Tag Archives: Infrastructure

QP: Worries about the status of French

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None of the leaders were present in the chamber today, nor was the deputy prime minister present. Candice Bergen led off, and after a litany of false narratives about the state of the economy pre-pandemic, she worried about the state of the Keystone XL pipeline. Paul Lefebvre insisted that the government was unwavering in its support for the project and raised the project in the first call with Joe Biden. Bergen felt this wasn’t good enough and recited some false talking points about the old Bill C-69, to which Lefebvre repeated that Trudeau raised the matter with Biden and that Canada’s current climate plan was a point in their favour. Bergen remained unsatisfied, and repeated the question again, to which Lefebvre quoted Joe Clark slamming the Harper record on the environment. Gérard Deltell was up next, and he chastised something that Montreal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos made about the decline of French in that city, to which Mélanie Joly assured him that they took the protection of French very seriously. Deltell complained that Official Languages Act had not yet been updated, to which Joly said they would be modernising it in due course. Claude DeBellefeuille led off for the Bloc, and she raised false narratives about judicial appointments, to which David Lametti assured her that they have an independent process based on merit and diversity. DeBellefeuille was not mollified, and repeated the question, and got the same answer. Jagmeet Singh appeared by video from his car, and in French, he demanded national standards for long-term care, to which Patty Hajdu reminded him they are working with provinces and territories on just that, and they gave them more money in the Safe Restart Plan. Singh switched to English to repeat false narratives about the ownership of Revera long-term care homes (they are not actually federally-owned, and insisting otherwise is being utterly disingenuous), to which Hajdu repeated her response.

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QP: Imagining a diplomatic snub

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It being Wednesday, the prime minister was present and ready to respond to all of the questions being posed. Erin O’Toole led off, and lied about what David Lametti said about judicial appointments, and Trudeau said he would answer in a moment, but wanted to first assure Canadians that they were monitoring what is happening in the United States. O’Toole accused him of a cover-up and of politicising appointments, to which Trudeau read a script about major reforms to the process to make it independent after Conservative mismanagement. O’Toole tried in French, and got the same answer. O’Toole then worried that federal guidance on masks was stricter than in Quebec, and wondered who Quebeckers should listen to, and Trudeau said that they respect the advice of local public health authorities but they are trying to provide guidance. O’Toole tried again in English, and got much the same response. Yves-François Legault got up for the Bloc and accused the prime minister of preferring Biden and weakening the relationship with Americans, then wondered if he had spoke to the president of France. Trudeau reminded him that regardless of the outcome of the election, they would stand up for Canadian interests and those of allies including France. Blanchet tried to pivot this to freedom of expression, and Trudeau listed things that Canada stands with France on, and that he would be speaking with Macron in the near future. Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, and in French, demanded to know when the federal standards on long-term care was coming — because you can wrangle the provinces overnight. Trudeau reminded him that they are working with the provinces. Singh then lied about federal ownership over certain long-term care homes and demanded an end to for-profit care, to which Trudeau reminded him that they respect provincial jurisdiction on long-term care but are there to support provinces.

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QP: Assertions of no PMO interference

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All of the leaders were absent for the day, and not even the deputy PM was present, making it feel a little more like a Friday than a Monday. Gérard Deltell led off in English, lamenting that the prime minister wouldn’t protect the unconditional freedom of speech, and feeling there should be limits on it. François-Philippe Champagne responded with condolences for the people of France, and saying that Canada would defend freedom of expression around the world. Deltell repeated the question in French, to which Champagne warned him against politicising such a horrific incident. Deltell tried to put forward the notion that it took Trudeau twelve days to condemn the murder of that teacher in France, to which Champagne rebutted that he made a statement the following day. Deltell reminded Champagne that he is not yet prime minister, and insisted that the government was not standing by its ally in France, and Champagne rebutted that the government speaks as a whole. Deltell again returned to Trudeau citing that there are limits to freedom of expression, for which Champagne again chided him about politicising the issue. Stéphane Bergeron led for the Bloc, and he too hammered on Trudeau saying there were limits to freedom of expression, for which Champagne reiterated his that Canada stood by France and to defend freedom of expression. Bergeron accused the government of downplaying Islamic terrorism and hurting Quebec’s special relationship with France, to which Champagne repeated that Canada was standing by France. Jagmeet Singh was up next by video, and in French, after mentioning the attack in Quebec City, he demanded increased funding for mental health services, for which Patty Hajdu reminded him that they have been increasing funds for provinces for mental health services. Singh switched to English to worry about small businesses paying commercial rent, accusing Trudeau of helping “Liberal insiders” instead. Sean Fraser responded with a list of programmes available for small businesses. 

