Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: The hand that feeds the Senate?

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Over at The Canadian Press, Joan Bryden wrote a wrap-up piece about the near-defeat of a few government bills in the Senate during the final days of the parliamentary sitting, but some of the piece has been rankling me, in part because of how it frames the state of play. So if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to pick it apart just a little, because I think it’s important to understand these things.

The lede is very awkward “In the final hours of Justin Trudeau’s four-year experiment with a less-partisan Senate, Independent senators came within a whisker of biting the hand that feeds them.” It’s a nonsense sentence that doesn’t make any sense – Trudeau’s experiment with a “less-partisan Senate” isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination, and there were no final hours to it – saying that it was the final hours of the parliamentary sitting or even session (since the chances of a prorogation and Speech from the Throne before the writs are drawn up in September are infinitesimal), or even the 42ndParliament would make sense, but not as written. I’m also really bothered by the notion of the “biting the hand that feeds them.” By feeding them, is it supposed to imply the person who appointed them, because that’s not the same thing. Is it supposed to imply that their posts continue at the beneficence of Trudeau, and that he could be rid of them at any point? Because that’s clearly not the case in the slightest (particularly constitutionally), but the phrasing implies the latter instead of the former, which is why it’s weird and misleading in all kinds of ways.

The rest of the piece is the usually bit of sniping between the leader of the Independent Senators Group, the Conservative whip, and the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, wherein Harder and the ISG insist that everything is fine, this is exactly what the Senate should be, and the Conservatives cry that the Independent senators are just Liberals by another name. The wrench in here is that Senator André Pratt calls the Conservatives out for supporting a government bill that more Independents opposed because they didn’t really want to set up a precedent for the Senate voting down government bills because when they form power next, there could be a real problem for them (though one has to say that the bill in question, C-83, was of very dubious constitutionality as it had court rulings against it before it was even law). As we approach the election, we can expect more of this sniping going on, particularly once the Independents start trying to agitate for continued independent Senate appointments to be an election issue – which is essentially an endorsement for Trudeau – and it could start to get very uncomfortable for all involved really quickly.

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Roundup: A queen and her prime minister

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It was Pride weekend in Toronto, and Justin Trudeau was in attendance once again this year, with several Cabinet ministers and his Toronto-area MPs. The only Conservative MP in attendance appears to have been Lisa Raitt, while Jagemeet Singh and Elizabeth May were also present.

But most importantly? This years RuPaul’s Drag Race runner-up from Toronto, the Queen of the North, Brooke Lynn Hytes was also in attendance, and got to meet her prime minister, as any good queen would.

https://twitter.com/AdamScotti/status/1142852635780927488

https://twitter.com/Bhytes1/status/1142870645673484294

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Roundup: Resurrecting sham “elections”

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As part of his ongoing fit of pique against the federal government, Alberta premier Jason Kenney has decided to revive one spectacular bit of political bullshit theatre that some of us had hoped was now dead and buried – the sordid practice of Alberta’s “consultative elections” for senators. The whole notion is unconstitutional, and while the Supreme Court didn’t explicitly rule against the provinces setting up their own “elections” as part of the Senate reference, it was certainly implicitly in there, both in the notion that a consultative “election” creates an expectation of legitimacy, but the logic behind it was also completely blasted during the hearing, when Justice Thomas Cromwell asked if a consultative election is fine, why not a consultative auction? Not to mention that the entire election process in past elections has been little more than the electoral equivalent of a show trial – a sham that resembles electoral democracy but is simply designed to return only candidates from a certain party to then form an illegitimate demand that they be appointed. Kenney’s attempt to say that this gives them “accountability” is ludicrous on its face because they don’t face re-election, so there is no actual accountability that can be exercised. The whole farcical exercise has more in common with the sham elections held in communist countries than it does with the actual electoral practices in the rest of Canada, and the fact that Kenney is looking to resurrect this demented kabuki is just more of his campaign of snake oil and lies whose only point is to keep stoking the irrational anger of Albertans and hoping that it won’t blow up in his face. It inevitably will, however, and the whole country will pay the price for Kenney’s arrogance in believing he can manage the monster he created.

In other news of Kenney’s political bullshit theatre, his piece by Chris Turner dismantles the whole raison d’être of Kenney’s so-called “war room,” by pointing to the literal conspiracy theories that underpin the whole thing, and the mythology that Kenney is trying to spin around why capital has left Alberta’s energy sector. And it’s complete myth, but it gets repeated uncritically constantly, and it goes unchallenged by the media, and yet Kenney is creating this $30 million spin machine to further reinforce this mythology and conspiracy theorism, because again, it feeds the anger of his base, telling them that it’s not the fault of the world price of oil that their fortunes have changed, but rather that it’s the sinister forces of dark foreign money that is really behind it all. Without putting too fine of a point on it, this is the kind of thing that fuels the kinds of populist movements that breed fascists. But Kenney doesn’t care, because he thinks he can control it.

