Tag Archives: Chrystia Freeland

Roundup: Premiers playing the deflection game

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-forty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have been intensifying their shelling of cities in Ukraine, and not just in the Donetsk region (and here is a look at what life is like in that region currently). Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired the head of the country’s security services and the prosecutor general, citing Russian collaborators within their departments.

Closer to home, there was some more discussion/whinging over the weekend about last week’s Council of the Federation meeting, and how it was mostly a gripe-fest directed at Ottawa. CBC’s Janyce McGregor wrote an excellent piece summarising the event and the arguments on both sides, but made a very salient observation in that the premiers were conspicuously silent on agenda items that were solely in their own wheelhouse, over things like harmonising regulations, or regulatory bodies, or interprovincial trade barriers. All of those require zero input from the federal government, and yet the premiers were silent on any progress made on these (intractable) issues in favour of simply a chorus of blame Ottawa. And it’s a very good point, because it points to the absolute deflection of the performance art that John Horgan and the others were engaged in. They’re not doing their own jobs. It was their lack of action during the pandemic that cratered the healthcare systems that they starved beforehand (particularly when they were getting higher federal transfers that they then spent on other things). Now they’re trying to deflect from their culpability by trying to rope in Ottawa, who has been sending them a lot of money, which many of those premiers have either not spent and just applied to their bottom line to pad their surpluses, or if they did spend it, didn’t track it so we know how it was actually spent. That’s on them. Trying to blame Ottawa is their way of avoiding culpability, and the media shouldn’t be simply acting as stenographers for them along the way.

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Roundup: Brown tries to defend himself

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It’s day one-hundred-and-thirty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Ukrainian forces have held off any Russian advances in the north of Donetsk province, as Russians shell the city of Sloviansk and other nearby populated areas. Russians are also trying to seize control of the highway linking the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Meanwhile, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is warning against trying to punish Russia for the invasion, with thinly-veiled threats about nuclear conflict, so that’s some nightmare fuel for you.

Closer to home, the day was largely consumed with Patrick Brown trying to refute the allegations against him, insisting that he wasn’t given any details he could substantively repudiate to the party brass, and that this was all the work of Poilievre loyalists on the leadership committee who were afraid that he wanted to take the party in a different direction with the help of members signed up from ethno-cultural communities (with some unspoken allegations of racism there). But beyond this, he was also contending with allegations from mismanagement from his own city council, and the memories of questionable conduct when he was Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader around certain loans (and this is without even bringing up the even older sexual assault allegations that ended said leadership). Brown, incidentally, dismissed those city council allegations as well, citing that they are from the faction of council that opposes him, and that everything has already been cleared up.

For the party’s part, they didn’t do themselves any favours by rushing the meeting and then putting out the disqualification release close to midnight, and it really just gave ammunition to Brown to claim that this was all a conspiracy of Poilievre-loyalists against him, and the fact that it was a reputed 11-6 decision also gave him fodder to work with. But the party president was doing media rounds as well, and insisted that the allegations didn’t come from the Poilievre camp, but from inside Brown’s own tent—the call is coming from inside the house. And while the party president also said there was no route to appeal, Brown has hired a very good law firm to try and overturn this decision, so we’ll see where this goes. Nevertheless, if he remains disqualified, this could have the effect of unmotivating the members Brown signed up, and giving Poilievre a better chance of taking the race on the first ballot, which he would need, otherwise the ranked ballot starts doing unexpected things (and no, they aren’t reprinting the ballots, so Brown will still be on it, but his votes not counted and the down ballot support redistributed).

