Tag Archives: RCMP

QP: A Multi-Pronged Action Plan™!

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Despite it being a Thursday, the leaders of the two main opposition parties were absent for no apparently reason. Way to show up and do your job guys — especially because the Prime Minister was in attendance. Megan Leslie led off asking about the powers listed in C-51, to which Harper boasted about our existing strong oversight, and accused the NDP of attacking our intelligence agencies. Leslie noted that it has been four years since better oversight was promised and not delivered, but Harper largely repeated his answer. Leslie turned to the topic of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and calling a national inquiry, to which Harper touted their “multi-pronged Action Plan™.” Romeo Saganash asked the same again, to which Kellie Leitch responded about the actions they’re taken, and then Saganash noted that C-51 was unconstitutional because it affects the rights of First Nations to protest. Stephen Blaney stated that peaceful dissent was allowed, and they needed to tackle terrorism. Marc Garneau led off for the Liberals, and noted the poor job market. Harper stood up to insist that their Action Plan™ gets results. Ralph Goodale gave it another go in English, insisting that the government has been a failure when it comes to jobs, to which Harper touted their job creation record. Goodale listed off more damning statements about the job market, but Harper insisted that the vast majority of jobs created were full-time, good paying and in the private sector, while Goodale’s budgets were followed by police investigations.

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Roundup: Review or oversight?

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With C-51 now before committee, and the process of hashing out hearing schedules and witness lists begun, the debate continues over its merits. The story about the young Edmonton who went to support ISIS and CSIS didn’t stop her – because they’re not empowered to disrupt – is adding fuel to the fire, while it’s also bringing out a lot of conspiracy theories that are way out there, like ones that state that the terrorism angle is just a smokescreen so that the government can go after environmentalists and First Nations who oppose their resource development projects. (For the record, I have a really hard time seeing that, especially when you start intimating that it’s at the behest of corporations). The question of oversight remains top of mind, particularly as the Liberals are making that the hill they want to die on – or at least fight an election over – to which Philippe Lagassé writes a very interesting piece about the nature of parliamentary oversight committees in comparable Westminster democracies. In particular, these committees and the one that the Liberals have proposed here in Canada is not actually oversight either – it’s a review committee, like SIRC, only broader because it would review all national security agencies as a whole rather than in silos as what little oversight or review mechanisms to do currently (an four years later, talk about better integrating oversight remains just that). More importantly, however, Lagassé notes that opposition parties need to be very careful about how much oversight that they demand parliamentarians have because involving them too much can make them complicit in decisions that they should be holding the government to account for, and by swearing in a group of MPs to secrecy to see the materials, it effectively silences them because they can’t talk about what they know, and it can take such material out of sight and out of mind – as what happened with the Afghan detainee documents. Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have more parliamentary review of national security, but we need to be cognisant of its aims and limits.

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QP: National security and painting a bridge 

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Despite it being Wednesday, the Prime Minister was absent from QP, meeting with Bill Gates instead. So when Thomas Mulcair led off asking about how much time the public safety committee would get to study C-51, Stephen Blaney responded by hoping they wouldn’t engage in any dilatory actions at said committee. Mulcair wondered if the PM was trying to hide the bill from scrutiny, to which Blaney accused Mulcair of attacking the credibility of CSIS. Mulcair then listed instances of where the RCMP were in the wrong when he meant to give examples of where CSIS broke the law, before asking about the right of dissent in the bill. Mulcair then moved onto the issue of a Quebec City rail bridge, at which point Lisa Raitt reminded him of CN Rail’s responsibilities. Mulcair then moved onto the topic of a funding cut at Marine Atlantic, to which Raitt pointed out that they were returning to their base level of funding after years of increases for revitalisation. Justin Trudeau was up next, asking what the government intended to do on the doctor-assisted dying issue, to which Robert Goguen moaned about how emotional of an issue it was. Trudeau then moved onto the issue of Keystone XL, and if the PM would put a price on carbon to convince the Americans that we are serious about the climate issue. Greg Rickford gave a couple of non sequiturs to slam Trudeau, and insisted it was not an international issue but a domestic American one. Trudeau called it a diplomatic failure, to which Rickford listed off the size of our energy trade.

