Tag Archives: Danielle Smith

Roundup: The premiers want their cut

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I have to say that it’s extremely precious to see the premiers getting bent out of shape because the federal government has started taking action on the housing crisis by dealing directly with municipalities and using the Housing Accelerator Fund to incentivise them to get rid of restrictive zoning practices that limit housing development. They’re claiming that the federal government is encroaching on their jurisdiction, but these very same premiers have abdicated this responsibility for decades now. They have the ability to eliminate these zoning restrictions with provincial jurisdiction, and they have time and again refused to. So, the federal government stepped in, and now they’re getting huffy about it. And to their credit, the federal ministers are pushing back on this, as well they should (especially because once again, they’re being blamed for the provinces’ failure to act on this crisis).

One of the excuses is that Quebec had a deal for money that flows to the province and not municipalities, because the province has legislation that forbids the federal government from cutting such deals. Okay, but what’s the motivation here? Are they sore because they’re not being invited to the photo ops when these deals are signed? Or are they sore because they can’t take a cut of those funds and use them for their own purposes, you know, like they have done with health transfers for decades now, or how they took funds meant for pandemic supports and simply applied them to their bottom lines so that they could run surpluses while letting their health care systems collapse around them? Because neither is a good look.

Even more to the point, the provinces keep insisting that Ottawa should be the one to pay for things cities need, like transit, or social housing, or major infrastructure, because they don’t want to have to spend the money. They keep crying poor and saying Ottawa has all of the money, but that’s also bullshit because the provinces have the same ability to raise revenues as the federal government does, but they choose not to because they don’t want to be the bad guy by raising taxes, even though it’s all the same taxpayer in the end. But this is how federalism has degenerated in this country, and it’s time people start holding the premiers to account for their failures (for a change).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say that they repelled more pushes along the various front lines and in particular around Avdiivka. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for unity as he dismisses the notion of wartime elections, and when he has been publicly disagreeing with his top general about the current phase of the war.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1721960135759741409

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Roundup: No, that’s not how inflation works

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Because some of you at the back still don’t get it, no, carbon pricing does not contribute 16 percent of inflation. It contributes 0.15 percent, because inflation is a year-over-year measure, and when the increase is steady and holding, the actual impact on inflation is negligible, because that’s how inflation works. But several of you you keep insisting that your math is correct when it’s not, and so here’s economist Trevor Tombe to try and get it through to you:

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1720919364172697678

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian missiles struck a shipyard in occupied Crimea, damaging a Russian warship there. There are conflicting reports about the state of the counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Russia claims they have halted any advance, while Ukrainians say that they continue to advance, albeit slowly. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushes back against the notion that they have entered into a stalemate, and says they need more air defences so that Russia can no longer dominate the skies. Here’s a look at Ukrainian soldiers who have turned to jiu-jitsu after losing limbs in the war.

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Roundup: A “dull as hell” House

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Jean Chrétien gave an interview yesterday to mark the 30th anniversary of his election win to form government in 1993, and there’s one part in it that sticks out for me in particular, which was about his time in politics, pre-dating his becoming prime minister, which has to do with the use of television in the Chamber:

“When I became a member of Parliament, there was no TV… In the House of Commons, we had no television. In those days in the House of Commons, we didn’t have the right to read anything. We had to get up and speak. It was fun. Today, they all come with speeches prepared by kids in the office and it is dull as hell, rather than have a real debate like we had in those days.”

This is spot on. It wasn’t just the arrival of the cameras that changed things, it was the relaxation of the rules around prepared speeches. It used to be that you weren’t allowed them, with very limited exceptions—the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne, the budget, and if you needed some particular help with specific facts or figures or translation (because simultaneous interpretation was a later arrival into Parliament). When they relaxed the rule around prepared speeches, it meant MPs started reading speeches into the record; time limits started to mean that they didn’t just speak up to that twenty-minute mark, but they were expected to fill the time entirely, which again, makes for very bad prepared speeches. There’s no actual debate either—during “debate” on a bill, the period for “questions and comments” is usually reserved for recitations of established talking points, with no actual exchange. One question, one response is not actually debate. Without relying on prepared speeches, and actually being allowed to debate, it would have made for actual tension or frisson between them, and to force them to know their material.

