Tag Archives: Chrystia Freeland

Roundup: Dissent without disloyalty

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Yesterday on Power & Politics, we saw something that is far too rare in Canadian politics, but should be the norm. In response to the government signing on the US’ recent initiative at the UN to basically renew the “war on drugs,” Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith went on the show to publicly disagree with his party and the government that his party forms, and more to the point, we didn’t see anyone clutching their pearls about this, or higher-ups in the party make threats. Shocking, I know.

The civics refresher here is that all MPs are supposed to hold government to account, whether they’re in the opposition or in the government’s backbench. Holding the government to account is the very raison d’etre of Parliament, but you wouldn’t know it given how many government backbenchers think it’s their job to be cheerleaders, to give unquestioning support, and possibly to suck up in the hopes of a Cabinet posting or parliamentary secretary position. I also know that this isn’t quite as true behind the caucus room door, but we see very little dissent in public. We see even less dissent in other parties – the NDP enforce solidarity and uniformity in all positions, and have been known to punish MPs who step out of line, while we’ve seen the amount of tolerance that the Conservatives have for dissenting opinions with Maxime Bernier’s post-leadership experiences (though I will grant you, there is still some diversity of thought in there, but it’s rarely expressed publicly). And while I don’t praise Justin Trudeau for many things, I will say his openness to dissenting voices is unquestioningly a good thing in Parliament.

And this brings me back to Leona Alleslev’s defection to the Conservatives last week, and the statements she made about how she didn’t think she could openly criticize the government and not be perceived as disloyal. This is one of those statements of hers that I called bullshit on at the time, and I will call bullshit on it doubly today given this latest incident where Erskine-Smith broke ranks and nobody is calling him disloyal for it. He’s doing the job he’s supposed to do, and which not enough MPs take seriously (and this is also because the lack of proper civics education and training for MPs when they’re elected). I’d like to see him setting an example that others will hopefully follow.

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Roundup: A (likely) electoral false alarm

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There were a few eyebrows raised in the Parliamentary Precinct yesterday when news came from the Procedure and House Affairs committee that the Chief Electoral Officer said that they intend to be ready for an election by the end of April, never mind that the fixed election date is October, and suddenly there was a renewed (but brief) round of election speculation fever (which was then suffocated by the Kavanagh hearings south of the border). Stéphane Perrault noted that they can basically run an election anytime under the previous contest’s rules, but they need lead time for future changes, which puts a clock on the current bill at committee if they want to have a chance for any of the changes to be implemented by next year’s election – and that assumes fairly swift passage in the Senate, which they may not get (particularly if the Conservatives are determined to slow passage of the bill down in committee as it stands).

Of course, I’m pretty sure that a spring election is not going to happen, simply because Trudeau’s agenda still has too many boxes without checkmarks – which is also why I suspect that we haven’t had a prorogation. And looking at how Trudeau has organised his agenda, so much of it has been backloaded to the final year, with plenty of spillover for him to ask for re-election in order to keep it going. (Things are also delayed, one suspects, because NAFTA talks have derailed things in the PMO, and sucked up much of the talent and brainpower. Suffice to say, I’m not taking any talk about an early election with any seriousness.

Meanwhile, more eyebrows were raised when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel claimed that she was being told to prepare for a fall election, which we’re 99 percent sure is just a new fundraising ploy, for what that’s worth.

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Roundup: Effacing labour

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Yesterday having been Labour Day, there were a couple of topical stories out there – that the government’s look at updating the Canada Labour Codemay look at more measures to help with work-life balance, and that there are ideas on the table to look at taxing robots who replace workers with automation (though this seems fraught with all manner of complications). There is even talk about how this government has given the labour movement a seat at the table with trade negotiations (though there is some talk about how it’s all for show, and that they have little actual impact). But all of this having been said, I found the statements by the leaders to be interesting.

https://twitter.com/MinWorkDev/status/1036629441517182984

https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1036677765250965504

Trudeau’s tweet was fairly standard, spoke about the labour movement, and the attached statement went into more detail about the achievements of the aforementioned labour movement. His minister of labour, Patty Hajdu, had a video message that talked about ways they are working on improving the current conditions, with a focus on harassment and coming pay equity legislation. Jagmeet Singh, true to NDP form, spoke about the focus on workers. But Andrew Scheer?

