Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: Combing the document dump

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The mass of WE-related documents were the subject of yesterday’s news fodder, and the fact that they largely corroborated the government’s assertion that the civil servants were the ones who suggested WE Charity be the vehicle to deliver the Canada Student Service Grant programme. They did, however, make a couple of notes that raised eyebrows – one was another communication between Bardish Chagger and the Kielbergers (though she has responded to dispel those concerns, saying it was a general comment she had made as the CSSG was not on her radar at the time), and the other were communications between Bill Morneau’s office and the finance department officials where Morneau’s office were described as “besties” with WE – which doesn’t necessarily prove that this was some orchestrated campaign to benefit WE. There were also documents wherein Jean-Yves Duclos was clearly not comfortable with WE being the only delivery vehicle for the programme because they don’t have sufficient depth in Quebec, though he was being assured otherwise.

To these revelations, and the fact that some of the pages had redactions on them (which is standard for both Cabinet confidences and instances where privacy is involved), the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre in particular put on a melodramatic press conference full of air quotes and flung pages, and the howling accusation that there was a cover-up in the works. Because we all know that when you don’t find the answers you want, there must be a conspiracy at play. It’s not unexpected, and I’m not sure he won over any converts among the Canadian public, but hey, this is all theatre for him, like so many things in Canadian politics.

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Roundup: Freeland precedes a prorogation

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The fallout from Bill Morneau’s resignation yesterday culminated in a brief Cabinet shuffle that saw Chrystia Freeland appointed to replace him as finance minister, and Dominic LeBlanc taking over her intergovernmental affairs responsibilities. This makes Freeland the country’s first woman federal finance minister, and there was much back-patting over that particular glass ceiling being shattered. The bigger news, however, was the fact that prime minister Justin Trudeau decided to prorogue Parliament to return on September 23rd – the same week they were intended to return anyway – for a new Speech from the Throne that would outline a new set of priorities for the government in order to focus on rebuilding the economy. Trudeau said that it was the time to move forward rather than revert to the status quo, and that we need bold new solutions rather than being held back by old ways of thinking. He also said that the pandemic was an “unprecedented opportunity,” a chance to build a more resilient Canada, which is healthier, safer, more competitive, more welcoming, and fairer. “This is our moment to change the future for the better,” he declared, adding that the window of opportunity wouldn’t be open for long.

During the Q&A, Trudeau only had praise for Morneau and wouldn’t elaborate on the leaks that happened up to his resignation. Regarding the Governor General, he said that he had confidence in the third-party investigative process launched by PCO. On his children going back to school, he said that they were discussing the matter “actively.” Regarding Freeland’s previous writing on taxing the super-wealthy, Trudeau said that he has been having this conversation with Freeland since he recruited her to politics, which is why the first thing they did was raise taxes on the top one percent, and that they wouldn’t raise taxes at this time. Regarding prorogation, Trudeau tried to differentiate his move with Harper’s 2008 prorogation by saying that while Harper was trying to avoid a confidence vote, he was instead putting one on the table with the Speech (err, except the logic falls apart when you realize that Harper also had a confidence vote following that prorogation, which he survived). He said that they continue to cooperate on any WE investigations, and that they released those thousands of pages of documents to the committee so that they can study them over the next month of fallow period, and that the opposition can keep asking questions when Parliament resumes. And when asked if he would be on the ballot next election, Trudeau said he would be and that he was “excited about the opportunity and the responsibility.”

We also got an extended response from Freeland, beyond her praise for Morneau, both about breaking the glass ceiling around women in the finance portfolio, and the government’s feminist agenda, which was important because of how this crisis has disproportionately affected women. Regarding her own disagreements with Trudeau – because of the narrative being promulgated about Morneau’s ouster – Freeland said that she and the PM had recently reflected “with good humour” on times they disagreed, and that she felt that having those different points of view, with the ability to have open, respectful, candid conversation about them (behind closed doors) brought government to a better decision. So there’s that.

