Tag Archives: Randy Boissonnault

Roundup: Inappropriate behaviour but no traitors

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Of the testimony at the Foreign Interference committee yesterday was the prime minister’s current National Security and Intelligence Advisor, who spoke about the allegations surrounding MPs in the NSICOP report. She stated that, having seen that intelligence and its updates since the report, she’s seen no indication of “traitors” in our Parliament. What she saw in the intelligence was inappropriate conduct and a lack of judgment in certain individuals, but no espionage, sabotage, or putting of Canadian security at risk.

This brings us back to the next steps in terms of any bad behaviour by MPs or lack of judgment, and what should be done about it, and once again, the answer is and always has been that the party leaders need to get involved. That means security clearances, and full briefings on the materials, so that they know what has been alleged, and that they can take corrective action in some fashion. (And before you say anything, yes Poilievre has a clearance as a former minister, but he has refused to be briefed under the specious reason that if he gets briefed, he’ll be “gagged,” which is nonsense and he knows it).

But as Philippe Lagassé points out, the chair of NSICOP also should have done more to be transparent than simply say what was in the report is enough, and leave it at that. Most people didn’t and won’t read the report, and media outlets taking those two or three sentences without context elsewhere in the document didn’t help either. Elizabeth May demonstrated that he could have gone further and said more without breaching any kind of confidentiality, but he chose not to for his own reasons, and so we’ve had months of suspicion for little reason.

#cdnpoli, all day every day.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-09T13:27:43.894Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile hit the port in Odesa, killing six, injuring eight, and damaging a Panamanian-flagged container ship. A further drone attack in the same region hit an apartment building, injuring another five. A Ukrainian drone strike has hit another Russian arms depot, which includes arms provided by North Korea.

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Roundup: Straying far out of their lane

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After their big song and dance about wanting the federal government to stay in their own lane, the premiers decided to start weighing in on defence spending—an explicitly federal jurisdiction—yesterday, trying to insist that Canada should meet its NATO spending target sooner than the outlined plan. I’m really not sure how this is exactly the premiers staying in their own lane if they expect the prime minister to stay in his, but they certainly made no shortage of ridiculous excuses for their demands, such as this being about trade with the Americans and so on, but come on. Justin Trudeau did write a letter in response to Tim Houston and Doug Ford, saying the federal government is only trying to help the provinces improve the lives of Canadians, and that maybe they should sign on rather than be obstructionist.

Also from the meeting, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador expressed an interest in resettling some the asylum seekers who landed in Quebec, but that hasn’t stopped Doug Ford from demanding more money for resettlement, nor has it stopped David Eby and Danielle Smith from demanding money for “newcomers,” when the specific issue is just what obligation the federal government has for asylum seekers before their refugee claim is approved, at which point they genuinely become a federal responsibility. This isn’t about helping to settle economic migrants or other mainstream immigrants, which aren’t the federal government’s sole responsibility, but they want to pretend that it is because they want to whinge for more money when what they’re trying to conflate has nothing to do with the actual obligations of the federal government. Again, it’s not really that tough to understand, but these premiers are going to be obtuse and engage in sophistry along the way.

Meanwhile, because several of the premiers are talking equalisation again, I cannot stress enough how badly the CBC described the programme in their article today. Provinces do not write cheques for equalisation. Not province transfers money to another province. It is paid for out of the federal treasury from the income taxes collected from all Canadians, and distributed to those provinces who fall below the threshold of fiscal capacity to have equal programming. Even more to the point, while not raised in the CBC piece, fiscal capacity has nothing to do with whether or not a province is running a deficit, because that would be absolutely absurd and no province would run a surplus if they thought they could get equalisation dollars if they didn’t. Regardless, this was extremely sloppy journalism from the CBC and reads to me like the reporter just relayed how one of the premiers described how the programme works rather than actually looking it up or asking someone who has a clue (and that’s not any of the premiers). Hermes wept…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 95 prisoners of war each yesterday.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1813524697964823028

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Roundup: It’s not logistically impossible

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For the past week-and-a-half, it has been nothing but handwringing over the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election results, and the demands that Justin Trudeau either step aside, or to at least meet with his caucus. I took a full week for Trudeau to finally take questions from the media and said that he’s “committed” to staying on the job. And in response to the demands for an in-person caucus meeting now and not in September, Trudeau said he’s having one-on-one conversations with members of the caucus, and some of them are saying he needs to change “key players.”

