Tag Archives: Public Service

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.

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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: 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.

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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: The walkback that wasn’t

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It started, as it so often does, with a Globe and Mail headline that was misleading and which managed to get the story wrong. The headline “Ottawa to dramatically scale back carbon tax on competitiveness concerns,” had the sub-head that “the decision follows months of lobbying by industries and comes just as Ontario is backing out of cap-and-trade,” but it completely misconstrued what the announcement was about. And every other news outlet was quick to follow with a matching story, because it was just too juicy to ignore, not that they got it right either. Not that it mattered – opponents of the federal carbon price backstop were all quick to cheer, declare victory, deploy their memes, and start hoisting Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe around as a hero, without at all understanding what happened, so good job there, Globe.

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As energy economists started bemoaning over Twitter, this wasn’t a policy change or a walking back on the carbon tax, because the price hadn’t changed. All that was announced was the subsidies available to certain large emitters who were particularly trade-exposed – in other words, this offsets any disadvantage they’d have by competing with non-carbon-taxed jurisdictions. They still pay the price, and it still is the incentive for them to drive innovation. But to add fuel to the fire, environment minister Catherine McKenna was particularly useless in communicating what this was about because she once again stuck to her go-to line that “the environment and the economy go together.” Her singular tweet during the day was unhelpful in unpacking the what was being announced. And it wasn’t until the end of the day that the National Post had a story written that spoke to those economists and unpacked the issue properly – you know, which should have been done at the start of the news cycle, and not the end of it.

Which leads to the bigger problem here, in that this has become a classic example of how media organisations have the power to frame slightly more complex issues in the dumbest possible terms in order to set it up in partisan terms. Well, the Globehas been racking up a record of outright misleading stories as well, but they weren’t the only culprits. CBC’s Power & Politics, for example, gave a not correct rendition of what happened, got Scott Moe’s boneheaded take, and only then talked to an economist about the issue, by which point it had been framed as a government climbdown, which it wasn’t. But we keep seeing this kind of pattern of dumbing down stories that aren’t even complex. Recall Stéphane Dion’s “green shift” plan – the only thing that reporters would say was “it’s complicated!” when it wasn’t, and hence, that’s how it got branded throughout the campaign. It does a disservice to Canadians to not explain policy issues properly and to frame things with facts on the table rather than in partisan boxes, but that takes time, which is what nobody seems to have, and that is a major problem for our democracy.

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Roundup: Moe’s carbon bafflegab

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Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe (or his staff) penned an op-ed in the National Post yesterday, to explain why he thinks Canadians are opposed to the federal government’s planned carbon tax. The reasons, however, are…not convincing. Nor are his counter-claims about what the alternatives are. And to be fair, almost nobody likes taxes, which is why leaders like Moe have been casting any kind of carbon price in as negative a light as possible in order to turn public sentiment against them. And we can’t ignore that most Canadians want to fight climate change like they want a pony – they say they want to do it, but don’t actually want to undertake any of the responsibility that goes with it.

As for Moe’s arguments, he decries the carbon price as a “one-size-fits-all” approach, which is bogus off the start. The price does not indicate the mechanism by which it’s implemented, whether that’s cap-and-trade or a tax, and how those systems are set up and administered can vary greatly, particularly in how the revenues are recycled. That’s why the federal government gave provinces the space to design a system that fits their particular circumstances best. So right off the start, Moe is being intellectually dishonest in his argument. And as for the stated goal of reducing emissions, a carbon price is not only about reducing emissions – it’s about giving a market signal so that major emitters can drive innovation to reduce their emissions and avoid paying it (you know, something a fiscal conservative would recognise, were Moe actually one and not a populist goof), and it ensures that everyday consumers make choices to reduce their emissions. If you see people lining up at gas stations when the price drops a few cents, imagine what price indicators mean when it comes to other behaviours.

