Tag Archives: Budget 2018

Roundup: The obtuse Atwal angles

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Because the Jaspel Atwal story refuses to go away, due to equal parts of inept messaging by the government and obtuseness on the parts of both the opposition and much of the media, it seems like we should dig into a few more aspects of it. If you haven’t yet, read John Ivison’s column that threads the needle on just what the senior bureaucrats were warning about with regard to the possibility of “rogue elements” in India’s government, and the invitation that MP Randeep Sarai extended to Atwal while Atwal was already in the country. If more people read this, we would have far fewer of the questions we’re hearing about how both “versions” of the incident can be true. And hey, people familiar with both Indian politics and security services are adding that this is more than plausible.

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In the meantime, opposition parties are trying to use their parliamentary tools to continue to make hay of this. Ralph Goodale got hauled before the national security committee yesterday, and he was unable to give very many answers – completely understandably – and suggested that MPs use the new National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians to discuss classified issues like this. It didn’t stop the opposition from trying to call the National Security Advisor to committee, but that was blocked. But as Stephanie Carvin points out below, MPs are not great at this kind of thing, and risk doing even more damage (and We The Media aren’t helping).

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In case you were wondering why the Conservatives dropped their planned Supply Day motion to try and wedge the government over support for a united India as a pretext to bash the Atwal issue some more, they faced an outcry of Sikhs in Canada and backed down (but are insisting that the motion is still on the Order Paper and can be debated on a future Supply Day).

In the meantime, India raised their tariffs on imports of pulses, and suddenly every single Canadian pundit joined the Conservatives in blaming it on Trudeau’s India trip and the Atwal accusations. Not one of them noted that India is having a bit of a domestic crisis with its farmers, and there is a global glut of pulse crops, which is depressing prices (for which India is trying to boost domestic production). But why look for facts when you can try to wedge it into a narrative you’ve already decided on? Cripes.

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QP: Trying to start a different conspiracy theory

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Thursday post-budget, and most of the leaders were away, off to sell their own version of what it contained. That led Lisa Raitt to lead off, asking about the tariffs on steel and aluminium that President Trump levied earlier today. François-Philippe Champagne said that they were sorting out the situation and any tariffs were unacceptable. Raitt moved onto the Jaspel Atwal issue and the spectre of a diplomatic rift with India, to which Kirsty Duncan stood up and recited the well-worn talking points about the invitation being rescinded and defending the integrity of public servants. Raitt worried that Canada was becoming a laughing stock, and Duncan recited about their respect for the work of public servants and national security agencies. Alain Rayes took over in French, and Duncan repeated the former talking points. Rayes demanded an explanation, but Duncan re-read the praise for the public service. Ruth Ellen Brosseau led for the NDP, concern trolling around the details around the pharmacare announcement. Bill Morneau said they were looking for expert advice to figure out how best to get pharmaceutical drugs to Canadians who need them. Brosseau switched to French to raise the concerns by groups that Morneau was somehow in a conflict of interest around those discussions because his former company administers benefit plans, but Morneau reiterated his previous response in French. Peter Julian took over to ask the very same thing, and this time Morneau got in a zinger about the NDP and Pierre Poilievre’s lack of expertise on this policy. Julian railed about Morneau Shepell, and this time Ginette Petitpas Taylor praised the work done on the file to date and that this would carry it forward.

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Roundup: The perverse state of party leaders

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Amid a bunch of bad puns by headline writers yesterday, seven out of ten Bloc MPs quit caucus because they can’t work with their leader, Martine Ouellet. Her demands that they push sovereignty above all else rankled too many, who felt their jobs as MPs were to represent Quebec’s interests in Ottawa boiled over, and they left to sit as a quasi-independent caucus (insisting that they still, deep down, belong to the Bloc) for the time being. It’s a move that some recall as being similar to when a number of Alliance MPs walked out of their caucus over dissatisfaction with Stockwell Day’s leadership, and they never really came back until the whole Conservative Party unification happened and Stephen Harper became leader.

