Tag Archives: Parliament Hill

Roundup: Dire warnings about MPs’ jobs

Posted on by

Another day, another apocalyptic warning that the workload and schedules of MPs are going to wind up killing somebody someday, and I just cannot even. This isn’t even the first time this particular argument has been made by MPs, but it boggles me even more that journalists aren’t pushing back more, and at least giving an “Oh, come on,” and it leaves the impression that there is an expectation that parliamentarians go in thinking it’s a nine-to-five job. And it gets even more ludicrous when you realise that MPs are not only sitting fewer days than they used to, but we already eliminated evening sittings three days a week in order to make the days more “family friendly” (which, as it happens, made congeniality worse because they stopped eating dinner together three nights a week).

https://twitter.com/garry_keller/status/1150587736736317441

Part of what has triggered this wave of pearl-clutching are the number of voting marathons that we saw in this current parliament, but we need to pour a bit of perspective sauce on the situation here. First of all, the opposition needs to have some tools to apply pressure to the government when they feel it’s necessary, and eliminating those tools would be a major problem. That said, I’m not sure that these particular marathons were appropriate uses for those tools, particularly as they were pegged to issues that were fairly minor on the scope of things, if not outright ridiculous, and yet the Conservatives made a big song and dance about these vote-a-thons, which wound up coming across as a temper tantrum. It became routine that estimates votes were coming up, so they were going to force a vote-a-thon to express their outrage of the day, and then blame the government for “forcing it” to happen. That’s…not how this works. And if MPs are opposed to those tactics, well, they can let their party leadership know that they’re opposed and do something about it internally. Otherwise, I’m not sure what their suggestions are for making life easier for MPs, because the alternatives – such as time allocating all business by means of programming motions and the like – is not healthy for democracy either. Perhaps they need to think about that as they complain about the jobs they chose.

Speaking of workloads, there was some angry debating over Twitter over the weekend about the Senate not sitting later to pass the bill that would add CBSA to the new civilian oversight body created for the RCMP (the accusation that they wanted to go on vacation). While I have my doubts about that bill (I think the earlier Senate bill to create an Inspector General for CBSA held a lot of promise, but the government refused to debate it), it’s pretty unfair to lay the blame on the Senate as a whole. Rather, it’s the government’s fault – both in introducing the bill so late, and sending it to the Senate at the very last minute, and in their Leader in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, who controls the agenda. He could have ensured that the Senate sat long enough to pass it, but we’ve seen over the past three-and-a-half years that Harder has been absolutely allergic to staying later than the Commons does, even though the Senate is actually scheduled to sit for an extra week at the end of each sitting, like they always do. Harder, however, has steadfastly refused, and the Independent senators haven’t pushed back. If you want someone to blame, start there.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The hollow discontent

Posted on by

The Council of the Federation meeting has concluded, and Jason Kenney is again giving warnings about national unity, but given that his thesis is a house built of lies, one should probably take it with a grain or two of salt. There were the usual demands of higher healthcare transfers (ironic given that the premiers are largely conservatives, at least one of whom was in Harper’s Cabinet when he reduced the rate of increase on those transfers), and federal assistance with pharmacare, and the platitudes about increasing labour mobility – for which we’ll see if Kenney’s theatrical moves around unilaterally reducing a handful of the province’s trade barriers will get any traction. It was noticeable that he didn’t decide to join the national securities regulator, and for as much as Andrew Scheer tried to swoop in with press releases about how Justin Trudeau had “failed” on interprovincial trade, the reality is quite the opposite – after achieving the trade deal with the provinces and the negative list of barriers, they have made substantial progress on chipping away at it.

There was some disagreement – François Legault continued his opposition to pipelines (which throws a giant wrench into their visions of “national energy corridors” that are being used as code-words for pipeline access routes), and Brian Pallister and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford, sniped back at Legault about his province’s “secularism” bill, that the other premiers mostly didn’t say anything about.

