Tag Archives: Council of the Federation

Roundup: Pride vs St. Patrick’s Day

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Andrew Scheer’s new deputy leader, Leona Alleslev, started off her new role with a bang this weekend by doing the media rounds, and when asked about Scheer’s continued refusal to attend Pride parades, Alleslev responded with “Have we asked anybody if they marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade?”

Oh no she better don’t!

Alleslev apologised several hours later, but by then you had a lot of Conservatives completely outraged that this was the kind of thing that was going to lose them the next election (and renewing the calls for Scheer’s resignation). While the point was made that she shouldn’t have needed to apologise because it was Scheer’s lines she was parroting, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone would have even for a second thought that there was an equivalence to the two. And Scheer’s own campaign communications director started a lengthy tweet thread to show all the various ways in which Scheer paid lip service to every religious and cultural event out there – except Pride, which is something that speaks volumes.

Alleslev also went on to insinuate that those who raised questions about Scheer’s leadership – and the numbers are growing, as are the profile of raising those questions – are somehow being “disloyal” to the party. And this irritates me, because this notion that parties are supposed to be personality cults for leaders is toxic and antithetical to how our system operates. The leader is not the party. The party is more than the person who leads it at any one moment, and it would be great if everyone could get on the same page about this because it’s kind of embarrassing for everyone who is carrying on otherwise.

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Roundup: The call is coming from inside the caucus room

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The hits just keep coming for Andrew Scheer, as one of his MPs came out vocally against his leadership yesterday. In the wake of the fairly low-key announcement of his Shadow Cabinet, it was quickly noticed that Ed Fast was not on said list, and Fast himself said that he was asked to be part of it and he declined, saying that Scheer should be surrounded by people loyal to his leadership, while Fast has concerns about it. Up until this moment, Scheer’s loyalists were dismissing those vocally and publicly calling for Scheer to step down as being Toronto elites and sore losers that go back to leadership rivals. Fast’s public denouncement puts a lie to this narrative.

Let’s face it – public dissent in caucus is rare because we have virtually eliminated all of the incentives for it. Our bastardized leadership selection process has leaders claiming a “democratic legitimacy” that they use to intimidate MPs into not challenging them, because it goes against the “will of the grassroots” (and to hell with that MP’s voters, apparently). We gave party leaders the power to sign off on nomination forms with the purest of intentions and it quickly got perverted into a tool of blackmail and iron-fisted discipline. Pretty much the only time MPs will speak out is if they have nothing to lose, and Fast is in that position – he could retire tomorrow and be all the better for it. And it’s when the dissent goes public that leaders really need to worry because that means that it’s happening by those inside the caucus room who aren’t saying anything out loud. Provincially, we’ve seen instances of it taking only one or two MLAs coming out publicly for leaders to see the writing on the wall and resign. The caucus may be bigger in Ottawa, but the sentiment is increasingly out in the open – that can’t be sustainable.

Scheer later went to the annual UCP convention in Calgary, where he was predictably given a fairly warm welcome– but he shouldn’t rest on this applause because he doesn’t need to win Alberta – he already has their votes, and they’re not enough to carry the country, no matter how much they increase their vote share. He needs seats in Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, and he is having a hard time cracking those areas, in particular because of his social conservatism and the UCP convention isn’t going to be the place to go to get honest feedback about that problem. It’s a bubble, and a trap that becomes too easy to feel that there is nothing wrong if he stays in it too long.

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Roundup: Upcoming Speaker election

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As you may be aware, the very first order of business in any new Parliament is the election of a Speaker, and today we have confirmation that the incumbent, Geoff Regan, is planning to run again for the role, as are the deputy and assistant deputy Speakers from the last parliament, Bruce Stanton, Carole Hughes and Anthony Rota, and one new face, Conservative MP Joël Godin. What is new in this Parliament is the plan to run the election by way of preferential ballot rather than successive rounds of voting, which is no doubt intended to speed up the process and reduce the use of hospitality suites between voting rounds as has happened in previous Parliaments. (ETA: Apparently I am mistaken and this is the second time they will have used a preferential ballot. My apologies). The speedier process will also allow them to have the Speech from the Throne on the same day, which is unusual in and of itself.

