Tag Archives: Maple Crown

Roundup: Why Statute of Westminster Day matters

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Yesterday was Statute of Westminster Day, which most people don’t have a clue about in spite of it showing up on their calendars. It’s a hugely important day in Canadian history because it was a turning point in our sovereignty as it relates to our relationship with the UK—the creation of the Canadian Crown as a separate and distinct entity from the UK Crown. Canada and several other realms (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Newfoundland, and South Africa) were all granted Separate Crowns because they decided that the Crown was indeed divisible (and in Canada, further divisible among the provinces), and that meant things like being able to control our own foreign policy.

Today is Statute of Westminster Day, which is the birthday of the Canadian Crown as a separate entity from the UK Crown. It’s an incredibly important day for Canadian sovereignty, but mostly gets passed over, or under-taught in schools. #MapleCrown

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-11T15:00:49.015Z

The problem, of course, is that we’re not taught this. We may be taught that that the Statute gave us more control over our foreign affairs (at least, I was in my social studies classes in Alberta), but it was couched more in terms of the aftermath of the First World War—the Canadian Crown was entirely absent from that discussion. And if you look at Parliamentary accounts on Twitter, for example, not one of them mentioned the Crown as the reason why we gained that autonomy and independence. It’s the whole gods damned reason why, and we don’t celebrate that at all. It’s a real problem as to why we don’t have a grasp of basic civics in this country, and something we need to rectify.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian troops overran or captured several Ukrainian positions near the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Ukrainians struck a Russian airfield near the Azov Sea with US-made missiles, and a Ukrainian drone hit police barracks in Chechnya.

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Roundup: Remembrance Day 2024

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In case anyone was wondering, there was a prayer offered by the rabbi who spoke at the National Remembrance Day ceremony, and that the Conservatives have been shamelessly peddling the lie that prayer has been banned.

Here is a look at ceremonies around the country, and photos from the national ceremony in Ottawa. Veterans who were victims of the LGBT purge from the military laid a wreath at the War Memorial this year.

I popped into Twitter to see that yet again, the royal family’s feed is using an image of the King and Queen taken on Remembrance Day in Ottawa during their 2009 tour. Their poppies are Canadian, Queen Camilla is wearing the Maple Leaf brooch, and King Charles is wearing a Canadian uniform

— Patricia Treble (@patriciatreble.bsky.social) 2024-11-09T21:26:39.849Z

This year’s Ottawa Citizen “We Are the Dead” feature, the final before the programme shuts down, profiles Arthur Reid, whose plane never made it back from a mission delivering an agent and supplies to the French resistance.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian glide bombs, drones and missiles all struck southern and eastern Ukraine on Monday, killing six and injuring at least 30 others. It also appears that an attack on the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed three and injured at least 19. Ukrainian forces are currently hard-pressed fighting not only 50,000 troops in the Kursk region of Russia, but the escalating fighting along the front lines in the east and south of the country.

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Roundup: A $7 million ad buy to tell on themselves

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Over the past several days, the Alberta government has been on a very strange campaign where they are in essence, telling on themselves by lying about the forthcoming federal emissions cap. How so, you ask? They keep insisting that this is a production cap on the energy sector, which is not what it is intended to be, particularly because the sector has been saying that they fully plan to be net-zero by 2050, and that these kinds of rules, while disliked by economists, would essentially force these companies to put their money where their mouths are. And, well, they have certainly been admitting that all of those promises to meet those targets through things like carbon capture have been pretty much all talk.

When Danielle Smith and her ministers tried to justify their ad campaign, well, things got even worse for them.

Meanwhile, the Alberta government bought the front pages of newspapers across the Postmedia chain at a cost of $7 million in order to decry this same policy, and in another telling lie, claim that it would increase grocery prices, because that’s the anxiety that they want to hit on in order to really stick it to the federal Liberals. But again, the problem here is that the driver of those higher grocery prices is climate change, and in particular, recurring droughts in food-producing regions, including in Canada, with a few flash floods or hurricanes along the way that also damage crops or livestock.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on the southern city of Mykolaiv has killed one and injured at least sixteen. A drone attack was also launched against Kyiv. The town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, and three surrounding settlements, were ordered evacuated. Russians claim to have taken the village of Levadne in the Zaporizhzhia region over the weekend.

