Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: O’Toole boots Batters at his peril

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The internal strife within the Conservative ranks is getting more pointed, as word came down yesterday that Erin O’Toole had lined up enough caucus members to force out any MP who signed Senator Denise Batters’ petition – thus weaponizing the (garbage) Reform Act to protect the leader rather than curb the leader’s powers – and with that threat in the open, O’Toole then kicked Batters out of caucus.

There are a few things about how this is all going down. First of all, the use of the Reform Act provisions to threaten other caucus members is a completely hypocritical action that would be utterly galling if it were not predictable. If only someone *cough* had warned everyone that this was a garbage piece of legislation that would only be used to insulate leaders and give them freer rein to be more autocratic and to threaten the MPs who get out of line, and literally put a target on the backs of anyone who openly stood against the leader as the Act’s provisions require. Imagine it being abused in exactly the way that someone *cough* warned was likely to happen, no matter what Michael Chong and every talking head pundit in this country gushed over. Funny that.

The other aspect of this is the fact that O’Toole kicking Batters out puts a stake in the party’s self-righteous moralising that they respect strong women and that Justin Trudeau hates them (citing Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes – but curiously omitting Chrystia Freeland from consideration). It’s even more curious that Senator Michael McDonald said virtually the same things about O’Toole that Batters did, and he didn’t face any sanction. In fact, this has clearly shown that O’Toole will tolerate the anti-vaxxers in his caucus but not someone who wanted the party’s grassroots membership to have a say in his leadership before August 2023 (at which time they would warn that there could be an election at any time so they couldn’t possibly change leaders then). And by kicking Batters out of caucus, she has nothing left to lose. She can join up with the Canadian Senators Group later today (the likeliest place for her to land) and carry on criticising O’Toole and calling on Conservative grassroots members to have their say about his leadership, and O’Toole can’t do anything about it. All of his leverage over her is now gone. If O’Toole thinks that this move solved any of his problems, he’s mistaken.

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Roundup: More dynamics at play with the story of the Clerk

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The CBC story earlier in the week regarding the Clerk of the House of Commons has its critics, and there were elements of the story that felt “off” while reading it – such as how it described Charles Robert’s relationship with a senator (omitting that the senator was male, and the actual dynamics of what happened with the former Liberal-appointed senators when Justin Trudeau expelled them from the party), or the way in which Robert allegedly consulted the Liberals over the timing of releasing a privilege ruling to the Speaker. I did know that his appointment ruffled feathers, which was in part over the poor process that the government ran for it, and how they essentially pushed out the other contender, Marc Bosc, by forcing him to re-apply for his deputy clerk position when he didn’t get the full clerk job. But it sounds like there were other dynamics at play there as well – and this thread by a former procedural clerk in the House of Commons illuminates some of those. It may not absolve Robert entirely, but it certainly colours the story that CBC published, and reminds us that we may not be seeing the full picture.

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Roundup: Another of Kenney’s talking points blows up on him

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The Alberta government is facing yet another situation where reality butts up against their preferred victimhood narratives – this time around equalisation. You see, for the first time since the 1960s, they have received more in federal transfers than they paid in federal taxes, and we can thank Justin Trudeau’s benediction, not only in pandemic transfers, but in things like money that they sent to the province to remediate orphan wells as a job-creation (and environmental) programme – never mind that they never should have because it meant that private companies and the province were able to successful offload their environmental liabilities to the federal government after the Supreme Court of Canada specifically ruled that they couldn’t under existing bankruptcy laws.

Of course, this isn’t stopping Kenney or his government from trying to spin this to carry on their narrative. For example, the province’s finance minister is claiming that they are still being unfairly impacted because of their contributions on a per capita basis continue to outstrip their share of the population. Because they have the highest incomes in the country by far and we have a progressive federal income tax. This is yet more of the province’s outright disinformation on how equalisation works because they are trying to make people angry rather than properly telling them how the system works, because if people understood, they might not be able to summon some performative outrage about it, and that wouldn’t help Kenney and his agenda.

