Tag Archives: Ethics Commissioner

Roundup: The Republic of the Northwest wank-off

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With an election soon to be called in Alberta, we’re going to start seeing all manner of ludicrous stories related to it, and lo, Maclean’s brings us an imagining of the future history of the “Republic of the Northwest,” which is apparently what a would become of a future Alberta-Saskatchewan-Manitoba-parts-of-BC-and-the-North seccession from Canada. The piece should have instead come with a mature content warning, as it’s basically the two authors jerking one another off to the masturbatory fantasy of a “more prosperous, freer, and more patriotic” future that is never going to be. Why? Because they simply glossed over all of the hard things that such a future would entail, the biggest and most obvious obstacle being the fate of the Indigenous populations. Sure, all of their environmental concerns are just “Laurentian Canadian” bureaucratic meddling. Apparently once Ottawa was out of the way, this new Republic (and curious that such a “patriotic” imagined country would not retain the Crown, if this is supposed to be some kind of small-c conservative fantasy that doesn’t involve being immediately swallowed up by the US), all kinds of pipelines could get built in mere months, with no obstacles whatsoever! Sure, the tidewater is all in Northern BC because the southern coast wouldn’t separate with them, but that won’t affect things! There weren’t any domestic environmentalists in this new country – they were apparently either all figments of Ottawa that were rained upon them, or they were all subject to mass arrest in this “freer” country. There were no Indigenous protests. There were no concerns about actual economic viability of these pipelines with relation to future capacity, or the fact that there is an ongoing global supply glut of oil and dumping more Alberta crude into the world economy wouldn’t be subject to yet more price declines because of basic laws of supply and demand. Nope – it’s all just freedom and prosperity!

And that’s not even to talk about how much they glossed over in terms of what separation would actually mean for the country, from fiscal arrangements, armed forces (do you think they’d just let them take half of the fighter fleet and a chunk of the Navy for their strip of Northern BC Coast line?), and again, the reality of treaties with Indigenous peoples with the Crown of Canada. Honest to Hermes, my eyes could not stop rolling the entirety of this piece. And the worst part is that there is a cohort of Albertans who think this is a plausible vision of the future. They all need to give their heads a shake, and the pair who wrote this piece need to wake up to reality.

On a related note, Jen Gerson digs into the looming problem of Alberta not really preparing for a future with a decreased oil demand, as they prefer instead to keep waiting on the next oil boom. (As the bumper sticker says, “Please God, give us another boom, and I promise not to piss it away this time.”) Yes, the province’s economy has diversified somewhat, but it’s still very dependent on oil revenues. That said, the Bank of Canada did note that the share of GDP that the oil sector is responsible for has diminished a fair amount since the 2015 oil shock, and it’s now less than IT services. The big problem the province is going to have is what to do with all of its under-educated young men, who either quit school or barely got their high school diploma while counting on lucrative oil sector employment. Those days are dwindling, and there will need to be plans to help them transition, sooner than later.

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Roundup: A small shuffle

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The practical fallout from Jody Wilson-Raybould’s resignation played out with a minor Cabinet shuffle yesterday morning, but rather than simply picking another backbencher to slot into the veterans affairs portfolio, Justin Trudeau moved Lawrence MacAulay from agriculture to put him in veterans, moved Marie-Claude Bibeau from international development to agriculture, and gave the international development portfolio to Maryam Monsef in addition to her status of women portfolio. There are a couple of calculations here – MacAulay held the veterans file over twenty years ago, so he’s not completely new, and he’s someone who is running again and has held his seat forever, so he looks like a steady hand in the department (and as a bonus, the department headquarters is in Charlottetown, and he’s a PEI MP). Bibeau, meanwhile, gets the distinction of being the country’s first woman agriculture minister, but she herself pointed out that she’s from a rural Quebec riding with a lot of dairy farmers, and she knows their issues well, and that’s a constituency that this government is keen to placate after concessions made in TPP and New NAFTA. And Monsef? She’s got a track record of good work in the portfolio’s she’s held, and can handle the added responsibility, as well as it reinforce the whole “feminist foreign policy” line of the government (not that you’d know it from how they’re funding it, but whatever).

In other SNC-Lavalin/Wilson Raybould Affair news, the opposition parties demanded that Parliament be recalled next week to keep this issue going, but Trudeau refused (and it’s worth remembering that the justice committee will still be meeting over the constituency weeks). Former Conservative and NDP Attorneys General have also written to the RCMP to demand an investigation (no political interference here), while former Liberal ones say there’s no clear criminal case. New Attorney General David Lametti says he wasn’t aware that Wilson-Raybould had already made the decision on the SNC-Lavalin file when he took over the portfolio, and that he’s still getting all of the facts on the situation.

