Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: Lethal overwatch?

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There’s been some chatter about a story in the Guardian that purports to show BC RCMP communications that would have allowed for “snipers” and “sterilizing” of Indigenous protests in the province over LNG pipelines – which the minister of Indigenous services wants some answers to, and which the RCMP denies is actually legitimate, citing that the terminology used isn’t consistent with their own, or that some of it is being misinterpreted (in particular “lethal overwatch). To that end, here’s Justin Ling with a bit of context and nuance to consider before you get agitated at what’s being reported, as it may not necessarily be correct.

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Roundup: Building the Teck narrative

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While some of Jason Kenney’s usual mouthpieces and apologists start agitating for the Teck Frontier oilsands mine, it seems we need yet more reality checks about the project – particularly the economics. Because we have seen on more than one occasion where a project that wasn’t economically viable still achieves mythology status because certain people who think the idea of it is great will lie about its fate in order to suit their narratives *cough*Energy East*cough*. Anyway, here’s Andrew Leach with more.

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Roundup: SNC-Lavalin gets a plea bargain

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In an unexpected development yesterday, we learned that SNC-Lavalin took a plea deal from the courts – that one of their divisions would plead guilty for fraud over $5000 in connection to their dubious activities in Libya, pay a fairly hefty $280 million fine over five years, and all of the rest of the charges they were facing were withdrawn, and they wouldn’t face debarment from future contract work for governments. In other words, they largely got what they wanted with the Deferred Prosecution Agreement/Remediation Agreement that they had been agitating and lobbying for, and which spun off the whole Double-Hyphen Affair in the first place.

Could of things – first of all, DPAs are not “get out of jail free” cards like they have often been described as. Had SNC-Lavalin been granted the DPA, they would have had to agreed that they committed wrongdoing, paid a fine which would have included remediation for the wronged parties, and would have a structured monitoring regime put into place to ensure better governance going forward, and it wouldn’t have protected any of their executives from future prosecution. One particular law professor, Jennifer Quaid, noted that even though they weren’t a good candidate for a DPA, it would have actually been more transparent than the plea bargain that they wound up with, there is no guarantee of remediation to wronged parties, and it’s unlikely there will be the same structure imposed, so maybe, just maybe, the DPA was the better plan in the first place.

Jody Wilson-Raybould tweeted out in response that the system worked, while Justin Trudeau said in an interview that he may have acted differently had he known this would have been the outcome, but he was trying to do the best he could at the time. And there are certain people screaming about prosecutorial independence, but I keep going back to the conversation that Wilson-Raybould taped with Michael Wernick, and so much of it was them talking past one another – him looking for an explanation and her not providing one until the end of the conversation when she said that she gave a report to PMO months prior, to which Wernick said “That’s news to me.” This key exchange was completely glossed over in most of the reporting because they fell instead for the juicy quotes that Wilson-Raybould had set up in conducting the conversation the way she did. So much of the communications and relationship breakdown is on full display in that call. (That being said, I remain deeply troubled with how much SNC-Lavalin was stage-managing the legislative process around the DPAs, even if lawyers in the field had been demanding that legislation for a decade because we were behind our comparable Western allies in making these kinds of arrangements available).

Meanwhile, certain journalists want to insist that this doesn’t mean that the story is over because parliamentary committees. Erm, except they would need the support of the Bloc to push forward with them, and they have explicitly stated that they have no interest in doing so. (Also, I am a bit concerned that Elizabeth May was conspiracy theorizing over Twitter regarding who this plea deal is “protecting.”)

On a related note, Wilson-Raybould was chosen by The Canadian Press as their Newsmaker of the Year, and make news she certainly did (and still does).

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Roundup: Competing economic illiteracy

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As someone who covers a fair bit of economic stories, the absolute inability of this government to come up with a definition of “middle class” is exhausting – and those of you who read me regularly will know that I will instead use Middle Class™ as a means of showcasing that it’s a meaningless branding exercise. And lo and behold, when challenged to offer up a definition during one of his year-ender interviews, Justin Trudeau said that “Canadians know who’s in the middle class and know what their families are facing and we focus more on the actual issues.” And I died a little bit inside. For a government that keeps insisting they’re all about data, and evidence-based policy, their refusal to offer a meaningful measure of what their core narrative is all about is entirely about branding. By not offering a definition, they don’t have to exclude anyone – because everyone believes they’re middle class (whether they had ponies or not). And more to the point, by not offering a metric, they can’t measure whether they’ve succeeded for failed – it’s only about feelings, which makes their talk of data and evidence all the more hollow.

And then there’s Pierre Poilievre, who, when challenged about the definition of a recession, makes up a bullshit response and thinks it makes him clever. It’s as economically illiterate as the Liberals’ Middle Class™ prevarication, but the fact that the Conservatives keep cheerleading a “made-in-Canada recession” that no economist sees on the horizon, and which they can’t even fit into the actual definition of what a recession is (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) sets a dangerous path of spooking markets. It’s all so stupid, and reckless, but the party’s current path of pathological dishonesty makes them blind to the danger of it all.

