Tag Archives: CSIS

Roundup: Pointing to the civilian culture too

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The reckoning over the culture in the Canadian Forces that permits sexual misconduct continues to get an airing, and over the weekend, we saw another dimension to this reckoning be raised, which is that the culture of the civilian branch – the Department of National Defence – has many of these same cultural problems in part because a good portion of its staff are former military and came up in the same toxic culture in the Forces. One example of ways in which the Forces were trying to show women that they weren’t welcome was forcing them into co-ed showers in 1997, and how the people involved in those decisions are still in positions of authority today.

Also over the weekend, there was an interview with retired Lt-Gen. Christine Whitecross, who discussed her experiences with misconduct that she did not always pursue complaints about, but also her sense of optimism that more people reporting sexual misconduct in the ranks. Whitecross also let it be known that she did apply for the chief of defence staff position, but obviously did not get it (to the surprise of many). As well, the accused in one of the most high-profile cases of sexual assault in the military – the story of which wound up in Maclean’s and touched off the Deschamps report and Operation Honour – is going to plead guilty to the charges after all.

Amidst all of this, the current military ombudsman is now echoing previous calls to make his office fully independent and reporting to Parliament, rather than to the department and the minister, and I just can’t. The very last thing we need is one more unaccountable Independent Officer of Parliament, and yet they are proliferating like mad, and this is yet one more demand. Surely we can figure out some sort of mechanism to help them retain greater independence within the current structure, but we need to stop the proliferation of Officers of Parliament, before they completely overrun our system, reducing our MPs to battle droids who recite canned speeches and vote according to their whip’s instructions. And it’s not like we’re not seeing other Officers of Parliament going well beyond their job descriptions and turning themselves into media darlings, right? Oh, wait…

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Roundup: Procedural shenanigans in a pandemic

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The state of the government’s legislative agenda remains mired in procedural shenanigans, and the Conservatives are largely to blame. Of course, this is being framed as giving the Liberals ammunition for calling an election to try and win a majority so that they can regain control over their agenda, despite the fact that nobody aside from a few bored pundits actually wants to go to an election in the middle of a global pandemic, especially because we won’t be getting enough people vaccinated until at least summer before this could even be a remotely plausible scenario.

The government has been trying to pass two bills in short order – the latest pandemic support bill, and the assisted dying bill, for which they needed to get yet another extension to the court-imposed deadline because the Conservatives keep denying consent to extend debate on it. The procedural tactics tend to be forcing concurrence debates on committee reports, and because the opposition has enough votes to force them through, the actual orders of the day – mostly government bills – don’t wind up being debated after all. Of course, what has been especially precious is the way that the NDP have been using Question Period to complain that the government isn’t bringing bills up for debate (including the conversion therapy ban bill and the UNDRIP bill), even though they are actively participating in these concurrence debates, and voting with the Conservatives to have the debates. (The NDP also wasted an hour of the Commons’ time the other day when Don Davies complained he couldn’t re-ask his question from QP after his video cut out, never mind that the audio was fine, he was heard, and the question got a response. But he wanted the video so that it could be clipped for his social media, which is what QP had degenerated to).

I find myself particularly bemused by the Conservative House Leader – backed up by the Bloc’s – to claim that the government hasn’t set “clear priorities” and is failing to manage the legislative agenda. This is pretty ridiculous, because they know full well why those two bills are being prioritised, and in the case of the assisted dying bill, the Liberals have several times offered to move a motion that would allow the Commons to sit until midnight and debate the bill uninterrupted, but the Conservatives keep refusing consent for such a motion. And for as much as both the Conservatives and NDP keep saying that it’s the Liberals that want an election and that they don’t want to give it to them, it’s curious how they keep trying to engineer the opportunities for such a call. The fact that this level of gamesmanship is going on while we’re still in the midst of a pandemic just breeds cynicism, but seems tactically stupid if the government can demonstrate that their ability to get help to people (as with the pandemic support bill) keeps getting stymied by these kinds of shenanigans. But most of our parties these days are all tactics and no strategy, so that’s not a surprise in the end.

