Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: Nothing to opt out of

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Breaking through the endless wank-a-thon of the pundit class declaring that Justin Trudeau needs to go was a story where Danielle Smith had sent a letter to Trudeau declaring that Alberta will “opt out” of the dental care plan, and that they want to negotiate “compensation” that they would apply to their own provincial low-income dental assistance programme, but this seems to completely misunderstand how the programme works. It is very literally an insurance programme. Dental offices bill Sun Life through a portal, and the federal government then reimburses Sun Life. Yes, the rollout was poor and confused (because the whole implementation of this programme has been a bit of a gong show, thanks entirely to the NDP), but this is not a federal transfer programme. There is nothing to compensate the province for because this is a 100 percent federal insurance scheme.

The reason it’s structured this way is because the NDP demanded, as part of the Supply and Confidence Agreement, that this needed to be a fully federal programme, and not cost-shared like early learning and child care, and because dental care is ostensibly provincial jurisdiction, it had to be structured as insurance, and the model they would up choosing was to get Sun Life to do it, and they just pay Sun Life, rather than stand up a federal bureaucracy to administer this. This should have been a federal-provincial transfer so that provinces could bolster their existing dental programmes to federal guidelines, but no. As a result, I don’t see just what Smith can “opt out” of, let alone be compensated for.

Of course, federal health minister Mark Holland didn’t help matters by going on Power & Politics and not explaining how the programme works, and instead suggested that she could opt out if she could guarantee the same or better coverage, but again, opt out of what? The province isn’t billing Sun Life. They are out of the equation entirely, and Holland should have pointed this out, rather than just trying to sound conciliatory and saying he doesn’t want a fight, and repeating the same lines about how many tens of thousands of seniors have availed themselves of the programme to date. Smith doesn’t appear to understand how the programme works, and has created a strawman around it to make it look like she’s standing up to Trudeau (at the expense of her population), and claiming they already have a great dental care programme and that this is duplicative (it’s not—the Alberta programme covers very few people and is a burden to administer).

There is an added issue here with how the media have covered this. CBC, CTV, The Canadian Press, all ignore the programme structure and just retype Smith’s letter, and then get comments from the provincial dental association about either their disagreement on the federal programme or some minor pushback about Smith’s comments about the existing provincial programme, but the fact that this is an insurance company where the dentists bill Sun Life and the province has no involvement at all is a pretty crucial part of the story, which nobody mentions. This should not be rocket science, and this would show that Smith is engaging in bad theatre, but of course they don’t do that, and readers are being given a disservice as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy is expected to sign a security agreement with the EU later today.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805883881356186102

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Roundup: Pledging to do things differently—really!

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If by some chance you managed to survive the complete and utter wank-fest of pollsters, poll analysts and Elder Pundits doing the media rounds yesterday without straining your eyeballs as they rolled endlessly, well, good for you. Just don’t expect anything but this to dominate the media landscape for the next several weeks to come, because going into this, the Elder Pundits declared that this was a sign that Trudeau needs to go, and they feel themselves perfectly vindicated, and they want you to know it. (Such a healthy media ecosystem we have in this country). So, while the entrails of this by-election get picked over, expect nothing but demands for a leadership review (which the Liberal Party’s constitution only allows for after a general election loss), for Trudeau to step down, and for successor chatter to spin up, with Mark Carney’s name all over the place in spite of all evidence to the contrary. (Gretchen, stop trying to make Mark Carney happen. It’s not going to happen).

Of course, Trudeau isn’t going to step down. He has convinced himself that he’s the one who can stand up to Poilievre, and that he wants to keep doing the work. Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould were all making the point that they have to listen more and work harder to regain trust, but the one that stuck out for me the most was Gould telling Power & Politics that they need to “do things differently,” but therein lies the problem with Trudeau. They don’t do things differently, starting with the fact that Katie Telford is still on the job and hasn’t decided that she needs to do something more with her life that just this, and being the central person by which everything flows (becoming part of the bottleneck of files this government needs to address). They are still communicating the same way after having been told time and again that it’s hindering them, and the most they’ve done is get some Gen Z staffers to put them in cringey TikToks (from their personal phones!) in addition to the same pabulum that they keep feeding us. They continue to pat themselves on the back for declaration over actions to implement those declarations. I get that they are trying to say the right things right now, but I have yet to see any desire on the part of Trudeau to do things differently, and maybe that should be the lesson here.

