Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Fair deal to direct anger

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Jason Kenney was determined to swallow much of the news cycle over the long-ish weekend (depending on where you were in the country), first by announcing on Friday that he had appointed a “fair deal” panel to look at ways in which Alberta can assert more independence – but many of those items don’t make any sense, especially as they will be more costly in the long run (or look particularly suspicious, like replacing the RCMP provincial policing contract with an Alberta Provincial Police when the RCMP is deep in investigating the UCP leadership contest corruption). In fact, the former chair of the province’s “Firewall” panel from 2003 says that this is just an exercise in blowing off steam that won’t amount to anything that they didn’t learn back then, which will be amplified over social media into promises that could never be fulfilled – which is a problem. Kenney then doubled down with a lengthy speech at the Manning Centre conference in Red Deer on Saturday, where most of these items were further listed.

This all having been said, I’m hearing from my friends and family in Alberta that Kenney’s cuts are already starting to affect them, and that anger may start to hurt him sooner than later. (Family examples: I have a nephew with special needs whose school aide’s hours are being slashed, and my brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter, and their training budget has just been decimated). I fully expect that Kenney is going to go hard on trying to direct the anger to Justin Trudeau and Ottawa in order to deflect the anger from his cuts, and you can bet that he’s going to go to absurd lengths to stoke it.

Meanwhile, here are some reality checks into the kinds of things that Kenney is proposing for his “Fair Deal” nonsense, whether it’s for the creation of their own provincial pension plan, or to collect federal taxes on their own.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1193379952961277952

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194018713629904897

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194072739243446272

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194075167506386945

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1194092599918944256

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Roundup: Making demands with a smile

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Manitoba premier Brian Pallister was in Ottawa yesterday to meet with prime minister Justin Trudeau, and to try and offer some “friendly advice” about dealing with the whole “Western anger” situation. Pallister also penned an op-ed for the Globe and Mail that was full of said “advice,” most of which was pretty dubious, but in the aftermath of his meeting, he said a bunch of things like the country can unite around climate action if they set their partisan differences aside – in other words, if the federal government abandons their plans and just lets the provinces do whatever, adding that a carbon price “isn’t the only way” to fight climate change – technically true, but it’s proven the most effective mechanism and the only one which deals with the demand-side of the problem. (In subsequent interviews, Pallister also ignored that the point of the national price is to avoid provinces from undercutting one another, which you would think might be a big deal). Pallister also made some hand-waving gestures around a municipal handgun ban given the province’s problem with violent crime, but that’s already being panned locally.

But back to Pallister’s op-ed, which was largely an exercise in blame-shifting and simple fiction. He blames the divisions on the federal government’s “economic, energy and environmental policies,” which is curious and convenient. Those policies? Bill C-69, which he blames for delays in a Manitoba flood mitigation project for which the new regime doesn’t apply. That project has been under the Harper 2012 assessment regime, which should be a clue as to why the federal government saw the need to make changes to it – not that it stops Pallister from repeating a bunch of the fictions that have been applied to the legislation by its opponents. He also counsels finishing the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is what the federal government is in the process of doing. Pipe is going in the ground. People beating their chests about it won’t make the process go any faster.

Pallister then goes on to complain about interprovincial trade barriers which is – wait for it – entirely in the hands of the provinces and not the federal government to lower. He makes mention of 34 exceptions which the federal government controls, but that’s 34 out of hundreds, and this government has set up a process to work with provinces to harmonize regulations that create barriers. They have been doing the heavy-lifting – more than the Harper government did – but it’s gone completely unacknowledged. That Pallister is shifting blame to the federal government is pretty rich when it’s the provinces who are the problem. His final “advice” for unity? Giving the provinces more money for healthcare. I’m not sure what that has to do with national unity or “healing the divisions,” but there you have it. It’s pretty clear that like Jason Kenney and Scott Moe, Pallister is trying to use the focus on this “anger” to try and leverage it to what he wants, and he won’t let the truth be a barrier for him. Just because he delivers the message with a smile doesn’t make the “advice” friendly.

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Roundup: The knives and the Reform Act

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The Conservatives are having their first post-election caucus meeting today, and there is talk that the discontent may be more serious than the public picture they’re letting on in public – not that that’s surprising. But all of the talk of forcing an early “leadership review” of Scheer rests – whether from the talk of the disaffected Conservatives, or in the public musings of Andrew Coyne and Stephen Maher to name a couple – haven’t made a very careful study of the Reform Act beyond its stated good intentions when the bill is actually garbage.

