Tag Archives: Housing

QP: The character assassination of Boissonnault continues

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While the prime minister was still in Rio for the G20 summit, his deputy was present, but most other leaders didn’t bother. Pierre Poilievre was present, however, and he led off in French by equating the prime minister to a firefighter setting fires, who blamed “bad actors” for the immigration problems, and that he needed to look in the mirror. Marc Miller spoke about the decision to lower targets as being the responsible thing to do. Poilievre repeated this in English, and Miller said they wouldn’t take any lessons from someone who has spent twenty years lighting fires in the House of Commons. Poilievre switched to the various allegations about Randy Boissonnault and demanded his resignation. Boissonnault said that despite the innuendo, he had not met and has no dealings with the person referred to in the article today. Poilievre tried again, with a couple of added swipes, and Boissonnault repeated that the same denial, and the article stated that fact. Poilievre then took a swipe at Trudeau saying people are confused by misinformation about the carbon levy, repeated lies about it, and demanded an election. Jonathan Wilkinson called out the disinformation and chanted that eight out of ten households get more money back. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he decried the amendments to their Supply Management bill in the Senate, and demanded the prime minister order senators to defeat the amendment. Karina Gould reminded him that senators are independent. Therrien railed about that independence and didn’t believe it, and repeated his demand. This time Marie-Claude Bibeau suggested that the Conservatives tell their own senators to pass the bill. 

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, complained about prices “not making sense” and more, and demanded the government adopt their economically stupid plan to cut the GST on certain items. Jean-Yves Duclos responded with a swipe about the Conservatives not supporting dental care. Don Davies repeated the same demand in English, and François-Philipppe Champagne repeated that the Conservatives will cut, and patted himself on the back for creating economic opportunities. 

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Roundup: Clapping back at the provinces and their JPs

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Justice Minister Arif Virani has been honing his responses to the cries for bail reform lately, both in pointing out that the provinces are not living up to their responsibilities—whether that’s with properly resourcing the court system so that trials are conducted in a timely manner, or in dealing with overcrowded remand centres where people are locked up awaiting trial, and because of the overcrowding and poor conditions, many accused are being given bail rather than subjected to those conditions. Even more recently, he has started pointing to how certain provinces, and Ontario especially, have been appointing Justices of the Peace, to decide on most bail hearings.

Ontario in particular had this whole song and dance about how great it was that they were appointing JPs who weren’t all lawyers, because it gave them greater breadth of experience or whatever, but if it’s true that they’re not actually applying the law of bail properly, that’s a problem. It could simply be that their training is inadequate, which again is a provincial responsibility, because if they are being expected to read, understand and apply case law that the Supreme Court of Canada has laid out when it comes to the law of bail, then again, that is a problem that the provinces need to solve.

And yes, there are going to continue to be voices chirping that the law is the problem, and that the Liberals created an “open door” through two pieces of legislation, but this has been an orchestrated disinformation campaign. The one law that the Conservatives refer to codified Supreme Court jurisprudence, and actually toughened bail in certain respects, especially around domestic violence; the other law they refer to had to do with doing away with solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries, which has nothing to do with bail in the slightest, but repeated lying that has not been pushed back against by both-sidesing media has led a whole lot of credulous people to believe the bullshit. The law of bail is not the problem—it’s everything else that is, and the provinces are once again being allowed to get away with not doing their jobs.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian security services have detained a special forces unit commander accused of being Russian mole. Russian air defences claim to have downed a series of Ukrainian drones in a number of different regions. There could be another mass displacement of Ukrainians if energy systems continue to be damaged over the winter. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a call with Putin, asking him to withdraw his troops and negotiate, which of course Putin won’t, and now Zelenskyy is angry with Scholz because these kinds of calls decrease Putin’s isolation.

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Roundup: Promising populist GST cuts

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In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh laid out a pre-election campaign pledge of removing the GST on certain “essential” items like ready-made food, diapers, home heating, and mobile phone and internet bills—all of which he would finance through an “excess profit tax” on large corporations. It is possibly the dumbest economic policy possible, but our politics are moving into an absolutely brainless phase of populism.

Removing the GST on these items will have a negligible impact, particularly for those in low-income brackets. If anything, most of those reductions will benefit higher-income households, such as the GST cut on home heating (because wealthier households have bigger houses that take more fuel), and it when it comes to apartment buildings, the cut has little impact, or for places with electric heat, how exactly do you disentangle how much of the hydro bill is heat versus other electricity usage? I know that the NDP have been pushing this policy for years now, long before Singh was leader, but has anyone thought about it for more than five seconds?

