Tomorrow marks the 200th birthday of Sir John A Macdonald, our first prime minister and the man who made us. Unfortunately, because we don’t do a good job of recognising him, we’re not seeing too many celebrations around the country, which is a shame. And more recently, we’re seeing a rash of spiteful editorials, like this one, that declare that we should not celebrate him at all because he was a horrible racist drunk, or what have you. Never mind that everyone in the 19th century was pretty terrible, never mind that he was far more enlightened and moderate than most of his peers, never mind context or nuance as we read history – let’s grind some modern day axes on the backs of historical figures who can’t defend themselves! (Macdonald’s biographer, Richard Gwyn, offers a pretty good response to these kinds of articles here). In the meantime, Stephen Harper pens an op-ed in Macdonald’s praise, while Mark Kennedy wonders if any politician today could survive the scandals that Macdonald did (spoiler: probably not), and Aaron Wherry gets a roundtable of experts together to discuss Macdonald’s legacy. In the meantime, celebrate his birthday by watching the CBC film about the first steps toward confederation (online here), listen to some of his speeches as read by other former prime ministers, and certainly have a drink in his honour. Note that his favourite tipple was actually champagne, and not scotch, as so many people like to claim.
Author Archives: Dale
Roundup: A new posting for Kevin Vickers
House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers has been appointed Canada’s new ambassador to Ireland, which seems like a fitting reward for the his heroic actions on October 22nd. Well, once you get past the questions about his diplomatic credentials (not that Ireland is likely to be a posting with actual diplomatic challenges). It also does leave one wondering about what will happen with the ongoing review of security on Parliament Hill in the wake of the shooting, since Vickers will no longer be around to answer questions. His deputy, Pat McDonell, will be assuming his duties for the time being, but if he doesn’t get the job full-time once Vickers is officially gone, it could mean that we might get a female Sergeant-at-Arms, as one of the other deputies who often sits in the chair is a woman. Kady O’Malley rounds up some of the reaction to the news.
Roundup: Support for Charlie Hebdo
In the wake of the deaths at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris yesterday, we saw an outpouring of support from Canadian officials yesterday. Stephen Harper drew parallels to the attacks that happened here and in Sydney, Australia, in his statement, while Thomas Mulcair took the National Press Theatre to make his own statement, which also had the added symbolism of speaking to journalists in our own space after members of our profession were just gunned down. Justin Trudeau tweeted his support, but as he was flying off to the Arctic, wasn’t available for the media, and Marc Garneau was out in his stead. Editorial cartoonists around the world mourned the loss of their compatriots. Some of the better reaction pieces include Ishmael Daro, Colby Cosh, Scott Gilmore, Aisha Sherazi, Andrew Coyne, Matthew Fisher, and Terry Glavin.
Roundup: The more substantial shuffle
On the heels of a tiny cabinet shufflette came a much more substantial shakeup in the government’s senior ranks, particularly as it concerns deputy ministers. The Deputy Minister of Defence (a former head of CSIS) is now the PM’s new National Security Advisor, while the DM of Public Works is now an ambassador to OECD in Paris – two portfolios that very much affect our military procurement, and in particular what is going on with the fighter jet replacement programme. The fact that key players in that process are moving on could easily be interpreted as a curious move if one were the suspicious type. More shuffles occurred at Health, International Trade, Environment, Agriculture, and Shared Services. I would also note with some particular curiosity that these moves happened on a Tuesday afternoon, which is almost unheard of lately. Pretty much every time any of these kinds of announcements are made, it’s on a Friday afternoon, usually around 3:30, so We The Media are left scrambling to report something about it. I’m not sure if this is actually indicative of anything, given Harper’s playing nice on Monday, but it is curious nevertheless.
