Tag Archives: The Senate

Roundup: Trudeau takes a knee

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The day began with a federal response to the death of an Indigenous woman in New Brunswick at the hands of police during what was described as a “wellness check.” Mark Miller, the Indigenous Services minister, very bluntly stated that he was “pissed” and outraged and wanted answers as to what happened. He also demanded answers on the video of RCMP in Nunavut using a truck door to knock down an intoxicated man, calling it out as “disgraceful” and “dehumanizing.” And while the prime minister later said that he would be speaking to Cabinet and the RCMP Commissioner about these incidents, Miller was correct in pointing out that there continues to be this pattern of behaviour. (Commissioner Lucki put out a statement later in the day that was long on platitudes).

Trudeau was up next with his daily presser, making some fairly vague mention of those police incidents before moving onto the day’s announcement – a $600 disability payment for those who qualify under the federal disability tax credit (because, again, most disability supports fall under provincial jurisdiction), as well as announcing an accessibility stream for employers to tap into. He also announced that he has put $14 billion on the table for provinces as part of their safe restart plans, to assist with more personal protective equipment for front-line workers and businesses, as well as for child care, support for municipalities, and made mention of the attempts to get that sick pay into place using federal dollars. (That isn’t going well either, as premiers like Doug Ford say that they don’t want the sick leave, but want even more money than what’s on offer – with no strings attached, obviously). During the Q&A, he was asked repeatedly about what he would do about police violence and systemic racism, but he would only offer his usual generalities and no specifics. He also again committed to collecting race-based disaggregated data, but put in a few digs about the quality of data that some of the provinces are providing because that’s who we are relying on to collect it. (Ontario’s health minister says she’s working on it).

Later in the day, as a number of Black Lives Matters protest marches took place peacefully all across the country, Trudeau showed up at the Ottawa protest and took a knee on a couple of occasions while holding a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, flanked by minister Ahmed Hussen and MP Anju Dhillon. (Catherine McKenna was also in the crowd but not with Trudeau). While Hussen said the image of the head of government taking a knee and clapping when people say “Black lives matter” is powerful, it does raise questions about just what is being said. Taking a knee was a form of protest about the government (of the United States, granted), but if Trudeau takes a knee, who is he protesting? Himself? I would charitably say that this is Trudeau showing solidarity, but it does open himself up to criticisms about doing this for the sake of appearance over substance.

Senate selection committee

I did want to mention the CBC story about senators getting pay increases for sitting on the Selection Committee when it’s only met twice. It’s yet another story in the vein of never-ending stories about how the Senate is full of grasping drains on the public purse, but as so many of these stories go, it ignores the mechanics of the situation. Selection committee meetings are meant to formalize the work that caucuses do internally to allocate committee seats – they don’t make those determinations in committee meetings. They do the work beforehand in whatever assignment process the caucus uses, and it can be a fair amount of work and one could make the argument that any kind of work like that deserves additional compensation. But it is work done that even if the actual committee meets very infrequently, that is the tip of the iceberg of work. The only thing that is particularly unusual in this circumstance is that ISG leader Senator Yuen Pau Woo named himself to the Selection Committee. Normally, it was the caucus whips who were on the committee because they usually did the bulk of the work of allocation committee assignments (and arranging for alternates if a senator couldn’t be present for their scheduled committee meeting for whatever the reason). Considering that Woo has been agitating for changes to the Parliament of Canada Act because as a caucus leader who is not leader of either the government or the opposition, he doesn’t get an additional stipend, so perhaps this was his way of trying to earn himself some additional compensation. This being said, Senator Pierre Dalphond, who recently defected from the ISG to the Progressives, took the opportunity to unload on Woo for this in a press release, which makes me wonder just what happened between the two that has apparently caused this drama.

