Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: Clearing the decks before summer

Posted on by

It’s the last Wednesday of the spring sitting, and the big question is whether they’re going to pull the plug today or not. The government says there is still work to do—in particular, they want to push the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission bill (Bill C-40) and the budget bill over the finish line, but the budget bill is up for a vote after QP tomorrow, leaving only C-40 at third reading debate, which is what is on for government orders tomorrow, and that’s the only bill they’re planning to bring forward for debate. This would make it pretty easy for them to pass a motion at unanimous consent to say something to the effect of it’ll pass on division or deemed pass at the collapse of debate at the end of the day, or some such if they really wanted, or to simply hold a vote at that point, and rise for the summer after that.

Of course, the Conservatives have been putting on a big song and dance about wanting to sit through the summer to “fix” the country, but we all know that’s all for show because that would mean nothing but more time for the government to keep passing bills and implementing their agenda, and that’s not what they want. They’re also trying to insist on committees sitting through the summer, but there are only two government bills at committee stage right now, so most of those meetings would likely be for private members’ business or for studies, and you can bet it’s going to be more of the latter, which would be little more than dog and pony shows to serve as clip factories while the House of Commons has risen. And if the Conservatives don’t agree for the House to rise tomorrow? Well, on the agenda are report stage debates on the cyber-security bill, the ports modernization bill, the (controversial) Métis self-government bill, and they have been debating the Elections Act changes, which the Conservatives and NDP are opposing because of bullshit objections to moving the fixed date back a week to avoid Diwali.

And then it’s up to the Senate to pass the number of bills on their plate, including the budget bill, and if they are true to recent form, they will race through their Order Paper until Friday, pass everything with little scrutiny other than maybe a few questions of the relevant minister at Committee of the Whole, and then rise by Friday, rather than stay another week or two to actually give things a proper review like they used to, back in the “bad old partisan days.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is claiming responsibility for a drone attack causing a massive blaze at an oil reservoir in Russia’s Rostov region. Ukraine is investigating the suspected beheading of one of its soldiers by a Russian in the Donetsk region. Reuters has some photos of combat medics on the job on the front lines.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1802984596122034588

Continue reading →

Roundup: Elizabeth May to the rescue (again)

Posted on by

The House of Commons has once again embarrassed itself in voting to send the NSICOP report to Justice Hogue for her to review, and its documents, to see if she can do or say something about the potentially “disloyal” parliamentarians therein. She can’t, and won’t, because this is a political problem and MPs have just voted to kick this down the road until October because certain of the leaders can’t arse themselves to be adults and take their responsibilities seriously, preferring instead to remain ignorant so that they can shout increasingly lurid and baseless accusations from the rooftops, because that gets them clicks and engagement on social media, and that is the cart that is driving politics in these debased times. Hopefully Justice Hogue will get this request and tell MPs to go drop on their heads because she has enough work to do and not enough time to do it in, thank you very much, and this is their political problem to solve, not hers. But we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth May was the adult in the room, who took the opportunity to avail herself of the security clearance she acquired over the course of these months of foreign interference handwringing, and did read the full, classified report, and then took to a microphone in the press theatre in the West Block to discuss what she could about the report, and then went on Power & Politics later and refined those remarks even further. And what did she find? No list of treasonous or disloyal MPs, a handful of cases of MPs who are no longer serving who may have been compromised in some manner, and the one incident of a former MP who should be investigated and charged. And even more to the point, she just proved that reading the report wouldn’t tie Pierre Poilievre’s hands, that he could still talk about the conclusions of the report without any specifics, and that Michael Chong has indeed spouting bullshit when he claimed that he knew more than a former CSIS director about this.

Hopefully this means that the hot air has been drained from this, particularly since Jagmeet Singh will read the classified version today, and Yves-François Blanchet seems to have finally been convinced to get the proper clearance so that he too can read it for himself. That leaves Poilievre as the odd man out, insisting on remaining ignorant, but hopefully with the other leaders offering similar reassurances as May, this could deflate the issue and turn to the real issues about how to better combat this sort of interference, letting parties put in necessary internal reforms to prevent nomination races from being coopted, and so on. That relies on them being grown-ups, and if one party decides to remain off-side and not among the adults in the room, that will be pretty telling. There should also be questions asked of the members of NSICOP for not providing reassurance from the start, and for letting this issue blow up unnecessarily, because that should have an impact on their credibility, or would if the Elder Pundits of this country hadn’t decided on a particular narrative that they are going to relentlessly pursue, regardless of what has transpired.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Kharkiv’s mayor says that the ability to strike missile launch sites across the border in Russia has helped calm the number of attacks his city has been facing. At the recovery conference in Berlin, Ukraine has been attracting pledges to help modernise its air defences to help prevent the need for even further rebuilding.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1800249418949841359