On the subject of prorogation, this is vastly different from 2008, and anyone who tries to compare the two is either being disingenuous or has a comprehension problem. The WE Imbroglio is hardly a scandal – yes, it highlights the PM’s poor judgment, and that should be the cue that it’s time for him to leave, but that’s about it. The attempts by the various committees to find a smoking gun haven’t been able to find one, and several of them are exceeding their mandates in trying to force more investigations. Prorogation won’t end any ongoing committees, but delay them, though I’m really not sure there’s much more to be gained by continuing them, for what it’s worth. This being said, Trudeau proroguing now instead of waiting until the eve of his scheduled Throne Speech is not exactly a smart move given the current pandemic context, because if there is a need for an emergency recall of Parliament for a new legislative measure as a result of said pandemic, they will need to have a Throne Speech before that can happen. While I’m sympathetic to those former staffers who said that the government needs to focus on their Throne Speech and budget, and that the WE stuff was a real distraction from that, I would say too bad – the government made its bed and needs to lay in it. It was unnecessarily provocative and only increases people’s cynicism about Trudeau breaking his promise not to use tactics like these for political gain.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield makes note of the juggling act that Freeland will need to employ in order to balance the goals she’s facing, but notes her experience as a working mother will help. Susan Delacourt points out that Freeland is the only “star candidate” of Trudeau’s that is still standing and hasn’t been tarnished along the way.

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Roundup: Exit Morneau

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After a week of leaks about clashes, finance Bill Morneau took to a lectern late in the day on Monday to announce that he had tendered his resignation, and would be resigning both as minister and as MP. Well, first he did some back-patting over his record and couched the decision by saying that he never planned to serve more than two election cycles, and since the economic recovery would take years, it was better for someone else to step in who could carry the work through. The bombshell out of this was the face-saving gesture that he had put his name forward to be the next secretary general of the OECD, and that he had the PM’s full support in doing so – which is either really cute that he thinks he actually has a chance, or a bit pathetic in that he offered up an excuse that beggared credulity. The Q&A portion had very few answers, but this kind of pabulum is what Morneau was so good at – lots of words, not a lot of substance. When asked about the difference that he was apparently clashing with Trudeau over, Morneau mouthed that there was “vigorous discussion and debate,” and that he hoped that work on the green economy could continue and that he would try to help with the OECD (which he won’t get). He denied that he was pressured to resign, said that when it came to WE, he has been involved in philanthropy for many years and that in hindsight he wished that he had one things differently and recused himself – and yet said nothing about the donor trip he didn’t disclose. He insisted that he still wanted to contribute, and said that at the OECD, he would deal with things like international taxation and digital transformation, and use the expertise he gained as the finance minister of a G7 country to help, but, well, that’s not going to happen and we all know it.

Liberal Sources™ are saying that there won’t be an interim finance minister, though the Orders in Council say that Mona Fortier is already the Acting Minister since Morneau is out of the picture. The leading contenders for the job appear to be Jean-Yves Duclos, Chrystia Freeland, and François-Philippe Champagne.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells describes the strange circumstances that surrounded Morneau’s departure – particularly the leaks to the media about fights that Morneau lost and was gracious about, with added snark about how the departure went down. Heather Scoffield notes the good work Morneau did before agreeing that it was time for him to go. (Look for my own column on Morneau’s departure later today on Loonie Politics).

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Roundup: An investigation into Rideau Hall

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It was announced at the end of the day yesterday that the Privy Council Office would be launching a “thorough, independent and impartial” investigation into the claims of harassment and verbal abuse at Rideau Hall, and that this would be done with the cooperation of the Secretary to the Governor General, Assunta Di Lorenzo – whom these same complainants say was Payette’s abusive tag-team partner. Payette later tweeted that she takes workplace harassment “very seriously,” for what that’s worth.

