Tag Archives: Erin O’Toole

Roundup: The voices we privilege

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There was an exchange over Twitter yesterday between economist Stephen Gordon that made me stop and think about what it represented. (The original tweet has since been deleted).

Why this gave me pause is because of what this exchange signals about whose voices we are privileging in the media as a matter of course. It’s rare to find a story that involves any kind of spending that does not include the CTF as a source being quoted, because they are reliable to give one “side” to the issue, whether it’s appropriate or not. And this also goes back to my Unifying Theory of Canadian Punditry, where most of the pundits and editors in this country still believe it’s 1995 and will always be 1995 on any fiscal matter – that the county is facing a debt bomb that will threaten it forevermore. That’s not the case, but these voices from the mid-nineties remain central – and indeed, that is where several of our political leaders hailed from, including Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper – and they still have sway because the editors and pundits of this country are also beholden to this era and its beliefs. It’s also about the language employed around the time, where citizens became “taxpayers” in their conception of the country. The CTF fits the ideological niche that these editors and pundits built for themselves, so their voices are privileged, regardless of whether they actually give truthful assessments or not.

Part of the reason also has to do with the media’s general preference to both-sides issues, and when you have a group that reliable offers one “side” – especially because they will always pick up the phone and have a quote for you when you’re on a deadline – then they get amplified. And it’s not just the CTF – it’s also Democracy Watch, and certain professors who are guaranteed to give an outraged quote on no matter the subject, and because they are reliable, they keep getting quoted, and get standing that they would not otherwise be afforded if we subjected their views to actual scrutiny. But this is one of the trade-offs that comes with the twenty-four-hour news cycle and constant deadlines to publish to the web. Journalists start to rely on voices who they know will always answer the phone and give a quote to one of the both-sides, so half the job is done.

This is one of the tells that I look for with many stories I read now – which voices are being privileged? Is it the CTF? Is it Dr. Jack Mintz? Is it Democracy Watch? The inclusion of those voices will pretty much indicate to you how much value to place on the story, because that helps outline what the framing of the piece is – and media literacy goes hand-in-hand with civic literacy.

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Roundup: Some vaccine doses arriving soon

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The prime minister was out this morning with a significant announcement about the vaccine roll-out, in that Canada could see its first 249,000 doses being delivered within about a week, pending Health Canada approval. As well, the box from Pfizer that will serve as the “dry run” of the roll-out plans also left Belgium and was heading for Canada for the exercise. The whole vaccine roll-out is going to be taxing to supply chains for things like dry ice, and there is already talk about lowering some expectations for how soon some long-term care residents can receive doses, because the Pfizer vaccine loses effectiveness if it is jostled too much, as it is with transport, so that may mean trying to find ways of getting those residents to vaccination centres instead of the other way around. We’ll see how this goes.

There is an interesting story in the Globe about a private vaccine manufacturer in Montreal, which is right next door to the National Research Council facility that is currently under construction, which is believed to be capable of manufacturing at least one of the potential vaccine candidates, but they appear not to have been asked by the government, or engaged in any meaningful way. I have questions, however, because it doesn’t really specify which type of vaccines could be manufactured (and yes, this does matter), so it may be a case of waiting to see the viability of one of the later candidates for approval before they go too far with licensing or engaging.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has the audacity to blame the Liberals for the anti-vaxx petition that his MP, Derek Sloan, has been sponsoring. O’Toole says that because the Liberals have been so lacking in transparency that these kinds of things are bound to happen – which is some grade-A horseshit if I ever heard it. This as O’Toole spent the morning shifting the goalposts on what he deems to be sufficient transparency from the government. Of course, O’Toole doing the bare minimum and saying he doesn’t support the petition Sloan is sponsoring, but doing little else to stop the misinformation that he has had an active hand in spreading is quite something. Then again, there does seem to be a tendency among many conservative leaders to shift blame and deny that they are responsible for anything, and we apparently are seeing that again here.

