Tag Archives: Tough on Crime

Roundup: Enter the new Whip

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Newly-appointed Chief Government Whip Steve MacKinnon had a conversation with CBC over the weekend, and there are a few interesting bits in there. For one, I didn’t actually realise that the term came from 18th-century hunting slang for “whipper-in, as the rider who keeps hounds from straying from the pack. So it’s not about any kind of literal or metaphorical whipping of MPs to vote a certain way, and now we’ve both learned something new today.

What I did know before is that there is more to the whip’s job than just ensuring MPs vote in certain ways, particularly if there’s a confidence vote upcoming. Rather, the whip and his or her office has a lot of work in juggling assignments – who is on what committee, who can stand in for that MP if they are away, and to an extent, who has House duty. And because the whip is largely the person in charge of MPs’ attendance (even if said attendance is not made public), I have it on very good authority that the Whip spends a lot of time listening to MPs as they unburden themselves, and talk about what is going on in their lives as to why they can’t attend a committee meeting or vote. The whip also becomes responsible for the staff in a riding office if that MP resigns or dies in office. And then comes the discipline part, which is different between each party. Some parties are very strict about it, some have unofficial ways of enforcing discipline – largely through in-group bullying – and some are fairly relaxed over the issue provided it’s not a matter of confidence.

The other thing I would add is that at the advent of the era of “Senate independence,” as Justin Trudeau and others would have you believe, the whip in the Senate was equivalent to in the House of Commons, and they instructed senators how to vote – or else. This was simply not true – the whip in the Senate was always rather illusory, and the Whip’s office was more about doing things like committee assignments, finding alternates for those who were absent, and assigning things like office space or parking to incoming senators who joined the caucus. They had little to no leverage of senators and their voting patterns because of institutional independence, and I heard a former Liberal senate leader once remark that on one occasion when the leader’s office on the Commons side called them up and said they’d really like it if senators could vote for a certain bill, that these senators turned around and voted the other way, just to prove a point around their independence. So there is a lot more to the role than people may expect from the outside, and best of luck to Steve MacKinnon as he takes on this new role.

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Roundup: Taking his sweet-ass time to meet caucus

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The Liberals are starting to get restless – members of caucus are feeling put out that they haven’t actually had a formal caucus meeting yet post-election, and many of them are champing at the bit to have a closed-door drag out session about what went wrong in the election, and why their own leadership seemed unprepared for it when they called the blood thing in the first place. And telling the Hill Times that they want to know why the party leadership is taking their “sweet-ass time” to call this meeting was the icing on this particular cake.

I’m having a hard time fathoming why it’s taking Trudeau and company so long to get their collective acts together post-election. They made a whole song and dance about how urgently they needed to act while on the campaign trail, only for them to turn around and take said sweet-ass time in both finalising the Cabinet shuffle (and no, the recounts do not account for how long the delay is) as well as their decision to further delay summoning Parliament – and even his planned international travel does not excuse this. They could have had Cabinet sworn in before the Governor General went on her state visit to Germany, and could have summoned Parliament this week, in advance of Trudeau’s planned travel. That would have given them actual time to get committees up and running, and legislation in the system – particularly around the changes to the pandemic benefits – as soon as possible, as opposed to the current trajectory of a three-week sitting that will accomplish very little before they head back to their ridings for the Christmas break.

Additionally, not having a proper caucus meeting by now has reached the point of disrespecting their own MPs. They have things they want to say after the campaign trail, and they should be able to say it – that’s how this system works. It’s a very bad signal that they are being kept away from the leadership like this, because even aside from it betraying all of Trudeau’s talking points about being open and accountable within his own party, that kind of thing will start to fester if it’s not taken seriously. I’m not sure that’s a situation Trudeau wants to go out on in his final tour-de-force as leader.

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Roundup: Sitting on money, waiting for ICU to collapse

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In case it had escaped you that the incompetent murderclowns who run Ontario are incompetent, we learned yesterday that Doug Ford and his merry band of murderclowns sat on the entire $2.7 billion additional health transfer from the federal government that was supposed to go toward the COVID response, and, well, didn’t. This was during the second and third waves, which didn’t need to happen, and they were explicitly warned that reopening would mean disaster, and they did it anyway. They had money to help them improve testing, tracing, and doing things like improving ventilation in schools, and they didn’t. They sat on it to pad their bottom line.

