Tag Archives: CRTC

Roundup: A baffling way to fast-track a bill

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The House of Commons began their fast-tracked debate on Bill C-39 yesterday, which is the bill to delay the onset of making mental disorder the sole criteria for accessing Medical Assistance in Dying, but even before debate got started, the government moved their motion to fast-track it in the most unusual and frankly unserious way possible. The motion extends sittings to midnight Monday and Wednesday (they sat until about 10:30 last night), all in the service of second reading debate. At midnight or collapse of debate on Wednesday, the bill is deemed to have been adopted at second reading, deemed to have been send to committee of the whole, deemed adopted and reported back, deemed to be adopted at third reading, and sent off to the Senate. The same motion also authorized the justice committee to sit as long as they need to today to consider the bill, and to be given priority of resources (i.e. interpreters) from any other committee for their study. But they don’t actually report back to the Commons (remember it is deemed to have gone to committee of the whole), so I’m not sure what the point of the exercise is.

Procedurally, this is bonkers, and furthermore, it just exacerbates the fact that we have a completely broken understanding of what second reading debate is supposed to be in this country. It’s where you debate the overall purpose of the bill, and it should last a single afternoon, with a handful speeches and some debate, and then be sent off to committee where they can do the real work. But instead, our Parliament has decided that second reading debate needs days upon days of canned speeches—particularly on a bill like this where everyone can stand up and say how “deeply personal” the issue is, and where a large number of Conservatives in particular can decry it and repeat a bunch of false assertions and misinformation about what this is supposed to be about. None of how they went about this makes any sense (and I remind you that the bill is one line). If all of the parties decided to fast-track this, there should have been a single speech from each party, and then to send it to committee for actual consideration today, so it can be sent back on Wednesday for final consideration. They didn’t need to contort themselves in this way in order to give everyone speaking time (like they did with the interminable speeches for the invocation of the Emergencies Act).

Once again, this is another signal of how unserious our Parliament is, and that it has devolved into little more than an exercise in reading canned speeches into the record. Nobody is actually being served by this, and our MPs need to grow up and start actually engaging with the material before them.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 356:

Bakhmut and its suburbs are being subjected to heavy shelling as Russia’s new offensive has begun, and Ukraine says that they have fortified their positions in the area. Russians have also struck in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, and have been fortifying their own positions in the south of the country. Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of NATO warned that Ukraine is using ammunition faster than allies can provide it, and is trying to put pressure on Western defence industries to ramp up production as Russia is with its own industries.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1625178486926196740

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Roundup: The big health summit is today

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Today is the day, where the prime minster is meeting with the provincial and territorial premiers to lay out the future of health transfers, and from the sounds if it, it’s not a negotiation. The Senior Liberal Sources™ are pointing to a ten-year deal with an expansion to the main Canada Health Transfer, as well as individual deals with provinces that focus on their priorities, and yes, there will be strings attached to that money. Trudeau is framing this conversation in a way that talks a lot about data, but the more unspoken part of that is the fact that the point of that data is so that there can be outcomes that can be compared across jurisdictions, and not have it in a format where it takes six months or a year for researchers to compile the data in a way that’s usable, because each province reports their data differently. People often don’t realise that it’s one of the reasons why we have such poor statistical data in this country, which is because provinces (who are responsible for vital statistics) don’t report in a way that is consistent, and it takes StatsCan or other agencies like CIHI time to make the data work.

The other reason for strings, of course, is that provinces have a demonstrated history of not using health transfers on their healthcare systems. For the decade that health transfers rose at six percent annually, health spending in most provinces rose by somewhere around 2.2 percent annually, meaning a lot of that money got spent elsewhere. Andrew Coyne tweeted data going back 20 years, and it’s very noticeable the gap between what the federal government sent to provinces for healthcare, and what actually got spent on it. Given how much additional pandemic spending went directly to provinces’ bottom lines during the pandemic, there is no longer an appetite for this to continue, which is why strings are not only important, but need to be in place, and it looks like the premiers have finally run out of room in the court of public opinion to operate otherwise.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1622760959977656321

