Tag Archives: China

Roundup: A display of arrogance and entitlement from McDonald

Posted on by

In what is quite possibly an admission of arrogance and entitlement, the ostensible current Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Art McDonald, says that he’s going to return to the job now that he’s been “cleared” by the investigation into previous sexual misconduct – but that’s not his decision to make. The fact that he seemed to publicly indicate that this was a fait-accompli may have in fact been a faux pas, as the Minister of Defence actually showed a modicum of spine and said that no, McDonald is remaining on paid leave until they can decide what they’re going to do.

Remember, CDS is a Governor-in-Council appointment, meaning that the prime minister and Cabinet can appoint who they want to the position, and remove the current occupant at any point for any reason, and the fact that McDonald has both lost the moral authority to hold the job, coupled with this stunning bit of entitlement, may in fact prove that is should no longer be considered to be qualified to hold the position.

Meanwhile, here is former national security lawyer (and former armored officer) Leah West to put this into perspective:

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425547465051279361

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425547467471429634

https://twitter.com/leahwest_nsl/status/1425549147118125069

Continue reading →

Roundup: Questioning the housing numbers

Posted on by

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report yesterday on the federal government’s programme spending on housing affordability, and I have questions, both on the report, and on the responses to it. On the report itself, I’m having a hard time seeing how this is necessarily within his remit, and not that of the Auditor General. This is not exactly fiscal or macro-economic analysis – it’s evaluating programme spending, which is the Auditor General’s job. (Once again, the PBO is not a “budget watchdog” or a “watchdog” of any kind, per his enabling legislation). This doesn’t appear to have been at the request of any MPs in particular, though this updates his 2019 report which was requested by an unnamed MP at the time, but again, not really his wheelhouse. “Providing economic and financial analysis for the purposes of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability” is being taken a little too broadly.

The findings of the report are that the funds allocated to housing are being underspent, but doesn’t really delve into why, other than noting that some of the spending was related to having to renew bilateral agreements with provinces that were allowed to lapse in 2015, and that CMHC’s programmes have both faced “implementation delays” and that their shift toward funding capital contributions instead of affordability supports spread that funding out over the life of projects. Those “implementation delays” probably deserve a lot more exploration – the fact that municipalities in particular aren’t spending the dollars available fast enough because the projects are bottlenecked in their own jurisdictions (and Vancouver is most especially guilty of this) – and that’s a lot of what this report seems to be light on details about. Housing is largely a provincial responsibility, and aside from providing money, the federal government has very few levers at its disposal, and when municipalities can’t get their acts together, that’s not really a problem the federal government can solve.

As for opposition reaction, it was predictable in that it read the PBO’s topline and not much else. The Conservatives complained that the housing plans haven’t met their targets and that they need a plan that “gets homes built,” which again, is pretty hard to do with the very few levers available at the federal level. The NDP, meanwhile, accuse the government of dubious accounting and broken promises, as per usual, again based largely on topline figures and not the fact that many of the problems exist at the provincial and municipal levels. Federal dollars only go so far and can only wield so much influence, and these are details that matter when it comes to implementing promises.

Continue reading →

Roundup: What open nominations?

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Languages Commissioner goes rogue

Posted on by

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

Continue reading →

Roundup: Where is the civilian control?

Posted on by

Something rather unusual happened yesterday in that both prime minister Justin Trudeau, and his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, publicly panned the decision by the Chief of Defence Staff to keep the head of the navy on the job after he went on that golf game with the former CDS, General Jonathan Vance, while Vance is under active investigation for past sexual misconduct. But it’s pretty crazy that this happened given how things work under our system.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1410275366292307969

This boils down to Harijit Sajjan and the fact that he’s not doing his job as minister. He is supposed to be the person in Cabinet who does the civilian control, who manages the CDS, and who ensures that the CDS is doing his job properly, but Sajjan hasn’t been doing that job. If he were, then he wouldn’t have been so incurious as to why the investigation into Vance never took off when the former military ombudsman brought forward the allegations, and he would have taken the opportunity to cycle Vance out of the job and put in someone new rather than renew Vance for another term. These are all things were things Sajjan should have done and didn’t do.

Trudeau, however, keeps insisting that Sajjan is the right person for the job, that he’s not part of the old boys’ club, but that’s part of the problem – Sajjan was an active member of the military when he got elected and had to process his resignation papers while he was named to Cabinet, because technically at that point, the CDS outranked him, which is not good when Sajjan is supposed to be exercising civilian control. That’s why we shouldn’t put former military people into the role – they are not civilian control. This can’t be stressed enough. Sajjan shouldn’t have been put in the role, and hasn’t properly done his job since he’s been in it. It’s time for a new minister, and the sooner the better.

