Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: A display of arrogance and entitlement from McDonald

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In what is quite possibly an admission of arrogance and entitlement, the ostensible current Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Art McDonald, says that he’s going to return to the job now that he’s been “cleared” by the investigation into previous sexual misconduct – but that’s not his decision to make. The fact that he seemed to publicly indicate that this was a fait-accompli may have in fact been a faux pas, as the Minister of Defence actually showed a modicum of spine and said that no, McDonald is remaining on paid leave until they can decide what they’re going to do.

Remember, CDS is a Governor-in-Council appointment, meaning that the prime minister and Cabinet can appoint who they want to the position, and remove the current occupant at any point for any reason, and the fact that McDonald has both lost the moral authority to hold the job, coupled with this stunning bit of entitlement, may in fact prove that is should no longer be considered to be qualified to hold the position.

Meanwhile, here is former national security lawyer (and former armored officer) Leah West to put this into perspective:

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425547465051279361

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425547467471429634

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425549147118125069

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Roundup: Questioning the housing numbers

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report yesterday on the federal government’s programme spending on housing affordability, and I have questions, both on the report, and on the responses to it. On the report itself, I’m having a hard time seeing how this is necessarily within his remit, and not that of the Auditor General. This is not exactly fiscal or macro-economic analysis – it’s evaluating programme spending, which is the Auditor General’s job. (Once again, the PBO is not a “budget watchdog” or a “watchdog” of any kind, per his enabling legislation). This doesn’t appear to have been at the request of any MPs in particular, though this updates his 2019 report which was requested by an unnamed MP at the time, but again, not really his wheelhouse. “Providing economic and financial analysis for the purposes of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability” is being taken a little too broadly.

The findings of the report are that the funds allocated to housing are being underspent, but doesn’t really delve into why, other than noting that some of the spending was related to having to renew bilateral agreements with provinces that were allowed to lapse in 2015, and that CMHC’s programmes have both faced “implementation delays” and that their shift toward funding capital contributions instead of affordability supports spread that funding out over the life of projects. Those “implementation delays” probably deserve a lot more exploration – the fact that municipalities in particular aren’t spending the dollars available fast enough because the projects are bottlenecked in their own jurisdictions (and Vancouver is most especially guilty of this) – and that’s a lot of what this report seems to be light on details about. Housing is largely a provincial responsibility, and aside from providing money, the federal government has very few levers at its disposal, and when municipalities can’t get their acts together, that’s not really a problem the federal government can solve.

As for opposition reaction, it was predictable in that it read the PBO’s topline and not much else. The Conservatives complained that the housing plans haven’t met their targets and that they need a plan that “gets homes built,” which again, is pretty hard to do with the very few levers available at the federal level. The NDP, meanwhile, accuse the government of dubious accounting and broken promises, as per usual, again based largely on topline figures and not the fact that many of the problems exist at the provincial and municipal levels. Federal dollars only go so far and can only wield so much influence, and these are details that matter when it comes to implementing promises.

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Roundup: What open nominations?

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Do you remember when the Liberals considered themselves the party of open nominations? And how they were always going to uphold the democratic right of riding associations to run fair, open and transparent processes to select the candidates that would appear on the ballot for them? Because apparently the party has put this particular bit of democracy, openness and transparency down the memory hole as they continue to acclaim candidates from across the country. In two of these cases, the acclamations came a mere day after the incumbents announced that they weren’t running again, and in one of those ridings – Kanata-Carleton – there was the making of a contested nomination as rumours swirled that Karen McCrimmon wasn’t going to run again, and the riding association was frustrated that they couldn’t get any kind of answer from the party on how and when to run said contested nomination.

Now, the party is going to defend its honour by pointing out that their rules state that they can declare a state of “electoral urgency” to bypass the nomination process, but this is more of the Liberals’ penchant of letting the ends justify the means. They created the rules that were easily gamed, and frankly, the “electoral urgency” clause is a load of bullshit because they were using it in 2019 in the months before the election when they knew they had four years to have this process ongoing because there was a fixed election date under a majority parliament, so there were no surprises. Yes, the pandemic has made nomination races tougher because of public health restrictions, and the party has come under fire for using a verification system that includes facial recognition technology (which BC’s privacy commissioner is investigating, per that province’s laws), but again, these were things that the party should have been cognisant of and dealing with rather than simply wringing their hands and pulling the “electoral urgency” alarm to fast-track their hand-picked candidates, thwarting local democracy, and accountability.

