Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Trying to dispel yet another conspiracy theory

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It was Environment Canada’s turn to take to Twitter in a series of plain-language tweets in order to dispel the conspiracy theories that Justin Trudeau is creating “climate cops” that are going to arrest people for…reasons. They’re not climate cops, they’re Environment Canada enforcement officers, they’ve been in existence since 2008 (you know, when Stephen Harper was prime minister), and they enforce environmental regulations. The theory, which seems to have originated from a far-right former Rebel fabulist, has been broadcast by UCP leadership hopeful Danielle Smith and several sitting Conservative MPs, and it’s utterly bonkers. It’s even more concerning that MPs are willingly spreading conspiracy theories in order to keep up the rage-farming that they think will get them votes, and that they have absolutely zero self-awareness that this is utterly corroding democracy. None.

Meanwhile, Conservative has-been and ongoing shitposter Andrew Scheer is trying to discredit the Bank of Canada’s correction about the false narrative of “printing money,” using the same kind of faux-logic that Flat-Earthers use. So yeah, the discourse is going great. They’re really respecting democracy. (We’re doomed).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 190:

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for real this time, and conducted their initial inspection of the facility, with the intention to remain on the site, and yes, they avoided shelling and gunfire to get there. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that independent journalists were prevented from covering the visit, which allows Russia to present a one-sided picture.

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Roundup: A minor Cabinet swap

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As expected, there was a very minor Cabinet shuffle yesterday, and it was less of a shuffle than a two-person swap. Filomena Tassi takes over as minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario, while the incumbent, Helena Jaczek, takes over as minister of public services and procurement. The reason? Tassi’s husband suffered two strokes, and has had a difficult recovery, so she requested a lighter workload, and Trudeau obliged. Jaczek, meanwhile, is a former Ontario health minister, so she’s not unaccustomed to big files. What is perhaps most significant is that Trudeau accommodated her in order to ensure that she didn’t have to choose between family and her job, which is a very rare thing, even in this day and age where there remains an expectation that women give up their jobs and careers in order to play caretaker roles. That kind of a signal should count for something.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 189:

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant yesterday, in an attempt to stabilise the situation there. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that his forces are attacking Russian positions along the entire front line, trying to retake the south as well as going on the offensive in the east. We’ll see in the coming days how effective this has been, but British intelligence suggests that there have been successes in three parts of the southern region, but didn’t give any details.

Good reads:

  • Following the shuffle, Trudeau said that Canadians have lost faith in the leadership of Hockey Canada, as they insist on retaining their CEO for some unknown reason.
  • Trudeau also said the government would look into allegations that a CSIS informant smuggled teenaged girls from the UK into Syria.
  • Chrystia Freeland insists that Albertans are “kind and welcoming” in spite of being accosted last week. (They’re kind and welcoming if you conform, you mean).
  • Pablo Rodriguez has belatedly condemned the antisemitic tweets from the “anti-racism” contractor his department hired.
  • Health Canada is expected to announce the approval of the omicron-specific boosters today (though this was for BA.1, even though BA.4 and .5 are dominant).
  • Fourteen months later, the military won’t say what their investigation into alleged atrocities caught on video involving Iraqi police yielded.
  • The CRTC announced that they will adopt 988 as a national suicide prevention hotline number, but it won’t be in operation until November of next year.
  • 325 First Nations are launching a class action lawsuit to demand reparations from the government for the cultural devastation wrought by residential schools.
  • The so-called “Centre Ice Conservatives” changed their name to “Centre Ice Canadians” to appeal to a broader audience (not that it’ll help).
  • Using their majority to circumvent the process, the Ford government bullied through a bill that can force people in hospitals into long-term care facilities.
  • The UCP leadership candidates had their final debate on Tuesday night, and it was as bankrupt of real ideas as you might expect.
  • Althia Raj talks to Elizabeth May about her decision to run for co-leader of the Green Party, and why that’s different from her time as full-on leader.
  • Paul Wells contemplates the “temperamental centre” of Canadian politics, and what that could mean for the two main federal parties going forward.
  • My column takes note of the fact that the government is experimenting in frank discussion when it comes to the wait times issues, which is a good first step.

