Tag Archives: GLBT

Senate QP: Jody Wilson-Raybould is still so proud

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After the day’s repetitive QP in the Other Place, the justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould headed down the hall for Senate Question Period. Senator Larry Smith was up first, asking about the decision-making process to approve only one THC testing device, which many police forces are opting not to buy. Wilson-Raybould replied that they had expertise from the Canadian Society of Forensic Scientists, and that while it was the first device approved, it was not the only tool that law enforcement officers have, which was why they invested in field training for drug detection. Smith asked if there were other devices on the way, and Wilson-Raybould offered the backgrounder on the one approved device and said that she was open to approving others as they are tested.

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Roundup: Delay for the sake of delay

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With Parliament now risen for the summer, The Canadian Press decided to take a look back at the rise in obstruction tactics by the opposition in the last couple of months, and some of it is blatant obstruction for the sake of obstruction. And while a number of the usual pundits decried the piece, I think there are a few things to drill into here – not because I don’t think that there are legitimate uses for opposition obstruction and filibusters (because there certainly are), but what it says about the tone of this current parliament.

There are a few examples cited in the piece about opposition tactics that don’t make sense – the insistence on running out the clock on a six-hour marathon of speeches over the Senate public bill about Latin American Heritage Month that all parties supported (though I’m unsure how, procedurally, a Senate public bill got that many hours of debate because it should have really gotten two under private members’ business), the vote-a-thon tantrum that was cynically designed to simply kill Friday hours rather than make any meaningful points about the Estimates that were being voted upon, or the hours of concurrence debates on committee reports that all parties agreed upon. The piece makes the point that there are concerns that these tactics were designed to force the government to bring in time allocation on more bills in order to get them through, so that they could turn around and accuse them of acting in bad faith after they came in promising not to use time allocation (despite the fact that it’s a defensible tactic under most circumstances).

To a certain extent, this is the government’s fault for coming in trying to play nice and operating under the rubric that all parties can be reasonable and agree to debate timetables. That hasn’t always proved true, and when Bardish Chagger’s proposals around scheduling motions like they use in the UK got shot down (legitimately – it’s not something I would have really supported because it means automatic time allocation of all bills), she warned that time allocation would be used more frequently, and it certainly appears that the opposition parties have dared her to do so with their tactics. But I do find it frustrating as a parliamentary observer that good faith attempts and allowing more debate gets abused in order to try and embarrass the government rather than making parliament work better, and then they can complain when the government has to play hard(er) ball. We already know that the rules in which we structure debate here are broken and need to be overhauled to ensure that our MPs are actually debating rather than simply reciting speeches into the void, and that they in fact can encourage this kind of dilatory behaviour. The measures that Chagger proposed to make Parliament work better wouldn’t have actually done so, but I don’t think it’s illegitimate to shine a light on delay for the sake of delay because it does highlight that there are problems with the rules at present. But we need to get over the kneejerk reactions that calls to do so are about partisan purposes rather than about the health of our democracy.

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Roundup: A diminishing work ethic?

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The Senate rose for the summer yesterday after the morning’s royal assent ceremony, which I find to be extremely curious given that they were scheduled to sit for another week and had a whole new batch of bills sent to them when the House rose on Wednesday. You would think that they would want to get started on them, and possibly even pass a few more of them before rising for the summer, but apparently not, and that does trouble me a little bit. We saw this happen at Christmas, and we’re seeing it again now, where the tradition that the Senate sits at least an extra week to get through the raft of bills sent to them by the Commons is being abrogated by Senate leadership that seems less interested in demonstrating that they’re doing the work that needs to be done when MPs take off.

