The 100th anniversary of the great Centre Block fire meant that it was the wooden mace on the table today, to mark the destruction of the original mace. Justin Trudeau was absent, however, as he was in Edmonton to meet with Premier Notley there. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk yet again, and she read a question about Energy East, surprising no one. Bill Morneau answered, somewhat surprisingly, and he mentioned his meetings in Alberta recently, promising a new approach. Ambrose noted the resolutions of support passed in Saskatchewan, to which Morneau mentioned the meetings Trudeau was having with the Alberta premier. Ambrose gave an overwrought plea for jobs for people who are suffering, and Morneau insisted they were helping get social licence for groups who want to get resources to tidewater. Steven Blaney was up next, asking about job losses in French, and Morneau assured him that they are working together with affected provinces. Blaney accused the Liberals of abandoning workers, bringing in shipyards, to which Judy Foote assured him that they remain committed to the national shipbuilding strategy. Thomas Mulcair was up next, noting his visit to La Loche, Saskatchewan, and demanded funding for Aboriginal languages. Carolyn Bennett noted the importance of the visit, and she vowed to get those languages into schools. Mulcair moved onto the TPP and raised the opposition of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to the deal. Lawrence MacAulay noted that the signing was just a technical step that allows greater debate. Mulcair switched to French to ask again, and this time David Lametti responded in kind with much the same answer as MacAulay. For his last question, Mulcair demanded immediate changes to the EI programme, for which MaryAnn Mihychuk assured him that changes were coming.
Tag Archives: Canadian Forces
Roundup: On “mature” democracies
Oh, Maryam Monsef. I try so hard to be optimistic that your democratic reform mandate won’t be one big gong show, and yet I keep finding myself disappointed. The latest example – Monsef insisting that First-Past-The-Post is okay for fledgling democracies, but “mature” democracies can “do better.” And then my head exploded. If there is anything that makes me insane is this notion that somehow proponents of FPTP are just too stupid to grasp all of the wonderful things about various other voting systems (most especially the unicorns-and-rainbows that fans of proportional representation will extol), when some of us are quite learned, thank you very much, and have no interest in alternative voting schemes because they’re predicated on a lot of emotional bunk rather than solid civics. The cries that somehow FPTP is “unfair” or ensures that “votes don’t count” are the siren songs of sore losers who are actually the ones who don’t understand the way our system works, and when you try and point out the inherent flaws in their logic, they get huffy and try to change the goal posts. (I have had innumerable conversations like this. They always wind up the same. Always). And no, proportional representation won’t increase voter turnout. That’s been proven. Declining voter turnout in western democracies is part of a broader problem that is tough to grasp, but I would hazard that a lack of civic literacy is the bigger problem there – just like Monsef’s argument that somehow FPTP isn’t a “mature” system. I’m going to turn that around – I think FPTP is a mature system, and it’s one that, if we were a mature democracy, we would actually understand its intricacies as well as is pleasant simplicity, but no – we are a civically illiterate culture who doesn’t learn about how the system works, so we complain instead that it’s somehow “broken,” when what’s broken is our understanding and political discourse around it. If Monsef wants legitimate democratic reform, then tinkering with the system with abhorrent notions like online voting, lowered voting ages or alternative voting systems aren’t going to actually solve anything. What will solve our democratic deficit is a real push for civic literacy that will re-engage Canadians with the system. But that’s a hard, long-term problem, and everyone wants a quick fix. Those quick fixes will only serve to make things worse, as they always have (and past quick fixes are part of what’s broken about our system as it exists), and Monsef needs to start grasping this reality. One would think that a “mature” democracy would have that level of self-awareness, but I fear we’re not there yet.
Roundup: 10 grievances aired
“It’s a new way to interview the prime minister!” CBC declared, as they promoted their latest gimmick – their “face-to-face” special with the prime minister, in which they selected ten Canadians from around the country to come to Ottawa, and each have a ten minute conversation with Justin Trudeau about whatever their issue is. I watched the one-hour special (not the individual interviews – sorry, but I try to have a life), and was underwhelmed. Why? Because it wasn’t actually interviewing the PM – it was ten people coming largely with a personal grievance to be aired.
@jengerson “Why aren’t you magic? Why can’t you solve my personal problems with the snap of your finger? No, seriously, I mean it.”
