Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Losing faith in the justice system because of provincial choices

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The CBC has a story out about how a retired corporal from the military has lost faith in the justice system because court delays stayed the trial of her alleged attacker, and you can bet that pretty much everyone is going to take absolutely the wrong lessons from this, most especially legacy media.

The administration of justice—courts, Crown prosecutors, support staff—are all firmly within provincial jurisdiction. And for decades, provinces have been under-funding their systems while whinging that the federal government isn’t doing things like making bail harder to get (which is, frankly, unconstitutional). There is a story out of Toronto on the very same day about how staffing shortages—because of the province—have caused closures in courtrooms which led to a different sexual assault trial being tossed because they can’t get a trial within a reasonable time for the rights of the accused. And in the case of the corporal, it was because the Crown prosecutors (again, provincial responsibility) couldn’t get their shit together to push the case forward. And no, this has nothing to do with the federal government not filling judicial vacancies fast enough (which I have condemned this government for). These are all problems that are squarely within the provinces’ responsibilities.

And you can bet that people are going to try to both-sides this military issue because the provinces have been whinging that the military turning over cases to the civilian system is leaving them under-resources, even though it’s a handful of cases and the provinces have consistently made the policy choice over decades to under-fund their system. Trying to shift the blame to the federal government or whine that they’re not getting enough money is a well-worn pattern that we shouldn’t let them get away with. Unfortunately, that’s not in legacy media’s playbook, and you can bet that we’ll get more rounds of angry accusations that the federal government “let this happen” when clearly the failure was provincial the whole time.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they have reclaimed even more territory in the east and south parts of the country, as well as off-shore drilling platforms near occupied Crimea. Ukrainian forces have also been collecting Russian bodies along the “road of death” that they retook in June, so that they can exchange them for their own comrades, living and dead. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on his country to remain focused on the war, with warnings that a “wartime budget” is coming, meaning this could go on for longer than many have hoped.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1701223223440928994

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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: A resignation that won’t solve the problem

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A couple of days after everyone declared ministerial responsibility dead for Ontario housing minister Steve Clark’s refusal to resign over the Integrity Commissioner’s report and his own gross negligence and dereliction of his duties, Clark did resign, at 9 AM on Labour Day, pointing to an attempt to take the sting out of the messaging. Ford later announced changes to his Cabinet which would put Paul Calandra in the housing file, in addition to Calandra’s existing role as House Leader.

Ford, however, insists that the tainted process for those Greenbelt lands will carry on, and while he is promising a “review” of the process, he won’t do the one thing the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner have said, which was to cancel this process and start over. In fact, yesterday morning, Ford left open the possibility of reviewing all Greenbelt land and opening it up for development, which is unnecessary for housing needs—he hasn’t even implemented the recommendations of his government’s own housing task force, which explicitly stated they don’t need to develop those lands because there are fifty other things they should be doing instead.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1699015630316360078

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1699103206893056279

And that hasn’t been all. As this sordid affair continues to drip out, the identity “Mr. X” from the reports has been identified as a former mayor and developer who Ford has ties with, and his operation is practically stuffed with Batman villains. The jokes write themselves, but just make the corruption all the more hard to take.

My latest:

  • My weekend column looks at how ministerial responsibility changed in the age of message discipline, but how Doug Ford and Steve Clark can’t do the bare minimum.
  • At National Magazine, I look at the number of “secret trials” that we have seen come to light recently, and what could be behind them.
  • Also at National Magazine, I get some reaction to the Competition Tribunal’s cost award to the Bureau and the signals that they are sending by it.
  • My column points out just how inappropriate it is for premiers to write open letters to Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem, and how it corrodes our system.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian strikes damaged more grain warehouses at the Danube port of Izmail. Ukrainian forces say that they have taken more ground in both the eastern and southern fronts, as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited two front-line areas. Ukraine’s defence minister is being replaced by Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, who headed a privatization fund. Ukraine’s parliament passed an anti-graft law that contains a loophole, and many are urging Zelenskyy to veto it as a result. A parts shortage and a dispute over intellectual property rights is hobbling the ability to repair the Leopard 2 tanks we sent to Ukraine. And Ukrainian intercepts show Russian soldiers complaining about poor equipment and heavy losses.

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Roundup: Open Letters to Tiff Macklem

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BC premier David Eby decided he needed to be extra performative yesterday, and wrote an open letter to Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, urging him not to raise interest rates next month because of the “human cost” of these interest rate hikes—ignoring of course the counterfactual of the effects of unchecked high inflation and the “human cost” that it has over the short and medium term.

