Tag Archives: Budget 2019

Roundup: Philpott has more to tell, but won’t

Posted on by

The day, which was already off to a cranky start for most MPs who were voting all night, got an early, crankier start – for the Liberals, in any case – as a bombshell interview with Jane Philpott was released, in which she stated that there was more to the Double-Hyphen Affair story that needed to be told. But…she’s not going to do it. Oh, and by the way, she has no leadership ambitions, so this isn’t about that. And that was pretty much throwing a cat among the pigeons in the Commons, as suddenly the Conservatives started waving this interview about as further ammunition in their so-called protest vote-a-thon to “let her speak” (never mind that the votes have absolutely nothing to do with this Affair in any way, shape or form). And as the day wore on, other nonsense crept in, such as the Liberals fumbling a “shift change” during the votes and almost losing one of them. And incidentally, Philpott and Wilson-Raybould have been excused from the vote-a-thon, so as to not exacerbate any tensions with their sleep-deprived colleagues.

And it becomes increasingly more obvious that the way both Wilson-Raybould and Philpott are handling this is becoming a problem for all involved. Other MPs like John McKay and Judy Sgro vented by saying that if they’ve got something so important to say, that they should just raise it as a point of personal privilege in the Commons and get it over with. The former Law Clerk of the Commons, Rob Walsh, also said that they have absolute immunity in the Commons if they want to speak, and there would be no real consequences as they are no longer in Cabinet – except possibly being booted from caucus, and Trudeau reiterated that he was fine to let them stay in caucus because they’re okay with disagreement in the Liberal caucus. (He also insisted that Wilson-Raybould was not shuffled over the SNC-Lavalin DPA, yet again).

In hot takes, Matt Gurney says that Philpott is waving a red flag and we should hear what she has to say. Justice committee chair Anthony Housefather gives his reflections of what the committee heard, but also cautions that they are not a legal process and can’t be expected to behave like one. Susan Delacourt, however, is running out of patience with the drama, and notes that speaking truth to power isn’t acting like you’ve got a big secret you can be coy about. If it’s that important, then they should take any advantage they have and say what it is.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1108917885676601344

Continue reading →

Roundup: Caucus drama and another vote-a-thon

Posted on by

Yesterday was another non-stop day of shenanigans and ongoing fallout from the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair, so let’s walk through it. The day began with caucus meetings, and on the way into Liberal caucus, Justin Trudeau stated that he was satisfied that Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott wanted to still work for the Liberal cause, so he would let them stay in caucus – though apparently Philpott got something of a rough ride from her fellow Liberals, according to various sources. Nearby, Andrew Scheer opened the door to the media for a speech about how terrible the budget was, except it was the same kind of jejune talking points that we’ve come to expect, such as how these deficits were terrible, unsustainable, and would lead to future tax increases – all of which are objectively untrue given that the deficit is actually small, sustainable, and with a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, will not require future tax increases. Because remember, a federal budget is nothing like a household budget, and people should be smacked for comparing them. Scheer also told some complete falsehoods about the deficit (detailed in this thread by Josh Wingrove), and it wouldn’t be his first lie of the day – his whole shtick during QP was another complete falsehood about parliamentary procedure.

Just before QP, there were more developments – Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes decided to quit caucus, and later cited that her tweet and subsequent interview about her tense meetings with the PM around her departure led to unintended consequences “for those she cares about,” and she felt it best to sit as an independent for the remainder of the session. Also, the CEO of SNC-Lavalin said that he never said that 9000 jobs were in danger – but if you also recall the testimony from committee, that seemed to stem from a memo from the department of finance, and there is also a hell of a lot of nuance to this figure of the 9000 jobs and what is at stake for SNC-Lavalin (thread here). And then not long after QP, the Conservatives started their vote-a-thon as a “protest” about the handling of the Double-Hyphen Affair, during which they again made the tactically inept decision to vote against all of them, opening themselves up to all manner of Liberal social media about all the good and necessary funding that they “threatened.” The Liberals, meanwhile, went into full drama queen mode and got cots put into the space behind the House of Commons so that MPs rotating off of votes can nap (which the Conservatives tried to mock in their own tweets). It’s all so very stupid.

In related news, Bill Morneau’s chief of staff, Ben Chin, denies he did anything wrong in talking to Jody Wilson-Raybould’s chief of staff at the time, saying there’s nothing wrong with staffers talking to staffers. Michael Chong is also trying to keep his hot garbage Reform Act in the news by saying that it would be illegal for Justin Trudeau to kick anyone out of caucus without a vote (though that doesn’t appear to be an issue any longer). Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at how the procedural shenanigans could play out over the next few days.

