Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: The first Trump 2.0 salvo

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And so it begins. Donald Trump went on this Truth Social to declare that he’s going to impose 25 percent tariffs against Canada until we secure the border and stop letting illegal aliens and fentanyl across, and predictably, everybody lost their gods damned minds.

Guys, he’s signalling he wants counter offers.Throwing someone under the bus is not an offer Doug/Danielle. He can do that without you. What do you have that he needs? Or, what do you have what ppl he needs/owes need? Hint ON: it’s not auto parts.

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T02:12:33.298Z

Justin Trudeau had a call with Trump apparently shortly after, and Dominic LeBlanc and Chrystia Freeland put out a bland, vaguely-reassuring statement, while Trudeau also had to call the premiers of the two largest provinces to calm them down (as they had already been demanding an emergency First Ministers’ meeting about Trump’s return). In amidst this, Jagmeet Singh was also being performative about demanding Trudeau fight, and so on.

It took less than three hours before the first of the Elder Pundits started demanding that we capitulate on a number of files to Trump while, delusionally, insisting that he can be bargained with in good faith. Honest to Zeus, you guys.

And here's our first sighting of a capitulationist argument. John advocates that we gather and sit down and negotiate "in good faith" with the incoming administration, and then lists a bunch of things where we should just concede.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T04:47:28.634Z

Well, I see that Alaric has brought a lot of Visigoths with him to the gates of Rome. Maybe we should sit down and negotiate with Good King Alaric in good faith and he will agree to sack only half of Rome.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T04:54:19.405Z

I mean, had this strategy succeeded even once with that guy? "Say what you want about Trump, but he sure does respect and respond to people who come and negotiate in good faith." Haha, no.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T04:57:16.619Z

Once everyone calms down and breathes into a paper bag for a few minutes, we need to be clear-eyed about this, and one of the most important things to be clear-eyed about is that if Trump does this, that means he raises gas prices in the American Midwest overnight. Maybe we need to let him discover some consequences for his actions instead of capitulating? It might be a novel approach, and we might suffer some collateral damage, but it might be less than we think.

What action should we take to a threatened 25% tariff?Some thoughts….www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T02:14:27.371Z

https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3lbsuq6etic26

I mean seriously if the guy is about to jam a stick in his own damned wheel we don't need to have an emergency Team Canada summit and capitulate our way into offering sacrifices. We should just say…go ahead, and enjoy the pain you're inflicting on yourself.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T02:41:01.591Z

You all MOCKED George Lucas and said this was boring or dumb but who’s laughing now???

— Happy Nute Dawn (@nutedawn.bsky.social) 2024-11-26T01:00:33.647Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia once again launched a massive drone assault, targeting Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kyiv, mostly damaging residential buildings. Russian forces are also rapidly advancing toward Kurakhove.

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QP: Blaming Trudeau for a “woke riot”

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While the PM was off to Montreal to address the NATO parliamentary association meeting (which I remind you is not a NATO leaders’ summit), his deputy was present in his stead. Unusually, all of the other leaders were present on a Monday with no PM present, and Pierre Poilievre was present and led off in French, and he blamed Trudeau for the riot in Montreal, listed off a metric tonne of absolute bullshit, and demanded an election. Bill Blair said that what was on display was criminality, and that everyone must condemn it in no uncertain terms. Poilievre repeated the same bullshit in English, and this time Blair denounced the attempt to score partisan points off of what happened. Poilievre returned to French to take a swipe at the Bloc for supporting the government and demanded an election, and Chrystia Freeland said that every member has an opportunity to help Canadians with their measures, and wondered if the Conservatives would be free to vote into help people. Poilievre returned to English again to decry the “tax trick” of the GST “holiday,” and Freeland noted that in Canada, inflation, interest rates, deficits and the public debt are lower than the U.S., and repeated the question as to whether Conservatives would be free to vote for the tax holiday. Poilievre then denounced the notion of a “vibe-cession,” and Freeland suggested that Poilievre needs to be a little more economically literate, noted the upward GDP revisions, and the increase in per capita GDP.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, to decry that the cheques would go to high-income earners but not seniors, and Freeland said that they take the concerns of seniors seriously, and noted that they have supported seniors more than any government in the past, and that the federal expenditure on seniors is $48 billion. Blanchet decried the “discrimination” of this measure, and Freeland noted that seniors who are still working will get the cheque.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP to also decry that seniors won’t get that cheque, calling them the “most vulnerable” (the vast majority of seniors are not). Freeland reiterated that that how is the time to help people who have been through tough times with extra support. Singh switched to French, he repeated his condemnation of the exclusion of seniors, and added in students for good measure, and Freeland said that she hoped that the NDP would help them help Canadians.

