Tag Archives: First Nations

QP: Another slogan to “fix” the budget

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While both the prime minister and his deputy were in town, they were not present for QP, though most of the other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and listed off his slogans before noting that the government was spending more on interest on the debt than healthcare, and demanded the government take is “dollar-for-dollar” plan to “fix the budget.” Sean Fraser wondered if it was common sense or nonsense to cut programmes to help people. Poilievre took a swipe at Fraser for his alleged incompetence around immigration numbers, which “doubled” housing prices, and demanded the government reduce the deficit and interest rates. François-Philippe Champagne recited that Poilievre only built six affordable housing units when he was “housing minister” (which he wasn’t really), and that they wouldn’t take any lessons. Poilievre switched to English to misquote a Scotiabank report claiming government deficits were adding two points to the interest rates, to which Fraser accused him of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing in his opposition to programmes to help people. Poilievre insisted there was no value in food programmes that don’t exist or the doubling of the cost of housing, and repeated his same misleading declaration about interest rates. Fraser needled Poilievre about the number of affordable units lost when he was “minister” and the number of houses that weren’t built. Poilievre accused Fraser of being incompetent as immigration minister before being named housing minister, and then gave some misleading nonsense about rental prices when he was “housing minister.” Fraser took a shot at the Conservatives for opposing the resettlement of Afghan refugees who had helped the Canadian Forces, and after the Speaker finally restored order, repeated the points about Poilievre’s housing record.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and complained that Quebec didn’t get their fair share of housing funds, to which Pablo Rodriguez talked about the Bloc’s lack of priorities as they keep demanding referendums while the government is investing. Therrien tried his complaint again, and Fraser insisted that they were working with the province to ensure they would get their fair share.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed about corporate handouts to companies like Loblaws, and wanted the government to roll back Conservative policies. Champagne thanked him for his help in reforming competition law, but said they still needed support to get the Grocery Code of Conduct passed. Singh switched to French to demand an excess profits tax on grocery giants, and Champagne repeated his response.

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Roundup: Compromising the GG for clicks

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Last week, the Governor General held a national symposium on online harassment, and invited people who have experienced significant amount of it over the past few years to speak about it.

https://twitter.com/GGCanada/status/1778413516266840314

Of course, the Attorney General, Arif Virani, decided to make some hay around this in order to promote the online harms bill, which may be great for him, but is very bad for the GG, and he should have known that. His staff should have known that and ensured that he didn’t tweet something out that could compromise the GG and her position. The staff at Rideau Hall should have also known this and not invited Virani for this very reason, because come on.

And so, we now have a punch of loudmouths from the pundit class railing about the GG and how she has “endorsed” a controversial bill (which she actually did not), but of course truth doesn’t actually matter to these kinds of loudmouths, whose only goal is to try and embarrass the government. But this government, of course, so desperate to get their content for their socials, ignored all of this and went ahead and tried to co-opt the GG’s event for their own purposes. And of course, they’ll justify this by saying “oops, but we meant well.” Like they always do. The ends justify the means, the rules only apply to bad people, and so on. Every gods damned time with these guys.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Fragments of a downed missile fell over a settlement outside of Dnipro on Sunday, injuring twelve. Ukraine’s military chief has signalled that the battlefield situation on the front lines in the east has significantly deteriorated over the past several days, and that they are attempting to take the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9th, which is when Russia marks Victory Day.

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Roundup: A housing plan to challenge the provinces and municipalities

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In one of the last pre-budget announcements, the federal government delivered their overall housing plan for 2024, which was a mixture of previously made announcements over the past couple of weeks, with a few more added in—such as plans to lease and not sell public land—to offer a more complete picture of the things that they are doing as a federal government to “unlock” the construction of hundreds of thousands of homes. And I am going to make the point that the term “unlocked” is interesting and deliberate, while most media outlets keep using the term “build” incorrectly, because they’re not saying they’re going to build x-number of units, because they have no way to actually guarantee that because they have very few levers at their disposal to actually build. The other part of “unlock” is that it very much puts the onus on the other levels of government, who do have those levers, to do the work now that the federal government has cleared the way for them.

