Tag Archives: François-Philippe Champagne

Roundup: $2 billion unbidden

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There was a lot of reaction to the announcement that prime minister Justin Trudeau was giving an additional $2 billion to the provinces to help schools restart safely – unbidden – and those reactions were interesting. Trudeau himself made a point of saying that this was as a result of listening to his backbench Liberal MPs and parents who continued to express concerns, and that it wasn’t requested by premiers, so that’s a political marker right there. It’s also a transfer that is largely without strings – it comes in two tranches, one now, one at the end of the year, and all the provinces need to do between them is to tell Ottawa how they spent the money, so again, it’s a bit of a political test for those premiers – and it’s also giving rise to speculation that this is a sign that Trudeau is in election mode.

Reaction was mixed. Doug Ford expressed gratitude (but also falsely claimed that Ontario’s restart plans were the safest in the country, which is patently absurd), but his education minister – and his opposition critic in the NDP – derided the funds as “late to the game.” Manitoba premier Brian Pallister, for example, was somewhat non-committal, and said he’d take the money, but praised his own government’s efforts. And, hilariously, Jagmeet Singh took credit for it, saying that he had called a press conference to “make an announcement” (read: demand) about more money for schools and lo and behold, the prime minister delivered before that press conference happened. Yeah, okay then.

The complicating factor in all of this is that this is an area of sole provincial jurisdiction and there should be zero expectation for federal dollars, which is why I find myself mystified by all of the people on Twitter (and the Ontario NDP education critic) bemoaning that these funds didn’t flow in June. But if you recall, in June, Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland were negotiating with the provinces for their “Safe Restart Plan,” with $14 billion on the table which included money for schools, so it’s not like it wasn’t being discussed – the provinces were recalcitrant because they didn’t want the strings attached that come with billions of dollars. Eventually, they came to an agreement and it turned into $19 billion, and this $2 billion is on top of that, so it’s not like the federal government has been completely silent. I would also suspect that there is a bit of an implicit rebuke in this new envelope of money because provinces have been dithering on their restart plans, giving confusing options to parents with no time to evaluate them, and more critically, have been unwilling to do the important work of reducing class sizes. One could easily interpret this money as Ottawa telling them – not in so many words – to get their acts together, and they’ll look fairly magnanimous while they’re at it.

https://twitter.com/StandingHannah/status/1298685195579723776

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Roundup: O’Toole on the third ballot

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On a third ballot result, Erin O’Toole won the Conservative leadership race. The big event turned into a very big disaster. It was delayed by over six hours because the machine they were using to open the envelopes with ballots started destroying thousands of ballots, and it was well past midnight by the time the first ballot was even announced – far beyond the day’s news cycle and past the deadlines for newspapers’ first editions, which had long since gone to print. While we were waiting, Andrew Scheer gave his farewell speech, which was bitter, and full of jejune understandings of conservatism or the political landscape – he railed against imaginary left-wing straw men, scared up a Bolshevik threat, lied about the media – to the point where he called The Post Millennial and True North (aka Rebel Lite™) as “objective” that more people should pay attention to, which is incredible.

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1297768475939819521

As for the result, this was very much about the social conservatives flexing their muscles within the party. Both Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan got over 35% of the votes combined on the first ballot, and there were places where either of the front-runners came in third to Lewis, and she swept Saskatchewan, where MacKay came in last. And true to form, it was those social conservatives’ down-ballot support that played kingmaker to O’Toole over MacKay, who was inexplicably considered the “last Progressive Conservative standing” (which doesn’t make sense because he was in no way a PC MP, especially if you look at his voting record). O’Toole at least has a seat, so that means he can get to work immediately, but we’ll see how many bruised feelings are in the caucus and party ranks given how the campaign played out, especially given that O’Toole hired a professional shitposter to run his campaign.

For his victory speech, O’Toole graciously thanked his competitors, and thanked the “patriotic Canadians” who made the victory happen. He paid special mention to Quebec, where he won the most votes, and made it clear that he was going to keep Sloan in the fold, in spite of some of his odious statements. O’Toole insisted that he was going to unite the party, before he took pot shots at Trudeau. He said they would be proposing a new “positive Conservative vision,” and that they would be ready for the next election, which could be as early as this fall. And then it was onto the doomsaying about the direction of the country under the Liberals, complete with the economic illiteracy that has marked the modern Conservative party. “The world still needs more Canada – it just needs less Justin Trudeau,” O’Toole said, before insisting that everyone has a home in the Conservative party.

We’ll delve into the entrails of the regional breakdowns of the race, and the particular mechanics of it and how that affected the results, but I will tell you right now that I have little patience for these takes about how this result means that the party’s power is shifting eastward – that’s hard to believe given the concentration of their votes, even though none of the leadership candidates came from there. And frankly, the notion that the party requires someone from Alberta to helm it keeps it blinkered, and insular. That’s not how you build the kind of national party that the country needs.

