Tag Archives: The Senate

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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Roundup: A bridge loan, not a bailout

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It was a bit of a staggered rollout of the message of the day, starting with Bill Morneau and Navdeep Bains in Toronto to announce the creation of the Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF), which is designed to give large employers temporary bridge financing if they can’t get it by other means, but that comes with a great many strings attached, such as ensuring that jobs and collective agreements are maintained, that climate change plans are not affected, and that there are limits to executive compensation, share buybacks, dividends, and on top of that, these companies will need to disclose their financial structures to ensure that they’re not avoiding taxes with offshore banks or shelters.

Justin Trudeau was up shortly thereafter for his daily presser, noting the start of National Nursing Week, before he spoke about enhanced measures for medium-sized businesses, and then reiterated the messages around the LEEFF, citing that these were bridge loans and not bail-outs, and that the government was only to be a lender of last resort. When asked whether this was some kind of attack on oil companies with the focus on environmental plans, Trudeau insisted that many of them had net-zero-by-2050 plans, so this condition should not have been more onerous on them – but that didn’t stop the usual suspects from complaining that this wasn’t the kind of help that the energy sector was looking for.

During the ministerial presser, Chrystia Freeland said that they working with the US to deal with the inevitable increase in cross-border traffic as economies started re-opening, as premiers express reservations around the possibility of visitors once again coming to Canada.

Meanwhile, here’s economist Kevin Milligan on the path of the labour market and the economy, that’s worth thinking about.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1259641163989970945

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Roundup: Possibly a criminal leak

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The day got off to a very brow-raising start when someone – meaning almost certainly a minister’s office – leaked StatsCan jobs data ahead of its official release to soften the narrative around it, given that the predicted number of job losses were twice as many as what wound up being reported. This is a big deal – it’s market-moving information that should have criminal consequences for leaking, and yet here we are. And what is particularly galling about this is that I have my suspicions about which minister’s office leaked the information, and it’s one that has been showing a particular pattern of impunity, which is a very bad sign for how this government works – and not to mention how it communicates. Because they can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, someone took it upon themselves to leak sacrosanct data (which, it needs to be reiterated, should not and cannot happen in a gods damned G7 country) in order to spin the narrative. Heads should roll for this.

And then prime minister Justin Trudeau had his daily presser, acknowledging the jobs numbers before he announced that the government would be extending the wage subsidy beyond June in order to keep the (eventual) economic recovery strong, while also announcing that Navdeep Bains would be leading a new industry strategy council. During the Q&A, Trudeau also had to face questions about why nobody can say “Taiwan” when it comes to thanking them for donations of personal protective equipment, so Trudeau did just that, so I guess certain MPs will need to find something else to have a meltdown over next week.

And for the 75th anniversary of VE Day yesterday, the Queen made a televised address in the footsteps of her father.

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Roundup: Virtual aggression at committee

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau began his daily presser a little earlier than usual, owing to the fact that the Commons’ Special Committee on COVID-19 was meeting at noon, and today, the announcement was for $252 million in aid for food producers and the agri-food sector – which he assured us was a “first step,” as the industry representatives have been asking for some $2.6 billion in aid. Some of this aid was for beef and hog producers to keep their animals longer, given that meat processing plants have faced outbreaks and been shut down; other funds were for the government to buy stocks of produce that is facing the risk of expiring, in the hopes that it can be distributed elsewhere. During the Q&A, when asked about news that there were eyewitnesses to the crash of the Canadian Forces Cyclone helicopter off the coast of Greece, Trudeau responded that the military has their protocols for notification that he respected.

