Tag Archives: Competition Bureau

Roundup: Stupid polls about the monarchy

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It appears to be the season for reporting on really stupid polls, because there was yet another one yesterday, saying that an increasing number of Canadians want to “reconsider” our ties to the monarchy, which is already a misleading turn of phrase because we have a domestic monarchy, and have since 1931. Yes, we time-share their natural persons with the UK and thirteen other realms, but the Canadian monarchy is a Thing, and it’s not a gods damned foreign imposition.

What makes this kind of polling even more irresponsible is the fact that there is simply nothing in there about what they expect to replace it with, because there are myriad options, and absolutely no exploration of any of them. It’s also extremely relevant because that’s how Australia’s republican movement faltered—voters were not in favour of the appointed head of state option presented in the referendum, and since its failure, support for the monarchy in that country has increased. (Better the devil you know, and all of that. On top of that, getting rid of the monarchy would require a wholesale rewrite of our constitution (because it’s the central organizing principle), and would abrogate all of the treaties with First Nations, because they are all with the Crown, which would add a whole other layer of complexity for our relationship and reconciliation. (In fact, there is a compelling argument that ending the monarchy would simply mean completing the colonial project).

There is no simple yes/no choice for the future of the monarchy in Canada—it’s yes/which model to replace it with (because you can’t not have an organizing principle for executive power, and you really want to have some kind of a constitutional fire extinguisher available), and how to go about doing it, and stupid poll questions like this just elide over that reality in a completely misleading way.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Ukrainian attack on a shipyard in occupied Crimea has damaged two Russian ships undergoing repairs at the facility and caused a fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vetoed an anti-corruption bill that contained a loophole that allowed people to forgo disclosing assets for another year. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also praised Ukraine’s progress toward EU membership, but said that they still have more work to do.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1701984458960765381

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Roundup: A resignation that won’t solve the problem

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A couple of days after everyone declared ministerial responsibility dead for Ontario housing minister Steve Clark’s refusal to resign over the Integrity Commissioner’s report and his own gross negligence and dereliction of his duties, Clark did resign, at 9 AM on Labour Day, pointing to an attempt to take the sting out of the messaging. Ford later announced changes to his Cabinet which would put Paul Calandra in the housing file, in addition to Calandra’s existing role as House Leader.

Ford, however, insists that the tainted process for those Greenbelt lands will carry on, and while he is promising a “review” of the process, he won’t do the one thing the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner have said, which was to cancel this process and start over. In fact, yesterday morning, Ford left open the possibility of reviewing all Greenbelt land and opening it up for development, which is unnecessary for housing needs—he hasn’t even implemented the recommendations of his government’s own housing task force, which explicitly stated they don’t need to develop those lands because there are fifty other things they should be doing instead.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1699015630316360078

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1699103206893056279

And that hasn’t been all. As this sordid affair continues to drip out, the identity “Mr. X” from the reports has been identified as a former mayor and developer who Ford has ties with, and his operation is practically stuffed with Batman villains. The jokes write themselves, but just make the corruption all the more hard to take.

My latest:

  • My weekend column looks at how ministerial responsibility changed in the age of message discipline, but how Doug Ford and Steve Clark can’t do the bare minimum.
  • At National Magazine, I look at the number of “secret trials” that we have seen come to light recently, and what could be behind them.
  • Also at National Magazine, I get some reaction to the Competition Tribunal’s cost award to the Bureau and the signals that they are sending by it.
  • My column points out just how inappropriate it is for premiers to write open letters to Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem, and how it corrodes our system.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian strikes damaged more grain warehouses at the Danube port of Izmail. Ukrainian forces say that they have taken more ground in both the eastern and southern fronts, as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited two front-line areas. Ukraine’s defence minister is being replaced by Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, who headed a privatization fund. Ukraine’s parliament passed an anti-graft law that contains a loophole, and many are urging Zelenskyy to veto it as a result. A parts shortage and a dispute over intellectual property rights is hobbling the ability to repair the Leopard 2 tanks we sent to Ukraine. And Ukrainian intercepts show Russian soldiers complaining about poor equipment and heavy losses.

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Roundup: The temporary, temporary House of Commons

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Something that caught my eye over the long weekend was a look at the “just in case” temporary, temporary House of Commons Chamber that has been assembled inside the Parliamentary ballroom in the Sir John A Macdonald Building. It seems that while maintenance is happening in the actual temporary Chamber in the West Block, and the threat of a possible recall over the BC ports issue, they decided to do some contingency planning and assemble this contingency Commons. This being said, I wouldn’t expect all MPs to attend it—a good many of them would avail themselves of the hybrid sitting rules (because they have so many things happening in their ridings *jazz hands* that they couldn’t possibly attend), with the exception of the Conservatives, because they would attend in person to prove a point. My biggest complaint is that the configuration shown in the CBC piece would have two lecterns at the end of the Chamber, rather than be arranged as despatch boxes like they do in Westminster, which would certainly be how I would have preferred it.

