Tag Archives: CSIS

Roundup: Pearl-clutching over fraud

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While he didn’t show up at the “virtual” special committee yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless held his daily presser, during which he announced that they were creating a $470 million programme to support fish harvesters, which would include grants for those businesses who needed a bridge, and EI application rules for those who would have to miss the season because it wasn’t safe. As well, there was another $100 million for an agriculture and food solutions programme through Farm Credit Canada. Trudeau also noted the upcoming long weekend, and said that as of June 1st, some national parks and historical sites would be re-opened to the public – provided the province they are in would allow it – and that there were new restrictions for pleasure craft, with the intention that they not be allowed to head to places where they could infect local populations, particularly in the North.

Meanwhile, the breathless pearl-clutching fraudulent CERB claimants continues unabated, as the National Post procured yet another government documents that allegedly says to grant it even to people who have quit their jobs or been fired with cause, which shouldn’t be allowed. But as Trudeau stated under questions after his presser, the goal was to ensure rapid delivery for the 99 percent of people who were claiming this benefit for legitimate reasons, and that if they had insisted on more robust checks at the beginning of the process, the money still wouldn’t be flowing. This of course hasn’t stopped some of the usual suspects from tweeting bullshit about how the programme is being abused, with zero evidence and using examples that could not actually work. But let’s create a moral panic about it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1260960640480407552

We also had some observers fanning themselves and reaching for their fainting couches when Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who chairs the finance committee, remarked to Bill Morneau at yesterday’s finance committee meeting, that he wanted a stronger statement from the government that they were going to deal with fraudulent cases. Imagine – an experienced backbencher taking a tough tone with his own party in government! Suffice to say, the message from this government has consistently been that if there is misconduct, it will be caught and dealt with at the appropriate time (and now is not that time). I’m not sure how much more explicit they can actually get, but maybe that’s just me.

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Roundup: Hurt feelings and punitive lessons

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There is a vote coming up on Monday, when Parliament returns from the constituency week, which is on the Conservatives’ Supply Day motion to allot the opposition an additional three Supply Days, which the Conservatives are trying to spin as a “lesson” for the Liberals, because they apparently haven’t gotten the memo that it’s a hung Parliament. Also, the Conservatives’ feelings are hurt that their previous Supply Day was moved from a Thursday to a Friday, and they feel like it was being done as “punishment.” Never mind that the rules allow the government to allot a certain number of Supply Days to Wednesdays and Fridays (which are half days), and every government has monkeyed around with Supply Days in the past – most especially the Conservatives.

To that end, I find it particularly galling that Candice Bergen thinks that the Liberals need to take some lessons in humility because it’s a hung parliament, considering how the Conservatives behaved during the minority years. Humility? Conciliatory note? Nope. It was daring the opposition, declaring non-money bills (some of them in the Senate) to be confidence measures, screwing over the other parties by changing the federal rules governing spending limits on leadership campaigns while the Liberals were in the middle of theirs, and it culminated in a finding that the government was in contempt of parliament because of how they were withholding information that parliamentarians had a right to see.

Meanwhile, I would also issue the warning that this kind of stunt, which will further limit the government’s available calendar, will inevitably wind up with the government needing to use time allocation or other similar measures in order to pass time-sensitive legislation. Bergan may think she’s being clever by using these kinds of tactics, but this kind of thing always blows up in someone’s face, and nobody wins in the end.

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Roundup: Expecting a regulatory overhaul

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I’ve been keeping my eye on the Orphan Well issue in Alberta from a distance, somewhat in part because of everything I learned about the problem when writing about the Supreme Court of Canada challenge around how the obligations to clean them up interacted with federal bankruptcy law. As it turns out, the Supreme Court said no, companies can’t offload these environmental problems in order to salvage other assets, so Alberta was left with a problem as the huge problems with the way their regulatory system operates has been left with a very big problem. The province’s energy regulator (which has long been accused of being captured by the industry) is finally admitting that their system for determining liabilities has been flawed all along, and the province is saying they’ll be releasing new regulations soon, but we’ll have to see how much more stringent they’re going to be with the provincial government constantly worried that they’ll unduly harm the industry in its weakened state (which is another reason why Kenney has been pressing for those so-called “equalization rebates” from the fiscal stabilization fund in order to put toward remediating orphan wells – because why not get the federal taxpayer to deal with the remediation of environmental liabilities that the province deliberately under-funded in order to keep the good times rolling (and their tax base unsustainably low).