This point that Coyne makes is exactly right. If things were running the way they should, someone from caucus would be the leader, and it would be the caucus selecting him or her, not the membership, and it would be the caucus who removes him or her. If Ouellet had an ounce of shame, she’d resign in the face of this revolt (as bad leaders like Alison Redford did once a mere two MLAs went public). But things are not running well. Rheal Fortin, the party’s former interim leader, went on Power Play and yet didn’t say that she should step down which is insane (though Gilles Duceppe did). Parties don’t serve leaders – leaders should serve the party. MPs shouldn’t be drones to serve a popularly elected leader, with all of the initiative of a battle droid. This perverse state of affairs is poisoning our parliamentary democracy, and it should stop. Ouellet should resign and mind her own affairs in the legislature that she already has a seat in, rather than trying to straddle both, and the Bloc should just choose a leader from their own ranks – Fortin was already doing the job, no reason he can’t go back to doing it.

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QP: Atwal evasions

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With all of the leaders present for the proto-PMQ day, it was no doubt going to be wall-to-wall Jaspel Atwal questions instead of questions about yesterday’s budget, given the way that the news cycle is moving. Jim Eglinski led off, strangely enough, and he recounted being on the scene as an RCMP officer after Atwal’s attempted assassination in the 1980s, and wondered why the PM would associate with Atwal. Justin Trudeau reminded him that the invitation never should have been made and it was rescinded. Andrew Scheer got up next, and asked about the Indian government rejecting the notion that elements of the Indian government put Atwal up to it. Trudeau grabbed a script, and read about their respect for public servants and the advice they give. Scheer railed about Trudeau’s “incompetence,” and this time Trudeau went off the cuff about the Harper Conservatives going negative and torquing the public service for partisan advantage. Scheer tried again, louder, and Trudeau assured him that his government would never use public servants in such a manner. Scheer gave it one last shot, demanding answers on the media briefing that was organised, but Trudeau noted that governments organise media briefings all the time. Guy Caron was up next, expressing his dislike of the budget, and Trudeau got a script to read of all the great things in the budget. Caron railed about the plan to means-test pharmacare, and Trudeau read about how these measures built on actions over the last two years to make prescription drugs more affordable. Hélène Laverdière was up next to worry about the possible diplomatic harm caused with the India trip, and Trudeau, off the cuff, reiterated his previous points about trusting national security agencies. Laverdière wondered what the point of the trip was, and Trudeau read off the good news talking points related to the investments that resulted from the trip.

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Roundup: Gender Budget Breakdown

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The great gender-based budget has landed, and aside from the gender aspects, consensus seems to be that it’s not terribly ambitious – but that’s not suprising for a budget that is a year out from an election year. And it does help Bill Morneau list off a few more promises fulfilled amidst modest spending, which has been tempered by the economic uncertainty on the horizon. Debt-to-GDP and the deficit continue to fall, but there are concerns that the revenue projections may be a bit too rosy.

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In more specifics, here is a look at how it delivered on the gender front, including pay equity and paternity leave, and even more money for the RCMP to properly investigate sexual assault claims that were deemed “unfounded.” There is more money for Indigenous communities, and more for science and innovation. As expected, there is a commitment to study universal pharmacare to be headed by former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, but there were no dollars attached to the project. (The NDP, not surprisingly, are not convinced by the exercise). There’s more money for cyber-security and CSE, but nothing about new fighters or warships (but then again, DND has a procurement capacity bottleneck right now, so perhaps it’s for the best that they’re not piling on new promises). It also contains some $16 million over the next two years to find a new payroll system to replace the Phoenix gong show. The rules for how private corporations will be taxed have been made clearer. There is the expected $50 million over five years for local journalism (to be distributed by one or more independent, non-governmental organizations). And hey, there is also $73 million for the new Ottawa Public Library/Library and Archives Canada joint facility.

Canadian Press has reaction statements of various leaders and stakeholder groups. Maclean’s has compiled some lists as well: fifteen ways it affects your wallet, the eight biggest winners, five ways in which the budget helps families, and six ways it could help shrink the gender pay gap. The Financial Post looks at all the small items that may have escaped your notice.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert looks at how the budget positions the Liberals ahead of the 2019 election. Susan Delacourt notes how much of the budget reflects the tough year that Morneau endured. Andrew Coyne delivers a scathing rebuke of the budget and its social justice aspirations in lieu of economic ones.

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Roundup: Brown out…again

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After all of that drama, Patrick Brown is out of the leadership race…again. But the speculation around it took over the news cycle for the day. Not that there wasn’t some other news on that front – it was confirmed that the province’s integrity commissioner was investigating Brown for allegedly failing to disclose all of his income sources, and further stories came out about his attempts to bigfoot two particular nomination races, at least one of which is currently being investigated by police.