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Roundup: Papering over party divisions

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It’s day one-hundred-and-twenty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Severodonestk has fallen, mostly pounded into rubble the way that Mariupol was. Up next for Russian forces is across the river, to the city of Lysychansk, where they are now trying to once again encircle Ukrainian forces, while more civilians try to evacuate the area. Emboldened, Russians have also fired missiles again at Kyiv, killing at least one person. This is likely seen as a warning as NATO leaders are gathering early this week to reaffirm support for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1541103194184601601

Closer to home, all does not sound well in the Conservative caucus. Last week, in her blog post announcing she wouldn’t be running to lead the UCP, Michelle Rempel Garner noted that:

…in both parties there have also been squabbles that have erupted in the pages of national media, public meltdowns, nearly missed physical fights, coups, smear jobs, leaked recordings and confidential emails, lack of consensus on critical issues, caucus turfings, people harassed to the point where they resign roles, and hours long meetings where members have been subjected to hours of public castigation. There have been heated exchanges to get basic concerns addressed, unjustified insularity in decision making, shunnings, exclusionary cliques and more.

So of course, over the weekend, Candice Bergen was asked about this, and while she refused to say anything about it to the Star, she denied this was the case to CTV, seeming to imply that Rempel Garner is either making it up, or is “experiencing things differently.” Bergen is also talking a big game about party unity, and is going to spend Canada Day in Halifax with Peter MacKay, for some inexplicable reason, as though this makes a point about party unity. (Remember, MacKay was never really a Red Tory, given that he voted in lockstep with Stephen Harper on everything, and couldn’t vote for socially progressive issues when other former Red Tories would). Bergen is also denying that she has any safety concerns, and seems to pin blame for the level of harassment that MPs are facing onto Justin Trudeau because he made people get vaccinated, and called out far-right extremists for what they are.

Also over the weekend, former Conservative Senate den mother leader Marjorie LeBreton emerged to voice her concerns about the direction the party is heading in, particularly around their support for the occupation, which erodes their credibility as a law-and-order party. She’s so incensed about Poilievre’s support for the occupation that she resigned from her position as a member of his riding association over it, and worries that the party may be “fracturing beyond repair.” None of this is painting a promising picture of a party that Bergen is insisting nothing is wrong in, but perhaps she is not the most credible source for what his happening behind closed doors, because it’s not in her interest to tell the truth about it.

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Roundup: Allegations of political interference amidst other errors and omissions

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It’s now around day one-hundred-and-nineteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and while the fighting continues at Severodonetsk, the people of Kharkiv are emerging from the subways and underground shelters they were in when Russian forces bombarded their city, and are finding so much of it shelled and burned. Meanwhile, we’re learning more about the Ukrainian helicopter pilots who were flying rescue missions from the steel plant in Mariupol, getting some of the wounded soldiers to safety.

Closer to home, allegations emerged from documents made public in the mass shooting inquiry in Nova Scotia that a superintendent’s notes said that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki said she felt she had been disobeyed because he had not released any information about the weapons used, citing that she had promised PMO and Public Safety the information because it was tied to pending gun control legislation, while he said he didn’t want to release it because it would interfere in their investigation into how the weapons were acquired. In a separate interview, the director of communications for the Nova Scotia RCMP was expressing frustration that Lucki’s statements did not match what the department was putting out, and blamed that on political interference. The government immediately denied having made any orders or applied any pressure, and Lucki put out a statement a few hours later which she too denied interfering, but said she should have been more sensitive in her approach to the meeting.

This, of course, touched off a round of outrage and insistence that if the allegations of interference were true that there would need to be heads rolling, but I will confess to having a hard time sorting through this, because what I’ve read of these same documents shows a lot of errors and omissions in the statements the RCMP was putting out, and there is an imperative for RCMP brass and the government to have details and facts that the media are demanding from them. And the RCMP in the province seem to have been self-satisfied that they were putting out false or misleading information throughout the event, which is hard for the Commissioner or the government to deal with when they know there are other facts that aren’t being released. Was there an element of crassness in wanting to know what kinds of weapons were used? I mean, it sounds like it was a legitimate question that media would be asking, so it’s hard to say. I will say that the demands for an emergency committee meeting is unlikely to solve anything more than what we’ve already learned from all involved, and that this is just an excuse for more theatrics at the start of summer that Conservatives want to be able to fundraise off of, but they’ll probably get their wish because all MPs can’t resist putting on a show—especially if it gets unhinged as these meetings inevitably will.

