Roundup: Poilievre tries out new tough-on-crime disinformation

Posted on by

As evidenced in Question Period yesterday, the Conservatives have found a new lie to suit their narrative around the transfer of Paul Bernardo, and it’s citing the former Bill C-83, which allegedly eliminated solitary confinement in Canadian prisons on favour of “structured intervention units.” We can pretty much be assured that the legislation did not do what it said it would, and “structured intervention” is largely still solitary confinement, and the actual problems haven’t been solved, but the underlying notion here was that this bill was in response to the finding of the courts and international human rights bodies that solitary confinement is a violation of human rights. Nevertheless, this is being blamed for the conditions that allowed for Bernardo’s transfer, which again, is not true. It’s not the first time they’ve done this tactic—they also did it with the former Bill C-75 on bail reform, which was about codifying Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence around bail, and actually created several more categories where a reverse onus was needed, which made bail tougher to get. That didn’t stop the lies then, and it isn’t around C-83 now.

In the meantime, here is the Alberta Prison Justice Society with some important context around prison transfers and security classifications, which a lot of people should know (and in some cases, do know but are lying about it in order to drum up outrage, because politics is all about rage-farming and shitposting these days).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the settlement of Novoberyslav in the Kherson region, killing a married couple when their house was bombed. The Ukrainian advance continues in the south, while Russians are trying to trying to dislodge Ukrainian positions in the east. Meanwhile, a group of African leaders are visiting Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s “peace formula” to end the war.

Good reads:

  • Anita Anand says that we will be deploying 15 Leopard 2 tanks plus support vehicles and personnel to Latvia by next spring.
  • Civil servants who were on strike last month have voted “overwhelmingly” in support of the four-year deal struck.
  • Statistics Canada’s real-time population estimate says that we have surpassed 40 million people, thanks in large part to our aggressive immigration targets.
  • The head of CMHC is fairly pessimistic about housing affordability, barring some way in which the current crisis spurs innovation.
  • The special interlocutor on unmarked graves wants legal mechanisms to deal with residential school denialism (which would probably be tricky to under the Charter).
  • Here is a look at the state of crisis that bail courts in Toronto are in because of a lack of resources from the province (as Poilievre shouts things like “jail not bail!”)
  • The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement doesn’t violate Section 7 of the Charter, but sent it back to Federal Court for Section 15.
  • The agriculture committee has recommended the government hit grocery giants with a windfall tax if the Competition Bureau can prove price-gouging.
  • As scrutiny on nomination races increases because of foreign interference allegations, the Conservatives have dropped the ability to sell memberships in bulk.
  • In New Brunswick, Blaine Higgs may be facing a leadership challenge, but he may also just pull the plug and call an early election to head it off.
  • My weekend column points out that Pierre Poilievre’s facile and specious talking points about inflation are wrong, and his “solutions” won’t fix it.

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.