Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: Use your Australian comparisons wisely

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If it’s not the leadership omnishambles in the UK that’s holding our attention, it’s the indecisive election result in Australia. While that would be something in and of itself, we find ourselves with pundits eager to take some lessons from Australia, only to completely balls things up along the way. To wit, Kelly McParland writing in the National Post delivered this hot mess yesterday which manages to conflate every possible thing in Australian politics in order to prove a point – not necessarily a bad point – but went about it in entirely the wrong way. So, for Mr. McParland’s edification, let’s break it down a little.

First of all, the “six prime ministers in six years” has virtually nothing to do with the ranked ballots in Australia. The system of caucus selection of leaders there (which is how leaders should be chosen, as I’ve argued elsewhere numerous times) has gone to extremes, creating a culture of paranoia and betrayal. But that’s not the fault of the ranked ballots since it’s a different process. That parties will spill leaders shortly before an election in the hopes of having a more appealing leader is party politics enabled by the ability to have spills, rather than the ranked ballot effect. Conflating them is not helpful.

The ranked ballots themselves allow for more small parties to exist independent of “big tent” brokerage parties because ranked ballots discourage tactical voting – something McParland neglects to mention while returning to the Canadian canard that the Liberals only want ranked ballots because they think they’ll clean up by getting everyone’s second place votes. That has led to the need for the Australian Liberals (read: conservatives) to require a coalition partner to govern, which is a consideration to make if we want ranked ballots, but it is a giant conflation to mix this in with the stability of their system and leadership woes.

The problem of the Australian Senate is the bigger nub of the argument, but which gets lost in the rest of the McParland’s confusing mess. The Australian Senate is chosen by single-transferable proportional voting, and the system has been effectively gamed in the previous election so that a bunch of marginal players got seats and subsequently created a huge problem in their upper chamber, requiring more tinkering of the system to be forced through and the Prime Minister calling for double-dissolution (so that both chambers be elected at the same time – a rare occurrence usually reserved for political crises) in order to break the legislative deadlocks. Those tweaks appear to be causing even more problems with this election, but we may see how it all shakes out in a few weeks. (Note that these ballots tend to be the size of placemats, because of the way they’re structured with the enormous number of parties running). And while the problems with these marginal parties being given outsized powers of persuasion in the previous parliament are very valid points to make, it gets lost in the sea of conflations that plagued the rest of the piece.

So I get McParland’s point about electoral reform advocates needing to be careful what they wish for, and can even agree with it to a large extent, this was utterly the wrong way to go about it.

Meanwhile, here’s a primer about Australia’s lengthy counting process – so lengthy that their Senate preferential distribution process could take over a month. Closer to home, here are some of the ways in which the electoral reform committee plans to engage with Canadians.

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Roundup: A milestone Pride

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Though he had committed to it long before the shootings in Orlando, there was a particularly importance to the visibility that Canadian political leaders brought to Toronto Pride this year, and for the first time, a sitting Prime Minister marched, alongside an openly lesbian Ontario premier. For the first time, the Conservative party leaders, both federally and provincially marched, along with leadership candidates Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch, and Michael Chong (and Lisa Raitt, should she decide to throw her hat into the ring). Absent however was outgoing federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, which is unusual considering how the NDP generally pride themselves on being at Pride. And yes, Elizabeth May was there for her tenth year in a row as well. This year, being in the shadow of Orlando, was a reminder that yes, Pride is political, and the actions of Black Lives Matter Toronto added to that politicisation (make of their tactics what you will). That you had the entire political spectrum in Canada represented for the first time was a milestone worth noting.

In a place where a Pride parade really matters, one happened in Steinbach, Manitoba, after much pushback from the local political leaders, in a place where openly gay and lesbian people have literally been run out of town by harassment and bullying. Visibility is important, particularly in these smaller towns where ignorance and fear go hand-in-hand, making the need to be visible all the more important, lest nothing change.

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Roundup: Happy Dominion Day!

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Happy Dominion Day! In lieu of the usual rant, today I leave you with a few items for your perusal: a look at ten animals that helped shaped Canada, a look back at the creation of the flag, 40 famous Canadians giving their memories of childhood summers, and Maclean’s has 111 stories from Canadians. Now go enjoy the day, to the sounds of my July 1st theme song.

