Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[fotze2]

Are we living in a land
Where sex and horror are the new Gods?
Yeah
When two tribes go to war
A point is all you can score

- Troutman via Frankie Goes to Hollywood

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by timun

*siiiiiiiiiiigh*...

So, that clip was from yesterday's Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates meeting, not today (which you linked). And of course 34 seconds of a tweet is insufficient to give full context to what was actually being discussed.

Originally Posted by Firebot

Liberals voted against the ArriveCAN audit in 2022, and yesterday and today attempted to filibuster the summoning of the 2 owners of GCSecurities with a Liberal MP on the committee (Irek Kusmierczyk) even calling the auditor general's report fiction. The NDP and Bloc supported the motion at the chagrin of Liberals but the filibuster was still attempted.

The motion passed yesterday, not Feb 20, because of the constant filibustering where the committee talk went over 2 days. If you are going to try to correct me in a stupid vain attempt at least get your correction right. Hard to miss, that yesterday and today,

If anything attempting to show context to the Liberal MP makes him look worse. Why even going to go through the trouble of perusing through a multi hour clip for a transcript to excuse his fiction claim, which doesn't make him look better.

Yet you pass yourself as non-partisan? You solely come to the defense of Liberals all the time. Why even try to correct on this as you just did?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Yet you pass yourself as non-partisan?

Yeah it’s super weird when people do that despite clearly being partisan. Who would do that? It’s just craaaaazy.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by timun

*siiiiiiiiiiigh*...

So, that clip was from yesterday's Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates meeting, not today (which you linked). And of course 34 seconds of a tweet is insufficient to give full context to what was actually being discussed.

See https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en...40221/-1/41088 @ 14:12:13 for the beginning of Scheer speaking, as follows:
[INDENT]SCHEER: Thank you very much Mr. Chair, I'd like to move a motion that I'll just provide a little bit of context for before I move it. Little bit of a recap of what brings us here today, to the motion that I'd like to propose, and it has to do with the ArriveSCAM app, and some of the shocking revelations that we've heard from the Auditor General and her findings. To back up: during the pandemic, this, uh—it was decided to bring in—the government decided to bring in an app for Canadians, forcing Canadians to use this app, to document their crossing the border into Canada. It should have cost just around eighty thousand dollars; instead, so far, the Auditor General has concluded that it is at least sixty million dollars in cost attributed that, and that's based on what she can find.

I do believe THIS is the actual reason for the point of order. ArriveCAN 1.0, the initial app was forecast to cost $80 thousand, but the entire program was estimated at $54 million.

So Scheer is trying to make things look much worse than it is (actual only 6 mil over budget - that she could find). Saying ArriveCAN should have cost $80 thousand is fiction.. or exaggeration, whatever, but then it is Scheer putting words in the Liberals mouth that they are calling the report fiction.

This gets to Timun's past points. We have this X post that Firebot is all onboard the "Liberals calling the report fiction" train, when the actual issue with the statement is not that at all, but is actually the "should have cost" amount given by Scheer. There is still issues with the single sourced contracts and deleted emails, but now we have the Cons creating a "scandal" out of their own lieing fiction exaggeration.

Scandals are being less and less about the actual transgression and more just a collection of 30 second/144 character gotchas out of context. This statement has fired up the Cons to say how the Liberals are closing ranks and protecting their own by throwing the AG under the bus, which is not the case at all, but it makes a good headline!

And while I am writing this I see Firebot has doubled down.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by belsarius

I do believe THIS is the actual reason for the point of order. ArriveCAN 1.0, the initial app was forecast to cost $80 thousand, but the entire program was estimated at $54 million.

This gets to Timun's past points. We have this X post that Firebot is all onboard the "Liberals calling the report fiction" train, when the actual issue with the statement is not that at all, but is actually the "should have cost" amount given by Scheer. There is still issues with the single sourced contracts and deleted emails, but now we have the Cons creating a "scandal" out of their own lieing fiction exaggeration.

