Tag Archives: Ethics Commissioner

Roundup: Graphing some drivers of inflation

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Just how much are the price of raw materials contributing to headline inflation? Well, the raw materials price index was released yesterday, and economist Stephen Gordon was curious, so he made some graphs.

Things I noticed: While gasoline is a big driver of headline inflation, the prices of wheat and beef are worth taking a look at because of the price spikes. What caused those spikes? Drought. Drought killed 40 percent of the wheat crop in 2021, and also meant a shortage of feed crop for livestock, which meant that ranchers had to cull herds to be able to afford to feed the remaining animals (because importing feed is expensive). This year we also saw more drought, which is having the same effect (and that drought has been persistent in southern Saskatchewan, which has to be in danger of turning into a dustbowl soon). And yes, there is a direct correlation to these more frequent droughts with climate change.

Also worth pointing out is the price of chicken also spiking, which was because of avian flu that meant culling flocks to prevent transmission. Again, that drives up prices. This is just more data to show that it’s not the carbon price driving up food prices—it’s climate change and its knock-on effects.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine’s largest private energy company says that they need more missile defences to protect power plants in advance of more Russian attacks over the winter. Ukrainian forces have confirmed that they have established several beachheads on the eastern banks of the Dnipro river, which is an important step in the counter-offensive. In Kharkiv region, the government is now building fortified underground schools because of the constant attacks. A Yale study says that more than 2400 Ukrainian children from four occupied regions have been taken to Belarus.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1725490287160529137

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Roundup: “Credible allegations” of an assassination on Canadian soil

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It was an unexpected moment after Question Period, when Justin Trudeau returned to the House of Commons, and took advantage of the Statements by Ministers slot in Routine Proceedings to speak on an issue of “national security,” and revealed that credible intelligence from Canadian agencies has found that an agent of the Indian government was likely responsible for the murder of a Sikh leader in British Columbia several months ago. Other opposition leaders expressed their shock, and support for the government in this—being unusually less dickish than usual (until they denied Elizabeth May her own opportunity to speak—the dickishness resumed at that point). It also sounds like the timing of this announcement was earlier than anticipated—the Globe and Mail got a leak and went to confirm it with the government, and were asked if they could hold off publishing for a week, and the Globe said they had 24 hours, so Trudeau was forced to do this now, and not after he returned from the UN General Assembly.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1703856088238416330

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1703879668842016904

Shortly thereafter, Mélanie Joly and Dominic LeBlanc scrummed in the Foyer and said that a high-ranking Indian diplomat was expelled from the country, and it sounds like the government is considering further measures in the near future. It also sounds like this was being discussed at the G20 meeting in India last week, as both the head of CSIS and Trudeau’s National Security Advisor were on the trip, and suddenly the frostiness with Narendra Modi and the cancelled trade mission make so much more sense, being as this was being pursued in back channels during the summit, not only with Indian officials but also with allied countries including the US and the UK.

For background, here is what we know about the victim, and the timeline of events surrounding the murder. India, predictably, refutes this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

There have been Russian attacks on both Lviv in the west and Kherson in the south. Ukrainian forces say they breached Russian lines near Bakhmut in the east, and have reclaimed two more villages. Six deputy defence ministers were fired, possibly in relation to a corruption scandal.

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Roundup: Open Letters to Tiff Macklem

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BC premier David Eby decided he needed to be extra performative yesterday, and wrote an open letter to Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, urging him not to raise interest rates next month because of the “human cost” of these interest rate hikes—ignoring of course the counterfactual of the effects of unchecked high inflation and the “human cost” that it has over the short and medium term.

What is pretty galling in all of this is that Eby knows better. He was once a pretty good civil liberties lawyer, and he fully knows that the Bank is independent, and that they have a legal mandate that they need to fulfil when it comes to keeping inflation at two percent, and that their main policy tool is the blunt instrument of interest rates. His “I know the Bank is independent but…” spiel was frankly embarrassing, and should not have merited the attention it got from the media, but here we are.

Speaking of, Power & Politics was not only true to form in giving him a soapbox to make his point, and rather than doing their jobs of pointing to the irresponsibility of this kind of move, particularly at a time when you also have Pierre Poilievre warning that he’s going to fire the Governor (with what power?) and threatening the Bank’s independence. It would be great if CBC could do a single economics story properly and not just treat it like an issue to be both-sidesed, but they apparently have zero willingness to do so, and the fact that this Eby interview was that ignorant is a sign that they cannot be bothered to care about economics stories for anything than just trying to plug them into their established narratives, and it’s doing the country an extreme disservice.