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Roundup: Combing the document dump

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The mass of WE-related documents were the subject of yesterday’s news fodder, and the fact that they largely corroborated the government’s assertion that the civil servants were the ones who suggested WE Charity be the vehicle to deliver the Canada Student Service Grant programme. They did, however, make a couple of notes that raised eyebrows – one was another communication between Bardish Chagger and the Kielbergers (though she has responded to dispel those concerns, saying it was a general comment she had made as the CSSG was not on her radar at the time), and the other were communications between Bill Morneau’s office and the finance department officials where Morneau’s office were described as “besties” with WE – which doesn’t necessarily prove that this was some orchestrated campaign to benefit WE. There were also documents wherein Jean-Yves Duclos was clearly not comfortable with WE being the only delivery vehicle for the programme because they don’t have sufficient depth in Quebec, though he was being assured otherwise.

To these revelations, and the fact that some of the pages had redactions on them (which is standard for both Cabinet confidences and instances where privacy is involved), the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre in particular put on a melodramatic press conference full of air quotes and flung pages, and the howling accusation that there was a cover-up in the works. Because we all know that when you don’t find the answers you want, there must be a conspiracy at play. It’s not unexpected, and I’m not sure he won over any converts among the Canadian public, but hey, this is all theatre for him, like so many things in Canadian politics.

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Roundup: Exit Morneau

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After a week of leaks about clashes, finance Bill Morneau took to a lectern late in the day on Monday to announce that he had tendered his resignation, and would be resigning both as minister and as MP. Well, first he did some back-patting over his record and couched the decision by saying that he never planned to serve more than two election cycles, and since the economic recovery would take years, it was better for someone else to step in who could carry the work through. The bombshell out of this was the face-saving gesture that he had put his name forward to be the next secretary general of the OECD, and that he had the PM’s full support in doing so – which is either really cute that he thinks he actually has a chance, or a bit pathetic in that he offered up an excuse that beggared credulity. The Q&A portion had very few answers, but this kind of pabulum is what Morneau was so good at – lots of words, not a lot of substance. When asked about the difference that he was apparently clashing with Trudeau over, Morneau mouthed that there was “vigorous discussion and debate,” and that he hoped that work on the green economy could continue and that he would try to help with the OECD (which he won’t get). He denied that he was pressured to resign, said that when it came to WE, he has been involved in philanthropy for many years and that in hindsight he wished that he had one things differently and recused himself – and yet said nothing about the donor trip he didn’t disclose. He insisted that he still wanted to contribute, and said that at the OECD, he would deal with things like international taxation and digital transformation, and use the expertise he gained as the finance minister of a G7 country to help, but, well, that’s not going to happen and we all know it.

Liberal Sources™ are saying that there won’t be an interim finance minister, though the Orders in Council say that Mona Fortier is already the Acting Minister since Morneau is out of the picture. The leading contenders for the job appear to be Jean-Yves Duclos, Chrystia Freeland, and François-Philippe Champagne.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells describes the strange circumstances that surrounded Morneau’s departure – particularly the leaks to the media about fights that Morneau lost and was gracious about, with added snark about how the departure went down. Heather Scoffield notes the good work Morneau did before agreeing that it was time for him to go. (Look for my own column on Morneau’s departure later today on Loonie Politics).

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Roundup: A brief return to the Commons

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The Commons will be meeting today in an actual, real sitting and not an abbreviated strange hybrid committee, in order to pass Bill C-20 on disability payments, which they say is in an improved format from their previous attempt in C-17 (which one presumes is now withdrawn from the Order Paper). The bill also includes the changes to the wage subsidy that were announced on Friday, and it sounds like will also have the changes to court system timelines that were previously announced and part of C-17, but the text of the bill won’t be out until the Commons actually sits. We also know that the bill will pass, because the Bloc have agreed to everything, and this means a motion that will see the bill essentially passed at all stages with a couple hours’ worth of speeches in lieu of actual debate or legislative processes, which is less than ideal. We’ll also have a proper Question Period today, so we can look forward to that, and all of the questions on the WE Imbroglio that will come with it. The Senate has not yet announced when they will be meeting to pass it on their end, which may not be until later in the week.

