Tag Archives: Healthcare

Roundup: Ford omitting the accountability part

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Justin Trudeau met with Doug Ford at Queen’s Park yesterday, and Ford says that they are on the same page about the urgent need for healthcare reform, and that the status quo isn’t working. But what I find interesting is that Ford didn’t go into any details, the prime minister did put out a readout of the meeting later in the evening, and yes, healthcare was mentioned, but in a somewhat different context than what Ford told reporters after the meeting”

“They also spoke about pressures on the healthcare system and the importance of funding and accountability to deliver for Canadians. The prime minister emphasised that the Government of Canada is committed to continue working with provinces and territories to support public health systems that deliver quality healthcare for all Canadians.”

The use of accountability stood out for me, because this is what the federal government is pushing—ensuring that any future health transfers go to the healthcare system, and not a tax cut or to pad a province’s surplus like they did with the billions of dollars in pandemic aid that provinces were given. The premiers continue to balk at this, but we’re not all blind and dumb, and we can see them rolling around in money (Alberta and BC both announced higher-than-anticipated surpluses), so them not investing in their own healthcare systems when they obviously have the money to do so is not going to endear them to the federal government as these talks continue.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1564736954234814466

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 188:

The supposed counter-attack around Kherson has seen explosions of ammo dumps and bridges, but it remains difficult to see what is going on there. Russia claims they repelled the attack and caused hundreds of casualties, but they have lied about absolutely everything in this whole invasion thus far, so they are unlikely to be reliable sources. Russian forces elsewhere continued shelling the port of Kykolaiv, as well as Kharkiv in the north. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors will need to cross an active battlefield to reach the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

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Roundup: The fallout from Freeland being accosted

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Much of the discourse this weekend was around a video of Chrystia Freeland being accosted at an elevator in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and all that it entails. While Freeland can handle herself—she ran circles around the KGB as a student in Ukraine—it’s the signal that this sends, particularly to women in public office, but most especially racialized women and those of other minorities or diverse backgrounds, who are routinely targeted in similar ways. While there were a number of denunciations of this, and Freeland called it out as wrong, the prime minister called for a united front from political leaders to call for an end to this kind of harassment and violence. Notably, however, a number of Conservative leadership candidates have not said anything, and when Poilievre in particular was asked, he quickly played the victim, that he too is harassed and threatened.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 186:

There has been more shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and the cities that surround it, over the weekend, because who cares about the risk of the cooling systems being compromised and a radiation leak happening? Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces say that they beat back the Russian advance on Bakhmut in the Donestk region.

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Roundup: Questions for the new SCC justice

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The parliamentary hearings around Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin’s appointment took place yesterday, which were the usual awkward affair that these things tend to be, as they’re mostly a get-to-know-you exercise where you can’t really ask too many substantive questions, and as is so often the case with our parliament these days, it was full of self-congratulation of MPs and senators who were so proud to be there for this historic moment. A lot of media outlets picked up on O’Bonsawin saying that she’s a judge first and Indigenous/a mother/a Franco-Ontarian afterward, which is probably the kind of answer you want in a Supreme Court of Canada justice, but it was interesting how many outlets made that their headline.

More interesting to me were some of the responses from justice minister David Lametti, and former PEI Premier Wade MacLauchlan, who ran the selection committee, given that their testimony is actually more relevant because Lametti in particular is the political actor who is responsible for this appointment (along with the prime minister). Regarding O’Bonsawin replacing the Court’s criminal law specialists, even though she is not one herself, Lametti said that it shouldn’t fall to one person on the Court as they all need to be aware of the issue, and I think that’s fair. But when it comes to the answers about encouraging more diverse candidates, I find it utterly mystifying that this government continues to insist on people applying for these positions rather than having their committees canvas the legal community for names, and then approaching them directly rather than waiting for applications. It’s been a problem that this government has had since day one, and it doesn’t encourage diversity because a lot of people from marginalised communities don’t apply because they are either discouraged already because of institutionalised racism and discrimination, or because they feel they have no chance because they don’t fit the established mould. This government knows this, and yet they persist with this inadequate model, for reasons unknown. It boggles the mind.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 182:

It was both the 31st Independence Day and six-months since Russia began its illegal invasion of the country. Russia marked the day by hitting a train full of civilians near the town of Chaplyne in Eastern Ukraine, killing 22 people. Here are some six-month retrospectives from the Star, CBC, and Associated Press.

