Tag Archives: Pablo Rodriguez

Roundup: Speaker Fergus on the spot in new privilege battle

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The brewing privilege battle over the Sustainable Development Technologies Canada documents is largely going under-reported, save for the National Post, but it’s going to be an interesting showdown with the Speaker about the refusal to turn over these documents. The government’s argument is that the stated purpose for demanding these documents is not for Parliamentary business, such as committee study, but because they intend to be turned over to the RCMP, which is in and of itself a problem because it does violate the separation of powers and really, really looks like politicians trying to direct the police (who have said that they don’t want the documents, because it would violate the Charter rights of any accused). I think this is a sound argument, and one that is necessary because of the ongoing abuses of privilege that the past couple of parliaments have engaged in.

Yes, Parliament has unfettered authority to send for the production of papers, but there have to be limits on this privilege, or it can be abused, and I think that this case demonstrates the limits. The complicating factor is that limits are especially difficult to maintain in a minority parliament situation because all of the opposition parties tend to be all be interested in embarrassing the government at any turn (and this is not unique to this government, but any government). It’s partly why NSICOP was fine during a majority Parliament but became the subject of political manoeuvring during the minority years—because opposition parties will try to use their leverage to embarrass a government or score points when they think they can.

I don’t envy Speaker Fergus in having to make this decision, but this kind of exercise is clearly beyond the pale. It’s not up to MPs to get information on behalf of the RCMP, and that crosses so many red lines that it should be blinding. He’s going to be criticized whatever he makes, but hopefully for the sake of precedent, he makes the right choice and rein in some of this foolishness, because once MPs feel empowered enough to do this to one organisation—SDTC in this case—they’re going to start going after anyone they disagree with ideologically on an increasing base going forward.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians targeted a geriatric centre in Sumy, as well as the power grid, which a UN body believes is probably against international humanitarian law. Russia says they are ramping up their drone production tenfold (but that may just be all talk, given the sanctions and the availability of components).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1836807096391676132

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Roundup: Bringing in the spouses?

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The fallout from Jagmeet Singh’s confrontation with members of the Asshole Brigade who are harassing people in front of Parliament Hill has taken a couple of strange twists. In his post about the incident, Singh said that “That’s the country that Pierre Poilievre wants,” which of course sent the Conservatives into the usual bit of performative victimhood. Among those was Michael Cooper, who was seen hanging out with some of those members of the Asshole Brigade, and he tweeted out that he didn’t know them, that they approached him at the restaurant he was eating in…but there is video that shows him meeting with them before the restaurant, so perhaps that’s a very judicious use of the truth.

The stranger part was that Anaida Poilievre wrote a long Twitter missive to rebut the accusation and to praise Poilievre’s good character, while taking shots at Singh and Justin Trudeau. There has been a long-held convention in Canadian politics that spouses stay out of things, and they get a semblance of anonymity as a result. The fact that she has been very active in Poilievre’s campaign is a sign that she could be much more active in a future where Poilievre becomes prime minister, and that’s a bit of a problem because we don’t have “First Ladies” in this county like the Americans do, because our “First Lady” is Queen Camila. If she plays an active role, does she then become a target for other parties? Does that open up attacks for their spouses? I worry about that given the coarsening of politics as it is, and the fact that far too many people are already targeting MPs’ homes as part of protests. We don’t need them to become fair game as things continue to race to the bottom.

https://x.com/AnaPoilievre/status/1836225640938508466

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling in Zaporizhzhia killed one woman and injured two others, while another attack targeted energy facilities in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi. Ukrainian drones have struck a Russian military base north of Moscow, causing an “earthquake-sized” blast. President Zelenskyy will be addressing the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday.

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Roundup: Sutcliffe gets a federal no

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With a bit of an apology to non-Ottawa residents, but our mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, is trying to blackmail the federal and provincial governments for more money, and insists that the city’s budget shortfall isn’t his fault. That’s a lie, and his low-tax austerity plan has bitten him in the ass, and he wants someone else to bail him out, but man, has he made some choices. There is plenty about the budget hole that is his fault, not the least of which is pandering to rural and suburban voters at the expense of downtown meaning that their property taxes stay low while downtown’s are high (under the rubric that multi-unit buildings put more strain on the system, rather than the cost of extending the system to ever-more-distant suburbs and exurbs). In fact, during the last city election, his main rival warned him that his plan had a massive budget hole in it and lo, they were proved right. Funny that.

