Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: A six-point sham

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Over the weekend, Andrew Scheer went to Calgary to further outline his “economic vision,” which included a short-term six-party plan which…does nothing about the economy. Those six parts are to scrap the federal carbon price, repeal Bill C-69, repeal Bill C-48 and end any tanker ban in northern BC, establish timelines for project approvals, end the “foreign interference” in project approvals, and invoke the constitutional authority to build major projects. Do you see a pattern here?

To be clear, these six proposals are all, well, hot air. Ending the federal carbon price won’t get energy projects built – most oil and gas companies are in favour of it. Repealing Bill C-69 won’t help because the 2012 environmental assessment legislation the Conservatives put into place just wound up in litigation, and that will continue if he reverts to it. Ending the tanker ban won’t have any measurable impact because there are no pipelines in the area, no plans for any, and if he thinks he can revive Northern Gateway then he didn’t pay attention to the reasons why the Federal Court revoked its approval. Establishing timelines for approvals? Again, nice in theory, but without a framework behind it (like Bill C-69 would ostensibly provide), it will likely mean yet more litigation. That “foreign interference” in project approvals is largely the conspiracy theories that the conservative movement is clinging to (ignoring the foreign funds that go into their own thinktanks like the Fraser Institute). And that “constitutional authority” is not a magic wand, and would only sow confusion because any project that crosses a provincial boundary is already a federally regulated project, so there’s nothing to invoke. So Scheer’s “six point plan” should perhaps better be called a “six point sham.”

Meanwhile, here’s some further analysis of Scheer’s decision to back away from his pledge to eliminate the deficit in two years, whether it’s because of Liberal warnings of austerity, the unpopularity of Doug Ford’s cuts playing out in Ontario, or the desire to try and deprive the Liberals of their talking points. But it does also take the wind out of Scheer’s own rhetoric about the evils of deficits, particularly those that are small and sustainable like the ones we’re seeing right now.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1131728209018380288

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Roundup: Vetting judges? Oh noes!

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Yesterday the Globe and Mail had a story about how the current government will run potential judicial nominees through the Liberal party’s voter database as part of the vetting process, which was followed by an analysis of how many appointees were Liberal donors. This first came up weeks ago when yet another Jody Wilson-Raybould-related leak revealed that she was trying to “depoliticize” the appointment process by not providing certain information to PMO when she passed along recommendations, which is a problem – not that it was framed that way. This current story follows up on that, and has a few framing issues of its own. There are a few things to unpack in this, but first of all, I’ll let Adam Goldenberg point out a few issues with this analysis:

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013782795497478

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With this in mind, I have a few thoughts of my own – first of all is that I think Goldenberg is correct in his reminder that vetting includes political vetting – and the party’s database (as Susan Delacourt noted on Power Play) contains more than who donated – they will collect all manner of information as part of their construction of voter profiles, so it makes sense that they would also run potential appointments through this. (The fact that parties don’t have stringent privacy rules around their databases is a discussion for another day). Why? Because the prime minister is ultimately politically accountable for all Governor-in-Council appointments, and that includes judges. And so long as the prime minister is politically accountable, I think it’s reasonable that his office does whatever vetting they deem necessary – and there’s nothing in here to indicate that they’re checking to ensure that they’re voting for Liberal partisans, which we need to keep in mind.

The other aspect of his story that makes me a bit queasy is the implication that there is favour being shown to Liberal donors – and the math bears out a little bit that while seventy percent of appointees hadn’t donated to anyone, twenty-five percent of them donated to the Liberals, which is disproportionate to other parties. But we also need to remember a few things, the primary one being that we need to stop treating political donations as a bad thing. The donation limits in this country are quite small – you’re not going to bribe someone for $1200, let’s face it – and we donations are a form of engagement. Engagement is a good thing. The more we stigmatize past political donations – and those donations could be for a variety of reasons, such as an acquaintance running in a local campaign, or because they wanted the tax receipt – the more we send the message that engagement is bad, which is the very opposite of what we should be doing in a country where we already have abysmal levels of engagement, whether it’s taking out party memberships, donating, or volunteering (and yes, Samara Canada has done research on this). Pearl-clutching stories like this just reinforce this narrative, which is bad for democracy.

