Tag Archives: Maxime Bernier

Roundup: Leniency for chronic offenders

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There was an interesting piece about document security lapses within the federal government, which is something that speaks to me as someone who spent time doing records management within a federal department back during my early days in Ottawa as I was building up my freelance career (before I started on the Hill). The report cited 3075 lapses in the past year at Public Services and Procurement, with six employees being cited as chronic offenders.

During my time doing this kind of document work, there were a rash of news stories about secret documents being left unattended, or being thrown out and found on street corners, and much of it boils down to a culture within the public service of not caring about document security – in part because people aren’t trained to care about it. It was also because, in my department’s experience, every time they would train an admin assistant in document management, she would go on mat leave, then her replacement wouldn’t be trained to the same level, and she would go on mat leave or another assignment, and her replacement not trained, and on it went. So records went unattended, and people in the department stopped properly dealing with their records, including those who were supposed to be kept secret. And you’d see people in the Tim Horton’s downstairs from the office with Protected of Secret file folders on them, despite the fact that they weren’t supposed to leave the office area. And nobody seemed to care about that fact – all of which reinforced the notion that there isn’t a culture of responsibility around these kinds of things.

Which brings me back to the article. With those chronic offenders, they are being treated leniently, despite the fact that they are supposed to be subjected to tough sanctions, including demotion or termination. But as with so many things in the public service, where there are so few instances where there are consequences for transgressions, it seems to reinforce the notion that document security doesn’t need to be taken seriously, and then we get more security and privacy breaches. If there were actual consequences, that might start making an effort at reducing the number of breaches.

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Roundup: Her Excellency’s many issues

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The floodgates have opened, and stories about the difficult first year that Her Excellency Julie Payette has been having as Governor General have been fast and furious. From concerns that she’s still living at Rideau Gate rather than Rideau Hall despite there being renovated living quarters now available, to concerns about her not telling her security detail where she’s at, the concerns on the ground that she’s breaking convention by not visiting every province in her first year, were all warm-ups for this wide-ranging piece in the National Post that compiles a lot of the things we’ve been hearing unofficially in Ottawa, about what a struggle the year has been. While some of it is growing pains, and some of it are potentially unfair comparisons to having previously appointed Governors General who were superhuman in their ability to take on a volume of work (and in the case of someone like Adrienne Clarkson, write all of her own speeches for 500+ engagements in a year), I was particularly disturbed by the fact that the Liberal Research Bureau was doing the background checks and vetting for the appointment when Trudeau should have kept the Vice-Regal Appointments Committee in operation (and the only reason anyone can think as to why he disbanded it was that it was Harper’s creation and it was simply an act of pettiness). The fact that they didn’t properly prepare her for the role is also a big red flag as to the seriousness with which they undertook the process and the decision. I hope that these are just growing pains and that they’ll sort themselves out, but given how badly this government has managed its appointment processes so far, it really leaves one questioning some of the competence of the senior ranks of this government.

If there’s a silver lining to all of this, I would say that I hope it means that it might encourage some of these charities and organisations that the GG used to be the patron of might look instead to members of the royal family. This could very well be a golden opportunity to start re-forging some links with our monarchy, and getting more royals on our shores to have a lot more face-time and remining both royals and Canadians that we have bonds that need to be strengthened, lest they atrophy. It’s also a particularly good time given the addition of Megan, Duchess of Sussex, to the family, and the fact that she spent that much time in Toronto gives her that connection already, and we should be capitalising on it (not to mention the fact that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has Canadian ancestors including a pre-Confederation Prime Ministers, and we should be milking that connection for all it’s worth too).

Meanwhile, here’s a look at Payette finally getting to Humbolt, Saskatchewan, six months later, and the fact that she’s been reluctant to visit other sites of tragedies, like Fredericton after the recent shootings there.

Special note: If you’re concerned about the tornado that hit this area, they were to the west of Ottawa, and across the river in Gatineau, and nowhere near the Parliamentary precinct. I wasn’t affected, and my power didn’t go out (hence why you’re getting this morning’s roundup).