Well, the federal government isn’t having any of it, and for good reason, not the least of which is that they are not in the mood to set the precedent that bailing out one city because of their poor choices, which will lead to every other city demanding the same, and no, the whole issue of payments for federal properties in lieu of property taxes are not justification. So, Sutcliffe is pretty much out of luck, because I’m pretty sure that Doug Ford is going to give him much the same response. Of course, this is likely just a PR move so that he can justify the tax increases that he should have instituted two years ago, but making the federal government your punching bag to justify doing your own job is pretty sad.

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of Ukraine downing all 27 drones Russia launched overnight Thursday, Russians bombed a shopping mall in Kostiantynivka in the Donestsk region, killing at least 14 people. The UN says that July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. Russia has declared a federal emergency as a result of the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk. Ukrainian forces also raided Russian forces on the Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea, and hit an airfield with their drone attack on the Lipetsk region.

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Roundup: Concerns divorced from reality in C-11

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The continuing discourse around Bill C-11—the online streaming bill—continues to plumb new depths of utter idiocy, and this weekend, the Globe and Mail dragged Margaret Atwood into it, where she said some things that have absolutely nothing to do with the bill at hand. Why? Because Senator David Richards, a novelist who has been little more than a crank during his time in the Senate, gave a speech last week (around 1530 in the Hansard) that was pretty much complete and utter nonsense in which he accused the government and the CRTC of being Goebbels-like propagandists because of this bill, and people have glommed onto the debate without knowing anything about it.

If anything, the Globe story was complete journalistic malpractice, because it didn’t give sufficient context to the bill or what it actually says, and Atwood admitted she hadn’t read the bill, and they ran the story about her comments regardless.

I have done several stories on this bill and its predecessor in the previous Parliament (here and here). In spite of the Conservative narrative that this was “Orwellian” and that an “Internet czar” was going to censor your tweets, the bill is nothing about that. It’s about ensuring that streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ play by similar rules as other conventional broadcasters, particularly in using part of their revenues to continue to Canadian content media funds. YouTube was included for that reason—as the largest music streaming service, it should also disclose its Canadian revenues and submit the same proportion to media funds for artists that radio does. That’s it. The CRTC has been determining what counts as “Canadian Content” for those purposes, as well as for tax credits, for decades. The current point system has been in place since 1984. None of this is new or novel, and none of this is the Minister of Heritage telling people what to produce, and absolutely none of this is “government censorship,” and if people believe that, then they don’t understand the meaning of the word. And yet, these narratives have been allowed to perpetuate in the mainstream media, either because the journalists in question are too lazy to actually read the bill, or they are content to both-sides the debate, and when one of those sides are outright lying, or are free speech zealots who object to CanCon regulations on principle, and on the other side you get ministerial pabulum, you’re not exactly cutting through any of the bullshit. We have been so let down by the media over the course of this interminable debate, and we are all the worse off for it because people aren’t doing the jobs.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 348:

Russian missiles struck Kharkiv over the weekend, destroying residential buildings, while a fire caused a blackout in Odessa. Russia and Ukraine also traded almost 200 prisoners of war in a prisoner exchange on Saturday. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defence minister is being shuffled to a new portfolio as part of the government shake-up in light of combatting corruption allegations.

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Roundup: Confusion over AstraZeneca

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The third wave of the pandemic is now out of control in Ontario while the murderclowns in our provincial government continue to stand idly by, as BC goes into a “circuit breaker” lockdown to try and get a hold of their own skyrocketing numbers – because apparently fourteen months into this pandemic, nobody can grasp that exponential growth means that cases grow exponentially. Funny how that happens.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1376630821717569538

Meanwhile, there was confusion over new advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine as the National Advisory Committee on Immunisation informed provinces on Sunday that they were advising on pausing doses for those under 55, but didn’t make a broader announcement about that until late in the afternoon Monday, leaving a mess of confusion for much of the day. It seems that the blood clotting issue, while still extremely rare, is of a type that can have a forty percent fatality rate, and it’s been seen more prevalently in women under 55 (though it is suspected that it may simply because more women have been vaccinated in the healthcare fields and hence it is showing up more often there). That being said, they have decided to hold off on that age group until they can get more data, which could come in the next few weeks – especially as there have been no reported case of clotting in Canada thus far. It should also be noted that there would be very few AstraZeneca doses given to those under 55, because most provinces are not there yet in terms of their vaccine roll-outs, so those under 55 who have received it are likely some essential workers. (More from Dr. David Fisman in this thread).

