Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Gould takes the French debate

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It was the French debate for the Liberal leadership last night, and it was a fairly smoothly run affair, with an aggressive moderator, and very few instances of candidates talking over one another. While you can read a recap here, and the Canadian Press liveblog, I watched it in French to get a sense of how well the candidates were actually performing. The biggest blunder of the evening was Mark Carney slipping up and saying that he agrees with Hamas, which the Conservatives pounced on in bad faith, and Freeland quickly caught his error and corrected him, but it certainly coloured the online reaction.

Meanwhile, my thoughts:

  • Karina Gould was the best performer of the night. Her French was the strongest, and she was articulate in her positions, she had something of substance to say in most of the responses, and in her closing remarks, made the very salient point that they won’t win by being Conservative Lite™.
  • Chrystia Freeland’s French was very deliberate and didactic in tone, but that’s not much different from her speaking style in English. She had a bit of a mixed bag in terms of policy discussions, and could identify things the government has done or is doing, because she was there for the discussions and implementation.
  • Mark Carney had the shakiest French, but as he has throughout his entire leadership campaign, he mostly stuck to platitudes and clichés, and gave very few answers or specifics, even when pressed to do so by the moderator. It was not a shining moment for him.
  • Frank Baylis’s French was fine, being as he’s from Montreal, but he pretty much made himself irrelevant the whole evening, by constantly reminding everyone that he’s a businessman, as though that gave him any special abilities or insights, particularly when dealing with Trump, and he had some absolutely bizarre ideas associated with fiscal discipline.

The English debate is tonight, so we’ll see how different the candidates are with the language they are more comfortable in.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s overnight air attacks injured one woman in the outskirts of Kyiv, and Poland scrambled their aircraft because the attacks were targeting western Ukraine, close to their borders. G7 foreign ministers, led by Canada, are still working on a joint statement about the anniversary of the war, because the American position has now shifted into Russia’s favour. At the United Nations, the US voted against Ukraine’s resolution to condemn Russia for their invasion, and joined the ranks of Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.

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Roundup: Poilievre selects his echo chamber

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Yesterday, Pierre Poilievre held a media availability in the GTA, and if you ignore some of his more vacuous commentary, like claiming that he needs to cut government spending to bring down inflation when deficits never fuelled inflation in the first place, and the fact that inflation has already been tamed and is currently sitting below the 2 percent target, well, you get the drift. Nevertheless, what was particularly interesting was the fact that media who attended the event were told that they weren’t getting questions, and that only five pre-determined outlets would get questions—two far-right outlets, two ethno-cultural media outlets, and Radio-Canada.

This is clearly a strategy of speaking to an echo chamber who won’t push back on the kinds of horseshit he was peddling (like the inflation comments). It’s also noteworthy that in his interview with True North/Juno Media last week, Poilievre went on a tangent about how they should be allowed in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and he claimed that Gallery-members are “government-approved,” when the government has zero say in who gets Gallery accreditation—the Gallery is self-governing, and we have determined that True North, Rebel, and other far-right outlets are not actually practicing journalism, but propaganda. (The Gallery has also determined that left-wing outlet PressProgress also doesn’t merit membership because it is run by the partisan Broadbent Institute). Nevertheless, Poilievre’s spokesperson went ahead and spun it as though Poilievre was oh-so available to the media while Mark Carney was not.

This is, of course, mendacious. Poilievre has been self-selective of his media availabilities, and has refused most legacy media outlets, particularly those who are inclined to push back against any of his complete and utter bunkum. And yes, we have seen similar tactics coming from Trump, who has been offering not only space for far-right outlets, but has kicked out established media outlets from their desks in the Pentagon to give them to the chuds who will mindlessly repeat his propaganda. Conservatives in this country have been moving in this direction for a while now, and for Poilievre to be so blatant about it is very telling.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 161 drones and a dozen missiles at Ukraine overnight Wednesday, targeting gas infrastructure in Kharkiv, and the power supply in Odesa. The media availability from Zelenskyy’s meeting with the new US envoy was changed to a photo op, and a chill has definitely set in.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1892538057057878088

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Roundup: NDP remain clueless about inflation

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Yesterday, Statistics Canada released the December inflation numbers, and they ticked up to 1.9 percent as higher energy prices offset the downward effect that the stupid GST/HST “holiday” was having on some of the indexes. That “holiday” ended last week, so that effect will end shortly, but there were also notes to watch in that some of the core measures that the Bank of Canada tracks closely started to tick back up again after months of steady declines.

