Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Parting shots after the furore

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As the furore around the transfer of Tori Stafford’s killer dies down now that she has been moved back to another medium-security facility (but not “behind bars” as there aren’t any in women’s institutions in this country), the Conservatives and Conservatives are trying to get parting shots in. While the Conservatives have been demanding apologies from the Liberals because they’re still sore that they were called ambulance chasers, the Liberals’ parting shot was delivered on Friday as Karen McCrimmon, the parliamentary secretary for public safety, let it be known on Power & Politics that other child killers were transferred to healing lodges under the Conservatives. Hold up, said P&P, and while McCrimmon couldn’t give any names, the show went and checked. And lo, since 2011, twenty people convicted of killing a minor have been moved to healing lodges, 14 of them under the Conservatives. Now, we don’t know any of the details of these transfers, and how along they were in their sentences, or anything like that, because the families of the victims didn’t come forward like Stafford’s father did. But it certainly blows the Conservative narrative that this is somehow a Trudeau/Liberal “soft on crime” policy out of the water.

So, a couple of observations: The Conservatives keep insisting that they weren’t the ones who politicised the issue, and yet they are simultaneously patting themselves on the back for “forcing” the government to act, when the government ordered a review within a couple of days of this transfer going public. That sounds an awful lot like politicising it. Their talking heads have also been going onto the talk shows to insist that the Liberals were the ones who started the “name calling” and “insults” first, when it was only after a day of sustained questions that got increasingly graphic and overwrought that Trudeau accused them of ambulance-chasing politics. In other words, they are trying to play victim. There is also a certain amount of utter shamelessness when they insist that things that happened under their watch (the aforementioned killer being transferred from maximum to medium security, or now these other child-killer transfers) are somehow different because we’re talking about the here and now. I get that this is politics, but at some point, one has to wonder why there is a lack of shame around any of what goes on.

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Roundup: A StatsCan privacy check

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While the ongoing issue of Statistics Canada looking for financial transaction data continues, the actual privacy practices in the institution aren’t being adequately explained to Canadians – and they certainly aren’t being represented accurately by the opposition. So with that in mind, here’s professor Jennifer Robson to explain just what she has to go through in order to access data for her research at StatsCan, in order to give you a better sense about how seriously they take this kind of thing.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1059641954021990400

This is why the complaints that the data won’t be secure as it’s being anonymized is pretty specious, and the pearl-clutching that StatsCan would have a person’s SIN is also overblown considering that they already have it – they matched up people’s tax returns with their census forms to ensure that they had accurate data regarding household incomes, and lo, nobody made a peep about that when it happened. Again, this overblown rhetoric around what is being planned about this financial transaction data is not only risible, but it’s actively mendacious (particularly when Conservative MPs keep saying things like this is a project by the Liberal Party or by Justin Trudeau himself). And yes, StatsCan has done a woeful job as to explaining what it needs these data for, and this government is largely too inept to communicate any of that information either. And yet here we are.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out that while the Conservatives have been spending years attacking StatsCan, the real privacy threat comes from the unregulated use of personal information by political parties, not the country’s statistical agency.

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Roundup: Di Iorio’s bizarre tales

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The tale of absent MP Nicola Di Iorio got even more bizarre yesterday as he started talking to the media, but remained secretive about what he’s been up to since he stopped showing up to Parliament. Di Iorio claims that when he announced his intention to resign in April, there was an outpouring of support from the riding that had him reconsider. Fair enough. He then disputed the reporting that an issue had arisen because he wanted to hand-pick his successor rather than run an open nomination…and then basically confirmed it by saying he wants a hand in picking the successor in the riding and not wanting it to be an open nomination, casting aspersions on the nomination process and claiming the nomination is the election (because it’s a pretty safe seat). So, points for that own-goal.

But wait – it gets even more bizarre. Di Iorio claims that he is on a special assignment from the prime minister that has work that keeps him busy in the riding – too busy to be in Ottawa. And he won’t say what that work is, other than it has something to do with “road safety.” And to add to that, PMO confirmed that he “agreed to continue his work to ensure a smooth transition in his riding and to work on specific files that are in line with his work experience and expertise,” and that he’s expected to announce his decision regarding his future in the coming days. I’m…unconvinced by this. In my ten years covering the Hill, I have never seen any MP disappear for months on a “special assignment” that is so demanding that they can’t show up in Ottawa. I’ve seen plenty of sick leaves, and one or two stress leaves, but never a “special assignment” that has them ignoring their actual duties in Ottawa, where they should be. And why the PMO is being vague about this as well is all the more odd, and smacks of trying to save some kind of face for the situation that Di Iorio has caused. I’m not convinced that any of this is legitimate, so we’ll see what he has to say in the “coming days.”

