Tag Archives: Corrections

QP: Putting the heat on Blair

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While Justin Trudeau fled the capital to go sell auto workers the merits of the New NAFTA over in Brampton, Andrew Scheer was elsewhere. Candice Bergen led off with the story of the murder of a sex worker of a person on parole, and demanded a denunciation of the Board’s actions. Bill Blair reminded her that an investigation has been launched into the matter. Bergen asked about MasterCard getting $50 million from the government, to which Mélanie Joly said that the government was investing into a cyber-security centre. Bergen said that MasterCard can afford to pay for their own cyber-security, and bashed the investment again, and Joly responded about the importance of job creation. Luc Berthold was up next to ask about the Auditor General’s budget, to which Jean-Yves Duclos effused about the Middle Class before citing that they would work with the Auditor General. Berthold asked again in French, and Duclos responded with the record on growth and job creation. Yves-François Blanchet was up next to worry about Teck Frontier Mine destroying the Paris Agreement, and Jonathan Wilkinson responded that they were still making their determination on the environmental assessment. Blanchet also worried that said mine would require new pipelines and wondered if they were afraid of saying no to Jason Kenney, to which Wilkinson repeated that they were still considering it. Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, to once again demand limiting the tax break in order to fund dental care, and Bill Morneau reminded Singh that their tax cuts have benefited 20 million Canadians. Singh asked again in French, and got much the same response. 

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Roundup: The reality of negotiation

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As was ever thus, the Twitter Machine erupted with fury and disingenuous outrage when health minister Patty Hajdu told reporters that she couldn’t guarantee that a national pharmacare programme would be in place at the end of the current parliament (for which we don’t know when that will be, as a hung parliament rarely lasts beyond two years.

“Some of that will be predicted by, predicated by, the responses of the provinces and territories,” said Hajdu, because *mind blown* healthcare is largely the domain of the provinces and any pharmacare system would have to be negotiated with them – in particular, a national formulary, which is going to be extremely complicated to ensure that existing plans don’t get left behind or that the new national plan isn’t worse off than any existing ones that it would replace.

What is especially irritating are all of the voices crying out that this just means the Liberals were lying on the campaign trail, which is false and ridiculous – Trudeau spent the campaign not overpromising on this file, but rather kept saying that it was contingent on negotiation with provinces, which is why their fiscal plan only called for a “down payment” on such a programme rather than the whole thing, but nevertheless, the promise was to go by the principles of the Hoskins Report, which they have bene doing thus far. The NDP, by contrast, insisted that this could be done by 2020, and whenever anyone brought up the fact that the provinces may object, the line was largely that why would anyone say no to federal dollars? It’s absurd, of course, because provinces are rightfully afraid that they would be stuck with an expensive programme to run if the federal government suddenly cut out transfers or funds to it because they suddenly had other priorities (which has happened in the past).

And to that end, we have a bunch of premiers who are balking at it, Quebec and Alberta want to be able to opt-out with compensation, and Ontario is instead insisting that the federal government pay for drugs to treat rare diseases – the most expensive kind, and the ones where costs are rapidly escalating. So of course they want the federal government to pay for them rather than to share the burden. It’s predictable, and for anyone to be shocked and appalled that the Liberals have to deal with this reality is really, really tiresome.

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Roundup: Considerations on Trudeau’s Alberta problem

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Talk about what Justin Trudeau is going to do about his Alberta/Saskatchewan problem continues to swirl, with few answers so far. Alison Redford says she’s willing to help in some capacity – not that she’s been asked yet – but I guess we’ll see if there has been enough time and space from her aura of power problem that led to her ouster. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé with some important thoughts about the issue:

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188550490084257792

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188551735398277121

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188554137232990211

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188555710851878914

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188558518300872704

Meanwhile, Carla Qualtrough says all options are on the table which can include some changes to equalization, but as this piece explains, there is so much misinformation about how equalization works that it’s important we separate facts from lies about it – and there are a whole lot of bad actors, Jason Kenney chief among them, lying about the programme in order to stir up anger that he hopes to use to his advantage.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1188507654605430785

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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: TMX is go

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It wasn’t unexpected that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was given the green-light by the government, with assurances that there would be construction this season – but there are still details to come. More accommodations were made as part of their Indigenous consultations, and it sounds like there may be more details to be ironed out, particularly around one First Nation who is concerned about the pipeline traversing their aquifer. More than anything, however, Trudeau made it clear that any profits from this pipeline – which could be $500 million per year – would go toward clean energy projects. (It also needs to be said that Trudeau came and faced the media for this announcement – something Harper never did with Northern Gateway).

