Roundup: Arguing over an appearance already scheduled

Posted on by

It’s not even a sitting week, and yet we were treated to another instalment of the parliamentary clown show that has infected our House of Commons. The Procedure and House Affairs committee held an emergency meeting to demand that David Johnston appear before them to explain his reasons for not recommending a public inquiry. But the moment they got there, the chair said that Johnston was already scheduled to appear at the committee on June 6th, and that this had been arranged previously, and it just confirmed that this insistence he appear right away was just really, really bad theatre.

And then it went downhill from there, as MPs spent the next four hours debating a motion for Johnston to appear even sooner than the 6th, for no less than three hours, alone, because remember, they need to put on a bit song and dance about how they’re so serious! about all of these allegations. As I said, bad theatre. And then, the Liberals and NDP decided to try and be clever about this, and include a recommendation in the motion that all party leaders go through the security clearance process in order to read the full report and all of its classified evidence used to compile it. Well, that didn’t go over very well, and in the end, the Conservatives voted against their own motion because they didn’t want to be called out for refusing to actually read the full documents.

Spending four hours to try and sound tougher about a pre-scheduled meeting, to give themselves the last word, is just one more reason why our Parliament is no longer a serious institution. It’s appalling that they have wasted everyone’s time and resource like this, because Michael Cooper needed to make himself look like a tough guy. Inexcusable.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Wagner Group mercenaries are preparing to turn over control of their positions in Bakhmut to Russian soldiers, while Ukraine says that Wagner is only turning over positions on the outskirts of the city, and that they have drawn Russian forces into the city, where they are inflicting high casualties and weakening Russian defensive lines elsewhere. A prisoner swap took place for 106 Ukrainian soldiers, some of them captured in the fighting in Bakhmut. Russian control of one of the dams along the Dnipro river is causing flooding because they haven’t been working to level the water flow with the other dams in the network.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau has agreed to waive Cabinet confidence around foreign interference documents so that NSICOP and NSIRA can see them and get the complete picture.
  • Mélanie Joly is unimpressed that Leslyn Lewis and homophobic “Christian” personality Charles McVety are hosting an Israeli minister without Global Affairs.
  • The federal government says it will invest $2. 5 billion in renewing the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of small craft, tapping smaller shipyards and suppliers.
  • Federal funding was announced for Akwesasne to help combat cross-border crime.
  • Michael Duheme has formally been appointed as RCMP commissioner after serving in the role on an interim basis, and he says he wants to drive “change and growth.”
  • The herbal supplement industry has been “blindsided” by new federal requirements for hospitals to report adverse reactions to those (largely unregulated) products.
  • Provincial and federal privacy are investigating OpenAI for hoovering up personal data without permission as part of training ChatGPT.
  • The Parliamentary Black Caucus took a trip to Washington to meet the Congressional Black Caucus, and compare experiences.
  • Jagmeet Singh has asked for some fairly reasonable conditions for his getting security cleared to read the full Johnston report documents.
  • Atlantic premiers met with Steven Guilbeault after having a huge freak-out over the incoming clean fuel regulations, thanks in part to disinformation circulating about it.
  • François Legault is saying he might increase Quebec’s immigration targets, but only if economic migrants already speak French before arriving.
  • Jason Kenney lost his bid to have a defamation lawsuit tossed, and environmental groups he accused of harming Alberta can carry on with their action.
  • Philippe Lagassé points to why Governors General should take their pensions and retire in obscurity rather than stay involved as David Johnston has (and he’s right).
  • Colin Horgan notices a bunch of process issues in the alleged foreign interference reporting that reporters should have caught but didn’t, and that’s a problem.

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.