Tag Archives: G20

Roundup: Ignoring the abuse and the banana republic tactics

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While on the one hand, it’s nice that legacy media is once again paying attention to the fact that there is an ongoing filibuster in the House of Commons that has largely paralyzed any work for six weeks now, but it would be great if they could actually make a gods damned effort at it. Pretty much every story, and the CBC’s turn was yesterday, just types of the quotes from Karina Gould and Andrew Scheer blaming one another for the filibuster. The current fascination to this story, however, is that the Supplementary Estimates votes are coming up, and every gods damned Hill reporter is dying to use the phrase “American-style government shutdown” to go along with it that they continue to gloss over the actual issues at hand.

There is a legitimate issue about the abuse of the parliamentary privilege to demand documents, because the power is only in relation to Parliament summoning those documents for their own purposes, not to turn them over to a third party. The Speaker and the clerks who advise him should never have allowed this to be considered a matter of privilege because the powers are being abused, but this is too much of a “process story” for them, so they don’t like that angle. There is also the even more pressing issue that these powers are being abused in a manner befitting a banana republic, where the powers of the state are being weaponized against those that the legislature doesn’t like, and that should be absolutely alarming to anyone paying attention.

This kind of abuse sets precedents, and if it’s allowed to happen now, it’ll be allowed to happen the next time someone wants to abuses these powers. The most that media outlets can muster up is “The RCMP says they don’t want these documents, so why are you so insistent?” but never “Why do you think it’s appropriate to behave like this is a banana republic where you are using the state to go after your perceived enemies?” We are in a particular moment in western democracies where autocrats are threatening to take over, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary has provided them a template to dismantle the guardrails of the state to delegitimize opposition and stay in power as long as possible. This is creeping into Canada, and legacy media in this country needs to be alive to the issue and call out these kinds of tactics and behaviours, rather than just both-sidesing it and using words like “polarized” or “divisive,” because that just plays into their hands.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine fired eight US-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia, two of them being intercepted, the rest hitting an ammunition supply location. President Zelenskyy addressed Ukraine’s parliament with a speech to mark the 1,000th day of the invasion.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1858871441032155385

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Roundup: Who cares about the Speaker’s peril when there are talking points to parrot?

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I want to point you to a piece that was on The Canadian Press wire this weekend about a potential procedural showdown between the ongoing privilege filibuster and the coming end of the supply cycle, when the Supplementary Estimates will need to be voted on. This could have been a fascinating discussion that focuses on the pressure that will be on Speaker Fergus to get it right—which, to be frank, he did not when he made the ruling that allowed the privilege filibuster to begin, and pretty much every procedural expert I’ve spoken to has said he got the ruling wrong, and even more to the point, even a former Law Clerk of the Commons has said that this shouldn’t be a privilege issue because the powers to demand papers doesn’t extend to turning them over to a third party as is the case here.

But did the CP story touch on this? Hardly at all! There was some vaguely-worded talk about how this showdown could be unprecedented, but doesn’t actually explain the procedure, or the ruling the Speaker would have to make, and instead spends most of the piece both-sidesing the Liberal and Conservative talking points about the filibuster, because that’s what CP does best in their desire to be as scrupulously neutral as possible. Because who needs actual facts or an explanation of parliamentary procedure when you can quote talking points? This is a problem that CP refuses to address for itself, as news outlets across the country become more and more reliant on wire copy as the number of parliamentary bureaux for legacy media outlets continue to shrink.

Any of it, really.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T01:44:06.383Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a massive missile and drone barrage against Ukraine overnight Saturday, which hit an apartment buildingin Sumy, killing eight. Russia launched a further 120 missiles and 90 drones overnight Sunday, targeting power systems and killing at least seven people, which will likely mean power cuts. The invasion is now 1,000 days old, and Russia is continuing to expend massively, including in lives, for small territorial gains. It also appears that President Biden has finally okayed the use of long-range weapons provided by the Americans to strike targets inside Russia. It appears that a Russian factory has been producing hundreds of decoy drones meant to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences, while certain drones will carry thermobaric warheads. (More on that investigation).

