Tag Archives: CBSA

Roundup: PBO on thin ice

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Comments made the Parliamentary Budget Officer over the weekend should have him very nervous for his future, as he is straying far beyond his mandate. The PBO, Yves Giroux, was in the media saying that current deficit levels are “unsustainable” within one or two years, which both misreads the current situation, and is venturing into opining on policy choices, which is not his job.

As an Independent Officer of Parliament, he has a certain degree of latitude for doing the job he is tasked with doing, which is to provide costing for proposals on demand by parliamentarians – something which can be a very creative exercise at times – and to provide independent fiscal forecasts of federal budget numbers – also something which has been made redundant because the Department of Finance doesn’t publish their forecasts any longer as the current practice is to take the average of the top twenty private sector forecasts and use those in budget documents. But he’s not invulnerable – Independent Officers can still be fired for cause, and Giroux seems to be flirting with that line.

It’s possible that Giroux doesn’t understand just what he’s doing when he’s answering these media requests, but it’s not the first time that he’s said dumb things in the media, such as a few weeks ago when Bill Morneau resigned that it was akin to “changing pilots mid-flight” (apparently unaware that this is actually standard practice on long-haul flights). He’s supposed to be a lot more circumspect, by virtue of his position, and not offer up any kind of opinion on policy choices. He is not there to second-guess the government and its actions – this is not a technocracy. He is supposed to provide cost estimates when asked, and provide independent forecasts (and as we saw in the election, sometimes he has trouble with the former when he simply put certain parties’ promises on his letterhead without actually doing any analysis of them). Offering opinions on policy choices impacts his ability to be independent, which he should know if he had any particular sense about him. I suspect that someone – perhaps a former PBO who is feeling particularly charitable – needs to pull him aside and to tell him to stop answering all of these media requests, and if he does accept them, to stick to the very narrow contents of his reports. His predecessors largely did not have this problem. Other Officers of Parliament do not have this problem. He needs to undertake to rectify it.

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QP: Trying to single out ministers to divide the Cabinet

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The prime minister was finally present for the second day of the mid-July sitting, after his inexplicable absence the day before. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, where he insisted that Canadians had enough of his scandals, and demanded he appear before committee. Trudeau stated that he was considering the invitation, that he was happy to be here today and tomorrow, and that he should have recused himself when the suggestion was made by the public service. Scheer spun a tale of WE’s alleged schemes, and again demanded that Trudeau appear at committee. Trudeau responded by listing the aid they have given students. Scheer then ranted about his disgust with the Liberals and didn’t have a question, to which Trudeau chided him about the things that he should be asking about, like the aid package under debate. Scheer got increasingly breathy as he again spun out a conspiracy theory around WE, wondering on what basis the civil service could have recommended WE, to which Trudeau stated that the civil service looked at the government’s plans and decided WE was best placed to fulfil it. Scheer quoted a charity watchdog on WE’s ability to fulfil the programme, and the asked Chrystia Freeland what it would take for her to lose faith in the prime minister, but Trudeau rose once more to praise the efforts they have made to engage students and support them. Yves-François Blanchet was up next for the Bloc, and he meandered around the problems Trudeau is facing, to which Trudeau insisted that they were focused on helping Canadians through the pandemic. Blanchet quipped that Trudeau couldn’t buy his way out of a crisis, and a suggested that Trudeau temporarily step aside and let Freeland replace him, and Trudeau praised the Safe Restart agreement with the provinces. Up next was Jagmeet Singh for the NDP, and he wondered why Trudeau didn’t recuse himself when the WE contract came up, and Trudeau stated that he followed the recommendation of the civil service. Singh insisted that apologies mean nothing if the Liberals help their “wealthy friends,” and worried why they didn’t just use another program instead, to which Trudeau said it was a shame that the NDP was so cynical about measures for students.

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Roundup: A curious case for declaratory legislation

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A curious story showed up on the CBC website yesterday, wherein justice minister David Lametti stated that if it looked like pandemic delays were going to cause criminal trials to essentially “age out” of the court system as a result of the Jordan decision – meaning that once they reach a certain point, they are deemed to be stayed because they took too long and have become unconstitutional – that he would introduce legislation to “clarify” how the Supreme Court’s Jordan decision was to be clarified. It’s curious because it seems to be a bit of a made-up issue – the Jordan decision already stated that the 30-month timeline allowed for exceptional circumstances, and we can all agree that a global pandemic is by definition an exceptional circumstance. This isn’t to say that declaratory legislation isn’t a valid exercise, because it can be – but it just seems wholly unnecessary in this case, when there are other ways that the government could be better dealing with the criminal justice system and juries than worrying about the Jordan timelines.

