Tag Archives: Euthanasia

Roundup: No, the Supreme Court did not allow an extreme intoxication defence

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We are now on or about day eighty of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like Russian forces took heavy losses to the tune of as many as 73 tanks in a two-day battle that saw them destroyed in a failed river crossing. So that’s something. Meanwhile, a twenty-one-year-old Russian soldier is now on trial for war crimes for killing civilians. It also looks like some six million Ukrainians are now displaced out of the country by this point, most of them in neighbouring countries, and that situation is starting to take its toll.

As for the potential expansion of NATO with Finland and Sweden about to make their applications, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he is not favourable to those countries joining—and applications must be approved unanimously by member countries. This may be a ploy to extract concessions by Sweden in particular, as it relates to Turkey’s domestic political interests.

Closer to home, you will have no doubt seen a bunch of headlines saying that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that “extreme intoxication is a valid defence in murders and sexual assaults.” That is not true, and is extremely misleading. The court in fact stated that extreme intoxication is not a defence that can be relied upon. What they did state was that the section in the Criminal Code that said that a state of automatism brought about by intoxication was not a defence was in fact unconstitutional, because it removed the principle around needing criminal intent. (There was a second, related decision that ruled on a few other related issues). There is a difference between extreme intoxication and a state of automatism, and it should behove news outlets to make a proper differentiation so that they’re not spreading misinformation—which they essentially are with these headlines designed to induce a moral panic. So please disregard them, because it is explicitly not what the court ruled. (I will have a piece delving deeper into its issues out in a day or two).

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QP: The person not in charge didn’t make a request

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For proto-PMQ day, all of the leaders were present for the first time in a while, so that made for a nice change of pace. Candice Bergen led off, script on her mini-lectern, and she raised the testimony of the RCMP Commissioner at committee, saying she did not request the use of the Emergencies Act, even though she found it helpful. (Note that she would not have been the one to request it because the RCMP was not the police of jurisdiction). Justin Trudeau read a statement about the police needing the tools and that they now had the inquiry to review what happened. Bergen insisted that the use of the Act was an overreach and the prime minister was trying to cover it up. Trudeau dropped the script and extemporaneously stated that the Conservatives seem to be pretty nervous that the inquiry will uncover their complicity in keeping the occupation going. Bergen pivoted to the rising cost of living, or the line-ups at airports and Service Canada office, and tried to paint him as out of touch by pointing out that he doesn’t buy his own groceries or pump his own gas—never mind that as leader of the Official Opposition, she also gets a chef and a driver. Trudeau recited the list of benefits the government has been enriching for people. Luc Berthold took over in French, declared the prime minister to be a “master of disinformation” and decried the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Trudeau read the powers that were needed, and that there was an inquiry underway. Berthold then accused the prime minster of doing nothing about the cost of living and demanded a break on gas taxes, to which Trudeau read that if Conservatives really cared about affordability, they wouldn’t delay the budget implementation bill.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he raised their Supply Day motion yesterday to replace the daily prayer in favour of a moment of daily reflection, insisting that this was related to the “British Monarchy,” and demanded to know how the prime minister would vote on it. Trudeau listed the things that people were more concerned about than this issue. Blanchet tried to pin Trudeau down on it, and he called this out as a desperate attempt to find wedges to exploit.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he raised the price of gasoline before demanding new taxes on oil companies to pay for social programmes. Trudeau reminded him that they already raised taxes on the wealthiest one percent and indexed benefits to inflation, and that the NDP had voted against that at the time. Singh repeated the question in French, and got the same answer.

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Roundup: A growing humanitarian crisis

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We are now on day fourteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some of the big concerns are the growing humanitarian ones—not only the inability to safely get civilians out of cities under bombardment, but the fact that in some of those cities, particularly Mariupol, people are trapped with no electricity, little food, running water, or medical supplies. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the British Parliament via video, and called on them for even tougher sanctions against the “terrorist state” Russia. The US has decided to ban all Russian oil and gas, while corporations like McDonald’s and Starbucks have decided to suspend operations in Russia (though more likely because the ruble is nearly worthless and not something they want to be doing business in).

Justin Trudeau was in Latvia for NATO meetings, where he announced that Canada’s mission there would be extended for several more years. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also made the point of warning Russia against attacking any supply lines supporting Ukraine within NATO territory, citing that it would trigger Article 5. Poland also floated the idea of sending fighter planes to a US/NATO base in Germany to then somehow send to Ukraine, but the Pentagon nixed the idea as unworkable.