One of Regan’s main advantages in this race is experience, which is going to be a very important consideration in a hung parliament situation. And while many of us would love an assertive Speaker like the UK’s John Bercow (perhaps without the alleged bullying of House of Commons staff), who did a lot to protect the rights of MPs against the party leaders and the Cabinet, we have to remember that Canadian Speakers are hampered by the Standing Orders that limit their powers. Some of those rules may be changing – the Liberals pledged as part of their platform that they would like to see the Speaker do away with the speaking lists provided by the party whips and House leaders, which frees up the Speaker to pick MPs to speak and perhaps enforce some more discipline that way – but it’s only a half-measure so long as we still allow scripts and prepared speeches in the Commons. Nevertheless, if they go ahead with even the half-measure, that could be a bigger challenge for any Speaker to take on, so having one with some experience under his (or her) belt would be a beneficial thing.

Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column offers the guidebook on how the Speaker election will be run, as well as just what the job entails should any other MPs be considering the job.

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Roundup: The hollow discontent

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The Council of the Federation meeting has concluded, and Jason Kenney is again giving warnings about national unity, but given that his thesis is a house built of lies, one should probably take it with a grain or two of salt. There were the usual demands of higher healthcare transfers (ironic given that the premiers are largely conservatives, at least one of whom was in Harper’s Cabinet when he reduced the rate of increase on those transfers), and federal assistance with pharmacare, and the platitudes about increasing labour mobility – for which we’ll see if Kenney’s theatrical moves around unilaterally reducing a handful of the province’s trade barriers will get any traction. It was noticeable that he didn’t decide to join the national securities regulator, and for as much as Andrew Scheer tried to swoop in with press releases about how Justin Trudeau had “failed” on interprovincial trade, the reality is quite the opposite – after achieving the trade deal with the provinces and the negative list of barriers, they have made substantial progress on chipping away at it.

There was some disagreement – François Legault continued his opposition to pipelines (which throws a giant wrench into their visions of “national energy corridors” that are being used as code-words for pipeline access routes), and Brian Pallister and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford, sniped back at Legault about his province’s “secularism” bill, that the other premiers mostly didn’t say anything about.

When all was said and done, however, it became noticeable how hollow Kenney’s attempt to build some kind of coalition of discontent was – while he was trying to insist on a brewing unity crisis, all of the other premiers were pretty much “one or two disagreements, but we’re good otherwise.” Which kind of blows Kenney’s narrative out of the water – especially when he was forced to admit that the province doesn’t really want to separate. It’s a tacit admission that once again, this is just using lies to try and keep people angry because he thinks he can use that to his advantage, but not enough other premiers want to play with that particular bonfire.

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Roundup: Weasel words on conversion therapy

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In the wake of the Liberals announcing that they were looking at what measures they could take at a federal level to ban “conversion therapy,” the question was put to Andrew Scheer if he opposed it. Scheer responded that while he opposes “forced” conversion therapy, he will wait to see what the government proposes around banning it before if he’ll support it. The Conservatives quickly cried foul that the Global news headline was that “Andrew Scheer will ‘wait and see’ before taking a stance on conversion therapy ban” was just clickbait that didn’t reflect his actual quotes (and Global did update their headline), but not one of them pointed out the fact that Scheer’s own words were, to be frank, weaselly.

Scheer said that he opposed “forced” conversion therapy, and that he’s opposed to “any type of practice that would forcibly attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation against their will or things like that.” And you note the weasel words in there – about only being opposed to “forced” therapy, or to change it “against their will.” The giant implication that not one conservative rushing to defend Scheer is that there are types of “voluntary” conversion therapy that he is okay with, and that is alarming because any kind of so-called “conversion therapy” is torture, whether entered into voluntarily or not – and it ignores that when people enter into it voluntarily, it’s because they have such a degree of self-loathing that they have deluded themselves into believing that they can change their sexual orientation in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and a lot of that self-loathing comes from the sorts of violence, whether physical, mental or spiritual, that has been inflicted upon them. And it does look entirely like Scheer is being too cute by leaving a giant loophole in the window for his religious, social conservative flank to not feel threatened by his position, because it lets them carry on with the mythology that there is such a thing as “voluntary” conversion therapy, and that this is all about their “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit that asserts that homosexuality is just a learned behaviour and not an intrinsic characteristic. So no, I don’t think Scheer has been at all unequivocal.