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QP: Eco-terrorists and auto support

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Monday being the new Friday in QP, there were no major leaders in the Chamber to start off the week — Mulcair in Halifax, Trudeau in the 905, and Harper, well, elsewhere. That left Peter Julian to lead off, demanding oversight over national security agencies, and Stephen Blaney to respond by insisted that freedoms would not be curtailed and invited them to support it. Julian pointed out contradictions in government messaging, to which Blaney noted that Parliament itself came under attack. Julian worried that any protests could be considered “Eco-terrorism,” which Blaney insisted he read the bill instead. Peggy Nash then asked about possible plans to steel GM shares at a loss to balance the budget, to which Andrew Saxton read a statement about the “decisive action” taken during the recession. Nash asserted that the government didn’t really care about the auto sector, to which James Moore gave an impassioned refutation. Dominic LeBlanc was up for the Liberals, and lamented the government’s lack of action on the middle class, for which Pierre Poilievre insisted that the Liberals just want to raise taxes. Ralph Goodale gave more of the same in English, Poilievre repeated his answer, and when Goodale listed the many ills of the government’s budgeting, Poilievre fell back on the usual “your leader thinks budgets balance themselves.”

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Roundup: Yes, governing is political

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Your best political read of the weekend was a Twitter essay from Philippe Lagassé, so I’ll leave you to it.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515068326457344

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515450780020736

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515909972434945

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569516334192701440

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569516761273532418

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517336677507073

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517603938369536

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517862274142209

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569518893456171008

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569530939325296641

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569531442990088193

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569532019685908480

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569532280991055872

Lagassé, who was part of the fighter jet replacement options analysis task force, reminded us then as reminds us now that we need to stop behaving like we should be in a technocracy, that there are political considerations and debates that need to be had, and that ministers decide things for which there is always a political calculation. This is not a bad thing, though we may disagree with the final decision. The great thing is that we can hold those who made the decisions to account – something you can’t really do in a technocracy, so can we please stop pretending that it’s the way our system is supposed to operate?

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Roundup: About those federal minimum wage claims

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I got a householder from my MP, Paul Dewar, the other day, and the figure he cited on it bothered me – that raising minimum wage for federally-regulated workers would benefit “tens of thousands.”

I remember this being fact-checked when the NDP first announced this policy, and shortly after I tweeted the photo of the mailer, one of my followers found the reference – that there are currently 416 federally-regulated workers earning minimum wage.

https://twitter.com/debalap/status/568907831178600448

And let’s also be clear – federally-regulated workers are paid the prevailing provincial minimum wage, which keeps them in line with their local counterparts, and is in line with other jurisprudence regarding federally-regulated workplaces and provincial workers compensation regimes – jurisprudence that has been upheld at the Supreme Court level. It was later pointed out to me that the number of federally-regulated workers who earn between the local minimum wage and $15 may indeed be in the thousands.

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568985974824267776

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568986289363484673

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568986575398252545

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568986883247640576

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568987594337296384

https://twitter.com/kaylehatt/status/568987927687995392

Fair enough. It may well be that the intent of the NDP policy is to encourage the provinces to raise their own provincial minimum wage rates, but no province with an NDP government has bothered to make such a move, so that may be a telling sign. The bigger issue, however, is that this $15/hour minimum wage issue is a gimmicky policy that will actually do nothing to raise anyone out of poverty, and in fact seems to be yet another case of a political party lifting talking points from American sources without bothering to check the Canadian data or context, and if you talk to any credible Canadian economist, they will tell you that you may as well advocate raising the minimum wage to $20 even $20,000/hour, because raising the minimum wage is terrible policy for poverty reduction. What does work, however, are cash transfers to the poor by means of things like the GST rebate mechanisms that are already in place. But it’s populist to say that people “deserve a raise,” even if it’s terrible policy, and it deserves to be pointed out. Context is as important to journalism as repeating facts in isolation.

