Tag Archives: North Korea

Roundup: The report and its “legal imperatives”

Posted on by

As expected, the MMIW Inquiry report was delivered in a ceremony yesterday morning, and the prime minister accepted the report at the ceremony and promised that a national action plan would be developed in concert with Indigenous people – but the fact that he didn’t echo the use of the word “Canadian genocide” from the report had everyone trying to make an Issue out of it (though he made a qualified use of the term at a speech later in the day in Vancouver). The overall theme of the report is that there needs to be a “decolonization” in order for things to get better – which is easier said than done. The report’s 231 recommendations are phrased as “legal imperatives,” but some of them are tremendously problematic or impractical. Some of it is useful – suggestions around policing (which the RCMP promises to review carefully), some specific recommendations about the “man camps” that accompany resource development projects in Indigenous territory, more Indigenous prosecutors and judges (but less helpful is the suggestion that they may require a separate judicial system). But far less practical “imperatives” included things like demanding that the government create jobs in Indigenous communities (because we have a command-and-control economy?), or the creation of a basic income for all Canadians (erm, you know how much that would actually cost, right? Right?). How those kinds of recommendations can be phrased as “legal imperatives” is in and of itself a problem.

And then we’re back to the “genocide” issue, which has sucked up a lot of the oxygen. The Commissioners asserted that it’s a different kind of genocide than the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda (which had Roméo Dallaire objecting), but wanted to remove the qualification of “cultural” genocide that was previously used in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, and which was accepted by pretty much all facets of Canadian society. Expect this particular polarizing language to continue to dominate the discussion in the weeks ahead.

In hot takes, Chantal Hébert worries that the report’s fairly hardline, all-or-nothing approach will be an excuse for people to tune out rather than engage with its findings (much like the apocalyptic language around climate change has not had the desired effect of spurring action). Chris Selley, meanwhile, points out some of the glaring omissions in the report, the lack of some context when it comes to rates of murders of Indigenous men, for example, and some of the contradictory recommendations such as being against mandatory minimum sentences because they disproportionately affect Indigenous people – while calling for mandatory minimums that are punitive if victims are Indigenous women, never mind that most of the perpetrators will be Indigenous men.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Bernier goes full tinfoil hat

Posted on by

Maxime Bernier appears to be going full tinfoil hat, with a Twitter thread about a supposed move to create some kind of UN parliament that will erase borders, and that Canada will be absorbed into, and I can’t even. I literally cannot.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1082829073922093057

As Carvin points out, this is a campaign that is orchestrated by Neo-Nazi sympathizers in Europe, and it’s the very same thing that Andrew Scheer was also have been touting this very same conspiracy theory as part of their attempt to push back against the UN global compact on migration. But then again, Scheer and company also gave succour to racists in order to try and paint Trudeau as some kind of bully, so it shouldn’t be a surprise, and they’re being wilfully blind and deaf to the white nationalists and xenophobes that are infiltrating the “yellow vest” protests that they like to promote, so there’s that.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1082252207234473985

Meanwhile, Bernier has tapped an anti-abortion, anti-trans “Christian pundit” as his party’s candidate in Burnaby South. And he’s being accused of running a campaign in that riding that is trying to depict Jagmeet Singh’s efforts as being one that is running only for the Indo-Canadian community, so, you know, the xenophobia tuba instead of the dogwhistle.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A bad case for a dumb idea

Posted on by

The flirtation with separatist sentiment in Alberta is bringing all the boys to the yard, and suddenly they’re all trying to make a cockamamie case for why this is a real threat. Yesterday it was respected tax economist Jack Mintz who decided to stray way outside of his lane, and insist that Alberta has a better case for this than Great Britain does with Bexit, which is patent nonsense both on its face, and in every single one of his nonsense arguments. And yet, in the rush to pander to the angry sentiment in Alberta and to offer up simplistic solutions and snake oil to what is a series of protracted (and in some cases intractable) problems that require time and patience to resolve. Mintz later went on the CBC to defend his column, and made a bunch of other nonsense arguments that presumes that the US would be a better customer for Alberta oil…despite that the actual pipeline capacity going from Alberta to the US is minimal and don’t think they could easily build more if they can’t even get Keystone XL over the finish line there.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1075414877890502656

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1075415929394102272

Meanwhile, Tyler Dawson makes the case that such a separatist movement not only lacks logic, it also lacks a real leader or the intellectual heft to actually make it something viable. Andrew Leach takes Mintz to task on his assumptions about demand for Alberta oil. Jen Gerson tells Alberta that while they have legitimate grievances, the insistence that Ottawa is simply out to get them risks becoming a pathology, while the separation talk is terrible, and simply burning the system down won’t help anyone. Can I get an amen up in here?

