Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: It’s auto theft summit day

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It’s the big auto theft summit happening in Ottawa today, and it’s more than just federal and provincial governments and police who are meeting—it’s also insurance companies and auto manufacturers, because part of the problem are the ways in which auto companies have made unsecured RFID technology with key fobs and so on part of the recent lines, which means thieves can capture the frequency of your fobs and steal your card by cloning said fobs. Insurance companies could wield their might in insisting on these changes, which could make a measurable impact. As a down-payment of sorts, Dominic LeBlanc announced a $28 million boost to CBSA’s ability to detect stolen vehicles with more detection tools and analytics.

Meanwhile, as Pierre Poilievre tries to insist that this problem can solely be attributed to Justin Trudeau because of certain legal changes around conditional sentencing and bail (which were in response to Supreme Court of Canada decisions, it must be stated), he’s also made a bunch of specious correlations about how car thefts were lower in the Harper era in order to back up this claim. Except, that’s mostly not true either. But then again, facts, logic or honesty are never really in play when Poilievre is speaking, and this is no different.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 11 out of 17 drones in the early morning hours of Thursday. Russia launched massive attacks on Kyiv and other cities over the day yesterday, which killed five and wounded more than thirty. The mobilisation bill has now passed first reading. Here’s a look at the corps of retired Colombian soldiers fighting for Ukraine

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Roundup: A singular call for a leadership review

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As the Liberals’ caucus retreat got underway in Ottawa (immediately after the Cabinet retreat), things got off to another rocky start as Liberal backbencher Ken McDonald told Radio-Canada that he thinks there should be a leadership review in the party ahead of the next election, and lo, the media leapt all over that story, and the rest of caucus spent the day insisting that no, they’re happy with Trudeau (though one anonymous Liberal praised McDonald’s bravery in bringing this up). The problem with this proposal? The party’s constitution has no mechanism for this.

The new constitution, which was adopted after the Liberals formed government, only has one avenue for a leadership review, which is that one is to be held if they lose an election. And fair enough—that’s really the only time they could hold one, because it essentially means running an entire leadership contest but with only the leader canvassing sign-ups and votes (because they no longer have paid memberships), and his or her opponents trying to organise a no vote. There is no way a sitting prime minister has the time or capacity to do this while running the country, and it’s one more reason why the way we run leadership contests is made to obscure accountability. It also guarantees that bellyachers like McDonald can’t get their wish because frankly there is no capacity for this to happen while they are governing.

This all points to reasons why we need get back to the system of caucus appointing and disposing of leaders. It restores accountability because the leaders are once again afraid of their own members, and must be more responsive to their concerns rather than doing things like threatening to withhold the signature from their nomination papers if they don’t toe the line. It also precludes these mini-leadership contests as a “leadership review” (where past examples such as Jeremy Corbyn and Greg Selinger were not great examples of the membership being able to get rid of problematic leaders). It would make for one quick vote and being able to put the matter to bed rather than this interminable grousing that we’re seeing now, and an immediate replacement of a leader rather than a months-long leadership race that includes egomaniacs who have never won a seat, let alone have any idea how politics works. But people who don’t know how the system works insists that this is somehow “anti-democratic” (which is bullshit), and so this bastardised status quo continues to make our system worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine shot down 11 out of 14 Russian drones targeting the southern part of the country in the early hours of Thursday morning. A Russian military plane crashed, and they claimed it contained 65 prisoners of war headed for a swap and that Ukrainian forces downed the plane, but couldn’t produce proof; Ukraine didn’t confirm or deny this, but made it clear that if Russia was transporting POWs this way without notice it was unacceptable.

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Roundup: Federal Court says Emergencies Act didn’t meet the threshold

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The Federal Court ruled yesterday that the invocation of a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act didn’t actually meet the threshold for such a declaration. (Full decision here). As a result, some of the uses of emergency powers were overbroad, such as the curtailment of freedom of expression in clearing the occupation, or that the police just kind of made it up as they went along as they froze the bank accounts of the owners of trucks participating in the occupation (and really, only about 57 individuals were affected). The federal government declared immediately that they were going to appeal this decision, citing in part the fact that the public inquiry didn’t come to the same conclusion. While I have a full story coming out later today on this, it’s important to note that the ruling was fairly narrow and technical, rejected a number of the complainants that were part of it, and largely affects future invocations of the Act, having little effect on what happened (because we can’t turn back time).

