Tag Archives: Election 2021

Roundup: The Leaders’ Debate Commission has some suggestions

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We are now on or about day seventy-seven of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces are now pummelling the strategic port city of Odessa, especially to disrupt supply lines. This is particularly key for grain shipments, which are already being blocked by the blockade of the Black Sea, and which are going to keep driving up world food prices, and hit areas of food insecurity even harder. It also looks like Russia is increasingly using Soviet-era munitions, which suggests that they are rapidly using up their supply of precision weapons. As for the Ukrainian fighters still in Mariupol, they are appealing to the UN to evacuate their wounded as they did with the civilians beneath in the steel plant there.

Closer to home, the Leaders’ Debate Commission released their report on the 2021 federal election debates, and lo, they concluded that the formats were clumsy and had too many moderators. Gosh, you think? Setting aside the fact that they had pollster Shachi Kurl to moderate the English debate, which was a questionable choice at best, the fact that they had a line-up of journalist co-moderators boils down to the fact that the broadcasters and media outlets who participate insist on having their talent featured as part of their participation, and one has little doubt that they don’t want to participate if they don’t get their way on this, and Kurl was likely the compromise if nobody could get their own talent to be the sole moderator for the event, and lo, in her desire to be tough, she gave François Legault what he had been begging for the entire election, so good job there. (After all, it’s bad enough that the broadcasters have to give up a couple of hours of American programming prime time that they rake in the ad dollars from).

The report also noted the unhappiness with the debate format, but their recommendation of firmer control and “working with stakeholders” is a bit weak. Yes, we need a simplified format, but will the leaders actually play ball with that? The insinuation is that the leaders like the convoluted format because it is easier to draw clips from, and avoids prolonged engagements with other leaders that can draw them into *gasp!* a substantive conversation. And that’s really the rub with this whole thing—it really requires the participation of reluctant broadcasters and reluctant party leaders, and too many compromises get made along the way. I’m not sure what the solution to that winds up being in the end, because the alternatives we saw in 2015, with the myriad of debates and formats, had far less engagement and that’s not good for democracy either.

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Roundup: The House of Commons’ vaccine mandate

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The expected happened in a way that was a little unexpected – and perhaps a bit improper. The Board of Internal Economy apparently met (possibly virtually), and decided that as of November 22nd, there is a vaccine mandate for the parliamentary precinct, and that includes MPs, staffers, and contractors. It’s a bit of a cute way of imposing a vaccine mandate on MPs themselves, but it may not fly regarding the Chamber itself because of parliamentary privilege.

Mind you, a privilege argument won’t last long. While the decision to go the route of BoIE seems to be a bit of a dare – and Yves-François Blanchet seems to indicate that he’s of the opinion that this is a legitimate use of its powers (I wouldn’t be so sure), this could easily be challenged in the Chamber, but even if the Speaker determines that there is a prima facie case of privileges being infringed, the rest of the House can vote instead to dismiss it rather than send it to committee, or even if they do send it to committee, vote it down afterward. And they likely will, because all of the parties except for the Conservatives are in favour of the vaccine mandate, so it’ll pass one way or the other. Now the government can head off any challenge by introducing a motion in the Chamber on the first or second day to declare that MPs need to be fully vaccinated in order to be in the Chamber, and they can then vote it through and it’ll be fully legit, so if they’re smart, they’ll ensure that happens once there is a Speaker in place. (This will also likely happen in the Senate, but they are still in discussion in that Chamber, but one can likely assume a similar vaccine mandate will be in place with their own precinct areas and Chamber in a similar manner).

This leaves the question of hybrid sittings. The Conservatives and Bloc have been in favour of ending them, while the NDP have supported keeping it going. The Liberals haven’t officially said, but they have been pushing for this since before the pandemic, so you can bet that they’ll be fine with some form of hybrid ability going forward, which shouldn’t be allowed – the human cost of hybrid sittings when it comes to the toll it takes on the interpreters is frankly immoral to continue with. That will nevertheless by an ongoing conversation between the parties before any order to resume said sittings goes ahead in the first few days of the new parliament – but a rule should also be made that unvaccinated MPs shouldn’t be allowed to simply join by hybrid sitting instead. Parliament, whether in the Commons or the Senate, is an in-person job, and it’s an essential function of this country. The hybrid measures should only ever have been temporary and for the duration of that pandemic emergency, and now that we have vaccines, there is no longer a need for them.

