Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: O’Toole continues to sit on the vaccine fence with caucus

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Erin O’Toole continues to try and have his cake and eat it too when it comes to ensuring his MPs and senators are fully vaccinated in order to attend Parliamentary sittings. But in his desire to sit on the fence and play both sides, he may have inadvertently shown his hand. After the party’s big caucus meeting in Ottawa yesterday, O’Toole announced that caucus “agreed to respect and abide new rules which require Parliamentarians attending in the House of Commons and Senate to be vaccinated.” But he still planned to raise the point of privilege about the Board of Internal Economy decision, because of course.

But.

It seems that he tripped himself up in French, and spelled out that the plan was for those who “participate in person,” which is a pretty big loophole for the holdouts in the caucus. And yet, O’Toole and his caucus continue to oppose hybrid sittings (as well they should), so anyone who doesn’t show up shouldn’t be allowed to participate virtually either – unless this is yet another case of having his cake and eating it too. “They can’t show up, but they have the option of hybrid, so I guess we’ll allow them to participate that way!” with a show of feigned helplessness to the situation. And we still don’t know how many MPs or senators this affects (though the Senate has not yet issued its own vaccine mandate yet), so it could be three or four, or it could be twelve or fifteen, especially as there appear to be vaccinated MPs who refuse to disclose the fact because they don’t want to appear to their anti-vax constituents like they sold out. So this is where O’Toole finds himself. It’s still a losing battle because any privilege complaint will be voted down by everyone else in the Chamber, even if they try to drag it out until the New Year. And all the while, O’Toole continues to look like he’s pandering to the party’s worst elements rather than standing up to them and demonstrating actual leadership.

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Roundup: Rejections without significance

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Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

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Roundup: The $3.5 million witch hunt finds no witches

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In Alberta, the Committee on Un-Albertan Activities – err, Allan Inquiry – released its final report, a year late and millions of dollars over-budget, and it concluded that there was no illegality or nefarious activity with regard to environmental groups who may have received some funding from international donors when it comes to opposing the oil sands and other oil and gas activities. Dollars that went toward campaigns against the energy sector were fairly minor, and had little-to-no impact on projects not moving forward (because market forces did the job just fine, thank you very much). In other words, the province spent $3.5 million on this joke of an inquiry, and tried to claim it was money well spent, because the government is nothing more than a total clown show.

And then there were the lies – the minister insisted that the inquiry was never about finding illegality (untrue – there are receipts), and Jason Kenney outright lying about what the numbers in the report stated, because he needs to try and spin it in the worst possible light to both justify the exercise, and to continue trying to point the populists he stoked in a direction other than his.

https://twitter.com/charlesrusnell/status/1451353269708603397

https://twitter.com/charlesrusnell/status/1451353273781293094

Meanwhile, prime minister Justin Trudeau is pouring cold water on Kenney’s referendum rhetoric, reminding him that a provincial referendum is not an amending formula for the constitution – seven provinces representing fifty percent of the population is. More to the point, Kenney sat around the Cabinet table when the current equalisation formula was last amended, so he can’t claim it’s unfair as he’s the one who helped put it into place. Because seriously – claiming it’s unfair because Albertans pay the same federal taxes as everyone else is just political bullshit masquerading as a grievance, even though it’s a grievance that has largely been created for the sole purpose of driving populist anger.

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Roundup: The admiral needs to take the hint

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Things are looking pretty dire for Admiral Art McDonald, the former-ish Chief of Defence Staff, whose little tantrum last week in writing a letter to the general and flag officers to demand his job back (not that they could do anything about it) is looking more and more impolitic. Why? Because the military police are now pushing back to say that he wasn’t “exonerated” as McDonald claimed in his letter, but rather that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges, which is not the same thing as the allegation being unfounded. And McDonald’s accuser is speaking out publicly and pointing to witnesses to the incident, which the military won’t say whether they were interviewed or not as part of their investigation. Nevertheless, the incident makes it even clearer that McDonald doesn’t understand civilian control and doesn’t have the character and temperament necessary to guide the Forces through this particular period of culture change, and it’s better for him – and everyone else – that he get the hint and retire before consequences follow from that letter.