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Roundup: Was Montreal razed?

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You might have thought it was the apocalypse, as a bunch of anti-NATO and pro-Palestinian rioters damaged property and set some cars on fire in Montreal (as the city was set to host a meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Association, which is NOT a NATO leaders’ meeting), while Justin Trudeau was at the Taylor Swift concert with is daughter. Suddenly every, particularly a bunch of American blue-check accounts on Twitter, followed by Pierre Poilievre and a bunch of people who should otherwise be rational actors in Canada, were screaming that “Montreal was burning to the ground” (it was not), and treated this like the proverbial Nero fiddling as Rome burns. (Violins were not invented yet, for the record).

Without getting into the absolute bullshit that Poilievre was spouting in his lengthy rant, I have to keep asking people what exactly Trudeau should have done? This is explicitly a job for the local police, and it sounds like they shut it down in fairly short order because, well, riots happen in Montreal on a not-infrequent basis. Riots happened during the Harper era, that were frequently about hockey games, but hey, this is all because Trudeau. There was literally nothing Trudeau could have done in the moment. And yes, a bunch of chuds on social media tried to equate this with the invocation of the Emergencies Act during the occupation of downtown Ottawa, as though anything about the two situations were remotely similar, and even then it wouldn’t have made a difference, because the local police shut down those rioters and made arrests. One of the rioters was outed as the owner of a Second Cup franchise, and the company tore up her franchise agreement the next day. (Consequences!) All things that Trudeau could do nothing about because it’s not his role or responsibility. People need to get a gods damned grip.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy made another call for more air defences after another mass drone attack overnight Saturday; Zelenskyy also noted that since last July, 321 port infrastructure facilities have been damaged. Military sources have said that Russia has lost over 40 percent of the territory it took in the Kursk region of Russia. Here’s a look back at the past week in the conflict, and how the pace has accelerated with long-range missile strikes on both sides. Ukrainian forces are studying the remains of those new Russian missiles.

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Roundup: Pants-wetting about a marching song

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News stories yesterday that the Royal Canadian Navy was, of their own initiative, exploring changing their marching song from “Heart of Oak” caused an inordinate amount of absolute pants-wetting from not only the usual suspects, but even some other otherwise rational voices who insisted this was all Justin Trudeau’s fault. When pointed out that the government had nothing to do with this, that the military brass was doing this on their own, they replied with things like “A military leadership shaped by, and following the direction of, the government. This horseshit is absolutely on the prime minister.”

I find it borderline incomprehensible that people cannot accept that the military itself has recognised that they need to change their own culture. They are in a recruitment and retention crisis because they can no longer count on straight white men from economically-depressed regions to fill their ranks in perpetuity. The country has changed, and they need to change with it—to say nothing of the fact that the former culture was rife with racism, misogyny, homophobia, sexual violence, and abuse of power in the top ranks. That kind of toxic environment wasn’t good for anyone, but it is being mythologised as “warrior culture.”

Even more to the point, this is being dismissed as “DEI” or “woke,” even from people who should know better. Trudeau is not sitting there forcing them to adopt “quotas” or so-called “DEI” or he’ll take away their lolly. But this goes back to my column last week about how a lot of these voices are pretty unconsciously privileging anything from straight white men as the “norm” and as the default “neutral,” and everything else is “woke,” and if you point out that privilege, you’re “divisive.” People need to grow the hell up and realise it’s 2024, and that means recognizing that the world has moved on from treating straight white men as the only “normal” that matters, and that includes the military.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on residential buildings in Sumy killed two and injured more than twelve. Russians also claim to have overtaken the village of Novodmytrivka in the Donetsk region. There are more details about the hypersonic missile attack on Dnipro earlier in the week, to which president Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is developing new types of air defence to counter “new risks.”

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Roundup: The worst policy for retail politics reasons

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With the smell of desperation lingering in the air, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland announced a “GST holiday” for two months on all sorts of items—ready-made meals, children’s clothes, diapers, books, toys, beer, alcohol below a certain percentage, restaurant meals, you name it—to happen between December 15th and February 15th, to be followed by $250 cheques in April for anyone who worked in 2023 and whose household income is below $150,000 (so, not the top five percent of wage-earners).

