Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: The rot Chong won’t address

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Conservative MP Michael Chong took to Policy Options yesterday to decry that the unilateral expulsions of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus was indicative of a “deeper rot” in our parliamentary culture. His solution? Just make some amendments to his garbage legislation Reform Act to better enforce the called-for votes to implement at the beginning of each parliament, or to do away with the voting entirely (which was a compromise to make the bill palatable), and ensure that the measures in the bill are fully enforceable regardless. And I just can’t even.

Chong keeps insisting that his garbage bill was going to “rebalance” the power between MPs and party leaders, but it does nothing of the sort – much like this omnibus motion that Liberal MP Frank Bayliss is proposing to amend the Standing Orders (which Chong is a co-sponsor of). These kinds of measures don’t actually attack the root of the problems facing our parliament, and in the creation of new rules, they simply create avenues for unintended consequences that make things worse. (For more on the Bayliss motion and why it’s a problem, see my weekend column). The solution is not, and will never be, more rules. The solution is to do away with the rules that have made things progressively worse, and to start rolling back the changes that our MPs keep making in the vain hopes of improving their lot when all they need to do is assert the powers that they already have.

I fear I am getting repetitive about this point, but until people start listening, I will keep saying it – the biggest root cause of the problems in our system, particularly where it concerns the “balancing” of powers of MPs vis-à-vis the party leader, is the party leadership selection system. Unless caucus members can select the leader, any attempt made by them to remove the leader, garbage Reform Act or no, will be seen as illegitimate precisely because the current selection system insulates leaders with a false notion of “democratic legitimacy.” And Chong knows this, but keeps trying to burnish his garbage bill in the hopes that it will somehow shine. It’s not going to happen, and MPs telling themselves that the solution is more rules are simply deluding themselves. More rules got us in this situation. More rules keeps taking power away from MPs under the guise of “rebalancing” or “restoring” that power, and this cycle keeps repeating. It needs to stop, and it means MPs (and the pundit class of this country) need to stop believing this mythology. The only solution is caucus selection of leaders. Anything else is a mirage.

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Roundup: Suspension as a first step

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The Senate’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Committee has considered the Senate Ethics Officer’s report into the conduct of one Senator Lynn Beyak and found her response to be wanting. Because she has refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and hasn’t removed the racist letters from her website, let alone apologise for posting them, they are recommending that she be suspended without pay for the remainder of the current parliament (meaning that it would end when parliament is dissolved and the writs drawn up for the election). Part of the thinking is that the time away – without pay or access to Senate resources – will give her time to think about her actions, and they suggest that the sensitivity training about racism and Indigenous history should be out of her own pocket. And if she still refuses to take action, they’ll look at having Senate administration take the letters down from her site (though nothing would stop her from moving them to a site that she hosts on her own), and if she still refuses action, well, they can revisit her fate in the next Parliament.

A couple of things to consider in all of this. First – it may help to re-read my column on the subject – is that they are likely recommending suspension because they will be very reluctant to recommend full expulsion without exhausting all avenues, and to afford her every single bit of procedural fairness and due process they possibly can in order to ensure that if it comes to that, that they will be on unshakeable ground. Setting a precedent for the removal of a senator should be done very, very carefully, and it has been argued in some circles that the reason why Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau remain in the Chamber are because the need to be politically expedient in their suspensions and not affording them proper fairness essentially made it impossible to recommend expulsion in the future because they could plausibly argue that they hadn’t been afforded the due process. Consider that lesson learned with how they are dealing with Beyak.

I can’t stress enough that recommending expulsion is an extraordinary step, and they can’t just do it because she’s an unrepentant racist (even though she doesn’t see herself that way) – especially because part of the whole reason the Senate has such strong institutional protections is because Senators are supposed to be able to speak truth to power without fear of repercussion. But it’s clear that this isn’t what Beyak is doing, and they need to go to great lengths to prove it and to provide enough of a paper trail to show that there is no other choice to deal with her than expulsion, because this is a very dangerous precedent that they would be setting. More than anything, the measures they are recommending are done in the hopes that she does the honourable thing and resigns, though it remains to be seen if she will get that hint (given that she refuses to believe that she’s done anything wrong). This will be a slow process. People will need to be patient. Demanding her immediate removal will only make things worse.

