Tag Archives: Nominations

Roundup: Farewell, 43rd Parliament, and good riddance

Posted on by

Parliament is dissolved, and the 44th General Election has begun. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterised the election as a chance for Canadians to weigh in on the direction they want to see the recovery, calling it the most important election since 1945 – and he didn’t go the route of pointing to just how toxic the House of Commons was all spring as his justification (though he easily could have), because this is Campaign Trudeau™, and everything needs to be upbeat and positive. He also put mandatory vaccinations (for areas under federal jurisdiction, including air travel) as one of the centre planks of his campaign and dared people to contrast it to the other parties, with both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh spending the weekend prevaricating and talking around it, so even though it may seem that the distinctions between them are subtle, they are there.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1426929811071635458

Erin O’Toole has pretty much retreated to his studio in downtown Ottawa, and spent the first day holding telephone town halls from there, and will do so again today. His pitch has been that the election is pretty much a vanity project by Trudeau in the hopes of a majority, but the fact that he has so far stumbled out of the gate, both with a disastrous shitpost video and his waffling on mandatory vaccinations, has not been terribly auspicious.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1427054892338884611

Jagmeet Singh started his day in Montreal, as he had already committed to attending the Pride parade there – but there was the inherent contradiction in that parades and crowds are okay but elections are unsafe. It’s also worth noting that he didn’t criticise the Governor General for granting dissolution, which makes it apparent that his letter two weeks ago was a cynical ploy that undermined Mary Simon.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1426320404315004940

Of course, while the opposition leaders kept insisting that the election was unnecessary and in some cases, too costly (but seriously, if you think it’s a bad think that elections cost money, you shouldn’t be in the business of democracy), their own rhetoric belies the fact that they didn’t think that Parliament was working, or should have worked because they kept insisting that you can’t trust the prime minister. So…maybe be more consistent if you want people to believe you when you said that there was no reason for an election, because clearly, you think there is.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1426974226007867401

Otherwise, a campaign that is going to be digital and social-media focused has been off to a bad start, contrasting the Conservatives’ terrible shitpost video versus the Liberals’ hopeful and optimistic video that is a note-perfect recreation of a parody video of a feel-good corporate video employing stock footage. So…yeah. Everything is kind of awful, but at least we only have five weeks of this and not two years like the Americans do.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1426699232141004805

Continue reading →

Roundup: O’Toole wants intervenor status

Posted on by

Yesterday morning, Erin O’Toole declared that he would seek intervenor status at the Federal Court in the dispute between the House of Commons and the Public Health Agency of Canada over the disclosure of classified documents. Apparently, he believes that he has a “distinct perspective” on the underlying issues raised by the case, which is…a bit novel considering that his press release was a partisan document that was not about legal arguments but rather about political calculus.

As a reminder, the process was triggered because under the Canada Evidence Act – which Parliament passed – says that when requests for secret or confidential documents are made to a government entity like PHAC, they must notify the Attorney General, and that triggered a process by which said Attorney General sought clarity from the Federal Court – does the Canada Evidence Act and its limitations supersede or otherwise restrict Parliament’s privileges in demanding documents and the production of papers as they see fit, given that they are ostensibly the highest court in the land. Plenty of people have tried to make this a partisan issue – O’Toole most especially among them – rather than a process where everyone is following the law, and the law conflicts with Parliamentary privilege.

I half-suspect that in this case, the Federal Court may not grant O’Toole standing, given that he has pretty much stated that this is going to be an attempt at electoral grandstanding inside of a court room, which the Court would be hesitant to do. Beyond that, his statement in the press release doesn’t actually make sense – the request to present the documents will die when Parliament is dissolved, and the special committee that demanded the documents ceases to exist. Beyond that, if he forms government, he won’t need to release the documents because he’d be able to read them in secret, thus eliminating the possibility that releasing them might compromise our Five Eyes obligations, or inadvertently compromise a foreign intelligence source (though I am not convinced this is a national security or intelligence issue, but rather more likely one of an RCMP investigation into policy breaches). Not to mention, the documents were released, both in a redacted form to the committee, and in an unredacted form to NSICOP, and the Conservatives want someone else to do the redacting who doesn’t have national security experience. I have a hard time discerning just what “distinct perspective” he has other than scoring points, given that the Speaker will be exercising his role in protecting the privileges of the Commons, and he doesn’t need O’Toole’s help for that.

Continue reading →

Roundup: What open nominations?