Liberals have been raising point of orders and fillbustering throughout the committee time looking to squash any statements they vehemently disagree with or makes them look bad and waste as much time as possible. If they were interested in resolving this they would be openly working to get to the bottom of the corruption instead of continuously blocking the investigation. Again, a reminder that the Liberals voted against the audit of ArriveCAN contracts.

The Liberal MP did not state what the point of order from what Scheer stated was about (considering his point of order was right after the auditor general's number), and your interpretation is pure conjecture.

Whether a flub, or just out of Liberal habit, nothing that Scheer stated is out of line and it is not fiction that it initially would have cost 80K and that the auditor general found 60 million in spending. Those are both facts, not fiction. Fiction is the Liberal MP's word.

In its end state and upgrades, would the app cost 80K after revision? Most certainly not.

Is it a good soundbite to state that an 80K app turned into 60 million? Most certainly is.

Is it causing the usual suspects to get all contorted out of shape and scrambling to defend Liberals yet again against 'Conservative Propaganda'™ in vain attempts to correct me and others, scrambling to find something, anything that can use to discredit a portion of a statement, when their attention and energy could be put on the actual government linked corruption aspect instead? You betcha!

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Is it causing the usual suspects to get all contorted out of shape and scrambling to defend Liberals yet again against 'Conservative Propaganda'™ in vain attempts to correct me and others, scrambling to find something, anything that can use to discredit a portion of a statement, when their attention and energy could be put on the actual government linked corruption aspect instead? You betcha!

You have a very interesting perspective on your interactions here.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Liberals have been raising point of orders and fillbustering throughout the committee time looking to squash any statements they vehemently disagree with or makes them look bad and waste as much time as possible. If they were interested in resolving this they would be openly working to get to the bottom of the corruption instead of continuously blocking the investigation. Again, a reminder that the Liberals voted against the audit of ArriveCAN.

The Liberal MP did not state what the point of order from what Scheer stated was about (considering his point of order was right after the auditor general's number), and your interpretation is pure conjecture.

Whether a flub, or just out of Liberal habit, nothing that Scheer stated is out of line and it is not fiction that it initially would have cost 80K and that the auditor general found 60 million in spending. Those are both facts, not fiction. Fiction is the Liberal MP's word.

In its end state and upgrades, would the app cost 80K after revision? Most certainly not.

Is it a good soundbite to state that an 80K app turned into 60 million? Most certainly is.

Is it causing the usual suspects to get all contorted out of shape and scrambling to defend Liberals yet again against 'Conservative Propaganda'™ in vain attempts to correct me and others, scrambling to find something, anything that can use to discredit a portion of a statement, when their attention and energy could be put on the actual government linked corruption aspect instead? You betcha!

There is no vain attempt, it is an actual correction, and not of you, of the specific point "The Liberals are calling the AG report fiction". I don't doubt that the liberals are filibustering issues, especially when the Conservatives are pulling stunts like this that in no way help the process but only are used to point the finger at strawmen.

It is totally fiction to try to use the $80 thousand as a starting point. You can go and see the estimated costs of the program posted on the CBSA website.

You can't use one line of a budget or forecast and try to say everything beyond that one line is an overage. It was never used as the projected cost of the program. It is a great soundbite, and also a lie that the program should have cost $80 thousand and went to $60 million.

I'm also not defending the wording the Liberal used, he could have been more clear, but I don't know how much detail can be used in a point of order so I can't respond to that directly.

For someone constantly complaining about "liberal partisans" you are defending the Conservatives just as hard. I love how my interpretation is pure conjecture, but somehow yours isn't? I can point to a specific talking point that was not accurate by Scheer, and I can also point to a direct rebuttal that there is no complaint about the report.

It isn't Liberal defenders getting bent out of shape. Its people who want the truth, with context.

