Tag Archives: Canada 150

QP: Bonuses, modernization, and vacations

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While there was nothing else on his calendar to indicate why he should be absent, the PM nevertheless was. Rona Ambrose led off, incredulous that the PM was frustrated with Bombardier for their bonuses when he negotiated the deal with no strings. (Note: He didn’t actually negotiate it). Navdeep Bains rebutted that it was a repayable loan with clear strings around protecting jobs. Ambrose railed that the budget nickel-and-dimes Canadians in the face of this, to which Bains insisted that they had a plan around jobs, and touted the job creation numbers. Ambrose and Bains went another round of the same, before Ambrose switched to French to give it yet another round in the other official language. Bains responded in kind, albeit a little more awkwardly, before Ambrose moved onto the topic of changing the Standing Orders, for which Bardish Chagger trotted out her lines about “modernizing” the House of Commons. Thomas Mulcair took up the topic and wondered how Chagger feels having to cover for the PM. Chagger stood up to give earnest praise about being part of a government that consults and listens to Canadians. Mulcair asked in French, and Chagger praised the “new approach” in French in return. Mulcair turned to the Prime Minister’s “illegal vacation” and revelations about payments related to it, for which Chagger asserted that the PM needs to be in constant contact with his office even when out of the country. Mulcair and Chagger then went around for another round of the same.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/849326412624527360

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Roundup: It’s not really a $300/tonne price

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A “secret memo” has been floating around from a couple of different news organizations, which purports to claim that a $300/tonne carbon price would be required to reach our emissions reduction targets, and of course, opponents of carbon pricing are lighting their hair on fire and saying “See! The Liberals are trying to destroy the energy industry!” And so on. Except that’s not what it says. It says that if no other measures were taken, that’s what the carbon price would be, but those are the only measures we’re taking. We’re doing a bunch of things with regulations and other programmes, not to mention that carbon prices can be the incentive by which industries will innovate and look for ways to reduce their emissions as it becomes a price incentive. You know, a free market mechanism instead of the heavy hand of government regulation. Regardless, the National Post version of the story has a bunch of perspective sauce, much of it courtesy of Andrew Leach, and I’ll leave you with some of his added Twitter commentary on the matter, much of it directed to Jason Kenney and Brian Jean in Alberta who are using this as “proof” that carbon pricing is ineffective and/or some nefarious scheme.

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QP: Concerns about “Joe”

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With Justin Trudeau away and tempers still flaring over proposed changes to the Standing Orders, it was promising to be a QP full of performed outrage. Rona Ambrose led off, lamenting all the new taxes that “Joe” will have to pay thanks to the budget. Bill Morneau insisted that they built the budget around “Joe” and that he would be better off overall. Ambrose then worried what  “Joe” would think of the PM’s snack bill for his trip to the Bahamas (which was not just snacks but fees), to which Bardish Chagger noted that they asked the Clerk of the Privy Council to draft policies on reimbursing the treasury. Ambrose was incredulous, but Chagger retreated to talking points about consultation. Ambrose pivoted to changes to the Standing Orders, and Chagger tried to talk up the ideas she proposed. Ambrose asked again in French, and Chagger repeated her defence. Thomas Mulcair was up next, carrying on denunciations of the proposed changes, and Chagger reiterated her attempt to be “reasonable” on her proposals. After another round in French that got the same reply, Mulcair moved to railing about the scrapping of certain measures in the budget, for which Morneau gave a standard response about the middle class tax cut while raising taxes on the one percent. Mulcair railed about protecting rich CEOs instead of First Nations children, but Morneau meandered through a paean about middle class anxiety.

