Tag Archives: Public Service

Roundup: Another diminished Auditor General Day

Posted on by

It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and she had five reports that weren’t terribly complimentary of the government and its efforts, especially as some have been in the works for years and are making progress that is far too slow for the task at hand.

  1. In spite of working to make changes to the processing, there is still a massive backlog of permanent resident applications at Citizenship and Immigration, as well as a major problem with asylum claims that are taking years to be processed.
  2. The efforts to combat racism in government departments and the RCMP are falling short (which is not a huge surprise because this government has a particular problem of saying “intersectional” and “GBA+” and assuming that it will magically fix things rather than doing the actual hard work).
  3. The work to modernise the critical IT infrastructure of the government, particularly when it comes to delivering services Canadians rely on, is getting worse and Treasury Board doesn’t have plans yet on how to replace some of it (which should be alarming).
  4. Modernising the delivery of benefits like CPP, EI, and OAS is behind schedule and facing cost overruns, because of course it is.
  5. Canadians can’t get access to critical antimicrobial drugs as drug resistant strains get worse, and while data collection is improving, there remain gaps in access, which the Pandemic made worse.

You might also note that only three of those five items had news stories attached to them, and not all five. Even more to the point, two were Canadian Press wire stories, one came from the Globe and Mail, and that was it. The National Post had their own version of the immigration story, but of the major outlets, that was all that got covered. It used to be that on Auditor General days, the lock-up room at the OAG was packed, and each outlet sent several reporters to ensure that most of the reports got adequate coverage (some of the special audits of Crown corporations excepted). What we see now is a sad indictment of just how diminished our media capacity is, and how little value we are placing on these reports, which is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

New overnight attacks focused on both the north and south of Ukraine, but no casualties have been reported yet. Russian forces resumed their onslaught of the eastern city of Avdiivka, which Ukrainian forces continued to hold at bay. Russians have also stepped up their bid to re-take the city of Kupiansk, which was liberated late last year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is looking to fill 2000 judicial vacancies (and we thought it was bad in Canada), while also looking to vet the current roster of judges for malfeasance as they work toward cleaning up corruption in order to meet the conditions for acceptance into the EU.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A new Speaker in a toxic environment

Posted on by

The day began with the speeches from the prospective candidates for Speaker—unserious Liberal candidate Stephane Lauzon bowed out before things got started, and the rest began their speeches as to why they deserved to get the job. There were also a few fulsome (in the proper sense of the word) expressions of thanks to Anthony Rota and claims that he was a “good Speaker” when he absolutely was not, which is why we were here today. The notion of respect and decorum got mentioned time and again, because they always do, for what little good it does (because the Speaker can only do so much). Elizabeth May once again said she was running (even though her being a party leader should have been disqualifying automatically, except for the fact that because the Greens don’t have official party status was the technicality that allowed it), but her running was yet again less about being a serious candidate than it was about giving herself the opportunity to make a speech about the rules, and why the Speaker needs to give up the lists provided to him or her and use their own judgment as to who should be recognised. (I actually agree, but this is one of those areas where if the Speaker did this unilaterally there would likely be a revolt). May also made the point that Rota apparently broke his own rules in recognising the Nazi-aligned veteran, however the Speaker’s office says that those rules didn’t really apply because it wasn’t an official sitting of the Commons, and Speakers have wide discretion in any case.

In the end, Liberal MP Greg Fergus was chosen, making him the first Black Speaker in Canadian history. The choice was a surprise to me because Fergus had never shown any interest in the role prior to this past week. In fact, he has always been a pretty notorious partisan (former leader of the Young Liberals, former national director of the party, former parliamentary secretary to the prime minister), and that raises questions for me, but that’s solely my opinion. Fergus did talk about subscribing to Hansard when he was 14, and being a House of Commons page, which puts him in good stead for his respect for the Chamber and the institution, but again, he’s coming into the position as a complete neophyte with no experience as a Chair occupant, which should be a little worrying given the particular state of Canadian democracy right now, and the rancorous mood.

