Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: Moe defends the Saskatchewan Nation

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Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is in trouble. The COVID numbers in his province are still out of control, five of the patients that they had to airlift to Ontario because they didn’t have enough ICU capacity have died, and his approval ratings are plummeting. So what does Moe think the solution to his problems is? Taking a page from Jason Kenney’s playbook and trying to pick fights with Ottawa, and in keeping with Kenney’s playbook, Moe has decided to also try adopting a tactic of “We want what Quebec has!” and wants Saskatchewan to be declared a “nation within a nation.”

That’s right – the nation of Saskatchewan, which is defined not by language (though they do call hoodies “bunny hugs” there, so that counts, right?) or by culture (going to Roughriders games is a distinct culture from the rest of Canada, right?), but by…well, he won’t exactly say. Which is pretty much where the rationale for his argument falls apart entirely. Because he doesn’t actually know what the hell he’s talking about, he is aping talking points from Kenney and company, and spouting a random sampling of phrases from Quebec nationalists, and hoping it gives him credibility. Rest assured, it doesn’t.

The other thing that Moe seems to forget that this kind of nationalism/separatism talk has consequences. In Quebec, it devastated their economy in the seventies and eighties as head offices departed for Toronto, and the former financial capital of the country, Montreal, was a corporate graveyard. Not sure that this is an outcome that Moe is gunning for, but hey, those who fail to learn history correctly… Moe seems to think that he can get more autonomy from the federal government in this way, but he doesn’t actually make any case for it. He brays that Quebec has their own immigration deal with the federal government (because they are prioritizing francophones – and they are now facing labour shortages because they have been overly restrictive), or that they got a special deal around national childcare (because they already had a system in place that meets the criteria where Saskatchewan does not), but doesn’t acknowledge the reasons why, and is simply playing people for idiots. But really, this is all Moe just being Jason Kenney’s Mini-Me, and it’s not going to work.

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Roundup: An unsuccessful distraction attempt

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Erin O’Toole emerged from hiding yesterday, and tried to set the narrative of the day about a supposed scary coalition between the Liberals and the NDP – which isn’t happening. A coalition government means that both parties have Cabinet ministers at the table, and given that we just had the dog and pony show of a Cabinet shuffle not two weeks ago, and there was nary an NDP MP among them, we can be reasonably assured that there will be no coalition government. Nevertheless, even a supply and confidence agreement, or some other arrangement, remains unlikely in the extreme because the Liberals know the NDP are in a vulnerable position, broke an unable to afford another election, so they will ensure the government survives regardless – there is no need to give them any leverage or excuse to try and take credit for the government’s actions (not that anything has stopped them thus far).

But while O’Toole tried to make big noises about the “coalition” that isn’t and never will be, he was trying to deflect from the ongoing problem in his party around MPs like Marilyn Gladu and Leslyn Lewis, who have been stoking vaccine hesitancy (while insisting otherwise), conceding that they have “caused confusion,” which is just more soft-peddling and mealy-mouthed refusal to take leadership or to put his foot down. Indeed, when asked about whether there would be any discipline for these remarks, O’Toole stated that they would deal with it “as a team,” which basically means that no, he’s not going to do anything about it.

While my upcoming column will delve further into just why O’Toole refuses to put his foot down, Gladu can insist all she wants that this isn’t a challenge of O’Toole’s leadership, the simple fact is that she continues to undermine it at every opportunity, and that is going to eventually erode what little trust or credibility O’Toole has left.

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Roundup: Anand asking the right questions

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Defence minister Anita Anand was making the rounds this weekend, and talked a lot about further examination of what has been going on in the military, whether to refer past cases of misconduct to civilian investigators for a second look, and about whether it makes sense to have the military ombudsman report to Parliament (spoiler: It does not because Parliament is not in the chain of command, as explained in this column I wrote).

Nevertheless, this is all looking more and more like an indirect indictment of the job Harjit Sajjan was doing as minister, as professor Steve Saideman explains:

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Roundup: A headache over added and subtracted seats

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The question of seat redistribution and the allocation – and subtraction – of seats has been simmering, and the premier of Quebec is demanding that the prime minister step in and guarantee that Quebec not only retain the seat it is slated to lose, but also to guarantee that because of the notion that Quebec constitutes a nation within Canada, that they must be guaranteed that their share of seats never drops even if their population grows at a much slower pace than other provinces. The problem with that? It would require a constitutional amendment to do, using the 7/50 formula (seven provinces representing 50 percent of the population). And that could be the tricky part.

