Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: Constitutional conventions are constitutional

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There was another example of the shocking level of civic illiteracy in our elected officials yesterday as Green Party leader Elizabeth May again trotted out the canard that political parties aren’t in the constitution. She was making a perfectly good point of privilege around the way that independent MPs and those from not officially recognised parties are being adversely affected by rules changes that are being carried forward from the last parliament, and that’s fine, but she’s shockingly wrong about the constitutional status of parties. Why? Because while political parties are not literally in the Constitution Acts of 1867 or 1982, they are part of the grounding framework of our system of Responsible Government, which is in and of itself a constitutional convention – part of our unwritten constitutional inheritance from the United Kingdom. It shouldn’t need reminding but apparently it does because apparently nobody learns civics any longer, but constitutional conventions are constitutional. In fact, they are just as enforceable as elements of the written constitution. And lo and behold, the preamble to the 1867 Act is:

Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom

This is exactly where our Responsible Government framework lies. The UK has an unwritten constitution, and its constitutional conventions have stood the test of time, and this is precisely why May and others who follow her logic are dead wrong. Parties are at the heart of Responsible Government because it’s how a government gains and maintains confidence. The system simply cannot hold with hundreds of “loose fish” all vying for attention and reward. (If you try to bring up the party-less territorial governments, smack yourself upside the head because you simply cannot scale up a consensus model from 19 members in NWT or 22 in Nunavut to 338 in Ottawa. It is a complete impossibility). Does that mean that we don’t currently have problems with the powers accumulated by party leaders? No, we absolutely do, but that’s also because we tinkered with the system of selecting those leaders, presidentializing them with massive membership votes rather than caucus selection that keeps them accountable in the Responsible Government tradition. But parties are absolutely essential to the functioning of our parliamentary system, and the fact the written portions of our constitution are silent on that fact is indicative of absolutely nothing. If one relies solely on the written portions and not the constitutional conventions, they are wholly ignorant of our system of government, and need to be called out as such.

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Roundup: Monarchial stability

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In an interview with CTV’s Question Period about his upcoming trip to the Queen’s official 90th birthday celebrations in London, His Excellency the Governor General credited the monarchy with holding Canada together, and noted that constitutional monarchies are among the most stable of all forms of government – and he’s right. Predictably, however, the republicans among us got right offended, saying that Canadians deserve some of the credit, and it was simplistic, patronising and wrong to say that Canada would “disintegrate without a London-based, hereditary Head of State.” The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores some of the counterfactuals, and what we see in countries where heads of state are elected and who are largely partisan in nature. The stability of those countries is indeed an issue in many cases, and social progress is generally further behind than most constitutional monarchies, which have a demonstrated tendency not to be as conservative or reactionary as one might think given the importance of maintaining those traditions. But the most important reason why constitutional monarchies like Canada’s tend to be more uniting is that they don’t rely on a partisan head of state to be the uniting figure around which all of the pomp and circumstances happens, and you don’t have people going “he’s not my president” and so on. It’s not the partisan head of state’s face on postage stamps and in embassies, or who receives military salutes. Ours is a system designed to keep leaders from developing cults of personality and keeps their ambitions in check because they do not hold power – they merely exercise it on behalf of the one who does (that being the monarch). It’s also why it’s concerning that our prime ministers in this country have been getting presidential envy, and why this “First Lady” business around Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is a problem because it goes against our particular constitutional monarchical order. Having someone be above the political fray has benefitted our society and our culture, and it can’t be easily dismissed as being simple or patronising. Systems help to shape societies, and our system has shaped ours for the better. We can’t simply ignore it out of some childish sense of spite about how and why that system works the way it does.

His Excellency also noted that Trudeau’s children help bring Rideau Hall “alive,” and he reminded us that his own children used to play with Pierre Trudeau’s children when they were the same age, living in Montreal nearby one another.