Amidst the various reactions, revisionism certainly was on display among the talking heads over the course of the evening, who insisted that the government had more “surgical” tools they could have used instead of invoking the Act, erm, except no, they didn’t. The problem was that Doug Ford washed his hands of the whole thing, and eventually the federal government had no other option than to invoke the Act because nobody else was getting control of the situation. And the Conservatives? They are eating up this decision and spreading shitposts far and wide over their socials about how this was a condemnation of Trudeau, and how “divisive” he was, and so on. This feeds directly into their dystopian world-building where they are pretending that Trudeau is some kind of jackbooted dictator taking away people’s rights, when that’s explicitly not what happened here, or any reflection of our objective reality whatsoever. But they want to create the illusion that this is true for their believers, because when you can get them to stop believing in our objective reality, people are so much easier to manipulate.

In commentary, Emmett Macfarlane makes a reasoned case for disagreement with the decision which is well worth reading, while Paul Wells makes more of a case for this decision over the public inquiry, though I suspect he too falls a little into the trap of revisionism because the existing tools weren’t working precisely because Doug Ford refused to act.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missile strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv have killed 18 people, which Russia claims are all hits on the military-industrial complex. It is more likely that Russia is probing Ukraine’s defences for weakness as they suffer from shortages because Western arms manufacturers are slow to produce new ammunition and equipment, and the US’ budget deadlock is not helping matters any. On the front lines, the reliability of drones used by Ukrainian troops is of varying quality because many of them are cheaply and hastily assembled.

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Roundup: Debunking Singh’s dunks

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NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s political comms lately have been a little bit…cringey. Not like that TikTok in the shower staring blankly cringey, but saying ridiculous things that he should have thought about for thirty seconds before posting cringey. Like this housing development in Edmonton, that he’s denouncing as “luxury condos.” Except they’re not, that whole concept is dated, any market housing that increases supply helps push down prices, and oh yeah, it’s a Métis-led development that is geared largely for affordable housing, and most of them are to be pegged at below-market. Yikes.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748311506620428422

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748313113206636842

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1748314188756251009

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s pretending that Poilievre will cancel rent control, which, erm, doesn’t exist federally, and then goes on a conspiracy theory about being beholden to developers who contributed to his campaign, in the low thousands of dollars, because remember, this is Canada and we have campaign contribution limits. If you think you’re buying a politician for $1200/year, you’re out to lunch.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1749125638961652148

Of course, this is what happens when as a party, you crib all of your ideas from the “justice Democrats” in Washington, and ignore that we’re two separate countries with different laws, demographics, and circumstances. Unfortunately, this keeps happening, and it makes our politics in this country dumber as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia had to suspend operations at a Baltic Sea fuel terminal after what appeared to be a Ukrainian drone strike caused a major fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is concerned by Trump’s rhetoric of unilateral action and claiming he could end the conflict in 24 hours, and wants Trump to visit Ukraine so he can see the situation for himself.

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Roundup: Ed Broadbent passes

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Early afternoon Thursday, the Broadbent Institute put out a statement that their founder, former long-time NDP leader Ed Broadbent, had passed away at 87.

With this in mind, The Canadian Press has a few stats about his life, as well as quotes from prominent Canadians reacting to his passing, while CBC has some photos of his career from their archives.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Speaking in Estonia, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated the point that any ceasefire will only benefit Russia and not Ukraine. Ukraine’s defence minister said that the hotly contested mobilisation bill has been withdrawn and that a new one is ready to be tabled in their parliament.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1745537331270930924

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Roundup: Chow chooses blackmail

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Toronto mayor Olivia Chow woke up and chose violence, as the kids say, when it comes to her budget proposals for Toronto. While the 10.5 percent property tax increase is long-overdue for a city whose property taxes remain well below the national average after years of austerity governments who have allowed the city to crumble so they can keep from increasing said property taxes (and this is not unique to Toronto either), she is also calling for an additional measure—federal blackmail. The proposal is called a “federal impacts levy,” or an additional six percent increase ostensibly to cover the costs of providing services for asylum seekers, and is basically holding the federal government at knifepoint, saying pay up or all your safe seats in this city are going to be in jeopardy.

