Tag Archives: Federalism

QP: Demanding new national plans

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With the stay-at-home order lifted in Ontario, we had a whole five Liberals in the Chamber, including Justin Trudeau, for what that’s worth, Erin O’Toole led off, worried that the government had no plan for the economic recovery, to which Trudeau replied that the best economic recovery plan is a healthy population, which they were doing everything to support. O’Toole then raised the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s new economic recovery task force, demanding a national strategy for rapid testing — never mind that this is a provincial responsibility. Trudeau reminded him that they delivered some 19 million rapid tests to provinces, and that O’Toole himself was opposed to a national strategy on long-term care, so he wasn’t exactly being consistent. O’Toole then pivoted to vaccinations, complaining Canada was lagging, to which Trudeau reminded him of the hundreds of thousands of doses arriving this week and every week, and that we were well on track to six million doses by the end of March. O’Toole repeated the question in French, got the same answer, and then demanded a plan for three hundred thousand doses delivered per day, to which Trudeau gave his rote assurances on the portfolio and everyone being vaccinated by September.

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised a Quebec scientist who developed a potential vaccine but did not get federal funding, calling it a slight against Quebec, to which Trudeau reminded him that they took the recommendations of science. Blanchet then demanded the full contracts were published, and Trudeau chided him, saying that he knows full well that there are confidentiality agreements, and they were transparent with the contracts, and the delivery dates.

Jagmeet Singh then rose for the NDP, and in French, he demanded leadership on vaccinations, and that all resources would be deployed into it, to which Trudeau assured him that it was what they were already doing. Singh switched to English to demand that the prime minister stop “hiding behind jurisdictional issues” and demanded funding for federal vaccinations sites. Trudeau chided Singh and the NDP for not understanding the constitution.

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Roundup: Domestic vaccine production…eventually

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There was a sliver of positive news yesterday, when it was announced that the federal government had signed a deal with Novavax to produce their vaccine in the future National Research Council facility in Montreal. The catch? That facility won’t be completed construction until summer, and then it will require Health Canada approval, so it may not be able to produce new doses until the end of the year – at which point, most Canadians should already be vaccinated using the Pfizer and Moderna doses we’ve contracted for. That doesn’t mean this facility still won’t be for naught – it’s possible we will need booster shots for the other vaccines, possibly do deal with different variants (and Novavax has shown success with the B.1.1.7 variant first spotted in the UK), and it also means that we will be able to produce for export to other countries who will need it.

Of course, this started back in on the same questions about why we weren’t able to produce vaccines domestically earlier, and why this plant is taking so long. Of course, this plant is actually moving faster than is usual – Good Manufacturing Practices facilities to produce vaccines usually take two or three years to build, not a single year, and there are several other facilities under construction across the country for other vaccine candidates. As for the same questions about why we didn’t contract to produce other vaccines here, it was because there were no suitable facilities – particularly from the approved ones. (This NRC facility was in talks to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, but there is also talk about why the PnuVax facility in Montreal has not yet been tapped – but it may yet be for a future candidate once approved). And for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, we simply didn’t have facilities in this country that could produce mRNA vaccines to scale (most existing mRNA production was on a single-dose system for tailored vaccines used for treating particular cancers). And these are things we a) can’t build overnight, and b) didn’t know were even viable because it’s a new technology that had not yet been approved for a vaccine, especially on the scale of the one we’re dealing with now. It would have been a hell of a gamble to build a facility to GMP standards for a vaccine technology that may not have panned out.

Why I’m particularly annoyed about the return of these questions – particularly from the likes of Jagmeet Singh as he appeared on platforms like Power & Politics – is that they pretend that any vaccine facility can produce any vaccine, ignoring that not all vaccines are created equally, or that the technology to produce vaccines isn’t different across platforms. Singh’s notion that a nationalised vaccine producer should have been able to handle this is also farcical because again, what platform would it have bet on? All of them? It’s ridiculous and dishonest – as have been the demands to make the vaccine procurement contracts public (which no other country has done), because all that would do is allow other countries to look at what we paid, and then offer the companies more money to break the contracts with us. (And FFS, both Singh and Erin O’Toole are lawyers and should know this). The kinds of point-scoring that is taking place right now is getting to be beyond the pale, and it’s obscuring the actual kinds of accountability we should be practicing.