A lot of this has shown that they have been listening to expert like Mike Moffatt, and while you can read his full thread, I did think it was nice that they put out a chart as to whose responsible for what, because there are a lot of people who are ignorant about these kinds of jurisdictional questions (or pretend to be in any case), so it’s handy that they actually spell it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778804892183748617

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778808362668306508

And a couple more thoughts from Jennifer Robson in this thread:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Shortages of air defences is leaving Kharkiv in particular more vulnerable to Russian attack. A drone attack hit an energy facility in Dnipropetrovsk in the south. Reuters has another photo series of the front lines.

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QP: Friday energy on a Thursday

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The prime minister was again absent from QP today, as was his deputy, and all of the other leaders were also away. Melissa Lantsman led off, railing about the carbon levy increase, and demanded the prime minister respect the vote on having a televised meeting with the premiers and on what day it will be. Steve MacKinnon noted that today they are debating their sustainable jobs bill, and that the Conservatives have put forward 20,000 amendments generated by AI, calling them the “robo-caucus” doing “robo-work” and told them to stop gatekeeping opportunities, Lantsman said that was false and not an answer, before she listed food bank stats, and again demanded a meeting. MacKinnon suggested they “plug into the reality channel,” because of the jobs at stake that they are standing in the way of. Lantsman insisted that the prime minister was being defiant and wondered what he was covering for. Anita Anand noted that the invitation is open for premiers to come up with a better plan but they haven’t put any forward, and that Scott Moe even stated this was the most cost-effective plan. Dominique Vien took over in French and listed failures from the government, before citing the premier of Quebec telling the federal government to butt out of its business. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that Poielivre only built six housing units when he was minister, and invited her to visit an affordable housing project in her riding. Vien claimed federal incompetence in fiscal management, and repeated the demand to butt out. MacKinnon got up to point out that she was in Charest’s Cabinet and voted for a carbon price, and now she wants to be hypocritical about housing.

Claude DeBellefeuille led for the Bloc, claimed that Quebec was being short-changed and demanded higher unconditional housing transfers to the province. Duclos praised an affordable housing project in her project. DeBellefeuille tried the same demand a second time, and Duclos again praised the agreement signed with the province a few weeks ago, which was the largest in provincial history.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and blamed the federal government for rental increases in Montreal and for not building enough affordable housing. (Guess whose jurisdiction that is?) Duclos returned to his talking points about Poilievre’s six units. Lindsay Mathyssen decried inadequate military housing across the country, and Bill Blair pointed out that the work has already begun to build new units on bases across the country. 

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QP: “Intruding” into the competences of the provinces

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Even though Wednesdays are usually the day the prime minister answers all questions in QP, he was absent today, as he was due to begin his testimony at the foreign interference inquiry before QP was likely to end. His deputy was also absent, but not all of the other leaders were present, even though it’s Wednesday. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, listing off a number of falsehoods around things like inflation, and wondered why the federal government was meddling in Quebec’s affairs. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that it was odd for Poilievre to talk about incompetence because when he was housing minister, he built a whole six units, but you called Quebec mayors incompetent. Poilievre then noted that interest rates did not come down today and blamed federal spending, but Duclos kept on with his same points. Poilievre repeated the false point about interest rates, and Anita Anand pointed out that it’s possible to provide supports for Canadians while being fiscally prudent, and listed their measures. Poilievre repeated the false claim that government spending is fuelling inflation, and Anand noted that wages are growing faster than inflation and that the current government has brought down poverty rates across the country. Poilievre gave his Mark Carney lines, and this time François-Philippe Champagne stood up to declare that he would take no lessons from the Conservatives, and listed their plans to help Canadians while the slogans on the other side wouldn’t build homes.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc—even though Yves-François Blanchet was just out in the Foyer answering questions—and accused the federal government of meddling in Quebec’s jurisdiction and demanded they just give them money. Duclos listed investments the government is making to help Canadians. Therrien repeated his same demand, and listed more ways they work with Quebec.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and decried the Indigenous infrastructure funding gap (Hajdu: It was important for the AFN to help us write this report so we can close the gap faster), and then asked about the Canadian Disability Benefit implementation (Kiera: We are on track to deliver the benefit, and we will get it right).