What is pretty galling in all of this is that Eby knows better. He was once a pretty good civil liberties lawyer, and he fully knows that the Bank is independent, and that they have a legal mandate that they need to fulfil when it comes to keeping inflation at two percent, and that their main policy tool is the blunt instrument of interest rates. His “I know the Bank is independent but…” spiel was frankly embarrassing, and should not have merited the attention it got from the media, but here we are.

Speaking of, Power & Politics was not only true to form in giving him a soapbox to make his point, and rather than doing their jobs of pointing to the irresponsibility of this kind of move, particularly at a time when you also have Pierre Poilievre warning that he’s going to fire the Governor (with what power?) and threatening the Bank’s independence. It would be great if CBC could do a single economics story properly and not just treat it like an issue to be both-sidesed, but they apparently have zero willingness to do so, and the fact that this Eby interview was that ignorant is a sign that they cannot be bothered to care about economics stories for anything than just trying to plug them into their established narratives, and it’s doing the country an extreme disservice.

Programming Note: I’m taking the full long weekend off, so I’ll see you early next week.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces have reported some success in the south and east, but I am also tickled by their latest video offering, telling all of those armchair generals to basically shut up because they’ve been doing the heavy lifting on their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has developed its own long-range weapons that can strike 700 kilometres away, which may have been a sly nod to the attack on Russian airbases that destroyed a number of fighters. The mayor of Kyiv wants to build more fortifications, because there always remains the threat from Russia.

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Roundup: Giving up on 24 Sussex?

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The big news that everyone was talking about yesterday was that the National Capital Commission is considering an alternate site for the prime minister’s residence than 24 Sussex, in part because of security considerations at the existing site (because apparently, we now also need to worry about reinforcing the roof with steel in the event of a drone strike). One of those sites could be in nearby Rockliffe Park, near the RCMP’s national headquarters, where something would need to be built from scratch, including the security arrangements. And before anyone suggests it, no, the prime minister cannot take over Stornoway because it would be even more impossible to secure than the 24 Sussex site is, and the RCMP would never allow it.

And because this was the story of the day, someone asked Pierre Poilievre about it, and of course, he gave the populist answer about how that would be the last thing on his priority list because he’s too busy worrying about middle class people getting houses. Obviously, that’s a rehearsed and tested media line, because his plans won’t actually get any more houses built than the current government’s plans, but hey, he lies about it with confidence, so people obviously believe him. He then went on to say that he would want something that’s able to be secured, but just “basic,” with possibly a separate site for hosting dignitaries, but let’s be real—we don’t really do luxurious official residences in this country, and the notion that we would be building some kind of lavish mansion is already pushing it.

The more salient point is that Poilievre’s populist noise is why we can’t have nice things, and why 24 Sussex was allowed to fall to such disrepair as to reach the point of total failure. We keep dining out on cheap outrage and hairshirt parsimony, and we pander to the too-large portion of the commentariat who thinks that if Ritz crackers and ginger ale are good enough for a church social, they’re good enough for international diplomacy. We keep increasingly marginalising ourselves on the global stage with our rinky-dink backwater antics like this, and we’ve allowed the official residence of our head of government fall to pieces because everyone is too afraid of the headlines (while self-righteous media outlets see absolutely nothing wrong with what they’ve enabled). What an absolute embarrassment we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

Ukraine Dispatch:

At least four people died in the Kherson region in the south as a result of mines and other explosives left behind by Russians; the commander of the southern front also reported continued progress pushing southward. The Russians claim that they destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea.

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Roundup: The torqued six attendees

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The National Post’s series on judicial appointments continued apace yesterday, with the torqued and misleading headline that “High-level judges may have paid to meet Trudeau before their appointments,” and members of the pundit class and commentariat swooned with disbelief, and social media was blanketed with caterwauling about “corruption” and “bribery” and so on. Some of the excitable far-right fanboys started ranting about the whole judiciary being corrupted and needing to be bulldozed (because how better to enable fascism?)

But if you read the piece, and put it into context with the previous work, it says that as many as six out of 1308 lawyers who later got judicial appointments may have attended Liberal fundraisers that the prime minister or other Cabinet ministers attended. Which is…nothing. And yet, the framing and the headline suggests that they paid for access and that said meeting resulted in their appointment to the bench, in absence of any evidence to the contrary—just innuendo and correlation that has no relation to causation. This kind of journalism tends to be bullshit.