Meanwhile, here’s Katie Simpson talking about her interview with Di Iorio yesterday.

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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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Senate QP: Wilkinson’s first appearance

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It was to be Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s first appearance in the Senate, still new in the portfolio. Senator Don Plett led off, asking on the Fisheries bill and how it had provisions around captions of cetaceans which were different from those in the Senate public bill that deals with similar matter. Wilkinson first led off by remarking that he used to be a constitutional negotiator and worked on senate reform, before he launched into some prepared remarks on the capture of cetaceans for public display, and said that they support the Senate bill in principle and looked forward to the Chamber’s debates on the Fisheries bill. Plett pressed and raised Wilkinson’s predecessor’s concerns around provincial jurisdiction which would render the Senate bill unconstitutional, and Wilkinson noted that the Senate bill is not government legislation, but the provisions related to whales in the Fishies bill were done with the understanding that it was federal jurisdiction. 

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Roundup: Finishing a ham-fisted job

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In the wake of Karina Gould’s appearance at Senate QP earlier this week, the ISG is reaching out to the media to push the narrative that they desperately need changes to the Parliament of Canada Act in order to “finish the job” of making the Senate “independent,” which has me giving a bit of a resigned sigh because it feels to me a bit like someone climbing onto a steamroller when they’ve barely taking the training wheels off of a bicycle. While there are arguments to be made for changes to the Act, it ignores the fact that it’s actually fairly difficult to do (previous attempts to change the Act have been curtailed because of legal opinions that have stated that it may require the consultation of the provinces), and the fact that it’s probably premature to start making these changes.

While on the one hand, I understand that the ISG is looking to cement changes to the Senate in advance of the election in the event that the Liberals don’t win and a hypothetical Andrew Scheer-led Conservative government starts making partisan appointments again, and they want to protect the gains they’ve made, but on the other hand, they really still haven’t even learned how the Senate operates currently, so demanding changes in advance of that seems a bit precious. The fact that they haven’t managed to figure out some pretty basic procedure (while complaining that it’s being used against them) and then demanding the rulebook be thrown out and rewritten to suit them is problematic, and making what amount to permanent changes to the institution on the basis of what is currently a grand experiment seems completely foolhardy – particularly when they have already negotiated workarounds to most of the issues that are currently irritating them, such as funds for the ISG, while I’m really not sure why the length of vote bells is being treated as a dire circumstance demanding action.

The other thing that bothers me with the interview that Senator Woo gave is that he’s demanding that Trudeau pick up the reins with this modernisation while he’s thus-far been content to let Senators figure it out. Granted, there is an element of “he made this mess and now he’s letting everyone else clean it up” to the whole thing, but I’m not sure I want to trust Trudeau to finish the job of “modernising” the Senate because of the fact that he’s caused significant damage that a future generation is going to have to undo, and along the way, he’s managed to centralise more power within the caucus room as part of his ham-fisted “fix” for a Senate problem that didn’t actually exist. Trying to get him to finish the job may simply be inviting bigger problems that will take even longer to undo.

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QP: Eight questions later…

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With so much news going on, and so many balls to juggle, it was a question as to whether the Conservatives would carry on the tactics they’ve been pursuing the past week or so. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he immediately led off with the falsehood that small and medium-sized business would bear the brunt of the new carbon taxes. Justin Trudeau stated how proud he was of his plan, and they had lowered small business taxes. Scheer tried again, and Trudeau accused the Conservatives of having no plan. Scheer waved around the background documents to claim that the industrial sector is exempt from the same costs as SMEs — deliberately omitting that the rebates are only for trade-exposed sectors — but Trudeau didn’t correct the record. Scheer dug into that same line of questioning, and Trudeau went into a bit of high dudgeon about how Canadians wanted more than opposition but wanted their plan. Scheer tried one last time, and Trudeau again avoided calling bullshit on it, but simply lamented that the Conservatives were unwilling to take climate action. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, who raised the concerns of BC First Nations opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline who claim the new process remained rigged. Trudeau picked up a script to read about how the we’re getting the job done. Caron then raised the lack of movement on steel and aluminium tariffs, and Trudeau took up another script to read about how great the New NAFTA was. Tracey Ramsey took over to lament that polling showed people being disappointed with the agreement, and Trudeau assured her that he met with workers in her area who were pleased with the deal. Nathan Cullen returned to the TMX review’s timelines, and Trudeau picked up a script to say that the old process was why the previous government couldn’t get pipelines built.

