Tag Archives: Parliamentary Budget Officer

Roundup: For fear of extremists rising

Posted on by

In damage control mode, the Liberals have sent out senior sources to talk about why they pulled the plug on electoral reform, and have brought up the relatively new talking point about concerns for the rise of extremist parties, while cabinet was opposed to a referendum (not surprisingly given the referenda we’ve seen globally lately) and to a PR system in general. I say relatively new talking point because it was raised as part of the MyDemocracy survey, but as Paul Wells stated on Power & Politics last night, for a government that purports to be eloquent, they never made the case. I also suspect there was the added problem that in making it known that he was open to being convinced, Justin Trudeau allowed Nathan Cullen and others to steal the narrative away from him, which is a big reason why the Liberals completely lost the plot on that file.

Colby Cosh goes through the promise and given the choice as to whether Trudeau was being sleazy or stupid in making that promise, Cosh goes on the side of stupid – for which I would agree – and notes that a retreat was the best he could hope for rather than some truly unsavoury outcomes, particularly with regard to a referendum or a more purely proportional system. And here we get back to the rise of extremist parties.

Canada is not immune to this rabid and toxic populism that is going around globally, and we’ve seen examples of it manifesting in this country, from the election of Rob Ford, to some of the identity politics being attempted in previous elections both federally and provincially. Just because it has been relatively contained and not entirely successful doesn’t mean it can’t succeed in the future, particularly with its proponents feeling emboldened by what’s happening south of the border. And while Nathan Cullen insists that the rise of alt-right parties is “a load of crap,” he is blinkered by this notion, primarily coming from the left-wing, that a PR system would incentivise all of these left-wing and progressive parties that would somehow always form nice coalition governments. Right now we’re seeing something very different playing out in Europe, with all of their myriad of PR systems producing growing hard-right parties on the verge of winning power in several countries. Trudeau has every right to be concerned about that in Canada, and we have demonstrated proof that our current system has blunted their growth because they can’t command enough broad-based support to dominate our big-tent brokerage parties. That’s not a bad thing.

https://twitter.com/benjaminokinsey/status/827582598109069312

Oh, PR proponents claim. We’ll just raise thresholds so that these parties can’t get seats! But that’s just as problematic because if the thresholds are too low – say below three percent – you’re likely to cut off the Greens and the Bloc, for which they would cry bloody murder. (Their self-interested insistence that more people would vote for them if they knew they were guaranteed PR seats doesn’t help their case). It’s also another way of saying that you want to game the system to produce party configurations that you like, which again is self-interested, and doesn’t make the case for how it makes the system better.

In related news, Paul Wells looks at Karina Gould’s new mandate of cyber-security for our electoral system now that electoral reform is out of the question, and no, it’s not a trivial matter even if we don’t use any kind of electronic ballots in this country. Both Elections Canada and the various parties all have databases, and the party databases most especially are vulnerable, in part because they aren’t subject to any federal legislation which deals with privacy or information security, and that could prove to be a problem in the future.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The measure of a political promise

Posted on by

There’s been a lot of hay made, ink spilled and electrons converted into pixels over the last 36 hours or so about the value of political promises, and how terrible it is when politicians break them. It makes people so cynical, and it’s no wonder that people hate politicians, and so on. We had Liberal MPs Nate Erskine-Smith and Adam Vaughan prostrating themselves about how sorry they are that the promise was broken, voter reform groups wailing about how terribly they’ve been betrayed, and columnists pontificated on broken promises (though do read Selley’s piece because he offers some great advice, not the least of which is telling PR advocates to tone down the crazy. Because seriously).

But in the midst of this, we had Conservative leadership candidates laying out a bunch of promises of what they would do if they a) won the leadership, and b) won the next general election, and some of those promises were hilariously terrible. For example, Maxime Bernier thinks it’s cool to freeze equalization payments so that the federal government can tell provinces how they should be managing their own fiscal houses, or Andrew Scheer saying that he would enshrine property rights by using a novel approach to amending the constitution through the back door, as though the Supreme Court of Canada would actually let that pass.

And while everyone was tearing their hair out over Trudeau’s “betrayal” and “lies,” what were these two other, equally implausible promises as Trudeau’s on electoral reform, met with? A few pundits tweeted “good luck with that” to Scheer. And that was about it. So forgive me while I try to calibrate my outrage meter on political promises here, as to which ones we should take seriously and which ones we know are bad or wholly improbable but can safely laugh off.