For context, here’s a profile of Wilson-Raybould’s former chief of staff, Jessica Prince. Here’s a look at whether the Ethics Commissioner can really look into the whole matter. Here’s a look at the government’s reconciliation agenda in the lens of Wilson-Raybould’s demotion and resignation, and why her Indigenous world-view may have informed her decision not to go ahead with insisting on a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin. Here’s a look back at the measures the Conservatives put in 13 years ago to separate the role of the Crown Prosecutor from the Department of Justice, creating the Public Prosecution Service, which was one of their measures when they rode in on the white horse of accountability. In light of Michael Wernick’s testimony, here’s a look back reforms Brian Mulroney made to the role of Clerk of the Privy Council, which may create untenable contradictions in his role. Here are five possible scenarios for the future of SNC-Lavalin if the trial goes ahead, which includes decamping for the UK, or a foreign takeover.

And for pundit comment, Chantal Hébert has four questions about the ongoing situation. Andrew Coyne is not convinced it’s time for a prime ministerial resignation or an RCMP investigation, but that a rethink of our governing culture nevertheless is what will ultimately be needed. My weekend column contemplates the damage to Brand Trudeau™ after the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair.

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Roundup: Welcoming (another) investigation

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And thus, the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould drama rolls along (and don’t you dare -gate this, or I will hunt you down and hurt you). The day began on a few different developments – first, that the Ethics Commissioner said he would begin “an examination” into the matter (which everyone stated was an investigation, though for a matter that has involved the parsing of words, I’m not sure that one is equal to the other), and that the Prime Minister said that welcomed the investigation from the Commissioner (possibly because it will take seven to nine months), that he’d spoken with Jody Wilson-Raybould twice over the past couple of day and stated that when they met back in the fall, and that he told her that any decisions around the Public Prosecution Service were hers alone (in the context of the public lobbying that was being done on all sides). And more to the point, he noted that the fact that she’s still in Cabinet should be proof that what’s alleged didn’t happen, as she would have resigned out of principle if she had been pressured, per the Shawcross Doctrine, and if he didn’t have confidence in her, then he wouldn’t have kept her in Cabinet. Oh, and he would ask the current Attorney General to look into the matter of whether he could waive solicitor-client privilege, because it’s not a simple matter (which got legal Twitter buzzing again).

Of course, none of this is proof enough for the opposition parties, who are demanding that the Justice Committee study go ahead, and the meeting is called for Wednesday, though the Chair has said that he’s hesitant because of the way in which the meeting was called, and the fact that he’s afraid of it simply becoming a partisan circus rather than a useful non-partisan exercise in getting to the truth of the matter. Other Liberals, like New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, is hoping the committee does take up the matter because he’s “troubled” by the allegations, while Celina Caesar-Chavannes is coming to Wilson-Raybould’s defence in light of accusations that there is a smear campaign in the works. And as added context to what is at stake, the federal government signed $68 million in new contracts with SNC-Lavalin last year, and they have a stake in some major projects.

Meanwhile, University of Toronto professor Kenneth Jull walks through the benefits and problems with deferred prosecution agreements like SNC-Lavalin has been pushing for. Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column goes through procedurally what is likely to happen during Wednesday’s justice committee meeting. Lawyer Michael Spratt sardonically wonders if Wilson-Raybould couldn’t achieve any of the promises in her mandate letter because she was being held back by PMO. Andrew Coyne remains adamant that there has not been a proper denial in any of this mess, as the PM continues to step on his own messaging, like he so often does.

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Roundup: Courting the tinfoil hat crowd

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Over the past few days, the Conservatives have been delving into tinfoil hat territory in their attempts to stir up panic and anger toward the UN compact on global migration, which Canada plans to sign next week in Morocco. According to the Conservatives, this non-binding political declaration will somehow erode Canadian sovereignty and be tantamount to “border erasure,” and that if you listen to the Twitter trolls picking up on Andrew Scheer and Michelle Rempel’s posts about this, it will make criticizing immigration a “hate crime.” All of which is complete and utter bullshit, and even Chris Alexander, one-time Harper-era immigration minister, calls this out as factually incorrect. And yet, the Conservatives plan to use their Supply Day today to force a vote on this very issue so that they can express performative shock and dismay when the Liberals vote it down.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1070071215384080389

While Justin Trudeau and Ahmed Hussen have quite rightly called the Conservatives out on this issue as repeating Rebel Media talking points, I have to see this as yet another example of Conservatives not only shamelessly lying to score points, but trying to dip their toe into extremist territory, and the belief that they can just “just enough” extremist language and talking points to try and stir up enough anger and paranoia that they think it will move their poll numbers, but no white supremacists or xenophobes please, “we believe in orderly immigration.” And of course, real life doesn’t work that way, and they wind up stirring up elements that they say they disavow, but continue to wink at because they think it’ll get some kind of benefit out of it.

