Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

QP: One last kick at the hybrid can before summer

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For the final sitting day of the spring, the Liberal benches were once again empty save for Mark Gerretsen, the prime minister planning to appear by video from quarantine. Erin O’Toole led off in person, script on his mini-lectern, and he worried that over five years the government has grappled with Operation Honour, and wanted the prime minister to confirm that the defence minister had never hired someone who was found to previously dismissed from an employer for sexual misconduct — obviously laying a trap because he has something he plans to unveil. Trudeau gave praise to Sajjan for his service. O’Toole noted that Trudeau didn’t really answer and gave him another opportunity, and Trudeau praised their work in changing the culture in the military. O’Toole gave him yet another opportunity in French, and Trudeau repeated that they were taking concrete action make this culture change. O’Toole then raised the contracts to Tom Pitfield’s data services company, and wondered if he had been given any other contracts, and Trudeau noted that the casework database their MPs use, it has strict separation from the party database, and warned against cheap attacks. O’Toole raised two other contracts to Pitfield, noted that they were going to crack down on corruption, and wanted the same from the prime minister. Trudeau dismissed the “baseless personal attacks,” and raised the work they were doing for Canadians.

Yves-François Blanchet, in a somber tone, asked the prime minister to reflect on their choice to create two classes of seniors by giving additional benefits for those over 75, and Trudeau recited that they are always there for seniors and that older seniors have greater needs. Blanchet then wanted the prime minster to increase health transfers to promises, and Trudeau reminded him that they have sent billions to the provinces for help in the pandemic, and that eight out of every ten dollars of assistance were federal dollars, but discussions on increasing transfers were coming in the future.

Jagmeet Singh complained that the ultra rich were not being prosecuted for tax evasion while the government was cutting pandemic benefits, for which Trudeau praised the actions they have taken to help Canadians. Singh then decried that the remaining boil-water advisories on First Nations could take five more years and accused this of not being a priority to the government, and Trudeau reminded him of how many advisories they have solved, and that pretending they did nothing was just misleading and cynical politics.

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Roundup: The Ombudsman demands independence

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The military ombudsman put out a position paper yesterday that called for his office to be made fully independent, and he criticized the minister’s office and the Department of National Defence for trying to interfere in investigations and ignoring recommendations for change. In particular, he cited that turning a blind eye to his office’s recommendations advances political interest or has to do with self-preservation or career advancements within the defence community.

Readers may know that I have issues with the demands for yet more officers of parliament. The proliferation of these officers has become acute in the last decade, and while there is a need for an independent ombudsman for the military, I also have not been blind to some of the previous holders of that office, and some were very much unsuited for an office that has no accountability. I’m not sure what kind of a structure the ombudsman’s office should need to be, but again, making him unaccountable and completely insulated opens the role up to the kinds of abuses of authority we’re seeing with the last officer of parliament that was created (being the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has become completely unmoored from his legislative mandate). Anyone who doesn’t share this concern obviously isn’t paying attention (and I can guarantee you that the media is not paying attention, because they like it when these unaccountable officers try to turn themselves into media darlings, as the PBO is doing right now).

When asked about this, Justin Trudeau said that he would put it to Justice Louise Arbour as part of her comprehensive review, so that the ombudsman’s office can be part of the solution to reforming the military, but I fear that she may recommend the officer of parliament route. Part of the problem right now is that the minister isn’t responsive, but I think the solution needs to be that the minister needs to go rather than the ombudsman needing additional powers. Would that we actually hold ministers accountable for their failures, but this government doesn’t seem to be too keen on that.

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QP: Not a question, but a direct plea

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On what promises to be the second last QP of the spring sitting, the three opposition leaders were all present, while Justin Trudeau as only available remotely, being in quarantine, once again leading only Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, in French, where he read a script about the military ombudsman’s comments on ministerial interference in investigations. Trudeau assured him they were working on the structural and cultural change necessary, including appointing Louise Arbour to reviewing the situation. O’Toole repeated the allegations in French, but didn’t phrase it as a question, but turned it into a plea to Canadians to vote out the Liberals. Trudeau repeated his same response in English. O’Toole then turned to the non-story about the Liberals paying for data services to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister. Trudeau stated this was for constituency casework, which was kept separate from political databases, and all rules were followed. O’Toole tried to turn this into an expansive statement about Liberal “corruption,” and demanded to know if any other contracts were given to Tom Pitfield, and Trudeau talked around the Conservatives slinging mud and hoping to see what would stick. O’Toole produced a document that claims that a contract was given to Pitfield, and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were only focused on narratives and not facts, that all parties use case management databases, and all rules were followed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, in person, and complained about the new border measures announced yesterday, complaining they were arbitrary. Trudeau insisted this was part of a gradual reopening and more stages would be announced soon. Blanchet complained there were more rules than variants, and Trudeau said that while the leader of the Bloc may want simple answer, but they needed to ensure that Canadians were kept safe. 

