Tag Archives: Conservative Leadership

Roundup: Caucus confidence and garbage legislation

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It is now day one-hundred-and-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has turned over several of the bodies of Russian fighters from that steel mill in Mariupol where they were holed up for weeks. Missiles continue to fall over other parts of the country, and president Volodymyr Zelensky warns that Russians are targeting the city of Zaporizhzhia in the south, as a means of advancing further into the centre of the country. As well, here is a thread about Russia’s cyberwar in Ukraine, and how they route Ukrainian internet through Russian servers when they take over territory as a means of controlling information.

Meanwhile, a lot of attention has been paid to the confidence vote that UK prime minister Boris Johnson was subjected to within his own party, which he barely survived, and at a much lower margin than other UK prime ministers survived theirs before they made their political exits. With 42 percent of your caucus against you, you cannot survive more than a few more months. It’s simply untenable. Of course, Michael Chong had to pipe up to make yet another pitch for his (garbage) Reform Act and trying to goad the Liberals into signing onto it, which is wrong, and tiresome. Like the Liberals did when Chong first proposed the bill, there was this assertion that this would be what would do in Stephen Harper because his caucus must hate him, erm, except they didn’t. And Chong is making the very same assertion here, which seems to be yet one more Conservative falling into the trap of believing that people hate Trudeau as much as they do. Additionally, as I have stated time and time again, MPs did not need Chong’s garbage legislation to be able to oust leaders—they already had that power if they chose to use it. Putting a legislative framework around those powers only curtails them by stealth, while pretending to “give” MPs powers they already have, it absolutely limited senators’ powers within their caucuses, and it gave leaders even more insulation by putting up thresholds to levels beyond what would ordinarily have been considered fatal to a leader. It doesn’t need to spread further.

https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1533902493322776576

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Roundup: Jubilee Weekend (not that you’d know it in Canada)

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It’s day one hundred-and-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv has once again come under attack from Russian missiles, who claimed this was about hitting tanks donated by Western countries. Ukrainians, meanwhile, say they have reclaimed Sievierokonetsk in a counter-offensive, but this has not yet been verified. Ukrainians are taking losses, between 60 to 100 per day which is more than the Americans took daily than in the worst of the Vietnam War, but this may also galvanize to them fight even harder as more advanced weapons from allies arrive. Here are stories from the southern city of Mykolaiv, where the shelling is constant.

Meanwhile, NATO is kicking off two weeks of naval exercise in the Baltic Sea which will include Sweden and Finland, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been meeting with Turkey’s president to try and solve the impasse of Turkey blocking Sweden and Finland’s entry into the alliance.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1533516244124590085

Closer to home, it was the celebrations of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over the weekend, even though the Canadian government kept things as low-key as they possibly could. I have real trepidation about the way in which this government seems to think of Canadian monarchy as an afterthought, because it inevitably leads to politicisation when Conservatives put in more effort, and that is the absolute last thing we want or need. It’s an institution for everyone, and needs to be treated as such. There were, nevertheless, a few CanCon elements in the celebrations in London, as well as some royal Kremlinology about what it all signalled. Tangentially related to the celebration was the 150th anniversary of the Governor General’s Foot Guards in Ottawa, who got their own parade.

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Roundup: A barometer we should pay attention to

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It is now day one hundred-and-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine says that they have reclaimed a large chuck of Severodonetsk, foiling Russia’s attempt to move further into the city. There are concerns that Russia is trying to dig in and stay in those eastern cities for the long haul.

For that one hundredth day of the war, here’s a look back at Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s nightly video addresses, and what they have done for his people. Here is a timeline of the events of the invasion, as well as an attempted accounting of some of costs that this war has taken on the people of Ukraine. As well, a museum in Kyiv is collecting materials left behind by Russian forces and making art out of it.