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Roundup: Freeland has a KGB file

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I think it goes a little unappreciated at times as to just what a force of nature Chrystia Freeland can be. This weekend, we learned about her KGB file – wherein she was code-named “Frida” – from the time she was a university student on an exchange programme in Soviet Ukraine. She was ostensibly there to learn the language, but she was already fluent (she spoke it at home growing up, and still speaks it at home with her children), and instead spent much of her time organising local dissidents, and acting as a fixer for foreign journalists (which set up her later career). And along the way, she knew how to evade Soviet surveillance and send letters through the Canadian embassy in Moscow where the diplomatic pouches couldn’t be searched. The KGB was apparently not only worried about her, but impressed by her talents and felt she could have made a great spy.

Having read this, I was reminded of a debate that took place in the House of Commons in the waning days of the Harper government, when then-parliamentary secretary James Bezan was trying to minimise Freeland’s connection with Ukraine, and tried to make it sound as though Freeland was inventing it. (Remember that the Conservatives very much try to play up their connections with the Ukrainian diaspora community across the prairies, because they have votes there). Never mind that Freeland’s mother helped write Ukraine’s first post-Soviet constitution, but we have learned more about Freeland’s own activities in organising movements that helped bring down the Soviet presence in that country.

The fact that our deputy prime minister has this history is pretty interesting stuff, and all the more interesting as she is very likely to be the next prime minister of this country. Add to that, the fact that she is currently a persona non grata in Russia and the subject of sanctions by that country makes it all the more fascinating that she could soon be in charge of this country.

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Roundup: Self-awareness and civilian control

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When it comes to the issue of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces, there seems to be an epidemic of a lack of self-awareness. This is demonstrated time and again within the ranks as officers are given inappropriate promotions (remember the head of personnel who had known sexual misconduct allegations), are protected by the top brass (General Jonathan Vance, the infamous golf game earlier in the year), and the issue with Major-General Peter Dawe being given the role of sorting through the various reports on reforming military culture after he was suspended for writing the glowing letter for someone under his command who had been convicted of sexual assault. Every time, this has to be pointed out to them and how inappropriate their actions continue to be.

But it’s not just the ranks that lack self-awareness – it’s also their political masters. During a media availability yesterday, both prime minister Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland also had harsh words for the military’s inability to exercise self-awareness on the sexual misconduct file – but they have a role to play there as well, because in a democracy like ours, the military answers to civilian control. In our particular system, that should be going through the Chief of Defence Staff to the Minister of National Defence – but the current minister, Harjit Sajjan, has made it clear that he is not exercising his responsibility for civilian control, and is not properly overseeing the CDS, or his top decisions. Part of this may be because he is former military (he was actually active when he was elected and needed to go through the discharge process so that the CDS could no longer outrank him), and is steeped in the culture and cannot adequately see the reality of what is going on, or why he needs to exercise civilian control. And no, I’m not sure it was any better under the previous government either, who also appointed a former general to Minister of Defence (Gordon O’Connor), and generally let the military run their own show – especially with procurement, which is why there were so many botched files, from the F-35 to joint supply ships.

We need to re-assert civilian control by means of a competent minister who doesn’t have a military background, and someone who can actually perform some managerial competence and keep the CDS on a tight leash. But that may depend on Trudeau having enough self-awareness of his own recognise that this is what needs to happen as he decides on how to shuffle his Cabinet, and I’m losing confidence that this could actually happen.

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Roundup: Calling for a return to in-person sittings

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Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet held a press conference yesterday, where he called for Parliament to be recalled as quickly as possible, and for it to resume in-person with vaccinated MPs, ending the “hybrid” sittings that we were saddled with in the previous session. For once, I actually agree with Blanchet – we are at the point with vaccinations and public health measures that there really is not any excuse for MPs not to be attending in person (wearing masks indoors as often as possible), because we cannot continue as we were before dissolution.