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Roundup: CSIS has a warning and a request

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The head of CSIS gave a rare speech yesterday, in which he did two things – called for more modernisations to the CSIS Act in order to let the organisation collect more digital information, and to warn about state actors who are targeting the country’s economic secrets, often though partnerships that they then take advantage of (pointing the finger on this one specifically at China).

Meanwhile, here’s former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis’ assessment of what she heard in the speech, which has a few interesting insights.

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Roundup: The COVAX conundrum

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It was another day of less than optimal vaccine news yesterday – first a warning that there was going to be more fluctuation in future shipments including what appears to be another reduction in the next Moderna shipment (of which we’re still not sure the allocation yet), followed by news that we are in line for a shipment from the COVAX facility, which comes with its own particular special challenges.

Why? Because part of COVAX is to provide vaccines to the developing world, and it appears that Canada is accepting vaccines that would be going to them. Except that’s not the deal we signed – while we are funding vaccines for the developing world through COVAX (and will be sending our excess doses once our own population is vaccinated), part of the procurement diversification strategy was the stream under COVAX that we get some doses while also funding for the developing world. But of course, that wasn’t clearly explained – and the minister did have to do the media rounds to do that later in the day, by which it was too late, and you had everyone tut-tutting that we’re taking doses from those who need it more than we do. Which, incidentally, is happening at the same time that the government is being yelled at for not procuring more doses faster (as though yelling will make Pfizer’s retooling go faster or Moderna’s supply chain issues resolve themselves), and lo, we have doses that we paid for, but we’re going to look like jerks if we take them. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Good thing this government can communicate effectively. Oh, wait…

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Roundup: A freak-out over vaccine math

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With things in a particularly…fragile state around the vaccine rollout, leaking numbers without context should be seen as a Very Bad Thing, and yet that’s what happened yesterday morning, when it appeared to look like Pfizer was cutting the number of vials they were sending us before the end of our Q1 agreement, and there was a freak out. Premiers started demanding federal action (as though Justin Trudeau can just strong-arm Pfizer into producing more doses somehow), or badmouthing Pfizer itself (because that’ll help). And it turns out that it was all for naught.

It turns out that with the possibility that the vials of vaccine will be re-labelled to say that they contain six doses instead of five (which apparently is not uniform, and requires either a skilled operator or different syringes which are in short supply right now), Pfizer decided to rejig the math so that there are the same numbers of doses, but just in fewer vials. Health Canada has not agreed to this re-labelling, and has no timeline on when such a decision could be made, but Pfizer apparently jumped the gun in sending new numbers that got misinterpreted (and misrepresented once the context was actually known), and this government can’t communicate its way out of a wet paper bag at the best of times, so its inability to properly communicate these new figures only made things worse (especially as they didn’t smack it down during Question Period). And if Health Canada doesn’t relabel the vials? Pfizer still sends us the contracted-for number of doses. So the freak-out was for nothing – except maybe yet another kick in the ass for this government to get in the game when it comes to getting ahead of these things.

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Meanwhile, we also found out that Ontario had mis-reported its vaccination figures, and they’ve only vaccinated half as many as they said they did, which really puts the province’s hue and cry into the fact that it was running out of doses into a new light – and also the fact that they have been so desperate to blame the federal government for everything. It’s the “look over there” strategy, that certain members of the media seem to keep falling for, every single time. The absolute incompetence of the Ford government never fails to astound.

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Roundup: Ford playing up the pandemic theatre

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The state of pandemic theatre in Ontario continues to ramp up as Doug Ford’s current campaign about railing about a) vaccine doses, and b) international travellers reaches a fever pitch. Ford is currently making a big dog and pony show about invoking a section of the province’s Health Protection and Promotion Act to mandate testing for air travellers when they arrive because the federal government has not yet done so (they have made the rule that people must get tested before they get on the plane), but what is telling is that Ontario still has done precious little about increasing lab capacity, and we are still lagging far behind on the kind of genomic testing that would help us identify which strains of the virus are being contracted. Additionally, the number of cases traced to international travel has been around one percent, while other case growth remains exponential, which is more proof that this is about theatre, not deal with the real problems.

