QP: Vance and the old boys’ club

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Wednesday, proto-PMQ day, and we actually saw three Liberals in the Chamber for a change — the prime minister, Catherine McKenna, and Mark Gerretsen, because of course he was there. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and in French, gave his insistence that he didn’t believe that Trudeau wasn’t aware of the allegations against General Jonathan Vance. Justin Trudeau first gave the statement that any sexual misconduct was unacceptable and that they have new investments in the budget to combat misconduct, and that more announcements were coming soon. O’Toole switched to English to raise what happened when Trudeau booted two MPs from caucus over sexual harassment allegations before lamenting that a woman in uniform who came forward got no help. Trudeau repeated the list of actions they have taken and are planning to take. O’Toole then returned to the incredulity that Trudeau couldn’t have know about the nature of the allegations, for which Trudeau reminded him that they followed the same process that O’Toole followed in 2015 when he first heard rumours of allegations against Vance. O’Toole insisted that wasn’t true, and insinuated that the Liberals were too busy dealing with misconduct in their own ranks, and Trudeau noted that what was being lobbed at him proved that his party took things seriously. O’Toole then insisted that if everyone knew but the prime minister, then he needed to fire his chief of staff, and Trudeau gave one more impassioned cry that his party takes this seriously.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and raised the strike at the Port of Montreal, and wondered if text in the back-to-work legislation had to do with unilateral scheduling issues, for which Trudeau recited that they believe in negation but exhausted all of their options. Blanchet noted that he didn’t answer the question, and repeated it, asking for a yes or no answer, but Trudeau read a timeline of negations instead.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in English, raised the National Day of Mourning, demanding better paid sick leave, and Trudeau read that employer leave is the most effective mechanism, and that they instituted it for federally-regulated workplaces but the NDP voted against it. Singh insisted that the federal sickness benefit simply needed to be improved, and Trudeau noted that the NDP are “completely befuddled” by provincial jurisdiction.

Round two, and Candice Bergen accused Trudeau of throwing his chief of staff under the bus (Trudeau: We followed the same process your leader did when he was Associate Minister of Defence), and said that Trudeau wouldn’t deal with Vance because he had skeletons in his own closet (Trudeau: You are grasping to personal attacks because you have lost all relevance), and Raquel Dancho in French demanded to know if the PM knew of the Vance allegations (Trudeau: Here are some relevant quotes that we had no details about the allegations, which is why we need a better system), and noted that Vance got a raise after the allegations (Trudeau: We are trying to change the culture of the military).

Blanchet was back up to return to the reference in the back-to-work legislation (Trudeau: We don’t want to impose solutions, we want to impose neutral arbitration), and Blanchet tried again (Trudeau: Why don’t you support our bill to re-open the port and get the parties back to negation).

James Bezan returns to what Trudeau’s chief of staff told him about Vance (Trudeau: You are making personal attacks because you don’t want to talk about the budget, and here are more quotes to say we didn’t know the nature of the allegations), asked if Vance would have been fired if he knew the nature of the allegations (Trudeau: We followed the same process you did), and Bezan then stated that Stephen Harper sat down Vance and drilled him — which apparently didn’t do anything, so I’m not sure what that proves (Trudeau: You have no grasp of process or responsibility because it’s not the job of politicians to insert themselves in the process).

Singh was back up, and he joined in on the accusations that Trudeau really knew about the Vance allegations (Trudeau: Look at our investments in the budget to combat sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces and institute independent oversight), and demanded that the tax filing deadline be extended (Trudeau, with script: CRA has been there for Canadians, and we are offering targeted interest relief).

Round three saw yet more questions on the Vance allegations (Trudeau: It’s incredibly important to have proper processes and we need to put in more supports for victims; Your raising Harper proves the point that we need a better process), the Port of Montreal and the “solution” of having Trudeau make stern phone calls (Trudeau: We are there to help get the Port up and running again), “emboldening” the old boys club in the military (Trudeau: We need to create a system we don’t have at this point, so there is a proper process that results in consequences), the hypothetical notion that if he had been told about the nature of the allegations against Vance would he have fired him (Trudeau: My chief of staff has sat down with senior military staff about the changes that need to be made), action to save Laurentian University (Trudeau: This is provincial jurisdiction and we are in contact with the province and will support where we can).

Overall, it was kind of a strange day where the number of topics were extremely narrow, and outside of the Conservatives, it was only the leaders who kept getting up to ask questions. This being said, I’m not sure that Trudeau really acquitted himself well on most of the topics – on the Vance allegations, he insisted that more measures to combat sexual misconduct in the military were on the way, and he largely avoided saying that he didn’t know the nature of the allegations by either deflecting to the process that the Conservatives used in 2015 when O’Toole, as associate defence minister at the time, heard the rumours of Vance, or insisting that they take all allegations seriously, which the minister doesn’t seem to have done. With the very specific questions the Bloc were asking about the back-to-work legislation for the Port of Montreal strike, Trudeau stuck to generalities about the importance of for the Quebec economy and sniping about the Bloc’s utility, but didn’t actually answer the very specific questions that were put to him. And only with the NDP did Trudeau have reasonable answers, which is that the best paid sick leave is that which comes from employers and that is provincial jurisdiction.