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Roundup: All about Alleslev

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As the fallout from Leona Alleslev’s defection to the Conservatives continues, the comments from her former colleagues have remarkably tended not to be bitter or angry, but more bewilderment as she didn’t express any concerns to them beforehand, though there was understandably some shock from her riding association. That’s a bit shocking considering the pure vitriol that we’ve heard from Conservatives when they had defections in the past (particularly when women defected, if you recall the misogyny lobbed at Belinda Stronach after her floor-crossing). Of course, that also hasn’t stopped the Liberals from leaking effusive emails of praise that Alleslev sent them, and speeches she gave that completely contradict everything that she told the Commons on Monday when she made the decision. I remain struck by this insistence that the current government isn’t offering the “foundational change” she claims to be looking for, yet is aligning herself with a party whose recent policy convention was pretty much dominated with resolutions to simply turn back the clock to the Harper era, which was apparently a golden age. If she wanted “foundational change” from that, I’m not sure that going back to reinforce it is what she’s looking for.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the history of floor-crossings in Canada, and the trends for when it goes well for those MPs, and when it all goes down in flames.

Bernier blindsided

Maxime Bernier’s team is finding it hard to keep up with online groups pretending to act on his behalf but have no actual associations with him, and which are posting offensive material and items that he says are contrary to his positions. I have two things to say about this: 1) It’s hard to believe that his team are such rank amateurs that they didn’t secure these domain names in the first place, which bodes ill for the kind of logistical knowledge they would need to run a national campaign; and 2) Bernier has brought much of this on himself. By winking to white nationalists, and by not even dog-whistling, but rather playing these tunes with a tuba, he’s invited the very xenophobes that he claims aren’t welcome in his party (as he keeps playing their tunes on his tuba while staring wide-eyed as they keep flocking, like he’s the Pied Piper of racists). This credulous, naïve act he’s putting on is getting a bit tiresome. If he doesn’t understand how his message plays out, that’s another strike against him being ready for the prime time of leading a credible political party.

Please note: I’ll be hosting a live chat today at 7 PM Eastern for $10 subscribers to my Patreon, to answer your questions about the return of Parliament. Subscribers have access to exclusive content not available elsewhere.

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Roundup: A melodramatic floor crossing

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So there was a bit of drama in the House of Commons yesterday as Liberal MP Leona Alleslev gave a speech that served as her rebuke to her own party and her signal that she was crossing the floor to the Conservatives. It’s unusual that this was done on the floor of the Commons as opposed to the usual manner of a surprise press conference where the leader comes out with his or her new MP, and they give a repudiation of the deserted party along the way. And while Alleslev told Power & Politics that she hadn’t made her mind up until the last minute, when she was giving the speech, she had reached out to Andrew Scheer in August and had conversations with him then. But considering that Scheer had already called a press conference for just before QP far earlier in the morning (after Candice Bergen already gave a press conference on the party’s plans of the fall), I’m calling bullshit on that explanation.

While I will defend the rights of floor crossers with my dying breath (and I have a column to that effect coming out later today), there’s something else in Alleslev’s speech that sticks in my craw:

“The government must be challenged openly and publicly. But for me to publicly criticize the government as a Liberal, would undermine the government and, according to my code of conduct, be dishonourable.”

This is ridiculous and wrong. Plenty of Liberal MPs have openly criticized the government. Some have faced minor punishments for it, others not, but I have yet to hear anyone saying that Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, for example, undermined the government. It’s the role of backbenchers to hold government to account, just as much as it is the opposition – they’re not supposed to be cheerleaders (which is especially why it’s frustrating that they treat their QP questions as suck-up opportunities, with the exception of Bill Casey). Government backbenchers get the added ability to have no-holds barred discussions behind the caucus room door with the PM and cabinet, which can be even more effective than opposition questions under the right circumstances. And her former caucus members have expressed some disbelief in her excuse that she’s said that – particularly that there were no warning signs (and I’ve heard this from numerous MPs).

I’m also a bit dubious with the reasons she’s given for why she’s decided to cross the floor, particularly because she recited a bunch of Conservative talking points that don’t have any basis in reality, such as the apparent weakness of the economy (seriously, the gods damned Bank of Canada says our economy is running near capacity and unemployment is at a 40-year low), and her concern about military procurement (she does remember the Conservative record, right?). Never mind the fact that she’s suddenly reversing positions she publicly held just weeks ago, as people digging up her Twitter history are demonstrating.

There is also a question of opportunism here, not only for what she thinks she may get by switching her allegiance to Scheer, but she may have read the tea leaves from the provincial election and gotten spooked. Whatever the reason, she made her choice as she has the agency to do, and her constituents will get to hold her to account for it, which is the beauty of our system.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt wonders if Alleslev’s defection means that Trudeau isn’t keeping pace with the rapid change of pace in politics (though I disagree with her on the calculations around prorogation).

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Roundup: Asking the wrong questions about the rules

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There was a piece on the CBC site this weekend that irked me, and I’m not sure it was just the problematic headline – why our ethic rules aren’t keeping politicians out of trouble. It’s a ridiculous construction on the face of it – you can have all the laws you want, and it won’t stop people from contravening them out of malice or ignorance. After all, the Criminal Code hasn’t eliminated crime, so why would an ethics regime miraculously end all ethics violations by public office holders?