Continue reading →

QP: French and feminism

Posted on by

After yesterday’s own-goal by the Conservatives, it was an open question as to whether we’d get more of the same for proto-PMQs. And just before things got underway, news broke that Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes decided to leave caucus to sit as an independent, so that got everyone salivating. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and he started off by reading how shocked and appalled Canadians were about the justice committee shutting down the Double-Hyphen Affair hearings, but rather than blast Trudeau, he asked the chair of the Ethics committee — one of his own MPs — if they would look into the matter. Bob Zimmer rose to say that he had received a request that was in order, and members were invited to submit proposed witnesses. Scheer then turned to Trudeau say that they had “just learned” the Ethics Committee would look I to the matter (which isn’t actually true – a letter does not mean there is an investigation until the whole committee votes on it, and the Liberals hold the majority on said committee), and wanted him to appear before it. Trudeau first noted International Day of the Francophonie, then stated that committees make their own decision. Scheer scoffed at that in French, demanding that key witnesses be allowed to appear, and Trudeau repeated his response in French. Scheer tried again in English, and Trudeau repeated his response in French, accusing the Conservatives of playing petty politics over things like the economy. Jagmeet Singh got up next and read a demand that all witnesses be heard before the next election. Trudeau again noted the Day of the Francophonie and reminded Singh that committees were masters of their own destiny, not the vehicles of party leaders. Singh then turned to rail about the inadequate pharmacare provisions in the budget, and Trudeau read a script about the pharmacare proposals. Singh, in French, read some condemnation of the housing provisions in the budget, and Trudeau again picked up a script to read all of the things they are doing for housing. Singh returned to English to demand more housing units, and Trudeau reiterated his points sans-script.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Traps and tantrums

Posted on by

Budget Day was a giant production, for a variety of reasons yesterday, starting with the long-awaited showdown at the Commons justice committee. Given that the Liberal members had released that letter the night before, we knew that they were going to wrap it all up – without a report, I might add – and on their way in this morning, they handed to the media a copy of the motion they were planning to move to start a new study on hate crimes (because this increasingly seems like what the Liberals want to fight the next election on). Well, this caused the opposition to storm out because that motion was supposed to be in camera (and we all know how much they’ve respected the notion that committee business be handled in camera of late), and then they came back and had their meeting, and the committee (read: Liberal majority) decided to end the study of the Double-Hyphen Affair.

This set the Conservatives off, and they warned that they would ensure that the budget was going to be delayed, mark their words, and they set up all manner of procedural trickery in which to do so. Except that the Liberals outplayed them, tabled the document just before 4 PM, right before the vote was being called that was intending to delay the budget speech, and then Bill Morneau marched out to the Foyer to start talking to all of the assembled media outlets and get his message out, while the opposition stayed in the Chamber to carry on their procedural shenanigans, to the point where they essentially held themselves hostage. When Morneau was able to give his speech, well over an hour later, the Conservatives did ensure that he was drowned out with noise so that he couldn’t be heard and that no clips were able to be captured for news media, but given how Morneau was doing the media rounds and Scheer wasn’t – indeed, after the fact, when he and his caucus marched out to the Foyer, they denounced the budget as a distraction from the Double-Hyphen Affair, and had nary a substantive comment on it. (Jagmeet Singh, incidentally, had the usual NDP talking points about how it wasn’t enough, but couldn’t really respond when pressed about specifics or implementation of their vision). So, take it for what you will, I’m not sure how well the Conservatives came across in the end yesterday, especially as Scheer walked right into Trudeau’s very obvious trap that about the Conservatives not wanting to talk about the economy.

Speaking of the budget, it was far more stimulus-heavy than I would have expected, but then again, targeting both seniors and millennials, and going some distance in doing more for skills training, though their housing affordability measures were weak sauce and will likely do nothing about the supply side of the issue (especially as they keep the focus on buying a home rather than simply having affordable housing writ large).

