Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Roundup: Premiers pleading poverty while demonstrating largesse

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Ontario premier Doug Ford met with Maritime premiers in New Brunswick yesterday, and wouldn’t you just know it, they demanded more federal healthcare dollars while simultaneously saying that throwing money at the problem wouldn’t fix things, so they want to go to more private delivery. The problem, of course, is that Ford didn’t even bother to spend his full healthcare budget last year as he continues to underpay nurses and doctors, and both he and Blaine Higgs in particular put pandemic healthcare dollars onto their bottom lines, and Higgs boasted a healthy surplus last year thanks to federal transfers. It’s hard to take premiers’ demands for cash seriously if they don’t actually spend the dollars they’re given, and that they keep boasting about their balance sheets while still steadfastly refusing to increase pay, or to reform billing systems. While François Legault wasn’t at the table today, he’s also promising a tax cut if he gets elected again, while crying poor and insisting the federal government needs to spend more. Erm, you know that the federal government can see you, right?

On that note, Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe announced that his province is so flush with money thanks to high oil and gas revenues that they’re going to give out vote-buying cheques to the whole province. But he too is going cap-in-hand to Ottawa for more health transfers, and he’s sending patients in his province to private clinics in Alberta and won’t pay for their transportation to get there either. (Oh, and giving cheques to everyone is going fuel inflation, but you knew that, right?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 180:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is banning public celebrations in advance of Ukraine’s independence day, citing fears that Russia will likely plan more severe attacks in line with the occasion, particularly around civilian infrastructure. Russians struck near Kharkiv and areas near Bakhmut in the Donbas, while the Ukrainan counter-attack continued to advance on Kherson in the south. There were also new claims of Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as international pleas to ensure a ceasefire around the area continue to go unheeded. Russians are also, not surprisingly, blaming the car bomb that killed the daughter of one of Putin’s advisors, on Ukraine.

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Roundup: Meet Canada’s newest Supreme Court justice

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday that he will be appointing Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada, making her the first Indigenous justice on the top court. She will be replacing Justice Michael Moldaver, who retires on September 1st, a few months ahead of his mandatory date, and this is for one of the Court’s three Ontario seats. While it was a given that this appointment would be a woman in order to restore gender balance on the court, there has been pressure for an Indigenous justice for a while. This government has also mandated that official bilingualism should also be a requirement for appointment, which shrinks the pool of available Indigenous candidates a whole lot. And it’s not without controversy—it is true that, as many Indigenous activists point out, that kind of linguistic requirement is colonial, but it also has been pointed out that relaxing those kinds of requirements is generally done at the expense of French, which is also a very fraught notion with the insistence that French is “in decline” in the country (which is debatable, because use of French has been up in Quebec, but they are paranoid about the “mother tongue” statistics, which is generally about immigrants for whom French is not their first language).

While you can read O’Bonsawin’s application questionnaire here, it’s worthwhile noting that she comes to the Supreme Court directly from the Superior Court rather than the Court of Appeal. This isn’t a big deal, but it does speak to the pool of available candidates, because there are exceedingly few Indigenous judges at the appeal court level. This being said, it’s perfectly permissible to appoint people to the Supreme Court if they’re law professors, or even lawyers working in a firm—Justice Suzanne Côté was appointed directly from practice. This being said, O’Bonsawin has academic chops to add to her experience, with a PhD in the Gladue sentencing principles, which are about taking proper life circumstances into account during sentencing for Indigenous people. She also has done a lot of work around mental health, which is also important in the current legal environment, so it does look like she will bring a wealth of experience to the bench. The only thing I would say is that with Moldaver’s retirement, there is no longer a criminal justice specialist on the Supreme Court, which may be an issue in the longer-term, but there are enough bright minds on the court that I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Meanwhile, here is some reaction from the president of the Canadian Bar Association, and several Indigenous leaders.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 177:

Ukraine has been making several drone attacks in the areas of Nova Kakhovka, near the occupied city of Kherson, as well as possibly the Crimean port of Yevpatoriya, which seems to be about Ukrainians showing their capabilities to Russian aggressors. Ukraine is also warning that Russia is planning a “large scale provocation” around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in an attempt to decouple it from the Ukrainian grid and attach it to the Russian grid, which is apparently a complex operation that could cause a disaster. Meanwhile, doctors talk about why they are staying in place in war-hit towns in Ukraine.

