Tag Archives: Council of the Federation

Roundup: The premiers’ pre-meeting

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While a Council of the Federation meeting will be happening this week in Saskatoon, Jason Kenney has been planning a pre-meeting for several premiers at Stampede, last night and today. It’s an interesting bit of dynamic because while Kenney is one of the most junior members of the Council (with only PEI being more junior), he’s trying to act like a bit of a ringleader for the various conservative-led provinces as they wage war against Justin Trudeau and the federal government. We’ll see how well that goes over.

Meanwhile, John Horgan says he’s hoping that they can use this meeting to get something accomplished, and that it won’t be a number of premiers trying to have a stand-off against Trudeau in advance of the election. But given that several of those premiers have been having public tantrums over the carbon price, two of them now having lost their court challenges, I’m quite certain that they’re going to have some kind of theatrical blow-out for the sake of Andrew Scheer to come in and try and look statesmanlike. (Have I mentioned that fixed election dates are garbage?)

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Roundup: Neither a minor nor a major shuffle

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So there was a Cabinet shuffle, and while not major, it was a little bigger than some may have anticipated. Five new ministers have entered the fray, which expands things somewhat, but still isn’t into later Harper territory. Some of the changes are not unexpected – Joly being moved to tourism while still keeping official languages is a bit of a demotion from the Heritage file that she garnered so much criticism from, particularly in Quebec, on things like the Netflix file. Some of the changes are pretty political – moving Sohi from infrastructure to natural resources in order to have the Alberta minister on the pipeline file is pretty naked on its face. Bill Blair to border security (plus organized crime reduction) are two files that the government wants a stern face on to make it look like they’re taking action. Some of the additions, however, are a bit mystifying, like a minister for seniors? Really? Is this not just a pandering exercise to a voting demographic rather than a file with particular challenges that need addressing? And some of these questions won’t be answered right away, because the mandate letters won’t be available until later in the summer. Here is the updated Cabinet list including the existing ministers whose titles got modified, and here are profiles of the five new additions.

And then the reaction. Blair’s promotion may send the signal that they’re taking the border situation seriously, but it also can look like they’re a) caving to critics, b) admitting that this is a security and not a humanitarian situation, c) putting border security alongside fighting organized crime in the same portfolio risks conflating the two in the eyes of those who are convinced that these irregular migrants are really all criminals and terrorists. Trudeau apparently lured Blair into politics on the promise of fighting the number one enemy of public security – fear. I’m not sure that putting him in this new role fights fear or reinforces it.

In terms of analysis, Paul Wells notes both that putting Blair into Cabinet is a bit of a poke in the eye to Doug Ford, given that they were nemeses during the Fords’ years in Toronto City Hall, and that this new Cabinet is one built to survive the coming storms until the next election (along with the observation that Trudeau seems to have demoted himself by stripping away the intergovernmental affairs responsibility and giving it to Dominic LeBlanc). Kady O’Malley makes five observations about the shuffle, while Susan Delacourt looks at the shuffle from the perspective of reacting to the recent Ontario election.

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Roundup: Deleting the message

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The Conservatives decided to delete their tweet yesterday that depicted a black migrant crossing to Canada – over a bridge made of Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet, and through a broken chain-link fence. There was backlash that the tweet was racist, and it certainly was intended to stoke the xenophobic tendencies that they have been flirting with. I will point out once again that their continued reliance on the talking point that this is about the “orderly” asylum system would probably make most of Europe laugh and pat them on the head condescendingly, because it’s pretty precious that they think Canada should get the special status of an “orderly” system that no other country gets.

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Meanwhile, Maclean’shas a look at the history of the Safe Third Country Agreement, and how it’s basically just waiting for Donald Trump to blow it up if he actually learns about what it is and what it does. Chris Selley, on the other hand, points out the ways in which both the federal government and the new Ontario government are mishandling the whole file, which is fair criticism. But I do think we can’t take our eye off the fact that the Conservatives are flirting with xenophobic populism for partisan gain, and playing cute with it, pitting one group of newcomers against another, and patting themselves on the back for their “compassion” for certain groups of refugees that they use solely as props to hammer away at the regime they’re fleeing. This has been their modus operandi since Jason Kenney was immigration minister, but they’ve poured it on a little thicker since they saw that this kind of populist rhetoric worked for Trump and Brexit (never mind the fact that we have solid proof of election interference in both, and definitive proof of broken rules in the Brexit referendum). This is worrying for our democracy, and we should be very wary of their adopting these techniques.

