Tag Archives: Julie Payette

Roundup: Waiting on the Industrial Relations Board’s decision

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As the Industrial Relations Board began its deliberations of the rail situation and the request of the minister, one of the two railways, CN Rail, opted to end their lockout and start the trains running again. But because the minister’s order included extending the previous collective agreement to now, it somehow reset things for the union, and they issued a seventy-two-hour strike notice, so…the trains may not run again? The whole while, the other rail company, CPKC, just stayed the course with their lockout in order to wait for what the Board had to say.

As for the Board, it needs to determine if binding arbitration is the only way to resolve the impasse in the labour dispute, and whether it can justify that the economic situation has a sufficient impact on the general public that arbitration is, again, the only way to resolve this, and the parties need to present evidence to this effect because this is a quasi-judicial body. The way this whole situation with the Board has been described by most media outlets has been outright wrong, and coupled with the fact that the business lobbies don’t seem to understand the limits of the minister’s powers, and it has led to nothing but confusion as to what is really going on.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are keeping conspicuously silent about the whole thing, no doubt in a cynical attempt to continue to court the blue collar union vote (as though their history of attempted union-busting will just magically disappear). It is impressive, however, just how much message discipline they have had over this, with nary a stray tweet being sent out (probably because they know Jenni Byrne will scream at them if they do).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has suspended ferry service to occupied Crimea after the Ukrainian navy blew up one of those ferries that was hauling fuel and munitions to the occupied region. The Ukrainian forces say that they have used high-precision US-made glide bombs in parts of Kursk, and that they have also re-taken some land in Kharkiv.

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Roundup: The grifters make nice for the cameras

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The first part of the grifter convoy arrived in Ottawa yesterday, probably 80 trucks in total, and they largely blocked the street in front of Parliament Hill and made a bunch of noise, but that was it so far. Much of the day appeared to be devoted PR—the organizers swearing up and down that they wanted this to be peaceful, engaging with the police to that effect, who are on the lookout for “lone wolves,” telling reporters on the scene the fiction that they were frustrated with vaccine mandates (until you scratched the surface, and they insist that they are tired of the “tyranny” of the current “dictator” Justin Trudeau, whom you will all recall just won a free and fair election).

It’s all bullshit, however. All of it. This whole thing was organized by extremists, some of whom have ties to the Sons of Odin. If anyone with “genuine concerns” is really along for the ride, it’s because they’re a hapless moron who can’t do their due diligence before they got swept up into the grift. We don’t know where a lot of the money collected by the GoFundMe is coming from, but it’s a good bet it’s not all domestic—especially as this has been picked up by agitators in the American media ecosystem, who are seeing this as some kind of mobilisation effort (while repeating the bizarre falsehood that this is somehow 50,000 trucks and 1.4 million people headed to Ottawa, which defies credulity). They have a stated aim of overturning democracy and eliminating all public health orders (never mind that 99 percent of them are provincial or municipal), and it’s never going to happen because it’s impossible, but nevertheless, there are more and more Conservative MPs who keep giving them legitimacy while trying to play cute and insisting that they denounce extremism, even though the gods damned extremists are behind it. Erin O’Toole went so far as to stage a photo op with a supposed trucker family while in an RCAF jacket, which is a pretty dubious statement to be making considering this convoy’s goal is to overturn democracy, which includes him.

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Meanwhile, Matt Gurney wonders how we deal with the impossible task of marginalizing the extremists, and proposes we actually start fixing the things that can be fixed to show that the system can work. (Not mentioned: Calling out the opportunists who feed the extremists’ irrational anger and the politicians who court them because they think they can use their energy and dollars). Colin Horgan, on the other hand, speaks for all of our weariness, as we are subjected to these conspiracy theorists who are all playing hero in their own minds, and believing their own juvenile bullshit, while even those with “genuine concerns” only make it worse by feeding into it all the same.

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Roundup: A plan to tax the unvaxxed

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By all accounts, it sounded like Quebec premier François Legault was spit-balling policy when, at the press conference to announce the province’s new chief public health officer, he proposed that the province impose additional costs on the unvaccinated in the form of some kind of surtax that would be “significant,” meaning more than $100. There were no details, which is kind of a big deal, but you immediately had other political leaders worried about “slippery slopes,” as though we don’t have other sin taxes on things like alcohol and cigarettes which impose their own significant public health burdens, as well as concerns that this will further disenfranchise those who are already marginalised. And fair enough.

