Tag Archives: Iran

Roundup: No breach of privilege for horse jokes

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Our long national horse-joke nightmare is over. The Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that said tweet didn’t impinge on Garnett Genuis’ ability to do his work, and was not a prima facie breach of privilege, and the matter is dropped. I’m just surprised that it took him three days to determine that, but here we are. I was able to return to the House of Commons without fear that I would be removed by security (because the privilege complaint got the Sergeant-at-Arms involved), and things went as they have for pretty much the past almost fourteen years. Sure, Andrew Scheer gave me a death stare, but he’s not going to keep me from doing my job.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1574767434145447940

With that in mind, a few notes and observations—while I might have preferred a stronger statement from the Press Gallery executive, I have come to learn that there was a lot of backroom pressure being exerted by certain Conservatives, so the Gallery didn’t relent to that, which is a positive sign, but still worrying about the overall implications. I am under no illusions—this was a targeted attack on me, and this was a test case for what the Conservatives hoped they could get away with in their attempt to go to war with the media. They figured that I was vulnerable, because I’m a freelancer without a corporation and a newsroom backing me up, and I’m gay, and they hoped it would count against me. It didn’t. The Gallery rebuffed their attempts, and I wasn’t about to let the Conservatives bully or intimidate me. But this was pure intimidation, and We The Media can’t kid ourselves. I was one of the first, but I will not be the last. We’re going to need to get a lot better at solidarity in the months and years to come. Am I going to recycle this horse joke yet again? Probably not. But I’m not going to stop calling out their bullshit, either in print or over Twitter.

The bigger warning sign is about what this says about the state of politics. For Scheer and Genuis, this is just a game, and they are more concerned with scoring points than they are in doing the work of being an MP, whether it’s actual accountability, or policy work, or any of it. And the sad reality is that this is where politics has been headed under the current generation for a few years now. Friends of mine who used to be staffers got so discouraged by this attitude about point-scoring—and this is from all parties, not just the Conservatives—that they wanted out. Their going after me was just another attempt to score a point, and that’s why I’m not going to laugh this off and say “It’s just politics.” Because it’s not “just politics,” and this is not a game. We need to break this mindset, and return to this being a serious place with serious people. Garnett Genuis and Andrew Scheer are not serious people. Oh, and if they couldn’t parse the grammar of that tweet, then they have no business scrutinizing legislation.

And finally, a big thank you to all of my supporters and followers over the past week. It was very heartening to get your messages of encouragement throughout, even as I dealt with an influx of trolls who apparently have nothing better to do with their time than stalk my Facebook, or click on my YouTube videos in order to down-vote them. (Guess what guys—the algorithm counts those clicks, down-votes and shitty comments as engagement in my favour).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 216:

Russia is claiming to have won overwhelming majority votes in their sham-referendums (conducted at gunpoint) in occupied regions of Ukraine as a pretext for annexation, which no Western country is going to view as legitimate. Meanwhile, Russian men at risk of conscription are fleeing the country, and a Russian-backed disinformation network trying to spread propaganda about the invasion has been shut down.

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Roundup: Threats only matter when it’s your family

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The chatter yesterday morning was that the Diagolon crew talked on their online show about raping Pierre Poilievre’s wife just to prove that they could, and lo, Poilievre got angry, referred this to the RCMP, and called the Diagolon crew dirt bags and insisted he had never heard of this group before, even though he very clearly had, and had been playing footsie with them like he has with a bunch of other far-right extremists. And yes, it’s horrifying that they would make these kinds of comments—which they insist were just “a joke” and that they meant no harm (far-right extremists are always “just joking” until they’re not), but Poilievre only seemed to care about rape threats when they were directed as his family, and not, say, the female journalists who reported on his connections with Diagolon, for whom Poilievre decried as a “smear” and sent his flying monkeys after them, who were again subjected to all manner of graphic rape and death threats, which he has never denounced. You see where this is going?

https://twitter.com/TedFriendlyGuy/status/1574412812574769152

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 215:

It is apparently the last day of Russia’s sham referendum in occupied regions of Ukraine, while their forces have conducted drone airstrikes on the port of Odessa.

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Roundup: Royal tour, day one

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It is now approximately day eighty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and we have some confirmation now that the fighting in Mariupol is at an end. Both sides are claiming victory—Russia claiming it is a mass surrender, Ukraine stating that the garrison achieved their objectives, and in particular, they tied up Russian forces that couldn’t be deployed elsewhere, as those forces have been pushed back, as far as the border in some cases. There is now a negotiated withdrawal taking place, and prisoner swaps may be in the works, so we’ll see how this plays out.

