Tag Archives: Doug Ford

Roundup: The problem with pulling out of NSICOP

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The demand for documents related to the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab reached a boiling point yesterday, as the House of Commons voted to summon the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada to the bar in the Commons to face censure – and turn over the document – while Erin O’Toole also declared that he was pulling the Conservative members from NSICOP, alleging that there is some kind of cover-up happening.

For weeks, O’Toole and Michael Chong in particular, have been trying to paint a story that these two scientists caused a national security breach at the Lab, and that there have been a string of resignations over it. There’s no actual evidence for any of this – all signs point to the firing as being over a breach of intellectual property protocols, which was coupled with the fact that there used to be a permissive culture in the Lab where scientists (especially those deemed “favourites,” and one of the two fired scientists was indeed a favourite), did whatever they wanted and staff were instructed to make it happen – but that management changes started to end that culture, and it’s currently a fairly toxic workplace. (Check out my interview with the reporter who’s been on this story for two years here). The government has insisted they can’t turn over documents because of privacy laws, and the vague notions about national security because the two were marched out by federal RCMP, without any elaboration, and this opacity just made it easier to build up conspiracy theories – especially when they could tie them into the Wuhan lab in China, were samples of other viruses were sent to.

O’Toole withdrawing from NSICOP, a mere day after new members were appointed to the committee, damages the national security oversight in this country overall. Yes, there are legitimate criticisms about how NSICOP is structured – especially when it bumps up against the realities of a hung parliament – but it could also have been used to build trust between national security agencies and MPs, so that when it came up for review in five years, they may have been able to move toward a more UK-like model where it became a parliamentary committee. (More history in this thread). Some national security experts, like Stephanie Carvin, have argued that it should have been where initial determinations about those documents could be made, especially because they could be read in context – you can’t just read national security documents cold and make sense of them. But there is an additional, cultural problem for opposition MPs in this country (of all stripes) is that they prefer to remain ignorant in order to grandstand, and that’s exactly what O’Toole did yesterday – grandstand at the expense of the trust with national security agencies, and the cause of oversight of national security by parliamentarians. Short-term partisan considerations once again take the fore. What a way to run a democracy.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1405508435521806338

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Roundup: Time allocation in perspective

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There seems to be both a sense of amnesia and of performative wailing and garment rending as the government – with the cooperation of opposition parties – has moved time allocation on its budget implementation bill, and extended sitting hours for the final few days of the sitting. The sense of amnesia is that this kind of thing happens every June, every single year (and usually again in December), and that’s how things work. There is absolutely nothing unusual about this state of affairs, and its’ very strange that certain media outlets are making this out to be something unusual. It’s not – if anything, what’s unusual is that there are so few bills that they are trying to get over the finish line in the face of opposition that has spent an extraordinary amount of effort fighting these bills with lies, red herrings, concern trolling, and a complete lack of proportionality.

The fact that the government has imposed time allocation on its budget implementation bill is not unusual, and the fact that it’s ten hours – five at report stage and five more at third reading – is also a fairly generous amount of time, especially when considered in parliamentary terms. It’s essentially two more full days of debate for a regular Tuesday or Thursday sitting day. It’s also not really “debate,” and frankly Elizabeth May’s concerns here are a bit precious – it’s MPs reciting pre-written speeches into the record, with little interaction between them, and when it comes to report stage and third reading, there is specific purpose. The bill already had seven allotted days at second reading, which is bananas – second reading should take a single afternoon because it’s supposed to be where you discuss the overall principles of the bill, and then send it off to committee. It spent thirteen hours at committee of clause-by-clause consideration – which, again, is a fair amount considering that most committee sittings are two hours – where they heard from 65 witnesses in pre-study sessions. Five hours at report stage, to discuss whether or not to adopt the amendments agreed to at committee, is an awful lot of parliamentary time. Same again with third reading, where you are giving final consideration before final passage to the Senate, is more than generous – you are no longer debating the principle, or the details – those have all been agreed to.

