Tag Archives: Syria

Roundup: The outsider instinct

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Over in the National Post, Michael Den Tandt offers the theory that Donald Trump and his excesses have poisoned the well for other “outsider” candidates worldwide, and that his flash-over-substance style will make others take a second look. Citing the Conservative party leadership in Canada, Den Tandt supposes that this dooms a potential candidacy by Kevin O’Leary, just as Boris Johnson basically outsidered-himself out of the running to be prime minister in the UK – but I’m not sure that I buy the premise of the argument.

I think that there remains a hankering for outsider candidates despite Trump, and that that precisely because he’s poisoned the well that we’ll continue to see these kinds of players railing against the establishment. As is playing out in the Conservative leadership race here, we’ll see more candidates establish themselves as outsiders struggling against the party “elites” because that’s the narrative that has been blown wide open in recent years. (See: Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost). Den Tandt acknowledges that Tony Clement dropped out because he was unable to attract donors for being too conventional and too much an established politician, which I think is part of what blows his whole thesis out of the water. It wasn’t that Clement got in the race too soon, it’s that this notion of needing to find an “outsider” is a particularly strong influence in the zeitgeist right now, especially for conservatives who feel that the establishment has been letting them down, that it hasn’t gotten them where they need to be (witness how Harper’s incrementalism has largely been undone in a matter of months, if you don’t count the permanent fiscal chokehold that the GST cut has put into place). I think it’s why Leitch is taking the Ford Brothers/Nick Kouvalis route of yelling “gravy train,” and why Maxime Bernier is playing entirely against the rest of the party’s established policies and is getting attention for it. Everyone wants to play against the establishment and they are looking for the right way to do it. I don’t think we’ll have another Donald Trump – it would be hard to get that kind of unconstrained id and utter narcissism in a single package again – but I think there is absolutely going to be yet more people trying to find the right balance. I’m not sure it’ll be as successful in Canada as it might be in the States (particularly as our system is not really broken like theirs is), but the impulse to find that outsider is still pervasive, and it will be felt in the race here.

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Roundup: Use your Australian comparisons wisely

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If it’s not the leadership omnishambles in the UK that’s holding our attention, it’s the indecisive election result in Australia. While that would be something in and of itself, we find ourselves with pundits eager to take some lessons from Australia, only to completely balls things up along the way. To wit, Kelly McParland writing in the National Post delivered this hot mess yesterday which manages to conflate every possible thing in Australian politics in order to prove a point – not necessarily a bad point – but went about it in entirely the wrong way. So, for Mr. McParland’s edification, let’s break it down a little.

First of all, the “six prime ministers in six years” has virtually nothing to do with the ranked ballots in Australia. The system of caucus selection of leaders there (which is how leaders should be chosen, as I’ve argued elsewhere numerous times) has gone to extremes, creating a culture of paranoia and betrayal. But that’s not the fault of the ranked ballots since it’s a different process. That parties will spill leaders shortly before an election in the hopes of having a more appealing leader is party politics enabled by the ability to have spills, rather than the ranked ballot effect. Conflating them is not helpful.

The ranked ballots themselves allow for more small parties to exist independent of “big tent” brokerage parties because ranked ballots discourage tactical voting – something McParland neglects to mention while returning to the Canadian canard that the Liberals only want ranked ballots because they think they’ll clean up by getting everyone’s second place votes. That has led to the need for the Australian Liberals (read: conservatives) to require a coalition partner to govern, which is a consideration to make if we want ranked ballots, but it is a giant conflation to mix this in with the stability of their system and leadership woes.