Meanwhile, Scheer’s apologists will demand to know why the government refused to act on a “conversion therapy” ban when presented with a petition about it in March, but again, this is an issue where there is a great deal of nuance that should be applied. The government response was that these practices tend to fall under healthcare or be practiced by health professionals, which makes it provincial jurisdiction, and that while there can be some applications of the Criminal Code with some practices, it required coordination with the provinces to address, which they have been doing. What the Liberals announced this week was that they were seeing if there were any other measures they could take federally, which might involve the Criminal Code. Again, it’s an issue where it’s hard for them to take a particular line, so they’re trying to see what it is possible to do – that’s not a refusal, it’s an acknowledgement that it’s a complicated issue.

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Roundup: Attacking his own plan

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Andrew Scheer’s sudden denunciation of the planned clean fuel regulations got some reaction yesterday, partly from the government, and partly from economists who deal with this kind of thing for a living. Scheer’s labelling it a “secret fuel tax” is more than a little odd, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he’s proposing by removing the transparent federal carbon price and replacing it with more costly regulations, which would get passed onto consumers in a hidden way without any of the rebates that the current federal backstop programme provides – in other words, doing exactly what he’s accusing the Liberals of doing. The government noted that Scheer’s 4¢/litre figure are just a guess because the regulations haven’t been finalised yet (though some economists say it’s about right based on current projections), but again, it needs to be driven home that this is exactly the kind of thing that Scheer himself is proposing, but without the added “technology is magic” sheen attached.

To that end, here’s economist Andrew Leach’s mock open letter to Scheer.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield points out that this latest attack by Scheer risks boxing him in, and attacks his credibility on the climate file.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1148609609424429057

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Roundup: The premiers’ pre-meeting

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While a Council of the Federation meeting will be happening this week in Saskatoon, Jason Kenney has been planning a pre-meeting for several premiers at Stampede, last night and today. It’s an interesting bit of dynamic because while Kenney is one of the most junior members of the Council (with only PEI being more junior), he’s trying to act like a bit of a ringleader for the various conservative-led provinces as they wage war against Justin Trudeau and the federal government. We’ll see how well that goes over.

Meanwhile, John Horgan says he’s hoping that they can use this meeting to get something accomplished, and that it won’t be a number of premiers trying to have a stand-off against Trudeau in advance of the election. But given that several of those premiers have been having public tantrums over the carbon price, two of them now having lost their court challenges, I’m quite certain that they’re going to have some kind of theatrical blow-out for the sake of Andrew Scheer to come in and try and look statesmanlike. (Have I mentioned that fixed election dates are garbage?)

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Roundup: Neither a minor nor a major shuffle

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So there was a Cabinet shuffle, and while not major, it was a little bigger than some may have anticipated. Five new ministers have entered the fray, which expands things somewhat, but still isn’t into later Harper territory. Some of the changes are not unexpected – Joly being moved to tourism while still keeping official languages is a bit of a demotion from the Heritage file that she garnered so much criticism from, particularly in Quebec, on things like the Netflix file. Some of the changes are pretty political – moving Sohi from infrastructure to natural resources in order to have the Alberta minister on the pipeline file is pretty naked on its face. Bill Blair to border security (plus organized crime reduction) are two files that the government wants a stern face on to make it look like they’re taking action. Some of the additions, however, are a bit mystifying, like a minister for seniors? Really? Is this not just a pandering exercise to a voting demographic rather than a file with particular challenges that need addressing? And some of these questions won’t be answered right away, because the mandate letters won’t be available until later in the summer. Here is the updated Cabinet list including the existing ministers whose titles got modified, and here are profiles of the five new additions.

And then the reaction. Blair’s promotion may send the signal that they’re taking the border situation seriously, but it also can look like they’re a) caving to critics, b) admitting that this is a security and not a humanitarian situation, c) putting border security alongside fighting organized crime in the same portfolio risks conflating the two in the eyes of those who are convinced that these irregular migrants are really all criminals and terrorists. Trudeau apparently lured Blair into politics on the promise of fighting the number one enemy of public security – fear. I’m not sure that putting him in this new role fights fear or reinforces it.

