Tag Archives: Parliament Hill

Roundup: The needed reforms to the Estimates

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Democratic reforms remain the topic of discussion on the Hill, following Dominc LeBlanc’s appearance at the Procedure and House Affairs committee on Thursday, and some of what he’s talking about is necessary – most importantly, reform to the Estimates process. The Liberals had promised during the election that they would reform the process so that the Estimates were a) readable, and b) resembled the Public Accounts, so that the latter could be used to check over the former. There is probably no greater reform that needs to happen than this, because it’s the job of MPs to hold government to account by means of controlling the public purse. The Estimates are how they plan to spend the money, and the Public Accounts are the accounting of how it was spent. When both are reported using different accounting methods, and with the Estimates currently being largely unreadable to the layperson, it makes that accountability nigh impossible to do. It’s no wonder that the process has largely devolved to voting them through at all stages with no actual discussion or scrutiny (as they did in December, only for the Senate to catch their mistakes when they ballsed it up in their haste). It’s also why MPs have been consistently fobbing off that homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Auditor General, and increasingly the Senate, while ministerial visits to committee to discuss the Estimates for their departments are spent answering questions on issues of the day rather than the Estimates they were there to talk about. Add to that, there’s the “deemed” rule, whereby Estimates are deemed to be agreed to and passed after a certain date, so MPs couldn’t even hold them up if they wanted to. It’s so entirely broken, which is why the Liberal promise to fix this system is so damned important. Of course, with the good comes the bad – talk of eliminating Friday sittings, possibly with longer days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to compensate (but what about the “family friendly” elimination of evening sittings so that MPs can have dinner with their families?), and assurances that they wouldn’t actually be getting Fridays off, but working in their constituencies. The problem there is that constituency work is not actually part of an MP’s job – the ombudsman role they play on behalf of their constituents’ interactions with the civil service has grown over the years until it’s metastasised into this beast now where there are stories that the immigration department won’t touch files until they are forwarded by the MP’s office (so far down the slippery slope to corruption it’s alarming), and MPs continue to spend their resources doing this work rather than their actual jobs of scrutinizing the Estimates or legislation. In other words, eliminating Friday sittings makes this problem worse, not better. LeBlanc also did agree that a proposal to ban applause in the Commons may be something else worth considering to help improve decorum, and I would agree that even more than the constant sanctimonious tut-tutting about heckling, applause and scripts are the bigger problems that should be tackled if we want to be serious about making changes to the way our MPs do business.

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Roundup: Speaker Regan’s futile vow

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The Speaker’s lecture about heckling versus ideas on Tuesday continues to make the rounds, alongside the Samara study that I wrote about the other day, but as Nick Taylor-Vaisey concludes, the vows to end heckling won’t last, which is just as well. What gets me are the constant head-shaking about how heckling wouldn’t happen in any other workplace, so why should it be acceptable in parliament. My response would be, and will always be, is that parliament is different, and that it shouldn’t be like any other workplace. Consider it a kind of by-product of parliamentary privilege that keeps the institution self-governing and in its own particular bubble against some of the laws and regulations that apply to other people. Parliament is special because nowhere else does this kind of debate happen, is there an accountability function to be had in open and on public display, and nowhere else is the exchange of ideas both vigorous, theatrical, and relevant to whether or not that MP will continue again past the next election. Once again, I will offer the caveat that yes, there is boorish and sexist heckling that should be called out and stamped down, but that is not necessarily representative of all heckling, and really, we haven’t seen the likes of a “calm down, baby” that made the John Crosbie/Sheila Copps exchanges so much a part of our collective memory. We don’t have MPs singing the national anthem to drown out the other side, or setting off firecrackers. And it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of MPs aren’t showing up for debates inebriated – something that could not be assured during the days of martini lunches and copious alcohol all around the Hill. This is probably the calmest our QPs have been in a generation, and yet we are still faced with these constant admonitions that it’s still somehow terrible. No, it’s not. If Elizabeth May can’t hear, that’s as much a function of the terrible acoustics in the Chamber, where you can’t often hear what’s being said even during the dullest of regular debates, than it is the reactions of those around her. If there is an issue that should be tackled, it’s the constant applause and standing ovations, and the use of scripts that has destroyed the debating ability of our MPs. Heckling is honestly the least of our worries.