But in the end, Brown did withdraw, penning a four-page letter citing his reasons.

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In the aftermath of it all, Jen Gerson examines Brown’s weakness of character and lack of ability to maintain the confidence of his caucus, which doomed him in the end. And along the way, she also came to the conclusion that Andrew Coyne and I are right about the fact that the way we choose our leaders is broken, and it’s time to get back to caucus selection. David Reevely, meanwhile, recaps all of the various revelations about Brown over the past weeks, and notes the things he’s not disputing that are just as alarming as the things he is.

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QP: Who ordered a conspiracy theory?

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While Justin Trudeau was back in the country following his week in India, he was not, however, present for QP today, nor was Andrew Scheer. That left Candice Bergen to lead off, asking if it was the PMO’s contention that the government of India conspired to ensure Jasper Atwal’s attendance at the PM’s visit. Ralph Goodale said that while he can’t comment on individual security arrangements, the system works well. Bergen asked if the PMO arranged the for the national security advisor to brief media about the supposed plot around Atwal, but Goodale said that the invitation never should have been given and it was rescinded. Bergen tried a third time, but Goodale did not vary his response. Pierre Paul-Hus tried again in French, adding a level of insinuation about the PM loving terrorists, but Goodale stuck to his points, and again once more on Paul-Hus’s second attempt. Guy Caron was up next, levelling new accusations about KPMG around the Isle of Man, but Diane Lebouthillier responded that she was at meetings last week around tax evasion and had set up a meeting in Canada for further steps. Caron demanded to know if any tax-fighting measures were in the budget, and Lebouthillier responded that access to data is essential in the fight against tax evasion, which they have now that they didn’t years ago. Hélène Laverdière wondered what the point of the India trip was, and Kirsty Duncan assured her that they came back with renewed ties and $1 billion in investment. Laverdière lit into the list of irritants with India that went unresolved, but Duncan’s response was the same.

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Roundup: Conference call confidential

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Over the weekend, Jen Gerson got a big scoop for Maclean’s, which was the first of the two Ontario Progressive Conservative caucus conference calls that eventually led to Patrick Brown’s resignation. (If you haven’t read the piece, do so now because I’m going to spoil it a bit). When it turned out that Brown himself was listening in, along with some of his remaining staff, it turned into a bunch of pleading (and whinging) while those caucus members who were on the call (about 20 of the 28 in total) were united in the fact that Brown had to step down right away, or they were going to publicly call for it, and Brown kept insisting that for the sake of his dignity, he wanted to meet them all the following morning and resign afterward. None of the caucus were having this because they were already being blasted over social media, and by the time everyone from caucus could get to Toronto and meet the following day, it was going to be too late for the sake of the party’s image in the run up to an election.

This is an interesting point, but I think this is an instance where the credibility of allegations comes into play. While CTV did have to walk back on a couple of the details, the core allegations remain intact and as soon as they were published, reporters from various outlets began remarking that this was an open secret, and that they had all been working on their own stories about Brown but that CTV had beaten them to the punch. That most of Brown’s campaign staff immediately jumped ship also indicated that there was a certain credibility to the allegations – this had to be more than just “fake news” and baseless allegations designed to get him out of the way. That context matters in the wake of the social media discussion.

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This tension, which I talked about not only in my Maclean’s piece but also in my book, is part of the problem with the way parties are run these days, where the elected members of caucus are treated as afterthoughts to the leader, even though they have very real concerns of their own. While none of the discussions recorded on this call seemed to have ventured into the territory of “we can’t do this because the members elected him,” that became the narrative once it happened by those who resented caucus making the push. Granted, several of Brown’s MPPs started tweeting that they were calling for his resignation before he pulled the plug, and usually it only takes one or two caucus members to go public before a leader with any modicum of shame does the right thing, though I’m not sure that Brown had quite enough shame to want to go out with enough dignity, and his pleading to be given until the next day was likely an attempt to forestall the inevitable. It’s all fascinating how it played out, but remains part of the object lesson in why our leadership selection needs to change.