To be clear – I’m not looking to give Trudeau a free pass on this one, and I’ve written elsewhere that I think he needs to own up to the fact that it was a bad promise made when he was a third-place party who were blue-skying a number of things. And I think that it should give parties and candidates pause so as to caution them against being overly ambitious in what they promise (preferably, though, without draining all ambition out of politics). But come on. Let’s have a sense of proportion to what just happened here.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Losing crucial regional perspectives

Posted on by

As the hollowing out of the Press Gallery continues, we lost a fairly unique voice yesterday, being Peter O’Neil, who was writing for the Vancouver Sun. While he is but yet one more journalist who has been let go in this period of bloodletting, his was a fairly unique position of being the only “regional” voice left in a major chain paper. Yes, we still have the Winnipeg Free Press and the Halifax Chronicle Herald sending journalists to the Hill rather than just buying wire copy (which they still do, mind you), but those independent papers, and that does make a difference.

Once upon a time, each local paper for the major chains sent someone to Ottawa to cover stories here from the local perspective rather than rely solely on national reporters to feed stories to them. It allowed for local concerns to be brought to MPs here, and for the MPs to better engage with their local papers from Ottawa – especially as they had someone who knew their home ridings here to keep them honest. That’s all gone now. And part of why this is a problem is that there has been a proven correlation between the loss of regional reporters in the Press Gallery and a decline voter turnout in those communities where they suffered that loss. (There are academic studies on this, but my GoogleFu is failing me on this one, but yes, this was a subject frequently discussed during my master’s programme). And now, with even fewer national reporters there to do the daily reporting plus trying to get any kind of perspective, we no longer have reporters doing the same kinds of accountability on MPs themselves rather than just of the government. Peter was the last of the regional voices from the big chains, and because Vancouver has a particular unique political culture of its own, that was an important perspective to have. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why he wound up writing the biography of former Senator Gerry St. Germain – because St. Germain knew that O’Neil knew West Coast politics, he could trust him enough to tell his story. That’s not an insignificant thing in a country with big regional differences like Canada has. And this becomes a growing problem as we lose more and more journalists and positions here in Ottawa, which we need to figure out how to reverse, one way or another, before things deteriorate to the point of no return.

Continue reading →

Roundup: No, Monsef was not demoted

Posted on by

So, cabinet shuffle, and while everyone keeps saying this is somehow Trump-focused, I’m not sure what labour, status of women, or democratic institutions has to do with Trump. There will be all manner of hot takes, and yes, you’ll get mine too. It was striking in that just barely over a year into the new government, two of the most senior hands have not only been bounced from cabinet, but from parliament as a whole – John McCallum headed to China as our new ambassador, and Stéphane Dion to parts unknown in what is likely to be a diplomatic posting of some variety, but what we’re not quite sure just yet. In a government that has very few experienced hands, this is something that does give me some pause. MaryAnn Mihychuk’s ouster, however, was not a great surprise given the stuff that came out when she had a number of duties taken away from her portfolio, particularly around her attitude and her ambition to be a regional political minister in a cabinet that has largely eschewed them. Chrystia Freeland to foreign affairs is not a surprise (making her the first Liberal woman foreign affairs minister in the country’s history – previous ones had been Conservatives), Patty Hajdu to labour seems a natural next step for the job she has been doing, and François-Philippe Champagne to trade is ambitious but he proved himself as Bill Morneau’s parliamentary secretary over the past year. Another first in Cabinet is Ahmed Hussen to immigration, who is Somali-born (and while some have said he’s the first Black cabinet minister, that would actually be Lincoln Alexander).

And then there’s Maryam Monsef. She’s off to Status of Women, which people keep insisting is a demotion, but I have a hard time accepting that notion. She carried a file that is the equivalent of a flaming bag of excrement and smiled all the way through. Sure, she’s no longer the person to finish trying to smother that file as elegantly as possible (so good luck with that, Karina Gould), but a demotion would have been getting the Mihychuk treatment. Status of Women is not a demotion. People went on TV scratching their heads about what challenges are in that department, apparently having not paid attention to the big files in that department, including sorting pay equity, ensuring that all government departments actually implement gender-based analysis, and that tiny little file about the plan to combat gender-based violence. You know, no challenges at all. Plus, she’s gone from a make-work portfolio that didn’t have an actual department – just a handful of PCO staffers to support her – to an actual line-department. It’s not a demotion. And did I mention good luck to Gould because yeah, now she gets to try to stick handle trying to find a way to kill the electoral reform election promise as gracefully as possible (despite Kady O’Malley’s belief that the PM thinks that all hope is not yet lost). Because seriously – this is a file that needs to be put out of its misery before it can cause actual damage to our democratic system.