In addition, making more exceptions to the GST are hard to administer, and it will reduce the GST rebates that lower-income households rely on. And promising the “excess profits” tax is basically an arbitrary exercise in determining what they consider “excess,” and that will basically be how much they think they can soak out of these companies, who will inevitably engage in creative accounting to suddenly lower profit margins or incur paper losses to avoid paying said tax, and all of the things the NDP had hoped to spend that windfall on will blow away like ashes in the wind. This isn’t progressive policy, but the NDP are going to pursue it anyway because they think that they can get the populist win here, when it’s almost certainly going to fail.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2024-11-15T01:27:01.865Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A combined Russian strike hit a residential building and energy installations in Odesa, killing one on Thursday evening. As well, the Russian assault on Kupiansk in the northeast broke through the outskirts of the city, but were eventually repelled.

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Roundup: Refusing to defend his own bill

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Because this parliament has descended to the absolute depths of performative uselessness, Conservative MP Arnold Viersen is refusing to testify to his own private member’s bill, and his Conservative colleagues on the justice committee are filibustering to keep the clock running out on the bill rather than extend the time to hear from witnesses, in the hopes of reporting back without amendments. And why is Viersen avoiding testifying? Because the Liberal and NDP members are likely to ask him about his pro-life views and activities—for clips for their own socials.

The bill, which would mandate certification of age and consent for those who appear in porn, got all-party support before going to committee, but I suspect that this bill is completely unenforceable (as we are net importers of porn), and is likely to suffer from some of the same problems from the other age verification bill, which is unworkable and an absolute privacy nightmare. And it would be great if the committee could actually hear from experts who could say so, but they are unlikely to at this stage. (Conservative filibusters also limited witness testimony on the age verification bill, which meant they could not hear from experts who would tell them it’s unworkable and a privacy nightmare).

Nevertheless, I think that because of these kinds of shenanigans, if an MP refuses to testify about their own bill, the committee should vote it down, and it should be killed as a consequence for wasting everyone’s time. I’d even be happy putting that in the Standing Orders. We also need to change it so that if a PMB needs a royal recommendation, it doesn’t even get debated rather than the current practice of letting it go as far as the final vote, because again, that wastes everyone’s time, and time is a precious commodity in Parliament, and plenty of MPs could have used that time for their own PMBs who won’t get the change.

Speaking of committees, the Conservatives want an “immediate” recall of the public safety committee, rather than waiting for its regularly-scheduled meeting next week, to discuss the arrests of two teens who planned to bomb a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill. But in spite of the seriousness of the topic, we all know what this is really about—getting clips for their social media of them talking about how “divisive” Trudeau is, and that he personally caused this kind of radicalisation. It’s as predictable as it is stupid, but this is where our Parliament is right now.

This is a serious issue, but recalling the committee “immediately” is about nothing more than gathering clips for social media, and probably ones that try to blame Justin Trudeau’s “divisiveness” for this. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T19:11:02.519Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down two cruise missiles, two ballistic missiles and thirty-seven drones headed for Kyiv, where it looks like renewed attacks are being made on power systems ahead of winter. Ukraine’s General Staff also says that they repelled four attacks on the city of Kupiansk in the northeast. Here’s a look at Ukrainians trying to support those on the front lines while they collectively wait to see what Trump 2.0 brings.

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Roundup: Remembrance Day 2024

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In case anyone was wondering, there was a prayer offered by the rabbi who spoke at the National Remembrance Day ceremony, and that the Conservatives have been shamelessly peddling the lie that prayer has been banned.

Here is a look at ceremonies around the country, and photos from the national ceremony in Ottawa. Veterans who were victims of the LGBT purge from the military laid a wreath at the War Memorial this year.

I popped into Twitter to see that yet again, the royal family’s feed is using an image of the King and Queen taken on Remembrance Day in Ottawa during their 2009 tour. Their poppies are Canadian, Queen Camilla is wearing the Maple Leaf brooch, and King Charles is wearing a Canadian uniform

— Patricia Treble (@patriciatreble.bsky.social) 2024-11-09T21:26:39.849Z

This year’s Ottawa Citizen “We Are the Dead” feature, the final before the programme shuts down, profiles Arthur Reid, whose plane never made it back from a mission delivering an agent and supplies to the French resistance.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian glide bombs, drones and missiles all struck southern and eastern Ukraine on Monday, killing six and injuring at least 30 others. It also appears that an attack on the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed three and injured at least 19. Ukrainian forces are currently hard-pressed fighting not only 50,000 troops in the Kursk region of Russia, but the escalating fighting along the front lines in the east and south of the country.

