Tag Archives: Veterans

Roundup: The false binary in MAiD coverage

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The stories about the hearings on expanding the Medical Assistance in Dying regime continue apace, complete with lurid tales of people threatening to access MAiD for reasons of poverty rather than because they want to die at this particular moment of whatever condition they suffer that makes them eligible, and almost all of them frame it as the federal government forcing people to die. Althia Raj’s latest column was literally titled “Why does the Trudeau government leave people no option but to take their own lives?” before it was changed several hours later, which may or may not have been because I pointed out the fact that disability supports and housing are provincial responsibilities and not the responsibility of the federal government, who are concerned only with the Criminal Code prohibitions against providing MAiD.

Once again, provinces are being let off the hook for their own responsibilities to care for these vulnerable people. In all of the cases going to the media, it’s over areas that the province should have been responsive to, but we also know that they have been in the business of legislating poverty for those who require disability supports, so it’s not a surprise, but it’s not something the federal government can just swoop down and fix. Yes, they have committed to their disability benefit, which is still in still at committee and will take time to implement because of the complexity of dealing with provincial programmes and most especially ensuring that any federal benefits don’t mean that provincial ones are clawed back (like several provinces did with CERB payments, because again, they are legislating poverty), but even this federal support does not make it a federal responsibility, nor should it impact the considerations for the Criminal Code provisions around providing MAiD to those who request it. That road leads to “perfect world” thinking, where people will be made to suffer needlessly because premiers can’t do their jobs. (Full disclosure: My mother accessed MAiD when she had terminal cancer, and was afforded a good and dignified death).

I also think that there is a growing media ethics problem where we are seeing an increasing number of these stories with either unverified accounts of people who accessed MAiD for seemingly illegitimate purposes (though they obviously had a qualifying condition), or those who are taking to the media to threaten to access MAiD if they can’t get supports they need, as is the case cited in Raj’s column. The framing of these stories is often badly flawed, the facts usually unclear, and frankly, it is emboldening people to use the lurid threats of suicide (albeit medically assisted) in order to draw attention to their plight. Media outlets need to start reconsidering how this is being covered, because the number of these stories appears to be on the rise, and it doesn’t help anyone when things are covered in such a way.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 272:

The damage to the electrical system in the country has president Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging Ukrainians to conserve electricity where possible and to think about options that will help them wait out long outages. He also said that people from liberated Kherson can apply to relocate to places where security and heating issues are less acute, considering how much of Kherson’s civilian infrastructure was destroyed. Here is more about how Kyiv is dealing with the blackouts.

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Roundup: National Remembrance ceremonies in Canada as Kherson is liberated in Ukraine

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National Remembrance Day ceremonies were held in Ottawa, with some particular attention paid to it being the 80thanniversary of the raid on Dieppe, as well as some particular attention to the memory of the Queen, who was herself a veteran of the Second World War.

Of course, someone had to be churlish and parochial today, so the Conservatives put out a press release denouncing the fact that Justin Trudeau was absent, because he’s on his way to an important summit in Asia. And he met with troops in New Brunswick yesterday, and during his refuelling stop in Alaska. And yes, Stephen Harper also missed several Remembrance Day events because of foreign travel, so the complaints about Trudeau are not only weird and hypocritical, but they’re indicative of the fact that the Pierre Poilievre has just hired an avowed shitposter as his director of communications, and this level of juvenile partisan sniping is what we can expect more of in the coming days because this is exactly what he thinks is going to speak to Canadians.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 262:

Ukrainian special forces arrived in Kherson to a hero’s welcome, but the real work begins now of trying to deal with the landmines the Russians left behind in the city. There are also concerns about “sabotage operations” by Russian troops in civilian clothes. Kherson is strategic because it allows Ukraine to control fresh water flowing to occupied Crimea, and keeps Russian control out of the southern part of the country in an attempt to keep the land bridge to Crimea.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1591099528736051205

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Roundup: Play stupid procedural games, win stupid procedural consequences

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My patience for the stupid procedural games being played in the House of Commons is wearing incredibly thin as Liberal House Leader Mark Holland is moving a motion to extend sitting hours to midnight. Now, this would be fairly normal for the last four sitting weeks of the year, but Holland is moving the motion to extend until June. *sighs, pinches bridge of nose* Holland claims it’s because the Conservatives are being obstructionist, and putting up long speaking lists for every bill, so he’s going to accommodate them, and the Conservatives are saying that it’s their job to have vigorous debate on every bill, but this is beyond excessive. (The NDP are also in favour of this, because they too have essentially had a policy of talking every bill to death for the past decade or so). But that should make everyone happy, no?

