Tag Archives: CRTC

Roundup: For fear of Mary Dawson

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It was a day of juvenile finger-pointing as the big headline from the Globe and Mail was that the Ethics Commissioner said that she plans to speak to Justin Trudeau and Bill Blair about allegations that certain fundraisers may have breached conflict of interest laws, based entirely on innuendo from the Globe (which then gets repeated in Question Period, and that gets written up, and when the Globe adds another new piece of unproven innuendo the next morning, the cycle starts over again). Trudeau’s response? Bring it on – I’ve done nothing wrong.

So where are we? Because I’m not sure at this point. Do we insist that the PM and ministers no longer fundraise? Because that’s happening is that the party is capitalising on their “celebrity” for higher-level fundraisers, which is basic economics. They’re more in demand, so you send them to the higher-priced fundraisers. Should they be disallowed because someone would try to talk to them about their particular hobby-horses? As though they wouldn’t if they met them in the grocery store or on the street? Because I’m not sure that it’s actually lobbying activity, despite the label that has been slapped onto it by the bulk of the media and the opposition, looking to score some points on this. Does this mean that the whole of cabinet should be encased in these bubbles where nobody can talk to them? If the fear is that they get “exclusive” access, the government is quick to point out that they’ve accused of consulting too much and that there are plenty of other opportunities. If the worry is that it’s because they’re rich that they get access, again I’m not seeing the issue because you’re not buying influence for $1500. “Oh, you’re buying good feeling and they’ll think to pick up the phone and call you the next time something comes up” is the latest excuse I’ve heard, and I rolled my eyes so hard that it almost hurt. Honestly? Especially with the accusations that they’re buying the influence of “good feelings” donating to the Trudeau Foundation, which the PM severed his connections to and which provides scholarships? And if the charge is that because many of these rich business people are of Chinese descent, again, I’m not actually seeing any real issue here. They accuse one businessman of donating who had interests in canola that the Chinese government restricting and then Trudeau got it resolved. Conspiracy! Err, except that was the concern of every single gods damned canola farmer in this country so singling out one Chinese-Canadian starts to smack of veiled racist sentiment.

Once again, I’m waiting for someone to show me where there’s smoke, let alone fire. I mean, other than that sickening smell of people who’ve lit their own hair on fire over this. And I would be willing to bet that Mary Dawson is going to shrug and say “they haven’t broken any rules, but I want you to turn over more power to me” like she does all the time.

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Roundup: Postcards for values

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Yesterday the National Post reported that the government is planning on sending a postcard to every household in the nation and asking them to head to a website to answer questions about their democratic values. Immediately the Twitter-verse went into full-snark mode, wondering why the government would do this rather than hold a referendum, and wondering at the cost of such an exercise, but there were a few phrases that struck me as I read it, and that goes back to the fact that they’re asking Canadians what values they’re looking for in their voting system as opposed to asking them to choose a system. Why does that matter? Because it basically allows the government to justify whatever decision they end up making by selling it as living up to the greatest number of the “values” they got feedback on. And when the committee report comes back a deadlock with several dissenting reports (as it inevitably will), the government will be further empowered to finally suffocate the whole ill-fated enterprise and list all of the ways the current system conforms to the majority of the “values” that they polled Canadians on, and lo, we shall never speak of this again. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, PEI had their plebiscite on electoral reform and with a stunningly low voter turnout of 36 percent even with several days of voting, lowering the age to 16, and giving people a myriad of options to vote including online, it came down to several preferential rounds where Mixed-Member Proportional won a very narrow 52 percent win. This again translated into two very different sets of reactions – elation from the PR crowd for whom this validates their crusading on the topic, never mind that the mandate for said system is really, really weak (between the low turnout and the fact that it took several drop-off rounds to get that bare majority vote), or the fact that the plebiscite was by definition non-binding and there is more than enough opportunity for the government to get out of it (and really, I’m not sure that such a low vote is mandate enough to make such an important change). The other reaction was a sense of somewhat smugness from proponents of a referendum on electoral reform at the federal level, basically telling their opponents (who insist that such a referendum would favour the status quo) that they’re wrong. But if you think about it, such a low turnout and the fact that MMP barely squeaked past may indeed be an indication that there was more of a desire for the status quo than is being acknowledged. Nevertheless, both groups are going to be insufferable for days to come.

