Tag Archives: Keystone XL

QP: O’Toole with the follow-up

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Wednesday, proto-Prime Minsters Questions Day, and all of the leaders were present. Erin O’Toole led off, with his script on the mini-lectern in front of him, and not only declared that Canada would not get vaccines until other countries do, and demanded the “real” vaccine plan. Justin Trudeau assured him that Canada has one of the most robust vaccine plans in the world. O’Toole was not mollified, and again demanded the plan, to which Trudeau gave some bland platitudes before he said they had a numerous plans for distribution in the works. O’Toole complained he wasn’t getting a real answer, wondered about American “emergency” approvals for drugs, and accused the government of not having a plan. Trudeau gave a weary sigh and noted that people don’t care about what they hear in QP, but that they wanted the government to get stuff done, and they were. O’Toole switched to French to complain that the government was been mean to Quebeckers by not applying the province’s Bill 101 to federal workplaces, and Trudeau assured him that they were committed to protecting the French language in Quebec. O’Toole then mischaracterised comments by MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos as being “contemptuous” of Quebeckers, and Trudeau assured him that she had apologised for the her remarks. Yves-François Blanchet picked up on this line and decried the decline of French, and Trudeau repeated that they respect French and were working to strengthen it. Blanchet ratcheted up his rhetoric for his follow-up, and Trudeau wondered why the Bloc was trying to start a fight over something the government agrees with. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he accused the government of doing less in the second wave than they did in the first to which Trudeau listed measures that they have taken to assist the provinces. Singh then switched to English to repeat the accusations, and Trudeau repeated his response. 

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Roundup: Getting to COVID-zero

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The pandemic continues to grow exponentially, and people are wringing their hands about what to do, the notion of getting to COVID-zero is circulating again, after certain jurisdictions – Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia – managed it. So here’s Dr. Isaac Bogoch to explain it.

We can barely get premiers to institute some reasonably tough measures as it is, which is going to make anything required to actually crush the virus almost impossible – especially if we’re relying on their political calculus that closing businesses is worse for them than the hundreds or thousands of deaths that will happen otherwise.

For a bit of a reality check on the feasibility of this, Chris Selley explains why some countries’ systems for locking down COVID wouldn’t work in Canada, either because they were draconian or we are too far behind the curve to make it happen.

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QP: Worries about the status of French

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None of the leaders were present in the chamber today, nor was the deputy prime minister present. Candice Bergen led off, and after a litany of false narratives about the state of the economy pre-pandemic, she worried about the state of the Keystone XL pipeline. Paul Lefebvre insisted that the government was unwavering in its support for the project and raised the project in the first call with Joe Biden. Bergen felt this wasn’t good enough and recited some false talking points about the old Bill C-69, to which Lefebvre repeated that Trudeau raised the matter with Biden and that Canada’s current climate plan was a point in their favour. Bergen remained unsatisfied, and repeated the question again, to which Lefebvre quoted Joe Clark slamming the Harper record on the environment. Gérard Deltell was up next, and he chastised something that Montreal MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos made about the decline of French in that city, to which Mélanie Joly assured him that they took the protection of French very seriously. Deltell complained that Official Languages Act had not yet been updated, to which Joly said they would be modernising it in due course. Claude DeBellefeuille led off for the Bloc, and she raised false narratives about judicial appointments, to which David Lametti assured her that they have an independent process based on merit and diversity. DeBellefeuille was not mollified, and repeated the question, and got the same answer. Jagmeet Singh appeared by video from his car, and in French, he demanded national standards for long-term care, to which Patty Hajdu reminded him they are working with provinces and territories on just that, and they gave them more money in the Safe Restart Plan. Singh switched to English to repeat false narratives about the ownership of Revera long-term care homes (they are not actually federally-owned, and insisting otherwise is being utterly disingenuous), to which Hajdu repeated her response.

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Roundup: Ford ignored advice in favour of uncontrolled spread

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Surprising nobody, we find that Doug Ford rejected advice from his public health officials in releasing his colour-coded guidelines, because it’s all about business over human lives. And while there have been calls for a while to try and determine just who is giving him advice, this reinforces the point that these remain political decisions, and that it is Ford and his Cabinet who are the ones to be held to account for what has been happening with infections in Ontario. The fact that Ford put his “red line” figure so far above public health advice, to a level where you are literally dealing with uncontrolled spread rather than trying to stamp it out early, should tell everyone that he is not taking this seriously.