This narrative that it’s a “gag” and “cutting debate” is overblown in the context of what is being offered here. This isn’t an abuse of time allocation, like we saw in previous parliaments – it’s a legitimate tool in the face of procedural obstruction, and given that this is a hung parliament, the fact that at least one opposition party is agreeing to the use of this tool makes the narrative a bit silly. But that seems to be the way these things get written up, because there is a general ignorance of procedure and what it all means.

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Roundup: Atwin crosses to the Liberals

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There was a somewhat shocking turn of events yesterday as Green MP Jenica Atwin suddenly crossed the floor to the Liberals, after weeks of turmoil within the party over the policies around Israel. When Atwin made comments about Israel being an apartheid state, one of leader Annamie Paul’s advisors threatened her position, and she decided it was time to go. Remember also that the NDP have a Thing about floor-crossing, and wouldn’t have accepted her, leaving her with just the Liberals as a potential home rather than staying an Independent – no doubt increasing her chances at re-election. She insisted that all of her previous comments and votes stood, no matter that she was now a Liberal, so perhaps she will remain among the more “maverick” MPs in the caucus who don’t all toe the line in the same way.

https://twitter.com/DavidWCochrane/status/1403096836383166465

Of course, with any floor-crossing, we get the same tired chorus of voices demanding that anyone who does cross must immediately resign and run in a by-election, which is nonsense in the broader context of how our system works. We elect MPs – we don’t elect parties, even if that’s your calculation when you go into the voting booth. Why this distinction matters is because we empower MPs to act on our behalf, regardless of the party banner, and then we get to judge them for their performance in the next general election. Sometimes MPs will need to make decisions to cross the floor for a variety of reasons, but usually because it’s intolerable in their current situation, and they make the move. We empower them to do so because our electoral system gives them agency as an individual – they’re not a name off of a list because the party got x-percentage of a vote.

This absolutely matters, and we need to enshrine their ability to exercise their ultimate autonomy if we want our system to have any meaning. Otherwise we might as well just fill the seats with battle droids who cast their votes according to the leader’s wishes, and read pre-written speeches into the record that the leaders’ office provided. The trained seal effect is bad enough – we don’t need to erode any last vestiges of autonomy to please the self-righteous impulses of a few pundits who think that this kind of move is heretical or a betrayal, or worse, to appeal to the desire by certain parties (in particular the NDP) to have their power structure so centralized that they see their MPs as a mere extension of their brand rather than as individuals. Parliament means something – the ability of MPs to make ultimate decisions needs to be respected in that context.

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Roundup: Ford turns to the Notwithstanding Clause – again

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The sudden comfort with which premiers are deciding to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause is getting a bit uncomfortable, as Doug Ford decided he needed to invoke it after a court struck down his attempts to limit third-party spending in provincial elections in a somewhat arbitrary fashion (given that unions get together to form American-esque political action committees in this province). While you can find a great explainer on Ford and his particular legal challenge in this thread, the more alarming part is the apparent need to reach for the “emergency valve” of the Clause before even appealing the decision to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada.

There is a perfectly legitimate reason why the Notwithstanding Clause exists, which as to do with keeping a certain amount of parliamentary supremacy in lawmaking, and it gives governments an avenue of recourse if there is a fundamental disagreement with a court’s interpretation of legislation. But lately, it’s being invoked by premiers who know they are trying to push through objectionable legislation – François Legault did it with Bill 21, which the courts have essentially said blocks their ability to strike down any portion of the law, and he’s doing it again with his Bill 96 on trying to obliterate any bilingualism in the province (the same bill that seeks to unilaterally amend the federal constitution). Ford had threatened to invoke it to ram through his unilateral changes to Toronto City Council while they were in the middle of an election, but ultimately didn’t because of a court injunction, and his decision this time is similarly dubious. This willingness to invoke the Clause at the first sign of court challenge or on the first defeat is a very big problem for our democracy, and we should be very wary about this abuse of power, and punish these governments appropriately at the ballot box during the next elections for these decisions.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402715067083280387

In the meantime, here’s Emmett Macfarlane with more thoughts on the court decision that led to this turn of events.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402711628978720772

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402712563960455173

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1402713058913525761

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Roundup: Misconduct at CBSA? You don’t say!

