Tag Archives: Elections Canada

Roundup: It’s not really a $300/tonne price

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A “secret memo” has been floating around from a couple of different news organizations, which purports to claim that a $300/tonne carbon price would be required to reach our emissions reduction targets, and of course, opponents of carbon pricing are lighting their hair on fire and saying “See! The Liberals are trying to destroy the energy industry!” And so on. Except that’s not what it says. It says that if no other measures were taken, that’s what the carbon price would be, but those are the only measures we’re taking. We’re doing a bunch of things with regulations and other programmes, not to mention that carbon prices can be the incentive by which industries will innovate and look for ways to reduce their emissions as it becomes a price incentive. You know, a free market mechanism instead of the heavy hand of government regulation. Regardless, the National Post version of the story has a bunch of perspective sauce, much of it courtesy of Andrew Leach, and I’ll leave you with some of his added Twitter commentary on the matter, much of it directed to Jason Kenney and Brian Jean in Alberta who are using this as “proof” that carbon pricing is ineffective and/or some nefarious scheme.

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Roundup: Worst instincts for second-choice votes

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As the Trumpocalypse serves up another “totally not just Muslims” travel ban south of the border, immigration references in the Conservative leadership race are certainly starting to pick up steam. Maxime Bernier started dropping not-so-coded references to “radical proponents of multiculturalism” who want to “forcibly change” the cultural character of the country (no, seriously), while Kellie Leitch offers up some of the questions her “values test” would include. Because you know, it’s totally not like people aren’t going to lie about the obvious answers or anything. Meanwhile, Deepak Obhrai says that statements like Leitch’s is creating an environment that could get immigrants killed, in case you worried that things aren’t getting dramatic. Oh, and to top it off, Andrew Scheer has a “survey” about terrorism that he wants people to weigh in on, and it’s about as well thought-out as you can expect.

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/838798221501673473

While John Ibbitson writes about how the Conservative leadership candidates’ anti-immigrant rhetoric is a path to oblivion for the party, I would also add this Twitter thread from Emmett Macfarlane, which offers up a reminder about how our immigration system in this country actually works, because facts should matter in these kinds of debates.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/838879309829967874

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/838879524888670208

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/838879901725900800

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/838881353940750339

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Senate QP: Karina Gould brings the vague

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After the House of Commons voted down the NDP motion to condemn the government for abandoning their electoral reform promise, minister of democratic institutions Karina Gould headed down the hall to the Other Place to answer questions there. Senator Carignan led off, asking about her new mandate letter, and Gould answered in generalities. Carignan followed-up asking about her plans for reforming the Senate, and Gould mentioned the new appointment system put into her place by her predecessor, and that she was waiting to read the report of the Senate Modernisation committee and to work together.

Senator Frum asked about loopholes that allow foreign money to be used in elections by registered third parties, and Gould spoke circles around financing laws but didn’t give much in the way of an answer regarding a loophole. Frum pushed on the notion that there was a possibility of foreign funds getting into the system, and Gould said she would look into it but it wasn’t something she had really come across.

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QP: Programming opposite Trudeau-Trump

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With Trudeau away at the White House, it was still surprisingly busy in the Commons with most of the desks filled, but not all of the leaders were present. Rona Ambrose led off with the case of Vincent Li, didn’t mention his schizophrenia, and worried about the government looking to end the bulk of mandatory minimum sentences. Jody Wilson-Raybould reminded her that the review boards determined when those found not criminally responsible were eligible for release and discharge when people were deemed not criminally responsible. Ambrose decried that Trudeau voted against Conservative legislation that would ensure that people like Li were locked up for life, but Wilson-Raybould didn’t take the bait, and spoke in generalities about the need for broader criminal justice reform. Ambrose then raised the issue of carbon taxes, claiming that they would lead to jobs flowing south, to which Scott Brison reminded her that while they have had positive job numbers, the global economy is sluggish and they were working to stimulate growth. Luc Berthold then rose for a pair of questions in French to demand that the government lower business taxes and cut carbon taxes. For his first question, François-Philippe Champagne reminded him of their focus on trade, and for his second, Brison repeated his previous response in French. Jenny Kwan led off for the NDP, demanding an end to the safe third country agreement, to which Ahmed Hussen told her that there was no evidence that the US travel ban was having an impact on the agreement. Hélène Laverdière pointed out the illegal border crossing happening, and Hussen repeated his point that the executive order had to do with resettled refugees, not claimants. Laverdière brought up the case of a Quebecker refused entry into the US, to which Dominic LeBlanc reminded her that the US has the sovereign power to decide who goes into their territory but people could bring up concerns with them. Jenny Kwan asked the same again in English, and got the same answer.

