Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Misconduct at CBSA? You don’t say!

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It was not really a surprise to see the news that misconduct investigations of CBSA officers has increased over the past year – even in spite of travel volumes being down precipitously over the last year – and cases included things like interfering in an immigration process, belittling clients, abusing authority and sharing private information. Partly why this isn’t a surprise for me is because I’ve been tracking some of this for a while – I’ve heard horrific stories from lawyers, and from the Senators who have been pushing for independent oversight for CBSA for years.

That independent oversight still hasn’t happened. There have been numerous bills introduced in Parliament to provide it, and the most successful to date was a Senate initiative to create an Inspector General for CBSA. This was something the Liberals used to be in support of. Ralph Goodale was set to sponsor the bill in the Commons, until he became minister for public safety, then suddenly wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. When the bill passed the Senate unanimously, no one in the House of Commons dared to sponsor it there, MPs on the Liberal side having been warned away, and Conservatives were certainly not going to sponsor a Senate Liberal bill (and the Bloc and NDP most certainly were not either). The Liberals did introduce a weak sauce version of an oversight bill at the end of the previous parliament, with no time for it to go through, then again early in the current one, which died on prorogation and hasn’t been introduced since. That version would put CBSA under the RCMP’s Civilian Complaints and Review Commission, but for all intents and purposes, CBSA would still be investigating itself, meaning that the oversight is certainly not independent (and the CCRC is having a hard enough time getting the RCMP to sign off on its own complaints, which can’t be formalized until such sign-off).

The political will for this seems to be non-existent, which is strange, considering that the Liberals did reimplement plenty of other oversight for national security institutions like CSIS and CSA, and while some of CBSA’s activities call under the ambit of the new national security oversight bodies, it doesn’t capture the oversight of all of their activities. There are known problems with CBSA, and it’s unthinkable that a law enforcement body like it doesn’t have proper civilian oversight. The disconnect is unfathomable, but puts another mark in the column of Liberals being weasels about their promises once again.

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Roundup: Liberals being weasels about “open nominations” – again

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Remember back before the 2015 election when Justin Trudeau declared that the Liberals would be a party of open nominations? And then how he weaselled out on that after the election in order to protect nominations when they had a majority? And even after that, decided to trigger their “electoral urgency” rules in advance of the 2019 election, even though they knew the timing of it years in advance and could have actually let those nominations happen? Well, they are being weasels again, and just triggered the “electoral urgency” rules once more.

Of course, because there are only three narratives to choose from in most media outlets, this was seen as “more proof” that there’s going to be an election this fall, especially when combined with the fact that MPs agreed to hold a take note debate session on the 15th that will allow MPs who have opted not to run again to give a farewell speech. It’s all proof! Erm, except that this is a hung parliament that will have reached the two-year mark in the fall, making an election far more likely, so it’s a convenient time to hold such a session, given that it certainly wouldn’t happen after a confidence vote to bring down the government. I remain unconvinced that the Liberals are planning to dissolve parliament by the end of summer on a flimsy excuse, but then again, I generally don’t subscribe to the Three Narratives.

This being said, this weaselly behaviour around nominations is unsurprising given the trends in this country, and where the party has been headed. They did it in 2019, and at the end of last year, they did away with open nominations for the two by-elections and simply appointed candidates outright, never mind that there was interest from others in each riding and they could have held competitive races, yes, including in a virtual situation. We’ve seen all parties behave in ways that are undermining the democratic process by gaming nominations – Samara Canada wrote a report on it. (Samara was also credulous about the NDP’s claims about open nominations in 2011, in spite of all of the evidence of paper candidates who never even visited the ridings, never mind having run in an open contest, but that’s neither here nor there). The point is that this kind of behaviour is toxic to the long-term health of our system of government, and it needs to be countered and pushed back against. Unfortunately, because the media is hung up on the “early election” narrative at any opportunity, they never actually hold the parties to account for their undemocratic behaviour, and we’ve allowed it to get to this point. This is a very bad thing, and we should be pushing back and demanding proper, open nominations from all parties, no matter how inconvenient it may be in a hung parliament.

