Category Archives: Political Roundup

What’s going on in Canadian politics

Roundup: The committee goes after McKinsey

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The Commons’ government operations committee met and, as expected, launched a study into those McKinsey contracts, but because the Liberals decided to be tricksey about it, they got consent to amend the terms so they’re going to review contracts going back to 2011, which means they’ll also be reviewing Conservative-era contracts. But it’s all pretty stupid because McKinsey does very little in the way of government contracts overall (especially compared to a number of other big firms), and this is just about politics and the Conservatives trying to accuse McKinsey of being a “Liberal-friendly firm” because of Dominic Barton, not to mention the fact that McKinsey has had a lot of bad press of late. But this doesn’t touch the overall issue of use of outside consultants by government, and is mostly going to be about showboating, because why do actual valuable work in committee when you can spend all of your time scoring partisan points.

With that in mind, I will point you to my most recent YouTube episode, where Carleton university professor Jennifer Robson and I discuss the rise of the so-called “shadow public service,” and it’s a lot more nuanced than you think. Additional context from Robson below:

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 330:

The major news out of Ukraine was a helicopter crash, killing the country’s interior minister, senior staffers, and one child when it crashed into a kindergarten in a suburb of Kyiv. What we know and don’t know about the crash can be found here, but there is no indication yet if it was downed by Russian missiles. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency is placing teams in all four of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of accidents as the fighting carries on.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1615719966820507684

 

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Roundup: The bullshit narrative around the just transition “memo”

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Because Alberta politics is plumbing the depths of utter stupidity, there has been a multi-day freak out over the federal government’s supposed “just transition” plan (and yes, the federal ministers say they don’t like the term and prefer “sustainable jobs,” but the term is internationally recognised from the Paris Agreement and from similar American initiatives). Earlier in the week, there were a couple of credulous columns about a supposed “leak” of a federal memo talking about 2.7 million energy jobs being imperilled, or due to be transitioned, or some such nonsense.

And it was a completely bullshit story—there was no leak. There was no memo. There were selective quotes taken out of context and then torqued some more that came from a publicly available briefing package prepared for the minister of natural resources prior to a committee hearing back in June. And it doesn’t say 2.7 million jobs will be “transitioned”—it says that’s the size of the energy sector, and that there could be “significant labour market disruptions” given the transition of the industry due to global forces.

And while Danielle Smith was caught out on this lie, it not only hasn’t stopped her from having a public meltdown about it, but Rachel Notley decided to get in on the action, because it’s pre-election season, so that means out-bidding, and trying to distance herself from Trudeau—never mind that her own climate plan when she was in government included “just transition” language for coal workers. It’s all so bloody stupid, and we’re all dumber for watching it play out. I’m going to especially call out Power & Politics for adopting Smith’s mendacious framing of this supposed memo, and for both-sidesing it on their website rather than fact-checking Smith’s claims against the actual bloody document. This shouldn’t be that hard. Stop giving these lying liars the credibility they’re looking for. Call them out for what they are.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 329:

The search for survivors has been called off at the site of the bombed apartment building in Dnipro, with the death toll sitting at 45 including six children. Meanwhile, Germany looks willing to approve the transfer of Leopard 2 tanks from allied countries to Ukraine in the next few days (and a few may come from Canada if that’s the case). Ukrainian officials are also saying they are still fighting in Soledar, and that it has not completely fallen to the Russians or their mercenaries.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1615314617374212097

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Roundup: Ford opts for more private clinics

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As expected, Doug Ford announced a plan to move more outpatient surgeries to private clinics. While I have a column on this coming out later today that goes into my thinking on this in greater depth, I did want to share some of the more salient tweets on this through the day, because they’re asking the right questions.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1615014400385077251

We should note the interview that provincial health minister Sylvia Jones did Power & Politics, where the question of these clinics upselling to patients was raised, and Jones dismissed any concerns as this being about “choice,” which is a red flag.

Jagmeet Singh was, of course, demanding that Justin Trudeau swoop in to save the day, in spite of not really having any particular federal levers to deploy.

Meanwhile, Chrystia Freeland was busy subtweeting the whole thing.