In response to these results, the NDP put out a statement that crowed that the GST “holiday” had driven down food price inflation, and therefore must be made permanent. *sighs* My dudes. No. You didn’t actually read the fucking report, did you? If you had, you would have seen that the decline in food price inflation was from restaurant meals, not grocery stores, along with alcohol purchases because beer and wine was also affected by the GST/HST holiday. Also, you don’t know how inflation works, because it’s a year-over-year measure. That means that if you make it permanent, within a year, the one-time tax cut will disappear as the year-over-year figures no longer count it. It also ignores that the real driver of food price inflation is climate change (and the yes, the war in Ukraine). This is not only illiterate, but it’s sheer incompetence.

There was something else in the report that bears mentioning, that was included in the rising energy prices, which was the provincial gas tax in Manitoba. A year ago, when Wab Kinew suspended the tax, he boasted that it meant Manitoba had the lowest inflation in the country. Well, it’s a year later, and inflation is a year-over-year measure, and said gas tax has been reinstated (albeit at a lower level than it was previously). And what are Manitoba’s numbers like? Well, their energy prices increased by 25.9%. Because inflation is a year-over-year measure, and this is the price you pay for a gimmick like suspending your gas tax for populist reasons.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has launched an overnight drone attack on Odessa, which has injured at least four. Ukraine launched their own overnight drone attack on Russia, hitting an oil refinery in the Samara region, after they previously hit a pumping station for the Caspian pipeline that supplies Kazakhstan. Russian forces claim to have control of the settlement of Yampolivka in the east, while Ukrainian forces destroyed a North Korean self-propelled howitzer in Luhansk region.

Meanwhile, president Zelenskyy is not visiting Saudi Arabia so as not to legitimise the “peace talks” that the US is holding with Russia without Ukraine or Europe present, where the US is throwing a lifeline to Putin rather than using the opportunity to maximize the pressure on him, while Trump himself was reciting Russian propaganda from the White House.

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Roundup: Leadership hopefuls straying into provincial territory

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It’s practically an iron law of Canadian politics that the longer a federal leadership contest runs, the more likely they are to start dipping into areas of provincial jurisdiction. With the NDP, well, that’s a given because they refuse to understand the very notion that federalism exists and you can’t just wave away jurisdictional boundaries with “political willpower” (aka Green Lantern Theory), but the Liberals are all pretty much at it right now with their various campaigns.

Chrystia Freeland proposed a plan to give incentives for Canadian-trained doctors and nurses to come home, with a big bonus and a promise to get credential recognition “within 30 days.” I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to work because the federal government doesn’t pay doctors and nurses (except in cases where they are working with Indigenous Services for First Nations and Inuit facilities), and credentials recognition is run by provincial professional colleges, where the federal government has no particular sway, so I’m not sure how she plans to make that happen. As well, most provinces have not done the necessary things to attract and retain doctors and nurses, such as properly increasing their compensation, or reforming how they bill the system, so it’s hard to see how the incentives are in place for them to be tempted by her one-time bonus.

Mark Carney wants to incentivise prefabricated and modular homes…but won’t give any details on how, that would happen. And yes, housing is primarily a provincial responsibility, so again, I’m not sure just what mechanism he wants to use for said promotion.

Karina Gould proposed both reforms to EI, which her government has been sitting on for years (and yes, I know people who were working on said project years ago), and also promised to a “path” toward basic income, which is hugely problematic at the federal level because most social services are delivered by the provinces, and it’s incredibly complex to try and figure out the various supports at different levels. The BC government had an expert panel report on how to make it happen, and their ultimate recommendation was not to proceed with a basic income, but to enhance existing supports because often they are better targeted for people with complex needs. Gould seems to have ignored this research, and even more disappointing was that the CP story about Gould’s proposal talked about the NDP private members’ bill and the Senate public bill which called for a “framework” for basic income, but those bills couldn’t actually make it happen. They were empty because those kinds of bills can’t spend money, and would simply have been moral suasion. Unfortunately, progressives have consistently ignored the research on basic incomes, because it’s a solution in search of problems that they are desperate to try, and if Gould wants “evidence-based” policy, this is not it.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched 140 drones against Ukraine overnight Wednesday, and strikes damaged port facilities in Izmail, while two of the drones landed in neighbouring Moldova. Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, starting a fire. President Zelenskyy appeared to have visited near the front lines at Pokrovsk, praising the good work of the soldiers there. Zelenskyy also said that he would not accept any bilateral “peace deal” that the US reaches with Russia in which Ukraine is not a participant.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1890070620504985845

