Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: A justified time allocation

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Amidst the Conservatives’ planned filibusters and procedural gamesmanship as part of their campaign to demand that the National Security Advisor be hauled before committee to answer questions on the Atwal Affair™, Government House Leader Bardish Chagger is starting to play hard ball in return. When the Conservatives tried to filibuster in order to delay debate on the gun control bill after already delaying the debate by means of their vote-a-thon (for which they continue to blame the Liberals for their own self-inflicted discomfort, like a kid who keeps hitting himself in the hopes that it will persuade his parents to give him something they’ve denied him), Chagger invoked time allocation in order to get the bill moving to committee. And – scandalously! – she gave them a whole extra day of second reading debate. The horror!

Err, except no, that’s actually totally a fair amount of second reading debate for any bill, no matter what it is. Why? Because the point of second reading is to debate the broad merits of a bill. Do we agree with its overall aims, yes or no. It’s not about debating its intricacies, which is what committee study is for, and it’s more than legitimate for the government to want to move it to committee so that it can get proper study. That’s the way things should work, in a properly functioning Westminster parliament. But in Canada? No, we’ve developed this ridiculous culture where the parties insist on interminable days-long second reading debate, and by “debate,” we mean read twenty-minute-long prepared speeches into the record while nobody pays attention. It’s not debate, and it’s part of what we really need to address when it comes to fixing the broken culture inside the House of Commons. So it’s not actually a scandal that time allocation was imposed on this bill, and I would add that it’s not such a bad thing that Chagger is learning to play hard ball.

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Senate QP: All about Trans Mountain

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After a delay due to votes in the Commons, Senate QP got underway with special guest star, natural resources minister Jim Carr. Senator Larry Smith led off, raising the Trans Mountain pipeline and wondering how the minister was supposed to move the project forward. Carr noted that the government approved the pipeline because they believe it’s good for Canada, and noted that while BC has decided it wants to consult, Canada has already done so in order to not make the same mistakes that were made with Northern Gateway. Smith wondered if there was any kind of contingency plan to deal with future obstacles, and Carr noted that they had already intervened before the National Energy Board, who agreed with the government position, and permitting continues at pace and that pace is determined by Kinder Morgan.  Continue reading →

QP: A sweater and an overnight bag

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With all leaders in the House, and all hands on deck, we were ready to see just what fireworks would transpire. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, concerned about the “inappropriate gift” that the PM received from the Aga Khan that was not disclosed. Justin Trudeau stood up to reiterate well-worn talking points about the previous Ethics Commissioner’s report and how they worked to strengthen future disclosures. When Scheer pressed, Trudeau assured him that during the holidays, family friends exchange gifts and he gave the Aga Khan a sweater, and got an overnight bag in return. Scheer changed topics, and demanded the briefing from Daniel Jean for the committee. Trudeau retorted that a briefing was offered to Scheer and he refused, and after a second round of the same, Scheer thundered that he was only offered a classified briefing so that he could stop asking questions. Trudeau gave the riposte that only a Harper Conservative would think that giving information to the media was hiding the truth. Guy Caron was up next, and he returned to the question of the “unacceptable” gift, insisting that it had to be worth over $1000 to be deemed such, and it couldn’t have been an overnight bag (Really? What if it was a Louis Vuitton bag?). Trudeau reiterated that he disclosed the gift to the Commissioner as part of the investigation. Caron was not mollified, and he railed that this was not open or transparent. Trudeau disagreed, and insisted that they were delivering on their promises. Charlie Angus got up next to deliver some sanctimony — and some swipes at the Aga Khan along the way — and Trudeau reminded him that the system is to disclose to the Commissioner. Angus went for a second round, and got the same in return. Continue reading →

Roundup: That $1 trillion figure

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The big scary headline yesterday was that Canada’s market debt had reached $1 trillion. OH NOES! screamed the commentators, and the Conservatives most especially (albeit not in Question Period, but at committee). Part of the problem with this figure, however, is how it’s being reported, and most especially, being compared to things like a household mortgage, which it is absolutely nothing like. For starters, the “market debt” figure being reported there adds a great many things into it – things like the debts of Crown Corporations like CMHC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, or Export Development Canada. These may have federal backstops, but with BDC and EDC, for example, these are important vehicles for entrepreneurs and exporters to expand their businesses, which is generally good for the economy. And you can bet that the “fiscal hawks” out there are disingenuously bundling this into the federal government’s net debt, or sub-national government debt, and giving themselves the vapours to prove a point, which isn’t necessarily helpful.

