Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: We all got played on the Telford gambit

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Yesterday morning, we saw an exhausting series of manoeuvres that made the Liberals, the NDP and the Conservatives all pretend like they were playing 3D chess against one another, but it was none of that. First thing was that the Liberals released the final mandate of David Johnston in his role as special rapporteur on the allegations, and he has until May 23rdto make a recommendation around a public inquiry, and until October 31st for his final report (but I see the possibility for shenanigans if the recommendation for a public inquiry won’t actually be acted upon until the final report so that it can be fully informed, etc.) And if there is a recommendation for a public inquiry, Sikh organisations in this country want India to be included in any examination of foreign interference

In the meantime, Justin Trudeau said that no, the vote on the motion to send Katie Telford to committee wasn’t going to be a confidence measure (because frankly that would be stupid), and that they had decided to send Telford to the Procedure and House Affairs committee after weeks of filibustering to prevent it, just as Singh was announcing he would support the Conservative motion to bypass the filibuster by instructing the Ethics committee hear her testimony instead (which the Conservatives chair). This just blew up three weeks of trying to trying to prevent her from appearing under the principle of ministerial responsibility and not calling staffers to committee, because they didn’t have an end game for the filibuster, and we’re just going to throw centuries of Westminster parliamentary principles on the fire for the sake of scoring points—and that’s what this all is about. Scoring points, as the Liberals also used this as a test of their agreement with the NDP, which shook it.

And while all of this was taking place, Mark Holland got up in the House of Commons to apologise for misspeaking yesterday in saying that Pierre Poilievre was offered a briefing and declined it, but his confusion was that Poilievre had publicly stated he would refuse such a briefing on classified information. (Are you following?)

So while Jagmeet Singh spent the day insisting that he was the one who ended the filibuster (he wasn’t), the NDP their own procedural game they were trying to play, which was to force a concurrence debate and vote on the PROC report recommending a public inquiry into these interference allegations, but the Conservatives beat him to the punch and called for a concurrence debate on a different committee report, which just points out how nobody is actually taking this issue seriously. It’s a pissing contest and point-scoring. And at the end of this, the NDP voted against the Conservative Supply Day motion to send Telford to the Ethics committee, because it was now a moot point.

And in the end? We’ve torched more parliamentary principles and weakened our parliamentary system further, and Trudeau has spilled more blood in the water, which is only going to make things even worse because there is now a frenzy around him. The Conservatives and their bad faith politics have played all of us in this whole affair because this was never about Telford and her testimony, but merely trying to set a trap so they could claim a cover-up, and the Liberals walked right into it and flailed for weeks. We’ve set more bad precedents, and democracy is worse off than it was before, because everyone needed to score points instead of being adults over this whole situation. Everyone keeps making it worse, because they can’t help themselves. What a way to run a country.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Japan’s prime minister made an unannounced visit to Ukraine yesterday to meet with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and to tour the massacre site at Bucha. Meanwhile, police in Avdiivka are trying to evacuate holdouts in the town, as Russian forces continue their attempts to encircle it.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1638100893856944128

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1638272233054392327

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Roundup: Forcing a confrontation for point-scoring alone

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The whole sorry affair over summoning Katie Telford to testify at committee is coming to a head today with the vote on the Conservatives’ Supply Day motion to bypass PROC and have her testify at the Ethics Committee (where they hold the chair). And in the meantime, the Liberals are deciding if they want to make this a confidence vote, while the NDP are deciding if they are going to go along with the Conservatives on this, or back the Liberals—particularly if this does become a confidence measure.