For those of you who weren’t following along, the hybrid sittings were direct contributors to the toxicity of the previous session, as MPs didn’t have to look one another in the eye while they behaved in the ways that they did or levelled the accusations at one another that they did, and the limitations of those sittings, particularly at committee, exacerbated the procedural warfare and filibusters that parties engaged in. Additionally, there can be no moral justification for continuing the hybrid sittings given the human toll it takes on the interpreters, who were suffering acoustic injuries at an increased rate because MPs refused to use their equipment properly, or behave reasonably online in ways that wouldn’t disrupt or injure those interpreters. Some parties – particularly the NDP, but you can bet that the Liberals will chine in as well – will want to keep some aspects of hybrid sittings around, but I want to caution that this should be resisted as much as possible – we don’t want to incentivise these to continue, because it will erode parliament the longer it carries on.

Meanwhile, I do fear that there will be Conservative MPs who continue to refuse either vaccination or to disclose their vaccination status (as a craven way of keeping their own anti-vaxx voters on-side) who will complain that they should be allowed to either attend the House of Commons without proof of vaccination, or to be allowed to carry on in a hybrid means without it. Even more to the point, I fear that at least one of them will turn this into a point of personal privilege, that their rights to speak in the Chamber are being infringed upon, and this will become a privilege fight (which would be doomed as the vaccinated majority eventually votes them down). Nevertheless, a return to in-person sittings needs to happen as soon as possible, and if some MPs refuse then so be it – and they can lose their salaries for absenteeism while they’re at it.

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Roundup: Return of the two Michaels

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Friday was very much an exercise in life coming at one fast, as Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with American authorities, and hours later, the extradition order she was under was dropped and she was free to return to China. A few hours after that, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were on their way back to Canada, the fig leaf that their arrests were not hostage diplomacy in retaliation for Meng’s arrest completely gone, and they arrived on Canadian soil in the early hours of Saturday morning, with prime minister Justin Trudeau and foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau greeting them on the tarmac in Calgary. Spavor debarked there, Kovrig then continued onto Toronto, where he was met by his estranged wife and his sister.

With all of this in mind, there are questions as to where our relationship with China goes next. Garneau says that they are “eyes wide open,” and that they are now following a four-fold approach to China: “coexist,” “compete,” “co-operate,” and “challenge” – which seems to be a more articulate policy direction than the “tough but smart” that Garneau’s predecessor, François-Philippe Champagne stated several months ago. This certainly came up during the election, but the Liberals didn’t articulate much of a foreign policy in their platform, and we got very little in the way of debate on the subject. It is not insignificant, however, that Canada did lead a group of Western allies in a pact against the use of hostage diplomacy, whether practice by China or others (and there are others), so it’s not like the government sat on their hands the whole time either. It will also be exceedingly difficult to disentangle our trade from China – particularly in our agricultural sector – so it will be very interesting to see what this process looks like going forward over the next couple of years.

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Roundup: Knives out for O’Toole?

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Erin O’Toole’s future is under discussion, as a number of vocal MPs are coming out to support his continued leadership, and former Ontario premier Mike Harris is adding his voice to the call. But this is as other MPs are phoning up journalists, on a not-for-attribution basis, absolutely savaging O’Toole and the fact that he is a lying liar and an opportunist of the highest order, and that ultimately undermined their case during the election. (Threads here and here).

This is going to start resolving itself at the first caucus meeting, whenever that takes place, because it’s when the party is going to have to vote on which provisions of the (garbage) Reform Act they are going to adopt for the 44th parliament, including the provision about having the caucus hold a vote to start a leadership review process. Why this is important is one of the reasons that makes the Act garbage in the first place – it actually makes it harder for caucus to push out a leader because it establishes a threshold of 20 percent of the caucus needing to demand a vote before it can be held. That exposes his critics at a time when he is deciding on critic portfolios and things like committee chairs for opposition-chaired committees, and he can use that fear-or-favour system to punish his critics if they fail to meet that 20 percent threshold. If they didn’t have this threshold or this framework, we’ve seen leaders read the writing on the wall with far fewer MPs/MLAs going public, and resigning as a result. The (garbage) Reform Act provides protection for those leaders where it’s supposed to be putting the fear of caucus into them, and it’s just such a dark irony that once again, attempts to improve the system only make it worse.