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé explains why Governors General need to be uncontroversial and above reproach – which extends to how they comport themselves in office, which this current situation is certainly an example of. He also makes the very salient point that the prime minister needs to be directly involved in fixing this situation one way or the other, which can mean encouraging Payette that it’s time to “spend more time with her family.” Chris Selley longs for the days of a boring GG in office, citing David Johnston as the ideal when compared to the current example (and there is a good chapter on the criteria for selecting a GG in Royal Progress, written by Senator Serge Joyal, with the observation that the women selected for the roles have largely had media presences as opposed to governance experience).

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Roundup: Bill Morneau makes himself a bigger target

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As if the WE Imbroglio couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Bill Morneau stepped up to the plate yesterday and drove it to an all new level of lunacy by declaring that he had just repaid some $40,100 in travel costs to WE after they sent him and his wife on tours of some of their operations, and he didn’t realize that they hadn’t been billed for the full costs. WE later said that they were ostensibly free trips because the pair are well-known philanthropists, and these kinds of trips help showcase their work to potential donors. It would also appear that these weren’t reported to the Ethics Commissioner, if I’m reading it correctly, so that means even more problems for Morneau coming at him. (And before you make the joke, no, Morneau did not previously “forget” about his French villa – he incorrectly reported its ownership structure).

Morneau was, of course, appearing at the Finance committee to answer questions on the WE Imbroglio, and this sent Pierre Poilievre and Charlie Angus in particular over the edge. Already there were more questions raised about the contract with WE over the student grant programme because they had signed it with one of the charity’s holding companies, but that may have been about limiting liabilities, so it could be explained away, but it has all become byzantine both from a lack of government candour (shocking, I know), and because the opposition has constructed conspiratorial narratives that have taken any facts and shaped them in the darkest way possible, so as to make it difficult to figure out what is going on.

And this is only going to spiral from here on out. While the Conservatives and Bloc are now howling for Bill Morneau to resign, both Justin Trudeau and his chief of staff, Katie Telford, have agreed to appear at committee at a future date to be negotiated, so that is going to be nothing shy of a circus. And because the circus did not have enough monkeys, conspiracy theorist Vivian Krause also appeared at committee yesterday, for some unknown reason, to assert – with no evidence – that WE was passing along information to the Liberal Party for their voter identification database (which was denied by both WE and the Liberals), and yet this was being brought up in the Commons, and in some irresponsible reporting.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1286029728982478848

Meanwhile, Justin Ling has a broad exploration of the bigger picture of what the whole Imbroglio says about this government and WE, particularly when it comes to the power of branding. Heather Scoffield lists the ways in which Bill Morneau has managed to be off-side because he’s blind to the ethics implications of his decisions. And to remind everyone about this column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about why it was time for Morneau to be shuffled from Cabinet before all of this WE business started up, which really starts to look like it’s untenable that he remain in the position much longer, not only because he can’t communicate, can’t deal with the business community, and now because it’s unavoidable that he is completely blind to his ethical obligations.

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Roundup: The toxic environment at Rideau Hall

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The big news last night was that the CBC had staff on the record about the climate of harassment and verbal abuse that has emerged at Rideau Hall since Julie Payette became Governor General, and her friend Assunta Di Lorenzo her Secretary. It’s not actually surprising – there are three years of stories coming out of Rideau Hall about the atmosphere getting increasingly toxic and that Payette’s behaviour has been mystifying at times – that she doesn’t want to do some of the ceremonial aspects of the job, and wants to have an active hand in portions of the job where she shouldn’t. My own sources have been saying that Payette and Di Lorenzo are “erratic,” and that most people can’t deal with them. Staff has left Rideau Hall in droves. All of the indications are that it’s a sick workplace – but Payette put out a press release saying that this is all news to her because nobody has complained through the official process (which isn’t really a complaint mechanism because it all goes back to Di Lorenzo and ultimately Payette). And if you need convincing, here are three years of stories (thread), including some of my own.

