Roundup: The freezing salary dog-and-pony show

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-fifty-four of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has targeted Odessa and Mykolaiv with air strikes, damaging private buildings and port infrastructure, because of course they were very serious about that deal to let grain shipments resume through those ports. Shelling also continues in the Donetsk region, as well as Kharkiv.

Closer to home, the Nova Scotia legislature was recalled yesterday to pass “emergency legislation” to freeze salaries, and cut the premier’s salary, as part of a dog and pony show about showing that they’re serious in the face of a cost-of-living crisis, and I cannot even. I absolutely hate this kind of politics, because the inherent message is that public life isn’t valuable, that the work elected officials do is worthless, and that they don’t deserve compensation for something that becomes a twenty-four/seven job, particularly at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to attract people to public life. It’s the kind of thinking that winds up ensuring that only people who are independently wealthy start seeking office, because they’re the only ones for whom it isn’t a loss for them to take the positions and give up their career paths (and in some cases pensions, as some provinces have disbanded theirs) to do so. This kind of attitude needs to be called out more, rather than fed into for populist reasons, and this goes for all parties.

I will also note that the premier, Tim Houston, is also trying to make the hybrid sitting option permanent for “things such as health reasons,” which again is a big no for me. While the province doesn’t have the issue of simultaneous translation that Ottawa does, it is nevertheless a bad idea because it normalizes the idea that elected office is some kind of middle-management position that can be done from home when it’s not. It’s a face-to-face job, and these things always start out with making it exceptional, for “health reasons” and such, but that quickly turns into parental leave, then work-life-balance, and then “I have so much work in my constituency I just couldn’t possibly,” and ends with populists taking it as a badge of honour to stay away from the “bubble” at the legislature or Parliament. It also creates an unrealistic and unsustainable expectation of presenteeism, rather than just letting MPs or MLAs have sick days and be done with it. It’s not a good thing, and people need to stop pretending that hybrid sittings are at all appropriate in a legislative context, because they are not.

Good reads:

  • The Pope held two more events in the Edmonton area yesterday, and how heads to Quebec City for several more events.
  • Murray Sinclair and Romeo Saganash are criticizing the inadequacy of the Pope’s “apology” delivered on Monday.
  • The federal government plans to audit CP Rail’s safety measures after a TSB report says that the company has “normalized” a persistent problem with brakes.
  • The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) had to ditch some of their recruitment ads because they gave off too much of a creepy “Big Brother” vibe.
  • The International AIDS Conference is underway, and it has been pointed out that efforts to fight HIV in Canada have stalled, and infections are not declining.
  • Hockey Canada officials told the Heritage committee that they alerted Sport Canada of allegations, but that those were not forwarded to the minister at the time.
  • The Commons’ access to information, privacy, and ethics committee will look at the RCMP’s use of spyware next month, as summer showboat season continues.
  • The trial of former Liberal MP Raj Grewal is being extended to the fall.
  • My column delves into the reasons why the allegations of political interference in the Nova Scotia mass shooting investigation never made any sense.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1551927617837842433

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