Tag Archives: NATO

Roundup: No, a foreign power can’t install a prime minister

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One of the unfortunate things about certain people I follow on the Twitter Machine constantly retweeting sludge is that sometimes I see something that is so outrageous that it sets me off. This, from former Global journalist Sam Cooper, is just such an egregious thing.

Setting aside the torqued use of Michael Chong’s testimony, this has all of the credibility of those racist emails that used to circulate, usually at the hands of someone’s relatives, where people worried that the changing Canadian demographics could mean that we might *gasp!* have a Muslim prime minister! As is unsurprising in racist emails like those, the internal logic was deeply flawed and the understanding of our system was non-existent, and was likely repurposed from American racist content worrying about a Muslim president, but that aside, this worry from Cooper is about the same quality.

To wit: If a party held a leadership contest while during a prime minister’s term, the fear expressed here is that, somehow, a foreign government would be able to swamp party memberships (either sales or sign-ups, depending on the party) and install a preferred candidate, who would then become prime minister without an election (which, I should not need to remind anyone, is perfectly legitimate in a parliamentary system). The hole in this logic is that pretty much every party has a weighted point system as part of these elections, so that highly populated regions of the country don’t swamp the more sparely-populated ones. In order for a foreign government to therefore take over a leadership contest, they would need a critical mass of voters in the majority of ridings in the country, particularly ones like small rural ridings in Quebec or Atlantic Canada. That’s simply not a possibility for any foreign government to engineer. The fact that Cooper doesn’t have a clue how these things work should be (another) warning sign about his judgment. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone attacks on Kharkiv struck residential buildings and cut power supplies. A Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle (larger than a drone) was used to strike deep inside Russian territory, striking an industrial site.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775913487300002262

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Roundup: No, East Coast LNG isn’t going to happen

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With the news out of Ukraine becoming more pressing, we’re once again seeing some bad faith takes in Canada about how we should be displacing Russian gas with our LNG, which is never going to happen. Ever. And people should know this, but they keep clinging to this fantasy because it sells to a particular base, but lying is lying, whether it’s to yourself or to your voters.

As always:

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian drone attack hit an apartment building in Odesa over the weekend, and the final tally shows twelve people were killed, including a baby. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on Western allies to summon the political will to get them the aid they need (speaking mostly to the Americans for that one). Veterans across Ukraine have been disavowing medals in support of a gay soldier whose medal was rescinded by the church.

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Roundup: Online harms bill finally tabled

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The long-awaited online harms bill was tabled yesterday, to much fanfare. The bill would create obligations for web giants to build in certain safety features, and creates a new Digital Safety Commission to oversee this, along with an ombudsman to help people navigate the process if they have been victimised and need content taken down. There are prescriptive processes that give companies 24 hours to remove certain content if flagged (most of it is child sexual exploitation or the sharing of intimate images), but there are very narrow criteria. There are also new Criminal Code provisions around making hate speech a standalone offence instead of an aggravating factor, and restores the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s ability to be an avenue for redress for hate speech for those who don’t want to go through the criminal route, albeit with a tighter definition and more ability to dismiss vexatious complaints than the previous system.

To that end, here are five things the bill does, a list of recent examples of online harms inflicted upon youth in recent years, while the mother of Amanda Todd is calling on Parliament to pass the bill swiftly so that other youth are protected.

As for opposition reaction, the Conservatives have point-blank called this censorship, which seems to be opening themselves up to charges that they don’t care about the safety of children and youth online. The Bloc say they’re going to read it over before supporting, while the NDP, seeing this on the Order Paper, tried to give one last attempt to sound tough about the government not introducing this sooner, so that they can launch another data-mining petition.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed nine out of 14 Russian drones and three guided missiles overnight on Monday. Ukrainian forces had to fall back from the village of Lastochkyne near Avdiivka, as Russian forces continue to press ahead while Ukrainian forces suffer from a lack of ammunition. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the Black Sea corridor, which is getting grain to countries in need, is in jeopardy without more US aid.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1762133928406626660

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Roundup: Trying to allay diaspora concerns

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After two diaspora groups pulled out of the foreign interference inquiry, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released a statement yesterday outlining precautions that are being taken to protect witnesses and sensitive information, which is hoped will allay their concerns (though some of those concerns have to do with the three politicians being given standing and the ability to cross-examine other witnesses).

