Tag Archives: Tough on Crime

Roundup: An implicit repudiation

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It was Auditor General day yesterday, and as usual, there were some stories that didn’t get a lot of attention, like CBSA’s computer systems, and some which are somewhat alarming, like the fact that twenty years later, Health Canada still doesn’t have a real plan to deal with superbugs, that there are some serious deficiencies when it comes to nursing stations with remote First Nations, or that the Royal Canadian Mint and the Office of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman had some spending issues. But the most interesting bits were in two chapters – one on tax expenditures, the other on the release of male offenders from corrections. In essence, both are repudiations of the way that this government has been managing things. Tax expenditures has a lot to do with the mass proliferation of those boutique tax credits that this government likes to throw around in order to target voters, but as the AG points out, it’s done with little scrutiny, and not enough information on them gets back to Parliamentarians to hold that spending to account. (Couple this with the report on Monday about the growth in tax complexity, and it should be a big red flag). As for offenders, too many low-risk offenders are not getting parole when they are eligible, and that makes reintegration harder, and recidivism more likely because they don’t get the monitoring that comes with parole. Add to that, the squeeze on programming resources within prisons and the removal of incentives to do the programming means that too many offenders are being released without having completed their rehabilitation programmes, which is also alarming. It’s also the direct fault of this government and their tough-on-crime policies what have made a virtue of trying to keep people in prisons longer, and then justifying it by saying that they won’t be on the streets to re-offend (never mind that in the vast majority of cases, keeping them in prison longer does more harm than good). And as the AG pointed out, it’s more costly to keep them in prison longer and without gradual release and programming, they get released with a higher chance to re-offend. In other words, we’re paying more to get poorer results because it’s easier to try and get votes by appealing to the sense of retribution rather than rehabilitation. Well done, guys. Slow clap.

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Roundup: The Privacy Commissioner finally has his say

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Bill C-51 is now getting its review in the Senate, hearing from someone that the Commons didn’t – the Privacy Commissioner. What they got was an earful – there are some big problems with the information sharing provisions in the bill that would allow large amounts of personal information to be collected and shared between departments with little justification, and that his office would be swamped with work because of it. He’s also calling for oversight – like everyone else – and for the ability for different watchdogs to communicate with one another and coordinate their investigations in order to get a better picture of what these organisations are doing as they work together but their oversight remains siloed. Those other oversight bodies – SIRC and the CSE Commissioner – had much the same concerns when it comes to the ability to work together, and just keeping pace with the increasing scope and scale of operations. But will any of this have an effect? Maybe, as there are some Conservative senators who are concerned about these kinds of things and who may push back. But the government may bully through, and said senators may decide that this isn’t the hill they want to die on (which does happen), and they’ll let it go through. Suffice to say, the issue has not gone away.

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Roundup: Of gaffes and grandchildren

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I think by this point we can pretty much acknowledge that Joe Oliver is not anyone’s best choice to communicate a message – he wasn’t as Natural Resources minister, with his “foreign-funded radicals” warnings about environmentalists, and certainly not as finance minister given his Tuesday night gaffe with CBC’s Amanda Lang. There, he said that any problems with raising the TFSA limit might not happen until 2080, and that he’d leave it for “Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s granddaughter to solve that problem.” Not only did he admit that there was a problem with it, but he decided it’s best to leave it to the next generation – not to mention his prediction that the Harper family will become some kind of dynastic rules of Canada – because we’ve seen so many of those. When opposition parties made hay of it, Harper came out to defend Oliver’s comments, but we have heard this warning before, from the PBO who drafted a report looking at the hole in future budgets that this kind of measure would create, and it’s not inconsiderable, so no, the question being put to Oliver by Lang was more than reasonable, and it would have been irresponsible for her not to ask it. In other post-budget news, here are the opposition positions on many of the pieces therein. There was mention in the budget about “expanding and modernising” the Honours system, but there are almost no details about what that means other than a new website. Pierre Poilievre said the money being given to the Ottawa police is for “fighting jihadis” – except it’s not, but rather for things like demonstrations or visits by foreign dignitaries. Oops. Mike Moffatt looks at the very optimistic budget projections on the price of oil. The budget nearly doubles what it gives to SIRC, but we’ll see if they’ll be expected to do more with it, given that they are already under-resourced. Paul Wells puts absolutely everybody to shame and writes about the budget as political document, and it’s so on point I want to weep.