It’s all really stupid. While I have a longer piece on the underlying parliamentary implications around forcing staffers to testify at committee coming out later today, we can’t lose sight of why this is happening. The Conservatives knew the government would balk at forcing a staffer to testify, so they would use the reluctance to push the line that they are hiding something, and if they’re fighting this hard “it must be really bad.” Which is bad faith bullshit, but that’s the name of their game, and true to form, the Liberals walked right into it, because they flailed over the leaks in the media, and can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag. And the Conservatives get to jam the NDP in the process, and try to force a wedge between them and the government. None of this is about foreign interference or taking the issue seriously. This is entirely about the Conservatives smelling blood in the water and going on the attack so they can score as many points as possible, because nobody in this parliament is serious or a grown-up. This is all a gods damned game to them, and it’s destroying our Parliament in the process.

Do I think the Liberals will force a confidence vote? No, because as much as the principle of ministerial responsibility is of importance, they’re not going to risk bringing down the government over it—particularly to have an election over allegations of interference in elections without any chance to ensure there are proper safeguards before that election happens. Then again, miscalculations have happened in minority parliaments before, and sometimes games of chicken go wrong. But really, this is yet another instance of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And this really is the stupidest game.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces are warning that the town of Avdiivka could become a “second Bakhmut,” as they have held out against assault for eight months while avoiding being encircled, but Russians are trying to cut off their supply lines. Meanwhile, Ukraine sort of claimed responsibility for destroying a shipment of cruise missiles travelling by train through occupied Crimea. Elsewhere, here is a look at the de-mining work that needs to take place in places freed from occupation before they can complete critical infrastructure repairs.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1637881139355328523

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Roundup: The leaker comes forward (sort of)

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The big Friday bombshell from the Globe and Mail in their continued series of allegations of foreign interference was an op-ed from the primary leaker, who gave a self-serving justification for doing so, insisting that they were tired of the problem of foreign interference going ignored, and that they hoped to  ignite a conversation and that they didn’t intend for things to get this ugly. Erm, seriously? You leaked to Bob Fife, and you didn’t think he would torque the absolute life out of it? That seems dangerously naïve for an intelligence official. Even more to the point, their frustration with the pace of work is not justification for violating their oaths to secrecy (and comparing themselves to Jody Wilson-Raybould seems to be particularly ill-considered). There is an attitude of “I know best,” which former senior intelligence official Artur Wilczynski called “narcissistic,” and I did take that tone from the op-ed.

One of the things I’ve really come to recognise and have been building a series of columns around is that there is a pervasive normalcy bias in our governments at all levels. It’s why provincial governments inadvertently allowed their healthcare systems to collapse. It’s why we are now in a housing crisis nation-wide. It’s why our military was allowed to degrade, and it’s why successive governments of all stripes have not taken foreign interference seriously enough. We disbelieve and downplay threats and warnings because we’ve been sheltered for a century now under the wing of the Americans, and very little bad has happened to us in comparison to most other countries. We got lazy and complacent. That’s hard to shake, but I would say we’ve made more progress in the last five years than we have since the ned of the Cold War. And unfortunately, it’s probably going to take crises to shake us from our complacency (like what is happening in healthcare). Unfortunately, the crisis that this leaker precipitated has likely made the situation worse and not better because it’s now become a partisan battleground.

Speaking of partisan battlegrounds, yesterday we had the prime minister accusing Pierre Poilievre of “ginning up a partisan circus” and trying to take a flamethrower to our institutions in order to win power (not untrue), and Poilievre saying that the intelligence community is in full revolt because of Trudeau (and hey, it turns out it’s largely one narcissistic leaker). Trudeau also defended Johnston against the “horrific” partisan attacks, though Trudeau does deserve a measure of criticism for putting Johnston in this position. Johnston, incidentally, provided a statement saying he was working to finalise the details around his role and the mandate, so it looks like he is going ahead with it, concerns notwithstanding.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces continue to resist the Russians’ attempt to encircle Bakhmut. While this is happening, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, for his war crimes but most especially for his programme of forcibly relocating Ukrainian children and working to re-educate them and place them with Russian families—a hallmark of a genocide. Meanwhile, Slovakia has now pledged their 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine after Poland got the ball rolling.

