Tag Archives: Immigration

QP: The Bloc have demands—or else!

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The prime minister was off at the UN in New York, leaving his deputy to attend QP in his stead, and only some of the other leaders were present as a result. Speaker Greg Fergus started off with a warning about behaviour and questions that relate to the administration of government, and said that he would have more to say on it later, but he hoped for better from MPs. Andrew Scheer led off by rattling off a list of slogans, before concern trolling about tent cities and food banks, and claimed that the government’s solution was for people to pay more taxes, which is juvenile in the extreme. Chrystia Freeland praised the fact that inflation is coming down, and interest rates along with it, which makes the Conservatives mad because they can’t use it as a wedge. Scheer insisted that it was cold comfort that prices weren’t coming down (which is generally how inflation works), and took a swipe at the NDP before demanding an election. Freeland noted that the Conservatives have a hidden austerity agenda, and wondered aloud what exactly they planned to cut. Scheer then raised the capital gains tax changes, and claimed this would affect housing (extremely unlikely), and Freeland took the opportunity to praise their mortgage rule changes from last week. Luc Berthold took over in French to decry students using food banks, and demanded the carbon levy be cut. Jean-Yves Duclos called this nonsense, and called out the belief that school food programmes are “bureaucratic.” Berthold took a swipe at the Bloc, and demanded an end to the government. Duclos kept on the points about the depiction of the school food programme.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded an enrichment to OAS, or face an election. Steve MacKinnon pointed out the Bloc’s record  voting against returning the retirement age to 65 and enriching the GIS, as well as dental care. Therrien thundered that the government could afford this instead of funding oil companies, and made his threat again. MacKinnon reiterate that they have never cut help for seniors, only ever increased it even when the Bloc voted against it.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and complained that Loblaws wants to charge people $100 for a doctor’s appointment, which is provincial jurisdiction and he should take that up with Doug Ford. Mark Holland called him out for caving to a bully. Singh repeated the accusation in French, and Holland kept on his tear about the NDP caving not only on the agreement, but also on the carbon levy.

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Roundup: What the Bloc are demanding

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As part of their demands in order to support the government, the Bloc Québécois have been making enriching pensions one of their main demands, and the government has (rightfully) been pushing back, and I’m not sure that everyone understands the issue. Certainly, there are columnists who have missed the details of this, which are actually long-standing, and think that there is enough fuzziness that the government can negotiate around it. No. This has been a specific Bloc demand since the Liberals first put in the policy of enriching OAS for seniors over the age of 75, because those seniors have greater needs and many have depleted their savings. The Bloc even have a private member’s bill that they are currently debating, but naturally this bill is out of order because PMBs can’t spend money, and that’s exactly what this bill is directing them to do. So, they are very specifically demanding a royal recommendation for this bill in order for it to actually be in order, voteable, and that it can do what they want.

It’s not going to happen. It shouldn’t happen, because the whole rationale is off. But they’re going to make life uncomfortable for the government soon enough if they don’t get their way, which is why this issue has taken over the spotlight over the past week.

Here’s Tyler Meredith to explain the proposal and the financial costs, and why it’s not something the government wants to sign onto.

https://twitter.com/tylermeredith/status/1836962451264327962

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians made three strikes on Kharkiv, injuring 15. Residents of Kyiv are being told to stay indoors because of smoke from nearby fires. Ukraine has banned officials using the Telegram app because they fear that Russians can access their conversations. President Zelenskyy says that top officials have discussed and come to an agreement around the need for more domestic arms production on faster timelines.

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Roundup: Speaker Fergus on the spot in new privilege battle

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The brewing privilege battle over the Sustainable Development Technologies Canada documents is largely going under-reported, save for the National Post, but it’s going to be an interesting showdown with the Speaker about the refusal to turn over these documents. The government’s argument is that the stated purpose for demanding these documents is not for Parliamentary business, such as committee study, but because they intend to be turned over to the RCMP, which is in and of itself a problem because it does violate the separation of powers and really, really looks like politicians trying to direct the police (who have said that they don’t want the documents, because it would violate the Charter rights of any accused). I think this is a sound argument, and one that is necessary because of the ongoing abuses of privilege that the past couple of parliaments have engaged in.

