Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: Barriers and non-solutions

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As part of a discussion on Power & Politicsyesterday on barriers women face in politics, there were a few well-worn tropes thrown out there, but I wanted to poke into a couple of the items discussed (much of which I’ve already written about in my book, but a refresher course never hurts):

  1. This needs to be an issue addressed by the parties at the grassroots level and shouldn’t be legislated top-down. Parties are already too centrally controlled, and if you want empowered MPs that are women and those who are from diverse communities, they need to participate from the ground-up rather than be appointed top-down.
  2. The side-effect of quotas, be they de facto or de jure, tends to be that women and minorities are nominated in “no-hope” ridings. We’ve seen this time and again, even from the NDP, who have their “no nomination can be run unless the riding association has exhausted the possibility for an equity-seeking candidate” rule. That rule is often conveniently broken if they think they have a winnable straight, white male candidate, and 2011 is a perfect example of how they loaded a lot of women and racialized candidates in “no hope” Quebec ridings that got swept up in the “orange wave.” Most were not good MPs, and some had never been to their ridings before winning, which is the opposite of how nominations should be run.
  3. The voting system is not the problem – it’s entrenched barriers in the nomination system where not enough encouragement is given to women to run (i.e. until this last electoral cycle, they didn’t recognize that women need to be asked several times before they will consider running, and they may have things like childcare issues that need to be sorted when running). A PR system usually creates some manner of list MPs, where your women and minority MPs come from lists rather than having had to run and win ridings, which creates two-tiers of MPs. This also manifests itself in countries with quotas, and women MPs in places like Rwanda have seats but little power as a result.
  4. We can’t do much more to make our parliament more “family friendly” without hollowing it out even more than it has been. While there are issues with childcare, MPs are not without resources to address it (like hiring nannies) rather than forcing the institution to hire precariously-employed childcare workers for part of the year with no sense of numbers on a daily basis. While 60-day parental leave is not objectionable, remote voting and Skyping into committee meetings is very much a problem that we should not encourage in any way.

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Roundup: Craven and unnecessary

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While Andrew Scheer continues his effort to woo Quebeckers to the Conservative cause, he’s apparently decided to start carrying the Bloc’s water for them, and yesterday morning made the “important” announcement that a Conservative government would ensure that there was a single tax form for Quebec. Which…is a problem that the Quebec government created for itself and could put an end to at any time they choose by returning to the federal tax form that all other provinces use. Scheer insists that this is about listening to Quebec, but it’s just a bit more craven than that, and yes, it’s a promise fraught with problems when you get into the details. It’s also interesting to note that his message changed over Twitter over the course of the day, which makes it all the more curious that he seems to be doing this on the fly.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1011262711034867714

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1011265775573688323

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1011393533343719425

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1011397075932549120

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1011433391986655232

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1011433535368937473

Mental health and Hill staffers

A Liberal Hill staffer, Paul Wernick, went public about a second suicide attempt, brought on by crippling depression and the stress of sixty-hour work weeks that life on the Hill is known for. His story makes some very important points that more Hill denizens should beware of – though he quit drinking years ago, there is a culture of drinking at the myriad of receptions that staffers attend with their bosses, and it can serve to self-medicate the stresses of the job, which is where things can get dangerous. There are resources available for staffers, but they may not be aware of them – Wernick says that he wasn’t, which shows that there’s still work to do when it comes to helping staffers out.

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Roundup: Judging Question Period the Toronto Star way

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The Toronto Star released a package of stories yesterday on Question Period, and because this is the way we do journalism these days, it was full of data analysis that looks shiny, and hey, they got some investigative reporters to count questions and responses. Absent from that? A hell of a lot of context. So while you got some backbenchers who don’t participate to gripe about it being scripted (which it is), and some counting up of the talking points (without any context as to why these developed), or a surface-level look at the political theatre of it all (again, absent a lot of context or history, or bigger-picture look at the ways in which the messaging has changed and how it is currently being used to gather social media clips). It’s inch-deep stuff that, for someone who covers QP every single day, is mighty disappointing. (Additional point – most of the writers of these pieces have not attended QP, which is a problem because watching it from your desk in Toronto is not the same thing as being there in person. At all).