Continue reading →

QP: Hosing the field with doomsday disinformation on capital gains

Posted on by

The prime minister present today, as was his deputy, for one of the few remaining times this spring. All of the other leaders were present as well today. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and worried that the prime minister’s watch has seen the wealthiest double their incomes while youth can’t afford a home. Justin Trudeau said that they are rising the capital gains exemption in order to fund the housing and programmes that younger people need. Poilievre insisted that Trudeau’s own numbers show that the wealthy got wealthier, and that his tax increases only punish the poor and middle class. Trudeau insisted that this was just the Conservatives going to bat for the wealthy. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question, and got much the same reply from Trudeau, who added that if it didn’t have real-world impacts, it would be funny to watch the Conservatives tie themselves into rhetorical knots. Poilievre railed that everyone was paying higher taxes thanks to Trudeau, linking the carbon levy in that, and Trudeau trotted out the lines about the carbon rebates, and helping people who need it. Poilievre trotted out an illiterate and innumerate line about the capital gains changes, getting it completely wrong, and Trudeau took this as an opportunity to take shots at the Conservatives choosing to vote against youth and the Middle Class™.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, read a headline about the RCMP saying they don’t have the legislative tools to fight hate speech, and demanded support for their bill to remove the religious exemption from hate speech. Trudeau listed measures they have taken, such as the Online Harms bill and the legislation to criminalise Holocaust denial. Blanchet considered this wasted breath, and raised rhetoric being shouted on the streets of Montreal, to which Trudeau insisted they were trying to fight hate speech and calls for violence.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP and clumsily insisted that the government did nothing on taxing the wealthy for eight years, to which Trudeau reminded him that the first thing they did in office was raise taxes on the one percent and lower it on the Middle Class™, and that the NDP voted against that. Singh repeated the question in French, and got the same answer.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The PBO immolates what little credibility he had left

Posted on by

It looks like the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, decided to extend his “winning” streak and cover himself in glory at the Commons’ finance committee yesterday, and once again immolated what credibility he has left. Defending his report, claiming he had access to a confidential report from Environment Canada that he was “gagged” from releasing (which the Conservatives jumped on and launched a thousand shitposts about, because committees are now only about content generation), lamented that the government doesn’t publish more climate modelling of their own, and how he hates how his reports are politicised, even though he’s been at this job for years and knows full well that PBO reports are always politicised, because that’s why MPs like them—so that they can both wield those reports as a cudgel, while hiding behind the shield of the PBO’s non-partisan “credibility” to keep the government from attacking it.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1797780078203671008

https://twitter.com/prairiecentrist/status/1797691621708054916

While this Tony Keller column lays out four major problems with the original carbon price report that the PBO produced—which again, Giroux continues to not really apologise for—energy economist Andrew Leach has some additional comments, driving home both how shallow the analysis is, and the fact that it’s not replicable because the PBO studiously refuses to explain his methodology, relying on “trust us, that’s our job.” But as we saw on P&P and again at finance committee, he complained that the government should be doing this kind of modelling work when it’s literally his one statutorily legislated job to do.

And to be helpful, Jennifer Robson provides some unsolicited advice on how the PBO could make his methodologies more transparent, if he actually wanted to do that (which I doubt, because so many of his reports rely on his pulling a novel methodology out of his ass, according to the many economists I’ve interviewed in the past). But that’s also part of the point about why he has no credibility left, and why he should start drafting that resignation letter.

https://twitter.com/lindsaytedds/status/1797817128483254759

Ukraine Dispatch:

A civilian was killed in a Russian strike on a recreation facility in Kharkiv. Here’s a look at what to expect from Ukraine’s peace summit to be held in Switzerland next week.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Stop talking about what they’re talking about

Posted on by

The one thing everyone was talking about this weekend was Conservative MP Arnold Viersen going on Nate Erskine-Smith’s podcast and just blatantly laying out his anti-abortion (and anti-gay) agenda, and then a) claiming he was ambushed, and b) putting out the vaguest statement ever to walk back his comments and defend The Leader’s position (which is less clear than he likes to pretend).