That rancorous mood extended to the congratulatory speeches. Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s speech danced on the edge of being partisan in his talk about what were essentially government priorities, to which Pierre Poilievre decided to one-up him and go full-partisan, that included a bizarre false history lesson where he tried to wedge his “common sense” nonsense into “common people,” and the House of Commons, with a wrong history of the name and the institution itself, before trying to compare Trudeau to King John, who was forced to sign the Magna Carta. If the words “classless jackass” crossed your mind, you would be correct, which is all the more reason why the state of Canadian democracy is in trouble, and Fergus will be hard-pressed to do much about it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 29 out of 31 Russian drones and one cruise missile in overnight attacks, while falling debris tarted fires in Dnipro. Russia claims it downed a Ukrainian missile off the coast of occupied Crimea. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was visiting troops in the country’s northeast.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A cut or not a cut of the defence budget?

Posted on by

Yesterday morning, the CBC had a story about the department of national defence looking to cut $1 billion from its books as part of the government’s ongoing spending review, and people lost their gods damned minds, both in Canada and in some international venues. The story was based on comments that were made at committee by the chief of defence staff and the deputy minister, and they talked about how it was going to be challenging to meet these reductions while worrying about capabilities. This was a bit of a surprise, because Anita Anand had previous said that defence was going to be exempt from her cost-cutting demands, but the comments from General Eyre and the deputy minister sounded like DND volunteered to do their share (which I always treat with suspicion—the previous Auditor General made his own pledge to do his part to make cuts as part of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan™, and lo, wound up delaying badly overdue IT upgrades that his successor needed to beg Parliament for more resources to deal with). And because this is not my first rodeo, I immediately presumed that what this likely means is the accounting game of shifting certain spending into future years or re-profiling some committed dollars that they can’t spend (because they simply don’t have the capacity to spend their current allocation), but a whole lot of people who should know better freaked all the way out.

This came up in Question Period, and Bill Blair was present, but he didn’t really answer the question—he took a swipe at the Conservatives for their record of cutting defence spending to below 1 percent of GDP (indeed, here’s a look back in history of Harper complaining to Peter MacKay that he didn’t cut the military enough) and then read some bland pabulum that didn’t even approach answering the question—because that’s what this government does. It wasn’t until nearly 4 PM that Blair posted a thread to Twitter about how they were still increasing the defence budget, and these $1 billion in savings were internal measures like cutting back on travel and consultants, but noted the spending commitments they’ve made like NORAD modernisation, and ships and planes, and so on.

It absolutely mystifies me as to how this message-obsessed government took almost eight hours to craft a response to this news story that when they could have shut down the hysterical reaction to it in mere minutes had they simply sent out a similar tweet first thing in the morning. There is nothing in there to demonstrate why it took eight hours. They could also have had Blair give a reasonable response during QP that would have simply said “This reporting is exaggerated, we are looking for some efficiencies, but overall defence spending is still increasing,” and it would have defused everything. But they didn’t, either because they’re inept, or it takes them that many hours to get sign-off from Katie Telford’s office, which is a sad sign about where this government is at. But nearly eight hours for this kind of response to the story is unacceptable, and it’s a real-time demonstration in why things need to change at the top with this government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The first American Abrams tanks are being delivered in the eastern front, in the hopes they will make a difference. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre by Nazi forces.

Continue reading →

QP: Return of the carbon price mendacity

Posted on by

While the prime minister was away at an EV battery plan announcement in Quebec, his deputy off in Toronto, and other leaders were also absent. Chris d’Entrement was again in the big chair for the day, even though one would think they would rotate Alexandra Mendès in there as well. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, accused the prime minister of looking like “a clown” around the world, called Rota a “Liberal Speaker,” railed that it took him five days to say anything, and then repeated it in English in the same question. Karina Gould said that everyone agreed it was the Speaker who was responsible and he resigned. Poilievre then accused the prime minister of creating “the middle-class hungry” and demanded they cut the carbon price. Anita Anand stood up to wonder if the Conservatives would support their bill on cutting the GST on rentals and increasing competition. Poilievre then called out Atlantic Liberal MPs who say that they have concerns about the carbon price while at home but not while in Ottawa. Randy Boissonnault accused the Conservatives of looking to cut programmes and let the planet burn. Poilievre rambled about the supposed “NDP coalition” before demanding they vote for their Supply Day motion to cut the carbon price. Boissonnault repeated his same response about the Conservatives only looking to slash and burn. Poilievre then returned to French to call out the Bloc leader for voting to increase the carbon price (which is not entirely true). Pascale St-Onge insisted that what doesn’t make sense is a party that doesn’t have a climate plan.

