Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Roundup: Glover says she’s the premier

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It was quite a day in Manitoba yesterday as Heather Stefanson was sworn-in as the province’s first female premier, but the leadership drama isn’t over. Her challenger, former federal Cabinet minister Shelly Glover has not conceded defeat, and plans to challenge the leadership election in court, citing irregularities and reports that Stefanson’s scrutineers looked defeated at one point of the counting and then something allegedly mysterious happened to a ballot box…or something. I’m having a hard time keeping track of it. Regardless, Glover insists that she’s really the premier, not Stefanson.

One could be very pedantic here and note that Stefanson has been sworn in, so she’s premier regardless. Her immediate predecessor, Kelvin Goertzen, was not chosen in a leadership election by caucus as interim leader, and he was fully and legitimately premier, even if it was only for a few weeks (and yes, he’s going to get a portrait in the legislature to reflect that status). So no, Glover is not premier, and even if by some miracle she were declared party leader (which won’t happen – the courts won’t get involved in the inner workings of a political party), Stefanson is still premier and will be until she resigns or is dismissed.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1455671852647559168

But on a broader point, Glover has always been a very problematic politician, stridently repeating talking points in the face of logic and evidence, and getting combative when challenged on her bullshit, particularly as she seemed to lack the critical reasoning skills to think through her positions. And this attempted court challenge is her combativeness and willingness to believe illogical or contrary things playing out in the very way she demonstrated during her nine years in federal politics (two of which were as a minister). And Glover had her own run-ins with Elections Canada, and at one point Elections Canada asked the Speaker to suspend her because of financial irregularities during an election (which were later resolved with revised filings that Elections Canada accepted, Glover terming them an “honest mistake.”) One has to question her fitness to lead given her history and temperament, but I’m not a member of the party.

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Roundup: Taking his sweet-ass time to meet caucus

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The Liberals are starting to get restless – members of caucus are feeling put out that they haven’t actually had a formal caucus meeting yet post-election, and many of them are champing at the bit to have a closed-door drag out session about what went wrong in the election, and why their own leadership seemed unprepared for it when they called the blood thing in the first place. And telling the Hill Times that they want to know why the party leadership is taking their “sweet-ass time” to call this meeting was the icing on this particular cake.

I’m having a hard time fathoming why it’s taking Trudeau and company so long to get their collective acts together post-election. They made a whole song and dance about how urgently they needed to act while on the campaign trail, only for them to turn around and take said sweet-ass time in both finalising the Cabinet shuffle (and no, the recounts do not account for how long the delay is) as well as their decision to further delay summoning Parliament – and even his planned international travel does not excuse this. They could have had Cabinet sworn in before the Governor General went on her state visit to Germany, and could have summoned Parliament this week, in advance of Trudeau’s planned travel. That would have given them actual time to get committees up and running, and legislation in the system – particularly around the changes to the pandemic benefits – as soon as possible, as opposed to the current trajectory of a three-week sitting that will accomplish very little before they head back to their ridings for the Christmas break.

Additionally, not having a proper caucus meeting by now has reached the point of disrespecting their own MPs. They have things they want to say after the campaign trail, and they should be able to say it – that’s how this system works. It’s a very bad signal that they are being kept away from the leadership like this, because even aside from it betraying all of Trudeau’s talking points about being open and accountable within his own party, that kind of thing will start to fester if it’s not taken seriously. I’m not sure that’s a situation Trudeau wants to go out on in his final tour-de-force as leader.

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Roundup: Rejections without significance

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Because it’s a story that refuses to die, we now know that both the Bloc and the NDP have rejected the four main votes in the (garbage) Reform Act, and now we await the Liberals, who will in turn doubtlessly reject it as well whenever they finally have their first official caucus meeting, and of course, we have political scientists trying to derive meaning from these refusals, as they have tried with the Conservatives agreeing to the four votes.

