Tag Archives: Annamie Paul

Roundup: A debasing “debate” on inflation

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Because sometimes this is a media criticism blog, I find myself outraged at the hack job that Power & Politics has been doing on this bullshit story about inflation, and it’s turned to being completely irresponsible. Yesterday was a perfect example of how shows like this are more interested in horserace bullshit than they are in economics, and lo, for an MP panel, the host wanted each party to give a single example of how their party would tackle inflation, even if it’s a complex issue, and lo, each MP gave a pitch to their party’s platform. Nothing about monetary policy and the Bank of Canada and its mandate – nothing. Just parties serving up their talking points to one another. So enlightening! Later, during the “Power Panel,” said host kept saying “we’re not going to talk about monetary policy” when talking about inflation, and that makes about as much sense as talking about climate change while declaring you’re not going to talk about GHG emissions. It’s kind of central to the point.

More to the point, the show – and several other outlets – used a truncated quote from Justin Trudeau to frame his response in a misleading way. To wit, the question he was asked by Bloomberg:

 You mentioned the Bank of Canada’s mandate, that mandate is expiring at the end of this year. If re-elected, the review, or the extension of the mandate is probably the first big economic policy decision you will make after the election. There is some talk of allowing the Bank of Canada to make some tweaks to its mandate to give it the flexibility to tolerate higher inflation and help the economy a little bit more at this difficult time. Do you have a position on the mandate? Would you support a slightly higher tolerance for inflation?

And Trudeau’s answer:

I don’t know. When I think about the biggest, most important economic policy that this government, if re-elected, would move forward, you’ll forgive me if I don’t think about monetary policy. You’ll understand that I think about families. When we first got elected in 2015, the very first thing we did was raise taxes on the wealthiest one per cent so we could lower them for the middle class. Similarly, if re-elected, the Liberal government will continue to invest in supports for families, for students, for seniors. Investing in housing, because we know that it is not right that so many people right here in the Lower Mainland and indeed across the country can’t afford their first home. We know that these are the policies that make a difference in the growth of our country, in the jobs people get, and the opportunities people have to grow and prosper. That is what we will stay focused on.

The clear implication is that he’s not focused on the Bank of Canada’s mandate, but on his own affordability agenda. But all anyone picked up on was “I don’t think about monetary policy,” and turning that into him being flip, and the host of P&P went so far as to compare it to Trudeau saying that budgets balance themselves – itself a truncated quote, where the original line, when asked about a commitment to balancing the budget, was: “The commitment needs to be a commitment to grow the economy and the budget will balance itself.” Which is true. Erin O’Toole is making the same pledge in his platform.

While I yelled at the TV over Twitter, my reply column filled up with assertions that the show was in the tank for the Conservatives, or that they were out to get Trudeau, but that’s not really the case. They’re not really in the tank for anyone – they want to get clips that will generate headlines and simplistic narratives, and that’s why they ask inflammatory questions designed to give explosive answers, and why they truncate quotes to be as sensational as possible. Part of this is the current host’s fault – she’s a reporter who is geared toward getting a “gold quote” out of people rather than a nuanced understanding of the situation. A bigger problem is the people who produce the show, who are more concerned with partisan talking heads giving simplistic and facile responses than actually understanding what is going on, and they’ve chosen the laziest, least-effort format to fill air time and generate some kind of spark of interest, which is usually partisans sniping at one another. Yes, it’s a big problem for our civic literacy, and it hurts our media literacy as well. Nobody was served by the “debate” on inflation, particularly as there was no context to what it was about, or what monetary policy means, and all it did was make everyone dumber. This kind of “journalism” has become a scourge.

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Roundup: Paul’s disqualifying blunder

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It was not a good day for civic literacy or basic constitutional knowledge on the campaign trail, as Green Party leader Annamie Paul suggested that the Governor General “reinvoke” Parliament to hold an emergency debate on the situation in Afghanistan, and worse, cited a section out of the Emergencies Act to make it happen, and my head nearly exploded from the sheer stupidity of it all.

First of all, and this is crucial – the Governor General does not have that power. She has already dissolved Parliament. She can’t un-dissolve it with the stroke of a pen, and there is no mechanism to “reinvoke” Parliament, not even under the Emergencies Act. Parliament has been dissolved. There is nothing to recall in order to hold a debate, which again, is a useless gesture in the current situation. The most that would happen is that MPs would read speeches into the record for about five hours, and that’s it. Paul is perfectly welcome to read a twenty-minute speech to the media if she so chooses, and it would have exactly the same effect as an “emergency debate” would in the House of Commons (and I do use the term loosely). More to the fact, this is not a situation for which the Emergencies Act could be invoked, because it is not a national emergency in any shape or form. Additionally, the section she cites says that Parliament needs to be recalled at its earliest opportunity, even if it’s been dissolved – in which case it means as soon as there’s a new parliament that can be convened.

