Roundup: Trudeau’s troubling QP pledge

In an interview with Huffington Post, Justin Trudeau mused somewhat about his proposed changes to Question Period, where he is looking to institute a once-weekly Prime Minister’s Questions Period, akin to Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK, but wouldn’t commit to showing up any more days than that. Under Harper’s time in office, he went from three days to one or two, and only answering the questions of the other leaders when he did show up. Even if a theoretical Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were to show up once a week and answer all of the questions put to him, I’m a bit sceptical because it does limit availability. Part of what’s been the beauty of our QP as we have structured it is that the PM can be called upon to answer any question on any day, with no advance notice. That’s not the way it works in Westminster, where the PM is given questions in advance. Trudeau is also talking about staying out on the road to connect with Canadians, but insists that it’s not a diminution of parliament but rather the opposite, because he’ll have a capable cabinet that can handle things in his absence and it not be a one-man government. Fair enough, but anytime politicians insist that their time is better spent away from Parliament Hill is diminishing the role of parliament. We have a representative democracy, which means that people send their representatives here to debate and make the decisions. If those representatives decide they have better things to do, then what’s the point? I do find it a troubling sentiment because parliament matters. Pretending it’s a distraction from “the real issues” or just a “bubble” ignores that the work that does go on here is important and needs to be accorded with some actual respect. There is more to governing a country than doorstep issues, and it might behove a future Prime Minister to acknowledge that.

Continue reading

Roundup: A refresher on the GG

With a minority government likely in the offing – possibly Conservative, possibly Liberal – we’re seeing a spate of new articles about post-electoral scenarios and the role of the Governor General. While some of them get it more or less right, (my own offering a couple of weeks ago here), into the middle of this, Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch sticks his nose in and starts making trouble of his usual sort – deliberately misconstruing the system to his own ends. And then, unfortunately, As It Happens picked it up and ran with it without someone credible to counter it. Fortunately, Philippe Lagassé was already ahead of that game earlier yesterday morning, followed by a smackdown of Conacher later in the evening. I’ll leave you to it.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653914291637198848

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653914770098290690

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653915706283659264

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653915926199410688

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653916331650252800

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653916666636713984

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653917027585916928

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653919426622943232

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653919762775437313

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/653920023229132800

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654124638788653056

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654124746611683328

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654124846054404096

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654124979273908224

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654125100501872641

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/654125513863098368

Continue reading

Roundup: Crafting an image

The National Post had an interesting feature looking at the construction of Justin Trudeau’s image over the course of this election, with his carefully chosen images like the boxing, or the canoeing, and so on. Of course, Trudeau had this set out since he began the leadership contest, with an official photographer who has followed him around everywhere since. And yes, there is a deliberate crafting of the image he has been putting forward – vital, positive, authentic, all chosen to look natural and not artificial. This is nothing new, and what the piece didn’t mention was that Stephen Harper has been busy doing the same thing for the past number of years. Harper has a team of photographers and videographers on staff who have similarly been engaged in crafting an image of Harper that he has been trying to build, albeit it’s one of him being leaderly but not glamorous or robust. Where the divergence has been is the way in which Harper has crafted this image to such a controlling extent that he has gradually been shutting out legitimate news media and photojournalists and then distributes handout photos from his own photographers instead. Which, as we know, is not journalism but stenopgraphy. It’s gotten to the point where he has been self-generating “news” videos (the 24/Seven series) in order to bypass the press. Trudeau, to his credit, has not yet begun engaging in this kind of behaviour, and has been far more open to media availabilities and photojournalism, where media cameras are at the same events where his photographer is. That remains an important distinction – sure, he may have some great shots as part of his campaign media, but the real media is still there too, and that’s an important distinction.

Continue reading

Roundup: A new member of the Canadian Family

Zunera Ishaq, the woman who challenged the niqab ban at citizenship ceremonies, took her oath yesterday with her face veiled, and the sky did not fall. And while Muslim immigrants question their faith in Canada, Ishaq is now free to cast her ballot to exercise her rights as a Canadian citizen.

