Tag Archives: Andrew Scheer

Roundup: Lethal overwatch?

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There’s been some chatter about a story in the Guardian that purports to show BC RCMP communications that would have allowed for “snipers” and “sterilizing” of Indigenous protests in the province over LNG pipelines – which the minister of Indigenous services wants some answers to, and which the RCMP denies is actually legitimate, citing that the terminology used isn’t consistent with their own, or that some of it is being misinterpreted (in particular “lethal overwatch). To that end, here’s Justin Ling with a bit of context and nuance to consider before you get agitated at what’s being reported, as it may not necessarily be correct.

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Roundup: SNC-Lavalin gets a plea bargain

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In an unexpected development yesterday, we learned that SNC-Lavalin took a plea deal from the courts – that one of their divisions would plead guilty for fraud over $5000 in connection to their dubious activities in Libya, pay a fairly hefty $280 million fine over five years, and all of the rest of the charges they were facing were withdrawn, and they wouldn’t face debarment from future contract work for governments. In other words, they largely got what they wanted with the Deferred Prosecution Agreement/Remediation Agreement that they had been agitating and lobbying for, and which spun off the whole Double-Hyphen Affair in the first place.

Could of things – first of all, DPAs are not “get out of jail free” cards like they have often been described as. Had SNC-Lavalin been granted the DPA, they would have had to agreed that they committed wrongdoing, paid a fine which would have included remediation for the wronged parties, and would have a structured monitoring regime put into place to ensure better governance going forward, and it wouldn’t have protected any of their executives from future prosecution. One particular law professor, Jennifer Quaid, noted that even though they weren’t a good candidate for a DPA, it would have actually been more transparent than the plea bargain that they wound up with, there is no guarantee of remediation to wronged parties, and it’s unlikely there will be the same structure imposed, so maybe, just maybe, the DPA was the better plan in the first place.

Jody Wilson-Raybould tweeted out in response that the system worked, while Justin Trudeau said in an interview that he may have acted differently had he known this would have been the outcome, but he was trying to do the best he could at the time. And there are certain people screaming about prosecutorial independence, but I keep going back to the conversation that Wilson-Raybould taped with Michael Wernick, and so much of it was them talking past one another – him looking for an explanation and her not providing one until the end of the conversation when she said that she gave a report to PMO months prior, to which Wernick said “That’s news to me.” This key exchange was completely glossed over in most of the reporting because they fell instead for the juicy quotes that Wilson-Raybould had set up in conducting the conversation the way she did. So much of the communications and relationship breakdown is on full display in that call. (That being said, I remain deeply troubled with how much SNC-Lavalin was stage-managing the legislative process around the DPAs, even if lawyers in the field had been demanding that legislation for a decade because we were behind our comparable Western allies in making these kinds of arrangements available).

Meanwhile, certain journalists want to insist that this doesn’t mean that the story is over because parliamentary committees. Erm, except they would need the support of the Bloc to push forward with them, and they have explicitly stated that they have no interest in doing so. (Also, I am a bit concerned that Elizabeth May was conspiracy theorizing over Twitter regarding who this plea deal is “protecting.”)

On a related note, Wilson-Raybould was chosen by The Canadian Press as their Newsmaker of the Year, and make news she certainly did (and still does).

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Roundup: Mandate letters and the minister for everything

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Yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau released the mandate letters for his ministers, giving us a glimpse as to what their marching orders will be (which is still a fairly novel transparency and accountability measure in this country, it needs to be said). The National Post counted up some 288 projects listed in those mandates, some of them holdovers from the previous parliament (which isn’t surprising considering that  many of them were fairly ambitious and transformational and were not achievable within four years). But there were also a number of things missing from several of those letters that should have been dealt with – particularly on the justice file.

As with the previous parliament, each of the letters has an identical preamble, advising the ministers to “govern in a positive, open and collaborative way,” because it’s a hung parliament and all of that. In terms of specific points in the letters, there are issues like discussions with province over pharmacare, shortening wait times for airport screenings, tax cuts for green tech companies, reforming the medical assistance in dying laws, advancing international efforts to ban “killer robots,” procuring new fighter jets and modernizing NORAD. One of the more alarming mentions was in Bill Morneau’s letter, advising him to review and possibly modify the financial stress test applied to mortgages, which is a Very Bad Thing, and means that the real estate lobby is winning its air war over the good common sense of the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. (Seriously – there is no excuse for encouraging bad debt).

