Tag Archives: Jason Kenney

Roundup: Suspension as a first step

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The Senate’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Committee has considered the Senate Ethics Officer’s report into the conduct of one Senator Lynn Beyak and found her response to be wanting. Because she has refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and hasn’t removed the racist letters from her website, let alone apologise for posting them, they are recommending that she be suspended without pay for the remainder of the current parliament (meaning that it would end when parliament is dissolved and the writs drawn up for the election). Part of the thinking is that the time away – without pay or access to Senate resources – will give her time to think about her actions, and they suggest that the sensitivity training about racism and Indigenous history should be out of her own pocket. And if she still refuses to take action, they’ll look at having Senate administration take the letters down from her site (though nothing would stop her from moving them to a site that she hosts on her own), and if she still refuses action, well, they can revisit her fate in the next Parliament.

A couple of things to consider in all of this. First – it may help to re-read my column on the subject – is that they are likely recommending suspension because they will be very reluctant to recommend full expulsion without exhausting all avenues, and to afford her every single bit of procedural fairness and due process they possibly can in order to ensure that if it comes to that, that they will be on unshakeable ground. Setting a precedent for the removal of a senator should be done very, very carefully, and it has been argued in some circles that the reason why Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau remain in the Chamber are because the need to be politically expedient in their suspensions and not affording them proper fairness essentially made it impossible to recommend expulsion in the future because they could plausibly argue that they hadn’t been afforded the due process. Consider that lesson learned with how they are dealing with Beyak.

I can’t stress enough that recommending expulsion is an extraordinary step, and they can’t just do it because she’s an unrepentant racist (even though she doesn’t see herself that way) – especially because part of the whole reason the Senate has such strong institutional protections is because Senators are supposed to be able to speak truth to power without fear of repercussion. But it’s clear that this isn’t what Beyak is doing, and they need to go to great lengths to prove it and to provide enough of a paper trail to show that there is no other choice to deal with her than expulsion, because this is a very dangerous precedent that they would be setting. More than anything, the measures they are recommending are done in the hopes that she does the honourable thing and resigns, though it remains to be seen if she will get that hint (given that she refuses to believe that she’s done anything wrong). This will be a slow process. People will need to be patient. Demanding her immediate removal will only make things worse.

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Roundup: Undaunted by the facts

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report yesterday that confirmed what the federal government has been saying – that yes indeed, because the federal carbon price backstop is legislated that 90 percent of proceeds must be returned to individual households, that the vast majority of Canadians will be better off as a result, and yes, this includes both direct and indirect costs, and he did a whole analysis based on input and output-based pricing, and confirmed it all with StatsCan data. The federal government might as well have said “I told you so.” But did this force a mea culpa from the Conservatives that perhaps they were wrong about the whole thing? Nope. Instead, both Andrew Scheer and Ed Fast, his environment critic, issued released that cherry picked a couple of pieces from the report, divorced of proper context, to say that it “proved” their false narrative about said price. Because of course they did. And did we see any fact checking about their statements? Not anywhere that I could see. Which is your preview of the coming election – that fact-free shitposts will continue to spin lies, and they will largely get away with it, even after they’ve been debunked.

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports that Andrew Scheer and several of his campaign team were meeting up with oil and gas executives to help plot the demise of the Liberals in the coming election. And before you get any ideas about this being old boys with cigars in backrooms, it should be noted that these were executives from fairly junior companies and not the big players, who do support carbon pricing (for which Jason Kenney wants to go to war with them). (As an aside, one of these junior company executives is a fairly robust troll on Twitter, so that should give you a taste of what this was about). Much like Kenney’s rhetoric, the players at this conference discussed using litigation as a tool to fight their critics, but one has to wonder how they possibly think this is going to appeal to the centrist voters they need in key battlegrounds like the 905 belt around Toronto, let alone to have any hope of winning seats in Quebec. You would think that a meeting like this just confirms for Canadians the caricatures that they have about the energy industry and its lobbyists, and doesn’t really engender sympathy for the pain that the industry is feeling at present. But maybe I’m just missing something.

