With 54 MPs not running again in the next election, we’re hearing a lot of teary farewells, and a number of them talking about their regrets for all kinds of things, particularly about some of the nastiness and the more toxic aspects of their career in politics. It’s more of what we saw in the Samara Canada series of exit interviews with MPs from previous parliaments, which culminated in the book Tragedy in the Commons, where MPs all bemoaned how terrible it was, and how the parties controlled everything, and how everyone else was nasty and partisan (but not them – even when you pointed to examples where they were engaging in that behaviour). What strikes me is that pretty much no MP you’ll speak to will take any responsibility for their own actions, whether it’s boorish partisan behaviour, letting the leader’s office dictate to them, or as is now commonplace, dutifully reading the scripts that are placed in front of them with no critical capacity to say no, I won’t demean myself in this way. (The obvious exception to all of this is Irwin Cotler, who has been a pretty exemplary class act throughout his time as a parliamentarian, but for pretty much everyone else this applies). When we listen to MPs get all teary and expressing their regrets, we should start asking them why they didn’t do something differently. And that’s really it – we elect MPs directly under our electoral system, and that empowers them to be the masters of their own destiny within the Commons (with the obvious exception of whips on things like confidence votes). They don’t need the Reform Act for things to change – they just need to take responsibility for their own behaviour and act like grown-ups. Sadly, the vast majority don’t and then blame everyone else, which is a sad state of affairs.
Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau
Roundup: Some laudable goals, and a lead balloon
The writs might as well have been dropped for the kinds of campaigning that was going on yesterday – Trudeau in Ottawa, and Mulcair in Toronto. While Mulcair largely reheated past statements about support for the manufacturing sector (not that he spelled out what that support means) or lowering small business taxes (of the kind that could actually help out whose wealthy Canadians who incorporated themselves for tax reasons), it was Trudeau’s package of announcements that got the big play. The package included 32 measures for “real change” to bring more openness and transparency to government – a familiar song and dance, but there were some pretty laudable concrete proposals in there, around things like Access to Information, improving service standards at CRA, or repealing this government’s “fair” election laws. The part that got everyone talking – and my head exploding repeatedly – was Trudeau signing onto the electoral reform bandwagon. While Trudeau was talking about consultations and then legislation within eighteen months, the fact that he’s buying into the completely and demonstrably false notion that votes don’t count under our current system (in fact, they not only count but all count equally) is disheartening – particularly after he spent his leadership campaign talking about how he didn’t believe in PR systems (as opposed to Joyce Murray, where that was a central plank for her). Without turning this post into a denunciation of electoral reform, let me simply say that it’s false to say that votes don’t count now, and that changing the system will simply replace one set of problems – or perceived problems – for a whole new set of problems. There were so many other laudable proposals in his platform, one or two duds excepting, that it’s too bad that this one particularly bad one sucked the air out of the rest of it all. If he want’s “evidence based policy,” then perhaps he should reconsider this particular promise. Paul Wells writes about the earnestness of it all, with some historical perspective for good measure.
Liberals are now using "Ottawa is broken."
No. Just stop. pic.twitter.com/CQMdpoeIL5— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 16, 2015
Oh FFS – every vote already counts *equally*. Why is this such a hard concept to grasp? #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/E2skdjI5fo
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 16, 2015
Roundup: Out goes an oddly pivotal figure
In a sense, there’s a closing of a particular chapter of Canadian politics with the announcement yesterday that Peter MacKay was done with politics, and would not be running again. He’ll stay on until the election, and Harper has opted to keep him in the justice portfolio for the dying days of the 41st parliament, but MacKay has made his mind up, and is going to slowly start packing up his office. In many ways, MacKay is a central figure to the modern era of Canadian politics. His decision to begin the process of merging with the Canadian Alliance – betraying an explicit written promise not to, made to secure the leadership of the old Progressive Conservative party – formed the juggernaut by which Stephen Harper was able to form the government that is entering its tenth year in power. While many are saying that this departure marks the end of the “progressive” side of the Conservative party, it bears reminding that MacKay was not a terribly Red Tory, and that there are far more progressive voices in the caucus and cabinet than he was. Where it may have an impact is with the continued attempt by the old Reform Party wing to amend the constitution of the party to sweep away the vestiges of the old PC wing, particularly predominant in the Maritimes and parts of Ontario, and with MacKay no longer there to use his weight among the membership, that final transformation may take place in a year or two. MacKay is also being remembered not only for his political controversies, but also for his romantic misadventures, now behind him as he leaves to spend more time with his family. John Geddes looks back at MacKay’s career, while Paul Wells writes about MacKay’s role in the political merger that changed Canadian politics, and Hugh Segal writes about MacKay’s importance to Canadian politics. Not long after John Baird’s departure, MacKay was spotted meeting with Brian Mulroney in Toronto, which fuelled resignation rumours, which he denied at the time. The Halifax Chronicle Herald’s editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon recalls some of his best work with MacKay’s caricatures, and Global has some archived footage of MacKay’s break-up with Belinda Stronach when she crossed the floor to the Liberals. And BuzzFeed Canada has a listicle about MacKay’s career.