The problem of the Australian Senate is the bigger nub of the argument, but which gets lost in the rest of the McParland’s confusing mess. The Australian Senate is chosen by single-transferable proportional voting, and the system has been effectively gamed in the previous election so that a bunch of marginal players got seats and subsequently created a huge problem in their upper chamber, requiring more tinkering of the system to be forced through and the Prime Minister calling for double-dissolution (so that both chambers be elected at the same time – a rare occurrence usually reserved for political crises) in order to break the legislative deadlocks. Those tweaks appear to be causing even more problems with this election, but we may see how it all shakes out in a few weeks. (Note that these ballots tend to be the size of placemats, because of the way they’re structured with the enormous number of parties running). And while the problems with these marginal parties being given outsized powers of persuasion in the previous parliament are very valid points to make, it gets lost in the sea of conflations that plagued the rest of the piece.

So I get McParland’s point about electoral reform advocates needing to be careful what they wish for, and can even agree with it to a large extent, this was utterly the wrong way to go about it.

Meanwhile, here’s a primer about Australia’s lengthy counting process – so lengthy that their Senate preferential distribution process could take over a month. Closer to home, here are some of the ways in which the electoral reform committee plans to engage with Canadians.

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Roundup: A milestone Pride

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Though he had committed to it long before the shootings in Orlando, there was a particularly importance to the visibility that Canadian political leaders brought to Toronto Pride this year, and for the first time, a sitting Prime Minister marched, alongside an openly lesbian Ontario premier. For the first time, the Conservative party leaders, both federally and provincially marched, along with leadership candidates Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch, and Michael Chong (and Lisa Raitt, should she decide to throw her hat into the ring). Absent however was outgoing federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, which is unusual considering how the NDP generally pride themselves on being at Pride. And yes, Elizabeth May was there for her tenth year in a row as well. This year, being in the shadow of Orlando, was a reminder that yes, Pride is political, and the actions of Black Lives Matter Toronto added to that politicisation (make of their tactics what you will). That you had the entire political spectrum in Canada represented for the first time was a milestone worth noting.

In a place where a Pride parade really matters, one happened in Steinbach, Manitoba, after much pushback from the local political leaders, in a place where openly gay and lesbian people have literally been run out of town by harassment and bullying. Visibility is important, particularly in these smaller towns where ignorance and fear go hand-in-hand, making the need to be visible all the more important, lest nothing change.

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Roundup: Idle Brexit musings

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While everyone continues to talk Brexit over the weekend, and you have a curious number of Conservative MPs here in Canada almost irresponsibly tweeting gleefully over it, I am forced to wonder if they are not in fact trying to demonstrate enthusiasm for referenda in general, given their daily caterwauling for one on electoral reform in this country. That could be why their messages are so focused on the democratic result of it, as opposed to the substance of what the Brexit vote actually represented. But that’s just idle speculation, so take of it what you will.

Of course, talk of how referenda are terrible at determining issues of substance is also part of why that’s been on my mind, because I am leaning more to the side that the issue of electoral reform would require a referendum because of what it proposes to do, and I don’t trust that the government is going to get useful answers from a series of townhalls and a report from a committee whose composition has been gamed to look “fair” when the person doing the gaming has a specific goal and output in mind. Of course, an electoral reform referendum would be subject to its won particular brands of demagoguery, particularly considering that we have an appalling lack of civic literacy in Canada, and when nobody can accurately depict the current electoral system, we’re going to be subject to some propaganda on the change side of the referendum whose fictions will be as bald-faced as that which the Leave side promised in the Brexit campaign, not that it will matter to the casual voter because it plays into emotions about things that feel and sound “fair” without actually grasping the situation (which is a solution in search of a problem). The last referendum on electoral reform in Ontario largely failed because the government of the day was ambivalent, but the current federal government is not, and that worries me. So it’s something to consider.

Meanwhile, the meltdown happening in the UK’s Labour Party, with a problematic leader who refuses to resign in the face of a full-blown caucus revolt is another object lesson in why membership selection of party leaders is a terrible, terrible system because it gives those leaders an excuse to refuse to be held to account, citing a “democratic mandate” as Jeremy Corbyn is doing right now. And no, adopting the provisions in Michael Chong’s Reform Act where caucus can vote to remove a leader is not actually the solution because it entrenches that parties must elect leaders by way of their membership, and that disconnect between selection and removal creates enormous problems in terms of the legitimacy of the removal process. Accountability matters, and needs to be balanced with democracy. Membership selection of leaders does not provide the needed accountability, and the horrifying lesson of a leader who won’t be held to account is playing out right now and should give everyone pause about the system that we blazed the trail for in this country.

