Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Cue the emergency committee meeting

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It wouldn’t be summer if we didn’t have an emergency committee meeting of some sort, and we got just that yesterday, as the Conservatives triggered the recall of the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee with an eye to opening an investigation into Liberals contracting database services from a Liberal-friendly company, headed by a personal friend of the prime minister’s. The party has claimed that this is for constituency services, and that there is no data going to party databases (as has been the case with the Conservatives and their own constituency data in the past), and that all of the rules have been followed, but the Conservatives have a narrative they need to feed, so there it went.

In the end, it got nowhere. The Liberals managed to stymie the proceedings long enough for the Bloc MP to side with them in opting not to pursue the matter, but along the way, they (correctly) suggested that this is a matter best suited for the Board of Internal Economy, which deals with MPs’ resources and allocations, and these payments have been coming out of MPs’ office budgets. Of course, the Conservatives (and to an extent the NDP) can’t put on a public dog and pony show at BOIE like they could at the ethics committee, so of course they had no interest in pursuing that course of action – especially after the Liberals also wanted the Conservatives’ database practices included in their referring the study to BOIE.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t issues that could be better explored here, the chief of which is that political parties are exempt from privacy legislation, so there aren’t many effective firewalls around the use of constituency files. And hey, that would be something that the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee should be tackling, because it’s right in their mandate! One Conservative MP also suggested that perhaps the House of Commons build their own constituency file management system so that parties don’t have to contract their own systems, which may not be a bad idea – but it’s one that BOIE would tackle, not the ethics committee. And the point of this exercise was about the dog and pony show, not anything of substance, which is one more reason why this particular session has turned toxic.

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Roundup: Trudeau’s feeling punchy in Calgary

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues his tour of the country as the pandemic wanes, and yesterday stopped in Calgary to meet with both Jason Kenney and Naheed Nenshi, and there were some particular notes that Trudeau’s tone had changed, and that he was more combative than he has been in the past – in particular, taking shots at Kenney’s government over their resistance to dealing with climate change and the economic opportunities that come with the green economy, and that Kenney had endorsed banning niqabs in the country as an example of how the previous government didn’t take systemic racism seriously. (And if anyone wants to point out that Kenney was the party’s “ethnic outreach” minister, remember that his particular focus was on communities where they felt they could target social conservative votes, citing their mutual dislike of the gays, marijuana, and so on).

There was in particular some politics being played about the announcement over funding for Calgary’s Green Line LRT project, where the province – which has been apparently slow-walking it for a year now – approved the funding in a press release shortly before Trudeau’s announcement, and weren’t at the announcement themselves, which sounds about typical.

Trudeau, meanwhile, pushed back against the notion that there is some kind of unfairness in equalisation, and that Alberta is being somehow disadvantaged. While he pointed out that the current formula was negotiated with Kenney at the Cabinet table, it bears repeating that equalisation is not the province writing cheques to one another – it comes out of general revenues from federal taxes, and Alberta pays the highest federal taxes because they have the highest incomes in the country by far – even during these tougher economic times for the province as a result of the downturn in the oil market. Not that Kenney is going to tell the truth of how it works when he’s trying to nurse a faux grievance in order to score political points (much as he’s doing with his bullshit “senate nominee elections”). Part of this newfound punchiness on Trudeau’s part has to do with the narrative of election speculation, but also that Kenney has been weakened, and the Conservatives nationally are losing ground, and Trudeau likely sees an opening. There is talk that they could take several seats in Edmonton and Calgary thanks to both softer Conservative numbers and the fact that they could lose ground on their right flank to the swivel-eyed loons in the “separatist” Maverick Party, which gives the Liberals more of an opening. Trudeau also made the point that they want Alberta to have representation in the government, and perhaps people learned their lesson after shutting them out in the province out of spite, only to realize they made a big mistake afterward. We’ll see where it goes, but the shift in tone is notable.

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Roundup: A big reduction in GHGs from steel

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You can tell that the pandemic is subsiding because politicians are starting to travel again — and more to the point, the prime minister and Cabinet members are starting to spread out across the country in order to start making funding announcements. Naturally, this is immediately being billed as election speculation, never mind that this happens every year once the House of Commons rises, and that there is certainly a pent-up desire on the part of government to be back in the spotlight doing these kinds of announcements. (But seriously, let’s ban the phrase “campaign-style” from news copy).

