Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: Misleading his recruits

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After some confusion in the Conservative ranks, Andrew Scheer’s Quebec lieutenant, Alain Rayes, is apologising for misleading candidates in the province when he insisted to them that the party considered abortion a settled matter and that they wouldn’t allow any attempt to change the laws. Not so – Scheer’s actual pledge is that the government – meaning Cabinet – would not bring forward any bills, but the backbenches are free to do so, which is why anti-abortion groups have been busy trying to get their supporters nominated as candidates. And now the party and Rayes are saying that he just misheard Scheer’s pledge, which could put some of those Quebec candidates that Rayes recruited in a sticky position because some of them are saying that they decided to run for the Conservatives because they were assured that they weren’t going to touch abortion. Oops.

And this dichotomy of a hypothetical Conservative Cabinet pledges versus its backbenchers is one of those cute ways that Scheer can try to mollify the Canadian public while at the same time assuring his social conservative base that yes, he’s still the party for them, and he’s going to ensure that they have space to put forward legislation. From there, depending on whether or not they have a majority government and if so, how large it is, it comes down to counting votes to see if these kinds of bills have a chance of making it – and the current move in anti-abortion circles is to use backdoor attempts at criminalization through means like trying to create jurisprudence by means of laws that give a foetus personhood status through bills that treat them as such when a pregnant woman is murdered, for example, which they then plan to slowly extend to abortion services. It’s a long-term plan, but one that begins with getting enough anti-abortion candidates nominated and elected, so even though Scheer says his Cabinet won’t introduce these bills, as private members’ bills, they are unlikely to be whipped, and that leaves him to free his caucus to “vote their conscience.”

Of course, if he’s planning to be like Stephen Harper and assert pressure to ensure that these kinds of bills don’t make it through, then his courting of the anti-abortion community is hollow, and he’s lying to them, which will also be something that his base will have to contend with. But the clarification that only a hypothetical Cabinet wouldn’t introduce any anti-abortion measures is too cute by half, and relies on the fact that not enough people appreciate the difference between Cabinet and the backbenches, and why that distinction matters.

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Roundup: When the leaders are away…

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Pride in Ottawa came and went this weekend, and surprising nobody, Andrew Scheer didn’t show up. But then again, not a single leader, federal or provincial leader, showed up either. Trudeau gets a pass because he was off at the G7 meeting in France, but he’s also only ever showed up to a single Pride in this city. And the only time any of the leaders showed up was the year Trudeau did – a one-off which is a bit of an insult to the city which is seat of government, and the second-largest city in Ontario (for those absentee provincial leaders), which essentially tells us that we’re not worth the effort. (For the record, Jagmeet Singh was in Edmonton to campaign in the NDP’s sole riding in that province).

Meanwhile, here’s a look at why Scheer shouldn’t have shown up at Ottawa Pride without an invitation – or an apology – and more than one person has remarked that straight people shouldn’t be inviting people to Pride on behalf of the LGBT community.

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Roundup: Importing the culture war

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We’re not even in the writ period, and the imported culture war bullshit is already at a fever pitch. In order to capitalize on it being Ottawa Pride this weekend, the Liberals started passing around a video of Andrew Scheer’s 2005 speech denouncing same-sex marriage, under the rubric of Ralph Goodale calling on Scheer to attend his hometown Pride in Ottawa this weekend. (Note: We’ll see if Trudeau makes it to Ottawa Pride this year, as he may not be back from the G7 meeting in France. Trudeau has only ever appeared at Ottawa’s Pride parade once). And off they were to the races. Scheer’s director of communications said that Scheer “supports same-sex marriage as defined in law,” and would uphold it as prime minister – and then proceeded to name Liberals who previously voted against it.