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Roundup: From the Bank to Finance

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Tongues were set wagging late Sunday night as word came down that the government was planning to appoint Michael Sabia, currently the head of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, to be the new Deputy Minister of Finance. There had been a bit of concern over the last week when it was reported that Freeland was interviewing five candidates to replace her deputy, who had announced his resignation the day after the fiscal update, given that it’s unusual for this to happen in our system. But deputy ministers are Governor-in-Council appointees, so while it’s unusual for ministers to choose their own deputies rather than the Clerk of the Privy Council recommending one to the prime minister, capacity for such decisions do exist. One does wonder, however, what signal this sends to the Infrastructure Bank, given that they just put Sabia in charge a couple of months ago, and now they’re moving him again.

This having been said, it was not unexpected that the outgoing deputy would not last there too much longer, because he too was of the generation in the public service for whom it is 1995 and will always be 1995 – and already the pundit class for whom this is the unifying theory are already chirping about his departure. Why this may turn out to be important is because we are going to have to start thinking out federal finances in a different way as the pandemic moves into recovery mode. Why? Because the old obsessions around debt and deficit (which is the mindset of the 1995 crowd) may lead to more damage than good, and we could see ourselves in a Japan-like situation if we’re not careful. And while yes, there are “guardrails” and planned “anchors” once we’re fully into the recovery stage, it may be time for a fresh mindset in the senior ranks – though given how much attention they put on Sabia when they brought him into the Infrastructure Bank, moving him to Finance right away seems mighty cozy, and this will no doubt launch another round of the current witch hunt going on in committees.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1335269637769060352

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1335270894571237378

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1335271066701344768

Good reads:

  • One of Pfizer’s top executives says that Canada could be getting vaccines within 24 hours of Health Canada approval, possibly by the end of this week.
  • Major-General Dany Fortin says they are expecting a constant flow of vaccines into the country by January once approvals are completed.
  • A (small) rise in cases in PEI has the province moving to a “circuit-breaker” lockdown before the cases start rising – like other provinces should have done.
  • An internal review at Global Affairs found no standard process for vetting honorary consuls, and they have since developed a new code of conduct.
  • Speaker Rota reflects on his first year in the big chair, at a time of pandemic, “virtual” and hybrid sittings.
  • Susan Delacourt details how the Liberals are preparing for a possible election in the spring, even though they don’t necessarily want one.
  • Chantal Hébert evaluates Erin O’Toole’s first 100 days as leader, and finds it wanting, not only for the lies, but also the evasion on his own plans.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: More doses, and a witch hunt

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It looks like we’re going to end the week on yet more talk about COVID vaccines, because that’s all we can talk about anymore. The news yesterday was that Canada has upped its orders for the Moderna vaccine (which we are near the front of the line for), which is also significant because these ones, while also a two-dose vaccine, don’t need the same ultra-cold chain that the Pfizer one does, so that will make distribution much easier. As well, the federal government offered some further refinement of the priority advice, to say that residents and staff of long-term care facilities should get the first doses, as well as Canadians over the age of 80, followed by healthcare and personal support workers in contact with patients, followed by Indigenous communities (who are especially susceptible to the virus given the living conditions in many of those communities).

On a similar vein, here is a further exploration of the delays to the National Research Council’s planned vaccine production facility, including the fact that even when this is completed, it’s not built to manufacture mRNA vaccines so again, it won’t help with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines – but perhaps it can with the AstraZeneca vaccine if it gets approval.

Meanwhile, the Commons ethics committee hauled former MP Frank Baylis before them to answer questions about his company being subcontracted to help build ventilators, and lo, he had perfectly reasonable explanations for all of the things the opposition parties deemed suspicious, and the actual contractor for the ventilators is a Conservative donor, and didn’t even know that Baylis was a former MP when he contacted the company because they had the kind of clean room he needed to assemble the ventilators. But this whole affair has been a ridiculous witch hunt from the start, full of lies and disinformation because they could make the facts line up in a way that looked damning even though they aren’t. But this is the game we’re playing, where truth is the first casualty to cheap point-scoring.