And then there was the “virtual” Special Committee meeting, which was a decidedly less friendly tone than it had been last week. MPs asking questions were constantly interrupting ministers because they felt they were going too long (because talking points need to be recited), some MPs had signs up in their backgrounds which they wouldn’t have been able to get away with in a regular Commons sitting or committee meeting, and some MPs felt the need to lob personal insults as part of their questions – and the Chair said nothing of it. In fact, had they done so during QP, the other MPs in the chamber would have raised hell, and the Speaker would have been obliged to say something, if only a warning about inflammatory language. But because it’s “virtual” and there can be no heckling, some MPs are feeling emboldened. I suspect it’s also the kind of emboldened attitude that people have when they abuse customer service people over the phone because they don’t have to look them in the eye, and this goes directly to my warnings about the social contagion that will accompany any attempts to solidify “virtual sittings” of Parliament.

The other thing of note was that MPs were asking questions about things that were outside the ambit of the committee, which is supposed to be about the pandemic response. Questions about the assault rifle ban are not about pandemic response, and those should have been ruled out of order. As well, the thing that kept getting asked repeatedly during the hearing was the notion that the government should deny aid to companies who use legal tax havens, because they are “immoral.” It’s a bit galling for MPs to be calling on the government to deny aid to people who work for those companies, particularly since they are not engaging in illegal behaviour. The minister, Diane Lebouthillier, kept repeating that the CRA was investigating anyone using illegal tax avoidance, but wouldn’t call out that what was being demanded was problematic. The other reason why those demands are problematic is they keep saying “Demark did it!” without offering any kind of analysis of how Denmark’s tax system compares to Canada’s, particularly where tax havens are concerned. When Denmark introduced their 75 percent wage subsidy and people kept pointing to it, they ignored the list of caveats that accompanied it, which was vital context. But hey, parties need soundbites and clips for their social media, even now.

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Roundup: Sorrow and motions

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As the various party leaders lined up, one after another, to give their positions before the microphones on yesterday’s return of the House of Commons, prime minister Justin Trudeau devoted his presser to the mass-shooting in Nova Scotia and the loss of an RCMP constable, including a direct address to children as part of his speech. More controversially, Trudeau made a plea to media not to name the killer and give him the “gift of infamy,” which became the subject of many a column the rest of the day. During the Q&A, he insisted he didn’t want to fight about the return of the Commons, while also saying that the government was not backing away from its plans to enact further gun control measures.

Not far away, the Commons resumed its sitting with a skeleton complement, kicking off with Green MP Paul Manly immediately launching a point of privilege to complain that their health and safety was being jeopardized by the sitting, and it impacted on the ability of MPs who faced travel restrictions to participate. (Manly’s point was later rejected by the Speaker). After a very surreal QP, and more speeches on the Nova Scotia shooting, the vote was held and it was decided that there would be in-person sittings on Wednesdays starting next week, with planned 90-minute “virtual” sittings on Tuesdays and Thursdays – you know, assuming that they can actually get them up and running. Also, those sessions would not be regular sittings of the Commons, but would qualify as “special committee” sessions that would be devoted to two-and-a-quarter-hour-long sessions to ask questions of the government.

Throughout this whole debate, I keep shaking my head at the fact that they insist that they don’t want MPs to keep travelling, or how MPs from regions with travel restrictions can’t participate, but nobody can apparently fathom that MPs could travel to Ottawa, and then *gasp* stay there! You know, like they have housing allowances and per diems that facilitate it. This insistence on once-per-week sittings means that there will be all kinds of unnecessary travel, travel that MPs from those regions can’t participate in (or at least not easily), and it needlessly complicates this whole affair when we could have more easily kept a skeleton parliament with these MPs who stay in Ottawa present, and just ensured that you had a representative sampling that includes MPs from those otherwise hard-to-travel-to-and-from regions so they don’t have to travel back-and-forth. It’s revolutionary, I know. None of this is rocket science, and yes, it involves some sacrifice on the part of these MPs, but no worse than some of our essential healthcare workers who also can’t see their families during this crisis.

