Government House Leader Steven announced yesterday that he will be moving a motion in the House of Commons today regarding changing the committee make-up for the remainder of this parliament in order to reflect the government’s new majority status, which feels a little bit like jumping the gun. While he does need to give notice of the motion, it won’t be debated until next week sometime at the earliest (because Thursday is a Supply Day for one of the Opposition Parties, and I doubt he would debate this motion on a Friday), but there’s no way the government can vote on it yet. Why? Because the three new MPs haven’t been sworn in yet, and it’s generally a three-to-four-week process for Elections Canada to fully certify the results and report back to the Commons so that the swearing-in can happen, and well, it’s only been a week-and-a-half.
I do find it interesting that they have decided to go the route of adding MPs to the committees to make them twelve members instead of ten, which may be a mistake on the government’s part. Yes, removing a Conservative instead of adding a Liberal to each committee might have seen them howl more, but the things is, we actually barely have enough MPs to go around when it comes to staffing committees properly (remember, this is the reason why official party status is twelve MPs—so that they can have coverage on every standing committee). During Trudeau’s majority parliament, committees were down to ten MPs, which meant that parliamentary secretaries didn’t have to be voting members, which is better for all because they couldn’t essentially be putting their thumbs on the scales on the government’s behalf, but when they were back to minority parliaments, committee memberships went back up to 12 in order to accommodate more opposition members, thus meaning parliamentary secretaries were back to voting members. It looks like Carney and MacKinnon have no problem with this, even though they should—it’s bad form for the independence of committees, but they don’t actually care about that.
It also looks like MacKinnon is doing this now and not later is a power move. I had previously suspected that this move wouldn’t be fully implemented until autumn because the last four sitting weeks before summer would have the committees slammed to get things passed before the break, but now they’re going to mess up their ability to work until the Procedure and House Affairs Committee can produce their report on the new committee memberships because the Conservatives decided to play stupid games on the Ethics committee and force a vote on making François-Philippe Champagne appear before them to answer theatrical questions about his non-existent conflict of interest with the Alto high speed rail project. By pushing this motion and vote to as soon as the government can make it, once the new MPs are sworn-in, it gives them a chance to try and head off the committee before Champagne appears for the sole purpose of having the Conservatives (and probably Bloc) call him corrupt on camera so that they can get clicks on their social media channels. Just ridiculous, and even more ridiculous that MacKinnon has to get in on the dick-swinging in the process.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia claims to have captured 80 settlements and 1700 square kilometres since the start of the year, while Ukraine has recaptured some of that territory back. As Ukraine is about to resume pumping oil through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, now that repairs are completed, it looks like Ukrainian drone attacks have reduced Russian oil export capacity by 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney announced his new Canada-US trade advisory committee.
- Our chief trade negotiator with the US, Janice Charette, says that she is expecting to see some “mutuality” from the Americans after the concessions we’ve made so far.
- Anita Anand summoned the Israeli ambassador last week to request an investigation into the killing of a Canadian citizen in Lebanon.
- Steven MacKinnon introduced a bill to provide a regulatory framework for space launches and recoveries in Canadian territory (as we have none).
- Here is an attempt to cut through the parsing of economic data that each party uses to make their case. (Unsurprisingly, Poilievre’s stats are often misleading).
- While the Canadian Forces is touting increased recruitment, their recruitment of women continues to lag, as does their ability to retain them given toxic workplaces.
- CSIS won’t be processing any early retirement requests, because they’re too short-staffed as it is already.
- MPs voted to ratify Annette Ryan as the new Parliamentary Budget Officer, but it was close as the Conservatives and Bloc voted against her.
- It looks like a now-former CBSA officer spent years illegally looking people up in the agency’s database for his real estate side business.
- The Media Ecosystem Observatory is pointing to a network of slopaganada accounts that are promoting Alberta separation and annexation by the US.
- CPAC has cancelled its primetime political news show citing budget pressures.
- The justice committee heard testimony that called for not only making sexualised “deepfakes” illegal, but for an effective and timely removal mechanism.
- BC’s energy minister has reiterated that a northern coastal pipeline route remains unrealistic because of the environment and the opposition.
- Patricia Treble points out the demographic crunch facing the working royals, which will certainly impact those of us in the realms.
- Lindsay Tedds pens an excoriation of the “Calgary School” and the chaos agents that it has produced, most notably Danielle Smith.
- Philippe Lagassé walks through the dynamics at play with the two competitors of the submarine procurement contract.
- Colby Cosh reminds Avi Lewis that not-for-profit cooperative grocery stores already exist in western Canada, and that they haven’t reduced prices from the big chains.
- My column calls out Carney’s attempt to paint himself as a “tough on crime” prime minister as one that is doomed to fail because you cannot win with it.
Odds and ends:
My Loonie Politics Quick Take notes Danielle Smith’s attempt to speedrun through the Orbán playbook, including her plan to gerrymander the next election.
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