Roundup: Brison’s long farewell

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It was a bit of a surprise yesterday morning, as Treasury Board president Scott Brison announced that he was resigning his cabinet position because he decided that after 22 years in elected politics, he had decided he wasn’t going to run again this fall. His reasons were mostly that it was time for something new, and the fact that he now has a young family – something that was largely inconceivable when he first got into politics, then as a Progressive Conservative – though that hasn’t stopped everyone from speculating that this has something to do with the upcoming trial of VADM Mark Norman, given that Norman’s lawyers are trying to insinuate that Brison had tried to politically interfere with the procurement process for the interim naval supply ship. (Brison denies this, and he’s not the one on trial, but here’s a thread on what this decision means on his ability to testify). One can’t also help but noting that this will be a bit of a blow for Trudeau as well, as one of his most experienced and competent ministers will be leaving the Cabinet table, and that will matter given the fact that there are still too many ministers that haven’t quite grown into their responsibilities yet.

This, of course, means that we’re now fully into Cabinet shuffle speculation, given that there is one coming on Monday to replace Brison. Every other member of Cabinet, save Jody Wilson-Raybould, has confirmed that they plan to run again in the next election (and Wilson-Raybould likely will as well – she was out of the country and didn’t respond to questions), so it’s unlikely that anyone else will be dropped at this point, particularly given the last shuffle wasn’t too long ago, so it’s an open question as to who will be tapped to replace Brison, and who will take the Treasury Board file.

On a personal note, Brison played a big part in my early days on the Hill, when I was writing primarily for LGBT outlets. When I was the Ottawa correspondent – and later political editor – for the now defunct Outlooks magazine, I had a monthly segment where I would ask Brison, Senator Nancy Ruth, and NDP MP Bill Siksay (later Randall Garrison after Siksay retired) a question every month to get queer perspectives from the three main parties, and that helped me to grow into the journalist that I am today. He was always generous with his time, and incredibly patient with my rookie status, and I will forever be grateful for that.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau is on another “town hall” tour, with stops so far in Kamloops and Regina, and no, not all of the questions were friendly (or sane, for that matter).
  • Catherine McKenna announced federal green funding for an Ontario business, bypassing the province, seeing as they pulled out of the climate price framework.
  • The federal government gave the IRB $74 million to help tackle its backlog, though documents show that it’s only half of what they need to do the job.
  • Canadian consular officials have met with one of the detained Canadians in China for a second time.
  • The federal government is preparing another charm offensive of American lawmakers around the steel and aluminium tariffs.
  • Chrystia Freeland is calling out Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro as a fully-entrenched dictator.
  • The Coast Guard has recovered far more oil than anticipated from a sunken wreck that had begun leaking over the past few years.
  • Senator Mike Duffy has filed an appeal of the court decision that ruled the Senate’s parliamentary privilege protects it from his attempted lawsuit.
  • Senator Linda Frum is back on the Twitter Machine following the hack of her account.
  • Maxime Bernier says issues like abortion and trans rights aren’t in his platform, so he sidesteps questions about his Burnaby South candidate.
  • Here’s a first-person account of the clash of values within the Wet’suwet’en nation over the pipeline, and Canadian law versus their traditional ones.
  • Éric Grenier crunches the numbers on the three upcoming by-elections.
  • Robert Hiltz takes Jagmeet Singh to task for talking a big game about the recent First Nations pipeline protests, but not bothering to turn up.
  • Chris Selley tackles the bizarre applications of the new (unconstitutional) impaired driving law that recently was enacted.

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