Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: The torqued six attendees

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The National Post’s series on judicial appointments continued apace yesterday, with the torqued and misleading headline that “High-level judges may have paid to meet Trudeau before their appointments,” and members of the pundit class and commentariat swooned with disbelief, and social media was blanketed with caterwauling about “corruption” and “bribery” and so on. Some of the excitable far-right fanboys started ranting about the whole judiciary being corrupted and needing to be bulldozed (because how better to enable fascism?)

But if you read the piece, and put it into context with the previous work, it says that as many as six out of 1308 lawyers who later got judicial appointments may have attended Liberal fundraisers that the prime minister or other Cabinet ministers attended. Which is…nothing. And yet, the framing and the headline suggests that they paid for access and that said meeting resulted in their appointment to the bench, in absence of any evidence to the contrary—just innuendo and correlation that has no relation to causation. This kind of journalism tends to be bullshit.

I have made this case before, and I’ll re-up it again—we absolutely do not want or need purity tests to be applied to applicants to the bench, and we should not bar anyone who has ever donated to a party from receiving an appointment. Donation is a necessary form of civic engagement, and lawyers tend to be more engaged in their communities, and often have the means to donate. This is important—we need people engaged in the system, and if we bar them from promotion because they have donated at one point in time or another, we are losing talent from the judiciary. The process as it stands is working (albeit slow for other reasons), and we don’t need concern trolls dismantling it for the sake of purity tests.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Three Ukrainians were killed in an overnight Russian attack on Poltava, and two others were killed in shelling later in the day in the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials have confirmed that they have liberated the strategic settlement of Robotyne in the country’s south, as they are pushing further in the area as part of the counteroffensive. Russians are claiming that they scrambled jets in response to two US drones flying near occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: Demands to recall Parliament to make more speeches

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The Cabinet retreat has wrapped, and there is no big announcement on housing policy other than to say that they know there’s not one silver bullet that will solve the housing challenges, so that means more work. Pierre Poilievre dutifully summoned reporters to the Foyer in the West Block to mock the lack of action and decry “What was the solution? More speeches, more photo ops…” And then he demanded that Parliament be recalled so that they can “take action” on housing, but without a legislative proposal, all this would mean is a take-note debate, which would be a bunch of twenty-minute speeches being read into the record. You know, exactly the thing that he was mocking Trudeau about. So that’s consistent.

Meanwhile, the debate about international students is picking up, with the government seems to want to deal with the problem of dubious private colleges at the same time, even though they don’t really make a dent in the housing crisis, and leads to problems of just how the federal government determines legitimacy (which is a provincial responsibility), and there a host of other problems with the programme that they may not have the capacity to deal with. Limiting international students could have other, longer-term repercussions, as they are quite easy to stream into permanent residency, and good for Canada in the long run—but again, there are problems in the system as it is.

With that in mind, Alex Usher’s thread has concerns about how the federal government could mess things up, while Mike Moffatt’s thread offers suggestions for things the federal government could do (or in several cases, undo) to relieve the pressure. This all having been said, a bit part of the problem here is that provinces have cut or frozen funding to these institutions, and limiting international students will be a huge financial blow to them, and that should be addressed somehow.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1694317541559066707

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians targeted Ukrainian grain facilities with drone attacks, destroying some 13,000 tons of grain at the Danube port of Izmail, while Ukrainians claim to have taken out a Russian air defence system in occupied Crimea with a drone attack of their own. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosted an international meeting about liberating Crimea from Russian control. And how to go about doing so.

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Roundup: Trying to use guilt on Meta

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As the wildfire situation intensifies, and more states of emergency are declared, Canadian heritage minister Pascale St-Onge has decided to try doubling down on using guilt to try and get Meta/Facebook back to the table to talk about the Online News Act, insisting that blocking news links puts lives in danger. I’m not sure I buy that—you can still directly access news sites, and they are easy to find, particularly the CBC and its local affiliates.