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Roundup: Beating one’s chest over China

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The current dispute with China doesn’t seem to be getting better, as the canola issue is apparently about to be compounded with things like soybeans and peas, and word has it that the Chinese government has been compiling a list of Canadian targets within the country that could face further retaliation, because we all know that this is about the arrest and extradition of Meng Wanzhou. While Trudeau says that more help for canola farmers is coming “in a few days,” China is taking its time in visa approvals for the scientific delegation Canada is trying to send in order to get answers from them on the supposed pests they found in our canola shipments.

Enter Andrew Scheer, who has declared that Justin Trudeau hasn’t done enough, and he demanded that a new ambassador be appointed (because that can happen at the drop of a hat), that the government launch a trade complaint against China at the WTO, and that the government pull its investment from the Asian Infrastructure Bank (never mind that Canadian companies are starting to win bids through it). Because beating one’s chest is obviously the way to deal with China, and there would be no possible consequences for doing so.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1123023732610613249

One gets the impression from watching this that Scheer – or whoever is advising him – has no serious ideas for how to deal with complex situations like this. I mean, Scheer has also insisted that he somehow could have gotten a better New NAFTA deal and that he could have somehow gotten the steel and aluminium tariffs lifted by now, which is ridiculous, and yet here he is, demonstrating how “serious” he is about foreign policy, this time with China. Even more risible is the way in which he characterises the current government’s position as “appeasement.” Erm, except appeasement would have meant that they would have freed Meng by now, or did that “crafty” thing about warning her before she could have been arrested so that she could have avoided the trip altogether (as certain former political players in this town later told the media that the government should have done). You would think that the person who wants to lead the country would try to be a bit more serious about his foreign policy, but this is where we are.

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Roundup: Anger over vilified legislation? Shocking!

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Over on the Financial Post’s op-ed pages, Senator Richard Neufeld worries about all of the angry Canadians the Senate’s energy committee is hearing from over Bill C-69. I have no doubt that they are hearing from angry people, because there has been a massive disinformation campaign around this bill from the start. The Conservatives and their provincial counterparts in Alberta have dubbed it the “no more pipelines” bill, even though it’s nothing of the sort. Neufeld worries that the bill means that we can never have any more major projects in this country, which is absurd on the face of it, but hey, there are narratives to uphold.

I’ve talked to a lot of environmental lawyers about this bill, and the potential amendments that it could merit. It is certainly not a bill without flaws, and the government seems to have acknowledged that (and apparently there is some kind of gamesmanship being played right now, where the government has a list of amendments they want to introduce at the Senate committee via one of their proxies but they won’t release them ahead of time for some reason). This having been said, there seems to be no acknowledgment of a few realities – that the current system that the Harper government put into place isn’t working and has only wound up with litigation; that we simply can’t bully through projects past Indigenous communities anymore, because Section 35 rights mean something; and that the bill sought to eliminate a lot of heavy lifting by putting more consultation on the front end so that projects could be better scoped, and that it would mean not needing to produce boxes of documents that nobody ever reads in order to check boxes off of lists as part of the assessment process. This is not a bad thing.

But like I said, there are problems with the bill, and Neufeld lists a few of them in passing while trading in more of the myths and disinformation around it. But so long as that disinformation campaign goes unchallenged – and this includes by ministers who can only speak in talking points and can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag because they’re too assured of their own virtues that they don’t feel the need to dismantle a campaign of lies – then the anger will carry on, and when this bill passes in some amended form (and it’s likely it will), then it will simply become another propaganda tool, which should be concerning to everyone – including those who are weaponizing it, because it will blow up in their faces.