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 349:

Russian forces have been keeping up the pressure in the eastern part of Ukraine while they prepare for a new offensive, likely around the anniversary of the start of the invasion, and there are worries they could be putting that pressure in Donetsk so that they can launch a surprise attack in the south. As well, there has been shelling around Zaporizhzhia.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says that Canada is ready to assist allies with aid they need around the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria.
  • François-Philippe Champagne and Pablo Rodriguez gave the new chair of the CRTC her marching orders in a public letter.
  • Marco Mendicino says that any foreign agent registry will need the buy-in from cultural communities in Canada lest it turn into a tool of stigmatisation.
  • As part of the government’s Ocean Protection Plan, there is investment in deep sea research; coastal First Nations chiefs have endorsed the marine protected area plan.
  • Canada is expanding its temporary work permit programme for Hong Kong residents.
  • The deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement says that McKinsey’s global record isn’t enough to disqualify it from Canadian government contracts.
  • The new Indigenous languages commissioner says he hopes to have his office fully operational by summer.
  • A labour tribunal has found that Parliament hasn’t been protecting the health and safety of its translation staff. Gosh, you think?
  • A man has been arrested for making death threats against the Liberal MP for Kichener—Conestoga, Tim Louis.
  • Former Liberal MP Raj Grewal wants the breach of trust charges laid against him during his time in office dismissed for lack of evidence.
  • The Conservatives are calling on the Auditor General to probe the McKinsey contracts, for no reason other than they’re building a conspiracy theory.
  • All opposition parties are peformatively demanding answers from the government about the Chinese “spy balloon.”
  • Quebec’s immigration minister is freaking out after reports that New York City is providing free bus tickets to asylum seekers trying to reach Roxham Road.
  • Matt Gurney explains why the gun control changes were an impossibility and a trap of the Liberals’ own making, which is why they had to walk them back.
  • Colin Horgan notes the Conservatives building conspiracy theories and trying to use the Unreal in order to tap into dark impulses in voters, as QAnon has done.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Keeping the focus on the distraction

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If our Parliament were at all serious, we would see House of Commons committee studies be actual serious affairs. But we’re no longer a serious Parliament, and MPs seem to go out of their way to demonstrate this at every opportunity. Yesterday it was the government operations committee, which is studying those McKinsey contracts, and they had an expert from Carleton University before them, who studies the use of external consultants by governments. She kept telling them that the focus on McKinsey was a distraction from the real problems. But what did the Conservatives in particular want to ask about? McKinsey, because they think it’s a political winner for them to start building this bullshit conspiracy theory that somehow Dominic Barton is secretly running Canada, and that McKinsey got all of these contracts because Trudeau likes Barton (never mind that the McKinsey contracts are on the extremely low end of the consultancy scale).

If we had a serious Parliament, they would have asked better questions and been more on the ball about the larger problem. But we don’t, and instead we got a bunch of showboating for the cameras, which will all wind up in social media shitposts.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 342:

Russian forces have been shelling both Kharkiv and Kherson, hitting residential buildings in both cities, while moving on the towns of Maryinka and Vuhledar, which are near Bakhmut. Meanwhile, France and Poland appear to be seriously considering getting fighter jets like F-16s to Ukraine, even though the Americans are unwilling.

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Roundup: New Zealand’s leadership selection

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New Zealand is about to have a new prime minister, and lo, it was a process that took a single day. Yes, it was an acclamation where only one person put his name forward (“to avoid disunity,”), but that is less of an issue because New Zealand is one of the last remaining parliaments where it’s decided by a vote held within the caucus among the MPs—the way that Westminster parliaments are supposed to work. And of course, it’s completely alien to how things have devolved in this country.

