Tag Archives: RCMP

QP: Swagger around the Trump election

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In the wake of the U.S. election results, the prime minister was present today to answer all questions, while his deputy was away. All of the other leaders were present, and Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and claimed that Trudeau had previously caved to Trump on softwood lumber and claimed he would do so again. Justin Trudeau dismissed this and noted how they successfully renegotiated NAFTA, and stood up to other tariffs. Poilievre’s tried this again in English, and Trudeau repeated his same points with the added note that Poilievre wouldn’t get his security clearance. Poilievre went on about what is “dumb” and claimed the carbon levy was driving jobs and investment in the U.S., and Trudeau said that they were going to grow the economy together, and said that that government takes defence and security seriously, and pointed to the defence cuts under the Conservatives and his refusal to get His clearance. Poilievre patted himself on the back for the Conservatives “crushing the Taliban and ISIS,” claimed Trudeau couldn’t shoot down a Chinese weather balloon. Trudeau accused Poilievre of talking down the Canadian Forces, and called him out for not committing to their two percent NATO timeline. Poilievre returned to French to claim that Trudeau has destroyed the economy, and Trudeau listed ways in which they have stood up for Canadian workers and took defence seriously, before one more swipe at the security clearance. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the crush of Americans heading for the border to avoid Trump. Trudeau noted that they have been making preparations before some economic back-patting. Blanchet felt that was too vague, and Trudeau again offered some bland assurances that they are protecting the border, and the steps taken to better distribute refugees around the country.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and worried about the American tariffs would raise prices in Canada. (Huh? How?) Trudeau listed the workers they stood up for workers the last time and will do so again. Singh said was “cold comfort” before repeating the question in French, and Trudeau, related his same back-patting.

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Roundup: A Pollyanna about Tuesday’s outcome

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I have not said much about the American election because not my circus, not my monkeys, and I really can’t get worked up about a contest I have no say in, however, comments made by the US ambassador to Canada this weekend have utterly boggled my mind. “I firmly believe that regardless of the outcome of the election, the United States is going to remain the most durable democracy in the world,” David Cohen said, and went on about how democracy will “easily” survive whatever the outcome of that election.

No. America has been teetering on the brink of autocracy for a while now, and while I get that his job is to be blandly reassuring as the ambassador, this just smacks of being a giant Pollyanna. And for Canada, where so much of what happens in the US leaks over the border and affects our politics here, those autocratic impulses are not far behind either. We already have provincial governments using tactics lifted directly from the authoritarian playbook, as is Pierre Poilievre, and he’s not shy about it either. And if America stops defending other democracies around the world under an autocratic regime, things are going to get very difficult indeed as these democracies are under threat from Russia and other autocratic actors who want to break them in order to show their own populations that democracy doesn’t work, so better to suck it up and live with the corruption of their autocratic states. And then there is Trump’s vision of NATO as a protection racket, that he fully intends to upend, and already Viktor Orbán is salivating at the thought of a Trump victory handing Ukraine to Russia, destroying a democracy the way he has been doing in Hungary.

There will be consequences, and I don’t think it helps anyone for Cohen to shrug it off like that.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv, injuring at least five. Ukrainian forces destroyed 66 out of 92 Russian drones sent into the country overnight Saturday, and fortunately, no casualties were reported. Russians have also taken control of the village of Vyshneve in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces hold back one of the most powerful offensives since the start of the invasion.

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Roundup: Calling for the moderates to re-engage

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Over in The Line, former provincial Progressive Conservative (and former federal Conservative) comms staffer Chisholm Pothier goes though Blaine Higgs’ downfall in New Brunswick, and in particular how his obsession with “parental rights” as a cover for oppressing trans youth was one of the main drivers of that collapse, particularly because the Liberals in that province were talking about the things people were worried about, like housing and healthcare. He eschewed the usual partisan nonsense and congratulated Suan Holt on a deserved win. But that wasn’t the important part.

The most important takeaway from the piece, however, is that Pothier calls on Tories in New Brunswick to get memberships and get engaged with the party if they want to take it back from what Higgs turned it into, which is a narrow little cult catering primarily to Christian nationalists. This is something I have written columns about in the past—that it’s extremely important for ordinary people and moderates within a party to take out a membership and get involved at the grassroots level, because if you don’t, the crazies absolutely will and they will take over your party. This is what happened with the UCP in Alberta—when Jason Kenney engineered the hostile takeover of the PC party there, and then its merger with the Wildrose to form the UCP, it was done very much by getting the swivel-eyed loons to engage with the process at the expense of the moderates, whom they didn’t want in the party. This was to be a small-c conservative party and not the amorphous centrist mass that the PC party in Alberta had become, constantly reshaping itself and its beliefs to follow those of each successive leader. And now, it’s a party of hardcore fanatics, who turned on Kenney, and whom Danielle Smith is terrified they will do the same to her, so she is becoming increasingly radical in how she is governing as a result.