Because really, so much of how the province is spinning this is yet more distraction sauce from Kenney’s continued failures, and the thousands of unnecessary deaths on his watch, and as I have pointed out elsewhere, Kenney has only one tool in his toolbox, and that is anger. He’s losing yet one more argument that Alberta is being treated “unfairly,” so you can expect a lot more gaslighting and deception in the near future as Kenney and company will try to push back against reality.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1458600346398478337

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Roundup: Moe defends the Saskatchewan Nation

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Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is in trouble. The COVID numbers in his province are still out of control, five of the patients that they had to airlift to Ontario because they didn’t have enough ICU capacity have died, and his approval ratings are plummeting. So what does Moe think the solution to his problems is? Taking a page from Jason Kenney’s playbook and trying to pick fights with Ottawa, and in keeping with Kenney’s playbook, Moe has decided to also try adopting a tactic of “We want what Quebec has!” and wants Saskatchewan to be declared a “nation within a nation.”

That’s right – the nation of Saskatchewan, which is defined not by language (though they do call hoodies “bunny hugs” there, so that counts, right?) or by culture (going to Roughriders games is a distinct culture from the rest of Canada, right?), but by…well, he won’t exactly say. Which is pretty much where the rationale for his argument falls apart entirely. Because he doesn’t actually know what the hell he’s talking about, he is aping talking points from Kenney and company, and spouting a random sampling of phrases from Quebec nationalists, and hoping it gives him credibility. Rest assured, it doesn’t.

The other thing that Moe seems to forget that this kind of nationalism/separatism talk has consequences. In Quebec, it devastated their economy in the seventies and eighties as head offices departed for Toronto, and the former financial capital of the country, Montreal, was a corporate graveyard. Not sure that this is an outcome that Moe is gunning for, but hey, those who fail to learn history correctly… Moe seems to think that he can get more autonomy from the federal government in this way, but he doesn’t actually make any case for it. He brays that Quebec has their own immigration deal with the federal government (because they are prioritizing francophones – and they are now facing labour shortages because they have been overly restrictive), or that they got a special deal around national childcare (because they already had a system in place that meets the criteria where Saskatchewan does not), but doesn’t acknowledge the reasons why, and is simply playing people for idiots. But really, this is all Moe just being Jason Kenney’s Mini-Me, and it’s not going to work.

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Roundup: An unsuccessful distraction attempt

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Erin O’Toole emerged from hiding yesterday, and tried to set the narrative of the day about a supposed scary coalition between the Liberals and the NDP – which isn’t happening. A coalition government means that both parties have Cabinet ministers at the table, and given that we just had the dog and pony show of a Cabinet shuffle not two weeks ago, and there was nary an NDP MP among them, we can be reasonably assured that there will be no coalition government. Nevertheless, even a supply and confidence agreement, or some other arrangement, remains unlikely in the extreme because the Liberals know the NDP are in a vulnerable position, broke an unable to afford another election, so they will ensure the government survives regardless – there is no need to give them any leverage or excuse to try and take credit for the government’s actions (not that anything has stopped them thus far).

But while O’Toole tried to make big noises about the “coalition” that isn’t and never will be, he was trying to deflect from the ongoing problem in his party around MPs like Marilyn Gladu and Leslyn Lewis, who have been stoking vaccine hesitancy (while insisting otherwise), conceding that they have “caused confusion,” which is just more soft-peddling and mealy-mouthed refusal to take leadership or to put his foot down. Indeed, when asked about whether there would be any discipline for these remarks, O’Toole stated that they would deal with it “as a team,” which basically means that no, he’s not going to do anything about it.

While my upcoming column will delve further into just why O’Toole refuses to put his foot down, Gladu can insist all she wants that this isn’t a challenge of O’Toole’s leadership, the simple fact is that she continues to undermine it at every opportunity, and that is going to eventually erode what little trust or credibility O’Toole has left.

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Roundup: A headache over added and subtracted seats

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The question of seat redistribution and the allocation – and subtraction – of seats has been simmering, and the premier of Quebec is demanding that the prime minister step in and guarantee that Quebec not only retain the seat it is slated to lose, but also to guarantee that because of the notion that Quebec constitutes a nation within Canada, that they must be guaranteed that their share of seats never drops even if their population grows at a much slower pace than other provinces. The problem with that? It would require a constitutional amendment to do, using the 7/50 formula (seven provinces representing 50 percent of the population). And that could be the tricky part.

