Tag Archives: Liberal Leadership

Roundup: Vacuous yet patriotic ads

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Oh, focus group testing. Once again you pull through in calling out the government’s somewhat Orwellian-named “Responsible Resource Development” ads as being light on substance but hey, they’re uplifting and patriotic. Just the way the government likes them to be. These ads come as part of tweaks being made in advance of the government putting out another $9 million worth of them in the coming months. Meanwhile, remember that promised federal-provincial oilsands monitoring regime? A year later, still nothing in place. But at least they intend to have a “world class system,” which is what counts – right?

Vote attendance figures for the Commons are now published, with the best attendance (the Government House Leader and Whips respectively), and worst (NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who was on leave to deal with his alcoholism). Mind you, this is not actual attendance figures, because those aren’t made public (unlike the Senate).

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Roundup: Wallin’s celebrity senatorial status

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Senator Pamela Wallin takes the Toronto Star on a tour of her Saskatchewan hometown, and talks about her travel expenses, including the fact that it’s not easy to get to Wadena from Ottawa, and that because she’s an honorary captain in the Air Force, she has to travel to events at airbases around the country. Meanwhile, Senator Segal writes about his proposition to hold a referendum on Senate abolition as a means of getting people talking about the institution, but given the state of civic illiteracy in this country, my sense is that it’s a very dangerous proposition, and is akin to asking people if they want to remove their pancreas if they don’t know what it does. Senator McInnis thinks an elected Upper Chamber would have more “credibility,” but he doesn’t discuss any of the other consequences of such an action, including gridlock or battles over who has more “democratic legitimacy” and therefore clout. Jesse Klein writes about electoral and Senate reform while relying on meaningless emotional and romantic terms like “fairness” without paying enough attention to either current electoral realities or the actual consequences of the changes.

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Magic Bean Economics and tragicomedy: The Mississauga debate

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The third Liberal leadership debate was held today in Mississauga, and while the format was somewhat more successful than the previous debacle, it really did reinforce the candidate ranking that has emerged over the course of the debates. The one-on-one questions could have been better served if each exchange were another minute longer, and the moderate stepped in when they tried to talk about themselves in the form of a question. Because really, take the format seriously. The three-person debates worked quite well, and got the best traction of the debates to date.

Remaining in the bottom four were David Bertschi, George Takach, Martin Cauchon and Karen McCrimmon. If this contest were like RuPaul’s Drag Race, as it should be, then Bertschi and at least one other would have been eliminated by this point, but alas, they are still hanging around. And once again, they reminded us why they are in the bottom four.

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Roundup: New residency questions

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It seems that Senator Peterson of Nunavut is next on the list to have his residency questioned. Apparently he may be spending more time in BC than in Nunavut, where he is representing. Meanwhile, intrepid reporters went to check out signs of life at Senator Mac Harb’s alleged primary residence in the Ottawa Valley, and found the Christmas lights were still up. Closer to home, there is talk that Senator Wallin’s travel expenses were flagged during a random audit, for what it’s worth. And yes, the audits of those residences will be made public. What is amusing is the concern that the NDP are showing about “secret audits” in the Senate – as though the Commons Board of Internal Inquiry were a paragon of openness and transparency as opposed to the most secretive organisation on the Hill.

What’s that? The RCMP has a problem of bullying within the ranks? You don’t say!

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Garneau, Trudeau, and the presidentialisation of leadership

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At a press conference in Ottawa Wednesday morning, Marc Garneau laid down a marker in the leadership campaign between himself and Justin Trudeau. Essentially, Garneau called out Trudeau for not having enough solid policy positions, never mind that Trudeau has consistently said that he doesn’t want to come out with a full platform because the last thing the party needs is another top-down leader making pronouncements.

Without inserting myself into one camp or the other, it seems to me that there is a much bigger question at play here about the direction that Canadian politics has been taking, and it does bring me back to a basic discussion around civic literacy. Moreover, it’s a discussion about the role that parties play within our democratic system, and the way in which the grassroots interacts with those parties. With power ever increasingly centralising in leaders’ offices, this is probably a discussion that more people should be having.

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Roundup: Absenteeism, transparency and outside auditors

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It’s time to look at the absenteeism rates over in the Senate once more, and Senator Romeo Dallaire currently has the highest rate, largely because he’s doing research at Dalhousie on child soldiers and advising the UN – things he’s not declaring as Senate business and isn’t claiming expenses or time on. The promised review of absenteeism rules is still ongoing, but has become a bit of a backburner issue with the other things going on at the moment. And no, you can’t actually find out what the absenteeism rates of MPs are, because they don’t make that data available, whereas the Senate does (even if you do have to head to an office building during business hours to find out). As for the allegations of misspending, there are suggestions that they turn the investigation over to the Auditor General because it may be too much for the three-member committee to handle – though I know there has been reluctance to have the AG look at their expenses because he reports to them. Oh, and Senator Wallin’s travel claims are now being added to the list of things to be checked by the outside auditor – even though Harper himself asserted that her travel claims are not out of line, which he has not done for Senator Duffy.

