Tag Archives: China

QP: Field-testing a new talking point

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While Justin Trudeau was in the building, he didn’t show up for Question Period today, nor did his deputy, but all of the other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and decried that the national debt has doubled (ignoring the reason, being the pandemic), and decried that rent and mortgage payments have doubled, worried about seniors, lamented supposed rising crime rates, and then somehow tied this all to McKinsey contracts, because that makes logical sense. Pascale St-Onge got up to agree that it was a difficult period with high inflation, but the government would be there for people who need it. Poilievre wondered if those most in need were McKinsey consultants, and lamented how much the government was spending on consultants (never mind the explosion in such contracts under the Conservative government and in Poilievre’s department in particular when he was a minister). Mark Holland got up to remind the Conservatives that when they were in government, they never talked about poverty or people using food banks, while praising his own government’s record on lifting people out of poverty. Poilievre then accused the government of telling people that they should stop complaining because they’ve never had it so good. Holland called out Poilievre for doing nothing about the situation other than making YouTube videos. Poilievre went on a tear about rental costs—which is provincial responsibility—and red tape preventing housing development—a municipal issue—and blamed the federal government for it. Holland got back up to insist that Poilievre is just amplifying anxiety. Poilievre then accused the government of trying to silence the debate, and demand they fix the problems instead, and Holland reiterated that the government is playing it straight about the problems the country is facing, while Poilievre’s only solution was to tell people to invest in crypto. Poilievre got back up, but had run out of questions. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc to wonder what the Notwithstanding Clause was for if not preemptive use—which is hilariously wrong. David Lametti got up to talk about minority rights, the dialogue between legislatures and the courts, and why the last word should not be the first. Blanchet rambled for a moment before quoting Pierre Trudeau on the Charter, and Lametti reminded him that Charters in Canada and Quebec were about protecting minority rights, and he repeated his point about dialogue with the courts.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and recalled the horrors that were in long-term care homes early in the pandemic and accused the government of doing nothing since, demanding legislated standards—never mind this is provincial jurisdiction. Kamal Khera got up to remind Singh that she was a nurse, and that the government appreciated the work of the Canadian Standards Association in developing national standards. Singh switched to French to lament increased privatisation, and Jean-Yves Duclos insisted they were holding up the principles of access and the public system.

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Roundup: A few notes on the hybrid quotes

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Because the hybrid parliament debate will resume in the New Year, CTV has a collection of quotes from MPs both here and in comparable Parliaments abroad about the format, and I find some of the commentary to be lacking. A few notes:

  1. Lots of talk about being able to participate while stick, while ignoring that this is setting up an extremely unhealthy system of presenteeism. MPs should be allowed to take sick days or leave if they require treatment for something like cancer, and not be made to feel guilty about it.
  2. There was some talk about party whips setting up rules for when MPs can appear virtually, but there seemed to be a lot of “when they feel like it” happening, particularly since Niki Ashton only appeared in Ottawa for two days the whole fall sitting, which should be absolutely unacceptable.
  3. Our committees are in crisis because of how they have been limited by hybrid sittings and the lack of interpretation staff. Only two government bills that were not budget-related got passed in the fall. Two. Some bills were in committee the entire thirteen sitting weeks that they sat, and are still not out of committee. Additionally, there are some committee chairs who are only appearing virtually (while not sick or infirm), which should not be allowed because it’s impossible to moderate a room you’re not in.
  4. The piece did quote the interim head of the interpretation service, but absolutely none of the MPs raised a single concern for the injuries that they are telling the interpreters to suffer so that they can appear remotely when they feel like it. The continued lack of basic awareness or concern about this remains unconscionable, and it’s absolutely shameful that MPs can’t arse themselves to care.
  5. Only the Bloc raised the concerns that ministers aren’t accessible because they are moving increasingly remotely, and allowing virtual voting is even worse for that. It used to be the time when MPs could get a chance to catch a minister’s attention about a matter that requires their attention, because they were all in the Chamber at the same time. Now most ministers run out of the Chamber when votes begin and vote on their phones from their cars, and they are no longer accessible, and that is a very big problem. Similarly, the more MPs and ministers are remote, the less they are able to be button-holed by journalists, making them even less accountable than they already are (especially because the architecture of the West Block makes it too easy for them to avoid media, even when they are there).

I don’t care how convenient MPs find hybrid sittings or remote voting, it’s degrading our institutions and it needs to come to an end immediately.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 302:

I could find no stories on the situation on the ground in Ukraine because absolutely all of the coverage was about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington DC. During Zelenskyy’s visit with President Joe Biden at the White House, we got confirmation that the US will be sending Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine. Zelenskyy then headed to the Capitol, where he met with Nancy Pelosi (who enthused that this was just like when her father met with Winston Churchill in Congress 81 year ago), before Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress. His message—that aid for Ukraine isn’t charity, but an investment in democracy and security, at a time when a number of US representatives are publicly doubting the “blank cheque” that has been given to Ukraine.

