Tag Archives: Undermining Parliamentary Democracy

Roundup: The toxic environment at Rideau Hall

Posted on by

The big news last night was that the CBC had staff on the record about the climate of harassment and verbal abuse that has emerged at Rideau Hall since Julie Payette became Governor General, and her friend Assunta Di Lorenzo her Secretary. It’s not actually surprising – there are three years of stories coming out of Rideau Hall about the atmosphere getting increasingly toxic and that Payette’s behaviour has been mystifying at times – that she doesn’t want to do some of the ceremonial aspects of the job, and wants to have an active hand in portions of the job where she shouldn’t. My own sources have been saying that Payette and Di Lorenzo are “erratic,” and that most people can’t deal with them. Staff has left Rideau Hall in droves. All of the indications are that it’s a sick workplace – but Payette put out a press release saying that this is all news to her because nobody has complained through the official process (which isn’t really a complaint mechanism because it all goes back to Di Lorenzo and ultimately Payette). And if you need convincing, here are three years of stories (thread), including some of my own.

Ultimately, this is Justin Trudeau’s responsibility because he appointed her without due diligence that she would be suitable for the role. The fact that he did away with the vice-regal appointments committee in order to listen to his own inner cadre about Payette as a choice is pretty much the exact kind of thing we’re seeing with the WE Imbroglio playing out right now – nobody bothered to exercise critical judgment, and instead all went along nodding and drinking more of the Kool-Aid, and lo, a bad decision was made – and one that ultimately damaged one of our parliamentary institutions. It also is now up to Trudeau to do something about the situation, whether it’s managing Payette and Di Lorenzo and working on a plan to transition them out, or if they won’t go, calling up the Queen and asking her to dismiss Payette (which is a last resort because the first rule of constitutional monarchy is you don’t get the Queen involved). Any way you look at this, it’s not good, and it’s yet another black mark on Trudeau’s record.

Here’s Philippe Lagassé on the options available to dealing with Payette. And if you want to know more about the former vice-regal appointments commission and the role of the Secretary to the Governor General, and why Di Lorenzo’s appointment has been a problem from the start, read my chapter in Royal Progress: Canada’s Monarchy in the Age of Disruption, and learn more about it.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Referenda as a subversion of parliamentary democracy

Posted on by

Over in Alberta, a new bill has been tabled that amends the province’s enabling legislation to run referenda, and upon reading what’s in the bill, the NDP critic immediately sounded the alarm on what’s in the bill – that it gives the premier sole power to determine whether or not these referenda are binding, the timing, and the wording of the referendum question, and more to the point, it allows for third parties to spend as much as $500,000 in advertising – and they won’t be audited if they spend under $350,000. (Remember that in the province, during a general election, third parties can only spend $150,000 on advertising). And when said critic labelled the bill as “undemocratic,” she has been ridiculed by the premier, justice minister, and any number of halfwits over social media who insist that there is nothing more democratic than a referendum.

They’re wrong. Referenda are actually deeply undemocratic.

Why? Because anytime there is more than two simple alternatives being put to the public – and alternatives are never simple or binary – then there isn’t actually a clear question being put forward, or a clear choice involved. And at the end of the process, the government then gets to interpret those unclear results as they see fit, which is actually a means by which the premier (or equivalent – this is the case with any referendum) simply uses those results to strengthen their own control. They use the façade of putting the decision to the people to tighten their own grip on power, and democracy as a whole suffers, especially because it reduces the role and function of Parliament (or provincial legislature in this case). I would recommend that people read The Will of the People: A Modern Myth by Andrew Weale, which, while predicated on the Brexit referendum, lays out why these exercises diminish Parliament. It’s important that people understand what exactly Kenney is doing by bringing this forward.

