Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: A slacktivist declaration

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The Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day vote went ahead yesterday on declaring that China is conducting a genocide against the Uyghur population, and it passed unanimously – without anyone in Cabinet voting. Well, Marc Garneau was there to performatively declare that he was abstaining – which you can’t actually do, because Commons votes are strictly yay or nay (the Senate has an abstention option), but no one else in Cabinet was there, for what it’s worth.

Immediately, news outlets everywhere started declaring that “Parliament declared a genocide,” which, no, did not happen. It was a non-binding vote in the House of Commons – which is not Parliament – that essentially expressed an opinion. There is nothing official about said declaration, which is important, because an official declaration would have consequences. Essentially, the House of Commons voted to put a black square on their Instagram and call it action against genocide.

And there will be consequences, such as China attempting to impose further sanctions upon Canada in an attempt to try and warn other Western countries from making a similar declaration, because China doesn’t want to lose face. This is precisely why the government has been working with allies to do – ensure that all of their ducks are in a row before they make a formal declaration of genocide, so that they a) have a united front against China’s retaliation, b) that they can uphold the obligations under the Genocide Convention around preventing genocide and punishing those responsible – something that the Americans have opted themselves out of because they refuse to respect the authority of the International Court of Justice, which means that America declaring a genocide is largely a symbolic act, whereas Canada doing the same is not. (And it would be great if media outlets could actually articulate this point rather than ignoring it, because they all have. Every single one of them).

But the opposition parties – and apparently the backbench Liberals as well – are more concerned with making a statement and the kind of preening that comes with “showing leadership” rather than doing the actual hard work of getting our allies on-side so that we have a meaningful declaration and that we aren’t cheapening the term “genocide,” which is literally the worst crime against humanity. But political leadership in this country is decidedly unserious, so this is the kind of clown show we’re getting, complete with a cartoonish understanding of foreign policy. Go us.

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Roundup: Not releasing the contracts

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It seems that prime minister Justin Trudeau has rejected a call by the premiers to release the details of the vaccine contracts – as well he should have. So much of the past couple of weeks’ panic over the delays in Pfizer and Moderna doses has been this self-assuredness that the federal government must have negotiated a bad deal, and they’re going to “prove it” by demanding to see what’s in the contracts. After all, most of the conservative-leaning premiers are still operating under the assumption that Trudeau is some kind of naïf who can barely put his own pants on let alone govern a country (while most of them believe themselves to be super-geniuses). Of course, all that making the contracts public would do is to allow other countries to start trying to outbid what we paid for our doses in order to get the companies to break the contracts in order to get their own orders faster.

With this in mind, I would point you in the direction of this longread from Maclean’s, which goes through the story of the procurement process for these vaccines, including talking to some of the players involved, and while no secrets are divulged, some of the calculations on the part of the companies is better fleshed out, including the fact that our public healthcare system ostensibly makes out rollout likely to go more smoothly, which is good for the companies because it means fewer wasted doses. Now, mind you, it’s not going to be even across the country given the disparities in health systems between provinces, and the varying levels of incompetence that some of the provincial governments display, but there are some good insights in the piece, so I would encourage you to take the time to read it through.

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Roundup: A freak-out over vaccine math

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With things in a particularly…fragile state around the vaccine rollout, leaking numbers without context should be seen as a Very Bad Thing, and yet that’s what happened yesterday morning, when it appeared to look like Pfizer was cutting the number of vials they were sending us before the end of our Q1 agreement, and there was a freak out. Premiers started demanding federal action (as though Justin Trudeau can just strong-arm Pfizer into producing more doses somehow), or badmouthing Pfizer itself (because that’ll help). And it turns out that it was all for naught.

It turns out that with the possibility that the vials of vaccine will be re-labelled to say that they contain six doses instead of five (which apparently is not uniform, and requires either a skilled operator or different syringes which are in short supply right now), Pfizer decided to rejig the math so that there are the same numbers of doses, but just in fewer vials. Health Canada has not agreed to this re-labelling, and has no timeline on when such a decision could be made, but Pfizer apparently jumped the gun in sending new numbers that got misinterpreted (and misrepresented once the context was actually known), and this government can’t communicate its way out of a wet paper bag at the best of times, so its inability to properly communicate these new figures only made things worse (especially as they didn’t smack it down during Question Period). And if Health Canada doesn’t relabel the vials? Pfizer still sends us the contracted-for number of doses. So the freak-out was for nothing – except maybe yet another kick in the ass for this government to get in the game when it comes to getting ahead of these things.

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Meanwhile, we also found out that Ontario had mis-reported its vaccination figures, and they’ve only vaccinated half as many as they said they did, which really puts the province’s hue and cry into the fact that it was running out of doses into a new light – and also the fact that they have been so desperate to blame the federal government for everything. It’s the “look over there” strategy, that certain members of the media seem to keep falling for, every single time. The absolute incompetence of the Ford government never fails to astound.

