Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Lies about legalisation

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For months now, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have been claiming that the Liberals “legalised” hard drugs in BC, which is false, and have been trying to build up a particular lie that they are planning to do so across the country. Again, to repeat, this is a lie, and the limited decriminalisation that happened in BC was done reluctantly, but only after the province, the provincial police force, and municipal authorities all wanted to give it a go as a way of reducing mortality from the toxic drug crisis. They’ve had limited success, but have started rolling back some of those measures which had nothing to do with decriminalisation, mainly being open drug use, because it’s spooking voters. And I get that, but it has nothing to do with decriminalisation and everything to do with the toxic supply. Drug users have taken the notion that if they use openly, then someone may save them with Naloxone if they overdose in public. It’s not just happening in BC, but everywhere across the country now—I see it on the streets in Ottawa all the time, and there is no decriminalisation happening.

Nevertheless, this week Poilievre claims he has “proof” that there is a national decriminalisation plan—which he and his MPs use “legalise” with interchangeably, even though they are absolutely not the same thing. The problem? That the very text he’s highlighting doesn’t say that there is a national decriminalisation plan, only that the federal government is willing to work with willing jurisdictions using the tools at their disposal, that can include decriminalisation. It doesn’t matter that they apparently have no reading comprehension ability—they’ve just highlighted a couple of words and made a false declaration.

And now Poilievre and his MPs are blanketing their social channels with this blatant lie, because they want to make people angry and afraid. The truth doesn’t matter. It never did. They’re going to keep lying, because it works, and because nobody, least of all legacy media, is going to call them on it.

Ukraine Dispatch

While both sides have traded drone assaults, the Russians claim to have taken over two villages—one in Kharkiv region, the other in Luhansk. Russians are moving in on the town of Pokrovsk in the east, which serves as a logistics hub for Ukraine. The Czech Republic says that artillery deliveries to Ukraine are going to accelerate. And Ukraine is closing in on a deal to restructure $20 billion of its debt.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1815394403675988039

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Roundup: Straying far out of their lane

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After their big song and dance about wanting the federal government to stay in their own lane, the premiers decided to start weighing in on defence spending—an explicitly federal jurisdiction—yesterday, trying to insist that Canada should meet its NATO spending target sooner than the outlined plan. I’m really not sure how this is exactly the premiers staying in their own lane if they expect the prime minister to stay in his, but they certainly made no shortage of ridiculous excuses for their demands, such as this being about trade with the Americans and so on, but come on. Justin Trudeau did write a letter in response to Tim Houston and Doug Ford, saying the federal government is only trying to help the provinces improve the lives of Canadians, and that maybe they should sign on rather than be obstructionist.

Also from the meeting, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador expressed an interest in resettling some the asylum seekers who landed in Quebec, but that hasn’t stopped Doug Ford from demanding more money for resettlement, nor has it stopped David Eby and Danielle Smith from demanding money for “newcomers,” when the specific issue is just what obligation the federal government has for asylum seekers before their refugee claim is approved, at which point they genuinely become a federal responsibility. This isn’t about helping to settle economic migrants or other mainstream immigrants, which aren’t the federal government’s sole responsibility, but they want to pretend that it is because they want to whinge for more money when what they’re trying to conflate has nothing to do with the actual obligations of the federal government. Again, it’s not really that tough to understand, but these premiers are going to be obtuse and engage in sophistry along the way.

