Tag Archives: NATO

Roundup: Standing for the Emergencies Act inquiry

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-twenty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian long-range bombers struck a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine that had over a thousand people inside, leaving 13 dead and over 40 injured. Further east, Russians are now advancing on Lysychansk, but because it is higher up the river banks, it is a more defensible position for Ukrainian forces, and that could tie up Russian forces for months.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with G7 leaders by video, and asked for more modern air defences, as well as even more sanctions as the ones that are in place are still not having enough of an effect. Zelenskyy also asked for assistance in unblocking Ukrainian ports so that they can get grain ships in, but this will mean de-mining work that could take weeks or months. Russia, meanwhile, looks set to default on its foreign debt for the first time since the Bolshevik revolution, and here is an explainer of what that could mean.

Closer to home, Justice Paul Rouleau, heading up the public inquiry into the invocation of the Emergencies Act, has released the list of who he has granted standing to hear from, and lo, the Conservative Party is not on it. Citing precedents from previous inquiries like Gomery, Rouleau has basically concluded that the Conservatives had nothing substantive to add, other than to whinge that the Liberals were mean to them about their support for the occupation, and he’s not interested in partisan point-scoring.

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Roundup: The non-retracted story and the myths around it

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It’s day one-hundred-and-fourteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Severodonetsk has not fallen yet. French president Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Premier Mario Draghi all visited Kyiv together, while Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, arrived on a separate train. They were there to show European unity, in spite of the fact that there have been many criticisms levelled at them in recent weeks for being slow to deliver promised aid, or trying to appease Putin. The fact that they could see some of the atrocities in Irpin, outside of Kyiv, may have given them some perspective on the conflict as well. They did also come with a message about trying to facilitate Ukraine’s entry into the European Union, which would have a great deal of symbolic weight in the conflict.

Meanwhile, NATO defence ministers met in Brussels to discuss ways to continue bolstering their Eastern flank, which will mean more forward-deployed combat formations.

Closer to home, there has been a pervasive bit of disinformation circulating, spread by certain media outlets, that CBC had retracted some of its reporting on the occupation, and in particular about its funding. That’s false—there was on radio correction, but the stories themselves stood, and are still there. Nevertheless, this notion that there was this retraction has been the basis of part of the Conservative attacks on Marco Mendicino in the justification for the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and in particular the financial tools that were used to freeze bank accounts of participants. While the Conservatives, citing these certain outlets, claim that the allegations of “dark money” fuelling the occupation was false, there was indeed foreign money coming in, though not as much as some people assumed. Of course, the Conservatives are also lying about just who this occupation was made up of, so any of their assertions what is true or false around the entire situation are suspect because they have a vested interest in protecting the occupiers, believing they can harness them to their own ends. (Spoiler: They really won’t in the end).

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Roundup: Jubilee Weekend (not that you’d know it in Canada)

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It’s day one hundred-and-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv has once again come under attack from Russian missiles, who claimed this was about hitting tanks donated by Western countries. Ukrainians, meanwhile, say they have reclaimed Sievierokonetsk in a counter-offensive, but this has not yet been verified. Ukrainians are taking losses, between 60 to 100 per day which is more than the Americans took daily than in the worst of the Vietnam War, but this may also galvanize to them fight even harder as more advanced weapons from allies arrive. Here are stories from the southern city of Mykolaiv, where the shelling is constant.

Meanwhile, NATO is kicking off two weeks of naval exercise in the Baltic Sea which will include Sweden and Finland, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been meeting with Turkey’s president to try and solve the impasse of Turkey blocking Sweden and Finland’s entry into the alliance.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1533516244124590085

Closer to home, it was the celebrations of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over the weekend, even though the Canadian government kept things as low-key as they possibly could. I have real trepidation about the way in which this government seems to think of Canadian monarchy as an afterthought, because it inevitably leads to politicisation when Conservatives put in more effort, and that is the absolute last thing we want or need. It’s an institution for everyone, and needs to be treated as such. There were, nevertheless, a few CanCon elements in the celebrations in London, as well as some royal Kremlinology about what it all signalled. Tangentially related to the celebration was the 150th anniversary of the Governor General’s Foot Guards in Ottawa, who got their own parade.