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Roundup: Salivating over magical LNG terminals

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With the visit of German chancellor Olaf Scholz to Canada, there has been no shortage of media salivating at the narrative of Canada somehow sending liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe to displace Russian supply, and they keep going on about it. Power & Politics had an interview with Scholz, and the first third of it was spent with Vassy Kapelos hectoring Scholz about whether he wanted Canadian LNG, and if he told the Quebec government to stop opposing pipelines, and I’m being serious that she actually asked him this, as though he wasn’t going to diplomatically tell her that it wasn’t his place to tell them that (which he did). And while he said sure, Canadian LNG would be great, there is no way that’s going to happen. There is no infrastructure to do so. Building it takes three to five years, and even then, if there is a steady supply (good luck with that, because it’ll drive up costs for product domestically), it’ll take 25 to 30 years to make those investments in that infrastructure pay off, and we’d be well past 2050 then. (I wrote a column on this recently). It would quite literally be investing in a stranded asset. But that won’t stop Canadian media outlets from pounding on this narrative drum, over and over again. You would think that reporters and TV hosts might have done some homework to realize that there is no business case, so you look foolish by pursuing this dead-end line of questioning, but apparently not.

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Ukraine Dispatch, Day 181:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is vowing of a “powerful response” if Russia attacks the country on its Independence Day, which also will mark six months since the illegal invasion began. And American intelligence is also warning that something may happen, which is why they are urging their nationals leave the country. Russians did conduct air strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, not far from the nuclear plant, and they have been shelling near Kharkiv in the northeast. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada says that they are investigating 28,000 war crimes, including child deaths.

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Roundup: Premiers pleading poverty while demonstrating largesse

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Ontario premier Doug Ford met with Maritime premiers in New Brunswick yesterday, and wouldn’t you just know it, they demanded more federal healthcare dollars while simultaneously saying that throwing money at the problem wouldn’t fix things, so they want to go to more private delivery. The problem, of course, is that Ford didn’t even bother to spend his full healthcare budget last year as he continues to underpay nurses and doctors, and both he and Blaine Higgs in particular put pandemic healthcare dollars onto their bottom lines, and Higgs boasted a healthy surplus last year thanks to federal transfers. It’s hard to take premiers’ demands for cash seriously if they don’t actually spend the dollars they’re given, and that they keep boasting about their balance sheets while still steadfastly refusing to increase pay, or to reform billing systems. While François Legault wasn’t at the table today, he’s also promising a tax cut if he gets elected again, while crying poor and insisting the federal government needs to spend more. Erm, you know that the federal government can see you, right?

On that note, Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe announced that his province is so flush with money thanks to high oil and gas revenues that they’re going to give out vote-buying cheques to the whole province. But he too is going cap-in-hand to Ottawa for more health transfers, and he’s sending patients in his province to private clinics in Alberta and won’t pay for their transportation to get there either. (Oh, and giving cheques to everyone is going fuel inflation, but you knew that, right?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 180:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is banning public celebrations in advance of Ukraine’s independence day, citing fears that Russia will likely plan more severe attacks in line with the occasion, particularly around civilian infrastructure. Russians struck near Kharkiv and areas near Bakhmut in the Donbas, while the Ukrainan counter-attack continued to advance on Kherson in the south. There were also new claims of Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as international pleas to ensure a ceasefire around the area continue to go unheeded. Russians are also, not surprisingly, blaming the car bomb that killed the daughter of one of Putin’s advisors, on Ukraine.

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Roundup: Hussen nets yet another self-inflicted wound

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This government continues its habit of own-goals and an inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and in this week’s episode, we find Ahmed Hussen not properly addressing the fact that the government apparently didn’t properly vet a supposed “anti-racism training” contractor, and lo, he turned out to have a history of making antisemitic comments over social media. But in his statement, Hussen a) doesn’t name the individual, and b) doesn’t say what “working to rectify the matter” means. Have they terminated the contract? Are they going to report on why due diligence was not done? Is there going to be some kind of accountability to be had for this colossal cock-up? Because from this kind of bland statement, I’m not seeing responsibility, accountability, or a recognition that this wasn’t being taken seriously enough in the first place.

To pour gasoline on this self-inflicted fire is the fact that this just gives ammunition to Pierre Poilievre and other Conservatives, who while consorting with far-right extremists, insist that it’s the Liberals who are the real racists because Justin Trudeau did Blackface. In fact, Poilievre did just that over the weekend. And the Liberals keep giving him the ammunition to do so, because they don’t seem to have enough adult supervision in what they’re doing. This is a problem that they can’t seem to get a handle on, seven years later. I’m not saying any of the other parties will be any better, but wow. It’s not really an encouraging sign about government capacity in this country.

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Ukraine Dispatch, Day 179:

More Ukrainian drones have been in the airspace over Russian-occupied Crimea, which some analysts stay is showing the weakness of Russia’s position there. Ukraine also made airstrikes over the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Russia forces have been shelling the southern city of Voznesensk, while intensifying combat around Bakhmut in the country’s east. In related news, a suspected car bomb killed the daughter of one of Putin’s closest advisors, but nobody has claimed responsibility, though this will likely ratchet up tensions in the conflict.