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The fact that we have another party leader who is just pulling this out of her ass is bad enough, but she’s also a lawyer and should know better (and this goes doubly for Jagmeet Singh, as he too is a lawyer, and has been inventing powers for the Governor General). The fact that you can’t recall a dissolved Parliament is basic civics – and the fact that she doesn’t know this and is trying to issue demands to the Governor General should be disqualifying. It’s a complete embarrassment – but you wouldn’t know it if you watched the CBC, who glossed over the whole incident and didn’t mention it during their roundup of the day’s speeches. (We had other reporters covering themselves in glory today by asking the prime minister who was in charge during the election. No, seriously). An utter farce all around. This is why we can’t have nice things.

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Roundup: O’Toole wants intervenor status

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Yesterday morning, Erin O’Toole declared that he would seek intervenor status at the Federal Court in the dispute between the House of Commons and the Public Health Agency of Canada over the disclosure of classified documents. Apparently, he believes that he has a “distinct perspective” on the underlying issues raised by the case, which is…a bit novel considering that his press release was a partisan document that was not about legal arguments but rather about political calculus.

As a reminder, the process was triggered because under the Canada Evidence Act – which Parliament passed – says that when requests for secret or confidential documents are made to a government entity like PHAC, they must notify the Attorney General, and that triggered a process by which said Attorney General sought clarity from the Federal Court – does the Canada Evidence Act and its limitations supersede or otherwise restrict Parliament’s privileges in demanding documents and the production of papers as they see fit, given that they are ostensibly the highest court in the land. Plenty of people have tried to make this a partisan issue – O’Toole most especially among them – rather than a process where everyone is following the law, and the law conflicts with Parliamentary privilege.

I half-suspect that in this case, the Federal Court may not grant O’Toole standing, given that he has pretty much stated that this is going to be an attempt at electoral grandstanding inside of a court room, which the Court would be hesitant to do. Beyond that, his statement in the press release doesn’t actually make sense – the request to present the documents will die when Parliament is dissolved, and the special committee that demanded the documents ceases to exist. Beyond that, if he forms government, he won’t need to release the documents because he’d be able to read them in secret, thus eliminating the possibility that releasing them might compromise our Five Eyes obligations, or inadvertently compromise a foreign intelligence source (though I am not convinced this is a national security or intelligence issue, but rather more likely one of an RCMP investigation into policy breaches). Not to mention, the documents were released, both in a redacted form to the committee, and in an unredacted form to NSICOP, and the Conservatives want someone else to do the redacting who doesn’t have national security experience. I have a hard time discerning just what “distinct perspective” he has other than scoring points, given that the Speaker will be exercising his role in protecting the privileges of the Commons, and he doesn’t need O’Toole’s help for that.

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Roundup: What open nominations?

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Do you remember when the Liberals considered themselves the party of open nominations? And how they were always going to uphold the democratic right of riding associations to run fair, open and transparent processes to select the candidates that would appear on the ballot for them? Because apparently the party has put this particular bit of democracy, openness and transparency down the memory hole as they continue to acclaim candidates from across the country. In two of these cases, the acclamations came a mere day after the incumbents announced that they weren’t running again, and in one of those ridings – Kanata-Carleton – there was the making of a contested nomination as rumours swirled that Karen McCrimmon wasn’t going to run again, and the riding association was frustrated that they couldn’t get any kind of answer from the party on how and when to run said contested nomination.

Now, the party is going to defend its honour by pointing out that their rules state that they can declare a state of “electoral urgency” to bypass the nomination process, but this is more of the Liberals’ penchant of letting the ends justify the means. They created the rules that were easily gamed, and frankly, the “electoral urgency” clause is a load of bullshit because they were using it in 2019 in the months before the election when they knew they had four years to have this process ongoing because there was a fixed election date under a majority parliament, so there were no surprises. Yes, the pandemic has made nomination races tougher because of public health restrictions, and the party has come under fire for using a verification system that includes facial recognition technology (which BC’s privacy commissioner is investigating, per that province’s laws), but again, these were things that the party should have been cognisant of and dealing with rather than simply wringing their hands and pulling the “electoral urgency” alarm to fast-track their hand-picked candidates, thwarting local democracy, and accountability.

Open nominations are one of the most important and fundamental building blocks of our democratic system. When parties flout those rules, it hurts the entire system – especially as it cements even more power in the leaders’ offices. That the Liberals are so blatantly ignoring their own supposed values in this crucial stage of the democratic process is a sign that the way the party rewrote their constitution to fit the Trudeau era is a very real problem that they are going to have to do a lot of soul-searching to address, especially when that age comes to its inevitable end.

