Tag Archives: Trade

Roundup: Sending amendments back a second time

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There’s drama with the Senate, after they sent back the omnibus transport bill back to the Commons a second time, after the government rejected several of the nineteen amendments proposed. We haven’t seen this happen in twelve years, that last time being in 2006 when there was back-and-forth on Harper’s Accountability Act, when he had a minority in the Commons, and the Liberals had a majority in the Senate, giving them the necessary leverage. But while much of the focus is on whether or not there’s going to be a constitutional crisis over this (there’s not, and quit being such drama queens about it), there is actually some nuance here that should be explored a bit more.

There are a couple of reasons why the Senate eventually voted to insist on some of the amendments, and one of those had to do with the way it creates unfairness for the Maritimes when it comes to rail transportation rates, as there is a monopoly in the region. What’s very interesting about this is the fact that after PEI Senator Diane Griffin made her speech about the regional unfairness, all subsequent debate became spontaneous and unscripted – something we almost never see in either chamber. This is how Parliament should work, and based on that speech, some senators changed their votes, which shows that the process does work as it’s supposed to, from time to time. It also shows that the Senate is fulfilling its role when it comes to standing up for regions, as they are doing for the Maritimes in this case. (Griffin, incidentally, says she’ll likely back down if the Commons rejects the amendments a second time).

The other reason the Senate is sending these amendments back, however, is the fact that when the government rejected them, they didn’t offer an explanation as to why, and this is important (and I haven’t seen anyone reporting this fact). And this puts the onus on the government, because they owe senators that explanation as to why their sober second thought is being rejected. Just about a year ago, when the Senate sent back amendments to the budget implementation bill, the House rather snippily stated that such amendments would impede the privileges of the Commons – but never stated how they would do so. While the Senate passed the bill, they did send a message back to the Commons that yes, they do have the ability to amend budget bills thank you very much, but they did make sure to let Bardish Chagger know their displeasure the next time she appeared at Senate QP, where they wanted the explanation as to how the amendments would impact the Commons’ privileges (and she never did give them an answer). Trudeau keeps saying he respects the independence of the Senate, but he should demonstrate that respect by offering explanations and not treating the work of the Senate in such a dismissive manner.

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QP: Accusations of rigged rules

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For caucus day, all leaders were present (for a change), and when Andrew Scheer led off, he read some scripted concerns about carbon taxes raising the price of everything, and demanded to know how much it would cost families. Trudeau got up to respond that the Conservatives tried doing nothing and were trying to justify it now. Scheer switched to English and said that the PM was gleeful there were high gas prices in BC and accused him of not caring because he’s a millionaire. Trudeau said that it wasn’t what he said, and that this was just an attempt to create fear and division from a party that doesn’t have a plan. Scheer switched back to French to accuse the government of trying to game the electoral system for their own benefit, and Trudeau noted that this was about taking the influence of money out of politics. Scheer accused Trudeau of rigging the system to punish those who disagree with him, listing a number of conflated incidents that were “proof” of such behaviour. Trudeau responded that Conservatives tried to make it harder to vote while his party was trying to make it easier. Scheer accused the government of imposing fundraising restrictions because the Liberals can’t raise as much money as they can, and then demanded that ministerial travel be restricted in the pre-writ period, to which Trudeau said that the record number of voters in the last election was not because of the Conservative changes, but rather, it was about getting Stephen Harper out of office. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, complaining that they didn’t have enough time to evaluate the candidate for Chief Electoral Officer. In response, Trudeau took up a script to read some praise for the candidate, and then Nathan Cullen asked the same in English, but with a truckload of added sanctimony. Trudeau read the English version of his same script. Cullen then accused the government of rigging the Trans Mountain approval process, to which Trudeau assured him that they enhanced the assessment process. Caron took over to ask the same again in French, saying that putting a financial stake in Kinder Morgan was the kind of subsidy that the government promised to end, but Trudeau repeated his response, insisting that any stake was about the project being in the national interest.

