Tag Archives: Public Service

Roundup: Some long-awaited policy announcements

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The Liberals finally came out yesterday with a suite of policy announcements at the end of their caucus retreat, with a bunch of measures that some have been calling on for a while. Removing the GST on purpose-built rentals was actually an idea they ran on in 2015 then didn’t implement after further study (credit to Rachel Aiello for finding that), but have now gone ahead with in light of all of the calls to do so. As well, a number of people were treating the warnings to municipalities about not getting Housing Accelerator Fund dollars if they continued exclusionary zoning as though it were new, when it was part of the policy design in the 2021 platform all along.

One of the more interesting announcements was around upcoming changes to the Competition Act, but while Jagmeet Singh will take credit for it, the government has been consulting on this for over a year. The big news is the proposed elimination of the “efficiencies defence,” which would be a sea change in Canadian competition law.

There were also warnings to the grocery oligopolies that they have until Thanksgiving to stabilise prices (meaning return them to the headline rate of inflation), but I have a hard time seeing how this is going to work considering that the bulk of price increases are because of supply issue, such as yields being reduced for climate-related droughts or floods. Margins have been consistent throughout, so this policy is going to need a lot more finessing, and the price issues related to a lack of competition in the sector is going to be as difficult to fix as the supply issues. They also said they would extend the loan repayment period for CEBA loans after an outcry, btu extending the deadline for most means forgoing the partial forgiveness portion, meaning they will have more to repay.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian shelling killed a six-year-old boy in the village of Novodmytrivka in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian forces have retaken the village of Andriivka in the east, as they continue to press on toward Bakhmut.

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Roundup: A foreign interference inquiry after all

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The announcement finally came down yesterday that the government will be launching a public inquiry into foreign interference, with terms of reference that include China, Russia, and any other state or non-state actors whom they see fit, and that this will be expected to have an interim report by the end of February next year, with a final report at the end of the year. Leading the inquiry will be Quebec Court of Appeal justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who has no national security experience, but says she is “honoured” to lead the exercise (though that is not what I would be feeling). The choice of judge and the terms of reference are apparently all unanimously agreed to by the government as well as the three main opposition parties, which is in part why it took so long, but there are still a few red flags, particularly around the timeline. It doesn’t seem either remotely possible or even plausible that the bulk of the work can be completed in five months (Hogue doesn’t start until the 18th), considering how much time it will take to stand up the inquiry’s infrastructure, and for her and her staff to be properly briefed on how to read top secret information and how to contextualise intelligence. This having been said, Dominic LeBlanc says the government will turn over any Cabinet documents she needs, and Justin Trudeau says he’ll willingly testify before said inquiry when asked to, so they’re certainly making a big show about cooperation.

As expected, the opposition parties fell all over themselves to take credit for this, and chided the government for why this took so long to get to this point, as though they weren’t a big part of the problem, most especially in trying to find someone to lead this process who was willing to do the job and subject themselves to the likelihood of daily character assassination in the process (because as much as they say they’re all in favour of this, the moment they think they can score points off of what is happening, they will have zero hesitation in being ruthless in doing so). Already Twitter was abuzz with her political donation history (Conservative), who appointed her to the bench (Peter MacKay), and her previous law firm (which has Liberal and China connections), so you can bet that there will be those who won’t hesitate to move into character assassination at a moment’s notice.

In related news, LeBlanc says he’ll be meeting with MP Han Dong in the near future to discuss his future and whether he’ll be able to re-join the party given the allegations against him, which David Johnston found to lack credibility in his report. It sounds like LeBlanc hasn’t had the time to deal with this with everything else going on over the summer, so we’ll see where that leads.

Programming note: It’s my birthday this weekend, so I’m going to make it a long-ish weekend on the blog. See you next week!