I cannot stress enough that ordinary people need to be engaged with parties at the grassroots level, or things get really bad. A party that only consists of Kool-Aid drinkers, regardless of the party, becomes toxic pretty fast (especially if they start going on with the purity tests). While the PCs in New Brunswick have a chance to reclaim their party, which is probably too late in Alberta (and couldn’t happen at all with the sudden capitulation of BC United to the BC Conservatives). It also may not be possible for the federal Liberals, who did away with party memberships altogether in favour of sign-ups that will populate their voter database while all power centralized in the leader’s office. Pothier’s advice should carry for all parts of the country, not just New Brunswick—if you want to keep your party from falling prey to fanatics of any stripe, you need to get involved as a member to push back against them.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched two waves of drone attacks over Kyiv, and one of them struck an apartment building, killing one and injuring five. A missile attack struck residences and a medical facility in Dnipro, killing three. G7 leaders announced $50 billion in loans to Ukraine to be repaid with seized Russian assets.

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QP: Misleading about the updated PBO report

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The PM was still in Laos, and his deputy was off to Toronto, as was Pierre Poilievre, meaning only one of the mainline leaders were present today. That left Andrew Scheer to lead off, and worried about the rise in antisemitism and hate crimes, blamed Justin Trudeau’s so-called “divisive rhetoric,” and that it takes too long to list terrorist groups as such, giving the example of the Houthis. Arif Virani says that they denounced the actions of Samidoun in Vancouver, and that they are being reviewed for a designation. Scheer then raised the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s updated report on the carbon levy, grossly mischaracterised it, and cited numbers out of context before demanding an election. Steven Guilbeault quoted the report to point out that eighth out of ten households are net beneficiaries. Scheer insisted that Guilbeault was also misleading because he only focused on the direct costs and not the net economic impact. Guilbeault recited more passages that made his point that only the wealthiest are impacted. John Barlow took over to insist that the impacts were worse for farmers. Guilbeault cited grain reports that prove that droughts have reduced grain yields. Barlow cherry-picked another citation from the report and demanded an election. Guilbeault listed the indirect economic impact costs on things like farms, and that they had the support of different agricultural associations.

Claude DeBellefeuille led for the Bloc and demanded that the Senate be abolished because they weren’t passing a Bloc bill on Supply Management (and good luck getting the constitutional amendment to make that happen). Lawrence MacAulay recited his support for Supply Management and impressed upon the Senate to pass it. DeBellefeuille demanded that the two senators be brought into line (which is not how this works), and Marie-Claude Bibeau reiterated support for the sector.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and complained about “greedy CEOs” and Thanksgiving dinners, to which François-Philippe Champagne said that they should thank the government for reforming competition, and gave props to Singh for his contributions. Singh switched to French to give the same again, and Champagne patted himself on the back for summoning the grocery CEOs to demand action.

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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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QP: Concern trolling your own filibuster

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The PM was in Laos, his deputy elsewhere, and all of the other leaders were present because Wednesday. Pierre Poilievre, fresh out of his no-speaking-for-one-day punishment, began in French, and he claimed that he would have liked to use Parliament’s time to deal with pressing issues but they’re paralysed because the prime minister has refused to turn over documents. (Seriously?!) Karina Gould said this was all false, and read the RCP’s concerns with the production order, and they could send this to committee today. Poilievre listed selective facts to make this seem more scandalous than it is, and wondered if someone steals from you whether you call the cops or send the matter to committee. This time François-Philippe Champagne recited that Canadians are tired of these games and slogans, and that they have had enough of filibustering, and that they will always protect rights and freedoms. Poilievre switched to English to retread his first concern-trolling question, and Gould reiterated that this was not true and repeated the RCMP’s statement. Poilievre again listed the selected facts, and claimed the minister’s story was changing (false), and mocked the notion that this would cause Charter rights to come cashing down. Gould said this was a typical witch-hunt to go after things that have nothing to do with the events, such as personnel files of people not implicated by events, and repeated that this should go to committee. Poilievre scoffed at the notion that this was a witch hunt, and mischaracterised the relationship between the government and SDTC. Gould said that if the police request documents, they are turned over, but this is an abuse of authority.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the Bloc’s Supply Management in the Senate. Lawrence MacAulay recited that they support Supply Management, and they are encouraging the Other Place to pass it. Blanchet railed about the two senators allegedly holding up the bill, and Marie-Claude Bibeau recited the support for Supply Management before noting they appointed independent senators, which is a concept the Bloc should understand. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and was incredulous with the story that “corporate landlords” are using AI to jack up rents (which is not federal jurisdiction). Sean Fraser said it was too bad the NDP decided to walk away from the government’s attempt to do something about the situation. Singh then turned to the reports that government lawyers are claiming that there is no duty to provide First Nations with water. Patty Hajdu said that they Have been fixing the mess the Conservatives left, and urged the NDP to support their safe drinking water bill.

