respect the rule of law when courts inevitably rule against it because it’s going to be blatantly unconstitutional. Which isn’t what was promised, and the whole point of the Act, based on the brain trust that invented the idea, was to force a constitutional crisis by disobeying the Supreme Court. Now Smith is saying otherwise, which is starting to look mighty cynical—that she sold her base on a false promise in order to get them to buy memberships and vote for her, and now she’s going to tone it down. It’s just so cynical and crass that you have to wonder what she won’t say or do in order to get her way now that she’ll have access to real levers of power.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 229:

The weekend began with an explosion on the bridge between Crimea and Russia, attributed to Ukraine, and on the day after Putin’s birthday, given how much of a vanity project this bridge was for Putin. By Monday morning, Russians shelled the city centres in Kyiv and nine other cities in Ukraine, all targeting civilian infrastructure, calling it retaliation for the Crimean bridge explosion, and trying to call it terrorism (while attacking civilian centres, which is actual terrorism). One of the cities hit was Zaporizhzhia, where apartment buildings were struck. As well, here are stories of survivors of Russians in liberated villages in the Kherson region, and a look at the looting Russians have undertaken of places like museums in captured regions.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1579530489802944512

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Roundup: Tagging the misogynists to own the Libs

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News broke yesterday morning from Global that videos on Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube channel contained hidden tags including #mgtow (Men Going Their Own Way), which is considered so misogynistic that even Reddit has banned it. This anti-feminist movement includes incels who have perpetrated mass murder in this country. But it’s not like Poilievre hasn’t been playing footsies with other extremist elements in this country, right? Right?

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1578020907876249600

In the wake of the revelation, Poilievre was forced to address it in Question Period, where he denounced the “organisation,” which isn’t an organisation, and said that he denounces misogyny, and then began engaging in whataboutism and trying to attack the prime minister instead. There was no actual apology, and his insistence that because he ensured that the tags were removed and he denounced misogyny, that’s enough. His caucus was telling media on their way out of the West Block that Poilievre “took responsibility” and that was more than Trudeau ever did, which is wrong on both counts. There was no responsibility taken—mere hours later, Poilievre’s office said they weren’t going to investigate and basically shrugged about who could have possibly done this (the answer is starting to look pretty obvious), and he has done zero work of trying to remedy his tendency of flirting with these extremist elements, whereas Trudeau has put in the work when it comes to combatting racism.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 225:

Russian forces shelled an apartment block in Zaporizhzhia, in spite of the fact that they “annexed” the territory, while the Ukrainian counter-offensive continues. Sweden, meanwhile, has found evidence of detonations along the Nordstream pipelines, pointing to Russian sabotage.

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Roundup: Taking the blame, children’s cold medicine edition

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There has been a concerted effort to try and make the shortage of over-the-counter children’s cold and fever medication the federal government’s problem, even though they have precious few levers at their disposal. The Conservatives are trying to demand that Health Canada lift restrictions on imports that aren’t labelled in English and French, though I’m not sure that would really help if these shortages (which are due to high demand because COVID isn’t over!) are more widespread, and even there, that would require a lot of provincial coordination because pharmacies are also under provincial jurisdiction. But apparently the minister can’t just say that people need to talk to the provinces—that simply won’t do.

I had a bit of a debate over Twitter about this last night, and I will concede that part of this is a problem with the government’s inability to message and get ahead of these kinds of issues, or leverage some righteous anger and direct it to the provinces to do their gods damned jobs for once—but this government doesn’t like to do anger, and it really doesn’t like to blame the provinces for the things that the provinces aren’t doing when they should be, because they want to be “nice,” and “cooperative,” and “not divisive.” But that’s not helping anybody, and so we get more platitudes and feel-good pabulum that doesn’t actually make anyone feel good. I do have real problems with everyone—particularly media—trying to make every problem the federal government’s, but the government need to get better at messaging around this tendency, which they steadfastly refuse to do.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 224:

As Russia’s president signed papers that purport to annex territory in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces continue to press ahead in their counter-offensive in both the east and the south, collapsing Russian lines even further. And those new troops Russia has been conscripting to send to Ukraine? Much of them come from the country’s ethnic minorities, which is a calculated move. Ukraine, meanwhile, is making a bid for the 2030 FIFA World Cup as a way of survivors of the invasion healing from the war.

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Roundup: The “bigger picture” of continued hybrid sittings

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee is looking in to the future of hybrid sittings, and the Speaker wants them to consider the “bigger picture” of all of this. Of course, the bigger picture is that a) by trying to tie future use of hybrid to sickness or work-life balance, MPs will be creating an impossible attendance standard and create a monstrous culture of presenteeism; b) ministers will not only evade accountability not being in the House, and will be unavailable for MPs to see them during votes—which is the one time they are most available—and this is already happening as ministers are getting used to taking off when votes start and doing them from their phones in their cars, which is very bad; it also means that minister and MPs in general are less available to be found by the media; and c) the big one is of course the human toll that these sessions take on the interpretation staff. The NDP, as usual thinks you can just hire more interpreters, except there are no more interpreters to be hired. They literally cannot graduate enough of them to cover the existing attrition even before the injury and burnout rate from Zoom is factored in.