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In the meantime, Ford government and their allies in certain media outlets have begun waging a campaign against doctors who are critical about the government’s lack of response, particularly about the carnage in long-term care facilities. One doctor has had his contract terminated from his position because of his criticism, and the Toronto Suntargeted another doctor that Ford later expressed “concerns” about (completely disingenuously) – though it’s worth noting that Chrystia Freeland has come to this doctor’s defence. It has been noted that this is not the first time that Ford and his people have used these particular tactics against their critics, but the fact that they are doing this to the very doctors and health experts who are trying to chart a course out of this pandemic is galling and rather telling about how this government is more concerned about their egos than they are in doing the right thing to protect the lives of people in this province.

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Roundup: More year-enders, more bland assurances

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The year-ender interviews with the prime minster continue to roll out, so we’ll see how much in there is actually newsworthy. Still from The Canadian Press’ year-ender, Trudeau said that the government is trying to find “balance” with its ability to be transparent while still able to have no-holds-barred closed-door discussions like they do in Cabinet, all in response to questions about why the government is so slow at its promised reforms to the Access to Information system.

From the CBC, Trudeau said that the 500,000 Canadians who got “educational” letters from the CRA about their CERB payments won’t need to repay by the end of the year, as some had feared – never mind that the government created this problem when they weren’t clear about what the eligibility criteria were.

To CTV, Trudeau said that the target date of having Canadians vaccinated by September is something of a conservative estimate – it could happen faster, but it could also happen more slowly, depending on supply chain issues like those that have hit Pfizer already. He also said that he’s less concerned about the comparisons with the US as having plans to inoculate people at a faster per-capita rate, noting that they have much bigger challenges in their healthcare system, hinting that their estimates may be overly optimistic.

Monetary policy

Andrew Scheer is back at shitposting, this time spreading lies about the Bank of Canada and their use of quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Quantitative easing is not actually just “printing money,” and it’s not going to cause runaway inflation. In fact, we’re running so far below our inflationary targets that the Bank should be running expansionary monetary policy – and yes, the Bank has a helpful primer on quantitative easing for people like Scheer and Pierre Poilievre if they cared to learn. But they don’t, and are jeopardizing the independence of the central bank by keeping up this particular policy of lies and shitposting to try and score points.

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Roundup: Bold new climate action

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As expected, Justin Trudeau and Jonathan Wilkinson (along with Steven Guilbeault for good measure) announced the next round of climate action to get us to the Paris targets, and it includes a rapidly increasing carbon price, which immediately had conservative premiers like Doug Ford and Jason Kenney go into full meltdown about how this was going to crush the economy and make life unaffordable for people – never mind that it’s designed to be revenue neutral. We even had political show hosts try to frame this issue as “can we afford climate action when the economy is terrible?” which is both irresponsible in that it presents a false binary and a wrong expectation that climate action is costly as opposed to able to provide cost savings. As part of this, a more enhanced rebate for those provinces subject to the federal price was announced so that people will be getting larger quarterly front-loaded rebates so that they can offset their increased costs and make smarter choices and keep more of their money.

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Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield declares the plan to be bold, but worries that there is no alternative to a carbon price if the Supreme Court of Canada strikes down the current one (but that ignores that they could impose it by a different legislative mechanism). Paul Wells is also surprised by the audacity of the plan, given that this government likes to try and take the easy route rather than make the politically hard sell of carbon pricing.

