With the First Ministers’ meeting now out of the way, attention is turning to Justin Trudeau’s trip to Washington DC next week, and what will happen there, and naturally, what it all means. At least five ministers will accompany him on the trip – though not necessarily to the state dinner, which is going to apparently be quite the event. Obama is apparently looking to Trudeau to be a partner for green initiatives, and indeed Trudeau will be hosted by an environmental group with a known anti-oilsands agenda (to the protests of Conservative MPs). Trudeau, for his part, is being introduced to the Americans first by appearing on 60 Minutes where he will be seen in a more serious light than his appearance in Vogue, and part of his message is that he wants Americans to be a little more outward looking and pay attention to other countries. Of course, the one topic that must not be spoken of is the presidential nomination process, for which Trudeau cannot (and indeed must not) make any kind of pronouncements on other than that he won’t comment on the internal politics of another country. Not that it won’t stop everyone from asking while he’s down there (because you know they all will, Canadian and American media alike), but he’s savvy enough of a politician not to say anything. Instead it’ll likely be a litany of platitudes about trade, trying to thin the border, and thanks for Canada’s renewed contribution in the conflict with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And the requisite celebrity questions and requests for selfies, of course.
Tag Archives: Canadian Forces
Roundup: Points for process
From all accounts, the First Ministers meeting in Vancouver got off to a terse start. Premiers were unhappy over the regional bickering over Energy East and discussions of carbon pricing, while Indigenous groups were grousing that they should also have been at that table when it comes to coming up with a plan on combating climate change. By lunch, word around the place was that Trudeau was digging in his heels and was ready to impose a national carbon price on the provinces if they continued to balk and not work together to come to some kind of framework. And, by those same accounts, something changed after lunch and they struck a more conciliatory tone, and even though the meeting ran overtime, they came up with the Vancouver Declaration on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which was essentially an agreement on process. They have six months now to form four working groups and when they meet again in September, the expectation is that there will be more concrete plans, but carbon pricing mechanisms will be part of it – though there seems to be some indication that somehow carbon capture and storage will be seen as some kind of mechanism related to climate mitigation, despite the fact that thus far it’s been an expensive failure of a concept (but hey, Brad Wall is fully committed to it). And then even more grousing happened from the opposition, where the Conservatives complained that there was too much uncertainty for market investment (though not really if you consider that carbon pricing is coming, which the energy sector has actually been demanding and building into their projections), and the NDP moaning that there are still no targets or timelines (to which one wonders if they would have simply imposed them and told the provinces to deal with it if they were in charge, as with their vaunted plans for a cap-and-trade system despite the fact that BC has a successful carbon tax). So if nobody goes away happy, does that mean it was some measure of success? Perhaps, but one shouldn’t diminish the fact that there was a victory for process, because (and it can’t be stated enough) process matters. Democracy is process. So if you have a process laid out, it means that you can move ahead in a coordinated fashion with a plan and a road map and go from there. That may be an understated ending to the conference, but we’ll have to see what the next six months bring.
Roundup: Go knock doors
While I’ve pretty much said my piece on the Manning Conference, one last headline caught my eye yesterday, which was the “Traditional campaigns dead! It’s a digital world now!” variety, which made me roll my eyes a bit, but here it is. The “experts” – all American – talk about how Facebook and digital ads are where it’s at instead of TV advertising, but it seems to me like they missed entirely what happened during the last federal election – you know, something that the Conservatives might have a vested interest in actually learning from their mistakes in, rather than what is going on south of the border, with their utterly insane primary season and unlimited corporate and private money. Because seriously, if they paid attention to what the Liberals did here, it was actually a lot of traditional campaigning, which was door-knocking. Yes, they flooded social media with their “days of action,” which featured candidates and their teams – wait for it – door-knocking. There wasn’t a series of YouTube or Facebook ads that won the election for the Liberals – in fact, the only commercial that anyone remembers is the one with Trudeau on the escalator, and mostly because everyone tried to mock it (not all of it effectively). How often in the last decade did we hear about the Conservatives’ fearsome electoral machine with their CIMS database, and how that was helping them cut swaths though campaigns based on the smiley and frowney faces of voter identification? It didn’t win them the election. Yes, the Liberals rebuilt their own voter identification database (“Liberalist”), but again, what was it used for? Door-knocking, and canvassing donations, but it also bears noting that the Liberals did not spend the most money, disproving that money is what wins elections. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take the words of these American “experts” that the Conservatives enlisted with a grain of salt, while the traditional shoe-leather method of direct voter engagement and going from door-to-door is putting in the hard work that won a majority of seats.
