Tag Archives: Eve Adams

Roundup: Mischief petitions

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There’s a nonsense e-petition circulating on the Parliamentary website about the PM’s groping allegation, and essentially calls for him to be removed from caucus because that’s what happened to other Liberals who faced allegations (not true), and then goes on about how he’s lost the confidence of citizens. It’s pure mischief, and the fact that Michelle Rempel is sponsoring it is pretty much proof of that, but that aside, I’m mystified how this passed the vetting that these kinds of petitions are supposed to get because it has nothing to do with a government issue but rather it’s phrased entirely about caucus management. It should be disqualified as such.

This having been established, I have to say that I’m getting mighty tired of e-petition stories, because they’re not actually news. The fact that they’re hosted on the Parliament of Canada website makes them easy to search, so it’s cheap and easy filler content, but the fact that the story here didn’t contextualize the petition as not having anything to do with government business, and instead ginned it up with a headline that it was trying to force a “government response” to the allegation when it has nothing to do with government business, is actually on the irresponsible side. Yes, it’s salacious because it keeps the “groping” allegation story going, but there’s nothing actually there. It’s the equivalent of empty calories in news form. We should be doing better.

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Roundup: So long, Eve Adams

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Some six months after crossing the floor, Eve Adams’ time as a Liberal is at an end as she was defeated in her nomination race in Eglington-Lawrence. Marco Mendicino, a former federal Crown prosecutor who put away terrorists in the “Toronto 18” plot, handily won the riding, and will go on to face Joe Oliver in the upcoming election. Of course, now comes all of the pundits who will question whether Adams’ defeat will also damage Justin Trudeau, but I will say that I’m unconvinced by those arguments. While Scott Reid wrote in the Citizen on Friday that loyal Liberals should hold their noses and vote for Adams to avoid damaging their leader, I think that he entirely misread the situation. When Trudeau accepted Adams into caucus, the reaction was pretty muted. When he did it, it was to take a boot to the Conservatives, and to have Adams talk about how the Conservatives were no longer the party of the Progressive Conservatives (never mind that she never was one). It was about playing up that Red Tories had a home in the Liberal Party. But after that, she faded to the background. Instead of putting her up in QP the next day to great applause, Adams didn’t even show up in the House for days. When she did, she stuck to the background, wasn’t given slots in QP or during Members’ Statements, and was pretty much kept out of the limelight. Trudeau, for his part, stuck to his line of open nominations and didn’t endorse her. And when the process played out and Mendicino won, Trudeau’s hands were clean. Yes, he accepted her into caucus, but that was it. He let the grassroots decide without any interference, and that says a lot, in an age of a lot of bellyaching about the rougher edges of the open nomination process (and seriously, people, the people who have complained about being red-lighted have pretty much proven why that was the case). If anything, things played out in the very best light for Trudeau – he has a strong local candidate that won in a fair race, and he still got in a few punches at the Conservatives when Adams crossed the floor. I have a hard time seeing how this is a negative for him in any way. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed Canada collects your tweets in response to Mendicino’s win.

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Roundup: Giving terrorists what they want

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Because they’re totally not trying to use public service resources for electioneering purposes, it has been revealed that the Foreign Affairs minister Rob Nicholson wanted his department to produce a minimum of three media statements per week regarding the security threats posed by terrorism. While they would draw from events around the world, the statements would have been a steady stream delivered to media inboxes in the hopes of getting some kind of traction. Fortunately, the civil servants in the department realised this was ridiculous and pushed back, saying it wasn’t a priority for them to fulfil these requests, and good on them for doing so – it’s not their job to try and help the party build a narrative for their election campaign. And no doubt, we’ll likely hear a lot more about the security question from the Conservatives going forward, because it’s not like their economic record is doing them any favours right now. Of course, the irony in all of this is that it would appear to feed directly into the aims of terrorists, which is of course, to create fear. If the government is going to deliver nothing but a stream of statements saying “Ooh, terrorists! Be very afraid!” then doesn’t it mean that they’re letting the terrorists win? Even if they follow it up with the chest thumping about how awesome the government is by taking such a strong stand against them, etcetera, etcetera? I’m at a bit of a loss as to how this is a brilliant strategy in the bigger picture.

