Tag Archives: NATO

Roundup: Another far-right defeat

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The news out of France this weekend was that the far-right was not the victors in their legislative elections, but rather that the left-wing alliance came in with the highest seats, followed by Emmanuel Macron’s centrists, denying the far-right the victory they had been hoping for. This isn’t great for Macron in that his prime minister has resigned and he will have a hard time getting his agenda through the National Assembly, but nevertheless, his gamble did somewhat pay off in that he thwarted the far right from making any further advances. This, along with the fact that Labour won a resounding victory in the UK days earlier, has plenty of people talking about how hopefully the US and Canada will be next to reject the far-right. I am not wholly mollified.

The US remains the big question mark, particularly given all of the attention on president Biden’s fitness to carry on for another term, and we cannot get too complacent here in Canada. While our own far-right is still marginal, the bigger danger remains that the Conservatives continue to try and court those far-right actors and are increasingly taking pages out of the authoritarian playbook. Nevertheless, the Elder Pundits in this country insist that there’s nothing to see here, that things can’t be that bad under Poilievre, or that the concerns of women or LGBTQ+ people are mere exaggerations. They’re not, and we can’t let our guard down at this critical juncture.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down three out of six missiles fired by Russia over the central regions of the country. Russian drones hit an energy facility in the Sumy region on Saturday. Ukrainian drones hit a munitions depot inside Russian territory, causing a massive explosion. Russians claim that Ukrainians were thwarted trying to hijack one of their strategic bombers, but there is no verification of that claim.

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Roundup: It’s not logistically impossible

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For the past week-and-a-half, it has been nothing but handwringing over the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election results, and the demands that Justin Trudeau either step aside, or to at least meet with his caucus. I took a full week for Trudeau to finally take questions from the media and said that he’s “committed” to staying on the job. And in response to the demands for an in-person caucus meeting now and not in September, Trudeau said he’s having one-on-one conversations with members of the caucus, and some of them are saying he needs to change “key players.”

And then comes along Liberal caucus chair Brenda Shanahan, who insists that it’s “logistically impossible” to have an in-person caucus meeting before September, to which I call bullshit. MPs can all get on a plane to Ottawa at any point, even if it means they have to cancel a barbeque appearance at some point. It’s not impossible, it’s a choice, and that choice is to not respect the members of the caucus, because frankly the leader doesn’t feel the need to be afraid of caucus because we have trained MPs to believe the falsehood that they are powerless and that the leader can push them around. That’s not actually true, and the caucus collectively has the power to vote non-confidence in the leader if they actually had the intestinal fortitude to do so. But therein lies the problem.

I’m also going to point out that all of the breathless reporting on Thursday about Chrystia Freeland saying that the Cabinet is fully behind Trudeau—of course they’re fully behind him. If they weren’t, they’d be out of a job. This isn’t rocket science, guys.

In case you missed them:

  • My weekend column where I talked to the author of the book Theatre of Lies about the situation we find ourselves in Canadian politics and what to do about it.
  • My column points out that one of the problems the Liberals face is how they choose their leaders, and that a proper Westminster system would have solved this by now.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take wonders just what Danielle Smith thinks she wants to “opt out” of around dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down 21 out of 22 Russian drones overnight Thursday. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from one neighbourhood in Chasiv Yar after their defensive positions were destroyed, risking further casualties. A Russian missile strike in Odesa killed a woman, while a guided bomb in Kharkiv region killed a man. Russians have started targeting Ukrainian air bases in advance of the delivery of F-16 fighter jets. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán went to Kyiv for a frosty meeting as Hungary assumes the rotating presidency of the EU. Orbán then headed to Moscow, no doubt to get fresh orders from Putin.

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Roundup: Provinces learned they can underfund disaster management

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The House of Commons’ national defence committee tabled their report on disaster management earlier this week, and one of its recommendations is for a permanent civilian federal disaster management force that can be deployed for wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters—but they stopped short of recommending a Canadian FEMA, which may not be possible given that this is constitutionally largely an area of provincial jurisdiction, and would require some kind of provincial agreement to operate, and because this is Canada, the provinces would want some kind of say in its operations but wouldn’t want to pay for it, because of course.

