Roundup: Committee as clown performance

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Because we no longer really have a Parliament, but merely a content creation studio that occasionally passes legislation, we find ourselves in yet another series of events where the institution is being weaponized for social media content. It’s not just the privilege filibuster happening in the House of Commons, though that definitely is happening (the Conservatives are taking the opportunity to get the words “corruption” and “Liberal insiders” in all of their talking points so they can create clips from them, never mind that the word “Liberal” was nowhere to be found in the Auditor General’s report on SDTC). Today, Jagmeet Singh has decided he needs another stunt for his own socials.

Singh plans to attend the Natural Resources committee meeting after Question Period, so that he can “stand up to big oil and gas,” by which he means the CEO of Cenovus Energy and the vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, both of whom are appearing by video conference as part of the study on the Trans Mountain Expansion. To drive home the point, party leaders don’t appear at committees (Elizabeth May occasionally accepted, because hers is a party of two, and she occasionally wants to participate in a committee meeting). Singh, however, is going tomorrow for the sole purpose of putting on a dog-and-pony show for the cameras.

This isn’t Singh’s first time doing so, mind you. He did it with the grocery CEOs, where he comically brough in a huge stack of papers, claiming they were questions from Canadians to those CEOs, but he didn’t ask a single one, but merely soliloquized for the cameras in the NDP’s designated spots. It was a pure clown performance for the sake of clips, but the NDP fell all over themselves to insist how great it was, and now Singh wants to do this again. Why now? Well, probably because he slit his own throat and immolated what little credibility he had when he walked away from his agreement with the Liberals in bad faith, and played into Pierre Poilievre’s hands, and now he wants to redeem himself and play up his precious illusions about sticking it to corporations. You can bet this is going to be another clown show that he’ll pat himself on the back over, and absolutely everyone’s time will have been wasted.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one and injured five in the Kherson region, and guided bombs killed two and inured thirty in Kharkiv. Russian forces have reached the frontline city of Toretsk, and they are advancing to the centre of the town. Ukrainian forces are maintaining “sufficient pressure” on Russian troops in the Kursk region of Russia, as they hold captured territory for a third month.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau headed to Laos for the ASEAN summit.
  • Chrystia Freeland says there has been no consideration about using prorogation to get out of the current privilege filibuster happening in the House of Commons.
  • The government says that they have already referred Samidoun to national security officials to see if they merit a terror designation, as the Conservatives make hay.
  • Justice department lawyers are telling the courts the government has no obligation to provide First Nations with clean drinking water, while ministers say otherwise.
  • The Commons public safety committee heard from experts about Elon Musk playing a key role in disseminating Russian propaganda via Tenet Media.
  • Speaker Fergus banned Pierre Poilievre from speaking in the Commons after he refused to withdraw his comments about Joly “pandering” to Hamas supporters.
  • Poilievre’s lighter punishment also meant the Speaker had to backtrack on Liberal Yvan Baker’s speaking ban, which Baker says is evidence of a double-standard.
  • On his book tour, Marc Garneau says he hopes there is still room in the Liberal party for “blue Liberals” like him. (They haven’t shifted that far, you guys).
  • Poilievre doubled down on saying that Iran making pre-emptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “a gift by the Jewish state to humanity.”
  • The key architect of Danielle Smith’s “recovery-focused” approach to the opioid epidemic is leaving his role by the end of the month.
  • Vancouver police are investigating chants of “death to Canada” at a Samidoun-led rally in Vancouver on Monday.
  • My column wonders about whatever happened to the notion of waiting for Justice Hogue’s report on foreign interference before calling an election.

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take offers an explainer on the banana republic motion that has landed the House of Commons in a privilege filibuster for a week now.

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