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Roundup: Manufacturing an “attendance” record

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The big headline that everyone was talking about yesterday was a load of manufactured bullshit, which shouldn’t really surprise anyone, but it was what everyone was throwing around nevertheless. The Globe and Mail crunched the numbers from the Zoom log-ins from the special COVID-19 committee that has been sitting in lieu of regular House of Commons sittings, and found that lo, the Conservatives had the worst “attendance record.” Which is kind of hilarious because it completely misunderstands how this whole farcical process works. Oh, but the Conservatives must be hypocrites, because they’re demanding full sittings! Well, no – you’ve just found some numbers that you’re applying disingenuously in order to make them look like hypocrites. It’s exactly the kind of stunt that causes people – and small-conservatives especially – to distrust the mainstream media, because it looks an awful lot like they’re not being given a fair shake. Of course, Andrew Scheer didn’t do himself any favours when he called it “Liberal spin” rather than pointing out that this was a false construction, but his inability to do anything other than meathead partisan talking points was and still is his downfall.

Why this is such bad-faith “reporting” is because it ignores the fact that there is a set speaking list every day. If you’re an MP – particularly a Conservative MP in a rural riding where you have spotty Internet to begin with – what incentive is there for you to log into Zoom and watch it that way when you have no chance to participate when you can simply follow the proceedings on CPAC and get a better experience because the translation tends to work better? It also operates on the assumption that all 338 MPs are in the House of Commons at all times when Parliament is sitting regularly, which isn’t the case – the only time all MPs are in the Chamber are during Question Period and for votes, and no, despite the sales job that the government has been trying to foist onto the public, this committee is not Question Period. Trying to hand out attendance awards for participating in a Zoom call on steroids is a waste of everyone’s time and resources, and is a distraction from the actual issues related to the calls to have proper in-person sittings – or it would be if the majority of media outlets could actually report critically on it rather than swallowing the government’s lines.

Speaking of outrage clicks, the CBC has again been misrepresenting some Senate matters, like how the Selection Committee works, as part of their story wherein Senator Dalphond is calling for committee chairs and deputy chairs to rescind their “bonuses” in the current session because of many haven’t sat because of the pandemic. But it occurs to me that it’s unlikely that chairs have even been getting their stipends because most committees haven’t even been constituted yet, which makes this look even more like this is part of Dalphond’s particular vendetta against Senator Yuen Pau Woo, and Woo’s insistence on chairing the Selection Committee, and he’s trying to use a larger point about chairs’ salaries (using false comparisons with the House of Lords as ammunition) in order to provide cover from making this look personal. I am becoming extremely concerned about Dalphond’s behaviour here – though my disappointment with how the CBC covers the Senate is pretty much standard. Cheap outrage clicks on the backs of misrepresenting the Senate is par for the course for how journalism runs in this town. (I wrote more on the backstory here).

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Roundup: Damage control and lunatic accusations

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For his Friday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was back at Rideau Cottage, and he started off with the news that the Canadian Forces deployments to long-term care facilities in Ontario and Quebec would be extended until June 26th, but that the plan was to start transitioning to more assistance from the Canadian Red Cross. He mentioned the call with the premiers on Thursday night, which by all accounts got pretty testy, but Trudeau stuck to generalities. He raised the arrest video of Chief Allan Adam, saying he was shocked and that there needed to be an independent investigation, and that policing reforms across the country needed to happen soon. Finally, he mentioned that temperature checks would be implemented on flights, which raised all kinds of questions of faux-confusion that we were told that this was ineffective in detecting COVID-19 – which is true, but it was explained about eleventy times that this was simply an added measure of protection to keep people with fevers off of flights. (And lo, the pundits who seem incapable of thinking critically about public health advice have been decrying this as “added confusion,” which it’s not really). During the Q&A, Trudeau was also asked about the blood donation ban for men who have sex with men, given that NDP MP Randall Garrison has been agitating about this recently, and Trudeau reiterated the government’s position that they were funding the science that would ensure it was safe to end the ban, that they reduced it from a permanent ban to a three-month ban, and that he hoped for a positive announcement soon.

Later in the day, we saw a flurry of damage control out of the RCMP, as Commissioner Brenda Lucki clarified that yes, there is systemic racism in the Force and she should have been clearer about that, and that she has to ensure policing free of bias. As well, the Alberta Deputy Commissioner, who previously denied that systemic racism exists in the Force, said that he’s learned a lot in the past few days and he too will now admit that it exists, and promised to help eliminate it – as calls for his resignation have been mounting. Meanwhile, Winnipeg police tried to get ahead of a story with a video that showed four police grappling with, kicking, and Tasering someone during an arrest, which they insisted was someone who was violent and high on meth – but seemed incapable of admitting that it looks like more police brutality.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been trying to make an Issue of the fact that foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne *gasp* has a $1.2 million mortgage for two London properties from a Chinese bank, that predated his time in politics. The mortgages were fully disclosed, and neither the Ethics Commissioner, CSIS or the RCMP seemed to think this was a big deal when he was either elevated to Cabinet or shuffled to his current portfolio, but now the Conservatives are accusing him of being compromised, and going easy on China – to the point that they have insinuated that he is letting the two Michaels languish in a Chinese prison – because of these mortgages. It’s a position that is ludicrously insulting because the worst thing that this Chinese Bank could do is demand immediate repayment (unlikely given the rules for financial institutions in the UK), and Champagne could have to sell those properties, which, given that property in the UK has appreciated rapidly, he could make a tidy profit. More to the point, that same Chinese bank has been operating in Canada since 1993 and had $3 billion on the books here, and there was nary a peep about it from the Conservatives in the nine years they were in power. But logic and common sense are not in play, and instead they are demanding that the Canada-China special committee be reconstituted and Champagne be hauled before it to answer about this, which is starting to reek of a McCarthy-era witch hunt, because they can’t help but engage in meathead partisanship.

