Tag Archives: First Nations

QP: Raising the referendum temperature

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With the big announcement on the trans rights bill having been made, there were plenty of members’ statements about International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. All of the leaders were present, and Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, and asked about the review of the forthcoming NEB ruling on the TransMountain Pipeline. Justin Trudeau hit back, saying that it was the previous government that created uncertainty by not committing to protecting the environment. Ambrose insisted that the review was “very thorough,” but Trudeau repeated his response about the previous government’s failings. Ambrose changed to the electoral reform referendum issue, and Trudeau responded with his promise that the last election would be the last under First-Past-the-Post. Denis Lebel took over and asked another pair of demands for a referendum in French, and Trudeau repeated his same answer in French. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and wondered “what the hell” the government was waiting for about decriminalizing marijuana — earning him a rebuke from the Speaker. Trudeau repeated his standard points about legalization as a framework to protect kids and deprive organized crime of revenue. Mulcair switched to French to ask about a pardon for people currently convicted under the existing law, but Trudeau’s answer didn’t change. Mulcair changed to C-10, for which Trudeau insisted that it would be used to build an aerospace industry in Canada. Mulcair repeated the question in English, and got the same response.

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QP: Narratives and process

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While there was already drama in the Commons earlier in the morning as a government bill barely survived a tie vote, by the time QP rolled around, it was a bit more sedate. Justin Trudeau was in Montreal for an award presentation, and Rona Ambrose was elsewhere, which left Denis Lebel to lead off. He raised the new guidelines around advertising, but wondered why Trudeau was still in a Discovery Canada ad. Brison reminded him that the ad in question was not a paid ad, and thus did not apply. Lebel asked again, and Brison switched to English and hit back about the previous government’s record. Lebel switched to English to ask again, and got the same answer. Andrew Scheer asked again, and raised the self-promotion narrative before demanding do know that no government funds were used in the ad. Brison read out the policy, and suggested that Scheer rethink his questions. After another round of the same, Thomas Mulcair rose for the NDP, and thundered about the “scammers” in KPMG. Diane Lebouthillier insisted that there were codes of conduct in place and that no one gets special treatment. Mulcair thundered again in French, got the same answer, and before Mulcair thundered about Montreal infrastructure funding. Amarjit Sohi insisted that funding was on the way as consultations were underway. Mulcair asked again in English, and go the same.

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QP: Howling for a referendum 

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While the March for Life went on outside the Centre Block, and while Justin Trudeau was in town — having met with the premier of New Brunswick only a couple of hours before — he didn’t show up at QP. Then again, neither did Rona Ambrose or Thomas Mulcair. Jason Kenney led off, demanding a referendum on electoral reform as the provinces had. Maryam Monsef kept up yesterday’s saccharine talking points, and insisted that a referendum wouldn’t reach young people, women, people with disabilities or minorities. Kenney and Monsef went at it again for another two questions, before Stephen Blaney picked up on it in French, and got the same response. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet led for the NDP, and decried the composition of the electoral reform committee, to which Monsef insisted that having the Bloc and Greens on the committee was indeed going above and beyond what was required. Hélène Laverdière changed topics and turned to Saudi LAV sales, wondering how many civilians need to be killed before it becomes unacceptable. Stéphane Dion reminded her that the NDP promised to respect the contract to win the seat in that riding, and when Laverdière tried to make it about a question of trust, Dion noted that the NDP changed their tune, not the Liberals.

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QP: Monsef’s saccharine platitudes

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For caucus day, all of the leaders were present, and from the gallery at the back of the chamber, former Speaker Peter Milliken was keeping a jovial eye on the place. Rona Ambrose led off, mentioning her time in Fort McMurray and asking that infrastructure funding for the region be fast-tracked to help them get back on their feet. Trudeau thanked her for her leadership on the ground and noted that he formed an ad hoc cabinet committee for the rebuilding, in order to bring the whole of government to help. Ambrose changed topics and demanded a referendum on electoral reform. Trudeau raised the Fair Elections Act, and that people voted for change in the last election. Ambrose asked again in French, got much the same answer, and then Scott Reid took over to ask if the only way the government was going to hold a referendum was if they knew they could win. Trudeau repeated his commitment from the election that it was to have been the last election under First-Past-the-Post. Reid pressed, and Trudeau said that people wanted change after the last government’s behaviour with a majority. Thomas Mulcair got up next, and demanded that the committee allow all of the members to vote. Trudeau insisted that Canadians were clear when they voted for change in the election. Mulcair declared the fix to be in for preferential ballot which he insisted worked in their favour. Trudeau gave his same answer, and Mulcair moved onto a video about Saudi human rights abuses with relation to the LAVs. Trudeau reminded him that he promised not to break the contract, and that Mulcair did too. Mulcair gave a roaring repeat, and got as sharp of a rebuke from Trudeau.