Nothing about the actual meaning of Labour Day. Nothing about the gains made by the labour movement, or the safety of workers, or the eight-hour work day, or weekends. Nope. It’s a holiday before getting “back to the grind.” Now, the previous government was no friend to labour, with vexatious legislation designed to make certification harder, impose onerous financial reporting requirements, the fight with public sector unions over sick days, and numerous back-to-work bills. But to not even mention the history of the movement and the gains made, whether it’s with occupational health and safety, weekends, pensions, anything? It smacks of pettiness, and of effacing history – you know, something he gets riled up when it’s a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, but apparently not the Winnipeg General Strike.

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Roundup: Negotiating in good faith

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After another day of drama, there is no NAFTA deal, and talks have been suspended until Wednesday. And what drama there was, when off-the-record comments that Donald Trump made in an interview with Bloomberg were leaked to the Toronto Star, who published them, which showed Trump bragging that he wasn’t negotiating with Canada in good faith, and later in the day, he confirmed the remarks over Twitter with the note “at least Canada knows where I stand.” (Speculation now stands in that he deliberately leaked the comments). The revelation of the comments no doubt put a strain on the talks, but Chrystia Freeland later noted that she was negotiating with Robert Lighthizer, not Trump, and he was negotiating in good faith. So a little wedge in there, in any case. But in the end, Freeland insisted that we are close to a deal, so we’ll see once the long weekend is over and tempers cool a little.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1035582322668498944

Meanwhile, here’s a look at the issue of Chapter 19 – arbitration – that the Americans want scrapped even though it’s been as useful to them as it has been for us, so it’s a demand that makes no sense. Also, here are other things to look for when a deal is concluded, and what areas that we have made concessions on and what it means.

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Roundup: Mandate letter madness

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Yesterday was the big day that the mandate letters for the new cabinet minister were finally released, and the Cabinet committees got a bit shake-up. You can get an overview of the letters here, and some deeper analysis on what’s being asked of Jim Carr in international trade, Dominic LeBlanc in intergovernmental affairs, and Jonathan Wilkinson in fisheries. Reading through the letters, however, I found that almost all of the new letters – either with established ministries or with the new ones that they are establishing – were all giving them specific direction on which other ministers they should be working with to achieve specific goals. Very few of them were goals that they were to pursue on their own, which I find to be very curious from a governance perspective.

The big question mark remains around Bill Blair and just what he’s supposed to do as Minister of Looking Tough on Stuff – err, “border security and organized crime reduction.” We got no insight as to whether he has any actual operational control over a department or an agency like CBSA. Rather, his list of goals included looking at a ban on handguns and assault rifles as part of the existing Bill C-71, and that as part of his duties in relation to the border, he should have discussions with the Americans about the Safe Third Country agreement, but it was all rather vague. (There was also some talk about opioid smuggling as part of his border security duties, for what it’s worth). Nevertheless, it was another one of those letters that was focused on which other ministers he’s supposed to be working with as opposed to providing oversight of a ministry, which I find weird and a bit unsettling as to what this means for how the machinery of government works under Trudeau.

Meanwhile, the number of Cabinet committees was reduced, and some of the files that certain of these committees were overseeing got shuffled around. We’ll see how this affects governance, but it’s all a peek into the sausage-making of governance (which, it bears reminding, that the Ford government in Ontario refuses to give any insight into as he refuses to release his own ministers’ mandate letters).

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Roundup: NAFTA theatrics

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Yesterday was big for NAFTA news, as the Americans and Mexicans resolved their bilateral differences, particularly around autos, and made progress on getting concessions on the American demands for a sunset clause. But, true to form, US President Donald Trump started spouting a bunch of nonsense about how Canada was on the sidelines, and if we didn’t accept a deal by Friday, he’d slap tariffs on our autos, and so on. The problem there – that he has no congressional authority to conclude a bilateral agreement without us (and indeed, outgoing Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto kept saying that they were waiting for Canada to rejoin negotiations), so it’s a lot of bluster. Nevertheless, Chrystia Freeland cut short her diplomatic trip to Europe and is headed for Washington today, and trilateral talks will resume, and there’s likely to be a heavy focus on dairy as Trump has become fixated on it. This all having been said, have the Conservatives been pleased by the progress made? Funny you should ask.

First of all, the language in both is that it includes Trudeau’s name and the word “failure,” which is their narrative-building exercise (and Hamish Marshall can give them a cookie for sticking to it). But more importantly, as Kevin Carmichael notes, the Conservatives have been backing the government’s strategy to date on this. Of course, Andrew Scheer made a big deal during his big speech on Friday to insist that the Conservatives were going to be the adults in the room on foreign policy (which is risible considering the bulk of their record), but it also defies the reality of the situation. Even John Baird called bullshit on this line of reasoning – there was no reason for Canada to be part of those particular discussions, and this hasn’t really put us in a weakened position, and for all of the Conservatives’ sniggering about the labour chapter that Freeland has been advocating, wages were a big part of this deal that was struck with Mexico. (It’s also adorable that Erin O’Toole tries to make out that the Liberal strategy is all about domestic political posturing, which is exactly what he’s engaging in with his press release).