I have to say that I’m not surprised by the rather nasty tenor that the Conservative questions took – particularly from Candice Bergen, but some of O’Toole’s insinuations were also pretty low. This being said, I remain completely mystified that the Conservatives thought that it was somehow a slam dunk to mention that when the rumours around Vance surfaced in 2015 that it was brave or heroic of Stephen Harper to sit Vance down, and look him in the eyes, and “drill him” about them. Because, after this “courageous” action on Harper’s part, Vance apparently lied to him, and he still got appointed as Chief of Defence Staff. They admitted that Harper inserting himself politically in the matter did absolutely nothing, and yet they kept trying to insist that this was the preferable option to trying to maintain an arm’s-length process. I don’t get it, but I’m not the genius advising Erin O’Toole.

Sartorial snaps and citations remain on hiatus for lack of a sufficient sample size.

7 thoughts on “QP: Vance and the old boys’ club”

  1. I hope none of these politicians think that they will change attitudes and culture in the military, not going to happen no matter what measures or process you might have in place. The military is not the civilian world.

  2. All the nasty talk now is just another attempt to smear Trudeau.
    Maybe there is more to it that hasn’t emerged yet but it appears that what Vance actually did was:
    1. have a consensual affair with a subordinate, and
    2. send an email that included a reference to a nude beach
    So all in all, history’s greatest monster, I guess.
    But seriously, unless there was more to it than this, its a nothingburger.
    I realize there are military regulations against having affairs with subordinates, but apparently it was consensual. The affair is an embarrassment and reveals Vance’s poor judgement, but its not a #MeToo-type of scandal unless others come forward. And the email is just dumb – sometimes people try to make stupid jokes – it may reveal poor judgement but its not criminal.
    So no wonder Harper didn’t do anything – there was nothing he actually needed to do.

    • Weghazi went nowhere, so I hope the Liberals make the upcoming opposition day motion to launch another star chamber inquiry into the Vance matter a confidence measure. The cons and their NDP lackeys can’t gain any traction on their crap policies, so they fall back on Republican style scandal-mongering, knowing that their media friendlies will play ball particularly if they can find a “juicy” angle to get good ratings. Obscure British legalese didn’t sell well two years ago, so they went with feminism and Indigenous issues, and a victim narrative about a stubborn backstabbing grandstander. Weghazi involved celebrities and the national pastime of Maggie-bashing. This one’s got sex — honest-to-god actual sex — so it’s tailor-made for prime time and Facebook clicks. Which is really all that matters. Not actual facts.

      It isn’t even about Vance; it’s certainly not about “standing up for women” or “holding the government accountable.” It’s plainly obvious what their intentions are. It’s about scalping Telford and Sajjan like they did Morneau, and are ultimately desperate to do to Trudeau. But not before they rile up enough potential sausage handlers with their stochastic sh_tposting by pushing sleaze to the frothing base. They really, really want to have a blue dress story to frame Trudeau with, and all they have is that decades-old BS from Kinsella and now this tinfoil soap opera about Vance. “A Few Bad Men”? The question is whether O’Toole is going to play the role of Ken Starr or does he honestly think he’s Jack Nicholson? He lies all the time because he can’t handle the truth!

    • The Old Boys’ Clubs in the military and quasi-military institutions in the country are beyond revolting, as are those in politics. I don’t understand, though, why this blog attracts an Old Girls’ Club that — when Justin Trudeau is involved — seemingly never stops finding excuses for any malfeasance, conflict of interest, lack of judgement, or just plain failure to adhere to the high standards we should expect of a Prime Minister in this country. That’s really sad.

      • I guess the victims’ advocacy group that wanted the committee to stop using their stories as campaign fodder for partisan dunks were just a bunch of TruAnon groupies in the “old girls’ club.” Wow.

        And cons wonder why their party polls in the toilet with female voters. Or why victims are reluctant to come forward. Disgusting.

  3. QAnonservative Party of Canada is back at it again. The vomitorium of social media is already blending their conspiracy theories, going from Telford as Ghislaine Maxwell to now Sophie is involved with Vance. The Jerry Springerfication of Parliament continues. I’m sorry Dale, I know you’re a stickler for tradition but I really don’t think Parliament going virtual has anything to do with the degradation of decorum in the Chamber. It’s who the Cons are. The NDP is just going full mask-off in their bitterness over having lost the brass ring in 2015. As for the Bloc, well, Blanchet has his own skeletons so it’s not surprising he’d jump aboard the bandwagon, point fingers and try to “vous, aussi” Trudeau.

    It’s disgusting, gutter-level exploitation and smearing of the PM for political dunks, and it’s not going to end well when another sausage handler crashes his truck into Rideau Cottage again and the Cons attempt to deflect their own culpability. I miss the halcyon times when they would just pout about his hair and socks and try to make a thing out of an elbow bump. With this, someone is going to get hurt.

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