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Roundup: Dealing with disappointment

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As the tears and recriminations continue over Justin Trudeau’s decision to scrap his electoral reform pledge, we’re seeing a number of pretty dubious messages emerging from those doing the wailing and gnashing of teeth. For as much as Elizabeth May shed tears about how this was a betrayal of youth voters, Justin Trudeau went before a crowd of university students yesterday and nary a word was spoken from those “betrayed” youths about electoral reform. Oops. I’m also a little disturbed by the point that has been made repeatedly by the likes of May, and Ed Broadbent on national television, that somehow the feminist Trudeau was shoving young women ministers “under the bus” over his broken pledge. One has to point out, however, that there is a bit of a sexist undertone to that bit of concern trolling, implying that neither minister was capable of handling themselves on this file, and it ignores that Maryam Monsef was effectively promoted for her performance, going from a make-work office out of PCO to a line department with a big agenda along with added responsibilities for assisting the minister of heritage, while Karina Gould was handed a pretty big new file to tackle in the democratic institutions portfolio, being the very real concerns about cyber-security in our electoral system. And if you don’t think that’s a problem, look at the fact that the BC Liberals suffered a major data breach over the weekend that compromised the files of countless voters.

And then there’s the cynicism argument. Not only have the youth been betrayed by this move, but this breeds cynicism because the rug has been pulled out from those who were engaged in the process, and we have studies that show that people get disengaged when they have bad experiences. But I’m going to challenge that a bit, because as much as you had a group of people that were engaged by the process, the vast majority who have been vocal about it have been selective in their reading about what went on. People insist there was consensus in the report, but the fact that every party walked back on what it said shows that it was not actually consensus. PR advocates not only stacked the witness lists, but most over-read the mandate of the committee and gave some particularly creative interpretations of just what Trudeau’s electoral promise was, deciding that it meant that their preferred system was the only acceptable outcome – in other words, they have only been hearing what they want to hear. When they don’t get it, they blame others for breeding cynicism. As for the disengagement brought on by disappointment, I’ve read those studies too and the common denominator that I found was that much of that disappointment is brought on by the fact that people don’t know how the system works. They get discouraged because they approach the wrong level of government to deal with a particular problem, or that they are simply impatient to deal with the waiting lists caused by limited resources. I get that unrealistic promises might be disappointing when they don’t happen, but people need to be better educated to know when promises are disappointed so that their expectations can be tempered (though politicians should know better than to make stupid promises in the first place).

Meanwhile, I will point you to a must-read, which is a post by UBC political scientist Christopher Kam, who writes a spectacular takedown of an NDP ten-percenter extolling the virtues of proportional representation. It not only takes it apart piece by piece, but provides a good fact-check on some of the PR talking points that were circulating during the electoral reform committee hearings, including debunking some of the studies that were cited continuously to “prove” the points about how great PR governments are.

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Roundup: Dragging in the GG

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The performative outrage against Trudeau’s Castro comments reached a new low yesterday with the announcement that the Governor General would be attending the commemoration in Havana as the Canadian representative. Despite not being a leadership candidate (thus far), Conservative MP Michelle Rempel took to Twitter to perform some more outrage, and dropped these particular gems.

It wasn’t so much that my head exploded. More like a piece of my soul died in utter exasperation because I know for a fact that she knows better. Misrepresenting the role of the Governor General is a particularly terrible thing to do, particularly giving the impression that you can write to him (or worse, the Queen) and he’ll somehow override the Prime Minister and the government of the day for your own partisan benefit. No, it doesn’t work that way, and its antithetical to the entire foundation of our system of government. And giving your follows completely the wrong impression about how Responsible Government works for the sake of some temporary passing performative outrage for the issue of the day is particularly heinous because it poisons the well. And this is what trying to stir up populist outrage does – it poisons the well for all of politics, particularly when you misrepresent things for temporary advantage. I get that there is political theatre, and that in the age of social media you need to be performative to a degree, but for the love of all the gods on Olympus stop undermining the whole system. When you stir up this hornet’s nest, it will come and bite you just as much as it does the government of the day, and we will all be left with a giant mess like we’re seeing south of the border. This is not something we want to import or emulate, no matter how many points you think it will win you temporarily. Only madness lies along this path, and the damage is insidious and incalculable, particularly when it comes from people who actually know better. It’s not a game. Stop treating it like it is.

