Caucus Day, and the only other day of the week when we can expect all party leaders to show up — because they’re showing how much Parliament matters. Thomas Mulcair led off, asking where the budget was, to which Stephen Harper read off a laundry list of measures they have already brought forward. Mulcair noted job losses, to which Harper decried NDP tax hikes. Mulcair brought up the Governor of the Bank of Canada’s statement about the state of the economy being “atrocious,” but Harper kept up his same line of answers. Mulcair noted that the costs of our military missions being classified in budget documents, but Harper ignored it and touted their family tax cuts. Mulcair then brought up Jason Kenney’s misleading statements about smart bombs, and Harper again claimed the NDP would take away the family tax cuts, before decrying how awful ISIS is. Justin Trudeau was up next, and noted unemployment figures and demanded a real plan. Harper responded by claiming that the Liberals would also take away the family tax credits. Trudeau gave a jab about spending taxpayer dollars for benefit gain, to which Harper gave a bog standard “$40 million dollars” response before he again claimed the Liberals would take away programmes from Canadians. For his final question, Trudeau asked about partisan advertising, before making a dig another the absent Liberal party platform.
Tag Archives: Jason Kenney
Roundup: Kenney’s fading credibility
It was no surprised that the motion to support the Iraq mission passed, but what was perhaps unexpected was the bit of verbal sparring between Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau, and the issue of Kenney’s credibility came up. It has come up several times, having been called out repeatedly by journalists for posting misleading photos on his Twitter account, or his statements that were not true about things like Russian planes buzzing our frigate in the Black Sea, but this weekend, things got even more escalated when the Chief of Defence Staff had to come out and make a statement to both back up and correct the record with regards to Kenney’s statements about how Canada and the US were the only countries engaged in Syria and Iraq using precision bombs. That’s blatantly not true, and General Lawson had to use some careful language to not embarrass his minister but at the same time correct the record, and Kenney treated it as though Lawson backed up his statement – which he didn’t. And Trudeau used that during the question-and-answer portion of his speech on the Iraq motion, that the minister doesn’t have the credibility behind his words when it comes to the motion to extend the mission and the Liberals can’t trust him as a result. Will that be enough political cover for Trudeau given the disgruntled members of his own party who would see us join the mission? I guess we’ll wait and see. Meanwhile, the government’s fudging on the reality of our combat operations is a sign that Canadians really don’t have the stomach for another war.
QP: What about Future Shop?
Monday in the Commons, and as is now usual, none of the major leaders were present. It’s not like holding the government to account is important or anything. That left Nycole Turmel to lead off, haltingly reading a question about the closures of Future Shop stores, and government inaction on job creation. Joe Oliver was actually present for the first time in weeks, but simply delivered a talking point on the the fragile global economy and their low-tax plan. Turmel asked again in French, and got much the same answer. Turmel then turned to the issue of Jason Kenney’s false statements about precision-guided munitions. Kenney stood up and insisted that the U.S. and Canada are the only countries with these capabilities. Jack Harris asked again in English, and Kenney insisted that the Chief of Defence Staff confirmed his statement, which…is not necessarily the case. For his final question, Harris asked about Canadian jets possibly coming under fire in Syria, to which Kenney said that he was told that the Syrians didn’t have radar coverage in that region. Marc Garneau was up for the Liberals, and asked about downgraded economic forecasts. Joe Oliver responded with a quip about high Liberal taxes. Ralph Goodale then asked for more investment in municipal infrastructure, to which Joe Oliver insisted that the Liberals wanted to weaken the oil economy. Huh? Another round offered no further clarity.
Roundup: Some questionable justifications
Yesterday, Jason Kenney went on a charm offensive to lay out the legal position on extending our bombing raids into Syria, most notably saying that we have authority under Article 51 of the UN Charter, with Iraq asking us to help them defend their borders while the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to. It’s pretty thin ice under international law, but if the Americans are doing it, apparently that’s good enough for this government. More dubious was Kenney saying that we’re acting in the “spirit of” Responsibility to Protect, to which Trudeau later made the point that one of the tenets of R2P is that you don’t make the situation worse, which could be the outcome if our bombing ISIS in Syria ends up solidifying Assad/ And what about Syrian air defences? Do we not need to coordinate with them so as to not get shot down? Kenney says there’s no ground radar in that part of the country, and that ISIS doesn’t have weapons capable enough of taking down our fighter jets. Kenney also made the claim that only the smart bombs that Canada and the US posses in the alliance are capable of doing the job, but experts are disputing that fact, pointing out that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also have the capability. In other words, this sounds like Kenney embellishing the truth again, which puts the veracity of his other statements into question as well. As for Harper, he started joking that we didn’t have to worry about ISIS’ lawyers taking us to court, when the bigger concern is actually other world leaders. You know, like Putin, for whom we are accusing of breaking international law for annexing the Crimea. Oh, wait a twisted little world it is.