In any event, here is defence lawyer Michael Spratt with some thoughts on the story:

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Roundup: Calling the PM to committee

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As the WE Imbroglio continues to roll along in the absence of much other news, there are a couple of new developments – one is that both Seamus O’Regan and Katie Telford, both of whom are subject to the Conflict of Interest Act, also have past histories of raising funds for the WE group of charities pre-government formation, which could complicate things as for whether or not they should have recused themselves from any decision-making over the Student Grants programme contract. The other is that the Conservative are proposing to summon prime minister Justin Trudeau before the finance committee to answer questions about the decision to grand that contract – with the added show of having him do so under oath (which is a bit of extraneous showboating – lying before committee would mean that he would face charges of contempt of parliament, and he has already sworn oaths of office which make demands to testify under oath at committee to be unnecessary). Suffice to say, summoning the prime minister to committee is more fraught than you may think, so here’s professor Philippe Lagassé with some perspective.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282376899512107008

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https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282382362593067008

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Roundup: Pearl-clutching about the deficit

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For the first time this week, prime minister Justin Trudeau held a presser, wherein he praised the agreement with the First Nations on moving ahead with transferring control over child welfare, mentioned the virtual Cabinet retreat that was held over the previous two days, and mentioned that new pandemic modelling was on the way, noting that there are still hot-spots around the country. And then it was the takeaway message of the day – a mere couple of hours away from the fiscal “snapshot” being delivered, Trudeau made the case that they chose to support Canadians rather than leaving them to fend for themselves, and that the cost of doing nothing would have been far greater on both healthcare and the economy. He reiterated that this was not the time for austerity, but that they have been building a “bridges” to a stronger, more resilient Canada, and drove home the point that the federal government took on debt so that ordinary Canadians wouldn’t have to. He pointed to the low debt-to-GDP ratio, and that historically low interest rates mean manageable borrowing costs. And with one final word on Bob Rae being appointed to the UN, he took questions, one of the first of which determined that he didn’t recuse himself when the WE Charity sole-source contract came before Cabinet, which is something the Ethics Commissioner is looking at. He spoke about the necessity of childcare, that Bill Blair has been engaged on the subject or the RCMP and police brutality as part of the broader Cabinet workplan on combatting systemic racism, that they were following the recommendations of the Auditor General on CBSA, and then reiterated again that with historically low debt-servicing costs, it was easier for the federal government to take it on in order to prevent Canadian households from having to do so. When asked about the relationship with Donald Trump, Trudeau once again reiterated that they have concerns about the possibility of new tariffs, and that it will only hurt American industry because they need Canadian aluminium as they can’t produce enough of their own.

And then the fiscal “snapshot.” While Bill Morneau’s pabulum-heavy speech was pretty much all self-congratulation and a recap of measures they’ve taken, the accompanying documents did show a $343 billion deficit projected for this year (though it has been speculated that this was an outer bound limit designed for them to come under), and that the total debt by the end of this fiscal year could be $1.2 trillion – numbers everyone clutched their pearls about while ignoring that the debt-servicing costs continue to decrease even though the size of the debt has increased. There was mention that the wage subsidy is going to be extended, but with modifications on the way “sooner than later,” but there wasn’t much indication about the broader recovery plan thus far.

Of course, the obsessions among all of the media coverage was the deficit and debt figures, because our reporting narratives remain firmly affixed in the mid-1990s, and no one can break free of them – not to mention the hyperbolic mentions about how this was the biggest deficit since the Second World War (never mind that this is a virtually unprecedented global pandemic we’re facing with a demand-side shock that people can’t seem to wrap their heads around). And because the framing devices remain in the 1990s, headlines obsessed that there wasn’t a plan to curb spending – because of course we know how the epidemiology of this pandemic is going to play out until we get a vaccine at some point in the future. But perspective? You need to turn to the economists on Twitter for that.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1280933038394875905

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1280946657106878464

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Roundup: Trudeau slows to a summer pace

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back at Rideau Cottage yesterday morning, for what he promised would be the last “daily” briefing, though they haven’t been daily for a few weeks now. And there really wasn’t anything new to announce – yet another reminder that the Canadian Emergency Business Account and commercial rent subsidies were good things, that there were still hotspots of pandemic around the country, but that we are making progress – but are not out of the woods yet – and oh, yeah, the New NAFTA comes into force on Wednesday. During the Q&A, Trudeau stated that American chest-thumping over tariffs only hurts them because they need Canadian aluminium as they can’t produce enough of their own. When asked about the Human Rights Watch report on Canadian foreign fighters being held prisoner in Syria, Trudeau insisted that they are preoccupied with the safety of diplomatic personnel in the region, and we don’t have any in Syria, which makes the complicated situation even more complex because most of these prisoners are facing charges. (Not everyone buys this argument). And when asked yet again about We Charities being given that contract, Trudeau again insisted that the advice of the public service was that only they could deliver on the scale that was required, and that some 25,000 students hand applied over the past few days, to prove the point.

