Tag Archives: Jason Kenney

Roundup: Kabuki theatre around the Elections Act changes

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There are days when the state of our parliament achieves the level of farce, and we appear to be having another of those moments. Minister Dominic LeBlanc sent a letter to opposition party leaders – which seems to be a more common occurrence the days – urging them to pass the bill that would allow for pandemic-related changes to the Canada Elections Act per the request of the Chief Electoral Officer. This bill was tabled back in December, and we have just exhausted the sitting weeks in March, and it still has not even made it to committee, in part because the Conservatives have spent weeks using procedural tactics to delay debate on most every piece of legislation on the Order Paper.

LeBlanc apparently mentioned the upcoming budget in the letter, because that is a confidence measure and this is a hung parliament, so it is possible that the government could face a non-confidence vote and trigger an election at pretty much any point. And so during what debate there has been on this bill, the opposition MPs keep saying that there’s no imminent election unless the Liberals plan on calling one, and the NDP are going so far as to say that they simply need to work together to avoid one. Essentially, they get to accuse the government of opportunism for trying to do their due diligence at the request of the Chief Electoral Officer, which is cute for everyone involved.

But here’s the real kicker that makes this all a farce – the bill has an implementation period of 90 days after royal assent. The House isn’t sitting for the next two weeks, and even if they managed to have a Second Reading vote, speed it through committee and rush it to the Senate, I don’t image that it could be passed both chambers before the 23rd of April at the earliest, and only then would that 90-day clock start. That means that the changes couldn’t be fully implemented until the very end of July, meaning that even if the budget were the crux by which the government could fall (those votes would likely happen sometime in early May), there is no way that these changes could pass before a spring election could be called (considering the usual writ period of about six weeks). Any party pushing for an election without these changes would be suicidal. The government really has no interest in calling an election (seriously, and I’ve spoken to ministers who lament the number of items they have on the Order Paper that they need to see passed), especially because we are now into a Third Wave of this pandemic and there is no possible way we can vaccinate our way out of it without a time machine, so all of this chest-thumping by parties (and pleading by bored pundits) is for naught. This is all a bunch of Kabuki theatre for the sake of scoring points. We are not a serious country.

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Roundup: Pointing to the civilian culture too

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The reckoning over the culture in the Canadian Forces that permits sexual misconduct continues to get an airing, and over the weekend, we saw another dimension to this reckoning be raised, which is that the culture of the civilian branch – the Department of National Defence – has many of these same cultural problems in part because a good portion of its staff are former military and came up in the same toxic culture in the Forces. One example of ways in which the Forces were trying to show women that they weren’t welcome was forcing them into co-ed showers in 1997, and how the people involved in those decisions are still in positions of authority today.

Also over the weekend, there was an interview with retired Lt-Gen. Christine Whitecross, who discussed her experiences with misconduct that she did not always pursue complaints about, but also her sense of optimism that more people reporting sexual misconduct in the ranks. Whitecross also let it be known that she did apply for the chief of defence staff position, but obviously did not get it (to the surprise of many). As well, the accused in one of the most high-profile cases of sexual assault in the military – the story of which wound up in Maclean’s and touched off the Deschamps report and Operation Honour – is going to plead guilty to the charges after all.

Amidst all of this, the current military ombudsman is now echoing previous calls to make his office fully independent and reporting to Parliament, rather than to the department and the minister, and I just can’t. The very last thing we need is one more unaccountable Independent Officer of Parliament, and yet they are proliferating like mad, and this is yet one more demand. Surely we can figure out some sort of mechanism to help them retain greater independence within the current structure, but we need to stop the proliferation of Officers of Parliament, before they completely overrun our system, reducing our MPs to battle droids who recite canned speeches and vote according to their whip’s instructions. And it’s not like we’re not seeing other Officers of Parliament going well beyond their job descriptions and turning themselves into media darlings, right? Oh, wait…

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Roundup: Stop hitting yourself!