The other thing with the arrival of television is how it changed the nature of Question Period. It became very much about trying to a) get on TV, and b) providing clips for the evening news, which is one reason why parties started to do things like asking the same question in English and in French, so that they could get clips for both news services. With the advent of social media, however, the incentives changed again, and it was about creating content for those social feeds, which could include bad behaviour to drive up engagement. This is where we’re at now. It’s not exciting, and like Chrétien says, it’s “dull has hell” because you’re just watching badly scripted performances meant entirely for the consumption of clips. Politics should not be about this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A civilian was killed in the Kherson region early Wednesday after Russians bombed the area. Russians are ignoring their losses and pressing on at Avdiivka, Debris from downed Russian drones downed power lines near a nuclear plan in the western part of the country, knocking out power for hundreds of people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine will strike back if Russia attacks their power grid again this weekend. Here is a look at some Ukrainian sappers who have returned to the job of de-mining after they lost limbs doing the work.

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Roundup: Picking a fight over the CPP

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau decided to get into a new federal-provincial scrap yesterday by releasing an open letter to Alberta premier Danielle Smith on the issue of her proposal to withdrew from the Canada Pension Plan and create their own provincial one. Trudeau said that he would fight for the stability of pensions in the country, and that his Cabinet would ensure that people are aware of the risks of Smith’s plan—which is wise enough considering that the whole thing is premised on fantasy math that everyone knows is not ever going to fly, and that Smith’s whole pitch is premised on that fantasy math (and that without it, the whole thing falls flat). But this is also the same federal government that is unable to have a frank conversation about absolutely anything, so it’s hard to imagine that they would start now, on this particular file, and would instead just trot out a bunch of feel-good pabulum about the current system, which is not going to help absolutely anyone, and it certainly won’t counter Smith’s lies and fantasy math, but this government can’t help themselves.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714644819807809638

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714645765002510598

Smith naturally responded saying that Trudeau’s comments were unhelpful and if he wanted to be constructive, he should have shown up with a number of what the actual withdrawal figure would be. And it’s true that Trudeau’s letter had no figures in it at all, whether that’s because he relied on the platitudes about the stability of the existing system, or because he’s waiting to have a watertight analysis from his departments, and that’s going to need more time. The cynic in me says it’s the former, but it may be the latter, because there may be a serious effort happening to come to a realistic figure—which of course would raise the question of why Trudeau would release his letter today and not wait until that was in hand? In any case, Smith wants this fight with Ottawa, and the whole premise of this fight and the fantasy math is to use it as a cudgel to threaten the rest of Canada so that she can demand they back off on environmental legislation and regulation (which, again, she has been consistently lying about and the government hasn’t come up with a half-decent counter to). Given the state of play, I’m not confident this will wind up in anything but a giant clusterfuck.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1714691053083582798

Ukraine Dispatch:

The death toll rose after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, while Ukrainian forces have been making some progress around Robotyne in the south. Near Kharkiv, a farm worker was killed when his tractor hit a mine.

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Roundup: An unearned victory lap amidst the Court’s repudiation

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Yesterday morning, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal Impact Assessment Act is partly unconstitutional, and that the federal government was over-broad in the criteria they used to trigger a federal environmental assessment. Ironically, while Jason Kenney and the federal Conservatives liked to call the legislation the “No More Pipelines Bill,” the section that governs pipelines was found to be entirely constitutional, so it was fairly laughable as they started crowing over social media about their supposed victory. It might have helped if they had actually read it and not just the headlines.

The more important part of the decision, however, was the fact that while it did find part of the federal legislation ultra vires Parliament, it also explicitly repudiated the arguments that the Alberta government and the Alberta Court of Appeal were making, in claiming that the province somehow has interjurisdictional immunity for so-called “provincial” projects. That’s not true, and the Court said so, which means that when Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre were claiming that the Supreme Court “affirmed” that provinces have the exclusive right to develop their own resources, that’s wrong. It’s not what the Court said, and in fact they said the opposite of that. Alberta’s “victory” was a pretty hollow one because the Court affirmed the federal role in environmental assessments and that they can assess whatever they want once their ability to make said assessment is triggered—the only real issue was the criteria for the trigger, which needs to be narrowed. The federal government has pledged to do just that, and because this was a reference opinion by the Court and not a decision on legislation, it has not been struck down. In fact, because there don’t seem to be any projects under assessment that would be affected by the decision, it seems to show that the law is carrying on just fine, and that the amendment will be a fairly surgical tweak (and yes, I spoke to several legal experts to that effect yesterday).

