Tag Archives: The Monarchy

QP: Tough on Black and Indigenous people

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In between events with the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, the prime minister was present in QP, as were all other leaders. Candice Bergen led off, script in front of her, and she declared that the stated reason for invoking the Emergencies Act was “falling apart” as the interim Ottawa police chief said he did not request it, and she insisted there was a cover-up. Justin Trudeau quoted another witness at the committee who praised the efficacy of the measures. Bergen blamed Trudeau for the blockade with a litany of dubious accusations, and Trudeau retorted that the opposition doesn’t want light shed into their role in prolonging the occupation. Bergen insisted this was “misinformation” before she pivoted the complaining about airport delays and demanded a return to “pre-COVID normal.” Trudeau reminded her that COVID is not over, and that they are identifying ways to help bottlenecks. Bergen started ranting that Trudeau got to go maskless in other countries while Canadians are tired of doing everything being asked of them (erm, which they haven’t been). Trudeau again reiterated that they are following the science. Bergen then launched into a tirade about COVID measures affecting youth, and Trudeau somehow hating youth, and Trudeau listed all of the help they gave young Canadians over the course of the pandemic.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he gave a bizarre rant about the “British monarchy” and the Anglican Church, and demanded to know how much this would cost. Trudeau, bemused, said that Ottawa must really be delivering for Quebec if the Bloc had to dig to reach this. Blanchet continued to complained that royal tours cost money, and Trudeau took the opportunity to praise our system and its stability at a time when democracy is under threat around the world.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, noted the inflation headline number, and repeated yesterday’s demand to cut oil and gas subsidies and to give that money to people in a GST rebate. Trudeau listed that they have been cutting subsidies, that they are going “line by line” on emissions cuts, and that they have affordability measures. Singh repeated the question in French, and got the same reply.

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Roundup: Limited federal options on Bill 21

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So, the fight over Bill 21 in Quebec is gaining some traction now that there have been real-world consequences, and a bunch of MPs (mostly Conservatives) who previously said nothing about it—and who previously supported odious things like “barbaric cultural practices tip lines” and “Canadian values tests”—are now speaking up and recanting previous positions. Which is good, but while everyone is hoping for some kind of federal response or action on the legislation, I’m not sure there is an actual avenue. Consider this from constitutional law professor Carissima Mathen:

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1469013986142298114

This is essentially what Justin Trudeau has been saying—he’s opposed to it, but this isn’t the time for the federal government to step in. That time will be when the fight reaches the Supreme Court of Canada, because then they have a legitimate avenue to be an intervenor in the case. Until then, they can say they oppose it—and they have much more so than other parties—but they’re also not making wild symbolic actions that won’t mean anything. And while both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh say they are personally opposed (and Singh has a legitimate dog in this fight), Singh has been somewhat blank on actions a federal government could take, while O’Toole made it clear he wouldn’t interfere in any way because a) provincial jurisdiction, and b) he’s spent his entire leadership trying to suck up to François Legault and out-Bloc the Bloc, for all of the good it did him in the election. And there are demographic considerations that play into the political calculations as well:

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert, lays out the political calculations and options for Trudeau and O’Toole when it comes to challenging Bill 21. Paul Wells adds a boatload of more context to the situation both federally and in Quebec, and gives some sharper thoughts as to why the federal government has vanishingly few levers but nevertheless has options.

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Roundup: Blockbuster jobs numbers—mostly

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Statistics Canada released the Labour Force Survey numbers yesterday, and they were very good—four times as many jobs were created as had been forecast by economists. All of the jobs lost during the pandemic have been recovered and more, and unemployment is very nearly as low as it was before the pandemic began (at which point we were at record lows, around statistical “full employment”), and it was even noted that “core-aged” women had their highest ever employment levels. Things are turning around. Mostly.

There are still a lot of vacancies and there is a mismatch between jobs available and the skills that unemployed workers possess, and while the government is pouring money into training, that takes time. And labour shortages mean wages are likely to continue to increase (and if anyone says they’re stagnant, they are either lying or haven’t read the data). As well, productivity has taken a dive over the last quarter, so that will matter as well. Conservatives are claiming that the increase in jobs is as a result of the majority of pandemic benefits ending, but I’m not sure there is a direct comparison that can be made given the skills mismatches that are in the economy (and which pre-date the pandemic, which was one of the reasons why the Bank of Canada, among others, was making a concerted effort to call for inclusive growth). There is work still to do, but the government is feeling pretty good about the data.