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QP: Howling denunciations

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With the budget lock-up going on down the street, procedural warfare taking place at committee, and news from the attacks on Westminster filtering through, there was a lot to distract from QP. Rona Ambrose led off, asking about the Westminster attack, and Trudeau offered both condemnation for the attacker, and condolences for the victims. Ambrose then moved onto the topic of immigration policy and those who follow the rules. Trudeau said that they are ensuring that all Canadian laws are being followed and police and border agencies have the resources they need. Ambrose then moved onto the proposed changes to the Standing Orders, and Trudeau said that they were pleased to put forward a broad discussion paper, with a number of platitudes. Ambrose pressed on changes to Question Period, and Trudeau insisted he was pleased to answer questions but he was open to improvements. Ambrose wondered how Trudeau would respond if Stephen Harper proposed showing up in QP just once a week — never mind that once a week was Harper’s average. Trudeau hit back that Harper would never put forward a paper or have a discussion about it. Mulcair was up next and asked the same thing, and Trudeau instead admonished the opposition for their heckling with all of the school children in the gallery. Mulcair went another round, and got much the same admonishment. Mulcair then turned to a question about what should happen if a minister should break the Conflict of Interest Act, and Trudeau said that they follow the rules. Mulcair accused Trudeau of taking illegal gifts and breaking the law, and railed about how little Trudeau repaid for his vacation. Trudeau noted that they put a policy into place for reimbursement, and that the RCMP makes determinations about his safety.

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Roundup: Candour versus transparency

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The government announced yesterday that their proposed changes to the Access to Information Act won’t be coming as quickly as promised because they “wanted to get it right.” Now far be it for me to be completely cynical about this in asserting that they never intended to fulfil this promise, because I’m not entirely sure that’s the case, but I will also say that any Conservative crowing about how terrible the Liberals are for this delay *cough*Pierre Lemieux*cough* needs to give their head a shake because the Liberal have already made changes that far exceed what the Conservative did on this file. This all having been said, Howard Anglin makes some interesting points about this, and whether it’s desirable for them to go ahead with some of these changes.

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As much as my journalistic sensibilities want greater transparency, I also do feel a great deal of sympathy for the point about candour. Having too many things in the open has had an effect on the operation of parliament and times where parties could quietly meet and come to a decision with little fuss has turned into a great deal of political theatre instead (which is one reason why I’m wary of opening up the Board of Internal Economy too much). We want functional institutions, and that does require candour, and not all desires to keep that candour and ability to speak openly from being public is more than just a “culture of secrecy” – there is a deal of self-preservation involved. While it would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and the line by which this tension is resolved would be clearly demarcated lines, but that’s not going to happen. This is going to be muddled through the hard way.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt writes about that culture of secrecy that exists within the capital – an even within Cabinet jealously guarding information – and how it’s an ongoing fight to keep from letting that culture keep going unchallenged.

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QP: Just a discussion paper

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As a lame anti-M-103 protest was taking place on the steps of the Centre Block, and procedural warfare happening in committee, MPs filed into the Commons for the grand inquest of the nation, pre-budget edition. Rona Ambrose led off, lamenting that the PM was looking to engage in a once-a-week only QP. Trudeau insisted that he was happy to be here, and took a dig at the previous government by saying his front bench was strong and he was demonstrating government by cabinet. Ambrose pressed, laying into Trudeau’s admiration for Chinese dictatorship and his fascination with Fidel Castro, but Trudeau noted that it was just a discussion paper that included a U.K.-style PMQ idea. On a third go-around, Trudeau shifted his response to the great things his government was doing for the middle class. Ambrose moved onto the size of the deficit, and Trudeau was able to retreat to his well-worn points about their middle-class tax cut. Ambrose lamented the possibility of cancelled tax breaks, and Trudeau responded with praise for his tax cuts and the Canada Child Benefit. Thomas Mulcair was up next, demanding lower taxes for small businesses, and Trudeau gave his usual points about helping the middle class. Mulcair railed about privatization, and Trudeau noted that he campaigned on investing in infrastructure while Mulcair committed only to balancing the books. Mulcair demanded that the loophole for stock option taxes be loophole, and Trudeau retreated behind his points about lowering taxes for the middle class. For his final question, Mulcair asked why charges were abandoned in a gangsterism trial, but Trudeau only offered generalities about confidence in the justice system.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/844255477177507841