Meanwhile, new Government House Leader Karina Gould is taking on the perennial promise to make Question Period better, which…isn’t really her call. And, frankly, the one thing that the government could do to make it a serious exercise would be to ban talking points, pat lines and happy-clappy pabulum in favour of making ministers answer questions properly…but they won’t do that, because PMO would never allow it because it goes against the whole ethos of message control that has rotted politics but they insist on following.

So, with the greatest of respect, all of the platitudes in the world about making Question Period something Canadians can be “proud” of is empty rhetoric unless the government is committed to doing the hard work and communicating like human beings, which they absolutely won’t do. And so, our Parliament will continue to slide into a place of irredeemable unseriousness, because that’s apparently the way they like it by adhering to that ethos.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Following missiles strikes on the city of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian authorities are accusing Russians of deliberately targeting emergency workers by drawing them to the scene of a missile strike, and then targeting that scene with a second strike a short while later. Russians launched a massive air attack, largely on western Ukraine, on Sunday, purported in retaliation for a Ukrainian drone strike against a Russian tanker delivering fuel to its forces. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities say they prevented a Russian hack on their armed forces’ combat information system. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief says that they are putting in place the conditions to advance on the battlefield.

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Roundup: No, it’s not another carbon tax

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Pierre Poilievre is currently on a tour of Atlantic Canada, braying about the increase in the carbon price, and the incoming clean fuel standard regulations, which he has mendaciously dubbed “Carbon Tax 2.” Poilievre claims will be a combined hike of 61 cents per litre of gasoline. He’s wrong—the figure comes from future carbon price increases plus a dubious Parliamentary Budget Officer report on the clean fuel standard pricing effects, which were based on a lot of assumptions that may not happen, and the figure from that report that Poilievre is citing was an estimated price effect from 2030, which again, he falsely implies is coming right away.

While I’m not going to say much more, because I will probably write about this later in the week in a more comprehensive way, it was noted that a columnist at our supposed national paper of record not only fully bought into Poilievre’s bullshit, but he couldn’t even be bothered to check his facts on these prices. Here’s energy economist Andrew Leach setting the record straight:

As a bonus, here is Leach throwing some shade at Michael Chong as he tries his own brand of bullshit about what is happening with Norway.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The counteroffensive moves “slowly but surely,” not only in regaining a cluster of villages in the southeast, but also around Bakhmut, while Russians are bringing in their “best reserves.” Ukrainian forces also have to contend with low-cost suicide drones that are difficult to defend against, as these drones target valuable equipment. Meanwhile, in a speech to parliament, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out any peace plan that would turn the war into a frozen conflict.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1674074924124631041

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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: 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: One last beclowning before summer

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On the final sitting day before summer break, our deeply unserious MPs decided to beclown themselves once again. No, I’m not talking about the absolutely shameful display after Question Period with the litany of points order and unanimous consent motions, but rather the decision by Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux to write to the Speaker to file an “official grievance” that Taylor Swift didn’t announce any Canadian dates on her Eras Tour, and that two other MPs, one Liberal, one Conservative, seconded it.

I wish that this was Beaverton-level satire, but no, it happened—hours after the Beaverton joked about it.

As has been pointed out, this isn’t even original beclownery, because it’s just copying something an Australian MP did. I’m also not sure what they think they’re going to accomplish, other than making themselves look like absolute fools. Do they want the Speaker to write a strongly-worded letter to Swift? Summon her to the bar of the Chamber to explain herself? I’m sure if they had planned a little further in advance, they could have arranged for a unanimous consent motion to express their “profound sadness” in her decision. This used to be a serious institution populated mostly by serious people. It is no longer that, and the denizens of the Chamber should reflect on this over the next couple of months. What a gods damned embarrassment.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is admitting that the counter-offensive is happening slower than anyone would like, but reminds everyone that this is not a Hollywood movie, and that it takes as long as it does because there are lives on the line. Russia is claiming they shot down two drones near Moscow and are blaming the Ukrainians for it.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1671589133003759628

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Roundup: Poilievre tries out new tough-on-crime disinformation

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As evidenced in Question Period yesterday, the Conservatives have found a new lie to suit their narrative around the transfer of Paul Bernardo, and it’s citing the former Bill C-83, which allegedly eliminated solitary confinement in Canadian prisons on favour of “structured intervention units.” We can pretty much be assured that the legislation did not do what it said it would, and “structured intervention” is largely still solitary confinement, and the actual problems haven’t been solved, but the underlying notion here was that this bill was in response to the finding of the courts and international human rights bodies that solitary confinement is a violation of human rights. Nevertheless, this is being blamed for the conditions that allowed for Bernardo’s transfer, which again, is not true. It’s not the first time they’ve done this tactic—they also did it with the former Bill C-75 on bail reform, which was about codifying Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence around bail, and actually created several more categories where a reverse onus was needed, which made bail tougher to get. That didn’t stop the lies then, and it isn’t around C-83 now.

