Tag Archives: Terrorism

Roundup: Unserious knee-jerk suggestions

Posted on by

As expected, some of the sillier suggestions for avoiding future SNC-Lavalin-type Affairs have started cropping up, and yesterday, Policy Options hosted one from the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. His suggestions? Splitting the role of Attorney General and Justice Minister, and to ban omnibus bills.

On the former, it’s clear that he didn’t actually read the McLellan report beyond the headlines, because he would have seen – as Paul Wells pointed out so ably in his own piece – that the guidelines that McLellan puts forward in the report would have prevented this whole sordid affair before it got off the ground. (Side note: It may not have prevented Jody Wilson-Raybould from being shuffled, given the lack of competence she had demonstrated in the role overall, and Scott Brison was going to retire regardless, so that likely would have happened, but the fallout may not have gone quite the same way). There is no reason given in the Policy Options piece for rejecting McLellan’s advice – just that the whole Affair has damaged the public confidence. So that gets a failing grade.

As for the suggestion to ban omnibus bills, he doesn’t quite grasp the magnitude of the suggestion. He claims, not incorrectly, that they exist for the sake of efficiency, but that efficiency is largely because there are many pieces of legislation every year, where if you introduced individual bills for each component – such as around technical changes in a budget implementation bill – Parliament would grind to a halt. There is a time and a place for omnibus bills – the difference is when they are being used abusively. The Conservatives stuffing changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act into a budget implementation bill? That’s abusive. The Deferred Prosecution Agreement provisions being put into the budget bill? It’s borderline, but it wasn’t hidden or snuck through – it was in plain sight, the committees in both Houses each saw it and dealt with them (albeit less effectively on the Commons side), and the Commons has new rules to deal with splitting up votes on omnibus bills. Ironically, if the DPA legislation had been put forward as a separate bill, it likely would have languished until swallowed up by an omnibus justice bill, as happened to several other criminal justice reform bills over the course of the last parliament (speaking of Wilson-Raybould’s ability to manage her own bills). But the suggestion to simply ban all omnibus bills is unserious and jejune, and a perfect example of the kind of knee-jerk suggestions we’re going to see plenty of in the days ahead.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Clarity on “partisan” ads

Posted on by

That report that climate change advocacy could be considered “partisan” during the writ period had a lot of people talking yesterday – but the problem is that it seems to have been a bit overblown, which I’m chalking up to Environmental Defence overplaying the advice from Elections Canada, and The Canadian Press reporter not getting enough context around that advice. In any case, Elections Canada was playing some damage control, specifying that it had to do with paid advertising and not advocacy writ-large, while various party leaders took shots at the absurdity of it all. And to walk through some of it, here’s Jennifer Robson to allay some of your fears.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Narratives about radicalization ahead

Posted on by

One of the sub-plots from the 2015 election is about to get a rerun as the UK decided to revoke citizenship from “Jihadi Jack” Letts, who has joint-UK and Canadian citizenship. That essentially leaves him with only Canadian citizenship – dumping their problem on our laps (likely in contravention of international law, incidentally). And that means a return to Trudeau’s decision to revoke a Conservative law that would have had a similar effect in Canadian law, because as you may recall, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”

Where this will be compounded with the Conservative talking points that Trudeau thinks that returning fighters are “powerful voices” that can be reformed with podcasts and poetry lessons – which is a gross distortion of both Trudeau saying that people who were de-radicalised (not returning fighters) could be those powerful voices in their communities, and de-radicalisation programmes themselves, which again, are not for returning fighters but preventing people from taking that step once they’ve been radicalised. And lo, they will talk about how “naïve and dangerous” the notion that returning fighters can be de-radicalised is, when all of the things they point to are about de-radicalising people before they leave the country or do something violent here. But why should they let truth get in the way of a narrative?

Meanwhile, Letts’ parents are imploring the Canadian government to do something, and they are prepared to move here if that helps, but it also leaves questions as to what Letts may be charged with – though there is no evidence he was actually involved in any fighting. Nevertheless, it’s a problem the UK dumped on us that will become a partisan election issue, with all of the nonsense that entails.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Conspicuous silences

Posted on by

While responses from Canadian politicians and civil society was swift to the mass murder in New Zealand by an alleged white nationalist, Andrew Scheer’s initial tweets didn’t mention the fact that the victims were Muslims, or that they were killed in a mosque. He later put out an official statement that mentioned these things, but didn’t recant any of his winking to white nationalists with “globalist” conspiracy theories, giving succour to racists in order to “own the Libs,” or his wilful blindness of the racist and xenophobic elements of the “yellow vest” protesters that he recently addressed on the Hill (alongside other famous white nationalists, without denouncing them).