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Roundup: Refusing to aid so-called “illegal refugees”

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MPs from the Liberals, NDP and even the Bloc are condemning the actions of Conservative MP Richard Martel as he refused to assist asylum seekers in his riding who face possible deportation to El Salvador, where they are threatened by gang violence. More than that, Martel called them “illegal refugees,” which is not a Thing, but is certainly drawing from American and far-right rhetoric.

What I find most interesting in this, however, are the people who think that Pierre Poilievre should intervene if he wants to show that he’s sincere about his outreach to newcomer communities, and should send the message to “treat all refugees equally.” But this ignores that Poilievre has been following the Jason Kenney “curry-in-a-hurry” method of ethnocultural outreach, which was predicated on using these communities in wedging others, whether it was going to socially conservative communities and saying things like “You hate the gays? Us too! You should vote for us!” Even more to the point, Kenney constantly turned different newcomer communities against one another, creating an artificial division between the “good” economic immigrants who “went through the queue,” versus the asylum seekers whom he termed “queue-jumpers,” never mind that there is no queue for asylum seekers or refugees, but that it is a separate process entirely (and no, refugees are not economic migrants. Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian project, and people need to get that through their heads). Getting one group of immigrants to resent asylum seekers was what Kenney was constantly trying to do.

Mind you, he wasn’t all that successful—his efforts never really netted much of a result when you looked at the election data, but the myth of his so-called success has been cemented in the imaginations of conservatives (and a not-inconsiderable portion of the media), so of course Poilievre is going to take inspiration from it. So I don’t expect he’ll take too much exception to the “illegal refugee” line, because it’s right out of the Jason Kenney playbook.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 301:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the front lines in Bakhmut and met with soldiers there. Zelenskyy is expected to head to Washington today, his first trip since the invasion began, to address Congress as it debates further aid for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine are removing signs of Russian influence form public spaces now that the Russian-speaking lobby in the country has largely evaporated.

https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1605101789677867009

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Roundup: The first Sovereignty Act lawsuit

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The first legal challenge to Danielle Smith’s risible “Sovereignty Act” has been filed, and it’s from the Onion Lake Cree Nation, citing that the Act tramples on their treaty rights, that it’s ultra vires the province’s authorities, and that they were not consulted on it when it impacts their rights. This shouldn’t be a surprise—they warned her that she didn’t consult them and that this was going to be a problem, and she not only didn’t listen, she made the utterly offensive comparisons, claiming that the federal government oppresses Alberta like it did First Nations. This is who she is. I can’t wait for the courts to smack this legislation down for the unconstitutional mess that it is.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 300:

Russian drones struck Kyiv’s power grid for the third time in a week, as 18 out of 23 drones were shot down over the city, and those successful drones are said to have caused fairly serious damage. There were also reports of kamikaze drones flying over a nuclear power plant in the Mykolaiv region.

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Roundup: That’s not what the Canada Health Act means

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As much as I have some residual shreds of optimism that some people are starting to wake up to what is going on with the collapse of our healthcare system and are finally starting to apportion blame where it belongs—namely the provincial premiers—that doesn’t extend to everyone. And lo, there are still far too many members of the pundit class in this country, including its newest inductee, who refuse to get the memo, and who misconstrue the system in order to pin the problems on Justin Trudeau. To add to that, my reply feed is inundated with people who believe the disinformation that Trudeau has either cut or withheld half of the funding for provinces, which bears absolutely no resemblance to what is happening in reality.

And do not start handwaving about the Canada Health Act, because you can pretty much guarantee that it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1603805932995182592

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1603806417819168768

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 297:

Russia launched a major missile offensive against Ukraine, whose forces intercepted some 60 of the 76 missiles fired at them. That further damaged critical infrastructure in places like Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kryvhi Rih, and Zaporhizhzhia. This of course strained electrical grids even further, as each subsequent attack strains the system even further, making it harder to recover from each attack.

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QP: One last kick at the can for 2022

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It was the final Question Period of 2022, and not a moment too soon. After we got the traditional recitation of the Xmas Poem as read by Anthony Housefather (some of whose rhymes were a bit more tortured than in years previous), things got underway.

