Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: A curious appointment bottleneck

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There was an interesting revelation in the Hill Timesyesterday in that the government is sitting on more than 100 vetted Senate candidates while twelve seats remain vacant, and yet put out a call for yet more applications while the advisory committees are all empty, which would be the people who are supposed to vet all of those incoming applications. But that number amazes me – 100 names that are vetted and ready to go for those twelve vacancies, and the government isn’t moving on them, adding one or two names every couple of months at random intervals. And don’t get me wrong – I’m firmly opposed to mass appointments, but that also means that the Chamber should be in full operation and that vacancies should be filled as they happen, which are one or two at a time. Add to that the fact that because these are all being named as Independents, the kinds of mentoring that should happen isn’t, so at this point it almost doesn’t matter if we get all twelve in one fell swoop because the result would be the same either way.

The other thing that is very interesting is that in the interview with former appointment committee member Indira Samarasekera, she mentioned that they identified key skill areas that the Senate is in need of and that their names have reflected that, but these aren’t necessarily the people that Trudeau is naming in the long run. Which isn’t to say that Trudeau has simply been naming ideological Liberals and calling them Independents (despite what the Conservatives in the Senate are claiming), but it is hard to deny that there isn’t a similarity to most of the candidates in the fact that they tend to be activists from the social sciences as opposed to some of the business, foreign affairs, and trade experts that Samarasekera noted that they recommended. Despite this all, the piece provides an interesting window on just what seems to be the bottleneck in appointments that this government has a problem with making, and which continues to be a slow-moving crisis of their credibility.

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Roundup: Upping the Trans Mountain drama

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Late afternoon yesterday, Kinder Morgan put out a surprise press release saying that they were suspending “non-essential activities” and spending related to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, citing the political fights still underway on the project. It’s a transparent move to try and force a political solution to some of the drama underway, and it certainly got everyone’s attention. Within the hour, Jim Carr was standing before reporters to assure them that all options were on the table, but by that point, Rachel Notley was demanding “concrete action” from the federal government, while Jason Kenney started his performative caterwauling about how terrible the federal government has been on this, and the federal conservatives promptly followed suit, ignoring their own record on pipelines in the meantime. Andrew Leach, however, has kept receipts, and immediately called them out on it. (John Horgan, incidentally, denies that he’s been harassing the project).

When Leach called out the fact that the previous government didn’t hold a press conference about the approval of Northern Gateway, and didn’t travel to BC to promote it, Raitt didn’t get his point and responded with a news article from the day which pointed out directly that the minister’s office sent out a release and refused all questions, after which Harper noted in the Commons that jurisdiction was deferred to the NEB. So the question is, if that was good enough for the Conservatives then, why is it so terrible that the Liberals are doing more and being more vocal about Trans Mountain now?

Paul Wells, meanwhile, takes a survey of the landscape in the wake of these developments, and continues to express some doubts as to what is going on. I personally have to wonder what more the federal government can do in the face of the provincial tit-for-tat from Alberta and BC, seeing as they already have jurisdiction over this pipeline, and they realistically can’t bigfoot the actions of the NEB, which is a quasi-judicial body. After all, there is the rule of law to contend with. To date, BC really hasn’t made any concrete actions that the government can take to court, for example, and certainly nothing that would merit reviving the powers of disallowance from constitutional dormancy. Kenney et al.’s demand to declare Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution is legally illiterate, so what else, pray tell, should the federal government do? I’ll be curious to see what verifiable solutions present themselves in the coming days.

To round it off, Kevin Milligan also offered some observations on the situation on the ground.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/983120057608781824

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/983121108852289536

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/983123756355694592

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Roundup: Pallister’s dubious threats

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Manitoba premier Brian Pallister is looking to talk tough with the federal government, essentially daring them to increase the carbon price that he’s instituting in his province with a threat to take the federal government to court if they do. This after Pallister’s government already explored the notion of taking the government to court over the imposition of a federal carbon price backstop in the first place, and deciding that it wasn’t something they could win. For reference, Pallister’s government says they’ll implement a $25/tonne carbon tax, and leave it there rather than raise it every year (the point of which is, of course, to drive businesses and consumers to make choices that mean paying fewer of these carbon prices), and Catherine McKenna is basically saying “That’s great, but if your price doesn’t increase in 2020 like it’s supposed to, we’ll charge the difference.” While Pallister is trying to stand with other small-c conservative leaders – most of whom aren’t yet in office – I’m really not sure where he thinks he has the legal footing on this one.

