Tag Archives: Official Languages

QP: Is it federal hostage-taking, or provincial?

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As Trudeau was at the G20 summit in Bali, his deputy was present for QP once again. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, as he usually does, and he decried the crisis of families trying to pay for home heating, citing that Acadians on the East Coast and Franco-Ontarians in Northern Ontario use diesel (because he wanted to address francophones not in Quebec as Quebec has a cap-and-trade system), which are being impacted by the so-called “triple, triple, triple” carbon price (which isn’t not until 2030). Chrystia Freeland insisted that her economic plan was responsible and caring at the same time, such as doubling the GST credit and the rental support for low-income people. Poilievre switched to English to denounce that Freeland boasted about not needing a car because she lives in downtown Toronto, and denounced the supposed tripling of the carbon price. Freeland responded that she has probably driven more pick-up trucks than Poilievre has, and began laying into his advice about investing in crypto, and demanded he apologies to Canadians. Poilievre decried $3/litre diesel, and what that will cost people who need it for heating, and demanded the carbon price be cancelled. Freeland insisted that the Conservatives only want to eviscerate EI, pensions, making polluting free, and to claw back climate incentive cheques, or depriving low-income people of rental supports or dental care. Poilievre retorted “false, false, false, false,” and then misquoted the PBO’s report on carbon prices, and repeated his demand to cancel the price. Freeland took the opportunity to read a script about what the Conservatives are “blocking” in the budget implementation bill. Poilievre insisted that they have a majority with the NDP, so they can do what they like, then blamed them for rising house prices before repeating his “triple” ear worm. Freeland slowly recited that they have a plan that is compassionate and fiscally responsible, citing items like ending interest on student loans and the changes to the Canada Worker Benefit.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and accused the government of encouraging the anglicisation of Quebec through their official languages bill. Freeland said that while she is an anglophone, the government considers French a priority, supporting them to keep speaking French on an English continent. Therrien railed that companies like Air Canada and VIA Rail continue to flout their obligations and are trying to avoid Quebec’s language laws, and Freeland insisted that they do understand how hard it is to protect the French language but they support doing so.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he raised the crisis in emergency rooms, and accuse the federal government of inaction, as though it was their jurisdiction to do so. Freeland insisted that she was sure that every member in the Chamber understand how precious children are, and insisted that they are a priority, and that as for healthcare, they have are increasing transfers by eight percent. Singh repeated the question in English and got the same answer.

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Roundup: The federal walkout in the face of the premiers’ games

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The federal-provincial health ministers’ meeting broke down with federal ministers Jean-Yves Duclos and Carolyn Bennett walking out after a communiqué from the premiers was leaked, decrying a failure of the talks, drafted five days ago, indicating that there was no intent to listen to the federal government’s position on tying increased funding to accountability measures like outcomes and pan-Canadian data. Duclos said in his press scrum after walking out that just increasing the transfer to provinces is not a plan, which is one hundred percent correct, because we know that provinces have a demonstrated history of spending additional federal dollars on other things that are not healthcare. (Duclos’ statement here). The provincial spokes-minister, Adrian Dix, carried on with his disingenuous talking points about not being able to fix the system without more money, or demanding a first ministers’ meeting about this, the only purpose of which would be for the premiers to gang up on the prime minister for the cameras. Dix also painted this false picture of lamenting that the federal government couldn’t come together with them like they did over COVID, completely ignoring that the federal government sent billions of additional dollars to provinces for COVID and most of those provinces simply put that money directly onto their bottom lines to end their fiscal year with a surplus, which is not the point of sending money to them for healthcare.

Justin Trudeau, earlier in the day, was already calling the premiers out on this bullshit by pointing out that they are crying poor while they are offering tax breaks for their wealthier citizens, which is not a sign that their budgets are hurting for federal dollars. And this is exactly the point—premiers have largely decided to make this the federal government’s problem, because they can get away with this particular lie. Legacy media will continue to take the line that so long as a single federal dollar is involved, this becomes a federal responsibility, which is not how this works. The crumbling healthcare system is not the federal government’s problem. They have done nothing but increase funding year over year. The provinces have created this mess, and in all likelihood exacerbated it deliberately in order to force the federal government’s hand in giving them a lot more money with no strings attached, but the federal government isn’t blinking, and is finally starting to call bullshit. Let’s see if legacy media actually catches on (but I have serious doubts they will).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 259:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’s willing to negotiate peace—on his terms, and not Russia’s, but forestalled criticism Russia was levelling against him. Otherwise, there was more shelling in Bakhmut, and two civilians were seriously wounded by unexploded mines around Kharkiv.