The quasi-American pseudo-presidential primary system that we’ve adopted in this country is corrosive to politics. It has hollowed out the political parties, and pretty much killed grassroots riding associations, because they no longer matter to the party. Memberships—paid or unpaid (as is the latest craze)—is about leadership selection, not sticking around to do the hard policy work, because the parties have centralized that and justify it using Big Data. It’s all about populating databases rather than ensuring you have a base of engaged partisans who act as a link between the community and the caucus in Parliament. The leader then turns the party into a personality cult while they wield almost absolute power because there are almost no checks on that remaining. At least with caucus selection, there is a direct line of accountability so that the caucus that chose the leader can remove said leader as well, which is one of the most important considerations.

Suffice to say, while one might have preferred that they at least had a vote between two candidates for the job, the fact that they have retained caucus selection is important, and Canada needs to return to the same system if we are to have any hope of fixing the damage to our system.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 332:

Russian forces claim that they took control of the town of Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut, which their mercenaries claimed to have taken already. And they’re still claiming they’ve taken Soledar, which Ukraine disputes. Meanwhile, the NATO meeting in Ramstein, Germany, ended without an agreement on sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, as Germany is the holdout and needs to authorize the use of their technology.

https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1616506280876642317

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Roundup: The first Sovereignty Act lawsuit

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The first legal challenge to Danielle Smith’s risible “Sovereignty Act” has been filed, and it’s from the Onion Lake Cree Nation, citing that the Act tramples on their treaty rights, that it’s ultra vires the province’s authorities, and that they were not consulted on it when it impacts their rights. This shouldn’t be a surprise—they warned her that she didn’t consult them and that this was going to be a problem, and she not only didn’t listen, she made the utterly offensive comparisons, claiming that the federal government oppresses Alberta like it did First Nations. This is who she is. I can’t wait for the courts to smack this legislation down for the unconstitutional mess that it is.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 300:

Russian drones struck Kyiv’s power grid for the third time in a week, as 18 out of 23 drones were shot down over the city, and those successful drones are said to have caused fairly serious damage. There were also reports of kamikaze drones flying over a nuclear power plant in the Mykolaiv region.

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Roundup: A scolding from Xi Jinping

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Much of the conversation yesterday was about a piece of video was captured at the G20 meeting in Bali, where on the sidelines, we saw Xi Jinping scolding Trudeau for “leaking” their conversation to the press, except there was no “leak.” It was a bog-standard readout like is sent out after any conversation with a foreign leader, with its vague wording and fairly inscrutable pabulum. And Trudeau told him as much about Canada believing in “free and open and frank dialogue.” Xi, however, put on a show of scolding, which some have said was more about saving face than anything. Nevertheless, this became something of a Rorschach test, based on your feelings about Trudeau—if you like him, he’s standing firm in the face of Xi, but if you don’t, he’s either looking chastened, or weak, or that Xi is taking Trudeau down a peg. It’s both fascinating and crashingly dull that these same narratives keep getting trotted out time and again.

https://twitter.com/Dennismolin11/status/1592905231427592193

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1593073811481853952

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 267:

Russian attacks in the east of Ukraine intensified as they were reinforced with troops fleeing from Kherson, as Ukrainian cities were working to restore power after the missile attacks earlier in the week. It also looks more likely that the missiles that struck Poland were Ukrainian anti-missile missiles, which still leaves Russia culpable, given that they fired some 100 cruise missiles at civilian targets in the first place. Meanwhile, two Canadian companies that produce electrical transmission towers are looking to assist Ukraine by offering their emergency replacement pylons to local companies.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1592980519997751297

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Roundup: The transcript doesn’t show interference

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It turns out that the recording of that meeting of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki coming down on her Nova Scotia team in the wake of the mass shooting in Portapique was found after all, and lo, it doesn’t actually show political interference. (Transcript here). She does say that she told the minister’s office the information on the firearms used would be released (we know that she was contacted by Bill Blair’s chief of staff, not Blair himself), and when the information was not released, she said she had to apologise to the minister and the prime minister, but there is no mention of a promise to release that information. In fact, the only time the word “promised” was used was when Lucki said that she was promised a timeline of events and a map, and she didn’t receive those either, and spoke about feeling disrespected because she wasn’t given it. Lucki did at one point bring up “legislation” the government was working on around guns (it was actually an Order in Council), which Lucki said was supposed to help police, but again, there was no mention of pressure from the minister about it. She was politically aware of what was going on, because she would have been consulted in its development (which had been going on for months at this point), and it should be stressed that political awareness is not interference. Commissioners are supposed to be politically aware. That’s part of their job, just like the Chief of Defence Staff.

