Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Roundup: Animating the Double-Hyphen Affair zombie

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Because Jody Wilson-Raybould and the corpse of the Double-Hyphen Affair is getting a fresh attempt at necromancy now that her book is being released, we’re going to see a renewed round of questions about what happened. The Conservatives are sending out a bunch of press releases intimating that RCMP is still considering investigating the matter, and Wilson-Raybould herself is calling on the prime minister to allow them to investigate obstruction of justice – because they really want this zombie to wake up and start trying to eat the brain of this campaign.

In response to questions yesterday, Justin Trudeau said he has not been contacted by the RCMP regarding SNC-Lavalin, which…is not actually surprising. I’m not sure what there would be to investigate, really, and why it would be Trudeau they would be investigating. Her own testimony seemed to indicate that the pressure was largely coming from the jackasses who were in Bill Morneau’s office at the time (and it was those same jackasses in Morneau’s office who were letting SNC-Lavalin pull their puppet strings in pushing through the deferred prosecution agreement legislation into the budget implementation bill), and if you actually listen to the whole call with Michael Wernick and not the carefully curated clips that Wilson-Raybould set up in how she steered the conversation, he was looking for information that she had previously sent to PCO, but didn’t reach his desk. There is no actual obstruction of justice happening. The ultimate irony in all of this, however, is that if they had gone ahead and given SNC the deferred prosecution agreement – which it sounds like they wouldn’t have qualified for anyway – the company would have actually faced some consequences. As it was, SNC-Lavalin settled while the case around an executive collapsed and the company got away with a lesser penalty and few, if any, compliance measures, without any interference on anyone’s end.

The worst part of this, however, is that you have columnists who are writing things like “Wilson-Raybould offers a ballot question in an election about nothing,” which is ludicrous. This is not an election about nothing – no election is about nothing. There is plenty at stake in this campaign, but because it’s less so for straight white guys, whom these columnists are, they are blind to it.

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Roundup: A costing document with too-rosy projections

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The NDP released their platform costing document at 4:30 PM on a Saturday – the second day of advanced polls – a time of day where most of the population will have tuned out already. This was a choice, much like the Conservatives releasing theirs right before the debates – so that attention would be elsewhere. Why? Because as much as they might dress it up, there’s not a lot in there that is credible.

There is some $215 billion in proposed new spending, some of which is difficult to see is feasible, such as their plans for a basic income for the disabled – they have no costing details for it from the PBO, and that is largely intersecting with provincial benefits programmes, and one economist who looked at the number said it’s way too low. Their revenue projections in particular are very, very rosy, and an expert I reached out to said it’s impossible to get that money, especially in the first two years, because of the amount of administration necessary to capture it. So that blows their projections out of the water. But wait, they will say – we got the PBO to cost it and got his stamp of approval! But he was working with their inputs and assumptions, and implementation matters (which is why he shouldn’t be costing platforms in the first place, because implementation involves political decisions). If they tell him that revenues can start in the next year, he has to operate on that assumption, even though it’s not possible, so they get figures that won’t bear out in reality, but they can wave them around and say they have a stamp of approval. It’s a problem, and it’s another example of how parties play games with promises that they don’t spell out how they’ll implement, which increasingly means that those promises are hollow (and yes, all parties are guilty of this).

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1436825763806957574

Meanwhile, on the subject of the Conservatives’ “carbon savings plan” and the points they claim you’ll accumulate in lieu of a tax rebate, here’s energy economist Andrew Leach on how impossible that will be to implement. It’s a long thread, but a worthwhile one, because once again, implementation matters. And this is clearly a plan that there is no intention to actually implement (especially considering that their costing document claimed its costs would be negligible – another fiction).

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Roundup: Grading the parties’ sincerity on climate

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One of the great things about the policy landscape in Canada are the number of professors out there who are willing to devote their time and energy to providing advice to political parties, or who will be willing to evaluate their proposals. We had an example of this as professor Mark Jaccard at Simon Fraser University went and checked over the parties’ environmental platforms and did the modelling on them, and then graded them – and the Liberals came out ahead by quite a margin (and in the interest of trying to look “balanced,” the CBC declared that the Conservatives were “not far behind,” though it was literally the difference between an A- and a D).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1433770709730344962

The full study not only evaluates the targets, but the policies and costs as well – because there are economic costs to some of these plans. Interestingly, he also tests the sincerity of those plans, which is not only a sense of how feasible they are, but also their history as a party of a willingness to do the heavy lifting, and that’s a pretty important measure. “Beware of politicians who promise big but have not subjected their promises and plans to assessment by independent climate policy modellers. In this regard, the NDP and Greens are suspect,” Jaccard writes, and it’s worth reading through why he gives them the scores he does. The economic damage that the NDP plan promises to do would never be agreed to by their union base, and the fact that it would require a police state for them to set the kinds of binding carbon budgets that they propose are demonstrations about how unserious the policies are.