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QP: It’s hogwash and poppycock

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In advance of the Fall Economic Statement, neither the prime minister nor his deputy were present, and neither was Pierre Poilievre, for a change. That left Jasraj Hallan to lead off, and declared the Statement to be the “last chance” to stop tax increases and inflationary spending (of which there are no actual taxes being raised for ordinary Canadians, nor is the spending actually inflationary). He insisted that people are paying more in taxes than ever before (not sure that’s actually true), and railed about the so-called “Liberal inflation tax,” and demanded the prime minister stop spending. Randy Boissonnault reminded him that the plan would be released in two hours, but that they could rely on the government to do what is right, and supporting Canadians who need it. Hallan insisted the government’s “greed knows no bounds” and decried rising interest rates because of the “Liberal inflation tax” and demanded the government stop spending. Boissonnault reminded him that they reduced taxes on Canadians five times, and that the Conservatives voted against it every time. Hallan repeated his demand a third time, to which Boissonnault listed that the Conservative plan is to cut benefits, EI, climate incentives, child care, and so on. Pierre Paul-Hus took over in French, and declared that the government is in no hurry to reduce inflation because that would reduce its revenues (which doesn’t actually match what the government is doing and is completely misleading), and demanded no new taxes, and Boissonnault said the statement was both economically false and cruel, as helping Canadians who need it is not inflationary. Paul-Hus misquoted Mark Carney about inflation and blamed it on “irresponsible spending” (which, once again, is not true), and Boissonnault quoted former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz in saying that the government’s measures stopped a deflationary spiral, while the Conservatives only want to cut, cut, cut.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he worried about the announced immigration targets, insisting that Quebec cannot handle that many and wanted a slowdown. Sean Fraser stated that the Quebec doesn’t set targets, the federal government does, and we need immigration. Blanchet insisted that this was about trying to weaken the Quebec nation and drown them out, to which Pablo Rodriguez needled that the Bloc was so concerned about percentages when these are about men, women and children.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and in French, he cited a report stating that the government was losing $30 billion per year to tax evasion and the Irving family in particular was  a prime offender. Diane Lebouthillier said that those who evaded taxes would get a knock on the door from the CRA. Daniel Blaikie then worried about Loblaws’ profits, demanding that the chains “pay what they owe,” and a windfall profit tax, to which Boissonnault listed the actions they have taken around raising income taxes and investments in the CRA to combat evasion.

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Roundup: The fiscal stance is tight

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer was doing his actual job of providing alternative fiscal forecasts for Parliamentarians, and his projection of the economic situation is that growth will slow over the second half of this year, which isn’t a bad thing because it will help to tackle inflation, particularly as the Bank of Canada continues to raise rates. The deficit continues to shrink, as does the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which shows our fiscal stance is not too loose.

Here’s economist Kevin Milligan putting things into more context, but the bottom line is that the Conservatives’ assertion that government spending is fuelling inflation is not true, and they need to come up with some more credible talking points. (Yeah, yeah, good luck with that one, I know).

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580598737906597894

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580602979140632576

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1580605473476476929

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 232:

It was another day of Russian strikes against civilian targets, including by Iranian-built kamikaze drones, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to request more air defence systems to protect the country. Ukrainian forces boasted that they took down four Russian helicopters in the space of eighteen minutes.

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Roundup: Independent thought alarm, Iran edition

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I hear the independent thought alarm sounding as Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, who is Iranian-Canadian, is being critical of the government’s response when it comes to sanctions on the Iranian regime, and he wants them to do more. This being said, he has stressed that the minister, Mélanie Joly, has been very receptive to talking to him about the situation, and hearing his ideas, but that wasn’t of any interest to the CBC. No, they were interested in the narrative that even Liberal MPs aren’t happy with the government’s moves to date on sanctioning the Iranian regime, and lo, they put on an “expert” who says the government should do more, in spite of the fact that the don’t have the actual capacity to enforce more sanctions, let alone monitor the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I don’t expect the party to come down on Ehsassi for this, and the Liberals have demonstrated that they are willing to put up with a certain degree of independence from their MPs (more so than pretty much any other party right now), but I always find the reaction of the media interesting in situations like this, because as much as they claim they want more independence for MPs, when it gets demonstrated, they immediately start acting like this is either an attack on the government/prime minister, and they try to wedge it as much as possible to make it sound exciting. But all this really does is crack the whip without the party Whip ever needing to do a thing, because the media is enforcing discipline more than he ever could. Some members of the media should probably reflect on that fact

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 222:

Ukrainian forces have made a major breakthrough in the south, advancing along the Dnipro River and threatening Russian supply lines in the region. In the northeast, the liberation of Lyman is providing a staging ground to press into the Donbas region.

