While Justin Trudeau had promised to be present for one of the final QPs of this parliament, he was absent as things got underway, while Andrew Scheer was also absent (though he too was also in town). Lisa Raitt led off, demanding a start date for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, to which Patty Hajdu said that there was more to come shortly. Raitt gave a homily about all of the people she spoke to who didn’t believe the pipeline would happen before she repeated her demand, and Hajdu went on a tear about all the things the Conservatives didn’t get done before repeating that they would have more to say soon. Raitt railed that nobody believes the government, but it didn’t change Hajdu’s answer. Gérard Deltell took over in French to repeat the demand, letting Hajdu go on a paean about how her government respects workers. Deltell tried one last time, disingenuously ignoring the Federal Court of Appeal decision, and Hajdu repeated her previous response one last time. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he lamented that the TMX would not do anything for the environment or Indigenous rights, to which Catherine McKenna got up to lament that the Conservatives didn’t vote for the motion on the climate emergency. Singh switched English and flailed about fossil fuel subsidies before demanding action on climate instead of symbolism, to which McKenna listed actions the government has taken. Singh then lamented the national housing strategy as not being ambition enough, to which Goodale said that the without their government, housing funding would have been cut otherwise. Singh flailed a bit more to repeat the question in French, and Goodale reiterated his response.
Tag Archives: Trade
QP: In the shadow of the Raptors parade
With all three main party leaders at the Raptors parade in Toronto, Trudeau eventually addressing that crowd, it was up to Candice Bergen to lead off today, and she complained that the government just didn’t want to build any pipelines, even though they are due to approve the Trans Mountain expansion in just days. Amarjeet Sohi responded that they have ensured that pipelines are being built, and that they have concluded their consultations on TMX. Bergen demanded a date for when the TMX would begin construction, and Sohi dodged with a reminder that the Conservatives didn’t get any pipelines built to non-US markets. Bergen gave it another go, and Sohi reminded her that they had undertaken meaningful consultation. Gérard Deltell took over in French, lamenting that the Liberals wanted to kill the energy sector, to which Sohi found it regrettable that the Conservatives didn’t have any confidence in the sector. Deltell demanded a start date for TMX construction, and Sohi replied that Conservative actions didn’t demonstrate their own support of the project. Peter Julian was up next for the NDP, and he railed that there was no business case for TMX, and Sohi replied that the NDP didn’t understand the economy or the environment. Pierre-Luc Dusseault repeated the question in French, to which Sohi reminded him there is a diversity of opinion among First Nations along the route. Dusseault then demanded a wealth tax, per the NDP’s new policy platform, to which Bill Morneau reminded him of their Middle Class™ tax cuts and how the average family is now $2000 per year better off than under the previous government. Julian repeated the demand in English, and got much the same response.
QP: Condemning Kenney’s threats
Justin Trudeau was present for the first time in almost two weeks today, while Andrew Scheer was again absent. Lisa Raitt led off, worrying about the amendments to Bill C-69 from the Senate, and raising the letter from Jason Kenney and company threatening national unity if they don’t pass. Trudeau stated that they welcome the suggestions from the “independent” Senate, but said that a premier threatening national unity if he doesn’t get his own way needs to be condemned. Raitt said that Trudeau thought he was above the premiers, and Trudeau stated that he meets with premiers unlike Harper, but returned to his condemnation of the threats to national unity. Raitt worried that Trudeau was bringing on a constitutional crisis, and Trudeau reminded her that one of those amendments would make Indigenous consultations optional, which was not the way to move forward. Alain Rayes took over in French, and he demanded respect for premiers. Trudeau reiterated in French that he has worked with premiers, but Conservative premiers who threaten national unity needs to be condemned. Rayes claimed that the PM was attacking premiers at every opportunity, and Trudeau reiterated his response. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and he repeated his demand from yesterday to impose a price cap on cell phone companies, to which Trudeau picked up a script to list measures that the government has taken which means lower bills in regions where there is more competition. Singh repeated the demand in French, and Trudeau read the French version of his script in response. Singh then painted himself as brave enough to stand up to telecom companies, and repeated his demand, to which Trudeau extemporaneously assured him that the government was making investments to improve connectivity, including in rural areas. For his final question, Singh quoted a news story where a Liberal MP’s law firm may have been involved in a money laundering transaction, to which Trudeau read from a script about the task force they set up to deal with money laundering.