But as this is happening, we see the country’s Elder Pundits sighing and saying “There the Liberals go again, always talking about abortion,” and “wow, they’re really desperate to pull this card again, especially so early,” when the Conservatives are the ones who keep bringing it up, time after time, but the Elder Pundits keep telling everyone to just ignore it, because that will apparently make it go away. It’s not going away, and they are increasingly emboldened about these kinds of issues because the authoritarians and wannabe-authoritarians are using these very issues to oppress, and to create wedges that they can leverage, but calling that out is a little uncouth. While yes, I do think that backbench suck-up questions on abortion every day in Question Period for a week is overkill, but again, the Conservatives are the ones who keep bringing it up and who keep insisting that they’re going to re-open these issues, and if the leader says they won’t, I don’t feel inclined to believe him because he has lied about every single issue under the sun (which again, the Elder Pundits of this land continue to studiously ignore). Maybe we need to stop ignoring what is right in front of us, Elder Pundits be damned.

As a bonus, here’s a story about Viersen and what a homophobic/transphobic person he really is (on top of his continued bullshit about trying to block porn). He’s not alone in the party on this front. We should be paying attention but the Elder Pundits keep telling us not to. It’s really tiresome.

https://twitter.com/HannahHodson28/status/1796928863265521767

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile hit residences in Balakliia near Kharkiv, injuring 13. Russians have also continued pounding energy facilities across Ukraine, prompting a fresh plea for more air defences. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to the Asia security summit in Singapore to drum up support for the upcoming peace conference, and to call out China for pressuring countries not to attend.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A question with the intention to intimidate

Posted on by

Conservative MP Chris Warkentin has put a question on the Order Paper asking whether a number of economists have received any government contracts, and for any information about those contracts if they have been the recipient. While Stephen Gordon responds for himself below, it was also noted that all of the economists listed (who include names like Kevin Milligan, Andrew Leach, and Mike Moffatt) are all male, which I’m sure is just a coincidence and not indicative of a mentality that they think there’s no such thing as a “lady economist.”

This having been said, I think it’s important to point out that what Warkentin is doing here, on behalf of the party, is directly out of the authoritarian playbook. Number one of the seven key tactics in that playbook are to politicise independent institutions (and university academics would qualify), while number four on that list is about quashing dissent, and many of these names are economists who signed onto that open letter about the value of carbon pricing (which, to reiterate, was not defending the Liberal policy because it’s not actually carbon pricing, but a carbon levy plus regulation and subsidies). The Order Paper question is a shot across the bow that they are looking for anything to discredit these economists as partisan hacks whose expertise can be discounted for that reason. It’s about as subtle as a ham-fist, but they don’t care because they’re riding high in the polls. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be alive to what they’re doing, because it absolutely matters.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A missile strike in Kharkiv has killed at least seven civilians, as the Russian assault continues. Russians have also taken control of the village of Andriivka, southwest of Bakhmut. Russian jamming has also prevented many of Ukraine’s newer glide bombs from hitting their intended targets.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Premiers washing their hands of food insecurity culpability

Posted on by

As you may have seen or read from Question Period yesterday, Pierre Poilievre was trying to draw a connection between Justin Trudeau, government spending, and the fact that more people than ever are lining up at food banks than ever before. On its face, the connection is specious and we know this is more of Poilievre’s particular little game of pretending that Justin Trudeau is omnipotent and is personally making all of these things happen, and if you’ve been paying attention, you would also know that the real cause of food price inflation is largely climate-driven (mostly droughts in food-producing regions, but other extreme weather like flash floods or hurricanes have devastated crops), and the invasion of Ukraine didn’t help, because Ukraine is a major grain and cooking oil exporter, and it threw global markets into disarray.

So, what really is the reason people are being increasingly driven to food banks? Well, according to the CEO of Food Banks Canada, it has a lot more to do with the fact that provincial social assistance payments have not been keeping up with inflation, and skyrocketing rents (which, again, is provincial jurisdiction) are also taking a bigger and bigger bite out of the wallets of lower-income Canadians. And while she did say that the federal government could do more, with another GST rebate as they have done already, this once again is mostly the problem of the premiers, who are doing as little as possible about it. Colour me shocked!

