Tag Archives: Canadian History

Roundup: A dearth of innovative policy ideas

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While Maxime Bernier’s social media committee continues to demand attention (yesterday’s missive was to declare “political correctness” dead in Canada – in both official languages), all eyes will turn to Andrew Scheer as the party’s policy convention gets underway this week in Halifax. There is all kinds of talk that they’ll come away from this more united than ever – one of those kinds of meaningless phrases that parties seem to trot out whenever they face the slightest bit of internal criticism or difficulty, and usually before and after there’s some kind of rift or someone gets tossed. But depending on what Bernier tries to do with his acolytes at the convention, we’ll see if his tone or messaging changes after the convention is over, or if this becomes some new problem for Scheer to contend with – eventually.

As for the policy resolutions, most of the ones we’re seeing discussed are…not very innovative. In fact, most of them seem to be either the usual pushing back against restrictions on their well-worn bugaboos and hobbyhorses (looking to make anti-abortion policies more accepted in the party officially, for example), but so few of them seem to be actually coming from a free market conservative point of view. In fact, a lot of what’s on the list is pretty reactionary, and definitely signals a shift from a party that used to be all about the rule of law, and now seems to think they’re above it (witness resolutions against any payments or court settlements with convicted terrorists – a dig at Omar Khadr).

One could go on – a policy about building Energy East, despite the fact that there is no economic case to do so. Repealing gender identity legislation because they are under the illusion that it compels people to use unconventional pronouns (because apparently the Jordan Peterson crowd is well represented here), Andrew Scheer’s problematic policy of withholding funds to universities who don’t defend speech (but no context there, because you know they’ll rail about Israel Apartheid Week), closing the “loopholes” in the Safe Third Country agreement (no mention of how exactly, or the unintended consequences of doing so), maybe developing a climate policy that won’t involve a carbon tax or cap-and-trade (so you’re in favour of heavy-handed and expensive regulation? Really?), prioritizing CANZUK trade agreements (a rose-coloured view of our colonial past that didn’t really exist economically), treating pornography like a public health issue (Seriously, guys – didn’t you embarrass yourselves with this already at the Commons health committee when you couldn’t articulate a policy out of this fraud) – nothing innovating in here in the slightest. So one has to wonder just what vision there is within the party if this is the best that they can come up with for policy resolutions.

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Roundup: Scheer’s milquetoast response

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While Maxime Bernier’s Twitter missives continue to roll along, accusing Indigenous communities of playing the victim card and making some pointed remarks about the dedication of a Winnipeg park to the founder of Pakistan (on the date of Pakistan’s national independence), the calls for his ouster have started to mount, particularly from the Liberal side of the aisle – which won’t do much. Within the Conservative ranks, Senator Salma Ataullahjan is calling Bernier out for his divisive rhetoric, and said she planned to talk to Andrew Scheer about how poorly this is playing within the Pakistani-Canadian community that she has been reaching out to for the party. Scheer finally did issue a statement on Wednesday evening, and it was about as milquetoast as you can imagine.

The fact that Scheer didn’t actually condemn Bernier’s statement, and the fact that he immediately engaged in both-sidesism to condemn identity politics “on the left and the right” seems to fit with the fact that this particular kind of shitposting by members of his party is not only tolerated, but is the modus operandi of their current communications strategy. The fact that Scheer is using the same language about identity politics that Bernier is using certainly makes it sound like he’s more than just winking to them about the kind of dog-whistling that they’re engaging in. Whether this is because Scheer is afraid of alienating Bernier’s base within the party, or because Scheer himself sees this kind of footsie with xenophobes as a way of trying to keep the more intolerant section of the base mollified remains to be seen. Still – his choice of language, and his refusal to actually deal with the substance of Bernier’s comments is deliberate and simply raises far more questions than it answers.

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Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert wonders why Bernier is bringing up this fight when it’s even gone dormant in the Quebec provincial election, and wonders if it’s a dare to Scheer to discipline him when he may be the more popular figure in the party. It’s a good question, and Bernier certainly seems to be aiming for a fight at the upcoming convention.

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Roundup: Bozo eruptions coming from the top

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Given some of the “bozo eruptions” over Twitter over the past couple of days by Conservative MPs and senators, I have to wonder about both the mindset behind this strategy of posting, and the adult supervision that underpins it. Obviously, the latter is lacking given what we’ve seen this week especially, but we also can’t deny that there is an attempt at strategy behind it, even if it’s a strategy that’s been kluged together in service of a narrative. That narrative is to put “Justin Trudeau” and “failed” in as many sentences together as possible, but it’s also about a deliberate campaign of lies and misdirection in service of creating that narrative. But even with this in mind, some of it is just really, really dumb.