Posted on by

Do you remember when the Liberals considered themselves the party of open nominations? And how they were always going to uphold the democratic right of riding associations to run fair, open and transparent processes to select the candidates that would appear on the ballot for them? Because apparently the party has put this particular bit of democracy, openness and transparency down the memory hole as they continue to acclaim candidates from across the country. In two of these cases, the acclamations came a mere day after the incumbents announced that they weren’t running again, and in one of those ridings – Kanata-Carleton – there was the making of a contested nomination as rumours swirled that Karen McCrimmon wasn’t going to run again, and the riding association was frustrated that they couldn’t get any kind of answer from the party on how and when to run said contested nomination.

Now, the party is going to defend its honour by pointing out that their rules state that they can declare a state of “electoral urgency” to bypass the nomination process, but this is more of the Liberals’ penchant of letting the ends justify the means. They created the rules that were easily gamed, and frankly, the “electoral urgency” clause is a load of bullshit because they were using it in 2019 in the months before the election when they knew they had four years to have this process ongoing because there was a fixed election date under a majority parliament, so there were no surprises. Yes, the pandemic has made nomination races tougher because of public health restrictions, and the party has come under fire for using a verification system that includes facial recognition technology (which BC’s privacy commissioner is investigating, per that province’s laws), but again, these were things that the party should have been cognisant of and dealing with rather than simply wringing their hands and pulling the “electoral urgency” alarm to fast-track their hand-picked candidates, thwarting local democracy, and accountability.

Open nominations are one of the most important and fundamental building blocks of our democratic system. When parties flout those rules, it hurts the entire system – especially as it cements even more power in the leaders’ offices. That the Liberals are so blatantly ignoring their own supposed values in this crucial stage of the democratic process is a sign that the way the party rewrote their constitution to fit the Trudeau era is a very real problem that they are going to have to do a lot of soul-searching to address, especially when that age comes to its inevitable end.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Nova Scotia makes two for child care

Posted on by

Prime minister Justin Trudeau and Iain Rankin, premier of Nova Scotia, announced yesterday that Nova Scotia was now the second province to sign a new childcare agreement with the federal government under the dollars allocated in Budget 2021, and that it would transition the province to halving current fees by next year, and reducing them to the goal of $10/day by 2026, with commitments along the way for those five years. And crucially, there are federal funds going toward training new early childhood educators, as well as to improve the post-secondary programming around ECE, which are important considerations for expanding the system, especially as one of the federal government’s criteria for that expansion is quality of care.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1414960548735721473

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1415130851755511808

This makes it two provinces down, both of them with non-conservative premiers, and it’s speculated that Newfoundland and Labrador will be next. Alberta claims to be “negotiating” around things like flexibility, but there is a bit of a red herring in there – nothing precludes the province from creating additional, more flexible spaces outside of the federal parameters if they feel they need it, but trying to insist this is about “choice” is a false dichotomy – there can be no actual choice if there is only constrained choice available. In other words, it’s not a real choice if there are no spaces available, and the federal government has long recognized that we have a supply-side problem, which is what they are trying to address. Opposing the federal plan because you claim it’s not flexible enough is, frankly, an abdication of responsibility.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, put out an extremely bizarre “backgrounder” yesterday to claim that the Liberals never meet their promises on childcare, and it was both strange and dishonest. Strange in that this is the kind of thing you’d expect to have an NDP header on it and not a Conservative one, but dishonest because they killed the gods damned system that was in place in 2006. Seriously – Paul Martin’s government had signed agreements with all of the provinces in 2006, and money for the first year was starting to flow when the NDP teamed up with the Conservatives and brought the government down, killing the childcare system that had just been established, because the Conservatives preferred to send $100/month to families instead – because “choice.” Oh, and they created tax credits for new childcare spaces, which created approximately zero of them. They vehemently opposed childcare, and still do, so for them to try and say the Liberals haven’t kept their promises when they actively worked against them and killed the programme that was created is just galling.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Exit Jody Wilson-Raybould

Posted on by

Jody Wilson-Raybould announced yesterday that she wasn’t going to be running again in the next election, but wasn’t leaving to “spend more time with family.” Rather, she planned to continue her work in other venues, but noticed that the House of Commons had become more toxic and ineffective, which is very true.

https://twitter.com/Puglaas/status/1413128438592933898

While I don’t think that Wilson-Raybould was a particularly great minister (and she has yet to answer for her pushing blatantly unconstitutional legislation through), she nevertheless had a particularly valuable viewpoint that made the House of Commons better for having her in it. Her singularly pushing back against the Bloc’s attempts to play politics around Quebec’s Bill 96 and the proposed constitutional changes and nationhood declarations was something we could certainly have used more of, not less.