https://twitter.com/katemckenna8/status/795799811345842176

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QP: Doomsaying and expense obsession

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Caucus day, and with Trudeau back from the UN, we had a full leadership deck today (minus Elizabeth May, who is travelling with the electoral reform committee). Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk, doomsaying the economy and the looming catastrophes of a carbon tax and a CPP increase. Trudeau reminded her that they have lowered taxes for the middle class and noted that the previous record of not raising them on the wealthy didn’t work. Ambrose moved to the possible extradition treaty with China and that country’s human rights record. Trudeau noted that the dialogue they have established means they can raise difficult questions as well as investment opportunities, while they won’t lower the standards on extraditions. Ambrose worried about Chinese cyber-attacks, and Trudeau noted again that the dialogue allows them to raise difficult issues. Ambrose asked about the extradition treaty again in French, got the same answer, and ended her round asking about a peacekeeping missing in sub-Saharan Africa. Trudeau noted the responsibility that Canada has to the world, and said that they were considering the mission carefully in order to determine what the mission would be, but assured her they would be transparent. Thomas Mulcair was up next and demanded a vote on a peacekeeping mission. Trudeau noted this appreciation for the capacity of parliamentarians to raise issues, but didn’t deliver the necessary civics lesson about why a vote would undermine the role of the opposition. Mulcair touched on the extradition treaty with China, got the same answer that Ambrose got, and Mulcair moved onto a pair of questions about the climate targets not being more robust than those of the Conservatives. In both cases, Trudeau reminded him of their commitment to working with the provinces as they agreed to price carbon.

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Roundup: Party fault lines

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With social conservatives trying to stake out turf, along with Kellie Leitch’s “Canadian values” testing, Michael Chong’s Red Toryism and Maxime Bernier’s Freedom!-crying Libertarian-ish-ism, the question has been posed as to whether the Conservative leadership is opening up old schisms in the party. And the answer I would surmise is that probably, and it’s almost inevitable that it would. The party is a fairly big tent with some big divisions that got patched over by Stephen Harper in his quest to take down the Liberal party, and at the time, he was able to get enough disaffected factions together to do just that and keep them together while they achieved power, because power is its own reward. But now that they’re no longer in power, with Harper no longer at the helm, and the conditions that predicated his leadership have moved on, it’s not surprising in the slightest that these factions are now getting restive and trying to find different leadership camps to rally around. It’s not uncommon, and I have to wonder if there is anyone with enough personality and charisma to keep the factions together, given that there seems to be little appetite for another Harper (not that one could really be found among the current crop of leadership candidates). One could add that it should be a warning to Jason Kenney that the same conditions that allowed for the Conservative unification federally may not exist in Alberta given the history and challenges of the separate parties there. I would also note that given the diversity of views to be found in that big tent, this is likely not a discussion that we would be having if Canada were to adopt a Proportional Representation voting system. There, each faction would be more likely to splinter off into its own party in the hopes of forming an external coalition with more leverage for trying to achieve their goals rather than the internal coalitions that exist in big-tent brokerage parties currently, which moderate the excesses of the various factions in the hopes of achieving government. It’s one of those reasons why we need to be sceptical of those poll analyses that would show how the election might have gone under another system, given that it’s not likely that our parties would continue to exist in the same way under a different system.

Meanwhile, in case it was keeping you up at night, Kevin O’Leary continues to say he’s waiting to see who else is running before he announces if he’ll make a leadership bid of his own.

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Roundup: A rapidly shrinking legacy

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A little less than a year after the last election, Stephen Harper announced yesterday that he was finally resigning his seat as an MP, and will be off to face future challenges under the banner of his own private consultation firm, Harper and Associates. Apparently he is looking forward to “building something new” and will have an international focus in his new endeavours, which I find a bit curious considering that this was someone who had never even left the country until he became Leader of the Opposition, and whose foreign policy during his time in government was a tad, well, ham-fisted. Oh, and he’ll be joining a speaker’s bureau and tour the world to give speeches, which again is against the grain of his time in office when he was known for not only speaking as little as possible, but also of scrubbing any bits of humanity from his speeches in order to make them as dull and forgettable as possible with no hint of personality in them. We’ll see if he plans to continue this in his new life. Meanwhile, here are some reactions from some of his former cabinet ministers, other notable Canadians, and five ways that Harper changed politics in Canada. Susan Delacourt writes about Harper’s legacy of being a lone wolf and keeping everyone at a distance.