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Roundup: Not spelling out a non-binding motion

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The Conservatives spent their Supply Day yesterday calling for an “emergency” televised meeting with premiers on the carbon levy, which was full of the usual nonsense and false talking points about the effect the carbon levy is having on food affordability, or using the torqued numbers from the PBO report in a misleading way. Nevertheless, Pierre Poilievre was trying to make a point about Trudeau being somehow afraid to face the premiers, which is just more of his terminally online “Debate me!” energy going on, even though we all know this wouldn’t actually be a debate, it would be the premiers ganging up for the sake of them all gathering video clips for fundraising purposes.

This having been said, I find myself one again supremely irritated by how the CBC—and in particular a certain journalist in the CBC’s bureau—chose to write up the day’s activities, with the headline about the motion trying to “force” Trudeau to meet with the premiers. The motion is non-binding. It can’t force anything. All Supply Day motions are non-binding. But the headline seems to indicate that it could bind the government, and nowhere in the text of the piece does it point out that it’s non-binding. This is malpractice at this point, because it’s painting a completely false picture of what the debate was. The “debate”—and I use the term loosely because it was MPs reading twenty-minute speeches into the record—was posturing for the sake of gathering clips for social media. That’s all. And this particular writer has been on the Hill long enough that he should know this, but he has a habit of ignoring relevant facts about procedure or jurisdiction to try and lend weight to his pieces. It’s not cute, and it’s not doing anything for the CBC’s reputation.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine says that they downed 20 attack drones overnight, though there was still infrastructure damage in the west of the country. Ukraine is trying to repair and shield their power systems after the recent spate of attacks. A retaliatory strike inside of Russia hit an aviation factory in the Voronezh region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited fortifications in the Kharkiv region, while the Americans are offering to send seized Iranian weapons, and to sell them $138 million USD air defence upgrades.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1777666453950337220

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Roundup: No, a foreign power can’t install a prime minister

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One of the unfortunate things about certain people I follow on the Twitter Machine constantly retweeting sludge is that sometimes I see something that is so outrageous that it sets me off. This, from former Global journalist Sam Cooper, is just such an egregious thing.

Setting aside the torqued use of Michael Chong’s testimony, this has all of the credibility of those racist emails that used to circulate, usually at the hands of someone’s relatives, where people worried that the changing Canadian demographics could mean that we might *gasp!* have a Muslim prime minister! As is unsurprising in racist emails like those, the internal logic was deeply flawed and the understanding of our system was non-existent, and was likely repurposed from American racist content worrying about a Muslim president, but that aside, this worry from Cooper is about the same quality.

To wit: If a party held a leadership contest while during a prime minister’s term, the fear expressed here is that, somehow, a foreign government would be able to swamp party memberships (either sales or sign-ups, depending on the party) and install a preferred candidate, who would then become prime minister without an election (which, I should not need to remind anyone, is perfectly legitimate in a parliamentary system). The hole in this logic is that pretty much every party has a weighted point system as part of these elections, so that highly populated regions of the country don’t swamp the more sparely-populated ones. In order for a foreign government to therefore take over a leadership contest, they would need a critical mass of voters in the majority of ridings in the country, particularly ones like small rural ridings in Quebec or Atlantic Canada. That’s simply not a possibility for any foreign government to engineer. The fact that Cooper doesn’t have a clue how these things work should be (another) warning sign about his judgment. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone attacks on Kharkiv struck residential buildings and cut power supplies. A Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle (larger than a drone) was used to strike deep inside Russian territory, striking an industrial site.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775913487300002262

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Roundup: Erin O’Toole’s revisionist history

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It was MP Day at the Foreign Interference Inquiry, and the big star of the day was former Conservative leader and serial liar Erin O’Toole, who has come to believe that as many as nine seats may have been lost as a result of foreign interference, mostly from China. That’s…an interesting number, considering that the party’s internal polling had long since concluded that their position on vaccine mandates was what cost them the election (though O’Toole being caught out in as many lies as he had been really didn’t help him any, one of the most egregious examples being on gun control).