More to the point, the reason why Kenney is bringing this bill forward is advancing the agenda of his “Fair Deal Panel,” which aims to hold referenda on things like equalization (which can’t actually do anything), opting out of the Canada Pension Plan in favour of a provincial model (which should raise alarm bells considering how the province’s existing pension plan has made a series of bad decisions), or any other number of the Panel’s recommendations for opting out of federal institutions in favour of more costly provincial ones out of spite, or as a make-work project. It’s deeply cynical, and as we’ve established, actually undemocratic wearing the guise of populist democracy, and Kenney is going to do untold damage to the province with these tools at his disposal, but people won’t care because they’ve been fooled by his rhetoric. It’s all deeply concerning, but unless the province’s opposition can up their game and actually make cogent arguments to the public, then Kenney will continue to steamroll over them.

Continue reading →

Roundup: That 21-second pause

Posted on by

Sometimes the news out of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily pressers is unexpected, and yesterday was no exception. After first acknowledging that he would be speaking more on the situation with anti-Black racism in the House of Commons later, Trudeau turned to the subject of the government’s efforts to procure more personal protective equipment and the industry retooling to supply it domestically in Canada. But none of this was the actual news. It was during the Q&A that, after a question on Hong Kong (Trudeau: We are very concerned because there are 300,000 Canadian citizens there), he was put on the spot about what Donald Trump is doing in the US, and what Trudeau’s silence in not denouncing it says. And then Trudeau paused. Gathering his thoughts, for twenty-one seconds, there was uncertainty as to what was going on in his mind, when he finally spoke about the “horror and consternation” of what was going on in the US – but he was very diplomatic and not calling out Trump on anything specifically. There is a relationship to manage there, especially during this global pandemic. When asked about Israel, Trudeau reiterated the support for a two-state solution and that he is “concerned” about annexation plans into Palestinian territory and that he told both prime ministers of that country (because there are now two) about it personally. He was also was asked about the MMIW Inquiry report and its finding of “genocide,” and Trudeau prevaricated somewhat, using the term “cultural genocide” before talking about the need to do better and work on the road to reconciliation, but wasn’t going to allow himself to be drawn into using other language.

A short while later in the Commons, Trudeau stood to give his speech on racism, and made sure that he had MP Greg Fergus and minister Ahmed Hussen in the frame behind him – because it’s always about optics. Nevertheless, he stated that he didn’t want to be another white politician lecturing about racism, and said that not being perfect is not an excuse for not doing anything, before he listed actions his government had taken in engaging the Black community, for what it’s worth.

Andrew Scheer gave a far more predictably milquetoast denunciation of racism, name-checking convenient names for his narrative along the way, like Lincoln Alexander and John Ware. But in his denunciation of racism – including anti-Asian racism and anti-Semitism along the way in light of a recently vandalized synagogue, he kept going on about peaceful protests over riots, and the importance of freedom, singling out economic and religious freedom. There was zero awareness from Scheer about structural racism, or self-awareness in how his party’s “tough-on-crime” fetishism contributes to over-policing at the heart of these protests.

Yves-François Blanchet was less equivocal than Scheer, going on about the anthropology of there being no such thing as race and that racism was about othering – but then stated that the Canadian and Quebec governments “weren’t racist” (erm, you do know what Bill 21 in Quebec was all about, right?) before saying that there may be “traces” that create systemic barriers. And then this shifted to a demand to process the claims of certain asylum seekers (because there’s nothing like the reliance on low-wage and untrained labour that is a direct beacon to the systemic barriers that these very minorities face) before citing that peaceful protests were legitimate and violent ones were not.

Jagmeet Singh kept saying that the government needs to make concrete action instead of making “pretty speeches,” and that the prime minister has the power to do things beyond words, demanding things like ending racial profiling, ending the over-policing of Black and Indigenous bodies, subsequent over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people, and the need for race-based data. But as Singh can’t even grandstand properly, when he was up to question Trudeau several minutes later in the special committee, he seemed to indicate that things like ending racial profiling could be done with the snap of a finger, and when he demanded that boil water advisories be lifted in First Nations communities, Trudeau reminded him that they are on schedule for doing just that.

Elizabeth May closed out the speeches by naming as many Black and Indigenous deaths at the hands of police that she could recall, before talking about the cyclical nature of these kinds of denunciations every few months, acknowledging her white privilege, denounced Trump, and called on the government to root out white supremacist groups as a terrorist threat, particularly within police forces in Canada.

