Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Roundup: Hoping to master the algorithm

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As I often rail about terrible government communications and Parliament being reduced to a content studio for social media clips, I was struck by two stories over the weekend. The first was a look into the Liberals’ trying to use social media more effectively to bring back Millennial and Gen Z voters, which means staffers are directing their ministers to tailor content more specifically to these platforms, and ministers using influencers more to get their messages across. While I’m less concerned about the latter because I do think that can be helpful and savvy, it’s the former that concerns me more because we have too many politicians chasing the algorithm as it is, and the algorithm is bad and fickle. If you listen to Aaron Reynolds of Effin’ Birds fame talk about using social media to build his business, he will warn that tailoring your business to specific algorithms is doomed to fail because those algorithms change and can wipe you out, and politicians chasing the algorithm is not only cringe-worthy, it’s frankly bad for media literacy and democracy in general.

The other story was that Conservative MP Branden Leslie produced a Facebook video chock-full of fake news clips that purport to show a future where Trudeau has resigned, but amidst the complaints that using news branding for this kind of deep-fake content is problematic and deeply unethical, Conservatives are defending it as perfectly justified because “nobody could mistake it for reality.” This from the party that is actively building a dystopian alternate reality built on disinformation for their followers to believe in, because they want them to forgo things like critical thinking in order to simply swallow whatever falsehoods the party wants to tell them, and now they’re asserting that people won’t be taken by the very falsehoods this video perpetuates, after they have been training that same audience to swallow falsehoods? Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. This is nothing good, and a sign that there is no moral compass in the party whatsoever.

Throughout this, I am reminded of something Paul Wells said last week that really struck a chord with me:

I think the social-media revolution has constrained government’s attempts to explain themselves, and radicalized citizens’ responses, more than it’s helped anyone do anything good. And I think most political organizations’ attempts to master these tools end up looking like the tools are, quite thoroughly, mastering the organizations.

This is exactly right, and it’s why I worry that the Liberals trying to push more to social media to reach those Gen-Zers is going to make this actively worse, while the Conservatives are already using the worst features of these platforms to their most unethical extent. This is the state of political communications these days, and it’s very, very scary, and it’s dragging democracy down with it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians bombed a big box store complex in Kharkiv on Saturday, killing 14, wounding 43, with 16 others still unaccounted for, even though Ukrainian forces are pushing them back from areas outside of the city.

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Roundup: More misleading over opioids

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The weekend discourse appears to have been much of what last week’s was, which was the Conservatives lying about the state of the opioid crisis in BC, lying about Justin Trudeau’s culpability, and lying about…well, pretty much everything. I feel like I need to keep saying this, but the decriminalisation project in BC is not what caused people to start using drugs openly in public places. That is happening everywhere. It is happening right now on the streets in Ottawa, where there is no decriminalisation, because there is currently a prevailing ethos that if you use in public places and overdose, you have a better chance that someone will come across you and get a Naloxone kit to save your life. It’s not about decriminalisation. That also didn’t cause users to leave needles in parks—that’s been happening for decades in some urban centres. We’re now fully into moral panic territory.

Meanwhile, Toronto Public Health’s hopes for a similar decriminalisation programme don’t seem to be going anywhere, and Justin Trudeau stated last week, in QP that they only work with provinces and not individual cities on these kinds of projects, which is why they didn’t accept Vancouver’s proposal earlier, and why they’re not contemplating Toronto or Montreal now. And frankly, that shouldn’t be unexpected because public health is a provincial responsibility, so it would make more sense for the federal government to work with a province rather than an individual municipality that may be at odds with the province in question. Federalism matters, guys.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces shot down 23 of 24 drones overnight on Sunday, with more airstrikes on Kharkiv during the day on Sunday. There was also a drone attack on power supply in the Sumy region early Monday morning. Drone footage shows how the village of Ocheretyne is being pummelled by Russians, as residents are scrambling to flee the area, as Russia claims they have captured it. Problem gambling has become an issue for a lot of Ukrainian soldiers dealing with the stress of combat.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1787172469100478665

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Roundup: The First Hogue Report

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On a very busy Friday, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the first report of the foreign interference public inquiry, to some moderate fanfare. Much of it was broadly what was in the Johnston report, but with some more nuance, which left some of it open to degrees of interpretation, some partisans claiming it proves there was meddling, others leaning on the parts where she said that what there was wasn’t enough to amount to changing an election outcome, and there certainly wasn’t some grand effort by China to win the election for the Liberals. At most, it might have cost Kenny Chiu his seat, and there remained questions about Han Dong’s nomination, but even there, there wasn’t a lot of evidence to prove or disprove anything one way of the other.