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Yesterday, the Conservatives had the gall and the cheek to put out a press release blaming the Liberals for the fact that none of their legislation is going through in a timely manner, never mind that it’s the opposition using procedural delay tactics to hold bills up. In particular, Conservative House Leader Gérard Deltell accuses the Liberals of not calling bills “in a logical order,” scheduling “insufficient time” (never mind that some bills recently have had more debate than budget bills), and then sounding wounded when the Conservatives are the ones being accused of playing games.

While most of this statement really reads like Detell holding the government’s arm while telling them to stop hitting themselves, while trying to craft the narrative that the Liberals are deliberately causing problems in order to engineer an election – err, except that it’s not the Liberals who are calling for concurrence motions and debates on committee reports rather than proceeding to government orders every day.

But hold up, you may say – surely the government could cut a deal with the Bloc or the NDP! What do you think those terms would be? The Bloc demand unconditional transfers to the provinces, which the federal government would be foolish to agree to, while the NDP want an intrusion in provincial areas of jurisdiction on things like rent, sick leave, pharmacare, dental care, and long-term care – things that the federal government cannot make unilateral change on, and are already negotiating with provinces on in most cases, and that is a time-consuming process. Nobody wants to play ball, even though nobody says they want an election (and really, the only people who do are bored pundits), but nobody wants to look like they are helping out the Liberals too much because they think it’ll cost them at the ballot box. Accusing one another of wanting an election while essentially engineering excuses to have one is making for a very irritating sitting, and I don’t imagine it will get any better the longer it lasts.

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Roundup: Ford is steering Ontario into the third wave

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Ontario is seeing the biggest rise in the B117 variant of COVID – known colloquially as the UK variant – and yet Doug Ford is promising to start lifting restrictions later this week. We’ve only just gotten first doses to residents of long-term care facilities, and even those vaccinations won’t have a dent in ICU admissions, and yet, Ford and company are barrelling ahead with nonsensical plans. Another example was to delay March Break until April, ostensibly to prevent travel (because there is always travel over holidays), but it seems to also fly in the face of measures related to closing schools to prevent more spread, and that it could have had that utility.

Nevertheless, the province’s own modelling shows a disastrous third wave oncoming because of these more transmissible variants, and point to the need to keep up current restrictions. Ford plans to go ahead with loosening them. And then there was this remarkable exchange where a TVO reporter asked if the province was headed for disaster on this current course, and the public health officials essentially confirmed it.

Ontario is being governed by a group of murderclowns. There is no other explanation.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s use of stock photos is telling

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You may have noticed that Erin O’Toole has been launching a new social media campaign about the dire state of our economy, using stock photo images to illustrate his points. Over my years in journalism, I have come to be very wary of the use of stock images by parties in their advertising, because much of it is inherently deceptive or manipulative (aside from being cheap to slap into their products) – and I will fully credit Glen McGregor for this.

So, what have we seen with two of O’Toole’s posts? One of them was about January’s brutal job numbers, accompanied by a stock photo of a young white guy in a hoodie, looking somewhat distressed. The problem? Those same job numbers showed disproportionate losses among women and visible minorities because the most affected sectors were wholesale and retail trade, as well as accommodation and food services – which makes sense given all of the closures in the second wave. In other words, the images he put up was not only tone deaf, but speaks to just who he thinks his voter base will respond sympathetically to, which says a lot. (The only upside here is that he model was actually Canadian and not a Romanian, but when said model found out about it, he chimed in).

https://twitter.com/TunaPhish09/status/1359408430264377347

O’Toole posted another one yesterday about standing up for Canadian workers, using a photo of a (white) construction worker. But again, if you look at last month’s job numbers, construction jobs were actually up – they were the main driver of goods-producing jobs (which were a net gain rather than a net loss on the month). Again, though, this is about what O’Toole is signalling what kinds of jobs he thinks matters, and it’s not where the losses have been. As he starts to make a lot of noise about his recovery plans and supposed economic dream team, he is sending very loud signals about what he thinks the recovery should look like, and it appears to be pretty divorced from what everyone else thinks it should look like, and that is something worth paying attention to.