Closer to home, the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the extremely low turnout from the Ontario election continues, and that has Turnout Nerds and Proportional Representation fanboys out in force, to little avail. Most corrosive were the rounds of people who insisted that because the turnout was so low, that Ford had formed a majority government with something like 20 percent of eligible voters and that this was somehow illegitimate and that they should petition the lieutenant governor to deny him the ability to form government (erm, except that he is already in government, and simply has a new legislature). While you have some people trying to explain this low turnout as frustration and disengagement, where people were told time and again by media polls what the outcome was going to be so they never bothered, I do think there is something to be said about this being a measure of where we’re at, and it’s not good—and that mandatory voting would simply paper over that indicator. Of course, what this should do is prompt parties to get their acts in gear and present something that can actually excite voters and get them out to the polls, but we’re seeing cynical moves by parties who capitalise on low turnout (Ford’s Progressive Conservatives), or who try to game their so-called “vote efficiency” to have just enough turnout (federal Liberals). It’s not healthy, and we should do more about it, but the parties didn’t seem interested this time around.

https://twitter.com/Honickman/status/1532847527975915521

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Roundup: Bill Morneau has learned no lessons

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We’re now around day ninety-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and…there wasn’t a lot of news I could find, other than the fact that Russia continues to pound cities in the Donbas region. Germany says they will send more advanced radar and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, but we’ll see how timely their deliveries really are.

Closer to home, Bill Morneau delivered a speech where he says he’s worried about the economic progress of this country because he says he doesn’t see enough focus on growth (never mind that it’s the dominant focus of the last two budgets). But then he went on about how he wants some kind of “permanent commission” to focus on said economic growth, and I just cannot even. It’s called Parliament. David Reevely lays this out in the thread below, but I will add that Morneau really was never any good at being in government. He kept trying to play things like he was still in the corporate world, where it was about who you knew, and it was paired with the mindset of this government where if you mean well, then the ends justify the means, so rules got broken an awful lot. That’s why Morneau was eventually forced to resign over his role in the CatastrophWE. And he demonstrates with this speech that he has learned precisely zero lessons.

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Roundup: Doug Ford broke the fact-checker

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It’s now approximately day ninety-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have captured half of the city of Severodonetsk in a “hail of grenades,” while fierce street fighting continues. A rocket strike also hit Sloviansk, also in the Donbas region, which killed three and wounded six. As previously mentioned, the Russian strategy seems to be to try and take the Donbas region as fast as possible, before more heavy western weapons arrive, and lo, it looks like the US will be sending medium-range rockets to Ukraine after a promise that they wouldn’t fire them over the Russian border. Meanwhile, here is a look at Médecins Sans Frontières treating civilians wounded in the fighting near Ukraine’s front lines, and how it’s at a scale they have never faced before.

Closer to home, the Toronto Star’s attempt to fact-check Doug Ford for a week wound up being an exercise in misery, as he “broke” said fact-check system. Now, to be clear, the Star’s whole fact-check exercise between the federal and provincial elections has been fairly risible. It’s not a good system where you take everything the leaders say for a week each, and then evaluate them based on number of falsehoods per time spoken. And because it’s done by someone for whom politics is not their regular beat, they don’t have enough context to know whether what is being said is true or not, and a lot of stuff is being given a pass that shouldn’t be precisely because they don’t know enough of what is going on to have a reasonable bullshit detector throughout. This having been established, Ford still broke their system by barely speaking at all, and when he does, it’s largely in generalities that can’t be easily checked, and it makes it easy for him to get caught up in exaggerations that also wind up getting a pass. Still, he did still lie a lot, particularly about the situation he inherited, but the fact-check system is pretty useless, so why bother?

Nevertheless, this is now the second election where Ford has largely been a blank slate, with little in the way of policy other than his previous move of rebating licence plate stickers, and his promise to expand a highway as though it will do anything about congestion (which it won’t because induced demand). There is no contest of ideas because it’s content-free, and nobody wants to call this fact out even though it is utterly corroding our democracy. But it seems to be a strategy that works for him, and which the media in this province seems to be fine with, because they have given him the easiest ride humanly possible, and it’s just so dispiriting. How are we a serious province?

