Tag Archives: China

Roundup: Sensation over nuance

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The big headline over CBC yesterday was that five of the six most recent federal judicial appointments in the province of New Brunswick all had some kind of ties to Dominic LeBlanc – never mind how tenuous those ties were. This of course led a bunch of Conservative apologists to compare this with the Dean French/Doug Ford situation in Ontario, which is absurd given that judicial appointments have a more rigorous merit-based system around them (more rigorous than it was under the Conservative era), and many of the French/Ford appointments had to do with whether someone was connected to French by family or lacrosse, many with no obvious competences in the roles they were appointed to. The Conservatives also declared that this was somehow related to both Loblaws winning a competition around fridge refits (no, seriously), and that this was reminiscent of the Arctic surf clam contract that LeBlanc was involved in wherein the definition of “family” used by the Ethics Commissioner differed from that in other statutes. (Not mentioned was the time when the Conservatives appointed most of Peter MacKay’s wedding party to the bench in Nova Scotia).

Reading deeper into this story, I found that some of the connections that were being highlighted were a bit dubious. The most dubious was the fact that one of the judges named was not actually someone that was recently named, but rather promoted to the Chief Justice of province’s Court of Appeal by Trudeau, though she was originally a Conservative donor and had been first named to the Bench by Harper. The fact that she bought a property from LeBlanc next to his summer cottage was deemed to be curious in this. Likewise the fact that two of them were part of a group that paid off LeBlanc’s leadership campaign debts a decade ago (each would have donated a few hundred dollars) is a pretty dubious link between them. The only one that might raise eyebrows is the fact that one of the five is married to LeBlanc’s brother-in-law…but even then, at what point do we start disqualifying someone whose relation is by marriage twice-removed?

The other bit of nuance that we can’t forget here is that New Brunswick is a very small province with a very small population, and legal circles in a province like that would be very tight – especially when you consider that the provincial political culture is far more nepotistic than the federal culture is. While the CBC piece cites a paper that says that people with political connections get judicial appointments at a rate double that in other parts of the country, but one has to remember that it can be harder to avoid, which is why fighting nepotism in those places can be much harder. And this is the point where people will bring up the fact that Jody Wilson-Raybould objected to the fact that names that were short-listed needed to be sent to PMO for vetting by the Liberals’ database, but again, it needs to be stressed that they need to go through all sources to check for red flags because the prime minister is politically accountable for those appointments. It’s called Responsible Government. Does that mean that these five appointments didn’t have some influence from LeBlanc tapping the justice minister and saying he wanted them appointed? Anything is possible, but it’s unlikely given the vetting process and the fact that most of these connections are tenuous at best. But it’s also regrettable that this kind of journalism strives for sensationalism and an attempt at being gotcha than it is with nuance.

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Roundup: Federal Government 2, Provinces 0

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It was not a surprise that the Ontario Court of Appeal told Doug Ford to go pound sand with regard to its objections to the federal carbon price, which is exactly what they did in a 4-1 decision, affirming the Saskatchewan decision that the price is not a tax but a regulatory charge, and that it’s not unconstitutional. Ford, predictably, vowed to take this to the Supreme Court of Canada, and given that they agreed to hear the Saskatchewan case, it’s likely these two will be heard together, where you can pretty much bet that the majority of the judges there will tell Moe, Ford, and the likes, to similarly go pound sand. As for the dissenting judge on the Ontario panel, well, he has a pretty interesting history of his legal philosophy, and was unusually appointed directly to the Court of Appeal from his being a law professor.

Meanwhile, here’s some analysis, with threads by Andrew Leach, plus Lindsay Tedds on the whole tax/regulatory charge difference.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1144686800348340226

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1144687790367674368

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1144706969493749761

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1144708330037874692

Meanwhile, the BC government’s lawyers were in Alberta court on Friday to argue for an injunction against the province’s blatantly unconstitutional “turn off the taps” legislation now that it’s been proclaimed, likening it to a loaded gun that they don’t want to go off accidentally. The hitch, of course, is the question of whether BC has standing to go to Alberta court over the case, so we’ll see what the judge decides there.

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Roundup: The menace of ignorant premiers

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Occasionally a politician will say something so blindingly wrong and stupid that it makes me incandescent with rage, and yesterday the honour went to PEI’s new premier, Dennis King, who believes that because he’s in a hung parliament that he’s “not the government,” but that “we’re all the government.”

