Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: Mark Holland is optimistic

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New Government House Leader Mark Holland is brimming with optimism that the things that paralyzed the previous session of Parliament will be behind them post-election. It’s a nice idea, but I wonder just how it will actually play out. Yes, the Liberals have broken some of the deadlocks that plagued them (a fact that they didn’t articulate during the election, even when pressed on the subject), and they have a bit of leverage now in that none of the other parties can even contemplate another election anytime soon – the Conservatives are consumed with internal disputes over vaccine mandates and just when they plan to put Erin O’Toole to a leadership review, and the NDP are very broke having spent record amounts of money to gain themselves a single new seat, and the Bloc have no desire to go back to the polls, particularly since their play to be François Legault’s voice in Ottawa didn’t play well for them in the election. This will allow the Liberals to play some hardball and use confidence to their advantage for the time being.

But in spite of this, I would not put it past any of the opposition parties to engage in some of the other shenanigans that got us the election, whether that is tying up the committees in interminable attempts at witch hunts, or drowning in document production requests – and that may yet still happen. The election did end some of that, but much of it could very easily be revived once the committees are back up and running (likely in the New Year).

“There was a very clear message sent to all parties that there’s an expectation that we work together, and I’m operating on the presumption that we will have all heard that message and that we all come ready to work and to collaborate in a constructive and positive way,” Holland told The Canadian Press.

I’m not sure that such a presumption is a good one to make. There was an expectation that all parties should work together during the pandemic, and while they did a bunch of backroom negotiations around emergency legislation – and kept any of the debates off-the-record – they stalled all other bills until the very end, when the NDP and Bloc realized they needed to start playing ball again. I’m not sure what the appetite for playing ball will be on most bills, or whether the political calculus will be to try and stymie the Liberals once again (which could lead to showdowns over confidence). I wish Holland all the luck in the world on this, but I suspect he may start losing the hair he has left because the current state of our parliamentary discourse is pretty toxic, and things like the Liberals’ desire to keep hybrid sittings going will only exacerbate that problem.

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Roundup: A notice of appeal before a pause

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It’s not wholly unexpected that the federal government filed the notice of appeal on the Federal Court decision around the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order around First Nations children. No sooner did all of the television news rush to get Cindy Blackstock on camera when another notice went out by the government – that they had reached an agreement to pause said litigation while they sit down with stakeholders in this court case, as well as with two other related class-action lawsuits, and hammer out a deal by December 1st.

There are a few thought around this. The first is that this should have been expected because the real crux of the issue if the Tribunal’s order rather than the compensation itself. The government has committed to spending the money – and there are billions of dollars at stake – but any tribunal that exceeds its statutory authority is something that any government, no matter the stripe, will want to challenge because they don’t want to set a precedent where the Tribunal continues to exceed its authority, and in this case, turns itself into some kind of roving commission of inquiry. (I wrote all about this issue previously here). The notice of appeal spells this out pretty clearly, and while one judge at the Federal Court may have disagreed, he’s certainly not the court of last instance (and frankly, I would rather hear from some of the judges on the Federal Court of Appeal when it comes to matters of administrative law – as with this Tribunal – than I would this particular judge). And while a number of self-righteous reporters demanded to know why the government couldn’t just pay the amount and sort out the issues later, I’m pretty sure that litigation doesn’t work that way.

My other thought is that it looks a lot like the notice of appeal was more out of a need for the government to keep their options open as the negotiations continue, particularly given that it was filed as late as it was, followed immediately by the press conference to explain what was taking place. Frankly I don’t buy the “they filed it at 4:30 on a Friday to bury it” because it wasn’t exactly buried when it dominated the politics shows and is the top story on every news site in the country. That’s not burying something, especially when they have a captive audience. This being said, I’m still don’t think that this government has communicated the issues very effectively (particularly the issue around the Tribunal exceeding its authority), and that’s compounded by the fact that the media writ-large has shown itself to be fairly incapable of writing a legal story with any nuance or complexity, and rely on both-sidesing it with a clear bias toward taking Blackstock’s word as the authority, and by conflating a number of different issues and completely blurring the timeline of the different orders from the Tribunal. This isn’t a black-and-white issue of taking kids to court – but you wouldn’t know it if you only paid attention to what gets reported.

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Roundup: Performative consultations by the PM

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It is performative consultation season, and lo, prime minister Justin Trudeau held meetings with Erin O’Toole, Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May yesterday, and the versions of the conversation released by readouts from both the PMO, O’Toole and Singh’s officers were…quite something. (Thread here). O’Toole demanded an end to CRB and an end to the “wedge politics” around vaccines, while Singh demanded CRB continue, and for the government to drop future appeals of litigation around First Nations children. Both were play-acting tough in their readouts, even though Singh is but a paper tiger. Trudeau’s readouts, meanwhile, were similar and bland, listing the already circulated “priority” items he wants to address right away (and yet is delaying recalling parliament), with no indication of what the other parties said, or if any kinds of agreements were reached.