Why does this matter? Well, recall the Environment Commissioner’s report last week that was done in concert with provincial auditors general, and as Paul Wells points out in this excellent piece, they could demonstrate that it wasn’t just the Harper government not doing their part (as McKenna was so quick to focus on), but rather the provinces weren’t doing their part either – especially those who were talking a good game. Nobody is taking this seriously, and the ability to hit our targets gets further away. And in the midst of Wells’ excoriation of these political leaders and their big talk on the environment, he drives home the message that we can’t believe any of them. And he’s right. Which is why we can’t believe Pallister’s rhetoric in this either, as he claims that his province’s plan is better than the federal one, so they shouldn’t have to add the increased carbon tax as part of that. Sorry, but no. The common carbon price across the country is about more than just reductions as it is about preventing carbon leakage to other jurisdictions in the country (and possibly elsewhere, depending on how well its designed), and he should know that. But just like the federal conservatives playing cute with trying to insist that McKenna should be able to tell them exactly how many megatonnes a $50/tonne carbon price will reduce, it’s not how this works. A carbon price is not a scrubber in a smokestack – it’s a market mechanism that is supposed to drive demand and innovation, and it works in jurisdictions where it is implemented properly. It’s not just about a claim that their system with a lower price will be better, which is a claim we shouldn’t believe anyway. It’s time for everyone to play hardball with politicians and these promises, and that means more than just disingenuous questions or demands, but actual accountability for what mechanisms are supposed to do and how they’re being implemented.

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Roundup: Three senators went to Washington

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Three Conservative senators went to Washington DC to talk about marijuana legalization, and you may be shocked to learn that they were not reassured by any of it. They were told that Homeland Security isn’t adding any new resources to the border so Canadian travellers may face more delays, and they were told of all of the new cartels that have emerged as the crime rate has skyrocketed in Colorado. And oh, how the loopholes around home-growing are being exploited by criminal elements. Woe! Most of this should be taken with a particular grain of salt – there has been no proven causal relationship between the increased crime rate in Colorado with marijuana legalization, and if there are Mexican cartels looking to exploit loopholes to export it from the state, I’m not sure that’s as big of an issue in Canada if the whole country is legalizing instead of a single province. And as for the border, well, individual agents already have immense discretionary powers now, so nothing is really going to change there.

What was curious in all of this is how the Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder, complained that these three Conservatives were “undermining the government” by taking this trip. I’m not sure that it’s a very credible complaint considering that they weren’t claiming to be headed down there on behalf of the government – rather, it was under the rubric that they haven’t been getting straight answers from the government, so they wanted to get answers for themselves. It’s almost as if they were exercising the discretion afforded to them as part of the “independent Senate” where they don’t have to ask the government’s permission to engage in such activities. And let’s not kid ourselves – this was a very partisan exercise, and I’m sure that most Canadians can see that it clearly was. They’re not exactly hiding it, but they’re also doing their duty as the opposition to get the information they think they need to hold government to account. The sky isn’t falling here, and Harder is coming across as a little thin-skinned in making the complaints he is.

Oh, and for those of you asking, it’s likely that this trip was paid for by the Senate, but bear in mind that Senators are allowed travel to Washington as part of their duties (and in fact, a trip to Washington is included as part of their annual travel points). There’s no actual scandal here for anyone to point to.

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Roundup: Propaganda and democratic interference

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During a media availability yesterday, Justin Trudeau mentioned the Russian embassy’s propaganda efforts in linking Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather to Nazi publications in World War II as a reason for expelling diplomats that he accused of interfering in Canadian democracy. Almost immediately, we got some of the more obtuse pundits in our commentariat fretting about why we didn’t expel those diplomats at the time that happened, and why the government couldn’t just say that last week when they were asked how those Russians had interfered. And to clarify, Trudeau cited that as an example, which is very much interfering with our democratic processes. And as for why they didn’t expel them earlier, I direct you once again to Stephanie Carvin’s Open Canada piece about the expulsions, and why we allow intelligence officers to stay when we know that they’re engaging in espionage activities. Seriously – go read it.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/981654741783597056