Odds and ends:

For Xtra, I delved into the new Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan and got some reaction from stakeholders in the community.

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Roundup: Premiers pleading poverty while demonstrating largesse

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Ontario premier Doug Ford met with Maritime premiers in New Brunswick yesterday, and wouldn’t you just know it, they demanded more federal healthcare dollars while simultaneously saying that throwing money at the problem wouldn’t fix things, so they want to go to more private delivery. The problem, of course, is that Ford didn’t even bother to spend his full healthcare budget last year as he continues to underpay nurses and doctors, and both he and Blaine Higgs in particular put pandemic healthcare dollars onto their bottom lines, and Higgs boasted a healthy surplus last year thanks to federal transfers. It’s hard to take premiers’ demands for cash seriously if they don’t actually spend the dollars they’re given, and that they keep boasting about their balance sheets while still steadfastly refusing to increase pay, or to reform billing systems. While François Legault wasn’t at the table today, he’s also promising a tax cut if he gets elected again, while crying poor and insisting the federal government needs to spend more. Erm, you know that the federal government can see you, right?

On that note, Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe announced that his province is so flush with money thanks to high oil and gas revenues that they’re going to give out vote-buying cheques to the whole province. But he too is going cap-in-hand to Ottawa for more health transfers, and he’s sending patients in his province to private clinics in Alberta and won’t pay for their transportation to get there either. (Oh, and giving cheques to everyone is going fuel inflation, but you knew that, right?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 180:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is banning public celebrations in advance of Ukraine’s independence day, citing fears that Russia will likely plan more severe attacks in line with the occasion, particularly around civilian infrastructure. Russians struck near Kharkiv and areas near Bakhmut in the Donbas, while the Ukrainan counter-attack continued to advance on Kherson in the south. There were also new claims of Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as international pleas to ensure a ceasefire around the area continue to go unheeded. Russians are also, not surprisingly, blaming the car bomb that killed the daughter of one of Putin’s advisors, on Ukraine.

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Roundup: Meet Canada’s newest Supreme Court justice

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday that he will be appointing Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada, making her the first Indigenous justice on the top court. She will be replacing Justice Michael Moldaver, who retires on September 1st, a few months ahead of his mandatory date, and this is for one of the Court’s three Ontario seats. While it was a given that this appointment would be a woman in order to restore gender balance on the court, there has been pressure for an Indigenous justice for a while. This government has also mandated that official bilingualism should also be a requirement for appointment, which shrinks the pool of available Indigenous candidates a whole lot. And it’s not without controversy—it is true that, as many Indigenous activists point out, that kind of linguistic requirement is colonial, but it also has been pointed out that relaxing those kinds of requirements is generally done at the expense of French, which is also a very fraught notion with the insistence that French is “in decline” in the country (which is debatable, because use of French has been up in Quebec, but they are paranoid about the “mother tongue” statistics, which is generally about immigrants for whom French is not their first language).

While you can read O’Bonsawin’s application questionnaire here, it’s worthwhile noting that she comes to the Supreme Court directly from the Superior Court rather than the Court of Appeal. This isn’t a big deal, but it does speak to the pool of available candidates, because there are exceedingly few Indigenous judges at the appeal court level. This being said, it’s perfectly permissible to appoint people to the Supreme Court if they’re law professors, or even lawyers working in a firm—Justice Suzanne Côté was appointed directly from practice. This being said, O’Bonsawin has academic chops to add to her experience, with a PhD in the Gladue sentencing principles, which are about taking proper life circumstances into account during sentencing for Indigenous people. She also has done a lot of work around mental health, which is also important in the current legal environment, so it does look like she will bring a wealth of experience to the bench. The only thing I would say is that with Moldaver’s retirement, there is no longer a criminal justice specialist on the Supreme Court, which may be an issue in the longer-term, but there are enough bright minds on the court that I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Meanwhile, here is some reaction from the president of the Canadian Bar Association, and several Indigenous leaders.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 177:

Ukraine has been making several drone attacks in the areas of Nova Kakhovka, near the occupied city of Kherson, as well as possibly the Crimean port of Yevpatoriya, which seems to be about Ukrainians showing their capabilities to Russian aggressors. Ukraine is also warning that Russia is planning a “large scale provocation” around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in an attempt to decouple it from the Ukrainian grid and attach it to the Russian grid, which is apparently a complex operation that could cause a disaster. Meanwhile, doctors talk about why they are staying in place in war-hit towns in Ukraine.