Meanwhile, the reporting on the decision largely ignored this repudiation of the provincial argument. The Canadian Press, the National Post, and the Star all missed that point entirely in their reporting. Only the CBC caught it—in the main story it was given a brief mention amidst the egregious both-sidesing, but Jason Markusoff’s more nuanced analysis piece did get a little more into it, but again, it did not really point out that Kenney’s crowing over social media was for naught, and that Smith’s victory lap was not really deserved. (Smith later went on Power & Politics and lied about what projects that the Act supposedly impacted, such as the Teck Frontier mine—that project was assessed under the Harper-era regime, and was shelved because the price of oil couldn’t justify the project’s viability). It would be nice if we had more journalists actually talking to more experts than just one while they both-sides the ministers and Smith, because they would find that they missed a pretty significant part of the decision. (My own story that does precisely this analysis was delayed in publication, so it should be up on Monday).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces pounded Avdiivka in the Donbas region for a fourth day in a row as they try to make gains in that area. Ukrainian authorities say that Russians have destroyed 300,000 tons of grain since they started attacking Ukrainian port cities in July (because they’re trying to weaponise hunger).

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Roundup: Cancelling an invitation that was never issued

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Danielle Smith is at it again, claiming that accepted “on behalf of the Government of Alberta” an invitation to appear at the federal environment committee next week, and that she was sent a letter “rejecting my attendance.” The problem? It’s yet another load of horseshit from Smith, because she was never invited to the committee. Two of her ministers were invited, and she thought that she could just show up and put on a dog and pony show, but that’s not how committees work. You can’t just invite yourself to appear. The witnesses are agreed to by all parties beforehand and a motion is passed to send the invitations. Even if she’s premier, Smith can’t just attend in place of the invited ministers—again, that’s not how committees work.

https://twitter.com/emmalgraney/status/1712598055885910272

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1712599648609972476

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1712601220232446093

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1712602741120684351

In any case, the meetings were cancelled because it was really about hearing from Suncor’s CEO, and they declined, so the committee abandoned that line of testimony, but in any case, Smith is lying again, and trying to spin this into some kind of federal-provincial flamewar, and people shouldn’t treat her with any level of credulity.

Oh, but wait—The Canadian Press did just that, and the headline on the wire overnight repeats the bullshit that her appearance was cancelled, which again, is not true because she wasn’t invited, and in the meagre text of the piece, it both-sides the whole thing, because of course it does. This is utterly irresponsible of CP, who should know better.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There has been fierce fighting around Avdiivka, as Russians have been moving troops and equipment there to try and make a push to show that they’re still capable of making gains in the country as they lose territory elsewhere in the counter-offensive.

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Roundup: More both-sidesing Smith’s mendacity

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch:

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

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

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Roundup: Danielle Smith threatens to use a magical incantation

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith has launched a new ad campaign trying to agitate against the federal government over the clean electricity regulations, trying to get other provinces to similarly fight back against them, claiming that people will freeze in the dark, and there will be rolling blackouts, and so on. None of this is actually true, and the fact that energy prices in her province have shot up have little to do with the clean electricity transition than the choices that her government made around how those prices are regulated. She has also lied and said that because the federal regulations use the criminal law powers that energy CEOs will be jailed in 2035 if they still use natural gas—an absolute falsehood that is not only lurid for the sake of scoring points, but ignores that not every criminal penalty is jail, but can mean large fines (because fines over a certain size become the domain of criminal law instead of administrative monetary penalties.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1707491205678858379

The most hilarious part, however, is that Smith is “threatening” to invoke her risible “Sovereignty Act” to fight these regulations, which will do absolutely nothing. She might as well threaten to use a magical incantation for all of the good it will do. Unfortunately, there are far too many credulous journalists and pundits who actually believe that this kind of magical incantation has any power, which is disappointing and allows Smith to continue with her nonsense.

Anyway, here’s Andrew Leach with some actual facts that Smith is missing.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Not a lot of news out of Ukraine yesterday, except for a visit from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who says that Ukraine is gaining ground in their counter-offensive, while president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to call for more air defences, given how many drone attacks they have been under in recent nights.