What’s particularly cute about this defence of Scheer is that it does not say that Scheer’s views have evolved, and the use of “as defined in law” is that the law was a result of a Supreme Court of Canada reference, so there is no way that any government could try to repeal it without invoking the Notwithstanding Clause to escape a Charter challenge. But beyond that, Scheer’s people have not offered any kind of defence that he voted against the trans rights bill in 2016, which is more current and pressing of a rights issue than where we are with same-sex marriage. But it’s not really about same-sex marriage at all – it’s all about our political class being high on the fumes of the American culture war that they’ve been inhaling, and are trying desperately to recreate here because they all think it’ll be a political winner for them, rather than the fact that it will simply burn the house down around them.

In amidst this, Jagmeet Singh decided that he wanted to get in on the culture war action and declared that he wouldn’t prop up a Conservative government in a hung parliament based on this (fourteen-year-old) homophobia – which essentially means that he’s conceded that he’s not running to be the prime minister in the election, but is content to stay as the third party. There’s realism, and then there’s bad strategy. Singh then went on to list all of the Liberal failures on the LGBT file – except most of the ones he listed are in areas of provincial jurisdiction. Oops. This election is already so, so very stupid.

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Roundup: Trying to play the tough guy

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Now that the Ethics Commissioner’s report is out in the open, the Conservatives are doing their best to try and capitalise on it – both with the coming Ethics Committee meeting (that is going to be shut down), and in Scheer trying to look tough on the issue. After calling on Liberals to essentially turn on Trudeau – something that would be far more effective if this were the era of caucus selection of leadership so that they could hold him to account – he also decided to take matters into his own hands at the National Acadian Day festivities in Dieppe, New Brunswick, earlier this week. When Trudeau spotted Scheer in the crowd, he came over to shake his hand, and, camera rolling, Scheer told him “You have to stop lying to Canadians. You need to come clean.” Trudeau, true to form, responded with a nonchalant “Oh, this is a good day today,” and went back to glad-handing with the crowd. Scheer has been trying to make the video go viral, but…he looks kind of awkward in it, like his attempt at being tough and in Trudeau’s face were essentially laughed off. I’m not sure how this bolsters Scheer’s case, but, well, he’s trying to convince his online audience of it.

There were also tongues waving and actual salivation over the revelation that the RCMP had been in touch with Jody Wilson-Raybould after the allegations first surfaced in the Globe and Mail back in February, but nothing has come of it since, and PMO assured the CBC that they had not been contacted by the RCMP. (I find it hard to believe anything will come of that either, given that there’s nothing they could charge them with – and no, this can’t possibly be obstruction of justice because a DPA is not getting off scot-free).

Meanwhile, a bunch of people are trying to be clever about Trudeau’s refusal to apologise for this situation by contrasting it with all of the various official apologies he’s made for historical injustices, as though there can be a actual equation of the two. Worth reading, however, is this thread from a legal analysis of the Ethics Commissioner’s report, and it pokes a number of holes in it, rendering it all the more problematic (which isn’t to say to say that there wasn’t any wrongdoing).

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Roundup: Whinging on the way out

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Once again, the brave political culture of Ottawa manifests itself with another column featuring anonymous MPs complaining to credulous columnists about how terrible their lives are, this time courtesy of John Ivison, who transcribes the miseries of Liberal MPs who aren’t running again about how everything is centralized in the PMO, that they’re being placated with busywork in committees, and the humiliation of being forced to memorize softball scripts to read in QP. And it’s all just so tiresome, because the vast majority of this is just learned helplessness.

I have increasingly less patience for this kind of anonymous whinging from MPs because they have all the power to change their situation if they wanted to do anything about it, but they instead learn to simply accept their situation even though they can change it. They don’t have to take the orders from the PMO if they think it’s humiliating or degrading. They don’t have to ask the questions prepared for them by PMO for QP – they can ask their own. The key is that they need their fellow backbenchers to back them up, and behave similarly. If you think the prime minister is going to throw a tantrum and threaten to not sign the nominations of his whole backbench, well, you’d be mistaken. They have this power. But instead they whinge to columnists about how unfair their lot in life is, never mind that they made this bed, and if they really wanted to change things, they would take back their power and stop electing leaders in quasi-presidential primaries that only serves to give them a false sense of “democratic legitimacy” at the expense of MPs. Again, they have the power to change this if they really wanted to.