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Roundup: Threats and compromises over dental care

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After spending the weekend talking tough on healthcare, Jagmeet Singh made some threats and shook his fist in the direction of Althia Raj yesterday, insisting that if the promised dental care programme doesn’t happen by the end of the year, that he was walking away from the supply-and-confidence agreement with the federal government. As this was hitting the wires, so was a leak that said the government was looking at a temporary cash transfer for eligible households in lieu of dental care this year, because it’s taking longer to implement (even though they insist they are on track). But the federal government hasn’t even decided on a delivery model yet, which is a problem, and premiers haven’t signalled any willingness to work with them on this either, and that’s a problem for all involved. Singh was naïve to believe this could happen in a few months, and the Liberals were stupid to promise that it could, knowing that this was going to be tricky because of the jurisdictional hurdles. And I suspect this is just going to drive cynicism on all sides, because new national social programmes can’t be done on the back of a napkin and rolled out in a few weeks, and everyone has set up expectations that will be nigh-impossible to meet. So good job, everyone. You’ve really helped.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 167:

There are international concerns after Russians shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, in what is believed to be an attempt to cut power to Ukrainian-held cities in the southern part of the country. We also got word that a Ukrainian grain ship has reached Turkey, but it seems there has been a dispute with the cargo’s buyers in Lebanon, so they may be looking for a new buyer for the corn haul. Because of course. Over the weekend, Russians targeted the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

In case you missed it:

  • My column on Michael Chong’s latest round of reform ideas, and some of them are actually good, while others may not be practical given current limitations.
  • For National Magazine, I wrote about the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision around condom refusal and how that can lead to a sexual assault trial.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on the (then-forthcoming) leadership debate and how you shouldn’t count anything out when there’s a ranked ballot in the mix.
  • My column on why we can’t keep ignoring the link between climate change and what it’s done to crops, and by extension, rising food inflation.
  • My Xtra column on this government’s poor record on HIV funding, while they were busy patting themselves on the back at the International AIDS Conference.
  • My column calling out Senator Dasko’s morally bankrupt poll trying to drum up support for the continuation of hybrid sittings, with no mention of the human toll.

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Roundup: A deal to ship grain?

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We’re now in day one-hundred-and-fifty of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and an agreement has been signed that will allegedly allow Ukrainian grain to flow again from their Black Sea ports. Allegedly. No one really trusts Russia to actually live up to their end of the bargain, but we’ll see. Apparently one of the conditions to this agreement is that Ukraine doesn’t raise the issue of the grain that Russia stole from them, so we’ll see what happens from here. Meanwhile, CBC has a video package of the past week in the war.

https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1550434643094249472

https://twitter.com/AlexGabuev/status/1550537176592822272

https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1550450333545123841

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Roundup: Trying for a left-wing populist narrative

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It’s day one-hundred-and-forty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have been pounding Kharkiv, mostly by randomly shelling residential areas to inflict civilian casualties. But as this shelling takes place, the head of MI6 in the UK says that their analysis shows that Russia’s army is nearly exhausted, and that this will open up opportunities for Ukrainian forces to counter-attack in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Turkey says that Russia and Ukraine are about to sign a deal that will re-open Black Sea ports and allow grain shipments to pass through again, and hopefully avert the threat of famines (and likely lower world grain prices). There are still a lot of questions—including whether Russia can actually be trusted—but we’ll see what happens in the coming days.

https://twitter.com/AnitaAnandMP/status/1550193058809090054

Closer to home, Jagmeet Singh is trying to play the populist card, and it’s just laughable. It’s like the satire of a populist’s talking points (not that the NDP hasn’t morphed itself from a principled left-wing party to a left-flavoured populist one more than a decade ago). Like Singh and his inner circle looked at Pierre Poilievre’s traction and said “get me a piece of that action,” so they tried to ape his talking points. It’s risible, and it’s a sign of the intellectual vacuum at the centre of our political parties (and no, Liberals, you don’t get to be smug about this one either as your party can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag).