This, of course, led to yet another vapid re-litigation of the Act, and repeating many of the dumb arguments that don’t actually hit on the heart of the matter. There was the hand-wringing about “we trained people to go to Facebook for news,” which makes me wonder why we just don’t then retrain people to go directly to news sites or apps, while the discussion in the piece returns to the red herring about compensating for links. It’s not about compensating for links. It’s about compensating for Google and Facebook monopolizing the ad tech space and siphoning revenues from all links along the chain, and the Act providing transparency and fairness to the deals and negotiations that were already taking place. Which is also why stories about local media demanding the government capitulate to Meta’s bullying are particularly troublesome, because not only are they getting the narrative wrong (and the government needs to take a LOT of the blame for that one), but they’re saying that we should let web giants threaten sovereign governments if they don’t like what they’re seeing, and that’s especially troubling because these companies operate monopolistically and with impunity.

In the meantime, mendacious narratives about the legislation are also growing and becoming utterly grotesque, but between Poilievre and his Conservatives outright lying about the law, referring to it as government censorship and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the government’s own false narratives about the bill and the supposed theft of content (not true), we’re sinking into a morass that is seeing disinformation players taking the already distorted narratives and turning it into a funhouse mirror. This is all very, very bad, but none of the players in this want to describe things with a modicum of accuracy and reality, and that’s a very big problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck Chernihiv in the north on Saturday, killing seven and wounding at least 129 people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to the Netherlands for talks, and for confirmation that the Netherlands and Denmark would be turning over F-16 fighters to Ukraine at the appropriate time. Zelenskyy has also been talking to Sweden about acquiring Gripen jets as well.

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Roundup: Smith can’t get her story or timeline straight

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Danielle Smith took to the microphones yesterday to thump her chest about the proposed clean electricity regulations, but what wound up happening was a series of wrong facts about her government’s “pause” on approvals for new clean electricity projects. Smith claims that the moratorium came at the request of the Alberta Utilities Commission and the Alberta Electric System Operator, except neither requested it, the timelines don’t add up, and it looks a lot like Smith’s government has been going out of their way to screw with clean energy stakeholders.

Receipts are all below.

Smith also refused to say whether our record wildfire season across the country is related to climate change, but insisted that most of the fires in her province were set by humans. That’s also a lie, but that’s Smith’s modus operandi.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched a large-scale air attack against western Ukraine including the city of Lviv, which was the largest attack on the city since the start of the war. There were missile and drone strikes against Odessa which wounded three in the early hours of Monday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited troops near the eastern front line yesterday.

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Roundup: The big separation news

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The big news, meriting a tonne of international headlines, was that prime minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have entered into a legal separation, and that they have gone through all of the legal and ethics processes involved. Trudeau will remain at Rideau Cottage, being the de facto official residence, while Grégoire Trudeau has found a place of her own nearby, and will still be heavily involved because of shared custody.

And while we typically don’t make a habit on reporting on the personal lives of political leaders (unless they cross particular ethical lines, like accepting the lavish gifts from certain companies because they want the promotion on Instagram, as though they were celebrity influencers), there is nevertheless a whole lot of seeking of reaction, the comparisons to his father’s public divorce, questions about what this means for his image and political future (really?), hand-wringing, and some snide comments from certain pundits that if the Trudeaus want privacy they should return to being private citizens, not to mention homophobic remarks from the far-right commenters pretending to be news media. Totally normal stuff.

In reaction, Susan Delacourt notes both the history of the relationship and the constant presence of gossip around prime ministerial marriages and how they are always claimed to be on the rocks. Althia Raj remarks on how this kind of a thing does get politicised, particularly because so much political stock is put in the images of happy families.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drones damaged grain infrastructure in the port city of Odessa, which has been an organised campaign on Russia’s part since they pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal. Likewise, Russians struck the inland port of Izmail, near the Romanian border, where Ukrainian grain heads down the Danube River, for the same reason, and the result is that world grain prices continue to rise. (This is a major driver of food price inflation). As for the counter-offensive, Ukrainian forces say that they have stopped any Russian advances, but the Russians are dug in, making them harder to dislodge.

