While Justin Trudeau was off to Argentina for the G20, Andrew Scheer was elsewhr, as was Guy Caron, more unusually. Mark Strahl led off, worrying about new revelations about investigations that Raj Grewal may have been swept up into, to which Bardish Chagger responded that last week he made them aware of his serious challenges and treatment, and they hoped he got the help he needed. Strahl didn’t believe her, but Chagger reiterated the response. Strahl got even more incredulous, but Chagger’s response varied only by saying the RCMP operates independently. Luc Berthold tried again in French, and got the same answer in French, and then they went yet another round of the same. Ruth Ellen Brosseau led for the NDP, demanding that the government take action. Patty Hajdu said that it was troubling, but this was a global decision affecting plants in the US and elsewhere, so they were going to help workers where they could. Brosseau then demanded the government not sign the New NAFTA until an oversight clause around milk classes was removed, to which Lawrence MacAulay deployed his well-worn points about defending Supply Management. Tracey Ramsey was worried that we didn’t know what was in the deal and demanded that it not be signed, to which Mélanie Joly stood up to assure her it was a good deal for Canada. Brian Masse, whose rant about the auto sector didn’t reach the question before he got cut off, and Hajdu recited some talking points about their support for the industry through the auto innovation fund.
Tag Archives: Parliamentary Budget Officer
Roundup: A noble bill with problems below the surface
It’s not often that I’ll go out of my way to comment on poor reporting (as opposed to columns), but in this particular case, I’m going to make an exception. The story is the fact that Rona Ambrose’s bill on mandatory sexual assault training for judges has been stalled in the Senate. Ambrose appeared on Power & Politics to express her shock and dismay, but there was very little research done in terms of the concerns that have been raised with the bill to date, and the fact that its passage through the House of Commons was problematic in and of itself (most especially the fact that it was referred to the Status of Women committee instead of the Justice Committee in order to ensure swift passage, with a committee that was sympathetic and didn’t have the expertise on the matter). The written story on the CBC website was simply a recap of Ambrose’s interview with no comment from anyone else, or recounting any of the concerns or pushback from the debates on the bill.
So I decided to take twenty minutes and skim over the Second Reading debates in the Senate on the bill, and lo, there are some pretty important concerns being raised. Senator Jaffer, who is a lawyer who has done judicial training, pointed to the fact that the bill mandating written rulings in all sexual assault cases not only takes away from the fact that there are procedures for clear oral rulings that can be appealed, but that it will cause other delays. The training also disadvantages rural lawyers, and can tip the hand of a lawyer in a firm that they are applying to be a judge.
Senator Joyal, a formidable constitutional lawyer who had a career fighting for minority rights (and who helped write the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) expressed some serious concerns about the powers given to a federal commissioner to determine what qualifies for training. He raised the very real point that the bill stipulates that training must be done by sexual assault survivors and organisations that support them, which automatically biases the training and the presumption of innocence (and others have raised the point that these trainers are often called as expert witnesses, which creates further biases). Joyal also noted the constitutional implications of the bill given that judicial independence includes the ability to maintain control over their education.
Senator Pratte, while not a lawyer, raised the salient logistical issue that for every 500 judicial applicants, maybe 50 make it through, meaning that if everyone needs training before they can be appointed, it delays assessment of applicants and has the potential to create problems with the quality if the training. He also raised the notion that if sexual assault survivors are needed for this training, how long will it be before other victims’ groups demand to be heard for other judicial training?
Senator Fraser, whose objections were briefly noted in the CBC piece, also made points about the inappropriateness of the bill mandating that reports on the number of judges who have taken the training be tabled in Parliament because judges report to Chief Justices in their regions, not to the minister. As well, because the majority of these cases are actually heard in provincial courts, this could qualify as interference in provincial jurisdiction.
