Tag Archives: Trade

Roundup: Jean’s version

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Yesterday finally saw that long-anticipated Daniel Jean appearance before the Commons public safety committee, and it was…not explosive. Much of it was simply reiterating everything we’ve heard before – that Jean was sensitive to misinformation that was appearing in media outlets that suggested that RCMP and CSIS didn’t take Jaspal Atwal’s appearance seriously, that there was a possibility this was an attempt to embarrass the Canadian government into looking like they didn’t take Khalistani separatists seriously, and that Jean himself suggested the briefing and PMO simply providing him with a list of journalists to reach out to. And when the Conservatives demanded to know about the “rogue elements in the Indian government” or “conspiracy theory” allegations, Jean corrected that he didn’t say those things.

Now, some of the journalists involved in the briefing are disputing a few details, and in particular the notion that Jean had suggested that perhaps Indian intelligence was involved (which he denied yesterday). And there remains this concern trolling that senior bureaucrats don’t normally go to the media like this so he “must have” been put-up to it by PMO, which I’m not really sure is the case, particularly because as we heard in later releases about Jean’s briefing, and in his testimony yesterday, he highlighted the use of “fake news” and propaganda by hostile outlets, which is why we wanted to correct them as a neutral third-party. This is not really a widespread concern just a few years ago, particularly given the way that it was seen as interfering with elections and whatnot, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he wanted to be more proactive about it.

Of course, the real hitch in all of this is that some of the sensationalized reporting around the original briefing, coupled with the torque applied to it by Andrew Scheer and company to the point where the story being proffered in the House of Commons didn’t match reality (which is Scheer’s stock in trade these days) have spun this whole narrative beyond what was a “faux pas,” per Jean. And when Jean’s narrative didn’t match Scheer’s, it was Scheer who tried to insist that Trudeau spoke about the “rogue elements” (he never did – he very studiously avoided any specifics and only said that he supported what Jean said), and that it was up to Trudeau to provide clarity for his apparent contradictions when he didn’t actually make any – it was Scheer himself who put forward a false narrative and has been caught with his pants down over it. But let’s also be clear – a lot of the reporting around this has not been stellar either, between sensationalization and omitting of aspects (like his concern about the misinformation being fed to Canadian media), coupled with a refusal to call Scheer out on his disingenuous framing of the whole thing, has led these false narratives to grow out of control. And they keep getting dragged on longer by things like yet more false claims being piled on, such as with the chickpea tariffs and the allegedly cancelled meeting that never existed, but do we call it out? Not until days later. And some journalists should own up to their role rather than get their backs up (like they did yesterday) so that we can move on from this whole incident because we really do have better things to discuss.

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Roundup: A big meeting, no big answers

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Yesterday saw the big meeting between Justin Trudeau and premiers Rachel Notley and John Horgan on the subject of the Trans Mountain expansion, and what was supposed to be a 35-minute tête-à-tête turned into over 90. We didn’t get specifics out of the meeting, but we got some clues, in particular that Horgan is pointing to deficiencies in the government’s ocean protections plan, while Trudeau and Notley will be in discussion with Kinder Morgan about a possible stake in the project to help with risk mitigation, and to get the ball rolling before construction season. Trudeau also noted some kind of upcoming legislation to reiterate federal jurisdiction over the project, but one hopes that they don’t try to declare this under Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution, because it’s already federal jurisdiction and invoking that when the jurisprudence is already settled would introduce doubt that doesn’t actually exist – no matter what Horgan seems to imply.

And then comes along Andrew Scheer, who demonstrates either a wilful ignorance of history, or a willingness to again demonstrate that he is a fabulist – or possibly a combination of the two. Regardless, his particular assertions about the history of government investment in energy projects is woefully mistaken and wrong.

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Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt looks at how the meeting de-escalated the tensions somewhat, while Paul Wells reads everyone’s positions, and wonders if the government’s plans actually address Kinder Morgan’s concerns. Also, here’s a reminder about the last time a BC premier tried to intrude on federal jurisdiction and got slapped down hard by the federal government.