Roundup: The Senate should strangle Chong’s bill
There has been a sudden flurry of concern regarding the state of Michael Chong’s Reform Act, currently in the Senate, because the bill is likely to die there. In fact, if there were any sense in the world, it would, but not before the pundit class starts wailing and gnashing their teeth about how terrible it is that the unelected Senate would defeat a wildly popular bill from the Commons. Of course, that’s immediately where my head hits the desk, because that’s exactly why we have the Senate we do – because sometimes MPs overwhelmingly vote in dumb things, and cooler heads in the Senate can talk them down and defeat them without fear of electoral repercussion. You know, sober second thought, the raison d’etre of the Upper Chamber. And let’s face it – the Reform Act is a spectacularly terrible bill that will undermine Responsible Government and our system of Westminster-style democracy pretty much permanently. And if you think the gong show that just happened with the leadership review in Manitoba was an exception, well, Chong’s bill would see to it that those become somewhat more the norm across the country. The bill will do nothing to “empower” MPs. It will do the opposite by disincentivising them from rebelling against their leaders, as has successfully overturned bad leaders in many instances (most recently Alison Redford comes to mind). What will empower MPs is for them to actually stiffen their spines and do their jobs, because they have all the power that they need already – a lesson that Senator Fraser reiterated in her speech against Chong’s bill. But contrary to Andrew Coyne’s assertion, the Conservative leadership in the Senate has been inclined to pass the bill, but there are a number of Conservative senators who have wised up to the fact that the bill is terrible and they would do well to kill it in one way or another. Other senators are keenly aware that even MPs who voted for the bill know it’s terrible but didn’t think they could be seen to vote against it, so they sent it to the Senate, where it could be killed there, and they could use it as political cover (and denounce those terrible, awfully, unelected and unaccountable senators for killing a bill that passed the Commons even though MPs knew it was terrible). The “pass it off to the other chamber” game is not a new phenomenon (second only to “let’s pass it off to the Supreme Court”), but it’s another sign of how spineless MPs have become. Not that Chong’s bill would do anything about that spinelessness, ironically. Instead, it looks like it will be up to the Senate to save MPs from themselves yet again, and MPs won’t learn their lessons about taking their responsibilities seriously.
The Senate always sits later than the Commons to finish passing bills. With so many on their plate, they will likely sit into July. 2/2
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 12, 2015
With another omnibus budget bill on the way, they will hold more hearings on it than the Commons will. But you know, "leisurely."
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 12, 2015
Also wondering how many senators @acoyne spoke to about the Reform Act. His take doesn't match conversations I've had with them.
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 12, 2015
I don't agree with all of her points, but she gives Chong a good kicking for his disingenuous use of terms in the bill. 2/2
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 12, 2015
Roundup: Trudeau makes a move
After months of anticipation, the Liberals unveiled the first real plank of their policy book yesterday, being their tax plan as it relates to middle class families. By restructuring the current universal childcare benefit, eliminating income splitting, and introducing a new tax bracket on those earning over $200,000 per year, Trudeau has proposed a income tax cut for the “middle class,” along with childcare benefits that will be more means tested than the current system, all under the banner of “fairness.” Immediately the government was apoplectic, and Pierre Poilievre, incredulously, tried to spin it as the Trudeau Tax™ and that somehow eliminating the doubling of TFSAs was a “tax hike” on those earning more than $60,000 per year (never mind that that income was already taxed, and that bracket got the income tax cut). The NDP insisted that the plan wouldn’t give a tax cut to “two-thirds” of Canadians, but when challenged on how they would cut those taxes, they instead pivoted to “childcare!” Emmett Macfarlane is glad there are now concrete proposals to debate, while John Geddes has three questions about the proposal. Kevin Milligan and Lindsay Tedds give more of the economic details and analysis.