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Roundup: Framing models as data

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau started off by saying that the government had signed an agreement with Amazon Canada – and not Canada Post – to manage the distribution of personal protective equipment to the provinces and territories when it is received by the federal government, but one imagines that this also involves warehousing and logistics than just simply delivery. He also announced $100 million being diverted to help meet food insecurity needs, through Food Banks Canada, as well as a variety of other breakfast clubs and other food organizations. He also mentioned his teleconference with the other premiers and their devotion to data sharing and projections, and that they were working to verify the latest figures that were being put online. During the Q&A, he confirmed that Canadian Forces – in the form of Rangers – have been dispatched to the Nunavik region of Northern Quebec, and addressed the news that the American president had ordered 3M to stop sending N95 masks to Canada and other Latin American countries (3M’s president pushed back citing humanitarian concerns and retaliation), and Trudeau stated that he has warned the Americans not to block access to needed supplies – particularly as Canada has many supplies and healthcare workers the Americans need, such as the 1000 nurses who live in Windsor but work in Detroit. It does highlight the need for more domestic production of these masks as competition for procurement gets more intense globally.

And then, Ontario released its modelling of some potential COVID-19 morbidity scenarios in the province, and the media went crazy. Despite the fact that this modelling is not data and that they are mere possible scenarios that are used for planning purposes, it was framed as “data” and in the language of how many people “will die,” as though this was mathematical certainty (though a handful said “could,” as though it were any better). And lo, all of the headlines used both this framing and sensationalism, they buried the new restrictions that are being imposed in Ontario as a result. And when some of the doctors that were being interviewed about these projections, and those doctors pushed back that this wasn’t data, self-righteous journalists threw tantrums about how this was information the public had a right to know, and so on.

But here’s the thing – part of this is a transparent attempt by Doug Ford to justify his further crackdowns, which I get. (Thread from Scott Reid here for context). But at the same time, there is no nuance to reporting of these models, they are incorrectly framed, and it’s throwing a lot of big numbers and timeframes out there without sufficient context. It’s not only disaster porn, but I fear that it will not actually have the desired effect of scaring people into compliance with lockdown measures. Instead, I am reminded of the aphorism that a single death is a tragedy, but a thousand deaths is a statistic – and numbers like these (the wild range of 3000 to 15,000) will have the real possibility of becoming a statistic in people’s minds, which may do more to undermine the whole reason why this modelling was released in the first place. And that worries me more than anything else.

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Roundup: Supplies, spin, and rent

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was on the theme of medical supplies – signing agreements with three major medical suppliers in the country, MOUs signed with five other companies, and some 3000 other companies who have volunteered to help the government with those supplies in whatever way they can. Trudeau also noted that they have allocated an additional $2 billion for new personal protective equipment, largely by way of bulk-purchasing, and that more supplies would be arriving within days. As well, the government is tasking its next-generation manufacturing supercluster with scaling-up these kinds of producers to meet the domestic and global demand. Why this became a somewhat fraught issue is because there are places in the country where PPEs are being rationed, and Quebec stating that they were days away from running out – though Trudeau said that in some cases, it may be the medical providers who were rationing because they were trying to preserve supplies for an anticipated surge of cases.

[Here is another Q&A with infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, and a discussion on the current debate about masks.]

Meanwhile, the National Post hears from a bunch of government insiders who claim that the attempt to get the power of taxation without parliamentary approval was about trying to hold leverage of the big banks who have been reluctant to loosen lending requirements, which is an explanation that makes absolutely no sense, and makes me again repeat that there appears to be a cadre of jackasses in Morneau’s office who have been responsible for many of this government’s missteps and woes, and we shouldn’t trust them.

