Tag Archives: Terrorism

Roundup: TPP a Caretaker conundrum

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership talks are taking place right now, with the possibility that a deal could be struck with Canada while we’re in a writ period. The optics of this are a bit fraught, because if the government gets the deal signed, then they can crow about their prowess on the campaign trail, and how they’re signing deals to boost our economy. But the flip side of that coin is that a really big deal may be a kind of violation of the Caretaker Conventions that govern how an incumbent government operates during a writ period. Remember that we can never be without a government even when Parliament is dissolved – they just need to exercise restraint, and can’t implement major policy changes or make appointments during that period. This time around, however, the government released the Convention guidelines publicly while adding specific exemptions about negotiating trade deals. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of sense – do we really want to hold up the eleven other countries while we are in an extra-long election period? (Note that there seems to be a desire to conclude the deal before the American election gears up to full-on insanity mode). One of the arguments is that there should at least be some kind of consultation with opposition leaders if the negotiations continue during the writ period, and there are complaints that the TPP negotiations are unprecedented in their secrecy. What is not mentioned is that secrecy is deliberate considering how game changing this pact could be, particularly when it comes to weakening some of the tough subsidized markets in several member countries. And if you look at the reactions that rumours of deals around weakening Supply Management or auto parts content rules, and promises by other party leaders to maintain those protectionist policies, it’s hard not to see why they want to keep a lid on things until they’re finalised – particularly if the goal is actual trade liberalisation rather than just lip-service. It’s a delicate balance, and arguments can be made on both sides of the propriety of the government’s negotiations under the Caretaker Conventions. For example, Susan Delacourt argues the government is going beyond the Conventions. I’m not sure I have any answers, but I guess we’ll see what gets decided, and let the chips fall where they may.

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Roundup: A baffling public service pledge

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In a bid to win over the public service vote in the Ottawa region, the NDP have pledged a “code of conduct” for ministers and their staff, as well as an end to cuts to the public service, a Public Appointments Commission to end patronage appointments, a restoration of collective bargaining rights, and putting an end to contract staff. Oh, and an end to muzzling “scientists and other public service employees.” And that sends off my alarm bells because it’s a massive reorientation of the role of the public service. While the NDP thinks that they’re trying to remove the politicization around the public service that has been developing, empowering public servants to speak against the governments that they are supposed to serve is mind-boggling. The issue of just what we’re muzzling in terms of scientists was thoroughly hashed out a few months ago when Andrew Leach went against the countervailing wisdom and challenged the “white coat” privilege that these kinds of pronouncements assume, that it’s all a bunch of benevolent climate scientists who can’t speak about their work. What it ignores is that there are other kinds of scientists – like economists in the Department of Finance – for whom this is not even a consideration. Just because it’s politically convenient to think that we want these white coats to denounce the government’s environmental policies, does that mean it should be okay for government economists to denounce fiscal policy? Or government lawyers to denounce the government’s justice policies? (It’s also why their candidate, Emilie Taman was denied a leave to run – the Public Prosecution Service was created to remove the perception of political bias from Crown prosecutions, and having one of your prosecutors running for office defeats that purpose). Public Servants serve the Queen and carry out their duties in a neutral fashion. Making it easier for them to start denouncing the government is a mystifying promise. Also, the promise to bar temps is short-sighted and makes it harder for young people to get civil service jobs. Those temp jobs are often the best way to get one’s foot in the door in the public service and get some experience that can translate into a job, considering how byzantine and nigh-impossible the outside competition process is if one wasn’t lucky enough to get bridged in through a school programme. Conversely, getting new staff in a timely manner or for a specific project is also a ridiculous process for managers. Banning temps makes no actual sense.

