Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: A recommendation to the Industrial Relations Board

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The rail duopoly lived up to their plans and locked out workers at midnight last night, and lo, the business lobbies across this country howled, and railed that the federal government didn’t prevent this from happening. Why didn’t they pre-emptively impose binding arbitration, they asked? Well, they actually can’t. They don’t have the legal authority to, they can only recommend it to the Industrial Relations Board, who can recommend binding arbitration, but they also know that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that there is a Charter right to collective bargaining, so why they would imperil that right before the courts is something that these business lobbyists haven’t bothered answering. Seriously, it’s an issue. But also, these same lobbyists didn’t blame the rail duopoly for the lockout, which is also a problem because they didn’t need to do that.

By the end of the day, labour minister Steve MacKinnon declared that the issues at the bargaining table were at an impasse, and made his recommendation to the Board that they end the lockout that could include binding arbitration, but also extending their previous collective agreement to now, so that they can get trains rolling again in a matter of days, should the Board agree to these recommendations—but they may not! They’re arm’s-length, and recent court decisions show that the test for these kinds of tactics are a high bar.

The NDP, meanwhile, had a predictable meltdown over this, saying it was “anti-worker” and trotted out their lines about corporations without necessarily actually understanding what happened with the referral to the Board, who will make their own determination. Jagmeet Singh also took to the microphones to insist that he won’t support any back-to-work legislation (which is unlikely to be necessary), even if it’s a confidence measure…which doesn’t matter, because the Conservatives would support it. To add to this, pretty much every headline in the country got the point of binding arbitration wrong, making it sound like the minister ordered it when he doesn’t have that legal authority. This shouldn’t have to be so hard, and yet…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs killed two civilians in Sumy region, while evacuations continue from Pokrovosk in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian drones have been attacking an airbase in Volgograd in Russia. President Zelenskyy visited the Sumy region, which borders Kursk. CBC has been speaking to people in Kursk, hearing about Russians disillusioned by their own government, and conscripts surrendering to Ukrainians.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1826629421236977861

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Roundup: No, that lurid tweet was not “inartfully worded”

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Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri deleted her Twitter post that claimed that the high cost of living was causing parents to traffic their children into sex work, and that “soft on crime policies” mean that survivors don’t come forward. She claims that this was simply a statement being “inartfully worded.” Bullshit. Don’t believe her. Ferreri has a record of saying things that defy credulity, such as that seniors in her riding are reduced to eating cat food because of Trudeau, or that the carbon levy has created a mental health crisis in teenagers. No, seriously. She has also been caught on several occasions embellishing her personal history, such as her “scholarship” to university (she got discounted tuition because one of her parents worked there), or her claim that she is the “single mother of six children” (she’s divorced with three children from her first marriage, and her current partner has three children from his previous marriage, and occasionally custody overlaps). This is a pattern.

All of this is deliberate. It is not her being clumsy or not articulating herself—it’s a deliberate tactic of using lurid images to make people irrationally angry at the government, because lies that trigger strong emotions work. That’s the sad truth of the matter, and this is 100 percent the tactic that the Conservatives are using to try and win the next election. Ferreri, granted, likes to gild the lily a little more when it comes to her tales of woe, and that’s what got her into trouble this time, but this isn’t accidental, or her not understanding the crime statistics she heard from her local organizations. This was absolutely about trying to come up with a new lie to make people angry at Trudeau, and she got caught. Not that there will be any consequences, because everything is both-sidesed in the media, so her defenders will rationalize her falsehoods, and nothing will change. They know how to game the system like this, and they will keep doing it because it works for them.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that they destroyed an S-300 anti-aircraft system in Rostov region overnight, citing that it was being used to attack civilian infrastructure. President Zelenskyy says that forces are shoring up defences in the east near Pokrovsk, as Russia tries to capture the city. There is some speculation that Putin’s slow response to the incursion in Kursk could cause him problems among his backers—or not, since he’s making them rich regardless.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1825896088315834440

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Roundup: The imagined need for Cardy

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I don’t really want to give the “Canadian Future Party” (formerly the “Centre Ice Conservatives”) too much air time and attention, but their interim leader, Dominic Cardy (formerly leader of the New Brunswick NDP who defected to that provinces’ Progressive Conservative Party but now sits as an independent after a falling out with Blaine Higgs) was making the media rounds yesterday, and he was mostly saying ridiculous things about the state of politics as they are today.