And while I’m on the subject of jackasses, I spent much of yesterday on the Twitter Machine trying to remind people that rent is provincial jurisdiction, so constantly hounding the federal government is a waste of time. This was met with numerous people who insisted that the federal government could invoke the Emergencies Act to claim that power. The mind boggles. Why in the hell would the federal government invoke the tool of last resort to intrude into landlord/tenant legislation when the provinces are perfectly capable of doing so on their own. It makes zero sense. Add to that the people crying out that the federal government should immediately give money to renters, as though there were a mechanism to do so. It’s taking the CRA three weeks to retool their systems to deliver the CERB, which is a pretty breakneck speed to ensure that the system can do what’s being asked of it and hopefully not fail doing it (because their computers are not magic, and you can’t just type “give everyone $2000” and expect it to happen. It’s impossible). And no, there is no analogous funding arrangement to healthcare or post-secondary, as others were trying to claim – those are funding envelopes to provincial governments that come with agreements. They don’t go to individuals, and they are not spending in provincial jurisdiction over the objection of any province. The number of people who seem to think otherwise is astounding.

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Roundup: Taking on domestic flights

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For his Saturday presser, Trudeau went tie-less, because it’s the weekend. He mostly offered reassurances, but did say that formal orders were coming to keep symptomatic people from domestic flights and trains – which the federal government has authority over – but long-distance busses were provincial responsibility, so look there. He also mentioned – which was followed up by the Chief Public Health Officer minutes later in her own briefing – that there were signs that physical distancing was starting to bend the curve in BC, but as Dr. Theresa Tam reiterated, that means that now is the time to double down, not get lax.

Meanwhile, here’s economist Kevin Milligan reminding you of everything announced this week and how to access it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1243954419772715008

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Roundup: Chartering special flights

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For his Sunday presser, Justin Trudeau announced formally that the House of Commons was coming back on Tuesday afternoon to pass more emergency legislation, and that Canadian airlines were standing by to help with repatriation efforts. He also made it clear that the existing aid package was just a first step, and that they were actively considering what the next ones would be. He also made a direct address to children in the country, thanking them for their patience with all of this. In the subsequent ministerial presser, Patty Hajdu said that they were hoping for better coordination with provinces this week as to what measures they are taking, so that there will be less of a patchwork across the country. She’s also looking into criminal penalties for travellers who don’t self-isolate, so that could be coming in the next few days.

As for the return of Parliament, the agreement is that about 32 MPs are coming back – which is far more than there should be, given that quorum is 20 – and that they planned to have about four-and-a-half hours of debate on the legislation, and that while there wouldn’t be a formal Question Period, there was going to be time for MPs to ask questions of the ministers present. What we learned later in the day was that the government was sending out special planes to pick up Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen and Don Plett, which I find highly dubious. There is no reason why they need to be in Ottawa if they weren’t there already (and I find Scheer’s excuse that he went to Regina for March Break to be problematic because he knew they were suspending Parliament before he left and knew full well that they would need to recall it, which is why that was part of the agreement). Now, if they decide they’re going to stay in Ottawa for the duration, then okay, sure, I’ll grudgingly give them a pass, but if they plan on having the government fly them back home after the single day’s sitting, then I’m sorry, but it’s completely irresponsible, not only because it’s modelling poor behaviour when people are being told to stay home unless it’s absolutely necessary for them to be out (and while I will argue that it is necessary for a Skeleton Parliament to be in place, it is not necessary that the Opposition Leader and House Leader be present when others can fill those duties temporarily), it’s also a huge waste of resources – particularly considering that Scheer has made a big deal of how much the current government is “wasteful,” with special websites and social media shitposts about. It’ll be even more galling if he has the government pay for Scheer’s wife and children to be returned to Stornaway with him, given his own particular spending scandal with party funds – particularly if the consideration for having needing Scheer and Bergen there to begin with is simply for the sake of having them be on camera.

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1241809854131568643

Most senators seem to be taking this more seriously, both in terms of restricting attendance to those within driving distance (Don Plett excepted), but also that they are holding teleconferences with their members to ensure that they fully discuss the legislation so that they can raise any particular concerns if they have them. Would that certain MPs were a bit more responsible in that regard.

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