Tag Archives: Ethics Commissioner

Roundup: It’s all coming back to me now

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As Jason Kenney continues his bellicose demands for a revival of the Energy East project, it seems that his arguments have a certain familiar ring to them. Wait for it…

Anyone who has paid any attention to the Energy East demands for the past few years will note that there is a definite NEP 2.0 sensibility to them – especially the notion that in the name of “energy security,” we should repurpose this pipeline/build a new segment to the port of Saint John, where there is a single refinery that can handle limited amounts of heavy crude, and that the Irvings should either be forced to accept said Alberta heavy crude at a cost of an additional $10/barrel than they can currently import cheaper, lighter crude from abroad that their current refinery can handle, and that consumers in Atlantic Canada should be made to pay more for their gasoline for the privilege of it coming from Alberta – because I’m not sure that Alberta is going to accept the $10/barrel discount on their crude when they already are suffering from low global oil prices that have made many new oilsands projects economically unviable. Never mind the similarities of this scheme to the original NEP, for which Alberta has created a grand myth about the Great Satan Trudeau (even though the resulting closures in the industry had more to do with the collapse in global oil prices and global recession that happened at the same time) – the cognitive dissonance will not hold.

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Roundup: An investigation into Rideau Hall

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It was announced at the end of the day yesterday that the Privy Council Office would be launching a “thorough, independent and impartial” investigation into the claims of harassment and verbal abuse at Rideau Hall, and that this would be done with the cooperation of the Secretary to the Governor General, Assunta Di Lorenzo – whom these same complainants say was Payette’s abusive tag-team partner. Payette later tweeted that she takes workplace harassment “very seriously,” for what that’s worth.

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé explains why Governors General need to be uncontroversial and above reproach – which extends to how they comport themselves in office, which this current situation is certainly an example of. He also makes the very salient point that the prime minister needs to be directly involved in fixing this situation one way or the other, which can mean encouraging Payette that it’s time to “spend more time with her family.” Chris Selley longs for the days of a boring GG in office, citing David Johnston as the ideal when compared to the current example (and there is a good chapter on the criteria for selecting a GG in Royal Progress, written by Senator Serge Joyal, with the observation that the women selected for the roles have largely had media presences as opposed to governance experience).

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QP: Trying to single out ministers to divide the Cabinet

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The prime minister was finally present for the second day of the mid-July sitting, after his inexplicable absence the day before. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, where he insisted that Canadians had enough of his scandals, and demanded he appear before committee. Trudeau stated that he was considering the invitation, that he was happy to be here today and tomorrow, and that he should have recused himself when the suggestion was made by the public service. Scheer spun a tale of WE’s alleged schemes, and again demanded that Trudeau appear at committee. Trudeau responded by listing the aid they have given students. Scheer then ranted about his disgust with the Liberals and didn’t have a question, to which Trudeau chided him about the things that he should be asking about, like the aid package under debate. Scheer got increasingly breathy as he again spun out a conspiracy theory around WE, wondering on what basis the civil service could have recommended WE, to which Trudeau stated that the civil service looked at the government’s plans and decided WE was best placed to fulfil it. Scheer quoted a charity watchdog on WE’s ability to fulfil the programme, and the asked Chrystia Freeland what it would take for her to lose faith in the prime minister, but Trudeau rose once more to praise the efforts they have made to engage students and support them. Yves-François Blanchet was up next for the Bloc, and he meandered around the problems Trudeau is facing, to which Trudeau insisted that they were focused on helping Canadians through the pandemic. Blanchet quipped that Trudeau couldn’t buy his way out of a crisis, and a suggested that Trudeau temporarily step aside and let Freeland replace him, and Trudeau praised the Safe Restart agreement with the provinces. Up next was Jagmeet Singh for the NDP, and he wondered why Trudeau didn’t recuse himself when the WE contract came up, and Trudeau stated that he followed the recommendation of the civil service. Singh insisted that apologies mean nothing if the Liberals help their “wealthy friends,” and worried why they didn’t just use another program instead, to which Trudeau said it was a shame that the NDP was so cynical about measures for students.

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Roundup: Some strings attached

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau wound up holding an irregular presser yesterday, mid-afternoon instead of late morning, and with a specific purpose in mind – to announce that the federal government had finally come to an agreement with the provinces over the Safe Restart Plan, now pegged at $19 billion rather than the $14 billion initially put on the table. What is noteworthy is that there were still federal strings attached for this money, though some premiers noted that the strings were not as tight as before. The money is to go toward municipalities, transit, contact tracing, personal protective equipment, childcare, and ten days of paid sick leave (so now Jagmeet Singh can pat himself on the back, even though this was BC premier John Horgan’s initiative), and is to last for the next six to eight months, at which point there will be a re-evaluation of where everyone is at. Trudeau also made it official that the Canada-US border will remain closed to non-essential travel until August 21st.