Speaking of Senate leadership, our good friend, the Leader of the Government in the Senate – err, “government representative” sent out a press release yesterday that pat himself on the back for all of the changes to make the Senate more independent, which he equated with making better laws. Why? Well, 13 out of 51 bills in the current session of this parliament were successfully amended by the Senate, so that must mean it’s working! Well, maybe, but it ignores the context that the current prime minister is more willing to entertain some amendments, unlike the previous one. That gives room for the Senate to propose them, but the vast majority of the amendments that do get accepted tend to be technical rather than substantive ones. Not that it doesn’t happen – the government has backed down on a couple of occasions and accepted major amendments (like with the RCMP unionisation bill, which had a Supreme Court of Canada ruling to back up the amendments), but for the most part, the government has resisted substantive amendments to its legislation, so much that you have their new appointees like Senator Pratte openly questioning why the government bothered with creating its “independent Senate” if they’re not going to listen to what it has to say. Not that I’m suggesting that the government should accept every Senate amendment, but there are recent examples where they probably should have, such as with the impaired driving bill that passed this week. There was overwhelming evidence to show that this was almost certainly unconstitutional and would create havoc within the justice system, but the government refused to listen, and senators backed down and let the government reject their amendments rather than insist upon them in the face of such overwhelming testimony. If Harder were really concerned that the Senate was improving legislation, he might not have insisted that once the government rejected those amendments that the Senate back down rather than stand up for some constitutional principles, but he didn’t. Make of that what you will.

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Roundup: Covering up non-existent data

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With the Conservatives still railing about the supposed Carbon Tax Cover-Up™ (yes, Pierre Poilievre is still trying to make fetch happen), their allies are trying to get in on the action. Jason Kenney tried, and Andrew Leach took him to task for it – and it’s some pretty crucial context because pretty much everything he and the Conservatives are saying is utter bunk. But they’ve set up the narrative that this document they’re demanding is some kind of smoking gun, because they’re building the narrative that this is all some cash grab by a government dire to pay for its spending (never mind that the revenues are going back to the province from which it was collected and not federal coffers, but the truth has never mattered here).

Later in the day, Lisa Raitt tweeted about how one gas station in her riding lowered its prices and there were line-ups around the block! People are struggling! Carbon taxes will devastate families! Again, Leach took her to task, especially the point that this is the whole point about carbon taxes – to change behaviours through price signals. You know, something a free market conservative should espouse (but Raitt is not a free market conservative, but a right-flavoured populist, and said as much during her leadership campaign).

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out the fact that what the Conservatives are demanding is a mix of publicly available data combined with provincial implementation and offsets that nobody has yet, so the government can’t actually provide the data (as some of us have been saying for weeks now), while adding that there is more than a little hypocrisy for a party that keeps demanding disclosure but won’t offer any of their own when it comes to their own supposed plan. But hey, this is about politics and coming up with a scary number that won’t have any proper context or that makes assumptions that no behaviours will change, which misses the point. But, as I’ve said time and again, this isn’t about the truth. This is about the Conservatives building a scary straw man to go to war against, because that’s how they think they’ll win in 2019. And maybe it’ll work. Time will tell.

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Roundup: Cynical procedural gamesmanship

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Thursday night’s tantrum vote-a-thon ended mid-morning on Friday, long before it was supposed to have run its course, and no, the government didn’t capitulate and turn over that report that the Conservatives have been portraying as some kind of smoking gun for months now. No, after hours of high-minded exhortations that this, on the anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, was about no taxation without information, or that this was some kind of cover-up by the government intent on raising the cost of living for everyone, they decided to pull the plug as soon as the clock struck ten. Why? Because at that point, it would be too late to start Friday sitting hours in the Commons, and thus cancelling the day’s planned debates around the cannabis bill (where they would have finalized debate on the Senate amendments and send it back to the Upper Chamber). It is probably one of the most cynical procedural stunts that I have seen in all of my time on the Hill, dressed up as bringing attention to the so-called “carbon tax cover-up,” which is itself a cynical disinformation campaign.

Worst of all was the hours of sanctimonious social media warfare that was sustained throughout it, whether it was the Conservatives dressing this up as some righteous fight over the refusal to release the information (which, let’s be clear, was apparently a projection based on the campaign platform that would mean nothing given that the carbon pricing plans will be implemented by provinces, and where the revenues will be recycled by those provinces and is largely irrelevant to the discussion), or the Liberals crying that the Conservatives were keeping them away from Eid celebrations in their ridings (so much so that Omar Alghabra accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia, and then the real wailing and gnashing of teeth started). It was so much self-righteous bullshit, and it made everyone look bad.