As for these columnists, I would add that they need to get over this jejune notion that just letting MPs do more private members’ business will solve things. It won’t. In fact, it will probably just make things worse, because it will just bottleneck in the Senate, and MPs will spend more of their time working on these hobby horses rather than doing their actual work of holding government to account. That’s not how Parliament is supposed to work.

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Roundup: The source of the complaints

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Carrying on with yesterday’s theme, Bill Morneau decided he would try and be too cute by half and release an open letter of his own, questioning Andrew Scheer’s promise to premiers to maintain the current health and social transfer system, and claimed that he was still advocating a cut. I’m not sure that it was quite right, but it was a novel attempt – and something Morneau rarely does, so there’s that. Scheer, meanwhile, keeps on his affordability message, claiming that he’s the only one worried about it while the Liberals keep raising taxes, etc.

The thing is, Scheer is wrong about that. He is fond of citing that Fraser Institute report that treats the cancellation of boutique tax credits as “raising taxes” – as it also ignores the tax-free Canada Child Benefit offered to most families as a replacement, and a more targeted one that will actually benefit low-income households at that – much like he’s fond of ignoring that the climate rebates will make most households better off in jurisdictions under the federal carbon pricing system. But beyond that, the data clearly shows that the federal taxes as a share of federal revenues also continues to decline under the Liberals. Scheer’s affordability narrative as it comes to taxes is bogus. Well, except for one particular group, who is not better off under the changes that the Liberals have made. And yet, as Kevin Milligan demonstrates with data and receipts below, it’s certainly not the average Canadians that Scheer claims to be fighting for. But then again, illiberal populists claiming to be looking out for average people while benefitting the wealthiest is getting to be a tired game by this point – and yet people still keep falling for it.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157388641385062401

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157390752697085952

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157394371806785536

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157396798412976128

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157439654120923136

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Roundup: Cuts and capacity

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Andrew Scheer made a defensive manoeuvre yesterday by sending letters to each of the premiers promising that he wouldn’t cut health or social transfers if he formed government – his way of heading off attacks from Justin Trudeau that are trying to paint Scheer with the same brush as Doug Ford, as Ford continues to make ill-considered cuts across Ontario without regard for logic or reason (while, oddly enough, his government’s spending continues to increase). There is an added bit of significance to this in that Ford has spent the past year trying to sell the message that Ontario’s books are such a basket case that the province is in the road to bankruptcy – which is a complete and total fabrication. While yes, Ontario does have a high debt-to-GDP ratio, we also have to remember that the previous government was borrowing money where interest rates are below the rate of inflation – essentially they are getting free money that they could use to invest in the province.

Enter Kevin Carmichael at the Financial Post, who wrote a must-read contemplation of the state of the federal books yesterday. It’s an adult conversation about the actual state of our finances – contrary to Scheer, our books are in great shape and the deficit is miniscule, and contrary to Trudeau and Bill Morneau, the deficits are coming in smaller than projected and growth is greater than projected and with no new increases in spending, we could be back in surplus before the 2023 election (thought that is always this government’s problem). And with that in mind, he poses the question – do we need to sock away surpluses in anticipation of a future recession even though we already have the capacity to deal with it, or do we spend our current capacity on something that would have lasting changes for our economy, like national childcare? It’s the kind of grown-up conversation that we should be having, but we’re not as parties snipe at one another over who is more “divisive.”

