Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: Concern trolling on bombers and refugees

Posted on by

In the wake of Friday’s attacks in Paris, and Trudeau’s trip to the G20 in Turkey, we seem to have been inundated with a whole lot of calls to carry on the bombing mission in Iraq and Syria, coupled with all manner of concern trolling from Conservative MPs and others to slow down on the refugee pledges for “security screening,” never mind that there have yet to be any verifiable links between the attackers and any actual refugees from the region. (Most of what we’ve heard has been about homegrown attackers, along with a couple of passports of dubious authenticity). Michael Petrou makes the case that keeping up the fight against ISIS with the bombing mission is evidence-based policy (plus has a video of Syrian refugees in France here), while Terry Milewski gives a look at what the mission has accomplished to date, and notes Canada’s participation in some recent victories in the region. Wesley Wark says that the aftermath of Paris shows that Canada needs to up its intelligence game. After sparring with Jason Kenney over the Twitter Machine, Paul Wells lays the smackdown on Conservatives doing backseat ministering without actually looking critically at their own policy – which is still being enacted in the region – while they second-guess what the voters decided pretty clearly on October 19th. (And it’s an amazing piece that you really must read).

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665639828235530240

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665640401370374145

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665640787040845824

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665640896562487296

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665641975610126336

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665642870829748224

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665643511606177794

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665645420547174400

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/665645614206619649

Continue reading →

Roundup: The hinted appointment process

Posted on by

Programming note: I really have nothing to offer on the situation in Paris, so I’ll leave that to those better suited to comment, which is better for all involved.

Look up there – it’s the Senate bat-signal, with news that we may have an idea what the new appointment process is likely to look like. According to the Citizen:

  • An independent advisory body will be created that is composed of Canadians who are people of “stature” and who have public credibility. It will consider people who would be good senators and then refer the names to the prime minister, who keeps the ultimate authority (in accordance with the Constitution) to make the appointments.
  • There will be a public input component to the process, so that Canadians have a way of recommending themselves, or others, as future senators.
  • There will be a consultative role for the provinces, given that Trudeau wants the Senate to regain credibility as a representative of the regions.

If you said that this looks a fair bit like the vice-regal appointments committee, you’d be right, not that the article stated that anywhere. In fact, it went to great lengths to talk about what the House of Lords Appointments Commission in the UK, and meanders to the boneheaded suggestion by Greg Sorbara that we get members of the Order of Canada to choose senators. Also, nowhere in the piece does it seem to acknowledge that the new Canadian process could let these new senators chosen by an independent process choose which Senate caucus they want to sit in or remain independent, with a full understanding of the additional pressures that independent senators actually face. So while it’s good to get some more hints on what we’re likely to see, it might be great if we had reporters who could actually uses useful Canadian comparisons, and who actually understood how the Senate operates rather than engaging in more of the pointless speculation about the supposed chaos that we’re supposed to see in there in the brave new era.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A muzzle or a distasteful incident

Posted on by

The neutrality of the civil service has been an issue lately, with the distasteful episode of the cheering (and booing) at Global Affairs last Friday on the one hand, and to a certain extent, the “un-muzzling” of scientists on the other. Michael Petrou explores the former issue here, while Paul Booth offers some advice for the “un-muzzled” here, noting that there is a balance to be struck between talking about one’s research while at the same time maintaining their role of civil servants where they are not supposed to be critical of the government of the day if they want to keep their jobs, because they have a role to play. At the heart of both is that they ultimately serve the Queen and not the government of the day, no matter how much their advice or carrying out of government policy is criticised. While ink has been spilled on the cheering as being proof that the Conservatives were right to be suspicious of “official Ottawa,” one has to note a few different thing, including simple demographics – polling data repeatedly shows, time and time again, that education levels will affect political preferences, with the Conservatives scoring best among those who only have high school diplomas, while those who have attained increasing levels of higher education increasingly support Liberals. The vast majority of the civil service is university-educated, so their sympathy with the Liberals should not be a surprise. Should they have cheered Trudeau? Probably not. I will note that for context, the one clip I saw of the cheering happened after Trudeau said that he would be taking their advice unlike the previous government, while the booing of that journalist’s questions were both to the fact that they crashed a private event, and that it was a question for which an answer had already been given earlier in the day. Not that this should excuse what happened, because they should have known better, and I know plenty of other civil servants who were also critical of what happened there. But on the other hand, we should also note that they are human, and that the Conservatives exacerbated any distrust of the civil service with excessive dickish behaviour (such as Diane Finley walking into a department she was taking over and telling the staff that they were all Liberals and that she would clean up the joint). We should hope that this kind of incident doesn’t happen again, and it may very well not. I’m also not sure how helpful it is to light our hair on fire about it either, but I could very well be wrong about that.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A really new cabinet