The Trinity Western decision

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the law societies of BC and Ontario could decide not to accredit the graduates of evangelical Trinity Western University’s proposed law school on the grounds that the mandatory covenant that students are expected to sign infringes on the rights of LGBT students, particularly because it mandates that any sexual activity they engage in must only be within the confines of a heterosexual marriage. Of course, it’s more technical than that, because it boils down to standards of reasonableness with the decision that the Law Societies as accrediting bodies can engage in, and I can’t pretend to understand the nuances of it all – but the very smart legal minds that I follow had some trouble wrapping their minds around it all as well, because the balancing of rights is a difficult issue. Some of the legal minds I follow felt this was one of the worst decisions in years, but I’m not sure how much of that is ideological either. It’s also worth noting that this was the last decision that former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin participated in.

In reaction, here are three legal reactions to the decision, while Chris Selley worries about what it means for religious freedom, and Colby Cosh looks at what the decision means for the Supreme Court, paying particular attention to Justice Rowe’s concurring decision on the meaning of freedom of religion.

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Roundup: More Bernier fallout

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Because we can’t stop talking about the Maxime Bernier “ouster,” if it can really be called that since it was more a demotion than anything, but it still got all of the tongues wagging, and all of the reporters cornering every Conservative they could find. And most of those Conservatives downplayed the whole thing, Erin O’Toole going so far as to say that hey, there are other shadow cabinet changes coming so no big deal. The underlying message was that Bernier “broke his word” about the book chapter, which is a semantic game, but given some of the various dynamics in play, it’s hard not to try and find additional drama into the whole affair.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1006872600994123777

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1007085698803949568

That Rob Silver tweet may be even closer to home than most people want to admit. I have to say that there have been some pretty spectacular expectations heaped on Bernier, particularly because he speaks to a certain slice of the party, but perhaps in a more superficial way than they want to believe. After all, many of the Ayn Rand-readers are desperate to attach themselves to someone in the party who represents them (never mind that this isn’t a party of libertarians or even economic conservatives, but right-flavoured populists), so he was someone that they could pin those hopes to, ignoring a lot of what he actually said and did. His lack of judgment when he was foreign affairs minister under the Harper government was stunning, both in his intemperate comments in Afghanistan, or with the security of documents with his then-girlfriend. During the leadership campaign, he would sign off on social media campaigns that dogwhistling to MRAs before claiming he didn’t know about the connotations of “red pills” and so on (and knowing who was running that campaign, they couldn’t not know what it meant). And his constant self-promotion in opposition to Scheer post-leadership is another sign of poor judgment. And really, we shouldn’t discount this particular bit of reasoning.

In further analysis on the whole brouhaha, John Ivison keeps his ear to the ground in the caucus and wonders if Bernier’s ouster from shadow cabinet may force a rift in the party given how close the leadership vote was. Chantal Hébert notes that it was probably a matter of time before things with Bernier came to a head (as she suggests he’s not too well-liked among his Quebec colleagues) and that the by-election timing made it something Scheer couldn’t ignore. Andrew MacDougall sees this as a failing by Scheer to manage his caucus, not properly communicating with Bernier when necessary, and keeping him outside of the fold at a time when he should have drawn him in to get his cooperation on the issue at a time when it’s under attack by the likes of Trump. Andrew Coyne similarly sees this as a failing by Scheer, but for the fact that he has bought into the line that caucus must sing from a single song sheet, particularly on an indefensible policy like Supply Management. Colby Cosh sees not only political games from Bernier, but explicit quid pro quo from Scheer for his dairy supporters who (allegedly) put him over the top in the race (though I’m not sure we have any actual proof of this), and that those dairy lobbyists have successfully leveraged intra-party dynamics to their advantage.

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Roundup: Curiously speedy swearing-in

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With the final vote in the Senate today on the cannabis bill, there have been a few interesting developments, starting with the fact that the government has been making appointments – there was one on Friday, and two more were announced yesterday, and what’s even more curious is how fast they are being sworn in. The two named yesterday will be sworn in today, while the one named Friday was sworn in Monday is already voting on amendments to C-45 despite not having been there for any of the debate or committee testimony. Normally when senators are named, there are a few weeks between their being named and being sworn-in so that they can get all of their affairs in order, which makes this curious, and like it’s looking like Trudeau has been making panicked appointments with the fate of C-45 in the air. And what’s even more curious is the fact that it’s not the Conservatives who are the problem, since they don’t have the numbers to defeat it, but it’s the independent senators who are no longer voting as a bloc but have swung different amendment votes in different ways.

https://twitter.com/JacquiDelaney/status/1004520578919817216

Of course, Conservatives are already promulgating the conspiracy theory that because the provincial nomination committees are largely vacant that these are all hand-picked by the PMO, but in truth, the PMO is sitting on over a hundred vetted names on the short-lists, and these new appointments are all coming off of those lists, where they’ve been languishing for months. So not a conspiracy – just poor management to the point of incompetence.

