Roundup: An address to the nation following the Throne Speech

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It’s Speech from the Throne day, which is always exciting, though it’ll be a much sparser affair given the pandemic. What is stranger is the fact that prime minister Justin Trudeau plans to take to the airwaves in the evening, around 6:30 PM, apparently in a bid to talk about the urgency pandemic and the emerging second wave, because we’re back to exponential growth in new cases in four provinces. After all, last night in the UK, Boris Johnson gave a public address to announce a second lockdown was going to start, so 2020 is going really well.

Meanwhile, there still is no agreement among MPs on how voting will work once the new session begins, and it sounds like the test for the proposed remote system did not go very well. Currently the parties seem to have some kind of an accord on a rotation system, but Trudeau and the Liberals keep pushing for hybrid sittings and remote voting while the Conservatives (rightfully) remain skeptical. But nobody is talking about the most practical solution, which is sequestering MPs and creating a bubble around Parliament Hill for them. I mean, if the NHL can do it, why can’t MPs, given how much more important Parliament is than the hockey playoffs.

Speaking of the importance of Parliament, MPs from the Liberals and NDP are balking at the availability of priority testing for them and their families at that Gatineau clinic, insisting that they’ll take spots away from other people who need it in the long queues for tests. And then the Conservatives went ahead and used unapproved serological tests yesterday provided by a lobbyist who is trying to get Health Canada to approve them – never mind that these tests don’t determine current infections, but only the presence of antibodies from past infections. This while they howl for the government to approve more rapid tests, even though the truncated approval process in the US has meant that faulty tests got approved there, which Health Canada is trying to avoid.

Good reads:

  • The federal government also signed a contract for 72 million doses of yet another possible vaccine candidate.
  • 38 police agencies in Canada were hacked by American hacktivists, but the RCMP insists no secret information was taken (after they took three months to report it).
  • The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing the challenges to the federal carbon price backstop law, and will have a second day of hearings today.
  • The Independent Senators Group has returned to agitating for changes to the Parliament of Canada Act to eliminate the status of the Senate’s official opposition.
  • The state funeral for John Turner will be held October 6th, in a very pared-down format owing to the difficulties of the global pandemic.
  • Here’s a look at how Erin O’Toole is spending his COVID isolation. O’Toole’s wife has also now tested positive for COVID.
  • Surprising nobody, BC’s Dr. Bonnie Henry has been facing abuse and death threats.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at what we can expect in the Throne Speech later today.
  • Kevin Carmichael interviews Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins as she begins to wind down her time at the Bank.
  • Heather Scoffield observes the government’s plans around electric vehicles and batter production, and whether that will be the boost they’re hoping for.
  • In the Globe and Mail, I write about how Trudeau appointing by-election candidates without nomination races is corrosive to grassroots democracy and hurts the party.
  • My column looks at all of the things that Justin Trudeau is being blamed for that are actually provincial jurisdiction, while the premiers are getting a pass from critics.

Odds and ends:

Colby Cosh looks at the contentious issue of trying to rename the town of Asbestos, Quebec.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: An address to the nation following the Throne Speech”

  1. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. Right now, we have NO point-of-entry assessment tool, other than the almost useless temperature test. Catching some infectious people would surely be better than catching none. I’m not suggesting that Health Canada be overly hasty, but they do seem to be much slower than health authorities in many other countries. I can easily imagine a scenario in which every other developed country is administering a vaccine proven safe and effective, while HC spins its wheels, just to be 110 per-cent sure.

  2. Trudeau keeps getting blamed for the premiers’ problems because of meatheaded partisanship. There are very few Liberal provincial governments, and the ones that do exist don’t really have any problems to write home about. Instead we have a bunch of cons getting a free pass from their federal buddies and the con-friendly media, plus Singh being his usual hypocrite regarding Horgan (crying foul that Trudeau scheduled two byelections while remaining silent on Horgan’s blatant power grab, and before that blaming Trudeau for the Wet’suwet’en issue while ignoring Horgan’s complicity in what the provincially-contracted RCMP was doing).

    It’s not that O’Toole or Singh are ignorant of civics. It’s that they’re not going to call out their own house when it’s easier to score political points by dunking on Trudeau and playing upon the public’s ignorance of jurisdictional realities. It’s partisanship but also populism, same as when Republican governors sabotaged Obamacare leaving the federal GOP (and Bernie Sanders) to whine that the Democrats had failed at delivering healthcare. Guess who then swooped in, proclaiming that “I alone can fix it,” while the kamikaze candidate from Vermont declared that it was better to “Bern the system down.” Hopefully Canadians don’t fall for the same gaslighting and snake oil as their neighbors downstairs.

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