Yes, Parliament has unfettered authority to send for the production of papers, but there have to be limits on this privilege, or it can be abused, and I think that this case demonstrates the limits. The complicating factor is that limits are especially difficult to maintain in a minority parliament situation because all of the opposition parties tend to be all be interested in embarrassing the government at any turn (and this is not unique to this government, but any government). It’s partly why NSICOP was fine during a majority Parliament but became the subject of political manoeuvring during the minority years—because opposition parties will try to use their leverage to embarrass a government or score points when they think they can.

I don’t envy Speaker Fergus in having to make this decision, but this kind of exercise is clearly beyond the pale. It’s not up to MPs to get information on behalf of the RCMP, and that crosses so many red lines that it should be blinding. He’s going to be criticized whatever he makes, but hopefully for the sake of precedent, he makes the right choice and rein in some of this foolishness, because once MPs feel empowered enough to do this to one organisation—SDTC in this case—they’re going to start going after anyone they disagree with ideologically on an increasing base going forward.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians targeted a geriatric centre in Sumy, as well as the power grid, which a UN body believes is probably against international humanitarian law. Russia says they are ramping up their drone production tenfold (but that may just be all talk, given the sanctions and the availability of components).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1836807096391676132

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Roundup: Bringing in the spouses?

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The fallout from Jagmeet Singh’s confrontation with members of the Asshole Brigade who are harassing people in front of Parliament Hill has taken a couple of strange twists. In his post about the incident, Singh said that “That’s the country that Pierre Poilievre wants,” which of course sent the Conservatives into the usual bit of performative victimhood. Among those was Michael Cooper, who was seen hanging out with some of those members of the Asshole Brigade, and he tweeted out that he didn’t know them, that they approached him at the restaurant he was eating in…but there is video that shows him meeting with them before the restaurant, so perhaps that’s a very judicious use of the truth.

The stranger part was that Anaida Poilievre wrote a long Twitter missive to rebut the accusation and to praise Poilievre’s good character, while taking shots at Singh and Justin Trudeau. There has been a long-held convention in Canadian politics that spouses stay out of things, and they get a semblance of anonymity as a result. The fact that she has been very active in Poilievre’s campaign is a sign that she could be much more active in a future where Poilievre becomes prime minister, and that’s a bit of a problem because we don’t have “First Ladies” in this county like the Americans do, because our “First Lady” is Queen Camila. If she plays an active role, does she then become a target for other parties? Does that open up attacks for their spouses? I worry about that given the coarsening of politics as it is, and the fact that far too many people are already targeting MPs’ homes as part of protests. We don’t need them to become fair game as things continue to race to the bottom.

https://x.com/AnaPoilievre/status/1836225640938508466

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling in Zaporizhzhia killed one woman and injured two others, while another attack targeted energy facilities in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi. Ukrainian drones have struck a Russian military base north of Moscow, causing an “earthquake-sized” blast. President Zelenskyy will be addressing the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday.

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Roundup: The sudden concern over redistributing asylum seekers

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There is a particular strain of ugly anti-immigrant rhetoric which has largely been tamped down in this country but has started to re-emerge thanks to the permission structures being formed by the Republicans in the US, and which are being laundered into Canada by blaming the Liberals for somehow “breaking the consensus” around immigration in recent years with high arrival numbers, ignoring that the vast majority of these numbers have been asked for by provincial premiers. Nevertheless, the issue with asylum seekers (which are not economic immigrants) has disproportionately landed in Quebec’s lap because of the ease of border crossing there, and Quebec has made demands of other provinces to share the load.

