Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Senators get their funds

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In case you missed the news, the new Independent Senators Group got core funding to hire staff to help coordinate independent senators’ activities and logistics. This came around the same time that they managed to strike a deal when it comes to getting more independents on committees without waiting for a prorogation to hit the reset button as the rules would otherwise dictate. Why this matters is because it allows the ISG to effectively organise their own members, to help them hire staff and do things like that – efforts which Government Leader – err, “representative” Senator Peter Harder has been attempting to bigfoot with his own offers to help these senators get staffed up and offering briefings and assisting in legislative coordination and so on. The fact that he represents the government and has been sworn into the Privy Council – regardless of his protestations that he’s independent because he’s actually not (you can’t be both an independent and represent the government – it’s like being half-pregnant) – makes this a blow to actual independence that these senators are supposed to be exercising. Giving the ISG the funds to do that on their own is an important step. Of course, the same piece mentions that Harder plans to move motions in the Senate in the spring related to his ability to restyle his title as he wishes, and that I have a problem with. This particular semantic game that he and the Trudeau government are playing around his role is a very big problem when it comes to how the chamber operates in our Westminster system, and Harder playing silly buggers with what he calls himself in order to cloak his role with the government is a problem. He and this government need to drop the charade and just come clean – Harder should be a cabinet minister in keeping with the role, and be the point of contact for accountability in the Senate. Playing games around it weakens accountability and the duty of the Senate in that role.

Meanwhile, with the appointment process for six upcoming vacancies having been announced, we also got the release of the report on the statistics from the previous round (highlights here). Maybe this time we’ll see an appointment from Southwestern Ontario, a new LGBT senator or even someone from outside of the social sciences!

Finally, Senator Denise Batters appears to have broken the rules to record a video in the Senate Chamber, accusing Trudeau of authoritarian tendencies in trying to destroy opposition in the Senate. While her basic premise – that there is a movement to shut down the position of Official Opposition in the Senate – is correct and concerning, Batters cranked it up to eleven in being completely overwrought about it, and does more harm than good to the issue. I’m not sure how much the move to weaken Official Opposition in the Senate comes from Trudeau or from Harder and his particular vision of Senate “independence” where he can co-opt the independents to his causes, but that remains a concern that I’ve heard from not only the Liberals and Conservatives in the Senate, but a couple of the independents as well. But this kind of stunt doesn’t help.

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Roundup: Chagger on fundraising

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Government House Leader Bardish Chagger talked to the Huffington Post, and the headline had all of my media colleagues grasping for their pearls as she declared that the House of Commons was not the place to discuss Liberal fundraisers. And if I’m going to go full pedant on this, she’s right – to an extent. On its face, fundraising is party business and really nothing to do with the administrative responsibility of the government. Why this current round of eye-rolling nonsense around so-called “cash for access” fundraising (which isn’t actually cash for access in the sense that we got used to talking about with Ontario) is because the opposition is trying to link those fundraisers with conflicts of interest from the government, all based on insinuation with no actual proof of quid pro quo. But because there is this tenuous connection, the questions are being allowed, and they get to make all manner of accusations that would otherwise be considered libellous before the cameras under the protection of parliamentary privilege. Indeed, when Ambrose accused the government of acting illegally with those fundraisers, Chagger invited her to step outside of the Chamber to repeat those accusations. Ambrose wouldn’t, for the record.

Where this might resonate are with memories of the previous parliament, with endless questions about the ClusterDuff affair, and the operations of the Senate, and those various and sundry questions that came up time and again, and which were rarely actually about things that were the administrative responsibility of the government. And every now and again, Speaker Andrew Scheer would say so. But contrary to the opinions of some, this wasn’t something that Scheer made up out of thin air.

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In fact, Scheer was too lenient for many of these questions, and there are sometimes that I think that Regan is even more so. Most of the NDP questions asked during the height of the ClusterDuff affair were blatantly out of order, asked for the sake of grandstanding. That the questions with the current fundraising contretemps have made this tenuous link to government operations and decisions is the only thing that makes them marginally relevant to QP. That said, the hope that this will somehow tarnish the government or grind down their ethical sheen generally depends on there being actual rules broken or actual impropriety, which there hasn’t been. Meanwhile, a bunch of issues that the opposition should be holding the government to account for are languishing because they need to put up six MPs a day on this. But hey, at least they’re providing clips to the media as opposed to doing their jobs, right?

