Quotulatiousness

October 3, 2021

Trudeau’s no-show on the very first “National Day for Truth and Reconciliation” wasn’t accidental

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, an explanation of sorts for the Prime Minister effectively boycotting his own National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to go on a family vacation in British Columbia:

Thursday was Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. According to Heritage Canada, it is a day that “honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

To mark the occasion, ceremonies were held in Indigenous communities across the country. Politicians from every level of government took part. In those provinces where it was not a holiday, schoolchildren wore orange shirts and learned about a shameful part of their country’s past, and came home telling their parents that “every child matters”.

And Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, who lowered the flag on federal buildings and has kept it down ever since, who has made reconciliation the centrepiece of his leadership, went surfing in Tofino. But not before lying about it — his official itinerary had him in private meetings in Ottawa, and it was only after Toronto Sun reporter Bryan Passifiume noticed that a federal jet had taken off from Ottawa and made its way to one of the most gorgeously isolated parts of the country that the PMO admitted that Trudeau wasn’t in Ottawa working the phones, he was in Tofino playing in the waves. When he was tracked down by a team from Global news, he turned his back to the camera and walked sullenly away along the beach.

What are we to make of this behaviour? Social media was full of people calling it an “own goal” or an “unforced error” or a “self-inflicted wound”, and that Trudeau’s officials should have known that this trip was a bad idea, and urged him to put it off by a day or two.

We think these people are getting it wrong. To call this an error in judgment fundamentally misunderstands Justin Trudeau’s psychology and what motivates him. As far as we at The Line can tell, the timing of this trip, the location, and the predictable negative reaction, was very deliberate, and is entirely in keeping with the prime minister’s previous behaviour. To put it bluntly, the prime minister is taking a suck attack.

When the Liberals came to power in 2015, winning a very surprising majority government, it was almost completely due to the perceived magnetism of Justin Trudeau. He charmed Canadians, he charmed the press, and he charmed foreigners; his “because it’s 2015” line made international headlines and made him the figurehead of youthful, global progressive politics. He was the handsome noble young prince here to save us all.

The problem is, when you’re at the top there is only one way to go in politics and that’s down. And so inevitably came the 2019 federal election, in which Liberal fortunes were undermined by two main things: the fallout from the SNC-Lavalin scandal that saw two ministers and his senior adviser resign, and the emergence of a number of photos showing a very grownup, but very immature, Justin Trudeau cavorting around in blackface. After the Liberals were reduced to a minority, with his own reputation heavily, er, stained, Trudeau disappeared in what was clearly an epic sulk. When he re-emerged in the public eye, he’d grown a beard that was clearly designed to Add Gravitas to his public image.

He did it because he could do it, and he’d do it again just to show Canadians just how disappointed he is in them and how much harder they will need to work to regain the privilege of his leadership. We could use a man like Bertolt Brecht again…

September 20, 2021

Canada was given advance notice of the AUKUS deal … about five minutes notice

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

When the news broke about a new western alliance involving Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the official line — belatedly — was that our allies had kept Canadian officials “in the loop”, about the negotiations. Now that everyone’s attention is on the vote-counting, it can be safely acknowledged that the Canadian government got a heads-up just a few minutes before the formal announcement, as Ted Campbell discusses:

US President Joe Biden with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (onscreen) during the AUKUS announcement.
Image from businesstelegraph.co.uk.

So, Steven Chase and Robert Fife say, in the Globe and Mail, that “The Canadian government was surprised this week by the announcement of a new security pact between the United States, Britain and Australia, one that excluded Canada and is aimed at confronting China’s growing military and political influence in the Indo-Pacific region, according to senior government officials [and] Three officials, representing Canada’s foreign affairs, intelligence and defence departments, told The Globe and Mail that Ottawa was not consulted about the pact, and had no idea the trilateral security announcement was coming until it was made on Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.”

Not only did our oldest and closest friends and allies kick Canada out of the “inner circle”, they didn’t even bother to tell us that the political and diplomatic kick in the arse was coming, although, the Globe journalists say, the Australian and British defence ministers gave Harjit Sajjan a brief “heads up” just minutes before the announcement. Mr Sajjan’s spokesman said that Canada “had been kept in the loop”, I call BS.

Vice Admiral Mark Norman, someone who knows a lot about what happens at the highest echelons of government in Ottawa said that “if Mr. Trudeau was fully briefed” [on this new AUKUS pact, then] “he doesn’t understand what is going on internationally and he doesn’t understand what the significance of an arrangement like this is as it relates to international security.” I don’t think he had heard a word about this until Minister Sajjan’s senior aids called the PCO and PMO on Wednesday afternoon.