Of course not. Andrew Scheer is, not incorrectly, pointing out that midnight sittings take resources (read: interpreters) away from committees, and calls this the Liberals trying to kill accountability by stealth. That’s one interpretation, but one could also say that it’s the consequences of the Conservatives decision to fill up the speaking lists like they are. And it’s all so unnecessary. This insistence of filling up speaking lists and having MPs read canned speeches into the record for hours on end is a particularly Canadian phenomenon, and it’s a symptom of our politics being treated un-seriously. It’s stupid gamesmanship that started years ago, and it gets worse with each passing parliament, and we need to stop it. The fact that Holland and Scheer are now exacerbating it even more as a kind of brinksmanship is killing our democracy, and MPs need to grow the hell up, on all sides of the Chamber.

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Roundup: Ford tries to escape testifying

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Some drama is emerging from the Emergencies Act public inquiry, as we find out that Doug Ford and Sylvia Jones, his then-solicitor general, have refused to be interviewed by the Commissioner, and have refused to testify before it. Recall that just last week, Doug Ford said that he hadn’t been asked to testify when asked (because it makes no sense that he and Jones were not on the list). Well, today, we found out that they were asked, they refused, and now the Commissioner plans to summon them, but Ford intends to challenge that summons under the rubric of parliamentary privilege, which would seem to me to be abusing it, but there you have it.

https://twitter.com/SkinnerLyle/status/1584624171598086145

Meanwhile, the acting Ottawa police chief was testifying, and it was a lot more of the same when it comes to police not taking the threat of an occupation seriously, and them essentially ignoring the intelligence that was being forwarded to them, and lo, these “protesters” turned into an illegal occupation. There was also an email filed from RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki who said that they hadn’t exhausted all tools before the Act was invoked, for what that’s worth.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1584574961339203586

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1584612932595638275

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 243:

Ukrainian officials are claiming greater success in shooting down drones attacking electrical infrastructure, but worries are now that Russia will try to detonate a “dirty bomb” within their territory as they have essentially announced the intention to do so and blame it on the Ukrainians doing it to frame Russia. If it wasn’t such a terrifying prospect, it would be really, really stupid. Meanwhile, doctors in the country are worried about spending the winter months in the basements of hospitals as electrical systems are under attack.

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Roundup: The edgy reporting on the state of the monarchy

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It wasn’t unexpected, but Canadian media has decided to go full-on concern trolling for the republican cause while the world mourns the passing of the Queen. There is no end to the polls about Canadians’ feelings about the “British” monarchy (oblivious to the fact that we are under the Canadian monarchy, which is separate and distinct), or stories about Indigenous people and their relationship with the Crown, but they seem to entirely lack the nuances of the treaty relationship and the failure of the Queen’s Canadian government to properly uphold those treaties, and instead putting forward a narrative that the Crown was directly responsible for the cultural genocide of residential schools. There are stories aplenty of some of the Realms who are considering abandoning the monarchy in favour of republicanism, as Barbados just did, but some can’t seem to distinguish between the Commonwealth (a voluntary organisation mostly made up of former British colonial holdings, but has since expanded to include countries with no such colonial ties) and the Realms (the fifteen countries for whom the Queen served as monarch), and it makes the questions very awkward if they really don’t know what they’re asking (looking at you, Power & Politics). And then there are the stories, largely American, which can’t get the basics right about the funding of the monarchy, or that taxpayer dollars are paying for the Queen’s funeral (as though American taxpayer dollars don’t pay for their presidents’ state funerals, or for their presidential libraries/personality shines).

It’s predictable, and it’s utterly provincial. I’m sure plenty of them think they’re being edgy, or getting to the real hard news of the day, but it’s mostly coming off as ill-informed, devoid of proper context, and in some cases, without much in the way of constitutional reality. I wish I could say we should expect better, but sadly, it’s about exactly what we can expect form our media outlets.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 203:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ventured out of Kyiv yesterday, visiting the strategic city of Izyum now that it has been liberated from the Russians. On the way back to Kyiv, however, his motorcade was involved a collision, though his injuries were said to be minor. One of the towns recently freed was Hrakove, which was largely levelled by Russians, and its original population of 1000 is now about 30. Meanwhile, nearly 5000 Ukrainian recruits have completed basic training in the UK from allied trainers, including Canadians. Ukraine is also seeking a more formalised treaty with Western partners to ensure its protection from future Russian invasion.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1570006459324284928

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Roundup: Meet Canada’s newest Supreme Court justice

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday that he will be appointing Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada, making her the first Indigenous justice on the top court. She will be replacing Justice Michael Moldaver, who retires on September 1st, a few months ahead of his mandatory date, and this is for one of the Court’s three Ontario seats. While it was a given that this appointment would be a woman in order to restore gender balance on the court, there has been pressure for an Indigenous justice for a while. This government has also mandated that official bilingualism should also be a requirement for appointment, which shrinks the pool of available Indigenous candidates a whole lot. And it’s not without controversy—it is true that, as many Indigenous activists point out, that kind of linguistic requirement is colonial, but it also has been pointed out that relaxing those kinds of requirements is generally done at the expense of French, which is also a very fraught notion with the insistence that French is “in decline” in the country (which is debatable, because use of French has been up in Quebec, but they are paranoid about the “mother tongue” statistics, which is generally about immigrants for whom French is not their first language).