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Roundup: Summoning the hockey executives

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It’s day one-hundred-and-eighteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and word has it that the Russians are trying to overcome Severodonestk by Sunday, thereby taking the whole of the Luhansk region. While the Ukrainians are being pounded by artillery, they are allegedly inflicting heavy casualties on the Russians, but they need more Western arms, and they need them to arrive even faster if they have any hope of taking out the Russian artillery that is pounding them. Ukraine, meanwhile, is planning on taking a bunch of destroyed Russian tanks and armoured vehicles on a tour around Europe to keep attention on the conflict as it drags on.

Closer to home, the attention on the Hill yesterday was on the heritage committee, where Hockey Canada officials were summoned to explain the payout to settle a sexual assault claim, and whether federal funds were used to do so in contravention of their funding agreements. The minister has ordered a forensic audit of their finances to ensure that this didn’t happen, but we did see MPs on all sides go hard on this, as they should have. (Note that the Conservatives did try to use this issue as a means of procedural warfare in their filibuster of the online broadcasting bill, which was absolutely skeezy). Here is some comment from former athlete and whistle-blower Alheli Picazo, who has experience with the problem of tackling abuse in sport:

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Roundup: A bill to swiftly pass?

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We’re at day one-hundred-and-fifteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Severodonestk is still contested territory, under constant Russian shelling making it impossible for civilians trapped under a chemical plant to escape. UK prime minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv for a second time, promising more arms as well as training for soldiers on a rotating basis. At the same time, the European Commission is recommending Ukraine for consideration for EU Membership. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian soldier who recorded the atrocities at Mariupol has been freed from Russian custody, while the Ukrainian Cabinet approved a resolution to bar Russian citizens from entering Ukraine without a visa.

Closer to home, the federal government tabled a new bill aimed at responding to the Supreme Court of Canada decision five weeks ago that allowed automatism as a defence in very narrow circumstances. The bill eliminates “self-induced extreme intoxication” as a defence, while leaving automatism out in those very rare cases where it would be unknowable that one might enter into this state, which points to the fact that in at least one of the cases before the Supreme Court that led to the provisions being struck down was that it was simply a bad trip that they didn’t know would happen as he had never done mushrooms before. David Lametti also indicated that he’s been in discussion with the other parties, and it sounds like this could be a bill that gets passed at all stages next week before the House of Commons rises for the summer (and likely leaving any actual scrutiny up to the Senate, if they have the appetite to do so before they also rise, way too early).

I also did note that during the press conference announcing the bill, minister Marci Ien had some fairly critical words for her former media colleagues in how the Supreme Court of Canada decision had been reported, where the headlines were that “extreme intoxication is a defence,” which isn’t what the judgment said, and the judgment very clearly differentiated between extreme intoxication and a state of automatism. Nevertheless, bad headlines led to disinformation that was making people afraid (and Ien cited her own daughter’s experiences reading social media about this decision, and she listed some of the figures that these disinformation posts got in terms of likes and shares). And I remember reading those headlines, and listening to the outraged questions in QP in the days that followed, and having to sigh and point out that no, that’s not what the Supreme Court ruled, and it would help if they actually read the gods damned decision because it was all right there. But sadly this seems to be the state of the media discourse these days, so good on Ien for calling it out, especially given the fact that she was herself a journalist.

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Roundup: Feel-good busywork

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We are on day one-hundred-and-twelve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it’s estimated that Russians now control some 80 percent of Severodonetsk, as civilians are being pushed to the industrial outskirts of the city because the Russians are taking a scorched-earth approach to their artillery. A Russian general says they will open a humanitarian corridor today, but we know how trustworthy their word has been to date. If Ukraine can get enough heavy military equipment from its allies in time, they may be able to push back and go on a counter-offensive, but we’ll see if that can happen. Elsewhere, here are how Ukrainians are turning to humour to cope with their situation.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1536778589089193988