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Roundup: Peter Harder, hero of the Senate

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Oh, Senator Peter Harder. The Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” did the media rounds yesterday to both promote his fifty-page position paper on his conception of the constitutional role of the Senate, and to kick at the Conservatives whom he claims are “sabotaging” his attempts to turn the Senate into a less partisan place. (I have a column reacting to the contents of the paper coming out later, so stay tuned for that). I’m constantly struck by Harder’s attempts to play the hero in this when he’s done virtually nothing to earn the title. Aside from putting out this paper in advance of the Modernization committee’s upcoming report, Harder has pretty much eschewed his actual duties of negotiating with the various caucuses in the Senate on legislative timelines (because negotiating and horse-trading is “partisan”), and he didn’t do his job in canvassing the votes for the marijuana bill, and even though it was in no danger of being defeated, he still got caught with his pants down and was a big drama queen about it. But instead of taking a modicum of personal responsibility for not doing his job, he instead blames the Conservatives for “sabotage” when they’re doing their job as opposition, when he would prefer that Senators never defeat bills (which would make his job even easier and put even less pressure on him to do his job). And yet nobody pushes back against his narratives in the media.

Senator McCoy meanwhile, makes a point that hasn’t been well aired in public yet, which is that Harder has been pushing for the Senate to return to the model of the Clerk being responsible for all of the Senate’s bureaucracy rather than the three-clerk model that they moved to post-Duffy scandal – a model which forces senators to take more responsibility for their actions rather than being able to blame their bureaucracy. Questions about the government’s control over that Clerk are certainly live ones, and it does undermine the notion that the Senate is supposed to be getting more independent. Apparently, that doesn’t extend to its internal operations. Curious indeed.

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Roundup: Let’s not punt it to the Supreme Court

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As the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion drama continues to chug along, we saw that Bill Morneau had a meeting with Rachel Notley and while nothing specific was announced, it was stated that something is on the way in fairly short order. Add to that, Jim Carr was doing the media rounds saying that the pipeline will get built, and it’s a question of how, which is an important clue. And then came Jagmeet Singh, who decided that his contribution to this is to insist that this all get referred to the Supreme Court of Canada in a joint federal/provincial/First Nations reference. Because showing political leadership apparently means fobbing off the tough questions to the Supreme Court. He also suffers from the delusion that the Court could act swiftly on this, ignoring that it would take six months to even pull a reference together (seriously – the Court wouldn’t hear it until the fall at the earliest). And then his environment critic went on Power & Politicsand said that even if the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the federal government and that the project could go ahead, they’d still oppose it because obviously it would be a wrong decision. Yeah. Okay.

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As Carissima Mathen explains in this segment of The House, the Supreme Court doesn’t like to be used for political purposes, reference questions are generally of general application, and even referring the question of jurisdiction to them would imply that there is doubt that the federal government has it, which settled case law clearly demonstrates that they do. (Likewise, going Jason Kenney’s route and invoking Section 92(10)(c) implies that there is doubt that these pipelines are federal jurisdiction when we know that they are, hence why it’s not only a redundant course of action, but it creates damaging precedent). And that’s why Morneau was pretty explicit when he shot down Singh’s proposal yesterday – they know they have jurisdiction, so it would make no sense to refer it to the SCC. On a related note, the BC NDP have changed their rhetoric around using every tool in the toolbox to oppose the pipeline and are now pledging to use all tools to protect their coastline and environment, likely because they got a legal opinion that said that they have no jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Ditchburn notes that Indigenous protests against the pipeline aren’t a side plot – and she’s right, but it’s also separate from the jurisdiction issue, and should be treated as separate. (I also suspect that the government will argue that approval was given before they legislated implementation of UNDRIP, and that they did additional consultation and created the Indigenous-lead monitoring committee, so that should satisfy Section 35). Chantal Hébert sees few options that the federal government could use that would still maintain provincial peace. David Moscrop wants everyone to cool their jets because this isn’t actually a crisis, but rather how democracy and federalism actually work. Jen Gerson looks at how this failure would be the signal of a bigger market failure in Canada, and open us up to creating an institutionalized culture of kickbacks and corruption when it comes to major projects.