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Roundup: Elections Canada’s helpful suggestions

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Amidst the (possibly overblown) hysteria that party nomination contests are a possible vector for foreign interference, Elections Canada has come along with a series of “helpful” proposals to parties in order to reduce the vulnerabilities. They insist they don’t want to actually manage these contests (which is good, because that would be an enormous expansion of the organisation, which I’m not sure we really want), but nevertheless they could play some kind of role around financial oversight of these contests, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Their suggestions include limiting votes to Canadian citizens, or at least permanent residents, which I think is reasonable, because much like I think it’s good that parties let people join by age 14 so that they can learn about and participate in grassroots organisation before they’re able to vote, bringing in permanent residents before they can also vote could help foster better civic engagement (well, if parties hadn’t decimated their grassroots as they centralised power in their leaders’ offices). Other suggestions include published nomination rules and processes (which parties will hate because they have become used to the ability to tip the scales at the behest of the leader and his or her cult of personality), publishing fuller results such as number of ballots cast and vote distribution, requiring all contestants file a financial return, and banning the sale of party memberships in bulk (the Liberals no longer have paid memberships, while the Conservatives are more expansive rules around this, for the better).

Some of these are quite reasonable, but I have my doubts that parties will do more than theatrically take them under advisement, because they simply don’t want to. They’ve spent so much time and energy in order to minimise their grassroots in favour of the leader and his or her office that they have eliminated most of the checks and balances that are supposed to keep them from getting too big for their own britches (and the Liberals have been the absolutely worst with this, with the 2016 changes to their party constitution). Will they start to re-impose these minor changes in order to hold themselves accountable? I’m not going to hold my breath.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck a playground in the southern city of Mykolaiv, killing three. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was invited to attend Cabinet in Westminster, where he reiterated the need reduce restrictions on long-range missiles so that they can strike sites in Russia where they are being attacked from.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1814328171543580848

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Roundup: A new Chief of Defence Staff

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The change of command ceremony went ahead yesterday, and General Jennie Carignan became not only the first female four-maple leaf general in Canadian history, but the first female Chief of Defence Staff—also the first in the G7 and G20, but not NATO (where Slovenia beat us to the punch on that). And yes, she has served in combat as a combat engineer (because women were allowed to serve in combat positions in Canada long before the Americans allowed women to serve in combat roles in their military), which is important to note for someone who has reached her position.

In her speech, Carignan pointed to the fact that she is proof that anything is possible, that culture change remains at the heart of what everything the Forces are doing (at a time when the Conservatives are pushing to return to some nonsense “warrior culture”), and that she believes there is a five-year window for us to prepare for emerging threats like Russia and China. It has also been pointed out that she is in the enviable position to be the head of a military with money to spend rather than dealing with cuts (but that could change if Poilievre gets in power), though as a woman, we all know that she’s going to be in for some absolutely rank misogyny, particularly from the right and far-right who will insist that she’s a “diversity hire” or some other such bullshit.

Meanwhile, the Star has an exit interview with General Wayne Eyre, who was essentially Chief of Defence Staff entirely by accident after his two predecessors were both removed for abuse of office and an investigation for sexual misconduct (and when acquitted, claimed he was “exonerated” when he wasn’t, and wrote to every member of the military brass to demand his old job back, demonstrating his unfitness for the job).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine shot down sixteen drones and three missiles from Russia, but attacks on the Donetsk region have killed five. The Ukrainian army has been forced to pull out of the village of Urozhaine in the Donestk region after their defensive positions were all destroyed as the village was reduced to rubble. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the UK for European political community meetings.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1813977906089173311

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QP: Crowing about the release of a “secret report” that was not secret or a report