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Roundup: Political theatre over terrorist listings

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After Question Period yesterday, Jagmeet Singh rose to propose a motion that the government get serious about tackling white supremacy, which included listing the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization. After a brief interruption where Elizabeth May wanted the Soldiers of Odin added to that list – which was ruled procedurally out of order – Singh’s motion passed, and it was a big social media coup for him, which was also turned into a fundraising pitch so that they could “keep the pressure up” on the Liberals to actually go through with it.

The problem? This is all political theatre – and dangerous political theatre at that. The motion was non-binding, and does not automatically list the Proud Boys, but serves as political direction for the relevant national security agencies to do so, but they can’t actually do that, because there are clear processes set out in law to do so. The Conservatives tried this a few years ago with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and to have them listed – which still hasn’t been done, because there’s a process, and established criteria that it appears they don’t meet the threshold of under existing Canadian law.

To add to that, this kind of precedent should be absolutely alarming because it was a year ago that there were people demanding that Indigenous protesters blockading railways be declared “terrorists,” and if this were up to votes in the Commons (though, granted, this was a motion that required unanimous consent), that could turn bad very, very fast. There are established processes for terrorist listings for a reason, and they should be respected – not being used so that MPs can pat themselves on the back and virtue-signal that they oppose white supremacy. That doesn’t solve problems and can make the jobs of legitimate national security agencies more difficult, but hey, MPs get to make some hay over Twitter, so that’s what counts, right?

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Roundup: Trudeau’s transparent fiction about vetting

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his call to the Queen yesterday morning to update her on the situation with the Governor General and that the Chief Justice will be fulfilling his role as Administrator in Julie Payette’s absence, and then he went to face reporters and spun an elaborate and transparent fiction to them, claiming that there was a “rigorous vetting process” around Payette’s appointment. This was a lie, complete with the rote assurances that they are always looking to improve the process. You know what would have been an improvement? Not abandoning the perfectly good process in the first place because when you had a lieutenant governor position open up, you wanted to fill it with one of your former ministers because you owed her after siding with Jody Wilson-Raybould over her. And from there, he couldn’t abandon it just for that position – he had to abandon the whole thing. In fact, Dominic LeBlanc pretty much ratted him out to the Globe and Mail that the vetting was inadequate, so even if you haven’t been following this file like some of us have, you know this was a lie.

Where the rub in this is because Trudeau is refusing to apologise or take any responsibility for the appointment itself, which is entirely on him under the tenets of Responsible Government. He has to wear this appointment – especially because he abandoned an established consultative process that worked and got good results, then didn’t actually vet Payette when she was suggested to him by his close circle, nor did he call references. As one CBC reporter at the presser said, it took her almost no work at all to find out that Payette’s previous two workplaces showed this very same pattern of abusive behaviour – which again supports the fact that the “rigorous vetting” was a lie. This is something that Parliament should be holding Trudeau to account for, like how our system is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, Colby Cosh makes the salient point that part of our desire for putting celebrities into Rideau Hall stems from our watching the cult of celebrity in American politics and looking to replicate it here, whereas what we should be doing is finding someone competent and unassuming for the role. Paul Wells recounts some of the early red flags with Payette, like her refusal to sign government orders in a timely manner, before making the salient point that part of Trudeau’s problem is really bigger than him – that the impulse to try and make things new and shiny is bigger than just him, and that Trudeau needs to be reminded of the hard work that goes into making these appointments. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé providing a reality check as the cheap outrage brigade starts in on Payette’s post-appointment annuities.

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Roundup: The rot in Alberta’s witch hunt

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The Alberta government’s $3.5 million special committee into Un-Albertan Activities “foreign-funded special interest groups” opposed to the energy sector has posted their list of commissioned studies, and they are a collection of climate deniers, and foreign-funded special interest groups – oil companies – who write boosterism for the sector. Oh, and there’s also a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense in there as well. And yes, they paid thousands of dollars for those reports.

This is what the government spent $3.5 million on, at a time when they are complaining that they are so broke (because they relied too much on a high price of oil) that they are looking to slash and burn public services in the province. The fact that they are funnelling money to hucksters and charlatans, and that they accepted the work of a conspiracy theorist to launch the whole committee in the first place, is par for the course in the province, unfortunately. This whole exercise is a kind of distillation of the absolute rot in Alberta politics that its potency would be fatal if you ingested it. One wonders what the straw that breaks the camel’s back will wind up being (and it may yet be those MLAs’ pandemic vacations), but this particular farce is absolutely galling.

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Roundup: More pandemic theatre

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The horror show of COVID infections continues apace in Ontario, and premier Doug Ford has decided to get really serious and issue a “stay-at-home” order, which amounts to little more than the mockdown that is currently in place already. In spite of his promises of an “iron ring” around long-term care facility, there are now outbreaks at forty percent of facilities. Ford won’t do anything about the sick days that are necessary for people to stop spreading infections at workplaces, and he won’t do anything about evictions from commercial landlords. So he’s totally handling this with aplomb.