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Roundup: French debate, the first

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So, the first French debate, and the only one where we’ll see five leaders all on the same stage. It wasn’t a dumpster fire, but it had its trying moments. Not twenty minutes into it, they got into the tiresome niqab debate, of which Justin Trudeau had the clearest and probably best statement, saying that we don’t accept it when men tell women what they can and can’t wear. There was also a ridiculous segment about the Senate, when it got compared to a vestige of our British colonial past (it’s not – the Senate of Canada is actually a wholly unique institution in the world), and Gilles Duceppe dropped the republican gauntlet in calling for an end to the monarchy, and saying an independent Quebec would do so. (Never mind that Quebec’s foundations are actually pro-monarchy, in part because it was the Quebec Act and Royal Proclamation that protected their language, culture and post-France turning the colony over to the British). Harper was pretty laid back in this debate, Mulcair easily nettled – particularly when Trudeau went after him on the bulk water exports issue. Trudeau was more evenly paced and not frantic this time around, Elizabeth May not overly memorable other than calling out the niqab debate as a distraction, and Gilles Duceppe, was as wily as a fox as ever. Here’s Kady O’Malley’s liveblog, while here’s the CBC recap. The Ottawa Citizen gathered four experts to react to the debate.

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Roundup: About that “costed” plan

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The NDP released their “costed” fiscal plan yesterday, which was not in fact the full costing that they had promised, but rather a broad-strokes framework, full of vague line item names like “Helping Families Get Ahead” and “Help Where It’s Needed Most” rather than actually talking about their childcare plan, and their promises around the healthcare escalator. (That escalator, incidentally, has confused a lot of reporters in the room). It’s kind of ironic that after a week spent baiting the Liberals on releasing their costed platform, the NDP didn’t actually deliver theirs. Suffice to say, the analysis to date seems to be that the NDP platform relies on the Budget 2015 numbers – numbers which are no longer relevant as the price of oil has crashed even further, and GDP growth is nowhere near what was projected and likely won’t be anytime soon, which blows a hole of several billion dollars into the assumptions. It also relies on the same austerity that the Conservative budget is built upon, despite what the NDP insists. The Conservatives and Liberals immediately panned the document, but that’s not a surprise. Being as I’m not an economist, I’ll leave the comments for those who are, and they have plenty to say (with some background on how to read these kinds of documents from Kevin Milligan here):

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https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/644306950700724224

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Roundup: May’s magical thinking

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It was Elizabeth May’s turn to go before Peter Mansbridge last night, and as with all other leaders, she too got the basics of government formation wrong – but unlike the others, May just got it wrong in a different way. She insisted that if Harper got a minority government, the opposition parties should be able to call the Governor General to insist that they get a chance to form government before Harper. Nope, that’s not how it works, because the incumbent remains the Prime Minister until he or she resigns. That’s because the position can never be vacant. Ever. Her Majesty must always have a government in place, and it’s the GG’s job to ensure that happens. So really, no matter the result on election night, the leader whose party wins the most seats isn’t invited to form government – the incumbent is still the government until they choose to resign, which may or may not involve testing the confidence of the Chamber first. May also revealed that she has the GG’s number and will make that call herself, as though he is obligated to take it. Remember of course that May has also previously written the Queen about issues, and treated form letter responses as vindication. It’s part of her particular problem of over-reading her mandate – she’s hugely conflated her role as an MP with that of being in government in the past, and it’s a problem with how she interacts with the system. It’s also part of her curious insistence that somehow, a handful of Green MPs sitting in opposition and not in a coalition cabinet would magically make a minority parliament a less fractious place. How, exactly? Did none of the proponents of more minority governments learn any lessons from the three minority parliaments prior to 2011? Apparently not, because the magical thinking prevails.

