Tag Archives: Equalisation

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: Alberta is broken, part eleventy-seven

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Things are increasingly broken in Alberta, and I’m not referring to the province’s horrific case rates, collapsing ICUs, and Jason Kenney’s continued refusal to take appropriate public health measures in the face of this. No, I’m referring to the fact that a group of MLAs including the gods damned Speaker and deputy Speaker came out as quasi-separatists yesterday with a looney-tunes “Free Alberta Strategy” which is 100 percent handwaving and pretending that they can simply opt-out of federally-imposed laws by sheer force of political will, and the mistaken notion that Quebec did it and they can too. (Spoiler: Quebec didn’t actually do it, and what few things it did do pretty much devastated their economy). This thread helps to clarify a lot of what they’re asking for and why it’s eye-rollingly ludicrous.

There are a few things to unpack here. Much of this stems from Kenney’s farcical referendums that will take place next month, the central of which is to demand a renegotiation of equalisation, which is where these quasi-separatist loons are drawing their inspiration from. It encouraged this kind of magical thinking that somehow Alberta could just stamp its feet and hold its breath and the federal government would somehow surrender its jurisdiction over things. That’s not how this works. But it’s also about Kenney’s entire attitude toward governing, and how he was building anger toward Trudeau in particular so that it would distract the population from his own failings. I have tended to liken Kenney to an arsonist who would set fires and get far enough ahead of them to put them out so that he can look like a hero – but he hasn’t put them out. He poured a glass of water on them and demanded a medal, while the very fires he set are spreading. Everything that is happening in this province all started with a match that has his name and fingerprints all over it. It’s not just trying to pretend that there’s a “good parts only” version of populism that he’s cherry-picking, or that he is somehow “tapping a relief well” to keep it from blowing up in his face. It blew up. The province is in a crisis, and he keeps lighting more fires because he can’t help himself. Things are going to get even worse in the coming weeks, and try as he might, Kenney has nobody to blame but himself.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442925906679320582

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1442932249666621441

And then there’s the whole issue with the Speaker and his deputy. This is the second time now that said Speaker has compromised the avowed neutrality of his position, and he needs to be removed by the Legislature at once, as well as his deputy. It is unacceptable that they remain in their positions any longer, as they cannot be trusted to be neutral presiding officers in the Legislature.

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Roundup: The “brother” meltdown

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Because we’re in an election and it ramps up the absolute stupidity across the board, we had another so-called “gaffe” that made a bunch of people performatively lose their minds, and I can’t even, you guys.

In a press conference about the situation in Afghanistan, Maryam Monsef, the minister responsible for the status of women and gender equality and a former refugee from Afghanistan, who fled when she was a child, made a direct address to the Taliban about letting people out of the country, and used the term “brothers.” And people lost their gods damned minds. She was asked about it and said that the context was cultural and she absolutely considers them to be terrorists, and yet the insinuation persists that, somehow, she was using the term as being sympathetic to a group that is diametrically opposed to everything she is about. WTF.

https://twitter.com/ChrisGNardi/status/1430565362265907205

And I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to suggest that there was a racist or Islamophobic undercurrent in the media even questioning that she was somehow trying to be sympathetic to the Taliban. Because seriously, you think that somehow Monsef personally, or the Trudeau government, is going to be “soft on terror,” or some other bullshit like this? Are these the tropes by which we will repeatedly fall back into, because we have learned nothing over the past twenty years? Apparently not, especially when it’s all being done to put on a show. It’s pretty gross, you guys. Do better.

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Roundup: Kenney announces his next big distraction

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By now you’ve heard that Jason Kenney has announced the referendum questions that Alberta will be voting on in October as part of Kenney’s mass distraction plans. It’s unheard of to have multiple referendum questions – in this case, daylight savings and removing equalisation from the Constitution – on top of an unconstitutional sideshow of Senate “nominee elections,” and yet Kenney is putting these all together with the upcoming municipal elections. This has the bonus for Kenney of muddying the waters of those elections, where more progressive candidates tend to do better, particularly in the cities, and he gets to claim that he saves money by holding them at the same time, but this is a lie. Municipal elections are run by the municipalities themselves, while these referenda and bogus “nominee elections” are held by Elections Alberta, and just because they happen at the same time and can co-locate spaces doesn’t change the fact that it going to cost more.