OMG this two-month GST holiday is the dumbest idea ever. Who came up with this? Did they read any of the literature from the US sales tax holidays on school supplies? Includes restaurant meals, takeaway, fastfood, beer, wine, in addition to kids clothes, toys, etc.

— Dr Lindsay Tedds (@lindsaytedds.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T16:23:50.682Z

It’s absolutely terrible economic policy, it’s poorly implemented (and is going to be an absolute nightmare all around to ensure implementation happens) it will benefit higher-income households disproportionately, and it’s not going to do any favours for the deficit situation that they insist they want to put on a downward trajectory, but it’s apparently good retail politics. (And good for the restaurant industry, particularly during their slower months, but a dog’s breakfast for retailers). Apparently, the Liberals are frustrated that all of their good work with the Canada Child Benefit, $10/day childcare, dental care and any incoming pharmacare deal with provinces (and not to mention rebounding faster from the pandemic and tacking inflation faster than any other comparator government) isn’t helping them in the polls, so they’re resorting to direct bribes, because reasons. It’s so stupid. We live in the stupidest times, and everyone is just going along with it.

If this GST holiday is an NDP initiative then I ask them what do they think this accomplishes over enriching the GST/HST refundable tax credit. The primary beneficiaries of the tax holiday are high income households. The primary beneficiaries of an enriched rebate are low income households.

— Dr Lindsay Tedds (@lindsaytedds.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T16:40:37.584Z

I haven't calculated the impact of this GST holiday but if consumption doesn't drastically change, this GST holiday will likely mean that families in high income deciles will see a large reduction in the GST paid whereas families in lower-income deciles will see more moderate declines.

— Gillian Petit (@gillianpetit.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T17:22:59.293Z

As a reminder that ableism starts by imagining a lack of disability as the normal or default state for members of society and permits or even promotes the unequal or inferior treatment of persons with disabilities. Linking the GST rebate to working income is ableism.

— Dr Lindsay Tedds (@lindsaytedds.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T17:11:20.096Z

Amendment! Not quite no matter what. Backgrounder says “earned up to $150K net”. But that’s a bit fudgy. It could be total net income but it doesn’t say that. If I have $140k in wage income but $25k in investment income do I qualify?

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T20:11:22.726Z

Part of this was a sop to the NDP in the hopes that they would help end the filibuster in the House of Commons, but they’re not all that keen on that (as they are happy to watch the Liberals twist in the wind), and are talking about trying to push a programming motion to pass the bill with these promised tax changes in a single day, which is not terribly bright, and the government really, really needs to actually pass the capital gains changes, because they’re already being applied while the legislation has been held up by this filibuster. Can the government play hardball with the NDP to break the filibuster and send the privilege matter to committee? I guess we’ll wait and see.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia fired new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Dnipro on Tuesday, claiming to be in retaliation for long-range strikes inside Russian territory, hitting an industrial enterprise and a rehabilitation centre. (Curiously enough, a Russian spokeswoman was giving a briefing on the missiles when she was called mid-conference and told not to talk about them). Russia’s strikes over the weekend have badly damaged Ukraine’s largest private power producer, while Russians are now claiming they have taken the village of Dalne in eastern Ukraine.

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QP: Attempting to be clever about a poor policy decision

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The prime minister was in Toronto for the ill-considered GST “holiday” announcement along with his deputy, and most of the other leaders made themselves absent as well. Pierre Poilievre had just given a press conference but was not present, leaving it up to Frank Caputo to lead off instead, asking a ghoulish about sexual killers getting reduced security in prison, falsely blaming the former Bill C-83 (which was about solitary confinement reform). Dominic LeBlanc castigated the Conservatives for constantly repeating the names of heinous killers who are behind bars. Caputo then switched to denouncing the announced “affordability package” and demanded an election. Arif Virani declared that today was a great day for affordability and hoped the Conservatives wouldn’t be muzzled from voting for it. Caputo dismissed the measures and again demanded the carbon levy be cut instead. Virani gave a paean about how great the measures were for Xmas. Luc Berthold took over in French to say the best course was to cut the carbon levy, but the framing was odd because it doesn’t apply in Quebec, and François-Philippe Champagne praised the proposed measures. Berthold insisted the measures would raise inflation and demanded an election, and Champagne said that they don’t need an election, and the Conservatives need to support it.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and complained about the state of official languages and the decline of French. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, newly in the portfolio, said she looked forward to working with the Quebec government. Therrien quoted Quebec’s French Language Commissioner in saying that the federal government is “anglicising” Gatineau and Quebec, and Petitpas Taylor said she was offended by this as a New Brunswicker.