Programming Note: I’m taking the full long weekend off, so I’ll see you early next week.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces have reported some success in the south and east, but I am also tickled by their latest video offering, telling all of those armchair generals to basically shut up because they’ve been doing the heavy lifting on their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has developed its own long-range weapons that can strike 700 kilometres away, which may have been a sly nod to the attack on Russian airbases that destroyed a number of fighters. The mayor of Kyiv wants to build more fortifications, because there always remains the threat from Russia.

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Roundup: Promising a spending cut—for real this time!

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention, but word has come down that new Treasury Board president Anita Anand will be tasking other ministers to find $15.4 billion in spending cuts with a deadline of October 2nd, and they really mean it this time. For realsies. The Liberals have been promising programme spending reviews for years now, but haven’t seemed to show any progress on them, or at least not in any public or transparent way, and that’s generally a problem for any government, and particularly one who has been in power for as long as this one has. Anand’s expertise is in governance, so she might have a chance to pull this off, but the civil service has fought back against Treasury Board presidents trying to make reforms—Scott Brison tried to reform the Estimates process and bring it back into line with the budget cycle, and he lost that battle, and it doesn’t look like any of his successors have even tried since. The other thing here is that $15.2 billion is going to be hard to justify if the military is excluded, but can they actually make cuts (setting aside the lapsed funding they can’t spend because of capacity issues)?

The reaction has pretty much been predictable—public sector unions freaking out, Jagmeet Singh concern trolling that this means “essential services” will be cut, and Pierre Poilievre says the Liberals can’t be trusted to make cuts. (Erm, you remember the Chrétien-Martin era, right?) But for some more practical thinking, here’s Jennifer Robson, who teaches public administration:

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1691613225677144349

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have struck Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine, which is far from the fighting, including a factory in Lutsk. In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian drones have been spotted heading for the Izmail port on the Danube River, which threatens more grain shipments. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia to meet troops there. Meanwhile, farmers in Ukraine are facing the prospect of rock-bottom grain prices if they can’t ship it, which means it’s worth more to store than to sell.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1691510365304102915

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1691366868760829953

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Roundup: O’Toole claims privilege over foreign interference

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Yesterday in the House of Commons, Erin O’Toole rose on a point of privilege to say that his briefing from CSIS warned of “active” campaigns against him from China in four categories—that they are funding operatives to build propaganda campaigns against him, funding networks to amplify it, using WeChat for that purpose, and run voter suppression against his party and one MP in particular. His claim is that the government’s inability or unwillingness to act on the intelligence of foreign interference impacts his privileges as an MP.

I’m dubious that this constitutes an actual breach of privilege, because frankly, if disinformation campaigns, social media amplification and voter suppression are happening, well, his own party is just as guilty as the Chinese regime of doing exactly the same thing. I also fail to see what the House of Commons can do about addressing this supposed breach of privilege other than vote on sending a strongly-worded rebuke to the regime in Beijing. I also don’t necessarily trust that O’Toole is giving us all of the relevant details because he seemed to be very selective with what he wrote about his meeting with David Johnston on his Substack, and I cannot stress this enough, Erin O’Toole is a serial liar. Unfortunately, because he does it with a solemn tone and not, say, a clown nose and a unicycle, he manages to bamboozle a swath of the pundit class who are convinced that he’s the upstanding guy that they all want him to be rather than who he proved himself to be during his leadership, and that somehow, now that he’s no longer the leader, he’s gone back to being the guy they all want him to be. I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, the NDP used their Supply Day to call on David Johnston to step down so that the government will call a public inquiry. This while Pierre Poilievre is daring Singh to bring down the government, and Singh saying he won’t until trust is restored in elections (which is tactically stupid). The government insists they have confidence in Johnston, but it does raise the point that if everyone but the Liberals vote for this, it becomes politically untenable for the government to maintain the current course of action, even if it’s the right thing to do (because I remain unconvinced that a public inquiry will do absolutely anything more in this situation other than take three years, cost $180 million, and create a media circus with a daily drip of “revelations” that will amount to nothing but will nevertheless fuel said media circus). But this may wind up backing the Liberals into a corner and forcing them to call an inquiry, lest the damage get worse.

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Roundup: Abusing a committee’s mandate

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Because our Parliament is made up of deeply unserious people, the Conservatives on the Procedure and House Affairs committee, led by Garnett Genuis, are trying to push investigations of the Trudeau Foundation. The problem? This is far beyond the remit of this committee, and they have absolutely no authority to do what they’re attempting to do. The opposition members of the committee have been blocking Genuis’ motions, but this is absolutely abusing the parliamentary process in order to pursue a bullshit vendetta and conspiracy theory.