In order to try and claim the centrist high ground, Cardy rightly points to the fact that the Conservatives are moving to the far right in many areas (and many of his party’s organizers appear to be disaffected Conservatives), but he then tried to insist that they are going to be different from the Liberals by claiming that the Liberals are moving to the “extremes.” Reader, I howled with laughter. The Liberals have barely budged from their amorphous centrist position, moving ever-so-slightly to the left by actually implementing some of the programmes they’ve been trying to for a couple of decades, like child care, which has a hell of an economic case to recommend it when you look at the participation of women in the labour force and the economic returns that it brings. I’m not sure what “extremes” Cardy seems to be thinking of—the Liberals haven’t nationalized any industries; they haven’t abolished private property or beheaded any billionaires. Hell, they’ve barely raised the taxes on said billionaires, whose existence remains a policy failure in any just society. For all his talk about being an “economic disaster,” the country’s books are the strongest in the G7, the deficits that have been run outside of the height of COVID were rounding errors in the size of our economy, we had the lowest inflation spike of comparator economies, it returned to the control zone fastest, and we’ve achieved the soft landing of avoiding a recession after said inflationary spike. Cardy’s economic daydreams appear to be coming from some kind of fantasyland.

Selley is right—this isn’t an issue about ideologues, and Cardy’s going on about their policies being “evidence-based” is another one his weird fantasy daydreams. If we wanted a technocracy, we would install one, but governing is about making choices, and sometimes there are trade-offs to that policy. You can’t just keep shouting “evidence-based!” because sometimes the decisions you need to make will need some kind of an ideological grounding in order to weigh which trade-offs you’re willing to make. Nothing Cardy is offering here has even the hint of being serious, and people should recognize that fact.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck port infrastructure in Odesa on Wednesday night, while a drone attack killed two medics in Kharkiv region, and more energy infrastructure was hit in the Chernihiv region. Ukraine says they have pushed furtherinto the Kursk region, and are now claiming this is about creating a “buffer zone” to prevent shelling of Ukrainian territory from positions within Kursk. Here is a look at the use of drone warfare as part of the Kursk operation, such as using them to strike four airfields in surrounding regions.

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Roundup post: No other orders of government

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The Conservatives put out a statement yesterday about a Statistics Canada report on dwelling units, and blamed the federal government for the lack of creation, never mind that the federal government isn’t actually responsible for housing, and has very few levers at their disposal, and the levers they do have they are pretty much maxed out in terms of what they’re able to do. But reading this particular statement, you wouldn’t know that we have provincial and municipal governments who are responsible for housing, and who have the policy levers to do something about it, whether it’s zoning, or density rules, or building codes, or direct financial levers. Thos are all at their disposal, but Pierre Poilievre would have you believe that none of those exist.

The sad irony of course is that the moment that the Conservatives next form government, they will immediately insist that these issues aren’t their problem, that the provinces should be dealing with this, and they will play stupid games with funding (which Paul Wells noted last week, Poilievre’s planned incentives are rounding errors for city budgets).

And yes, my reply column is full of chuds who insist that Trudeau created this situation with immigration, again ignoring the role that provinces played in demanding more arrivals to fill labour shortages while simultaneously doing nothing about housing or social services (their responsibilities), and that there is a counterfactual in terms of what would have happened to the economy in terms of inflation and controlling it if we hadn’t brought in as many new immigrants as we did. The answer is that things probably would have been a whole lot worse for us as a whole, and we can’t ignore that while trying to look for blame for the current situation.

Ukraine Dispatch

A top Ukrainian commander says that they now control as much as a thousand square kilometres of territory in Kursk, while Putin vows a “worthy response.” There are concerns by Ukraine’s state security service that Russia is trying to falsely accuse them of war crimes as part of the operation. Here is a good look at the Kursk operation, its goals and the future options that will need to be weighed in terms of what Ukraine does next.

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Roundup: Another committee demand

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The Conservatives are demanding yet more “emergency” committee hearings, but because it’s a committee they don’t control, they are getting in front of the cameras to make performative demands. Case in point, yesterday Andrew Scheer called a press conference to demand that the NDP and Bloc agree to recall the public safety committee to examine how a suspected terrorist was able to immigrate and obtain citizenship when he may have been videotaped dismembering a prisoner in 2015.