Meanwhile, the number of smaller oil and gas companies who haven’t been paying their taxes to municipalities or rents to farmers and landowners is climbing, leading to a great deal of frustration in the province, and there are calls essentially for these smaller companies to be allowed to go bankrupt so that larger ones can take them over, and they’ll be better capitalized to deal with their environmental liabilities, as happened in Texas several years ago. Then again, seeing as the provincial government and their federal counterparts seem to be so much more beholden to the smaller oil and gas players than they are the big ones (for whom they will deride as being big corporations, because don’t forget they’re right-flavoured populists), so we’ll see how far that line of argument gets them.

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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: Middle Class™ is a state of mind

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I don’t really want to engage in a pile-on, but the fact that the new Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity® was doing the media rounds and imploding on trying to offer a definition of just what is Middle Class™ was not a good start to her ministerial career – not to mention an indictment of the comms geniuses in the PMO who sent her out there unprepared. You would think that actually having a working definition of what is “middle class” would be an important thing to equip a minister with when you give her the portfolio – particularly when you wrap up an otherwise sober role of Associate Minister of Finance with this ridiculous title. And there are a couple of very serious points to make here – if you can’t actually define what “middle class” means, then you have no actual way of measuring your success in dealing with the perceived issues of income disparity – which this government has been using Middle Class™ as a code for without trying to sound like they’re engaging in class warfare. But as a branding exercise, when you rely on the fact that everyone thinks they’re “middle class” or about to be – particularly people who are well over what is actually middle class in this country – it’s one of those things that tends to flatter people, but becomes meaningless – essentially that Middle Class™ is a state of mind. Mona Fortier did, over the course of the day, transition from “it involves your kids being in hockey” to “there’s no one definition” because of regional variations and disparities, but it was a bit of a trial by fire, and hopefully a lesson that she – and the comms geniuses in PMO – will take to heart.

All of this talk of being Middle Class™ does bring me back to this scene from the early noughties UK sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme, where being Middle Class was a Thing.

Meanwhile, Chris Selley makes the very salient point that this government has moved the needle on poverty in this country, but the problems we’re facing aren’t with the Middle Class™, and perhaps they should put a focus on those areas instead.

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Roundup: Holding up a mythical threat

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The first day of the new Cabinet, and Justin Trudeau, along with Chrystia Freeland and Jim Carr, had their first meeting as a group with Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, who held up the now-former Bill C-69 as the source of much of the anger in Alberta, and his demands that it be changed. The problem here – and Nenshi acknowledged – is that the pre-existing system that Stephen Harper’s government put into place in 2012 did not work, and Nenshi could list projects being held up by it, which is all the more reason why his strident condemnation of the new assessment system is all the more baffling. Part of the problem here is that the bill – along with the now-former C-48 – have been used as scapegoats for the frustrated economic ambitions of the province. Never mind that C-48 was largely symbolic – there is no pipeline project that would head for the northwest coast of BC, nor is there going to be, and no, Northern Gateway is not going to make a comeback because the obstacles identified by the Federal Court of Appeal were almost certainly insurmountable. And C-69 is in no way a “no more pipelines” law.

I talked to a lot of environmental lawyers on both sides while C-69 was being debated, and the biggest source of unease on the proponent side was the uncertainty as to whether the legislated timelines would have the problem of issues stopping the clock – thus dragging out those timelines – much of which was alleviated when the draft regulations were released. Again, the talk about the carbon budget in the bill was clarified in the regulations, which also alleviated many of their concerns (and caused some on the environmental side ulcers). So while the government is now talking about tweaks to the regulations, that seems more than entirely appropriate for the reality of the situation, and their refusal to scrap the law is entirely rational and just.