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With the prime minister was off at the G7 summit in Italy, and his deputy off in Montreal, most of the other leaders didn’t bother to show up either. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, claiming that the “economic vandalism” and “carbon tax cover-up” have been exposed thanks to his party’s valiant efforts, and that the government finally revealed the data set about the cost impacts of carbon pricing beyond the retail price, and lo, it takes $30 billion out of the economy (which isn’t actually true—the figures only track one particular measure and not the other costs or offsets on the economy), and how the government attacked the PBO to hide the information (again, completely not true). Steven Guilbeault said that they have already established that math is Poilievre’s strong suit, that he can’t count above six, and that the data prove that eight out of ten households get more back, and that 25 million tonnes of GHG reductions are because of the carbon price. Poilievre accused the government of trying to hide the data (not true), raised the cost to Quebeckers, took a swipe at the Bloc, and accused the government again of attacking the reputation of the PBO for telling the truth (which isn’t what happened). Guilbeault reminded him that the carbon levy doesn’t apply in Quebec, and that he can turn to his own MPs who voted for the province’s carbon pricing system when she was in the Charest Cabinet. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the claim that the previous “hidden report” (which is not a report) costs the economy $30 billions and considered it economic vandalism. Guilbeault insisted that this is misreading the data, that most households get more back, and that the carbon pricing is responsible for half of emissions reductions. Poilievre repeated his defence of the PBO, to which Guilbeault repeated his same response. Poilievre again mischaracterised the data, and demanded that Guilbeault resign, and this time Jonathan Wilkinson got up to point to the 300 economists who explained how carbon pricing works, and that there is a cost of inaction on climate change.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc and complained about the Governor General’s budget, and demanded the medal programme be cancelled. Pascale St-Onge gave a tepid defence of the medals and the monarchy. Therrien complained that the same estimate vote contains funds for Indigenous clean drinking water initiatives and demanded the money on the medals be spent elsewhere. St-Onge pointed out that they have constituents who are interested in the medals who should be respected.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and railed about the proposed “third link” project in Quebec City, and demanded that no federal money go toward it. Pablo Rodriguez said that he should direct his ire to the provincial government. Lori Idlout decried the Indigenous infrastructure gap, and Patty Hajdu agreed that the record has been poor, and that the current government has been moving on those priorities.

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Roundup: Singh’s sad display of performative toughness

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In a Parliament that is mired in some of the worst theatrics imaginable, it’s hard to think about something that could possibly take the cake, and yet, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh certainly tried with his sad, pathetic performance over the weekend. To wit: The government started debate on the pharmacare legislation at the end of last week, and Conservative MP Stephen Ellis put forward a “reasoned amendment” at the bill be killed at second reading for *handwaves* reasons. Singh would not stand for this, so he…wrote a strongly worded letter, and threatened the Conservatives that he would not stand for delays. And then put out some press releases to show how tough he was in sending that strongly-worded letter. And lo, the deadline he gave the Conservatives to withdraw their amendment came to pass, and wouldn’t you just know it—nothing happened.

The thing with these “reasoned amendments” is that the Conservatives are now moving them on every piece of legislation because it essentially adds time to the clock, which they can use to then run out the clock, again and again, blocking the ability for the government to get more legislation through the process. It’s a tactic that is supposed to be used as a last resort for very serious matters, but it’s being used routinely now, because this is who the Conservatives are, and they will do absolutely anything to keep the government from moving on its agenda. There is a lot that could be written about the absolute degrees of procedural warfare that has taken place over the last few years that have bogged the government and its agenda down entirely, but I’ll get around to it at a later date.

Suffice to say, this is just one more example of Singh making himself (and his party) irrelevant. He keeps pretending he’s going to be tough on the government for their budgets, and then goes along with them (per the Supply and Confidence Agreement). After each song and dance, he swallows himself whole, and then pats himself on the back for how much he accomplished in that budget (never mind that the NDP did absolutely none of the work, but still take full credit for everything). This attempt to “threaten” the Conservatives is just yet more sad spectacle, and it showcases just ineffective he really is.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Russian drone attack on the power facilities in Sumy region wound up cutting power to 400,000 consumers. Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more villages—Soloviove, and Kotliarivka, and Ukrainian bloggers appear to corroborate this claim.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s municipal power grab

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The Alberta government tabled a bill yesterday that gives them sweeping new powers as it relates to municipalities in the province, leaving a lot of questions as to why. Constitutionally they do have this ability, as municipalities are creatures of the province, but the motivation is the real question. Among the changes are allowing political parties to run in municipal elections in Edmonton and Calgary, which I have to wonder if this isn’t for some kind of back-handed partisan purposes, so that they can point to how many counsellors identify as NDP, Liberals, or C/conservative as opposed to having to guess under the current system, but it’s a change nobody really asked for. I am of two minds with it, because it could provide more resources and better nomination processes…but it would also create expectations between the provincial party and the municipal party, and that is something I’m not sure anyone would really look to as being a good thing.