While the piece quotes an academic who says that part of the problem is that the rules regime tells politicians how they can’t act, but not how they should act, so much of it is based on judgment calls, and not everyone has good judgment. But more to the point, in the two prominent situations that we’ve seen in recent months – the Trudeau report about his vacation with the Aga Khan, and the LeBlanc report about whether his wife’s cousin counted sufficiently as “family” under the definition of the Act, is that both of these situations were based on the judgement of the Ethics Commissioners rather than what was in the legislation. Mary Dawson took it upon herself to judge how someone defines their relationship with the Aga Khan (who is akin to the Pope of the Ismaili Muslim faith), while Mario Dion took what has been called an overly broad interpretation so that LeBlanc is forced to treat one of his wife’s sixty first cousins as close when all evidence points to them being mere acquaintances (and this after Dion has publicly come out to state that he wants to be seen as tough and not a lapdog). I’m not sure how any of these situations points to how the rules are stopping politicians from staying out of trouble when the trouble they’re in is based on a single person’s choice of how to interpret those rules, in some cases in defiance of common sense.

I would also caution that we need to be careful about setting a regime that is too constrictive, because it becomes either a means of either becoming one of constant investigation for political score-settling, or a system where we have yet another Officer of Parliament who becomes the embodiment of “Mother, May I?” and we don’t let politicians exercise any judgment that we can hold them accountable for – and we can’t hold these commissioners to account for their judgment, even when it can be found to be dubious. (Also note that we also made the requirements for who can be Commissioner to be so restrictive that anyone qualified wouldn’t want the job, which is another problem in and of itself). The amount of energy we put into the penny ante “scandals” in Canadian politics, which are piddling in comparison to the kinds of gross violations that happen regularly in the US, or that did happen in the UK (moat cleaning, anyone?) makes you wonder about our preoccupations. Which isn’t to say that we should ignore them, but let’s treat them with the gravity that they deserve, and I’m not sure that any of the “scandals” we’ve seen in this parliament are worth the energy we’ve expended on lighting our hair on fire about them.

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Roundup: The people’s vanity project

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Yesterday, Maxime Bernier confirmed his party will be called the “People’s Party of Canada,” just like so many communist parties in the world. Oops. And like those other “People’s Parties,” he won’t hold a contested leadership race, and he’ll get the final say on policies, so that’s off to a great start. Even better was the fact that his logo is simply a repurposing of an old Reform Party logo, and the policy page is a word-for-word copy of the Libertarian Party’s policy (which people also insist was a copy of Bernier’s leadership race policies), so that’s a great start. And during his press conference, he already started with the policy musings that apparently originated from the Internet’s darker recesses. So there’s that.

And aside from the trite attempt to use gay rights as a cover for bashing Muslims, Bernier has a glimmer of awareness that he’s going to be branded with the xenophobes he’s riling up, and he insists that anti-Semites and xenophobes will be kicked out of the party, while at the same time as he’s still using not-even-thinly-veiled xenophobia to try and create a wedge between his nascent party and the Liberals. But while he hopes to make immigration and refugees (and yes, there is a difference) between them as a wedge, he’s already getting warnings that he’s going to have to be very careful to keep the racists out (not to mention the alt-right, the MRAs, and whichever other dog-whistles he happens to be blasting at the time).

Meanwhile, John Geddes deciphers Bernier’s messaging and what he’s offering based on it, while Andrew Coyne reminds all of those who insist this will simply split the Conservative vote that yes, there is actually room in the Canadian political spectrum for such a “worthy experiment,” assuming that Bernier were capable enough to pull it off (and Coyne, like the rest of us, has his doubts). And Paul Wells delivers an epic takedown of Bernier’s potential voters.

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Roundup: Stop saying disallowance

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As the drama over Doug Ford using the Notwithstanding Clause to ram through his petty vengeance on Toronto City Hall drags on, we saw new levels of stupid demands yesterday, as Toronto City Council voted on a motion yesterday to request the federal government use its constitutional disallowance powers on the bill and kill it. But that’s never going to happen. Likewise with people writing the Lieutenant Governor to demand that she not sign the bill. That’s never going to happen. As this piece explains, disallowance is a dead letter because it would create a constitutional crisis over federalism, just like a Lieutenant Governor disallowing a bill from a government that has the confidence of the legislature would also be a constitutional crisis. And Trudeau has stated repeatedly that he’s not going to get involved – sure, his Toronto MPs can write a letter to Queen’s Park to express their concern, but this isn’t his fight, and he knows full well that getting involved would create a shitstorm the likes we haven’t seen in this country in decades. So no, Ontario – you get to lay in the bed you made.