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Roundup: Obama and his populist rant

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So, that speech by Barack Obama was quite something. Canada tends not to be a country of lofty rhetoric or grand and eloquent speechmaking, so it’s nice when we get to borrow it for a bit, but it is a bit of novelty. For all of his complementary rhetoric about Canadians and our progressivity, it was interesting to note the places where people in the Commons weren’t all unanimous with the applause (mentions of climate change and LGBT rights certainly didn’t endear the Conservatives), and he was very clever in the way he couched his criticism of Canada needing to do more to pull its weight with NATO, by timing it so that the applause had already started with is line about the great job that the Canadian Forces do when he finished the thought that the world wants them to do more. Clever that.

What was perhaps even more interesting and less rehearsed was the rant that Obama went off at the conclusion of the Three Amigos summit press conference, where he pushed back against the use of “populism” when it comes to the likes of Trump, Sanders, and the Brexit vote. While Obama was quick to paint Trump in particular with the terms of nativism and xenophobia, I’m not sure that he really addressed the core of the issue with the rise in populist sentiment that gets hijacked by those nativist and xenophobic elements. Why? Because he was quick to try and associate populism with only the positive benefits of helping the working classes to better themselves, and on the face of it, “populism” is about appealing to ordinary people. The problem is that it has a dangerous flipside about making that appeal in contravention to expert opinion and evidence, which is painted as elitist – something that Obama steered clear of. Meanwhile, populism has already overtaken the political discourse in Canada, when our one-time ideological parties on both the left and the right have abandoned their ideologies in favour of left and right-flavoured populism, eschewing that evidence or clear-eyed policy in favour of selling it to ordinary people, never mind that it would actually disproportionately benefit the wealthy (and yes, that applies equally to Conservative and NDP policy in Canada). When that ethos of casting off evidence and expert opinion reaches dangerous levels, you get the kinds of rhetoric you heard in the Brexit campaign, and with Trump and his supporters, but it’s on the same populist road. So you will forgive me if I don’t subscribe to Obama’s embrace of populism as solely a force for good. It has a dark side that needs to be acknowledged, lest it get as out of control as it clearly has been doing of late.

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Roundup: Specious arguments about political bullying

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As someone who writes a lot about our democratic system (true fact – I have a book about it coming out in March), I read a lot of really dumb things that people try to assert in order to make a point. The Citizen had an op-ed yesterday that pretty much takes the cake for specious reasoning when it comes to asserting that our electoral system somehow turns everyone into petty bullies. That’s right – it postulates that First-Past-the-Post is responsible for The Elbowing that happened a couple of months ago. No, seriously. It’s such a moronic argument that I. Can’t. Even.

Here’s the thing – trying to blame the electoral system is a losing proposition because trying to prove the counterfactual amounts to pixie dust and unicorns. Electoral politics can get nasty because that’s the nature of competition, and even in systems that are supposedly built upon consensus models (such as the legislatures in the NWT and Nunavut), there is just as much bullying among MLAs that takes place as in the oppositional system we have here. There is all manner of fractious and nasty politics in countries that have proportional or ranked ballot systems because it’s almost like we’re all human beings or something. Add to that, trying to put the blame on the logically fallacious notion about “false majority” governments (which don’t exist because the popular vote is not a real thing – elections are not single events but rather 338 separate and simultaneous events that you can’t simply mash into a single statistic and expect it to be meaningful) doesn’t automatically turn the victors into bullies because it posits that either “true” majorities or minority governments would not be the same. That’s of course false, as large majorities can turn triumphalist and run roughshod over opposition parties just as much, and minority parliaments can be petty and nasty as parties clamp down in order to ensure that the government isn’t toppled, as our own recent memory shows. None of this has anything to do with First-Past-the-Post, and pretending that another system would force parties to work together forgets that it simply means shifting from one model of horse-trading and bargaining to another model, where there tends to be more extreme elements jockeying for power instead. So, to be quite frank, if this is supposed to be “kicking off” a discussion on electoral reform, it might as well be a tale that includes a vampire or two because it’s just as fantastic.