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Roundup: The safety of being in fourth place

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Ah, the safety of being the third and fourth parties in the House of Commons, where nothing you say really matters! Case in point with both Yves-François Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh, who spent yesterday lambasting prime minister Justin Trudeau for not badmouthing Donald Trump in public – Blanchet calling Trudeau “spineless,” and Singh condemning Trudeau’s silence. Because there’s nothing like demanding that the leader of our country insult the thin-skinned and erratic leader of our closest neighbour and trading partner, whom we rely on for economic security and military protection. Yeah, poking that bear will have no consequences whatsoever! One expects this kind of thing from Blanchet, who never has to worry about ever being in power, but for Singh, it seems to further prove that he has no interest in even pretending like he has a shot at forming a government, so he’s going to simply grandstand (badly) and look as unserious as he possibly can. And it’s more than just these kinds of declarations – it’s the demands that pretend that massive systemic change can happen with the snap of a finger, or that the federal government can just reach into provincial jurisdiction willy-nilly and using the incantation Canada Health Act as though it’s a justification or a blueprint for a federal role that accidentally forgot the part where you need to negotiate with the provinces first, and assumes that they’ll gladly sign onto whatever programme is being offered to them with all of the strings attached. Real life doesn’t work like that – but apparently you don’t need to worry about real life when you’re the fourth party.

Shameless self-promotion alert:

I’ll be appearing (virtually) before the Procedure and House Affairs committee this morning to talk about “hybrid” sittings and remote voting for MPs. (Spoiler: I’m against them). The fun starts at 11 AM Eastern.

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Roundup: That 21-second pause

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Sometimes the news out of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily pressers is unexpected, and yesterday was no exception. After first acknowledging that he would be speaking more on the situation with anti-Black racism in the House of Commons later, Trudeau turned to the subject of the government’s efforts to procure more personal protective equipment and the industry retooling to supply it domestically in Canada. But none of this was the actual news. It was during the Q&A that, after a question on Hong Kong (Trudeau: We are very concerned because there are 300,000 Canadian citizens there), he was put on the spot about what Donald Trump is doing in the US, and what Trudeau’s silence in not denouncing it says. And then Trudeau paused. Gathering his thoughts, for twenty-one seconds, there was uncertainty as to what was going on in his mind, when he finally spoke about the “horror and consternation” of what was going on in the US – but he was very diplomatic and not calling out Trump on anything specifically. There is a relationship to manage there, especially during this global pandemic. When asked about Israel, Trudeau reiterated the support for a two-state solution and that he is “concerned” about annexation plans into Palestinian territory and that he told both prime ministers of that country (because there are now two) about it personally. He was also was asked about the MMIW Inquiry report and its finding of “genocide,” and Trudeau prevaricated somewhat, using the term “cultural genocide” before talking about the need to do better and work on the road to reconciliation, but wasn’t going to allow himself to be drawn into using other language.

A short while later in the Commons, Trudeau stood to give his speech on racism, and made sure that he had MP Greg Fergus and minister Ahmed Hussen in the frame behind him – because it’s always about optics. Nevertheless, he stated that he didn’t want to be another white politician lecturing about racism, and said that not being perfect is not an excuse for not doing anything, before he listed actions his government had taken in engaging the Black community, for what it’s worth.

Andrew Scheer gave a far more predictably milquetoast denunciation of racism, name-checking convenient names for his narrative along the way, like Lincoln Alexander and John Ware. But in his denunciation of racism – including anti-Asian racism and anti-Semitism along the way in light of a recently vandalized synagogue, he kept going on about peaceful protests over riots, and the importance of freedom, singling out economic and religious freedom. There was zero awareness from Scheer about structural racism, or self-awareness in how his party’s “tough-on-crime” fetishism contributes to over-policing at the heart of these protests.

Yves-François Blanchet was less equivocal than Scheer, going on about the anthropology of there being no such thing as race and that racism was about othering – but then stated that the Canadian and Quebec governments “weren’t racist” (erm, you do know what Bill 21 in Quebec was all about, right?) before saying that there may be “traces” that create systemic barriers. And then this shifted to a demand to process the claims of certain asylum seekers (because there’s nothing like the reliance on low-wage and untrained labour that is a direct beacon to the systemic barriers that these very minorities face) before citing that peaceful protests were legitimate and violent ones were not.

