Roundup: More lying to cover up for the lies

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Earlier in the week, Conservative MP and justice critic Frank Caputo put out one of the party’s signature shitpost videos where he spent seven minutes talking about how he took a trip to the medium-security prison that houses notorious serial killers Paul Bernardo and Luka Magnotta, and it was replete with this theatrical outrage that the facility has a hockey rink and a tennis court. How dare they! Such “luxury”! Caputo also says he got to tour Bernardo’s cell while Bernardo was away, but that he came face-to-face with him after, and that Bernardo ask him something.

Well, it turns out that encounter didn’t actually happen. Correctional Services says that they were at opposite ends of a corridor and may have seen one another but didn’t interact. They also said that the hockey rink that Caputo was complaining about hasn’t been in service for the past couple of years, so as to dispute the notion that Bernardo is spending his days playing pick-up hockey.

Well, the Conservatives didn’t like that. Andrew Scheer accused The Canadian Press of bias for quoting the Correctional Services. Caputo claims that they denied the existence of the hockey rink, which they didn’t. And Pierre Poilievre’s press secretary accused CP of lying to cover for the government, except he was the one lying.

It’s galling just how egregious the Conservatives have lied throughout this affair—both Caputo lying on his shitpost video, and then all of the other Conservatives trying to run interference and lying about CP’s reporting. CP, the most egregious of both-sidesers in order to maintain strict neutrality in all things. But they will say and do anything to discredit the media, both to build their dystopian alternate reality, but to also condition their followers to believe absolutely anything, and to just ignore all of the cognitive dissonance. And of course, their apologists will either keep lying or keep trying to distract from the lies in order to try and whitewash the whole affair. This is the kind of thing that kills democracies, and they’re gleefully going along with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say that they have sunk another Russian warship using unmanned sea drones.

Good reads:

  • The state funeral for Brian Mulroney has been set for March 23rd in Montreal, with a lying-in-state in Ottawa beforehand (location TBD since it can’t be in Centre  Block).
  • Sean Fraser is calling on provincial and municipal governments to be more creative in how they can encourage more housing, especially as provinces have the levers.
  • Mark Holland signed a $36 million healthcare agreement with Nunavut.
  • Sources™ say that the government is going to reinstate UNRWA funding.
  • FINTRAC says that it has suffered a cyber-attack, but its classified and intelligence systems have not been compromised.
  • A group of Palestinian Canadians and human rights lawyers are seeking a court order to prevent weapons shipments to Israel (which Joly says aren’t happening).
  • Some energy and utility companies could face higher tax bills as the amount of debt they are allowed to transfer to offshore branches is being limited.
  • Jamil Jivani’s swipe at the Ford government in his victory speech has exposed some of the tensions between the two parties in recent months.
  • A would-be Conservative candidate wants an investigation into what he calls Iranian interference in his nomination. (There were questions about his own associations)
  • Patricia Treble looks at the problem facing the royal family with so many working royals out for illness or recuperation.
  • Justin Ling walks through current attempts at censorship and regulation on the internet by various governments (much of it with homophobic undercurrents).
  • My column points out all of the ways in which the future of national pharmacare is now entirely in the hands of the premiers (which could doom it).

Odds and Ends:

For National Magazine, I take a deeper dive into the online harms bill and hear from  a variety of experts and stakeholders.

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