2023-04

Friday March 3, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 3, 2023

Did foreigners interfere in Canada’s elections? Don’t expect politicians to sort it out

The best argument so far for an independent inquiry into foreign election interference in Canada has come from the least independent voices in this escalating furor — politicians and members of Parliament.

February 25, 2023

A hearing at a Commons committee on Wednesday vividly proved the point. National security discussions should come with a warning label — don’t try this at home. Or more accurately, don’t try this in the House.

It comes down simply to this: the question of whether foreign actors have been meddling in Canadian elections is simply too important to be litigated by the people who were players in those elections, with vested interests. That goes for all the political parties: the governing Liberals and their opposition rivals.

Opposition parties are in fact on side with the idea of some independent inquiry, though Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre also wants MPs to continue their Commons committee investigation, such as it is right now.

“We cannot allow this affair to simply go up in smoke with a secret private investigation, it must be public so that Canadians know exactly what is going on,” Poilievre told reporters on Wednesday. “We cannot shut those parliamentary inquiries down with a promise that in two years there will be some report on a public inquiry.”

But if Wednesday’s Commons hearings were any indication, Canadians aren’t going to get many answers from the political arena. Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser, Jody Thomas, explained as much during her testimony.

January 16, 2020

“We cannot talk about national security information in a public forum,” said Jody Thomas, who stared down this committee with the same, flat, no-nonsense tone she brought to last fall’s public inquiry into the “freedom convoy.” Thomas said at those hearings that she was one of the influential advisers saying yes to a declaration of emergency on the convoy last winter. On Wednesday, she made clear she’s one of the people on the inside arguing against a wide-open public inquiry.

A lot of the back and forth between MPs, Thomas and other senior security officials testifying on Wednesday proved the national security adviser’s point. MPs — who do come from political parties — were gamely trying to get the security people to say how much political parties were in the loop about possible election threats in 2019 and 2022.

Sorry, the politicians were told — that’s top secret. (Though the officials did manage to reveal that the RCMP is not investigating any of the allegations surfacing in the media of late, which is significant.)

The problem with politicians looking into political interference is that they’re not the ones who need to be reassured that Canadian elections are free and fair. It’s the voting public, and the news on that right now is not good.

November 24, 2020

An Angus Reid poll released this week showed that a disturbing two-thirds of Canadians believed that China either definitely or probably tried to influence the past two elections in Canada. An even more disturbing 42 per cent of past Conservative voters were inclined to believe the elections had been “stolen.” Sound familiar?

That means that the horse is already out of the barn on this one. Reassurances from the Liberal government will just feed the cynicism of non-Liberal voters, while opposition’s continuing attempts to cry foul could make those parties sound like they have an axe to grind — a pox on all their houses, in other words.

The opposition leaders are right to ask that their parties have a voice in determining the shape of any future inquiry. In the past, I’ve been told, no election-reform legislation proceeded without broad agreement between all the parties.

That may have been a myth, I haven’t tested that against the long historical record. But it seems the point is wise. On something as important as democracy and electoral legitimacy, you don’t want anyone saying that the ruling party put its thumb on the scale.

Trudeau continues to say that we have all the inquiries we need into electoral interference right now and they need to run their course. The current Commons committee hearings, with no offence to any of the MPs doing their questioning, is not going to be the final word — any more than the various parliamentary hearings into the convoy, which paled in comparison to Justice Paul Rouleau’s inquiry.

Trudeau’s next move should be to convene a meeting of all the opposition leaders, swear them to the highest levels of security clearance, and hammer out how they can get a grasp on this issue before the public gets any more cynical about the fairness of elections. That one gesture in itself would prove that the politicians are putting democracy over their partisan interests.

It would also, as a bonus, be enormously frustrating to whatever foreign actors are enjoying the current spectacle of Canadians questioning whether their democracy works. (The Toronto Star)

 

Friday March 3, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 3, 2023

Bused out of Quebec, francophone asylum seekers struggle to get medical services

Over the phone, the woman’s voice is regretful but hurried — she says she’s sorry, but if the French-speaking migrant on the other end of the line cannot find someone to translate English, the doctor won’t see him for the medical exam he needs in order to claim asylum in Canada.

March 24, 2022

CBC News obtained a recording of the phone conversation the man says took place Wednesday in Niagara Falls, Ont. 

“It’s not possible to speak with the doctor if you can’t speak English,” the woman tells him in French. “You have to find someone at your hotel to help you.” 

“I don’t know anyone here,” Guirlin — whose last name CBC News has agreed to withhold because of his precarious immigration status — replies.

Guirlin and his family are among the more than 5,500 asylum seekers who have been bused by Canada’s government from Quebec’s border with the U.S. to cities in Ontario, including Windsor, Cornwall and Niagara Falls. 