So really, what Ford is offering is more pandemic theatre – the close cousin of security theatre. And most of the restrictions and exemptions don’t actually make sense. They’re not going to do enough to curb transmission – especially as newer variants start making their way into the community – because he won’t do the hard work of closing the large workplaces where spread is happening, because that would be harming the economy – as though rising infections and deaths won’t do worse economic damage. Ford continues to shirk his responsibilities and let this pandemic get worse, and more deaths to pile up, as he tries to shift blame and try and to get people to blame one another than acknowledge his own culpability. The “Uncle Doug” schtick isn’t working, and he keeps hoping it will, and here we are, waiting for things to get worse before he institutes more half-measures. Welcome to Ontario – yours to discover.

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Roundup: New mockdowns after Goldilocks failed

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Things in Ontario have reached the point where Doug “I won’t hesitate” Ford has finally enacted a province-wide mockdown…but not before he hesitated even further by not putting it into force until Boxing Day. You know, so that everyone can still flood the malls and box stores, and feel like they’re justified in “cheating” for Christmas gatherings. And by mockdown, it’s not a real lockdown – it’s a few added restrictions but most workplaces are still up and running, in spite of mounting evidence of outbreaks in them, so good job there.

Ford, meanwhile, was more than happy to blame the federal government for not properly closing borders, and insisted that they do more testing at airports…which they are. Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu had to counter that the rapid testing pilot at Pearson is ongoing – but that also doesn’t change the fact that only 1.3 percent of new cases can be traced to travel, which blows a hole in Ford’s narrative. Of course, that narrative is all about blame-shifting so that he doesn’t have to look like the bad guy in the “lockdowns,” never mind that these should have happened in September at the latest to have nipped the second wave in the bud, but they didn’t do that, because they tried the “Goldilocks approach,” and it failed. How many hundreds of people have died unnecessarily since?

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Roundup: Some vaccine doses arriving soon

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The prime minister was out this morning with a significant announcement about the vaccine roll-out, in that Canada could see its first 249,000 doses being delivered within about a week, pending Health Canada approval. As well, the box from Pfizer that will serve as the “dry run” of the roll-out plans also left Belgium and was heading for Canada for the exercise. The whole vaccine roll-out is going to be taxing to supply chains for things like dry ice, and there is already talk about lowering some expectations for how soon some long-term care residents can receive doses, because the Pfizer vaccine loses effectiveness if it is jostled too much, as it is with transport, so that may mean trying to find ways of getting those residents to vaccination centres instead of the other way around. We’ll see how this goes.

There is an interesting story in the Globe about a private vaccine manufacturer in Montreal, which is right next door to the National Research Council facility that is currently under construction, which is believed to be capable of manufacturing at least one of the potential vaccine candidates, but they appear not to have been asked by the government, or engaged in any meaningful way. I have questions, however, because it doesn’t really specify which type of vaccines could be manufactured (and yes, this does matter), so it may be a case of waiting to see the viability of one of the later candidates for approval before they go too far with licensing or engaging.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has the audacity to blame the Liberals for the anti-vaxx petition that his MP, Derek Sloan, has been sponsoring. O’Toole says that because the Liberals have been so lacking in transparency that these kinds of things are bound to happen – which is some grade-A horseshit if I ever heard it. This as O’Toole spent the morning shifting the goalposts on what he deems to be sufficient transparency from the government. Of course, O’Toole doing the bare minimum and saying he doesn’t support the petition Sloan is sponsoring, but doing little else to stop the misinformation that he has had an active hand in spreading is quite something. Then again, there does seem to be a tendency among many conservative leaders to shift blame and deny that they are responsible for anything, and we apparently are seeing that again here.

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QP: The PornHub panic

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While the prime minister was on the Hill and just gave a press conference to announce that vaccines would likely be arriving in a week following Health Canada approval, neither he nor his deputy were at QP. Candice Bergen led off, giving selective information about vaccination roll-outs in other countries, and then said that the announced first batch of the Pfizer vaccine wouldn’t be enough. Anita Anand insisted that this was a wonderful day, and that the light at the end of the tunnel was clear. Bergen then moved to the PornHub story in the New York Times, saying he was allowing rape and sexual exploitation to happen in his own backyard, to which David Lametti reminded her that there are laws in place, including for Internet service providers, and that they were taking this seriously. Bergen insisted that there has been no action, as though there was a magic wand that was not being used, and Lametti repeated his points before declaring his pride in the Digital Charter. Stephanie Kusie then took over in and French to demand refunds for airline consumers, to which Chris Bittle stated clearly that there would be no sector-specific aid without refunds. Kusie worried that any plan would bar executive compensation, and Bittle reiterate the importance of ensuring refunds. Claude DeBellefeuille led for the Bloc to demand increased health transfers with no strings attached, to which Patty Hajdu read in halting French about how much the federal government had transferred to the provinces since the pandemic began. DeBellefeuille was not mollified, and repeated her demand, for which Hajdu read another set of talking points. Jenny Kwan demanded more safe places for women in Vancouver’s downtown east side, to which Maryam Monsef said that she has been working with the advocates in the area. Leah Gazan demanded action on the report from the MMIW inquiry, to which Carolyn Bennett assured her that they were working on this with a new $751 million funding commitment.

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