Tag Archives: Conservative Leadership

Roundup: A painful lesson in committee cooperation

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News broke yesterday morning that rogue Liberal backbencher Nate Erskine-Smith had been reassigned from the public safety committee by the party whip, and immediately everyone was all “uh oh, this is totally because he spoke out against his party.” Yes, Erskine-Smith has been making all kinds of waves, talking about his disagreement with the approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, advocating for the decriminalisation of all illegal drugs to treat them as a public health as opposed to a criminal law issue, and most recently, prostrating himself before his electorate to decry his government’s decision to abandon electoral reform (and using the curious tactic of using language that both undermines his government’s legitimacy and advocates for a system that undermines the very agency he has as an MP to stand apart from his party, but whatever).

Of course, it also appears that none of those commenters from the peanut gallery actually bothered to read the story about why Erskine-Smith was yanked from the committee, and it had little to do with his outspokenness than the fact that he was overly naïve as a newbie MP if trying to make parliament a nicer place. In this case, he wanted to operate by consensus on the committee and tried to get the other parties onside for amending the bill on establishing a national security committee of parliamentarians. The problem was that in the process, he was manipulated by Tony Clement into deleting some of his government’s own provisions because, you know, consensus and working together! So yeah, painful lesson, and maybe he’ll learn to be a little less trusting the next time. I get that you want parliament to be a nicer place and politics to be done better, but if you’re not careful, your opponents will (metaphorically) shiv you because they have their own goals, and they don’t necessarily want to buy into your platform. And let’s not forget that the competition of ideas is part of what keeps our system vital and accountable.

Of course, the fact that the whip could take this step has the usual suspects up in arms about how too much power is in the hands of the leader (by way of the whip), and the standard calls about reforming committees were trotted out. The Liberal Party’s promises on committee reform – more resources, electing chairs by secret ballot, and ensuring parliamentary secretaries are no longer voting members – were pretty much accomplished, but Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong has his own reform ideas (try to look surprised), but reading them over, I have doubts. In particular, his plan to take away the power to assign MPs to committees and replacing it with a secret ballot process is dubious, in particular because a) I can’t imagine trying to count those ballots, b) it won’t solve the problems of MPs all trying to get onto the “sexier” committees while leaving some of the less exciting ones to be scrounging for members, c) critics – which the leader assigns – are on those committees, so for a party like the NDP, the secret balloting process would be useless, and d) this is a typical Chong suggestion of a solution in search of a problem. MPs like to bitch and moan about being assigned to committees they don’t like, but rarely actually ask for committee assignments, nor do they seem to have an appreciation that sometimes the party has to spread out their talent to places where it’s needed as opposed to where MPs want to go.

I’m also not keen on Chong’s plan to merge five committees to bring down the total number because there’s no actual need. We have 338 MPs and we don’t have a super-sized cabinet with a bloated parliamentary secretary brigade to match it, and in the previous parliament, they already reduced committees from 12 to 10 members apiece. There are enough MPs to go around, and merging the mandates of committees overloads them rather than letting them undertake studies of their own accord, which they should be doing. There’s no real crisis of overloading MPs with work right now (which was not always the case), so this particular suggestion seems gratuitous.

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Roundup: Dealing with disappointment

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As the tears and recriminations continue over Justin Trudeau’s decision to scrap his electoral reform pledge, we’re seeing a number of pretty dubious messages emerging from those doing the wailing and gnashing of teeth. For as much as Elizabeth May shed tears about how this was a betrayal of youth voters, Justin Trudeau went before a crowd of university students yesterday and nary a word was spoken from those “betrayed” youths about electoral reform. Oops. I’m also a little disturbed by the point that has been made repeatedly by the likes of May, and Ed Broadbent on national television, that somehow the feminist Trudeau was shoving young women ministers “under the bus” over his broken pledge. One has to point out, however, that there is a bit of a sexist undertone to that bit of concern trolling, implying that neither minister was capable of handling themselves on this file, and it ignores that Maryam Monsef was effectively promoted for her performance, going from a make-work office out of PCO to a line department with a big agenda along with added responsibilities for assisting the minister of heritage, while Karina Gould was handed a pretty big new file to tackle in the democratic institutions portfolio, being the very real concerns about cyber-security in our electoral system. And if you don’t think that’s a problem, look at the fact that the BC Liberals suffered a major data breach over the weekend that compromised the files of countless voters.

