Roundup: Cheering on an attack on institutional independence

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Yesterday, Senator Claude Carignan tabled a bill that seeks to strip Julie Payette of her pension, and would strip any former Governor General of a pension if they don’t serve at least five years (never mind that nine of our 29 past Governors General did not serve at least five years). It’s an attack on the institutional independence of an office that can serve as a check on government, and needs to be called out as such.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1376970875031945217

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1376971807576711168

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1376998266282328065

But just how was it discussed on Power & Politics last night? Over several segments, each of them with different pundits, the common consensus that this was great populist politics to go after an unpopular figure like Payette, and digging into the issue of their other benefits – because nothing sells in Canadian media like cheap outrage and hairshirt parsimony. The most we got to the cautionary tale was to beware unintended consequences, and that a future GG may have to invent a medical reason for a resignation (which the bill states that Cabinet would have to approve, which is entirely bonkers). Not one person – not one – raised the issue of institutional independence, and why it’s a Very Bad Thing to open the door to governments being able to threaten their financial well-being as a way to hold power over them, most especially when the beneficiaries of this independence (not only the GG, but also senators and Supreme Court justices) provide a check on the power of government. This is the level of discourse in this country? Seriously? And even more to the point, the host of the show kept steering the topic to this kind of populist, vindictiveness rather than the actual consequences of making an action like this. It is absolutely boggling, but it gives you a sense as to why things have degenerated as they have. This bill represents an existential threat to our parliamentary system, and it’s being played for petty drama and populist cheap shots.

We need better pundits in this country, and better politics shows. This is horrifying.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau announced that an additional five million doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be arriving earlier than expected this spring.
  • It looks like Johnson & Johnson doses will start arriving by the end of April.
  • Here is a look at the changed demographics of the variant-driven third wave of the pandemic, and how new cases are tending younger and more severe.
  • Marco Mendicino announced a new policy to help more Yazidi survivors of ISIS to reunite with family in Canada.
  • The government is extending our anti-ISIS mission in Iraq for another year.
  • Canada is pledging another $49.5 million in aid for refugees in Syria.
  • There is now a court challenge to sex work laws after the Conservatives’ revamp, which the Liberals promised to change and haven’t yet.
  • Some critics say that the Supreme Court’s carbon price decision created too narrow a box for federal governments to deal with issues of national importance.
  • Conservative insiders are concerned that there really aren’t many Ontario seats that they could actually win, which they would need to in order to form government.
  • Neither private sector unions nor the NDP are buying Erin O’Toole’s sudden conversion to their cause as a way of trying to attract working-class votes.
  • Documents show that the Alberta government was more interested in keeping a meat packing plant open rather than employee safety during COVID.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column explains why a government trying to put a poison pill in a budget bill in order to force an election is harder than it sounds.
  • Economist Trevor Tombe offers suggestions for how Alberta could better recycle its carbon price revenues rather than the federal household rebates.
  • Heather Scoffield recounts how the governing Liberals are not buying Facebook’s insistence that they are benevolent entities in the media landscape.
  • My column looks at the Senate bill that would attack Julie Payette’s pension, and why this is a very bad thing that attacks institutional independence in this country.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Cheering on an attack on institutional independence”

  1. Maybe it’s time to review the salaries and/or pensions of senators. So many of them get generous taxpayer monies just to spread FUD and be obnoxious internet trolls.

    As for the Canadian “punditry,” they’re so useless as to be dangerous. An actual group of monkeys with typewriters would do a better job.

    • J. B.:

      Could you please be so kind and Named tohos senators that are nothing but “be obnoxious internet trolls and spread FUD”?

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