Meanwhile, because several of the premiers are talking equalisation again, I cannot stress enough how badly the CBC described the programme in their article today. Provinces do not write cheques for equalisation. Not province transfers money to another province. It is paid for out of the federal treasury from the income taxes collected from all Canadians, and distributed to those provinces who fall below the threshold of fiscal capacity to have equal programming. Even more to the point, while not raised in the CBC piece, fiscal capacity has nothing to do with whether or not a province is running a deficit, because that would be absolutely absurd and no province would run a surplus if they thought they could get equalisation dollars if they didn’t. Regardless, this was extremely sloppy journalism from the CBC and reads to me like the reporter just relayed how one of the premiers described how the programme works rather than actually looking it up or asking someone who has a clue (and that’s not any of the premiers). Hermes wept…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 95 prisoners of war each yesterday.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1813524697964823028

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Roundup: A predictable lack of self-awareness of her rhetoric

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As day follows night, it was not only predictable but absolutely inevitable that Danielle Smith would immediately start parroting Republican talking points to condemn the rhetoric of her political rivals for the increase in political violence in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And because this is Danielle Smith, there is absolutely zero self-awareness of her own history of violent political rhetoric and encouraging it among the more swivel-eyed elements of her political base in reference to her rivals.

In fact, here are some examples of how Smith’s past rhetoric has put lives in danger, which, again, she refuses to take absolutely any responsibility for. No, it’s the “progressive left” with their “cancel culture” that is creating this violent rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre says he worries about the safety of his family, but rejects any notion that he has to tone down his own political rhetoric, where he accuses the prime minister of selling out the country to foreign powers, or offering succour to the “convoy” crowd and their flags denoting their desire to have sex with the prime minister, while refusing to condemn their violent rhetoric (such as images or actual nooses that they carry as part of their grievance cosplay). It should be little wonder then why Canadian intelligence services worry that threats to politicians are increasing because those people see that there’s no consequences for them doing so. Indeed, this comes at the same time as the former Army reservist who crashed into the gates of Rideau Hall with a truck full of guns got out on statutory release. It was a short sentence (he was sentenced to less than half of the maximum), and seems to be no worse for wear from it. It certainly gives all of the impression that we’re not taking it seriously.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s navy says that the last Russian patrol ship has left Russian-occupied Crimea to be re-based elsewhere, thanks to Ukraine’s campaign of naval drones causing significant damage to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine still needs another 25 Patriot missile defence systems, and more F-16s in order to protect the country from further Russian strikes.

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Roundup: Target 2032

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The government’s slow rollout of NATO announcements continued apace yesterday with the formal announcement that their roadmap to meeting the defence spending target of two percent of GDP was expected by 2032, at which point that would include not only the submarines, but some other air defences as well. But because the details on that roadmap remain scarce, it allowed the usual narratives to carry on, while the Conservatives took to their socials to insist that the government had no intention of really following through on this promise, with no evidence at all (unless it was an admission that they have no intention of sticking to any of these plans, because they have already admitted that they have no intention of meeting the two percent target, merely “working toward it.”)

There was also an announcement that Canada and the US would work with Finland on icebreaker capability, with the details to be worked out in the next six months.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched two missiles and six drones at Ukraine, mostly at the Sumy and Mykolaiv regions. US intelligence reports that Russian agents tried to assassinate the CEO of a German arms manufacturer sending weapons to Ukraine. And Ukraine’s former army chief, who clashed with president Zelenskyy, has begun his new role as ambassador to the UK.

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Roundup: The usual NATO narratives

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Because the NATO summit is happening right now in Washington DC, you may have noticed that the entire media narrative in Canada is around the two-percent-of-GDP defence spending target (which is a stupid metric!) and how Canada has not managed to miraculously achieve it, and tossing around words like “free-rider” and “unserious.” The Elder Pundits have declared that this is the narrative by which the entire event must be framed by, and ignore absolutely all other context or counterfactuals.

Indeed, we shall not mention that the GDP denominator is a much bigger hurdle for Canada because of the size of our economy relative to many other NATO member countries, and that because our economy is growing, that pushes our spending requirements even higher. (Conversely, if we crashed the economy, we could reach that two percent target really quickly). We shall not mention that Canada contributes to NATO operations in a meaningful way, unlike many other NATO countries who may be meeting the two-percent spending target—holding the fort in Kandahar when no one else would, hitting moving targets in Libya, managing one of the most difficult missions in the Baltics right now (being the Latvian mission) as well as training Ukrainian troops into being effective soldiers who were able to hold off the invasion. Nor shall we mention that other countries claiming to reach their two percent targets have only done so through the accounting trickery of front-loading their capital spending (meaning future spending will drop off), or promising the spending in spite of constitutional restrictions around the size of deficit spending. None of these facts matter to the Elder Pundits and the narrative they have decided upon.

