If you thought that the NDP’s sudden demand that the government refer the satellite offices case to the Supreme Court to rule on its justiciability immediately wasn’t a sign of desperation, the fact that those MPs being ordered to repay are now suing the Board of Internal Economy in Federal Court is even more so. Can one even sue a parliamentary board that one is a part of? In fact, it smacks of the kind of desperate tactic where you throw absolutely everything at the wall, no matter how implausible, and hope that something sticks. The suit demands that the $2.7 million in demanded repayments be set aside, calling the decision “unreasonable, arbitrary and incorrect.” Except it wasn’t the Board that made the findings – it was the Clerk of the Commons, and she has the paperwork to prove that the NDP misled her when they set up the scheme in the first place. It’s also curious that the NDP would go for this kind of process when discovery is going to be very difficult for them as they have to turn over all manner of documents as part of the process. Still, with time running out before their MPs start having their salaries garnisheed, I have to wonder how many more tactics we’ll see employed to try and delay things, at least until the election and then beyond.
Tag Archives: Procurement
Roundup: Hurry or not
It’s a curious thing, this notion of political expediency. When it comes to the issue of national security changes, for which you would think the government would want to take the time to get it right considering not only the Charter implications, but also the potential for major embarrassment to a government should things go wrong *cough*Maher Arar*cough* there should be an impetus for some due diligence. Instead, we’re getting word that they want to limit committee study to three days, because gods forbid that they might have to schedule a few extra committee meetings or sit into July to ensure that things happen. Meanwhile, on an issue such as doctor-assisted dying, where there is a ticking clock looming over them, the government instead prefers to push it off to the next parliament, insisting there’s “plenty of time” and don’t worry, they’re “consulting with Canadians” on the subject, which gives one the sense that they’re going to put pretty much as much effort as they did into the recent prostitution law, which is to say that it was a fairly sham process designed to give them a result that they could use to justify a solution that is unlikely to pass a second Charter challenge. Oh, and because they’ll be in a time crunch when they do get around to presenting a bill, it would allow them to insist that they need to use time allocation to ram though a bill without a lot of actual consultation with experts (assuming that the Conservatives form government again). This method of issues management makes no sense, but they apparently are under the impression that it works for them.
Roundup: Hedging the messages
Justin Trudeau continued his tour of southwestern Ontario over the past couple of days, meeting with local mayors and touring a Ford plant, and so on. But while he was talking about moving away from traditional manufacturing while in London, his stop in Windsor spoke about the need to support the auto sector as a pillar to diversify around, which seems to me to be a fairly big hedge since much of the problem with the auto sector is that it pretty much requires the government to keep feeding the beast with ever larger cash subsidies lest those manufacturers relocate elsewhere, which they generally end up doing anyway, while not enough is being done to transition those communities away from the expectation that they’ll get a decent paying job at the auto plant with a pension and benefits. Also, he needs to stop saying that the government put all of their eggs in the oil basket, because it’s like four percent of GDP, so it’s just not true. Another curious statement Trudeau made was that carbon pricing should be up to the provinces, which seems like a fairly fraught proposition because one can rather easily imagine the headaches that having a patchwork of pricing schemes around the country will create – carbon tax in one province, a technology levy in another, and cap-and-trade in yet another, while the federal government tries to book the overall reductions with no real commonality between them.
(1/n) Re: @JustinTrudeau and GHGs: I've worked on GHG policies at fed and prov level – we need a new way to deal with fed/prov on GHGs.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(2/n) Federal regs end up pleasing the lowest common denominator – coal, autos, oil and gas, EITE, etc. and stringency drops for all.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(3/n) A new framework, in the spirit of healthcare where fed gov't sets the boundaries, directs traffic, etc, has some promise.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(4/n) but, in order for it to work, fed gov't needs clear def'ns for stringency, and a tasty carrot or a big stick to make provinces move
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(5/n) Without that, we're in the world we're in now – each province does what it wants to do, and the fed gov't does little else.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
(6/n) So, let's see what details @JustinTrudeau puts on the policies, but this is a good/promising direction for Canada. #cdnpoli
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 22, 2015
Roundup: Rate cut, dollar drop
In a move that surprised pretty much everyone yesterday, the Bank of Canada lowered their already rock bottom prime interest rate to 0.75 percent as a means of dealing with the effect of falling oil prices on our economy, and in response, the dollar dropped even further. Bank Governor Stephen Poloz said that the upsides of lower oil prices could have positives, but as the economic forecast was also downgraded, he said that it could delay recovery by at least a year. Opposition reaction to the rate cut was that it showed the government was mismanaging the economy, but Justin Trudeau also wouldn’t say if he would run deficits, nor would Thomas Mulcair indicate how he would pay for his childcare promises. Andrew Coyne is not bothered by the falling dollar, saying we’ll adjust, though as I watch my purchasing power evaporate before my eyes at the iTunes store, I can’t say I’m too happy about it.
