Tag Archives: Procurement

QP: The “failure” drinking game

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Almost immediately after the dramatic floor-crossing by MP Leona Alleslev from the Liberals to the Conservatives, a smug press conference from Andrew Scheer, and the arrival of new Conservative MP Richard Martel, things settled in for the first QP of the fall sitting. Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he listed off the various “failures” of Justin Trudeau, getting breathier as he went along. Trudeau first welcomed the new batch of pages to the House before he listed the various successes of the government, including the $2000 more in the pockets of families. Scheer listed the “failures” in the energy sector, and Trudeau noted the ten years of failures by the previous government, and that they would get Trans Mountain built “in the right way.” Scheer tried again, and got slightly more pabulum from Trudeau on the need to get more markets for oil. Scheer then switched to the “crisis” of irregular border crossers, and Trudeau reminded him that while it was a challenge, they invested in necessary measures to ensure that rules are all followed. Scheer asked again in French, and got the same answer. Guy Caron led for the NDP, and he immediately launched into concerns about concessions around Supply Management, to which Trudeau assured him that they would get a good deal on NAFTA. Caron name-dropped Jagmeet Singh and worried about someone’s housing situation, and Trudeau reminded him that they have made investments in housing, and they were moving ahead with a $40 billion national housing strategy. Charlie Angus was up next, and offered some disappointment on behalf of the Kasheshewan First Nation. Trudeau mentioned the billions apportioned to Indigenous communities before picking up a paper to list the interim solution they have come to and that more developments were coming later in the week. Angus responded angrily, demanding immediate solutions, and Trudeau responded with the list of ways they are trying to work with Indigenous communities to solve these problems.

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Roundup: A sudden focus on birth tourism

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So that was the Conservative policy convention. There wasn’t a lot of drama, post-Bernier, and most of the reactionary and social conservative policy resolutions got voted down in the end, including those related to abortion. What did wind up being contentious was a resolution around stopping automatic birth citizenship, which was supposedly aimed at stopping “birth tourism” but would have the alternate effect of creating stateless individuals, which is contrary to international law. Mind you, the Liberals didn’t help any when they started talking about how this meant revoking existing citizenships (which it wasn’t), and then certain Conservative partisans started complaining that this was being unfairly cast as xenophobic (I’m not sure that’s really an unfair assessment), but there you have it. Incidentally, MP Deepak Obhrai came out against this. There was a bit of other drama when opponents of supply management stole the briefing binder for dairy lobbyists and found proof therein that regardless of what was decided, Scheer would use his prerogative as leader to ensure the policy was untouched. When this hit social media, his people insisted that no, that’s erroneous information, they had it wrong, but remember that leaders’ prerogative is pretty much how every party operates since we’ve started privileging leadership over the grassroots, but people seem to keep forgetting that.

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Here’s a sit-down interview with Scheer to get his thoughts on policy positions that the convention was debating over the weekend, and another where he refuses to say if the Bernier split worries him. Scheer does complain that it’s hard for ordinary people to learn his name because he’s not suave and photogenic like Trudeau (never mind that a lot of what people in other countries remark about Trudeau is regarding his stances and policies, not just his looks). That said, it’s his party now, and it remains to be seen what his mark will inevitably be on it.

Meanwhile, the first poll about how people would vote with a theoretical Bernier-led party in the mix is out, and it would take enough votes away from the Conservatives and NDP to give the Liberals a bigger margin of victory. But remember, it’s early days and it’s pretty much the equivalent of putting “a pony” as the choice in the polls and people will immediately respond to it based on what they’re projecting rather than the reality, but that’s not unexpected.

Good reads:

  • Trilateral NAFTA might resume this week, but without Chrystia Freeland as she is on a diplomatic tour in Europe until Friday.
  • There are concerns that Shared Service Canada is gearing its procurements to favour multi-nationals over home-grown companies for contracts.
  • Families of fallen soldiers want public access to the rebuilt Afghanistan war cenotaph.
  • CRA’s tax evasion tip line netted some 32,000 leads last year.
  • Kevin Carmichael doesn’t think that there will be another interest rate hike in September.
  • Susan Delacourt sees problems with the conservative coalition that Andrew Scheer should be cementing at this point in his leadership.