And then there’s the cynicism argument. Not only have the youth been betrayed by this move, but this breeds cynicism because the rug has been pulled out from those who were engaged in the process, and we have studies that show that people get disengaged when they have bad experiences. But I’m going to challenge that a bit, because as much as you had a group of people that were engaged by the process, the vast majority who have been vocal about it have been selective in their reading about what went on. People insist there was consensus in the report, but the fact that every party walked back on what it said shows that it was not actually consensus. PR advocates not only stacked the witness lists, but most over-read the mandate of the committee and gave some particularly creative interpretations of just what Trudeau’s electoral promise was, deciding that it meant that their preferred system was the only acceptable outcome – in other words, they have only been hearing what they want to hear. When they don’t get it, they blame others for breeding cynicism. As for the disengagement brought on by disappointment, I’ve read those studies too and the common denominator that I found was that much of that disappointment is brought on by the fact that people don’t know how the system works. They get discouraged because they approach the wrong level of government to deal with a particular problem, or that they are simply impatient to deal with the waiting lists caused by limited resources. I get that unrealistic promises might be disappointing when they don’t happen, but people need to be better educated to know when promises are disappointed so that their expectations can be tempered (though politicians should know better than to make stupid promises in the first place).

Meanwhile, I will point you to a must-read, which is a post by UBC political scientist Christopher Kam, who writes a spectacular takedown of an NDP ten-percenter extolling the virtues of proportional representation. It not only takes it apart piece by piece, but provides a good fact-check on some of the PR talking points that were circulating during the electoral reform committee hearings, including debunking some of the studies that were cited continuously to “prove” the points about how great PR governments are.

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Roundup: O’Leary’s debate debut

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Saturday night was another Conservative leadership “debate,” and again I use the term loosely because there was very little debating going on. Yes, this particular event did offer more chances for rebuttal, but given that it was staged and structured like the most boring academic conference ever (all it was missing was a line-up at the floor mic for people to give fifteen minute speeches in the guise of asking questions to the panel), we still didn’t get a lot of candidates challenging one another. Not that it didn’t happen – it did, but most of the candidates spent their time taking shots at either Kevin O’Leary (particularly deriding him as not being a Conservative), and Maxime Bernier (most especially around his ideas about equalisation, which, to be fair, are a bit daft).

Going after Bernier may not seem like the think you would expect, but he has been leading the race in terms of fundraising, which is not an insignificant thing. One does have to wonder, however, if there are enough self-described libertarians in the Conservative Party to give him the edge he needed. Bernier, incidentally, says he was being attacked because his opponents are afraid of his position on equalisation. And to be fair, he’s probably right, but not for the reason he thinks, but rather because it has the potential to severely damage the party in the more “have not” provinces of the country, most especially in Atlantic Canada, where they already have zero seats.

As for O’Leary, this was his first real event on the campaign, and he didn’t exactly sparkle, but he did stand out from his competitors a few times, both when he refused to criticise the country’s justice system, pointing to his experience abroad, and in the kinds of shots he took at the current government, which were of a more brash tone than other candidates were taking. He also played his ethnic cards, saying he would consider it a personal failure if Lebanese Canadians didn’t all take out party memberships and declaring that he “owns the Irish vote.” Okay then. Will his brashness that help him? Maybe, considering how very milquetoast most of his competition has been, and the crowd who laps up this populist demagoguery seems to love people who “tell it like it is.” O’Leary, meanwhile, shrugged off the attacks and kept his cool, and didn’t take the bait and made a point of directing his attacks to Trudeau (and premiers Wynne and MacNeil) instead of his fellow candidates.