Open nominations are one of the most important and fundamental building blocks of our democratic system. When parties flout those rules, it hurts the entire system – especially as it cements even more power in the leaders’ offices. That the Liberals are so blatantly ignoring their own supposed values in this crucial stage of the democratic process is a sign that the way the party rewrote their constitution to fit the Trudeau era is a very real problem that they are going to have to do a lot of soul-searching to address, especially when that age comes to its inevitable end.

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Roundup: On JWR’s Globe interview

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On a slow news weekend, about the only thing of interest was an interview that Jody Wilson-Raybould did with the Globe and Mail about her upcoming book, which everyone seems to be hoping will have some kind of explosive revelations that will reverberate on the campaign trail (and rest assured, the publisher is timing the release to coincide with the election because they want the sales).

I’m not sure that there was anything too new in this interview, but I would make a couple of observations. One of them is that she never got Trudeau’s cell phone number, but had to deal with either Gerry Butts or the PMO switchboard to reach him, which is interesting from a way of how Trudeau views his Cabinet. Another is that she notes that in the beginning, there did seem to be a true attempt at “Cabinet government,” where ministers were given their files and left alone to deal with them, and only later did PMO start interfering, leaving Wilson-Raybould to believe it was all a sham. I’m less convinced it was a sham – my own conversations with various and sundry people have tended to indicate that PMO only started to handle those ministers who were less than competent at their jobs, but this being a Canadian Cabinet, stay in for various reasons (largely around representation) – certainly not every minister is being handled by PMO. It also fits with what I heard about Wilson-Raybould’s performance as minister, which was largely that it wasn’t terribly competent (and the fact that there were bills that were continually abandoned and absorbed into larger omnibus bills is certainly one indication of this). As well, she seems particularly sore that her ideas for advancing Indigenous self-governance weren’t necessarily being followed, and there seems to be a bit of ego in that she feels hers was the way to go, though given the particularly fractious nature of Indigenous politics, one can bet that her ideas weren’t necessarily being universally agreed to by other Indigenous leaders.

This being said, I don’t doubt that she feels she as being tokenized by this government, and she’s not the only one. That’s a problem, but I’m not sure it would be any better in any other party, and it may require another generational change within all of the parties to start improving. I do think there is plenty of blame to go around for her experiences in federal politics (and she is neither blameless nor a victim), and it’s too bad that we are losing her perspective from Parliament.

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Roundup: The July job numbers

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The Labour Force Survey results for July were released yesterday, and while there was positive job growth, it wasn’t quite as robust as had been expected. The recovery remains uneven, but some of the narratives and commentary aren’t really helping when it comes to adjusting to the reality of this stage of the pandemic (which isn’t even post- yet).

A lot of the narratives are still being driven by the likes of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which continues to rail about CERB and its successor suite of benefits that they claim are providing a “perverse incentive” for people to stay home, but that doesn’t seem to fit the reality, which is that the market is shifting. A lot of people who were in these service-industry jobs either moved on during the pandemic because it (and the government benefits) afforded them the opportunity to do so – which is why you have people complaining that their favoured servers at their local watering holes didn’t come back, and you have nineteen-year-olds who just got their Smart Serve certification replacing them. But another narrative is also bubbling up, where we also have a cohort who aren’t willing to go back to what existed beforehand, with the low wages and mistreatment, and a lot of those business owners haven’t made the cognitive leap yet that they can’t keep operating the way they did before. Of course, this is one reason why the CFIB is so up in arms about these benefits – they have a vested interest in things returning to the old normal where labour can be exploitative without consequence, but the current reality is changing that. This could be change happening that will be better for us all overall, if it’s able to take hold – and chances are, this government more than others are more willing to let it happen.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are insistent that the federal government is “killing job creation,” which is a novel argument considering that they’re not the level of government responsible for the maintenance of public health measures (which has been one of the biggest determinants of economic activity over the course of the pandemic). They’re also keeping up the fiction that a pre-third wave job recovery projection was a “promise” about job creation, again, which was derailed by more public health measures because provinces screwed up their own recoveries by re-opening too soon. All of which is to say that we don’t seem to be capable of having a reasonable conversation about what is happening in the labour market, to the detriment of all of us.