Continue reading →

Roundup: MPs and their “new normal”

Posted on by

Over the weekend, we saw a few pieces that were attempting to put the House of Commons’ current situation into context, both along with how some provinces are handling their own situations in the current pandemic context, but also just getting a bit of a sense from MPs themselves. There is a sense that these hybrid committee meetings are “better than nothing,” with some of those MPs acknowledging that actual in-person sittings are better for the sheer fact that one can often talk to a minister about an important file just by showing up, or that a lot of the real work gets done in the lobbies and corridors and not in the chamber itself, which is great to see – it’s not just about the performative questions, though that is what the government and its allies have reduced the Commons to, with no real appreciation for the lack of oversight for the massive spending being pushed through.

That said, we also need to be very wary of those who will try to use this opportunity to push their agendas – those who go on about how the “old normal” wasn’t working in Parliament, and hey, isn’t this an opportunity to push through reforms that they couldn’t before. The problem is that a lot of those proposed reforms were simply bad and would make the House of Commons a far worse place, because they completely misunderstood what the problems were and continue to be. Nevertheless, we’re going to see many attempts by some of those same MPs to not let a good crisis go to waste, so you can bet there will be no shortage of these proposals going forward.

Meanwhile, with all of the attention on the protests in the US (and a few in Canada as well), here was a worthwhile thread from social development minister Ahmed Hussen:

Continue reading →

Roundup: Not the provinces’ cash cow

Posted on by

Everything got off to an earlier start yesterday, beginning with the ministerial presser, during which Marc Miller announced another $650 million being allocated to Indigenous communities for healthcare, which would also include added income supports for those living on-reserve, as well as some $85 million to build new shelters for women on reserves. Marc Garneau also announced that the ban on cruise ship docking in Canadian waters was going to be extended to October 31st, which will impact the economies of these communities, but also limits potential vectors for the pandemic. When pressed about the issue of airline ticket refunds, Garneau reiterated the warning that the sector could fail if they were forced to refund all of the tickets, though later on, prime minister Justin Trudeau indicated that there were talks ongoing.

For his presser, Trudeau started off by talking about his teleconference with the premiers and spoke about sick leave being one of the items on the agenda, and it was later in the Q&A that he said that he was offering for the federal government to assume most of the responsibility for the costs, rather than putting it on business owners, but it sounds like some premiers remain rather cool to the idea. After reiterating the earlier Miller/Garneau announcement, Trudeau took questions, which included mention that he was trying to get premiers to agree to some modified orders at the Canada-US border that would allow family reunification, such as cases like the Canadian woman who was trying to get the American father of her unborn child into the country before she gave birth – but again, there are premiers who are not keen. After the questions, Trudeau then gave an unprompted statement on anti-Black racism as a result of what’s going on in the US – that there is a need to stand up as a society, that there needs to be more respect, and that we have work to do as well in Canada. He called on all Canadians to stand together in solidarity, as they know how deeply people are being affected by what we are seeing on the news.

Something else raised in Trudeau’s Q&A was a letter sent to him by five of his Toronto-area backbenchers, calling on him to lead the country in national standards on long-term care, and to press Ontario for a full public inquiry into what happened with the breakdown in care (which I maintain won’t tell us anything we don’t already know). Trudeau praised them for their efforts, and talked about the ongoing talks with provinces, but two of those MPs were on Power & Politics later in the day, and something that I was also glad to hear was Judy Sgro saying that while they wanted federal leadership, they both were respecting that this is provincial jurisdiction and they also didn’t want the provinces treating the federal government like a “cash cow” when you have premiers like Ford demanding more federal funds to fix their own long-term care mess. My own patience for provinces crying out for federal funds to fix the problems in their own jurisdiction is wearing mighty thin, particularly as most of those provinces have broad taxation powers at their disposal (though some of those provinces have less tax room available to them – Ontario, however, is not one of them). Premiers don’t want to have anything on their books and would rather it come from Ottawa’s, so that they don’t have to look like the bad guy when it comes to paying for their own programmes – never mind that there’s really only one taxpayer in the end.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The opposition kneecaps itself