https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1550180051152404482

There are no “Ottawa elites” who are “enraged” by your suggestion. Yes, it got a bunch of scorn from, well, everyone because the last thing you want to do when you’re facing high inflation is to just give everyone even more money. Targeted help, sure, but social assistance and disability are provincial programmes, whereas the Canada Child Benefit is too broad a programme that it has been considered stimulus by the government and every credible economist, which is the last thing you want right now. The GST credit can maybe be a vehicle as it’s more targeted, but you need to be specific about that. As for the notion that corporate price gouging has caused inflation is flat-out wrong (even if it has contributed in a small way). Taxing oil companies won’t solve inflation, and an “excess profit tax” is a fraught move because it gets very tricky to come up with a workable definition of “excess,” particularly given the fact that a) the economy is overheated so of course businesses are going to be making more profit, and b) the world price of oil has more to do with supply constraints and capacity constraints for refining, so just taxing it more doesn’t actually solve any problems. But this kind of ham-fisted economic illiteracy does nothing for Singh’s credibility, and just drags the discourse even further down.

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Roundup: Collapsing hospital care is a crisis for premiers

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It’s on or about day one-hundred-and-forty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have shelled the city of Toretsk in the Donestk region, smashing more buildings as they continue to try and take control of the area. Ukraine is also calling out Russia’s conduct when it comes to prisoners of war, citing illegal treatment.

Meanwhile, there are no assurances around weapons that Canada is sending to Ukraine that they’re being tracked so that they can ensure they won’t wind up on the black market. NATO partners are having discussion about this, but Canada is merely monitoring rather than participating. Ukrainian officials assure Canada that they are closely monitoring any movement of weapons, as are our allies, and are insisting that information to the contrary is likely Russian disinformation.

Closer to home, emergency rooms are closing in some parts of the country as hospitals are facing a severe staff shortage, particularly among nurses. And gosh, it’s quite a coincidence that Ontario gave nurses an effective pay cut that they haven’t reversed, or that Alberta tried to cut nurses’ pay because they said they were making too much relative to nurses in other provinces. No, seriously, that’s their case. This is while the premiers have mishandled COVID, refuse to do the simplest things like mask mandates at this point, and then wondering why the hospitals, which never recovered from the previous waves of the pandemic, are once again collapsing. A very cynical person might think premiers have created this situation, either to pressure the federal government to hand them more money without strings, or to set up the conditions to force more private delivery of care (which won’t actually do anything about staffing or resources other than distribute them toward those who can pay), but it looks clear that they aren’t prepared to give the necessary damn that the situation requires, and that’s a problem.

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Roundup: Summer showboat season has begun

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It’s day one-hundred-and-forty-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a missile strike in the more central city of Vinnystia killed a four-year-old disabled girl, which was used by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others to demand that Russia be declared a state sponsor of terrorism as a result. There have been other strikes in Dnipro, near the centre of the country, and in Mykolaiv, which is closer to the front lines in the south. CBC has a video of the week in the war here.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is preparing a counteroffensive in the south, particularly to reclaim Kherson, which is a strategic objective that could give them control of the region, including of giving them the ability to strike Russian positions in Crimea. The fact that the Ukrainians have now accepted delivery of the American HIMARS rocket system is giving them a new advantage over the Russians, and could turn the campaign, which is in a “grinding” phase of attrition currently. There have been no Russian advances in the east part of the country for over a week now, so the supposition that Russia needs time to regroup seems to be proving true.

Closer to home, summer showboat—err, committee season has begun, with two emergency meetings yesterday, being the foreign affairs committee, and the industry committee. In the former, they have committee agreed to meet over the summer to discuss the return of those gas turbines to Germany, and will call ministers to testify. The latter used the day to plan meetings on the Rogers outage, where they plan to call ministers, Rogers executives, and the CRTC, and you can bet that MPs from all parties are planning who their best performers on camera will be in order to give some outrage and sanctimony clips that they can then use for shitposts and fundraisers. Because that’s what our Parliament has devolved to.