Meanwhile, Kenney has suddenly changed his story about the incident where he handed out earplugs during that debate in the Alberta legislature, and it’s gone from it being “light-hearted morale-boosting” to “one of my MLAs has tinnitus and was being shouted at,” which the video clearly didn’t show, and it’s just one more example of Kenney’s smile-and-lie show that he puts on for media interviews, and you can’t help but feel sorry for the interviewers because trying to disentangle his egregious lies is a Sisyphean task.

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1142194069902364680

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Roundup: Closing it all down for the summer (and the election)

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The House of Commons rose yesterday, earlier than expected after news that Conservative MP Mark Warawa died of cancer. Business was truncated, all remaining bills passed swiftly, and a few tributes were made to Warawa before adjourning the House, ostensibly until September, but the writs would be drawn up for the election before then. There is a chance that Parliament will be called back in the summer to deal with the New NAFTA implementation bill, which was not passed, but apparently they’re waiting on the Americans before we go further.

Over on the Senate, side, a number of bills passed through swiftly, including the reforms to the Access to Information legislation, but the ones that caught the most attention were Bills C-48 and C-69, being the west coast oil tanker ban and the environmental assessment legislation. Immediately after those were passed, Alberta premier Jason Kenney thundered over Twitter about how he was going to challenge them in court – which you can expect the courts to tell him to go pound sand, just as they will with his challenge to the federal carbon price that will be imposed on his province come January. The Senate won’t be passing a number of private members’ bills, including some prominent ones like Rona Ambrose’s bill, but it was a bad bill anyway and deserved to die on the Order Paper. (The Liberals also promised to revive the bill in the next parliament, which…isn’t great, frankly, because it’s either unconstitutional in its original form, or largely symbolic in its amended form).

This means that all that’s left is a royal assent ceremony, which will happen this afternoon, and it’ll be the first time that they’re going to attempt a ceremony with the two chambers in separate buildings. It’s been suggested previously that the Usher of the Black Rod will take a limousine to West Block to knock on the Commons’ door to deliver the message that Her Excellency requests their presence in the Senate, at which point the Speaker and a token few MPs will head over – possibly in limos or little parliamentary busses – to the Senate for the ceremony. We’ll see how it all unfolds.

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Roundup: A real climate sham

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Andrew Scheer unveiled his long-awaited environmental plan yesterday, citing that it was a “real plan” because it was longer than the other parties’…but that was about it. After he listed a bunch of lies about the current Liberal plan, Scheer kept saying that carbon pricing didn’t do anything, which is both factually incorrect (as proven by peer-reviewed work), but it also completely ignores that the current plan hasn’t had a chance to sufficiently bend the curve. By removing carbon pricing from the market and instead forcing companies who exceed their emissions to caps, it is actually even less of a market-based plan than the Liberals’ plan, and there are no specifics in how any of it would work. Promising technological solutions without price signals to spur their development is just like counting on magic to lower emissions. It’s also like Scheer’s complete lie that this plan won’t cost Canadians – it will cost them, but those costs will be passed onto them and hidden, whereas the carbon price is transparent so that people can make better choices. Scheer also claims that his plan would have the best chance of meeting the Paris targets – without actually having targets, or articulating how they would be achieved. It’s replete with a bunch of boutique tax credits that are inefficient, and is generally a bunch of language that does very little. How he claims this is a “real plan” is somewhat of a farce.

And then there’s the global component, where Scheer says that Canada should be lowering global emissions by exporting “cleaner” Canadian energy like LNG – err, except that would grow Canadian emissions, and yet he wants us to get credits for those exports. And he says that China should use Canadian carbon capture and storage technology – except it’s hugely expensive, and is not really feasible unless you’re pricing carbon (not to mention that if the storage is not done properly, it can simply all be for naught). And Canada still has some of the highest per-capita emissions, which Scheer conveniently ignores in his arguments.