And in reaction, we have Susan Delacourt pointing out why this becomes a problem for Poilievre’s expectations management. Jen Gerson mockingly declares Trudeau to be dead in the water, because of course she does. Paul Wells also makes the observation that Trudeau will espouse making changes but won’t, and will just keep doing what he’s been doing the whole time.

Ukraine Dispatch

The shells obtained by the Czech initiative are starting to arrive in Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia exchanged 90 prisoners of war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed an International Criminal Court warrant for two more Russian military leaders.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

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Roundup: Back to the constituencies

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At long last, the children—and by “children,” I mean MPs—have gone home for the summer. Finally. Not before there wasn’t another last-ditch effort by Conservatives to try and demand more committee hearings over the summer, because they need clips for their socials, after all. I also find it particularly strange that the Conservatives have been phrasing their condemnations that the other parties want to go back to their ridings to “vacation” for the summer, because normally MPs are extremely precious about the fact that this is not a break because they have sO mUcH wOrK tO dO in their constituencies and that if they had their druthers they’d do even more work in their constituencies and less in Ottawa, so this feels like the Conservatives making a tacit admission that they don’t do work in their constituencies. (I know they’re not, but this is what happens when you make dumb arguments to score points).

This being said, MPs are absolutely behaving like children over all of this, and they all need a gods damned time out, not that I expect things to get much better in the fall because the incentives for this kind of behaviour remain—it’s all about getting clicks and engagement on their socials, and acting like children gets them that, apparently. It’s too bad the incentives aren’t there for them to act like adults, but the world has gone stupid.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians resumed air attacks on Ukrainian power facilities. (Timeline of such attacks here). The fire at the oil terminal in southern Rostov burned for a second day after Ukraine’s drone strike. Here’s a look at how Russian glide bombs have accelerated the time it takes for them to destroy front-line settlements in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1803342727267885346

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Roundup: Trudeau weighs in—sort of

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It was another big day on the foreign interference/NSICOP file today, with Elizabeth May holding another press conference to clarify her previous remarks and to assure everyone that she doesn’t think there’s nothing to see here, and that like Jagmeet Singh, she’s alarmed by what she read, but no, there is nothing to indicate that any sitting MP has committed treason (the only possible exception of course being the one former MP), but a few MPs may have compromised themselves by accepting favours from certain embassies in order to secure their nominations, which was stupid and possibly unethical, but certainly not treason (which has a strict Criminal Code definition).

Shortly after this, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue sent a letter saying that her commission can look into these issues, that she has access to all of the documents that went into the NSICOP report, and that she’s going to try to include this assessment as part of the final report by the end of the year, which isn’t the October 1st that MPs wanted when they voted on this stupid motion in the first place, but hey, she didn’t tell them to go drop on their heads (like she should have), and this pushes the ability for the party leaders to put on their grown-up pants and actually deal with this political problem even further into the future, which is a problem. This should not have happened, she should have told them to deal with their political problems on their own and not fob them off onto a judge, but she didn’t, and so nothing gets solved.

But then, Justin Trudeau himself appeared on Power & Politics, and kept up his evasive talking points on the issue and the report, wouldn’t really clarify what exactly it is that he disagrees with NSICOP about, and kept pointing to how great it was that we have an independent commission that’s looking into all of this, so people can rest assured. Which doesn’t actually help, especially when the biggest accusation is that he has done nothing with this information for months. About the biggest thing to come from that interview was Trudeau saying that there are a range of issues with foreign interference in all parties, and that false accusations may well be a goal of some foreign regimes. He also threw a bit of a bomb at Singh by implying that maybe the NDP isn’t as clean as Singh insisted after he read the classified report, so this is going to extend the media circus tomorrow, particularly when Singh has his usual media availability tomorrow before Question Period.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck dwellings and power lines in the Poltava region, injuring twenty-two and knocking out electricity in the area. Ukrainian troops have been massing in the Kharkiv region, pushing out the Russian incursions. Ukraine is having difficulty restructuring their bonds, and might fall into default.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Joly are expected to meet with the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Ottawa today.
  • Bill Blair, being far too diplomatic, suggests his critics were “confused” about the purpose of Canada sending a warship to Havana (when they spread disinformation).
  • Blair also made it clear that he is not contemplating sending trainers back to Ukrainian soil. (Current training is happening in the UK, Poland and Latvia).
  • Patty Hajdu committed $1.2 billion for a hospital near James Bay, which will flow to the province, who is doing the actual construction (as it’s their jurisdiction).
  • The government is prevaricating on the question of whether Canadian news outlets should be compensated when “AI” chatbots train on them as copyrighted sources.
  • Here is an explainer of the stupid fight happening at the Canadian heritage committee over the CBC not airing certain hockey games.
  • At committee, the Parliamentary Budget Officer now says the government hasn’t gagged him, it was all a misunderstanding of translation. Convenient!
  • Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan talks about her severe concussion and how that has sparked advocacy for how concussions affect women differently.
  • Liberal MP Andy Fillmore is resigning his seat in order to make a run for the mayor of Halifax.
  • While former Supreme Court chief justice says she’s stepping down from the Hong Kong court to spend time with family, she renewed her tenure on Singapore’s court.
  • New Brunswick’s government site about the carbon levy overestimates the costs and doesn’t mention the rebates, because why tell the truth?
  • Paul Wells spent a day on the Hill to see the current state of the place, and well, it’s not great. (And thanks for the shoutout!)

