Tag Archives: NSICOP

Roundup: O’Toole out, Bergen in

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It wasn’t even a close vote—Erin O’Toole has been deposed as Conservative leader on a vote of 73 to 45, and he is done for. He says he’ll stay on as an MP, but we’ll see how long his appetite for that lasts now that is ambitions have been dashed. But rather than face the media, O’Toole put out a six-minute statement over social media that tried to claim the party was the founding party of Canada (nope—his party was created in 2003), and a bunch of other things to try and burnish his image on the way out the door. “This country needs a Conservative party that is both an intellectual force and a governing force. Ideology without power is vanity. Seeking power with ideology is hubris,” he recited. Erm, except the pandering to populism is not an intellectual or governing force, he couldn’t even identify an ideology given that he kept flopping all over the place, depending on who was in the room with him at the time. And he keeps floating this notion that Canada is “so divided!” but this has been his go-to talking point for a while, trying to intimate that there is a “national unity crisis” because Alberta didn’t get its own way and get a Conservative government (that would take them for granted and ignore their concerns), never mind that it’s not actually a national unity crisis, but mere sore loserism.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1488987184241811458

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1489082431936372742

Later in the evening, out of seven potential candidates, the party voted for Candice Bergen to be the interim leader, which is a curious choice given how much she swings to the angry populist side of the party, from her unapologetically sporting a MAGA hat, to her full-throated support for the grifter occupation outside of Parliament Hill currently. It makes one wonder about both the upcoming leadership and what that says about unifying the different factions of the party, or whether the party will splinter because these factions may prove irreconcilable. And perhaps it should be a lesson that hey, maybe you shouldn’t just lie to each faction saying you really belong to them, and hope the other side doesn’t find out.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells enumerates O’Toole’s failures, and worries about the direction the party is headed now that it seems to be tearing down the few firewalls it had to keep the worst of Trumpism out of its playbook.

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Roundup: New NSICOP line-up, sans Conservatives

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Because the issue of NSICOP/Winnipeg Lab documents refuses to die, yesterday’s iteration was that the prime minister announced the new composition of NSICOP, and it didn’t include any Conservatives, either MPs or senators, because they refused to put any names forward. Erin O’Toole then tweeted that this was because it was somehow hiding documents, which is a complete and utter falsehood.

To recap: those Winnipeg Lab documents were released in an unredacted form to NSICOP to review. The Conservatives withdrew from NSICOP because it didn’t suit their needs to actually review the documents—the whole point was the song and dance about a “cover-up.” If, during the years that NSICOP has been operating, any of its reports were unfairly redacted and information was being hidden from the public that its membership felt was important, they would have resigned in protest. That did not happen because it was working. And even if it were a full parliamentary committee, redactions still happen because it’s still national security.

O’Toole is acting in bad faith so that he can wink and nod to conspiracy theorists and put on a show that doesn’t reflect reality. He knows it, and he should be called out on it.

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Roundup: Holland breaks out the passive-aggressive open letter tactics

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The drama over the Winnipeg Lab documents took another turn yesterday as Government House Leader Mark Holland sent a four-page open letter to the Conservative House Leader, urging him to reconsider rejecting the government’s offer to create a new ad hoc panel to have the documents vetted behind closed doors with a panel of three former judges to adjudicate any disputes. In said letter, Holland name-checks nearly every national security and intelligence expert who has weighed in on the topic of the past few weeks, with a couple of exceptions.

While Holland didn’t name Philippe Lagassé’s piece, it’s fairly irrelevant to the concerns at hand. Whether NSICOP gets turned into a full-blown committee or not, it won’t make a material difference because the Conservatives’ objections are not based on any particular matter of principle or specific objection. As I point out in my column, they are merely acting in bad faith in order to be theatrical and try and score points by winking to conspiracy theories in order to paint the picture that the government is hiding something for the benefit of the Chinese, or some other such nonsense.

I don’t expect Holland’s letter to do anything other than look passive-aggressive and ham-fisted as the issue continues to fester—not that there is an order to produce documents any longer, and the committee that made said order no longer exists either (though O’Toole has been under pressure to restore it, as though it actually did anything meaningful other than be yet another dog and pony show). We’ll see if the other two opposition parties come to some kind of agreement, but so far this issue continues to just make everyone look like our Parliament is amateur hour. Which it kind of is.

