Tag Archives: François Legault

Roundup: Hoping it won’t be that bad (but it will be)

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Because we’re in the middle of re-litigating the carbon levy yet again ahead of the Conservatives’ planned confidence vote, some familiar patterns are emerging, some of which are from the Elder Pundits who are, yet again, playing the “It won’t be that bad!” card, when in fact, yes it will be. Case in point was John Ivison reaching out to Ken Boessenkool, former Conservative advisor, to talk about the industrial carbon price, and Boessenkool (whose post-political career involves a lot of validating the Elder Pundits’ belief that it won’t be that bad) told him that the majority of those prices are provincially regulated, so they should remain intact. Which is not an assumption I would make because we have several provinces who believe that they can reach their reduction targets without any price (which is stupid), and they want to keep attracting investment, particularly in oil and gas, so they are likely to either greatly reduce their industrial price, or kill it altogether. This will in turn trigger a race to the bottom among other provinces, so the prices become useless. This is the whole reason why a federal benchmark and backstop were created—so that provinces couldn’t do that, and why the Supreme Court validated this as a legitimate exercise of federal powers. (Incidentally, Jenni Byrne disavowed Boessenkool after that piece went to print, which pretty much validates my point).

Meanwhile, other Elder Pundits are trying to write about the alternatives the Conservatives will use instead of the carbon levy, but even there, as they assert that while the levy is the best mechanism but there are others (because remember, they want to keep insisting it won’t be that bad), but that is a misread of what the Conservatives are actually promising, which is to tear up everything the Liberals have done, and rely on magic (in part because they don’t want to do anything, excuse themselves from doing anything by insisting that we’re only two percent of emission so what we do doesn’t matter, and any action they do take will only be “aspirational.”) For what it’s worth, the NDP also believe in the magic that they can only price carbon for corporations and it won’t be passed along to consumers, or that consumers won’t have to change any behaviour because corporations are evil. And it’s really, really depressing because the actions are having a difference, we have bent our emissions curve downward, and this is going to just upend everything for the sake of authoritarian populism, while the gods damned Elder Pundits tut-tut that the carbon levy must be bad because it’s unpopular, never mind that their refusal to understand of communicate it, or to refute the lies about it, have contributed to this situation. Good job, everyone. Enjoy your summers of wildfire smoke, and your melting icecaps.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians struck an apartment building in Kharkiv, wounding 21 civilians, as Ukraine destroyed 71 out of 80 attack drones overnight. There were also air strikes on Zaporizhzhia that injured 13 civilians. President Zelenskyy is hoping for faster action from the Americans, ahead of his visit to the White House, given that Ukrainian drone strikes have hit Russian arms depots, destroying thousands of tonnes of weaponry.

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Roundup: Temporarily abdicating responsibility to Justice Hogue

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The day in the House of Commons started off with the Bloc moving a Supply Day motion to call on the government to send the issue of the implicated parliamentarians from the NSICOP report to the Hogue Commission to have her deal with it, which the Conservatives also spent the weekend demanding, and the Liberals? Immediately rolled over and said sure, let’s do that. Which is stupid, because this is an abdication of responsibility, and it lets Pierre Poilievre off the hook for doing the grown-up, responsible work of getting the classified briefing so he knows what’s going on in his own party and so that he can take action. But he doesn’t want to do that, because knowing the truth could mean he might be forced to behave like a responsible adult rather than an ignorant critic who can lob wild accusations from the rooftops with reckless abandon, and that’s what he loves to do because he also knows that’s what’s going to get him media attention. The NDP, meanwhile, tried to amend the motion to get Justice Hogue to also probe the allegations around interference in Conservative leadership races, and Jagmeet Singh says that if he finds any member of his party is implicated after he reads the full report, he’ll kick them out. (With no due process? And remember, he’s a criminal defence lawyer, for whom due process is their livelihood). Elizabeth May is also going to get her briefing, and is trying to weigh what she can say publicly when she does. Nevertheless, dropping this in Hogue’s lap is not a solution, but Canadian political leaders love to foist their political problems onto judges to solve for them, which can’t work, and we’re just going to wind up where we are today, but several months later. Because certain leaders refuse to be an adult about it.