Meanwhile, if you want hot takes on the cabinet shuffle, there are plenty here from Michael Den Tandt on Freeland, Andrew Potter on Dion, Susan Delacourt susses out the dynamics, while Paul Wells adds both some global perspective and insight into what it says about Trudeau.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Questions about fundraising

Posted on by

This whole fundraiser headache just won’t go away, and at this point, I just want to bang my head against a wall because all sides are just making this whole situation way more needlessly gross than it needs to be. At his end-of-year press conference yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that at fundraisers, people do talk to him about stuff and he listens, but that doesn’t really influence his decision-making. And I’m a little queasy about everyone labelling this as “lobbying” because that has a fairly specific term and any actual lobbyists need to be registered, which the party makes an effort to screen them out of these events. According to the opposition, this was “bragging” as opposed to the reality that when you’re the PM, people will want to tell you stuff all the time, so unless the suggestion is that he doesn’t attend fundraisers any longer, then I’m not sure how you stop people from taking that opportunity to try and tell the PM their great idea/issue they’re passionate about that he could totally do something about/etc. The NDP are vowing to introduce a bill to put the government’s ethical guidelines into legislation, but how do you legislate the “appearance” of conflict of interest? It’s a subjective measure that the media and the opposition have been torqueing with no actual demonstrated quid pro quo (and no, insinuation based on coincidental timing is not actually proof of quid pro quo), and I’m not sure what they’re exactly suggesting they give the Ethics Commissioner power to do when it comes to regulating said appearance of conflict, but giving yet more power to an unaccountable officer of parliament rankles on me even more.

And then there’s the Trudeau Foundation. After they embarked on new fundraising efforts because of low interest rates were hitting their ability to do their work, and lo, they suddenly have new donors, some of them Canadians with foreign connections. This apparently is a sign of a conspiracy that people are somehow trying to curry favour with the Prime Minister, despite the fact that he has severed his ties to the Foundation before this happened. (Apparently this too goes into “appearance” of conflict where none actually exists). Oh, and it’s also apparently suspicious that some companies have increased their lobbying of a new government. Because it’s not like you want to get your points to the new people in charge when you’re looking to change policies that the previous government implemented (or refused to). That’s kind of how lobbying works. It’s not necessarily nefarious.

And to tie this all off, the Globe and Mail ordered polling on “cash for access” fundraising (never mind that what happens at the federal level bears no resemblance to what went on in Ontario), and wouldn’t you know, most people don’t like it. And half of respondents think that you can buy government influence for $1500? Honestly? This is the media not doing our jobs to show how government works, but is just reinforcing stereotypes about crooked politicians being on the take. It’s kind of gross, and we should be better than this.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The ricochet into Canada

Posted on by

I had idly wondered how long the Trump victory in the United States would take to start showing ricochets in Canada, and apparently it was minutes, as in the middle of the night, Kellie Leitch’s campaign was already putting out fundraising emails drawing comparisons, particularly around their mutual bashing of “elites.” Because Leitch, you see, apparently isn’t an elite, never mind the fact that she’s a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon in Muskoka, a university professor, and former cabinet minister whose was the protégé of the finance minister. No sir, nothing elite about that, because she had to compete with the “biggest old boys’ club” out there, being surgeons, so there. Um, okay. (Incidentally, Leitch previously didn’t want to be compared to Trump, which she kept vacillating over during last night’s leadership debate). And that elite-bashing was quickly picked up by bother other leadership candidates, and others in the party like Tony Clement (who apparently also doesn’t think he’s an elite, despite all evidence to the contrary).

Michael Chong, however, rejected Leitch’s move as being antithetical to the “big tent” Conservative movement that the party is trying to become. Chris Alexander also sounded a cautious note, for what it’s worth, but Lisa Raitt’s tone is less decisive.

https://twitter.com/michaelchongmp/status/796428123768324100

Michelle Rempel, however, seems cognisant enough about the trap of demagoguery when it comes to dealing with difficult issues and cautions against importing that ethos to Canada. Rempel also relayed some of her experiences of what she saw during her recent visit to the States, and the alarming levels of discontent among the populace.

Meanwhile, here’s Justin Trudeau’s statement on working together with a Trump presidency. Thomas Mulcair, on the other hand, wants Trudeau to call out Trump. And over in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn is taking on that message of public anger about the “governing elite” and trying to make hay of it, so no, this kind of rhetoric is not endemic to the right.