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Roundup: Cutting the expected doses in half

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It was another big day for vaccine news, starting with a technical briefing by federal public health officials that gave a bit more clarity on what is happening. Health Canada says we could see approval of the Pfizer vaccine within seven to ten days, while we also got some more information about the roll-out plan, including how the Pfizer and Moderna roll-outs are different, that they have concluded tabletop exercises and found gaps to plug, and that a dry run is scheduled for December 14th, after which they say they will be ready to start receiving vaccines, depending of course on approvals and availability from the manufacturer. But then came the bombshell – raw materials shortages are going to mean that Pfizer has had to cut their expected 2020 production by nearly half, which will mean fewer early vaccine doses to get to healthcare workers and the most vulnerable.

And then there are the provinces. In Quebec, François Legault had to say that his attempted “moral contract” for Christmas was off the table because cases won’t go down, but he also insisted that he wouldn’t have meaningfully done anything different in handling the pandemic, which is bananas. The continued climb of cases in Ontario means that we are likely facing more lockdowns before too long. In Manitoba, Brian Pallister gave a tearful speech about needing to cancel Christmas – but then also stated that it was “unfair” that early doses were being reserved for First Nations (who are especially vulnerable), which is mind-boggling. As for Alberta, where new cases keep breaking records, we got more details on the planned field hospitals (which are not really going just “contingency planning”), and in spite of yesterday’s insistence to the contrary, they are looking at possible military assistance to staff these field hospitals.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1334611584824446978

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1334561390640701441

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Roundup: Not getting a normal Xmas

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Things are getting serious, but as much as our political leaders beg people to stay home, the numbers continue to climb. Prime minister Justin Trudeau held his presser outside of Rideau Cottage once again today, a signal that he wants people to work from home where they can, and that he plans to do the same as much as possible (so we’ll see if he’s back in the Chamber during the last three sitting weeks of the year). And he said flat-out that we’re not going to have a normal Christmas this year, because we’re too far beyond that point. And while Quebec is trying to come up with a “moral contract” plan to allow people to celebrate – a plan which is just as likely to accelerate the spread of the virus in that province – the Toronto and Peel regions in Ontario are headed back into lockdown as of Monday, because Doug Ford finally decided to pull the trigger (far too late to do much good). The new federal supports which included additional lockdown supports received royal assent this week and people can begin applying for them on Monday, with the rent supports retroactive for a couple of months.

This having been said, the Conservatives have already been trying out new lines of attack, which Erin O’Toole debuted right after his meeting with the prime minister on Thursday, in which he lays the blame for the second wave at the feet of the federal government. These lines were repeated in Question Period yesterday, and when Conservatives appeared on the political shows, and include lines like “the lockdowns were supposed to be temporary to let the government find a solution.” Right – that was the point. And it was the premiers, whose jurisdiction testing, tracing, and isolation is in, who pissed way the summer and didn’t invest in increasing the capacity necessary to do that, and lo and behold, we are too late now. O’Toole and his MPs demand “better data” about outbreaks, which again, is supposed to be coming from the provinces, but most of them are falling down on that job as well. Much of the Conservatives’ rhetoric is aimed at the notion that rapid testing – including at-home testing (which has much lower sensitivity) will allow people to go to work and the economy to re-open, and they point to all of these other countries that approved rapid testing, either omitting that many of the approved rapid tests in places like the US had their approvals pulled because they turned out to be useless, or the fact that they are virtually all facing massive spikes of their own in the second wave, meaning that lo, those tests were not the panacea at all. Additionally, we had the Chief Medical Officer of Health in Alberta talking about how people were lying about symptoms or tests in order to visit people in hospitals, and continuing the spread, so how can we actually think that giving people at-home tests is going to be at all feasible if they are going to lie about their results?

But this is about creating a narrative – one that absolves their provincial allies from responsibility, which relies on historical revisionism about the early days of the pandemic, and on wishful thinking around rapid tests. It’s also about disinformation, which is self-contradictory because of jurisdictional issues. And this gets added to other lies and disinformation they’re promulgating, like Pierre Poilievre walking right up to the line of conspiracy theories with the “Great Reset” sustainability initiative, where he is trying to play into NOW truthers under the “I’m just quoting Trudeau,” knowing full well how this stuff fuels the crazies. But they don’t care. They will be as irresponsible with this kind of messaging as possible because it’s only about scoring points, and they don’t care what they burn to the ground along the way. It’s a hell of a way to demonstrate how they would run the country if given the opportunity.