Roundup: No Fridays off
It’s not the first time I’ve written on this topic, and it certainly won’t be the last. Yesterday’s column by David Akin about making MPs continue to work on Fridays has me itching to reiterate a few points, even if some of Akin’s writing style makes me cringe a little. (Seriously, PROC is an “obscure but important” committee? Really?) Akin makes good points in that we are already seeing a greater diversity in people running and getting elected, and more women running and getting elected than ever before, and that people who put their name on the ballot know that the job entails actually being in Ottawa five days a week for roughly half the year. And really, that’s one of the points that makes me a bit crazy when we keep circling back to these discussions about making parliament “family friendly.” Parliament is not just another workplace, and you can’t apply the same standards to it that you would with any other job. We all know that a great deal of sacrifice is involved with the job, which is why we compensate MPs fairly well for it (though one could quite easily argue that they are underpaid, though populist sentiment means that argument will never win the day). Even more crazy making were MPs on Procedure and House Affairs committee saying things like “It’s special being here,” while trying to figure out how to vote from their riding or telecommute to the job in Ottawa, never mind that the job involves being in Ottawa because it relies on building personal relationships. No, it’s not “special” to be in Ottawa – it’s the job you signed on for. Being present to vote is what you signed on for. If you didn’t want to be in Ottawa but still serve the public, you could have run for local city council, but no, you wanted to play a federal role. That means being in Ottawa. It doesn’t mean being here year-round, and clearly it’s not given the growing number of constituency weeks, but constituency work is not what your job is. Your job is to hold the government to account, which means being present, debating, reading the Estimates and the Public Accounts, doing committee work, grilling ministers and department staff, and engaging with stakeholders as part of that job. All of that is done here. Sure, helping people with passport forms is all well and good, but it’s not actually your job. In fact, the growing MP role as civil service ombudsman is a distressing turn of events, because it starts to subtly politicise the system, but it also takes away from the accountability role. We are already in a crisis of civic literacy in this country. Having MPs justify the fact that they don’t feel the need to be in Ottawa to do their jobs, and to wrap that justification up in the flag of being family-friendly is a problem. Yes, it’s tough, and marriages break up with too much frequency, but the system already bends over backwards to accommodate spouses and families. The reality remains, however, that this is not a job that you can do from home, and candidates needs to go into it with their eyes open rather than making excuses to shirk their duties once they get here.
Roundup: It’s not a wealth transfer
Woe be Saskatchewan, apparently, with the collapse in global commodity prices, affecting both its oil and potash industries. Its premier, Brad Wall, is in full-on populist mode in advance of a provincial election, and when not goading Montreal mayor Denis Coderre over Energy East, he’s also demanding some kind of federal dollars should the Trudeau government decide to bail out Bombardier, as well as funds for his idea of a well-capping programme. To be fair, the well-capping idea is a good one, but Wall’s bombast is probably not helping, particularly when he makes comments about equalisation funding. The Conservatives have been all about equalisation in Question Period, with questions yesterday demanding “fairness” for Alberta and Saskatchewan after the territories were having their formulas adjusted, despite the explanation that the adjustments were because of changing Statistics Canada measurements. More egregious was when former Speaker Andrew Scheer decried that wealth was still being transferred to other provinces based on calculations from when Saskatchewan was benefitting from $100/barrel oil. And my head very nearly exploded when he asked that because it’s about as wrong – and frankly boneheaded – as one can get when discussing equalisation. Despite the common mythology, the federal equalisation is not a wealth transfer between provinces. “Have” provinces don’t write cheques to the federal government in order to pass them along to the “have not” provinces. It’s nothing like that at all. Every Canadian pays into equalisation by way of taxes, and the federal government will transfer some of its general revenue funds to provinces who need help in providing an equal level of service to its citizens. Now, provinces like to make all kinds of claims based on what their per-capita contributions to the programme are, but it’s not a bloody wealth transfer. I get why they like to claim that it is for political purposes, but it’s wrong and it just fuels these ridiculous regional conflicts (like the ones we’re seeing now between the west and Quebec based on nonsense rhetoric over Energy East) to no good end. So seriously, MPs and premiers – knock it off. You’re not helping anyone.
