Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Unserious knee-jerk suggestions

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As expected, some of the sillier suggestions for avoiding future SNC-Lavalin-type Affairs have started cropping up, and yesterday, Policy Options hosted one from the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. His suggestions? Splitting the role of Attorney General and Justice Minister, and to ban omnibus bills.

On the former, it’s clear that he didn’t actually read the McLellan report beyond the headlines, because he would have seen – as Paul Wells pointed out so ably in his own piece – that the guidelines that McLellan puts forward in the report would have prevented this whole sordid affair before it got off the ground. (Side note: It may not have prevented Jody Wilson-Raybould from being shuffled, given the lack of competence she had demonstrated in the role overall, and Scott Brison was going to retire regardless, so that likely would have happened, but the fallout may not have gone quite the same way). There is no reason given in the Policy Options piece for rejecting McLellan’s advice – just that the whole Affair has damaged the public confidence. So that gets a failing grade.

As for the suggestion to ban omnibus bills, he doesn’t quite grasp the magnitude of the suggestion. He claims, not incorrectly, that they exist for the sake of efficiency, but that efficiency is largely because there are many pieces of legislation every year, where if you introduced individual bills for each component – such as around technical changes in a budget implementation bill – Parliament would grind to a halt. There is a time and a place for omnibus bills – the difference is when they are being used abusively. The Conservatives stuffing changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act into a budget implementation bill? That’s abusive. The Deferred Prosecution Agreement provisions being put into the budget bill? It’s borderline, but it wasn’t hidden or snuck through – it was in plain sight, the committees in both Houses each saw it and dealt with them (albeit less effectively on the Commons side), and the Commons has new rules to deal with splitting up votes on omnibus bills. Ironically, if the DPA legislation had been put forward as a separate bill, it likely would have languished until swallowed up by an omnibus justice bill, as happened to several other criminal justice reform bills over the course of the last parliament (speaking of Wilson-Raybould’s ability to manage her own bills). But the suggestion to simply ban all omnibus bills is unserious and jejune, and a perfect example of the kind of knee-jerk suggestions we’re going to see plenty of in the days ahead.

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Roundup: The inevitable committee bat-signal

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And now, the hangover from Wednesday’s Ethics Commissioner’s report, starting with the inevitable demand from the opposition parties that the Commons Ethics Committee reconvene for an emergency meeting to hear from the Commissioner, plus a list of witnesses, to fully explore the whole thing in front of the cameras yet again. And while a meeting has been called for next Wednesday, it will inevitably be that the Liberals on the committee (or rather, those from nearby ridings who have come to the meeting to fill the seats) will say that with the report, we’ve heard everything we need to and Canadians can make a decision in October, and deny permission for the meeting, which will then be followed by the other parties bemoaning the cover-up and secrecy, and then we’ll move onto campaigning. As you do.

Elsewhere, we heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould who said that the revelations about how deeply SNC-Lavalin was working with the department of finance was a surprise to her. Jane Philpott said she felt sad by the whole affair, and troubled by the attempts to discredit Wilson-Raybould in the prime minister’s submissions to the Commissioner, and she thinks an apology is warranted. Trudeau, however, is steadfastly not doing so. Mario Dion thinks that his office needs the power to levy sanctions for breaches like this one, as there currently aren’t any. SNC-Lavalin will be carrying on with their Federal Court of Appeal bid to get judicial review for the Director of Public Prosecution’s decision not go discuss a DPA with them.

Another emerging theme from this whole sordid affair is the issue of the post-retirement careers of Supreme Court of Canada justices, several of whom became embroiled in the affair. Amid calls for new rules around what constitutes proper activities for these retired justices, there does seem to be a recognition by the current Chief Justice and the Canadian Judicial Council that there may be an issue, and they are having these discussions.

Meanwhile, Chris Selley notes that the Commissioner’s report seems to impugn the way that governments do business, especially when they make a big deal about investing in a company and showing up with a giant novelty cheque (though we’ve seen a lot fewer of those under this government than the previous one) – and he thinks it’s about time. Law professor Errol Mendes details how Dion has made a serious misinterpretation of his enabling legislation and jurisdiction in the creation of this report, which should be concerning (and We The Media need to be far less deferential to Officers of Parliament because they are not always right).

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Roundup: The bitumen-soaked petard

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Probably the most important piece you could read from yesterday’s offerings was this analysis from energy economist Andrew Leach, who dismantled much of the logic behind the Conservative environmental “plan” that Andrew Scheer was so proud of. Aside from the fact that it lacks detail, it’s full of contradictions (such as eschewing carbon taxes, and yet does largely the same thing with large emitters), and a lot of things that don’t make sense. Leach not only calls out the fact that the “plan” is full of straw men and distractions (such as the focus on raw sewage), but probably most devastating is that he punches holes in the plan for the Canada Clean Brand™ that Scheer is trying to promote – the notion that Canadian products are “cleaner” and should displace those abroad, thus keeping Canadian jobs and still (ostensibly) lowering emissions. And while that may be true enough with aluminium, it’s certainly not for our oil exports, which kind of blows the whole thing out of the water. Oops.

