The electoral reform committee was back yesterday and the “star” witness was former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, currently heading the institute that bears his name. If you’ve been out of the loop, Broadbent is an unabashed supporter of Proportional Representation, and figures that Mixed-Member Proportional is the cat’s pyjamas, and proceeded to regale the committee with any number of ludicrous statements about both the current system and the purported wonders of MMP, and then delivered this particular gem: that MMP would have spared the west the National Energy Programme in the 1980s.

I. Can’t. Even.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/770351319471325185

The amount of mythologizing around the NEP in this country borders on psychosis. There was a time not so long ago that people also caterwauled that a Triple-E senate would also have prevented the NEP, with no actual proof that would be the case if you actually stopped to think about what would be involved in creating such an institution (particularly the imposition of party discipline because if you think you would be electing 105 independent senators, you’re even more delusional than the premise of the question belies). Most of these mythologies around the NEP forget that there was a history involved with global energy crises, broad support in the rest of the country, and that it was a global recession that happened around the same time that was largely responsible for the economic collapse that ensued as opposed to the NEP itself, but the two became conflated in the minds of most people. It didn’t happen in a vacuum or because Pierre Elliot Trudeau simply rubbed his hands and tried to come up with a diabolical plan to screw the West. For Broadbent to suddenly claim that a PR system would have ensured more regional voices at the table and common sense would have prevailed is simply revisionist history combined with the kind of unicorn logic that his preferred voting system would have been responsible only for the good things in history and never the bad. It’s egregious bullshit and needs to be called out as such.

Good reads:

• As Trudeau heads to China, the Conservative trade critic tries to dispute the narrative of the Conservative relationship with China.
• He’s also trying to cast aspersions on the appointment of Pierre Pettigrew as the new CETA envoy.
• Some people lament that Trudeau’s decision not to make an expensive photo op of visiting Arctic military exercises as a sign he’s not committed to the North.
• Most of the Nunavut Liberal association has resigned over what sounds like the party leader having engineered Hunter Tootoo’s nomination (which then soured).
• Protests cancelled the first day of NEB hearings on Energy East in Montreal, and they’ve cancelled them for today as well.
• Conservatives seem to be making a partisan witch hunt in their criticism of the Supreme Court nomination committee members.
• The government is gearing up for a court battle over private healthcare clinics in BC.
• A peacekeeping mission to Africa could end up costing less than NATO deployments in Eastern Europe thanks to UN reimbursements.
• Stephen Harper would have been up for a private members’ business slot when Parliament returned, had he not resigned.
• Stephen Gordon writes about Stephen Harper’s economic legacy and the parts that the Liberals have adopted going forward.
• Andrew Coyne warns against those who would see inflation targets raised, as it won’t actually lead to growth.
• My Loonie Politics column asks why we can’t talk about accountability as part of electoral reform.

Odds and ends:

Apparently this was the best census in terms of response rate since 1666.