Tag Archives: Japan

Roundup: Singh’s sad display of performative toughness

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In a Parliament that is mired in some of the worst theatrics imaginable, it’s hard to think about something that could possibly take the cake, and yet, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh certainly tried with his sad, pathetic performance over the weekend. To wit: The government started debate on the pharmacare legislation at the end of last week, and Conservative MP Stephen Ellis put forward a “reasoned amendment” at the bill be killed at second reading for *handwaves* reasons. Singh would not stand for this, so he…wrote a strongly worded letter, and threatened the Conservatives that he would not stand for delays. And then put out some press releases to show how tough he was in sending that strongly-worded letter. And lo, the deadline he gave the Conservatives to withdraw their amendment came to pass, and wouldn’t you just know it—nothing happened.

The thing with these “reasoned amendments” is that the Conservatives are now moving them on every piece of legislation because it essentially adds time to the clock, which they can use to then run out the clock, again and again, blocking the ability for the government to get more legislation through the process. It’s a tactic that is supposed to be used as a last resort for very serious matters, but it’s being used routinely now, because this is who the Conservatives are, and they will do absolutely anything to keep the government from moving on its agenda. There is a lot that could be written about the absolute degrees of procedural warfare that has taken place over the last few years that have bogged the government and its agenda down entirely, but I’ll get around to it at a later date.

Suffice to say, this is just one more example of Singh making himself (and his party) irrelevant. He keeps pretending he’s going to be tough on the government for their budgets, and then goes along with them (per the Supply and Confidence Agreement). After each song and dance, he swallows himself whole, and then pats himself on the back for how much he accomplished in that budget (never mind that the NDP did absolutely none of the work, but still take full credit for everything). This attempt to “threaten” the Conservatives is just yet more sad spectacle, and it showcases just ineffective he really is.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Russian drone attack on the power facilities in Sumy region wound up cutting power to 400,000 consumers. Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more villages—Soloviove, and Kotliarivka, and Ukrainian bloggers appear to corroborate this claim.

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Roundup: The slow pace of judicial appointments

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In what is a fairly perennial story, there are complaints that delays in the justice system are being caused, in part, by the slow pace of judicial appointments by the federal government. One should probably also point to the fact that provinces continue to under-resource their court systems, but the federal government can wear much of the blame around these vacancies, in large part because of the system that they have chosen to set up in order to make these appointments.

In order to de-politicise these appointments as much as possible, the process involves independent judicial advisory committees vetting applications from lawyers who want to become judges, and those who are highly recommended get passed onto the minister’s office for another round of vetting (which has a political element because the prime minister remains politically accountable for all judicial appointments), before the appointments are finalised.

While this sounds all well and good, the problem is twofold—that the government has a stated desire to appoint more diverse members to the bench, but at the same time, they insist on self-nominations. The problem there is that a lot of people from the diverse communities they draw from don’t feel either qualified to apply, or they simply feel like they won’t get it because of the persistent image of judges as being old white men, and that it will keep replicating itself so they don’t apply. This draws out the process while they wait for more diverse applications, and on it goes. What these committees should be doing is more outreach and going out to nominate lawyers who they feel would do well on the bench—particularly as there is an observed difference in people who are nominated for an appointment like this, and those who apply and get it. But this government refuses to do that kind of outreach work, even when it would net them better, more diverse results, and here we are, with a slower process for these appointments, and mounting complaints that the government is shuffling their feet when it comes to ensuring the benches are filled so that they can deal with the backlog in the courts.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 324:

Days after Wagner Group mercenaries claim they took the town of Soledar, Ukrainian forces continue to insist that they are holding out, and that it’s a “bloodbath,” with them having killed over 100 Russian troops so far, and that the Russians are just walking over their own bodies to keep fighting.