This having been said, I think Wilson-Raybould, like Jane Philpott, were somewhat naïve about the nature of federal politics, and were sold some particularly bad advice about life as an independent MP, and more broadly about hung parliaments in general. There is a particular romance around them, particularly from a segment of the political science crowd, which has rosy visions of the 1960s and inter-party cooperation to get things done, when hung parliaments in recent decades have simply been nasty and highly partisan, and that contributed a lot to the toxicity and ineffectiveness of this parliamentary session. On top of that, Wilson-Raybould had broken the trust of her fellow MPs, and that no doubt further isolated her in an already fractious situation in the Chamber. It’s too bad that she couldn’t have contributed more, but her no longer being there is a diminution to the kinds of voices that we should be hearing more of.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Parliament versus itself

Posted on by

Not unexpectedly, the Speaker of the House of Commons has declared that he’s going to fight “tooth and nail” for Parliament’s right to demand whatever documents they want – as well he should. But this is a very complex issue that becomes parliament fighting against itself, because of the obligations in places like the Canada Evidence Actthat triggered the process that the Attorney General had to undertake around those Public Health Agency documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings.

With that in mind, here is some context as to what the Canada Evidence Act demands, and why this is not Justin Trudeau personally defying the will of parliament, but the government following its own laws.

For a further breakdown of the legal balancing act involved, and what the court process for this will look like, read through this thread (which was a little too long to simply post, but a couple of highlights are below).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Liberals being weasels about “open nominations” – again

Posted on by

Remember back before the 2015 election when Justin Trudeau declared that the Liberals would be a party of open nominations? And then how he weaselled out on that after the election in order to protect nominations when they had a majority? And even after that, decided to trigger their “electoral urgency” rules in advance of the 2019 election, even though they knew the timing of it years in advance and could have actually let those nominations happen? Well, they are being weasels again, and just triggered the “electoral urgency” rules once more.

Of course, because there are only three narratives to choose from in most media outlets, this was seen as “more proof” that there’s going to be an election this fall, especially when combined with the fact that MPs agreed to hold a take note debate session on the 15th that will allow MPs who have opted not to run again to give a farewell speech. It’s all proof! Erm, except that this is a hung parliament that will have reached the two-year mark in the fall, making an election far more likely, so it’s a convenient time to hold such a session, given that it certainly wouldn’t happen after a confidence vote to bring down the government. I remain unconvinced that the Liberals are planning to dissolve parliament by the end of summer on a flimsy excuse, but then again, I generally don’t subscribe to the Three Narratives.

This being said, this weaselly behaviour around nominations is unsurprising given the trends in this country, and where the party has been headed. They did it in 2019, and at the end of last year, they did away with open nominations for the two by-elections and simply appointed candidates outright, never mind that there was interest from others in each riding and they could have held competitive races, yes, including in a virtual situation. We’ve seen all parties behave in ways that are undermining the democratic process by gaming nominations – Samara Canada wrote a report on it. (Samara was also credulous about the NDP’s claims about open nominations in 2011, in spite of all of the evidence of paper candidates who never even visited the ridings, never mind having run in an open contest, but that’s neither here nor there). The point is that this kind of behaviour is toxic to the long-term health of our system of government, and it needs to be countered and pushed back against. Unfortunately, because the media is hung up on the “early election” narrative at any opportunity, they never actually hold the parties to account for their undemocratic behaviour, and we’ve allowed it to get to this point. This is a very bad thing, and we should be pushing back and demanding proper, open nominations from all parties, no matter how inconvenient it may be in a hung parliament.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A broken system thwarting foreign agents

Posted on by

Something in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) annual report, made public this week caught my eye, which talked about how the “critical election incident protocol panel” – the body set up in order to have some sort of way to help deal with any detected foreign interference during an election (given the whole Russian interference thing south of the border in previous of their elections) – needs to include more traditional espionage as part of their warning triggers. Why? Because, as NSICOP says, foreign agents could try to infiltrate political parties to exert influence, whether it’s in nomination meetings, or volunteering in campaign offices.

I will admit that I laughed.

Not because foreign interference isn’t serious – because it is – but because the joke would be on them, given that grassroots members no longer have any influence in our political system since we have made the system entirely leader-driven. Nomination meetings are being gamed by leaders’ offices to the point where it’s difficult to determine just how free and fair any of them are these days – that is, when leaders aren’t outright appointing candidates (as Justin Trudeau did with Marci Ien and Ya’ara Saks for the by-elections late last year). Trying to hijack nomination contests at the best of times is exceedingly difficult because of the requirement for the leader’s signature (or their proxies, thanks to the garbage Reform Act), which was part of why that requirement was created back in 1970 – officially to keep the Chief Electoral Officer from needing to adjudicate nomination disputes, but anecdotally about heading off pro-life groups trying to hijack Liberal nominations. Foreign agents trying to use the same tactics would have fairly marginal chances of success once their involvement became known.

