Nearly all the desks were filled on what was possibly the final QP of the spring. Andrew Scheer led off, concerned about the “astronomical” debt the Liberals were leaving behind (which, in absolute terms, is one of the envies of the world because it’s quite low). Justin Trudeau reminded him that they won the election on promises to invest. Scheer tried again, giving a lame “budgets don’t balance themselves” quip, and Trudeau again reminded him that they needed to invest after the previous government didn’t and hey, lower taxes for the middle class and the Canada Child Benefit. Scheer railed about all of the new taxes being levied (most of which were not new taxes but cancelled tax credits that had little efficacy), and the PM reiterated that he lowered taxes. Scheer jabbed that Trudeau had never been part of the middle class, and Trudeau hit back that boutique tax credits and lower taxes on the wealthiest didn’t help those who needed it the most. Scheer then turned to the new national security bill, saying it removed needed tools for law enforcement agencies. Trudeau noted that they were balancing community safety with rights and freedoms, and that they welcomed recommendations for amendments. Thomas Mulcair was up next, grousing that the government broke their promise on allowing Access to Information requests to ministers offices and the PMO. Trudeau simply noted that they made the biggest reforms to the bills and increased proactive disclosure. Mulcair tried again with added mocking, but Trudeau didn’t budge, and Mulcair then railed that they kicked journalists out of a party fundraiser. Trudeau reminded him that they have raised the bar on transparency and that other parties weren’t doing. Mulcair tried again in French, but Trudeau’s answer didn’t change.
Tag Archives: National Security
Roundup: The disingenuous framing of a committee report
As you may have heard, the Heritage Committee released their long-awaited study on suggested ways to help the local media landscape in Canada. And I’m not here to talk about that, however, but rather how the narrative got completely spun into “Netflix tax!” or “Internet tax!” which wasn’t exactly what they were proposing either. Still, it became a convenient cudgel by which to try and bash the government with.
And that’s the bigger problem with this whole affair – that a committee report is being used to paint the government when it’s backbenchers who are on the committee. That separation between government (meaning Cabinet) and a committee of the legislature is important, and conflating the two is being wilfully disingenuous and makes the problem of not understanding how our parliament works even worse.
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/875529614218731523
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/875530069086744577
https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/875380786563862530
https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/875402337665331200
https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/875403159463768066
Paul and Aaron both have some very valid points. When the opposition frames it as “Netflix tax!” it’s sadly how most media will report it as well, and I didn’t see a lot of corrections going on about what the report actually said, and that’s a problem. But Aaron also has the point about how the media loves to jump on differences of opinion in parties, but when the parties themselves frame the issue, the media often gets swept up in those narratives.
Remember when there were those Conservative backbenchers trying to float some backdoor abortion legislation or motions that the government distanced themselves from but the NDP screamed bloody murder about hidden agendas and so on? This is not far from the same thing. And they know they’re being disingenuous, but they’re doing it anyway, no matter how much they’re actually damaging the perceptions of the institution.
That said, I could be really mean and point out that it may be hard for the Conservatives to tell the difference between backbenchers on a committee and the government seeing as during their decade in office, they essentially turned the committees into branch plants of the ministers’ offices with parliamentary secretaries ringleading the show and completely destroying their independence…but maybe I won’t.
Roundup: Cullen’s plan to launder accountability
The NDP used their Supply Day motion yesterday to call for a new process to vet nominations for Officers of Parliament using a newly created subcommittee of Procedure and House Affairs that would have one member from each recognized party to vet the nominees. And while you may think on the surface that this is innocuous, there are plenty of problems with this proposal that go to the core of our system of Responsible Government.
Although I also have to say I interpret clause 5 as, effectlvely, a veto like Bardish Chagger, but Cullen vehemently disputes that's true. pic.twitter.com/mm5ERPUDJb
— kady o'malley (@kady) June 13, 2017
For starters, the original motion was absolutely a veto, despite Nathan Cullen’s protests, and that’s not entirely appropriate given our system. They negotiated an amendment to remove that section, but the Liberals decided they weren’t going to agree to the motion in any case, which is fine because the veto wasn’t the bigger problem.
