Tag Archives: John Horgan

Roundup: Being precious about participating in the gong show

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Fewer things make me roll my eyes harder the NDP being precious about decorum or the dysfunction within the House of Commons, and it is no exception when Charlie Angus despairs about the gong show happening day-in and day-out. As much as they like to pretend that they are the “adults in the room”—and Peter Julian likes to go on television to say that whenever he’s invited on—but adults in the room don’t heckle constantly (and both Julian and Angus are amongst the very worst—remember the pledge that they were never going to heckle in 2011?), nor do they engage in constant petty insults in order to make themselves look tougher than they are, but that’s what the NDP does day-in and day-out.

The thrust of the piece linked above, however, remains the current filibustered state of the Commons (for which the writer does point out the problems with the motion without going as far as actually calling what it is—banana republic tactics that will have severe consequences in the future if a precedent is allowed to develop), and that if anything is going to get things back on track, it’s going to have to be the NDP who comes to some kind of agreement with the government in order to break the logjam so that important legislation can start moving again. What the piece doesn’t go into is how this has been an ongoing problem in the past two parliaments, since the Liberals lost their majority in 2019. That was when the Conservatives began a campaign of procedural warfare that the Bloc and NDP gleefully participated in because they would do anything to embarrass the government—right up until the end of the sitting, every December and June, and suddenly realize they had bills they wanted to pass, so they started to cooperate. The Supply-and-Confidence agreement mellowed this out a little, but only slightly, as committees continued to get worse, and the NDP were hit-and-miss on whether they wanted to make things work or not.

I am somewhat ruefully reminded of the litany of books and articles that used to constantly come out to praise minority parliaments, and how great they were because they would force parties to work together to get things done for Canadians. That hasn’t been the case for a long time now, and given that the NDP proved themselves to be bad faith actors in how they ended the supply-and-confidence agreement, it’s going to be a long time before they are awarded any trust again, at least not until they have a new leader who can earn it back. But if they do want to make the remainder of this parliament work, they have a lot to answer for, and it would be great if more people could call them on their bullshit.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that Russians are using North Korean troops in significant numbers as they conduct assaults in the occupied regions of Kursk. Ukrainian drones conducted an overnight attack Friday and hit a crucial Russian oil facility in the Oryol region, and Ukrainian special forces destroyed a Russian train carrying 40 cars of fuel to Russian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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Roundup: The capacity to spend

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One of the constant refrains since the Trump election is that Canada needs to get serious about increasing out defence spending faster, or he’ll be mean to us in NATO, or something like that. While I would note that he’ll be mean to us regardless because that’s who he is, and that he’s never understood how NATO actually works, so whether or not our spending is above 2 percent of GDP or not is almost a moot question. But the biggest consideration is actually whether we actually have the capacity to spend more.

The thing is, defence spending has gone up significantly, but the military lapses some of that spending on a yearly basis because they just can’t get that spending out of the door, for various reasons, including the fact that they simply don’t have the personnel to do everything that needs to be done, and you can’t just hire someone off the street in most of these cases—military personnel is just that, and they take time to train and rise up through the ranks appropriately. Add in the recruitment and retention crisis (thanks to sexual misconduct and abuse of power in the General Officer and Flag Officer ranks), and it makes it even harder.

Nevertheless, here’s Philippe Lagassé with some thoughts on building the capacity to spend more.

Ukraine Dispatch

It appears that Russia has fired cruise missiles against Kyiv for the first time in two months, not just drones. The US confirms that North Korean troops are now fighting alongside Russian forces.

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Roundup: The full closure of 24 Sussex

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News that has been years overdue arrived yesterday that the National Capital Commission is finally—finally!—closing 24 Sussex to personnel, so that they can begin abatement of things like asbestos at the site, which they’d need to do even if they decide to tear it down at some point. But no, there hasn’t been an actual decision on its future, because of course there hasn’t been, but at least they have reached this step, seven years later. But who is still there if the prime minister and family have been at Rideau Cottage the whole time? Well, for one, the prime minister’s chef still operates out of 24 Sussex (and the food is transported over by staff), likely because the kitchen in Rideau Cottage is too small for both the chef and the family, based on what glimpses we got of it during the pandemic; one assumes likewise with any other household staff. They are being relocated to another NCC property, but they won’t say where.

