Tag Archives: Procurement

Roundup: The C-69 battle begins

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The Senate’s Energy and Environment committee is slated to begin their examination of Bill C-69 today, which promises to be a right gong show as the Conservatives have been pledging to do everything they can to kill the bill, which could mean attempting to delay things as long as possible – which is one reason why they have been aggressively pushing for the committee to hold cross-country hearings. This is being pushed back against by the government whip – err, “liaison,” and the leader of the Independent Senators Group, but that hasn’t stopped the agitation. Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald went so far as to pen an op-ed in the National Post that says the prime minister is trying to “keep the Senate from the people,” which is absurd on its face considering that Trudeau’s hands-off policy on the Senate is one reason why the Chamber is in a bit of disarray at the moment.

Meanwhile, there will be an effort from non-Conservative senators to see amendments to the bill, which could create its own delays as the debates and votes on those amendments could get drawn out for weeks, while the parliamentary calendar ticks down. (For reference, I wrote this piece last week, talking to lawyers on both the environmental and proponent sides of the issue about the kinds of amendments they would like to see). The bill has its issues, no doubt, but the rhetoric around it has reached hyperbolic proportions, and much of the opposition we hear has become based on myth rather than fact or analysis. That’s going to make the Senate’s deliberations more difficult in the weeks ahead, as people will be howling about non-existent segments of the bill, and we’ll hear the daily demands in QP that the bill be withdrawn, never mind that the current system isn’t working and has been the subject of numerous court challenges. I suspect this will become a very nasty fight before the end of spring.

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QP: Whacking and managing

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Monday on the Hill, and the prime minister was present, but Andrew Scheer was not. Candice Bergen led off, and she demanded to know why Adam Vaughan was not fired from his parliamentary secretary role for his tweet about “whacking” premier Ford. Justin Trudeau said he would get to the question in a minute, but wanted to first pay tribute to the late Auditor General, Michael Ferguson. Bergen said that there would be time for that during ministerial statements, then reiterated the question. Trudeau said that Vaughan had apologised and they were endeavouring to keep debate civil. Bergen tried again, and got the same response. Gérard Deltell was up next to offer his usual questions about the deficit, and Trudeau dutifully recited his memorised talking points about investing in the Middle Class™ over Conservative cuts. Deltell tried again, and Trudeau reminded him they cut taxes. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he demanded to know why oil and gas subsidies were not yet cut, and then railed about the Trans Mountain pipeline, repeating the misreading of the PBO report. Trudeau noted that they were honouring their commitment to cut those subsidies by 2025, and they were balancing the economy and the environment. Caron railed that the government wasn’t doing enough, and Trudeau rattled off the government’s many environmental measures. Murray Rankin took over in English to make the same environmental demand, and Trudeau reiterated his responses in English. Rankin tried again, and Trudeau lectured him that it was irresponsible not to get a proper price for oil while they needed to make investments in renewables. 

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Roundup: Backbench lessons

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Backbench Liberal MP Greg Fergus is learning the tough political lessons that just because the prime minister says something, it doesn’t mean that changes are necessarily happening. In this case, it’s the declaration by Justin Trudeau a year ago that the government would start to address the systemic barriers faced by Black Canadians, including anti-Black racism, but there has been negligible progress in the meantime, other than a commitment of funds. Fergus’ lesson – that lobbying can’t be a one-time thing, but an ongoing effort.

It’s certainly true, and he’s learning that the hard way – it’s easy to make a declaration, but you need to hold the government’s feet to the fire in order to ensure that things happen, particularly a sclerotic bureaucracy that doesn’t like to change the way it does things (and to be fair, you can’t just turn the way a bureaucracy does anything on a dime – it takes time, and it takes capacity-building, which can’t be done overnight). If anything, Fergus is getting a lesson in being a backbencher – that it’s his job to hold government to account, especially when it’s his own party in power. They can promise a lot of things, but you need to ensure that they actually do it, which is part of why Parliament exists, and why we need good backbenchers who want to do their jobs, and not just suck up to the prime minister in order to get into Cabinet. Hopefully we’ll see an invigoration in the way Fergus and others agitate to ensure that the government keeps its promises, because seeing the backbenchers doing their jobs is always a good thing in any parliament.