To that end, key points, and five things from the report. It wasn’t just China, but India, Pakistan, Iran, and a few others. Some candidates in the 2019 election “appeared willing” to engage in foreign interference, with more staff members implicated, around advancing the interests of China, but there weren’t any firm conclusions about who much any foreign interference actually tipped the scales in any one riding. The government also announced that they are tabling legislation on Monday, which is likely to include the foreign agent registry, and possibly some updates to CSIS’ mandate and powers.

Justice Hogue did make a couple of comments about nominations being a possible gateway for foreign interference, but that’s something that would be hard for governments or agencies to do much to involve themselves in because of how parties operate as private clubs, by necessity. That said, as I wrote in this column a couple of weeks ago, open nominations are practically extinct in the current moment so perhaps there isn’t that much danger after all.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Debris from destroyed drones fell on Kharkiv, injuring three and starting a fire. Russia says it has pushed Ukrainians back from 547 square kilometres so far this year, as Americans delayed their crucial aid shipments.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1786364727032971377

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QP: The provocation and the restraint

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After all of yesterday’s drama, it was a real question as to what was going to go down today, with the prime minister present, and there to respond to (but not necessarily answer) all questions. His deputy was absent, but all other leaders were present. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, worrying about the public health director suggesting decriminalisation in Montreal and Quebec, and demanded the government deny the request. Justin Trudeau said that they should take a moment to reflect on what happened yesterday, and said that the government takes the tragedy in BC seriously and they work with science and compassion, and will work with BC on adjusting their pilot project. Poilievre demanded to know if he would reject a request from Quebec, and Trudeau said that they worked with BC when they made the proposal, and he has received no other proposals. Poilievre switched to English, dropped the Montreal angle and demanded he reverse course on BC’s decriminalisation. Trudeau repeated that they will work with BC to adjust their pilot project. Poilievre insisted that Trudeau still hasn’t answered the question, and went into six British Columbians dying every day, and Trudeau repeated that BC approached them with the pilot project, and they worked with them to develop the project, and they looking into the modifications of the project they have asked for. Poilievre very slowly demanded that he reverse decriminalisation, and Trudeau again said they were working with BC.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, needled the Bloc for declaring they will support the budget, before going on about Amira Elghawaby making comments about the challenge to Quebec’s Law 21. Trudeau said that they build bridges by funding infrastructure and by helping communities come together. Blanchet railed about Elghawaby and halal mortgages, somehow, and insisted that some communities were getting other privileges. Trudeau said that in a pluralistic democracy, it’s important to talk to communities in order to meet their concerns.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he raised the Loblaws boycott, and the fact the grocery task force has done no work. Trudeau says that they are concerned with Loblaws not signing onto the grocery code of conduct, and they have given the Competition Bureau new powers. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same answer.

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Roundup: A genteel time that never was

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I saw a post yesterday that took a page from Hansard on that day in 1978, and well, it was full of the first prime minister Trudeau and several honourable members accusing one another of being animals, or parts thereof. And while hilarious, I think it’s a bit of a corrective when people keep insisting that Parliament used to be a much more genteel place (and we got a lot of that during the Ed Broadbent and Brian Mulroney memorials).

It really wasn’t that genteel. It never has been—there are infamous reports in Hansard about early debates in the 1860s where MPs were setting off firecrackers in the Chamber and playing musical instruments to disrupt people speaking. And I can also say that Question Period was a hell of a lot more raucous when I started covering it fifteen years ago compared to what it is today, which has a lot to do with the Liberals clamping down on applause (for the most part) for their members, which has led to there being less heckling from the Liberal benches (not saying it doesn’t happen—it absolutely does—just not as much, and certainly not in the quantities it used to be).

Question Period is worse in other ways, however—nowadays it’s all reciting slogans and everyone on the same script so that they can each get a clip for their socials, while the government gives increasingly disconnected talking points in lieu of responses, and there’s almost no actual debate (though every now and again, Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre will get into an actual exchange with one another). And the repetition of slogans or the reading of canned lines each give rise to heckling because of its ridiculousness, and yes, there is louder heckling when women ministers are answering questions (but this is not a recent phenomenon either). But there was never a golden age of gentility in our Parliament, and we need to stop pretending there was as we lament the state of things. Instead, we should be lamenting the quality of the debate, which has been dead and buried since about the time that Bob Rae retired from politics.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck an educational facility in Odesa, killing four. Russian forces are advancing in the eastern Donetsk region after the withdrawal from Avdiivka, while Ukraine waits for new arms from the west. UN experts say that a missile that landed in Kharkiv on January 2nd was indeed of North Korean manufacture. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, visited Kyiv—the first member of the royal family to do so since the war began—and continued her work championing those affected by conflict-related sexual violence.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1785060798890459222

