Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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Roundup: Time to change the dress code?

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NDP MP Randall Garrison is pushing for the House of Commons to update is dress code, in particular around the gendered rules that men need to wear a jacket and tie in the Chamber in order to speak and vote. Part of Garrison’s stated motivation is to make it easier for future trans and non-binary MPs, even though accommodations are already routinely made, such as allowing Indigenous MPs to wear beaded necklaces or other symbols in place of a tie. I don’t see why it would be any different to accommodate a trans or non-binary MP in a similar manner without any fuss – a mere notice to the Speaker would suffice.

On the one hand, there is a certain amount of archaic assumption in the “contemporary business attire” around jackets and ties for men, and only men – there is no dress code for women in the Chamber (and these rules apply to those of us who sit in the Press Gallery in the Chamber, incidentally). Business attire in the current context is starting to slide down the scale – particularly in this era of work-from-home – so I’m leery of loosening the restrictions too much, particularly as it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you would have a bunch of MPs in track suits, yoga or sweat pants, hoodies, and mom jeans (and I have seen male MPs in mom jeans with jacket and tie in the Chamber, which was not a pleasant sight). Printed t-shirts are also a very real concern, because we will immediately slip into them being used as props, particularly during Members’ Statements, and we do not want that to happen. On the same token, I wouldn’t have minded imposing a few more rules for women in the Chamber, such as mandating jackets as part of “business attire,” because sometimes the definitions of what constitutes “business attire” for some female MPs has been particularly…challenging. (Flashback to the old Megan Leslie Outfit Watch on my former blog).

I get that ties suck. I really do. I used to really hate them, but I’ve somewhat reluctantly grown to accept them and now I have no issue with it. And once we’re into late May and early June and the humidity starts to climb, wearing suits is not fun (and whereas I have threatened to show up to the Gallery in shorts and sandals – but with jacket and tie – one reporter has actually done so and was my hero for the day). But at the same time, I think there should be some kinds of standards, for both men and women, because frankly there can be a demonstrated lack of both maturity and good taste among MPs and there need to be some guidelines. Can they be loosened a little? Sure, that should be okay, and maybe we won’t require a tie at all times – within reason. It does merit a discussion in any case.

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Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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Roundup: A refreshed Cabinet for a new parliament

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So, that was the big Cabinet shuffle. It was extensive, and we saw three ministers dropped entirely (not the first time), a few promotions, a few demotions, and a lot more hybrid and chimeric ministries which will make governance a challenge to say the least. Nevertheless, here we are. Some observations:

  • This was not a new Cabinet or ministry – this was just a shuffle. It’s also not a third term or mandate, because we don’t have those in Canada – it’s the third parliament that the current ministry has spanned.
  • Marc Garneau’s exclusion from Cabinet has fuelled rumours he’s about to become ambassador to France. My presumption is that Bardish Chagger’s exclusion is because she is going to be the new Whip, as the old Whip and his deputy are now in Cabinet. Jim Carr’s departure may be health-related.
  • After Trudeau had rather bravely centralized all of the economic development agencies under one roof and didn’t have them beholden to local ministers and the corrupting influence that offers, he has relented and re-established the practice of regional economic development ministers again, and undone the work of trying to clean up the mess they create.
  • The most important portfolios – finance, defence, foreign affairs – are now all held by women. Anita Anand is the second woman defence minister in Canadian history (the first being Kim Campbell), and her background as a law professor specializing in governance can only help in a role where there has been a crisis in civilian oversight. As foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly will have to deal with the tensions between the US and China (and our general lack of a coherent foreign policy).
  • Splitting up Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a good and necessary thing; giving Bill Blair emergency preparedness and not public safety is an even better thing because Blair was essentially at risk of capture in the role as a former police chief (with a questionable record around actions of the Toronto Police during the G20 to boot).
  • There are nine new faces in this configuration of Cabinet, and more diversity – the first Black woman since Jean Augustine, the first out lesbian minister, and the queerest Cabinet in Canadian history.
  • Putting Steven Guilbeault in environment may yet be a huge disaster given how badly he mismanaged Bill C-10, but Jonathan Wilkinson in natural resources will likely mean a steadier hand on some of those files where the two overlap.
  • Carving off an associate health minister portfolio for Carolyn Bennett to deal with addictions and mental health is a bit of a throwback to when she was the first minister of state for the newly-created Public Health Agency of Canada, back in the Paul Martin era. Jean-Yves Duclos in health – an economist who did a lot of work on poverty reduction – means he’s not going to be fooled by provinces trying to get more money out of the federal government that they plan to spend elsewhere.
  • Trudeau says he plans to lead the Liberals in the next election, but I’m not sure I believe him, and of course he’d say that now. He wouldn’t actually say he plans to leave until it comes time to do so, lest he turn himself into a lame duck without any moral authority to get anything done.