The problem becomes fighting the narrative that has been created around this law, and the fact that it has grown into a mythological terror is what they will have to grapple with – and compounding this is the fact that this government has proven itself time and again to be utterly incompetent at communications. For as much as Catherine McKenna did some good work when she was the minister, she kept repeating the tired slogan of “the environment and the economy go together” and other nonsense talking points (and then insisting that she spoke like a regular person), which did nothing to counter the lies being promulgated by Jason Kenney, Andrew Scheer, and others, about what was actually in the legislation. And you can’t fight lies with canned talking points. I wish this government – and the communications geniuses in the PMO most especially – would get that through their heads, which is why trying to placate the anger when it’s being directed at the mythology and not the reality of this legislation is going to be an uphill battle.

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Roundup: Look at all the chimeric ministers

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With the usual bit of pomp and circumstance, the Cabinet has been shuffled in advance of Parliament being summoned. It is bigger by two bodies, there are seven new faces, a few new portfolios – and baffling ones at that – a few being folded back into their original ministries, and yes, gender parity was maintained throughout. The Cabinet committees are also getting a shuffle, which gives you a glimpse at what they see the focus will be, and spoiler alert, it’s very domestic and inward-looking – not much of a surprise in a hung parliament where there are few plaudits or seats to be won on foreign affairs files. It’s also no surprise that it’s Quebec and Ontario-heavy, and largely representing urban ridings, because that’s where the Liberals won their seats.

And thus, the biggest headline is of course that Chrystia Freeland has been moved from foreign affairs to intergovernmental affairs, but with the added heft of being named deputy prime minister – the first time this title has been employed since Paul Martin, and Freeland assures us that it’s going to come with some heft and not just be ceremonial. She’s also retaining the Canada-US file, so that there remains continuity and a steady hand on the tiller as the New NAFTA completes the ratification process. It also would seem to indicate that it gives her the ability to keep a number of fingers in a number of pies, but we’ll have to wait for her mandate letter to see what specifics it outlines, though the expectations that she will have to manage national unity in this somewhat fractious period is a tall order. Jonathan Wilkinson moving to environment has been matched with the expected talk about his upbringing and education in Saskatchewan, so as to show that he understands the prairies as he takes on the environment portfolio. Jim Carr is out of Cabinet officially, but he will remain on a Cabinet committee and be the prime minister’s “special representative” to the prairie provinces, which is supposed to be a less taxing role as he deals with cancer treatments (though I don’t see how that couldn’t be a recipe for high blood pressure, but maybe that’s just me). Two other ministers were demoted – Kirsty Duncan, who will become deputy House Leader, and Ginette Petitpas Taylor, who will become the deputy Whip – though it should be noted that both House Leader and Whip are of added importance in a hung parliament.

The opposition reaction was not unexpected, though I have to say the Conservatives’ talking point was far pissier than I would have guessed – none of the usual “we look forward to working together, but we’ll keep our eyes on you,” kind of thing – no, this was bitter, and spiteful in its tone and language. Even Jason Kenney was classier in his response (but we all know that lasts about five minutes). That’ll make for a fun next few years if they keep this up.

As for some of my own observations, I was struck by the need to name a new Quebec lieutenant, given that Trudeau used to say that they had a Quebec general (meaning him), so no need, and lo, did the Conservatives had meltdowns over it. Likewise, there was thought under the previous parliament that they would eliminate all of those regional development ministers and put them all under Navdeep Bains (whose ministry has rebranded again from Industry, to Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and is now Innovation, Science, and Industry), which kept a lot of the kinds of nepotism that was rampant in those regional development agencies at bay. Now Trudeau has hived off the economic development portfolio into its own ministry, to be headed by Mélanie Joly, but she’ll have six parliamentary secretaries – one for each development agency region, which feels like the whole attempt to break those bonds is backsliding. Science as a standalone portfolio was folded back into Bains’ domain, but the very specific project that Kirsty Duncan was tasked with when she was given the portfolio four years ago was completed, so it made a certain amount of sense. Democratic Institutions is gone, folded back into Privy Council Office and any of its functions Dominic LeBlanc will fulfill in his role as President of the Queen’s Privy Council (which is a role that is traditionally secondary to another portfolio). Trudeau continued to keep his Leader of the Government in the Senate out of Cabinet, which is a mistake, but why listen to me? (I’m also hearing rumours that Senator Peter Harder is on his way out of the job, so stay tuned). The fact that David Lametti got a new oath as minister of justice and Attorney General to reflect the recommendations of the McLellan Report was noteworthy. But overall, my biggest observation is that Trudeau is doubling down on the kinds of chimeric ministries that tend to straddle departments, which makes for difficult accountability and confusing lines of authority on files. The most egregious of the new portfolios was the “Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity,” which is a fairly bullshit title to attach to the fact that she’s also the Associate Minister of Finance, which should have been significant in the fact that it’s the closest we’ve been to a woman finance minister at the federal level, but dressing it up in this performative hand-waving about the Middle Class™ (which is not about an actual class but about feelings) is all the kinds of nonsense that keeps this government unable to communicate its way out of a wet paper bag, and it’s just so infuriating.