Closer to home, we saw the fiftieth Senate public bill of this session tabled yesterday, and that’s a sign that things are going off the rails in Justin Trudeau’s “new, independent” Senate. To refresh your memories, Senate public bills are roughly equivalent to private members’ bills for senators, and like any Senate bill, cannot spend money. This kind of proliferation is getting to be an issue, because it’s a sign that these new senators are behaving a lot like MPs (and I don’t just mean the sudden desire for everyone to put their feelings on the record at Second Reading of any bill for no reason at all), and that’s not a good thing. The Order Paper in the Commons is replete with literally hundreds of private members’ bills that are going nowhere because they have a lottery system, and a handful of MPs will get one shot at a bill or motion for the duration of this Parliament, but that doesn’t stop them from tabling all kinds of bills to make a statement, or set a marker, or pretend that the government will be so enamoured with their work that they’ll adopt it for themselves, and that they can reflect in that glory for all time. In the Senate, however, they don’t have one shot, and the work isn’t time allocated from start-to-finish, so they can introduce and debate as many as they like, provided they can get debate time, particularly with committees.

Normally, these bills don’t go very far because they get busy with government bills and the odd PMB from the Commons, which get priority time, but the government has had a very light legislative agenda this session, which has meant that senators have a lot of time on their hands, and these kinds of bills tend to come up. Some of them are feel-good busywork, like declaring special national days. Some of them are just mischief (looking at you, Senator Carignan). Some of these are the policy hobbyhorses of senators who have an inflated view of their positions, combined with a type-A personality, so they’re going to push their personal agenda whether anyone else likes it or not. And even though the government has finally started introducing more bills in the Senate, many of which are housekeeping bills by nature, it’s obviously not enough to keep them busy, or from picking up MPs’ bad habits.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1536898175210078209

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Roundup: Legitimizing lunatic narratives about inflation

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We are now around day fifty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like Russia is shifting more units to attacking cities in Eastern Ukraine, and what could be a battle to control the country’s industrial heartland. We also have satellite images that show Russians digging mass graves around Mariupol to try and hide evidence of their war crimes and atrocities against civilians in that city. In Russia, the regime is cracking down harder on its critics, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is being charged under the new law that criminalises spreading “false information,” and could be imprisoned for up to 15 years as a result.

Closer to home, I have about lost all patience with the way that the inflation numbers are being reported on, particularly because it’s primarily a lot of both-sidesing without actually reading the gods damned Consumer Price Index from Statistics Canada, even though it’s right there, and spells out what the drivers are. But because our media outlets—and both the CBC and The Canadian Press are especially bad about this—are more invested in the appearance of fairness for political messages than actually calling out falsehoods, simply give equal time to all of the messages. This particular piece on the CBC’s site yesterday, that goes and very gently debunks the messages that different political parties are spreading, is a lot more both-sidesing because it’s still giving equal weight to all of these messages, even if it’s getting experts to push back a little bit (but in some cases, still framing it as though some of these messages are still “a little bit right,” which is the cute trick that they’ve been relying on to not look like they’re biased against any party). And how much room is given to explaining the actual drivers? A single, small paragraph that lists a few of them in general terms, rather than laying out the issues of energy production and fuel shortages in certain countries, or the global supply shortage of semiconductor chips, or most importantly, the fact that we’ve had a lot of droughts in food-producing regions, including in Canada, and that is having a huge impact on food prices because the supply simply isn’t there.

Why this becomes even more important is because you have Pierre Poilievre saying flat out that the Bank of Canada’s economists are “financially illiterate,” because he learned better from the crypto bros on YouTube. It’s alarming, and if the mass media can’t push back against this utter lunacy, but instead soft-pedals it and frames it like “everyone is a little bit right” when they don’t actually bother to go to the gods damned statistical data, it lets this utterly bogus narrative gain traction and legitimacy. This is a problem for our democracy and our society in general, because they’re afraid that Poilievre’s bot army will be mad at them. They’re going to call you biased whatever you do, so why not show a bit of fortitude and call the lies what they are?

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Roundup: Higher inflation than expected

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It is now day fifty-seven (or so) of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and hope is waning for the remaining defenders of Mariupol, and the civilians still sheltering there. As the fighting intensifies in the eastern part of the country, there are also concerns that it will devolve into a war of attrition, which Russia has historically been more able to withstand. We have also learned more about what happened when Russian troops occupied Chernobyl, where staff were working at gunpoint, and sleeping three hours a night in order to safeguard the site and ensure that Russians didn’t tamper with any of the equipment there.