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Roundup: Suck it up and fix 24 Sussex

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Since this is apparently my week for being cranky about stuff, I’ll turn my ire today on the various naysayers regarding renovations to 24 Sussex. And I’m going to say off the bat that they need to basically shut it and just fork out the money because guess what, we have obligations in this country to both official residences and heritage buildings, and we have to stop being so petty about it. What becomes clear in the more detailed breakdown of the options available that was posted in The Huffington Post was that a lot of these additional costs are not about the building, but rather they are about security. That’s part of why I find the demands that they have a residence that will be open to tourists to be boggling, because I’m not sure what purpose that serves. Of the other official residences, only Rideau Hall and the Citadel are partially open to the public, and even then in fairly controlled circumstances, and those are also working residences – something that 24 Sussex, Stornoway, the Farm and Harrington Lake are not. And why 24 Sussex should have the capacity for state dinners is also a bit baffling because the PM doesn’t host state dinners – the Governor General does. That’s his job as representative of our head of state (being the Queen). Can some official dinners be held at 24 Sussex? Sure. But not state dinners. I also find the fact that they’re even exploring the possibility of turning 24 Sussex into a working residence to be boggling, right up to including a $562 million option of abandoning 24 Sussex in favour of taking over the National Research Council’s headquarters at 100 Sussex and turning that into a Canadian White House with PMO offices on top of an official residence. Baffling, really.

So while the calls to bulldoze 24 Sussex return in force thanks to performative cheap outrage, and we clutch our pearls at the ongoing maintenance costs of the building being vacant while the property itself doesn’t increase in value, I say we stop trying to turn this into a tourist trap or working residence, which means not building an annex over the pool house to turn it into an apartment so the main house becomes something they don’t live in, and instead just focus on renovating the house itself and keeping it strictly as an official residence. And no, we can’t just bulldoze it because it is an important heritage property, and would still be even if it didn’t house prime ministers, but it does, so now we are obligated to deal with it the right way. In fact, I say we restore its façade to its original, pre-1950s features to better respect its heritage and history. Add to that, we should not only better empower the NCC to protect our official residences and heritage properties so as to let successive prime ministers (and opposition leaders and Speakers) know that it’s not up to their discretion when renovations need to be done to these properties, but we should also empower them to go after the previous inhabitants for negligence in allowing the property to decay this much. Maybe that will send a message.

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Roundup: Crying wolf on fundraising

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I’m starting to feel like a bit of history repeating again as I get cranky over yet more clutched pearls about so-called “cash for access” or “pay to play” fundraisers, which are nothing of the sort. Cabinet ministers are not soliciting stakeholders for tens of thousands of dollars of donations to meet fundraising targets. This is a government whose penchant for consultation means that there are multiple avenues of access for said stakeholders that they need not pony up to ministerial shakedowns in order to get meetings. And this latest allegation, that somehow “communist billionaires” from China got preferential access for $1500 (they didn’t pay as they can’t donate since they aren’t Canadian citizens) stretches credulity, and taking the cake is this hysteria about a donation made to the Trudeau Foundation. You know, a foundation that the Prime Minister is not a part of, and is a registered charity, which the PM sees no enrichment from in the slightest. That wealthy donors also contributed to the foundation, a statue of Trudeau’s father (again, where is the actual enrichment?) and to law school scholarship at McGill (Trudeau did not go to McGill law school) doesn’t have any particular relevance to him or government business, so even on the face of it, where is the conflict of interest? And don’t tell me that there’s a “perception” because if you actually look at the facts and not just go “Hmm, Justin Trudeau…Trudeau Foundation… Yup, sounds fishy to me,” then you’d realise that this is bunk. But no. Here we are, yet again, trying to make hay over activities that are reported, above board, and not actual conflicts of interest beyond people yelling “smell test!” and “appearance!” with no actual facts. And let me again remind you that the Chief Electoral Officer himself noted that our current donation levels are fine, and lowering them will mean money starts to move underground, which we do not want. And if you bring up the Ethics Commissioner calling these events “unsavoury,” let me also remind you that she wants all gifts to MPs registered at an extremely low threshold, meaning a massive amount of more compliance paperwork which MPs themselves have balked at, and the Lobbying Commissioner’s investigation is because people have brought this to her attention, and it doesn’t mean that she has found anything amiss. Honestly, stop lighting your hair on fire over innuendo. You’re currently crying wolf, and when any real impropriety happens, you risk it being shrugged off after any number of previous false alarms.