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Roundup: Just the Speaker doing his job

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We got our first glimpse at the court documents related to the challenge of the House of Commons’ order demanding the production of secret documents related to the firing of the two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, put in his submission that the case should be tossed because of Parliamentary privilege, and there was no explicit waiving of parliamentary privilege under the Canada Evidence Act, which is what the Public Health Agency is following in refusing to turn over unsecured documents. As a reminder, they have turned over the documents, both in redacted form to the committee that requested them, and in unredacted form to NSICOP, which has appropriate security clearances and safeguards, so it’s not like this is a blanket refusal to defy Parliament – it’s that they have their own obligations to follow. It’s also somewhat problematic that the committee wants the Commons’ Law Clerk to then redact the documents on his own, without appropriate training or context, so they ultimately claim they’re not looking for unredacted documents – only for someone else to do the redacting, at which point this is just becoming absurd.

The way this is being spun is also somewhat irritating – because this was a Canadian Press wire story, outlets who ran the piece sometimes did so with altered headlines that stated that it was the Liberals interfering with the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commons rather than the government, which is not really true. This isn’t a partisan issue – it’s different parts of the government acting according to the laws that Parliament passed. When the demands were made, PHAC was bound in legislation to inform the Attorney General, and while it is the same physical person as the minister of justice, under his Attorney General hat, he had obligations to follow the law and test these demands in Court.

The other commentary that is somewhat maddening is people pointing out that the Speaker is somehow going against his party in doing his job as Speaker in defending the Commons’ privileges. Again, this isn’t actually a partisan issue on either side (well, the Conservatives making these demands for the documents, with the support of the other opposition parties, are behaving in an extremely partisan manner and trying to embarrass the government, but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of what we’re discussing). Trying to make it a partisan issue when everyone is doing their jobs is just degrading the discourse and muddying the understanding of what is going on (which is what certain parties would like to happen because it makes it easier for them to lie about the state of play). We shouldn’t be doing their dirty work for them.

Programming Note: I’m taking the next week off (as much as I am able), because it’s probably my only opportunity in advance of the possible election, and I really don’t want to have to deal with election coverage while battling burnout. Take care, and I’ll see you on the far side of the long weekend.

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Roundup: Subjecting a minister to a double standard

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I found myself bemused at the CBC story yesterday about Carolyn Bennett’s office allegedly being some kind of “toxic work environment,” according to a number of former staffers. Reading the piece, however, says little about Bennett herself – other than hammering on the point that she didn’t get along with Jody Wilson-Raybould, as though that were somehow relevant to her office – but rather that the toxicity was related to other staffers in the office who were clannish and played favourites with other staffers. The story made great pains to say that Indigenous staff felt their voices weren’t being heard on policy files, but again, this is about the behaviors of other staffers and not the minister herself.

This all having been said, I am forced to wonder whether anyone could reasonably expect a minister’s office to be some kind of normal office environment, because I can’t really see it. These places are pressure cookers of constant deadlines and stress, and there’s a reason why they tend to be populated by fairly young staffers, many of them recent graduates, which is because they are willing to put up with the long hours, constant travel, and the obliteration of their personal lives where older staffers with families and obligations largely wouldn’t. And while we can say we’d prefer that these offices are healthy work environments and safe spaces, but this is politics at the highest levels in this country. It’s not going to be pretty, as much as we may like it to be.

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I also think it bears noting that Bennett has been the subject of a lot of criticism that is never given to male ministers, and in particular with the dust-up over her snarky text message with Wilson-Raybould a few weeks ago, seems subject to a double standard that women in ministerial roles are not allowed to have personality conflicts where this, again, is not even blinked at among men. Under this context, the CBC piece looks to be both catering to these double-standards, and looking like they have an axe to grind with Bennett, for whatever the reason.

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Roundup: Carney out, no need to panic

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To the dismay of the bulk of the pundit class, Mark Carney says he has other climate-related commitments and won’t be running for a seat in the next election. In response, Pierre Poilievre tweeted that Carney is afraid of running because Trudeau will cause a financial meltdown, and Carney will try to blame it on Freeland. It’s just so stupid, and yet this is the state of public discourse in this country.

To be clear, there is no financial meltdown going to happen. Yes, there are challenges that need to be addressed, but let’s be real here.

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Roundup: The Languages Commissioner goes rogue

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We appear to have another Independent Officer of Parliament who has decided to go rogue, as the Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, has announced that he plans to investigate the nomination process that selected Mary Simon as Governor General, given her lack of French. There are, of course, a whole host of problems with this, starting with the fact that the GG is not a federal bureaucrat and is not included in the Official Languages Act. Her office in Rideau Hall is certainly subject to the Act, and there is no question it will operate bilingually, but Simon herself is not. Furthermore, she is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister, and the advice that he gets from his appointments committee (as problematic as the current structure may be) is non-binding.