Of course, the obvious solution is to tinker with the seat distribution formula, which the Conservatives introduced (fully intending to screw over Ontario for new seats along the way). But as I stated in my column a couple of weeks ago, we would probably be better served adding far more than just four seats – something more like 40 would be better for everyone, especially because it would mean better populating committees and keeping parliamentary secretaries from voting positions on them. Mike Moffatt and I discussed this over Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456558821942431744

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456560023383969796

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456590475985571840

Furthermore, if we stay at the current redistribution formula, that sole new seat in Ontario is going to cause a lot of problems with redrawing boundaries (which will then have provincial reverberations, because Ontario provincial ridings mirror their federal counterparts, with the exception of an additional seat in Northern Ontario for better representation. Once this reality starts to sink in, perhaps the government would start considering boosting that formula to avoid these kinds of headaches.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456593608648298498

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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Roundup: Time to change the dress code?

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NDP MP Randall Garrison is pushing for the House of Commons to update is dress code, in particular around the gendered rules that men need to wear a jacket and tie in the Chamber in order to speak and vote. Part of Garrison’s stated motivation is to make it easier for future trans and non-binary MPs, even though accommodations are already routinely made, such as allowing Indigenous MPs to wear beaded necklaces or other symbols in place of a tie. I don’t see why it would be any different to accommodate a trans or non-binary MP in a similar manner without any fuss – a mere notice to the Speaker would suffice.

On the one hand, there is a certain amount of archaic assumption in the “contemporary business attire” around jackets and ties for men, and only men – there is no dress code for women in the Chamber (and these rules apply to those of us who sit in the Press Gallery in the Chamber, incidentally). Business attire in the current context is starting to slide down the scale – particularly in this era of work-from-home – so I’m leery of loosening the restrictions too much, particularly as it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you would have a bunch of MPs in track suits, yoga or sweat pants, hoodies, and mom jeans (and I have seen male MPs in mom jeans with jacket and tie in the Chamber, which was not a pleasant sight). Printed t-shirts are also a very real concern, because we will immediately slip into them being used as props, particularly during Members’ Statements, and we do not want that to happen. On the same token, I wouldn’t have minded imposing a few more rules for women in the Chamber, such as mandating jackets as part of “business attire,” because sometimes the definitions of what constitutes “business attire” for some female MPs has been particularly…challenging. (Flashback to the old Megan Leslie Outfit Watch on my former blog).

I get that ties suck. I really do. I used to really hate them, but I’ve somewhat reluctantly grown to accept them and now I have no issue with it. And once we’re into late May and early June and the humidity starts to climb, wearing suits is not fun (and whereas I have threatened to show up to the Gallery in shorts and sandals – but with jacket and tie – one reporter has actually done so and was my hero for the day). But at the same time, I think there should be some kinds of standards, for both men and women, because frankly there can be a demonstrated lack of both maturity and good taste among MPs and there need to be some guidelines. Can they be loosened a little? Sure, that should be okay, and maybe we won’t require a tie at all times – within reason. It does merit a discussion in any case.

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Roundup: Glover says she’s the premier

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It was quite a day in Manitoba yesterday as Heather Stefanson was sworn-in as the province’s first female premier, but the leadership drama isn’t over. Her challenger, former federal Cabinet minister Shelly Glover has not conceded defeat, and plans to challenge the leadership election in court, citing irregularities and reports that Stefanson’s scrutineers looked defeated at one point of the counting and then something allegedly mysterious happened to a ballot box…or something. I’m having a hard time keeping track of it. Regardless, Glover insists that she’s really the premier, not Stefanson.

One could be very pedantic here and note that Stefanson has been sworn in, so she’s premier regardless. Her immediate predecessor, Kelvin Goertzen, was not chosen in a leadership election by caucus as interim leader, and he was fully and legitimately premier, even if it was only for a few weeks (and yes, he’s going to get a portrait in the legislature to reflect that status). So no, Glover is not premier, and even if by some miracle she were declared party leader (which won’t happen – the courts won’t get involved in the inner workings of a political party), Stefanson is still premier and will be until she resigns or is dismissed.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1455671852647559168

But on a broader point, Glover has always been a very problematic politician, stridently repeating talking points in the face of logic and evidence, and getting combative when challenged on her bullshit, particularly as she seemed to lack the critical reasoning skills to think through her positions. And this attempted court challenge is her combativeness and willingness to believe illogical or contrary things playing out in the very way she demonstrated during her nine years in federal politics (two of which were as a minister). And Glover had her own run-ins with Elections Canada, and at one point Elections Canada asked the Speaker to suspend her because of financial irregularities during an election (which were later resolved with revised filings that Elections Canada accepted, Glover terming them an “honest mistake.”) One has to question her fitness to lead given her history and temperament, but I’m not a member of the party.