And of course, the Beaverton had one of the most salient responses to Ford’s announcement, as they are wont to.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 328:

The death toll from the Russian missile strike on the apartment building in Dnipro has risen to 40, as rescuers continue to sort through the rubble. There was also Russian shelling in Kherson, killing three people. Meanwhile, Russians may have finally taken Soledar, though it remains unconfirmed, though that came at a horrific cost of thousands of dead or wounded Russians—a tactic where the Ukrainians are trying to exhaust the Russians leaving them vulnerable in other areas.

https://twitter.com/tpyxanews/status/1615112061951909894

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Roundup: On Trudeau’s feeling re-energized

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The CBC’s Aaron Wherry has a longread out right now about Justin Trudeau’s time in office, and the sense that he’s feeling re-invigorated and is almost certainly going to run for a fourth election, likely in 2025, which some of us (myself included) have not been so sure about. But there is a lot of observation from insiders and observers that he does seem to have the fight back (indeed, I heard from some people in the know of the funk he found himself in at one particular point), and that it’s not necessarily Pierre Poilievre’s presence that is doing it, but that he has a sense of unfinished business, of promises yet to be fulfilled.

To that end, the piece notes that Cabinet and caucus have been told to focus on four Cs: competence, confidence, contrast and campaign-readiness (in that order), of which the first is going to be incredibly important when it comes to trying to dispel this notion that “everything feels broken,” particularly when there is a pervasive sense that government can’t even get the little things right (though I would note that some of the “little things” are more complex than they may appear on the surface, and a lot of what people are complaining about is not the job of the federal government to fix, no matter that they may try to claim some kind of policy ownership, such as investing in housing when those funds are the only policy lever they have available). And yeah, some of it is their own fault (see: judicial appointments), where they decided on processes that hampered them more than it helped them, and absolutely their inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag is one hundred percent one of their biggest own-goal problems, which they seem resolutely unwilling to do anything about.

I know there is also a lot of talk about the “smell of death” on this government, and I will probably write something longer about that elsewhere, but nevertheless, it was interesting to read Wherry’s piece and put some of it into the context of these conversations that are being had around the pundit sphere. There are a lot of things to consider about this government, and little of it can fit into some of these fairly facile narratives.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 327:

There was a fresh round of Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine on Saturday, and one missile struck a nine-story building in Dnipro, killing at least twelve people, while another 30 to 40 people are still missing and could be trapped under rubble. The missile—the kind used to strike warships—may have been aimed at a nearby power station. This as Ukrainian officials continue to insist that the battle for Soledar is not lost, and this certainly takes the attention away from that. CBC also heard from a Russian conscript who was at the site of the Makiivka counter-attack, which struck Russian barracks.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1614351103637991424

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Roundup: Encouraging noises on health transfers

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There seems to be a noticeable shift in tone coming from several premiers when it comes to the federal government’s demands that there be more strings attached to future federal health care transfers, and that they seem to be realizing that their time-old tactics of simply blaming the federal government isn’t working as well as it used to. In part, I think that Justin Trudeau has stepped up his game on communication around this issue more than he usually does, and made effective use of his round of year-end interviews on this file, and showed that he was willing to give them more money, but that there needs to be changes rather than putting money into a broken system that won’t get meaningful results. I also think that shit is getting real for the premiers as we are now seeing an increasing number of deaths in ERs that should have been preventable, and that the patience of the population when it comes to children’s hospitals in particular is now gone, and they are being forced to wear it more than they would normally have had to in the past.

So, this sounds like an increased willingness to rebrand federal strings as “shared priorities,” and that’s a climbdown that premiers seem to be increasingly willing to live with. But then again, I wouldn’t trust all of the premiers, and in particular Doug Ford, whose math about new beds is false advertising, and who is hilariously claiming that new private surgery clinics won’t cannibalise hospital staff or resources, because of course they will. That’s the whole gods damned point. His “safeguards” will be as effective as toddler gates whose latches can be figured out and overcome within seconds. So, while it’s good to hear the shift in tone, I wouldn’t count any unhatched chickens just yet.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 325:

Russians are once again claiming that they are now in control of the remains of Soledar, but the Ukrainians continue to say their units are still there and still fighting.

https://twitter.com/bachyns/status/1613939963237732365

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Roundup: The slow pace of judicial appointments

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In what is a fairly perennial story, there are complaints that delays in the justice system are being caused, in part, by the slow pace of judicial appointments by the federal government. One should probably also point to the fact that provinces continue to under-resource their court systems, but the federal government can wear much of the blame around these vacancies, in large part because of the system that they have chosen to set up in order to make these appointments.

