Tag Archives: Gun Control

Roundup: All about Alleslev

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As the fallout from Leona Alleslev’s defection to the Conservatives continues, the comments from her former colleagues have remarkably tended not to be bitter or angry, but more bewilderment as she didn’t express any concerns to them beforehand, though there was understandably some shock from her riding association. That’s a bit shocking considering the pure vitriol that we’ve heard from Conservatives when they had defections in the past (particularly when women defected, if you recall the misogyny lobbed at Belinda Stronach after her floor-crossing). Of course, that also hasn’t stopped the Liberals from leaking effusive emails of praise that Alleslev sent them, and speeches she gave that completely contradict everything that she told the Commons on Monday when she made the decision. I remain struck by this insistence that the current government isn’t offering the “foundational change” she claims to be looking for, yet is aligning herself with a party whose recent policy convention was pretty much dominated with resolutions to simply turn back the clock to the Harper era, which was apparently a golden age. If she wanted “foundational change” from that, I’m not sure that going back to reinforce it is what she’s looking for.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the history of floor-crossings in Canada, and the trends for when it goes well for those MPs, and when it all goes down in flames.

Bernier blindsided

Maxime Bernier’s team is finding it hard to keep up with online groups pretending to act on his behalf but have no actual associations with him, and which are posting offensive material and items that he says are contrary to his positions. I have two things to say about this: 1) It’s hard to believe that his team are such rank amateurs that they didn’t secure these domain names in the first place, which bodes ill for the kind of logistical knowledge they would need to run a national campaign; and 2) Bernier has brought much of this on himself. By winking to white nationalists, and by not even dog-whistling, but rather playing these tunes with a tuba, he’s invited the very xenophobes that he claims aren’t welcome in his party (as he keeps playing their tunes on his tuba while staring wide-eyed as they keep flocking, like he’s the Pied Piper of racists). This credulous, naïve act he’s putting on is getting a bit tiresome. If he doesn’t understand how his message plays out, that’s another strike against him being ready for the prime time of leading a credible political party.

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Roundup: Offering justifications for the indefensible

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The attempts by conservatives, both provincial and federal, to justify the use of the Notwithstanding Clause is in full swing, and it’s a bit fascinating to watch the intellectual contortions that they will go through in order to justify a) the abuse of process for Bill 5 in the first place, b) the need to ram it through during the middle of the election itself in order to interfere, and c) why they need to go to the mat and use the nuclear option in order to help Ford enact petty revenge. One of Ford’s MPPs wrote up her legal analysis, which is more than Ford or his attorney general have bothered to do, but it still didn’t explain the need for haste when an appeal of the lower court decision would have been the proper way to go about disputing its reasoning. Ford’s MPPs would go on TV and throw around the word “elites” as though that justifies the nuclear option, which, again, doesn’t actually constitute a proper reason for employing said nuclear option. Andrew Scheer, meanwhile, is falling back on the technicality that Ford’s using the Clause is “within the law” because municipalities are under provincial jurisdiction, which is beside the point – the point being that Ford is violating the norms of our democratic system for his own personal ends, and not calling out that violation of norms is troubling.

Even more troubling was that during yesterday’s raucous Question Period in Queen’s Park, Ford stated that we don’t need the Charter because people elected him – all of which just continues his particular inability to discern between popular rule and democracy. Popular rule is justifying breaking rules and norms because you got elected – democracy is those rules and norms that keeps power in check. That he can’t grasp the difference should be alarming.

The LeBlanc Report

The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner issued his report yesterday on whether Dominic LeBlanc violated ethics rules regarding the awarding of the Arctic surf clam fishery to a company that was headed (on an interim basis) by his wife’s cousin – the context is that he’s one of sixty first cousins, and his relationship with LeBlanc is at best described as an acquaintance. Reading through the report, it hinges upon the Commissioner reading the definition of family much more expansively than it is interpreted elsewhere in the very same regime, which is how LeBlanc interpreted it. LeBlanc took responsibility, vowed to do better in the future, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition from taking the usual route of wailing and gnashing of teeth to decry just how unethical this government is.