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It was not really a surprise to see the news that misconduct investigations of CBSA officers has increased over the past year – even in spite of travel volumes being down precipitously over the last year – and cases included things like interfering in an immigration process, belittling clients, abusing authority and sharing private information. Partly why this isn’t a surprise for me is because I’ve been tracking some of this for a while – I’ve heard horrific stories from lawyers, and from the Senators who have been pushing for independent oversight for CBSA for years.

That independent oversight still hasn’t happened. There have been numerous bills introduced in Parliament to provide it, and the most successful to date was a Senate initiative to create an Inspector General for CBSA. This was something the Liberals used to be in support of. Ralph Goodale was set to sponsor the bill in the Commons, until he became minister for public safety, then suddenly wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. When the bill passed the Senate unanimously, no one in the House of Commons dared to sponsor it there, MPs on the Liberal side having been warned away, and Conservatives were certainly not going to sponsor a Senate Liberal bill (and the Bloc and NDP most certainly were not either). The Liberals did introduce a weak sauce version of an oversight bill at the end of the previous parliament, with no time for it to go through, then again early in the current one, which died on prorogation and hasn’t been introduced since. That version would put CBSA under the RCMP’s Civilian Complaints and Review Commission, but for all intents and purposes, CBSA would still be investigating itself, meaning that the oversight is certainly not independent (and the CCRC is having a hard enough time getting the RCMP to sign off on its own complaints, which can’t be formalized until such sign-off).

The political will for this seems to be non-existent, which is strange, considering that the Liberals did reimplement plenty of other oversight for national security institutions like CSIS and CSA, and while some of CBSA’s activities call under the ambit of the new national security oversight bodies, it doesn’t capture the oversight of all of their activities. There are known problems with CBSA, and it’s unthinkable that a law enforcement body like it doesn’t have proper civilian oversight. The disconnect is unfathomable, but puts another mark in the column of Liberals being weasels about their promises once again.

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Roundup: The choice of patios over schools

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Days after Ontario premier Doug Ford put on a dog and pony show of consulting scientists, health experts and educators about whether to re-open schools for in-person learning for the remainder of the school year, demanding consensus, Ford declared yesterday that he was going to cancel those classes – but he wanted all grades to have an outdoor graduation at the end of the year. This genius suggestion apparently came from a letter he got from a child, and he immediately headed to said child’s home to discuss it. That’s right, Ontario – not only is this province run by incompetent and unethical murderclowns, but they’re taking policy suggestions from literal children.

Pouring salt into the wound, Ford is now trying to push up his re-opening dates for the economy, immediately contradicting his handwringing that schools are too unsafe because of the variants of concern in the community, but those very same variants would be as much a threat to other businesses re-opening, so it’s neither credible nor cogent. And even if we’ve got good vaccination numbers, the hospitalisation and ICU numbers are still way too high to consider any kind of re-opening, or we’ll just repeat the same pattern we did with the previous two waves of this gods damned pandemic. But hey, he wants people to have a beer on a patio.

And we need to keep this in mind, especially when it comes time to hold Ford to account at the ballot box – he made these choices throughout the pandemic to delay, to take half-measures, to not make schools safe, to do simply try to blame-shift rather than act on areas that are under his responsibility, to sit on federal funds rather than spending them immediately and effectively to do things like expanding testing and tracing, and the economy wasn’t any better off as a result. It’s on him, as these were his choices.