Jagmeet Singh kept saying that the government needs to make concrete action instead of making “pretty speeches,” and that the prime minister has the power to do things beyond words, demanding things like ending racial profiling, ending the over-policing of Black and Indigenous bodies, subsequent over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people, and the need for race-based data. But as Singh can’t even grandstand properly, when he was up to question Trudeau several minutes later in the special committee, he seemed to indicate that things like ending racial profiling could be done with the snap of a finger, and when he demanded that boil water advisories be lifted in First Nations communities, Trudeau reminded him that they are on schedule for doing just that.

Elizabeth May closed out the speeches by naming as many Black and Indigenous deaths at the hands of police that she could recall, before talking about the cyclical nature of these kinds of denunciations every few months, acknowledging her white privilege, denounced Trump, and called on the government to root out white supremacist groups as a terrorist threat, particularly within police forces in Canada.

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Roundup: Not the provinces’ cash cow

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Everything got off to an earlier start yesterday, beginning with the ministerial presser, during which Marc Miller announced another $650 million being allocated to Indigenous communities for healthcare, which would also include added income supports for those living on-reserve, as well as some $85 million to build new shelters for women on reserves. Marc Garneau also announced that the ban on cruise ship docking in Canadian waters was going to be extended to October 31st, which will impact the economies of these communities, but also limits potential vectors for the pandemic. When pressed about the issue of airline ticket refunds, Garneau reiterated the warning that the sector could fail if they were forced to refund all of the tickets, though later on, prime minister Justin Trudeau indicated that there were talks ongoing.

For his presser, Trudeau started off by talking about his teleconference with the premiers and spoke about sick leave being one of the items on the agenda, and it was later in the Q&A that he said that he was offering for the federal government to assume most of the responsibility for the costs, rather than putting it on business owners, but it sounds like some premiers remain rather cool to the idea. After reiterating the earlier Miller/Garneau announcement, Trudeau took questions, which included mention that he was trying to get premiers to agree to some modified orders at the Canada-US border that would allow family reunification, such as cases like the Canadian woman who was trying to get the American father of her unborn child into the country before she gave birth – but again, there are premiers who are not keen. After the questions, Trudeau then gave an unprompted statement on anti-Black racism as a result of what’s going on in the US – that there is a need to stand up as a society, that there needs to be more respect, and that we have work to do as well in Canada. He called on all Canadians to stand together in solidarity, as they know how deeply people are being affected by what we are seeing on the news.

Something else raised in Trudeau’s Q&A was a letter sent to him by five of his Toronto-area backbenchers, calling on him to lead the country in national standards on long-term care, and to press Ontario for a full public inquiry into what happened with the breakdown in care (which I maintain won’t tell us anything we don’t already know). Trudeau praised them for their efforts, and talked about the ongoing talks with provinces, but two of those MPs were on Power & Politics later in the day, and something that I was also glad to hear was Judy Sgro saying that while they wanted federal leadership, they both were respecting that this is provincial jurisdiction and they also didn’t want the provinces treating the federal government like a “cash cow” when you have premiers like Ford demanding more federal funds to fix their own long-term care mess. My own patience for provinces crying out for federal funds to fix the problems in their own jurisdiction is wearing mighty thin, particularly as most of those provinces have broad taxation powers at their disposal (though some of those provinces have less tax room available to them – Ontario, however, is not one of them). Premiers don’t want to have anything on their books and would rather it come from Ottawa’s, so that they don’t have to look like the bad guy when it comes to paying for their own programmes – never mind that there’s really only one taxpayer in the end.

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Roundup: The opposition kneecaps itself

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In case you were wondering, yes I’m still upset by the move to keep regular Commons sittings suspended in favour of these showboat “hybrid” committee sittings, while the government continues to pat itself on the back for all of the questions they’re letting the opposition ask as they let the substantive work of Parliament slide. And while this particular piece talks about the “image politics” of Trudeau using his Rideau Cottage briefings, there was little discussion about how these somewhat farcical committee meetings – especially now that they have the gloss of the Chamber in this “hybrid” capacity – can let Trudeau keep crowing about how much he respects Parliament because low-information votes (enabled by low-information journalists who seem incapable of determining the difference) see the gloss of the Chamber and think that the Conservatives are just being big babies about it all.