And the rest? Lisa Raitt had her best night ever, possibly bolstered by the fact that it was a bit of a hometown crowd for her, and she seems to be making her working-class roots that much more of her narrative, but I’m still having a hard time seeing what kind of direction she proposes to lead the party in other than “I’m everything Trudeau is not.” Also, props for bringing up that Globe and Mail piece on “unfounded” sexual assault rates and challenging the government to do something about it. Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux were laughable, Chris Alexander seemed to be doing a lot of “me too” to the points of other candidates – most especially Raitt – but had nothing really new to say. Andrew Scheer made a point of being parochial, Michael Chong remains the grown-up at the table which probably dooms his campaign, and for as middle-of-the-road as he is, everyone was quoting Erin O’Toole’s big line of the night saying “We don’t beat the celebrity-in-chief with another celebrity-in-chief.” The problem is that nobody quoted the second half of his statement where he brought up Robert Stanfield as the model to follow. Remember Stanfield? Who never beat the celebrity PM of his day (being Pierre Elliott Trudeau) and who never became prime minister? Yeah, not sure that was the wisest analogy. Also, O’Toole kept making Silence of the Lambs references, but completely wrong ones. He thought he was being funny by calling all 32 Atlantic Canadian Liberal MPs “lambs” who were “silent,” when Silence of the Lambs is about a cannibal and a serial killer. Not sure that was appropriate. Oh, and about eight or nine candidates need to drop out by oh, yesterday, because at this point, they’re going to start doing more damage than good.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/828343848346779648

Meanwhile, Peter MacKay says that Leitch’s immigration policy is going to damage the party, while Michelle Rempel lists the things she’s looking for in making a decision about a leadership candidate (and spoiler: Kevin O’Leary wouldn’t make the cut).

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Roundup: For fear of extremists rising

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In damage control mode, the Liberals have sent out senior sources to talk about why they pulled the plug on electoral reform, and have brought up the relatively new talking point about concerns for the rise of extremist parties, while cabinet was opposed to a referendum (not surprisingly given the referenda we’ve seen globally lately) and to a PR system in general. I say relatively new talking point because it was raised as part of the MyDemocracy survey, but as Paul Wells stated on Power & Politics last night, for a government that purports to be eloquent, they never made the case. I also suspect there was the added problem that in making it known that he was open to being convinced, Justin Trudeau allowed Nathan Cullen and others to steal the narrative away from him, which is a big reason why the Liberals completely lost the plot on that file.

Colby Cosh goes through the promise and given the choice as to whether Trudeau was being sleazy or stupid in making that promise, Cosh goes on the side of stupid – for which I would agree – and notes that a retreat was the best he could hope for rather than some truly unsavoury outcomes, particularly with regard to a referendum or a more purely proportional system. And here we get back to the rise of extremist parties.

Canada is not immune to this rabid and toxic populism that is going around globally, and we’ve seen examples of it manifesting in this country, from the election of Rob Ford, to some of the identity politics being attempted in previous elections both federally and provincially. Just because it has been relatively contained and not entirely successful doesn’t mean it can’t succeed in the future, particularly with its proponents feeling emboldened by what’s happening south of the border. And while Nathan Cullen insists that the rise of alt-right parties is “a load of crap,” he is blinkered by this notion, primarily coming from the left-wing, that a PR system would incentivise all of these left-wing and progressive parties that would somehow always form nice coalition governments. Right now we’re seeing something very different playing out in Europe, with all of their myriad of PR systems producing growing hard-right parties on the verge of winning power in several countries. Trudeau has every right to be concerned about that in Canada, and we have demonstrated proof that our current system has blunted their growth because they can’t command enough broad-based support to dominate our big-tent brokerage parties. That’s not a bad thing.

https://twitter.com/benjaminokinsey/status/827582598109069312

Oh, PR proponents claim. We’ll just raise thresholds so that these parties can’t get seats! But that’s just as problematic because if the thresholds are too low – say below three percent – you’re likely to cut off the Greens and the Bloc, for which they would cry bloody murder. (Their self-interested insistence that more people would vote for them if they knew they were guaranteed PR seats doesn’t help their case). It’s also another way of saying that you want to game the system to produce party configurations that you like, which again is self-interested, and doesn’t make the case for how it makes the system better.

In related news, Paul Wells looks at Karina Gould’s new mandate of cyber-security for our electoral system now that electoral reform is out of the question, and no, it’s not a trivial matter even if we don’t use any kind of electronic ballots in this country. Both Elections Canada and the various parties all have databases, and the party databases most especially are vulnerable, in part because they aren’t subject to any federal legislation which deals with privacy or information security, and that could prove to be a problem in the future.

