Tag Archives: Israel

Roundup: Stop ignoring the premiers’ role in pharmacare

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Over the weekend, the Star ran a brief interview with Dr. Eric Hoskins, former Ontario health minister and the person that Justin Trudeau initially tasked with writing a report on getting to pharmacare, about the current situation between the government and the NDP over getting to just that. Hoskins says he’s trying to have high-level engagements with both parties, because this could be the last opportunity to get this to work in a long time, but some of that means getting the NDP to back down on their arbitrary timelines (which is more than reasonable considering how much their stupid timeline demands has meant a poor rollout of dental care, because proper implementation can take time).

This having been said, I was struck by the fact that the story completely left out the role of the premiers in this, and I cannot stress this enough, because healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility, you cannot in any way, shape or form, get to national, universal pharacare without the provinces on board. And no, this isn’t something that they can just opt-in to over time, like the NDP seem to think—they need to be in on it from the ground floor, so that they can shape the direction of the Canada Drug Agency, and negotiate a national formulary rather than just the federal government pulling it out of their asses and, again, expecting the provinces to sign onto it (again, like the NDP seem to think). Hoskin’s whole report premised on the provinces being active participants in the process, because this affects them fundamentally. And it’s the provinces who have been the biggest hold-up for moving forward with this—only PEI has moved ahead, and thanks to the gradual build-up they’ve implemented with the federal government, they have a low-cost co-pay system running in the province, which is a wild step-up from the virtually nothing they at the provincial government level before.

The way that media keep talking about pharmacare is that this is something the federal government will do on high, and will somehow pay for entirely themselves, which again, is not how this would work. The PBO’s report cites a figure that the federal and provincial governments together would be paying (using whatever a methodology that may or may not survive reality), but doesn’t have any breakdown about what the cost-share would be, because of course that would need to be negotiated. It would be great if the national conversation, particularly that is happening in media, could actually include the crucial role of the provinces, but we all know that legacy media is allergic to the issues around jurisdiction, and it means a much worse discourse as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces intensified their push toward Avdiivka in the east, and Kherson in the south, while six people were killed in a Russian missile strike on a postal distribution centre in Kharkiv. Russian forces claim that they foiled several attempts by Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro river near Kherson over the past day. Meanwhile, here is a look at Ukrainians preparing for another winter of attacks on the electricity grid, as they prepare firewood and candles.

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Roundup: Fantasy readings of court decisions

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In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Impact Assessment Act, there has been a lot of fantasy being projected on what the decision said (hint: it’s not what most everyone says, no matter which sentence they’ve cherry-picked). There’s a lot of blame on the Act for projects not moving forward, as even though many of them had approvals in hand already and the economics for those projects didn’t make sense with current oil prices (as many were conceived of when there was a belief that we were reaching peak oil and that prices would start to skyrocket as a result—oops), or as with certain LNG projects that never got off the ground, they couldn’t get buyers to sign contracts for what they hoped to produce. That’s why the handwringing over Qatar supplying Europe with LNG is particularly funny, because we just don’t have the LNG capacity on the east coast—there is no ready supply of natural gas to liquefy, so without another massive pipeline project, it would mean importing product to liquefy and re-sell to the Europeans, which is not exactly a cost-savings for them when they can get it much cheaper from Qatar.

Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach calling out these kinds of fantasies, particularly when they’re coming from the Alberta government.

As a bonus, Leach also calls out the excuses for inaction on the energy transition:

Ukraine Dispatch:

No word on any fresh attacks against Ukrainian cities. Meanwhile, artefacts that were stolen from occupied territories were confiscated when they were attempted to be smuggled into the US, and have now been returned to Ukraine.

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Roundup: Another diminished Auditor General Day

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and she had five reports that weren’t terribly complimentary of the government and its efforts, especially as some have been in the works for years and are making progress that is far too slow for the task at hand.

