The CBC’s Éric Grenier has posted an analysis of free votes in the Commons in the current parliament, determining which party’s MPs dissent the most often. Part of this kind of analysis bothers me in part because it’s quantitative rather than qualitative, in part with how it was carried out. Rather than actually going through each vote to see a) what kind of vote it was, and b) the substance of the vote, he relied on the measure of how the cabinet voted to determine if it was a whipped vote or not, which is a poor measure, seeing as this would capture all manner of procedural votes (albeit, there haven’t been nearly as many in the current parliament as there were in the previous one). I’m not sure that there are any particular surprises in here in that the Liberals have been given a freer hand with their free votes, which was largely the case with the Conservatives in the previous parliament as well – having a majority usually lets a give their backbenchers a little added room to blow off a bit of steam when necessary. It’s also not unexpected in the fact that the Liberals are a party that doesn’t have a core ideology that they feel compelled to adhere to in the way that most Conservatives and the NDP most certainly do. It also shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that leadership candidates in the Conservatives are breaking ranks more often, given that they’re trying to put their own stamp on the party, so this is their latitude to start doing that. And as for the top “dissenting” voters, the top two are Liberals Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and Robert-Falcon Ouellette, who have a history of being a bit…naïve, if I may be blunt, in some of the positions they’ve taken to date. Erskine-Smith, if you recall, recently got pulled from a committee because his attempts to do more consensus-building wound up getting him manipulated by Tony Clement into voting against his own party’s interests when it came to amendments to a government bill, and Ouellette is often seen saying…not terribly thought-out things in the media. So, does it surprise me that they’re the two who voted against their party the most? No, not really. But Grenier doesn’t have any kind of context around this numbers, and that’s all he does – post numbers because he’s the numbers guy, which can be interesting in reporting, but it also only tells a fraction of the actual story, which is why stories like these do rub me the wrong way.

Good reads:

• The Liberals defeated the Conservatives’ all-lives-matter counter-motion to M-103 in a vote of 165 to 126.
• Ralph Goodale says the government is monitoring the influx of irregular migrants, while Ahmed Hussen says that refugees can still make fair claims in the US.
• Tony Clement hung up on CBC Radio when they pressed for details about what “enforcing the law” around illegal refugee border crossings means.
• Hussen said that the government will be resettling some 1200 Yazidis and others targeted by ISIS, 400 of which should be arriving in the country today.
• Chrystia Freeland told a Toronto audience that any changes to NAFTA will be done trilaterally, and basically that we won’t throw Mexico under the bus.
• Paul Martin thinks that Trudeau is on the right path with the Trumpocalypse and China. So there’s that.
• Here’s a look at the plight of Somali refugee claimants who have made it to Mexico but are trying to reach Canada.
• CRA is going to be implementing a mandatory fingerprinting policy for those accused of tax evasion, even before they’re convicted.
• Even Ontario’s Attorney General is getting impatient with the federal government’s pace at appointing judges.
• Preston Manning is telling Conservative leadership candidates not to take party unity for granted.
• Brad Trost copied Andrew Scheer’s religious/home schooling tax credit idea, then claimed to be the more authentic messenger.
• A CANZUK trade group wants people to take out Conservative memberships in order to support Erin O’Toole.
• Stephen Gordon writes about how nationalist parties are as likely to emerge on the left in Canada as they are the right, each sceptical about globalism.
• Paul Wells notes the interesting populist hints about the forthcoming budget in Trudeau’s speech in Hamburg.
• Susan Delacourt offers her own close reading of that same speech and notes the particular attention paid to contrition.
• My Loonie Politics column looks at the various interlopers into the Conservative leadership contest.

Odds and ends:

In the Law Times, I wrote about how a pair of Supreme Court decisions could lead to legislative changes around the production of documents.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/834229556701597696

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/834233066893803520

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/834233534164393985

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/834242473719382016

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/834242999542546432

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