It should probably be noted that this was probably inevitable. David Johnston warned as much of this in recommending against a public inquiry, but hey, politics took over and here we are.

https://twitter.com/chercywong/status/1760726555259752568

Ukraine Dispatch:

There has been a drone strike in Odessa, killing three. It is hoped that examining the debris of the North Korean missiles that the Russians have acquired and are using against Ukraine will offer clues as to how they are avoiding sanctions. Here’s a look at two years of conflict through the eyes of one Ukrainian soldier who has seen it all. Here is a look at those whose relatives have gone missing in combat and their bodies not yet found. Reuters has a photo library from the first two years of the war.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1760766644995887429

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Roundup: Poilievre punches down

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Pierre Poilievre made a lot of statements yesterday, and they were all alarming in their own ways. First up was expressing support for Bill S-210, which aims to require ISPs to ensure age verification for any online porn sites, or face massive penalties—a bill that passed the Senate and is now headed to committee with opposition support in the Commons. It’s a hugely problematic bill that is going to be a privacy nightmare and cause more problems than it solves. Poilievre also said he doesn’t want this implemented by way of a government digital ID or that prevents people from access legal materials, and his MPs keep handwaving and insisting that there must be some kind of technological solution here. There’s not, this is bad, and frankly is pretty Big Government/gatekeeping, which Poilievre claims to hate. What it does, however, is tap into the moral panic over porn being the root cause of a bunch of social ills, and Poilievre loves getting in on that action.

He was then asked by Rebel Media about trans people and washrooms—because of course the far-right remains obsessed about this—and Poilievre stated that he was against trans women in changing rooms, washrooms, or women’s sports, which is an outrageous egregious overreach and is Poilievre punching down in order to appease the Rebel Media audience. (I will note that you had pundits on Power & Politics baffled by this, believing that Poilievre has this demographic “locked down.” Not true—he needs to actively court them because they see him as being too soft and establishment—see Christine Anderson referring to him as “Pussyvere”—and he has to constantly prove himself to them). It’s also worth noting that for Poilievre’s press conferences, which are limited to five questions and no follow-ups, Rebel and True North are often at the front of the line for questions, which is another particular sign of who he’s speaking to. Justin Trudeau did respond and push back about this making trans people unsafe, which is true, but this is another moral panic Poilievre is trying to cash in on.

The last bit was perhaps the ugliest, where Poilievre was asking about the upcoming online harms bill, and he said that Trudeau shouldn’t be the one to bring it in, claiming this would be censorship, misquoting the line about “those with unacceptable views” (again, playing to the “convoy” audience who took up this misquote with great aplomb), and then launched into a tirade about how Trudeau needs to look into his heart about his past racism and Blackface. And then, because of course, a certain CBC journalist wrote this up (which I’m not going to link to) and devoted half of the story to rehashing the Blackface history including photos, because they didn’t learn a gods damned thing about how Trump got in (and this goes beyond just egregious both-sidesing). None of this is good.

Ukraine Dispatch:

With the loss of Avdiivka, Ukrainians are expecting more advances from Russians. This has spooked enough of the elderly in villages in the area, who are now heading for safer regions, worried that their towns are going to be the next to be ground to dust. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is downplaying the loss of Avdiivka as he calls for more western arms and support, but it has been relentless grind for Ukrainian forces. This said, western intelligence suggests that Russia doesn’t have the domestic capacity to manufacture the ammunition it needs either, so we’ll see how long they can keep up their current pace. Meanwhile, anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine are investigating more than sixty cases involving the defence sector.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1760235411987980541

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Roundup: Falsely framing carbon prices and inflation

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I want to point your direction to a CTV piece from the weekend, taken from an interview with Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon on CTV’s Question Period. The headline and substance of the piece, taken from the interview, is “Feds won’t pause carbon price despite inflation.” Now, if you were a casual reader who didn’t know what was going on, you might think that the carbon price is driving inflation and the government is being obstinate in refusing to deal with that driver of inflation.

That would, however, be completely wrong. We know that the carbon price contributes only negligibly to inflation because inflation is measured on a year-over-year basis, and with the carbon price increasing at the same rate every year, the impact on year-over-year prices remains negligible. The Bank of Canada figures that it works out to 0.15 percent of inflation. Is this mentioned anywhere in the story? Nope. Instead, it’s both-sides as pointing to Poilievre’s promise to “axe the tax” (which is not a tax, but a levy, and yes, there is a difference), contrasted with MacKinnon pointing out that at committee last week, food economists pointed to the fact that there’s no evidence the carbon price has had a meaningful impact on the price of food, because, again, if you pay attention, you would know that the bigger drivers of food price inflation are droughts or floods in food-producing regions, including Canada’s, which is related to climate change. (That poing is also absent from the story).