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We’ve also been finding out things like Ford refusing to spend COVID funds on things like schools and long-term care homes, and have instead been sitting on the funds to pad the books – and we have the province’s Financial Accountability Officer confirming this. This should be no surprise. I mean, look at the autism programme, where Ford promised more money and then spent none of it, and the wait lists continued to grow and parents and families continue to suffer, and the long-term consequences of not getting early intervention therapies are going to balloon for years. But Ford doesn’t care. He cares about looking like he’s fiscally prudent because every gods damned pundit in this country still thinks it’s 1995 and will always be 1995 – and Ford desperately seeks their validation.

And this need for validation has been a big part of why we’re at the state we’re in here in Ontario. Because Ford didn’t go full-Trump early in the pandemic, or throw tantrums at Justin Trudeau, everyone suddenly started giving him praise. He sounded avuncular, and suddenly everyone assumed he was doing a good job when he wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the COVID money and delaying any meaningful action about, say, getting schools back up and running, or increasing lab capacity for testing, or the contact tracing abilities of public health units across the province. None of it. But people still showered him with praise for how well he was behaving, and for striking up an unlikely friendship with Chrystia Freeland. And yet here we are, where he and his Cabinet have repeatedly lied about what is going on with the pandemic, about their response, and even the direction of the case numbers. Hopefully this piece in the Star that clearly demonstrates that Ford rejected the advice in favour of waiting for uncontrolled spread (because gods forbid he close down businesses) will start to open people’s eyes, but my optimism for that is waning because of all of the other scandals and distractions that his government has created only serve to scatter the attention necessary to force his hand.

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Roundup: A question of political accountability

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An issue that I am getting tired of writing commenting on over, and over again, is this story about the supposed political vetting of judicial candidates. The reporters on the story fail to mention the crucial constitutional details underpinning the story, Erin O’Toole lies about what the justice minister has said in response to the constant allegations, and now the president of the Canadian Bar Association is writing to the government to express his concerns that this whole thing threatens public faith in the judiciary. And here I go again.

For the eleventieth time, let me reiterate that the prime minister is politically accountable for judicial appointments under our system of Responsible Government. That means that if another bad one gets through the selection process, he has to wear it politically if things come to light – kind of like what happened around now-former Justice Robin Camp (who you may remembered wondered why a sexual assault complainant didn’t keep her knees together). This is one of the reasons why once the candidates have made it through the initial non-partisan vetting process, that they are subjected to a political screen – to ensure that nobody is aware of any particular skeletons in these potential judges’ pasts that could come around to bite them in the future. Some of the confusion here is because one of the ways in which the government has been doing this vetting has been through their voter identification database, which has been interpreted as seeing if they are donors or had lawn signs – which is a false reading of what these databases do, which is to build voter profiles, and they consume vast amounts of data to do so (which is also why there are concerns that they are not subject to federal privacy laws). But this is being deliberately framed as looking for partisan manipulation. (This is not to suggest the motives of these reporters is partisan – only that they are looking to embarrass the government, and it wouldn’t matter which party is in charge).

I am more concerned by the fact that someone is leaking to the press, and the French press especially seems to be targeted about revelations concerning a particular staffer, which suggests to me some internecine fighting within the Liberal ranks that they are willing to do damage to themselves in order to hurt this staffer in particular. But why worry about motive or the fact that you are being played when you have a potentially embarrassing headline?

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Roundup: Not the provinces’ cash cow

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Everything got off to an earlier start yesterday, beginning with the ministerial presser, during which Marc Miller announced another $650 million being allocated to Indigenous communities for healthcare, which would also include added income supports for those living on-reserve, as well as some $85 million to build new shelters for women on reserves. Marc Garneau also announced that the ban on cruise ship docking in Canadian waters was going to be extended to October 31st, which will impact the economies of these communities, but also limits potential vectors for the pandemic. When pressed about the issue of airline ticket refunds, Garneau reiterated the warning that the sector could fail if they were forced to refund all of the tickets, though later on, prime minister Justin Trudeau indicated that there were talks ongoing.

For his presser, Trudeau started off by talking about his teleconference with the premiers and spoke about sick leave being one of the items on the agenda, and it was later in the Q&A that he said that he was offering for the federal government to assume most of the responsibility for the costs, rather than putting it on business owners, but it sounds like some premiers remain rather cool to the idea. After reiterating the earlier Miller/Garneau announcement, Trudeau took questions, which included mention that he was trying to get premiers to agree to some modified orders at the Canada-US border that would allow family reunification, such as cases like the Canadian woman who was trying to get the American father of her unborn child into the country before she gave birth – but again, there are premiers who are not keen. After the questions, Trudeau then gave an unprompted statement on anti-Black racism as a result of what’s going on in the US – that there is a need to stand up as a society, that there needs to be more respect, and that we have work to do as well in Canada. He called on all Canadians to stand together in solidarity, as they know how deeply people are being affected by what we are seeing on the news.

