Tag Archives: Danielle Smith

Roundup: Being precious about participating in the gong show

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Fewer things make me roll my eyes harder the NDP being precious about decorum or the dysfunction within the House of Commons, and it is no exception when Charlie Angus despairs about the gong show happening day-in and day-out. As much as they like to pretend that they are the “adults in the room”—and Peter Julian likes to go on television to say that whenever he’s invited on—but adults in the room don’t heckle constantly (and both Julian and Angus are amongst the very worst—remember the pledge that they were never going to heckle in 2011?), nor do they engage in constant petty insults in order to make themselves look tougher than they are, but that’s what the NDP does day-in and day-out.

The thrust of the piece linked above, however, remains the current filibustered state of the Commons (for which the writer does point out the problems with the motion without going as far as actually calling what it is—banana republic tactics that will have severe consequences in the future if a precedent is allowed to develop), and that if anything is going to get things back on track, it’s going to have to be the NDP who comes to some kind of agreement with the government in order to break the logjam so that important legislation can start moving again. What the piece doesn’t go into is how this has been an ongoing problem in the past two parliaments, since the Liberals lost their majority in 2019. That was when the Conservatives began a campaign of procedural warfare that the Bloc and NDP gleefully participated in because they would do anything to embarrass the government—right up until the end of the sitting, every December and June, and suddenly realize they had bills they wanted to pass, so they started to cooperate. The Supply-and-Confidence agreement mellowed this out a little, but only slightly, as committees continued to get worse, and the NDP were hit-and-miss on whether they wanted to make things work or not.

I am somewhat ruefully reminded of the litany of books and articles that used to constantly come out to praise minority parliaments, and how great they were because they would force parties to work together to get things done for Canadians. That hasn’t been the case for a long time now, and given that the NDP proved themselves to be bad faith actors in how they ended the supply-and-confidence agreement, it’s going to be a long time before they are awarded any trust again, at least not until they have a new leader who can earn it back. But if they do want to make the remainder of this parliament work, they have a lot to answer for, and it would be great if more people could call them on their bullshit.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that Russians are using North Korean troops in significant numbers as they conduct assaults in the occupied regions of Kursk. Ukrainian drones conducted an overnight attack Friday and hit a crucial Russian oil facility in the Oryol region, and Ukrainian special forces destroyed a Russian train carrying 40 cars of fuel to Russian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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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: Fiscal update when?

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This year’s Fall Economic Statement is very late—it’s extremely unusual for it to happen in December—but these are not normal times, and the ongoing privilege filibuster hasn’t helped matters any. The government’s attempts to get shame either the Bloc or the NDP into finally voting with the government to pull the plug on it have all been in vain, because they all want to do their part to embarrass the government as much as possible. This being said, I’m not sure what the holdup is with the Public Accounts either, though they have insisted that they’re with the Auditor General and will be released soon. In any case, the government has refused to explain exactly why these releases are so late, because we’re back to the tiresome “If you’re explaining, you’re losing” schtick, so as usual, this government never explains.

Pierre Poilievre decided that he would pretend to be magnanimous and “offer” the government two hours from the Conservatives’ allotted day on Monday to present the update, but Chrystia Freeland rejected it out of hand, calling the offer absurd, and saying “This proposal from the Conservatives is like an arsonist who set the fire in the first place, saying, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll come with a fire truck for a couple of hours, but tomorrow I’ll be back again with matches’.” Procedurally, I don’t see how the Conservatives could offer up time to government business on an allotted day, but also procedurally, Freeland could use the daily Statements by Ministers slot during routine proceedings to deliver the update (though that may be somewhat more awkward for the associated media lockup because those statements tend to be earlier than budget or fiscal update speeches are traditionally delivered, in part because of any data from those lock-ups moving markets (which is why they are traditionally delivered after 4 PM). They could technically also deliver it outside of the Chamber (Paul Martin once read it at committee, and the Conservatives liked to deliver it off Parliament Hill entirely), but we don’t want to encourage a return to the practice of announcing things outside of Parliament (and the UK Speaker uses very strong language about this sort of thing).

If I had to guess, I would suspect that it’ll be delivered next Wednesday or Thursday, once the Supply votes are out of the way, which makes it extremely convenient for Freeland and every other minister to spread out across the country to deliver the “good news” about the programmes in the budget, whereas Poilievre would want to use the timing of the update to claim that he “forced” the government to “come clean about the numbers,” or some such bullshit like that. None of this is great, but we’re dealing with an exhausted government and a dysfunctional parliament, so nothing is as it should be right now.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is giving soldiers who deserted or went AWOL a second chance, particularly given the shortages they’re facing on the Eastern front, and lo, some six thousand soldiers have rejoined. News leaking out of the Trump camp indicate that his plan to end the war involve major land concessions, NATO membership being off the table, and cutting military aid, unless Putin refuses, in which case they would provide more. (Land concessions are not really his goal, guys).

