In one of her year-end interviews, Rona Ambrose said the Donald Trump is “far off the spectrum,” and “not a voice that is welcome in our party.” Um, except that she can’t really get off that quickly or easily on this one. While Ambrose may not be saying it, her party is one that dumped any pretence of actual ideological conservatism long ago, and simply became right-flavoured populists who loudly championed all manner of non-conservative ideas and plans, all for the sake of appealing to enough micro-targeted groups that they could cobble together a base of support that they rose to power once, but which fell apart in 2015. Remember too that in the dying days of the election, Harper willingly embraced the Ford brothers in Toronto in order to cash in on their populist appeal, which are two very Trump-like voices that apparently have been welcomed into her party with open arms. And as for charges that her party is not doing enough to combat Islamophobia as Syrian refugees start arriving in the country, we’re seeing a lot of concern trolling out of her party that makes it sound like they’re supportive of the idea when in fact they are arguing or agitating for indefinite delays to refugee arrivals. Put all of this together, and it’s hard to see how Ambrose is arguing for any kind of principled conservatism, or that she rejects the populism of Trump while she has not moved to distance herself or her party from the Ford brothers. That’s a worrying sign, and when the Conservative leadership does get underway, we’ll see if Doug Ford makes that leap. If he does, we’ll see if Ambrose continues to insist that those kinds of voices are welcome in the party or not.
Tag Archives: First Nations
Roundup: Tiresome cheap shots
Oh, look – there’s the Senate bat-signal and oh, it’s because a couple of pundits have decided to be completely tiresome about it. I see. Up first is CBC’s Terry Milewski, who has once again decided to use Mike Duffy to paint the whole of the Senate with his disreputable brush. Never mind that the vast majority of senators don’t abuse the system, or that they have made vast improvements on financial controls and transparency (and remain far more transparent than the House of Commons in most respects), apparently the whole system is an unfixable morass because Duffy. Um, okay. And to cap it off, Milewski tries to make some wrong-headed point about representation in the Senate, ignoring that representation is along regional and not provincial lines, and no, Newfoundland is not part of the Maritimes and is a region unto itself, but hey, conflating its seats is fun and deliberately misleading! Apparently nobody has taken a basic civics or Canadian history course, because the whole point of why the Senate was constructed the way it was, was precisely because it wasn’t supposed to be representation-by-population. The Commons is, and the Senate had to rebalance the representation to keep Ontario from swamping the minority provinces. Oh, but those are “bizarre” and “absurd imbalances” apparently, because Milewski has decided that ignorance is the effective bully tactic. It’s a series of cheap shots that should be beneath the journalistic establishment, but alas no, it’s become par for the course these days. And then there’s Andrew Coyne, who decided to deliberately over-complicate the situation in the Senate in order to misconstrue what’s happening and sow confusion to make a point, that it’s not the kind of reforms that he would prefer (never mind that he’s never quite articulated why it’s preferable to have an elected Senate that would compete with the Commons, or to remove the Senate’s veto powers when they’re necessary to thwart a majority prime minister who is overstepping his or her bounds, other than the saying “democracy!” while hand-waving). But clearly, some clear-eyed critical thinking about our parliamentary institutions is a lot to ask, particularly when there are cheap points to be scored.
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/676603993049690112
Roundup: The Senate steps up
In their very first piece of legislation passed, the House of Commons ballsed it up. Quite badly, in fact. In rushing through a supply bill, they didn’t include a necessary schedule for where the money that was being authorised would be spent, which is a pretty big deal. And so, when it reached the Senate, this was caught and the bill had to be sent back before the Senate could deal with it and pass it so that it could get Royal Assent and everyone could go home for the holidays. The Senate, however, was not amused. This is not the first time that defective bills have made it to the Senate, be it when they sent an earlier unamended version down the hall, or when their due diligence wasn’t done and they had to make some kind of excuses to get the Senate to pass it anyway with the promise of adding a clause in a future bill to retroactively fix it. And the patience of the Senate is wearing thin. In the words of Speaker Furey:
“While it is not our place to look into the functioning of the House of Commons, I am appalled that we received a defective bill. If it is the wish of the house, I would be prepared to write to my counterpart in the House of Commons to seek his assurance that this will not happen again.”