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Roundup: Delving into Wright’s emails

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Nothing too explosive in the Duffy trial yesterday, but more those emails from Monday are certainly creating a bit of a stir, showing the PMO ignored the scandal for the first while, how Harper’s lawyer ended up disagreeing with Harper on the residency questions, and how Duffy didn’t want to repay anything because it would have made him look guilty, which he certainly didn’t think he was. Most of those players in the emails are still around Harper today. Incidentally, Pamela Wallin’s travel claims also come up in the emails. Andrew Coyne meanwhile has sorted through them and come to a conclusion on his own, so I’ll let him:

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Roundup: Challenging Responsible Government

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Last week, a group of lawyers wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail, calling for a constitutional challenge to judicial appointments, bemoaning the political process and concern trolling over an apparent declining lack of public confidence in the system – never mind the fact that no such lack of confidence is being expressed anywhere. Leonid Sirota writes an excellent takedown of the proposal here, but there is another concept that this group of lawyers ignores entirely, which is that of Responsible Government. Under our system, a prime minister and cabinet can legitimately make appointments so long as they enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. Being as we’re a democracy and not a technocracy, it’s a system that allows the government to carry on its necessary business while having a mechanism to be held to account, not only at the ballot box but at any time, the House can withdraw its confidence if they feel the government has abused its powers. It cannot be understated that the whole reason we gained Responsible Government in the colonies pre-confederation is that we wanted control over our patronage appointments, so that they weren’t coming from London. It’s one of the foundational cornerstones of our whole democratic system. That this group of lawyers wants to undermine it with no actual evidence that there’s a problem – rather, what seems to be some fairly partisan sour grapes because they don’t agree ideologically with a small minority of appointments – is troubling. They should know how our system of government works. That they apparently don’t is a very big problem.

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Roundup: Dubious travel bans

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As a new policy announcement yesterday, Stephen Harper said that if the Conservatives were to continue to form government after the election, they would introduce legislation to curb “terrorist tourism,” all of which is an entirely ridiculous plan, whether it’s as an issue of mobility rights, of letting the RCMP or CSIS determine who is a “professional journalist” or humanitarian organisation, or the fact that this betrays any shred of libertarianism that the Conservatives profess to hold. (But then again, we already knew that they’re not an ideological party, but rather right-flavoured populists, right?) Justin Trudeau says this is just a distration from economic issues and that Harper has to answer more questions about limiting rights, while Thomas Mulcair doubted the move’s efficacy (while continually repeating that they’re not going to be against any move that reduces terrorism). Anyway, Paul Wells demolished the whole thing in a series of tweets.

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Roundup: Giving terrorists what they want

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Because they’re totally not trying to use public service resources for electioneering purposes, it has been revealed that the Foreign Affairs minister Rob Nicholson wanted his department to produce a minimum of three media statements per week regarding the security threats posed by terrorism. While they would draw from events around the world, the statements would have been a steady stream delivered to media inboxes in the hopes of getting some kind of traction. Fortunately, the civil servants in the department realised this was ridiculous and pushed back, saying it wasn’t a priority for them to fulfil these requests, and good on them for doing so – it’s not their job to try and help the party build a narrative for their election campaign. And no doubt, we’ll likely hear a lot more about the security question from the Conservatives going forward, because it’s not like their economic record is doing them any favours right now. Of course, the irony in all of this is that it would appear to feed directly into the aims of terrorists, which is of course, to create fear. If the government is going to deliver nothing but a stream of statements saying “Ooh, terrorists! Be very afraid!” then doesn’t it mean that they’re letting the terrorists win? Even if they follow it up with the chest thumping about how awesome the government is by taking such a strong stand against them, etcetera, etcetera? I’m at a bit of a loss as to how this is a brilliant strategy in the bigger picture.

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Roundup: A mixed pipeline message

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There was confusion in the ranks yesterday as to just what the NDP position on the Energy East pipeline is. Recently they said that it was the “cornerstone” of their energy policy, and then comes an interview in L’Actualité where Mulcair is quoted as saying that he’s against it. And then Twitter went bananas. The NDP comms staff started rushing out transcripts and partial audio files to counter it, before their youth wing sent out a tweet cheering the opposition to said pipeline – only to have to delete it a few minutes later “for clarification.” Suffice to say, it did look a bit sloppy, and like he’s trying to give two separate messages to two different parts of the country – something that the party has certainly done before.

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