Ahmed Hussen said that people who are silent about hateful online comments feed into the narratives that lead to violence, which had Scheer’s office sniping that he was trying to score political points off of a tragedy, but it’s notable that Lisa Raitt and Michelle Rempel were calling out people posting racist responses to the news of the tragedy. (Notably, only Michael Chong called out the white nationalist problem in Canada). Here’s Carleton University professor Stephanie Carvin providing some national security and intelligence context, along with some analysis of how social media feeds this problem.

Andrew Coyne points out Scheer’s continued inability to do the right thing, not only with his poor first statement this time, but his inability to confront racists and for buying into populist conspiracy theories (and he even missed a few other examples).

Jody Wilson-Raybould

As the next Liberal caucus meeting draws closer, and a decision as to whether Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott should be allowed to remain in caucus becomes more immediate, Wilson-Raybould published an open letter to her constituents to reiterate her commitment to being a Liberal, but it was more than that. Rather than just a simple statement about serving her constituents, or some feel-good language, she went on about being new to party politics and wanting to bring change to reject the culture of conflict, empty partisanship, and cynical games. Except this reads a lot like a cynical game in and of itself because it’s both a dare to the prime minister to keep her (and Jane Philpott) in caucus – Justin Trudeau saying he hasn’t spoken to either of them, and that he had no comment on this letter – and it sounds a lot like a challenge to Trudeau and his authority. You know, like she did with her refusal to turn over relevant information about recommendations for judicial appointments, and her refusal to be given a different Cabinet post. It remains to be seen what her endgame is, but this seems to be looking more like a future leadership bid, albeit in a way that hasn’t been done by those who have done so in the past. But that said, I think it’s pretty hard to ignore that Wilson-Raybould has an endgame in mind.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1106587109429641216

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have decided that they’re going to begin a new round of procedural warfare over the demands to get Wilson-Raybould to testify again at the Justice committee, and they’re going to demand all-night line-by-line votes on the Supplemental Estimates. But…we’ve seen this show already. It’s a poor procedural protest because these votes have zero to do with the Wilson-Raybould situation, and when they vote against line items, it opens them up to attack from the government – just like the last time they attempted this and voted against things like veteran benefits allocations. It’s not smart strategy, and it’s premature because the committee hasn’t decided if they’re going to hear from Wilson-Raybould again or not. And then they’ll cry foul, like “You’re making us inconvenience everyone!” when no, nobody is making you do anything. Try again.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Sixty-nine day countdown

Posted on by

The House of Commons comes back on Monday, in the new chamber in West Block, and with an election on the horizon. That means it will soon be a frantic scramble to get bills passed before June arrives, and there are a lot of constituency weeks between now and then. The count is sixty-nine sitting days officially left on the calendar, but from that you need to remove a prescribed number of opposition-controlled Supply Days, plus the budget. Add to that, more days will need to be subtracted for bills that the Senate will send back to the Commons – and there will be bills they will send back, and that will eat into the calendar – especially in the final days of the sitting in June, when everyone wants to go home.

The agenda still has a number of big items on it, with Bardish Chagger having identified their poverty reduction bill, the reform of the Divorce Act, and the bill to eliminate solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries – and that could prove the most difficult because there have already been judges weighing in on what they’ve read and they’re not impressed. That could set up for more back-and-forth from the Senate if they don’t make enough of the big fixes to that in the Commons sooner than later.

And the Senate really is going to wind up being the spoiler or the wildcard in all of this. They’re already underwater on their Order Paper, and the Chamber will be late in returning from the break because of the construction delays, and there has been very little movement from most of the committees on getting back up and running now, in order to make progress on the bills that are before them. (In one case, where the bill is highly contentious, the Conservatives have not been cooperating because the Independent senator who chairs the committee has basically been doing the bidding of the Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder, so they wanted to send a message). The national security reform bill, sat at second reading for the entire fall sitting when it should have spent far more time at committee given how extensive and far-reaching the bill is. They need some serious adult supervision to get them back on track, and I’m not sure where that’s going to come from, so we’ll see how this plays out over the next few weeks.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Kenney and Scheer vow to repeat mistakes