And then comes along Liberal caucus chair Brenda Shanahan, who insists that it’s “logistically impossible” to have an in-person caucus meeting before September, to which I call bullshit. MPs can all get on a plane to Ottawa at any point, even if it means they have to cancel a barbeque appearance at some point. It’s not impossible, it’s a choice, and that choice is to not respect the members of the caucus, because frankly the leader doesn’t feel the need to be afraid of caucus because we have trained MPs to believe the falsehood that they are powerless and that the leader can push them around. That’s not actually true, and the caucus collectively has the power to vote non-confidence in the leader if they actually had the intestinal fortitude to do so. But therein lies the problem.

I’m also going to point out that all of the breathless reporting on Thursday about Chrystia Freeland saying that the Cabinet is fully behind Trudeau—of course they’re fully behind him. If they weren’t, they’d be out of a job. This isn’t rocket science, guys.

In case you missed them:

  • My weekend column where I talked to the author of the book Theatre of Lies about the situation we find ourselves in Canadian politics and what to do about it.
  • My column points out that one of the problems the Liberals face is how they choose their leaders, and that a proper Westminster system would have solved this by now.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take wonders just what Danielle Smith thinks she wants to “opt out” of around dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down 21 out of 22 Russian drones overnight Thursday. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from one neighbourhood in Chasiv Yar after their defensive positions were destroyed, risking further casualties. A Russian missile strike in Odesa killed a woman, while a guided bomb in Kharkiv region killed a man. Russians have started targeting Ukrainian air bases in advance of the delivery of F-16 fighter jets. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán went to Kyiv for a frosty meeting as Hungary assumes the rotating presidency of the EU. Orbán then headed to Moscow, no doubt to get fresh orders from Putin.

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Roundup: Terrible capital gains narratives

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The communications around the capital gains changes have been atrocious. Chrystia Freeland is painting an apocalyptic picture of what will happen to Canadian society if we don’t make these changes, and the talk about fairness, where workers pay more taxes than those who can earn it on investment income is missing the key component of the discussion which is around the unequal treatment of different types of income that allows people to engage in tax arbitrage—picking and choosing which revenue models will net them the least taxation, which is a real problem for fairness that is not being discussed at all.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801021913738698941

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801022109172256818

In amidst this comes Calgary economist Jack Mintz, whose sole entire schtick is to cut taxes to solve every problem under the sun. And of course, Pierre Poilievre was quoting him in Question Period, calling him the greatest economy in the country, which is pretty risible. It didn’t help that Poilievre made the basic mistake of believing that the tax rate is going up rather than the inclusion rate (the point at which it kicks in on the profit you’ve made), but he has doomsday scenarios to unleash into the world to make his case that this is a Very Bad Thing, when it’s nothing at all like he seemed to believe.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801086926696415384

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801088499522937017

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1801096926227497107

Everyone has handled this whole situation poorly, media included, and this has been al lost opportunity to try and have a proper conversation about these kinds of tax measures and changes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missile attacks have left much of Kyiv without power and water. Russian missiles also struck an administrative building and an apartment block in Kryvyi Rih in the south, and killed nine and injured 29. The American government says they are aware of credible reports that abducted Ukrainian children are being put up on adoption websites.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1800901662820704467

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QP: Scoring more points on opioid victims