Is there a lesson here? Yes – don’t give provinces more money without strings attached. You would think that this should be obvious, given that before Jim Flaherty unilaterally changed the transfer escalator from six percent to a minimum of three or GDP growth, we know that provinces were not spending that health transfer only on health – the growth in health spending was far below the growth in the health transfer. For them to demand yet more money with no strings attached – particularly for outcomes – while we have examples like Ford here, who are using the money to reduce their deficit in spite of all the lives that could have been saved it was actually deployed meaningfully, there should be no argument. If they want the money, they need to have metrics and outcomes to ensure that it’s being spent on what it’s supposed to be.

Meanwhile in Alberta, the COVID situation has been allowed to deteriorate so badly that ICUs could be overrun in ten days, forcing doctors to triage who gets ventilators and who will be allowed to die. With this in mind, Jason Kenney finally relented and started re-imposing public health restrictions, but in a byzantine and complex manner, and has said they will allow vaccine certificates or a “restriction exemption program,” because they can’t actually call it a vaccine passport or certificate. Kenney also both apologised for the situation and then did not apologise for lifting the restrictions when he did, so that clarifies things. I’m curious to see if this ricochets through the federal campaign – some Conservatives seem to think it will. In either case, Jason Kenney, his health minister and chief medical officer of health all should be resigning for letting this foreseeable tragedy happen on their watch, but we all know that they won’t, because what does accountability matter any longer?

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Roundup: A promise of extra-illegality

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On a day of more organized protests outside of hospitals around the country, prime minister Justin Trudeau has decided the way to deal with this is…more criminal sanctions. Which is ridiculous, because there are already criminal sanctions around nuisance, harassment, and intimidation, and creating a law specifically for healthcare workers is kind of ridiculous and merely clogs up the criminal code – and I don’t care that they think they’re sending some kind of message. There are existing laws and police should enforce them. Of course, the NDP are saying that this was their idea first, while in more technical terms, Singh says that the victims being healthcare workers should be considered an aggravating factor during sentencing, but the effect is largely the same – this is virtue signalling using the Criminal Code rather than a useful exercise in enforcing existing laws.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1437477651225133056

In Alberta, however, premier Jason Kenney has been warning that he can use the province’s recent law about critical infrastructure – designed to criminalise Indigenous protesters who blockade railways or pipelines – and how they can apply to this situation because the law is so broadly worded. That alone should be concerning about how this law was intended to be applied, but nevertheless, this does appear to be an unforeseen use for this particular piece of legislation.

https://twitter.com/EmmaLGraney/status/1437470976472666116

Meanwhile, Althia Raj worries about Trudeau inflaming “divisions” in the country as the PPC gains more followers among these protesters and the anti-vaxx crowd, but this is a  credulous take if I ever heard one. These are not rational actors we are dealing with. They are part of an embrace of conspiracy theory that is happening across the Western world, for whatever the reason, and this is a very big problem. I’m not sure I see the utility in appealing for Trudeau to be soft-peddling to these conspiracy theorists, but I will note that there has been one party who has been winking and nodding to these conspiracy theories, and even going to far as to promulgating them in the House of Commons, and that party is not the one that Trudeau leads. There are consequences for O’Toole and company for doing so, and we are reaping what they’ve sown. It’s too bad that people in the media are not calling it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1437467693934854149

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Roundup: Grading the parties’ sincerity on climate

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One of the great things about the policy landscape in Canada are the number of professors out there who are willing to devote their time and energy to providing advice to political parties, or who will be willing to evaluate their proposals. We had an example of this as professor Mark Jaccard at Simon Fraser University went and checked over the parties’ environmental platforms and did the modelling on them, and then graded them – and the Liberals came out ahead by quite a margin (and in the interest of trying to look “balanced,” the CBC declared that the Conservatives were “not far behind,” though it was literally the difference between an A- and a D).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1433770709730344962

The full study not only evaluates the targets, but the policies and costs as well – because there are economic costs to some of these plans. Interestingly, he also tests the sincerity of those plans, which is not only a sense of how feasible they are, but also their history as a party of a willingness to do the heavy lifting, and that’s a pretty important measure. “Beware of politicians who promise big but have not subjected their promises and plans to assessment by independent climate policy modellers. In this regard, the NDP and Greens are suspect,” Jaccard writes, and it’s worth reading through why he gives them the scores he does. The economic damage that the NDP plan promises to do would never be agreed to by their union base, and the fact that it would require a police state for them to set the kinds of binding carbon budgets that they propose are demonstrations about how unserious the policies are.