The problem is that a committee like this will not actually bring other parties into the process to make it “non-partisan,” but rather, it will launder the government’s responsibility for the appointments so that it becomes impossible to hold them to account when things go wrong. Remember when the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, Christiane Ouimet, turned out to be a giant problem? Do you remember what the government said when it came up in QP? They said “We consulted and no one raised any objections then – not our problem,” which was untrue. Add this process in, and that “not our problem” becomes baked in. At least this government has enough of a shred of decency when it comes to our parliamentary system to not look to find a new solution to wash their hands of future accountability, because that’s all that this motion offers – aside from the ability for opposition parties to engage in shenanigans of their own on the nomination sub-committee. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that for many of these Officers, they serve Parliament as a whole, so a process that excludes senators becomes even more problematic for the functioning of our system.
To try and tie this to what happened with Madeleine Meilleur is a bit of a red herring – through the established process, it became clear to everyone (except maybe Mélanie Joly) that Meilleur simply wasn’t suited, most especially after she managed to alienate Anglophone Quebeckers – an extremely difficult thing to do, and yet she managed, and with the Senate lining up to vote against her appointment, it pretty much proves that the existing system worked.
No, this is about this farcical notion that people like Cullen keep pushing about how this is all about “making Parliament work.” It already works when the players involved do their jobs, and creating new processes creates added complications and unintended consequences, like the laundering of accountability, which nobody thinks about or raises as an issue because few people bother to learn how the system works. This Americanized suggestion is flash in the pan, trying to capitalize on what was clearly a blunder that the existing system nevertheless corrected. And if people had any good sense, they’d stop listening to Nathan Cullen’s attempts to “improve” our democracy.
Roundup: Bills left unpassed
While the House of Commons may have risen for the summer on Friday, they did so with an unusual number of bills waiting to pass third reading, not to mention the fact that Bill C-7 on RCMP unionization is heading back to them after the Senate amends it (and those amendments have passed at the committee stage and are awaiting third reading vote). What is most unusual to me is the fact that C-7 was another bill that was in response to a Supreme Court decision that also was granted an extension, and still managed to miss its deadline and remains un-passed. Now, the government is prepared to allow it go un-passed through the summer, despite the fact that while it was under consideration on the Commons side, they insisted they couldn’t make substantive amendments to the bill because of the deadline. That deadline has passed, and they are willing to now let it go through the summer, the sense of urgency suddenly evaporated? How? It makes no sense. And looking at the other bills that they haven’t passed yet, there are two that are both awaiting Third Reading and could have passed if they’d sat for an extra couple of days: C-2 on their vaunted income tax changes, and C-4 on undoing the Conservatives’ changes to labour rights. Why they’re letting these languish through the summer – particularly C-4, which keeps some pretty onerous regulations for labour unions on the books – is frankly mystifying.
I will say that the mood in the Commons was strangely exhausted by the time Friday rolled around, when they hadn’t even been doing late-night sittings up to this point in order to get things passed an off to the Senate (often with the expectation to get those bills passed as well before rising themselves). In fact, normally by this time, MPs are outright feral, and the tone in the Commons could generally be compared to jeering, hooting baboons. Mind you, we had The Elbowing and that associated drama a few weeks ago, and as someone remarked to me the other day (and if I could remember who you were when I had this conversation, I would credit you), they basically peaked too soon this year. And that very well could be. It still makes no sense that they would leave these two bills on the Order Paper waiting for final debate, or not waiting for C-7 to come back from the Senate. But then again, there have been a lot of questionable choices made this spring, so perhaps we should chalk it up to more of that.
Roundup: A test of bicameral wills?
Whether through stubbornness or pique, the House of Commons voted to adopt nearly all of the amendments the Senate proposed to Bill C-14, with the exception of the biggest and most important one – the one which would eliminate the requirement of a “reasonably foreseeable” death before someone could be granted medical assistance in dying. And then, the Commons more or less announced that tomorrow will be their last sitting day before they rise for the summer, essentially daring the Senate to return a bill to a chamber that has gone home (well, they are supposed to come back on the 29th for Obama’s address), and leaving the spectre of there being no law in place, which has all manner of medical community stakeholders concerned (never mind that the framework of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Carter decision is in place and would ensure that nobody would be charged for providing the service). It’s a little more ballsy than I would have given the Liberals credit for a few weeks ago, particularly before I saw the background paper that Jody Wilson-Raybould released with her…questionable justification for drafting the law the way it was. Now comes the difficult part – will the Senate stick to their guns and insist that the amendments to eliminate “reasonably foreseeable” be maintained if the bill is to remain constitutional, or will they back down because they’ve made their point and the Commons is the elected chamber?