During the Q&A that followed, Trudeau expressed optimism around the vaccine candidate being held up by Chinese customs, and said that in spite of the Russian hacking story, it was important to work with everyone to develop a vaccine and that they were working to get the balance right. When asked if he would appear before committee as invited around the WE Imbroglio, that his House leadership team was looking at the possibilities, but that he also looked forward to taking questions in the Commons next week during the scheduled special sitting day. Chrystia Freeland was asked about what she knew regarding the WE Imbroglio, and she gave a fairly lengthy response about how everyone accepts responsibility for what happened, and apologized, saying that “clearly we made a mistake and we’re going to learn from it,” adding that everyone knew that the PM was connected to WE but didn’t know of his family’s specific financial arrangements, and then added that she still supported the PM and that it was a privilege to serve in his Cabinet. When asked if Quebec had no problems with the strings attached to the billions on the table, Freeland said that they agreed to it like everyone else, and that it was actually a Really Big Deal to get all thirteen provinces and territories to sign onto a deal that includes the municipalities and covered several ministries, saying that it showed that Canadians have understood that we need to work together in this time of crisis.

Shortly after the presser ended, Bardish Chagger and her officials appeared before the Finance committee to discuss the WE Imbroglio. Chagger insisted that nobody in PMO directed her to make an arrangement with WE, but she kept deferring to her officials, which…isn’t really how ministerial responsibility works. There was also talk about how WE had sent an unsolicited proposal to several ministers about a youth programme before this was announced, which WE later came out and said was a youth entrepreneurship programme which had nothing to do with what became the Service Grant programme. This having been said, the senior bureaucrat on the file said that they had three weeks to come up with a programme, and that WE fit the bill for its requirements, which is why they were recommended – and pointed out that potential conflicts are for public office holders to deal with, not bureaucrats (which is true). Up today, the Ethics Committee will begin their own examination into the Imbroglio, so we’ll see if that goes any better.

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Roundup: A shock-and-awe number

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The Conservatives are crowing about their membership numbers in the lead-up to their leadership vote, where some 269,000 Canadians are now eligible to vote – not that they all will, but it’s a shock-and-awe number that they say are bigger than any previous Conservative (or its predecessor parties’) leadership contest – though not quite as large as the Liberal contest that elected Justin Trudeau. And while on paper it’s great that there are so many people who have joined the party, this is one of those traps that have created so many of our problems in this country.

The original sin in Canadian politics was the Liberals’ decision in 1919 to move away from caucus selecting their new leader after Wilfrid Laurier’s death to a delegated convention. From then on, under the guise of being “more democratic,” they ensured that their leaders could henceforth not be held to account by the MPs of their caucus – nor the party, really, because “leadership reviews” are largely bogus exercises (sorry, Thomas Mulcair!). And what ends up happening is that when you have a big number like 260,000 party members, when the leader who winds up being selected in this manner gets into trouble, he or she tells their caucus “I have the democratic legitimacy of these 269,000 votes – the average riding has 75,000 electors. I have the bigger mandate.” It has been the way in which the centralization of power has been justified, and all of abuses of that power have followed.

The other problem is that these kinds of memberships tend to be transactional for the duration of the leadership contest. A good many of these members won’t stick around and to the work of nominations or policy development, which is another reason why these shock-and-awe numbers wind up being hollow in the long run. We do need more people to take out party memberships in this country, but it has to be meaningful engagement, and a leadership contest is not that. It only serves to perpetuate the problems in our system.

 

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Roundup: Trudeau steps on yet another rake

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The prime minister’s problems with the now-cancelled WE Charity contract blew up yesterday, as it was revealed that Justin Trudeau’s mother and brother have been paid by WE to speak at events, that his wife had once been paid by them in 2012, all of which contradicts their previous statements that they don’t pay speakers. (Trudeau maintains that he has never been paid). Suddenly this makes the fact that Trudeau didn’t recuse himself from any decisions around that contract at the Cabinet table look very bad, because his family does benefit from the organization, and they’re not just donating their time and profile as had been previously stated. And for WE’s part, they have done themselves no favours by saying that it was their social enterprise arm, ME to WE, which paid them, except for the times when there was a billing error and WE Charity paid them instead. This as more parliamentary committees are (finally) doing their jobs in calling ministers and bureaucrats before them to explain their decisions. And to cap it off, Yves-François Blanchet is now demanding that Trudeau step aside and let Chrystia Freeland run things until everything is cleared up. So that’s something.