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Roundup: Maxime Bernier, drama queen

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Like a high school drama queen, Maxime Bernier made his move yesterday, removing himself from the Conservative caucus just as the party was about to begin their convention in Halifax. And not a moment too soon, apparently, as apparently the caucus was prepared to “belittle” him regarding his recent shitposting over Twitter, in an apparent attempt to Mean Girl him into falling in line. Well, that didn’t apparently work, and Bernier went out with a bang, calling the Conservatives a party that was “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” and which only speaks in platitudes, and that he plans to launch his own party within the coming weeks. Good luck with that.

Minutes later, Andrew Scheer held his own press conference in Halifax and said good riddance, that Bernier was only in it for himself, but, curiously, stuck to platitudes. And notably, he didn’t refute anything that Bernier has been saying over the past couple of weeks, and in particular his winking to white nationalists. (Note to Conservatives: simply listing how many ethnocultural firsts your party has had is not refuting the aforementioned winking to white nationalists). And then Scheer said that Bernier evidently decided to help Trudeau, and then immediately started backpedalling to insist that no, this wasn’t going to split the party, and they’re united, and Bernier is a nobody, and you get the drift. So score one for Scheer there.

And then started up the tweets, many of them angry or belittling from fellow MPs, and a bunch of bizarre rumours started being floated to journalists like that Bernier used to sleep through Cabinet meetings under Harper (seriously? You actually expect us to believe that?) while other party stalwarts rallied around Scheer (and Bernier currently seems to have zero supporters, for what it’s worth). The Liberals, justifiably, are remaining cautious and are not openly popping any champagne bottles because who knows where this will go.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells has grave doubts that Bernier has what it takes to lead a new political movement, while Jen Gerson angrily writes about Bernier’s supposed defence of “Canadian values” and that he doesn’t seem to have a clue what he’s tweeting about. Scott Gilmore seems to think that Bernier’s fundraising record shows he may have the momentum to pull this off – but Stephen Maher has his doubts. John Ivison casts aspersions on all sides of the split, Martin Patriquin wonders about the effect that it will have with the ground ripe for messages of populist xenophobia like Bernier has been employing. Don Martin suspects this departure will rally the party around Scheer, while Robyn Urback takes Bernier to task in the most scathing, sarcastic way possible. (My own column on Bernier’s future will be up later today).

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Roundup: Scheer plans another ego trip

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Andrew Scheer has declared that in October, he and a group of MPs will head to India. While it’s not uncommon for opposition MPs to do a bit of foreign travel, particularly if they’re on some kind of committee or parliamentary friendship group, it’s a little more uncommon for them to go as the Official Opposition in any capacity (Washington DC excepted). But Scheer? He’s decided that his trip to India will be to “repair” the relationship with that country after the “disastrous” trip that Justin Trudeau made earlier this year.

Let’s unpack this a bit more. Scheer has zero diplomatic standing to do absolutely anything on behalf of the government of Canada. Add to that, I’m trying to figure out just what “damage” Scheer hopes to repair, because the only real “disaster” from Trudeau’s visit was related to Jaspal Atwal showing up at that event, which wound up being hugely overblown considering that India had allowed him back into the country and considered him rehabilitated from his former extremist views. The fact that Trudeau wore some expensive Indian clothes? The thing that people continue to underestimate/forget/ignore is that he was doing it to speak to a certain demographic in India which responds to these kinds of gestures – even if the upper-class voices that dominate their international press don’t. Trudeau didn’t lose points with that middle-class voter base in India (or the Indo-Canadian diaspora) – but that message was lost on the white press covering the trip, and given how the Conservatives reacted back in Canada (going so far as to use the insulting term of “costume,” which earned them a stinging rebuke from Liberal backbencher Ruby Sahota), they were tone-deaf to the whole thing. Was Trudeau snubbed my Modi? Not at all, and just because Modi didn’t greet him at the airport is not a snub considering that a) Canada doesn’t rank that high on his list of priorities, and b) we were greeted by an agriculture minister, who does have dealings with Canada. And on that subject, the fact that Trudeau wasn’t able to make progress on the tariffs that India imposed on pulse imports was not a “failure,” given that those tariffs were imposed for domestic political reasons (low prices due to a global supply glut, pandering to rural voters, and the fact that there has been a suicide crisis among Indian farmers for years now), and those tariffs hurt Australia more than they do Canada. But please, tell us again how those were done in retaliation for the trip. Meanwhile, Trudeau made several investment announcements and did have successful meetings with civil society groups in India. So again, I ask – what “damage” is there for Scheer to supposedly repair (for which he has zero authority to do anything about)?