While this was going on, there was a little too much made of the (temporary) disunity between Health Canada and NACI, in spite of the fact that they are separate, that NACI is arm’s-length from government, and that they each have different roles to play. Too many people – especially in the media – were just throwing their hands up and proclaiming their confusion, which allowed certain actors like the Conservatives’ health critic to take advantage of the situation and insisting that the minister wasn’t “controlling her bureaucrats” (NACI are not “her bureaucrats), and trying to paint a situation like the government is out of control. Yes, it’s a fluid situation, and there should have been earlier guidance released after the provinces were notified and started pausing their own appointments, but I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to consider the situation as being out of control, or so confusing that nobody knows what was going on. I think there were a lot of dramatics (or possibly histrionics) from people who should know better, but perhaps I’m being too generous.

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Roundup: It’s Cabinet Shuffle Day!

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We are now well into Cabinet leak territory, and right now the news is that Chrystia Freeland will indeed be moving – but we don’t know where. We do know that François-Philippe Champagne will replace her at Foreign Affairs, that Pablo Rodriguez will be the new Government House Leader (after we already heard that Steven Guilbeault will take over Canadian Heritage), plus Seamus O’Regan moving to Natural Resources, that Jonathan Wilkinson is taking over Environment and Catherine McKenna will take over Infrastructure. We’re also hearing from Quebec media that Jean-Yves Duclos will take over Treasury Board, and that Mélanie Joly is due for a promotion – but no hint as to what it means otherwise. Still no word on Public Safety, which is a huge portfolio that will need a very skilled hand to deal with in the absence of Ralph Goodale.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1196922355181924352

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1196922357073489920

https://twitter.com/JenniferRobson8/status/1196959319994056705

Meanwhile, some of the other roles that Trudeau needs to decide who are not in Cabinet will include the whip, parliamentary secretaries, and considerations for committee chairs (though he won’t have the final say on those as they are ostensibly elected by the committees themselves, and it’s the whips who largely determine who will sit on which committee). Committees are especially important in a hung parliament, so this could mean big roles for those who didn’t make it into Cabinet.

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Roundup: A six-point sham

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Over the weekend, Andrew Scheer went to Calgary to further outline his “economic vision,” which included a short-term six-party plan which…does nothing about the economy. Those six parts are to scrap the federal carbon price, repeal Bill C-69, repeal Bill C-48 and end any tanker ban in northern BC, establish timelines for project approvals, end the “foreign interference” in project approvals, and invoke the constitutional authority to build major projects. Do you see a pattern here?

To be clear, these six proposals are all, well, hot air. Ending the federal carbon price won’t get energy projects built – most oil and gas companies are in favour of it. Repealing Bill C-69 won’t help because the 2012 environmental assessment legislation the Conservatives put into place just wound up in litigation, and that will continue if he reverts to it. Ending the tanker ban won’t have any measurable impact because there are no pipelines in the area, no plans for any, and if he thinks he can revive Northern Gateway then he didn’t pay attention to the reasons why the Federal Court revoked its approval. Establishing timelines for approvals? Again, nice in theory, but without a framework behind it (like Bill C-69 would ostensibly provide), it will likely mean yet more litigation. That “foreign interference” in project approvals is largely the conspiracy theories that the conservative movement is clinging to (ignoring the foreign funds that go into their own thinktanks like the Fraser Institute). And that “constitutional authority” is not a magic wand, and would only sow confusion because any project that crosses a provincial boundary is already a federally regulated project, so there’s nothing to invoke. So Scheer’s “six point plan” should perhaps better be called a “six point sham.”

Meanwhile, here’s some further analysis of Scheer’s decision to back away from his pledge to eliminate the deficit in two years, whether it’s because of Liberal warnings of austerity, the unpopularity of Doug Ford’s cuts playing out in Ontario, or the desire to try and deprive the Liberals of their talking points. But it does also take the wind out of Scheer’s own rhetoric about the evils of deficits, particularly those that are small and sustainable like the ones we’re seeing right now.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1131728209018380288

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