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Roundup: No health deal with the provinces

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So that was that. The federal government came to the table yesterday with some more money for health transfers plus another $11.5 billion over ten years for targeted priorities, and the provinces balked, so there’s no deal and the federal government is sticking to the existing 3 percent or GDP growth (whichever is higher) escalator. But really, the whole thing was a bit of a charade to begin with.

Andrew Coyne pretty much savaged the whole affair over the Twitter Machine all day, and he’s certainly not wrong about any of it.

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So both Bill Morneau and Jane Philpott say that they’re willing to work on ways to help the provinces, but Morneau went into it basically saying they’re in the middle of writing the budget, so now is the time. They said no, so that may be it. Well, except that New Brunswick is saying they’re open to a bilateral deal, because with their stagnant population growth, the current escalator is a lot of money for them. Will this shame other provinces into signing on, or at least enough that the rest will start looking foolish for rejecting it out of their ritualized Busting of the Gaskets? I guess the next couple of weeks will tell. Incidentally, Justin Trudeau seems to be having difficulty in remembering just what was promised on funding during the election, for what it’s worth.

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Roundup: Not offering excuses

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Justin Trudeau has been making the media rounds over the past few days, and some of the highlights of yesterday’s interviews were how he warned the now-former Italian prime minister that referendums were a bad idea because they give people a licence to lash out at institutions – and they did in that case, and said PM resigned. He also spoke about his “friendly-ish” phone conversation with Donald Trump, the inedible lunch served at a Paris climate conference event, and that he hasn’t yet decided if RCAF001 will be replaced anytime soon. And then there are the fundraising questions. His response was that he’s followed all of the rules, and that this hysteria (my word, not his) is largely a result of opposition and media frenzy than anything substantive. And he’s not really wrong.

And as if summoned, former advisor to Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan, appeared in the Globe and Mail to remind everyone that these kinds of fundraisers are the exact same thing that Harper and company did when they were in office. The problem, of course, is that Trudeau promised not to have the “appearance” of conflict, but I always bring it back to defining what the appearance is, because I am still waiting for any evidence that would lead one to actually think there is an appearance of conflict and I remain unconvinced. Indeed, when the Globe came out with yesterday’s screaming headline that Liberal donors were invited to a dinner for the Chinese premier, I’m not seeing any evidence that they were invited solely because they were donors – indeed, most of the names highlighted seemed to be invited because they have business interests with China than there being proof of quid pro quo. And as someone else pointed out on Twitter, did anyone thought to compare how many of the people that Stephen Harper took on his trip to Israel were Conservative donors? Or do they not count because when Stephen Harper rode into power in 2006 on the white horse of accountability that he didn’t make the promise of “appearance” of conflict that is being generously interpreted? Have we not finished hoisting Trudeau on his own petard long enough, or do we need to go full Yellow Peril with all of the insinuations about Chinese connections, while continuing to poison the well when it comes to our faith in political institutions?

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Senate QP: Grave fears of the Trumpocalypse

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For the final ministerial Senate QP of the year, with special guest star Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. Senator Carignan led off asking about whether she would advocate for natural gas as a transitional measure away from coal, and the development of shale gas reserves as the Obama administration did. After a bit of a preamble, McKenna noted that they were in a transitional phase which won’t happen overnight, and that while they approved an LNG project in BC, they approach each project on its own to evaluate the science of their impact while at the same time looking for opportunities to market our resources.

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QP: Not just the rules, but listening to Canadians

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With just a couple of QP session left in the year, all of the leaders were present today, interim or otherwise. Rona Ambrose led off, worrying that the prime minster was bragging about being the target of illegal lobbying — which was not what he said, but whatever. Trudeau said that wherever he is, he talks about growth for the middle class and all of those wonderful things. Ambrose wondered when money became more than ethics. Trudeau insisted that he has the same message everywhere he goes, about taxing the one percent more to cut taxes for the middle class. Ambrose asked the same again, got the same answer, and then she worried that his true priority was fundraisers and that he’s left the impression that he can be bought. Trudeau reiterated that they raised taxes on the wealthiest to cut taxes for the middle class. Ambrose accused the Trudeau Foundation of laundering influence to the PM, and demanded that he tell them to stop accepting foreign donations. Trudeau assured her that he severed his connections shortly after he became party leader and they advance the cause of the humanities in a non-partisan manner. Thomas Mulcair was up next, also concern trolling about fundraising, and Trudeau repeated his same points about their priorities. Mulcair demanded support for the NDP bill to “give teeth” to ethics rules, but Trudeau repeated his same points. Mulcair moved onto marijuana legalisation and demanded immediate decriminalisation. Trudeau reminded him that their objectives were to keep it out of the hands of children and the profits from the hands of organised crime, and that until the law was changed, it stands. Mulcair pivoted again to the situation of Stelco workers, and Trudeau said that they were engaged in the challenge.