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The concerns about whether this somehow contravenes the Canada Health Act seem to be overblown, as it’s not charging for healthcare services, but other concerns about just how this might be implemented remain, as professors like Jennifer Robson articulate below.

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Roundup: Sending in the wrong minister

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The shenanigans at committees on all sides are severely testing my patience, as things continue to spiral toward a potential contempt of Parliament charge, never mind that what’s being demanded is exceeding what is generally acceptable parliamentary norms.

The demands that staffers appear at committee are clearly outrageous and in violation of the sacrosanct notion of ministerial responsibility, but the Liberals are nevertheless pushing the bounds of what is acceptable in and of itself. Instead of sending staffers, they were offered the chance to send the prime minister instead – a bit of a long shot, but sending the Government House Leader was clearly testing the committee’s bounds. For them to then send the Minister for Middle Class™ Prosperity® on a second appearance is definitely pushing buttons, and they should know better. If you’re going to invoke the principle of ministerial responsibility, then gods damned well respect it and put the actual minister forward, and for PMO staff, then the prime minister is the responsible minister. Sending Mona Fortier is a deliberate slap in the face.

At the same time, I am also particularly at the end of my rope with the constant demand for unredacted documents, and the insistence that the House of Commons’ Law Clerk be the one to do any redactions. His office is already buried under the literal millions of documents that the Health Committee demanded, and now the Foreign Affairs committee also wants a piece of him and his time to do even more redactions when the non-partisan civil service is normally the body that does this work. This is generally beyond the scope of what the Law Clerk should be doing, and he’s already stressed his resources and staff to do work they shouldn’t be doing, and yet more MPs keep making even more demands. That’s not how this works, and not how this should work, and yet they keep hand-waving about “cover-up!” as though that’s some kind of talisman. I’m not sure what the solution here is other than telling MPs from all sides to grow up, but that’s where we are.

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Roundup: Cheering on an attack on institutional independence

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Yesterday, Senator Claude Carignan tabled a bill that seeks to strip Julie Payette of her pension, and would strip any former Governor General of a pension if they don’t serve at least five years (never mind that nine of our 29 past Governors General did not serve at least five years). It’s an attack on the institutional independence of an office that can serve as a check on government, and needs to be called out as such.

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But just how was it discussed on Power & Politics last night? Over several segments, each of them with different pundits, the common consensus that this was great populist politics to go after an unpopular figure like Payette, and digging into the issue of their other benefits – because nothing sells in Canadian media like cheap outrage and hairshirt parsimony. The most we got to the cautionary tale was to beware unintended consequences, and that a future GG may have to invent a medical reason for a resignation (which the bill states that Cabinet would have to approve, which is entirely bonkers). Not one person – not one – raised the issue of institutional independence, and why it’s a Very Bad Thing to open the door to governments being able to threaten their financial well-being as a way to hold power over them, most especially when the beneficiaries of this independence (not only the GG, but also senators and Supreme Court justices) provide a check on the power of government. This is the level of discourse in this country? Seriously? And even more to the point, the host of the show kept steering the topic to this kind of populist, vindictiveness rather than the actual consequences of making an action like this. It is absolutely boggling, but it gives you a sense as to why things have degenerated as they have. This bill represents an existential threat to our parliamentary system, and it’s being played for petty drama and populist cheap shots.

We need better pundits in this country, and better politics shows. This is horrifying.

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Roundup: An oncoming vaccine delivery crunch

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It looks like the vaccine delays are at an end, with ramped up deliveries planned through to the end of March, and Pfizer’s Canadian president insisting that they fully plan to meet their contracted deadlines. Add to that, there is more talk of AstraZeneca vaccines on the way (which could be from India as well as the US), but as has been pointed out in this breakdown of vaccine delivery math, this is going to put more pressure on provinces to get those doses into arms.