Of course, the Conservatives’ case and rationale is largely hyperbolic, and their blaming the current government for crime rates is both specious and done entirely in bad faith. But then again, Scheer is a lying liar who lies constantly, so he’ll say anything to get attention, and that’s all this is really about—attention. The Conservatives need to get fresh clips for their socials, and summer committee meetings are precisely the kind of thing that they think makes them look good, so that’s why they have been trying to run committees over the summer, and claiming that the other parties want to be “on vacation” rather than doing work in their constituencies. (This becomes one of those areas where you could accuse the Conservatives of projection in that they treat constituency time as “vacation” or a “break” rather than simply doing other kinds of work in the riding).

This is just one more demand for a dog-and-pony show. I’m not sure what exactly a parliamentary committee could do here.

In case you missed them:

  • For National Magazine, I look at BCCLA’s fight to try to see secret documents to hold CSIS to account for possibly improper spying on environmental groups.
  • Also for National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on annuities the Crown owes for several Ontario First Nations for treaty breaches.
  • My weekend column conducts a thought experiment on how the Liberals could possibly hold a leadership contest under their current rules anytime soon.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the performative hairshirt parsimony on display as people lose their minds over the purchase of the diplomatic condo.
  • My column goes through some of Poilievre and company’s recent deceitful claims when it comes to drug decriminalisation and safer supply.
  • My feature story in Xtra looks at queer diplomacy in Canada, and how we’ve made great strides in the past decade, but we still have a lot more to do.
  • My weekend column on Jagmeet Singh’s continued announcements that are either economically illiterate, or entirely the domain of the provinces.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that their forces downed four Russian missiles and 15 drones overnight. Nevertheless, a missile did strike the Kharkiv region, killing one and injuring twelve. The first group of F-16 fighters are now in Ukraine, and ready to be deployed.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1820400963833958849

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1820799395371110697

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Roundup: Desperately latching onto a narrative

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It’s not unexpected, but over the past fifty-two hours or so, we are getting the attempts to wedge the Canada Angle™ onto the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris handoff, and trying to somehow it to Justin Trudeau. When it comes from ignorant Americans, it’s a bit creepy and you want to tell them to worry about their own messes. When it comes from Canadians, it’s cringey and a little bit desperate.

Even if Justin Trudeau were to somehow miraculously decide it was time for him to step aside, say after a long walk along the beach during his vacation right now, there will be no automatic handoff to Chrystia Freeland. Even if she were still interested in the leadership at this point (and it’s not clear if she were, because I suspect that even she realizes that no matter how competent of a minister she is, she’s something of a charisma black hole), there is no internal process for leadership selection, and the process the party designed to bring us Trudeau needs months of voter sign-ups in order to build to a coronation for a new personality cult hermit crab to inherit the empty shell of a party brand. It’s not a quick pivot, and Trudeau would likely still need to remain in a leadership capacity until a handoff, months later, which gives his successor little runway. (As I wrote in my column, if this were a healthy Westminster democracy with caucus selection of leadership, this could have been handled weeks or months ago).

Aside from that fact, there is no consensus candidate to be that replacement that would allow for a handoff like with Harris, where the Americans’ interminable election process means that they had little time to find a replacement before their convention, and all of the major players decided to line up behind Harris. That wouldn’t happen here because there is no one that the party is going to rally around as a whole. There are frankly too many personalities who want that leadership, even if it’s a poisoned chalice by now, and I’m not sure how the dynamics of trying to convert from one cult of personality to another plays on the fly rather than after a complete crash and rebuild. In any case, this isn’t the US, it’s not even remotely the same as Biden/Harris, and the pundit class needs to cool their jets.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack damaged a power facility in the Sumy region, resulting in more power cuts. Russians claim that a Ukrainian drone attack damaged a ferry and killed one person in port.

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Roundup: Senate criticisms that miss the mark

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The Globe & Mail wrote an unnamed Editorial Board missive on Friday, about how the “Trudeau Senate” is not a better Senate overall. While long-time readers may not be surprised to know that I actually agree with this, I do not, however, endorse the thinking or methodology behind the Globe editorial, because it’s sloppy, lazy, and ultimately doesn’t understand the Senate and what it’s supposed to be, but that shouldn’t be a surprise given that the Elder Pundits have never actually understood the Senate or its function.