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Roundup: Duffy expenses redux

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Because it’s never over, the saga of Mike Duffy’s illegitimate expenses are back in the news as Senate Administration is demanding that he repay some $16,955 in expenses claimed improperly that were paid for using his third-party contract with Gerald Donohue. And, wouldn’t you know it, Duffy’s lawyer is raising a huge fuss saying that the judge in the trial already declared that these were okay – something senators dispute, saying that just because they were not deemed criminal it doesn’t mean that they were okay, particularly when these expenses were not allowable and that the third-party contract was used to go around the approval process. (Duffy’s lawyer, incidentally, is also hinting that they will demand back pay for the suspension, to the tune of $155,000). But this is where the particular nature of the Senate comes into play, which is that it’s a self-governing body that is protected by parliamentary privilege, and it needs to be in order to safeguard our democratic system. In governing its own affairs, it is allowed to enforce its own rules (which, it bears reminding, do and did exist no matter what Bayne tried to argue in trial). And it is also empowered to enforce its own discipline, which is what the suspensions were related to – not a determination of criminality or a reflection of it, but rather that Duffy (and Wallin and Brazeau) had brought disrepute onto the Chamber and an example needed to be made. Is it fair? Possibly not, but this is also politics. Bayne raised the straw man argument that the 29 other senators whose expenses were flagged by the Auditor General weren’t suspended, which is a ridiculous argument considering that a) Duffy was not part of that process at all; and b) they ensured that there was a resolution process that ended in repayment one way or the other, so nobody was seen to be escaping justice. I don’t think Bayne will find much truck in the courts if he wants to press the issue around Duffy’s suspension or the fact that they are demanding repayment for expenses that clearly were not allowed, but it seems that we may be subjected to more drama around this, possibly for years if they take the matter as far as the Supreme Court of Canada.

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QP: Shifting focus to fighter jets

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After the big “family photo” on the steps of the building this morning, and a speech marking the 150th anniversary of the legislature of Canada meeting on Parliament Hill, we got into the business of the day. While Trudeau was on the Hill in the morning, he was on his way to Toronto and absent from QP today. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, and asked about measures to bring Yazidi girls to Canada as refugees. John McCallum noted that refugees are prioritised based on need as determined by the UN, and that he was proud of their record. Ambrose turned to the question of fighter jets, and wondered why they would get new jets if they didn’t use the ones we have to fight ISIS. Harjit Sajjan noted that that he had received a briefing on the mission in Iraq, but didn’t really answer. Ambrose listed off the sins of Liberal procurement past, and wondered how this time would be different. Sajjan retorted that the previous government cut $3 billion from the defence budget. Denis Lebel was concerned about pulling out of the the F-35 programme and how that would affect the aerospace industry in Montreal, and Sajjan noted that no decision had been made. When Lebel tried to press about the other allies who had adopted the F-35, Sajjan noted that they were not fully operational and they were taking the time to make the right choice. Thomas Mulcair led off for the NDP, asking about a statement that Senator Pratte made about the need to pass C-10 quickly. Marc Garneau said there was no deal, but this was about avoiding future litigation. Mulcair wanted assurances that there was no deal, and Garneau plainly stated there wasn’t one. Mulcair turned to tax havens by KPMG, and Diane Lebouthillier noted that there were investigations and court cases ongoing. Mulcair said that if it was in the courts it would be public, but pivoted to the Super Hornets and sole-sourcing. Sajjan repeated that no decision was made.