More concerning, however, is the fact that Power & Politics brought on a bunch of former premiers who all gave Ford a pass on using the Notwithstanding Clause, and each of them going after the courts in one way or another – Christy Clark in particular making it sound like she would rather a government run roughshod over the rights of minorities rather than let courts protect them at the expense of project approvals (thinking specifically of Trans Mountain). And most alarming was the fact that there was no pushback against any of this, which you’d think would be important to have. Apparently not.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1040427270945464321

Meanwhile, Supriya Dwivedi writes a stunning takedown of Ford’s many hypocrisies on this issue, and the fact that there is far too much silence over his attack on the fundamental democratic notion of judicial review. As well, the former Executive Legal Officer of the Supreme Court of Canada has some interesting analysis about how Ford’s move could violate international law.

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Roundup: Self-inflicted leadership wounds

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There was a fairly damning piece out about the state of the NDP yesterday, as they began their caucus retreat in Surrey, BC, and how the party basically put itself on hold for two years after they turfed Thomas Mulcair but left him in place for two years while they engaged in an overly long leadership process, only to let their fundraising collapse and their outreach stagnate. I do have vague recollections about how they were totally going to use the two-year!leadership contest to totally re-energise the party, and it would totally bring in all kinds of new fundraising and members, and so on. Turns out, none of that happened, Mulcair being left in place slowly poisoned the well, and at the end, they wound up with a leader without a seat, and who has been largely absent both from Ottawa and the national stage (leaving another defeated leadership candidate in his place in Ottawa). I’m hoping that the entire Canadian political scene takes this as an object lesson that the way we’re running leadership contests is very bad, and that we need to get back to the sensible and accountable caucus selection (and removal) of leaders. The pessimist in me, however, sees this very likely reality that they won’t take the lesson, and we’ll continue stumbling along.

Also in NDP news is the damage control about the Erin Weir debacle, and they’re getting out activists and pet columnists to come to their defence and to insist that Weir is the worst person imaginable, ignoring that he took to the media to defend himself after a campaign of leaks started against him as part of the Mean Girling around him, and they’ve offered nothing to substantiate that he is a harasser in any meaningful sense of the word. Jagmeet Singh even proclaimed that he wouldn’t be intimidated by “elites” from the party’s own grassroots – their own current and former MPs and MPPs in Saskatchewan – into changing his mind. It’s actuall a bit stunning.

Notwithstanding

Because this is still Very Big News, there is talk coming out of PC circles in Ontario that Doug Ford is willing to use the nuclear option to show that he’s tough against the courts where Trudeau isn’t, and then uses the false notion that the Notwithstanding Clause could have been used on the Trans Mountain ruling – which it couldn’t, because the Clause only applies to certain sections of the Charter, for which Section 35 is not a part of. But since when to facts matter when you’re pursuing a private grievance in a big, public way? Worse was the fact that people were trying to get Ford to bring up the fact that Justice Belobaba refused to freeze Omar Khadr’s $10 million settlement and turn it over to the widow of his putative victim. Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, continues to say that this is a political issue for Ontarians to deal with, not for him to swoop in and do something about, and he’s right.

Meanwhile, here’s Paul Wells snarkily congratulating Ford’s government for embracing the extremism it too Stephen Harper a decade to find and for making the Notwithstanding Clause easier for any other government to use in a fit of their own pique. Law professor Vanessa MacDonnell thinks that Ford should clearly articulate why he is invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, while Susan Delacourt wonders why Trudeau left it up to Brian Mulroney to forcefully denounce the invocation.

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Roundup: Notwithstanding Ford

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It was a crazy day in the state of constitutional law yesterday, as an Ontario judge struck down Doug Ford’s bill to reduce the size of Toronto city council on some rather dubious grounds, and Doug Ford responded by insisting that he would invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to ensure it passed anyway, no matter that the issue by which he’s going to use the seldom-used provision on is of dubious merit, and has all of the appearances of enacting a political grudge (while all of the “reasonable” members of his Cabinet who were supposed to keep his worst impulses in check cheer him on). It’s a full-blown tire fire.