And then there is Chrystia Freeland’s letter, which is expansive and makes her in essence a “minister of everything” who is assigned to basically work with a number of other ministers to advance their priorities, whether it’s carbon pricing, getting resources to market, breaking down internal trade barriers, facilitating pharmacare talks, working on pan-Canadian childcare, gun control, regional economic development agencies, and advancing reconciliation. This leaves questions as to what exactly Trudeau will be doing while Freeland does all the work – leaving her to either take the fall while Trudeau gets to take the credit. This having been said, it’s just as likely that she wanted a full plate of projects rather than simply spending her weeks heading to provincial capitals to meet with premiers once the New NAFTA is ratified, but she certainly has her work cut out for her, ensuring that enough of these promises are fulfilled before the inevitable early election call that comes in a hung parliament.

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Roundup: Exit Scheer

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The news that blew up all of our days was that of Andrew Scheer’s sudden resignation as leader, despite having stated for nearly two months that he planned to stay on and fight the next election. As this news broke, so did the news that party funds were being used to finance his children’s private school education, and throughout the day there was a lot of back-and-forth as to just who in the party knew about it, and it sounds increasingly like Stephen Harper, the Conservative Fund’s chair, was mighty upset when he learned about it. Oops. Nevertheless, Scheer went before the House of Commons and talked about how this was all about needing to spend more time with his family, and he spun a tale about how he realized he barely knew his teenaged son, and Justin Trudeau and others were very gracious and classy, and offered more humanity to Scheer than he managed to in his time as leader. The caucus also voted to let Scheer stay on as interim leader until his replacement is chosen, but considering how well that went for the NDP, with the embittered Thomas Mulcair poisoning the well, well, you’d think they would know better.

While the group calling itself Conservative Victory that were organizing to pressure Scheer to resign has declared victory, we now begin with all of the breathless speculation as to who will run to replace Scheer, and you can bet that most of the usual names – Raitt, Ambrose, Kenney – won’t. The Star runs through the probable names and their chances of actually running.

And, of course, come all of the hot takes. Justin Ling declares this the end of Scheer’s reign of incompetence. Andrew Coyne notes that Scheer’s departure won’t solve the party’s bigger problems. Matt Gurney makes the point that the party really can’t choose a new leader until they learn the lessons from the last election. Susan Delacourt explores the parallels between Scheer’s departure and that of Joe Clark after his election loss in 1979. Paul Wells gives a fair accounting of Scheer’s self-inflicted wounds, and the huge challenge the party faces in trying to find a leader that will unify the party’s various factions. Robert Hiltz gives his not-so-fond farewell to Scheer with his trademarked acerbic style. My own column on Scheer’s demise looks at how he turned politics into a house of lies, and why his successor will need to rectify that mistake.

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QP: Cheerleading a recession

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After this morning’s surprising announcement that Andrew Scheer was resigning as Conservative leader, the PM was in his office but not present for QP (even though he had been in the House to respond to Scheer’s resignation just a couple of hours earlier). After a lengthy ovation, Scheer lamented last month’s job numbers, which I remind you was 100 percent bullshit, particularly his warnings about a “made-in-Canada recession.” Bill Morneau reminded him that while monthly job numbers are important, they would continue to invest in Canadians as that created over a million jobs. In French, Scheer demanded an economic update, and Morneau responded was that one would happen in the coming days. Scheer switched back to English to carry on his lament for the stage of the economy, giving misleading G7 job stats, to which Morneau repeated that their plan to invest was working, and that the economy was on track for the second-highest growth in the G7. Leona Alleslev was up next, and in French, concern trolled about the New NAFTA, and demanded impact assessments for it. Chrystia Freeland reminded her that the existential threat to our economy was now past, and endangering ratification was simply threatening the economy. Alleslev switched to English to worry about “repairing” our relationship with the US, and Freeland stated that the most important thing was ratifying the agreement. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and he spun a sad tale of steel workers in Ontario being protected but aluminium workers in Quebec were not, to which Freeland reminded him that they got the tariffs repealed, and that the new agreement had 70 percent North American aluminium content requirements. Blanchet sang the praises of economic nationalism, and Freeland warned of the dangers of partisanship. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and demanded the government stop the judicial review of the Human Rights Tribunal compensation order, to which Marc Miller started that they were engaging partners to see that there was the fairest and most comprehensive compensation offered. Singh tried again in English, and Miller listed new measures they are in compliance with, and said that they were sitting down to get compensation right.