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Roundup: Ford playing up the pandemic theatre

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The state of pandemic theatre in Ontario continues to ramp up as Doug Ford’s current campaign about railing about a) vaccine doses, and b) international travellers reaches a fever pitch. Ford is currently making a big dog and pony show about invoking a section of the province’s Health Protection and Promotion Act to mandate testing for air travellers when they arrive because the federal government has not yet done so (they have made the rule that people must get tested before they get on the plane), but what is telling is that Ontario still has done precious little about increasing lab capacity, and we are still lagging far behind on the kind of genomic testing that would help us identify which strains of the virus are being contracted. Additionally, the number of cases traced to international travel has been around one percent, while other case growth remains exponential, which is more proof that this is about theatre, not deal with the real problems.

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In the meantime, Ford government and their allies in certain media outlets have begun waging a campaign against doctors who are critical about the government’s lack of response, particularly about the carnage in long-term care facilities. One doctor has had his contract terminated from his position because of his criticism, and the Toronto Suntargeted another doctor that Ford later expressed “concerns” about (completely disingenuously) – though it’s worth noting that Chrystia Freeland has come to this doctor’s defence. It has been noted that this is not the first time that Ford and his people have used these particular tactics against their critics, but the fact that they are doing this to the very doctors and health experts who are trying to chart a course out of this pandemic is galling and rather telling about how this government is more concerned about their egos than they are in doing the right thing to protect the lives of people in this province.

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QP: Blaming the wrong government for deaths

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It was another day of a nearly-empty chamber, and today there were a mere two Liberals on their benches, rather than just one, which is outrageous. Candice Bergen led off on video, accusing the government of being responsible for deaths in long-term care facilities because of the vaccine delays — with no mention of the culpability of provincial governments in their failures to manage the pandemic. Chrystia Freeland, also by video, insisted that Canada was one of the leading countries for vaccine rollouts. Bergen then blamed the cancellation of surgeries on the lack of vaccines — completely false — and Freeland repeated her assurances that Canada was among the best performers thus far and doing more. Bergen tried one last time to blame the federal government for the failures of the provinces, and Freeland again repeated her same assurances of Canada doing comparatively well on vaccines among allies. Richard Martel took over to lament that the government had not brought forward the bill to close the loopholes on sick benefits for debate but wanted them to pass it in one fell swoop, and Freeland assured him they were trying to correct an error. Martel was not mollified, insisting they needed to study the bill, but Freeland insisted that they wanted to close the loophole immediately and it was unfortunate that the opposition would not let them. Yves-François Blanchet took over on behalf of the Bloc, and wanted debate and amendments to the bill so that it could be retroactive, and Freeland assured him that the bill was not designed to encourage Canadians to ignore the guidelines to avoid travel. Blanchet was not impressed and thundered about closing the borders, but Freeland pivoted and invited Blanchet to apologise for his comments about Omar Alghabra. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he demanded immediate vaccines to protect seniors, for which Freeland calmly read her talking points about vaccine contracts and our record to date. Singh switched to English to demand for-profit long-term care be made public, starting with Revera, whose relationship be deliberately misconstrued. Freeland calmly stated that she shared his anguish and they were looking at best practices for long-term care.

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Roundup: Delays for new doses

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The pandemic continues to trend poorly, and new modelling suggests there could be as many as two thousand deaths in the next ten days, and if the current restrictions don’t curb people’s interactions, spread could triple as our hospitals are already out of space. It’s grim. And to compound it, news came down yesterday that Pfizer’s plans to retool part of their vaccine production facility in Europe means that for the next few weeks, shipments could be reduced by as much as fifty percent – shortfalls that will likely be made up once production is up and running because they’ll be able to increase their output capacity, but it’s still disappointing. It’s also funny (in a black humour sort of way) to watch premiers struggling to deliver this message without taking shots at the federal government because they know that it’s beyond their ability to do anything about.

Part of why this is a problem that needs to be communicated is because there seems to have been a brewing sense that vaccines are here, so we’ll be able to start lifting restrictions soon, and that’s not actually the case. Even once everyone gets vaccinated, we’ll probably still have restrictions and mask-wearing for the time being because we don’t yet know if people can transmit the virus once they’re vaccinated, and it will take time for everyone’s immune response to sufficiently build even after they’ve had their second dose. And then we don’t know how long the immunity will last either, while the virus is starting to mutate. So seeing this delay to vaccinations (and it’s mostly a delay on the early phases and less likely to be so for the general public, who will still likely get their shots at the same time as was planned) as a delay for returning to the old normal is just not something that anyone should be counting on, and we should be communicating that effectively.

