Tag Archives: CRTC

Roundup: Boxing in the Conservatives on abortion

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It is approximately day seventy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces appear to be storming the steel plant in Mariupol, after a handful of civilians were evacuated and made it to Kyiv-controlled areas. As well, UK prime minister Boris Johnson addressed the Ukrainian parliament (and I can’t wait for the usual suspects in this country to start demanding Justin Trudeau to do the same, just because).

Closer to home, that US Supreme Court leak about the potential overturning of their abortion jurisprudence has galvanized politicians in Canada in a number of ways. For the Bloc, they decided to engage in mischief by moving a unanimous consent motion after Question Period about a woman’s right to choose, which was explicitly designed to box the Conservatives into a corner, and they dutifully marched into it—right after Candice Bergen sent out orders to the caucus not to discuss it. Of course, several MPs made their comments on their way into the West Block, while most of the leadership candidates made their feelings known.

This raises questions as to whether this could happen in Canada, and it’s theoretically possible, but not under the current configuration of the Supreme Court of Canada. Of course, the more likely course is for a future government to attempt to criminalise it via the Criminal Code, which they have been attempting to in piecemeal form, either via “sex-selective abortion” legislation, or bills that give rights to foetuses, which undermines the Canadian legal jurisprudence that rights begin at birth. The bigger problem in Canada is uneven access, whether between rural and urban areas within a province, or between provinces, particularly in places like New Brunswick and PEI, and the fact that the federal government has been fairly impotent when it comes to clawbacks of Canada Health Transfers related to not providing this service (which Conservatives don’t insist on federally, but Liberals do, when they are in power). I also think it’s an issue that this “feminist federal government” simply refunded the clawbacks from New Brunswick when the pandemic began so that they couldn’t be cast as the bad guy, instead of being seen to stand up for principles and for access. And lo, we may soon need to be providing access to Americans who come to Canada for the procedure, and that may cause capacity challenges, depending on the province. So we have our challenges, but they’re different ones from the US.

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QP: Resurrecting a five-year-old scandal

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After a number of tributes for Guy Lafleur, and one for former astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason, things got underway after the two-week break. While he was in town, the prime minister was absent, but his deputy was present, so that was something, though no other leaders were present either. Luc Berthold led off in French, and he he decried the budget, accusing the prime minster of being out of touch. Chrystia Freeland replied that Canadians understand that inflation is a global phenomenon, and she listed some international comparisons to show that Canada was lower, citing the reasons as COVID and Putin. Berthold then pivoted to the story in the Globe and Mail about the RCMP considering laying a fraud charge against the prime minister for the trip to the Aga Khan’s private island, to which Mark Holland stood up to say that this matter was settled years ago. Berthold insisted this proved Trudeau’s lack of judgment, and decried the loophole in the law, and demanded to know when Trudeau last met with the RCMP, and Holland repeated his response. James Bezan repeated the question about the story in English, and he wondered if the prime minister gave himself the power to break the law, and Mark Holland got back up to recite in English that this was settled five years ago and that the Ethics Commissioner had a report. Bezan repeated his question, and Holland sang the praises about the government’s economic actions.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he led with this dubious court decision of the appointment of a unilingual lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, saying it demonstrates that the government treats francophones as second-class citizens, and Ginette Petitpas-Taylor insisted that the LG was taking French lessons, and why they were modernising the Official Languages Act. Therrien kept after this, and added to his outrage the appointment of a unilateral anglophone board of directors at CN Rail, and Omar Alghabra insisted that this board would be rectified in the next round of appointments.

Rachel Blaney rose for the NDP, and she raised the fact that the seniors reimbursed for GIS clawbacks were subjected to a time limit, for which Kamal Khera rose to recite her praise for the government’s actions on seniors. Don Davies raised the fact that the government was backing down on some PMPRB regulatory changes for drug pricing, and Adam van Koeverden read a statement about balancing access for new medicines and lowering drug prices.

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Roundup: Trudeau confirms that there are to be strings attached

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It’s around day forty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it appeared to be a fairly quiet day. Well, as quiet as can be in a country where two-thirds of its children have been forced to flee their homes in the past six weeks, which creates plenty of problems for their safety and security as they may be exploited in the confusion. Meanwhile, Russia has tapped a new general to lead its forces in Ukraine, and he’s one with a reputation of particular brutality in leading the Russian troops that acted in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, leaving a trail of civilian deaths and human rights violations in his wake. As well, Austria’s chancellor met with Putin, the first European leader to do so since the invasion, and tried to convince him to end the invasion, but he walked away from the meeting without any optimism that the war will end anytime soon.

