This is extremely accurate, I suspect. Like you I don’t think this is a massive scandal, but it is the sort of scandal where it is “better” from Trudeau’s perspective to be able to control the narrative by saying “We’re waiting for the results of the investigation, anything else is just speculation. The opposition just wants to blow this out of proportion.” As opposed to having some concrete that the CPC will probably blow out of proportion. 
But I think keeping it vague and the answers will come in time until there’s something else to talk about in the news is the “right” move (again for Trudeau). People have short attention spans.
What I want to know is: Is anything being done about it right now? Or is there just a lot of huffing and puffing and covering asses?
Even the appearance of foreign meddling in Canadian elections is damned serious, and that seemingly nothing in particular is being done about it makes it doubly so.
Again, something will be done… after the next election. It will take exactly that much time for the special rapporteuse to conduct a thorough fact finding mission and cross the country speaking to citizenry supporting your government and communities and possibly follow through on any decisions. There will be another week of media consternation, and not much more. This is not enough, though.
In fairness, given the frosty relationship after the “Meng-Mike-Square Affair”, it is not realistic to think there was extensive official Chinese support, and most of the problems seem to be in how things were handled, although we know even less than usual. If CSIS had no actual evidence, this is concerning, but of course quality matters. Maybe the rapporteur will be treated in a less mushroom-like fashion.
Meng was largely an American problem and Trudeau was not blameworthy. I don’t see the disadvantages of a foreign agent registry like many countries seem to use. Trudeau is probably wise to avoid answers but not to use obvious excuses nor take real measures.
Breaking news. I don’t really have any comment about it, just posting it for interest sake of the thread.
So Meta says that if Bill C-18 passes, Canadians will simply be cut off from news feeds on Facebook and Instagram. I’m guessing other news services will follow suit. This spectacularly bad bill is going to cause a lot of damage. It turns out that shaking down big information providers is not as easy as Trudeau thought.
Though Meta would prefer free reign, this has been done elsewhere, with the same threats and their reversal. Which does not mean the bill is optimal.
I wonder how the finances of that break out in Canada vs Australia?
It’s not clear exactly what happened in Australia. There were unspecified amendments made to the law to make facebook happy. It appears they made negotiations with news media optional as one of the changes, which sounds like they defanged the law. But the article was pretty vague on the details.
This article and its links describe Australia in more detail.
Which is not to say experts like C-18. Technology Law experts like Geist don’t, nor does Coyne, who states (similar to your view, Globe source below):
Not content, likewise, with subsidizing the CBC – plus the private broadcasters plus the magazine industry – the Liberals have lately sought to extend state funding to the newspaper industry as well, with the enthusiastic support of many publishers. The first tranche of aid was provided in 2019 through a five-year, $595-million suite of tax credits known colloquially, and accurately, as the newspaper bailout.
Now the Liberals are proposing to entrench state aid to newspapers through Bill C-18, still before the Commons. Only instead of providing the aid directly out of government coffers, it will be laundered through the major search and social-media platforms, notably Google and Facebook.
Technically the bill would only mandate negotiations on how much the platforms should have to pay to use newspaper content. But who’s kidding whom? Not only would the newspapers be empowered to bargain collectively, as if they were a union, but in the event of an impasse, the issue would fall to the CRTC to decide. One guess whose side it would be likely to take.
That would be troublesome enough, if the platforms were in fact using our content, without paying for it. But as they do not – they merely link to it, to our enormous benefit – the program is revealed for what it is: a crass shakedown. Facebook and Google have money. The publishers want it. So the government will force FacebookGoogle to give the publishers some of it. It’s as simple as that.
It sounds like C-18 is worse than the Australia bill if Geist is right that even linking to a news article in social media requires some form of payment. It’s not just about Facebook and Google, but all social media and all users. Presumably if I have a substack and link to an interesting article in Canadian media, they can go after me for some kind of payment. Is that correct?
The obvious answer to this is that no one should link to an article in Canadian media. That should make them happy, right?
It gets worse though, because the Canadian content rules they are pushing on social media will force them to manipulate search results to include more Canadian content - which they will then have to pay for linking. Crazy. Sounds like a shakedown racket.
The government is not interested in going after individuals who link. It should be noted that both of the above are from 2022. This is about getting money out of FacebookGoogle to publishers who already benefit from links to their articles. However, it is true the Australian bill is better, and Geist is likely right there are theoretical concerns about “facilitating access”.
I would worry that, while they certainly wouldn’t go after every tweeter or substack owner, they might use it to selectively go after voices they’d rather not hear.
Where law enforcement is required this is a matter of national security and should be handled by the RCMP, not local police forces.
Why do people keep doing this? Why?
I mean, I know fifty years ago, when there was no internet and records were on microfiche and taped to the back of a passing raccoon or whatever the hell we did back then, you could talk bullshit like this, and people would either just think “well, okay,” but these days a reasonable determined person with a computer or smartphone can unveil your lies in twenty minutes. It’s just bizarre.
On top of originally exaggerating her aboriginal ancestry, Timmons then seems to have lied about withdrawing her claims. She said she stopped referring to it in 2009, but CBC - again, with what appears to be the most trivial of efforts - found she had it in her CV and summaries long after that. In 2019 she accepted an award from Indspire, and if you don’t know what Indspire is, it’s a charity, and I’ll give you one guess as to what kind of people it exists to help based on the prefix. She accepted the award, on stage, holding an eagle feather. Guess what the bio she gave Indspire says about her?
Don’t lie about your background. Just don’t. Don’t.
There would be no desire to do so as the push mentioned in the link to “indigenize the university” did not AFAIK exist then.
Maybe she would have lied about something else, like mentioning a degree earned without saying that it was only honorary. Changing patterns of what is stolen, in these stolen valor cases, tells you a bit about the state of the culture.
In the 1970’s it was found (by the student newspaper) that a president of a large university on the west coast had received his degrees from a mail order college that apparently did not even offer the kind of degree he claimed to have had.
Just watched the recording of Biden’s speech to Parliament. Pretty good, and got a bit feisty at the end.
An analysis from the National Post.
I made the mistake of looking at the comments. Sigh.
The National Post and the Toronto Sun are the worst for that.
Silly rabbit!