There’s the Senate bat-signal, so here we go again. On Evan Solomon’s radio show, Liberal Senator David Smith suggested that if Trudeau does not appoint a Government Leader in the Senate that it will create frustration in the Chamber if they have no means by which to hold the government to account, and that they could – if it got that far – start to stall or even vote against the government’s legislation as a protest. Mind you, as these things do, the headlines hype it up, but it does point to problems that I outlined in my National Post piece earlier this week. And because I know that some people have suggested it, no, just calling ministers before committee is not enough as it robs the daily exercise of accountability that is Senate Question Period of meaning (as Smith suggested), and those appearances might happen every couple of months. The existing protocol is for the Government Leader to have access to the same briefing books as the Prime Minister. If senators are to do their job of sober second thought and accountability, they need access to information on a timely basis, and the government leader, if he or she can’t provide that answer immediately, takes it under advisement and gets a written response as soon as possible. They have a job to do and they need information to do it. The threats over the past couple of weeks, as overhyped as they have been, have awakened Andrew Coyne’s concern trolling over the Senate’s veto powers, because he apparently doesn’t believe they should have enough power to push back against a majority government when necessary, and would rather the courts do it years down the road. Meanwhile, Senate Speaker Housakos has said that he plans to propose the creation of an arm’s length spending oversight body to give guidance to the Internal Economy Committee, but we have no details on this yet. I would once again caution that we need to ensure that the Senate remains self-governing for the sake of parliamentary supremacy (argued here). I would still like to see Senator McCoy’s proposal for a Senate audit committee comprised of three senators, an auditor and a former judge as the best solution, but I guess we’ll wait to see what Housakos’ proposition is.
Tag Archives: Canadian Forces
Roundup: Assisted dying heating up
The issue of doctor-assisted dying is heating up the closer we get to Trudeau and cabinet being sworn in, seeing as there’s a looming February deadline on the horizon. Trudeau signalled that he plans to ask the Supreme Court for an extension to their decision to strike the existing laws down, but that too poses its own challenges. The federal government had initially asked the Court for eighteen months, and they gave them twelve, at which point the government sat on it for several months before creating what looked to be a stacked advisory committee to study the issue. That committee is also in the crosshairs, as advocacy groups say that it should be abolished because of its stacked nature. The chair of said committee said that its members’ former positions against assisted dying are no longer relevant because the Court has ruled and they now have to come up with a system that will work to protect the vulnerable while enabling those Canadians who wish to die with dignity to do so on their own terms. It certainly couldn’t hurt Trudeau to let them report and see what they have to say, and then choose to accept or disregard it at that time. The very fact that he’s now forming government should also be a signal that he expects this consultative process to be something other that the one the government engaged in around the prostitution question, in that he is not expecting them to give one response in particular but to have a more thoughtful result in the end. I guess we’ll see. Meanwhile, advocates of religious communities came out against assisted dying again, insisting instead on more resources for palliative care, as though they were mutually exclusive, never mind that the Supreme Court has also made a clear ruling. (And one would think that if they allowed people who wanted to die on their own terms rather to do so, it would free up those resources that were otherwise needlessly prolonging their suffering that could be applied to palliative care, but maybe I’m wrong on that one).
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/659187808322605056
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/658299297897824256
Roundup: May already has a job
In the wake of Monday’s election results, a number of people have been trying to circulate a few petitions calling on Justin Trudeau to appoint Elizabeth May as environment minster. It’s so ridiculous I barely know where to begin. First of all, why would she cross the floor? There is no need for a coalition government, and for her to abandon the Green Party to join the Liberals would be a bit of a repudiation of what she stands for. It also demonstrates a lack of awareness of what it means to be in a cabinet, which means solidarity with the government’s decisions as a whole. If you don’t agree with all of the cabinet’s decisions, you resign, because cabinet solidarity is part of our system of government. With her many strident positions on various policy files, it’s hard, if not impossible, to see May agreeing with the Liberal positions on so many files. Most of all, this call demonstrates a complete inability for people to appreciate the role that the opposition plays in our system of government. It’s vital, because it holds the government to account – and why wouldn’t you want May to be holding the government to account over their environmental policies? Why would it be a lesser job for her to be doing the holding to account? In the romantic notion that people have that everything should somehow be done by consensus, they don’t appreciate that there is a role for accountability when there is disagreement. It doesn’t need to be nasty – which is unfortunately where we’ve wound up in recent years because of the kinds of culture that has been allowed to breed in parliament – but it can be principled and fair, and certainly May is providing that kind of opposition. Trudeau is making other inroads, such as inviting her and other opposition members to the Paris climate summit – former practice that Harper abandoned when he decided that only his ministers should be allowed to attend these kinds of things. Can May play a role in the system? Absolutely, and she does? That doesn’t mean that she needs to be given a seat at the cabinet table. That’s just ridiculous.