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Roundup: Bemoaning private meetings

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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.

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Roundup: Looking forward to the first QP

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It’s the first full sitting of the new parliament, which includes the first Question Period of the new session. Hooray! It’s going to be exciting, but there remains so much to be seen, so it’s hard to pre-judge the whole thing. Not to mention, the Liberals are keen to change the rules around QP by the New Year, so what happens this week may be a glimpse into a future that never will be. Will Speaker Regan enforce his heckle ban? Will MPs respect it? While Kady O’Malley offers a preview of what to expect, and the rest of the Ottawa Citizen staff gives their expectations for some of the match-ups, I’ll offer a few of my own observations. First of all, the first few QPs of any new parliament aren’t likely to be exciting because, frankly, everyone’s still a bit sanctimonious at this point. There’s all this hope and optimism, and of course they’re going to be civil and constructive because why wouldn’t they be? It’s also early enough that there really haven’t been too many screw-ups or missteps by the new government yet, so there’s not too much for the opposition to sink their teeth into just yet. We’ll see if Trudeau is going to show up, and how many questions he’ll answer, seeing as he plans to change the rules so that he’ll only be required to show up one day per week (but answer all questions on that day). As for some of these match-ups the Citizen staff came up with, well, it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t really watch QP in their last parliament because some of their descriptions and predicted “winners” are complete nonsense. Advantage Irene Mathyssen over Kent Hehr? Seriously? Mathyssen who reads her questions with sheets of legal-sized paper in front of her face is more impressive than Hehr, who has years of provincial experience? Sorry, no. Cullen as a “strong performer?” Seriously, did anyone actually listen to him ask questions in the last parliament? Because he didn’t so much ask questions as give soliloquies as to how terrible the government was with no actual question asked. Not sure how that makes him a “strong performer.”

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Roundup: A muzzle or a distasteful incident

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The neutrality of the civil service has been an issue lately, with the distasteful episode of the cheering (and booing) at Global Affairs last Friday on the one hand, and to a certain extent, the “un-muzzling” of scientists on the other. Michael Petrou explores the former issue here, while Paul Booth offers some advice for the “un-muzzled” here, noting that there is a balance to be struck between talking about one’s research while at the same time maintaining their role of civil servants where they are not supposed to be critical of the government of the day if they want to keep their jobs, because they have a role to play. At the heart of both is that they ultimately serve the Queen and not the government of the day, no matter how much their advice or carrying out of government policy is criticised. While ink has been spilled on the cheering as being proof that the Conservatives were right to be suspicious of “official Ottawa,” one has to note a few different thing, including simple demographics – polling data repeatedly shows, time and time again, that education levels will affect political preferences, with the Conservatives scoring best among those who only have high school diplomas, while those who have attained increasing levels of higher education increasingly support Liberals. The vast majority of the civil service is university-educated, so their sympathy with the Liberals should not be a surprise. Should they have cheered Trudeau? Probably not. I will note that for context, the one clip I saw of the cheering happened after Trudeau said that he would be taking their advice unlike the previous government, while the booing of that journalist’s questions were both to the fact that they crashed a private event, and that it was a question for which an answer had already been given earlier in the day. Not that this should excuse what happened, because they should have known better, and I know plenty of other civil servants who were also critical of what happened there. But on the other hand, we should also note that they are human, and that the Conservatives exacerbated any distrust of the civil service with excessive dickish behaviour (such as Diane Finley walking into a department she was taking over and telling the staff that they were all Liberals and that she would clean up the joint). We should hope that this kind of incident doesn’t happen again, and it may very well not. I’m also not sure how helpful it is to light our hair on fire about it either, but I could very well be wrong about that.