We’ve seen this kind of self-aggrandisement from Scheer before with his trip to the UK to supposedly have talks about post-Brexit trade agreements, never mind that a) he’s not the government and can’t commit to anything, b) Trudeau and Theresa May already agreed to those talks once Brexit happens – because the UK legally can’t hold any talks until then, and c) he totally sold the trip with that photo of him at a red phone booth. So you’ll forgive my scepticism about this planned India trip, because it sounds dubious at best.

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Roundup: Bernier still hanging on

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Apparently we’re going to talk about Maxime Bernier again, because of course we are. Yesterday’s developments included a couple of new Twitter missives, and Andrew Scheer finally, finally, held a press availability to discuss the situation, in which he basically said nothing. While not condemning Bernier’s remarks yet again (thus tacitly endorsing them), Scheer said that Bernier doesn’t speak for the party, that they value diversity, and no, he won’t talk about “caucus dynamics” when it comes to whether her plans to turf Bernier from the party. But that particular dynamic may be slightly more complicated.

There are a couple of reasons why Scheer is gun-shy when it comes to flexing his leadership muscles when it comes to Bernier’s constant stream of eruptions. One of them is that Bernier has a base within the party that Scheer can’t afford to alienate. Or at least that’s the theory – Éric Grenier teases out the numbers of Bernier’s support a bit more, and he’s not really a top fundraiser, nor may his base be as big as it’s made out to be. Part of this is because a number of supporters flocked to him in the leadership because he looked like a winner, and he got frontrunner momentum. Remember that many of these people also supported Kevin O’Leary, because he looked like a winner. So there’s that. There’s also the theory that because the Conservatives have bound themselves to Michael Chong’s greatly flawed Reform Act that the leader can’t expel a caucus member, that they must do it in a vote. That’s of course more of a theoretical consideration than a realistic one, given that the Act is largely a paper tiger – there is nothing binding in it, there is no enforcement, and it was so watered down in the process of passing it that it’s less than useless (and indeed is actively harmful to how leadership politics works in this country). Not to mention, Scheer has the option of threatening not to sign Bernier’s nomination papers for the next election (something the Reform Act promised to solve then didn’t), so it’s not like Scheer is without actual levers to push Bernier out if he so chose, even if he was bound by the useless Act.

Meanwhile, I will turn your attention to something else that Paul Wells noticed over the past few days when these tweets started.

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1030207649168543744

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Roundup: Scheer’s milquetoast response

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While Maxime Bernier’s Twitter missives continue to roll along, accusing Indigenous communities of playing the victim card and making some pointed remarks about the dedication of a Winnipeg park to the founder of Pakistan (on the date of Pakistan’s national independence), the calls for his ouster have started to mount, particularly from the Liberal side of the aisle – which won’t do much. Within the Conservative ranks, Senator Salma Ataullahjan is calling Bernier out for his divisive rhetoric, and said she planned to talk to Andrew Scheer about how poorly this is playing within the Pakistani-Canadian community that she has been reaching out to for the party. Scheer finally did issue a statement on Wednesday evening, and it was about as milquetoast as you can imagine.