And while there are a bunch of voices (especially over on the CBC) who seem to think that Andrew Scheer was pushed out for his loss, they have all apparently forgotten that he resigned, particularly after his use of party funds came to light. Whether that was an excuse is not really the point – it wasn’t simply because he lost the election.

Programming note: I am taking the weekend off of blogging entirely because I am exhausted from the election and need to catch up on some sleep. See you next week.

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Roundup: Misleading to the point of misinformation

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As they tend to do after every election concludes, Power & Politics had David Meslin on to talk about electoral reform, because apparently, we are going to re-litigate it once again. (The saving grace is that this time they didn’t have Meslin using his LEGO to show different PR results). The problem? The graphic that the show produced as an example of how the results of this election would be under PR was essentially misinformation.

https://twitter.com/Catelli2Oh/status/1440818668217135110

The assumptions made to produce said chart is that Canada would employ a system of pure proportional representation, and then allocate seats in that regard. But this would be a PR system that nobody is actually asking for, and which would be unconstitutional because seats are allocated on a provincial basis, while such a system would be unable to take that into account under the current 338 seat model. That’s a pretty big deal. Most people advocate for some form of mixed-member proportional, where you vote for a local MP, and then vote a second time for a party, which will then allocate someone from a list into a number of seats designed as “top-ups” to make the seats more closely resemble the “popular vote” (even though such a thing is a logical fallacy under our current vote construction). Furthermore, it would assume that we’d have the same parties, which is unlikely (and Meslin went at great length about how great it would be for the big tent parties to break up), and even more to the point, under a different voting system, voting behaviours would be different. With all of this in mind, the fact that the gods damned CBC produced an infographic with a misleading characterisation of what Monday’s vote might have looked like under PR is not just irresponsible – it’s downright misinformation.

It’s also concerning that Meslin thinks that as many as 21 seats for the People’s Party under such a system is no big deal, and he thinks we should have more radical parties for the sake of “innovation.” The notion of a far-right party getting 21 seats and putting them in the potential position to be kingmakers in a coalition government is frightening to say the least, but we’ve also seen in other countries that use PR, such as Germany and the Netherlands, that when far-right parties breach the threshold to attain seats, they grow in popularity because they are given respectability and a platform to espouse their views. One of the great strengths of big-tent parties, that Meslin completely ignored, is that they moderate extremes, which is actually a good thing in politics. Big tent parties build coalitions of regions and factions within themselves, rather than having smaller parties building the coalitions externally post-election. It’s one reason why radical parties are short-lived, and why disruptive parties tend to “self-correct” within a couple of election cycles, because they can’t maintain the necessary organisation that Canada requires. These are features of our system – not bugs, and it would be great if CBC didn’t turn to the same guy every election to make the same misleading points, time and again.

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Roundup: Stripping the riding associations

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In the wake of the election, we are starting to see a few post-mortem thoughts bubbling up, and this one caught my eye over the Twitter Machine on what went on in the NDP campaign:

https://twitter.com/JessaMcLeanNDP/status/1440366348341694465

This is troubling in several respects – it gives some context as to why the NDP couldn’t get the ground game in ridings where they thought they had a chance to pick up seats, and it explains why their campaign spent as much as it did. This shouldn’t be a surprise for the party however – they are a very centralised organisation, and 2011 was ample demonstration that they have very few grassroots organisations in whole swaths of the county. That’s why when the “Orange Wave” happened, you had a tonne of candidates who had never even visited their ridings – the riding organisations were pretty much just on paper, much like the candidates. A proper riding organisation would have held a nomination race for someone from the area, not a McGill student who signed up on a form and spent the race working Mulcair’s riding in Montreal. They didn’t nurture those grassroots, as shallow as they were, and lo, they lost most of their Quebec seats in 2015, and all but one of them in 2019, nor did they regain any in this election.

Ground game matters, especially in an election where getting out the vote is crucial. Grassroots organisations matter. They may have them in a few of their stronghold ridings, but it really doesn’t look like they have it very well developed in large parts of the country, especially in places where they think they have a chance at winning. But if they’re simply stripping their riding associations of resources – and from the sounds of it, carrying on with the centralised nominations – then that’s a sign of an unhealthy political culture, and not a surprise that they aren’t getting the traction that they’re hoping for.