Roundup: A tacit plea of no contest
From all accounts, it was one of the worst press conferences in recent memory. Former Liberal MP Scott Andrews, currently an independent, said he’s not going to fight to rejoin the Liberal caucus, that he accepts what was in the executive summary of the investigation into the harassment allegations, but wouldn’t say anything more concrete about whether he feels he was guilty or innocent of the allegations. There were hints, however, that he is not contesting what has been in the media – that he followed an MP home, pushed her against the wall and groped her, stopped when she told him to but subsequently referred to her as a “cockteaser.” Talking about learning the lessons of “the importance of personal space” and his “jovial Newfoundland personality” seems to indicate that he’s tacitly admitted he’s done something. The fact that he said he’s laying down partisanship, however, does raise questions, but with no answers forthcoming, we will be left to speculate. Andrews said that he hasn’t decided if he’ll run again in the next election, but even as an independent it would be a long shot. Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, says he considers the matter closed, so unless someone starts leaking the contents of the investigator’s report, this is probably the last we’ll hear about it.
QP: The Wright connection
Wednesday, caucus day, and everyone was present and ready to go. Thomas Mulcair led off, asking if the prime minister was planning an extension or expansion of the Iraq mission. Stephen Harper responded by first thanking the House for its support of the mission and then said that no decision had been made and he would let them know when it had. Mulcair asked again in French, and got the same response. Mulcair then switched to the topic of the Ethics Commissioner’s report on Diane Finley, and wondered about Nigel Wright’s role in the affair. Harper responded that she used her discretion while acting in good faith, and would take the advice of the Commissioner going forward. Mulcair pressed, but got the same response that she acted in good faith. Mulcair tried to push on the quote about Nigel Wright being asked to “sort out” the issue, but Harper tried to distance himself. Justin Trudeau was up next, and wanted the Prime Minister to explain to the half-million Muslims in the country how he found their faith to be “anti-women.” Harper responded by reading condemnations from Jewish groups about elements in Trudeau’s speech on Monday. Trudeau pointed out that Harper used to oppose Sihk’s wearing turbans in the RCMP, and Trudeau responded by reading some Muslim groups defending the no-niqabs-in-citizenship-ceremonies position. Trudeau then moved to Jason Kenney’s misleading photos on Twitter, to which Kenney doubled down, insisting we were in Iraq to protect women and girls from ISIS. So, no apology then.
Roundup: The many reactions to Trudeau’s speech
Justin Trudeau’s Monday night speech in Toronto certainly has a lot of people talking, and it’s not just the trolls on Twitter! His attempt to reclaim “liberty” for the Liberals instead of the Conservatives, who like to talk a lot about freedom (particularly from taxes and big nanny state governments) is certainly going to cause a reaction, and did it ever. Jason Kenney, not surprisingly, was not a fan and railed about “politically correct Liberals” not thinking critically about Muslim women wearing niqabs. Michael Den Tandt sees the speech as trying to create a narrative framework for the Liberals going forward, and notes it gained from the timing of things like Chris Alexander conflating the hijab and the niqab, Jason Kenney’s Twitter Machine misadventures, or John Williamson’s racist statement about “whities” and brown people. (The NDP, conversely, are going on about how Trudeau can talk liberty when he plans to vote for C-51, which they see as a threat to liberty). Terry Milewski sees this as another shot fired in a nascent culture war about the niqab, and notes that just as Trudeau compared the current climate against Muslims with the anti-Semitism during the 1940s, while Stephen Blaney turned around and invoked the Holocaust to defend C-51. Aaron Wherry looks at the speech in contrast to the Federal Court ruling on the niqab in citizenship ceremonies, and the subsequent debates about religion and feminism that the Conservatives and Liberals are having.