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the PBO’s big mess, and the spin over the “secret report” which wasn’t a secret or a report.

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Roundup: A possible reluctant partial briefing

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Because we’re stuck on this story, the Globe and Mail has heard that Pierre Poilievre has now said that he will accept a briefing if CSIS has any particular concerns about his caucus or party—but that’s it! Nothing more, because he keeps falsely insisting that his hands would be tied, when they actually wouldn’t be. Nevertheless, there is more to intelligence than just CSIS, and the NSICOP report is drawn from various sources, who sometimes disagreed with one another, and that matters in this kind of thing too, so it is baffling why Poilievre keeps insisting on tying his own hands.

Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh was on Power & Politics to discuss his reading of the classified version of the report, and it was just more evasion and going around in circles rather than answering anything, and some of this was the continued attempt to take shots at the Liberals and Conservatives without actually spelling out what he thought should have done differently. He did say that the Liberals should keep Han Dong out of caucus, but that was as much as he would say, but kept insisting that the government has done nothing, but couldn’t say what they should do, or even acknowledged that there wasn’t really actionable intelligence that they could have acted upon, so again, what has really been the point? Incidentally, Elizabeth May does say that she is just as concerned about what is in the report as Singh, but her relief was that there were not current MPs implicated, which Singh won’t even say.

The only smart thing that Singh has said to date is that he isn’t going to pull the plug on the government over this because it would make no sense to go to an election if there are still questions about how it might be interfered with. To that end, they are in the process of passing the Elections Act updates, and the foreign interference bill, which should hopefully provide new tools to combat any attempted interference. Once those are passed and implemented it’ll probably get us closer to the fixed election date, so that may be the one thing that keeps the Supply and Confidence Agreement going until then.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine shot down seven of eleven Russian drones targeting critical infrastructure on Friday. Ukraine has been adopting an “elastic” defensive posture while they wait for the arrival of more western weapons to shrink the munitions gap between Russia and them. Vladimir Putin said he would call a ceasefire if Ukraine turned over the four regions his forces partly occupy plus forswear any NATO membership in the future, which Ukraine flatly rejected. The International Criminal Court is investigating Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure as potential war crimes.

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Roundup: Stop talking about what they’re talking about

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The one thing everyone was talking about this weekend was Conservative MP Arnold Viersen going on Nate Erskine-Smith’s podcast and just blatantly laying out his anti-abortion (and anti-gay) agenda, and then a) claiming he was ambushed, and b) putting out the vaguest statement ever to walk back his comments and defend The Leader’s position (which is less clear than he likes to pretend).

But as this is happening, we see the country’s Elder Pundits sighing and saying “There the Liberals go again, always talking about abortion,” and “wow, they’re really desperate to pull this card again, especially so early,” when the Conservatives are the ones who keep bringing it up, time after time, but the Elder Pundits keep telling everyone to just ignore it, because that will apparently make it go away. It’s not going away, and they are increasingly emboldened about these kinds of issues because the authoritarians and wannabe-authoritarians are using these very issues to oppress, and to create wedges that they can leverage, but calling that out is a little uncouth. While yes, I do think that backbench suck-up questions on abortion every day in Question Period for a week is overkill, but again, the Conservatives are the ones who keep bringing it up and who keep insisting that they’re going to re-open these issues, and if the leader says they won’t, I don’t feel inclined to believe him because he has lied about every single issue under the sun (which again, the Elder Pundits of this land continue to studiously ignore). Maybe we need to stop ignoring what is right in front of us, Elder Pundits be damned.