To wit: They start out with the concern trolling from that shoddy CBC article last week about how recent appointees to the Senate include former party donors, which I dismantled in my column last week, so I’m not going to repeat it here. Suffice to say, anyone who clutches their pearls at this misses the mark at the bigger danger of only appointing people completely divorced from politics. They misjudge what the rules changes recently passed mean (or that they were largely about changing the names of everything), and try to make them sound ominous when they don’t have a grasp on the internal dynamics. They raise the costs of the Senate, but compare it to a base year when the Senate was about twenty senators short, but they also seem to not understand that senators need to organise themselves internally, and that costs money for staff and infrastructure. And no, an “independent” senate should not be comprised of about 100 “loose fish” with a Speaker and a Government Leader, because that would be complete chaos.

The only genuine point they make is that the Senate is producing fewer substantive reports, which is true. And why? Because when there so many type-A people appointed who feel that they have earned this position because they applied for it (which again, is a Problem with how Trudeau’s process), the majority of them feel like they should be off doing their own projects, which has meant an absolute explosion in Senate public bills (which are their equivalent of private members’ bills), and you have a bunch of Senators doing things like commissioning polls, or trying to fly to international conferences and justifying it on their expenses (even when they were denied permission by Internal Economy) because they’re important Senators. Trudeau’s Senate is not a better Senate than the one he inherited—which had its problems!—but not for the reasons the Globe’s Elder Pundits imagine.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian missiles and drones struck the Kharkiv region, killing two and damaging energy facilities and rail infrastructure. Russia’s Black Sea Tuapse oil refinery was damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is again calling for long-range weapons to protect the country after another drone attack on Kyiv, the fifth in two weeks.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1814560384864412036

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Roundup: The aftermath and the rhetoric

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In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in the United States, there has been no shortage of reaction in this country, including Justin Trudeau actually calling Trump to send his regards, but the reaction that should raise the most eyebrows was from Pierre Poilievre, who says that he’s happy that the alleged shooter was killed. No call for justice, nothing about the rule of law or due process, just summary execution without a trial. That shouldn’t be a surprise considering he says that he wants to use the Notwithstanding Clause to take away the civil rights of the accused before they have even had a trial, but this is where this kind of rhetoric goes, and we need to be aware of that.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1812525573954064727

While we’re being reassured in Canada that our security services are on the case, the debate over the rhetoric of political violence is ramping up even further in the US, given that they are a country where assassinations and attempted assassinations are far more common, as is gun culture (and a whole pop culture mythology that you solve your problems with guns). Of course, you have the far-right in that country insisting that this is Biden and the Democrats’ fault by pointing out (correctly!) that Trump is a threat to democracy (which he has himself stated that he’s going to be a “dictator on day one”), and so this is his fault. Never mind the normalized rhetoric on their side, where your candidates pose with automatic rifles and post ads of them firing at targets that they label with things like “socialism”—no, it’s only the Democrats’ rhetoric that is at stake, and there are going to be media outlets who will credulously play along with this, and treat normalized violent rhetoric from the right as a non-issue.

This all having been said, we don’t have enough conversations in this country about how much that violent rhetoric is seeping into this country unchallenged, where you have the so-called “convoy crowd” walking around with signs and t-shirts about Trudeau and a hangman’s noose, under the false (and frankly stupid) notion that he’s somehow a “traitor” to this country (or worse, that he’s some kind of communist dictator, as though he has nationalised the means of production in this country and abolished private property), but do we see the Conservatives condemn that rhetoric when they embrace that crowd? Nope. Harassment and attacks against MPs have increased dramatically over the past four years, but nobody wants to talk about it or draw attention to it, and that’s as much of a problem. We’re not as far removed from the violent strain on democracy as we’d like to think we are in this country, which is why we need to remain vigilant, and not pretend like we’re immune.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian forces claim to have taken control of the village of Urozhaine in the Donetsk region, while Ukraine says they are still fighting in the area. Two people are dead in a “double-tap” attack in the Kharkiv region, where the second missile hit after emergency crews responded to the first hit, which is a tactic Russia is increasingly employing.

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Roundup: The usual NATO narratives

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Because the NATO summit is happening right now in Washington DC, you may have noticed that the entire media narrative in Canada is around the two-percent-of-GDP defence spending target (which is a stupid metric!) and how Canada has not managed to miraculously achieve it, and tossing around words like “free-rider” and “unserious.” The Elder Pundits have declared that this is the narrative by which the entire event must be framed by, and ignore absolutely all other context or counterfactuals.