One can easily imagine the conversations on Wednesday and Thursday in some of the corridors of power in Ottawa: “ Biden us!” said one senior official. “No,” said another, even more senior, “this has been coming for a long time. It’s a shock, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise.” “They screwed us,” said a third, “we’ve done nothing to deserve this. It’s just because we aren’t spending as much as Biden and Morrison want on the military and it’s because we’re not sending more ships to Asia, more often.” “No,” the second person said, “it’s because we decided, all of us, you and me, too, to not do whatever it took to arrest the changes in our national strategic outlook.” “How can you say that?” the first speaker said, “We all protested, I wrote a long brief explaining why we needed to step up …” “We’re still here,” the more senior official said. “We didn’t resign and go public as soon as we saw how things were shaping up. Almost no one did.” “No one listens when senior officials or admirals or generals resign,” said the third official, “it wouldn’t have done any good.” “You’re right,” the most senior official answered, “resignations are, normally, not news and they rarely change politicians’ minds … not, anyway, when they’re done one at a time. Back in 2016, when many us started to see, clearly, how things were going we should have resigned en masse ~ and not just we three, but dozens of us from PCO, from Foreign Affairs and from DND and the military. If the senior public service had rebelled, as it should when the government makes destructive policy choice against our advice, then there would have been enormous, even irresistible political pressure. But we didn’t, did we? We all stayed on and wrote a couple of arse-covering briefing notes and went about our business. We are as much to blame for this as are those dimwits in Trudeau’s cabinet and inner circle. We failed Canada.”

Vice Admiral Norman, the article explains, “said the agreement goes far beyond access to U.S. submarine technology [which is Mr Trudeau’s lame excuse for why Canada was kicked out of the inner circle] This is about accessing both current and emerging technologies, from cyber and artificial intelligence, to acoustics and underwater warfare – a whole range of very important strategic capabilities.” Further, “Mr. Norman said Canada has many national interests in the Indo-Pacific – including trade, promoting the rule of law and democracy, and countering China’s aggressive behaviour and posturing – but he suspects close allies do not take Canadian defence commitments seriously [and he added] I don’t think our allies think we are serious when it comes to defence. I think they have concerns not just about our defence expenditures, but also the extent to which our [international] commitments are both lasting and meaningful.” This has been evident since 2015. Justin Trudeau effectively campaigned on doing less in the world. Everyone knew this was coming ~ especially those who voted for the Liberal Party … it is what they wanted. It’s what Canada got.

September 19, 2021

A communist-party-connected publisher reprinted Justin Trudeau’s 2014 book Common Ground

Filed under: Books, Cancon, China, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Aha! I thought … yet more scandal! This time with direct pay-offs to Trudeau from his Beijing paymasters! Sadly, for the conspiracy minded among us, it’s not much more significant or scandalous than Barack Obama’s endorsement of Trudeau, as Kenneth Whyte explains:

… the Globe & Mail reported that Justin Trudeau’s 2014 memoir Common Ground was republished in a Chinese edition in 2016.

Doesn’t sound like much of a story, does it? Foreign editions of Canadian books are released all the time.

What’s different in this case, says the Globe, is that the Chinese publisher is Yilin Press of Nanjing, part of the state-owned enterprise Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing and Media, which “takes operational direction from the propaganda department of the Jiangsu provincial communist party committee.”

Why would a propaganda wing of the communist party make such a deal? The Globe quotes foreign policy experts who say that the republication of Trudeau’s book is “a classic ploy” by Beijing to flatter a foreign leader. “They are trying to do anything they can to encourage him to look positive on China and the Chinese state,” according to one of the experts.

Says another: “Clearly, by publishing his biography they wanted to please him. They are the masters of propaganda.”

What do the Chinese hope to get out of courting Trudeau? “Beijing had high hopes it could persuade Canada to sign a free-trade agreement and was seeking Canada’s help in its global campaign Operation Fox Hunt to track down people it called criminals, many of whom were Chinese dissidents,” writes the Globe.

The Globe also finds it notable that the Liberals, at the time, were trotting Trudeau out to private events at the homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadians. The PM would do a little dance and the money would flow:

    Chinese billionaire and Communist Party official Zhang Bin attended a May 19, 2016, fundraiser at the home of Benson Wong, chair of the Chinese Business Chamber of Canada. A few weeks later, Mr. Zhang and his business partner, Niu Gensheng, donated $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and $50,000 to erect a statue of Mr. Trudeau’s father.

So it all looks a bit unseemly.

I poked around and was reliably informed by someone in a position to know that Trudeau and his agent sold worldwide rights to Common Ground to HarperCollins Canada. That means it was up to HarperCollins to publish the book in Canada and also sell rights to its republication in as many foreign markets as possible. Trudeau would get a cut of revenues from those sales.

Except, as he further reveals, Trudeau had long since assigned any profits from the book to a charity, so he’s not being secretly bribed by copious amounts of money from the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda budget (at least, not in this case, hedging just a bit …).

Should the PM, or someone in his office, have asked questions about Yilin Press and its connections to the communist party? Maybe, but it’s not like there was a free-market alternative down the street from Yilin. Every publisher in China is accountable to the communist party in one way or another. To get an ISBN number in the Chinese market, you have to go through the state, not because the state provides the service, but because it monitors all publications. Si Limin, chairman of the China Book Publishing Industry Association, is the former director of the News and Newspapers Department of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. And so on.

As for the trade deal the Chinese were supposedly eager for Trudeau to sign? It was more the other way around. In 2017, the Liberals tried to convince Beijing to adopt Trudeau-style progressivism in return for free-trade with Canada. They were laughed out of town. The Chinese couldn’t even be bothered to pretend an interest in human rights to get a deal signed.

I have all kinds of problems with the ethical standards of the Liberal party, Trudeau’s personal judgment, those cash for access meetings, and his Chinese policy, but there’s nothing much to see here.