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Roundup: The myth about the tweet

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At a townhall event in Surrey, Andrew Scheer made a very big deal about the border and the “integrity” of our immigration system. At the centre of it is his invention is the mythology that the #WelcomeToCanada tweet two years ago somehow opened the floodgates. It’s ridiculous on its face, and it ignores the context during which that tweet happened – the recent election of Donald Trump, and the talk of the “Muslim ban” that was ramping up tensions and causing a spike of panic among asylum seekers and refugee claimants in the States, as well as a demonstrable rise in hate crimes. And we can’t forget that within days of this tweet, the Quebec City mosque shooting happened, from which there was a direct correlation drawn to the rhetoric of Trump and his surrogates around Muslims. Trudeau was attempting to take a different approach, and to highlight the decision to bring over Syrian refugees when Trump and his surrogates were insisting that it would be bringing in terrorists (recall the “poisoned Skittles” meme), but Scheer is choosing to ignore all of this.

And then there’s the entire mischaracterisation of the immigration and refugee determination systems, and the very deliberate conflation of the two. They’re separate, and are resourced separately, which makes the constant attempt to portray asylum seekers as somehow disadvantaging “legitimate” immigrants a deliberate attempt to turn immigrants against refugees and asylum seekers. Scheer will then insist that he’s not anti-refugee – that he’s met people in refugee camps who don’t understand why other people can cross the border and “jump the queue” – except of course that there isn’t an actual queue, but rather a process. In fact, those in the camps are usually chosen for resettlement by the UNHCR, and often done by private sponsorship – something that Scheer is a big fan of. In fact, during the Harper era, they reformed a lot of the refugee system to try and offload as much responsibility for resettlement onto the UNHCR, and to more heavily weight private sponsorship over government. (Note that Maxime Bernier is making a big deal about taking more responsibility for refugee determination away from the UN, which could create a wedge, or push Scheer to up his tinfoil hattery around the UN’s processes). Again, asylum seekers who cross the border are separate from those processes, and don’t have the same system impact, because it’s not Canadian officials doing most of the work. It’s another artificial dichotomy that ignores the context of the situation of these asylum seekers and seeks to again create divisions between people involved in those separate processes. Nothing about refugee claimants or asylum seekers is actually impacting the “integrity” of the immigration system – it’s a false dichotomy.

But it’s a wedge, and one built on lies, which is what Scheer is hoping for. Is there a cost to asylum seekers? Yes, absolutely. But we also need to remember that Canada is getting off extremely lightly by sheer virtue of our geography, surrounded by ocean on three sides and the US border on the other, which filters out the vast majority. Scheer shouldn’t expect sympathy from anyone about the influx we’ve seen (which, I remind you, is not out of step with historic norms). In a world facing a migrant crisis, with more displaced people since the Second World War, there are far more who would argue that Canada isn’t doing enough, and telling lies to make it look like we’re under siege because of a single tweet is more dangerous than he realizes.

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QP: Lavish lifestyles or austerity

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Thursday in the new Chamber, and neither the PM nor Andrew Scheer were present. Plus ça change… That left Candice Bergen to lead off with slams against the prime minister’s alleged lavish lifestyle before demanding to know whey they planned to raise taxes. Bill Morneau got up and noted that the first things they did was lower taxes on the Middle Class™. Bergen retorted that the Conservatives delivered a balanced budget (not really), and that today’s deficits were tomorrow’s higher taxes (not with a declining debt-to-GDP ratio), but Morneau noted that the facts didn’t match her rhetoric and that Canadians didn’t want to return to the “bad old days” of Conservative austerity. Bergen read more vitriol about Trudeau, to which Morneau listed off their tax cuts and Canada Child Benefit plans, and decried the Conservative legacy of debt. Gérard Deltell took over in French, and gave his usual demand to know when the budget would  be balanced. Morneau state that their plan was clear to invest, and that the approach was working as witnessed by lowest unemployment in 40 years and people with more money in their pockets. Deltell asked a second time, and Morneau repeated his pabulum. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and said that the PBO reported that the government paid too much for the Trans Mountain pipeline. Morneau replied that he had it wrong — that they bought the pipeline because it was good for the economy. Caron wondered why they didn’t invest instead in transitioning to a clean economy, to which Morneau reminded him of the need to get access to international markets, which was why it was necessary to buy the pipeline. Nathan Cullen took over in English to repeat the question with added sanctimony, to which Morneau said that their purchase price of the pipeline was in the middle of the commercial range, which meant it was a good one. Cullen tried again, and got much the same response.