Continue reading

Roundup: Refugee file hijinks

The news of the day yesterday was the revelation that the PMO ordered a halt to government-sponsored Syrian refugee processing for several weeks in the spring so that they could review the programme. There are some serious concerns that they had access to the personal files of those refugees, and other concerns that they were trying to pick and choose which refugees they would accept in terms of religious or ethnic minorities – screening out some Muslim claimants, much as they admitted to doing earlier in the year when they insisted they were taking “the most vulnerable.” Harper came out mid-day to insist that political staffers didn’t take part in making any decisions, and that they didn’t change any results – but neither he nor Chris Alexander refuted the facts of the story. There are curious elements, such as why they had reason to suspect that the UNHCR – which this government has offloaded the responsibility for vetting refugee claimants onto – would not be forwarding the most vulnerable cases to them already (that’s what they do), and why the government had a Danish Christian group do the audit. What’s even more curious is that only government sponsored refugees had their files halted, but privately sponsored refugees – most of those by family members or church groups in Canada – were left untouched. If there were concerns about security, would they not also be affected? Apparently not. And then comes Bob Fife’s story – that the “right communities” the government was looking to ensure the refugees came from would be those that have connections in Canada that could be exploited for votes. It’s a cynical answer, but fits the pattern that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing over the past number of years of this government.

Continue reading

Roundup: Boil-water promises need a grain of salt

Some First Nations issues have finally been getting some play in the past couple of days in the election, after the early reiterations of positions by the parties with regards to things like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. While Trudeau and Mulcair in recent days made repeated promises around closing funding gaps with First Nations, particularly around education, Trudeau this week made a pledge around the boil-water advisories on some 93 First Nations reserves, and said that he wants those eliminated within five years (though that number could be larger as the federal list doesn’t include BC). The question that Kady O’Malley asked, quite reasonably, is how big of a hole that puts in Trudeau’s other spending promises around infrastructure spending, as previous estimates have pegged water and wastewater systems needed on 571 First Nations around $1.2 billion. What could be more concerning to Trudeau and company is this conversation that Maclean’s had with an expert in this particular field, who said that dealing with this problem in five years is unrealistic given that the reasons for the advisories on so many communities is varied and that there can’t be a simple top-down fix for the issue. It is a complex problem that involves more than one level of government, and while the promise may be laudable, it may be necessary to temper expectations (albeit, as openly and transparently as possible) while still pushing ahead on the file, fixing as many as possible in five years but noting that eliminating the problem may take longer.

Continue reading

Roundup: The problem with paper candidates

Yesterday, the quixotic Jean-François Party released a rare bilingual statement to decry the use of “paper candidates,” citing a case of a Green candidate from BC who had never visited the riding he or she is contesting in Quebec. If there was to be a cautionary tale around the use of paper candidates, it should have been with both the NDP in the 2011 federal election, and more recently in the Alberta provincial election. In both cases, paper candidates accidentally got elected in popular “waves” where it was clear that the voters of Quebec and Alberta were motivated to vote for the party for their particular reasons (affection for Layton in 2011, anger with the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta this year). In both cases, some less than stellar MPs/MLAs were accidentally elected – one of them, incidentally, joined the Jean-François Party. While Jean-François Party co-founder (and now party president and candidate) Jean-François Larose was one of those NDP MPs who was part of the sweep, then-fellow NDP MP Manon Perreault was an example of how a paper candidate turns out to be trouble. Over the course of the 41st parliament, Perreault was charged and convicted of criminal mischief when she falsely accused an assistant of theft, and was also later investigated by the RCMP for problems with travel claims expenses (though I’m not sure we heard the outcome of said investigation). Nevertheless, she was turfed from the NDP caucus during her trial, and after the writ dropped, she joined the Jean-François Party. So really, that the party is now coming out against paper candidates when their very existence is dependent on the victory of such candidates is curious. The problem, however, is that the parties have an incentive to create these candidates, and that incentive is that running full slates, regardless if those candidates have ever been to those ridings or not, allows them to claim the maximum spending cap. Hence, as especially in Quebec in 2011, ridings which barely had NDP riding associations all accepted the “nominations” of those paper candidates which included Ruth Ellen Brosseau and the McGill Four, because the NDP wanted their spending cap. So what to do about it? It’s a sticky situation because it would seem the answer is to remove the incentive of the spending cap, but how does one enforce that the candidates have actually been to the riding, or are actually campaigning? Do we really want Elections Canada to become an intrusive body to not only poke their heads into the party nomination process and to check up on those candidates in the ridings? It’s hard to say. I do think that paper candidates are an affront to our democratic system, but without turning Elections Canada into Big Brother, I’m at a loss as to a workable solution.