Closer to home, prime minister Justin Trudeau has confirmed that he’s looking to have strings attached to future health care funds from the federal government, because he’s well aware of the history of provinces that have taken more federal dollars and used them on other things, including tax cuts, and the healthcare system has been left to suffer. Which is the way it should be—if the federal government is giving you money for healthcare, it should be used for just that, and no, that doesn’t mean they’re micro-managing, it means they want accountability for the money they send.

We also got confirmation that provinces are dishonestly ignoring the fact that the agreement in the 1970s to transfer tax points to the provinces in lieu of health transfers. They continue to insist that the federal government only funds 22 percent of their health care systems, but with the tax points, it’s over 33 percent, which is not insignificant considering that provinces are demanding the federal government fund the systems to at least 35 percent—a 35 percent that they don’t count the tax points under. They need to count those tax points, and government and media need to make that clear, rather than media just repeating the premiers’ talking points and both-sidesing it.

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Roundup: Faux concern over a decades-old system

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We’re now on or about day forty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces are digging in and preparing for a renewed Russian offensive on the eastern and south-eastern portions of the country. UK prime minister Boris Johnson visited with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv over the weekend, to show his support and solidarity in person. Elsewhere over the weekend, Ukraine was trying to ensure humanitarian corridors out of the Donbas region for Ukrainians to evacuate in advance of the coming Russian onslaught in the region.

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Closer to home, we are being subjected to a bunch of nonsense around Canadian content regulations in the context of Bill C-11, which updates the Broadcasting Act to now include streaming platforms like Netflix or Disney+. The particular nonsense? The notion that the CRTC will define what qualifies as Canadian. Erm, except they have been doing this already. They’ve had a well-defined point system for what counts as CanCon since 1984. Nineteen gods-damned eighty-four. This is not new. Extending broadcast regulations to streaming platforms changes absolutely nothing about what counts as Canadian content, because the rules are platform neutral. For decades, production companies needed a 6/10 on the CanCon scale to qualify for tax credits. None of this is new.

The problem, however, is that in the debates over C-11 (and its predecessor in the previous parliament, Bill C-10) you had Conservative MPs trying to make this an issue (and Rachael Thomas, who was then Rachael Harder, was particularly vocal about this). She kept trying to propagate this insane notion that somehow these rules should be in the legislation, which is bonkers because that shouldn’t be the job of Parliament, nor is legislation responsive in the way that regulation is. We have arm’s-length regulators like the CRTC for a reason, which is to de-politicise these kinds of decisions. Sure, everyone comes up with supposedly scandalous examples of why certain things which may sound Canadian on the surface isn’t considered Canadian under the CanCon rules (such as The Handmaid’s Tale series), and it’s only until you look at the points system and think through the rules that you realise that these examples really aren’t that scandalous. The whole point is to ensure that our industry isn’t just a branch plant for American productions who can do it cheaper and get tax credits up here. It’s to ensure that there are incentives for things that are actually Canadian-led and produced, and under Canadian creative control, to get made. You can argue that the rules need to be updated, but let’s not pretend that there is anything new here (and really, The Canadian Press deserves a rap on the knuckles for this kind of framing of the issue).

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Roundup: The competing pre-budget narratives

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We are now on or about day forty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the talk of the day was president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the UN Security Council, where he recounted (with video) the extent of Russia’s atrocities in towns like Bucha, and demanded war crimes tribunals, and more importantly, massive reform of the Security Council in order to strip Russia of its veto powers. That, of course, is far easier said than done, particularly because the major powers won’t play if they don’t get additional powers, and Russia is a nuclear power. So we’ll see what happens next (which may be nothing).

Closer to home, we are now one day away from the budget, so expect a lot of narratives about the expectations, whether the government should spend more or cut back, though I find there to be some problems with some of the assumptions therein. For example, when it comes to spending, I’m not sure why things like more money for housing or the investment in dental care would be classified the same as subsidies to industries or so on. Is an expansion of the social safety net the same as expansionary fiscal policy that would ordinarily be used to create jobs or growth (which is less relevant right now given that we are sitting around full employment)? I’m not sure they’re the same, but they seem to be treated as much in some of the pieces circulating in the Discourse right now.

