Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Enter the QP scolds

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With the return of Parliament comes the inevitable return of the sanctimonious commentary around the behaviour of MPs in the House of Commons. Already we had Scott Gilmore insisting that MPs “not be assholes,” and this eyeroll-inducing plea from Tamara Miller that goes on about grade eight students. What Miller seems to forget is that the House of Commons is not a classroom. Question Period is not a lecture or a seminar course where all sides discuss this week’s assigned reading. It’s political theatre, and it’s an exercise in holding government to account, and that isn’t always done with dry recitations of scripts and polite golf claps.

The other thing that I keep needing to drill into people is that Question Period is not the totality of what happens in the Commons. The rest of the day you are more likely to be in danger of narcolepsy than you are of hearing heckling or other boorish behaviour. Committees are generally fairly well behaved, but if there’s a contentious issue then parties will send in their ringers to put on a show when they know people are watching. It’s political theatre. Is it always pleasant? No. But most of the hours of the day aren’t anywhere near what happens in QP, and that’s fine. There is also nothing wrong with heckling per se – some of it is very legitimate, whether it’s cross-talk when ministers are saying things that aren’t true, or when they’re not answering the question but rather just reading non sequitur talking points – as happens too often. I don’t think that MPs should just sit on their hands and be silent when they’re being spun or insulted to their faces by some of what governments – regardless of stripe – pull. Does this mean that all behaviour is acceptable? No – there is a lot of behaviour that is more akin to jeering, hooting baboons than to parliamentarians, and yes, some of it is sexist and bullying, but not all of it, but it should be incumbent upon parties and the Speaker to police the excesses, but the constant tut-tutting about any heckling is frankly gag-inducing.

This having been said, should MPs behave better in QP? Sure. The clapping ban the Liberals instituted helps tremendously (when it’s obeyed – it had pretty much broken down toward the end of the last parliament), and frankly, it makes Scheer and Singh look terribly insecure by comparison if they require ovations every time they stand up to speak when Trudeau doesn’t. But honestly, I can’t think of anything worse than the way that these scolds imagine that QP should be.

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QP: Begun, this 43rd Parliament has

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The first Question Period of the 43rd Parliament just happened to be on a Friday, and for the first time in my memory, all of the leaders were present. The PM at Friday QP? Unheard of! And yet, here we are. Andrew Scheer led off in French, mini-lectern reliably on his desk, and he raised this morning’s job numbers and the 71,000 reported job losses, calling it a “crisis.” Justin Trudeau, without script, told him that their plan was about creating jobs and investing. Scheer tried again in English, and Trudeau made points particularly related to the jobs created by the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Scheer insisted that other countries were increasing investments in natural resources, and Trudeau reminded him that blaming foreign activists didn’t get pipelines built. Scheer said that of all the divisions in the country that Trudeau allegedly created, he stated that provincial premiers were united in opposition to Bill C-69, and Trudeau reminded him that the previous Harper environmental regime didn’t work and singled out two projects that continue to face delays. Scheer then worried about a vote around Israel at the UN that he called “anti-Israel,” to which Trudeau took up a script to reiterate the country’s support for Israel. Yves-François Blanchet was up for his federal debut to worry that the government ignored the call by premiers to increase health transfers to the provinces. Trudeau responded that they had committed to some increases related to getting people family doctors and implementing pharmacare. Blanchet then demanded that provincial environmental assessments get priority over federal ones, to which Trudeau spoke about partnerships on the environment. Jagmeet Singh led off for the NDP, and concern trolled that the prime minister was not brave enough to stand up to pharmaceutical companies and implement pharmacare. Trudeau, without notes, said that they were committed to pharmacare but it was an area of provincial jurisdiction and needed negotiation. Switching between English and French in the same question, Singh demanded the government stop taking Indigenous children to court, and Trudeau assured him they were committed to compensation.

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Roundup: Payette’s personal contributions

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With some adjustments to the pomp and ceremony to accommodate Parliament’s new dual-building status, the Speech from the Throne went ahead yesterday, and the speech itself was not all that exciting. There was a big focus on the environment and climate change, a whole section on reconciliation with Indigenous people, and this government’s watch words of “middle class prosperity,” and the government sprinkled just enough hints that could mollify the other opposition parties if they were looking for something to justify their support, though both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh came out to puff their chests out and declare that they weren’t happy with what was in the speech.

More concerning was the fact that the Governor General herself contributed to writing the speech, which is unusual, and dare I say a problem. Her role is to read the speech on behalf of the government, and there are centuries of parliamentary evolution as to why this is the case, but her having an active hand in writing the speech – even if it’s the introduction (and in particular the notions of everyone being in the same space-time continuum on our planetary spaceship), it’s highly irregular and problematic because it means that Payette is once again overreaching as to what her role in things actually is, and that she’s unhappy with it being ceremonial (a failure of this government doing their due diligence in appointing her when she is not suited to the task). While one of my fellow journalists speculated that this may have been what was offered in exchange for her having to read a prepared speech (something she does not like to do), it’s still a problem with lines being crossed.