Take this tweet from Shannon Stubbs – who is a pretty decent MP, it should be stated, but seems to have lost her ability to be credible over Twitter. Part of what is so gross about this tweet is that it basically undermines our entire criminal justice system, which requires that the accused have advocates in order to have a fair trial. And she knows this – the party knows this (while they go about fetishizing victims of crime and altering the entire vocabulary around them in order to tilt the playing field against the accused so as to deny them fairness). But the temptation to be shamelessly partisan is just too much for some of them to withstand. And in the end, I have to think that it’s this mindless partisanship is often to blame – and it is mindless. It robs them of their intellect and critical thinking capacity, and makes them focus solely on scoring cheap points.

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I’ve seen a lot of the chatter about the tweet from Senator Denise Batters about Omar Alghabra, to the point that the woke crowd is referring to as a “white nationalist,” which I’m quite sure she’s not – she’s just partisan to the point of being mindless, and that includes making ill-suited attacks to the point of dogwhistling, because it becomes reductive and about scoring points. She should know better. (As for Blaine Calkins and his tweet, well, I’m not sure I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows better, so I’ll leave it at that). But there needs to be a recognition that this kind of point-scoring is actually doing damage to their own brand, and as we’ve seen this week, has blown up in their faces more than once. You would hope that this would be cause for some reflection and that they’ll think twice before continuing to engage in this kind of behaviour – but I’m not holding my breath. So long as the official line from the leader is to lie over Twitter as often as he thinks he can get away with it, he’s set a low bar of an example for the rest of his caucus to follow, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing these kinds of bozo eruptions.

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Roundup: The walkback that wasn’t

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It started, as it so often does, with a Globe and Mail headline that was misleading and which managed to get the story wrong. The headline “Ottawa to dramatically scale back carbon tax on competitiveness concerns,” had the sub-head that “the decision follows months of lobbying by industries and comes just as Ontario is backing out of cap-and-trade,” but it completely misconstrued what the announcement was about. And every other news outlet was quick to follow with a matching story, because it was just too juicy to ignore, not that they got it right either. Not that it mattered – opponents of the federal carbon price backstop were all quick to cheer, declare victory, deploy their memes, and start hoisting Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe around as a hero, without at all understanding what happened, so good job there, Globe.

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As energy economists started bemoaning over Twitter, this wasn’t a policy change or a walking back on the carbon tax, because the price hadn’t changed. All that was announced was the subsidies available to certain large emitters who were particularly trade-exposed – in other words, this offsets any disadvantage they’d have by competing with non-carbon-taxed jurisdictions. They still pay the price, and it still is the incentive for them to drive innovation. But to add fuel to the fire, environment minister Catherine McKenna was particularly useless in communicating what this was about because she once again stuck to her go-to line that “the environment and the economy go together.” Her singular tweet during the day was unhelpful in unpacking the what was being announced. And it wasn’t until the end of the day that the National Post had a story written that spoke to those economists and unpacked the issue properly – you know, which should have been done at the start of the news cycle, and not the end of it.

Which leads to the bigger problem here, in that this has become a classic example of how media organisations have the power to frame slightly more complex issues in the dumbest possible terms in order to set it up in partisan terms. Well, the Globehas been racking up a record of outright misleading stories as well, but they weren’t the only culprits. CBC’s Power & Politics, for example, gave a not correct rendition of what happened, got Scott Moe’s boneheaded take, and only then talked to an economist about the issue, by which point it had been framed as a government climbdown, which it wasn’t. But we keep seeing this kind of pattern of dumbing down stories that aren’t even complex. Recall Stéphane Dion’s “green shift” plan – the only thing that reporters would say was “it’s complicated!” when it wasn’t, and hence, that’s how it got branded throughout the campaign. It does a disservice to Canadians to not explain policy issues properly and to frame things with facts on the table rather than in partisan boxes, but that takes time, which is what nobody seems to have, and that is a major problem for our democracy.