The asylum seeker issue is rife with other levels of government falsely claiming that this is solely a federal responsibility, so they should foot the whole cost. It’s not actually true—the federal government is responsible for refugees once their claims have been approved, but before that point, they generally fall under the social services provided by provinces and municipalities, and the federal government will reimburse a portion of those costs. Of course, premiers like to wash their hands of this because of course they do (and there is a constant rhetorical battle happening in Question Period where the Bloc keep demanding that the federal government owes Quebec some $450 million for the provision of services, again falsely claiming sole federal responsibility), which leaves cities often bearing the burden, and Toronto and Montreal most especially as they get the lion’s share of asylum claimants. There remain questions around Toronto, if they have followed the proper channels to request federal funds for this (I believe there is a need for a certain provincial action to accompany it which may not have been undertaken), but again, they have been given millions of dollars this year for assistance with this.

My bigger concern is the Pandora’s Box that this kind of federal blackmail opens up. While some pundits will declare it to be genius, and on a strategic level, it is a clever way to back the federal government into a corner, but at the same time, this invites other cities or provinces to start adopting this kind of tactic, and even more to the point, it once again leaves the province—whose constitutional responsibility the city is—off the hook for their own underfunding and downloading of services to try and make their own bottom lines look good. We already have provinces who think they can just declare themselves exempt from federal laws, and others who are openly breaking those laws (or at least threatening to under the cover of legal fictions), while the pundit class says it’s the prime minister’s fault, that he made them break the law and behave this way. Chow is now pushing this envelope even further, and I worry about the long-term consequences for this country so that she can solve her short-term problem of being an adult around her city’s fiscal crisis.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel in Kharkiv, injuring eleven people, many of them journalists. Ukrainian forces have been shifting toward building fortifications and a more defensive posture in recent months. Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that they have shown that Russia can be stopped, but that Ukraine still needs more air defence systems and ammunition. Zelenskyy added that there are “clear signs” of a slowdown in Russia’s defence industry as he called on allied nations to tighten sanctions.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1745019147065721141

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1745348642100109636

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Roundup: Both-sidesing Moe’s legal fictions

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The playacting around Scott Moe’s threat about not remitting the carbon levy continues to play out in the media, and once again I will point to University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach calling out the media for how they are framing this, which is poorly.

Today’s example is the CBC, once again egregiously both-sidesing this in the construction of their reporting. On a plain reading of the law, the Saskatchewan government can’t engage in the legal fiction of registering as the distributor of natural gas in the province, and a competent journalist should be able to say as much, but they won’t. The demands of both-sidesing means that they have to get someone else—“some experts”—to couch it so that they can’t possibly be accused of bias or an agenda, even when it’s the plain reading of the law. And this is exactly why parties, particularly on the right in North America, have learned that they can get away with outright lying about absolutely everything—because they won’t be called out on it, and when your reporters couch the language in “some experts” saying it’s a lie, and your populist schtick is to denounce experts as being the enemy of the “common people,” then that expert commentary is immediately dismissed, and the lie carries on without consequence. You would have thought that the past few years, particularly given how the American media entirely shat the bed with trying to cover Trump, that they might have learned something, but nope. CBC and The Canadian Press in particular will continue to egregiously both-sides Poilievre and his myriad of lies, much as they are with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, and those same leaders will continue to lie with abandon because they will continue to get away with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched more heavy waves of missiles at Ukraine, killing four civilians early Monday.

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Roundup: Legal fictions around the carbon levy refusal

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While we all emerge from our holiday slumber, the big story domestically remains that Saskatchewan is planning to move ahead with their plans to stop collecting the carbon levy on heat, and hoping that they won’t suffer any repercussions for it. This includes trying to put forward some legal fictions like trying to register the Government of Saskatchewan that’s the seller of natural gas and electricity rather than Crown corporations like SaskEnergy, which the federal government would be well within their rights to reject outright because it’s a fig leaf attempting to protect those Crown corps for breaking federal law. And to add to that, the provincial minister has been spinning the falsehood that the federal “pause” on heating oil won’t reduce the rebate, and that the rebates in his province should be secure if they stop collecting the levy, which is also false–the rebates will be reduced because that money comes from collecting the carbon price—it’s not a federal entitlement programme out of general revenue.