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Roundup: Another incoming mass appointment

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The government’s permanent Senate appointment board is set to get underway “within days” to get to work on filling the remaining 19 vacant Senate seats, but if you listen very carefully, you can hear my alarm going of that the way they appear to be planning to do this is a Very Bad Idea. Specifically, it certainly looks like the plan is to appoint all 19 in one fell swoop by the fall, and I cannot stress enough how much of a really, really bad thing this is. It’s like nobody learned any of the lessons from the glut of 18 panic appointments in 2008, and how badly that stressed the Senate in its ability to absorb that many new members at once, and the fact that it had a negative effect on their independence because it meant that the government at the time pretty much controlled them and exercised a heavy whip hand because there wasn’t time to let them integrate at their own pace. The seven appointments made this spring, without a government or caucus to guide them, put them on a steep learning curve and left them with little in the way of logistical support for setting up their offices, which isn’t exactly ideal either. That Peter Harder has now created for himself a new quasi-whip (ahem, styled “government liaison”) that has the capacity to help them with some logistics issues, barring the Independent Working Group being in a position to offer that support as well if they are in a position to do so, may wind up being one less stressor for the individual appointees, but that still doesn’t neglect the fact that mass appointments are bad for the system. Because of the nature of the Senate, it works best when individual vacancies are filled as they happen, and that those new senators gradually get up to speed, given the unique way that the chamber operates, and that really is a process that can take two or three years to get fully into it. But the government sitting on the appointment process as long as it has, in order to do these appointments in one fell swoop, is a problem, and it’s yet another problem of their own making, which is a consistent pattern when it comes to the Senate. It’s one thing I hope that does come out of this Federal Court challenge to Senate vacancies – that there is a declaration that sets a time limit for when vacancies must be filled, so that it cuts down on future mass appointments, on top of ensuring that those regions have their proper representation as they are guaranteed under the Constitution, because yes, these things do matter.

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Roundup: Idle Brexit musings

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While everyone continues to talk Brexit over the weekend, and you have a curious number of Conservative MPs here in Canada almost irresponsibly tweeting gleefully over it, I am forced to wonder if they are not in fact trying to demonstrate enthusiasm for referenda in general, given their daily caterwauling for one on electoral reform in this country. That could be why their messages are so focused on the democratic result of it, as opposed to the substance of what the Brexit vote actually represented. But that’s just idle speculation, so take of it what you will.

Of course, talk of how referenda are terrible at determining issues of substance is also part of why that’s been on my mind, because I am leaning more to the side that the issue of electoral reform would require a referendum because of what it proposes to do, and I don’t trust that the government is going to get useful answers from a series of townhalls and a report from a committee whose composition has been gamed to look “fair” when the person doing the gaming has a specific goal and output in mind. Of course, an electoral reform referendum would be subject to its won particular brands of demagoguery, particularly considering that we have an appalling lack of civic literacy in Canada, and when nobody can accurately depict the current electoral system, we’re going to be subject to some propaganda on the change side of the referendum whose fictions will be as bald-faced as that which the Leave side promised in the Brexit campaign, not that it will matter to the casual voter because it plays into emotions about things that feel and sound “fair” without actually grasping the situation (which is a solution in search of a problem). The last referendum on electoral reform in Ontario largely failed because the government of the day was ambivalent, but the current federal government is not, and that worries me. So it’s something to consider.

Meanwhile, the meltdown happening in the UK’s Labour Party, with a problematic leader who refuses to resign in the face of a full-blown caucus revolt is another object lesson in why membership selection of party leaders is a terrible, terrible system because it gives those leaders an excuse to refuse to be held to account, citing a “democratic mandate” as Jeremy Corbyn is doing right now. And no, adopting the provisions in Michael Chong’s Reform Act where caucus can vote to remove a leader is not actually the solution because it entrenches that parties must elect leaders by way of their membership, and that disconnect between selection and removal creates enormous problems in terms of the legitimacy of the removal process. Accountability matters, and needs to be balanced with democracy. Membership selection of leaders does not provide the needed accountability, and the horrifying lesson of a leader who won’t be held to account is playing out right now and should give everyone pause about the system that we blazed the trail for in this country.

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Roundup: The Brexit fallout

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So, Brexit. If you missed how it all went down, here’s the recap of the evening’s events, a look at the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty regarding an exit from the EU, a look at other countries who may be next, and speculation about how the Queen is faring in the face of this result. There’s a look at the divisions within the UK, and what psychology tells us about feelings toward immigration and how that influenced the referendum vote. And of course, what the Brexit could mean for the Canada-EU trade agreement, seeing as the UK was one of the driving forces behind this agreement. The results of that referendum seem to have made Quebec sovereigntists chippy about the 50-percent-plus-one threshold, while Jason Kenney’s tweets once the results were announced raised a number of eyebrows. The Prime Minister, however, assures us that our economy is strong enough to be able to withstand the market storms triggered by this event. (And do check out Maclean’s full package of excellent Brexit pieces here).