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Roundup: Inflation falling into the control range

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The inflation numbers were out yesterday, and headline inflation dropped to 2.8 percent annualized, which is the lowest in the G7, and back within the Bank of Canada’s control range of 1 to 3 percent (though they have stated they are going to keep measures in place it reaches two percent). There are still hot spots—food price inflation is still fairly high, and shelter costs are also running high, but that’s not unexpected given where things are at right now.

Chrystia Freeland called this news a “milestone moment” that Canadians should feel some relief in, while the Conservatives repeated some of their usual talking points. The NDP, naturally, are keeping up with their attempt to blame high inflation on corporate greed, particularly food price inflation, even though the data doesn’t really bear that out, as I pointed out in this thread:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces struck the southern port city of Odessa, and while most of the missiles and drones were intercepted, there were hits and there was damage from debris. This was considered to be retaliation for the explosion on the bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea. More strikes are aimed at Odessa in the early morning hours. Meanwhile, with the Black Sea grain deal ended by Russia, the EU is looking to transport more Ukrainian grain by rail and road, while the UN says they are floating “a number of ideas” around how to get that grain flowing again.

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Roundup: No sympathy over late night sittings

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In today’s edition of my ongoing exasperation with MPs, I present to you NDP mental health critic Gord Johns, who wants changes made to the parliamentary calendar in order to ensure that there aren’t midnight sittings toward the end of the fall and spring sittings, and he cited Elizabeth May’s hospitalisation as proof about how these twelve-hour days are bad. But there are a few things the matter with his concerns, not the least of which was that May wasn’t hospitalised for exhaustion but rather that she had a stroke, which was caught in time.

First of all, no MP is sitting in the Chamber for twelve hours a day. Even with committee commitments, MPs are only “on duty” for a few of those hours, and they have plenty of opportunity to take shifts during these late-night sittings. And thanks to remote voting (which is an abomination in our system), they don’t have to rush to the Chamber if there are late-night votes for whatever reason, so that’s not even an excuse. Elizabeth May does like to spend as much time in the Chamber as she can, but that is also a choice.

The bigger issue here, however, is that the biggest reason there are late nights late in each sitting is because there is work to get done, and it didn’t get done earlier because of procedural games or dilatory motions, or bullshit filibusters, or what have you. The parliamentary calendar is pretty finite, and there isn’t much wiggle room in there, so if you start playing games (and over the past few years now, this kind of procedural warfare has been fairly constant because they simply oppose the government as opposed to pulling out the big guns for major points of principle), then you have to make up that time somewhere, and that tends to mean late nights late in each sitting. I would have to say that there were actually fewer of them this spring than usual, possibly because the NDP agreed to play ball with more instances of time allocation to head off the procedural games, but it wasn’t that long ago that they were gleeful participants in said procedural warfare, and this is the result. Nevertheless, I’m not terribly sympathetic here, and this is firmly within the fuck around/find out principle, where the fucking around is the procedural warfare, and the finding out is the late nights in June and December.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Another overnight Russian air attack, this time hitting the port city of Mykolaiv, while defences around Odessa have been engaged. Russia has pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, which could impact world grain prices and cause more problems for the food insecure regions that rely on Ukrainian grain, though Ukraine and Turkey say they will try to keep shipments flowing in spite of Russia. There are more details about the blast on the bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea, where two people were killed, while damage to the bridge could cut off supply lines to Russian troops in occupied regions.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1680983350692007937

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Roundup: The problem with feel-good legislation

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There was a story out over the weekend about a recently-passed private member’s bill about cancers being faced by firefighters, but how it’s, well, a little bit useless. As well-meaning as the bill is, and there are a lot of well-meaning private members’ bills, it’s also one of those terrible “national strategy” bills that plague our Parliament year-in and year-out.

The thing about “national strategy” bills are that they’re trying to legislate in areas of provincial jurisdiction, largely around healthcare, but sometimes around certain environmental concerns, and so on. Because MPs know that people are about these issues that aren’t in their areas of jurisdiction, they instead come up with these feel-good bills that call on the federal government to coordinate with provinces to create a “national strategy” about whatever the issue is, in the hopes that they’ll come to some common ground, or the like. But also remember that these bills are not only about an area of provincial jurisdiction, but they also can’t spend any money, so they don’t create any incentives that the federal government can use to bring provinces on-side. So about the most that these bills tend to do is raise some awareness about the issue in question in the media (as is demonstrated by the CBC piece over the weekend that I’m referencing here), but aside from that, it’s a lot of thoughts and prayers.