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Roundup: Unilateral Arctic plans and foreign aid churlishness

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Pierre Poilievre called a press conference from Iqaluit, yesterday, where he announced his Arctic policy ideas, which include finally building an air force base in the region, doubling the number of Canadian Rangers, and building two more heavy icebreakers, but for the Royal Canadian Navy and not the Coast Guard. Oh, and that he was going to pay for it all by gutting foreign aid. Set aside the fact that the plans for an Arctic base have long been in the works with slow progress, but does the Navy even want icebreaker capability? They didn’t want the slushbreakers—sorry, Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships that the Harper government decided they needed, and here is another Conservative who wants to impose capabilities that they have not asked for, because reasons. Nevertheless, this whole thing set off the premier of Nunavut, who noted there was zero consultation on these policies, and pointed to actual sovereignty-affirming things that governments should be doing for the north that aren’t this kind of performative flexing.

As for Poilievre’s disdain for foreign aid, it’s one-part monkey-see-monkey-do with MAGA and Elon Musk dismantling USAID, but it’s juvenile, provincial, and ignores that foreign aid is soft power that also does thinks like not let Russia and China swoop in and start winning hearts and minds in those countries, which is what Trump opened the door to, and which Poilievre seems keen to follow, justified by a number of lies about the recipients of that aid based on the fact that UNRWA may have had a handful of compromised employees. He doesn’t care about the realities of this aid spending and the projection of soft power, because those recipients can’t vote for him, and he’s playing into tired populist tropes about “taking care of people at home,” even though they actually don’t care about vulnerable people at home, and just want a tax cut instead of actually helping anyone. And again, Poilievre doesn’t care.

If anything, Canada should actually be living up to its previous pledges about increased funding for foreign assistance, particularly because the dismantling of USAID is going to affect programmes that Canada was partnering with them on, and they provided much of the “thought leadership” in the space. Children are going to die of malnutrition, and preventable illness, HIV infections are going to skyrocket, and again, Poilievre doesn’t care because those people can’t vote for him. What a bleak, cursèd timeline we live in right now.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Ukrainian drone attack damaged an industrial facility—possibly an oil refinery—in Russia’s Saratov region. The US’ “freeze” of aid money means that organisations helping investigate Russian war crimes can’t pay staff or continue their work—Trump and Musk just doing Putin’s bidding.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1888916130254725208

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Roundup: The threat of annexation is serious

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Well, things got real again today, as Justin Trudeau told the audience at his Canada-US Economic Summit that Trump isn’t joking around with his talk of annexation, and that part of the reason why is access to our critical minerals. Trudeau apparently also talked about the need to mend fences with Mexico as well, which was apparently an oblique shot at Doug Ford, who has been trying to throw them under the bus rather than working with them to counter Trump. (Ford, meanwhile, disparaged the whole summit while on the campaign trail, because apparently, it’s stealing his thunder). There was also talk at the summit about pipelines, nuclear energy (and conservative shills who claim Trudeau is anti-nuclear are straight-up lying), and removing some of the federal-situated trade barriers around financial services regulations and procurement.

As the day went on, more details came out about those two calls that Trudeau had with Trump on Monday about the tariffs and the “reprieve” that was granted. Comments included that Trump was musing about breaking a 1908 boundary treaty, was dismissive of our contributions to NORAD, and listed off a litany of complaints. (Because “it’s all about fentanyl,” right?) It was also on this call that Trudeau apparently deduced that Trump hadn’t been briefed on the $1.3 billion border plan, but maybe that’s what you get when Trump refuses your calls for weeks while he plays gangster. (And he was also refusing the Mexican president’s calls as well, so this was not a Trudeau-specific snub).