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians attacked the Danube port of Izmail for the fourth time in five days, damaging more grain silos and critical infrastructure. Ukrainian forces are gearing up air defences in preparation for another winter of attacks on their energy systems and power grid. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tasked his new defence minister with rebuilding trust after a series of corruption allegations in the defence forces, particularly around procurement. Ukraine is also calling for more international pressure on Russia to return the children they have taken from Ukraine over the course of the invasion.

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Roundup: Toronto Pride at a necessary time

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It was Pride in Toronto over the weekend, and one that is more necessary than ever given the rising levels of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred that is being directed toward queer and trans communities, as old libellous tropes about sexual predators resurface and are being used by politicians, including those in Canada, to demonise queer and trans people. Look at some of the things Blaine Higgs has been saying in New Brunswick—this is not a “parental rights” issue, it’s one where he is making it quite clear that he doesn’t want LGBTQ+ people to take up space in public. It has also been pointed out that even though conversion therapy has been banned in Canada, the ideology that underpins it continues to be strong, and the Conservative candidate in Portage—Lisgar was advocating for it during the by-election, so these fights are not over by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the parade, Justin Trudeau was absent as he was off to Iceland for a summit, but his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, did lead the Liberal contingent. Jagmeet Singh was present, but Pierre Poilievre was not, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. (Also, Singh didn’t tweet about Toronto Pride, nor did Poilievre even acknowledge it).

Ukraine Dispatch:

In spite of the ongoing attacks against Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainians were enjoying the prospect of the attempted mutiny/coup that was taking place in Russia.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1673028522971987974

As for Russia and the Wagner mutiny/coup that wasn’t, it fizzled out as they reached the outskirts of Moscow, with rumours that Bularussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had to broker the deal to end it, and that the Wagner leader will head to Belarus now, but we’re missing a lot of independent reporting on what may have happened, so we’ll see in the days ahead.

https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1673116584674754561

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Roundup: Poilievre tries out new tough-on-crime disinformation

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As evidenced in Question Period yesterday, the Conservatives have found a new lie to suit their narrative around the transfer of Paul Bernardo, and it’s citing the former Bill C-83, which allegedly eliminated solitary confinement in Canadian prisons on favour of “structured intervention units.” We can pretty much be assured that the legislation did not do what it said it would, and “structured intervention” is largely still solitary confinement, and the actual problems haven’t been solved, but the underlying notion here was that this bill was in response to the finding of the courts and international human rights bodies that solitary confinement is a violation of human rights. Nevertheless, this is being blamed for the conditions that allowed for Bernardo’s transfer, which again, is not true. It’s not the first time they’ve done this tactic—they also did it with the former Bill C-75 on bail reform, which was about codifying Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence around bail, and actually created several more categories where a reverse onus was needed, which made bail tougher to get. That didn’t stop the lies then, and it isn’t around C-83 now.

In the meantime, here is the Alberta Prison Justice Society with some important context around prison transfers and security classifications, which a lot of people should know (and in some cases, do know but are lying about it in order to drum up outrage, because politics is all about rage-farming and shitposting these days).

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians struck the settlement of Novoberyslav in the Kherson region, killing a married couple when their house was bombed. The Ukrainian advance continues in the south, while Russians are trying to trying to dislodge Ukrainian positions in the east. Meanwhile, a group of African leaders are visiting Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s “peace formula” to end the war.

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Roundup: The “filibuster” that wasn’t

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A particular level of self-aggrandisement seems to be taking hold in the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, as he describes things that are not reflective of reality. Yesterday morning, he summoned the media to a speech he delivered to caucus—something that is not uncommon for the last caucus meeting before the summer break, but we are still two weeks away from that. There, he promised that he was going to rise in the House of Commons at 7 PM and begin a filibuster of the budget bill, and that he wouldn’t stop until the government backed down and acceded to his demands.

Except it was all bullshit.