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Roundup: Legalism and homework monitors

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Another day, another dissection of the rules of the Senate, this time with the revelation that nobody in Senate administration ensured that work got done when they paid out contractors that senators drew up. The defence maintained the legalistic hammering, to the point that lawyer Donald Bayne omitted one key phrase from the guidelines for Senators expenses: “Likewise, individual Senators must be conscious of the requirement to expend public monies prudently.” And really, that’s what’s at the heart of this trial – even if the rules themselves were loose, it doesn’t mean that it’s permission to go well beyond their intended use and purpose. It makes me wonder who should be checking in on the work of senators when they contract out services – should it be Senate Administration checking that speeches were written, and that research was conducted? Do they become the babysitters and homework monitors of the Senate? It’s a hard question to ask because you can only infantilise them so far before you start getting into problems. It’s even more problematic when senators’ policy work can take a wide variety of forms. This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be some form of oversight to ensure that there isn’t abuse, but we need to keep in mind that these aren’t civil servants or functionaries. They’re parliamentarians, with all of the attendant privileges that comes with that, and that means something. It’s also one of the reasons why pundits opining that this is really a “trial about the Senate” bothers me, and that these “entitled” senators have “free reign to spend public money,” which is obviously not true. Questions were raised, particularly about Wallin but also Duffy, and things were coming to light, though it there may have been the intent to take care of it more quietly. None of it excuses what Duffy did, and the fact that he appears to have deliberately misled Senate Administration with the contracts he drew up, as he certainly appears to have done with his various and sundry claims. Is it the Senate’s fault, or do we blame them to absolve him of the personal responsibility? That should be kept top of mind as the pundit class makes their pronouncements. The Senate didn’t make Duffy do anything – he made all of his choices himself. Meanwhile, the daily behind-the-scenes look notes Duffy’s exit strategy, and here’s a profile of the courtroom sketch artist.

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Roundup: The end of acting honourably

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At the end of the first week of the Duffy trial, the Crown regained some of the ground that it was appearing to lose – it wasn’t just that the rules were loose, or that there was no definition around residency, but there was an expectation that senators behave honourably, and thanks to the actions of the likes of Duffy, Wallin, and others, that expectation is now being buried under new legalistic guidelines. There was also pushback to the notion that because the Prime Minister appointed Duffy a Senator from PEI, his residency was assumed to be genuine – there are limits, and as I’ve discussed on this blog previously, not only did the PMO not ensure that their ducks were in a row on that front before Duffy was appointed (as previous governments who took appointments seriously and didn’t make them in a panic had done), but they almost practically encouraged the alleged abuses of Duffy and Wallin in particular by that very act of not ensuring residence upon appointment. Duffy himself kept trying to get reassurance as to the residency issue – as his own diaries show – but apparently only enough to ensure that he didn’t need to make the effort of actually ensuring that he was properly moved to the Island as his principle residence. What should be addressed – but isn’t in the trial because it is beyond the ambit – is the fact that when the Queen or GG makes the appointment on the basis of the PM’s advice, it is assume that the advice is sound because of Responsible Government. In the case of Duffy, we can be reasonably assured that the advice was likely not sound – that Duffy was not qualified to be a senator from PEI, or Wallin a Senator from Saskatchewan. What that also means is that under Responsible Government, we get to hold that government to account, and there is an election coming up. Perhaps we need to remind people of that fact. Maclean’s also has commissioned comic strips of the week’s events, while Scott Reid gives us his take on the Duffy Diaries, and the defence to date.

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Roundup: A desperate lawsuit

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If you thought that the NDP’s sudden demand that the government refer the satellite offices case to the Supreme Court to rule on its justiciability immediately wasn’t a sign of desperation, the fact that those MPs being ordered to repay are now suing the Board of Internal Economy in Federal Court is even more so. Can one even sue a parliamentary board that one is a part of? In fact, it smacks of the kind of desperate tactic where you throw absolutely everything at the wall, no matter how implausible, and hope that something sticks. The suit demands that the $2.7 million in demanded repayments be set aside, calling the decision “unreasonable, arbitrary and incorrect.” Except it wasn’t the Board that made the findings – it was the Clerk of the Commons, and she has the paperwork to prove that the NDP misled her when they set up the scheme in the first place. It’s also curious that the NDP would go for this kind of process when discovery is going to be very difficult for them as they have to turn over all manner of documents as part of the process. Still, with time running out before their MPs start having their salaries garnisheed, I have to wonder how many more tactics we’ll see employed to try and delay things, at least until the election and then beyond.