What is disappointing in this is that the NDP in particular started making personal attacks against Jaccard, and trying to build lame conspiracy theories that he is somehow being paid off to pump up the Liberals and talk down the NDP, which is both ridiculous and is the kinds of sore loser tactics that we’ve come to expect. (Seriously, my reply column on a daily basis is full of Dippers with hurt feelings because I have the temerity to point out the reality of things like jurisdiction or the fact that you can’t willpower things into existence). Elizabeth May was among those who took swipes at Jaccard, for the temerity of being an economist and not a climate scientist – which is also ridiculous because economics is literally the science of allocating scare resources, and the fact that climate scientists are not offering policy solutions. Science is not policy, and that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the two and how they complement one another – providing that you’re willing to listen and not get in a huff because someone pointed out that your implementation plans don’t belong in the real world.

https://twitter.com/MarkJaccard/status/1433891783524720641

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Roundup: False narratives about the Q2 GDP

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The figures for second quarter GDP were released yesterday, and they weren’t as good as had been expected. There was a surprise contraction of 1.1% annualized, which caught economists off-guard (and perhaps Statistics Canada as well, as their flash estimate a month previous had still shown growth). The majority of these declines were in the months of April and May because of the third wave, as June had shown robust growth in nearly all sectors as economies around the country re-opened – and those declines were largely in the areas of home resales and exports. To an extent, the home resales was a bit of a correction – after giant increases in previous quarters, most especially Q3 of 2020, the market slowed down.

For Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre, however, these figures were a cataclysmic sign that Trudeau can’t “manage” the economy, and that it’s deficits that are leading to inflation, which is insane. A lot of the weakness is attributable to the Third Wave and its associated lockdowns, and that is squarely the fault of premiers who opened up too soon, reduced restrictions too fast, and then were too slow to re-impose them (and we’re going to get more of that in the oncoming fourth wave). More than anything, it’s reflective that O’Toole and Poilievre aren’t even bothering to read the data beyond the headlines, and are slotting it into pre-arranged talking points which are so divorced from reality that it should be concerning to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. The fact that Poilievre is goading the Bank of Canada over Twitter is a Very Bad Thing. He’s continuing to politicise them, and feeding into a bunch of poisonous populist narratives, and O’Toole is joining him for the ride. This is a very bad thing for our economy, and it doesn’t matter that they’re doing it all for show and that they probably will keep things status quo should they form government – the fact that they are polarising the debate and riling up these same toxic mobs that have been following Trudeau’s campaign around is absolutely a problem. This kind of rhetoric should be disqualifying for anyone who seeks higher office in this country.

Meanwhile, as you may have heard, Erin O’Toole reiterated his promise to balance the budget without making any cuts (in spite of promising earlier to cut things like the CBC) because he’s going to grow the economy enough. Why does that sound familiar?

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1432799152266694657

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Roundup: Handwaving about tax loopholes

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The narratives about “closing tax loopholes” never really die, and lo, they have come back yet again on the campaign, as Jagmeet Singh hopes to use this as a campaign plank, and to basically start extracting a dollar figure from them. The problem? Well, that’s basically misunderstanding the problem with these “loopholes” – they’re a game of whack-a-mole. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t tackle them, because you should, and successive governments have been doing that for decades, but as soon as you close one, the well-funded tax preparation industry finds another that they can exploit, and all of that money that a government may have been hoping to recoup doesn’t appear.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1432361687361933312

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1432362354314993667

Additionally, Singh alleged that Justin Trudeau was somehow directing the CRA to not go after large corporations, and that he isn’t charging the “super rich” tax evaders. But again, this distorts reality – the CRA is an arm’s length agency from government, and free from political direction, and don’t direct audits or collection activities. Yes, the current government has provided more funds for CRA to undertake those activities, but they can’t tell them who to audit. Additionally, when CRA finds a file that they deem suspicious, they forward it to the RCMP, and if they feel that there is criminality, they forward it to the Public Prosecution Service – which, again, is arm’s length and not subject to political direction – and they decide whether or not to lay charges. Thus far, they have not with some of the high profile investigations into the Panama Papers, or other such leaks, likely because they know their chances of a successful prosecution are slim because these particular practices wind up being legal in the long run, no matter how often governments try to crack down on them. Regardless, Singh trying to portray this as either cronyism or a lack of political will is not reflective of reality.