What is the most disappointing of all, however, is their “Question Period fact check” piece, which takes a sampling of questions and answers, and assesses the veracity of the questions being posited and the responses. Why it’s a problem is because they fell into the problem of how questions are framed – surface truths that are stripped of context to say something that it doesn’t. An example is when the Conservatives railed that the PBO said that carbon taxes would take $10 billion out of the economy. Which isn’t actually what he said – he said that it would take $10 billion out of the economy if the revenues weren’t recycled through tax cuts or other measures but were just given directly back to taxpayers. That’s a whopping difference in the message, because using only the $10 billion figure is a disingenuous attack line. And what did the “fact checkers” rate it? “True!” even though it wasn’t actually. And the piece was full of problematic fact-checks like that, which makes it infuriating for someone who actually pays attention to what is being said and how. So while everyone pats themselves on the back for the piece, I’m really unimpressed with the package as a whole.

Equalisation reform

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe released his plan to reform equalisation yesterday and it’s…not equalisation. It’s like he doesn’t get the concept at all. Which at this point should not surprise anyone, because it’s been so badly reported on for decades and has been the tool of demagogues to bash Quebec rather than understanding how the system actually works – paid for by federal income tax out of general revenues to a province that doesn’t have the fiscal capacity to offer comparable services. It’s not one province writing a cheque to another one. For provinces that pay into it more than they get out, it’s because they have high incomes, thus they pay more income tax. It’s not that mysterious (and yet most reporters simply write “it’s complicated” and leave it at that). And Quebec has structural issues related to their fiscal capacity (and yes, their tax rates are already high relative to other provinces) but the per capita equalization they receive is actually low, not that the shock-and-awe figure of the total amount isn’t constantly being weaponized.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1009498701151158272

And what does Moe suggest? Basically taking money from Quebec’s share and giving it to all provinces whether they need it or not. It’s bullshit that fortunately a number of economists called out – not that it’ll matter, because the audience that Moe is speaking to dismisses what economists have to say. Sigh.

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Roundup: More Bernier fallout

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Because we can’t stop talking about the Maxime Bernier “ouster,” if it can really be called that since it was more a demotion than anything, but it still got all of the tongues wagging, and all of the reporters cornering every Conservative they could find. And most of those Conservatives downplayed the whole thing, Erin O’Toole going so far as to say that hey, there are other shadow cabinet changes coming so no big deal. The underlying message was that Bernier “broke his word” about the book chapter, which is a semantic game, but given some of the various dynamics in play, it’s hard not to try and find additional drama into the whole affair.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1006872600994123777

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1007085698803949568

That Rob Silver tweet may be even closer to home than most people want to admit. I have to say that there have been some pretty spectacular expectations heaped on Bernier, particularly because he speaks to a certain slice of the party, but perhaps in a more superficial way than they want to believe. After all, many of the Ayn Rand-readers are desperate to attach themselves to someone in the party who represents them (never mind that this isn’t a party of libertarians or even economic conservatives, but right-flavoured populists), so he was someone that they could pin those hopes to, ignoring a lot of what he actually said and did. His lack of judgment when he was foreign affairs minister under the Harper government was stunning, both in his intemperate comments in Afghanistan, or with the security of documents with his then-girlfriend. During the leadership campaign, he would sign off on social media campaigns that dogwhistling to MRAs before claiming he didn’t know about the connotations of “red pills” and so on (and knowing who was running that campaign, they couldn’t not know what it meant). And his constant self-promotion in opposition to Scheer post-leadership is another sign of poor judgment. And really, we shouldn’t discount this particular bit of reasoning.

In further analysis on the whole brouhaha, John Ivison keeps his ear to the ground in the caucus and wonders if Bernier’s ouster from shadow cabinet may force a rift in the party given how close the leadership vote was. Chantal Hébert notes that it was probably a matter of time before things with Bernier came to a head (as she suggests he’s not too well-liked among his Quebec colleagues) and that the by-election timing made it something Scheer couldn’t ignore. Andrew MacDougall sees this as a failing by Scheer to manage his caucus, not properly communicating with Bernier when necessary, and keeping him outside of the fold at a time when he should have drawn him in to get his cooperation on the issue at a time when it’s under attack by the likes of Trump. Andrew Coyne similarly sees this as a failing by Scheer, but for the fact that he has bought into the line that caucus must sing from a single song sheet, particularly on an indefensible policy like Supply Management. Colby Cosh sees not only political games from Bernier, but explicit quid pro quo from Scheer for his dairy supporters who (allegedly) put him over the top in the race (though I’m not sure we have any actual proof of this), and that those dairy lobbyists have successfully leveraged intra-party dynamics to their advantage.

