Tag Archives: Competition Bureau

Roundup: Fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies

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Erin O’Toole has apparently decided he’s going all-in for the unvaccinated, and wants “reasonable accommodations” made for them while they continue to flood the healthcare system and push it to the point of collapse, and lo, he wants the federal government to halt their vaccine mandate for truck drivers citing the fragility of the supply chain. (Erm, so when the virus rips through the unvaccinated drivers, that won’t further disrupt the supply chain?)

Logic doesn’t seem to be penetrating O’Toole’s rhetoric—nor the simple fact that premiers are responsible for the management of the pandemic, not the federal government. There are no “reasonable accommodations” because rapid tests are not actually passports that allow the unvaccinated free licence to go out in public (unlikely to be masked either, because the Venn diagram of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers is nearly a perfect circle). All it does is prolong the pandemic and the strain on the healthcare system which is leading to the mockdowns across the country—which again, O’Toole is trying to pin on Trudeau because the federal government continues to offer pandemic supports, and he claims that this is “normalizing” them. (He also calls them lockdowns when they are nothing of the sort). He’s tried to claim that the federal government should have been able to increase bed capacity in hospitals (physical beds are not the problem—the problem is trained staff to tend to the patients in those beds). It’s just a bunch of fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies, and O’Toole knows it, but he’s decided that this is the path that he can exploit politically, and there frankly aren’t enough people, particularly in the media, calling him on his bullshit (because both sides! *jazz hands*).

Meanwhile, O’Toole is also calling for emergency meetings of the health committee to examine the “critical gaps” in the federal government’s ability to manage the pandemic in the omicron wave. Which is…not the federal government’s fault. They provided the vaccines, and the rapid tests when asked, and are deploying military help across the country when provinces ask (never mind that the military is stretched beyond capacity and they can’t do their actual jobs right now). No, what O’Toole has decided we all need is a dog and pony show to deflect from the failures of the premiers so that he can try and pin this all on Trudeau. It would be risible if we hadn’t already seen the Conservatives abuse that very same committee in the previous parliament, for the sake of a few headlines.

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Roundup: Rejections without significance

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Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

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Roundup: Annual amnesia and Estimates abrogation

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The House of Commons has risen for the summer, with four priority bills having made it to the Senate – including the budget implementation bill – but the rest of their “priority” bills languishing on the Order Paper. And the main party leaders spent the day sniping at one another in their respective press conferences, not necessarily telling the whole truth of the situation along the way, because that’s the way this particular game gets played.

It’s also that magical time of year when Hill reporters realise that the Senate exists and doesn’t operate in the same way that the House of Commons does, and we go through the ritual song and dance of worrying that bills won’t get passed before the Senate rises for the summer, and some usual tough talk by certain senators that they won’t be pushed around and they won’t fast track bills, until they do. We go through this every June, and every June, they push through these bills to ensure that they get royal assent before they leave for the summer. And no, the Senate’s calendar is not as fixed as that as the House of Commons, and yes, they do frequently sit later in order to get these bills passed. There is also the annual ritual of the government leader insisting that they really shouldn’t amend these bills because that would mean recalling the House of Commons, and that costs x-number of dollars per day and that’s apparently a bad thing for democracy (no, I don’t get the logic either), and with the constant speculation of an election, we’ll get additional concerns that they really can’t amend these bills because of that fact, and after some requisite chest-thumping, most senators will back down and pass the bills unamended. Yes, this happens every year, and it might behove these Hill reporters to remember this every year.

There is, of course, a more alarming aspect of what has transpired in this particular year, which is that several House of Commons committees didn’t do any scrutiny of the Estimates for the departments they are responsible for overseeing, and this is absolutely bloody alarming. This is the whole gods damned point of Parliament, and because they were wrapped up in their procedural warfare, that fundamental job didn’t get done. (And because of rules written in the sixties, Estimates that aren’t signed off on are deemed adopted, which is another outrage that they have not corrected). This should never have been the state of affairs – and I will note that some of those committee chairs offered additional sittings to ensure this scrutiny happened, but the MPs on those committees didn’t agree to it, which is an absolute outrage. That is your number one job as an MP, ahead of all other considerations, and you blew it because you were too busy grandstanding and/or protecting ministers who should have fallen on their swords, and we have further undermined our parliament as a result. Slow clap, MPs – stellar job.