Roundup: Doing the policy heavy lifting
If you were to turn to the Big Book of Canadian Political Journalism Clichés, you’d find pages of tiresome and frankly libellous descriptions of the Senate of Canada. And oh, look – The Canadian Press drew from a number of them to craft the lead of their latest piece: “Canada’s Senate, often accused of being an anachronism, is being asked to wrestle with the futuristic dream of driverless cars.” Of course, the accusations of being an anachronism often come from clueless political journalists who recite the received wisdom around the Upper Chamber with little or no critical insight or understanding of Chamber, its actual role, or its operations, and they treat it like a joke, which makes ledes like this commonplace. “Isn’t it hilarious that the Senate is supposed to look at future technology? Aren’t they all ancient, napping in the Chamber? LOL,” and so on. And then this line a little further down in the piece: “His request for a Senate study is part of the Trudeau government’s attempt to recast the much-maligned upper house as an independent and valued institution that has an important parliamentary role to play.” Um, no, it doesn’t need to be recast as having an important role to play because they’ve always had it. The Senate has been doing the kinds of cutting-edge policy study and research that the Commons can’t or won’t for decades. Just in the last parliament alone, they studied things like BitCoin and crypto-currencies, and they have been debating legislation on growing issues like genetic privacy that the Commons continues to shirk while they snipe at one another over partisan issues. But hey, when asked to do a comprehensive study on the regulatory, policy and technical issues that need to be addressed by the growing field of driverless cars, hey, it’s all a big joke because it’s the Senate. That kind of tiresome attitude is part of why the studies and reports that come out of the Senate – which in many ways acts like a built-in think tank for Parliament (and a hugely cost-effective one at that) – tend to go under the radar. Some reports get a couple of days of press, such as the very good report on the Canada-US price differential (which the previous government then largely ignored when they went to craft legislation to close that gap – an issue now moot thanks to our falling dollar), but for the most part, the media will ignore the studies. It’s really a shame because there is a lot of good work in there that is worth a lot more discussion and attention, lest it gather dust on a shelf. But why actually turn to those studies when we can make jokes about the Senate, malign its denizens thanks to the actions of a couple of bad apples, and ignore the actual work while grumbling that they aren’t elected? It’s too bad that We The Media can’t take these things more seriously, as we would all be better off as an informed citizenry as a result.
QP: In advance of the deployment motion
As Ottawa dug itself out from a record snowfall, everyone was ready to go in advance of the debate on the new ISIS mission that would happen after QP. Rona Ambrose had her mini-lectern ready to go, and she read a question about how the PM could possibly withdraw our CF-18s from the fight against ISIS. Justin Trudeau noted that one opposition party wanted them to do more and the other wanted them to do it less, and they had a comprehensive plan. Ambrose accused him of stepping back against the fight against terror, to which Trudeau assured her that our allies were happy with our stepping up our efforts. Ambrose accused Trudeau of picking and choosing Canadian values, to which Trudeau reminded her about what people voted for. Ambrose then accused the government of burning through the surplus her government left — eliciting laughs from the government benches — and wondered how much deficit they would pile on. Trudeau reminded her that they actually left a deficit, and they were committed to delivering growth. Ambrose lamented job losses, to which Trudeau again noted committing to growth. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and blasted the government for not preventing job losses at Bombardier. Trudeau insisted that they would grow the economy in responsible ways. Mulcair demanded again in English, and Trudeau repeated his answer with an added lament about shouting about problems. Mulcair then changed topics and demanded to know if the new mission was a combat mission. Trudeau said that they were doing what was most effective. Mulcair gave another go, and got pretty much the same answer.
Roundup: A vote for support
We have the motion on the Order Paper now for the debate and eventual vote on the newly refocused mission in Syria and Iraq, and to the relief of those of us who care about things like Crown Prerogative and the powers of the executive, it’s crafted simply in the language of supporting the mission. This is critical, because asking for authorisation is a giant can of worms that nobody really should want to even contemplate opening, but even with this language, it’s going to cause headaches going forward. To recap, asking for authorization is something that launders the prerogative and thus the government’s accountability. When something goes wrong, they can shrug and say “the House voted for the mission,” and to varying degrees, the Harper government did this, particularly with relationship to Afghanistan. These non-binding votes are a rather unseemly bit of political theatre that purports to put the question to MPs – because apparently they need to have buy-in when we send our men and women in uniform into danger, or some such nonsense – and it gives parties like the NDP a chance to thump their chests about peacekeeping and pandering to pacifistic notions (and does anyone seriously buy that nobody is trying to stop the flow of money, arms and fighters to ISIS without Canada butting to the front of the line to finger-wag at them?), and parties like the Conservatives a chance to rail that they were doing so much more when they were in charge (when they weren’t), or when they were in charge, to pat themselves on the back for everything they were doing (when really, it tended to be a bare minimum at best, or a symbolic contribution at worst). Of course, all of this could be done with a simple take-note debate without a vote, which is how it should be, because a vote implies authorisation, and that’s how the NDP have read each and every vote in the past, and they will loudly remind everyone in QP and elsewhere about it. Trudeau has been trying to keep expectations measured by saying that they recognise the role of the executive in making these decisions – but he went and proposed a vote anyway, muddling the role of MPs in this situations like these. That role, to remind you, is to hold the government to account, so if you’re going to have a vote on a military mission, then one might as well make it a confidence vote because foreign policy and control of the military is at the heart of the Crown’s powers. (These authorisation votes that aren’t confidence measures are playing out in the UK right now, which is making a mess of their own system, for the record). Trudeau should have known better than to continue this pattern of confusion and left it at a take-note debate, like it should be. A vote, whether it’s an actual authorisation or just a declaration of support, only serves to make the waters murky, which we need our governments to stop doing before they do lasting harm to our system of Responsible Government.