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Roundup: Trying to set up a dog and pony show for Carney

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Because everything is stupid, the Conservatives have announced that they will move a motion at finance committee to call on Mark Carney to appear in order to…talk about his plans as future Liberal leader? Oh, man. It’s so stupid that it hurts. “Since he’s attempting to get as much media attention as possible, he should welcome the Conservative invitation to appear at Committee,” the press release read, which is an indication of how unserious and stupid this is. When asked by media about the invitation that hasn’t come, Carney said that since this was made in the media before the motion was even moved shows that this is just theatre, which of course it is. This is about gathering clips of him criticising the current government wherever possible, or of the Conservative MPs badgering and hectoring him, because they think that’s going to be gold for them online. And there is nothing for Carney to be gained here either—there is no winning against this kind of “debate me, bro!” mentality because it’s not a debate, but an exercise in being caught out, and the only way to get out ahead is to not play.

I’m really not sold on the notion that Carney is positioning himself for a leadership run, particularly at this point in time, and frankly he would be a very, very bad choice. Setting aside the fact that as a former central bank governor, he should stay the hell away from electoral politics for the sake of his successors, there are certain organizational things you need to have to have any kind of chance in politics and I’ve seen no evidence he has this or has been building this. Other Cabinet ministers have been (and have allegedly been warned to tone it down). That, and I’ve talked to people who worked with him before and they’re not of the opinion he’d have the temperament for the job, while the Liberals should see this as Ignatieff 2.0 and run far away from it.

This aside, this is just such a waste of finite time and resources for the committee. Committees are supposed to be doing the serious work of Parliament (as opposed to the theatrical parts in Question Period), and this is a signal that there is no interest in committee work being serious, but only being more theatre and content generation for social media, and that is an appalling state of affairs for our democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles have struck Ukrainian power facilities in three regions, while air attacks on the Sumy region killed two. Russians have also been targeting rail lines in order to disrupt incoming US aid shipments. Meanwhile, two hospitals in Kyiv have been evacuated after comments made by Belarusian KGB officials who claim that those hospitals house soldiers, which could make them targets in coming air strikes.

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Roundup: Premiers want unconditional money

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The premiers are at it again. They’ve written yet another letter to Justin Trudeau to complain about the budget, and all of the ways that it infringes on their jurisdiction, and to call for a return to a “cooperative approach” that means just giving them “unconditional federal funding.” (It was also hilarious to watch certain premiers complain about federal spending as though they also weren’t running their own deficits, while simultaneously demanding more money from the federal government). And I get that they’re concerned that the costs of these new programmes will be downloaded onto them if a future federal government cuts their funding—it’s a legitimate concern. But at the same time, most of these programmes will have longer-term payoffs, whether it’s child care (which Quebec has proved will pay for itself), or pharmacare or dental care, which has the potential to reduce overall healthcare costs—costs the government is going to have to pay when they could have avoided doing so with proper investments.

Nevertheless, it’s not lost on me that we’ve spent years of people saying “nobody cares about jurisdiction,” and demanding the federal government do something—including some of the premiers—and when the federal government not only does something but attaches strings so that the money has to go to particular outcomes, those same premiers immediately go “No, not like that.” But once burned, twice shy—the federal government learned the hard way during the height of the pandemic when the billions they sent to the provinces largely went unspent but went toward their provincial deficits—so they’re going to very much demand strings attached to those dollars. So, of course the federal government is going to do what they can seeing as they’re shouldering the blame anyway, while the premiers continue to be precious about it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles destroyed grain storage facilities in Odesa, as well as the foodstuffs they contained that were bound for Asia and Africa. Ukrainian forces say they shot down a Russian strategic bomber, while Russia claims it crashed due to a malfunction. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the command post used by the troops defending Chasiv Yar in the east.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1781227417404600676

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Roundup: A housing plan to challenge the provinces and municipalities

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In one of the last pre-budget announcements, the federal government delivered their overall housing plan for 2024, which was a mixture of previously made announcements over the past couple of weeks, with a few more added in—such as plans to lease and not sell public land—to offer a more complete picture of the things that they are doing as a federal government to “unlock” the construction of hundreds of thousands of homes. And I am going to make the point that the term “unlocked” is interesting and deliberate, while most media outlets keep using the term “build” incorrectly, because they’re not saying they’re going to build x-number of units, because they have no way to actually guarantee that because they have very few levers at their disposal to actually build. The other part of “unlock” is that it very much puts the onus on the other levels of government, who do have those levers, to do the work now that the federal government has cleared the way for them.