  1. In spite of working to make changes to the processing, there is still a massive backlog of permanent resident applications at Citizenship and Immigration, as well as a major problem with asylum claims that are taking years to be processed.
  2. The efforts to combat racism in government departments and the RCMP are falling short (which is not a huge surprise because this government has a particular problem of saying “intersectional” and “GBA+” and assuming that it will magically fix things rather than doing the actual hard work).
  3. The work to modernise the critical IT infrastructure of the government, particularly when it comes to delivering services Canadians rely on, is getting worse and Treasury Board doesn’t have plans yet on how to replace some of it (which should be alarming).
  4. Modernising the delivery of benefits like CPP, EI, and OAS is behind schedule and facing cost overruns, because of course it is.
  5. Canadians can’t get access to critical antimicrobial drugs as drug resistant strains get worse, and while data collection is improving, there remain gaps in access, which the Pandemic made worse.

You might also note that only three of those five items had news stories attached to them, and not all five. Even more to the point, two were Canadian Press wire stories, one came from the Globe and Mail, and that was it. The National Post had their own version of the immigration story, but of the major outlets, that was all that got covered. It used to be that on Auditor General days, the lock-up room at the OAG was packed, and each outlet sent several reporters to ensure that most of the reports got adequate coverage (some of the special audits of Crown corporations excepted). What we see now is a sad indictment of just how diminished our media capacity is, and how little value we are placing on these reports, which is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

New overnight attacks focused on both the north and south of Ukraine, but no casualties have been reported yet. Russian forces resumed their onslaught of the eastern city of Avdiivka, which Ukrainian forces continued to hold at bay. Russians have also stepped up their bid to re-take the city of Kupiansk, which was liberated late last year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is looking to fill 2000 judicial vacancies (and we thought it was bad in Canada), while also looking to vet the current roster of judges for malfeasance as they work toward cleaning up corruption in order to meet the conditions for acceptance into the EU.

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QP: Questions about French castles

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While the prime minister was entertaining Caribbean leaders for the CARICOM summit, his deputy was on her way to Washington for other meetings, and only a couple of the other leaders were present in the Chamber for QP. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and recounted the story of a couple from Ontario who wold their home and bought a castle in France, and wouldn’t be able to afford to move back to Ontario and buy a new home there. François-Philippe Champagne took this up and launched into a demand that the Conservatives support their bill on affordability. Poilievre pivoted and said that they warned the government that the clean fuel regulations would impose higher costs on lower income Canadians and wanted it cancelled, and Steven Guilbeault noted that the Conservatives campaigned on the same standards, but the difference is that the Liberals actually did it. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the story of a couple with the castle in France. Champagne got back up to deploy the “take no lessons” line and exhorted the Conservatives support their bill. Poilievre claimed this was Champagne saying “let them eat cake,” and this time Karina Gould got up to point out that Poilievre won’t explain why he won’t support a bill to increase affordability measures. Poilievre returned to the question on the clean fuel regulations, and this time Guilbeault read a survey of small businesses owners impacted by weather events and pilloried the Conservatives for ignoring climate change. 

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and decried that only 20 trucks of humanitarian aid have been allowed into Gaza, and wanted to know if the government has been on the case. Mélanie Joly says that they have been constantly asking to deliver humanitarian aid, and that they are engaging with the different countries in the region. Therrien insisted that Canada needed to show humanitarian leadership, to which Ahmed Hussen red a script about their commitment to getting humanitarian aid to civilians. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he railed that Toronto hasn’t received the promised $97 million in aid for housing, particularly around asylum seekers. Mark Miller said that they are engaging with the city and the province, and that they have been asking the city for the receipts which they will pay for once they receive them. Singh switched to French to recount a story of someone who was evicted and needed to find a smaller, less adapted home. Champagne exhorted him and all of the opposition to vote for their affordability measure.