The Conservatives, however, took that same transcript, cherry picked a couple of lines about feeling the need to apologise, and took this as “proof” of interference, that either Lucki or Blair had lied, and demanded both of their resignations, and launched a point of privilege in the House of Commons to the effect of saying that Blair lied to them. Because this is what they do—take everything in bad faith, and generate a bunch of clips for shitposts, then fundraise off of them. It’s not even truthiness at this point—it’s out and out bad faith, lies, and deception. And you don’t see the media calling bullshit on it and pointing to what is in the transcript, they just both-sides it, and their talking heads will waffle around it. The talking heads also don’t try to follow all of the information and put it together, where they would see that the allegations of interference don’t actually make sense. I won’t recap the column, but suffice to say, there was no need to interfere because they had all of the information, and the people who claim they were are actually arguing for less transparency. It’s bizarre all around.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 240:

Ukrainian forces have bombarded Russian positions in the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, targeting their resupply routes along a major river. Russians shelled the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions.

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Roundup: The allure of citizens assemblies

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Yesterday in the mother parliament in Westminster, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists “super-glued” themselves around the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons. Their demand—somewhat ironically, to “let the people decide” on climate change. Now, it would be ironic given that they are literally in the chamber where the people do decide, but no, what they are demanding is a citizen’s assembly, which is antithetical to democracy. There is a particular romance around these assemblies, which are composed of selected individuals from a perfect cross-section of society, and they are supposed to work by consensus to come up with some kind of solution, under the guidance of experts. Of course, therein lies the problem with this whole system—the people did not elect this assembly, and there is no way to hold them to account for the decisions that they make. As well, evidence suggests that they are fairly manipulable with the right “experts” guiding them, which is why groups like Extinction Rebellion or Fair Vote Canada are enamoured with them—because they are certain that with the “proper guidance,” these assemblies will come to the “correct” decisions, without the mess or compromises of democracy, or more to the point, going through the trouble of organizing that democracy requires to actually make change. This is no way to make big decisions, and politicians shouldn’t pander to groups whose aims are anti-democratic.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 191:

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency remain at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and hope to have a full picture of the situation at the plant by early next week. Here is an explanation as to why this IAEA inspection is so important.

https://twitter.com/CFOperations/status/1565396106577690630

Programming Note: Because it’s a long weekend, posts will resume Wednesday.

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Roundup: A minor Cabinet swap

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As expected, there was a very minor Cabinet shuffle yesterday, and it was less of a shuffle than a two-person swap. Filomena Tassi takes over as minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario, while the incumbent, Helena Jaczek, takes over as minister of public services and procurement. The reason? Tassi’s husband suffered two strokes, and has had a difficult recovery, so she requested a lighter workload, and Trudeau obliged. Jaczek, meanwhile, is a former Ontario health minister, so she’s not unaccustomed to big files. What is perhaps most significant is that Trudeau accommodated her in order to ensure that she didn’t have to choose between family and her job, which is a very rare thing, even in this day and age where there remains an expectation that women give up their jobs and careers in order to play caretaker roles. That kind of a signal should count for something.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 189:

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant yesterday, in an attempt to stabilise the situation there. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that his forces are attacking Russian positions along the entire front line, trying to retake the south as well as going on the offensive in the east. We’ll see in the coming days how effective this has been, but British intelligence suggests that there have been successes in three parts of the southern region, but didn’t give any details.