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Roundup: Bernier booted from shadow cabinet

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The surprising news last night was that Andrew Scheer had finally had enough and removed Maxime Bernier from his shadow cabinet, reassigning his critic portfolio to Matt Jeneroux. The ostensible reason that Bernier was booted? That he uploaded that chapter from his cancelled book in which he decries the tyranny of Supply Management. Never mind that the chapter was already floated to the Globe and Mail and was published weeks ago, which led to the outcry that had Bernier pull the book until his political retirement. Scheer said that this constituted Bernier breaking his word to caucus on the book, never mind that it was already in the public domain.

A more plausible explanation? That Scheer was getting a lot of heat about Bernier’s views about Supply Management in the face of Trump’s tweets about dairy tariffs that are part of the system, where the government could point to Bernier being on Scheer’s front bench as proof that the Liberals cared more about Supply Management than the Conservatives did. In fact, the swipes about this got increasingly nasty in QP the last few days, to the point that Luc Berthold got right indignant about it when it was thrown in his face yesterday. Add to that, there’s a by-election coming up in a rural Quebec riding, where this is one of those issues that they care a lot about, and Scheer (who is campaigning there later this week with the former Bloc leader who has renounced separatism and taken out a Conservative membership card) wanted to prove that he’s listening to Quebeckers on Supply Management – even though Bernier himself is a Quebecker. (Note: This is also why the Conservatives rarely ask Supply Management questions in English during QP – this is all about pandering for Quebec votes).

I do think that this is further proof that there is little room in the current Conservative party for actual free-market conservatives, and that they are working hard to cravenly embrace right-flavoured populism that is divorced from the values that they claim to espouse (as I wrote a year ago when Scheer first won the leadership). My only question now is whether Bernier will be banished to the nosebleeds along with fellow disgraced caucus member Kellie Leitch.

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Roundup: Curiously speedy swearing-in

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With the final vote in the Senate today on the cannabis bill, there have been a few interesting developments, starting with the fact that the government has been making appointments – there was one on Friday, and two more were announced yesterday, and what’s even more curious is how fast they are being sworn in. The two named yesterday will be sworn in today, while the one named Friday was sworn in Monday is already voting on amendments to C-45 despite not having been there for any of the debate or committee testimony. Normally when senators are named, there are a few weeks between their being named and being sworn-in so that they can get all of their affairs in order, which makes this curious, and like it’s looking like Trudeau has been making panicked appointments with the fate of C-45 in the air. And what’s even more curious is the fact that it’s not the Conservatives who are the problem, since they don’t have the numbers to defeat it, but it’s the independent senators who are no longer voting as a bloc but have swung different amendment votes in different ways.

https://twitter.com/JacquiDelaney/status/1004520578919817216

Of course, Conservatives are already promulgating the conspiracy theory that because the provincial nomination committees are largely vacant that these are all hand-picked by the PMO, but in truth, the PMO is sitting on over a hundred vetted names on the short-lists, and these new appointments are all coming off of those lists, where they’ve been languishing for months. So not a conspiracy – just poor management to the point of incompetence.

Meanwhile, some 40 amendments have been passed, with several more defeated, and the government engaged in a bit of deal-making to assuage the concerns of Indigenous senators who wanted to put in an amendment to delay implementation until more consultation with Indigenous communities had been done. The health and Indigenous services ministers instead offered a number of measures and funds to ensure there was access to production, and culturally-appropriate addictions treatment services. One Conservative senator accused those Indigenous senators of capitulation, before she was slapped back by Senator Murray Sinclair for her patronising tone. One could argue that this means that the government is listening to the concerns that are raised, so we’ll see how much follow-through there is.