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Roundup: Picking a fight over the CPP

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau decided to get into a new federal-provincial scrap yesterday by releasing an open letter to Alberta premier Danielle Smith on the issue of her proposal to withdrew from the Canada Pension Plan and create their own provincial one. Trudeau said that he would fight for the stability of pensions in the country, and that his Cabinet would ensure that people are aware of the risks of Smith’s plan—which is wise enough considering that the whole thing is premised on fantasy math that everyone knows is not ever going to fly, and that Smith’s whole pitch is premised on that fantasy math (and that without it, the whole thing falls flat). But this is also the same federal government that is unable to have a frank conversation about absolutely anything, so it’s hard to imagine that they would start now, on this particular file, and would instead just trot out a bunch of feel-good pabulum about the current system, which is not going to help absolutely anyone, and it certainly won’t counter Smith’s lies and fantasy math, but this government can’t help themselves.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714644819807809638

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1714645765002510598

Smith naturally responded saying that Trudeau’s comments were unhelpful and if he wanted to be constructive, he should have shown up with a number of what the actual withdrawal figure would be. And it’s true that Trudeau’s letter had no figures in it at all, whether that’s because he relied on the platitudes about the stability of the existing system, or because he’s waiting to have a watertight analysis from his departments, and that’s going to need more time. The cynic in me says it’s the former, but it may be the latter, because there may be a serious effort happening to come to a realistic figure—which of course would raise the question of why Trudeau would release his letter today and not wait until that was in hand? In any case, Smith wants this fight with Ottawa, and the whole premise of this fight and the fantasy math is to use it as a cudgel to threaten the rest of Canada so that she can demand they back off on environmental legislation and regulation (which, again, she has been consistently lying about and the government hasn’t come up with a half-decent counter to). Given the state of play, I’m not confident this will wind up in anything but a giant clusterfuck.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1714691053083582798

Ukraine Dispatch:

The death toll rose after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, while Ukrainian forces have been making some progress around Robotyne in the south. Near Kharkiv, a farm worker was killed when his tractor hit a mine.

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QP: The first attempt to publicly undermine Speaker Fergus

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The prime minister and his deputy were in town but away, hosting CARICOM meetings instead, while the other leaders were all present. Speaker Fergus wanted to make a statement about decorum before things got underway, Pierre Poilievre decided to throw a tantrum because he started right now, and had Andrew Scheer fight on his behalf. There was a back-and-forth on the rules and consultation with the Table Officers, and Fergus trying to assert his authority as the Conservatives tried to undermine him publicly. Eventually, Fergus did get to his speech, and faced attempts by the Conservatives to interrupted him with points of order, and eventually he got to the point about excessive and loud heckling, while recognising that there is a place for witty comments as a feature of our system; the use of “provocative” terms that lead to tense exchanges, such as calling one another racists or shouting obscenities; and the tendency to the make personal attacks, including coming up with fake titles, or drawing attention to absences. He promised to use what tools he has to limit those attacks, reinforcing that he has the authority to preserve order and decorum. That would include refusing to recognise a member, or to name a member.

Poilievre finally led off in French, and he decried “inflationary deficits” with a couple of bespoke mentions of Quebeckers. François-Philippe Champagne trotted out the “take no lessons” line and decried the cuts the Conservatives would make cuts to services. Poilievre switched to English to worry about the “middle-class homeless,” and demanded an end to deficits, to which Anita Anand recited the points about the country’s Aaa credit rating and that the government invests in Canadians. Poilievre shrugged off the “incompetent ratings agencies” before worrying about homeless seniors with a specious connection to deficits. Mark Holland said that cuts to social programmes like Poilievre was peddling would make people worse off in the long-run. Poilievre boasted that the previous government balanced the budget will increasing healthcare (false), and Anand got back up to insist that they won’t balance the budget on the backs of Canadians. Poilievre retorted that the government runs massive deficits on the backs of people before turning to the hospital in Gaza, and demanded that they denounce terrorists for inflicting it. Karina Gould said that their hearts were broken for the innocent Palestinians affected and that they have denounced terrorism while they stand with Israel.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he demanded Canada work with allies to get humanitarian aid to Gaza. Gould insisted that they were calling for a humanitarian corridor and to protect the lives of civilians. Blanchet was incredulous that Trudeau had not apparently spoken to Joe Biden since the attack in Israel, and Gould reiterated that they are in contact with allies and stakeholders. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and mocked Champagne’s inability to get answers on how the grocery chains were lowering prices, and wanted support for a motion to call them to committee. Champagne insisted that his summoning those CEOs was unprecedented. Singh got back up ask the question in French—because he needs clips in both languages—and Champagne says that he wrote to the chair of the committee to ask him to summon the CEOs, so he was glad the NDP was on board.

