The Conservative national council, plus about twenty other individuals including MP Diane Finley, are nearly set to lay out their leadership campaign rules, including the date of the vote – likely sometime in 2017. I’m sure we’ll start seeing the campaigns start to rev up soon after that – Kellie Leitch and Jason Kenney out the door first, and over time, I’m sure a not-Jason-Kenney candidate will emerge for others to start coalescing around. People keep saying Lisa Raitt, but I haven’t seen any sign of her French improving, and that is going to be an important consideration with the party having improved its fortunes in Quebec in the last election. And then there’s Peter MacKay, who leads in the polling on the subject, but I’m not sure that he’s had enough time and distance from politics just yet, not to mention the fact that he really isn’t the Red Tory that most people seem to think he is (just because he very briefly led the Progressive Conservatives after winning the leadership on a promise that he immediately turned around and broke). I’m not unconvinced that there needs to be someone who was much more of an outsider, largely untainted by the Harper years, who will be the instrument of the party broadening its base more as part of the leadership process, and again, I really doubt that MacKay is that person. He is intimately tied with Harper for his joining with him in the creation of the party, and I fail to see how that would be any kind of asset in a leadership race where the party would need to show that it is moving on from those years, rather than simply moving to relive them.
Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau
QP: A New Dawn
It was the first Question Period of the 42nd parliament, and the excitement – and indeed nervousness – in the Chamber was palpable. Would it be a gong show? A serious discussion on policy matters? Would there be the same kinds of canned talking points and obfuscation that we’ve come to expect, or would the era of openness and transparency take hold and offer up substantive answers to substantive questions? And it was a bit of both.
(I did have the full, detailed recap written up, and then my WordPress iOS app swallowed it whole with a “saving error,” so apologies for not being able to provide it today).
Roundup: Welcome, parliamentary secretaries
Justin Trudeau named his parliamentary secretaries yesterday – 35 of them, with three for his office alone, each representing particular portfolio issues. Those appointments aren’t at full gender parity, but then again, they’re not cabinet ministers either. The question now is what becomes of them – will they have useful and meaningful roles while still respecting the letter and spirit of Responsible Government in our system, or will they be used as human shields and ministerial proxies as they were in the last parliament? According to the Open and Accountable Government document that the PMO put out, the role of a parliamentary secretary is not to be a replacement cabinet minister, but to attend Question Period; help shepherd their minister’s legislation through the process in the Commons and in committee (but not voting in committee); supporting their minister’s position on Private Members’ Business; supporting their minister on committee issues and appearing before committees; and carrying out other House duties, such as leading government responses to Opposition Day motions and participating in the Late Show (aka Adjournment Proceedings). All of these are important, but let me make a couple of cautions. First of all, parliamentary secretaries should not – and I cannot emphasise this enough – sit on committees. This practice has been banned in the past, but when repealed, we saw what happened in the last parliament what became of it, which is that the committees were (in the words of Scott Brison) turned into “branch plants of ministers’ offices.” With their special PMO staffer behind them at committee meetings, it allowed the PMO to basically control the committee agendas, robbing them of any semblance of independence like they are supposed to have. This cannot be allowed to continue in the new parliament. We should also discontinue the practice of allowing parliamentary secretaries to field questions in QP. They are not members of the Ministry, and don’t have access Cabinet briefing materials, so they can’t answer. Under Responsible Government, the government is being held to account, so government needs to answer – not their proxies. Having them do so shields the minister from answering, and if the minister is not present, then they need to have a designated deputy in Cabinet to field those questions (and yes, there is a list of the deputies). Let’s keep the roles separate, and keep government accountable to parliament, the way it should be.
