Tag Archives: CRTC

Roundup: Danielle Smith’s personal border patrol

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While Alberta premier Danielle Smith continues to prefer capitulation to Trump’s predations and boot-licking as her preferred course of action, she announced that she would be creating a $29 million Interdiction Patrol Team using Alberta Sheriffs, which are not actually police officers because they don’t enforce criminal laws, along with dogs and drones. Nevertheless, the plan is that they will create a two-kilometre “interdiction zone” along the entire border with Montana, and arrest people in said zone, which grossly exceeds their constitutional authority and any provincial exercise of power. This is supposed to be done in coordination with the RCMP and CBSA, but again, this is going well beyond her constitutional authority for a lot of security theatre, particularly because there is not exactly a lot of traffic across that border to begin with. This being said, she had been planning to do something like this for years now, likely as kayfabe because she relies on a lot of American narratives to feed her radicalised support base, but with the added context of Trump, it just legitimises his position unnecessarily.

I look forward to all the right-wingers who whined endlessly about the federal government's very reasonable use of the Emergencies Act to react to this rule-of-law destroying nonsense.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-12T20:28:44.210Z

Meanwhile, it looks like one option the federal government might explore is potential export taxes instead of retaliatory tariffs as a last resort, but upon hearing this, Smith and Scott Moe freaked out, and Moe began demanding a federal election, because of course he did, given that he would rather capitulate. So much for Team Canada!

Between this and Ford’s musing about export controls on hydro, my intuition is this is a better approach than chats over meatloaf and ipad playlists. Granted, there’s a certain ‘spaghetti on the wall’ -ishness to handling Trump 2.0

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T19:40:32.132Z

But promising to never ever, no matter what, reduce oil exports, is … not wise. Oil is leverage.Pledging loyalty is not.

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T19:49:03.034Z

Of course, this is again all for show. CBSA’s president says that US law enforcement knows that the amount of fentanyl that comes from Canada is essentially “slippage,” and that the small packages are difficult to detect. The RCMP Commissioner says that there is talk with American counterparts about joint aerial patrols along the border. We’ll see how this starts to shape up over the next few weeks, but it is diverting a great deal of resources for a relatively minor problem that isn’t really our responsibility to begin with because Americans are supposed to police their own side of the border.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian officials say that they have reclaimed three settlements in Kursk region, while Ukrainian troops have been ordered to hold the line, at least until Trump takes office. President Zelenskyy visited an artillery unit on the southeast frontline.

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Roundup: Pants-wetting about a marching song

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News stories yesterday that the Royal Canadian Navy was, of their own initiative, exploring changing their marching song from “Heart of Oak” caused an inordinate amount of absolute pants-wetting from not only the usual suspects, but even some other otherwise rational voices who insisted this was all Justin Trudeau’s fault. When pointed out that the government had nothing to do with this, that the military brass was doing this on their own, they replied with things like “A military leadership shaped by, and following the direction of, the government. This horseshit is absolutely on the prime minister.”

I find it borderline incomprehensible that people cannot accept that the military itself has recognised that they need to change their own culture. They are in a recruitment and retention crisis because they can no longer count on straight white men from economically-depressed regions to fill their ranks in perpetuity. The country has changed, and they need to change with it—to say nothing of the fact that the former culture was rife with racism, misogyny, homophobia, sexual violence, and abuse of power in the top ranks. That kind of toxic environment wasn’t good for anyone, but it is being mythologised as “warrior culture.”

Even more to the point, this is being dismissed as “DEI” or “woke,” even from people who should know better. Trudeau is not sitting there forcing them to adopt “quotas” or so-called “DEI” or he’ll take away their lolly. But this goes back to my column last week about how a lot of these voices are pretty unconsciously privileging anything from straight white men as the “norm” and as the default “neutral,” and everything else is “woke,” and if you point out that privilege, you’re “divisive.” People need to grow the hell up and realise it’s 2024, and that means recognizing that the world has moved on from treating straight white men as the only “normal” that matters, and that includes the military.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on residential buildings in Sumy killed two and injured more than twelve. Russians also claim to have overtaken the village of Novodmytrivka in the Donetsk region. There are more details about the hypersonic missile attack on Dnipro earlier in the week, to which president Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is developing new types of air defence to counter “new risks.”

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Roundup: Putting words in the Auditor General’s mouth

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It was an Auditor General’s Report Day in the Nation’s Capital, and these reports were far more salacious than many in the past, which is in part why they dominated Question Period. The AG looked at three issues—contracts awarded to McKinsey and Company, the allegations around governance at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, and combatting cybercrime, and each report has a lot of things to say.