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Roundup: No ideological obstruction

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There’s the Senate bat-signal again. Conservative Senate leader Claude Carignan says that his caucus won’t abuse their majority in the Senate to thwart Liberal legislation that comes forward, to which I say “Um, yeah. Of course.” Because wouldn’t you know it, Senators have a job to do, and they know it. Of course, I’ve never bought into the conspiracy theory that Conservative senators would be the puppets of Harper, trying to influence things beyond the political grave, or even the theory that they would be extra dickish just because they were Harper appointees. Then again, most people seem to forget that senators of any stripe suddenly get a lot more independent when the PM who appointed them is no longer in office, and they get really, really independent once leadership races kick off. So far we’re at the first of those two, and with the Conservatives as a whole allegedly experimenting with a less command-and-control style of leadership, we may see the yoke they unduly placed over their Senate caucus lifted. Mind you, we’re still waiting for a signal to see what Trudeau will do in terms of both the Speaker of the Senate and the Leader of the Government. Without a Leader, they might as well just cancel Senate Question Period, which would be a loss because it’s quite instructive for how QP in the Commons should be run. Some senators have floated the idea of just having Senate QP be about asking questions to committee chairs (which, incidentally, they already can do), but it’s not a good idea because those committee chairs aren’t going to have a lot to say about issues of the day, they won’t have access to briefing materials, and they aren’t conduits by which the government can be held to account, which is the whole point of QP – not asking details about committee work. But seriously – can we please stop worrying about fantastical hysteria about what the Senate is going to do? 99 percent of it is based on false assumptions and ignorance of the chamber, and it’s so, so tiresome. They have jobs to do. Let them.

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Roundup: Setting the ballot question

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Last night, the At Issue panel pondered the kind of existential question of the past eleven weeks – what is the “ballot question” in the election. With so many weeks and so many events that have come up along the way – Mike Duffy, Syrian refugees, the niqab debate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and as of yesterday, the poor judgement of Justin Trudeau’s now-former campaign co-chair. Oh, and I guess the economy, but that’s always been a bit of a backdrop that’s built on a bunch of ridiculous and false premises (no, the Prime Minister can’t really control the economy, or create jobs out of a hat). And while the At Issue panel pretty much all chose “change” as the ballot question, I almost think it may have been something more specific – something that the Conservatives themselves telegraphed from the very beginning of the election, when they started running those ridiculous ads with the “interview committee.” That question was “is Justin ready?” Coming into the Liberal leadership, he became Teflon to a certain extent – none of the attacks would stick to him, and his only wounds were the self-inflicted kind. So how did the Conservatives play it? Trying to question his readiness, and their tag line was “I’m not saying no forever, but not now.” And then the government decided to drop an eleven-week campaign instead of the usual five, the intention being to give Trudeau plenty of rope with which to hang himself. They drove expectations so low as to question his ability to even put on pants before a debate. And then Trudeau turned around and performed well in debates, and gained confidence on the campaign trail. Instead of tripping him up, those eleven weeks galvanised him, and people started to see that. He wasn’t making stupid blunders, and he stopped shooting himself in the foot. The NDP, by contrast, started to look increasingly craven as their promises outstripped reality (witness the “Swiss cheese” of their platform costing), and Harper looked increasingly tired and worn out, unable to come up with answers to issues of the day, his ministers (like Chris Alexander) imploding under scrutiny, and by this late point in the campaign, there is a sense of desperation, Harper now trying to insist a campaign branded around him is not really about him, while he associates himself with the Ford brothers, and is visiting ridings he already holds in the sense that he looks like he’s trying to save the furniture. And yet, he placed the very ballot question in people’s minds from the start. Trudeau answered it, in defiance of the rules of never repeating your attacker’s lines, and said yes, he’s ready. And increasingly, it looks like the voters believe that. Does that discount Mulcair? To a certain extent, but he was never the credible threat to Harper, nor was he ever intended to be. (Remember, the plan was for the Conservatives and NDP to wipe the Liberals off the face of the map and become the two party state that they both dream of – something which didn’t end up happening). Harper put the wheels in motion, and it looks like his creation has gotten away from him.