Roundup: Action on assisted dying
We’re now less than a week away from the opening of Parliament, and there’s a lot for the Liberals to do. One of those things is deciding what to do about the assisted dying file, and it looks like the Liberals have planned to strike a special joint committee of MPs and senators to quickly examine the issue and provide some legislative recommendations to the government. Remember that the deadline the Supreme Court gave the government is February 6th, and they haven’t decided if they will as the Court for an extension – one they may not be granted, and one where that extension will be a burden to those on the ground who may actually need the law in a timely fashion. There are a couple of reasons why the inclusion of senators in the process is noteworthy – one is that it can help to speed up the process of passing the inevitable legislation, because it can be like a bit of pre-study, getting them involved earlier in the process in order to speed up their own deliberations on the bill when it arrives. The other reason is that the Senate was debating a bill on doctor-assisted dying in the last parliament, which had been sponsored by Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth, based on her consultations with former MP Stephen Fletcher, and had workable solutions to some of the issues raised in protecting the vulnerable. That bill was debated over several days at second reading, but never was voted on to send to committee, likely because of some foot-dragging, but that debate happened, and those same senators are still there. If it’s something that can help speed the process, it’s not a bad idea that they’re in the loop and participating in solving the problem, which could potentially get legislation in the system before that Supreme Court deadline, and with a little luck, they won’t need to ask for an extension.
Roundup: A plea without merit
At a security and defence conference in Ottawa yesterday, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson gave a plea for warrantless access to people’s Internet subscriber data. Trust us, Paulson said – we won’t abuse it or violate the Charter. Never mind that every privacy expert ever, as well as the Supreme Court of Canada, has said that no, they don’t need this kind of information without a warrant. At one point, Paulson made the comparison of getting a warrant to run license plates, which is patently ridiculous because you can’t get nearly the same information from a license plate that you can from someone’s browser history. Paulson raised all manner of bogeymen by which he needs warrantless access, from cyber-attacks to child pornographers, but the funny thing is that after the Supreme Court’s decision against warrantless access to subscriber data, RCMP data shows that forcing the police to get a warrant to see your IP history hasn’t hampered investigations, which makes Paulson’s plea all the more problematic. Trying to get this particularly dangerous power is not a surprise, but it is perhaps a little unbecoming knowing coming from a Commissioner who should know better.
Roundup: Changing the refugee timeline
The Liberal government has released their official refugee resettlement plans, and surprising probably no one, they had to back away from the pledge of 25,000 by year’s end. The revised goal is 10,000 by year’s end, the 15,000 remaining by the end of February, and while that number will be both government-sponsored and privately sponsored, they pledge to have a least 25,000 government-sponsored refugees by the end of 2016. All security screening will happen on the ground in the refugee camps, while they will be offered mental health services once in Canada. There are spaces for 6,000 that would be prepared in a couple of different military bases, but those are intended only as a back-up, with the intention to have communities take them right away. So in all, more resettled refugees than the previous government would have done, but not quite as ambitious as they had initially hoped for. As for why the government changed their minds, Trudeau told Matt Galloway in an interview that it was because they wanted to “get it right,” at which point, we ask ourselves how we consider the accountability question. Do we blast them for breaking the campaign promise? Do we point out that it was possibly a reckless promise in the first place, as they were trying to one-up the other parties? Do we try to have a more grown-up conversation where we allow them the ability to change their minds with changing circumstances (and before you say it, no, I don’t think that the attacks in Paris changed anything, particularly about the question of security)? The Conservatives have certainly decided to declare victory on this one, but it should probably be noted that while things are going slower than promised, the doors are not closed, which is unlike the calls we’ve seen in several American states and others. Trudeau is sending the message that these refugees are not some outsider menace, as it should be noted that in fact the vast majority of attacks that have happened to date were from those who were born in the country where the attacks happened, and they were radicalized later in life. It does send a message that keeping up with resettlement is happening in spite of the Paris attacks, and that should perhaps be noted too.
Roundup: Refugee plans leaking out
We have some more details on the Syrian refugee plans that have started leaking out – 900 Syrians arriving per day starting December 1st, primarily from camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey; military facilities are being quickly winterized to help house them, mostly in Ontario and Quebec; and it looks like Christmas leave and vacations are being cancelled for a number of civil servants and military personnel to help make this all happen in time, which will cost in overtime. All will be identified by the UNHCR as resettlement candidates and screened on the ground (screening process explained here), and once they land and additional checks are made, they’ll immediately be made permanent residents. And it sounds like there may also be an advertising campaign to help Canadians who want to help out and do more to help the refugees. We’re due to get the official confirmation for these plans by next week, so we’ll see how much of all these leaks bears out then, but it does appear that the ambitious plan is coming together, and perhaps all of the overblown concerns for plans nobody has seen or articulated may be for naught.