Philippe Lagassé and Stephanie Carvin lay out the case precisely why it’s a Very Bad Idea to publicly name names, and why party leaders need to get their classified briefings so that they can clean house in an appropriate manner, which is what they refuse to do.

Meanwhile, more people are latching onto the mention in the NSICOP report about compromised media outlets—those on the left are convinced this is talking about Postmedia being on the take, and now Conservative MPs are putting out shitpost videos trying to claim that mainstream media writ-large is on the take so they aren’t to be trusted. The report didn’t actually say anything about mainstream media, and if you have a grasp of the media landscape, the report is likely referring to ethno-cultural media outlets serving diaspora communities, as there is plenty of documented evidence of particularly Chinese interference in some of these outlets in Canada. But the Conservatives don’t care about the truth, or context—they want to flood the zone with bullshit in order to create this dystopian alternate reality for their followers with the explicit aim of reducing their trust in reality, and that’s exactly what they have weaponised the report to do. It’s amazing that nobody actually calls them out for doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian guided bomb strike has hit houses in Kharkiv, injuring at least six. Russian forces have taken control of the village of Staromaiorske in the Donetsk region, but Ukraine denies that Chechen special forces have taken over a village near the northeast border. Ukraine is claiming responsibility for damaging three Russian air defence systems in occupied Crimea, as well as for a June 5th attack on an oil refinery that has cost half a billion dollars in lost production. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Germany for a conference on post-war recovery.

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Roundup: Still not finding the right tone

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Justin Trudeau continues to struggle to find the right tone to respond to the allegations of Chinese interference in the previous couple of elections, and still hasn’t managed to find it. Yesterday he made the point that this is serious, and that’s why it shouldn’t be made a partisan issue of, and that doing so is doing the work of these autocratic countries for them because it weakens trust in democratic institutions…but he’s not exactly doing much to engender that trust either, because the response is once again some feel-good bromides that don’t worry, they didn’t actually affect the election outcome. Okay, but you’re asking people to take your word for it, and doing so with the same pabulum that they shovel in everyone’s direction for absolutely everything, so it’s hard to take these assurances seriously. It’s time to drop the feel-good talking points and be utterly frank, as much as can be allowed given the nature of the situation, and that’s what they’re not doing.

And because they’re not being frank, the Conservatives are shrieking “collusion,” and “you turned a blind eye because you benefitted” (as though a hung parliament is the real benefit here). But part of the problem is that the Liberals never think that they’re partisan, even when they are, and while Jennifer O’Connell may not have been wrong in saying that the Conservatives sure sound like they want to build this up as a “big lie”/illegitimate election campaign, it wasn’t the right tone to strike. At all. I did find it interesting that a former Conservative candidate did talk to the Star, and said that he didn’t think that this alleged interference did much with the Chinese-Canadian population because Conservatives themselves were doing their best to alienate that community.

I would also like to note that poll analyst Éric Grenier was on Power & Politics yesterday to provide a bit of a reality check to these ongoing allegations, and how the ridings that the Chinese diplomats allegedly targeted had no bearing on the election. For the Liberals, they didn’t get a majority because of Quebec, thanks to debate moderator Shachi Kurl playing into Yves-François Blanchet’s hands and phrasing her “tough question” to sound like Quebeckers are racists, and it gave Blanchet the ammunition he was looking for. For the Conservatives, the GTA remains elusive to them, and that’s why they couldn’t win. None of the alleged Chinese interference did anything to change that, and the Globe and Mail should have included this kind of analysis in their original story, but they didn’t, because they wanted this to be as sensational as possible. This continued narrative that the Chinese government attempted to engineer a minority parliament remains frustratingly moronic because you can’t do that. It’s as dumb as when the Globe endorsed the Conservatives but not Stephen Harper in 2015. It doesn’t work like that, but hey, why should the so-called newspaper of record understand how our gods damned political system works?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 365:

Russian shelling of Kherson in the southern part of the country has killed two civilians, with two civilians injured by missile strikes in Kharkiv. Meanwhile, the CBC talks to front-line Ukrainian soldiers about the training they got from Canadians, and the praise is coming particularly for battlefield medicine, as well as leadership for junior officers learning to take the initiative (unlike the old Soviet system).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628484262994362370

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Roundup: Warning signs of grassroots demise in Ontario

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The Star profiles the four potential leadership candidates for the Ontario Liberal party, two of whom are sitting MPPs, the other two being sitting MPs, and I had a couple of observations. One is that the whole piece is framed in the absolutely toxic discourse of looking for a messiah to resurrect a party’s fortunes, which is one of the big problems in Canadian politics in the current era, and a big part of that is because we have devolved leadership contests into pseudo-presidential primaries, the result of which has been to hollow out parties and turn them into empty shells to be inhabited by leaders like hermit crabs. Those leaders turn that hollow shell of a party into a personality cult, until their time is done, and then the next leader does the same again. It’s also worth noting that the Ontario Liberals are currently one of the few remaining parties in the country that still used delegated conventions for the leadership—yes, a problem, but not as bad of one as one-member-one-vote systems. Of course, the article also derides delegated conventions as favouring “party elites,” which is a load of bullshit. Delegated conventions are better at engaging grassroots than OMOV because the riding associations need to get together to elect the delegates, who are then trusted to carry their wishes forward on subsequent ballots.

The other observation I see is that it largely glosses over the fact that the grassroots party in the province has crumbled, and many of its riding associations exist only on paper. This is absolutely shocking, because this is an admission that the party has completely failed in keep up the absolute basics of how our democratic system is structured. This is what leader-centric parties have led to, where the grassroots are seen only as votes for a leadership contest, donors, and a pool of volunteers at election time rather than the people who make up the party, who do the policy work, who run the nominations, and who do the work of accountability at the local level. The grassroots riding associations are supposed to be the interface between the riding and the caucus, especially in ridings that the party doesn’t hold currently. The fact that the party leadership (and I’m guessing Steven Del Duca most especially was part of the problem here) allowed things to atrophy this badly is a really worrying sign about the health of democracy in this province, but also this country generally because these trends are across parties and provinces, because we have failed to learn our lessons when it comes to the basics of civics. This is the kinds of things that people should have learned about in school (and why I wrote my book).

I will add that I would really prefer if the two MPs didn’t jump into this race, and that they stayed in Ottawa and did the work here rather than try to be saviours for the provincial party, especially because voices like Nathaniel Erskine-Smith are so necessary in Ottawa and being a “rogue” in the caucus, which I fear would be swamped and workshopped to death if he were to try to apply that to leadership. But maybe I’m just being cynical here.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 334:

Russian forces have increased shelling outside of their held territories in the East, particularly around Zaporizhzhia. The head of the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk region says that he visited Soledar, which the Russians claim they captured but Ukraine still denies. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with families of the victims from the helicopter crash earlier in the week. Zelenskyy is also promising further action to root out corruption, with key decisions coming this week, given that this continues to be one of the sticking points for Ukraine in joining with the European Union and other alliances. Elsewhere, here’s a look at how organisations are working to counter Russian disinformation about the war.

https://twitter.com/melnykandrij/status/1616832357826265091

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Roundup: Backing away from the crazy now that the leadership is secured

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Now that she has won the UCP leadership and is about to be sworn-in as premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith is suddenly backing down from some of the things she’s been saying about her “Sovereignty Act,” and is telling media outlets that she’ll respect the rule of law when courts inevitably rule against it because it’s going to be blatantly unconstitutional. Which isn’t what was promised, and the whole point of the Act, based on the brain trust that invented the idea, was to force a constitutional crisis by disobeying the Supreme Court. Now Smith is saying otherwise, which is starting to look mighty cynical—that she sold her base on a false promise in order to get them to buy memberships and vote for her, and now she’s going to tone it down. It’s just so cynical and crass that you have to wonder what she won’t say or do in order to get her way now that she’ll have access to real levers of power.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 229:

The weekend began with an explosion on the bridge between Crimea and Russia, attributed to Ukraine, and on the day after Putin’s birthday, given how much of a vanity project this bridge was for Putin. By Monday morning, Russians shelled the city centres in Kyiv and nine other cities in Ukraine, all targeting civilian infrastructure, calling it retaliation for the Crimean bridge explosion, and trying to call it terrorism (while attacking civilian centres, which is actual terrorism). One of the cities hit was Zaporizhzhia, where apartment buildings were struck. As well, here are stories of survivors of Russians in liberated villages in the Kherson region, and a look at the looting Russians have undertaken of places like museums in captured regions.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1579530489802944512

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Roundup: Taking the blame, children’s cold medicine edition

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There has been a concerted effort to try and make the shortage of over-the-counter children’s cold and fever medication the federal government’s problem, even though they have precious few levers at their disposal. The Conservatives are trying to demand that Health Canada lift restrictions on imports that aren’t labelled in English and French, though I’m not sure that would really help if these shortages (which are due to high demand because COVID isn’t over!) are more widespread, and even there, that would require a lot of provincial coordination because pharmacies are also under provincial jurisdiction. But apparently the minister can’t just say that people need to talk to the provinces—that simply won’t do.

I had a bit of a debate over Twitter about this last night, and I will concede that part of this is a problem with the government’s inability to message and get ahead of these kinds of issues, or leverage some righteous anger and direct it to the provinces to do their gods damned jobs for once—but this government doesn’t like to do anger, and it really doesn’t like to blame the provinces for the things that the provinces aren’t doing when they should be, because they want to be “nice,” and “cooperative,” and “not divisive.” But that’s not helping anybody, and so we get more platitudes and feel-good pabulum that doesn’t actually make anyone feel good. I do have real problems with everyone—particularly media—trying to make every problem the federal government’s, but the government need to get better at messaging around this tendency, which they steadfastly refuse to do.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 224:

As Russia’s president signed papers that purport to annex territory in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces continue to press ahead in their counter-offensive in both the east and the south, collapsing Russian lines even further. And those new troops Russia has been conscripting to send to Ukraine? Much of them come from the country’s ethnic minorities, which is a calculated move. Ukraine, meanwhile, is making a bid for the 2030 FIFA World Cup as a way of survivors of the invasion healing from the war.

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Roundup: The “bigger picture” of continued hybrid sittings

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee is looking in to the future of hybrid sittings, and the Speaker wants them to consider the “bigger picture” of all of this. Of course, the bigger picture is that a) by trying to tie future use of hybrid to sickness or work-life balance, MPs will be creating an impossible attendance standard and create a monstrous culture of presenteeism; b) ministers will not only evade accountability not being in the House, and will be unavailable for MPs to see them during votes—which is the one time they are most available—and this is already happening as ministers are getting used to taking off when votes start and doing them from their phones in their cars, which is very bad; it also means that minister and MPs in general are less available to be found by the media; and c) the big one is of course the human toll that these sessions take on the interpretation staff. The NDP, as usual thinks you can just hire more interpreters, except there are no more interpreters to be hired. They literally cannot graduate enough of them to cover the existing attrition even before the injury and burnout rate from Zoom is factored in.

But MPs have consistently ignored the human toll, preferring their convenience, and whinging about long travel distances and having families, as though there aren’t options available to them that aren’t to most other Canadians. I will keep beating on this drum, because we won’t be able to maintain a fully bilingual parliament for much longer if this keeps up (we’re barely doing so as it is), and it’s probably going to take things absolutely falling apart for them to care, and that’s a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 223:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces have made rapid and powerful advances in both the east and south, and in places where Russian forces are retreating, they are abandoning posts so rapidly that they are leaving dead comrades behind.