The story also went onto state that Senator Joyal, who chairs the Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, wouldn’t give a date for when the bill will be studied, but it didn’t mention that government bills always take precedence at committee, and as you can see from the committee’s schedule, they have a pretty full slate for the coming weeks, possibly months.
Frankly, I’m more than a little dismayed at the lazy reporting on this bill. While it may look like a slam-dunk issue on the surface, there’s a lot beneath the surface that’s not being reported on, which is actually fairly irresponsible. Would that political reporters at the CBC take twenty minutes to do some actual research on their stories than simply transcribe an interview.
Roundup: The big climate reveal
Yesterday was the big day, where Justin Trudeau unveiled the final details of his carbon pricing plan, and how the rebates would work for the provinces subject to the carbon backstop, which are going to be Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, with the Yukon and Nunavut also kicking in slightly later. (You can find breakdowns here). The Conservatives and their provincial premier allies immediately chimed in to predictably call this some kind of scam, and that nobody believed the rebates would happen, and so on, and so on. Also of note is that Trudeau’s nominal ally, Brian Gallant in New Brunswick, has also grumbled about the carbon price (but if he loses and Blaine Higgs forms government, he too is opposed to it). Manufacturers and small businesses are grumbling, despite the fact that there will be rebates for small and medium-sized businesses under the scheme. Also getting larger rebates will be people in rural communities, given that they have higher carbon costs (and it’s no secret that the Liberals have a harder time winning votes there).
https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1054753060336078848
With this in mind, here are some noted climate economists who can put some of yesterday’s announcement into proper perspective. (Additional thread from Kevin Milligan here, and Nic Rivers here).
Today's federal announcement is interesting. The federal approach is *simple* and transparent: flat, universal transfers that for a majority of households exceed exp. CTax costs. Provinces that prefer spending or PIT/CIT rate reductions can do so if they want. #cdnecon #cdnpoli
— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) October 23, 2018
It's a big day for environmental policy in Canada. Remember, demand curves slope downward and all policies have distributive impacts. If you want to reduce GHG emissions, spur innovative solutions, and mitigate regressive impacts, best choice is a carbon price w a broad rebate.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) October 23, 2018
Another bit you'll hear a lot today is that we don't need taxes, we need technology. Decades of economic research has shown that carbon pricing programs are the best spur for emissions-reducing technology because they reinforce/complement market demand https://t.co/JMbVsWv34o pic.twitter.com/Oiebpt1Aru
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) October 23, 2018
It's almost as if firms respond to prices by changing their behaviour. Lots of other stuff going on in AB, of course, but electricity demand is growing, and emissions are way down. pic.twitter.com/pkcM40hq7J
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) October 23, 2018
In case you're wondering, this quote isn't from today's announcement. It's from the Turning the Corner Plan which was introduced by the government of Stephen Harper in 2008. #cdnpoli cc @AndrewScheer https://t.co/2GB3H95SOv
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) October 23, 2018
Meanwhile, here’s a look at whether Trudeau can escape the problems of Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift, with points to Trudeau being a better communicator (but I’d argue that journalists prefacing every explanation of the Green Shift with “it’s complicated” didn’t help either). Chris Selley notes that this is the issue that could make or break Trudeau in the next election, which is why he needs to get it right. Paul Wells drops a bit of reality on the language that Scheer and Ford are using, and wonders whether the carbon backstop rebates will start catching on with other provinces.
Roundup: Counting on LNG
The federal and BC provincial governments made a big ballyhoo yesterday about the fact that a consortium of companies have come together to make a $40 billion investment in Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in BC, and it’s a project that not only did Indigenous consultation correctly, but got buy-in from the communities. It’s seen as a study in contrasts for other pipeline projects – but it’s also worth noting that natural gas isn’t bitumen, and you’ve got vastly different environmental consequences to a spill or breach. It’s also a major energy project at a time when the dominant narrative is that we apparently can’t get anything built in this country, or that investment is fleeing (not actually true), and that what we need to do is to end carbon pricing (despite the fact that energy companies have been calling for it), gutting environmental legislation (never mind that the regime Harper put into place created far more problems than it solved), and that Indigenous consultation is just a fleeting goalpost that keeps shifting. This project seems to prove otherwise – even if BC promised breaks on provincial and carbon taxes to sweeten the deal (though one could say that it shows there’s enough flexibility in the system as opposed to the whole system being hopelessly broken). Suffice to say, it makes the Conservatives’ talking points far less tenable (not that the truth has really mattered to them).