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Roundup: Smothering Rosemary’s Baby

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In case you missed the news, and all of the howling earlier in the day, Justin Trudeau confirmed in a new mandate letter to Karina Gould that electoral reform is now a dead letter. And thank all of the gods on Olympus that they’ve smothered this Rosemary’s Baby because it was a stupid promise that he never should have made in the first place. I argue that much in a column for Loonie Politics, and it had the very real danger of undermining Trudeau’s ability to get anything else done for the next three years.

While people have wondered why Trudeau didn’t just promise to put this off until the next election, I think that would have been a worse outcome, and the issue would have grown like a cancer that would undermine the perception of that election’s legitimacy, as the demands of each party on that file continued to consume more and more time and oxygen. A swift death was better. Others have wondered how Trudeau could have declared there to be no consensus when he didn’t actually ask which system people preferred, but that misses a few key points. For one, there were some clear messages from the committee and from the MyDemocracy survey, some of which were that people didn’t want MPs elected off of lists (which severely limited the kinds of systems available) and that some of the systems out there would not have been constitutionally valid. Meanwhile, when the government did ask about outcomes (through the MyDemocracy survey), that was more informative than asking which system people preferred because people tend to think of electoral systems like they do wanting a pony, when they also need to be asked if they want to spend their time mucking out the stables. I’m sure you’d find that the answers would change right there. There have been accusations that Trudeau didn’t show leadership by not trying to forge some kind of consensus, but I’m pretty sure that would have been impossible. He had a preferred system that the opposition parties didn’t like and maligned for completely false reasons, and no matter what he did, it would have been viewed from the lens of self-interest and dismissed. In other words, it was a no-win scenario.

And then there’s Nathan Cullen, with his angry words and his big show of pretending that he wasn’t trying to be cynical about the process when Cullen’s whole modus operandi the entire time has been fuelled by cynicism. His manipulation of the formation of the special committee was a cynical con job wrapped up in moral outrage. His selective reading of the committee’s report, as well as the MyDemocracy survey, was self-serving to the extreme. But he presents an earnest face to the media, and people buy it. I get it. That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been cynically playing this whole affair, because rest assured, he has been.

And now the myriad of hot takes. Chantal Hébert calls the promise a cheap electoral prop, which she’s not wrong about. Andrew Coyne goes for the full sarcasm in blaming voters for believing Trudeau’s promise. Tasha Kheiriddin says that Trudeau will wear this failure (though I suspect that only a small percentage of Liberal voters will actually care by 2019). Jonathan Kay takes the correct (in my opinion) take in that reform was never going to happen because our system doesn’t need to be fixed. John Geddes doesn’t think that Trudeau lied – just that the impetus waned as people were no longer discontent with a system that didn’t give them a Harper government (and I suspect he is also right). John Ivison agrees that Trudeau hasn’t demonstrated the level of mendacity for this to have been a lie from the start, but those who sincerely believed him will feel betrayed. Chris Selley goes a bit darker, and pre-emptively counted this as the kind of broken promise that makes people cynical about politics and gives rise to the likes of Rob Ford or Donald Trump. And he’s got a point, but honestly? Politics is what makes people cynical about politics.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/826863475003629568

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Roundup: Tragedy to pull MPs together

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The aftermath of the Ste-Foy mosque shooting was not atypical for when things go horribly in this country. MPs and political leaders of all stripes band together and make a show of solidarity. There are solemn speeches, and a moment of silence, and for as much as everyone decries the level of partisanship that permeates the hallowed halls of our democratic institutions, they all do put on a united front, that this is our country and we won’t allow it to succumb to violence and darkness based on the actions of a lone few.

As for the facts of the incident, what we know is that the suspect is a 27-year-old white male whose social media history has a lot of far-right connections. He was charged with six counts of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, and there may yet be terrorism-related charges once the RCMP and the Quebec police forces complete their investigations. Talk of a second shooter or suspect turned out to be a witness on the scene who called 911 and was trying to help the wounded when he fled at the sight of police guns.