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Roundup: Demanding LNG with someone else’s money

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While the federal Conservatives continue to promote the fantasy notion that Canada can somehow supply Europe and Japan with LNG to displace Russian supply—something that was never going to happen because of the timelines for projects to be built and that they need to be in operation to make their money back—under the notion that Ottawa needs to “get out of the way,” again ignoring that there has been no market case for it, Jason Kenney is going one step further and demanding that the federal government to build LNG export infrastructure. Which is odd because the Conservatives howled with outrage when the federal government nationalized the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline in order to sufficiently de-risk it for it to complete construction. If there’s no market case, why not get the federal government to do it?

But let’s also remember that the proposed Kitimat LNG facility on the West Coast, fully permitted and approved, is not being built, because there is no market case. Hence why Andrew Leach is calling out Kenney’s nonsense below, particularly the fact that Kenney is calling on the federal government to spend their money rather than Kenney spending his province’s own money. You know, like he did with Keystone XL, and whoops, lost billions because he made a bad bet and the American administration didn’t restore its permits. Funny that.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 217:

UN human rights investigators have found that Russia has been violating international law when it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war during the invasion of Ukraine, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also asked for Canadian help in ridding his country of mines left behind by Russian forces. Meanwhile, there are reports that Russian conscription officers are at borders trying to intercept would-be conscripts from fleeing the country.

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Roundup: Salivating over magical LNG terminals

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With the visit of German chancellor Olaf Scholz to Canada, there has been no shortage of media salivating at the narrative of Canada somehow sending liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe to displace Russian supply, and they keep going on about it. Power & Politics had an interview with Scholz, and the first third of it was spent with Vassy Kapelos hectoring Scholz about whether he wanted Canadian LNG, and if he told the Quebec government to stop opposing pipelines, and I’m being serious that she actually asked him this, as though he wasn’t going to diplomatically tell her that it wasn’t his place to tell them that (which he did). And while he said sure, Canadian LNG would be great, there is no way that’s going to happen. There is no infrastructure to do so. Building it takes three to five years, and even then, if there is a steady supply (good luck with that, because it’ll drive up costs for product domestically), it’ll take 25 to 30 years to make those investments in that infrastructure pay off, and we’d be well past 2050 then. (I wrote a column on this recently). It would quite literally be investing in a stranded asset. But that won’t stop Canadian media outlets from pounding on this narrative drum, over and over again. You would think that reporters and TV hosts might have done some homework to realize that there is no business case, so you look foolish by pursuing this dead-end line of questioning, but apparently not.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1562196541451800576

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1562198870243028993

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 181:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is vowing of a “powerful response” if Russia attacks the country on its Independence Day, which also will mark six months since the illegal invasion began. And American intelligence is also warning that something may happen, which is why they are urging their nationals leave the country. Russians did conduct air strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, not far from the nuclear plant, and they have been shelling near Kharkiv in the northeast. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada says that they are investigating 28,000 war crimes, including child deaths.

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Roundup: Mystified about our “clean” gas

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There has been a pervasive talking point of late, which asserts that Canadian oil and gas is “cleaner” than elsewhere—somehow—and that should be justification enough for us to increase production. There is also a pervasive myth that emission have come down in the oil sands, which is blatantly untrue—in some projects emissions intensity has decreased, meaning there are fewer emission per barrel produced, except that they increased the number of barrels produced, so emissions haven’t actually gone down. And yet Conservatives in particular pat themselves on the back about this, and keep repeating how “clean” our energy products are (when they aren’t making the risible “ethical oil” canard). So imagine my surprise when Toronto Star columnist Heather Scoffield uncritically repeated this assertion that Canadian natural gas is “cleaner” than other countries’ product, which is news to me. I grew up in Alberta—I have seen the literal mountains of sulphur that has been removed from the extracted hydrocarbons. Alberta is replete with sour gas wells, which are dangerous, and I’ve also seen the evacuation plans for areas if such a sour gas well blows. I’m not sure how this is “clean” gas. So, I reached out to an expert about the assertion. He’s mystified too. Perhaps our national columnists shouldn’t just take Conservative and industry talking points at face value.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 177:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Lviv, and they discussed the fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and the deal around grain shipments. Meanwhile, Russians struck at Kharkiv again, while more explosions were reported at a Russian military airport in Russian-occupied Crimea, with reports that Russian air forces fired at targets near the city of Kerch in Crimea.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1560022545356791810

