While it was caucus day, and all of the leaders were present, but things got off to a late start for a rather unfashionable reason. When QP started, Rona Ambrose started, mini-lectern on desk, reading a question about the lack of concern by the government over mounting job losses in Alberta. Justin Trudeau reassured her that he was preoccupied with the issue, and that measures were coming in the budget. Ambrose repeated the question in French, got much the same response, and then turned to the lifting of sanctions on Iran but tied it into the Syria mission. Trudeau said that the world was safer with a nuclear deal with Iran, and that Canada needed to engage in a responsible way with that country. Tony Clement railed against Iran in French, to which Trudeau repeated his previous answer about engaging responsibly, and then went for another round in English on the topic. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and demanded action on restoring home mail delivery. Trudeau reminded him that they campaigned on a moratorium, which they did, and they were now engaging with Canadians on the issue. Mulcair then demanded that OAS be restored to people at 65 immediately, to which Trudeau reminded him that it’s already the case. Mulcair read the same question again in French, got the very same answer, that they age increase wasn’t going to happen until 2023, and suggested that Mulcair check his facts first. Mulcair asked about provincial pension enrichments, to which Trudeau reminded him that the finance minister is currently engaging with provinces.
Tag Archives: Ukraine
Roundup: The problem with private members’ bills
I’ve written a lot about the problems with private members’ bills, and in my column this week over at Loonie Politics, it came up again given that the lottery for the Order of Precedence was posted. I wrote about it back in the spring when there were a number of problematic ones that the Senate was possibly going to kill (and in some cases did when the clock ran out on them) for good reason – because they were bad bills. While interviewing Liberal Senator George Baker yesterday for a story I was writing, he offered this, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to include in the piece, but every MP should nevertheless read it and take it to heart:
“Here’s a real problem with these private member’s bills: if there’s a fault in the bill, if there’s a word out of place, if there’s an error in the wording or in the intent of a sentence of paragraph – if it’s a private member’s bill, then the Senate is in a quandary because if they amend the bill, then they will in all likelihood be defeating the bill. If you amend a bill in the Senate, if it’s a private member’s bill, it goes back to the Commons and it goes to the bottom of the list for consideration, and then the private member will come to the Senate committee and say you’re going to pass this bill. We had it happen three times in the past two years. They say you’re going to defeat the bill, so the Senate turned around and passed the bill, given the tradition of not defeating something that’s legitimately passed in the House of Commons, and Senate ignored the necessary amendments and they passed bad legislation.”
Baker is absolutely right in that there is a problem – MPs don’t have them drafted very well, and then don’t do their due diligence because these bills are automatically time-allocated by design. That a number of these bills died on the Order Paper in the Senate one hopes might be an object lesson to MPs that they need to do better, but unfortunately, the lesson too many MPs took is that the “unelected and unaccountable Senate” didn’t just rubber-stamp a bill because it passed the Commons. Except, of course, it’s not their job to rubber stamp, and we’ve had an increasing number of bad bills getting through the cracks based on these emotive arguments, and not a few hissy fits along the way *cough*Reform Act*cough*. And now we have bad laws on the books because of it, apparently content to let the courts handle it instead. It’s sad and a little pathetic, to be perfectly honest. We should be demanding out MPs do better, and when they screw up, they need to take their lumps so that they’ll do better next time. Otherwise they won’t learn – or worse, they will take the wrong lesson, and our system will be worse off.
Roundup: Refugee hysteria
The question of Syrian refugees in the aftermath of the Paris attacks has reached ridiculous proportions, as a number of American state governors declared that they were going to let ISIS win and terrorize them, by insisting that they didn’t want any Syrian refugees in their states. Because it’s the refugees that have been responsible for mass shootings in the States, right? Closer to home, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall decided he was going to be the one to try and crank up the concern trolling over refugees to eleven, saying that he wants the whole thing suspended because he thinks that security screening is being compromised in order to reach the “quota” and “deadline,” despite there being zero evidence to that effect, and the fact that in order for people to be registered refugees under the UNHCR, most of these kinds of background checks will already have been completed. Unfortunately, Wall is also cynically pandering to populist sentiment that has been stoked by the hysteria of what happened in Paris, in defiance of logic and fact. What is fortunate, however, is that pretty much every other province has disavowed this kind of nonsense and is ready to push ahead, with Quebec and Ontario ready to accept some 16,000 refugees, Rachel Notley being okay with the accelerated timeline, Greg Selinger saying that Manitobans are excited to welcome newcomers, and Christy Clark recognizing the urgency to bring refugees over. So it looks like Wall is the outlier on this one, but that’s not exactly a surprise, considering that critical thinking hasn’t been his strongest suit on a number of other files *cough*Senate reform*cough*.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/666337468132761600
Roundup: Honesty in deficits?
