Tag Archives: CSIS

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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Roundup: Explaining the costing process

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With the writ period drawing ever closer, a good thread appeared over the Twitter Machine from someone who used to work in the Parliamentary Budget Office, and who has some insights about the PBO’s new mandate for costing parties’ election platform promises. It’s good to keep in mind – particularly when it comes to ensuring that the parties are accountable to voters.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1158741889798946818

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1158741894530125825

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Roundup: Kenney’s latest salvo

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Over the weekend, Alberta premier Jason Kenney put out a video over Twitter that was an explicit declaration that he plans to campaign against Justin Trudeau in the upcoming federal election, but it was couched in the language of provincial separatism. Or rather, Kenney claimed that Trudeau was trying to “push Alberta out” of the Canadian federation, but he would rather “separate Trudeau from the office of the prime minister.”

For Kenney to claim that Trudeau is the source of Alberta’s woes is frankly ridiculous, and to say that Trudeau has been stoking separatist sentiment is laughable. Last I checked, Trudeau wasn’t the cause of the plunge in world oil prices, nor was his the government that has been blocking progress on the Keystone XL pipeline or Enbridge Line 3, and he not only bought the Trans Mountain pipeline to de-risk it, but ensured that the Federal Court of Appeal’s concerns were addressed so that it could begin construction without further court challenges. And if Kenney wants to throw Energy East or Northern Gateway in the mix, well, the former was withdrawn because the economics of the project were insufficient, and the Harper government’s inaction and lack of proper Section 35 consultation ensured that Northern Gateway would not go ahead.

Of course, Kenney is also perpetuating his campaign of lies and snake oil, such as his complaints that the province is getting a “raw deal” from equalization – remembering of course that Alberta doesn’t sign a cheque to other provinces, but that it comes from everyone’s federal income taxes, and Alberta has the highest incomes in the country by far, nor will a referendum on the programme do anything other than further inflame sentiment in the process that Kenney has been lying about. And he knows that he needs to keep the population angry at outside forces so that they don’t start turning on him given that he can’t fulfil the promises he made to them. This video was not only bizarre, but it also perhaps gives a hint of the kind of increasingly desperate measures that Kenney will have to resort to in order to keep stoking anger.

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Roundup: A carbon reality check

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A couple of weeks ago, Paul Wells did one of his CPAC interviews with Elizabeth May, the transcript of which is now available, and she talked a lot about how she thinks Canada can transition to a cleaner economy, and said a bunch of things about the oil and gas industry as part of that. The problem, of course, was that she was wrong about pretty much all of it, as energy economist Andrew Leach demonstrates.

Leach, meanwhile, also takes Jason Kenney’s rhetoric about carbon pricing to task in this Policy Options piece, and lays out the danger of that rhetoric, which has a high probability of blowing up in Kenney’s face. And as a bonus, he proposed a tool for conservatives to check their policy instincts against.

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Roundup: Frivolously calling in CSIS

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Because there is nothing that the current strategic geniuses in the Conservative leader’s office won’t do to turn an issue into some kind of cartoonish conspiracy or a theatrical production, they decided yesterday to write an open letter to CSIS to demand that they open an investigation into John McCallum, citing that he was trying to direct the Chinese into interfering in the Canadian election. No, seriously.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1149729121230045185

To not put too fine of a point on this, calling in national security agencies over a partisan issue is not only highly unserious, it’s dangerous because it not only politicises CSIS, but it also fuels the current rage by those on engaging in illiberal populism of accusing those who engage in legitimate political disagreement of being treasonous. And while Lisa Raitt would take to Twitter to try and defend this with overly cute legalistic justifications, the broader point stands. Leave CSIS out of your political theatre. This should be a no-brainer. And yet…

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1149745283825315840

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Roundup: Intelligence and context

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There was a lot of flurry yesterday about supposed revelations made in Federal Court that CSIS has been spying on peaceful environmental groups. Except, people who used to be at CSIS, will tell you that’s exactly not the case. And the reporting on this hasn’t exactly helped either because it’s in a very defined frame with tropes that somewhat credulously take what these groups are saying and putting it with the redacted documents and drawing conclusions, that again, people who used to work there, will dispute, and those voices aren’t in the reporting. So here’s Stephanie Carvin and Jessica Davis, both of who used to work at CSIS, offering some proper context for what those documents say.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148217645986131969

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148217647852642304

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148233105825812480

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https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1148235624580833283

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https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148301752770408448

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1148222236832215040

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Roundup: More trouble in Rideau Hall

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The news out of Rideau Hall is rarely good these days, and yesterday, it was about high levels of harassment and job dissatisfaction being reported by the staff there. I’m not entirely surprised by this, given that most of the established and long-time staff abandoned it shortly after Julie Payette was named governor general, because she and her hand-picked secretary (who had no government or Crown-related experience) essentially made everyone’s lives miserable. This after it was revealed that Payette still refuses to move into Rideau Hall because she’s unhappy with the lack of privacy there, while she has decided to decamp to the Citadelle in Québec City – her other official residence – for the summer. (On that note, it’s probably the most use the Citadelle has had continuously in quite a while). All of this makes one wonder if she wasn’t told when she was offered the position that it’s a very public role and that living in an official residence would come with issues like staff being in the building at all hours. It seems odd that she wouldn’t have known this going into the job (and possibly a sign that Justin Trudeau and his office did a terrible job in either selecting her or preparing her).

Meanwhile, I remain concerned that we’ve heard nothing from the PMO about how they’re planning to replace the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan following his untimely death this week, because the provincial government will be paralyzed until that is filled. If we had a functioning vice-regal appointments commission, there would have been more names from a short-list on record that could be drawn from fairly easily for a replacement, but now it’s an opaque box, and if there is another Judy Foote-like appointment in the works, that could be yet another self-inflicted wound for this government.

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