Why does this matter? Because of how the story has been framed. It frames itself that carbon prices are driving inflation, which is false and misleading. It sets up a false scenario about what is driving inflation (which has fallen over the last year and is now in a sticker place just above target), and sets about positing a false solution, while trying to look like it’s concerned about cost-of-living concerns while looking at absolutely none of the driving factors of what has caused an increase in the cost of living. This, my friends, is shoddy journalism. I get that they were trying to get a headline out of that interviews, but great Cyllenian Hermes, that was not the way to do it, and it’s a little embarrassing that this was the result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

At least three Ukrainians have been killed in Russian attacks on cities in the country’s east, near the front lines. Ukrainian forces repelled an attempted Russian advance on the southern front, as Russians move their forces forward following the withdrawal from Avdiivka. The withdrawal from Avdiivka was preceded by a change in Russian tactics designed to take advantage of the shortage of ammunition. Ukrainian forces say that Russians executed six unarmed Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner in Avdiivka as they were fleeing, and two more in the nearby village of Vesele. Here is a look at the significance of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure within Russian borders.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1759195559272108467

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Roundup: Another day of Guilbeault-baiting

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It’s becoming a little too predictable, and yet here we are again. Steven Guilbeault said something not even that controversial—that we have enough roads to suit our needs so the government isn’t going to spend more infrastructure dollars on major projects to grow them, while they focus on other things like transit and active transport. He’s not even terribly wrong for the most part—there is reams of evidence to show that expanding roads and highways doesn’t cure congestion but merely causes more, so the focus should be on other priorities.

Predictably, everyone freaked out—Conservatives went into full meltdown, and the premiers all lined up to howl about this, when again, they know he’s not wrong, and oh, by the way, there isn’t any money left in the infrastructure fund anyway, so why does it matter? Guilbeault was trotted out to say that he should have been more specific in his comments, and he was mostly referring to the Third Link proposal in Quebec City, which they have no intention of funding, but of course, by that point, the narrative is set as chuds across the Internet have been memeing this for all it’s worth.

Dunking on Guilbeault has become something of a national preoccupation, and news media likes nothing more than to both-sides this sort of thing, taking the bait to continue to give uncharitable readings and framing this as he and the government being “out of touch.” If there’s one thing that makes everyone angry, it’s the whole “war on the car” bullshit that keeps incredibly bad city councillors and mayors in power across this country. And we wonder why we are incapable of serious discourse in this country?

https://twitter.com/s_guilbeault/status/1757961974137168362

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces say that they used naval drones to sink a Russian landing ship in the Black Sea. Here is an explainer of the security assurances that Ukraine is signing with a number of countries including Canada.

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Roundup: The AG’s report into ArriveCan

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The Auditor General released her report into ArriveCan yesterday, and it was suitably scathing, but in spite of Pierre Poilievre throwing arounds words like “corruption” and blaming the prime minister directly, the AG’s criticisms were squarely directed to the CBSA. It bears mentioning that CBSA is a federal agency, not a department, which means that it operates at arm’s length of government. Unlike a department, they don’t have direct political oversight, and while the president of CBSA reports to the public safety minister, and will accept broad political direction, the government does not direct operations (much like the CRA or RCMP).

So just what did she find? A complete lack of paperwork, of checks and balances, or of proper management or contracting practices, right up to the point of the outside contractor taking senior CBSA officials out to dinners and helping write the terms for when the contract would be put out to tender in a way that benefitted them. Once again, it’s hard to pin this on the government or Cabinet because they’re not involved in this level of decision-making. The Conservatives like to characterise this as “Liberal insiders” or “cronies” getting rich, but again, the report draws none of these conclusions. Meanwhile, those senor officials are now suspended, and there is an ongoing RCMP investigation, which is appropriate, while CBSA’s internal audit is ongoing.

There is an open question as to the reliance on outside contractors, which may be appropriate considering that CBSA wouldn’t have required the presence of app developers on their IT staff as a matter of course, and I’m not sure if this could have been contracted out to Shared Services Canada either (though given SSC’s history, I’m not sure I’d be confident in the quality of that product). And that’s fair enough. The problem becomes that they cut every corner and disregarded the rules in the process, whereas transparent contracting and proper paper trails and records of approval processes could have shown this to be a viable exercise, but we can’t know that because of how they ultimately behaved. So, while Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh insist that civil servants could have done the work, I’m not convinced, but that doesn’t mean that this still wasn’t handled in the worst way possible.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces attacked a power plant in Dnipro with missiles and drones, cutting off power and water supplies to some residents. Analysis shows that Russia used Zircon hypersonic missiles against targets in Kyiv on February 7th. Ukraine is looking to produce thousands of long-range drones this year. Ukrainian military intelligence suggests that Russia has been obtaining Starlink terminals through third countries.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1757040939929944128