In fact, I think that relying on the Reform Act could insulate Scheer more readily than it could push him out, given that it has a relatively high threshold to trigger the caucus vote to ouster a leader, and that high threshold can be used to intimidate any would-be usurpers or those who would use the ability to hold their leader to account for his or her sins – in this case, a bad campaign based on lies, a platform that didn’t appeal to any of the target demographics or ridings that they needed to win, and the inability of said leader to articulate positions on socially conservative issues that would offer any kind of reassurance to those target demographics and regions. (And did I mention the campaign of lies?) That intimidation can make it harder for the caucus to make a clean break and get on with choosing a new leader.

This having been said, I want to push back on something that Conservative MP Chris Warkentin said on Power & Politics last night as it pertains to this Reform Act business, wherein he said that he didn’t agree with giving caucus that power because it somehow “disempowered” the grassroots (followed by the ritual motions of insisting that they are a “grassroots party” as though that were actually true). For a century now, political parties in Canada have flattered their grassroots members by pretending that letting them choose the leader is “democratic,” when all it does is obliterate accountability. It means that the leader can claim a false democratic legitimacy and centralize their power by marginalizing both the MPs in his or her caucus, and eventually marginalizing the grassroots because that power has been centralized and those grassroots become an increasingly irrelevant means of pretending to get policy advice. It’s simply become an exercise in the grassroots willingly turning over their agency and power to the very person who will undermine them, but hey, it’s “democratic.” This is the root of the problems that have developed in our system, and we can’t just keep pretending that they don’t exist because “grassroots parties” no longer resemble that.

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Roundup: A quasi-exit for May

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The other, non-Senate big news on Parliament Hill yesterday was Elizabeth May’s decision to step down as Green Party leader – sort of. She said that she would stay on as the “parliamentary leader,” but give up the mantle of big-P Party leader, and that one of her appointed deputy leaders, Jo-Ann Roberts, would be interim leader until the party could have a leadership convention – next October. May fully intends to stay on as an MP and run again as an MP (and said that she would not run for Speaker this time, but would pursue it in the next Parliament).

This particular kind of leadership dynamic is part of what ails Canadian democracy right now – this notion that there should be year-long leadership races, and that someone who doesn’t have a seat in Parliament should be leading the party in any capacity. The fact that the leader is not selected by caucus alone is one of the biggest problems with our system – it has allowed leaders to centralize power and when they get into power, that centralization rests in the PMO. And with May stepping back, and new MPs Jenica Atwin and Paul Manly also eschewing running for the role, they will again be a party where their leader is outside of Parliament, and who may or may not run for a seat anytime a byelection comes around, and they will face some of the challenges that Jagmeet Singh became all too familiar with.

There needs to be a rebalancing of leadership roles in our system, and we need to keep the party leader’s focus back on parliament, with the rest of the leadership better handled by the Party president. But what the Greens are doing now is just perpetuating what is horribly wrong with our system.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how May left on her own terms, while Paul Wells sees the end of May’s leadership as a chance for her party to overhaul its message and its organizational abilities.

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Roundup: Waiting – or not – for a Cabinet call

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One of the more interesting stories that was out first thing Friday morning was that of new NDP MP Heather McPherson, the party’s only Alberta MP, who mused openly to the CBC that she would be willing to take on a Cabinet position if prime minister Justin Trudeau offered it – but she wouldn’t cross the floor for it. Hours later, she backtracked on Twitter, saying that she obviously wouldn’t take a Cabinet position – likely because it was pointed out to her what that would entail. While this is obviously a rookie mistake, it might be worth delving into a bit more for the sake of everyone’s edification.

First of all, having an opposition MP in Cabinet – who remains an opposition MP and who hasn’t crossed the floor – is pretty much a coalition, even if you don’t want to call it that. Being in Cabinet, she would be bound to Cabinet confidentiality and solidarity, meaning that she would have to vote with the rest of the Cabinet, even if the rest of the NDP were opposed; and confidentiality could be a very sticky issue if they want to ensure that she’s not going to divulge Cabinet secrets to her caucus colleagues behind the closed doors of the caucus room (which in and of itself has its own confidentiality convention that, like Cabinet confidentiality, is intended to let the members have free discussions without then being picked off by media when their views are off-side from the rest of the Cabinet or caucus, as the case may be). Now, there are exceptions to how this can work, such as in New Zealand where they have developed a system where they could swear her in as a member of the Privy Council and bring her into Cabinet discussion where appropriate by not make her a full member of Cabinet (as they do with Green MPs in that government), but I’m not sure what the utility would be in this case, when there are better options available to Trudeau (such as appointing a Senator, which is more in keeping with our own traditions and one of the reasons why our Senate exists in the way it does). Regardless, the point is moot, and that’s as far as the thought exercise extends.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1190232873477058562

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1190247532246556672

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Roundup: Performative or procedurally correct?