And funnily enough, Carvin had pointed to that attempted Russian propagandizing days earlier when responding to Susan Delacourt’s column that wondered why we weren’t taking the allegations of Russian interference with more alarm that we have been. As Carvin points out – it’s not just cyber that we have to worry about, and if MPs were actually doing their jobs, they would be far more focused on this issue rather than re-litigating the Atwal Affair™ again and again to score cheap points.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/981274900890398720

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/981274905906835457

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/981274910797414400

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Roundup: The AG’s vacancy problem

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The Auditor General was on Power Play yesterday to talk about his recent examination of the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority, and how the lack of appointments to the board meant a lack of oversight for the CEO, who then abused his expenses. Michael Ferguson then went on to talk about the greater pattern of unfilled vacancies by this government (which will be the focus of one of his upcoming reports), and it’s a verifiable problem that this government has, in large part because as part of their reform of the system to ensure that more women and minorities were appointed, they changed to a system of seeking out nominees to having people apply for positions. For as much merit as ensuring more diversity among appointees has, the way they’ve handled it has been a gong show.

All of this is well and good to point out, but where I have a problem is where the AG suggests that if governments can’t fill these positions in a timely manner that we should consider a system where these boards have their own nomination committees to make their own appointments. This should raise a major alarm because it’s a sign of creeping technocracy and undermining accountability and responsible government. Government makes these appointments so that there is someone who can be held to account for them. Who is accountable if boards nominate their own members? How do we ensure that they don’t turn into cesspits of nepotism after we worked long and hard to ensure that we have taken patronage out of our current appointment systems?

Unfortunately, this is not a surprise with Ferguson, whose recommendations around an external audit committee for the Senate ignores the detrimental effect that this would have on Parliament’s ability to be self-governing. I do think it’s problematic that you have an officer of parliament who keeps advocating for greater technocracy and the undermining of our parliamentary democracy (and worse, that nobody in the media will dare to call him on it, because apparently we worship auditors general and believe that they can do no wrong). His observations about the problems around appointments are valid, don’t get me wrong. It’s his solutions that are untenable in the extreme.

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Roundup: Justice bill under fire

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The big news over the long weekend was the Liberals’ major criminal justice reform bill, which was tabled at the end of last week. It’s a big bill because it’s a big topic, but also because the government decided to fold in two previous bills that have been languishing on the Order Paper so that they can all get passed at once. One of those bills has clauses that have been overtaken by a previous bill that again, languishes on the Order Paper. And yet, despite this major reform push, one of the biggest problems facing the justice system, mandatory minimum sentences, which are clogging the courts, remain intact because this bill doesn’t address them, and the minister is shrugging in terms of saying the debate is still ongoing with provinces and courts over those. Among changes in this bill are severely limiting preliminary inquiries, which could mean that a number of cases go to trial where they wouldn’t have otherwise given that the point of a preliminary inquiry was to determine whether there was enough evidence to secure a conviction. Another change is to eliminate peremptory challenges in jury selection, something which has gained a lot of attention in the past couple of months after the Gerald Stanley trial in Saskatchewan had an all-white jury.

None of this is without controversy, and defence lawyers are raising the alarm. Lawyers like Michael Spratt say the changes will not speed up trials, and will actually eliminate some procedural fairness from the system. The elimination of peremptory challenges is far more contentious, with some defence lawyers saying it won’t fix anything while another says it could eliminate the current abuses. One law professor calls it a good first step, but lists other recommendations to increase access to justice in remote communities and improve jury selection.

On a related note, it looks like Saskatchewan hasn’t been selecting juries in a way that complies with their own provincial laws. While this may not be enough to cause an appeal in the Stanley trial, which has put much of the focus on the issue of peremptory challenges, it does raise questions about jury selection laws in this country that are part of these reforms.