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Roundup: An “uncontroversial” bill delayed

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It’s starting to become something of a rote exercise – that whenever the Senate does its job and considers large and contentious legislation, it’s accused of moving slowly. Most of the time, they’re actually moving fairly swiftly in the context of how bills get passed, but that’s not the narrative. And every single time, the pundit class will moan about how they’re frustrating the “will of Parliament” (because that’s how they refer to the House of Commons, when it is in fact but a third of what constitutes Parliament – the Senate and the Crown being the other two aspects), and on and on we go. This week’s performative disbelief that the Senate is daring to do the job required of it is around the marijuana bill – but not just that, but the accompanying bill regarding mandatory roadside testing. While the marijuana bill is actually proceeding fairly quickly given the agreed-upon timelines that Senators set for themselves on the bill (though they were slow off the mark because Senator Harder thought it wise to have the Senate rise essentially a week early at Christmas and then not consider the bill again until well after they’d returned so that he could put on the dog and pony show of having three ministers appear in Committee of the Whole before second reading debate even began), the mandatory testing  bill is languishing at committee. Why? While John Ivison may consider the bill “relatively uncontroversial,” it is actually the opposite, and there is a debate raging about the bill’s constitutionality, and many senators – including one who helped to author the Charter of Rights and Freedoms back in 1982 – are unimpressed with the government’s assurances. After all, they went through a decade of the Harper government insisting that their justice bills were Charter-compliant, only for them to be struck down by the courts, one after another.

Of course, this too has led to debates in the Senate about their role and whether they should be challenging the constitutionality of bills. Some of the Independent senators, which Leader of the Government in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder has added his voice to, believing that Senators shouldn’t substitute their judgment for that of the courts, citing that because these issues aren’t black and white that the courts should handle them. (In the same breath as Harder says this, he also says that they shouldn’t be rubber stamps, apparently unable to pick a lane). So to say that this is “uncontroversial” means that someone isn’t paying attention to the debate – only what’s being told to him by the government’s mouthpiece (in this case, Bill Blair).

If the Senate passes C-45 before C-46, the sky won’t fall. They can apply existing impaired driving laws, because, newsflash, people already drive high while pot is illegal. Once again, the government isn’t inventing cannabis – they’re legalizing and regulating it. Will it be more difficult without detection devices? Maybe. But it’s not like there’s a legal vacuum. Let’s calm down a little.

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QP: Sob stories about carbon taxes

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While the PM was present today, following a meeting with the Prince of Monaco, Andrew Scheer was absent, yet again. Alain Rayes led off, listing off a torqued and misleading litany of supposed ills of carbon taxation — numbers that did not reflect reality — to which a Justin Trudeau noted that while the previous government didn’t take action, his government would do so. Rayes railed on about cancelled tax credits before trying to wedge it into another carbon tax question, and Trudeau reiterated his answer. Pierre Poilievre took over, accusing the Pm of having lived “most of his life” in government-owned mansions and of living in the lap of luxury while raising taxes on everyone, but his mention of BC in his preamble set Trudeau off on an explanation of how BC’s decade-old carbon tax has led to economic growth and lower emissions. Poilievre gave another list of disingenuous accusations, and Trudeau noted that everting in that was wrong before launching into a well-worn list of things his government accomplished. They went another round of the very same before Guy Caron got up for the NDP, railing about tax havens and the registration of corporations in Canada. Trudeau took up a script to read that they had international treaties to share data with partners, and that they reached agreements with provincial and territorial governments to have transparency on who own corporations. Caron asked again in English, got the same answer, and then Tracey Ramsey railed about secret negotiations around NAFTA. Trudeau noted that an agreement in principle was about the broad strokes being agreed to so that they could move forward to a legal scrub. Karine Trudel asked the same in French, but got a much blander response about trade.