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Roundup: Morneau has a few legitimate gripes

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There is a lot of media attention around Bill Morneau’s upcoming book, and he’s started to do the interview circuits, and lo, he did one with CTV at the end of last week that aired over the weekend. In what he describes around his time in office, some of it has to do with some of the frustrations he felt, and I will say that some of them are very legitimate. Things like how he could never have a private meeting with Justin Trudeau, and that there was always someone from his staff there—that’s very legitimate! And it’s something that I’ve heard from a lot of different sources, including the fact that this extends to the caucus room, where it’s supposed to just be MPs in attendance, and was under previous leaders. (There would also have been senators under previous leaders, but that’s a topic for another day).

But some of what Morneau describes also points out that after several years on the job, he’s still something of a political naïf who hasn’t quite grasped that Parliament Hill is not Bay Street (and that is a big reason why he got caught up in an ethics breach over the WE Charity issue). What may be the best policy in his opinion may not be politically saleable, and I don’t think he has ever really grasped that notion. I think some of his thoughts on the pandemic benefits packages are a little too clouded in hindsight bias, and the fact that he was overridden on the wage subsidy had a lot to do with the original proposal was not being seen to be up to the task at hand. I saw in another excerpt from the book that he complained that some ministers were being placated with amounts of money that he didn’t like, but I am curious what some of that programme spending was. In any case, I don’t think this will make too big of a wave, or that there is anything too explosive in all of the write-ups I’ve seen, and it’s likely to make too much of a splash, beyond him trying to rehabilitate his reputation before he goes back to Bay Street in a more visible way.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 320:

The “ceasefire” is passed, and Russian forces have been shelling in the Donbas region, as well as Zaporizhzhia. During the Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the incoming new package of military aid from the US. There was a prisoner swap on Sunday where both sides released 50 prisoners.

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Roundup: Smith disqualifies herself on day one

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Her first day on the job, and Danielle Smith is already proving to be unsuited for public office. Shortly after being sworn-in as premier by the Lieutenant Governor, Smith held a press conference where she said that she wants to protect the unvaccinated, because they are the “most discriminated-against” group in her lifetime.

*deep breath, clenches fists*

No. Not even close. And let me tell you, it was a choice to say that on Coming Out Day. They are not discriminated against. There is no “segregation.” The unvaccinated are people who get to live with the consequences of making a selfish choice based on a bunch of junk “science” and conspiracy theories that they’ve consumed, and their reckless disregard for the vulnerable and immune-compromised. Those consequences? Not eating in restaurants or not getting to travel. A few lost their jobs because of the choice they made. Contrast this to actual discrimination that people suffer because of race, gender, sexuality, or disability. Consequences that include employment, housing, hate crimes, and even mass slaughter, and yes, this has all happened in Smith’s lifetime. This is her answering the grievances of the privileged, the entitled, and the selfish, and not having actually suffered discrimination, she lacks the basic self-awareness to know the difference between the two. This should be disqualifying.

Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan, Scott Moe unveiled his “white paper” on pushing back against so-called federal encroachment on the province, and well, I’ve read far more vigorous undergraduate papers in my day. The premise of said paper is that all environmental rules and regulations are just a ruse for keeping the province down, and controlling them, which is risible on its face. And the notion that Saskatchewan should somehow be a “nation within a nation” belies the fact that they don’t have a distinct language, culture, legal tradition, or pre-Confederation history. Calling hoodies “bunny hugs” is not a distinct culture. Resource extraction without concern for environmental consequences is not a distinct culture. Moe is doing some bad Jason Kenney cosplay, and it’s just pathetic.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907251221172224

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1579907677316345856

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 230:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with G7 leaders and asked for more air defences (to fend off future missile attacks like they faced this week), a price cap on oil and gas exports from Russia to cut off their funding, and an international mission at the Ukraine-Belarus border, presumably to keep any Belarussian forces out of the country. Some German air defence systems did arrive in the country yesterday, so they are starting to arrive as this ask is being made. Meanwhile, bodies are being exhumed from the mass graves outside of the city of Lyman, which was liberated from Russian occupation.

https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1579849665226629121

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Roundup: Untenable ideas that get print