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Roundup: Kenney’s boggling re-opening

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Because the state of the pandemic is going so well in Alberta, Jason Kenney announced that they will start lifting some restrictions starting February 8th, and I am boggled. Just boggled. Kenney says that tagging the decisions to lifting restrictions to hospitalisation rates in three-week increments is somehow responsible because it’s a lagging indicator, but that’s precisely why it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s a lagging indicator. When hospitalisation rates go up, it’s already too late. New positives caught by testing can be up to two weeks behind infection, and hospitalisations can be a couple of weeks behind those, and this is a virus where the growth is exponential. It’s too late by then, and we have to remember that the province’s contact tracing still hasn’t been fully re-established after it got overwhelmed.

The notion that you can have “just a little COVID” and re-open the economy does not work – it grows exponentially, and hospitals get overwhelmed. It especially will not work a second time now that there are UK and South African variants in the community, which are way more easily transmitted, and places like the UK saw infection curves that went nearly vertical. Kenney is demonstration that he has learned absolutely nothing over the past eleven months, and he’s willing to let more people die for the economy.

I also wanted to take particular exception to Kenney’s health minister, Tyler Shandro, and his insufferable whinging that because of the vaccine delays, that Canada and Alberta are “not a priority,” to which I am forced to ask why they should be. Why are we so special as a country that we deserve vaccines before anyone else, particularly those countries who have been much harder hit that we have been? And I get that he is counting on the vaccines as their way out because they let the infections spread so badly that their hospitals were overwhelmed, and they had to largely shut down their economy again, but that’s on him. Vaccines were never going to be the solution for many, many more months. This sense of entitlement that Shandro is exhibiting is extremely off-putting, and needs to be questioned and called out.

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Roundup: Trudeau’s transparent fiction about vetting

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his call to the Queen yesterday morning to update her on the situation with the Governor General and that the Chief Justice will be fulfilling his role as Administrator in Julie Payette’s absence, and then he went to face reporters and spun an elaborate and transparent fiction to them, claiming that there was a “rigorous vetting process” around Payette’s appointment. This was a lie, complete with the rote assurances that they are always looking to improve the process. You know what would have been an improvement? Not abandoning the perfectly good process in the first place because when you had a lieutenant governor position open up, you wanted to fill it with one of your former ministers because you owed her after siding with Jody Wilson-Raybould over her. And from there, he couldn’t abandon it just for that position – he had to abandon the whole thing. In fact, Dominic LeBlanc pretty much ratted him out to the Globe and Mail that the vetting was inadequate, so even if you haven’t been following this file like some of us have, you know this was a lie.

Where the rub in this is because Trudeau is refusing to apologise or take any responsibility for the appointment itself, which is entirely on him under the tenets of Responsible Government. He has to wear this appointment – especially because he abandoned an established consultative process that worked and got good results, then didn’t actually vet Payette when she was suggested to him by his close circle, nor did he call references. As one CBC reporter at the presser said, it took her almost no work at all to find out that Payette’s previous two workplaces showed this very same pattern of abusive behaviour – which again supports the fact that the “rigorous vetting” was a lie. This is something that Parliament should be holding Trudeau to account for, like how our system is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, Colby Cosh makes the salient point that part of our desire for putting celebrities into Rideau Hall stems from our watching the cult of celebrity in American politics and looking to replicate it here, whereas what we should be doing is finding someone competent and unassuming for the role. Paul Wells recounts some of the early red flags with Payette, like her refusal to sign government orders in a timely manner, before making the salient point that part of Trudeau’s problem is really bigger than him – that the impulse to try and make things new and shiny is bigger than just him, and that Trudeau needs to be reminded of the hard work that goes into making these appointments. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé providing a reality check as the cheap outrage brigade starts in on Payette’s post-appointment annuities.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352702547702800385

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352703435058065408

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352705240517251073

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1352707613633425409

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Roundup: Jason Kenney is out of moves

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It was day two of Jason Kenney’s very public temper tantrum over the cancellation of the Keystone XL permits, with renewed demands that the federal government impose trade sanctions or invoke other reprisals under the New NAFTA agreement, which were going to be a tough sell regardless. And if the federal government doesn’t, Kenney is threatening to start talking about more of his “Fair Deal” nonsense, riling up the swivel-eyed loons in the province’s “separatists” as a way of creating more pressure – and to try and protect his own right flank, given that he’s already bleeding support.

