Thursday August 11, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 11, 2022

Delivering new services ‘complicated,’ Freeland says of planned dental care program

April 8, 2022

The government is working hard to meet its end-of-year deadline to deliver dental-care coverage to kids, the deputy prime minister said Tuesday, but added providing new services is “complicated.”

The Liberals agreed to offer dental coverage to low- and middle-income children by the end of the year as part of their confidence and supply deal with the New Democrats to keep the minority government from toppling before 2025.

Several groups have raised concerns about the very tight deadline, and four sources close to the program say the government is working on a temporary solution to give money directly to qualifying families while it comes up with a permanent program.

Freeland did not confirm or deny the government’s immediate plans but said the Liberals are committed to the dental-care program, and it’s a commitment she’s “happy to make.”

The government could pursue dental-care deals that resemble the ones it made with provinces to lower the cost of child care, in which it offered provincial governments money to administer their programs under a prescribed set of criteria. However, that route is looking increasingly unlikely.

August 3, 2022

Federal officials have also canvassed dental-health experts about other approaches. The government could contract out a national program to a private insurance firm or have federal public servants take on the work.

“Kids should not have their teeth get rotten just because their parents don’t have enough money to pay for them to go see a dentist, I think it’s as simple as that,” Freeland said.

The Liberals set aside $5.3 billion over five years to fully implement the program. They hope to start with children under the age of 12 with an annual household income of less than $90,000.

Last week NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he was confident the dental-care program would come together by the end of the year, as outlined in the agreement with the Liberals.

Freeland said the government is working “very, very hard” to make good on the promise to the NDP. The Liberals risk the NDP walking away from the supply and confidence agreement entirely if they don’t. (CTV) 

 

Wednesday August 10, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 10, 2022

FBI raid on Trump’s residence takes US into uncharted territory

The news that sent tremors across America broke at 6.36pm on Monday when the publisher of an obscure Florida politics website tweeted that the FBI had raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, adding with a pinch of self-deprecation: “TBH, I’m not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but it’s real.”

March 26, 2019

Eighteen minutes later another Florida resident responded to the news with more bombast. “These are dark times for our nation, as my beautiful home … is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” the former president said in an enraged statement.

More than 30 FBI agents, armed with a search warrant issued by a federal magistrate from West Palm Beach, are reported to have entered Trump’s private residence and offices at his Mar-a-Lago club. According to NBC News, they stayed on site most of the day.

Despite Trump’s cries of “siege” and “occupation” there was no unseemly bashing down of doors or igniting of loud flash-bangs for which the FBI is legendary in other situations. The search team had alerted the Secret Service agents guarding the compound in advance, ensuring an orderly execution of the warrant.

Once the operation was under way, the FBI placed a call to Eric Trump, the former president’s son, who according to the account he gave to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Monday night was the one who, in turn, broke the news to his father. At the time, father and son were in Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the former president is preparing to be deposed in a civil lawsuit brought by New York state relating to his company’s financial bookkeeping.

Eric Trump portrayed the search to Hannity in terms as lurid as those deployed by his father. “They started ransacking an office, ransacking a closet,” he said. “They broke into a safe! He didn’t have anything in the safe.”

May 27, 2020

Within hours of the news erupting, Trump, his family and inner circle, and a slew of top Republicans across the country had begun assailing the Biden administration and what they called the “weaponized Department of Justice” for trying to thwart another presidential bid by Trump in 2024. Several prominent conservatives likened the search to the actions of a tinpot dictator.

Barely 18 months after the violent insurrection at the US Capitol following Trump’s claims of a stolen 2020 election, rampant claims by leading Republicans that the justice department is using its formidable powers to interfere in the 2024 presidential election could also be incendiary. On Monday night a crowd of angry Trump supporters gathered outside the Palm Beach club in a taste of what might come.

The search warrant granted to the FBI relates to official records, and to the ongoing investigation into whether Trump violated the Presidential Records Act. The provision requires the White House to preserve all paperwork and digital output resulting from official business and to send it for safe storage to the National Archives.

The fact that the FBI sought a search warrant rather than a subpoena implies that it did not trust Trump to hand over or preserve official documents in his possession.

