Jody Wilson-Raybould announced yesterday that she wasn’t going to be running again in the next election, but wasn’t leaving to “spend more time with family.” Rather, she planned to continue her work in other venues, but noticed that the House of Commons had become more toxic and ineffective, which is very true.

https://twitter.com/Puglaas/status/1413128438592933898

While I don’t think that Wilson-Raybould was a particularly great minister (and she has yet to answer for her pushing blatantly unconstitutional legislation through), she nevertheless had a particularly valuable viewpoint that made the House of Commons better for having her in it. Her singularly pushing back against the Bloc’s attempts to play politics around Quebec’s Bill 96 and the proposed constitutional changes and nationhood declarations was something we could certainly have used more of, not less.

This having been said, I think Wilson-Raybould, like Jane Philpott, were somewhat naïve about the nature of federal politics, and were sold some particularly bad advice about life as an independent MP, and more broadly about hung parliaments in general. There is a particular romance around them, particularly from a segment of the political science crowd, which has rosy visions of the 1960s and inter-party cooperation to get things done, when hung parliaments in recent decades have simply been nasty and highly partisan, and that contributed a lot to the toxicity and ineffectiveness of this parliamentary session. On top of that, Wilson-Raybould had broken the trust of her fellow MPs, and that no doubt further isolated her in an already fractious situation in the Chamber. It’s too bad that she couldn’t have contributed more, but her no longer being there is a diminution to the kinds of voices that we should be hearing more of.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau was in BC to sign an agreement with the province on childcare, as that province is the first to take the federal government up on their plans.
• Trudeau also said that they are working on guidelines for fully-vaccinated travellers to Canada, but unvaccinated travellers are a long way away.
• We got more information about the firings at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, and it’s looking increasingly fairly benign.
• Three former Canadian generals are calling for faster action to bring over Afghan interpreters and their families, lest they face Taliban retribution for their aid.
• CMHC’s attempt to cool the housing market wound up simply shifting insured mortgages to the private sector, until they backed down on their changes.
• After five ballots, RoseAnne Archibald has been chosen as the new national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and is the first female national chief.
• Michaëlle Jean says that Haiti needs international support to investigate the assassination of their president, and there needs to be dialogue within the country.
• Will Amos, in a hand-picked media interview, says his Zoom incidents were a result of “hyperactive multitasking,” and “lack of focus.” Sure, Jan.
• Erin O’Toole is starting his summer tour, making campaign promises about infrastructure and fiscal stabilisation.
• The NDP are calling for a special prosecutor to ensure that justice is brought to those who perpetrated abuses within residential schools.
• Annamie Paul unveiled some of her party’s critics, but her two sitting MPs aren’t being given any portfolios because they have “other duties,” which is…novel.
• An internal Green Party report shows the party is having a hard time bringing in diverse candidates in part because riding associations aren’t aware it’s an issue.
• Philippe Lagassé suggests that true decolonization would put Indigenous languages on par with the two colonizers’ official languages, particularly with Mary Simon.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1413121178802298883

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