Tag Archives: Privacy

Roundup: Ignoring the broader privacy concerns

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The House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee met yesterday to discuss the Public Health Agency of Canada’s use of anonymised mobile phone data to assess the efficacy of public health orders. As expected, this was little more than a partisan dog and pony show wrapped up in a bow of concern trolling that ignored the actual privacy issues involved in favour of trying to score points. Which is pretty much how we knew this was going to go down.

There could be actual privacy issues that they could discuss, and summon witnesses from telecom companies that sell this data, or the health companies that use it and track it, but no, they’re going to bring in the minister and Chief Public Health Officer to grill them about the programme, because accountability. And yes, the minister would be accountable politically, but that solves none of the actual issues that might be at fault here, but hey, this is about putting on a show rather than doing something useful, so good job with that, guys.

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Roundup: A rosier fiscal update

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There was some drama around the delivery of yesterday afternoon’s fiscal update, as two members of Chrystia Freeland’s staff tested positive for COVID, and while she had not been around them recently, she decided that the prudent course of action was to stay isolated and deliver it virtually rather than in the Chamber. She also made it clear that this was not a budget or a mini-budget, but rather a look at where the nation’s books are, and it was a rosier picture than was anticipated in the spring’s budget.

There are no significant new spending promises in this document, aside from more money being set aside for COVID supports as the omicron variant bears down on us (which includes buying millions more rapid tests for the provinces to deliver—not that most have been good at it so far), as well as the $40 billion being set aside for compensation for Indigenous children in care and to fix the system going forward, and some money to help BC recover from their recent spate of natural disasters, and to reimburse seniors faced with GIS clawbacks. There are also some dollars being put toward reducing immigration backlogs, and helping ports deal with supply-chain snarls. But otherwise, it held the line, surprising some observers who like to chide this government’s profligacy. There was a gender section that laid out in stark terms how the pandemic affected women disproportionately.

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As for opposition reaction, the Conservatives complain there’s nothing in there about inflation…which is the Bank of Canada’s job, and the only thing the federal government could do are wage and price controls. The NDP say there isn’t enough about the clawbacks in there, or not enough other support measures, but with the Bloc pretty much guaranteed to support it, they can afford to look tough in spite of being paper tigers.

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Roundup: Theatre of the absurd, housing motion edition

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The closer the House of Commons gets to rising for the winter break, the more absurd theatre we see. Yesterday was case in point, with the Conservatives’ second and final Supply Day of the calendar year. The topic was housing, but their motion was a complete dog’s breakfast of nonsense, contradiction and outright unconstitutional demands. Because of course it was.

The point was made that the inclusion of the outright lie about capital gains taxes was a ploy for the Conservatives to say that the Liberals were not ruling it out when this motion as inevitably defeated (as indeed it was). But Liberal Mark Gerretsen though he was being crafty and tried to move a motion after QP to head off those talking points, trying to call for unanimous consent to reaffirm that they wouldn’t tax capital gains. But the motion didn’t pass, so Gerretsen tried to spin that too, and it’s just utterly stupid that I can’t even.

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Roundup: Senator Batters blindsides O’Toole

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There is much intrigue within the Conservative ranks, and it just got a lot more interesting. First thing yesterday morning was the story that Bert Chen, the member of the party’s national council who was suspended for circulating a petition to call for an early leadership review would be suspended indefinitely, rather than for just sixty days. But a short while later, another petition started circulating to call for a leadership review, and this one was one they couldn’t ignore – from Senator Denise Batters.

Batters laid out a fairly devastating line of attack in her video – noting that O’Toole is the one that is growing the “rift” in the party, and that he is responsible for the election loss because of what voters perceive to be his character flaw – that he is not trustworthy. “You can’t come back from that,” Batters stated. And as a senator, Batters has latitude to lead this petition drive on behalf of grassroots members that others don’t, given that she doesn’t have nomination papers that need the leader’s signature, and if O’Toole boots her from caucus, she will only get even more vocal from outside, and she has a parliamentary platform. There have been some talking heads who are insinuating that she is perhaps a catspaw for Peter MacKay, given that she supported him in the leadership, but I sincerely doubt that’s the case – as partisan as she can be, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s not a puppet for anyone. The party president tried to dismiss her petition, saying it goes against the party’s constitution, but the section he cited was only in relation to the leadership process, whereas she is initiating a party-wide referendum, which is different. (And again, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s a lawyer who was once chief of staff to Saskatchewan’s minister of justice). Some talking heads have also stated that this goes against the process from the (garbage) Reform Act, but as a senator, Batters is excluded from the Act, and she is leading a grassroots movement, not one from caucus. It’s also being stated that this is just one part of a multi-stage movement within the party to call for this leadership review, so we’ll see where this develops, but O’Toole’s problems are not going away anytime soon.