Roundup: The other CSIS bill gets scrutiny
The Senate heard a lot of testimony yesterday regarding Bill C-44 – the other bill to boost CSIS’ powers, in case you’d forgotten about it. Those new powers include being able to operate abroad and break laws in other countries, which might be a bit of a problem, and raises a bunch of questions when it comes to how you oversee those kinds of operations, particularly given the limitations that SIRC faces when they can only visit one CSIS foreign posting per year to look into their operations. There was also testimony from Ray Boisvert, the former assistant director at CSIS, who described the internal processes of conducting investigations and getting warrants, painting a pretty robust system of high bars to proceed with investigations or operations – but again, we have to take his word for it, because we no longer have the in-house oversight of the Inspector General’s office, and SIRC does an annual review. SIRC, incidentally, said they have enough resources to do the job they’re supposed for now, but if they’re going to need to take on new responsibilities such as overseeing a far more robust and empowered CSIS, well, they’ll also need more money, which this government seems pretty unwilling to give. Curiously, the deputy minister of Public Safety said that the Auditor General also provides oversight of CSIS operations, which is pretty wrong – he looks at value-for-money, which is not the kind of oversight that CSIS requires.
Roundup: Loans and borrowing without oversight
Government programmes that allow their Crown Corporations to lend money are growing without any parliamentary oversight, and certainly no statutory review once these programmes have been in place, whether it’s student loans or business development loans. Now, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is sounding the alarm, because it’s one more way in which parliamentarians have lost control over the public purse and have little ability to hold the government to account for any of these loans that they are giving out. Add to the fact that they have already lost the ability to hold the government o account for any borrowing that the government does – they took that bit of oversight away a couple of years ago as part of an omnibus budget bill, despite it being a fundamental part of our Westminster democratic traditions, and now any borrowing simply requires a nod from cabinet – hardly an effective check on government’s financial decisions. Further add to that the fact that the government has been putting out budgets with no numbers in it, and Estimates not attached to any budget so that there is no comparison or examination of what’s in it in a fiscal perspective, and it all adds up to parliamentarians not doing their jobs, and being able to control the purse strings of the government of the day, making Parliament a shadow version of itself. This should alarm everybody in this country because this is the parliament that you’ve elected not doing their jobs.
Roundup: All About Eve, Part 2: The Revenge
It was a move that shocked pretty much everyone – Conservative parliamentary secretary Eve Adams crossed the floor to the Liberals, and called out Stephen Harper as “mean-spirited” and a bully. Of course, Adams is not without controversy, with her botched nomination and allegations of shenanigans, and the news from the Conservative Party that she was denied a further attempt to contest a nomination – not that it impacted her parliamentary secretary role or duties, which they apparently still had confidence in her carrying out. This makes her look to be self-serving in her decision to approach the Liberals, though it sounds like she approached Trudeau before the final no from the Conservatives. There are also suggestions that her relations with Harper started to deteriorate after a meeting last month, but it’s all still unclear at this point. For the Liberals, Adams played up her roots in the Progressive Conservatives – a party which is no longer and whose bona fides are fading from the modern Conservative Party (which, to be fair, has also tossed social conservatism in favour of base populism). Trudeau is trying to re-capture those blue Liberal voters who voted Conservative in the past couple of elections, as well as to get the Red Tories who still exist, particularly in Ontario but also in Alberta, to vote Liberal instead. Now she’s going to try and contest one of the still open seats in the GTA, but if any Liberals want to send a message that she’s not welcome in the party for her past Conservative sins, well, this is their chance to let their displeasure be heard. As for Adams, she leaves from a prestigious position with the government to the third party, and she goes from strict message control to a place where she’s going to have to do a lot more heavy lifting as she takes on a critic portfolio. Maybe she can make something of it and prove herself. She’s got about 14 sitting weeks to make something of her change. Then there’s the question of Adams’ spouse, Dmitri Soudas, former right-hand-man of the PM and former director of the Conservative Party. He says he supports her move, and has already made threatening tweets to Conservative MPs who have tried to be too snarky about it, but the Liberals have stated that he will have no formal role in the campaign other than supporting Adams with her nomination. It was, however, pretty rich of the Liberals to cast questions about this dynamic as sexist, because they were a “power couple” and that makes it relevant. I personally am curious about some of the wider-ranging implications, such as how the Soudas-Leo Housakos power structure will carry on, as that is currently part of the cabal at the centre of Senate leadership. The loss of Soudas from the Conservative fold could resonate there as well. Paul Wells offers some snarky – but entirely deserved – comments on the whole affair.
Do men get accused of ambition when they cross the floor? I don't really know any politicians who aren't ambitious. #cdnpoli
— Susan (@susandelacourt) February 9, 2015
https://twitter.com/d_soudas/status/564867569836765184
To clarify: Soudas will not have a formal role in the LPC but he, like her whole family, is supportive of @MPEveAdams's decision and her run
— Kate Purchase (@katepurchase) February 9, 2015
https://twitter.com/d_soudas/status/564910542037319680