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Roundup: On feeding the loons

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I try not to do that hackneyed “slow news day?” thing, however I am forced to question the editorial judgment at Global’s Calgary bureau after they reported on a supposed new “separatist” group meeting in Alberta, who are shaking their fist at clouds – err, I mean throwing a temper tantrum about some perceived slights. The apparent “newsworthiness” of this event is the fact that there was a bullshit poll out last week that said that as many as a quarter of Albertans could support separation, and Jay Hill, one-time Alberta separatist, says that Justin Trudeau being re-elected could make that fifty percent.

That sound was my eyes rolling so hard. And then again when John Ivison tweeted this gem.

What could possibly different about Scotland than Alberta? Could it be that Scotland once used to be its own country? Could it be that they have a distinct language and culture? That they already field their own sports teams in international competitions? That they’re not landlocked? Colby Cosh wrote about this not two weeks ago – there is no coherence in the argument for Alberta separatism, and they can’t even take their own argument seriously.

Let’s call this what it is – extortion, blackmail, and a campaign of lies fomented by the likes of Jason Kenney who is stoking it to keep his base angry, because the moment they realize that they’ve run out of external enemies to blame their problems on, the moment they’ll turn on him because he hasn’t been able to deliver on any of his snake oil promises. And Kenney is using these swivel-eyed loons as a straw man – the whole “I’m not a separatist, but Justin Trudeau is stoking the sentiment” defence. It’s just more lies, and We The Media don’t have to keep giving them oxygen. We don’t have to pay attention to these loons – especially if they’re going to call themselves moronic things like “Wexit Alberta.”

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Roundup: Whinging on the way out

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Once again, the brave political culture of Ottawa manifests itself with another column featuring anonymous MPs complaining to credulous columnists about how terrible their lives are, this time courtesy of John Ivison, who transcribes the miseries of Liberal MPs who aren’t running again about how everything is centralized in the PMO, that they’re being placated with busywork in committees, and the humiliation of being forced to memorize softball scripts to read in QP. And it’s all just so tiresome, because the vast majority of this is just learned helplessness.

I have increasingly less patience for this kind of anonymous whinging from MPs because they have all the power to change their situation if they wanted to do anything about it, but they instead learn to simply accept their situation even though they can change it. They don’t have to take the orders from the PMO if they think it’s humiliating or degrading. They don’t have to ask the questions prepared for them by PMO for QP – they can ask their own. The key is that they need their fellow backbenchers to back them up, and behave similarly. If you think the prime minister is going to throw a tantrum and threaten to not sign the nominations of his whole backbench, well, you’d be mistaken. They have this power. But instead they whinge to columnists about how unfair their lot in life is, never mind that they made this bed, and if they really wanted to change things, they would take back their power and stop electing leaders in quasi-presidential primaries that only serves to give them a false sense of “democratic legitimacy” at the expense of MPs. Again, they have the power to change this if they really wanted to.

As for these columnists, I would add that they need to get over this jejune notion that just letting MPs do more private members’ business will solve things. It won’t. In fact, it will probably just make things worse, because it will just bottleneck in the Senate, and MPs will spend more of their time working on these hobby horses rather than doing their actual work of holding government to account. That’s not how Parliament is supposed to work.

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Roundup: Partisanship and thoughtlessness

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There was an interesting piece out yesterday about a study that showed that those with strong partisan leanings were less likely to be able to correctly identify current events, and are likely using news to confirm their existing views rather than being well informed. It’s not too surprising in the current milieu, where partisanship it turning more toward tribalism as we are apparently trying to import America’s culture wars into Canada out of some misplaced sense of envy, however I worry that this will be the kind of study that will simply turn into an exercise in confirmation bias by all sides – partisans and supposed non-partisans alike.

Let us first recall that partisanship is not actually a bad thing – it’s fundamentally about a contest of ideas and values, which is a good thing in politics. While everyone likes to talk about “evidence-based policy” and doing what’s best for all, there are fundamental philosophical differences about what that may be – and that’s okay. That’s good for democracy! Let us also recall that party membership is of fundamental importance in our system of government, and it’s one that has been gradually been debased as leaders have grown too strong and have hollowed out their parties – in part because memberships have allowed it rather than jealously guarding their own powers. We need more people to be party members, because that’s where grassroots engagement happens. We should resist the temptation to turn this kind of a study into an excuse to debase this kind of engagement in the political process.