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Roundup: Kenney gets some policy resolutions

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Alberta’s United Conservative Party held their foundational policy convention in Red Deer this last weekend, featuring plenty of cameo appearance by federal Conservatives including Andrew Scheer, and you can bet that Justin Trudeau was a favoured target (along with the premier, Rachel Notley, of course). Jason Kenney vowed to make an enemy of the “green left,” to the point where he was vowing to fight things that are areas of federal jurisdiction, which is funny considering that he’s been baying at the moon about the federal government apparently not asserting their jurisdiction vigorously enough when it comes to pipelines getting built. Funny how that happens.

There was an interesting digression into conservative feminism as part of the weekend’s narratives, with an airing of grievances against the particular brand of feminism that Justin Trudeau preaches, and the allegations that it means that Trudeau is dictating their values to them (particularly when it comes to issues like abortion, where Trudeau follows the logic that women should have agency over their own bodies – shockingly). Rona Ambrose announced that she is leading a new non-profit group to help women get involved in the UCP, through fundraising, mentorship, logistics, and networking – things that are not seen as tokenism or quotas. Heather Forsyth, former minister under Ralph Klein and interim leader of the Wildrose Party, was less than impressed, referring to talk of barriers facing women in politics as “socialist crap.” Of course, Dr. Cristina Stasia reminded her that socialism has long been sexist and hostile to women in politics as it’s seen as a “man’s role.” So there’s that.

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A number of social conservative issues came up at the convention, and despite sitting MLAs encouraging the grassroots members to vote against them – things like requiring parents be told if their children attend a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting at school, or having parents sign-off on “medically invasive procedures” for minors (read: abortions), which the grassroots crackpots insist were about “parental rights.” Sure, Jan. And Kenney outright said afterward that he’ll take these under advisement but won’t be held to them, saying that they’re “poorly worded” and the like. Because he wants to win and not be another “Lake of fire” party like Wildrose was, which cost them at least one election. However, Kenney has courted enough social conservatives and empowered them enough that they decisively won several policy votes meaning that they’ll be difficult to ignore, no matter how hard he tries to play down those resolutions when it comes time to draft his election platform, given that he conspicuously stayed out of the policy development process in order to give members a freer hand. It’ll be an even bigger problem for him to ignore them now.

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Roundup: Questions about Scheer’s assertions

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Andrew Scheer went to Calgary yesterday to talk to that city’s Chamber of Commerce and said a few things that I feel should probably stand a bit of questioning. Like the fact that he thinks it’s a “red flag” to use taxpayer funds to backstop the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline. And it’s fair that there’s scepticism about governments essentially subsidizing private business, but it’s his assertion that “governments investing tax dollars in energy projects is not the optimal solution.” Sure, it’s not optimal, but it’s complete and total historical revisionism to suggestion that this is somehow new or novel. Given the ways that governments, both federal and provincial, have de facto subsidized the development of the oilsands with generous royalty breaks and other tax incentives has been sinking a hell of a lot of taxpayer dollars into energy projects. And yes, there was a whole national crisis that had a hand in bringing down a federal government around the government sinking money into a cross-country pipeline.

But the other statement that Scheer makes that I find a bit puzzling is this continued insistence that somehow provinces were forced to “take matters into their own hands” over the Trans Mountain issue because the federal government showed a lack of leadership. And I’m still trying to figure out how this works. For starters, which provinces is he referring to? BC, which took it upon themselves to challenge federal jurisdiction in a naked attempt to appease a coalition partner? Or Alberta, who escalated tactics on the basis of a press release? “They should use all of the tools at their disposal,” Scheer insists of the federal government, and yet I’m not sure what exactly they were supposed to do. They already have jurisdiction – trying to re-assert it would imply that there was a question when there isn’t one, and creating doubt would embolden opponents. There wasn’t anything to challenge in the courts because BC had only put out a press release, and nobody even had a clue about what specific questions BC was raising until they filed their court reference this past week. How would going half-cocked have helped matters? But demanding they “use all the tools” sounds an awful lot like hand-wavey nonsense that serves to only invoke the politician’s syllogism than it does to suggest meaningful action. Kinder Morgan, meanwhile, has used this exercise in threatening to pull out in order to exact political leverage (and the fact that a private company is attempting to blackmail governments is not a good look), but there remain questions outside of all of this as to their own obligations to fulfil the conditions imposed on them by the National Energy Board for continued approval of the project. That can’t be glossed over.