The simple truth, however, are that these votes really don’t matter because the legislation is garbage. The power to elect caucus chairs doesn’t require its adoption, as we’ve seen, and the power over the expulsion of caucus members is largely illusory anyway because it tends to depend on what the leader says either way. I would be hugely surprised if the caucus and the leader ever parted ways on whether or not to boot someone out of the club, as that would create a schism and be a sign that the leader was on the way out. As well, the power of the caucus to pressure a leader to resign is actually better off without the Reform Act because what the Act winds up doing is protecting the leader by setting a high threshold and requiring a public declaration to trigger a vote, which can invite retribution. It has been far more effective to push a leader out with one or two public declarations by brave members that signal the writing on the wall rather than demanding a twenty percent threshold.

In the Hill Times piece, the Act’s author, Michael Chong, pats himself on the back for codifying these sorts of caucus decisions, but codifying them is part of the problem. Our Westminster system tends to work best under conventions that aren’t codified because it affords them flexibility and the ability to adapt, whereas codification is inflexible, leads to testing of the system and the pursuit of loopholes and getting around what has been codified. It’s the same with setting that threshold to push out a leader – it winds up insulating the leader more than empowering the caucus, and we’ve seen leaders resign with far less pressure than what this codified system affords, not to mention that by Chong codifying that party leaders must be selected by membership vote in the actual Parliament of Canada Act as a result of this garbage legislation, he has made it even harder for parties to return to the proper system of caucus selection and removal of leaders as we need to return to. Chong has screwed Parliament for a generation, and it would be great if the talking heads would stop encouraging him.

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Roundup: Not pushing back on referendum disinfo

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Because this is occasionally a media criticism blog, I’m going to call out Power & Politics once again for completely dropping the ball, this time on the bullshit “referendum” happing in Alberta. They hosted Bill Bewick, who heads a group in favour of the referendum, and gave him a pretty uncritical interview, with only the barest hints of pushback. Because both-sidesing.

Host David Common pushed back on a mere couple of points – that the referendum won’t actually do anything because it doesn’t obligate the federal government to negotiate anything; and the fact that without equalisation, PEI would need a 30 percent HST to make up the same funding. He even went so far as to egg on Bewick about how much equalisation Ontario pays, as if it was relevant, because no province actually pays equalisation, which is a pretty big thing that Bewick and his bullshit ever got called on. Equalisation is simply federal taxes that come off everyone’s paycheque – that a fraction of those funds get redistributed to some provinces who need help in offering comparable levels of service when they don’t have adequate fiscal capacity. And the key thing to remember is that Alberta may pay more federal taxes because they have the highest salaries in the country – by far – even during the pandemic. Crying that the province has a deficit has nothing to do with equalisation and everything to do with the fact that the provincial government refuses to raise their own revenues by means of a modest sales tax like other provinces have, and the fact that they chose to rely on resource revenues instead. Their deficit is a choice.

I am forced to wonder whether Bewick didn’t get any pushback because the host and/or the producers simply don’t have a clue about the truth, or because they feel bound by the need to both-sides everything and plan to have someone credible on to refute the points in a separate interview later today – because heaven forbid that the host actually push back lest he or she be called out as being biased or partisan. But calling bullshit and pointing out fact shouldn’t be considered bias or partisanship – it should be simple fact-checking, which they can’t seem to be arsed to do at the best of times, let alone in a referendum that is fuelled by misinformation and disinformation coming from official sources trying to make a political wedge out of this. In a case like this, it’s especially incumbent upon the media to play their role in pushing back against a government that is lying to its citizens, but this timidity to do so is a very real problem for our media.

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Roundup: Unvaccinated MPs should stay home without pay

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It has begun – Conservative MPs warning that there will be a privilege fight if they don’t get to come to work in the House of Commons unvaccinated. This time it’s Mark Strahl, who was the party whip in the previous session, and he thinks that they should be allowed to attend if they submit to rapid testing, which is not a prophylactic against COVID. And a privilege fight is nonsense, of course – it’ll be the MPs themselves who set the rules that you need to be vaccinated to be in the Chamber (or possibly in the entire Precinct) – and by then, the rules around needing to be vaccinated to board a plane or train should also be in force. And if Conservatives on the Board of Internal Economy want to protest this rule, they’ll be outvoted, and that’ll be it. And if he brings a privilege motion to the House, the majority there can vote it down as well. There is no winning hand for anti-vaxxer MPs here.

