Tag Archives: Turkey

Roundup: Unveiling the help for students

Posted on by

Prime minister Justin Trudeau arrived at his daily presser with big news – the long-awaited relief package for students, totalling some $9 billion in new emergency measures, starting with the Canada Emergency Student Benefit that provides between $1250 and $1750 per student between May and August (being the period when they would ordinarily be out of school). This would be augmented by additional grants next year on top of loan repayment deferrals. As well, the government would be creating a number of placements for students in needed areas, as well as a Canada Student Service Grant between $1000 and $5000 for those students who volunteer with essential services during these pandemic times – on top of additional funding for the next academic year, and specific pots of money for Indigenous students. During the Q&A and the subsequent ministerial presser, there were questions on repatriations (most especially from India), as well as on what’s happening with prisons as they face the pandemic (and here is a good thread from Justin Ling, who brought the receipts as to why this matters) – made especially important because even the Correctional Investigator can’t get proper figures about what is going on. This gets complicated when you have tough-on-crime politicians making hay about needed decarceration during a crisis like this. Trudeau also gave a rare moment of candour when he stated in response to a question that universal benefits are actually more complicated than they seem, which was why they went with the CERB (but it only took him three tries to actually say it – something I’ve been pointing out for a while).

And then the requests came. Quebec’s premier asked for an additional 1000 soldiers to help cover off in long-term care facilities as the death toll continues to climb, particularly around Montreal. (Here’s a thread that explains some of what is going on, particularly as transmission from long-term-care facility to hospitals is an added problem). Around the same time, Doug Ford also asked for military assistance with five facilities in Ontario (but wouldn’t say which ones). But throughout this, we keep seeing the PM and other ministers being asked if the federal government needs to somehow “take over” the long-term care file, which I think is a bit boggling because there’s no actual mechanism for them to do that. Provincial powers aren’t delegated by the federal government – back during Confederation, they were divvied up between the provinces and the federal government, and in many cases, the provinces were given those powers because they are closer to the people. Yes, there is a federal role in healthcare (beyond simple dollars), which has a lot to do with regulation and the approval of drugs and medical devices, which avoids the duplication of every province needing to do their own. I’m not sure how exactly they should assume control of these facilities – especially because provinces do not take well to having their funding allocations come with strings or reporting requirements. Seriously – previous governments have tried, and it doesn’t go well. Yes, we’re going to need to have a reckoning in this country about the whole issue of long-term care, but that reckoning can’t simply be having Ottawa assume control. I mean, not unless they want to amend the Constitution (and good luck with that).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Warnings, theatre, and lunacy

Posted on by

Justin Trudeau began his day in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and after the usual warnings to those who are thinking of voting NDP and Green about a Conservative government, promised that if re-elected he would ensure that the province’s sole private abortion clinic would remain open by way of applying the Canada Health Act (though he didn’t specify how), before spending the day stopping in various communities on the way to Halifax, where he ended the day.

Andrew Scheer began his day in Quebec City where he promised to hold a first ministers’ meeting on January 6thwhere he would totally solve the intractable problem of interprovincial trade barriers…apparently through sheer force of his personality. (I previously wrote about this sort of cheap theatre here). He then toured a few other Quebec communities, finishing his day in La Prairie.

Jagmeet Singh began his day in Toronto, where he claimed that abolishing the Senate would somehow better represent Canadians, which is so much horseshit that I can barely breathe. Aside from the fact that it would require a constitutional amendment with the unanimous support of the provinces – something PEI and the rest of Atlantic Canada would not countenance as the Senate was one of the conditions by which they joined Confederation, but it would cut their representation in half, and the whole counter-balancing effect that the Senate’s structure has against the representation-by-population nature of the Commons would be out the window. It’s the most ignorant statement Singh could possibly make, but hey, applause lines.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Hand-waving through a plan doomed to fail

Posted on by

It’s the final debate day of the election, so expect a couple of brief photo-ops, then a quiet day as the leaders do their final prep. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer went to the Roxham Road irregular border crossing in Quebec to pledge that he would end said border crossings – and then hand-waved through just how he planned to do so, given that the Safe Third Country Agreement is a treaty with the Americans and we can’t do anything without negotiating with them, and they are not exactly big on taking in asylum claimants right now and would be happy to see them wind up in Canada. And their “other options,” such as trying to declare the entire border an “official point of entry” for the purposes of the agreement won’t work, and will simply drive more asylum seekers to more remote crossing points where there are fewer controls, and more likelihood of death or injury. In other words, he was misleading about his plans to address the issue, and more than that, he invoked the spectre of MS-13 (which is an American border issue, not a Canadian one), gave the false notion that these crossings somehow let migrants “jump the queue” unfairly (there is no queue for refugees, and they don’t impact those we are bringing in from refugee camps), made the ludicrous promise to move more citizenship judges to the border to process claims faster (proximity has nothing to do with it, and trying to speed up claims has failed in the past because we still need to have procedural fairness and adherence to Charter rights). Immigration and refugee experts have thus proclaimed that Scheer’s pledge today is doomed to failure. On a related note, Scheer keeps saying his full platform will be out in “plenty of time” for people to make an informed decision, but advance polls have already opened on university campuses, and for everyone else tomorrow, so that’s not exactly time for people to start making informed decisions – and leaving Scheer open to the criticism that he plans to replicate the Doug Ford tactic of not releasing a platform and preferring to coast in on anger instead. And while we’re on the subject of Scheer’s dishonesty, he claimed that Elections Canada gave the okay for his campaign director, Hamish Marshall’s ad company to also be producing election ads for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – but Elections Canada said that’s not true. So chalk that up to yet another lie on the tally.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1181961052390600707