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Roundup: Trying to politicize NSICOP

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The fight for documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings from 2019 has been intensifying in the House of Commons, both in the Conservatives working on a privilege fight over access to unredacted documents, but also in the way they have been treating the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP). While not perfect, NSICOP is at least some level of oversight of the national security apparatuses of this country by parliamentarians (though not an actual parliamentary committee), which is more than existed previously. They have tried to dismiss it as somehow partisan, which it’s not – all parties are represented on the committee (though the Bloc seat is currently vacant), and say that the prime minister’s office controls it (as it’s an executive body and not a parliamentary one). But they have the power to have their members resign in protest if they felt that the PMO was bigfooting them, and they haven’t, which means that these objections are about politics – particularly as they are building a bunch of bullshit conspiracy theories around the two firings in order to score cheap points.

As a reminder, the Conservatives were dismantling some of the national security oversight, neutering the Inspector General at CSIS and making poor appointments to the only other real civilian oversight of national security agencies in the country. This is at least a point in Trudeau’s favour – he overhauled and strengthened the various oversight mechanisms of all of these bodies, including the creation of NSICOP, which does valuable work.

With that in mind, here is Stephanie Carvin with some thoughts on this fight, and check out this thread from Philippe Lagassé for more thoughts as to how NSICOP is currently structured and how it compares internationally.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1400446108376174594

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1400446110653689856

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1400446112931225601

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1400446115099680773

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1400479339528003594

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QP: Demanding a show of urgency on Calls to Action

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For Wednesday, proto-PMQ day, Justin Trudeau was present with his one other MP, Mark Gerretsen, because of course he was. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and he mentions the Kamloops mass graves, and wanted urgent action on several of the Calls to Action in the Truth and Reconciliation report. Trudeau had a script to read that they accepted all of the calls to action, and are working with Indigenous communities to fulfil those calls, including millions of dollars from Budget 2019. O’Toole insisted that this wasn’t good enough and wanted “urgent” action, for which Trudeau insisted that they have been taking it seriously, and that they are working with the communities, but mentioned that this fresh sense of urgency comes from non-Indigenous Canadians, but Indigenous people have been living with this. O’Toole tried to sound somber in saying that the families deserved a precise roadmap to achieving these calls to action, and Trudeau slowed down to annunciate that they were working in a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed way, and then slammed the Conservatives for not giving funding when the Commission asked for it in 2019. O’Toole insisted that they needed to “show urgency” and that this wasn’t time for political rhetoric — and yet that was all he was offering. Trudeau repeated that they are moving forward and put the boots to the Conservatives for fighting the UNDRIP bill. O’Toole then switched to French to repeat his first question about the renounced funding, and Trudeau reiterated that they are taking action and allocated funding.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he wanted time allocation on Bill C-10, musing that perhaps the government wanted the bill to fail so that they could blame the Conservatives, and Trudeau condemned the games the Conservatives were playing in committee to delay the bill while praising the aims of the bill. Blanchet then meandered about protecting French, before returning to C-10 as a mechanism to do so, and Trudeau thanked him for recognising the cultural protections in the bill, which was why they were trying to get it passed.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he returned to the topic of the mass grave, and once again raised the court cases against Indigenous children and survivors (though, as a lawyer, Singh should know that narrow points of law do need to be contested when they create bad precedents). Trudeau somewhat sharply reminded him that they support compensation and moving forward in culturally appropriate ways. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same reply.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s big corporate Pride energy

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For the start of Pride month, the Conservatives decided to go all out to show just how down they are with The Gays these days, starting with a video that Erin O’Toole put out to talk about how great diversity is, and how he joined the military to defend rights, and so on. At the same time, MPs Eric Duncan, Michelle Rempel Garner and Bernard Généreux held a press conference to decry the MSM blood deferral period and put forward an unworkable proposal to lift it (watch for my story on this later today), and pledged to go hard on this issue for the whole month – as though there is nothing more pressing for the queer and trans communities to deal with. Of course, when asked about whether O’Toole’s pledge during the leadership contest to only attend Pride festivities where police are allowed to march in uniform stands, Rempel Garner prevaricated and refused to answer, but probably most ironic of all was Duncan declaring that the Liberals were only interested in virtue signalling – even though he was doing exactly that, knowing that Canadian Blood Services is arm’s length and the minister can’t interfere (and make no mistake, the Liberals should be held to account for making a promise they couldn’t keep – twice).