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Roundup: GST “holiday” bill passes

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The federal government got their wish, with the cooperation of the NDP, to get their GST “holiday” bill through the House of Commons thanks to a programming motion that paused the ongoing privilege filibuster for the sitting day. In spite of the Bloc and Conservatives slow-walking it with dilatory amendments, it did pass late at night, with the terms of the motion being that once it passed second reading vote, it would automatically be deemed to have been referred to committee of the whole and passed, and then passed at third reading. (The Senate won’t see it until Tuesday at the earliest). It’s the first opportunity the Commons has had to do real work in more than six weeks, for what it’s worth. The Liberals and NDP, however, think they’ve found a big gotcha, that by forcing the Conservatives to vote against this legitimately terrible policy will be the key to reversing their fortunes in the polls, and their attempts remain cringe-worthy.

Pierre Poilievre took to the microphones to denounce it as “inflationary,” which is actually nonsense because we’re no longer in an overheated economy. Nevertheless, he relies on the simplistic notion that any government spending or deficits are inflationary (and claims that Chrystia Freeland herself this, which isn’t really what she said—not that the truth has ever mattered to Poilievre). Then again, his entire understanding of economics comes from crypto bros on YouTube, so probably best not to take him seriously. It’s still a terrible policy, however, so their opposition to it somewhat accidentally puts them on the right side of the issue, even if the reasons are entirely false and misleading (but broken clocks being right twice a day, and all of that).

As for the implementation of this terrible policy, it just looks even worse as the details emerge. What counts and what doesn’t for the rebate are all over the map, and it’s so chaotic that businesses are, quite rightly, frustrated at just how much work it’s going to be to implement for those two months. None of this should have happened, and the Liberals should have come up with a better measure than this (and rubbed the NDP’s faces in their own ill-conceived GST cut plan), but here we are, and it just keeps getting worse by the day. Well done, guys. Slow clap.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia fired another nearly 200 missiles and drones, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to leave more than a million people without power. Fragments from downed drones hit two buildings in Kyiv, injuring one person.

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Roundup: The virtual meeting with the premiers over Trump

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau had his virtual meeting with the premiers yesterday evening, and it has been a really interesting divergence in reactions. Jagmeet Singh is panicking and demanding performative forcefulness, while Pierre Poilievre is trying to leverage the moment for his own political ends, claiming that the solution is to do everything he says (conveniently!). Premiers have been all over the map, going from caution to outright boot-licking (looking at you, Danielle Smith), and this was one of the messages that emerged from that meeting. I also find it particularly crass the number of premiers who set up American flags for their backdrops before their media availabilities before and after the meeting. Seriously, guys?

Chrystia Freeland met with reporters and spoke about the need for a united front and not to be seen to be squabbling with one another, but premiers with their own agendas haven’t really seemed to warm to that necessity, because they’d rather score points against the current government with boneheaded accusations that they were “blindsided” by the threats, and that they don’t have a plan. (They’ve had a plan for over a year, guys. You might want to actually pay attention). And after the meeting, most of the premiers made their own individual points about how they want so many more resources poured into their province (such as more RCMP members that don’t exist because they can’t recruit and train them fast enough, or retain them in the toxic culture of the Force), but Smith remains particularly stubborn in trying to leverage this into foregoing the emissions cap and trying to say that Trudeau shouldn’t be leading the effort to defend Canada (again, to her benefit).

Meanwhile, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took a much more aggressive stance with threatened retaliation (which Trudeau has thus far not threatened, preferring a “methodical” approach). Sheinbaum had a call with Trump and basically pledged to keep doing what they were already doing, and Trump declared victory, so maybe Canada will do the same? Trudeau has talked about strengthening border measures, which has been an ongoing process, particularly since the amendment of the Safe Third Country Agreement, so maybe that too will be enough to get Trump to declare victory? I guess we shall see, but in the meantime, we’ll see how many premiers can keep their cool.