Posted on by

So, that’s the new cabinet. For all of the concern trolling over “merit” when it comes to women being appointed in such numbers, Trudeau and the Liberals found an impressively credentialed group of Canadians that will do the country well. There is no one on that list that one could reasonably say got there for the sake of tokenism, which is not something you could argue with the previous government, where there was a lot of dead weight that was simply there to tick some boxes (and quite obviously so). The full list is here, and the Maclean’s annotated group photo is here. While they all did some quick media scrums after their first cabinet meeting, there weren’t a lot of answers yet because they haven’t had a chance to get their departmental briefings. Within a week or two, hopefully we’ll start getting some scrums with some answers (another huge change from the previous government). There may be some entrails to be sorted through in terms of those who didn’t make cabinet, but given that cabinet making is a delicate art, and there are many factors to consider, I would hope that nobody reads too much into the so-called “snubs,” particularly given that the commitment to parliament mattering more should prove that there are plenty of great roles for each of those “stars” that didn’t get a seat at the cabinet table. Maclean’s even went so far as to build a whole second cabinet out of those who didn’t make it this time. As for reaction, Susan Delacourt looks at what messages the picks send, while Andrew Coyne notes that despite the pledge for gender parity, that was not demonstrated in the make-up of cabinet committees.

Continue reading →

Roundup: New Cabinet Eve

Posted on by

Welcome to Stephen Harper’s last day as Prime Minister. Tomorrow is the big day, and if you’re in Ottawa and want to take part, well, Rideau Hall is getting it all set, with big screens on the grounds, and helpful hints on attending (like you can’t park there and you’d better wear comfortable shoes, because you might be standing from 10 am to 1 pm). The cabinet will also apparently arrive by bus rather than everyone in their own individual cars, and it sounds like there will be some sort of interaction with the crowds, so I guess we’ll see how that all goes when it happens. Suffice to say, it again marks a change in tone from the last guy. If you’ve missed the others so far, Kady O’Malley gives a good primer on how to form a cabinet, while Nick Taylor-Vaisey fills you in on some more of the background details, like just what is a cabinet, and what are the oaths you need to sign? And no, I’m not going to engage in any cabinet speculation, because it’s a bit of a mug’s game at this point. I also don’t really want to get into the “gender quota versus merit” debate because it’s not a debate. There have always been quotas, be it linguistic, regional or even religious (when that mattered), more than merit, and I can’t believe that this is even a conversation, but whatever. The real question is how many women get into the “big” portfolios of finance, foreign affairs, justice, or defence.