September 17, 2021

Australia, the UK, and the US join in a military alliance … Canada of course is nowhere in sight

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, China, Military, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

News broke the other day about a new three-nation military arrangement clearly aimed at containing Chinese ambitions in the Pacific, involving Australia, Britain, and the United States, to be known as AUKUS (or AUUKUS, depending on the reporting source). These three countries are already tightly linked in the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing network which also includes Canada and New Zealand. As more than one wit noted on Twitter after the announcement, it’s a good thing Canada doesn’t have a Pacific coast or any economic interests in that ocean…

Ted Campbell, who recently emerged from a blogging hiatus to comment on the ongoing federal election, felt this new pact cemented the idea that Canada is “no longer a serious country” in military terms:

It is now abundantly clear that the USA, inter alia, puts Justin Trudeau’s Canada in the same league as (anti-nuclear) New Zealand. Canada is no longer one of the most trusted allies … Australia is; Britain is: India is; Japan is … Canada is NOT.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has, in six short years, moved Canada from one of America’s best friends to, de facto, a Chinese puppet state. He has done this with his own (and his many advisors’) eyes wide open. Canada, Justin Trudeau’s Canada is no longer a serious nation … perhaps we don’t really deserve to be. After all, we (almost 40% of the almost 70% who bothered to vote at all) elected him … then we did it again. Maybe the world is just concluding that we are not serious people who can be relied upon when the going gets tough.

He followed this up with a bit more concern on the sinking Canadian international profile:

Just take a look at those technologies ~ AI, quantum computing, cyber warfare ~ those are all areas vital to Canada’s security and prosperity and what are we focused on? Climate change and Québec’s latest attempts to make Canada into an illiberal state. China spews out more carbon in a week than Canada does in a year. China is aiming to displace America as the global guarantor of peace, security and trade. Do any of the dimwits in the Liberal government understand that? Why in hell is Prime Minister Trudeau attacking Alberta’s (relatively clean) oil industry rather than, for example, concentrating on making Canadian nuclear energy work for us?

A few days ago I said that Canada needs nuclear powered submarines to assert and protect our sovereignty in the waters we claim as our own. No one contradicted me. No one ever raises any serious, well-founded objections to nuclear submarines for Canada. It’s a no brainer. But, look at the last line in the quote above. Who is getting nuclear submarines? Australia … because it is a serious country with adult political leadership.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s regime has sidelines Canada. Our strongest, most traditional allies have abandoned us. We have been sold out … to China.

I use that term “sold out”, intentionally. I do NOT believe that Justin Trudeau is a traitor … for heaven’s sake, he’s not smart enough to betray anything. He’s barely able to memorize his lines. But a lot of people have invested a lot in China ~ the Desmarais family (of Power Corporation fame) and former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, for example, are all closely tied together and even more closely tied to the Canada-China trade file. I assert that the “China lobby” in Canada is very, very powerful, very, very rich and extraordinarily well connected to Canada’s political leadership ~ Liberal and Conservative, alike. I further assert that it, not Justin Trudeau and Marc Garneau and the mandarins in Ottawa, drives Canada’s foreign, trade and fiscal policies. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is NOT a traitor … but he is puppet and people whose vital interests are centred on China, not Canada, pull the strings.

Why is Canada excluded from the AUKUS pact?

One reason Canada isn’t involved is certainly the distraction of the federal election, and there would have been no way that Justin Trudeau would have wanted to answer questions on the campaign trail about anything geostrategic or military, and he especially doesn’t want Canadians looking closely at his servile deference to the Chinese government. Of course, given that he’s literally bribed the major newspaper chains and TV networks with “subsidies” right before the election was called, he might well have been safe from any hint of an awkward question from his unofficial PR branches in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Over at the Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey looks at the military and technical implications of the new alliance:

The Royal Australian Navy is likely to become the next nation to join the nuclear submarine operators club. This is the key headline emerging from the surprise tri-lateral announcement on Wed 15 September by the Prime Ministers of Australia and the UK, and the President of the United States.

The move, forming a new “three eyes” club known as AUKUS is a genuinely significant development intended to provide a significant uplift in capability in the Indo-Pacific region. For the first time in nearly 70 years, the US has agreed to share some of its most sensitive technology with a third party, to help Australia become a “naval power underway on nuclear power”.

There are several ramifications of this decision, that will be felt for many years to come. The first is that from an American perspective, this is a good opportunity to take steps to increase burden sharing in the Pacific.

[…]

From a wider diplomatic perspective, there are three distinct groupings to consider. Firstly, the remaining 5-EYES members (Canada and New Zealand). Its unlikely that this will do much damage to 5-EYES – for example New Zealand would never have been approached as the acquisition of a nuclear submarine would be vastly beyond the budget, or needs, of the small but incredibly professional Royal New Zealand Navy.

Canada may be feeling slightly raw about this – particularly those with long memories who recall the 1980s and the doomed plan to acquire nuclear submarines for the RCN. But who knows, in terms of timelines these vessels may be entering service in the same timeframe as Canada seeks to replace the Upholder/Victoria class – it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they may seek to join in later on.

Given 5-EYES is more than just an Indo-Pacific focus, it would be wrong to read much into this as a statement on the future of that Alliance. Rather it is better to see this as a subgrouping of a very successful international alliance.