Roundup: Justin Trudeau and the division of powers
From the sounds of it, Justin Trudeau is apparently setting back the cause of federalism in Canada, as he is getting blamed for an increasing number of provincial woes. It’s been happening for a few weeks with some federal Conservatives like Parm Gill, who are agitating against the provincial Liberals’ new sex ed curriculum, but because Gill and others just refer to the programme as the Liberals’ – not specifying that it’s Kathleen Wynne’s government in Ontario – the implication is that they’re one and the same as Gill shills for federal votes on a provincial issue (that is being torqued by provincial Progressive Conservatives and others, one might add). Moving out east, Trudeau is being blamed for complicity in the provincial Liberals in Nova Scotia proposing to reform film and television tax credits in their provincial budget – apparently Trudeau not saying anything about that change, and a number of other provincial budgetary items, makes him complicit in the whole affair. (During his visit to Halifax yesterday, Trudeau did say he was supportive of arts and culture, but reminded them that he’s a Quebec MP and respects provincial jurisdictions). Yesterday took the cake, as the federal NDP put out a press release blasting Trudeau because the provincial Liberals in PEI remain, well, a little backward on the whole issue of funding abortions in that province. This isn’t the first time that the federal NDP have been trying to ride the provincial parties for their benefit, as they keep hauling out this study that shows that provincial NDP governments have better fiscal records than provincial Liberal or Conservative parties in order to somehow prove they’d be great economic managers – never mind that the various provincial parties are largely divorced from the federal ones (with a couple of minor exceptions in a couple of provinces) and that in many cases the only thing they share is a name, though the NDP like to claim that they’re all one party, federally and provincially. It also means that if you stretch that logic, that Thomas Mulcair is responsible for raising the HST in Manitoba, that province’s appalling state of child welfare cases, and the myriad of problems that the provincial NDP in Nova Scotia left behind when they were defeated (prompting the provincial Liberals to table the budget they just did). It’s actually pretty alarming that people don’t seem to understand the division of powers between the provinces and the federal government – particularly when it’s political parties fuelling this nonsense, and they really need to stop.
Wait, so the NDP are attacking Trudeau over the PEI Liberals? They know there are jurisdiction issues, right? pic.twitter.com/p3CGtIKYx0
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 15, 2015
Roundup: Legalism and homework monitors
Another day, another dissection of the rules of the Senate, this time with the revelation that nobody in Senate administration ensured that work got done when they paid out contractors that senators drew up. The defence maintained the legalistic hammering, to the point that lawyer Donald Bayne omitted one key phrase from the guidelines for Senators expenses: “Likewise, individual Senators must be conscious of the requirement to expend public monies prudently.” And really, that’s what’s at the heart of this trial – even if the rules themselves were loose, it doesn’t mean that it’s permission to go well beyond their intended use and purpose. It makes me wonder who should be checking in on the work of senators when they contract out services – should it be Senate Administration checking that speeches were written, and that research was conducted? Do they become the babysitters and homework monitors of the Senate? It’s a hard question to ask because you can only infantilise them so far before you start getting into problems. It’s even more problematic when senators’ policy work can take a wide variety of forms. This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be some form of oversight to ensure that there isn’t abuse, but we need to keep in mind that these aren’t civil servants or functionaries. They’re parliamentarians, with all of the attendant privileges that comes with that, and that means something. It’s also one of the reasons why pundits opining that this is really a “trial about the Senate” bothers me, and that these “entitled” senators have “free reign to spend public money,” which is obviously not true. Questions were raised, particularly about Wallin but also Duffy, and things were coming to light, though it there may have been the intent to take care of it more quietly. None of it excuses what Duffy did, and the fact that he appears to have deliberately misled Senate Administration with the contracts he drew up, as he certainly appears to have done with his various and sundry claims. Is it the Senate’s fault, or do we blame them to absolve him of the personal responsibility? That should be kept top of mind as the pundit class makes their pronouncements. The Senate didn’t make Duffy do anything – he made all of his choices himself. Meanwhile, the daily behind-the-scenes look notes Duffy’s exit strategy, and here’s a profile of the courtroom sketch artist.