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Roundup: A committee nobody will love

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So, the government has put the notice on the Order Paper about forming their electoral reform committee, and there will be howls of outrage from all corners as this is going to please precisely nobody. Well, except maybe Liberals who will be controlling this process. In short, Maryam Monsef’s principles for democratic reform have been distilled to five points from eight, and the committee will be constituted of twelve MPs – six Liberals, three Conservatives, one New Democrat, one Bloc and Elizabeth May, but the Bloc MP and May won’t have voting rights in keeping with established practice. The committee will invite all MPs to hold town halls in their ridings and submit a written report back to the committee by October 1st, and the committee’s final report is to be delivered by December 1st. Of course, the NDP are going toe be livid because Liberals continue to make up a majority on the committee (which is legitimate given that they have the most seats) and that it doesn’t follow Nathan Cullen’s “proportional” idea – which, let’s be clear, was all about gaming the committee to advance his own proportional representation agenda. May is going to be upset because she’d not getting a vote, and she too is going to be railing that it won’t allow her to advance her own PR agenda. The Conservatives are going to be upset because the possibility of a referendum is not in this proposal, and they see that as their way of holding onto the status quo (which they feel favours their own chances). And I’m going to add my own particular objections that, as I’ve written previously, there are some serious problems with those principles that Monsef has laid out. We’ll see how this exercise goes, and I have a sneaking suspicion that these town halls may start to become sideshows as groups like Fair Vote Canada start trying to Astroturf them in trying to get PR advanced as the model to go forward (and given how PR advocates tend to operate, the insults and nastiness are going to start flying pretty quickly). There is also the (not unjustified) suspicion that the fix is already in, that the Liberals have their preferred model (likely ranked ballots) and that this is all a big production number to make it look like they’ve consulted Canadians, and that may very well be the case. Suffice to say, I suspect the next few months are going to be one giant headache, especially for those of us who are cognisant of the civic literacy issues at play.

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QP: Nobody believes that invitation 

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A lovely Tuesday afternoon in Ottawa, and most of the leaders were present today, though not Rona Ambrose, who is still in Alberta, on the ground with the Fort McMurray Fire victims. Andrew Scheer led off, reading from a script on his mini-lectern, first calling for praise for the firefighters in that region, and then demanded pipelines be built to “cushion the blow” of the fire. Justin Trudeau first congratulated the firefighters on the ground, and said they would help with the rebuilding. Scheer demanded that the government not allow “special interests” block any pipelines. Trudeau hit back by pointing out that the Conservative approach failed to get pipelines to tidewater. Scheer brought up the Washington trip and how the in-laws were present by not the Natural Resources minister. Trudeau reminded him that those guests were personal invites by Obama. Scheer insisted that nobody believed that was the case, and demanded Trudeau just tell them that he added those names to the list. Trudeau told him that Obama insisted they be invited on top of the official delegation. Scheer hammered away, insisted that the Natural Resources Minister still should have been there. Trudeau repeated again that the Conservatives didn’t understand how that bilateral relationship actually works. Thomas Mulcair led for the NDP, and he wondered who the government was trying to protect in the KPMG tax evasion scandal. Trudeau reminded him of their investments into CRA, and noted that it was a Liberal who raised the issue in committee to begin an investigation. Mulcair read some shell companies listed in the Panama Papers, and pointed out that the parliamentary secretary to the minister of heritage worked for one of them. Trudeau reiterated that they were committed to combatting tax evasion, regardless of Mulcair’s smears. Mulcair moved onto the PBO report on the loss of small business tax cuts, and Trudeau praised the Canada Child Benefit as a measure that helps the economy as a whole. Mulcair then demanded that the assisted dying bill be referred to the Supreme Court, but Trudeau demurred.

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Roundup: Who to blame for short timelines

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Our friend Kady O’Malley penned a column over the weekend about how anyone upset about the tight timeline of the assisted dying legislation should be upset at the fixed election date instead of the Supreme Court for imposing the deadline. And she’s right, but I’m not particularly enthused about her suggestion that the election date be moved to earlier in the year instead of October, as that date pretty much wipes out the fall sitting of Parliament. I mean, that is a valid point, but if you were to ask me, the real suggestion would be to simply eliminate the fixed election date as we already have a constitutional requirement that elections be held every five years, whereas the fixed date is a particular bit of Americanisation that is supposed to provide stability but just winds up making the whole system worse off, from turning Question Period into an unrelenting series of election ads, to simply changing the government’s calculations on policy to suit that date rather than supposedly helping the opposition by giving them more predictability when it comes to election timing. It didn’t, incidentally, stop the speculation of early election calls since pretty much every media outlet continued to ask whether there would be an early call (as is permissible, since the legislation can’t actually bind the powers of the Governor General), so it’s not like it changed that conversation any. That all being said, I would like to note that while many people quite rightly point out that there was no obligation on the Supreme Court to give the government that year (plus the extra four months) to come up with a bill, but could rather have struck down that prohibition immediately and we would have had few ill-effects, I will point out that without a deadline, MPs would simply keep putting off the legislation under the constant plaintive wails that it’s “deeply personal” and “a difficult subject.” Our MPs, in the event you haven’t noticed, are a lot that really are pretty lacking when it comes to moral courage to deal with difficult things. Instead, they wait for people to bring it to the courts in order to be “forced” to deal with it, and if you look at the pattern from the last decade or so, their response is to half-ass some rushed legislation in response, decry the courts for forcing them into such a compromise position, and leave it for it all to be challenged in court once again. That we have a new government doesn’t seem to have changed the pattern too much, with overly cautious legislation that doesn’t appear to meet the test laid out by the Supreme Court in the Carter decision, while MPs fall all over themselves to declare that it’s a “deeply personal” issue while wailing plaintively that there are no provisions for more palliative care in a bill that is about changing Criminal Code prohibitions. So rather than blaming the fixed election date (which is a valid position), I choose instead to blame our rather spineless crop of MPs, who have mostly chosen to complain about the lot they’ve been given rather than rise to the occasion.