This particular op-ed by professor Lori Turnbull makes some very salient points about the fact that our opposition was already weak – the Conservatives hobbled by their leadership contest (though I would argue that Andrew Scheer’s particular brand of political ineptness certainly made that situation worse), the NDP having lost their national relevance (again, Turnbull is being polite in not calling out Singh’s particular lack of ability), and the Greens’ irrelevance – and yet they’ve managed to kneecap themselves even further by giving away the tools they had at their disposal, like Supply Days and private members’ legislation. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.

Meanwhile, while this is going on, the Senate opposition leader, Senator Don Plett, is calling for the Senate to return and start sitting two days a week to start doing some parliamentary work including weekly questioning of ministers. Plett is calling for in-person sittings with about 40 senators in the Chamber at a time, and proportions are likely under negotiation right now, but it might allow for the Chamber to finally get some of its housekeeping out of the way like getting committees agreed to (now that the Progressives are a viable force again and aren’t at the mercy of ISG leader, Senator Yuen Pau Woo, as he tried to deny them committee seats), and perhaps the Chamber could give those committees their orders of reference so that they can start doing some work. It would be fitting if the Senate could start showing up the Commons, as they are wont to do – provided that it doesn’t simply devolve into endless back-patting, which is a danger with some of the newer members.

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Roundup: Making help available to the provinces

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was earlier than usual yesterday, Trudeau saying it was because of a pending Cabinet meeting, and his itinerary showed an afternoon of calls to other world leaders as the race to secure votes for the UN Security Council seat is in full-swing. Trudeau’s main message of the day was that the federal government was making available trained federal employees capable of making 3600 contact-tracing calls per day, with the ability to deploy an additional 1700 StatsCan interviewers capable of making 20,000 calls per day, should any province require their services as part of the testing and tracing necessary for economies to re-open. (Because obviously, provinces need the federal government to do everything for them these days). Trudeau also mentioned the launch of an online benefits portal, to help people navigate the various financial benefits available to them.

During the Q&A that followed, Trudeau said that the government was trying to find a balance when it comes to the issue of airlines offering vouchers instead of refunds for cancelled travel as they face their own cash crunches and layoffs. When asked about contact-tracing apps, Trudeau did hint that they were trying to find one that would be useable across the country – as Apple and Google have stated that they want a single app to service an entire country (which is hindered by the fact that Alberta has already launched their own app) – but he also gave a reasonable explanation about the fact that they haven’t recommended one to date because they required the app to run in the foreground while people were out, which drains batteries and limits functionality. As for the worrying news out of Hong Kong, Trudeau stated that he was concerned about the situation – and a few hours later, Canada made a joint statement with the UK and Australia to condemn the proposed law that China apparently plans to impose on the region.

For his part, Andrew Scheer held his own presser to present a motion that the Conservatives are proposing for the Commons to debate for Monday’s regular sitting, wherein he wants Parliament to be declared an essential service (where have I heard that before?) and wants regular sittings with a maximum of 50 MPs present where regular business can be discussed. And he’s got a point, were he and his caucus not being complete dicks about it and creating a series of falsehoods to justify their position. We’ll see what happens on Monday, and whether they can come to an agreement before then.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1263901581256384514

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Roundup: A campaign of lies to demand Parliament’s return

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau opened with an announcement of some $75 million in additional support for off-reserve First Nations people, Métis and Inuit, primarily those in urban situations that require additional supports. He also said that provinces – most especially Ontario and Quebec – were being offered additional federal supports for testing and contact tracing as they open up their economies, which was later confirmed in the readout of the first ministers’ teleconference that took place later in the day. During the Q&A, Trudeau also referred to China not understanding the notion of what a rule of law country is after certain comments about the detention and determination of the extradition of Meng Wanzhou (and the BC court will make its determination next Wednesday).