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QP: Taxing Canadians to death

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While Justin Trudeau held a media availability earlier in the day, he was not in QP, despite there being nothing else on his agenda. Rona Ambrose led off to decry the carbon tax in the light of the Trumpocalypse and its promises of slashed taxes, and Jim Carr stood up to take the questions, praising the outcome of the meeting with the premiers on Friday. Ambrose insisted that there was no costing for said tax, and Carr reminded her that each province would determine their own system. After another round again on French, Ambrose turned to fundraising and said the PM “bragged” about people discussing government business at fundraisers. Bardish Chagger got to stand up to start the “rules” talking points. Ambrose asked again, and got the same answer. Alexandre Boulerice was up next to raise fundraising, asking in English (unusually for him). Chagger gave her usual points. Ruth Ellen Brosseau stood up to ask in French, and got the French version of Chagger’s speech. Brosseau switched to English to read some confusing question about fundraising and the MyDemocracy survey, but Chagger took this one for the same response. Boulerice, in French, railed about MyDemocracy, and Maryam Monsef stood up to praise it.

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Roundup: A small government climbdown

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Sometimes it’s not just that the Senate is everyone’s convenient punching bag in federal politics – it’s also what they like to dangle before the media to show that they’re serious about some issue or another. Early on in the parliament, it was Conservatives who were supposedly going to flex their muscles to defeat all kinds of government bills in the Senate, which never happened, and now we’re getting threats from the new independent cohort. This time, it’s Bill C-29, the government’s budget implementation act, and a provision therein that has Quebec all hot and bothered because it would affect their consumer protection legislation as it relates to the banks.

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The government has maintained that because this is a federally-regulated sector that they have jurisdiction. Quebec disputes this, says that they have a Supreme Court of Canada decision to back up their position, and premier Couillard has been asking the government to remove this section from the bill, and impressing upon Senators to do something if the government won’t. New Quebec Senator André Pratte has apparently been making the rounds to do just that, while Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” – Senator Peter Harder has responded with the usual plaintive wail that the Senate should respect the will of the House of Commons, never mind how much he was praising up and down the work they did on amending the assisted dying legislation just a few months ago.

But the pressure from the Senate may have already come to good effect. In Question Period of Friday, the finance minister’s parliamentary secretary, François-Philippe Champagne, announced a particular government climbdown on the issue:

We are going to continue working with consumer groups, stakeholders, and the provinces and territories to develop regulations and enforce the law. We are going to delay the implementation of some provisions of division 5 of the bill so that the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce can examine this important issue more closely.

In light of this development, should the Andrew Coynes of the world really be wailing and gnashing their teeth about the Senate supposedly overstepping their authority, or not respecting the will of the Commons? Or should we acknowledge that they heard the concerns that the government steamrolled over with their majority and forced the government to acknowledge that hey, maybe there is a problem that we should fix? Because I’m getting awfully tired of constantly hearing about how the Senate is somehow becoming this de facto ruling body of appointees, when it’s anything but. It’s doing the job that it was intended to do, which is sober second thought – particularly when there is a government with a majority, and with more independent senators in the chamber, they’re not taking orders from PMO to push things through. This is their job. This is what they’re supposed to do. Can we please tone down the histrionics about it?

