Tag Archives: Fundraising

Roundup: Election interference protocols

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The federal government unveiled their plans for dealing with election interference in future elections, and tried to create a system that keeps it within the realm of the civil servants and away from Cabinet (who would be in caretaker mode during the writ-period) and politicians in general. The protocol (infographic here) would see that the heads of national security agencies brief the Clerk of the Privy Council, the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, and the deputy ministers of Justice, Public Safety, and Global Affairs, who would then determine if there is a substantial threat to a free and fair election, at which point they inform the PM, party leaders, and Elections Canada before they hold a press conference to inform people of the incident.

In response, the Conservatives say it doesn’t go far enough, because they are on tear about foreign funding and third-party campaign financing, while the NDP say they want the Chief Electoral Officer involved (though I’m not quite sure what he would do in that kind of situation, because he deals with administering the election and not things like strategic “leaks” to media or propaganda). They also want social media companies to do more, and they are apparently reaching out to the government over this, but, well, their records have a lot to be desired in these kinds of situations.

Meanwhile, here’s Stephanie Carvin with what she was looking for beforehand:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1090623966895587330

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1090623974957039621

And what we saw in the announcement:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1090643636231028736

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1090649350609473538

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QP: China vs Brexit

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Wednesday, and most but not all leaders were present, somewhat unusually. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and in French, he read some condemnation that the prime minister didn’t fire John McCallum soon enough Trudeau stood up and said that on China, they were working to freeing the imprisoned Canadians, and then took a shot at Scheer’s lack of foreign policy credibility given his support for Brexit. Scheer switched to English to read his litany of foreign policy sins by this government, and Trudeau reiterated that they were working to safeguard Canadians in China before repeating his shot at Scheer on Brexit. Scheer wondered why it took so long for Trudeau to fire McCallum, but Trudeau wouldn’t let up on Scheer’s Brexiteering. Scheer then switched to the carbon tax and said that the government planned to raise the price to $3/tonne before his benches reminded him that the talking point was $300. Trudeau responded that Scheer still hasn’t delivered his own climate plan, and when Scheer gave falsehoods about industrial exemptions and the apparent planned carbon tax hikes, Trudeau shrugged and noted that their rhetoric was empty if they were resorting to personal attacks, before talking about how people would be better off with carbon rebates. Peter Julian led off for the NDP, and in French, predictably raised the issue of housing, but this time name-dropped the riding of Outremont. Trudeau picked up a script to state that it was too bad if the NDP derided the plans to refit existing housing. Julian switched to English to ask the same, and Trudeau had a script in hand but didn’t actually read from it while he listed the investments being made in housing. Charlie Angus stood up to demand personal action on the housing emergency in Cat Lake, and Trudeau read that they were developing a long-term plan of action with its leadership, and noted they lifted the boil-water advisory in that community already. Angus took a couple of shots at Seamus O’Regan and the prime minister, and Trudeau listed the investments they have made with Indigenous communities. 

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Roundup: Getting mad at algorithms

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While the Conservatives spent their day in the House of Commons using their Supply Day motion to lay an unsubtle trap for the Liberals – demanding that they table a balanced budget and a written pledge to not raise any taxes, certain that the Liberals would defeat it so that they could turn around and say “See! Look! Trudeau is planning to raise your taxes!” – Andrew Scheer spent his afternoon getting angry at Google’s search algorithms.

The problem (other than the dangerous level of computer illiteracy) is that this was something that originated on a reddit thread that Scheer immediately latched onto.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1090332359650672641

https://twitter.com/cfhorgan/status/1090326614536146944

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1090333969319641089

Despite the afternoon of tweets pillorying Scheer and mock Google searches that put his image up for searches like “People who will never be prime minister,” it does actually score a deeper underlying point about this kind of virtue signalling over social media.

And this is part of the problem – we’ve seen this before with the issue of the UN global compact on migration, that Scheer started adopting tinfoil hat conspiracy theories to try and reclaim those votes that are suddenly gravitating toward Maxime Bernier. (I’m also not unconvinced that part of this Google search panic is some leftover James Damore “Google is full of social justice warriors!” drama that inhabits certain corners of the internet). The creation of this kind of alternate reality of conspiracies and lies that that they then turn into attack campaigns against media who fact-check and debunk their false claims, is them playing with fire. Making people believe disinformation may seem like a good idea to win a few votes in the short run, it has very long-term negative consequences that they seem utterly blind to. And yet, this is their current strategic vision. No good can come of this.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1090370788694192128

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1090361590858371075

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Roundup: A subdued oil price shock