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Roundup: An errant tweet begets irresponsible reporting

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As I reserve the right to grouse about bad journalism, I’m going to call out a particularly egregious CBC article that appeared over the weekend about a deleted tweet about a judicial appointment, and the way in which the story was framed, being that said potential judge was a donor to the justice minister’s nomination campaign and later to the riding association. The fact that a tweet was made and quickly deleted because the appointment process was not completed is bad form, and embarrassing for the minister’s office, but it need not be a sign that there is anything improper going on if you look at the facts in their totality. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the article omitted any context about how the appointment process is made, framed it like the minister is appointing his donors out of patronage, and got quotes from the Ethics Commissioner to “prove” that the conflict of interest rules are too lax.

The minister does not get to appoint anyone he wants on his rolodex. I mean on paper he has that ability, and constitutionally it’s his responsibility, but in practice it’s not how it works. The judicial appointments process – and I have written extensively about this – starts with lawyers applying to Judicial Appointments Committees in provinces, who then vet them and those which are deemed “Recommended” and “Highly Recommended” are forwarded to the minister’s office. At that point, there is a political vetting process because the government is politically accountable for these appointments if they go bad, but this particular process has been routinely mischaracterised both by media and the opposition – so much so that they have dragged in others on this point. In this case, it is likely that the candidate in question had passed the JAC and was forwarded to the minister’s office as either Recommended or Highly Recommended, and it was in the process of the political vetting when the errant tweet was made, but by deliberately omitting the role of the JACs in these appointments, the CBC article deliberately created a false impression for the sake of building their narrative.

It’s a problem when the media refuses to report this particular situation properly, with context of how appointments work, because they are more interested in a narrative that there is either rampant patronage, or that any lawyer who wants to be a judge should never donate to any party ever for fear of somehow tainting themselves. Political donations are part of how our system works, and it’s not a sign that someone is either a rampant partisan, or that they are trying to buy a judgeship – as the CBC seems to be alleging – especially given the donation limits in this country. Whether that is because there is an element of American political envy here, where we want to feel like we have the same problem of money in politics like they do (seriously, we do not), or whether there is a particular streak of misplaced moralism, in either case the reporting is tainted, and it’s completely irresponsible.

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Roundup: Quitting over a municipal issue

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News came down yesterday that Liberal MP Bob Bratina announced, in a bit of a huff, that he wasn’t going to run again in the next election because the government decided to fund an LRT project in Hamilton – where his riding is, and where he used to be mayor – because he’s personally opposed to the project. A certain Postmedia columnist picked up on this and insisted this was dire news for the Liberals, because they’re not even listening to their own MPs. There are counterpoints to this argument.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1394439822748659719

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1394441891937140741

This having been said, yes, we know that sometimes Trudeau and Cabinet can be deaf to caucus concerns, but in this case, Bratina is throwing a tantrum, insisting that they didn’t consult “the Hamilton guy” when the Labour minister’s riding is also in Hamilton, and the infrastructure minister, Catherine McKenna, grew up there. In other words, the voices at the Cabinet table are just as qualified to talk about Hamilton issues than the “Hamilton guy,” especially because he’s personally opposed to a project that is basically what his own party is standing up for right now – mass transit options as part of the oncoming rapid decarbonization we need to engage in if we’re going to get our GHG emissions below catastrophic levels. He should be well aware of this given it’s the party he ran for two elections in a row. If he wants to run for mayor again to oppose the project, he’s within his rights to do so.

As for said the aforementioned columnist’s coded language around “common sense” and “silent majorities,” it’s hard to square that with the current incarnation of the Liberals. In other words, it’s probably pretty safe to consider his dire warning about this as an example of concern trolling, for what it’s worth.

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Roundup: Blanchet thinks he knows when an election will be called

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The constant assertion that we are just around the corner from another election is tiresome, and yet it keeps rearing its head, sometimes in very novel ways. Yesterday, it was Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet telling a virtual meeting of Quebec municipalities that he believes an election is going to be called on August 16th, in order to avoid a federal election interfering with municipal elections in Quebec this fall – assuming, of course, that the pandemic is largely under control by then.

No, seriously.