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Roundup: Kenney’s shock-and-awe tour

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Jason Kenney is in town on his shock-and-awe tour, with eight ministers and countless staff in tow, intent on making the province’s “Fair Deal” case to their federal counterparts – while those federal ministers smile and nod and say “yes, dear.” Meanwhile, certain credulous journalists and columnists are swallowing Kenney’s presentation whole, as he brings charts and graphs and rattles off figures that they don’t bother to question, never mind that he has a well-known and well documented propensity for lying with these very same facts and figures – and then gets terribly indignant if you call him on it, and will keep reiterating them, bulldozing over his doubters. And we’re going to get even more of that during the media rounds later today – mark my words.

To that end, Kenney’s ever-evolving list of demands continue to be largely unreasonable (as said credulous journalists and pundits nod and say “They’re perfectly reasonable” when they’re not) – things like demanding a solid timeline for the completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline (impossible if there are further court challenges, and Kenney is lying when he says there are mechanisms), along with bringing in First Nations as equity partners (there is little point until the project is completed, which was the whole point of buying the pipeline in the first place – to adequately de-risk it); his $2.4 billion demand for “fiscal stabilization,” some of which he plans to put into remediating orphan wells (never mind the Supreme Court has ruled that these are the responsibility of the companies who owned them); substantial repeals of environmental legislation (because the failed system under Harper that only resulted in litigation worked so well); changing rules so that oil and gas companies can raise revenues (reminder: flow-through shares are de facto federal subsidies); and recognising Alberta’s efforts at methane reduction (I’m going with “trust, but verify” on this one, because Kenney likes to lie about the province’s other carbon reduction efforts). So yeah – “perfectly reasonable.” Sure, Jan.

Bill Morneau, for his part, says he’s willing to talk to his provincial counterparts at their upcoming meeting about fiscal stabilization, but isn’t making promises. While the premiers all signed onto this notion at the Council of the Federation meeting last week, it was because it’s federal dollars and not dealing with equalization which could affect their bottom lines – and Kenney’s supposedly “conciliatory” tone in which he says he’s willing to accept fiscal stabilization changes over equalization is likely a combination of the realization that he’s getting to traction from the other premiers, whose support he would need to make any changes, and the fact that Trudeau publicly called Scott Moe’s bluff on equalization reform when he said that if Moe can bring a proposal forward signed off on by all of the premiers then they would discuss it – something that isn’t going to happen. This all having been said, it also sounds a lot like Kenney wants the rest of Canada to bankroll the province for their decision not to implement a modest sales tax which would not only have solved their deficit but would have provided them with the fiscal stability to help weather the current economic hard times – but that’s an inconvenient narrative. Better to drum up a fake separatist threat and try to play the hero instead.

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Roundup: Payette’s personal contributions

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With some adjustments to the pomp and ceremony to accommodate Parliament’s new dual-building status, the Speech from the Throne went ahead yesterday, and the speech itself was not all that exciting. There was a big focus on the environment and climate change, a whole section on reconciliation with Indigenous people, and this government’s watch words of “middle class prosperity,” and the government sprinkled just enough hints that could mollify the other opposition parties if they were looking for something to justify their support, though both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh came out to puff their chests out and declare that they weren’t happy with what was in the speech.

More concerning was the fact that the Governor General herself contributed to writing the speech, which is unusual, and dare I say a problem. Her role is to read the speech on behalf of the government, and there are centuries of parliamentary evolution as to why this is the case, but her having an active hand in writing the speech – even if it’s the introduction (and in particular the notions of everyone being in the same space-time continuum on our planetary spaceship), it’s highly irregular and problematic because it means that Payette is once again overreaching as to what her role in things actually is, and that she’s unhappy with it being ceremonial (a failure of this government doing their due diligence in appointing her when she is not suited to the task). While one of my fellow journalists speculated that this may have been what was offered in exchange for her having to read a prepared speech (something she does not like to do), it’s still a problem with lines being crossed.

And then there was the reporting afterward. When Andrew Scheer said that he was going to propose an amendment to the Speech during debate, Power & Politics in particular ran with it as though this was novel or unusual, and kept hammering on the fact that Scheer is going to propose an amendment! The problem? Amendments are how Speech from the Throne debates actually work. It’s part of the rules that over the course of the debate, the Official Opposition will move an amendment (usually something to effect of “delete everything after this point and let’s call this government garbage”) to the Address in Reply to the Speech, and the third party will propose their own sub-amendment, and most of the time, they all get voted on, and the government carries the day – because no government is going to fall on the Throne Speech. There is nothing novel or special about this, and yet “Ooh, he’s going to move an amendment!” Get. A. Grip.

