Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: Clarity on “partisan” ads

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That report that climate change advocacy could be considered “partisan” during the writ period had a lot of people talking yesterday – but the problem is that it seems to have been a bit overblown, which I’m chalking up to Environmental Defence overplaying the advice from Elections Canada, and The Canadian Press reporter not getting enough context around that advice. In any case, Elections Canada was playing some damage control, specifying that it had to do with paid advertising and not advocacy writ-large, while various party leaders took shots at the absurdity of it all. And to walk through some of it, here’s Jennifer Robson to allay some of your fears.

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Roundup: Trying to play the tough guy

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Now that the Ethics Commissioner’s report is out in the open, the Conservatives are doing their best to try and capitalise on it – both with the coming Ethics Committee meeting (that is going to be shut down), and in Scheer trying to look tough on the issue. After calling on Liberals to essentially turn on Trudeau – something that would be far more effective if this were the era of caucus selection of leadership so that they could hold him to account – he also decided to take matters into his own hands at the National Acadian Day festivities in Dieppe, New Brunswick, earlier this week. When Trudeau spotted Scheer in the crowd, he came over to shake his hand, and, camera rolling, Scheer told him “You have to stop lying to Canadians. You need to come clean.” Trudeau, true to form, responded with a nonchalant “Oh, this is a good day today,” and went back to glad-handing with the crowd. Scheer has been trying to make the video go viral, but…he looks kind of awkward in it, like his attempt at being tough and in Trudeau’s face were essentially laughed off. I’m not sure how this bolsters Scheer’s case, but, well, he’s trying to convince his online audience of it.

There were also tongues waving and actual salivation over the revelation that the RCMP had been in touch with Jody Wilson-Raybould after the allegations first surfaced in the Globe and Mail back in February, but nothing has come of it since, and PMO assured the CBC that they had not been contacted by the RCMP. (I find it hard to believe anything will come of that either, given that there’s nothing they could charge them with – and no, this can’t possibly be obstruction of justice because a DPA is not getting off scot-free).

Meanwhile, a bunch of people are trying to be clever about Trudeau’s refusal to apologise for this situation by contrasting it with all of the various official apologies he’s made for historical injustices, as though there can be a actual equation of the two. Worth reading, however, is this thread from a legal analysis of the Ethics Commissioner’s report, and it pokes a number of holes in it, rendering it all the more problematic (which isn’t to say to say that there wasn’t any wrongdoing).

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Roundup: The inevitable committee bat-signal

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And now, the hangover from Wednesday’s Ethics Commissioner’s report, starting with the inevitable demand from the opposition parties that the Commons Ethics Committee reconvene for an emergency meeting to hear from the Commissioner, plus a list of witnesses, to fully explore the whole thing in front of the cameras yet again. And while a meeting has been called for next Wednesday, it will inevitably be that the Liberals on the committee (or rather, those from nearby ridings who have come to the meeting to fill the seats) will say that with the report, we’ve heard everything we need to and Canadians can make a decision in October, and deny permission for the meeting, which will then be followed by the other parties bemoaning the cover-up and secrecy, and then we’ll move onto campaigning. As you do.

Elsewhere, we heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould who said that the revelations about how deeply SNC-Lavalin was working with the department of finance was a surprise to her. Jane Philpott said she felt sad by the whole affair, and troubled by the attempts to discredit Wilson-Raybould in the prime minister’s submissions to the Commissioner, and she thinks an apology is warranted. Trudeau, however, is steadfastly not doing so. Mario Dion thinks that his office needs the power to levy sanctions for breaches like this one, as there currently aren’t any. SNC-Lavalin will be carrying on with their Federal Court of Appeal bid to get judicial review for the Director of Public Prosecution’s decision not go discuss a DPA with them.

Another emerging theme from this whole sordid affair is the issue of the post-retirement careers of Supreme Court of Canada justices, several of whom became embroiled in the affair. Amid calls for new rules around what constitutes proper activities for these retired justices, there does seem to be a recognition by the current Chief Justice and the Canadian Judicial Council that there may be an issue, and they are having these discussions.

Meanwhile, Chris Selley notes that the Commissioner’s report seems to impugn the way that governments do business, especially when they make a big deal about investing in a company and showing up with a giant novelty cheque (though we’ve seen a lot fewer of those under this government than the previous one) – and he thinks it’s about time. Law professor Errol Mendes details how Dion has made a serious misinterpretation of his enabling legislation and jurisdiction in the creation of this report, which should be concerning (and We The Media need to be far less deferential to Officers of Parliament because they are not always right).

