Tag Archives: CBSA

Roundup: Zelenskyy’s trip to Canada

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It was Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s big day in Ottawa, his first since the war began, and he began the day paying a visit to Governor General Mary May Simon. She taught him the Inuktitut word “Ajuinnata,” meaning perseverance in the face of adversity, and it’s a message Zelenskyy took with him. (Simon also taught that word to the Queen when she was first appointed, and has been something of a calling card that she leaves with those she interacts with).

From there, Zelenskyy arrived on Parliament Hill and did the official greetings within the West Block before having an extended bilateral meeting that included signing new economic agreements and pledges of another round of economic and military support from Canada. And from there, to the House of Commons to address a joint session of Parliament, giving an excellent speech (that was far better than the one Joe Biden delivered a few months ago).

From there, Zelenskyy was off to Toronto to meet more business groups and supporters in Canada. The CBC has photos from the day here, and here is a summary of what was agreed to between the leaders.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While the cat’s away… Ukrainian forces launched a missile strike against Russian forces in occupied Crimea, and destroyed the headquarters of Russia’s navy in the region. On the eastern front, Ukrainian troops are vowing to fully re-take Bakhmut, but know that it’s going to be a challenge.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1705219158013522222

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1705273496157192520

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Roundup: The big separation news

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The big news, meriting a tonne of international headlines, was that prime minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have entered into a legal separation, and that they have gone through all of the legal and ethics processes involved. Trudeau will remain at Rideau Cottage, being the de facto official residence, while Grégoire Trudeau has found a place of her own nearby, and will still be heavily involved because of shared custody.

And while we typically don’t make a habit on reporting on the personal lives of political leaders (unless they cross particular ethical lines, like accepting the lavish gifts from certain companies because they want the promotion on Instagram, as though they were celebrity influencers), there is nevertheless a whole lot of seeking of reaction, the comparisons to his father’s public divorce, questions about what this means for his image and political future (really?), hand-wringing, and some snide comments from certain pundits that if the Trudeaus want privacy they should return to being private citizens, not to mention homophobic remarks from the far-right commenters pretending to be news media. Totally normal stuff.

In reaction, Susan Delacourt notes both the history of the relationship and the constant presence of gossip around prime ministerial marriages and how they are always claimed to be on the rocks. Althia Raj remarks on how this kind of a thing does get politicised, particularly because so much political stock is put in the images of happy families.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones damaged grain infrastructure in the port city of Odessa, which has been an organised campaign on Russia’s part since they pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal. Likewise, Russians struck the inland port of Izmail, near the Romanian border, where Ukrainian grain heads down the Danube River, for the same reason, and the result is that world grain prices continue to rise. (This is a major driver of food price inflation). As for the counter-offensive, Ukrainian forces say that they have stopped any Russian advances, but the Russians are dug in, making them harder to dislodge.

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Roundup: Plans to half-ass maternity leave

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A piece that caught my eye over the weekend was an interview with new Government House Leader Karina Gould about how she plans to deal with her maternity leave on the second time around, and how it’ll be different from the first time (when she was the first Cabinet minister to give birth while in office). Significantly, she doesn’t want to come back as quickly as she did the last time, where she only took ten weeks off, and then returned with her husband in tow to help with child care duties while she did her job.

What Gould says she wants to do differently this time is to not travel to Ottawa, but attend virtually from her constituency office, while the government whip assumers her duties during her absence. But this gets back to what I have been repeatedly warning about when it comes to remote and hybrid sittings, which is that this is going to create an expectation of presenteeism that is unrealistic, particularly for new parents. And while they absolutely should take the time they need off, it should actually be time off in a proper leave of absence, rather than constantly hovering by their computers to follow proceedings along over Zoom, and being ready to vote using their remote app at a moment’s notice. That, frankly, not only doesn’t help anyone, but creates even more stress on the MP or minister while they’re on leave.

