Tag Archives: The Monarchy

Roundup: Simping for the return of Stephen Harper

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Yesterday, former Conservative campaign manager and current media darling Fred DeLorey wrote a column for iPolitics that posited that under a Pierre Poilievre government, appointing Stephen Harper to the Cabinet post of foreign affairs would be a “bold declaration of Canada’s readiness to assume a pivotal role in shaping global affairs.” It’s a…novel…argument, and while I will admit that I haven’t read the piece because my subscription has lapsed, I wanted to make a few points regardless.

The first point is that while it is possible for a prime minister to appoint a minister who doesn’t have a seat, the convention is that they find one as soon as possible, whether in the Commons or in the Senate, because otherwise they can’t report to Parliament or sponsor legislation without needing a proxy to do it for them. Harper himself appointed Michael Fortier to the Senate in order to serve as minister of public works, and later international trade. (Fortier resigned from the Senate to run for a seat in the Commons in the next election and was soundly defeated). I find the notion of Harper being given a Senate seat to be far too ironic considering his utter disdain for the institution, and in particular its appointed nature. The alternative is asking one of Poilievre’s MPs to resign in a safe seat to run a by-election for Harper to run in, but again, I have seen zero desire on his part to get back into electoral politics. He’s also a one-man show, and the party is still very much his cult of personality, three leaders later, so I have a hard time envisioning him being a team player and not undermining Poilievre’s authority at every turn.

As for it being a “bold declaration,” I think that on the face of it, it smacks of trying to copy Rishi Sunak giving David Cameron the post in the UK government (along with a seat in the Lords), and Sunak’s government is about to be wiped out in the upcoming general election. There has also been plenty of chatter since this proposal went up over Twitter, and a lot of it is from people who still, to this day, believe that Harper is some kind of Bond villain, and that his IDU is some kind of SPECTRE. He’s not, and it’s not. The IDU is a social club for terrible people, and Harper has spent a lot of time cultivating friendships with autocrats and dictators, and has been part of the move to create permission structures for far-right parties to engage in increasingly autocratic far-right behaviour. It’s hard to think of what kind of cachet Harper is going to have on the foreign policy circuit given that he didn’t really have any foreign policy wins when he was in office. Conservatives love to recount how he allegedly told Putin to get out of Ukraine at a major summit, and look how effective that was—Putin went from occupying Crimea to launching a full-scale invasion of the rest of the country. Harper really showed him! Meanwhile, he’s spent so much time cuddling up to these terrible people and laundering their actions in pretending that they are “centre-right democratic parties,” unless that’s the kind of foreign policy that Poilievre wants to cultivate (which is possible). I just fail to see where DeLorey sees an upside in any of this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have been pounding Ukrainian power facilities, including a hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, or power supplies in Kharkiv, during which president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on allies to summon the political will to deliver needed air defences. Russia says these are “revenge strikes” for attacks across their border, an claims these military targets including “concentrations of troops and foreign mercenaries.” Ukraine says that Russian oil refineries are legitimate targets. Ukraine is also worried that Russia could be preparing as many as 100,000 troops to make a new offensive push this summer, or to replenish depleted units.

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1771149078010765485

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Roundup: Stupid polls about the monarchy

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It appears to be the season for reporting on really stupid polls, because there was yet another one yesterday, saying that an increasing number of Canadians want to “reconsider” our ties to the monarchy, which is already a misleading turn of phrase because we have a domestic monarchy, and have since 1931. Yes, we time-share their natural persons with the UK and thirteen other realms, but the Canadian monarchy is a Thing, and it’s not a gods damned foreign imposition.

What makes this kind of polling even more irresponsible is the fact that there is simply nothing in there about what they expect to replace it with, because there are myriad options, and absolutely no exploration of any of them. It’s also extremely relevant because that’s how Australia’s republican movement faltered—voters were not in favour of the appointed head of state option presented in the referendum, and since its failure, support for the monarchy in that country has increased. (Better the devil you know, and all of that. On top of that, getting rid of the monarchy would require a wholesale rewrite of our constitution (because it’s the central organizing principle), and would abrogate all of the treaties with First Nations, because they are all with the Crown, which would add a whole other layer of complexity for our relationship and reconciliation. (In fact, there is a compelling argument that ending the monarchy would simply mean completing the colonial project).