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Roundup: Globe Debate debacle

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The big “economic debate” was last night, hosted by the Globe and Mail, and well, it wasn’t exactly edifying on any account. The moderator was also commenting, he rushed segments so the leaders were alternating between slow points and rushing through, and then there was the shouting and the non sequiturs. And what non sequiturs they were – I’m not sure what C-51 had to do with taxation, but Thomas Mulcair brought it up anyway. Truth be told, much of the “debate” was leaders trying to go down their talking point and catchphrase checklists. Alas. Kady O’Malley offers advice for future single-issue debates, while Drake Fenton gives an ode to the moderator’s bell/egg timer. Reaction from the Citizen’s pundit panel, Paul Wells, and Micheal Den Tandt.

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Roundup: The dream of tax simplification

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With the big economic debate coming up tomorrow, it’s with no small bit of amusement that noted economist Jack Mintz dropped a bomb in the middle of the election, and blowing open the pledges of most of the parties. In particular, Mintz says that the corporate tax rate should be lowered so as to keep those companies from shifting the burden in the form or lower wages or higher prices; raising the small business tax rate because it’s largely used by the wealthy to pay lower taxes; and eliminate a suite of investment tax credits to make the whole system simpler and fairer. In other words, doing pretty much the opposite of what the NDP has promised, and to a degree what the Conservatives have promised with their small business tax rate promises and more boutique tax credits than anyone knows what to do with. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks that boutique tax credits are a good idea – particularly as Harper promised yet another bunch, this time for single and widowed seniors, and as Kevin Milligan explained, it’s pretty useless considering that a) it’s non-refundable and a lot of those seniors already don’t pay taxes, and b) we have a number of other income supports for seniors. (Also, I think this means that Harper is officially trolling singletons and childless couples, who are now the great pariahs of tax credits). The consensus would be that it’s better to eliminate the boutique tax credits and simply lower the overall tax rate – but how would parties be seen as rewarding “deserving” Canadians of those tax credits. (Again, it would seem that singletons and childless couples are not deserving.) Harper claimed that his boutique tax credits haven’t made tax forms too complicated. That sound you hear is every accountant in the country laughing, because it’s simply not true. We need major tax reform in this country, overhauling the system from top to bottom. (Same with the Criminal Code, incidentally). Too bad nobody is going to campaign on that.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/643841869735006208

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/643842726228680704

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Roundup: Uncomfortable tax truths

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It’s one of those funny things that happen during campaigns, when one leader tells an uncomfortable truth about an issue, and the other leaders rush to condemn him or her about it. In this particular incidence, it was Justin Trudeau telling Peter Manbridge that he was less keen on a blanket reduction in small business taxes than he was in tweaking the system, because a “large percentage” of those small businesses are wealthy Canadians using those businesses to pay less tax. And he’s absolutely right about it – particularly after changes were made to the system a few years ago that basically turned it into an income-splitting mechanism for some particularly wealthy Canadians. The Conservatives and NDP, however, are outraged, as they are promising small business tax cuts, the NDP going so far as to demand that Trudeau apologise for “smearing” small businesses – except that they don’t have the facts on their side. The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ checked out Trudeau’s statement, and found it to be true, with minor quibbles about the meaning of “large percentage.” (Trudeau seems to be relying on the studies that say that up to 60 percent of small business filers are problematic). There is also the added contention that another good percentage of these filers aren’t actually job creators, like the Conservatives and NDP keep saying – mom and pop shops aren’t, for example. Economist Kevin Milligan delves further into the issue, and notes that Quebec has been making changes to their small business tax laws to ensure that companies have at least three full-time employees to be eligible – thus ensuring that it’s a “ job creator” and not a couple splitting income or a mom-and-pop shop that has no intention of hiring someone else. It is a problem that needs fixing and not platitudes, and it’s good that at least one leader sees fit to recognise that fact, and has so far stood up for it despite the heat he’s taking.

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