Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Reviving the NEP to own the Libs?

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It’s kind of amazing how little thought goes into some of the slogan-laden thinking in so much of the politics in this country, and no party is exempt from it. It’s also funny how some of these policies are just rehashing of old programmes that they hated before. Case in point? Alberta trying to make hay about New Brunswick importing oil rather than getting it from Alberta.

Or as I like to say:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones hit a petrol station in Kharkiv, causing a massive explosion. The new commander-in-chief wants to regain momentum in the conflict, but problems with manpower and dwindling ammunition remain structural challenges for him.

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QP: Who has more connections to Loblaws lobbyists?

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The prime minster was present as is customary for a Wednesday, while his deputy was away. All of the other leaders were present as well for a second day in a row. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, citing rental increases as though that were a federal jurisdiction. Justin Trudeau cited a Conservative MP pointing out that the government has new announcements every day, which Trudeau agreed, that they were rolling out programmes to help Canadians and speed up home building. Poilievre insisted that the government just bloats bureaucracy but doesn’t build houses. Trudeau called him out for insulting mayors and using the homeless as props while offering nothing. Poilievre cited CMHC figures and population estimates for needing another five million units. Trudeau said that they were investing in municipalities to decrease red tape and accelerate building while increasing densification. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question, to which Trudeau repeated his same response. Poilievre trotted his line that people can’t live in programmes and announcements, to which Trudeau walked into the trap by pointing to an announcement he made about investments made years ago turned into houses today, and accused Poilievre of insulting mayors and people’s intelligence. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, pointed to the government delaying the expansion of MAiD and that if the Conservatives get in, they will lock it down when the delay expires. Trudeau said that they are upholding fundamental rights and freedoms, but this is a difficult issue that they will “continue to reflect” on. Blanchet wanted the government to adopt Quebec’s request for advance requests, to which Trudeau insisted this was an very difficult decision for them to make as a society.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, to demand the government support his bill on grocery prices. Trudeau noted that they have measures in the Fall Economic Statement that align with the NDP proposal, and trotted the accusations around Jenni Byrne. Singh switched to French to repeat the demand, and Trudeau repeated his same response. 

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Roundup: The King’s cancer diagnosis

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There were some shockwaves as news was released that King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer that was found while he was undergoing his treatment for a benign enlarged prostate. The palace insists that it’s not prostate cancer, but have been extremely vague otherwise, and the King will withdraw from public-facing duties over the course of his treatment, though he will still keep up his state duties such as dealing with the Red Boxes daily, and signing things that need to be signed in them.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1754565735655887066

In terms of Canadian reaction, we saw messages from the Governor General and Justin Trudeau, along with a cursory if casual statement from Pierre Poilievre, but nothing from Jagmeet Singh or from Yves-François Blanchet, though that was to be expected. Still, poor form from Singh on this silence for the sovereign of the country he insists he wants to lead.

Meanwhile, Patricia Treble has some added context to this announcement both in terms of the history of the royal family disclosing medical information, and what it is likely to mean for things like the planned upcoming royal tour of Canada, which was supposed to take place in May, but is now likely to be postponed again. Here is some added detail about the Counsellors of State which could act in his stead if he becomes incapacitated due to his illness.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Some of the soldiers fighting near Bakhmut fear that they will be there until the war is over, as mobilization legislation continues to be debated including provisions that would allow those who have been fighting over three years to de-mobilise. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that he is considering a high-level military shake-up, which has some soldiers concerned. Journalists in Ukraine say that the country’s domestic security service has put them under illegal surveillance; president Zelenskyy has ordered an investigation.

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Roundup: The dumb impulse to make hay of Jenni Byrne

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Over the course of the week, Liberals feel that they found some kind of a clever wedge against the Conservatives in the “revelation” that Pierre Poilievre’s advisor Jenni Byrne’s firm is registered in Ontario to lobby the provincial government on behalf of Loblaws. Byrne herself has not lobbied, and the firm’s work has only done work around trying to get beer and wine into those stores, but those facts haven’t deterred the Liberals. Instead, it’s come up in Question Period and prime minister Justin Trudeau brought it up unbidden at a press conference because he wants the media to talk about it. This while their MPs start tweeting stupid things like “Conservatives have a vested interest in keeping food prices high.”

This is just sad, and it’s a sign that the party is flailing. There is no smoking gun here, and trying to insinuate that there is looks desperate. If anything, it certainly makes it look like the Liberals are going to start stooping to the kinds of dishonest lines that the Conservatives like to trot out in order to try and score points, which you would think the Liberals generally feel they are above, and if they too start going full-bore on fundamentally dishonest talking points to try and get ahead in the polls, then we’re going to be in serious trouble as a country if every party abandons any semblance of honest discourse. It also fundamentally undermines the actual message that the major cause of food price inflation is climate change, which you do not want to do. In other words, knock it off and grow up.