I have made this case before, and I’ll re-up it again—we absolutely do not want or need purity tests to be applied to applicants to the bench, and we should not bar anyone who has ever donated to a party from receiving an appointment. Donation is a necessary form of civic engagement, and lawyers tend to be more engaged in their communities, and often have the means to donate. This is important—we need people engaged in the system, and if we bar them from promotion because they have donated at one point in time or another, we are losing talent from the judiciary. The process as it stands is working (albeit slow for other reasons), and we don’t need concern trolls dismantling it for the sake of purity tests.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Three Ukrainians were killed in an overnight Russian attack on Poltava, and two others were killed in shelling later in the day in the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials have confirmed that they have liberated the strategic settlement of Robotyne in the country’s south, as they are pushing further in the area as part of the counteroffensive. Russians are claiming that they scrambled jets in response to two US drones flying near occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: The Capital Pride 2023 observations

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It was Capital Pride this weekend, and the government once again took the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for the first anniversary of their 2SLGBTQIA+ Action Plan™, and to offer some grants to local organisations from the Action Plan’s budget—so money is flowing, at least.

This having been said, it was a pretty poor turnout from federal politicians for the parade itself. The PM was absent, but he had only just returned from touring wildfire sites and evacuation centres out west, and he did just visit Edmonton’s Pride on Saturday, so I will give him that. But the Liberal contingent was smaller than usual this year, and local MP Yasir Naqvi was absent (which is unusual for him), whether that was because he was on a provincial leadership tour somewhere, or for some other reason. Marci Ien was present, having just made the announcement hours before, and new minister Jenna Sudds was present, as were Mona Fortier, Greg Fergus, Marie-France Lalonde and Francis Drouin, but while I saw photos of many of them early on in the parade, I didn’t see most of them along the route.

https://twitter.com/JennaSudds/status/1695944518036509165

This having been said, I didn’t see a single NDP MP, though I think I spotted a couple of MPPs (and I didn’t see the one whose seat the riding is in), and the Conservatives didn’t march at all, federal or provincial PC party. Make of that what you will.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian authorities are investigating a mid-air collision between two training aircraft in the western part of the country, which killed there pilots. Russians have meanwhile been targeting the central and northern regions of the country with cruise missiles overnight. They have also been shelling the north-eastern city of Kupiansk, in what may be a push to recapture the area, after it was already liberated by Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian forces have broken through one of the most difficult lines in the south and appear to have momentum in the region. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is telling American critics that Ukraine could hold wartime elections next year, but they’ll need financial assistance from the US and Europe, particularly for reaching electors abroad, and to send election observers to the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1695803020947165468

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Roundup: $3 million in cheap outrage

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The National Post continues their cheap outrage series on the Governor General’s travel expenses, and are aghast that it totalled $3 million over the course of a full year, with the usual chiming in of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation that this was so awful because there are struggling people in this country. (Note that the CTF exists only to push this narrative in the media, and because they always answer the phone when reporters call them, they have become “reliable sources” for these kinds of shitty reactions, and it feeds this grubby little ecosystem).

Aside from this being some of the absolutely laziest reporting out there, the headline and the framing of the story obscures the fact that the Governor General travels where the government sends her, because that’s how Responsible Government works. She does what the government advises, because that’s the system. No, she does not represent the monarchy in Canada, she represents the Canadian monarchy both at home and abroad, because certain kinds of international diplomacy demand these kinds of visits. (It’s why the UK government is sending King Charles III to France in September—he doesn’t determine that, the government does). Blaming Mary May Simon for the travel the government sends her on is unfair, blaming her for the costs in unfair because she doesn’t make any of the decisions—the military does when it comes to the plane, the catering, and so on (and previous cheap outrage reporting is forcing them to scale back what few amenities there were, which were not out of line with any business class travel). But it’s her name on it and the insinuation that she is living it the high life on the taxpayer’s dime.

It’s also for this reason that I find it pretty rich that the reporter was getting huffy over Twitter that the spokesperson at Rideau Hall pushed back on him, saying that these stories disparage the GG and are harmful to her diplomatic efforts. We already have transparency around the spending—all of the reporting came from public documents. But the framing has fed into a lot of racist narratives about her (and believe me, I see a lot of it in my reply column on Twitter), and there seems little awareness of that, particularly because there is a self-righteousness around of shitty reporting. Diplomacy costs money. Democracy costs money. And doing away with the post of GG won’t save money—any replacement will cost us more, and risks doing away with a necessary constitutional fire extinguisher. But hey, hairshirt parsimony and outrage sells, never mind that it corrodes our democratic institutions.

