Tag Archives: Marc Garneau

Roundup: No backbench rebellion…for now

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As far as backbench revolts go, this one was a bit of a damp squib, or to put it another way, Wells’ First Rule has once again borne out in practice—For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome. Purportedly, Trudeau addressed caucus and got emotional talking about the toll has taken on him, including his children constantly seeing the “Fuck Trudeau” flags and so on, but nevertheless there was a frank airing of grievances from some MPs, though nobody had a copy of that memorandum calling on him to step down that had names attached (oh, the bravery!). In the end, it looks like it was only 24 backbench MPs who had signed onto this (not that anyone could see the names), which is not 40, and makes it easier for them to be dismissed (though still, that number could very well grow). Nevertheless, there was a commitment for everyone to reflect more about what was said, and a few voices have said that they want Trudeau to give some indication by Monday if he plans to stick around or to call it a day (though I can’t imagine that he would want to make any such decision on their timetable).

While the message coming out of caucus was that they have never been stronger or more united, that sounds an awful lot like the “We’ve never been more united” speech just before or after someone crosses the floor. Others, like Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, said that the palace intrigue needs to stop and that the knives need to turn outward rather than inward—a reference that the real enemy is Pierre Poilievre, and not Trudeau, though again, nobody is saying that this matter is done with, particularly given that everyone needs to reflect on what happened.

This having been said, I think it’s fair to question the organizational abilities of those leading this backbench revolt, because a lot of what has come out in public has been pretty shambolic, as is the fact that there seems to be absolutely no plan for the day after if Trudeau did take their message and decide to start planning his exit. I think in part that’s because there has been no heir apparent, or nobody for anyone to rally around as a focal point for who could replace Trudeau, and that may have as much to do with the fact that a good many MPs were political operatives or even staffers who were around during the Chrétien-Martin wars, and remain traumatized by them, and the fact that Trudeau had very consciously focused on rooting out those camps when he took over the party. We’ll see what happens over the next week or two, but just because nothing happened today doesn’t mean that the tide isn’t shifting.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians have captured two villages in the Donetsk region in the east, and are currently storming four more settlements in the Donbas region, but those attacks are currently being repelled. The Americans have now corroborated that as many as 3000 North Korean troops are now in Russia, training for a possible deployment to Ukraine. Here is a look at how fire trucks in Nikopol now have anti-drone jammers mounted on them because Russians have been targeting them.

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Roundup: Committee as clown performance

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Because we no longer really have a Parliament, but merely a content creation studio that occasionally passes legislation, we find ourselves in yet another series of events where the institution is being weaponized for social media content. It’s not just the privilege filibuster happening in the House of Commons, though that definitely is happening (the Conservatives are taking the opportunity to get the words “corruption” and “Liberal insiders” in all of their talking points so they can create clips from them, never mind that the word “Liberal” was nowhere to be found in the Auditor General’s report on SDTC). Today, Jagmeet Singh has decided he needs another stunt for his own socials.

Singh plans to attend the Natural Resources committee meeting after Question Period, so that he can “stand up to big oil and gas,” by which he means the CEO of Cenovus Energy and the vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, both of whom are appearing by video conference as part of the study on the Trans Mountain Expansion. To drive home the point, party leaders don’t appear at committees (Elizabeth May occasionally accepted, because hers is a party of two, and she occasionally wants to participate in a committee meeting). Singh, however, is going tomorrow for the sole purpose of putting on a dog-and-pony show for the cameras.

This isn’t Singh’s first time doing so, mind you. He did it with the grocery CEOs, where he comically brough in a huge stack of papers, claiming they were questions from Canadians to those CEOs, but he didn’t ask a single one, but merely soliloquized for the cameras in the NDP’s designated spots. It was a pure clown performance for the sake of clips, but the NDP fell all over themselves to insist how great it was, and now Singh wants to do this again. Why now? Well, probably because he slit his own throat and immolated what little credibility he had when he walked away from his agreement with the Liberals in bad faith, and played into Pierre Poilievre’s hands, and now he wants to redeem himself and play up his precious illusions about sticking it to corporations. You can bet this is going to be another clown show that he’ll pat himself on the back over, and absolutely everyone’s time will have been wasted.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one and injured five in the Kherson region, and guided bombs killed two and inured thirty in Kharkiv. Russian forces have reached the frontline city of Toretsk, and they are advancing to the centre of the town. Ukrainian forces are maintaining “sufficient pressure” on Russian troops in the Kursk region of Russia, as they hold captured territory for a third month.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1843704158240821371

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Roundup: A double standard on barring speeches

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There was a story in the Star yesterday that I hadn’t actually noticed happening, which is that Liberal MP Yvan Baker has been barred from speaking in the House of Commons until he apologises for saying that the “Putin wing” had taken over the Conservative Party on March 20th. Baker says he has no intention of apologising for what he considers to be the truth, and the Speaker, as usual, makes little tut-tut noises about what Baker said, never mind that there is a giant double-standard at play.