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Roundup: Manning and the Populists

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It’s the Manning Centre conference here in Ottawa, which is the “conservative Woodstock,” as they say, and is pretty much were all of the small-c conservatives come to network, only this year, in the midst of the Trumpocalypse happening south of the border, the flavour of this year’s conference has changed, with much more pandering to the fringe elements, catering to overblown fears of Islamic terrorism and the kinds of populist demagoguery that are suddenly in vogue. Oh, and all fourteen Conservative leadership candidates are also there, and hey, they had a little debate, which allowed them a bit more freedom to actually debate in small groups, but most of it was still their canned talking points, so take it for what it’s worth.

As for conference programming, here’s Kady O’Malley’s recap of the first half including Preston Manning’s speech, and her assessment that fears of a Trumpist takeover appear to be more overblown, as many of the demagogic panels have had less than spectacular attendance. John Geddes recaps the moments of the leadership debate that had the biggest sparks. Geddes also has a conversation with Manning about populism and how it’s shaping debates right now.

Andrew Coyne warns Conservatives at the Manning Conference about the siren song of populist demagoguery. Chris Selley looks at that demagoguery up close in the panel on the “Islamist extremist menace” at the Conference, calling it bonkers. John Ivison looks at the dynamic Kevin O’Leary is bringing to the Conference and the race, and the outsized role he is starting to play, building an “Anyone but O’Leary” vibe. Paul Wells notes the changes in the Conference’s tenor over the years as a result of the political culture of followership, eager to imitate the perceived leaders of their pack.

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Roundup: Private islands and tall poppies

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Another day, another excuse found for the Twitter-verse to light their hair on fire over something Justin Trudeau did. In this case, it was the fact that it was disclosed that he spent his holidays in the Bahamas at the private island of the Aga Khan, citing that he is a long-time personal family friend and yes, he repaid the costs of flying the Challenger to Nassau. And boom, they were off. The fact that successive governments have funded initiatives from the Aga Khan Foundation is suddenly “proof” that this is some kind of conflict of interest, and of course at least one Conservative leadership candidate is citing this as some kind of proof of broken rules and violated ethics, other Conservatives going one step further to crying that this is some kind of slap in the face to all of those out of work Albertans.

Are you serious?

While you have some columnists like Chris Selley going “See! See! This is why we need to know where the PM goes on holiday!” I’m still not seeing where the actual conflict of interest is here. The Aga Khan does not get money from the government – his Foundation does, and that’s not the same thing. Assuming he were to lobby Trudeau while he was there, what would the result be? Some more money for a maternal and child health programme? Some more school books for Syrian refugee children? Wait, let me clutch my pearls over that. The only thing that did pique my curiosity in the slightest was that this was not run by the Ethics Commissioner, as seems to be the thing to do these days, but again, not actually seeing where there’s a real conflict here.

Part of what I suspect is at work here, particularly around comments like Rempel’s, is the reflexive pettiness that Canadian journalism stokes around any kind of conscious display of wealth or privilege by our political class. Yes, Trudeau has a foot in the world of the global jet set, owing in part to his upbringing and father’s international celebrity (which he has since adopted), and it’s been a long time since we’ve had a PM like that. The last guy was so hell-bent on curating this image of being a boring minivan-driving hockey dad (despite the fact that he never drove a minivan, always worked a job that was either in politics or political advocacy and as far as I can tell, his kids never actually played hockey), and was part of a political crew who thought that doing more than serving Ritz crackers and ginger ale for a diplomatic reception was some kind of affront, that it’s seeped into our political discourse to ill effect. Couple that with this ethos in the journalism community that has tried to preserve this somewhat faux blue-collar anti-elitist aesthetic that they jump to participating in this kind of tearing down, pretty much proving the rule of tall poppy syndrome that exists in this country, and add in a dose of the lazy drive to push cheap outrage stories, and we get more of this tiresome concern trolling. Once again, the details of this story are fairly academic, but I’m not seeing either the smoke or the fire. Except for where they’ve set their own hair ablaze yet again, of course.