One of the problems we’re dealing with as a country is that we’re dealing with the Canadian Forces being at their capacity and they are constantly being asked to deal with disaster management across the country because provincial capacity maxes out too soon. But why does provincial capacity max out? Because they keep cutting funds or under-investing, and creating these situations because they know that regardless of what happens, they can simply call up the federal government to ask them deploy the Canadian Forces, and even more to the point, that they can do it for free because the federal government won’t ask for reimbursement even though they are entitled to. And this has wound up teaching the premiers that there are pretty much no consequences for their under-investing or even cutting the funding for this kind of emergency management, so they are incentivized to rely on the Canadian Forces to do the work for them for free, and now we have reached the end of that being possible.

So, what is the solution? I am wary of the notion of building up a federal force because even if they can manage to get provincial agreements, staff it up (because you would be drawing from the same pool as the Canadian Forces, which has a recruitment and retention crisis), and even if they paid for all of it (which they shouldn’t), this will exacerbate the existing problem of provinces not funding or bolstering their existing forces that are their constitutional responsibility because there will still be a federal backstop. And if the federal government starts asking for reimbursement, either for the use of the Canadian Forces or this hypothetical future force, then the media will be aghast that the federal government is making the province pay in their time of need, completely ignoring that the provincial under-funding created the situation in the first place. We’re at a bit of a rock and hard place, because we have let federalism break down like this, and that’s not good for the country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck the Eastern settlement of Selydove, killing two. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian “barn” tank that has been modified to protect against drone attacks. Ukraine launched a drone attack that struck three Russian oil refineries overnight.

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Roundup: Back to the constituencies

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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

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Roundup: Clearing the decks before summer

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It’s the last Wednesday of the spring sitting, and the big question is whether they’re going to pull the plug today or not. The government says there is still work to do—in particular, they want to push the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission bill (Bill C-40) and the budget bill over the finish line, but the budget bill is up for a vote after QP tomorrow, leaving only C-40 at third reading debate, which is what is on for government orders tomorrow, and that’s the only bill they’re planning to bring forward for debate. This would make it pretty easy for them to pass a motion at unanimous consent to say something to the effect of it’ll pass on division or deemed pass at the collapse of debate at the end of the day, or some such if they really wanted, or to simply hold a vote at that point, and rise for the summer after that.

Of course, the Conservatives have been putting on a big song and dance about wanting to sit through the summer to “fix” the country, but we all know that’s all for show because that would mean nothing but more time for the government to keep passing bills and implementing their agenda, and that’s not what they want. They’re also trying to insist on committees sitting through the summer, but there are only two government bills at committee stage right now, so most of those meetings would likely be for private members’ business or for studies, and you can bet it’s going to be more of the latter, which would be little more than dog and pony shows to serve as clip factories while the House of Commons has risen. And if the Conservatives don’t agree for the House to rise tomorrow? Well, on the agenda are report stage debates on the cyber-security bill, the ports modernization bill, the (controversial) Métis self-government bill, and they have been debating the Elections Act changes, which the Conservatives and NDP are opposing because of bullshit objections to moving the fixed date back a week to avoid Diwali.

And then it’s up to the Senate to pass the number of bills on their plate, including the budget bill, and if they are true to recent form, they will race through their Order Paper until Friday, pass everything with little scrutiny other than maybe a few questions of the relevant minister at Committee of the Whole, and then rise by Friday, rather than stay another week or two to actually give things a proper review like they used to, back in the “bad old partisan days.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is claiming responsibility for a drone attack causing a massive blaze at an oil reservoir in Russia’s Rostov region. Ukraine is investigating the suspected beheading of one of its soldiers by a Russian in the Donetsk region. Reuters has some photos of combat medics on the job on the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1802984596122034588

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Roundup: A possible reluctant partial briefing

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch:

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

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Roundup: Elizabeth May to the rescue (again)