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The prime minister was in town today but not in QP, though his deputy was. Most of the other leaders were also away, leaving Andrew Scheer to lead off, where he asked for the date at which the prime minister would like make it illegal to smoke crack in a hospital room. Chrystia Freeland said that BC approached the federal government with a pilot project, the government shares their concerns, and they are working then to adapt the programme, but MPs shouldn’t score political points off of this tragedy. Scheer tried a second time, and Freeland gave a paean to working together to solve these problems, and that relayed that she spoke to premier Eby about their cooperation in working on this, while opioid addiction is a tragedy. Scheer then cherry-picked data on BC’s opioid fatalities, and ignored the increasing rates in Alberta and BC. Freeland again said that she has been in touch with the premier on the issue and they are working collaboratively, and not fundraising off of the pain and death of desperate people. Luc Berthold took over in French, and worried about crack use “exploding” in Montreal, and demanded a preemptive no to any similar projects in Montreal. Freeland slowly annunciated that abC has a pilot project and now has concerns that they will be working together to address, and that these tragedies require putting partisanship aside. Bethold tried to implicate the Bloc in any decriminalisation in Quebec, and Freeland repeated this is a tragedy, and said that what is really extremist and radical are white supremacist policies, and wanted Conservatives to denounce them.

Luc Therrien led for the Bloc, and raised a newspaper story about a “rapprochement” between CBC and Radio-Canada and demanded they never be merged. Freeland insisted that they will always support the French broadcaster. Therrien demanded that each half be made fully independent—which would never work because Radio-Canada requires CBC’s infrastructure. Freeland repeated that they will always support French in Canada.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and started shouting about the government’s environmental record, to which Freeland insisted that this government has done more for the environment than any previous government in Canadian history, but they are doing more. Don Davies took credit for the capital gains changes, and wondered why the Liberals are maintaining Conservatives’ “corporate giveaways.” Freeland noted it was great that the NDP supports tax fairness, and that nurses and carpenters should pay the same taxes as CEOs, and noted Conservative silence on this fairness.

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Roundup: The aftermath of coordinated social media posts

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It took only minutes from Pierre Poilievre’s ouster from the House of Commons during Question Period yesterday for the first boo-hoo fundraising email to be sent out to party donors, falsely claiming the reason why he was ejected as being “censorship” (it was because he did not respect the authority of the Speaker and refused to withdraw a remark when given four opportunities to do so), but it’s not like the truth has ever stopped Poilievre in the past. A few more minutes later, every Conservative MP started putting out tweets also giving a false version of what happened, and they used the word “whacko” over and over again, like toddlers, because of course they did.

The Liberals were quick to take to the microphone in the Foyer after QP, several in a row, denouncing Poilievre and his actions, and Marc Miller in particular used his talent for blunt speaking in disputing this narrative that Poilievre has somehow been “silenced,” and they quickly circulated the clip of him saying so as well—because everything is about the socials, and we all know it.

Meanwhile, you had journalists and every flavour of internet troll insisting that the word “whacko” had been used in the Chamber before, but the difference is that it hadn’t been directed to someone in the past, and that’s what makes it unparliamentary (and anyone who doesn’t get the difference doesn’t deserve to be on social media). It also looks like this was indeed the first time a leader of the opposition was named and expelled federally, but it has happened in provinces in the past, for what it’s worth.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian guided bombs targeted railway infrastructure in Kharkiv, killing at least one person. The death toll from the attack on the educational institution in Odesa also continued to climb.

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Roundup: Overselling “soft populism”

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It was quite the weekend for uncritical media for Pierre Poilievre, after he had a bad couple of weeks of being called out for a series of egregious lies that could no longer be spun or both-sidesed. Nevertheless, the National Post was there to gush about his so-called “soft populism” that was full of comments of people insisting he was really within the mainstream and which studiously ignored his attempting to normalize far-right actors in order to capture the PPC vote, or his shifting the Overton-window to make their particular pronouncements acceptable discourse when they remain radical. Nobody wants to talk about his attempts to take MAGA Republican populism and just use the “good parts only” in the hopes that he can ignore the bad stuff that comes with it, but that’s not how real life works, and these are things we should be discussing.