Why is that concerning? Well, provincial government competence is a very live concern. Ontario, for example, still hasn’t set up a web portal or call centre to book appointments for vaccinations, when they’ve been caterwauling that they need more doses – only, whoops, it turns out that they can’t even bloody count the doses they’ve delivered and they only delivered half as many as they thought they had. That’s not exactly encouraging (particularly because the government is being run by a gang of incompetent murderclowns).

Add to that, Ontario’s ethical framework for vaccine priorities is far more confused than it should be. Would that this government could get its act together, but no. This is only making a bad situation worse, but remember, everyone has to keep praising Ford for how he really exceeded his (low) expectations, rather than holding him to account for the thousands of unnecessary deaths that have occurred on his watch.

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Roundup: Ford is steering Ontario into the third wave

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Ontario is seeing the biggest rise in the B117 variant of COVID – known colloquially as the UK variant – and yet Doug Ford is promising to start lifting restrictions later this week. We’ve only just gotten first doses to residents of long-term care facilities, and even those vaccinations won’t have a dent in ICU admissions, and yet, Ford and company are barrelling ahead with nonsensical plans. Another example was to delay March Break until April, ostensibly to prevent travel (because there is always travel over holidays), but it seems to also fly in the face of measures related to closing schools to prevent more spread, and that it could have had that utility.

Nevertheless, the province’s own modelling shows a disastrous third wave oncoming because of these more transmissible variants, and point to the need to keep up current restrictions. Ford plans to go ahead with loosening them. And then there was this remarkable exchange where a TVO reporter asked if the province was headed for disaster on this current course, and the public health officials essentially confirmed it.

Ontario is being governed by a group of murderclowns. There is no other explanation.

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Roundup: Nuancing the discipline debate

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Over the weekend, Aaron Wherry wrote a piece about party discipline, comparing Derek Sloan’s ouster from the Conservatives in Canada, with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s censure in the US. While I think Wherry makes a few interesting points, he misses a boatload of nuance that should probably be included in there – including the fact that I’m not sure that control over nominations is necessarily an issue of party discipline per se, and I fear that the piece suffers a bit of conflation as a result.

What I thought in particular was his point where parties can exert more control over who can and cannot get nominations in Canada, where party influence is much weaker in American primaries. The ability for party leaders to be able to veto nominations is a fairly recent development, dating back to the Canada Elections Act reforms in 1970, when they needed an accountability mechanism when party names appeared on ballots for the first time, and in the interests of not burdening Elections Canada with intra-party disputes over nominations, they gave party leaders the ability to sign off on nominations. At no point in the debates (and I did read the Hansards and committee transcripts when I was researching for my book) was the possibility of this being used as a tool of party discipline raised. Nevertheless, this became essentially a tool of blackmail, where leaders could threaten to withhold signing the nomination papers of any MP who wanted to run again if they didn’t toe the party line. But this is only a tool of discipline for an incumbent, not someone who has never run before, which is more what Wherry is talking about with Sloane and Greene.

In either of those cases, these were newbies to the party, and control over who is and is not running is part of the argument he is making – that it’s tighter control in Canada than in the US, and maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think there is more elegance to the argument than that. When it comes to the more substantial difference between Canada and the US when it comes to quality control of who winds up on the ballot is how the grassroots mechanisms different. In Canada, it is ostensibly a matter for the riding association, which can be hundreds of thousands of members – especially if there is a membership drive for a contested nomination – but that’s not the same as a primary, which is many, many times larger. There is a more robust intra-party green-light process in Canada that has grown up over time, but the bigger problem right now is it is being abused, and parties are gaming the nomination process, in many cases to favour candidates that their leader would prefer, and this is a problem that very much needs to be solved as soon as possible. While yes, it may be preferable that we have a bit more quality control over our candidates (emphasis on “bit” – plenty of people get elected who never should have made it past their green-light process), it should still be a more grassroots driven process, and not be the sole discretion of the party leader. That is the part that is harming us more than helping us, and the happy medium won’t be found until we get back to a place where we aren’t selecting party leaders through membership votes, and the grassroots has their proper role in ground-up democracy restored.