There are some legitimate issues that need to be dealt with around this program. Muddying the waters with BS like "Liberals are calling the AG report fiction" does nothing to resolve the issue, just create more anger where none actually exists.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by belsarius

There is no vain attempt, it is an actual correction, and not of you, of the specific point "The Liberals are calling the AG report fiction". I don't doubt that the liberals are filibustering issues, especially when the Conservatives are pulling stunts like this that in no way help the process but only are used to point the finger at strawmen.

Correcting me on when a clip in terms of date (as Timun did) seems quite a vain attempt, don't you agree?

For someone constantly complaining about "liberal partisans" you are defending the Conservatives just as hard. I love how my interpretation is pure conjecture, but somehow yours isn't? I can point to a specific talking point that was not accurate by Scheer, and I can also point to a direct rebuttal that there is no complaint about the report.

It isn't Liberal defenders getting bent out of shape. Its people who want the truth, with context.

There are some legitimate issues that need to be dealt with around this program. Muddying the waters with BS like "Liberals are calling the AG report fiction" does nothing to resolve the issue, just create more anger where none actually exists.

I was going to edit my post to add these 2:

Is the "Liberals state the auditor general report is fiction" a great soundbite? Most certainly.

Did the Liberal MP intentionally state the auditor general report was fiction? Most likely not.

People are focusing down on the details of whether or not Kusmierczyk meant to call the auditor general report fiction. Scheer obviously made his tweet in jest to use this soundbite to his advantage.

"Liberals are now calling the Auditor General’s report "fiction."

They will do anything to protect Trudeau and his corruption.

Common Sense Conservatives will do everything to protect your tax dollars!"


Politicians being politicians being politicians. Politicians making grandiose statements, grandstanding on soundbites. News at 11.

So now we spend multiple posts scrutinizing and interpreting a 34 second X clip that I linked to complement the ArriveCAN fillbusting(which has been occuring and Liberals have been interfering with this being a minute example), because some posters are hellbent on focusing on minute details on statements that are totally irrelevant instead of the larger picture and actual potential corruption being investigated and Liberal attempts to shut it down.

Conclusion: we have come to find that Liberals may not have intentionally called the auditor general's report fiction as Scheer stated, and Conservatives are poopoo heads for using Liberals words against them.

This is the conclusion and focus we are going with out of all this? That has nothing to do with the meat of my original post.

[timun]

Originally Posted by Firebot

The motion passed yesterday, not Feb 20, because of the constant filibustering where the committee talk went over 2 days. If you are going to try to correct me in a stupid vain attempt at least get your correction right. Hard to miss, that yesterday and today,

Okay, I thought you were linking the meeting in the context of the tweet, not in the context of the date the motion ultimately passed.

If anything attempting to show context to the Liberal MP makes him look worse. Why even going to go through the trouble of perusing through a multi hour clip for a transcript to excuse his fiction claim, which doesn't make him look better.

I'm not trying to make the Liberal MP look better, I'm trying to give the full context of a 34-second tweet that has been edited to make a point that... I might not go as far as to say it's a "lie", but it's certainly an exaggeration and misconstruing of what the Liberal MP was saying.

The Liberal MP was not saying "the AG's report is fiction", he was saying "saying the ArriveCan app was only supposed to cost $80k and now it's $60M" is fiction. Because the $80k number does not include the full costs of the program and is an entirely irrelevant point of comparison.

Scheer's motion went on to chastise the two guys from GC Strategies for refusing to appear before the committee, but the Bloc MP who spoke after (Vignola) was quick to point out that the one of them (Firth) did appear before them last November. Twice.

It's all bull####-peddling at this point, which, again, is why I'm not keen to follow the news cycle about this crap at this time.

Yet you pass yourself as non-partisan? You solely come to the defense of Liberals all the time. Why even try to correct on this as you just did?

I've complained about the Liberal government many times, I think a lot of what they've done in the last nine years is hot trash. I've repeatedly said I've never voted for them before and don't intend to now. The problem here seems to be that you think anything less than rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth vitriol directed at them, and me pointing out that the Conservative opposition are also a bunch of lying pieces of ####, means I'm endorsing the Liberals.