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Roundup: Giving Dean French undeserved credibility

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In an attempt to keep litigating the “revelation” from court documents that there was a “potential breakthrough” with the occupation in Ottawa in advance of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the CBC credulously brought the “negotiator, Dean French, onto Power & Politics to give his side of the story. It was a complete gong show. French was self-aggrandizing while trying to appear faux-humble, and insisted he wasn’t taking sides when he clearly was, particularly in repeating the patent horseshit from former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Brian Peckford, who spent the occupation claiming he’s the last living signatory of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (he’s not), and that the public health measures violated the Charter and that the government was operating illegally (they’re not, and the courts have pointed out that those measures are saved under Section 1 of the Charter, which is reasonable limits in a free and democratic society). Yet there was French, unchallenged by the host of the show, repeating these claims from Peckford in justifying his assertion that the government was in the wrong. It’s also patently absurd on its face that French’s negotiations would have done anything about the occupation—shifting a few trucks from residential streets and packing them even tighter onto Wellington was not any kind of solution, not that there was agreement among the occupiers on even doing this much. That was not a solution, because the occupation would still have been in place, and the occupiers would have continued to terrorize the residents and businesses in the area. There was no “breakthrough” to be had, and I cannot believe that CBC would go along with the fiction that there was. No, wait—I do believe it, because they uncritically both-sides everything, just like they did with this French interview, and even more to the point, gave French credibility in this. (French, for those of you who may not be aware, was Doug Ford’s initial chief of staff who was forced to resign because he was handing out government appointments to unqualified people with whom he had a lacrosse connection. And yes, I’m being completely serious). The complete lack of critical thinking on the part of P&P’s producers and host when it came to this interview, or the choice they made in pursuing this losing line of inquiry is particularly troubling. Credulously both-sidesing is not journalism—it’s stenography, and that is costing us our democracy.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 176:

Ukrainian forces say they beat back a Russian attack in the southern region of Kherson, while Russian forces shelled the city of Kharkiv in the north, killing more civilians. This as the UN Secretary General is set to meet with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the western city of Lviv. Meanwhile, it sounds like Russia sacked the head of their Black Sea fleet after the recent explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea, and that they have relocated more of their planes and helicopters either deeper in the peninsula or into Russian territory.

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Roundup: UCP contest finds new lows

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As the UCP leadership race in Alberta meanders through clown town, outgoing leader Jason Kenney took a slightly bold step, and called Danielle Smith’s “Sovereignty Act” proposal “nuts,” which is an interesting enough intrusion in the race. But, because this is Kenney, he then took it a step too far and spouted a bunch of nonsense about the lieutenant governor not signing it, and no, that’s not how this works. There is pretty much no ability for an LG to refuse to sign legislation post-Statute of Westminster, because they aren’t reporting to the foreign desk of the Imperial government in Britain. Federal powers of disallowance may still be on the books, but have for all intents and purposes gone extinct because we have courts that have the power to strike down laws, and yes, that does matter. So you can bet that if Smith were to win said contest, and did manage to somehow pass said bill without a full-on caucus revolt (because it’s sheer, unconstitutional lunacy), you can rest assured that said bill would be immediately challenged in the courts, if not outright referred to the Supreme Court of Canada by the federal government, where it would summarily be struck down, likely in a ruling from the bench because it is so blatantly unconstitutional on its very face. So we have both Smith and Kenney in the wrong here, and this contest just keeps finding new lows.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 173:

Russian troops spent the weekend shelling the cities of Nikopol and Kramatorsk, as well as claimed the village of Pisky on the outskirts of Donetsk province. This as Ukrainian forces were continuing their counter-offensive in the south, striking the last working bridge over the Dnieper River, cutting off Russian supply lines. Ukrainians also say that they are targeting Russians that are firing near or from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility, and are accusing Russians of using it as a shield. As well, here is a look at Ukrainian drone pilot training, where video game skills are a welcome addition.

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