Posted on by

In case you were wondering, yes I’m still upset by the move to keep regular Commons sittings suspended in favour of these showboat “hybrid” committee sittings, while the government continues to pat itself on the back for all of the questions they’re letting the opposition ask as they let the substantive work of Parliament slide. And while this particular piece talks about the “image politics” of Trudeau using his Rideau Cottage briefings, there was little discussion about how these somewhat farcical committee meetings – especially now that they have the gloss of the Chamber in this “hybrid” capacity – can let Trudeau keep crowing about how much he respects Parliament because low-information votes (enabled by low-information journalists who seem incapable of determining the difference) see the gloss of the Chamber and think that the Conservatives are just being big babies about it all.

This particular op-ed by professor Lori Turnbull makes some very salient points about the fact that our opposition was already weak – the Conservatives hobbled by their leadership contest (though I would argue that Andrew Scheer’s particular brand of political ineptness certainly made that situation worse), the NDP having lost their national relevance (again, Turnbull is being polite in not calling out Singh’s particular lack of ability), and the Greens’ irrelevance – and yet they’ve managed to kneecap themselves even further by giving away the tools they had at their disposal, like Supply Days and private members’ legislation. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.

Meanwhile, while this is going on, the Senate opposition leader, Senator Don Plett, is calling for the Senate to return and start sitting two days a week to start doing some parliamentary work including weekly questioning of ministers. Plett is calling for in-person sittings with about 40 senators in the Chamber at a time, and proportions are likely under negotiation right now, but it might allow for the Chamber to finally get some of its housekeeping out of the way like getting committees agreed to (now that the Progressives are a viable force again and aren’t at the mercy of ISG leader, Senator Yuen Pau Woo, as he tried to deny them committee seats), and perhaps the Chamber could give those committees their orders of reference so that they can start doing some work. It would be fitting if the Senate could start showing up the Commons, as they are wont to do – provided that it doesn’t simply devolve into endless back-patting, which is a danger with some of the newer members.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A horrific report

Posted on by

The theme of the day was set from the start of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser – that the military deployed to long-term care in Ontario had found troubling cases of abuse and neglect, and that Trudeau immediately forwarded on those concerns to premier Doug Ford. Trudeau then went on to talk about their contract with GM in Oshawa for more face masks, and spoke about the other partnerships for things like more ventilators and other equipment. Trudeau also spoke about funding up to 700 youth jobs in the agriculture sector, and that he was convening a meeting with the UN Secretary General and the prime minister of Jamaica as part of an international push to ensure poverty reduction as a result of the pandemic. During the Q&A, Trudeau was asked repeatedly about the request to fast-track the claims of asylum seekers who were working in long-term care facilities, and he spoke about trying to find flexibility (but apparently not about the fact that it’s hugely problematic that facilities are hiring these extremely low-wage and largely untrained workers). When asked about the pending Meng Wanzhou extradition verdict, he said that the great thing about our justice system is that governments don’t have to apologise for it. And when asked further about the report on those long-term care facilities, Trudeau reiterated that this was a provincial matter, but that the federal government needed to be “part of the conversation” going forward.

A short while later, Doug Ford released the report, then wrung his hands about how terrible it was, and how he vowed he was going to take action – kind of like he promised that they would ensure there was an “iron ring” around these facilities, and well, that didn’t exactly happen either. And he talked tough, saying that the people who ran these facilities could face charges, but his government did cut back on inspections, so he has to wear that one too. And while he mouthed the words about taking responsibility for the situation, in the same breath Ford blamed his predecessors, and then said he was going to need “federal help,” which translates to “I don’t want to have to pay to fix this,” and he wants to put this on the federal books instead of his own. Because that’s what always happens. The NDP opposition in Ontario was also making itself useless by demanding a full public inquiry, which won’t tell us anything we don’t already know, especially as we’ve just had another public inquiry on long-term care home deaths in this province, and it will simply be a justification to delay action, possibly permanently.

