Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: A summer stunt

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With the new Cabinet in place and a new trade minister now in the portfolio, Andrew Scheer decided that yesterday was the day to engage in a political stunt and demand that Parliament be recalled in the middle of summer in order to pass the enabling legislation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Astute observers may recall that the Conservatives made a couple of attempts before the Commons rose for the summer to pass the bill at all stages with zero debate or committee study, but were rebuffed both times. Now they want Parliament to sit over the summer in order to pass it expeditiously.

There are, of course, a few problems with this demand. First of all, Ottawa is a virtual ghost town at this time of year, as a sizeable portion of the population (and most especially the civil service) is off at some cottage somewhere, and very little is getting done. You want to ensure there’s a revolt, then cancel everyone’s vacations. A number of workers on Parliament Hill, such as those who work in the Parliamentary Restaurant, get laid off over the summer, so rehiring them for a few days or a week would be a giant logistical nightmare. Not to mention, you’re going to have a tonne of cranky MPs who are hot and sticky in humid Ottawa, who are will spend the time grousing that they have work to do in their consitutencies (especially with an election a little over a year away). This especially includes Scheer’s own MPs. Add to that, Scheer says that the Commons needs to move now because there’s no guarantee how long the Senate will take with this – err, except if his own senators offer to play ball with the other senators and come to an agreement on a timeline for the bill, then it’s more of an empty threat.

The government, mind you, shot down this proposal because it’s a blatant stunt, but that left the Conservatives the day to start tweeting sanctimoniously over Twitter about how they’re willing to get to work but the Liberals aren’t. (Seriously guys, this game will bite you in the ass before you know it). And then there’s the kicker – Scheer made this demand, then rebuffed the media requests and said he’s off for holidays for the next two weeks, thus cementing the fact that this was all a stunt. Slow clap, guys. But I guess it’s a way to try and capture the news cycle for the day.

Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé to school you on how most people don’t it right when they talk about treaty ratification in our parliamentary system.

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Roundup: Performative obeisance

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Brave anonymous Conservatives have gone to the media to describe how they asked Andrew Scheer to let them vote to remove Maxime Bernier from caucus. Scheer, smartly, said no, but the whole affair is sordid and more than a little gross. The reasons these brave anonymous Conservatives gave for looking to oust Bernier was because he apparently lied to caucus when he said he was going to shelve his book project and then reposted the chapter that had already been made public on his website. But it’s not really about Bernier’s supposed sins, but rather it’s another instance of MPs being performative in their demonstrations of obeisance to Scheer as the leader, which is antithetical to how a Westminster system should operate.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1014655867529003008

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1014657981416292353

Scheer knows that booting Bernier would cause a rift in the party, where all of the Ayn Rand-reading wannabe-libertarians in the party would storm off after him in a huff, possibly forming a libertarian splinter party in their wake (never mind the fact that Bernier isn’t actually that smart as a politician, as charismatic as he may be, and it would likely all end in tears). But Scheer has to preserve the big tent – or at least the illusion thereof, because gods know that he’s already alienated Red Tories and free-market conservatives with his pursuit of boneheaded populism – and so he’s going to keep Bernier around. Not in his shadow cabinet, apparently, because Bernier has become a liability in his attempt to portray himself as a greater defender of Supply Management than thou, but Bernier will at least be there in the room, tolerated. For what that’s worth.

More importantly, this is but one more sign about how venal and degenerate political parties in this country have become as they’ve been hollowed out and serve as little more than personality cults thanks to the bastardized leadership contest rules that each has adopted. Because leaders are chosen in such a broken manner, it has given them the appearance of “democratic legitimacy” that is antithetical to how our system operates, and rather than hold them to account, the caucuses now twist themselves into pretzels to show loyalty to the brand of the leader rather than the ideals of the party. And until we’re willing to stand up and say no, this is a bastardization of our system, it will only continue to get worse (and yes, the Liberals are among the worst culprits for this). This is not how parties are supposed to work. This is not how the Westminster system is supposed to work. And yet we have brave anonymous MPs tattling on each other for thought crimes against their leaders. It’s revolting.

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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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