  1. Many of the contracts awarded to McKinsey were done sole-source with poor justification, going all the way back to 2011. And for context, these are contracts sought and awarded by the civil service, and not the political direction of the government; also, while there was a huge focus on McKinsey, they are less than one percent of these kinds of external contracts.
  2. There were governance problems at SDTC, including conflicts of interest in awarding funds, but there has been a lot of reporting in The Logic that suggests that some of this has been overblown, such as the fact that everyone on SDTC’s roster was given funds during the pandemic including operations that directors had ties to, so there couldn’t have been preferential treatment. Nevertheless, the government announced today that they are essentially pulling the plug on the organisation and folding it into the National Research Council.
  3. Cybercrime incidents have a poor record of being followed up on when reported to the wrong agency, and that many were dropped and the complainants were not told they reported to the wrong agency, meaning that a lot of files got lost along the way. The government is working on a single-window solution for reporting cyber-incidents, but that hasn’t happened yet.

On the first two, the Conservatives made up a huge fiction about these being contracts to “Liberal insiders,” or “friends of the government,” or “cronies,” or the like, when the reports said absolutely nothing of the sort. In fact, the reports quite clearly state that there was no political direction or involvement in these contracts, which means that these allegations by the Conservatives are not only false, but potentially libellous, but they want to create an air of corruption around the government. In addition, they seem desperate to avoid any scent of involvement themselves, when the McKinsey contract problems date back to when Harper was in government, and SDTC was set up by the Conservatives, including its governance structure, which proved problematic. In either case, the cries of corruption and trying to invoke the ghost of Sponsorship are little more than cheap lies, but that’s what the Conservatives do best these days, it seems, so none of it is surprising.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A pair of Russian missiles struck civilian infrastructure in Dnipro, injuring eight including two children. Ukrainian officials say that the decision to allow Ukraine to strike into Russian territory will disrupt their advances and help defend the Kharkiv region.

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Roundup: A choice of passive voice

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The reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny triggered reactions around the globe, and especially at the security conference underway in Munich, where Navalny’s wife spoke shortly after the news. Reaction from Canadian figures was pretty swift. Justin Trudeau was on CBC radio and was quite blunt: “It’s something that has the entire world being reminded of exactly what a monster Putin is.”

And then there was Pierre Poilievre, who passive-voiced the whole thing.

Between this and his votes regarding the Ukraine trade agreement, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he is winking and nodding to a certain online audience. And while certain pundits have been “We think the initial vote was a mistake and he can’t take the L so he doubles down,” I suspect it’s more like “Sure, some Ukrainian diaspora communities are going to be pissed off, but what are they going to do? Vote Liberal? Hahaha.” They have hitched their wagon to the far-right PPC-voting crowd because they think that’ll get them the votes they need to win, and this is a crowd, that is mainlining Russian disinformation online, and believe that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a money-launderer buying yachts, that Putin is just trying to shut down “biolabs,” and throw in some antisemitic conspiracy theories about “globalists,” and it’s all stuff that Poilievre is willing to wink and nod to. Passive-voicing this statement was a choice.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1758543572578484364

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Roundup: The AG’s report into ArriveCan

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The Auditor General released her report into ArriveCan yesterday, and it was suitably scathing, but in spite of Pierre Poilievre throwing arounds words like “corruption” and blaming the prime minister directly, the AG’s criticisms were squarely directed to the CBSA. It bears mentioning that CBSA is a federal agency, not a department, which means that it operates at arm’s length of government. Unlike a department, they don’t have direct political oversight, and while the president of CBSA reports to the public safety minister, and will accept broad political direction, the government does not direct operations (much like the CRA or RCMP).

So just what did she find? A complete lack of paperwork, of checks and balances, or of proper management or contracting practices, right up to the point of the outside contractor taking senior CBSA officials out to dinners and helping write the terms for when the contract would be put out to tender in a way that benefitted them. Once again, it’s hard to pin this on the government or Cabinet because they’re not involved in this level of decision-making. The Conservatives like to characterise this as “Liberal insiders” or “cronies” getting rich, but again, the report draws none of these conclusions. Meanwhile, those senor officials are now suspended, and there is an ongoing RCMP investigation, which is appropriate, while CBSA’s internal audit is ongoing.