One of the more interesting questions in all of this is how it will affect emissions – not only locally, but globally, and that’s really the big question. While the local emissions would be high enough that it appears that BC would likely need to virtually decarbonise their economy otherwise, there is the potential that this LNG would be a major help in reducing emissions in Asian economies that are reliant on coal-fired generation – but that’s only if the LNG displaces coal and not other renewables instead. In all likelihood, LNG would be used alongside renewables as a backup or stopgap, but it may be some time before we see if that’s really what happens. Suffice to say, it has the potential to have a major impact on global emissions, if applied in the right way.
More New NAFTA fallout:
- Justin Trudeau says that despite that notification clause in the new NAFTA, Canada will still pursue a deeper trading relationship with China.
- Kim Campbell says it’s a bit cheeky for the Conservatives to suggest that they could have gotten a better deal given the American leadership.
- In Vancouver, Bill Morneau praised the new NAFTA, but also said that dairy and steel sectors still need help. So, there’s that.
- The new NAFTA includes a specific clause to insist that Canadians not be able to watch the American broadcast of the Super Bowl. No, seriously.
- Here’s a deeper dive into the Supply Management issue as it relates to the new NAFTA, including the fears of hormone-laced milk coming in from the US.
- Here’s a look at the government’s efforts at trade diversification, given that NAFTA is more or less renegotiated.
- Here’s a look at next steps when it comes to ratification of the new NAFTA.
Roundup: Dissent without disloyalty
Yesterday on Power & Politics, we saw something that is far too rare in Canadian politics, but should be the norm. In response to the government signing on the US’ recent initiative at the UN to basically renew the “war on drugs,” Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith went on the show to publicly disagree with his party and the government that his party forms, and more to the point, we didn’t see anyone clutching their pearls about this, or higher-ups in the party make threats. Shocking, I know.
The civics refresher here is that all MPs are supposed to hold government to account, whether they’re in the opposition or in the government’s backbench. Holding the government to account is the very raison d’etre of Parliament, but you wouldn’t know it given how many government backbenchers think it’s their job to be cheerleaders, to give unquestioning support, and possibly to suck up in the hopes of a Cabinet posting or parliamentary secretary position. I also know that this isn’t quite as true behind the caucus room door, but we see very little dissent in public. We see even less dissent in other parties – the NDP enforce solidarity and uniformity in all positions, and have been known to punish MPs who step out of line, while we’ve seen the amount of tolerance that the Conservatives have for dissenting opinions with Maxime Bernier’s post-leadership experiences (though I will grant you, there is still some diversity of thought in there, but it’s rarely expressed publicly). And while I don’t praise Justin Trudeau for many things, I will say his openness to dissenting voices is unquestioningly a good thing in Parliament.
And this brings me back to Leona Alleslev’s defection to the Conservatives last week, and the statements she made about how she didn’t think she could openly criticize the government and not be perceived as disloyal. This is one of those statements of hers that I called bullshit on at the time, and I will call bullshit on it doubly today given this latest incident where Erskine-Smith broke ranks and nobody is calling him disloyal for it. He’s doing the job he’s supposed to do, and which not enough MPs take seriously (and this is also because the lack of proper civics education and training for MPs when they’re elected). I’d like to see him setting an example that others will hopefully follow.