Also not reflective of reality – some of the hand-waving he’s been doing in other interviews, such as this one where he says he’ll “get it done” on ending the deferral period for blood donations for men who have sex with men – never mind that Canadian Blood Services is arm’s length from government and not subject to their orders. You can’t Green Lantern your way through government. Implementation of your ideas matters – a lot.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s tacit endorsement of conspiracy theories

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At another campaign event yesterday, Justin Trudeau faced another angry mob in the background, and this time they included signs that showed doctored photos of Trudeau at the gallows about to be hanged. Trudeau carried on throughout, but did call out Erin O’Toole to actually denounce this kind of thing, and O’Toole…didn’t really. Not in any meaningful way.

https://twitter.com/supriyadwivedi/status/1432053724281810959

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1432050587860881409

It was pointed out that this particular image of Trudeau at the gallows was also part of one of Conservative incumbent Cheryl Gallant’s videos, wherein she peddled the conspiracy theory that Trudeau was going to call a “climate lockdown” to exert control and that climate change is just some fiction cooked up for these kinds of nefarious plots. And wouldn’t you know it – O’Toole refused to condemn Gallant or her continued attempts to push conspiracy theories. The party ensured Gallant scrubbed her YouTube channel, but their excuse when asked was that the image in question was “out of context,” which is bullshit that nobody should believe.

This isn’t the first time Gallant has been in the media for such things, and O’Toole has been aware of them in the past, and refused to do anything about it – in essence, endorsing the behaviour. And hell, Gallant is one of the reasons why Stephen Harper became so hard line about message discipline – because Gallant’s batshit media utterances about protecting sexual orientation from hate crimes helped to sink the Harper campaign in 2004. That O’Toole has been letting her run free with her accusations that the Liberals want to normalise sex with children, or this “climate lockdown” is a plot – and he knows she’s doing it, because it’s been brought to his attention before and he refused to say anything about it then either – it’s a tacit endorsement. Just saying “I’m the leader and what I say goes” both delegitimises the whole point of having MPs in the first place, and presents the party as monolithic, which it’s not. But to not say anything about Gallant or her conspiracies at all, and to consciously avoid saying anything about it at all is a choice, and it’s a choice that should be pointed out loud and clear as to what kinds of behaviours that O’Toole is willing to tolerate in order to achieve power.

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Roundup: A lack of self-awareness in the face of a violent mob

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The cancellation of Justin Trudeau’s planned rally on Friday evening because of the growing number of angry protesters has given some pause to members of the media about how things got so bad, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of self-reflection on too many people out there. While both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh have denounced the violent protesters, and O’Toole and local candidate Kyle Seeback kicking their volunteers who were part of the mob off of their campaigns, there remains a complete lack of self-awareness on their part. O’Toole not only endorses the kinds of shitposters that fuel this toxic outrage, but he has gone so far as to hire them, both for his leadership and for the campaign. The actively contributes to this discourse through winking and nodding to them, repeating their conspiracy theories in the House of Commons either directly or indirectly, and he directly contributes to this kind of poisoned discourse. Likewise, Conservative Michelle Rempel Garner is speaking out about being accosted and harassed on her campaign, but there is nary a word of acknowledgement about how she has fed this crowd, or the fact that she sends her own army of trolls and flying monkeys against those she disagrees with (and I know people who have been on the receiving end of this).

Most galling, however, are the media figures like John Ivison, who have essentially blamed Trudeau himself for this state of affairs.

There are others who have been bringing up the testimony of former Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, during the hearings into the Double-Hyphen Affair, when he sounded the alarm about the rising incitements to violence that were happening on social media – statements that were roundly ridiculed by members of the media. I’d say that perhaps we should be looking for some self-awareness out of this, but I have serious doubts that it’s even possible among the majority of them. But maybe I’m just getting cynical.

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Roundup: Singh needs to start giving details

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We have seen plenty of coverage thus far in the election about how popular Jagmeet Singh is, and how authentic he seems to his audience, and plenty about his personal likeability, but I am not seeing a lot that is pushing back against the things he is proposing. We have a couple of such examples yesterday, first with his pharmacare proposal. Essentially, the current government has put in the work, and established the Canada Drug Agency transition office, and thus far has signed up one province – Prince Edward Island. The other premiers have all balked at this, including the NDP premier of British Columbia, John Horgan, which I find mighty interesting in the current context. So, just what would Singh do differently? Well, he won’t say. Per the CBC:

When pressed by reporters on how he would get the provinces to sign onto his plan, Singh was light on details but committed to partnering with provincial and territorial governments. “We’d work with provinces and territories, I know it’s going to be hard work, but it’s going to save families money,” he said.

