The big headline that everyone was talking about yesterday was a load of manufactured bullshit, which shouldn’t really surprise anyone, but it was what everyone was throwing around nevertheless. The Globe and Mail crunched the numbers from the Zoom log-ins from the special COVID-19 committee that has been sitting in lieu of regular House of Commons sittings, and found that lo, the Conservatives had the worst “attendance record.” Which is kind of hilarious because it completely misunderstands how this whole farcical process works. Oh, but the Conservatives must be hypocrites, because they’re demanding full sittings! Well, no – you’ve just found some numbers that you’re applying disingenuously in order to make them look like hypocrites. It’s exactly the kind of stunt that causes people – and small-conservatives especially – to distrust the mainstream media, because it looks an awful lot like they’re not being given a fair shake. Of course, Andrew Scheer didn’t do himself any favours when he called it “Liberal spin” rather than pointing out that this was a false construction, but his inability to do anything other than meathead partisan talking points was and still is his downfall.

Why this is such bad-faith “reporting” is because it ignores the fact that there is a set speaking list every day. If you’re an MP – particularly a Conservative MP in a rural riding where you have spotty Internet to begin with – what incentive is there for you to log into Zoom and watch it that way when you have no chance to participate when you can simply follow the proceedings on CPAC and get a better experience because the translation tends to work better? It also operates on the assumption that all 338 MPs are in the House of Commons at all times when Parliament is sitting regularly, which isn’t the case – the only time all MPs are in the Chamber are during Question Period and for votes, and no, despite the sales job that the government has been trying to foist onto the public, this committee is not Question Period. Trying to hand out attendance awards for participating in a Zoom call on steroids is a waste of everyone’s time and resources, and is a distraction from the actual issues related to the calls to have proper in-person sittings – or it would be if the majority of media outlets could actually report critically on it rather than swallowing the government’s lines.

Speaking of outrage clicks, the CBC has again been misrepresenting some Senate matters, like how the Selection Committee works, as part of their story wherein Senator Dalphond is calling for committee chairs and deputy chairs to rescind their “bonuses” in the current session because of many haven’t sat because of the pandemic. But it occurs to me that it’s unlikely that chairs have even been getting their stipends because most committees haven’t even been constituted yet, which makes this look even more like this is part of Dalphond’s particular vendetta against Senator Yuen Pau Woo, and Woo’s insistence on chairing the Selection Committee, and he’s trying to use a larger point about chairs’ salaries (using false comparisons with the House of Lords as ammunition) in order to provide cover from making this look personal. I am becoming extremely concerned about Dalphond’s behaviour here – though my disappointment with how the CBC covers the Senate is pretty much standard. Cheap outrage clicks on the backs of misrepresenting the Senate is par for the course for how journalism runs in this town. (I wrote more on the backstory here).

Good reads:

• François-Philippe Champagne has repaid his mortgages with a Chinese bank and refinanced them with a Canadian one to avoid creating a further distraction.
• Bill Blair says the government is consulting with First Nations leaders to come up with the legislative framework to make First Nations policing an essential service.
• RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki says that the number of mental health calls the RCMP are responding to has grown “exponentially.”
• A former justice minister and Supreme Court of Canada justice want the government to end Meng Wanzhou’s extradition (and prove to China that hostage-taking works).
• The American government is starting to grumble about new tariffs over concerns about aluminium and dairy. Of course.
• As the American threaten sanctions on employees of the International Criminal Court, Canada has reaffirmed its support for the institution.
• A Calgary Conservative MP has fired the student staffer who was accused of hacking Erin O’Toole’s campaign and its strategy videos.
• Here’s a look at how cuts to Ontario Public Health before the onset of the pandemic hobbled the province’s response to the crisis.
• In Alberta, the UCP has put up their lone Black minister to defend against questions regarding an government appointee who spread racist and anti-Semitic memes.
• Alberta also plans to restart its environmental monitoring in three weeks (after dubiously claiming the pandemic forced them to stop).
• Éric Grenier delves into the election spending returns which have been made public, showing how the main parties spent and what some of it indicates.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column explains how Commons committees can force emergency meetings throughout the summer, particularly in a hung parliament.
• Heather Scoffield has a conversation with Bill Morneau about the upcoming fiscal “snapshot” and the next steps of the recovery.
• Chris Selley boggles at premiers and other political leaders being given participation medals for the abysmal job they’ve done during the pandemic.
• Max Fawcett looks at the influence that Jason Kenney has been wielding in the Conservative leadership race, especially when it comes to oil and gas subsidies.
• My column takes a more expansive look at Jody Wilson-Raybould’s record, and why her claims of being prevented from enacting criminal justice reform makes no sense.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a first-hand account of being a Black woman in policing in Toronto, and how raising concerns about racism or misconduct leads to punishment.

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