And then comes the aftermath. In a scrum following QP, Ralph Goodale offered assurances of police vigilance and noted that he wasn’t increasing the terror threat level from its current reading of “medium,” for what that’s worth. There is also speculation that this will be added impetus for the Commons to pass that private members’ motion on a study of Islamophobia in Canada – something some Conservatives like Kellie Leitch are opposed to, calling it “special status” for Muslims. And then there was the White House, cravenly using the incident to justify their “Muslim ban,” even though the suspect is an alleged white supremacist.

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/826239354997727236

In commentary, John Ivison notes that moments like those today were when the Commons is at its best. Chantal Hébert noted that Trudeau has been silent about Trump’s “Muslim ban” while this has been going on. Deepak Obhrai, however, made the explicit link between the two. Michael Chong has also been vocal in drawing links between this incident and the rise in demagoguery, which he wants more politicians to stop engaging in. Robyn Urback looks at how the first twelve hours after the shooting were a giant exercise in confirmation bias as people struggled to fit the facts with their personal narratives.

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Roundup: MyDemocracy survey says…

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The results of the MyDemocracy.ca survey got published yesterday, and it’s full of some fairly contradictory results about people generally being reasonably satisfied with our system (or at least not wildly dissatisfied), preferring constituency connections and accountability (but also co-operation, which makes accountability difficult), while also wanting more diversity of views (unless it lets in radicals and extremists). Also, no mandatory voting, online voting, or lowering the voting age. (Full report here). So yeah. And already you’ve got Nathan Cullen sore that it doesn’t say “Canadians want PR” because that’s not what it was asking. Anyway, Philippe Lagassé is best positioned to weigh in on it, so here we go:

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https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/824043118475546626

Reading through the methodology and the reasoning behind the questions was fairly illuminating and something the detractors of the survey should probably want to actually do before they scroll ahead to where they go “Why doesn’t it say that Canadians really want proportional representation? Stupid biased survey” because we know that’s what they want to hear.

Of course, if you ask me, this should provide enough justification for them to smother this whole thing in the cradle and wash their hands of it, saying it turns out that Canadians aren’t too concerned with reform and hey, it turns out it’s way more complex than we thought so yeah, bad promise, we’ll do better next time, and then move onto some actual topics of importance than just trying to appease a few sore losers.

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Roundup: Divorcing commentary from policy

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So, it’s now official that Kevin O’Leary is throwing his hat in the race (though, it should be said, he still hasn’t filed his paperwork and paid his entry fees). And already, he’s making outrageous statements like how all of his previous commentary doesn’t count because it was just commentary and not policy that he’ll be judged on (not sure it works that way). But he keeps saying “That was good television but it’s not policy.”

Or there’s already the bald-faced wrong numbers he’s pushing, whether it’s around the country’s fiscal situation, certain programmes like defence spending, or even growth figures.

https://twitter.com/cfhorgan/status/821802645514027009

And while that’s all well and good, Chris Selley makes some very good points about the places where O’Leary diverges from the party’s base, whether it’s on CBC, peacekeeping or not being concerned about terrorism. That could make him a tough sell with them, particularly on issues that they’ve been vocal about for the past couple of decades.

But despite that, I have to say that it’s not only his name recognition that gives him and advantage in this race, but the fact that he’s going to appeal to a particular demographic in the party that fetishizes businessmen in politics (as though the skillsets were remotely similar, which they’re not), and particularly brash businessmen are swelling everyone’s trousers of late, especially when they boast about things like the “language of jobs” or being able to “read a balance sheet” (which O’Leary has yet to provide concrete evidence that he can, given that he apparently couldn’t read the actual context of that fiscal projection that got him so alarmed that he just had to join the race).

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He’s also been playing his cards right, as Adam Daifallah points out here, whether it’s with the “phony war” by staying relevant while “thinking about” his decision, his social media execution, his upstaging the French debate and lowering those expectations for himself. And more than anything, the race, with its 14 candidates, most of them dull and beige, has been a bit of a snooze (Kellie Leitch’s constant nonsense aside), and O’Leary is going to shake that up. The other candidates have been telegraphing that they’re afraid of him for a while (hello Lisa Raitt’s “Stop Kevin O’Leary” website), and that means something. We’ll see just how much it means sooner than later.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/821728909280550912

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Roundup: Butchered applause lines

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Now that the French “debate” has passed, it looks like today is the day that Kevin O’Leary will announce his candidacy for the Conservative leadership – something most of the other candidates will probably welcome given that it will divert everyone’s attention from the embarrassing debacle that was the “debate,” and I do use the term loosely. As with previous events in this contest, there was no debate, just a line-up of talking points, only this time it was mostly in mangled French, some of which was utterly incomprehensible.