Meanwhile, some 40 amendments have been passed, with several more defeated, and the government engaged in a bit of deal-making to assuage the concerns of Indigenous senators who wanted to put in an amendment to delay implementation until more consultation with Indigenous communities had been done. The health and Indigenous services ministers instead offered a number of measures and funds to ensure there was access to production, and culturally-appropriate addictions treatment services. One Conservative senator accused those Indigenous senators of capitulation, before she was slapped back by Senator Murray Sinclair for her patronising tone. One could argue that this means that the government is listening to the concerns that are raised, so we’ll see how much follow-through there is.

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Roundup: Justifying a belligerent tone

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Two days after the American tariff announcements, and I found myself still struck by the tone that the federal Conservatives have adopted with this, squarely blaming Trudeau rather than the uncertainty engine known as Trump, and engaging in the same kind of disingenuous narrative-building to justify their stance. In particular, they have been trying to claim that when Trudeau made his tour of steel and aluminium plants earlier in the year, that it was a “victory tour,” which is vastly different from how I remember it. Back then, it was about reassurance and the prime minister wanting to tell them that he had their backs and given that the government was ready for these tariffs to happen and had a package of retaliatory measures ready to go, it means that they didn’t take the reprieve for granted – entirely negating the premise of the Conservatives’ attack lines. Not that facts matter. They are also insistent that the Trudeau government has allowed itself to get “distracted” by the feel-good chapters around labour and gender in NAFTA negotiations, which again, is novel if you pay the slightest amount of attention to what’s been going on. But this isn’t about truth – this is about building their narrative that Trudeau is a dilettante who is incompetent and that the Conservatives are the real grown-ups in the room (despite evidence to the contrary). And because people have let Scheer and company lie with impunity on all sorts of files for months now, they feel emboldened to take this course of action, despite how gauche or out of step with other conservative voices in the country it may be, because they see this as their long-term game plan. And we’ll see if any of those voices call them out on it.

As for the impact of the tariffs, it turns out that they could have a far less detrimental impact on Canada’s aluminium industry because it exports more product to the US than we do steel, and America’s own smelters are older and less efficient than Canadian ones, meaning that these tariffs won’t do anything to help support the US industry, and American producers say that they could do more harm than good. Steel, of course, is a different story. The whole tariff issue, meanwhile, could mean that the lock that the American arms industry has on our military procurement may be at an end, and that our Forces may start looking to Europe for equipment instead – something that may actually be more affordable, but the tendency had been to buy from American producers under the guise of “interoperability” with American forces. As for the American companies facing retaliatory tariffs, well, they’re still learning about them, but most don’t seem too concerned. At least not yet. And many Republicans and businesses are lashing out at Trump for the move – including anchors at Fox Business.

In further reaction, Andrew Coyne believes that the sheer size of the US economy means that our retaliation will come to nothing, and even if we coordinate with other countries, we’re unlikely to change Trump’s mind, so better to work to contain the US presidency. Susan Ariel Aaronson suspects that the tariffs will weaken America’s national security interests rather than strengthen them, as Trump has used as the excuse to enact them, while Andrew MacDougall thinks that Trump’s move may benefit Doug Ford, who pledges to lower taxes and cut red tape that may appeal to people who think this can help keep Ontario’s economy competitive.

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Roundup: Don’t be fooled by Friday’s childish meltdown

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You may have heard that there was a bit of a meltdown in the House of Commons yesterday. You may also have heard a bunch of suspect commentary about what it was about, and some particularly dubious ruminations about how noble it was that these opposition MPs were standing up for their rights to examine the Estimates and to ensure that all government spending was properly voted for, and so on. The problem is, is that those sentiments demonstrate that they’ve been taken in by the ruse that this is all related to.