And then there was the reporting afterward. When Andrew Scheer said that he was going to propose an amendment to the Speech during debate, Power & Politics in particular ran with it as though this was novel or unusual, and kept hammering on the fact that Scheer is going to propose an amendment! The problem? Amendments are how Speech from the Throne debates actually work. It’s part of the rules that over the course of the debate, the Official Opposition will move an amendment (usually something to effect of “delete everything after this point and let’s call this government garbage”) to the Address in Reply to the Speech, and the third party will propose their own sub-amendment, and most of the time, they all get voted on, and the government carries the day – because no government is going to fall on the Throne Speech. There is nothing novel or special about this, and yet “Ooh, he’s going to move an amendment!” Get. A. Grip.

And now, the hot takes on the Speech, starting with Heather Scoffield, who calls out that the Speech neglected anything around economic growth. Susan Delacourt makes note of how inward-focused this Speech is compared to its predecessor. Chris Selley lays out some of Trudeau’s improbable tasks in the Speech, as well as the one outside of it which is to play a supporting role to Freeland and her task at hand. Paul Wells clocks the vagueness in the Speech, but also the fact that they are setting up for games of political chicken in the months and years ahead.

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Roundup: Poisoning the free market well

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Last week, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning stated that conservatives across the country need to get their acts together when it comes to real environmental plans – but then made the boggling case that the Liberals and NDP had “poisoned” the notion of carbon prices, so those were off the table. I can barely even. Stephen Harper called for carbon pricing in the form of a cap-and-trade system when Stéphane Dion was calling for a carbon tax, until Harper decided that doing nothing was preferable to the actual decent plan that he had a hand in developing. For Manning to blame the Liberals and NDP for poisoning the well is more than a little rich – particularly considering that you have a center-left party adopting free market principles in carbon pricing, which you would think would overjoy a small-c conservative. But no.

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Meanwhile, the story about those conservative premiers who signed a Memorandum of Understanding about developing Small Modular Reactors? Well, it turns out that the MOU is basically about declaring interest in the hopes of forcing the federal government to invest in their research and development – so that they don’t have to put any of their own dollars up front. Add to that the temptation for them to treat this as a form of technosalvation – that they can cite it as the excuse for why they’re not doing more to reduce emissions in the short-term – and it all looks very much to be a big PR exercise. (Look surprised!)

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Roundup: Lowest cost and least economically-damaging

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The Ecofiscal Commission released their final report yesterday, and said that Canada will have to increase carbon prices to $210 per tonne by 2030 is the cheapest and most effective way to reach our climate targets, though certainly not the only way – regulation or subsidies are also possible, but less effective and far more costly. Increasing carbon prices would also mean increased rebates under the current federal backstop (but provinces could certainly recycle revenues in other ways, and some provinces could entirely eliminate their income taxes with said revenue), which would have other knock-on economic effects, but for simplicity and cost, they point toward carbon prices. (It’s worth noting that this analysis didn’t cover the output-based pricing system for large emitters, which helps take things like trade-exposure into account to provide those industries more time to adjust).

Predictably, the Conservatives freaked out and started a new round of social media shitposts about how this was the Liberal plan all along, and they would prevent the cost of everything from going up, etcetera, etcetera, but that’s a dishonest position because other models, like regulation and subsidies, drive up the costs just as much, but they tend to be passed onto consumers in a hidden way, whereas straight-up carbon pricing is transparent and makes it easier for consumers to make better choices (which addresses the demand-side of carbon emissions).

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To that end, here is the Ecofiscal Commission’s Chris Ragan making the case in his own words, while Heather Scoffield suggests that premiers Kenney and Ford should be thanking Trudeau for imposing the federal carbon backstop because it’s a less economically damaging way of reducing emissions than their plans to date have been.

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Roundup: Frivolous lawsuits that help no one

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Because climate lawsuits on behalf of youths are apparently all the rage, another one has been launched, this time against the Ford government in Ontario, because of their cancellation of the cap-and-trade system and their challenging of the federal carbon price. I can barely even.

So, to recap: Lawsuits are about getting individual remedies, and these actions are not designed to do so. They are using “novel” Charter arguments, which are an abuse of process. It’s also trying to use the courts to impose public policy solutions, which is not the job of the courts. That’s not their function, and trying to use the courts because you lost at politics is not how things work. And further to that point, the courts are already overburdened, and these kind of frivolous suits – and that’s exactly what they are – waste everyone’s time and court resources, and I would fully expect the courts to impose costs on those who brought forward these complaints that waste everyone’s time.

I spent an afternoon on the Twitter machine of being accused of not taking climate action seriously because I made these points about this lawsuit, which is not the case at all. My point – as exemplified by the (very good) lawyer who joined in the fight over Twitter, is that this is a political problem, not a legal one. You don’t use a saw to hammer a nail, which is what this lawsuit is attempting to do. The courts are not the place for this because they can’t force a government to come up with a climate change plan that meets the expectations of scientists – that’s not how life works, and it’s not how democracy works. And sure, young people are frustrated with the slow action so far, but democracy depends on people organising, and that means doing the hard work of getting involved in riding associations, changing party policy though conventions, and agitating internally to do something. And it means organising. I can’t stress this enough – organise, organise, organise. Protest votes won’t get you anywhere – and let’s face it, that’s what Green votes are. That’s how you make change in politics, and the sooner that young people realise this – and you can join parties as young as sixteen and start volunteering and voting on nominations and resolutions – the more you will be effecting meaningful change. (Want to learn more about how that works? Read my book).