Yes, Canada needs to spend more, but you can’t just throw money at National Defence—they haven’t had the capacity to spend their full budget, which is why the spending lapses (which the PBO did get right in his report). It is taking time to build the capacity back up to spend the money, and part of that is fixing the recruitment and retention crisis (which has gone very, very slowly). But they are recapitalising the Forces in a significant way, and once we get to the submarine procurement, those numbers are going climb precipitously, but again, we want to do that cautiously to avoid the procurement problems of the past. Minister have been saying that we need there to be something to show for the increased spending, which media and the Elder Pundits have had a hard time comprehending. So, when you hear the usual “free rider” nonsense, remember that we are actually contributing, unlike a lot of other member countries.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1810866983534997849

Ukraine Dispatch

Here are more accounts from the bombing of the children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday. Russia claims that the hospital was hit by Ukrainian fire, but offers no evidence, while the UN assessment is pretty sure it was the Russian missile that was observed. From the NATO Summit in Washington, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Americans to keep funding Ukraine’s war effort rather than waiting for the election results in November.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1810640148444709169

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Roundup: Another far-right defeat

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The news out of France this weekend was that the far-right was not the victors in their legislative elections, but rather that the left-wing alliance came in with the highest seats, followed by Emmanuel Macron’s centrists, denying the far-right the victory they had been hoping for. This isn’t great for Macron in that his prime minister has resigned and he will have a hard time getting his agenda through the National Assembly, but nevertheless, his gamble did somewhat pay off in that he thwarted the far right from making any further advances. This, along with the fact that Labour won a resounding victory in the UK days earlier, has plenty of people talking about how hopefully the US and Canada will be next to reject the far-right. I am not wholly mollified.

The US remains the big question mark, particularly given all of the attention on president Biden’s fitness to carry on for another term, and we cannot get too complacent here in Canada. While our own far-right is still marginal, the bigger danger remains that the Conservatives continue to try and court those far-right actors and are increasingly taking pages out of the authoritarian playbook. Nevertheless, the Elder Pundits in this country insist that there’s nothing to see here, that things can’t be that bad under Poilievre, or that the concerns of women or LGBTQ+ people are mere exaggerations. They’re not, and we can’t let our guard down at this critical juncture.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down three out of six missiles fired by Russia over the central regions of the country. Russian drones hit an energy facility in the Sumy region on Saturday. Ukrainian drones hit a munitions depot inside Russian territory, causing a massive explosion. Russians claim that Ukrainians were thwarted trying to hijack one of their strategic bombers, but there is no verification of that claim.

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Roundup: Electoral reform tries to take the spotlight

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In addition to the constant wanking of pollsters and polling analysts, while the Elder Pundits continue to pronounce the end of Justin Trudeau’s political career, there has been an entire sub-category of commentary that is trying to tie this by-election loss to the failure to enact some kind of electoral reform, even though Trudeau has won two elections since then. Justin Ling wrote up a whole op-ed about this for the Star yesterday, given that the 84 candidates on the by-election ballot were because of a tantrum by electoral reform group to use the stunt to call attention to Trudeau’s broken promise. And Ling makes some wild assertions along the way.

This notion that MPs are more beholden to the party than to their constituents would not be fixed by changing the electoral system. In fact, the current system is the one that most empowers MPs to be beholden to their constituents, as most PR systems rely on party votes, and party lists to fill “proportional” seats, and that makes those MPs even more beholden to the leader because they don’t have the connection to a riding as a result. That’s an even worse outcome, and hands even more power to the leader to centralise, worse than they already do. The ability to be independent under such a PR system is even less than under the current system, so I have a hard time fathoming why anyone thinks that this solves any of those problems.