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Roundup: The problem with pulling out of NSICOP

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The demand for documents related to the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab reached a boiling point yesterday, as the House of Commons voted to summon the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada to the bar in the Commons to face censure – and turn over the document – while Erin O’Toole also declared that he was pulling the Conservative members from NSICOP, alleging that there is some kind of cover-up happening.

For weeks, O’Toole and Michael Chong in particular, have been trying to paint a story that these two scientists caused a national security breach at the Lab, and that there have been a string of resignations over it. There’s no actual evidence for any of this – all signs point to the firing as being over a breach of intellectual property protocols, which was coupled with the fact that there used to be a permissive culture in the Lab where scientists (especially those deemed “favourites,” and one of the two fired scientists was indeed a favourite), did whatever they wanted and staff were instructed to make it happen – but that management changes started to end that culture, and it’s currently a fairly toxic workplace. (Check out my interview with the reporter who’s been on this story for two years here). The government has insisted they can’t turn over documents because of privacy laws, and the vague notions about national security because the two were marched out by federal RCMP, without any elaboration, and this opacity just made it easier to build up conspiracy theories – especially when they could tie them into the Wuhan lab in China, were samples of other viruses were sent to.

O’Toole withdrawing from NSICOP, a mere day after new members were appointed to the committee, damages the national security oversight in this country overall. Yes, there are legitimate criticisms about how NSICOP is structured – especially when it bumps up against the realities of a hung parliament – but it could also have been used to build trust between national security agencies and MPs, so that when it came up for review in five years, they may have been able to move toward a more UK-like model where it became a parliamentary committee. (More history in this thread). Some national security experts, like Stephanie Carvin, have argued that it should have been where initial determinations about those documents could be made, especially because they could be read in context – you can’t just read national security documents cold and make sense of them. But there is an additional, cultural problem for opposition MPs in this country (of all stripes) is that they prefer to remain ignorant in order to grandstand, and that’s exactly what O’Toole did yesterday – grandstand at the expense of the trust with national security agencies, and the cause of oversight of national security by parliamentarians. Short-term partisan considerations once again take the fore. What a way to run a democracy.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1405508435521806338

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Roundup: The meltdown over NACI

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There was a collective meltdown yesterday as the National Advisory Committee on Immunization delivered its most recent recommendations, saying that they recommended that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine be deployed for those over 30 (even though the current supply in the country is currently on hold pending a review of its quality control), and then cited that mRNA vaccines remained their preferred candidates – and everyone lost their minds.

This is not really unexpected if you have been paying attention, where the chair of the committee in particular has said that because of the “safety signal” attached to AstraZeneca related to the particular blood clots (which are very serious – there is a reasonably high fatality rate related to them) that it would be preferable to get mRNA vaccines, but if someone could not wait for them, then they should get the first available vaccine, even if it’s AstraZeneca. In their minds, it’s about being transparent around the risk factors associated, and they’re right. It’s just that this makes it harder for governments and public health officials to carry on with message that the best vaccine is the first one you are offered. Both are correct, and NACI has a lot of nuance in their guidance that is difficult for people to parse effectively, which is a problem, but it’s a question of whether the problem is NACI’s in how they communicate their guidance, or a problem in particular with media who are supposed to be able to take complex issues and translate them to the public, and yet are not very good at it (often walking away from these releases citing that they are “more confused than before,” which they shouldn’t be if they paid attention). It especially isn’t helped when certain journalists, talking heads, and especially certain MPs conflate the very different roles that NACI and Health Canada have, and try to assert that they should always be “on the same page” when they have different roles. Health Canada determines the safety of the vaccines, NACI offers guidance on the best way to deploy them, factoring in the current local epidemiology and vaccine supplies – guidance which provinces can accept or reject. It’s also why that guidance is always changing – they are reacting to current circumstances rather than just offering a simple recommendation once and being done with it, which most people are not grasping. And they have operated pretty much invisibly for decades, because there hasn’t been the kind of public attention on new vaccines up until now, which is why I really dislike the calls by people to “disband NACI” after yesterday’s press conference.