For the record, the committee is charged with dealing with the reports of the Auditor General, and ensuring that the government is accountable for implementing them. It’s actually one of the low-key best committees in the House of Commons, which largely does serious and valuable work and has been known to put ministers and deputy ministers on the hot seat in a serious way.

But there is absolutely no connection between the reports of the Auditor General and the Trudeau Foundation. The only government connection that the Foundation has is the endowment, which they remain accountable to the industry minister for maintaining intact. That’s it. Their donations have nothing to do with the government’s business. The Auditor General has no authority to audit the Foundation, and the CRA operates at arm’s length from the government, so the government and certainly not this committee can’t bully them into auditing the Foundation beyond the compliance measures they are already subjected to in order to maintain their non-profit status.  This is simply an attempt to weaponise the committee for the Conservatives’ political gain, and it’s damaging one of the few good committees in the Commons for a bullshit purpose.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces launched an air raid of “exceptional intensity” on Kyiv in the early morning hours, but damage was limited, mostly because air defences have been working. Over near Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces continue to push Russians back. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy stopped in London at the end of his brief European tour to get a pledge of more drones and missiles from the UK. Anti-corruption forces in Ukraine seem to have found evidence of bribery in the country’s Supreme Court.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1658033675072598017

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Roundup: Angst over a poor metric

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A lot of ink (or, well, pixels, I supposed) has been spilled over the past week about those leaked documents where Justin Trudeau allegedly told NATO leadership privately that Canada will never reach the two percent of GDP defence spending target, which shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who has paid a modicum of attention. And while we get these kinds of analysis pieces that try to dig more into the two percent target and its significance, we have to remember that it’s a lousy metric. Greece has been above it for years because of a stagnant economy and including military pensions in their calculations—and you can easily get to 2 percent of GDP by tanking your economy, while growing your economy makes that spending target increase impossibly. The other thing that the two percent metric doesn’t capture is engagement—Canada routinely steps up to meet its NATO commitments even without reaching the spending target, while certain European countries may meet the spending target but don’t participate in these missions (again, looking at you, Greece, but not just Greece).

Part of the problem is that while this is a conversation that requires some nuance, the two percent target is too easy for journalists to focus on, and that becomes the sole focus. It’s a problem because We The Media keep reducing this to a single binary “are we meeting/not meeting that two percent” rate, which doesn’t help advance the conversation in any way, but most of us refuse to learn because a simple binary is easier to understand/convey.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Fighting continues in the western part of Bakhmut, as Wagner Group mercenaries are worried about the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive. Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation says that new technologies are going to help them win the war, particularly as they enhance the accuracy of modern artillery.

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QP: A special kind of incompetence to read the same script over and over

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Neither the prime minister nor his deputy was present today, but neither were any of the other leaders, so that didn’t necessarily bode well from the start. Pierre Paul-His got things started in French, and he repeated Pierre Poilievre’s lead talking points from yesterday—that the prime minister has a “special kind of incompetence” for increasing the cost of the bureaucracy while still allowing them to go on strike, and demanded he fix what was broken. Mona Fortier praised the work of civil servants, and that they continue to bargain in good faith for a fair agreement. Paul-Hus demanded to know why the prime minister wasn’t answering, speculating that it was because he was too busy planning his next vacation, to which Mark Holland somewhat crankily responded that for the third day, yes the prime minister took a vacation with his family, and they stayed at the home of a family friend. Jasraj Hallan took over in English, and repeated the same “special kind of incompetence” talking points with an angrier tone, and Fortier repeated her same points about praise and good-faith negotiations. Hallan then insisted that the only people getting ahead are “crony insiders,” blamed the government for inflation, and turned this into a rant about the “scam” of the carbon price. Holland noted a lot of hypocrisy in the question, then listed the ways in which the leader of the opposition avails himself of government funding—house, car, office, staff—before he talks on the phone with American billionaires to try and destroy the CBC, and wondered if Poilievre should have a Twitter label that notes he’s 99 percent government-funded. Hallan got indignant, and said that nobody believes the government, before he completely mischaracterised the PBO’s report on carbon prices, and Holland needled back and wondered how the Conservatives are trading in conspiracy theories on Reddit and 4chan.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he tried to insist that appointing people who have connections to the Trudeau Foundation could mean that the prime minister has nothing to do with it. Holland got up and recited that Trudeau has not been associated with the Foundation for ten years. Therrien went on a tear about Beijing-backed donations and demanded a public inquiry. Holland insisted that foreign interference is concerning for everyone in the Chamber.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and ranted about contracts to consultants rather than giving civil servants a good deal. Helena Jaczek stated that there is a need for flexibility but they are keeping an eye on contracts. Gord Johns repeated the same accusation in English, and Jaczek stated that the budget had plans to reduce that kind of consultant spending.