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1034187012415340544

In the meantime, industry players in Canada are looking for more details, while Philippe Couillard is vowing not to accept any compromises that will affect Supply Management, so that could be fun while the Quebec election rolls along.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1034216416512172033

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Roundup: Get off that former diplomat’s lawn

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For the past couple of days, we’ve been bombarded by this suggestion that the Saudi Arabia spat has been all because the Liberals spend too much time doing their diplomacy over social media rather than in person – which is utterly ridiculous, and smacks of a bunch of retired diplomats railing about kids today before they yell at them to get off their lawns (while they hike their pants up to chest-level). If you actually look at the tweet in question, versus the kinds of vacuous press releases that governments issues on diplomatic issues all the time, about how they “strongly condemn” this or that, there is no actual difference whether it’s a press release or a tweet, except for the character limit (and even then, sometimes no difference at all). There’s a term for this – moral panic.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1027338409768087553

Meanwhile, the opposition has gotten in on the “diplomacy by tweet” game, which is awfully rich. Some of these same voices have been ones who would rant and rail that the government didn’t issue tweets condemning one government or another fast enough, or who’ve issued their own foreign policy missives by Twitter on their own. And then there’s the fact that they’ll rail about any diplomacy done behind closed doors with other countries, but when it’s done in the open like this? Terrible. Just terrible.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1027247475135008769

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1027248707467702273

The other thing I would mention is the fact that while there are demands that diplomacy be done either in the open or behind closed doors – take your pick on what the outrage du jouris – the assumption that Chrystia Freeland doesn’t know what she’s doing here is also puzzling and not borne out by history. Remember not that long ago, with the pogrom against LGBT people in Chechnya, and there were voices on all sides howling for Freeland to make some grand public gestures about what was going on. As it turns out, she was personally working behind the scenes to get some extremely vulnerable people out of the country and to safety before they wound up in a concentration camp, which she very well couldn’t do while making grand public gestures. All of which to say is that this posturing around Twitter diplomacy is absurd and helps no one.

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Roundup: Moe’s carbon bafflegab

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Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe (or his staff) penned an op-ed in the National Post yesterday, to explain why he thinks Canadians are opposed to the federal government’s planned carbon tax. The reasons, however, are…not convincing. Nor are his counter-claims about what the alternatives are. And to be fair, almost nobody likes taxes, which is why leaders like Moe have been casting any kind of carbon price in as negative a light as possible in order to turn public sentiment against them. And we can’t ignore that most Canadians want to fight climate change like they want a pony – they say they want to do it, but don’t actually want to undertake any of the responsibility that goes with it.

As for Moe’s arguments, he decries the carbon price as a “one-size-fits-all” approach, which is bogus off the start. The price does not indicate the mechanism by which it’s implemented, whether that’s cap-and-trade or a tax, and how those systems are set up and administered can vary greatly, particularly in how the revenues are recycled. That’s why the federal government gave provinces the space to design a system that fits their particular circumstances best. So right off the start, Moe is being intellectually dishonest in his argument. And as for the stated goal of reducing emissions, a carbon price is not only about reducing emissions – it’s about giving a market signal so that major emitters can drive innovation to reduce their emissions and avoid paying it (you know, something a fiscal conservative would recognise, were Moe actually one and not a populist goof), and it ensures that everyday consumers make choices to reduce their emissions. If you see people lining up at gas stations when the price drops a few cents, imagine what price indicators mean when it comes to other behaviours.

Moe keeps pointing to his province’s investment in carbon capture and storage, which has not yet proven itself cost-effective as a technology, but ironically would be more cost-effective if there was a carbon price that would help to better monetize its value. He talks about designing an offset system that would recognise carbon sinks in agriculture, but again, having a price allows this recognition to be better tracked and monetized, which again, provides incentives. You’d think this would be elementary stuff to someone who purports to be a fiscal conservative that believes in the free market. But that’s not what Moe is (nor is Doug Ford or Andrew Scheer for that matter), and they need to justify how they’re rejecting actual fiscal conservative measures.