The thing is, the referendum on equalization won’t actually do anything because even if they sent a message to the rest of Canada and brought everyone to the table to negotiate, the only thing that’s in the Constitution is the principle of equalization – the formula itself is federal legislation, because the programme is paid out of federal general revenues. But Kenney is content to keep lying to the public and pretending that Alberta signs a cheque every year that Quebec cashes and pays for its child care system with (which it doesn’t – they pay for that out of their own taxes, and they reap the direct economic benefits from it as well). As well, the myth that Quebec killed Energy East is being invoked (Quebec had nothing to do with it – the proponent couldn’t fill both Energy East and Keystone XL with their contracts, so Energy East was abandoned as Keystone XL looked like the more likely to reach completion – not to mention that it wouldn’t have actually served the Eastern Canadian market), which is again about stoking a faux sense of grievance. The fact that Kenney is stoking this anti-Quebec sentiment because he thinks it’ll win him points (and hopefully distract the angry mob that is gathering outside his own door) is not lost on Quebeckers when it comes to Kenney’s good friend, Erin O’Toole, looking for votes in the federal election.

But as economist Trevor Tombe keeps saying, Alberta doesn’t need equalization in the same way that Bill Gates doesn’t need social assistance – Alberta is still making way more money than any other province, even with their harder times economically. The province’s deficit is not a result of equalization or money supposedly being siphoned east (again, equalization comes out of federal taxes) – it’s a result of a province that refuses to implement sales taxes or other stable revenue generation, and expecting everyone else to subsidize that choice (while also cutting corporate taxes under the illusion that it would create jobs, but didn’t). This is just Kenney handwaving and shouting “look over there!” because he knows he’s in trouble, and he needs to keep everyone focused on a different enemy. He shouldn’t be rewarded by people falling for it.

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Roundup: Exit Jody Wilson-Raybould

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Jody Wilson-Raybould announced yesterday that she wasn’t going to be running again in the next election, but wasn’t leaving to “spend more time with family.” Rather, she planned to continue her work in other venues, but noticed that the House of Commons had become more toxic and ineffective, which is very true.

https://twitter.com/Puglaas/status/1413128438592933898

While I don’t think that Wilson-Raybould was a particularly great minister (and she has yet to answer for her pushing blatantly unconstitutional legislation through), she nevertheless had a particularly valuable viewpoint that made the House of Commons better for having her in it. Her singularly pushing back against the Bloc’s attempts to play politics around Quebec’s Bill 96 and the proposed constitutional changes and nationhood declarations was something we could certainly have used more of, not less.

This having been said, I think Wilson-Raybould, like Jane Philpott, were somewhat naïve about the nature of federal politics, and were sold some particularly bad advice about life as an independent MP, and more broadly about hung parliaments in general. There is a particular romance around them, particularly from a segment of the political science crowd, which has rosy visions of the 1960s and inter-party cooperation to get things done, when hung parliaments in recent decades have simply been nasty and highly partisan, and that contributed a lot to the toxicity and ineffectiveness of this parliamentary session. On top of that, Wilson-Raybould had broken the trust of her fellow MPs, and that no doubt further isolated her in an already fractious situation in the Chamber. It’s too bad that she couldn’t have contributed more, but her no longer being there is a diminution to the kinds of voices that we should be hearing more of.

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Roundup: Trudeau’s feeling punchy in Calgary

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues his tour of the country as the pandemic wanes, and yesterday stopped in Calgary to meet with both Jason Kenney and Naheed Nenshi, and there were some particular notes that Trudeau’s tone had changed, and that he was more combative than he has been in the past – in particular, taking shots at Kenney’s government over their resistance to dealing with climate change and the economic opportunities that come with the green economy, and that Kenney had endorsed banning niqabs in the country as an example of how the previous government didn’t take systemic racism seriously. (And if anyone wants to point out that Kenney was the party’s “ethnic outreach” minister, remember that his particular focus was on communities where they felt they could target social conservative votes, citing their mutual dislike of the gays, marijuana, and so on).

There was in particular some politics being played about the announcement over funding for Calgary’s Green Line LRT project, where the province – which has been apparently slow-walking it for a year now – approved the funding in a press release shortly before Trudeau’s announcement, and weren’t at the announcement themselves, which sounds about typical.

Trudeau, meanwhile, pushed back against the notion that there is some kind of unfairness in equalisation, and that Alberta is being somehow disadvantaged. While he pointed out that the current formula was negotiated with Kenney at the Cabinet table, it bears repeating that equalisation is not the province writing cheques to one another – it comes out of general revenues from federal taxes, and Alberta pays the highest federal taxes because they have the highest incomes in the country by far – even during these tougher economic times for the province as a result of the downturn in the oil market. Not that Kenney is going to tell the truth of how it works when he’s trying to nurse a faux grievance in order to score political points (much as he’s doing with his bullshit “senate nominee elections”). Part of this newfound punchiness on Trudeau’s part has to do with the narrative of election speculation, but also that Kenney has been weakened, and the Conservatives nationally are losing ground, and Trudeau likely sees an opening. There is talk that they could take several seats in Edmonton and Calgary thanks to both softer Conservative numbers and the fact that they could lose ground on their right flank to the swivel-eyed loons in the “separatist” Maverick Party, which gives the Liberals more of an opening. Trudeau also made the point that they want Alberta to have representation in the government, and perhaps people learned their lesson after shutting them out in the province out of spite, only to realize they made a big mistake afterward. We’ll see where it goes, but the shift in tone is notable.