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Roundup: Another day talking in circles

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We’re in for yet another round of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the subject of the electoral reform process, and this time it’s from the NDP who are moving a supply day motion to try and get the proposed parliamentary committee to reflect their particular gamed composition rather than a composition that reflects the House of Commons – which, I will remind you, was elected entirely fairly and correctly under how our system is supposed to operate, where we elect individual seats in separate and simultaneous elections. Demands that the committee should reflect the popular vote ignore the facts that a) the popular vote is a logical fallacy that does not actually exist since there were 338 separate elections and not just one, and b) the composition that the NDP are demanding is not actually proportional to the “popular vote,” as they are giving the Bloc and the Green Party an oversized share of the seats and votes. And rather than just thirty minutes of this endless repetition as we might hear in QP, no, it will be the whole day in the Commons, minus one hour for private members’ business. And we’ll be subjected to the sanctimonious speeches of the NDP (of which they will read the same speech in English and French ad nauseum, only changing the riding names mentioned), followed by baying from the Conservatives that what we really need is a referendum, and the odd interjection from Elizabeth May that she deserves a vote on the committee and that no, we don’t need a referendum because it’s not a constitutional issue (except that certain kinds of electoral reform are actually constitutional issues, albeit likely with the simplest amending formula). And then there are the Liberals, where we’ll get some of the usual saccharine from Maryam Monsef, some sharper rebukes from Mark Holland, and the odd backbencher repeating the talking points about Canadians demanding a change to the system. There won’t be any substantive issues discussed, and while I will be the first to say that yes, process is important, so long as each side tries to game the process to fit their own purposes, we’ll just keep talking in circles and go nowhere. Which, really, is where this discussion should go and we should instead invest in a programme of civic literacy instead so that people can actually learn how the system works. But in the absence of that, I’m ready to declare that we should nuke the whole thing from orbit.

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QP: An end to constant clapping?

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On caucus day, all of the leaders were present but there were a few curiously empty desks. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, asking about Canadian special forces troops coming under fire near Mosul, and wondered about the training mission. Trudeau replied about helping our allies take the fight to ISIS, and listed off the additional resources added to the mission. Ambrose asked again about the combat mission, and Trudeau reiterated that it was not a combat mission. Ambrose then moved back to the howls for a referendum, and Trudeau listed off his promises of broad consultation. Denis Lebel took over in French to demand a referendum, and got much the same answer, and then a second round of the same. Thomas Mulcair was up next, asking about RCMP surveillance on journalists, and Trudeau reminded him that the RCMP were taking steps, and that they have learned from their mistakes. Mulcair asked again in English, and demanded why C-51 was not repealed. Trudeau mentioned ongoing consultations with stakeholders and the forthcoming parliamentary oversight body for national security. Mulcair then switched to C-10 and jobs affected, and Trudeau insisted that they were trying to ensure the long-term success of the industry. For his final question, Mulcair bemoaned the lack of investment in Bombardier, and Trudeau reiterate that they are encouraging investment in the sector.

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Roundup: Term limit nonsense

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As we gear up for the Conservatives’ policy convention this weekend, one of the policy resolutions on the table is term limits for the party leader, which they propose to cap at eight years should the leader become Prime Minister. While this is an example of the grassroots showing some displeasure at Stephen Harper and his stranglehold over the party for well over a decade, it’s a terrible bit of Americana that people keep trying to import into our system as though it were a panacea to problems that exist here. They’re entirely wrong, however, but they keep trying. Over in the National Post, John Pepall argues that term limits are fundamentally undemocratic because they prevent people from having the choice of electing a popular leader for as long as they like, but while he has a point, I would stress that term limits in a Canadian context are a complete lack of understanding of our system of Responsible Government, which rests on the principle of confidence. After all, term limits are largely unnecessary because our system can dump a prime minister at any point by means of a vote of no confidence – something that can’t happen in the American system, as they don’t have a system based on confidence, but rather on defined terms, with the relief valve of recall elections in some cases. Otherwise, they are forced to wait out a term until the next election, while in a Westminster system, it can happen with a snap vote in the Commons. Of course, we do have the problem in this country particularly around being able to dump a leader who is not the PM because we have moved away from the caucus selecting the leader, to systems of either delegated conventions, one-member-one-vote, or the latest Liberal abomination, the “supporter category.” Caucus selection kept leaders accountable to them, and it kept them in check, whereas they accumulated more presidential powers as the base that elected them grew larger and they felt more empowered by their “democratic mandate.” While leaders can still lose membership reviews by party members (witness Thomas Mulcair), a caucus can still pressure a leader to resign these days by simply making their dissatisfaction public. In most cases, like with Alison Redford, all it takes is a couple of MPs/MLAs with enough of a spine to go public, and the leader sees the writing on the wall. In cases where the leader digs in their heels – as with Greg Selinger in Manitoba – it can become the death knell for that particular government, as we witnessed in that province’s election just weeks ago. But all of these upsets were accomplished without term limits, and respecting the principles of Responsible Government. Trying to graft on Americana will just turn our system into some kind of monstrous chimera that won’t actually be able to function – hell, the changes we’ve made to leadership selection processes so far have already damaged and warped our system and need to be undone. But if Conservative Party members want to actually respect our system of government, they’ll vote down this cockamamie policy proposal with extreme prejudice, and hopefully we won’t have to speak of this again.