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Roundup: Impressing the Scots

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The Speaker of the Scottish Parliament paid a visit to Ottawa’s Parliament earlier in the week and was apparently so impressed with our Question Period that she plans to write a report to take suggestions from it. I’m frankly a little dumbfounded, because our QP is pretty gods damned terrible in pretty much every respect, but let me first take what her observations are.

One of them is that ours operates bilingually fairly seamlessly. Well, she didn’t see the seams, in any case. In Scotland, they have translation available for those who speak Gaelic, but it’s not automatically provided like English/French is here. But she didn’t seem to see the stress that the pandemic has caused our simultaneous interpretation abilities, from the injuries to interpreters, or the strains to resources that are now severely limiting the function of our Parliament because MPs didn’t care enough about those interpreters as they abused them over Zoom, and lo, we’re staring down a crisis.

She was impressed with the “brevity” of our QP, where it operates in thirty-five second questions and answers. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, frankly, because it has largely just created a demand for talking points, both in asking and answering questions, and so much of the exercise is useless—the questions must contain key phrases (and that’s getting worse), while the answers are frequently non-sequiturs or just bland pabulum that is disconnected from what has been asked. I’m not sure what she saw that was so impressive. The fact that it happened at a rapid pace and bilingually looks impressive from afar, but spend more than a day here, and the uglier underside quickly becomes apparent. Yes, ours can be more dynamic than Westminster’s because we don’t require questions be asked in advance in order for briefings to be prepared, so the PM must be nimble when answering, but again, most of those answers are going to be vague and superficial.

It’s kind of flattering that they’re seeing the good we have to offer, but these days, our rules and system has given rise to an increasingly unserious Chamber, and that’s not something we should be exporting to anyone.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the border with Poland and Belarus, citing a need to be ready in case Belarus became another invasion route for Russia.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1648688637670830083

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Roundup: An abuse of parliamentary privilege

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I’m going to start off with the caveat that I don’t know a lot of what is happening in Nova Scotia politics, but I came across this story yesterday that is pretty concerning for the practice of parliamentary democracy across Canada. During debate on a bill around use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual assault cases, an independent MLA (formerly a Progressive Conservative but was ejected from caucus in 2021) tabled a document that she claimed was a non-disclosure agreement that a former female staffer had been coerced into signing with the PC Party. (To make things more interesting, said staffer died last year, and was working for this MLA at the time, and she says the document was found in the staffer’s effects—and, the party’s former leader was forced out over inappropriate behaviour toward a female staffer, so I’m not sure how many of these factors actually connect).

A government minister has since moved a motion to force her to retract her comments about the incident, and if she doesn’t, that she should be ejected from the Chamber until she does. And that’s a capital-P Problem. Said independent MLA has since complained to the province’s justice department that the move is unconstitutional…but the justice department can’t do anything about it, because this is clearly a matter that is within parliamentary privilege. But it absolutely violates all of our constitutional norms, and should be a warning sign about the lengths to which parties will abuse their majorities in legislatures to silence or bully opposition members. It sounds like the provincial Liberals and NDP will be opposing this motion, but the PCs do have a majority, so they may not be able to do much in the long run. I would not be surprised if the Speaker finds that the motion is out of order, but this is genuinely frightening about how much they are willing to abuse process and parliamentary privilege like this.

Don’t get me wrong—parliament or the legislatures do have the power to eject members, but it needs to be for very serious wrongdoing, such as being convicted of a serious crime, and if the member refuses to resign gracefully, then they can order the seat vacated. But those are extreme circumstances that have yet to be actually tested (because in virtually every case, sanity prevails and they resign with a shred of dignity still intact). But this is an unconscionable abuse of that power, an abuse of a parliamentary majority, and sets a very dangerous precedent for the future, and the PC members who thought this was at all appropriate should not only be ashamed, but should probably consider tendering their resignations for this debacle.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they repelled 45 Russian attacks around Bakhmut over a twenty-four-hour period, continuing to grind down the Russian forces while they await more arms from allies like the US in order to begin the spring counter-offensive.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1643326962226585604

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