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/552543899257167873
Roundup: Reassigning Fantino
In some ways, it was a big surprise because it’s almost – almost – like Stephen Harper was admitting he made a mistake with regards to his choice for veterans affairs minister. But it wasn’t entirely that – just a bit of a shuffling of the deck. Without really summoning press to Rideau Hall yesterday, the PM shuffled Julian Fantino out of Veterans Affairs, and put newcomer Erin O’Toole in his place. But lest you think that Fantino has had his day in cabinet and he can quietly disappear into the backbenches, no – Harper found him a new home. Technically it’s his old home as Associate Minister of Defence, but instead of being on the procurement file, as he was previously, now he’s been charged with Arctic sovereignty, cyber-defence and foreign intelligence. Let’s remember that when Fantino was previously on that job, he had the F-35 fiasco blowing up around him. Then Veterans Affairs fell apart around him when he was in that portfolio. And if his lack of interpersonal skills was a big part of the failure at Veterans Affairs, he’s going to be in charge of a fairly diplomacy-heavy role with Arctic Sovereignty? Really? Same thing with foreign intelligence and CSE. You want a notoriously poor communicator to deal with those questions? Really? (My other thought is about what this says about confidence in the abilities of Rob Nicholson if the PM need to split off some of his duties to hand them over to an Associate Minister). As for the veterans file, it’s going to be an uphill battle for O’Toole, who is an immeasurably better communicator than Fantino or his parliamentary secretary, Parm Gill, ever were, but he’s still constrained by the policy of the day, and the spending restraints that the government has imposed across the board. Sure, he may be able to communicate better and maybe not alienate his stakeholders to the same extent that Fantino did, but if he can’t really change what’s really ailing the department, it is likely to just be a fresh coat of paint and little else. Paul Wells shares a few thoughts about what the PM might have been thinking.
So some poor sap at Langevin gets to dig up the microtapes to revert the M-4 Unit to his previous Associate Defence Minister programming?
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
One does suppose that a duotronic computer system like the M-4 Unit might be well placed to deal with information security. #Fantino
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
Just think of all the new talking points that the M-4 Unit will have to upload to his duotronic databanks. #Fantino
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
Roundup: Find a new narrative for Mulcair
Michael Den Tandt writes that Thomas Mulcair is the most effective parliamentarian that we have today – which makes me weep a lot, mostly because it simply isn’t true. Den Tandt focuses on the three main party leaders, and tries to rate them on performance versus the attention that they get, and his thesis is that Mulcair may be the most effective but gets least attention for all manner of reasons. But in his construction of said premise, he gets a few things wrong. For one, he claims that Mulcair ditched his speaking notes, which is absolutely not true. What Mulcair did was ditch the mini-lectern on his desk, but not until the heyday of Duffy questions, which really was Mulcair’s moment. It was his “prosecutor-in-chief” moment, which lasted for about two days, and then petered out, and he has yet to re-create the moment or the energy since. He still has his notes – they’re just on his desk, and he still reads from them, and it’s evident in both the tone and substance of his questions – particularly as he rarely asks direct follow-ups, and may not ask a follow-up until 20 minutes later in QP, or not at all until the next day. The problem remains that much of the commentariat remains fixated on this vision of Mulcair as “prosecutor-in-chief” and “best performer in the House” even though it was a two-day experience that has not been repeated since. Of course, they don’t attend QP and one isn’t sure how often they watch the forced perspectives on CPAC, so they can stick with this image and not have it shaken by daily exposure to what Mulcair is really like as a performer. And there are far better parliamentarians as a whole – those who show up for debates, fully researched and able to speak off-the-cuff, to ask or take questions, and to do more than simply read speeches into the record. They’re few and far between, but they do exist. Mulcair is not one of those MPs – not by a long shot. But somewhere along the way, those couple of days during the Duffy heyday has given pundits a narrative that they refuse to be shaken from. And it makes me sad that after watching Bob Rae wipe the floor with his opponents during QP for nearly two years, for whom Mulcair was a non-entity in comparison day in and day out, that his far superior performance is so easily forgotten.
Roundup: An unconstitutional promise
Over in the francophone media, Thomas Mulcair has been talking about his promise to never ever appoint senators ever if he were to become PM and form government. Of course, that kind of talk is beyond ridiculous and is in direct contravention to the constitution – the same sections that the Supreme Court gave a whole lot of clarity on in the recent Senate reference decision. Mulcair claims he would try to push the provinces to abolish the institution, but good luck with that – all of which tends to put a lot of doubt into just how seriously Mulcair would take is constitutional obligations should he ever assume the position. The interview did give rise to this post, which speculated on the conditions by which a Governor General might reasonably start appointing senators without waiting for advice from the PM, if said PM was obstinately refusing to put forward names for appointment. While we are going to start hearing from the courts on this matter sooner than later, with an active challenge now underway in BC, I’d have to agree with both Emmett Macfarlane and Philippe Lagassé on this one – having the GG make direct appointments would put us into a constitutional crisis because it would violate the principles of Responsible Government, but said GG could also note that the PM was refusing to act within his or her constitutional duties, and dismiss them, inviting someone else to form government instead. It would still be a bit of a crisis, mind you, and there would be all manner of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media about it, but it would be much more in line with the principles of Responsible Government than making the appointments without advice. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t come to that, and that our current and future prime ministers start taking their jobs of making these appointments far more seriously.