For starters, here’s a bit of context about just what the Notwithstanding Clause actually is, and some history of its use. But what is perhaps more alarming are the number of voices who are calling on the federal government to invoke the defunct constitutional provisions around disallowance as a way of thwarting Ford – and some of that has been fuelled by Toronto mayor John Tory meeting with prime minister Justin Trudeau last night. I can pretty much guarantee you that Trudeau, however, won’t touch the disallowance powers with a bargepole, because a) the powers are defunct for a reason (in that the issues that disallowance was used on are better dealt with through the courts), and b) it would stir up such a shitstorm of epic proportions that it would be difficult to contain the political damage, and I’m not sure that Trudeau is willing to expend that much political capital for something that is really not his political ambit, and he’s likely to win most of Toronto’s seats again regardless. But if you also look at the message that Trudeau’s minister of intergovernmental affairs, Dominic LeBlanc sent out, the not unsubtle language in there is that this is a fight for the political arena, and Ontario voters will have to deal with the mess that they created, which is pretty much how it should be. It’s not going to be easy if we’re having these kinds of issues three months in, but people shouldn’t expect another order of government to swoop in and save them. That’s not how democracy works.

Meanwhile, Emmett Macfarlane walks through what’s constitutionally dubious about the court ruling, while Andrew Coyne invokes some high dudgeon about use of the Notwithstanding Clause and Ford’s thuggish populist tactics. Chris Selley reminds us that so much of this episode is because Ford is all about chaos, and he brings more of it with these tactics. Susan Delacourt, rather chillingly, wonders which will be the next premier to decide that the Charter is inconvenient for their populist proposals. And University of Ottawa vice-dean of law Carissima Mathen both writes about why Ford’s comments are so offensive to our system of laws and governance, plus offers some more context about the Notwithstanding Clause in this video segment that you should watch.

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Roundup: No magic wands or Senate public bills

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau went to Edmonton yesterday, and amidst his many media appearances, made a few key points – that getting approval for Trans Mountain was a priority, that while considerations like an appeal or legislation were part of the “all options on the table,” he also made the point that he won’t use “legislative tricks” to get it through, and made some pointed comments about the Conservatives demanding that he wave a magic wand that doesn’t really exist to get it built. If you listened to what he was saying through the layer of pabulum that wraps all of his statements, the core point was that they will comply with the Federal Court of Appeal decision and find the best way to fulfil the roadmap to approval laid out therein.

And oh, what legislative tricks are being proposed. In a particularly boneheaded move, Independent senator Doug Black insists that passing his Senate Public Bill on the Trans Mountain pipeline will declare it in the national interest, and poof, problem solved. (He also suggested giving the NEB four months to redo the portions of the assessment related to marine tanker traffic, when credible people who know these processes say that’s a six-month process, so score another win for Black’s credibility). The problem of course is that there is no actual legislative solution to the issue – the certification is a Cabinet decision, and while some people suggest retroactively changing the legislation to keep the NEB scoping as it was in the report Cabinet based its decision on that the courts found to be flawed, that’s a prospect that will only engender more litigation and will cause further delays – which is why Trudeau has been making the point that they need to ensure long-term solutions so that there will be investor confidence (as Suncor’s CEO announced that they would halt any expansion of their operations until there is a firm pipeline in the ground). Oh, and no piece of legislation can get around Section 35 obligations for the duty to consult, and while I can see some political merit in getting the Supreme Court to weigh in on what exactly constitutes meaningful consultation, it sounds an awful lot like passing the buck to them in order to take the heat off of a political issue, which they really don’t appreciate, and frankly they’ve ruled enough times that governments should have a good idea about what constitutes meaningful consultation.

To add fuel to this fire, Jason Kenney has started making pronouncements about how this recent Court decision is “fuelling separatism” in the province, which really irks me because this wasn’t some bureaucratic decision out of Ottawa – it’s about the rule of law (and if you really want to be technical, the bureaucratic decisions of the NEB came out of Calgary, which is where their headquarters are located). Kenney is being a bad actor and is holding out lighters for arsonists to grab, only to turn around and say “Who, me? I wasn’t inflaming anything! I’m just relaying what I hear,” which is a very dubious denial, and he’s playing with fire in order to score some cheap political points. Add to that, his agitating against the rule of law has darker authoritarian tones, as Colby Cosh pointed out last week, given that this notion about Canada not being “open for business” because the courts protect peoples’ rights. He should be called out on this, rather than being encouraged to keep making these points by credulous journalists (just like those same voices who let Senator Black go unchallenged in that piece).

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne makes that very point – that this ruling is about the rule of law, and that’s a good thing. Too many actors in this are trying to muddy the waters or accuse the judiciary of some kind of activism that they’re not actually doing (while encouraging their own type of activism that would ignore the rule of law in favour of perceived economic benefit), which is a very worrying sign.

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