Tag Archives: Elections Canada

Roundup: Questions about Scheer’s assertions

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Andrew Scheer went to Calgary yesterday to talk to that city’s Chamber of Commerce and said a few things that I feel should probably stand a bit of questioning. Like the fact that he thinks it’s a “red flag” to use taxpayer funds to backstop the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline. And it’s fair that there’s scepticism about governments essentially subsidizing private business, but it’s his assertion that “governments investing tax dollars in energy projects is not the optimal solution.” Sure, it’s not optimal, but it’s complete and total historical revisionism to suggestion that this is somehow new or novel. Given the ways that governments, both federal and provincial, have de facto subsidized the development of the oilsands with generous royalty breaks and other tax incentives has been sinking a hell of a lot of taxpayer dollars into energy projects. And yes, there was a whole national crisis that had a hand in bringing down a federal government around the government sinking money into a cross-country pipeline.

But the other statement that Scheer makes that I find a bit puzzling is this continued insistence that somehow provinces were forced to “take matters into their own hands” over the Trans Mountain issue because the federal government showed a lack of leadership. And I’m still trying to figure out how this works. For starters, which provinces is he referring to? BC, which took it upon themselves to challenge federal jurisdiction in a naked attempt to appease a coalition partner? Or Alberta, who escalated tactics on the basis of a press release? “They should use all of the tools at their disposal,” Scheer insists of the federal government, and yet I’m not sure what exactly they were supposed to do. They already have jurisdiction – trying to re-assert it would imply that there was a question when there isn’t one, and creating doubt would embolden opponents. There wasn’t anything to challenge in the courts because BC had only put out a press release, and nobody even had a clue about what specific questions BC was raising until they filed their court reference this past week. How would going half-cocked have helped matters? But demanding they “use all the tools” sounds an awful lot like hand-wavey nonsense that serves to only invoke the politician’s syllogism than it does to suggest meaningful action. Kinder Morgan, meanwhile, has used this exercise in threatening to pull out in order to exact political leverage (and the fact that a private company is attempting to blackmail governments is not a good look), but there remain questions outside of all of this as to their own obligations to fulfil the conditions imposed on them by the National Energy Board for continued approval of the project. That can’t be glossed over.

I’m also curious what else he thinks the federal government should have done to silence BC’s objections, considering that he’s also supporting the Saskatchewan government’s attempt to push back against the imposition of the federal carbon backstop price. Is his position that federal governments should bigfoot provinces to get pipelines, but that they don’t dare interfere in areas of shared jurisdiction like the environment? That’s an interesting needle to thread, and somehow, I doubt we’ll see him attempting to do so anytime soon.

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QP: The sexist carbon tax

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Following meetings with the prime minister of Portugal, Justin Trudeau was in Question Period, while Andrew Scheer was absent yet again. Lisa Raitt led off, worrying about the high price of gasoline in BC, which was being “compounded” by the carbon tax. Trudeau reminded her that BC has had a price on pollution for over ten years, and that carbon pricing allows people to make better choices. Raitt went for incredulous, raising the story that Trudeau has meals prepared at 24 Sussex and messengered to Rideau Cottage, to which Trudeau noted that the Conservatives were only interested in political attacks but not action on the environment. Gérard Deltell took over in French, noting that GHG emissions went down under ten Conservatives without a carbon tax — once again, omitting that it was because Ontario shuttered their coal-fired plants and the economic downturn, rather than anything that the then-Conservative government did. Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives have no plan so they attack. Deltell asked again, and got the same answer. Raitt got back up, mentioned that the question was originally written by Gord Brown and had planned to ask it later in the week, and raised the issue of compensation for thalidomide survivors. Trudeau picked up a script to first give condolences for Brown’s death, and then added that they would have an announcement for those survivors soon. Guy Caron led off for the NDP, raising the problem of web giants creating the demise of advertising in newspapers which impacted press freedom. Trudeau took up another script to read about their support for a free press on World Press Freedom Day. Caron asked again in English, demanding those web giants be taxed, and Trudeau, sans script, reiterated his response and added that they are supporting local media via transition funding and CBC. Matthew Dubé worried about attempting to apply the Safe Third Country Agreement to the entire border, to which Trudeau said that they apply all of the rules and laws including our international obligations. Jenny Kwan asked the same in English, and got much the same answer with a slight admonishment that they were trying to create fear and conspiracy.