As for international travel, prime minister Justin Trudeau hinted that they are looking at tighter restrictions, but this comes with a host of other problems, not the least of which is the fact that mobility rights are Charter rights, and trying to define what travel is deemed “essential” is going to require some actual definition (unlike what Ontario has done with its current stay-at-home order). But with unchecked community spread already happening, and variants identified in the UK and South Africa also having been identified here, it may already be too late. The better tactic may be better enforcement of quarantine orders, but that may also be a question of resources. Nevertheless, there are no easy solutions to the problem.

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Roundup: Listing invaders as terrorists?

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In the aftermath of Wednesday’s assault on Capitol Hill, Canadian officials have been trying to give some assurances that it couldn’t happen here, and that our own intelligence officials are on the ball when it comes to these right-wing extremists. Which is good to know. Meanwhile, certain leaders are demanding that the Proud Boys be declared a terrorist organisation for their role in Wednesday’s attack, so here’s former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis to explain what that would entail and what it would mean.

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Roundup: Feigned ignorance and consequences

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The list of politicians, federal and provincial, that travelled over the Christmas break, has grown, and premiers especially have been finding it hard to keep their stories straight about their own culpability. A reminder: ministers cannot leave their province without permission, and they need to have someone appointed as an acting minister during their absence, which requires paperwork, and in no possible universe would the premier not have known. While Doug Ford has lied that he didn’t know his finance minister was leaving the country, Jason Kenney and Scott Moe took the weaselly path of “taking responsibility” for not making it clear to their caucus that there wasn’t to be any travelling – something which is a red herring in the case of ministers. They knew and were caught out, and now they are trying to minimize the damage and divert attention away from their culpability, but anyone who knows how governments work know that this is grade-A bullshit.

There is a question of consequences – particularly for the backbenchers who were caught out. Among the federal Conservatives, there seems to be little that they can do to sanction Ron Liepert, while David Sweet resigned as the chair of the ethics committee and said he’s not running again in the next election. A real question will be for Senator Don Plett, who is the leader of the opposition in the Senate. There could be some real political damage to the institution if he doesn’t do something to show remorse, whether that is stepping down from his leadership position, or some other act of contrition. If he doesn’t do it voluntarily, we’ll see if Erin O’Toole makes a move as party leader, or if the Conservative caucus in the Senate makes their own move to limit the damage to their own reputations. Regardless, we’ll see how the next few days play out as the outrage continues to swirl.

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Roundup: A reasoned amendment

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Something very usual happened in the Senate yesterday, in that Independent Senator Kim Pate decided to move a reasoned amendment to the government’s supply bill. A reasoned amendment is basically a procedural move to decline to give a bill second reading, meaning you don’t even agree with the bill in principle. This is a very rare move, and the fact that this is being used on a supply bill is a sign that this is a senator who is playing with fire.

You don’t mess around with supply bills. This is about money the government needs to operate, and if it fails, they can’t just keep funding government operations with special warrants. It’s going to be a giant headache of having to recreate the bill in a way that isn’t identical to the one that just passed (because you can’t pass two identical bills in the same session), go through the process again as the House is set to rise for the holidays (the Senate usually lags a few days later) is going to be a giant headache that is going to lose this senator any of the support she’s hoping to gain. Now, because the Senate isn’t a confidence chamber, defeating a money bill won’t make the government fall, but this is still a very bad precedent to try and set, or worse, given other newer senators ideas about how they should start operating.

There are plenty of objectionable aspects of this stunt of Pate’s – and yes, it is a stunt – but part of it is misunderstanding what that the supply bill is not about new pandemic aid programmes – it’s about keeping the civil service functioning. Her particular concern that 3.5 million people remain the poverty line is commendable, but Pate has been advocating for the government to implement a basic income for a while now, and a lot of people have been misled by the way in which the CERB was rolled out into thinking that this is a template for a basic income, which it’s not. And implementing a basic income – of which certain designs can be useful, but plenty which are not – is a complex affair if you talk to economists who have been working on the issue for years, not the least of which is that it’s going to require (wait for it…) negotiation with the provinces, because they deliver welfare programmes. And if Pate thinks that this kind of a stunt is going to force the government to suddenly implement one, she’s quite mistaken. I am forced to wonder who is giving her this kind of procedural advice, because she’s operating out of bounds, and asking for a world of procedural trouble. It’s fortunate that the Senate adjourned debate for the day shortly after she moved this motion so that others can regroup, but this is a worrying development for the “new” Senate.