Great. He’ll “partner” with provinces that have thus far said no, and lo, he’ll do it by next year when it’s going to take years to negotiate a national formulary for said programme – something that seems to be a surprise to Singh, if you go by their stunt of a private members’ bill in the previous parliament, where they essentially proposed a framework where the provinces pay for prescription drugs and the federal government will then sign over a cheque. Yeah, it doesn’t really work like that. But I haven’t seen this being hammered home – you can’t just keep handwaving promises, particularly promises in areas of provincial jurisdiction, and not provide details on how you’ll accomplish it, and no, just promising to “work with” those provinces is not good enough. The current government has been doing that, and if you’re going to complain that they haven’t moved fast enough, then you need to explain how you’re going to do it differently. And no, the fact that you’re not Justin Trudeau is not an answer.

But he didn’t stop there. No, he also opined on vaccine passports, saying that the federal government should just go ahead and implement it federally – but again, didn’t say how they should, given that they don’t control the vaccination data because the delivery of healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction. These particular details matter, and you can’t just handwave them away. We need to start pressing Singh for details, because his answers aren’t good enough, and if he’s going to present himself as a serious contender for government, he needs to be asked the implementation questions so that he can answer them – and be made to answer them.

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Roundup: Curious demands for suspended campaigns

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The situation in Kabul seems to have had a secondary effect during the campaign, which have been repeated calls for the prime minister and/or affected ministers to suspend their campaigns in order to deal with the crisis. While it sounds like a good idea, I can’t help but feeling that this is strictly performative, especially given the situation on the ground.

For starters, having them in Ottawa at this point wouldn’t make that much of a difference, as the vast majority of civil servants are still working from home, and these ministers have just been through a year of remote or hybrid Parliament, and managed to do their duties from home for much of that, so why they couldn’t just keep doing it during this situation – and by all accounts that’s what they are doing – just strikes me as odd, but again, this instinct of performativity – being seen to be looking like they’re doing the job, as opposed to just doing it. And it’s not like they would be micro-managing the civil servants processing these approvals either, so again, I’m not sure why the need to suspend their campaigns is really there. The prime minister attended a G7 teleconference while on the road, other ministers have been providing daily briefings to the press from their homes over the past week or so, so again, there doesn’t seem to be a genuine need to suspend.

Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh is declaring the airlift mission to be a “failure” without necessarily understanding the situation on the ground, while Erin O’Toole, with his military experience, is simply proclaiming that he would have had “a plan,” as though any plan survives the first engagement. It was a fast-moving situation where we didn’t have assets of our own on the ground and were reliant on our allies, who weren’t necessarily dependable in their own right – made all the opaquer by the need for operational security. Of course, their real goal is to make the current government look like they’ve been incompetent on the file, and while I will agree that some of what happened can be attributed to our culture of risk-aversion, I think we need to try and keep some of the context of the situation in mind, rather than jumping to knee-jerk conclusions.

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Roundup: The “brother” meltdown

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Because we’re in an election and it ramps up the absolute stupidity across the board, we had another so-called “gaffe” that made a bunch of people performatively lose their minds, and I can’t even, you guys.

In a press conference about the situation in Afghanistan, Maryam Monsef, the minister responsible for the status of women and gender equality and a former refugee from Afghanistan, who fled when she was a child, made a direct address to the Taliban about letting people out of the country, and used the term “brothers.” And people lost their gods damned minds. She was asked about it and said that the context was cultural and she absolutely considers them to be terrorists, and yet the insinuation persists that, somehow, she was using the term as being sympathetic to a group that is diametrically opposed to everything she is about. WTF.

https://twitter.com/ChrisGNardi/status/1430565362265907205

And I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to suggest that there was a racist or Islamophobic undercurrent in the media even questioning that she was somehow trying to be sympathetic to the Taliban. Because seriously, you think that somehow Monsef personally, or the Trudeau government, is going to be “soft on terror,” or some other bullshit like this? Are these the tropes by which we will repeatedly fall back into, because we have learned nothing over the past twenty years? Apparently not, especially when it’s all being done to put on a show. It’s pretty gross, you guys. Do better.

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