Liberal Senator Terry Mercer was even less forgiving and deservedly so:
“It galls me, Mr. Speaker, that they talk about an administrative error. That’s passing the error off onto the staff. I’m sorry; the Members of Parliament voted on this; it is their fault and they alone take the blame… To give us this BS about administrative error, passing the buck off to someone in the administration of the House of Commons, doesn’t wash with me, and it shouldn’t wash with anybody, and it shouldn’t wash with Canadians. I want this to be notice to the Minister of Finance and to our colleagues in the other place that this place will not put up with this anymore.”
Senator Fraser suggested that the Commons needs to examine their system and perhaps even apologise to the Senate, while other Senators noted that this is government legislation and not a private member’s bill, and that perhaps the Senate should not always be as patient and perhaps rise without granting Royal Assent in the future. Part of the root of this is that that the Senate, yet again, did its job while the Commons didn’t. In their haste to get this passed so that MPs can leave, MPs spent a grand total of fifteen minutes on the Supply bill, including Committee of the Whole. That’s right – fifteen minutes to examine and authorise the spending of money by the government. The Senate Finance Committee held three days of pre-study on the bill so that they would know what the issues were, and lo and behold, when the bill arrived in defective form, they could spot it immediately. And as noted before, this keeps happening with increasing frequency. And yet, when we send MPs to Ottawa to “be our representatives,” we seem to forget that they have a job to do – to scrutinize bills, and most especially spending, and they’re not doing it. They leave it to others to do, be it the Auditor General, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or the Senate – all while bitching and moaning about how terrible the Senate is even though the Senate is actually doing their jobs when MPs aren’t. And the next time I hear someone give me the line about how the Senate has no function in a modern democracy, I can give them yet another object lesson about how the Commons is the real dysfunctional chamber in our democracy. I’ll repeat Speaker Furey’s admonition – it’s appalling. Shape up, MPs. You’re embarrassing yourselves.
QP: The scattershot attack
The week slowly drawing to a close, more desks started to empty out in the Chamber, but hey, Justin Trudeau was there for a fourth day in a row — I’m not sure that ever happened under Harper, ever. Rona Ambrose led off, lectern still on desk, and she read a question in French about the size of the deficit. Trudeau rose and stated that they had pledged to be open and honest about budget figures, and they would reduce the net debt-to-GDP ratio. Ambrose then accused the government of doing nothing for the plight of Albertans with dropping oil prices. Trudeau reminded her that the previous government did nothing for them. Ambrose changed topics again, and trolled for support for their opposition day motion to maintain the CF-18 bombing mission. Trudeau reminded her that the Americans were just happy with the Canadian position, and that he was even just invited for a state dinner at the White House, something Harper never got. Denis Lebel was up next, and asked the same question to get the same answer. Lebel then asked why Trudeau thought that the 1982 patriation was a good template for electoral reform, but Trudeau reminded him of the promises made during the election.Thomas Mulcair was up next and noted the RCMP Commissioner’s admission that there were racists in his force and asked what the government was doing about it. Trudeau lamented it, but basically said that it was up to the RCMP to deal with their members. Mulcair asked about boil water advisories on First Nations reserves, to which Trudeau noted they were working with those First Nations. Mulcair changed topics again to Canada Post, and got the very same response he got the past three days. Mulcair gave one last change of topic, asking about which refugees where getting health funding for refugees, which Trudeau said they would be doing.