Alexandre Bourlerice rose for the NDP, and took credit for the government temporarily cutting the GST on certain items, and demanded this be made permanent. Champagne said that the NDP is just waking up and that the government has long understood the affordability needs and giving people a hand at Xmas. Don Davies made the same demand in English, and Anita Anand yelled that it was tax-free on essential goods for the holidays and how great this was, ending with a swipe at the Conservatives about “How can they claim to speak for Canadians when they can’t even speak for themselves?”

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Roundup: Boissonnault out (for now?)

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Just before Question Period yesterday, a very brief press release was issued that prime minister Justin Trudeau and Randy Boissonnault “agreed” that Boissonnault would step away from Cabinet in order for Boissonnault to clear the allegations against him. The wording was a little curious, but at this point it was probably inevitable given the sheer volume of stories coming out, never mind that most of them involved coincidences, or unproven allegations about his former business partner and not him.

I’m not going to remark much about any of the allegations, including those of “race-shifting” because Boissonnault has been issuing corrections to media outlets for more than five years that he didn’t say he was Indigenous even if the party said he was (which seems to never get mentioned in these stories), and the Ethics Commissioner keeps looking at each new allegation and saying there’s nothing to investigate. However, what I will note is that we are back to the situation where there is no longer anyone around the Cabinet table from Alberta or Saskatchewan. Now, Freeland did grow up in Alberta and can claim some credibility there, and Jonathan Wilkinson used to work for the Saskatchewan government, so he has some credibility there too, but Trudeau doesn’t have many options when it comes to replacing an Alberta seat because his only other alternative is George Chahal, who pretty much burned his future prospects when he got caught removing a rivals flyers during the campaign, and he has recently been vocal about looking to see Trudeau resign as leader.

I will also note that it remains particularly curious that for as much as media outlets and the National Post most especially have been pouring time and resources into these Boissonnault allegations, and every time they call up another Indigenous leader to denounce Boissonnault and call for his resignation, there is a particular silence around Danielle Smith and previously claims she has made about Indigenous ancestry, which have definitively been proven false. If the Conservatives are so offended by claims Boissonnault may or may not have made, or have been made about him, I have yet to see a single Conservative or pundit in this country call Smith a “fake” or a “fraud,” or a “phoney,” and demand that she resigns for the very same offences they are accusing Boissonnault of having made, when Smith’s has been plainly on the record for a couple of years now. As far as I can determine, the Post ran a single story about it, and not three weeks of constant, breathless reporting about it. It’s incredibly funny how that happens, no?

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has now fired UK-provided cruise missiles into Russian territory, striking targets in Kursk. Ukraine also says it successfully struck a command post in the Belgorod region, likely in a drone attack. Here is a look at the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.

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QP: Boissonnault out vs caucus muzzling

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Fresh from his trips to Peru and Brazil, the prime minister was present for QP today, ready to respond to any and all questions, though his deputy was elsewhere. All of the other leaders were present, and just before QP started, it was announced that Randy Boissonnault was stepping away from Cabinet to “clear his name” from the various allegations against him. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and led off with the various salacious allegations against Boissonnault. Justin Trudeau noted that Boissonnault has left Cabinet to focus on the allegations, but the Conservatives only want to cut. Poilievre raised Jody Wilson-Raybould and tried to compare her to Boissonnault, and Trudeau noted that for a leader who claims to want the truth is muzzling his own caucus. Poilievre switched to English, gave a quip about doubling hosing prices and gun crimes, and up until a minute ago, had a minister with a “double identity,” and Trudeau again repeated the points about Poilievre muzzling his MPs rather than letting them advocate for their communities. Poilievre again tried compare Wilson-Raybould to Boissonnault, and Trudeau repeated that Poilievre won’t let his caucus talk because he’s afraid of what they are going to say about him. Poilievre retorted that twenty Liberals want Trudeau gone, and demanded an election. Trudeau said that MPs on his side were free to share their opinions unlike the other side.