Roundup: London Liberal retreat
With the Liberals kicking off their winter caucus retreat in London, Ontario, there were some defensive press releases sent out by the local Conservative MP, and later by Joe Oliver regarding comments that Trudeau said about the economic situation in the region – a region that has seen a “lost decade” compared to the rest of the province. Trudeau did make remarks about the economy in the evening, and while he still won’t lay out policy planks, he can now claim that it’s been a prudent move because he hasn’t committed to any grand spending plans in a time of falling oil prices. That said, he has made infrastructure spending one of his priorities, something that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne made an explicit call for while in Ottawa yesterday, to the tune of five percent of GDP. It’s ambitious, and this government isn’t exactly going to be receptive – look at how they continually pat themselves on the back for back-loading their infrastructure spending plans as is – but Wynne was making some interesting points that this didn’t have to be all money in the next fiscal year, but other options about leveraging surpluses when approaching the markets for capital loans. Add to that, but economists like Mike Moffatt have been talking about the need for better infrastructure in southwestern Ontario in order to help them regain their productivity – after all, it’s hard to get your manufacturing business off the ground if you can’t get high-speed Internet in the area. It will be interesting to see how this will all play out in the upcoming election.
Do we get to look forward to missives like these every time Justin Trudeau enters a Conservative riding? #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/I78AqYfqTO
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 20, 2015
So the solution is what? Keep pumping more subsidies into the sector? #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/KqdtgkvQWS
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 20, 2015
Roundup: Two rulings and a report for the Mounties
The RCMP were in the centre of the spotlight yesterday, with two Supreme Court judgements and a fact-finding report on the Moncton shootings all having been released. Regarding the former, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the ban on RCMP from collectively bargaining was unconstitutional, which opens the door for them to form a recognised police association (though they seem to be shying away from a full-blown union). This ruling has further reaching consequences as it also resolved some of the problems in the existing jurisprudence around freedom of association, which has been in a fairly bad state for the past four years or so since a previous decision introduced a great deal of confusion into the law. The second decision related to a challenge of the government’s wage rollbacks imposed on the Force in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, but the RCMP lost that challenge because of the fairly narrow way in which it was constructed and argued. As for the Moncton report, much of it focuses on the lack of training and slow roll-out of new carbines, confusion among communications and problems related to body armour, many of which are problems that date back to the Mayerthorpe massacre of four Mounties. Where these two stories intersect, beyond the RCMP issue itself, is that police association members are saying that they could have addressed some of these problems and had timelines established as part of a collective bargaining process, which of course they don’t have.
Roundup: Confessions of a style watcher
In a sit-down interview with Canada AM, Lisa Raitt talked about her frustration with being a woman in politics, and so much attention is being paid to her appearance, particularly with things like weight gain and hairstyles. And absolutely, it’s part of the double standards that women face for a host of societal reasons, which is something that should be tackled in a variety of ways, including sauce for the gander – ensuring that much of the same language is applied to male MPs. That being said, I wanted to add a couple of observations as someone who is known for doing style critique of MPs (and occasionally senators). Number one – I don’t comment on weight or hair, because that’s not the point of what I’m doing. What I am doing however is commenting on the image that MPs put forward by their own conscious choice – do they project an image confidence that often comes along with looking your best? Or do they look like a fool because they make $160K per year and apparently still shop at Value Village, where nothing fits or coordinates? Add to that, I also look at how the men dress. It’s not just a suit and tie and there you go – for men it has a lot to do with the cut of the suit, and looking like they spent a moment to consider if those colours go together, or if they look like they got dressed in the dark in a rumpled suit that hangs like a used burlap sack? Image and appearance do matter, but only as a first impression, after which an MP needs to have substance to back it up. It’s sad that we have a number of MPs who have neither.