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QP: The Bloc let their motives be known

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While he had initially stated that he would not be in QP today, things changed and prime minister Justin Trudeau did show up after all. Erin O’Toole led off in French with a script in front of him, accusing the prime minister letting the pandemic alert system get sidelined because he preferred Chinese data, to which Trudeau disputed it, saying that the funding was stable and they we investigating to know what happened with the system. O’Toole doubled down and accused the prime minister of ideologically preferring information out of China, and Trudeau disputed this more vigorously. O’Toole switched to English to accuse the government of ignoring warnings about Huawei, to which Trudeau insisted that they were aware of the reports and were working to keep Canadians safe. O’Toole tried again, for which Trudeau reiterated his response. O’Toole then moved onto a potential refinery closure in Newfoundland, accusing the government of doing nothing about it, to which Trudeau declared that they were engaged and listed consultations they have undertaken. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and he returned to the accusations of the government consorting with an alleged Chinese gangster, to which Trudeau offered a curt no in response. Therrien listed more apparent meetings that the government had with this alleged gangster, and Trudeau reminded him that the Liberals’ fundraising activities were the most transparent of any party. Jagmeet Singh was up to lead for the NDP, and in French, he demanded a tax on “excessive profits” companies made in the pandemic, to which Trudeau recited his worn talking point that they raised the taxes on the one percent when they formed government and the NDP voted against it. Singh changed to English to name poor workers to put faces on the same question, and Trudeau responded that they recognised front-line workers and that was why they stepped up to supports for businesses, before repeating his line about raising taxes.

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QP: Energy workers and omitted automation

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The prime minister was away, having attended the state funereal of Rt.Hon. John Turner, but his deputy was again present, which was worth something. Erin O’Toole led off, with his script on the mini-lectern in front of him, and in French he accused government of dragging their feet on the procurement of ventilators, citing one contract in particular.  Chrystia Freeland assured him they were taking the pandemic seriously, and thanked industrial partners for stepping up. O’Toole tried again, and this time Freeland stated that his assertion wasn’t true, that they had sourced enough ventilators across the country, and were still procuring necessary equipment and medication. O’Toole switched to English to reiterate the question with added bombast, to which Freeland calmly assured him that they were confident they have the ventilators they need, and they have acquired so much PPE that they are acquiring additional warehouse space. O’Toole then switched to the topic of a possible refinery closure in Newfoundland, to which Freeland too exception to his characterisation, and reminded him that they just transferred millions of dollars to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador for the benefit of energy workers. O’Toole then raised Suncor job losses — studiously omitting that those losses were as a result of increased automation— and Freeland disabused him of the notion that the government doesn’t care about Albertans and listed the benefits delivered to the province. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and he made the usual demand for increased health transfers, to which Freeland reminded him of the increased supports they have already provided. Luc Thériault repeated the plea, and Freeland repeated that they have given the provinces additional funds. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he complained that some people made profits off the pandemic and they needed to be taxed, to which Freeland listed that they were working to combat tax evasion. Singh switched to English to complain that private clinics were giving COVID tests for a fee, and Freeland agreed that everyone should be treated the same, and that Health Canada just approved an antigen test.

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Roundup: Learned helplessness sets into the Senate

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News that the Senate has been suspended until the end of the month, and that they have only met fourteen times since March, is deeply irritating to me on numerous levels. My primary irritation is that the Senate has work it can do, but hasn’t been doing it both because they’ve been unable to get their committees up and running, and because there have been virtually no government bills that were not COVID-related or Estimates that have headed their way. On the committee front, it would seem that much of the drama that happened in the early part of the year in the Selection committee has largely resolved itself because the Progressive Senators Group has been revitalized and is now a viable caucus again, meaning that Senator Yuen Pau Woo’s attempt to exclude them from committee seats has been for naught, and they should be able to come to an agreement about equitable distribution of seats now that he’s not able to screw them over. As for government bills, this has largely been a question of timing – bills in process did not advance very far before the pandemic hit – but the government has a very full agenda and should introduce one or two of its bills in the Senate as they are capable of doing, in order to get the ball rolling on them. There is no excuse for them not to.