This is the part where I chime in with a few reminders that this is the reason why our Senate exists the way it does – it enjoys institutional independence and cannot be threatened by the Commons so that they can push back on bills they find unconstitutional, particularly a controversial one like this, where MPs are proving themselves to be timid in the face of a Supreme Court of Canada decision that lays out what they deem to be an appropriate constitutional reading of the issue – something the government is basically flouting in an attempt to push back on this bit of social evolution for as long as possible. And as I’ve stated before, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the Commons is waiting for the Senate to “force” them to advance things. Will it turn into a ping-pong between the chambers? Not for much longer, I would say, but it is going to depend on who blinks. If the Senate does dig in its heels on this and insist that doing otherwise would be to let an unconstitutional bill pass, then there is every reason to suspect the government take the “forced into this” option and let the Senate be the punching bag when religious and disability groups complain. There are people suggesting that the Supreme Court should break the impasse, which I would loudly denounce because it’s the very last thing we need. It’s not their job, and it would signal a complete abdication of the rights of Parliament and Responsible Government that our predecessors fought long and hard for. (Also, stop demanding these bills be referred to the Court – legislating is not a game of “Mother May I?”). This whole exercise is why the Senate exists. Let’s let them do their jobs.
Honestly, the concern trolling over the perfectly legitimate actions of the Senate on a controversial bill is utterly galling.
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 17, 2016
Roundup: Bemoaning private meetings
There are times when demands for transparency from the government in all things does perplex me, particularly times when it starts to feel creepily inappropriate. Case in point is the sudden cry of “Oh noes! Justin Trudeau’s itinerary doesn’t list who those private meetings are with!” followed by some handwringing about taxpayer dollars. And then a chorus of “Oh noes! He met with lobbyists!” Because that’s the whole point of lobbying – to meet with officials, and not all lobbying is evil or the exchange of money, gifts or favours for the sake of influence, despite what American television will tell you (though, to be honest, the American version of lobbying – where those lobbyists have been able to be on the floor of the House of Representatives – is excessive). The fact that we can see after the fact that the PM and his staff have met with lobbyists is a sign of the transparency in our reporting mechanism, and I’m sure that there are meetings that should probably be private for all sorts of legitimate reasons. Can we ask questions about it? Sure. Does it mean that we are entitled to be privy to all of the details? I don’t see why. The thing is, sometimes the government relies on private, frank conversations in order to help guide their thinking – kind of like meetings with the Governor General. Sometimes good governance requires a modicum of discretion, and sometimes total transparency makes things worse. Is there a balance to be had? Of course. The fact that we’re getting daily itineraries is a far cry more than what we got under the last guy, and while that can’t simply be the go-to excuse that something is better than nothing, it also behoves us to temper our expectations a little. They don’t have to jump when we say so. I sometimes wonder if there aren’t a few people who don’t realise this and who get bent out of shape when it doesn’t happen. By all means, let’s ask the questions – but let’s also not pretend that the system is broken when we don’t get the answer we’re looking for.