The fact that Scheer didn’t actually condemn Bernier’s statement, and the fact that he immediately engaged in both-sidesism to condemn identity politics “on the left and the right” seems to fit with the fact that this particular kind of shitposting by members of his party is not only tolerated, but is the modus operandi of their current communications strategy. The fact that Scheer is using the same language about identity politics that Bernier is using certainly makes it sound like he’s more than just winking to them about the kind of dog-whistling that they’re engaging in. Whether this is because Scheer is afraid of alienating Bernier’s base within the party, or because Scheer himself sees this kind of footsie with xenophobes as a way of trying to keep the more intolerant section of the base mollified remains to be seen. Still – his choice of language, and his refusal to actually deal with the substance of Bernier’s comments is deliberate and simply raises far more questions than it answers.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1029871106507898881

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https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/1029868048440643584

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Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert wonders why Bernier is bringing up this fight when it’s even gone dormant in the Quebec provincial election, and wonders if it’s a dare to Scheer to discipline him when he may be the more popular figure in the party. It’s a good question, and Bernier certainly seems to be aiming for a fight at the upcoming convention.

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Roundup: Extreme multiculturalism

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The fallout to Maxime Bernier’s latest Twitter missive on multiculturalism was more muted than one might have expected – no actual condemnation from Andrew Scheer, just a bland statement from his office that didn’t address Bernier’s words at all. And Erin O’Toole offered his own response which was basically just a reiteration that the various conservative parties in Canada’s history have had ethno-cultural firsts as a way of proving that they’re not all bigots or racists, but it missed the point that there was nevertheless a certain amount of tokenism in those firsts – that yes, they’ve got one of these different groups, but one is enough, thanks, and don’t talk to us about systemic barriers or discrimination. After all, these singular examples pulled up their bootstraps and made it – why can’t everyone else?

Bernier himself got huffy that he was described as saying he was against diversity – he insists he’s okay with some diversity, but not “extreme multiculturalism,” which is odd, because it’s like he missed the whole point of multiculturalism, which is about finding an effective way of integrating newcomers rather than alienating them further into ghettos. The fact that he doesn’t get that just adds fuel to the notion that this is all about winking to xenophobes and white nationalists, never mind the fact that it’s a nonsense proposition that there’s a Goldilocks zone of not too little, not too much, but just enough diversity that will magically keep Canada from disintegrating into some kind of ethnic hellhole. Never mind that the concern trolling about Liberal “identity politics” ignores the fact that in order to address systemic barriers facing women, sexual minorities, and people of colour, you actually to address what those barriers are, which is not about balkanizing – as Bernier seems to think.

Meanwhile, not every Conservative seems to be keen on Bernier’s pronouncements, but they seem concerned about how much influence he has among the base (somewhat mystifyingly). And with a convention coming up, we’ll see if these tensions spill out into the open.

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Roundup: Bozo eruptions coming from the top

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Given some of the “bozo eruptions” over Twitter over the past couple of days by Conservative MPs and senators, I have to wonder about both the mindset behind this strategy of posting, and the adult supervision that underpins it. Obviously, the latter is lacking given what we’ve seen this week especially, but we also can’t deny that there is an attempt at strategy behind it, even if it’s a strategy that’s been kluged together in service of a narrative. That narrative is to put “Justin Trudeau” and “failed” in as many sentences together as possible, but it’s also about a deliberate campaign of lies and misdirection in service of creating that narrative. But even with this in mind, some of it is just really, really dumb.

Take this tweet from Shannon Stubbs – who is a pretty decent MP, it should be stated, but seems to have lost her ability to be credible over Twitter. Part of what is so gross about this tweet is that it basically undermines our entire criminal justice system, which requires that the accused have advocates in order to have a fair trial. And she knows this – the party knows this (while they go about fetishizing victims of crime and altering the entire vocabulary around them in order to tilt the playing field against the accused so as to deny them fairness). But the temptation to be shamelessly partisan is just too much for some of them to withstand. And in the end, I have to think that it’s this mindless partisanship is often to blame – and it is mindless. It robs them of their intellect and critical thinking capacity, and makes them focus solely on scoring cheap points.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1028043707788996610

