Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Roundup: Yes, the Conservatives did it too

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Amidst the faux drama in QP this week about the apparent discrepancy between the Dogwood Initiative getting funding for an anti-Kinder Morgan activist while the government refuses to give funding to groups that use such summer jobs grants to pay for students to distribute fliers of aborted foetuses, or to groups that refuse to hire LGBT students, I find myself losing patience with the constant refrains that if the Conservatives engaged in this kind of behaviour, there would be riots in the streets.

Reminder: the Conservatives did engage in that kind of behaviour. They wantonly defunded all manner of organizations, whether they ensured that women in developing countries could access safe abortions, whether they advocated for women’s equality here in Canada, or if they were ecumenical social justice organizations that engaged in education and outreach at home and abroad. They defunded the Court Challenges Programme which helped ensure that minority groups like the LGBT community could do the work of bringing their challenges to the Supreme Court of Canada (because it’s expensive and law firms can’t do it all pro bono). They cut funding to HIV and AIDS services organizations and diverted all manner of funding to a vaccine initiative that they then flaked out on and frittered away millions of dollars so that they had no impact (and the results of those cuts are still being felt today as the current government wants to shift funding priorities to prevention). They prioritized refugee resettlement for Christians in the Middle East over Muslims. They engaged in abusive auditing over charitable organizations that opposed them ideologically. All of this happened, in the most petty and mean-spirited manner at that, and there weren’t riots in the streets. There were a handful of protests, and the media barely mentioned a number of these cuts.

Is the way that the government handled this attestation on the Summer Jobs Grants heavy-handed? Yes. Was the wording clumsy? Probably. But groups aren’t being denied funding because they’re faith-based – they’re being denied funding because they’re refusing to either sign the attestation, or they’ve tried to rewrite it to suit themselves, despite the fact that the government has said repeatedly that “core mandate” refers not to values or beliefs, but daily activities. In all of the rhetoric and pearl-clutching, the actual facts are being distorted and need to be called back into focus. We also need to focus on the fact that the real problem here is that MPs get to sign off on those grants, which is a violation of their roles as guardians of the public purse, and instead makes them agents of the government in distributing spending (clouding their accountability role). But sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this constant invocation that “if the Conservatives did it…” is bogus and amnesiac. They did it. All the time.

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Roundup: Dumbing down the border debate

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The Conservatives were in full performative outrage mode yesterday, with a Supply Day motion to demand a plan by May 11thto stop the influx of irregular border crossers seeking asylum, and for the PM to admit that his “Welcome to Canada” tweet is the cause of the problem. It’s not going to work, but it’s indicative of the way in which they are dealing with complex issues and trying to boil them down in a way that is ultimately disingenuous, while using bogus arguments like how the backlogs in this system are slowing down legitimate immigrants and refugee claimants – the immigration stream is separate and is unlikely to be affected by this influx, and when you’re talking about “legitimate” refugees, there is a great deal of difference between resettling refugees in camps and processing the claims of those who arrive on our shores to claim asylum. Those claims, yes, are slowed down, but it’s more than just this influx that is that problem, and drawing this link is a long-time Conservative tactic of trying to play immigrants and refugees off of one another.

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For example, Michelle Rempel has been demanding that the government simply declare the whole border with the US to be an official port of entry for the purposes of the Safe Third Country Agreement, in order for us to simply turn back anyone who crosses from the US. See! Simple! It’s not like we need American sign-off to do so (because it’s their border too), and it does nothing about what has been driving this influx in the first place, which is less Trudeau’s tweet than the tweets of one Donald Trump. And while the government deployed MPs with linguistic ties to communities that were crossing previously, such as Haitians and Guatemalans, the influx we’re seeing right now has to do with Nigerians who are getting tourist visas for the US, and then using those to cross into Canada. To that end, we learned yesterday that the government has been sending officials to Nigeria to try and engage on the ground there, while also working with the Americans to try and get action from them that their tourist visas are being abused, so we’ll see if that has any measurable effect.

This isn’t to say that the current government isn’t blameless in all of this either. While they correctly point to the fact that the previous government made cuts to both the Immigration and Refugee Board and CBSA, which are reverberating to this day, they have had their own problems when it comes to not filling vacancies on the IRB because they changed the appointment process, and like virtually all of their appointment processes, the changes have slowed down the system to a crawl, and have touched off a slow-moving crisis within the whole of government and the courts. That’s on them 100 percent, and that is the problem that’s causing slowdowns with more than just refugee claimants, but also immigration appeals (and they are separate parts of the IRB, so again, it’s not just the influx of claimants causing problems for immigrants). But those aren’t the kinds of issues that the opposition is touching on with this issue, and it’s not the kind of simple solution that they’re trolling for, which is ultimately what’s harming the debate.