At the same time, we should also be realistic about what the budget can and cannot do, such as combatting inflation. In spite of facile narratives that government spending is driving inflation, that’s not showing up anywhere in the data—what is driving it has a lot more to do with the world price of oil (which is directly impacted by the sanction on Russia as a result of their invasion of Ukraine), and the fact that there were droughts in food-producing regions including Canada, thus limiting food supplies and driving up costs, and that the invasion is going to make it worse as Ukraine was considered the breadbasket of Europe (and elsewhere), and if they can get crops planted this year, there are problems with the Russians having targeted ports. Add to that the rising cost of housing (which is largely a problem of supply driving by craven municipal governments who can’t authorize zoning changes or increase density because they’re afraid of NIMBYs and/or are in the pockets of developers), and you wind up with a whole lot of things that the federal budget can’t really do much about. Not that there won’t be an effort to put all of the weight on the federal government regardless, because that’s how we roll, apparently.

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Roundup: A strange definition of dictatorship

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We’re now on or about day thirty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces appeared to be pulling back from Kyiv, allegedly to give more space to peace talks, not that anyone believes Russia (nor should they). It could mark a more concentrated effort by Russian forces to “liberate Donbas,” which some say could be a face-saving measure for Putin. As part of the peace talks, Ukraine floated the idea of making Canada a security guarantor to the proposal of neutrality, and not hosting any military troops or bases from other alliances such as NATO, so that’s something. In the meantime, here is a look at why Russia is taking such heavy casualties (and why that is unlikely to deter them).

Closer to home, we have a major problem with disinformation that is being pushed by MPs, particularly Conservative ones. This week, MPs Brad Redekopp and Rachael Thomas declared that Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and that they were being absolutely serious about it. This, like Andrew Scheer declaring that Trudeau is the world’s greatest threat to liberty, is absolutely gobsmacking, but part of an increasing pattern of rhetoric that is dangerous to our democracy because it is so corrosive to both accepting election results, and faith in government writ-large, regardless of party.

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This metastasises into the full-blown endorsement of conspiracy theories, and it’s a problem that is currently plaguing MPs, as that (fairly shite) Senate bill on developing a framework for a guaranteed basic liveable income has senators’ mailboxes and social media being flooded with both conspiracy theories and disinformation about this bill, but also panicked seniors who are being told that they will be denied their pensions and benefits if they are insufficiently vaccinated or the likes. It’s a real problem, and too many MPs (and a handful of senators) have been feeding into this disinformation environment for the sake of scoring a few points, and they really need to stop. No good comes of this, and they’re causing longer-term damage that will be incredibly hard to overcome.

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QP: Unhappy with the new emissions plan

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With Justin Trudeau off in Vancouver to give a speech on the government’s new emissions plan for 2030, we did have his deputy present, which was something. Most of the other leaders weren’t present either, and some have become rare sights of late. Luc Berthold led off in French and complained that the emissions reductions plan would cripple the oil sector and that this meant we couldn’t help our friends in Europe get off Russian oil and gas. Terry Duguid stood up to recite some bromides about the plan as announced. Berthold then launched into a rant about how the government doesn’t answer simple questions, and demanded to know if inflation was costing Canadians more. Chrystia Freeland responded that they were sensitive to costs which is why they indexed benefits and introduced $10/day child care. Berthold then railed about the increasing price on carbon, demanding it be suspended, to which Freeland recited the good news about economic growth. Kyle Seeback took over in English, and he misleadingly cited the PBO report on carbon pricing in order to complain that the emissions reduction plan wasn’t going to work. Duguid got back up to recite that the PBO indeed stated that most families would be better off with rebates, and he cited the rebate levels in several provinces. Seeback then railed that the government spent $60 billion on fighting emissions and they still went up—again, somewhat misleadingly because the curve of growth has flattened—and Duguid responded that if the Conservatives were still in charge the emissions would be even higher.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he demanded that the government start chartering planes to get more Ukrainian refugees over here. Sean Fraser insisted people were arriving all the time and they were rolling out programmes to support them. Therrien said that Air Transat was just waiting for the government to charter flights and repeated his demand, and Fraser said that they are discussing with airlines.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP in person, and he called the emissions reduction plan “disappointing,” saying it gives a free pass to the fossil fuel sector. Duguid got back up to recite a number of actions they have taken around the energy sector. Singh repeated the question in French, and Duguid recited some more climate action plans.

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Roundup: A middle power and a convenor

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We are on day twenty-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the shelling and air strikes against civilian targets continue—an apartment building in Kyiv, a theatre where children were sheltering in Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the US Congress yesterday, invoking Pearl Harbour and 9/11 as part of his demand to close the sky” (which isn’t going to happen), and added that if America can’t do that, then to at least give Ukraine the planes so they can do it themselves. That was obviously a demand he couldn’t make of Canada (no, seriously—third-hand CF-18s would not be of much use to them), so we’ll see if that gets him any further aid from the US—hours after his address, Joe Biden signed an order authorising another $800 million worth of lethal aid, including anti-aircraft systems, so that presentation may have done its job.