Something else raised in Trudeau’s Q&A was a letter sent to him by five of his Toronto-area backbenchers, calling on him to lead the country in national standards on long-term care, and to press Ontario for a full public inquiry into what happened with the breakdown in care (which I maintain won’t tell us anything we don’t already know). Trudeau praised them for their efforts, and talked about the ongoing talks with provinces, but two of those MPs were on Power & Politics later in the day, and something that I was also glad to hear was Judy Sgro saying that while they wanted federal leadership, they both were respecting that this is provincial jurisdiction and they also didn’t want the provinces treating the federal government like a “cash cow” when you have premiers like Ford demanding more federal funds to fix their own long-term care mess. My own patience for provinces crying out for federal funds to fix the problems in their own jurisdiction is wearing mighty thin, particularly as most of those provinces have broad taxation powers at their disposal (though some of those provinces have less tax room available to them – Ontario, however, is not one of them). Premiers don’t want to have anything on their books and would rather it come from Ottawa’s, so that they don’t have to look like the bad guy when it comes to paying for their own programmes – never mind that there’s really only one taxpayer in the end.

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Roundup: Threats over Keystone XL threats

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Back from the Victoria Day long weekend, prime minister Justin Trudeau started off his daily presser by announcing that the government had agreed to extend the partial border closure with the US for another thirty days, before he started talking about how the government was working to expand the eligibility for the Canada Emergency Business Accounts so that more small businesses and entrepreneurs could apply for them. He also made a plea to employers to rehire their workers and use the wage subsidy programme, which is why it’s in place, but I guess we’ll see what kind of uptake that will get. In response to questions, Trudeau said that they were trying working to create a national framework around things like testing and contact tracing before the borders could re-open, but this being areas of provincial jurisdiction, it requires that kind of cooperation. On the subject of the resumption of Parliament, Trudeau was dismissive, citing concerns over MPs who may not be able or willing to head to Ottawa (as though accommodations can’t be made). When asked about the comments by Joe Biden in the US that he would cancel the permits for Keystone XL, Trudeau reminded everyone that he supported the project even before he was prime minister.

On the Keystone XL file, Alberta has recently put a $1.5 billion financial stake, alogn with $6 billion in loan guarantees, in completing said pipeline (after they pleaded poverty on keeping teaching assistants on the payroll and refusing other forms of pandemic aid in order to force them into federal coffers), so they’re threatening legal action, and Jason Kenney is promising to file a trade action if Biden is a) elected, and b) revokes the authorizations. But it also many not be that easy, and Alberta could be on the hook for major losses if this comes to pass.

Good reads:

  • Here’s a deeper look into the commercial rent subsidy programme, where the details are still being negotiated with the provinces before it is finalized.
  • The National Post tried to get a picture of Ontario’s preparations for economic re-opening, and there seem to be a lot more questions than answers.
  • The President of the CMHC says that this pandemic could raise household debt levels and cause a drag on GDP growth. (You don’t say).
  • The Royal Canadian Navy is relying on US Navy drones to help locate the wreckage of the Cyclone helicopter that crashed off the coast of Greece.
  • Here is a look at the challenges of running election campaigns in a time of pandemic (but the piece omits that Saskatchewan needs to have an election this fall).
  • The UK has released a preliminary post-Brexit tariff list, which gives Canada a start in terms of what kind of trade deal we will have to work out by the end of the year.
  • A Toronto attack from three months ago has been reclassified as an incel terrorist attack, which is the first time that incels have been branded as such.
  • Apparently Andrew Scheer discontinued his process to revoke his American citizenship, given he was no longer going to be prime minister.
  • Rona Ambrose has joined the board of directors of a vape company.
  • The leader of the Quebec wing of the Green Party is accusing Elizabeth May of having consolidated power through her “parliamentary leader” role.
  • New Brunswick’s legislature is adapting to in-person sittings by having some MLAs sitting in the visitor galleries to maintain physical distancing.
  • Max Fawcett notes the curious silence from the usual “ethical oil” types about the news that Saudi Arabia is investing in the Alberta oil sands as others pull out.
  • Susan Delacourt delves into how closely the Canadian and American governments have had to work to keep the border closed, in spite of their divergent approaches.
  • My column delves into the Procedure and House Affairs committee report on virtual sittings and finds the fix is in to make virtual elements permanent post-pandemic.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Shelters and masks