Closer to home, the inflation numbers were released yesterday, and they were much higher than expected, as conflict inflation brought on by the aforementioned invasion of Ukraine is hitting. And of course, most media outlets were useless in explaining the causes of it, while the parties were equally useless in their own reactions. The government keeps focusing on their talking points about things like child care and dental care, and the fact that they indexed benefits, rather than actually explaining the drivers. The Conservatives are railing about “printing money” (which, to be clear, nobody is actually doing) and insisting that the government should declare a GST holiday, which would a) do nothing for grocery prices as most groceries are GST-exempt; and b) would have a stimulative effect and just fuel even more inflation, especially as people would be likely to use said GST holiday to buy big-ticket items. And the NDP, predictably, chalk this up to greed and want higher wealth taxes, which again, do very little about the drivers of inflation.

And then there’s the Bank of Canada, who will be forced to respond with higher rate hikes, but the question becomes whether they’ll keep the increases more gradual—another 50 basis points at the next meeting in June—of if they’ll go even higher as a way of demonstrating that they are really taking this seriously and that the system of inflation control that they’ve been responsible for since the 1990s will prevail. It doesn’t directly address the drives, but it could be that the signals are more important than the actual policy at this point, because the bigger worry is the expectation that inflation will continue, which will turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy—something they are very, very keen to avoid.

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Roundup: Sour premiers wanted more money

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We’re not on or about day forty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and yesterday’s particular war crime of note was an attack on a train station in Kamatorsk that killed fifty-two Ukrainians fleeing to safer parts of the country. More chilling was the fact that the remains of the rocket had “For the children” spray painted on its side. Meanwhile, an international organization formed in the 1990s to identify the dead and the missing in the Balkan conflicts is preparing to send a team of forensic experts to Ukraine to help identify their dead as a result of Russian atrocities.

Closer to home, there is more reaction to this week’s budget, and in particular, some of the sour notes coming from provinces. It’s not just the current bit of confusion around just what the dental care programme is going to entail, because we don’t have any implementation details yet, and it sounds like the federal government may try to leverage existing provincial programmes for low-income earners. But more to the point, it’s about health transfers, and the fact that premiers aren’t getting their way with their demands for increased unconditional transfers, ostensibly to ensure that the federal government pays 35 percent of the share of health costs—a figure which is distortionary because since the 1970s, provinces were given tax points instead of direct transfers, so the true cost to the federal government would be far, far higher than the 35 percent figure they like to float. Not to mention, we saw that when federal transfers were higher for a decade, provinces used much of that money on other things, as certain provinces also did during the pandemic. So frankly, I wouldn’t expect the federal government to just hand over more unconditional money in the budget, particularly as they are negotiating with provinces for specific outcomes around mental health and long-term care.

Those demands for higher transfers are also raised in this op-ed by economist Trevor Tombe and professor Daniel Béland, which accuses the federal government of being uninterested in reforming those health care arrangements. I would dispute that because they have made it clear, during the election and since, that they are very interested in reforming those arrangements, and that those reforms mean strings attached to federal dollars, and those negotiations are ongoing. I’m also troubled by the notion that the federal government should be doing something about provincial debt, which is far more unsustainable than the federal government’s. Is the suggestion that the federal government upload more costs or programme responsibilities? Because I don’t see premiers clamouring for that (though they do want more money). Is the suggestion that the federal government simply pay for everything? Because that’s absolutely not sustainable either. It also ignores that most provinces have the ability to raise revenues the old-fashioned way—raising their own taxes. (Some provinces are admittedly screwed demographically, but again, what levers are we proposing the federal government employ?) Tombe and Béland want an open and collaborative process to rethink the fiscal relationships between levels of government, but we’ve all seen this movie before, and it always winds up with the provinces demanding the federal government give them more money. I’m not sure how that helps.

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