And now, the talking heads. Aaron Wherry hears from a Senior Liberal Source™ that the message of this Cabinet is the need for urgent delivery of promises. Heather Scoffield makes note of the activists leading the environment and housing files. Jason Markusoff highlights the squirming that Jason Kenney and others are doing now that Steven Guilbeault is the environment minister. Althia Raj sees some attempted legacy-building in Trudeau’s choices.

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Roundup: Rejections without significance

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Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

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Roundup: The $3.5 million witch hunt finds no witches

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In Alberta, the Committee on Un-Albertan Activities – err, Allan Inquiry – released its final report, a year late and millions of dollars over-budget, and it concluded that there was no illegality or nefarious activity with regard to environmental groups who may have received some funding from international donors when it comes to opposing the oil sands and other oil and gas activities. Dollars that went toward campaigns against the energy sector were fairly minor, and had little-to-no impact on projects not moving forward (because market forces did the job just fine, thank you very much). In other words, the province spent $3.5 million on this joke of an inquiry, and tried to claim it was money well spent, because the government is nothing more than a total clown show.

And then there were the lies – the minister insisted that the inquiry was never about finding illegality (untrue – there are receipts), and Jason Kenney outright lying about what the numbers in the report stated, because he needs to try and spin it in the worst possible light to both justify the exercise, and to continue trying to point the populists he stoked in a direction other than his.

https://twitter.com/charlesrusnell/status/1451353269708603397

https://twitter.com/charlesrusnell/status/1451353273781293094

Meanwhile, prime minister Justin Trudeau is pouring cold water on Kenney’s referendum rhetoric, reminding him that a provincial referendum is not an amending formula for the constitution – seven provinces representing fifty percent of the population is. More to the point, Kenney sat around the Cabinet table when the current equalisation formula was last amended, so he can’t claim it’s unfair as he’s the one who helped put it into place. Because seriously – claiming it’s unfair because Albertans pay the same federal taxes as everyone else is just political bullshit masquerading as a grievance, even though it’s a grievance that has largely been created for the sole purpose of driving populist anger.

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Roundup: The admiral needs to take the hint

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Things are looking pretty dire for Admiral Art McDonald, the former-ish Chief of Defence Staff, whose little tantrum last week in writing a letter to the general and flag officers to demand his job back (not that they could do anything about it) is looking more and more impolitic. Why? Because the military police are now pushing back to say that he wasn’t “exonerated” as McDonald claimed in his letter, but rather that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges, which is not the same thing as the allegation being unfounded. And McDonald’s accuser is speaking out publicly and pointing to witnesses to the incident, which the military won’t say whether they were interviewed or not as part of their investigation. Nevertheless, the incident makes it even clearer that McDonald doesn’t understand civilian control and doesn’t have the character and temperament necessary to guide the Forces through this particular period of culture change, and it’s better for him – and everyone else – that he get the hint and retire before consequences follow from that letter.

Meanwhile, it seems that the former commandant of the Canadian Forces School of Military Intelligence is serving as a staff officer in Ottawa after being relieved of his command following an investigation into allegations of inappropriate conduct, which signals that there aren’t consequences if people simply get moved around.

Interested observers are wondering what is taking the government so long to take more action on what is going on with the senior ranks in the military, or to formally make General Wayne Eyre the permanent Chief of Defence Staff, formally taking McDonald’s reinstatement off the table (though he should have taken the hint when Eyre got promoted to full general). There is speculation that they are waiting for the Cabinet shuffle, but one would think that they’d want to make changes now, so that a fresh minister won’t have to come in and do the cleaning out on his or her first day rather than letting Sajjan do it now, and let his successor come in fresh. But that might require this minister and this government to have a modicum of self-awareness, and which would be your answer as to why they haven’t.

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Roundup: A delayed return

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We have a date – well, two of them. Justin Trudeau announced yesterday morning that Cabinet would be shuffled on October 26th, and that the House of Commons would return on November 22nd, which is ridiculous. After an election where Trudeau kept punctuating the “urgency” of a number of files, some of them COVID-related, and with a list of priorities to take care of in his first 100 days of the new parliament (apparently that clock doesn’t start ticking until Cabinet is sworn in), the decision to delay the return of Parliament for two months after the election is egregious – especially because this is a hung parliament where the confidence of the Chamber should be tested at its earliest opportunity, and two months later is not that.

I am generally pretty forgiving of the fact that it can take our government longer to get its act together post-election – as compared to the UK, where they have nearly twice as many MPs – but they can get a new government sworn in and a new Parliament started within three weeks of an election. But it should not have taken Trudeau this long to deal with this shuffle as it has, even if one or two Cabinet contenders had to deal with recounts. And yes, the government dispatched the Governor General on her first state visit abroad this week, but that again was his choice, and he could have either delayed that trip, or announced the Cabinet before she left the country.