There is no simple yes/no choice for the future of the monarchy in Canada—it’s yes/which model to replace it with (because you can’t not have an organizing principle for executive power, and you really want to have some kind of a constitutional fire extinguisher available), and how to go about doing it, and stupid poll questions like this just elide over that reality in a completely misleading way.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Ukrainian attack on a shipyard in occupied Crimea has damaged two Russian ships undergoing repairs at the facility and caused a fire. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vetoed an anti-corruption bill that contained a loophole that allowed people to forgo disclosing assets for another year. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also praised Ukraine’s progress toward EU membership, but said that they still have more work to do.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1701984458960765381

https://twitter.com/rustem_umerov/status/1702012801131102435

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Roundup: The reason we don’t have a “First Lady”

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In a bid to find an angle on the Trudeau separation story, the CBC gave us a look at how in Canada, the position of prime minister’s spouse is untitled and unofficial—which is true. But nowhere in the piece does it mention the reason why, which is because we’re a constitutional monarchy. That’s pretty much the whole reason why the spouse of the prime minister has no official title or role, because as head of government, the prime minister doesn’t merit the same symbolic weight of a president in a republic, who is their head of state. Hence, their spouse because the “First” lady/gentleman, because they occupy that symbolic position. And there is good reason for why we organise our government like this, because in our system, it keeps prime ministers in check by not assigning them the symbolism or honours, and prevents them from creating cults of personality around it. The arrangement is that our head of state—or more properly, our sovereign—has the power, and the prime minister “borrows” or exercises it on their behalf, and that helps to keep them in check.

To that end, our sovereign is King Charles III, so if we had a “First Lady,” it would be Queen Camila. And could this CBC piece actually point this out or acknowledge it? Of course not. The piece did note that spouses of the Governor General are also granted the use of the title of “Your Excellency,” but it also omitted that there was a practice where we gave the spouse of the Governor General the title of “Chatelaine of Rideau Hall” when it was only women in the role, but it has fallen into disuse. I think we should absolutely revive it, and employ something like Châtelain or Castellan for a male spouse, particularly because they tend to play a fairly active role, unlike the spouse of a prime minister.

One of the good things about the fact that the role of a prime minister’s spouse is that it gives them the flexibility to be as involved or uninvolved as they choose to be. Laureen Harper preferred to remain out of the spotlight and kept her advocacy to things like fostering homeless cats. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau had a public profile of her own before her high-profile marriage and his becoming prime minister, so she could use that profile to pursue her own projects around mental health and wellness that didn’t have to be tied to the government. She did complain that she needed more staff to deal with the volume of requests being asked of her, but I would hesitate before we put some kind of formal mechanisms into place to make this a more official role because we’re not Americans, and these are roles that the Queen and the Governor General and their spouse should be doing more than the spouse of a prime minister.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine is investigating the attacks on grain port infrastructure as possible war crimes. Here is a look at the de-mining work that Ukrainian forces need to undertake on the front lines as Russians have booby-trapped everything, including the bodies of their own dead. And audits have uncovered corruption at Ukrainian military recruitment centres, which president Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls “revolting.”

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1687124892951408641

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Roundup: Johnston says no public inquiry

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It was David Johnston Day, as his first report was delivered, and he did not recommend a public inquiry for very good reasons—particularly that it could not be necessarily public given the nature of the information, and that it would be window dressing at this stage of the game, considering he had already done a lot of the heavy lifting, and planned to do public hearings as part of his final report. You can read the full report here, but here are the five key takeaways. There was plenty of scathing material in there, particularly to the system of information dissemination within government, but also to the way media stories torqued partial information into falsehoods (the Han Dong allegations were discredited in the report). There is a problem with information culture within government, and while this government has done a lot to fix some things, they are not adapting fast enough to the changing environment, and that is on them. (Check out some of the threads linked below as well).

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1661045080705187842

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1661080153122848781

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/1661211717924188161

Johnston’s decision was necessarily a no-win scenario, and everyone is unhappy, but nobody has exactly explained how a public inquiry was going to restore trust in the democratic system—particularly as it comes under attack by bad faith actors who spent the day trying to discredit Johnston and his report (never mind that he did address the alleged conflicts and consulted with a former Supreme Court of Canada justice before accepting the job), and that no matter who would lead either the Special Rapporteur process or a theoretical public inquiry, there would be the same bad faith attacks because they don’t actually want to restore faith in the process. They want people to distrust because they cynically hope to leverage that in the next election. Pierre Poilievre in particular has refused to strike any kind of statesmanlike tone and refuses to be briefed because he knows that the moment he actually knows the intelligence and can’t talk about it, he can’t outright lie and make accusations with wild abandon, and that’s his entire shtick. But this is a fairly classic Canadian problem, where MPs don’t want to know the actual secret information, because then they’d have to stop talking, which they don’t want to do. Remember, ours is no longer a serious Parliament.