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Roundup: Convention resolutions to be forgotten?

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Coming out of the Liberal policy convention, the party’s top five resolutions were pharmacare, mental health, decriminalizing small amounts of drug possession, decriminalizing sex work, and protecting pensions. Some of the resolutions are controversial to members of caucus, and there’s no guarantee that any of these will show up in the party platform (or the Order Paper beforehand) despite its what the grassroots members allegedly want (big caveats here given how centralized and top-down this process has become under their new constitution), but maybe there will be pressure to implement them. Maybe. Trudeau doesn’t seem keen on decriminalization talk while the marijuana bill is still being debated (and he’s expending political capital on it).

Their big exciting Obama-connected guest (because that’s what the Liberals and NDP have grasped onto for the past eight or nine years) was David Axelrod, who said that the party needs to show that they are still change-makers and not the status quo, while he and Gerald Butts talked about political life. Dr. Danielle Martin, who makes the case for healthcare in the US, spoke about the need for universal pharmacare in Canada. Among the ministers who got up to speak to delegates, Ahmed Hussen talked about being racially profiled while he encouraged Liberals to combat racism. Trudeau’s own speech to the faithful included its share of digs at the Conservatives as still being the party of Harper, so good thing they can still draw on that particular bogeyman. New party president Suzanne Cowan spoke about how they all needed to be fundraisers going forward. And hey, the rank-and-file members were expressing some particular concerns about the rash of self-inflicted wounds that the party keeps enduring.

And because it wasn’t all sunshine and roses coming out of the convention, MP Francis Drouin is now facing an allegation of sexual assault from an incident that happened during the convention, and he’s put out a statement to say that an allegation has been made and he’s cooperating with the investigation – nothing else. It’s probably worth noting that there were harassment workshops at the convention that both Justin Trudeau and Kent Hehr attended, and the facilitator of said workshops noted that Trudeau simply listened and took notes throughout, which impressed her. So we’ll see what transpires from here.

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Roundup: Morale over policy

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It’s the Liberal Party’s big policy convention in Halifax this weekend, and it’s already consumed with the pre-election narrative, never mind that said election is a year-and-a-half away. And while it’s supposed to be about policy, and developing the ideas that are intended to shape the next election platform, it’s really more about morale, and finding inspiration to go out and do the door-knocking (as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s keynote spoke about). It’s about reminding the party that they need to keep up a united front and “have the Prime Minister’s back,” and totally not worry that they won’t be able to keep all of their seats in Atlantic Canada or the West. No ma’am.

When it comes to the policy resolutions, they are very much of the left-wing/progressive side of the party. Almost entirely so, in fact, some of them exactly the same kinds of demands that the NDP have made, making me wonder what’s left in their big tent for the more fiscally conservative, “blue Liberal” members to grasp onto. The most talked about resolution so far is that around decriminalising small amounts of all drugs so that they can be treated as a public health issue instead of a criminal one, as has been done successfully in Portugal. In contrast to the health minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould says she’s open to decriminalising, and reforming prostitution laws (which is another resolution). In an interview with Power & Politics, however, Petitpas Taylor refused to say one way or the other how the government would consider a successful vote by the convention on the issue, deferring instead to keeping an open mind.

But while everyone is going to talk policy on a superficial level this weekend, I have to raise the point that the party has so centralized their operations and policy machinery that this is only superficially a grassroots movement, and instead is an exercise in confirming the policies that the leader’s office is floating. Because the Liberals have so disempowered their grassroots when they changed the party constitution at their previous convention, there is little hold for the grassroots any longer. This is a problem with how our system is supposed to work, and is a direct result of the ways in which we have so utterly presidentialized party leadership contests so that they are now repositories of vast power that can’t be challenged, and everything is being reworked to be top-down instead of bottom-up. While this is all being done under the rubric of being modern, and nimble, it’s corrosive to how politics is supposed to work in this country, and we’ll see how long it takes for party members – err, “registered Liberals” to figure out that they’re being played and they start to demand their rightful power back.