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Roundup: Undaunted by the facts

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report yesterday that confirmed what the federal government has been saying – that yes indeed, because the federal carbon price backstop is legislated that 90 percent of proceeds must be returned to individual households, that the vast majority of Canadians will be better off as a result, and yes, this includes both direct and indirect costs, and he did a whole analysis based on input and output-based pricing, and confirmed it all with StatsCan data. The federal government might as well have said “I told you so.” But did this force a mea culpa from the Conservatives that perhaps they were wrong about the whole thing? Nope. Instead, both Andrew Scheer and Ed Fast, his environment critic, issued released that cherry picked a couple of pieces from the report, divorced of proper context, to say that it “proved” their false narrative about said price. Because of course they did. And did we see any fact checking about their statements? Not anywhere that I could see. Which is your preview of the coming election – that fact-free shitposts will continue to spin lies, and they will largely get away with it, even after they’ve been debunked.

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports that Andrew Scheer and several of his campaign team were meeting up with oil and gas executives to help plot the demise of the Liberals in the coming election. And before you get any ideas about this being old boys with cigars in backrooms, it should be noted that these were executives from fairly junior companies and not the big players, who do support carbon pricing (for which Jason Kenney wants to go to war with them). (As an aside, one of these junior company executives is a fairly robust troll on Twitter, so that should give you a taste of what this was about). Much like Kenney’s rhetoric, the players at this conference discussed using litigation as a tool to fight their critics, but one has to wonder how they possibly think this is going to appeal to the centrist voters they need in key battlegrounds like the 905 belt around Toronto, let alone to have any hope of winning seats in Quebec. You would think that a meeting like this just confirms for Canadians the caricatures that they have about the energy industry and its lobbyists, and doesn’t really engender sympathy for the pain that the industry is feeling at present. But maybe I’m just missing something.

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Roundup: Drawing the wrong lessons

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At the time I’m writing this, it’s not looking too good for Rachel Notley and her NDP in the Alberta election (and sorry I couldn’t stay up late to track results, but StatsCan waits for no journalist). With that in mind, I wanted to just post a couple of thoughts about what this could bode – not just the immediate nonsense of Jason Kenney theatrically tabling a bill to repeal the province’s carbon tax (and immediately subjecting him to the federal backstop), or his threat to “turn off the taps” to BC when it comes to oil — something a court would strike down immediately because it’s utterly unconstitutional. Rather, I suspect that this will provide additional encouragement to Andrew Scheer to emulate Kenney’s tactics — fomenting anger, and selling people a steady diet of lies and snake oil, and hoping that he can find someone to blame when he’s unable to deliver on any of it should he get into power. Scheer’s problem will be that he doesn’t have another level of government he can cast too much blame upon, but that won’t dissuade him from the other tactics.

I also suspect that we’re going to get a renewed round of wailing and gnashing of teeth from “progressives” about how they couldn’t coalesce their votes around Notley and the NDP, and there will be all manner of blame being cast at the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals for splitting their vote (which is nonsense, of course, but we’ll hear it anyway).

Meanwhile, my column offers my personal loathing and dread about the way the election happened, and the problem with stoking anger and promising magic wands and snake oil.

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Roundup: Missing the mark on encouraging participation

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The House of Commons’ status of women committee tabled a report this week that is about getting more women into politics? The problem? That all of its recommendations are focused on what the government can do, when it’s not their job. Rather, it’s the job of political parties, and only some of them take it seriously. Add to that, the one recommendation that people tend to focus on — that the federal government give some manner of financial compensation to parties who recruit more women candidates — is bad policy because it simply rewards parties for putting women candidates in unwinnable ridings and lets them claim their percentages. The Conservatives had their own dissenting report as well, which focused on their notion of women running on “merit” rather than quotas (because there’s apparently no tokenism in their party), and wanted more focus on women who bully and discourage other women in politics. (The NDP’s own dissent focused on some of the language of the recommendations, and more funding for women’s groups, childcare, and so on).