I get that people want clear binaries, and simple instructions, but that’s not NACI’s job, really, and expecting them to change their way of communicating after decades is a difficult ask. There is a lot of nuance to this conversation, and I will point you to a couple of threads – from professor Philippe Lagassé here and here about this kind of advice and how it’s communicated to the public; as well, here is hematologist Menaka Pai, who talks through NACI’s advice and what it means.

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QP: Bludgeoning about belief in climate change

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It was heartening to see a few more bodies in the Chamber, but alas, there remained only a mere two Liberals — Mark Gerretsen and the designated front-bench babysitter, Catherine McKenna. Candice Bergen led off in person, and she spun a very dubious connection between continued lockdowns and federal actions or perceived lack thereof. Jonathan Wilkinson, surprisingly, answered and gave a brief speech about how climate change is real, in the wake of the Conservatives’ policy convention. Bergen then pivoted to the trials of the two Michaels, and demanded the government withdraw their participation in the Asian Infrastructure Bank, which Marc Garneau disputed, citing that these were a top priority, and thanked allies for appearing that the court houses in China in protest. Bergen railed that the government sent $40 million to the Asian Infrastructure Bank, and Garneau gave a stern warning to China about arbitrary detention. Gérard Deltell took over in French, and received pay increases given to General Vance after the allegations against him were raised, for which Harjit Sajjan stated that he doesn’t determine pay raises, but that it was done independently on the advice of the public service. Deltell tried again, and this time Sajjan raised testimony from Harper’s former chief of staff at the defence committee earlier in the day.

Alain Therrien rose for the Bloc, and demanded increased health transfers for the provinces, crocodile tears about the plight of nurses metaphorically streaming down his face, for which Patty Hajdu reminded him they are already giving increased transfers to the provinces. Therrien was not mollified, demanding increases, and in response, Hajdu listed assistance given to the provinces.

Jagmeet Singh then led for the NDP in person, and in French, he also raised Vance’s pay increase and demanded an apology, for which Sajjan repeated that he does not determine pay. Singh then switched to English to demand concrete action to end systemic racism in the RCMP, and Bill Blair gave his condolences to Colton Boushie’s family, and said that the Commissioner of the RCMP agreed to implement the recommendations of the report.

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Roundup: Chalk up a couple of own-goals

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Political own-goals can be painful but also hilarious, and we saw two of them happen yesterday. The first was courtesy of the federal Conservatives, whose intended shitpost went awry when they wound up praising the Liberal government. It was obviously deleted within an hour or so, but the damage was done, and the day was spent with Liberals tweeting that the Conservatives told the truth for once. Oops.

The other was in Alberta, where a committee was examining the Energy Department’s budget, and questions arose about the spending on the province’s “war room,” whose job is supposed to be pushing back against the supposed “falsehoods” about their energy sector. You may have heard that last week, said war room decided to do battle against an obscure Netflix film called Bigfoot Family that shows a battle against an oil magnate seeking to blow up an Alaskan wildlife preserve. As a result of the war room’s ham-fisted campaign, the movie made the top ten streamed films, and had pretty much the opposite effect of what was intended. Nevertheless, the province’s energy minister, Sonya Savage, defended the attack against the film, and some UCP MLAs were praising the war room’s ability to make a film reach the top ten to be “pretty awesome.” Erm, they achieved the opposite and had more people watch the film they wanted to censor, guys. It’s so mind-numbingly dumb, and I just cannot even.

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Roundup: Final debate on the amendments

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While the Commons is not sitting this week, the Senate is, with several bills now on their Order Paper for consideration, most especially the assisted dying bill, which is under a court-imposed deadline (that has already been extended thrice). At issue are the amendments that the government accepted, rejected, and otherwise modified from what the Senate sent back to the Commons a few weeks ago (where the Conservatives then held it up).