Roundup: Sending amendments back a second time
There’s drama with the Senate, after they sent back the omnibus transport bill back to the Commons a second time, after the government rejected several of the nineteen amendments proposed. We haven’t seen this happen in twelve years, that last time being in 2006 when there was back-and-forth on Harper’s Accountability Act, when he had a minority in the Commons, and the Liberals had a majority in the Senate, giving them the necessary leverage. But while much of the focus is on whether or not there’s going to be a constitutional crisis over this (there’s not, and quit being such drama queens about it), there is actually some nuance here that should be explored a bit more.
In a rare step the Senate rejected the Commons transportation bill for a second time. @VassyKapelos explains the significance #pnpcbc #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/eBQPdIf9h6
— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) May 10, 2018
There are a couple of reasons why the Senate eventually voted to insist on some of the amendments, and one of those had to do with the way it creates unfairness for the Maritimes when it comes to rail transportation rates, as there is a monopoly in the region. What’s very interesting about this is the fact that after PEI Senator Diane Griffin made her speech about the regional unfairness, all subsequent debate became spontaneous and unscripted – something we almost never see in either chamber. This is how Parliament should work, and based on that speech, some senators changed their votes, which shows that the process does work as it’s supposed to, from time to time. It also shows that the Senate is fulfilling its role when it comes to standing up for regions, as they are doing for the Maritimes in this case. (Griffin, incidentally, says she’ll likely back down if the Commons rejects the amendments a second time).
.@SenDianeGriffin says if the House doesn't want to take the advice of senators and amend Bill #C-49 to provide more fairness to Maritimers, it's their funeral #pnpcbc #cdnpoli #SenCa pic.twitter.com/FmL5j2DEY3
— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) May 10, 2018
The other reason the Senate is sending these amendments back, however, is the fact that when the government rejected them, they didn’t offer an explanation as to why, and this is important (and I haven’t seen anyone reporting this fact). And this puts the onus on the government, because they owe senators that explanation as to why their sober second thought is being rejected. Just about a year ago, when the Senate sent back amendments to the budget implementation bill, the House rather snippily stated that such amendments would impede the privileges of the Commons – but never stated how they would do so. While the Senate passed the bill, they did send a message back to the Commons that yes, they do have the ability to amend budget bills thank you very much, but they did make sure to let Bardish Chagger know their displeasure the next time she appeared at Senate QP, where they wanted the explanation as to how the amendments would impact the Commons’ privileges (and she never did give them an answer). Trudeau keeps saying he respects the independence of the Senate, but he should demonstrate that respect by offering explanations and not treating the work of the Senate in such a dismissive manner.
Roundup: Detailed spending or slush fund?
The Parliamentary Budget Officer weighed in yesterday on the government’s desire to create a $7 billion fund as part of the Estimates to get a jump start on budget promises before those spending plans can be finalized with departments and voted on in the Supplementary Estimates later in the year. The verdict? That enabling this would make it more difficult for MPs to do their duty of controlling government spending, because in their estimation, nothing obliges the government to spend that $7 billion on what is outlined in the budget annex. Government officials (on background) dispute this because they say that if they were to spend it on something other than what is laid out in the budget annex that it would constitute an unauthorized use of public funds.
“See! It’s a slush fund!” The Conservatives immediately cried and gave their little song and dance about how it’ll mean the Liberals can spend it willy-nilly on anything they want. And perhaps they should know – after all, they created a $3 billion “emergency fund” to deal with the 2008 financial crisis and wound up spending it on things like the gazebos in Tony Clement’s riding for the G8/G20 meeting when those funds were supposed to be used for border infrastructure. So is this the voice of experience talking? Good luck getting them to admit it. The NDP line, meanwhile, is that this is the Liberals trying to “suppress Parliament,” which I think you’ll have a hard time trying to find evidence for given how few actual strongarm tactics they’ve managed to engage in so far (a couple of ham-fisted moves that they’ve had to walk back from aside).