Elsewhere, it sounds like today is the day that Sweden and Finland both make their applications to NATO, and while Turkey is still being sour about it, but we’ll see what particular concessions they try to extract before their membership is accepted.

Closer to home, it was the first day of Charles and Camilla’s royal tour, starting in Newfoundland and Labrador. They visited the provincial legislature, the lieutenant governor’s residence, and the village of Quidi Vidi, as well as met with residential school survivors. Prince Charles did talk about the need for reconciliation in his speech, and that is going to be one of the themes of the tour.

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1526656706914271233

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1526657592495423490

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Roundup: A Ukrainian delegation in Ottawa

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We are now on or about day thirty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has accused Ukraine of crossing the border with two helicopter gunships to attack a fuel depot in Belgorod—something that the Ukrainians deny, which raises the notion that this may be some kind of false-flag operation by Russia to justify further action against Ukraine. After all, CSE has outlined some of the disinformation storylines that Russia has been pushing around their invasion of Ukraine, including the fabrication that Ukrainians are harvesting organs from soldiers, which is blatantly untrue—but Russia has been bad enough at their information operations that it may not be too surprising if they staged this explosion in Belgorod. Also pressing is the statement from president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Russian forces have been leaving mines in the area outside of Kyiv, including around homes and corpses.

https://twitter.com/ArmUkraineNow/status/1510096650823421958

Elsewhere, Ukraine has paused its efforts to recruit fighters internationally, given that there are some problems with the legal status of some of them with their home countries, but also the fact that it actually doesn’t make sense to put these people on the front lines with little-to-no training. That said, they stated that they still need help with non-combat roles, such as transporting food, ammunition, fuel, and moving wounded soldiers from the battlefields, so we’ll see if there is still the same enthusiasm for those roles. As for refugees coming to Canada, there are concerns that there are now months-long waits for biometrics appointments at embassies and consulates in surrounding countries, but the government has been putting more resources in those offices, and have stated that it would actually take longer to make the IT changes necessary for visa-free travel than this system which adapts existing travel streams to the country. I guess we’ll see which winds up being correct.

Meanwhile, five Ukrainian parliamentarians have been in Ottawa for the past two days, meeting with Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Anita Anand, and other parliamentarians. Part of what they have asked for the government are a specific shopping list of weapons and lethal aid, as well as financial aid. It sounds like there haven’t been any announcements out of these meetings, other than an assurance to watch next week’s budget, so that’s one more thing to stay tuned for on Thursday.

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Roundup: Fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies

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Erin O’Toole has apparently decided he’s going all-in for the unvaccinated, and wants “reasonable accommodations” made for them while they continue to flood the healthcare system and push it to the point of collapse, and lo, he wants the federal government to halt their vaccine mandate for truck drivers citing the fragility of the supply chain. (Erm, so when the virus rips through the unvaccinated drivers, that won’t further disrupt the supply chain?)

Logic doesn’t seem to be penetrating O’Toole’s rhetoric—nor the simple fact that premiers are responsible for the management of the pandemic, not the federal government. There are no “reasonable accommodations” because rapid tests are not actually passports that allow the unvaccinated free licence to go out in public (unlikely to be masked either, because the Venn diagram of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers is nearly a perfect circle). All it does is prolong the pandemic and the strain on the healthcare system which is leading to the mockdowns across the country—which again, O’Toole is trying to pin on Trudeau because the federal government continues to offer pandemic supports, and he claims that this is “normalizing” them. (He also calls them lockdowns when they are nothing of the sort). He’s tried to claim that the federal government should have been able to increase bed capacity in hospitals (physical beds are not the problem—the problem is trained staff to tend to the patients in those beds). It’s just a bunch of fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies, and O’Toole knows it, but he’s decided that this is the path that he can exploit politically, and there frankly aren’t enough people, particularly in the media, calling him on his bullshit (because both sides! *jazz hands*).

Meanwhile, O’Toole is also calling for emergency meetings of the health committee to examine the “critical gaps” in the federal government’s ability to manage the pandemic in the omicron wave. Which is…not the federal government’s fault. They provided the vaccines, and the rapid tests when asked, and are deploying military help across the country when provinces ask (never mind that the military is stretched beyond capacity and they can’t do their actual jobs right now). No, what O’Toole has decided we all need is a dog and pony show to deflect from the failures of the premiers so that he can try and pin this all on Trudeau. It would be risible if we hadn’t already seen the Conservatives abuse that very same committee in the previous parliament, for the sake of a few headlines.