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Roundup: Exit Kenney

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It is now around day eighty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and more than 260 fighters have left the Mariupol steel plant, into Russian custody, where their release will be negotiated. But there will be demands for them to stand trial, just as Russian soldiers are currently—one of them pleading guilty to killing civilians yesterday.

Closer to home, Alberta premier Jason Kenney announced that he will step down after receiving only 51.4% support in the UCP’s leadership review. It’s quite something, and he’s also the sixth premier in the last decade because it has become such a poisoned chalice, so good luck to his potential successors. I’ll write more about this in the next day or two, but it’s certainly a sign of how things are going in the province.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1527088935725412354

As for the royal tour, day two was spent in Ottawa, starting with a ceremony to lay a wreath at the National War Memorial, a service at a Ukrainian church, a visit to the Byward Market, the RCMP Musical Ride, a round table discussion on climate finance, and finally a reception at Rideau Hall. There were good crowds for all of them, and it’s a very different reception than the attention of certain other tours this year. At the reception, AFN national chief RoseAnne Archibald raised the notion of an apology from the Queen (which is a bad idea), for what it’s worth. Meanwhile, here is an in-depth look at the first day of the royal tour and its broader context after William and Catherine’s Caribbean royal tour.

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1527013393542131712

https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/1527053388428484608

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Roundup: How to remove a central bank governor

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It is now approximately day seventy-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and war crimes trials are beginning in the country, hearing from one youth who whose father was murdered in front of him, and who was shot by Russian soldiers but who survived. Shooting at civilians—and children especially—is a war crime, and Russians will be hard-pressed to come up with justifications for them. As well, the UN is declaring a “child rights crisis” in the country, given how many children have been killed in the invasion. Meanwhile, here is a look at the “partisans” fighting on Ukraine’s behalf from behind Russian lines, which may or may not be the cause of all of those fires and explosions.

Elsewhere in Europe, Finland’s president and prime minister are urging the country’s parliament to vote in favour of making their application to join NATO, while Sweden is expected to follow suit days later. If Putin’s fig-leaf excuse for invading Ukraine was to stop NATO’s expansion, well, he’s just done the opposite, so good job there. There will be some sensitivity in managing the time between Finland applying for membership and when they are granted it, as they could be particularly vulnerable to Russian aggression during that period.

Closer to home, Pierre Poilievre’s attack on the Bank of Canada is not going unnoticed, but it helps for the rest of us to know just what he’s trying to suggest. To that end, Kevin Carmichael provides needed context to what exactly Poilievre is threatening to do to the Bank of Canada governor, and why he’s wrong on inflation. As well, this thread is a good take on the mechanism for the how governor is appointed and what it would take to remove him.

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Roundup: Fetch the fainting couch for a naughty word

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It is now on or about day seventy-two of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and things appear to be heating up even more in Mariupol, with reports that Russians have started storming the tunnels under the steel plant where civilians and soldiers are holded up, thanks to information from a traitor. There are particular concerns about the capture of Ukrainian soldiers because we are days away from May 9th, which is Victory Day in Russia, where they celebrate their defeat of the Nazis in World War II. The fear is that Russians will cage these captured soldiers and parade them around for Victory Day as a propaganda coup. This means that we may see fights to the death in Mariupol, so that they aren’t captured, not to mention fear that Russians won’t respect the Geneva Conventions or other international law when it comes to those who surrender, given their record of war crimes and atrocities thus far.

Closer to home, if you didn’t catch it earlier, the Deputy Speaker reviewed his recordings and didn’t find any evidence that Justin Trudeau uttered the phrase “fucker” during Question Period on Wednesday, and our long national nightmare is over. But seriously, I am getting very, very tired of the amount of pearl-clutching that this received in the media when they said absolutely nothing about the fact that the questions Trudeau was receiving at the time were from Conservatives who were building a conspiracy theory in real time about that special forces surveillance plane that flew over the occupation during a training flight. The media also doesn’t blink at the rank disinformation that is being disseminated during QP, other than to occasionally both-sides it, but an obscenity? Quick, get me to my fainting couch! Pass my smelling salts! We have a very twisted set of priorities in our national discourse, and it’s absolutely smothering our democracy.