Posted on by

There was a conference in Calgary yesterday called “Energy Relaunch,” during which both Jason Kenney and Andrew Scheer laid out plans for how they propose to get the province’s oil and gas industry “back on track” if they were to form government. The problem is that they seemed to have learned absolutely no lessons from the past few years about where the problems and bottlenecks in the process lie, and what to do about them. Their solutions tended to be to use bigger bulldozers and to gut more legislation, and Kenney more specifically included funding the legal challenges of resource-friendly First Nations communities and targeting “foreign-funded” organisations that opposed development (because it’s all one big conspiracy by the Tides Foundation, and however else makes a convenient scapegoat). But if anyone has paid any attention to the court decisions over the past number of years, especially over Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain, the theme that emerges is that they have been slapped down because successive governments have attempted to cut corners and weasel out of their obligations rather than doing the hard work of proper assessments and consultation with Indigenous communities that would get them the approval they were looking for. The current Liberal government seems to get this fact and is proceeding accordingly when it comes to Trans Mountain, while Scheer and Kenney wail and gnash their teeth about how they didn’t appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada (without articulating what the error in law was), or somehow legislating away the problems (never mind that retroactive legislation will lead to more litigation, and you can’t legislate away your Section 35 duty to consult obligations).

Kenney also promised that if made premier, he would launch a “war room” to counter any critics of the oil sands in real time. The problem is that hasn’t worked to day, and won’t work going forward, but Kenney refuses to grasp that reality.

Energy economist Andrew Leach was also presenting at the event, and has some thoughts as to what he heard as well:

Continue reading →

Roundup: The big climate reveal

Posted on by

Yesterday was the big day, where Justin Trudeau unveiled the final details of his carbon pricing plan, and how the rebates would work for the provinces subject to the carbon backstop, which are going to be Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, with the Yukon and Nunavut also kicking in slightly later. (You can find breakdowns here). The Conservatives and their provincial premier allies immediately chimed in to predictably call this some kind of scam, and that nobody believed the rebates would happen, and so on, and so on. Also of note is that Trudeau’s nominal ally, Brian Gallant in New Brunswick, has also grumbled about the carbon price (but if he loses and Blaine Higgs forms government, he too is opposed to it). Manufacturers and small businesses are grumbling, despite the fact that there will be rebates for small and medium-sized businesses under the scheme. Also getting larger rebates will be people in rural communities, given that they have higher carbon costs (and it’s no secret that the Liberals have a harder time winning votes there).

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1054753060336078848

With this in mind, here are some noted climate economists who can put some of yesterday’s announcement into proper perspective. (Additional thread from Kevin Milligan here, and Nic Rivers here).

Meanwhile, here’s a look at whether Trudeau can escape the problems of Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift, with points to Trudeau being a better communicator (but I’d argue that journalists prefacing every explanation of the Green Shift with “it’s complicated” didn’t help either). Chris Selley notes that this is the issue that could make or break Trudeau in the next election, which is why he needs to get it right. Paul Wells drops a bit of reality on the language that Scheer and Ford are using, and wonders whether the carbon backstop rebates will start catching on with other provinces.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Dredging up deficit panic

Posted on by

We’ve seen a return of questions in the past few days about the federal deficit – while the Public Accounts have shown that it was a little smaller than projected, it’s still there. The Conservatives hope to make hay over this in the next election, and as part of his “one year to go” speech over the weekend, Andrew Scheer repeated the lines that Stephen Harper mockingly performed over the election about how the Liberals promised just a “tiny little deficit” and well, it doesn’t look like they’ll make balance next year like they initially promised. Mind you, Scheer and his crew also ignores the fact that the Liberals were handed a $70 billion hole in GDP when they took over, so their spending promises are pretty much in line with their promises, but they made the choice to simply borrow to make up the difference – and yes, governing is about choices. Kind of like how the Conservatives chose to underfund a number of major projects in order to achieve the illusion of a balanced budget, that the Liberals had to then pick up the pieces on (Phoenix, Shared Services), and that’s also part of why they’re in the red. But you know – details.

In light of all of this fear-mongering, Kevin Milligan does the math on deficits, and well, it’s not quite the doom we’ve been thinking, as the debate remains trapped in the nineties and isn’t catching up to current realities.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053691438829985794

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053692158564163585

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053694039445274624

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053695340774223872

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053696086911541249

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1053697398403358721

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne worries about the deficits, with the recall about how the not-so-big deficits of the seventies suddenly metastasized out of control in the eighties, but he doesn’t math out his fears either.