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Roundup: Motion 6 regrets

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With a tiny bit of time and distance from the ridiculous events of this week, attention is turning back to the procedural shenanigans that got us to the frayed tempers in the first place. While the Liberals promised an era of fewer procedural tactics when being sworn in, in reality it was a petty dumb promise to make because let’s face it – sometimes it’s tough for a government to get their agenda through a House of Commons that doesn’t like some of their plans, and the opposition isn’t going to go along with them. It’s not their job to, and our system is built to be adversarial in order to keep the government accountable. On the other hand, there is so much hyperbole being applied to what Motion 6 was, and what the Liberals attempted to do with it, that we need to apply a little bit of perspective sauce. For starters, while Peter Julian rants and rails about how “draconian” the motion was, those in the know on the Hill know that he is very difficult to work with as a House Leader. In fact, the word “impossible” has been thrown around if you ask the right people. And sometimes that means using a heavier hand to work around. Rona Ambrose complained that Motion 6 took away “every ability” for the opposition to hold the government to account, but I’m not sure that dilatory motions are actual accountability. They’re protests, certainly, but that’s not necessarily accountability, so points for hyperbole there. And yes, this is a problem of the Liberals’ own making, promising infinite debate on an infinite number of bills, until they ran into a bunch of deadlines that made infinite debate a problem. And we need to remember that time allocation can be a perfectly appropriate tool when used appropriately. Did the Conservatives over-use it? Yes, because Peter Van Loan was an inept House manager, and the NDP refused to let any debate collapse, which made it a regular tool. And every debate does not need to go on forever. There is no genuine reason that there needed to be 84 speakers at second reading for the assisted dying bill. None. Particularly when virtually every one of those interventions was reading a script that said 1) This is a deeply personal issue; 2) What about palliative care?; and 3) Conscience rights, conscience rights, conscience rights. That does not need to be repeated 84 times at the stage of debate where you deciding on the merits of the bill. It’s noble that the Liberals were as accommodating as they were, but in this case, the opposition demands that everyone be heard – and not during extended hours – is actually unreasonable. Likewise, when LeBlanc started the time allocation motions, it was to head off NDP procedural trickery around Bill C-10, which they are perfectly justified in doing. And now that the government has backed off from Motion 6 (which I maintain was likely the nuclear option they were presenting to try and force the opposition parties back to the negotiation table for timetables around bills, and I doubt their tales that they were cooperative given the personalities involved), we’re going to see an increased hue and cry any time a future time allocation motion is brought forward. The Liberals, by combination of a dumb promise of infinite debate combined with their tactical ham-fistedness, have hampered their own future attempts to get bills passed in a timely manner. This will make things even more difficult going forward, as more planks of their ambitious agenda get unveiled.