More to the point, it will be exceedingly difficult to do House Leader duties remotely, because part of the job is stage-managing answers in Question Period, and directing who should be responding (though not always effectively as we have seen). That can’t be done remotely, and indeed, Mark Holland got into trouble a couple of times for trying to do it over hybrid format at the height of the pandemic, because he was trying to do so with a phone, and that was forbidden. The best thing is for her to simply take the time she needs, and resume her duties from Ottawa when she’s ready, because she won’t be doing anyone any favours trying to half-ass it from her constituency office when she should be spending time with her newborn.

In case you missed them:

  • My column on the Conservatives preparing a “stolen election” narrative by deliberately confusing basic Westminster parliamentary dynamics
  • My Xtra column on why conservatives posing with “Straight Pride” and “Leave Our Kids Alone” t-shirts are no accident—and a sign of their moral cowardice.
  • My column on the signal that Chrystia Freeland has sent to premiers and mayors when it comes to their plans to beg Ottawa to bail them out.
  • My piece for National Magazine about how competition law has failed the media sector in Canada, and why Bill C-18 was a flawed attempt to deal with it.
  • My column on why a public inquiry into Canada’s COVID response may actually prove impossible, because federalism.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles slammed into an apartment complex and a university building in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, killing six and wounding 75. Russian drones also hit Kharkiv, partially destroying a college dormitory. Ukrainian forces say they have reclaimed 15 square kilometres of occupied territory in the past week, while describing that the fight has been tougher than expected because the Russians have fortified themselves. Meanwhile, a drone struck an office building in Moscow’s financial centre, which Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for, and Russians claim that they destroyed three Ukrainian drones headed for their ships in the Black Sea.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1685580157254307840

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Roundup: May inflation shows it’s cooling faster

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Statistics Canada released the May inflation numbers yesterday, and they were well down from the month previous, the headline number now down to 3.4 percent, which is in line what the Bank of Canada is predicting about it returning to about three percent by the end of the year. Part of this is because year-over-year gasoline prices fell, meaning that there is a base-year effect in play, but food inflation remains high (in large part because of climate change affecting food-growing regions and the difficulty in getting Ukrainian grain to market continues to keep those prices high), and mortgage interest rates are one of the factors fuelling this. Unfortunately, you have certain economists like Jim Stanford who think that this is the Bank causing this inflation, when in fact if they hadn’t raised rates when they did, higher inflation would still be ripping through the economy. (Seriously, stop listening to Jim Stanford).

Additionally, these numbers continue to prove that Pierre Poilievre’s narratives about inflation are specious at best, but are pretty much bullshit he is squeezing into whatever the headline seems to be. Last month, when there was a 0.1% uptick in inflation, Poilievre blamed it on the news of the budget deficit, and that this was proof that the deficit was “pouring gasoline on the inflationary fire.” That was wrong, and the Bank of Canada said that the trend was that inflation was still decreasing (and that the government’s fiscal policy was not having an effect on that decelerating inflation). And lo, inflation is still decelerating, in spite of the budget deficit. It’s like Poilievre has no idea what he’s talking about.

Meanwhile, economist Stephen Gordon has a few thoughts the numbers.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing four and destroying a cafe that was fairly well known. Meanwhile, a UN human rights report shows that Russian forces carried out widespread and systematic torture of civilians they detained before executing them, but also found that Russians troops detained by Ukrainians also alleged torture and mistreatment.

https://twitter.com/united24media/status/1673784944798191617

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1673769121450696724

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Roundup: Johnston’s classified last word

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In what appears to be a growing habit of waiting until the prime minister is out of the country, His Excellency David Johnston turned in the final version of his report last night, stating that this was all classified material added to the confidential annex to his previous report, and that the public title page was updated, and with that, he’s not answering any more questions as he is no longer Special Rapporteur. You can pretty much imagine him giving the finger as he did so, considering what he was subjected to for stepping up (though I will reiterate the point that Philippe Lagassé correctly makes in saying that former Governors General should not be seen or heard). The Privy Council Office responded publicly that they received it, and thanked him for his service.