They are also among a number of those — mostly francophones from Haiti or countries in Africa — for whom the transfer happened against their wishes since they could not afford to find a place to stay immediately. Their plan all along was to live in Quebec.

February 17, 2023

Guirlin, his wife, who is six months pregnant, and their four-year-old son ended up in Niagara Falls on Feb. 14. Originally from Haiti, the family had been struggling to make ends meet in Brazil, when they decided to travel north through a dozen countries to make their way to Canada. 

When they arrived on Feb. 11 via Roxham Road, the popular irregular border crossing south of Montreal, they were asked by immigration officers where they planned to live in Canada.

“I said we want to stay in Montreal because I don’t speak English and my wife doesn’t either, and she needs to have medical appointments for the pregnancy,” Guirlin said in a phone interview Thursday. 

He says they were told in the following days there was no space for them in Montreal, and that they were being sent to Ontario. They boarded a bus with roughly 40 other asylum seekers from a number of other countries last Tuesday. For now, the government has put them up in a hotel. (CBC) 

 

Thursday March 2, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 2, 2023

Google is stealing from Canadian newspapers and advertisers

June 26, 2019

For 15 years, we’ve all been hearing a fake story about why newspapers around the world are dying. It goes like this — the internet killed the news, with old, slothful media companies being unwilling to adapt to new technology. The closer you look, the less sense this story makes. There are plenty of new media companies, everyone from the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, digitally native firms with deep pockets and clever managers, who can generate huge amounts of web traffic, but aren’t able to sell the advertising to monetize it. And there is still advertising, lots of it. It’s just that the money for those ads isn’t going to the newspapers on whose sites they sit.

The real story of why newspapers are suffering can be found in an action in January by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, when the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, along with eight U.S. states, filed a suit to break up Google’s advertising business. According to American enforcers, the search giant has unlawfully engaged in “monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products,” basically the software plumbing underneath most online advertising, and thus, the revenue that newspapers rely on. Google inflated its profits, redirecting advertising revenues from newspapers to itself.

June 12, 2019

It’s a complex story, but at the heart of it is what looks like theft. Most of us think of Google as a search engine, and it is. But Google has many other lines of business. This particular suit involves display ads on the open web, which are what you find on the Wall Street Journal or ESPN. These ads are bought and sold in an unusual manner. If a user goes to the site of a newspaper, unbeknownst to the consumer, a highly complex financial market kicks into gear. Newspapers no longer sell most of their advertising directly but have become integrated into a giant set of global auctions. In these auctions, advertisers bid for the right to place their ad not into a specific newspaper, but in front of a specific user. Money then changes hands, from the buyer of the ad to the publisher, with a set of middlemen each taking a cut. This happens in a split second, billions of times a day. At this point, online advertising is far bigger than the stock market in terms of the number of transactions.

Well, guess who runs the software to manage this financial market? Google. And guess who takes the lion’s share of the revenue? Google.

March 21, 2018

There’s a decade-plus-long backstory to this scheme. In the mid-2000s, Google transitioned from its role as a search engine into the main intermediary of all online advertising. In 2005, Google had a lot of advertisers that were buying its search ads. It also started to let smaller websites put strips of ads up and gave them a share of the revenue. Ad industry insiders at the time realized that advertising was transitioning from a Mad Men-style set of local, regional and national markets to an automated set of marketplaces.

Google’s strategy wasn’t to remain a search engine, but to expand and control all online advertising. But the firm had a problem. It couldn’t break into the market for the space on big established publisher sites, because that market was already controlled by another near-monopolist, DoubleClick. DoubleClick had 60 per cent market share in the software used by publishers to manage how they sell ads on their site, or what’s known as an ad server. So, Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, did what every good monopolist does when in a lax policy regime: he bought his rival — DoubleClick — in 2007. (Continued: The National Post) 

 

Wednesday March 1, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 1, 2023

Sliding toward a new reality in health care

January 17, 2023

According to an Ipsos opinion poll released in February, more Canadians than ever are open to the idea of private-sector delivery of publicly-funded health-care service. Not only did the poll find 59 per cent of respondents support private delivery, 60 per cent supported the idea of private care for those who can afford it.

But wait — just a couple of months earlier half of the respondents to an Angus Reid Institute poll said more private care options would a negative impact on the system, with only 32 per cent believing private options would improve things.

Vagaries of methodology and ideology aside, what’s going on here. Could both things be true? Neither?

It’s a relevant discussion as Ontario and other provinces look to the private sector to deliver more services, reducing wait times and allowing more people to get needed care. But how much private-sector involvement is too much? When does the Canada Health Act, the blueprint for universal health care, become more of a suggestion than the rule?

It certainly doesn’t help when governments, in particular the Ontario government, are more interested in promoting their preferred ideological and political outcome than in providing straight answers.

August 19, 2022

Consider Premier Doug Ford’s promise that Ontarians will always be able to access care with their “health card not a credit card.” Lovely sentiment, but is it true?