Continue reading →

QP: Trying to lay an obvious trap

Posted on by

Following statements marking the two fallen soldiers who were killed by terrorists on Canadian soil four years ago, Andrew Scheer led off in French, mini-lectern on desk, reading a demand to deal with returnees from groups like ISIS, and that included demanding support for their opposition motion. Justin Trudeau responded with a statement of support for the police and intelligence services who are looking to bring these people to justice, and that they would support their motion. Scheer switched to English to repeat the demand, saying the government hasn’t done enough, and Trudeau reiterated the response in English. Scheer switched to the Mark Norman case, demanding the records from PMO be released to Norman’s defence, and Trudeau said that he wouldn’t comment on the case as it’s before the courts. Scheer insisted that he didn’t want comment on the case, but wanted to know if he would release the documents, to which Trudeau said that there were all kinds of other things they could ask about but they were fixated on this court case he couldn’t comment on. Scheer took Trudeau up on the invitation to ask about the New NAFTA, and wondered about caps on dairy exports to third countries, but Trudeau simply praised Supply Management and didn’t answer. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, lamenting that Canada could not meet their GHG targets, to which Trudeau accused the opposition of refusing to accept that the economy and the environment to together. Caron changed to French, and railed about the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline, and Trudeau listed investments in environmental protection that they’ve made, and insisted that they would meet their GHG targets. Hélène Laverdière demanded that arms to Saudi Arabia be halted, to which Trudeau picked up a script to read his condemnation for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and said that they were working closely with G7 allies. Laverdière switched to English to repeat the demand, and Trudeau read his English version of the script, with new paragraphs on strengthening export permit reviews.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A “grand coalition” is a terrible idea

Posted on by

Over in New Brunswick, where there has been no movement on whether or not there will be a new government, we are being treated to such views as the suggestion that there should be a “grand coalition” between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives in the province to…rise above partisan interests? Erm, well, leaving aside the fact that there is a lot of bad blood between the leaders and it’s never going to happen, I find the suggestion in and of itself utterly offensive. Why? Because our system depends on there being an opposition to hold the government to account. That’s the whole point of parliament after all – to hold government to account, and while backbenchers are supposed to play that role as well as the opposition, in practice it often doesn’t work that well because the incentives are rarely there when there are Cabinet posts to distribute and the fact that we’ve bastardized our leadership system so as to neuter caucus’ ability to hold their leaders to account. Such a “grand coalition” would mean that the province has an opposition comprised of two three-member parties, which would have to fight over who gets to be the Official Opposition, and would have a hard time doing the job of holding a massive coalition government to account.

Now, I will add that New Brunswick and its peculiar political culture once returned a legislature that was 100 percent Liberal and had zero opposition members, and they managed to make it work. Sort of. But it’s not a situation that anyone should want to repeat, because it’s a Very Bad Thing for democracy and the practice of Responsible Government. Opposition plays an important role, and I know that people don’t like it because the adversarial nature can become both theatrical (witness Question Period), but if members don’t take that theatricality to heart, it can become embittering – especially if there are few avenues for cross-partisan bonding. I don’t know enough about how that part of the political culture works in New Brunswick, but the diminishing avenues for such bonding in Ottawa has created a less collegial parliament than it used to be in years past, and that’s a problem.

https://twitter.com/SkinnerLyle/status/1052295726477312000

Meanwhile, the lieutenant governor is straying dangerously out of her lane in issuing statements warning the parties to come to a solution because she doesn’t think the province wants a new election, and that means also finding a Speaker. This shouldn’t be public, and I get that some people want transparency, but she shouldn’t be doing this – especially because it gives people the idea that she can boss around the premier, which she can’t actually do unless we want to undo 170 years of Responsible Government in this country. It’s especially bad if the parties are trying to play the LG and trying to force her hand in some way – which is the kind of gutless manoeuvre that we should expect from Canadian politicians who don’t like to be seen to be making unpopular decisions and will try to foist the blame onto someone else. This whole situation is distasteful, and everyone needs to grow up and behave like adults.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1052316915140423680

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1052317982884425729

https://twitter.com/SkinnerLyle/status/1052335901366476800

Continue reading →