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Roundup: Not a free press issue, but a trap

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Because everything is stupid, we are being drawn into a dumb fight that is trying to de-legitimise legacy media, and legacy media is once again walking into the trap. To wit: On Tuesday, a Rebel “News” personality accosted Chrystia Freeland on the sidewalk outside of the PS752 memorial, and in the end was detained by police for an altercation. We can’t see exactly what happened because as soon as he was intercepted by the protective detail, his camera conveniently panned away, and returned to him as the police were arresting him for assaulting an officer. (He was later released without charge). There are legitimate questions if the police overreacted, and again, we can’t see what he did to them when the camera panned away, but this is not a free press issue.

To be clear: He is not a journalist. Ezra Levant and Rebel “News” keep testifying under oath in court that they are not journalists and not a news organization. And this particular performer, David Menzies, does this a lot—accost people, get arrested, and then Levant puts out a fundraising plea to their viewers, who dutifully shell out. This stunt was practiced, and the camera work seems to indicate just that. They’re already fundraising and claiming they’re going to sue Freeland and the police, because that’s their grift. And because everything is stupid and awful, Pierre Poilievre has decided to step in and claim that this is a freedom of the press issue.

Bullshit.

This isn’t about freedom of the press because Menzies is not a journalist, and Rebel is not a news outlet—by their own admission. But they pretend to be, and Poilievre is happy to go along with that fiction because this way he can try to de-legitimise reputable media outlets by saying that they are on the take from Justin Trudeau, and therefore suspect. It’s not really true, but Poilievre and his caucus have been engaged in this dystopian world-building to paint the picture that Trudeau is a despotic tyrant stripping away their freedoms who is telling the media what to write, and if they don’t, he censors and now arrests them (all of which is an absurd fabrication). And of course, Poilievre is data-mining and fundraising off of this, because again, he wants to get in on the grift.

He doesn’t care about the free press. He abuses legitimate journalists on the regular, and I have been at the receiving end of that. There was no concern about Menzies’ freedoms when he was arrested at previous Conservative events, having accosted both Melissa Lantsman and Andrew Scheer. But by trying to call out the Parliamentary Press Gallery for not condemning Menzies’ detention, and a bunch of mainstream outlets cluelessly not getting that this is grift and playing along, treating Rebel and Menzies as though they were legitimate, is doing the work of letting Poilievre de-legitimise them. It feeds his dystopian narrative, and creates the bifurcated reality where facts no longer apply. And this has the potential to get worse as Marilyn Gladu is trying to get the Commons’ heritage committee to take this up, meaning a full-on dog and pony show for the cameras that legitimate media won’t know how to handle themselves in, because they refuse to believe that they are the targets in this all-out offensive. This is actively damaging democracy, and by not being self-aware, legacy media are causing themselves more harm. This can’t end well.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The massive air assault Russia has launched against Ukraine is stretching their air defences, and they need more systems and ammunition, particularly of anti-aircraft guided missiles, some of which is being held up by the fighting in the US Congress. More than a thousand towns and villages have lost power because of winter storms affecting power systems that have been weakened by Russia’s assaults. Drone manufacturers in Ukraine are producing them faster than the country’s current budget can buy them.

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Roundup: NSIRA spanks Global Affair’s intelligence program

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A long-delayed public release of NSIRA’s report into the activities of the Global Security Reporting Program—the “intelligence” arm of Global Affairs, which has diplomats openly engaging with persons of interest abroad—was finally released, and it’s making some waves. In particular, for a programme that isn’t actual covert intelligence gathering has some governance problems, with a lack of coherent policies or training that has led to some lines being blurred, which can make some countries believe this is an actual foreign intelligence service (it’s not, and we don’t have one).

So, with this in mind, here are four threads from some very reputable sources. Stephanie Carvin walks through the report, and breaks down its components, as well as the government’s responses.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1737569161042096138

Jessica Davis has a shorter walkthrough (with paragraph numbers!) about her own concerns about what she reads in it.

Leah West has a few legal observations about the report.

And Thomas Juneau gives a much more generous read, and places some of the GSRP’s work into better context.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed journalists’ questions about whether Ukraine is losing the war, but acknowledges challenges of being in a country under siege. Ukraine’s forces appear to be moving to a more defensive posture, likely because of the artillery shortage.

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