Moe keeps pointing to his province’s investment in carbon capture and storage, which has not yet proven itself cost-effective as a technology, but ironically would be more cost-effective if there was a carbon price that would help to better monetize its value. He talks about designing an offset system that would recognise carbon sinks in agriculture, but again, having a price allows this recognition to be better tracked and monetized, which again, provides incentives. You’d think this would be elementary stuff to someone who purports to be a fiscal conservative that believes in the free market. But that’s not what Moe is (nor is Doug Ford or Andrew Scheer for that matter), and they need to justify how they’re rejecting actual fiscal conservative measures.

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Roundup: A public dust-up

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Late last week, as news came out that the Canadian government had been instrumental in getting a number of Syrian “White Helmets” and their families out of that country and that a number of them would be resettled in Canada, there was a bit of a public scrap between Conservatives as the party’s foreign affairs critic gave a position on the situation that Rempel hadn’t been consulted on, despite the fact that she’s the immigration and refugee critic. Her musing publicly as to whether the boys made the decision without her is one of those signs that perhaps not everyone is singing from the same song sheet in Andrew Scheer’s Conservative party – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – but not consulting the relevant critics before freelancing an opinion to the media is a bit of a faux pas. Whether it was sexism (per Rempel’s insinuation) or just arrogance on the part of O’Toole, remains to be determined, but it was certainly illuminating for observers.

On the subject of Rempel, the Hill Times has an extensive profile of her, which is a good read that I’d encourage everyone to do. It’s a pretty fair piece, and I would suggest to people that her persona over social media is not representative of who she is as an MP. Which isn’t to say that her social media persona isn’t a problem – it very much is, particularly when she sends her followers on the attack against someone who she has a disagreement with. But that aside, she’s the kind of MP who takes the time to do her actual job of things like reading the Estimates and the Public Accounts, and who can follow debate and ask questions that aren’t scripted (and indeed, she tends to eschew talking points whenever possible). We need more MPs who take the job as seriously as she does.

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Roundup: Recalling the committee

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Yesterday was the day when the Commons immigration committee returned to town for an emergency meeting on the irregular border-crossing situation, and in the end, they agreed to hold two more meetings in the next few weeks to get a better sense of what is going on, and what the government’s plans are. There’s partisan gamesmanship happening on all sides of this, and each party wants a different outcome from these hearings, but they’re going to happen, and despite the fact that Michelle Rempel tries to spin the fact that she “forced” the Liberals to pay attention to this, she was apparently pushing on an open door as they were happy to do it, as their position is that this gives them an opportunity to correct the spin and misinformation that Rempel and her compatriots are putting out there.

Meanwhile, the government also made it clear that they were going to give funding directly to the City of Toronto to deal with their housing situation for migrants (only a few of which are actually irregular border crossers) because the provincial government has abdicated their responsibility to do something – while other communities outside of Toronto are willing and able to house and resettle more of them, and are actively seeking to do so. David Reevely gives more context here, and in particular notes that while the number of migrants is relatively small, the bigger problem is that they’re being put into a system that is already stressed.

But the rhetoric carries on, and Andrew Coyne takes it on in this piece – that, despite the claims, this isn’t actually a “crisis,” and treating it as such isn’t helpful, nor are the suggestions that the Conservatives are throwing out there. And worse, the Conservatives have put out a particularly problematic Twitter campaign that is being decried as racist, basing itself on a headline from a Diane Francis column in the Financial Post which is full of outright misinformation (particularly the notion that irregular border crossers aren’t screened – they absolutely are), torque, and reheated Conservative talking points. Coyne went further in a twitter thread, but regardless, the Conservatives continue to walk a fine line around pandering to xenophobic anger while still insisting that they support “orderly immigration,” as though we that were feasible 100 percent of the time. Real life doesn’t work like that, and Canada has been fortunate in that we’re protected by three oceans and American paranoia, but now we have to deal with a fraction of the migrants that other countries do. Maybe it behoves us to act like grown-ups about this.

