The NDP held their first post-election caucus meeting yesterday, saying goodbye to departing MPs and welcoming their rookies and returning MPs, and when they met the press afterward, Jagmeet Singh announced that he is going to press for pharmacare and for the government to abandon their application for judicial review the Human Rights Tribunal compensation for First Nations youth. But there are problems with both – on the former, he is proposing the party’s first private members’ bill be taken up with the matter, and on the latter, the substantive problems with the Tribunal likely exceeding its statutory authority to make that kind of compensation order is kind of a big deal and as a lawyer, you would think he might have an appreciation for bad jurisprudence while still pushing for the government to go ahead with the compensation that they said they would honour. But you know, performative outrage.

Which brings me back to the notion of pharmacare legislation. The whole promise is built on both bad practice and bad procedure. Remember that when it comes to private members’ bills, they are allocated by lottery, meaning that it’s random as to who gets what slot, and Singh is not proposing as leader to take away the slot of the first NDP MP whose name comes up so that he can dictate what bill will be presented. That’s not only heavy-handed, but it actively removes the independence of that MP (which the NDP is used to doing while pretending they don’t, but let’s call a spade a spade). So much for any of the issues that MP cares about – the leader demanded their spot. The second and more important aspect is that private members’ bills can’t initiate government spending, and pharmacare is provincial jurisdiction, meaning that it’s depending on negotiating with premiers. The bill, essentially, is out of order, unless it becomes an exercise in demanding a national strategy, which the NDP love to do, but one of their MPs went on TV last night to say that they intend to use it to lay out the framework they want to implement. I can pretty much guarantee you that it means the bill will be dead on arrival, and that the committee that decides on what private members’ business is voteable will decide that it’s not. (The sponsor who was forced to give up their spot for this bill will then demand that the Commons vote to override the committee, and when they don’t, the NDP will wail and gnash their teeth that the Liberals don’t care about Pharmacare, which is a script so predictable it might as well be a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie).

I served on the Private Members' Bills Subcommittee and this will not be permitted under the rules. Involves money and has Constitutional implications. DOA. https://t.co/AqrN8apWde

— Brad Butt🇨🇦 (@BradWButt) October 30, 2019

What the NDP could do instead is use their first Supply Day to debate a motion on Pharmacare, which would then have a vote and let them scream and moan if the Liberals don’t adopt it for the reason that they’ve already committed to the implementation plan in the Hopkins report (which the NDP decry as not being fast enough), but at least that would be procedurally sound. But their apologists have been telling me on Twitter that all private members’ bills are theatre and only exist to make a point (untrue), or that they could simply get a minister to agree to it in order to spend the funds (never going to happen), but hey, it’s a minority parliament so the NDP can pretend to dictate terms as though they actually had bargaining given the seat maths. It’s too bad that they can’t be both performative and procedurally correct.

Good reads:

• First Nations leaders on the prairies are warning that any talk of “Western separatism” would have to deal with their treaties.
• Just in time for our federal election to be over, Twitter is banning all political ads starting next month.
• The Hill Times profiles five former staffers who are now newly-elected MPs.
• Another Conservative Senator, this time Jean-Guy Dagenais, thinks that it’s time for Scheer to go.
• Tongues are wagging after Peter MacKay suggested that Scheer missed a goal on an open net in the election, and we’re back to leadership ambition speculation.
• Jagmeet Singh says he’s “not satisfied” with his party’s election results, but seems to completely miss the fact that under his leadership his party organization atrophied.
• Elizabeth May is contemplating a run to be Speaker of the Commons.
• Quebec is implementing a “values test” as part of their immigration responsibilities, and it seems some questionswould alienate Canadian-born social conservatives.
• Éric Grenier looks to history for how well opposition leaders fare when they get a second crack at an election.
• Andrew Leach evaluates the recent carbon pricing for large emitters initiative in Alberta, and what the policy gets right and wrong.
• Kevin Carmichael parses yesterday’s Bank of Canada decision to hold interest rates, and what was in their monetary policy report.
• Colby Cosh takes on the Quebec Court of Appeal decision in the royal succession case and what it means for Canadian sovereignty.
• Susan Delacourt takes note of Trudeau’s hunkered-down-in-private-meetings schedule, and what his tapping Anne McLellan means.
• Andrew Coyne suggests that perhaps Andrew Scheer is but a symptom and not the cause of the malaise in the Conservative Party, and that they have bigger problems.

Odds and ends:

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