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Roundup: Poilievre’s facile budget demands

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Pierre Poilievre called a Sunday morning press conference, which is a particularly Conservative tactic that tries to set the agenda for the week, in which he made his demands around the upcoming budget. We all know that it’s pretty much set in stone by this point and is on its way to the printers, but that never stops parties from making performative demands right up until the end. To that end, Poilievre had three main demands:

  1. Bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes, so hard work pays off again.
  2. Bring home lower prices, by ending inflationary carbon tax hikes & deficit spending that drive up inflation & interest rates.
  3. Bring homes people can afford by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits.

First of all, the thing he refuses to acknowledge or understand is that tax cuts fuel inflation. If he’s worried about the increasing cost of living, tax cuts won’t actually do anything meaningful, and are more likely to just add fuel to that fire. (Meanwhile, taxes aren’t going up for anyone except profitable corporations and on luxury goods). When it comes to housing prices, carbon prices are not inflationary (the Bank of Canada has cited that their effect on inflation is negligible), and deficit spending has absolutely nothing to do with either inflation or interest rates. This is a facile narrative that Poilievre keeps insisting, preferring an austerity budget that will only make the vulnerable even more precarious without government supports, but this economic message still resonates for a particular generation. Meanwhile, none of this will affect housing prices, because that is driven by a lack of supply, which is because municipalities refuse to zone for density, and because provincial governments won’t use their powers to force the issue. And that leads us to the third point, which is that the federal government has no ability to “remove gatekeepers” at the provincial or municipal level. They can’t do anything about building permits, and I am dubious that there is enough federal land that is suitable for housing developments in major cities around the country that is underutilized. I may be wrong, but this has been a perennial promise by governments for years and nothing has really moved, which leads me to believe there’s not a lot to be had.

It’s not at all surprising that Poilievre is sticking to facile and wrong budgetary narratives, but it would be great if he could actually be called out on it rather than both-sides at best, which is barely even happening. This is important stuff and we’re just shrugging it off, and focusing on more bullshit polls about people believing the Conservatives are still the better economic managers in spite of decades of proof to the contrary.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces have believed to have suffered more than 1100 dead in a week of battles near Bakhmut, with another 1500 wounded so badly as to be removed from the fighting. The Institute for the Study of War believes Russia’s planned advance has stalled in Bakhmut, and that the assault will be more difficult to sustain without more significant losses.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1634849209840173057

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Roundup: Derailing the committee with sexism

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The big happenings of the day on the foreign interference file were at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee when ministers Dominic LeBlanc and Mélanie Joly testified. We found out that thus far, one diplomatic visa has been rejected by Canada because of interference allegations, and we also got the very reasonable explanation from Joly that we haven’t been expelling diplomats because that invites tit-for-tat from the Chinese government (and they are not afraid to take hostages), and we need our eyes and ears on the ground in that country. We also learned from Joly’s Great China director at Global Affairs that “diplomatic representations” were made about their alleged boats around helping to defeat Conservative candidates in the last election.

What made the news, however, was that Conservative MP Michael Cooper was hostile and belittling toward Joly in a clearly misogynistic manner, made worse by the fact that he later put out a statement that refused to apologise for it, but insisted he wanted action and not a “symbolic stare down.” Erm, you guys keep bringing up Harper’s symbolic stare down of allegedly telling Putin to get out of Ukraine in 2014 and calling that courageous, so I’m not sure why Joly’s confrontation with her Chinese counterpart is considered any lesser. Oh, wait—we know why.

In other news on the interference file, here’s an interview with former CSIS director Ward Elcock on recent developments, and there are a couple of takeaways—that this is old news, and that we’ve known about Chinese interference for years; that there is no reason to believe that the PM did get these briefing notes (and it has been noted by other experts that Canada does not have a system of pushing intelligence upward, and yet this is what so much of Global’s reporting in hinging on); and that it is highly unlikely these leaks are coming from CSIS, but someone who has access to their documents (and the good money is on someone within the RCMP).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633863409211961346

As well, NSIRA did announce that they too are undertaking their own investigation of the allegations and what CSIS has been doing around it, while not looking to duplicate the work that NSICOP is doing.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633808644935409666

Ukraine Dispatch:

Yesterday’s widespread Russian attack saw more than 80 missiles, plus more drones, hitting cities across the country, killing six people and cutting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant off of the power gird for eleven hours.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1633720689541652483

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Roundup: A leaked NSICOP report?