Roundup: Unrest in the ranks
There appears to be some unrest in the Conservative ranks, we’re starting to hear – both in the caucus and the party machinery itself. While it’s not unthinkable for a party that has just lost an election, they seem to be doing some questionable things. Things like trying to bar defeated candidates from one last caucus gathering that’ll allow them to vent and hug it out behind closed doors. Denied of that, they’ll likely start talking to the media, their muzzles loosed. It’s started, even with some that were not defeated (but more on that in a moment). Behind the scenes, there’s some rancorous finger-pointing going on with Jenni Byrne in the centre of it all. And while this takes place, Diane Finley stepped forward to make it known that she is officially interested in becoming interim leader, as Rob Nicholson has so far unofficially. What was curious was the way in which Finley went onto Power & Politics to make her case about needing to transition from a more “authoritarian” PMO to a “collaborative” OLO, and basically shrugging off her participation in said authoritarianism. She touts her management experience, but what I heard from civil servants during Finley’s first go-around as minister of Human Resources was that she walked into the building and told everyone that they were all Liberals and she was going to fix the joint up. Collaborative! (She later went to Immigration and broke the system, creating massive backlogs by refusing to make appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board until she had re-jigged the selection process. Management skills!) Word also has it that both Jason Kenney and Kellie Leitch have their leadership teams assembled, so that race could easily kick off right away. Whether they wait to hash out what happened over the election that led to their demise, or they discuss what kind of reorganization the party needs before they get into the leadership process, doesn’t seem to be a concern yet at this point. We’ll see if that’s a problem going forward.
Diane Finley makes it official re: interim leadership bid. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/fO5J2AbOS3
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 23, 2015
Roundup: Campaign autopsies in full swing
Not that we’ve had a day to catch our breaths (more or less), the campaign post-mortems are beginning, especially from the Conservative camp. Things are starting to leak out, such as this gem from the Conservative camp, which tells about their considering and ultimately rejecting the Hail Marry pass of having Harper say that he wouldn’t run after this campaign. It also tells of the Conservatives trying to offer advice to the faltering NDP campaign about how to attack the Liberals, lest the Liberals win out over both of them, and lo and behold, they did. Ron Liepert – a former provincial cabinet minister who turned federal to take out Rob Anders at the nomination race – talks about a campaign where the central party wasn’t respecting the local candidates or listening to their concerns on the ground. Andrew Coyne writes that the party defeated itself with a “deep, unrelenting, almost poisonous cynicism.” Not surprisingly, Conservatives like Michelle Rempel are questioning the tone of the campaign. As for the NDP, they are starting their own process, but some, like now-former MP Craig Scott, are less gracious in defeat.
https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/657050622504472576
https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/657050927812075520
Roundup: Boil-water promises need a grain of salt
Some First Nations issues have finally been getting some play in the past couple of days in the election, after the early reiterations of positions by the parties with regards to things like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. While Trudeau and Mulcair in recent days made repeated promises around closing funding gaps with First Nations, particularly around education, Trudeau this week made a pledge around the boil-water advisories on some 93 First Nations reserves, and said that he wants those eliminated within five years (though that number could be larger as the federal list doesn’t include BC). The question that Kady O’Malley asked, quite reasonably, is how big of a hole that puts in Trudeau’s other spending promises around infrastructure spending, as previous estimates have pegged water and wastewater systems needed on 571 First Nations around $1.2 billion. What could be more concerning to Trudeau and company is this conversation that Maclean’s had with an expert in this particular field, who said that dealing with this problem in five years is unrealistic given that the reasons for the advisories on so many communities is varied and that there can’t be a simple top-down fix for the issue. It is a complex problem that involves more than one level of government, and while the promise may be laudable, it may be necessary to temper expectations (albeit, as openly and transparently as possible) while still pushing ahead on the file, fixing as many as possible in five years but noting that eliminating the problem may take longer.