As all of this is going on, several Conservative MPs have continued to argue against the bill to ban “conversion therapy” (sort of), and much of it is done with concern trolling and red herrings – that they oppose the practice but they have “concerns” about this bill, and debate on the bill still hasn’t collapsed so that it can go to a vote. And it’s hard to take O’Toole seriously that his party is suddenly cool with the gays when his own MPs are putting forward speeches that are vile with homophobia and transphobia (and that O’Toole had to pander to social conservatives to get his leadership win).

I’m not saying that the Conservatives can’t show growth on queer and trans issues, but they haven’t exactly been putting in the work to show these communities that they are actually allies – and the concern trolling and red herrings of the conversion therapy bill prove just that. Right now it’s all just words, and it’s complete virtue signalling, with O’Toole and company insisting that it’s the Liberals who are the real homophobes, not them, and that The Gays should switch their votes because the Conservatives are cool with them now. I’m not sold, they haven’t demonstrated any real understanding of the issues facing our communities – picking the literal smallest hill to die on with the blood deferral period – or why they deserve to be trusted. It’s like the same kinds of hollow corporate Pride sentiments all over again.

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Roundup: An errant tweet begets irresponsible reporting

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As I reserve the right to grouse about bad journalism, I’m going to call out a particularly egregious CBC article that appeared over the weekend about a deleted tweet about a judicial appointment, and the way in which the story was framed, being that said potential judge was a donor to the justice minister’s nomination campaign and later to the riding association. The fact that a tweet was made and quickly deleted because the appointment process was not completed is bad form, and embarrassing for the minister’s office, but it need not be a sign that there is anything improper going on if you look at the facts in their totality. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the article omitted any context about how the appointment process is made, framed it like the minister is appointing his donors out of patronage, and got quotes from the Ethics Commissioner to “prove” that the conflict of interest rules are too lax.

The minister does not get to appoint anyone he wants on his rolodex. I mean on paper he has that ability, and constitutionally it’s his responsibility, but in practice it’s not how it works. The judicial appointments process – and I have written extensively about this – starts with lawyers applying to Judicial Appointments Committees in provinces, who then vet them and those which are deemed “Recommended” and “Highly Recommended” are forwarded to the minister’s office. At that point, there is a political vetting process because the government is politically accountable for these appointments if they go bad, but this particular process has been routinely mischaracterised both by media and the opposition – so much so that they have dragged in others on this point. In this case, it is likely that the candidate in question had passed the JAC and was forwarded to the minister’s office as either Recommended or Highly Recommended, and it was in the process of the political vetting when the errant tweet was made, but by deliberately omitting the role of the JACs in these appointments, the CBC article deliberately created a false impression for the sake of building their narrative.

It’s a problem when the media refuses to report this particular situation properly, with context of how appointments work, because they are more interested in a narrative that there is either rampant patronage, or that any lawyer who wants to be a judge should never donate to any party ever for fear of somehow tainting themselves. Political donations are part of how our system works, and it’s not a sign that someone is either a rampant partisan, or that they are trying to buy a judgeship – as the CBC seems to be alleging – especially given the donation limits in this country. Whether that is because there is an element of American political envy here, where we want to feel like we have the same problem of money in politics like they do (seriously, we do not), or whether there is a particular streak of misplaced moralism, in either case the reporting is tainted, and it’s completely irresponsible.

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Roundup: A flawed way to fix the CRA’s mistakes

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Remember the issue with self-employed Canadians applying for CERB, and being told they were eligible for gross income only to later be told that no, it was really net, and they may have to repay it? And then the government came to the realization that they were going to find themselves in serious trouble (such as a class action lawsuit) if they didn’t change course, and let those CERB payments go ahead? Well, for the people who made repayments, they can get that money back – but they have to apply for it. And that becomes the real trick.

With that in mind, here is Jennifer Robson raising some concerns with the whole thing, because CRA is not doing this very well. And that could be a problem for some of the people this is supposed to have been helping in the first place.