HMCS Victoria
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

September 14, 2021

The Line‘s She-lection Bullshit Bulletin No. 4 … don’t bother questioning the timing

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The latest installment of The Line‘s campaign bullshit tracker looks at the attempts by Liberal partisans to gin up some faux outrage over the timing of former Trudeau cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s tell-all book:

First of all, we would like to specifically invite our Conservative and Liberal friends to take a few deep calming breaths and settle the fuck down about Jody Wilson-Raybould’s forthcoming book, Indian in the Cabinet, which will be out on Tuesday — but was splashed early in the Globe and Mail. The book will recount, among other things, JWR’s memories of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The excerpt the Globe ran certainly doesn’t paint Justin Trudeau in a particularly flattering light.

But it doesn’t matter.

Seriously, our Conservative friends need to rein it in. The SNC-Lavalin affair was an example of the Liberals at their very worst; so utterly self-assured and self-righteous that any ethical or normative breach can be justified to themselves so completely that they’re genuinely shocked and offended that not everyone else buys the official story. However, alas, there’s no remaining life in this scandal. The very best-case scenario for the Conservatives is that the topic bubbling up again reminds some voters that they don’t love Trudeau, and why. But any big damage this was gonna do to Brand JT, it did literally years ago, and before the last election campaign. There are no remaining undecided voters who’ll swing based on a new book that dishes on a pre-COVID scandal.

But now to our Liberal friends, good Lord, people, chill out. We’ve seen quite a few of you, including some who ought to know better, muttering darkly about the “timing” of JWR’s book, landing as it is right before the election.

The book was announced in March, people. We all knew it was coming — so did the Liberals when they called the election. Was the book’s publication timed for maximum impact? Well, no shit Sherlocks. What, was JWR obligated to delay out of deference to the guy who kicked her out of caucus for defying him? Here’s some sage wisdom for the Libs out there: if you make enemies in politics, those enemies will eventually try to fuck you. It’s real deep stuff, we know. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, JWR is selling books. This is what book selling is: her publisher accelerated the book’s publication date by a few weeks to land when it would have maximum public interest, and the greatest potential for earned media. JWR gets to stick it it to JT and maximize her sales before hitting the speaking circuit, where the real bucks get made.

Also, so what?

Stop gargling your own bathwater, people. We’ll read the book when it’s out, but it won’t swing the election.

September 13, 2021

“Only the most fanatical Justin Trudeau partisans will begrudge Jody Wilson-Raybould for her moment of revenge”

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Howard Anglin responds to an early excerpt from former Trudeau cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould:

Jody Wilson-Raybould, 30 January, 2014.
Photo by Erich Saide via Wikimedia Commons.

Reading the first excerpt of her book, I did find myself occasionally cocking an eyebrow at the portrayal of a wide-eyed innocent who somehow awoke to find herself in a den of partisan thieves.

It was, after all, the Liberal Party she had joined — the most ruthless and successful vote-winning machine in Western politics this side of Mexico’s PRI — not the parish altar guild.

But setting aside questions of systemic hypocrisy and looking only at the SNC-Lavalin imbroglio, it is as clear today as it was in 2019 that Wilson-Raybould was right and Trudeau was wrong.

She was right as attorney general to rebuff political pressure to offer SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement — a slap on the wrist that would have seen the engineering and construction company avoid criminal conviction and remain eligible for more federal contracts — and Trudeau and his office were wrong to pressure her to consider it.

Now, she is fully justified in reminding us of that fact. And if the book’s self-righteousness message is belied by the calculated timing of its release, well, she has earned the right to say “I told you so” at the time of her choosing.

As far as the election goes, the most important revelations are about Trudeau’s character.

To constitutional law nerds like me, however, the highlight is Wilson-Raybould’s disagreement with the prime minister over the role of the Attorney Genereal, including her description of a freshly briefed Trudeau expatiating scholastically on the nuances of the Shawcross doctrine before she drily punctures his condescension with the comment: “You have been talking to a lawyer.”

Coming from someone who was until a few weeks earlier “his” lawyer, at least in his capacity as head of government, the comment is doubly ironic.

Wilson-Raybould had, by her account, explained the doctrine and its implications at length to Trudeau, as well as to his principal secretary, Gerry Butts, and the Clerk, neither of whom is a lawyer but both of whom were nevertheless dispatched to try to explain their version of it to her and her lawyer chief of staff.

September 11, 2021

Thursday’s debate was “a grand Kabuki theatre, increasingly divorced from any grounded reality about our fiscal situation, or our ability to deliver on complex programs or problems”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Jen Gerson offers her observations of the debate on Thursday night among most of the federal party leaders — missing, of course, the participation of the PPC’s Maxime Bernier who was pointedly not invited:

“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

No one can be said to have “won” such an exercise. You “win” these “debates” not by proposing the best policies, or offering competing philosophies, or even by presenting the best rhetoric. Rather, a “winner” is determined by who comes off the best to a general public that largely doesn’t follow the minute differences of respective platforms.

By that measure, no one really won Thursday’s debate, but Trudeau especially did not win it. I imagine that one of the problems of being raised as a spectacle of wealth, privilege and popularity is that it doesn’t quite prepare you for the moment when the worm turns, when people learn to dislike you for all the right reasons; when you are no longer given the proper deference and respect you feel is owed to you.

Trudeau came off as defensive, and flustered, taking hit after hit from other party leaders on topics ranging from his record, reconciliation and, especially, his self-interested decision to call a party in the first place. That he lacks a credible answer to why we’re holding this election at all three weeks into this campaign is a deep failure, one large and deep enough to consume his prospects of forming a majority government — and his hold on the party leadership along with it.