https://twitter.com/SusanDelacourt/status/1673445165191643137

As this was happening, NSIRA put out a public statement saying that they’re going through Johnston’s findings in the confidential version of his report, but said that certain Cabinet confidences were not being disclosed to them, and that only a limited number of documents were handed over, and if they are to examine things, they and NSICOP need to see everything, which is fair enough. Given that Trudeau had waived Cabinet confidences for Johnston, I suspect this is more the work of the civil servants and their obsessive desire for secrecy, but it is a bit curious that NSIRA did call the government out so publicly like that, and once again, Trudeau pretty much needs to be shamed into doing something that should have been a matter of course.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Despite reclaiming another village in the southeast, Ukraine admits that not a lot has changed along the southern front just yet. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did visit with troops along the eastern front, and presented medals to those on the front lines. Meanwhile, the Russia/Wagner Group infighting has improved Ukrainian morale along the front lines.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1673301190753550341

As for the aborted mutiny/attempted coup, here are four things we do know about the outcome, and four things we don’t. In the meantime, the memes are just getting started, and there are some pretty good ones.

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Roundup: Bell Media’s plea to the CRTC

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We’ve been talking a lot about the state of media in Canada lately, and the awfulness hasn’t stopped as Bell Media is now asking the CRTC to let it get out of its local news requirements citing that they are losing money. But this isn’t a surprise—news is generally money-losing for broadcasters, but it’s content with a lot of eyeballs that they can charge a lot of advertising dollars for.

But let’s also be up front—Bell is making money hand over fist because they are part of the telecom oligopoly in this country, and are an extremely profitable company. Their local news obligations are part of the price of admission, and the CRTC is not being shy about this. With the Rogers-Shaw merger, one of the conditions they imposed was the creation of a certain number of hours of new information programming from their stations, which basically amounts to a new one-hour documentary per week, for nearly every week of the year. And this is a condition of their broadcast licence, so they can’t get out of it.

With this in mind, I’m pretty confident that the CRTC is going to tell Bell Media to get stuffed, and possibly even impose more news obligations as part of their licencing requirements because they’re aware of the state of news media. And the fact that the new CRTC Commissioner was a competition lawyer gives me some added confidence in this because she gets the problems associated with centralized news production and how local markets suffer as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

At least three people in Ukraine were killed by Russian attacks, two of them on a trolleybus that came under fire in Kherson. There were also reports of heavy Russian missile attacks overnight. Ukraine has also signalled that the main thrust of its counteroffensive has yet to happen, which is obvious from the fact that they haven’t yet committed the bulk of their forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also ordered an audit of the heads of military draft offices after allegations of corruption.

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1672148522488016897

Meanwhile, things are blowing up in Russia, quite literally, as the head of the Wagner mercenary group has turned on the Russian military, and has so far seized the military command in Rostov, and allegedly plans to head to Moscow in order to confront the military leadership there. Thus far, it’s hard to say if this is a mutiny or a military coup, and it’s hard to get any accurate information without an independent press in Russia, so everything should be taken with a shaker full of salt, but it’s going to be an interesting few days.

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Roundup: A game of chicken over a public inquiry

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A game of chicken is shaping up around the demands for a public inquiry into allegations of foreign interference, that started with Dominic LeBlanc throwing it into the opposition’s lap to come up with a name they could agree to that could head it, along with terms of reference, knowing full well that it is going to be incredibly difficult to do, particularly because they all have competing goals, and some their demands are literally impossible, such as having an incredibly wide-ranging inquiry that could somehow complete its work in but a few months. Not going to happen.

Pierre Poilievre has decided to try and turn the tables and says that he wants the government to commit to said inquiry before he starts sharing names, which risks letting the government sit back and say that they already stated their terms. Committing to a public inquiry is one thing, but drawing up the Order in Council for it is quite another, and that requires having the commissioner(s) and terms of reference already decided.