Meanwhile, the NDP and Greens voted in the House of Commons to prop up the Liberals’ motion to carry on with the useless “special committee” hearings rather than proper sittings of the Commons, which also included provisions that means that they will rubber-stamp some $150 billion in spending on June 17th without a proper legislative or committee process, essentially abandoning their fundamental duties as MPs. Slow clap, guys. Slow clap.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Selling out parliament for a press release

Posted on by

If there was any more sign of crass politicking than Jagmeet Singh starting the day by declaring that he would only agree to the government’s plans regarding continued special committee hearings in lieu of actual parliamentary sittings if the government ensured there was access to two weeks of paid sick leave available to Canadians, I’m not sure what else it could be. To predicate kneecapping the House of Commons in exchange for something you can count as a win is…quite something. Not quite the petulance of Andrew Scheer’s short-lived declaration that he would only wear a non-medical mask if regular House of Commons sittings resumed, but certainly brash.

To that end, Justin Trudeau held his daily presser and, in reference to the hipster jamboree at Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods park on Saturday that social media spent the rest of the weekend litigating, said that the variety of local rules can be confusing but people should pay attention to what their jurisdiction’s rules are, and to keep physical distancing. Then then announced that the commercial rent assistance programme was now accepting applications, and outlined that half of the provinces would accept applications on that day, listed the provinces that would accept applications Tuesday instead, and that those with ten or more tenants were to apply Wednesday. Trudeau then said that he had spoken to Singh, and assured him that he was in discussions with the provinces to ensure that people got access to those ten paid sick days per year, but in the Q&A, gave the credit to BC premier John Horgan. That didn’t stop Singh from putting out a self-congratulatory press release immediately, as though this were a done deal and not negotiations that were ongoing because it’s mostly provincial jurisdiction. Trudeau also defended his party’s use of the wage subsidy, but because he can’t answer these questions like a real human being, it was mostly a lot of platitudes and verbal pabulum.

In the wake of this, a bunch of my Twitter critics felt like Trudeau’s discussions with the province on this sick day policy was some kind of an own to my constant reminders that this is provincial jurisdiction, which is bizarre because nothing has been agreed to. Trudeau can’t force the provinces to do anything, and even pointed out that the mechanism to make this happen is complicated – particularly if the provinces are going to expect the federal government to pony up for those paid days instead of forcing employers to pay for it themselves. But again, this isn’t something Trudeau himself can do on his own – he can try to get the provinces on board, but that’s not always a winning proposition. Look at the dog’s breakfast that the commercial rent subsidy managed to be, which is because it’s what the provinces could agree to, while Trudeau takes the blame. And even if the provinces get on board with this paid sick leave, it’ll still be months before that comes to fruition, but hey, Singh got a press release out of it, so he can declare victory to his base.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A campaign of lies to demand Parliament’s return

Posted on by

For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau opened with an announcement of some $75 million in additional support for off-reserve First Nations people, Métis and Inuit, primarily those in urban situations that require additional supports. He also said that provinces – most especially Ontario and Quebec – were being offered additional federal supports for testing and contact tracing as they open up their economies, which was later confirmed in the readout of the first ministers’ teleconference that took place later in the day. During the Q&A, Trudeau also referred to China not understanding the notion of what a rule of law country is after certain comments about the detention and determination of the extradition of Meng Wanzhou (and the BC court will make its determination next Wednesday).

Meanwhile, in the special COVID-19 committee, Conservative MPs engineered outrage by demanding the government answer questions on the Harrington Lake renovations, and when they were called out for the fact that the agreement between all parties was that the special committee’s ambit was on the pandemic, they tried to justify the question by saying that if the government was granted extraordinary spending powers, they needed to ensure that it wasn’t going to these renovations – which is disingenuous bullshit because the spending for those would have been approved of years ago. Nevertheless, they bundled their outrage clips and started putting shitposts around social media to claim that because we don’t have proper parliamentary sittings right now that they weren’t allowed to ask questions that the “government doesn’t approve of” – again, which is disingenuous bullshit. Those questions weren’t in the ambit of the committee, which is why they were objected to. I’m also incredibly pissed off that they are trying to make an issue out of these renovations, calling them “secret renovations” to “mansions for the prime minister’s enjoyment,” which is out of bounds. These are official residences, and every time they get weaponised like this in order to score political points, it means that we can’t maintain them properly. That’s the reason why 24 Sussex was allowed to turn into a crumbling shitpile, and yet here they are, carrying on the same kinds of accusations that led to this situation. They refuse to learn, and we all pay the price for it.