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The NDP held their first post-election caucus meeting yesterday, saying goodbye to departing MPs and welcoming their rookies and returning MPs, and when they met the press afterward, Jagmeet Singh announced that he is going to press for pharmacare and for the government to abandon their application for judicial review the Human Rights Tribunal compensation for First Nations youth. But there are problems with both – on the former, he is proposing the party’s first private members’ bill be taken up with the matter, and on the latter, the substantive problems with the Tribunal likely exceeding its statutory authority to make that kind of compensation order is kind of a big deal and as a lawyer, you would think he might have an appreciation for bad jurisprudence while still pushing for the government to go ahead with the compensation that they said they would honour. But you know, performative outrage.

Which brings me back to the notion of pharmacare legislation. The whole promise is built on both bad practice and bad procedure. Remember that when it comes to private members’ bills, they are allocated by lottery, meaning that it’s random as to who gets what slot, and Singh is not proposing as leader to take away the slot of the first NDP MP whose name comes up so that he can dictate what bill will be presented. That’s not only heavy-handed, but it actively removes the independence of that MP (which the NDP is used to doing while pretending they don’t, but let’s call a spade a spade). So much for any of the issues that MP cares about – the leader demanded their spot. The second and more important aspect is that private members’ bills can’t initiate government spending, and pharmacare is provincial jurisdiction, meaning that it’s depending on negotiating with premiers. The bill, essentially, is out of order, unless it becomes an exercise in demanding a national strategy, which the NDP love to do, but one of their MPs went on TV last night to say that they intend to use it to lay out the framework they want to implement. I can pretty much guarantee you that it means the bill will be dead on arrival, and that the committee that decides on what private members’ business is voteable will decide that it’s not. (The sponsor who was forced to give up their spot for this bill will then demand that the Commons vote to override the committee, and when they don’t, the NDP will wail and gnash their teeth that the Liberals don’t care about Pharmacare, which is a script so predictable it might as well be a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie).

https://twitter.com/BradWButt/status/1189643457444417536

What the NDP could do instead is use their first Supply Day to debate a motion on Pharmacare, which would then have a vote and let them scream and moan if the Liberals don’t adopt it for the reason that they’ve already committed to the implementation plan in the Hopkins report (which the NDP decry as not being fast enough), but at least that would be procedurally sound. But their apologists have been telling me on Twitter that all private members’ bills are theatre and only exist to make a point (untrue), or that they could simply get a minister to agree to it in order to spend the funds (never going to happen), but hey, it’s a minority parliament so the NDP can pretend to dictate terms as though they actually had bargaining given the seat maths. It’s too bad that they can’t be both performative and procedurally correct.

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Roundup: It’s the same government and words matter

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Concern for civic literacy in this country took another blow as numerous media outlets started reporting that prime minister Justin Trudeau was meeting with Governor General Julie Payette to “signal his intention to form government.” They took this obviously wrong line directly from the PMO press release, but let me reiterate that it is wrong. Worse, Power & Politics said that Trudeau went to Payette to ask permission to form a government, which is so wrong that it should make the walls bleed with anguish. Payette doesn’t give permission. Trudeau is already the prime minister and the election doesn’t change that. Government doesn’t change – it merely carries over into a new parliament. What Trudeau was really doing was meeting about his intentions for the upcoming parliament, including when he would like her to summon it – but this was not actually or accurately communicated to Canadians. And true, he could have theatrically resigned and got sworn in again, but that would be both counterproductive and dumb, but again, this is the language that we’re using to describe this routine bit of government business.

Shortly thereafter was news that Trudeau had tapped Canadian ambassador to France, Isabel Hudon, and Anne McLellan, for his “transition” to his “second term,” at which point my head exploded because there is nothing to transition, and we don’t have “terms” in Canada. He may be shuffling his Cabinet, and there may be shakeups in PMO or in their Machinery of Government shop, but it’s the same ministry. There is nothing to actually transition to or from. It’s just a Cabinet shuffle. And again, this was not accurately communicated nor explained to Canadians.

There are clear concepts in Westminster parliaments that are not being accurately described, either by the hapless fools in Trudeau’s PMO, or by any of the media bureaux, who should know better. We are inundated with Americana politically, and there are so many people – both politicians and journalists – who want to playact American politics in Canada because it’s “fun” or “sexy,” when we’re a different country with a very different system, and “borrowing” terms or concepts (or in the case of the NDP, entire election planks that don’t make sense) that don’t actually translate here don’t help anyone. Instead, they create confusion that bad actors exploit to their own purposes, who know that they won’t be corrected when they deliberately misconstrue things. This is a problem, and would that our media outlets could see that this is a problem that they have the power to fix – but they don’t, and here we are. Do better, everyone. Seriously.