Pierre Poilievre led off in French, raising a statistic about the rising cost of Christmas dinners, and wedged in a lurid tale of people threatening to access MAiD rather than living in grinding poverty (which ignores that that is not a criteria). Justin Trudeau said that he would like to join in and wish people happy holidays, but knows that it can be difficult because of global inflation, which is why they have created support programmes for those who need it, including with dental care and childcare. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his same points, but trying to tie poverty to government waste. Trudeau noted that Canadians step up for each other, and listed his government’s actions again. Poilievre again tried to tie supposed government waste to inflation, and Trudeau deployed his well-worn talking points about the government making the decision to help Canadians when they needed it and it resulted in the economy roaring back faster than our comparator countries. Poilievre demanded to know when the “waste” identified by the Auditor General would be paid back, but Trudeau mentioned this week’s by-election in his paean about his government supporting Canadians. Poilievre could not end the year without deploying a “triple, triple, triple” ear worm in worrying about heating bills, and Trudeau noted that the federal carbon price doesn’t kick in over in Atlantic Canada until the spring, so Poilievre was trafficking in misinformation. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and tried to intimate that the premiers wanted to meet with him “like a family dinner,” and Trudeau noted that he has met with premiers more than any of his predecessors, noted that he was meeting with François Legault in a few days, but he was there to work with provinces to solve the healthcare crisis. Blanchet torture the family dinner even more, and Trudeau noted that the system as it exists isn’t working, which is why he was there to invest more, but it would take more than just throwing money. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and asked a very selective reading of the health-related promises from the election, and wondered where the action was. Trudeau noted that they were working toward rewards and outcomes with provinces. Singh declared that when he as prime minster, he would keep his promises (to much laughter), and demanded to know what happened to the promised $25/hour wage for long-term care workers, and Trudeau repeated that the federal government is there to step up, and that they would work with provinces to raise those wages.

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Roundup: Trudeau holding the line on health transfers

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While NDP leader Jagmeet Singh makes empty threats about ending their confidence agreement with the government if they don’t *handwave* do something about the current crisis in paediatric hospitals, prime minister Justin Trudeau seems to be staking a pretty firm position that he’s not giving the provinces a blank cheque and that he’s going to only give money when there is an agreement to reform the system, starting with data on outcomes so that they can measure what the new funding is doing. In his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Trudeau elaborated on this particular position, with the backing of some national doctors and nurses groups, that just throwing money at a broken system won’t solve anything, so he’s going to just keep kicking this problem down the road.

Of course, the provinces think they have the upper hand here and have spent all kinds of money trying to convince Canadians that this is all the federal government’s fault, because they have been given a free hand with blame-shifting for decades now, because they could get away with it. There is ever-so-slowly a coming around to the fact that no, this is pretty much entirely the provinces’ mess, and the fact that they think we’re all idiots who can’t see that they’re crying poor while running surpluses, handing out vote-buying cheques and giving tax cuts to upper income brackets. They can’t keep up this act forever, and they are looking increasingly desperate in their attempts to keep shouting “look over there!”

Meanwhile, let me note that PEI remains the only province still moving ahead (slowly) with national pharmacare, as they are slowly identifying gaps and adding them to the formulary.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 294:

Ukrainians fleeing from Bakhmut describe constant shelling as Russians have pounded the city into nothing. In Kyiv, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy dissolved the District Administrative Court, which was rife with corruption and likened to a criminal organisation, saying that Ukraine can fight corruption and Russian invaders at the same time. The US has also been finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defence systems to Ukraine, which could help with the incoming Russian bombardment. Meanwhile, doctors and nurses from Mariupol have reassembled in Kyiv to help displaced Ukrainians in need of care. Elsewhere, here is the tale of Ukrainian women building drones in Latvia to send back to aid the war effort in Ukraine.

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Roundup: The ideas guy versus the kludge

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The rules around the kludge that is being called dental care are released, and lo, it’s about as bad as was expected, possibly even worse, because the CRA was always the worst way possible to deliver this benefit (particularly after some of the trust-but-verify problems surrounding pandemic benefits that the Auditor General illuminated earlier in the week), and ye they bullied ahead with it because the NDP didn’t care about implementation, so they put an unrealistic timeline in their agreement with the Liberals to prop up the government, and an expectation that this should be a federally-administered programme rather than an agreement with provinces like every other federal programme (most recently with early learning and child care).

And no, this is not something that could simply be added into existing healthcare systems because that would require provincial buy-in, and every premier who was asked about this balked, some of them because they have existing programmes for low-income households, and all of them because they really, really do not want another federal programme to manage and contribute to, or be on the hook for when a new government comes to power and starts to axe it.

