Roundup: Abdicating responsibilities and calling on Justice Hogue instead

Posted on by

The reverberations from the NSICOP report continued over the weekend, with the rhetoric still as ridiculous as ever. For example, everyone keeps shouting the word “treason” about what these MPs are alleged to have done (with the exception of the one former MP in the report), and lo, it doesn’t actually meet the Criminal Code definition of “treason,” which means that it’s unlikely anyone is going to face charges for what is alleged to have happened (if indeed any of it was in fact foreign interference and not actions undertaken as part of diplomacy, and the jury is still out on that).

And rather than continue to use this opportunity to behave like adults, the Bloc and the Conservatives now want to turn this over to Justice Hogue so that she can make some sort of determination rather than put on their big-boy pants and get their classified briefings. Turning this over to Justice Hogue would be an absolute abdication of responsibility by both the Bloc and Conservative leaders, and soon it could just be the Conservative leader since Yves-François Blanchet is now considering getting a classified briefing. That hasn’t stopped Michael Chong from going on national television to literally claim that he knows better than former CSIS directors about this, and saying that if Poilievre gets briefed, his hands are tied. That’s wrong, that’s bullshit, and that’s fabricating excuses so that he can continue to act as an ignorant critic rather than an informed observer.

This is not new. This is a long-standing problem in Canadian politics that opposition leaders don’t want to be briefed because if they do, then they have to be responsible in their commentary, and they don’t want to do that. They want to be able to stand up and say inflammatory things, and Poilievre is not only no different, but that’s his entire modus operandi. He can’t operate if he has to act like a responsible grown-up, where he would have to get the information and do something with it internally in his party, but he doesn’t want to do that when he can continue screaming that the prime minister is hiding something. But it’s hard to say that the prime minister is hiding something when he is quite literally offering Poilievre the opportunity to read the classified report, so instead he lies about what that would mean, and he gets Michael Chong to debase himself and also lie about it. This is the state of politics, and it’s very, very bad for our democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians appear to be making headway in their attempt to capture the strategically significant town of Chasiv Yar. Ukraine says that it struck an “ultra-modern” Russian aircraft six hundred kilometres from the front lines. The Globe and Mail has a longread about of Ukraine’s most elite special forces units, on the front lines of the war with Russia.

Good reads:

  • Chrystia Freeland will table the Ways and Means Motion for the capital gains inclusion rate changes in the House of Commons today.
  • Arif Virani says he’s open to amending the Online Harms bill, while the Conservatives are arguing it should just be scrapped.
  • The Privy Council Office disputes that it refused to turn over a thousand documents to NSICOP under Cabinet Confidence, saying they’re most likely correspondence.
  • New numbers prove what we already knew—that the Canada Disability Benefit will help pretty much nobody.
  • A possible strike of CBSA members has been postponed until Wednesday while negotiations continue.
  • Google has signed on with the Canadian Journalism Collective to distribute their $100 million annual payment to exempt themselves from the Online News Act.
  • The foreign interference bill is wrapping up at committee in spite of civil society groups concerned that it hasn’t had enough study for its possible problems.
  • The Star looks at the escalating series of threats MPs are facing—especially at their homes and affecting families—while nobody wants to talk about it.
  • Alberta MLA Shannon Phillips is resigning her seat after being ground down by the state of politics and police harassment, which is an indictment of the state of politics.
  • Kevin Carmichael pours some cold water on the jubilation of the Bank of Canada’s rate cut with a reminder of the headwinds our economy is still facing.
  • Shannon Proudfoot pays attention to the messages sent by Arnold Viersen going on that podcast, and Poilievre’s swift condemnation thereof.
  • Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney debate the naming-names issue, and why political parties themselves need to be stepping up rather than changing the subject.
  • Paul Wells gets a tour of the recovery-based addiction treatment network that the Alberta government is building, and some of it sounds impressive.
  • My column offers a corrective to the overwrought handwringing about the potential for the Senate to become an ideological thorn in a future government’s side.
  • My weekend column looks at the NSICOP report’s suggestion that Elections Canada start monitoring nomination races, and why that’s actually a very bad idea.

Odds and ends:

For National Magazine, I look into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on so-called “secret trials” and why there is a necessity for informer privilege in courts.

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