This being said, the deadline of having this declared before Friday is wholly artificial. The government doesn’t need to table this in the House, and they can draw up the Order in Council at any time. If the aim is for the House of Commons to vote on the proposal, that’s a bad idea because then it launders the accountability for what happens, and lets the government off the hook if things go sideways, and MPs should know this because it’s fundamental to their very jobs, but they have become completely blinkered in this. At this point, I’m not expecting an announcement before Friday, and for this to drag on for several more weeks because there won’t be any agreement on names or the scope of the inquiry. That said, I do fully expect that we’ll have a summer full of “emergency” committee meetings on this and other topics, so I doubt the story will go away—just the daily demands in Question Period.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired another 35 Iranian-made drones into Ukraine, with some 32 being shot down, but a “critically important facility” in Lviv was struck, with no further clues as to what it was. There are also competing narratives at play—president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they are destroying Russian forces in both the east and south, while the Russians claim that they are repelling the offences. Here is a look at some of the Canadian soldiers training Ukrainian troops at Camp Sapper in Poland.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1671118296374976513

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Roundup: The “filibuster” that wasn’t

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A particular level of self-aggrandisement seems to be taking hold in the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, as he describes things that are not reflective of reality. Yesterday morning, he summoned the media to a speech he delivered to caucus—something that is not uncommon for the last caucus meeting before the summer break, but we are still two weeks away from that. There, he promised that he was going to rise in the House of Commons at 7 PM and begin a filibuster of the budget bill, and that he wouldn’t stop until the government backed down and acceded to his demands.

Except it was all bullshit.

There wasn’t going to be a filibuster. The House had already passed a programming motion, thanks to the NDP, that laid out just how many hours left of debate there were before the final debate, and Poilievre couldn’t just talk and talk past he expiry of that clock. It was already set in stone. So, after another attempted abuse of remote voting as a procedural tactic (which the Deputy Speaker lost all patience with), Poilievre got up to give his five hours of allotted time. But again, this isn’t actually a filibuster because the leader of the opposition gets unlimited speaking time to certain items on the Order Paper, and this was one of them. He wasn’t filibustering anything. He was showboating.

While Conservatives flooded social media with effusive praise about how he was standing up for defenceless Canadians against the predations of the government, and they kept praising how long he was speaking, he wasn’t actually accomplishing anything other than playing to his own backbenches. It’s not like anyone other than a few shut-ins and reporters who drew the short straw were watching. He didn’t stop the budget bill, because it was already the subject of a programming motion. He just talked for the sake of it, and was even finished before midnight hit, when the time would have expired automatically. There was nothing heroic about this action, and it accomplished exactly nothing at all.

https://twitter.com/a_picazo/status/1666653154694266880

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for international assistance in dealing with the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, as they continue to evacuate people from floods, and local authorities rush things like drinking water to the affected area. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have gained more ground around Bakhmut, but insist that this is not part of any ongoing spring offensive.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1666417873776959489

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Roundup: Involving Elections Canada?

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The Chief Electoral Officer is talking about approaching parties about monitoring nomination races, which I have some mixed feelings about. While the impetus around this is of course the ongoing paranoia about foreign interference and the notion that Chinese agents are trying to stage-manage these contests, that’s really the least of our concerns, because more often than not, the real problem is party leaders gaming these races in order to get their own preferred candidates on the ballot. Mind you, that is increasingly becoming a quaint notion as many parties are increasingly just foregoing nomination races entirely, and the leader is simply using their powers to appoint people to nominations, which betrays the whole mechanism of grassroots politics, and the Liberals have become some of the absolute worst about this.