Meanwhile, it seems that the former commandant of the Canadian Forces School of Military Intelligence is serving as a staff officer in Ottawa after being relieved of his command following an investigation into allegations of inappropriate conduct, which signals that there aren’t consequences if people simply get moved around.

Interested observers are wondering what is taking the government so long to take more action on what is going on with the senior ranks in the military, or to formally make General Wayne Eyre the permanent Chief of Defence Staff, formally taking McDonald’s reinstatement off the table (though he should have taken the hint when Eyre got promoted to full general). There is speculation that they are waiting for the Cabinet shuffle, but one would think that they’d want to make changes now, so that a fresh minister won’t have to come in and do the cleaning out on his or her first day rather than letting Sajjan do it now, and let his successor come in fresh. But that might require this minister and this government to have a modicum of self-awareness, and which would be your answer as to why they haven’t.

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Roundup: No formal deal to be had

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While we’re still a month away from Parliament being summoned and the first major confidence vote – likely on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne – there is going to be no end of talk of some kind of formal governing arrangement between the Liberals and either the Bloc or the NDP. Because that’s what always happens, and we’re predictable like that, but really, there isn’t going to be any arrangement, because nobody actually wants one.

As David Reevely has pointed out, the idea of any kind of supply or confidence agreement with the Bloc is political poison, and won’t happen. Period. And any kind of agreement with the NDP is not saleable politically on either side. And oh, you might say – didn’t they rely on the NDP last year during the pandemic? Well, not really. For the early months, they came to all-party agreements on emergency legislation in the backrooms, and all of it was done behind closed doors and we got next to no debate in the House of Commons over it – just a few speeches about the pandemic, and some back-patting about working together, but nobody was actually going to bring down the government over it. Later on, the NDP and the Bloc joined with the Conservatives in their procedural warfare that largely paralysed legislation for the better part of five months, because they love to embarrass the government, no matter the stripe, and it wasn’t until May when both the Bloc and NDP realized they had bills they wanted to get passed (C-10 for the Bloc, the UNDRIP, the conversion therapy ban, and the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation bills for the NDP) and they finally started to play ball. As for the confidence votes in the interim, the NDP pretended like they were forcing the government’s hand into extending benefits that were going to be extended regardless – this is not a government that is averse to spending money when need be – and they patted themselves on the back for doing such a good job of taking credit for work that happening anyway.

The other fact is that the seat math just isn’t there for a need for a formal agreement of any kind. It’s not marginal enough – as in BC and New Brunswick during their respective hung legislatures, where they had a mere seat or two leeway with the support of the minority partner – whereas that’s not the case here. And as much as everyone is going to handwave about “Canadians want a Parliament that works,” the truth is nobody is in the position to go to an election for at least another 18 months, if not longer. And yes, the Bloc and the NDP will huff and puff and performatively make demands, but in the end, the government will carry on with period bouts of empty drama that the press gallery will dutifully type up as though it did carry much weight, and things will carry on, without need for a formal arrangement once again.

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Roundup: A delayed return

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We have a date – well, two of them. Justin Trudeau announced yesterday morning that Cabinet would be shuffled on October 26th, and that the House of Commons would return on November 22nd, which is ridiculous. After an election where Trudeau kept punctuating the “urgency” of a number of files, some of them COVID-related, and with a list of priorities to take care of in his first 100 days of the new parliament (apparently that clock doesn’t start ticking until Cabinet is sworn in), the decision to delay the return of Parliament for two months after the election is egregious – especially because this is a hung parliament where the confidence of the Chamber should be tested at its earliest opportunity, and two months later is not that.

I am generally pretty forgiving of the fact that it can take our government longer to get its act together post-election – as compared to the UK, where they have nearly twice as many MPs – but they can get a new government sworn in and a new Parliament started within three weeks of an election. But it should not have taken Trudeau this long to deal with this shuffle as it has, even if one or two Cabinet contenders had to deal with recounts. And yes, the government dispatched the Governor General on her first state visit abroad this week, but that again was his choice, and he could have either delayed that trip, or announced the Cabinet before she left the country.