The other theory raised about why the Conservatives are going full steam on this issue is because they’re trying to head off Maxime Bernier, who is also trolling on this particular bit of lunacy. Why they think this would be a good strategy, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s not as harmless as they might think it is, and that should be concerning to everyone.

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Roundup: On MPs’ sanctimony

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My patience for self-aggrandising bullshit is at an all-time low, so you can image just how hard my eyes rolled when I heard that Justin Trudeau was telling a school group that was touring Parliament that his side is “serious and respectful” and the other guys like to shout, and how it was because when a there isn’t a lot that they can go after the government on, they make noise instead. Trudeau’s capacity for sanctimony is practically legendary, but this was gilding the lily more than a little. Now, I will grant you that since he’s been in charge, the Liberals have been far better behaved in QP than they used to be, and the clapping ban has lowered the level of din in the chamber by a great deal (though said ban is not always honoured). And yes, the Conservatives do yell and heckle a lot, but some of it is deserved when you have ministers or parliamentary secretaries who read non sequitur talking points rather than doing something that resembles answering a question. (They also yell and heckle to be childish and disruptive as well, but it bears pointing out that it’s not entirely undeserved). It’s also cheap theatre, and there is a time and a place for that in politics, and if we didn’t have it during QP, then I daresay that there might be an outbreak of narcolepsy on the Hill. But as with anything, it should be done judiciously and cleverly, and that’s not something that these guys are any good at, and so we return to the sounds of jeering, hooting baboons no more days than not, but that’s no excuse for sanctimony. There are no saints in that chamber.

With that in mind, my tolerance for the whinging and crying foul over the removal of Leona Alleslev as chair of the NATO Parliamentary Association is also mighty thin, for the sheer fact that when she crossed the floor, she wouldn’t be able to chair a parliamentary association. The way these things work is that a government MP chairs, and an opposition MP vice-chairs, and lo, the Conservatives already had a vice-chair on said association. Her removal was not retaliation, but it is a consequence. Now, there are definite questions that can be asked about the timing of said removal – two weeks before a NATO meeting that she has worked toward, and weeks after she crossed the floor (but I don’t know how often this association meets, so this may have been the first opportunity) – but that is far different from the caterwauling from the Conservatives about how the “supposedly feminist” prime minister was being mean to a woman and a veteran. (As an aside, could we please stop with this policing of the PM’s feminism? 99 percent of attacks attached to said policing have nothing to do with feminism). This attempt to claim the moral high ground is exasperating.

To add to all of this, the meeting where the removal happened was met with a bunch of disruptive, juvenile behaviour by Conservative MPs and staffers that included butchered singing, and *gasp!* drinking! Oh noes! Nobody behaved admirably in this situation, and nobody has any high ground to claim, so maybe we should all behave like adults around this.

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Roundup: The people’s vanity project

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Yesterday, Maxime Bernier confirmed his party will be called the “People’s Party of Canada,” just like so many communist parties in the world. Oops. And like those other “People’s Parties,” he won’t hold a contested leadership race, and he’ll get the final say on policies, so that’s off to a great start. Even better was the fact that his logo is simply a repurposing of an old Reform Party logo, and the policy page is a word-for-word copy of the Libertarian Party’s policy (which people also insist was a copy of Bernier’s leadership race policies), so that’s a great start. And during his press conference, he already started with the policy musings that apparently originated from the Internet’s darker recesses. So there’s that.

And aside from the trite attempt to use gay rights as a cover for bashing Muslims, Bernier has a glimmer of awareness that he’s going to be branded with the xenophobes he’s riling up, and he insists that anti-Semites and xenophobes will be kicked out of the party, while at the same time as he’s still using not-even-thinly-veiled xenophobia to try and create a wedge between his nascent party and the Liberals. But while he hopes to make immigration and refugees (and yes, there is a difference) between them as a wedge, he’s already getting warnings that he’s going to have to be very careful to keep the racists out (not to mention the alt-right, the MRAs, and whichever other dog-whistles he happens to be blasting at the time).