My point here is largely that we see these bills time and again, which largely raise a lot of false hopes, and which can be a bit of a waste of peoples’ time. MPs get one shot a private member’s bill in any given parliament, and a lot of them don’t even get that because of the fact that it’s a lottery system that determines the order in which they appear, and for them to waste that shot on a feel-good bill that doesn’t actually do anything just gets tiresome after a while, and it can be really hard on the people whose hopes have been raised for nothing to happen, because it’s just a feel-good bill.

Ukraine Dispatch:

One civilian was killed by Russian shelling on Kharkiv, and seven wounded in a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia. Elsewhere, there appears to have been a blast on the Russian bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1680525991418929156

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Roundup: Another rate hike, more nonsense talking points in response

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Not unexpectedly, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates another quarter point yesterday because inflation is becoming sticky, particularly in the core measures that they use to strip out the highly volatile measures like gasoline prices. If you read through the Monetary Policy Report, which shows the state of the global and Canadian economies, economic growth in Canada remains stronger than expected—too strong to tame inflation—and there is still too much demand in the system, particularly for services as opposed to goods, which is keeping those prices higher, as they are especially sensitive to the tight labour market. To that end, the Bank is now expecting inflation to last around three percent for most of the next year before finally getting back to the target of two percent, which is later than they anticipated because economic growth is still too strong.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre continues to spout absolute nonsense about the causes of this inflation—it’s not government spending, and that isn’t indicated in the MPR anywhere—and lo, media outlets like the CBC simply both-sides his talking points rather than dismantling them. He’s talking about how he’s going to cut taxes, which would actually fuel inflation rather than do anything to tame it (and no, carbon prices are only marginally inflationary and cutting them would do nothing to slow it). And then there’s the NDP, who think that the Bank should lay off and instead use windfall taxes, as though “greed-flation” is what’s driving inflation (again, not indicated anywhere in the MPR). But as economist Stephen Gordon has pointed out, this kind of promise of painless measures to fight inflation are the provenance of quacks and faith healers. It won’t help, and it will make things worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

It was a third consecutive night of Russian drone attacks directed to Kyiv, and falling debris has killed one person. Elsewhere, Ukrainian troops are reporting “some success” around Bakhmut.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1679340673357557761

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1679031785764659201

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Roundup: Get out your faux-cowboy drag, it’s Stampede season

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It was the start of Stampede in Calgary, meaning political leaders donned their faux-cowboy drag and put in an appearance in what has become an expected performance annually. Over the weekend, we saw both prime minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre make appearances—Poilievre in the parade—but I have yet to see anything from Jagmeet Singh (or Elizabeth May for that matter).

Trudeau made a campaign appearance for the by-election happening in Calgary Heritage happening right now, as well as a Laurier Club donor’s event, but did have a few public appearances, particularly at the annual Ismaili community pancake breakfast (where Poilievre and Danielle Smith also appeared).

This having all been said, there was also some weird commentary around Poilievre’s appearance, some of it a little…Freudian? Aside from the comments about the amount of make-up he was wearing (which was seen rubbed off on his open shirt collar), but also comments about the tweets he was putting out during his time doing some door-knocking on the by-election campaign.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The 500th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine passed over the weekend, and to mark the occasion, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Snake Island (site of the “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” declaration at the start of the invasion) as part of a symbolic act of defiance, and as proof that they will reclaim their territory. Over the weekend, the Russians struck the town of Lyman with rockets, killing eight civilians and wounding 13 others. The counter-offensive seems to be making more progress in the south, while the Russians continue to try and maintain their gains around Bakhmut as Ukrainian forces continue to surround it. Here is a look at life in Zaporizhzhia, in the shadow of the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1677716706066612225

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