Roundup: The problem with paper candidates
Yesterday, the quixotic Jean-François Party released a rare bilingual statement to decry the use of “paper candidates,” citing a case of a Green candidate from BC who had never visited the riding he or she is contesting in Quebec. If there was to be a cautionary tale around the use of paper candidates, it should have been with both the NDP in the 2011 federal election, and more recently in the Alberta provincial election. In both cases, paper candidates accidentally got elected in popular “waves” where it was clear that the voters of Quebec and Alberta were motivated to vote for the party for their particular reasons (affection for Layton in 2011, anger with the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta this year). In both cases, some less than stellar MPs/MLAs were accidentally elected – one of them, incidentally, joined the Jean-François Party. While Jean-François Party co-founder (and now party president and candidate) Jean-François Larose was one of those NDP MPs who was part of the sweep, then-fellow NDP MP Manon Perreault was an example of how a paper candidate turns out to be trouble. Over the course of the 41st parliament, Perreault was charged and convicted of criminal mischief when she falsely accused an assistant of theft, and was also later investigated by the RCMP for problems with travel claims expenses (though I’m not sure we heard the outcome of said investigation). Nevertheless, she was turfed from the NDP caucus during her trial, and after the writ dropped, she joined the Jean-François Party. So really, that the party is now coming out against paper candidates when their very existence is dependent on the victory of such candidates is curious. The problem, however, is that the parties have an incentive to create these candidates, and that incentive is that running full slates, regardless if those candidates have ever been to those ridings or not, allows them to claim the maximum spending cap. Hence, as especially in Quebec in 2011, ridings which barely had NDP riding associations all accepted the “nominations” of those paper candidates which included Ruth Ellen Brosseau and the McGill Four, because the NDP wanted their spending cap. So what to do about it? It’s a sticky situation because it would seem the answer is to remove the incentive of the spending cap, but how does one enforce that the candidates have actually been to the riding, or are actually campaigning? Do we really want Elections Canada to become an intrusive body to not only poke their heads into the party nomination process and to check up on those candidates in the ridings? It’s hard to say. I do think that paper candidates are an affront to our democratic system, but without turning Elections Canada into Big Brother, I’m at a loss as to a workable solution.
The Jean-François Party wants to do away with paper candidates. So far their MPs are all cast-offs from NDP/BQ. pic.twitter.com/nU2EtrQdMy
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 6, 2015
Roundup: Munk debate a success
The Munk Debate on foreign policy was actually really well done – probably the best and most substantive debate we’ve had so far during this election, with a good format, good moderation, and bilingualism that more or less worked out (though there could have been a bit more effort into the French). (Kady’s liveblog here). We also started to see a bit more of a change in the leaders. Harper was more or less his usual self, and in foreign policy, well, he’s got ten years of experience, but he also has a record to defence. Trudeau stepped up his game in this debate, and was the most confident and self-assured he’s been of any debate. The improvement was marked, and given the low expectations going in, where people figured that foreign policy was his weakest area (especially as it’s where most of his notable gaffes going into the election were), but those fears were largely put to rest. As for Mulcair, people expecting a statesmanlike performance were largely dashed as he tended to more personal attacks and swipes, while avoiding a number of answers – possibly because his party’s foreign policy platform is the thinnest of the three. Trudeau also defended his father’s record from attacks by Mulcair, and seemed to have a few of his best moments doing so, and it did get notice over the Twitter Machine. (It was also, he noted the fifteenth anniversary of his father’s death, so that certainly did weigh on his mind at the time). Here is some debate reaction from Michael Den Tandt, the Ottawa Citizen’s panel, and over Twitter, Bob Rae (who was subject of another of Mulcair’s swipes on stage). Oh, and audience polls seem to indicate that Trudeau was the big winner. Make of that what you will.
https://twitter.com/carbonexplorer/status/648663698819694592
Very tired line from Mulcair – "sort of like being attacked by a dead sheep"- proud to have led a govt that re-built Ontario at a tough time
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) September 29, 2015
I didn't always agree with Pierre Trudeau but he was a great man. I can't say the same about Tom Mulcair #cdnpoli
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) September 29, 2015
Mulcair's entire "record" on the environment was when he was a Liberal. So I guess it didn't count. #cdnpoli.