There wasn’t going to be a filibuster. The House had already passed a programming motion, thanks to the NDP, that laid out just how many hours left of debate there were before the final debate, and Poilievre couldn’t just talk and talk past he expiry of that clock. It was already set in stone. So, after another attempted abuse of remote voting as a procedural tactic (which the Deputy Speaker lost all patience with), Poilievre got up to give his five hours of allotted time. But again, this isn’t actually a filibuster because the leader of the opposition gets unlimited speaking time to certain items on the Order Paper, and this was one of them. He wasn’t filibustering anything. He was showboating.

While Conservatives flooded social media with effusive praise about how he was standing up for defenceless Canadians against the predations of the government, and they kept praising how long he was speaking, he wasn’t actually accomplishing anything other than playing to his own backbenches. It’s not like anyone other than a few shut-ins and reporters who drew the short straw were watching. He didn’t stop the budget bill, because it was already the subject of a programming motion. He just talked for the sake of it, and was even finished before midnight hit, when the time would have expired automatically. There was nothing heroic about this action, and it accomplished exactly nothing at all.

https://twitter.com/a_picazo/status/1666653154694266880

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for international assistance in dealing with the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, as they continue to evacuate people from floods, and local authorities rush things like drinking water to the affected area. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have gained more ground around Bakhmut, but insist that this is not part of any ongoing spring offensive.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1666417873776959489

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Roundup: O’Toole claims privilege over foreign interference

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Yesterday in the House of Commons, Erin O’Toole rose on a point of privilege to say that his briefing from CSIS warned of “active” campaigns against him from China in four categories—that they are funding operatives to build propaganda campaigns against him, funding networks to amplify it, using WeChat for that purpose, and run voter suppression against his party and one MP in particular. His claim is that the government’s inability or unwillingness to act on the intelligence of foreign interference impacts his privileges as an MP.

I’m dubious that this constitutes an actual breach of privilege, because frankly, if disinformation campaigns, social media amplification and voter suppression are happening, well, his own party is just as guilty as the Chinese regime of doing exactly the same thing. I also fail to see what the House of Commons can do about addressing this supposed breach of privilege other than vote on sending a strongly-worded rebuke to the regime in Beijing. I also don’t necessarily trust that O’Toole is giving us all of the relevant details because he seemed to be very selective with what he wrote about his meeting with David Johnston on his Substack, and I cannot stress this enough, Erin O’Toole is a serial liar. Unfortunately, because he does it with a solemn tone and not, say, a clown nose and a unicycle, he manages to bamboozle a swath of the pundit class who are convinced that he’s the upstanding guy that they all want him to be rather than who he proved himself to be during his leadership, and that somehow, now that he’s no longer the leader, he’s gone back to being the guy they all want him to be. I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, the NDP used their Supply Day to call on David Johnston to step down so that the government will call a public inquiry. This while Pierre Poilievre is daring Singh to bring down the government, and Singh saying he won’t until trust is restored in elections (which is tactically stupid). The government insists they have confidence in Johnston, but it does raise the point that if everyone but the Liberals vote for this, it becomes politically untenable for the government to maintain the current course of action, even if it’s the right thing to do (because I remain unconvinced that a public inquiry will do absolutely anything more in this situation other than take three years, cost $180 million, and create a media circus with a daily drip of “revelations” that will amount to nothing but will nevertheless fuel said media circus). But this may wind up backing the Liberals into a corner and forcing them to call an inquiry, lest the damage get worse.

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Roundup: Grading the official Star Wars Day posts

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Yesterday was May the 4th, also known as “Star Wars Day,” and this year’s Canadian politics offerings were largely unimpressive, most had little to no effort, which is supremely disappointing. Congrats to Library and Archives Canada who made the most effort.

From the political leaders:

For someone who loves memes and trying to win Twitter, Poilievre didn’t even participate.

A sampling of government departments and organizations:

And the rest:

Internationally, we got a couple more:

That last one, the “Stand with Ukraine,” was the best, and caught the spirit perfectly. We are living in a moment where there is a resistance to tyranny taking place, so why not lean into that message?