The Government Leader in the Senate, Senator Marc Gold, is taking the line that this is a “historic example” of collaboration between the two Chambers that has resulted in better legislation, but I’m not sure just how historic that is, and by “better legislation,” it’s a fairly marginal case because the government reduced the attempt to render this legislation fully compliant with the constitution with one of its famous half-measures that means that people’s suffering will be prolonged as a result, and yet more others will need to embark on yet more court challenges in order to fully access what should be guaranteed rights.

Ultimately it does look like this will pass without sending it back to the Commons again, as most senators are taking the line that the House has had their say, and because they’re democratically elected, it can go ahead now (though there have been instances where the Senate made a second insistence on certain bills in order to make a point – though I’m not sure that will be the case here), and that it could pass and get royal assent before the court deadline. Nevertheless, the amount of time this has taken for something that had court-imposed timelines is a sense of just how vulnerable the parliamentary calendar really is when you had determined opposition to bills, and it’s not over yet because the proposed changes in this legislation will impose a two-year timeline for more consultations on aspects of the law that currently remain prohibited (where that prohibition remains unconstitutional), but that the government is dragging its feet for the sake of politics. Ultimately, nobody comes out of this exercise looking particularly good.

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Roundup: Hybrid heckling

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In a case of being careful what one wishes for, it turns out that all of the hopes that hybrid sittings would mean an end to heckling didn’t happen. In fact, MPs are now complaining it’s worse because when someone unmutes to heckle, it creates even more disruption as the camera shifts to them (but of course, this is also a completely selfish thing because it causes even more strain for the interpreters, who are burning out and MPs just don’t care).

What the Hill Times piece missed, because none of their reporters have shown up to QP during the pandemic, is that there are still shenanigans in the Chamber while the exchanges are happening over zoom. Most days, it’s Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen (the most consistent Designated Liberal™ in the Chamber) sniping back and forth with one or two Conservatives opposite – often Pierre Poilievre or Gérard Deltell, and this can be fairly distracting because you can’t hear the exchanges happening on screen. The worst was the Friday where Poilievre decided he was going to have a running commentary on everything going on on-screen, and when I say that he has a singular wit, I mean that he’s the only one who thinks he’s funny. He’s not. It was so bad that I couldn’t hear what was happening on the screen because of the constant running commentary that the Speaker wasn’t cracking down on. And I get it – they’re bored because there’s nothing for them to do but sit there as room meat as the charade carries on over Zoom, but it’s terrible.

Hybrid QP is actually pretty demoralizing. There is no spark or energy to what happens. It’s a lifeless recitation of talking points where they can’t inhabit the same space, and thus there is zero frisson to any of it. It’s unnatural and yet MPs seem to want more of this rather than fighting to have proper sittings in a safe way.

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QP: Reminder that it’s a novel virus

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It was Thursday, and neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present, which generally means a less exciting day. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and poked out inconsistencies in the story around the Global Public Health Information Network, to which Patty Hajdu related early actions by the government and Dr. Theresa Tam, as well as citing that she would say more about the GPHIN soon. O’Toole tried to call out inconsistencies in early pandemic advice, to which Hajdu reminded him that it’s a novel virus that we are still learning about. O’Toole called the decision around GPHIN politically motivated, to which Hajdu said that when she was alerted to the changes, she ordered and external investigation, and she would have more to say about that soon. In French, O’Toole accused the government of losing control of the pandemic, and Hajdu listed federal actions. O’Toole then concern trolled about testing, to which Hajdu listed the rollout of new rapid tests. For the Bloc, Stéphane Bergeron trolled the prime minister about his call with the president of France, to which François-Philippe Champagne pointed out what was wrong about the premise of the question, and reminded him that Canada defends freedom of expression around the world. Bergeron asked when there was going to hold a debate on acceptable limits to freedom of expression, to which Champagne rebutted his assertions. Jagmeet Singh was up next to lead off for the NDP, and in French, he worried about the record profits of web giants, to which Steven Guilbeault reminded him at they are now treating web giants the same as traditional players in the creative market. Singh switched to English to rail about the Westons making profits in the pandemic, for which Sean Fraser said that they were supporting front-line workers, and that they raised taxes on the top one percent, which the NDP voted against. 

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