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Roundup: Mark Holland is optimistic

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New Government House Leader Mark Holland is brimming with optimism that the things that paralyzed the previous session of Parliament will be behind them post-election. It’s a nice idea, but I wonder just how it will actually play out. Yes, the Liberals have broken some of the deadlocks that plagued them (a fact that they didn’t articulate during the election, even when pressed on the subject), and they have a bit of leverage now in that none of the other parties can even contemplate another election anytime soon – the Conservatives are consumed with internal disputes over vaccine mandates and just when they plan to put Erin O’Toole to a leadership review, and the NDP are very broke having spent record amounts of money to gain themselves a single new seat, and the Bloc have no desire to go back to the polls, particularly since their play to be François Legault’s voice in Ottawa didn’t play well for them in the election. This will allow the Liberals to play some hardball and use confidence to their advantage for the time being.

But in spite of this, I would not put it past any of the opposition parties to engage in some of the other shenanigans that got us the election, whether that is tying up the committees in interminable attempts at witch hunts, or drowning in document production requests – and that may yet still happen. The election did end some of that, but much of it could very easily be revived once the committees are back up and running (likely in the New Year).

“There was a very clear message sent to all parties that there’s an expectation that we work together, and I’m operating on the presumption that we will have all heard that message and that we all come ready to work and to collaborate in a constructive and positive way,” Holland told The Canadian Press.

I’m not sure that such a presumption is a good one to make. There was an expectation that all parties should work together during the pandemic, and while they did a bunch of backroom negotiations around emergency legislation – and kept any of the debates off-the-record – they stalled all other bills until the very end, when the NDP and Bloc realized they needed to start playing ball again. I’m not sure what the appetite for playing ball will be on most bills, or whether the political calculus will be to try and stymie the Liberals once again (which could lead to showdowns over confidence). I wish Holland all the luck in the world on this, but I suspect he may start losing the hair he has left because the current state of our parliamentary discourse is pretty toxic, and things like the Liberals’ desire to keep hybrid sittings going will only exacerbate that problem.

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Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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Roundup: A notice of appeal before a pause

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It’s not wholly unexpected that the federal government filed the notice of appeal on the Federal Court decision around the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order around First Nations children. No sooner did all of the television news rush to get Cindy Blackstock on camera when another notice went out by the government – that they had reached an agreement to pause said litigation while they sit down with stakeholders in this court case, as well as with two other related class-action lawsuits, and hammer out a deal by December 1st.

There are a few thought around this. The first is that this should have been expected because the real crux of the issue if the Tribunal’s order rather than the compensation itself. The government has committed to spending the money – and there are billions of dollars at stake – but any tribunal that exceeds its statutory authority is something that any government, no matter the stripe, will want to challenge because they don’t want to set a precedent where the Tribunal continues to exceed its authority, and in this case, turns itself into some kind of roving commission of inquiry. (I wrote all about this issue previously here). The notice of appeal spells this out pretty clearly, and while one judge at the Federal Court may have disagreed, he’s certainly not the court of last instance (and frankly, I would rather hear from some of the judges on the Federal Court of Appeal when it comes to matters of administrative law – as with this Tribunal – than I would this particular judge). And while a number of self-righteous reporters demanded to know why the government couldn’t just pay the amount and sort out the issues later, I’m pretty sure that litigation doesn’t work that way.

My other thought is that it looks a lot like the notice of appeal was more out of a need for the government to keep their options open as the negotiations continue, particularly given that it was filed as late as it was, followed immediately by the press conference to explain what was taking place. Frankly I don’t buy the “they filed it at 4:30 on a Friday to bury it” because it wasn’t exactly buried when it dominated the politics shows and is the top story on every news site in the country. That’s not burying something, especially when they have a captive audience. This being said, I’m still don’t think that this government has communicated the issues very effectively (particularly the issue around the Tribunal exceeding its authority), and that’s compounded by the fact that the media writ-large has shown itself to be fairly incapable of writing a legal story with any nuance or complexity, and rely on both-sidesing it with a clear bias toward taking Blackstock’s word as the authority, and by conflating a number of different issues and completely blurring the timeline of the different orders from the Tribunal. This isn’t a black-and-white issue of taking kids to court – but you wouldn’t know it if you only paid attention to what gets reported.

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