More to the point, this reduces the fall sitting of the House of Commons to a maximum of four weeks, but you can bet that in practice, it’ll be less than three. Committees won’t really get up and running, and sure, he may introduce a number of priority bills, but they will see precious little debate in that time. What we will get are the Address in Reply to the Speech From the Throne, and probably the Fall Economic Update, plus a number of Estimates votes, which will be rushed through without any actual scrutiny (they may get some modicum of scrutiny on the Senate side), but I’m not sure we’ll even see the Budget Implementation Bill for said economic update making it past second reading unless it is bullied through at all stages under the threat that emergency rent and wage subsidies will expire without passage. It’s undermining democratic norms for the sake of expediency, and that is the last thing we want to be encouraging any government in engaging in, regardless of stripe.

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Roundup: Not pushing back on referendum disinfo

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I’m going to call out Power & Politics once again for completely dropping the ball, this time on the bullshit “referendum” happing in Alberta. They hosted Bill Bewick, who heads a group in favour of the referendum, and gave him a pretty uncritical interview, with only the barest hints of pushback. Because both-sidesing.

Host David Common pushed back on a mere couple of points – that the referendum won’t actually do anything because it doesn’t obligate the federal government to negotiate anything; and the fact that without equalisation, PEI would need a 30 percent HST to make up the same funding. He even went so far as to egg on Bewick about how much equalisation Ontario pays, as if it was relevant, because no province actually pays equalisation, which is a pretty big thing that Bewick and his bullshit ever got called on. Equalisation is simply federal taxes that come off everyone’s paycheque – that a fraction of those funds get redistributed to some provinces who need help in offering comparable levels of service when they don’t have adequate fiscal capacity. And the key thing to remember is that Alberta may pay more federal taxes because they have the highest salaries in the country – by far – even during the pandemic. Crying that the province has a deficit has nothing to do with equalisation and everything to do with the fact that the provincial government refuses to raise their own revenues by means of a modest sales tax like other provinces have, and the fact that they chose to rely on resource revenues instead. Their deficit is a choice.

I am forced to wonder whether Bewick didn’t get any pushback because the host and/or the producers simply don’t have a clue about the truth, or because they feel bound by the need to both-sides everything and plan to have someone credible on to refute the points in a separate interview later today – because heaven forbid that the host actually push back lest he or she be called out as being biased or partisan. But calling bullshit and pointing out fact shouldn’t be considered bias or partisanship – it should be simple fact-checking, which they can’t seem to be arsed to do at the best of times, let alone in a referendum that is fuelled by misinformation and disinformation coming from official sources trying to make a political wedge out of this. In a case like this, it’s especially incumbent upon the media to play their role in pushing back against a government that is lying to its citizens, but this timidity to do so is a very real problem for our media.

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Roundup: Singh has a list of demands

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In the wake of his party’s post-election first caucus meeting, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh held a press conference yesterday to do a bit of chest-thumping and pretend that he holds some kind of balance of power in the forthcoming parliament, or that he can play kingmaker. If anything, he undermined his own position with his list of demands, because he doesn’t have any real leverage. His party is substantially weakened after the election, particularly given that they spent all kinds of money and gained a single seat out of it, and they are likely in debt once again and in no shape to go to another campaign anytime soon – especially if they want to figure out what they did wrong and have time to course-correct.

As for his list of demands, we are back to a lot of the usual nonsense where Singh doesn’t seem to grasp implementation – or jurisdiction. To wit:

  • Paid sick leave – that is being expanded to ten days for federally-regulated workers, but that’s only six percent of the workforce. The rest is provincial.
  • Halting clawbacks from GIS for seniors who accessed CERB – the GIS is means-tested and meant for the poorest of seniors, so it’s not surprising that CERB or other benefits could impact the means test.
  • Clean drinking water in Indigenous communities – this is in progress. Willpower won’t make it go faster.
  • A federal vaccine document for internal travel – this cannot happen unless provinces sign on, and until a couple of weeks ago, there were provinces still hostile to the very notion. The federal government cannot unilaterally create such a document because the provinces control vaccination data.
  • Dropping the appeal of the Human Rights Tribunal decision in the First Nations Child and Family Services case – this may yet happen given how completely the Federal Court decision against them last week was, but there were legitimate issues being litigated regardless that compensation is already being negotiated, irrespective of a further appeal.
  • Demanding higher health transfers – the federal government fully plans to negotiate those, but it won’t be without strings, especially as certain provinces sat on the pandemic-related transfers and put them towards their bottom lines rather than spending them on the pandemic.