When all was said and done, however, it became noticeable how hollow Kenney’s attempt to build some kind of coalition of discontent was – while he was trying to insist on a brewing unity crisis, all of the other premiers were pretty much “one or two disagreements, but we’re good otherwise.” Which kind of blows Kenney’s narrative out of the water – especially when he was forced to admit that the province doesn’t really want to separate. It’s a tacit admission that once again, this is just using lies to try and keep people angry because he thinks he can use that to his advantage, but not enough other premiers want to play with that particular bonfire.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Weasel words on conversion therapy

Posted on by

In the wake of the Liberals announcing that they were looking at what measures they could take at a federal level to ban “conversion therapy,” the question was put to Andrew Scheer if he opposed it. Scheer responded that while he opposes “forced” conversion therapy, he will wait to see what the government proposes around banning it before if he’ll support it. The Conservatives quickly cried foul that the Global news headline was that “Andrew Scheer will ‘wait and see’ before taking a stance on conversion therapy ban” was just clickbait that didn’t reflect his actual quotes (and Global did update their headline), but not one of them pointed out the fact that Scheer’s own words were, to be frank, weaselly.

Scheer said that he opposed “forced” conversion therapy, and that he’s opposed to “any type of practice that would forcibly attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation against their will or things like that.” And you note the weasel words in there – about only being opposed to “forced” therapy, or to change it “against their will.” The giant implication that not one conservative rushing to defend Scheer is that there are types of “voluntary” conversion therapy that he is okay with, and that is alarming because any kind of so-called “conversion therapy” is torture, whether entered into voluntarily or not – and it ignores that when people enter into it voluntarily, it’s because they have such a degree of self-loathing that they have deluded themselves into believing that they can change their sexual orientation in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and a lot of that self-loathing comes from the sorts of violence, whether physical, mental or spiritual, that has been inflicted upon them. And it does look entirely like Scheer is being too cute by leaving a giant loophole in the window for his religious, social conservative flank to not feel threatened by his position, because it lets them carry on with the mythology that there is such a thing as “voluntary” conversion therapy, and that this is all about their “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit that asserts that homosexuality is just a learned behaviour and not an intrinsic characteristic. So no, I don’t think Scheer has been at all unequivocal.

Meanwhile, Scheer’s apologists will demand to know why the government refused to act on a “conversion therapy” ban when presented with a petition about it in March, but again, this is an issue where there is a great deal of nuance that should be applied. The government response was that these practices tend to fall under healthcare or be practiced by health professionals, which makes it provincial jurisdiction, and that while there can be some applications of the Criminal Code with some practices, it required coordination with the provinces to address, which they have been doing. What the Liberals announced this week was that they were seeing if there were any other measures they could take federally, which might involve the Criminal Code. Again, it’s an issue where it’s hard for them to take a particular line, so they’re trying to see what it is possible to do – that’s not a refusal, it’s an acknowledgement that it’s a complicated issue.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Sensation over nuance

Posted on by

The big headline over CBC yesterday was that five of the six most recent federal judicial appointments in the province of New Brunswick all had some kind of ties to Dominic LeBlanc – never mind how tenuous those ties were. This of course led a bunch of Conservative apologists to compare this with the Dean French/Doug Ford situation in Ontario, which is absurd given that judicial appointments have a more rigorous merit-based system around them (more rigorous than it was under the Conservative era), and many of the French/Ford appointments had to do with whether someone was connected to French by family or lacrosse, many with no obvious competences in the roles they were appointed to. The Conservatives also declared that this was somehow related to both Loblaws winning a competition around fridge refits (no, seriously), and that this was reminiscent of the Arctic surf clam contract that LeBlanc was involved in wherein the definition of “family” used by the Ethics Commissioner differed from that in other statutes. (Not mentioned was the time when the Conservatives appointed most of Peter MacKay’s wedding party to the bench in Nova Scotia).

Reading deeper into this story, I found that some of the connections that were being highlighted were a bit dubious. The most dubious was the fact that one of the judges named was not actually someone that was recently named, but rather promoted to the Chief Justice of province’s Court of Appeal by Trudeau, though she was originally a Conservative donor and had been first named to the Bench by Harper. The fact that she bought a property from LeBlanc next to his summer cottage was deemed to be curious in this. Likewise the fact that two of them were part of a group that paid off LeBlanc’s leadership campaign debts a decade ago (each would have donated a few hundred dollars) is a pretty dubious link between them. The only one that might raise eyebrows is the fact that one of the five is married to LeBlanc’s brother-in-law…but even then, at what point do we start disqualifying someone whose relation is by marriage twice-removed?