Something that did come out of the readout with Singh was that Trudeau is in favour of continuing hybrid sittings, and Pablo Rodriguez’s office confirmed that, which is really, really disappointing and frankly mind-boggling. We are not in the same phase of the pandemic, and we are in a place where, with mandatory vaccination and masking, MPs can all safely attend parliamentary duties in-person, end of story. Carrying on hybrid sittings – which only the Liberals and NDP favour – are frankly unjustifiable, given the human toll that the injuries take on the interpreters, and the incredible amount of human and technical resources that they consume (and which have starved the Senate of necessary resources because the Commons gets priority). And just imagine telling the interpreters that they have to keep being subjected to injury because MPs are too gods damned selfish or lazy to do the jobs they’ve bene elected to do. Parliament is an in-person job – it depends on building relationships, which happens face-to-face. Hybrid sittings were 100 percent responsible for the last session devolving into complete toxicity, and if you don’t think that congeniality matters, remember that things don’t get accomplished without it. Those five months of procedural warfare didn’t happen in a vacuum. Saying they want hybrid sittings to carry on is both irresponsible and corrosive to parliament as a whole. There can be no justification for carrying them on.

Meanwhile, in case you thought it was just opposition parties making demands of the government before parliament is summoned, we have plenty of civil society groups calling for the paid sick leave for federally-regulated employees to happen immediately (erm, not how the legislative process works, guys), decriminalisation of illicit drugs, and for refugees and undocumented healthcare workers to be allowed access to a programme that would grant them permanent residency status.

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Roundup: A surplus thanks to federal funds

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Something jumped out at me yesterday while doomscrolling, which was New Brunswick crowing that they have a bigger-than-expected surplus thanks to all of the additional federal dollars that were sent to the province because of the pandemic. And it stuck in my craw a bit – provinces have been crying poor when it comes to healthcare dollars and around doing things like improving long-term care, and then they turn around and pat themselves on the back for running surpluses as a result of federal dollars. It doesn’t quite add up.

The fact that certain provinces have been using federal pandemic dollars to pad their bottom lines is a problem for Confederation, particularly as these very same provinces are demanding that the federal government turn over even higher healthcare transfers, and justifying it with historically inaccurate talking points about the original share of healthcare spending without also recognizing the other agreements made in the late 1970s. The current federal government is certainly willing to spend the money, but they have also learned that they don’t want to get burned by it like previous governments have. Recall that when the health transfer escalator was at an unsustainable six percent per year, provincial healthcare spending growth was in the low two-percent range, meaning those additional dollars were spent on other things that did not improve the healthcare system. Similarly, when Stephen Harper tried to buy peace with Quebec and sign a huge cheque to correct a fictional “fiscal imbalance,” the provincial government turned around and cut taxes, which wasn’t the intent of said funding, and yet it happened.

It’s with this in mind that Trudeau has promised that there will be strings attached to future health transfers, and he laid out what many of those strings will be in the campaign, whether it’s hiring targets for doctors and nurses, or minimum salaries for long-term care workers. And yes, premiers will bellyache about it, and the opposition parties will take up those cries in the House of Commons, but we have seen repeatedly over this pandemic that the provinces will demand money and then not spend the money they do get. Time for some accountability for dollars – because it’s all coming from the same taxpayer in the end, regardless of which level of government is trying to make their bottom line look better.

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Roundup: Calling for a return to in-person sittings

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Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet held a press conference yesterday, where he called for Parliament to be recalled as quickly as possible, and for it to resume in-person with vaccinated MPs, ending the “hybrid” sittings that we were saddled with in the previous session. For once, I actually agree with Blanchet – we are at the point with vaccinations and public health measures that there really is not any excuse for MPs not to be attending in person (wearing masks indoors as often as possible), because we cannot continue as we were before dissolution.

For those of you who weren’t following along, the hybrid sittings were direct contributors to the toxicity of the previous session, as MPs didn’t have to look one another in the eye while they behaved in the ways that they did or levelled the accusations at one another that they did, and the limitations of those sittings, particularly at committee, exacerbated the procedural warfare and filibusters that parties engaged in. Additionally, there can be no moral justification for continuing the hybrid sittings given the human toll it takes on the interpreters, who were suffering acoustic injuries at an increased rate because MPs refused to use their equipment properly, or behave reasonably online in ways that wouldn’t disrupt or injure those interpreters. Some parties – particularly the NDP, but you can bet that the Liberals will chine in as well – will want to keep some aspects of hybrid sittings around, but I want to caution that this should be resisted as much as possible – we don’t want to incentivise these to continue, because it will erode parliament the longer it carries on.