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Roundup: And now the lawsuits

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Because we can’t go a single day without yet more nonsense in the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair fallout, we had news yesterday that Andrew Scheer is being personally sued by prime minister Justin Trudeau for libel following press releases in which he intimated that Trudeau committed a crime and is attempting to cover it up. Scheer says bring it on, and make it fast. And then come the narratives – Conservatives say that the prime minister is trying to intimidate them, or bully them into silence, but at least with the lawsuit he’ll have to testify under oath. The Liberals are saying that this is just calling out Scheer’s lies and shows that they have consequences, and it demonstrates that Trudeau is willing to testify under oath as a result. And the pundit class wonders why they would want to continue to drag this out for months, if not years, as this drags on in the court system. (And for those of you who recall, Stephen Harper once planned to sue Stéphane Dion for libel over allegations made in the Chuck Cadman Affair, but he eventually dropped it after Dion was no longer Liberal leader). So, something for everyone, really.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1114959070136537088

Meanwhile, Wilson-Raybould says that all of the anonymous leaks are “trampling over” the confidences around the discussions she may or may not have had with the prime minister. Err, except her own side has been leaking stuff too, even if she insists it’s not her doing it. She also says that she has no desire to help Andrew Scheer win the next election, and doesn’t see herself as a floor-crosser but will operate as an independent Liberal for the time being.

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Roundup: Media rounds and brand damage

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Freed from the expectation that they needed to stay quiet(er) in order to not jeopardise their chances of remaining in caucus, both Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott hit interview circuit, the former in Maclean’s and the Globe and Mail, the latter also in Maclean’s and on CBC Radio and Power Play. And there is no doubt that both of them thought they were doing the right thing, but I’m not sure they quite grasp some of the political realities that the prime minister is grappling with. They kept saying that if Trudeau had just apologised from the start, this all could have been avoided, but that would have meant admitting that he was in the wrong, and that’s both a problem on every level for him to do, and I get the impression that nobody thinks they were trying to interfere or apply inappropriate pressure. And because they both think they’re right, we’re in the situation we’re in. Philpott did tell Don Martin that she’s aware of other conversations that are still relevant to what happened, but she’s not going to dangle them out there (err, she just did) because everything that people need to know is already public, but she didn’t say that she thought the prime minister was lying. In her interview with the Globe, Wilson-Raybould admitted to clashing with Carolyn Bennett over the Indigenous Rights framework, but it was her comments to Maclean’s that really made me pause, where she said she didn’t really understand the Liberal Party anymore, and it makes me wonder if she actually understood them to begin with, given how the party morphed itself as the cult of Trudeau after his messianic leadership campaign, and that many of the new MPs are as a result of that rather than stalwarts who stood with the party through the lean opposition years. Oh, and Wilson-Raybould also sorta disputed that there were negotiations regarding ending the tiff with Trudeau, and some confusion as to whether that was before she quit Cabinet or in the weeks that followed, and we got a bit of clarification.

Speaking of Trudeau, there has been a lot of focus on the damage to his brand, in particular his Feminist™ brand in the past few weeks, and with the ouster of Wilson-Raybould and Philpott (not to mention Celina Caesar-Chavannes’ decision to leave caucus of her own accord). In particular, the symbolism of the whole Affair crashing down around the Daughters of the Vote event was a darkly ironic for the prime minister, with one of his former youth delegates calling his rhetoric hollow. Add to that, there has been an expectation built up around him that his “doing politics differently” led people to believe that when push came to shove that he wouldn’t act like a politician, in spite of all of the symbolism he invested in. (There is probably a lesson in there too about filling in the blanks when someone says they’ll be different, but won’t specify how). Over on Twitter, Moebius Stripper reminds us not to confuse the actual good feminist work of this government with its Feminist™ branding.

Amidst the awfulness and brand-torching, Chris Selley recalls weeks ago when the Liberals floated a trial balloon to say that Trudeau would apologise for…something, didn’t, and now the claims that Wilson-Raybould tried to force an apology. Paul Wells, meanwhile, is in a Mood, and he (quite properly) lambastes this while Affair as another in a line of incidents that reveals the true heart of this government, and the ramshackle way in which they run this government (and if you looked at what they’ve done to the Senate alone, I would absolutely agree).