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Roundup: Long on speeches and imported culture wars

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The Conservative convention this weekend was long on speeches—Poilievre’s speech very much needing an editor as it went on for well over an hour—and was full of praise for the so-called convoy occupiers (from Poilievre’s wife as well as the wife of the “anti-woke general”). Said “anti-woke general” proved himself to be so fragile that he thinks that things like racial equality and gender equality are “destroying” Canada. There was also the Brexiteer from the House of Lords who also showered Poilievre with praise, so some real talent on display there.

Policy resolutions were not focused on things like housing or affordability, but instead prioritised things like vaccines, and culture war bullshit that extended to two separate resolutions attacking trans people (which the party could have used mechanisms to de-prioritise but didn’t, meaning they wanted them to come up for a vote). The Canadian Press has compiled five take-aways from the convention.

https://twitter.com/dalybeauty/status/1700974631468052754

In pundit reaction, Althia Raj looks at how the Conservatives used their convention to woo Quebeckers, and how they are going after the Bloc along the way. Aaron Wherry notes that claims of “common sense” are easier said than done, particularly as Poilievre painted an idyllic 1950s picture of the future he wants. Shannon Proudfoot hones in on the feeling of “enough” that permeated the convention, and the swinging of the pendulum, but also cautioned about who limiting that can be.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces staged early-morning drone attacks against Kyiv on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the counter-offensive has made more advances along the southern front, as well as near Bakhmut in the east.

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Roundup: Singh’s curious housing assertions

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It looks like Jagmeet Singh is going to make another attempt at overplaying his hand, as he promises to use his “leverage” to try and squeeze more concessions from the government, particularly around housing. And sure, he can try, but part of this is going to go back to his absolute inability—or unwillingness—to understand how process works, and that’s kind of a big deal when you’re trying to demand the federal government do things.

For example, Singh was on Power & Politics the other day and insisted that the federal government can “rapidly” build new affordable houses, because they have “the land, the money, and the power” to do so. But I’m not sure this has entirely been thought through. Yes, the government has been going through their property portfolio to identify lands that can be sold for housing purposes, but that’s been ongoing for a couple of years and there hasn’t been a lot of traction because I suspect there isn’t a lot that’s available that is suitable for housing, and even if there was a glut that could be released, could they get it re-zoned for housing in short order by municipalities? I have my doubts. Yes, they have money, but that’s not infinite, and spending too much can have impacts on inflation, which they are trying to bring down (which is not helped by Singh’s stubborn insistence that only corporate greed is fuelling inflation, which is not true, and that a windfall tax will fix it, which is also not true). I’m also not sure what he means by the “power” to build homes—housing is primarily a provincial and municipal jurisdiction, where the federal contribution is mostly financial. Does he envision that they tender the construction of these houses? Because if that’s the case, a federal procurement process is neither simple nor quick (and just wait for the losing companies to sue the government, like what happens with defence procurement). Do they hire site planners, architects, and construction workers directly? Again, do you know what a federal hiring process looks like? And more to the point, there is a very tight labour market, which means that this will increases costs (and money is not infinite).

So, again, what process does he envision that the federal government can use to “rapidly” build these houses? Because remember, the timelines that the NDP are insisting on with their supply-and-confidence agreement have created their own problems, such as with the construction of the dental care programme, which has relied on a very poor kludge to get out the door within the deadline, and bad programme design just creates headaches, especially if it’s to meet an arbitrary deadline. Pharmacare is going to be similar—they’re insisting on particular timelines, but even if enabling legislation is passed this year, it’s not really going to matter unless nine other premiers sign on (and I haven’t seen Singh publicly haranguing NDP premier David Eby to do so). Process matters, and Singh pretending it doesn’t is a sign he’s not a serious person.

(As an aside, could every gods damned person who interviews Singh please stop asking why he hasn’t taken the nuclear option of tearing up the agreement as their first question? Seriously).

Ukraine Dispatch:

A combined overnight drone and missile attack on Kyiv killed two people, while an overnight drone attack, purportedly from Ukraine, struck military targets inside Russia and allegedly damaged four transport planes. Even more curious is that some of these Ukrainian drones appear to be made out of cardboard—for real!