Well, the federal minster, Marc Miller, has had discussions with provinces about taking more of these asylum seekers—with federal supports—but that was enough to get New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs to start lying about it over social media. (Higgs is floundering in the polls ahead of an election and has been turning to Christian Nationalists as his strategy to stay competitive). And while Miller has called out Higgs for his fictitious alarm, it has already spread to other provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, with BC’s Conservative leader also weighing in (and talking out of his ass as he does about many, many files).

https://twitter.com/marcmillervm/status/1834359608481100045

Miller is an effective communicator, unlike most of his fellow Cabinet members, so he’s actually mounting a good defence, but we cannot forget that this particular xenophobic rhetoric has been creeping into the discourse here, enabled by certain premiers and by Pierre Poilievre who have been blowing this particular dog-whistle while the Elder Pundits shrug and insist that it’s not really happening because Canada is different (it is, but it’s not that different), but they see it being used effectively in the US, and in places like Hungary, and they want a piece of that action if it’ll get them the power that they crave. We’ll see if Miller can score enough blows, but I suspect that with the Elder Pundits dismissing the nature of these attacks, the effectiveness of his counters, even with receipts, will be blunted in broader public.

In case you missed it:

  • My Xtra column on the three upcoming provincial by-elections, and how conservative parties all moved further to the right in each of them.
  • My weekend column on the way the Public Accounts committee went from being the best, most non-partisan committee in Parliament to yet another sideshow.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take that explains Supply Days, and why they’re going to be a lot more weighty now that the NDP have reneged on their agreement.
  • My column on the tiff at TIFF over that Russian film, and why Conservatives blaming Trudeau are really telling on themselves about their own censorship ambitions.

Ukraine Dispatch

https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1834204204405039436

 

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Roundup: Angry over an invented grievance

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Two new Senate appointments were made over the weekend, both from Alberta, which naturally resulted in a mountain of utter bullshit, because neither were from the so-called “senators in waiting” that Alberta periodically “elects” as a stunt in order to invent a grievance against the federal government. There was also more of this nonsense hand-wringing that one of the two is a habitual Liberal donor and held roles as an organiser in the party in the past, but hasn’t for well over a decade. Nevertheless, clueless journalists and bad faith opposition members decry this as “partisan,” even though there is no actual Liberal caucus in the Senate for them to sit with, nor any Liberal whip to direct their votes (even though that has only ever really been illusory in the Senate).

The whole “Senate consultative elections” schtick in Alberta has only ever been a stunt—even when Stephen Harper appointed those who won them, because he was trying to make a point about reforming the Senate through the backdoor without actually doing constitutional changes. The logic of how they’re “just consultations” and that they are still appointed and don’t have any additional legitimacy within the Senate was laid bare during the Supreme Court hearings when Justice Cromwell asked the person making the argument “So why isn’t a consultative auction just as legitimate?” and they didn’t have an answer. But really, the whole thing was just to invent one more reason to make people mad at the federal government, at a time when there was a political impetus to stoke such regional divisions and resentments because that always helped them score political points, and lo, it’s still working for them decades later as they continue to get angry about something they just invented for the sole purpose of making them angry. It’s predictable, and it’s childish, and we should expect provincial governments like Alberta’s to behave like adults (but good luck with that these days).

Of course, where would we be without the conservative columnists in this country, making pronouncements about this without actually understanding a gods damned thing about it. “Not representative of Albertan thinking”? What exactly is “Albertan thinking?” If the insinuation is that their appointment is somehow illegitimate because they’re not conservatives, then I have news for you because the Senate is often a place where political outliers in a province can gain representation, such as Liberals in Alberta, particularly during the “bad old partisan days” where they may be shut out of the province electorally but could still have representation in the Senate and be present in caucus to provide that representation. That doesn’t happen anymore thanks to Trudeau’s short-sighted decision to boot all of the senators from his caucus, which is also why Ivison’s comments about Trudeau “renouncing” his reforms are such utter nonsense, because if Trudeau had renounced them, he would invite senators back into his caucus. He won’t (even though he should), but hey, Ivison needs to think of something from his perch in Costa Rica, and reinforcing a bullshit narrative is about the best it’s going to be.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was a bloody day in Ukraine as Russian missiles struck a military academy and a hospital, killing over fifty people and wounding more than 200. In the hours since, Russia has since launched missiles and drones against Kyiv and Lviv. This as children are returning to school, and in Kharkiv, those schools are now underground because of constant bombardment. Meanwhile, president Zelenskyy continues to call on Western countries who haven’t yet allowed their weapons to be used for long-range strikes inside Russia to not only allow them, but to supply further weapons so that Ukraine can make crucial hits. It also looks like a major government shake-up is on the way after a wave of resignations.