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Roundup: Trudeau begins his Big Reset

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Yesterday very much looked like the start of Justin Trudeau’s attempted Big Reset after the weeks of damage that the Double-Hyphen Affair has done to his reputation, starting with the appointment of Joyce Murray to Cabinet as the new Treasury Board president. Murray has been the parliamentary secretary for Treasury Board during the entire life of this government, has been pushing for a “greening of government” initiative within the department, and has a history of being someone who has gone offside with the rest of caucus on several occasions, thus her appointment could be seen as sending signals that Trudeau is open to disagreement. Following this was the announced retirement of Michael Wernick as Clerk of the Privy Council, citing that he couldn’t carry on in the role if he was no longer trusted by opposition parties on issues like his role around sounding the alarm regarding election interference. This doesn’t mean culpability for the Double-Hyphen Affair, but it is nevertheless part of the accountability process (and accountability, like democracy, is a process). Wernick will be replaced by Ian Shugart, who is currently the deputy minister of foreign affairs. (I’m also not convinced that this is the last of the staffing changes, and we may yet see more cleaning house in the PMO as a demonstration of doing something).

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Minutes later, during Question Period, Trudeau announced that former justice minister Anne McLellan was named as a special advisor to the prime minister to examine aspects of what happened in the Affair, particularly as it relates to the dual roles of Justice Minister and Attorney General, and whether it’s time to separate the two. (She also backed out of a fundraiser for the Liberal Judy Lamarsh fund – which aims to help more women run for office – after taking on the new role). And then, after QP, Trudeau gave a rousing speech about condemning hatred and calling out white supremacy, and made some pointed digs at Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier for their winking and nudging of white nationalists without condemning their messages. All of this is working to change the narrative – things are being put into place to fix what happened, the speech sets Trudeau on a different rhetorical tone than Scheer – and sets out a huge contrast between the two, especially after Scheer’s insipid speech that followed – so we’ll see if the Liberals can capitalise on this, but the fact that Trudeau explicitly said in the speech that this was exactly the time for politics could be the signal that he wants to fight an election on this issue.

But that may be harder to do, given that the Liberal members of the justice committee put out a letter saying that they weren’t inclined to call Jody Wilson-Raybould back to testify further, stating that they’d heard enough and wanted to get on with the report, and let the other processes carry on. I will say that at least they put out a letter with reasoning in it – they simply could have gone in camera today and emerged saying they were going to focus on writing the report, and saying nothing more. You know, like the Conservatives frequently did when they were in power. It doesn’t look good for the Liberals, and feeds the Conservative narrative that they’re hiding something, but they may simply be trying to move on as quickly as possible. (Of course, there is no smoking gun here, and it’s a matter of determining credibility and finding the line of where pressure is deemed “inappropriate,” so that makes for a harder sell to keep this going as long as possible).

The Senate, meanwhile, is debating the motion to start their own study on the issue, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m not sure that the Conservatives in the Senate will get the Independents onside, as their performance during the inaugural televised Senate Question Period had the ISG leader tweeting right away that it was all about partisan posturing, but stranger things have happened.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107811059711119361

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107813615136997376

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Roundup: Predictable committee stunts

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As expected, the justice committee meeting yesterday was short and went nowhere, as the Liberals on the committee (most of whom are not regular members of said committee) voted to respect the original schedule, which is to consider next steps on Tuesday, like the plan was all along. And predictably, there was much performative outrage and the pundit class all shook their fists in outrage that the Liberals would dare to shut down the inquiry (which they didn’t), and lo, why doesn’t the PMO get it right on this whole sordid affair, woe is us, woe is us. If you need any clues that this “emergency meeting” was anything other than a stunt, let’s consider the fact that despite the fact that the committee was going to deal with next steps when Parliament returned next week, they nevertheless demanded said “emergency meeting” in the middle of March Break to denote how seriousthey were about it. (Meanwhile, if any of these MPs complain about how hard parliamentary life is on their families and children, we need only remind them that they pulled stunts like this). But when most of the actual committee members are unavailable, it’s not exactly like the bodies they’re filling the seats with are in a position to do the work of the regular members of the committee for them and to evaluate what they’ve heard. Oh, and putting Pierre Poilievre in the lead seat for the Conservatives is a flashing red light with accompanying klaxon that this is a stunt. The opposition also wanted this debate on inviting Jody Wilson-Raybould back to be in public, despite the fact that committee deliberations on witnesses and timetables happen behind closed doors for a reason. I cannot stress this enough. This kind of meeting to demand a vote in public is showmanship designed for the cameras. The feigned outrage and unctuous sanctimony when the Liberals voted the way everyone expected them to is also indicative that this was entirely a stunt. And We The Media bought it all, and nobody I saw bothered to challenge them on any part of it. Well done us.