Good reads:

  • Following the shuffle, Trudeau said that Canadians have lost faith in the leadership of Hockey Canada, as they insist on retaining their CEO for some unknown reason.
  • Trudeau also said the government would look into allegations that a CSIS informant smuggled teenaged girls from the UK into Syria.
  • Chrystia Freeland insists that Albertans are “kind and welcoming” in spite of being accosted last week. (They’re kind and welcoming if you conform, you mean).
  • Pablo Rodriguez has belatedly condemned the antisemitic tweets from the “anti-racism” contractor his department hired.
  • Health Canada is expected to announce the approval of the omicron-specific boosters today (though this was for BA.1, even though BA.4 and .5 are dominant).
  • Fourteen months later, the military won’t say what their investigation into alleged atrocities caught on video involving Iraqi police yielded.
  • The CRTC announced that they will adopt 988 as a national suicide prevention hotline number, but it won’t be in operation until November of next year.
  • 325 First Nations are launching a class action lawsuit to demand reparations from the government for the cultural devastation wrought by residential schools.
  • The so-called “Centre Ice Conservatives” changed their name to “Centre Ice Canadians” to appeal to a broader audience (not that it’ll help).
  • Using their majority to circumvent the process, the Ford government bullied through a bill that can force people in hospitals into long-term care facilities.
  • The UCP leadership candidates had their final debate on Tuesday night, and it was as bankrupt of real ideas as you might expect.
  • Althia Raj talks to Elizabeth May about her decision to run for co-leader of the Green Party, and why that’s different from her time as full-on leader.
  • Paul Wells contemplates the “temperamental centre” of Canadian politics, and what that could mean for the two main federal parties going forward.
  • My column takes note of the fact that the government is experimenting in frank discussion when it comes to the wait times issues, which is a good first step.

Odds and ends:

For Xtra, I delved into the new Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan and got some reaction from stakeholders in the community.

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Roundup: Harper gives his predictable endorsement

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It’s day one-hundred-and-fifty-three of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s foreign minister openly admits that they want to topple president Volodymyr Zelenskyy because they consider his government “unacceptable” or some such nonsense. Russian forces continue to shell Ukrainan cities in the east and south of the country, as well as in the Kharkiv region. This while a lot of people who initially fled from the Donetsk region have returned home after either feeling alienated further west in Ukraine as Russian speakers, or because they ran out of money, only to be killed by Russian shelling once they’re back. Meanwhile, the push to prosecute Russian war crimes continues in Kyiv even while the fighting rages on, while Slovakia is considering giving Ukraine their fleet of Soviet-era MiG warplanes.

Closer to home, Stephen Harper came out with his endorsement of Pierre Poilievre yesterday, and no, this is not a sign that he’s worried about Charest. Quite the opposite—it’s a sign of his absolute enmity for Charest. Harper has bad blood with Charest, dating back to when Charest was Quebec premier. He had sold Harper on the fantastical notion that Quebec was suffering from some kind of “fiscal imbalance” with Ottawa, which was all bullshit, but it made a good talking point for Charest, and lo, Harper decided to be different from Jean Chrétien and buy peace with Quebec, so he gave Charest the money he was demanding to fix said fictional “fiscal imbalance.” And lo, Charest immediately turned around and turned that payment into a tax cut in the province, and Harper was furious. I mean, it shouldn’t be a surprise, and it’s exhibit eleventy-six for instances of provinces taking federal dollars and not doing what they’re supposed to with it (which is why Justin Trudeau is so insistent upon strings being attached to future healthcare transfers), but Harper has nursed a grudge ever since. His endorsement of Poilievre is just more of him nursing said grudge—he’s not actually worried about Charest winning.

And while we’re here, no, Harper is not still pulling all of the strings in the party. He’s a micro-manager. If he were, they wouldn’t be in as much disarray as they are now. Also, the IDU is not some kind of fascist plot—it’s a gods damned social club that Harper is the convener of. Yes, it’s comprised of small-c conservative parties (including Angela Merkel and her party), and yes, Harper has made some very, very questionable statements from it, but it’s a social club. It has no power, and it’s not pulling any strings. He’s not a Bond villain. He was a mediocre prime minister who now spends his time swanning around the globe pretending he used to be important. That’s it. Stop giving him any more credit than that.

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