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Roundup: Why Canadian MPs resist security clearances

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Talk of reforming NSICOP into a full-fledged parliamentary committee is circulating, and it’s all just as well. While I have a full column on this coming out later today, I wanted to post this thread from professor Saideman to set some of the context for that, and to explain part of why we’re in the state we are in Canada when it comes to these things.

https://twitter.com/smsaideman/status/1483076151417389057

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Roundup: A late start isn’t an extra week off

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I’m not sure whether it’s because it’s a very, very slow news season, or if the basic knowledge of how Parliament works is that lacking, but we got a lot of really bad headlines yesterday about how the Senate plans to take an “extra week off.” Which is not actually true, and distorts the situation. And in some cases, it’s being spun this way by certain media suspects completely out of bad faith, because anytime they can badmouth the Senate they’ll grab the opportunity and run.

To clarify: The Senate does not have a fixed sitting schedule the way the House of Commons does, and in no way are they bound to match the sitting schedule, because they do different work, and the timelines are different. The Senate frequently doesn’t convene at the same time as the House of Commons after the winter or summer break because they simply don’t have enough work on their Order Paper to justify it. They passed all of the bills that the Commons sent to them before they adjourned for the break, so coming back at the same time makes no sense—especially when they are competing for IT resources and interpreters with the Commons in the current hybrid context (which has, frankly, screwed the Senate over, but they’ve also allowed it to happen). More to the point, there are many years where the Senate will sit for weeks after the Commons rises for its break, and they will have break weeks out of sync with the Commons every now and again because their workloads are different. But this isn’t communicated effectively, either by the Senate itself, or by the media reporting on it—and it most especially isn’t communicated or even mentioned by the bad faith actors whose only agenda is to paint the Senate in a bad light. It’s disappointing, but not unexpected.

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Roundup: Boycotting NSICOP for theatre

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Because we cannot trust our current political parties to do their jobs of accountability, Erin O’Toole has announced that he won’t name any MPs to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, citing the Winnipeg Lab documents and completely false insinuations that the committee is a tool of the prime minister’s office to obscure information. It’s bullshit, but it’s bullshit that the party has committed itself to for the sake of political theatre over serious work.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1473261482624397319

To throw a strop over these documents when a) the committee that ordered them no longer exists and won’t be reconstituted; b) the order the committee gave to produce those documents does not exist; and c) the government has offered other compromises to release those documents, both in releasing the unredacted documents to NSICOP, and in proposing an ad hoc committee duplicating the process from the Harper-era Afghan detainee documents, which the Conservatives also rejected for handwavey reasons. Do you see how none of this is adding up to anything coherent, and why the government’s many attempts to release the documents in an unredacted form that will still satisfy national security requirements keep getting rejected for performative reasons?

If NSICOP were really a tool of the PMO to hide information, then its members from both the opposition parties in the Commons and in the Senate would have resigned in protest long ago, and lo, that has never happened, because it’s not a tool of the PMO. O’Toole’s objections are theatre, and nothing more. It would be great if more people would call this theatre out for what it is, rather than just tut-tutting about secrecy. Our MPs have proven time and again that they’re not serious about accountability over national security and intelligence matters, and that they can’t be trusted with the information, and they have proven that the concerns of our national security and intelligence agencies are right, time and again.

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Roundup: Rejecting the compromise for more theatre

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In spite of the Liberals proposing a compromise on the release of the Winnipeg Lab documents last week, the Conservatives have rejected the offer, citing that it was “months late,” and that the “will of parliament has not changed.” But this is wholly disingenuous—they did offer another compromise in June before Parliament rose for the summer, and Parliament dissolved before the challenge to the order could reach Federal Court, which may have settled the outstanding question of whether the Security of Information Act fettered parliamentary privilege or not.

This rejection makes it clear that this is not about the information—it’s about political theatre. If it was about the information, they would have let NSICOP review the documents and report back. But no—they first came up with the fiction that they didn’t trust security-trained public servants to properly redact the documents, and then they came up with the fiction that the prime minister redacts NSICOP reports, which he does not and never did, and handwaved about only trusting the Commons’ Law Clerk—who doesn’t have the training or context around national security to know what is a necessary redaction or not—to do redactions. (They also piled onto the same law clerk the redactions from pandemic documents for the health committee in the previous parliament, overloading his office and ensuring that they would never see all of the requested documents). The government provided avenues for the documents to be released, but the Conservatives have consistently decided that theatre was more important (particularly as they fed the “mystery” of these documents into conspiracy theories).

We’ll see how much patience the other parties have for this nonsense—and at this point, it is most definitely nonsense. They were happy enough to embarrass the government pre-election, so we’ll see if they still have the appetite to do so now. But at this point, this no longer has any bearing on accountability or being serious about national security. This is one hundred percent about political theatre, and it would be great if the pundit class of this country could call it out for what it is.