Annamie Paul offered the best performance of the night by far, and demonstrated that the Green party as a whole is unworthy of her. Whatever private internal dramas that may be unfolding, in public that party condemns itself to obscurity by refusing to get behind a woman who is, by every measure, impressive.

Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet made himself into an idealized avatar of a whiny and aggrieved Quebec nationalism that puts Alberta to shame. It takes a real special lack of self-awareness to imagine that Quebecers have had it rougher in this country than Indigenous people. Or that Blanchet, by virtue of his French ancestry, has suffered from greater oppression than, say, Annamie Paul. One day, the rest of Canada is going to stop humouring these insulated, thin-skinned delusions — but not before Quebec’s seat count declines relative to the rest of the population’s. In the meantime, Blanchet’s ability to beam pure DGAF energy into the English debates at least made him seem like a human, albeit a delusional and unpleasant one.

By this measure, Erin O’Toole “won” the debate by not losing it. I can’t remember a single thing he actually said, and in such a setting this can only work to his favour.

I mean, what is there to say? On actual substantive policy issues, I couldn’t escape the sense of watching a grand Kabuki theatre, increasingly divorced from any grounded reality about our fiscal situation, or our ability to deliver on complex programs or problems.

September 8, 2021

The Line‘s She-lection Bullshit Bulletin No. 3 … scary black fully semi-automatic assault machinegun edition

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The folks at The Line continue their good work in pointing out some of the bullshittiest bullshit the politicians spew on the campaign trail. This week has been all about politicians promising to crack down even harder on the hunters and sport shooters who keep driving their pickup trucks (plastered with Trump bumper stickers, of course) into downtown Toronto to shoot their scary black fully semi-automatic AK-15 or AR-47 assault machineguns with chainsaw bayonets at innocent gang-bangers at 3 in the morning:

It is hard to know where to even begin picking through the bullshit that Canadians have had dumped atop their heads this week on the gun-control file. Both the Liberals and Conservatives hurled their share, but the worst offenders were by far the incumbents who claimed to ban “military-style assault weapons”.

Let’s start with this: Canadian law categorizes guns into three categories depending on their technical specifications: length, ammunition calibre, mode of operation, and the like. The categories are licensed and regulated differently. It can get pretty complicated. Despite their near-constant use, the terms “assault rifle”, “assault weapon” or the even-scarier sounding “military style assault weapon/rifle” have no specific or universally recognized meaning, including under Canadian law and firearms regulations. They aren’t part of or used by the categorization system.

This is essential to understand: because the terms have no specific and universally held meaning, these campaign-ready phrases can be appended to pretty much any type of rifle, whatever its actual legal category under our law. And that’s how we all found ourselves aspirating bullshit this week.

Most gun experts would generally classify an assault rifle/weapon as a rifle that fires medium-powered (or higher) ammunition and is capable of a “full auto” mode — that is, the weapon will continue firing as long as the trigger is held down. This results in a rapid volley of bullets at a cost of diminished accuracy (the recoil makes the firearm difficult to hold on target). These firearms typically have their ammunition kept in detachable magazines of 20 or 30 rounds each. When a magazine is emptied, it can be replaced by a practiced user in moments.

These sorts of weapons have been banned in Canada since the 1970s.

In 2020, the Liberals used an executive order — an Order in Council — to change the classification of several broad categories of until-then legal rifles, with the effect of preventing sales and further restricting most lawful uses for owners. None of these firearms were assault rifles/weapons by any reasonable standard. All are capable of semi-auto operation only, meaning one round is fired for each pull of the trigger. Under Canadian law, the magazines are limited to five rounds (there are some rare exceptions but five is the law).

Sigh. Still with us?

So the Liberals chose firearms linked to tragic events in Canada or abroad, like the AR-15, deemed these “assault weapons” and then banned them. But there was nothing meaningful or rational about this ban; it was was entirely a matter of political messaging. Numerous other rifles — firing the exact same ammunition from the exact same size of magazine at the exact same semi-automatic pace — remain legal and for sale to any licensed would-be purchaser. This isn’t an oversight. It’s just that the Liberals’ political goals were met by simply banning rifles linked to tragedies and ignoring the rest.

That’s the key thing to understand about what the Liberals did — it was always bullshit policy. But it sounds good to Canadian voters who don’t know fuck-all about guns. In that way, it’s meeting the Liberals’ needs.

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole quickly abandoned his party’s pledge to revoke the Liberals’ 2020 order-in-council once someone noticed and called attention to it. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to O’Toole in the past … he’s what we used to call a “Red Tory” — really just a Liberal wearing a blue suit.

September 3, 2021

“Watching our feminist prime minister uncomfortably defend and explain away decidedly unfeminist behaviour has become an evergreen moment for our nation”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The NP Platformed newsletter is in the hands of Kathryn Marshall while Colby Cosh is on vacation, and she offers yet another golden moment of hypocrisy on the part of Justin Trudeau:

Standing in the fenced-in corner of a backyard during a press conference this Tuesday, Justin Trudeau was cornered in more ways than one.

Faced with questions from the media as to why he was allowing an incumbent Liberal candidate who had been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment to run for his party, an exasperated Trudeau was once again faced with his hypocrisy when it comes to his feminist credentials.