And then my head exploded.

King is the premier, which means he’s the government. And for him to try and abrogate his responsibilities in the face of questions from the opposition is a sickening lack of civic literacy and frankly spine. Trying to shame the opposition into “collaborative government” is frankly trying to avoid accountability. After all, when everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable, and that’s not how our system works. He’s the premier. He is responsible to the legislature for the decisions that the government makes, and while he’s trying to launder them through the opposition in the name of “collaboration,” that’s not how the system works. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hung parliament – that only means that he needs to work harder to secure the support of the opposition, not that they are in government with him. And yes, I’m enraged by this because he and everybody else should know better.

Alberta extremism

On another topic, this story out of Edmonton about extremist billboards calling for civil war against the rest of Canada, and promoting conspiracy theorism and outright lies about Justin Trudeau is extremely concerning because this is how illiberal populism happens. And Jason Kenney has a direct hand of responsibility in this, both by selling lies about the province’s situation and about what Trudeau is and is not doing, and by selling them snake oil in a bid to keep them angry because that’s how he gets votes. But as the anger won’t dissipate now that he’s in charge, he’s forced to try and keep the anger going in one way or another and hope that it doesn’t blow up in his face – hence why he’s inventing new grievances by things like his sham Senate “elections” – because unless he keeps trying to point that anger to new enemies, it will turn on him. I really don’t think he appreciates the monster he’s created, and these billboards are a warning sign that needs to be heeded.

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Roundup: Nepotism versus Responsible Government

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As the nepotism scandal in Ontario picks up steam, with revelations that there were appointments made to lacrosse players and an MPP’s father, and more demands that there be a more independent review of the appointments that have been made, I think it’s time for a bit of a civics and history lesson about patronage appointments. In many ways, patronage appointments are how we wound up with Responsible Government in the colonies that became Canada in the first place – the local assemblies wanted control over who was being appointed to these positions rather than them going to people from the UK who would then come over to carry them out, and eventually we won that right as part of Responsible Government. It was also understood at the time that it was fine if the party in power put their friends into patronage positions because when fortunes turned and their rivals formed government, they would be able to do the same with their friends. That particular view we have, fortunately, evolved from.

Regardless of this evolution, the core fact remains – that under Responsible Government, it is the first minister and Cabinet who makes these decisions as they are the ones who advise the Governor General/lieutenant governor to make said appointment. It also means that they are accountable to the legislature for that advice, which is where the current nepotism scandal now hangs. There are going to be all kinds of Doug Ford apologists who say that this was all Dean French, that Ford didn’t know what was going on – even though he signed off on it. And that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if this was French hoodwinking Ford because Ford is the one who advises the LG about the appointments, and Ford is responsible to the legislature for making those appointments (and for hiring French, when you think about it). And if his party gets too embarrassed by this particular scandal, well, there could be a loss of confidence in the offing (likely from within party ranks than the legislature, but stranger things have happened).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1143639086231633920

On that note of accountability, we should also point out that with the appointment of yet more ministers and “parliamentary assistants,” there are a mere 27 MPPs left in the back benches who don’t have a role, which means that they will see themselves as one screw-up away from a promotion (and this is more salient in the provinces, where regional balances are less of an outright concern, and this government in particular seems less interested in other diversity balances). That does erode the exercise of accountability by backbenchers. So does, incidentally, a chief of staff who would berate MPs for not clapping long enough, but maybe they’ll grow a backbone now that French is gone. Maybe.

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Roundup: Solidifying the “new” Senate

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Another day, another badly executed wrap-up article on the Senate, this time courtesy of the CBC, which again, has a badly misleading lede in which it claims that “Legislative changes that would have made it harder for a future prime minister to reverse Senate reforms have fallen through.” This is wrong – any changes to the Parliament of Canada Act that the government was contemplating would have had zero effect on the selection process for future senators. Why? Because that’s not governed by that Act, or indeed any piece of legislation – it’s part of the constitution, and clearly spelled out as a prerogative of the Governor-in-Council, meaning the prime minister and Cabinet will advise the Governor General as to who gets appointed. There is nothing that Trudeau could do to bind that advice legislatively – recall the Senate reform reference to the Supreme Court of Canada – that would require a constitutional amendment requiring seven provinces with fifty percent of the population to do.