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Another day, another story on foreign interference, this time from Global. It was largely a rehash of material released earlier, but hidden inside was mention of seeing an unredacted report from NSICOP, which raises more questions about who is leaking this material (and to what end). Justin Trudeau continues to be evasive and not give any answers to fairly clear and specific questions about what he was told and when, which is not something you should need the special rapporteur for, and which shouldn’t be a matter that requires the blanket of national security secrecy, but the barrage of pabulum about the importance of national security oversight bodies is not exactly helping his case, or making it look like he has everything under control.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633509940064133130

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633509943625105411

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1633472781428948998

NSICOP did announce that they will look into the allegations of foreign interference, but the fact that one of their unredacted reports was leaked to the media is going to undermine trust in that process by security officials in this country, who were dubious about the process from the start, and who will find it even harder to trust now. That’s not good for the ongoing ability to have parliamentarians play a role in the oversight of those bodies, which is necessary in a democracy.

In the meantime, there’s more that the government could get started on right away when it comes to combatting foreign interference, and Jessica Davis has a good thread about those actions here.

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1633488015573041153

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired a massive missile barrage across Ukraine early this morning, with more critical infrastructure being targeted. The Wagner Group is claiming that they have made advances into Bakhmut, but it’s still too early to tell the veracity or what it means in the bigger picture. Here’s a look at Canadian soldiers training Ukrainians on how to operate the Leopard 2 tanks we’ve sent them.

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QP: A nasty tone on interference allegations

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The PM and his deputy were both in Kingston to greet European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, blissfully unaware of what was about to go down in the Chamber. After a lengthy statement from the Speaker about MPs using proper headsets for remote participation because of the need to protect the interpreters (three years too late), Pierre Poilievre led off in French, saying that Beijing has been secretly helping Trudeau for ten years and that Trudeau’s response was to strike a secret committee to look at it secretly, which…is not at all what happened, but why expect Poilievre to deal in facts? Dominic LeBlanc said that thirteen years ago CSIS sounded the alarm and the previous government did nothing about it, including Poilievre who was the minister of democratic reform. Poilievre repeated his same false accusations in English, and LeBlanc said that the announcement last night was about additional measures on top of the ones they already took, which the previous government did nothing about. Poilievre then mocked the notion of a rapporteur, calling it a fake position doing fake work and said this was a cover-up. LeBlanc said that this was proof the opposing doesn’t take it seriously, pointed out that yesterday, Poilievre admitted in QP that they did nothing about interference because it wasn’t in their partisan interest to do so. Poilievre accused the prime minster of hiding—knowing he is with von der Leyen—and this time, Mark Holland got up to give some sanctimonious denunciation that the opposition is playing games with national security. Poilievre repeated the accusation of Trudeau apparent hiding—got warned by the Speaker twice—and insisted that he must be covering up something really bad. Holland tried to point out that Poilievre knows full well where Trudeau is, and he too got warned by the Speaker, before he insisted that they don’t use issues of national security as partisan fodder.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he too complained that NSICOP is secret and that they want an independent public inquiry—apparently ignoring that Cabinet also appoints and sets the terms of an inquiry. LeBlanc said the rapporteur will operate transparently and will advise the government on next steps. Therrien said that this was not partisan but about public confidence, and worried we were straying into banana republic territory. LeBlanc said that the share the same concerns, and which is why they have taken steps since they got elected and are now taking further steps.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the Bloc, and in French, he demanded an independent public inquiry, and LeBlanc repeated that they share the concerns about the strength of our institutions, and to do so transparently and openly. Singh repeated the demand in English, and this time, Marco Mendicino listed the measures announced last night.