There is an open question as to the reliance on outside contractors, which may be appropriate considering that CBSA wouldn’t have required the presence of app developers on their IT staff as a matter of course, and I’m not sure if this could have been contracted out to Shared Services Canada either (though given SSC’s history, I’m not sure I’d be confident in the quality of that product). And that’s fair enough. The problem becomes that they cut every corner and disregarded the rules in the process, whereas transparent contracting and proper paper trails and records of approval processes could have shown this to be a viable exercise, but we can’t know that because of how they ultimately behaved. So, while Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh insist that civil servants could have done the work, I’m not convinced, but that doesn’t mean that this still wasn’t handled in the worst way possible.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces attacked a power plant in Dnipro with missiles and drones, cutting off power and water supplies to some residents. Analysis shows that Russia used Zircon hypersonic missiles against targets in Kyiv on February 7th. Ukraine is looking to produce thousands of long-range drones this year. Ukrainian military intelligence suggests that Russia has been obtaining Starlink terminals through third countries.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1757040939929944128

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Roundup: Google signs a deal to avoid transparency

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With days to go before the Online News Act would start applying, Google has come to an agreement that sees it pay $100 million per year into a fund, rather than to have individual deals with news outlets. This is one of the things that seems to escape most of the critics of the Act—this was about ensuring that the deals that Google and Facebook were already signing with news outlets were subject to transparency and had an arbitrator—the CRTC—at the ready in the case of disputes. This was never a “link tax” or some such nonsense, it was about putting structure into the same deals that were already being made, and it was the transparency that they objected to. This deal ensures that they are not subjected to that transparency, because it’s one lump sum, which is the real takeaway from this deal.

Of course, none of this fixes the underlying problem with is the domination of the ad tech space where Google and Facebook control all aspects of it and are siphoning money at each stage, which is why they have starved news outlets of advertising revenues. Of course, nobody wants to talk about that aspect. To deal with this, there still needs to be stronger anti-trust action, particularly in the US, but this deal is a start, nevertheless.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians claimed that they launched missiles from their Black Sea fleet against “military targets,” but nothing has been verified. Ukraine’s foreign minister says that the EU has delivered about 300,000 of its promised munitions shells so far.

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Roundup: The premier has no clothes

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith is threatening to invoke her so-called “Sovereignty Act” next week to shield power companies from federal clean energy regulations—but that will do absolutely nothing. The province doesn’t enforce federal environmental regulations, so it can’t shield the power companies from said regulations. Smith might as well get up in the legislature and perform some kind of magical incantation, because it’ll have pretty much the exact same effect.

This being said, a lot of journalists seem to either believe that the Act is going to somehow do what she’s claiming, or they’re just both-sidesing it, because guess what—this is all performance. Smith has woven you the most extravagant outfit that is so magnificent that you can’t even see it. Right? “The Emperor Has No Clothes”? Or in this case, the premier has no clothes. Don’t take this invocation at face value. Point out that it does nothing, and that she is trying to pull a fast one to keep rage-farming.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine launched one of its biggest drone attacks on Russian positions in occupied Crimea, while Russians made a renewed push to take Avdiivka. Russians also launched a massive drone attack on Kyiv, where debris has caused injuries. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered reform proposals to the country’s troop mobilisation programme as the war drags on.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1728127516299481335

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Roundup: A failed vote, a policy pretzel

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It was not unexpected that the Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day motion on removing the carbon price from all forms of home heating failed, because the Bloc had no interest in supporting it, and lo, none of the Liberals broke ranks and voted for it either. (Liberal MP Ken McDonald, who had voted for such motions previously, “scratched his head” with two fingers as he voted, which the Conservatives took to be giving them the finger, and lo, cried victim about it). And once the vote was over, Conservatives took to social media to call out all of those Liberal MPs they had been targeting in advance of it, because this is the bullshit state of where Canadian politics have degenerated to.

In advance of the vote, Jagmeet Singh was in the Foyer, twisting himself into a pretzel to say that he didn’t really agree with the Conservative motion, but he was going to vote for it anyway to send a message to the Liberals that he disagrees with them, but he also wants to push his boneheaded “cut GST on all home heating” policy, which is as dumb as a bag of hammers. (No, seriously—it would be impossible to disentangle the heating portion of certain sources of heating, such as electric heating, or what natural gas goes to heating and what goes to hot water tanks, or natural gas barbecues; plus, the policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy, who have bigger houses). There is no policy coherence, because this is all about posturing and performance, and Canadians are ill-served as a result.