Ultimately, this is Justin Trudeau’s responsibility because he appointed her without due diligence that she would be suitable for the role. The fact that he did away with the vice-regal appointments committee in order to listen to his own inner cadre about Payette as a choice is pretty much the exact kind of thing we’re seeing with the WE Imbroglio playing out right now – nobody bothered to exercise critical judgment, and instead all went along nodding and drinking more of the Kool-Aid, and lo, a bad decision was made – and one that ultimately damaged one of our parliamentary institutions. It also is now up to Trudeau to do something about the situation, whether it’s managing Payette and Di Lorenzo and working on a plan to transition them out, or if they won’t go, calling up the Queen and asking her to dismiss Payette (which is a last resort because the first rule of constitutional monarchy is you don’t get the Queen involved). Any way you look at this, it’s not good, and it’s yet another black mark on Trudeau’s record.

Here’s Philippe Lagassé on the options available to dealing with Payette. And if you want to know more about the former vice-regal appointments commission and the role of the Secretary to the Governor General, and why Di Lorenzo’s appointment has been a problem from the start, read my chapter in Royal Progress: Canada’s Monarchy in the Age of Disruption, and learn more about it.

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Roundup: Taking a personal day

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Of all the possible misplays for Justin Trudeau to make at the height of a controversy around his poor choices, ethical blind spots, and insistence that he’s being open and transparent, the first day of a two-day recall of the House of Commons saw him absent with the only excuse on his daily itinerary being a “personal day,” which sent the opposition into a frenzy. It’s not like Trudeau chose this day for the Commons to be recalled and for there to be a proper Question Period – erm, except he did. And then wasn’t present. Way to read the room.

Andrew Scheer had his own attempts to make hay, insisting that if the Liberal backbenchers don’t oust Trudeau (without a mechanism to do so, it should be noted), that they were signalling that they were okay with his “corruption” – never mind that a conflict of interest is not actually corruption, and he’s not exactly someone who should be throwing stones considering that he was forced to resign his own leadership after it was revealed that he was helping himself to party funds to the tune of almost a million dollars.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are also pushing back against the bill being debated, objecting to the “complexity” of the wage subsidy changes, despite the fact that for there to be a proper phase-out and to ensure it’s more broadly encompassing than the programme was initially, there needs to be added complexity. Their objections won’t matter for much, considering that the Bloc has agreed to support the bill regardless so there are enough votes to go around, but it is a change from bills being supported unanimously at all stages, and something that resembles a sense of normalcy slowly returning to Parliament, which is a good thing.

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Roundup: A brief return to the Commons

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The Commons will be meeting today in an actual, real sitting and not an abbreviated strange hybrid committee, in order to pass Bill C-20 on disability payments, which they say is in an improved format from their previous attempt in C-17 (which one presumes is now withdrawn from the Order Paper). The bill also includes the changes to the wage subsidy that were announced on Friday, and it sounds like will also have the changes to court system timelines that were previously announced and part of C-17, but the text of the bill won’t be out until the Commons actually sits. We also know that the bill will pass, because the Bloc have agreed to everything, and this means a motion that will see the bill essentially passed at all stages with a couple hours’ worth of speeches in lieu of actual debate or legislative processes, which is less than ideal. We’ll also have a proper Question Period today, so we can look forward to that, and all of the questions on the WE Imbroglio that will come with it. The Senate has not yet announced when they will be meeting to pass it on their end, which may not be until later in the week.

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Roundup: Feigned confusion and a filibuster

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As anticipated, the government unveiled their reforms to the wage subsidy programme yesterday, which included more of a sliding scale for revenue drops and how much support businesses could get before the subsidy phases out, which helps ensure that businesses don’t reach a “cliff” in terms of restart growth only to have that support ripped away at an arbitrary level. This has the business community both applauding the government for responding to concerns, while also moaning that it’s so complicated now, which has some economists rolling their eyes. It also looks like the government that insisted they don’t like abusive omnibus bills is rolling the legislation for these changes in with the new-and-improved disability payments, as well as the justice timelines legislation, so that’s something to look forward to when the House comes back next week for a single day.