But because this is Canada, all of the blame continues to be funnelled to the federal government and Justin Trudeau, because as a country, we are apparently incapable of holding the premiers to account for anything that is in their wheelhouse. The media plays a very big role in this, because provincial legislature bureaux are decimated, and it’s sexier to make everything a federal story, constitution be damned, and that in turn gets justified with the phrase “Nobody cares whose jurisdiction it is.” Well, nobody except the federal government that doesn’t have any levers to pull, or the Supreme Court of Canada, who will be called in if the federal government tries to do something and the premiers cry foul. But you know, the population are to be treated like idiots and that they can’t understand basic federalism. This country is so parochial sometimes, and the premiers love it because they can get away with murder (or, well, negligent homicide, as the pandemic fully proved). We are so boned as a democracy, but we’re going to keep shrugging and washing our hands of it. Good job, everyone.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian air strikes continue to his Kharkiv, as a ten people were wounded in a café hit, and a Russian drone hit a police car on an evacuation trip in Kharkiv’s surrounding region. (Kharkiv photos here). Russian drones also hit power supplies in Sumy region, causing blackouts. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for more upgraded defences to combat guided bombs, which are now the primary way that Russians are targeting cities.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1793296668529443312

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1793216513005998133

Continue reading →

Roundup: Wildfire evacuations have begun

Posted on by

It’s absolutely insane to think that it’s not even Victoria Day, and we are in the middle of evacuations in northern communities because of wildfires. Several neighbourhoods in Fort McMurray, Alberta, have been evacuated—all neighbourhoods that were decimated by the fires in 2016. Fort Nelson, BC, has been evacuated, as has Cranberry Portage, Manitoba, while the premier toured the area.

Meanwhile in BC, a former forestry minister has co-authored a report calling for better integrated government management of these fires in the province, but also points to things like the plans for Indigenous communities to do controlled burns as they used to have not reached levels that would be meaningful, nor have “broadcast burns” from forestry companies, and recommendations for how forestry can better leave sites less susceptible to fire are not being implemented. One has to wonder what the delay is considering how much worse wildfire season gets every year.

Amidst all of this, we still see certain political parties steadfastly refuse to believe this is the result of climate change, and will instead say things like “the carbon price didn’t prevent a single fire” as though that’s how the price is designed to operate, or you have them spreading the conspiracy theories that agents of the prime minister have been setting these fires, because reasons. It’s not good.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine’s forces have pulled back in two new positions near Kharkiv as the Russians advance. Russians conducted air strikes on residential areas of Kharkiv. There is speculation that the move on Kharkiv is merely a ploy to pull forces from elsewhere on the front lines, as they have more of an interest in solidifying their gains in Donetsk. AP spent some time with a drone unit in the region, working to slow the Russian advance.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Evacuation alerts starting early

Posted on by

Fort McMurray spent the weekend under evacuation alert because of forest fires in the area, and we’re still not even at Victoria Day yet.

Of course, the brain-rotted conspiracy crew are all up in the replies accusing the federal government of paying people to start those fires because reasons, but climate change is serious business, and it amazes me that certain parties remain steadfastly opposed to making necessary changes, or pretending that one day magical technology will do the job without any effort.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces claim to have captured five villages on the border of the Kharkiv region as they make their way toward the city, forcing more than 1700 civilians to flee the area. (I wonder how all those Republicans who held up aid for seven months feel about this).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1789670737596272953

Continue reading →

Roundup: MPs lacking a moral compass make up bizarre accusations

Posted on by

When it comes to the absolute moral decline of MPs in the current Parliament, we’ve found a good candidate who exemplifies this in the form of Conservative MP Brad Redekopp, who put out an absolutely batshit crazy video a few days ago that literally blames Justin Trudeau and his supposed “soft on crime” policies for the murders that happened in Saskatoon so far this year. Columnist Phil Tank points to all of the ways that this accusation is batshit insanity by looking at the circumstances of each of these murders, and you really can’t connect them to any of Trudeau’s policies, but that won’t stop Redekopp from not only making these accusations, but defending them in the face of Tank’s column.

The accusations against the so-called “attack” against him (because heaven forfend, we hold him to account for his batshit insane conduct) as being from an “extremist left-wing agenda,” and that both the columnist and Justin Trudeau want to hand out free drugs. I would laugh at how absolutely childish this thin-skinned retaliation is if this wasn’t a gods damned elected official who should not only know better, but should have the ability to take criticism, and to behave in a manner that is somewhat dignified as befits his office.

But it’s more than that—it’s the fact that he feels like he can get away with outright lying (and lying to such batshit insane lengths) because he feels no sense of shame or moral compass that says “Maybe you shouldn’t lie or make up batshit insane accusations and stick to some facts in the face of tragic circumstances.” But he doesn’t, and that is perhaps most concerning out of all of this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian strikes have damaged several power generation plants in a fresh round of targeting them. Ukrainian artillery forces need to fire and then quickly hide their platforms from Russian drones. Ukrainian intelligence says that they thwarted (another) attempt on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s life.

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1787917915460649244

Continue reading →