Here’s University of Alberta’s Andrew Leach with more:

In case you missed it:

  • My Xtra story on the Ontario court decision that ruled that calling queer people and drag queens “groomers” is a slur and is not protected speech.
  • My weekend column on an NDP private member’s bill initiative on a Middle East peace plan that looks like a Kickstarter, but is promising things it cannot deliver.
  • My column on the complete lack of serious responses in any of the Conservatives’ year-ender interviews (and the ongoing attempts to justify their Ukraine votes).
  • My year-ender column traces how the shift and fragmentation of social media turned the our politics into an even more toxic snake pit than ever.
  • My latest column on Poilievre’s “debt bomb” disinformation documentary and why it’s just hysteria to rile up the Boomers and Gen-Xers.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on the way the housing issue is going to dominate the political scene for the foreseeable part of 2024.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Kyiv and Kharkiv have come under heavy bombardment in the past several days, in particular striking apartment buildings. There have been Ukrainian drone strikes in the Russian province of Belgorod.

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Roundup: The deafening silence around that antisemitic cartoon

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As you probably saw, on Wednesday, the Toronto Sun published a political cartoon from an American syndicated source that was both deeply antisemitic and Putin propaganda, and in response to criticism, the Sun initially doubled down before finally withdrawing it hours later and giving an apology with no accountability for what had happened.

Justin Trudeau criticized the cartoon during his media availability in Toronto, but there was pretty deafening silence from Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, and Michael Chong. The closest it got to condemnation was Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish, retweeting Brian Lilley calling the apology the “right move,” and later wrote that antisemitism is gross in political cartoons, universities, unions and school boards. Her fellow Jewish Conservative MP Marty Morantz was also completely silent on this. What were Conservatives vocal about? Falling for that Hamas troll-bait video, which they continued to fall all over.

It’s not an accident. They know full well that a segment of their audience here in Canada, not just the US, where the cartoonist is from, believe this propaganda and are on board with the antisemitism, and they pandered to it, much like Poilievre has been trying to skate that line in sending signals to this crowd with his Ukraine votes while paying lip-service to his party’s past support, or trafficking in antisemitic conspiracy theories while denouncing antisemitism—sucking and blowing at the same time. The silence from the Conservatives on this incident was deafening, and it should ring alarm bells for the Jewish community that for all of their constant bluster about being friends of Israel as a signal to the Jewish community that talk is cheap, and their actions (and inaction and silence) have spoken for them.

Programming Note: That’s it for me for 2023. I’m taking the next week or so off to recover, and will be back early in the New Year. Thanks for reading, and wishing all of my readers a happy holiday season.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia has launched around 7400 missiles and 3700 attack drones against Ukrainian targets over the course of the 22-month invasion. Here is a look at four factors that have stalled the counteroffensive. And Ukraine’s parliament voted to legalise cannabis in the country, citing the stress of the war on the population.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1737958416302133568

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Roundup: Exploring a national emergency response agency

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Something that caught my eye over the weekend was an interview that Harjit Sajjan had with The Canadian Press over the weekend about building up some kind of national emergency response agency, so that we don’t have to constantly rely on the military for each event as we have been. It would likely be a network of local and regional agencies, but have some kind of federal coordinating role, but we do have some models domestically to draw on, such as the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The issue there is that it’s only geared toward one kind of event, whereas floods and hurricanes or tornadoes require different responses.

To that end, Sajjan is looking at different models and how different countries manage their agencies, so he’s not immediately jumping on an American FEMA model, but if there is one particular note of caution to sound it’s that we can’t rely on the premiers not ballsing this up or making ridiculous demands because none of them want to spend money on this kind of thing if they think they can get away with forcing the federal government to spend instead, while at the same time not willing to cede any jurisdictional sovereignty so that the federal government can actually do anything other than just give them money that they totally promise will be spent on this and not on tax cuts (really, we promise this time, for reals!)

There’s a reason we’ve come to rely on the military for this kind of work, which is that provinces don’t want to spend the money, and the federal government has so far refused to make provinces reimburse the Forces for doing the work (because they would be massacred in the headlines if they did), and provinces know that. It doesn’t help that the NDP think that this is really the only kind of thing that the military should be doing either. But something has to give, and let’s hope the federal government, of whichever stripe is in power if this gets off the ground, doesn’t simply roll over for the premiers’ usual nonsense on this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians launched a massive drone attack on early Sunday aimed at the southern and western Ukraine, while Ukraine launched a drone attack against a Russian airbase in Russia’s Rostov province. As Russia presses to try and capture Avdiivka, Associated Press has seen drone footage in the area that shows at least 150 bodies in Russian uniforms littering the treeline.

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