There is a conversation to be had about the role media is playing in undermining the faith in democracy, but you can rest assured there will be no self-reflection around it. Rather, there will be self-justification and rationalization, and sniping that Johnston expects us to take the intelligence he’s seen at face value, which is ironic considering that the media outlets reporting on these leaks are expecting us to do the very same thing, even though there are agendas at play within that reporting.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661050997936996356

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661051520018706432

In pundit reaction, Justin Ling gives a fairly balanced summation of the report with some insightful commentary. Susan Delacourt is sceptical of Johnston’s assertion that politicians and media can play their parts in restoring faith in democracy. Andrew Coyne is unhappy with the notion that we are expected to just trust Johnston (ignoring the contradiction made above), and while he credits Johnston with inviting NSICOP and NSIRA to review his findings, the same secrecy problem remains. Matt Gurney despairs at the picture of incompetence the report paints.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Following his return to Ukraine after meetings at the G7 in Hiroshima, Japan, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visted marines on the front lines in the country’s east. Over the weekend, the Russians claimed they overran Bakhmut over the weekend, which Ukraine denies, particularly as they have been reclaiming territory surrounding it. Russians are also claiming Ukrainian “sabotage groups” are crossing the border into the Belgorod region, but it sounds like these may be disaffected Russians, as Ukrainans deny involvement. Russians later claim to have “crushed” these groups.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1660291196030271490

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1660884230174560256

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Roundup: Grading the official Star Wars Day posts

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Yesterday was May the 4th, also known as “Star Wars Day,” and this year’s Canadian politics offerings were largely unimpressive, most had little to no effort, which is supremely disappointing. Congrats to Library and Archives Canada who made the most effort.

From the political leaders:

For someone who loves memes and trying to win Twitter, Poilievre didn’t even participate.

A sampling of government departments and organizations:

And the rest:

Internationally, we got a couple more:

That last one, the “Stand with Ukraine,” was the best, and caught the spirit perfectly. We are living in a moment where there is a resistance to tyranny taking place, so why not lean into that message?

Ukraine Dispatch:

Another day, another early morning drone attack, this time targeting Kyiv and Odessa. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an “unscheduled” trip to the Hague to call for Putin to face a special tribunal once Ukraine wins the war. The first opportunity to arrest Putin may come in South Africa this summer, and there are those who are “confident” that South Africa will do the right thing. Zelenskyy also got assurances from the Dutch prime minister that talks are progressing on acquiring F-16s for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1654199754358771722

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1654192129260900368

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Roundup: You can’t replace committee travel with Zoom

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Another day, another story where I roll my eyes and sigh because nobody can seem to grasp some pretty fundamental points. To wit: Scandal and pearl-clutching because the Senate’s audit committee is planning a trip to Westminster to consult with their counterparts there. Someone fetch a fainting couch for all of the zeros attached to the costs of the trip! And of course, we couldn’t have cheap outrage without getting a quote from the so-called Canadian Taxpayers Federation, whose continued existence depends on being the go-to source for media when they need a cheap outrage quote.

Some context to this story—the Senate’s audit committee has been a long and hard-fought battle to come into existence because the previous Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, was trying to steer the nascent committee in a direction that would see it be completely staffed by outsiders, which is a particular affront to Parliamentary privilege and the status of the Senate as a self-governing body in and of itself. Eventually the current composition—a mix of senators and outsider, with senators in the majority—was adopted, years after it should have been, and very much in the model that the House of Lords employs. (Note that this model had first been championed by the late Senator Elaine McCoy, and we could have saved years of fighting had people just listened to her). And because this has to do with a parliamentary body, you can’t just get advice from any audit firm in Canada, as the CTF seems to think—you need best practices from those who have dealt with the particular issues that a parliamentary body has. Of course, none of this context is in the story, because nobody pays attention to the Senate unless it’s for a cheap outrage story like this one. Of course.