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Roundup: Beer still imprisoned

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The Supreme Court of Canada delivered their ruling in the Comeaucase yesterday, which deals with the subject of interprovincial trade barriers – in particular, those around alcohol. While this case has been widely championed as “free the beer,” what we got came down to an exploration on the nature of federalism in this country – and many observers were keenly unimpressed as they chose to uphold those particular barriers.

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First of all, read this Q&A with University of Ottawa vice-dean of law Carissima Mathen about the decision, so that you get some sense of how the constitution operates here, and why the Court is loathe to interfere in something of this magnitude. It’s not just alcohol sales that could be affected – its knock-on effects include supply management schemes (which the Conservatives have yet to reconcile with their “free the beer!” sloganeering), public health prohibitions, environmental regulations, and so on. And more technically, the case that led up to this decision was a lower court judge making an interpretation of settled law that they felt wasn’t robust enough to justify overturning that jurisprudence – not enough had changed – and they upbraided said judge in the ruling. This is also something that can’t be taken trivially in the decision.

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And then there are the critics. University of Alberta law professor Malcolm Lavoie says the decision privileges some parts of the Constitution over the other, while John Ibbitson looks at what the knock-on effects could be and wonders if the result wasn’t for the best. Emmett Macfarlane is not sold on that, and feels that the Court feels too bound by old JCPC decisions that undermined the text of the constitution when they should instead be upholding it – that the intent of the Founding Fathers was indeed a centralized economic union. Some commentators think that the decision could legitimize Alberta’s bill to limit oil exports to BC, but frankly I think that analysis is beyond absurd. I do have to say that I have a degree of sympathy for the Court in not looking to overturn the entire federal order, because there would be monumental blowback. But it’s not like they said that it couldn’t be done – what it needs is the political will for the legislatures to come to an agreement on this, and there is a new internal free trade framework that is coming into place where there’s a better forum for having these discussions than we’ve had in 150 years of confederation. And I think that perhaps those who felt that the Court needed to do the work of the legislatures on this issue were doing so a bit inappropriately because we keep insisting that the Court do the hard work that the legislatures won’t, and perhaps this is another wake-up call that we need to do the actual work of making tough decisions in this country on our own.

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Roundup: Bernier’s epiphany

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All of the drama yesterday was the news that Maxime Bernier decided to spike his own planned book after his chapter blaming his loss on “fake Conservatives” supporting Andrew Scheer, particularly when the defenders of Supply Management took out memberships to stop Bernier. When he did release a statement late in the day, Bernier basically blamed the media for writing about the controversial stuff, which is kind of ridiculous given that he should have known that questioning the legitimacy of Scheer’s win, and putting in print that he planned to renege on his promise to shut up about Supply Management was going to be trouble no matter what else was in the book. (No word on whether he spent his advance already, as he now will have to refund it).

A couple of observations first: Of course the leadership contest was lousy with “fake Conservatives.” That’s what our leadership contests have become in Canada, given that it’s about trying to get as many new members as possible to bestow enough “democratic legitimacy” on a would-be leader so that they can turn the party into their own personal cult. Until we change the system and restore it to caucus selection, this will only get increasingly worse as time goes on. Part of his analysis that his problem was just defenders of Supply Management as the problem ignores the fact that there were a hell of a lot more people taking out party memberships in order to stop Kellie Leitch (and by extension, Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux, but mostly Leitch). They didn’t deliver the contest for Michael Chong, and it’s hard to say how many of those ballots wound up going toward Scheer instead of Bernier. Also, Scheer knew that Bernier was going to be mavericky when he made him a critic on an economic portfolio, so he can’t be surprised that this kind of eruption was going to happen. It’s who Bernier is, and it’s kind of surprising that it took this long for Bernier to realize that maybe it’s not a good thing for the image the party is trying to put forward. (On a side note, every time a leader insists that they’ve never been more united, I brace for a defection, because I’ve heard those insistences too many times).

Paul Wells wrote a very good piece about Bernier and the value of loyalty in politics, which most journalists don’t really grasp, which explains why politicians do the things they do, and compromise in the way that they do. It’s one of the things I do think about and probably don’t wrap my head around enough, but it goes back to the way in which people continue to blame the parties for “making” MPs do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do, right up to compromising their beliefs and whatnot. MPs have the choice to do whatever – parties don’t make them, MPs do these things of their own volition. Senators too, for that matter – even when it goes against their best interest, or the normal operations of that chamber. They do it out of loyalty to the leader or the party, take your pick, and while we could have a debate about the effect of method of selection on that loyalty, we need to think more about that lens when we’re having these discussions.