There is a lot of private-sector delivery of health services already in the market, so no one can credibly claim private delivery doesn’t work. But increasingly there are some grey areas that should make us worry.

For example, consider the pediatric practice in Toronto that offers same-day virtual access to registered practical nurse services, but only to people willing to pay a monthly subscription and per visit fee. Yes, sick young patients will be seen regardless, but if you want to be sure of same-day virtual care and in-person consultation within a day or so, you need to pay.

Without casting aspersions, does that really sound like equitable access to care, as described in the Canada Health Act? Or does it sound more like real two-tier care, one tier for those who can afford it, the other for those who cannot?

January 18, 2023

There are other anecdotal examples, including some where people say they’ve been told they can get access to services and procedures, but it might take a year or more, unless they want to pay in which case they can get access in short order.

Some tiered service has existed for years now, such as in cataract surgery, where patients are offered different options for lenses, one covered by OHIP, others not and available if you can afford them or have insurance coverage.

The point here is not to denigrate services, patients or providers dealing with this changing landscape. It is that the system is evolving, in real time, without much reflection, debate or study. We’re sliding toward a different health-care universe, and it’s happening largely by stealth. That’s not the he way it should be, nor is it a prescription for success or public buy-in. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday February 28, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 28, 2023

Intolerable Ties

August 15, 2017

“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams continued to see his reach shrink Monday as dozens of newspapers and a major comic strip platform said they would no longer publish his long-running office workplace comic strip over his recent racist remarks.

Newspaper readers around the country were greeted by notes from publishers – and, in at least one instance, a blank space – alerting them to outlets’ decision to stop running the popular comic. Adams’ fate was effectively sealed Sunday evening when “Dilbert” distributor Andrews McMeel Universal said it was severing ties to the cartoonist. By Monday morning, “Dilbert” was gone from the GoComics site, which also features many top comic strips like “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes.”

In a Feb. 22 episode of his YouTube show, Adams described people who are Black as members of “a hate group” from which white people should “get away.” Various media publishers across the U.S. denounced the comments as racist, hateful and discriminatory while saying they would no longer provide a platform for his work.

October 30, 2018

Readers of The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts, found a blank space in Monday’s edition where “Dilbert” would normally run. The paper said it would keep the space blank throughout March “as a reminder of the racism the pervades our society.”

Newspapers ranging from the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post to smaller papers like the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette have also said they would cease to publish “Dilbert.” The strip, which lampoons office culture, first appeared in 1989.

Two of Canada’s largest newspapers, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, have also dropped the Dilbert comic strip over its creator’s remarks. (The Globe and Mail) 

Meanwhile, Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre is denying he ever spoke to a controversial German politician who recently claimed she spoke to him at least a “couple of times.”

August 26, 2022

Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament with the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) or Alternative for Germany party, made the comments in a video posted to Twitter by the Western Standard media outlet.

In the video, Anderson is asked about her opinion of Poilievre, to which she responds, “I have spoken to him a couple of times, he seems to be a decent guy, and we need people that actually do think and go back to what democracy is all about and what elected representatives should do. It’s to be elected by the people and then represent and act in their best interests.”

Poilievre denounced Anderson last week after she met with three Conservative MPs during her recent tour of Canada in support of the “Freedom Convoy” movement.

Her tour included stops in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Whitby, Ont.

The three Ontario MPs — Colin Carrie, Dean Allison and former Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis — were pictured with Anderson, a meeting the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said it was “deeply concerned” about.

July 11, 2019

The centre specifically pointed to the German AFD party Anderson belongs to as being “known for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views.”

Skamski, Poilievre’s spokesperson, said in a previous statement that the MPs were unaware of her “vile” views and said they regret meeting with her.

Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University, says the meeting with Anderson shows “poor judgment” as the Conservatives look to court moderate voters ahead of the next federal election and disassociate themselves from radical views.

“Many people in the party, many of their supporters, many who voted Conservative Party, do not endorse (Anderson’s) views,” she told CTV National News last weekend. “But that association has been a problem for the Conservatives in the past, and you would think they’d be doubly careful about associations that could revive those concerns.”

November 5, 2022

During her tour, Anderson appeared with convoy organizer Tamara Lich and two of her lawyers. She also posed for a photo with the flag of Diagolon, an online protest movement considered by some to be an extremist group.

In a video posted to Twitter on Friday, People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier appeared with Anderson and called her an “honourary member” of the party. (CTV) 

Letter to the Editor – The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 3, 2023

Cartoon deeply offensive

Cartoon deeply offensive

The cartoon in Tuesday’s Spec which links the leader of the federal Conservative party with the KKK and with Dilbert is categorically unjustified and deeply offensive. Cartoons like contribute to growing cynicism toward political leaders.

Fred Spoelstra, Hamilton