That threw a wrench in a bunch of planned #QP questions.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T19:32:28.061Z

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, said this display proved why Quebec needs to be on its own, and then demanded that the government force the Senate to pass the Supply Management bill. Trudeau noted that his party was in favour of it, and demanded the prime minister personally meet with senators to get them to pass it, and Trudeau noted that he does meet with them often, but regardless, the government will protect the system.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, complained about the cost of living, and demanded the government support their economically illiterate GST cut plan. Trudeau said that if the NDP was so concerned about the cost of living, they would help the government break the Conservative obstruction in the Chamber. Singh repeated the demand in French, and Trudeau repeated his same response. 

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Roundup: Ignoring the abuse and the banana republic tactics

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While on the one hand, it’s nice that legacy media is once again paying attention to the fact that there is an ongoing filibuster in the House of Commons that has largely paralyzed any work for six weeks now, but it would be great if they could actually make a gods damned effort at it. Pretty much every story, and the CBC’s turn was yesterday, just types of the quotes from Karina Gould and Andrew Scheer blaming one another for the filibuster. The current fascination to this story, however, is that the Supplementary Estimates votes are coming up, and every gods damned Hill reporter is dying to use the phrase “American-style government shutdown” to go along with it that they continue to gloss over the actual issues at hand.

There is a legitimate issue about the abuse of the parliamentary privilege to demand documents, because the power is only in relation to Parliament summoning those documents for their own purposes, not to turn them over to a third party. The Speaker and the clerks who advise him should never have allowed this to be considered a matter of privilege because the powers are being abused, but this is too much of a “process story” for them, so they don’t like that angle. There is also the even more pressing issue that these powers are being abused in a manner befitting a banana republic, where the powers of the state are being weaponized against those that the legislature doesn’t like, and that should be absolutely alarming to anyone paying attention.

This kind of abuse sets precedents, and if it’s allowed to happen now, it’ll be allowed to happen the next time someone wants to abuses these powers. The most that media outlets can muster up is “The RCMP says they don’t want these documents, so why are you so insistent?” but never “Why do you think it’s appropriate to behave like this is a banana republic where you are using the state to go after your perceived enemies?” We are in a particular moment in western democracies where autocrats are threatening to take over, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary has provided them a template to dismantle the guardrails of the state to delegitimize opposition and stay in power as long as possible. This is creeping into Canada, and legacy media in this country needs to be alive to the issue and call out these kinds of tactics and behaviours, rather than just both-sidesing it and using words like “polarized” or “divisive,” because that just plays into their hands.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine fired eight US-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia, two of them being intercepted, the rest hitting an ammunition supply location. President Zelenskyy addressed Ukraine’s parliament with a speech to mark the 1,000th day of the invasion.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1858871441032155385

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QP: Speaker Fergus walks into the trap set for him

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The PM was wrapping up at the G20, while his deputy was also elsewhere, as were most of the other leaders. Andrew Scheer was there to lead off, and he listed a bunch of specious allegations around Randy Boissonnault, and Boissonnault responded that he had nothing to do with the person in question. Scheer tried again, listing more salacious allegations, and this time Jean-Yves Duclos responded with the usual lines about Pierre Poilievre not getting his security clearance. Scheer then cited a tweet from Jody Wilson-Raybould that took a swipe at Boissonnault and then got into a back-and-forth with Speaker Fergus about which words he used weren’t parliamentary. Karina Gould got up to to decry the disrespect the Conservatives have been showing the Chamber, and had to start over after a lengthy intervention by the Speaker, who was pretty much exasperated by this point. Fergus then threatened to start taking questions away, before Luc Berthold got up to give the same talking points about Boissonnault in French, and Gould again got up to say that Boissonnault has answered, and it was time to stop the partisan games. Berthold tried one more time, got warned about the use of a first name, and Gould again got up to moralise about how the Conservatives are making a joke of this place.

Fergus has pretty much lost the entire Chamber. This is utterly ridiculous. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T19:32:20.904Z

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and railed about their fraud perpetrated against the CRA and the hunt for the whistleblowers. Marie-Claude Bibeau insisted that this was false and that they took it seriously, and that the Privacy Commissioner was involved. Therrien went on a tear about CRA trying to protect their own backsides, and Bibeau replied that they have not hidden anything and that that they have taken action.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and demand the government adopt the NDP’s economically illiterate GST cut plan. François-Philippe Champagne agreed with the framing device that the Conservatives would only cut, while the government is investing in Canadians. Leila Dance made the same demand in English, and Jenna Sudds also agreed that the Conservatives will cut before praising the school food programme.

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