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Roundup: Another cry for technocracy

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After Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office weighed in on the government’s figures in advance of the election, he too finds that the province’s deficit is probably bigger than reported, as will its debt figures be. The accounting dispute between the government and its Auditor General remains in the air, while there are doubts being raised as to whether there are really surpluses in the pension funds in a meaningful sense. And it’s all done Andrew Coyne’s head in, because now he thinks that it’s time to simply take away any financial reporting away from a government, and turn it all over to a neutral, arm’s length, third-party body because the alternative is to let governments and other political parties spin and manipulate about what’s in the books. In his estimation, Auditors-General and Parliamentary Budget Officers/Fiscal Accountability Officers are of little use because their reports and opinions are not binding, who can pretend that they’re related to matters of opinion and accounting disputes, while opposition parties aren’t doing the job of accountability because they use the same torqued figures for their own purposes.

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But I think that Coyne is completely off the mark here, because he places too much faith in the words of the current watchdogs. We’ve seen examples where the Auditor General has been wrong – the Senate audit being a prime example where he was out of his depth, based a number of findings on opinion that were later overturned by a former Supreme Court of Canada justice hired to adjudicate the findings, and further legal analysis of his findings poked yet more holes in his analysis. We also see numerous examples of where the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s methodology is suspect (to say the least), but we rarely see these challenge being made public in the media because the media takes the words of these watchdogs as gospel, which should be alarming to anyone who engages in the slightest bit of critical thinking. To turn even more of our government’s fiscal processes over to yet another unaccountable technocratic body strikes fear into my heart because the people we keep demanding we turn this power over to are not infallible, and there are no ways for us to hold them to account – especially if the media refuses to do so responsibly either.

So while I can sympathise with Coyne’s frustration – and the situation in Ontario is particularly egregious, with all three parties guilty of playing along – the answer is never technocracy. We may get the governments that we deserve, but that also means that we, the voting public, need to do a better job of doing our own due diligence and demanding better, and we’re not – we’re just shrugging our way toward oblivion, which is part of the problem.

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Roundup: Detailed spending or slush fund?

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer weighed in yesterday on the government’s desire to create a $7 billion fund as part of the Estimates to get a jump start on budget promises before those spending plans can be finalized with departments and voted on in the Supplementary Estimates later in the year. The verdict? That enabling this would make it more difficult for MPs to do their duty of controlling government spending, because in their estimation, nothing obliges the government to spend that $7 billion on what is outlined in the budget annex. Government officials (on background) dispute this because they say that if they were to spend it on something other than what is laid out in the budget annex that it would constitute an unauthorized use of public funds.

“See! It’s a slush fund!” The Conservatives immediately cried and gave their little song and dance about how it’ll mean the Liberals can spend it willy-nilly on anything they want. And perhaps they should know – after all, they created a $3 billion “emergency fund” to deal with the 2008 financial crisis and wound up spending it on things like the gazebos in Tony Clement’s riding for the G8/G20 meeting when those funds were supposed to be used for border infrastructure. So is this the voice of experience talking? Good luck getting them to admit it. The NDP line, meanwhile, is that this is the Liberals trying to “suppress Parliament,” which I think you’ll have a hard time trying to find evidence for given how few actual strongarm tactics they’ve managed to engage in so far (a couple of ham-fisted moves that they’ve had to walk back from aside).