Um, pretty sure that most of those refugees are fleeing Assad and not ISIS. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) December 10, 2015
Roundup: Imposition and breaches of privilege
The Senate sat for the first actual sitting of the new parliament yesterday, and already the new era is being felt as they had to do away with Senate Question Period as there was no one there to answer questions on behalf of the government. You may not think this is an issue, but it does blow a hole in the accountability role of the Senate. Conservative Senate leader Claude Carignan moved a motion that would invite ministers to appear before the Senate to answer questions instead, and couched it in the language of urgency for regions like Atlantic Canada, who have no Conservative representation in the Commons, and they would have questions to ask that need answers. Of course, that would require going into Committee of the Whole and calling those ministers to the bar, rather than being able to do it as a regular Senate QP, which presents logistical challenges, but we’ll see what the government has to say in response. Meanwhile, former Senate Speaker Leo Housakos is moving a point of privilege that the government’s refusal to appoint a Government Leader is interfering in the operations of the Senate, which infringes on their privileges as a result. I don’t think he’s completely wrong there, particularly that the government is forcing changes to the way the Senate operates by circumventing things like Senate QP from functioning properly without anything in the way of consultation. It remains to be seen if the new Speaker will deem it a prima facia breach and put it to the Senate rules committee to determine if the breach is real, but this could be setting up a conflict between the two chambers, which could have been avoided if Trudeau had been a bit more thoughtful in the way he’s handled the whole situation. (As for other Senators complaining that “partisan” is being treated like a dirty word, and that the future “non-partisan” appointments will all be Liberals, and claiming that having senators in national caucus makes them more accountable, well, I think they need to take a breath and get a grip, because there are better ways to argue their points than the way they’re going about it).
QP: TFSA concerns
Tuesday’s QP followed on the announcement of the design phase of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, and counter-programmed Mike Duffy’s testimony in his fraud trial, so plenty going on. When QP got underway, Rona Ambrose had her mini-lectern on her desk, and read a question about the reduced limit for Tax-Free Savings Accounts. Justin Trudeau, without script, noted the plans to help vulnerable seniors with things like an increase in the GIS. Ambrose switched to French, and wondered what else the government would do to get cash, such as eliminating TFSAs altogether. Trudeau snapped back that trying to intimidate seniors wouldn’t work. Ambrose quoted Bill Morneau’s company’s praise for the increased limits, but Trudeau responded that the Conservatives were out of touch with Canadians. Denis Lebel asked another question on TFSAs in French, to which Trudeau replied that they were making concrete actions to help seniors. Lebel switched to the new deficit figures, to which Trudeau said that they would continue to update the numbers as they became available. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and welcomed the establishment of the inquiry process, but wondered about the timeline for action. Trudeau responded that they were making sure that the inquiry was properly informed, which is what they were committed to doing. Mulcair then turned to the question of Trudeau’s definition of middle class if people under a certain threshold didn’t benefit from the tax cut. Trudeau reminded him that they were getting more help through the Canada Child Benefit. Mulcair asked again in French, and got the same answer. For his final question, Mulcair demanded a clear answer on the home delivery. Trudeau reminded him that they had a moratorium in place, and they had a commitment to keep.
Roundup: A hedge on refugees?
It looks like the new Liberal government may be walking back a little on their first election promise, around the 25,000 Syrian refugees. Initially the promise was 25,000 government-assisted refugees with additional privately sponsored refugees on top of that figure. Yesterday, it sounded like the 25,000 will be a combination of the two based on comments by the minister, but Trudeau seemed to contradict that in his press conference while the minister’s spokesperson was hedging somewhere around the fact that there may be some privately sponsored among the 25,000 this year with more to come in 2016, but I’m not sure that the privately sponsored numbers will be that significant in the short timeframe that it would be too much of a difference for that 25,000 target. Meanwhile, it sounds like plans are being developed to fly a thousand Syrian refugees per day out of Aman, Jordan, while temporary lodgings are currently being worked out. No doubt we’ll hear more details in the coming days.
Roundup: Good riddance, Reform Act
The past couple of days, we’ve had yet more attention paid to the Reform Act, and with any luck, it’ll be the last time we pay attention to it, as the three major parties all have largely voted down – or ignored – the law after their first caucus meetings. And really, it’s for the best – it was a terrible law that did nothing like it promised. It did not help to “rebalance” the powers of MPs in the face of their leaders, and it didn’t increase the accountability of leaders, despite people claiming it would. While the original version of the bill would have made the necessary change of taking away the leader’s veto power over a nomination and replace it with a different mechanism, but that got watered down to uselessness. The rest of it was meaningless noise because the problem is less the removal of the leader than the selection. Giving the caucus the power to remove the leader in writing is ridiculous because they really can do it anytime they like and have the gonads enough to do so – Chong’s laying out percentages made it more difficult because it became a dare to get enough open supporters, rather than having one or two courageous people to go forward to the media (witness Alison Redford or Kathy Dunderdale’s resignations). So long as we select leaders by party membership, any attempt by caucus to remove a leader, no matter how justified, becomes seen as a snub to the grassroots by elites, which is the trap that Chong walked into. Party selection of leaders is what created the unaccountable situation, and the larger the membership base that selected them, the less accountable they get. And it annoys the crap out of me that political scientists everywhere don’t take the selection problem into account when they insist that the Reform Act is better than nothing. No, it wasn’t. And as Kady O’Malley quite rightly points out, it was a colossal waste of time. I would go further to add that it was a colossal, cynical waste of time. Chong had tried to move these changes at party policy conventions several times and failed, so he tried in the Commons to exert pressure there. And a number of different voices in the party have told me that this is all building to a leadership bid by Chong, and one has no doubt that he’ll try to come in as the Great Reformer, and build his brand that way. For him to use that much parliamentary time and media airtime to build this profile leaves a bad taste.