While you can read O’Bonsawin’s application questionnaire here, it’s worthwhile noting that she comes to the Supreme Court directly from the Superior Court rather than the Court of Appeal. This isn’t a big deal, but it does speak to the pool of available candidates, because there are exceedingly few Indigenous judges at the appeal court level. This being said, it’s perfectly permissible to appoint people to the Supreme Court if they’re law professors, or even lawyers working in a firm—Justice Suzanne Côté was appointed directly from practice. This being said, O’Bonsawin has academic chops to add to her experience, with a PhD in the Gladue sentencing principles, which are about taking proper life circumstances into account during sentencing for Indigenous people. She also has done a lot of work around mental health, which is also important in the current legal environment, so it does look like she will bring a wealth of experience to the bench. The only thing I would say is that with Moldaver’s retirement, there is no longer a criminal justice specialist on the Supreme Court, which may be an issue in the longer-term, but there are enough bright minds on the court that I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Meanwhile, here is some reaction from the president of the Canadian Bar Association, and several Indigenous leaders.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 177:

Ukraine has been making several drone attacks in the areas of Nova Kakhovka, near the occupied city of Kherson, as well as possibly the Crimean port of Yevpatoriya, which seems to be about Ukrainians showing their capabilities to Russian aggressors. Ukraine is also warning that Russia is planning a “large scale provocation” around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in an attempt to decouple it from the Ukrainian grid and attach it to the Russian grid, which is apparently a complex operation that could cause a disaster. Meanwhile, doctors talk about why they are staying in place in war-hit towns in Ukraine.

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QP: Too tired to land a punch

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While the prime minister was landing in Rwanda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, his deputy was supposed to appear virtually, but didn’t in the end. Every other leader was present, one of them with a special guest. Candice Bergen led off, script on her mini-lectern, and she read the accusations that the PMO interfered in the investigation of the Nova Scotia mass shooting, and demanded an independent investigation into the matter. Bill Blair recited that there was no interference and no pressure, and pointed to the statement of the RCMP to corroborate this. Bergen insisted the government has a pattern of interference, and repeated her demand, and Blair repeated his own denial under the banner that this was the truth. Bergen pivoted to inflation, and demanded tax cuts, saying the government would rather let people suffer than accept their ideas. Jonathan Wilkinson reminded her that they have a package of affordability measures, and that they are working with global partners to stabilise the global oil supply. Luc Berthold took over in French to lament inflation and demanded tax cuts, and Rachel Bendayan denied that the Conservatives’ proposals would lower the cost of living, and that the government won at the Supreme Court to win about carbon prices, and that the Liberals have a plan. Berthold then raised the issue of passport lineups, and Karina Gould assured him that they have strategies to get those who need their passports expeditiously.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he too raised the passport lines with a dose of sarcasm about the prime minister’s international travel, and Gould reiterated that the situation in Montreal is unacceptable but different from elsewhere in the country, and that they have management teams to assist the situation. Blanchet gave it a second go and got the same response. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, his daughter on his arm, and he decried high inflation, demanding action for families. This gave Gould an opening to talk about child care. Singh repeated the question in French, and Gould repeated her points about child care.

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Roundup: Doug Ford broke the fact-checker

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It’s now approximately day ninety-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have captured half of the city of Severodonetsk in a “hail of grenades,” while fierce street fighting continues. A rocket strike also hit Sloviansk, also in the Donbas region, which killed three and wounded six. As previously mentioned, the Russian strategy seems to be to try and take the Donbas region as fast as possible, before more heavy western weapons arrive, and lo, it looks like the US will be sending medium-range rockets to Ukraine after a promise that they wouldn’t fire them over the Russian border. Meanwhile, here is a look at Médecins Sans Frontières treating civilians wounded in the fighting near Ukraine’s front lines, and how it’s at a scale they have never faced before.