Only the day before, Trudeau was touting the Liberals “zero-tolerance” policy for sexual harassment. Of course, that was in the context of a Conservative candidate who had been accused of sexual misconduct. Notably, that candidate was very swiftly given the boot by leader Erin O’Toole, which was the correct response.

Now Trudeau finds himself in the exact same position that the Conservative leader was in. Following a CBC report, it has come to light that one of the Liberal candidates, two-term MP Raj Saini, has been the subject of numerous sexual harassment allegations from a number of staff going all the way back to 2015. I have no idea if these allegations are true, but they are deeply disturbing and should be taken seriously. As reported by the CBC, there are seven different sources who “described four different cases where Saini allegedly made unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate comments.” One of the allegations involves a former staff member who filed a human rights complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and tried to end her own life.

It should be a ludicrously easy call for Trudeau. The Liberal party has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment, right? Obviously, Saini needs to go and an individual who is facing allegations of this nature is in no position to be running for public office, period.

Except for one small hiccup. The allegations have come to public light after the candidate cut-off date for the election, which was Monday. So if Trudeau gets rid of Saini, it means they can’t replace him with someone else, and the result is no Liberal candidate on the ballot in a safe Liberal seat. Call me cynical, but if I had to guess, I would say this likely has something to do with the fact that overnight, the Liberal’s “zero-tolerance” policy appears to have evaporated into thin air.

August 31, 2021

The Line‘s She-lection Bullshit Bulletin No. 2

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Yes, it’s time to publish some of the silliest political bullshit our “leaders” and their parties are slinging around in the federal “she-lection”:

Let’s start with an interesting one.

We’d recommend watching the whole clip (and we’d also note that there’s a second video clip further down in the thread; technical limitations broke one long clip into two shorter ones). But there’s two piles of dung here, and it’s worth breaking them out separately.

The first is, of course, the patented non-answer to a direct question. Glen McGregor asked Trudeau about our people in Afghanistan who were in that very moment in immediate danger. Trudeau talked about something nice he did in 2015. We understand that this is a campaign, but imagine you or someone you love is stuck Afghanistan in now, and the leader of the country is asked about you/them, and that’s the answer? Really?

The second pile of scat is more nuanced. Check out the part of the clip starting at 1:25. Trudeau says that O’Toole and the Conservatives are “promising to end the very program that brought in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, the very program we’re using to bring in tens of thousands of Afghans fleeing to [safety] in Canada. That doesn’t make sense.”

Well, we mean … it doesn’t make sense because it’s not true.

The Tories are proposing changes to how Canada accepts refugees. Specifically, they want to shift to more heavily rely on privately sponsored refugees, citing research that shows these refugees more easily and more quickly settle into Canada. There would be both government-sponsored and private-sponsored refugees under what the CPC is calling a “joint model” model. This is broken out in the CPC’s campaign platform on page 129.

This seems … pretty reasonable? The Tories are not only promising to maintain current funding levels and numbers of accepted refugees, they just want to structure it differently. Not even very differently, at that: of the 62,000 Syrian refugees that Canada has resettled since Trudeau came to office, half were privately sponsored. The CPC platform also very specifically notes that this wouldn’t apply in “cases of emergency”, which the fall of Afghanistan clearly is. You can criticize that as policy, or even doubt they’ll follow through. Just saying they’ll cancel the program, though, is nonsense.

Of course, Trudeau isn’t the only bullshitter on the campaign trail, so RTWT for the rest of the antics that The Line felt were bullshitty enough to register this week.

August 29, 2021

Justin Trudeau discovers for himself the truth of Harold Macmillan’s dictum on the most difficult thing about being Prime Minister

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked what was the most difficult thing about his job and is reported to have said, “Events, my dear boy, events.” Justin Trudeau had everything he wanted in the Canadian political situation in early August so he put his early election plans into action … and along came those unpredictable events:

“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

What would have happened in the election of 2021 if Afghanistan hadn’t fallen? If the writ had been drawn up just a few weeks before, or a few weeks after August 15, the day Kabul fell to the Taliban?

This is the sort of question political science nerds will debate over weak beer for decades to come. It’s no great mystery why the Liberals went forward with the election even as armed fighters began to stream into the capital city of a country in which Canadians have sacrificed so much time, blood and treasure.

But I can picture the scene in the war room now and the logic is inescapable. The meeting with the governor general had been set, the news leaked, the campaign messaging laid out, the suits pressed and the planes booked. Besides, as we all know: “nobody cares about foreign affairs.” That old cant, repeated, like a charm.

Most of the time, it’s true.

Canadians hadn’t thought about Afghanistan for a decade. We’d all stopped paying any mind to some poor nation on the dark side of the world, that disputed chunk of mountain and desert besieged by misery and war since the time of Alexander the Great.

Nobody cares about such things. Until they do.

And what’s the difference between a foreign affair that we care about, and one that we do not? The answer is not flattering. We are selfish and solipsistic creatures. We care about current events abroad when what’s happening has some connection to ourselves or our interests — or when the news reflects something about ourselves.

I would not be the first pundit to point out the parallel between the fall of Kabul and the death of Alan Kurdi, the three-year old Syrian refugee boy whose body washed ashore after drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in September of 2015, in the midst of the federal election that brought Justin Trudeau to power. That child’s doll-like body, face-down on a beach, destroyed us, and the tragedy was made more pointed with the discovery that his family had been trying to reach Canada. And that his asylum application had been rejected by officials in Stephen Harper’s government.

