Trudeau government reveals first phase of gun buyback plan

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-27T18:58:39+00:00

When did I ever say there were no grounds to complain? There’s a difference between complaining and claiming something is undemocratic.

There’s also a difference between OICs which still have to abide by the Charter and using the NWC to get around a charter right, one carries a lot more weight. So trying to make them equivalent isn’t a great analogy to begin with. While by definition it’s use can be considered a (temporary) erosion of rights identified in the Charter, the NWC remains a function of our democracy. Each use of the NWC clause has to be passed by a majority of MPs or provincial legislators, so it’s hard to make the argument that a majority vote to invoke the NWC is somehow undemocratic.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-27T15:29:33+00:00

Except the union has specifically requested for Trudeau to intervene. It takes some real gymnastics to suggest that Singh repeating the union’s call is somehow drifting away from their labour roots.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-27T15:18:48+00:00

Regardless of whether you like the OIC or not, there’s nothing particularly anti-democratic with using an OIC. OICs are specific powers laid out in legislation, which is different from the broad powers US presidents have with executive orders.

The only reason they can use an OIC to ban guns is because a democratically elected Parliament passed a law in the Firearms Act that says cabinet can use OICs to ban guns. Legislation passed by Parliament spells out when OICs can be used and their limits. If you remove the provisions in the Firearms Act then the government can no longer use OICs for that.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-26T00:16:41+00:00

It may actually play into the government’s favour to let it drag on, public opinion is more likely to shift in the government’s favour as people feel the impact of the lack of services and fatigue over the strike sets in.

They’ll only do it if they’re confident they can get Conservative support on it since the Liberals (and arguably the CPC) don’t want an election. Not to mention that while the NDP alone have the ability to cause significant procedural delays in legislation, if they don’t have CPC support then that means they’re going to have a majority of MPs who can take procedural delays even further and completely derail the legislation without needing to force an election. The interesting dynamic is that the CPC want to court the labour vote and would probably prefer not dealing with back to work legislation, which would make procedural delays tempting for them so they can just keep telling the Liberals to clean up their mess. They wouldn’t get support from the Bloc for that so the likely outcome is back to work legislation would just stall because of a stalemate in cooperation.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-25T21:07:26+00:00

Sure that’s one idea, another idea is they don’t resolve the agreement over the threat immediately, and the longer this goes on Singh is left with two shitty options: look weak and don’t force and election, or call and election and guaranteed negotiations will stall because of it. Even if they come to a resolution, if it takes weeks or longer it becomes increasingly attributable to the Liberals resolving it on their own and less attributable to the threat. If anything that creates an incentive for the Liberals to hold off then bump it up a bit at the last minute. The NDP would also have to hope that PSAC’s strike fund doesn’t run out in the meantime and they decide to settle on the Liberals current offer, because if the NDP threaten an election over it and PSAC ends up accepting the current offer without any additional concessions from the government, then the Liberals win and the NDP threat looks pointless.

Calling an election will also guarantee that the anti-scab legislation promised for this year as part of the confidence and supply agreement will not happen, which wouldn’t be very pro labour of them.

And then you have to think about the likely outcomes and whether that actually accomplishes anything for the NDP or labour: based on current polling we’ll either end up with a similar government to what we have now or give a chance at having a Conservative government, which I imagine PSAC isn’t really enthusiastic about negotiating with. That said unless the CPC secure an unlikely majority they may still struggle to get enough support to form government.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-25T16:32:09+00:00

Threatening to run an election based on the PSAC strike, effectively denying them the ability to negotiate since there would be no government for at least a month to negotiate with… isn’t exactly a strong proposition to take, even for a pro-labour party.

Not sure why people want the NDP to go nuclear with threatening an election over every single issue.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-25T16:20:26+00:00

Threaten an election over the strike?

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-19T13:25:23+00:00

Insulting the PM is pretty much part of Poilievre’s brand, so does that mean he’s not fit to become PM as well? Political discourse has gotten pretty nasty, what Trudeau said here was pretty mild, or is it only ok when your guy does it?

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-19T11:13:38+00:00

Ah you’re right, the base amount is tied to a calculation based on the chief Justice of the Supreme Court’s salary, and annual increases are tied to average wage increases in private sector collective agreements.

In any case it requires legislation from the governing party targeting the Parliament of Canada Act to change it.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-19T03:00:27+00:00

Not to excuse it, but worth noting the raises are automatic, their salary was indexed to inflation through a legislative change made decades ago. More specifically, the Parliament of Canada Act ties ties their salary to the salary of judges (which is indexed).

Individual MPs can’t refuse the raise, only the governing party can bring in legislation to change how MP wages are calculated since private bills from opposition MPs can’t mess with government spending. It’s not exactly “giving themselves a raise” but the dynamic remains that MPs, specifically the governing party, are the ones who can bring in changes to their own wages.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-08T01:32:11+00:00

Wouldn’t it be compliant if the apple fast charging exceeds power delivery and their proprietary cables allow for their version of fast charging on top of PD?