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Roundup: Preparing for another rally, this time of bikers

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It is now approximately day sixty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russians fired two missiles at Kyiv while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was visiting, which is not a good thing. There are also concerns that Russia will attempt sham referendums in the southern and eastern parts of the country that they have captured as an attempt to legitimise their occupations. Elsewhere in Europe, Russia’s decision to cut off Poland and Bulgaria off from natural gas as a form of blackmail was met with condemnation from the rest of Europe, and given that Putin sees a united Europe as a threat, his attempts to divide the community is not working very well.

https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1519734914018590726

Closer to home, Ottawa is bracing for a different kind of convoy this weekend, this time led by motorcycles instead of trucks, and they claim to be veterans concerned about freedoms, and much like the previous occupation, while there were a handful of truckers involved, I’m not sure how many legitimate veterans will be in this rally, or that it won’t have the same group of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists, and grievance tourists tagging along. There don’t seem to be as many links in organisers between this rally and the previous occupation, given that many of them are either in jail or on bail, but that’s not necessarily indicative of the others that tag along. This time, the police seem much more alert to the situation—and to the fact that they are on thin ice with the people of Ottawa (seriously, the whole force needs to be disbanded), and they have set up exclusion zones and barred the rally from stopping at the War Memorial as they had planned, which is just as well because it shouldn’t be used as a symbol for these kinds of events. RCMP and OPP are already in the city in preparation, and the city has announced a bylaw crackdown during the rally.

As for the previous occupation, the added security around Parliament Hill cost $6.3 million in parliamentary security alone, with another $4.5 million being racked up in overtime for Parliamentary Protection Services officers. And then there are the $36.3 million the city is demanding that the federal government foot the bill for (though frankly the city should swallow some of this out of their police budget considering how useless the Ottawa Police were and that they allowed the occupation to take hold). One wonders how much this upcoming rally is going to add to that total.

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Roundup: Incoherent housing plans

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We are now on or about day fifty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has declared victory when it comes to their siege of the strategic city of Mariupol, and has ordered its troops not to storm the last pocket of resistance there. But hey, they’ve “liberated” the city by shelling it to rubble, so good job there. It is estimated that some 2000 Ukrainian troops remain on site, spread out in a network of tunnels and bunkers, along with several thousand civilians. Of course, this also means that Russian forces are likely going to simply try and wait out those remaining troops and civilians as they run out of food and supplies, and trap them inside.

Closer to home, Pierre Poilievre has been unveiling more of his housing platform, but…it’s pretty incoherent, in a lot of ways. There isn’t that much financial leverage that the federal government can wield when it comes to ending NIMBYism and seven decades of market incentives for single-family homes that are unsustainable and which only continue to exacerbate the affordability crisis (not to mention the climate crisis). Oh, and Poilievre is defending his own rental property portfolio, citing that he’s providing affordable rental accommodations to two “deserving families.”

The last point on that list is pretty critical—it would undermine central bank independence, and one imagines could actually create a deflationary spiral in the right circumstances that would create a depression, which is precisely what they were avoiding when they engaged in quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Jennifer Robson has even more concerns about the incoherence of the plan in this thread. Meanwhile, I would also recommend checking out this thread by Mike Moffatt about just how complex the drivers of the housing situation in Ontario is. It’s not just one thing—it’s a lot of moving parts that got us to where we are now.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1517214855572320256

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Roundup: Faux concern over a decades-old system