Balanced budgets and deficits continued to be a topic of discussion on the campaign yesterday, and it will continue to be so today as Justin Trudeau is set to unveil his infrastructure plan to boost the economy, which seems set to include some deficit financing for another year or two as the economy appears stagnant. Stephen Harper warns the other parties are looking at “permanent deficits,” but it bears reminding that according to the previous Parliamentary Budget Officer, the only way that Harper killed off is own structural deficit was in changing the health transfer escalator, leaving him with only a cyclical deficit (which persists, no matter how much they shuffle money around on paper to cover over it). The NDP continue to insist they won’t run a deficit, but they also seem to dispute that they would need to continue austerity and they would even do things like restore the health transfer escalator, which starts to boggle the mind. The Liberals seem to be looking to score points for honesty in that a) they don’t know the true state of the books, and b) the global economic situation, but one might also add that our debt-to-GDP ratio is in a good place now (as opposed to the eighties and nineties), so small deficits won’t affect our economic health that much. To that end, Mike Moffatt says it’s important to ask parties how they would manage deficits, because they are inevitable in the current economic climate, while Andrew Coyne says that we should be paying attention to the signals being sent by the leaders when it comes to deficits.
https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/636646713005076480
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Roundup: Wai Young, Conservative fabulist
Yesterday it was revealed that Conservative MP Wai Young spoke at a church congregation to tell them that Harper was doing things in the same vein as Jesus, and used Bill C-51 as an example. Because Jesus was really concerned about giving inordinate powers to intelligence agencies without any kind of oversight, and about preventing terrorist attacks – oh, wait. No he wasn’t. While Young’s terrible theology sparked the usual ridicule over the Twitter Machine, it was her other statement that was perhaps most alarming, which was her claim that CSIS knew there was a bomb on the Air India flight 30 years ago, but were forbidden from sharing that information with the RCMP, and 400 people died as a result. Except no, none of that is true, they didn’t know and they could share information. Oops. Young later claimed that she “misspoke,” but that seems to be code amongst Conservative MPs for making stuff up. You know, like when that other Conservative backbencher apologised to the House for “misspeaking” when he claimed that he has directly witnessed people taking voter identification cards out of the recycling bin with the intention of casting fraudulent ballots. Turns out that one wasn’t true either. But hey, political fabulism is apparently okay so long as you apologise for “misspeaking” when you get caught. Truth and debating on the strength of your ideas doesn’t matter – no, you can just invent things out of whole cloth, repeat complete fabrications against your opponents (income splitting for seniors, anyone?) and say it often enough in the hopes that people will start believing it’s true (Hello, 2011 election). Why wouldn’t a backbencher like Young think it’s okay if this is the behaviour that she’s watching get rewarded by everyone else around her? It’s a sad indictment of the state of our political discourse.
Roundup: Spinning deficit financing
It should be no surprise that a government that likes to re-announce the same funds over and over again are now re-spinning old funds with a new purpose. As previously discussed, they’re going full-speed ahead on rebranding their childcare benefits as economic stimulus – because apparently only families with children should be stimulating the economy. (Singletons, we’re being shafted – again). As well, Scott Brison noted that these cheques are essentially being deficit financed, after the budget raided both the contingency reserve and the EI fund to pay for them while still claiming balance (not to mention their projections for oil prices). And hey, you know what would be a good thing during a recession? A full contingency reserve and an EI fund that’s ready to help any layoffs and job losses that result from said recession. But things were going to be rosy, and there was nothing to worry about – except now there is, but Harper insists it’s all external factors (never mind that he still takes credit when things go well even though it had nothing to do with his government). What great economic leadership…
Same can be said for NDP's daycare plan. https://t.co/jF6vGQMcGw
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
As far as childcare plans go, the LPC's is hard to beat: channelling $$ to families with low incomes.
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
My feed is filling up with NDP supporters who oppose giving $$ to low-income families.
Apparently the reason involves beer and popcorn.
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
"Why give low-income families $$ if they won't spend it on what I want them to spend it on?"
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 14, 2015
Roundup: Cheques doing double duty
While former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page says that if we go into a technically recession, it should be contained as there is still growth in other sectors beyond oil and gas, Pierre Poilievre has been out spinning yet another tale over the weekend. Not content to show that the universal childcare benefit cheques due in the mail this month are nakedly partisan attempts at vote buying (and those of us of a certain age will remember when Ralph Klein would send out cheques to help Albertans pay for the cost of natural gas conveniently as elections were around the corner), Poilievre has ensured that the cheques get a second political purpose – they are now to also count as economic stimulus. Which of course they would be – but not very much, according to Don Drummond. As well, the government keeps saying they’re making all of these infrastructure investments, but the vast majority of them are still years down the road, and their Canada 150 infrastructure programme is going to be very small-time, and is also unlikely to have much in the way of lasting economic benefit. So we can expect these kinds of talking points to be repeated ad nauseum for the next few weeks as the campaign heats up, and until we get the numbers from StatsCan on September 1st as to whether we’re in a recession or not.