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Roundup: A catalogue of ineptitude

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Over in the weekend Ottawa Citizen, our good friend Kady O’Malley has a comprehensive breakdown of everything that went wrong with the electoral reform committee, and it’s pretty stunning once it’s all laid out before you. It starts with the Liberals’ relenting to allow the makeup of the committee to be more *cough* “proportional” than the traditional make-up of a parliamentary committee (which was not actually proportional, but merely gamed by the NDP to give the appearance of proportionality, and the Liberals relented for what I’m guessing was good faith). From there, it moves to the Liberals putting all newbies on the committee (with the exception of the chair) who didn’t have a clue what they were doing, and their lack of experience, combined with the fact that they no longer had a majority (despite having a parliamentary majority) meant that the opposition party gamed the witness selection in such a way that it meant they were able to self-select witnesses to get the outcome they wanted – namely 88 percent of witnesses preferring proportional systems, and furthermore, because they had motivated followings for their public consultations, it allowed them to self-select their famed 87 percent in favour of proportional systems and a further 90 percent in favour of a referendum. And almost nary was there a voice for ranked ballots. (Also a nitpick: ranked ballots have little to do with the proportionality that people keep trying to force the system into, nor are they about gaming the system in favour of centrist parties like the Liberals. Rather, ranked ballots are designed to eliminate strategic voting, ensure that there is a “clear winner” with a simple majority once you redistribute votes, and to make campaigning “nicer” because you are also looking for second-place votes. Experience from Australia shows that it has not favoured centrist governments).

In other words, this whole exercise was flawed from the start, in large part because the Liberal government was so inept at handling it. In fact, this cannot be understated, and they are continuing to be completely inept at handling the fallout of the broken process that they allowed themselves to be bullied into (lest they face charges of trying to game the system – thus allowing the other parties to game it for them), and rather than either admitting that this went off the rails (because it did) and that it was a stupid promise to have made in the first place (because it was) and trying to either be honest about cutting their losses, they’re dragging it out in order to find a more legitimate way to either punt this into the future, or declare that no consensus can be found (which there won’t be) and trying to kill it that way. But in the meantime, the daily howls out outrage of the opposition because of the way that they have completely bungled not only the committee response (and let’s face it – the report’s recommendations were hot garbage) and the further rollout of their MyDemocracy survey without adequately explaining it has meant that this continues to turn into an outrageous farce. I’m not necessarily going to lay this all at the feet of the minister, or call for her resignation, but this is one particular file where the government has been so clueless and amateurish that the need to pull out of the tailspin that they find themselves in, take their lumps, and then smother this in the crib. Enough is enough.

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Roundup: Desmond’s deserving recognition

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The news was announced yesterday that Bill Morneau had chosen Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond to grace the new $10 banknote, which is being hailed pretty much universally as an excellent choice, and certainly the one that I had been hoping for when the shortlist was announced. As soon as it was announced, though, we got inundated with a flood of headlines declaring Desmond to be “Canada’s Rosa Parks,” which starts to grate because Desmond’s stand against segregation began nine years before Parks’ did, but she has largely been an unknown in Canadian history. I hadn’t even really heard of her until the History Minute last year (and side note, not only was it a compelling story, but I was pleased to see that Battlestar Galactica’s Kandyce McClure played her), and it was a reminder that yes, we too had segregation in Canada, albeit a subtler one because it wasn’t entrenched in legislation. That Canadians identify Parks before Desmond is part of our problem with our own history, both in that we have a tendency to whitewash much of it, but also that we are so inundated with Americana that our own achievements get lost in it (such as when Upper Canada was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to end slavery). Of course, part of why Desmond’s case has been obscured in history has to do with the fact that her case was ostensibly one related to tax evasion (for the one cent theatre tax she did not pay to sit in the lower seats despite requesting to pay the higher priced ticket) and her lawyer didn’t push the racial discrimination angle in court. Hopefully, this inclusion will help to rectify this wrong, to restore Desmond’s rightful place in the history books and in the popular consciousness about civil rights in Canada.

Chatelaine has seven facts about Desmond. Former Nova Scotia lieutenant governor Maryann Francis talks about when she was able to give a Free Pardon posthumously for Desmond and the meaning of it for her. Maclean’s digs into its archives to look at Desmond and the issues of racism in Nova Scotia going back decades.

Meanwhile, there have been a few comments about how our wartime prime ministers, Sir Robert Borden and William Lyon Mackenzie King will no longer be gracing banknotes, while Sir John A Macdonald and Sir Wilfred Laurier are moving from the $5 and $10 banknotes to the $50 and $100, with accusations that this means that we’re somehow “effacing history.” The thing is, Borden and King are in plenty of other places in our history books, while a person like Desmond is not. I think we have room enough to learn about the contributions of more than just the great white men of history and making it more inclusive. That’s hardly effacing history – it’s opening it up.

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