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Because it was a Saturday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau appeared in jeans and without a tie, belying the more casual nature of the day at a time when days blend into one another. He had a couple of messages – that the government had invested another $40 million in shelters for women facing domestic violence (a particular consideration at a time when people are forced to stay home), and another $10 million for Indigenous women facing violence. He also pointed to $157 million in funds for the homeless, and that the communities where these funds were needed have been identified so funds were now flowing. On the subject of masks and medical devices, Trudeau stated that millions of more masks were expected in the next 48 hours (from the time of said announcement), and that the government had leased a warehouse in China to help coordinate the acquisition of these masks and supplies while they charter flights to carry them to Canada. Trudeau also noted that he would be speaking to his American counterpart in the coming days about the issue of masks and so on.

For her own presser, Dr. Theresa Tam reiterated yet again that these models that reporters keep demanding are not crystal balls, that they are not real numbers, that they aren’t predictions, and that they are highly sensitive to what is happening right now. But that hasn’t stopped the framing by reporters that these are hard data, and that they are indicative of anything in particular. And while here is an attempt to nuance the models Ontario released on Friday, but it’s one print article when TV reporters and headlines are framing it as disaster porn (and getting self-righteous about it).

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QP: Blockades and Teck

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With protests going on outside of Parliament Hill, and a whole lot of performative bluster going on over the cancellation of the Teck Frontier mine inside the House of Commons, all of the leaders were present for the theatrics that were to come. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and in French, he read some condemnation about Trudeau’s alleged weakness and demanded to know how a future blockade would be handled. Scheer turned to English and started immediately getting breathy as he railed that there was a playbook for future radical activists, to which Trudeau reminded him that by cherry-picking only the Wet’suwet’en who agreed with him, Scheer demonstrated that he didn’t understand reconciliation. Scheer then pivoted to the Teck cancellation, and tried to make a connection to Trudeau allegedly breaking the law over SNC-Lavalin’s activities but his point got a bit lost after that. Trudeau reminded him that the message from Teck’s CEO was that you can’t have projects if you don’t have a credible plan on climate change. Scheer got increasingly breathy as he read condemnation, to which Trudeau stated that the opposition has refused to understand that the world is changing, and that global investors have indicated that they need to see strong action on climate change. Scheer then listed a number of falsehoods about Teck Frontier meeting requirements, for which Trudeau quoted Teck’s CEO’s support for climate pricing and regulations, and accused the Conservatives’ polarization for putting the economy at risk. Yves-François Blanchet was up for the Bloc, and wondered why there wasn’t action on getting the barricades removed. Trudeau stated that even though the RCMP withdrew from the affected area and the barricades didn’t come down, they had to escalate the situation. Blanchet worried things would get worse, and Trudeau reiterated his previous points. Jagmeet Singh was up next in French, putting the blame personally on Trudeau for not bringing down the barricades peacefully, to which Trudeau stated that they came to the table in good faith but other parties involved did not. Singh repeated the question in English, and Trudeau reiterated that when there was no reciprocal openness to dialogue from the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, they changed their posture.

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Roundup: Kenney’s Washington mistruths

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Apparently the lure of trying to wade into American politics was too strong for Jason Kenney to resist over the weekend, and he joined Doug Ford in taking swipes at Democratic Party hopefuls over the Keystone XL issue, before telling a Washington audience that Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, had conspired with the Obama administration to kill the Keystone XL pipeline – which is funny, because it was during the Harper government, and Trudeau has been on the record of being fully supportive of Keystone XL the whole time. Kenney’s Mini-Me, Scott Moe, insisted that this fable was “absolutely correct,” which is a lie in and of itself. And of course, people brought their receipts.

Of course, Kenney has nothing to fall on but lies about the state of the oil industry in order to keep the attention off of himself and his government’s failings in trying to manage the shifting economy – and his convenient target is always Justin Trudeau, whom he needs to keep his voters angry at as a means of distraction. That said, his audience laps it up, and that has pretty much eliminated any sense of shame that Kenney had left. There was a piece in this weekend’s tablet edition of Maclean’s that interviewed so-called “Wexit” supporters, and they all repeated the same memes and lies that Kenney and company peddle, along with a healthy amount of self-delusion, that Kenney also stokes by way of his rank dishonesty. He is continuing to play with fire, as he feels he’s clever enough to put it out and be declared a hero before it gets too big, and trying to do it from Washington is not only a sign of hubris, but possibly of his own desperation.

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