Tag Archives: Ahmed Hussen

Roundup: The safety of being in fourth place

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Ah, the safety of being the third and fourth parties in the House of Commons, where nothing you say really matters! Case in point with both Yves-François Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh, who spent yesterday lambasting prime minister Justin Trudeau for not badmouthing Donald Trump in public – Blanchet calling Trudeau “spineless,” and Singh condemning Trudeau’s silence. Because there’s nothing like demanding that the leader of our country insult the thin-skinned and erratic leader of our closest neighbour and trading partner, whom we rely on for economic security and military protection. Yeah, poking that bear will have no consequences whatsoever! One expects this kind of thing from Blanchet, who never has to worry about ever being in power, but for Singh, it seems to further prove that he has no interest in even pretending like he has a shot at forming a government, so he’s going to simply grandstand (badly) and look as unserious as he possibly can. And it’s more than just these kinds of declarations – it’s the demands that pretend that massive systemic change can happen with the snap of a finger, or that the federal government can just reach into provincial jurisdiction willy-nilly and using the incantation Canada Health Act as though it’s a justification or a blueprint for a federal role that accidentally forgot the part where you need to negotiate with the provinces first, and assumes that they’ll gladly sign onto whatever programme is being offered to them with all of the strings attached. Real life doesn’t work like that – but apparently you don’t need to worry about real life when you’re the fourth party.

Shameless self-promotion alert:

I’ll be appearing (virtually) before the Procedure and House Affairs committee this morning to talk about “hybrid” sittings and remote voting for MPs. (Spoiler: I’m against them). The fun starts at 11 AM Eastern.

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Roundup: MPs and their “new normal”

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Over the weekend, we saw a few pieces that were attempting to put the House of Commons’ current situation into context, both along with how some provinces are handling their own situations in the current pandemic context, but also just getting a bit of a sense from MPs themselves. There is a sense that these hybrid committee meetings are “better than nothing,” with some of those MPs acknowledging that actual in-person sittings are better for the sheer fact that one can often talk to a minister about an important file just by showing up, or that a lot of the real work gets done in the lobbies and corridors and not in the chamber itself, which is great to see – it’s not just about the performative questions, though that is what the government and its allies have reduced the Commons to, with no real appreciation for the lack of oversight for the massive spending being pushed through.

That said, we also need to be very wary of those who will try to use this opportunity to push their agendas – those who go on about how the “old normal” wasn’t working in Parliament, and hey, isn’t this an opportunity to push through reforms that they couldn’t before. The problem is that a lot of those proposed reforms were simply bad and would make the House of Commons a far worse place, because they completely misunderstood what the problems were and continue to be. Nevertheless, we’re going to see many attempts by some of those same MPs to not let a good crisis go to waste, so you can bet there will be no shortage of these proposals going forward.

Meanwhile, with all of the attention on the protests in the US (and a few in Canada as well), here was a worthwhile thread from social development minister Ahmed Hussen:

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Roundup: Scheer’s own personal Brexit idea

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You may have heard the Conservatives making a big push over the past couple of weeks about promising that they would bow to Quebec’s wishes and let them have a single tax return (as in, surrender the federal authority to collect income tax in the province, as opposed to Quebec returning to the system that every other province uses by which the federal government collects all taxes and turns over their provincial share). While the Conservatives portray it as a simple administrative change, and that there wouldn’t even need to be any job losses – just put those 5000 CRA employees in Quebec to work on tax evasion! – it’s really a lot more complicated than that. While Alan Freeman wrote about the history and why it’s naked pandering to Quebec, tax economist Kevin Milligan walks through the complexity, and quite tellingly, notes that this is a Brexit-like proposal from Scheer – bold idea, no proposal of how to implement it. And yes, that is a problem.

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Roundup: A “positive vision” full of falsehoods

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Andrew Scheer gave his first major speech to the party faithful at the Conservative convention in Halifax on Friday, and it was, in a word, meh. After telling the tale of his grandparents and parents struggling to get by, and establishing his “regular guy” credentials (despite the fact that his career suggests he’s been anything but), but from there, it was his usual litany of lies and nonsense talking points. “Conservatives would never leave a credit card bill to our children and grandchildren,” says the party that racked up hundreds of billions in debt during their term; vague assurances about the environment that would actually do nothing to address emissions while also maligning carbon taxes while claiming to understand them and yet demonstrating he doesn’t – or that if he does, he’ll simply lie about them. He went on a whole tangent about Sir John A Macdonald, and this whole bit about how activists were only targeting him because he’s a Conservative and not Liberal prime ministers who arguably did worse (and another lie was about how they weren’t going after Mackenzie King on the $50 banknote – he is being phased out in the next series, as Viola Desmond on the $10 banknote pushes the established prime ministers to higher denominations). He claimed he got to work with UK prime minister Theresa May on a post-Brexit trade deal – something that Trudeau actually did, given that he has no standing to do anything, and claimed that he would be the “adult in the room” in his planned trip to India (which, again, he has no diplomatic standing to do anything on, and that there is no “damage” for him to “repair.”) And his “positive vision” for Conservatives? That he won’t look back at history with shame, and he would have space for debate with viewpoints he disagreed with (this after being astonished that Trudeau would call an avowed racist a racist, characterizing it as a “smear.”) So…yeah. If your positive vision is to simply keep lying about issues, I’m having a hard time squaring that circle.