When this news broke, my Twitter feed was full of people outraged that the leader of the opposition has a nicer house than the prime minister, and demanded that the PM take over Stornoway instead. The reason Stornoway is in better shape was because Preston Manning refused to move in when he was opposition leader, so the NCC took the opportunity to do needed renovations that 24 Sussex never had, and no, the prime minister is never going to take it over because the property is too vulnerable, and would be a security nightmare. Never going to happen. As for those who wonder why our opposition leader even has an official residence, I say that it’s because it reflects the importance of the position in a Westminster democracy like ours, and should have status appropriate to that importance. It doesn’t matter that other Westminster countries don’t also follow that—Canada chose to value its opposition leader in such a way, and it is important, so let’s treat it as such.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 268:

There were more Russian missiles targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving some 10 million people without power as winter sets in, while fighting intensified in the east as Russia tries to secure its hold on Donetsk. In liberated villages near Kherson, there are survivors talking about beatings and torture by Russians, and more graves have been found with bodies bearing signs of being tortured.

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Roundup: On oaths to the Queen

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-twenty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and much of the attention has been on the reverberations of the attack on the shopping centre in Kremenchuk, where the death toll is up to 18, with more than 20 missing, and many more wounded. French president Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack, and said that because of it, Russia “cannot and should not win” the war (but then again, Macron’s attempts to get Ukraine to give territorial concessions to end the conflict is not exactly reflecting well on him either). As well, CBC interviews a Ukrainian marine who survived the battle of Mariupol with severe injuries before spending two weeks as a Russian prisoner of war before he was able to be sent back to Ukraine for treatment.

https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1541839370747011072

Meanwhile, Turkey has dropped their objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, which means that their membership can move ahead. This while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is talking about an eight-fold increase in Western troops being placed at an increased state of readiness, and more troops headed to the Baltic states, to make Russia very aware that they really, really shouldn’t cross their borders.

https://twitter.com/AnnLinde/status/1541877388937728005

https://twitter.com/ChristinsQueens/status/1541845991225278474

Closer to home, I spent way too much time yesterday being angry at a garbage piece of Canadian Press wire copy that was bad PR masquerading as a news story. I mean, we’re not even a week into Parliament’s summer recess, and this is what CP is using as void fill for the news hole? The piece claims that 56 percent of Canadians oppose the oath of allegiance to the Queen, then cites a “poll,” but it wasn’t actually a poll, it was online panels that are not actually random samples, but that fact isn’t mentioned until six paragraphs down. The only person quoted in the piece is the guy who runs the think tank who commissioned the panels, and he says that most Canadians are unaware that newcomers have to swear an oath to be “faithful to the Royal Family,” which is a wilful distortion of the truth. The oath is to the Queen and her “heirs and successors,” because heredity is kind of the point of monarchy. It’s not the whole Royal Family. Nobody is swearing fealty to Prince Andrew, or even Princess Anne for that matter. And for a think tank that claims to be devoted to increasing Canadians’ knowledge of their country, that kind of distortion is malpractice at best, but I suspect it’s more about trying to build a case that the monarchy is not a unifying force, particularly for immigrants. As for the CP journalist, this was simply retyping a press release with no added context. There were no basic civics in there about how we’re a constitutional monarchy, that the Queen of Canada is different from the Queen of the UK, or that the oath to the Queen is not to her natural person, but to the Crown as the central organizing principle of our constitution (which is why we would need to rewrite the entire thing if we ever were insane enough to ditch the monarchy—not that we would ever get the unanimous agreement of the provinces to do so). It’s really disappointing that CP has descended to this kind of stenography when they used to be one of the most enviable bureaux on the Hill.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1541409039330021380

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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Roundup: Clear and concise, to counteract Poilievre

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Earlier this week, to accompany the release of their Monetary Policy Report, the Bank of Canada released a sixty-second clip over social media to explain their assessment of the state of the Canadian economy in plain language. And it was great.

This kind of communication is essential, especially now, for the Bank because of the level of noise and misinformation that is being promulgated, particularly by certain members of Parliament who have made it their mission to politicise the work of the Bank, as they spout facile talking points about the current state of inflation that have zero bearing on the actual causes. And if it’s not Pierre Poilievre, my reply column is full of chuckleheads who think they know better, and inflation truthers (which are the gods damned worst). So yes, this kind of clear, simple-to-digest communication is especially needed by the Bank, much like the Cases in Brief have become an essential form of communication from the Supreme Court of Canada. This is a great initiative from the Bank, and hopefully we’ll see more like it in the future.

On a related note, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge says that the current governor is on the right track with the economic recovery and where inflation is going, so if you needed an additional vote of confidence that they know what they’re doing, there you have it.

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Roundup: Self-harm by way of platitude

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I try not to make a habit of re-litigating my Twitter disputes in this space, but in this particular case, I find it’s a perfect illustration of how this government’s inability to communicate its way out of a wet paper bag, and why that harms them. To wit: A Global News piece declares that Trudeau won’t commit to ending boil-water advisories on First Nations by 2021 as is the current promise. It uses the recent evacuation at Neskatanga First Nation as an illustration of problems with boil-water advisories. It quotes Trudeau giving a bland talking point about “more work to do,” and way down at the bottom of the story is reference to the fact that in Neskatanga, not only has money been approved and delivered, but the new water treatment facility is nearly completed construction.