And now, the hot takes on the Speech, starting with Heather Scoffield, who calls out that the Speech neglected anything around economic growth. Susan Delacourt makes note of how inward-focused this Speech is compared to its predecessor. Chris Selley lays out some of Trudeau’s improbable tasks in the Speech, as well as the one outside of it which is to play a supporting role to Freeland and her task at hand. Paul Wells clocks the vagueness in the Speech, but also the fact that they are setting up for games of political chicken in the months and years ahead.

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Roundup: Contemplating compromised committees

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As the summoning of the new Parliament draws ever closer, we’re seeing more stories about the procedural intricacies of the first few sitting days, and the coming confidence vote on or before the 10th because of the Supply cycle and the need to pass the Supplementary Estimates before that date. Fair enough – those can be expected to pass pretty handily because nobody is going to want to head right back to the polls (and I wouldn’t expect the Governor General to grant an immediate election either – the developing convention is waiting at least six months, providing there is another viable governing party, though that would be the real trick given the current seat maths).

This all having been said, there was something in this interview with Pablo Rodriguez, the new Government House Leader, which sticks in my craw, and that’s the talk about possibly undoing the rule changes that prevent parliamentary secretaries from being voting members on Commons committees, and I. Just. Cannot. Even.

While the chances of this happening are fairly slim, given that it would require opposition support and they are unlikely to get it, it’s still crazy-making. This reflex to go super political in a hung parliament is understandable but deeply frustrating because it undermines the whole raison d’être of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account, and committees are one very big piece of the accountability puzzle. Parliamentary secretaries should have no business even being near committees because it undermines their independence. It’s bad enough that under the previous parliament, they were still on the committee in a non-voting capacity, but it still allowed ministers’ offices to attempt to stage manage what went on (to varying degrees, depending on which committee it was). Having the parliamentary secretaries as voting members simply turns committees into the branch plants of ministers’ offices, and we saw this play out for the better part of a decade under Stephen Harper. Committees are not there to simply take orders from the minister and waste everyone’s time, and it would be hugely disappointing if the Liberals returned to that way of thinking simply because it’s a hung parliament. If we think that the only time to let Parliament function properly is if there’s a majority for the government, then it’s a sad state of affairs for our democracy.

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Roundup: Poisoning the free market well

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Last week, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning stated that conservatives across the country need to get their acts together when it comes to real environmental plans – but then made the boggling case that the Liberals and NDP had “poisoned” the notion of carbon prices, so those were off the table. I can barely even. Stephen Harper called for carbon pricing in the form of a cap-and-trade system when Stéphane Dion was calling for a carbon tax, until Harper decided that doing nothing was preferable to the actual decent plan that he had a hand in developing. For Manning to blame the Liberals and NDP for poisoning the well is more than a little rich – particularly considering that you have a center-left party adopting free market principles in carbon pricing, which you would think would overjoy a small-c conservative. But no.

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Meanwhile, the story about those conservative premiers who signed a Memorandum of Understanding about developing Small Modular Reactors? Well, it turns out that the MOU is basically about declaring interest in the hopes of forcing the federal government to invest in their research and development – so that they don’t have to put any of their own dollars up front. Add to that the temptation for them to treat this as a form of technosalvation – that they can cite it as the excuse for why they’re not doing more to reduce emissions in the short-term – and it all looks very much to be a big PR exercise. (Look surprised!)

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Roundup: Pride vs St. Patrick’s Day

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Andrew Scheer’s new deputy leader, Leona Alleslev, started off her new role with a bang this weekend by doing the media rounds, and when asked about Scheer’s continued refusal to attend Pride parades, Alleslev responded with “Have we asked anybody if they marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade?”

Oh no she better don’t!

Alleslev apologised several hours later, but by then you had a lot of Conservatives completely outraged that this was the kind of thing that was going to lose them the next election (and renewing the calls for Scheer’s resignation). While the point was made that she shouldn’t have needed to apologise because it was Scheer’s lines she was parroting, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone would have even for a second thought that there was an equivalence to the two. And Scheer’s own campaign communications director started a lengthy tweet thread to show all the various ways in which Scheer paid lip service to every religious and cultural event out there – except Pride, which is something that speaks volumes.

Alleslev also went on to insinuate that those who raised questions about Scheer’s leadership – and the numbers are growing, as are the profile of raising those questions – are somehow being “disloyal” to the party. And this irritates me, because this notion that parties are supposed to be personality cults for leaders is toxic and antithetical to how our system operates. The leader is not the party. The party is more than the person who leads it at any one moment, and it would be great if everyone could get on the same page about this because it’s kind of embarrassing for everyone who is carrying on otherwise.

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