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Roundup: Strings vs no strings for child care dollars

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Justin Trudeau was in Montreal yesterday to announce that Quebec would be getting $6 billion over five years for their part of the government’s national child care programmed – but that funding is coming without strings, and that has a few people a little worried. The reason it comes without strings is not because it’s Quebec and they get special treatment (though you’re going to hear that argument), but rather the fact that the province already has a subsidised child care programme for $8.50/day, and meets the federal criteria of their national programme – in other words, they already did the work.

This is where the political pressure within the province will come to play. Premier François Legault was saying that not all of that money will likely be reinvested into the system, but he does this at his own peril – while the province has a system that meets the federal criteria, it’s oversubscribed, and salaries for early childhood educators are considered too low, leading to staff shortages throughout. There is going to be pressure to ensure that the money goes toward fixing these problems – higher wages, training more staff, getting them into place so that the system can grow to meet demand over the next five years, but Legault seems to be underestimating the number of spaces on wait lists, which is why there is concern that the lack of strings will mean it won’t be spent to necessarily fix the problems.

Of course, this is where Alberta’s minister enters the picture and complains that they wanted the same deal – their portion of the federal funds without strings – and were rebuffed. Of course, there is no recognition that Quebec has the system in place that meets the federal requirements, and Alberta does not, nor does there seem to be any hint of recognition within the provincial government that these are investments that pay off in the long run as more women enter into the work force and generate tax revenues greater than what gets spent on those early learning and child care spaces. And given the experience from the pandemic, it’s more important than ever that they build this system.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1423436550344482827

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1423470159168159746

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1423470175614078979

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Roundup: No, fixed election dates don’t give the GG unconstitutional powers

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The “debate,” if you can call it such, over Jagmeet Singh’s decision to undermine Her Excellency Mary Simon by publicly writing her and telling her to refuse the advice of the prime minister who commands the confidence of the Chamber just got more ridiculous, as Andrew Coyne decided to weigh in yesterday (and no, I’m not going to link because hate clicks are still clicks). Coyne contends that the fixed election date law empowers the GG to turn down such a request, and “proves” it by quoting testimony from former justice minister Rob Nicholson at the Senate committee.

No. Just…no.

The logic in Coyne’s argument can’t hold because the Governor General’s role in accepting the advice of the prime minister who enjoys the confidence of the Chamber is the very basis of our constitutional framework under Responsible Government. The only discretion she might have over dissolution is when a request is made shortly after an election – that’s it. Nothing a simple statute, like the fixed election date law, can change a constitutional element, and there is jurisprudence to back this up, particularly the doomed attempts at trying to get the courts to uphold the fixed election date legislation, which they dismissed (including the Supreme Court of Canada). Fixed election date legislation is an empty shell – a bit of theatre and attempt to Americanise our system, and is antithetical to how Westminster systems operate – it shouldn’t be on our books as a result. There is no way that it could empower the GG to do away with constitutional norms to refuse dissolution, and if she did refuse, the prime minister would be obligated to resign, and we’d be in an election regardless. It’s ridiculous and wrong to suggest otherwise.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1422914814494584833

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1422925735472271369

What is even more ironic about this whole situation is that Jagmeet Singh and Coyne himself will often rail that the “undemocratic Senate” shouldn’t be allowed to exercise their constitutional powers to veto legislation, and yet they are demanded that an appointed Governor General exercise powers that she doesn’t actually have under the constitution. It’s bizarre, and it’s a lot of bullshit masquerading as principle.