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Roundup: Blustering through a climbdown

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It was a day full of bravado, as Erin O’Toole began the day with a bit of a climbdown, saying they would change the name of their proposed special committee from the blatantly inflammatory “anti-corruption committee” to the “special committee on allegations of misuse of public funds by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic,” which is exactly the same thing (and whose first four letters – which committees abbreviate to – would be SCAM, which is yet another one of their childish tactics). Government House leader Pablo Rodriguez was not mollified, quipping “If you write a book about Frankenstein and call it ‘Cinderella,’ it’s still a book about Frankenstein.” O’Toole then tried to say they would amend their motion to insist that a vote for it was not a vote for an election, to which the government said no dice – you’re saying you don’t have confidence in us, so you get to put your money where your mouth is as this is going to be a confidence vote. And then O’Toole tried to say that he doesn’t have confidence in the government, but doesn’t want an election, and sorry, that’s not how this works. You’re accusing them of corruption and misusing public funds – which is a loss of confidence in a system like ours – and then saying you don’t want an election? Yeah, no. You have confidence and the government governs, or you don’t, in which case the government falls and you go to an election.

There is going to be a monumental amount of chest-thumping and testosterone being hosed across the carpet between the aisles in the Commons today as this comes to a head, but frankly, the government is calling O’Toole out for his bluster and tough talk. The Bloc are also blustering about being in favour of an election, leaving the NDP holding the bag. Jagmeet Singh insisted that this was a “farce” and “stupid” to trigger an election in a pandemic over creating a committee – omitting that the title of the committee implied corruption, which should be a de facto loss of confidence, and the fact that said committee’s terms of reference would give it priority over all other government business, including having ministers, the prime minister, and civil servants being expected to drop everything and appear or produce documents at the committee’s beck-and-call, in the middle of a pandemic where everyone is already stretched. (There was also Conservative sniping that Singh didn’t seem to have a problem with John Horgan calling an early election in the middle of a pandemic). I know the NDP want to play the grown-ups in the room (somewhat ironic after Charlie Angus’ histrionics and theatrics on the WE Imbroglio file), but at least represent the situation for what it is.

Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column explains just how the motion on creating that special committee can be considered a confidence matter. Paul Wells offers some intense snark over the current confidence showdown, and how Trudeau may not be gambling if he’s likely to win another election. Heather Scoffield sees utility in the government’s proposed pandemic spending oversight committee – assuming that it is set up as advertised.

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Roundup: Budget cuts and accountability for advice

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There was an interesting piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday where a couple of former top doctors enumerated some of the problems at the Public Health Agency of Canada that have been festering for years in spite of repeated warnings, which started creeping in with the budget cuts that started in 2011, and which were compounded with the loss of scientific capacity to the point where the president who just resigned had no scientific background at all. Which isn’t to say that you necessarily need someone with a science background in an administrative position like that (as opposed to the Chief Public Health Officer, which is a different kettle of fish entirely), but it points to some of the ways in which the civil service in this country has been losing capacity for a while. Suffice to say, it would appear to point to the fact that the current government wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on at PHAC, though to be fair, there has been a fair bit on their plates, as they were dealing with medically assisted dying, legalised cannabis, and completely restructuring First Nations and Inuit healthcare delivery, which were all health-related files. The fact that emergency stockpiles weren’t being properly managed has come up repeatedly, but this does start with the cuts made under the Harper government.

Meanwhile in Queen’s Park (where premier Doug Ford made cuts to public health before the pandemic began), there is a piece in the Star that starts to ascertain just who is as the premier’s “health command table,” and ascertains that it’s Ford pulling all the strings and making all of the decisions. Which is as it should be – any “command table” should be merely advisory, because in our system of government, Cabinet makes the decisions, and Cabinet gets to wear them. I worry that trying to expose who is at this table will try to blame them for the advice they’re giving to Ford, rather than Ford making decisions on that advice – particularly when we’ve seen him ignore advice on things like school re-openings. There is a debate to be had about the transparency around the advice being given, so that we can ascertain whether or not Ford is actually following it, which I get, but I also wonder if there isn’t also a need for that table to be a place of frank discussion without it all coming out in the press – like why we have Cabinet confidentiality. And it’s a fair debate to be had, but again, let me reiterate that this is 100 percent on Ford, no matter what advice he may or may not be getting. That’s how Responsible Government works, and we need to quit finding ways to give Ford a pass, or an out on his shite decision-making.

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