The other bit of nuance that we can’t forget here is that New Brunswick is a very small province with a very small population, and legal circles in a province like that would be very tight – especially when you consider that the provincial political culture is far more nepotistic than the federal culture is. While the CBC piece cites a paper that says that people with political connections get judicial appointments at a rate double that in other parts of the country, but one has to remember that it can be harder to avoid, which is why fighting nepotism in those places can be much harder. And this is the point where people will bring up the fact that Jody Wilson-Raybould objected to the fact that names that were short-listed needed to be sent to PMO for vetting by the Liberals’ database, but again, it needs to be stressed that they need to go through all sources to check for red flags because the prime minister is politically accountable for those appointments. It’s called Responsible Government. Does that mean that these five appointments didn’t have some influence from LeBlanc tapping the justice minister and saying he wanted them appointed? Anything is possible, but it’s unlikely given the vetting process and the fact that most of these connections are tenuous at best. But it’s also regrettable that this kind of journalism strives for sensationalism and an attempt at being gotcha than it is with nuance.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Closing it all down for the summer (and the election)

Posted on by

The House of Commons rose yesterday, earlier than expected after news that Conservative MP Mark Warawa died of cancer. Business was truncated, all remaining bills passed swiftly, and a few tributes were made to Warawa before adjourning the House, ostensibly until September, but the writs would be drawn up for the election before then. There is a chance that Parliament will be called back in the summer to deal with the New NAFTA implementation bill, which was not passed, but apparently they’re waiting on the Americans before we go further.

Over on the Senate, side, a number of bills passed through swiftly, including the reforms to the Access to Information legislation, but the ones that caught the most attention were Bills C-48 and C-69, being the west coast oil tanker ban and the environmental assessment legislation. Immediately after those were passed, Alberta premier Jason Kenney thundered over Twitter about how he was going to challenge them in court – which you can expect the courts to tell him to go pound sand, just as they will with his challenge to the federal carbon price that will be imposed on his province come January. The Senate won’t be passing a number of private members’ bills, including some prominent ones like Rona Ambrose’s bill, but it was a bad bill anyway and deserved to die on the Order Paper. (The Liberals also promised to revive the bill in the next parliament, which…isn’t great, frankly, because it’s either unconstitutional in its original form, or largely symbolic in its amended form).

This means that all that’s left is a royal assent ceremony, which will happen this afternoon, and it’ll be the first time that they’re going to attempt a ceremony with the two chambers in separate buildings. It’s been suggested previously that the Usher of the Black Rod will take a limousine to West Block to knock on the Commons’ door to deliver the message that Her Excellency requests their presence in the Senate, at which point the Speaker and a token few MPs will head over – possibly in limos or little parliamentary busses – to the Senate for the ceremony. We’ll see how it all unfolds.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A weekend of Norman

Posted on by

Over the course of the long weekend, there was another push about the Vice Admiral Mark Norman story, but there were some problems in how this has all been unfolding. The National Post had a longread that was the first to interview Norman and his family about the ordeal, but in the process, in focusing on making Norman a martyr to his cause, I’m not sure that they did him any favours because it did seem to make it look like he did what he was accused of doing – this, while everyone kept tweeting about how enraging this story was on Norman’s behalf.

There were other threads – General Jonathan Vance, the Chief of Defence Staff, gave a somewhat exasperated sounding interview to state that the decision to suspend Norman was his and his alone, while the Globe and Mail reported that it was the former National Security advisor to the prime minister and the former Clerk of the Privy Council – both Harper appointees, it should be noted – that called in the RCMP to investigate the leak after their own internal investigation was inclusive. This blows up the narrative of the Conservatives that it was somehow a personal vendetta to destroy Norman’s career, or that the prime minister was personally directing this – though that narrative is also about trying to match up Trudeau’s stupid misspeaking about the Norman case likely winding up in court before charges were even laid that had them trying to spin a narrative about interference. (The Conservatives, meanwhile, keep hoping that there will be more embarrassing revelations, but they don’t seem to be coming). Likewise, the attempts to insist that the government was orchestrating the withholding of documents hasn’t actually matched up with the realities of the processes involved.