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Roundup: Explaining the system to Ford

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had his first meeting with Ontario premier Doug Ford yesterday, and it went about as well as could be expected. While the expected topic was going to be carbon pricing, Ford’s people pre-emptively put out a release saying that they were going to wash their hands of the whole irregular border crossers issue, citing that it was the problem the federal government created and they would have to pay for it going forward. Which is a pretty interesting interpretation of areas of provincial responsibility. Trudeau took this in stride, apparently, and in the press conference after, said that he took the time to explain some of the confusion that the premier seemed to have around the issue and things like the difference between immigration and asylum, and Canada’s international obligations when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers. For what it’s worth.

Of course, Ford’s provincial immigration minister lashed out after this happened, but what I find particularly telling about all of this is how much it relies on the kinds of partisan talking points that the federal Conservatives have been putting out around how this is entirely the fault of Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet (which would be predicated on ignoring the political situation in the United States), and that it misrepresents the number of migrants who have been since shuttled to Ontario as a result. Now, the federal government is not blameless, as they have been slow to ramp up the resources needed to process claims and were a bit slow off the mark to look at ways to communicate with the communities on the ground in the US – a tactic that ultimately has proved to be successful, but not before a wave of arrivals had already crossed the border. The other thing that is notable is that the predominantly American framing of “illegals” has been cropping up here too, which should be a warning sign about the kinds of populist rhetoric that is being repurposed for domestic effect.

The other thing that this highlights is the fact that we have a provincial government that got to where it is on the basis of simple slogans and unrealistic promises (no, you’re not going to get cheaper gasoline or buck-a-beer), so it should be no surprise when they start making noises that don’t reflect their obligations, both nationally and internationally. Yes, they can try to get more money out of the federal government – which they are providing – but trying to wash their hands of the issue (while subtly playing into the kinds of xenophobic populism that they have largely eschewed to date) is not going to fly.

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Roundup: Performing partisanship

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Andrew Potter put out a very interesting post yesterday about self-help for partisans, given the tone of the rhetoric right now, and it came at a particularly apropos moment given how unreadable my Twitter reply column has become since the publication of my fact-check piece for Maclean’s. And no, it’s not just Conservatives who are sore that their team has been caught out, it’s also an equal number of their opponents who are utterly obnoxious in using the piece to prove something about the Conservatives.

What has really gotten me, however, are the number of partisans whom I’ve worked with, who have been sources for pieces I’ve written that have savaged the Liberal government, who are taking to Twitter to accuse me of bias. And I had to step back from my reactions to realise something that Potter articulated in his piece:

And maybe that’s the big problem — that everyone has stopped arguing with their opponents, and has decided to simply perform for their supporters.

And this is it exactly – they’re not engaging critically with what I wrote or acknowledging that I have a record of being just as critical on the government on very substantial issues (as opposed to cheap outrage and the usual hairshirt parsimony that means nothing). They have to take to social media to denounce me in order to perform their partisanship. And I get it. But it’s really, really disappointing.

But as Potter also points out, this is also reflecting itself in how Parliament is operating these days – MPs aren’t debating with one another. They’re performing for their base, and we can see that in the way that we went from debate to reading speeches into the void, and from QP that engaged on issues to one that is now solely focused on generating outrage clips for social media. Parliament is ceasing to be about debate or ideas, or about governance or accountability – it’s about performing for your base so that you can win a few more votes. And that’s not only sad, but it’s terrifying for what it means for the future. And that’s why I think we need to have a rethink of where rules changes have gotten us, and start reshaping those rules that will force MPs to re-engage with Parliament in the way it’s intended to run, rather than allowing it to further degrade into this puppet show we’re careening toward.

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Roundup: Equalization, feigned outrage, and outsourced research

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Apparently, we’re talking equalisation again after it was “revealed” that the current formula was renewed for another five years in the budget implementation bill and nobody cottoned on to the fact. Err, except that it was right there for everyone to see. And so you have a bunch of performative outrage from the likes of Jason Kenney about how this was the “deceitful scrapping of Equalization Renegotiation talks,” which is of course, utter bullshit but he need to create outrage that will drive his base – because if there’s anything that will be guaranteed to drive outrage in the West, it’s the deliberate lies being spread about how equalisation works in order to make themselves look like the victims in all of this (never mind that even in the depths of the recession they had the highest fiscal capacity in the country, and the fact that they have a deficit because they made the political choice to keep taxes low and not implement a PST in Alberta). But why be truthful and talk about the system honestly when you can foment outrage with lies? Way to go there. Sure, you can make the point that there could have been more public discussions around it, but there were discussions at the federal-provincial level, despite what Kenney claims.