What would changes to the Parliament of Canada Act regarding the Senate do? The actual proposals were to ensure that leaders of any parliamentary group in the Senate would get commensurate salary increases and resources to put them on par with the what is nominally the government and official opposition in the Senate, and the ISG has been pushing for this pretty hard, but they also were demanding to be part of consideration for vote bells, though I’m not sure why it would matter (particularly given that they have demonstrated time and again that they’re not reliable negotiating partners). But I also suspect that part of the reason why these changes didn’t get proposed was because there is some legal opinion that it would require some kind of buy-in from provinces to make this kind of change, so there was likely little time for the government to add this ball to all of the other ones they were juggling that late in the parliamentary calendar (despite the cries of the ISG). Of course, this hasn’t stopped the media from falsely framing these changes as affecting the selection process, as this has been cited by more than one reporter from more than one outlet, and it’s false.

The rest of the story is again more of the same voices opining on how great the “new” Senate is working, but we fortunately got a bit of pushback from Liberal Senator Lillian Dyck, who did point out that the lack of organisation among the Independents has held up bills and slowed down the process – and she’s right. But nobody wants to talk about that as they’re busy patting themselves on the back for “not being whipped.” There’s more to the Senate than that, and they need to get off this self-congratulation because things aren’t working as well as they like to claim.

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Roundup: The hand that feeds the Senate?

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Over at The Canadian Press, Joan Bryden wrote a wrap-up piece about the near-defeat of a few government bills in the Senate during the final days of the parliamentary sitting, but some of the piece has been rankling me, in part because of how it frames the state of play. So if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to pick it apart just a little, because I think it’s important to understand these things.

The lede is very awkward “In the final hours of Justin Trudeau’s four-year experiment with a less-partisan Senate, Independent senators came within a whisker of biting the hand that feeds them.” It’s a nonsense sentence that doesn’t make any sense – Trudeau’s experiment with a “less-partisan Senate” isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination, and there were no final hours to it – saying that it was the final hours of the parliamentary sitting or even session (since the chances of a prorogation and Speech from the Throne before the writs are drawn up in September are infinitesimal), or even the 42ndParliament would make sense, but not as written. I’m also really bothered by the notion of the “biting the hand that feeds them.” By feeding them, is it supposed to imply the person who appointed them, because that’s not the same thing. Is it supposed to imply that their posts continue at the beneficence of Trudeau, and that he could be rid of them at any point? Because that’s clearly not the case in the slightest (particularly constitutionally), but the phrasing implies the latter instead of the former, which is why it’s weird and misleading in all kinds of ways.

The rest of the piece is the usually bit of sniping between the leader of the Independent Senators Group, the Conservative whip, and the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, wherein Harder and the ISG insist that everything is fine, this is exactly what the Senate should be, and the Conservatives cry that the Independent senators are just Liberals by another name. The wrench in here is that Senator André Pratt calls the Conservatives out for supporting a government bill that more Independents opposed because they didn’t really want to set up a precedent for the Senate voting down government bills because when they form power next, there could be a real problem for them (though one has to say that the bill in question, C-83, was of very dubious constitutionality as it had court rulings against it before it was even law). As we approach the election, we can expect more of this sniping going on, particularly once the Independents start trying to agitate for continued independent Senate appointments to be an election issue – which is essentially an endorsement for Trudeau – and it could start to get very uncomfortable for all involved really quickly.

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QP: Juvenile attributions

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While Justin Trudeau had promised to be present for one of the final QPs of this parliament, he was absent as things got underway, while Andrew Scheer was also absent (though he too was also in town). Lisa Raitt led off, demanding a start date for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, to which Patty Hajdu said that there was more to come shortly. Raitt gave a homily about all of the people she spoke to who didn’t believe the pipeline would happen before she repeated her demand, and Hajdu went on a tear about all the things the Conservatives didn’t get done before repeating that they would have more to say soon. Raitt railed that nobody believes the government, but it didn’t change Hajdu’s answer. Gérard Deltell took over in French to repeat the demand, letting Hajdu go on a paean about how her government respects workers. Deltell tried one last time, disingenuously ignoring the Federal Court of Appeal decision, and Hajdu repeated her previous response one last time. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he lamented that the TMX would not do anything for the environment or Indigenous rights, to which Catherine McKenna got up to lament that the Conservatives didn’t vote for the motion on the climate emergency. Singh switched English and flailed about fossil fuel subsidies before demanding action on climate instead of symbolism, to which McKenna listed actions the government has taken. Singh then lamented the national housing strategy as not being ambition enough, to which Goodale said that the without their government, housing funding would have been cut otherwise. Singh flailed a bit more to repeat the question in French, and Goodale reiterated his response.