But while the Post story was curious enough, I found this analysis piece by the CBC’s Murray Brewster to have its share of framing problems, in saying that the allocation of responsibility was throwing people under the bus – like Vance (never mind that he admitted it was his decision). Brewster also seems to confuse the arguments that Crown prosecutors were making with those of “senior government officials” framing the prosecution, because I have never read anything about senior officials framing the prosecution – nor have I read anything coming from government or officials framing the allegations against Norman as an issue of civilian control, which is why I always found it odd because that’s at the heart of what was being alleged. Beyond that, Brewster wonders why the Liberals aren’t asking questions of the Conservatives about how they rewrote the rules on that procurement in the first place, or why the former Conservative ministers didn’t speak to the RMCP after the charges were laid, or why Norman would stake his career on this procurement – all questions that I don’t know why the Liberals would ask. They’re a little past holding the Conservatives to account because the Conservatives aren’t in power any longer, and it would seem to me that it would be more the role of journalists asking these kinds of questions of the Conservatives, as opposed to the government – perhaps more than trying to curry sympathy for Norman.

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1128335527785193472

Continue reading →

Roundup: Fighting on the economy

Posted on by

There are a couple of interesting threads out on the wires right now about the direction that the government is headed in as we head toward an election, and one of them is that Liberals in Ontario would rather their party fight the election based on the economy rather than the environment – this as the Liberals and NDP are trying to compete as to who can talk a better game on climate in order to head off the surge in Green Party support in the polls, and the recent Green by-election win. I’m sure this is going to be a very lively discussion behind the caucus room doors, and in the party’s election planning meetings, but that sentiment is clearly there.

At the same time, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council of Canada are expressing some displeasure with the government, but as Paul Wells notes here, some of it is a bit…dubious, such as demanding balanced budgets and lower taxes while the Americans are fuelling their tax cuts with trillion-dollar deficits. Wells also noted that both of these lobby groups aren’t really acknowledging that much of the drag on our economy is caused by outside forces – namely the brewing trade war between the US and China, and before that, Donald Trump’s threats to tear up NAFTA – and that these groups have studiously avoided talking about climate and the need to deal with our emissions. Nevertheless, there is a malaise between Corporate Canada and the Liberals possibly because the party seems to be setting their Blue Liberal base loose as they try to move further to the left in order to claim the space the NDP usually occupies, and that may wind up costing them in the longer term, if history is any guide.

Kevin Milligan, meanwhile, finds himself a bit puzzled at how little these same Corporate Canada voices have acknowledged the very significant changes that the government made in the fall economic update to deal with the US tax changes.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1127275895859716096

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1127278184821444608

Continue reading →

Roundup: Cluelessly demanding reforms

Posted on by

Over the long weekend, Independent Senator Tony Dean posted an op-ed over on iPolitics to decry the supposed partisan attempts to block reform in the Senate – but it’s a dog’s breakfast that betrays a complete lack of understanding about the institution. It’s indicative of the attitude of a cohort of the new senators who think that they know best, despite not having a working knowledge of Parliament as a whole, or the Senate in particular, and yet they feel as though they know definitively how it needs to change. And more dangerously, Dean brings up that recent poll to show how Canadians apparently love the “new” Senate as a means of bashing Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives, who have no intention to continue the new appointment process – in effect campaigning for the Liberals, which should be uncomfortable for “independent” senators.

The core of Dean’s argument is that the Senate needs a business committee in order to get things done – which is both wrong, and wrong-headed. He complains that individual senators can delay bills, which he fails to grasp is the whole point. The Senate does not exist to rubber-stamp government bills, and yet Dean seems to miss that point. It’s not just that the Conservatives are partisan and therefore Bad – it’s because the Senate has a constitutional role to fill, and a business committee won’t stop delays. All it does is institute time allocation on all legislation before the Chamber – and it’s ironic that he’s pushing for that notion because in the very same piece he complains that the Conservatives were draconian about time allocation when they were in charge. He complains that there is no “TV Guide” for the Senate because debates aren’t organised, which is another wrong notion because the whole point about the way in which the Chamber has operated, where there are days between speeches between proponents and critics on bills is because it allows for thoughtful responses rather than the canned speechifying that happens in the House of Commons. And “organising” debates for the sake of TV is just time allocation in disguise. Which he fails to grasp.