https://twitter.com/ashleycsanady/status/661179686009962497

https://twitter.com/ashleycsanady/status/661180078185775104

https://twitter.com/ashleycsanady/status/661180363868278784

https://twitter.com/laura_payton/status/661291352769064961

Continue reading →

Roundup: New Senate appointment process isn’t rocket science

Posted on by

Apparently what is going on in the Senate is proving a little too confusing for some of the nation’s more obtuse pundits, so here’s a few points of explanation. John Ibbitson penned a column expressing optimism about the proposed new system of Senate appointments, and yet threw in a number of bizarre concerns that made me wonder. For one, it’s hard to see how they would all come “from Bay Street” when there is a set number of regional seats apportioned. His notion that they should come from “Main Street and the street” is also fairly mystifying because the Senate should be a place for eminent, accomplished Canadians. The House of Commons is for just that – the common people. The Senate has served best when it is a place where people who have achieved excellence can find a new way to contribute to public life in a way that they would not otherwise because they would not think to seek elected office – people like Romeo Dallaire or Kelvin Ogilvie. Ibbitson is also astoundingly obtuse when he calls Senate Liberals “Independents,” and figures that all new senators under this system would also be Independents, when neither statement is correct. Senate Liberals are still Liberals – they just don’t sit in caucus with the Liberals in the Commons so as to give them greater independence, and nowhere was it said that any senator chosen by an arm’s length process had to be an Independent when they could simply choose which caucus to sit in of their own accord. There is nothing wrong with that because there is nothing wrong with parties or with partisanship. Yes, the kind of hyper-partisan tribalism we’ve seen in recent years is a problem, but that’s a function of message control and discipline rather than the actual role and function of partisanship, and the two parties who relied heavily on message control and discipline were dealt blows in the last election, giving pause to those who believe in that kind of system. The Senate has generally always been a less partisan place because they’re not scoring points for re-election, which is half the point. None of this is rocket science, but you wouldn’t know it judging from some of the commentary we’re seeing.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Another reboot report

Posted on by

Yesterday saw the release of yet another expert report bemoaning all of our democratic woes, and proposed a handful of would-be solutions – or would be, if they actually bothered to correctly diagnose the problems they bemoaned. This time, it was the Public Policy Forum, and they have a pretty eminent list of people who compiled the piece. The problem was, while enumerating their grievances with our parliamentary system, they didn’t look at causes, and hence plan to treat symptoms rather than causes. “Restore cabinet governance” you say? Great! But no look at why the centralisation got more pronounced and how to fix the underlying reasons why. While their solutions regarding the public service and ministerial staffers are all well and good, their discussions around the committee system in the Commons stuck in my craw a bit. According to the report, we have too many committees, which is absurd considering that some of the busier committees don’t have the time to actually study a lot of bills with a reasonable number of witnesses getting reasonable turns to answer questions. So give them more work? Hmm. They want the whole Commons to vote on committee chairs instead of the committees themselves, like with the Speaker, but neglect to mention that this has bred its own particular set of problems in the UK, where this is the norm, where those chairs are becoming problematic personalities who have become somewhat untouchable when they start breaking rules. Their particular suggestions that committees not be bound by the parliamentary calendar is also a bit specious considering that they already have the power to meet when Parliament isn’t sitting, but those MPs tend to see the value in being in their constituencies during said periods when the House isn’t sitting. Give them more resources and staff? Certainly – they could do that tomorrow if they wanted, but it’s not because there are too many committees to do it adequately. And despite all of these suggestions, not one of them touches the underlying problem that the vast majority of MPs get elected without knowing what exactly their job is or how to do it, and what their responsibilities are once they get a committee assignment. But does this report once talk about better educating and equipping MPs themselves? Nope. So while it’s a valiant effort, perhaps they need to actually look at the forest for the trees.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Unrest in the ranks

Posted on by

There appears to be some unrest in the Conservative ranks, we’re starting to hear – both in the caucus and the party machinery itself. While it’s not unthinkable for a party that has just lost an election, they seem to be doing some questionable things. Things like trying to bar defeated candidates from one last caucus gathering that’ll allow them to vent and hug it out behind closed doors. Denied of that, they’ll likely start talking to the media, their muzzles loosed. It’s started, even with some that were not defeated (but more on that in a moment). Behind the scenes, there’s some rancorous finger-pointing going on with Jenni Byrne in the centre of it all. And while this takes place, Diane Finley stepped forward to make it known that she is officially interested in becoming interim leader, as Rob Nicholson has so far unofficially. What was curious was the way in which Finley went onto Power & Politics to make her case about needing to transition from a more “authoritarian” PMO to a “collaborative” OLO, and basically shrugging off her participation in said authoritarianism. She touts her management experience, but what I heard from civil servants during Finley’s first go-around as minister of Human Resources was that she walked into the building and told everyone that they were all Liberals and she was going to fix the joint up. Collaborative! (She later went to Immigration and broke the system, creating massive backlogs by refusing to make appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board until she had re-jigged the selection process. Management skills!) Word also has it that both Jason Kenney and Kellie Leitch have their leadership teams assembled, so that race could easily kick off right away. Whether they wait to hash out what happened over the election that led to their demise, or they discuss what kind of reorganization the party needs before they get into the leadership process, doesn’t seem to be a concern yet at this point. We’ll see if that’s a problem going forward.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Threats from the Senate