In our own bureaucratic nightmare, and Harper’s dispassionate response, we saw reflected our own lack of compassion.

What we are confronting now in Kabul is our lack of competence.

August 28, 2021

Flagging enthusiasm

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Friday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh considers the suddenly politically relevant position of the Canadian flag:

The other day, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole made mention of the fact that the Canadian flag atop the Peace tower in Ottawa has been flying at half-staff for almost three months and that as prime minister he would put it back up — countermanding the specific order Justin Trudeau gave on May 30. O’Toole’s remark was a brief one dropped in at the end of a longer statement, but he did say we should be proud of our flag, which some people still think of as a Liberal contrivance, and he made the point that being proud of Canada goes hand in hand with wishing to improve it.

I saw this the other day and commented on social media that “I expect the Canadian dying media to be All. Over. This. — Conservative leader Erin O’Toole just called for the Canadian flag to be raised (they’ve been at half-staff officially since the end of May). If the media have their way, this will guarantee a huge majority government for their crush, Justin Trudeau.”

I admit, this was a bit glib, and not all the Canadian media are in the tank for Justin, but (as the old joke about lawyers had it) the 90% give the other 10% a bad name.

First of all, if sticking up for the proper display of the flag counts as wrapping oneself in it, doesn’t using it for gestures of regret (or the dreaded “virtue signalling”) really qualify as the mirror image of this? Trudeau made a point of making sure we knew the lowering of the flag was his own initiative. Liberals have spent a couple of generations working their asses off to constantly remind us that it’s a Liberal flag, which is precisely why conservatives in Ontario towns starting with “B” love the Red Ensign. It is natural to wonder whether, given the apparent Liberal sensitivity about our blood-soaked banner, we won’t get a third national flag before everyone’s finished adapting to the second one. […]

Canada is a place where literal Conservatives can’t “wrap themselves” too tightly in the literal flag: this isn’t the United States, where the positioning and context of the flag in ads or on stage will let you know instantly whether you’re at a Republican or a Democratic event. (The presence of an eagle is always a good clue.) Yet our Liberals have manoeuvred themselves into a position, somehow, in which it is awkward to fly the flag too high.

Can Trudeau now set a date for the raising of the flag to its position of respect and dignity, having plumb forgotten to do so in the first place? And if he is the renewed choice of the Canadian people as prime minister, will he be able to hoist the thing back up? Will this happen the day after the election? The first week? After prolonged consultations with First Nations, perhaps involving a royal commission?

You see, there is an aspect to this that goes beyond politicians battering at one another with flagpoles and other national paraphernalia. O’Toole’s comment didn’t just remind us that we’re Canadians and we should like our flag. It reminded us that we have a government that often seems to have a big problem thinking 30 seconds ahead, let alone six months.

August 23, 2021

Canada is extremely good at posturing on the international stage … not so good at performing

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kevin Newman on the continuing failure of the Canadian government and Canadian Armed Forces to protect and retrieve the people in Afghanistan we’ve promised to help:

On the second day of the Taliban’s rule in Kabul, the front of Hamid Karzai International Airport was crowded with people trying to travel abroad, but were stopped by Taliban militants, 17 August, 2021.
Public domain image from VOA via Wikimedia Commons.

It is impossible to piece together, or understand, why no one from Canada would come out of the military protection of the airport to speak to them over the past two days. Because there must have been a whole lot of talking happening on the safe side of the razor wire barrier separating the Afghans from the terminal. Late Friday, a Canadian C-17 carrying more soldiers and a few diplomatic and immigration staff arrived at Kabul’s military air terminal. They had a plan to work with American forces to get some of the gas station people out of the country. There seemed to be renewed confidence expressed in media interviews by Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino that, finally, things would happen.

Instead the Americans started executing rapid-retrieval missions into Kabul to get their own people out, sealed the entrance where Canada’s gas station people were waiting, and co-operation with Canadian forces seemed to disintegrate.

In the meantime, there was a game of numbers to play. With so few Canadian cases on that C-17 ready to return to a third country, the big grey plane was loaded with Afghans that other countries had successfully brought to the airport. A picture and story was fed to political reporters on the campaign trails in Canada declaring broadly that “106 Afghans have been flown out on a Canadian C17” – but National Defence would not reveal if any of those passengers had been Canadian cases.

According to the Globe and Mail‘s Stephen Chase there had been none on the only other Canadian flight of 175 to leave the airport twenty-four hours earlier, even as the government boated of another “success”. For weeks, the Prime Minister and his besieged cabinet had also been talking about 20,000 refugees coming to Canada. That too was misleading in is vagueness, according to Global News’ Mercedes Stephenson, as all but a handful are coming from outside Afghanistan and even then, it’s over many years.

There is zero evidence from multiple Afghan sources around the airport that any of those the Prime Minister boasts they’re “rescuing”, (LGTBQ2, human rights advocates, women and journalists) have come from Kabul or any part of Afghanistan in the past month.

With all that, the government continues to claim a C-17 will come and go each day. But do the math. If even a hundred daily Canadian cases make those flights, (no where near that many have so far), there is no way the vast majority of applicants will make it here before the window closes for evacuations. Canada’s commitment of men and materials in no way matches the need. So, will Immigration officials those with no hope now of rescue and admit that they won’t get out in time? That number is likely in the thousands. They need to develop a more realistic way to survive the Taliban.