Roundup: New Senate appointment process isn’t rocket science
Apparently what is going on in the Senate is proving a little too confusing for some of the nation’s more obtuse pundits, so here’s a few points of explanation. John Ibbitson penned a column expressing optimism about the proposed new system of Senate appointments, and yet threw in a number of bizarre concerns that made me wonder. For one, it’s hard to see how they would all come “from Bay Street” when there is a set number of regional seats apportioned. His notion that they should come from “Main Street and the street” is also fairly mystifying because the Senate should be a place for eminent, accomplished Canadians. The House of Commons is for just that – the common people. The Senate has served best when it is a place where people who have achieved excellence can find a new way to contribute to public life in a way that they would not otherwise because they would not think to seek elected office – people like Romeo Dallaire or Kelvin Ogilvie. Ibbitson is also astoundingly obtuse when he calls Senate Liberals “Independents,” and figures that all new senators under this system would also be Independents, when neither statement is correct. Senate Liberals are still Liberals – they just don’t sit in caucus with the Liberals in the Commons so as to give them greater independence, and nowhere was it said that any senator chosen by an arm’s length process had to be an Independent when they could simply choose which caucus to sit in of their own accord. There is nothing wrong with that because there is nothing wrong with parties or with partisanship. Yes, the kind of hyper-partisan tribalism we’ve seen in recent years is a problem, but that’s a function of message control and discipline rather than the actual role and function of partisanship, and the two parties who relied heavily on message control and discipline were dealt blows in the last election, giving pause to those who believe in that kind of system. The Senate has generally always been a less partisan place because they’re not scoring points for re-election, which is half the point. None of this is rocket science, but you wouldn’t know it judging from some of the commentary we’re seeing.
Roundup: May already has a job
In the wake of Monday’s election results, a number of people have been trying to circulate a few petitions calling on Justin Trudeau to appoint Elizabeth May as environment minster. It’s so ridiculous I barely know where to begin. First of all, why would she cross the floor? There is no need for a coalition government, and for her to abandon the Green Party to join the Liberals would be a bit of a repudiation of what she stands for. It also demonstrates a lack of awareness of what it means to be in a cabinet, which means solidarity with the government’s decisions as a whole. If you don’t agree with all of the cabinet’s decisions, you resign, because cabinet solidarity is part of our system of government. With her many strident positions on various policy files, it’s hard, if not impossible, to see May agreeing with the Liberal positions on so many files. Most of all, this call demonstrates a complete inability for people to appreciate the role that the opposition plays in our system of government. It’s vital, because it holds the government to account – and why wouldn’t you want May to be holding the government to account over their environmental policies? Why would it be a lesser job for her to be doing the holding to account? In the romantic notion that people have that everything should somehow be done by consensus, they don’t appreciate that there is a role for accountability when there is disagreement. It doesn’t need to be nasty – which is unfortunately where we’ve wound up in recent years because of the kinds of culture that has been allowed to breed in parliament – but it can be principled and fair, and certainly May is providing that kind of opposition. Trudeau is making other inroads, such as inviting her and other opposition members to the Paris climate summit – former practice that Harper abandoned when he decided that only his ministers should be allowed to attend these kinds of things. Can May play a role in the system? Absolutely, and she does? That doesn’t mean that she needs to be given a seat at the cabinet table. That’s just ridiculous.