Not to say that there wasn’t some artificial drama during the horror show. Kellie Leitch in full butchered French and Steven Blaney both had their sight set on Maxime Bernier and attacked him out of the gate (while Erin O’Toole, in very slow sentences, pleaded with them not to fight), and for the first 45 minutes at least, all anyone could talk about was supply management, before the moved onto softwood lumber – because apparently dairy and forestry are Quebec’s only two industries. And then when it came to questions of national security, it was all manner of fumbled pearl-clutching (and it was like you could watch them grasping for that strand of pearls and missing it every time) as a number of them insisted that they were for immigration but wanted to ensure that they weren’t letting in terrorists. Brad Trost decided to go full-Trump and declare that we ban immigration from “pro-radical Islamist” regions (but don’t worry, he doesn’t hate all immigrants – he married one!).

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/821520113786621953

If you’re looking for a professional evaluation of everyone’s proficiency in French, CBC assembled an expert panel to grade everyone, and based on my own personal observations, Lisa Raitt did better than most expectations (but was still mostly reading her responses), and Chris Alexander, for all of his other weaknesses in this race, had one of the best grasps of the language of any of them. Rick Petersen, the other also-ran who doesn’t have a seat, also had a really great grasp of French and was one of the only people speaking off the cuff – doubly impressive given that he’s an Anglo and not Francophone. And as for Deepak Obhrai, people keep saying “points for trying!” or “At least he showed up, unlike O’Leary!” well, there were actual times when he was just uttering phonetic gibberish – and pointing while doing it.

But, as Martin Patriquin writes, none of this is going to matter after a few hours today because once O’Leary is in the race, none of it is going to matter.

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Roundup: The business of selling seats

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Kevin O’Leary went on television on the weekend, because of course he did, and then said a bunch of nonsense. Because of course he did. This time, it was to whine about how it’s not fair that rich people can’t fund their own campaigns, and to say that he thinks that the Senate should be a profit centre rather than a cost, and charging people $100K to $200K per year for the privilege of sitting there. No, seriously. He has said he thinks it’s fine to sell seats in a house of Parliament, and nobody challenged him on that point of the fact that it’s grossly unconstitutional. (Only a later update of the story added quotes from Emmett Macfarlane that appeared to be what he tweeted on the subject).

Not only that, but you immediately had a bunch of chuckleheads showing up on the Twitter Machine going “a plain reading of the constitution would say this is allowed” without any hint that they are being ironic. Before Leonid Sirota beat me to the punch, I was going to remind everyone that the idea of selling Senate seats came up during the Supreme Court of Canada hearing on the Senate reference, where Justice Cromwell cornered the government’s lawyers on the question of “consultative elections” and how they wouldn’t require a change in the constitution. “If consultative elections are allowed, then why not a consultative auction?” asked Justice Cromwell, and well, the government lawyer had to basically swallow that one. (To remind you, they ruled that consultative elections are not allowed without a change to the constitution).

I would also add that for as much as we’ve (rightfully) lambasted O’Leary on this ludicrous idea, the NDP and others have been floating around a similar idea in the past about defunding the Senate and making it a volunteer position – you know, so that just like O’Leary’s plan, it becomes available to only the super-rich who have the time and resources to devote to doing the work. Because that’s exactly the kinds of people we want to fill those seats. Not to mention, if O’Leary thinks that Senate seats should be up for sale, why not any other federally appointed position – judges, heads of tribunals, Commissioner of the RCMP? All profit generators instead of a drain on the taxpayer, right? Yeah, no.

On a related note, O’Leary said that if he does win the leadership, he wouldn’t be in any rush to run in a by-election but would spend time crossing the country to gather support. Because this is what happens when you don’t insist that the leadership be from caucus. It elevates the position above what it should be, and diminishes the role of caucus and the value of a seat in parliament. Leadership races should be by caucus selection, not membership vote. We’ve bastardized our system enough, and we need to reign it in.

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