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Roundup: Life means life

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Because the Harper government can’t keep the good people of Canada too scared, he made a big show about announcing yet another piece of tough-on-crime legislation. One that is completely unnecessary given existing laws in place – one which will give cabinet the authority to permanently deny parole from certain murderers, as though there was any chance that the Clifford Olsons or Paul Bernardos of the world would ever walk the streets again – but the government certainly wants you to think that they could given all those liberal judges and such. Never mind that the recidivism rate for most inmates given full parole is about three percent. Never mind that it has pretty much no chance of surviving a Charter challenge in the courts. Never mind that it sets up the odd dichotomy where this government believes that parliamentarians can’t be trusted with national security but can instead be trusted with denying someone parole permanently. Never mind the impact on the rule of law. No, this government needs people to think that they’re going to be tough on crime, and damn the actual consequences. So here we are. Andrew Coyne eviscerates the bill with his usual aplomb here.

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Roundup: Review or oversight?

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With C-51 now before committee, and the process of hashing out hearing schedules and witness lists begun, the debate continues over its merits. The story about the young Edmonton who went to support ISIS and CSIS didn’t stop her – because they’re not empowered to disrupt – is adding fuel to the fire, while it’s also bringing out a lot of conspiracy theories that are way out there, like ones that state that the terrorism angle is just a smokescreen so that the government can go after environmentalists and First Nations who oppose their resource development projects. (For the record, I have a really hard time seeing that, especially when you start intimating that it’s at the behest of corporations). The question of oversight remains top of mind, particularly as the Liberals are making that the hill they want to die on – or at least fight an election over – to which Philippe Lagassé writes a very interesting piece about the nature of parliamentary oversight committees in comparable Westminster democracies. In particular, these committees and the one that the Liberals have proposed here in Canada is not actually oversight either – it’s a review committee, like SIRC, only broader because it would review all national security agencies as a whole rather than in silos as what little oversight or review mechanisms to do currently (an four years later, talk about better integrating oversight remains just that). More importantly, however, Lagassé notes that opposition parties need to be very careful about how much oversight that they demand parliamentarians have because involving them too much can make them complicit in decisions that they should be holding the government to account for, and by swearing in a group of MPs to secrecy to see the materials, it effectively silences them because they can’t talk about what they know, and it can take such material out of sight and out of mind – as what happened with the Afghan detainee documents. Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have more parliamentary review of national security, but we need to be cognisant of its aims and limits.

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Roundup: Mandating bilingual tweets

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The Official Languages Commissioner has decreed that cabinet ministers should tweet in both official languages, which seems like a fairly concerning decree when you look at how some of those ministers are using the Twitter Machine to engage in some actual dialogue with actual Canadians (and some journalists too) about issues, without it all being canned statements and talking points. The caveat to the Commissioner’s statement is that they must use both official languages when communicating “objectives, initiatives, decisions and measures taken or proposed by a ministry or the government.” In other words, those canned links to press releases. The thing is, those are already being tweeted out by the official department accounts, whereas the ministers tweeting – at least for the good ones – are more “personal” and less filtered. Those are where the value in Twitter lies, and if the objective is to simply turn ministerial Twitter accounts to official releases, then what’s the point? I think this may be an instance where the Commissioner needs to perhaps re-evaluate social media and the engagement that happens over it.

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Roundup: Recycled economic planks

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Thomas Mulcair spent the noon hour yesterday laying out three of his party’s economic planks for the coming election. (A reminder: it’s still nine months away). To that end, Mulcair promised a cut to small business taxes, an extension of the capital gains cost allowances for companies buying new equipment, and an innovation tax credit for businesses. The first of those is not new – the NDP have been going in this direction since the previous election, and the second is current government policy that is set to expire, but one wonders how much it has been taken up as the government already extended it, and we still hear that Canadian companies didn’t spend the high dollar years investing in this equipment to boost productivity at a time when it was advantageous for them to do so, and now the dollar is much lower and it’s more costly for these businesses to buy this new equipment. The third, geared toward research and development, again sounds suspiciously like what the current government has been trying to do as they retooled the National Research Council to help with commercialisation of technologies. There is, of course, debate on some of the utility of these points as well, with certain experts saying that those small businesses that would benefit from this kind of tax cut are already well off. (Also, small businesses are not the biggest job creators in the country – sorry, but that doesn’t make any mathematical sense). The final point is geared toward revitalising the manufacturing sector, but it’s pocket change in terms of dollars, and the sector has much more entrenched structural problems. Of course, there is no mention of how this is costed, on top of promises for their childcare spaces, restoring the much higher healthcare transfer escalator, and returning OAS eligibility to 65 – and no, raising corporate income taxes won’t get you that much, nor will going after offshore tax havens. Mulcair also added that the NDP would move to protect pensions from bankruptcy proceedings, which again is not new policy, for what it’s worth.

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