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028049573279948800

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I’ve seen a lot of the chatter about the tweet from Senator Denise Batters about Omar Alghabra, to the point that the woke crowd is referring to as a “white nationalist,” which I’m quite sure she’s not – she’s just partisan to the point of being mindless, and that includes making ill-suited attacks to the point of dogwhistling, because it becomes reductive and about scoring points. She should know better. (As for Blaine Calkins and his tweet, well, I’m not sure I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows better, so I’ll leave it at that). But there needs to be a recognition that this kind of point-scoring is actually doing damage to their own brand, and as we’ve seen this week, has blown up in their faces more than once. You would hope that this would be cause for some reflection and that they’ll think twice before continuing to engage in this kind of behaviour – but I’m not holding my breath. So long as the official line from the leader is to lie over Twitter as often as he thinks he can get away with it, he’s set a low bar of an example for the rest of his caucus to follow, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing these kinds of bozo eruptions.

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Roundup: Senate constituency office?

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Independent Senator Dan Christmas has opted to open a “constituency” office in his local Mi’kmaw community in Nova Scotia in a bid to be more accessible. Which is all well and good, but the CBC piece that reported on this is atrocious. Embarrassingly so.

The article refers to Christmas as a “member of the Canadian government” which he explicitly is not. Being a member of government means being part of Cabinet, which Christmas certainly is not. In fact, as a senator, his job is to hold government to account. That’s not talked about in here at all. I’m also not sure what he hopes to use the office for, because senators traditionally don’t do the kinds of constituency work that MPs do, such as acting in an ombudsman-like capacity for constituents having trouble dealing with the civil service (particularly with immigration files, which is a huge problem). And it’s not like he’s the first senator to do so – I recall Senator Mike Duffy making a big deal about doing the same thing in PEI (which I can’t recall if he ever got around to actually doing, or if it was simply a stated intention that some of the usual pundits went around congratulating him for), and Senator Bob Runciman had a constituency office as well. Regardless, the article doesn’t really give much of a sense of his plans for the office – just that he wants to be visible in his community and that he wants to be a kind of “ambassador” to Ottawa from the Mi’kmaw, which again, not really an apt analogy because he doesn’t represent that government in any capacity. I am forced to wonder if this is a result of a lack of understanding of his role because, as an Independent senator, he lacks much in the way of proper mentoring from established senators, but again, I remain mystified, and we’ll see how long this lasts before he realises he could better spend his office budget doing things that are of more utility.

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Roundup: Duffy’s poor arguments

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Day two of Duffy’s bid to sue the Senate, and his lawyer came up with some…novel arguments. And it sounds like the judge wasn’t buying many of them. For example, they tried to argue that because PMO was exerting influence on the Senate’s leadership that it should nullify privilege. That’s…creative, and utterly ridiculous. When he tried to argue that the suspension should be invalid because it was done for political purposes, the judge wondered aloud if that meant she would have to call every member of the Internal Economy Committee to testify as to their motives – and no, that wasn’t going to happen she quickly decided. They also tried to argue that because the suspension wasn’t related to legislation that privilege doesn’t apply. But that’s also ridiculous because the ability to discipline its members is among the privileges outlined in Section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867. So good luck with that.  Oh, and the “indefinite suspension” argument is also void because it wasn’t indefinite – it was until the end of the parliamentary session, and there was a fixed election date, so it would expire at that point regardless. (Also, the Senate’s privileges allow it to expel a member, so arguing that indefinite suspension is tantamount to expulsion is also not a solid argument).

The final argument was a plea to put the Charter ahead of privilege, which would go against previous Supreme Court of Canada rulings that stated just the opposite – that the Charter doesn’t trump privilege, because that would open up a floodgate to litigation against the parliamentary process. There’s a thing called stare decisis, the doctrine of precedent that binds our common law system, and while there are rare cases where it can be challenges, this isn’t one of them. It’s actually quite audacious that his lawyer would make the case, and I’m not seeing any particular argument about how the judge should invalidate a Supreme Court of Canada ruling. So yeah. Good luck to this case, because I really don’t see it going anywhere fast.

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