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Roundup: Carrying on the co-opting
Justin Trudeau and three ministers announced the new plan to fight ISIS yesterday, and while the CF-18s are coming home in two weeks, the surveillance and refuelling planes will remain along with triple the number of special forces trainers, plus ministerial advisors in Iraq and capacity building in neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, along with a lot more humanitarian assistance on the ground, and small arms and ammunition to our Kurdish allies. Its’ an approach that the Americans praised (despite Rona Ambrose’ dire warnings), but there is something that is troubling, which is the fact that Justin Trudeau has declared that he will still call a vote on the matter in the House of Commons. Why is this important? Because it has to do with the practice of Responsible Government. Under our system, the government – meaning the cabinet – takes a decision, and the Commons gets to hold them to account for it. But what Stephen Harper decided to start doing back in 2006 is to put things which are normally the prerogative of the Crown – things like military deployments – to a vote in the Commons, for purely political reasons. Part of those reasons were about trying to drive a wedge in the Liberal ranks over the mission in Afghanistan, and he did it very effectively. The other part was that it gave him political cover. When things went wrong, and they did, his ministers stood up to remind the House that they voted for that Afghan mission. Because that’s what insisting on votes does – it co-opts the House’s accountability role, and launder’s the government’s prerogative so that they can help avoid being held to account. It was bad enough that the Harper government, it’s worse that the Trudeau government, which says a lot of good things about restoring the proper functioning of our parliamentary system, to not do so in this case – especially after saying that he understands the role of the executive in military matters, and then goes on to promise a vote anyway. (I would also add that it’s mind-boggling that the NDP would continue to insist on a vote despite the fact that it co-opts them, but mind-boggling is what a lot of their positions tend to wind up being). One imagines that the language of the vote will be one which simply expresses support in the mission rather than has the language of authorisation, as Harper did with the previous Iraq vote, but it’s still terrible all around, not only for optics, but the proper functioning of our system of government.
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Roundup: Application versus consultation
The head of the new Senate Appointment Advisory Board appeared at the Procedure and House Affairs committee yesterday, and has raised a few issues about this new process that are a bit troubling, which has to do with applications – rather, that there seems to be an emphasis on application rather than nominations arising out of consultations. In particular, the ability for people to apply for a seat on their own seems to be at odds with some of the design of the advisory process. Emmett Macfarlane notes that this wasn’t how he envisioned the process when he was asked to help design it, and that it not only overly bureaucratizes the process, but it sets it up for a particularly unsavoury sort to want to apply, which I concur with. Why is this important? Because we’ve only spent the past number of months watching the trial of a certain Mike Duffy, who was well known for wanting desperately to become a senator for decades, and how he viewed such an appointment as a “taskless thanks” which would also provide him with all manner of perquisites – and witness how he managed to monetize all of his relationships as a result of his appointment, as we’ve witnessed in testimony. We also lived though the bizarre spectacle that was Bert Brown, “elected” senator whose self-appointed crusade for Senate reform comprised largely of unsolicited meetings with provinces to convince them of his plan (on the Senate’s dime), and taking to the op-ed pages to basically call his detractors Nazis (I’m not sure how else you take it when he reminds you of his family’s military service in WWII as a rebuttal). Some of the best senators we’ve seen are those who never expected an appointment, and who never would have sought office on their own – people like Roméo Dallaire. It’s also why I’m not sold on the NDP fear that this process will just be elites nominating elites – a broad enough consultation will bring people of accomplishment and expertise in a wide variety of fields than just academia. But at the same time, the Senate should be a place that rewards experience and expertise rather than being a repository for randoms, given their role to scrutinise legislation and act as the country’s premier think tank. I have a hard time seeing how hot dog vendors can fulfil those roles, no matter how many people they interact with in a day.
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It's almost like begging for another Mike Duffy… https://t.co/s3Nd9Z4amm
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 4, 2016