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Roundup: Competence, communication, and the Commissioner

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Yesterday was political theatre in the extreme, as the Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, released his report into the Double-Hyphen Affair. His conclusions were damning for Trudeau (but suspect – more on that a little later), and there was some genuinely troubling revelations in there, such as the fact that it seems that it was lobbyists from SNC-Lavalin who were the ones who suggested putting the Deferred Prosecution Agreement legislation in the budget, and seemed to be attempting to stage-manage the whole thing – right up to dreaming up elaborate schemes to try and bring former Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin into the fold, only for her to tell them that she’d wait to hear from Jody Wilson-Raybould. (Reminder: DPAs are not an invention of SNC-Lavalin, but have been a tool in other countries for over a decade, and Canada was a laggard in adopting them, and even then, we didn’t do a very good job of it, and yes, there is a lengthy paper trail of the consultations undertaken by the government on this. Also, they’re not a get out of jail free card – they do involve penalties, but would enable the innocent employees and shareholders of a company to not suffer for the actions of a few). As troubling as this is, my biggest takeaway is the absolute crisis of competence within this government – officials in different ministers’ offices who didn’t communicate with one another, which was compounded by Wilson-Raybould not offering any explanations for her decisions so that they could be communicated to either SNC-Lavalin or even the other departments. Recall that the infamous Wernick call that Wilson-Raybould was prefaced by Wernick that he was looking for an explanation, and ended when Wilson-Raybould said that she turned over a report to PMO weeks previously, to which Wernick responded “That’s news to me.” If Wilson-Raybould was being continuously bombarded from all sides, it’s because there was a lack of clear communications from all sides. Was that improper interference? Well, that’s a bit of a judgment call, though Dion argued that it was. You can take that for what you will.

With the release of Dion’s report came the release of Anne McLellan’s own report into the structure of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General’s office, which ultimately concluded that the roles didn’t need to be separated, but that clearer guidelines needed to be established – including better communication from the Attorney General on decisions that were of interest to the government.

(Meanwhile, here are some primers on the Shawcross Doctrine, who Mario Dion is, and a timeline of events).

As for reactions, Andrew Scheer was predictable in saying that this was “unforgiveable,” decried that this was the first prime minister in history to have been found to have broken ethics laws (laws that only applied to two prime ministers, so that history is pretty short), and that he wants the RCMP to investigate…something. We’re not quite sure what. Unsurprisingly, Wilson-Raybould issued a statement shortly after the release of the report, saying that she has been completely vindicated. Trudeau himself said that he doesn’t agree with all of the conclusions – particularly that you can never debate an issue with the Attorney General – but said he accepted the report and took responsibility, and that they would learn from it – and lo, they have the McLellan Report to draw more of those lessons from as well.

What virtually nobody actually made any mention of, save a handful of lawyers, was the fact that the Commissioner’s findings resulted from a very large overreading of that section of the Conflict of Interest Act – so much so that it was hard to see how his understanding of “private interest” fit in with the definition of a conflict of interest. In fact, in the report, Dion stated that the initial complaint was under Section 7 of the Act, and while found that was not violated, he then decided on his own volition to see if Section 9 wasn’t a better fit, and then showcased how he jumped through a number of hoops to arrive at that conclusion. He also complained that he wasn’t given access to documents that fell under Cabinet Confidence, and argued that his mandate made that access “implicit” rather than explicit, which should be a warning sign of an Officer of Parliament that is trying to claim more powers than Parliament originally allocated to him. That should be concerning – as is the fact that everyone credulously cherry-picked the damning paragraphs from the report rather than looking at it in context, and the fact that the basis for those conclusions are actually problematic. This doesn’t mean that wrongdoing didn’t occur – just that the report itself was arrived at by a great deal of overreach, which should colour the conclusions, but nobody in the media did any of that critical thinking.