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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: Inflation starts to cool

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The CPI figures were released yesterday morning, and the headline number has cooled from its peak, and in July was running at an annualized rate of 7.6 percent, the decrease largely being driven by lower gasoline prices. Of course, there are still plenty of other drivers that are keeping it high, some of which are things like food (largely being driven by factors like climate change), hotel stays, and airline charges. But rather than exploring what these drivers are, most of the coverage of the day was focused on the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth that prices are high and demands for the government to do something about it, which, short of wage and price controls—which don’t really work—they can’t do much about. And no, “just give everyone money” is not a solution because that drives demand further. Same as tax cuts or breaks, and in fact, increasing taxes is generally a good way to dampen inflation. Regardless, there is a real incurious narrative to this in the media, which is not surprising, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, here is Kevin Carmichael’s hot take on the figures, while Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem took to the pages of the National Post to offer some reassurance that the Bank is on the case. Economist Stephen Gordon explains the data here on video. Heather Scoffield warns that even if inflation peaked there are too many factors keeping it high for some time to come. And here is a look at the StatsCan analysts who compile the inflation data.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 175:

There was another explosion at an ammunition depot at a military base in Russian-occupied Crimea, and the Ukrainian government will neither confirm nor deny involvement, though they are mockingly calling it “demilitarization,” as a play on Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine.

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Roundup: A supposed “breakthrough” that amounted to nothing

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Federal documents, albeit heavily redacted, are starting to be made public as part of the court challenge around the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and thus far we can see that the Ford government in Ontario offered to meet with those blockading the Ambassador bridge (and were rejected), that the federal government had briefly considered negotiating with the occupiers in front of Parliament Hill, but did not go ahead with it (which is just as well considering their demands were the overthrow of democracy in favour of a ruling junta of occupiers, senators, and the Governor General). The night before the Act was invoked, the government was informed of a “potential breakthrough” with the negotiations happening with the city, which again, were unsuccessful, and the Act was invoked.

This has of course proven to be fodder for certain Conservative leadership candidates who insist that this is some kind of smoking gun that invoking the Act was unnecessary, but that’s not what it indicates, and frankly, you shouldn’t negotiate with a group of right-wing extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who think nothing of overturning democracy because their feelings got hurt. But this seems to be where we’re at, which is utterly boggling.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 170:

Analysis of that explosion on the Russian airbase in occupied Crimea shows that as many as twenty Russian warplanes may have been destroyed, which would be the largest single-day loss since World War II. (Kyiv still has not claimed responsibility for the explosion). The head of the International Atomic Agency is calling on Russia and Ukraine to halt shelling near the Zaporizechzhia nuclear plant, and to allow experts to evaluate the safety of the facility. Ukrainian forces have begun their counter-attack in the Kherson region, having recaptured 54 settlements (while 92 percent of the region remains under occupation). In Bucha, civilians murdered by Russians are being buried as numbers because they have not been identified by name. Meanwhile, in Denmark, Western countries pledged more support for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1557621932429819907

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Roundup: Not calling out the obvious lies

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It seems that Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis have been hyping up a Substack post by a National Post columnist who has been falsely claiming that court documents say that vaccine mandates don’t work. It’s not surprising that they would amplify this garbage, or that said garbage completely misrepresents the studies in question, which provided proof that vaccine mandates do work. Of course, there has been little-to-no denunciation of said lies being propagated by these candidates, nor has the mainstream media done their own fact-checking on the claims (which was done by PressProgress, which is not actually a media organization but a partisan oppo-research outlet that masquerades as journalism). This is not a good thing. This is a sign that things are very broken, and that we are headed to a very dark place. Our media need to step up and start calling this stuff out for what it is, and to stop both-sidesing it out of an exaggerated sense of “fairness.” Lies are lies. There are not two sides. You don’t need to have their political opponents say that they’re lies because that simply provides fodder for the true believers to swallow the lies, because it’s their opponents denouncing them. This is corroding our democracy, but nobody seems to care enough to do something about it.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1557412067572858886