In the demonstrable instances, however, the ethics violations have been pretty small ball (i.e. Bill Morneau not properly reporting the ownership structure of the French villa he disclosed), or legitimate differences of opinion on relationships (whether the Aga Khan was a family friend in Trudeau’s case, or the closeness of the relationship between LeBlanc and his wife’s cousin in this case). These are not instances of influence being peddled, people being unjustly enriched (and I know people will quibble about the Bell Island vacation, but the Aga Khan is not some tycoon looking to increase his corporate holdings by way of government connections), so perhaps a bit of perspective is warranted. Should Trudeau and LeBlanc have cleared things with the Commissioner beforehand? Absolutely. But this performative outrage we’re seeing will only get you so far, and railing that there have been no consequences beyond naming-and-shaming means little considering that it was the Conservatives and NDP who designed this ethics regime back in 2006, and they could have designed a more robust system them – or at any point that it’s come up for statutory review – and they haven’t.

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Roundup: Self-inflicted leadership wounds

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There was a fairly damning piece out about the state of the NDP yesterday, as they began their caucus retreat in Surrey, BC, and how the party basically put itself on hold for two years after they turfed Thomas Mulcair but left him in place for two years while they engaged in an overly long leadership process, only to let their fundraising collapse and their outreach stagnate. I do have vague recollections about how they were totally going to use the two-year!leadership contest to totally re-energise the party, and it would totally bring in all kinds of new fundraising and members, and so on. Turns out, none of that happened, Mulcair being left in place slowly poisoned the well, and at the end, they wound up with a leader without a seat, and who has been largely absent both from Ottawa and the national stage (leaving another defeated leadership candidate in his place in Ottawa). I’m hoping that the entire Canadian political scene takes this as an object lesson that the way we’re running leadership contests is very bad, and that we need to get back to the sensible and accountable caucus selection (and removal) of leaders. The pessimist in me, however, sees this very likely reality that they won’t take the lesson, and we’ll continue stumbling along.

Also in NDP news is the damage control about the Erin Weir debacle, and they’re getting out activists and pet columnists to come to their defence and to insist that Weir is the worst person imaginable, ignoring that he took to the media to defend himself after a campaign of leaks started against him as part of the Mean Girling around him, and they’ve offered nothing to substantiate that he is a harasser in any meaningful sense of the word. Jagmeet Singh even proclaimed that he wouldn’t be intimidated by “elites” from the party’s own grassroots – their own current and former MPs and MPPs in Saskatchewan – into changing his mind. It’s actuall a bit stunning.

Notwithstanding

Because this is still Very Big News, there is talk coming out of PC circles in Ontario that Doug Ford is willing to use the nuclear option to show that he’s tough against the courts where Trudeau isn’t, and then uses the false notion that the Notwithstanding Clause could have been used on the Trans Mountain ruling – which it couldn’t, because the Clause only applies to certain sections of the Charter, for which Section 35 is not a part of. But since when to facts matter when you’re pursuing a private grievance in a big, public way? Worse was the fact that people were trying to get Ford to bring up the fact that Justice Belobaba refused to freeze Omar Khadr’s $10 million settlement and turn it over to the widow of his putative victim. Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, continues to say that this is a political issue for Ontarians to deal with, not for him to swoop in and do something about, and he’s right.

Meanwhile, here’s Paul Wells snarkily congratulating Ford’s government for embracing the extremism it too Stephen Harper a decade to find and for making the Notwithstanding Clause easier for any other government to use in a fit of their own pique. Law professor Vanessa MacDonnell thinks that Ford should clearly articulate why he is invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, while Susan Delacourt wonders why Trudeau left it up to Brian Mulroney to forcefully denounce the invocation.

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Roundup: Effacing labour

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Yesterday having been Labour Day, there were a couple of topical stories out there – that the government’s look at updating the Canada Labour Codemay look at more measures to help with work-life balance, and that there are ideas on the table to look at taxing robots who replace workers with automation (though this seems fraught with all manner of complications). There is even talk about how this government has given the labour movement a seat at the table with trade negotiations (though there is some talk about how it’s all for show, and that they have little actual impact). But all of this having been said, I found the statements by the leaders to be interesting.

https://twitter.com/MinWorkDev/status/1036629441517182984

https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1036677765250965504

Trudeau’s tweet was fairly standard, spoke about the labour movement, and the attached statement went into more detail about the achievements of the aforementioned labour movement. His minister of labour, Patty Hajdu, had a video message that talked about ways they are working on improving the current conditions, with a focus on harassment and coming pay equity legislation. Jagmeet Singh, true to NDP form, spoke about the focus on workers. But Andrew Scheer?