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Roundup: Asylum claimant dust-up

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So there was a bit of a testy exchange yesterday as federal and provincial immigration ministers met in Winnipeg, and Ahmed Hussen got into a bit of a spat with Ontario’s new minister, Lisa MacLeod. Hussen objected to MacLeod (and Doug Ford) using the rhetoric of “illegal border crossers” and ginning up the same rhetoric of the Federal Conservatives that somehow refugee claimants take make it harder for legal immigrants (despite the fact that they’re separate processes and systems). This objection is not new either – Hussen has been saying this for weeks, so for MacLeod to get offended about it yesterday is being performative in the extreme – which is what she wants. With Kathleen Wynne no longer in the picture for her party to pit themselves against, they now need to make Trudeau their straw man. And when Hussen called the behaviour “un-Canadian,” MacLeod and her defenders accused Hussen of “bullying,” which is childish. But wait – it gets better. MacLeod loudly announced that the federal government should pay for these asylum claimants, while Hussen has been saying for weeks that they need Ontario to step up and find places elsewhere in the province than just Toronto to house them, and hey, they’re providing money to do just that. And then, because this wasn’t theatrical enough, Saskatchewan’s minister also refused to sign onto the communiqué from the meeting and demanded that the federal government not only pay for these asylum seekers (of which Saskatchewan has received zero), but that they should pay the full cost of all other government-sponsored refugees. Couple of things: 1) This is starting to get alarmingly close to the kinds of xenophobic populist rhetoric we’re seeing south of the border, and we should be very alarmed by that; and 2) Remember how the federal Conservatives just a few years ago cut refugee health benefits as a “deterrence” mechanism (which the courts later called “cruel and unusual”), which simply downloaded those costs onto the provinces? These are your political brethren.

Also released yesterday were the latest figures for the number of irregular border crossers, and it has plunged again. Because it’s a “crisis” that the government has “done nothing about.” Err, except they have been doing something about it, trying to stem the migrant flow at the source, and lo and behold, it seems to be working. For now, in any case. But the Conservatives continue to press for a meeting of the Commons’ immigration committee next week to rail about it.

Meanwhile, Martin Patriquin calls out the divisive and inflammatory language because it misses the actual issue at play, treating it as a permanent burden rather than a temporary state of affairs.

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Roundup: A “quiet” housekeeping bill

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Do bills get passed “quietly”? There was a bit of debate over the Twitter over this fact yesterday, where it was conceded that a bill was passed with little fanfare, but I wanted to dissect this a little bit. The bill in question was one that was a technical housekeeping bill that legislated that several Minister of State positions were bumped in status, salary and precedence to full ministers, and that they had line departments split out from the previous departments they existed under the envelope of. It had been on the Order Paper since 2016, and signalled that it was happening since the Cabinet was first unveiled in 2015, with Orders in Council doing effectively what the bill did on an interim basis. It garnered attention yesterday because amidst the Cabinet shuffle speculation, it was noted that the bill allows for a couple of more seats to be added to the Cabinet table under this new framework, so Trudeau could theoretically increase the size of his Cabinet (and he yet might). But regardless, because this was passed without fanfare, it was termed as being passed “quietly.”

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Part of why I have a problem with the use of “quietly” – not just in this circumstance but in others – is because it implies that that there was intent. A recent egregious example was the renewal of the equalization formula – something that was in the budget document, in the bill (clearly marked), and came up at committee, and on top of that, was the subject of discussions between the federal and provincial governments for months. But nobody batted an eyelash until the Globe and Mail said it was passed “quietly” (apparently because they didn’t report on it, which is like a tree falling in the forest). And like I said with that equalization issue, it’s not the media’s job to flag every little thing for MPs – they can do their own homework.