Meanwhile, in the special COVID-19 committee, Conservative MPs engineered outrage by demanding the government answer questions on the Harrington Lake renovations, and when they were called out for the fact that the agreement between all parties was that the special committee’s ambit was on the pandemic, they tried to justify the question by saying that if the government was granted extraordinary spending powers, they needed to ensure that it wasn’t going to these renovations – which is disingenuous bullshit because the spending for those would have been approved of years ago. Nevertheless, they bundled their outrage clips and started putting shitposts around social media to claim that because we don’t have proper parliamentary sittings right now that they weren’t allowed to ask questions that the “government doesn’t approve of” – again, which is disingenuous bullshit. Those questions weren’t in the ambit of the committee, which is why they were objected to. I’m also incredibly pissed off that they are trying to make an issue out of these renovations, calling them “secret renovations” to “mansions for the prime minister’s enjoyment,” which is out of bounds. These are official residences, and every time they get weaponised like this in order to score political points, it means that we can’t maintain them properly. That’s the reason why 24 Sussex was allowed to turn into a crumbling shitpile, and yet here they are, carrying on the same kinds of accusations that led to this situation. They refuse to learn, and we all pay the price for it.

At the same time, I am exasperated by the fact that the Conservatives are now trying to use yet more lies and disingenuous bullshit to bolster their case to bring back regular sittings of a skeletal parliament. Nobody wants these sittings more than me, but the fact that they are trying to drum up fake outrage against Trudeau, claiming he is trying to permanently sideline parliament in favour of daily press conferences (where they falsely claim that he hand-picks the journalists asking questions), is really beyond the pale. But this is what the party has become under Andrew Scheer – a haven of liars who will say anything, no matter how outrageous, in order to try and score points. The fact that people saw through this and kept him from forming government should be a lesson, but no. They are barrelling ahead with this tactic, and it boggles the mind why they think this a winner for them. Poisoning the well hurts everyone in the end – most especially Parliament as an institution, which they suddenly claim they cherish and are trying to defend.

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Roundup: LEEFF details and mask recommendations

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As is becoming the norm on days when there is a special committee sitting, it was the ministers who were out first – specifically Bill Morneau, who was announcing more details for the Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF), and how that was going to work – including more of the attached conditions such as ensuring that there was some kind of beneficial arrangement for the government in the form of warrants, and the possibility of a government observer on boards of directors.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau was up next for his daily presser, wherein he repeated his pleas to employers to use the wage subsidy to re-hire their workers, and for commercial landlords to take advantage of the rent subsidy programme, which would begin taking applications on May 25th. He also said that more assistance for large retailers would be coming.

What made no sense was the Thing that journalists made of the fact that Trudeau has increasingly been seen with a non-medical mask in certain public situations, followed by Dr. Theresa Tam making an “official recommendation” that people wear such masks when physical distancing is difficult. Erm, except she’s been saying that for weeks now, so why this was such a big deal that journalists needed to play up and then dissect the “evolution” of her position is boggling. Nothing has changed – the message has always been that these masks won’t prevent you from contracting the virus, and that you still need to maintain physical distancing and proper hygiene (and more to the fact that these masks can instill a false sense of confidence, and that people are more likely to touch their faces more with them on). But hey, our de facto parental authority figure is telling us this “officially” now, so that obviously has some kind of psychic weight, or something. (Seriously, guys).

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Roundup: Setting the Auditor General up for failure?

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Andrew Scheer was first out of the block this morning for a presser to call for the return of more in-person sittings of Parliament when the current suspension order lifts in a week’s time – which he is correct to do – but his bombast and rhetoric about Trudeau looking to avoid accountability is over the top and unnecessary, and simply alienates the audience he needs to persuade. Score another one for Scheer’s complete inability to read the room. Later in the day, the Procedure and House Affairs committee tabled its report recommending full virtual sittings (over my dead body – and yes, I’ll write more about this next week), but we’re faced with a number of MPs who immediately start to clutch their pearls about travel to Ottawa, as though there weren’t better options available to minimize said travel.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau was up next for his daily presser, and he announced some $450 million in funding for health researchers and others who have been unable to access the existing aid programmes due to technicalities, so it shows that the government has been responsive to some of the complaints that have been lodged about those programmes (well, those that are within federal jurisdiction, anyway). Trudeau also announced that the wage subsidy programme would be extended until August, as well as expanding the eligibility criteria, which is a signal that they are looking to transition more people on to the payrolls of their employers and not the CERB.