Nothing about the actual meaning of Labour Day. Nothing about the gains made by the labour movement, or the safety of workers, or the eight-hour work day, or weekends. Nope. It’s a holiday before getting “back to the grind.” Now, the previous government was no friend to labour, with vexatious legislation designed to make certification harder, impose onerous financial reporting requirements, the fight with public sector unions over sick days, and numerous back-to-work bills. But to not even mention the history of the movement and the gains made, whether it’s with occupational health and safety, weekends, pensions, anything? It smacks of pettiness, and of effacing history – you know, something he gets riled up when it’s a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, but apparently not the Winnipeg General Strike.

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Roundup: Mandate letter madness

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Yesterday was the big day that the mandate letters for the new cabinet minister were finally released, and the Cabinet committees got a bit shake-up. You can get an overview of the letters here, and some deeper analysis on what’s being asked of Jim Carr in international trade, Dominic LeBlanc in intergovernmental affairs, and Jonathan Wilkinson in fisheries. Reading through the letters, however, I found that almost all of the new letters – either with established ministries or with the new ones that they are establishing – were all giving them specific direction on which other ministers they should be working with to achieve specific goals. Very few of them were goals that they were to pursue on their own, which I find to be very curious from a governance perspective.

The big question mark remains around Bill Blair and just what he’s supposed to do as Minister of Looking Tough on Stuff – err, “border security and organized crime reduction.” We got no insight as to whether he has any actual operational control over a department or an agency like CBSA. Rather, his list of goals included looking at a ban on handguns and assault rifles as part of the existing Bill C-71, and that as part of his duties in relation to the border, he should have discussions with the Americans about the Safe Third Country agreement, but it was all rather vague. (There was also some talk about opioid smuggling as part of his border security duties, for what it’s worth). Nevertheless, it was another one of those letters that was focused on which other ministers he’s supposed to be working with as opposed to providing oversight of a ministry, which I find weird and a bit unsettling as to what this means for how the machinery of government works under Trudeau.

Meanwhile, the number of Cabinet committees was reduced, and some of the files that certain of these committees were overseeing got shuffled around. We’ll see how this affects governance, but it’s all a peek into the sausage-making of governance (which, it bears reminding, that the Ford government in Ontario refuses to give any insight into as he refuses to release his own ministers’ mandate letters).

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Roundup: A dearth of innovative policy ideas

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While Maxime Bernier’s social media committee continues to demand attention (yesterday’s missive was to declare “political correctness” dead in Canada – in both official languages), all eyes will turn to Andrew Scheer as the party’s policy convention gets underway this week in Halifax. There is all kinds of talk that they’ll come away from this more united than ever – one of those kinds of meaningless phrases that parties seem to trot out whenever they face the slightest bit of internal criticism or difficulty, and usually before and after there’s some kind of rift or someone gets tossed. But depending on what Bernier tries to do with his acolytes at the convention, we’ll see if his tone or messaging changes after the convention is over, or if this becomes some new problem for Scheer to contend with – eventually.

As for the policy resolutions, most of the ones we’re seeing discussed are…not very innovative. In fact, most of them seem to be either the usual pushing back against restrictions on their well-worn bugaboos and hobbyhorses (looking to make anti-abortion policies more accepted in the party officially, for example), but so few of them seem to be actually coming from a free market conservative point of view. In fact, a lot of what’s on the list is pretty reactionary, and definitely signals a shift from a party that used to be all about the rule of law, and now seems to think they’re above it (witness resolutions against any payments or court settlements with convicted terrorists – a dig at Omar Khadr).

One could go on – a policy about building Energy East, despite the fact that there is no economic case to do so. Repealing gender identity legislation because they are under the illusion that it compels people to use unconventional pronouns (because apparently the Jordan Peterson crowd is well represented here), Andrew Scheer’s problematic policy of withholding funds to universities who don’t defend speech (but no context there, because you know they’ll rail about Israel Apartheid Week), closing the “loopholes” in the Safe Third Country agreement (no mention of how exactly, or the unintended consequences of doing so), maybe developing a climate policy that won’t involve a carbon tax or cap-and-trade (so you’re in favour of heavy-handed and expensive regulation? Really?), prioritizing CANZUK trade agreements (a rose-coloured view of our colonial past that didn’t really exist economically), treating pornography like a public health issue (Seriously, guys – didn’t you embarrass yourselves with this already at the Commons health committee when you couldn’t articulate a policy out of this fraud) – nothing innovating in here in the slightest. So one has to wonder just what vision there is within the party if this is the best that they can come up with for policy resolutions.