At the same time, I am exasperated by the fact that the Conservatives are now trying to use yet more lies and disingenuous bullshit to bolster their case to bring back regular sittings of a skeletal parliament. Nobody wants these sittings more than me, but the fact that they are trying to drum up fake outrage against Trudeau, claiming he is trying to permanently sideline parliament in favour of daily press conferences (where they falsely claim that he hand-picks the journalists asking questions), is really beyond the pale. But this is what the party has become under Andrew Scheer – a haven of liars who will say anything, no matter how outrageous, in order to try and score points. The fact that people saw through this and kept him from forming government should be a lesson, but no. They are barrelling ahead with this tactic, and it boggles the mind why they think this a winner for them. Poisoning the well hurts everyone in the end – most especially Parliament as an institution, which they suddenly claim they cherish and are trying to defend.

Continue reading →

Roundup: On Scheer’s silence over Sloan

Posted on by

For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was all about science – specifically, a $1.1 billion package for research on vaccines and clinical trials, plus the launch of an immunity task force that will help to determine the spread of the virus within the population (as many may have been exposed and only ever experienced mild symptoms or had none at all), which will be necessary as we talk about re-opening the economy and how that will proceed. Trudeau also reiterated that the situation with long-term care facilities is untenable, that using soldiers to help the residents of those homes is merely a short-term solution that demands a long-term re-think. During the Q&A, Trudeau was not promising the billions of dollars that municipalities were demanding, but made some fairly vague commitments about working with provinces, given that cities are creatures of provincial legislation. He also said that provinces were going to take their own leads on re-opening their economies given that there are different epidemics playing out across the country and not just one nationally, though there is talk of federal guidelines.

The thing that had everyone talking throughout the day, however, was Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan making a fairly blatantly racist call for Dr. Theresa Tam to be fired while questioning her loyalty to Canada as he accuses her of following Chinese propaganda. And more to the point, that Andrew Scheer refuses to comment on what Sloan says insofar as the racism – he did say that as the opposition, they should be criticizing ministers who make decisions and not officials who give advice. Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising as the party has already been pursuing this notion of vilifying the WHO because they were too credulous about the information coming out of China and Canada followed WHO advice, and Sloan simply took it one step further. And more to the point, under Scheer, the party has offered succour to racists on more than one occasion (most notably after the incident when Trudeau called out the racist statements of an avowedly racist woman in Quebec at an event, after which the Conservatives insisted that she was merely concerned about the economic impact of “illegal” asylum seekers and that anyone who questioned the government would be called a racist – because being labelled a racist is apparently a worse crime than actual racism). A few other Conservative MPs did denounce Sloan’s comments, and local officials within Sloan’s riding called on him to be denounced by Scheer and expelled from the party.

Ah, but that’s part of the issue. The Conservatives, if you recall, voted to adopt certain provisions of Michael Chong’s (garbage) Reform Act which ensures that the full caucus must vote to expel a member, that the leader alone can’t do it. It would be mighty awkward for Scheer to pull that trigger regardless, considering that he’s in an interim, outgoing position and not really the leader any longer, and that Sloan is vying to replace him (and it will be a doomed effort), but I will say that regardless of the circumstances, I have long been uncomfortable with both leaders expelling members, and with the more recent notion that MPs (and senators, where applicable) should be expelled at the first sign of trouble, rather than managing them better from within the fold, or leaving it up to their riding association to decide whether or not to keep them in the party, being as they are really the ones who should be deciding.

Continue reading →