The logic of this assertion, however, does not hold. First of all, there would be no reason for the prime minister to go to the Governor General (assuming we have a new one installed by that point – otherwise, it would be to the Chief Justice in his role as Administrator, for which the optics are very bad), and request dissolution in the middle of August. Remember that we still have fixed election date legislation, and while it’s largely useless, it does create a situation of poor optics for prime ministers or premiers who pull the trigger early. Yes, we are in a hung parliament, so a confidence vote could be lost at any point, but the Commons won’t be sitting in August. In fact, it is not scheduled to be back until September 20th, and I doubt we’re going to be having the same kinds of summer sittings like we did last year, where there was a sense of urgency, particularly around rapidly passing new pandemic spending measures. That is unlikely to be the case this summer given the place that we’re in with the pandemic. This means the government couldn’t even engineer its own defeat over the summer without a hell of a lot of effort, which seems tremendously unlikely given the circumstances. Given the poor optics of just requesting dissolution, this seems highly unlikely.

To add to this, Bill C-19 – which would allow Elections Canada to hold a safer election in the pandemic setting – only just got sent to committee this week in the Commons. Next week is a constituency week, so even if it did pass both committee and third reading the following week (unlikely), and passed the Senate the week after that (a better possibility given the speed at which they seem to be operating these days – not that it’s necessarily a good thing) then it still has a 90-day implementation period for those changes to take effect, so it wouldn’t reach that threshold until mid-September at the earliest. Again, this makes a call for an August 16th dissolution unlikely, because Elections Canada couldn’t be prepared, and even if most of the country gets their second dose by the end of September, that both cuts it uncomfortably close for when an election would be held following an August 16thdissolution, if at all given the need for more advanced voting days and so on.

Simply put, C-19 should have passed months ago in order to ensure there were proper safeguards in case something happens in this hung parliament, and a confidence vote didn’t go quite the right way. But nobody is suicidal enough to want an election right now, and that will continue to be case for much of the fall, until we can be sure that we’re out of the grip of the pandemic. Blanchet is spouting nonsense and should be called out as such.

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Roundup: Trudeau cleared, Morneau not

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The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner released his reports on Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau’s involvement in the WE Imbroglio yesterday, and came to two different results – the prime minister was cleared, but Morneau was found to have breached three sections of the Act, because he was not only personal friends with the Kielburgers (which Trudeau was not), but Morneau gave them a lot of access to his department as a result of that friendship, and offered them very preferential treatment.

On the one hand, this defused a few of the prepared talking points, but it didn’t disarm all of them. The Conservatives insist that even if he wasn’t found to have broken the rules, the system is still “broken” and needs to be made even tougher, which they are going to regret when every interaction becomes a minefield and their own members start getting caught up in impossible situations should they form government, and it misses the mark of what the current problems are. The NDP, predictably, say that this proves the Liberals only care about their “rich friends,” which I’m not sure the Kielburgers really qualify as for obvious reasons.

Of course, as I have written before, the problem is not that the rules are too lax, but rather that the Liberals in their current incarnation have a culture that believes that so long as they mean well, that the ends will justify the means. No amount of tinkering or toughening up the rules can change that because it’s a cultural problem. It also doesn’t help that the definition of “corruption” has become so broad in the Canadian discourse that penny ante bullshit is treated as a capital crime, though very curiously, grift that is out in the open in places like Queen’s Park or the Alberta Legislature are not treated with the same kinds of howling denunciations that the WE Imbroglio has been. I also have to wonder what these same howlers would do if they saw the actual corruption that takes place in other countries, because it’s on a whole other level than anything that has happened here. And on a final note, this report does not mean that WE Charity was “destroyed” for nothing. The charity hasn’t been “destroyed,” and its dubious activities were brought to light by good reporting, not Charlie Angus’ antics at committee, and that’s a good thing. This incident helped to shine that spotlight. Let’s not confuse Trudeau’s exoneration with anything else that has happened to WE in the interim.

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