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Roundup: Scheer’s milquetoast response

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While Maxime Bernier’s Twitter missives continue to roll along, accusing Indigenous communities of playing the victim card and making some pointed remarks about the dedication of a Winnipeg park to the founder of Pakistan (on the date of Pakistan’s national independence), the calls for his ouster have started to mount, particularly from the Liberal side of the aisle – which won’t do much. Within the Conservative ranks, Senator Salma Ataullahjan is calling Bernier out for his divisive rhetoric, and said she planned to talk to Andrew Scheer about how poorly this is playing within the Pakistani-Canadian community that she has been reaching out to for the party. Scheer finally did issue a statement on Wednesday evening, and it was about as milquetoast as you can imagine.

The fact that Scheer didn’t actually condemn Bernier’s statement, and the fact that he immediately engaged in both-sidesism to condemn identity politics “on the left and the right” seems to fit with the fact that this particular kind of shitposting by members of his party is not only tolerated, but is the modus operandi of their current communications strategy. The fact that Scheer is using the same language about identity politics that Bernier is using certainly makes it sound like he’s more than just winking to them about the kind of dog-whistling that they’re engaging in. Whether this is because Scheer is afraid of alienating Bernier’s base within the party, or because Scheer himself sees this kind of footsie with xenophobes as a way of trying to keep the more intolerant section of the base mollified remains to be seen. Still – his choice of language, and his refusal to actually deal with the substance of Bernier’s comments is deliberate and simply raises far more questions than it answers.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1029871106507898881

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1029890459089416192

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1029868048440643584

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1029887527245701120

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert wonders why Bernier is bringing up this fight when it’s even gone dormant in the Quebec provincial election, and wonders if it’s a dare to Scheer to discipline him when he may be the more popular figure in the party. It’s a good question, and Bernier certainly seems to be aiming for a fight at the upcoming convention.

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Roundup: Extreme multiculturalism

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The fallout to Maxime Bernier’s latest Twitter missive on multiculturalism was more muted than one might have expected – no actual condemnation from Andrew Scheer, just a bland statement from his office that didn’t address Bernier’s words at all. And Erin O’Toole offered his own response which was basically just a reiteration that the various conservative parties in Canada’s history have had ethno-cultural firsts as a way of proving that they’re not all bigots or racists, but it missed the point that there was nevertheless a certain amount of tokenism in those firsts – that yes, they’ve got one of these different groups, but one is enough, thanks, and don’t talk to us about systemic barriers or discrimination. After all, these singular examples pulled up their bootstraps and made it – why can’t everyone else?

Bernier himself got huffy that he was described as saying he was against diversity – he insists he’s okay with some diversity, but not “extreme multiculturalism,” which is odd, because it’s like he missed the whole point of multiculturalism, which is about finding an effective way of integrating newcomers rather than alienating them further into ghettos. The fact that he doesn’t get that just adds fuel to the notion that this is all about winking to xenophobes and white nationalists, never mind the fact that it’s a nonsense proposition that there’s a Goldilocks zone of not too little, not too much, but just enough diversity that will magically keep Canada from disintegrating into some kind of ethnic hellhole. Never mind that the concern trolling about Liberal “identity politics” ignores the fact that in order to address systemic barriers facing women, sexual minorities, and people of colour, you actually to address what those barriers are, which is not about balkanizing – as Bernier seems to think.

Meanwhile, not every Conservative seems to be keen on Bernier’s pronouncements, but they seem concerned about how much influence he has among the base (somewhat mystifyingly). And with a convention coming up, we’ll see if these tensions spill out into the open.