Good reads:

  • In London, Justin Trudeau met with the Queen, as well as Thresa May, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden, as well as Five Eyes partners on a security briefing.
  • Chrystia Freeland is headed back to Washington for some crucial decisions on NAFTA talks.
  • While Kinder Morgan’s CEO says the political battles may mean the pipeline remains untenable, BC says that they will file their court reference within days.
  • The Commons health committee released their study on universal pharmacare, which the health minister says will be the basis of their consultations.
  • In advance of the Liberal convention, the health minister has already rejected the policy resolution to adopt a Portugal-style drug decriminalization scheme.
  • Speaking of the convention, Kent Hehr says he will attend, and attend one of the sexual harassment workshops being offered there.
  • UN climate data shows our GHG emission are decreasing – but not nearly fast enough to meet our Paris targets.
  • A report from the former Inspector General of CSIS was uncovered, showing problems with the way the agency conducts interviews with detainees abroad.
  • The agency that was supposed to create guidelines for service dogs for veterans with PTSD has pulled out of the project unexpectedly.
  • Two Catholic Bishops took to the Hill to defend the Pope’s refusal to apologise for residential schools. One Conservative MP blocked a motion to demand an apology.
  • The RCMP are set for their union certification vote.
  • Pierre Poilievre continues to snipe about the guaranteed minimum income report, and cites Ontario’s model as a bad starting point because of costs.
  • Andrew Coyne looks at the PBO report on guaranteed minimum income, and wonders if three points on the GST is a good deal for eliminating poverty.
  • Chantal Hébert reads the polls and wonders if the pipeline debate is really resonating with Canadians, and whether it will affect Trudeau in the next election.

Odds and ends:

Liberal MP Neil Ellis was taken to hospital for an undisclosed condition.

https://twitter.com/AdamScotti/status/986641462380126208

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Roundup: Unconstitutional threats

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Alberta’s Bill 12, that would give its energy minister the power to declare what can go in the pipelines that leaves the province, is almost certainly unconstitutional (and I think they’re being too cute by half in saying that it’s not because it doesn’t target BC specifically). It’s way overbroad in terms of the powers it gives the minister, and even if it somehow manages to pass constitutional muster, you can imagine that it would certainly be struck down by the courts for the sheer scope of how arbitrary it is. And in case you think that the pressure tactics of raising gas prices in BC are sound, it’ll likely do more damage to their own producers and refineries, whose supplies and production they are curtailing. So bravo for thinking that cutting off your nose to spite your face is good public policy, guys.

The premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, says that he’s going to pass his own version to back up Alberta in their fight. Because that’s helpful. BC, meanwhile, says that because the bill is blatantly unconstitutional, it’s likely just a political bluff – but if it’s not, they’ll sue Alberta for it, as well they should. Alberta’s minister insists that it’s no bluff. So here we are, with few grown-ups in the room apparently, because they’re lighting their hair on fire to do something, anything, now, now, nowrather than coming up with a measured and reasoned response to the situation. And then there’s Michelle Rempel’s take. Oi.

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Roundup: Jean’s version

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Yesterday finally saw that long-anticipated Daniel Jean appearance before the Commons public safety committee, and it was…not explosive. Much of it was simply reiterating everything we’ve heard before – that Jean was sensitive to misinformation that was appearing in media outlets that suggested that RCMP and CSIS didn’t take Jaspal Atwal’s appearance seriously, that there was a possibility this was an attempt to embarrass the Canadian government into looking like they didn’t take Khalistani separatists seriously, and that Jean himself suggested the briefing and PMO simply providing him with a list of journalists to reach out to. And when the Conservatives demanded to know about the “rogue elements in the Indian government” or “conspiracy theory” allegations, Jean corrected that he didn’t say those things.

Now, some of the journalists involved in the briefing are disputing a few details, and in particular the notion that Jean had suggested that perhaps Indian intelligence was involved (which he denied yesterday). And there remains this concern trolling that senior bureaucrats don’t normally go to the media like this so he “must have” been put-up to it by PMO, which I’m not really sure is the case, particularly because as we heard in later releases about Jean’s briefing, and in his testimony yesterday, he highlighted the use of “fake news” and propaganda by hostile outlets, which is why we wanted to correct them as a neutral third-party. This is not really a widespread concern just a few years ago, particularly given the way that it was seen as interfering with elections and whatnot, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he wanted to be more proactive about it.