It has been known for some time that Trump has a vexed relationship with official documents. As far back as June 2018 Politico was reporting that White House staff were forced to sift through “large piles of shredded paper” and painstakingly tape them back together.

December 5, 2019

In a strange coincidence of timing, just hours before the raid began Axios released photographs obtained by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman that appeared to show a White House toilet clogged with wads of handwritten paper. Trump was fingered as the flusher.

The FBI’s document bust itself stems back to January, when it was revealed that after protests Trump had returned 15 boxes of documents, gifts and letters to the National Archives. The following month the head of the archive, David Ferriero, told Congress that the boxes included some “classified national security information”, and that as a result his staff had “been in communication with the Department of Justice”. (The Guardian) 

 

Tuesday August 9, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 9, 2022

Ontario legislature session begins as Doug Ford’s government pushes ahead with new mandate

Young Doug Ford: The Series

Opposition parties and critics are calling on the Ontario government to provide more relief to tackle rising inflation while also expediting solutions for hospital staffing woes when the legislature returns and the provincial budget is tabled this week.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government will again table its 2022-23 budget on Tuesday, originally introduced in April and put to the test as a main plank of the PC platform during the June election.

After being re-elected, Mr. Ford said the budget would remain largely intact with the addition of a 5-per-cent increase to Ontario Disability Support Program rates that the party campaigned on, as well as a pledge to tie future annual increases to inflation. The budget promises $4-billion in additional spending for highways and roads and $10-billion for hospital infrastructure over 10 years.

August 3, 2022

But with the cost of living on the rise, inflation surging over 8 per cent and hospitals facing significant staffing shortages, critics say more measures need to be introduced to provide support for Ontarians.

Official Opposition NDP interim leader Peter Tabuns said Friday his party is calling for a new budget that increases spending for health care and education, as well as raises wages for public-sector workers. Mr. Tabuns said this would mean repealing Bill 124, introduced by the government in 2019, capping public-sector wage increases at 1 per cent for a three-year contract period. (The Globe & Mail) 

Saturday August 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 6, 2022

Nine Years? Brittney Griner Is a Political Prisoner

Brittney Griner has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony for possessing a tiny amount of cannabis oil. Griner’s case was never about a minor offense against Russia law (which was real, for what that’s worth). It’s about what kind of country Russia has become as its president, Vladimir Putin, has descended into anti-Western hysteria while initiating foreign wars and ramping up internal repression.

August 12, 2021

Griner was arrested just days before the invasion of Ukraine, which is to say that she was grabbed after Putin and his circle had almost certainly made the decision to go to war. She was perfect for the part that the Russians wanted her to play as a possible bargaining chip. She is a prominent American, but not too prominent. She is gay, Black, and covered in tattoos, the kind of defendant for whom the average Russian will have no sympathy. Detaining her for a minor drug charge must have been an easy call for the Russian intelligence services.

Better yet for the Kremlin, the American determination to get her back home serves a Russian-propaganda purpose. Russia does not value all its citizens equally; some Russians matter and others vanish without trace. The efforts to spring Griner, however, almost certainly feed into a Russian narrative that America, too, does not care about all of its citizens equally and that we value racial or sexual minorities disproportionately—exactly the case that anti-Western hysterics like Putin have been making for years. Look at the effort the Americans put into getting this person back, the Russians will say later. That’s who they care about.

Friday August 5, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 5, 2022

Out-of-office reply: Prime Minister Trudeau, family on holiday in Costa Rica

March 14, 2019

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is heading to Costa Rica for a two-week vacation with his family.

The Prime Minister’s Office says the family is returning to the same place where they stayed over the Christmas holiday in 2019 and that they are paying for their own accommodations.

The prime minister must fly on a Royal Canadian Air Force plane for security reasons — even for personal travel — and the family’s flights on the last trip to and from Costa Rica cost the government about $57,000, with thousands more spent on flight crews’ stay in San Jose.

The PMO also says it consulted with the office of the federal ethics commissioner about the coming holiday.

In 2017, Trudeau was found to have violated conflict of interest rules related to a 2016 vacation he took to Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas.

The PMO says Trudeau will get regular briefings while he is away. (The National Post)