It’s hard not to see that the Liberals’ capacity for self-harm knows no bounds, between these self-inflicted wounds and their inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag/manage an issue, means that they inevitably make it worse for themselves – which they did yet again today by essentially saying that the only thing that matters is that Trudeau was really concerned about the youth. Seriously? It is not only obvious that Trudeau seems to lack any sense of self-awareness, in part because he has grown up as a kind of celebrity, but it’s also combined by the fact that there clearly isn’t anyone in his office who will stand up to him and say that no, this maybe isn’t a good idea, and no, it’s going to come across well no matter how well-meaning it all is. I mean, the first couple of years in office, Trudeau dismantled any way for the party mechanism to push back against the leader and his office, and that was a fair bit more autonomous than what goes on in PMO. This being said, I will add that our ethics and conflict of interest regime in this country is ludicrous, and subject to the whims of successive Ethics Commissioners, who either read their mandates so narrowly that nothing was ever her problem, except when she took it upon herself to decide who is and is not a family friend of the Aga Khan (that being Mary Dawson), or her replacement, who has invented new statutory interpretation out of whole cloth on numerous occasions to baffling results. None of this excuses Trudeau’s constantly stepping on rakes – he should absolutely know better, but seems incapable of figuring that out.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how repetitive Trudeau’s ethical lapses are getting, and how every time he promises that he’s learned his lesson – until he does makes yet another blunder. Matt Gurney is baffled at PMO’s tone-deafness on this whole affair. Chris Selley, while boggled at Trudeau’s constant blunders, is even more incredulous at how Andrew Scheer keeps being so bad at responding while creating his own distractions.

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Roundup: Exit WE

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau seems to be making Fridays his campaign stop field trip presser days, and this time it was to a food bank in Gatineau. Trudeau started off by announcing that because of the situation with the new national security law that China had imposed on Hong Kong, they were suspending the extradition treaty to Hong Kong, as well as exports of certain equipment including military equipment. After commenting about how the government was helping food banks during the crisis, he mentioned that they were moving ahead on delayed infrastructure projects, noting that 92 were getting underway in BC. He also said that he would be hosting a two-day virtual Cabinet retreat next week, where discussions would include how to make the country more resilient during future waves of the pandemic. During the Q&A, Trudeau stated that he was disappointed by Air Canada’s service cuts and hoped that they would be restored as the economy recovers. He also made the point that childcare was an important consideration and why it was one of the conditions for the provinces as part of the $14 billion that is still on the table, and that hasn’t been agreed to. Asked about the intruder on the grounds of Rideau Hall, he simply stuck with thanking the RCMP for their response. And with regards to China, Trudeau said that they were taking action regarding the Hong Kong situation, and looking at steps that Canada can take while we are in discussions with our allies.

Of course, Trudeau also addressed the news that shortly preceded his presser that WE Charity had voluntarily pulled out of the Canada Student Grant programme, for which he said that he was disappointed in how it unfolded, but that he would continue to look for ways to give young people opportunities to serve. He stated that he thought WE had more capacity for training and protectively identifying volunteers, and insisted again that it was the public service that reached out to WE and not his office. And a few hours later, the Ethics Commissioner said he would look into this contract on the grounds of whether or not it furthered the private interests of someone (meaning Trudeau’s family), though I’m not sure how exactly volunteering their time and profile is a material benefit when they get no money from it. Then again, this particular Ethics Commissioner has gone out of his way to invent new interpretations of offences to make it look like he’s being tough, so who knows where this will go.

On the subject of WE, new revelations came out in advance of their pulling out, including criminal activity and fraud in their Kenyan operations in 2017, and the fact that they were offering summer camps $25,000 if they brought in over 75 volunteers over a few months. To add to that, others in the charitable sector are raising questions about the assertion that WE was the only group capable of administering the programme given that they lack links with local groups across the country ­– and the government’s own Canada Service Corps could have been used instead. So it’s no wonder that WE looked at what was before them and decided to pull the plug before even more organizations started digging into their activities, and this government didn’t fight them on it, because maybe they’ve learned a lesson or two on issues management. Maybe.

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Roundup: Self-isolating MPs

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Yesterday evening, Seamus O’Regan tweeted that after a persistent head cold, he went to his doctor and was self-isolating until he got the results of the COVID-19 test that he got. Around the same time, former Conservative Cabinet minister (and sexting blackmail victim) Tony Clement was on Power & Politics saying that it may be time to think about taking Parliament “digital,” and holding debates and votes remotely for the duration. Yeah, that’s a big nope.