Roundup: Exeunt Glover and Paradis
Another two are down, and one wonders how many more are still contemplating the plunge. It was announced on Friday that both Shelly Glover and Christian Paradis, middling cabinet ministers such as they are, weren’t going to run again. Glover indicated she was going to return to her policing career, while Paradis cited “personal reasons.” Both, as it happens, have had a number of brushes with the Ethics Commissioner, and it does make one wonder if that really was a common denominator in their rather abrupt decisions – that all of the attention being paid to the Duffy trial is forcing some of the players with in Conservative Party headquarters to try and scrub away as many of the potentially embarrassing messes as they can before the election happens, so that it can’t be used against them in the race to be purer than pure. The late date of these announcements is also a bit of a puzzle, given the ultimatums that Harper had previously given, so that he had an election-ready cabinet in place, and we saw a number of ministers make their departures then. Baird later dropped out entirely, but Glover and Paradis plan to finish out their terms, and thus the question remains as to whether or not their announcements mean yet another mini-shuffle, with just eight sitting weeks left? It also makes one wonder if there are any other ministers considering their futures now, and wondering if the time isn’t right to get out while the going is good – or if they are seeing writing on the wall, and would rather leave on their own terms rather than face defeat in what could be a brutal slog of an election. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Roundup: Budget dates and fabulist tales
The next election marker has been set, which is the budget date – April 21st, shortly after MPs return from the Easter break. Joe Oliver says it’ll be balanced, but the real trick will be finding out how he did it, either by raiding the contingency reserve, or cutting a programme somewhere, or delaying some kind of capital expenditure, quite possibly from a military procurement project that is bogged down in a lengthy and probably broken procurement process. Their marquee spending plan, their family tax package including income splitting, has already been introduced as a standalone piece of legislation, inexplicably, unless you look at it through the lens that they want to see the spectacle of the opposition parties voting against it because of the income splitting portion of the bill. They’ve already been mindlessly parroting the talking points about these tax measures, which will supposedly not only help parents with childcare (not really) but also provide just the kind of economic stimulus the country needs (err, childcare?) and do whatever else the question asked of the government was. It’s not that it matters, because they want to set up the narrative that the opposition parties will rip the money out of the wallets of parents if they get to power, which is why the government deliberate set up that this programme would give those parents a lump sum cheque in the middle of summer – so that it’s in their wallets closer to the election so that their warnings resonate, never mind that the warnings aren’t true either – both opposition parties have stated that they won’t touch the enhanced benefits, just income splitting, which most households won’t see any real difference from anyway . It’s not that they haven’t abandoned their other talking points either – Greg Rickford was just in Calgary giving fabulist tales of the kind of carbon scheme that Justin Trudeau would introduce, never mind that it has no grounding in reality. It’s not just that they repeat these fictions endlessly, but that they are now non sequitur answers to any question put to them. We’ve apparently reached the stage in our political evolution where Conservative MPs have become these dolls with pull-strings that will play you one of a small number of randomly selected phrases. And if this is what we’re going to be subjected to for the next six months, I may yet go insane before then.
Roundup: Camembert and clutched pearls
In the media feeding frenzy yesterday morning, appetites whetted by unconfirmed reports by CTV that some 40 senators got additional letters from the Auditor General looking for further clarifications on expenses audited, one particular senator got swarmed while waiting at an elevator. Senator Nancy Ruth, who is a character who shoots from the hip and a pretty deadpan sense of humour, expressed her concerns about the Auditor General not understanding the role that a senator plays – in her case, as a feminist activist who brings a gender analysis lens to the work she does in the Upper Chamber – and then noted that the auditors were getting really picky to the point of being weird, like asking why her assistant expensed a breakfast when she should have eaten on the plane on her flight from Toronto to Ottawa. Nancy Ruth, deadpan, said that airplane food was awful, with “ice cold camembert and broken crackers.” But immediately We The Media clutched our pearls that she made such a quip. Camembert? That sounds awfully fancy! Why, normal Canadians would only eat blocks of Kraft cheese, thank you very much. And suddenly it became held up as a symbol of the Senate’s problems, and its members’ “entitlements.” There is this terrible strain of petty cheapness in our media – we’re aghast that things cost money (look at the renovations to Parliament Hill, much of which had been allowed to deteriorate because of the optics of spending money), and if someone puts up a dollar figure without context, it’s all the more fodder. If someone makes a legitimate expense, well, “ordinary Canadians” don’t get these expenses (err, except they do), so we try and shame them for claiming things that are within the rules. The moral panic around taxpayer dollars can be terribly provincial because it tends to be so very petty, this enviousness that some people are rewarded for doing long and difficult work – and make no mistake, the life of a senator is far less glamorous than people like to make it seem, particularly if you have a gruelling travel schedule to a lonely city like Ottawa and back. And it is a lot of work, both on Senate files and the kinds of projects that Senators take on because they have a position and a platform by which to champion them. But rather than acknowledge it, we begrudge it and we try to make everyone resent it too. Is it any wonder there is such cynicism about politics in this country? We stoke it at every opportunity. Maybe the problem is us, and our inability to roll with a quip or a joke, too busy clutching at our pearls instead.
https://twitter.com/jordanowens/status/583346556625154048
https://twitter.com/jandrewpotter/status/583450918303232000