In order to de-politicise these appointments as much as possible, the process involves independent judicial advisory committees vetting applications from lawyers who want to become judges, and those who are highly recommended get passed onto the minister’s office for another round of vetting (which has a political element because the prime minister remains politically accountable for all judicial appointments), before the appointments are finalised.

While this sounds all well and good, the problem is twofold—that the government has a stated desire to appoint more diverse members to the bench, but at the same time, they insist on self-nominations. The problem there is that a lot of people from the diverse communities they draw from don’t feel either qualified to apply, or they simply feel like they won’t get it because of the persistent image of judges as being old white men, and that it will keep replicating itself so they don’t apply. This draws out the process while they wait for more diverse applications, and on it goes. What these committees should be doing is more outreach and going out to nominate lawyers who they feel would do well on the bench—particularly as there is an observed difference in people who are nominated for an appointment like this, and those who apply and get it. But this government refuses to do that kind of outreach work, even when it would net them better, more diverse results, and here we are, with a slower process for these appointments, and mounting complaints that the government is shuffling their feet when it comes to ensuring the benches are filled so that they can deal with the backlog in the courts.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 324:

Days after Wagner Group mercenaries claim they took the town of Soledar, Ukrainian forces continue to insist that they are holding out, and that it’s a “bloodbath,” with them having killed over 100 Russian troops so far, and that the Russians are just walking over their own bodies to keep fighting.

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Roundup: Prepared to cooperate with a committee probe

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The simmering issue over the McKinsey contracts carried on yesterday as Justin Trudeau told a press conference that he has tasked ministers Mona Fortier and Helena Jaczek with looking into those contracts, and that they will cooperate with any committee investigation that may happen around them. Fortier was also on Power & Politics to praise transparency and accountability, but didn’t entirely push back when asked why Radio-Canada couldn’t see the reports when asked, though that’s unlikely to happen for most of them given that they are meant for internal consumption and not for the public, though there should be some kind of better accounting for them, such as possibly releasing an executive summary.

Meanwhile, Alex Usher has some good observations about civil service capacity and these kinds of consultants, and they’re salient. Subject matter expertise in the civil service has been waning for a while, and most civil servants now jump from department to department in search of career advancement, and executives get shuffled from department to department all the time, so you no longer have someone in an executive position who has been in that department their whole careers. That can matter in the end.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 323:

The battle around Soledar appears to continue, as the claims by Russia and the mercenary Wagner Group continue to be disputed by Ukrainian forces who insist they are holding out and Russia is merely trying for a propaganda victory. Elsewhere in the country, Ukrainian soldiers are engaged in war games exercises near the Belarus border, amid rumours that Russian forces may try to make another attempt to cross through those borders.

https://twitter.com/GitanasNauseda/status/1613169572873469954

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Roundup: The hypocrisy around McKinsey concerns

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It was a little weird yesterday, that with Justin Trudeau off in Mexico City, that a number of MPs from all opposition parties descended on the Hill to hold press conferences and send out a raft of releases, as though they all just got back to work after the holidays. (I know, they were working in their ridings, but it was just an interesting turn of events). One of the things that all of the opposition parties demanded was a parliamentary inquiry into the use of McKinsey contracts by the government. Which is fine, if a week after the raft of stories on them, and the minister of procurement says she’d be happy to turn over documents if the right committee requests them, which they haven’t, but then Pierre Poilievre, who deigned to show up in front of microphones, wondered why civil servants weren’t being allowed to do their jobs.

Ahem.