All of this talk, of course, leads to yet more questions about military spending in Canada, and that “two percent of GDP” target, which is a very poor metric.

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Roundup: Those December inflation numbers

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Yesterday was Consumer Price Index day at StatsCan, which means a new round of inflation data, and a new round of ridiculous shitposts from Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre. In an effort to provide some perspective as to what is driving prices this month, let’s delve into the report, shall we?

Key drivers are:

  • Food prices have been rising because of poor weather conditions in food-growing regions, which has impacted prices for things like fresh fruit, and supply chain disruptions impact those imports. Additionally, we had droughts in Canada this summer, and crop yields were down in the area of 35 percent, which is making it more expensive.
  • Durable goods, primarily things like household appliances and vehicles, all of which are impacted by those supply chain disruptions, especially with the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips.
  • Construction costs are higher because of higher building materials (demand outstrips supply), and home and mortgage insurance prices have been rising as a result of severe weather-related claims.
  • Gasoline prices have moderated, which is again, a global supply and demand issue.
  • Oh, hey—stronger demand for air travel is increasing the price of fares.

So yeah, I’m not seeing a lot in here that is either Justin Trudeau’s fault, or something that he, or any other future federal government could do anything about. I mean, other than wage and price controls (which didn’t actually work), so if we want to bring back “Zap, you’re frozen!” that remains an option. As well, prices have started to moderate. Month-over-month inflation was actually down 0.1 percent, which could be the signal that things are starting to turn a corner.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1483990594770800643

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Roundup: A lack of self-awareness in the face of a violent mob

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The cancellation of Justin Trudeau’s planned rally on Friday evening because of the growing number of angry protesters has given some pause to members of the media about how things got so bad, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of self-reflection on too many people out there. While both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh have denounced the violent protesters, and O’Toole and local candidate Kyle Seeback kicking their volunteers who were part of the mob off of their campaigns, there remains a complete lack of self-awareness on their part. O’Toole not only endorses the kinds of shitposters that fuel this toxic outrage, but he has gone so far as to hire them, both for his leadership and for the campaign. The actively contributes to this discourse through winking and nodding to them, repeating their conspiracy theories in the House of Commons either directly or indirectly, and he directly contributes to this kind of poisoned discourse. Likewise, Conservative Michelle Rempel Garner is speaking out about being accosted and harassed on her campaign, but there is nary a word of acknowledgement about how she has fed this crowd, or the fact that she sends her own army of trolls and flying monkeys against those she disagrees with (and I know people who have been on the receiving end of this).

Most galling, however, are the media figures like John Ivison, who have essentially blamed Trudeau himself for this state of affairs.

There are others who have been bringing up the testimony of former Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, during the hearings into the Double-Hyphen Affair, when he sounded the alarm about the rising incitements to violence that were happening on social media – statements that were roundly ridiculed by members of the media. I’d say that perhaps we should be looking for some self-awareness out of this, but I have serious doubts that it’s even possible among the majority of them. But maybe I’m just getting cynical.

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Roundup: On not electing first ministers

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There was something going around the Twitter Machine yesterday regarding past prime ministers, and Kim Campbell in particular, and it appealed to my sense of pedantry/exactness in our civic discourse – no, Kim Campbell was not “elected” as prime minister, but no prime minister is actually elected in the Westminster System.

She was not the first prime minister not to have been appointed to the position without leading their party to victory in a general election. We had two early prime ministers who were sitting senators and not MPs. John Turner didn’t have a seat in either Chamber when he was sworn in as prime minister. At least Campbell had a seat and had led several high-profile Cabinet portfolios (first female justice minister and defence minister), and she made significant reforms to the structure of Cabinet upon her appointment as PM, many of which have been lasting. She did not have to face Parliament as prime minister, but neither did Sir Charles Tupper, not John Turner. Trying to somehow insist that because her appointment did not follow a general election victory as somehow denigrating or making her lesser-than as a prime minister is ahistorical and ignorant of how Westminster parliaments work.