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Roundup: Performing partisanship

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Andrew Potter put out a very interesting post yesterday about self-help for partisans, given the tone of the rhetoric right now, and it came at a particularly apropos moment given how unreadable my Twitter reply column has become since the publication of my fact-check piece for Maclean’s. And no, it’s not just Conservatives who are sore that their team has been caught out, it’s also an equal number of their opponents who are utterly obnoxious in using the piece to prove something about the Conservatives.

What has really gotten me, however, are the number of partisans whom I’ve worked with, who have been sources for pieces I’ve written that have savaged the Liberal government, who are taking to Twitter to accuse me of bias. And I had to step back from my reactions to realise something that Potter articulated in his piece:

And maybe that’s the big problem — that everyone has stopped arguing with their opponents, and has decided to simply perform for their supporters.

And this is it exactly – they’re not engaging critically with what I wrote or acknowledging that I have a record of being just as critical on the government on very substantial issues (as opposed to cheap outrage and the usual hairshirt parsimony that means nothing). They have to take to social media to denounce me in order to perform their partisanship. And I get it. But it’s really, really disappointing.

But as Potter also points out, this is also reflecting itself in how Parliament is operating these days – MPs aren’t debating with one another. They’re performing for their base, and we can see that in the way that we went from debate to reading speeches into the void, and from QP that engaged on issues to one that is now solely focused on generating outrage clips for social media. Parliament is ceasing to be about debate or ideas, or about governance or accountability – it’s about performing for your base so that you can win a few more votes. And that’s not only sad, but it’s terrifying for what it means for the future. And that’s why I think we need to have a rethink of where rules changes have gotten us, and start reshaping those rules that will force MPs to re-engage with Parliament in the way it’s intended to run, rather than allowing it to further degrade into this puppet show we’re careening toward.

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Roundup: A justified time allocation

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Amidst the Conservatives’ planned filibusters and procedural gamesmanship as part of their campaign to demand that the National Security Advisor be hauled before committee to answer questions on the Atwal Affair™, Government House Leader Bardish Chagger is starting to play hard ball in return. When the Conservatives tried to filibuster in order to delay debate on the gun control bill after already delaying the debate by means of their vote-a-thon (for which they continue to blame the Liberals for their own self-inflicted discomfort, like a kid who keeps hitting himself in the hopes that it will persuade his parents to give him something they’ve denied him), Chagger invoked time allocation in order to get the bill moving to committee. And – scandalously! – she gave them a whole extra day of second reading debate. The horror!

Err, except no, that’s actually totally a fair amount of second reading debate for any bill, no matter what it is. Why? Because the point of second reading is to debate the broad merits of a bill. Do we agree with its overall aims, yes or no. It’s not about debating its intricacies, which is what committee study is for, and it’s more than legitimate for the government to want to move it to committee so that it can get proper study. That’s the way things should work, in a properly functioning Westminster parliament. But in Canada? No, we’ve developed this ridiculous culture where the parties insist on interminable days-long second reading debate, and by “debate,” we mean read twenty-minute-long prepared speeches into the record while nobody pays attention. It’s not debate, and it’s part of what we really need to address when it comes to fixing the broken culture inside the House of Commons. So it’s not actually a scandal that time allocation was imposed on this bill, and I would add that it’s not such a bad thing that Chagger is learning to play hard ball.

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Roundup: Begun, this wine trade war has

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The dispute between the NDP governments of Alberta and BC picked up intensity as Alberta decided to ban future purchases of BC wine within the province – without the consultation of groups like Restaurants Canada – and everyone is demanding that Justin Trudeau step in and do something. Anything. Never mind that Trudeau did just days ago tell audiences in Edmonton and Nanaimo that the pipeline was approved and that it was going to get built, and that it was part of the deal that came with stronger environmental laws.

There are a couple of problems in all of this. For one, there’s nothing for Trudeau to actually do at this point – BC hasn’t done anything yet besides put out a press release, and they actually can’t do anything. There’s nothing they’re actually doing at this point for Trudeau to step in and stop. It’s all just rhetoric at this point. And ultimately, this is all politicking, because Rachel Notley needs an enemy to fight against to show Jason Kenney’s would-be voters that she’s doing the job, and John Horgan is holding onto power only with the support of the three Green MLAs in his province, and he needs to keep them happy, so he’s making noises to do so. Add to that the federal Conservatives are amping up the rhetoric to try and “prove” that Trudeau isn’t really on the side of the industry, or that he’s secretly hoping that these delays will make Kinder Morgan think twice about the project like what supposedly happened with Energy East (never mind that what happened with Energy East had more to do with Keystone XL being put back on the table and being the better option for TransCanada to pursue), everyone is trying to score points. So, until there’s something that Trudeau can do, maybe everyone should hold their gods damned horses and not make the situation worse.