Indeed, we shall not mention that the GDP denominator is a much bigger hurdle for Canada because of the size of our economy relative to many other NATO member countries, and that because our economy is growing, that pushes our spending requirements even higher. (Conversely, if we crashed the economy, we could reach that two percent target really quickly). We shall not mention that Canada contributes to NATO operations in a meaningful way, unlike many other NATO countries who may be meeting the two-percent spending target—holding the fort in Kandahar when no one else would, hitting moving targets in Libya, managing one of the most difficult missions in the Baltics right now (being the Latvian mission) as well as training Ukrainian troops into being effective soldiers who were able to hold off the invasion. Nor shall we mention that other countries claiming to reach their two percent targets have only done so through the accounting trickery of front-loading their capital spending (meaning future spending will drop off), or promising the spending in spite of constitutional restrictions around the size of deficit spending. None of these facts matter to the Elder Pundits and the narrative they have decided upon.

Yes, Canada needs to spend more, but you can’t just throw money at National Defence—they haven’t had the capacity to spend their full budget, which is why the spending lapses (which the PBO did get right in his report). It is taking time to build the capacity back up to spend the money, and part of that is fixing the recruitment and retention crisis (which has gone very, very slowly). But they are recapitalising the Forces in a significant way, and once we get to the submarine procurement, those numbers are going climb precipitously, but again, we want to do that cautiously to avoid the procurement problems of the past. Minister have been saying that we need there to be something to show for the increased spending, which media and the Elder Pundits have had a hard time comprehending. So, when you hear the usual “free rider” nonsense, remember that we are actually contributing, unlike a lot of other member countries.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1810866983534997849

Ukraine Dispatch

Here are more accounts from the bombing of the children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday. Russia claims that the hospital was hit by Ukrainian fire, but offers no evidence, while the UN assessment is pretty sure it was the Russian missile that was observed. From the NATO Summit in Washington, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Americans to keep funding Ukraine’s war effort rather than waiting for the election results in November.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1810640148444709169

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Roundup: Giroux tries his hand at semantics

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Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux is at it again, deciding that he wants to play talking head pundit rather than sticking to the confines of his job. Case in point was his report on the proposed Digital Safety Office, and his calculations around staffing and the costs thereof (which the Conservatives have disingenuously suggested was reason to kill said office should they form government, when we know it has nothing to do with the costs). But Giroux has decided to make some utterly incomprehensible musings, talking about how “Canadians need to decide” if this is just “bureaucracy” or “enforcement” of the Act.

I’m not even sure where to start here. For one, of course it’s enforcement—that’s the whole gods damned point of the office. And there will be cost recovery in the way of fees and fines from the web giants, but Giroux didn’t bother to calculate what those could look like, because apparently, he can only pull certain methodologies out of his ass, but not others. But to try and play semantic games about whether or not this is “bureaucracy” is frankly baffling. What exactly is he trying to say? How is this at all related to his statutory responsibilities of providing economic and macro-economic analysis? It’s not, and Giroux should know that if he wants to be a pundit, he should resign and actually go do that.

But that’s not all. Giroux put out another report that is disputing Canada’s defence spending vis-à-vis GDP, so that he can weigh in on the Narrative about our commitments to NATO (without any actual context). Giroux claims that we’ll be below because the Canadian Forces has been lapsing certain levels of spending (which is true, and also a sign why we can’t just budget even more money that they can’t spend), but beyond this, he also decided he was going to use his own calculations for the GDP denominator instead of the OECD calculation that NATO uses, because he knows better, apparently. I mean, why have an apples-to-apples comparison that’s actually useful when you can pull a bespoke method from your ass in order to make a point, which again, is not within his remit to be doing. I’m going to be generous and say that there is a legitimate point about lapsing spending, but whatever he’s trying to do here is hardly within the confines of his job description, and more in line with his desire to be a media star.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a daytime airstrike against Ukraine that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, and which killed at least 41 civilians in total. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Warsaw to meet with the president of Poland to discuss strengthening air defences, as well as signing a bilateral defence cooperation agreement. Zelenskyy vowed retaliation for the strike, and called on allies to stand with him. Russia is claiming that Ukraine launched tens of drones at them, and that two power substations and an oil depot caught fire as a result.

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