Roundup: Reassigning Fantino
In some ways, it was a big surprise because it’s almost – almost – like Stephen Harper was admitting he made a mistake with regards to his choice for veterans affairs minister. But it wasn’t entirely that – just a bit of a shuffling of the deck. Without really summoning press to Rideau Hall yesterday, the PM shuffled Julian Fantino out of Veterans Affairs, and put newcomer Erin O’Toole in his place. But lest you think that Fantino has had his day in cabinet and he can quietly disappear into the backbenches, no – Harper found him a new home. Technically it’s his old home as Associate Minister of Defence, but instead of being on the procurement file, as he was previously, now he’s been charged with Arctic sovereignty, cyber-defence and foreign intelligence. Let’s remember that when Fantino was previously on that job, he had the F-35 fiasco blowing up around him. Then Veterans Affairs fell apart around him when he was in that portfolio. And if his lack of interpersonal skills was a big part of the failure at Veterans Affairs, he’s going to be in charge of a fairly diplomacy-heavy role with Arctic Sovereignty? Really? Same thing with foreign intelligence and CSE. You want a notoriously poor communicator to deal with those questions? Really? (My other thought is about what this says about confidence in the abilities of Rob Nicholson if the PM need to split off some of his duties to hand them over to an Associate Minister). As for the veterans file, it’s going to be an uphill battle for O’Toole, who is an immeasurably better communicator than Fantino or his parliamentary secretary, Parm Gill, ever were, but he’s still constrained by the policy of the day, and the spending restraints that the government has imposed across the board. Sure, he may be able to communicate better and maybe not alienate his stakeholders to the same extent that Fantino did, but if he can’t really change what’s really ailing the department, it is likely to just be a fresh coat of paint and little else. Paul Wells shares a few thoughts about what the PM might have been thinking.
So some poor sap at Langevin gets to dig up the microtapes to revert the M-4 Unit to his previous Associate Defence Minister programming?
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
One does suppose that a duotronic computer system like the M-4 Unit might be well placed to deal with information security. #Fantino
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
Just think of all the new talking points that the M-4 Unit will have to upload to his duotronic databanks. #Fantino
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 5, 2015
Roundup: Some context around the defection
While Danielle Smith continues to declare victory as she defends her defection, insisting that the Wildrose had held two premiers to account and that they had managed to shift the PCs to their position under Prentice, there are one or two things worth noting. While I spoke to other day about the problems with calling this defection a “reunification” of conservatives in the province, I think there are a couple of other facts to consider that the pundit classes keep overlooking in their handwringing about the state of democracy in Alberta now that the official opposition has been decimated. The first is that even in a Westminster democracy, there are no guidelines about the strength of the opposition. We’ve even had cases (New Brunswick, I believe) where there were no opposition parties elected, and they had to find a way of including that balance. The other fact is that nowhere in the country is there an opposition so closely aligned ideologically with the government of the day, where you have a nominally right-wing government and an even more right-wing official opposition. That puts a whole lot of context into the unprecedented move of an official opposition leader crossing to join the government ranks, as there is less of a gap to actually cross.
Roundup: Onward, One Party State
The One Party State known as Alberta has struck again, and consumed its own opposition. Floor-crossings to the government, the same government that has been in power for four decades, is a long-held tradition in that process, but never before has it been to this extent, in the history of confederation. Wildrose leader Danielle Smith resigned her position and took eight of her MLAs over the floor to join Premier Jim Prentice, and his revitalised Progressive Conservatives. The five remaining Wildrose MLAs will likely remain the official opposition (though there are rumours of another resignation on the way for health reasons), leaving five Liberal and four NDP MLAs to have some semblance of opposition, as shambolic as it is likely to be. Oh, and of those five Liberal MLAs, two of them will soon be jumping ship to run federally. So yeah – opposition? Who needs it? It’s amazing to witness this all-encompasing amorphous political culture in Alberta consume itself and its own best interests, and it’s galling to see Smith justify her decision as essentially declaring victory, that with Prentice in place there is a principled conservative at the helm that she can support, papering over some of the other inherent problems that were in her party, being the split between those who were able to be socially progressive as opposed to the regressive “Lake of Fire” crowd. Jen Gerson writes about Prentice setting himself up to be a generational premier, while Colby Cosh explores what it all means in the broader political culture of the province, and how the threat of falling oil prices may have pushed things forward.