https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1138511571515301888
Roundup: A line-by-line review
If the tweets of Cabinet ministers are to be believed, Cabinet is currently seized with doing a line-by-line review of the amended Bill C-69 that was sent back to them from the Senate earlier this week. By all accounts, the current form of the bill is a complete dog’s breakfast that includes a number if contradictory clauses, because the Chamber of Sober Second Thought didn’t bother to actually do the work of reconciling them because members of the environment and energy committee were keen to placate Jason Kenney and to credulously believe the oil and gas industry lobbyists who insisted that the bill’s original form, while not perfect, would somehow doom all future projects in this country. And you would think that actually getting a bill in reasonable condition back to the Commons would be kind of important to a body like the Senate, for whom this is their raison d’être as a legislative chamber who preoccupies itself with reviewing legislation, but no, they decided instead to sent it back to the Commons as is rather than to take the blame that Kenney and company will lay on them as he continues to lie about the bill and consider it a rallying cry for the implacable anger of Albertans that he sold a bunch of snake oil to during the last provincial election.
We have spent hours and hours engaging with industry and environmental stakeholders on Bill C-69. Now we are undertaking line by line reviews of Senate amendments to see if they strengthen this important Bill. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/gHEUPFBl1r
— Amarjeet Sohi (@AmarjeetSohiYEG) June 7, 2019
In the midst of this, you have senators like Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith claiming that the Senate’s attempt to stop bills C-69 and C-48 are supposedly the last bastion of the provinces who are “under attack” by prime minister Justin Trudeau, which is hokum of the highest order. C-48 doesn’t landlock Alberta’s resources because the chances of a pipeline to the northern BC coast are virtually nonexistent given the Federal Court of Appeal decision on Northern Gateway’s failure, and the propaganda campaign against Bill C-69 is the completely divorced from reality, but hey – angry narratives to sustain. At the same time, Senator André Pratt is defending the Senate against accusations levelled from the likes of Andrew Coyne that they’re overreaching if they do kill C-48 (which they won’t), saying that they’re trying to do their job while being cognisant that they’re an appointed body. He’s not wrong, and it’s probably one of the better articulated pieces of late.
Meanwhile, the Conservative whip, Senator Don Plett, is denying that he’s stalling the UNDRIP bill, and he’s actually got procedure on his side for this one – the cancelled meeting would have been extraordinary, and there are reasons why the Senate doesn’t hold special committee meetings while the Chamber is sitting – which they are sitting later and later because they have so much business to get through because the Independent Senators can’t get their act together, and lo, we have the current Order Paper crisis that they are working their way through (though apparently not so urgently that they didn’t sit yesterday). Unfortunately, the media does love private members’ bills, and is focusing a lot of attention on them, no matter that most of them are actually bad bills that should probably die on the Order Paper (but people don’t like to hear that).
Roundup: Amendments and dysfunction
There is some movement on legislation in the Senate, with the amended fisheries bill heading back to the Commons, as is Bill C-69 on environmental assessments. This bill was passed on division (meaning no standing vote) and will let the government reject all of those amendments made at committee that were essentially written by oil and gas lobbyists, which nobody had the intestinal fortitude to want to actually debate, preferring the tactic championed by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, to let someone else do the heavy lifting. That way the government can defeat the bulk of those amendments in the Commons on a whipped vote, and then Harder can say “the elected Chamber has spoken” while patting himself on the back for the amendments that did pass – likely only the ones the government itself proposed.
The bigger drama is being reserved for C-48, the tanker ban bill, as the whole Senate voted to overturn the committee report that recommended it not go forward, which was pretty much how I expected it to go. Given the torqued, partisan report that emerged, the talk about the committee being dysfunctional are ringing pretty true, but I’m not going to blame the Conservatives for that because the Independents aren’t stepping up. The likely next steps for this bill are for amendments to be debated at third reading, the bulk of which are likely to be defeated, and then the Conservatives will play procedural games with the debate so that Harder is forced to invoke time allocation on a final vote for it, because the Conservatives have set up that situation for him.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the UNDRIP bill, particularly that the Senate didn’t vote to give the Aboriginal People’s committee permission to meet while the Chamber was sitting in order to discuss it – which isn’t actually a sinister plot. The Senate is set up so that the Chamber meets for only a few hours in the day and that committees don’t meet then, which also has major logistical considerations – they don’t have enough staff or interpreters to cover both, unlike the House of Commons. And to illustrate that, this thread by Chris Reed explains some of the procedural considerations of what happened. But also remember that in the midst of the Senate’s Order Paper crisis, nobody wants to take any responsibility and are content to blame the Conservatives for being “partisan.” They’re not the problem here.