In terms of analysis, Paul Wells notes both that putting Blair into Cabinet is a bit of a poke in the eye to Doug Ford, given that they were nemeses during the Fords’ years in Toronto City Hall, and that this new Cabinet is one built to survive the coming storms until the next election (along with the observation that Trudeau seems to have demoted himself by stripping away the intergovernmental affairs responsibility and giving it to Dominic LeBlanc). Kady O’Malley makes five observations about the shuffle, while Susan Delacourt looks at the shuffle from the perspective of reacting to the recent Ontario election.

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Roundup: Deleting the message

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The Conservatives decided to delete their tweet yesterday that depicted a black migrant crossing to Canada – over a bridge made of Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet, and through a broken chain-link fence. There was backlash that the tweet was racist, and it certainly was intended to stoke the xenophobic tendencies that they have been flirting with. I will point out once again that their continued reliance on the talking point that this is about the “orderly” asylum system would probably make most of Europe laugh and pat them on the head condescendingly, because it’s pretty precious that they think Canada should get the special status of an “orderly” system that no other country gets.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1019323971274248193

Meanwhile, Maclean’shas a look at the history of the Safe Third Country Agreement, and how it’s basically just waiting for Donald Trump to blow it up if he actually learns about what it is and what it does. Chris Selley, on the other hand, points out the ways in which both the federal government and the new Ontario government are mishandling the whole file, which is fair criticism. But I do think we can’t take our eye off the fact that the Conservatives are flirting with xenophobic populism for partisan gain, and playing cute with it, pitting one group of newcomers against another, and patting themselves on the back for their “compassion” for certain groups of refugees that they use solely as props to hammer away at the regime they’re fleeing. This has been their modus operandi since Jason Kenney was immigration minister, but they’ve poured it on a little thicker since they saw that this kind of populist rhetoric worked for Trump and Brexit (never mind the fact that we have solid proof of election interference in both, and definitive proof of broken rules in the Brexit referendum). This is worrying for our democracy, and we should be very wary of their adopting these techniques.

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Roundup: Asylum claimant dust-up

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So there was a bit of a testy exchange yesterday as federal and provincial immigration ministers met in Winnipeg, and Ahmed Hussen got into a bit of a spat with Ontario’s new minister, Lisa MacLeod. Hussen objected to MacLeod (and Doug Ford) using the rhetoric of “illegal border crossers” and ginning up the same rhetoric of the Federal Conservatives that somehow refugee claimants take make it harder for legal immigrants (despite the fact that they’re separate processes and systems). This objection is not new either – Hussen has been saying this for weeks, so for MacLeod to get offended about it yesterday is being performative in the extreme – which is what she wants. With Kathleen Wynne no longer in the picture for her party to pit themselves against, they now need to make Trudeau their straw man. And when Hussen called the behaviour “un-Canadian,” MacLeod and her defenders accused Hussen of “bullying,” which is childish. But wait – it gets better. MacLeod loudly announced that the federal government should pay for these asylum claimants, while Hussen has been saying for weeks that they need Ontario to step up and find places elsewhere in the province than just Toronto to house them, and hey, they’re providing money to do just that. And then, because this wasn’t theatrical enough, Saskatchewan’s minister also refused to sign onto the communiqué from the meeting and demanded that the federal government not only pay for these asylum seekers (of which Saskatchewan has received zero), but that they should pay the full cost of all other government-sponsored refugees. Couple of things: 1) This is starting to get alarmingly close to the kinds of xenophobic populist rhetoric we’re seeing south of the border, and we should be very alarmed by that; and 2) Remember how the federal Conservatives just a few years ago cut refugee health benefits as a “deterrence” mechanism (which the courts later called “cruel and unusual”), which simply downloaded those costs onto the provinces? These are your political brethren.

Also released yesterday were the latest figures for the number of irregular border crossers, and it has plunged again. Because it’s a “crisis” that the government has “done nothing about.” Err, except they have been doing something about it, trying to stem the migrant flow at the source, and lo and behold, it seems to be working. For now, in any case. But the Conservatives continue to press for a meeting of the Commons’ immigration committee next week to rail about it.

Meanwhile, Martin Patriquin calls out the divisive and inflammatory language because it misses the actual issue at play, treating it as a permanent burden rather than a temporary state of affairs.

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