Justin Trudeau and three ministers announced the new plan to fight ISIS yesterday, and while the CF-18s are coming home in two weeks, the surveillance and refuelling planes will remain along with triple the number of special forces trainers, plus ministerial advisors in Iraq and capacity building in neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, along with a lot more humanitarian assistance on the ground, and small arms and ammunition to our Kurdish allies. Its’ an approach that the Americans praised (despite Rona Ambrose’ dire warnings), but there is something that is troubling, which is the fact that Justin Trudeau has declared that he will still call a vote on the matter in the House of Commons. Why is this important? Because it has to do with the practice of Responsible Government. Under our system, the government – meaning the cabinet – takes a decision, and the Commons gets to hold them to account for it. But what Stephen Harper decided to start doing back in 2006 is to put things which are normally the prerogative of the Crown – things like military deployments – to a vote in the Commons, for purely political reasons. Part of those reasons were about trying to drive a wedge in the Liberal ranks over the mission in Afghanistan, and he did it very effectively. The other part was that it gave him political cover. When things went wrong, and they did, his ministers stood up to remind the House that they voted for that Afghan mission. Because that’s what insisting on votes does – it co-opts the House’s accountability role, and launder’s the government’s prerogative so that they can help avoid being held to account. It was bad enough that the Harper government, it’s worse that the Trudeau government, which says a lot of good things about restoring the proper functioning of our parliamentary system, to not do so in this case – especially after saying that he understands the role of the executive in military matters, and then goes on to promise a vote anyway. (I would also add that it’s mind-boggling that the NDP would continue to insist on a vote despite the fact that it co-opts them, but mind-boggling is what a lot of their positions tend to wind up being). One imagines that the language of the vote will be one which simply expresses support in the mission rather than has the language of authorisation, as Harper did with the previous Iraq vote, but it’s still terrible all around, not only for optics, but the proper functioning of our system of government.
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696736519126654976
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696889900747116545
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696890218461396992
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696890666672992256
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696891549745963008
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696891294443032576
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696905835071598592
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696905964902080512
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/696906561885728768
Good reads:
- More reaction to the mission from John Geddes, Wesley Wark, Peggy Mason and Andrew Coyne.
- Dominic LeBlanc is telling committees to benefit from the access that parliamentary secretaries have, and I can’t even.
- Canada has been quietly helping Ukraine with its cyber-security, but there are questions about the secrecy around the contract to the group helping them.
- Apparently there was some drama around advising the government whether or not buy those French Mistral-class carriers.
- Former Conservative campaign chair Jenni Byrne writes about what went wrong with the last campaign, without looking in the mirror. (BuzzFeed has more here).
- James Bowden writes a defence of First-Past-the-Post.
- Stephen Gordon lays out the problem with “universal” economic programmes.
Odds and ends:
Bruce Campion Smith visits Alert, and talks about the lifeline to the south, and what it’s like there during 24-hour darkness.
Hill security and RCMP officers involved in the October 22nd shooting were honoured by the Governor General.