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Roundup: Beware the lure of a pilot project

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You can bet that, as an election looms, that certain parties will start talking up Basic Income again (and this includes the Liberals, given recent party policy votes around it). We’re also hearing from a group of senators who want to push this in spite of evidence that it’s not the best way to go (and they have been vocally dismissing any dissent, no matter how expert). And a bill in the US about Basic Income pilots will add fuel to this particular tire fire. So with that, I turn it over to Dr. Lindsay Tedds, who was on the BC panel that examined the feasibility of Basic Income to break it down:

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1422689592722051072

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1422689597105049603

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1422689601018372096

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1422691518230433793

But there’s a reason why these kinds of pilot proposals are popular, and that is politics. Alas.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1422692966142029826

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Roundup: Just the Speaker doing his job

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We got our first glimpse at the court documents related to the challenge of the House of Commons’ order demanding the production of secret documents related to the firing of the two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, put in his submission that the case should be tossed because of Parliamentary privilege, and there was no explicit waiving of parliamentary privilege under the Canada Evidence Act, which is what the Public Health Agency is following in refusing to turn over unsecured documents. As a reminder, they have turned over the documents, both in redacted form to the committee that requested them, and in unredacted form to NSICOP, which has appropriate security clearances and safeguards, so it’s not like this is a blanket refusal to defy Parliament – it’s that they have their own obligations to follow. It’s also somewhat problematic that the committee wants the Commons’ Law Clerk to then redact the documents on his own, without appropriate training or context, so they ultimately claim they’re not looking for unredacted documents – only for someone else to do the redacting, at which point this is just becoming absurd.

The way this is being spun is also somewhat irritating – because this was a Canadian Press wire story, outlets who ran the piece sometimes did so with altered headlines that stated that it was the Liberals interfering with the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commons rather than the government, which is not really true. This isn’t a partisan issue – it’s different parts of the government acting according to the laws that Parliament passed. When the demands were made, PHAC was bound in legislation to inform the Attorney General, and while it is the same physical person as the minister of justice, under his Attorney General hat, he had obligations to follow the law and test these demands in Court.

The other commentary that is somewhat maddening is people pointing out that the Speaker is somehow going against his party in doing his job as Speaker in defending the Commons’ privileges. Again, this isn’t actually a partisan issue on either side (well, the Conservatives making these demands for the documents, with the support of the other opposition parties, are behaving in an extremely partisan manner and trying to embarrass the government, but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of what we’re discussing). Trying to make it a partisan issue when everyone is doing their jobs is just degrading the discourse and muddying the understanding of what is going on (which is what certain parties would like to happen because it makes it easier for them to lie about the state of play). We shouldn’t be doing their dirty work for them.

Programming Note: I’m taking the next week off (as much as I am able), because it’s probably my only opportunity in advance of the possible election, and I really don’t want to have to deal with election coverage while battling burnout. Take care, and I’ll see you on the far side of the long weekend.

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Roundup: Subjecting a minister to a double standard

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I found myself bemused at the CBC story yesterday about Carolyn Bennett’s office allegedly being some kind of “toxic work environment,” according to a number of former staffers. Reading the piece, however, says little about Bennett herself – other than hammering on the point that she didn’t get along with Jody Wilson-Raybould, as though that were somehow relevant to her office – but rather that the toxicity was related to other staffers in the office who were clannish and played favourites with other staffers. The story made great pains to say that Indigenous staff felt their voices weren’t being heard on policy files, but again, this is about the behaviors of other staffers and not the minister herself.

This all having been said, I am forced to wonder whether anyone could reasonably expect a minister’s office to be some kind of normal office environment, because I can’t really see it. These places are pressure cookers of constant deadlines and stress, and there’s a reason why they tend to be populated by fairly young staffers, many of them recent graduates, which is because they are willing to put up with the long hours, constant travel, and the obliteration of their personal lives where older staffers with families and obligations largely wouldn’t. And while we can say we’d prefer that these offices are healthy work environments and safe spaces, but this is politics at the highest levels in this country. It’s not going to be pretty, as much as we may like it to be.

https://twitter.com/jec79/status/1417870826934730753

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I also think it bears noting that Bennett has been the subject of a lot of criticism that is never given to male ministers, and in particular with the dust-up over her snarky text message with Wilson-Raybould a few weeks ago, seems subject to a double standard that women in ministerial roles are not allowed to have personality conflicts where this, again, is not even blinked at among men. Under this context, the CBC piece looks to be both catering to these double-standards, and looking like they have an axe to grind with Bennett, for whatever the reason.

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