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he railed about that military ombudsman’s report, and Trudeau read that they have been committed to structural and cultural change, and that they have taken more concrete actions recently, including some new appointments and $236 million in the budget. Singh switched to French to complain that some benefit were being reduced, and Trudeau recited that they were there for as long as Canadians needed them, and pleaded with the NDP to pass the budget.

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Roundup: Clown show at the bar

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The move to call the Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, to the bar of the House of Commons yesterday, was a complete clown show. After the Speaker read his admonishment, the Chamber descended to a back-and-forth of points of order, points of privilege, and a discussion of moving a motion on sending the Sergeant-at-Arms to the PHAC offices to search them and seize the unredacted documents (and good luck with that, given that secret documents are meant to be kept in secure cabinets).

I found it exceedingly curious that none of the opposition leaders were present for this spectacle, given that they would doubtlessly like to use it for their own partisan purposes. I am also deeply unimpressed that the government only presented other possible options for the disclosure of those documents, such as only turning them over after more security measures were in place and the Commons Law Clerk had assistance from national security officials to ensure redactions could be done properly and in context, after the admonishment happened, which they should have done beforehand to prevent this incident from ever having taken place.

I’m not sure that a security-cleared Commons committee could have prevented this whole incident, because the committee that started this whole state of affairs is not the Defence committee (which is the natural place for such as security-cleared body) but the Canada-China committee, which was a make-work project of this current parliament set up in large part because Conservatives are trying to use China as their wedge issue, and the government went along with it. The whole demand for these documents is overblown partisan theatre, considering that the firing of the two scientists was almost certainly a paperwork issue (based on the reporting by those who have been on this story for two years), but the fact that the Lab is a secure facility simply complicated matters. This whole incident is one trumped-up incident after another, until it all combusted, and it’s no way to run a grown-up democracy, and yet here we are. Nobody comes out of this looking good.

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QP: Why are you sending cheques?

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It’s the beginning of the last week of the sitting calendar, and none of the leaders were present, in person or virtually. The Liberal benches once again remained virtually empty, save Anita Vandenbeld, who swapped with Mark Gerretsen a short while later. Candice Bergen led off in person, raising the story that Liberal MPs have been sending cheques to Tom Pitfield’s company, given his friendship with the prime minster. Pablo Rodriguez responded that this was for a system to help manage constituency files. Bergen tried again, and this time Rodriguez insisted that the Conservatives were obstructing the agenda. Bergen, after starting off with the wrong script, then demanded that the government demand that the president of PHAC turn over documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings, for which Patty Hajdu admonished her for playing games with national security, given that the documents were given to NSICOP. Gérard Deltell took over in French to repeat the demand, and Hajdu warned that the Conservatives were playing a dangerous game with national security, and quoted Thomas Juneau about his concerns. Deltell tried again, and Hajdu quoted Stephanie Carvin this time.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1407050831128584198

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded that EI reform better cover people in the cultural sector, and Carla Qualtrough assured him they were working to do just that. Therrien couldn’t take yes for an answer and demanded again, and Qualtrough insisted that the best thing they could do was to pass the budget.

Rachel Blaney conflated the bodies at residential schools with the court case challenging the Human Rights Tribunal ruling on First Nations children, for which Mark Miller stated that there were competing concerns in class action lawsuits, which is why they we negotiating compensation for them. Leah Gazan raised a Black Lives Matter protest about police state violence, and Bardish Chagger stated that they take the calls to action seriously, which is why they took measures in the budget to address this work.

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Roundup: Priority but not a priority

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There are officially three sitting days left for the House of Commons before they rise for the summer, and lo, the bill to reform mandatory minimum penalties is nowhere to be seen, in spite of the government saying it’s a priority. In fact, it’s still at second reading stage, meaning there’s no chance they’ll get it through at this point, in spite of their professed need to do this as a way of combatting systemic racism in the justice system. Nor has there been any debate on the bill to make some of the modernisation plans forced upon the courts by the pandemic to be more permanent (some of it very needed, other aspects a little less so).