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Roundup: Getting the deficit vapours

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back making the media rounds yesterday, and one of the things he spoke about was the “ambitious green agenda” to be laid out in the Throne Speech, which has every pundit in the country clutching their pearls about the state of the deficit. Why? Because in Canadian punditry – and many government departments, finance especially – it is 1995 and will always be 1995. And some of that comes with the usual ridiculous assertions about comparing the nation’s finances to a household’s, or that of a business.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301527104383848449

And then there was one column in particular which doubled down on not only the usual deficit vapours, but the notions that somehow inclusive growth isn’t a real strategy, which credible economists – and not just those on speed dial for certain media outlets who have one answer for every problem – will tell you is a bogus argument. But hey, it’s 1995 and will always be 1995.

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1301505825366773762

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301496695814004736

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1301500044315693058

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Roundup: Kenney’s shock-and-awe tour

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Jason Kenney is in town on his shock-and-awe tour, with eight ministers and countless staff in tow, intent on making the province’s “Fair Deal” case to their federal counterparts – while those federal ministers smile and nod and say “yes, dear.” Meanwhile, certain credulous journalists and columnists are swallowing Kenney’s presentation whole, as he brings charts and graphs and rattles off figures that they don’t bother to question, never mind that he has a well-known and well documented propensity for lying with these very same facts and figures – and then gets terribly indignant if you call him on it, and will keep reiterating them, bulldozing over his doubters. And we’re going to get even more of that during the media rounds later today – mark my words.

To that end, Kenney’s ever-evolving list of demands continue to be largely unreasonable (as said credulous journalists and pundits nod and say “They’re perfectly reasonable” when they’re not) – things like demanding a solid timeline for the completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline (impossible if there are further court challenges, and Kenney is lying when he says there are mechanisms), along with bringing in First Nations as equity partners (there is little point until the project is completed, which was the whole point of buying the pipeline in the first place – to adequately de-risk it); his $2.4 billion demand for “fiscal stabilization,” some of which he plans to put into remediating orphan wells (never mind the Supreme Court has ruled that these are the responsibility of the companies who owned them); substantial repeals of environmental legislation (because the failed system under Harper that only resulted in litigation worked so well); changing rules so that oil and gas companies can raise revenues (reminder: flow-through shares are de facto federal subsidies); and recognising Alberta’s efforts at methane reduction (I’m going with “trust, but verify” on this one, because Kenney likes to lie about the province’s other carbon reduction efforts). So yeah – “perfectly reasonable.” Sure, Jan.

Bill Morneau, for his part, says he’s willing to talk to his provincial counterparts at their upcoming meeting about fiscal stabilization, but isn’t making promises. While the premiers all signed onto this notion at the Council of the Federation meeting last week, it was because it’s federal dollars and not dealing with equalization which could affect their bottom lines – and Kenney’s supposedly “conciliatory” tone in which he says he’s willing to accept fiscal stabilization changes over equalization is likely a combination of the realization that he’s getting to traction from the other premiers, whose support he would need to make any changes, and the fact that Trudeau publicly called Scott Moe’s bluff on equalization reform when he said that if Moe can bring a proposal forward signed off on by all of the premiers then they would discuss it – something that isn’t going to happen. This all having been said, it also sounds a lot like Kenney wants the rest of Canada to bankroll the province for their decision not to implement a modest sales tax which would not only have solved their deficit but would have provided them with the fiscal stability to help weather the current economic hard times – but that’s an inconvenient narrative. Better to drum up a fake separatist threat and try to play the hero instead.

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Roundup: The Cabinet dominoes

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With the days counting down until the Cabinet shuffle, the speculation is starting to get intense, and much of it is centred around the fate of Chrystia Freeland and whether Justin Trudeau will keep her in foreign affairs or move her to a more problem-solving domestic portfolio – particularly intergovernmental affairs, and capitalizing on her Alberta upbringing as the regional representative around the table (along with Jonathan Wilkinson as the Saskatchewan representative). One of the considerations is that nobody is quite sure who might take Freeland’s place in the foreign affairs portfolio, and the dominos go from there.

Another consideration is the fact that there will need to be some additional bench strength remaining for the committee chairs, as they will be a bigger battleground in a hung parliament than under a majority, given that the opposition will now hold the majority on them. That will essentially mean that amendments for bills will become a bigger consideration at the committee stage than they were in the previous parliament (to say nothing of what happens with amendments coming from the Senate, now that the Commons can insist on adopting them if the opposition all gangs up). There will be plenty of new dynamics that need to be managed – which is why the positions of House Leader and Whip will be all the more important in this new parliament.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield has been imagining mandate letters for incoming ministers, and those released over the weekend include the international trade minister, as well as the social development minister.

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