So, to recap: Yesterday the parties were on notice that Government House Leader Bardish Chagger was going to move the motion to start late-night sittings in the House of Commons for the last four scheduled sitting weeks, in order to get bills through and off to the Senate. After all, it’s likely that the government wants to prorogue and have a new Throne Speech in the fall, and it’s better to get as many bills off the Order Paper before that happens. But just before Chagger is going to move that motion during Routine Proceedings yesterday, the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie conveniently stands up to raise a point of order and starts to demand that the Speaker allow them to delete Vote 40 from the Estimates. Vote 40 is related to the $7 billion fund that the government wants to use to get a move on budgetary matters that haven’t made it through proper Treasury Board review yet. The figures are all in the budget, laid out in a table, on how it will be spent. The opposition has decided that this is really a “slush fund” that can be spent on anything (the government is quite insistent that if they spent it on anything other than what’s in the table in the budget that it would constitute unauthorised spending, which is a significant thing). After Blaikie started a lengthy speech about it, the Speaker said he’s heard enough, that the matter is before committee and not the Commons, so it’s not in order. When he tried to move onto other business, Blaikie kept demanding he be heard. The Conservatives joined in. And thus began an eight-minute childish tantrum of shouting and desk banging that drowned out other business, and once that calmed down, endless cycles of points of order regarding whether or not they could hear the motion or the interpretation, and so on. There was no greater principle being expressed or upheld – it was a procedural filibuster. And we know this because they tried other tactics after that one failed, including points of personal privilege over the earlier meltdown, and a concurrence debate on a committee report (which, as Kady points out, is kind of fun to watch because almost no one has prepared speeches for them, so they’re forced to think on their feet, which they should be doing anyway, but whatever).

Procedural shenanigans I’m fine with. It’s a necessary part of Parliamentary democracy. I’m less fine with the infantile tantrum that they threw when they didn’t get their way. That’s the part that needs to be called out for what it was. And I especially resent the fact that you have a bunch of pundit who should know what a filibuster looks like after being on the Hill for so many yearswho were all “They have a legitimate point!” That legitimate point, as meritorious as it may be in a more existential conversation about reform of the Estimates process, was not what this was about, and to treat it as though it was is to fall for the game. I will additionally add that I am especially displeased with the commentary on the Power & Politicspower panel, where pundits who are not in Ottawa and who don’t cover this place got space to ruminate about how the Speaker was acting partisan because the government is on its heels a bit, of that this $7 fund was just like an omnibus bill that they swore they would never use, and nobody pushed back about how bogus this commentary was. (Paul Wells offered the actual take, bolstered by Aaron Wherry, for the record, but regardless). I will reiterate that procedure matters, and it would really help if people covering and commenting on this place understood that.

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QP: Performative abortion politics

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The Commons was on Wednesday hours to give Conservatives the ability to go to the funeral for Gord Brown earlier in the day. Justin Trudeau was off to Saguenay, Scheer still at the funeral, and even Guy Caron, who is always present Monday to Thursday, was absent. Alain Rayes led off, and demanded that the government hold off on legalising marijuana until all police forces in Canada were equipped and trained to deal with drug-impaired driving. Catherine McKenna got up to reply, and instead brought up Ted Falk’s outburst yesterday about women not having the right to choose, and invited the opposition to recant that position and affirm a woman’s right to choose. Rayes claimed that the words weren’t spoken in the House — not true — and he repeated his question. McKenna repeated her own admonition, and Rayes tried a third time, and this time Ginette Petitpas Taylor responded that they were working with partners to ensure a responsible transition. Diane Finley repeated the question in English, and this time Ralph Goodale got up to remind her that drug-impaired driving is already an issue, not a future one, and that he’s glad they now support Bill C-46 and should encourage the Senate to pass it. Finley tried again, and Goodale elaborated that it’s already in the Criminal Code. Ruth Ellen Brosseau led for the NDP, accusing Kinder Morgan of having privileged access to the government. McKenna retreated to her usual platitudes about the environment and the economy going together, and when Brosseau tried a second time, Marc Garneau assured her that the Trans Mountain pipeline was in the national interest. Nathan Cullen got up to accuse Kinder Morgan lobbyists of attending Liberal fundraisers, to which McKenna reiterated her previous platitudes. When Cullen laid on further sanctimony, McKenna noted that it went through a full review, and it would go ahead.

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