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Roundup: Justifying a belligerent tone

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Two days after the American tariff announcements, and I found myself still struck by the tone that the federal Conservatives have adopted with this, squarely blaming Trudeau rather than the uncertainty engine known as Trump, and engaging in the same kind of disingenuous narrative-building to justify their stance. In particular, they have been trying to claim that when Trudeau made his tour of steel and aluminium plants earlier in the year, that it was a “victory tour,” which is vastly different from how I remember it. Back then, it was about reassurance and the prime minister wanting to tell them that he had their backs and given that the government was ready for these tariffs to happen and had a package of retaliatory measures ready to go, it means that they didn’t take the reprieve for granted – entirely negating the premise of the Conservatives’ attack lines. Not that facts matter. They are also insistent that the Trudeau government has allowed itself to get “distracted” by the feel-good chapters around labour and gender in NAFTA negotiations, which again, is novel if you pay the slightest amount of attention to what’s been going on. But this isn’t about truth – this is about building their narrative that Trudeau is a dilettante who is incompetent and that the Conservatives are the real grown-ups in the room (despite evidence to the contrary). And because people have let Scheer and company lie with impunity on all sorts of files for months now, they feel emboldened to take this course of action, despite how gauche or out of step with other conservative voices in the country it may be, because they see this as their long-term game plan. And we’ll see if any of those voices call them out on it.

As for the impact of the tariffs, it turns out that they could have a far less detrimental impact on Canada’s aluminium industry because it exports more product to the US than we do steel, and America’s own smelters are older and less efficient than Canadian ones, meaning that these tariffs won’t do anything to help support the US industry, and American producers say that they could do more harm than good. Steel, of course, is a different story. The whole tariff issue, meanwhile, could mean that the lock that the American arms industry has on our military procurement may be at an end, and that our Forces may start looking to Europe for equipment instead – something that may actually be more affordable, but the tendency had been to buy from American producers under the guise of “interoperability” with American forces. As for the American companies facing retaliatory tariffs, well, they’re still learning about them, but most don’t seem too concerned. At least not yet. And many Republicans and businesses are lashing out at Trump for the move – including anchors at Fox Business.

In further reaction, Andrew Coyne believes that the sheer size of the US economy means that our retaliation will come to nothing, and even if we coordinate with other countries, we’re unlikely to change Trump’s mind, so better to work to contain the US presidency. Susan Ariel Aaronson suspects that the tariffs will weaken America’s national security interests rather than strengthen them, as Trump has used as the excuse to enact them, while Andrew MacDougall thinks that Trump’s move may benefit Doug Ford, who pledges to lower taxes and cut red tape that may appeal to people who think this can help keep Ontario’s economy competitive.

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Roundup: Trans Mountain decision day?

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It looks like today will be the day we get some kind of answer on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion pipeline, and everything will likely be confirmed in the morning as Cabinet meets earlier than usual. The three options on the table are the previously announced indemnification, as well as the option to either buy the pipeline outright (though I’m not sure if that means just the expansion or the original pipeline itself that the expansion twins) in order to sell it once the expansion completes construction, or temporarily buying it long enough to sell it to someone else who will complete construction. The word from Bloomberg’s sources is that the government is likely to buy it outright, on the likely option of buying it long enough to find someone who can guarantee its completion.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1001288600967827456

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1001294404836085760

As for what this will mean politically, you can bet that there will be no end to the howls of outrage from both opposition parties – from the Conservatives, we’ll hear that this never should have happened, and it’s only because of the federal government’s incompetence that it did. (While one can certainly question their competence in a number of areas, this is one where they had few good options, and no, a court reference or a pipeline bill would not have helped because they already have the necessary jurisdiction they need). The NDP, meanwhile, will howl that this is a betrayal of their promises on the environment and the rights of First Nations, and that it pays billions to “Texas billionaires” rather than Canadians, and so on (though one would imagine that the NDP should be all for nationalizing infrastructure projects). And one can scarcely imagine the invective we’ll hear from Jason Kenney, as helpful as that will be. Suffice to say, the next few days (and weeks) will likely be even more dramatic that they have been. Because this time of year isn’t crazy enough in Parliament without this.

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Roundup: Don’t be fooled by Friday’s childish meltdown

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You may have heard that there was a bit of a meltdown in the House of Commons yesterday. You may also have heard a bunch of suspect commentary about what it was about, and some particularly dubious ruminations about how noble it was that these opposition MPs were standing up for their rights to examine the Estimates and to ensure that all government spending was properly voted for, and so on. The problem is, is that those sentiments demonstrate that they’ve been taken in by the ruse that this is all related to.