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Roundup: Inflation starts to cool

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The CPI figures were released yesterday morning, and the headline number has cooled from its peak, and in July was running at an annualized rate of 7.6 percent, the decrease largely being driven by lower gasoline prices. Of course, there are still plenty of other drivers that are keeping it high, some of which are things like food (largely being driven by factors like climate change), hotel stays, and airline charges. But rather than exploring what these drivers are, most of the coverage of the day was focused on the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth that prices are high and demands for the government to do something about it, which, short of wage and price controls—which don’t really work—they can’t do much about. And no, “just give everyone money” is not a solution because that drives demand further. Same as tax cuts or breaks, and in fact, increasing taxes is generally a good way to dampen inflation. Regardless, there is a real incurious narrative to this in the media, which is not surprising, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, here is Kevin Carmichael’s hot take on the figures, while Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem took to the pages of the National Post to offer some reassurance that the Bank is on the case. Economist Stephen Gordon explains the data here on video. Heather Scoffield warns that even if inflation peaked there are too many factors keeping it high for some time to come. And here is a look at the StatsCan analysts who compile the inflation data.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 175:

There was another explosion at an ammunition depot at a military base in Russian-occupied Crimea, and the Ukrainian government will neither confirm nor deny involvement, though they are mockingly calling it “demilitarization,” as a play on Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine.

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Roundup: Not calling out the obvious lies

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It seems that Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis have been hyping up a Substack post by a National Post columnist who has been falsely claiming that court documents say that vaccine mandates don’t work. It’s not surprising that they would amplify this garbage, or that said garbage completely misrepresents the studies in question, which provided proof that vaccine mandates do work. Of course, there has been little-to-no denunciation of said lies being propagated by these candidates, nor has the mainstream media done their own fact-checking on the claims (which was done by PressProgress, which is not actually a media organization but a partisan oppo-research outlet that masquerades as journalism). This is not a good thing. This is a sign that things are very broken, and that we are headed to a very dark place. Our media need to step up and start calling this stuff out for what it is, and to stop both-sidesing it out of an exaggerated sense of “fairness.” Lies are lies. There are not two sides. You don’t need to have their political opponents say that they’re lies because that simply provides fodder for the true believers to swallow the lies, because it’s their opponents denouncing them. This is corroding our democracy, but nobody seems to care enough to do something about it.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1557412067572858886

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 169:

In the aftermath of that massive explosion at a Russian base in occupied Crimea, nine Russian warplanes have allegedly been destroyed, and Kyiv continues to deny official responsibility (though it may have been the result of sabotage by Ukrainian partisans in the area). Meanwhile, Russians have been shelling the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, as well as continuing to shell the eastern city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainians have hit the city of Donetsk, which is controlled by Russian separatists.

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Roundup: Spyware or mass surveillance?

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As summer showboat season rolls along, the Commons’ access to information, privacy and ethics committee continued their hearings on the RCMP’s use of spyware. And it was…odd. A senior RCMP member said that the RCMP has been using said spyware to break encryption since 2002 (while advocating for legislation to allow them to evade encryption). The former privacy commissioner said he was surprised to learn that the RCMP had been using this “intrusive” technology for years, and didn’t seek authorisation from his office, while the RCMP denied that they were using the “Pegasus” spyware system. And a former CSIS officer testified that they have monitored politicians at all three levels of government because they had concerns they were being paid by foreign governments. But Liberal MPs kept going on to questions about mass surveillance, which is not what this is about, nor within the capabilities of this spyware, and it makes me wonder if they were trying to put a neat bow on this to say “See, there’s no mass surveillance” without really engaging with the topic. And they tried to pass the motion to say “All wrapped up,” but that didn’t happen either. So I’m not really sure what’s going on other than more showboating from all sides, which is the given at this time of year.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 168:

There was much speculation about an explosion at a military airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, creating much buzz over social media about whether this was a long-range missile strike from Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian officials denied this, but it could mean that Russians may have to fortify their own positions behind the lines on that peninsula, further stretching their resources. Meanwhile, Russian forces shelled the town of Nikopol, near the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as Russians continue to shell the power lines leading from the plant in order to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid so that they can begin the process to link it to Russia’s grid instead.

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Roundup: A deal to ship grain?

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We’re now in day one-hundred-and-fifty of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and an agreement has been signed that will allegedly allow Ukrainian grain to flow again from their Black Sea ports. Allegedly. No one really trusts Russia to actually live up to their end of the bargain, but we’ll see. Apparently one of the conditions to this agreement is that Ukraine doesn’t raise the issue of the grain that Russia stole from them, so we’ll see what happens from here. Meanwhile, CBC has a video package of the past week in the war.

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