[Firebot]

Quite a few more development on ArriveCAN occured yesterday, with Cameron McDonald and Antonio Utano testifying against their bosses and throwing them under the same bus. Minh Doan seems to be at the center of many of the question marks and nefarious undertakings yet the CBSA investigator failed to interview him on their investigation. Erin O'Gorman (the CBSA president) is also being accused of lying to the committee.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politi...over-arrivecan

MacDonald said it was Minh Doan, his then boss and now the government’s chief technology officer, who selected GC Strategies to develop the app. He accused of Doan, current CBSA Chief Erin O’Gorman and other senior officials of having lied when they appeared before the committee.

He accused Dohn of having deleted thousands of emails and having threatened him. Conservative MPs on the committee pushed for an outside investigation from the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mac...goat-1.7123046

"I think it's pretty clear that tens of thousands of emails have been deleted by Minh Doan," MacDonald told the committee.

"The app could never have cost $80,000," he said. "The $80,000 was to build a digital prototype that moved paper … to an online form that could be used on a mobile phone. It was used to show that you could digitize something."

He said the true estimate was closer to $6.3 million.

MacDonald said that the rising cost of the app can be attributed in part to other departments who argued that since their work was related to ArriveCan, they should also be able to carry out activities under the app's funding envelope.

"There were divisions, federal public servants who wanted to associate with ArriveCan so that they could get the funding that they needed to move their initiatives forward," he said.

"If you could just put it under an ArriveCan tagline, it was easier to achieve the funding and get the budget that you wanted from the finance branch."

Asked directly by Brock if Erin O'Gorman, the current president of CBSA, "lied" to the committee last week when she told MPs she did not know who made the decision to hire GC Strategies, MacDonald said, "Yes."

The bolded is pretty interesting and continues to show the lack of accountability of Canadian taxpayer money with the pandemic as cover. It sounds like it was a free for all with everyone trying to get their hands in the cookie jar with no contracts or paper trails based on the auditor general's findings. Now I don't believe the 2 will be absolved of wrongdoing, as clearly they were in on it to a degree (whisky tasting event?). But the CBSA investigation was making it seem like they are the masterminds. How deep is this rabbit hole?

[GGG]

I think the bolded is normal behaviour in large corporations. There is something g that needs improvement and needs to be done but by whatever contrived quantitative metrics that are used to evaluate value the project can’t be justified in those terms as a stand alone thing. But adding it to the scope of a larger project reduces the overheads associated with implementing it making it more attractive and reduces the scrutiny of the individual component making it easier for something necessary to get approved.

So I would call the practice of tying your smaller project to the larger project that is going ahead to get funding as very normal.

[Firebot]

There's normally accountability and business cases involved into tying smaller projects into larger projects. Funding is particularly scrutinized in larger corporations who need to answer to shareholders.

In this particular case, based on the auditor general's findings there was little to no contract or paperwork at all, hence why the estimate went up to 60 million based on what she could find that referred to and were linked to ArriveCAN.

In the end, ~19 million of that went directly in GCStrategies pockets while doing no IT work.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Firebot

There's normally accountability and business cases involved into tying smaller projects into larger projects. Funding is particularly scrutinized in larger corporations who need to answer to shareholders.

In this particular case, based on the auditor general's findings there was little to no contract or paperwork at all, hence why the estimate went up to 60 million based on what she could find that referred to and were linked to ArriveCAN.

In the end, ~19 million of that went directly in GCStrategies pockets while doing no IT work.

Your second and third paragrpahs is unrelated to the bolded section. I agree with you the lack of contracts with scopes of work is a concern as is the sole sourcing. The appearance of conflicts of interest is just as bad as conflicts of interest.