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QP: China vs Brexit

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Wednesday, and most but not all leaders were present, somewhat unusually. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and in French, he read some condemnation that the prime minister didn’t fire John McCallum soon enough Trudeau stood up and said that on China, they were working to freeing the imprisoned Canadians, and then took a shot at Scheer’s lack of foreign policy credibility given his support for Brexit. Scheer switched to English to read his litany of foreign policy sins by this government, and Trudeau reiterated that they were working to safeguard Canadians in China before repeating his shot at Scheer on Brexit. Scheer wondered why it took so long for Trudeau to fire McCallum, but Trudeau wouldn’t let up on Scheer’s Brexiteering. Scheer then switched to the carbon tax and said that the government planned to raise the price to $3/tonne before his benches reminded him that the talking point was $300. Trudeau responded that Scheer still hasn’t delivered his own climate plan, and when Scheer gave falsehoods about industrial exemptions and the apparent planned carbon tax hikes, Trudeau shrugged and noted that their rhetoric was empty if they were resorting to personal attacks, before talking about how people would be better off with carbon rebates. Peter Julian led off for the NDP, and in French, predictably raised the issue of housing, but this time name-dropped the riding of Outremont. Trudeau picked up a script to state that it was too bad if the NDP derided the plans to refit existing housing. Julian switched to English to ask the same, and Trudeau had a script in hand but didn’t actually read from it while he listed the investments being made in housing. Charlie Angus stood up to demand personal action on the housing emergency in Cat Lake, and Trudeau read that they were developing a long-term plan of action with its leadership, and noted they lifted the boil-water advisory in that community already. Angus took a couple of shots at Seamus O’Regan and the prime minister, and Trudeau listed the investments they have made with Indigenous communities. 

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QP: New Chamber, same talking points

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On the first day in the new Chamber, everyone was trying to find their way through the new building, yours truly included. After introducing the newest Conservative by-election winner, Andrew Scheer led off, decrying the government’s foreign policy as a “disaster,” listing a number of dubious points to bolster his case. Trudeau stood up, assured Scheer that he would get to his question in a moment, but wanted to take a moment to applaud the work of the men and women who did the hard work of getting the West Block up and running. Scheer repeated his question in French, and read that the government was hard at work to get those two Canadians released and for clemency for the third, while they stood up for the rule of law. Scheer read a wooden question about Trudeau apparently not being good with money, and Trudeau rotely recited his talking points about lowering taxes for the middle class. Scheer read the same question again in English, and got the same response, with an added Stephen Harper swipe included. Scheer insisted that the richest were paying less in taxes than before (not really true), and raised the spectre that the government planned to raise the carbon tax six times more than they stated — also false. Trudeau noted that people are now getting the Canada Child Benefit, and that Scheer didn’t talk about it probably because he wanted to cut it. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he demanded that the budget include investments in housing. Trudeau responded that their housing strategy was benefiting a million Canadians. Caron demanded more actions like cutting taxes on housing investments, to which Trudeau reiterated that their strategy was making progress. Peter Julian repeated the same question in English, and got much the same response from Trudeau, and when he brought up the big city mayors, Trudeau noted he met with them earlier in the day and that they thanked him for the investments.