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Roundup: Out goes an oddly pivotal figure

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In a sense, there’s a closing of a particular chapter of Canadian politics with the announcement yesterday that Peter MacKay was done with politics, and would not be running again. He’ll stay on until the election, and Harper has opted to keep him in the justice portfolio for the dying days of the 41st parliament, but MacKay has made his mind up, and is going to slowly start packing up his office. In many ways, MacKay is a central figure to the modern era of Canadian politics. His decision to begin the process of merging with the Canadian Alliance – betraying an explicit written promise not to, made to secure the leadership of the old Progressive Conservative party – formed the juggernaut by which Stephen Harper was able to form the government that is entering its tenth year in power. While many are saying that this departure marks the end of the “progressive” side of the Conservative party, it bears reminding that MacKay was not a terribly Red Tory, and that there are far more progressive voices in the caucus and cabinet than he was. Where it may have an impact is with the continued attempt by the old Reform Party wing to amend the constitution of the party to sweep away the vestiges of the old PC wing, particularly predominant in the Maritimes and parts of Ontario, and with MacKay no longer there to use his weight among the membership, that final transformation may take place in a year or two. MacKay is also being remembered not only for his political controversies, but also for his romantic misadventures, now behind him as he leaves to spend more time with his family. John Geddes looks back at MacKay’s career, while Paul Wells writes about MacKay’s role in the political merger that changed Canadian politics, and Hugh Segal writes about MacKay’s importance to Canadian politics. Not long after John Baird’s departure, MacKay was spotted meeting with Brian Mulroney in Toronto, which fuelled resignation rumours, which he denied at the time. The Halifax Chronicle Herald’s editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon recalls some of his best work with MacKay’s caricatures, and Global has some archived footage of MacKay’s break-up with Belinda Stronach when she crossed the floor to the Liberals. And BuzzFeed Canada has a listicle about MacKay’s career.

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Roundup: Risk or propaganda?

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It really was pretty galling when the tweets started rolling in yesterday morning – after admonishing the media to pay close attention and be very careful not to show the faces of any of the Special Forces troops in Iraq while they covered the Prime Minister’s surprise visit, the PM’s own media team went ahead and did it without a second thought. Oops. When this was pointed out, they took the videos down and tried to make some excuses, and later in the day, the Chief of Defence staff called the risk “minimal,” but maybe that’s because the PM’s 24/Seven videos get a mere tens of viewers, half of them from the media trying to see what they weren’t allowed to cover while the PM had his own team of propagandists doing the work for them. But the thing is, this wasn’t the first time this particular screw-up happened either. No, just a few weeks ago, Jason Kenney tweeted some of those faces that were not supposed to have been shown when he posted photos of the ramp ceremony of Sgt. Doiron, and I’m not sure that he delivered so much as an apology. And while Marc Garneau did ask whether this was a matter of incompetence, it also needs to be called out that neither of the opposition parties took this rather serious breach of operational security and government incompetence was asked about in QP until the second round for the NDP, the third for the Liberals. If a government is putting troops in danger because they want to bolster their image for propaganda videos, they deserve to be raked over the coals for it. It’s too bad that the opposition parties can’t be bothered to do their jobs.

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Roundup: Arctic Council changing hands

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It’s the end of Leona Aglukkaq’s two years as Chair of the Arctic Council on Canada’s behalf, and well, there’s not a lot to show for it. That’s not much of a surprise considering what we’ve seen of Aglukkaq in any of her roles so far. As the Americans prepare to head up their turn as Chair, we’re hearing a lot about their priorities, much of it having to do with climate change – you know, that thing at Aglukkaq likes to scold provincial governments about while doing next to nothing on the file herself, while simultaneously taking credit for the reductions that Ontario achieved by shuttering their coal-fired electricity plants. Aglukkaq instead pats herself on the back for encouraging private sector investment in the Arctic, but we haven’t really heard much in the way of good economic news in the North – instead, we’ve heard much more about the skyrocketing food prices and the lack of political will to do much about Nutrition North, or even for the government to acknowledge that problems exist with it. Like so many things during her time in federal politics, Algukkaq seems absent even from the conversation, so you can’t even say that she’s more talk than action. I’m not sure why anyone might have expected this to go any differently.