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Roundup: Aftermath of The Elbowing

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In the aftermath of The Elbowing, the opposition decided to use it as leverage to their advantage. The morning was spent, first with a third apology by Trudeau, followed by endless debate on a privilege motion about the incident, and because privilege motions take precedence over everything else, it essentially held the Commons hostage to endless lamentations that compared Trudeau’s actions to those of a domestic abuser and drunk driver. No, seriously. The intent was clear, however – this procedural gamesmanship would keep up until the government dropped Motion 6 – their procedural nuclear option – and eventually the government did. Of course, because they backed down after showing their hand, it means that they’re going to have a much more difficult time controlling the debate in the future, with the likes of Peter Julian and Andrew Scheer opposite Dominic LeBlanc in House Leaders’ meetings, and future attempts by the government to move their agenda forward will be hard to handle as any future attempts will be met with more emotional blackmail, and already it now looks like the assisted dying bill is going to miss its June 6th deadline because of the government’s fumbling and the opposition shenanigans.

Reactions to The Elbowing were also all over the pundit class, but possibly the one that needs to be read first comes from Ashley Csanady, who reminds us that comparing Trudeau to Jian Ghomeshi after this kind of incident is really an insult to actual survivors of violence. Kate Heartfield notes that this incident is unlikely to damage Trudeau’s brand, while Matt Gurney sees the incident as one where Trudeau was trying to stay true to brand and show Decisive Leadership™ when it all went wrong. Susan Delacourt sees this as a teachable moment for the PM and his impatience with dissent in the Commons (which I don’t entirely buy given how much leeway he’s given dissent in his own caucus), and Tim Harper also sees a disdain for dissent coming out of Trudeau. Paul Wells sees this as the culmination of the corner the Liberals have painted themselves into, promising infinite debate on an infinite number of bills, while Don Braid sees flashes of Trudeau’s father and his infamous temper in this episode.

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Roundup: The elbowing

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I can scarcely express just how stupid things got yesterday because everyone needed to rush to score points. But here we are. Starting back at the beginning, the government decided to put a motion on the Notice Paper that was basically the nuclear option of time allocation measures – essentially suspending all avenues by which the opposition could propose dilatory motions until the Commons rises for the summer, so that they can get C-14 and a few other timely pieces of legislation passed. And the opposition freaked out.

Nobody is quite sure why the Liberals resorted to such tactics, but my working theory is that the closed-door House Leaders’ meetings have degenerated to being unworkable (not an unlikely theory considering that my sources told me in the previous parliament that Peter Julian was impossible to work with), and Monday’s surprise vote after the NDP lied about the motions they were moving that day broke the trust of the Liberals, who had been attempting to work amiably with them. It’s also possible that putting this motion on the Notice Paper was as the nuclear option – the threat to hold over their heads in order to try and force them to come to the table with reasonable requests for timelines on debates. Dominic LeBlanc went so far as to suggest that rather than constraining debate, they were trying to allow for more under this motion, not that the opposition believed him. Temperatures got raised, and QP was one of the most heated of the current session.

After QP and the Komagata Maru apology, the procedural games started up again, including a privilege motion from Julian about how terribly draconian these tactics were. Fast forward a couple of hours to the time allocation vote on C-14, and the NDP apparently decided to play the childish tactic of physically blocking the Conservative whip from being able to walk down the aisle. The NDP claimed they were just “milling about,” but people milling about don’t all stand facing the same direction, and both Elizabeth May and Andrew Leslie have confirmed that there were shenanigans being played. And it would seem that Justin Trudeau had lost his patience by this point, possibly because Christy Clark was waiting in his office for a meeting he was already late for, and he still had a Komagata Maru apology reception to speak at, also late for. And so he did something completely boneheaded – he got up, went to the NDP blockade, and reached through to grab the Conservative whip and pull him through (which he apparently didn’t appreciate either), and in the course of that, accidentally elbowed Ruth Ellen Brosseau. Moments later, he went back to apologise to her as she fled the chamber – apparently flustered and unable to cope – when Thomas Mulcair began screaming at Trudeau and jabbing in his direction, when suddenly MPs from both sides of the aisle went to pull them apart before things got physical. It was all over in seconds, and Trudeau apologised for his actions.