A lot of this has shown that they have been listening to expert like Mike Moffatt, and while you can read his full thread, I did think it was nice that they put out a chart as to whose responsible for what, because there are a lot of people who are ignorant about these kinds of jurisdictional questions (or pretend to be in any case), so it’s handy that they actually spell it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778804892183748617

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1778808362668306508

And a couple more thoughts from Jennifer Robson in this thread:

Ukraine Dispatch:

Shortages of air defences is leaving Kharkiv in particular more vulnerable to Russian attack. A drone attack hit an energy facility in Dnipropetrovsk in the south. Reuters has another photo series of the front lines.

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Roundup: Admitting defeat with 24 Sussex?

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There is a rumour circulating in Ottawa, put in print, that former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper are offering to lead a charitable exercise of collecting donations to renovate 24 Sussex in the hopes that this will finally depoliticise the whole affair, and the work can finally get done. It’s absolutely discouraging, however, because if it’s true, it’s a giant admission of defeat when it comes to the ability for political decision-making and frankly our ability to have…not even nice things, but useful, official things in this country.

This is supposed to be why we have the gods damned National Capital Commission to deal with the official residences, so that it takes it out of the hands of the government of the day, but even then, it doesn’t exactly work because if the government doesn’t give them the budget allocations to do the work, it doesn’t get done. And they got the allocations for necessary repairs at Harrington Lake, or doing routine work at other residences like Stornoway, but 24 Sussex keeps being punted, as they do yet more studies about what possible alternatives could be, each more wildly fantastic or implausible than the last (such as converting the National Research Council building on Sussex into a quasi-White House with residences and offices, which is absolutely bloody ridiculous), and with the RCMP security wish list driving up the costs every time.

It’s an official residence. It should have the capacity to host a couple of working dinners (not state dinners—that’s why we have Rideau Hall or the Sir John A Macdonald Building across from the West Block), but that’s about it. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but I do think it should retain period features (which in my estimation should mean restoring the original façade with the turret) because this is a heritage property and we are a city of a lot of neo-gothic architecture. But we shouldn’t need a fundraising drive if everyone behaved like adults, which unfortunately seems like too much to ask these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired five missiles at Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing four, and a drone strike early Saturday morning on Kharkiv killed six and injured at least ten. Russians claim that they have taken control of the village of Vodyane in the east, but Ukraine denies the Russian reports that they have reached the suburbs of Chasiv Yar, one of their strongholds in the east. Ukraine did stage a strike against Russia’s Morozovsk military airbase, destroying six Russian warplanes.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1776278198684201137

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Roundup: Erin O’Toole’s revisionist history

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It was MP Day at the Foreign Interference Inquiry, and the big star of the day was former Conservative leader and serial liar Erin O’Toole, who has come to believe that as many as nine seats may have been lost as a result of foreign interference, mostly from China. That’s…an interesting number, considering that the party’s internal polling had long since concluded that their position on vaccine mandates was what cost them the election (though O’Toole being caught out in as many lies as he had been really didn’t help him any, one of the most egregious examples being on gun control).

Not only that, but O’Toole went on to claim that the member of the party’s national council who initiated the petition calling for a leadership review, who is Taiwanese, may have had motives based in foreign interference, which is also ridiculous. It also bears remembering that around the same time, O’Toole began in imperious streak of subverting the (garbage) Reform Act rules the party signed onto in order to punish those in caucus who were standing against him, resulting in him pushing out Senator Denise Batters, and this kept escalating until caucus called for a vote, again according to the (garbage) Reform Act, and at that point, he was done for. (This is all without anything related to the calls for his ouster from the collection of grifters, conspiracy theorists, and grievance tourists who were occupying downtown Ottawa at the same time). Trying to invent foreign interference motives for his demise is not just cry baby behaviour, it’s outright historical revisionism and fabulism to soothe his wounded ego, but I guess if you have no problem lying to everyone all the time, you’re probably pretty used to lying to yourself as well. Meanwhile the pundit class praises him for showing restraint in not using Trumpian “Big Lie” language. Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, as Kenny Chiu, Jenny Kwan and Michael Chong also testified, we have learned that the RMCP investigation into allegations of attempted Chinese intimidation of Chong has hit a dead end.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian missiles struck Dnipro on Tuesday, damaging an educational facility. There was also a drone attack against Kharkiv early Thursday that stuck apartment buildings and homes, killing at least four. In all, Russia launched 3000 aerial bombs, 600 missiles and 400 drones against Ukraine in March. Here is a look at the security arrangements that over 30 countries have now signed with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1775410021712494814

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