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1075469089450078208

Continue reading →

Roundup: Huawei, Trump, and the rule of law

Posted on by

The issue around the arrest of Huawei’s CFO in Vancouver last week took a number of turns yesterday, and is proving to be an utter gong show, thanks entirely to Donald Trump. So, to recap, the US ambassador to Canada stated that there was absolutely no political motivation behind the request for the arrest and extradition to the US, but meanwhile in China, a former Canadian diplomat who now works with International Crisis Group was arrested in China for no apparent reason, and there is no confirmation as to whether this is in retaliation for the Huawei arrest. Back in Vancouver, said CFO was granted bail for $10 million with five guarantors while she will await extradition hearings – and she has to surrender her passport, be under 24/7 surveillance and wear an ankle monitor, because she is considered a high flight risk. (Here’s a good backgrounder on all of the issues).

And then, it all went pear-shaped. Why? Because Donald Trump suddenly said that he’d intervene in the case if it helps to get a trade deal with China, which undermines the rule of law that Canada has been operating under and trying to assure Beijing that we’re operating under, and that because we have an independent judiciary with processes to be followed (which they can’t get their heads around because their judicial system is politicised), and all of the evidence around the criminal activities, allegations of fraud and of violating sanctions is apparently all for naught, because the US president has put his foot in it. And lo, Canada is relatively screwed by the whole thing. Hooray.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1072642206756990978

Continue reading →

Roundup: Scheer’s vague hand-wavey promises

Posted on by

We’ve been through a week of particularly misleading rhetoric about the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on the impact of a $50/tonne carbon tax on the Canadian economy, where the figures about the “damage” it would cause to our economy supposes that the money collected would be either lit on fire, or given in lump sums to individual families rather than recycled in provincial tax cuts or other measures. But confident that it reinforces their narrative, the Conservatives have been parading it around as “proof” that they are right to oppose carbon pricing. To that end, while doing the rounds on the Sunday political shows, Andrew Scheer said that his party’s climate plan – yet to be revealed, but he promises that’ll happen before the 2019 election – will both meet Paris Accord targets but won’t impose a carbon tax. That’s…special.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/990706861056839680

Given previous Conservative positions on this, it’s likely that this will involve either magic, or some particularly onerous and costly regulations of industry that will simply internalize the costs (which get passed onto consumers) rather than having that cost be out in the open so that people can see it in front of them and make choices appropriates – you know, a market pricing mechanism that you would think a conservative party would favour over red tape and regulations. (This of course assumes that they are actually a conservative party instead of a right-flavoured populist party, which we know that they’ve become). They will claim that they had a record of carbon reduction while in office, but it had zero to do with their own politics, and everything to do with Ontario shuttering their coal-fired electricity plants and the economic downturn. Remember that their “coal-fired regulations” applied to new plants which hadn’t been built yet, and their sector-by-sector regulations were slow to roll out, and steadfastly strayed away from our biggest-emitting sectors, like the oil sands (which they still haven’t given any indication how they would mitigate their emissions without carbon pricing to drive innovation). I suspect we’re going to be looking at some hand-waving about future technology that will magically remove carbon from the atmosphere, but I leave myself room to be pleasantly surprised.