Not well enough, apparently, as he did it again later when Brosseau reappeared in the chamber, but it doesn’t seem to matter because opposition MPs were now in point-scoring mode. Niki Ashton immediately got to her feet to decry that Trudeau had violated the “safe space” of the Chamber and NDP MPs started likening the incident to domestic violence, bullying and physical intimidation, and Julian talked about how his aunt was beaten to death. No, seriously. The Conservatives soon after began piling on, smelling blood in the water, and it devolved from there. Outside the chamber, Scheer and Julian took to the microphones to ramp up the spin, Julian deciding to drop the hints that there were “rumours” to the fact that Trudeau has some kind of history of violence, because there were points to be scored. And the faux outrage dominated the Twitter Machine as “fearful” MPs registered their shock and horror at what they’d witnessed. And it was just so stupid that I can’t even. Suffice to say, this looks like it’s going to boil down into privilege hearings in the Procedure and House Affairs committee, and we’re going to be subjected to weeks of un-clever “sunny ways” references, and suggestions that Trudeau is apparently unfit for office. It’s a good thing that next week is a constituency week, but I fear for what the final stretch of sitting weeks is going to be like if tempers are this frayed this early. I suspect it’s going to get really ugly from here.

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QP: Scripts vs Saccharine 

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The galleries full of Sikh delegates in advance of the Komagata Maru apology, the benches were similarly full on the floor of the Commons. Rona Ambrose, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, led off by railing about the government’s proposed motion to control the parliamentary calendar. Trudeau noted that they were trying to give MPs time to speak and that this was about putting forward the agenda that Canadians voted on. Ambrose dropped a reference to Trudeau’s admiration for the “basic dictatorship” of China before asking again in French, and Trudeau gave the same response. Ambrose moved onto the topic of an electoral reform referendum, and Trudeau used the “Unfair Elections Act” as his excuse for his preferred consultative process. Denis Lebel took over in French, asked Ambrose’s second question again and got the same answer, and his second question was the referendum question in French, prompting Trudeau to drop the “60 percent of Canadians voted to change the electoral system” talking point. Thomas Mulcair was up next, his mini-lectern making a return, and he first thundered about the government shutting down democracy, then asked about the Alberta Court of Appeal ruling around doctor-assisted dying before demanding that C-14 be referred to the Supreme Court. Mulcair asked again in French, got the same answer, and then changed to the issue of home mail delivery. Trudeau gave his standard response about the promise to consult, and for his final question, Mulcair demanded that the government stop taking veterans to court. Trudeau insisted that they were working with veterans to get results for them.

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Roundup: Process matters during reform

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The Senate is the centre of so much talk these days – government bills on their way that are likely to face amendments, blame for the trans bill dying there last parliament (despite the fact that the committees were overloaded with the government’s “tough on crime” bills and there was no way to prioritise private members’ legislation), the ongoing fascination with Mike Duffy’s return to work, and of course the ongoing internal reform project. Another snag in said reforms was unveiled yesterday in that it turns out that the Senate’s committee on Ethics and Conflicts of Interests for Senators can’t actually be legally constituted because under the Rules of the Senate, there need to be government senators on the committee. Well, there are technically no longer any government senators, and thus, they can’t be recommended to said committee. It’s a reminder of why process matters when it comes to doing reforms, because boldly forging ahead without a plan, and without the necessary rule changes in place means this happens. And yes, rule changes need to happen on a variety of issues, not the least of which are the ways in which it spells out who can constitute a caucus – necessary for independents to be able to organise themselves around logistical issues. As for Peter Harder, the Internal Economy committee has decided not to grant his additional budget requests for staff. He got half of his initial ask, but that was enough as far as they are concerned, and I can’t say that I’m unsympathetic to the committee because I still can’t fathom why Harder needed all of that staff considering that he has no caucus to manage. His excuse that it’s what his predecessor had in terms of budget and staffing seems to me to be a clearly bureaucratic reflex from his previous career in the civil service – ensuring that you have budgets that get spent and lest they be cut, and he wants to ensure that he gets that same budget as before, even though, as I said, there’s no reason why he needs so many people.

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