As a bonus, here’s a story about Viersen and what a homophobic/transphobic person he really is (on top of his continued bullshit about trying to block porn). He’s not alone in the party on this front. We should be paying attention but the Elder Pundits keep telling us not to. It’s really tiresome.

https://twitter.com/HannahHodson28/status/1796928863265521767

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile hit residences in Balakliia near Kharkiv, injuring 13. Russians have also continued pounding energy facilities across Ukraine, prompting a fresh plea for more air defences. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to the Asia security summit in Singapore to drum up support for the upcoming peace conference, and to call out China for pressuring countries not to attend.

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Roundup: Another failed attempt to oust the Speaker

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Because everything is so stupid right now, the first day of the final stretch started with yet another call for Speaker Greg Fergus to resign for a “very partisan” invitation to an upcoming event in his riding, and of course, the Conservatives tied this to Poilievre’s ejection from the House of Commons two weeks ago because he challenged the Speaker’s authority in refusing to withdraw unparliamentary language when invited to, falsely insisting that he gave the prime minister a pass on similar language. Because playing the victim is part of their playbook, and they have to insist that the system is against them.

A short while later, the Liberal Party came forward to take the blame for this, and insisted that the wrong text had been put on the website that was “auto-populated” with “standard-language” (decrying Poilievre), and that this was being organised by the riding association, not Fergus’ office. A short while after that, the party’s national director issued a public apology to Fergus and take full responsibility.

This didn’t placate the Conservatives or the Bloc, while the NDP were satisfied with the explanation and apology, so they’re not going to vote out Fergus (while they busily pat themselves on the back for being the “adults in the room”). Nevertheless, I will note that as media outlets rushed to tabulate all of the controversies Fergus has allegedly been involved in the past six months, they conflated a bunch of the bullshit ones with them, such as the remarks he made in Washington DC about the time he’d spent as a young Liberal with a retiring Democrat, which is hard to actually qualify as a partisan speech. Nevertheless, it got included, unfairly, because legacy media outlets are incapable of exercising judgment and will simply include the bullshit allegations with the real ones (the video he recorded in his robes and office) as a form of both-sidesing. While Fergus hasn’t been a great Speaker (albeit, better than his predecessor was), the constant attacks for bullshit reasons are starting to look suspicious.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 28 of 29 drones overnight Monday, with the remaining drone hitting private residences in Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces are finally getting new artillery shells on the front lines in order to repel the Russian advance near Kharkiv. Ukrainian drones attacked more Russian oil refineries, and purportedly sank a Russian missile cruiser stationed near occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: More misleading over opioids

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The weekend discourse appears to have been much of what last week’s was, which was the Conservatives lying about the state of the opioid crisis in BC, lying about Justin Trudeau’s culpability, and lying about…well, pretty much everything. I feel like I need to keep saying this, but the decriminalisation project in BC is not what caused people to start using drugs openly in public places. That is happening everywhere. It is happening right now on the streets in Ottawa, where there is no decriminalisation, because there is currently a prevailing ethos that if you use in public places and overdose, you have a better chance that someone will come across you and get a Naloxone kit to save your life. It’s not about decriminalisation. That also didn’t cause users to leave needles in parks—that’s been happening for decades in some urban centres. We’re now fully into moral panic territory.

Meanwhile, Toronto Public Health’s hopes for a similar decriminalisation programme don’t seem to be going anywhere, and Justin Trudeau stated last week, in QP that they only work with provinces and not individual cities on these kinds of projects, which is why they didn’t accept Vancouver’s proposal earlier, and why they’re not contemplating Toronto or Montreal now. And frankly, that shouldn’t be unexpected because public health is a provincial responsibility, so it would make more sense for the federal government to work with a province rather than an individual municipality that may be at odds with the province in question. Federalism matters, guys.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 23 of 24 drones overnight on Sunday, with more airstrikes on Kharkiv during the day on Sunday. There was also a drone attack on power supply in the Sumy region early Monday morning. Drone footage shows how the village of Ocheretyne is being pummelled by Russians, as residents are scrambling to flee the area, as Russia claims they have captured it. Problem gambling has become an issue for a lot of Ukrainian soldiers dealing with the stress of combat.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1787172469100478665

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Roundup: A genteel time that never was

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I saw a post yesterday that took a page from Hansard on that day in 1978, and well, it was full of the first prime minister Trudeau and several honourable members accusing one another of being animals, or parts thereof. And while hilarious, I think it’s a bit of a corrective when people keep insisting that Parliament used to be a much more genteel place (and we got a lot of that during the Ed Broadbent and Brian Mulroney memorials).