If we’re going to talk legacy, then his longevity is one of the biggest points, but we’ll see how lasting any of his accomplishments are. His ability to reunite the Conservative party, such as it was (because let’s face it, this was not the Progressive Conservative party of John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker, Joe Clark or Kim Campbell) was an accomplishment, but we’ll see if it holds under new leadership or if we have a new voting system. After all, a proportional representation system would see the parts of the conservative coalition break-off out of the big tent into smaller factions that would see advantage in gaining outsized power from a new system, and you can bet that the social conservative elements would not have the patience to stick with a party that has ignored them if they can gain seats and leverage in another way. The vast majority of his policy agenda is well on the way to being rolled back under the new government, with the exception of the fiscal stranglehold that Harper put on the nation’s finances with his decision to cut the GST by two points. That is the only real policy area that the new government has shown no appetite to roll back, but if deficits persist, then raising the GST may be something they would consider (though the fact that some of the provinces have moved into that tax room – which was Harper’s plan all along, in order to see the federal government retreat further from their affairs). He has a legacy of some Supreme Court of Canada judgments that have put a lot of roadblocks on attempts to change the constitution by backdoor or “unofficial” means, so take that for what you will. But his other plan of obliterating the Liberals and turning Canada into a two-party state of Conservatives versus NDP – as he so nearly succeeded in doing in 2011 – has unravelled spectacularly, and saw not only the resurgence of the Liberal party, but a deep wounding of the NDP in the process. So what does this all add up to? I guess we’ll have to wait to see the history books, but it is a legacy that seems to have a shrinking quality less than a year after his time in office ended.

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Roundup: The Brexit fallout

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So, Brexit. If you missed how it all went down, here’s the recap of the evening’s events, a look at the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty regarding an exit from the EU, a look at other countries who may be next, and speculation about how the Queen is faring in the face of this result. There’s a look at the divisions within the UK, and what psychology tells us about feelings toward immigration and how that influenced the referendum vote. And of course, what the Brexit could mean for the Canada-EU trade agreement, seeing as the UK was one of the driving forces behind this agreement. The results of that referendum seem to have made Quebec sovereigntists chippy about the 50-percent-plus-one threshold, while Jason Kenney’s tweets once the results were announced raised a number of eyebrows. The Prime Minister, however, assures us that our economy is strong enough to be able to withstand the market storms triggered by this event. (And do check out Maclean’s full package of excellent Brexit pieces here).

And then there’s the reaction. Doug Saunders notes that this is the first time that a far-right movement and its xenophobia has won a majority vote in a Western Nation, while Scott Gilmore notes that the Brexit could take a multitude of different forms. Andrew Coyne takes the events as a cautionary tale of countries engaging in self-harm. Paul Wells writes about the case that the EU needs to make for itself in the face of referenda like these, while Andrew MacDougall notes that this referendum, along with the Trump phenomenon in the states, is showing the power of demagoguery over fact and expert advice, which is probably the scariest part of this whole sad and sordid affair.

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Roundup: Modest changes suggested

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When its release was announced, I approached it with trepidation – based on the discussions to date, it was bound to be a horror show. Surprisingly, however, the report on how to make the House of Commons more “family friendly” was less ambitious than it could have been – so far, at least. There were many issues left unresolved for the future, and I’m sure that they plan to address some of those issues in a future report, which could indeed be that report that I’m dreading. Overall, however, they decided against the four-day workweek, and haven’t done anything particularly ridiculous like electronic voting or Skyping into committee meetings. Recommendations did include:

  • Maintaining the motion to keep most votes after QP, but not changing the Standing Orders so as to keep flexibility in the system
  • Not holding votes after Thursday QP so as to let MPs be flexible with travel arrangements
  • Moving the date up for deciding on next year’s calendar for better planning
  • Having House Administration provide flexible childcare options at the Members’ own hourly cost
  • Letting MPs’ families have access to their calendars
  • Better flexibility with the shuttle bus service on the Hill
  • Looking at amending the travel point system with regard to families.