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Roundup: It wasn’t terrorism, but support our anti-terror bill

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With the House back this week, we are likely to see debate resume on the new anti-terrorism bill – something that Peter MacKay was talking up over the weekend with regard to the alleged Halifax shooting plot, despite the assurances that the would-be shooters weren’t actually terrorists and were caught using existing tools. Through this, a former assistant director of CSIS says the tools are necessary because CSIS is built for the Cold War, and they really need these new tools to actively disrupt terrorist networks. Sure, that may be, but there remains the gaping flaw in terms of oversight, and another former CSIS agent spoke to the media, pointing out that without that oversight, we’ll see more cases where CSIS sanitizes their files before they hand them over to SIRC. As well, said agent warns that the provisions in the bill are likely to open up a whole area of secret jurisprudence which is alarming, and says that the Prime Minister making vaguely threatening statements like “tentacles of jihadism reaching us” could actually fan the flames and make things worse. So there’s that. Two professors who study national security laws weigh in on the bill, and while they see a few merits in it, they have a number of concerns and yes, the lack of oversight is one of the most alarming portions of it. And no, a judicial warrant is not a sufficient safeguard considering that we have documented cases where CSIS was found to have misled the very court it asked for a warrant from. That is a very big problem, and one that the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on sometime later this year.

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Roundup: Mandating bilingual tweets

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The Official Languages Commissioner has decreed that cabinet ministers should tweet in both official languages, which seems like a fairly concerning decree when you look at how some of those ministers are using the Twitter Machine to engage in some actual dialogue with actual Canadians (and some journalists too) about issues, without it all being canned statements and talking points. The caveat to the Commissioner’s statement is that they must use both official languages when communicating “objectives, initiatives, decisions and measures taken or proposed by a ministry or the government.” In other words, those canned links to press releases. The thing is, those are already being tweeted out by the official department accounts, whereas the ministers tweeting – at least for the good ones – are more “personal” and less filtered. Those are where the value in Twitter lies, and if the objective is to simply turn ministerial Twitter accounts to official releases, then what’s the point? I think this may be an instance where the Commissioner needs to perhaps re-evaluate social media and the engagement that happens over it.

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Roundup: The Adams nomination

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Day three of the Eve Adams floor crossing fallout, and once you wade through some of the sexist columns and tiresome Biblical references, a few things start to emerge. Adams had a very interesting interview on CP24 yesterday, and the host pressed her on a lot of issues and Adams seemed to have some coherent answers about changing her mind about income splitting when Flaherty came out with his objections, and that she was a loyal foot soldier for the Conservatives so their excuses about being happy to be rid of her are ringing hollow. She also said that she would be moving to riding she plans to run in, Eglington Lawrence, and that has already begun reaching out to the community there. The riding president says she’s welcome to run, but reminds everyone that it’s an open nomination. Trudeau told the media while in Winnipeg that he gave some reflection to accepting Adams into the fold, and said that it was Adams’ willingness to do the tough slog to win a difficult riding was what convinced him – and I think that’s borne out it in the fact that it’s going to be an open, contested nomination, and that Adams is going to have to do the hard work of convincing the grassroots members that she is the leopard who has changed her spots. And it’s going to be tough – here is one of the nomination candidates that she will be running against, and it’s going to be tough for her to beat someone of his credentials. I also believe that having Adams lose in a fair fight is part of Trudeau’s actual plan, where he gets the news value of her embarrassing the PM and then saying that the open nomination system worked. The fact that she was slotted into the riding’s nomination race without consultation seems to fit with that fact. But then again, what do I know?

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Roundup: No thanks, FactsCan

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A new site launched this week called FactsCan, which aims to fact-check claims put out by political leaders and parties as we head toward an election. The organisers like to think that because they’re not filing stories to the 24-hour news cycle that they can spend the time doing this when journalists apparently can’t. It sounds like a laudable goal on the surface, but if you think about it for longer than a few seconds, I’m not exactly convinced of the merits of this programme. For one, journalists are already fact-checking and pointing out blatant falsehoods. All the time. It’s our job. The site talks about offering information “with no BS or alternate agenda.” So, the mainstream media is delivering both? Is that their implication? At least one of the names attached to the project raises a red flag with me, which is someone from Democracy Watch, seeing as that is an organisation that often deliberately distorts the way our democratic system functions and has often given massively inaccurate information about some basic civic literacy concepts in this country – and yet one of their members will be “fact checking.” Okay. What bothers me the most, however, is the funding aspect. This site appears to be trying to do the crowd funding thing, but hey, why not simply pay for your news so that journalists can continue to do this kind of work like we’re supposed to, and so that we won’t have to keep facing newsroom cuts which further impact on our time? They’re also relying on volunteers to help them out, which again impacts on journalists’ livelihoods. If they want the media to do a better job, well, then they can subscribe to a newspaper or two so that we have the resources to do our jobs – not getting others to do it for free.

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