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QP: Promulgating microbiology lab conspiracy theories

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The prime minister was indeed present for his Wednesday proto-PMQs, in spite of it feeling kind of like a Tuesday because of the holiday Monday. Of course, the only other Liberal present was once again Mark Gerretsen. (We really, really need this pandemic to be over). Erin O’Toole led off with his script on mini-lectern, and he asked how a person with “deep connection” to China were able to get high-level security clearance to work in the National Microbiology Lab, and Justin Trudeau simply stated that the scientists were no longer employed by the government. O’Toole went on a tangent about the government’s “failure” in granting them clearance and demanded and end to all partnerships with China, and Trudeau read a statement about the research security working group. O’Toole kept insinuating that the two scientists in question were Chinese when they were in fact Canadian citizens, and Trudeau read more statement about national security agencies reaching out to research organisations to ensure that security was being taken seriously. O’Toole raised the supposed “cash for access” fundraisers Trudeau had with supposed Chinese agents early in his time in office, threw a bunch of non sequiturs against the wall, and then again demanded an end to all partnerships with China’s military medical institute. Trudeau read yet more talking points about the development of guidelines that take into account national security issues with research projects. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, and got another scripted response about how the government takes espionage seriously and that Public Safety and CSIS were working with universities.

Yves-François led for the Bloc, and he wanted support for a motion coming to the House around support for Quebec’s bill 96, and Trudeau stated that he looked forward to it, reminding him of the 2006 Harper motion. Blanchet waxed poetic about the motion, and Trudeau stated that he will work to protect French and that they already declare Quebec to be a nation in a untied Canada.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and decried that cuts to the Canada Recovery Benefit were on the way, and demanded the decision be reversed, and Trudeau reminded him that they would be there for Canadians, and that would not change. Singh then railed about banks raising fees, and Trudeau noted that they have been clear in discussions with these institutions that Canadians are going through a tough time which is why it’s important that everyone have their backs.

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Roundup: Getting called out by your deputy minister

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This government’s problems with cleaning up the culture of sexual misconduct in the military continues to roll along, and the calls are definitely coming from inside the house. In the latest installment, the deputy minister of National Defence has taken to the radio waves to point out that the government didn’t make an effort to push the military on implementing the Deschamps Report, who wound up treating it like a kind of checklist that they could do the bare minimum with rather than actually implementing the systemic changes that it called for. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given everything we know, but the fact that the deputy minister is saying this is damning.

We also got another harrowing tale of harassment, and retribution when the civilian employee who was subjected to it complained. This isn’t a surprise given the culture, and as the piece points out, one of the reasons she was targeted is because she upset the status quo – which is part of why the military made a conscious effort not to really implement the Deschamps Report, because it called for systemic changes, and that is a definite upset of the status quo. That the government didn’t really recognize this or push back against it is an indictment.

Which brings me back to the key point – that the government, and in particular the minister, needs to wear this. The deputy minister called him out. That’s not good. And part of the problem is also that Sajjan was part of that culture, which is may explain why he was either blind to the problems, or was fine with not actually bothered that they weren’t upsetting the status quo. It’s one of the reasons why actual civilian control of the military is so important, and we haven’t had that under Sajjan. Regardless, this is his problem to wear, and he needs to take actual ministerial responsibility, and offer his resignation. There is no other option.

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QP: Unchallenged misinformation around inflation

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For the first day back after a week away and the Victoria Day long weekend, the prime minister was present, along with Liberal placeholder Mark Gerretsen as the only other MP present on the government benches. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and Erin O’Toole led off citing misleading statistics about inflation, for which Justin Trudeau recited some platitudes about having people’s backs. O’Toole complained that housing was becoming unaffordable, and Trudeau listed actions they took, like raising taxes on the top one percent and the Canada Child Benefit as ways they are making life more affordable. O’Toole then raised the American tactic to raise softwood lumber tariffs, which doesn’t really affect the Canadian market (as it will only make it more expensive for Americans as there is a lack of supply in the market), and Trudeau wondered where O’Toole had been the last five years as the government stood up against American trade measures. O’Toole repeated his misleading inflation question in French, fo the same platitudes in French, and the repeated the softwood lumber tariff question in French. Trudeau repeated that they have delivered for the past five years.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he raised Quebec’s Bill 96, and wanted Trudeau to praise it. Trudeau reminded him that they want to protect French while also protecting linguistic minorities and that he looked forward to working with the government of Quebec on it. Blanchet took this as a yes, and wanted a more positive explicit endorsement. Trudeau reminded him that he works with the premiers, and he would meet them again later this week.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he accused the banks of “stealing” from people by raising fees and that the federal government could stop them but haven’t. Trudeau listed the measures they are taking to make the wealthy pay their fair share. Singh switched to English to quote the deputy minister of National Defence on the lack of progress on the Deschamps Report, for which Trudeau recited that the institution isn’t living up to its goals, and listed the actions they have taken, calling them “first steps.”

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