While on the one hand, I think the PBO has a point, on the other hand, it’s not a $7 billion black box, and the spending is outlined in the budget, and they can be held to account for it, which is also Parliament’s role. And given that the Estimates are basically unreadable currently and the fact that most MPs don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to them, the cynic in me wonders why they really care (other than it’s a convenient bludgeon to bash the government with). After all, I’ve watched enough times when the Commons has passed the Estimates at all stages with no actual debate or scrutiny on several occasions, leaving the actual hard work up to the Senate. Add to that, watching the Conservatives on their vote-a-thon vote against line items in the Estimates that they probably shouldn’t have shows how little attention they actually pay to the process and the contents. So would this $7 billion fund matter in the long run? Probably not. If nothing else, it’s more impetus for why we need to fix the Estimates process, to realign it with the budget and the Public Accounts, and ensure that they’re readable once again. And until that happens, I find myself having a hard time caring about this item given that there has been an attempt at due diligence that is otherwise so often lacking.

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QP: Memories of $5 fill-ups

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While Justin Trudeau was present today, Andrew Scheer was absent again. That left Lisa Raitt to lead off, who worried that the widows and single parents would be adversely affected by carbon prices. Trudeau called out the falsehoods of the Conservatives, and reminded her that Canadians expect meaningful action on the environment, which contrasted to the Conservatives. Raitt cast her mind back to when a person could put $5 in the tank and get to work, but Trudeau insisted that the Harper Conservatives didn’t get it. Raitt tried a third time, but got no different answer. Gérard Deltell took over in French, citing that the Conservative track record was to lower emissions while the was economic growth — blatantly ignoring that those reductions came from Ontario shuttering their coal-fired plants. Trudeau offered some platitudes about action versus inaction, and when Deltell repeated his “facts,” Trudeau noted that the economic growth Deltell mentioned was the worst in the G7. Guy Caron was up next, and demanded documents that proved that the government rigged the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain approval. Trudeau took up a script to read that the Federal Court of Appeal denounced the previous consultation process, and he noted their enhanced consultations and their agreements with 43 First Nations along the route. Caron tried again in English, and got the same answer. Hélène Laverdière asked if the government was attempting to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the Americans, and Trudeau took up a script to read that they have been having conversations with Americans for months, and that the Agreement helps to manage the flow of asylum seekers. Jenny Kwan asked the same in English, and Trudeau reiterated his same response.

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Roundup: A possible missed deadline on election laws

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With a ticking clock over their heads – one whose useful time may already have passed – the government unveiled a new bill yesterday to reform the country’s electoral laws, to not only roll back changes that the previous government made around voter ID, that people complained made it harder for people to vote, while also enhancing some privacy safeguards, and limiting the writ period to 50 days while imposing more spending limits on pre-writ and third-party spending (so long as there’s a fixed election date). In the event that you thought there was already a bill on the Order Paper to roll back those Conservative changes, well, you’d be right, but they’ve abandoned it and rolled those changes into this new bill – a tactic they have been using with increasing frequency for whatever reason. Of course, Conservatives are already grousing that the Liberals are trying to make voter fraud easier by reducing the ID restrictions – never mind that they were never able to prove that there were problems with the pre-existing system, with one MP being forced to apologize for misleading the House after insisting that he saw people collecting voter registration cards when he actually just made the story up. But why ruin a narrative about the Liberals trying to game the next election?

The point about timing is going to be a tough one, because ideally these changes should have been made months ago if Elections Canada was to have enough time to ensure that they’ll be in effect for 2019 – and this also has to do with their need to migrate to a new data centre in advance of that election. Why the government couldn’t get this bill out months ago – or advance the previous bill on electoral measures, for that matter – is a question that they have yet to answer. As to whether Elections Canada can make these changes in time, the fact that there is now a bill that they can look to could mean that they’ve been saved in time – maybe – but we have yet to see how long it will take for them to bring it to debate and get it to the Senate, which has been keen to both amend bills and take their time doing it.