In the meantime, here is the Alberta Prison Justice Society with some important context around prison transfers and security classifications, which a lot of people should know (and in some cases, do know but are lying about it in order to drum up outrage, because politics is all about rage-farming and shitposting these days).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the settlement of Novoberyslav in the Kherson region, killing a married couple when their house was bombed. The Ukrainian advance continues in the south, while Russians are trying to trying to dislodge Ukrainian positions in the east. Meanwhile, a group of African leaders are visiting Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s “peace formula” to end the war.

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Roundup: You’re not going to get a royal recommendation

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Another day, and another warning from the Speaker that a private member’s bill is going to need a royal recommendation before the final vote, and it won’t get it, so be prepared to waste everyone’s time on a doomed bill that won’t go anywhere. This is becoming increasingly routine in this parliament, where MPs keep advancing these bills that have no hope of passage up for debate, apparently because they want to be seen talking about the issue, and maybe shaming the government for not supporting it, as with this particular bill on enhancing OAS and GIS benefits for seniors between 65 and 74 (ignoring that they are enriched for seniors over 75 because many of them have exhausted their savings by that point).

But seriously—a private member’s bill cannot spend money. Only a government bill can do so, because they’re the government, and they need that expenditure approved by Parliament. This is fundamental to how parliamentary democracy works. These clear delineations in roles exists for a reason, and the role of MPs who are not in Cabinet is to hold Cabinet to account, and the primary way to do that is through the power of the public purse. You cannot hold them to account if you too are spending public money with abandon because you have at that point blurred the responsibilities and the lines of accountability. This shouldn’t be difficult for MPs to learn and grasp, but unfortunately, they have picked up a lot of bad habits and wrong-headed beliefs over the past number of years, and it’s becoming quite obvious that they either refuse to learn how the Chamber and the institution work, or they simply don’t care and would rather waste everyone’s time.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Ukrainian commander in the ruins of Bakhmut says that Russian Wagner Group mercenaries have stepped up their attacks in recent days, while Russia is denying claims that Ukrainian forces have made advancements in Bakhmut over the past couple of days. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the spring counter-offensive is being delayed because they need more western weapons. This while the UK has opted to send newer cruise missiles to Ukraine, who have the longest range of any of their arsenal to date. Zelenskyy also says he has approved a plan to reform criminal and law enforcement systems, which is a requirement for future EU membership.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1656535955338063873

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Roundup: David Johnston, special rapporteur

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The “unimpeachable” eminent Canadian chosen to be the special rapporteur on allegations of foreign interference is former Governor General David Johnston, and it took mere minutes for the Conservatives to start denouncing him, citing that he was affiliated with the Trudeau Foundation, and that his role on the election debate commission saw Rosemary Barton ask questions during the last debate when she “sued” the Conservatives (note: she did not sue them, but the CBC sued the party in her name for unauthorised use of footage; also, I don’t believe Johnston chose the moderators or questioners, considering that it was a demand of the broadcast consortium that their talent each be allowed to have time during the debate), and on and on it went. The pundit class largely insisted that Johnston should have recused himself right away because he is too closely associated with Trudeau, and others insisted that if it was truly a non-partisan appointment then Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh should have been part of the process and naming him, and anyway, the whole special rapporteur thing was stupid and so on.

https://twitter.com/SusanDelacourt/status/1636102797623009281

I mean, I understand why Trudeau decided to go this route—not everyone agrees that a public inquiry is the best route to go, because it could go for years and that could mean delaying action that should be taken now. Even if it is the route we want to go (and several Liberals are now saying that it’s the only option at this point), it would still be Trudeau and Cabinet setting the terms of reference, which is also part of the rationale—Trudeau says that he would leave that determination up to Johnston, and he’d follow his recommendations, thereby trying to put some measure of distance between himself and any such task. I do say that it mystifies me that everyone demanding an inquiry right now if not yesterday never seems to care about this very point, even though we all damned well know that they would immediately cite these points as to why the inquiry is illegitimate.

But honestly? Canada is a small pond. There are not too many “eminent Canadians” who have the track record to take on this kind of task, and who don’t have some kind of perceived conflict, no matter how unrealistic it is. But that’s the whole thing with perceived conflicts, and this notion of “smell tests” that don’t actually mean anything but which get the chattering classes frothing. Is Johnston the best choice? Maybe, maybe not. The likely other option was a former Supreme Court Justice, which has become a running joke in Canadian politics these days. Regardless, the fact that this is just more partisan fodder is all the more proof that parties are not actually taking this seriously, and would rather be out to score points instead.

Ukraine Dispatch:

American intelligence suggests that the Russians are making small advances toward Bakhmut, but at great cost. Further north near Kreminna, similar battles are playing out, with the Russians making unsuccessful attacks, but they worry that the attempts to surround Bakhmut could have repercussions for their section of the front, while fatigue is starting to set in.

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