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And as much as the Conservatives are snarking at Bill Morneau over this figure, ignoring how much they added to the national debt in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 (much of the spending coming too late as the recovery had already started when they spent the money, which was also not necessarily spent efficiently) or the fact that when the Liberals took office in 2015, there was a $70 billion hole in GDP because of the mini-recession that happened in part due to the drop in oil prices. That $70 billion is largely where their increased deficit figures come from, not that they communicate this very effectively. But despite Kevin Page’s warning that interest on debt is the fastest growing line item in the federal budget, debt-to-GDP is going down, and the deficit is shrinking faster than initially reported because the economy has been growing faster than expected. Current PBO figures show that there is no debt bomb – federal figures are in a downward trajectory sustainably. I’m not sure that tearing our hair out over this $1 trillion figure is helpful, particularly because it bundles in a lot of things, and the reporting on that isn’t making it clear. It’s just a big number that people are supposed to get upset over, which helps nobody understand the true fiscal situation, of the levers that governments have to deal with it.

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QP: Concern trolling about Daniel Jean

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While the memo went out cancelling travel for Conservative MPs, it apparently wasn’t received by Andrew Scheer, who was not present. That left it up to Candice Bergen to lead off, railing that the government forced them to vote for 21 hours in a “cover-up.” Justin Trudeau said that Scheer was offered a classified briefing by the public servants in PCO, and he declined. Bergen insisted that they wanted the same briefing that the media received, and Trudeau reiterated his answer, and that this was really about petty politics. Bergen retorted that members of the media aren’t sworn into Privy Council, and repeated her question. Trudeau said it was puzzling as to why Scheer turned town the briefing in order to play politics. Pierre Paul-Hus stoood is to repeat the question in French, and he got the same response in French as he did in English, with Trudeau digging in that the Conservatives would rather play politics than debate gun control. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, railing that only a small number of tax evasion files were opened by CRA, to which Trudeau took up a script to reminded him that they invested a billion dollars and have a thousand ongoing audits, and forty criminal investigations underway. Caron railed that KPMG was getting away while waitress’ tips are being targeted, and Trudeau gave some bland assurances that everyone will pay their fair share of taxes. Charlie Angus was up next, railing about the “close links” between Facebook, the Liberals, and actors identified in the current scandals. Trudeau took up a script to read some assurances that they respect privacy rights, and they are committed to ensuring Canadians can trust in our institutions. Angus demanded assurances that they would not balk at these actors being called to committee, but Trudeau read some more bland assurances.

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Roundup: Incoming procedural shenanigans

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Hang onto your hats, dear readers, because it looks like we’re up for another week of procedural gamesmanship as the Conservatives continue to try to make the Atwal Affair happen. Our hint is that the Conservative whip, Mark Strahl, has taken the unusual action of cancelling all MP travel, and wants to ensure that it’s all hands on deck for this short week (but one wonders if that includes Andrew Scheer, who has been barely in Ottawa lately, including on sitting weeks, as he continues his various tours across the country). That, and the fact that it seems that this is the time of year that there is some kind of procedural showdown, judging from the past couple of years. (Recall that around this time last year, the Commons ground to a halt over Bardish Chagger’s proposals for reforming the Standing Orders).

So what can we expect? No idea yet, but one imagines that the stops will be pulled out, whether it’s interminable points of privilege, filibusters at committees, or attempts to force concurrence motions on committee reports. Whatever it is, we’ll see how long they either have the stamina for it (unlike last week’s vote-a-thon tantrum), given the upcoming long weekend/two-week constituency break, or whether the government will back down (as they have tended to in the face of such obstruction techniques). Maybe the government will be able to issues manage/communicate their way out of a wet paper bag this time and effectively say that the opposition is wasting time that could be better spent debating gun control/the budget implementation bill/etc, etc. Or maybe the Conservatives will have better traction with their disingenuous narratives about the Atwal Affair and the absurd notion that the government is “muzzling” the National Security Advisor from appearing at committee (never mind that he shouldn’t appear based on Westminster norms, and that the government has pointed to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians to investigate the issue if the Conservatives are so motivated, if they actually cared about accountability and were not simply looking to public humiliate a senior public servant and the government). Suffice to say, nobody is going to cover themselves in glory over this, everyone’s patience will be tested, and nothing will be accomplished in the long run. But what else is new?