The major announcement yesterday was announcing $420 million in fully repayable loans to Algoma Steel to move away from coal-fired production to electric-arc production, which aims to reduce as much as 300 million tonnes of GHGs from their process every year, which is huge. Steel and cement are some of the biggest producers and some of the toughest to achieve GHG reductions with, so this is a fairly substantial announcement that will have a meaningful impact when it comes to reducing Ontario’s emissions.

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Heather Scoffield, meanwhile, complains that while the announcement sounds good on its face, too many of the details are obscured and not made transparent, so we don’t know if it’s really a good deal for Canadians or not — though I will note that Power & Politics interviewed one of the Algoma executives who said that some the details around who much of the loan could be forgiven if carbon reduction targets were met are still being negotiated, so perhaps the rest of those details will be made public once they are finalised.

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Roundup: A dubious plan for the next pandemic

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Erin O’Toole unveiled his party’s pandemic preparedness plan yesterday, and it was very curious indeed. His framing was a lot of revisionist history about border closures, and some outright fabrications about supposed contracts that went to people with close connections to the Liberals, which has not been shown anywhere other than the fevered imaginations of what happened around the WE contract, and the bullshit story they concocted around Baylis Medical. More than this, however, a number of things that O’Toole was critical of were things that dated back to the Conservatives’ watch – including changes to the management structure of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The fact that O’Toole is saying he would essentially undo changes the government he was a part of made – without acknowledging that they made the detrimental changes in the first place – is quite something. The fact that they’re going on about the pandemic stockpile without acknowledging that its management failed under their watch, going back to at least 2010 – and we have an Auditor General’s Report that confirms this – is not unsurprising. Other aspects seem to be dubious at best, such as doing something about pharmaceutical patents and doing away with PMPRB (Patented Medicines Price Review Board) regulations in order to appease these companies in the hopes that they will do more research and manufacturing here seems both unwise at best, and will mean higher drug prices for Canadians going forward.

There were some other things buried in there, not the least of which were contradictions around raising tariffs on PPE in order to ensure they are manufactured domestically, while also trying to “secure the North American supply chain” to reduce reliance on imports – but imports from the US and Mexico are still imports. There were also a number of jabs at China in the document, some of which will limit our ability to have international cooperation around research of emerging viruses, and he managed to wedge in the current drama around the National Microbiology Lab firings into his piece as well. The problem of course is that a lot of this sounds like it makes sense on the surface, but the moment you start reading their backgrounder (which doesn’t appear to be online – just emailed to reporters) and scratching beneath the surface, the more apparent it is that a lot of this is hot-air, blame-shifting, and disingenuous rhetoric masquerading as a plan.

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Roundup: C-10 keeps stumbling

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If there is any bill in recent history that is an object lesson in fucking around and finding out, it’s bill C-10, on amending the Broadcasting Act. Indeed, after the government, with Bloc support, moved time allocation while the bill was in committee, the five hours allotted to finish clause-by-clause consideration was apparently not enough, as it seems yet more MPs on the committee wanted to waste time fighting about things this bill doesn’t actually do. And lo, amendments that were passed after the five hours were up were deemed null and void by the Speaker, so once again, MPs found out.

This doesn’t mean that those amendments are necessarily gone for good – they can certainly be moved at report stage, where the bill is currently, though that may require extending the time allocation that was imposed on the current stage in order to be able to move and vote on said motions – and that leaves yet more opportunity for dilatory actions such as slow-voting and another point-of-order-palooza around remote voting. Barring that, the government can move them in the Senate, though that will be very uncomfortable as it will probably mean having to recall the Commons in a couple of weeks to pass the amended bill, which will be a gong show all around. Or, with any luck, it will be stuck on the Order Paper over the summer, and possibly smothered if the election call that the pundit class is so hell-bent on getting happens. Nevertheless – there is plenty of blame to go around for this state of affairs, not the least of which belongs to the minister for his singular failure to offer coherent communications around this bill at every opportunity, and most especially at committee.

I would add, however, that I have no patience for this notion that the bill saw “no real debate,” as certain individuals are claiming. It got more debate than most budget implementation bills – more than any bill I can remember in recent memory. Granted, we have no guarantee of the quality of debate, and considering that this bill has been the subject of a campaign of conspiracy theories (Internet Czar, anyone?), straw men, red herrings, and outright lies, while substantive and existential problems with the bill have largely gone unremarked upon, I can see a critique that the months of debate were short on substance. That said, I’m not sure how even more debate would have helped, other than to prolong the agony.