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QP: Concern trolling about climate targets

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Thursday, and neither the PM nor his deputy were in town to attend QP, and all of the other leaders decided to be absent as well. That left Andrew Scheer to lead off, giving a misleading condemnation of the emissions cap, claiming this was driving jobs and investment to the US, and wondered if the PM was getting a commission from the US energy department for all the jobs he was creating. Steven Guilbeault started that it was a cap on pollution, and that oil production was projected to keep increasing another 16 percent by 2030, and companies in the sector were making billion-dollar investments to ensure that the sector has a future while they fight climate change. Scheer insisted that this was a cap on production, and then used the Environment Commissioner’s report to concern troll about the slow progress on emissions reductions, before demanding an election, claiming the current path was “insanity.” Guilbeault noted that it was extraordinary that the Conservatives were talking about climate change, and repeated that emissions were going down after they had to pick up the slack after a decade of inaction. Scheer then cited a Salvation Army report about food insecurity and blamed the carbon levy before demanding an election, to which Soraya Martinez Ferrada responded in French that the Conservatives have an inferiority complex, noted that Canada had lower inflation than other countries and the Conservatives were jealous. Luc Berthold took over in French, repeated the concern trolling about emissions reductions, and Guilbeault repeated that it was extraordinary that the Conservatives were talking about climate change and that they have no plan. Berthold repeated the claims that the Liberals have done nothing for climate, and Guilbeault reiterated that the Conservatives would just let the planet burn because they have no plan for climate or the economy. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and railed about the amendment to the Supply Management bill in the Senate, claiming those senators were doing Trump’s bidding (seriously?!) and demanded the government call on senators to vote down the amendment. Karina Gould said that they were disappointed by the move and called on senators to vote it down. Therrien railed further about the amendment, and Marie-Claude Bibeau reiterated their support for Supply Management and encouraged senators to vote down the amendment. 

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he too railed about the Environment Commissioner’s report, and that the Liberals weren’t doing their jobs. Guilbeault suggested he actually read the report and insisted it showed progress because emissions were going down while the economy was growing. Lisa Marie Barron repeated the condemnation in English, and Guilbeault noted previous NDP support for carbon pricing and thanks to Conservative pressure, they are no longer progressive or environmentalists. 

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QP: Swagger around the Trump election

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In the wake of the U.S. election results, the prime minister was present today to answer all questions, while his deputy was away. All of the other leaders were present, and Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and claimed that Trudeau had previously caved to Trump on softwood lumber and claimed he would do so again. Justin Trudeau dismissed this and noted how they successfully renegotiated NAFTA, and stood up to other tariffs. Poilievre’s tried this again in English, and Trudeau repeated his same points with the added note that Poilievre wouldn’t get his security clearance. Poilievre went on about what is “dumb” and claimed the carbon levy was driving jobs and investment in the U.S., and Trudeau said that they were going to grow the economy together, and said that that government takes defence and security seriously, and pointed to the defence cuts under the Conservatives and his refusal to get His clearance. Poilievre patted himself on the back for the Conservatives “crushing the Taliban and ISIS,” claimed Trudeau couldn’t shoot down a Chinese weather balloon. Trudeau accused Poilievre of talking down the Canadian Forces, and called him out for not committing to their two percent NATO timeline. Poilievre returned to French to claim that Trudeau has destroyed the economy, and Trudeau listed ways in which they have stood up for Canadian workers and took defence seriously, before one more swipe at the security clearance. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the crush of Americans heading for the border to avoid Trump. Trudeau noted that they have been making preparations before some economic back-patting. Blanchet felt that was too vague, and Trudeau again offered some bland assurances that they are protecting the border, and the steps taken to better distribute refugees around the country.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and worried about the American tariffs would raise prices in Canada. (Huh? How?) Trudeau listed the workers they stood up for workers the last time and will do so again. Singh said was “cold comfort” before repeating the question in French, and Trudeau, related his same back-patting.