Meanwhile, the most galling part of the piece is the suggestion that all of this should be done over Zoom, both out of a concern for cost and carbon emissions. And honestly, this type of suggestion needs to have a stake driven through it. This kind of work relies on human interaction, and relationship-building, and that doesn’t happen and cannot happen over Zoom. This is one of the biggest problems with hybrid sittings (which, mercifully, the Senate has ended), but which MPs refuse to believe, and apparently a few senators do too—parliament is a face-to-face institution. It cannot effectively operate remotely. The pandemic was a short-term (ish) problem that required a solution, and while this was not the best one, it was a solution that nevertheless has emboldened people to think that Parliament is a job you can do from home. It’s absolutely not, and this kind of committee travel is no exception. You cannot replace the kinds of interactions that make this travel essential over Zoom, and we need to stop thinking of Zoom as the solution to problems that aren’t actually problems.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched another overnight round of attacks on Kyiv, this time with drones, but all were shot down. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces says it’s important that they maintain their hold on Bakhmut in advance of the counter-offensive (not the least of which because it’s degrading Russia’s forces significantly). The EU is hoping to increase production of ammunition in order to help Ukraine’s efforts. And here is one Ukrainian farmer’s novel way of de-mining his fields using parts from old Russian tanks.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1653390767329558530

https://twitter.com/war_mapper/status/1653169425749508100

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QP: Was there a briefing two years ago?

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While the prime minister was present today, his deputy was off to Washington DC, but the other party leaders were all present today, so a show was to be had. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, railed that it had been two years since the allegation about threats to Michael Chong’s family, demanded to know when he knew, and why the diplomat in the story was not yet expelled. Justin Trudeau took exception to the characterisation, said that the information he received after yesterday’s story was that measures were taken to protect measures when they are in the spotlight of foreign actors, and that he reached out to Michael Chong directly. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same allegations, and Trudeau reiterated his same response. Poilievre repeated the key elements of the story more slowly, and demanded that the diplomat in question be expelled. Trudeau again took exception to the characterisation of what happened, said that those kinds of accusations were unworthy of members of this House. Poilievre insisted that the government knew about the threats to years ago—with no proof that this made its way up the chain—and Trudeau repeated that this wasn’t true, and that where is action to take, it is taken. Poilievre insisted that Trudeau was only interested in his political reputation, and demanded the diplomatic immunity of that “agent” be taken away. Trudeau once again said this wasn’t true, and that nobody would simply sit on a threat to a colleague.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, said he didn’t see anything false in the Conservatives’ questions, and tried to turn this into a question on the Trudeau Foundation, and Trudeau insisted that political interference is not allowed and legal processes will go forward as necessary. Blanchet tried again to wedge on the Foundation, and Trudeau recited that he hasn’t had any involvement for a decade.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he too accused the prime minister of doing nothing on the alleged Chong briefing for two years, and demanded to know why Chong wasn’t informed at the time. Trudeau said it would be outrageous if someone sat on a threat for two years, and that is not what happened. Singh switched to French, and railed that the prime minister should have known at the time, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau insisted that they did act starting in 2015 with a G7 mechanism with allies to fight interference, plus the election monitoring panel, and the creation of NSICOP and NSIRA.

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Roundup: Allegations and reactions to reports of targeting an MP’s family

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The big news that dominated much of the discourse yesterday was that Globe and Mail story that a secret intelligence document from two years ago says that the Chinese regime sees Canada as a priority target for foreign interference because we don’t have a foreign agent registry, and said that they were targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family in Hong Kong, and that a Chinese diplomat in Canada was working on the matter. This of course turned into the daily outrage—Chong decried that he wasn’t warned about this, and then we saw the dog and pony show in Question Period. Justin Trudeau said that after reading the Globe story he has asked his officials to look into this document, and called the matter unacceptable. Oh, and two of those so-called Chinese “police stations” appear to still be in operation in the Montreal area, in spite of the RCMP saying they’d shut them down. So, there’s that.

https://twitter.com/MichaelChongMP/status/1653044204438732803

But here’s the thing—Chong isn’t an idiot, even if he sometimes plays one in Question Period, and should have known that his family there did face risks. Activists from these diaspora communities here have been saying it for years, and many have pointed to the fact that they deliberately don’t have contact with their family members back home in order to try to protect them. Chong shouldn’t have needed a CSIS briefing to know if his family in Hong Kong was under threat—he should have put two-and-two together on his own, given how outspoken he is about the regime. (Update: Behold, two years ago he stated he was doing just that). Trying to blame the government sounds particularly disingenuous because I know that Chong knows better, even if he wants to playact shock and outrage for the cameras in order to score points. There is a better way to deal with these allegations of foreign interference without these kinds of drama camp antics.