If Fergus is concerned about MPs alleging that their colleagues “stand four-square behind dictators,” it’s funny that the consequences only seem to apply to Baker. After all, Conservatives on a frequent basis have said that Trudeau is in the pocket of dictators, and that he allowed foreign interference on their behalf because it benefitted his party. (There is absolutely no public evidence of this). And most egregious was that Conservative MP Rachael Thomas has said on the floor of the Commons that Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and she faced absolutely no censure for saying it, which makes it really hard to see why Baker is being singled out for being hyperbolic—the point was about which elements of the party’s base that Poilievre is pandering to as opposed to saying that Poilievre is under Putin’s sway—when nobody else is. (I will note that Conservative MP Mark Strahl was barred from speaking for several weeks because he refused to withdraw the remarks that someone was lying, which is a big no-no under the rules of Parliament—rules which are now being absolutely abused—but he did eventually do so).

What is perhaps the most galling in all of his was the statement that Andrew Scheer gave to the Star, in which he says “Liberals should not whine and complain because they were caught spreading disinformation and lies to divide Canadians and cover for their own total failures on Ukraine.” Erm, serial liar and promoter of conspiracy theories Andrew Scheer is lecturing Liberals on the subject, when he faces zero consequences for lying in the House of Commons on a daily basis. We already knew he had absolutely no sense of shame, but it definitely extends to a complete lack of self-awareness as well. Just utterly ridiculous.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another bloody weekend in Ukraine which saw waves of drone attacks targeting Kyiv last night, the pounding of Zaporizhzhia with guided bombs earlier, the death of a top judge after an attack on Kharkiv, and an attack on a hospital in Sumy that killed ten. President Zelenskyy says that the front lines are “very, very difficult” as autumn descends on the conflict.

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Roundup: Impossible to extrapolate

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As with so many elections these days, it brings out the electoral reform fetishists, and they get self-righteous and say dumb things all over social media, and this week’s general election in the UK is no different. And lo, those fetishists are again making pronouncements about things like “voters’ wishes” because they’re trying to find a grand narrative that confirms their priors, and I fear I may lose my gods damned mind over this.

Once again, let us remember what this election is—650 separate and simultaneous elections, each one for a specific seat. So yes, the voters’ wishes are reflected because they chose who filled each seat. As well, I will once again remind you that the so-called “popular vote” is a logical fallacy because there is too much variation between each electoral contest to make any kind of grand aggregate that is meaningful—particularly in the UK, where the smaller countries have regional parties that England doesn’t, and yes, that does distort the “national picture” (as what happens in Canada with the Bloc). And no, every vote that is cast does not deserve their own seat. That’s not democracy, and it’s actually sore loserism if you believe that your vote doesn’t count if the person or party you prefer doesn’t win.

This is the other aspect of these fetishists spouting off and producing their own graphs of how they claim that Parliament “should” look if they had a PR system, erm, except they seem to always insist that it would be pure-PR (which is almost entirely unlikely), and it discounts that voting behaviour would change, but so would party formation under a system that no longer rewards big-tent brokerage in favour of post-election negotiation for coalitions. In no possible way can you extrapolate a vote like Thursday’s and come up with what a Parliament “should” look like, but that won’t stop the fetishists from trying.

Oh, and if one of these fetishists also tries to bring up lines about how the current single-member plurality system is “bad for democracy,” I’m not sure that PR is having a great run right now, as it legitimizes far-right and extremist parties that is almost impossible under SMP, and that legitimacy afforded to them is allowing them to grow across Europe. The situation in the Netherlands is also cause for concern, given that the far-right parties there have taken months to try to cobble together some sort of working coalition and may prove completely unworkable or ungovernable, and that’s not good for anyone.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russian advance toward Toretsk in the Donetsk region means that time is running out for any Ukrainian citizens that want to flee. While Ukraine managed to destroy all 32 Russian drones launched Friday night, early Saturday morning was another story—drones hit an energy facility in Sumy, and hits on Selydove and Komar killed eight combined. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s navy says that Russia has  nearly re-based all of its combat-read warships from occupied Crimea, because of the number of successful Ukrainian strikes on the region.