Ukraine Dispatch

Explosions were heard in Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne and Lutsk amid reports of a cruise missile attack last night. Three were wounded in a drone attack on Kyiv the night before. Russian forces claim to have taken the settlement of Nova Illinka in Donetsk region. Germany’s intelligence chief says that Russian sabotage in NATO countries could trigger Article 5.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1861772687229501452

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Roundup: Falling over each other to defend Trump’s position

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The first day of fallout from Trump’s tariff threats was full of more panicked flailing, and performative attempts at toughness. Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, and BC’s opposition leader John Rustad fell all over themselves to demand Trudeau address Trump’s border concerns (because boot-licking is how you really own the Libs, apparently). Pierre Poilievre took to the microphone to debut his latest slogan of demanding a Canada First™ plan, which basically involved all of the things that he’s already been calling for—most especially cutting taxes, killing the carbon levy and eliminating environmental regulations—plus more handwavey demands to increase defence spending (which he’s never committed to), and an even more authoritarian crackdown on drugs than he had previously been planning under the guise that Trump was somehow right about fentanyl coming over the border. He also full-on invented the claim that this announcement caught Trudeau’s government off-guard (never mind that they’ve been spending the past year re-engaging with American lawmakers at all levels for this very contingency). Best of all was that he insisted that the prime minister needs to put partisanship aside, and then launched into a screed of partisan invective, and said that putting partisanship aside means doing what he wants. If this was an attempt to show that he’s an adult in the face of trouble and that he has the ability to be a statesman, well, this was not it—just more of the same peevishness that he always displays.

Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau will be holding a virtual meeting with the premiers later today. One of the Bank of Canada’s deputy governors made the unsurprising observation that those tariffs would have economic repercussion on both sides of the border. The Logic has a look at the impact on Canadian business, plus a reality check on fentanyl seizures going into the US and irregular border crossings, and the legalities of Trump’s declaration.

https://twitter.com/tylermeredith/status/1861533934724563237

I probably shouldn’t be surprised at the number of people with a platform in this country who insisted that Trump must be right, and it must be our fault that he’s doing this, but seriously? Capitulate and boot-lick at the first opportunity? He doesn’t have a point. If anything, there is a bigger problem with American drugs, guns, and migrants coming into our borders, and we aren’t threatening massive tariffs until the Americans secure their border, because that would be insane, and yet, supposedly intelligent and successful people in this country suddenly think the reverse must be true. We live in the stupidest of times.

https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1861207325651943487

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Roundup: Boissonnault out (for now?)

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Just before Question Period yesterday, a very brief press release was issued that prime minister Justin Trudeau and Randy Boissonnault “agreed” that Boissonnault would step away from Cabinet in order for Boissonnault to clear the allegations against him. The wording was a little curious, but at this point it was probably inevitable given the sheer volume of stories coming out, never mind that most of them involved coincidences, or unproven allegations about his former business partner and not him.

I’m not going to remark much about any of the allegations, including those of “race-shifting” because Boissonnault has been issuing corrections to media outlets for more than five years that he didn’t say he was Indigenous even if the party said he was (which seems to never get mentioned in these stories), and the Ethics Commissioner keeps looking at each new allegation and saying there’s nothing to investigate. However, what I will note is that we are back to the situation where there is no longer anyone around the Cabinet table from Alberta or Saskatchewan. Now, Freeland did grow up in Alberta and can claim some credibility there, and Jonathan Wilkinson used to work for the Saskatchewan government, so he has some credibility there too, but Trudeau doesn’t have many options when it comes to replacing an Alberta seat because his only other alternative is George Chahal, who pretty much burned his future prospects when he got caught removing a rivals flyers during the campaign, and he has recently been vocal about looking to see Trudeau resign as leader.

I will also note that it remains particularly curious that for as much as media outlets and the National Post most especially have been pouring time and resources into these Boissonnault allegations, and every time they call up another Indigenous leader to denounce Boissonnault and call for his resignation, there is a particular silence around Danielle Smith and previously claims she has made about Indigenous ancestry, which have definitively been proven false. If the Conservatives are so offended by claims Boissonnault may or may not have made, or have been made about him, I have yet to see a single Conservative or pundit in this country call Smith a “fake” or a “fraud,” or a “phoney,” and demand that she resigns for the very same offences they are accusing Boissonnault of having made, when Smith’s has been plainly on the record for a couple of years now. As far as I can determine, the Post ran a single story about it, and not three weeks of constant, breathless reporting about it. It’s incredibly funny how that happens, no?

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has now fired UK-provided cruise missiles into Russian territory, striking targets in Kursk. Ukraine also says it successfully struck a command post in the Belgorod region, likely in a drone attack. Here is a look at the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.

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Roundup: Clapping back at the provinces and their JPs

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Justice Minister Arif Virani has been honing his responses to the cries for bail reform lately, both in pointing out that the provinces are not living up to their responsibilities—whether that’s with properly resourcing the court system so that trials are conducted in a timely manner, or in dealing with overcrowded remand centres where people are locked up awaiting trial, and because of the overcrowding and poor conditions, many accused are being given bail rather than subjected to those conditions. Even more recently, he has started pointing to how certain provinces, and Ontario especially, have been appointing Justices of the Peace, to decide on most bail hearings.