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The Bank of Canada decided to hold on raising interest rates yesterday, but there were some very interesting things in the accompanying Monetary Policy Report that haven’t been widely reported on, and much of that was the whole section in the report on the state of the oil industry in Canada. (It’s pages 9 and 10 of the report – PDF here). Essentially, for all of the talk about economic doom for the current state of oil prices and the price differential, this current price shock is affecting the Canadian economy at a quarter of what it did in the 2014-2016 price shock, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is that the oil sector is no longer as big of a part of the Canadian economy as it was then – it’s currently worth 3.5 percent of our GDP, while it was six percent just a few years ago. That’s fairly significant. As well, after the previous price shock, most energy firms are better equipped to handle the low-price environment thanks to innovation, improved efficiency and the fact that they already cut overhead costs. Add to that, our low dollar is providing a buffer effect because it supports non-energy exports and employment. In other words, while it’s softened the economy a little over the past quarter and the current one, this is projected to be shrugged off as the rest of the economy continues to pick up steam, and we’re likely to continue growing at a greater pace, because the rest of the economy continues to be running close to capacity. Even some of the areas of potential slack that have been identified, such as lower-than-expected wage growth, are mostly because the situation in Alberta is dragging down the national average. So perhaps it’s not all doom after all.

One other particular note from the morning was that Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz made a couple of remarks around his hometown of Oshawa, and how it’s managed to weather previous plant closures and how its resilience means it will likely weather the pending closure of the GM plant as well as it did previously.

Meanwhile, Kevin Carmichael walks us through the morning’s decision, and some of the reaction to it.

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Roundup: Bernier goes full tinfoil hat

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Maxime Bernier appears to be going full tinfoil hat, with a Twitter thread about a supposed move to create some kind of UN parliament that will erase borders, and that Canada will be absorbed into, and I can’t even. I literally cannot.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1082829073922093057

As Carvin points out, this is a campaign that is orchestrated by Neo-Nazi sympathizers in Europe, and it’s the very same thing that Andrew Scheer was also have been touting this very same conspiracy theory as part of their attempt to push back against the UN global compact on migration. But then again, Scheer and company also gave succour to racists in order to try and paint Trudeau as some kind of bully, so it shouldn’t be a surprise, and they’re being wilfully blind and deaf to the white nationalists and xenophobes that are infiltrating the “yellow vest” protests that they like to promote, so there’s that.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1082252207234473985

Meanwhile, Bernier has tapped an anti-abortion, anti-trans “Christian pundit” as his party’s candidate in Burnaby South. And he’s being accused of running a campaign in that riding that is trying to depict Jagmeet Singh’s efforts as being one that is running only for the Indo-Canadian community, so, you know, the xenophobia tuba instead of the dogwhistle.

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Roundup: CSIS’ hackers

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So that story about CSIS looking to hire hackers and data scientists? Well, some of the concerns raised about the story may have been overblown. Maybe. Stephanie Carvin – who used to be an analyst at CSIS – has some thoughts on the issue and what it represents.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081183300738342918

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081183303783383041

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081183316747919360

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081185895636787200

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081185900007247873

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1081185903224205312

I do wonder if We The Media are capable of asking some of the right questions when it comes to our intelligence services, and whether we treat them with too much suspicion because they’re a world of secrets and we don’t get to learn them, and that they not able to operate transparently. Not that they’re above scrutiny – they’r enot, and the fact that we’ve now got NSICOP to provide parliamentary oversight is a long overdue step up in that direction – but we can’t treat everything they do as inherently problematic.

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Roundup: Foreign policy complacency

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There has been some musing of late about Canada’s place in the world, and a couple of things jumped out at me. First is Paul Wells’ most recent column, which responds to a Globe and Mailop-ed from a former trade negotiator that wrings its hands at the way the current government is handling China. As Wells points out, said former negotiator is all over the map in terms of contradictory advice, but most gallingly, suggests that we break our extradition treaty with our largest and closest ally in order to appease China. And Wells quite properly boggles at this suggestion we break our treaty, while at the same time taking a moment to reflect on how there is a different way in which Ottawa seems to operate when it comes to these matters, particularly in an era where major corporations with investments in China are no longer calling the shots by way of political financing.

At the same time, Stephanie Carvin makes some particularly poignant observations about Canada’s foreign policy complacency in this era of the Americans retreating from their obligations on the world stage (never mind the Brexit-mired UK). We talk a good game, but have no follow-through, and in the past, she has quite rightly pointed to the fact that we won’t invest in the kinds of things we talk about the importance of globally (most especially “feminist” foreign aid). The government’s actions in Mali are another decent example – putting on a big song and dance about how important it is we go there, spend a few months there doing low-risk medevac, and then refuse to extend the mission for a few extra months so that our replacements can get properly established, meaning there will be a gap in services there.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1080853935328497665

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1080854398052564992

I do have to wonder about some of the crossover between what Wells and Carvin are talking about – that Wells points to the rise of crowd-pleasing populism freeing governments from the go-along-to-get-along complacency, but Carvin points to the fact that we are not actually free of that complacency, though perhaps there are different sorts of complacency that we are grappling with when it comes to our place on the world stage. Something to think about in any case.

