Roundup: No single point of failure

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It was another big day at the Procedure and House Affairs committee as both the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas, appeared, as did Bill Blair, both on the subject of what they knew about the “threats” against Michael Chong and his family. What we got was a bit more of the corroboration from the Johnston report that the process of pushing intelligence up to senior levels hasn’t been working, which is why these things weren’t noticed or acted upon earlier. Blair in particular offered more clarity about the issue with the top-secret emails and how it’s being misconstrued that he didn’t have passwords to it. No, it’s that he doesn’t have access to that system period, and CSIS prepares a package from him and brings it to him physically. He did also take a bit of a swipe at CSIS, saying that the Chong information was determined to be something that they didn’t think the minister needed to know, which is a bit petty.

What stood out for me the most was Thomas saying that there wasn’t one single point of failure here, or one link in the chain, but a flaw in the process, which is consistent with what Johnston put in his report. This is why I can’t believe that anyone who says that the report is some kind of cover-up has actually read the report because it’s quite clearly pointing to these appalling failures on the part of senior levels of government, and that is on the government to have done something about. They are responsible, and they need to fully own it in order to make the necessary changes.

I would also add that while this testimony was good to have, I still don’t see how this relates to Chong’s privileges supposedly being breached, and what remedies should be applied. There seems to be an effort to make this into a bigger issue around foreign interference, and not on the specific issue of Chong, and what the House of Commons should do if his privileges as an MP were specifically breached,  and I’m not seeing much of that.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired over 30 missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight, and all appear to have been shot down. The Russians also claim that they destroyed Ukraine’s “last warship” in a strike on Odessa, but Ukraine won’t talk about whether it’s true or not. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Moldova for the NATO meeting, calling for security guarantees if Ukraine can’t get NATO membership until the war is over. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled against Ukraine in denying same-sex marriage licences, which is going to need to be part of Ukraine’s hoped-for European integration.

https://twitter.com/internewsua/status/1664252937156059140

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1664311594858299402

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Toronto with members of the Toronto Raptors to proclaim the first annual National Day Against Gun violence.
  • Trudeau also met with Métis leaders, who want him to introduce a self-governance bill and get it passed before summer. (Good luck with that).
  • Doug Ford has committed to providing one third of the subsidies that Stellantis is demanding, as the details of the renegotiated agreement are being finalised.
  • Canada is sanctioning seven Russian collaborators in Moldova, as well as a political party, as proxies of Russians.
  • Marco Mendicino is hoping that they can get the gun control bill passed before the Senate rises for the summer, so that they can get to work on new regulations.
  • Pablo Rodriguez is furious that Facebook is testing a way to throttle Canadian access to news on its sites.
  • The RCMP say they have ended the work of the so-called Chinese “police stations” at the two centres in Montreal, which were existing service agencies.
  • The government has extended CBC president and CEO Catherine Tait for another 18 months.
  • A group of MPs are calling on the government to grant honorary citizenship to Russian dissent Vladimir Kara-Murza.
  • Former Harper Director of Communications Andre MacDougall calls out Poilievre’s use of vile smears in his desire to get clicks over being a substantive politician.

Odds and ends:

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