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Roundup: Sanctimonious outrage over unsavoury characters

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There was another bout of sanctimonious outrage in the House of Commons yesterday as a notorious Holocaust-denier attended an event put on by MPs of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group, and the Conservatives (and Melissa Lantsman in particular) demanded apologies and denunciations. While at least two Liberals, Salma Zahid and Omar Alghabra, denounced, there hasn’t been much of an apology, but noted that said denier was not invited, but that an open invitation went out to the Palestinian community and he was one of 150 or so who showed up. One would think that with a topic as sensitive as solidarity with the Palestinian people that there would have been more of an emphasis on ensuring that someone like this didn’t show up, but they didn’t. In QP, Alghabra was not incorrect in noting that they can’t control the attendance at every public event and that sometimes unsavoury people will show up, which is true—but again, you should know with an event like this that it’s going to attract certain characters, and to beware.

What is rich, however, is that when far-right extremists showed up at Pierre Poilievre’s rallies, or when he cavorted with the occupiers on Parliament Hill in February, or when he went on that walk with members of Diagalon, that he and his caucus insisted that he couldn’t be held to account for those people showing up. And lo, they have a different standard when it happens to others. It’s something of a pox on all their houses situation—the MPs who hosted the Palestinian event should have been more careful, and headed off trouble when they saw who showed up, while the Conservatives need to own when they were attracting extremists, and consorting with them. But I have little doubt that either side will own this, and the sanctimonious outrage will continue, back and forth from each side, in perpetuity.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 282:

Russian shelling has taken out power in over a third of recently liberated Kherson, and Ukrainian officials are reiterating their call for civilians to relocate for the time being. Meanwhile, here’s a look at the grinding battle near Bakhmut, whose strategic importance is questioned, but nevertheless, the well-fortified Ukrainians are exacting a heavy toll from Russian forces, even though it is costing between 30 to 50 Ukrainian casualties per day.

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Roundup: Patrick Brown disqualified?

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We are on day one-hundred-and-thirty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the governor of Donetsk province is urging some 350,000 residents to evacuate in order to both save lives and make it easier for the Ukrainian army to repel Russian advances. This being said, the Russians have been using up so many personnel and equipment on this advance that they may be forced to stall later in the summer, though they still have abundant resources that the Ukrainians don’t have at this point. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukrainians struggling in towns and villages outside of Kyiv, as their homes have been bombed out and they don’t know when they might get new ones.

Closer to home, the Conservative Party’s Leadership Election Organising Committee has taken the decision to disqualify Patrick Brown on the basis of “serious allegations of wrongdoing,” and that they are planning on turning the file over to the Commissioner of Elections. Brown’s campaign responded a short time later saying this is all based on anonymous allegations they haven’t been able to respond to, and that their lawyers are now involved. So, it’s going well. Nevertheless, it’s one more reminder of just how bastardised this whole process is because our parties keep trying to ape American presidential primaries, while filling their coffers and databases rather than worrying about things like accountability, or parliamentary leadership. These races are a mockery of our system, and we really, really need to return to a system of caucus selection of leadership, so that MPs are empowered, leaders are held to account, and that the party isn’t just a hollow vehicle for a personality cult.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1544519706127831041

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1544531763254411265

Oh, and while we’re at it, one of Peter MacKay’s staff from the last leadership contest is now suing Erin O’Toole for alleging he was behind a hacking theft, so there really is no end to the drama here.

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Roundup: Higher inflation than expected

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It is now day fifty-seven (or so) of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and hope is waning for the remaining defenders of Mariupol, and the civilians still sheltering there. As the fighting intensifies in the eastern part of the country, there are also concerns that it will devolve into a war of attrition, which Russia has historically been more able to withstand. We have also learned more about what happened when Russian troops occupied Chernobyl, where staff were working at gunpoint, and sleeping three hours a night in order to safeguard the site and ensure that Russians didn’t tamper with any of the equipment there.

Closer to home, the inflation numbers were released yesterday, and they were much higher than expected, as conflict inflation brought on by the aforementioned invasion of Ukraine is hitting. And of course, most media outlets were useless in explaining the causes of it, while the parties were equally useless in their own reactions. The government keeps focusing on their talking points about things like child care and dental care, and the fact that they indexed benefits, rather than actually explaining the drivers. The Conservatives are railing about “printing money” (which, to be clear, nobody is actually doing) and insisting that the government should declare a GST holiday, which would a) do nothing for grocery prices as most groceries are GST-exempt; and b) would have a stimulative effect and just fuel even more inflation, especially as people would be likely to use said GST holiday to buy big-ticket items. And the NDP, predictably, chalk this up to greed and want higher wealth taxes, which again, do very little about the drivers of inflation.