Meanwhile, Canada’s self-appointed media critic is in full braying doofus mode, and has some thoughts about journalistic ethics around media outlets reporting (or not) on leaked documents that they haven’t seen or been able to verify. Aside from the fact that CBC’s politics page did run the Canadian Press wire story about Chong’s reaction, Scheer should know how this works, right? Does he think that CBC can just call up the leaker and say “Hey, can we have a look at those documents too?” Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did believe that, but seriously—if he bothered to think it through for half a second, he would understand why CBC isn’t reporting on it, but that’s inconvenient for his narrative and his rage-farming, so here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians fired another early-morning salvo of missiles at Ukraine, and of the 18 fired, 15 were brought down by air defences, leaving three to strike targets primarily in the eastern city of Pavlohrad, killing two and rounding 40; Kyiv did not suffer any strikes this time. Over in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces have pushed Russians back from several parts of the city, and US estimates are that 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the past five months (up to 20,000 of those killed), most of them in and around Bakhmut. Two Canadian volunteer soldiers fighting for Ukraine were killed in Bakhmut last week.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1653047560020414465

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1652911854501388290

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Roundup: No authority to examine

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It was not unexpected, but the Auditor General did confirm yesterday that she wasn’t going to be looking into the Trudeau Foundation’s private donations because it’s not within her wheelhouse. Which is what I’ve been saying for over a week now—the Foundation isn’t a Crown corporation, its only reporting relationship to the Industry Minister is around the status of the initial endowment, and the Conservatives put them under the Access to Information and Privacy regime in 2007 because they put all kinds of organisation with a tangential relationship to government under the regime during their performative toughness. It doesn’t fall under the Financial Administration Act, so there is no basis for the AG to examine their books.

This news of course has the Bloc somewhat apoplectic, and they insist that if she doesn’t have the authority to look into their books, then Parliament should give her that authority. Which is, frankly, boneheaded. She already has more than enough work to do. The very last thing we need to do is turn her into some kind of roving commission of inquiry for MPs to sic her upon anyone who turns their ire (through a motion in the House of Commons that she would “consider”), especially because she’s already unaccountable for her parliamentary audits. Extending those into past Parliament or Crown corporations would be a disaster.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have bene trying to weaponise the Public Accounts Committee into looking into the Foundation, which again, is beyond their ambit. It’s especially beyond their ambit because the Auditor General hasn’t produced a report on them, and she won’t—because she has no authority to—so that particular committee has no authority to look into it. And yet, they voted on doing just so, but with the caveat of not calling any elected officials or members of the Trudeau family to testify. I can’t believe that the committee clerk didn’t warn the Chair this is out of bounds, but this is an opposition-chaired committee—in this case, Conservative John Williamson—and it sounds like he opted to ignore that warning and proceed anyway, which is incredibly poor form, especially since this whole exercise is about little more than letting Garnett Genuis perform for the cameras. And once again, we prove that ours is not a serious Parliament.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Estonia’s prime minister met with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the northwestern city of Zhytomyr, and said that she supports Ukraine’s accession to NATO “as soon as conditions allow” (which means the war has to be over and Russian forces no longer occupying territory).

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Roundup: Few details on the Canadian coronation

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As the coronation fast approaches, we’re still waiting for details in Canada about what we’re doing here, or what the events happening in Ottawa will be, or who is part of the delegation going to London for the event itself. The level of secrecy is a bit weird, but I have my suspicions that this is trying to be downplayed from the top, meaning PMO.

As for King Charles III himself, the early signs are that he’s looking to be a bit more involved and less removed than his mother tended to be, in part because that was the generation she came from. And what does that mean for Canada? Well, that’s dependent entirely upon the prime minister, because the King can only act on the advice of the PM. And this PM, well, doesn’t like it when the spotlight is away from him. He likes the “ceremonial” aspects of the job, and a lot of that stuff is what the Crown and the Governor General does. So while we’ve just had some incredibly important events in our country as a constitutional monarchy—the loss of the Queen who had been our sovereign for seventy years, and now the installation of the new King—it’s being downplayed in ways that are not healthy for us as a country, but our civic literacy about this is at terrible lows, and there is an organised campaign of misinformation about the role and nature of the Crown in this country, and Trudeau could do something about that, but he won’t, and it erodes the nature of our democracy even more.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian Forces are yet again claiming to have achieved more of a foothold in Bakhmut, while Ukrainian forces continue to insist they’re holding the line. There are also a bunch of denials as to whether or not the Ukrainians have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river in the south of the country. Russian forces are also claiming to have repelled a drone attack against their Black Sea fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1650111231196536832

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1650012022371753984

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