Roundup: A late start isn’t an extra week off

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I’m not sure whether it’s because it’s a very, very slow news season, or if the basic knowledge of how Parliament works is that lacking, but we got a lot of really bad headlines yesterday about how the Senate plans to take an “extra week off.” Which is not actually true, and distorts the situation. And in some cases, it’s being spun this way by certain media suspects completely out of bad faith, because anytime they can badmouth the Senate they’ll grab the opportunity and run.

To clarify: The Senate does not have a fixed sitting schedule the way the House of Commons does, and in no way are they bound to match the sitting schedule, because they do different work, and the timelines are different. The Senate frequently doesn’t convene at the same time as the House of Commons after the winter or summer break because they simply don’t have enough work on their Order Paper to justify it. They passed all of the bills that the Commons sent to them before they adjourned for the break, so coming back at the same time makes no sense—especially when they are competing for IT resources and interpreters with the Commons in the current hybrid context (which has, frankly, screwed the Senate over, but they’ve also allowed it to happen). More to the point, there are many years where the Senate will sit for weeks after the Commons rises for its break, and they will have break weeks out of sync with the Commons every now and again because their workloads are different. But this isn’t communicated effectively, either by the Senate itself, or by the media reporting on it—and it most especially isn’t communicated or even mentioned by the bad faith actors whose only agenda is to paint the Senate in a bad light. It’s disappointing, but not unexpected.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says provinces should explore ways to incentivise vaccination, but won’t weigh in on Legault’s anti-vaxx tax suggestion without more details.
  • At his press conference, Trudeau said that the repayment period for CEBA loans has been extended by another year because of ongoing pandemic measures.
  • Trudeau also confirmed that Canada will renew its commitment to training troops in Ukraine, and warned of further sanctions on Russia.
  • The government backed down on their vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers three days before it went into effect after industry freaked out on them.
  • François-Philippe Champagne is meeting with industry leaders to help figure out ways to sort out supply chain issues.
  • Bearskin Lake First Nations says the federal support they’re getting, including from the Canadian Rangers, is insufficient.
  • The Canadian Forces is dealing with a shortage of medical personnel for its own needs, while provinces keep demanding more assistance.
  • There is a UCP riding association meltdown in the riding of an MLA critical of Jason Kenney, as the past president accused the party of rigging the vote against him.
  • Leah West, Stephanie Carvin and Thomas Juneau pour some scorn on the way in which national security matters via NSICOP have been made a partisan football.
  • Paul Wells has questions about François Legault’s “unvaxxed tax” proposal, and sees through Legault’s real aim than just the pandemic.
  • Heather Scoffield tries to put the Legault proposal into the context of other attempts at reaching the unvaccinated, and whether money is the best way to go about it.
  • Althia Raj is shocked—shocked!—that Erin O’Toole would flat-out lie about what Steven Guilbeault said. (Erm, he’s been flat-out lying since day one).
  • Colby Cosh tries to divine the logical coherence between the anger over grocery chains fixing the price of bread, and Supply Management doing it for dairy.

Odds and ends:

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