Tag Archives: The Senate

Roundup: Rushing a resurrected bill

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The government made good on their promise yesterday to re-introduce Rona Ambrose’s bill on sexual assault training for judges, and to their credit, they tabled an amended bill that does take into account most of the criticisms of the previous version of the bill that likely would have rendered it unconstitutional because it interfered with judicial independence in pretty much every respect. (See my story here). Not that you’d know it from some of the reporting – the CBC in particular has been absolutely allergic in looking into what the objections to the bill were, and why they made it unworkable and unconstitutional, preferring to blame the Senate as being an “old boys’ club” rather than objecting to an unworkable and unconstitutional bill – you know, like they’re supposed to.

But despite every party supporting the bill, that didn’t stop them from getting cute with it. The Conservatives, for example, suggested in Question Period that the government amend the bill so that it also includes training for Parole Board members – which is out of step for the language in the bill. Because, seriously, the Canadian Judicial Council is not going to provide that training, as the bill stipulates that they do for judges. And then Jagmeet Singh decided he too was going to be cute, after QP, and move that the House vote to pass the bill at all stages in one fell swoop, with no scrutiny. The Conservatives blocked that (possibly to put on a show about their floated notion about Parole Board officers), but seriously, Singh was completely offside in moving the motion in the first place.

The previous version of the bill was fatally flawed, but it passed the House of Commons unanimously because it hadn’t been properly studied. They sent it to the Status of Women committee, which has no expertise in the legal system and how it operates, and they focused on survivor-based training, which actually turns out to be problematic because it could potentially bias the training, particularly when it comes to the presumption of innocence before the law. It wasn’t until the bill reached the Senate that its flaws were actually discussed, but hey, it sounded like a good idea so all MPs passed it without thinking. Let me be clear – that’s a terrible way to pass laws, and it’s MPs abandoning their roles. As a former criminal defence lawyer, you would think that Singh might appreciate the problems inherent in the bill, particularly when it comes to bias and judicial independence – the latter of which I challenged him on in a scrum after QP – and he was completely oblivious to it, mouthing platitudes about sexual assault survivors. That’s not how Parliament is supposed to work. It would be great if our opposition parties could do their jobs, but it increasingly feels like it’s too much to ask. (The same goes for you, CBC).

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Roundup: Ginned up outrage over accounting rules

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My tolerance for ginned-up outrage is mighty thin, and it was exceeded yesterday as a certain media outlet ran a completely bullshit story about how in the last fiscal year, $105 million of Veterans Affairs’ budget went unspent and was returned to the consolidated revenue fund rather than simply kept in the department for the following year as the government “promised” to do following a completely inane NDP Supply Day motion a year previous. The story is one hundred percent not worth anyone’s time, and we have a media outlet who has decided to waste precious resources into putting a disingenuous framing mechanism around an NDP press release and calling it accountability.

To be clear: the whole premise of this “outrage” is the fact that the NDP have deliberately ignored how accounting and budgeting rules work in order to dial up a fake controversy for the sake of scoring outrage points in the media. The unspent money from Veterans Affairs is because they’re a demand-based department – they estimate how much they’ll need to deliver services to veterans every year, and if the funds don’t all get spent, then the law states that money goes back to general revenue, and reallocated in the following year’s budget. This does not mean there is deliberate under-spending – it means that they overestimated what the demand for services would be in an abundance of caution. And yes, there are backlogs in the department, but when you have capacity issues because they can’t hire enough qualified staff at the drop of a hat (after the previous government let hundreds of them go), you can’t just throw that “leftover” money at that problem. Pretending that it works otherwise is frankly dishonest.

One of the journalists at said outlet took exception to my calling out the disingenuous framing and insisted that the government shouldn’t have promised not to keep the funds in the department if they didn’t intend to keep the promise – and I would almost accept that as a valid argument except for the whole promise in and of itself was the result of shenanigans. The NDP’s whole Supply Day motion last year was illusory outrage, and government explained over and over how accounting rules and demand-based departments work, but if they voted against the (non-binding) motion, they would be voting against veterans and it would be bad optics. The path of least resistance is to vote for it and just keep following the rules. Because what is the alternative – vote for it, and then bring in new legislation to contort the accounting rules for this one-off bit of faux outrage over a non-scandal that is the direct result of a party that deliberately misstated how said accounting rules work in order to try to generate headlines? How is that a productive use of anyone’s time or energy? It would be great if we could get certain media outlets to engage in some critical thinking and not fall for this kind of transparent spin, and then gin it up as though it were a real scandal. We all have better things to do.

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Roundup: Congeniality by way of TV

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Maclean’s has a profile of the TVO series Political Blind Date, which pits politicians from rival parties – sometimes from the same level of government, sometimes from different provinces – in situations that help them understand each other’s viewpoints and helps to break down the partisanship barriers. And this is great – but what it was missing was any particular context as to why partisanship has grown to such toxic levels in the first place, and that has a lot to do with parliaments and legislatures rejigging their rules to be more “family friendly.”

