Tag Archives: NSICOP

Roundup: Statute or prerogative?

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Because there was (thankfully) not a lot of news this weekend, and I just can’t about the Alberta election right now (seriously, does nobody realize the how much fire they’ve playing with by stoking anger and making unrealistic promises?) I’m instead going to leave you with some food for thought from Philippe Lagassé about the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians’ report and the calls for military intelligence to be a subjected to a statutory framework rather than carrying on operating under Crown prerogative, as they currently are. Enjoy.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1117440021689016320

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1117441870907330560

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1117444492477353984

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1117447616806047745

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Roundup: An important first report

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While everyone was focused on Jane Philpott’s attempt to claim that the provisions in the garbage Reform Act weren’t met as it regards her expulsion from caucus, a much more important event was taking place, which was the release of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians’ first public report. This is the first time that Canada has seen any kind of public oversight into our national security and intelligence services, and it was important to see. One of the things that they focused in on was the oversight of military intelligence operations, for which the military thanked them for their suggestions on improving governance, but balked at the proposal for a legislative framework.

Nevertheless, the expert in this stuff is Stephanie Carvin, so I will turn over the reactions to her (full thread starts here):

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115716056247676929

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717071185301504

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717072657502210

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115678714291871746

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115683292928299008

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115688317452935168

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Roundup: Trying to make a garbage bill relevant

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Over the past couple of weeks, Conservative MP Michael Chong has been trying to make “Fetch” happen – or rather, trying to make his Reform Act relevant again, first by taking to the Twitter Machine to outline the process outlined in the Act for ousting a party leader (as though the Liberals were seriously considering dumping Justin Trudeau), and later to insist that it laid out a process for expelling MPs from caucus. The problem? Well, there are several, but the most immediate one is that the Act requires each party to vote at the beginning of each parliament whether they will adhere to the provisions or not – and lo, none of the parties voted to. Not even Chong’s. It was always a garbage bill – I wrote a stack of columns on that very point at the time it was being debated – and it made things worse for parties, not better, and ironically would have made it even harder to remove a party leader by setting a public high bar that the pressure created by a handful of vocal dissidents or resignations would have done on its own. It also has no enforcement mechanisms, which the Speaker confirmed when Erin Weir tried to complain that it wasn’t being adhered to. But why did this garbage bill pass? Because it gave MPs a warm feeling that they were doing something to “fix” Parliament (and in the context of doing something about the “dictatorial” style of Stephen Harper under the mistaken belief that his caucus was searching for some way to get rid of him, which was never the case).  It had so neutered it in order to be palatable enough to vote on that it was a sham bill at best, but really it did actual harm to the system, but Chong was stubborn in determining that it should pass in its bastardized form rather than abandoning it for the steaming hot garbage bill that it was.

And now, with Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott’s ouster from caucus, Chong has been trying to make the rounds to claim that the move was illegal without a vote – err, except no party voted to adopt the provisions, which is pretty embarrassing. And yet he keeps trying to sell it to the public as though this were a done deal.

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Roundup: Scheer’s own personal Brexit idea

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You may have heard the Conservatives making a big push over the past couple of weeks about promising that they would bow to Quebec’s wishes and let them have a single tax return (as in, surrender the federal authority to collect income tax in the province, as opposed to Quebec returning to the system that every other province uses by which the federal government collects all taxes and turns over their provincial share). While the Conservatives portray it as a simple administrative change, and that there wouldn’t even need to be any job losses – just put those 5000 CRA employees in Quebec to work on tax evasion! – it’s really a lot more complicated than that. While Alan Freeman wrote about the history and why it’s naked pandering to Quebec, tax economist Kevin Milligan walks through the complexity, and quite tellingly, notes that this is a Brexit-like proposal from Scheer – bold idea, no proposal of how to implement it. And yes, that is a problem.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093194511260442624

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093195511857704960

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093196146011385856

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093197692530974722

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093198624656306176

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093199538192433153

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093200551653736448

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093205332216541184

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093230785094606848

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1093259900912775168

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Roundup: Polling on magical parties

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I am not a big fan about reporting on polls, which makes me particularly aggrieved that we saw a few stories today about the latest Angus Reid poll that postulated a hypothetical “Western Canada Party” and how that would skew the vote for the established parties. Why a poll like this is especially irksome is because when you invite people to vote for a hypothetical that has no leader, or policies, or structure, or even raison d’être, then it simply becomes a repository for unicorns and pixie dust. You’re inviting people from four fairly disparate provinces to join forces, when you have separate grievances with the federal government, and you think you’d make a coherent political force out of it? Really? What exactly is anyone supposed to take from this message, other than people have vivid imaginations?

Of course, the idea is pretty ludicrous on its face – it could never be anything other than a protest party that couldn’t aspire to power by sheer mathematics – and it builds on some particular mythology around the Reform Party that I’m not sure necessarily reflects history. You have people like Deborah Grey who hears this and just sighs about the notion about splitting the Conservative party again (though there is plenty to debate about how we qualify the “reunification”). Should Andrew Scheer read this poll and take it as a warning that his Western base thinks he’s pandering too much to Quebec? We’ve already seen him embrace some outright tinfoil hattery because he’s been spooked by Maxime Bernier and losing those votes – will he crank up his faux-Saskatchewan credentials to eleven for the rest of the election to keep pretending that he’s one of them to bash away at the federal government? Will we hear big and small-c conservatives double down on the faux mythology of Alberta’s conservativism (and if you haven’t yet, please do read Jen Gerson’s exploration of that mythology here). “Ooh, but protest vote!” people will handwave. But BC and Alberta would be protesting against different things – and different parts of BC would have different protests at that. Grievance-mongering is not a path to sustainable politics. Polls like this just confuse issues and make people think that there are magic wands – or in this case, magical political parties that could somehow cure all of their woes by forcing Ottawa to take them seriously, somehow. But that’s not real life, and politics is hard work, which is not something that this kind of polling reflects.

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