Ukraine Dispatch:

Another day, another early morning drone attack, this time targeting Kyiv and Odessa. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an “unscheduled” trip to the Hague to call for Putin to face a special tribunal once Ukraine wins the war. The first opportunity to arrest Putin may come in South Africa this summer, and there are those who are “confident” that South Africa will do the right thing. Zelenskyy also got assurances from the Dutch prime minister that talks are progressing on acquiring F-16s for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1654199754358771722

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1654192129260900368

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Roundup: You can’t replace committee travel with Zoom

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Another day, another story where I roll my eyes and sigh because nobody can seem to grasp some pretty fundamental points. To wit: Scandal and pearl-clutching because the Senate’s audit committee is planning a trip to Westminster to consult with their counterparts there. Someone fetch a fainting couch for all of the zeros attached to the costs of the trip! And of course, we couldn’t have cheap outrage without getting a quote from the so-called Canadian Taxpayers Federation, whose continued existence depends on being the go-to source for media when they need a cheap outrage quote.

Some context to this story—the Senate’s audit committee has been a long and hard-fought battle to come into existence because the previous Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, was trying to steer the nascent committee in a direction that would see it be completely staffed by outsiders, which is a particular affront to Parliamentary privilege and the status of the Senate as a self-governing body in and of itself. Eventually the current composition—a mix of senators and outsider, with senators in the majority—was adopted, years after it should have been, and very much in the model that the House of Lords employs. (Note that this model had first been championed by the late Senator Elaine McCoy, and we could have saved years of fighting had people just listened to her). And because this has to do with a parliamentary body, you can’t just get advice from any audit firm in Canada, as the CTF seems to think—you need best practices from those who have dealt with the particular issues that a parliamentary body has. Of course, none of this context is in the story, because nobody pays attention to the Senate unless it’s for a cheap outrage story like this one. Of course.

Meanwhile, the most galling part of the piece is the suggestion that all of this should be done over Zoom, both out of a concern for cost and carbon emissions. And honestly, this type of suggestion needs to have a stake driven through it. This kind of work relies on human interaction, and relationship-building, and that doesn’t happen and cannot happen over Zoom. This is one of the biggest problems with hybrid sittings (which, mercifully, the Senate has ended), but which MPs refuse to believe, and apparently a few senators do too—parliament is a face-to-face institution. It cannot effectively operate remotely. The pandemic was a short-term (ish) problem that required a solution, and while this was not the best one, it was a solution that nevertheless has emboldened people to think that Parliament is a job you can do from home. It’s absolutely not, and this kind of committee travel is no exception. You cannot replace the kinds of interactions that make this travel essential over Zoom, and we need to stop thinking of Zoom as the solution to problems that aren’t actually problems.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched another overnight round of attacks on Kyiv, this time with drones, but all were shot down. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces says it’s important that they maintain their hold on Bakhmut in advance of the counter-offensive (not the least of which because it’s degrading Russia’s forces significantly). The EU is hoping to increase production of ammunition in order to help Ukraine’s efforts. And here is one Ukrainian farmer’s novel way of de-mining his fields using parts from old Russian tanks.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1653390767329558530

https://twitter.com/war_mapper/status/1653169425749508100

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Roundup: Allegations and reactions to reports of targeting an MP’s family

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The big news that dominated much of the discourse yesterday was that Globe and Mail story that a secret intelligence document from two years ago says that the Chinese regime sees Canada as a priority target for foreign interference because we don’t have a foreign agent registry, and said that they were targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family in Hong Kong, and that a Chinese diplomat in Canada was working on the matter. This of course turned into the daily outrage—Chong decried that he wasn’t warned about this, and then we saw the dog and pony show in Question Period. Justin Trudeau said that after reading the Globe story he has asked his officials to look into this document, and called the matter unacceptable. Oh, and two of those so-called Chinese “police stations” appear to still be in operation in the Montreal area, in spite of the RCMP saying they’d shut them down. So, there’s that.