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Roundup: Emergency Cabinet stalling

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After yesterday’s emergency Cabinet meeting, you might think that ministers would have something to say. They did – they stated that they remained 100 percent behind the construction of the pipeline, and then Jim Carr fled to catch a plane, and all other ministers similarly fled, with Bill Morneau dropping a few more hints before he had a later media availability in Toronto, where he said that they would be meeting with Rachel Notley today in order to further discuss options. Of course, why they couldn’t just say this at the time is part of the frustrating way in which this government chooses to communicate (though I keep reminding myself, and occasionally others, is that if this were the Harper years, we wouldn’t know there was a meeting, reporters would have been barred from the third floor where it happened, and ministers would flee down the back stairs so as to avoid media).

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Notley, meanwhile, says that her government is prepared to buy the pipeline outright if Kinder Morgan pulls out (and there is speculation that if Kinder Morgan fails to get the pipeline built, they could launch a NAFTA challenge against the government). John Horgan says that Notley’s threats to legislate the cut of oil to BC, forcing them to raise gasoline prices, would be “provocative” – something he says as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And to add another wrench into things, AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde finally broke his silence on the Trans Mountain issue, asserting that UNDRIP principles mean they need First Nations consent.

But amidst all of this, we get back to some basic problems, in that thus far, BC hasn’t actually done anything yet, so there’s nothing that the federal government can actually do other than make a bunch of symbolic statements. Demands that this be taken to the Supreme Court are left with the basic problems of just what we’re asking them to weigh in on – federal jurisdiction is settled law, and until BC actually comes up with their novel plans to skirt the constitution, we have no actual question for the Court to decide on (when it eventually does – it wouldn’t hear the reference until the fall at the earliest, and then likely take up to six more months to render their decision). I’m hard-pressed to call that a panacea to the problem, or to give Kinder Morgan the comfort they’re seeking.

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Good reads:

  • The Commons Public Safety committee will meet for sixty minutes at noon on Monday to hear from National Security Advisor Daniel Jean.
  • The Mexican ambassador says that while wages in Mexico are increasing, they won’t rise to the levels demanded by some NAFTA players immediately.
  • The big omnibus crime bill contains a clause that would allow police to submit court testimony in writing instead of in person, meaning defence can’t cross examine.
  • VADM Mark Norman had his first court appearance, and it’ll be a high bar for the Crown to prove breach of trust. Here is a guide to the cast of characters in this saga.
  • The government still doesn’t have a timeline for eliminating the gay blood donor ban (but they are compiling research for a move to a better risk-based system).
  • Tired of waiting for the government to fulfil its promise to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, Senator Kim Pate plans to table a bill to do just that.
  • A book by former Dion advisor Jocelyn Coulon insists that there was a frosty relationship between Trudeau and Dion, stemming Dion rebuffing Trudeau in 2006.
  • The Ethics Commissioner might open an investigation into Raj Grewal’s invitation on the India trip (but nobody has said how his private interests were furthered).
  • Stephen Harper tweeted congratulations to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who is anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. John Geddes delves deeper here.
  • In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Maxime Bernier expresses some sour grapes and says that Andrew Scheer won thanks to “fake Conservatives.”
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column takes on the issue of those illicit political donations by Conrad Black.
  • Susan Delacourt looks at Canadians’ growing distrust in Facebook.
  • Martin Patriquin notes the Liberal inability to own their pithy phrases when they backfire, preferring instead to shift to less sentimental talking points.
  • My column calls out the insistence that there are “simple questions” or simple answers to the Trans Mountain issue.

Odds and ends:

An academic examination of Justin Trudeau’s Instagram feed shows not a single selfie among the image he’s crafted.

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Roundup: A curious appointment bottleneck

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There was an interesting revelation in the Hill Timesyesterday in that the government is sitting on more than 100 vetted Senate candidates while twelve seats remain vacant, and yet put out a call for yet more applications while the advisory committees are all empty, which would be the people who are supposed to vet all of those incoming applications. But that number amazes me – 100 names that are vetted and ready to go for those twelve vacancies, and the government isn’t moving on them, adding one or two names every couple of months at random intervals. And don’t get me wrong – I’m firmly opposed to mass appointments, but that also means that the Chamber should be in full operation and that vacancies should be filled as they happen, which are one or two at a time. Add to that the fact that because these are all being named as Independents, the kinds of mentoring that should happen isn’t, so at this point it almost doesn’t matter if we get all twelve in one fell swoop because the result would be the same either way.