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Also at the convention, the party will send the resolution around abortion regulation to the full membership, while they voted down the attempt to make repealing gender identity legislation part of the policy book. Not debated was the resolution around ending supply management, which infuriated a number of delegates – some saying they felt that the debate was deliberately stifled, others that it’s emblematic of a party that doesn’t actually care about free market conservative ideas – and that this may drive them to Bernier’s camp.

Meanwhile, the Bernier fallout continues apace at the convention. While he appears to have zero caucus support, there is talk that he can theoretically get the bare minimum he needs to register a party with Elections Canada, and good news, Kevin O’Leary is thinking of supporting him, and he’s got an ally in Stephen Fletcher, whose nomination Scheer blocked. So there’s that. In the interim, Conservatives at the convention continue to mean girl him (to which Bernier says that’s typical of losers), and the anonymous sources with the behind-the-scenes drama have started spilling the tea, for what it’s worth.

In yet more reaction to events, Andrew Coyne notes that while Bernier’s criticism of the Conservative Party under Scheer rings true, Bernier’s planned party nevertheless still smacks of a vanity project. Colby Cosh notes that Bernier’s lack of intellectual hygiene in his veering into talk of diversity and immigration has corrupted his chance to attract concerned with economic issues to his nascent party. Chantal Hébert looks at the history of the Reform Party and it doesn’t compare favourably to Bernier’s record. Former Reform MP Monte Solberg has been there and done that, and he evaluates Bernier’s behaviour and performance in light of it. Terry Glavin thinks that Bernier did Scheer a favour, assuming he takes some of the swivel-eyed loons with him away from the Conservatives. Also, I was on Canada 2020’s /Thread podcast, talking Bernier and his ability to pull it off.

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Roundup: A tire fire of a debate

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Last night was the third and final leaders’ debate in the Ontario election, and it was…terrible. Painful to watch. And yet here we are. Doug Ford promised all kinds of increased spending, and promised not a single layoff, while he offered no specifics on any promise, and a false version of history of when he was at Toronto City Hall. Andrea Horwath promised some different spending than the Liberals, that she would end “hallway medicine,” while being overly generous on the hole in her party’s platform and the fact that she doesn’t stand for Hitler memes (while not having actually rebuked or dumped the candidate accused of posting one). Kathleen Wynne was sorry that people don’t like her personally, but isn’t sorry for her record, and she offered detailed policy in a format that didn’t let leaders fully answer questions and where Horwath in particular kept interrupting and aggressively talking over everyone else. In all, a demonstration that this whole election is absolutely terrible.

In reaction, Chris Selley remarks on Ford’s performance – that the only place he stood out was his promises around childcare (though he didn’t offer specifics, which are that his tax credit won’t amount to much for parents), while David Reevely noted Horwath’s aggressive challenges around Ford’s lack of platform or Wynne’s stance around collective bargaining, showing more fire than Wynne, who was building an intellectual case in a lawyerly tone for much of the debate, only really finding her own fire when she pushed back against accusations around the Hydro One sale.

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Roundup: A moment for the Queen of Canada

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In light of Victoria Day and the celebration of the official birthday of the Queen of Canada (yes, they’re the same day), here are a few gems about the Queen of Canada, and the monarchy in general.

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Actor Stephen Fry talks about how the monarch keeps politicians in their place, and while it may seem “kind of preposterous” it a system that works. As he says. “If it works, it’s very foolish to get rid of it, even if it’s unreasonable.”

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/998568760003907584

And let’s not forget that Queen Victoria ensured that we have Responsible Government here in Canada.

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Senate QP: Citizenship and refugees on the docket

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While the debate on the report recommending Senator Meredith be expelled was pending, Senate Question Period rolled around, with special guest star Citizenship and Immigration minister Ahmed Hussen in the hot seat. Senator Smith led off on the issue of Bill C-6, which seeks to repeal the provisions that would strip citizenship from those dual-nationals convicted of terrorism. Hussen starting off by remarking that this was an election promise, that they didn’t believe that the same crimes should have different outcomes based largely on where one’s parents came from, and additionally, revoking that citizenship would be tantamount to exporting terrorism, where they can return to hurt Canada abroad. He added that citizenship should not be used as a tool for punishment, which should be role of the justice system. On his supplemental, Smith mentioned two Canadians added to the US terror watch list, and Hussen reiterated that criminals should be dealt with using the justice system, and that it creates unequal treatment which devalues Canadian citizenship.