While the worst of the previously discussed options were not recommended going forward, and some of the more nonsensical issues like decorum in the Chamber (which has to do with family friendliness how?) had no recommendations, I still think that some of these recommendations have problems. In particular, demanding that House Administration provide childcare options is an issue because uncertainty of usage is costly – do you have childcare workers essentially on standby? How does that work for them, exactly? As well, I find the demand that the Commons provide this service to be a bit rich because these MPs should be able to find solutions on their own. After all, they make $170,000 base salary per year – they can afford to find their own childcare options, whether it’s a nanny or whatnot. The recommendation around travel points is also a little unsettling because it amounts to reducing the transparency around travel so as not to discourage family members from travelling to Ottawa by opening themselves up to criticism. While I do think that we have a problem with petty, cheap outrage when it comes to reporting on MPs’ expenses, I also think that we should use the opportunity to have a discussion with Canadians about the effect of travel on MPs and their families rather than just shaming them without any pushback. After all, we should address these issues rather than just letting the cheap outrage narrative carry the day.

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Roundup: Smart, engaged, and too free for comfort

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It’s not the first piece that raises these questions, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, but I am starting to become a bit weary of the constant think-pieces that considers it a terrible woe that Justin Trudeau is putting smart and accomplished people in the Senate without the yoke of party discipline to constrain them. And lo, Chris Waddell’s over on iPolitics raises many of these same questions, worried about the lack of a democratic mandate (hint: It’s something called Responsible Government) and being fuzzy on the way the Senate actually operates.

Do Canadians want a more activist Senate composed of people who, while accomplished, have no democratic mandate to act? Do we want to see anyone who was not elected to office regularly rejecting or amending legislation passed by elected representatives? If so, on what basis should they do that? Their personal opinions? The views of others? If so, whose views?

In short, a) the democratic mandate comes from the constitution and our system of Responsible Government, where the government that holds the confidence of the Chamber can make such appointments and be responsible for making them; b) This fear that the Senate will suddenly start rejecting bills is nonsense. They’re aware of their role and the fact that they’re not elected, and they tend to exercise their powers with a little too much restraint if you ask me; c) They should do so on the basis of the constitution and whether it’s bad legislation. And yes, elected representatives do pass bad bills where Senators actually read them and find out that hey, it’s a bad bill and needs to be either amended, delayed, or outright stopped; d) Why does a party whip make the Senate rejecting or amending bills any more legitimate than if they do so on the basis of their lifetime of expertise in a given field or based on concerns that aren’t related to whether it’ll get them elected the next time around? Because seriously, that’s part of what “sober” in “sober second thought” means – having a more critical eye that isn’t just about trying to appease the public for short-term electoral gain when there could be bigger things at stake.

Senators don’t just review legislation. They can introduce bills as well — but without a party infrastructure to push such bills through the Senate and then get the attention of the Commons, how many of those bills will be debated in the House, let alone passed?

Yes, they can introduce bills, but they tend to introduce very few, and even fewer of them get very far because they are at the bottom of the list of the Senate’s priorities. And they can get into the Commons by the very same process they do right now – an MP sponsors it, and it goes through on the Order of Precedence. Party infrastructure has nothing to do with it (though the Conservatives did try some shenanigans by all signing up to sponsor Liberal Senate bills in the hopes of delaying and killing them, only to attach their names to bills that were never going anywhere and could backfire on said MPs in that it looked like they were putting their names behind things like stopping the seal hunt, which is political poison). Senate bills are considered Private Members’ Business. This isn’t rocket science.

Once appointed, senators can self-identify the issues they want to pursue in office. Simply by doing that, they make travel costs and expenses incurred in pursuit of those issues Senate business — expenses they can claim, in other words. But those issues are never earmarked by elected officials — so what makes them important enough to be paid for by taxpayers?