And I have to stress that this is a party issue, not a government issue. Parties are the ones who set the rules for their nomination contests, and are responsible for recruiting their own candidates, and even more to the point, these should be grassroots efforts rather than coming on high from party headquarters. That means mobilising party members at the ground level to find and recruit more women, and to convince them to run. The Liberals have had success with this — they instituted a programme of getting people to find women in their communities and then asking them several times to run, because they know the research that shows that while a man would likely accept on the first request, women can take something like seven times being asked before they will accept to run. Overcoming that socialised reluctance is a big part of it, and where the focus needs to lie — on top of the parties making their nomination rules more clear (and less reliant on the “unwritten rules” as have been spoken of), and ensuring that things like childcare are being taken care of so that women can do things like door-knock and and canvas. None of this is something that the government can take care of, but the party grassroots needs to be aware of and work toward implementing.

It’s not just rules — it’s an ecosystem. Part of that is civics education, because we don’t teach students about things like nomination races and why they matter, and how to get involved. That’s one of the most fundamental parts of our system, and we don’t teach it. How do we expect more young women to get involved if we don’t tell them how? This is where the focus needs to lie if we’re to make any lasting change.

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Roundup: Forcing a partial denunciation

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While Andrew Scheer was goading Justin Trudeau to carry on with his libel lawsuit against him, it seems that Trudeau did manage to get Andrew Scheer to do one thing that he has thus far avoided, which was an actual denunciation of white nationalism, and that he actually said those words rather than talking around them. He didn’t denounce Faith Goldy for appearing with him at that “convoy” rally, and he didn’t say anything about his cherry-picking of wilful blindness of the “Yellow Vest” contingent with their racist and whites supremacist messages at that rally, but it was a start. Baby steps. 

Part of the backdrop for this was an exchange between Senator Leo Housakos and Chrystia Freeland at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, where Housakos said he didn’t see any white suprematist threat (which he later said was poorly worded), and Freeland laying down the law on it. 

Amidst this drama, the head of CSIS was appearing at a different Senate committee, this time to talk about Bill C-59, the national security bill, and he did state that the intelligence service was becoming more and more preoccupied with the threat of white nationalists and far-right extremists, even though religious extremism was still one of their largest focuses. It’s something that is of concern and we can’t ignore the winking and nudges that absolutely takes place, or especially the blind eyes that get turned, but we do seem to be having a conversation about it, so that’s probably a good start.

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QP: A dare and a denunciation

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All of the leaders were present today, for what promised to be a lot of back and forth over the libel suit. Andrew Scheer led off, and he dared Justin Trudeau to go ahead with the suit. Trudeau picked up a script to say that this was the party of Stephen Harper, that they backed down when threatened over statements about Navdeep Bains, and this was more misleading by the Conservatives. Scheer repeated the question in French, and got the same response from Trudeau but in French. Scheer demanded court proceedings commence, and Trudeau first said that Scheer wouldn’t denounce white supremacists, and raised Senator Housakos’ comments in committee saying he didn’t think it was a problem. Scheer dismissed this as a smear tactic, and stated that he always denounced white supremacists (possibly saying those actual words for the first time). From there, Trudeau went on a tear about Scheer misleading Canadians and pivoted to the environment, to which Scheer demanded Trudeau go on the record in court, and Trudeau kept on about the Conservatives’ lack of a plan. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and said that the OECD was watching Canada on the SNC-Lavalin file and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau reminded him that the justice committee was master of its own destiny and he ensured everything was public. Singh tried again in French, got the same answer, and then Singh railed in French about Loblaws getting climate funds. Trudeau reminded him that the private sector has a role to play in fighting climate change and the government would partner with them, and when Singh tried again in English, and Trudeau said the problem with the NDP was that they were all talk, while they were taking action.

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Roundup: An important first report

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While everyone was focused on Jane Philpott’s attempt to claim that the provisions in the garbage Reform Act weren’t met as it regards her expulsion from caucus, a much more important event was taking place, which was the release of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians’ first public report. This is the first time that Canada has seen any kind of public oversight into our national security and intelligence services, and it was important to see. One of the things that they focused in on was the oversight of military intelligence operations, for which the military thanked them for their suggestions on improving governance, but balked at the proposal for a legislative framework.

Nevertheless, the expert in this stuff is Stephanie Carvin, so I will turn over the reactions to her (full thread starts here):

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115716056247676929

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717071185301504

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1115717072657502210

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115678714291871746

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115683292928299008

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1115688317452935168

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