https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/620328712375025668
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https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/620332221707235329
Ridiculous claim when Liberal plan is $4B bigger stimulus! Poilievre flogs bigger child benefit as economic boost http://t.co/z5rPV9v5ek
— John McCallum (@HonJohnMcCallum) July 13, 2015
Roundup: The R-word
With all of this bad economic news coming out lately, the R-word has been bandied about – recession, or technical recession, in the event that we get two quarters of negative growth. After all, we had negative growth in the first quarter, and we’ve already had one US bank say that we’re headed for recession and a 77-cent dollar (note: This was misreported as a 70-cent dollar the day before yesterday). Oh, but don’t worry, Joe Oliver says – we won’t go into recession. His forecasters still show growth, and Harper insists that the oil patch is going to bounce back, while they send out MPs saying that certain sectors of the economy are going to do better with a lower dollar – except no, the manufacturing sector isn’t ramping up on a lower dollar this time because that burned them before, and they had already retooled a lot of their operations to service oil and gas demand rather than export demand. So there’s that. One also can’t help but be reminded of the 2008 election, when Harper insisted that if a recession was going to happen, it would have happened already, and hey, look at all of these great buying opportunities. And then the “Great Recession” happened (a ridiculous name considering that the recession in the early 80s was actually worse), and the government drove us into deficit with a badly planned stimulus programme. Now that the campaign has begun, all of the leaders are plugging their messages – Harper insisting that things are going to bounce back and hey, look over there – terrorists!; Mulcair talking about manufacturing jobs without saying how he’ll encourage them (that miniscule innovation tax credit isn’t going to cut it) while also falsely decrying that “all of our eggs” were in the resource basket (not even remotely true); while Trudeau is making points about the current way the government is treating the economy and environment in an oppositional framework when it needn’t be, and talking about ramping up infrastructure spending but also trying to be clever about how to do it without more deficit spending. We’ll know by September 1st if we’re really in a recession or not, but it could make for a long two months of campaigning on the economy in the meantime.
Roundup: Preparing to change gears
Today may be the final day the Senate sits – we’ll see if the Liberals are able to tie-up the “union-busting” bill C-377 in procedure for longer than it has been illegitimately time-allocated for today. From that point on, with business out of the way, it looks like senators can spend the summer focusing on some of the more managerial aspects of what has been going on with them of late, being the Auditor General’s report and his recommendations, particularly with regards to the independent oversight committee. It’ll be a tricky thing to get right because the AG did not contemplate the issue of parliamentary supremacy, but you can be sure that there are a number of senators who won’t be silent about that particular issue. It will also be a summer of fending off smears and attacks from MPs trying to use the Senate as a punching bag in their bid to get re-elected – never mind that a few incidents of alleged misspending have nothing to do with the powers or legislative business of the Senate, or the fact that MPs are far more opaque about their own spending practices. To that end, Senate Speaker Housakos told Bob Fife over the weekend that he’s not going to take any lessons on accountability from MPs, and most especially Mulcair with his party’s $2.7 million satellite office issue. And that’s exactly it – MPs aren’t saints by virtue of having been elected, and it doesn’t mean that they are really held to account for those issues because they are rarely brought to light. Witness last week, when the Ottawa Citizen asked MPs about their residential claims, and only 20 out of some 300 actually bothered to respond. Oh, but it’s the Senate that has the problem and with the “entitlement” issue.
Roundup: Getting out the leg irons
It was the image that launched a thousand attack ads – or probably will, at any rate, as Dean Del Mastro was marched out in handcuffs and leg irons, off to spend the night (at least) in an Ontario prison after being found guilty of breaking election finance laws. “Cheating is cheating,” the judge noted, and that it was a serious enough crime to warrant some kind of jail time, so she decided on a month – though he may get out by tomorrow on bail pending the appeal of his case. Del Mastro’s lawyer also tried to get other exceptions for Del Mastro – jail on weekends, numerous exceptions for the eventual house arrest provisions – because he has a farm and needs to feed the animals, and a job in Toronto, and so on. The judge didn’t appear to be buying it, and made a point about needing a jail sentence onto only to show the severity of the crime (hence denunciation and deterrence), but also the issue of time to reflect on his actions, thought may be asking a lot from Del Mastro, as he walked into the courtroom convinced of his own innocence, and has shown no remorse whatsoever, even though the judge noted that Del Mastro was prepared to falsify his own statements to try and get away with his overspending. Many will argue that leg-irons and jail time are overkill, give that he’s not a dangerous criminal, but it relies on the same logic behind putting white collar criminals behind bars as well – because making them pay a fine or just house arrest aren’t considered punishment enough for the severity of their crimes. Disagree with it all you want, but we have made this choice though our legislative regimes, and if we want to change that, well, there’s an election coming up. Meanwhile, Stephen Maher says the Conservatives’ treatment of the man who testified against Del Mastro leaves a lot to be desired.