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/1141060718743048192

None of this was good enough for Trudeau’s critics, however – Andrew Scheer made up a bunch of nonsense about how the government failed to get the project moving until now, Jagmeet Singh flailed about how this was contrary to climate goals, and Elizabeth May was in high dudgeon about how this made a mockery of all other climate actions (never mind the fact that oil would flow by rail without this pipeline, and this actually reduces emissions overall – crazy, but true). John Horgan promised to keep fighting the pipeline, while Jason Kenney promised to keep fighting every other environmental measure.

And then the hot takes – Aaron Wherry enumerates why this pipeline is the compromise that it is. Chantal Hébert doesn’t think that this approval will be the political problem that some think it will be. Jody Wilson-Raybould isn’t a fan of the approval, for what it’s worth. Don Braid waxes about how this entrenches the view of Alberta as a “resource bucket to pay for national dreams.” (Erm, isn’t that exactly what Kenney and company keep selling?)

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Roundup: Defence intelligence and their limits

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Some of you may recall that recently, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians submitted a report to the prime minister, which was later made public, about how military intelligence in this country is large and vaster than most people anticipate. The Canadian Press recently obtained the August 2018 federal directive about what kinds of personal information that defence intelligence is able to collect and keep, and it turns out that they can indeed keep some of that information, even if obtained by chance, so long as it supports a legitimate investigation. You may recall that at the time of the NSICOP report that there were calls for its activities to be bound by statute instead of by Crown prerogative, as it is currently. With that in mind, here’s Philippe Lagassé with some context on why that may or may not be a good thing.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1137787804979748865

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1137789288127631361

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Roundup: A line-by-line review

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If the tweets of Cabinet ministers are to be believed, Cabinet is currently seized with doing a line-by-line review of the amended Bill C-69 that was sent back to them from the Senate earlier this week. By all accounts, the current form of the bill is a complete dog’s breakfast that includes a number if contradictory clauses, because the Chamber of Sober Second Thought didn’t bother to actually do the work of reconciling them because members of the environment and energy committee were keen to placate Jason Kenney and to credulously believe the oil and gas industry lobbyists who insisted that the bill’s original form, while not perfect, would somehow doom all future projects in this country. And you would think that actually getting a bill in reasonable condition back to the Commons would be kind of important to a body like the Senate, for whom this is their raison d’être as a legislative chamber who preoccupies itself with reviewing legislation, but no, they decided instead to sent it back to the Commons as is rather than to take the blame that Kenney and company will lay on them as he continues to lie about the bill and consider it a rallying cry for the implacable anger of Albertans that he sold a bunch of snake oil to during the last provincial election.

In the midst of this, you have senators like Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith claiming that the Senate’s attempt to stop bills C-69 and C-48 are supposedly the last bastion of the provinces who are “under attack” by prime minister Justin Trudeau, which is hokum of the highest order. C-48 doesn’t landlock Alberta’s resources because the chances of a pipeline to the northern BC coast are virtually nonexistent given the Federal Court of Appeal decision on Northern Gateway’s failure, and the propaganda campaign against Bill C-69 is the completely divorced from reality, but hey – angry narratives to sustain. At the same time, Senator André Pratt is defending the Senate against accusations levelled from the likes of Andrew Coyne that they’re overreaching if they do kill C-48 (which they won’t), saying that they’re trying to do their job while being cognisant that they’re an appointed body. He’s not wrong, and it’s probably one of the better articulated pieces of late.

Meanwhile, the Conservative whip, Senator Don Plett, is denying that he’s stalling the UNDRIP bill, and he’s actually got procedure on his side for this one – the cancelled meeting would have been extraordinary, and there are reasons why the Senate doesn’t hold special committee meetings while the Chamber is sitting – which they are sitting later and later because they have so much business to get through because the Independent Senators can’t get their act together, and lo, we have the current Order Paper crisis that they are working their way through (though apparently not so urgently that they didn’t sit yesterday). Unfortunately, the media does love private members’ bills, and is focusing a lot of attention on them, no matter that most of them are actually bad bills that should probably die on the Order Paper (but people don’t like to hear that).

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QP: A course on how the court system works

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While Justin Trudeau was in Paris to sign the Christchurch Call on ending on online extremism, Andrew Scheer was present, and he led off with a level-headed question about the video of the RCMP interrogating an Indigenous sexual assault victim, and Ralph Goodale asserted that the video demonstrated technique at that were abhorrent and wrong, and that police needed to ensure that survivors were not re-victimised in the process. Scheer then pivoted to Mark Norman case and the disclosure of documents to the court, to which Bill Blair started that the government fulfilled its obligations and all decisions relating to them were done by public servants and the court and not the government. Scheer tried again highlighting the use of code words to evade Access to Information requests — a practice that long predates this incident — and got the same answer. Pierre Paul-Hus tried again in French, and Blair repeated himself again in English. Paul-Hus accused the prime minister of trying to destroy Norman, but Blair’s answer did not change. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and moaned about Loblaws before demanding more action around climate change. Catherine McKenna asserted that there was indeed a climate emergency and they had a plan, but then highlighted Singh’s constantly shifting position on things like the LNG project in BC. Singh flailed, trying to connect climate change with stable work and jobs, and McKenna zeroed in on the ten thousand jobs related to the LNG project. Singh then changed topics to the Phoenix fiasco, and Carla Qualtrough noted their “laser focus” on the matter and it was being fixed with IBM as a partner. Singh tried again in French, and got much the same response. 