The current dysfunction that Ling complains about in the piece is not a result of the electoral system—it’s because of the perverse incentives that have developed, compounded by the Trump Effect, that have made rational discourse impossible because everything is about driving engagement over social media, not in the Houses of Parliament. Changing the electoral system wouldn’t change that—in fact, it could make it worse as parties fragment and fragile coalitions emerge that rely on extremists to play kingmaker, forcing parties to behave in even more outrageous fashions. Electoral reform doesn’t solve problems—it takes an existing set of problems and replaces them with a new set of problems. Resurrecting this debate in order to once again flog this dead horse is not helping anyone, and if anything, is just distracting from the actual frank conversations that parties need to be having amongst themselves with their members about how to meet the moment to solving the problems this country faces. PR won’t make that happen, and we have to stop entertaining the notion that it somehow will.

Programming Note: I’m taking the long weekend fully off of blogging, as well as a few days next week in order to work on another project.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that they have forced Russian troops out of part of Chasiv Yar. Some Ukrainian commanders are complaining that the Canadian-built Senator armoured vehicles aren’t built for off-road capability, break down too often, and aren’t well suited for the front lines. With the EU security pact now signed, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on European allies to fulfil their promises around arms and supports.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1806344642041917773

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1806321424446951489

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Roundup: Nothing to opt out of

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Breaking through the endless wank-a-thon of the pundit class declaring that Justin Trudeau needs to go was a story where Danielle Smith had sent a letter to Trudeau declaring that Alberta will “opt out” of the dental care plan, and that they want to negotiate “compensation” that they would apply to their own provincial low-income dental assistance programme, but this seems to completely misunderstand how the programme works. It is very literally an insurance programme. Dental offices bill Sun Life through a portal, and the federal government then reimburses Sun Life. Yes, the rollout was poor and confused (because the whole implementation of this programme has been a bit of a gong show, thanks entirely to the NDP), but this is not a federal transfer programme. There is nothing to compensate the province for because this is a 100 percent federal insurance scheme.

The reason it’s structured this way is because the NDP demanded, as part of the Supply and Confidence Agreement, that this needed to be a fully federal programme, and not cost-shared like early learning and child care, and because dental care is ostensibly provincial jurisdiction, it had to be structured as insurance, and the model they would up choosing was to get Sun Life to do it, and they just pay Sun Life, rather than stand up a federal bureaucracy to administer this. This should have been a federal-provincial transfer so that provinces could bolster their existing dental programmes to federal guidelines, but no. As a result, I don’t see just what Smith can “opt out” of, let alone be compensated for.

Of course, federal health minister Mark Holland didn’t help matters by going on Power & Politics and not explaining how the programme works, and instead suggested that she could opt out if she could guarantee the same or better coverage, but again, opt out of what? The province isn’t billing Sun Life. They are out of the equation entirely, and Holland should have pointed this out, rather than just trying to sound conciliatory and saying he doesn’t want a fight, and repeating the same lines about how many tens of thousands of seniors have availed themselves of the programme to date. Smith doesn’t appear to understand how the programme works, and has created a strawman around it to make it look like she’s standing up to Trudeau (at the expense of her population), and claiming they already have a great dental care programme and that this is duplicative (it’s not—the Alberta programme covers very few people and is a burden to administer).

There is an added issue here with how the media have covered this. CBC, CTV, The Canadian Press, all ignore the programme structure and just retype Smith’s letter, and then get comments from the provincial dental association about either their disagreement on the federal programme or some minor pushback about Smith’s comments about the existing provincial programme, but the fact that this is an insurance company where the dentists bill Sun Life and the province has no involvement at all is a pretty crucial part of the story, which nobody mentions. This should not be rocket science, and this would show that Smith is engaging in bad theatre, but of course they don’t do that, and readers are being given a disservice as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy is expected to sign a security agreement with the EU later today.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805883881356186102

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Roundup: Pledging to do things differently—really!