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Roundup: A different debate

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This weekend we finally saw our first NDP leadership debate, which was actually more watchable than pretty much any Conservative debate we’ve had so far, so that’s something. Having only four candidates on stage instead of fourteen makes a difference, as does having everyone already in caucus rather than coming in from the outside, and no one so far seems to be running against their own caucus, so that’s also something. As with any NDP debate, however, it was less “debate” and more statements by which they could vehemently agree with and then say “I agree, and let me take that further and say…”

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The only real cleavage that there was over the course of the event was over the role of the resource economy and if there could be a case made for pipelines, and a couple of the candidates were more strident than others. Otherwise, there was a lot of the usual key words and phrases that signal their audience, like the “neoliberal agenda,” the growing one percent (err, except they’re not growing in Canada, and have in fact been shrinking), “unfair trade deals,” and renegotiating NAFTA. If one wasn’t careful, it could be mistaken for a Trump rally.

The format and fewer candidates did allow for a number of non-policy related questions, but some of them were a bit…suspicious, if I can use the word, like they were designed to ensure that they were reinforcing in-group credentials vouching. Maybe it’s just me, but it felt a bit creepy in places.

Meanwhile, I would encourage you to read the very trenchant observations from John Geddes, who nailed pretty much what each of the four candidates are running on out of the gate.

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Roundup: The “good parts” of populism?

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I will confess that the eleventy different appearances on every conceivable political show over the past week by Preston Manning to coincide with his eponymous institute’s networking conference over the weekend has had me a bit preoccupied. Everyone is eager to talk about the rise in populism, and whether Trumpism will make its way to Canada in a more visible form (not that we haven’t seen in here before already, with Rob Ford as the most obvious example), but what gets me is when Manning starts waxing about harnessing the “good parts” of populism rather than the ugly side that has led to things like Brexit and the Trumpocalypse, and he goes on at length about history of prairie populism and how he perceives that to be a positive thing. Granted, his particular perspective on that is more than a little biased, considering that his father’s brand of prairie populism made him premier of Alberta for a number of years, and Manning’s crafting that into the Reform Party got him to Ottawa for several more years. But reading some of the accounts of some of that prairie populism years later – in particular this account of the rise of the CCF in Saskatchewan and how they became another craven political party by the time of Tommy Douglas’ provincial demise – makes me think of growing up gay in Alberta, where that “prairie populism” left its mark in a province that was far less socially progressive and with parties that were less willing to be so, being dragged kicking and screaming to the Supreme Court of Canada. I didn’t grow up seeing the “good” side of prairie populism, which is why I struggle to reconcile with Manning trying to find the good parts of populist sentiment to embrace. I am having a hard time trying to find the “good parts” of breeding cynical distrust in institutions, and this narrative of “pure” people versus “corrupt elites,” and in waging wars against the media that follows that narrative’s lead. You wouldn’t think that politicians would want to play with the fire that is distrust, and yet they keep reaching for the lighter. I think Manning may be playing things a bit too optimistically, and may be a bit too naively, for my comfort level.

Chris Selley looks at the Manning Conference and some Conservative behaviour in recent weeks, and wonders if the party no longer stands for anything other than a series of shared grievances as opposed to some actual policy or ideology. (One could argue that they ditched ideology a while ago and have simply become right-flavoured populists, made most especially manifest when they went ahead with the GST cut that every single economist told them not to do). Kady O’Malley leaves us with a warning about drawing too many conclusions based on the Manning Conference’s schedule alone rather than the discussions that people were having on the floor of the event, which not only saw some of its biggest draw ever, but also seemed to be very much more about the leadership race than it was about those panels about “radical Islamic terrorism” and so on.

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Roundup: Let’s not efface Langevin

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A group of Indigenous MPs, along with the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, are calling on the government to rename the Langevin Block – the building that houses the PMO – because it is named after one of the architects of residential schools. And while I understand and respect their feelings on the matter, I would like to add that I think this would be a mistake. Why? Because the average Canadian doesn’t know who Hector-Louis Langevin was, and what his role in residential schools was (let alone that he was a Father of Confederation), so to further efface his name is actually a disservice to the spirit of reconciliation, which they say that this is a part of. What I would suggest instead are additions to the plaque explaining the building and the name, and for signage inside the building, to remind the denizens about the consequences of actions that may be have been well-intentioned at the time. And we have no reason to think that Langevin himself was especially malevolent, but was merely a product of his time. There was all manner of racist policies by the government because that was how they understood the world to be. It’s also a question of who’s next after Langevin? Sir John A Macdonald? I think that we would all be better off to confront Langevin’s legacy and to spell it out to people that what a party does in government can echo for generations and be completely devastating. It would be a reminder for all time that deeds and misdeeds have consequences. And the PMO being confronted with that on a daily basis would seem to me to do more for reconciliation than simply effacing the name and giving it something trite like the “Reconciliation Building” (as Calgary renamed their Langevin Bridge). Let’s teach history – not bury it, which removing the name would be.

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