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Roundup: The 21-hour tantrum

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If there is a parliamentary equivalent to a toddler having a full-on meltdown and screaming and pounding the floors after not getting their way, then you pretty much have the setting for the 21-hours of votes that the Conservatives forced upon the House of Commons. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think there was value in the exercise – I think having MPs vote on line items in the Estimates is a very good thing given that the Estimates are at the very core of their purpose as MPs, and we should see more of this (in a more organized fashion that they can do in more manageable chunks, mind you). But this wasn’t the exercise that the Conservatives billed it as.

Scheer’s framing is completely disingenuous. These votes were not blocking their efforts, and had nothing to do with the Atwal Affair, or the attempt to get Daniel Jean hauled before a committee. That particular motion was proposed, debated, and voted down on Wednesday. Forcing individual votes on the Estimates was a tantrum in retaliation. It was not about transparency. And it was tactically stupid – there would be far more effective ways to go about grinding Parliament to a halt to get their way rather than this tactic because there was an end point to it (and one which would have been at some point on Saturday if they hadn’t decided to let everyone go home).

The other reason it was stupid is because they forced votes on line items, it allowed the Liberals to spend the whole time tweeting about the things that the Conservatives voted down, like money for police, or veterans, or what have you. They handed that narrative to the Liberals on a silver platter. (The NDP, incidentally, voted yea or nay, depending on the line item, rather than all against, looking like they actually took it seriously). And what did the Conservatives spend their time tweeting? Juvenile hashtags, attempts to shame the Liberals (“You have the power to stop these votes. Just get the PM to agree.”) And in the end, it was the Conservatives who blinked and called it off (but declared victory and that they “drew attention” to the issue, of course).

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This all having been said, there are more shenanigans to be called out amidst this. There was a whole saga about whether or not PCO offered Andrew Scheer a briefing, which his office denied, and then suggestions that Scheer wouldn’t accept it because he wanted as much of it made public as possible (again, with more conflicting versions of how much they wanted to be public and how much in camera). But even with the demands for public briefings, it trips up the parliamentary notion that public servants aren’t called to committees – ministers are, because they’re responsible. (Deputy ministers can be called as the accounting officers of their departments, but the National Security Advisor is not a deputy minister). And with that in mind, why exactly would the government put a long-time civil servant up for the sole purpose of having the opposition humiliate him? Because we all know what happened to Dick Fadden when he was hauled before a committee to talk about his fears about Chinese infiltration, and it damaged our national security because MPs couldn’t help themselves but play politics over it. Nobody covered themselves in glory over this exercise, but this wasn’t some great exercise in preserving the opposition’s rights. This was a full-on temper tantrum, and the more attention we pay to it as though it were a serious exercise, the more we reward the behaviour.

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Roundup: Artificial cannabis vote drama

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It started with a bunch of headlines about how it was do-or-die day for the marijuana bill in the Senate. Apparently, nobody can canvas vote numbers any longer, so there was the suggestion that it was going to be close, and that that it could be defeated. The Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” even went before the cameras to play up the drama of not knowing the votes. As context, a number of senators were travelling on committee business, and there was a scramble to get them back to town in order to ensure they could vote on the bill (and while CBC gave the headline that it was the “government” scrambling, that would imply that it was actually government staffers doing the calling, not the ISG’s coordinators, as it actually was). The bill eventually passed Second Reading, and it wasn’t even a close vote.