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The House of Commons has once again embarrassed itself in voting to send the NSICOP report to Justice Hogue for her to review, and its documents, to see if she can do or say something about the potentially “disloyal” parliamentarians therein. She can’t, and won’t, because this is a political problem and MPs have just voted to kick this down the road until October because certain of the leaders can’t arse themselves to be adults and take their responsibilities seriously, preferring instead to remain ignorant so that they can shout increasingly lurid and baseless accusations from the rooftops, because that gets them clicks and engagement on social media, and that is the cart that is driving politics in these debased times. Hopefully Justice Hogue will get this request and tell MPs to go drop on their heads because she has enough work to do and not enough time to do it in, thank you very much, and this is their political problem to solve, not hers. But we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth May was the adult in the room, who took the opportunity to avail herself of the security clearance she acquired over the course of these months of foreign interference handwringing, and did read the full, classified report, and then took to a microphone in the press theatre in the West Block to discuss what she could about the report, and then went on Power & Politics later and refined those remarks even further. And what did she find? No list of treasonous or disloyal MPs, a handful of cases of MPs who are no longer serving who may have been compromised in some manner, and the one incident of a former MP who should be investigated and charged. And even more to the point, she just proved that reading the report wouldn’t tie Pierre Poilievre’s hands, that he could still talk about the conclusions of the report without any specifics, and that Michael Chong has indeed spouting bullshit when he claimed that he knew more than a former CSIS director about this.

Hopefully this means that the hot air has been drained from this, particularly since Jagmeet Singh will read the classified version today, and Yves-François Blanchet seems to have finally been convinced to get the proper clearance so that he too can read it for himself. That leaves Poilievre as the odd man out, insisting on remaining ignorant, but hopefully with the other leaders offering similar reassurances as May, this could deflate the issue and turn to the real issues about how to better combat this sort of interference, letting parties put in necessary internal reforms to prevent nomination races from being coopted, and so on. That relies on them being grown-ups, and if one party decides to remain off-side and not among the adults in the room, that will be pretty telling. There should also be questions asked of the members of NSICOP for not providing reassurance from the start, and for letting this issue blow up unnecessarily, because that should have an impact on their credibility, or would if the Elder Pundits of this country hadn’t decided on a particular narrative that they are going to relentlessly pursue, regardless of what has transpired.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Kharkiv’s mayor says that the ability to strike missile launch sites across the border in Russia has helped calm the number of attacks his city has been facing. At the recovery conference in Berlin, Ukraine has been attracting pledges to help modernise its air defences to help prevent the need for even further rebuilding.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1800249418949841359

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Roundup: Ford’s $600 million choices

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You might be excused if you were given the impression that things are going so well in Ontario right now that the government is spending its precious time and resources on the pressing need of…getting beer and wine into corner stores. Well, Doug Ford has decided that, in any case, and that he’s willing to pay out hundreds of millions in order to compensate the Beer Store—a conglomerate owned by the major breweries—for breaking their monopoly even earlier than he had planned to, to the tune of $225 million, with a possible $375 million in additional fees being rebated, meaning that this move could cost the treasury as much as $600 million.

So, to recap—that’s $225 million, but probably really $600 million, that could have gone toward something like keeping rural emergency rooms from having to close on weekends because they lack sufficient staff; it could have gone toward reforming how primary-care physicians are compensated so that they aren’t fleeing the field; it could have gone toward fixing the shortfalls in the early learning and child care programme that this government has caused by under-investment; or shoring up shelters housing asylum seekers; or really, any number of things that will actually have a meaningful impact on the lives of people in this province. But no, it’s going to pay these conglomerates.

Priorities.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While visiting Kharkiv, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine now has “combat control” over the region after nearly two weeks of Russians trying to make advances.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1793904060535636362

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Roundup: A question with the intention to intimidate

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Conservative MP Chris Warkentin has put a question on the Order Paper asking whether a number of economists have received any government contracts, and for any information about those contracts if they have been the recipient. While Stephen Gordon responds for himself below, it was also noted that all of the economists listed (who include names like Kevin Milligan, Andrew Leach, and Mike Moffatt) are all male, which I’m sure is just a coincidence and not indicative of a mentality that they think there’s no such thing as a “lady economist.”