With that in mind:

  • The deficit will grow this year before shrinking again, but there is no path back to balance in the immediate future. (Debt-to-GDP continues to decline).
  • Here are the highlights for five key demographics.
  • Here are 23 key measures in the budget.
  • There was the start of Pharmacare, beginning with the Canadian Drug Agency to facilitate bulk buying – next steps coming with the Hoskins report.
  • Municipalities got a chunk of new funding (with shots taken at premiers who are holding up infrastructure agreements).
  • There are more funds earmarked for Indigenous services, not only with water but also child and family services.
  • The budget also outlines a plan to start targeting stock options for taxation as another way of soaking the wealthy.
  • There is a plan to start taxing cannabis products by the potency of their THC.
  • The budget has money to help veterans transition to civilian life, but doesn’t seem to have anything to deal with the disability backlog.
  • There was a big commitment on rural broadband, but implementation details remain fuzzy.
  • Here are ten things that may slip under the radar.
  • Here’s a fact-check of Morneau’s speech (but the sources could have been better selected).

In budget hot takes, Chris Selley calls it the budget of a government that is no longer selling utopia – just buying votes, whereas Alan Freeman simply calls it a “do no harm” budget. John Geddes details the spending surprises in the document, while Andrew Coyne grouses about the how there seems to be more concern over the quantity of spending over the quality of it, given there is nothing in the budget about things like productivity. Heather Scoffield takes note of the Liberals’ attempt to frame the budget as a response to anxieties – economic or otherwise – that Canadians are feeling. Kevin Carmichael cautions that there budget leaves very little wiggle room for economic downturns, given how sluggish growth already is. Paul Wells notes the sprinkling of spending throughout the document, and the big bomb for political journalists in there. There are also worthwhile threads from economist Kevin Milligan here and here.

Continue reading →

QP: Afraid of the economy

Posted on by

The the budget lock-up going on not far from the Hill, and the Conservatives looking to go into full procedural meltdown mode in response to this morning’s justice committee meeting. Andrew Scheer stood up to decry the committee meeting results, demanding to know what the prime minister was covering up. Justin Trudeau stood up and read a script saying that he took responsibility for the erosion of trust between his office and Jody Wilson-Raybould, that the committee heard testimony, that they gave an extraordinary waiver of confidence, and the decision was ultimately hers all along. Scheer disputed this in English, but Trudeau repeated his response sans-script in English. Scheer again disputed that Wilson-Raybould could not speak, and wondered why she wasn’t being allowed to “finish her story.” Trudeau insisted that he did waive the confidentiality so that she could speak fully, and called the Conservatives desperate to talk about anything other than the economy because they know it would show their plans failed. Scheer retorted that the PM was desperate to talk about anything other than this scandal, and repeated his demand. Trudeau repeated that the Conservatives didn’t want to talk about the economy because they didn’t have a plan. Scheer wondered what was so bad that the PM was trying to hide it, and Trudeau stuck to his insistence that the Conservatives were afraid to talk about the economy. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and he read that appointing Anne McLellan was a weak response to what happened, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau gave a pained performance about the NDP not standing up for workers, as the government was standing up for jobs and workers. Singh switched to French to list the resignations that happened in recent weeks before repeating his derision of McLellan, and Trudeau dismissed the talk of “politics” in favour of listing the good economics gains his government made. Singh, in French, remained sceptical of the appointment, and Trudeau wondered aloud what people in Quebec would think about Singh not caring about their jobs. Singh took another shot at McLellan in English, and Trudeau listed all the steps they took in order to make matters public.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Trudeau begins his Big Reset

Posted on by

Yesterday very much looked like the start of Justin Trudeau’s attempted Big Reset after the weeks of damage that the Double-Hyphen Affair has done to his reputation, starting with the appointment of Joyce Murray to Cabinet as the new Treasury Board president. Murray has been the parliamentary secretary for Treasury Board during the entire life of this government, has been pushing for a “greening of government” initiative within the department, and has a history of being someone who has gone offside with the rest of caucus on several occasions, thus her appointment could be seen as sending signals that Trudeau is open to disagreement. Following this was the announced retirement of Michael Wernick as Clerk of the Privy Council, citing that he couldn’t carry on in the role if he was no longer trusted by opposition parties on issues like his role around sounding the alarm regarding election interference. This doesn’t mean culpability for the Double-Hyphen Affair, but it is nevertheless part of the accountability process (and accountability, like democracy, is a process). Wernick will be replaced by Ian Shugart, who is currently the deputy minister of foreign affairs. (I’m also not convinced that this is the last of the staffing changes, and we may yet see more cleaning house in the PMO as a demonstration of doing something).