Meanwhile, John Geddes deciphers Bernier’s messaging and what he’s offering based on it, while Andrew Coyne reminds all of those who insist this will simply split the Conservative vote that yes, there is actually room in the Canadian political spectrum for such a “worthy experiment,” assuming that Bernier were capable enough to pull it off (and Coyne, like the rest of us, has his doubts). And Paul Wells delivers an epic takedown of Bernier’s potential voters.

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Roundup: Offering justifications for the indefensible

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The attempts by conservatives, both provincial and federal, to justify the use of the Notwithstanding Clause is in full swing, and it’s a bit fascinating to watch the intellectual contortions that they will go through in order to justify a) the abuse of process for Bill 5 in the first place, b) the need to ram it through during the middle of the election itself in order to interfere, and c) why they need to go to the mat and use the nuclear option in order to help Ford enact petty revenge. One of Ford’s MPPs wrote up her legal analysis, which is more than Ford or his attorney general have bothered to do, but it still didn’t explain the need for haste when an appeal of the lower court decision would have been the proper way to go about disputing its reasoning. Ford’s MPPs would go on TV and throw around the word “elites” as though that justifies the nuclear option, which, again, doesn’t actually constitute a proper reason for employing said nuclear option. Andrew Scheer, meanwhile, is falling back on the technicality that Ford’s using the Clause is “within the law” because municipalities are under provincial jurisdiction, which is beside the point – the point being that Ford is violating the norms of our democratic system for his own personal ends, and not calling out that violation of norms is troubling.

Even more troubling was that during yesterday’s raucous Question Period in Queen’s Park, Ford stated that we don’t need the Charter because people elected him – all of which just continues his particular inability to discern between popular rule and democracy. Popular rule is justifying breaking rules and norms because you got elected – democracy is those rules and norms that keeps power in check. That he can’t grasp the difference should be alarming.

The LeBlanc Report

The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner issued his report yesterday on whether Dominic LeBlanc violated ethics rules regarding the awarding of the Arctic surf clam fishery to a company that was headed (on an interim basis) by his wife’s cousin – the context is that he’s one of sixty first cousins, and his relationship with LeBlanc is at best described as an acquaintance. Reading through the report, it hinges upon the Commissioner reading the definition of family much more expansively than it is interpreted elsewhere in the very same regime, which is how LeBlanc interpreted it. LeBlanc took responsibility, vowed to do better in the future, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition from taking the usual route of wailing and gnashing of teeth to decry just how unethical this government is.

In the demonstrable instances, however, the ethics violations have been pretty small ball (i.e. Bill Morneau not properly reporting the ownership structure of the French villa he disclosed), or legitimate differences of opinion on relationships (whether the Aga Khan was a family friend in Trudeau’s case, or the closeness of the relationship between LeBlanc and his wife’s cousin in this case). These are not instances of influence being peddled, people being unjustly enriched (and I know people will quibble about the Bell Island vacation, but the Aga Khan is not some tycoon looking to increase his corporate holdings by way of government connections), so perhaps a bit of perspective is warranted. Should Trudeau and LeBlanc have cleared things with the Commissioner beforehand? Absolutely. But this performative outrage we’re seeing will only get you so far, and railing that there have been no consequences beyond naming-and-shaming means little considering that it was the Conservatives and NDP who designed this ethics regime back in 2006, and they could have designed a more robust system them – or at any point that it’s come up for statutory review – and they haven’t.

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Roundup: Mandate letter madness

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Yesterday was the big day that the mandate letters for the new cabinet minister were finally released, and the Cabinet committees got a bit shake-up. You can get an overview of the letters here, and some deeper analysis on what’s being asked of Jim Carr in international trade, Dominic LeBlanc in intergovernmental affairs, and Jonathan Wilkinson in fisheries. Reading through the letters, however, I found that almost all of the new letters – either with established ministries or with the new ones that they are establishing – were all giving them specific direction on which other ministers they should be working with to achieve specific goals. Very few of them were goals that they were to pursue on their own, which I find to be very curious from a governance perspective.

The big question mark remains around Bill Blair and just what he’s supposed to do as Minister of Looking Tough on Stuff – err, “border security and organized crime reduction.” We got no insight as to whether he has any actual operational control over a department or an agency like CBSA. Rather, his list of goals included looking at a ban on handguns and assault rifles as part of the existing Bill C-71, and that as part of his duties in relation to the border, he should have discussions with the Americans about the Safe Third Country agreement, but it was all rather vague. (There was also some talk about opioid smuggling as part of his border security duties, for what it’s worth). Nevertheless, it was another one of those letters that was focused on which other ministers he’s supposed to be working with as opposed to providing oversight of a ministry, which I find weird and a bit unsettling as to what this means for how the machinery of government works under Trudeau.