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Roundup: Some real repercussions of the post-Trump era

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There was a Canadian Press piece over the weekend that took a cursory look at how the end of the Trump era may help Canadian conservatives, given that he can’t really be a bogeyman to beat them over the head with. The problem, however, is that this was just a cursory look, and didn’t get into any of the more profound cultural changes within politics that have come out of the Trump era, which the Conservatives in this country have taken full advantage of.

Some of this is the culture war stuff that the Conservatives have been very much keen to dive right in with, and you can see Erin O’Toole very much embracing that as he tweets about “cancel culture” (when it’s very much not about cancel culture), or his refusal to give a proper reckoning to historical injustices rather than complaining that this is about “erasing history” – mostly because it’s historical conservative figures who are the targets of such actions. Some of this has to do with ways in which he is trying to target working-class votes in a way that is essentially twisting himself into pretzels in order to reconcile with is past record and that of his party – populism doesn’t encourage ideological consistency after all.

More than anything, however, the piece doesn’t grapple with some of the broader legacy, which is that it made it permissible to lie constantly in politics – especially because they have learned that the media will only both-sides everything and not call them out on it. And more to the fact, they have learned that they can attack the media with impunity, and will face no rebuke or suffer no damage from doing so. They have learned that they can coarsen politics and crank up divisive rhetoric and that it will get a rise out of people more than civil dialogue and discourse will, and more than anything, they have learned that they can largely get away with it because the mainstream dialogue has shifted to make it acceptable. This is the real legacy of the Trump era that will be harder to dissipate once Trump is out of the picture, because the underlying sentiments remain, and here in Canada, while they may not be as pronounced as they are in the States, they are nevertheless still there, and they are festering because we broadly ignore them by assuring ourselves that we’re nothing like the Americans so we have nothing to worry about. But we should worry that the state of our discourse has moved, and we need to call it out for what it is, which few people seem to be willing to do.

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Roundup: A promise to fight back against federal action

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Another day, more record-breaking COVID cases in this country. In Ontario, new modelling suggests that if we don’t get this under control that we’ll be seeing 6,500 new cases a day by mid-December, which should terrify everyone. And Doug Ford? Well, he called the reports that he ignored public health advice “inaccurate,” and “one doctor’s opinion,” and insisted that he’s trying to find a “balance.” Because the needs of businesses outweigh human lives.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1326965295941099521

In Alberta, where the pandemic is starting to overwhelm a couple of hospitals, Jason Kenney was back in isolation for the second time after another close-call with a positive COVID case (which he tested negative for) – because he’s totally taking it seriously. Kenney decided to “toughen” measures, which means that he…reduced hours in restaurants and bars, stopped indoor sports, and limited weddings and funerals. Because he still refuses to do a proper lockdown to get infections under control, and he refuses to do anything to inconvenience businesses. Hell, he’s still telling people to go out to restaurants and bars – just not as late, which also has the added effect of ensuring more people will be in these establishments during the compressed hours, which would seem to increase the chances of infection rather than decrease it. After all, Alberta’s public health insisted that people should socialize in a “structured setting” (i.e. restaurant or bar) instead of at home, so they’re really taking it seriously.

As for those who still insist on calling on the federal government to enact emergency legislation, Ford stated yesterday in no uncertain terms that he would not stand for it, and warned that other premiers would also fight back because they want to guard their own jurisdiction. So yeah, unilateral federal action would not fly (not that it really could under the terms of the Emergencies Act anyway), and we’d simply wind up in court over it. In other words, stop waiting for Trudeau to act (because he can’t) and pressure the premiers instead to quit worrying about businesses – especially since they have the power to help them out – and worry instead about the hundreds of deaths that are happening every week.