Meanwhile, on the subject of carbon pricing, here’s Andrew Leach to correct some of the performative outrage and bad economics that have been passed around in the past week.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Improperly claiming a state function

Posted on by

News came out of the PMO first thing yesterday morning that the PM was planning a “state visit” to India, with stops in Agra, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and New Delhi in mid-February. And congratulations if the terminology there made you look askance.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/955410767993487360

Apparently nobody but Paul Wells clocked them on this fact, and it’s not really surprising, but it’s tremendously disappointing. Why? Because Trudeau and his PMO should know better, especially after we lived through the first few years of the Harper era where he was deliberately blurring the lines between his functions as head of government and the ceremonial trappings of head of state, as Harper got inappropriate salutes from honour guards on Canada Day, or he put himself on the parade podium during Remembrance Day ceremonies (at least, until members of the Royal Family showed up on those events and put him in his place, protocol-wise). You would think that, in the interests of not following Harper’s example, that they would want to actually use proper protocol. But apparently not.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/955495495987642368

This shouldn’t be that hard, but I’m torn as to whether we chalk this up to simple incompetence, or whether this is part of the trend that has been grumbled about where Trudeau seems more interested in the ceremonial trappings and the appearance that he would rather be Governor General than prime minister. I’m generally a fan of the theory that one shouldn’t attribute to malice what simple incompetence will explain, but come on. That said, the amount of protocol slippage in recent years is reaching epidemic proportions, with state funerals being granted to those who did not merit them, and the fact that this government hasn’t replaced the Canadian Secretary to the Queen following his retirement, meaning that our point of contact with Buckingham Palace is in the hands of bureaucrats in the department of Canadian Heritage of dubious motives and ability (and everything I’ve heard is that they tend to be small-r republicans, hostile to our constitutional monarchy). This is a disturbing trend, and we should call it out before it gets worse.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Duffy’s privilege problems

Posted on by

At long last, the Senate has responded to Senator Mike Duffy’s lawsuit against it, and is asking the Ontario courts to remove it from the suit because of parliamentary privilege. This was to be expected, and I’m surprised it took this long, but here we are. Duffy’s lawyer says that he’ll fight it, of course, but he’s going to have an uphill battle because this is very much a live issue.

For a refresher as to why this matters as an issue of privilege is because it’s about the ability of the Senate to discipline one of its own members. This is especially important because the Senate is a self-governing body of Parliament, and because it’s appointed with institutional independence and security of tenure in order to ensure that there is that independence. In other words, the Senate has to be able to police its own because there’s no one else who can while still giving it the ability to be self-governing (as we explored in great detail over the Auditor General’s desire to have an external audit body oversee the chamber’s activities). And indeed, UOttawa law professor Carissima Mathen agrees that it would be odd for the Senate not to have the power to suspend its own members, and raises questions about whether it’s appropriate for the judiciary to interfere in this kind of parliamentary activity. (It’s really not).

The even bigger complicating factor in this, of course, is that NDP court case trying to fight the House of Commons’ Board of Internal Economy decision around their satellite offices. The Federal Court ruled there that it’s not a case of privilege (which is being appealed), and Duffy’s former lawyer, Donald Bayne, said that this is a precedent in their favour while on Power & Politics yesterday. And he might have a point, except that the Commons’ internal economy board is a separate legislative creature, whereas the Senate’s internal economy committee is a committee of parliament and not a legislative creation. This is a Very Big Difference (and one which does complicate the NDP case, to the point that MPs may have actually waived their own ability to claim privilege when they structured their Board in such a fashion – something that we should probably retroactively smack a few MPs upside the head for). I don’t expect that Duffy will win this particular round, meaning that his lawsuit will be restricted to the RCMP for negligent investigation, but even that’s a tough hill to climb in and of itself. He may not have much luck with this lawsuit in the long run.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Harder’s shrouded call for time allocation

Posted on by

Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” Senator Peter Harder is back at it again, reviving his terrible idea of a Senate business committee, and putting out a piece about how great it would be. Just imagine, he says – ensuring that there are fewer gaps between interventions on bills will mean that Canadians can follow the debate more easily! It will safeguard substantive debate! The unspoken issue here is that it won’t let someone, probably the Official Opposition in the Senate, to delay debates.