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QP: One last PMQs for 2020

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For Wednesday, every major leader was present in the Chamber, for the last proto-PMQs of 2020. Erin O’Toole led off, worrying that the wage subsidy padded the books of sixty-eight corporations (per the reporting in the Financial Post). Justin Trudeau said he would get to the question in a moment, and wanted to pay tribute to the doctors and regulators who got the Pfizer vaccine approved, but warned there was still going to be a long winter ahead. O’Toole said that was important, but noted that one of the corporation was a long-term care provider who needed help from the Armed Forces. Trudeau noted that they provided aid when it was necessary. O’Toole stated that the government didn’t do their due diligence — which is something of a self-own given that the opposition didn’t apparently do theirs either, and Trudeau noted that they are being criticised for getting money out too quickly and compliance would be on the back end. O’Toole said that people were being told to pay back CERB based on net income and not gross, and Trudeau said that people who made good-faith mistakes would be given leniency. O’Toole then switched to French to bring up the PornHub story again, and Trudeau reminded him that new rules are coming to ensure internet providers take down illegal materials. Yves-François Blanchet was up for the Bloc, and he once again demanded support for a Bloc bill to extend Quebec’s Bill 101 to federally-regulated sectors, to which Trudeau picked up a script to read about how they are committed to protecting both official languages and an updated Official Languages Act is on the way. Blanchet then wondered if the prime minister would meet the premiers in order to give them all the money they want with no strings attached, to which Trudeau chided him that the Bloc only wants to pick a fight when they have been working well with the provinces. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, returned to the story of shareholders getting dividends while taking the wage subsidy, to which Trudeau stated that they helped Canadians throughout the pandemic. Singh repeated the question in English, worrying especially about artists being forced to pay back aid, for which Trudeau reminded him of the additional aid they provided artists.

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Roundup: The greater danger of spending too little

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Chrystia Freeland unveiled her first economic update yesterday, and much of it was predictable, from the size of the deficit (which every single news source focused on immediately, as though it were still 1995), to the lack of a fiscal anchor while we remain in the pandemic, to the promises for how to build back in a more inclusive and greener manner. One of Freeland’s major points was that there is a greater danger in not spending enough than there is in spending too much – particularly at a time of record low interest rates – and we saw this borne out in the last recession, where the Harper government withdrew stimulus too soon, and the Bank of Canada was forced to keep rates lower for longer and we had a consumer debt crisis as a result. There were “down payments” for the work of getting to national childcare, long-term care and the meeting climate targets, but those are also all areas where they need provincial buy-in, so that’s going to get interesting very fast, especially given the number of hostile premiers that are currently in office. There were also new programmes rolled out for tourism and live events, and plans to extend GST/HST to web giants.

Predictably, the opposition parties were unimpressed. Erin O’Toole spent his response speech lying about what has been done to date, set up a completely false revisionist history of the pandemic, and went on TV to moan that the government “overspent” on CERB – apparently not grasping that the point was to keep people at home so as not to spread the virus (ergo, the Conservative plan is apparently to force people back to work in unsafe conditions so that they can facilitate the spread of said virus). The NDP were also predictable in their demands for wealth and “excess profit” taxes, never mind that they are inchoate concepts that largely don’t work out in practice. This means that we get to go through yet another round of election speculation as people wonder if the opposition will gang up to bring the government down over the inevitable implementing legislation.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield remarks on the ambition in the fiscal update, and whether or not the government will have the ability to deliver on any of it. Kevin Carmichael bemoans the lack of a fiscal anchor, but does admit that Freeland is right in that there is a danger of spending too little, or withdrawing stimulus too early (like Stephen Harper did). Paul Wells is disquieted by the lack of details on big items in the update, as well as this government’s propensity to farm out tough decisions to people not in government – which is a problem.

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