The government, meanwhile, is introducing another bill today on a new disability support credit, after they tabled their bill to make changes to the Official Languages Act last week, and you can read this as either promises for an election platform, or a sign that they have plans they want to get to work on in the fall. This being said, it’s been deeply weird to have a sitting of Parliament go by without their being a metric tonne of justice-related legislation in the process, churning its way through both Chambers (and I was remarking in a forthcoming column that the fact that the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee isn’t already overloaded is virtually unheard of).

The procedural shenanigans that have dominated this sitting have been more acute than I’ve seen in all of my years on the Hill, and it’s meant a lot fewer bills making it over the goal line than we’ve seen in a very long time. The fact that you have private members’ bills outpacing government legislation is also virtually unprecedented. This whole session has been nothing but procedural warfare, and it’s only bolstered the narrative of the need for an election. I’m still not convinced anyone actually wants one (other than bored pundits), but the narrative is there if the government wants to grab it, and doesn’t look too nakedly opportunistic in doing so (which is probably easier said than done).

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Roundup: Being called to the bar of the Commons

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Following the motion in the House of Commons that the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada has been found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to turn over national security documents to a House of Commons committee, and is being summoned to the bar of the Chamber on Monday, said PHAC president is faced with a possibly impossible choice – if he turns over the documents, he is in breach of the Privacy Act and the Security of Information Act. If he doesn’t turn them over, he is in contempt of Parliament and its powers of production – and he has not been guaranteed immunity if he turns those documents over, not that the MPs who demand these documents care.

What is perhaps more worrying is the apparently cavalier way in which this is being dealt with, as there is very little security around this. The Canada-China committee, which wants these documents, has no security clearances, nor are their communications even secure – the “hybrid” sittings are done over Zoom, and while it’s a slightly more secure version than the commercial one, it’s still not actually secure. As well, I am not particularly moved by the fact that they say that any redactions will be done by the House of Commons’ law clerk, because I’m not sure that he has the necessary security clearance to view the documents unredacted, nor does he have the background and context to read those documents in and apply redactions properly. This is a pretty serious issue that these MPs are handwaving over, and frankly, the way that they have abused the Law Clerk and his office over the course of his parliament by demanding that he perform the redactions on millions of documents that could wind up leaking commercially sensitive information has been nothing short of shameful. It certainly hasn’t been filling me with any confidence that any of the information will be treated with proper seriousness considering that they aren’t promising actual safeguards – or immunity. It very much makes this look more like grandstanding over a proper exercise in accountability.

Meanwhile, here is a history of people who have been summoned to the bar in the Commons, the last time which was in 1913, where the person refused to testify, and spent four months in a local jail until the parliamentary session expired. It’s a power that has very much fallen into disuse, but interesting nevertheless.

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Roundup: The problem with pulling out of NSICOP

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The demand for documents related to the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab reached a boiling point yesterday, as the House of Commons voted to summon the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada to the bar in the Commons to face censure – and turn over the document – while Erin O’Toole also declared that he was pulling the Conservative members from NSICOP, alleging that there is some kind of cover-up happening.

For weeks, O’Toole and Michael Chong in particular, have been trying to paint a story that these two scientists caused a national security breach at the Lab, and that there have been a string of resignations over it. There’s no actual evidence for any of this – all signs point to the firing as being over a breach of intellectual property protocols, which was coupled with the fact that there used to be a permissive culture in the Lab where scientists (especially those deemed “favourites,” and one of the two fired scientists was indeed a favourite), did whatever they wanted and staff were instructed to make it happen – but that management changes started to end that culture, and it’s currently a fairly toxic workplace. (Check out my interview with the reporter who’s been on this story for two years here). The government has insisted they can’t turn over documents because of privacy laws, and the vague notions about national security because the two were marched out by federal RCMP, without any elaboration, and this opacity just made it easier to build up conspiracy theories – especially when they could tie them into the Wuhan lab in China, were samples of other viruses were sent to.