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Roundup: Openly pursuing creeping illiberalism

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You may have heard mention of a lavish trip that Conservative MPs took to London courtesy of a Hungarian think tank, but as you might expect from Canadian legacy media, the focus remains on the costs of the trip, and the stupid little partisan games in trying to get the ethics committee to look into it. What isn’t being mentioned is the fact that the think tank, the Danube Institute, is closely tied to the Orbán regime, and that is a worrying problem because of what it signals about right-wing parties in North America cosying up to Orbán.

Why this matters is because Orbán is undermining the rule of law and public institutions in Hungary, and is praising greater illiberalism. By cosying up to Orbán while has-beens like Stephen Harper try to sanitise his image through his IDU social club is because it creates a permission structure for right-wing parties like the Conservatives to start normalising the same illiberalism, pretending that this is all standard stuff for small-c conservative parties these days. The “don’t say gay” legislation in the US all came from Orbán’s playbook, and that is crossing over into Canada as well, with Conservatives openly winking and nodding to it, while you have conservative premiers invoking the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of gender-diverse youth. This is the canary in the coal mine.

On the subject of creeping illiberalism, Conservatives (and MP Rachael Harder in particular) tried to get the public accounts committee to haul the CBC executives before them to “explain” why they don’t use the term “terrorist” when referring to Hamas, never mind that this is a practice shared by other news organisations like the BBC and The Associated Press. This kind of attempted intimidation is absolutely out of order, and represents political interference in the public broadcaster, which would be bad enough it Harder wasn’t the one always screaming about so-called “government censorship” with the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act, as though that were a credible problem. It’s not, but it also seems to be both projection and an admission, that they want to control the news and programming, while accusing the Liberals of doing so (even though they absolutely are not). This is extremely dangerous for our democracy, and we should absolutely beware what they are trying to get away with.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While the attacks on Avdiivka continue, Russians struck an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia and killed two people. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for an attack on two Russian airfield in occupied areas using longer-range ballistic missiles quietly provided by the Americans, which is an unusual admission for them, but also signals that they can now hit Russian supply lines in more protected areas.

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QP: Dangerous questions on the independence of media

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The prime minister was present today, which was nice to see, as were all of the other party leaders, and it wasn’t even a Wednesday to get everyone together, so that was great. The prime minister’s deputy, however, was absent, as is so often the case these days. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he decried that the government’s deficit is driving up inflation and interest rates, which means people can’t get homes. (Erm…) Justin Trudeau responded that the austerity preached by the opposition wouldn’t help anyone get housing, before praising his government’s programmes. Poilievre insisted that people were living austerity while the government lived in largesse, and repeated his anecdote yesterday about the shipyard worker who couldn’t afford a house in Vancouver. Trudeau repeated that the Conservative’s austerity wouldn’t help people, and wondered what programmes the Conservatives would cut. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his anecdote about the shipyard worker with some added affected gravitas, and Trudeau repeated that the Conservative austerity won’t help anyone. Poilievre repeated his talking point about people living austerity amidst government largesse. Trudeau reminded him that Canada already has the lowest deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and wondered again what programmes Poilievre proposes to cut. Poilievre insisted he would cut the ArriveCan app, the Infrastructure Bank and McKinsey contracts and wondered if he would cooperate with the RCMP investigation into the ArriveCan contract. Trudeau noted that the government invests in people, and suggests that Poilievre ride the new transit line in Montreal that the Infrastructure Bank helped fund.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he returned to his concern trolling about Canada not being part of the Quint group (never mind that we are not a nuclear power), to which Trudeau insisted that Canada is already working closely with the US and other countries. Blanchet repeated his question, and wondered if party leaders could get more comprehensive briefings, and Trudeau said his officials were working on it.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he wanted assurances that all Canadians could safely get out of Gaza. Trudeau said that they have been concerned for all of the innocents in the region and praised their airlifts, before saying he was working to get the humanitarian corridor so Canadians could get out. Singh switched to French to raise the possibility that a hospital in Gaza may have been hit, and demanded that Trudeau call for a ceasefire. Trudeau insisted that he has been calling for hostages to be freed and to call for international law be respected.