Despite the attention paid to Senators’ expenses of late, I’m not overly moved by this line of concern. Without electoral constituencies to concern themselves with, Senators adopt causes, and those causes usually wind up being reflected in committee studies, bills, and reports. And as we’ve found, from both Justice Binnie’s report and the Duffy trial, there are questions raised when Senators start claiming anything as “Senate business,” and yes, there is much more transparency now than there was before, and more rules and reporting yet to come.

Perhaps the fact that we lack answers to these questions of substance is the reason why the Trudeau government has passed just one bill through the Commons for Senate consideration in the five months since it was elected — legislation tabled last December giving it the authority to spend money.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is utterly specious. The government has only passed one bill because they’ve only introduced seven thus far, and are taking them one at a time. That bill was spending estimates, and it had to go through, and lo, the Senate found that the Commons ballsed it up by sending an incomplete bill to them, missing the actual spending schedules. You know, doing their job of oversight when MPs couldn’t be bothered as they passed it at all stages in the span of a few minutes. So if anything, it’s a sign that the Senate is necessary and doing their jobs. Can we please stop this insistence that the only way we want smart and engaged people to have a hand in the parliamentary process is if it’s under the whip? The Senate isn’t a confidence chamber. The pundit class should know these basic facts.

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QP: Haze and incoherence

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A slushy and wet day in Ottawa, and the PM was headed off to Montreal instead of being in QP. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern again on Andrew Scheer’s desk instead of her own, and complained about the incoherence of the current government’s messaging. Navdeep Bains got up to respond, pointing out that the previous government turned a surplus into a deficit and touted their own plan for creating jobs. Ambrose complained about the size of the deficit, to which Bains insisted that they have a plan to grow the economy and make it more productive. Ambrose then insisted that Trudeau was imposing a national carbon tax, and this time Catherine McKenna got up and quoted Suncor’s CEO and Preston Manning as fans of carbon pricing. Maxime Bernier was up next, and he complained of the broken promise around the size of the deficit. Marc Garneau responded to this question, stating that Conservative cuts in the current economic situation could push the country into recession. Bernier insisted that deeper debt would not create wealth, and Garneau read some talking points about the importance of their own plan. Charlie Angus led off for the NDP, who noted a suicide in Moose Factory in his riding, and wanted a plan to end the discrimination in funding. Jean-Yves Duclos responded to this one, and he said that federal and provincial partners were working together on the complex issues. Angus listed the health problems on reserves, demanding action yesterday, for which Duclos reiterate that they were working with First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis to provide inclusive and sustainable circumstances. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet asked the same again in French, got the same answer from Duclos in French, and for her final question, demanded action on proportional representation. Maryam Monsef stated that she looked forward to meaningful consultations.

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Roundup: Farewells and self-awareness

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With 54 MPs not running again in the next election, we’re hearing a lot of teary farewells, and a number of them talking about their regrets for all kinds of things, particularly about some of the nastiness and the more toxic aspects of their career in politics. It’s more of what we saw in the Samara Canada series of exit interviews with MPs from previous parliaments, which culminated in the book Tragedy in the Commons, where MPs all bemoaned how terrible it was, and how the parties controlled everything, and how everyone else was nasty and partisan (but not them – even when you pointed to examples where they were engaging in that behaviour). What strikes me is that pretty much no MP you’ll speak to will take any responsibility for their own actions, whether it’s boorish partisan behaviour, letting the leader’s office dictate to them, or as is now commonplace, dutifully reading the scripts that are placed in front of them with no critical capacity to say no, I won’t demean myself in this way. (The obvious exception to all of this is Irwin Cotler, who has been a pretty exemplary class act throughout his time as a parliamentarian, but for pretty much everyone else this applies). When we listen to MPs get all teary and expressing their regrets, we should start asking them why they didn’t do something differently. And that’s really it – we elect MPs directly under our electoral system, and that empowers them to be the masters of their own destiny within the Commons (with the obvious exception of whips on things like confidence votes). They don’t need the Reform Act for things to change – they just need to take responsibility for their own behaviour and act like grown-ups. Sadly, the vast majority don’t and then blame everyone else, which is a sad state of affairs.

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