Roundup: Another useless voting marathon

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Unless a miracle happens and someone buckles, MPs will still be voting when this post goes live, because the Conservatives decided to demand another marathon vote session on the Estimates in order to prove a point. The point was that they want the government to table a document prepared by the public service about carbon pricing, which allegedly shows the fiscal impact – but it was redacted when released. The Conservatives see this as the smoking gun they need to “prove” that the federal carbon price backstop is a cash grab. Err, except the federal government isn’t keeping the revenues, and the provinces have until this fall to announce how they will be recycling the revenues, whether through tax cuts or whatnot, and lo, the government last month tabled a report that basically showed the efficacy of carbon pricing and that they’re waiting for the provinces to announce what their systems will be.

The Conservatives decided that their pressure tactic would be another round of line-by-line Estimates – because that worked so well the last time when they tried to force a meeting on the Atwal Affair™, only to buckle before votes could go into the weekend, and then they blamed the government for creating their own discomfort. Kind of like blaming someone else for when you hit yourself in the face on purpose to get attention. “You made me do this!” they cried. No, they didn’t, and worse, it was not only tactically incompetent (the votes had nothing to do with the demand then, and it doesn’t this time either), but by overplaying their hand, they voted against line items in the Estimates for things like funding veterans pensions or public services, all of which went into attack lines. And this time, because the government scheduled the vote for 10:30 PM, the fact that the Conservatives forced the 200 votes rather than the single vote means that Liberal MPs can complain that the Conservatives were keeping them from attending Eid celebrations in their ridings at dawn (some of them going so far as to cry Islamophobia). It’s a reach, and both sides are self-righteous about this, but come on.

As for the Conservatives’ demand, well, it’s a lot of disingenuous nonsense because the costs will be determined by how the revenues are recycled, which the federal government has no control over. Poilievre has been trying the semantic arguments that because it’s a federally-imposed tax that they need to know what the impact will be, focusing only on the cost before revenues are recycled, which is again, disingenuous and the precursor to misinformation. And if they were so concerned, they can do the analysis themselves – as Andrew Leach points out. But they don’t want to do that – this is all cheap theatre, performative outrage that the government is “covering up” information that they’re characterising as something it’s not. But as truth and context have become strangers in this parliament, none of this is unexpected.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh, and interim Bloc leader Mario Beaulieu were all in the Saguenay to campaign for Monday’s by-election.
  • Here’s Chrystia Freeland’s speech from Wednesday night, about defending liberal democracy in the face of demagoguery and populism. Well worth a read.
  • Freeland also met with her US counterparts today and says that NAFTA talks will be back on over the summer.
  • The TPP implementation bill was tabled yesterday, and the Conservatives tried to move to fastrack its passage, but the NDP said no.
  • Senators are now weighing whether or not to insist on the amendments that the House of Commons rejected in the cannabis bill.
  • The impaired driving bill is on its way back to the Commons without the random alcohol testing provisions, and this could be the real showdown with the Senate.
  • Navdeep Bains has ordered the CRTC to conduct an inquiry into the sales practices of telecom companies.
  • Jim Carr was in Argentina to announce that both countries would study how the other country subsidizes the fossil fuel industry.
  • Italy’s new populist government is threatening not to ratify CETA (although 98 percent of the agreement is now in force), largely over an agriculture dispute.
  • The showdown between the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Auditor General (who is not infallible) could open up the debate on the civil service’s culture.
  • The Nunavut legislature voted to remove the premier in what amounts to non-confidence, and the now-former deputy premier was elected to replace him.
  • The Ethics Commissioner rebuked Charlie Angus for running to the media every time he filed a complaint with his office and got a letter of acknowledgment.
  • Yesterday was Thomas Mulcair’s last day in the House of Commons, and he spoke about the need for Canada to be a champion of democracy in the world.
  • John Ivison talks to Bill Blair about the path to legalizing cannabis, and why Blair was the right person to sell the project to skeptics.

Odds and ends:

The Centre Block won’t be evacuated this summer but will start a phased move where the Commons and Senate move over the Christmas break.

The Supreme Court will rule today on whether Trinity Western University should be granted a law school given their stance on LGBT students.

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