On perhaps a related note, Trudeau’s director of communications, Kate Purchase, is leaving to become a senior director at Microsoft, and good luck to her – and she really is one of the nicest staffers and was actually helpful to media in stark contrast to the Harper crew. But I also hope that perhaps this means that her replacement can start ensuring that this government can start communicating its way out of a wet paper bag, because cripes, they have done themselves zero favours over the past four years.

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Roundup: Fiscal update and actuarial context

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Finance minister Bill Morneau released his fall economic update yesterday, and it showed that while the economy was doing well – fairly strong growth, very strong job creation (November’s numbers notwithstanding) and wage growth – the deficit was going to get a lot bigger unexpectedly. The reason for it, however, was largely ignored by all of the commentariat, both media and partisan, because the kneejerk response in Canada about any finance story is about the size of the deficit, end of story. The real reason – that low interest rates had forced a hefty actuarial adjustment for government pension plans – was inconvenient for them to force a narrative onto, so they just ignored it and clutched their pearls some more, crying “The deficit! The deficit!” and the Conservatives continued to cheerlead a “made-in-Canada” recession by cherry-picking some very selective economic data that was to the exclusion of the broader trends, because narrative. Here’s economist Kevin Milligan to explain some more.

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I would add that while the Conservatives like to rail about how our unemployment figures compare poorly to other countries, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand because we don’t all measure unemployment the same way, and not all of our economies work the same way. Canada has had record low unemployment in recent months, to the point where economists say we are have been at what is essentially “full employment” – in a statistical sense, not to dismiss that there are regions where it’s still a problem, but essentially there’s not a lot of room for more job growth in the economy. But hey, why let reality get in the way of the narrative, right?

In terms of analysis, John Geddes delves into the notion of “endless deficits” and finds that, shockingly, it’s not a cut-and-tried issue, but the real issue is complacency. Certain bank economists think that because the shift in the deficit is on pension obligations, it could force the Bank of Canada to act sooner if there were an economic downturn. Heather Scoffield wonders what kinds of budget promises that Morneau will have to abandon given the bigger deficit figures if they don’t want to lose their debt-to-GDP anchor.

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Roundup: Considerations for Teck

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the proposed Teck Frontier oilsands mine in northern Alberta lately, and demands by Jason Kenney and a number of Conservative MPs that its approval be fast-tracked as close to immediate as possible. Energy economist Andrew Leach has a few thoughts on the matter, particularly of how to reconcile Teck in the broader scope.

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Roundup: Mandate letters and the minister for everything

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Yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau released the mandate letters for his ministers, giving us a glimpse as to what their marching orders will be (which is still a fairly novel transparency and accountability measure in this country, it needs to be said). The National Post counted up some 288 projects listed in those mandates, some of them holdovers from the previous parliament (which isn’t surprising considering that  many of them were fairly ambitious and transformational and were not achievable within four years). But there were also a number of things missing from several of those letters that should have been dealt with – particularly on the justice file.

As with the previous parliament, each of the letters has an identical preamble, advising the ministers to “govern in a positive, open and collaborative way,” because it’s a hung parliament and all of that. In terms of specific points in the letters, there are issues like discussions with province over pharmacare, shortening wait times for airport screenings, tax cuts for green tech companies, reforming the medical assistance in dying laws, advancing international efforts to ban “killer robots,” procuring new fighter jets and modernizing NORAD. One of the more alarming mentions was in Bill Morneau’s letter, advising him to review and possibly modify the financial stress test applied to mortgages, which is a Very Bad Thing, and means that the real estate lobby is winning its air war over the good common sense of the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. (Seriously – there is no excuse for encouraging bad debt).

And then there is Chrystia Freeland’s letter, which is expansive and makes her in essence a “minister of everything” who is assigned to basically work with a number of other ministers to advance their priorities, whether it’s carbon pricing, getting resources to market, breaking down internal trade barriers, facilitating pharmacare talks, working on pan-Canadian childcare, gun control, regional economic development agencies, and advancing reconciliation. This leaves questions as to what exactly Trudeau will be doing while Freeland does all the work – leaving her to either take the fall while Trudeau gets to take the credit. This having been said, it’s just as likely that she wanted a full plate of projects rather than simply spending her weeks heading to provincial capitals to meet with premiers once the New NAFTA is ratified, but she certainly has her work cut out for her, ensuring that enough of these promises are fulfilled before the inevitable early election call that comes in a hung parliament.