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Roundup: Demanding the Speaker to something he can’t

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The Liberals are no stranger to stunts, and the “poor me” stunts are some of the worst of all. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that MP Ya’ara Saks has written an open letter to the Speaker to demand apologies from Conservatives for sexist remarks, be it Michael Cooper in Committee or Rick Perkins telling Jean Yip that she deserves a participation ribbon. The problem? There’s nothing the Speaker can really do about it.

Saks didn’t cite any Standing Orders that were contravened, and the Speaker is bound to operate within the Standing Orders. Those are the rules by which he is refereeing. And for well over a generation now, the Canadian House of Commons has seen fit to effectively neuter the Speaker so that he (or she) doesn’t have much in the way of leeway in order to enforce, well, anything. Other Speakers in other Westminster parliaments have a lot more authority and latitude—Australia’s Speaker can even demand that governments answer the question when they are seen to be evasive (though this can sometimes stray into Speakers acting in potentially partisan ways). But ours? Nope—because MPs chose to have a ridiculously unempowered Speaker. The result? More of a gong show, more speaking lists, more canned speeches without any flow, and overall, an unserious Parliament, particularly in relation to our comparator countries.

And MPs could change this. But they don’t want to, so they won’t. And that is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that his country’s military chiefs are unanimous to keep defending Bakhmut, probably because they are grinding the Russian forces down there at a fairly alarming rate. Meanwhile, the Americans are accusing the Russians of downing one of their drones over the Black Sea, which Russia denies.

https://twitter.com/yermolenko_v/status/1635649300922245120

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Roundup: Poilievre’s facile budget demands

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Pierre Poilievre called a Sunday morning press conference, which is a particularly Conservative tactic that tries to set the agenda for the week, in which he made his demands around the upcoming budget. We all know that it’s pretty much set in stone by this point and is on its way to the printers, but that never stops parties from making performative demands right up until the end. To that end, Poilievre had three main demands:

  1. Bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes, so hard work pays off again.
  2. Bring home lower prices, by ending inflationary carbon tax hikes & deficit spending that drive up inflation & interest rates.
  3. Bring homes people can afford by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits.

First of all, the thing he refuses to acknowledge or understand is that tax cuts fuel inflation. If he’s worried about the increasing cost of living, tax cuts won’t actually do anything meaningful, and are more likely to just add fuel to that fire. (Meanwhile, taxes aren’t going up for anyone except profitable corporations and on luxury goods). When it comes to housing prices, carbon prices are not inflationary (the Bank of Canada has cited that their effect on inflation is negligible), and deficit spending has absolutely nothing to do with either inflation or interest rates. This is a facile narrative that Poilievre keeps insisting, preferring an austerity budget that will only make the vulnerable even more precarious without government supports, but this economic message still resonates for a particular generation. Meanwhile, none of this will affect housing prices, because that is driven by a lack of supply, which is because municipalities refuse to zone for density, and because provincial governments won’t use their powers to force the issue. And that leads us to the third point, which is that the federal government has no ability to “remove gatekeepers” at the provincial or municipal level. They can’t do anything about building permits, and I am dubious that there is enough federal land that is suitable for housing developments in major cities around the country that is underutilized. I may be wrong, but this has been a perennial promise by governments for years and nothing has really moved, which leads me to believe there’s not a lot to be had.

It’s not at all surprising that Poilievre is sticking to facile and wrong budgetary narratives, but it would be great if he could actually be called out on it rather than both-sides at best, which is barely even happening. This is important stuff and we’re just shrugging it off, and focusing on more bullshit polls about people believing the Conservatives are still the better economic managers in spite of decades of proof to the contrary.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces have believed to have suffered more than 1100 dead in a week of battles near Bakhmut, with another 1500 wounded so badly as to be removed from the fighting. The Institute for the Study of War believes Russia’s planned advance has stalled in Bakhmut, and that the assault will be more difficult to sustain without more significant losses.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1634849209840173057

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Roundup: Derailing the committee with sexism

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The big happenings of the day on the foreign interference file were at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee when ministers Dominic LeBlanc and Mélanie Joly testified. We found out that thus far, one diplomatic visa has been rejected by Canada because of interference allegations, and we also got the very reasonable explanation from Joly that we haven’t been expelling diplomats because that invites tit-for-tat from the Chinese government (and they are not afraid to take hostages), and we need our eyes and ears on the ground in that country. We also learned from Joly’s Great China director at Global Affairs that “diplomatic representations” were made about their alleged boats around helping to defeat Conservative candidates in the last election.