This is less of an indictment of the use of party infiltration as a tactic of foreign agents, but rather of how our system has degenerated. Because we insisted on moving to leadership contests that became quasi-presidential primaries, we have upended the entire grassroots nature of our parties, and now everything is top-down, leader driven. It shouldn’t be this way, and yet this is where we are.

Continue reading →

Roundup: O’Toole’s use of stock photos is telling

Posted on by

You may have noticed that Erin O’Toole has been launching a new social media campaign about the dire state of our economy, using stock photo images to illustrate his points. Over my years in journalism, I have come to be very wary of the use of stock images by parties in their advertising, because much of it is inherently deceptive or manipulative (aside from being cheap to slap into their products) – and I will fully credit Glen McGregor for this.

So, what have we seen with two of O’Toole’s posts? One of them was about January’s brutal job numbers, accompanied by a stock photo of a young white guy in a hoodie, looking somewhat distressed. The problem? Those same job numbers showed disproportionate losses among women and visible minorities because the most affected sectors were wholesale and retail trade, as well as accommodation and food services – which makes sense given all of the closures in the second wave. In other words, the images he put up was not only tone deaf, but speaks to just who he thinks his voter base will respond sympathetically to, which says a lot. (The only upside here is that he model was actually Canadian and not a Romanian, but when said model found out about it, he chimed in).

https://twitter.com/TunaPhish09/status/1359408430264377347

O’Toole posted another one yesterday about standing up for Canadian workers, using a photo of a (white) construction worker. But again, if you look at last month’s job numbers, construction jobs were actually up – they were the main driver of goods-producing jobs (which were a net gain rather than a net loss on the month). Again, though, this is about what O’Toole is signalling what kinds of jobs he thinks matters, and it’s not where the losses have been. As he starts to make a lot of noise about his recovery plans and supposed economic dream team, he is sending very loud signals about what he thinks the recovery should look like, and it appears to be pretty divorced from what everyone else thinks it should look like, and that is something worth paying attention to.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Nuancing the discipline debate

Posted on by

Over the weekend, Aaron Wherry wrote a piece about party discipline, comparing Derek Sloan’s ouster from the Conservatives in Canada, with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s censure in the US. While I think Wherry makes a few interesting points, he misses a boatload of nuance that should probably be included in there – including the fact that I’m not sure that control over nominations is necessarily an issue of party discipline per se, and I fear that the piece suffers a bit of conflation as a result.

What I thought in particular was his point where parties can exert more control over who can and cannot get nominations in Canada, where party influence is much weaker in American primaries. The ability for party leaders to be able to veto nominations is a fairly recent development, dating back to the Canada Elections Act reforms in 1970, when they needed an accountability mechanism when party names appeared on ballots for the first time, and in the interests of not burdening Elections Canada with intra-party disputes over nominations, they gave party leaders the ability to sign off on nominations. At no point in the debates (and I did read the Hansards and committee transcripts when I was researching for my book) was the possibility of this being used as a tool of party discipline raised. Nevertheless, this became essentially a tool of blackmail, where leaders could threaten to withhold signing the nomination papers of any MP who wanted to run again if they didn’t toe the party line. But this is only a tool of discipline for an incumbent, not someone who has never run before, which is more what Wherry is talking about with Sloane and Greene.

In either of those cases, these were newbies to the party, and control over who is and is not running is part of the argument he is making – that it’s tighter control in Canada than in the US, and maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think there is more elegance to the argument than that. When it comes to the more substantial difference between Canada and the US when it comes to quality control of who winds up on the ballot is how the grassroots mechanisms different. In Canada, it is ostensibly a matter for the riding association, which can be hundreds of thousands of members – especially if there is a membership drive for a contested nomination – but that’s not the same as a primary, which is many, many times larger. There is a more robust intra-party green-light process in Canada that has grown up over time, but the bigger problem right now is it is being abused, and parties are gaming the nomination process, in many cases to favour candidates that their leader would prefer, and this is a problem that very much needs to be solved as soon as possible. While yes, it may be preferable that we have a bit more quality control over our candidates (emphasis on “bit” – plenty of people get elected who never should have made it past their green-light process), it should still be a more grassroots driven process, and not be the sole discretion of the party leader. That is the part that is harming us more than helping us, and the happy medium won’t be found until we get back to a place where we aren’t selecting party leaders through membership votes, and the grassroots has their proper role in ground-up democracy restored.

Continue reading →