Roundup: Important praise for the status quo
The electoral reform conversation has been going around, and proportional representation fans frequently take to my Twitter feed to harass me about the subject, and we usually end at the impasse where they refuse to deal with our system as it exists in order to comprehend its logic. Regardless, there are few voices out in the mainstream in favour of the status quo option, but I was pleased to see that the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board wrote a defence of the status quo. While some of it needed a bit more work (particularly in how they went about describing how the current system can “skew” results – it really doesn’t if you read those results properly and don’t import the logical fallacies of popular vote figures), but the nub of their argument is the most important – that our current system is particularly valuable in that it lets the electorate throw the bums out on a regular basis. It’s often said that in Canada, we don’t elect governments – we defeat them. And every few years, we get tired of who is in power, and we punish them and elect someone new who will clean up the mess left behind (and really, most of those parties need the defeats to let them clean house, re-energise, and think about where they went wrong. Sometimes, it takes them a couple of elections to do just that). What the editorial didn’t address very specifically is that in many PR countries, there really isn’t this ability to throw the bums out. Instead, they tend to be dominated by a central party who remains in power for decades, while they simply shuffle up their coalition partners when they need something. This was certainly the case in Germany, and while we don’t know what a PR-landscape in Canada would look like, it is a distinct possibility as there would be more incentive for small and fringe parties who exist to start agitating for their own power and influence within a coalition (as that would be the likeliest way to form future governments in what looks to be a continued sense of minority parliaments). As more small parties grow, the larger ones will likely fracture as there will be less incentive for the interests that they contain would stick around when they could gain outsized influence as a smaller party vying for that coalition power. Add to that, if we adopt a PR system that employs party lists, that makes it even harder for problem MPs to be tossed aside, as their fortunes are in the hands of the party itself, not the electorate. While emotional arguments about perceived fairness and “wasted” votes tends to rule the day, accountability should be a feature that requires greater consideration. Most other systems can’t provide it the way ours can, and that remains one of the reasons why I remain with team status quo on our electoral system.
Roundup: Flaherty’s national regulator, take two
While the attempt to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers has been on the government’s agenda since 1867 (no, seriously), Jim Flaherty took yet another stab at creating a national securities regulator – despite being shut down by the Supreme Court the last time. This time, however, he’s not imposing a system from Ottawa – he’s working with provinces to create a “cooperative capital markets regulatory system,” that ensures that each level of government give up their own powers to this new body, and he’s got Ontario and BC signed on, meaning it has oversight over some 90 percent of industry in the country already. While most other provinces will likely come aboard in short order, Quebec and Alberta remain opposed for the time being. It will likely be discussed further this weekend at a federal-provincial finance ministers’ meeting. John Geddes looks at Flaherty’s journey to this point, while economist Stephen Gordon points out that our patchwork of regulations may not be our biggest problem – but a national regulator can’t hurt.
Roundup: Communications in the New Order
It’s a tale of a media request gone horribly, horribly wrong – in the tragicomic depths of communications groups in the bureaucracy comes this incident where the Ottawa Citizen asked a simple question, and the tangled email chain that resulted. The request was late, the information he requested was pared down to nothingness, and one can tell that even the comms officers were frustrated when the information got edited down to nothing by the senior officials. It is an awful incident, especially when compared to the fact that it took the same reporter 15 minutes to get answers from NASA. While some people will point to this and say “Look! Culture of secrecy!” I’m not entirely convinced. Rather, it seems this is more indicative of the culture of fear and intimidation that the Harper government has instituted as they have centralised communications and messaging to such a degree that not only has the process been so bogged down by doubt that nobody wants to say anything lest they get slapped down, but even if they did provide an answer, the overseers in PMO are just as likely to not approve said message, and pass along a weak “approved” version, several hours later. Such is life in the New Order, unfortunately.
Here are the statements in the House from Jean Chrétien and others at the 20th anniversary of the Charter. Also not to be missed are Thomas Mulcair’s statements two years ago about the Charter and the “imposition” on Quebec – sentiments he echoed today in his party’s own release. The Conservatives, meanwhile, sent out a press release co-signed by the ministers of heritage and justice, in which they talked about John Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights. Kady O’Malley rounds up the various statements and plaudits here. Here’s a look at laws that the Charter impacted, and how the courts dealt with them before and after the Charter’s inception. And here’s a look at how Harper used to decry the Charter as giving the Courts the power to make “arbitrary” decisions – even though that’s exactly what the Supreme Court smacked his government down over with the Insite decision.
Despite Elections Canada moving to investigate Conservative Headquarters in connection to the Guelph robo-calls, the party still insists they’re not under investigation (which is technically true, if you’re going by the “isolated incident” defence).
Bev Oda defends cuts to foreign aid saying it’s more about accountability than the amount of dollars spent.
There was a massive corruption sweep in Quebec yesterday. The meaning of the arrest of Tony Accurso is discussed here.
And here’s a look at the Communications Security Establishment – the agency that is tasked with intercepting terrorist communications and cyber-security in Canada. They’re growing up as their own independent agency after being hived off from DND, but there remain concerns about just how much oversight they’re subject to.
Up today: “Tom”/Thomas Mulcair moves into Stornoway.