Meanwhile, I do fear that there will be Conservative MPs who continue to refuse either vaccination or to disclose their vaccination status (as a craven way of keeping their own anti-vaxx voters on-side) who will complain that they should be allowed to either attend the House of Commons without proof of vaccination, or to be allowed to carry on in a hybrid means without it. Even more to the point, I fear that at least one of them will turn this into a point of personal privilege, that their rights to speak in the Chamber are being infringed upon, and this will become a privilege fight (which would be doomed as the vaccinated majority eventually votes them down). Nevertheless, a return to in-person sittings needs to happen as soon as possible, and if some MPs refuse then so be it – and they can lose their salaries for absenteeism while they’re at it.

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Roundup: Alberta is broken, part eleventy-seven

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Things are increasingly broken in Alberta, and I’m not referring to the province’s horrific case rates, collapsing ICUs, and Jason Kenney’s continued refusal to take appropriate public health measures in the face of this. No, I’m referring to the fact that a group of MLAs including the gods damned Speaker and deputy Speaker came out as quasi-separatists yesterday with a looney-tunes “Free Alberta Strategy” which is 100 percent handwaving and pretending that they can simply opt-out of federally-imposed laws by sheer force of political will, and the mistaken notion that Quebec did it and they can too. (Spoiler: Quebec didn’t actually do it, and what few things it did do pretty much devastated their economy). This thread helps to clarify a lot of what they’re asking for and why it’s eye-rollingly ludicrous.

There are a few things to unpack here. Much of this stems from Kenney’s farcical referendums that will take place next month, the central of which is to demand a renegotiation of equalisation, which is where these quasi-separatist loons are drawing their inspiration from. It encouraged this kind of magical thinking that somehow Alberta could just stamp its feet and hold its breath and the federal government would somehow surrender its jurisdiction over things. That’s not how this works. But it’s also about Kenney’s entire attitude toward governing, and how he was building anger toward Trudeau in particular so that it would distract the population from his own failings. I have tended to liken Kenney to an arsonist who would set fires and get far enough ahead of them to put them out so that he can look like a hero – but he hasn’t put them out. He poured a glass of water on them and demanded a medal, while the very fires he set are spreading. Everything that is happening in this province all started with a match that has his name and fingerprints all over it. It’s not just trying to pretend that there’s a “good parts only” version of populism that he’s cherry-picking, or that he is somehow “tapping a relief well” to keep it from blowing up in his face. It blew up. The province is in a crisis, and he keeps lighting more fires because he can’t help himself. Things are going to get even worse in the coming weeks, and try as he might, Kenney has nobody to blame but himself.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442925906679320582

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442932249666621441

And then there’s the whole issue with the Speaker and his deputy. This is the second time now that said Speaker has compromised the avowed neutrality of his position, and he needs to be removed by the Legislature at once, as well as his deputy. It is unacceptable that they remain in their positions any longer, as they cannot be trusted to be neutral presiding officers in the Legislature.

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Roundup: Knives out for O’Toole?

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Erin O’Toole’s future is under discussion, as a number of vocal MPs are coming out to support his continued leadership, and former Ontario premier Mike Harris is adding his voice to the call. But this is as other MPs are phoning up journalists, on a not-for-attribution basis, absolutely savaging O’Toole and the fact that he is a lying liar and an opportunist of the highest order, and that ultimately undermined their case during the election. (Threads here and here).

This is going to start resolving itself at the first caucus meeting, whenever that takes place, because it’s when the party is going to have to vote on which provisions of the (garbage) Reform Act they are going to adopt for the 44th parliament, including the provision about having the caucus hold a vote to start a leadership review process. Why this is important is one of the reasons that makes the Act garbage in the first place – it actually makes it harder for caucus to push out a leader because it establishes a threshold of 20 percent of the caucus needing to demand a vote before it can be held. That exposes his critics at a time when he is deciding on critic portfolios and things like committee chairs for opposition-chaired committees, and he can use that fear-or-favour system to punish his critics if they fail to meet that 20 percent threshold. If they didn’t have this threshold or this framework, we’ve seen leaders read the writing on the wall with far fewer MPs/MLAs going public, and resigning as a result. The (garbage) Reform Act provides protection for those leaders where it’s supposed to be putting the fear of caucus into them, and it’s just such a dark irony that once again, attempts to improve the system only make it worse.

And while there are a bunch of voices (especially over on the CBC) who seem to think that Andrew Scheer was pushed out for his loss, they have all apparently forgotten that he resigned, particularly after his use of party funds came to light. Whether that was an excuse is not really the point – it wasn’t simply because he lost the election.