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Roundup: Another threatened frivolous lawsuit

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There is a weird little case of monkey-see-monkey-do happening between different conservative parties around the country that has accelerated with the three provincial elections, and Danielle Smith’s upcoming leadership review, and it would all be childish if the stakes weren’t so high. A few days ago, Scott Moe started claiming that the federal carbon levy was costing the jobs of teachers and nurses in the province—a transparently bullshit claim—but the talking point got picked up in Question Period by Pierre Poilievre, and soon other premiers were doing it, including Danielle Smith. Yes, it demonstrates an intellectual and moral bankruptcy that is stunning to behold, but also just how little imagination there seems to be among parties on the right in this country (not that the NDP has much imagination of their own, as they crib the notes of the “justice Democrats” in the US with alarming frequency).

After Blaine Higgs declared that he was going to launch a fresh legal challenge against the federal carbon levy—which will immediately be thrown out of court—Danielle Smith decided she couldn’t let that one go either, so she is now threatening a new legal challenge of the federal Impact Assessment Act, which has just been through changes after the Supreme Court ruled that the earlier version did not pass constitutional muster. And just like Higgs’ challenge that has no new legal arguments to draw on, Smith is also citing things that are not legislative in nature as she plans to challenge the amended law.

The federal government isn’t having it, and Steven Guilbeault has called her out over this, but I’m not sure her behaviour will change too dramatically once she’s on the other side of her leadership review because, well, she needs to prove to her base that she is doing more than just listening to them, but acting on their batshit crazy desires as well, so we’re going to see more of this nonsense going forward.

Applies to the vast majority of #cdnpoli.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-04T23:00:28.266Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian force shot down nine out of nineteen Russian drones targeting critical infrastructure overnight Thursday. Russian advances have knocked out about 80 percent of the critical infrastructure in the logistics hub of Pokrovsk, which they are trying to capture. President Zelenskyy visited the Sumy region, which borders the captured areas in Russia’s Kursk region. Reuters has a photo gallery of the all-female anti-drone mobile air defence unit known as the “Bucha witches.”

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Roundup: Filibustering their own motion

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The current privilege fight has ground business in the House of Commons to a complete halt, thanks to the tactics of the Conservatives, and they are trying to use this as some form of blackmail on the government, particularly as the government has been unable to move the legislation around the capital gains changes. Andrew Scheer even tried to be cute during the Thursday Question yesterday and said that if the government can’t conduct its own business, then they should call an election. Because of course he did.

While I won’t relitigate why this is an abuse of privilege that sets a terrifying precedent, it has been called out by the Government House Leader that the Conservatives are filibustering themselves because the whole point of this is that it’s supposed to go to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee so that it can be decided upon what should happen, but that’s inconvenient for the Conservatives. They would rather put up every single MP to speak to this issue to run out the clock, and so that they can all recite prepared scripts that scream “Liberal corruption!” even though that’s not what the Auditor General found. (Yes, there were conflicts of interest, but the government was not implicated in this at all). Gould asserts that the Conservatives are trying to keep it away from committee because the moment that committee starts calling witnesses, legal experts will point out the abuse of the parliamentary privilege powers and that this is banana republic behaviour, and she’s not wrong, but the bigger issue here is that the plan  of the Conservatives is to make the House of Commons as completely non-functional as possible through abuse of this privilege debate (which again, should have been over in a couple of hours at most with the matter sent to committee) so that they can claim further justification for an election.

If the other opposition parties wised up and stopped playing along with the Conservatives in their desire to embarrass the government for their own partisan aims, Parliament could be functioning a lot more smoothly and things they want to get passed could, but none of them seem to care much about the long-term implications of their actions (like the banana republic precedents) because scoring points is too much fun. There also remains that the government could prorogue Parliament for a day or two in order to kill the privilege motion, but that could set them up for bigger headaches, particularly as they want certain bills out of the Sente and prorogation would reset the clocks on them. In any case, the dysfunction is intentional, and the Conservatives need to be called out on the lies they are spreading to justify this behaviour.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a major drone attack over Ukraine, targeting 15 regions; casualties included two adults and a child after a drone struck a fuel truck in Chernihiv. Ukraine did hit Russian radar stations inside the country with long-range missiles, while Ukraine’s top commander has ordered defences bolstered in the east after the loss of Vuhledar. New NATO secretary general Mark Rutte visited Kyiv as his first trip in his new role.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1841746253052321929

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Roundup: Setting a precedent in this privilege fight

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There was a privilege debate in the House of Commons yesterday, and it’s expected to carry forward through today, on the subject of the refusal by certain entities, including the Auditor General, to turn over documents related to Sustainable Development Technologies Canada with the intention that they be turned over to the RCMP, even though the RCMP says they don’t want them, in part because it could be tainted evidence that may not stand up in court. This has been an abuse of the Commons’ privilege around the production of papers, in large part because they’re not for the benefit of the Commons or its committees, but to turn them over to the RMCP, which is also interference in their independence. Having politicians direct the police in terms of who they want investigated is the stuff of banana republics or authoritarian regimes, and it amazes me that neither the Bloc nor the NDP could recognize that fact in their quest to use any tool at their disposal to embarrass the government.