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Roundup: Not a looming crisis

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Everyone spent yesterday lighting their hair on fire based on this “buried” government report that was full of scary numbers, like growing deficits going out to 2050 that reached the $1 trillion mark, and wasn’t this just the sign of how reckless Liberal spending was, and so on. The headline in fact read “looming fiscal crisis.” The Conservatives in particular tried to push some rather questionable narratives about how much better fiscal managers they were, complete with a little chart that was a work of fiction that Dame Barbara Cartland would be proud of.

Of course, it’s all complete and utter twaddle. For one, the report points to the fact that the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to decline, which means that the economy is growing and the deficit is not proportionally. That is a big deal. And if you believe that the Conservatives would have a trillion-dollar surplus in the same amount of time, give your head a shake because they not only built their “balanced” budget on a foundation of sand in 2015, but they continued to insist that they would cut taxes rather than let surpluses accumulate (and hey, remember how their desire to cut the GST in a hurry left them with a deficit before the 2008 financial crisis even hit? Yeah. Prudent fiscal management there, what with the desire to put populism before good economics). Not to mention, as Andrew Coyne points out, the whole exercise was just that – a paper exercise based on a number of projections on a spreadsheet, not an actual economic forecast, which you wouldn’t actually do for 40 year timelines because that’s literally crazy-talk.

The question becomes, however, does this become a narrative that hangs around the Liberals’ necks like an albatross? They’re already using it as showing why they’re taking a harder line against the provinces demands for increased healthcare spending, and about approaching new spending with caution. But it also lends credence to their project for trying to restructure the economy to kick-start growth that is otherwise sluggish. Will it work? It remains to be seen. But without trying to sound like some kind of apologist, would it kill a single journalist writing the stories around said report to mention the debt-to-GDP ratio? Provide some actual context for those numbers, rather just present the scary trillion-dollar deficit figure and brand it a looming crisis, when it very clearly is not? But that might require something other than the usual kinds of cheap outrage that our journalism tends to peddle, making us all the poorer for it.

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Roundup: Sound the independent thought alarm

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Every time I read these headlines, I sigh and shake my head a little, because here we go again. “Indigenous Liberal MP breaks ranks with government on BC’s Site C Dam” it reads. The MP is Robert-Falcon Ouellette, and by “breaking ranks,” he has questions for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans – who grants approvals for these kinds of things – and he plans to ask him in caucus next week. Oooh, someone had better sound the independent thought alarm!

It seems that most of my fellow journalists have forgotten that it’s the job of backbenchers – even those of the governing party – to hold the government (meaning cabinet) to account. They’re supposed to ask questions and to not just give them a pass. Ouellette is doing his job. But by sensationalizing it (which this headline clearly does), and portraying it as “breaking ranks” (which he’s not – there have been no votes that he’s gone off-side with) is both demeaning to his job, and it reinforces the notion that MPs are supposed to be drones parroting the lines of their leaders, which is absurd. Not only that, but We The Media nevertheless insist that MPs are supposed to do their jobs and represent their constituents and address issues and not just parrot talking points, and yet we call them out the moment that they do just that. Why? Seriously – why are we doing this? We’re actively being destructive to our democratic system when we pull this kind of nonsense. There are far better and more effective ways that this story could have been framed that don’t privilege party discipline (which again, not actually being broken here) and this notion that MPs must be in lockstep. It shouldn’t be that difficult to do. And yet here we are.

Honestly, we need to do better if we expect better democratic outcomes in this country. We are part of the problem, and we should stop being just that.

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