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Roundup: Building communes? Really?

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Something you may have noticed is the propensity by which Poilievre likes to describe Trudeau as being a communist or a Marxist—there was even video posted on social media of him describing Trudeau as such while door-knocking (in spite of all evidence to the contrary). The so-called “convoy” occupation made frequent references to the current government as being some kind of communist dictatorship, again, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And once again, Poilievre was at it yesterday when he described the federal government’s plan of leasing properties for housing as “building communes.”

Aside from the way he wrote that as describing Trudeau as being in power perpetually, this tends to back to one of Poilievre’s most ridiculous obsessions, which is equating any form of socialism with the so-called “national socialism” of Naziism, yet again, in spite of all evidence to the contrary (this has become a recurring theme).

In no way is Trudeau, whose government faces a minority Parliament, a dictator, communist or otherwise. In the same way, Stephen Harper was not a dictator, and all of the people freaking out who insisted he would never relinquish power had all made fools of themselves by insisting otherwise. But Poilievre’s continued insistence on this kind of behaviour is not only dishonest, it’s the continuation of a campaign of unrelenting lying that legacy media obstinately refuses to address, let alone even acknowledge.

Ukraine Dispatch

Rather than deal with the Kursk incursion head-on, Russia decided to launch hundreds of drones and missiles across Ukraine on Monday, killing at least four people as the strikes targeted 15 regions including Kyiv, and damaged energy facilities that led to more rolling blackouts. A second round was launched overnight. It appears that at least one Russian drone crossed into Polish airspace on Monday, but no word yet on if it has been found.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1828129805537325206

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Roundup: No, that lurid tweet was not “inartfully worded”

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Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri deleted her Twitter post that claimed that the high cost of living was causing parents to traffic their children into sex work, and that “soft on crime policies” mean that survivors don’t come forward. She claims that this was simply a statement being “inartfully worded.” Bullshit. Don’t believe her. Ferreri has a record of saying things that defy credulity, such as that seniors in her riding are reduced to eating cat food because of Trudeau, or that the carbon levy has created a mental health crisis in teenagers. No, seriously. She has also been caught on several occasions embellishing her personal history, such as her “scholarship” to university (she got discounted tuition because one of her parents worked there), or her claim that she is the “single mother of six children” (she’s divorced with three children from her first marriage, and her current partner has three children from his previous marriage, and occasionally custody overlaps). This is a pattern.

All of this is deliberate. It is not her being clumsy or not articulating herself—it’s a deliberate tactic of using lurid images to make people irrationally angry at the government, because lies that trigger strong emotions work. That’s the sad truth of the matter, and this is 100 percent the tactic that the Conservatives are using to try and win the next election. Ferreri, granted, likes to gild the lily a little more when it comes to her tales of woe, and that’s what got her into trouble this time, but this isn’t accidental, or her not understanding the crime statistics she heard from her local organizations. This was absolutely about trying to come up with a new lie to make people angry at Trudeau, and she got caught. Not that there will be any consequences, because everything is both-sidesed in the media, so her defenders will rationalize her falsehoods, and nothing will change. They know how to game the system like this, and they will keep doing it because it works for them.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that they destroyed an S-300 anti-aircraft system in Rostov region overnight, citing that it was being used to attack civilian infrastructure. President Zelenskyy says that forces are shoring up defences in the east near Pokrovsk, as Russia tries to capture the city. There is some speculation that Putin’s slow response to the incursion in Kursk could cause him problems among his backers—or not, since he’s making them rich regardless.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1825896088315834440

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Roundup: Sophistry and the “Canadian Dream”

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A piece widely shared over the weekend in the Globe and Mail, titled “The Canadian dream is on life support,” was a curious bit of writing, as the Elder Pundits of this country treated it like a damning indictment of the current government. While Omer Aziz’s ultimate conclusions in the piece are correct—that the federal government needs to admit that things have gone wrong, throw out their old assumptions and pivot, and they need to throw away their talking points while they’re at it—his process of getting there was torturous, and full of outright sophistry.