Now, the Liberals have a choice next week, and if they don’t invite Wilson-Raybould back, it’ll be a black eye for them, deservedly. I suspect they know this. As for Wilson-Raybould, I’m not sure that anyone believes she can’t speak to her resignation, because it has nothing to do with solicitor-client privilege, Michael Wernick stated that none of this was discussed at Cabinet (hence essentially waiving any Cabinet confidence on the matter), and Gerald Butts has also spoken about this time period. If she insists she can’t, the credibility of that assertion needs to be questioned. But until the Liberals on the justice committee actually vote to shut it down and write their report, can we hold off on the pearl-clutching until then? Otherwise, we’re playing into stunts.

Speaking of predictable pundit outrage, here’s Andrew Coyne decrying that prime ministers can get away with anything in this country. Well, except for the resignations, the committee study, the Ethics Commissioner investigation, strongly worded letter from the OECD and intense media scrutiny. As for his shaking his fist at “our system,” I don’t exactly see the system south of the border any better at dealing with the blatant corruption of their president, so…yay?

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https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1106012461910581255

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Roundup: Calling Wilson-Raybould’s bluff?

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We may be finally reaching the climax in the whole SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair, as Justin Trudeau formally waived solicitor-client privilege and Cabinet confidence when it comes to Jody Wilson-Raybould appearing at the justice committee in order to clear the air on the whole situation. The limitation is that she can’t reveal any information or communications about her and the Director of Public Prosecutions regarding SNC-Lavalin – but that’s not what’s at stake, so it shouldn’t be an issue (though the Conservatives spent all afternoon decrying that Trudeau wasn’t sufficiently unmuzzling her before they knew the terms of the waiver). Of course, as soon as Trudeau announced that there was no issue with her speaking at committee, Wilson-Raybould released a letter saying that she was still consulting with her attorney, but she really wanted to appear at committee, but she eventually does, she wants a full thirty-minutes uninterrupted off the top to tell her side of the story. In other words, she’s still trying to control the situation.

This having been said, it is starting to feel like Trudeau is calling Wilson-Raybould’s bluff, after Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick called her out at committee when he stated that there could be no privilege because no legal advice was given, and it was never discussed at Cabinet. Which makes me also wonder if Wilson-Raybould will overplay her hand given that she’s going to have to be very careful what she says if she wants to remain a Liberal for much longer. As for the committee, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives’ demand that the PM be ordered to appear before them, and they heard from legal experts on the Shawcross Doctrine.

In related news, it was also found that the as part of the same consultations that led to the deferred prosecution agreements legislation, the government is also considering other changes to the integrity regime (as part of the two-year review that was part of said regime when it was implemented), which would empower an arm’s length officer in Public Procurement to offer more flexible debarrments to companies that have been found guilty of corporate malfeasance (such as SCN-Lavalin and the ten-year ban they could face), and which Carla Qualtrough says offers them more flexibility to deal with corporate bad behaviour. Meanwhile, a group of SNC-Lavalin shareholders are planning a class-action lawsuit against the company for not disclosing that they were denied a deferred prosecution for over  a month, while the lack of convictions for wrongdoing by the company’s former executives has people questioning whether the RCMP and the Crown prosecutors are up to the task of dealing with corporate crime.

In punditry, Susan Delacourt notices that while Wilson-Raybould is driving the Affair right now, it’s odd that it seems to be done absent leadership ambitions, which creates a different dynamic. Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column reviews the whole Affair to date to offer suggestions as to where Parliament could strengthen its accountability measures to prevent a future repeat occurrence. Professor Jonathan Malloy lays out why this whole Affair is not a classic political scandal by any measure (which is also why Scheer calling it “textbook corruption” is also very odd).