Programming note: I am making a long weekend for myself, so no post tomorrow or Saturday. See you next week!

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Ombudsman demands independence

Posted on by

The military ombudsman put out a position paper yesterday that called for his office to be made fully independent, and he criticized the minister’s office and the Department of National Defence for trying to interfere in investigations and ignoring recommendations for change. In particular, he cited that turning a blind eye to his office’s recommendations advances political interest or has to do with self-preservation or career advancements within the defence community.

Readers may know that I have issues with the demands for yet more officers of parliament. The proliferation of these officers has become acute in the last decade, and while there is a need for an independent ombudsman for the military, I also have not been blind to some of the previous holders of that office, and some were very much unsuited for an office that has no accountability. I’m not sure what kind of a structure the ombudsman’s office should need to be, but again, making him unaccountable and completely insulated opens the role up to the kinds of abuses of authority we’re seeing with the last officer of parliament that was created (being the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has become completely unmoored from his legislative mandate). Anyone who doesn’t share this concern obviously isn’t paying attention (and I can guarantee you that the media is not paying attention, because they like it when these unaccountable officers try to turn themselves into media darlings, as the PBO is doing right now).

When asked about this, Justin Trudeau said that he would put it to Justice Louise Arbour as part of her comprehensive review, so that the ombudsman’s office can be part of the solution to reforming the military, but I fear that she may recommend the officer of parliament route. Part of the problem right now is that the minister isn’t responsive, but I think the solution needs to be that the minister needs to go rather than the ombudsman needing additional powers. Would that we actually hold ministers accountable for their failures, but this government doesn’t seem to be too keen on that.

Continue reading →

QP: Why are you sending cheques?

Posted on by

It’s the beginning of the last week of the sitting calendar, and none of the leaders were present, in person or virtually. The Liberal benches once again remained virtually empty, save Anita Vandenbeld, who swapped with Mark Gerretsen a short while later. Candice Bergen led off in person, raising the story that Liberal MPs have been sending cheques to Tom Pitfield’s company, given his friendship with the prime minster. Pablo Rodriguez responded that this was for a system to help manage constituency files. Bergen tried again, and this time Rodriguez insisted that the Conservatives were obstructing the agenda. Bergen, after starting off with the wrong script, then demanded that the government demand that the president of PHAC turn over documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings, for which Patty Hajdu admonished her for playing games with national security, given that the documents were given to NSICOP. Gérard Deltell took over in French to repeat the demand, and Hajdu warned that the Conservatives were playing a dangerous game with national security, and quoted Thomas Juneau about his concerns. Deltell tried again, and Hajdu quoted Stephanie Carvin this time.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1407050831128584198

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded that EI reform better cover people in the cultural sector, and Carla Qualtrough assured him they were working to do just that. Therrien couldn’t take yes for an answer and demanded again, and Qualtrough insisted that the best thing they could do was to pass the budget.

Rachel Blaney conflated the bodies at residential schools with the court case challenging the Human Rights Tribunal ruling on First Nations children, for which Mark Miller stated that there were competing concerns in class action lawsuits, which is why they we negotiating compensation for them. Leah Gazan raised a Black Lives Matter protest about police state violence, and Bardish Chagger stated that they take the calls to action seriously, which is why they took measures in the budget to address this work.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Being called to the bar of the Commons

Posted on by

Following the motion in the House of Commons that the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada has been found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to turn over national security documents to a House of Commons committee, and is being summoned to the bar of the Chamber on Monday, said PHAC president is faced with a possibly impossible choice – if he turns over the documents, he is in breach of the Privacy Act and the Security of Information Act. If he doesn’t turn them over, he is in contempt of Parliament and its powers of production – and he has not been guaranteed immunity if he turns those documents over, not that the MPs who demand these documents care.

What is perhaps more worrying is the apparently cavalier way in which this is being dealt with, as there is very little security around this. The Canada-China committee, which wants these documents, has no security clearances, nor are their communications even secure – the “hybrid” sittings are done over Zoom, and while it’s a slightly more secure version than the commercial one, it’s still not actually secure. As well, I am not particularly moved by the fact that they say that any redactions will be done by the House of Commons’ law clerk, because I’m not sure that he has the necessary security clearance to view the documents unredacted, nor does he have the background and context to read those documents in and apply redactions properly. This is a pretty serious issue that these MPs are handwaving over, and frankly, the way that they have abused the Law Clerk and his office over the course of his parliament by demanding that he perform the redactions on millions of documents that could wind up leaking commercially sensitive information has been nothing short of shameful. It certainly hasn’t been filling me with any confidence that any of the information will be treated with proper seriousness considering that they aren’t promising actual safeguards – or immunity. It very much makes this look more like grandstanding over a proper exercise in accountability.