A short while later, Dr. Theresa Tam gave her last regular update as well, as those pressers also take on a less daily pace, as well as unveiled new federal modelling numbers, which show that the pandemic is largely under control, but with the warning that people need to keep up good habits around distancing and hygiene, lest flare-ups start happening.

Meanwhile, in Alberta, Jason Kenney and his finance minister unveiled their economic recovery plan, and it was complete with mistruths, and tired magical thinking that tax cuts will automatically create jobs (when these rapid cuts will only benefit existing players rather than attract future ones), or that hectoring tech firms for not upping sticks to relocate to the “cheap rents” of Calgary and lower taxes as being “irresponsible.” So yeah, good luck with that. Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach with a bit of a fact check.

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Roundup: Defunding the Police

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A lot of the discussion over the weekend has been taken up by the “defund/abolish” police narratives that have been part of the Black Lives Matter protests, both in the US and Canada, and while it’s not literally abolish or defunding police (thread here, also a good op-ed by Calumn Marsh here) – which doesn’t actually help their cause when it simply invites kneejerk reactions – I just wanted to offer a word of caution that a lot of these goals with this movement are things that cannot happen overnight. Building the kind of capacity for other social service agencies to take over the work that we have foisted upon police because we didn’t want to pay for them elsewhere will mean that it will take years before any kind of shift can possibly happen, it also makes other assumptions about the state of the current mental healthcare system (thread here), for example, that may not reflect reality. Another bit of context here is that American police are often poorly educated and trained, which is less often the case in Canada, so calls for reductions in salaries as part of this radically reformed force make me wonder if we may be doing more of a disservice to the ultimate goals, where you would want people more likely to have some critical thinking skills and able to better execute judgment. So while it’s a noble idea, we should be cautious about putting carts before horses.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1269643795286687744

Meanwhile, here’s a look at how the RCMP has not been responding to reports or investigations made by its Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, and how at least one has been waiting for responses since 2013. And yes, this is the same complaints commission that the government wants to add CBSA to its mandate (which I will remind you will only mean that CBSA will continue to investigate itself and simply report to this body).

With this in mind, here is Philippe Lagassé with some thoughts on what “civilian control” of the police could or possibly should look like.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1269268004325507073

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Roundup: Cautious progress in most places

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau led off by teasing that new federal modelling numbers were on the way, before mentioning the global vaccination pledging conference, and then turned to domestic measures to help seniors, announcing that their additional OAS and GIS payment would go out on July 6th. During the Q&A, there were questions on Huawei (as the US is making more clear threats to limit intelligence sharing with Canada if they aren’t banned), the fact that he hasn’t been more equivocal in denouncing Trump, and recent instances of police violence and misconduct in Canada such as one in Nunavut.

As promised, the new federal modelling numbers were released shortly thereafter, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the two biggest problem areas in the country remain Toronto and Montreal. There remain warnings that we could see another outbreak if testing and tracing regimes aren’t increased. This having been said, I think it was the data released by BC yesterday that was even more interesting.

One is the data around contact tracing (which that province can seem to manage, but Ontario can’t in its epic managerial incompetence), and it shows that once lockdown measures were in place, the number of contacts that infected people made dropped from 10.7 per case to 3.6, which is a pretty effective demonstration of why physical or social distancing matters.

The other is this analysis of the genomic epidemiology of the virus – as in, where it’s travelled from, because there are small mutations based on where it’s come from, and lo and behold, the vast majority of them were from European/Eastern Canadian strains and very few from China. But hey, the Conservatives and others keep insisting that if only we’d closed the border to China sooner, this all could have been avoided. This data proves that simply wasn’t the case (despite what people like Dr. Theresa Tam have been saying already) – not that it will stop their revisionist history. Nevertheless, it’s interesting stuff.

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Roundup: One-time benefits for seniors

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The day began much as Monday did, with a ministerial presser in Toronto, where Bill Morneau and Deb Schulte announced a one-time additional benefit for seniors who earn low-income supports. People may ask why this was necessary given that they haven’t lost incomes (like others have), and the theoretical justification is that they may be facing some increased costs around things like deliveries, taxis, or prescription fees. There is also a particular political justification in that this is a bit of a sop to the Bloc, who have been howling about this for weeks, and we all know that it’s because seniors vote.