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Roundup: Brown’s poor choice of words

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It is approximately day ninety-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has stormed the city of Sievierodonetsk after trying unsuccessfully to encircle it. Some 90 percent of the cities buildings are damaged, and Russian forces have not cared about civilian casualties. At the same time, president Volodymyr Zelensky ventured out of Kyiv and visited the city of Kharkiv, and thanked the Ukrainian defenders in that city who pushed the Russian invasion back on that front.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is getting new shore-to-ship missiles from Denmark while howitzers from the US are arriving, and it is hoped that these missiles can help better defend their coast line (and possibly sink the Russian Black Sea fleet in the process). Also, here is a look at those evacuating from cities like Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine.

Closer to home, Patrick Brown is trying to walk back on his calling social conservatives “dinosaurs” in his book, saying it was a “poor choice of words.” But he was trying to make a point in the statement that those dinosaurs are becoming less relevant to the party, which in Ontario especially, tends to mean that you need to go on bended knee to Charles McVety and his particular ilk so that you can get their endorsement, which Doug Ford was certainly willing to do, and Brown was not, instead trying to expand the party membership through other ethno-cultural communities that could go around that traditional social conservative membership bloc. And I’ve heard certain Conservative organisers say that they want “open memberships” like the Liberals have in order to grow the party away from being beholden to the social conservatives—erm, but maybe you should just adopt more centrist or mainstream policies that will attract more people to the party if you want to move away from that particular base. Mind you, there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation in that those members will keep fighting to keep the policy book in their favour, but there is also no guarantee that “open memberships” will help you organise around these social conservatives any differently either. Suffice to say, if the party wants to grow away from this base, it requires a lot more organisational ability than they seem to be demonstrating to date.

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Roundup: Cancelled committees because of the human toll of hybrid sittings

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It is now approximately day ninety-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have shelled more than 40 towns and villages in the Donbas region, while they try to encircle Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. It also sounds like Russia has lifted the age restriction for voluntary military service, which gives you a hint that they need more troops because the invasion has not gone well for them. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is asking Western allies for rocket systems to repel Russian forces from the Donbas, before the cities and towns in the area become “uninhabited.”

Closer to home, it looks like the realities of the finite resource of Parliament are finally starting to hit for MPs and senators, and more and more committee meetings are being cancelled as there simply aren’t enough interpreters to go around, exacerbated by late-night sittings, and more than anything, the fact that they keep finding excuses to extend hybrid sittings no matter that they know full well that the use of Zoom is causing injuries to the interpreters, and most of them know that they can’t simply hire more as there are no more to hire. They literally cannot graduate enough to replace the ones who are retiring or whose injuries are forcing them from the workplace (especially as they risk permanent hearing loss). And MPs simply don’t care. Worse, they passed a motion last week to create yet another special committee, as if they had the resources to do so. Because they don’t care. It’s all about show, whether that’s the Liberals and NDP patting themselves on the back for being “good examples” of working from home, or the Conservatives’ constant filibustering and wasting of time that drags out proceedings, which taxes the interpreters even further (and isn’t helped by the fact that they refuse to wear masks in the Chamber).

I’ve stated this before, and I’ll keep saying this—it is morally reprehensible for MPs and senators to keep demanding hybrid sittings when they know the human cost it takes on the interpreters. They could easily organize themselves in safer ways to have in-person meetings, which won’t strain the interpreters, and that they could have something that resembles normal operations as a result, but they refuse, because too many of them have grown to like the hybrid sittings, so that they don’t have to travel. Who cares if a human being is suffering injuries and facing the possibility of permanent hearing loss? That MP doesn’t have to travel, so that’s what counts. It’s absolutely unconscionable, and they should be shamed for it.

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Roundup: The painful French debate

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It is now on or about day ninety-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are becoming pivotal battlefields that Russian forces are trying to encircle. Russian missiles also struck the city of Pokrovsk, as part of the offensive in the Donbas region. Russia, meanwhile, is trying to accelerate their granting citizenship to people in captured areas, in order to somehow legitimise their occupation of the territories. Russia also has allegedly offered to open up Black Sea access so that Ukrainian grain can flow to the world market and avoid a food crisis—but only if the West lifts sanctions on Russia. So weaponizing food security is not above Putin’s regime.