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Roundup: Bozo eruptions coming from the top

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Given some of the “bozo eruptions” over Twitter over the past couple of days by Conservative MPs and senators, I have to wonder about both the mindset behind this strategy of posting, and the adult supervision that underpins it. Obviously, the latter is lacking given what we’ve seen this week especially, but we also can’t deny that there is an attempt at strategy behind it, even if it’s a strategy that’s been kluged together in service of a narrative. That narrative is to put “Justin Trudeau” and “failed” in as many sentences together as possible, but it’s also about a deliberate campaign of lies and misdirection in service of creating that narrative. But even with this in mind, some of it is just really, really dumb.

Take this tweet from Shannon Stubbs – who is a pretty decent MP, it should be stated, but seems to have lost her ability to be credible over Twitter. Part of what is so gross about this tweet is that it basically undermines our entire criminal justice system, which requires that the accused have advocates in order to have a fair trial. And she knows this – the party knows this (while they go about fetishizing victims of crime and altering the entire vocabulary around them in order to tilt the playing field against the accused so as to deny them fairness). But the temptation to be shamelessly partisan is just too much for some of them to withstand. And in the end, I have to think that it’s this mindless partisanship is often to blame – and it is mindless. It robs them of their intellect and critical thinking capacity, and makes them focus solely on scoring cheap points.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1028043707788996610

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028049573279948800

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028052339914104832

I’ve seen a lot of the chatter about the tweet from Senator Denise Batters about Omar Alghabra, to the point that the woke crowd is referring to as a “white nationalist,” which I’m quite sure she’s not – she’s just partisan to the point of being mindless, and that includes making ill-suited attacks to the point of dogwhistling, because it becomes reductive and about scoring points. She should know better. (As for Blaine Calkins and his tweet, well, I’m not sure I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows better, so I’ll leave it at that). But there needs to be a recognition that this kind of point-scoring is actually doing damage to their own brand, and as we’ve seen this week, has blown up in their faces more than once. You would hope that this would be cause for some reflection and that they’ll think twice before continuing to engage in this kind of behaviour – but I’m not holding my breath. So long as the official line from the leader is to lie over Twitter as often as he thinks he can get away with it, he’s set a low bar of an example for the rest of his caucus to follow, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing these kinds of bozo eruptions.

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Roundup: Singh’s pipeline waffle

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On yesterday’s Power & Politics, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh gave an interview that was probably as close to a car crash as I’ve seen him give to date, which should probably start to worry some people. His insistence that he’s in this “for people” is baffling, because that seems to be the most basic, elementary thing that politicians are in politics for. He spoke about the “housing crisis” that the federal government is supposed to do something about (he won’t exactly say what, because in places like Vancouver, supply is an issue), he rattled off the lie that the federal government had cut healthcare (a changed escalator is not a cut, and that particular lie went unchallenged), and he insists that he can do more as an opposition member to make the government keep promises than a Liberal backbencher could. (This kind of spin is something that the Liberals will play with the exact reverse – that a backbencher can do more because they can talk to ministers in the caucus room). He also denied that seeking this seat was because of caucus pressure to get a seat (this was indeed an issue), and is promising to move there if he wins (and good luck finding a house in that market, even to rent), but won’t say what he’ll do if he doesn’t win (and it was a close three-way race in the last election).

The more painful part of the interview, however, had to do with his commentary on the current spat with Saudi Arabia, during which Singh started pontificating about energy sovereignty, and not getting oil from the Saudis any longer. Okay, great – they currently supply a mere 11 percent of Canadian oil imports, so that’s not a big deal, but energy sovereignty means pipelines going west-to-east, which the NDP had a big problem with already in a proposal called Energy East. But when asked about pipelines, Singh deflected and started talking about refineries, which is a different thing altogether. Falling back on NDP catchphrases like “value-added” and “rip-and-ship,” his argument not only didn’t make any sense (the question wasn’t refineries – but that is an issue because East Coast refineries aren’t built to handle western heavy crude), particularly economically (seriously, there’s a reason why we haven’t built new refineries and have in fact shuttered others), it ignored the question about how you have energy sovereignty without pipelines that will run through Quebec – a voter base that the NDP is desperate to hold onto.

He’s been leader for almost a year now – this kind of talking point word salad is getting a bit thin for someone who should be able to provide answers on issues of the day, and who shouldn’t just fall on reheating non sequitur talking points. But this is what the party chose (well, in as much as we’ll see how many of those memberships stay active).

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