As for the lack of sitting days, this is largely the prerogative of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, and in the current pandemic state, I find that a kind of learned helplessness has been setting in, in both chambers. The Senate, disadvantaged on the part of resources, particularly when it comes to thinks like IT and video capacity, has taken a back-seat while the Commons has been gobbling up those resources to get its own operations going remotely, and yet the Senate could very well have come up with ways to meet in-person safely. The concerns about travel could be mitigated by just having senators stay put, but they have thus far refused to make allowances in their Internal Economy committee to let them do so that won’t cost them out-of-pocket if they don’t already have an apartment or condo in town. The current demands for “hybrid” sittings, in spite of the problems that have developed with them in the Commons, seems to be barrelling ahead in spite of the objections of the Conservatives, and despite the fact that simply creating a parliamentary bubble is the cheaper, easier, and better option.

The bitter irony in all of this is that for all of Justin Trudeau’s talk about a more “independent” Senate, the last eight months have turned the Chamber into one big rubber stamp, as process gets abused time and again in the name of emergency legislation because they refuse to create a parliamentary bubble. People should be angry about this, but most everyone is just shrugging and playing into the learned helplessness that has set it, making me all the more irritated by it all.

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Roundup: O’Toole and his conditional support

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As part of their need to get bills that died during prorogation back on the Order Paper, the Liberals yesterday reintroduced the bill that would ban “conversion therapy” as a criminal offence. Erin O’Toole insists that he’s against this pseudo-science – really! – but in the same breath claims that this bill is terribly flawed and that the Liberals are just introducing it to set a trap for him. His claim that the bill is problematic is dubious, because he claims that it would criminalise conversations about sexuality or gender identity between a minor and their parents or faith leader, when that’s clearly not the case. This, however, is a pervasive bogeyman that the social conservatives in the Conservative caucus want to put forward, and we’ve seen versions of it for years. Remember how they were so opposed to the government’s legislation allowing for same-sex civil marriages, and how they were rending their garments and howling that this was going to mean that their pastors and preachers were going to be forced to perform these marriages, or that their sermons would be denounced as hate speech? Did any of that happen? Nope. But there is a constant need to beat the drum that their religious freedoms are being trampled by the LGBT community because said community simply wishes to exist unmolested.

To an extent, though, this is the Liberals throwing the cat among the pigeons, because it’s going to be O’Toole’s first big test as leader when it comes to whether or not he’ll appease the social conservatives to whom he owes a debt for their support of his leadership, or whether he’ll keep trying to project the image that his is a big, welcoming party that wants to draw in members of this community. From previous conversations with insiders when previous private members’ bills on banning conversion therapy were introduced, that this sends the Conservative caucus into a panic because they know it’s going to sow divisions in their ranks, and these usual fears about religious freedoms rear their heads. And it’s not like the Liberals came up with this specifically to cause O’Toole headaches – it was introduced in the previous session, and got derailed by the pandemic.

I also feel the need to point out that during the leadership, there were a lot of profiles in the mainstream media that kept repeating that O’Toole had pledged to march in Pride parades without mentioning that he made that pledge conditional on uniformed police also marching, which eliminates all of the major Pride parades in this country owing to the current climate and conversation about policing. It also shows that his support is transactional, much like his insistence that he’s pro-choice but voted for a bill that would open a backdoor to criminalising abortion was shrugged off in the mainstream media rather than called out for the bullshit weaselling that it was. O’Toole is going to try to play both sides on this bill, and I suspect that he’s going to concern troll his way out of it – that his “concerns” about this “criminalization” will carry the day and he’ll insist that he’s being principled and weasel out of standing up to the social conservatives that he is beholden to.

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QP: A parliamentary secretary flounders

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Despite being in the building, Justin Trudeau was elsewhere for QP today, nor was his deputy present. Erin O’Toole led off, with a script on the mini-lectern in front of him, and he lamented that the pandemic early warning unit was scrapped months before the onset of this current pandemic. Darren Fisher got up to read a statement about the plans to conduct an independent review of the decisions taken. O’Toole was not satisfied, and demanded answers, and Fisher repeated his script on an independent review. O’Toole switched to rapid testing, and falsely insinuated that they would have eliminated the current testing backlog, though that is not the case — they are not the same. Fisher read that they are working with provinces and that new tests were approved. O’Toole blamed an outbreak in a Calgary hospital on the lack of rapid testing, and Fisher reiterated a script about working together to increase testing capacity. O’Toole switched to French to repeat the demand, and Fisher stumblingly accused the Conservatives of trying to politicise regulatory processes, but didn’t do so very effectively. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc to demand higher health transfers, to which Pablo Rodriguez listed federal cooperation with Quebec. Luc Thériault repeated the demand, and Rodriguez said that they were dealing directly with the government of Quebec and didn’t need the Bloc to be middle-men. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he lamented that infrastructure hadn’t been built, to which Catherine McKenna gave some happy talking points about the morning’s announcement on infrastructure priorities. Singh switched to English to repeat the question, and McKenna repeated her happy talking points in English.