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Roundup: A hung parliament in PEI

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The PEI election did not result in a Green Party majority, because shockingly, the polls were wrong. It did result in a hung parliament, which has never happened before in that province, and yet every single media outlet and then the prime minister himself declared that the progressive conservatives had won a minority. Err, except we don’t know the composition of the next government yet because the lieutenant governor hasn’t invited anyone to form government, and the seat distribution – 12 PC, 8 Green, 6 Liberal – is one where it’s not actually clear that the PCs will form government, as a Green-Liberal coalition remains more than possible. Which isn’t to say that it will happen, but there is a way in which government formation works in a Westminster system, and simply winning the most seats, even if you don’t win a majority, doesn’t mean that you get a chance to form government. It doesn’t work that way! And it would be really great if the media would stop creating this false sense that it works that way, because it doesn’t. And even if the PCs do form government, they will need one of the other parties to prop them up, and that will have a significant effect on the shape of that government. Pre-empting the lieutenant governor’s call simply invites confusion, which we should probably be avoiding.

Happily, the province’s electoral reform referendum also went down in defeat (and this is another place where the urban-rural split will likely be evident). Hopefully this means that the advocates will shut up about it because they keep losing. I know they won’t – they’re convinced that people just don’t understand or are too stupid to realise that PR is so good for them (it’s not), but you would hope that the constant defeats would be some kind of dissuasion.

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Roundup: Cluelessly demanding reforms

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Over the long weekend, Independent Senator Tony Dean posted an op-ed over on iPolitics to decry the supposed partisan attempts to block reform in the Senate – but it’s a dog’s breakfast that betrays a complete lack of understanding about the institution. It’s indicative of the attitude of a cohort of the new senators who think that they know best, despite not having a working knowledge of Parliament as a whole, or the Senate in particular, and yet they feel as though they know definitively how it needs to change. And more dangerously, Dean brings up that recent poll to show how Canadians apparently love the “new” Senate as a means of bashing Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives, who have no intention to continue the new appointment process – in effect campaigning for the Liberals, which should be uncomfortable for “independent” senators.

The core of Dean’s argument is that the Senate needs a business committee in order to get things done – which is both wrong, and wrong-headed. He complains that individual senators can delay bills, which he fails to grasp is the whole point. The Senate does not exist to rubber-stamp government bills, and yet Dean seems to miss that point. It’s not just that the Conservatives are partisan and therefore Bad – it’s because the Senate has a constitutional role to fill, and a business committee won’t stop delays. All it does is institute time allocation on all legislation before the Chamber – and it’s ironic that he’s pushing for that notion because in the very same piece he complains that the Conservatives were draconian about time allocation when they were in charge. He complains that there is no “TV Guide” for the Senate because debates aren’t organised, which is another wrong notion because the whole point about the way in which the Chamber has operated, where there are days between speeches between proponents and critics on bills is because it allows for thoughtful responses rather than the canned speechifying that happens in the House of Commons. And “organising” debates for the sake of TV is just time allocation in disguise. Which he fails to grasp.

Pointing to the programming motions on the assisted dying or cannabis legislation are not necessarily good examples of programmed debate in the Senate, because those were extraordinary bills, which the majority of Senate business is not. Dean was also known for insisting that the Conservatives would refuse to let those bills go to a vote when the Conservatives were proposing timetables for negotiation (and we all know that neither the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Peter Harder, nor the Independent Senators Group, seem to believe in negotiation or horse-trading to get things done in the Senate, because they mistakenly believe it to be “partisan,” which it’s not – it’s how stuff gets done). A business committee is a bad move for the Senate, and Dean needs to get a clue about that. It won’t stop the Conservatives from being partisan, and simply time allocating all business could set a bad precedent for when the Conservatives get back into power – which they will one day – and the impulse to return to some of the “draconian” measures of the Harper era come back, and suddenly they may feel differently about time allocating everything. But this cohort of new senators doesn’t get that because they’re not familiar with how parliament works, and they need to get on that because change for the sake of change may sound like a good idea in the moment, but can have lasting, damaging consequences for the institution as a whole.

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Roundup: Kenney changes his tone

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In the wake of Jason Kenney’s win in the Alberta election, he took to the microphones yesterday to try and sound statesmanlike, immediately ratcheting down his rhetoric on a number of files including his “turn off the taps” pledge (which never made any business sense) and his demand that the Trans Mountain Expansion construction get underway – acknowledging realities that he never did on the campaign trail. Of course, he still plans to kill the province’s carbon tax (and lift their emissions cap) which sets up for constitutional battles that they are doomed to lose. As for Rachel Notley, she becomes yet another woman first minister who has failed to win a second election, keeping that established pattern going. And I would encourage you all to read Jen Gerson’s roundup of the whole election, and the lessons in the end – that you can’t hope to paint your opponents as bigots and win, and that you can’t run a campaign about lashing out against the world without consequences.