And then there’s the Bank of Canada, who will be forced to respond with higher rate hikes, but the question becomes whether they’ll keep the increases more gradual—another 50 basis points at the next meeting in June—of if they’ll go even higher as a way of demonstrating that they are really taking this seriously and that the system of inflation control that they’ve been responsible for since the 1990s will prevail. It doesn’t directly address the drives, but it could be that the signals are more important than the actual policy at this point, because the bigger worry is the expectation that inflation will continue, which will turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy—something they are very, very keen to avoid.

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Roundup: No more human resources to spare

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I believe we are now in day thirty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces are believed to be leaving the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after their soldiers soaked up “significant doses” of radiation while digging trenches in the area. (You think?) There were also plans for another humanitarian corridor to evacuate people from Mariupol, but it doesn’t appear to have been honoured.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he had sacked two high-ranking members of the security services, citing that they were traitors. As for the Russians, the head of CGHQ in the UK says that they have intelligence showing that some Russian soldiers in Ukraine have refused to carry out orders, sabotaged their equipment, and in one case, accidentally shot down one of their own aircraft. There are also reports that Russian troops have resorted to eating abandoned pet dogs because they have run out of rations in Ukraine, which is pretty awful all around.

Closer to home, the Senate was debating their orders to extend hybrid sittings yesterday, as the sixth wave has been picking up steam, and one point of contention are the resources available to senators to hold sittings and committee meetings. In particular, they have a Memorandum of Understanding with the House of Commons about sharing common resources, and that MOU gives the Commons priority when it comes to resources available. This has hobbled the Senate, but even if they did try to come up with some way to add resources, the biggest and most constrained resource of them all is the finite number of simultaneous interpreters available, and we are already in a problem where as a nation, we’re not graduating enough of them to replace the attrition of those retiring, or choosing not to renew their contracts because of the worries that those same hybrid sittings are giving them permanent hearing loss because of the problems associated with the platform and the inconsistent audio equipment used by the Commons. These hybrid sittings exacerbated an already brewing problem of not enough new interpreters coming into the field, and Parliament is going to have a very big problem if they can’t find a way to incentivise more people to go into the field. We rely on simultaneous interpretation to make the place function, and if the number of interpreters falls precipitously low—because MPs and senators insisted on carrying on hybrid sittings in spite of their human cost—then we’re going to be in very big trouble indeed.

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Roundup: Using the invasion of Ukraine for crass domestic gain

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We are now on day seven of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv still stands, in spite of the convoy of Russian vehicles headed in its direction. Russians bombed Kyiv’s main television tower, as well as a Holocaust cemetery, which really bolster’s Putin’s claim that he is trying to “de-Nazify” the country. In fact, Russia is bombing more cities and inflicting more damage, and killing more civilians, which led to a response by the International Criminal Court to indict Putin for war crimes. Oh, and to compound the humanitarian crisis, some of Ukraine’s neighbours aren’t accepting non-white refugees who were in Ukraine, which is a big problem.

Here in Canada, yet more incremental sanctions were announced, along with more aid and supplies being sent, and new measures include ships that are of Russian origin or registry being denied entry into Canadian waters. Chrystia Freeland is warning that more severe sanctions will hurt Canadians as well, which people keep forgetting is a reason why sanctions can be so tough to implement, but here we are.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are making a number of demands which are not necessarily reasonable, such as their continued insistence that the Russian Ambassador be expelled, and the recall of our Ambassador in Moscow. Expelling ambassadors should be the absolute last case situation, because we need channels to talk, especially when the going gets tough. It was more justified with the Iranians because they were running an intimidation ring from their embassy, which does not appear to be the case with the Russians. The fundamental problem is that the Conservatives have adopted this mindset where they treat diplomacy as a cookie you get for good behaviour, which is not the point of diplomacy. That’s why we have diplomacy—to do the hard stuff, and you can’t do that if you keep kicking out opposing ambassadors every time you get in a huff about something. It’s poor practice, and is frankly a specious understanding of how the world works. Even more to the point, their continued insistence that this crisis is a good idea to push their “ethical oil” nonsense and to make the case for “drill, baby, drill,” no matter that it is a literal impossibility to meet Europe’s energy needs any time before the end of the decade, by which point we should be into rapid decarbonisation. But they have narratives that they are wedded to, no matter how crass or inappropriate, and they’re going to stick with them.

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Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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