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QP: Which plan should we adopt?

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A rainy Tuesday, and all the the leaders were present for a change, the only time this week that Trudeau would be, given that he takes off for Paris later tonight. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he was snide about Trudeau having plenty of time to rehearse his script on the Mark Norman case — while his own script was in front of him — and Trudeau reminded him that they were doing due diligence on a Conservative sole-source contract before he went on to talk about the independence of the investigation and decisions taken, and that PMO had responded to all document requests. Scheer took exception to this, describing efforts to avoid Access to Information laws that predate this government, and Trudeau noted that the decision to suspend Norman came from the Chief of Defence Staff, and repeated that they responded to document requests. Scheer tried in French, got the French version of Trudeau’s first response, and then demanded that Trudeau allow the defence committee to probe the issue. Trudeau reminded him that committees are independent of government, and that the Conservatives were desperate to talk about anything but the budget. Scheer then raised the fact that Omar Khadr got $10 million — BECAUSE HE WAS TORTURED — and demanded some kind of restitution for Norman, and Trudeau called the question a distasteful political game. Jagmeet Singh was up next and demanded in French that the government adopt their climate plan, and Trudeau asked which plan in return, given that the NDP plan changes on a weekly basis, and they wanted to shut down the largest project in Canadian history. Singh tried again in English, and Trudeau hit back that Scheer was capriciously looking to end ten thousand jobs on the LNG project after saying that they would leave no worker left behind. Singh then tried to take on the Mark Norman questions, but was halting and unsure in his pacing, and Trudeau called out that Singh was jumping on the Conservative bandwagon because they were floundering. Singh tried again in French, and Trudeau shrugged it off and went back to batting back the NDP’s environmental claims.

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Roundup: The Norman trial collapses

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As expected, Crown prosecutors announced yesterday that they were staying the breach of trust charges that had been laid against Vice Admiral Mark Norman regarding the leaks of cabinet confidences related to a shipbuilding project, and people who don’t pay attention to details decided that the timing was suspicious and spun a number of conspiracy theories, many of them around the fact that Andrew Leslie was due to “testify against” the government. (Reality check: Leslie agreed to be a character witness for Norman months ago, and PMO was fully aware and there were no indications that they tried to dissuade him from doing so). With that out of the way, Norman made a statement about bias and presumption of guilt by senior levels of government, and his lawyer, the formidable Marie Henein, threw shade at PMO – stating that while the prosecutors acted independently, she felt PMO was withholding documents for far too long in the process – and the suggestion is that some of the Harper-era documents were what eventually exonerated him (though the Crown attorneys said there was no one piece of evidence that was responsible). As this was happening, Harjit Sajjan announced on his way into caucus that the government would pay Norman’s legal expenses. Norman later met with the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, who said that with this out of the way, that Norman would be returning to duty soon, though we’ll see if it will be back as vice-chief of defence staff, as the role has since been filled by someone else. There are lingering questions – lots of them – about what happened here, but there aren’t likely to be many answers anytime soon given that the trial for the bureaucrat also charged with leaking information is coming up.

And great Cyllenian Hermes, were there a lot of hot takes on the end of the Norman trial today. Christie Blatchford described Norman’s ordeal, while Andrew Coyne has so many questions. Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney both point out that this could remove one controversy from Justin Trudeau’s plate before the election, but both point to the lasting reputational damage that this has helped to inflict on Trudeau.

I have a few comments of my own that nobody seems to have brought up – one of them is to point out that the RCMP unit that investigated the leak was apparently the same one who investigated Senator Mike Duffy, and so ballsed up that investigation that we all know how it ended. Perhaps we should question whether this investigative unit is very good at their jobs. The other thing that bothers me in this whole affair was less about the leak than it was about what appears to be a high-ranking military official who balked when Scott Brison, the Treasury Board president, put the process on pause so that they could examine the sole-source contract granted by the previous government (as is the official version of events). Remember that this contract was granted after the House of Commons rose for the summer (and before the election call), and when Senators raised it while they still sat, the government offered no clarity or details, so there was no proper scrutiny at the time. That matters. But whether Brison paused the process to examine it, or to possibly open it for tender, it shouldn’t have been for Norman to work his contacts to try and pressure the government to resume the process (as is the allegation), because that undermines the civilian control of our military. Nobody is talking about his angle, which I think needs a better airing in all of this.

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