The real question here is whether the other parties will bow to some sort of accommodation scheme, like letting unvaccinated MPs stay home and attend virtually – something I think should be opposed (the Bloc is already opposing it) because Parliament doesn’t work well in a hybrid setting. We tried it, and it was terrible. And frankly, MPs should also insist that those who refuse vaccination should not only have to stay hope – and not participate virtually – but should lose salary as well.

Parliament is an essential service, and they have a lot of work to do, and catering to a small percentage of conspiracy theorists and malcontents is only going to prolong this pandemic, and continue to overburden our healthcare system and create a lost generation of youth who will have missed out on opportunities. MPs are supposed to set an example – that starts with doing the responsible thing and being vaccinated.

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Roundup: Awaiting the (garbage) Reform Act votes

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Today is the Conservatives’ first caucus meeting of the new parliament – in person, no less – and everyone is anxiously awaiting news of whether they plan to vote on the (garbage) Reform Act provisions that would give caucus the ability to call for a leadership review. While I wrote about this for my column, coming out later today, I will make a few additional notes here.

As the column spells out, these provisions don’t actually provide an accountability mechanism, and they will wind up protecting O’Toole more than they will threaten him. So when I see MPs like Tom Kmiec saying that he wants MPs to accept the (garbage) Reform Act powers on a leadership review, citing that it provides a clear process, what he omits is that the 20 percent threshold insulates O’Toole, because those 24 MPs would need to openly sign their names to a letter to the caucus chair, meaning they will be easily identifiable for retribution if O’Toole survives the subsequent vote and/or leadership review, and that retribution can include not signing their nomination papers. That’s not an insignificant threat against them.

Meanwhile, Senator Michael MacDonald, a former Harper-era organizer, is urging a vote on a leadership review, citing O’Toole’s decision to say anything to whoever was in the room as being a threat to the party’s future chances.

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Roundup: Knives out for O’Toole?

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Erin O’Toole’s future is under discussion, as a number of vocal MPs are coming out to support his continued leadership, and former Ontario premier Mike Harris is adding his voice to the call. But this is as other MPs are phoning up journalists, on a not-for-attribution basis, absolutely savaging O’Toole and the fact that he is a lying liar and an opportunist of the highest order, and that ultimately undermined their case during the election. (Threads here and here).

This is going to start resolving itself at the first caucus meeting, whenever that takes place, because it’s when the party is going to have to vote on which provisions of the (garbage) Reform Act they are going to adopt for the 44th parliament, including the provision about having the caucus hold a vote to start a leadership review process. Why this is important is one of the reasons that makes the Act garbage in the first place – it actually makes it harder for caucus to push out a leader because it establishes a threshold of 20 percent of the caucus needing to demand a vote before it can be held. That exposes his critics at a time when he is deciding on critic portfolios and things like committee chairs for opposition-chaired committees, and he can use that fear-or-favour system to punish his critics if they fail to meet that 20 percent threshold. If they didn’t have this threshold or this framework, we’ve seen leaders read the writing on the wall with far fewer MPs/MLAs going public, and resigning as a result. The (garbage) Reform Act provides protection for those leaders where it’s supposed to be putting the fear of caucus into them, and it’s just such a dark irony that once again, attempts to improve the system only make it worse.

And while there are a bunch of voices (especially over on the CBC) who seem to think that Andrew Scheer was pushed out for his loss, they have all apparently forgotten that he resigned, particularly after his use of party funds came to light. Whether that was an excuse is not really the point – it wasn’t simply because he lost the election.

Programming note: I am taking the weekend off of blogging entirely because I am exhausted from the election and need to catch up on some sleep. See you next week.

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Roundup: Bracing for election night

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With voting day just days away, we’re starting to see a few “reminder” stories about how our system works, so that we can have some reasonable expectations about what the outcomes might look like on Monday, and why it will mean things like the current government staying in place and having the first chance to test the confidence of the new Chamber once it’s been summoned. There is an interview with Emmett Macfarlane here about how any decision will unfold on Monday night and why Trudeau will remain prime minister until he chooses to resign, which is good. There is also a piece from the Canadian Press which maps out different scenarios about how the evening may play out and what these scenarios might mean.