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 1, 2016
While the CBC pats itself on the back about this little exercise, and good on them for trying it, I just felt like there actually wasn’t anything new here. That Trudeau agreed to do this wasn’t a surprise in the least – connecting with “ordinary Canadians” is his shtick. He spent the better part of the past three years doing just that. If the last guy agreed to do this – that would be news. Trudeau? Not so much. That it feeds into this toxic narrative that there is an “Ottawa bubble” that must be broken out of is also annoying, because it presumes that the higher-level discussions that happen here aren’t important or that they don’t matter to “ordinary Canadians” when everything that happens here does impact, whether they see it or not. And with these airing of grievances, what I saw demonstrated was an expectation from these “ordinary Canadians” that the prime minister must not only have facile solutions to complex problems – many of which are not even within his own jurisdiction – but that there was an expectation that he personally should be doing something for them, and for their personal situation. Is this the expectation that people have about the way that politics works? That there is some kind of entitlement that voters have for their problems to be solved if they complain to the people in office about them? Maybe this is a reflection of who the CBC chose for their ten people, and that it’s not more reflective of the broader population as a whole. Suffice to say, I came away from the whole thing feeling worse for having watched it, but then again, maybe I’m not the audience for these kinds of things.
Roundup: Forcing internal reform
With the Senate back in session, the uncertainties of how it will operate in this new environment are starting to make themselves be seen. With each passing day, the lack of Senate Question Period becomes a little more awkward, and until new government legislation starts coming down the pipe, much of their debates right now are about just how they plan to organize themselves. Part of these are the debates about breached privileges – not only the continuation of the investigation of the prima facia breach from the previous parliament about the leak of the AG report, but also Senator Housakos’ complaint that the lack of a government representative doesn’t allow senators to properly do their jobs, and a new complaint today about how the rights of independent senators are being breached in the way that committees are currently organising themselves. In this case it was Senator Wallace, who recently left the Conservative caucus of his own volition, essentially complaining that he couldn’t get a committee assignment that he’d asked for (and the only one that was offered to him he turned down). And it’s already been raised in this parliament that the way committee assignments are determined are a problem for independent senators, and it’s a debate that needs to be had – particularly if there is to be a new batch of independent senators on the way in (though I don’t expect them all to remain independent, nor should they, really). And until some real work starts to land on the Senate’s docket, these kinds of organizational debates are going to dominate for the weeks to come, which may start to reshape how the organisation functions as a whole. If Trudeau did one thing in his non-constitutional Senate reform promise, it was to force the chamber to reform itself from within. One just hopes that the end result hasn’t broken it for the sake of better optics.
QP: Thanks for your pre-arranged meeting
Tuesday, and it was the first regular QP not attended by the new prime minister. Rona Ambrose led off, reading her thanks for Trudeau taking her advice and meeting with Denis Coderre — you know, the meeting he had already had planned before QP yesterday. Ambrose suggested that if he wanted to create other jobs, the government could permit the extension of the Toronto Island Airport, which would hopefully help Bombardier sell more jets. Marc Garneau responded by saying they took an undertaking to respect Toronto’s waterfront plans. Ambrose then raised the spectre of ISIS, and conflated the AQIM attack in Burkina Faso with the other conflict. Stephane Dion insisted that Canada was part of the fight against ISIS. Ambrose then called ISIS the greatest threat to women and GLBT rights, to which Sajjan insisted that ISIS was a threat that he was taking seriously. Gérard Deltell then repeated Ambrose’s first question with the spin of other Quebec industry, and got a response from Jim Carr about the importance of resource development, and took a a second question on Deltell in the same vein. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and demanded that the government not appeal the Human Rights Tribunal decision on First Nations child welfare, to which Jody Raybould-Wilson assured him that they would reform the child welfare system, but did leave the door open for judicial review. Mulcair then turned to the issue of existing pipeline approval processes, to which Catherine McKenna spoke about rebuilding trust with stakeholders. Mulcair demanded that the assessments be redone, but McKenna’s answer didn’t waver. Mulcair thundered about broken promises before pivoting to his scripted question about EI eligibility, to which MaryAnn Mihychuk assured him that they were conducting a comprehensive review.