So, to recap: Yesterday the parties were on notice that Government House Leader Bardish Chagger was going to move the motion to start late-night sittings in the House of Commons for the last four scheduled sitting weeks, in order to get bills through and off to the Senate. After all, it’s likely that the government wants to prorogue and have a new Throne Speech in the fall, and it’s better to get as many bills off the Order Paper before that happens. But just before Chagger is going to move that motion during Routine Proceedings yesterday, the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie conveniently stands up to raise a point of order and starts to demand that the Speaker allow them to delete Vote 40 from the Estimates. Vote 40 is related to the $7 billion fund that the government wants to use to get a move on budgetary matters that haven’t made it through proper Treasury Board review yet. The figures are all in the budget, laid out in a table, on how it will be spent. The opposition has decided that this is really a “slush fund” that can be spent on anything (the government is quite insistent that if they spent it on anything other than what’s in the table in the budget that it would constitute unauthorised spending, which is a significant thing). After Blaikie started a lengthy speech about it, the Speaker said he’s heard enough, that the matter is before committee and not the Commons, so it’s not in order. When he tried to move onto other business, Blaikie kept demanding he be heard. The Conservatives joined in. And thus began an eight-minute childish tantrum of shouting and desk banging that drowned out other business, and once that calmed down, endless cycles of points of order regarding whether or not they could hear the motion or the interpretation, and so on. There was no greater principle being expressed or upheld – it was a procedural filibuster. And we know this because they tried other tactics after that one failed, including points of personal privilege over the earlier meltdown, and a concurrence debate on a committee report (which, as Kady points out, is kind of fun to watch because almost no one has prepared speeches for them, so they’re forced to think on their feet, which they should be doing anyway, but whatever).

Procedural shenanigans I’m fine with. It’s a necessary part of Parliamentary democracy. I’m less fine with the infantile tantrum that they threw when they didn’t get their way. That’s the part that needs to be called out for what it was. And I especially resent the fact that you have a bunch of pundit who should know what a filibuster looks like after being on the Hill for so many yearswho were all “They have a legitimate point!” That legitimate point, as meritorious as it may be in a more existential conversation about reform of the Estimates process, was not what this was about, and to treat it as though it was is to fall for the game. I will additionally add that I am especially displeased with the commentary on the Power & Politicspower panel, where pundits who are not in Ottawa and who don’t cover this place got space to ruminate about how the Speaker was acting partisan because the government is on its heels a bit, of that this $7 fund was just like an omnibus bill that they swore they would never use, and nobody pushed back about how bogus this commentary was. (Paul Wells offered the actual take, bolstered by Aaron Wherry, for the record, but regardless). I will reiterate that procedure matters, and it would really help if people covering and commenting on this place understood that.

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Roundup: On lying with statistics

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Over the weekend, Andrew Scheer tweeted that there was “devastating” job news released on Friday, with “zero total jobs created” in April, and that 41,400 jobs had been lost so far this year. Investment is apparently being driven away from the country. It’s all doom and ruins. Except that it’s all complete bullshit. It’s lying with statistics.

What do the actual figures show? For starters, unemployment has been at a 40-year low for the past several months at 5.8 percent. This while the participation rate and employment rate have remained relatively steady throughout. Those “devastating” numbers in April were a net loss of 1,100 jobs, but that net showed a loss of 30,000 part-time jobs and an increase of 28,800 full-time jobs, and industry-wise, the losses were mostly in either construction or retail and wholesale trade. Wages have been increasing over 3 percent year-over-year for several months now. And yes, there was a brief correction in job numbers in January, but it was after a spike in November and December, while the trend cycle remains upward. And if you ask any credible economist, they’ll tell you the underlying numbers indicate that the economy is strong, which puts a lie to Scheer’s tweets.

Of course, I tweeted that Scheer was wrong over the weekend, and I was bombarded with apologists insisting that we should really be looking at the US unemployment rate, which is 3.9 percent. Err, except the Americans use a different measure, and if we used that same measure, our rate would be 4.9 percent. I was also told that all of these new jobs were part-time (not true – as explained above, they’re mostly full-time jobs displacing part-time ones, and have been for several months now), or that this is all because people have run out of EI and have stopped looking for work (please see: participation rate). Oh, and then there were the anecdotes being thrown my way as “proof” that those figures are wrong. Because anecdotes trump statistical data, as we all know. The data are all there. Scheer’s particular cherry-picking is ludicrous on its face, but he’s counting on the low-information voter not having enough know-how to look up the figures at StatsCan, or to read some actual economic analysis about how yes, the economy is doing quite well right now and we can expect interest rates to start going up as a result. It seems to me that if they were in government and an opposition party was doing the same thing he was doing, they would be howling about how awful it was that the opposition was talking down our economy. Funny how that is.

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