To your first paragraph the bolded paragraph does not state that no businesses cases or justification was prepared. It just states people saw this large funding initiative and so tied their projects to it as there is less scrutiny on each individual scope. The bolded section could accurately be describe every major project I have ever worked on.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by GGG

To your first paragraph the bolded paragraph does not state that no businesses cases or justification was prepared. It just states people saw this large funding initiative and so tied their projects to it as there is less scrutiny on each individual scope. The bolded section could accurately be describe every major project I have ever worked on.

At this point we don't know if business cases or justification was ever prepared in these cases because there is little to no document, backup, or contracts which some just had vague references to ArriveCAN and approved as ArriveCAN expenses (as per the auditor general's report). In itself a separate group piggybacking on a larger project if warranted is not cause for concern if justified (as you correctly stated), but in any situation of such there is supposed to be a paper trail and business case.

The auditor general's report is found here, bolded emphasis.

https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/E...1_e_44428.html

1.18We found that financial records were not well maintained by the Canada Border Services Agency. We were unable to determine a precise cost for the ArriveCAN application because of poor documentation and weak controls at the Canada Border Services Agency. We estimated that the application cost approximately $59.5 million.

1.19We found that 18% of invoices submitted by contractors that we tested did not have sufficient supporting documentation to determine whether expenses related to ArriveCAN or another information technology (IT) project. This made it impossible to accurately determine whether costs were attributed to the correct projects.

1.20Given the shortcomings of the financial records, we built up an estimated cost using the agency’s financial system, contracting documents, and other evidence. It is possible that some amounts attributed to ArriveCAN were not for the application. In some cases, the cost of contracts or task authorizations were specific to ArriveCAN; in others, details were missing or were of a general IT nature, and professional judgment was needed to attribute the cost to the application. Exhibit 1.1 shows the breakdown of our estimated costs for the main contractors at 31 March 2023.

1.21Canada Border Services Agency officials have expressed concerns that $12.2 million of the $59.5‑million estimate could be unrelated to ArriveCAN. We determined, however, that this amount was incurred under ArriveCAN task authorizations.Definition5 We also noted that a significant portion of these expenses were submitted to a parliamentary committee—the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates—as ArriveCAN expenses.

1.22We compared the estimate of $59.5 million with the amounts that the agency provided to the committee. We noted that in the information submitted to the committee, there were instances where costs that we determined were related to ArriveCAN were not included and where some other costs were incorrectly included. In our view, this was a consequence of the poor financial recordkeeping. For example, a resource listed in a task authorization could have worked on multiple projects, not just ArriveCAN.

Not exactly a glowing report, it was pretty much a free for all. We could likely attribute it to basic incompetence or bloat in normal circumstances if it was not for the 1500 deleted emails and the other aspects.

[Firebot]

Deal in place for pharma care

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lib...deal-1.7123952

Will see what it means for Canadians (I do personally think pharma care while very expensive is something that is worth the cost unlike other programs). No details yet on what it may look like.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Deal in place for pharma care

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lib...deal-1.7123952

Will see what it means for Canadians (I do personally think pharma care while very expensive is something that is worth the cost unlike other programs). No details yet on what it may look like.

This is a pretty big win for Singh. Despite the fact that his party has less than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons and less seats than 3 other parties he managed to force such a major piece of legislation into getting passed. Hopefully this plan helps those who need it.

[rubecube]

Yeah, that's a huge win for the NDP. Also buys the Liberals a bit more time to find a new leader if they feel so inclined.

EDIT: It's also a big win for Canadians in general. I think in a few decades we'll look back on this and realize how monumental it was.

[woob]

When does Marlaina and the Unqualified Clown Posse come out with a statement against this?

[TorqueDog]

I see mention of 'single-payer' in the article, really hoping they don't end up farming it out to some stupid third-party insurer.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by woob

When does Marlaina and the Unqualified Clown Posse come out with a statement against this?

Jesus, you guys love bringing up the UCP and trying to disparage them. They have you on full tilt.