This having been said, I think it’s important to point out that what Warkentin is doing here, on behalf of the party, is directly out of the authoritarian playbook. Number one of the seven key tactics in that playbook are to politicise independent institutions (and university academics would qualify), while number four on that list is about quashing dissent, and many of these names are economists who signed onto that open letter about the value of carbon pricing (which, to reiterate, was not defending the Liberal policy because it’s not actually carbon pricing, but a carbon levy plus regulation and subsidies). The Order Paper question is a shot across the bow that they are looking for anything to discredit these economists as partisan hacks whose expertise can be discounted for that reason. It’s about as subtle as a ham-fist, but they don’t care because they’re riding high in the polls. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be alive to what they’re doing, because it absolutely matters.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A missile strike in Kharkiv has killed at least seven civilians, as the Russian assault continues. Russians have also taken control of the village of Andriivka, southwest of Bakhmut. Russian jamming has also prevented many of Ukraine’s newer glide bombs from hitting their intended targets.

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Roundup: Back to challenging the Speaker once again

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Not unexpectedly, a number of MPs have renewed the call to oust Greg Fergus from the Speaker’s chair after Tuesday’s dramatics during Question Period. For the Bloc, who soured on Fergus shortly after his election and his recording a video in his robes, they’re complaining that he can’t control the room, which is a bit unfair because MPs themselves have hobbled the Speaker’s ability to enforce decorum by giving him narrow powers in the Standing Orders. This logic also ignores the culpability of those who are making the noise—the Speaker isn’t making them behave like that. And for the record, Fergus says he’s not stepping down.

For the Conservatives, however, they are playing the victim, as is a common far-right tactic these days, and claiming that he had a double standard on Tuesday. Their proof—that prime minister Justin Trudeau wasn’t forced to retract or get named when he referred to Poilievre’s “spineless leadership” in not denouncing far-right extremists and Alex Jones. Note that the language Trudeau used was that the leadership was spineless, he did not call Poilievre that. And he was warned about inflammatory language, and he rephrased. Poilievre called Trudeau “whacko,” which was is a direct attack, and then refused to withdraw the word when instructed to—and again, the prevarication and wheedling of trying to replace the word is not respecting the Speaker’s authority, especially when invited to simply withdraw four times. There is a difference between what each leader said and how each responded, and if Conservatives can’t tell that difference, then they have a real problem with their critical thinking skills, which isn’t a good thing for an MP.

There was added drama when Conservative MP Rachael Thomas, who now claims that she withdrew her remarks yesterday but was ejected anyway, and more to the point, says that Hansard was edited to justify Fergus’ decision. Recall that Fergus was cautioning her for yelling at him during an outburst, to which she shot back “I have big problems with the Chair.” Fergus told her to withdraw that, to which Thomas’s response was “Mr. Speaker, I stated that the Chair is acting in a disgraceful manner,” and then says that she added “I withdraw,” which is also in the Blues (meaning the unedited transcripts before they go for final polish). But I was sitting right above her, and didn’t hear her say “I withdraw,” but even if she did, you can’t challenge the Speaker again and then just say “I withdraw” and expect no consequences. That’s not even like a qualified apology, it’s openly challenging a second time, and then trying to give yourself a fig-leaf of cover. That’s bullshit, and she knows it.

To put a cherry on top of this, CBC dug up video of then-Speaker Andrew Scheer saying you can’t challenge the integrity of the Speaker, which includes allegations of partisanship, and lo, what are they doing now? Rules for thee but not for me is very much their modus operandi, and it’s not great for democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian ballistic missile struck a postal depot in Odesa, injuring fourteen and starting a huge fire, and Russians claim to have struck Ukraine’s southern command post in the same attack. There was also a guided bomb attack in the Kharkiv region, killing two in an attack on the village of Zolochiv, while there was also an attack on the town of Hirnyk near the front lines, which killed at least two more people. Drone footage shows the way that Chasiv Yar has been devastated by Russian bombardment as the move toward it, while Ukrainian forces in that area say they badly need more ammunition. The US is accusing Russia of breaking international chemical weapons ban by deploying choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.

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