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Roundup: Push-poll “miscommunications”

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Oh dear. It seems that despite initially denying the story, the Conservatives did eventually admit to being behind a push-poll in Saskatchewan designed to turn public opinion against the electoral boundaries changes – changes that will disadvantage the Conservatives as genuine urban ridings are carved out of the old distorting “rurban” ridings. Oh, but it was an “oversight” that they didn’t identify themselves. I’m sure the CRTC will be happy to hear that “guilty plea,” as Pierre Poilievre would term it, were this a Liberal mishap. But it’s not, so I’m sure their euphemisms will be equally creative.

The Environment Commissioner tabled his final report yesterday, which details frustrations with the pace of resource projects outstripping the capacity of regulatory agencies who are dealing with changing legislation, jurisdictional confusion, and not enough resources.

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Roundup: Succession and Senate consequences

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University of Ottawa professor Philippe Lagassé writes the definitive look at the Crown succession bill the government introduced last week, and proves how the government and its arguments are entirely wrong about it. Australian constitutional scholar, and the authority on succession issues, Anne Twomey, writes about the bill and how it de-patriates our constitution back to Britain, as well as is a telltale sign about the lengths the government will go to avoid dealing with the provinces.

Speaking of the lengths that Harper will go to in order to avoid the provinces, regarding last week’s other big news – the Senate reference – Paul Wells notes that Harper’s plan seems to have been to try to destabilise the legislative equilibrium by pushing what small changes he could and take advantage of the resulting free-for-all – which sounds about right. Over in the Globe and Mail, there is a look at what an elected Senate under the current proposal means regarding provincial parties running candidates in a body dominated by federal parties. The result is almost certainly chaos that would be largely unworkable, reduced to issue-by-issue coalitions, grinding the legislative process to a halt. Free-for-all that a PM could try to work some additional executive powers out of in order to “break the logjam”? Don’t discount the possibility.

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Domesticity politics: the Winnipeg non-debate

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“I’m sorry my dears, but you are up for elimination.” Ten words that should have been spoken, but one again, were not as the second Liberal leadership – well, “forum” – happened in Winnipeg. It was not a debate, but a series of one-on-one interviews with failed candidate Harvey Locke, whose uninteresting and frankly dull interview style did nothing to advance the plot of the leadership race. Someone pointed out that leaders do more one-on-one interviews than they do debates, so from that viewpoint it made a certain amount of sense – but one would think you’d need a competent interviewer and some actual questions of substance.

There isn’t a whole lot to be said about each of their answers, other than the fact that several of them had a tendency to ramble aimlessly around the topic without offering a substantive answer, and it didn’t help that the interviewer didn’t call them on it or try and keep it engaging.

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Roundup: The politics of the Senate reference

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The big move by the government yesterday was to send a list of reference questions to the Supreme Court with regards to Senate reform – and yes, abolition. The six questions – more like fifteen with the sub-clauses – come at a time when the notion is being mulled over by the Quebec courts at the behest of the provincial government, and the Supreme Court may opt to hold off on their deliberations until that decision is rendered, so that they can take it into consideration. And then comes the politics behind it all – the government claims this will “speed up” the reform process after years of opposition delay – never mind that this reference process could take up to two years, and the only ones stalling were the government themselves because they never brought their bills forward for debate (not that said bills were actually constitutionally sound). It also buys them time to keep the issue alive for the next election and as a fundraising issue for their base, but also provides them options when it comes to considering next steps, because they may need them if they want to continue this rather foolhardy pursuit. The Liberals are playing the smug game of “We wanted this reference six years ago – thanks for catching up.” And the NDP are accusing the government of “more delay” – even though they simply argue for abolition and give nonsense talking points about how much money they would save if that happened (forgetting of course that all of said “savings” and more would entirely be consumed in the interminable court challenges that would come from flawed legislation that would otherwise be caught in the Senate). And there are the legal arguments – is it really unconstitutional, or is the fact that the Prime Minister is still recommending appointments to the Governor General enough to avoid having to go the route of a constitutional amendment, no matter that they’re ensuring that these appointments are “elected,” and that the “democratic mandate” of these newly empowered Senators will have a tangible – and detrimental – effect on the way our system operates. I argue that the Supreme Court justices aren’t morons and will see a backdoor attempt for what it is and call bullshit. Other constitutional scholars aren’t so sure, and say that according to the letter of the law, it looks just fine. But politics – especially the way our Parliament operates – is more than just the letter of the law. It’s an organic whole, and surely that needs to be taken into consideration when a blatant backdoor proposal designed to get around doing the hard work of constitutional negotiation will have a serious and measurable effect on our democratic process. That has to count for something.

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