I’m also curious what else he thinks the federal government should have done to silence BC’s objections, considering that he’s also supporting the Saskatchewan government’s attempt to push back against the imposition of the federal carbon backstop price. Is his position that federal governments should bigfoot provinces to get pipelines, but that they don’t dare interfere in areas of shared jurisdiction like the environment? That’s an interesting needle to thread, and somehow, I doubt we’ll see him attempting to do so anytime soon.

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QP: The sexist carbon tax

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Following meetings with the prime minister of Portugal, Justin Trudeau was in Question Period, while Andrew Scheer was absent yet again. Lisa Raitt led off, worrying about the high price of gasoline in BC, which was being “compounded” by the carbon tax. Trudeau reminded her that BC has had a price on pollution for over ten years, and that carbon pricing allows people to make better choices. Raitt went for incredulous, raising the story that Trudeau has meals prepared at 24 Sussex and messengered to Rideau Cottage, to which Trudeau noted that the Conservatives were only interested in political attacks but not action on the environment. Gérard Deltell took over in French, noting that GHG emissions went down under ten Conservatives without a carbon tax — once again, omitting that it was because Ontario shuttered their coal-fired plants and the economic downturn, rather than anything that the then-Conservative government did. Trudeau reiterated that the Conservatives have no plan so they attack. Deltell asked again, and got the same answer. Raitt got back up, mentioned that the question was originally written by Gord Brown and had planned to ask it later in the week, and raised the issue of compensation for thalidomide survivors. Trudeau picked up a script to first give condolences for Brown’s death, and then added that they would have an announcement for those survivors soon. Guy Caron led off for the NDP, raising the problem of web giants creating the demise of advertising in newspapers which impacted press freedom. Trudeau took up another script to read about their support for a free press on World Press Freedom Day. Caron asked again in English, demanding those web giants be taxed, and Trudeau, sans script, reiterated his response and added that they are supporting local media via transition funding and CBC. Matthew Dubé worried about attempting to apply the Safe Third Country Agreement to the entire border, to which Trudeau said that they apply all of the rules and laws including our international obligations. Jenny Kwan asked the same in English, and got much the same answer with a slight admonishment that they were trying to create fear and conspiracy.

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Roundup: Another cry for technocracy

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After Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office weighed in on the government’s figures in advance of the election, he too finds that the province’s deficit is probably bigger than reported, as will its debt figures be. The accounting dispute between the government and its Auditor General remains in the air, while there are doubts being raised as to whether there are really surpluses in the pension funds in a meaningful sense. And it’s all done Andrew Coyne’s head in, because now he thinks that it’s time to simply take away any financial reporting away from a government, and turn it all over to a neutral, arm’s length, third-party body because the alternative is to let governments and other political parties spin and manipulate about what’s in the books. In his estimation, Auditors-General and Parliamentary Budget Officers/Fiscal Accountability Officers are of little use because their reports and opinions are not binding, who can pretend that they’re related to matters of opinion and accounting disputes, while opposition parties aren’t doing the job of accountability because they use the same torqued figures for their own purposes.

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But I think that Coyne is completely off the mark here, because he places too much faith in the words of the current watchdogs. We’ve seen examples where the Auditor General has been wrong – the Senate audit being a prime example where he was out of his depth, based a number of findings on opinion that were later overturned by a former Supreme Court of Canada justice hired to adjudicate the findings, and further legal analysis of his findings poked yet more holes in his analysis. We also see numerous examples of where the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s methodology is suspect (to say the least), but we rarely see these challenge being made public in the media because the media takes the words of these watchdogs as gospel, which should be alarming to anyone who engages in the slightest bit of critical thinking. To turn even more of our government’s fiscal processes over to yet another unaccountable technocratic body strikes fear into my heart because the people we keep demanding we turn this power over to are not infallible, and there are no ways for us to hold them to account – especially if the media refuses to do so responsibly either.

