Yesterday the Globe and Mail had a story about how the current government will run potential judicial nominees through the Liberal party’s voter database as part of the vetting process, which was followed by an analysis of how many appointees were Liberal donors. This first came up weeks ago when yet another Jody Wilson-Raybould-related leak revealed that she was trying to “depoliticize” the appointment process by not providing certain information to PMO when she passed along recommendations, which is a problem – not that it was framed that way. This current story follows up on that, and has a few framing issues of its own. There are a few things to unpack in this, but first of all, I’ll let Adam Goldenberg point out a few issues with this analysis:

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013782795497478

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013787128156160

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121013789766369280

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1121024056663400448

With this in mind, I have a few thoughts of my own – first of all is that I think Goldenberg is correct in his reminder that vetting includes political vetting – and the party’s database (as Susan Delacourt noted on Power Play) contains more than who donated – they will collect all manner of information as part of their construction of voter profiles, so it makes sense that they would also run potential appointments through this. (The fact that parties don’t have stringent privacy rules around their databases is a discussion for another day). Why? Because the prime minister is ultimately politically accountable for all Governor-in-Council appointments, and that includes judges. And so long as the prime minister is politically accountable, I think it’s reasonable that his office does whatever vetting they deem necessary – and there’s nothing in here to indicate that they’re checking to ensure that they’re voting for Liberal partisans, which we need to keep in mind.

Re: Liberals appointing judges who were past donors (https://t.co/SptS88E5xx). Plus ca change. @janicetibbetts pic.twitter.com/WoaJjkkIuy

— Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) April 24, 2019

The other aspect of his story that makes me a bit queasy is the implication that there is favour being shown to Liberal donors – and the math bears out a little bit that while seventy percent of appointees hadn’t donated to anyone, twenty-five percent of them donated to the Liberals, which is disproportionate to other parties. But we also need to remember a few things, the primary one being that we need to stop treating political donations as a bad thing. The donation limits in this country are quite small – you’re not going to bribe someone for $1200, let’s face it – and we donations are a form of engagement. Engagement is a good thing. The more we stigmatize past political donations – and those donations could be for a variety of reasons, such as an acquaintance running in a local campaign, or because they wanted the tax receipt – the more we send the message that engagement is bad, which is the very opposite of what we should be doing in a country where we already have abysmal levels of engagement, whether it’s taking out party memberships, donating, or volunteering (and yes, Samara Canada has done research on this). Pearl-clutching stories like this just reinforce this narrative, which is bad for democracy.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau visited flooded areas in Gatineau and warned that we’ll see more floods across the country because of climate change.
• While Trudeau recently touted that the budget “freed the beer,” it’s not really in his hands, and premiers keep raising their own protectionist barriers.
• When Japan’s prime minister visits Ottawa this weekend, it is expected he will pitch greater defence cooperation with Canada to counter Chinese aggression.
• Catherine McKenna says she hopes to have a solution to the garbage containers stuck in the Philippines in the coming weeks.
• The Bank of Canada held interest rates, and tightened their economic outlook given the widening output gap, and there being less slack in the economy.
• CBSA is studying whether its agents or passport scanning devices are showing bias in who they select for secondary screenings.
• Post-VADM Mark Norman allegations, Public Procurement is tightening the rules on what prospective shipbuilders can disclose publicly and to media.
• An Order Paper question has revealed that thus far, nearly 20,000 sensitive documents have been mishandled under the current government (unsurprisingly).
• Lloyd Axworthy says that Canada should renew its ties to Ukraine despite his reservations about the populism of its new president, a former comedian.
• Some senators are hoping to get the full Chamber to direct the legal committee to prioritize Rona Ambrose’ bill on sexual assault training for judges.
• Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott were invited to speak at an Indigenous justice conference, and Wilson-Raybould worried about the file being “managed.”
• The PEI Progressive Conservative leader says that he’s unlikely to join the “resistance” movement against the federal carbon tax like other conservatives.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column gives some righteous indignation to media calls about the PEI election outcome when it’s a hung parliament.
• Kevin Carmichael parses the Bank of Canada’s decision and the changes in their economic forecasts.
• Heather Scoffield notes that the Bank’s analysis shows no recession on the horizon (in yet another rebuke of Doug Ford’s concerns).
• David Moscrop sets up some of the context around the Green gains in PEI.
• Paul Wells evaluates where Justin Trudeau is with his environmental plans facing resistance, and wonders if doubling down is the best way to go about it.

Odds and ends:

Tristin Hopper makes the case to appoint Prince Harry as the next Governor General.

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