This having been said, a narrative started emerging over social media as soon as it became clear that Kenney was winning last night, which was conservatives across the country were insisting that the NDP’s campaign as solely “nasty” and full of “personal attacks” which was why they lost. Kenney himself, during his press conference yesterday, insisted that he had a “positive campaign” that the media somehow missed. I’m not sure what part of lies and snake oil promises are “positive,” nor am I convinced that pointing out racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia is a “personal attack.” In fact, it seems to point to this aggrieved sense that I’ve seen where the Conservatives in Ottawa will go to bat for avowed racists because their racism was being pointed out – that being called a racist is somehow worse than the actual racism being espoused. That’s a fairly troubling mindset, and yet we’re no doubt going to be seeing a lot more of it as Justin Trudeau makes a concerted effort to point out the winking and nudging to white nationalists that Andrew Scheer has engaged in.

And now the hot takes – because everyone’s got one. Colby Cosh points out that this really wasn’t the Lougheed vs Klein fight that some people portrayed, and that the broader climate fight is in the works. Stephen Maher advises that Trudeau abandon his “sunny ways” (more than he already has) and start bare-knuckle brawling, adding that if Kenney lets his social conservatives loose, that could work to Trudeau’s advantage. Andrew Coyne notes Kenney’s adoption of a statesman-like tone in victory following “campaign exuberance,” and that Trudeau would be in a tough spot to not approve Trans Mountain if Kenney repeals the province’s environmental plan. David Moscrop wonders if the trends in Alberta are changing and whether its conservatism will hold for Kenney’s benefit. Tristin Hopper makes the salient point that the increasingly uncompromising nature of the environmental movement hardened Albertans against the NDP.

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Roundup: Drawing the wrong lessons

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At the time I’m writing this, it’s not looking too good for Rachel Notley and her NDP in the Alberta election (and sorry I couldn’t stay up late to track results, but StatsCan waits for no journalist). With that in mind, I wanted to just post a couple of thoughts about what this could bode – not just the immediate nonsense of Jason Kenney theatrically tabling a bill to repeal the province’s carbon tax (and immediately subjecting him to the federal backstop), or his threat to “turn off the taps” to BC when it comes to oil — something a court would strike down immediately because it’s utterly unconstitutional. Rather, I suspect that this will provide additional encouragement to Andrew Scheer to emulate Kenney’s tactics — fomenting anger, and selling people a steady diet of lies and snake oil, and hoping that he can find someone to blame when he’s unable to deliver on any of it should he get into power. Scheer’s problem will be that he doesn’t have another level of government he can cast too much blame upon, but that won’t dissuade him from the other tactics.

I also suspect that we’re going to get a renewed round of wailing and gnashing of teeth from “progressives” about how they couldn’t coalesce their votes around Notley and the NDP, and there will be all manner of blame being cast at the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals for splitting their vote (which is nonsense, of course, but we’ll hear it anyway).

Meanwhile, my column offers my personal loathing and dread about the way the election happened, and the problem with stoking anger and promising magic wands and snake oil.

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Roundup: A trio of justice issues

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There were three major law-related stories in the news yesterday, starting with the announcement that Supreme Court of Canada Justice Clement Gascon has opted to retire early, citing “personal and family reasons.” This was quickly followed by Justin Trudeau announcing that a replacement process would be launched, and would again be headed by Kim Campbell, while the Conservatives followed a few hours later with a demand that this process not go ahead until the leak from the previous process was investigated (though the Privacy Commissioner is already on that case). The thing to remember of course is that there is something of a deadline here, being the election, and it’s more than possible that the Conservatives want this delayed so that they have the possibility of naming the next judge if they should happen to form government in October. For what it’s worth.

The second story was that of the carbon tax reference at the Ontario Court of Appeal, which was live-streamed for the first time in its history. The province’s argument apparently is that if the federal government is allowed to impose a carbon tax, that they’ll start intruding into other areas of provincial jurisdiction, which is…dubious. And it sounds like the judges weren’t having much of that line of reasoning either.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1117808109802663938

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1117809485395816451

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1117811576940060673

The third law story of the day was the revelation that the directive around civil litigation involving Indigenous people that Jody Wilson-Raybould instituted as one of her last acts as justice minister has been fiercely contested within the department because it many cases, it amounts to litigating badly and not actually getting the courts to resolve the legal questions that are at issue, which they argue doesn’t actually help reconciliation because you’re not dealing with underlying issues that require resolution. The piece also noted the frequent and direct political interference that Wilson-Raybould exerted on civil litigation (which she can do as Attorney General, unlike the arm’s length nature of criminal prosecutions), sometimes undermining the arguments that Crown attorneys were trying to advance in the middle of cases. It’s fascinating reading and yet more insight into what was going on with Wilson-Raybould in the lead up to her being shuffled.