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Roundup: Beyak’s website battle

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Unaffiliated Senator Lynn Beyak is preparing to go to war over her website on Monday. A motion had been moved in the Senate by Independent Senator Kim Pate to have Beyak’s website removed from Senate servers because of the letters that she posted on there, some of which have been deemed racist. Beyak is going to argue that if the motion passes, her privileges will be violated as it will impede her ability to do her job because she can’t inform her constituents about her work or to “address the concerns and opinions of all Canadians.”

For starters, I think Pate’s attempt to remove Beyak’s site is a bit of a stretch, given that Beyak isn’t posting anything that rises to the level of criminal hate speech (despite what her critics may say). The Senate places a great deal of value on free speech, most especially for its members, so it will be very difficult for them to make the case that Beyak should be denied it because she holds some objectionable views. Gods know that there have been plenty of abhorrent views expressed by other senators in the past about other minorities (thinking in particular about one senator’s views about the LGBT community), and she was not censured by the Chamber in any way. While there are different players in the Senate currently and this is the “era of reconciliation,” I still think that there is an uphill battle to take down Beyak’s site.

The other thing is that it would take very little effort for Beyak to port her website onto a different server, and just have a link from her Senate bio page, as many other senators have done, where there is simply a disclaimer next to it saying that it’s not an official Senate site. In other words, Pate’s measures are pretty much symbolic only, which may be fine on the surface, but won’t actually addess the real issues with Beyak’s views, or her promotion of views that are objectionable. Is this a battle worth having? I guess we’ll see.

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Roundup: Getting a second opinion on the dominant narrative

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It was a day full of Canadian pundits pontificating about Indian politics around Justin Trudeau’s trip, whether it’s around his use of traditional garb, the “snubs” by Indian politicians, and then the issue with Jaspal Atwal being invited to that reception. While MP Randeep Sarai has taken responsibility for Atwal’s invitation, the dominant narrative was that someone in PMO had to have known who he was, or that they somehow overrode the kinds of screening that the RCMP or CSIS would have put in place for an event like this. That, of course, got blown out of the water when media actually talked to security sources who said that they had no capacity to vet the 700 or so people invited to this event, so there went that theory. And yes, the Atwal thing is bad, and according to an Indo-American journalist that I spoke to about this, that probably set back Indo-Canadian relations by years, so well done MP Sarai. “Senior government officials” are also now pushing the theory that “rogue elements” in India’s government facilitated this, possibly to embarrass Canada for being “soft” on Sikh separatist extremists, so we’ll see if that compounds any damage.

First of all, if you did not do so yesterday, please take the time to read Kevin Carmichael’s look at the trip, and in particular how pack journalism narratives have formed, but he makes very relevant points about the political dynamics and the regional politics of India that the Canadian media is completely ignoring. My Indo-American friend made a few other observations about the coverage that we’re seeing, which is that he’s not actually being treated poorly over there, and it’s more that certain politicians and business leaders don’t want to be associated with members of the Indian Cabinet, which is controversial in large swaths of Indian society. As for the focus on Trudeau’s wardrobe, most of it is coming from the intellectual, international elite of India, who resent outsiders exoticising India, but the fact that Trudeau is allegedly wearing Indo-Canadian designers will garner plenty of positive reaction. She also added that the inside joke is that Indians outside of India have terrible taste, and are over the top and garish, but it’s also related to their own class stratification. Even tweets coming from verified accounts means that they’re coming from the social elite of India, and that journalism and public intellectualism in India, especially in Delhi, is oriented to socialites. So what Trudeau is doing will play incredibly well with many aspects of the stratified society. As for the Atwal issue, there will likely be competing narratives in India between the bureaucratic incompetence that allowed him into the country in the first place, tempered with “gloating over how a first-world country screwed up.” Regardless, I’m glad I reached out to get a different perspective on how this trip is playing out, because I’m not confident in the image being put forward by the Canadian punditocracy.

Meanwhile, back in the Canadian media sphere, Éric Grenier notes that the trip is likely a defensive action to bolster Liberal support in Indo-Canadian-heavy ridings, especially to counter Jagmeet Singh’s arrival on the political scene. Murad Hemmadi notes that the international press seems to have gotten over its crush on Trudeau, while Paul Wells gives a not wholly underserved whacking at the Liberal government over their handling of this trip (though I do note that many of Wells’ points would handily fall into the groupthink that may not actually reflect what will play on the ground in India).

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