My other issue with this is that not every bill is going to get fanfare – a lot of it is technical and relatively uncontroversial, there are a number of bills that are financial measures that are eye-glazing that most MPs don’t pay attention to (though they should) and simply pass of to the PBO to do their homework for them on. This particular bill was, as I said, on the Order Paper since 2016. There was nothing really controversial about it because it purported to fix inequities that would otherwise have ensured that a number of the women in the gender-equal cabinet were not equal in status or pay because they were in portfolios that had previously been relegated to “junior” positions, and a few reporters tried to make hay out of that fact when the Cabinet was first announced in 2015. This is not a bill that deserved fanfare. Expecting it is unrealistic and frankly comes off as a bit whiney when reporters can track these things on LegisInfo like everyone else. It didn’t pass “quietly” – it was a technical bill that passed like all technical bills do. And it’s time we struck “quietly” from the political lexicon.

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Roundup: Closing three loopholes

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As expected, Bill Morneau announced three new measures to crack down on tax avoidance by means of self-incorporation by high earners, many of them doctors and lawyers. While the government goes on a 75-day consultation period (to ensure that there are no unintended consequences) in order that the changes can be legislated in the autumn budget implementation bill, here’s economist Kevin Milligan explaining the problem and changes in detail here, plus his Twitter posts on the topic:

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Morneau acknowledged that the changes may personally disadvantage him (though two of the three categories didn’t apply to him) – making it clear that he didn’t look into his own situation to ensure that he was being fair and not self-interested in making them.

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Roundup: Divisions of Power at the Council

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With the Council of the Federation meeting today in Edmonton, they had a pre-meeting yesterday with some Indigenous leaders – others having opted not to join because they objected to it being “segregated” from broader Council meeting. While I can certainly see their point that they want to be full partners at the table, I have to wonder if this isn’t problematic considering some of the issues that the Council has to deal with – NAFTA renegotiations, inter-provincial trade, marijuana regulations – things that don’t really concern First Nations but that premiers need to hammer out. Two groups did meet – the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (which generally deals with off-reserve and urban Indigenous Canadians) and the Native Women’s Association of Canada, citing successful talks, while the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and Métis National Council stayed out of it.

While I’m sympathetic to these Indigenous groups’ desire to have full-fledged meetings with premiers, I’m not sure that the Council is the best place to do it, because they’re not an order of government so much as they’re sovereign organisations that have treaty relationships. While some of their concerns overlap, they don’t have the same constitutional division of powers as the provinces, so a meeting to work on those areas of governance can quickly be sidelined when meetings stay on the topics where areas do overlap with Indigenous groups, like health or child welfare, while issues like interprovincial trade or harmonizing regulations would get left at the sidelines as they’re not areas in which Indigenous governments have any particular constitutional stake. And yes, we need more formalized meetings between Indigenous leaders and premiers, I’m not sure that simply adding them to the Council achieves that, whereas having separate meetings – as was supposed to happen yesterday – would seem to be the ideal forum where they can focus on issues that concern them. Of course, I could be entirely wrong on this and missing something important, but right now, I’m struggling to see how the division of powers aligns in a meaningful way.

Oh, and BC won’t be at the Council table as NDP leader John Horgan is being sworn in as premier today, even though he could have scheduled that date earlier so that he could attend (seeing as this meeting has been planned for months).

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Roundup: The fount of Canadian honours

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A particular thread that I forgot to talk about last week was about the new GG, and one of the important things that the office does, which is to be the conduit by which the country’s honours system works. It’s a pretty important function of the office which has been encroached upon my MPs and in particular the Prime Minister in recent years, and yes, that is a problem.

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The Queen is the fount of honours in Canada, but politicians have been trying to get in on the game. Stephen Harper created a “teaching award,” and Trudeau has been talking about creating some kind of medal on his own as well, while there have been partisan spats about the Thérèse Casgraine award, or the John Diefenbaker award, and whichever party in power “forgetting” to award it, and on it goes. But part of leaving those kinds of decisions up to Rideau Hall is that it keeps the awards from taking on a partisan taint. With the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence, there was a lot of difficulty getting nominees under Harper because many people didn’t want to be associated with him, which is a fair point – the award should be politics-neutral, but associating it with the head of government as opposed to the Queen means not only that there’s a whiff of partisanship, but that the PM would use the awards as a bit of reflected glory. That’s generally something we try to avoid in our system, which is also why we ensure that it’s not the prime minister’s face on postage stamps or first in line in our embassies, but rather the Queen. It’s why the civil service swears their oaths to the Crown and not the government of the day as well – because we keep them above the partisanship of the day, and it keeps them from developing cults of personality (as much as is possible, but the age of celebrity politics is certainly challenging this notion). Suffice to say, we should be aware that the duties of honours rests with the Crown and with the GG for a reason, and we should frown on more attempts by politicians to horn in on them.