Meanwhile, here are some economists’ takes to consider:

https://twitter.com/stephen_tapp/status/1466766974365622275

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1466771813594140675

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Roundup: The curious case of Will Amos

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It was the end of Question Period when Bloc MP Claude DeBellefeuille raised a point of order, asking the Speaker to remind MPs that there is a dress code, citing that she had seen a male MP in a state of undress – which came across through the interpretation as “shirtless,” but as it turns out was much more – and she managed to do this without naming who it was, or offering too much description other than he apparently has a very good physique, and all with a straight face. The Speaker thanked her for the intervention and gave his usual gentle chiding. Because said MP’s mic was not activated, no one public-facing saw who it was, especially not in the Chamber. MPs who are on Zoom, however, have a different view than the rest of us get, and they could see it.

Not long after, someone leaked a minimally censored screenshot to Brian Lilley, who put it out over Twitter, and in short order it was determined that this was Liberal MP Will Amos, and he was more than shirtless. Amos made an apology, citing that he had just come from “jogging,” and didn’t realize his camera was on – but I know this has raised more questions because MPs need special log-ins and passwords in order to even log into their special Zoom, so why he would have done so before he had changed is…dubious. (It has also been questioned why he would have gone jogging mid-day when there are no showers in his Precinct office building). In any case, Amos has learned a very valuable lesson.

A bigger issue here, however, is the screenshot itself. MPs aren’t allowed to take photos in the Chamber, and it has been determined that screenshots of their Zoom screens follow under the same rules. It would have almost certainly been an MP who took the screenshot in order to leak to Lilley, which is a violation of House rules, and arguably, Amos’ privileges. It’s also likely that it was a Conservative MP who leaked said photo, given that they leaked it to Lilley. (There are additional issues around the non-consensual sharing of such images, and whether they would have been so quick to do so if it was a woman). I suspect that if Amos were to pursue the matter as a breach of his privileges, this could turn into a Thing that the Procedure and House Affairs Committee will likely have to deal with. It should also be yet another wake-up call for MPs about their collective behaviour over the course of this whole Hybrid Parliament, and why they are letting their standards slide. It probably wouldn’t hurt for the Speaker to actually lay down the law for a change rather than the constant gentle chidings that do absolutely nothing to change behaviour, but here we are.

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Roundup: Mark Carney undermines his Bank of Canada successors

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When it was announced that former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney was going to be speaking at this weekend’s Liberal convention, we got the usual amount of tongue-wagging from journalists and pundits who assumed that this would be the time when he announced he was running for the party. The Conservatives put out a nasty press release that considered him the “future leader of the Liberals,” as though this was a replay of the Michael Ignatieff trajectory. Carney didn’t make any announcements of future plans, but he did the next worst thing – he stated that he planned to support the Liberal Party in any way he could.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. I have written about this before, but the Bank of Canada is an institution that needs to be scrupulously independent, much like the Supreme Court of Canada. Monetary policy is not to be trifled with, and the separation between fiscal policy (government and the Department of Finance) from monetary policy (Bank of Canada) is sacrosanct in our system. We had a bona fide political scandal about maintaining this separation decades ago, which was the Coyne Affair, and it led to changes that guaranteed the central bank’s independence. This is why, much like Supreme Court justices, former Bank of Canada governors need to maintain their scrupulous independence after office, because the danger of tainting the institution is too great. Because what are we going to see now? All monetary policy decisions will be viewed through the lens of partisan politics and opportunism – which is toxic to the institution. Opposition MPs will start badgering and hectoring the current Governor when he appears before committee and assuming partisanship in his advice and policy direction – something that we are already getting dangerously close to, as Pierre Poilievre tried to go after the Governor over the decision to buy bonds through the current fiscal crisis (which is perfectly sound expansionary policy at a time when we were seeing deflation instead of the kinds of inflation that the Bank is trying to target). This matters, no matter how many Liberal partisans seem to think that this is something they can just handwave away because he said nice things about them.