Until the early 1990s, parliament used to hold evening sittings three nights a week. At six o’clock, the House would adjourn, and everyone would head upstairs to the Parliamentary Restaurant (aided by the fact that there was a dearth of restaurant options in the area, and liquor laws were such that you bought a bottle of booze that was kept behind the bar in the restaurant with your name on it). MPs would eat together, drink together, get to know one another across party lines, and it developed a sense of congeniality, and at eight o’clock, they’d head back to the Chamber and debate for a couple of more hours. The arrival of the Reform Party and the move to end evening sittings to be “family friendly” ended the congeniality and cross-party opportunities to just be parliamentarians together. With no impetus to break bread together, caucuses grew insular, and it became easier to treat other parties as the enemy rather than just having opposing points of view. Now, it’s rare that cross-party friendships occur unless there is committee travel that helps MPs bond, but that’s not very often. It’s disappointing that we are now relying on a TV show to build these relationships which used to be part and parcel of being an MP.

What’s particularly sad is that this kind of thing is now infecting the Senate, which used to be a far less partisan place than the House of Commons, and for which many senators have formed close and long-lasting friendships across the aisle. They still have more of the convivial culture that the Commons did, but that too is fading as the new Independents, eager to burn things down and declare anyone with partisan affiliation to be tainted and in some cases the enemy (particularly the Conservatives), it is polarizing the Chamber, and souring the mood therein. For a move that was supposed to lessen partisanship, Trudeau’s brilliant attempt to reform the Senate is doing the opposite – just one more unintended consequence that nobody bothered to consider, and all Canadians suffer as a result.

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Roundup: A cover-up leads to an admission

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The day was largely spent fretting over the state of the investigation into downed flight PS752 – particularly given the news that Iranian officials had already bulldozed the site before international investigators could arrive, ensuring a cover-up was underway. The Ukrainian government was insisting to the Iranians that Canadians be involved, and we got word that a mere two visas had been issued for Canadian consular officials so far (though François-Philippe Champagne did say that he was expecting more to be approved soon). Champagne later announced the creation of an international working group, comprised of the countries whose citizens were all killed aboard the flight, to press Iran for answers, while in the back channels, there is talk that Canadian officials are telling the Americans that they should have been informed of their plans to kill the Iranian general, given that we’re coalition partners. Amidst all of this, mourning continued across the country. (The National Post compiles profiles of the victims here).

And then, something surprising happened – Iranian officials, including their president, admitted publicly that it was indeed one of their missiles that shot down the aircraft accidentally, and that it was human error that they plan to prosecute those responsible, as well as profound apologies and expressions of regret (while taking a swipe at American “adventurism” in the process). It was a marked change of tone after days of denial, insisting that it was “impossible” that they could have shot it down, and what looked to be a cover-up in the making. One suspects that this will have a profound shift in the narrative in the days ahead, and that Iran will be prepared to pay some kind of compensation, just as what happened in 1988 when the Americans admitted they accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner.

Meanwhile, Adnan R. Khan walks through how the accidental missile strike could have happened, while Colby Cosh offers more parallels and reminders to the 1988 incident of the Americans shooting down the Iranian plane then, how it is remembered differently in the West than it is in Iran, and how our amnesia to is affects the reactions – particularly from those who are howling about “murder” and demanding the prime minister be angry about it. As if to prove the point, Heather Scoffield demands some righteous indignation from Trudeau, and for some of that to be directed to Trump for what his recklessness has cost us – as though that would help the situation or not cause even more problems for Canada down the road.

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Roundup: Testing names in the field

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Over the weekend, I got a call from a public opinion research company who was doing a survey on the Conservative leadership race. While many of the questions were fairly loaded or leading when it came to things like carbon pricing, and there were a lot of questions relating to just how progressive one thinks a future Conservative leader should be, I was most fascinated by the testing about potential candidates. There was an open-ended opportunity to provide a name that one might think could entice voters to switch to the Conservative party, followed by a list of names where one was invited to rank how much it would make you switch your vote for the Conservatives. That list: Gerard Deltell, former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, Jean Charest, Peter MacKay, Rona Ambrose, Lisa Raitt, Pierre Poilievre, Erin O’Toole, and Christy Clark. The inclusion of Carney is a head-scratcher considering that there was a Big Deal a few years ago about his apparently sniffing around the Liberals about a possible future leadership bid, while the fact that Michael Chong was left out despite his previous leadership run and the fact that he has stated he is seriously considering another go of it. So anyway, make of the list what you will, but those are the names that someone is testing.