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Roundup: Brad Wall’s basic nonsense

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Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall penned an op-ed for the National Post yesterday that, amidst quoting some classic rock lyrics, repeated a bunch of debunked mythology about pipelines that never happened, the federal price on carbon, Bills C-48 and C-69, and even pulse exports to India. (Seriously – does Wall not read anything?) But amidst this pile of false narratives, Wall decided to make a few “suggestions” about how to mollify Alberta and Saskatchewan, which included the non-starters of letting the provinces set their own carbon price on heavy emitters (effectively ignoring the whole point of the national price is to ensure that provinces don’t undercut one another in a race to the bottom), an “equalization rebate” which is not actually equalization – and worse, wants to offload the environmental liabilities of orphan well clean-up to the federal government under the guise of said “equalization rebates.” (Seriously, the Supreme Court just months ago said that the responsibility for orphan wells can’t just be offloaded because of bankruptcy, and companies need to be responsible for remediating them, because we have a polluter pays principle in this country). Wall also demanded that Trans Mountain be completed and privatized with a significant portion going to First Nations interests (why the privatization matters to him I’m not entirely certain), and amendments to C-48 and C-69 to ensure that pipelines can get to the West Coast – even though that would seem to undermine the fact that all projects need to undergo a proper assessment. Suffice to say, the demands for a “fairer deal” with the federation are generally built on false premises, such as lies about how equalization works, and a sense of grievance that no amount of capitulation will actually solve. (Ask Brian Mulroney about that one).

For a reality check, the Hill Times consulted with professor Andrew Leach about all of the claims that Trudeau single-handedly destroyed Alberta’s economy – complete bunk, of course – but it has some good facts in here about the context of the oil price crash, and the demands for MOAR PIPELINES! when there won’t be enough production capacity to build yet more pipelines once the TMX expansion, Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL all finish construction.

Meanwhile, Wall’s successor, Scott Moe, is warning that the separatist talk is “alive and happening.” I’m going to call bullshit – only a few loudmouths and swivel-eyed loons are talking about it, and not seriously. Ordinary people simply vent frustrations because they’re being fed a diet of lies and snake oil, which is what Jason Kenney and Moe want – people to be angry at Justin Trudeau, so that their attention can be safely elsewhere.

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Roundup: Considerations on Trudeau’s Alberta problem

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Talk about what Justin Trudeau is going to do about his Alberta/Saskatchewan problem continues to swirl, with few answers so far. Alison Redford says she’s willing to help in some capacity – not that she’s been asked yet – but I guess we’ll see if there has been enough time and space from her aura of power problem that led to her ouster. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé with some important thoughts about the issue:

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188550490084257792

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188551735398277121

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https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1188558518300872704

Meanwhile, Carla Qualtrough says all options are on the table which can include some changes to equalization, but as this piece explains, there is so much misinformation about how equalization works that it’s important we separate facts from lies about it – and there are a whole lot of bad actors, Jason Kenney chief among them, lying about the programme in order to stir up anger that he hopes to use to his advantage.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1188507654605430785

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Roundup: Judicially-determined science

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One of the lesser-reported stories yesterday was the fact that a group of youths “launched” a lawsuit in Federal Court against the government to claim that their Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person are being violated by the lack of climate change action, and want the courts to mandate the government implement a climate plan “using the best available science.” Well, it wasn’t really the youths themselves, but a group of lawyers and activists who are using a group of children and teens as the face of their campaign, because teen climate prophetesses are so hot right now.

The problem with this tactic, however, is the two-fold – one, that it’s going to be an exceedingly difficult argument that just because these specific youth had contracted ailments that could be climate-related (such as Lyme disease), it’s hard to make a generalized Section 7 argument as it relates to climate change; and two, this is public policy and should not be justiciable in the same way that Criminal Code provisions are where they touch social issues. Why? Because it shouldn’t be up to the courts to determine whether or not the government is living up to their climate change obligations. Are judges also climate scientists, or economists specializing in this area? The whole “best available science” line sounds good, but it’s hugely subjective as to how you reach those goals mandated by “science,” particularly when it comes to not devastating the economy and the livelihoods of millions of Canadians. How does a judge determine what the correct public policy should be? They don’t, but that’s what is being asked of them to determine here.

More to the point, this is yet another example of people trying to going to the courts when they lose at politics. Why I’m not surprised by this tactic being used by climate activists is because that Extinction Rebellion group is demanding the suspension of democracy to deal with the climate crisis, which should be alarming to anyone who follows their rhetoric. Trying to get judges to make policy determinations is just as much of a problem, and I eagerly await the Federal Court telling them to go drop on their heads.

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