If Liberals had a modicum of respect for institutions that they claim they have when those institutions are under attack by the Other Guys, then they wouldn’t keep doing this, and yet it happens time and again. They undermined the Senate, the Governor General, and now the Bank of Canada. They have become an absolute menace to the systems and institutions that are at the heart of how our country operates. This is a problem.

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Roundup: The importance of our distinctions

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There has been no shortage of columns on the future of the Canadian monarchy over the past few days – I’ve even contributed my own – and they are all over the map between “Our current system works” and “Barbados is going republican so why can’t we?” But one of the fundamental problems with many of these pieces is a fundamental lack of basic civics. Like, the most basic, which then gets even more compounded with wrong-headed expectations about what our other political actors should be doing. A huge example is the importance of keeping the ceremonial head of state functions away from the head of government functions, but this is failing to find as much traction these days, and that’s a problem.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372200793546366976

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372202091712819200

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372203588466978820

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1372205703843225607

I would dispute with Philippe a bit here in that people would get fussed about honours being handed out by prime ministers or ministers, particularly if it’s a PM that they disagree with. That’s one of the primary reasons why honours should be with the Queen via the Governor Genera/Lieutenant Governors, because it keeps it out of the hands of politicians and the whims of the government of the day. When you start turning honours over to politicians, bad things happen – recall the gong show that was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals, where MPs and senators were given a number to hand out apiece, and some of them went to certain individuals that would never have been eligible for any other honours in this country.

But of course, as Dan Gardner points out, so much of this stems not only from our poor civics education, but the fact that we are so saturated with American pop culture and politics that so many in this country believe that we are analogous in so many ways. Hell, we have political parties in this country who simply swallow the positions of American politicos and just divide by 10, thinking that’s all it takes, like we’re not separate countries or anything. It’s a huge problem and not enough of us are pushing back against it. The Crown is a big part of what keeps us distinct, and we need to better appreciate that. I can say from personal experience that one of the comments I’ve received most about my book is that people read the chapter on the Crown and say that it finally makes sense to them because they’ve never learned it properly before. We have a problem and we need to solve it before more people think that the solution is to become Americans.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1372205403782676486

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Roundup: Chalk up a couple of own-goals

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Political own-goals can be painful but also hilarious, and we saw two of them happen yesterday. The first was courtesy of the federal Conservatives, whose intended shitpost went awry when they wound up praising the Liberal government. It was obviously deleted within an hour or so, but the damage was done, and the day was spent with Liberals tweeting that the Conservatives told the truth for once. Oops.

The other was in Alberta, where a committee was examining the Energy Department’s budget, and questions arose about the spending on the province’s “war room,” whose job is supposed to be pushing back against the supposed “falsehoods” about their energy sector. You may have heard that last week, said war room decided to do battle against an obscure Netflix film called Bigfoot Family that shows a battle against an oil magnate seeking to blow up an Alaskan wildlife preserve. As a result of the war room’s ham-fisted campaign, the movie made the top ten streamed films, and had pretty much the opposite effect of what was intended. Nevertheless, the province’s energy minister, Sonya Savage, defended the attack against the film, and some UCP MLAs were praising the war room’s ability to make a film reach the top ten to be “pretty awesome.” Erm, they achieved the opposite and had more people watch the film they wanted to censor, guys. It’s so mind-numbingly dumb, and I just cannot even.

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Roundup: Announcing the process to find the next GG

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Yesterday afternoon, the government finally announced the process by which they will be selecting the next governor general, and it is the return of an advisory panel – but not really the old vice-regal appointment committee process that Stephen Harper initiated. For one, minister Dominic LeBlanc co-chairs the committee along with the interim Clerk of the Privy Council, which is a big change because LeBlanc’s inclusion means it is no longer arm’s length and won’t be able to claim that it can avoid the appearance of considerations being made through a political lens. As well, the Canadian Secretary to the Queen is nowhere to be seen in this process, whereas the previous CSQ chaired the previous committee process. (There has been some disagreement with this over Twitter, which is their prerogative but I would not consider the creation of a short list to be “political advice” any more than any other options presented to a government as compiled by the civil service).