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Roundup: Eminent Canadians push back

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The anti-terror legislation again dominated the headlines yesterday, starting with a letter that four former Prime Ministers – Turner, Clark, Chrétien and Martin – along with 18 other eminent Canadians including five former Supreme Court justices, penned in the Globe and Mail about the need for better oversight of our national security agencies. You know, like the Martin government was trying to pass in 2004 before the Conservatives and NDP brought them down (and which Peter MacKay blatantly misconstrued in QP). What’s more baffling is that the government, by way of Jason Kenney, is now arguing that the bill doesn’t need more oversight because it gives more power to the courts to provide it. (Funnily enough, this is the same party who likes to moan about judicial activism). The problem with judicial oversight is that it also isn’t really oversight, and we have actual demonstrated cases where CSIS didn’t tell the truth when they went to the courts for a warrant. One of those cases is now waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court, because CSIS failed in their duty of candour. This is not a minor detail, but rather a gaping hole in the government’s argument. Oversight is a very important and necessary component, and it makes no sense that the government can keep ignoring it because it’s going to come around and bite them in the ass if they don’t get a handle on it, particularly when the bad things that happen come to light, and they always do, and we’ll have another Maher Arar-type situation.

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Roundup: Closure and privilege

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It was wholly depressing the way in which the whole matter was rushed through. After the imposition of closure – not time allocation but actual closure – the government rammed through their motion to put all Hill security under the auspices of the RCMP without any safeguards to protect parliamentary privilege. After all, the RCMP reports to the government, and Parliament is there to hold government to account and therefore has privileges to protect that – the ability to have their own security being a part of that. Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger tried to amend the government’s motion to make it explicit that the Speakers of both chambers were the ultimate authorities, and the government said good idea – and then voted against it. And so it got pushed through, privilege be damned, with minimal debate and no committee study or expert testimony. The Senate, however, is putting up more of a fight, and the Liberals in that chamber have raised the privilege issue, and the Speaker there thinks there is merit to their concerns, and has suspended debate until he can rule on it. And this Speaker, incidentally, is far more aware of the issues of privilege and the role of Parliament and the Senate than his Commons counterpart seems to be, and he could very well rule the proposal out of order. One hopes so, and once again it seems that our hopes rest on the Senate doing its job, because the Commons isn’t doing theirs.

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QP: New BSE concerns

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The benches were pretty empty in the Commons on Monday, and apparently more than a few MPs were snowed in at their local airports, and none of the leaders were present. That meant that David Christopherson led off for the NDP, gruffly worrying about the BSE case in Alberta. Gerry Ritz confirmed that it was found and that they were still investigating. Christopherson wondered about consumer confidence, to which Ritz repeated that they were working with the farm in question and they put money in the budget to advance beef trading, which the NDP opposed. Christopherson then moved onto the back-to-work legislation for CP Rail, and the safety issues around it. Jeff Watson responded with some bog standard talking points about rail safety. Nycole Turmel repeated the questions in French, and Watson repeated his answers in English. Stéphane Dion was up for the Liberals, asking about the infrastructure deficit and the comments made by Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, and would the government do something about it. Peter Braid gave his standard Building Canada Fund talking points in response. Dion pressed, and Braid repeated his talking points more forcefully. Dion was back up, noting the bulk of the investments were backloaded, but Braid insisted that they were better off than under the Liberals.

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Roundup: Chris Alexander’s niqab nonsense

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In a mind-boggling moment of specious logic and dog-whistle politics as its worst, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander asserted that people who defend women wearing the niqab are inherently defending violence against women. No, seriously. I’m not even sure where to begin, from the patriarchal assertions that deny women agency to make their own choices about what they wear, to the completely false moral equivalence between the two, all while trying to score political points on the xenophobic attitudes of a portion of the population that feels uncomfortable by the Other that confronts them (or as in the case of the vast majority of the country, something that doesn’t actually confront them but they’ve seen on television and are weirded out by). More than anything, it’s exceedingly odd that this is a government that likes to get up on any high horse it finds and trumpets the fact that it champions freedom of religion around the globe. Look, we even created a special ambassador for the post, and pretty much overturned the doctrine that there shouldn’t be a hierarchy of rights, and yet here we are privileging religion above other rights in our foreign policy. And yet, the moment these women choose to demonstrate their religious observance by wearing the niqab, this government freaks out and says no, that’s terribly, you can’t do it at these times and places. And yes, I know that the niqab is really more of a cultural observance than a religious one, but many of these women believe it to be religious, so unless we want to go full colonial on them, perhaps the government – and Alexander in particular – needs to rethink the logic of their position before they make any more boneheaded pronouncements.

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