It really wasn’t that genteel. It never has been—there are infamous reports in Hansard about early debates in the 1860s where MPs were setting off firecrackers in the Chamber and playing musical instruments to disrupt people speaking. And I can also say that Question Period was a hell of a lot more raucous when I started covering it fifteen years ago compared to what it is today, which has a lot to do with the Liberals clamping down on applause (for the most part) for their members, which has led to there being less heckling from the Liberal benches (not saying it doesn’t happen—it absolutely does—just not as much, and certainly not in the quantities it used to be).

Question Period is worse in other ways, however—nowadays it’s all reciting slogans and everyone on the same script so that they can each get a clip for their socials, while the government gives increasingly disconnected talking points in lieu of responses, and there’s almost no actual debate (though every now and again, Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre will get into an actual exchange with one another). And the repetition of slogans or the reading of canned lines each give rise to heckling because of its ridiculousness, and yes, there is louder heckling when women ministers are answering questions (but this is not a recent phenomenon either). But there was never a golden age of gentility in our Parliament, and we need to stop pretending there was as we lament the state of things. Instead, we should be lamenting the quality of the debate, which has been dead and buried since about the time that Bob Rae retired from politics.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck an educational facility in Odesa, killing four. Russian forces are advancing in the eastern Donetsk region after the withdrawal from Avdiivka, while Ukraine waits for new arms from the west. UN experts say that a missile that landed in Kharkiv on January 2nd was indeed of North Korean manufacture. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, visited Kyiv—the first member of the royal family to do so since the war began—and continued her work championing those affected by conflict-related sexual violence.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1785060798890459222

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Roundup: Asking about Canadian LNG like it’s a free cookie

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Once again, CTV’s Vassy Kapelos asks a visiting European leader if they’d like Canadian LNG, and spins a whole story out of the fact that they say yes, while absolutely ignoring all of the many reasons why it’s never going to happen. This has happened with at least three leaders now, the latest being the president of Poland, who was visiting Canada last week (the taped interview aired over the weekend), and predictably, the story is making rounds with people insisting that Trudeau is wrong to say there’s no business case for it.

To wit: There is no ready supply of natural gas to be liquified on the East Coast, because they get it shipped from the north-eastern US. Blaine Higgs’ ambitions aside, nobody wants to be fracking in New Brunswick (not the First Nations, not the people who live in the region), and that would mean either paying even more to import American gas to liquefy, or build a pipeline from Alberta (and just as a reminder, Energy East was killed by the proponent because they didn’t have enough contracts to fill it and Keystone XL, and the latter was the surer bet at the time), and it costs money to ship gas across the country in a pipeline like that, which would increase the selling price. Then they would have to build a new export terminal to liquefy said gas, (there is one existing import terminal that could theoretically be converted), but all of this takes years, billions of dollars, and would need guaranteed operations for about 45 years to pay off, which is going to put them past the 2050 Net Zero date for a rapidly decarbonizing Europe to still want the LNG—which would be at a higher price than they can get it from Algeria or the Persian Gulf. That’s why there is no business case. There have been proposals to build terminals on the east coast before, and nobody in Europe wanted to sign a contract to make it a worthwhile investment to pursue. Hell, there are plenty of fully permitted projects on the west coast not moving ahead because nobody wants to sign contracts for the product.

But Kapelos and the CTV team keep ignoring all of these issues when they ask this question, which as one reply on Twitter stated, is like asking someone if they want a free cookie. The most the story says about the feasibility of east coast LNG is “There has been political debate for years around whether Canada could or should plan to export to European countries, as well.” That’s it. Seriously? This is malpractice at this point, and no, this is not because she or anyone is “in the pocket of Poilievre,” or anyone. It’s just lazy journalism, plain and simple. It’s not serving anyone, and frankly, is distracting from the actual issues.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones struck a hotel in Mykolaiv on the Black Sea, severely damaging it and local energy infrastructure, but fortunately there were no casualties. Another Russian oil refinery has suspended operations after a Ukrainian drone attack. While Ukraine waits on the arrival of more American aid, their forces have had to fall back from three more villages northwest of Avdiivka.

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