Roundup: Boycotting NSICOP for theatre

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Because we cannot trust our current political parties to do their jobs of accountability, Erin O’Toole has announced that he won’t name any MPs to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, citing the Winnipeg Lab documents and completely false insinuations that the committee is a tool of the prime minister’s office to obscure information. It’s bullshit, but it’s bullshit that the party has committed itself to for the sake of political theatre over serious work.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1473261482624397319

To throw a strop over these documents when a) the committee that ordered them no longer exists and won’t be reconstituted; b) the order the committee gave to produce those documents does not exist; and c) the government has offered other compromises to release those documents, both in releasing the unredacted documents to NSICOP, and in proposing an ad hoc committee duplicating the process from the Harper-era Afghan detainee documents, which the Conservatives also rejected for handwavey reasons. Do you see how none of this is adding up to anything coherent, and why the government’s many attempts to release the documents in an unredacted form that will still satisfy national security requirements keep getting rejected for performative reasons?

If NSICOP were really a tool of the PMO to hide information, then its members from both the opposition parties in the Commons and in the Senate would have resigned in protest long ago, and lo, that has never happened, because it’s not a tool of the PMO. O’Toole’s objections are theatre, and nothing more. It would be great if more people would call this theatre out for what it is, rather than just tut-tutting about secrecy. Our MPs have proven time and again that they’re not serious about accountability over national security and intelligence matters, and that they can’t be trusted with the information, and they have proven that the concerns of our national security and intelligence agencies are right, time and again.

Good reads:

  • More states of emergency are being declared around omicron, more provinces are imposing restrictions, and testing and tracing has collapsed in Ottawa.
  • As tracing has collapsed, here’s a reminder of why the COVID Alert app wound up failing (spoiler alert: Provinces didn’t take it seriously).
  • Justin Trudeau says that there was no quid pro quo with allies who supported Canada’s efforts to have the two Michaels freed by China.
  • Canada is launching a challenge of American softwood lumber duties under the Chapter 10 mechanism of the New NAFTA.
  • Steven Guilbeault has published the draft regulations to ban many common disposable plastics by the end of 2022, which are now in a consultation period.
  • Ahmed Hussen’s mandate letter talks about cooling housing investment and speculation, but some of his plans will involve provincial negotiations.
  • Advocates are concerned that Carolyn Bennett’s mandate letter doesn’t actual mention the word “opioids” or “overdose.”
  • A report that consulted military sexual misconduct survivors was released, and has 45 recommendations to combat the problem.
  • Our military shipbuilding is being impacted by COVID and supply chain problems, which is going to delay delivery of replacements for our rapidly aging navy.
  • The Taxpayers’ Ombudsman says that most of the problems identified with the CRA in 2017 by the Auditor General still haven’t been solved.
  • Conservative MP Rachael Thomas (former Harder) has been caught out spreading vaccine disinformation, and casting herself as an advocate for the unvaccinated.
  • Susan Delacourt enumerates how omicron is changing the landscape, including the fact that the new pandemic supports in Bill C-2 won’t be sufficient for most.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Boycotting NSICOP for theatre”

  1. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to continue riling up the base with conspiracy theories accusing Trudeau/PMO of being in cahoots with GHINA. At the same time, he is tamping down the China-relations committee due to their over-the-top racist McCarthyism costing them votes and seats in ethnically Chinese communities. His caucus and his own party hate his guts, and swing voters don’t trust him either, so he’s just throwing anything at the bigly wall he thinks will stick and which has the vague appearance of “Trudeau bad.”

    This is all to foster the asinine conspiracy theory that Cheryl Gallant was advancing on social media, that Trudeau played a role in unleashing the virus onto the world. You know, because he’s simultaneously an airheaded TV actor/snowboarder/surfer dude and a criminal mastermind all at once. Hillary Rodham Trudeau invented COVID, did 9/11, shot both Kennedys, and came up with the idea for Jar-Jar Binks. The horror. Lock him up.

    This party is completely out of ideas and eating themselves and each other alive. The only thing they seem to be able to agree upon is “Trudeau bad.” Holland is correct; they don’t really want the documents. They just want to keep invoking their existence as a narrative device and imaginary prop to accuse the Liberals of a “cover-up,” and keep thumping the drum that “Trudeau bad.”

    Maybe they’ll demand Margaret Trudeau testify before a committee as to whether she likes Chinese food. Then they’ll accuse her son of a cover-up again, when some committee or another doesn’t get to see the receipts because Mrs. Iselin — er, Mrs. Trudeau — threw them away with the packaging from her kung pao chicken. Poilievre can then wave blackened-out dinner menus at the press gallery. Better save some tin foil for wrapping up leftovers and making hats for everyone in the QAnonservative Party of Canada.

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