What concerns me is the timeline of this process, which the government claims to want to be “expeditious” because they don’t want to keep the Chief Justice in the Administrator position for long, particularly if we are in a hung parliament that could theoretically fall at any time (if you discount that the only people who actually want an election right now are bored pundits). Nevertheless, it took them a month-and-a-half after Payette’s resignation to just announce the committee. The old committee process took an average of six months to conduct a search and compile a short-list for a vice-regal position, which is really not tenable in the current situation.

If anyone wants to read more about the old process and the role of the Canadian Secretary of the Queen in it, it was part of the focus of my chapter in Royal Progress: Canada’s Monarchy in the Age of Disruption, which was the product of presentations made at the last conference by the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada.

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Roundup: Hybrid heckling

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In a case of being careful what one wishes for, it turns out that all of the hopes that hybrid sittings would mean an end to heckling didn’t happen. In fact, MPs are now complaining it’s worse because when someone unmutes to heckle, it creates even more disruption as the camera shifts to them (but of course, this is also a completely selfish thing because it causes even more strain for the interpreters, who are burning out and MPs just don’t care).

What the Hill Times piece missed, because none of their reporters have shown up to QP during the pandemic, is that there are still shenanigans in the Chamber while the exchanges are happening over zoom. Most days, it’s Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen (the most consistent Designated Liberal™ in the Chamber) sniping back and forth with one or two Conservatives opposite – often Pierre Poilievre or Gérard Deltell, and this can be fairly distracting because you can’t hear the exchanges happening on screen. The worst was the Friday where Poilievre decided he was going to have a running commentary on everything going on on-screen, and when I say that he has a singular wit, I mean that he’s the only one who thinks he’s funny. He’s not. It was so bad that I couldn’t hear what was happening on the screen because of the constant running commentary that the Speaker wasn’t cracking down on. And I get it – they’re bored because there’s nothing for them to do but sit there as room meat as the charade carries on over Zoom, but it’s terrible.

Hybrid QP is actually pretty demoralizing. There is no spark or energy to what happens. It’s a lifeless recitation of talking points where they can’t inhabit the same space, and thus there is zero frisson to any of it. It’s unnatural and yet MPs seem to want more of this rather than fighting to have proper sittings in a safe way.

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Roundup: Support on a closure motion

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There appears to be some marginal progress with the government attempting to move legislation in the House of Commons, now that the NDP and the Bloc are starting to realise that something needs to be done. To that end, the Bloc have agreed to support a motion on closure for Bill C-7 on assisted dying – as there is a court deadline and only eight more sitting days between now and then – with tentative NDP support. And the NDP are also starting to realise that the current impasse could give the government ammunition to call an election (even though the only people who want said election are bored pundits), and want other bills to move.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, did pass a motion yesterday to fast-track debate on the Canada-UK trade agreement implementation legislation and MPs sat until midnight as a result, but there will be a battle over the assisted dying bill. From there, it becomes a contest of wills as to which bills are getting prioritised. The government has been trying to pass Bill C-14, which implements measures from the fiscal update back in December, before the budget is brought down (likely next month). And there is another bill to close loopholes in pandemic supports, which the Conservatives have refused to fast-track, while complaining about said loopholes. But the NDP want other bills fast-tracked instead – the creation of a Day of Reconciliation with Indigenous people, the UNDRIP bill, and finally passing the conversion therapy ban bill, which is at third reading whenever it can be brought forward. The government is also trying to get some bills past second reading so that they can get them off to committee, which you’d think opposition parties would relish.

I do find the Conservatives’ complaint that the government keeps introducing bills to be somewhat ludicrous, as though the government doesn’t have a legislative agenda that they laid out, and that they can’t try and walk and chew gum at the same time. The parliamentary calendar is finite, and there are a lot of things that this government needs to be able to do, and the Conservatives have been putting a damper on much of that for weeks now. Now that the Bloc and NDP are looking more willing to play ball with the government, one presumes that we’ll see some time allocation motions upcoming to prioritise more bills, and get them through the process, rather than give the government “more ammunition” for the election nobody actually wants.

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