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1157119930434609153

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Roundup: Affordability truthers

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As expected, talk of the cost of living crept up again online today, with some more hyperbolic nonsense coming from one of our favourite Conservative talking heads. But this time, economist Stephen Gordon stepped in to provide a reality check – only to find more StatsCan “truthers” coming out of the woodwork. Remember, for populists, they don’t like data that contradicts their narratives, so they try to insist that the data is somehow biased or wrong. Gordon sets them straight, and makes the even more salient point that if the Conservatives (and by extension the NDP) are so concerned about cost of living increases that are within the rate of inflation, then perhaps they need to articulate what their monetary policy goals are – which is what the targeted rate of inflation amounts to. Plenty to think about and remember here.

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Roundup: Weasel words on conversion therapy

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In the wake of the Liberals announcing that they were looking at what measures they could take at a federal level to ban “conversion therapy,” the question was put to Andrew Scheer if he opposed it. Scheer responded that while he opposes “forced” conversion therapy, he will wait to see what the government proposes around banning it before if he’ll support it. The Conservatives quickly cried foul that the Global news headline was that “Andrew Scheer will ‘wait and see’ before taking a stance on conversion therapy ban” was just clickbait that didn’t reflect his actual quotes (and Global did update their headline), but not one of them pointed out the fact that Scheer’s own words were, to be frank, weaselly.

Scheer said that he opposed “forced” conversion therapy, and that he’s opposed to “any type of practice that would forcibly attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation against their will or things like that.” And you note the weasel words in there – about only being opposed to “forced” therapy, or to change it “against their will.” The giant implication that not one conservative rushing to defend Scheer is that there are types of “voluntary” conversion therapy that he is okay with, and that is alarming because any kind of so-called “conversion therapy” is torture, whether entered into voluntarily or not – and it ignores that when people enter into it voluntarily, it’s because they have such a degree of self-loathing that they have deluded themselves into believing that they can change their sexual orientation in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and a lot of that self-loathing comes from the sorts of violence, whether physical, mental or spiritual, that has been inflicted upon them. And it does look entirely like Scheer is being too cute by leaving a giant loophole in the window for his religious, social conservative flank to not feel threatened by his position, because it lets them carry on with the mythology that there is such a thing as “voluntary” conversion therapy, and that this is all about their “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit that asserts that homosexuality is just a learned behaviour and not an intrinsic characteristic. So no, I don’t think Scheer has been at all unequivocal.

Meanwhile, Scheer’s apologists will demand to know why the government refused to act on a “conversion therapy” ban when presented with a petition about it in March, but again, this is an issue where there is a great deal of nuance that should be applied. The government response was that these practices tend to fall under healthcare or be practiced by health professionals, which makes it provincial jurisdiction, and that while there can be some applications of the Criminal Code with some practices, it required coordination with the provinces to address, which they have been doing. What the Liberals announced this week was that they were seeing if there were any other measures they could take federally, which might involve the Criminal Code. Again, it’s an issue where it’s hard for them to take a particular line, so they’re trying to see what it is possible to do – that’s not a refusal, it’s an acknowledgement that it’s a complicated issue.

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Roundup: Attacking his own plan

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Andrew Scheer’s sudden denunciation of the planned clean fuel regulations got some reaction yesterday, partly from the government, and partly from economists who deal with this kind of thing for a living. Scheer’s labelling it a “secret fuel tax” is more than a little odd, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he’s proposing by removing the transparent federal carbon price and replacing it with more costly regulations, which would get passed onto consumers in a hidden way without any of the rebates that the current federal backstop programme provides – in other words, doing exactly what he’s accusing the Liberals of doing. The government noted that Scheer’s 4¢/litre figure are just a guess because the regulations haven’t been finalised yet (though some economists say it’s about right based on current projections), but again, it needs to be driven home that this is exactly the kind of thing that Scheer himself is proposing, but without the added “technology is magic” sheen attached.

To that end, here’s economist Andrew Leach’s mock open letter to Scheer.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield points out that this latest attack by Scheer risks boxing him in, and attacks his credibility on the climate file.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1148609609424429057

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