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Roundup: Making hay of Venezuela

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The situation in Venezuela has been getting political play in Canada, though perhaps not unsurprisingly from the NDP. Much of the party has long had a fascination with “socialist” regimes, both the Chavez regime in Venezuela, as well as Cuba (I was once at a house party with an NDP staffer who expressed shock that the Revolutionary Museum in Havana would have the audacity to subject her to propaganda when she was there to be inspired). It was perhaps least surprising that it would be Niki Ashton who put out the condemnation over Twitter for the Canadian government’s declaration to support the declared interim president of Venezuela in the bid to try and get a new round of free and fair elections up and running. This was echoed by one of the party’s by-election candidates, as well as newly nominated candidate Svend Robinson, who decried that the Canadian government was somehow following the lead of Donald Trump – patently absurd as we have not followed along with their Trump’s musing about military intervention, and the fact that we have recognised the last democratically elected leader in the country who has a constitutional case for the interim presidential declaration. And Jagmeet Singh? He offered a pabulum talking point that said absolutely nothing of substance, but did repeat the false notion that Canada is somehow following the Americans’ lead on this. All the while, Conservative and Liberal MPs started calling on Singh to denounce the Maduro regime in the country, which he hasn’t done, leaving the badmouthing to anonymous staffers.

Meanwhile, Canada is planning to host the other countries of the Lima Group next month in order to plan how to steer Venezuela back toward democracy, which totally sounds like us following the Americans and their musing about military intervention, right? Oh, wait.

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Roundup: Explaining the intractable

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Over at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative economics blog, Stephen Gordon grapples with the problem of how to explain carbon taxes to Canadians in a way that’s more meaningful and easier to comprehend rather than economics jargon. It’s a perplexing problem, and one that some economists on social media are trying to address – something made more difficult by the constant narrative of lies put forward by the likes of Andrew Scheer and his provincial conservative allies, for whom the verifiable benefits of pricing carbon are lied about and derided as making life unaffordable, or that rebates won’t change behaviours. Except that we have data that they do, but communicating those data is a challenge, and possibly an intractable one.

I would add that oftentimes, journalists don’t help because we largely have an allergy to anything that looks like math. If it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, we immediately default to “it’s complicated” and shrugging, rather than figuring it out and communicating to people. I think we need to do better as well, and I try and to my part (for which I am rewarded with taunts that I am some kind of Liberal apologist, despite that carbon pricing is the favoured tool by virtually every single major economist and anyone who favours market solutions over government regulation), but it can be challenging, particularly when you are confronted by those who actively do not care about the truth. If we’re going to call out dishonesty in politics, we journalists need to do a better job of calling out these lies as we do with other false talking points – which means doing more than letting The Canadian Press write up a Baloney Meter™ article every now and again.

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Roundup: A few notes on the state of the Brexit drama

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Given the state of the drama in Westminster right now, I thought I’d make a couple of points about why we’re here now. It’s pretty unprecedented for a government to lose a vote – badly – on a major foreign policy plank without automatically losing confidence, and yet, thanks to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, that’s exactly the case. And because Theresa May squeaked out a confidence vote, that leaves her in something of a precarious situation about not really having a mandate to continue on the path she was on, while not being able to take anything to the people in a general election, as might ordinarily be the case under our share Westminster system. The FTPA has made Parliament untenable, and enables bad actors to game the system, which would ordinarily have been avoided by the sheer fact that they would have been keen to avoid shenanigans that the Queen would need to be involved in.

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It seems to me that if the Westminster parliament were functioning normally, then May could have taken the question of proceeding with Brexit to the people in an election, given that she lost the vote of confidence. Of course that would necessitate Labour to come up with a coherent position (and perhaps a more coherent leader, which their current bastardised leadership selection process also gave them). That would have given the winning government a popular mandate to overtake the referendum if need be, but again, that’s now off the table because of the way the FTPA has distorted the Westminster system. With the practice of Responsible Government being blunted by this statute, it’s clear that it must go.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert looks at the Brexit omnishambles and compares it to the plans for Quebec sovereignty back in the day, and how this seems to be dampening any sovereigntist sentiment in the province even further (while getting in a few jabs about Andrew Scheer’s Brexit boosterism along the way). Andrew Coyne likewise looks to the Brexit drama as an object lesson in how seccession from any union is far from painless.

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