Little remarked upon was the fact that the nominee for Auditor General went before committee of the whole in the Senate yesterday, after they completed their debate on the dairy bill, as is customary for the appointment of any new Officer of Parliament. And Senator Peter Harder did make a pretty good intervention on the focus on value-for-money audits that the AG’s office seems to have shifted toward in recent years.

https://twitter.com/SenHarder/status/1261429867410751488

This having been said, I find myself irritated by this concern that MPs are apparently setting up the new AG for failure because her office is currently “underfunded.” Why? Because they created these conditions, and are trying to now blame the government for them. There have been concerns about the office’s resources, which are fair, and some of that blame has to lie with the previous AG, Michael Ferguson, who voluntarily cut his budget and put off needed IT overhauls in order to please the Harper government and its deficit reduction plans. The current government increased the funding, but apparently that’s not enough. But in the past few months, the current crop of MPs have passed a motion in the Commons to order the AG to audit the federal infrastructure programme in a politically motivated move to try and embarrass the government (when it was the slow response of provincial governments that has been holding up federal dollars going out the door), and then on the eve of the pandemic and the suspension of Parliament, MPs ordered the auditor general to track all of that spending rather than doing their jobs and checking the money before it goes out the door, like they’re supposed to. And now they want to complain that the Auditor General doesn’t have enough money to do the audits that he was working on before this happened? Seriously? Does nobody have any self-awareness? Add to that, this notion that the office needs an apolitical means of funding its budget so that governments can’t “politicize” the resourcing is technocratic bullshit that has no place in our system. Officers of Parliament have already been given way too much power and authority without any accountability for it, and now we want to turn over the ability for them to get any of the resources that they demand, when they already have no accountability? Seriously? Does nobody actually listen to themselves? Would that we could get some MPs who know their own jobs and do them. It would be embarrassing if they had any sense of shame.

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Roundup: Pearl-clutching over fraud

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While he didn’t show up at the “virtual” special committee yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless held his daily presser, during which he announced that they were creating a $470 million programme to support fish harvesters, which would include grants for those businesses who needed a bridge, and EI application rules for those who would have to miss the season because it wasn’t safe. As well, there was another $100 million for an agriculture and food solutions programme through Farm Credit Canada. Trudeau also noted the upcoming long weekend, and said that as of June 1st, some national parks and historical sites would be re-opened to the public – provided the province they are in would allow it – and that there were new restrictions for pleasure craft, with the intention that they not be allowed to head to places where they could infect local populations, particularly in the North.

Meanwhile, the breathless pearl-clutching fraudulent CERB claimants continues unabated, as the National Post procured yet another government documents that allegedly says to grant it even to people who have quit their jobs or been fired with cause, which shouldn’t be allowed. But as Trudeau stated under questions after his presser, the goal was to ensure rapid delivery for the 99 percent of people who were claiming this benefit for legitimate reasons, and that if they had insisted on more robust checks at the beginning of the process, the money still wouldn’t be flowing. This of course hasn’t stopped some of the usual suspects from tweeting bullshit about how the programme is being abused, with zero evidence and using examples that could not actually work. But let’s create a moral panic about it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1260960640480407552

We also had some observers fanning themselves and reaching for their fainting couches when Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who chairs the finance committee, remarked to Bill Morneau at yesterday’s finance committee meeting, that he wanted a stronger statement from the government that they were going to deal with fraudulent cases. Imagine – an experienced backbencher taking a tough tone with his own party in government! Suffice to say, the message from this government has consistently been that if there is misconduct, it will be caught and dealt with at the appropriate time (and now is not that time). I’m not sure how much more explicit they can actually get, but maybe that’s just me.

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