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Roundup: Missing the mark on encouraging participation

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The House of Commons’ status of women committee tabled a report this week that is about getting more women into politics? The problem? That all of its recommendations are focused on what the government can do, when it’s not their job. Rather, it’s the job of political parties, and only some of them take it seriously. Add to that, the one recommendation that people tend to focus on — that the federal government give some manner of financial compensation to parties who recruit more women candidates — is bad policy because it simply rewards parties for putting women candidates in unwinnable ridings and lets them claim their percentages. The Conservatives had their own dissenting report as well, which focused on their notion of women running on “merit” rather than quotas (because there’s apparently no tokenism in their party), and wanted more focus on women who bully and discourage other women in politics. (The NDP’s own dissent focused on some of the language of the recommendations, and more funding for women’s groups, childcare, and so on).

And I have to stress that this is a party issue, not a government issue. Parties are the ones who set the rules for their nomination contests, and are responsible for recruiting their own candidates, and even more to the point, these should be grassroots efforts rather than coming on high from party headquarters. That means mobilising party members at the ground level to find and recruit more women, and to convince them to run. The Liberals have had success with this — they instituted a programme of getting people to find women in their communities and then asking them several times to run, because they know the research that shows that while a man would likely accept on the first request, women can take something like seven times being asked before they will accept to run. Overcoming that socialised reluctance is a big part of it, and where the focus needs to lie — on top of the parties making their nomination rules more clear (and less reliant on the “unwritten rules” as have been spoken of), and ensuring that things like childcare are being taken care of so that women can do things like door-knock and and canvas. None of this is something that the government can take care of, but the party grassroots needs to be aware of and work toward implementing.

It’s not just rules — it’s an ecosystem. Part of that is civics education, because we don’t teach students about things like nomination races and why they matter, and how to get involved. That’s one of the most fundamental parts of our system, and we don’t teach it. How do we expect more young women to get involved if we don’t tell them how? This is where the focus needs to lie if we’re to make any lasting change.

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Roundup: An important first report

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While everyone was focused on Jane Philpott’s attempt to claim that the provisions in the garbage Reform Act weren’t met as it regards her expulsion from caucus, a much more important event was taking place, which was the release of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians’ first public report. This is the first time that Canada has seen any kind of public oversight into our national security and intelligence services, and it was important to see. One of the things that they focused in on was the oversight of military intelligence operations, for which the military thanked them for their suggestions on improving governance, but balked at the proposal for a legislative framework.

Nevertheless, the expert in this stuff is Stephanie Carvin, so I will turn over the reactions to her (full thread starts here):

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115716056247676929

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717071185301504

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717072657502210

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115678714291871746

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115683292928299008

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115688317452935168

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Roundup: And now the lawsuits

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Because we can’t go a single day without yet more nonsense in the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair fallout, we had news yesterday that Andrew Scheer is being personally sued by prime minister Justin Trudeau for libel following press releases in which he intimated that Trudeau committed a crime and is attempting to cover it up. Scheer says bring it on, and make it fast. And then come the narratives – Conservatives say that the prime minister is trying to intimidate them, or bully them into silence, but at least with the lawsuit he’ll have to testify under oath. The Liberals are saying that this is just calling out Scheer’s lies and shows that they have consequences, and it demonstrates that Trudeau is willing to testify under oath as a result. And the pundit class wonders why they would want to continue to drag this out for months, if not years, as this drags on in the court system. (And for those of you who recall, Stephen Harper once planned to sue Stéphane Dion for libel over allegations made in the Chuck Cadman Affair, but he eventually dropped it after Dion was no longer Liberal leader). So, something for everyone, really.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1114959070136537088

Meanwhile, Wilson-Raybould says that all of the anonymous leaks are “trampling over” the confidences around the discussions she may or may not have had with the prime minister. Err, except her own side has been leaking stuff too, even if she insists it’s not her doing it. She also says that she has no desire to help Andrew Scheer win the next election, and doesn’t see herself as a floor-crosser but will operate as an independent Liberal for the time being.

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