QP: Calmly upset versus storming out
With Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh still at D-Day commemorations, and Andrew Scheer at a family event in Regina, there were no major leaders present. Lisa Raitt led off, and she made a statement about D-Day, and offered the government a chance to say how they are commemorating the event. Bill Blair read a statement about service and sacrifice in response. Raitt then moved onto affordability and a plea for a government to “stop the taxes” without specifying which ones, to which Ralph Goodale stood up and reminded her of the Middle Class™ tax cuts and the Canada Child Benefit. Raitt moaned about the loss of boutique tax credits, and Goodale noted that the net of the government’s changes mean that most families are $2000 better off than before. Alain Rayes then cited the false Fraser Institute figure that taxes were raised by $800 per year, to which Jean-Yves Duclos recited in French the same measures that Goodale listed. Rayes tried again, with added theatrics, and Duclos cited that he was upset that the opposition was painting a false picture (in his calm demeanour). Ruth Ellen Brosseau was up next for the NDP, and she read a lament about the settlement that CRA reached with KPMG clients, to which Diane Lebouthillier stated that she had asked the CRA for more transparency around settlements going forward. Daniel Blaikie repeated the question in English with added outrage, and Lebouthillier repeated her response. Blaikie then moved onto a demand for additional aid for homeless veterans, and Blair read that their whole of government approach was getting results with homeless veterans. Brosseau then read the French version of the same question, and Duclos repeated the same response in French.
https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1136701597906558977
QP: Praise for our own leader’s plan
With Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh at the D-Day anniversary ceremonies, and Andrew Scheer elsewhere, it was up to Candice Bergen to lament the increased inspections of pork going into China, to which Marie-Claude Bibeau stated that they were encouraging all industry members to be extremely vigilant in their exports. Bergen demanded to know why a new ambassador had been appointed, to which Mélanie Joly noted that Canada is working with allies to call for the release of the detained Canadians. Bergen decried the deteriorating relationship, and Joly assured her this was a priority file. Luc Berthold took over in French to rail about the pork industry being impacted, and Bibeau repeated her earlier answer. Berthold demanded an ambassador and a WTO complaint, and Bibeau said that she agreed there was no issue with quality of Canadian exports, and that our representative at the WTO did raise the issue. Peter Julian was up next for the NDP, and he read some outrage about the KPMG client tax settlement, and Marc Garneau read that settlements are entered into in an independent process but the government was asking for more transparency going forward. Ruth Ellen Brosseau read her own repeat of the question in French, got Garneau to read the French version of his answer. Brosseau then read TVA was announcing layoffs and blaming competition from web giants, to which Pablo Rodriguez stood up to say that the Conservatives didn’t address the issue for ten years but they were working on legislation. Julian got up to read in English that web giants be made to pay their fair share, and Rodriguez again blamed the Conservatives for inaction.
Roundup: An unusually partisan report
The saga of Bill C-48 continues its strange trek through the Senate with the release of the report from the transport committee that recommended that the bill not proceed. Or at least that’s what it should have stated – that based on the tie vote, that the committee could not recommend the bill proceed. What they got instead was a lengthy screed about how allegedly terrible and the bill was for national unity, and it cherry picked comments from witnesses to “prove” that case, and strangely omitted any witnesses that stated – with facts – that the bill would have almost no impact on the energy industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In fact, the report was so partisan that it raised eyebrows among my sources in the Senate, who could not recall the last time that they had seen such a blatantly political document.
Naturally, not everyone on the committee was in favour of this report, and there are accusations back-and-forth about conversations regarding whether those who disagreed could write a dissenting report, and the eventual reluctance to bother because it would likely have tied things up in committee for even longer, as the clock ticks down. (Things are so bad on the Senate’s Order Paper that the need to sit well into July is now pretty much guaranteed). Of course, delaying this bill to death is part of the Conservative game plan, and everyone knows it – in fact, they pretty much have set up a situation where the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, will have to invoke time allocation to get it passed.