Good reads:

  • Several of the tight races may not have definitive conclusions until the end of the week. In one of them, ousted Liberal candidate Kevin Vuong remains in the lead.
  • The defeat of fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan has both sides of the Indigenous fishing dispute saying that this points to the need for a resolution to the situation.
  • The Star profiles ten of the new MPs that won races on Monday.
  • Here are a few thoughts from Liberals and academics as to where Trudeau goes now that he’s returned another hung parliament.
  • George Chahal has won a riding in Calgary, which essentially makes him a shoo-in for a Cabinet position.
  • It sounds like Erin O’Toole will encourage caucus to vote for the (garbage) Reform Act provisions that allow a leadership review to be triggered.
  • O’Toole has also triggered a campaign review to see where they went wrong.
  • Jagmeet Singh thinks his leadership is secure, and wants to press Trudeau on wealth taxes in exchange for his support.
  • François Legault doesn’t regret his endorsements in the federal election, even though they amounted to little change.
  • Kevin Carmichaels gets some economic reaction to the election results, and posits that there is now more political certainty for the markets to react to.
  • Chantal Hébert makes her observations about the election results, including that Trudeau will start entering the “legacy phase” of his time in office.
  • Robert Hiltz remains unimpressed by what was on offer in the election, and in the results.
  • My column looks at why the election was not an unnecessary effort, and what some of the underlying narratives that didn’t get explored were.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Shifts on the ground

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So, that was the election – the overall seat count doesn’t look like it’s change much, but on the ground it shifted quite a lot in plenty of places, with Conservatives making more breakthroughs in Atlantic Canada, and the Liberals making a comeback in Alberta. Two sitting ministers lost their seats – Bernadette Jordan and Maryam Monsef, and Deb Schulte was trailing around the time I posted this and went to bed. Those shifts to count for something, and they will mean a different make-up in the House once it returns, probably in late October.

While you’ll hear a lot of talk about how this election was “useless” given the result, I’ve got a column coming out later today that addresses those concerns, but I also wanted to make note about the question of timing – Trudeau pretty much had to go when he did because any later would have run into the municipal elections in Quebec and Alberta, which would spread their volunteer pool too thin, and going after that would mean an election close to Christmas, which everyone would bitch about (and Trudeau would want to avoid something like what happened in 2006). Meanwhile, going later would have meant more weeks of deadlocked bills in the Commons, for little added benefit.

As for the speeches:

  • Annamie Paul was up first, after placing a distant fourth in her riding (which was in no way a surprise). She gave some thanks to her volunteers, staff and family, but gave no indication of what her future plans are as leader, given the fact that the loss of another Green seat (while gaining one new one) won’t help her case as staying on as leader.
  • Erin O’Toole did not really give a concession speech, did not congratulate Trudeau on his win, but essentially made a promise to keep campaigning while falsely claiming that Trudeau had previously threatened another election in the next 18 months (whereas Trudeau simply warned that another hung parliament would likely wind up with another election in that time). O’Toole also made a few more false statements before calling it a night, essentially daring his party to keep him on as leader.
  • Yves-François Blanchet was also fairly bullish, but did concede that they needed to be more cooperative and said that the Bloc would participate in said cooperation, because they are still in a pandemic. That could mean Blanchet is the willing partner for the first few months of Trudeau’s agenda.
  • Jagmeet Singh was more gracious than the others in congratulating the PM on his victory, but then proceeded to take credit for the pandemic supports, and insisting that he will continue to push for things like dental care and his wealth tax which will be extraordinarily difficult to implement.
  • Trudeau was last, declaring that Canadians were sending his party back to work with a “clear mandate” – and *sigh* no, we don’t have mandates in our system of government. He also noted that voters have “Given this parliament and this government a clear direction.” Trudeau was the most gracious of all of the leaders in his victory, thanking the other leaders and their families, the Elections Canada staff and volunteers, and started quoting Laurier in talking about looking to the future that they hope to build together.

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