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Roundup: Planning to appoint a special rapporteur

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After two weeks of pretty much flailing on the subject of allegations of Chinese influence on the last two elections, Justin Trudeau held a late-day press conference yesterday to declare that he was going to appoint a special rapporteur to deal with these allegations, who would take a look at the situation and determine if a public inquiry or commission was necessary to look into the matter, and if so, to determine what the terms of reference should be for it.

On top of that, Trudeau also:

  • Asked both NSICOP and NSIRA to conduct their own investigations into the allegations;
  • Launched formal public consultations on a foreign agent registry (with the caution that we have to be careful about how to go about registering people from certain nationalities given the history of this country);
  • Established a new National Counter Foreign Intelligence Coordinator within the department of Public Safety;
  • Called for a plan to address outstanding recommendations from NSICOP and the Rosenberg Report within 30 days;
  • Pledged $5.5 million for civil society groups to counter disinformation.

It was a lot, and there are a few things worth noting in there. The recognition that they have dragged their feet on past NSICOP recommendations is significant, because NSICOP had previously found the federal government slow to react in the 2019 election. That this current crisis is kicking their asses into finally acting is a good thing, all things considered.

The Conservatives are already outraged saying that this is too secretive, and the NSICOP is a “trap” for their members—which is, of course, bad-faith bullshit, because if they were being unduly silenced or felt that official redactions to the reports were unfair, then they would resign in protest, which no member of NSICOP has ever done. The NDP were saying this was a “baby step” in the right direction but still want a public inquiry (but remember, there is no problem in this country for which the NDP does not demand an independent public inquiry). They may yet get one. Trudeau said he would consult with opposition leaders on who would be the special rapporteur, so he can at least launder any accountability for the appointment through them (not always a good thing, guys!), and we’ll see how that goes in the next few weeks. Nevertheless, it’s a bit surprising that it took Trudeau two full weeks to get to this point, and it shouldn’t have, but once again, he and this government can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and this has once again left them looking weak, and incapable of dealing with the issue.

Meanwhile, the Star has more reminders from the Chinese diasporic communities that they have been sounding the alarm for nearly twenty years and have been consistently ignored.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his advisors were unanimous in their agreement to press the fight at Bakhmut and not retreat. American analysts are saying that even if Bakhmut were to fall, it wouldn’t change the tide of the war in any appreciable way. Meanwhile, photos have shown that the town of Marinka, which used to be home to 10,000 people, has been completely razed to the ground by Russian forces. A new top anti-corruption investigator was also appointed on Monday, as part of the ongoing efforts to clean up the system for future EU membership.

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Roundup: Listening to diasporic communities

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Because we’re still talking about the allegations of foreign interference in elections, journalists are now officially in the “badger and hector” stage of demanding the government call some kind of independent inquiry, which Trudeau refuses to do (for good enough reasons), and he’s getting a bit exasperated and even snappish in his replies to the same questions, over, and over, and over, and over again. (Oh, the memories of journalists demanding he invoke the Emergencies Act every single day at the start of the pandemic). More to the point, Trudeau did make a point of saying that it’s often diasporic communities, and the parliamentarians who come from them, that are at greatest risk of this foreign interference, and there has been a fairly tremendous silence in the media from those voices. It’s not just Chinese influence we need to be on guard for, but Hindu nationalism is also becoming a worrying force within Canada. Nevertheless, Power & Politics did get one activist on the air yesterday, and actually did some critical self-reflection and media accountability along the way, which is virtually unheard of, so please do check out that interview.