The problem, of course, is that television news in this country is abysmal, and we’ll spend the night listening to inane banter that pretends that there is no sitting government (exacerbated by the fact that they are currently observing a convention that refers to the prime minister as the “Liberal leader” in order to have an exaggerated sense of “fairness” around his incumbent status), and they will throw around terms like “prime minister-elect” even though we don’t elect prime minister (it’s an appointed position) and the fact that if it is the incumbent – which it’s likely to be – he’s already the prime minister and won’t require an “-elect” or “-designate” title to go along with it. We’ll also no doubt hear talk about him getting a “mandate” even though that kind of thing is utterly incompatible with our system of government. And no matter how much people like me will call it out over social media, nobody will care, and they will continue to completely misinform people about our basic civics without any care in the world, because that’s the state of media in this country right now.

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Roundup: The ugliness is home-grown

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There was a fairly terrifying incident over the past couple of days where Liberal incumbent Marc Serré was assaulted in his campaign headquarters by a woman, who was later charged, but this seems to be yet another escalation of the kinds of ugliness we’ve seen in this campaign, whether it’s with the rise in graffiti, to the mob protests with signs advocating lynching, to the gravel being thrown.

Amidst this, we get John Ibbitson at the Globe and Mail actually advocating that the People’s Party “deserves” representation in Parliament, for some unfathomable reason. I mean seriously – this is a party that fight-right and white nationalist groups are advocating people join, and Ibbitson thinks that they deserve seats?

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1437866596987514885

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1437873572706492422

https://twitter.com/kateheartfield/status/1437882514350252043

https://twitter.com/kateheartfield/status/1437883654169051141

With this in mind, Supriya Dwivedi cautions against saying that this is all just imported American divisiveness and rhetoric, pointing out that this is as home-grown as it gets. I largely agree, but we can’t ignore that the purveyors of this rhetoric in Canada have been inspired by the right-wing populist ecosystem in the US and have imported parts of it here, thinking that they can control the beast. They can’t. And while they may have found the inspiration, it found fertile soil here, and now we’re paying the price.

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Roundup: A promise of extra-illegality

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On a day of more organized protests outside of hospitals around the country, prime minister Justin Trudeau has decided the way to deal with this is…more criminal sanctions. Which is ridiculous, because there are already criminal sanctions around nuisance, harassment, and intimidation, and creating a law specifically for healthcare workers is kind of ridiculous and merely clogs up the criminal code – and I don’t care that they think they’re sending some kind of message. There are existing laws and police should enforce them. Of course, the NDP are saying that this was their idea first, while in more technical terms, Singh says that the victims being healthcare workers should be considered an aggravating factor during sentencing, but the effect is largely the same – this is virtue signalling using the Criminal Code rather than a useful exercise in enforcing existing laws.

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1437477651225133056

In Alberta, however, premier Jason Kenney has been warning that he can use the province’s recent law about critical infrastructure – designed to criminalise Indigenous protesters who blockade railways or pipelines – and how they can apply to this situation because the law is so broadly worded. That alone should be concerning about how this law was intended to be applied, but nevertheless, this does appear to be an unforeseen use for this particular piece of legislation.

Meanwhile, Althia Raj worries about Trudeau inflaming “divisions” in the country as the PPC gains more followers among these protesters and the anti-vaxx crowd, but this is a  credulous take if I ever heard one. These are not rational actors we are dealing with. They are part of an embrace of conspiracy theory that is happening across the Western world, for whatever the reason, and this is a very big problem. I’m not sure I see the utility in appealing for Trudeau to be soft-peddling to these conspiracy theorists, but I will note that there has been one party who has been winking and nodding to these conspiracy theories, and even going to far as to promulgating them in the House of Commons, and that party is not the one that Trudeau leads. There are consequences for O’Toole and company for doing so, and we are reaping what they’ve sown. It’s too bad that people in the media are not calling it out.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1437467693934854149

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