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If by some chance you managed to survive the complete and utter wank-fest of pollsters, poll analysts and Elder Pundits doing the media rounds yesterday without straining your eyeballs as they rolled endlessly, well, good for you. Just don’t expect anything but this to dominate the media landscape for the next several weeks to come, because going into this, the Elder Pundits declared that this was a sign that Trudeau needs to go, and they feel themselves perfectly vindicated, and they want you to know it. (Such a healthy media ecosystem we have in this country). So, while the entrails of this by-election get picked over, expect nothing but demands for a leadership review (which the Liberal Party’s constitution only allows for after a general election loss), for Trudeau to step down, and for successor chatter to spin up, with Mark Carney’s name all over the place in spite of all evidence to the contrary. (Gretchen, stop trying to make Mark Carney happen. It’s not going to happen).

Of course, Trudeau isn’t going to step down. He has convinced himself that he’s the one who can stand up to Poilievre, and that he wants to keep doing the work. Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould were all making the point that they have to listen more and work harder to regain trust, but the one that stuck out for me the most was Gould telling Power & Politics that they need to “do things differently,” but therein lies the problem with Trudeau. They don’t do things differently, starting with the fact that Katie Telford is still on the job and hasn’t decided that she needs to do something more with her life that just this, and being the central person by which everything flows (becoming part of the bottleneck of files this government needs to address). They are still communicating the same way after having been told time and again that it’s hindering them, and the most they’ve done is get some Gen Z staffers to put them in cringey TikToks (from their personal phones!) in addition to the same pabulum that they keep feeding us. They continue to pat themselves on the back for declaration over actions to implement those declarations. I get that they are trying to say the right things right now, but I have yet to see any desire on the part of Trudeau to do things differently, and maybe that should be the lesson here.

And in reaction, we have Susan Delacourt pointing out why this becomes a problem for Poilievre’s expectations management. Jen Gerson mockingly declares Trudeau to be dead in the water, because of course she does. Paul Wells also makes the observation that Trudeau will espouse making changes but won’t, and will just keep doing what he’s been doing the whole time.

Ukraine Dispatch

The shells obtained by the Czech initiative are starting to arrive in Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia exchanged 90 prisoners of war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed an International Criminal Court warrant for two more Russian military leaders.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

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Roundup: Getting Stuff Done?

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While everyone concerned themselves last night with the ice hockey and the by-election, I thought there was an interesting tweet out that deserved a bit more consideration.

Usher is not wrong here. The early focus on “deliverology” fell to the wayside and the Liberals stopped measuring the number of promises that they had fulfilled, and which ones they could not fulfil or which ones they were abandoning (such as the promise around electoral reform, which was a dumb promise to have made, and where the committee process around it resulted in a hot garbage report that was functionally useless other than to prove it was a dumb promise to have made in the first place). But it’s also cultural. Paul Wells has observed that the Liberals are increasingly made up of the kinds of people who go to leadership conferences, but who haven’t really accomplished much else. Once upon a time, they were people who had built things and a record of professional accomplishment, but now it’s mostly people who just talk about doing things without actually doing them. And it’s a fair observation, but also points to a broader malaise in Canadian culture, where as a country we’re building fewer things while MBAs manage what we have, and wealth funds acquire companies and then strip them for parts until they’re forced to declare bankruptcy. You can’t pin that entirely on the Liberals, but Getting Stuff Done is proving a challenge for this government, and they should put some energy on doing that rather than just churning out some more communications pabulum.

And to make the point about Pwning for Pwning’s Sake, here’s Andrew Scheer wishing the country had fallen into a full-blown recession, because reasons.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian missiles struck Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least five people and wounding at least 41 others. A Russian missile also struck a storage facility in Odesa, injuring three. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has hit over 30 Russian oil refineries and depots thus far. Zelenskyy also ordered a purge of the country’s state guard after an assassination plot was uncovered. And today is the day that the EU begins membership talks with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

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