In hot takes, Chantal Hébert was first out of the gate, to wonder if this would be a fatal wound for Trudeau given how scathing the report was. Robert Hiltz castigates Trudeau’s inability to apologise because that would mean that the government was acting in SNC-Lavalin’s interests and conflating it with that of the country. John Geddes wonders why SNC-Lavalin never took Wilson-Raybould up on her offer to pass along their public interest arguments to the Director of Public Prosecutions (and the answer is fairly unsurprising). Andrew Coyne says the problem is not any conflict of interest, but the possibility of an abuse of power. Paul Wells notes the report is another reminder to Trudeau that his is a job where he makes decisions that have consequences, which he may not seem to grasp.

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Roundup: The bitumen-soaked petard

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Probably the most important piece you could read from yesterday’s offerings was this analysis from energy economist Andrew Leach, who dismantled much of the logic behind the Conservative environmental “plan” that Andrew Scheer was so proud of. Aside from the fact that it lacks detail, it’s full of contradictions (such as eschewing carbon taxes, and yet does largely the same thing with large emitters), and a lot of things that don’t make sense. Leach not only calls out the fact that the “plan” is full of straw men and distractions (such as the focus on raw sewage), but probably most devastating is that he punches holes in the plan for the Canada Clean Brand™ that Scheer is trying to promote – the notion that Canadian products are “cleaner” and should displace those abroad, thus keeping Canadian jobs and still (ostensibly) lowering emissions. And while that may be true enough with aluminium, it’s certainly not for our oil exports, which kind of blows the whole thing out of the water. Oops.

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Roundup: On feeding the loons

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I try not to do that hackneyed “slow news day?” thing, however I am forced to question the editorial judgment at Global’s Calgary bureau after they reported on a supposed new “separatist” group meeting in Alberta, who are shaking their fist at clouds – err, I mean throwing a temper tantrum about some perceived slights. The apparent “newsworthiness” of this event is the fact that there was a bullshit poll out last week that said that as many as a quarter of Albertans could support separation, and Jay Hill, one-time Alberta separatist, says that Justin Trudeau being re-elected could make that fifty percent.

That sound was my eyes rolling so hard. And then again when John Ivison tweeted this gem.

What could possibly different about Scotland than Alberta? Could it be that Scotland once used to be its own country? Could it be that they have a distinct language and culture? That they already field their own sports teams in international competitions? That they’re not landlocked? Colby Cosh wrote about this not two weeks ago – there is no coherence in the argument for Alberta separatism, and they can’t even take their own argument seriously.

Let’s call this what it is – extortion, blackmail, and a campaign of lies fomented by the likes of Jason Kenney who is stoking it to keep his base angry, because the moment they realize that they’ve run out of external enemies to blame their problems on, the moment they’ll turn on him because he hasn’t been able to deliver on any of his snake oil promises. And Kenney is using these swivel-eyed loons as a straw man – the whole “I’m not a separatist, but Justin Trudeau is stoking the sentiment” defence. It’s just more lies, and We The Media don’t have to keep giving them oxygen. We don’t have to pay attention to these loons – especially if they’re going to call themselves moronic things like “Wexit Alberta.”

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Roundup: Kenney’s latest salvo

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Over the weekend, Alberta premier Jason Kenney put out a video over Twitter that was an explicit declaration that he plans to campaign against Justin Trudeau in the upcoming federal election, but it was couched in the language of provincial separatism. Or rather, Kenney claimed that Trudeau was trying to “push Alberta out” of the Canadian federation, but he would rather “separate Trudeau from the office of the prime minister.”

For Kenney to claim that Trudeau is the source of Alberta’s woes is frankly ridiculous, and to say that Trudeau has been stoking separatist sentiment is laughable. Last I checked, Trudeau wasn’t the cause of the plunge in world oil prices, nor was his the government that has been blocking progress on the Keystone XL pipeline or Enbridge Line 3, and he not only bought the Trans Mountain pipeline to de-risk it, but ensured that the Federal Court of Appeal’s concerns were addressed so that it could begin construction without further court challenges. And if Kenney wants to throw Energy East or Northern Gateway in the mix, well, the former was withdrawn because the economics of the project were insufficient, and the Harper government’s inaction and lack of proper Section 35 consultation ensured that Northern Gateway would not go ahead.

Of course, Kenney is also perpetuating his campaign of lies and snake oil, such as his complaints that the province is getting a “raw deal” from equalization – remembering of course that Alberta doesn’t sign a cheque to other provinces, but that it comes from everyone’s federal income taxes, and Alberta has the highest incomes in the country by far, nor will a referendum on the programme do anything other than further inflame sentiment in the process that Kenney has been lying about. And he knows that he needs to keep the population angry at outside forces so that they don’t start turning on him given that he can’t fulfil the promises he made to them. This video was not only bizarre, but it also perhaps gives a hint of the kind of increasingly desperate measures that Kenney will have to resort to in order to keep stoking anger.