Pointing to the programming motions on the assisted dying or cannabis legislation are not necessarily good examples of programmed debate in the Senate, because those were extraordinary bills, which the majority of Senate business is not. Dean was also known for insisting that the Conservatives would refuse to let those bills go to a vote when the Conservatives were proposing timetables for negotiation (and we all know that neither the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Peter Harder, nor the Independent Senators Group, seem to believe in negotiation or horse-trading to get things done in the Senate, because they mistakenly believe it to be “partisan,” which it’s not – it’s how stuff gets done). A business committee is a bad move for the Senate, and Dean needs to get a clue about that. It won’t stop the Conservatives from being partisan, and simply time allocating all business could set a bad precedent for when the Conservatives get back into power – which they will one day – and the impulse to return to some of the “draconian” measures of the Harper era come back, and suddenly they may feel differently about time allocating everything. But this cohort of new senators doesn’t get that because they’re not familiar with how parliament works, and they need to get on that because change for the sake of change may sound like a good idea in the moment, but can have lasting, damaging consequences for the institution as a whole.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Statute or prerogative?

Posted on by

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

Continue reading →

Roundup: The ouster of the dissidents

Posted on by

After a day of bated breath, and rumours of regional caucus meetings, Justin Trudeau decided to pull the plug and expel Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from Liberal caucus, ostensibly saying that trust had been lost. While Wilson-Raybould would not say that she had confidence in the prime minister, Philpott went on camera that morning to say that she did, that her loss of confidence was solely in the handling of that one issue but otherwise she was still a good Liberal, but that wasn’t enough. For her part, Wilson-Raybould sent a letter to her caucus mates to plead her case, that she felt she was standing up for the values they shared and was trying to protect the prime minister from a “horrible mess,” but it didn’t sway any minds it seems. In the intervening hours, the texts and notes that Gerald Butts submitted to the Commons justice committee were released, and it mostly focused on the Cabinet shuffle, with the assurances that she was not being shuffled because of the SNC-Lavalin file, but because they needed someone with high profile for one of the highest-spending departments and she refused Indigenous Services. (Wilson-Raybould was also convinced that they were planning to replace her chief of staff with one of two PMO staffers she accused of trying to pressure her, which Butts said was not the plan, and which has not happened, for what it’s worth). I did find that Wilson-Raybould’s concern about the timing of the shuffle was suspicious, considering that the SNC-Lavalin file was on nobody’s radar until the Globe and Mail article, and her warnings of Indigenous anger if she was shuffled is also a bit odd considering that her record on addressing those issues while she was in the portfolio were…not exactly stellar.

When the “emergency” caucus meeting happened, Trudeau had just informed the pair that they were expelled, and he gave a lofty speech about trying to do politics differently, and sometimes that was hard and they didn’t always get it right, but he called recording the conversation with the Clerk of the Privy Council to be “unconscionable” (though it bears reminding that Philpott did not partake in this), and that they needed to be united because Liberals lose when they fight among themselves – and then he went into campaign mode. Because of course he did.

In the aftermath, Philpott put out a message that described her disappointment, and noted that she never got the chance to plead her case to caucus – though one imagines that for most of the caucus, the interview with Maclean’s, the hints of more to come, and what appeared to be a deliberate media strategy was her undoing, and her last-minute declaration of loyalty wasn’t enough to save her. She does, however, appear to want to stay in politics, so that remains interesting. Wilson-Raybould tweeted out a message that was unapologetic, rationalised her actions, and talked about transcending party, so perhaps that’s a hint of her future options. Andrew Scheer put out a message saying that there’s a home for anyone who speaks truth to power among the Conservatives, which is frankly hilarious given how much they crushed dissent when they were in power. (Also note that the NDP won’t take floor-crossers who don’t run in a by-election under their banner, and if they “make an exception” in this case, that will speak to their own principles. As well, if anyone thinks that they’re a party that brooks dissent, well, they have another thing coming). Liberals, meanwhile, made a valiant effort at trying to show how this was doing things differently – because they let it drag on instead of instantly putting their heads on (metaphorical) spikes. And maybe Trudeau was trying to give them a chance – he stated for weeks that they allow dissenting voices in the caucus – but the end result was the same.

In hot takes, Andrew Coyne says the expulsions serve no purpose other than vindictiveness, and that it’s a betrayal of the role of backbenchers to hold government to account. Susan Delacourt marvels at how long this has dragged out, and whether it’s a signal of dysfunction in the centre of Trudeau’s government that it’s carried out as it has. Robert Hiltz zeroes in on the lines in Trudeau’s speech where he conflates the national interest with that of the Liberal Party, which has the side-effect of keeping our oligarchical overlords in their comfortable places.

Continue reading →