But seriously—Samara Canada did a study on this a couple of years ago, and it’s shocking just how much parties have put their thumbs on the scales of these contests. (It’s actually worse than the report describes because the researchers credulously believed the NDP around their own claims around open nominations, ignoring everything that had been printed about all of their paper candidates who won in 2011, who absolutely did not even visit the ridings they had been assigned to beforehand, let alone face an actual nomination battle). The drama with the current by-election in Oxford is because the retired Conservative MP is outraged that Poilievre and Scheer put their thumbs on the scale to get their friend parachuted and nominated against someone from inside the riding, which is why he’s now supporting the Liberal candidate.

The big drawback, however, is that Elections Canada monitoring these contests is likely to become even more intrusive, because parties are essentially private clubs, which is not an especially bad thing. But we also have a huge volume of registered parties in this country who will never win a seat, and if Elections Canada has to monitor all of their nominations as well, that could be a giant swelling of their bureaucracy in order to have people who can monitor every one of these contests, particularly in advance of an election call, and in the time between the election being called and the cut-off date for names to be on the ballot. I’m not sure how feasible that’s going to be. The way our laws are currently structured were done in a way to explicitly keep Elections Canada from getting involved (which is why we developed a system of leaders signing off on nominations, which in turn became abused and a tool of blackmail). So while I’m cognisant that we have a problem with nominations in this country, I’m not sure that involving Elections Canada is the right solution.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There was another round of fire against Kyiv early on Sunday, which was largely repelled in the city but a regional airfield was hit. Russian forces struck the city of Dnipro, killing a child and wounding at least 25 others in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says have been five hundred child deaths so far. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces keep up their operations around Bakhmut, preventing Russian forces from solidifying gains in the city itself. Russians claim to have thwarted Ukrainian attacks in Donetsk province. This as Zelenskyy says that they are ready to begin the spring counter-offensive. Elsewhere, that survey of air raid shelters across Ukraine found that a quarter of them were locked or unusable, which is resulting in some charges.

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Roundup: O’Toole claims privilege over foreign interference

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Yesterday in the House of Commons, Erin O’Toole rose on a point of privilege to say that his briefing from CSIS warned of “active” campaigns against him from China in four categories—that they are funding operatives to build propaganda campaigns against him, funding networks to amplify it, using WeChat for that purpose, and run voter suppression against his party and one MP in particular. His claim is that the government’s inability or unwillingness to act on the intelligence of foreign interference impacts his privileges as an MP.

I’m dubious that this constitutes an actual breach of privilege, because frankly, if disinformation campaigns, social media amplification and voter suppression are happening, well, his own party is just as guilty as the Chinese regime of doing exactly the same thing. I also fail to see what the House of Commons can do about addressing this supposed breach of privilege other than vote on sending a strongly-worded rebuke to the regime in Beijing. I also don’t necessarily trust that O’Toole is giving us all of the relevant details because he seemed to be very selective with what he wrote about his meeting with David Johnston on his Substack, and I cannot stress this enough, Erin O’Toole is a serial liar. Unfortunately, because he does it with a solemn tone and not, say, a clown nose and a unicycle, he manages to bamboozle a swath of the pundit class who are convinced that he’s the upstanding guy that they all want him to be rather than who he proved himself to be during his leadership, and that somehow, now that he’s no longer the leader, he’s gone back to being the guy they all want him to be. I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, the NDP used their Supply Day to call on David Johnston to step down so that the government will call a public inquiry. This while Pierre Poilievre is daring Singh to bring down the government, and Singh saying he won’t until trust is restored in elections (which is tactically stupid). The government insists they have confidence in Johnston, but it does raise the point that if everyone but the Liberals vote for this, it becomes politically untenable for the government to maintain the current course of action, even if it’s the right thing to do (because I remain unconvinced that a public inquiry will do absolutely anything more in this situation other than take three years, cost $180 million, and create a media circus with a daily drip of “revelations” that will amount to nothing but will nevertheless fuel said media circus). But this may wind up backing the Liberals into a corner and forcing them to call an inquiry, lest the damage get worse.

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