Incidentally, Jagmeet Singh has been dodging questions on this very issue, trying to play his own politics while other levels of NDP government battle it out. So there’s that.

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Roundup: What Stephen Harper knew

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Some more explosive revelations last night, as Maclean’s acquired and published the internal emails of the Conservative campaign team when it came to their dealing with the matter of Rick Dystra’s nomination in the midst of his allegations that he sexually assaulted a staffer in 2014. Shortly after that was released, statements were put out by Ray Novak and then Stephen Harper himself to give their own versions of what they knew and the decisions they took at the time, and why they justified keeping Dykstra on (though he eventually lost his seat in the election).

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Amidst all of this, Jen Gerson has a very incisive column on the culture of politics, where sex and booze are the comforts of people away from their homes and families in a cloistered environment that has a frat-boy air to it all. And why nobody acts when it comes to allegations that “everyone knows” about, such as those related to Patrick Brown, is in part because gossip is part of that culture, and where information is power, compounded by the tribalism that comes with partisans who want to protect their own – while spreading dirt about their enemies – makes it difficult to know what to take seriously (and which is why the Erin Weir situation is probably an overreaction, whether justified or not). It’s a worthwhile read that tries to put the past couple of weeks in some better context than we’ve been getting with piecemeal stories coming out, and discussions around the environment on the Hill that don’t take cultural context into consideration as to why it persists beyond just simple power imbalances.

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Roundup: Duffy’s privilege problems

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At long last, the Senate has responded to Senator Mike Duffy’s lawsuit against it, and is asking the Ontario courts to remove it from the suit because of parliamentary privilege. This was to be expected, and I’m surprised it took this long, but here we are. Duffy’s lawyer says that he’ll fight it, of course, but he’s going to have an uphill battle because this is very much a live issue.

For a refresher as to why this matters as an issue of privilege is because it’s about the ability of the Senate to discipline one of its own members. This is especially important because the Senate is a self-governing body of Parliament, and because it’s appointed with institutional independence and security of tenure in order to ensure that there is that independence. In other words, the Senate has to be able to police its own because there’s no one else who can while still giving it the ability to be self-governing (as we explored in great detail over the Auditor General’s desire to have an external audit body oversee the chamber’s activities). And indeed, UOttawa law professor Carissima Mathen agrees that it would be odd for the Senate not to have the power to suspend its own members, and raises questions about whether it’s appropriate for the judiciary to interfere in this kind of parliamentary activity. (It’s really not).

The even bigger complicating factor in this, of course, is that NDP court case trying to fight the House of Commons’ Board of Internal Economy decision around their satellite offices. The Federal Court ruled there that it’s not a case of privilege (which is being appealed), and Duffy’s former lawyer, Donald Bayne, said that this is a precedent in their favour while on Power & Politics yesterday. And he might have a point, except that the Commons’ internal economy board is a separate legislative creature, whereas the Senate’s internal economy committee is a committee of parliament and not a legislative creation. This is a Very Big Difference (and one which does complicate the NDP case, to the point that MPs may have actually waived their own ability to claim privilege when they structured their Board in such a fashion – something that we should probably retroactively smack a few MPs upside the head for). I don’t expect that Duffy will win this particular round, meaning that his lawsuit will be restricted to the RCMP for negligent investigation, but even that’s a tough hill to climb in and of itself. He may not have much luck with this lawsuit in the long run.

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Roundup: Unifying the prohibitions across departments

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The federal government has issued new guidelines for foreign intelligence likely obtained through torture, so that it now covers the Canadian Forces, the Canadian Security Establishment, and Global Affairs Canada. This means that they are prohibited from using such information, except if it’s going to save lives either from an imminent terrorist attack or protecting Canadian troops on an overseas mission. This appears to harmonize direction handed down earlier to the RCMP, CSIS, and CBSA, so that all national security agencies (which are now under the same parliamentary oversight regime and will soon be under an independent arm’s length national security oversight regime) will have the same rules and restrictions. For some, it’s reassuring that the government is taking the issue seriously, but for others, the caveat isn’t good enough, and they need to issue a full prohibition, no caveats, no exceptions, full stop. Stephanie Carvin has more reaction to the announcement here:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/941445420475125761

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