While on the one hand, I think the PBO has a point, on the other hand, it’s not a $7 billion black box, and the spending is outlined in the budget, and they can be held to account for it, which is also Parliament’s role. And given that the Estimates are basically unreadable currently and the fact that most MPs don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to them, the cynic in me wonders why they really care (other than it’s a convenient bludgeon to bash the government with). After all, I’ve watched enough times when the Commons has passed the Estimates at all stages with no actual debate or scrutiny on several occasions, leaving the actual hard work up to the Senate. Add to that, watching the Conservatives on their vote-a-thon vote against line items in the Estimates that they probably shouldn’t have shows how little attention they actually pay to the process and the contents. So would this $7 billion fund matter in the long run? Probably not. If nothing else, it’s more impetus for why we need to fix the Estimates process, to realign it with the budget and the Public Accounts, and ensure that they’re readable once again. And until that happens, I find myself having a hard time caring about this item given that there has been an attempt at due diligence that is otherwise so often lacking.
Roundup: A possible missed deadline on election laws
With a ticking clock over their heads – one whose useful time may already have passed – the government unveiled a new bill yesterday to reform the country’s electoral laws, to not only roll back changes that the previous government made around voter ID, that people complained made it harder for people to vote, while also enhancing some privacy safeguards, and limiting the writ period to 50 days while imposing more spending limits on pre-writ and third-party spending (so long as there’s a fixed election date). In the event that you thought there was already a bill on the Order Paper to roll back those Conservative changes, well, you’d be right, but they’ve abandoned it and rolled those changes into this new bill – a tactic they have been using with increasing frequency for whatever reason. Of course, Conservatives are already grousing that the Liberals are trying to make voter fraud easier by reducing the ID restrictions – never mind that they were never able to prove that there were problems with the pre-existing system, with one MP being forced to apologize for misleading the House after insisting that he saw people collecting voter registration cards when he actually just made the story up. But why ruin a narrative about the Liberals trying to game the next election?
The point about timing is going to be a tough one, because ideally these changes should have been made months ago if Elections Canada was to have enough time to ensure that they’ll be in effect for 2019 – and this also has to do with their need to migrate to a new data centre in advance of that election. Why the government couldn’t get this bill out months ago – or advance the previous bill on electoral measures, for that matter – is a question that they have yet to answer. As to whether Elections Canada can make these changes in time, the fact that there is now a bill that they can look to could mean that they’ve been saved in time – maybe – but we have yet to see how long it will take for them to bring it to debate and get it to the Senate, which has been keen to both amend bills and take their time doing it.
Meanwhile, Elections Canada is working with CSE and outside contractors to provide iPads to polling stations in the next election for things like voter registration so that they can eliminate some of the paper systems at advanced polls. In other words, trying to speed up the process electronically while still keeping the paper ballots that are so necessary to have proper accountability in our system.
Roundup: Yes, the Conservatives did it too
Amidst the faux drama in QP this week about the apparent discrepancy between the Dogwood Initiative getting funding for an anti-Kinder Morgan activist while the government refuses to give funding to groups that use such summer jobs grants to pay for students to distribute fliers of aborted foetuses, or to groups that refuse to hire LGBT students, I find myself losing patience with the constant refrains that if the Conservatives engaged in this kind of behaviour, there would be riots in the streets.
