Yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau released the mandate letters for his ministers, giving us a glimpse as to what their marching orders will be (which is still a fairly novel transparency and accountability measure in this country, it needs to be said). The National Post counted up some 288 projects listed in those mandates, some of them holdovers from the previous parliament (which isn’t surprising considering that  many of them were fairly ambitious and transformational and were not achievable within four years). But there were also a number of things missing from several of those letters that should have been dealt with – particularly on the justice file.

As with the previous parliament, each of the letters has an identical preamble, advising the ministers to “govern in a positive, open and collaborative way,” because it’s a hung parliament and all of that. In terms of specific points in the letters, there are issues like discussions with province over pharmacare, shortening wait times for airport screenings, tax cuts for green tech companies, reforming the medical assistance in dying laws, advancing international efforts to ban “killer robots,” procuring new fighter jets and modernizing NORAD. One of the more alarming mentions was in Bill Morneau’s letter, advising him to review and possibly modify the financial stress test applied to mortgages, which is a Very Bad Thing, and means that the real estate lobby is winning its air war over the good common sense of the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. (Seriously – there is no excuse for encouraging bad debt).

And then there is Chrystia Freeland’s letter, which is expansive and makes her in essence a “minister of everything” who is assigned to basically work with a number of other ministers to advance their priorities, whether it’s carbon pricing, getting resources to market, breaking down internal trade barriers, facilitating pharmacare talks, working on pan-Canadian childcare, gun control, regional economic development agencies, and advancing reconciliation. This leaves questions as to what exactly Trudeau will be doing while Freeland does all the work – leaving her to either take the fall while Trudeau gets to take the credit. This having been said, it’s just as likely that she wanted a full plate of projects rather than simply spending her weeks heading to provincial capitals to meet with premiers once the New NAFTA is ratified, but she certainly has her work cut out for her, ensuring that enough of these promises are fulfilled before the inevitable early election call that comes in a hung parliament.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau met with François Legault yesterday, who urged the Bloc to pass the New NAFTA, but also warned Trudeau to keep out of Bill 21 challenges.
• Bill Morneau will release his fall economic update on Monday.
• The next round of penalties and compensation comes into effect for the Air Passengers Bill of Rights this Sunday.
• Andrew Scheer’s resignation and the revelation of the payments for his children’s private school education is causing a meltdown in the party’s organization.
• Erin O’Toole has told his caucus that he will run for the leadership (again), while Peter MacKay is apparently mulling it over the weekend.
• Jagmeet Singh says he doesn’t want to team up with the Conservatives to defeat the Liberals, but wants to use his leverage to push them to do more.
• The Speaker says that if Jody Wilson-Raybould doesn’t leave her old ministerial office, there are procedures to evict her. (More on those rules here).
• Michael Spratt dissects the changes that Ontario is making to Legal Aid, and how they have downloaded more costs onto the system while claiming otherwise.
• Max Fawcett looks at how changes to Alberta’s education system are weakening critical thinking in favour of more oil sector boosterism.
• Andrew Coyne takes issue with Jason Kenney’s demands for fiscal stabilization billions when the province won’t implement a sales tax to stabilize their revenues.
• Chantal Hébert looks at Scheer’s departure and the way that the current parliament should focus the party when it comes to selecting his replacement.
• Kevin Carmichael parses Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz’s latest paper, and its look at how we might manage an evolving economy.
• Heather Scoffield wonders how the government plans to pay for all of the demands being placed upon it, in light of the mandate letters.
• Chris Selley balks at the way that the ability to buy mass memberships for leadership contests creates leaders beholden to special interest groups.
• My weekend column looks at how Senator Woo wants to bully through changes to the Senate rules in favour of more empty speeches, ego-stroking, and wasted time.

Odds and ends:

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— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) December 3, 2019

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