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QP: About the Fiscal Monitor…

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While Justin Trudeau was in Toronto to meet Prince Harry and launch the countdown to next year’s Invictus Games, the rest of Parliament was getting down to business. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk and raised the surplus figures in the Fiscal Monitor. Bill Morneau said that the department continues to tell him that the year will still end in deficit, but those figures won’t be available until September. Ambrose worried that Canadians can’t trust him if he ignores basic facts, to which Morneau gave some bland praise for their fiscal programme for the middle class. Ambrose then repeated her first question in French, and got the same answer from Morneau in French. Denis Lebel got up next, and asked the very same question, and got the very same answer. Lebel closed with a question about support for the forestry industry, to which Kim Rudd read some praise for the sector as part of the government’s commitment to innovation. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet led off for the NDP, decrying that the government wasn’t bailing out Bombardier. Navdeep Bains insisted that the government understood the importance of the sector, and that they were trying to set it up for success in the long-term. Boutin-Sweet then decried the loss of jobs inherent in Bill C-10, for which Marc Garneau insisted that the bill mandated jobs be in three province, and said the bill would clarify the law to prevent future lawsuits. Nathan Cullen was up next, demanding a legislated tanker ban on the North Coast of BC. Garneau said that he was in the midst of working on this with his cabinet and provincial colleagues. Cullen railed about the issue further, and Garneau repeated his answer in French.

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Roundup: Six months later

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The Liberal government is now six months old, so everyone is checking in on the list of their promises kept and broken. This one list, compiled from the “Trudeau Meter,” however, is a bit nitpicky on some of those “broken” promises, calling them broken because there was no mention in this year’s budget when there are three more years of budgets left in the current mandate, and it’s pretty hard to expect everything to have happened in the first six months of a government, when there are a lot of moving pieces to keep track of. In other words, give them a little more time before you declare all of these promises broken. The deficit figures for this year continue to look better than anticipated as the Fiscal Monitor shows continued surpluses into the spring months (which the Conservatives will be insufferable about in QP next week, I can promise you), but that may be because CRA is apparently having a banner year in terms of collecting lapsed taxes, up to an extra $1 billion so far. So there’s that. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have the challenge of trying to stay united during this period of transition for their party, particularly as the leadership contest starts to intensify. As for the NDP, they’re now struggling to remain relevant six months later. So there’s that.

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Roundup: Responsible, not rogue

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A Liberal MP has broken ranks on a government bill! Oh noes! Let us now treat this as some kind of crisis of leadership! Okay, so the CBC piece about the event is only slightly more measured than that, but their Twitter headline certainly wasn’t.

One of the most enduring problems with Canadian political reporting is the constant conundrum of demanding that MPs exercise more independence, but immediately treating any instances of MPs breaking party ranks as some kind of crisis of leadership, where obviously the grip has been lost and soon it will be all over for the leader. (In some cases, the party itself treats it as some kind of betrayal of solidarity *cough*NDP*cough* and punishes its MPs internally with things like removing QP spots for weeks or removing members from committees or travel junkets). Ditto with senators, or at least until Trudeau kicked his senators out of national caucus – “is the leader losing control of his senators?” was not an uncommon headline either (though not one that is generally screamed as loudly, and one might also add that not enough ink was spilled on the split in caucus over Bill C-377 – the “union transparency” bill – the first time around when they voted to gut it, and Marjory LeBreton stepped down as Government Leader a couple of weeks later after seriously mishandling the whole thing inside her caucus). And yes, Trudeau did promise more free votes, but this is one of those common promises that tends to wind up with MPs voting in lock-step anyway because they all really support their party or they all just happen to all think in lock-step. I am also reminded that when Michael Ignatieff tried to encourage his caucus to vote more freely on private members’ bills by not rarely voting for them personally – so that they wouldn’t look to him as to how to vote – he was punished for it by Jack Layton lying about those missed votes as poor attendance during the election (though Ignatieff should have responded with the policy and shut him down, but didn’t, and lost the election quite badly as a result). Suffice to say, when MPs don’t vote in lockstep, we shouldn’t use terms like “goes rogue,” because it gives entirely the wrong connotation about what has taken place. We want more responsible and independent-minded MPs, so let’s not make it harder for them to do so. And let’s leave the word “rogue” to this for the time being:

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