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Roundup: Exit Scheer

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The news that blew up all of our days was that of Andrew Scheer’s sudden resignation as leader, despite having stated for nearly two months that he planned to stay on and fight the next election. As this news broke, so did the news that party funds were being used to finance his children’s private school education, and throughout the day there was a lot of back-and-forth as to just who in the party knew about it, and it sounds increasingly like Stephen Harper, the Conservative Fund’s chair, was mighty upset when he learned about it. Oops. Nevertheless, Scheer went before the House of Commons and talked about how this was all about needing to spend more time with his family, and he spun a tale about how he realized he barely knew his teenaged son, and Justin Trudeau and others were very gracious and classy, and offered more humanity to Scheer than he managed to in his time as leader. The caucus also voted to let Scheer stay on as interim leader until his replacement is chosen, but considering how well that went for the NDP, with the embittered Thomas Mulcair poisoning the well, well, you’d think they would know better.

While the group calling itself Conservative Victory that were organizing to pressure Scheer to resign has declared victory, we now begin with all of the breathless speculation as to who will run to replace Scheer, and you can bet that most of the usual names – Raitt, Ambrose, Kenney – won’t. The Star runs through the probable names and their chances of actually running.

And, of course, come all of the hot takes. Justin Ling declares this the end of Scheer’s reign of incompetence. Andrew Coyne notes that Scheer’s departure won’t solve the party’s bigger problems. Matt Gurney makes the point that the party really can’t choose a new leader until they learn the lessons from the last election. Susan Delacourt explores the parallels between Scheer’s departure and that of Joe Clark after his election loss in 1979. Paul Wells gives a fair accounting of Scheer’s self-inflicted wounds, and the huge challenge the party faces in trying to find a leader that will unify the party’s various factions. Robert Hiltz gives his not-so-fond farewell to Scheer with his trademarked acerbic style. My own column on Scheer’s demise looks at how he turned politics into a house of lies, and why his successor will need to rectify that mistake.

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Roundup: Immutable committee math

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In a move that is possibly quite disappointing, the Liberals got unanimous consent yesterday to suspend the sections of the Standing Orders governing the powers of parliamentary secretaries – which could be an issue if they plan to put them back on committees with voting powers and the ability to move motions and so on. Some of you may recall that when this was the standard practice during the Conservative era, these committees simply became branch plants of the ministers’ offices, and everything was stage-managed within an inch of their lives.

However.

I also have it on good authority that this may not be exactly as it seems. Part of the problem is that there is a shortage of warm bodies in the Liberal ranks to fill the committees, particularly if you have a Cabinet of 37 out of 157 seats, and what looks to be a prospective parliamentary secretary list of at least 46 (given that Economic Development with have separate parliamentary secretaries for each regional economic development agency). Then, subtract the Speaker and the Assistant Deputy Speaker, who can’t sit on committees, and that leaves them with 72 MPs (maybe less – a couple may also remain assigned to NSICOP, which pulled them from other committees in the previous parliament) to distribute across 27 standing and joint committees, where the parliamentary math in the current hung parliament would see four Liberal MPs per committee. Quite simply, they don’t have enough.

What I’ve been told by my sources is that what they may wind up doing is allowing parliamentary secretaries to sit as regular committee members on committees that aren’t those aligned with their minister, so that they would essentially be pulling double (or possibly triple) duty, especially if they remain on the committees aligned with their minister in a non-voting capacity. It’s not pretty, but it may be what winds up being necessary if they intend to live up to their promise to keep parliamentary secretaries from being voting members of their interested committees. (Are we ready to start having a discussion about having a more reasonable number of MPs for a country of our size? Because seriously, not having enough bodies is an actual problem that has consequences for the efficacy of the institution).

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Roundup: A promise weaselled out on

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A very important bill has been introduced in the Senate, that has been attempted on more than a few occasions now, and it’s a sign of a promise that the Liberals weaselled out on in the past. The bill? To restore Parliament’s ability to control government borrowing by way of votes – you know, like Parliament is supposed to do as part of their job of holding government to account by means of controlling the public purse. You see, back in the Harper era, they hid the change in one of their massive omnibus budget bills that stripped Parliament of the ability to vote on new borrowing, and instead turned it over to Cabinet. Senators caught it too late, and the bill passed, and whoops, no more ability for Parliament to hold government to account for it any longer. Senator Wilfred Moore introduced a bill to revert this practice on a couple of occasions, and Senator Joseph Day carried on with it in the previous Parliament, and has just reintroduced it in this one.

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The Liberals were all in favour of this back when they were in opposition, and made a big show about promising to restore this to Parliament – and then they weaselled out on it. What they did instead was introduced a debt ceiling of $1.168 trillion, after which Parliament would need to vote to extend it, and said that Cabinet only needed to report to Parliament every three years about the money it has borrowed, starting in 2020. Let me reiterate – they weaselled out of this promise, and at least there are senators who are alive to why this is important for Parliament.

These are principles that go back to Runnymede, and the Magna Carta in 1215, and made more explicit in 1688 when the king wasn’t able to borrow money without Parliament’s consent. The Conservatives broke this important principle of Parliament for their convenience. That the Liberals have refused to act on their promise to restore it is a black mark against them.

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