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Roundup: Partisan crybabies and skewered straw men

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As machinations and protestations go, the current drama in the Senate is starting to try my patience, particularly because so many of the players seem to be getting drawn off onto silly tangents at the expense of the bigger picture. In particular, the Conservative senators continuing to push this conspiracy theory that all new independent senators are just Liberals in-all-but-name is really, really throwing them off the message that Senator Peter Harder is trying to destroy the Westminster traditions of the Senate, and has a stated goal of removing any sense of official opposition from the Chamber. But when the complaints about Harder’s machinations are drowned out by their conspiracy theorizing, they’re only harming their arguments by making themselves look petty. And it is concerning what Harder has been up to, his latest move being a closed-door meeting for all senators to “discuss short-term and long-term government business.” Add to this are a number of the more established independent senators, who previously felt shut out, excusing Harder’s actions because he’s trying to bring them in, oblivious to the fact that this is how he’s trying to build his little empire.

Add to this conversation comes former senator Hugh Segal who penned an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen, bravely skewering straw men all around him about those darned partisan senators not giving up committee spots to independent senators (when he knows full well that it’s an ongoing process and that committees don’t get reconstituted until after a prorogation), and coming to the defence of Harder, with whom he worked together all of those years ago during the Mulroney government before Harder transitioned to the civil service. Poor Peter Harder, whose budget has been cruelly limited by all of those partisan senators and how he can’t get the same budget as Leaders of the Government in the Senate past (never mind that Harder has no caucus to manage, nor is he a cabinet minister as the Government Leader post is ostensibly). Gosh, the partisan senators are just being so unfair to him. Oh, please.

So long as people are content to treat this as partisan crybabies jealously guarding their territory, we’re being kept blind as to what Harder’s attempts to reshape the Senate are going to lead to. His attempts to dismantle the Westminster structure are not about making the chamber more independent – it’s about weakening the opposition to the government’s agenda. Trying to organise coherent opposition amongst 101 loose fish is not going to cut it, and Harder knows it. The Senate’s role as a check on the government is about to take a serious blow so long as people believe Harder’s revisionist history and back-patting about how great a non-partisan Senate would be. Undermining parliament is serious business, and we shouldn’t let them get away with it because we think it’s cute that it’s making the partisans angry.

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Roundup: Expat voting just fine as is

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Democratic institutions minister Maryam Monsef is saying that she plans to table new legislation around expat voting by the end of the year, and I’m going to come right out and say that while I know it’s not really popular to say so, I’m actually not sure that a five-year time limit for expats is so bad, because of the way that our voting system operates. To be more specific, our electoral system depends on your voting in one of 338 ridings to elect a local representative. You’ve not voting for the party banner or the party leader – you’re voting for the representative, regardless of what your particular electoral calculation is when you’re in the voting booth. And as an expat who has been out of the country – and in particular that riding – for more than five years, does it really make sense for you to continue to cast a ballot in said riding if you don’t actually live there?

And this is the part where people start shouting about their right to vote, which is all well and good, but again I go back to the central premise – how can you vote for a representative in a riding if you don’t live there, and almost certainly don’t know who is actually on the ballot? And don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter, that the majority of people vote based on the party or the leader, because it actually does matter. Our system is constructed in a way that ensures maximum accountability (and that accountability is currently wounded by the rules around party leadership selection, but that’s another story for another day), and that means accountability for the MP who was selected in that riding election for that seat (and yes, each riding is a separate election), and later in the House of Commons, when the government is responsible to the whole of the Chamber to maintain confidence to continue governing. And this is where expat voting gets complicated. How can someone who doesn’t live in the riding know what is going on, and whether the MP is doing a good job or not? Sure, a few expats maintain close enough ties, but I would venture that the vast majority don’t, and that the vast majority are looking to cast a special ballot based solely on party or leader preference, but that’s not how the system works, and yes, that’s important because democracy is process. The vote has to have a proper meaning, and that meaning is for the individual MP to fill the individual seat. This is not the United States where people ostensibly cast a direct ballot for the presidency (which again is complicated by their electoral college), but that makes a special ballot for expats a simpler affair. (They also impose taxes on expats, which Canada doesn’t). What about the voter rolls, where expats would ostensibly be listed at an address where they no longer live? How does that actually work in practical terms without creating yet more headaches for Elections Canada? Unless Maryam Monsef can thread the needle to demonstrate how expats can still vote within our current system in an effective manner which means voting for a candidate in a riding, I’m having a hard time seeing how dropping the five-year rule is either beneficial, practical, or even responsible. (And yes, I’m sure that I’m a monster for thinking so).

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