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QP: Security breach and securities regulators

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While the prime minister was off to the G7 meeting in the UK, the only Liberal in the Chamber was Francis Drouin, though Mark Gerretsen would replace him later in the hour. Erin O’Toole led off, accusing the government of hiding a security breach at the National Microbiology Lab. Jennifer O’Connell warned that O’Toole was playing a dangerous game, and that redacted documents were provided to the Canada-China committee and the unredacted documents went to NSICOP. O’Toole accused her of participating in a cover-up, and O’Connell accused O’Toole of not caring about national security. O’Toole scoffed, noting his military service, and worried there was a Chinese “infiltration” at the Lab, which O’Connell countered with a prof at the Royal Military College praising NSICOP. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, got the same answer as before, adding that she used to be a member of NSICOP so she could vouch for its security. O’Toole repeated his allegation of a cover-up in French, and O’Connell, exasperated, noted that she wasn’t sure how many more times she could say that they turned over the documents in the appropriate way.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, accusing the government of trying to create a new pan-Canadian securities regulator which Quebec opposed. Sean Fraser noted that the office cooperated voluntarily with provinces. Therrien tried again, and Fraser repeated that Quebec was not bound to work with that office.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he condescended to the government about the WE Imbroglio, and demanded that the government respect the Ethics committee’s report. Bardish Chagger thanked the committee for the work, but accused them of being more interested in partisan games. Charlie Angus then repeated the demand in English with added sanctimony and stretched the credulity of the allegations, and Pablo Rodriguez batted away the insinuations.

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Roundup: Ford turns to the Notwithstanding Clause – again

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The sudden comfort with which premiers are deciding to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause is getting a bit uncomfortable, as Doug Ford decided he needed to invoke it after a court struck down his attempts to limit third-party spending in provincial elections in a somewhat arbitrary fashion (given that unions get together to form American-esque political action committees in this province). While you can find a great explainer on Ford and his particular legal challenge in this thread, the more alarming part is the apparent need to reach for the “emergency valve” of the Clause before even appealing the decision to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada.

There is a perfectly legitimate reason why the Notwithstanding Clause exists, which as to do with keeping a certain amount of parliamentary supremacy in lawmaking, and it gives governments an avenue of recourse if there is a fundamental disagreement with a court’s interpretation of legislation. But lately, it’s being invoked by premiers who know they are trying to push through objectionable legislation – François Legault did it with Bill 21, which the courts have essentially said blocks their ability to strike down any portion of the law, and he’s doing it again with his Bill 96 on trying to obliterate any bilingualism in the province (the same bill that seeks to unilaterally amend the federal constitution). Ford had threatened to invoke it to ram through his unilateral changes to Toronto City Council while they were in the middle of an election, but ultimately didn’t because of a court injunction, and his decision this time is similarly dubious. This willingness to invoke the Clause at the first sign of court challenge or on the first defeat is a very big problem for our democracy, and we should be very wary about this abuse of power, and punish these governments appropriately at the ballot box during the next elections for these decisions.

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In the meantime, here’s Emmett Macfarlane with more thoughts on the court decision that led to this turn of events.

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QP: Magical solutions to housing shortages

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We had initially been promised the prime minister’s attendance today, but given events, he and the other party leaders all decided to jet off together to the vigil in London, Ontario, for the Muslim family that was killed in a hate crime on Sunday night. Candice Bergen led off by video, requesting an update on what the government was doing to support the Muslim community in the wake of the tragedy. Bill Blair listed off some supports, and made the point about Canada trying to “be the country we aspire to be,” which I thought was probably one of the better articulations out there, rather than the usual “this isn’t us” denialism. Bergen then demanded to know why unredacted documents related to the two fired scientists had not been turned over to the House of Commons as had been ordered, for which Patty Hajdu reminded her that she turned those documents over to NSICOP, which was the proper venue for it. Bergen accused the government of being in contempt of Parliament, and tied the lab to the investigation into the origins of COVID in Wuhan, thus fuelling more conspiracy theories, and Hajdu warned her about conflating issues. Gérard Deltell took over in French and tried to insist that NSICOP was the personal committee of the prime minister and that they couldn’t know what was turned over to it – which is a very dangerous move to politicise the committee like that – and Hajdu corrected him that the committee is multi-partisan and has the ability to review these kinds of documents. Deltell tried again, and got the same pushback from Hajdu.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and demanded action to solve the delays to temporary foreign workers in Quebec. Marco Mendicino insisted that he was hard at work with his Quebec counterpart and they were on target. Yves Perron took over and demanded immediate action on the arrival of those workers, and Mendicino reminded him that they have doubled the number of arrivals over the past decade.