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Roundup: Annual amnesia and Estimates abrogation

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The House of Commons has risen for the summer, with four priority bills having made it to the Senate – including the budget implementation bill – but the rest of their “priority” bills languishing on the Order Paper. And the main party leaders spent the day sniping at one another in their respective press conferences, not necessarily telling the whole truth of the situation along the way, because that’s the way this particular game gets played.

It’s also that magical time of year when Hill reporters realise that the Senate exists and doesn’t operate in the same way that the House of Commons does, and we go through the ritual song and dance of worrying that bills won’t get passed before the Senate rises for the summer, and some usual tough talk by certain senators that they won’t be pushed around and they won’t fast track bills, until they do. We go through this every June, and every June, they push through these bills to ensure that they get royal assent before they leave for the summer. And no, the Senate’s calendar is not as fixed as that as the House of Commons, and yes, they do frequently sit later in order to get these bills passed. There is also the annual ritual of the government leader insisting that they really shouldn’t amend these bills because that would mean recalling the House of Commons, and that costs x-number of dollars per day and that’s apparently a bad thing for democracy (no, I don’t get the logic either), and with the constant speculation of an election, we’ll get additional concerns that they really can’t amend these bills because of that fact, and after some requisite chest-thumping, most senators will back down and pass the bills unamended. Yes, this happens every year, and it might behove these Hill reporters to remember this every year.

There is, of course, a more alarming aspect of what has transpired in this particular year, which is that several House of Commons committees didn’t do any scrutiny of the Estimates for the departments they are responsible for overseeing, and this is absolutely bloody alarming. This is the whole gods damned point of Parliament, and because they were wrapped up in their procedural warfare, that fundamental job didn’t get done. (And because of rules written in the sixties, Estimates that aren’t signed off on are deemed adopted, which is another outrage that they have not corrected). This should never have been the state of affairs – and I will note that some of those committee chairs offered additional sittings to ensure this scrutiny happened, but the MPs on those committees didn’t agree to it, which is an absolute outrage. That is your number one job as an MP, ahead of all other considerations, and you blew it because you were too busy grandstanding and/or protecting ministers who should have fallen on their swords, and we have further undermined our parliament as a result. Slow clap, MPs – stellar job.

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Roundup: Atwin crosses to the Liberals

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There was a somewhat shocking turn of events yesterday as Green MP Jenica Atwin suddenly crossed the floor to the Liberals, after weeks of turmoil within the party over the policies around Israel. When Atwin made comments about Israel being an apartheid state, one of leader Annamie Paul’s advisors threatened her position, and she decided it was time to go. Remember also that the NDP have a Thing about floor-crossing, and wouldn’t have accepted her, leaving her with just the Liberals as a potential home rather than staying an Independent – no doubt increasing her chances at re-election. She insisted that all of her previous comments and votes stood, no matter that she was now a Liberal, so perhaps she will remain among the more “maverick” MPs in the caucus who don’t all toe the line in the same way.

https://twitter.com/DavidWCochrane/status/1403096836383166465

Of course, with any floor-crossing, we get the same tired chorus of voices demanding that anyone who does cross must immediately resign and run in a by-election, which is nonsense in the broader context of how our system works. We elect MPs – we don’t elect parties, even if that’s your calculation when you go into the voting booth. Why this distinction matters is because we empower MPs to act on our behalf, regardless of the party banner, and then we get to judge them for their performance in the next general election. Sometimes MPs will need to make decisions to cross the floor for a variety of reasons, but usually because it’s intolerable in their current situation, and they make the move. We empower them to do so because our electoral system gives them agency as an individual – they’re not a name off of a list because the party got x-percentage of a vote.

This absolutely matters, and we need to enshrine their ability to exercise their ultimate autonomy if we want our system to have any meaning. Otherwise we might as well just fill the seats with battle droids who cast their votes according to the leader’s wishes, and read pre-written speeches into the record that the leaders’ office provided. The trained seal effect is bad enough – we don’t need to erode any last vestiges of autonomy to please the self-righteous impulses of a few pundits who think that this kind of move is heretical or a betrayal, or worse, to appeal to the desire by certain parties (in particular the NDP) to have their power structure so centralized that they see their MPs as a mere extension of their brand rather than as individuals. Parliament means something – the ability of MPs to make ultimate decisions needs to be respected in that context.

