Roundup: We all got played on the Telford gambit

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Yesterday morning, we saw an exhausting series of manoeuvres that made the Liberals, the NDP and the Conservatives all pretend like they were playing 3D chess against one another, but it was none of that. First thing was that the Liberals released the final mandate of David Johnston in his role as special rapporteur on the allegations, and he has until May 23rdto make a recommendation around a public inquiry, and until October 31st for his final report (but I see the possibility for shenanigans if the recommendation for a public inquiry won’t actually be acted upon until the final report so that it can be fully informed, etc.) And if there is a recommendation for a public inquiry, Sikh organisations in this country want India to be included in any examination of foreign interference

In the meantime, Justin Trudeau said that no, the vote on the motion to send Katie Telford to committee wasn’t going to be a confidence measure (because frankly that would be stupid), and that they had decided to send Telford to the Procedure and House Affairs committee after weeks of filibustering to prevent it, just as Singh was announcing he would support the Conservative motion to bypass the filibuster by instructing the Ethics committee hear her testimony instead (which the Conservatives chair). This just blew up three weeks of trying to trying to prevent her from appearing under the principle of ministerial responsibility and not calling staffers to committee, because they didn’t have an end game for the filibuster, and we’re just going to throw centuries of Westminster parliamentary principles on the fire for the sake of scoring points—and that’s what this all is about. Scoring points, as the Liberals also used this as a test of their agreement with the NDP, which shook it.

And while all of this was taking place, Mark Holland got up in the House of Commons to apologise for misspeaking yesterday in saying that Pierre Poilievre was offered a briefing and declined it, but his confusion was that Poilievre had publicly stated he would refuse such a briefing on classified information. (Are you following?)

So while Jagmeet Singh spent the day insisting that he was the one who ended the filibuster (he wasn’t), the NDP their own procedural game they were trying to play, which was to force a concurrence debate and vote on the PROC report recommending a public inquiry into these interference allegations, but the Conservatives beat him to the punch and called for a concurrence debate on a different committee report, which just points out how nobody is actually taking this issue seriously. It’s a pissing contest and point-scoring. And at the end of this, the NDP voted against the Conservative Supply Day motion to send Telford to the Ethics committee, because it was now a moot point.

And in the end? We’ve torched more parliamentary principles and weakened our parliamentary system further, and Trudeau has spilled more blood in the water, which is only going to make things even worse because there is now a frenzy around him. The Conservatives and their bad faith politics have played all of us in this whole affair because this was never about Telford and her testimony, but merely trying to set a trap so they could claim a cover-up, and the Liberals walked right into it and flailed for weeks. We’ve set more bad precedents, and democracy is worse off than it was before, because everyone needed to score points instead of being adults over this whole situation. Everyone keeps making it worse, because they can’t help themselves. What a way to run a country.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Japan’s prime minister made an unannounced visit to Ukraine yesterday to meet with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and to tour the massacre site at Bucha. Meanwhile, police in Avdiivka are trying to evacuate holdouts in the town, as Russian forces continue their attempts to encircle it.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1638100893856944128

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1638272233054392327

Good reads:

  • The Russian government summoned our chargé d’affaires in Moscow to complain about Mélanie Joly’s comments about regime change.
  • Karina Gould says the passport backlog is now completely eliminated and they have new tools that can let people track the status of their applications.
  • The federal minimum wage is rising to $16.65/hour—but that only applies in federally-regulated workplaces, which is about six percent of workplaces.
  • The Canadian Forces are planning to roll out a new housing benefit for personnel to help with costs, particularly if they are assigned to cities with higher costs.
  • The federal government’s advisor on unmarked graves says that landowners are preventing some searches from occurring on their properties.
  • The Supreme Court of Canada heard the first of two days’ worth of hearings regarding the reference case on the federal Impact Assessment Act.
  • The Senate had to adjourn early because of a foul stench, which was later blamed on opening the locks at the Rideau Canal stirring up the stagnant water.
  • Senator McPhedran and Harjit Sajjan will appear before the immigration committee regarding travel documents being given to McPhedran for Afghans trying to flee.
  • MPs of all stripes are expressing concern about the Indian government’s crackdown and internet restrictions in the Punjab region.
  • Liberal MP Han Dong says he hasn’t been approached by CSIS, the RCMP or Elections Canada about the allegations made against him in the media.
  • Pierre Poilievre made a video calling to increase the seal hunt to protect fish stocks, and fisheries scientists are frustrated because that’s not entirely true.
  • Doug Ford says that CSIS briefed his chief of staff in November about concerns about his MPP, Vincent Ke, but didn’t offer many details.
  • Danielle Smith says she’s going to make changes to ensure timelier sharing of oil sands spills (but she says a lot of things that aren’t true).
  • Kevin Carmichael parses yesterday’s inflation data and the reaction to it.
  • Paul Wells puts the boots to the government over their commissioning a report on how to reform research councils and then promptly ignoring and burying it.
  • My column on the filibuster drama demonstrates the worsening unseriousness of our Parliament, for the sake of gathering clips of MPs sounding tough to Telford.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: We all got played on the Telford gambit”

  1. Dale ,from here, at a distance, I see that the winners in all these shenanigans are the CPC and MSM. They have succeeded in causing chaos, undermining democratic institutions, and handing more tools over to China and Russia. This is also done clearly to suppress the Liberal vote.

    • Ironic isn’t that the Conservatives caused the chaos that China wants by complaining about China’s interference.

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