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Roundup: Silence from Trudeau on child removals

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While all attention is glued to the horror show south of the border when it comes to child removals from migrant families, there is a lot of commentary around the conspicuous silence by this government, and from Trudeau in particular. While he said that he’s not going to “play politics” around this, some of his ministers have made comments to the effect that this policy is “simply unacceptable,” but Trudeau is largely mum. If anything, the government has taken a particularly defensive tone by talking about how much work they’ve done to reform immigration detention in this country, and to not separate children from their parents and only detain when necessary (and the record has improved, but it had some particularly dark spots in recent years, from suicides in detention to people being housed in provincial jails when there were no other immigration detention facilities available). There is an assumption that this is because he’s trying to “play nice” with Trump, but I’m not convinced about that.

If anything about the particular problem we’ve had with irregular border crossers over the past two years has shown, it’s that there is a narrative about how Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet created the crisis. I’m not convinced that it did, but that’s the narrative. Given this crisis at the American borders, with migrants coming in from conflict zones in Central America, and with global refugee numbers at an all-time high, you can bet that Trudeau is doing his level best to be circumspect in all of his statements, not because of Trump, but rather to avoid another surge of migrants headed for our borders, and into a system that is already swamped (in no small part because they’ve been unable to make timely appointments to the IRB, and because it’s still under-resourced). Now, if Trudeau made sweeping condemnations about what’s happening in the US, that could be seen as another open invitation, which would stress our system even further. Add to that the calls from the NDP and others to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement – a move that would immediately cause a massive rush for our ports of entry to claim asylum, again, swamping our already stressed system, beyond the diplomatic escalation that removing the “safe” designation from the US would cause. And the Trump administration may be fine with it, and do all it can to push more of their migrants to our borders and say “good riddance.” Regardless, I see Trudeau’s silence as an abundance of caution and trying not to create a larger border crisis than the one he’s currently dealing with, no matter the fact that what’s happening in the States is unconscionable.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1009287591957581824

Meanwhile, as if to highlight Canada’s own record, there was testimony before the Senate Aboriginal People’s Committee about how child removals within Indigenous communities continues to erode them, given that currently child welfare workers are more likely to separate children from their families than get proper assistance for those families in crisis, and that the numbers today are akin to another residential schools system. So, yeah. We don’t have a clean record, and I’m sure this would quickly be thrown in the government’s face if they said anything.

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Roundup: Another useless voting marathon

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Unless a miracle happens and someone buckles, MPs will still be voting when this post goes live, because the Conservatives decided to demand another marathon vote session on the Estimates in order to prove a point. The point was that they want the government to table a document prepared by the public service about carbon pricing, which allegedly shows the fiscal impact – but it was redacted when released. The Conservatives see this as the smoking gun they need to “prove” that the federal carbon price backstop is a cash grab. Err, except the federal government isn’t keeping the revenues, and the provinces have until this fall to announce how they will be recycling the revenues, whether through tax cuts or whatnot, and lo, the government last month tabled a report that basically showed the efficacy of carbon pricing and that they’re waiting for the provinces to announce what their systems will be.

The Conservatives decided that their pressure tactic would be another round of line-by-line Estimates – because that worked so well the last time when they tried to force a meeting on the Atwal Affair™, only to buckle before votes could go into the weekend, and then they blamed the government for creating their own discomfort. Kind of like blaming someone else for when you hit yourself in the face on purpose to get attention. “You made me do this!” they cried. No, they didn’t, and worse, it was not only tactically incompetent (the votes had nothing to do with the demand then, and it doesn’t this time either), but by overplaying their hand, they voted against line items in the Estimates for things like funding veterans pensions or public services, all of which went into attack lines. And this time, because the government scheduled the vote for 10:30 PM, the fact that the Conservatives forced the 200 votes rather than the single vote means that Liberal MPs can complain that the Conservatives were keeping them from attending Eid celebrations in their ridings at dawn (some of them going so far as to cry Islamophobia). It’s a reach, and both sides are self-righteous about this, but come on.

As for the Conservatives’ demand, well, it’s a lot of disingenuous nonsense because the costs will be determined by how the revenues are recycled, which the federal government has no control over. Poilievre has been trying the semantic arguments that because it’s a federally-imposed tax that they need to know what the impact will be, focusing only on the cost before revenues are recycled, which is again, disingenuous and the precursor to misinformation. And if they were so concerned, they can do the analysis themselves – as Andrew Leach points out. But they don’t want to do that – this is all cheap theatre, performative outrage that the government is “covering up” information that they’re characterising as something it’s not. But as truth and context have become strangers in this parliament, none of this is unexpected.

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