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Roundup: Holding up a mythical threat

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

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

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

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Roundup: It’s Cabinet Shuffle Day!

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We are now well into Cabinet leak territory, and right now the news is that Chrystia Freeland will indeed be moving – but we don’t know where. We do know that François-Philippe Champagne will replace her at Foreign Affairs, that Pablo Rodriguez will be the new Government House Leader (after we already heard that Steven Guilbeault will take over Canadian Heritage), plus Seamus O’Regan moving to Natural Resources, that Jonathan Wilkinson is taking over Environment and Catherine McKenna will take over Infrastructure. We’re also hearing from Quebec media that Jean-Yves Duclos will take over Treasury Board, and that Mélanie Joly is due for a promotion – but no hint as to what it means otherwise. Still no word on Public Safety, which is a huge portfolio that will need a very skilled hand to deal with in the absence of Ralph Goodale.

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Meanwhile, some of the other roles that Trudeau needs to decide who are not in Cabinet will include the whip, parliamentary secretaries, and considerations for committee chairs (though he won’t have the final say on those as they are ostensibly elected by the committees themselves, and it’s the whips who largely determine who will sit on which committee). Committees are especially important in a hung parliament, so this could mean big roles for those who didn’t make it into Cabinet.

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Roundup: The Cabinet dominoes

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With the days counting down until the Cabinet shuffle, the speculation is starting to get intense, and much of it is centred around the fate of Chrystia Freeland and whether Justin Trudeau will keep her in foreign affairs or move her to a more problem-solving domestic portfolio – particularly intergovernmental affairs, and capitalizing on her Alberta upbringing as the regional representative around the table (along with Jonathan Wilkinson as the Saskatchewan representative). One of the considerations is that nobody is quite sure who might take Freeland’s place in the foreign affairs portfolio, and the dominos go from there.

Another consideration is the fact that there will need to be some additional bench strength remaining for the committee chairs, as they will be a bigger battleground in a hung parliament than under a majority, given that the opposition will now hold the majority on them. That will essentially mean that amendments for bills will become a bigger consideration at the committee stage than they were in the previous parliament (to say nothing of what happens with amendments coming from the Senate, now that the Commons can insist on adopting them if the opposition all gangs up). There will be plenty of new dynamics that need to be managed – which is why the positions of House Leader and Whip will be all the more important in this new parliament.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield has been imagining mandate letters for incoming ministers, and those released over the weekend include the international trade minister, as well as the social development minister.

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Roundup: Singh thinks he has leverage

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Yesterday it was Jagmeet Singh’s turn have his one-on-one with prime minister Justin Trudeau in advance of the Cabinet shuffle and Throne Speech, and Singh came with his own list of priorities and demands – most of them as unrealistic as Andrew Scheer’s. And Singh’s insistence that he was open to voting against the Throne Speech, and that the party was ready to go to another election at any time, was simply precious. Unable to read the room, or calculate the seat maths, Singh apparently thinks he’s going to play kingmaker when there are more willing partners on the dance floor.

To that end, Singh was demanding immediate action on pharmacare, and pretending that Trudeau hasn’t been clear that he plans to implement the Hoskins Report, which called for a universal pharmacare system. The problem is that you can’t have “immediate action” on it, because it’s actually a very complex thing. You can’t actually just say “we’ll pay for all pharmaceuticals” because the costs would be extraordinary, and phasing it in with a single national formulary is actually incredibly challenging to do, especially across all provinces and territories, because they have different formularies currently and you run the risk of reducing people’s existing coverage (as what happened in Ontario when they briefly offered pharmacare for all young people in the province). It’s going to require careful negotiation with the provinces and stakeholders, and Singh’s constant refrain that this can happen immediately is fantasyland – just like his request that they also consider adding dental care in there.

As for some his other demands, the one about more “science-based” targets for emissions reductions is pure buzz-word. Science is not public policy, and you can’t just hand-wave and go “science” because it doesn’t work like that. Demanding the government abandon its judicial review of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision on compensation for Indigenous children in care? As a lawyer, you think he would be sensitive to the concerns of bad precedent – particularly if the Tribunal did exceed their statutory authority. Energy-efficient retrofits? Electrified transit? Green jobs? It’s like they haven’t paid much attention to the Liberal climate plan and what carbon pricing does to create market incentives. Electoral reform? Apparently he didn’t pay attention to the hot garbage report that the parliamentary committee released last parliament. His “super-wealth tax”? The one that would require the government to rewrite the entire tax code to make it conform to American concepts? I’m sure they’ll get right on that. Singh has no leverage, and yet he thinks the government should simply adopt the NDP platform or have the party’s support withheld. I’m sure the government will get right on that.

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