More to the point, this reduces the fall sitting of the House of Commons to a maximum of four weeks, but you can bet that in practice, it’ll be less than three. Committees won’t really get up and running, and sure, he may introduce a number of priority bills, but they will see precious little debate in that time. What we will get are the Address in Reply to the Speech From the Throne, and probably the Fall Economic Update, plus a number of Estimates votes, which will be rushed through without any actual scrutiny (they may get some modicum of scrutiny on the Senate side), but I’m not sure we’ll even see the Budget Implementation Bill for said economic update making it past second reading unless it is bullied through at all stages under the threat that emergency rent and wage subsidies will expire without passage. It’s undermining democratic norms for the sake of expediency, and that is the last thing we want to be encouraging any government in engaging in, regardless of stripe.

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Roundup: Not pushing back on referendum disinfo

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I’m going to call out Power & Politics once again for completely dropping the ball, this time on the bullshit “referendum” happing in Alberta. They hosted Bill Bewick, who heads a group in favour of the referendum, and gave him a pretty uncritical interview, with only the barest hints of pushback. Because both-sidesing.

Host David Common pushed back on a mere couple of points – that the referendum won’t actually do anything because it doesn’t obligate the federal government to negotiate anything; and the fact that without equalisation, PEI would need a 30 percent HST to make up the same funding. He even went so far as to egg on Bewick about how much equalisation Ontario pays, as if it was relevant, because no province actually pays equalisation, which is a pretty big thing that Bewick and his bullshit ever got called on. Equalisation is simply federal taxes that come off everyone’s paycheque – that a fraction of those funds get redistributed to some provinces who need help in offering comparable levels of service when they don’t have adequate fiscal capacity. And the key thing to remember is that Alberta may pay more federal taxes because they have the highest salaries in the country – by far – even during the pandemic. Crying that the province has a deficit has nothing to do with equalisation and everything to do with the fact that the provincial government refuses to raise their own revenues by means of a modest sales tax like other provinces have, and the fact that they chose to rely on resource revenues instead. Their deficit is a choice.

I am forced to wonder whether Bewick didn’t get any pushback because the host and/or the producers simply don’t have a clue about the truth, or because they feel bound by the need to both-sides everything and plan to have someone credible on to refute the points in a separate interview later today – because heaven forbid that the host actually push back lest he or she be called out as being biased or partisan. But calling bullshit and pointing out fact shouldn’t be considered bias or partisanship – it should be simple fact-checking, which they can’t seem to be arsed to do at the best of times, let alone in a referendum that is fuelled by misinformation and disinformation coming from official sources trying to make a political wedge out of this. In a case like this, it’s especially incumbent upon the media to play their role in pushing back against a government that is lying to its citizens, but this timidity to do so is a very real problem for our media.

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Roundup: A surplus thanks to federal funds

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Something jumped out at me yesterday while doomscrolling, which was New Brunswick crowing that they have a bigger-than-expected surplus thanks to all of the additional federal dollars that were sent to the province because of the pandemic. And it stuck in my craw a bit – provinces have been crying poor when it comes to healthcare dollars and around doing things like improving long-term care, and then they turn around and pat themselves on the back for running surpluses as a result of federal dollars. It doesn’t quite add up.

The fact that certain provinces have been using federal pandemic dollars to pad their bottom lines is a problem for Confederation, particularly as these very same provinces are demanding that the federal government turn over even higher healthcare transfers, and justifying it with historically inaccurate talking points about the original share of healthcare spending without also recognizing the other agreements made in the late 1970s. The current federal government is certainly willing to spend the money, but they have also learned that they don’t want to get burned by it like previous governments have. Recall that when the health transfer escalator was at an unsustainable six percent per year, provincial healthcare spending growth was in the low two-percent range, meaning those additional dollars were spent on other things that did not improve the healthcare system. Similarly, when Stephen Harper tried to buy peace with Quebec and sign a huge cheque to correct a fictional “fiscal imbalance,” the provincial government turned around and cut taxes, which wasn’t the intent of said funding, and yet it happened.

It’s with this in mind that Trudeau has promised that there will be strings attached to future health transfers, and he laid out what many of those strings will be in the campaign, whether it’s hiring targets for doctors and nurses, or minimum salaries for long-term care workers. And yes, premiers will bellyache about it, and the opposition parties will take up those cries in the House of Commons, but we have seen repeatedly over this pandemic that the provinces will demand money and then not spend the money they do get. Time for some accountability for dollars – because it’s all coming from the same taxpayer in the end, regardless of which level of government is trying to make their bottom line look better.

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