One of the things that really stood out for me in the piece was just how shallow the analysis really was, particularly in the fact that it served as something of an apologia for the premiers. You wouldn’t know it from reading the piece, but while he levels much of his scorn at the federal government, many of the problems he described are the fault of provincial governments, even where he asserts that they are solely federal such as with immigration. His attention to things like international students were the fault of provincial governments—most especially Ontario and BC—who let their post-secondary institutions treat these international students like cash cows (because they cut funding to those institutions), and allowed the public-private partnership colleges that were largely fraudulent to flourish, again because these provincial governments weren’t doing their jobs, while the federal government was told to just trust them (and I’m not sure how the federal immigration department was supposed to be auditing these institutions in the first place). Likewise, provincial governments scream for temporary foreign workers, and the federal government has to operate on a certain level of trust that these provincial governments know their labour markets best. With his condemnation of the supposed laxity of our criminal justice system again ignores that policing and the administration of justice are provincial matters, but that is never mentioned. He even sides with Facebook on their cutting off of Canadian news and says that the Canadian government wasn’t nice enough to them. Come on.

There are things going wrong in this country, but many of them are complex, and have roots in decades of policy choices by federal and provincial governments that have taken us to this point, and it’s hard for any one government to unwind these structural problems. This kind of essay does a disservice by trying to be simplistic about the problems and solutions to those problems.

Ukraine Dispatch

A father and son were killed in a Russian missile strike on the Kyiv region on Sunday, while three civilians were killed in attacks on Kharkiv and Donetsk on Saturday. In the Kursk incursion, Russians claim that they are increasing security in the area (as videos of their troops surrending en masse flood social media), while president Zelenskyy says that this move puts pressure on Russia as the aggressor. There was a fire reported on the grounds of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, but the structure itself appears to be intact.

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Roundup: Vandenbeld’s side—and a warning

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Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld penned an op-ed over on National Newswatch to explain her side of what happened at the Status of Women committee last week, which has led to her and her staff being targeted and harassed off-line (because this is one of the tactics that Conservatives also employ and pretend they don’t, even though they know full well that they send their flying monkeys at the people they single out over social media). It’s an illuminating read that has a lot more of the backstory about how this committee was operating under its previous chair, some of the procedural elements of what happened that got lost in the noise around the witnesses walking out (never mind that they were set up from the start), and some of the rationale behind why this is happening. Don’t get me wrong—I think she still made a mistake in trying to make the public pivot to the abortion study motion, but the rest of the piece is a good insight into the problems at hand.

“Following Trumps playbook, since becoming Conservative Party Leader, Pierre Poilievre has put out a narrative that Parliament is broken, and the institutions are rigged. The Status of Women committee was living proof that this narrative was not true. And so Poilievre had to destroy it.”

This is one of the most important points as to why things are happening the way they are, beyond the clip-harvesting exercises. It’s one of the primary reasons why the Conservatives have been going hard after Speaker Fergus, why they are abusing privilege in demanding reams of unredacted documents and demanding that the Law Clerk do necessary redactions and not trained civil servants, why they try to tie arm’s-length agencies to the government or prime minister personally. It’s all out of the same authoritarian populism playbook.

But while she pointed out, I feel the need to call out Power & Politics’ abysmal coverage of this issue yesterday, with the guest host (reading from a script on a teleprompter) saying that Vandenbeld’s “behaviour” led to her being harassed, and in the discussion with the Power Panel that followed, was dismissive of the “minutiae of parliamentary procedure” when that was one of the key cruxes of what happened. Procedure was quite deliberately abused, and it led to this confrontation. And the panellists themselves being dismissive of the overall problem, and giving the tired lines of “only five people in the country care about this,” or “I’m shocked that there’s politics in politics!” as though what has been happening is normal. It’s not. Institutions are being deliberately undermined and that is a very serious problem, and it would be great if the gods damned pundit class in this country could actually arse itself to care about that fact rather than just fixating on the horse race numbers for once.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it downed two Russian missiles and four drones overnight, but that shelling killed four people in the Donetsk region, and that homes in the Kyiv region were damaged by a drone attack the night before. There are unconfirmed reports of a Ukrainian force in the Kursk region of Russia, but Ukraine won’t confirm or deny.

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