The other thing that is very interesting is that in the interview with former appointment committee member Indira Samarasekera, she mentioned that they identified key skill areas that the Senate is in need of and that their names have reflected that, but these aren’t necessarily the people that Trudeau is naming in the long run. Which isn’t to say that Trudeau has simply been naming ideological Liberals and calling them Independents (despite what the Conservatives in the Senate are claiming), but it is hard to deny that there isn’t a similarity to most of the candidates in the fact that they tend to be activists from the social sciences as opposed to some of the business, foreign affairs, and trade experts that Samarasekera noted that they recommended. Despite this all, the piece provides an interesting window on just what seems to be the bottleneck in appointments that this government has a problem with making, and which continues to be a slow-moving crisis of their credibility.

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Roundup: Upping the Trans Mountain drama

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Late afternoon yesterday, Kinder Morgan put out a surprise press release saying that they were suspending “non-essential activities” and spending related to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, citing the political fights still underway on the project. It’s a transparent move to try and force a political solution to some of the drama underway, and it certainly got everyone’s attention. Within the hour, Jim Carr was standing before reporters to assure them that all options were on the table, but by that point, Rachel Notley was demanding “concrete action” from the federal government, while Jason Kenney started his performative caterwauling about how terrible the federal government has been on this, and the federal conservatives promptly followed suit, ignoring their own record on pipelines in the meantime. Andrew Leach, however, has kept receipts, and immediately called them out on it. (John Horgan, incidentally, denies that he’s been harassing the project).

When Leach called out the fact that the previous government didn’t hold a press conference about the approval of Northern Gateway, and didn’t travel to BC to promote it, Raitt didn’t get his point and responded with a news article from the day which pointed out directly that the minister’s office sent out a release and refused all questions, after which Harper noted in the Commons that jurisdiction was deferred to the NEB. So the question is, if that was good enough for the Conservatives then, why is it so terrible that the Liberals are doing more and being more vocal about Trans Mountain now?

Paul Wells, meanwhile, takes a survey of the landscape in the wake of these developments, and continues to express some doubts as to what is going on. I personally have to wonder what more the federal government can do in the face of the provincial tit-for-tat from Alberta and BC, seeing as they already have jurisdiction over this pipeline, and they realistically can’t bigfoot the actions of the NEB, which is a quasi-judicial body. After all, there is the rule of law to contend with. To date, BC really hasn’t made any concrete actions that the government can take to court, for example, and certainly nothing that would merit reviving the powers of disallowance from constitutional dormancy. Kenney et al.’s demand to declare Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution is legally illiterate, so what else, pray tell, should the federal government do? I’ll be curious to see what verifiable solutions present themselves in the coming days.

To round it off, Kevin Milligan also offered some observations on the situation on the ground.

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Roundup: Pallister’s dubious threats

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Manitoba premier Brian Pallister is looking to talk tough with the federal government, essentially daring them to increase the carbon price that he’s instituting in his province with a threat to take the federal government to court if they do. This after Pallister’s government already explored the notion of taking the government to court over the imposition of a federal carbon price backstop in the first place, and deciding that it wasn’t something they could win. For reference, Pallister’s government says they’ll implement a $25/tonne carbon tax, and leave it there rather than raise it every year (the point of which is, of course, to drive businesses and consumers to make choices that mean paying fewer of these carbon prices), and Catherine McKenna is basically saying “That’s great, but if your price doesn’t increase in 2020 like it’s supposed to, we’ll charge the difference.” While Pallister is trying to stand with other small-c conservative leaders – most of whom aren’t yet in office – I’m really not sure where he thinks he has the legal footing on this one.