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Roundup: Energy, pipelines and C-69

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With the big climate conference about to get underway, and the current oil price crisis in Alberta – along with the demands by the Conservatives to withdraw Bill C-69, there’s a lot of interesting things going on if we wanted to actually talk policy and not just hurling insults and blaming Justin Trudeau for everything wrong in this world. So with that in mind, here’s Andrew Leach with a fascinating thread on the oil sands, pipelines, climate commitments, and Bill C-69.

By now means is Bill C-69 a perfect bill either, and I’ve spoken to lawyers on both the environmental and proponent sides about their concerns, and they can all point to some of the same concerns, but I also think that the Conservatives’ characterization of it as a “no more pipelines” bill is beyond hyperbolic. If it works as it’s supposed to, the ability to better scope assessments will likely mean more timely actions and targeted consultations thanks to the early engagement that the bill mandates. But trying to cast this bill as a millstone around the country’s economy is ridiculous on the face of it, and withdrawing it won’t miraculously make the oil price differential disappear, or GM to reopen the Oshawa plant, as has been intimated. But far be it for us to expect honest debate on these issues these days.

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Roundup: The inaugural NSICOP report

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The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians tabled their redacted report on the prime minister’s India trip yesterday, and, well, there were a number of redactions. But what wasn’t redacted did paint a picture of an RCMP that bungled security arrangements, and that didn’t have good lines of communication with the prime minister’s security detail, and where they left a voicemail for someone who was on vacation, while someone else in Ottawa decided to not bother trying to reach out until the following day because it was the end of their shift. So yeah, there were a “few issues” that the RCMP fell down on. And because of the redactions (done by security agencies and not PMO, for reasons related to national security or because revelations could be injurious to our international relations), we don’t have any idea if the former national security advisor’s warnings about “rogue elements” of the Indian government were involved was true or not.

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The CBC, meanwhile, got documents under Access to Information to show what kind of gong show was touched off with the communications side of things as the government tried to manage the fallout of the revelations of Atwal’s appearance on the trip (and in many senses, it wasn’t until the prime minister gave a very self-deprecating speech on the trip at the Press Gallery Dinner that the narratives started to die down). Because remember, this is a government that can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag.

In order to get some national security expert reaction, here’s Stephanie Carvin and Craig Forcese:

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https://twitter.com/cforcese/status/1069718997937995776

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It should also be pointed out that the opposition parties are trying to make some hay over the redactions, and are intimating that they’re the product of PMO for partisan reasons. It’s not supposed to work that way, but hey, why deal in facts when you can proffer conspiracy theories, or in Andrew Scheer’s case, shitposts on Twitter?

https://twitter.com/RobynUrback/status/1069786954756173825

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Roundup: Refusing to learn their lessons

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A former PQ minister wants to run for leadership of the Bloc, and I just cannot. Can. Not. The challenger this time is Yves-François Blanchet, who served in Pauline Marois’ short-lived Cabinet, and has since taken on a political pundit career since being defeated in 2014. He apparently met with the caucus yesterday, and the majority of them – including their past and current interim leaders – all seem to like him, but I keep having to circle back to this simple question: did you learn nothing from your last disastrous leader?

I can’t emphasise this enough. Since their demise in 2011, the Bloc have had a succession of seatless leaders, including Mario Beaulieu (who now has a seat, incidentally, and is the current interim leader), and while he stepped aside so that Gilles Duceppe could return (unsuccessfully), they keep going for leaders who aren’t in caucus, and time after time, it goes poorly for them. Every single time, I have to wonder why they don’t simply do as our system was built to do, and select a member from caucus. Constantly bringing in an outsider does nothing for their profile (ask Jagmeet Singh how that’s going), and their leaders keep being divorced from the realities of parliament. And time and again, they keep choosing another outsider. Why do you keep doing this to yourselves? Why do you refuse to learn the lessons that experience has to teach you?

There is one current MP who is considering a run, Michel Boudrias, and if the Bloc was smart, they would choose him by virtue of the fact that he’s in the caucus, he’s in the Commons, and he knows how Parliament works. Of course, if they interested in ensuring he’s accountable (especially given just how big of a gong show their last leader was), then it would be the caucus that selects him so that the caucus can then fire him if he becomes a problem (again, if history is anything to go by). But that would take some actual political courage by the party, and given their apparent reluctance to learn the lessons from their mistakes, that may be too much to ask for.

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