In terms of fallout, we hear from prominent Canadian women like Kim Campbell, Elizabeth May and Michelle Rempel. Shannon Proudfoot writes about how brutally appropriate the end of the campaign ended up being. Bob Fife notes how the Trudeau PMO has had to scramble to adjust to this new reality. Robyn Urback looks at how the Democrats bungled the election, while the Guardian features a column about how liberals helped Trump’s victory. Anne Kingston writes about Trump winning his war against the media. Paul Wells writes about next steps for Trudeau, while Chantal Hébert wonders how much of Trudeau’s agenda is affected by this change, particularly in areas like climate change, or foreign policy (per John Geddes). Both Paul McLeod and Susan Delacourt saw similarities in the way Trump and Trudeau ran their campaigns. Here’s a look at how pundits and pollsters got things wrong, and Andrew Coyne writes a particularly poignant piece about how Trump’s ability to throw out the rules has vindicated some of the worst elements and impulses, and worries what this signals going forward.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Six more makes a full chamber

Posted on by

The final six Senate appointments have been made, all from Québec, and all were very much in the same pattern that we’ve seen to date from this government – well qualified, certainly, but without much in the way of ideological diversity, and as of yet, no new openly LGBT senators (that are very much needed). There could very well be some selection bias at play here, which is part of why asking people to apply rather than seeking to nominate people continues to be a problem, and promises of transparency would mean some kind of a statistical breakdown of the short lists presented to the PM, but one doubts that will ever happen.

Now this all having been said, the performative outrage by a number of Conservative senators is getting to be really tiresome. I am also failing to see the logic in how appointing a bunch of partisans and telling them that they are to be whipped (which no, senators are not supposed to be) is somehow preferable and “transparent” than it is to appoint a number of ideological similar individuals who aren’t assigned a party label, nor are they being told that they’re subject to a whip. It really makes no sense, particularly when there are all manner of other perfectly legitimate criticisms that can be levelled at the nomination process and the pattern that has emerged from the appointments, but to insist that it’s all a “con job” is really, really rich. It’s bad if they all vote for the PM who appointed them if they are “independent,” but it’s a-okay to vote under an illegitimate whip by the PM who appointed them so long as it’s under a party banner? Huh? (Also, to correct Senator Housakos, nothing stops any of these new senators from joining a caucus of their choice).

Meanwhile, we’re going to get more grousing about committee slots and research budgets, but honestly, that’ll work itself out within a few weeks and bellyaching won’t actually help make the process work faster or better. There is also some grumbling right now that the current crop of independent senators haven’t managed to fill the two slots per committee they’ve been allotted as is, so why give them yet more seats? It will happen, but the rules don’t really allow committee reconstitution until a prorogation anyway, so I’m not sure why there’s such a rush. Better to let the process take the time it needs rather than going too fast and ballsing it up and creating room for unintended consequence.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The fiscal update’s hidden gem

Posted on by

The fall fiscal update was delivered yesterday – in the House of Commons, it must be noted – and not unsurprisingly there are deeper deficits projected while the government pledges funds to kickstart an infrastructure bank in the hopes of attracting foreign investment. Oh, and “no path back to balance” is the phrase you’re going to hear an awful lot in the coming weeks. Probably ad nauseum. Oh, and “privatization,” as the NDP now consider the infrastructure banks (because hey, we might have to start paying for the roads and bridges that this bank might fund and we couldn’t have that). That having been said, the debt-to-GDP ratio will be the government’s saving grace when it comes to the size of the deficit, as it should remain relatively stable, while still coming in at the lowest in the G7 by a significant margin. So there’s that.

This all having been said, there were other elements in the update that bear mentioning, and which should not be overlooked, which are some of the changes to the way that Parliament operates. They’re going to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer a full Officer of Parliament (which I have mixed feelings about because this solidifies his status as an unaccountable officer for MPs to fob their homework off onto while hiding behind his analyses as “objective proof” of their partisan accusation), they’re adding new independence to Statistics Canada, and they’re going to open up the Board of Internal Economy. But more important than any of that is they’re going to do something about the Estimates cycle.