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There were a couple of pieces over the weekend that had me scowling a little, mostly because they don’t seem terribly well thought-through when you actually delve in a little. One of them was a piece in Maclean’s that used polling data to posit the idea of a Green Party-NDP merger which is a bit silly because the parties are nothing alike in the slightest. The premise that they both claim to care about the environment and appeal to youth is flimsy on its face, because the Greens aren’t really that “progressive” of a party seeing as the federal party came into being with a lot of disaffected Red Tories in their mix, and if you delve into some of their non-environmental policies, there’s not a lot of millennial progressivity in there. (Seriously, it’s a dog’s breakfast of things, as they discovered in the last election when it turned out that a bunch of their social policies were written by men’s rights activists, given that there is a lack of adult supervision when it comes to policy development in that party). Add to that, the party cultures are essentially night and day – the NDP are centralizing and are about solidarity at all costs (and they rigidly enforce it), while the Greens are decentralized to the point of practical incoherence. I get that there is going to be a bit of a fad in political circles right now that believes that Alberta “proved” that mergers work given the Progressive Conservative + Wildrose Alliance “merger” into the UCP was prototypical, but that would be looking at quantitative data over qualitative – and the UCP is still young.

The other piece that deserves some consternation was Justin Ling’s op-ed that suggested that co-leaders would be a great thing for parties to deal with the problem of presidentialised leadership politics, and look how great it’s working for Quebec Solidaire. Err, except the solution to our presidentialised leadership politics in this country isn’t to share power, but rather to restore the selection and firing process to the hands of caucus. The biggest flaw in Ling’s argument, however, is that it’s antithetical to the way in which our system is structured, which is that it’s about giving advice to the Queen (and by extension, the Governor General/lieutenant governor). That requires a single voice – which is why Cabinet Solidarity is a Thing – and it’s also to create a single point of accountability. If you have dual leadership, then it becomes harder to pin blame. It also has more than enough potential to create factionalisation within parties more than we have already, as different parts of the caucus align themselves behind one co-leader or the other in power struggles. As with so many of these kinds of reform ideas, they sound interesting on the surface, that’s about it.

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Roundup: Vetting judges? Oh noes!

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Yesterday the Globe and Mail had a story about how the current government will run potential judicial nominees through the Liberal party’s voter database as part of the vetting process, which was followed by an analysis of how many appointees were Liberal donors. This first came up weeks ago when yet another Jody Wilson-Raybould-related leak revealed that she was trying to “depoliticize” the appointment process by not providing certain information to PMO when she passed along recommendations, which is a problem – not that it was framed that way. This current story follows up on that, and has a few framing issues of its own. There are a few things to unpack in this, but first of all, I’ll let Adam Goldenberg point out a few issues with this analysis:

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013782795497478

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013787128156160

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013789766369280

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121024056663400448

With this in mind, I have a few thoughts of my own – first of all is that I think Goldenberg is correct in his reminder that vetting includes political vetting – and the party’s database (as Susan Delacourt noted on Power Play) contains more than who donated – they will collect all manner of information as part of their construction of voter profiles, so it makes sense that they would also run potential appointments through this. (The fact that parties don’t have stringent privacy rules around their databases is a discussion for another day). Why? Because the prime minister is ultimately politically accountable for all Governor-in-Council appointments, and that includes judges. And so long as the prime minister is politically accountable, I think it’s reasonable that his office does whatever vetting they deem necessary – and there’s nothing in here to indicate that they’re checking to ensure that they’re voting for Liberal partisans, which we need to keep in mind.

The other aspect of his story that makes me a bit queasy is the implication that there is favour being shown to Liberal donors – and the math bears out a little bit that while seventy percent of appointees hadn’t donated to anyone, twenty-five percent of them donated to the Liberals, which is disproportionate to other parties. But we also need to remember a few things, the primary one being that we need to stop treating political donations as a bad thing. The donation limits in this country are quite small – you’re not going to bribe someone for $1200, let’s face it – and we donations are a form of engagement. Engagement is a good thing. The more we stigmatize past political donations – and those donations could be for a variety of reasons, such as an acquaintance running in a local campaign, or because they wanted the tax receipt – the more we send the message that engagement is bad, which is the very opposite of what we should be doing in a country where we already have abysmal levels of engagement, whether it’s taking out party memberships, donating, or volunteering (and yes, Samara Canada has done research on this). Pearl-clutching stories like this just reinforce this narrative, which is bad for democracy.