Poilievre was a former minister in the Harper government, which imposed cuts on the civil service and a lot of their capabilities, while their use of outside consultants exploded. This story from 2013 shows the rapidly increasing use of those consultants, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. This study from 2011 documents the ballooning use of these consultants to create the “shadow public service” that is being decried currently. And there can be legitimate uses for outside consultants, but the fact that Poilievre is calling on the government to let the civil service to the work is the height of hypocrisy. The utter lack of shame in his saying that is…frankly unsurprising and telling, but it’s also completely galling at the same time.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612937741523881984

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612938363685806080

Meanwhile, Poilievre wouldn’t answer questions about his MP who refused to aid asylum seekers in his riding, but instead derided them as “illegal refugees.” Instead, he went on a rant about how the government hasn’t fixed the problems of irregular crossings, or that they haven’t renegotiated the Safe Third Country agreement with the Americans, and demanded that the government close Roxham Road, as though that wouldn’t force these asylum seekers to other, more dangerous crossing points where they wouldn’t be processed upon arrival.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 322:

Wagner Group mercenaries hired by Russia claim that they are now in control of the salt mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut, but Ukraine says their forces continue to hold out. Russians want to control the underground tunnels around Soledar. A vocational school in Kramatorsk says that no, the Russian strike against them didn’t kill “hundreds of Ukrainian troops” as the Russians are claiming. Here’s a bigger-picture look at the fighting around Bakhmut, which is now described as a “meat grinder.”

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Roundup: Releasing more F-35 deal details

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All of the talk yesterday was about the big F-35 announcement, which wasn’t actually about the decision around the F-35s, but rather some of the details around dates and costs. That didn’t, however, stop every media outlet from running clips of Trudeau in 2015 saying that he wasn’t going to buy F-35s because they weren’t the right plane for Canada and the price was astronomical. Well, some things have changed since then, but primarily it was the fact that the consensus among NATO allies has been to settle on the F-35 (as flawed as it is—no, seriously, last I checked, the ejection seats will literally kill a pilot who is below a certain height/weight), and interoperability is a key function, particularly when most of their use will be over North America. Ironically, now that Sweden is joining NATO, their Gripen fighters will have to become NATO compatible, which was the other choice for Canada in this procurement.

The other thing, which is being downplayed by certain circles, is that there was an actual proper procurement process, which the Harper government didn’t engage in when they sole-sourced the F-35s the first time, on dubious advice. There are going to be questions about the industrial benefits, but as participants in the joint strike fighter development programme, Canadian firms have been part of the supply chain for a while now, so the benefits are not like they used to be in previous procurement processes. But really, this was not the same kind of regional job creation programme that the shipbuilding process was, which is not really working out well for us.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 321:

Russian forces intensified their assault on Soledar, near Bakhmut, primarily with Wagner Group mercenaries. Ukrainian soldiers repelled the attempted advance.

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Roundup: Morneau has a few legitimate gripes

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There is a lot of media attention around Bill Morneau’s upcoming book, and he’s started to do the interview circuits, and lo, he did one with CTV at the end of last week that aired over the weekend. In what he describes around his time in office, some of it has to do with some of the frustrations he felt, and I will say that some of them are very legitimate. Things like how he could never have a private meeting with Justin Trudeau, and that there was always someone from his staff there—that’s very legitimate! And it’s something that I’ve heard from a lot of different sources, including the fact that this extends to the caucus room, where it’s supposed to just be MPs in attendance, and was under previous leaders. (There would also have been senators under previous leaders, but that’s a topic for another day).

But some of what Morneau describes also points out that after several years on the job, he’s still something of a political naïf who hasn’t quite grasped that Parliament Hill is not Bay Street (and that is a big reason why he got caught up in an ethics breach over the WE Charity issue). What may be the best policy in his opinion may not be politically saleable, and I don’t think he has ever really grasped that notion. I think some of his thoughts on the pandemic benefits packages are a little too clouded in hindsight bias, and the fact that he was overridden on the wage subsidy had a lot to do with the original proposal was not being seen to be up to the task at hand. I saw in another excerpt from the book that he complained that some ministers were being placated with amounts of money that he didn’t like, but I am curious what some of that programme spending was. In any case, I don’t think this will make too big of a wave, or that there is anything too explosive in all of the write-ups I’ve seen, and it’s likely to make too much of a splash, beyond him trying to rehabilitate his reputation before he goes back to Bay Street in a more visible way.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 320:

The “ceasefire” is passed, and Russian forces have been shelling in the Donbas region, as well as Zaporizhzhia. During the Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the incoming new package of military aid from the US. There was a prisoner swap on Sunday where both sides released 50 prisoners.

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