Roundup: Not an election issue to fight over

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The leader of the Independent Senators Group seems to have inserted himself into the political discussion by demanding to know where parties stand on the issue of Senate appointments in advance of the next election. Senator Woo’s concerns seem to be that he doesn’t want people to “unwittingly” vote for a party that doesn’t conform to their views on the Senate. I’m going to go ahead and say that this was probably a mistake because it’s very easy to construe that he’s looking to shill for the Liberals since they are the only ones to are half-arsing the issue of Senate modernization, at least in this particular bastardized vision of a completely “independent” Chamber that is more likely to be problematic than anything.

In case you were wondering, the Conservatives say they don’t have a firm position yet, but their democratic institutions critic says she prefers the Harper system of appointing candidates voted on in “consultative elections” – you know, the ones that the Supreme Court of Canada said were unconstitutional because they were attempting to do through the backdoor what they couldn’t to through the front door. Oh, and they support a partisan Senate because they have a “very strong Senate group.” And the NDP, well, they’re still insisting that they want to abolish the Senate, never mind that they will never, ever, get the unanimous support of the provinces to do so. That leaves Senator Woo holding the bag for the Liberals by default, which isn’t a good look if he wants to keep insisting that he’s independent from the Liberals.

And those of us who think that maybe the Senate is better off with Liberals, Conservatives and a group of crossbenchers in roughly equal numbers? Who are we supposed to vote for? I suspect we’re SOL, unless the Liberals decide to change their tune after their “experiment” in a totally independent Senate starts to blow up in their faces and they can’t get bills passed (in part because their Government Leader – err “representative” – doesn’t want to do his job), but yeah. I’m not sure this is an election issue to fight over because nobody knows what they’re doing and we’re going to find ourselves cleaning up the mess made in this institution for a generation to come.

Good reads:

  • Navdeep Bains told a committee that the Chief Statistician didn’t alert him about their plans for acquiring bank data, but still says the Chief has his confidence.
  • Apparently DND can’t produce any documents to back up the government’s assertion that there’s a “capability gap” with the current CF-18 fleet.
  • The Auditor General will be looking at fighter jet procurement as part of his latest report, due out today.
  • Here’s a look at some of the potential fallout of Tony Clement’s sexting problems and whether that will break the trust between the NSICOP and intelligence agencies.
  • The Veterans Affairs emergency fund for veterans in need isn’t getting much uptake as caseworkers keep referring veterans to outside agencies instead.
  • CRA’s new client service call centre is delayed and may not be doing enough to fix the problems the Auditor General identified.
  • Here’s a look at the Pence-Xi spat that derailed the APEC summit, and how that is causing uncertainty in advance of the upcoming G20 summit.
  • Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette wants more attention paid to a looming meth addiction crisis.
  • Andrew Scheer is planning on unveiling his policies today around solving gun violence that doesn’t involve a handgun plan.
  • It seems that the Conservatives’ biggest worries are not just Maxime Bernier, but also the weakness of the NDP.
  • Rachel Notley appointed three “envoys” to find a solution to the province’s oil price differential. Good luck with that.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at what procedural shenanigans may be in store during the push to get bills passed before the Christmas break.
  • Éric Grenier crunches the polling data to show why immigration may not be a good issue for parties to fight an election over.
  • Colby Cosh digs into this year’s homicide figures and how susceptible they are to chance.
  • Chantal Hébert looks at Andrew Scheer’s struggling messaging that isn’t gaining any traction with voters.
  • Martin Patriquin says the botched legal cannabis rollout has been a boon to the black market (though one assumes that’s for a limited time period).
  • Chris Selley points to the singular outrage of Ontario cutting its independent child advocate given the magnitude of the problems it was responsible for.
  • Paul Wells reflects on the Halifax International Security Forum, and the change in tone from participants from years past.

Odds and ends:

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