But remember, the NDP are the “ideas guy,” who never worries about implementation, and who takes credit for the work the other guys did, because he came up with the idea, don’t you know? This is all going to go so badly because it was rushed and had really stupid conditions imposed on it, but they can crow that they got dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 290:

It looks like Russian forces may have kidnapped two senior employees of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as part of ongoing pressure tactics to get them to sign the plant over to Russian authorities, which they have refused to do. Meanwhile, Belarus told the UN it would allow passage of Ukrainian grain through its territory to Lithuanian ports without conditions, but given that Belarus is a Russian puppet stage, we’ll see how much they actually uphold the deal.

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Roundup: Not a national government?

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The “Sovereignty Act” passed in Alberta on Wednesday night, albeit in a slightly amended form where the Henry VIII clause was largely taken out, but it’s still hot garbage and still blatantly unconstitutional on a number of fronts, so have no worries there. Rachel Notley has, not incorrectly, pointed out that that the rejection of federal authority clearly lays the groundwork for separatism, and the brain trust (if you can call it that) which were behind the bill are actively trying to court a constitutional crisis, demanding constitutional changes or they’ll start holding separation referendums (because that won’t devastate the province’s economy like it did Quebec’s in 1980. Cripes).

And then Danielle Smith said something really stupid, like she is wont to do, insisting that we don’t have a national government (erm, we do), and that provinces are sovereign (they’re not), and made up a bunch of ahistorical nonsense about signatories to the constitution and powers of the provinces, and it’s all wrong, but it’s not like Smith cares.

As for Justin Trudeau, he is steadfastly refusing to take the bait, and it looks like there will be some court challenges to the legislation in Alberta before the federal government is forced to make any kind of move to refer it to the Supreme Court of Canada. Some of those challenges may come from the province’s First Nations, who can clearly see that this is going to infringe on their inherent and treaty rights because it’s a resource grab by the province (and likewise in Saskatchewan with their “Saskatchewan First Act”) which is an absolute violation of Indigenous rights.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 289:

Russian forces shelled the entire front of the Donetsk region, in what Ukrainians say is a bid to secure the bulk of territory they have already claimed, with the fiercest fighting once again near Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Ukrainian officials are also saying that Russia has installed multiple rocket launchers at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, apparently trying to use it as a base to fire on Ukrainian territory, which not only violates all rules around nuclear safety, but is trying to use the plant as a shield from retaliation.

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QP: “Bludgeoning” the Auditor General

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The prime minister was still in Montreal at the COP15 biodiversity conference, and his deputy was in town but elsewhere, while only some of the other leaders were present today. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he decried the interest rate hike from the Bank of Canada, but blamed “inflationary deficits” from the government as the cause, which is not actually true, no matter the misquote that Poilievre attributed to the Bank Governor, and told the government to stop spending. Randy Boissonnault responded that the Bank is independent, that Canadians are living through difficult times, and he rejected the notion that their investments caused inflation, quoting the former Bank Governor, Stephen Poloz, that the investments stopped deflation, and then implored them to support Bill C-32. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same misleading concerns before quoting a single mother from a news story, saying that she listened to the government’s assurances that interest would be low for long. Boissonnault responded that Poilievre shouldn’t talk about advice given that he told people to invest in crypto, before he listed measures the government has taken to help people. Poilievre then changed topics, and raised objections from the Liberal MP for Yukon to the firearms legislation as currently envisioned and needled the government about it. Marco Mendicino gave a fairly standard response about not targeting hunters and farmers and that the bill gives resources to police and border agencies. Poilievre switched back to French, to raise the story of the RCMP getting a contract linked to someone under criminal suspicion for espionage in the United States, and whose parent company is in China. Helena Jaczek noted that they are studying the issue, but the company did meet their needs, so they are ensuring that they are protecting national security. Poilievre returned to English to accuse the answer of being “encrypted in bureaucratese” before repeating the question, and Mendicino noted that there is a rigorous process for contracts and they are scrutinising the process run by independent civil servants, and then raised the independent panels observing the last two elections to point out that they took actions but the Conservatives did not.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and gave an analogy about dangerous driving as a way of demanding the federal government increase health transfers to provinces. Mark Holland stood up to offer bland assurances that they are continuing to invest in the system. Therrien insisted there was no cooperation, and demanded increased transfers. Carolyn Bennett insisted they were working with the provinces to ensure there was not only funding but a national vision on healthcare, and listed the transfers sent to provinces.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and decried the interest rate hike, and demanded the prime minister find a way to tackle inflation without hurting workers. Boissonnault reminded him that the Bank of Canada is independent and the government is doing their job of keeping fiscal firepower for when they need it and listed actions they have taken. Singh switched to French to worry about consumer debts and repeated his same demand, Boissonnault repeated his same answer.

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