Ontario in particular had this whole song and dance about how great it was that they were appointing JPs who weren’t all lawyers, because it gave them greater breadth of experience or whatever, but if it’s true that they’re not actually applying the law of bail properly, that’s a problem. It could simply be that their training is inadequate, which again is a provincial responsibility, because if they are being expected to read, understand and apply case law that the Supreme Court of Canada has laid out when it comes to the law of bail, then again, that is a problem that the provinces need to solve.

And yes, there are going to continue to be voices chirping that the law is the problem, and that the Liberals created an “open door” through two pieces of legislation, but this has been an orchestrated disinformation campaign. The one law that the Conservatives refer to codified Supreme Court jurisprudence, and actually toughened bail in certain respects, especially around domestic violence; the other law they refer to had to do with doing away with solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries, which has nothing to do with bail in the slightest, but repeated lying that has not been pushed back against by both-sidesing media has led a whole lot of credulous people to believe the bullshit. The law of bail is not the problem—it’s everything else that is, and the provinces are once again being allowed to get away with not doing their jobs.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian security services have detained a special forces unit commander accused of being Russian mole. Russian air defences claim to have downed a series of Ukrainian drones in a number of different regions. There could be another mass displacement of Ukrainians if energy systems continue to be damaged over the winter. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a call with Putin, asking him to withdraw his troops and negotiate, which of course Putin won’t, and now Zelenskyy is angry with Scholz because these kinds of calls decrease Putin’s isolation.

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Roundup: Making more dishonest hay out of the New York condo

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The House of Commons’ Government Operations Committee heard from Mélanie Joly yesterday about the purchase of the new residence for the Consul General in New York, where Joly spoke about the importance to have a presence in New York, and that all of the rules were followed. (Both are true). The Conservatives, however, think they found some kind of smoking gun when Politico obtained documents through Access to Information that they claim “proves” that Tom Clark, said Consul General, had a role in the decision when he previously testified that he hadn’t. Except the documents don’t really say what they claim. There, the documents show that Clark pointed out that the residence is not wheelchair accessible, and that the relationship with the condo board has been deteriorating because of rules around when and what kinds of events can be hosted, which is one of the main reasons this residence exists.

They are trying to get Clark back to committee to grill him again, but that doesn’t change the fact that even if he pointed out that the current residence isn’t suited, he didn’t have any hand in the decision making that led to the new property. There is no contradiction to his testimony, but they have been content to lie about it all day, in press releases and in the House of Commons, because they can. In the political right, brazen lying has become a power play because they know they can get away with it because they won’t be called on it (the most media will do is both-sides them), and in creating these alternate universes from those lies, it becomes an in-group identification for their followers. We are in a very dangerous place with our democracy, and nobody wants to call this out.

Speaking of committees, far-right commentator Lauren Chen of Tenet Media, which is alleged to have taken Russian money, was summoned to appear at the public safety committee, where she attended, but refused to answer questions. This led to a unanimous motion to refer the matter to the Speaker, who will no doubt rule that this is yet another prima facie case of privilege being breached, but the Conservatives will have to end their current filibuster before they can move onto this particular issue.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s military shot down 48 drones and two missiles overnight Monday, while a missile attack on Zaporizhzhia killed six and injured at least twenty more on Tuesday. Ukrainian troops say that they have engaged with North Korean units in their occupied portions of the Kursk region of Russia, for the first time.

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Roundup: Emissions cap unveiled

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At long last, the federal government unveiled their long-awaited oil and gas emissions cap draft regulations, mandating that they reduce emissions by 35 percent by 2032, with the expectation that much of these reductions are going to come in the form of reducing methane emissions—much of which is already underway—and that production is still expected to rise by 16 percent over those eight years. (Five things to know about the proposal here). For an industry that insists that it’s going to be “Net Zero” by 2050, this would seem like an achievable milestone to get there along the way, but apparently not.

Danielle Smith had a meltdown and started threatening legal action, but can’t exactly articulate on what basis that would be. Certain newspaper columnists posited that she could somehow invoke the Notwithstanding Clause, which doesn’t apply to this sort of situation in any way, shape or form (and should be disqualifying for someone writing in a newspaper with a six-figure salary).

Industry insists this is going to kill them, but they’ve been promising reductions for decades and have taken plenty of government money to help them fulfil those promises that they are now insisting are impossible. So…at what point do we start calling them on their own bullshit? If their plan is to hope that there will be magical technology by 2050 that will painlessly reduce their emission for them, well, that’s their problem. They made these promises, and it’s time they show how they’re going to live up to them.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was another Russian air attack made against Kyiv overnight, but it’s too early to tell how much damage was caused. South Korea’s defence ministry now estimates more than 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia, but the Pentagon cannot confirm if they are currently fighting in the Kursk region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1853389611604615191

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