Meanwhile, the number of Cabinet committees was reduced, and some of the files that certain of these committees were overseeing got shuffled around. We’ll see how this affects governance, but it’s all a peek into the sausage-making of governance (which, it bears reminding, that the Ford government in Ontario refuses to give any insight into as he refuses to release his own ministers’ mandate letters).

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Roundup: Singh’s pipeline waffle

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On yesterday’s Power & Politics, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh gave an interview that was probably as close to a car crash as I’ve seen him give to date, which should probably start to worry some people. His insistence that he’s in this “for people” is baffling, because that seems to be the most basic, elementary thing that politicians are in politics for. He spoke about the “housing crisis” that the federal government is supposed to do something about (he won’t exactly say what, because in places like Vancouver, supply is an issue), he rattled off the lie that the federal government had cut healthcare (a changed escalator is not a cut, and that particular lie went unchallenged), and he insists that he can do more as an opposition member to make the government keep promises than a Liberal backbencher could. (This kind of spin is something that the Liberals will play with the exact reverse – that a backbencher can do more because they can talk to ministers in the caucus room). He also denied that seeking this seat was because of caucus pressure to get a seat (this was indeed an issue), and is promising to move there if he wins (and good luck finding a house in that market, even to rent), but won’t say what he’ll do if he doesn’t win (and it was a close three-way race in the last election).

The more painful part of the interview, however, had to do with his commentary on the current spat with Saudi Arabia, during which Singh started pontificating about energy sovereignty, and not getting oil from the Saudis any longer. Okay, great – they currently supply a mere 11 percent of Canadian oil imports, so that’s not a big deal, but energy sovereignty means pipelines going west-to-east, which the NDP had a big problem with already in a proposal called Energy East. But when asked about pipelines, Singh deflected and started talking about refineries, which is a different thing altogether. Falling back on NDP catchphrases like “value-added” and “rip-and-ship,” his argument not only didn’t make any sense (the question wasn’t refineries – but that is an issue because East Coast refineries aren’t built to handle western heavy crude), particularly economically (seriously, there’s a reason why we haven’t built new refineries and have in fact shuttered others), it ignored the question about how you have energy sovereignty without pipelines that will run through Quebec – a voter base that the NDP is desperate to hold onto.

He’s been leader for almost a year now – this kind of talking point word salad is getting a bit thin for someone who should be able to provide answers on issues of the day, and who shouldn’t just fall on reheating non sequitur talking points. But this is what the party chose (well, in as much as we’ll see how many of those memberships stay active).

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Roundup: Covering up non-existent data

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With the Conservatives still railing about the supposed Carbon Tax Cover-Up™ (yes, Pierre Poilievre is still trying to make fetch happen), their allies are trying to get in on the action. Jason Kenney tried, and Andrew Leach took him to task for it – and it’s some pretty crucial context because pretty much everything he and the Conservatives are saying is utter bunk. But they’ve set up the narrative that this document they’re demanding is some kind of smoking gun, because they’re building the narrative that this is all some cash grab by a government dire to pay for its spending (never mind that the revenues are going back to the province from which it was collected and not federal coffers, but the truth has never mattered here).

Later in the day, Lisa Raitt tweeted about how one gas station in her riding lowered its prices and there were line-ups around the block! People are struggling! Carbon taxes will devastate families! Again, Leach took her to task, especially the point that this is the whole point about carbon taxes – to change behaviours through price signals. You know, something a free market conservative should espouse (but Raitt is not a free market conservative, but a right-flavoured populist, and said as much during her leadership campaign).

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out the fact that what the Conservatives are demanding is a mix of publicly available data combined with provincial implementation and offsets that nobody has yet, so the government can’t actually provide the data (as some of us have been saying for weeks now), while adding that there is more than a little hypocrisy for a party that keeps demanding disclosure but won’t offer any of their own when it comes to their own supposed plan. But hey, this is about politics and coming up with a scary number that won’t have any proper context or that makes assumptions that no behaviours will change, which misses the point. But, as I’ve said time and again, this isn’t about the truth. This is about the Conservatives building a scary straw man to go to war against, because that’s how they think they’ll win in 2019. And maybe it’ll work. Time will tell.

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