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QP: Calling out the ramming through of bills

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Things were late in getting started thanks to a lengthy “hybrid” vote, and they skipped members’ statements in order to make up time (though Peter Julian made a valiant attempt to go through with them anyway). Candice Bergen once again led off, and she lamented that the government was “disinterested” in helping small businesses. Justin Trudeau listed assistance programmes that they had to help them, and did note that the commercial rent subsidy was not federal jurisdiction so it wasn’t working as well as they had hoped. Bergen then (correctly) railed that the government was ramming through emergency legislation without adequate consultation, to which Trudeau praised the collaboration between parties to get things right, before accusing the Conservatives of playing politics. Bergen lamented the government hiding from their scandals, to which Trudeau lashed out that the Conservatives wanted to deal with WE Charity while they government was dealing with the second wave. Gérard Deltell was up next, to quote a tweet from Andrew Leslie about the government limiting debate when it didn’t happen during the two world wars. Trudeau offered some bland reassurances about working together. Deltell lamented that debate was being limited again for C-4, for which Trudeau repeated the line about working together instead of playing petty politics, and gave a shoutout to Canadians to avoid the COVID Alert app. Alain Therrien was up for the Bloc, and he lamented that Quebec City and Montreal were back in the the “red zone” before he demanded higher health transfers, to which Trudeau pointed out that they did increase transfers and just sent them $19 billion in the Safe Restart Agreement. Therrien got shouty in his demand for transfers, and Trudeau reiterated that they did transfer billions already. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he lamented that the deficit was so high because he was afraid the government would lead to cuts, before demanding a wealth tax. Trudeau reminded him that the first thing that his government did was raise taxes on the top one percent, and that the NDP voted against it. Singh repeated the question in English, and Trudeau repeated his answer in English.

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Roundup: Developing an app

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The day’s presser began with prime minister Justin Trudeau congratulating the winners of the UN Security Council seats, and gave an articulation of why it was important to Canada to try, and a promise that he would keep working to these laudable foreign development goals, even if we weren’t at the table. From there, he announced that the Canadian Digital Service, in cooperation with BlackBerry and Shopify, had been creating a mobile app to assist with contact tracing that was soon to be tested in Ontario, and this was a system that would collect no personal or location data – that it had a database of anonymized identifier numbers that could be triggered if someone tests positive – and that unlike other contact tracing apps, this one simply needed to be installed on the phone and it would run in the background, and not need to be open, which would drain the battery. (And Trudeau got really into it, because he is a geek about these kinds of things). Closing off, he spoke about new applications for the cultural industry and funds for national museums.

During the Q&A, Trudeau said that the late start to the Security Council race hurt us (and he’s not wrong there – many countries need the full eight to ten years to make a successful bid), for what it’s worth. He also made some fairly vague promises around trying to rein in the RCMP when it comes to their use of force, particularly against Black and Indigenous people. He also refused to condemn Jagmeet Singh’s outburst on Wednesday, saying it wasn’t for him to judge how a racialised leader perceived what happened.

On a completely different note, I was pleased to hear that the MPs in charge of the Centre Block renovations have decided to keep the existing footprint of the original Commons chamber, and didn’t take up the options to either expand into the lobbies behind or completely move the West wall and expand outward from there. They also say that the renovated Chamber could accommodate up to 420 MPs, but it also sounds like they may be leaning toward using benches, which would be terrific because desks are an Americanism, and simply encourage MPs to be doing work other than paying attention to the debates (and we’ve all seen the piles of Xmas cards that start showing up in the fall). I am less keen on the talk about physical distancing as part of the renovations, because they won’t be done for a decade, and we are likely to be over this pandemic by then, and we can work with the existing chamber and set-up perfectly well if we really wanted to.

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