Meanwhile, the first “official” declared candidate is Bryan Brulotte, a one-time Progressive Conservative staffer and failed candidate, who is pitching a negative income tax and “luxury tax” in lieu of a carbon price. Pierre Poilievre is also planning to announce his candidacy today, with John Baird chairing his campaign – though one wonders if that will conflict with his post-mortem report on how the party botched the election.

On that note, here’s Jess Morgan’s argument why he would be the absolute worst thing, while Paul Wells sizes up what we know of the race to date, and what kinds of choices the party faces in the process.

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Roundup: Mandate letters and the minister for everything

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Yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau released the mandate letters for his ministers, giving us a glimpse as to what their marching orders will be (which is still a fairly novel transparency and accountability measure in this country, it needs to be said). The National Post counted up some 288 projects listed in those mandates, some of them holdovers from the previous parliament (which isn’t surprising considering that  many of them were fairly ambitious and transformational and were not achievable within four years). But there were also a number of things missing from several of those letters that should have been dealt with – particularly on the justice file.

As with the previous parliament, each of the letters has an identical preamble, advising the ministers to “govern in a positive, open and collaborative way,” because it’s a hung parliament and all of that. In terms of specific points in the letters, there are issues like discussions with province over pharmacare, shortening wait times for airport screenings, tax cuts for green tech companies, reforming the medical assistance in dying laws, advancing international efforts to ban “killer robots,” procuring new fighter jets and modernizing NORAD. One of the more alarming mentions was in Bill Morneau’s letter, advising him to review and possibly modify the financial stress test applied to mortgages, which is a Very Bad Thing, and means that the real estate lobby is winning its air war over the good common sense of the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. (Seriously – there is no excuse for encouraging bad debt).

And then there is Chrystia Freeland’s letter, which is expansive and makes her in essence a “minister of everything” who is assigned to basically work with a number of other ministers to advance their priorities, whether it’s carbon pricing, getting resources to market, breaking down internal trade barriers, facilitating pharmacare talks, working on pan-Canadian childcare, gun control, regional economic development agencies, and advancing reconciliation. This leaves questions as to what exactly Trudeau will be doing while Freeland does all the work – leaving her to either take the fall while Trudeau gets to take the credit. This having been said, it’s just as likely that she wanted a full plate of projects rather than simply spending her weeks heading to provincial capitals to meet with premiers once the New NAFTA is ratified, but she certainly has her work cut out for her, ensuring that enough of these promises are fulfilled before the inevitable early election call that comes in a hung parliament.

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Roundup: Immutable committee math

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In a move that is possibly quite disappointing, the Liberals got unanimous consent yesterday to suspend the sections of the Standing Orders governing the powers of parliamentary secretaries – which could be an issue if they plan to put them back on committees with voting powers and the ability to move motions and so on. Some of you may recall that when this was the standard practice during the Conservative era, these committees simply became branch plants of the ministers’ offices, and everything was stage-managed within an inch of their lives.

However.

I also have it on good authority that this may not be exactly as it seems. Part of the problem is that there is a shortage of warm bodies in the Liberal ranks to fill the committees, particularly if you have a Cabinet of 37 out of 157 seats, and what looks to be a prospective parliamentary secretary list of at least 46 (given that Economic Development with have separate parliamentary secretaries for each regional economic development agency). Then, subtract the Speaker and the Assistant Deputy Speaker, who can’t sit on committees, and that leaves them with 72 MPs (maybe less – a couple may also remain assigned to NSICOP, which pulled them from other committees in the previous parliament) to distribute across 27 standing and joint committees, where the parliamentary math in the current hung parliament would see four Liberal MPs per committee. Quite simply, they don’t have enough.

What I’ve been told by my sources is that what they may wind up doing is allowing parliamentary secretaries to sit as regular committee members on committees that aren’t those aligned with their minister, so that they would essentially be pulling double (or possibly triple) duty, especially if they remain on the committees aligned with their minister in a non-voting capacity. It’s not pretty, but it may be what winds up being necessary if they intend to live up to their promise to keep parliamentary secretaries from being voting members of their interested committees. (Are we ready to start having a discussion about having a more reasonable number of MPs for a country of our size? Because seriously, not having enough bodies is an actual problem that has consequences for the efficacy of the institution).