https://twitter.com/MichaelChongMP/status/1653044204438732803

But here’s the thing—Chong isn’t an idiot, even if he sometimes plays one in Question Period, and should have known that his family there did face risks. Activists from these diaspora communities here have been saying it for years, and many have pointed to the fact that they deliberately don’t have contact with their family members back home in order to try to protect them. Chong shouldn’t have needed a CSIS briefing to know if his family in Hong Kong was under threat—he should have put two-and-two together on his own, given how outspoken he is about the regime. (Update: Behold, two years ago he stated he was doing just that). Trying to blame the government sounds particularly disingenuous because I know that Chong knows better, even if he wants to playact shock and outrage for the cameras in order to score points. There is a better way to deal with these allegations of foreign interference without these kinds of drama camp antics.

Meanwhile, Canada’s self-appointed media critic is in full braying doofus mode, and has some thoughts about journalistic ethics around media outlets reporting (or not) on leaked documents that they haven’t seen or been able to verify. Aside from the fact that CBC’s politics page did run the Canadian Press wire story about Chong’s reaction, Scheer should know how this works, right? Does he think that CBC can just call up the leaker and say “Hey, can we have a look at those documents too?” Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did believe that, but seriously—if he bothered to think it through for half a second, he would understand why CBC isn’t reporting on it, but that’s inconvenient for his narrative and his rage-farming, so here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired another early-morning salvo of missiles at Ukraine, and of the 18 fired, 15 were brought down by air defences, leaving three to strike targets primarily in the eastern city of Pavlohrad, killing two and rounding 40; Kyiv did not suffer any strikes this time. Over in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces have pushed Russians back from several parts of the city, and US estimates are that 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the past five months (up to 20,000 of those killed), most of them in and around Bakhmut. Two Canadian volunteer soldiers fighting for Ukraine were killed in Bakhmut last week.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1653047560020414465

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1652911854501388290

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QP: Threats against an MP’s family taken seriously

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Both the prime minister and his deputy were present today, somewhat unusually for a Monday, but we’ll take it, and as a result, most of the other leaders were absent. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he raised the Globe and Mail story that there was apparently a briefing prepared two years ago that started that Chinese officials were prepared to threaten Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family back in Hong Kong, and that they consider Canada an easy target for interference, though the story state that it wasn’t clear if the prime minister actually saw this briefing. With this in mind, he railed at the prime minister for allowing this to happen (though again, we don’t know if he saw this) and demanded to know why the implicated diplomat at the consulate in Calgary hasn’t been expelled. Justin Trudeau responded that these threats are unacceptable, and that when he read this story, he tasked officials to find out more about it, and that they would take action. Poilievre repeated in English with a bit more incredulity, and got much the same answer. Poilievre insisted that this couldn’t be the case because it happened two years ago, and demanded that the diplomat named in the piece be expelled immediately. Trudeau repeated again that they are following up and will take action. Poilievre went back again to the fact that this was two years ago, and then demanded to know the date when the foreign interference registry would be created. Trudeau said that they are consulting on the registry to do it the right way, after listing the measures they have taken. Poilievre called this “administrative mumbo-jumbo,” and then said that two of the so-called Chinese “police stations” are still allegedly in operation, and Trudeau noted that the RCMP are dealing with this.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he railed about Morris Rosenberg’s alleged involvement in the Chinese donation to the Trudeau Foundation, to which Trudeau recited that he hasn’t been involved with the Foundation for ten years and the government has taken measures to deal with interference. Therrien tried to spin a conspiracy theory even harder, and Trudeau told him to wait for David Johnston’s recommendation. 

Peter Julian rose for the NDP, and in French, he returned to that Globe story said that China considers Canada uniquely vulnerable to interference, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau repeated that they are taking this seriously and have measures that are in place. Heather McPherson repeated the demand in English, and Trudeau replied that there is a variety of opinions on the value of a public inquiry which is why David Johnston has been tasked with the job.

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