Amidst this, Scheer’s apologists are saying “it’s good that they’re admitting that climate change is real!” or “Look at how far the Conservatives have come since 2008!” Except that’s all spin. They can say they believe in climate change, but they also say that Canada’s contribution is so small that we shouldn’t do anything about it. Scheer and others tried to burnish themselves with the environmental reputations of previous conservative governments, except the old Conservative party is dead, and the current one is engaging in some egregious political necrophilia to cover for their own weakness. That those apologists could say these things with a straight face on television is astounding.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1141470545130729473

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QP: One last “PMQ”

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It promised to be the last big show of the 42nd Parliament, with all of the leaders present for one last time. Andrew Scheer led off in French, worrying about the start date for the Trans Mountain expansion, studiously ignoring the Federal court of Appeal decision that revoked the permit. Justin Trudeau reminded him that Stephen Harper didn’t get any pipelines to new markets, while he ensured they got proper buy-in from Indigenous communities. Scheer switched to English to repeat his disingenuous lines, and Trudeau repeated that the only way to build energy projects was to work in partner with Indigenous people. Scheer got increasingly breathy as he accused the government of trying to phase out the energy sector, to which Trudeau replied that the Conservatives won’t take yes for an answer, and that they were succeeding in what the Alberta energy sector had asked for. Scheer shouted about all the things he would do to build pipelines and said the prime minister couldn’t get things done, and Trudeau calmly replied that the Conservatives still don’t understand why they failed the economy for ten years. Scheer rose one last time to assure Trudeau that a “real plan for the environment” would come at five o’clock, before he switched to some scattershot condemnation about the Liberals protecting corporate interests, and Trudeau listed off all the things that Scheer didn’t get about the environment. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he demanded the government spend on green projects instead of pipelines, and Trudeau took up a script to list off all of the measures they have taken to help the environment. Singh, in English, declared that the TMX would generate no profits — which is news to everyone — and he decried the government not protecting the environment. Trudeau picked up the English version of the script to list the measures that they have taken. Singh flailed around about measures for the environment, and Trudeau reiterated his previous response without a script, before he put it back to Singh that there were Indigenous communities supported the project. Singh switched to French to worry about the project some more, and Trudeau raised the fact that the pipeline was more responsible than moving oil by rail.

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Roundup: It’s TMX Day

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Today is the day that the government will make their decision on the Trans Mountain Expansion, and it should not be a surprise to say that they are almost certainly going to approve it, having spent $4.5 billion on the existing pipeline to “de-risk” the project, and far more in political capital at the cost of some of their BC, Indigenous, and environmental base while trying to insist that this is necessary for the transition to a cleaner economy. Of course, if they could communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, it might help them to make that case, but they seem incapable of it. The real question is going to be what kinds of changes to the route will be made in order to accommodate Indigenous groups, or other conditions to be mandated as part of it.

There will be much talk about the “pipeline crunch” that the TMX will hope to address, which has to do with added oilsands production and not enough ways to get it to market, given ongoing delays on the American side of both Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL – projects which have been approved in Canada, and the Line 3 construction has been ongoing on the Canadian side. But as much as TMX will help, we also need to remember that the projected growth capacity is limited, which is another reason why Energy East doesn’t make economic sense. The concern that the sector needs all kinds of new pipelines isn’t actually borne out in the data (as Andrew Leach has pointed out repeatedly, including here).

On a related note, the government has rejected most of the Senate amendments to Bill C-48, on the tanker ban, but did agree to the five-year legislative review period, but as much as industry groups are demanding that this bill and Bill C-69 be killed, it’s not going to happen.

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Roundup: Credulous takes on the “new” Senate

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Over in the Globe and Mail, John Ibbitson has declared that Justin Trudeau’s reforms to the Senate “worked,” and that Andrew Scheer should continue to appoint independents instead of partisans, and I just. Cannot Even. Reading the piece, it’s clear that Ibbitson has no real grounding in what the Senate is supposed to do on an actual basis, the various roles it plays aside from its legislative duties, and he has absolutely no conception of the broader scope of the problem that Justin Trudeau has unleashed on future parliaments – and how he has hobbled his own party in the future, while further centralizing his own power. But Ibbitson seems to have taken the word of Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, that this is how Parliament is “supposed” to work – Harder not exactly being a credible source – as well as an emeritus professor who has been a booster not only for these reforms, but who thinks it would be great to go even further and institute a business committee (which would be an even bigger problem going forward). So no, I’m not going to take Ibbitson’s word that this has “worked.”

While I’m not going to pretend that the Senate didn’t have its problems beforehand, a good many of the problems in recent years can be traced to the fact that Stephen Harper made some spectacularly poor appointments in his rush to populate the Chamber during the prorogation crisis of 2008, after he neglected to fill its seats for long enough that what Conservative senators there were in the Chamber at the time were clamouring for more members because there weren’t enough of them to adequately spread around the workload. And rather than make thoughtful appointments, Harper panic appointed a number of partisans who had no suitability to the role, and lo, problems and scandal ensued.