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1577324136220839937

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Roundup: Independent thought alarm, Iran edition

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I hear the independent thought alarm sounding as Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, who is Iranian-Canadian, is being critical of the government’s response when it comes to sanctions on the Iranian regime, and he wants them to do more. This being said, he has stressed that the minister, Mélanie Joly, has been very receptive to talking to him about the situation, and hearing his ideas, but that wasn’t of any interest to the CBC. No, they were interested in the narrative that even Liberal MPs aren’t happy with the government’s moves to date on sanctioning the Iranian regime, and lo, they put on an “expert” who says the government should do more, in spite of the fact that the don’t have the actual capacity to enforce more sanctions, let alone monitor the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I don’t expect the party to come down on Ehsassi for this, and the Liberals have demonstrated that they are willing to put up with a certain degree of independence from their MPs (more so than pretty much any other party right now), but I always find the reaction of the media interesting in situations like this, because as much as they claim they want more independence for MPs, when it gets demonstrated, they immediately start acting like this is either an attack on the government/prime minister, and they try to wedge it as much as possible to make it sound exciting. But all this really does is crack the whip without the party Whip ever needing to do a thing, because the media is enforcing discipline more than he ever could. Some members of the media should probably reflect on that fact

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 222:

Ukrainian forces have made a major breakthrough in the south, advancing along the Dnipro River and threatening Russian supply lines in the region. In the northeast, the liberation of Lyman is providing a staging ground to press into the Donbas region.

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Roundup: Demanding LNG with someone else’s money

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While the federal Conservatives continue to promote the fantasy notion that Canada can somehow supply Europe and Japan with LNG to displace Russian supply—something that was never going to happen because of the timelines for projects to be built and that they need to be in operation to make their money back—under the notion that Ottawa needs to “get out of the way,” again ignoring that there has been no market case for it, Jason Kenney is going one step further and demanding that the federal government to build LNG export infrastructure. Which is odd because the Conservatives howled with outrage when the federal government nationalized the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline in order to sufficiently de-risk it for it to complete construction. If there’s no market case, why not get the federal government to do it?

But let’s also remember that the proposed Kitimat LNG facility on the West Coast, fully permitted and approved, is not being built, because there is no market case. Hence why Andrew Leach is calling out Kenney’s nonsense below, particularly the fact that Kenney is calling on the federal government to spend their money rather than Kenney spending his province’s own money. You know, like he did with Keystone XL, and whoops, lost billions because he made a bad bet and the American administration didn’t restore its permits. Funny that.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 217:

UN human rights investigators have found that Russia has been violating international law when it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war during the invasion of Ukraine, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also asked for Canadian help in ridding his country of mines left behind by Russian forces. Meanwhile, there are reports that Russian conscription officers are at borders trying to intercept would-be conscripts from fleeing the country.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s day of reckoning

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Regardless of the outcome of today’s caucus vote, Erin O’Toole is finished as leader—the only question is how long he lingers. Thanks to the (garbage) Reform Act, what should have been an exercise in reading the room has come down to weaponization, threats, and now a legalistic battle of wills where anything less than fifty-percent-plus-one will mean O’Toole will try to lord over the caucus until an eventual grassroots leadership review, which may or may not be sooner than the current date scheduled (pretty much acceding to what Senator Denise Batters sidelined for calling for). But the fact that we’ve even reached this point, months in the making, where more than a third of his caucus is alienated, means he’s unable to lead the party no matter what, and frankly, the (garbage) Reform Act is just making this situation worse than it needed to be.

O’Toole apparently spent the day working the phones, and apparently has been saying that he’s willing to change his policies if he survives—but isn’t that part of the problem that got him here? That he keeps changing his positions depending on the audience he’s in front of? I’m not sure how he thinks this promise helps him. Also, “coincidentally” an Astroturf grassroots group calling itself the “Majority Committee” launched itself yesterday morning, conveniently parroting the exact same lines O’Toole used in his challenge letter to his caucus, so that doesn’t look staged at all. Meanwhile, his former allies are lining up against him, a number of former MPs have added their names to an open letter calling for him to step down, so any illusion that continuing on as leader after this is really just delusion.

https://twitter.com/BobBenzen/status/1488633402400071682

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne argues that it’s not O’Toole that needs to be ousted, but rather the unhinged yahoos in the caucus that are causing the party its biggest headaches. (I don’t disagree, but appealing to the yahoos is part of O’Toole’s problem). Althia Raj correctly notes that whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s vote, it’s untenable for O’Toole to stay. Matt Gurney (by video) wonders if this winds up leading to the break-up of the party.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1488522864269705222

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1488526887408353282

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