Justin Trudeau was in Markham, promising that the first thing he would do if re-elected would be to cut taxes for the middle class, which was essentially just a reannouncement of their basic personal amount cut. When answering questions, he offered some clarity to the situation around the spat between the Canadian Forces and provincial healthcare systems, which stems from the Canadian Forces being billed for higher rates than they would be normally for those services.

Jagmeet Singh, meanwhile, was in Montreal to address CUPE convention, with promise to fight privatization, in the hopes of winning back the labour vote.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Targeting the journalists

Posted on by

It has become increasingly clear that the Conservatives plan to wage war against the media as part of their election strategy, which you’d think is funny because We The Media aren’t running in the election. The problem is that this isn’t actually about the media, but rather about undermining the foundations of the institution and the trust that people place in it. Why? Because in the wake of the growing success of populist leaders and movements, they’ve decided to abandon all shame and simply straight-up lie. Most of the media won’t call them lies, because they tend to aim for both-sides-ism “balance” that tends to look like “one side says this, the other side says that, you decide” in its construction, and Scheer and company have decided to exploit that for all it’s worth. And if you do call them on those lies, well, you’re the one who is suspect, whose motives are driven by partisanship, or because you’re looking for some kind of government job, (or my favourite, that I’m allegedly performing sexual favours for the PM).

What I find particularly rich are the Conservatives operatives behind this campaign of harassment is how they insist that they don’t rise to Trumpian levels, but you could have fooled me. They may not say “fake news,” but they intimate it at every opportunity. And if you call them out on a lie (which doesn’t happen often), then they go on the attack. It’s happened to me on numerous occasions (and usually the attacks are themselves wrapped in more lies and distortions), but then again, I’ve also decided to call a lie a lie and not couch it in both-sides-ism. As much as they insist they’re just “pointing out specific inaccuracies” or “countering criticisms,” that’s another lie, and we all have the receipts to prove it.

In the meantime, they’ll content themselves with this sense of martyrdom, that they’re just so hard done byfrom the media, that the coverage of the Liberals is “glowing” while we do nothing but attack the Conservatives (have you actually read any reporting?) and that apparently the pundits are all taking the Liberals’ sides (seriously?) and that justifies their need to “go for the jugular.” But when you’re accustomed to blaming others to assuage your hurt feelings, you think that your attacks righteous, and that’s where we are. So yeah, this is going to get worse, it’s going to get Trumpian, and they’re going to keep insisting that they would never demonise the profession, but don’t believe them. It’s in their interests to undermine journalism, and they lack any shame in doing so.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Contradictions over a niqab policy

Posted on by

It’s definitely starting to look like there’s a either a rift forming in the NDP when it comes to their position on the niqab, or they’re saying one thing in English and another in French, trying to please both audiences in contradiction to the other. Alexandre Boulerice went on Quebec media to talk about the need to keep it out of the civil service, and that we need a national Bouchard-Taylor-esque commission to determine reasonable accommodation for religious minorities around the country – because that worked so well in Quebec, and apparently the rest of the country has the same insecurities around multiculturalism that we need to develop some kind of nonsense term like “interculturalism” to cover for assimilationist policies. Meanwhile, in English, MPs like Paul Dewar and Pat Martin are saying there’s no issue with the niqab and no party policy around it, and Thomas Mulcair has been dancing around the issue when asked directly, talking only about how the Federal Court judgement on the citizenship ceremony issue went to process – a ministerial decree – than the substance of the niqab issue. And if you thought that Boulerice was just freelancing that opinion, it was being tweeted out by the party’s official French Twitter Machine account, and give the degree to which communications are centralised in that party (possibly worse than the Conservative centralisation), it would seem to indicate that such a message has been officially sanctioned, and that the party looks to be trying to please different audiences in the country with contradictory messages. Meanwhile, The Canadian Press took their Baloney Meter™ to the Conservative claims around the niqab ban for citizenship ceremonies (spoiler: It’s full of baloney).

Continue reading →