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107703758396350464

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107706802458624000

Minutes later, during Question Period, Trudeau announced that former justice minister Anne McLellan was named as a special advisor to the prime minister to examine aspects of what happened in the Affair, particularly as it relates to the dual roles of Justice Minister and Attorney General, and whether it’s time to separate the two. (She also backed out of a fundraiser for the Liberal Judy Lamarsh fund – which aims to help more women run for office – after taking on the new role). And then, after QP, Trudeau gave a rousing speech about condemning hatred and calling out white supremacy, and made some pointed digs at Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier for their winking and nudging of white nationalists without condemning their messages. All of this is working to change the narrative – things are being put into place to fix what happened, the speech sets Trudeau on a different rhetorical tone than Scheer – and sets out a huge contrast between the two, especially after Scheer’s insipid speech that followed – so we’ll see if the Liberals can capitalise on this, but the fact that Trudeau explicitly said in the speech that this was exactly the time for politics could be the signal that he wants to fight an election on this issue.

But that may be harder to do, given that the Liberal members of the justice committee put out a letter saying that they weren’t inclined to call Jody Wilson-Raybould back to testify further, stating that they’d heard enough and wanted to get on with the report, and let the other processes carry on. I will say that at least they put out a letter with reasoning in it – they simply could have gone in camera today and emerged saying they were going to focus on writing the report, and saying nothing more. You know, like the Conservatives frequently did when they were in power. It doesn’t look good for the Liberals, and feeds the Conservative narrative that they’re hiding something, but they may simply be trying to move on as quickly as possible. (Of course, there is no smoking gun here, and it’s a matter of determining credibility and finding the line of where pressure is deemed “inappropriate,” so that makes for a harder sell to keep this going as long as possible).

The Senate, meanwhile, is debating the motion to start their own study on the issue, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m not sure that the Conservatives in the Senate will get the Independents onside, as their performance during the inaugural televised Senate Question Period had the ISG leader tweeting right away that it was all about partisan posturing, but stranger things have happened.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107811059711119361

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1107813615136997376

Continue reading →

QP: Bringing in Anne McLellan

Posted on by

The news broke just before Question Period that Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick was retiring, and before things got underway, new MPs were shown in to take their places, including Jagmeet Singh, so now the NDP questions would no longer have to wedge his name into them. When things got underway, Andrew Scheer led off by first giving the prime minister the opportunity to address the shootings in New Zealand, auto which Justin Trudeau read a statement of sorrow, and made mention of the shooting in Utrecht earlier this morning. Scheer then switched to French to start up with question on the Double-Hyphen Affair, and wondered when the prime minister would “allow” the former Attorney General to speak at committee. Trudeau responded that because of the questions raised by this incident, he has appointed Anne McLellan as a special advisor to provide recommendations to the government. After the same question again in English, Scheer then raised Wernick’s retirement, and again demanded that Wilson-Raybould be allowed to speak. Trudeau read that he took responsibility for the erosion of trust between her and Butts, and that they already granted an unprecedented waiver, but the decision around prosecutions were always hers. Scheer tried one last time, and got the same response. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and after a brief statement about New Zealand, Singh demanded a commitment to building half a million new affordable homes. Trudeau first congratulated him on his election, before reading about the things they were doing to help Canadians and hoped he could count on the NDP’s support. Singh then switched to climate change and demanded an end to carbon tax exclusions for big emitters — shoeing he doesn’t understand the system. Trudeau responded with a memorised platitude about supporting the Middle Class™ while protecting the environment. Singh switched to French to worry about the OECD warning around SNC-Lavalin, to which Trudeau recited his lines about standing up for jobs. Singh repeated the question in English, and got much the same answer. 

Continue reading →

Roundup: Procedural warfare denied (for now)

Posted on by

If the Conservatives were hoping for procedural tactics to try and delay the budget speech on Tuesday, well, they were outplayed by the government, who used their ability to control the timing of those Estimates votes to Wednesday instead of Monday. If you recall, the plan was for the Conservatives to force line-by-line votes on the Supplementary Estimates, so that they could delay the budget speech, which I will also remind you is a tactically stupid move, and doesn’t prove any point. And yet here we are. This having been said, I fully expect them to try some kind of dilatory tactics including a privilege motion of some variety on Tuesday in order to move the budget speech, because they’ve tried it before in the past, but once again, we’re a long way from the times that people who were good at this kind of thing were in charge.