What made the news, however, was that Conservative MP Michael Cooper was hostile and belittling toward Joly in a clearly misogynistic manner, made worse by the fact that he later put out a statement that refused to apologise for it, but insisted he wanted action and not a “symbolic stare down.” Erm, you guys keep bringing up Harper’s symbolic stare down of allegedly telling Putin to get out of Ukraine in 2014 and calling that courageous, so I’m not sure why Joly’s confrontation with her Chinese counterpart is considered any lesser. Oh, wait—we know why.

In other news on the interference file, here’s an interview with former CSIS director Ward Elcock on recent developments, and there are a couple of takeaways—that this is old news, and that we’ve known about Chinese interference for years; that there is no reason to believe that the PM did get these briefing notes (and it has been noted by other experts that Canada does not have a system of pushing intelligence upward, and yet this is what so much of Global’s reporting in hinging on); and that it is highly unlikely these leaks are coming from CSIS, but someone who has access to their documents (and the good money is on someone within the RCMP).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633863409211961346

As well, NSIRA did announce that they too are undertaking their own investigation of the allegations and what CSIS has been doing around it, while not looking to duplicate the work that NSICOP is doing.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633808644935409666

Ukraine Dispatch:

Yesterday’s widespread Russian attack saw more than 80 missiles, plus more drones, hitting cities across the country, killing six people and cutting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant off of the power gird for eleven hours.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1633720689541652483

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Roundup: A leaked NSICOP report?

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Another day, another story on foreign interference, this time from Global. It was largely a rehash of material released earlier, but hidden inside was mention of seeing an unredacted report from NSICOP, which raises more questions about who is leaking this material (and to what end). Justin Trudeau continues to be evasive and not give any answers to fairly clear and specific questions about what he was told and when, which is not something you should need the special rapporteur for, and which shouldn’t be a matter that requires the blanket of national security secrecy, but the barrage of pabulum about the importance of national security oversight bodies is not exactly helping his case, or making it look like he has everything under control.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633509940064133130

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633509943625105411

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633472781428948998

NSICOP did announce that they will look into the allegations of foreign interference, but the fact that one of their unredacted reports was leaked to the media is going to undermine trust in that process by security officials in this country, who were dubious about the process from the start, and who will find it even harder to trust now. That’s not good for the ongoing ability to have parliamentarians play a role in the oversight of those bodies, which is necessary in a democracy.

In the meantime, there’s more that the government could get started on right away when it comes to combatting foreign interference, and Jessica Davis has a good thread about those actions here.

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1633488015573041153

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired a massive missile barrage across Ukraine early this morning, with more critical infrastructure being targeted. The Wagner Group is claiming that they have made advances into Bakhmut, but it’s still too early to tell the veracity or what it means in the bigger picture. Here’s a look at Canadian soldiers training Ukrainians on how to operate the Leopard 2 tanks we’ve sent them.

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Roundup: A refreshed Cabinet for a new parliament

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So, that was the big Cabinet shuffle. It was extensive, and we saw three ministers dropped entirely (not the first time), a few promotions, a few demotions, and a lot more hybrid and chimeric ministries which will make governance a challenge to say the least. Nevertheless, here we are. Some observations:

  • This was not a new Cabinet or ministry – this was just a shuffle. It’s also not a third term or mandate, because we don’t have those in Canada – it’s the third parliament that the current ministry has spanned.
  • Marc Garneau’s exclusion from Cabinet has fuelled rumours he’s about to become ambassador to France. My presumption is that Bardish Chagger’s exclusion is because she is going to be the new Whip, as the old Whip and his deputy are now in Cabinet. Jim Carr’s departure may be health-related.
  • After Trudeau had rather bravely centralized all of the economic development agencies under one roof and didn’t have them beholden to local ministers and the corrupting influence that offers, he has relented and re-established the practice of regional economic development ministers again, and undone the work of trying to clean up the mess they create.
  • The most important portfolios – finance, defence, foreign affairs – are now all held by women. Anita Anand is the second woman defence minister in Canadian history (the first being Kim Campbell), and her background as a law professor specializing in governance can only help in a role where there has been a crisis in civilian oversight. As foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly will have to deal with the tensions between the US and China (and our general lack of a coherent foreign policy).
  • Splitting up Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a good and necessary thing; giving Bill Blair emergency preparedness and not public safety is an even better thing because Blair was essentially at risk of capture in the role as a former police chief (with a questionable record around actions of the Toronto Police during the G20 to boot).
  • There are nine new faces in this configuration of Cabinet, and more diversity – the first Black woman since Jean Augustine, the first out lesbian minister, and the queerest Cabinet in Canadian history.
  • Putting Steven Guilbeault in environment may yet be a huge disaster given how badly he mismanaged Bill C-10, but Jonathan Wilkinson in natural resources will likely mean a steadier hand on some of those files where the two overlap.
  • Carving off an associate health minister portfolio for Carolyn Bennett to deal with addictions and mental health is a bit of a throwback to when she was the first minister of state for the newly-created Public Health Agency of Canada, back in the Paul Martin era. Jean-Yves Duclos in health – an economist who did a lot of work on poverty reduction – means he’s not going to be fooled by provinces trying to get more money out of the federal government that they plan to spend elsewhere.
  • Trudeau says he plans to lead the Liberals in the next election, but I’m not sure I believe him, and of course he’d say that now. He wouldn’t actually say he plans to leave until it comes time to do so, lest he turn himself into a lame duck without any moral authority to get anything done.

And now, the talking heads. Aaron Wherry hears from a Senior Liberal Source™ that the message of this Cabinet is the need for urgent delivery of promises. Heather Scoffield makes note of the activists leading the environment and housing files. Jason Markusoff highlights the squirming that Jason Kenney and others are doing now that Steven Guilbeault is the environment minister. Althia Raj sees some attempted legacy-building in Trudeau’s choices.

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Roundup: Annual amnesia and Estimates abrogation

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The House of Commons has risen for the summer, with four priority bills having made it to the Senate – including the budget implementation bill – but the rest of their “priority” bills languishing on the Order Paper. And the main party leaders spent the day sniping at one another in their respective press conferences, not necessarily telling the whole truth of the situation along the way, because that’s the way this particular game gets played.

It’s also that magical time of year when Hill reporters realise that the Senate exists and doesn’t operate in the same way that the House of Commons does, and we go through the ritual song and dance of worrying that bills won’t get passed before the Senate rises for the summer, and some usual tough talk by certain senators that they won’t be pushed around and they won’t fast track bills, until they do. We go through this every June, and every June, they push through these bills to ensure that they get royal assent before they leave for the summer. And no, the Senate’s calendar is not as fixed as that as the House of Commons, and yes, they do frequently sit later in order to get these bills passed. There is also the annual ritual of the government leader insisting that they really shouldn’t amend these bills because that would mean recalling the House of Commons, and that costs x-number of dollars per day and that’s apparently a bad thing for democracy (no, I don’t get the logic either), and with the constant speculation of an election, we’ll get additional concerns that they really can’t amend these bills because of that fact, and after some requisite chest-thumping, most senators will back down and pass the bills unamended. Yes, this happens every year, and it might behove these Hill reporters to remember this every year.

There is, of course, a more alarming aspect of what has transpired in this particular year, which is that several House of Commons committees didn’t do any scrutiny of the Estimates for the departments they are responsible for overseeing, and this is absolutely bloody alarming. This is the whole gods damned point of Parliament, and because they were wrapped up in their procedural warfare, that fundamental job didn’t get done. (And because of rules written in the sixties, Estimates that aren’t signed off on are deemed adopted, which is another outrage that they have not corrected). This should never have been the state of affairs – and I will note that some of those committee chairs offered additional sittings to ensure this scrutiny happened, but the MPs on those committees didn’t agree to it, which is an absolute outrage. That is your number one job as an MP, ahead of all other considerations, and you blew it because you were too busy grandstanding and/or protecting ministers who should have fallen on their swords, and we have further undermined our parliament as a result. Slow clap, MPs – stellar job.

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