With a new captive audience, reporters who don’t normally tune into the Senate got the Conservative senators’ greatest hits of over the top, ridiculous denunciations of the bill, and the usual canards as though this was just inventing marijuana rather than controlling something that some twenty percent of youths (and the 45-to-65 crowd as well) have used in the past year. Senator Boivenu got so emotional that he called the bill a “piece of shit” that won’t “protect people.” And on it went. From a press event in New Brunswick, Trudeau said that Senators are supposed to improve bills, not defeat them, though to be clear, they do have an absolute veto for a reason, and they refrain from using it unless it’s a dire circumstance because they know that they don’t have a democratic mandate. This bill, however, doesn’t really come close to qualifying as a reason to defeat a government bill (though I’m not sure all of the senators have the memo about using their mandate sparingly).

Since 1980, the Senate has only defeated three government bills, and in each time it was at third reading, which means that they let them go through committee before deciding to defeat them. In two of those cases, it was Charter rights at play, and the budget implementation bill in 1993 included some cuts to programmes and “streamlining” or boards and tribunals that were a straw too far even for some Progressive Conservative senators that they voted against their own government. This particular bill doesn’t rise to either of those particular tests. As for what would happen if it were to be defeated, well, the government can’t introduce the same bill twice in a single session. The way around that? Prorogue and reintroduce it. It would only delay, which may in fact hurt the Conservatives in the end.

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QP: Scrapping over data mining

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While Justin Trudeau was off to New Brunswick, and Andrew Scheer elsewhere, it was up to Erin O’Toole to lead off, reading a quote about the job of the opposition to ask questions, attributing it to the PM, and wondered why the government wouldn’t let Daniel Jean appear before committee. Ralph Goodale calmly responded that the crux of the motion was around the Atwal invitation, that it was rescinded. O’Toole insisted two more times that MPs had a right to hear the briefing, but Goodale defended Jean’s career and insisted there were no contradictions in the positions put forward. Pierre Paul-Hus tried again twice in French, and Goodale poked holes in the Conservative Supply Day motion in return. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and decried that only $15 million out of the $1 billion given to CRA to combat tax evasion. Lebouthillier reminded him that the investment was over five years, and it would be ramped up in order to take a strategic approach. Caron then railed that the CRA’s anti-avoidance committee met in secret, while Lebouthillier said that it was a committee of experts that meets as necessary. Peter Julian took over in French, and demanded taxation on web giants, to which Bill Morneau said that they were conducting studies to ensure that the system would work well. Julian changed to English to insist that studying the issue would mean doing nothing, but Morneau reiterated that they wanted to have a plan before acting.

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Roundup: Threatening marathon votes

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Because apparently this Jaspal Atwal issue refuses to die, the Conservatives have decided to spend today’s Supply Day motion demanding that the Prime Minister instruct the National Security and Intelligence Advisory to attend the public safety committee and give the MPs there the same briefing he allegedly gave journalists (on background). Or else.

That’s right – in order to overplay their hands, they’re openly threatening to force some forty hours’ worth of votes on the Estimates as consequence for defeating this motion – because that doesn’t come across as petulant or childish. And while they couch it in the fact that they have a responsibility to hold the government to account – which they do – they’ve also been demonstrably obtuse about this whole affair. The different versions of what happen are not impossible to reconcile – they are, in fact, eminently reconcilable. The PM has defended the facts put forward by the senior officials, and have stated that they did not put him up to it. Media outlets have since dribbled out versions of “reviewing my notes” and toning down some of  their reporting of what was actually said to show that it wasn’t actually as inflammatory as initially reported as (because by the point at which it initially happened, they were focused more on wedging it into the narrative they had all decided on rather than acknowledging what was happening on the ground if it didn’t fit that frame). Nobody has acted responsibly in this – the government, the opposition, or the media. And digging in to entrench the narrative that somehow we have damaged relations with India (not true, unless you’ve conveniently forgotten the fiction about how it led to new tariffs) and that the trip was some giant disaster (forget the investments or the constructive conversations with Indian officials) is just making it all worse for everyone.

The bigger issue, however, is the fact that this committee is not the venue for this conversation to happen, and MPs are kidding themselves if they think it is. We have the National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians to review this kind of intelligence data in confidence, and then issuing a report on what was said. Commons committees have been down this road before, and have actively damaged our national security and intelligence agencies because they can’t help themselves, and now they’re demanding the chance to do it yet again. There are proper ways to hold the government to account. This planned stunt and threat is not it.

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