Of course, the real hitch in all of this is that some of the sensationalized reporting around the original briefing, coupled with the torque applied to it by Andrew Scheer and company to the point where the story being proffered in the House of Commons didn’t match reality (which is Scheer’s stock in trade these days) have spun this whole narrative beyond what was a “faux pas,” per Jean. And when Jean’s narrative didn’t match Scheer’s, it was Scheer who tried to insist that Trudeau spoke about the “rogue elements” (he never did – he very studiously avoided any specifics and only said that he supported what Jean said), and that it was up to Trudeau to provide clarity for his apparent contradictions when he didn’t actually make any – it was Scheer himself who put forward a false narrative and has been caught with his pants down over it. But let’s also be clear – a lot of the reporting around this has not been stellar either, between sensationalization and omitting of aspects (like his concern about the misinformation being fed to Canadian media), coupled with a refusal to call Scheer out on his disingenuous framing of the whole thing, has led these false narratives to grow out of control. And they keep getting dragged on longer by things like yet more false claims being piled on, such as with the chickpea tariffs and the allegedly cancelled meeting that never existed, but do we call it out? Not until days later. And some journalists should own up to their role rather than get their backs up (like they did yesterday) so that we can move on from this whole incident because we really do have better things to discuss.

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Roundup: A big meeting, no big answers

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Yesterday saw the big meeting between Justin Trudeau and premiers Rachel Notley and John Horgan on the subject of the Trans Mountain expansion, and what was supposed to be a 35-minute tête-à-tête turned into over 90. We didn’t get specifics out of the meeting, but we got some clues, in particular that Horgan is pointing to deficiencies in the government’s ocean protections plan, while Trudeau and Notley will be in discussion with Kinder Morgan about a possible stake in the project to help with risk mitigation, and to get the ball rolling before construction season. Trudeau also noted some kind of upcoming legislation to reiterate federal jurisdiction over the project, but one hopes that they don’t try to declare this under Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution, because it’s already federal jurisdiction and invoking that when the jurisprudence is already settled would introduce doubt that doesn’t actually exist – no matter what Horgan seems to imply.

And then comes along Andrew Scheer, who demonstrates either a wilful ignorance of history, or a willingness to again demonstrate that he is a fabulist – or possibly a combination of the two. Regardless, his particular assertions about the history of government investment in energy projects is woefully mistaken and wrong.

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Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt looks at how the meeting de-escalated the tensions somewhat, while Paul Wells reads everyone’s positions, and wonders if the government’s plans actually address Kinder Morgan’s concerns. Also, here’s a reminder about the last time a BC premier tried to intrude on federal jurisdiction and got slapped down hard by the federal government.

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Roundup: Peter Harder, hero of the Senate

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Oh, Senator Peter Harder. The Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” did the media rounds yesterday to both promote his fifty-page position paper on his conception of the constitutional role of the Senate, and to kick at the Conservatives whom he claims are “sabotaging” his attempts to turn the Senate into a less partisan place. (I have a column reacting to the contents of the paper coming out later, so stay tuned for that). I’m constantly struck by Harder’s attempts to play the hero in this when he’s done virtually nothing to earn the title. Aside from putting out this paper in advance of the Modernization committee’s upcoming report, Harder has pretty much eschewed his actual duties of negotiating with the various caucuses in the Senate on legislative timelines (because negotiating and horse-trading is “partisan”), and he didn’t do his job in canvassing the votes for the marijuana bill, and even though it was in no danger of being defeated, he still got caught with his pants down and was a big drama queen about it. But instead of taking a modicum of personal responsibility for not doing his job, he instead blames the Conservatives for “sabotage” when they’re doing their job as opposition, when he would prefer that Senators never defeat bills (which would make his job even easier and put even less pressure on him to do his job). And yet nobody pushes back against his narratives in the media.

Senator McCoy meanwhile, makes a point that hasn’t been well aired in public yet, which is that Harder has been pushing for the Senate to return to the model of the Clerk being responsible for all of the Senate’s bureaucracy rather than the three-clerk model that they moved to post-Duffy scandal – a model which forces senators to take more responsibility for their actions rather than being able to blame their bureaucracy. Questions about the government’s control over that Clerk are certainly live ones, and it does undermine the notion that the Senate is supposed to be getting more independent. Apparently, that doesn’t extend to its internal operations. Curious indeed.

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