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Roundup: The authentic Andrew Scheer

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It’s year-end interview time, and Andrew Scheer gave a couple yesterday that gave me a bit of pause. First was his interview in the National Post, where off the bat, he lays out this gem: “I am younger, I am modern and I have a different take on Conservative principles than my predecessors.” But does he lay out what that different take is? Nope. Scheer says that he can offer “authenticity” like a Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul, which is…curious. He’s spent the week talking about how middle class he is, unlike Justin Trudeau. This immediately elicited some reminders from Twitter – that the only job he held outside of politics was working at his friend’s insurance company for six months, that he got elected at 25 and has a $3 million pension by age 38; his political career includes being Speaker and Leader of the Opposition, each of which comes with an official residence and a driver. So he’s authentically middle class. Later, Scheer talked about how he’s spent the past six months “setting down markers” about the Conservative approach. Markers like putting everything in a disingenuous or outright mendacious frame and treating people like idiots? Okay, then.

Meanwhile, over on CTV’s Power Play (starts at 8:15), Scheer went on about how Conservatives do better when they present a positive approach (which I totally see with the aforementioned disingenuous and mendacious manner in which they go about their role), and then added this: “We are actually more caring than Liberals because we actually care about results, and they just like to send signals and show their good intentions and they don’t care about what actually benefits people.”

That’s…interesting. Because immediately preceding that was Scheer was outright virtue signalling about free speech on university campuses (which, I will add, is an issue that the alt-right has weaponized, and Scheer is playing directly into it). And if you look at the Conservative record over the past decade, it’s replete with sending signals that didn’t actually benefit people, whether it was tough-on-crime legislation that was either unconstitutional or created backlogs in the court system (as mandatory minimum sentences did), or gutting environmental laws (which only ended up in litigation and didn’t get any further projects approved), or their actions in making cuts to show that they had a paper surplus (which led to the massive gong show that is Shared Services Canada and the Phoenix pay system fiasco, not to mention the loss of capacity in a number of other departments). All of it was the very signalling that they criticize the Liberals for. So you’ll forgive me if I find Scheer’s particular assertions to be a bit unconvincing.

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Roundup: Will American tax changes affect us?

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With the excitement building over that coming US tax cut legislation (if one can call it that), we have already started seeing reaction here in Canada about how we should react, and while there has been some predictable demands that we start cutting our own corporate taxes yet again, others have called for a more pragmatic approach. In the Financial Post, Jack Mintz foretold doom for our economy in the face of these changes. With that in mind, Kevin Milligan tweeted out some thoughts:

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943147447957667840

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943148492121284608

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943150555899105280

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943151815540932608

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943152471857291264

It also hasn’t gone unnoticed that these changes will create all manner of new loopholes around personal incorporation to avoid paying income taxes – kind of like Canada has been cracking down on this past year. Imagine that.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/943192234958221313

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/943193234817404929

To that end, Milligan offered a few more thoughts about the experience around implementing these kinds of changes.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943179468205473792

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943180201596350464

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943183056554270722

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/943184198034001921

Meanwhile, my Loonie Politics column looks at whether the process used by that American tax bill could happen in Canada. Short answer: no.

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Roundup: Bringing back the euthanasia debate

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Before his death by a brain tumour, famous Canadian microbiologist Dr. Donald Low recorded a video making a plea for assisted suicide laws in this country, but feared that we still don’t have the political maturity to handle such a conversation. The video was released yesterday to great play in the media, for what it was worth. Sadly, I fear Low was right after the last attempt at such a debate in Parliament, and it’s one of those issues that MPs are too afraid to touch and will inevitably fob off on the Supreme Court to give them a push before they do anything with it. Only one Conservative MP, Steven Fletcher – a quadriplegic – seems to want to have that discussion, and supports the notion, given his particular perspective.

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