There is the added danger that this starts a contagion around other lobbyists and strategists that the parties rely on. Ottawa is a pretty small pool, and if you go after one party’s operatives who have lobbied, then it becomes fair game, and this escalates into a pretty scorched earth. Bringing up Byrne was a cute quip once in QP, and it should have been left at that. Trying to keep banging on this drum is going to have all kinds of collateral damage that nobody wants.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Knowledgeable Sources™ say that Ukraine has briefed the White House about plans to fire the country’s top military commander, while the defence minister has suspended a senior official in order to investigate suspected corruption. Russia continues to refuse to turn over any of the alleged bodies of alleged POWs from the plane they say Ukraine downed (because it totally isn’t a psy-op).

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1753430572150792628

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Roundup: More of a stage than an institution

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The House of Commons is back today after the Christmas break, and you can pretty much guarantee that there will be a level of awfulness to the discourse, because that’s where things are right now. In fact, when asked over the weekend, former prime minister Joe Clark correctly noted that the House of Commons is “more a stage than an institution” these days. You’ve heard me bang on about this more times than I can count, but it bears repeating—MPs are no longer debating ideas. They are reciting prepared talking points into the record, because those are being used to generate clips for social media. It’s not even for the benefit of news media anymore, like it used to be (which caused its own particular problems with how QP works), because they all think they can just bypass legacy media and speak directly to their own audiences over their socials.

It’s no longer politics—it’s theatre. Bad theatre. The kind where people can’t even memorise their lines, but are full-on reading the script in front of them during the performance, not even on cue-cards that are far enough in the distance, and most of them can’t even be ashamed of their own amateurishness as they adhere to their party’s message, do what is expected of them, and continue to pretend that this is all normal.

And that’s why our democracy is in trouble.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Security officials in Ukraine say that defence ministry officials conspired with employees from an arms firm to embezzle nearly $40 million that was earmarked to buy mortar shells. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has disclosed his own income as part of a drive for transparency and combatting corruption.

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Roundup: Just what farm emissions are subject to the carbon levy?

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While Pierre Poilievre continues to insist that the federal carbon levy is driving up food prices, he provides no proof of that other than his “common sense” reckon that the levy increases the price of everything.

It doesn’t really, but Poilievre likes to make you think it does. So, University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach has crunched the numbers, and lo, the carbon levy is exempt on very nearly all farm emissions, and contributes but a fraction to other expenses, like transportation. Of course, Poilievre is lying to make you angry, but it’s nice to have some receipts to know just exactly what the lies are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The fallout of that Russian plane downing that allegedly carried Ukrainian POWs continues to reverberate, as Russia claims they gave Ukraine a 15-minute warning about said plane, which Ukraine denies; as well, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner says that he believes this is an information op because the list of supposed POWs provided included several names on it that had previously been swapped. Several Ukrainian state organisations are reporting that they are experiencing cyber-attacks. Russia is also claiming that Ukrainian drones are responsible for an attack on an oil refinery in Russia’s south.

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Roundup: Debunking Singh’s dunks

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NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s political comms lately have been a little bit…cringey. Not like that TikTok in the shower staring blankly cringey, but saying ridiculous things that he should have thought about for thirty seconds before posting cringey. Like this housing development in Edmonton, that he’s denouncing as “luxury condos.” Except they’re not, that whole concept is dated, any market housing that increases supply helps push down prices, and oh yeah, it’s a Métis-led development that is geared largely for affordable housing, and most of them are to be pegged at below-market. Yikes.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748311506620428422

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748313113206636842

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748314188756251009

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s pretending that Poilievre will cancel rent control, which, erm, doesn’t exist federally, and then goes on a conspiracy theory about being beholden to developers who contributed to his campaign, in the low thousands of dollars, because remember, this is Canada and we have campaign contribution limits. If you think you’re buying a politician for $1200/year, you’re out to lunch.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1749125638961652148

Of course, this is what happens when as a party, you crib all of your ideas from the “justice Democrats” in Washington, and ignore that we’re two separate countries with different laws, demographics, and circumstances. Unfortunately, this keeps happening, and it makes our politics in this country dumber as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia had to suspend operations at a Baltic Sea fuel terminal after what appeared to be a Ukrainian drone strike caused a major fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is concerned by Trump’s rhetoric of unilateral action and claiming he could end the conflict in 24 hours, and wants Trump to visit Ukraine so he can see the situation for himself.

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Roundup: Frozen Alberta’s electricity woes

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Amidst the frigid cold-snap on the prairies over the weekend, Alberta started facing a crisis of its power grid, with emergency alerts going out to ask people to reduce consumption lest rolling blackouts start happening. People complied, and crisis was averted.