Meanwhile, the Ethics committee met yesterday to start their own look into the WE Imbroglio (conveniently with many of the same faces who subbed in at the Finance Committee during its hearing), to which the Liberals on the committee, knowing that they don’t have sufficient votes, decided instead to filibuster things, which is not a good look. Their arguments that this undermines the work of the Ethics Commissioner ignores that his role is supposed to support them, not the other way around; the fact that they were blocking a motion to demand the receipts from Margaret and Alexandre Trudeau’s public speaking events from their Speaker’s Bureau going back to 2008 is a little more suspect, and I haven’t heard a reasonable rationale for it or how it relates to the proposed study on how well the conflict-of-interest regime is working. Suffice to say, this isn’t a good look for the Liberals, and there are better ways of beating the Conservatives at their own game than playing into their hands. It’s too bad that they can’t seem to grasp that.

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Roundup: Some strings attached

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau wound up holding an irregular presser yesterday, mid-afternoon instead of late morning, and with a specific purpose in mind – to announce that the federal government had finally come to an agreement with the provinces over the Safe Restart Plan, now pegged at $19 billion rather than the $14 billion initially put on the table. What is noteworthy is that there were still federal strings attached for this money, though some premiers noted that the strings were not as tight as before. The money is to go toward municipalities, transit, contact tracing, personal protective equipment, childcare, and ten days of paid sick leave (so now Jagmeet Singh can pat himself on the back, even though this was BC premier John Horgan’s initiative), and is to last for the next six to eight months, at which point there will be a re-evaluation of where everyone is at. Trudeau also made it official that the Canada-US border will remain closed to non-essential travel until August 21st.

During the Q&A that followed, Trudeau expressed optimism around the vaccine candidate being held up by Chinese customs, and said that in spite of the Russian hacking story, it was important to work with everyone to develop a vaccine and that they were working to get the balance right. When asked if he would appear before committee as invited around the WE Imbroglio, that his House leadership team was looking at the possibilities, but that he also looked forward to taking questions in the Commons next week during the scheduled special sitting day. Chrystia Freeland was asked about what she knew regarding the WE Imbroglio, and she gave a fairly lengthy response about how everyone accepts responsibility for what happened, and apologized, saying that “clearly we made a mistake and we’re going to learn from it,” adding that everyone knew that the PM was connected to WE but didn’t know of his family’s specific financial arrangements, and then added that she still supported the PM and that it was a privilege to serve in his Cabinet. When asked if Quebec had no problems with the strings attached to the billions on the table, Freeland said that they agreed to it like everyone else, and that it was actually a Really Big Deal to get all thirteen provinces and territories to sign onto a deal that includes the municipalities and covered several ministries, saying that it showed that Canadians have understood that we need to work together in this time of crisis.

Shortly after the presser ended, Bardish Chagger and her officials appeared before the Finance committee to discuss the WE Imbroglio. Chagger insisted that nobody in PMO directed her to make an arrangement with WE, but she kept deferring to her officials, which…isn’t really how ministerial responsibility works. There was also talk about how WE had sent an unsolicited proposal to several ministers about a youth programme before this was announced, which WE later came out and said was a youth entrepreneurship programme which had nothing to do with what became the Service Grant programme. This having been said, the senior bureaucrat on the file said that they had three weeks to come up with a programme, and that WE fit the bill for its requirements, which is why they were recommended – and pointed out that potential conflicts are for public office holders to deal with, not bureaucrats (which is true). Up today, the Ethics Committee will begin their own examination into the Imbroglio, so we’ll see if that goes any better.

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