https://twitter.com/sproudfoot/status/1197239923100856321

In hot takes, Chantal Hébert sees the move of Freeland as the defining one of this shuffle, and notes that it could either be just what they need, or it could be a kamikaze mission for Freeland. Susan Delacourt sees the composition of the new Cabinet as one that corrects past mistakes and of taking on lessons learned. Robert Hiltz points to the two polarities of this Cabinet – the farce of the Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity, and the menace of putting Bill Blair in charge of public safety. Paul Wells makes the trenchant observation that carving up ministries across several ministers has the effect of creating multiple redundancies that will make more central control necessary – and I think he’s right about that. (Also, for fun, Maclean’s timed the hugs Trudeau gave his ministers, which didn’t compare to some from 2015).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1197245638548869120

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Roundup: Competence, communication, and the Commissioner

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Yesterday was political theatre in the extreme, as the Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, released his report into the Double-Hyphen Affair. His conclusions were damning for Trudeau (but suspect – more on that a little later), and there was some genuinely troubling revelations in there, such as the fact that it seems that it was lobbyists from SNC-Lavalin who were the ones who suggested putting the Deferred Prosecution Agreement legislation in the budget, and seemed to be attempting to stage-manage the whole thing – right up to dreaming up elaborate schemes to try and bring former Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin into the fold, only for her to tell them that she’d wait to hear from Jody Wilson-Raybould. (Reminder: DPAs are not an invention of SNC-Lavalin, but have been a tool in other countries for over a decade, and Canada was a laggard in adopting them, and even then, we didn’t do a very good job of it, and yes, there is a lengthy paper trail of the consultations undertaken by the government on this. Also, they’re not a get out of jail free card – they do involve penalties, but would enable the innocent employees and shareholders of a company to not suffer for the actions of a few). As troubling as this is, my biggest takeaway is the absolute crisis of competence within this government – officials in different ministers’ offices who didn’t communicate with one another, which was compounded by Wilson-Raybould not offering any explanations for her decisions so that they could be communicated to either SNC-Lavalin or even the other departments. Recall that the infamous Wernick call that Wilson-Raybould was prefaced by Wernick that he was looking for an explanation, and ended when Wilson-Raybould said that she turned over a report to PMO weeks previously, to which Wernick responded “That’s news to me.” If Wilson-Raybould was being continuously bombarded from all sides, it’s because there was a lack of clear communications from all sides. Was that improper interference? Well, that’s a bit of a judgment call, though Dion argued that it was. You can take that for what you will.

With the release of Dion’s report came the release of Anne McLellan’s own report into the structure of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General’s office, which ultimately concluded that the roles didn’t need to be separated, but that clearer guidelines needed to be established – including better communication from the Attorney General on decisions that were of interest to the government.

(Meanwhile, here are some primers on the Shawcross Doctrine, who Mario Dion is, and a timeline of events).

As for reactions, Andrew Scheer was predictable in saying that this was “unforgiveable,” decried that this was the first prime minister in history to have been found to have broken ethics laws (laws that only applied to two prime ministers, so that history is pretty short), and that he wants the RCMP to investigate…something. We’re not quite sure what. Unsurprisingly, Wilson-Raybould issued a statement shortly after the release of the report, saying that she has been completely vindicated. Trudeau himself said that he doesn’t agree with all of the conclusions – particularly that you can never debate an issue with the Attorney General – but said he accepted the report and took responsibility, and that they would learn from it – and lo, they have the McLellan Report to draw more of those lessons from as well.