So this is where things are at—the stakes are higher than we may want to admit (and certainly the head of the Canadian American Business Council doesn’t want to admit it and still believes this is just an offensive joke), but maybe this existential threat will help shake off the normalcy bias that has perpetuated a certain status quo. Nevertheless, the political landscape is shifting drastically right now, and it’s going to make for a very different election campaign than what everyone was counting on.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb attack on Sumy region in the northeast killed three. Russians claim to have taken the settlement of Toretsk, but the Ukrainian brigade in the outskirts says they haven’t moved. International nuclear monitors are concerned that the number of attacks on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have increased.

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Roundup: Ford’s false “mandate” demands

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Ontario premier Doug Ford confirmed that yes, he will be calling an early election on Wednesday, and spouted a bunch of bullshit about needing a “strong mandate” to deal with Trump, which is fiction. He went so far as to call for the “largest mandate in Ontario history,” which veers dangerously close into one-party-state delusions. And incredibly, Ford said “So you better pray that we get elected, because I’m going to protect everyone’s job, including the media’s job,” which no he won’t, and then said, “Imagine Bonnie Crombie or Marit Stiles sitting across from President Trump negotiating a deal. It would be an absolute disaster. And God help us if that ever happens.” Premiers do not engage in international negotiations. Ever. That is explicitly outside of their jurisdiction. Ford is not going to negotiate with Trump, even if he thinks that “businessman to businessman” they can work something out.

This is pure distraction. Ford has been planning on an early election for months, and now he has Trump as a fig-leaf of an excuse. He wanted to go to an election before the federal election because he doesn’t want Pierre Poilievre to taint his chances in 2026, when the next election is supposed to be held, and he’s afraid of this nonsense “theory” that Ontarians like to have different parties in power federally and provincially. And by running against Trump, he figures he can distract everyone from his corruption (RCMP investigation ongoing) and absolute mismanagement of the healthcare system to the point of its collapse, his dismantling of the post-secondary education system, and the size of the deficits he’s been running after all of his lamentations about Kathleen Wynne’s record when he has done worse by absolutely every metric. But Trump? Well, that’s a real distraction, and his playacting the “Captain Canada” role has been helping him build that, even though he hasn’t actually filled any federal vacuum in leadership (there is a conscious decision not to react to every Trump utterance), and it’s already had the Baby Spice effect on people’s brains.

Meanwhile, his constant claims that he needs a “mandate” is a fraught political concept that doesn’t actually mean anything in a Westminster system. He has a majority legislature. His opposition parties are largely ineffective or in disarray (and he has invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to neuter third-party groups from campaiging against him). Those opposition leaders said they will support anything he needs to do to counter the effect of any Trump tariffs. His claims that he needs a “mandate” to do this is an import that doesn’t actually mean anything. He was elected to govern for four years—he doesn’t need to call an election every time a crisis comes up to say that he needs a “mandate” to deal with it. Nothing would get done if he did. This is naked self-interest, and it needs to be exposed as such, but the Queen’s Park media won’t, and I suspect that Uncle Doug will sail to another election victory, both because he continues to beguile the population, and the opposition parties continue to be useless. It’s absolutely embarrassing.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a drone barrage against residential buildings in Kyiv overnight Friday, killing three. Russians claim they are about to overtake the town of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched an overnight drone attack against one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in the Ryazan region, causing an explosion and damage. Reuters got access to the drone unit that is launching these long-range attacks into Russia to damage their war capabilities.

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Roundup: Poilievre’s revisionist history on energy exports

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Pierre Poilievre held a media availability in Vancouver yesterday to promise that he would undo the changes to the capital gains taxes, spinning some bullshit provided to him by Jack Mintz about how this kills tens of thousands of jobs, when in reality it only provides a loophole for self-incorporated wealthy individuals to pay less tax—a fact that the Liberals were too incompetent to properly communicate. But this wasn’t the biggest whopper of the event. When asked by the media about where he stands on potential export taxes on oil exports as retaliation from Trump, Poilievre claimed that the Liberals blocked pipelines and LNG terminals, forcing Canadians to export more to the US, which gives Trump more leverage. Absolutely nothing about his is true. None of it. And with receipts, here’s Andrew Leach.

There’s more. In fact, another whole thread here about the history of Northern Gateway that Poilievre has memory-holed in order to create a false version of history to blame Trudeau rather than note the lack of action under the Harper government. (First tweet below)

And then Danielle Smith tried to start chiming in about an Alberta-first “Team Canada” approach grounded entirely in fantasy.