Posted on by

There are a couple of issues arising out of the Senate right now, both of which deserve a bit of exploration. The first is over the selection of the party’s interim leader – the party president has indicated that the Commons caucus would make the selection (per the provisions in Michael Chong’s lamentable Reform Act). Senator David Wells says that no, the party constitution says that an interim leader would be chosen by the Parliamentary caucus, which would include senators. Why is this important? Because right now, the party has no East Coast MPs, nor any from the GTA or Montreal, whereas they have Senators from those regions who can provide some of that input. (In fact, it’s yet another reason for why the Senate is valuable – for years, it used to mean that the only Albertans in the Liberal caucus were from the Senate, until of course Trudeau’s Great Expulsion). And as Wells points out, this is an issue in the party’s own constitution, which makes the party president’s position that much more untenable. The other issue is certain Conservative senators trying to flex their muscles and saying that they’re under no obligation to pass Liberal legislation, much as in 2006, Liberal senators were giving the Conservatives a hard time with some of their bills. This whole thing is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, this is likely someone talking out of their ass (and I have my suspicions as to who it is). With Harper no longer leader, and no longer PM, any leverage that he had with the Senate has pretty much evaporated. Newer senators no longer have someone to feel beholden to, and there is no longer the emotional blackmail of “You want to support the PM, don’t you?” Those non-existent levers of power that the PMO was trying to exercise (per Nigel Wright’s complaints) no longer have anything to back them up when it comes to threat or reward. And then there’s the matter of 2006 that these oh-so-brave “senior senators” are referencing, particularly the Accountability Act. The problem was that it was a bad bill that had all kinds of problems and loopholes, but they didn’t get fixed on the Commons side? Why? Because the Liberals of that era were so cowed by their election loss that they left the fight up to the Senate rather than take the blowback themselves, while Pat Martin was the Conservatives’ accomplice, giddily rubber-stamping the whole affair in order to punish the Liberals some more. So the Liberals in the Senate did the battling for the needed amendments, most of which they actually got. I’m going to be optimistic and say that the legislation coming from this crop of Liberals is likely to be of higher calibre because they’re not opposed to listening to civil service advice for kneejerk reasons. On top of it all, there has to be enough shreds of self-awareness in the Conservative senate caucus to know that if they start playing games, they’ll damage themselves and the Chamber’s reputation as Trudeau tries to rehabilitate it, and everyone will lose as a result. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t take these threats too seriously.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/657348537873735682

Continue reading →

Roundup: Campaign autopsies in full swing

Posted on by

Not that we’ve had a day to catch our breaths (more or less), the campaign post-mortems are beginning, especially from the Conservative camp. Things are starting to leak out, such as this gem from the Conservative camp, which tells about their considering and ultimately rejecting the Hail Marry pass of having Harper say that he wouldn’t run after this campaign. It also tells of the Conservatives trying to offer advice to the faltering NDP campaign about how to attack the Liberals, lest the Liberals win out over both of them, and lo and behold, they did. Ron Liepert – a former provincial cabinet minister who turned federal to take out Rob Anders at the nomination race – talks about a campaign where the central party wasn’t respecting the local candidates or listening to their concerns on the ground. Andrew Coyne writes that the party defeated itself with a “deep, unrelenting, almost poisonous cynicism.” Not surprisingly, Conservatives like Michelle Rempel are questioning the tone of the campaign. As for the NDP, they are starting their own process, but some, like now-former MP Craig Scott, are less gracious in defeat.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/657050622504472576

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/657050927812075520

Continue reading →