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Roundup: Domestic vaccine production…eventually

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There was a sliver of positive news yesterday, when it was announced that the federal government had signed a deal with Novavax to produce their vaccine in the future National Research Council facility in Montreal. The catch? That facility won’t be completed construction until summer, and then it will require Health Canada approval, so it may not be able to produce new doses until the end of the year – at which point, most Canadians should already be vaccinated using the Pfizer and Moderna doses we’ve contracted for. That doesn’t mean this facility still won’t be for naught – it’s possible we will need booster shots for the other vaccines, possibly do deal with different variants (and Novavax has shown success with the B.1.1.7 variant first spotted in the UK), and it also means that we will be able to produce for export to other countries who will need it.

Of course, this started back in on the same questions about why we weren’t able to produce vaccines domestically earlier, and why this plant is taking so long. Of course, this plant is actually moving faster than is usual – Good Manufacturing Practices facilities to produce vaccines usually take two or three years to build, not a single year, and there are several other facilities under construction across the country for other vaccine candidates. As for the same questions about why we didn’t contract to produce other vaccines here, it was because there were no suitable facilities – particularly from the approved ones. (This NRC facility was in talks to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, but there is also talk about why the PnuVax facility in Montreal has not yet been tapped – but it may yet be for a future candidate once approved). And for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, we simply didn’t have facilities in this country that could produce mRNA vaccines to scale (most existing mRNA production was on a single-dose system for tailored vaccines used for treating particular cancers). And these are things we a) can’t build overnight, and b) didn’t know were even viable because it’s a new technology that had not yet been approved for a vaccine, especially on the scale of the one we’re dealing with now. It would have been a hell of a gamble to build a facility to GMP standards for a vaccine technology that may not have panned out.

Why I’m particularly annoyed about the return of these questions – particularly from the likes of Jagmeet Singh as he appeared on platforms like Power & Politics – is that they pretend that any vaccine facility can produce any vaccine, ignoring that not all vaccines are created equally, or that the technology to produce vaccines isn’t different across platforms. Singh’s notion that a nationalised vaccine producer should have been able to handle this is also farcical because again, what platform would it have bet on? All of them? It’s ridiculous and dishonest – as have been the demands to make the vaccine procurement contracts public (which no other country has done), because all that would do is allow other countries to look at what we paid, and then offer the companies more money to break the contracts with us. (And FFS, both Singh and Erin O’Toole are lawyers and should know this). The kinds of point-scoring that is taking place right now is getting to be beyond the pale, and it’s obscuring the actual kinds of accountability we should be practicing.

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QP: Demanding a Line 5 tantrum

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It was another day of the Liberals showing contempt for Parliament by only putting Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, demanding that the prime minister stand up for Enbridge Line 5, to which Justin Trudeau, by video, reminded him of everything his government had done in order to push back against American encroachment. O’Toole said that this wasn’t raised in any call for the past several weeks, to which Trudeau dismissed Conservative armchair quarterbacking, asserting that they got the job done. O’Toole then pivoted to praise Northern Ireland for getting written assurances that they would be exempt from EU export controls on vaccines, and demanded assurances in writing, and Trudeau stated that they got “strong assurances” that Canada would not be affected by these transparency measures. O’Toole switched to French to call out the contradiction between the prime minister and industry minister as to when the Montreal vaccine facility would be able to produce the Novavax candidate — by summer, or the end of the year. Trudeau said that he had stated that the facility should be finished by the summer, and can start production before the end of the year. O’Toole then demanded a plan on vaccine delivery, to which Trudeau accused him of fear-no getting, and reiterated the talking points on the quarterly delivery commitments.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and moaned about health care transfers and that the federal government wants national standards — taking a swipe at the NDP while he was at it. Trudeau stated that they would increase health transfers, that they already had increased investments, and there would be more discussions going forward. Blanchet then railed about national standards over Quebec standards, to which Trudeau reminded him that the Canadian Forces stepped in to help those Quebec long-term care facilities.

Jagmeet Singh then got up for the NDP, and demanded paid sick leave, and fixing the existing federal benefit. Trudeau reminded him that they created a federal programme to help people immediately but it was great to see some provinces step up (because this is 94 percent provincial jurisdiction). Singh switched to French to raise his meeting with François Legault to demand an increase in federal health transfers, and Trudeau stated that they would continue to increase them, and reminded him of the tens of billions sent to province through the pandemic.

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