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Roundup: It’s TMX Day

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Today is the day that the government will make their decision on the Trans Mountain Expansion, and it should not be a surprise to say that they are almost certainly going to approve it, having spent $4.5 billion on the existing pipeline to “de-risk” the project, and far more in political capital at the cost of some of their BC, Indigenous, and environmental base while trying to insist that this is necessary for the transition to a cleaner economy. Of course, if they could communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, it might help them to make that case, but they seem incapable of it. The real question is going to be what kinds of changes to the route will be made in order to accommodate Indigenous groups, or other conditions to be mandated as part of it.

There will be much talk about the “pipeline crunch” that the TMX will hope to address, which has to do with added oilsands production and not enough ways to get it to market, given ongoing delays on the American side of both Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL – projects which have been approved in Canada, and the Line 3 construction has been ongoing on the Canadian side. But as much as TMX will help, we also need to remember that the projected growth capacity is limited, which is another reason why Energy East doesn’t make economic sense. The concern that the sector needs all kinds of new pipelines isn’t actually borne out in the data (as Andrew Leach has pointed out repeatedly, including here).

On a related note, the government has rejected most of the Senate amendments to Bill C-48, on the tanker ban, but did agree to the five-year legislative review period, but as much as industry groups are demanding that this bill and Bill C-69 be killed, it’s not going to happen.

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QP: In the shadow of the Raptors parade

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With all three main party leaders at the Raptors parade in Toronto, Trudeau eventually addressing that crowd, it was up to Candice Bergen to lead off today, and she complained that the government just didn’t want to build any pipelines, even though they are due to approve the Trans Mountain expansion in just days. Amarjeet Sohi responded that they have ensured that pipelines are being built, and that they have concluded their consultations on TMX. Bergen demanded a date for when the TMX would begin construction, and Sohi dodged with a reminder that the Conservatives didn’t get any pipelines built to non-US markets. Bergen gave it another go, and Sohi reminded her that they had undertaken meaningful consultation. Gérard Deltell took over in French, lamenting that the Liberals wanted to kill the energy sector, to which Sohi found it regrettable that the Conservatives didn’t have any confidence in the sector. Deltell demanded a start date for TMX construction, and Sohi replied that Conservative actions didn’t demonstrate their own support of the project. Peter Julian was up next for the NDP, and he railed that there was no business case for TMX, and Sohi replied that the NDP didn’t understand the economy or the environment. Pierre-Luc Dusseault repeated the question in French, to which Sohi reminded him there is a diversity of opinion among First Nations along the route. Dusseault then demanded a wealth tax, per the NDP’s new policy platform, to which Bill Morneau reminded him of their Middle Class™ tax cuts and how the average family is now $2000 per year better off than under the previous government. Julian repeated the demand in English, and got much the same response.

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QP: It’s simple arithmetic

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While the PM was away in Quebec, I watched Andrew Scheer walk into West Block fifteen minutes before Question Period, but he decided not to bother showing up. That left Candice Bergen to lead off, and she railed that the carbon price tax rebates were less than intended and she decried the entire government’s environmental agenda. Amarjeet Sohi stood up and recited the happy talking points about the carbon price leaving eight out of ten households better off, as confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Bergen scoffed at the response, and Sohi repeated his talking points. Bergen called the carbon price a “greedy tax plan,” and Sohi reiterated the same points yet again but noted that the Conservatives have no plan. Alain Rayes took over in French, and he railed about taxes and deficits, to which David Lametti recited the happy talking points about the strength of the economy and the million jobs created since 2015. Rayes and Lametti then went another round of the same. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he demanded lower cellphone prices — which was the substance of his party’s Supply Day motion — to which Jean-Yves Duclos praised the government’s record at reducing poverty. Singh repeated his question in English, to which Patty Hajdu listed measures they have taken and directives they gave to the CRTC to ensure affordability. Singh listed a number of corporate sins of the Liberals before returning to his demand for cheaper cellphone bills. Diane Lebouthillier stood up to praise her department’s work at stopping tax evasion, getting a dig in at Singh because it was supposed to be the subject of the Supply Day motion and they changed it at the last minute. Singh repeated the question in French, and Hajdu repeated her previous response in French.

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