Ukraine Dispatch:

It was Independence Day in Ukraine, the second since Russia’s invasion began, and full of poignant reminders of what the country is fighting for. Of course, Russia did attack, hitting Dnipro and Kherson. Ukrainian forces launched a “special operation” that landed troops in occupied Crimea, but did not state what the goals they achieved were. Russia claims they destroyed 42 drones launched over occupied Crimea. Meanwhile, Norway has opted to become the third NATO country to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, while more Ukrainian pilots and technicians will under F-16 training in the US.

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Roundup: Demands to recall Parliament to make more speeches

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The Cabinet retreat has wrapped, and there is no big announcement on housing policy other than to say that they know there’s not one silver bullet that will solve the housing challenges, so that means more work. Pierre Poilievre dutifully summoned reporters to the Foyer in the West Block to mock the lack of action and decry “What was the solution? More speeches, more photo ops…” And then he demanded that Parliament be recalled so that they can “take action” on housing, but without a legislative proposal, all this would mean is a take-note debate, which would be a bunch of twenty-minute speeches being read into the record. You know, exactly the thing that he was mocking Trudeau about. So that’s consistent.

Meanwhile, the debate about international students is picking up, with the government seems to want to deal with the problem of dubious private colleges at the same time, even though they don’t really make a dent in the housing crisis, and leads to problems of just how the federal government determines legitimacy (which is a provincial responsibility), and there a host of other problems with the programme that they may not have the capacity to deal with. Limiting international students could have other, longer-term repercussions, as they are quite easy to stream into permanent residency, and good for Canada in the long run—but again, there are problems in the system as it is.

With that in mind, Alex Usher’s thread has concerns about how the federal government could mess things up, while Mike Moffatt’s thread offers suggestions for things the federal government could do (or in several cases, undo) to relieve the pressure. This all having been said, a bit part of the problem here is that provinces have cut or frozen funding to these institutions, and limiting international students will be a huge financial blow to them, and that should be addressed somehow.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1694317541559066707

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians targeted Ukrainian grain facilities with drone attacks, destroying some 13,000 tons of grain at the Danube port of Izmail, while Ukrainians claim to have taken out a Russian air defence system in occupied Crimea with a drone attack of their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosted an international meeting about liberating Crimea from Russian control. And how to go about doing so.

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Roundup: Cabinet retreat missives

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We are starting to see the parade of ministers being trotted out to the media from the Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, PEI, and first up on everyone’s mind is housing and what the federal government should do about it. And they did hear from experts like Mike Moffatt yesterday, which is good, so we’ll see if anything comes of it. But of course, legacy media has glommed onto the issue of international students and whether they will cap them, without also exploring how that has become a necessary revenue stream for universities after provincial cutbacks and freezes, or the fact that there are a plethora of private colleges that the provinces are supposed to be regulating who have been abusing their ability to bring in international students basically to defraud them of hundreds of thousands of dollars while providing them a substandard education. That should be where more attention is being paid, but we all know that legacy media loves to blame the federal government instead of the provinces, so here we are.

We also heard from Dominic LeBlanc who again gave assurances that a public inquiry into foreign interference is in the works, but they are now trying to find a sitting judge who can lead it, because apparently all of the retired ones and other eminent Canadians who could do the job have all told them no—because who wants to subject themselves to partisan character assassination day-in-and-day-out? Of course, I half suspect that they’re going to get some pushback from the chief justices of the provinces about who could be made available considering that the federal government has been slow to make appointments and it’s contributing to delays and backlogs in the system as is, and taking someone out of circulation for another eighteen months doesn’t help the situation any.

Other ministerial soundbites include Chrystia Freeland insisting that they remain focused on the economy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say they have retaken a strategic south-eastern village as part of the counteroffensive, which continues its southward push. In addition to advanced Western weapons, the Ukrainians have developed a “mini-Grad” rocket launcher made up of old Soviet parts. In Athens, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Balkan leaders, as well as European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen. Ukrainian media is reporting that a group of saboteurs coordinated with Ukrainian military intelligence services to carry out drone attacks on air bases deep inside Russia, destroying and damaging aircraft. In Denmark, eight Ukrainian pilots have begun their F-16 fighter training.

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