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/551049830416777216
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/551050184713838593
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551049183608967169
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551050993983848448
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/551051201836777473
Roundup: Attendance under the microscope
As one of those fun little articles to fill the pages over the holidays, the Ottawa Citizen looked at party leaders’ abysmal QP attendance records. What it showed was, predictably, pretty abysmal, with the Prime Minister coming in with the worst attendance record, and Justin Trudeau not far behind. As someone who attends QP regularly, I could have told you as much, but it’s nice to see some recorded figures and percentages, though when you think about it, Mulcair’s increase is really means he’s there one more hour per week. The piece also treats Friday QP as a regular day, which it hasn’t been as long as I’ve been covering it, but perhaps we should pay more attention to it and treat it as more than just a rump where those MPs who aren’t jetting off back to their ridings stay behind to hold the fort. There is one thing in the piece that did bother me, which was the load of nonsense that Peter Julian said about Michael Ignatieff, because it’s completely false. Ignatieff was there for QP on most days – far more than Harper was. The “not showing up for work” figure that the NDP used in the last election was based on voting records, and it was misleading because Ignatieff made a policy not to vote on private members’ business whenever possible in order to free his caucus to vote as they chose rather than to take direction from him. That meant he attended fewer of these votes, but the NDP falsely treated that as an attendance record. For them to continue to spread disinformation about Ignatieff’s attendance is shameful (but not surprising, alas).
Roundup: Destroyed text messages
Access to Information emails have uncovered another decision that doesn’t pass the smell test – in this case, the Canada Revenue Agency directing Shared Services Canada to purge their archives of BlackBerry PINs and SMS text messages. The claim is that these are transitory communications that don’t have any business value, but that claim is utterly laughable. Of course business communications are being one PIN-to-PIN, and anyone who believes otherwise is kidding themselves. Sure, some of them may be “don’t’ forget to pick up milk on your way home,” but that doesn’t mean that the CRA shouldn’t still be collecting these communications and sorting out the ones with business value. Oh, but wait – that’s the point, isn’t it? Having a channel of communication that isn’t being picked up by ATIP requests, just like when managers declare, “We’re not taking any notes this meeting” – never mind that it’s in contravention to the government’s own rules around this kind of thing. The Information Commissioner has agreed to look into this case, and has previously warned that this information isn’t being collected in most departments, when all it takes to capture it is to flick a single switch on the servers. As a result, we’re going to find ourselves in a position where there is no paper trail for decisions taken by departments – in this case, CRA – and future governments and future generations will be left to puzzle what was going on. You know, the exact opposite of the point of records retention and archives. That Shared Services meekly went along with the directive is also suspect when they should have pushed back to defend the value of the corporate memory contained within those archives. In other words, a failure all around.
https://twitter.com/tinapittaway/status/547389195669757952
Roundup: A vow to do away with message control
In his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Justin Trudeau has promised an end to message control if he were to form government, and the unmuzzling of bureaucrats. It’s a bold promise, and one that we’ll have to see to believe because we have to remember where many of these directives come from, which is largely because Conservative candidates were making boneheaded statements to the media during campaigns, which sunk the party’s chances until message discipline became the order of the day. Once media could no longer jump on their every utterances, people weren’t exposed to what they were saying, and the Conservatives eventually got into power, where the discipline continued in order to keep their place. Likewise, after the 2011 election when a busload of accidental NDP MPs got elected, that party went into message lockdown in order to ensure that they didn’t have any particular bozo eruptions. If more Liberal candidates start saying things that causes the party some embarrassment – especially as We The Media can jump on said quotes and run with them rather mercilessly – then we’ll see how long they go without message control. Trudeau makes a point about the fact that you can’t be a government from a single person, and he has made a concerted effort to showcase the team around him, probably to mask any perceived weaknesses he has on the policy front (though I would say that most people underestimate his intellectual capacity). I also think that Harper’s spokesperson disputing Trudeau’s assertions and claiming that ministers are available to speak to the media is utterly precious. The last time a minister responded to my phone calls was pretty much never, and I’m not the only one who has to make do with a bland talking point from their spokesperson rather than getting an actual quote from said minister, let alone a briefing on a new piece of legislation.