So while I can sympathise with Coyne’s frustration – and the situation in Ontario is particularly egregious, with all three parties guilty of playing along – the answer is never technocracy. We may get the governments that we deserve, but that also means that we, the voting public, need to do a better job of doing our own due diligence and demanding better, and we’re not – we’re just shrugging our way toward oblivion, which is part of the problem.

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Roundup: A possible missed deadline on election laws

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With a ticking clock over their heads – one whose useful time may already have passed – the government unveiled a new bill yesterday to reform the country’s electoral laws, to not only roll back changes that the previous government made around voter ID, that people complained made it harder for people to vote, while also enhancing some privacy safeguards, and limiting the writ period to 50 days while imposing more spending limits on pre-writ and third-party spending (so long as there’s a fixed election date). In the event that you thought there was already a bill on the Order Paper to roll back those Conservative changes, well, you’d be right, but they’ve abandoned it and rolled those changes into this new bill – a tactic they have been using with increasing frequency for whatever reason. Of course, Conservatives are already grousing that the Liberals are trying to make voter fraud easier by reducing the ID restrictions – never mind that they were never able to prove that there were problems with the pre-existing system, with one MP being forced to apologize for misleading the House after insisting that he saw people collecting voter registration cards when he actually just made the story up. But why ruin a narrative about the Liberals trying to game the next election?

The point about timing is going to be a tough one, because ideally these changes should have been made months ago if Elections Canada was to have enough time to ensure that they’ll be in effect for 2019 – and this also has to do with their need to migrate to a new data centre in advance of that election. Why the government couldn’t get this bill out months ago – or advance the previous bill on electoral measures, for that matter – is a question that they have yet to answer. As to whether Elections Canada can make these changes in time, the fact that there is now a bill that they can look to could mean that they’ve been saved in time – maybe – but we have yet to see how long it will take for them to bring it to debate and get it to the Senate, which has been keen to both amend bills and take their time doing it.

Meanwhile, Elections Canada is working with CSE and outside contractors to provide iPads to polling stations in the next election for things like voter registration so that they can eliminate some of the paper systems at advanced polls. In other words, trying to speed up the process electronically while still keeping the paper ballots that are so necessary to have proper accountability in our system.

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QP: Applauding the ghosts of the Harper government

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While the PM was off in Vancouver to announce a new investment by Amazon, and Andrew Scheer…elsewhere (I believe Toronto), it was up to Candice Bergen to lead off today, concern trolling about the loss of foreign direct investment in Canada, and tying that to the coming federal carbon tax, demanding to know how much it would cost families. Bill Morneau replied, offering some pabulum about how great economy has been doing. Bergen sarcastically suggested that the Liberals are saying that the carbon tax will fix everything wrong with the world, to which Jim Carr noted that they have taken action through the oceans protection plan, strengthening environmental assessments, and their carbon pricing plans were all taking action, unlike the previous government. Bergen accused the government of covering up those costs, and Jim Carr read some stats about how much carbon would be reduced with their plan. Gérard Deltell took over to ask the same again in French, and Carr noted that the opposition had no plan, nor did they while they were in government. Deltell made the “cover-up” accusations in French, and Morneau stood up to offer some pabulum in French. Guy Caron was up for the NDP, and demanded to know if the government denied ordering the Kinder Morgan approval to be fixed. Carr said that he did refute it, and when Caron asked again in French, Carr pointed to all of the materials available on the website. Romeo Saganash asked the same again in French, and Carr listed consultations and engagement including the monitoring panel co-developed with Indigenous communities. Saganashed tried again in French, and Carr noted that they had made accommodations and that the conversations were meaningful.

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