Meanwhile, here is a history of people who have been summoned to the bar in the Commons, the last time which was in 1913, where the person refused to testify, and spent four months in a local jail until the parliamentary session expired. It’s a power that has very much fallen into disuse, but interesting nevertheless.

Continue reading →

QP: No, that’s not what the inflation data show

Posted on by

While the prime minister moved from hotel to at-home quarantine, his deputy was available instead. While there were fewer Conservatives in the Chamber than yesterday, the sole Liberal in the Chamber started out as Marie-France Lalonde instead of Mark Gerretsen, but they swapped places a short while later. Erin O’Toole led off in French, with a script in front of him, and he blamed federal spending for the decade-high inflation figures released this morning — which is not actually what those data showed. Chrystia Freeland declared that the biggest threat to economic stability was Conservative partisan games. O’Toole switched to English to focus on the rise in housing prices, and again seemed to think that the federal government has magic levers that can lower housing prices, to which Freeland repeated her assertion, given that they are blocking the budget bill. O’Toole retorted that the Conservatives had a Five-Point Plan™ to save the economy, and Freeland repeated that the Conservatives were standing in the way of the economic recovery. O’Toole then pivoted to a torqued reading of Harjit Sajjan’s record as minster, for which Sajjan robotically read that he won’t take lessons from the Conservatives and he was doing better. O’Toole then declared that he would speak directly to the voters in Sajjan’s riding, exhorting them to vote for Conservatives, and Sajjan stated that he was proud of his service, and raised the Conservatives’ record on abortion and Islamophobia.

For the Bloc, Yves-François Blanchet raised the new federal bill on Official Languages and how it counters Quebec’s Bill 96, and Mélanie Joly said that they were asking all parties to support their bill. Blanchet insisted that Quebec’s bill was threatened, and Joly stated that they would strengthen Official Languages and protect French.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and after railing about big banks in French, he complained that the government was cutting pandemic supports. Freeland stated that unless the budget bill passes, all supports will end. Singh switched to English to reiterate the question with some additional meandering around big corporations. Freeland asked in response why he was stopping supports by not helping to pass the budget.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Time allocation in perspective

Posted on by

There seems to be both a sense of amnesia and of performative wailing and garment rending as the government – with the cooperation of opposition parties – has moved time allocation on its budget implementation bill, and extended sitting hours for the final few days of the sitting. The sense of amnesia is that this kind of thing happens every June, every single year (and usually again in December), and that’s how things work. There is absolutely nothing unusual about this state of affairs, and its’ very strange that certain media outlets are making this out to be something unusual. It’s not – if anything, what’s unusual is that there are so few bills that they are trying to get over the finish line in the face of opposition that has spent an extraordinary amount of effort fighting these bills with lies, red herrings, concern trolling, and a complete lack of proportionality.

The fact that the government has imposed time allocation on its budget implementation bill is not unusual, and the fact that it’s ten hours – five at report stage and five more at third reading – is also a fairly generous amount of time, especially when considered in parliamentary terms. It’s essentially two more full days of debate for a regular Tuesday or Thursday sitting day. It’s also not really “debate,” and frankly Elizabeth May’s concerns here are a bit precious – it’s MPs reciting pre-written speeches into the record, with little interaction between them, and when it comes to report stage and third reading, there is specific purpose. The bill already had seven allotted days at second reading, which is bananas – second reading should take a single afternoon because it’s supposed to be where you discuss the overall principles of the bill, and then send it off to committee. It spent thirteen hours at committee of clause-by-clause consideration – which, again, is a fair amount considering that most committee sittings are two hours – where they heard from 65 witnesses in pre-study sessions. Five hours at report stage, to discuss whether or not to adopt the amendments agreed to at committee, is an awful lot of parliamentary time. Same again with third reading, where you are giving final consideration before final passage to the Senate, is more than generous – you are no longer debating the principle, or the details – those have all been agreed to.

This narrative that it’s a “gag” and “cutting debate” is overblown in the context of what is being offered here. This isn’t an abuse of time allocation, like we saw in previous parliaments – it’s a legitimate tool in the face of procedural obstruction, and given that this is a hung parliament, the fact that at least one opposition party is agreeing to the use of this tool makes the narrative a bit silly. But that seems to be the way these things get written up, because there is a general ignorance of procedure and what it all means.

Continue reading →