Meanwhile, a parallel drama is playing out in Alberta, where more than a quarter of UCP constituency associations passed a special motion that will force an early leadership review of Jason Kenney than the April date he had managed to negotiate with his caucus earlier – and they also want an outside auditing firm to ensure the security of the voting system for this review, so that there isn’t a repeat of the alleged shenanigans that coloured the initial leadership vote that got Kenney into power in the first place (which are still part of an ongoing investigation last I checked). Things are not looking up for Kenney either, and he and O’Toole suddenly have a lot in common.

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Roundup: Time to change the dress code?

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NDP MP Randall Garrison is pushing for the House of Commons to update is dress code, in particular around the gendered rules that men need to wear a jacket and tie in the Chamber in order to speak and vote. Part of Garrison’s stated motivation is to make it easier for future trans and non-binary MPs, even though accommodations are already routinely made, such as allowing Indigenous MPs to wear beaded necklaces or other symbols in place of a tie. I don’t see why it would be any different to accommodate a trans or non-binary MP in a similar manner without any fuss – a mere notice to the Speaker would suffice.

On the one hand, there is a certain amount of archaic assumption in the “contemporary business attire” around jackets and ties for men, and only men – there is no dress code for women in the Chamber (and these rules apply to those of us who sit in the Press Gallery in the Chamber, incidentally). Business attire in the current context is starting to slide down the scale – particularly in this era of work-from-home – so I’m leery of loosening the restrictions too much, particularly as it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you would have a bunch of MPs in track suits, yoga or sweat pants, hoodies, and mom jeans (and I have seen male MPs in mom jeans with jacket and tie in the Chamber, which was not a pleasant sight). Printed t-shirts are also a very real concern, because we will immediately slip into them being used as props, particularly during Members’ Statements, and we do not want that to happen. On the same token, I wouldn’t have minded imposing a few more rules for women in the Chamber, such as mandating jackets as part of “business attire,” because sometimes the definitions of what constitutes “business attire” for some female MPs has been particularly…challenging. (Flashback to the old Megan Leslie Outfit Watch on my former blog).

I get that ties suck. I really do. I used to really hate them, but I’ve somewhat reluctantly grown to accept them and now I have no issue with it. And once we’re into late May and early June and the humidity starts to climb, wearing suits is not fun (and whereas I have threatened to show up to the Gallery in shorts and sandals – but with jacket and tie – one reporter has actually done so and was my hero for the day). But at the same time, I think there should be some kinds of standards, for both men and women, because frankly there can be a demonstrated lack of both maturity and good taste among MPs and there need to be some guidelines. Can they be loosened a little? Sure, that should be okay, and maybe we won’t require a tie at all times – within reason. It does merit a discussion in any case.

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Roundup: Taking his sweet-ass time to meet caucus

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The Liberals are starting to get restless – members of caucus are feeling put out that they haven’t actually had a formal caucus meeting yet post-election, and many of them are champing at the bit to have a closed-door drag out session about what went wrong in the election, and why their own leadership seemed unprepared for it when they called the blood thing in the first place. And telling the Hill Times that they want to know why the party leadership is taking their “sweet-ass time” to call this meeting was the icing on this particular cake.

I’m having a hard time fathoming why it’s taking Trudeau and company so long to get their collective acts together post-election. They made a whole song and dance about how urgently they needed to act while on the campaign trail, only for them to turn around and take said sweet-ass time in both finalising the Cabinet shuffle (and no, the recounts do not account for how long the delay is) as well as their decision to further delay summoning Parliament – and even his planned international travel does not excuse this. They could have had Cabinet sworn in before the Governor General went on her state visit to Germany, and could have summoned Parliament this week, in advance of Trudeau’s planned travel. That would have given them actual time to get committees up and running, and legislation in the system – particularly around the changes to the pandemic benefits – as soon as possible, as opposed to the current trajectory of a three-week sitting that will accomplish very little before they head back to their ridings for the Christmas break.

Additionally, not having a proper caucus meeting by now has reached the point of disrespecting their own MPs. They have things they want to say after the campaign trail, and they should be able to say it – that’s how this system works. It’s a very bad signal that they are being kept away from the leadership like this, because even aside from it betraying all of Trudeau’s talking points about being open and accountable within his own party, that kind of thing will start to fester if it’s not taken seriously. I’m not sure that’s a situation Trudeau wants to go out on in his final tour-de-force as leader.

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Roundup: Rejections without significance

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Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

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Roundup: The July job numbers

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The Labour Force Survey results for July were released yesterday, and while there was positive job growth, it wasn’t quite as robust as had been expected. The recovery remains uneven, but some of the narratives and commentary aren’t really helping when it comes to adjusting to the reality of this stage of the pandemic (which isn’t even post- yet).