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 169:

In the aftermath of that massive explosion at a Russian base in occupied Crimea, nine Russian warplanes have allegedly been destroyed, and Kyiv continues to deny official responsibility (though it may have been the result of sabotage by Ukrainian partisans in the area). Meanwhile, Russians have been shelling the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, as well as continuing to shell the eastern city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainians have hit the city of Donetsk, which is controlled by Russian separatists.

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Roundup: Spyware or mass surveillance?

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As summer showboat season rolls along, the Commons’ access to information, privacy and ethics committee continued their hearings on the RCMP’s use of spyware. And it was…odd. A senior RCMP member said that the RCMP has been using said spyware to break encryption since 2002 (while advocating for legislation to allow them to evade encryption). The former privacy commissioner said he was surprised to learn that the RCMP had been using this “intrusive” technology for years, and didn’t seek authorisation from his office, while the RCMP denied that they were using the “Pegasus” spyware system. And a former CSIS officer testified that they have monitored politicians at all three levels of government because they had concerns they were being paid by foreign governments. But Liberal MPs kept going on to questions about mass surveillance, which is not what this is about, nor within the capabilities of this spyware, and it makes me wonder if they were trying to put a neat bow on this to say “See, there’s no mass surveillance” without really engaging with the topic. And they tried to pass the motion to say “All wrapped up,” but that didn’t happen either. So I’m not really sure what’s going on other than more showboating from all sides, which is the given at this time of year.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 168:

There was much speculation about an explosion at a military airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, creating much buzz over social media about whether this was a long-range missile strike from Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian officials denied this, but it could mean that Russians may have to fortify their own positions behind the lines on that peninsula, further stretching their resources. Meanwhile, Russian forces shelled the town of Nikopol, near the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as Russians continue to shell the power lines leading from the plant in order to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid so that they can begin the process to link it to Russia’s grid instead.

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Roundup: A choice to keep injuring interpreters

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-fifty-five of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has captured the country’s second-largest power plant, as they are redeploying their forces to three southern regions in advance of an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the area. Ukrainian forces have used American-supplied rockets to take out a strategic bridge being used by Russians to supply their forces occupying the Kherson region, which Ukraine has stated they intend to re-take. It’s these weapons that have allowed Ukrainian forces to turn the corner on their counter-offensive, and they have pointed out that the sooner they can get more of them, the sooner they will be able to end this war. Meanwhile, ship owners are assessing whether the risk is worth it to travel through mined sea corridors to ship grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports (and it could take weeks or months to clear the mines from these ports).

Closer to home, translators in Parliament are continuing to sound the alarm about the plan to hire unaccredited and off-site interpreters to do parliamentary work, no matter that this could impair the quality of the translations. This is very important, because it’s Parliament. To make this worse, the Government House Leader, Mark Holland, is downplaying the effect that hybrid sittings have had in injuring the existing interpreters, claiming that this is because they were already facing shortfalls before COVID because of the “expanded work” of Parliament. The problem with this statement is that they simply made the situation worse with hybrid sittings and the fact that it injures the interpreters, and they keep making excuses to keep them going. This is not helping with the shortfall in interpreters, it’s actively making it worse, and they don’t care. And while the Conservatives are opposing this move, they have not helped their case by insisting on resisting COVID measures including masking. And while I had a Liberal staffer chirping at me on Twitter about this, the fact is that MPs have been aware of the problems for over two years now, and have chosen to do nothing about it. They chose to keep hybrid sittings going, knowing full well that it injures the interpreters and can lead to permanent hearing loss. Their refusal to take measures is a choice, and a deeply unethical one. There is no defending it.

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