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Roundup: Cuts and capacity

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Andrew Scheer made a defensive manoeuvre yesterday by sending letters to each of the premiers promising that he wouldn’t cut health or social transfers if he formed government – his way of heading off attacks from Justin Trudeau that are trying to paint Scheer with the same brush as Doug Ford, as Ford continues to make ill-considered cuts across Ontario without regard for logic or reason (while, oddly enough, his government’s spending continues to increase). There is an added bit of significance to this in that Ford has spent the past year trying to sell the message that Ontario’s books are such a basket case that the province is in the road to bankruptcy – which is a complete and total fabrication. While yes, Ontario does have a high debt-to-GDP ratio, we also have to remember that the previous government was borrowing money where interest rates are below the rate of inflation – essentially they are getting free money that they could use to invest in the province.

Enter Kevin Carmichael at the Financial Post, who wrote a must-read contemplation of the state of the federal books yesterday. It’s an adult conversation about the actual state of our finances – contrary to Scheer, our books are in great shape and the deficit is miniscule, and contrary to Trudeau and Bill Morneau, the deficits are coming in smaller than projected and growth is greater than projected and with no new increases in spending, we could be back in surplus before the 2023 election (thought that is always this government’s problem). And with that in mind, he poses the question – do we need to sock away surpluses in anticipation of a future recession even though we already have the capacity to deal with it, or do we spend our current capacity on something that would have lasting changes for our economy, like national childcare? It’s the kind of grown-up conversation that we should be having, but we’re not as parties snipe at one another over who is more “divisive.”

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157119930434609153

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Roundup: Figures without context for outrage

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You may have noticed that the Conservative Party’s Twitter feed recently is trying to make “100 days of Trudeau fails” a Thing – because their overriding narrative has been to put “Trudeau” and “fail” in the same sentence for the past two years now, but it still feels a lot like trying to make “fetch” happen. But as they essentially regurgitate old headlines as part of this campaign, you will find that most of the posts are missing key context, which ensures that it’s often a big figure with nothing to support it. Given that We The Media have trained Canadians with our fixation on cheap outrage stories, I’m sure this is a tactic that they feel is a slam dunk, but in any case, here are a few examples from the past few days. In other words, don’t take anything at face value, but remember that there is context (that is easily Googled) to what they are posting, and most of it makes them look pretty petty – particularly the repairs and upgrades to the official residence at Harrington Lake, given that Trudeau has been entertaining foreign leaders there as they can’t do it at 24 Sussex.

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Roundup: Sticking with the date

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You may recall that last week, the Federal Court granted judicial review to the Conservative candidate looking to change the election date because it clashes with a particular orthodox Jewish holiday, and lo, the Chief Electoral Officer set about to review his decision. Yesterday he announced that he’d reviewed it, and he was still confident that there wasn’t sufficient reason to change it – moving it back a week would put it in conflict with a bunch of PD days in schools that they needed to use for polling stations, and it would collide with municipal elections in Nunavut, and there were still plenty of options, be they advance polls or special ballots, for those affected by the orthodox Jewish holidays. That decision goes to Cabinet, who will make the final call later this week.

But then something curious happened – a couple of Liberal MPs tweet their dismay at the CEO’s decision, which is a little odd because, well, it’s not really his call. He’s making a recommendation, and Cabinet makes the final decision because the dissolution of Parliament for an election is a Crown prerogative, meaning that it depends on the Governor-in-Counsel (i.e. Cabinet advising the governor general) that makes the decision, regardless of our garbage fixed election date legislation. So if they’re tweeting dismay, they should direct their pleas to their own government rather than to harass the CEO.

This having been said, I am forced to wonder if this isn’t part of the fallout from the aforementioned garbage fixed election date. One of the justifications for said garbage legislation is that it’s supposed to help Elections Canada plan, rather than scramble in the event of a snap election call – but it’s starting to feel like perhaps those plans are also getting a bit precious, which is a bad sign for an institution that is supposed to be adaptable in order to accommodate the election call, whenever it may be.

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