What virtually nobody actually made any mention of, save a handful of lawyers, was the fact that the Commissioner’s findings resulted from a very large overreading of that section of the Conflict of Interest Act – so much so that it was hard to see how his understanding of “private interest” fit in with the definition of a conflict of interest. In fact, in the report, Dion stated that the initial complaint was under Section 7 of the Act, and while found that was not violated, he then decided on his own volition to see if Section 9 wasn’t a better fit, and then showcased how he jumped through a number of hoops to arrive at that conclusion. He also complained that he wasn’t given access to documents that fell under Cabinet Confidence, and argued that his mandate made that access “implicit” rather than explicit, which should be a warning sign of an Officer of Parliament that is trying to claim more powers than Parliament originally allocated to him. That should be concerning – as is the fact that everyone credulously cherry-picked the damning paragraphs from the report rather than looking at it in context, and the fact that the basis for those conclusions are actually problematic. This doesn’t mean that wrongdoing didn’t occur – just that the report itself was arrived at by a great deal of overreach, which should colour the conclusions, but nobody in the media did any of that critical thinking.

In hot takes, Chantal Hébert was first out of the gate, to wonder if this would be a fatal wound for Trudeau given how scathing the report was. Robert Hiltz castigates Trudeau’s inability to apologise because that would mean that the government was acting in SNC-Lavalin’s interests and conflating it with that of the country. John Geddes wonders why SNC-Lavalin never took Wilson-Raybould up on her offer to pass along their public interest arguments to the Director of Public Prosecutions (and the answer is fairly unsurprising). Andrew Coyne says the problem is not any conflict of interest, but the possibility of an abuse of power. Paul Wells notes the report is another reminder to Trudeau that his is a job where he makes decisions that have consequences, which he may not seem to grasp.

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Roundup: These aren’t the bots you’re looking for

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The discussion of misinformation, “junk news,” and bots have been going around a lot, as have the notions of what journalists can and should be doing to fact-check these things. To that end, here’s a thread for thought from Justin Ling about how this can be working against us in the longer term:

And national security expert Stephanie Carvin adds a few thoughts of her own, to contextualize the problem:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424183185854464

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424186214158336

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424188500058112

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424197408702465

Chris Selley. meanwhile, respectfully suggests that if the government is so worried about online misinformation, that they stop pushing it themselves with their own particular bits of spin and torque that plant the same kind of false notions and expectations in people’s minds – and he’s absolutely correct.

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Roundup: Partisanship and thoughtlessness

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There was an interesting piece out yesterday about a study that showed that those with strong partisan leanings were less likely to be able to correctly identify current events, and are likely using news to confirm their existing views rather than being well informed. It’s not too surprising in the current milieu, where partisanship it turning more toward tribalism as we are apparently trying to import America’s culture wars into Canada out of some misplaced sense of envy, however I worry that this will be the kind of study that will simply turn into an exercise in confirmation bias by all sides – partisans and supposed non-partisans alike.

Let us first recall that partisanship is not actually a bad thing – it’s fundamentally about a contest of ideas and values, which is a good thing in politics. While everyone likes to talk about “evidence-based policy” and doing what’s best for all, there are fundamental philosophical differences about what that may be – and that’s okay. That’s good for democracy! Let us also recall that party membership is of fundamental importance in our system of government, and it’s one that has been gradually been debased as leaders have grown too strong and have hollowed out their parties – in part because memberships have allowed it rather than jealously guarding their own powers. We need more people to be party members, because that’s where grassroots engagement happens. We should resist the temptation to turn this kind of a study into an excuse to debase this kind of engagement in the political process.

We should also note that a big part of the problem is a lack of media literacy – particularly as the study also points to people being unable to locate where how their partisan biases line up with media outlets (which is also not a surprise, because people will paint an outlet with bias if they don’t like a story that makes their team look bad). So long as people don’t have these media literacy skills, any partisanship gets conflated with their preference for their own “teams,” and that helps magnify the kinds of problems that this study points to. It’s a complex problem overall, but we can’t simply say “partisanship makes you stupid,” as will be the temptation. Partisanship on its own doesn’t make you stupid – but if it’s mixed with other kinds of ignorance, it adds fuel to the fire.

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