Which brings us back to the issue of whether or not this change in the budget implementation bill was done underhandedly. Obviously the fact that it was a) in the budget; b) in the budget implementation bill for all to see; and c) raised at committee, clearly it wasn’t being hidden very well if that was the intention. Add to that, there have been ongoing consultations at the ministerial level for months, which again, not exactly being done sneakily. Paul Wells dug into the paper trails and found all of the receipts. And yet it’s being decried as having been done in some underhanded fashion. Why? Because the Globe and Mail reported that this was done “quietly.”

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If this is indicative of any problem, it’s the fact that our opposition parties are not doing their jobs. The Conservatives have long-since outsourced their opposition to the Globeif their QP questions are anything to go by (and confirmed by this latest “outrage”), not to mention the outsourcing of yet more homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and more to the fact, rather than doing their jobs of scrutinising the legislation and the budget, they spent the entire spring session railing about the India trip, inventing much (though not all) of the outrage out of whole cloth, and demanding the “costs” for the carbon tax where much of the data is already publicly available or does not exist where provinces have not yet come up with their plans. But instead, they spent their time trying to invent smoking guns that would “prove” that this government is out to raise taxes to pay for their deficits (again, ignoring that the funds from carbon prices all get returned to the provinces). If you’re the Official Opposition and can’t do your own homework, then what exactly are you doing? You’re in parliament to do a job – not to generate outrage clips for social media. And yet here we are.

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Roundup: Another useless voting marathon

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Unless a miracle happens and someone buckles, MPs will still be voting when this post goes live, because the Conservatives decided to demand another marathon vote session on the Estimates in order to prove a point. The point was that they want the government to table a document prepared by the public service about carbon pricing, which allegedly shows the fiscal impact – but it was redacted when released. The Conservatives see this as the smoking gun they need to “prove” that the federal carbon price backstop is a cash grab. Err, except the federal government isn’t keeping the revenues, and the provinces have until this fall to announce how they will be recycling the revenues, whether through tax cuts or whatnot, and lo, the government last month tabled a report that basically showed the efficacy of carbon pricing and that they’re waiting for the provinces to announce what their systems will be.

The Conservatives decided that their pressure tactic would be another round of line-by-line Estimates – because that worked so well the last time when they tried to force a meeting on the Atwal Affair™, only to buckle before votes could go into the weekend, and then they blamed the government for creating their own discomfort. Kind of like blaming someone else for when you hit yourself in the face on purpose to get attention. “You made me do this!” they cried. No, they didn’t, and worse, it was not only tactically incompetent (the votes had nothing to do with the demand then, and it doesn’t this time either), but by overplaying their hand, they voted against line items in the Estimates for things like funding veterans pensions or public services, all of which went into attack lines. And this time, because the government scheduled the vote for 10:30 PM, the fact that the Conservatives forced the 200 votes rather than the single vote means that Liberal MPs can complain that the Conservatives were keeping them from attending Eid celebrations in their ridings at dawn (some of them going so far as to cry Islamophobia). It’s a reach, and both sides are self-righteous about this, but come on.

As for the Conservatives’ demand, well, it’s a lot of disingenuous nonsense because the costs will be determined by how the revenues are recycled, which the federal government has no control over. Poilievre has been trying the semantic arguments that because it’s a federally-imposed tax that they need to know what the impact will be, focusing only on the cost before revenues are recycled, which is again, disingenuous and the precursor to misinformation. And if they were so concerned, they can do the analysis themselves – as Andrew Leach points out. But they don’t want to do that – this is all cheap theatre, performative outrage that the government is “covering up” information that they’re characterising as something it’s not. But as truth and context have become strangers in this parliament, none of this is unexpected.

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