The bill also seeks to ban electronic tabulators in municipal elections (which I’m not wholly opposed to because I prefer hand-counting ballots whenever possible), but the real thrust has to do with the ability to terminate councillors, and with overturning bylaws, and this seems to be the big one, because they are particularly butthurt that certain municipalities have implemented single-use plastic bans, and that’s far too “woke” for this provincial government. Better to overrule the decisions that those elected officials made and will be accountable to their voters for, and just strike those bylaws entirely.

As for the ability to terminate sitting councillors, the minister insists this is only for extremely serious cases (of which I can’t think of any in Alberta—we’ve had a couple in Ontario and one in Ottawa particularly), but just who decides what that threshold is are the premier and Cabinet, so it’s not like there is much in the way of safeguards, and if you’re giving this power to premier and Cabinet, to overturn an election in a municipality, is asking for it to be abused—particularly when you have someone like Danielle Smith in charge of those powers. I foresee a future gong show, because this is Danielle Smith’s Alberta we’re talking about.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian shelling killed three in the Donetsk region, while a missile attack against the Kharkiv region hit a railway station, wounding ten. Another Russian missile damaged critical rail infrastructure in the central Cherkasy region. Meanwhile, while the soon-to-be arriving new tranche of US aid is going to help Ukraine rebuild its defences, it is unlikely to recover it enough to resume a counter-offensive anytime soon.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith aspires to boss-level gatekeeping

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith has decided to crank up grievance politics up to eleven, and has tabled a bill that would bar the federal government from entering into funding agreements with municipalities, but would require them to only do so with the province. This is similar to Quebec, but because this is Danielle Smith, her proposal goes much further and would include things like organizations or even post-secondary institutions getting research funding, because she’s concerned that they’re funding “ideological” projects, apparently not understanding how arm’s-length granting bodies operate. (There’s a good primer here).

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1778184559718506741

Aside from this being based on some false premises, Smith is being utterly dishonest about the effect this will have. It’s not going to make things easier, or a “one-stop-shop,” as she claims—as it stands, intergovernmental negotiations is incredibly complex, and she is just giving her bureaucrats even more work. (See Jared Wesley’s thread below about just what these negotiations entail—it’s a lot).

It’s also just virtue-signalling to her reactionary base, which likes to console itself with fairy tales of mean old Ottawa punishing Alberta because the province is just too great that everyone else is jealous, so they need to fight back and this is Smith “fighting back.” How much of this will survive implementation remains to be seen, but in the meantime, this is just more attempts to govern by vibes rather than reality, and it’s absolutely going to make things worse in the province, but they’re going to pretend once again that they’re being saviours, because of course they are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian attack on the village of Lyptsi near the border hit a grocery store, killing a 14-year-old girl. Russian air strikes also damaged a power plant near Odesa. Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to let prisoners join the army to become eligible for parole.

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Roundup: Another NDP budget demand

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The NDP’s latest budget demand is a national school food programme, which is a) provincial jurisdiction, and b) something already under negotiation with provinces. This was a Liberal campaign promise, and as with many a file like this, they’ve been doing the heavy lifting in the background. For Jagmeet Singh, however, this isn’t happening fast enough, because in his conception of how governing works, the prime minister simply needs to put on his Green Lantern Ring and use enough willpower to make whatever he wants happen, and in the NDP’s conception, that generally means something that obliterates the federal and provincial jurisdictional boundaries.

I suspect a couple of things are at work—one of them is that if the federal government does come to an agreement with the provinces, Singh can try and claim victory for it, as he does with most things that he has done absolutely no work towards other than throwing a public tantrum. If this is a matter of the provinces looking for more federal money, then it will take time to ensure that the agreements are drawn up in a manner that has strings attached because we know that we absolutely cannot trust provinces to take the money and put it entirely where it is supposed to go (bitter experience with health transfers and pandemic supports), because as we’ve seen in child care, where there are agreements with strings, that some provinces have not been spending the federal funds where they are supposed to go, which remains a very big problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A man was killed in a Russian missile strike in the Kharkiv region, while five people were killed when a bus struck a mine in Luhansk region. One of Ukraine’s top commanders says they will stabilize their defensive position shortly, with the aim of returning to counter-offensive actions later in the year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Odesa with the prime minister of Greece when a Russian strike exploded nearby the pair. Here is a look at Europe’s attempt to get more ammunition to Ukraine, including a Czech initiative to deliver stockpiles until production can ramp up.

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