Meanwhile, Poilievre released a fifteen minute “documentary” on housing over the weekend that the usual pundit suspects gushed over, not because it contained anything true, because it didn’t—it’s the exact same pseudo-intellectual “economics” that he got from crypto-bros on YouTube, but it’s done with higher production values and data-visualization crimes, conspiracy claims, internally inconsistent arguments, and the inability to distinguish between correlation and causation, but hey—it looked slick, so that’s what everyone is going to glom onto. And while I get that it’s the weekend, the Post wrote-up a recap with absolutely no critical pushback to any of its claims, while the CBC couched it in poll numbers and some government talking points, again, with no actual pushback to any of Poilievre’s misleading claims.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have been shelling Kherson, and killed at least two people over the weekend. Russian advances appear to be easing off on Avdiivka, while their claims of having captured Maryinka remain unsubstantiated. Former president Petro Poroshenko was denied permission to leave the country (because of martial law) when it was found out that he was planning to meet with Hungarian prime minister and Putin apologist Viktor Orbán. Ukrainian officials are investigating claims that Russians shot surrendering soldiers, which is a war crime.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1731338721583079724

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Roundup: Google joins the bully tactics

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Following Facebook’s particular tantrum over the online news bill, and their announcement that they will remove Canadian news links from their site, and end some of their media fellowship programmes, Google has stated that they will do the same, and lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s absolutely a bully tactic, but so far the government is holding firm. It has been pointed out that when these web giants tried this in Australia, they lasted four days before they returned to the table, so we’ll see how long this lasts.

This having been established, a couple of things: Despite the media narrative, the bill is not a “link tax.” Links are nowhere in the spirit or the text of the bill. These companies were not supposed to be paying for hosting links on their sites, but rather, this was supposed to be an exercise in trying to rebalance the marketplace. Facebook and Google have so distorted the advertising market and destroyed it for media companies that this was supposed to be a way of essentially trying to compensate the public good of journalism for how they distorted the ad market. What the law is supposed to do, once it’s in force, is create transparent conditions for those negotiations to take place, with the oversight of the CRTC as an arm’s-length regulator. Again, this is not paying for links. There is no prescribed tariff rate for these links, but it was about addressing a market failure in a way that is as arm’s-length from government as possible. But web giants don’t like transparency (the deals they signed with media companies previously were all secret), and they don’t like to be held accountable. And the distance from government is also why the government didn’t just tax them and redistribute those revenues—never mind that web giants are expert at evading taxes, and the howls of government funding journalism from those revenues would be worse than the existing funds that the government already provides print journalism (which, again, they tried to keep as arm’s-length as possible through advisory boards making the qualification determinations).

I’m less inclined to be angry at the government, because they were largely being responsive to what the news industry was asking of them, even though that is tainted by the self-interest of certain zombie media giants. We should, however, absolutely be angry that these web giants are throwing their weight around and bullying sovereign governments like this, and it makes the case even more that these companies have become too big and need to be broken up. The fact that they are beating up on Canada won’t endear them to other jurisdictions, like the EU, but that’s in part why they’re doing it—they don’t want other countries to do what Canada is attempting here. But this may very well be a case that they are overplaying their hands, and those other countries or jurisdictions they are trying to scare off won’t be deterred.

Meanwhile, the opposition parties are having another normal one about this. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch:

No news from the front-lines of the counter-offensive, but emergency workers in the four districts surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are conducting drills in preparation for the event of a nuclear incident or leak involving the plant, as they are convinced Russia will stage. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Greta Thunberg to discuss the ecological impacts of war, including of the burst dam. Zelenskyy also met with former US vice president Mike Pence, for that matter. Human Rights Watch says that they have evidence that Ukraine has also been using illegal landmines as part of their operations.

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