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Roundup: Misreading Friday’s decision

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In light of Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on the Impact Assessment Act, Conservatives are already making some pretty stupid demands, like this one from MP Shannon Stubbs, who wants to move a motion at the Natural Resources Committee to repeal the old Bill C-69—except that it’s not what the Supreme Court ruled on, it’s a complete misreading of what the ruling was, and more to the point, would try to repeal the parts that are constitutional, and create even more uncertainty in the market. If people think that the system that the Harper government put into place was somehow better, all it did was ensure that project approvals wound up in litigation because there was too much uncertainty and ambiguity in the rules, and it didn’t do anything to speed approvals like they claimed it would.

For those of you who aren’t quite following, the thrust of the Court’s ruling was not that the whole scheme is unconstitutional, but rather that the list of things the federal government put into the Act in order to trigger a federal environmental assessment was overbroad, particularly around the issue of treating greenhouse gas emissions as an automatic federal issue because it’s a cross-boundary effect. That was too broad for the Court’s liking, so they’re essentially telling the government to narrow the scope of what triggers an assessment—that’s it. As previously stated, the Court explicitly rejected the notion that a “provincial” project is immune from federal assessment, so any talking points related to “exclusive jurisdiction” are also bogus, but so many people are proving that they either didn’t bother to read the decision, or if they did, certainly didn’t understand it.

Meanwhile, here’s another explanation of Friday’s ruling, this time from Martin Olszynski, Nigel Banks and David Wright.

Ukraine Dispatch:

On the 600th day of Russia’s illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, their assault on the city of Avdiivka appears to be losing steam, after Ukrainian forces repelled 15 attacks from four directions over the previous 24 hours. Russians are also apparently looking to pierce the front lines in the Kupiansk-Lyman area on the country’s northeast. Elsewhere, Russia launched another overnight attack, with five missiles and twelve drones, focused on the western part of Ukraine.

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QP: Concerns about the situation in Israel

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While the prime minister was in down, he was not in QP today, though his deputy was for a change. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and in a somber tone, asked for an update on those Canadians looking to get out of Israel and Gaza, as well as those in Lebanon looking to get out. Chrystia Freeland noted that this was the first time they were in the Chamber since the Hamas attacks, and she declared that Canada is supporting Israel and demands the release of hostages and unequivocally condemned Hamas’ attacks. Poilievre switched to English to decry the Hamas attacks, and demanded that the government criminaise the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Freeland repeated her previous statement in English instead of answering the demand. Poilievre pivoted and raised the PBO’s recent projection about the deficit and that it was higher than projected, and demanded to know how this would affect inflation and interest rates. Freeland said that a fiscal update would be coming in due course, and that they should pay attention to the independent ratings agencies who keep affirming our Aaa rating. Poilievre cited former finance minister John Manley’s concerns, and insisted this was the government ruining our fiscal position. Freeland repeated the point about ratings agencies and that our deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio is the lowest in the G7. Poilievre raised the plight of a shipyard worker he met who worries about his mortgages, and blamed the deficit. Freeland scoffed that talk is cheap, and said that if the Conservatives cared about the housing crisis, they would support their bill.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried that we weren’t included in the Quint statement on the situation in Isreal—ignoring that the Quint is about nuclear powers, which we are not. Freeland spoke about being at an IMF finance meeting in Morocco last week and that they all put out a statement in support of Israel. Blanchet kept insisting that Canada was not being included, and Freeland spoke about Israel not being a partisan issue but a Canadian issue.

Heather McPherson rose for the NDP, and she also raised concerns about the hostages in Gaza, including several Canadians. Freeland praised the clarity on condemnation for the terror attacks, and that that the government calls for the release of those hostages. McPherson accused the government of not standing up for innocent Palestinians and demanded the government call for a ceasefire. Freeland raised that the government supports Israel’s right to defend itself and they have sent $10 million in humanitarian aid to “trusted partners.”

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