After the Green Party won their second seat in Monday night’s by-election in Nanaimo–Ladysmith, it was inevitable that we would be subjected to a litany of hot takes about what this means for the upcoming federal election, most of which I’m not going to bother reading because frankly, I’m not sure it means anything at all. The Greens have been doing well provincially on Vancouver Island, where this riding is, and more than that, this particular candidate was once an NDP candidate who was booted from the party (apparently for views about Israel), and when the Greens picked him up, he won for them, while the NDP vote collapsed. Add to that, Green wins in BC, New Brunswick and PEI were also predicated by incumbent governments who had been in place for a long time (well, in New Brunswick, it was a constant PC/Liberal swap), and that’s not necessarily the case federally. While Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh tried to spin this as “proof” that Canadians care about the environment (for which both will try to tout their party policies on the same) we can’t forget that Canadians want to do something about the environment in the same way that they want a pony – it’s a nice idea that nobody has any intention of following up on because it’s a lot of effort and mess. This has been proven time and again. I would also caution against the notion that this means that “progressive” votes are up for grabs, because the Greens, well, aren’t all that progressive. If you read their platform, it’s really quite socially conservative, and they had whole sections essentially written by “Men’s Rights Activists” because they have little to no adult supervision in their policy development process. So any hot takes you’re going to read about the by-election are probably going to be full of hot air (quite possibly this one as well).

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1125798043905818624

Auditor General’s Report

The big news out of the Auditor General’s report was of course the backlog that the Immigration and Refugee Board faces regarding asylum claimants in Canada. The Conservatives, naturally, have jumped on this to “prove” that the current government has somehow broken the system, but every single expert that was cited over the day yesterday said that the Liberals inherited a system that was already broken (some went so far as to say that the Conservatives deliberately broke it in order to force a crisis that would allow them to adopt more draconian measures – though those backfired in a spectacular way, worsening the backlog), and that they have taken steps to increase the IRB’s resources. I wrote about some of these issues a while ago, and the IRB was starting to streamline some of their processes and start making use of technology like email (no, seriously) that cut down on some of the bureaucracy they were mired in – but as with anything, these kinds of changes take time to implement and have an effect. But expect the narrative of the “broken” system to continue in the run up to the election. Meanwhile, here are the other reports:

• Half of Canadians who call a government call centre can’t get through, which is blamed on technology that was allowed to go obsolete
• The RCMP are still not adequately prepared to deal with active shooter situations.
• Our tax system hasn’t kept up with e-commerce and needs modernization
• The mechanism to prevent governments from doing partisan advertising has little documentation and rigour.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau will head to Saskatchewan later this month to offer an official exoneration of Chief Poundmaker for his role in the Northwest Rebellion in 1885.
• At the Arctic Council meeting, Chrystia Freeland affirmed Canada’s cooperation with the Americans, while disagreeing on their stances on climate change.
• That Arctic Council meeting that concluded without a statement to make about climate change because the Americans refused.
• Bill Blair is confident the government would win a court challenge of the planned refugee changes to discourage asylum shopping.
• At a WTO council meeting in Geneva, Canada’s ambassador called out the Chinese over the canola issue and demanded scientific proof of the supposed contamination.
• Canada agreed to foot the costs of removing those garbage containers from the Philippines (which sets quite a precedent for future incidents).
• An internal audit from Natural Resources Canada shows they have more work to do when it comes to preparations for natural disasters.
• It looks like the Crown prosecutors are going to withdraw the Breach of Trust charges against VADM Mark Norman.
• The Commons ethics committee has voted to subpoena Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to testify about the Cambridge Analytica issue.
• The full Senate defeated the amendments made to the gun control bill at committee, and are preparing for third reading debate.
• Senators on the energy and environment committee are now considering a lengthy list of amendments to Bill C-69.
• Andrew Scheer gave his first big foreign policy speech, which he promised to act tough with China and Russia, and move Canada’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
• Conservative MP Mark Warawa gave a farewell address to the Commons, as he battles cancer, and called for more access to palliative care.
• A potential People’s Party candidate says his nomination was blocked because he’s gay (which the party denies).
• Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro is returning to Ottawa today to complain that the Commissioner of Elections was unfair to him in pursuing a prosecution.
• Gerald Butts has joined the Eurasia Group consulting firm.
• In Quebec, Bouchard and Taylor of the (in)famous commission on religious accommodation say the “secularism” bill will simply encourage prejudice.
• Terry Glavin takes the Conservatives to task for not doing enough to deal with their “racist jackass” problem in their ranks.
• Matt Gurney offers the reminder that military procurement in Canada is really about regional jobs, not purchasing usable equipment.
• Susan Delacourt parses the Samara Canada report on the phenomenon of “elite-led populism” in Canada, where the rhetoric isn’t matching the public sentiment.
• My column delves into the hay being made over the Liberals using their party database to vet candidates for appointed positions like judges and senators.

Odds and ends:

Here’s an amusing look at MPs’ use of misattributed quotes.

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