There was an interesting bit of news out yesterday in that the husband of Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Rob Silver, was accused of having lobbied officials in Bill Morneau’s office as well as the PMO about making changes to the emergency wage subsidy legislation so that the company he worked for would qualify for it (which they don’t as they are majority-owned by Quebec’s pension plan). Apparently, he was turned down and those officials said that they felt “uncomfortable” by it all, but it’s nevertheless raising questions, and the Lobbying Commissioner is going to review the incident (but it’s likely he fell within the rules of not registering because it falls under the 20 percent threshold). There’s also no suggestion that said PM’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, was associated in any of this, nor the PM, but that’s not really what’s interesting about it.
https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1296947674046959617
https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1296952196022571009
For the past two weeks, as the leaks about Bill Morneau started coming out in advance of his departure, we also saw a number of warnings over social media about Liberals being their own worst enemies and that now was really not a good time for a civil war within the party. The fact that there were anonymous leaks to both VICE and the National Post about this incident shows that someone is suddenly awfully keen to talk, hoping to possibly embarrass PMO in some way, and considering that the leakers are showing how virtuous they were in standing up to Silver might make one assume that those leakers are loyalists of Morneau who are trying to, if not burnish his reputation, then certainly tarnish his detractors. I do wonder if this is a limited screw-you to Trudeau, because I haven’t yet seen camps loyal to Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne forming and trying to oust Trudeau so that one of them can take over just yet. That said, this year has proven to be full of surprises, so we’ll see.
Good reads:
- Prime minister Justin Trudeau defended his government unveiling their CERB transition measures after calling for a prorogation.
- Not unsurprisingly, the federal government is filing an appeal of the Federal Court decision that declared the Safe Third Country Agreement violates Charter rights.
- The Procurement Ombudsman is taking a closer look at six sole-source contracts that were given to the WE organization by the federal government.
- The Mining Association is suddenly having second thoughts about its support for the old Bill C-69 after a project near the Alberta border triggered a federal assessment.
- In a follow-up investigation on the privacy violations from the Tim Horton’s app, there is a discussion on the toothless nature of our privacy safeguards.
- The NDP say that they have nearly paid down their 2019 campaign debt and are ready to go to an election again if necessary.
- Kevin Carmichael notes the government’s willingness to pander to oligopolies, and suggests one way to spur innovation is to procure from smaller, innovative firms.
- My weekend column explores the weirdly specific fetish that the pundit class has for whether or not a minister of the Crown has “made payroll” in the past.
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This is really petty and I hope it doesn’t lead to a change in government. Morneau needs to call off his dogs if that’s what’s happening here. As you said yourself, he wasn’t very good at his job, plus there were other disputes between him and Trudeau over spending policy, and he had lost the confidence of the caucus, with the $41K thing being the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s no one’s fault but his own. So for him or his “team,” whoever they might be, to level a backlash from the sidelines all of a sudden, reeks of JWR-style nastiness.
But I don’t think it’s about ousting Trudeau either (though I think JWR wanted to). I think the real “tiff” (pun intended) was between Morneau and Telford that reached peak with the Bank of Canada appointment, which makes me really upset in context because it sounds like the old-boy network of Finance ganging up on the *women* in the government just as the first female FM rises to the top.
I think the Morneau loyalists, whoever they are, want Telford fired, whether Trudeau steps down or not. The business world and the right-wing press have been smearing Freeland as an underqualified token hire who “doesn’t have Bay Street experience” and suspect that it was Telford’s idea to promote her in Morneau’s place. There has been nothing but vilification of Trudeau’s feminist government ever since he took office. The “she-covery” terrifies them. Hell hath no fury like businessMEN scorned.
Generally speaking, I think they are trying to put a kibosh on Trudeau’s “New Deal” program which the fiscal tightwads of the party are ideologically opposed to. Shame on them. Lick your wounds and move on, dam mit. There are more important things than naked ambition and revenge. Like people’s lives and a robust recovery after a once-in-a-century pandemic. Pathetic.
Another comment that I concur with 100%.
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