https://twitter.com/senharder/status/953308150421229570

In other words, Harder not only wants a committee to time allocate all government bills in the Senate, he wants to delegate the authority to do this time allocation to a particular clique who will do the dirty work for him (because as we’ve seen time and again, he’s loathe to do the actual negotiation of debate timetables with the other caucus groups as it is). This should, of course, be concerning to everyone because the Senate doesn’t debate bills like the House of Commons does, nor should it. The way the rules are currently structured maximise the rights of individual senators to speak to any bill or motion before the Senate, and it gives them an opportunity to carefully draft responses to the matter that were just given before them, rather than, as the Commons does, simply have them draft generic speeches that will then be read into the record (unless you’ve got someone adept enough to speak extemporaneously for their allotted time, which happens not at all in the Commons, and very rarely in the Senate). There is no actual demonstrated need for this – there isn’t any kind of crisis of bills not passing the Senate, and the few bills that are being deliberately delayed are either private members’ bills (which Senate rules don’t allow for time allocation), or it’s because the newer senators haven’t learned the procedural tactics that are letting the Conservative senators take as many adjournments on debate as they can. It’s a temporary problem that Harder is misdiagnosing and is looking to wield a sledgehammer to fix, completely unnecessarily.

As I’ve argued before, any gamesmanship that the Conservatives are playing is leaving the Senate vulnerable to arguments like Harder is making to need these kinds of time allocation measures – and they should be aware that they’re making Harder’s arguments for him. But it’s an unnecessary proposal that Harder is making, and one that not only misunderstands how things work in the Senate, but it will have consequences and it will diminish, rather than enhance, the debate. But we have a rich tradition of tinkering with the rules and making things worse off as a result that Harder is playing right into.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Draft climate legislation revealed

Posted on by

The government unveiled their draft legislation for carbon pricing mechanisms, largely as the backstop for those provinces whose governments are toeing the agreed-upon line, and it includes both pricing incentives for those who can get 30 percent below the national standards, as well as the ability for the federal government to directly reimburse individuals for their carbon payments rather than just returning it all to provincial coffers and letting the provincial government figure it out.

Energy economists Andrew Leach and Trevor Tombe dig into the announcements a bit more.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Concern trolling the NAFTA talks

Posted on by

Amidst all of the other drama around the Trumpocalypse, talk of NAFTA renegotiations have been ramping up again with the next round of talks in Montreal taking place in a couple of weeks. So far, people seem to be backing away from the ramparts and are sounding out extensions to the talks rather than trying to complete them as soon as possible, given the political deadlines of the Mexican federal election this summer and American mid-term elections this fall. Chrystia Freeland herself went out to say that this was good, that artificial deadlines weren’t necessary, and so far, so good. Cabinet ministers were also back on the charm circuit down in the States, and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is leading his own delegation next week – but not before he took to the Mississauga Board of Trade to blast the government’s handling of the whole thing. According to Scheer’s obvious concern trolling, Trudeau “doesn’t seem to have a plan” (which you would have to be completely blind and inattentive to believe, considering that Trudeau’s plan has been pretty bloody obvious), and we’ve seen plenty of examples in Question Period where the Conservatives insist that the government is fumbling the deal with all of the “unserious” talk of gender and Indigenous chapters. And while I get that Scheer and the Conservatives are supposed to hold government to account, this falls into the same category as their other efforts that rely on disingenuous statements and mendacious framing of issues in order to try and score cheap points. Scheer has also been disingenuous about the state of the lapsed softwood lumber agreement in the waning Obama years, and has tried to frame what happened with the TPP signing as more fumbling from Trudeau when in fact things were communicated to the Japanese, and the Australian media torqued the story to suit their own domestic purposes. And if you’re wondering what the NDP is up to, well, they’re still demanding that everything be out in the open, because that’s totally how you want to negotiate these things.

As for the government’s charm offensive, it seems to be meeting more with apathy with the Americans than anything, as NAFTA talks are apparently not on their radar while they focus on those tax cuts that Trump promised. That may be why the government decided to play hardball with the WTO challenge against the rash of protectionist measures in the States, such as softwood duties or the Bombardier C-Series tariffs, and Freeland has been musing recently about “creative thinking” to drive the talks forward, so we’ll see what next steps are. But you can’t say that the government doesn’t have a plan. This issue has consumed them for the past year, and they very obviously are doing something about it, which makes Scheer’s assertions all the more ridiculous.

Continue reading →