And then there’s the reaction. Doug Saunders notes that this is the first time that a far-right movement and its xenophobia has won a majority vote in a Western Nation, while Scott Gilmore notes that the Brexit could take a multitude of different forms. Andrew Coyne takes the events as a cautionary tale of countries engaging in self-harm. Paul Wells writes about the case that the EU needs to make for itself in the face of referenda like these, while Andrew MacDougall notes that this referendum, along with the Trump phenomenon in the states, is showing the power of demagoguery over fact and expert advice, which is probably the scariest part of this whole sad and sordid affair.

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Roundup: Duffy expenses redux

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Because it’s never over, the saga of Mike Duffy’s illegitimate expenses are back in the news as Senate Administration is demanding that he repay some $16,955 in expenses claimed improperly that were paid for using his third-party contract with Gerald Donohue. And, wouldn’t you know it, Duffy’s lawyer is raising a huge fuss saying that the judge in the trial already declared that these were okay – something senators dispute, saying that just because they were not deemed criminal it doesn’t mean that they were okay, particularly when these expenses were not allowable and that the third-party contract was used to go around the approval process. (Duffy’s lawyer, incidentally, is also hinting that they will demand back pay for the suspension, to the tune of $155,000). But this is where the particular nature of the Senate comes into play, which is that it’s a self-governing body that is protected by parliamentary privilege, and it needs to be in order to safeguard our democratic system. In governing its own affairs, it is allowed to enforce its own rules (which, it bears reminding, do and did exist no matter what Bayne tried to argue in trial). And it is also empowered to enforce its own discipline, which is what the suspensions were related to – not a determination of criminality or a reflection of it, but rather that Duffy (and Wallin and Brazeau) had brought disrepute onto the Chamber and an example needed to be made. Is it fair? Possibly not, but this is also politics. Bayne raised the straw man argument that the 29 other senators whose expenses were flagged by the Auditor General weren’t suspended, which is a ridiculous argument considering that a) Duffy was not part of that process at all; and b) they ensured that there was a resolution process that ended in repayment one way or the other, so nobody was seen to be escaping justice. I don’t think Bayne will find much truck in the courts if he wants to press the issue around Duffy’s suspension or the fact that they are demanding repayment for expenses that clearly were not allowed, but it seems that we may be subjected to more drama around this, possibly for years if they take the matter as far as the Supreme Court of Canada.

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Roundup: To give or not to give Sophie resources

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At his session-ender press conference, Trudeau highlighted three carefully chosen accomplishments, gave no additional clarity on the missing and murdered Indigenous women file, and didn’t commit to an open process for fighter procurement. All of that was par for the course, given that it was a lot of back-patting, but also a reminder that there is still a lot of work ahead, and he doesn’t want to look like he’s patting himself on the back too much. What I found more curious was in response to a question that he said that his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, should be able to have resources to carry out the duties that she has set about to undertake, but that he also doesn’t want to create a formal role for prime ministerial spouses going forward so that there is no obligation for the future. There is a certain amount of sense to this position, but it’s a very fine line to walk. Currently, she has one assistant and is given help from PMO staff on an ad hoc basis, as needed. Speculation with the staffing changes made to the household, particularly around nannies, has to do with creating space on the staff for an additional assistant for Grégoire Trudeau, but we have yet to see that materialise. None of it answers the specific existential question however on the role that prime ministerial spouses play. The reluctance to create an official position is a good instinct to have, especially because it bears reminding again and again that we are already a constitutional monarchy, and we have a royal family to take on these particular roles. In fact, the GG and his spouse also take on these kinds of feel-good roles in the absence of a more present royal family, which leaves very little room for a prime ministerial spouse to take it on. What they have to trade in – particularly Grégoire Trudeau – is a kind of celebrity status, especially as the previous few prime ministerial spouses haven’t had much in the way of a career of their own, and for Grégoire Trudeau, it has become her career to be a public speaker at events and for particular charity groups – and there’s nothing wrong with that. It nevertheless makes for a sticky situation with who pays for the help that such a career entails, particularly if it becomes an important optical consideration that she not be paid for the work (and if she were paid, even on a cost-recovery basis, one can already imagine people hissing “how dare she!” on accepting money from charities no matter that it’s the cost of doing business and standard practice). So we are between that proverbial rock and hard place. I don’t have a solution to offer either than to say that there is no winning, and it now becomes a way of finding the least unpalatable option, and that may wind up being what Trudeau is signalling – resources but the explicit rule that this is not formalising the role in any way. His reminding people that we have a royal family for these kinds of things wouldn’t hurt either so that we can stop this constant “First Lady” talk.

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