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Roundup: A short history of trans rights bills

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The government is unveiling their promised trans rights bill today, and throughout the day, you’ll be reminded that other trans rights bills have been introduced in the House, and twice died in the Senate, and there will be a general sense of the NDP trying to anoint themselves in this glow of having been the fearless pioneers on this file. And it’s true – they did introduce previous trans rights bills, some of them more successful than others. But there is more to the story than is usually presented, and as someone who used to cover this file extensively (back in my Xtra! and the much lamented Outlooks days), it’s a little more complicated than is often presented. And yes, the NDP have largely introduced iterations of this bill but the sponsor, then-MP Bill Siksay, was too far down the Order of Precedence for it to be ever debated. During the 40th Parliament, however, he was high enough on the Order that the bill came up for debate, and narrowly passed the Commons. By the time it reached the Senate, however, it had mere days before the government was defeated. The Senate has no mechanisms by which to accelerate a private members’ bill, and the justice committee – where it would have been sent to – was jammed full of “tough on crime” bills and a private members’ bill never would have been able to come up for debate (as government bills always take priority). Nevertheless, the Senate was blamed for “ragging the puck” and it died when Parliament dissolved and an election was called. By this time, Siksay had announced that he was not going to run again, and Liberal MP Hedy Fry had said that she would re-introduce the bill in his stead if re-elected. She was, and fulfilled his promise. The NDP’s newly elected MP Randall Garrison was named the party’s new LGBT critic, and he was incensed that Fry had re-introduced the bill and decided to table his own version, but because you can’t have two identical bills on the Order Paper, he needed to come up with some creative drafting in order to differentiate the two bills. And then, by sheer fate, his name came up right before Fry’s on the Order of Precedence when the lottery was drawn, so he went ahead with his poorly drafted bill, while Fry’s version of the same bill was not put forward (and she went on to introduce a cyberbullying bill that was defeated). Not only did Garrison’s bill go ahead, but he decided to introduce amendments that would partially gut the bill and do things like put in definitions for “gender identity” into the text (something that would put it out of step with any other protected grounds in legislation). The resulting bill was a dog’s breakfast, and he managed to squeak it past the Commons, but he actually lost some Conservative support because it was such a hot mess. And when it reached the Senate, there were concerns. Conservative Senator Don Plett had some particular concerns and wanted to raise amendments, and while this whole “bathroom bill” nonsense began circulating, his amendments, while not great, were blown out of proportion by supporters of the bill as being far more odious than they were. And that bill eventually died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved, but while the NDP railed against the Senate as “killing” a bill that the Commons passed, they ignored the fact that it was objectively a bad bill and this was more of a mercy killing. And now, we have a government who has committed to making this one of their priorities, and they are, which we should applaud.

Update: The differences between Fry’s and Garrison’s bill weren’t as pronounced as I remember the debate being. Apologies to all involved, and thanks to Justin Ling for the correction. The amendments, however, were a dog’s breakfast.

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QP: Tax credit meanies

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While Justin Trudeau was at Gleason gym in Brooklyn, and the Duffy verdict being read out a few blocks away, QP was ramping up for another scintillating session. In the lead up to QP, MPs sang a round of “Happy Birthday” and “God Save the Queen” in honour of Her Majesty’s 90th birthday, followed by a moment of silence for the National Day of Mourning. Rona Ambrose led off, complaining about the demise of the child sport tax credit. Bill Morneau reminded her that the new Child Tax Benefit offers more money for all families to use as they see fit. Ambrose asked again in French, got the same answer, and then moved onto complaining that the Liberals voted down her motion to declare ISIS a genocide. Stéphane Dion reminded her that the official recognition of genocide was serious and should only happen after an international investigation, which is what he was pushing for. Denis Lebel was up next, asking about the aluminium industry in Quebec. David Lemetti reminded him that they are working on the issue. Lebel asked about the issue of diafiltered milk, and Jean-Claude Poissant, responded that they were working on it. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and denounced Bill C-10, refusing to call Marc Garneau by his title. Garneau responded that they were going to rush the bill, which the NDP trie to kill. Mulcair then suggested that it was Carolyn Bennett who let the Catholic Church off the hook for Residential Schools. Bennett listed the dates to prove that it was the previous government, and the government couldn’t force the Church to do anything. Mulcair then changed topics to the Saudi arms deal, at which point Dion repeated Mulcair’s statements on honouring the agreement during the election. Mulcair thundered that the Liberals weren’t defending human rights, and Dion kept reminding Mulcair of his own words on the contract.