Programming note: I am taking the weekend off of blogging entirely because I am exhausted from the election and need to catch up on some sleep. See you next week.

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Roundup: Another day, another position on gun control

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Another day, and Erin O’Toole has yet another position on gun control. In the face of more questions on just where he stands, O’Toole now says that he’ll keep the existing prohibitions in place – but remains cagey on just what those are, never mind that his platform says he’ll repeal them. Also, never mind that his own candidates are saying they’ll repeal the measures the current government put into place.

What is fascinating as well is to watch certain small-c conservative columnists report on this about-face, saying things like this might save O’Toole’s campaign, rather than, oh, this is yet another example of him swallowing himself whole, reversing his positions when it suits him, saying one thing to one group and another thing to another group if he thinks he can get away with it, and generally being a naked opportunist. And these tend to be the same talking heads who spend days if the Liberals “flip-flop” on a position. I expect we’ll see a few more days of questions to O’Toole on his changing positions, and whether they change again in another day or two.

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Roundup: Grading the parties’ sincerity on climate

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One of the great things about the policy landscape in Canada are the number of professors out there who are willing to devote their time and energy to providing advice to political parties, or who will be willing to evaluate their proposals. We had an example of this as professor Mark Jaccard at Simon Fraser University went and checked over the parties’ environmental platforms and did the modelling on them, and then graded them – and the Liberals came out ahead by quite a margin (and in the interest of trying to look “balanced,” the CBC declared that the Conservatives were “not far behind,” though it was literally the difference between an A- and a D).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1433770709730344962

The full study not only evaluates the targets, but the policies and costs as well – because there are economic costs to some of these plans. Interestingly, he also tests the sincerity of those plans, which is not only a sense of how feasible they are, but also their history as a party of a willingness to do the heavy lifting, and that’s a pretty important measure. “Beware of politicians who promise big but have not subjected their promises and plans to assessment by independent climate policy modellers. In this regard, the NDP and Greens are suspect,” Jaccard writes, and it’s worth reading through why he gives them the scores he does. The economic damage that the NDP plan promises to do would never be agreed to by their union base, and the fact that it would require a police state for them to set the kinds of binding carbon budgets that they propose are demonstrations about how unserious the policies are.

What is disappointing in this is that the NDP in particular started making personal attacks against Jaccard, and trying to build lame conspiracy theories that he is somehow being paid off to pump up the Liberals and talk down the NDP, which is both ridiculous and is the kinds of sore loser tactics that we’ve come to expect. (Seriously, my reply column on a daily basis is full of Dippers with hurt feelings because I have the temerity to point out the reality of things like jurisdiction or the fact that you can’t willpower things into existence). Elizabeth May was among those who took swipes at Jaccard, for the temerity of being an economist and not a climate scientist – which is also ridiculous because economics is literally the science of allocating scare resources, and the fact that climate scientists are not offering policy solutions. Science is not policy, and that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the two and how they complement one another – providing that you’re willing to listen and not get in a huff because someone pointed out that your implementation plans don’t belong in the real world.

https://twitter.com/MarkJaccard/status/1433891783524720641

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Roundup: Curious demands for suspended campaigns

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The situation in Kabul seems to have had a secondary effect during the campaign, which have been repeated calls for the prime minister and/or affected ministers to suspend their campaigns in order to deal with the crisis. While it sounds like a good idea, I can’t help but feeling that this is strictly performative, especially given the situation on the ground.

For starters, having them in Ottawa at this point wouldn’t make that much of a difference, as the vast majority of civil servants are still working from home, and these ministers have just been through a year of remote or hybrid Parliament, and managed to do their duties from home for much of that, so why they couldn’t just keep doing it during this situation – and by all accounts that’s what they are doing – just strikes me as odd, but again, this instinct of performativity – being seen to be looking like they’re doing the job, as opposed to just doing it. And it’s not like they would be micro-managing the civil servants processing these approvals either, so again, I’m not sure why the need to suspend their campaigns is really there. The prime minister attended a G7 teleconference while on the road, other ministers have been providing daily briefings to the press from their homes over the past week or so, so again, there doesn’t seem to be a genuine need to suspend.

Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh is declaring the airlift mission to be a “failure” without necessarily understanding the situation on the ground, while Erin O’Toole, with his military experience, is simply proclaiming that he would have had “a plan,” as though any plan survives the first engagement. It was a fast-moving situation where we didn’t have assets of our own on the ground and were reliant on our allies, who weren’t necessarily dependable in their own right – made all the opaquer by the need for operational security. Of course, their real goal is to make the current government look like they’ve been incompetent on the file, and while I will agree that some of what happened can be attributed to our culture of risk-aversion, I think we need to try and keep some of the context of the situation in mind, rather than jumping to knee-jerk conclusions.

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