Roundup: Performative consultations by the PM

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It is performative consultation season, and lo, prime minister Justin Trudeau held meetings with Erin O’Toole, Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May yesterday, and the versions of the conversation released by readouts from both the PMO, O’Toole and Singh’s officers were…quite something. (Thread here). O’Toole demanded an end to CRB and an end to the “wedge politics” around vaccines, while Singh demanded CRB continue, and for the government to drop future appeals of litigation around First Nations children. Both were play-acting tough in their readouts, even though Singh is but a paper tiger. Trudeau’s readouts, meanwhile, were similar and bland, listing the already circulated “priority” items he wants to address right away (and yet is delaying recalling parliament), with no indication of what the other parties said, or if any kinds of agreements were reached.

Something that did come out of the readout with Singh was that Trudeau is in favour of continuing hybrid sittings, and Pablo Rodriguez’s office confirmed that, which is really, really disappointing and frankly mind-boggling. We are not in the same phase of the pandemic, and we are in a place where, with mandatory vaccination and masking, MPs can all safely attend parliamentary duties in-person, end of story. Carrying on hybrid sittings – which only the Liberals and NDP favour – are frankly unjustifiable, given the human toll that the injuries take on the interpreters, and the incredible amount of human and technical resources that they consume (and which have starved the Senate of necessary resources because the Commons gets priority). And just imagine telling the interpreters that they have to keep being subjected to injury because MPs are too gods damned selfish or lazy to do the jobs they’ve bene elected to do. Parliament is an in-person job – it depends on building relationships, which happens face-to-face. Hybrid sittings were 100 percent responsible for the last session devolving into complete toxicity, and if you don’t think that congeniality matters, remember that things don’t get accomplished without it. Those five months of procedural warfare didn’t happen in a vacuum. Saying they want hybrid sittings to carry on is both irresponsible and corrosive to parliament as a whole. There can be no justification for carrying them on.

Meanwhile, in case you thought it was just opposition parties making demands of the government before parliament is summoned, we have plenty of civil society groups calling for the paid sick leave for federally-regulated employees to happen immediately (erm, not how the legislative process works, guys), decriminalisation of illicit drugs, and for refugees and undocumented healthcare workers to be allowed access to a programme that would grant them permanent residency status.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland will hold a media availability today, where they may announce plans to replace the CRB with a different recovery benefit.
  • Trudeau is also expected to announce more details on the proof-of-vaccination system for international travel.
  • A report details incidents of racism in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, including derisive comments by managers.
  • The federal government says they plan to stick with their commitment to Novavax in spite of production challenges they are having in the US.
  • Municipalities want the federal government to foot the bill for retroactive pay increases for RCMP members under contract to those municipalities.
  • Apparently we have very little idea about how acute the doctor shortage is in this country because it’s difficult to measure, and provinces don’t want to hear it.
  • Governor General Mary May Simon gave CBC her first interview in her new role.
  • The Conservatives are, predictably, protesting the Board of Internal Economy decision to implement a vaccine mandate, even if they’ll lose in the end.
  • Philippe Lagassé contemplates the constitutional realities of how Cabinets operate versus the political and popular discourse that distorts that reality.
  • Kevin Carmichael reads the inflation data and deduces what it could lead the Bank of Canada to do in the near term.
  • Susan Delacourt calls out the Conservatives’ using elite status to exempt themselves from mandatory vaccinations – given how they howled for vaccines months ago.
  • Colby Cosh delves into the investigation into newly elected Liberal MP George Chahal allegedly stealing mailers.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Performative consultations by the PM”

  1. “Hybrid sittings were 100 percent responsible for the last session devolving into complete toxicity”

    It may or may not have contributed to it, but I still don’t think the hybrid sessions were “100 percent responsible” for the toxicity in the HoC. It’s been a six-year overreactive vendetta to Trudeau winning, full stop. The Conservatives hate him for existing because Harper’s sentiments trickle down to his minions. The NDP are still embittered over losing the brass ring in 2015. They’re also still stuck on having peaked with Sponsorgate and high off their once-in-an-eternity capturing lightning in a bottle in 2011, and they believe that Trudeau is all that stands in the way of that. The pivotal point where it got worse was the SNC fracas, and it’s only gotten more and more amplified ever since.

    That said, I think the “Blue Dipper” strange bedfellows alliance just hates the Liberals out of petty jealousy that they haven’t been able to compete by putting up worthwhile policy. For all those pundits pontificating about replacing Trudeau with someone else, that person wouldn’t fare much better either.

    The problem isn’t so much “virtual insanity” as the parties themselves having devolved into their own reality distortion field, due to an existential crisis of their own making. American politics blowing over the border has an effect too. The CPC hate Liberals on a personal level as much as Republicans hate Democrats. But the NDP have gotten infected with Bernie Squad fever and now they think “establishment centrists” are evil people. The prion disease is populism, and horseshoe politics. Not necessarily hybrid sittings, but hybrid sittings if necessary.

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