A lot of the narratives are still being driven by the likes of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which continues to rail about CERB and its successor suite of benefits that they claim are providing a “perverse incentive” for people to stay home, but that doesn’t seem to fit the reality, which is that the market is shifting. A lot of people who were in these service-industry jobs either moved on during the pandemic because it (and the government benefits) afforded them the opportunity to do so – which is why you have people complaining that their favoured servers at their local watering holes didn’t come back, and you have nineteen-year-olds who just got their Smart Serve certification replacing them. But another narrative is also bubbling up, where we also have a cohort who aren’t willing to go back to what existed beforehand, with the low wages and mistreatment, and a lot of those business owners haven’t made the cognitive leap yet that they can’t keep operating the way they did before. Of course, this is one reason why the CFIB is so up in arms about these benefits – they have a vested interest in things returning to the old normal where labour can be exploitative without consequence, but the current reality is changing that. This could be change happening that will be better for us all overall, if it’s able to take hold – and chances are, this government more than others are more willing to let it happen.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are insistent that the federal government is “killing job creation,” which is a novel argument considering that they’re not the level of government responsible for the maintenance of public health measures (which has been one of the biggest determinants of economic activity over the course of the pandemic). They’re also keeping up the fiction that a pre-third wave job recovery projection was a “promise” about job creation, again, which was derailed by more public health measures because provinces screwed up their own recoveries by re-opening too soon. All of which is to say that we don’t seem to be capable of having a reasonable conversation about what is happening in the labour market, to the detriment of all of us.

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Roundup: Cue the emergency committee meeting

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It wouldn’t be summer if we didn’t have an emergency committee meeting of some sort, and we got just that yesterday, as the Conservatives triggered the recall of the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee with an eye to opening an investigation into Liberals contracting database services from a Liberal-friendly company, headed by a personal friend of the prime minister’s. The party has claimed that this is for constituency services, and that there is no data going to party databases (as has been the case with the Conservatives and their own constituency data in the past), and that all of the rules have been followed, but the Conservatives have a narrative they need to feed, so there it went.

In the end, it got nowhere. The Liberals managed to stymie the proceedings long enough for the Bloc MP to side with them in opting not to pursue the matter, but along the way, they (correctly) suggested that this is a matter best suited for the Board of Internal Economy, which deals with MPs’ resources and allocations, and these payments have been coming out of MPs’ office budgets. Of course, the Conservatives (and to an extent the NDP) can’t put on a public dog and pony show at BOIE like they could at the ethics committee, so of course they had no interest in pursuing that course of action – especially after the Liberals also wanted the Conservatives’ database practices included in their referring the study to BOIE.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t issues that could be better explored here, the chief of which is that political parties are exempt from privacy legislation, so there aren’t many effective firewalls around the use of constituency files. And hey, that would be something that the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee should be tackling, because it’s right in their mandate! One Conservative MP also suggested that perhaps the House of Commons build their own constituency file management system so that parties don’t have to contract their own systems, which may not be a bad idea – but it’s one that BOIE would tackle, not the ethics committee. And the point of this exercise was about the dog and pony show, not anything of substance, which is one more reason why this particular session has turned toxic.

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Roundup: Another 751 unmarked graves

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There was yet more sobering news yesterday, that as many as 751 unmarked graves were located near the former Marieval residential school in Saskatchewan. Aside from the sheer number, some ways in which this site differs from Kamloops is that not all of the graves will be of children, and that many had headstones, which the Catholic Church removed in the 1960s during a dispute – which is a criminal offence, and the local First Nations chief said that they are treating this like a crime scene. And non-Indigenous Canadians should brace themselves, because we’re going to hear about hundreds, perhaps thousands, more of these graves over the next few years as the work of locating them ramps up, making it impossible to ignore the true face of our country’s history.

In response to the announcement, prime minister Justin Trudeau stated that this is Canada’s responsibility to bear, which was met by the usual calls that this was not enough action. The government has already committed to funding these searches in accordance with the wishes of local First Nations communities, as not all of them want the same approach, and Marc Miller said that they are open to boosting the funding if the need is there. There are also calls for an independent inquiry into these sites, but that could be a complicated structure if it requires provinces to get involved (and it likely will), and we could find ourselves with a repeat of some of the problems faced by the MMIW inquiry if that is the case.

Of course, the government’s response was made all the more problematic because Carolyn Bennett sent a spiteful one-word text to Jody Wilson-Raybould, who then tweeted it out and declared it to be “racist and misogynistic,” listing the tropes that she felt it invoked. Bennett publicly apologised and stated that it was their “interpersonal dynamics” that got the better of her, by which she means that the pair pretty much cannot stand one another, which lines up with the stories of their fights in Cabinet. It doesn’t excuse it, and Bennett absolutely should know better (especially because Wilson-Raybould has demonstrated that she keeps receipts), but that hasn’t stopped this from eclipsing some of the coverage of the day, which should have focused on Marieval, and what the next steps need to be.

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