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Roundup: Not the provinces’ cash cow

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Everything got off to an earlier start yesterday, beginning with the ministerial presser, during which Marc Miller announced another $650 million being allocated to Indigenous communities for healthcare, which would also include added income supports for those living on-reserve, as well as some $85 million to build new shelters for women on reserves. Marc Garneau also announced that the ban on cruise ship docking in Canadian waters was going to be extended to October 31st, which will impact the economies of these communities, but also limits potential vectors for the pandemic. When pressed about the issue of airline ticket refunds, Garneau reiterated the warning that the sector could fail if they were forced to refund all of the tickets, though later on, prime minister Justin Trudeau indicated that there were talks ongoing.

For his presser, Trudeau started off by talking about his teleconference with the premiers and spoke about sick leave being one of the items on the agenda, and it was later in the Q&A that he said that he was offering for the federal government to assume most of the responsibility for the costs, rather than putting it on business owners, but it sounds like some premiers remain rather cool to the idea. After reiterating the earlier Miller/Garneau announcement, Trudeau took questions, which included mention that he was trying to get premiers to agree to some modified orders at the Canada-US border that would allow family reunification, such as cases like the Canadian woman who was trying to get the American father of her unborn child into the country before she gave birth – but again, there are premiers who are not keen. After the questions, Trudeau then gave an unprompted statement on anti-Black racism as a result of what’s going on in the US – that there is a need to stand up as a society, that there needs to be more respect, and that we have work to do as well in Canada. He called on all Canadians to stand together in solidarity, as they know how deeply people are being affected by what we are seeing on the news.

Something else raised in Trudeau’s Q&A was a letter sent to him by five of his Toronto-area backbenchers, calling on him to lead the country in national standards on long-term care, and to press Ontario for a full public inquiry into what happened with the breakdown in care (which I maintain won’t tell us anything we don’t already know). Trudeau praised them for their efforts, and talked about the ongoing talks with provinces, but two of those MPs were on Power & Politics later in the day, and something that I was also glad to hear was Judy Sgro saying that while they wanted federal leadership, they both were respecting that this is provincial jurisdiction and they also didn’t want the provinces treating the federal government like a “cash cow” when you have premiers like Ford demanding more federal funds to fix their own long-term care mess. My own patience for provinces crying out for federal funds to fix the problems in their own jurisdiction is wearing mighty thin, particularly as most of those provinces have broad taxation powers at their disposal (though some of those provinces have less tax room available to them – Ontario, however, is not one of them). Premiers don’t want to have anything on their books and would rather it come from Ottawa’s, so that they don’t have to look like the bad guy when it comes to paying for their own programmes – never mind that there’s really only one taxpayer in the end.

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Roundup: Reassurances and critiques

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It was a much calmer day yesterday with little in the way of new announcements – the most noteworthy part of Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was that he was actually on time for possibly the first time ever! Oh, and the border restrictions for non-essential travel will probably only kick in sometime on Friday night, but details were still being worked out. As well, there is still no contemplation of use of the Emergencies Act, but it remains a tool in the box if need be.

With the slower news day in mind, here is economist Kevin Milligan who goes through the criticisms of the government’s massive aid package, and addresses which are fair and which ones may not have all of the considerations therein.

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https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1240758765655392261

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https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1240760179060342787

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Roundup: Lethal overwatch?

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There’s been some chatter about a story in the Guardian that purports to show BC RCMP communications that would have allowed for “snipers” and “sterilizing” of Indigenous protests in the province over LNG pipelines – which the minister of Indigenous services wants some answers to, and which the RCMP denies is actually legitimate, citing that the terminology used isn’t consistent with their own, or that some of it is being misinterpreted (in particular “lethal overwatch). To that end, here’s Justin Ling with a bit of context and nuance to consider before you get agitated at what’s being reported, as it may not necessarily be correct.

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