But MPs have consistently ignored the human toll, preferring their convenience, and whinging about long travel distances and having families, as though there aren’t options available to them that aren’t to most other Canadians. I will keep beating on this drum, because we won’t be able to maintain a fully bilingual parliament for much longer if this keeps up (we’re barely doing so as it is), and it’s probably going to take things absolutely falling apart for them to care, and that’s a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 223:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces have made rapid and powerful advances in both the east and south, and in places where Russian forces are retreating, they are abandoning posts so rapidly that they are leaving dead comrades behind.

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1577324136220839937

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Roundup: Independent thought alarm, Iran edition

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I hear the independent thought alarm sounding as Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, who is Iranian-Canadian, is being critical of the government’s response when it comes to sanctions on the Iranian regime, and he wants them to do more. This being said, he has stressed that the minister, Mélanie Joly, has been very receptive to talking to him about the situation, and hearing his ideas, but that wasn’t of any interest to the CBC. No, they were interested in the narrative that even Liberal MPs aren’t happy with the government’s moves to date on sanctioning the Iranian regime, and lo, they put on an “expert” who says the government should do more, in spite of the fact that the don’t have the actual capacity to enforce more sanctions, let alone monitor the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I don’t expect the party to come down on Ehsassi for this, and the Liberals have demonstrated that they are willing to put up with a certain degree of independence from their MPs (more so than pretty much any other party right now), but I always find the reaction of the media interesting in situations like this, because as much as they claim they want more independence for MPs, when it gets demonstrated, they immediately start acting like this is either an attack on the government/prime minister, and they try to wedge it as much as possible to make it sound exciting. But all this really does is crack the whip without the party Whip ever needing to do a thing, because the media is enforcing discipline more than he ever could. Some members of the media should probably reflect on that fact

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 222:

Ukrainian forces have made a major breakthrough in the south, advancing along the Dnipro River and threatening Russian supply lines in the region. In the northeast, the liberation of Lyman is providing a staging ground to press into the Donbas region.

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Roundup: Marinating ideas or wasting precious time?

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As his weekend think piece, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry extolled the virtues of MPs who aim high with their private members’ bills, even if they don’t go anywhere. I am of particular mixed feelings about this, because while I can get behind the notion that sometimes the big ideas need to marinate in the public consciousness for a while, whether that was cannabis legalisation, single-event sports betting, or trans rights, we also need to be cognisant that a whole lot of private members’ business is, well, a giant waste of everyone’s time, particularly when you have MPs who table dozens of bills and motions in any single session that will never see the light of day, but consume time they should be spending doing their actual jobs of holding government to account, as well as media attention for something that is dead on arrival.

It’s hard not to conclude that PMBs aren’t being abused in the current iteration of the Standing Orders. We’re seeing a growing number of bills that need royal recommendations still get debated all the way up to the final vote, which essentially means that everyone’s time has been wasted because it’s not going to proceed, and that MP could have used their spot for something that could have gone somewhere instead, rather than hoping that the government was going to grant the recommendation that late in the game. There is a never-ending supply of bills to amend riding names and declare national days, weeks, or months about some ethno-cultural group or cause, individual tweaks to the Criminal Code that have distorted all semblance of proportionality in our sentencing principles, or attempts at tax expenditures that are a loophole to the prohibition against proposing spending (because the rubric is that you are forgoing tax revenue, as though that didn’t come with its own costs), and when you do get the big issues, I’m really not sure that two hours of scripted speeches being read into the void is really exercising the national consciousness on the issue.

Maybe I’m just horribly cynical, but I don’t see the benefits of this particular exercise like I would if there was an actual grassroots process to formulate policy that the party adopts (and I especially have a problem when MPs use their spots to put forward policy positions because it surrenders their rights and privileges as MPs for the party’s sake, most especially if it’s a stunt on the party’s behalf—looking especially at you, NDP). Time is one of the most precious resources in Parliament, and the amount of time and resources that gets wasted on these bills that will never see the light of day just makes a mockery of the process.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 221:

After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russians retreated from the city of Lyman, which has been a logistics hub for the Donetsk region. In the meantime, Russians have targeted humanitarian convoys, because of course they did. Meanwhile, ten torture sites have been found in Izium, which Russia controlled for six months, and at least thirty people found in the mass grave outside of the city bore marks associated with torture.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1576248108690079745

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