Of course, the obvious solution is to tinker with the seat distribution formula, which the Conservatives introduced (fully intending to screw over Ontario for new seats along the way). But as I stated in my column a couple of weeks ago, we would probably be better served adding far more than just four seats – something more like 40 would be better for everyone, especially because it would mean better populating committees and keeping parliamentary secretaries from voting positions on them. Mike Moffatt and I discussed this over Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456558821942431744

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456560023383969796

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456590475985571840

Furthermore, if we stay at the current redistribution formula, that sole new seat in Ontario is going to cause a lot of problems with redrawing boundaries (which will then have provincial reverberations, because Ontario provincial ridings mirror their federal counterparts, with the exception of an additional seat in Northern Ontario for better representation. Once this reality starts to sink in, perhaps the government would start considering boosting that formula to avoid these kinds of headaches.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1456593608648298498

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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Roundup: Time to change the dress code?

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NDP MP Randall Garrison is pushing for the House of Commons to update is dress code, in particular around the gendered rules that men need to wear a jacket and tie in the Chamber in order to speak and vote. Part of Garrison’s stated motivation is to make it easier for future trans and non-binary MPs, even though accommodations are already routinely made, such as allowing Indigenous MPs to wear beaded necklaces or other symbols in place of a tie. I don’t see why it would be any different to accommodate a trans or non-binary MP in a similar manner without any fuss – a mere notice to the Speaker would suffice.

On the one hand, there is a certain amount of archaic assumption in the “contemporary business attire” around jackets and ties for men, and only men – there is no dress code for women in the Chamber (and these rules apply to those of us who sit in the Press Gallery in the Chamber, incidentally). Business attire in the current context is starting to slide down the scale – particularly in this era of work-from-home – so I’m leery of loosening the restrictions too much, particularly as it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you would have a bunch of MPs in track suits, yoga or sweat pants, hoodies, and mom jeans (and I have seen male MPs in mom jeans with jacket and tie in the Chamber, which was not a pleasant sight). Printed t-shirts are also a very real concern, because we will immediately slip into them being used as props, particularly during Members’ Statements, and we do not want that to happen. On the same token, I wouldn’t have minded imposing a few more rules for women in the Chamber, such as mandating jackets as part of “business attire,” because sometimes the definitions of what constitutes “business attire” for some female MPs has been particularly…challenging. (Flashback to the old Megan Leslie Outfit Watch on my former blog).

I get that ties suck. I really do. I used to really hate them, but I’ve somewhat reluctantly grown to accept them and now I have no issue with it. And once we’re into late May and early June and the humidity starts to climb, wearing suits is not fun (and whereas I have threatened to show up to the Gallery in shorts and sandals – but with jacket and tie – one reporter has actually done so and was my hero for the day). But at the same time, I think there should be some kinds of standards, for both men and women, because frankly there can be a demonstrated lack of both maturity and good taste among MPs and there need to be some guidelines. Can they be loosened a little? Sure, that should be okay, and maybe we won’t require a tie at all times – within reason. It does merit a discussion in any case.

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Roundup: Glover says she’s the premier

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It was quite a day in Manitoba yesterday as Heather Stefanson was sworn-in as the province’s first female premier, but the leadership drama isn’t over. Her challenger, former federal Cabinet minister Shelly Glover has not conceded defeat, and plans to challenge the leadership election in court, citing irregularities and reports that Stefanson’s scrutineers looked defeated at one point of the counting and then something allegedly mysterious happened to a ballot box…or something. I’m having a hard time keeping track of it. Regardless, Glover insists that she’s really the premier, not Stefanson.

One could be very pedantic here and note that Stefanson has been sworn in, so she’s premier regardless. Her immediate predecessor, Kelvin Goertzen, was not chosen in a leadership election by caucus as interim leader, and he was fully and legitimately premier, even if it was only for a few weeks (and yes, he’s going to get a portrait in the legislature to reflect that status). So no, Glover is not premier, and even if by some miracle she were declared party leader (which won’t happen – the courts won’t get involved in the inner workings of a political party), Stefanson is still premier and will be until she resigns or is dismissed.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1455671852647559168

But on a broader point, Glover has always been a very problematic politician, stridently repeating talking points in the face of logic and evidence, and getting combative when challenged on her bullshit, particularly as she seemed to lack the critical reasoning skills to think through her positions. And this attempted court challenge is her combativeness and willingness to believe illogical or contrary things playing out in the very way she demonstrated during her nine years in federal politics (two of which were as a minister). And Glover had her own run-ins with Elections Canada, and at one point Elections Canada asked the Speaker to suspend her because of financial irregularities during an election (which were later resolved with revised filings that Elections Canada accepted, Glover terming them an “honest mistake.”) One has to question her fitness to lead given her history and temperament, but I’m not a member of the party.

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Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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