So why is this a problem for the government? Because if they had the slightest bit of candour, they could have explained that capital projects like these take time, particularly in the kinds of remote and fly-in communities like these particular First Nations. Twitter is filled with people who are seriously asking why the government hasn’t solved these issues if they’re showering money around, without having the slightest clue about what he actual problems with these boil water advisories are, and accustomed to situations where they can simply throw money at a problem and it will go away. That’s not the case, and not understanding the logistical and capacity issues at play means that we get this ongoing confusion. For example, many of these reserves are only accessible to bring equipment up with ice roads for a couple of months of the year, which slows the ability to make timely solutions. (This is also an issue with housing on many reserves – small windows by which to bring in building supplies, and those windows are getting ever shorter because of climate change). This has been made even worse in the pandemic, because many communities won’t let the people who are building these new facilities into the community in an attempt to keep COVID out (which Trudeau made vague reference to, but folded it into his platitude so it gets lost). In some communities, it’s not a question of the equipment but of maintenance – as soon as they find and train someone local to do the work, they get headhunted and given a better offer, and the community has to start over again, as the equipment once again breaks down. And it would be great if Trudeau or one of his ministers could actually articulate these challenges, but they won’t. Instead, they fall back on their platitudes about “doing better,” and not giving people a clue about what the actual challenges are.

The government also assumes that these reporters will do the work to find out what the challenges are, but they won’t. Pressed for time, and under the constant pressure to produce, most of them will only both-sides the quotes and move on (as happened in this particular case). Most don’t understand the background or the actual challenges, so it doesn’t get reported – only the platitudes in face of the complaints. Actual candour from Trudeau and the Cabinet would fix this – easily! But they won’t do it. It’s maddening, and they’re just shooting themselves in the foot, over, and over, and over again.

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Roundup: A difference in Supreme Courts

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There’s been a fair amount of chatter the past couple of days about how everyone on both sides of the border seemed to know who US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was, but most Canadians would have no idea who any members of our own Supreme Court are. While some blame this on American “media saturation,” I think it’s more than that (though media saturation is a factor). Rather, the partisan jockeying around the composition of the American Supreme Court means that there is far more investment in who is on the bench and what their ideological leanings are, coupled with a willingness on the part of that Court’s justices to become media figures.

The Supreme Court of Canada is largely devoid of the partisan balancing act of its American counterpart, and Canada’s relative lack of particularly conservative schools of legal thought means that we have a much more homogenous legal community, which finds for less polarization on the top court – though the McLachlin era of many unanimous decisions has largely come to an end and dissents are more frequent – which is not such a bad thing. This isn’t to say that our court isn’t political, because it is – it is very much a political actor in the Charter era – but it is generally not partisan in that regard. As for the willingness for celebrity, most Canadian Supreme Court justices eschew the limelight, and very rarely grant interviews (not the case in the US), though the new Chief Justice, Richard Wagner, is a little more open with media and has taken to holding a year-ending press conference every June, which has not happened before now. Nevertheless, those are some of the reasons why Canada’s court and its personalities are not media spectacles like they are in the US, and that’s really not such a bad thing.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at how the Supreme Court of Canada is adapting to ensure in-person sittings for the duration of the pandemic.

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Roundup: A sudden demand for subsidies

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Something that went largely unremarked yesterday was a somewhat bizarre press release that Andrew Scheer put out, bemoaning the lack of cellphone coverage in one region of Quebec, and then wondered why the government had all kind of money to spend on other things but not this, and then lumped it in with softwood lumber and Supply Management as a Quebec priority.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/889841610665730048

While the fact that the Conservative leader was in essence demanding subsidized cellphone coverage in one particular region is strange in and of itself, it should be a reminder that this is no longer a party of actual fiscal conservatism – it’s a party of economic populism that just happens to chant about balanced budgets for the sake of it. To be certain, this is the first time I’ve seen cellphone coverage being listed as a top priority from Scheer or the Conservatives, and as many of my Twitter followers pointed out, there are plenty of places in this country with poor or non-existent coverage, especially along the TransCanada highway – somewhere one might expect that it might be some kind of national priority. But I’m also curious as to what exactly Scheer proposes to do about it that government deficits aren’t taking care of – language that seems to imply that they’re not simply going to demand that companies provide this coverage through regulatory means. Add to that, they were in power for almost a decade and did nothing about these kinds of coverage gaps, so it makes one wonder why it suddenly became a priority unless it just happens to be somewhere that Scheer is hoping to pick up some votes. Crass politicking? Perish the thought!

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