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QP: Blaming Trudeau for sectarian violence

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While the election was happening south of the border, the prime minister was present for Question Period, as were all of the other leaders. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and led off with a bit of an exaggeration about the softwood lumber agreement that Harper signed with the U.S. (which the industry objected to), as his way of demanding an election. Justin Trudeau noted that the Conservatives advocated capitulating to the Americans in previous trade disputes while his government stood up to Trump and won. Poilievre then made the false claim that the government is “impoverishing” Canadians, to which Trudeau dismissed this as more of Poilievre’s false “broken” narrative. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question and its false assertions about softwood lumber. Trudeau noted that he has already answered this in French, and took the opportunity to denounce the violence seen at Sikh and Hindu temples. Poilievre ignored that entirely and repeated his false narratives around the GDP per capita, and Trudeau noted Poilievre’s silence on the violence in the South Asian community, and used that to wedge in his condemnation that Poilievre wouldn’t get his security clearance. Poilievre said this was a distraction from the economy and blamed Trudeau personally for the sectarian violence, rise in hate crimes and division in the country. Trudeau said that while Poilievre is so assured that he knows the causes of these problems, he won’t get his clearance to get proper briefings.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and wondered why the emissions cap was being done by regulation and not statute, but Trudeau didn’t explain the difference, but went on a soliloquy about the oil and gas sector doing their fair share. Blanchet demanded tougher standards to take to the electorate, and Trudeau stated that no sector should be allowed to pollute without limit, and that they should re-invest their record profits into lowering their emissions.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and complained that a Loblaws-owned company is charging for families doctors. Trudeau noted that this is provincial responsibility, but their latest transfers included earmarks for hiring doctors and mental health services. Singh gave a scripted retort before repeating the question in French and got the same answer in French.

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Roundup: Emissions cap unveiled

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At long last, the federal government unveiled their long-awaited oil and gas emissions cap draft regulations, mandating that they reduce emissions by 35 percent by 2032, with the expectation that much of these reductions are going to come in the form of reducing methane emissions—much of which is already underway—and that production is still expected to rise by 16 percent over those eight years. (Five things to know about the proposal here). For an industry that insists that it’s going to be “Net Zero” by 2050, this would seem like an achievable milestone to get there along the way, but apparently not.

Danielle Smith had a meltdown and started threatening legal action, but can’t exactly articulate on what basis that would be. Certain newspaper columnists posited that she could somehow invoke the Notwithstanding Clause, which doesn’t apply to this sort of situation in any way, shape or form (and should be disqualifying for someone writing in a newspaper with a six-figure salary).

Industry insists this is going to kill them, but they’ve been promising reductions for decades and have taken plenty of government money to help them fulfil those promises that they are now insisting are impossible. So…at what point do we start calling them on their own bullshit? If their plan is to hope that there will be magical technology by 2050 that will painlessly reduce their emission for them, well, that’s their problem. They made these promises, and it’s time they show how they’re going to live up to them.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was another Russian air attack made against Kyiv overnight, but it’s too early to tell how much damage was caused. South Korea’s defence ministry now estimates more than 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia, but the Pentagon cannot confirm if they are currently fighting in the Kursk region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1853389611604615191

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QP: Low-energy economic bafflegab

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On a rainy Monday, the prime minister was in town but not at QP, while his deputy was in his stead. Some of the other leaders were present today, but not Pierre Poilievre, unusually. That left Andrew Scheer to lead off to read some utter nonsense about “economic vandalism” and a “per capita” recession, and demanded a cancellation of “tax hikes.” Patty Hajdu got up to first speak to the passing of Senator Murray Sinclair. Scheer said they joined in sending condolences, before returning to his claims of economic vandalism and railed about the proposed emissions cap, and demanded it be scrapped. Jonathan Wilkinson said that they are moving to address climate change, and that low-carbon sources will be more valuable. Scheer read some statistics without context to claim the government was creating jobs in the U.S., to which Steven Guilbeault responded that Scheer should actually read the regulations, and not that production was still projected to increase. Luc Berthold took over in French to read the same non-sequitur economic stats, and Chrystia Freeland shot back with countering statistics about how much better the situation in Canada was compared to the U.S. Berthold insisted that the wealth gap is growing between countries, and Freeland quoted an American economist who suggested companies leave New York for Toronto.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he railed that the Senate needed to pass the Supply Management bill, lest there be economic doom. Lawrence MacAulay reminded him that he as been a farmer under the system his entier career, and that the government supports it. Therrien railed further about the Senators holding up the bill, two which Marie-Claude Bibeau reminded him that Senator are independent and that only a Liberal government would protect it.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP to point to doctors in Quebec offering private options, and demanded the government do something. Mark Holland recited the paean about public healthcare and suggested that they work together to pressure provinces. Singh repeated the same in French, and got much the same paean en français.

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