The government’s counter-argument to this abuse of privilege is not only that this erodes the independence of officers like the AG, or the RCMP, btu this becomes a dangerous precedent when it comes to Canadians’ Charter rights, particularly around unlawful search and seizure. The Conservatives mock this argument in saying there is no Charter right for government documents, but that’s the thing about precedents when you have a party who is willing to use the authoritarian playbook to their own ends. Today it’s government documents, but how long before it’s a private individual whom they want to embarrass or to encourage police intervention? We watched the Conservatives (with the assistance of the Bloc and the NDP) haul one of the partners from GC Strategies before the bar of the House of Commons, against his doctor’s wishes because he was in the midst of a mental health crisis, because they wanted to embarrass him publicly. It looks like we’re about to get something similar with Randy Boissonnault’s former business partner, who is the subject of the second privilege debate that will be taking place, possibly later today, who has also not turned over demanded documents to the committee as they are on a witch-hunt to find “corruption” that the Ethics Commissioner has repeatedly found no evidence of. And as a reminder, there has been no evidence of any criminal behaviour with the SDTC allegations, but they are trying to find that evidence using the most ham-fisted and abusive methods possible.

Having parliament go after private citizens because they’re on private little crusades, mostly for the benefit of social media clicks, is a terrifying prospect for the future, and yet we are careening down that pathway. Speaker Fergus has been useless in putting his foot down against the abuse of Parliament’s powers in this way, and we may yet be in for another Supreme Court of Canada showdown on defining these powers and when parliamentary privilege because state-sanctioned harassment. But in the meantime, we’ll see the Conservatives drag out these privilege debates in order to derail the government’s agenda, because that’s the level of absolute dysfunction we’re at.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb struck an apartment block in Kharkiv late Wednesday, injuring at least ten civilians. There were also drone attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa and attacks on power systems in Sumy region. Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from Vuhledar after two years of grinding combat, which some describe as a microcosm of the current state of the conflict.

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Roundup: A promise to waste millions of dollars

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There are a lot of stupid, performative things being said right now, particularly in those three provincial elections, but one of the dumbest yesterday was courtesy of incumbent New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs, who promised that if re-elected, he will mount a new legal challenge of the federal carbon levy. And to make that worse, several Conservative MPs picked that up and declared during Question Period that the challenge was already underway (it’s not), as though it were a devastating argument for their demands to “axe the tax” or to call an election.

Higgs’ promise is premised entirely on bullshit. There is no basis for him to mount a new challenge because nothing about the programme has changed since the Supreme Court of Canada already ruled that it’s constitutional and within the powers of the federal government, particularly because of the existential challenge that climate change poses to Canadians. The fact that the price is increasing or that we have been though a bout of higher inflation—which has already stabilised and returned to target, and for which the carbon levy did not actually cause any of said inflation because that’s not how inflation works—don’t change any of the legal bases or arguments around the levy. And because the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled, any lower court that Higgs tries to mount a new challenge in is going to tell him to go pound sand.

Higgs is essentially promising to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, because you know that when the courts tell him to go pound sand, they’ll also tell him to reimburse the legal costs of the federal government because they wasted everyone’s time and money in bringing such a frivolous suit in the first place. But there is a political calculus, particularly on the right, where they are prepared to waste millions of dollars in doomed legal challenges because they think that it’s good electoral calculus to show that you’re fighting. Federally, Conservatives have made this argument a number of times when the government didn’t pursue doomed appeals and just made changes, and no doubt Higgs figures that this will work the same way for him. But then again, I guess they’re not bothered by the cognitive dissonance of “we need to balance the budget” and “we need to waste millions of dollars on a doomed legal crusade,” because that might require introspection or self-awareness, both of which are in incredibly short supply in politics these days.

Pretty much all of #cdnpoli. It's really hard to be optimistic about any of it right now.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-01T14:21:44.377Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Six civilians were killed and more wounded when Russian artillery struck a bus stop in Kherson. Russian troops have also reached the centre of Vuhledar, a Ukrainian bastion in the strategic high ground of the Donbas region, which is significant because of where it borders and the supply routes it controls. Ukraine is also investigating an apparent shooting of sixteen POWS by Russian troops.

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