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Roundup: The credible intelligence gets a lot weightier

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At the UN General Assembly, prime minister Justin Trudeau reiterated what he said about credible intelligence pointing to Indian agents responsible for the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, and said that he is calling on India to help with the investigation. But what we have since learned is that the credible intelligence includes both human sources and signals intelligence from Five Eyes allies that includes Indian diplomats’ communications, and that is certainly lending a lot more heft to these allegations—on top of the fact that the director of CSIS and the National Security Advisory made trips to India to deal with government sources there, and sources are saying that behind closed doors, the Indian government isn’t denying the existence of this intelligence. That’s a pretty big deal, particularly as members of the Pundit Class in this country are trying to insinuate that this is really about Trudeau ginning up controversy to create a distraction (which doesn’t follow this government’s pattern at all).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1705084748823961930

In the meantime, India has stopped processing travel visas from Canada under the transparently ludicrous excuse that their facilities face security threats, which affects a lot of people here hoping to visit family. Trudeau didn’t say if he would respond in kind, but it seems unlikely if he is serious about saying he’s not trying to provoke or escalate this with India, but to actually get to the bottom of this. (The fact that India doesn’t want to cooperate in public does appear to be something of a tell).

Zelenskyy Visit

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy landed in Ottawa last night. He will be visiting Governor General Mary May Simon this morning, followed by a visit to Parliament Hill, where he will be greeted my parliamentarians in advance of an address to Parliament that will take place around 1 PM Eastern.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1705081288808403189

Ukraine Dispatch:

While president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington, Russian forces pounded more Ukrainian cities, with more deaths being reported in the southern city of Kherson. There has been more shelling of Kherson early this morning. Here is a look at the Ukrainian soldiers fighting their way back to reclaiming Bakhmut.

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Roundup: Singh’s curious housing assertions

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It looks like Jagmeet Singh is going to make another attempt at overplaying his hand, as he promises to use his “leverage” to try and squeeze more concessions from the government, particularly around housing. And sure, he can try, but part of this is going to go back to his absolute inability—or unwillingness—to understand how process works, and that’s kind of a big deal when you’re trying to demand the federal government do things.

For example, Singh was on Power & Politics the other day and insisted that the federal government can “rapidly” build new affordable houses, because they have “the land, the money, and the power” to do so. But I’m not sure this has entirely been thought through. Yes, the government has been going through their property portfolio to identify lands that can be sold for housing purposes, but that’s been ongoing for a couple of years and there hasn’t been a lot of traction because I suspect there isn’t a lot that’s available that is suitable for housing, and even if there was a glut that could be released, could they get it re-zoned for housing in short order by municipalities? I have my doubts. Yes, they have money, but that’s not infinite, and spending too much can have impacts on inflation, which they are trying to bring down (which is not helped by Singh’s stubborn insistence that only corporate greed is fuelling inflation, which is not true, and that a windfall tax will fix it, which is also not true). I’m also not sure what he means by the “power” to build homes—housing is primarily a provincial and municipal jurisdiction, where the federal contribution is mostly financial. Does he envision that they tender the construction of these houses? Because if that’s the case, a federal procurement process is neither simple nor quick (and just wait for the losing companies to sue the government, like what happens with defence procurement). Do they hire site planners, architects, and construction workers directly? Again, do you know what a federal hiring process looks like? And more to the point, there is a very tight labour market, which means that this will increases costs (and money is not infinite).

So, again, what process does he envision that the federal government can use to “rapidly” build these houses? Because remember, the timelines that the NDP are insisting on with their supply-and-confidence agreement have created their own problems, such as with the construction of the dental care programme, which has relied on a very poor kludge to get out the door within the deadline, and bad programme design just creates headaches, especially if it’s to meet an arbitrary deadline. Pharmacare is going to be similar—they’re insisting on particular timelines, but even if enabling legislation is passed this year, it’s not really going to matter unless nine other premiers sign on (and I haven’t seen Singh publicly haranguing NDP premier David Eby to do so). Process matters, and Singh pretending it doesn’t is a sign he’s not a serious person.

(As an aside, could every gods damned person who interviews Singh please stop asking why he hasn’t taken the nuclear option of tearing up the agreement as their first question? Seriously).

Ukraine Dispatch:

A combined overnight drone and missile attack on Kyiv killed two people, while an overnight drone attack, purportedly from Ukraine, struck military targets inside Russia and allegedly damaged four transport planes. Even more curious is that some of these Ukrainian drones appear to be made out of cardboard—for real!

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