And just because…

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 34 out of 55 Russian drones overnight Thursday, but debris damaged energy infrastructure in Poltava region. There was a further drone attack on Kyiv as UK prime minister Keir Starmer was visiting. Ukrainian forces have begun using remote-controlled ground assault vehicles. Ukraine attacked a major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region.

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Roundup: No, we don’t need a “unity government”

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The closer the Trump tariffs loom, the more insane the suggestions are being proffered. Case in point was in The Line yesterday, where former NDP MP and law professor Craig Scott said that the only way to save Canada is with a “unity government.” It was like he had decided to smoke meth before sitting down to write the op-ed because it was devoid of sense, or rationality.

Yes, Trump’s threats are serious, but what exactly is a “unity government” going to do? The government currently has all of the powers it needs for retaliatory tariffs and most other countermeasures. Creating a situation of an interim party leader (as prime minister) and building a Cabinet to include members of all other parties (and as he proposes, former Conservatives like James Moore, Rona Ambrose and Lisa Raitt if the current ones don’t play ball) would only be for the sake of optics, and would cause more problems than it solves. What portfolios do you distribute to members of opposition parties, for a few months? And if you’re brining in former Conservatives because the current ones don’t play ball, well, they’re all in the phase of their post-political careers where they are making money, and bringing them into Cabinet means a lot of headaches around disclosures and ethics obligations—again for the sake of a few months of optics. On top of that, the demand to bring Parliament back right away makes no sense either, because there is nothing for them to legislate around the Trump threats. As I have stated elsewhere, its only utility would be for dubious unanimous consent motions and vapid take-note debates.

You don’t need a “unity government” for MPs to play nice in the face of a grave threat. Insisting that you do is naïve and ahistorical, but fully in keeping with Scott, who was a blowhard when he was an MP, and this hasn’t changed in his time since apparently. Anyone who takes his op-ed seriously needs to rethink some of their life choices.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims Ukraine has hit them with a massive drone and missile attack overnight that hit two factories. Russian forces are bypassing the stronghold of Pokrovsk in order to try and cut off its supply lines instead. Production at the Pokrovsk coal mine (used for the steel-making industry) has been halted as Russians close in.

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Roundup: Leadership rules released

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The Liberal Party National Council met last night, and around 10:30 PM released the rules of the forthcoming leadership contest. The voting ends March 2nd, with the announcement made on March 9th. There will be a $350,000 entry fee (high enough to discourage no-hope candidates), and candidates must declare by January 23rd. People registering to vote in the contest have until January 27th to sign up (remember, the Liberals don’t have memberships you need to buy), and they have tightened those rules to only include citizens and permanent residents, following all of the talk at the Foreign Interference Inquiry.

There are already complaints over social media that the entry fee is too high, meaning the field will be narrow, but that’s kind of the point—this is a race to be prime minister, not leader of the third party like it was the last time around, so you only want serious people, not those looking to build a profile (as far, far too many people do in leadership races). Yes, it’s a barrier to entry, but again, this needs to be a race for serious candidates only. As for the changes to who can register, there were a number of people on social media talking about how they registered their cats to vote, and things like that, because they thought they were being terribly clever in proving a point about how easy the system is to game. The Party spokesperson tweeted out that those fraudulent “memberships” (which they’re not really) will be removed, because again, the point of this exercise is really to collect data to populate a voter identification database, and it’s not too difficult to tell that your pets don’t have voter identification to match to in the system.

Speaking of unserious entrants, backbencher Chandra Arya announced he was running yesterday, and included a list of ridiculous plans including ending Canada’s monarchy, which is not only disqualifyingly dumb, but would mean getting unanimous consent of the provinces to essentially rewrite the constitution to do so. He also speaks no French and dismissed its importance (and good luck with that too). Christy Clark is apparently due to announce her bid shortly, but I did notice that Chantal Hébert was calling her out over social media for refusing to do an interview in French (to say nothing about actually knowing which party she belongs to, as she apparently took out a Conservative membership to vote for Jean Charest in their last leadership race after musing about her own bid for that leadership).

Ukraine Dispatch

Two people were killed in Russian shelling of the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s air force says that Russia has launched over 51,000 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine since the start of the invasion. And that oil depot that Ukraine hit near a strategic Russian airfield has continued to burn for more than 24 hours.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1877283979574845612

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