We should also note that a big part of the problem is a lack of media literacy – particularly as the study also points to people being unable to locate where how their partisan biases line up with media outlets (which is also not a surprise, because people will paint an outlet with bias if they don’t like a story that makes their team look bad). So long as people don’t have these media literacy skills, any partisanship gets conflated with their preference for their own “teams,” and that helps magnify the kinds of problems that this study points to. It’s a complex problem overall, but we can’t simply say “partisanship makes you stupid,” as will be the temptation. Partisanship on its own doesn’t make you stupid – but if it’s mixed with other kinds of ignorance, it adds fuel to the fire.

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Roundup: Cuts and capacity

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Andrew Scheer made a defensive manoeuvre yesterday by sending letters to each of the premiers promising that he wouldn’t cut health or social transfers if he formed government – his way of heading off attacks from Justin Trudeau that are trying to paint Scheer with the same brush as Doug Ford, as Ford continues to make ill-considered cuts across Ontario without regard for logic or reason (while, oddly enough, his government’s spending continues to increase). There is an added bit of significance to this in that Ford has spent the past year trying to sell the message that Ontario’s books are such a basket case that the province is in the road to bankruptcy – which is a complete and total fabrication. While yes, Ontario does have a high debt-to-GDP ratio, we also have to remember that the previous government was borrowing money where interest rates are below the rate of inflation – essentially they are getting free money that they could use to invest in the province.

Enter Kevin Carmichael at the Financial Post, who wrote a must-read contemplation of the state of the federal books yesterday. It’s an adult conversation about the actual state of our finances – contrary to Scheer, our books are in great shape and the deficit is miniscule, and contrary to Trudeau and Bill Morneau, the deficits are coming in smaller than projected and growth is greater than projected and with no new increases in spending, we could be back in surplus before the 2023 election (thought that is always this government’s problem). And with that in mind, he poses the question – do we need to sock away surpluses in anticipation of a future recession even though we already have the capacity to deal with it, or do we spend our current capacity on something that would have lasting changes for our economy, like national childcare? It’s the kind of grown-up conversation that we should be having, but we’re not as parties snipe at one another over who is more “divisive.”

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157119930434609153

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Roundup: Affordability truthers

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As expected, talk of the cost of living crept up again online today, with some more hyperbolic nonsense coming from one of our favourite Conservative talking heads. But this time, economist Stephen Gordon stepped in to provide a reality check – only to find more StatsCan “truthers” coming out of the woodwork. Remember, for populists, they don’t like data that contradicts their narratives, so they try to insist that the data is somehow biased or wrong. Gordon sets them straight, and makes the even more salient point that if the Conservatives (and by extension the NDP) are so concerned about cost of living increases that are within the rate of inflation, then perhaps they need to articulate what their monetary policy goals are – which is what the targeted rate of inflation amounts to. Plenty to think about and remember here.

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Roundup: A carbon reality check

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A couple of weeks ago, Paul Wells did one of his CPAC interviews with Elizabeth May, the transcript of which is now available, and she talked a lot about how she thinks Canada can transition to a cleaner economy, and said a bunch of things about the oil and gas industry as part of that. The problem, of course, was that she was wrong about pretty much all of it, as energy economist Andrew Leach demonstrates.

Leach, meanwhile, also takes Jason Kenney’s rhetoric about carbon pricing to task in this Policy Options piece, and lays out the danger of that rhetoric, which has a high probability of blowing up in Kenney’s face. And as a bonus, he proposed a tool for conservatives to check their policy instincts against.

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Roundup: The hollow discontent

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The Council of the Federation meeting has concluded, and Jason Kenney is again giving warnings about national unity, but given that his thesis is a house built of lies, one should probably take it with a grain or two of salt. There were the usual demands of higher healthcare transfers (ironic given that the premiers are largely conservatives, at least one of whom was in Harper’s Cabinet when he reduced the rate of increase on those transfers), and federal assistance with pharmacare, and the platitudes about increasing labour mobility – for which we’ll see if Kenney’s theatrical moves around unilaterally reducing a handful of the province’s trade barriers will get any traction. It was noticeable that he didn’t decide to join the national securities regulator, and for as much as Andrew Scheer tried to swoop in with press releases about how Justin Trudeau had “failed” on interprovincial trade, the reality is quite the opposite – after achieving the trade deal with the provinces and the negative list of barriers, they have made substantial progress on chipping away at it.

There was some disagreement – François Legault continued his opposition to pipelines (which throws a giant wrench into their visions of “national energy corridors” that are being used as code-words for pipeline access routes), and Brian Pallister and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford, sniped back at Legault about his province’s “secularism” bill, that the other premiers mostly didn’t say anything about.

When all was said and done, however, it became noticeable how hollow Kenney’s attempt to build some kind of coalition of discontent was – while he was trying to insist on a brewing unity crisis, all of the other premiers were pretty much “one or two disagreements, but we’re good otherwise.” Which kind of blows Kenney’s narrative out of the water – especially when he was forced to admit that the province doesn’t really want to separate. It’s a tacit admission that once again, this is just using lies to try and keep people angry because he thinks he can use that to his advantage, but not enough other premiers want to play with that particular bonfire.

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