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Roundup: An “adult conversation” consisting solely of a demand for cash

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It’s now day one-hundred-and-thirty-nine of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Russians have resumed pounding the city of Kharkiv, destroying civilian buildings. The Russian government is trying to fast-track giving Russian citizenship to all Ukrainians, an attempt to exert more influence over the country. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling out Canada’s decision to return those gas turbines to Russia by way of Germany, saying that Russia will interpret this as a sign of weakness that Russia will try to exploit, and he’s not wrong, but one wonders if there may not be a greater danger in alienating Germany as they are already facing rationing. For what it’s worth, the US State Department is backing Canada’s decision, but this situation was very much a Kobayashi Maru.

Closer to home, the Council of the Federation got underway yesterday, and of course the opening salvos were about healthcare funding, without strings attached. BC Premier John Horgan, who is currently the chair of the Council, was dismissive about the federal government’s concerns, calling them “accounting differences,” when Dominic LeBlanc called them out for their misleading figures about the current transfers, and the fact that several provinces are crying poor while simultaneously bragging about surpluses that they paid for with federal pandemic dollars, of the fact that Quebec is sending vote-buying cheques out to people ahead of their election. And LeBlanc is absolutely right—there need to be strings to ensure that provinces won’t use that money to pad their bottom line, reduce their own spending, or lower taxes, because they’ve all done it in the past. The best part is that Horgan keeps saying he wants an “adult conversation,” but the only thing the premiers are bringing to the table is a demand for more money, and that’s it. That’s not an adult conversation. (For more, the National Post took a dive into the issue, and came out with a fairly decent piece that includes the actual history of transfers, tax points, and provinces who spent those health care transfers on other things).

There will be a few other things discussed, and there’s a primer here about them. Jason Kenney wants to spend the premiers meeting pushing back at the federal emissions reduction targets, because of course he does.

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Roundup: Brown’s whistleblower goes public

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We’re now in day one-hundred-and-thirty-five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sounds like Russia might be taking an “operational pause” to regroup before they return to hammering Donetsk province…though there was still some shelling in the region. The Ukrainian flag is once again flying on Snake Island, which is a strategic access point to ports like Odessa. For his part, Putin says that he’s just getting started, and is daring the West to meet him on the battlefield, so that’s going well.

Closer to home, the Patrick Brown saga continues, as the woman who was in his camp and reported the alleged financial misdeeds to the party came forward and said she blew the whistle, and detailed the allegation that a company was paying for her work on the campaign and that Brown knew about it (which he and his camp have denied). As this goes to the Commissioner of Elections, the Liberals, keen to make some mischief, sent in their own complaint to the Commissioner, asking him to investigate the Conservative Party as a whole in the event that they benefitted financially from any memberships the Brown camp sold that may have been done improperly. So that’s going well.

The party is also contending with how they will count votes for Brown that are received, given that they’re not reprinting ballots, and don’t want to just not count his votes in any way in case that alters the maths of the preferential ballot in some way, so…they’re consulting. And we’ll see what that says. Meanwhile, members of the Conservative committee vetting leadership candidates apparently warned the organizing committee not to approve Patrick Brown’s bid, but were overruled, so that’s also interesting.

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Roundup: Hoping for a Canada Day with little disruption

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We’re on day one-hundred-and-twenty-eight of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it looks like shelling by Ukrainian forces have driven Russian troops from Snake Island, a strategic location in the south near Odesa (and where those border agents famously told the Russian warship to fuck itself). This could mean that the threats against Odesa are receding. Meanwhile, the fighting continues around Lysychansk, where the Russians are facing a tough road to try and encircle the city as they can’t cross the river without being exposed to the Ukrainian forces on the high ground.

Closer to home, it’s Canada Day, but the festivities are taking place off the Hill in Lebreton Flats, because a third of the lawn in front of the Centre Block is now a giant pit while they dig new underground infrastructure for the renovated building. As well, the Snowbirds have been forced to cancel their performance because of a serious maintenance issue with their fleet. The far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists have already started to descent on downtown Ottawa and Parliament Hill, so we’ll see if things are as disruptive as they were during the occupation, but thus far, police are taking no chances and we’ve already seen arrests and vehicles being towed, so we’re off to a better start than we were in January. Regardless, I hope you enjoy your Canada Day as much as possible.

Programming Note: I’m taking the long weekend off to recuperate, so I’ll see you Monday or Tuesday, depending on how I feel (and how much news there is over the weekend).

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