O’Toole withdrawing from NSICOP, a mere day after new members were appointed to the committee, damages the national security oversight in this country overall. Yes, there are legitimate criticisms about how NSICOP is structured – especially when it bumps up against the realities of a hung parliament – but it could also have been used to build trust between national security agencies and MPs, so that when it came up for review in five years, they may have been able to move toward a more UK-like model where it became a parliamentary committee. (More history in this thread). Some national security experts, like Stephanie Carvin, have argued that it should have been where initial determinations about those documents could be made, especially because they could be read in context – you can’t just read national security documents cold and make sense of them. But there is an additional, cultural problem for opposition MPs in this country (of all stripes) is that they prefer to remain ignorant in order to grandstand, and that’s exactly what O’Toole did yesterday – grandstand at the expense of the trust with national security agencies, and the cause of oversight of national security by parliamentarians. Short-term partisan considerations once again take the fore. What a way to run a democracy.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1405508435521806338

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QP: Preferring grandstanding to accountability or oversight

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While the prime minister remained in quarantine, we actually had three Liberals in the Chamber, for a change — Mark Gerretsen, Francis Drouin, and Marc Serré. Erin O’Toole led off in French, and read his scripted list of Sajjan’s alleged sins with a lot of conflation rather and random elements thrown in, and demanded his resignation. Chrystia Freeland started off by saying no woman should be subject to sexual misconduct, especially in the Forces, and added that they were committed to eliminating the toxic culture in the military. O’Toole switched to English to call on Liberals to vote for their motion to censure Sajjan, and Freeland repeated her response in English. O’Toole insisted that the toxic culture started with the prime minister, and wondered what Freeland knew of the Vance allegations, and Freeland responded by listing the great things on Sajjan’s record as minister. O’Toole then switched back to French and demanded the unredacted documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings, and Freeland assured him that they take national security seriously. When O’Toole then ratcheted up the politicisation of NSICOP and stated that Conservatives would withdraw from the committee, and Patty Hajdu, a little flat-footed, said that she was disappointed to hear O’Toole say that.

Marilène Gill led for the Bloc, and she gave a rather torqued reading of what the vote on yesterday’s Supply Day motion on provinces amending their constitutions, and demanded the federal government apply Quebec’s Bill 101. Mélanie Joly assured her their legislation would protect French. Gill pushed the matter, and Joly accused her of pushing a sovereigntist agenda.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded the further extension of pandemic benefits, for which Carla Qualtrough listed the benefits in Bill C-30, which was why they needed it to pass. Heather McPherson repeated the question in English, and Qualtrough repeated her response.

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Roundup: Lies about inflation and the central bank

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For weeks, the Conservatives (and Pierre Poilievre in particular) have been making a bunch of bogus and nonsensical attacks against the government and what they term the “inflation tax,” which makes absolutely no sense, but is predicated on the wild notion that the Bank of Canada is allegedly printing money to finance the government’s “out of control” deficits, and that this is going to drive up inflation and turn us into Venezuela. It’s bullshit – the Bank of Canada is independent from government (and it should be shocking that the Conservatives are suggesting otherwise given the history of the independence of the central bank in this country), quantitative easing is not “printing money,” and given that a year ago, in the early days of the pandemic, we were facing deflation as a country, an expansionary monetary policy was the right move to make. We’re still in need of stimulus, because the recovery has been so uneven, but the Bank of Canada knows this, because it’s their job.

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1405250437838610432

With this in mind, it was no surprise yesterday that when the inflation figures were reported, the fact that it clocked in at an annualized 3.6% had the Conservatives, and Erin O’Toole in particular, trying to make hay of this – and media outlets didn’t help with their headlines that this was the highest rate in a decade, without putting that in proper context. Now, part of that is the base effect of last year’s massive drop, which is going to take time to work itself out in the data; but it’s also in part based on factors from right now, the most important of which is housing prices, which have skyrocketed as demand has outstripped supply. None of this is a surprise, and none of this has anything to do with the size of the federal deficit or the Bank of Canada’s quantitative easing, and yet that is the narrative being painted. It didn’t help that O’Toole’s examples lacked any logical consistency, such as blaming increases in post-secondary education on the federal government, when that’s a provincial jurisdiction. Not that truth matters.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1405152487821168642

Compounding this, however, is the completely irresponsible way in which this was being spun by shows like Power & Politics, where the framing was “the cost of everything is going up!” followed by asking panellists if the government should do something about it. And to their credit, most of those panellists said no, leave it for the Bank of Canada, but the fact that the host kept torqueing this notion about “prices are rising!” and trying to constantly get people to say something – anything – inflammatory about inflation, was not only irresponsible, but shows actual contempt for proper economics reporting by the gods damned CBC. They don’t care about actual information or reasonable discussion, they want the false balance of opposed partisans battling it out, and the “drama” that creates. It does such a disservice to everyone that it amazes me that they can get away with it.

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