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Meanwhile, closer to home, Mélanie Joly’s comments that Canada isn’t a military power, but a middle power whose strength is convening to make sure diplomacy happens and convincing other countries to do more is rubbing a bunch of former military leaders the wrong way. We do contribute militarily, oftentimes more so than other allies who meet the stated NATO spending targets (which is one more reason why those targets are not a great measurement of anything), though our ability to do more is being constrained. That’s one reason why I’m getting mighty tired of the number of articles and op-eds over the last few days calling for more spending, while none of them address the current capacity constraints, particularly around recruiting.

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Roundup: Asking the parochial questions

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On day fifteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they bombed a children’s hospital in Mariupol, at a time that it was supposed to be under a ceasefire. And it’s not surprising that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still insisting on “closing the skies,” but that wouldn’t stop the shelling from artillery and missile batteries on the ground, and yes, it would draw the rest of NATO into a shooting war with a nuclear power. So while he’s justified in asking for the assistance, it would not actually improve the situation and would most likely wind up making things a whole lot worse. To make matters worse, a power outage at Chernobyl means that it could start leaking radiation unless power lines are repaired, which requires a cease-fire in the area, so that’s alarming. And all of the chaos is making it hard for aid efforts, including those by Canadian non-profits to reach those in the country who need it.

Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly and Anita Anand were in Berlin yesterday for more meetings on the situation in Ukraine, and Trudeau vowed that Putin would face justice for his war crimes under the International Criminal Court. He also announced another $50 million worth of military aid being sent to Ukraine, and that he had invited Zelenskyy to address Canada’s Parliament, much as he did the UK’s earlier this week. On a related note, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addressed the Ottawa Defence Conference yesterday and said that while Canada is playing a “leading role” in NATO’s response to the invasion, he is still calling for more military spending (which may not do any good given that our military doesn’t currently have the capacity or personnel to spend its current allotment).

And then, during a media availability with Freeland and Joly, a CBC reporter demanded to know why they were in Europe for “photo ops” rather than doing important work back home. And I can’t even—especially when he went on about the “taxpayer’s dime” when he tweeted about the exchange, trying to make himself sound put out by being smacked down about it. Aside from the “people are saying” framing, which is both ridiculous and telling, I’m not sure what pressing matters they should be attending to back home. The Commons is on March break this week and next. It’s just such parochial bullshit and the kind of cheap outrage/hairshirt parsimony that the CBC loves to engage in, and we wind up with poorer journalism as a result.

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QP: Some talking points about supporting Ukraine

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For Wednesday, caucus day, and this prime minister’s proto-PMQ day, there was a very curious absence in the Chamber, as Candice Bergen was absent even though every other leader was present—even Amita Kuttner was in the gallery watching. Luc Berthold led off, script in front of him, and in French, demanded the expulsion of the Russian ambassador. Justin Trudeau stated that they have been clear in their condemnation, and said they would continue to aid Ukrainians in every way possible—but did not answer the question. Berthold insisted there was no reason for Putin’s representative to stay here and spread misinformation, and Trudeau repeated his “everything we can do” talking points rather than do something like speak about the value of diplomacy. Berthold the pivoted to provinces lifting public health orders and demanded that all federal vaccine mandates be lifted, and Trudeau read some well-worn talking points about following science, and praised Canadians for getting vaccinated. Michael Chong took over in English, and he again demanded that the a Russian ambassador be expelled, and he went on about doing everything they can do for Ukraine. Chong demanded the government order the CRTC to keep RT from Canadian airwaves, and Trudeau read a script about information warfare and that they are asking the CRTC to conduct a review, but it was important to note that this was in the hands of independent regulators and not politicians.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the government musing about sending Western Canadian oil to Europe, and Trudeau, extemporaneously, said the future depends on decarbonising but at the moment Europe needs help so they would see what they can do. Blanchet wanted more clarity about what this means, and Trudeau rebutted that his was the government that has done the most to combat climate change, but they would be there to help friends in Europe.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, in person today, and demanded visa-free travel for Ukrainians, citing Lloyd Axworthy, and Trudeau insisted they were not refusing but were working to increase the ease by which they can help Ukrainians coming to Canada, and they were looking at the best way to go about this. Singh repeated the demand in French, and a Trudeau repeated his answer.

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