Meanwhile, Elections Canada is working with CSE and outside contractors to provide iPads to polling stations in the next election for things like voter registration so that they can eliminate some of the paper systems at advanced polls. In other words, trying to speed up the process electronically while still keeping the paper ballots that are so necessary to have proper accountability in our system.

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QP: Applauding the ghosts of the Harper government

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While the PM was off in Vancouver to announce a new investment by Amazon, and Andrew Scheer…elsewhere (I believe Toronto), it was up to Candice Bergen to lead off today, concern trolling about the loss of foreign direct investment in Canada, and tying that to the coming federal carbon tax, demanding to know how much it would cost families. Bill Morneau replied, offering some pabulum about how great economy has been doing. Bergen sarcastically suggested that the Liberals are saying that the carbon tax will fix everything wrong with the world, to which Jim Carr noted that they have taken action through the oceans protection plan, strengthening environmental assessments, and their carbon pricing plans were all taking action, unlike the previous government. Bergen accused the government of covering up those costs, and Jim Carr read some stats about how much carbon would be reduced with their plan. Gérard Deltell took over to ask the same again in French, and Carr noted that the opposition had no plan, nor did they while they were in government. Deltell made the “cover-up” accusations in French, and Morneau stood up to offer some pabulum in French. Guy Caron was up for the NDP, and demanded to know if the government denied ordering the Kinder Morgan approval to be fixed. Carr said that he did refute it, and when Caron asked again in French, Carr pointed to all of the materials available on the website. Romeo Saganash asked the same again in French, and Carr listed consultations and engagement including the monitoring panel co-developed with Indigenous communities. Saganashed tried again in French, and Carr noted that they had made accommodations and that the conversations were meaningful.

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Roundup: On the state of federal disarray

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Yesterday, Manitoba premier Brian Pallister took to the airwaves to declare that the Canadian federation is in a state of disarray, much like Alberta’s wannabe premier Jason Kenney declared that “Canada is broken” earlier in the week. And on the face of it, one could point to places where things don’t appear to be working, where you have a nation of fiefdoms of provinces who make their own rules and who don’t talk to one another – why we don’t have proper interprovincial free trade – and all of the petty bits of provincial protectionism that still exist, 150 years later (thanks in large part to the Judicial Council of the Privy Council, which was the final court of appeal in the early days of confederation, who undermined the Founding Fathers’ goal of a more robust federal government).

But this all aside, I have to look at Pallister, Kenney, and the rest, and point out to them that they’re absolute hypocrites for saying that the country isn’t working when they’re ones who make and continue to make contradictory demands about what is and is not federal jurisdiction. In the very same breath, they’ll demand that the federal government exert its constitutional authority to get a pipeline built, while simultaneously decrying that the federal government’s imposition of a carbon price is unconstitutional – never mind the fact that the carbon price is part of the political deal that is aimed at getting that pipeline approved. In other words, exert your authority only on things that I like, but not the things I don’t. It’s so self-serving and gross, but they play too cute by half about it. Every single one of them, handily handing off responsibility to the federal government when it suits them, and using the courts as a political tool to engage in political theatre – which, by the way, is abusing the courts.

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To that end, Alberta premier Rachel Notley is offering up a very real warning – that using the courts in these ways could open up much bigger problems that would cause interprovincial gridlock, all because BC premier John Horgan is looking to protect his minority government’s confidence deal with the Green Party. And as far as reasons go for trying to further exacerbate the state of the federation, it’s not a very good or noble one, no matter how much one wraps themselves in the cause of the environment or First Nations.