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QP: Imagining conflicts over cocktails

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Despite it being Monday, none of the leaders were in the House (save, as always, Elizabeth May), which is starting to feel like a bad old habit making a comeback. Denis Lebel led off for the Conservatives, first offering condolences for the Quebec family that died in the Ecuador earthquake, and asked for an update on Canada’s efforts. Marie-Claude Bibeau noted the support they were offering to that country. Lebel then pivoted to a demand to know which taxes the Liberals plan on raising to pay for their spending. Bill Morneau responded that they were investing as it was the right time to do so. Lebel switched to English to decry the lack of transparency, to which Morneau insisted that they were being open and transparent, and said that they only showed two years in the budget so as to show that they have work to do. Andrew Scheer bemoaned the “mean-spirited” ways in which the budget rolled back Conservative programmes like income splitting. Morneau insisted that the new measures would help more families than the old programmes. Scheer then launched into a question laden with lame sports puns, but Morneau repeated his assertions. Peter Julian decried a cocktail party that CRA officials attended along with firms like KPMG. Diane Lebouthillier noted that it was an event held by the Chartered Professional Accountants, which many employees are members of. Peter Julian tried again, ramping up the conflict of interest accusations, and got the same answer. Hélène Laverdière worried that human rights were not on the ambassador’s priority list in Saudi Arabia. Pamela Goldsmith-Jones said that Canada does not miss any opportunity to raise human rights with anyone including Saudi Arabia, nor did they miss an opportunity for positive engagement. Laverdière asked again in French, and Goldsmith-Jones reminded the NDP that they supported the LAV sales as well.

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Roundup: Fair Vote Canada’s shambolic release

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It’s not everyday that you get a completely unhinged press release in your inbox, but holy cow did Fair Vote Canada come out with a doozy yesterday. It’s hard to know where to start with such a work of “shambolic genius,” as Colby Cosh put it.

You see, according to the geniuses at Fair Vote Canada, they have cleverly parsed that when Trudeau pledged to “make every vote count” (a boneheaded statement because every vote already counts), he was referring to their slogan, and therefore he must really advocate for Proportional Representation, and because Trudeau has said he has no pre-conceived ideas about what the outcome of the consultations on electoral reform would be, he must really mean that he’s just trying to figure out which proportional representation system to use, because that’s what he’s signalled by using their slogan. Genius, I tell you. Genius!

But Wait… There’s More!™

While referring to Parliament as “the law factory” (Seriously? Seriously?!), they started invoking the Charter to claim that “equal treatment and equal benefit under the law” must mean that Canadian citizens are entitled to having their votes represented in direct proportion to the votes cast. Which is insane and ridiculous because that’s not how our system works at all, and is completely wrong when it comes to jurisprudence. You see, the Supreme Court of Canada has already rejected this line of reasoning, both in terms of the deviation of voting power (i.e. unequal riding sizes) for the purposes of better governance, but also with attempted challenges to the First-Past-The-Post system in the Quebec courts, which were roundly rejected and which the Supreme Court of Canada refused to grant leave to appeal. That means that as far as they’re concerned, the law is settled, and for Fair Vote Canada to try and advance this line of argument is futile and wrong. Because the law is settled. But considering that the whole basis for their advocacy of PR is rooted in sore loserism at the ballot box, it makes complete sense that they are also sore losers when it comes to the judicial system as well.

Moral of the story: Fair Vote Canada has long used falsehoods and logical fallacies to advance their case. This ridiculous and completely specious release is just one more in a dishonest string of arguments they’ve made and will continue to make as this debate heats up in the coming months.

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