But here’s the thing – this isn’t working for him. And Jen Gerson lays it out perfectly in this utterly devastating piece – that Kenney was the “emotional support pet” who said things people wanted to hear, who replaced a premier who was getting stuff done, and as a result, he has had nothing but losses. Not a single thing he can claim to be a win, but he’s going to keep doubling down on his failed policies and tactics, undeterred, because reasons. Kenney’s tactic of making people angry and pretending that he’s going to save them was never going to work – eventually, that anger has to go somewhere, and as we’ve seen over the anger of all of the hypocrites in his caucus buggering off to Hawaii or Mexico for the holidays, well, it comes back at you when you least expect it. Kenney has long deluded himself into thinking he’s both the gods’ gift to Alberta, and that he’s clever enough to set fires and then put them out once he has people’s attention so that he can look like a hero. Clearly, he is neither of those things, and the province is paying for that. Kenney has burned all of their bridges, and they have nothing left and nowhere to go.

https://twitter.com/jengerson/status/1352286840842199041

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Roundup: The politics of throwing tantrums

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The word of the day was tantrums. It started off with Ontario premier Doug Ford throwing one at the CEO of Pfizer when he called him up to demand answers on new vaccines. It seems, however, that it didn’t last long, because when Ford put out a press release – sans staged photo of him on the call – he didn’t say what he had been told. After his bluster about firecrackers the day before, it would certainly appear that he was chastened by said CEO that he couldn’t make magic happen, but Ford had to look tough for his audience.

Shortly thereafter, Erin O’Toole put out a press release demanding that Justin Trudeau also phone up the CEO to throw a tantrum about the temporary vaccine shortage, and then hours later, when it became confirmed that President Biden rescinded the Keystone XL permit by executive order, O’Toole put out a separate release that said that Trudeau hadn’t done enough to stand up for their energy sector, as though Trudeau needs to scream, cry, threaten, and hold his breath until he turns blue. And more to the point, I find it fascinating that the Conservatives keep insisting that Trudeau is all style and no substance, and yet the one thing they keep demanding of him is more political performance art. Then again, when you look back at their legacy in government, it was far more about optics over substance, whether that was over their unconstitutional tough-on-crime measures, or the GST cut – which went against all good economic sense. Signalling to their base seemed to be what they were really all about, to the detriment of sound governance.

And to top off the day of tantrums, Jason Kenney’s reaction to the Keystone XL cancellation was beyond precious, as he demanded that the federal government start imposing trade sanctions against the US for the move, which is utterly bonkers. It’s also pretty telling as to the state of delusion Kenney seems to occupy when it comes just what cards he has in his hand. Trying to start a trade war with the US would have far more devastating consequences for Canada, and Kenney should know that, but apparently the politics of throwing tantrums in public is too good to avoid. And this is the state of the discourse, apparently. I would very much like leaders who behave like adults to be in the room, but this is where we are.

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Roundup: Kenney would like his social licence

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Things are frantic on the energy file, as the Biden administration threatens to kill the Keystone XL pipeline project, and Jason Kenney is floundering. In one breath, he has been demanding that federal government do something – never mind that Justin Trudeau has been championing this project to his American contacts since he was first made Liberal leader, and brought it up on his first phone call with Biden after the election – and he’s insisting that this would damage Canada-US relations – as though it could be much worse than the last four years of inscrutable and random policy changes. But perhaps the most fitting of all is that everything that Kenney is now reaping what he has been sowing over the past number of years in terms of his insulting those close to Biden, and all of the environmental policies he has been denigrating and fighting in court are precisely the kinds of social licence that he needs to try and convince a Biden administration to keep the permit alive. Funny that.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1351220724921475074

Kenney has also threatened legal action if the permit is rescinded, but his chances of success on that venue look mighty slim.

The NDP and Greens, meanwhile, are cheering the planned cancellation, and insist that Canada should be focusing on creating green jobs instead – as though you can flip a switch and make it happen.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1351354379853467649

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