There is absolutely a partisan role for senators because they’re the institutional memory of parliament, and that especially includes inside the caucus room, and that also keeps a check on the leader because they don’t have to worry about their nomination papers being signed. And the Liberals are going to find out just how necessary those roles are when they’re no longer in power and have few people with the knowledge to help them rebuild. And yes, it will happen eventually. And as for the “new” system “working,” they can’t manage the Order Paper, and they have a crisis in front of them with the election looming. But hey, Peter Harder says it’s going swimmingly, so he’s the person we should believe. Okay then.

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Roundup: Disingenuous threats to national unity

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As bullshit political theatre goes, Jason Kenney continues to exercise it to its fullest as he released an “urgent letter” to the federal government yesterday, co-signed by five other premiers (four of them conservative, one of them without ostensible party affiliation) to demand that both bills C-48 and C-69 be withdrawn, and warns of consequences to “national unity” if they are not. And it’s a bit galling to play the national unity card, considering that it’s both groundless and petulant – like a tantrum where a child threatens to hold his breath until he turns blue to teach his parents “a lesson.”

Nobody is going to pretend that these are perfect bills, but for the purposes of what is being argued, neither can do the harm that Kenney and his allies are claiming. For example, C-48 will not landlock their resources, and there has been expert testimony to say that it would have a negligible impact on the oil and gas sector because there are no pipelines along that route, nor are there any planned (thanks in large part to how badly the Conservatives botched the Indigenous consultations on the Northern Gateway project). And C-69 is not going to make major infrastructure projects impossible – if anything, it would have a better chance of streamlining environmental assessments by ensuring clearer lines and better scoping of those assessments, so that there can be more focused work with the assessments. But the status quo is simply a path of more litigation because the current system is badly flawed. The branding it as the “no more pipelines bill” is and always has been disingenuous and an outright lie, but that’s what this all boils down to.

Kenney and company have lied repeatedly about the current government’s environmental programme – abetted by the fact that this government can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and they somehow refuse to call Kenney, Scheer, and company, on their bullshit. And given that Kenney managed to win an election by whipping his electorate into a state of irrational anger with a diet of lies and snake oil – anger that won’t abate now that he’s in charge – the attempt to export that technique to the rest of Canada is dangerous, but they don’t seem to care. That is the real threat to national unity, and it’s Kenny and company who are stirring it up, and they should be called out for it.

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Roundup: A line-by-line review

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If the tweets of Cabinet ministers are to be believed, Cabinet is currently seized with doing a line-by-line review of the amended Bill C-69 that was sent back to them from the Senate earlier this week. By all accounts, the current form of the bill is a complete dog’s breakfast that includes a number if contradictory clauses, because the Chamber of Sober Second Thought didn’t bother to actually do the work of reconciling them because members of the environment and energy committee were keen to placate Jason Kenney and to credulously believe the oil and gas industry lobbyists who insisted that the bill’s original form, while not perfect, would somehow doom all future projects in this country. And you would think that actually getting a bill in reasonable condition back to the Commons would be kind of important to a body like the Senate, for whom this is their raison d’être as a legislative chamber who preoccupies itself with reviewing legislation, but no, they decided instead to sent it back to the Commons as is rather than to take the blame that Kenney and company will lay on them as he continues to lie about the bill and consider it a rallying cry for the implacable anger of Albertans that he sold a bunch of snake oil to during the last provincial election.

In the midst of this, you have senators like Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith claiming that the Senate’s attempt to stop bills C-69 and C-48 are supposedly the last bastion of the provinces who are “under attack” by prime minister Justin Trudeau, which is hokum of the highest order. C-48 doesn’t landlock Alberta’s resources because the chances of a pipeline to the northern BC coast are virtually nonexistent given the Federal Court of Appeal decision on Northern Gateway’s failure, and the propaganda campaign against Bill C-69 is the completely divorced from reality, but hey – angry narratives to sustain. At the same time, Senator André Pratt is defending the Senate against accusations levelled from the likes of Andrew Coyne that they’re overreaching if they do kill C-48 (which they won’t), saying that they’re trying to do their job while being cognisant that they’re an appointed body. He’s not wrong, and it’s probably one of the better articulated pieces of late.

Meanwhile, the Conservative whip, Senator Don Plett, is denying that he’s stalling the UNDRIP bill, and he’s actually got procedure on his side for this one – the cancelled meeting would have been extraordinary, and there are reasons why the Senate doesn’t hold special committee meetings while the Chamber is sitting – which they are sitting later and later because they have so much business to get through because the Independent Senators can’t get their act together, and lo, we have the current Order Paper crisis that they are working their way through (though apparently not so urgently that they didn’t sit yesterday). Unfortunately, the media does love private members’ bills, and is focusing a lot of attention on them, no matter that most of them are actually bad bills that should probably die on the Order Paper (but people don’t like to hear that).

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