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Roundup: A promise weaselled out on

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A very important bill has been introduced in the Senate, that has been attempted on more than a few occasions now, and it’s a sign of a promise that the Liberals weaselled out on in the past. The bill? To restore Parliament’s ability to control government borrowing by way of votes – you know, like Parliament is supposed to do as part of their job of holding government to account by means of controlling the public purse. You see, back in the Harper era, they hid the change in one of their massive omnibus budget bills that stripped Parliament of the ability to vote on new borrowing, and instead turned it over to Cabinet. Senators caught it too late, and the bill passed, and whoops, no more ability for Parliament to hold government to account for it any longer. Senator Wilfred Moore introduced a bill to revert this practice on a couple of occasions, and Senator Joseph Day carried on with it in the previous Parliament, and has just reintroduced it in this one.

https://twitter.com/SenDayNB/status/1204502292076154880

The Liberals were all in favour of this back when they were in opposition, and made a big show about promising to restore this to Parliament – and then they weaselled out on it. What they did instead was introduced a debt ceiling of $1.168 trillion, after which Parliament would need to vote to extend it, and said that Cabinet only needed to report to Parliament every three years about the money it has borrowed, starting in 2020. Let me reiterate – they weaselled out of this promise, and at least there are senators who are alive to why this is important for Parliament.

These are principles that go back to Runnymede, and the Magna Carta in 1215, and made more explicit in 1688 when the king wasn’t able to borrow money without Parliament’s consent. The Conservatives broke this important principle of Parliament for their convenience. That the Liberals have refused to act on their promise to restore it is a black mark against them.

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Roundup: Contemplating compromised committees

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As the summoning of the new Parliament draws ever closer, we’re seeing more stories about the procedural intricacies of the first few sitting days, and the coming confidence vote on or before the 10th because of the Supply cycle and the need to pass the Supplementary Estimates before that date. Fair enough – those can be expected to pass pretty handily because nobody is going to want to head right back to the polls (and I wouldn’t expect the Governor General to grant an immediate election either – the developing convention is waiting at least six months, providing there is another viable governing party, though that would be the real trick given the current seat maths).

This all having been said, there was something in this interview with Pablo Rodriguez, the new Government House Leader, which sticks in my craw, and that’s the talk about possibly undoing the rule changes that prevent parliamentary secretaries from being voting members on Commons committees, and I. Just. Cannot. Even.

While the chances of this happening are fairly slim, given that it would require opposition support and they are unlikely to get it, it’s still crazy-making. This reflex to go super political in a hung parliament is understandable but deeply frustrating because it undermines the whole raison d’être of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account, and committees are one very big piece of the accountability puzzle. Parliamentary secretaries should have no business even being near committees because it undermines their independence. It’s bad enough that under the previous parliament, they were still on the committee in a non-voting capacity, but it still allowed ministers’ offices to attempt to stage manage what went on (to varying degrees, depending on which committee it was). Having the parliamentary secretaries as voting members simply turns committees into the branch plants of ministers’ offices, and we saw this play out for the better part of a decade under Stephen Harper. Committees are not there to simply take orders from the minister and waste everyone’s time, and it would be hugely disappointing if the Liberals returned to that way of thinking simply because it’s a hung parliament. If we think that the only time to let Parliament function properly is if there’s a majority for the government, then it’s a sad state of affairs for our democracy.

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Roundup: The call is coming from inside the caucus room

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The hits just keep coming for Andrew Scheer, as one of his MPs came out vocally against his leadership yesterday. In the wake of the fairly low-key announcement of his Shadow Cabinet, it was quickly noticed that Ed Fast was not on said list, and Fast himself said that he was asked to be part of it and he declined, saying that Scheer should be surrounded by people loyal to his leadership, while Fast has concerns about it. Up until this moment, Scheer’s loyalists were dismissing those vocally and publicly calling for Scheer to step down as being Toronto elites and sore losers that go back to leadership rivals. Fast’s public denouncement puts a lie to this narrative.

Let’s face it – public dissent in caucus is rare because we have virtually eliminated all of the incentives for it. Our bastardized leadership selection process has leaders claiming a “democratic legitimacy” that they use to intimidate MPs into not challenging them, because it goes against the “will of the grassroots” (and to hell with that MP’s voters, apparently). We gave party leaders the power to sign off on nomination forms with the purest of intentions and it quickly got perverted into a tool of blackmail and iron-fisted discipline. Pretty much the only time MPs will speak out is if they have nothing to lose, and Fast is in that position – he could retire tomorrow and be all the better for it. And it’s when the dissent goes public that leaders really need to worry because that means that it’s happening by those inside the caucus room who aren’t saying anything out loud. Provincially, we’ve seen instances of it taking only one or two MLAs coming out publicly for leaders to see the writing on the wall and resign. The caucus may be bigger in Ottawa, but the sentiment is increasingly out in the open – that can’t be sustainable.

Scheer later went to the annual UCP convention in Calgary, where he was predictably given a fairly warm welcome– but he shouldn’t rest on this applause because he doesn’t need to win Alberta – he already has their votes, and they’re not enough to carry the country, no matter how much they increase their vote share. He needs seats in Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, and he is having a hard time cracking those areas, in particular because of his social conservatism and the UCP convention isn’t going to be the place to go to get honest feedback about that problem. It’s a bubble, and a trap that becomes too easy to feel that there is nothing wrong if he stays in it too long.

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