Meanwhile, Swedish and Finnish diplomats are in Ankara, Turkey, to discuss NATO membership, and to assuage Turkey’s concerns about their perceived support for Kurdish groups that Turkey considers to be terrorists. Sweden has denied providing financial or military support for these groups.

Closer to home, it was the French debate in the Conservative leadership race last night, and it was…challenging to watch. Most of the French was not good, and they largely read prepared statements with halting and rehearsed attack lines against one another, which was not cute. Most of the night was spent with Pierre Poilievre, Patrick Brown, and Jean Charest going at one another, while Scott Aitchison, whose French was better than he let on, stayed out of the fray, and Roman Baber and Leslyn Lewis struggled to be even coherent (not that Baber is coherent at the best of times in English, considering that he’s an utter moron). The topic of inflation was painful because they kept insisting on policies that would fuel inflation and denouncing policies that would tame it, because of course they would, and there was an attempt to corner Poilievre on Law 21 and religious symbols, as he has been saying different things in English and French. As expected, Charest mopped the floor with his competitor on French ability alone, but his closing remarks, exhorting party members to reject Americanised politics, may simply go over like a lead balloon in a party base who thinks that Poilievre is their guy because he’s pugilistic and wants to fight like this was American talk radio. None of it leaves much room for optimism as to the direction of the party.

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Roundup: Competing nonsense lawsuits

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It’s now approximately day ninety-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk says that Russian forces are advancing from all sides. Another 200 bodies have been found in Mariupol, where Russian forces have been pounding the city to rubble.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1529206361338396672

There is also talk about Vladimir Putin having survived an assassination attempt after the invasion began, and Kremlin insiders are discussing a possible successor to Putin as discontent grows with the course of the war. So that’s going well.

Closer to home, I think the situation in New Brunswick is about to do my head in, as two competing lawsuits are colliding—the challenge to the appointment of a unilingual lieutenant governor, and a frivolous lawsuit challenging the fact that the premier violated the “fixed election date” in calling an election. The lieutenant governor suit is going down on appeal because the reasoning in the original decision is a constitutional impossibility (one part of the constitution cannot override another, which the ruling does). And the challenge to the election call is a dead letter because simple statute cannot bind the Crown prerogatives in this way, and Democracy Watch keeps losing this suit every time they attempt it, not to mention that you cannot undo an election. When a legislature is dissolved, it’s dissolved (and no, the UK ruling on prorogation is not the same thing). This is all nonsense and eating up court time unnecessarily, but this is where we’re at.

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Roundup: Pandering to a false narrative, Quebec edition

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It is now on or about day ninety of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and we have the first war crimes conviction, as the tank commander who pleaded guilty last week to killing civilians has been handed a life sentence. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russia is waging “total war” intended to inflict as many casualties as possible, and destroy as much infrastructure as they can. Zelenskyy also addressed a gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and he told assembled global and economic leaders there to apply “maximum sanctions” to Russia.

Meanwhile, Belarusians are joining the fight on Ukraine’s side, hoping that it will eventually help topple the regime in their own country. As well, the dreaded Russian hackers have not proven effective in the Ukraine invasion, and have themselves been the successful target of government cyber-operations and hactivists, so perhaps their reputation is not as deserved as it has been.

Closer to home, Quebec is close to passing Bill 96, which expands its language laws to almost absurd levels, including forbidding the use of English in nearly all circumstances, and there are concerns that the bill allows for warrantless searches in order to enforce it. (There CBC had an explainer here,  but beware the both-sidesing).This is all predicated on the notion that French is “declining” in Quebec—erm, except it’s not. Census data shows that, and the only decline was where French was the “mother tongue,” meaning that its decline may be because of immigration, most of whom learn French is fairly short order (though this is one area where Bill 96 is again overreaching—and they wonder why they have a labour shortage). Unfortunately, every federal party including the Liberals have bought into this narrative, and are not challenging it very hard. Some Liberal MPs have been to protests in opposition to the bill, which the Bloc freaked out about in Question Period last week, to some minor pushback from the Liberal Quebec lieutenant, but it’s not a good sign when any party refuses to call out a blatantly false narrative because they are afraid it will lose them needed votes. Such courage!

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1528807121692803072

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