Théberge, in that case, has decided that he’ll investigate the Privy Council Office for their role in supporting said committee and providing advice, which…is a stretch. A very, very big stretch. The whole sham investigation is already outside of his mandate, and more to the point, it is hugely colonial at that, and certainly not exactly befitting the stated goals of decolonization and reconciliation. (There is, of course, the matter of this government’s apparent hypocrisy in how it treated the appointment of Simon and how it treats the appointment of Supreme Court of Canada justices, but that is also not exactly something that Théberge could investigate).

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé enumerates these points, explains the role of convention versus legislation in these kinds of appointments, and most especially points to the fact that Théberge might want to better familiarize himself with the Constitution, given that the appointment didn’t violate any Act of Parliament. What a gong show.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1417267990790279174

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Roundup: Reprieve for Annamie Paul?

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After weeks of intense drama (sooo much drama), it looks like the Green Party’s federal council is finally going to back off on holding a vote to challenge Annamie Paul’s leadership, and possibly the review of her party membership as well. Nobody is saying what exactly went on, other than Paul will be holding a press conference in Toronto Centre at some point today, so we’ll see what she has to say for herself.

Meanwhile, one of Paul’s former leadership rivals has helped establish the Green Left, which promises to be a political organization but not a party, and it seems to be largely geared toward Green Party members in order to help them organize and push the party further toward eco-socialism. Whether there is any correlation between the two, or whether it’s simply coincidence, remains to be seen, but perhaps this sorry chapter in the Greens’ history may be drawing to a close – or at least transitioning to a new phase.

As for why this happened in the first place, I think part of the fault rests with how the Greens are structured, which is a hugely decentralized party that gives its leader very little power – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this certainly highlights some of the drawbacks of structure (and which other parties will use as a cautionary tale when it comes to demands that their own leaders relinquish their iron grip on power). But with the Greens, this particular problem is not just with the leader, but with much of their policy development process, which they have opened wide in the name of earning more democracy points, but leads to things like “men’s rights activists” writing swaths of their platform because it’s that open, and without much in the way of adult supervision. This is further compounded by having a leader who doesn’t have a seat, who isn’t planning on running in a winnable seat, and who doesn’t actually understand enough about what her own MPs are doing and how to communicate with them (thus driving one of them to cross the floor). There needs to be a better balance of grassroots empowerment and having a leader who has enough power to do things but is still beholden to the elected members (of which Paul is not one). You can’t just handwave and shout “democracy!” and not have any reasonable give-and-take in the process. Right now the balance is as absent in the Green Party as it is with the other mainstream parties – it’s just tipped in the opposite direction.

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Roundup: The “failure of negotiations” is nonsense

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It appears that the lack of seriousness around getting Bill C-6, which would ostensibly ban conversion therapy in Canada, through the Senate has reached its peak, as the Government Leader in the Senate, Senator Marc Gold, claims that negotiations have collapsed and he can’t bring the Senate back to deal with it. Which is nonsense. He has the power to petition the Speaker to recall the Chamber, and that request would almost certainly be granted. They can sit as long as necessary to pass the bill, and if they can’t get unanimous consent for hybrid sittings, well, by now most if not all Senators should be double-vaxxed and can attend in person. There are no actual impediments to them actually doing this.

Part of the problem is Gold himself – he doesn’t seem to grasp how the Senate works procedurally, and that he has a lot more power than he claims to. He also, for no good reason, proposed a date for the Senate to rise at the end of June when he could have kept it sitting into July with no actual problem. He also seems to be enamoured with the idea of agreeing on a timeline to pass the bill, which he doesn’t need, but ever since the Senate agreed to timelines around some major pieces of legislation in the previous parliament, there is a romance with doing this all the time in the Senate, which is unnecessary and in some cases counter-productive.

The other part of the problem is Justin Trudeau. And while it has been suggested that he has ordered Gold to let the bill die so that he can use it as a wedge in the election – frankly, the dynamics in the Senate don’t really support this line of reasoning – it’s more that Trudeau has a case of not-so-benign neglect when it comes to the Senate. By cutting it loose, so to speak, he gives it no mind rather than making it part of his strategy. There’s no reason why Gold is not a Cabinet minister who can answer for the government in the Chamber, rather than his current half-pregnant quasi-governmental role while still claiming independence, which doesn’t work in theory or practice. He clearly needs the support of PCO because he’s not able to do a reasonable enough job as it stands with what support he does get, and there frankly needs to be an actual government (meaning Cabinet) voice in the Chamber. But in insisting on “Senate independence,” Trudeau simply expects things to go through the Chamber and he can forget about it, which is a mistake.

Gold needs to fix this situation, and fast. If that means recalling the Senate in person, so be it. But claiming negotiations “collapsed” and he can’t do it is both untrue and against procedure. This is on him.

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