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QP: Unchallenged misinformation around inflation

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For the first day back after a week away and the Victoria Day long weekend, the prime minister was present, along with Liberal placeholder Mark Gerretsen as the only other MP present on the government benches. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and Erin O’Toole led off citing misleading statistics about inflation, for which Justin Trudeau recited some platitudes about having people’s backs. O’Toole complained that housing was becoming unaffordable, and Trudeau listed actions they took, like raising taxes on the top one percent and the Canada Child Benefit as ways they are making life more affordable. O’Toole then raised the American tactic to raise softwood lumber tariffs, which doesn’t really affect the Canadian market (as it will only make it more expensive for Americans as there is a lack of supply in the market), and Trudeau wondered where O’Toole had been the last five years as the government stood up against American trade measures. O’Toole repeated his misleading inflation question in French, fo the same platitudes in French, and the repeated the softwood lumber tariff question in French. Trudeau repeated that they have delivered for the past five years.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he raised Quebec’s Bill 96, and wanted Trudeau to praise it. Trudeau reminded him that they want to protect French while also protecting linguistic minorities and that he looked forward to working with the government of Quebec on it. Blanchet took this as a yes, and wanted a more positive explicit endorsement. Trudeau reminded him that he works with the premiers, and he would meet them again later this week.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he accused the banks of “stealing” from people by raising fees and that the federal government could stop them but haven’t. Trudeau listed the measures they are taking to make the wealthy pay their fair share. Singh switched to English to quote the deputy minister of National Defence on the lack of progress on the Deschamps Report, for which Trudeau recited that the institution isn’t living up to its goals, and listed the actions they have taken, calling them “first steps.”

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QP: Weaselling over the Port of Montreal strike

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For Monday, there was but a single Liberal on the government benches, and if you guessed that it was Mark Gerretsen, you’d be right. Candice Bergen led off in person, and she raised the testimony last week that the prime minister’s chief of staff knew about the allegations against General Vance. Harjit Sajjan told her that he followed the same process that Erin O’Toole did when he was in Cabinet and heard rumours about Vance that he wanted investigated — which may not be the slam dunk Sajjan may think it is. Bergen then raised the problem of people flying into the US and then driving over the border, which was allowing variants to spread. Omar Alghabra listed the measures, particularly around air travel, that had been implemented, and quarantine measures. Bergen said that Alghabra wasn’t understanding that people were landing in the US and driving up to the border to avoid hotel quarantines, and Alghabra stated that people still need tests before they fly into the US and upon landing. Gérard Deltell took over in French, lamented that the prime minster said he had no regrets over the handling of the pandemic, and demanded more rapid tests, for which Patty Hajdu reminded him that they delivered over 25 million rapid tests to provinces. Deltell railed at the fact that the government seemed to be blaming the provinces and demanded more rapid tests at the border, and Hajdu reminded him of their measures to date, and that they are working with provinces and territories. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and blamed the federal government for the strike at the Port of Montreal and stated that the government hadn’t sat both parties down (erm, pretty sure federal mediators have been involved), and Pablo Rodriguez reminded him of the importance of the port to all of Quebec. Therrien accused the federal government of dragging their feet on every labour dispute, and Rodriguez hit back accusing the Bloc of not being there for Quebec.

Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, and in French, he raised the death of a thirteen year-old over the weekend and demanded more federal action on the pandemic, to which Carla Qualtrough reminded him of federal supports available. Singh amped up his indignation in English, demanding paid sick leave and more vaccinations to hardest hit areas — both of which are provincial jurisdiction — and Qualtrough reiterated that they are doing what they can to get things like paid leave to people who need it.

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Roundup: Agitating for a political document

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Unable to score points on the vaccine procurement in a meaningful way, now that sufficient quantities have arrived, Erin O’Toole has recently tried pivoting to the federal budget, or the fact that there hasn’t been one in some 700 days. Given that the party is losing its lustre in public opinion polls as being “good fiscal managers” – a bit of branding that rarely, if ever, actually proved itself to be true, O’Toole is trying to bolster their street cred. The problem, of course, is that many of his arguments are, well, not actually sound ones.

For starters, no federal budget is like a household – not even close. It’s a bogus populist argument that just refuses to die, but everyone keeps repeating it and buying into it. More to the point, O’Toole is trying to claim that nobody knows how government money is being spent, which is a falsehood. Any money that the government spends has to come through the Estimates process, which gets voted on in Parliament after going through committee study. Afterward, how that those appropriations wound up being allocated get reported in the Public Accounts, which are released every year. All of this spending is being accounted for.

What O’Toole is looking for is a political document that lays out spending plans in broad strokes. It does not on its own showcase how that money gets allocated and spent. In fact, there has been a disconnect between the budget and the Estimates going back a few decades now, because governments and civil servants preferred it that way, and when the Liberals tried to better re-align those processes in the last parliament, it did not go very well thanks in part to institutional inertia pushing back. Suffice to say, it is not true that money is being spent blindly. MPs have ostensibly been in control of the process the whole time – but whether they have paid attention to what they were voting on is another matter entirely.

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