As for Singh’s threat to “withhold votes” if he doesn’t get his way, it’s a bit curious what he means. Does he mean he would vote against bills including the budget implementation bill for the fall economic update, which would have plenty of additional pandemic supports or items he supports? Or does he mean he’d simply not vote, which would mean the Liberals wouldn’t need to get Bloc support to pass their measures (which they would likely get as the Bloc also are in no position to go to another election). Because if it’s the latter, then he’s basically made himself irrelevant for the foreseeable future.

Programming note: I am taking the full long weekend off from blogging. See you next week!

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Roundup: Self-awareness and civilian control

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When it comes to the issue of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces, there seems to be an epidemic of a lack of self-awareness. This is demonstrated time and again within the ranks as officers are given inappropriate promotions (remember the head of personnel who had known sexual misconduct allegations), are protected by the top brass (General Jonathan Vance, the infamous golf game earlier in the year), and the issue with Major-General Peter Dawe being given the role of sorting through the various reports on reforming military culture after he was suspended for writing the glowing letter for someone under his command who had been convicted of sexual assault. Every time, this has to be pointed out to them and how inappropriate their actions continue to be.

But it’s not just the ranks that lack self-awareness – it’s also their political masters. During a media availability yesterday, both prime minister Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland also had harsh words for the military’s inability to exercise self-awareness on the sexual misconduct file – but they have a role to play there as well, because in a democracy like ours, the military answers to civilian control. In our particular system, that should be going through the Chief of Defence Staff to the Minister of National Defence – but the current minister, Harjit Sajjan, has made it clear that he is not exercising his responsibility for civilian control, and is not properly overseeing the CDS, or his top decisions. Part of this may be because he is former military (he was actually active when he was elected and needed to go through the discharge process so that the CDS could no longer outrank him), and is steeped in the culture and cannot adequately see the reality of what is going on, or why he needs to exercise civilian control. And no, I’m not sure it was any better under the previous government either, who also appointed a former general to Minister of Defence (Gordon O’Connor), and generally let the military run their own show – especially with procurement, which is why there were so many botched files, from the F-35 to joint supply ships.

We need to re-assert civilian control by means of a competent minister who doesn’t have a military background, and someone who can actually perform some managerial competence and keep the CDS on a tight leash. But that may depend on Trudeau having enough self-awareness of his own recognise that this is what needs to happen as he decides on how to shuffle his Cabinet, and I’m losing confidence that this could actually happen.

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Roundup: Green insiders spill the tea

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This apparently was the weekend for the tea to start being spilled about what was really going on inside the Green Party, and we got a lot of details. The primary one is this lengthy read that details the struggles inside the party, and there is plenty of blame to go around, but what is on offer here really shows that Annamie Paul was a key author in her own misfortune. To add to that, Elizabeth May also writes in her own words an account of why she stayed silent on Paul’s orders, how she tried to support Paul in any way possible including offering to resign and let Paul run in her riding, which is the first time I’ve heard that such an offer had been made. More to the point, it is a fairly detailed accounting of how Paul misunderstood how Greens view their own leadership, and tried to impose a very top-down view of it, including demanding that her MPs didn’t speak to the media, and how even now, Paul announced her intentions to resign but hasn’t formally done so, which is why the party is in a weird state of limbo.

While once again I have no doubt that racism, misogyny and antisemitism all played a role in Paul’s departure, her own actions were certainly part of what happened, from her salary demands (she wanted the party to pay a salary equivalent as though she were a sitting MP), to her control over the party that was unlike the party’s constitution, which the national council largely did accede to. This being said, everything that has come out this weekend really makes me think that the glass cliff narrative is less likely a driving force in what happened, and a more complicated series of events took place. It is too bad, given how Paul did acquit herself on the national debate stage for the most part (until you realised her answer for everything was “we have to work together”) and it’s a shame that it all came to this.

Meanwhile, May also stated over the weekend that she won’t take the interim leader position, and says she wants Paul Manly, who lost his seat, to do the job until they can run another leadership contest. Of course, it may be too late for the party by this point, but we’ll see if they can salvage what remains, but it’s not looking promising.

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