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Roundup: Gowns for influence

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The celebrity status of Sophie Grégoire Trudeau gained some internal clarity within government circles as new ethics rules were published with regards to her as it pertains to gifts and loans of the clothes and jewellery she wears. As a woman with a certain profile, Grégoire Trudeau has done the politic thing to do and showcase Canadian designers, because we all know that she would immediately be subject to criticism if she didn’t. And when a person of a certain profile makes that kind of decision about showcasing designers, she tends to be presented with dresses, outfits, and jewellery to showcase at different high-profile events – often for loan, but occasionally as a gift as thanks for the exposure she gives those designers, so it makes sense that there are some rules around it, as an extension of the fact that her husband is a public office holder. I get it.

What I do not get is this notion that somehow accepting the loan or rental of a gown, outfit or piece of jewellery is going to somehow corrupt the ethics of the government of the day and put them in some kind of impossible conflict of interest. And yet, here we are, once again quoting Duff Conacher, head of the Parliamentary Thought Police, giving credence to this kind of lunacy:

“In terms of personal ethics she shouldn’t be accepting these gifts. She should decide, and she will likely decide, to wear Canadian designers quite a bit to showcase them as others have … [but she should] not be tainted with even the appearance that’s she’s up for sale and happy to receive free gifts when she can afford to buy her own clothes and jewelry.”

Are. You. Serious? Aside from the fact that such a shopping habit would quickly become very expensive and become the subject of all manner of other gossip pieces (and let’s face it – the PM’s salary isn’t that generous, no matter what you may think), fashion is an industry that is not static. It’s very difficult to buy a few pieces and then just recycle them endlessly while you’re in the public eye and being seen to promote designers. That invites its own kind of damning criticism. But how, pray tell, is she “up for sale?” What influence does she wield that this is some kind of ethical dilemma for the operation of the government? She’s promoting the industry, and she is circumscribed from accepting items over $1000 (which are surrendered to the Crown collection unless she chooses to purchase them), and gifts over $200 are disclosed, which is fine. But “up for sale”? Seriously? Do you think they’re seriously going to ask her husband to send along subsidy cheques? Then again, this is from the mind of someone so paranoid that he thinks that $1500 can buy influence in government, and that capping donations at $100 will somehow fix the system rather than drive financing to less reputable channels (as it did in Quebec, which is the model he curiously admires). The disclosure rules are sensible. Let’s leave it at that.

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Roundup: Not a grown-up party

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There is an interesting piece in yesterday’s Hill Times about the policy process of the Green Party as it struggles to grow from an activist movement into a serious political party. Despite the heavy reliance on commentary from the one non-party voice in particular, there are some interesting lessons therein about ways in which their current process is causing problems with resolutions around things like the BDS movement, which put it at odds with the leader. If you recall during the last election, it came to light that some of their platform policies around things like divorce laws were MRA propaganda, forcing them to do quick disavowals to go along with the shrugs of “hey, we’re a very open party” and “grassroots democracy!” And don’t get me wrong – grassroots engagement is a good and necessary thing in politics, but there does need to be framework around it that ensures that grown-ups are in charge and that really problematic contributions can be weeded out rather than thrown into the “open-chalkboard” approach that sets too low of a threshold for some of the more odious policy ideas to make it through without a really proper vetting. (Conversely, there needs to be enough power at the grassroots level so it’s not just the leader’s office deciding policy without any accountability for doing so, which the Liberals seem to be moving toward). What’s more concerning is that the attempts to move to some form of a proportional representation system that would allow for these more fringe views to gain seats without the party having matured into a credible political force that can deal with its crazies. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as being too open and too “grassroots” in politics, and it’s part of what is causing the implosion of the Republicans in the States, where the lack of controls in favour of more “direct democracy” primaries – alongside with this narrative that government is corrupt or illegitimate – has caused it to become completely unhinged. Some of these same messages are being echoed by the kinds of people within the Green Party, coded in language around the current electoral or party systems. It does become concerning, and it’s why these kinds of too-open endeavours start to make me nervous.

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