What is disappointing in this is that the NDP in particular started making personal attacks against Jaccard, and trying to build lame conspiracy theories that he is somehow being paid off to pump up the Liberals and talk down the NDP, which is both ridiculous and is the kinds of sore loser tactics that we’ve come to expect. (Seriously, my reply column on a daily basis is full of Dippers with hurt feelings because I have the temerity to point out the reality of things like jurisdiction or the fact that you can’t willpower things into existence). Elizabeth May was among those who took swipes at Jaccard, for the temerity of being an economist and not a climate scientist – which is also ridiculous because economics is literally the science of allocating scare resources, and the fact that climate scientists are not offering policy solutions. Science is not policy, and that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the two and how they complement one another – providing that you’re willing to listen and not get in a huff because someone pointed out that your implementation plans don’t belong in the real world.

https://twitter.com/MarkJaccard/status/1433891783524720641

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QP: Not a question, but a direct plea

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On what promises to be the second last QP of the spring sitting, the three opposition leaders were all present, while Justin Trudeau as only available remotely, being in quarantine, once again leading only Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber. Erin O’Toole led off in person, in French, where he read a script about the military ombudsman’s comments on ministerial interference in investigations. Trudeau assured him they were working on the structural and cultural change necessary, including appointing Louise Arbour to reviewing the situation. O’Toole repeated the allegations in French, but didn’t phrase it as a question, but turned it into a plea to Canadians to vote out the Liberals. Trudeau repeated his same response in English. O’Toole then turned to the non-story about the Liberals paying for data services to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister. Trudeau stated this was for constituency casework, which was kept separate from political databases, and all rules were followed. O’Toole tried to turn this into an expansive statement about Liberal “corruption,” and demanded to know if any other contracts were given to Tom Pitfield, and Trudeau talked around the Conservatives slinging mud and hoping to see what would stick. O’Toole produced a document that claims that a contract was given to Pitfield, and Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives were only focused on narratives and not facts, that all parties use case management databases, and all rules were followed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, in person, and complained about the new border measures announced yesterday, complaining they were arbitrary. Trudeau insisted this was part of a gradual reopening and more stages would be announced soon. Blanchet complained there were more rules than variants, and Trudeau said that while the leader of the Bloc may want simple answer, but they needed to ensure that Canadians were kept safe. 

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and he railed about that military ombudsman’s report, and Trudeau read that they have been committed to structural and cultural change, and that they have taken more concrete actions recently, including some new appointments and $236 million in the budget. Singh switched to French to complain that some benefit were being reduced, and Trudeau recited that they were there for as long as Canadians needed them, and pleaded with the NDP to pass the budget.

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Roundup: Priority but not a priority

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There are officially three sitting days left for the House of Commons before they rise for the summer, and lo, the bill to reform mandatory minimum penalties is nowhere to be seen, in spite of the government saying it’s a priority. In fact, it’s still at second reading stage, meaning there’s no chance they’ll get it through at this point, in spite of their professed need to do this as a way of combatting systemic racism in the justice system. Nor has there been any debate on the bill to make some of the modernisation plans forced upon the courts by the pandemic to be more permanent (some of it very needed, other aspects a little less so).

The government, meanwhile, is introducing another bill today on a new disability support credit, after they tabled their bill to make changes to the Official Languages Act last week, and you can read this as either promises for an election platform, or a sign that they have plans they want to get to work on in the fall. This being said, it’s been deeply weird to have a sitting of Parliament go by without their being a metric tonne of justice-related legislation in the process, churning its way through both Chambers (and I was remarking in a forthcoming column that the fact that the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee isn’t already overloaded is virtually unheard of).

The procedural shenanigans that have dominated this sitting have been more acute than I’ve seen in all of my years on the Hill, and it’s meant a lot fewer bills making it over the goal line than we’ve seen in a very long time. The fact that you have private members’ bills outpacing government legislation is also virtually unprecedented. This whole session has been nothing but procedural warfare, and it’s only bolstered the narrative of the need for an election. I’m still not convinced anyone actually wants one (other than bored pundits), but the narrative is there if the government wants to grab it, and doesn’t look too nakedly opportunistic in doing so (which is probably easier said than done).

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Roundup: Atwin crosses to the Liberals

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There was a somewhat shocking turn of events yesterday as Green MP Jenica Atwin suddenly crossed the floor to the Liberals, after weeks of turmoil within the party over the policies around Israel. When Atwin made comments about Israel being an apartheid state, one of leader Annamie Paul’s advisors threatened her position, and she decided it was time to go. Remember also that the NDP have a Thing about floor-crossing, and wouldn’t have accepted her, leaving her with just the Liberals as a potential home rather than staying an Independent – no doubt increasing her chances at re-election. She insisted that all of her previous comments and votes stood, no matter that she was now a Liberal, so perhaps she will remain among the more “maverick” MPs in the caucus who don’t all toe the line in the same way.

https://twitter.com/DavidWCochrane/status/1403096836383166465

Of course, with any floor-crossing, we get the same tired chorus of voices demanding that anyone who does cross must immediately resign and run in a by-election, which is nonsense in the broader context of how our system works. We elect MPs – we don’t elect parties, even if that’s your calculation when you go into the voting booth. Why this distinction matters is because we empower MPs to act on our behalf, regardless of the party banner, and then we get to judge them for their performance in the next general election. Sometimes MPs will need to make decisions to cross the floor for a variety of reasons, but usually because it’s intolerable in their current situation, and they make the move. We empower them to do so because our electoral system gives them agency as an individual – they’re not a name off of a list because the party got x-percentage of a vote.