The mystery in this deadly absurdity is the government’s obsession with paperwork. Even today Canadian officials on the safe side of the airport controlling who might get through were reported by eyewitnesses to be taking an “extremely strict” approach to paperwork verification. Only those granted full Canadian citizenship under the government’s Special Immigration Measure are being told they qualify to leave. That requires a lot more work to process and is perhaps less than a tenth of all the Afghans who are known to have applied and are in various stages of completing multiple forms.

Other countries have also been willing to grant refugee status to their interpreters and families, which doesn’t guarantee citizenship, but is it is a much faster way to process many more people, and it gives Afghans more choices should air rescue be impossible. In a news conference, Mendicino claimed his department’s agent in Kabul has authority to overlook the passport and biometric fingerprint requirements. But the evidence on the ground suggests he is being ignored.

August 10, 2021

Elections not for changing things but merely for “sending messages”?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jay Currie on the election that Justin Trudeau clearly itches to call at any moment:

“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Apparently Justin Trudeau thinks that the best use of the nation’s time as we head into a Delta driven 4th wave of COVID is to have an election. Okay, I never thought he had any judgement and an election call at the moment would confirm that but here we are.

There are huge issues facing Canada. Unfettered immigration, useless but expensive carbon taxes, deficits to 2070, price inflation, real estate markets which have put housing in the luxury goods category, a stalled First Nations reconciliation process, the collapse of any number of energy projects, increased homelessness, opioid deaths, a health care system which seems incapable of dealing with even a fairly mild pandemic, senior care in a shambles where our elderly died in droves as much from neglect as COVID and on and on.

Judging from the Liberals activities in the run up to the election, while those issues get the occasional nod, the strategy seems to be to spend lots of money in seats the Libs either hold or would like to win. As to substance, the Libs seem very committed to “doing something” about climate change, keeping immigration levels up over 400,000 per year and not being racist. Unfortunately, this is also pretty much the substantive position of the Conservative Party. The CPC’s big selling point is getting rid of Justin and his gender balanced Cabinet of flakes.

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole (who also happens to be my local MP) seems to believe the only way he’s going to topple Trudeau and the liberals is by offering exactly the same policies but wrapped in false Tory blue instead of Liberal red. As far as I can tell, he’s the reddest of Red Tories to lead the party in decades (disclaimer: I’ve met O’Toole a few times and chatted about non-political topics … he seems a decent sort and he’s probably a good neighbour and an upstanding citizen in his private life). He’s certainly no Stephen Harper — and I wasn’t much of a Harper fan, but I’d strongly prefer Harper to O’Toole as Tory leader. I certainly don’t plan on voting for him, and unless the Libertarians scare up a candidate in my riding I’ll be voting PPC this time around:

You will notice I do not mention Max Bernier or the Peoples’ Party. I don’t because the PPC plays outside the consensus. The PPC and its supporters think that significant change is absolutely required and that issues like the deficit, immigration, economic development, First Nations policy, housing and health care need new thinking. […] In terms of seats and outcomes, while I would be delighted to see the PPC win a few seats, the real target for the PPC is the national and regional popular vote. Yes, I do know that does not matter electorally. After all, the CPC won the popular vote in the last federal election. (My own sense is that the Maverick Party has some chance of winning seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan which will be discussed in that subsequent post.)

Max and the PPC need to crack the 5% barrier this time out. If they can do that and Max can win in Beauce, they will have sent a huge message to the CPC. That message is important. Now, if Max and the PPC manage to cut through and beat the Greens – not an unrealistic goal – the message that there are real problems which need real solutions will go mainstream whether the gatekeepers like it or not.

There are really two elections coming up: the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, paid for media, horse race and a vote on whether Canada is a serious country.

July 2, 2021

QotD: Quebec’s legendary sensitivity to criticism

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We have a generally pro-Quebec stance; however, these annual meltdowns because Some Anglo Said Something Mean About Quebec are getting really tiresome. Somehow this province has managed to prove itself to be even more thin-skinned than Alberta — yes, we said it. Quebec is more reactive than the province that last week suffered a fit over an unflattering children’s cartoon.

And for some reason, the rest of Canada continues to treat these tantrums as if they are very weighty and serious matters meriting news coverage and discussion by very weighty and serious people. Canada’s indulgence of Quebec’s inability to tolerate pointed criticism is probably why the province gets away with passing racist legislation like Bill 21. And no one — least of all politicians — dare say boo because they’re all too eager to win seats in a populous province perpetually in play.

Attaran’s tweets wouldn’t even be worth our lowly mention, except that they prompted response from Justin Trudeau himself, who responded by saying: “Enough of the Quebec bashing.” That’s right, what we have here is Prime Minister Brownface condemning the tweets of an Iranian-Canadian professor who called Quebec racist by declaring such comments “Quebec bashing.” People, we are down the rabbit hole.

Earlier in this dispatch, we called Attaran a bit of a dumbass, and maybe some of you found that assessment a bit harsh. Others, perhaps not. We leave ourselves open to be capably judged by you, our dear readers. But we must ask this: What kind of dumbass do you have to be to make a figure like Amir Attaran into a national hero on free speech grounds? Good lord.

“Dispatch from The Front Line: Doing the Code Dance”, The Line, 2021-03-26.

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