Nevertheless, this gave the opportunity for certain premiers to try and blame this on clean energy rules, or to misconstrue those rules in the face of what took place over the weekend in order to tout how great coal is in order to score points, none of which helps anyone. But when your only calculus is to score points, well, that’s what politics has become.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired 37 missiles and three drones at Ukraine early Saturday, and only eight of those missiles were shot down, likely because of a deficit of air defence ammunition, and as a result, Dnipro and Chernihiv were struck. Meanwhile, Russians have been spending big on infrastructure projects in occupied territories to both draw closer links to Russian territory, but to convince people that they can better rebuild the territories.

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Roundup: Chow chooses blackmail

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Toronto mayor Olivia Chow woke up and chose violence, as the kids say, when it comes to her budget proposals for Toronto. While the 10.5 percent property tax increase is long-overdue for a city whose property taxes remain well below the national average after years of austerity governments who have allowed the city to crumble so they can keep from increasing said property taxes (and this is not unique to Toronto either), she is also calling for an additional measure—federal blackmail. The proposal is called a “federal impacts levy,” or an additional six percent increase ostensibly to cover the costs of providing services for asylum seekers, and is basically holding the federal government at knifepoint, saying pay up or all your safe seats in this city are going to be in jeopardy.

The asylum seeker issue is rife with other levels of government falsely claiming that this is solely a federal responsibility, so they should foot the whole cost. It’s not actually true—the federal government is responsible for refugees once their claims have been approved, but before that point, they generally fall under the social services provided by provinces and municipalities, and the federal government will reimburse a portion of those costs. Of course, premiers like to wash their hands of this because of course they do (and there is a constant rhetorical battle happening in Question Period where the Bloc keep demanding that the federal government owes Quebec some $450 million for the provision of services, again falsely claiming sole federal responsibility), which leaves cities often bearing the burden, and Toronto and Montreal most especially as they get the lion’s share of asylum claimants. There remain questions around Toronto, if they have followed the proper channels to request federal funds for this (I believe there is a need for a certain provincial action to accompany it which may not have been undertaken), but again, they have been given millions of dollars this year for assistance with this.

My bigger concern is the Pandora’s Box that this kind of federal blackmail opens up. While some pundits will declare it to be genius, and on a strategic level, it is a clever way to back the federal government into a corner, but at the same time, this invites other cities or provinces to start adopting this kind of tactic, and even more to the point, it once again leaves the province—whose constitutional responsibility the city is—off the hook for their own underfunding and downloading of services to try and make their own bottom lines look good. We already have provinces who think they can just declare themselves exempt from federal laws, and others who are openly breaking those laws (or at least threatening to under the cover of legal fictions), while the pundit class says it’s the prime minister’s fault, that he made them break the law and behave this way. Chow is now pushing this envelope even further, and I worry about the long-term consequences for this country so that she can solve her short-term problem of being an adult around her city’s fiscal crisis.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel in Kharkiv, injuring eleven people, many of them journalists. Ukrainian forces have been shifting toward building fortifications and a more defensive posture in recent months. Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they have shown that Russia can be stopped, but that Ukraine still needs more air defence systems and ammunition. Zelenskyy added that there are “clear signs” of a slowdown in Russia’s defence industry as he called on allied nations to tighten sanctions.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1745019147065721141

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1745348642100109636

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Roundup: Both-sidesing Moe’s legal fictions

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The playacting around Scott Moe’s threat about not remitting the carbon levy continues to play out in the media, and once again I will point to University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach calling out the media for how they are framing this, which is poorly.

Today’s example is the CBC, once again egregiously both-sidesing this in the construction of their reporting. On a plain reading of the law, the Saskatchewan government can’t engage in the legal fiction of registering as the distributor of natural gas in the province, and a competent journalist should be able to say as much, but they won’t. The demands of both-sidesing means that they have to get someone else—“some experts”—to couch it so that they can’t possibly be accused of bias or an agenda, even when it’s the plain reading of the law. And this is exactly why parties, particularly on the right in North America, have learned that they can get away with outright lying about absolutely everything—because they won’t be called out on it, and when your reporters couch the language in “some experts” saying it’s a lie, and your populist schtick is to denounce experts as being the enemy of the “common people,” then that expert commentary is immediately dismissed, and the lie carries on without consequence. You would have thought that the past few years, particularly given how the American media entirely shat the bed with trying to cover Trump, that they might have learned something, but nope. CBC and The Canadian Press in particular will continue to egregiously both-sides Poilievre and his myriad of lies, much as they are with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, and those same leaders will continue to lie with abandon because they will continue to get away with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched more heavy waves of missiles at Ukraine, killing four civilians early Monday.

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