Pretty sure the Catholic Church is a bigger threat to global GLBT rights than ISIS. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 26, 2016
Roundup: “Elected” senatorial whinging
One of Alberta’s “senators in waiting” is grumbling about the current Senate appointment process, believing that the people of Alberta “have spoken” when they chose his name from a list to one day fill a Senate seat for that province. The problem, of course, is that the Supreme Court declared that whole process – which was a bit of a farce from its very inception – unconstitutional. If one wants Senate elections, they need a constitutional amendment with the seven-provinces-representing-fifty-percent-of-the-population amending formula. And don’t give me the “but it’s a non-binding election” line either, as Justice Cromwell very rightly pushed back during the Senate Reference hearings, “why not hold a consultative auction then? Is that any less valid?” The thing with the excuse for Senate elections as they have existed in this country so far is that they don’t actually provide any form of accountability is because they are for a non-renewable term. With an election, the re-election is where the accountability comes in. Anyone can get elected, no matter how terrible – we’ve seen untold number of examples of this in the past, and with the process that Alberta put into place, most of their Senate “elections” were just names on a ballot – most of the time, there was little advertising, there were no televised debates, and generally only one party participated as the Liberals boycotted the process and the NDP had no interest seeing as they want the Senate abolished anyway. At least when you have MPs who more or less accidentally get elected, you can judge them the next time around to see whether they did a good job or not (and we got a taste of this with the demise of many of those NDP MPs who got elected in the “Orange Wave” in 2011). Complicating the process in the Alberta conception of Senate “consultative elections” was the notion that they were based on provincial party nominations which don’t necessarily correspond to the federal parties that Senators caucus in (or at least used to until a couple of years ago), and what would one’s platform be anyway? It’s pretty hard to make legislative promises as a Senator, and promising transparency in spending is a sideshow compared to the actual legislative duties that they are expected to perform. And if memory serves, none of the “elected” Senators that Harper appointed have put forward any bills in the Senate either. One of them is also now concern trolling about the new “independent” senators as not being accountable to a party caucus, which makes one wonder why the big fuss about electing a Senator if one simply expects them to follow party lines despite the fact that the place was created with institutional independence for the very sake of pushing back against the government. Nevertheless, the Conservatives’ democratic reform critic has decried the new Senate appointments process as an “insult to Alberta” (erm, what part of unconstitutional don’t you understand?) and now we get these demands that the results of this sham election be considered regardless of the process or the Supreme Court’s judgment. The Senate was not designed to simply create 105 new backbenchers for the Commons. It would be nice if people stopped insisting as though that were the case, which is precisely what these “elections” have given us.
Roundup: Cauliflower concerns
The NDP put out a press release yesterday, which was essentially an object lesson in precisely what not to do when trying to make hay out of a political issue. The issue – rising food prices, and in particular, the rising cost of fruits and vegetables, and the lament that cauliflower is now a “luxury item.” Err, except that it’s not. And worse, that its “inexplicable” rise in price is entirely explicable – there’s a drought in California, and then there was a frost, which reduced the supply, and the increased demand lately (because it’s a trendy food right now) means that, thanks to the basic laws of supply and demand, the price spiked for a few weeks. And lo, it’s come back down again. And let us not forget that fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter is actually a luxury that our parents pretty much never had. They attempted to use the release to highlight inequality – Mulcair put out a release a couple of days previous, lamenting that Trudeau didn’t bring up inequality during his speech at Davos – but most of the claims in the cauliflower release were spurious. Transportation costs are not increasing – the crashing price of oil means that the cost of fuel is coming down by quite a lot. And the lament that the December rate of inflation was 1.6 percent? Um, target inflation is two percent, so unless they have another target in mind, that might be a policy they want to put out there. Rising food costs also have a lot to do with the lower dollar, and if memory serves, the NDP were lamenting that the dollar was too high (no doubt because they felt it was depressing the manufacturing sector, never mind that there are deeper structural issues than just the dollar alone), and that’s the thing about a low dollar – that it reduces your purchasing power, particularly if the fresh fruits and vegetables that don’t grow in this country in the winter have to be imported. To cap it off, the release offers no actual suggestions for what they’d like to see – only a vague statement that the upcoming budget is an opportunity to do something about inequality. So what, pray tell, is up for offer? Socialist wealth redistribution? The government is already raising taxes on the wealthiest one percent and offering more transfers to poorer families. So in totality, one has to ask if there as any adult supervision in putting out this hot mess of a press release, because the evidence before us makes that assertion unlikely in the extreme.
This NDP release about cauliflower is utter nonsense. IT’S EXPENSIVE BECAUSE THERE WAS A DROUGHT! Seriously! pic.twitter.com/hWJK4GRB6U
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 22, 2016
The return of "ZAP! You're frozen." anyone? https://t.co/zSwdxWX5UF
— Luke Kawa (@LJKawa) January 22, 2016
Roundup: Appointment board terms
The Order in Council relating to the new Senate appointment board was made public yesterday, and some of the details were tweeted out (as below, with commentary). Of note for me when you read the terms was that this interim process for the first five appointments will be done by engaging with civil society groups of various distinctions. The permanent process going forward will be the one that invites people to nominate others (or themselves) as vacancies come open.