Meanwhile, you can expect the next two days to be replete with bleating admonishing that the Liberals are going to try to use a “shock and awe” budget to drown out the Double-Hyphen Affair, as though the past five weeks of breathless reporting will evaporate in a single night. Come on.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Musings from a non-committee member

Posted on by

It was another day of clutched pearls as Liberal MP Francis Drouin, who moved the motion at the stunt committee meeting on Wednesday to adjourn until the planned meeting next week, spoke to CBC about the fact that he thinks that they’ve heard enough and it’s time to move to the next phase of the committee. The problem? That Drouin isn’t actually a member of said committee, so his opinion doesn’t really matter. That he was at the committee on Wednesday is largely because his riding is not far from Ottawa, and that tends to be what happens when emergency meetings get called – most of the regular members don’t end up showing up because of travel times and commitments (or in this case, it’s the middle of March Break, and some of them have families with kids that they don’t see nearly enough). Now, if the Liberals meet on Tuesday, and put a bunch of ringers on the committee when they decide to go in camera to talk next steps for witnesses and timetables, and they decide they’ve had enough, well then, yes, we will have something to complain about. But that hasn’t happened yet, there isn’t any indication about that happening, so let’s all just calm down. Drouin is entitled to his own opinions, but he won’t be making any decisions here.

Should the justice committee opt to end the investigation, here are options that Jody Wilson-Raybould could use to “speak her truth” some more (though given how tactical her silence has been, I wouldn’t hold my breath). I also suspect that after their dire warnings yesterday, the opposition are going to start procedural shenanigans in order to try and force the government to carry on the hearings, but we’ll see how that unfolds.

In related news, it turns out that SNC-Lavalin also tried to recruit the Quebec justice minister to lobby for a DPA on their behalf. As well, a luxury condo in Toronto owned by the Gaddafi family, redecorated at SNC-Lavalin’s expense, has been sitting empty since 2009.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Republic of the Northwest wank-off

Posted on by

With an election soon to be called in Alberta, we’re going to start seeing all manner of ludicrous stories related to it, and lo, Maclean’s brings us an imagining of the future history of the “Republic of the Northwest,” which is apparently what a would become of a future Alberta-Saskatchewan-Manitoba-parts-of-BC-and-the-North seccession from Canada. The piece should have instead come with a mature content warning, as it’s basically the two authors jerking one another off to the masturbatory fantasy of a “more prosperous, freer, and more patriotic” future that is never going to be. Why? Because they simply glossed over all of the hard things that such a future would entail, the biggest and most obvious obstacle being the fate of the Indigenous populations. Sure, all of their environmental concerns are just “Laurentian Canadian” bureaucratic meddling. Apparently once Ottawa was out of the way, this new Republic (and curious that such a “patriotic” imagined country would not retain the Crown, if this is supposed to be some kind of small-c conservative fantasy that doesn’t involve being immediately swallowed up by the US), all kinds of pipelines could get built in mere months, with no obstacles whatsoever! Sure, the tidewater is all in Northern BC because the southern coast wouldn’t separate with them, but that won’t affect things! There weren’t any domestic environmentalists in this new country – they were apparently either all figments of Ottawa that were rained upon them, or they were all subject to mass arrest in this “freer” country. There were no Indigenous protests. There were no concerns about actual economic viability of these pipelines with relation to future capacity, or the fact that there is an ongoing global supply glut of oil and dumping more Alberta crude into the world economy wouldn’t be subject to yet more price declines because of basic laws of supply and demand. Nope – it’s all just freedom and prosperity!

And that’s not even to talk about how much they glossed over in terms of what separation would actually mean for the country, from fiscal arrangements, armed forces (do you think they’d just let them take half of the fighter fleet and a chunk of the Navy for their strip of Northern BC Coast line?), and again, the reality of treaties with Indigenous peoples with the Crown of Canada. Honest to Hermes, my eyes could not stop rolling the entirety of this piece. And the worst part is that there is a cohort of Albertans who think this is a plausible vision of the future. They all need to give their heads a shake, and the pair who wrote this piece need to wake up to reality.

On a related note, Jen Gerson digs into the looming problem of Alberta not really preparing for a future with a decreased oil demand, as they prefer instead to keep waiting on the next oil boom. (As the bumper sticker says, “Please God, give us another boom, and I promise not to piss it away this time.”) Yes, the province’s economy has diversified somewhat, but it’s still very dependent on oil revenues. That said, the Bank of Canada did note that the share of GDP that the oil sector is responsible for has diminished a fair amount since the 2015 oil shock, and it’s now less than IT services. The big problem the province is going to have is what to do with all of its under-educated young men, who either quit school or barely got their high school diploma while counting on lucrative oil sector employment. Those days are dwindling, and there will need to be plans to help them transition, sooner than later.

Continue reading →