Roundup: Trudeau begins his Big Reset

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Yesterday very much looked like the start of Justin Trudeau’s attempted Big Reset after the weeks of damage that the Double-Hyphen Affair has done to his reputation, starting with the appointment of Joyce Murray to Cabinet as the new Treasury Board president. Murray has been the parliamentary secretary for Treasury Board during the entire life of this government, has been pushing for a “greening of government” initiative within the department, and has a history of being someone who has gone offside with the rest of caucus on several occasions, thus her appointment could be seen as sending signals that Trudeau is open to disagreement. Following this was the announced retirement of Michael Wernick as Clerk of the Privy Council, citing that he couldn’t carry on in the role if he was no longer trusted by opposition parties on issues like his role around sounding the alarm regarding election interference. This doesn’t mean culpability for the Double-Hyphen Affair, but it is nevertheless part of the accountability process (and accountability, like democracy, is a process). Wernick will be replaced by Ian Shugart, who is currently the deputy minister of foreign affairs. (I’m also not convinced that this is the last of the staffing changes, and we may yet see more cleaning house in the PMO as a demonstration of doing something).

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Minutes later, during Question Period, Trudeau announced that former justice minister Anne McLellan was named as a special advisor to the prime minister to examine aspects of what happened in the Affair, particularly as it relates to the dual roles of Justice Minister and Attorney General, and whether it’s time to separate the two. (She also backed out of a fundraiser for the Liberal Judy Lamarsh fund – which aims to help more women run for office – after taking on the new role). And then, after QP, Trudeau gave a rousing speech about condemning hatred and calling out white supremacy, and made some pointed digs at Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier for their winking and nudging of white nationalists without condemning their messages. All of this is working to change the narrative – things are being put into place to fix what happened, the speech sets Trudeau on a different rhetorical tone than Scheer – and sets out a huge contrast between the two, especially after Scheer’s insipid speech that followed – so we’ll see if the Liberals can capitalise on this, but the fact that Trudeau explicitly said in the speech that this was exactly the time for politics could be the signal that he wants to fight an election on this issue.

But that may be harder to do, given that the Liberal members of the justice committee put out a letter saying that they weren’t inclined to call Jody Wilson-Raybould back to testify further, stating that they’d heard enough and wanted to get on with the report, and let the other processes carry on. I will say that at least they put out a letter with reasoning in it – they simply could have gone in camera today and emerged saying they were going to focus on writing the report, and saying nothing more. You know, like the Conservatives frequently did when they were in power. It doesn’t look good for the Liberals, and feeds the Conservative narrative that they’re hiding something, but they may simply be trying to move on as quickly as possible. (Of course, there is no smoking gun here, and it’s a matter of determining credibility and finding the line of where pressure is deemed “inappropriate,” so that makes for a harder sell to keep this going as long as possible).

The Senate, meanwhile, is debating the motion to start their own study on the issue, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m not sure that the Conservatives in the Senate will get the Independents onside, as their performance during the inaugural televised Senate Question Period had the ISG leader tweeting right away that it was all about partisan posturing, but stranger things have happened.

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https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107813615136997376

Good reads:

  • The big budget “leak” so far is that there will be a focus on rural broadband…which sounds like a promise we’ve heard time and again.
  • Bill Morneau is also expected to announce “exploratory talks” with Indigenous groups about an equity and revenue-sharing stake in the Trans Mountain expansion.
  • With ten sitting weeks left, Bardish Chagger says she’ll need to use time allocation more often, while the Conservatives demand more Wilson-Raybould testimony.
  • Chrystia Freeland and Harjit Sajjan announced that Canada will extend its current military training missions in Iraq and Ukraine.
  • Ralph Goodale says that Bill Blair’s report on handguns and semi-automatic assault rifles will be coming very soon.
  • In the VADM Mark Norman case, the justice department had to delete three tweets about the document requests after complaints from Norman’s lawyers.
  • The judge in that case has also started releasing documents to the defence now that she’s reviewed them, but there are a lot more to go.
  • Facebook was to announce measures it plans to take to prevent its site from being a platform for disruption or interference during the next election.
  • Here’s a look at the Senate’s big broadcast debut, and all of the dynamics that are expected to play out.
  • There was a Speech From the Throne in Alberta that did not presage an election call, but instead laid out an actual legislative agenda for the next few weeks.
  • More details are emerging in the “kamikaze” campaign coordinated with Jason Kenney’s leadership team, including illegal campaign donations.
  • These revelations, plus others, have caused at least one UCP candidate to not only withdraw, but his entire riding association also resigned in protest.
  • Another former UCP candidate wants a judicial inquiry into the allegations.
  • Jason Markusoff writes about what the revelations on the “kamikaze” campaign are showing about Jason Kenney’s need to win.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at how the justice committee probe into the Double-Hyphen Affair might end (written before the letter from the Liberals).
  • Colby Cosh gives everyone a good smack upside the head over the infatuation with “AI” (which isn’t actually AI), and how government dollars are being shovelled to it.

Odds and ends:

In Law Times, I have a story on the intersection of cannabis law and condo law when it comes to banning cannabis smoking in condos.

Here’s a look at the Buffalo Chronicleas a fake news outlet that some high-profile names have been trafficking in.

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