Tag Archives: Bill Morneau

QP: Blaming the wrong government for deaths

Posted on by

It was another day of a nearly-empty chamber, and today there were a mere two Liberals on their benches, rather than just one, which is outrageous. Candice Bergen led off on video, accusing the government of being responsible for deaths in long-term care facilities because of the vaccine delays — with no mention of the culpability of provincial governments in their failures to manage the pandemic. Chrystia Freeland, also by video, insisted that Canada was one of the leading countries for vaccine rollouts. Bergen then blamed the cancellation of surgeries on the lack of vaccines — completely false — and Freeland repeated her assurances that Canada was among the best performers thus far and doing more. Bergen tried one last time to blame the federal government for the failures of the provinces, and Freeland again repeated her same assurances of Canada doing comparatively well on vaccines among allies. Richard Martel took over to lament that the government had not brought forward the bill to close the loopholes on sick benefits for debate but wanted them to pass it in one fell swoop, and Freeland assured him they were trying to correct an error. Martel was not mollified, insisting they needed to study the bill, but Freeland insisted that they wanted to close the loophole immediately and it was unfortunate that the opposition would not let them. Yves-François Blanchet took over on behalf of the Bloc, and wanted debate and amendments to the bill so that it could be retroactive, and Freeland assured him that the bill was not designed to encourage Canadians to ignore the guidelines to avoid travel. Blanchet was not impressed and thundered about closing the borders, but Freeland pivoted and invited Blanchet to apologise for his comments about Omar Alghabra. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he demanded immediate vaccines to protect seniors, for which Freeland calmly read her talking points about vaccine contracts and our record to date. Singh switched to English to demand for-profit long-term care be made public, starting with Revera, whose relationship be deliberately misconstrued. Freeland calmly stated that she shared his anguish and they were looking at best practices for long-term care.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Not getting a normal Xmas

Posted on by

Things are getting serious, but as much as our political leaders beg people to stay home, the numbers continue to climb. Prime minister Justin Trudeau held his presser outside of Rideau Cottage once again today, a signal that he wants people to work from home where they can, and that he plans to do the same as much as possible (so we’ll see if he’s back in the Chamber during the last three sitting weeks of the year). And he said flat-out that we’re not going to have a normal Christmas this year, because we’re too far beyond that point. And while Quebec is trying to come up with a “moral contract” plan to allow people to celebrate – a plan which is just as likely to accelerate the spread of the virus in that province – the Toronto and Peel regions in Ontario are headed back into lockdown as of Monday, because Doug Ford finally decided to pull the trigger (far too late to do much good). The new federal supports which included additional lockdown supports received royal assent this week and people can begin applying for them on Monday, with the rent supports retroactive for a couple of months.

This having been said, the Conservatives have already been trying out new lines of attack, which Erin O’Toole debuted right after his meeting with the prime minister on Thursday, in which he lays the blame for the second wave at the feet of the federal government. These lines were repeated in Question Period yesterday, and when Conservatives appeared on the political shows, and include lines like “the lockdowns were supposed to be temporary to let the government find a solution.” Right – that was the point. And it was the premiers, whose jurisdiction testing, tracing, and isolation is in, who pissed way the summer and didn’t invest in increasing the capacity necessary to do that, and lo and behold, we are too late now. O’Toole and his MPs demand “better data” about outbreaks, which again, is supposed to be coming from the provinces, but most of them are falling down on that job as well. Much of the Conservatives’ rhetoric is aimed at the notion that rapid testing – including at-home testing (which has much lower sensitivity) will allow people to go to work and the economy to re-open, and they point to all of these other countries that approved rapid testing, either omitting that many of the approved rapid tests in places like the US had their approvals pulled because they turned out to be useless, or the fact that they are virtually all facing massive spikes of their own in the second wave, meaning that lo, those tests were not the panacea at all. Additionally, we had the Chief Medical Officer of Health in Alberta talking about how people were lying about symptoms or tests in order to visit people in hospitals, and continuing the spread, so how can we actually think that giving people at-home tests is going to be at all feasible if they are going to lie about their results?