Continue reading

Roundup: Free-ish trade deal with TPP

So, the TPP got signed, in case you missed the entirety of the news cycle yesterday. The Supply Management system was almost entirely left intact, and what tiny bit of market access that TPP countries gained will be more than compensated to the dairy farmers with very generous subsidies, and thus the Dairy Cartel was sated. Also, the auto parts content rules were kept largely intact as well, not that Unifor seems to care, as they’re going full-on protectionist and crying doom. Harper of course was touting the deal, while the Liberals sounded broadly supportive but wanted more details plus a full discussion in parliament when it comes to enabling legislation. The NDP, however, are still warning doom and taking the tactic of “Nobody trusts Stephen Harper” and latched onto Unifor’s claims that 20,000 jobs were imperilled. So there’s that. Economist Trevor Tombe takes us through why the deal is good for the country, while Andrew Coyne laments the timidity of maintaining the barriers we did.

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/651093562784923648

Continue reading

Roundup: A potential TPP deal

While signs that the election could become an ugly question of identity politics continue to circulate, the impending announcement of some resolution or other in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks could swing the election narrative yet again. While an announcement was supposed to have been made yesterday, it was held over until morning today, and we’ll see what becomes of it. Back in Canada, Harper has been talking up the deal, while Thomas Mulcair has taken to using the TPP as his new wedge. While trying to change the channel from the niqab issue, and his own rapidly softening poll numbers, Mulcair has become the born-again protectionist, declaring that Harper has no mandate to negotiate the deal (despite the fact that there is both precedent and it would still require parliamentary approval for enabling legislation), loudly decrying the impact on dairy farmers and auto parts manufacturers. The curious thing, however, is that two months ago he declared himself an enthusiastic supporter of the potential deal. The Liberals, meanwhile, are saying that they are supportive of free trade but won’t make any comments one way or the other about the TPP until they have more details – for which the NDP are castigating them for not taking a stand. Remember how at the Maclean’s debate, Mulcair was making a big deal about not wanting to take a stand on certain pipeline projects until he had a better environmental assessment? Suddenly waiting for more details is irresponsible. It gives me a headache.

Continue reading

Roundup: Resurrecting the “barbaric” issue

Not content to ratchet up the niqab issue alone, the Conservatives decided yesterday to go full-on culture war, and dredge up their Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices legislation from the previous parliament, and not only tout what it does (almost all of which is duplicative and unnecessarily antagonistic), but they added the promise of setting up a “tip line” for when people suspect these “barbaric cultural practices” like child brides, polygamy or female genital mutilation are taking place. Never mind that there’s already a tip line in place – it’s called 911 – it seems ripe for reporting on neighbours as a general xenophobic policy that ties up police resources that are already stretched thin. While the Twitter lit up with an attempt to turn the #BarbaricCulturalPractices into an exercise in sarcasm, there are more serious issues underlying the Conservatives’ use of the word. Back when the bill was being debated, Senator Mobina Jaffer, herself a Muslim woman and a lawyer, utterly dismantled the bill from its use of the loaded term “barbaric” to its hypocrisy in targeting polygamy by foreigners but not the community of Bountiful in BC, to the way in which it actually denies the protection of those who were forced into marriages, to the way in which the government improperly uses the defence of “provocation” to try and make a point about honour killings. It’s a masterful bit of legislative scrutiny that deserves to be read again in light of what the Conservatives are trotting out for electoral gain, and in order to put the whole issue into proper context. (That it also demonstrates the value of the work that senators can do its an added bonus).

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/649992456377765889

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/650004567241961472

Continue reading