Closer to home, the Toronto Star’s attempt to fact-check Doug Ford for a week wound up being an exercise in misery, as he “broke” said fact-check system. Now, to be clear, the Star’s whole fact-check exercise between the federal and provincial elections has been fairly risible. It’s not a good system where you take everything the leaders say for a week each, and then evaluate them based on number of falsehoods per time spoken. And because it’s done by someone for whom politics is not their regular beat, they don’t have enough context to know whether what is being said is true or not, and a lot of stuff is being given a pass that shouldn’t be precisely because they don’t know enough of what is going on to have a reasonable bullshit detector throughout. This having been established, Ford still broke their system by barely speaking at all, and when he does, it’s largely in generalities that can’t be easily checked, and it makes it easy for him to get caught up in exaggerations that also wind up getting a pass. Still, he did still lie a lot, particularly about the situation he inherited, but the fact-check system is pretty useless, so why bother?

Nevertheless, this is now the second election where Ford has largely been a blank slate, with little in the way of policy other than his previous move of rebating licence plate stickers, and his promise to expand a highway as though it will do anything about congestion (which it won’t because induced demand). There is no contest of ideas because it’s content-free, and nobody wants to call this fact out even though it is utterly corroding our democracy. But it seems to be a strategy that works for him, and which the media in this province seems to be fine with, because they have given him the easiest ride humanly possible, and it’s just so dispiriting. How are we a serious province?

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QP: Rota’s return to the big chair

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Not only was the prime minister president for QP, as were most other leaders, but Anthony Rota was also back in the Speaker’s chair, for the first time in months. Before things got underway, he took a moment to thank MPs for their support during his absence, and for the care team for his surgery.

After several rounds of applause, things launched with Candice Bergen at her mini-lectern, and she accused the prime minister of trying to end the energy sector by way of the carbon price, insisting that he wants high gas prices. (Erm, Candice, Europe would like a word about gas prices). Justin Trudeau somewhat haltingly listed programmes that are indexed to inflation, and reminded her of what families in Manitoba get in the carbon rebate. Bergen then pivoted to trying to find fault with both the gun control bill and the bill that will remove mandatory minimums on some gun crimes. Trudeau took up a script to praise his own gun control bill, and to recite that removing mandatory minimums is about keeping Black and Indigenous people for; being disproportionately affected by the justice system. Bergen read some scripted outrage about criminals getting house arrest, to which Trudeau read a script about systemic discrimination or people going to jail because they struggle with addiction. Raquel Dancho took over, accusing the government of being responsible for the rise in violent crime, denouncing the removal of mandatory minimums along the way. Trudeau, extemporaneously, listed the new measures in the gun control bill tabled yesterday. Dancho insisted the government wasn’t doing enough to stop gun violence, inadvertently listing things the government was already doing as her counter to “useless” gun bans. Trudeau dismissed this as parroting talking points from the gun lobby, and noted they did invest in the same tools Dancho mentioned.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he complained that the federal government was ready to go to the Supreme Court of Canada over Quebec’s Law 21 and 96, and he wondered if English was really threatened in Quebec. Trudeau took up a script to raise the woman denied a teaching job because she wears a hijab, and it was his job to defend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Blanchet insisted this was a lie, and that secularism was being attacked, before repeating his question a to whether English was threatened in Quebec. Trudeau, extemporaneously, stated the incorrect truism that French is under threat, and insisted that this was about defending minorities throughout the country.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and in French, he noted that the government agreed to decriminalise small amounts of hard drugs in BC, and wanted support for the private member’s bill on doing this nationally. Trudeau recited a script about the opioid crisis and today’s announcement out of BC. Gord Johns repeated the question in English, and Trudeau read the English version of the same script.

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Roundup: Incoherent housing plans

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We are now on or about day fifty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has declared victory when it comes to their siege of the strategic city of Mariupol, and has ordered its troops not to storm the last pocket of resistance there. But hey, they’ve “liberated” the city by shelling it to rubble, so good job there. It is estimated that some 2000 Ukrainian troops remain on site, spread out in a network of tunnels and bunkers, along with several thousand civilians. Of course, this also means that Russian forces are likely going to simply try and wait out those remaining troops and civilians as they run out of food and supplies, and trap them inside.

Closer to home, Pierre Poilievre has been unveiling more of his housing platform, but…it’s pretty incoherent, in a lot of ways. There isn’t that much financial leverage that the federal government can wield when it comes to ending NIMBYism and seven decades of market incentives for single-family homes that are unsustainable and which only continue to exacerbate the affordability crisis (not to mention the climate crisis). Oh, and Poilievre is defending his own rental property portfolio, citing that he’s providing affordable rental accommodations to two “deserving families.”

The last point on that list is pretty critical—it would undermine central bank independence, and one imagines could actually create a deflationary spiral in the right circumstances that would create a depression, which is precisely what they were avoiding when they engaged in quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Jennifer Robson has even more concerns about the incoherence of the plan in this thread. Meanwhile, I would also recommend checking out this thread by Mike Moffatt about just how complex the drivers of the housing situation in Ontario is. It’s not just one thing—it’s a lot of moving parts that got us to where we are now.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1517214855572320256

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