Why does this matter? Well, recall the Environment Commissioner’s report last week that was done in concert with provincial auditors general, and as Paul Wells points out in this excellent piece, they could demonstrate that it wasn’t just the Harper government not doing their part (as McKenna was so quick to focus on), but rather the provinces weren’t doing their part either – especially those who were talking a good game. Nobody is taking this seriously, and the ability to hit our targets gets further away. And in the midst of Wells’ excoriation of these political leaders and their big talk on the environment, he drives home the message that we can’t believe any of them. And he’s right. Which is why we can’t believe Pallister’s rhetoric in this either, as he claims that his province’s plan is better than the federal one, so they shouldn’t have to add the increased carbon tax as part of that. Sorry, but no. The common carbon price across the country is about more than just reductions as it is about preventing carbon leakage to other jurisdictions in the country (and possibly elsewhere, depending on how well its designed), and he should know that. But just like the federal conservatives playing cute with trying to insist that McKenna should be able to tell them exactly how many megatonnes a $50/tonne carbon price will reduce, it’s not how this works. A carbon price is not a scrubber in a smokestack – it’s a market mechanism that is supposed to drive demand and innovation, and it works in jurisdictions where it is implemented properly. It’s not just about a claim that their system with a lower price will be better, which is a claim we shouldn’t believe anyway. It’s time for everyone to play hardball with politicians and these promises, and that means more than just disingenuous questions or demands, but actual accountability for what mechanisms are supposed to do and how they’re being implemented.

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Roundup: Three senators went to Washington

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Three Conservative senators went to Washington DC to talk about marijuana legalization, and you may be shocked to learn that they were not reassured by any of it. They were told that Homeland Security isn’t adding any new resources to the border so Canadian travellers may face more delays, and they were told of all of the new cartels that have emerged as the crime rate has skyrocketed in Colorado. And oh, how the loopholes around home-growing are being exploited by criminal elements. Woe! Most of this should be taken with a particular grain of salt – there has been no proven causal relationship between the increased crime rate in Colorado with marijuana legalization, and if there are Mexican cartels looking to exploit loopholes to export it from the state, I’m not sure that’s as big of an issue in Canada if the whole country is legalizing instead of a single province. And as for the border, well, individual agents already have immense discretionary powers now, so nothing is really going to change there.

What was curious in all of this is how the Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder, complained that these three Conservatives were “undermining the government” by taking this trip. I’m not sure that it’s a very credible complaint considering that they weren’t claiming to be headed down there on behalf of the government – rather, it was under the rubric that they haven’t been getting straight answers from the government, so they wanted to get answers for themselves. It’s almost as if they were exercising the discretion afforded to them as part of the “independent Senate” where they don’t have to ask the government’s permission to engage in such activities. And let’s not kid ourselves – this was a very partisan exercise, and I’m sure that most Canadians can see that it clearly was. They’re not exactly hiding it, but they’re also doing their duty as the opposition to get the information they think they need to hold government to account. The sky isn’t falling here, and Harder is coming across as a little thin-skinned in making the complaints he is.

Oh, and for those of you asking, it’s likely that this trip was paid for by the Senate, but bear in mind that Senators are allowed travel to Washington as part of their duties (and in fact, a trip to Washington is included as part of their annual travel points). There’s no actual scandal here for anyone to point to.

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Roundup: Propaganda and democratic interference

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During a media availability yesterday, Justin Trudeau mentioned the Russian embassy’s propaganda efforts in linking Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather to Nazi publications in World War II as a reason for expelling diplomats that he accused of interfering in Canadian democracy. Almost immediately, we got some of the more obtuse pundits in our commentariat fretting about why we didn’t expel those diplomats at the time that happened, and why the government couldn’t just say that last week when they were asked how those Russians had interfered. And to clarify, Trudeau cited that as an example, which is very much interfering with our democratic processes. And as for why they didn’t expel them earlier, I direct you once again to Stephanie Carvin’s Open Canada piece about the expulsions, and why we allow intelligence officers to stay when we know that they’re engaging in espionage activities. Seriously – go read it.

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And funnily enough, Carvin had pointed to that attempted Russian propagandizing days earlier when responding to Susan Delacourt’s column that wondered why we weren’t taking the allegations of Russian interference with more alarm that we have been. As Carvin points out – it’s not just cyber that we have to worry about, and if MPs were actually doing their jobs, they would be far more focused on this issue rather than re-litigating the Atwal Affair™ again and again to score cheap points.

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