At his first stop on his Northern tour in Whitehorse, Stephen Harper announced a major Arctic research agenda to be spearheaded by the National Research Council. He wants to turn unique Canadian challenges into opportunities! Okay then. Michael Den Tandt notes that Harper is also in election mode, and is starting to flesh out his vision of the agenda for when that happens. (Den Tandt’s video file of the trip is here).
Tag Archives: Keystone XL
Roundup: Dubiously non-partisan advertising
The government is enlisting the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the College of Family Physicians to put their logos on a Government of Canada, non-partisan ad campaign designed to talk about the dangers of marijuana. Where this becomes problematic is because the Conservative party has been making a lot of hay attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their policy around marijuana decriminalization, and it starts to look like a partisan ad using the government and tax dollars as a shield. It’s bad optics, and even if the three medical associations want to sign on because they have genuine concerns with teenagers using pot (as well they should), the timing and the current environment does taint the whole exercise.
Roundup: Another hit of distraction sauce
The NDP are set to crack open that bottle of distraction sauce as the Board of Internal Economy sits today to discuss the issue of “satellite offices.” The distraction – that they want the meeting open to the public (so that they can showboat and obstruct, like they did when Thomas Mulcair went before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee while calling it “transparency”) and when their wish is denied, they can rail to the media about how terrible the state of affairs is, and how it’s all a conviction by a “kangaroo court” that’s all just partisans being mean to them because they’re just so awesome, and all of that. The goal, of course, is to try and lose the substance of the story around their satellite offices amidst all of the other noise that they’re generating around it. Because that’s how you maturely handle a misspending issue in Canadian politics.
Roundup: Cruel and unusual cuts
The Federal Court has ruled against the government’s healthcare cuts for refugees, and given them four months to make changes before they are struck down on the basis of being cruel and unusual, and the fact that the government hasn’t offered a good Section 1 defence (reasonable limits within a free and democratic society) for their cuts. The “cruel and unusual” is a fairly novel reading of the Charter, but there does seem to be some possible basis for it. Of course, it will all come out in the appeals, since the government announced immediately that it would be appealing, before trotting out the usual canards that refugee claimants were somehow getting better healthcare coverage than average Canadians (something the judgement itself noted was a falsehood). The judgement also noted that there was no proof that the changes saved taxpayers any money, since these claimants with health conditions would generally wind up in a hospital when their problems became acute, which costs the system even more. Kate Heartfield notes that legal or not, those refugee health changes are still bad policy. And in case you need a refresher, here are some of the other losses the government has had at the courts lately, which will all be the subjects of fundraising pleas. Activist courts! OH NOES!
Roundup: Different lessons before the by-election
Not that Parliament has risen for the summer, the leaders can begin their summer tours in earnest, without having to take those inconvenient breaks to show up for the odd Question Period or a vote here or there. Because you know, they’re meeting with “real Canadians” as opposed to doing their actual jobs. And with by-elections happening a week away, both Trudeau and Mulcair are in Toronto today to campaign there, both of them drawing different lessons from the Ontario election, while the people who study these sorts of things aren’t necessarily sure that voters are committed to the same parties provincially and federally, and that they may be making a different calculation electorally.
Roundup: Sweeping, questionable changes
The House and Senate have both risen for the summer, but as they did, Jason Kenney and Chris Alexander unveiled their massive overhaul of the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme. It proposes to try and make the programme harder to use, with ever-diminishing caps on the number of workers (who were a fraction of one percent of the total workforce in the country, incidentally) with the aim of getting more unemployed Canadians, as well as Aboriginals, new immigrants and people with disabilities into these low-wage jobs. But Kenney seemed tone deaf to some of the massive labour challenges in Alberta, to demographic issues, to incentivising labour mobility, to the problems of aging populations in rural regions that are depopulating, but most especially to the attitude change that needs to happen if they think that university graduates will think that low-wage jobs in the food service industry or even higher-wage jobs in processing jobs like meat packing are going to be the answer to their labour shortages. The NDP condemned the changes without actually reading them, and all of their objections were addressed, not that it mattered. The Liberals made some pretty salient comments about the implausible changes to inspections and the giant loophole going unaddressed through the youth labour exchange programme. The restaurant and small business associations are really unhappy with the changes, which hamstring their ability to find workers in tough markets. John Geddes starts picking out the flaws in Kenney’s case, including demographics and the notion that it’s likely that non-Canadians made for cheaper and more reliable hires. Andrew Coyne says that the changes are simply bad policy, which punishes the service sector where a government goes out of its way to prevent a manufacturing job from offshoring. Coyne notes that if Canadians don’t want to take these jobs, then they shouldn’t be artificially shoehorned into them, but rather to spend their efforts creating value elsewhere in the economy while those who do want those jobs should be made to be Canadians by using the TFW programme as a pathway to citizenship.
Roundup: A Freudian slip by MacKay?
Peter MacKay apparently misspoke during Question Period yesterday. Whether it was a Freudian slip, or an inability to read the script he’d been provided, it certainly raised eyebrows as he stated that Justice Robert Mainville would be a great pick for the Supreme Court, when Mainville was being moved from the Federal Court of Appeal to the Quebec Court of Appeal. The move had given rise to speculation that it was an attempt to put him in place to move to the Supreme Court when Justice LeBel retires in November, and MacKay all-but confirmed that was the intention, before he back-pedalled and said that he was simply referring to the fact that the Quebec Court of Appeal is the province’s supreme court – a fairly lame back track, and fodder for the court challenge being launched by the same Toronto lawyer that successfully challenged the Nadon appointment.
QP: Hudak math and Kijiji data
For the first time of the week, all three leaders were in the Chamber, possibly for one of the last times before the Commons rises. Thomas Mulcair led off by asking about cuts to job market research, wondering how it could be justified. Stephen Harper responded by insisted that it wasn’t correct and more resources had been diverted into the area, and by the way, we created one million net new jobs. Mulcair retorted with a crack about Hudak math, and looking for information on Kijiji, to which Harper noted that the information came from Statistics Canada. When Mulcair demanded that the hiring tax credit for small businesses be extended, Harper reminded them that they voted against that time-limited measure in the first place. Mulcair changed topics and moved to the fighter jet procurement, and if other companies could put in bids. Harper assured him that the report had not yet been considered by cabinet, but they would soon. Justin Trudeau was up for the Liberals, and noted that the previous chief of defence staff noted that the F-35 was not the only suitable plane for Canada, and whether the process was going to be open and transparent. Harper repeated that cabinet had not yet considered the report. Trudeau moved onto the Northern Gateway Pipeline and the widespread opposition to it. Harper responded that the government was in the process of reviewing the report of the National Energy Board, and they would be coming to a decision soon.
Roundup: Standby for evening sittings
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan is calling for evening sittings for the remainder of the spring sitting of the Commons, in order to get stuff done. Here’s a list of five bills that the government is looking to get through before they rise for the summer. And you can bet that the late nights will make MPs all that much crankier as the last stretch before summer grinds along. Get ready for silly season, ladies and gentlemen.
Roundup: Victoria Day and the Canadian Crown
Given that yesterday was Victoria Day, here is a look at how it’s a particularly idiosyncratic Canadian holiday, which combines the celebration of the monarch who founded our country along with the official birthday of the reigning monarch, and has a history wrapped up in things like Empire Day, but remains uniquely Canadian all the same.