Part of this, however, is tied up with narratives that our pundit class keeps importing from the US, and which our media stokes out a sense of general ignorance of civics. We recently saw in places like Nova Scotia, where they just appointed a new premier, that the media are jumping up and down for him to get “his own mandate” – meaning going to a general election – which goes against how our system works. In Newfoundland and Labrador, their premier was appointed without a seat, which he promptly won in a by-election, and then called an election “to get a mandate” and lo, it turned into a gong show because they had a sudden outbreak of COVID. But this false notion about “mandates” keep cropping up, because media and pundits keep feeding it. It’s not how our system works, and it places false expectations on new first ministers, and creates unreal expectations for those, like Campbell, who did everything according to our system’s actual tenets. It would be great if we had a better sense of civics in this country to counter this ongoing nonsense.

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Roundup: Ford’s sick days deception

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The issue of paid sick days went completely sideways in Ontario after the murderclown government, thinking they were clever, tried to propose that the federal government simply double the payout of the federal sickness benefit programme, promising that they would cover the difference, and leave it at that. Not surprisingly, the federal government said no, because the federal sickness benefit is not paid sick leave, and everybody knows it. Doug Ford knows that, because he repealed the paid sick days that were legislated in the province, at the behest of business owners (because when Ford says he’s looking out for “the little guy,” he means the business owner). Reinstating them is a simple fix in the province’s labour code, unlike “fixing” the federal benefit, which is an impossibility because a) it’s not their jurisdiction, and b) they are limited by their back-end IT infrastructure, which in no way could allow them to have seamless paid sick days the way amending the provincial labour codes would allow. (The federal government could do more when it comes to the sick leave provisions in federally-regulated workplaces, but they are not starting from zero like provinces are).

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387006526406209538

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387007565285011459

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1387072092491894790

While on Power & Politics, Ontario’s labour minister, Monty McNaughton, did let slip that they didn’t want to implement actual paid sick days because it would be a burden on businesses, which were already suffering from the pandemic – as though having an outbreak in their facility won’t hurt them even more, or having their employees die of COVID. That, and they have options available to them, such as using the wage subsidy to pay for their employees’ sick leave – that’s one of the reasons it’s there. The whole gods damned point of the federal sickness benefit is for those who don’t have employers, like the self-employed, who could need some kind of income support if they can’t work because of COVID. It was never supposed to replace actual paid sick leave, but premiers decided that they could try to get around their own obligations with it.

Meanwhile, BC premier John Horgan is putting on a song and dance of reluctantly implementing paid sick leave in BC – fourteen months later – and making a theatrical production of trying to claim they wanted to make this a national programme. This, dear readers, is horseshit. Labour codes are provincial jurisdiction in 94 percent of workplaces, and if the federal government had tried to come up with a national paid sick leave programme pre-pandemic, every single premier would have cried jurisdiction and refused on principle. For Horgan and other premiers to now try and claim they want a federal programme is a lie, and an attempt at giving themselves cover. They are trying to avoid the wrath of the business lobbies, and the small business lobby in particular, and trying to use a federal programme designed primarily for the self-employed as their fig leaf.

Even more to the point, I cannot abide how pretty much every single media outlet has framed this issue, painting it as either federal-provincial “finger-pointing,” or even worse, claiming that Ford’s proposal as being some kind of “compromise.” It is not a compromise – it’s more deception that these media outlets are spooning up. And they keep offering Doug Ford political cover. I cannot stress this enough. By trying to be “neutral” and both-sidesing the issue, they are providing Ford with more ability to try and pin this on the federal government when it’s his issue, in his jurisdiction, and he needs to own it.

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Roundup: Ending the defence committee study

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Something unexpected happened yesterday, in that the Defence committee voted to end the study on the allegations against General Jonathan Vance – the Liberals moving the motion, and the Bloc supporting it (which was the real surprise). Of course, ending the study comes with a number of different narratives. For the Conservatives and the NDP, this is all about the government trying to “cover up” what happened, because they won’t allow staffers to testify – nor should they. The concept of ministerial responsibility is inviolable in our constitutional framework, and the government should be fighting to maintain it, and yes, they have put the minister forward in this case several times, so that does matter. For the Liberals’ decision to move to end the study, it’s also at the request of some victims’ groups, who have stated that every past government is at fault, and that the committee is simply using the victims in order to score partisan points – and they are 100 percent correct in that assertion.

I do find it disturbing, however, that in most of the reporting on what has gone on, media have followed the opposition narrative that staffers are being “blocked” from appearing, and that the only time that ministerial responsibility is mentioned, it’s in quotes and being both-sidesed in terms of the government’s response. This is a real problem because it is undermining this fundamental principle in our democracy. This is something that should be explained, including why it’s wholly improper for the opposition to be demanding that this important principle be violated, and why when the Conservatives were in government, they repeatedly invoked the same principle as well to keep their staffers away from committee. Constitutional principles matter – they’re not just to be dismissed as a “process story” as so many journalists and editors are wont to do in this city, and it cheapens the discourse when this context is being left out of the stories, and when the government’s correct position is being spun as being improper.