Why does this matter? Because MPs are supposed to hold the government to account by controlling the public purse, but over succeeding decades, the ways in which they do that – the Estimates and supply cycle – have become so corrupted that they no longer follow the budget cycle, their accounting methods no longer match the Public Accounts so that they can’t track spending, and in many cases, MPs just vote on the Estimates in a series of votes with zero scrutiny (leaving that job up to the Senate – naturally). So if this government is promising to put the Estimates and Budget cycle back in sync, and to clean up the discrepancies between the Estimates and the Public Accounts, that is a Very Big Deal. It means that it will let MPs do their jobs like they’re supposed to do. (We’ll see if any of them do, especially with an empowered PBO for them to fob that homework off onto, but this will certainly help him too). It’s restoring some of the proper functioning of our parliamentary democracy, and we shouldn’t ignore it.

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/793611413419880448

Continue reading →

QP: Building a conspiracy theory

Posted on by

Even though Justin Trudeau was not off to Europe for the CETA signing, he was not in Question Period, nor was Thomas Mulcair. Rona Ambrose led off, demanding transparency on the mission in Iraq, saying that the training mission has changed (never mind that it was always billed as “advise and assist.”) Marc Garneau answered, somewhat unexpectedly, and noted that it was advise and assist by that they needed operational security because Daesh was sophisticated. Ambrose tried again, and Garneau repeated the response, but added that a new medical facility in Iraq was being installed. Ambrose then moved onto fundraising and raising the spectre of the lobbying commissioner investigating, but it merely merited a recited response on the strict federal rules. Denis Lebel was up next and raised the issue of a veteran who faced discrimination for her sexual orientation, and Garneau reminded her that society had changed and they were working on a whole-of-government response. Lebel then moved onto the PBO report on the labour market and the loss of jobs reported. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that they were working on job creation. Tracey Ramsey led off for the NDP, decrying the EU trade agreement and the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. Chrystia Freeland read her astonishment at the lack of NDP support for a progressive trade agreement. Alexandre Boulerice asked again in French, raising the spectre of Quebec dairy farmers and drug prices, but Freeland’s answer didn’t change. Boulerice then raised the fundraising rules, Chagger gave her rote response on federal limits, and Tracey Ramsey gave another go in English for the same response.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Chong’s plans are a start

Posted on by

While new Conservative leadership candidate Steven Blaney decided to come out swinging with a niqab ban policy designed to appeal to those Quebeckers still hot for the idea and to give Kellie Leitch a run for her money, Michael Chong also came out with some policy yesterday morning – much more modest policy in line with how he thinks he could start to change parliament for the better if he were party leader. Because it’s not big policy pronouncements, it’s more in keeping with the kinds of things that leadership candidates should be focusing on, but that said, there are a few problems with what he laid out. I tweeted some of those concerns earlier, but I’ll elaborate a bit more.

So yes, Chong made a valiant attempt at doing this with this Reform Act, but it got so watered down in his amending the bill to get it passed that it rendered it useless, and the veto went from the party leader to their designated surrogate. This is a promise that is more difficult than it sounds because there does need to be a quality control mechanism in place (which is why it was introduced in the first place), but it also needs to be arm’s length from the leader, and Chong’s previous proposals for such an officer didn’t fly. He’ll need to try and thread this needle much more carefully going forward.

This one bothers me a fair deal because it’s buying into the nonsense that the Liberal Party has been spreading with their reforms to their party constitution. They claim it’s about “modernizing” the party structure and making it more responsive, but it’s more about populating databases, so that when they come out with top-down policy pronouncements, they can use their Big Data approach to justify anything. If other parties want to simply populate their own databases to target or micro-target policies even more that the Conservatives did during their decade in office, this isn’t actually good for democracy, and it’s not actually good for the grassroots. You don’t have people who are quite literally buying into the process (thus putting some skin in the game) and having an interest in their responsibilities as members when it comes to policy and nominations. It devalues membership, and I do think that’s a problem.

Promising reforms to the way the Senate operates while billing this as part of a package of giving power back to the grassroots is curious, but I’ll run with it only so far as to say that Chong shouldn’t actually be trying to out-Trudeau on this. Trudeau has put some things in motion that are not actually for the better, be it centralizing power in his own caucus, or trying to weaken the accountability role of the Senate, while his current “representative” there is trying to upend the whole system so that he can be the true bureaucrat that he is and empire-build, co-opting the whole burgeoning independent system for his own ends. Chong not grasping the constitutional role of the Senate Speaker, or the role of the Government Leader under Responsible Government is worrying, and I do feel like he should know better and not just try to play the reform-for-the-sake-of-reform card. That becomes a very dangerous thing under our system, especially because the system is not broken, so we should stop trying to break it while insisting on fixing problems that don’t actually exist.

Continue reading →