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We’re now on or about day forty-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces are digging in and preparing for a renewed Russian offensive on the eastern and south-eastern portions of the country. UK prime minister Boris Johnson visited with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv over the weekend, to show his support and solidarity in person. Elsewhere over the weekend, Ukraine was trying to ensure humanitarian corridors out of the Donbas region for Ukrainians to evacuate in advance of the coming Russian onslaught in the region.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1512858863728570369

https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1513190467743236103

Closer to home, we are being subjected to a bunch of nonsense around Canadian content regulations in the context of Bill C-11, which updates the Broadcasting Act to now include streaming platforms like Netflix or Disney+. The particular nonsense? The notion that the CRTC will define what qualifies as Canadian. Erm, except they have been doing this already. They’ve had a well-defined point system for what counts as CanCon since 1984. Nineteen gods-damned eighty-four. This is not new. Extending broadcast regulations to streaming platforms changes absolutely nothing about what counts as Canadian content, because the rules are platform neutral. For decades, production companies needed a 6/10 on the CanCon scale to qualify for tax credits. None of this is new.

The problem, however, is that in the debates over C-11 (and its predecessor in the previous parliament, Bill C-10) you had Conservative MPs trying to make this an issue (and Rachael Thomas, who was then Rachael Harder, was particularly vocal about this). She kept trying to propagate this insane notion that somehow these rules should be in the legislation, which is bonkers because that shouldn’t be the job of Parliament, nor is legislation responsive in the way that regulation is. We have arm’s-length regulators like the CRTC for a reason, which is to de-politicise these kinds of decisions. Sure, everyone comes up with supposedly scandalous examples of why certain things which may sound Canadian on the surface isn’t considered Canadian under the CanCon rules (such as The Handmaid’s Tale series), and it’s only until you look at the points system and think through the rules that you realise that these examples really aren’t that scandalous. The whole point is to ensure that our industry isn’t just a branch plant for American productions who can do it cheaper and get tax credits up here. It’s to ensure that there are incentives for things that are actually Canadian-led and produced, and under Canadian creative control, to get made. You can argue that the rules need to be updated, but let’s not pretend that there is anything new here (and really, The Canadian Press deserves a rap on the knuckles for this kind of framing of the issue).

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Roundup: A more modest budget than feared

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We are now somewhere around day forty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s retreat from Chernihiv has shown much more destruction in its wake. Given that Russia is re-positioning to the Donbas region, Ukraine is trying to maintain humanitarian corridors from the area, while pleading with NATO and other countries for yet more weapons to fight the Russian invaders. Meanwhile, RCMP officers in Canada are reaching out to Ukrainians who have made it here to gather evidence of Russian war crimes, so that it can be forwarded to The Hauge.

As for the budget, it was not the orgy of NDP-led spending that Candice Bergen and others had been hinting at, though it did increase spending somewhat, but that was largely offset by higher revenues thanks to the booming economy. The deficit is reducing rapidly, as is the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the “fiscal anchor.” In fact, Bergen’s reaction speech was pretty much drafted with a very different budget in mind, and when called on this, she prevaricated. Jagmeet Singh, predictably, said there was enough in there for him to support (checklist here), but he still put on a show about criticising things he didn’t like, and the environmental provisions in particular.

https://twitter.com/AdamScotti/status/1512237421513125897

Some specifics:

  • Here are the $10 billion in housing measures the government is proposing, though some of those measures will do nothing for affordability.
  • The corporate tax rate is going up, and there is a special surcharge being levied against banks and insurance companies, as promised.
  • There is money allocated for dental care, but no details on the implementation mechanism, which is very important to have.
  • The $8 billion over five years in new defence spending won’t get us to the NATO two-percent goal, but a needed defence review is included.
  • There is some $500 million earmarked for more military aid for Ukraine, plus another $1 billion in loans to prop up their economy.
  • There is new money for cyber-security, much of it going to CSE.
  • Some $15 billion is earmarked for the creation of two new arms-length bodies to help with medium-and-long term growth.
  • There is $4.3 billion over seven years for Indigenous housing.
  • As expected, the tax credit for carbon capture and storage projects is drawing heat from environmental groups.
  • There is $3.7 million being earmarked for mental health services for Black civil servants (as they have a class action lawsuit underway).
  • There is some more money for arts organizations including the National Arts Centre.
  • Both the National Post and The Canadian Press have lists of smaller items in the budget that may have escape notice.

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