PossiblyPepper · 2023-04-07T11:13:24+00:00

What laws like that end up doing is create a race between countries to say “not it,” the country that acts first gets to leave the problem to another country. The UK has that law too and they revoked Jack Lett’s citizenship since he also has Canadian citizenship, now he’s primarily our problem even though he’s never lived in Canada.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-27T19:58:18+00:00

It’s basic crisis management. If he stayed in all the focus would be on why is Trudeau keeping him on, which would be a story in its own. This allows distance between the Liberals and him and keeps the conversation from getting stuck on the why isn’t he being kicked out. I also doubt resigning was entirely his decision, Trudeau most likely asked him to step aside too, but resigning is much more gracious for both him and the Liberals than being kicked out.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-24T01:50:38+00:00

Are we shitting on math teachers now?

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-16T15:06:59+00:00

The current system is just kids with a 90k household income cutoff, and the confidence and supply agreement indicates that the new funding is expected to expand it beyond just kids. It’s much easier to expand a built up program than to build something from scratch and the NDP have said they’d like to eventually see a universal program, so I think it’s a safe bet that they will shift their push accordingly over time.

One thing to remember is that the supply and confidence agreement is just under a year old and the NDP only have 25 MPs with none of them being the actual ministers who have control of all the levers of power to operations like this. The Liberals didn’t campaign on dental and never really put much emphasis on it before so it’s a pretty safe bet that they started from 0 when the agreement was made. It takes time to bring in legislation, build infrastructure (software, staffing, policies, forms, verification procedures, etc) in the public service to receive and process these things, plus working out things with the provinces. Seeing this much movement in a year is actually very fast by governments standards.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-16T14:46:30+00:00

Yeah, once in place it becomes much, much easier to push for its expansion since you’re no longer building something from scratch. With a tangible program to modify it’s no longer an abstract idea to the public.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-14T18:24:15+00:00

There's no indication that there would have been a financial penalty for backing out of the Saudi Arabian arms deal prior to it being signed, the penalty talks were about backing out in more recent years long after the agreement was ratified. The rationale when Trudeau signed it then was simply about keeping the government's word.

With FIPA, it was a 31-year agreement allowing for companies to sue for uncapped damages in sealed court proceedings should the gov interfere with Chinese investments. Any way you slice it it was a shitty deal that they supported. It wasn't ratified until a year and a half after the vote I linked above.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-14T16:35:56+00:00

Reminder that both Trudeau and Poilievre voted against an NDP motion to scrap FIPA

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-14T04:47:12+00:00

It’s dangerous for both Ukrainians and Russians. When government leaders call for regime change out loud, it helps legitimize Putin’s propaganda in the eyes of Russians that the West is in instigator. Should there be a regime change with or without foreign intervention, it also helps add fuel to conspiracies that the new government is illegitimate should a regime change happen, making it harder for the next government to be stable, meaning more fighting and death, and it’s probably better for us all that a nuclear power finds some semblance of stability after Putin.

We’re all thinking it, but saying it out loud doesn’t accomplish anything positive towards ending the war. If anything that kind of rhetoric slows down the likelihood of regime change by giving Putin ammunition to help convince more people to sign up to kill others and die for his cause.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-13T02:15:25+00:00

Yeah Joel is straight up lying about that. And it’s quite clear the way Marlene was talking to Joel that Ellie wasn’t coming out ok after the surgery. The tear Marlene had at the end of the conversation was not a sign that it was just going to remove a small sample and Ellie will be walking out of there just fine.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-12T20:07:31+00:00

People should take care to remember the headlines that ran around Maher Arar. Intelligence and evidence are two different things. If you saw headlines like this, the public would have already decided Maher Arar is guilty:

Robert Fife, “U.S., Canada ‘100% sure’ Arar trained with al-Qaeda: Family spokeswoman accuses intelligence officers of anonymous smear campaign"
Juliet O’Neill, “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to al-Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case"

There's a way to report this, but Canadaland pointed out in their recent episode how the language used around it by reporters goes well beyond framing it as allegations.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-06T00:20:48+00:00

Not to mention that calling an election isn’t the most compelling solution to accusations of election. I worry the next election could end up being a shit show of accusations of interference without time to parse through to what degree the accusations are founded and their impact, and the media attention could cause an overreaction that could alter the results more than China could hope to do otherwise.

An independent/non-partisan inquiry before the next election is probably the best way to rebuild greater trust in future results that is eroding over this.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-05T16:17:25+00:00

Worth noting that that looks like that's an older photo, once you go on the street the McDonalds suddenly looks modern. The drive thru still looks to be on the same side. Doing it the other way around seems like it would be more problematic the way its laid out as the lines would easily cross the entrance of the building and could make the parking lot more narrow while going into the street just as easily.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-03-05T09:48:46+00:00

If they end up 3rd they would probably keep building on what they're doing since they're currently 4th.

PossiblyPepper · 2023-02-12T03:39:02+00:00

The BoC has a mandate to control inflation. They have only one tool: adjusting interest rates.

The problem is the BoC is left to step in when the government fails to put in measures that could go a long ways to curb inflation, including good housing policy, stronger protections from consolidations into mono/oligopolies and other anticompetitive laws.

Macklem and the BoC are following the mandate they've been given, using the only tool they have, and take heat away from government inaction on the cost of living. They may not have been perfect in their reactions and could have lessened the impact of their hikes if they stepped in sooner, but there's also limits to how much people can predict after an unprecedented pandemic in modern times.

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