While this was going on, the premiers met in Halifax, ostensibly to talk healthcare but it would up being another gang-up session where they all demanded that the federal government remove the carbon price on all home heating out of “fairness” (never mind the problems of energy poverty, that heating oil is four times as expensive as natural gas, and that some of those premiers should have been doing more about this problem years ago). They also groused that the federal Housing Accelerator Fund was being negotiated directly with municipalities and not them, which, again, forgets that they have studiously ignored the housing problem in their own provinces for decades and now they’re getting put out that the federal government has had to step up after they refused to. But that’s the state of our federation, and it’s a

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721622048345149688

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721628581921509676

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian air strikes on Odessa late Sunday night struck the city’s principal art gallery and wounded eight. A criminal investigation has been launched into the decision to hold a troop-honouring ceremony in Zaporizhzhia which was easily detected by surveillance drones, allowing the Russians to target it; around the same time, the top aid to Ukraine’s commander-in-chief was killed when a grenade was hidden inside a birthday present.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1721649238642245908

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Roundup: More both-sidesing Smith’s mendacity

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I found myself somewhat gobsmacked by the way in which The Canadian Press has written up the pushback against some of Danielle Smith’s ridiculous accusations against the federal clean electricity regulations. She has been panned by experts for weeks, but how does CP frame this? With statements by a Liberal MP in Calgary, George Chahal.

“The fuse is lit for fireworks in Ottawa after a Liberal member of Parliament accused Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of making false claims days before Smith is slated to appear before a federal environmental committee,” is the lead, and the piece proceeds to methodically both-sides this to death. It’s Chahal-said about Smith’s batshit crazy things she’s claiming about these regulations, like how this is going to mean blackouts and energy company executives being hauled off to jail, versus statements from Alberta’s energy minister, who in turn accuses the federal government of misinformation. There is no third-party expert weighing in, it’s simply the two sides, and the reader is supposed to determine whom they feel is more credible based on a handful of quotes. Come on.

We are in the middle of a misinformation and disinformation crisis in the Western world, and legacy media—of which a wire service like CP is a foundational element of—cannot arse themselves to do some basic gods damned due diligence and provide evidence that Smith and her ludicrous allegations are nothing more than mendacity for the sole purpose of rage-farming and stoking anger against the federal government (because that works so well in Alberta). There are ways to call out lies in a fair and transparent manner, but there was absolutely zero attempt her, and that just lets lies fester in the open, which is why leaders like Smith and Pierre Poilievre (as Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole before him) have all learned from, that it means they suffer no consequences for their lies, because nobody calls them out—just other partisan actors who can be dismissed as such. We’re playing with fire when it comes to the health of our democracy, but nobody seems to care, and that’s a very big problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones have attacked Danube port infrastructure in the Odesa region once again. Ukraine’s intelligence service has accused two villagers who fled to Russia of helping guide the missile strike on the village of Hroza that killed 55 people last week. Ukraine’s prime minister says they need $42 billion in budget support this year and next to help aid reconstruction. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Brussels to meet with military leaders and to impress upon them the importance of keeping up aid to Ukraine, and not to get distracted by the outbreak of hostilities in Israel—NATO leaders have pledged ongoing support.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1712119948749717958

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QP: Champagne, turkeys, and the worst themed questions imaginable

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The prime minister was off in Vaughan, Ontario, a housing announcement, while his deputy was on her way to Kingston for a separate event, while some of the other leaders were present in the Chamber. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, reciting talking points and misleading about the promise around food prices, demanded they be reduced immediately. François-Philippe Champagne said that first Poilievre was trying to tell people to buy crypto and now he wanted them to buy $120 turkeys, but they needed to support their legislation on competition. Poilievre called Champagne the “turkey in this joke,” and decried that the price of turkey had gone up 67 percent in eight years. Speaker Fergus warned about comparing members to animals, before Champagne listed the ways in which they are trying to rein in grocery prices. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his demand to bring down prices in the next four days. Champagne loudly declared that he would take no lessons from the Conservatives, and said that he found a Butterball for Poilievre for $30. He got warned about using props, and Poilievre made a little pun about people not wanting Champagne for Thanksgiving, and complained that turkeys these days are skimpy and looked like they have been “taxed to death.” Champagne tried to come back with people not having fun these days, and got applauded by the Conservative benches, before he pitched support for their competition bill. Poilievre gave a few more of his slogans, and Champagne said that the best way to help Canadians was to support their bill.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he railed that Marc Miller not admitting that French is in decline in Quebec. Pablo Rodriguez cautioned that they need to be careful with statistics, because more people are speaking French than ever before, and stated that he was living proof because he grew up speaking Spanish and is now a francophone. Therrien railed that it meant the government could not understand about settlement capacity, and this time Miller got up to point that the statistics the Bloc are citing are about “mother tongue” which is not the same thing as people not speaking French, and that they shouldn’t misrepresent the situation.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that the government is not helping with the price of food by not stamping down on corporate greed. Anita Anand took this one, and patted herself on the back for the government’s programmes to help Canadians. Singh worried that Shopper’s Drug Mart is rolling out American-style healthcare, to which Mark Holland patted himself of the back for reducing drug costs through bulk purchasing and working on pharmacare legislation.

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