And here's the mandate for the Senate appointments board. https://t.co/cwc6kocSUQ
— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) January 21, 2016
Board members who select new senators will earn $375-$450 per diems, plus travel costs. Not even lawyer money. https://t.co/aFdwzBbZC5
— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) January 21, 2016
Here are the detailed terms for the Senate appointments board. https://t.co/EXgFpxGraa
— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) January 21, 2016
Because of Responsible Government and the Constitution. It’s a Thing. https://t.co/mPh828058x
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 21, 2016
Pretty safe bet that one of the first five new senators appointed will be aboriginal. I will bet my house on this. https://t.co/6LqSLZ6JIm
— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) January 21, 2016
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/690289470709563392
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/690289727677829121
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/690290163809959937
Roundup: An appointment panel is named
The government announced the composition of the permanent members of the Senate appointment advisory board, along with the ad hoc members of the three provincial members for the Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba seats that they plan to fill immediately. The federal members are headed by Huguette Labelle, a former senior civil servant and chancellor of Ottawa University, along with Indira Samarasekera, the former president of U of A who comes from a physical sciences background, and Daniel Jutras, a dean of law from McGill University. The provincial members have more varied backgrounds, including one Manitoba member who is a folk singer who also dabbles in pseudoscience around past lives, so oops there. They expect to make their first round of recommendations by the end of February – later than would have been hoped, but it’s only about three sitting weeks, so not too long to delay processes in the Senate, particularly as one of those first five appointments is to be the government’s new “coordinator” in the Senate (which remains a boneheaded suggestion if you ask me, considering that they will have no Senate experience whatsoever). And then come the complaints, mostly from the Conservatives (though the NDP did their share of tutting and shaking their heads about the “undemocratic” nature of the Senate). The problem with the complaints, largely coming out of Conservative Senate Leader Claude Carignan’s office, is that they’re grasping at straws – two of the academics were Trudeau Foundation scholars, so that obviously means they’re Liberals and can’t possibly be independent, right? No, seriously, that was Carignan’s argument. Also, that they were too elitist to pick “ordinary” Canadians to sit in the Senate, which actually isn’t their mandate. They are supposed to look for people with distinguished public service or who have some legislative experience. While I have my particular issues with the notion that the new Senators appointed through this process will all be independent (no, that’s not a guarantee, and nothing can stop them from joining whichever caucus they choose), there is this endemic chattering amongst Conservative senators that they’ll just all be Liberals by any other name, and as a result, they denounce the whole process. Never mind that the process by which some of those same senators got appointed was not particularly well run (the panic appointments of 2008 produced a number of senators of dubious merit), it makes their objections to this process to seem a bit precious. The other complaints – that because the appointment panel was not chosen by all-party consensus, that their deliberations are secret, that the short-lists are similarly kept secret, that the PM isn’t bound by the list – are all frankly out of step with the practice of Responsible Government and the constitution, and make no sense. Scott Reid’s complaint that it’s a process insulting to Albertans and their “elected” senators is also farcical considering the sham election process and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Senate reference case. And while there is plenty of things that could be criticised about the way this process is happening, the fact that the Conservatives are choosing the most ridiculous and specious arguments is a sign of that they’re not taking this seriously, which blunts the effectiveness of their role as official opposition.
Add MP Scott Reid to the list of people who apparently can’t grasp Responsible Government. #SenCA #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/7l0DVzOMjI
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 19, 2016
Roundup: Airfare obsessions
Oh, the things we obsess over in this country – like the Prime Minister’s air travel. Perpetual source of media copy, as are the strange figures that get attached to it. As previously mentioned, Justin Trudeau and family went on vacation to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts-Nevis, and apparently rented a villa there (which they paid for out of pocket), and got a bit of tabloid attention, because why not? Also, apparently there was a bit of diplomacy as he met with the country’s prime minister and foreign minister, but that’s beside the point. The point is that while Trudeau has promised to reimburse the public purse for the equivalent of economy fares for the trip, the media continues to bring forward the dollar figure of $10,000 per flying hour to operate the Challenger jets, which the PM is obligated to take for security reasons. The problem with using that $10,000/flying hour figure is that it never places it in the context of it being a military aircraft, and it’s not just sitting around waiting to shuttle the PM around – they’re in use for other operations, and even when they’re not, they still get flown empty because those military pilots need to keep up flying hours aboard them. It’s a Thing, but nobody ever mentions it. Instead, when the PM wants to go somewhere on personal business, we drag up the $10,000/flying hours figure because we want a bit of cheap outrage, and if there’s anything that Canadian media loves, it’s cheap outrage. It is a little curious that Trudeau is reimbursing at the economy fare rate, but I guess we’ll see what that rate looks like once it’s repaid. While Paul Martin made it the practice to repay double the going business-class rate, Stephen Harper would occasionally reimburse it at what was alleged to be the lowest possible economy fare, though most of the time when reporters tried to find equivalent flights for what Harper repaid, well, it couldn’t be done. I would say that if anything, repaying less than the economy fare is almost more insulting than not repaying anything and saying “I’m Prime Minister, I can’t fly commercial, so deal with it” because it almost looks like you’re showing contempt than respecting the taxpayer (which is the born-again motto of the Conservative Party post-election). So really, we should suck it up (provided that the trips aren’t egregious) but I see little chance of that happening anytime soon.