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Roundup: Such a serious country

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The country is fixated on the election south of the border, while we’re failing to effectively deal with a global pandemic, but what shiny thing caught everyone’s attention yesterday? The fact that Whole Foods’ uniform policy forbade employees from wearing poppies. The horror! The horror! Politicians from all stripes across the country were outraged – outraged! Doug Ford leapt into action to declare he would pass legislation to make it illegal for businesses to prohibit employees from wearing poppies, which is more than he’s done about dealing with the pandemic in his own gods damned area of jurisdiction, so make of that what you will. Erin O’Toole got worked up and posted a video calling on people to boycott “Woke Foods,” which is not only not clever, but not even close to a reflection of the situation – in fact, Whole Foods came under fire for not allowing their employees to wear masks that said “Black Lives Matter” on them, so that’s hardly being Woke™. (Then again, when you wield a shitpost-shaped hammer, everything is a woke-shaped nail). It was the lead question in QP. Three separate unanimous motions were passed in the House of Commons after Question Period to condemn Whole Foods, to encourage all businesses to let their employees to wear poppies, and to summon the Whole Foods CEO to the Veterans Affairs committee to explain himself. Everyone needed a piece of their outrage pie.

A couple of hours later, the veterans affairs minister, Lawrence MacAulay put out a release saying that he spoke to said CEO and everything was okay – employees would be able to wear poppies after all. Phew! Of course, we got all parties on-side for the most useless and ridiculous of symbolic controversies, because that’s just how serious we are as a country. Well done, everyone.

Meanwhile, there’s still a pandemic where the second wave is spiking in Canada, and none of the premiers seem to want to do anything about it. Doug Ford is set to loosen restrictions on some of the most hardest-hit regions of Ontario, while his promise to hire thousands of more long-term care workers lacks any details, which sounds about right for Ford. Jason Kenney is calling on people to voluntarily stop having house parties, but won’t make any actual restrictions, nor will he sign onto the federal contact tracing app. You’d think that we’d be spending the day raking these premiers over the coals for their unwillingness to do anything (because it’ll hurt small business – when they have the capability of offering supports for them), but no, we can’t even do that either.

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Roundup: Heading down the same road to destruction

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As the American election results continue to grind along, there are a couple of things that have emerged that we should take to heart – one is that “Trumpism” wasn’t a fluke in 2016, and that it’s a real force that America needs to contend with honestly. The other is that the polarisation in the country has become so acute that adherents to each tribe party are now living in alternate realities, where facts don’t penetrate. This was punctuated by something that Gerald Butts has been saying over the past couple of days, that there are also two “information ecosystems” in the US, that perpetuate these alternate realities, in that each side’s news media is fairly disassociated from one another (and in some cases, facts and reality).

Why do I think this matters in particular? Because I see elements of this culture war bubbling up in this country, in somewhat inchoate and fledgling forms, but it’s there. We may not have the alternate forms of media in this country, but parties – Conservatives in particular – are building it over social media instead of traditional broadcasting (though they did make an honest effort with SunTV). The complete disregard for facts has well and truly wormed its way into the party’s discourse, and we’re now on their second party leader for whom bald-faced lying is now a daily occurrence, and this gets built into shitposts for those social media channels that they are promulgating, in some cases presenting their own alternate reality versions of situations. The NDP aren’t much better, importing wholesale the rhetoric of a segment of the American democratic party, and their own adherents refuse to believe the facts of situations (such as the existence of federalism in this country), as their leader deliberately misleads or omits facts to present the image of a government that simply doesn’t care to do things rather than the truth of their not having the jurisdiction to do them.

This is a problem that we have been complacent about addressing in this country, because we insist that it’s not as bad as in the US – and sure, we don’t have the same level of tribalism and political duality as they do, but just because we’re not as far down the road as they are doesn’t mean we’re not on the road here. There was an attempt to create that duality here – it wasn’t that long ago that the Liberals were considered to be a spent force, politically, and the Conservatives and NDP spent early Question Periods of the 41st Parliament patting themselves on the back that there was finally a real contrast in parties in the House of Commons (while the whole of the pundit class demanded that the remains of the Liberals merge with the NDP, as though the parties didn’t have fundamental ideological differences). We keep adopting Americanisms in our political systems and structures, and way too many political staffers (and more than a few reporters) spend their days LARPing episodes of the West Wing. Too many Canadians are keen to import all of the same problems that are turning America into a failed state because we think they’re more “exciting,” or somehow enviable in other ways. We should be repudiating this and shedding these American affectations from our politics, but nobody wants to do that, and this is going to cause an increasing number of problems the longer we go down this road. America is a giant flashing warning sign to turn back – can we do so in time?

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