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QP: Performative carbon outrage

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While Justin Trudeau was off in Toronto to sell his climate rebate plan, Andrew Scheer was back in Ottawa, leading the charge against the idea. And to lead off in QP, he disingenuously suggested that a carbon price would have no effect on the climate (not true), and would only raise costs for families. Dominic LeBlanc responded by touting that they have a plan and the Conservatives did not. Scheer forced a tortured trick-or-treat analogy to insist that large emitters were exempt from the plan — which is a lie — and LeBlanc reiterated his points without correcting the record. They went for another round of the same, and then Scheer reached into his bag of greatest hits to demand the true costs of the climate plan, and LeBlanc hit back that Scheer’s lack of plan wouldn’t be revealed until after the election. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he railed about the concessions in the New NAFTA. Marc Garneau praised the agreement and stated that they were continuing to fight the steel and aluminium tariffs. Caron railed about the exemptions on duties for private couriers but not Canada Post, and Garneau insisted that Canadians were satisfied with the agreement. Alexandre Boulerice heard scorn on the government’s climate targets, and LeBlanc assured him that they were living up to their commitments, and noted the Nobel prize for pricing pollution, which is what the government was doing. Boulerice groused about pipelines, and LeBlanc gave more assurances of their plan.

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QP: Trying to lay an obvious trap

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Following statements marking the two fallen soldiers who were killed by terrorists on Canadian soil four years ago, Andrew Scheer led off in French, mini-lectern on desk, reading a demand to deal with returnees from groups like ISIS, and that included demanding support for their opposition motion. Justin Trudeau responded with a statement of support for the police and intelligence services who are looking to bring these people to justice, and that they would support their motion. Scheer switched to English to repeat the demand, saying the government hasn’t done enough, and Trudeau reiterated the response in English. Scheer switched to the Mark Norman case, demanding the records from PMO be released to Norman’s defence, and Trudeau said that he wouldn’t comment on the case as it’s before the courts. Scheer insisted that he didn’t want comment on the case, but wanted to know if he would release the documents, to which Trudeau said that there were all kinds of other things they could ask about but they were fixated on this court case he couldn’t comment on. Scheer took Trudeau up on the invitation to ask about the New NAFTA, and wondered about caps on dairy exports to third countries, but Trudeau simply praised Supply Management and didn’t answer. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, lamenting that Canada could not meet their GHG targets, to which Trudeau accused the opposition of refusing to accept that the economy and the environment to together. Caron changed to French, and railed about the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline, and Trudeau listed investments in environmental protection that they’ve made, and insisted that they would meet their GHG targets. Hélène Laverdière demanded that arms to Saudi Arabia be halted, to which Trudeau picked up a script to read his condemnation for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and said that they were working closely with G7 allies. Laverdière switched to English to repeat the demand, and Trudeau read his English version of the script, with new paragraphs on strengthening export permit reviews.

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QP: More Mark Norman insinuations

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While Justin Trudeau was in town but not in Question Period, Andrew Scheer was also away for reasons undisclosed. Candice Bergen led off on the Vice-Admiral Mark Norman issue again, demanding that the government turn over recordings of Cabinet meetings where shipbuilding contracts were discussed. Ralph Goodale got up to respond by reminding her that this is before the courts and they can’t discuss it. Bergen raised the spectre that the government was destroying records because of the Ontario Liberals did in relation to the gas plants scandal. Goodale reminded her of the Standing Orders that state that matters before the courts can’t be discussed. Bergen tried again on the same insinuations, and Goodale said that the government follows the law. Gérard Deltell got up to try again in French, and Goodale reminded him about the independence of the courts. Deltell reminded him that Paul Martin released records for the sponsorship scandal, and Goodale cautioned him that commentary like that was not permitted. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, demanding expungements instead of pardons for former simple possession convictions. Goodale reminded him that the old system didn’t work which was why they changed it, and that they were putting in a new expedited process for those pardons. Caron asked again in French, and Caron reminded him that the expungements for when the law itself was discriminatory such as when it criminalised people for being gay. Hélène Laverdière got up next, and asked the government to apply the Magnitsky Act on Saudi officials responsible for the disappearance and possible death of Jamal Khashoggi. Chrystia Freeland assured her that they were working with partners to call for answers, but when Laverdière asked again in English, bringing up our arms sales, and Freeland gave a more pointed response about the G7 foreign minister’s statement that she led.

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