Roundup: Senate drama a hopeful sign
Drama in the Senate! Conservative Senator John Wallace quits the Conservative caucus over what he calls irreconcilable differences with the current leadership and fellow Conservative senators over their constitutional role. Will this streak of independent thinking spread to more Conservatives as the iron grip of the former Prime Minister weakens? (Note: Please read those preceding sentences in Clone Wars newsreel voice). In all seriousness, this was bound to happen, and it may not be the last we’ll see either. You see, Senators generally get more independent the longer they’re on the job, and historically that independence goes into overdrive once the Prime Minister that appointed them is no longer in charge, and it gets even more pronounced during a leadership contest. Wallace was part of the Class of 2009 in the Conservative Senate caucus, making him one of the longer-serving members, and he’s starting to feel his independence much more now. With Harper out of the way, and the inappropriate attempts by the PMO to exercise invisible levers of power within the Senate now over – attempts which only succeeded because mass appointments created a situation where those newbie senators were given the false notion that they could and should be whipped, alongside a sense that they needed to go along with what they were being told to do in order to “support the prime minister.” That pressure is gone, and things that have been bothering Wallace for the past couple of years – things like the shabby treatment of those formerly suspended senators who were not given an appropriate chance to address the accusations made about them, or the ways in which deeply flawed Conservative private members bills were passed without amendment “because amending the bill would kill it” they were constantly told (never mind that it should be an object lesson to MPs to do their jobs of due diligence instead of passing bills blindly). From the sounds of it, the current Senate leadership is looking to try and keep up some of their heavy-handed practices, and Wallace has had enough. There have been other Conservatives who bucked the party line on a number of other bills in the last parliament (the revolt over C-377 the first time around being a good example, and those holdouts who kept up their objections the second time around being ones to watch), so we may start seeing more Conservative senators ready to do their jobs more diligently. Nevertheless, Wallace’s stand this week is a good sign.
DRAMA! Conservative Senator John Wallace resigns from caucus out of "irreconcilable differences." #senCA #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/40mplO2z1w
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) November 18, 2015
Roundup: Return of the airplane pressers
After very little media time at the G20 in Turkey, Prime Minister Trudeau held a press conference on the flight to the Philippines yesterday, taking every question, and generally being far more open than Harper ever was on an international trip. There were a number of messages – first, that while the plan remains to withdraw the CF-18s from combat in Iraq and Syria, we would be stepping up training on the ground beyond the 69 special operations trainers there currently, and the what that training might look like is still being determined. Second, he spoke about his forthcoming bilateral meeting with President Obama while at the APEC summit, and that there was a lot of climate discussion at the G20 that will continue right through to the Paris summit, with Canada looking to get on board with more robust discussions and pushing more recalcitrant countries to step up. Finally, when it comes to Syrian refugees, yet more assurances that security is not being compromised as part of the push to get the promised 25,000 here before the end of the year. As for that APEC summit, Stéphane Dion and Chrystia Freeland were there in advance of Trudeau talking trade and in particular the TPP, since that looks to be one of the dominant themes on the agenda there.
Roundup: Refugee hysteria
The question of Syrian refugees in the aftermath of the Paris attacks has reached ridiculous proportions, as a number of American state governors declared that they were going to let ISIS win and terrorize them, by insisting that they didn’t want any Syrian refugees in their states. Because it’s the refugees that have been responsible for mass shootings in the States, right? Closer to home, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall decided he was going to be the one to try and crank up the concern trolling over refugees to eleven, saying that he wants the whole thing suspended because he thinks that security screening is being compromised in order to reach the “quota” and “deadline,” despite there being zero evidence to that effect, and the fact that in order for people to be registered refugees under the UNHCR, most of these kinds of background checks will already have been completed. Unfortunately, Wall is also cynically pandering to populist sentiment that has been stoked by the hysteria of what happened in Paris, in defiance of logic and fact. What is fortunate, however, is that pretty much every other province has disavowed this kind of nonsense and is ready to push ahead, with Quebec and Ontario ready to accept some 16,000 refugees, Rachel Notley being okay with the accelerated timeline, Greg Selinger saying that Manitobans are excited to welcome newcomers, and Christy Clark recognizing the urgency to bring refugees over. So it looks like Wall is the outlier on this one, but that’s not exactly a surprise, considering that critical thinking hasn’t been his strongest suit on a number of other files *cough*Senate reform*cough*.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/666337468132761600