Not only that, but O’Toole went on to claim that the member of the party’s national council who initiated the petition calling for a leadership review, who is Taiwanese, may have had motives based in foreign interference, which is also ridiculous. It also bears remembering that around the same time, O’Toole began in imperious streak of subverting the (garbage) Reform Act rules the party signed onto in order to punish those in caucus who were standing against him, resulting in him pushing out Senator Denise Batters, and this kept escalating until caucus called for a vote, again according to the (garbage) Reform Act, and at that point, he was done for. (This is all without anything related to the calls for his ouster from the collection of grifters, conspiracy theorists, and grievance tourists who were occupying downtown Ottawa at the same time). Trying to invent foreign interference motives for his demise is not just cry baby behaviour, it’s outright historical revisionism and fabulism to soothe his wounded ego, but I guess if you have no problem lying to everyone all the time, you’re probably pretty used to lying to yourself as well. Meanwhile the pundit class praises him for showing restraint in not using Trumpian “Big Lie” language. Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, as Kenny Chiu, Jenny Kwan and Michael Chong also testified, we have learned that the RMCP investigation into allegations of attempted Chinese intimidation of Chong has hit a dead end.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles struck Dnipro on Tuesday, damaging an educational facility. There was also a drone attack against Kharkiv early Thursday that stuck apartment buildings and homes, killing at least four. In all, Russia launched 3000 aerial bombs, 600 missiles and 400 drones against Ukraine in March. Here is a look at the security arrangements that over 30 countries have now signed with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775410021712494814

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Roundup: Another tranche of housing money

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As part of his pre-budget announcement tour, Justin Trudeau was in Halifax yesterday to announce a new tranche of housing funding, which comes with strings attached for provinces to access it, and if provinces don’t, well, it’ll get rolled into the municipal stream to let them access it instead. Some of this is an extension of the existing Housing Accelerator Fund, but they also have some new conditions around densification to be able to qualify for that funding, which is really about overcoming the NIMBYism that prevents a lot of it currently.

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/1775245369128939654

This having been said, there will be implementation issues, and for that, Jennifer Robson has some thoughts.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they downed two out of three Russian drones overnight on Monday, and that so far this year, Russia has fired five Zircon hypersonic missiles at Kyiv. Ukraine continues to make its own drone attacks against Russian refineries, with the latest strike against the country’s third-largest refinery. After much debate, Ukraine has lowered its draft age from 27 to 25 as they need to replenish their troops. Ukraine’s largest energy grid operator says that recent attacks have damaged the power system, but that total collapse is unlikely.

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Roundup: Capping temporary foreign workers

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Yesterday, ministers Marc Miller and Randy Boissonnault announced that the federal government will be setting a “soft cap” on temporary foreign workers as part of immigration levels coming this fall, with an eye to reducing the number who arrive in Canada. Part of this is justified by the fact that the pandemic labour shortages have started to subside, and there isn’t the same need for as many, particularly in low-wage sectors where the valid criticism is that access to these workers keeps wages artificially low, though we have seen a great deal of wage growth over the past two years as part of the labour shortages and rising inflation, and wage growth has been outpacing headline inflation for a while now (which lends to fears of a wage-price spiral if wage growth doesn’t start moderating).

Mike Moffatt has some context for what the government announced, which is going to combine with the caps on foreign students.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1770916193894891796

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1770917112007000102

On that note, The Logic takes a look at how those public-private partnership colleges are going to have to deal with the new federal rules around capped numbers, after they learned to exploit the old system, which was treated very much as a loophole by those students who knew they weren’t getting much of an education but were rather trying to get a foothold in Canada so they could get some work experience that would allow them apply for permanent residency—something else that the re-imposition of the caps on hours worked for international students is going to have even more of an impact on.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched its largest missile barrage against Kyiv in weeks, and while all of the missiles were shot down, there was still damage and injuries from the debris. As well, missile strikes damaged power supplies in Kharkiv, and a missile strike in Mykolaiv in the south killed one and injured four. Three Ukrainian-backed Russian rebel groups say they are continuing cross-border attacks following weeks of raids. Ukrainian women are talking about beatings they received at the hands of Russians during the occupation of their homes.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1770729801940123891

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