But this is about creating a narrative – one that absolves their provincial allies from responsibility, which relies on historical revisionism about the early days of the pandemic, and on wishful thinking around rapid tests. It’s also about disinformation, which is self-contradictory because of jurisdictional issues. And this gets added to other lies and disinformation they’re promulgating, like Pierre Poilievre walking right up to the line of conspiracy theories with the “Great Reset” sustainability initiative, where he is trying to play into NOW truthers under the “I’m just quoting Trudeau,” knowing full well how this stuff fuels the crazies. But they don’t care. They will be as irresponsible with this kind of messaging as possible because it’s only about scoring points, and they don’t care what they burn to the ground along the way. It’s a hell of a way to demonstrate how they would run the country if given the opportunity.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Getting to COVID-zero

Posted on by

The pandemic continues to grow exponentially, and people are wringing their hands about what to do, the notion of getting to COVID-zero is circulating again, after certain jurisdictions – Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia – managed it. So here’s Dr. Isaac Bogoch to explain it.

We can barely get premiers to institute some reasonably tough measures as it is, which is going to make anything required to actually crush the virus almost impossible – especially if we’re relying on their political calculus that closing businesses is worse for them than the hundreds or thousands of deaths that will happen otherwise.

For a bit of a reality check on the feasibility of this, Chris Selley explains why some countries’ systems for locking down COVID wouldn’t work in Canada, either because they were draconian or we are too far behind the curve to make it happen.

Continue reading →

QP: An unequivocal clarification

Posted on by

While everyone’s attention was on the election south of the border, things got underway in the House of Commons for our own (superior) system of democracy. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern and quoted Pierre Elliott Trudeau about the importance of free speech, to which Justin Trudeau rebutted that Canada always stands up for freedom of expression. O’Toole demanded to know if the PM stands up for freedom of speech, and Trudeau responded that nothing justifies violence or terrorism. O’Toole tried again, and Trudeau was even more forceful in his defence of free speech than the previous two times, without any of the equivocation that was being called out after this comments last week. O’Toole switched to French and recounted how the French president called the Quebec premier, and chided Trudeau on not getting a similar call, to which Trudeau repeated that they always stand up for free speech and will stand against terrorism and violence. O’Toole again brought up Trudeau’s father, and Trudeau reiterated for the fifth time that they unequivocally defend free expression and denounce terrorism. Yves-François Blanchet led off for the Bloc and he carried on with the same question, accusing Trudeau of twisting himself into knots over it, to which Trudeau again reiterated that they will always defend freedom of expression.  Blanchet was not mollified, and they went for another round of the same. Jagmeet Singh was up next and in French, asked about flu vaccine supplies — orders for which is once again a provincial responsibility. Trudeau responded that they ordered more than usual, and it was good that more people were getting it. Singh tried again in English, to which Trudeau reiterated that they preordered more than usual, and that they would work with the provinces to get more.

Continue reading →

Roundup: O’Toole’s conversion to the labour movement

Posted on by

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole addressed the Canadian Club of Toronto yesterday, and the more I read of his speech, the more curious I become of just what it is he’s trying to say. For example, he spent part of the speech bemoaning the collapse of private sector union membership in the country, talking about how it was part of the balance between what was good for the economy and what was good for workers. That’s surprising considering that when he was in Cabinet, O’Toole supported anti-union legislation that the party put forward (under the guise of private members’ bills, naturally), and the party was having a field day before the last election trying to accuse the government of stacking their media bailout fund by allowing Unifor – the country’s largest private sector union – to have a seat at the table (given that Unifor also represents a lot of journalists). I’m sure the labour movement in this country has whiplash from this sudden reversal – though I would note that in his mouthing about the importance of unions the past couple of months, he is careful to distinguish between private and public sector unions, the latter he still continues to be evil. (And before anyone says those two anti-union bills were “about transparency,” you all know that’s a lie and can stop insulting our intelligence).