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Roundup: A newer, worse compromise

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The Speaker engaged in a bit of procedural housekeeping after Question Period yesterday, and ruled that the Board of Internal Economy’s vote on a vaccine mandate for MPs in the House of Commons was in fact a violation of MPs’ privileges—which most of us expected, because that’s pretty much what it was. It’s a moot point, however, because the motion passed that re-authorized hybrid sittings included the vaccine mandate for the Chamber, so there remains a vaccine mandate regardless of this outcome. It sounds like the Conservatives are satisfied with this ruling in that it doesn’t create a precedent for expanding the BoIE’s powers, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing in all.

At the same time, the government house leader proposed a compromise for the Winnipeg Lab documents, which had been floated before dissolution but is back on the table now—which is procedurally dumb because the committee that requested those documents is non-existent, as is the order to produce those documents. If said committee were reinstated and they vote on a new motion to produce documents, then the government should have floated this compromise then, but no, they’re going ahead with it unbidden, which is silly. This compromise would see the creation of a new committee that would be advised by a panel of three former senior judges who would vet materials—but again, this is stupid.

The compromise was the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. That was the point. It was the right venue for these documents to go to, and that’s where those documents were sent, before the Conservatives decided that theatre was more important (and the other two parties decided that embarrassing the government was also the point). All this is doing is muddying the waters even further, duplicating efforts, and making MPs even less trustworthy to Canadian security and intelligence services. Because our MPs are not interested in actual oversight or accountability—they are only interested in theatre, and that diminishes our Parliament for everyone.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1466554090452762626

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Roundup: The Ombudsman demands independence

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The military ombudsman put out a position paper yesterday that called for his office to be made fully independent, and he criticized the minister’s office and the Department of National Defence for trying to interfere in investigations and ignoring recommendations for change. In particular, he cited that turning a blind eye to his office’s recommendations advances political interest or has to do with self-preservation or career advancements within the defence community.

Readers may know that I have issues with the demands for yet more officers of parliament. The proliferation of these officers has become acute in the last decade, and while there is a need for an independent ombudsman for the military, I also have not been blind to some of the previous holders of that office, and some were very much unsuited for an office that has no accountability. I’m not sure what kind of a structure the ombudsman’s office should need to be, but again, making him unaccountable and completely insulated opens the role up to the kinds of abuses of authority we’re seeing with the last officer of parliament that was created (being the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has become completely unmoored from his legislative mandate). Anyone who doesn’t share this concern obviously isn’t paying attention (and I can guarantee you that the media is not paying attention, because they like it when these unaccountable officers try to turn themselves into media darlings, as the PBO is doing right now).

When asked about this, Justin Trudeau said that he would put it to Justice Louise Arbour as part of her comprehensive review, so that the ombudsman’s office can be part of the solution to reforming the military, but I fear that she may recommend the officer of parliament route. Part of the problem right now is that the minister isn’t responsive, but I think the solution needs to be that the minister needs to go rather than the ombudsman needing additional powers. Would that we actually hold ministers accountable for their failures, but this government doesn’t seem to be too keen on that.

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QP: Not a question, but a direct plea

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On what promises to be the second last QP of the spring sitting, the three opposition leaders were all present, while Justin Trudeau as only available remotely, being in quarantine, once again leading only Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, in French, where he read a script about the military ombudsman’s comments on ministerial interference in investigations. Trudeau assured him they were working on the structural and cultural change necessary, including appointing Louise Arbour to reviewing the situation. O’Toole repeated the allegations in French, but didn’t phrase it as a question, but turned it into a plea to Canadians to vote out the Liberals. Trudeau repeated his same response in English. O’Toole then turned to the non-story about the Liberals paying for data services to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister. Trudeau stated this was for constituency casework, which was kept separate from political databases, and all rules were followed. O’Toole tried to turn this into an expansive statement about Liberal “corruption,” and demanded to know if any other contracts were given to Tom Pitfield, and Trudeau talked around the Conservatives slinging mud and hoping to see what would stick. O’Toole produced a document that claims that a contract was given to Pitfield, and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were only focused on narratives and not facts, that all parties use case management databases, and all rules were followed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, in person, and complained about the new border measures announced yesterday, complaining they were arbitrary. Trudeau insisted this was part of a gradual reopening and more stages would be announced soon. Blanchet complained there were more rules than variants, and Trudeau said that while the leader of the Bloc may want simple answer, but they needed to ensure that Canadians were kept safe. 

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he railed about that military ombudsman’s report, and Trudeau read that they have been committed to structural and cultural change, and that they have taken more concrete actions recently, including some new appointments and $236 million in the budget. Singh switched to French to complain that some benefit were being reduced, and Trudeau recited that they were there for as long as Canadians needed them, and pleaded with the NDP to pass the budget.

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