This absolutely matters, and we need to enshrine their ability to exercise their ultimate autonomy if we want our system to have any meaning. Otherwise we might as well just fill the seats with battle droids who cast their votes according to the leader’s wishes, and read pre-written speeches into the record that the leaders’ office provided. The trained seal effect is bad enough – we don’t need to erode any last vestiges of autonomy to please the self-righteous impulses of a few pundits who think that this kind of move is heretical or a betrayal, or worse, to appeal to the desire by certain parties (in particular the NDP) to have their power structure so centralized that they see their MPs as a mere extension of their brand rather than as individuals. Parliament means something – the ability of MPs to make ultimate decisions needs to be respected in that context.

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QP: Security breach and securities regulators

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While the prime minister was off to the G7 meeting in the UK, the only Liberal in the Chamber was Francis Drouin, though Mark Gerretsen would replace him later in the hour. Erin O’Toole led off, accusing the government of hiding a security breach at the National Microbiology Lab. Jennifer O’Connell warned that O’Toole was playing a dangerous game, and that redacted documents were provided to the Canada-China committee and the unredacted documents went to NSICOP. O’Toole accused her of participating in a cover-up, and O’Connell accused O’Toole of not caring about national security. O’Toole scoffed, noting his military service, and worried there was a Chinese “infiltration” at the Lab, which O’Connell countered with a prof at the Royal Military College praising NSICOP. O’Toole then repeated his first question in French, got the same answer as before, adding that she used to be a member of NSICOP so she could vouch for its security. O’Toole repeated his allegation of a cover-up in French, and O’Connell, exasperated, noted that she wasn’t sure how many more times she could say that they turned over the documents in the appropriate way.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, accusing the government of trying to create a new pan-Canadian securities regulator which Quebec opposed. Sean Fraser noted that the office cooperated voluntarily with provinces. Therrien tried again, and Fraser repeated that Quebec was not bound to work with that office.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he condescended to the government about the WE Imbroglio, and demanded that the government respect the Ethics committee’s report. Bardish Chagger thanked the committee for the work, but accused them of being more interested in partisan games. Charlie Angus then repeated the demand in English with added sanctimony and stretched the credulity of the allegations, and Pablo Rodriguez batted away the insinuations.

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QP: Beware Big Arts and Culture

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For the prime minister’s first appearance of the week, he had only Mark Gerretsen on the benches to keep him company (though Francis Drouin arrived after the PM left when the leader’s round ended). Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern, and he wondered if the government filing an amicus briefing in American courts mere hours before the threatened closure of Line 5 was an admission of failure of diplomacy — not that the Michigan governor has the power or authority to shut down the pipeline. Justin Trudeau replied that they filed the brief and are continuing to engage and encouraging mediation between the parties involved. O’Toole asked the same question in French, got the same answer, and then he asked why Trudeau personally approved a raise for General Vance if his office was investigating him for sexual harassment, and Trudeau stated that his office did not investigate, but that was PCO, as political offices should never conduct investigations, before he gave some usual bromides about supporting men and women in uniform. O’Toole related the question in English, got the same answer, and then insisted that he caught out Trudeau in a lie, stating that Katie Telford was apparently “investigating” when she sought assurances the allegations didn’t pertain to a safety issue, but Trudeau shrugged off the allegation and repeated his usual assurances of taking all allegations seriously and following the same process the Conservatives did in 2015.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he groused about time allocation on C-19, insinuating that the prime minister wanted an election in a pandemic. Trudeau disputed that, stating that he doesn’t want one, but the Bloc and Conservatives obviously do because they voted against a confidence issue. Blanchet said he wasn’t afraid of an election but didn’t want one, and repeated the allegation, and Trudeau considered this far-fetched, but they need to be prepared in a hung parliament for a possible election, since the opposition apparently wants one.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and accused the government of sending the military to spy on Black Lives Matters protests, and Trudeau agreed that the reports were concerning and he was looking into them. Singh repeated the same question in French, as though Trudeau didn’t just deny involvement, and Trudeau repeated his same response. 

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