Of course, if the government is going to claim ministerial responsibility, that doesn’t just mean Sajjan has to show up (which, to his credit, he did for six hours) – Sajjan has to actually take responsibility as well, and he hasn’t. And more to the point, Sajjan should fall on his sword for this, because he did drop the ball. He remained way too incurious about the allegations and whether an investigation was being carried out – which is not the same as involving himself in the investigation or meddling in it. It’s basic due diligence for someone who is responsible to Parliament for the armed forces and its leadership, and he failed in that due diligence. Sajjan has no choice but to resign over this, and it will be a giant sign that Justin Trudeau is not taking this seriously if he doesn’t insist on a resignation in short order.

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Roundup: The importance of our distinctions

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There has been no shortage of columns on the future of the Canadian monarchy over the past few days – I’ve even contributed my own – and they are all over the map between “Our current system works” and “Barbados is going republican so why can’t we?” But one of the fundamental problems with many of these pieces is a fundamental lack of basic civics. Like, the most basic, which then gets even more compounded with wrong-headed expectations about what our other political actors should be doing. A huge example is the importance of keeping the ceremonial head of state functions away from the head of government functions, but this is failing to find as much traction these days, and that’s a problem.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372200793546366976

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372202091712819200

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https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372205703843225607

I would dispute with Philippe a bit here in that people would get fussed about honours being handed out by prime ministers or ministers, particularly if it’s a PM that they disagree with. That’s one of the primary reasons why honours should be with the Queen via the Governor Genera/Lieutenant Governors, because it keeps it out of the hands of politicians and the whims of the government of the day. When you start turning honours over to politicians, bad things happen – recall the gong show that was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals, where MPs and senators were given a number to hand out apiece, and some of them went to certain individuals that would never have been eligible for any other honours in this country.

But of course, as Dan Gardner points out, so much of this stems not only from our poor civics education, but the fact that we are so saturated with American pop culture and politics that so many in this country believe that we are analogous in so many ways. Hell, we have political parties in this country who simply swallow the positions of American politicos and just divide by 10, thinking that’s all it takes, like we’re not separate countries or anything. It’s a huge problem and not enough of us are pushing back against it. The Crown is a big part of what keeps us distinct, and we need to better appreciate that. I can say from personal experience that one of the comments I’ve received most about my book is that people read the chapter on the Crown and say that it finally makes sense to them because they’ve never learned it properly before. We have a problem and we need to solve it before more people think that the solution is to become Americans.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1372205403782676486

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Roundup: Final debate on the amendments

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While the Commons is not sitting this week, the Senate is, with several bills now on their Order Paper for consideration, most especially the assisted dying bill, which is under a court-imposed deadline (that has already been extended thrice). At issue are the amendments that the government accepted, rejected, and otherwise modified from what the Senate sent back to the Commons a few weeks ago (where the Conservatives then held it up).

The Government Leader in the Senate, Senator Marc Gold, is taking the line that this is a “historic example” of collaboration between the two Chambers that has resulted in better legislation, but I’m not sure just how historic that is, and by “better legislation,” it’s a fairly marginal case because the government reduced the attempt to render this legislation fully compliant with the constitution with one of its famous half-measures that means that people’s suffering will be prolonged as a result, and yet more others will need to embark on yet more court challenges in order to fully access what should be guaranteed rights.

Ultimately it does look like this will pass without sending it back to the Commons again, as most senators are taking the line that the House has had their say, and because they’re democratically elected, it can go ahead now (though there have been instances where the Senate made a second insistence on certain bills in order to make a point – though I’m not sure that will be the case here), and that it could pass and get royal assent before the court deadline. Nevertheless, the amount of time this has taken for something that had court-imposed timelines is a sense of just how vulnerable the parliamentary calendar really is when you had determined opposition to bills, and it’s not over yet because the proposed changes in this legislation will impose a two-year timeline for more consultations on aspects of the law that currently remain prohibited (where that prohibition remains unconstitutional), but that the government is dragging its feet for the sake of politics. Ultimately, nobody comes out of this exercise looking particularly good.

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