I get that being a politician is a tactile business, and there are concerns that the House of Commons is essentially one big cruise ship, however Parliament needs to happen face-to-face. It’s inconceivable that it could be done remotely because so many of the needed conversations happen off-camera and on the sidelines. That can’t be replicated by everyone working remotely. Should they take additional precautions? Sure – additional hand-washing, practicing social distancing when they take meetings, and so on, but that’s not exactly a big hardship. And it’s not like there aren’t a number of constituency weeks coming up for MPs to hunker down if they need to, and even though it may be a hung parliament, there are more than enough provisions for members from different parties to “pair” absences so that there are no accidental losses of confidence in the meantime (because as much as the Conservatives claim they want an early election, this is largely bravado as their party organization is in chaos and they are in no shape for it, not to mention that neither the Bloc nor the NDP want one either, and they have the votes that count).

The bigger danger, however is contagion – not of the virus, but of the notion that MPs can “work remotely,” which many have been pushing for in the ongoing effort to make Parliament more “family friendly.” But that way lies madness – MPs won’t bother to leave their constituencies, believing they can do more good there (even though constituency work is actually not part of their job description), and without those sideline conversations, it will polarize the environment even more than it already is. Recall how collegiality was shattered after evening sittings were ended and MPs no longer ate dinner together – this would make it that much worse, if they no longer have to look one another in the eye or cross paths. This nonsense needs to be quashed here and now. You can’t Skype Parliament.

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Roundup: Protests and impossible demands

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The protests in support of the hereditary chiefs who are against the BC Coastal GasLink pipeline continue to disrupt the rail corridors in central Canada, though that may soon come to an end as the OPP has stated that the situation has become “dire” and threatened enforcement of court injunctions soon enough. Rail service has been cancelled for both freight and passengers, which is going to cause some economic disruption, especially as other sympathetic protesters have been attempting to blockade ports on both coasts. The federal government maintains that they are very concerned about what is happening, but state that these remain areas of provincial jurisdiction, and that’s something that we can’t simply handwave away.

And this is something that should be remarked upon a little more – the demands that the federal government get involved with the Coastal GasLink situation are essentially saying that the government should ignore the constitution, or that when a group feels aggrieved by the provincial government that they can then turn around and demand that the federal government do something, like asking your mother for permission after your father says no. Meanwhile, some of the protesters – like those staging a “sit-in” in the Department of Justice building, are making novel demands of the minister that are outside of his powers, and which don’t respond to how government operates in Canada – particularly given that the RCMP operates at arm’s length and doesn’t take orders from the justice minister or any Cabinet minister. In this case, they are enforcing a court order, which again, the government can’t simply step in and make disappear. We have a rule of law. And yes, the situation is complicated by the fact that there aren’t treaties in this area of BC, which means there is uncertainty as to the rights and title question (which have been under negotiation for years, if not decades), but the justice minister can’t wave a magic wand. Real life doesn’t work like that, and for this group to declare that if he doesn’t wave a magic wand by today that “reconciliation is dead,” well, it’s more than a little precious.

Meanwhile, these protests are giving rise to other voices who want to exploit the situation, like Conservative leadership hopeful who says that if he was prime minister, he would do something about it. He won’t say what – but by gum he’d do something! Jason Kenney, meanwhile, is trying to build the case that this is somehow a “dress rehearsal” for future pipeline protests, and calling these actions “ecocolonial” (whatever that means). Meanwhile, his environment minister is slagging the First Nation chief who has raised concerns about Teck Frontier and the lack of engagement by the provincial government, saying that it’s just about money and the government has to worry about taxpayers. Of course, unless Kenney and company don’t tone it down, things are bound to get worse because of the underlying complexity, so perhaps people need to take a deep breath.

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Roundup: A sledgehammer solution

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Talk about the sexual assault training for judges bill has continued, and the Conservatives have continued to float the idea that it should be expanded to include Parole Board officers. The problem there, of course, is that the bill deals with amendments to the Judges Act, which has bugger all to do with the Parole Board, and this too-cute-by-half tactic of the Conservatives betrays how boneheaded their tactics are.

Meanwhile, Gib van Ert, former Executive Legal Officer to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (who heads the Canadian Judicial Council), has some thoughts on the bill and why it’s very problematic.

Some scholars have shrugged and say “Big deal if it means they get more training,” but the original legislation was far more insidious in that the reporting requirements were a threat do the administrative independence of the court as well. But I’ve spoken to former judges who say this is unnecessary. Another one responded to van Ert. Part of the problem is that there have been high profile cases where the judge has been very wrong on sexual assault law, and that tends to be overturned at the appellate level – but much of the time, the most infamous cases have been provincial court judges, which this doesn’t deal with.

So why are they doing this? Optics. MPs want to look like they’re doing something about the problems or perceived problems, and they’re taking the sledgehammer approach because it looks effective, even when it may not actually be. But that is so much of politics these days, which we need to start breaking out of.

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