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Roundup: Dumbing down the border debate

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The Conservatives were in full performative outrage mode yesterday, with a Supply Day motion to demand a plan by May 11thto stop the influx of irregular border crossers seeking asylum, and for the PM to admit that his “Welcome to Canada” tweet is the cause of the problem. It’s not going to work, but it’s indicative of the way in which they are dealing with complex issues and trying to boil them down in a way that is ultimately disingenuous, while using bogus arguments like how the backlogs in this system are slowing down legitimate immigrants and refugee claimants – the immigration stream is separate and is unlikely to be affected by this influx, and when you’re talking about “legitimate” refugees, there is a great deal of difference between resettling refugees in camps and processing the claims of those who arrive on our shores to claim asylum. Those claims, yes, are slowed down, but it’s more than just this influx that is that problem, and drawing this link is a long-time Conservative tactic of trying to play immigrants and refugees off of one another.

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For example, Michelle Rempel has been demanding that the government simply declare the whole border with the US to be an official port of entry for the purposes of the Safe Third Country Agreement, in order for us to simply turn back anyone who crosses from the US. See! Simple! It’s not like we need American sign-off to do so (because it’s their border too), and it does nothing about what has been driving this influx in the first place, which is less Trudeau’s tweet than the tweets of one Donald Trump. And while the government deployed MPs with linguistic ties to communities that were crossing previously, such as Haitians and Guatemalans, the influx we’re seeing right now has to do with Nigerians who are getting tourist visas for the US, and then using those to cross into Canada. To that end, we learned yesterday that the government has been sending officials to Nigeria to try and engage on the ground there, while also working with the Americans to try and get action from them that their tourist visas are being abused, so we’ll see if that has any measurable effect.

This isn’t to say that the current government isn’t blameless in all of this either. While they correctly point to the fact that the previous government made cuts to both the Immigration and Refugee Board and CBSA, which are reverberating to this day, they have had their own problems when it comes to not filling vacancies on the IRB because they changed the appointment process, and like virtually all of their appointment processes, the changes have slowed down the system to a crawl, and have touched off a slow-moving crisis within the whole of government and the courts. That’s on them 100 percent, and that is the problem that’s causing slowdowns with more than just refugee claimants, but also immigration appeals (and they are separate parts of the IRB, so again, it’s not just the influx of claimants causing problems for immigrants). But those aren’t the kinds of issues that the opposition is touching on with this issue, and it’s not the kind of simple solution that they’re trolling for, which is ultimately what’s harming the debate.

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Roundup: That $1 trillion figure

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The big scary headline yesterday was that Canada’s market debt had reached $1 trillion. OH NOES! screamed the commentators, and the Conservatives most especially (albeit not in Question Period, but at committee). Part of the problem with this figure, however, is how it’s being reported, and most especially, being compared to things like a household mortgage, which it is absolutely nothing like. For starters, the “market debt” figure being reported there adds a great many things into it – things like the debts of Crown Corporations like CMHC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, or Export Development Canada. These may have federal backstops, but with BDC and EDC, for example, these are important vehicles for entrepreneurs and exporters to expand their businesses, which is generally good for the economy. And you can bet that the “fiscal hawks” out there are disingenuously bundling this into the federal government’s net debt, or sub-national government debt, and giving themselves the vapours to prove a point, which isn’t necessarily helpful.

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And as much as the Conservatives are snarking at Bill Morneau over this figure, ignoring how much they added to the national debt in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 (much of the spending coming too late as the recovery had already started when they spent the money, which was also not necessarily spent efficiently) or the fact that when the Liberals took office in 2015, there was a $70 billion hole in GDP because of the mini-recession that happened in part due to the drop in oil prices. That $70 billion is largely where their increased deficit figures come from, not that they communicate this very effectively. But despite Kevin Page’s warning that interest on debt is the fastest growing line item in the federal budget, debt-to-GDP is going down, and the deficit is shrinking faster than initially reported because the economy has been growing faster than expected. Current PBO figures show that there is no debt bomb – federal figures are in a downward trajectory sustainably. I’m not sure that tearing our hair out over this $1 trillion figure is helpful, particularly because it bundles in a lot of things, and the reporting on that isn’t making it clear. It’s just a big number that people are supposed to get upset over, which helps nobody understand the true fiscal situation, of the levers that governments have to deal with it.

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