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Senate QP: Gould talks Senate appointments

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Following the largely repetitive QP in the Other Place, Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould, headed over to the Senate for their ministerial QP as this week’s special guest star. Senator Larry Smith led off, asking about the mention of Senate reform in her mandate letter, but the only mention on her site has been around the appointments process, and was that the extent of her involvement. Gould said that she was looking forward to being part of the Senate’s internal modernisation efforts and would be there for them if they wanted to change the Parliament of Canada Act. Smith asked her to table the names of all senate appointment candidates and committee meeting minutes, but Gould noted that she was not part of the process, and wouldn’t commit to tabling anything.

Senator Batters went into James Cudmore’s hiring by her office, and wondered if PMO directed her to hire him, and who was paying his legal fees. Gould noted that Batters was in step with her colleagues in the Other Place before she praised staffers, and noted that questions on an ongoing court case were inappropriate.

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QP: Not misleading, just misinformed

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On a cooler and less humid day in the nation’s capital, things proceeded apace in the House of Commons, and there was far less drama to start off the day. Andrew Scheer led off, mini lectern on desk, demanding to know why the counter-tariffs the government collected haven’t been funnelled directly to business that have been affected by the US tariffs. Justin Trudeau responded that the government was supporting affected industries, but also things like innovation. Scheer then started on his “failure” talking points with regards to the Trans Mountain pipeline, to which Trudeau shot back about the ten years of failure from the previous government, particularly around respecting First Nations. Scheer switched to English to ask again, and Trudeau insisted that growing the economy and respecting both the environment and Indigenous communities went hand in hand. Scheer railed about pipelines line Energy East not getting built, and Trudeau stepped up his rhetoric about not respecting First Nations. Scheer then spun a bunch of nonsense about carbon taxes, and Trudeau didn’t correct Scheer’s mischaracterisation, but responded with some platitudes about paying for pollution. Guy Caron was up next to lead for the NDP, and concern trolled about the effect on Supply Management with TPP, to which Trudeau insisted they were keeping the system intact. After another round of the same, Tracey Ramsey repeated the questions in English, and got much the same response from Trudeau, who added that they got better a better deal than the Conservatives did. On another round of the same, Trudeau insisted that the NDP didn’t want any trade deals, and the Conservatives would sign anything, but he would only sign a good deal, and that included NAFTA.

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Roundup: Notwithstanding Ford

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It was a crazy day in the state of constitutional law yesterday, as an Ontario judge struck down Doug Ford’s bill to reduce the size of Toronto city council on some rather dubious grounds, and Doug Ford responded by insisting that he would invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to ensure it passed anyway, no matter that the issue by which he’s going to use the seldom-used provision on is of dubious merit, and has all of the appearances of enacting a political grudge (while all of the “reasonable” members of his Cabinet who were supposed to keep his worst impulses in check cheer him on). It’s a full-blown tire fire.

For starters, here’s a bit of context about just what the Notwithstanding Clause actually is, and some history of its use. But what is perhaps more alarming are the number of voices who are calling on the federal government to invoke the defunct constitutional provisions around disallowance as a way of thwarting Ford – and some of that has been fuelled by Toronto mayor John Tory meeting with prime minister Justin Trudeau last night. I can pretty much guarantee you that Trudeau, however, won’t touch the disallowance powers with a bargepole, because a) the powers are defunct for a reason (in that the issues that disallowance was used on are better dealt with through the courts), and b) it would stir up such a shitstorm of epic proportions that it would be difficult to contain the political damage, and I’m not sure that Trudeau is willing to expend that much political capital for something that is really not his political ambit, and he’s likely to win most of Toronto’s seats again regardless. But if you also look at the message that Trudeau’s minister of intergovernmental affairs, Dominic LeBlanc sent out, the not unsubtle language in there is that this is a fight for the political arena, and Ontario voters will have to deal with the mess that they created, which is pretty much how it should be. It’s not going to be easy if we’re having these kinds of issues three months in, but people shouldn’t expect another order of government to swoop in and save them. That’s not how democracy works.

Meanwhile, Emmett Macfarlane walks through what’s constitutionally dubious about the court ruling, while Andrew Coyne invokes some high dudgeon about use of the Notwithstanding Clause and Ford’s thuggish populist tactics. Chris Selley reminds us that so much of this episode is because Ford is all about chaos, and he brings more of it with these tactics. Susan Delacourt, rather chillingly, wonders which will be the next premier to decide that the Charter is inconvenient for their populist proposals. And University of Ottawa vice-dean of law Carissima Mathen both writes about why Ford’s comments are so offensive to our system of laws and governance, plus offers some more context about the Notwithstanding Clause in this video segment that you should watch.

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