I hate these “flip it around” suppositions because they all happened already. Remember when the Conservative government defunded pretty much every women’s advocacy group? The howls didn’t amount to much. https://t.co/GlgID3Vas5 pic.twitter.com/e1t2U89kML
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 27, 2018
Reminder: the Conservatives did engage in that kind of behaviour. They wantonly defunded all manner of organizations, whether they ensured that women in developing countries could access safe abortions, whether they advocated for women’s equality here in Canada, or if they were ecumenical social justice organizations that engaged in education and outreach at home and abroad. They defunded the Court Challenges Programme which helped ensure that minority groups like the LGBT community could do the work of bringing their challenges to the Supreme Court of Canada (because it’s expensive and law firms can’t do it all pro bono). They cut funding to HIV and AIDS services organizations and diverted all manner of funding to a vaccine initiative that they then flaked out on and frittered away millions of dollars so that they had no impact (and the results of those cuts are still being felt today as the current government wants to shift funding priorities to prevention). They prioritized refugee resettlement for Christians in the Middle East over Muslims. They engaged in abusive auditing over charitable organizations that opposed them ideologically. All of this happened, in the most petty and mean-spirited manner at that, and there weren’t riots in the streets. There were a handful of protests, and the media barely mentioned a number of these cuts.
Is the way that the government handled this attestation on the Summer Jobs Grants heavy-handed? Yes. Was the wording clumsy? Probably. But groups aren’t being denied funding because they’re faith-based – they’re being denied funding because they’re refusing to either sign the attestation, or they’ve tried to rewrite it to suit themselves, despite the fact that the government has said repeatedly that “core mandate” refers not to values or beliefs, but daily activities. In all of the rhetoric and pearl-clutching, the actual facts are being distorted and need to be called back into focus. We also need to focus on the fact that the real problem here is that MPs get to sign off on those grants, which is a violation of their roles as guardians of the public purse, and instead makes them agents of the government in distributing spending (clouding their accountability role). But sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this constant invocation that “if the Conservatives did it…” is bogus and amnesiac. They did it. All the time.
Roundup: The struggle of independent senators
Despite the news being a day-old yesterday, the departure of Senator David Adams Richards from the Independent Senators Group got a bunch of tongue wagging, and even more wannabe comedians making lame jokes about Senate independence. Richards stated repeatedly over the past two days that he wasn’t pressured to vote or do anything by the ISG, but wanted to be “truly independent,” though I’m not sure he quite understands what he’s signing up for. Amidst this, the memo written by Senator Gold to his ISG colleagues about his conflict with just how independent they can be without defeating government bills also hit the news (despite the fact that I wrote about this in my weekend column), which got even more wannabe commentators to start opining about who is really independent in the Senate without having a clue about what is going on. (I will credit Althia Raj as being the only person who did have a clue yesterday, so there’s that).
So, to recap, the Independent Senators Group don’t whip votes or force attendance but organize for the purposes of logistics and to advance the cause of Senate modernization. Logistics include things like allocating office space, and also things like committee assignments, because of the way the Senate operations work, spots are divided up between caucuses, and the ISG is granted their share of committee seats. Any senators outside of the three caucus groups have a much tougher time of getting those committee seats. This is something that Richards is going to face if indeed he wants to do committee work. If he doesn’t, well, that’s going to be an issue because much of the value of the Senate comes from their committee work, which is superior to committee work coming out of the Commons by leaps and bounds.
As for the struggle for how independent Senators should be, part of the problem is that they’re getting a lot of bad and conflicting information, much of it coming from the Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder, who is deliberately misconstruing both the history of the Senate, the intent of the Founding Fathers, and how the Senate has operated for 150 years. Part of this stems from the fact that he refuses to do his actual job – he won’t negotiate timelines with the caucuses because he thinks that horse-trading is “partisan,” and he wants to ensure that government bills can’t get defeated by means of a Salisbury Convention so that he doesn’t have to do the work of counting votes to ensure that he can get those bills passed. And the Independent Senators are caught in the middle of this, too new to understand what is going on, and getting a lot of bad advice from people who are trying to force their own ideas of what the Senate should look like, and they’re afraid of accidentally defeating a government bill and having public opinion turn against them as being anti-democratic, and the like. So there are serious issues being contemplated, and the commentary coming from the pundit class right now, who think they’re being clever but who actually don’t have a clue about what they’re talking about, helps no one. And if people want to grab a clue, I have a collection of columns on the topic they can read up on.