Rachel Blaney demanded immediate action on the motion that passed yesterday on ending litigation against First Nations children and residential schools survivors, for which Carolyn Bennett praised the intent of the motion, but stated that they contain complex legal issues that should not be resolved unilaterally on the floor of the House of Commons. Charlie Angus repeated the question with added sanctimony, and Bennett read that the court ordered an independent review of the compensation which could include greater amounts for some survivors, which the government was funding.

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QP: Mona Fortier reminds us she exists

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It was a scorcher in the Nation’s Capital, and once again, the only Liberal MP in the Chamber was Mark Gerretsen. Candice Bergen led off by video, and she complained that the million jobs promised by the end of June had not materialized, and compared our job numbers to the Americans’, and demanded a plan to re-open the economy – as though that were a federal call. Mona Fortier assured her eight out of every ten jobs lost at the start of the pandemic had already been recovered, and that international credit ratings have pointed out Canada’s plan was sound. Bergen railed about job losses and accused the government of being more concerned about their travel itineraries than Canadians, for which Fortier reminded her of the good new of the Q1 GDP numbers (which really weren’t great, considering how much of those numbers were tied up in real estate). Bergen then blamed the federal government for the third wave of the pandemic (when she knows full well it was premiers who reopened too early and locked down too late), and Fortier listed measures taken to help businesses in lockdowns and as part of the recovery. Gérard Deltell took over in French and railed about jobs, for which Fortier repeated the “good news” in the GDP numbers. Deltell seemed to think the lockdowns were completely over when complaining that jobs had not completely recovered, and Fortier recited good news talking points about the wage subsidy. 

Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and he demanded that the federal government extend Quebec’s Bill 101 to federally-regulated industries because the Official Languages Act only protects bilingualism and not French, and Mélanie Joly assured him they were protecting French. Therrien complained this wasn’t good enough because the federal bureaucracy had a high failure rate, and Joly stated that they were working to strengthen the Act and the Commissioner’s powers, and to extend the Act to industries in federal jurisdiction in the private sector.

Alexandre Boulerice led for the NDP by video, and he demanded the government support their motion on abandoning litigation involving First Nations children and survivors, for which Mark a Miller noted that they support parts of the notion but there are jurisdiction issues to be litigated, and they were negotiating compensation. Charlie Angus repeated the question in English with added sanctimony, and Miller repeated slowly that every First Nations child that has suffered at the hands of the child welfare system will get just and fair compensation.

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QP: Leaning harder into the Winnipeg Lab conspiracy theory

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It was the prime minister’s first appearance in the Chamber since the discovery of the mass grave in Kamloops last week, and he was joined once again by Mark Gerretsen. Erin O’Toole led off, and with his script before him, he asked for swift action on the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission around the residential schools. Justin Trudeau gave some platitudes about reconciliation and mentions their investments in those Calls to Action. O’Toole then moved onto the National Microbiology Lab, and deliberately conflated the issue around the two fired scientists with the global demand for answers around the origin of COVID, for which Trudeau reminded him that there are mechanisms to review national security matters. O’Toole dismissed NSICOP as the prime minister’s “secret committee” and tried to conflate the issue around those scientists, for which Trudeau hit back about the secrecy of the Harper government and their refusal to subject national security agencies to independent oversight. O’Toole switched to French to repeat his first question on the two scientists, for which Trudeau reminded him of the oversight mechanisms. O’Toole switched back to English to try and tie in this with approvals for foreign investment from China and Huawei, and Trudeau replied that the Conservatives never hesitate to play politics with national security, before he returned to his praise of the creation of NSICOP.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and pressed for the swift passage of Bill C-10 in spite of Conservative opposition, for which Trudeau praised the cooperation of other parties in trying to pass the bill, and that they hoped to pass it before summer. Blanchet warned that if it did not pass by summer, there would be a heavy political price to pay in Quebec, and Trudeau reminded him that they have been there for artists since the beginning, starting with reversing the Harper-era cuts, and that it was the Conservatives blocking culture.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he raised the court challenges around Indigenous children and residential school survivors (which are about narrow points of law and not compensation). Trudeau stated that every survivor deserves compensation and they are working on that, and they have also been guiding “transformative change” around Indigenous child and family services. Singh repeated the question in French, and got much the same answer.

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