The shenanigans with this bill aren’t done yet. There will be a great deal of debate when this report gets debated in the whole Senate, where it is doubtlessly going to be rejected, but not without a great deal of noise and accusations that the Independents are just Liberal stooges, and so on. And it’s going to be so annoying when it’s all over.
QP: Fiction about carbon taxes
While the prime minster was on his way back to Ottawa (for a stopover before heading to London and then Normandy), Andrew Scheer was elsewhere, and Jagmeet Singh was the only major leader present. That left it up to Pierre Poilievre to lead off, and he spun a bunch of fiction about carbon prices impoverishing Canadians. Bill Morneau said that just because Poilievre says things, it doesn’t make it true, and he listed their Middle Class™ tax cuts and Canada Child Benefit as leaving Canadians better off. Poilievre whinged about the cancellation of boutique tax credits, and he raised the spectre of higher taxes because of the deficit — which is fiscally illiterate — and Morneau noted that they cancelled boutique tax credits because they only benefitted the wealthy. Poilievre again insisted there would be “massive tax increases,” and Morneau reiterated that the typical family of four was $2000 better off now than under the Conservatives. Gérard Deltell took over in French, and he worried about deficits, and Morneau offered some pabulum on investing in Canadians. Deltell raised the canard that Morneau didn’t run deficits on Bay Street, and Morneau quoted the declining debt-to-GDP ratio. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and in French, he worried about corporate tax rates, to which Morneau reminded him of the new tax brackets they put in for the wealthy. Singh tried again in English, and Morneau reminded him that the corporate rate is competitive with the US, and that they put in rules for transparency for offshore holdings as well as taxing the wealthy. Singh railed about the rich not paying their fair share, and Navdeep Bains listed off accomplishments under this government including a million new jobs. Singh tried again in French, and this time Jean-Yves Duclos listed the benefits of the government investing in the Middle Class™.
Roundup: The report and its “legal imperatives”
As expected, the MMIW Inquiry report was delivered in a ceremony yesterday morning, and the prime minister accepted the report at the ceremony and promised that a national action plan would be developed in concert with Indigenous people – but the fact that he didn’t echo the use of the word “Canadian genocide” from the report had everyone trying to make an Issue out of it (though he made a qualified use of the term at a speech later in the day in Vancouver). The overall theme of the report is that there needs to be a “decolonization” in order for things to get better – which is easier said than done. The report’s 231 recommendations are phrased as “legal imperatives,” but some of them are tremendously problematic or impractical. Some of it is useful – suggestions around policing (which the RCMP promises to review carefully), some specific recommendations about the “man camps” that accompany resource development projects in Indigenous territory, more Indigenous prosecutors and judges (but less helpful is the suggestion that they may require a separate judicial system). But far less practical “imperatives” included things like demanding that the government create jobs in Indigenous communities (because we have a command-and-control economy?), or the creation of a basic income for all Canadians (erm, you know how much that would actually cost, right? Right?). How those kinds of recommendations can be phrased as “legal imperatives” is in and of itself a problem.
And then we’re back to the “genocide” issue, which has sucked up a lot of the oxygen. The Commissioners asserted that it’s a different kind of genocide than the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda (which had Roméo Dallaire objecting), but wanted to remove the qualification of “cultural” genocide that was previously used in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, and which was accepted by pretty much all facets of Canadian society. Expect this particular polarizing language to continue to dominate the discussion in the weeks ahead.
In hot takes, Chantal Hébert worries that the report’s fairly hardline, all-or-nothing approach will be an excuse for people to tune out rather than engage with its findings (much like the apocalyptic language around climate change has not had the desired effect of spurring action). Chris Selley, meanwhile, points out some of the glaring omissions in the report, the lack of some context when it comes to rates of murders of Indigenous men, for example, and some of the contradictory recommendations such as being against mandatory minimum sentences because they disproportionately affect Indigenous people – while calling for mandatory minimums that are punitive if victims are Indigenous women, never mind that most of the perpetrators will be Indigenous men.