O’Toole argued that we have somehow completely de-industrialized as a country, which is news to the rest of us, and then went on an extended tirade about China, because he’s trying to frame this as a national security argument and not just populism hollowing out his party’s political ideology. He claimed that the Liberals were using the pandemic to launch a “risky experiment with our economy” around green energy, which is…not really true, and ignores how markets have moved to green tech with better economic outcomes for doing so. He also continued his protectionist bent, and made a few deeply curious statements like “Free markets alone won’t solve all our problems” (erm, his party is the one that rails about the evils of socialism, no? Is he proposing nationalizing industries? Or does he simply mean global trade when he talks about “free markets”?), and adding that that GDP growth is not the “be-all and end-all of politics” – which is odd because nobody has actually suggested that it is (but his predecessor was fond of attacking straw men as well). I’m also a bit puzzled by what exactly he’s getting at when he says “We need policies to shore up the core units of society — family, neighbourhood, nation. We need policies that build solidarity, not just wealth.” Some of this is thinly-veiled Thatcherism, but where it’s building in terms of his populist rhetoric I am a bit troubled.

And make no mistake – this is full-throated populism, particularly when he starts railing about political and business elites selling out the country (with mention about political correctness in there) – which he’s oddly making to an audience that is thought of as Canada’s business elites. But it’s also deeply hypocritical because of just who O’Toole is. He is the son of a GM executive (which he tries to obscure when he says his father “worked for GM” as though he were blue-collar), who went on to be an MPP. In fact, earlier in the week, O’Toole was tweeting about how he built himself up to leadership, conveniently omitting the huge leg-up he was given along the way. It’s like the “self-made” tech millionaires who got their start with loans from their millionaire fathers, and getting those fathers to buy their tech at their companies. More to the point, after O’Toole left the military, he was a Bay Street corporate lawyer, which is not exactly the image of the middle-class guy he’s painting himself as. When he rails about “elites,” he needs to look in the mirror because that’s exactly what he is. Of course, we’ve seen this story so many times in populist politics, where rich white guys turn themselves into the heroes for the “oppressed underclass” (of mostly straight white guys) who somehow believe that said rich white guy is a “man of the people.” And no doubt O’Toole is hoping he’ll dine out on this as well, but make no mistake, this speech was hypocrisy of the highest order.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A gesture toward pettiness

Posted on by

There are a lot of symbolic gestures that politicians do that I cannot abide, but one of the most obnoxious and corrosive ones is the insistence on cutting their own pay when times get tough – and lo and behold, we have an Ontario senator who is moving a motion to do just that, asking both MPs and Senators to forgo statutory pay increases (to meet inflation) as a gesture. This is not really a symbolic or empty gesture – it is a signal to populist impulses that serve to devalue public life, and treats what they do as somehow being less valuable than people in the private sector – which is ironic considering how much less MPs and senators make than professionals and executives in the private sector.

Without entirely relitigating what I wrote on this before, I wanted to point out some of the fairly offensive characterizations of such gestures that were in the National Post piece, which describes the gesture as “important” for private sector and low-income workers, and the usual suspects at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation trying to insist that politicians aren’t making sacrifices when people are losing their businesses.

The problem with this line of logic is that these gestures don’t do anything. If anything, they come with a dose of schadenfreude, that if I’m suffering then watching politicians or civil servants being forced to suffer as well is satisfying, even if it ultimately makes things worse overall. What good does it serve to make everyone miserable or worse off? How does that make the situation better for everyone? It doesn’t. There are enough trade-offs that go with public life or public service that often make it a fairly unappealing to many people, so why pile on? Pettiness won’t solve the economic crisis or make people’s businesses reopen, and it certainly won’t make COVID go away, so why indulge it?

Continue reading →

Roundup: The importance of automatic filing

Posted on by

The Throne Speech commitment about automatic tax filings continues to make waves, particularly because it’s such an important component about ensuring that government benefits go to those who need them, and how it’s not happening currently. With that in mind, here’s Dr. Jennifer Robson with some additional context as to why this is a problem and why it’s a good thing the government is finally proposing to act on it.