Shortly thereafter, Justin Trudeau held his daily presser at a slightly earlier time because of the impending sitting of the Commons “virtual” special committee, and he reiterated much of what had been announced earlier, but somewhat more unusually, stated that this pandemic has revealed uncomfortable truths about how we treat seniors in this country, and that there are serious underlying challenges that they will help the provinces with in finding lasting solutions. This particular construction is pretty key, because this is explicitly a provincial issue, and the federal government can’t just write in long-term care to the Canada Health Act as certain people have been demanding. The Act doesn’t work like that, as they should very well know. During the Q&A, Trudeau stated that the government planned to be very careful when it comes to easing border restrictions, and that he wasn’t going to ask for Carolyn Bennett’s resignation over the dispute over the Wet’suwet’en MOU.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1259819355866632192

During the special committee meeting that followed, the Conservatives were hung up on the reporting that civil servants were instructed to ignore any potential cheating on CERB applications and process them anyway, with the goal to investigate and pursue repayment after this is all over. We’ll see if this concern over the government “ignoring fraud” carries over the next few days, or if this is an instance of the opposition chasing headlines.

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Roundup: Big border closure, big aid package

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As the impact of the pandemic starts to be really felt in Canada, there is a new kind of rhythm starting to take shape in Ottawa, which is essentially that we get our daily press conference with Justin Trudeau, followed by ministerial press conferences, one after the other, and along the way, the daily briefings and pressers from the different provinces creep up in there as well. Today’s Trudeau press conference outlined the agreement to close the Canada-US border to non-essential traffic, and to outline the broad strokes of the $82 billion in economic measures (when you include tax deferrals) designed to help the country cope with the pandemic. He also said that measures specific to the airline industry and oil and gas sector were coming later in the week, including significant measures to remediate orphan wells in Alberta, which means that the federal government has now assumed a chunk of the province’s environmental liabilities, and both the companies that left them and the province that didn’t properly regulate their remediation are going to be let off the hook, so slow clap for that one.

Other measures included in the package were a suspension of federal student loan repayments (made interest-free), and distinctions-based funds for Indigenous communities, along with additional funds for shelters and the homeless. Not everyone is happy with those measures – the small-business lobby says that the measures aren’t enough to stop layoffs because the wage subsidy is only ten percent, which they say isn’t big enough. And in case this weren’t all bad enough, the price that Canadian oil is going for fell to its lowest level ever. So that’s fun.

We also learned that negotiations are ongoing between the parties – and Chambers – to temporarily recall Parliament in order to pass spending measures that were announced yesterday, and that could happen as early as next week, because there is a forty-eight-hour window after the Speaker agrees to the request. Part of the issue is the negotiation around how many MPs to recall – quorum for the Commons is twenty, and fifteen for the Senate – because they want to ensure proportionality. Pablo Rodriguez stated that he also wants to ensure that it’s MPs who don’t have to travel by plane to get here, but Jagmeet Singh was on TV yesterday saying he’s ready to come back, which kind of defeats the purpose, especially if we’re trying to encourage Canadians not to travel.

[Maclean’s has updated their Q&A on symptoms and contacts on where to get help.]

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield gets a personal perspective on the aid package announced today, while Kevin Carmichael weighs in on the debate around the package – whether it is preferable to favour speed and not precision – by finding that the details are a bit too finnicky, but also notes the “elasticity” of the aid, which can expand or contract as need be as it progresses. In this thread, the Parliamentary Budget Officer finds it not targeted enough (though I’m not sure that it’s his job to weigh in on policy decisions like this). Economist Lindsay Tedds also has some suggestions on how provincial governments can step up given that the federal aid package only goes so far.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1240331137517367298

Good reads:

  • Here’s a look behind-the-scenes of the discussions around closing the Canada-US border.
  • Two new test kits for COVID-19 have been approved for use in Canada, to hopefully speed up testing in provincial labs.
  • The IRB has suspended in-person refugee hearings for the time being, and CBSA has halted deportation orders.
  • Here’s a look into emergency federal procurement rules that can be activated to rapidly source things like medical equipment.
  • The Hill Times got a look into the deals made between parties and caucuses in both chambers to pass those four bills and to suspend Parliament.
  • CBC is suspending their local evening news broadcasts for a central CBC News Network broadcast (in place of Power & Politics), which may breach CRTC rules.
  • It looks like MPs have agreed on a subcommittee of MPs to help guide the Centre Block renovations, including a list of “do not touch” heritage spaces.
  • Jason Kenney introduced an aid package for Alberta given that the province is being hit not only with COVID-19, but also plummeting oil prices.
  • Colby Cosh offers a meditation on the nature of liberal democracy in times of crisis like the one we’re facing.
  • Susan Delacourt notes that the current pandemic means that the government has stopped talking about citizens as “taxpayers” and framing politics as transactions.

Odds and ends:

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