Meanwhile, Morris Rosenberg is now doing interviews about his report, and he talked about the recommendation to lower the threshold for making public these attempts at interference. Also, a reminder that we can’t assume that the leaks being fed to media are from CSIS—merely someone who has access to their reports.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1631670700338446336

Meanwhile, there is a very good point being made that while NSICOP should be the venue by which these issues are being discussed, the government has not exactly acted on their recommendations in the past, and that remains a problem.

https://twitter.com/Dennismolin11/status/1631779724841066506

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian Forces claim that they have nearly encircled Bakhmut, and are blasting bridges out to the west, but Ukrainian forces have not given up their positions just yet. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his call with American and European officials that Russia needs to face war crimes prosecutions for is actions during its invasion of Ukraine. On a related note, a village outside of Kyiv is still digging up bodies from their brief Russian occupation.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says an Indigenous Commissioner of the RCMP is an “excellent idea,” and no. It’s the same toxic structure and culture and would change nothing.
  • Mélanie Joly and her Chinese counterpart had a testy exchange at the G20 meeting in New Delhi over the allegations of Chinese interference in elections.
  • The government plans to finally—finally!—start debate on their digital privacy bill after letting it languish on the Order Paper for the past nine months.
  • An autopilot software glitch has been identified as the cause of a military helicopter crash in 2020, and a fix has not yet been implemented across the fleet.
  • The Senate Speaker and two other senators are facing criticism for meeting with the Speaker of Israel’s parliament, who is a far-right figure in that country.
  • Surprising nobody, Google’s CEO is not accepting the summons to appear at the Commons’ heritage committee, but will send his country manages instead.
  • The Northwest Territories is calling out Alberta for not notifying them of an oil sands tailings pond spill into their shared waterway.
  • That BC company is walking back some of their claims about getting a licence to produce and sell cocaine commercially.
  • Stephanie Carvin gives a primer on what we’re talking about when we talk about intelligence (and why it’s not evidence, since people have difficulty with that).
  • Jessica Davis gives an explainer on just what constitutes foreign interference, and lists three recent examples of what does and doesn’t qualify.
  • Shannon Proudfoot imagines Pierre Poilievre through the lens of the Mr. Men books, and how he went from Mr. Mouth to Mr. Nothing to See Here.
  • Chris Selley points out that as of yet, nobody has bothered to challenge Quebec’s blatantly unconstitutional law to opt out of the Oath to the King.
  • My Xtra column wonders why the government hasn’t appointed a special envoy for LGBTQ+ issues, as many of our contemporaries have.
  • My weekend column points out that we shouldn’t need a public inquiry into election interference if MPs would be grown-ups and use NSICOP like it is intended.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Few answers at committee

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee met yesterday for an emergency meeting around these recent allegations of Chinese interference in the last election, and it wasn’t the most illuminating exercise—not just because MPs constant attempts at point-scoring, but because most of the national security agencies couldn’t answer very many questions, because answering questions can jeopardise sources or investigations. And we got the same cautions that virtually every media outlet is ignoring, which is that intelligence is not evidence, and much of it is out of context or incomplete, which is why everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt and not repeated credulously the way absolutely everyone is.

We did learn a couple of things. The first is that the RCMP were the ones who opted not to proceed with any investigations or charges around interference when presented with information about it. The second is that the prime minister is being briefed constantly about these kinds of threats, and that the problem is getting worse instead of better.

And then there were all of the calls for a national public inquiry, which the NDP insisted they were going to try and look tough in demanding. Not to be outdone, Poilievre not only demanded an inquiry, but said that all recognised party leaders had to have a say in who would chair it, otherwise it would just be another “Liberal crony” (which was again used as a smear against Morris Rosenberg). The prime minister’s national security advisor said that a public inquiry wouldn’t get many more answers because of the nature of the secret information, and all of that would still be kept out of the public eye, which is a good point. Incidentally, the opposition parties cannot demand a public inquiry—it doesn’t work like that. They can’t force a vote in the House of Commons, or anything like that, so this is once again, mostly just performance.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Despite the warnings that the Ukrainians may not be able to hold Bakhmut for much longer, they nevertheless held positions for another day, while Russian forces are also gearing up for a renewed offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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