Continue reading →

Roundup: More deficit vapours

Posted on by

The deficit pearl-clutchers have continued their parade through the op-ed pages of the nation, and some of them worry that the government’s planned green and inclusive recovery package could cost *Dr. Evil finger* ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS! Some of the usual suspects are getting the vapours over this, so here are a couple of reality checks to start your long weekend off with. Enjoy.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301931200152567809

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301933193436819456

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301933884750401536

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301944987043627012

Continue reading →

Roundup: The O’Toole victory post-mortems

Posted on by

Now that Erin O’Toole has been “decisively” declared the winner of the Conservative leadership contest, all of the analysis has churned out. While O’Toole avoided the media (he’ll have a press conference today instead) and got to work with meetings to solidify his transition to leader, including changes to senior staff, but had a call with the PM, wherein O’Toole was sure to point out in his readout that he raised “western alienation” as a concern he wanted addressed in the Throne Speech – sending a signal to his base on day one.

Here is a reminder of the things that O’Toole promised during his leadership campaign – and caution, a lot of those promises are premised on some eye-popping economic illiteracy. Here are five ridings whose results help tell the story of O’Toole’s rise using the rules of the campaign (you can find the full riding-by-riding breakdown here). Here’s an analysis of who the power players are in O’Toole’s Conservative Party.  Here’s a look into Leslyn Lewis’ campaign and what it signals, but I would put a word of caution for those who insist that this is some kind of turning point for a party that tends to favour old straight white men at all levels – I did notice over the past few months that whenever certain Conservative voters would harass female academics on social media and were called out for it, they would insist they weren’t sexist because they were voting for “a black woman to become prime minister.” I have a sneaking suspicion that Lewis has given a certain amount of cover to these kinds of people, which isn’t really a sign of progress.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt lists the things O’Toole will need to address before the party will be ready for an election, which means biding their time. Heather Scoffield sees an opportunity for O’Toole to exploit when it comes to fiscal policy. Aaron Wherry wonders how O’Toole will differentiate himself as leader given the party’s approach to issues. Éric Grenier crunches the numbers to show how the social conservative vote benefitted O’Toole over Peter MacKay. And Paul Wells takes stock of O’Toole, finding him to be little more than a warmed-over Scheer in an era where the political centre in the country has shifted from where the Conservatives believe it to be, which will mean that O’Toole will need to think bigger than he currently seems to have an interest in.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A curious set of leaks

Posted on by

There was an interesting bit of news out yesterday in that the husband of Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Rob Silver, was accused of having lobbied officials in Bill Morneau’s office as well as the PMO about making changes to the emergency wage subsidy legislation so that the company he worked for would qualify for it (which they don’t as they are majority-owned by Quebec’s pension plan). Apparently, he was turned down and those officials said that they felt “uncomfortable” by it all, but it’s nevertheless raising questions, and the Lobbying Commissioner is going to review the incident (but it’s likely he fell within the rules of not registering because it falls under the 20 percent threshold). There’s also no suggestion that said PM’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, was associated in any of this, nor the PM, but that’s not really what’s interesting about it.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1296947674046959617

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1296952196022571009

For the past two weeks, as the leaks about Bill Morneau started coming out in advance of his departure, we also saw a number of warnings over social media about Liberals being their own worst enemies and that now was really not a good time for a civil war within the party. The fact that there were anonymous leaks to both VICE and the National Post about this incident shows that someone is suddenly awfully keen to talk, hoping to possibly embarrass PMO in some way, and considering that the leakers are showing how virtuous they were in standing up to Silver might make one assume that those leakers are loyalists of Morneau who are trying to, if not burnish his reputation, then certainly tarnish his detractors. I do wonder if this is a limited screw-you to Trudeau, because I haven’t yet seen camps loyal to Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne forming and trying to oust Trudeau so that one of them can take over just yet. That said, this year has proven to be full of surprises, so we’ll see.

Continue reading →