Roundup: A vote for support

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We have the motion on the Order Paper now for the debate and eventual vote on the newly refocused mission in Syria and Iraq, and to the relief of those of us who care about things like Crown Prerogative and the powers of the executive, it’s crafted simply in the language of supporting the mission. This is critical, because asking for authorisation is a giant can of worms that nobody really should want to even contemplate opening, but even with this language, it’s going to cause headaches going forward. To recap, asking for authorization is something that launders the prerogative and thus the government’s accountability. When something goes wrong, they can shrug and say “the House voted for the mission,” and to varying degrees, the Harper government did this, particularly with relationship to Afghanistan. These non-binding votes are a rather unseemly bit of political theatre that purports to put the question to MPs – because apparently they need to have buy-in when we send our men and women in uniform into danger, or some such nonsense – and it gives parties like the NDP a chance to thump their chests about peacekeeping and pandering to pacifistic notions (and does anyone seriously buy that nobody is trying to stop the flow of money, arms and fighters to ISIS without Canada butting to the front of the line to finger-wag at them?), and parties like the Conservatives a chance to rail that they were doing so much more when they were in charge (when they weren’t), or when they were in charge, to pat themselves on the back for everything they were doing (when really, it tended to be a bare minimum at best, or a symbolic contribution at worst). Of course, all of this could be done with a simple take-note debate without a vote, which is how it should be, because a vote implies authorisation, and that’s how the NDP have read each and every vote in the past, and they will loudly remind everyone in QP and elsewhere about it. Trudeau has been trying to keep expectations measured by saying that they recognise the role of the executive in making these decisions – but he went and proposed a vote anyway, muddling the role of MPs in this situations like these. That role, to remind you, is to hold the government to account, so if you’re going to have a vote on a military mission, then one might as well make it a confidence vote because foreign policy and control of the military is at the heart of the Crown’s powers. (These authorisation votes that aren’t confidence measures are playing out in the UK right now, which is making a mess of their own system, for the record). Trudeau should have known better than to continue this pattern of confusion and left it at a take-note debate, like it should be. A vote, whether it’s an actual authorisation or just a declaration of support, only serves to make the waters murky, which we need our governments to stop doing before they do lasting harm to our system of Responsible Government.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151173568729088

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151589626966016

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698151991277723648

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698152397277917184

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698153619657461760

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/698154371541032961

Good reads:

  • Canada has signed a green energy agreement with the United States and Mexico.
  • The new Clerk of the Privy Council is looking to do away with “gift” patronage appointments going forward.
  • Bloomberg gets a look at the six factors the federal government is considering if they are to bail out Bombardier.
  • Liberal Senator Massicotte doesn’t think that the Upper Chamber is ridding itself of partisanship fast enough. Because this is a process we want to speed through.
  • The government currently has no intention of reaching the 0.7 percent of GDP goal for foreign aid spending.
  • The Conservatives are demanding to know what role Dominic LeBlanc had in setting up a meeting between Navdeep Bains and the Irving Family.
  • A Spanish supply vessel helping to plug our capability gap arrived in Halifax to help resupply our East Coast fleet operations.
  • Colby Cosh casts a sceptical eye at the new NATO mission to have ships monitor the “human trafficking” of refugees in the Mediterranean.
  • Scott Reid reminds us of the way the RCMP inserted themselves into a federal election ten years ago.
  • Susan Delacourt praises the work of Elections Canada in getting the vote out in the last election.

Odds and ends:

A climate group has entered into a compliance agreement with Elections Canada for not registering as a third party in the election in order to advertise.

Trudeau is signalling that the next GG won’t be an old white guy.

Trudeau also had a Twitter chat to mark his 100 days in office.