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QP: Inventing a conflict from whole cloth

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With the Easter long weekend upon us, it was Friday-on-a-Thursday in the House of Commons, and Question Period was no exception — only slightly better attended than a regular Thursday. Candice Bergen led off with a disingenuous framing of the Raj Grewal non-story, and Bardish Chagger noted that everything was cleared with the Ethics Commissioner, and that Grewal’s guest at the event registered through the Canada-India Business Council. Bergen demanded to know who in the PMO authorised the invitation, and Chagger reiterated her response. Alain Rayes was up next, and demanded the prime minister to sign off on a human trafficking bill from the previous parliament, to which Marco Mendicino noted that there was a newer, better bill on the Order Paper (but didn’t mention that it has sat there for months). On a second go-around, Mendicino retorted with a reminder that the previous government cut police and national security agencies. Ruth Ellen Brosseau led off for the NDP, and raised the fact that Stephen Bronfman and a government board appointee were at a Liberal fundraiser last night, to which Andy Fillmore reminded him that they have made fundraisers more transparent. Charlie Angus carried on with the same topic in a more churlish tone, got the same answer, and on a second go-around, François-Philippe Champagne praised the appointment to their Invest Canada agency. Brosseau got back up to list allegations of harassment at Air Canada, to which Roger Cuzner reminded them that Bill C-65 will cover all federally regulated industries.

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Roundup: Too omnibus or not too omnibus?

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The opposition is crying foul over the government’s 556-page budget implementation bill and moaning that it breaks the promise about omnibus bills. It’s not an unfair point, but one that requires a bit of nuance. For one, the government never promised that they would never table an omnibus bill – only that their omnibus bills would not be abusive, and yes, there is a difference. Omnibus bills can be useful tools, particularly if it’s regarding matters that would have a number of coordinated amendments to the same existing statute. That way, you don’t have six different bill all amending the same piece of legislation (like the Criminal Code, for example, or the Income Tax Act, if it’s a budget bill), possibly causing pile-ups of amendments to some of the same sections of the bill. The overriding criteria for it not to be abusive, however, is that it should all touch on the same subject matter. The abusive bills of the previous government didn’t do that, and they stuffed everything into it, including a number of unrelated measures (like environmental legislation) into budget bills in order to get them passed expeditiously – a technique they started during the minority years, so that they could huff and puff about confidence measures and not sending Canadians to the polls too soon; they simply carried on the technique once they had a majority.

Does this current budget implementation bill reach that level of being abusive? Not that I can see. Glancing through the bill, the only section that raises a possible eyebrow is the section within that creates the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act – the carbon tax legislation. Should it be separated? Well, it does have to do with fiscal measures as it deals with the federal carbon price backstop (which yes, is a carbon tax for those provinces who refuse to implement one), as opposed to, say, environmental assessments. And the government has pointed out that they have circulated draft legislation prior to this, so it’s not coming out of the blue or as a complete surprise stuffed into the bill along with a number of other surprises. But, if the opposition wants to challenge it, the Speaker has the power to split the bill if they can make their case convincingly enough. The other issue is that the government hasn’t pre-declared a timetable for when they want this to be passed, but it will likely mean some marathon committee time. Let’s just hope that the opposition doesn’t demand days and days of useless Second Reading “debate” first, which would eat into the committee time, because that’s where a bill like this should spend its time.

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QP: A greatest hits of disingenuous complaints

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On caucus day, with the benches close to full, we had all leaders present for Question Period, and yes, Justin Trudeau ready for his proto-PMQs. Andrew Scheer led off as usual, mini-lectern on desk, and Andrew Scheer raised the non-story of MP Raj Grewal’s extracurricular business whose associate attended the now infamous reception in India. Trudeau replied that they signed a billion dollars in trade deals in India, and when Scheer raised another MP’s dealings on that trip, Trudeau took up a script to read yet more praise about the relationship between Canada and India. Scheer then returned to the demands for Daniel Jean to appear at committee and the concerns that media reported they were told details that they couldn’t print. Trudeau reminded him that a full classified briefing was offered, and Scheer has turned it down because he wants to play politics. Scheer tried again, and Trudeau reached further into the days of Stephen Harper of muzzling scientists and ignoring truths that clashed with their messaging. Scheer then moved over to the issue of gifts plural given and received between Trudeau and the Aga Khan, and Trudeau noted that this was all dealt with via the Ethics Commissioner and that Scheer was simply engaging in personal attacks. Guy Caron was up next, demanding taxes on Netflix, to which Trudeau reminded him that Netflix wouldn’t pay those taxes — ordinary Canadians would. Caron then raised the size of the budget implementation bill, and Trudeau listed all of the good things in it. Shiela Malcolmson called said bill a betrayal, and Trudeau read off more gender measures from the budget. Peter Julian then went for another round of the same, and got a similar response.

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