Yves-François Blanchet got up and wondered why the Conservatives wouldn’t axe subsidies, before wondering why the prime minister still hasn’t called president Zelenskyy or Jewish leaders. Gould said that calls were made, and that the prime minister apologised to everyone harmed. Blanchet insisted that the headlines would have been different if the prime minister had apologised immediately (which would have given Rota cover), and Gould repeated that calls were made and apologies were made through diplomatic channels from the beginning.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he demanded that the government end all new fossil fuel projects and move the net-zero date up to 2045. St-Onge insisted that they have brought emissions down since 2018, and that they would do more. Boulerice the worried the chaos caused by changing insurers for civil servants, and Anita Anand insisted that they were working with the leadership and Canada Life to ensure the situation was rectified.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Reaction to Monday’s assassination revelations

Posted on by

In response to Monday’s explosive allegations that agents of the Indian government may have had assassinated a Sikh separatist leader in Canada, the Indian government calls the allegations “absurd” and has expelled a Canadian diplomat in retaliation for the expulsion of one of their diplomats. On his way into Cabinet, Justin Trudeau said that he wasn’t trying to escalate with India but wanted cooperation on the investigation, and said that he did consult with allies before making his speech on Monday.

In terms of international support, the UK offered a fairly tepid statement of support, while the US’ initial lukewarm statement was upgraded to a much more supportive statement later in the day. This is, of course, going to put strain on trade talks, at least in the near term.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1704216214283624787

There was reaction on the Hill from the World Sikh Organization and the National Council of Canadian Muslims, who said the allegations are not surprising, particularly given the actions of the Modi government to minorities in India. It also sounds like Hardeep Nijjar had been meeting with CSIS on a weekly basis up until his assassination, because of the threats against him, leading to questions about whether our security agencies did enough to protect him (but should probably be asking if they have the capacity to protect threatened community members more). Here is some reaction from Sikh and south Asian MPs and ministers.

Very curiously, Pierre Poilievre came out in the morning to change his tone from his speech on Monday, and is now demanding evidence from the prime minister about the allegations. Even more curious is the fact that there was a take-note debate on the subject in the House of Commons last night, and no Conservative participated, which is very, very unusual. I do have to wonder if this is the influence of new MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, who has been accused of having an anti-Sikh bias in his Indian foreign policy commentary in the past, and whom Conservatives lean heavily on for their foreign policy advice. (Then again, it might just be Poilievre fully engaging in dickish tendencies and not wanting to look like he’s letting Trudeau get any points for this, which is equally a possibility).

For some additional perspective, former CSIS director Richard Fadden and former national security advisor Vincent Rigby talk about what we know, why it’s not a surprise that India has been interfering in Canada, and the reason why it’s difficult to provide necessary protection to some of the people under threat.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia’s drone attack on Lviv early Tuesday morning hit a warehouse containing humanitarian supplies, and killed one person. There were more deaths in Kherson due to Russian shelling. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was at the UN General Assembly to call on Russia to end the war so that the world can address more urgent issues like the climate crisis. Back home, there are more corruption allegations surrounding people close to Zelenskyy.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Some long-awaited policy announcements

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A foreign interference inquiry after all

Posted on by

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.

https://twitter.com/billblair/status/1699740567435915664

Continue reading →

Roundup: Toronto Pride at a necessary time

Posted on by

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

Continue reading →

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The “filibuster” that wasn’t

Posted on by

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

Continue reading →