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) September 29, 2015
Nastiness is one thing, recycled nastiness is worse. #cdnpoli
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) September 29, 2015
Apparently Mulcair said he's campaigning for a "strong stable majority government". Even his fantasies are written by someone else #cdnpoli
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) September 29, 2015
APTN's Iqaluit bureau correspondent has never heard the 'big sled no dogs' quip about Harper in Nunavut https://t.co/u3V1khtKN5
— Jorge Barrera (@JorgeBarrera) September 29, 2015
https://twitter.com/kateheartfield/status/648657546933325824
Harper doesn't get obvious segue to talk about how much he supports Israel so he makes his own.
— Michael Petrou (@michaelpetrou) September 29, 2015
Oh, Trudeau veering into deficit spending. #MunkDebate pic.twitter.com/8jFLR6qStT
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 29, 2015
Roundup: Let the equivocation begin
With three weeks left in the race, we’ve started seeing Thomas Mulcair start equivocating – or clarifying in any case – some of the policy planks he’s been running on. In many of those cases, it’s starting to make his promises look far less impressive. Take childcare – he is now talking about sitting down with provinces and using some of their existing spaces toward his “one million spaces” goal. One example was with Ontario, and the two years of full-day kindergarten offered in this province, so how does that get counted into with is childcare pledge, and the funding questions that go along with it? Add to that, with some 900,000 spaces already in existence across the country, does that mean that his plan will simply be to add another 100,000 spaces over the next eight years and make sure that they simply cap the fees at $15/day? Or is it still supposed to be a million new spaces? With his cap-and-trade announcement, he says that provinces can opt-out so long as they meet or exceed the federal objectives. But does that not then become essentially the Liberal position, where the provinces take the lead while the federal government establishes the targets? And didn’t he denounce that very notion? Mulcair has even started back-pedalling a little on his criticism of “useless” senators, saying it was only the institution he was denouncing (which, I’m sorry, is absolutely not what he said at the time). As crunch time approaches I’ll be interested to see how much more “clarifying” happens between the different parties, and how much of that clarifying goes against what they were saying the whole time.
Mulcair just clarified that his million daycare spaces by 2023 includes those already in place (over 900 000). See http://t.co/Xs5a2uFbWo
— Marc Garneau (@MarcGarneau) September 26, 2015
Roundup: Ignoring legal advice
Looking through the government documents made available to the public during the court challenge on the government’s niqab ban during citizenship ceremonies, a pattern emerges quickly – that the department knew this was a non-starter, and they tried to offer alternatives for accommodation. Jason Kenney, the minister at the time, would have none of it, and pressed ahead anyway. And lo and behold, he used an instrument to implement a ban that was out of order. The Federal Court has said so, and the Federal Court of Appeal upheld it in a ruling from the bench, and this didn’t even touch the Charter arguments. But it shouldn’t be a surprise given the frequency at which this government’s legal and constitutional positions keep getting struck down by the courts, whether it’s with certain mandatory minimum sentences, or the Senate reference. People wonder what kind of legal advice they’re being given, and as this particular case clearly demonstrates in the documents, they’re being told that their positions don’t hold water – and yet they push ahead anyway. As we saw in the Duffy trial that the government created their own legal advisor position within the PMO, never mind that they have the Department of Justice who should be providing them with legal advice. The plain reading of what this means of course is that they didn’t like what Justice had to tell them, so they found a workaround to give them legal advice they found was more palatable. It all seems like such a waste of time, energy and taxpayer’s money – this from a party who insisted that they were going to put an end to waste in government.
https://twitter.com/michaelplaxton/status/646638431653765120