Tag Archives: Ethics

QP: Demanding an admission of failure

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As rain threaten outside, Justin Trudeau was back in the House of Commons for another day of Question Period, with one other Liberal behind him, and you would be right if you guessed that it was once again Mark Gerretsen. Erin O’Toole led off by pointing to other American outlets which are concern trolling about the situation in Canada, and blamed the rollout of vaccines for the third wave — which is a huge falsehood — and demanded and admission of failure. Trudeau called this out as disinformation, citing our place in the rankings and that delivery schedules were rolling along even if Moderna is occasionally a day or two behind. O’Toole quoted the head of Toronto’s university health network saying this is the worst place in the pandemic and he blamed the slow rollout of vaccines instead of murderclown premiers, to which Trudeau stated that they were doing what they could to support provinces. O’Toole switched to French to repeated his first question, got the same answer, and then repeated the question on doctors in French, and again got the same answer.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised the bailout of Air Canada, accusing the government of trying to break regional airlines, for which Trudeau insisted there will be further assistance for the aerospace industry. Blanchet was not mollified, but Trudeau replied with further assurances that they are supporting the sector. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he decried the current state of the pandemic, and demanded a new plan to fight it, for which Trudeau stated that in some areas of the country it is bad and that they are doing what they can to help affected provinces. Singh switched to English to decry the cancellation of vaccinations appointments in Scarborough, which is a question of provincial jurisdiction, not federal. Trudeau stated that things were bad in Ontario and that they were trying to offer what assistance they can to the Ford government. 

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Roundup: Bill Morneau makes himself a bigger target

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As if the WE Imbroglio couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Bill Morneau stepped up to the plate yesterday and drove it to an all new level of lunacy by declaring that he had just repaid some $40,100 in travel costs to WE after they sent him and his wife on tours of some of their operations, and he didn’t realize that they hadn’t been billed for the full costs. WE later said that they were ostensibly free trips because the pair are well-known philanthropists, and these kinds of trips help showcase their work to potential donors. It would also appear that these weren’t reported to the Ethics Commissioner, if I’m reading it correctly, so that means even more problems for Morneau coming at him. (And before you make the joke, no, Morneau did not previously “forget” about his French villa – he incorrectly reported its ownership structure).

Morneau was, of course, appearing at the Finance committee to answer questions on the WE Imbroglio, and this sent Pierre Poilievre and Charlie Angus in particular over the edge. Already there were more questions raised about the contract with WE over the student grant programme because they had signed it with one of the charity’s holding companies, but that may have been about limiting liabilities, so it could be explained away, but it has all become byzantine both from a lack of government candour (shocking, I know), and because the opposition has constructed conspiratorial narratives that have taken any facts and shaped them in the darkest way possible, so as to make it difficult to figure out what is going on.

And this is only going to spiral from here on out. While the Conservatives and Bloc are now howling for Bill Morneau to resign, both Justin Trudeau and his chief of staff, Katie Telford, have agreed to appear at committee at a future date to be negotiated, so that is going to be nothing shy of a circus. And because the circus did not have enough monkeys, conspiracy theorist Vivian Krause also appeared at committee yesterday, for some unknown reason, to assert – with no evidence – that WE was passing along information to the Liberal Party for their voter identification database (which was denied by both WE and the Liberals), and yet this was being brought up in the Commons, and in some irresponsible reporting.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1286029728982478848

Meanwhile, Justin Ling has a broad exploration of the bigger picture of what the whole Imbroglio says about this government and WE, particularly when it comes to the power of branding. Heather Scoffield lists the ways in which Bill Morneau has managed to be off-side because he’s blind to the ethics implications of his decisions. And to remind everyone about this column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about why it was time for Morneau to be shuffled from Cabinet before all of this WE business started up, which really starts to look like it’s untenable that he remain in the position much longer, not only because he can’t communicate, can’t deal with the business community, and now because it’s unavoidable that he is completely blind to his ethical obligations.

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QP: Chagger for the defence

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The ranks were thin, as was to be expected as it was both the middle of July and the middle of a global pandemic. The prime minister was mysteriously absent, the only major leader not present for the day. Andrew Scheer led off by concern trolling that the PM listed that today was a personal day on his website, which should have been against the rules being as you’re not allowed to mention if a member is present or not, and additionally you can’t do through the back door what you can’t through the front, which Scheer did here. Chrystia Freeland responded that she was happy to take their questions. Scheer then moved onto the WE Imbroligo and how WE was chosen as the partner, to which Freeland recited the non-partisan public service gave the advice to go with WE, and they followed it. Scheer demanded that the PM show up at committee to answer questions, to which Freeland repeated her same points. Scheer listed more problems with WE, and Freeland repeated the same points again. Scheer then attempted to shame the Liberals on the Ethics committee for filibustering the questions, and tried to accuse the Liberals or corruption or incompetence, and Freeland responded that was neither, before she recited the prepared lines one last time. Yves-François Blanchet was up next for the Bloc, and he raised the concerns of someone who met with the prime minister recently and demanded fifty weeks for some unspecified programme, to which Freeland assured him that they were helping Canadians. Blanchet made reference to people with serious illnesses on EI, and Freeland again returned with bland assurances. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and insinuated that the student grant programme was about helping Liberal friends and not students. Freeland explained that youth were particularly threatened by current circumstances which was why they tried to help. Singh switched to English to rail about a “billion-dollar bail-out,” to which Freeland reiterated her assurances.

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Roundup: Calling the PM to committee

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As the WE Imbroglio continues to roll along in the absence of much other news, there are a couple of new developments – one is that both Seamus O’Regan and Katie Telford, both of whom are subject to the Conflict of Interest Act, also have past histories of raising funds for the WE group of charities pre-government formation, which could complicate things as for whether or not they should have recused themselves from any decision-making over the Student Grants programme contract. The other is that the Conservative are proposing to summon prime minister Justin Trudeau before the finance committee to answer questions about the decision to grand that contract – with the added show of having him do so under oath (which is a bit of extraneous showboating – lying before committee would mean that he would face charges of contempt of parliament, and he has already sworn oaths of office which make demands to testify under oath at committee to be unnecessary). Suffice to say, summoning the prime minister to committee is more fraught than you may think, so here’s professor Philippe Lagassé with some perspective.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282376899512107008

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282377930405027840

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282382362593067008

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Roundup: Trudeau steps on yet another rake

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The prime minister’s problems with the now-cancelled WE Charity contract blew up yesterday, as it was revealed that Justin Trudeau’s mother and brother have been paid by WE to speak at events, that his wife had once been paid by them in 2012, all of which contradicts their previous statements that they don’t pay speakers. (Trudeau maintains that he has never been paid). Suddenly this makes the fact that Trudeau didn’t recuse himself from any decisions around that contract at the Cabinet table look very bad, because his family does benefit from the organization, and they’re not just donating their time and profile as had been previously stated. And for WE’s part, they have done themselves no favours by saying that it was their social enterprise arm, ME to WE, which paid them, except for the times when there was a billing error and WE Charity paid them instead. This as more parliamentary committees are (finally) doing their jobs in calling ministers and bureaucrats before them to explain their decisions. And to cap it off, Yves-François Blanchet is now demanding that Trudeau step aside and let Chrystia Freeland run things until everything is cleared up. So that’s something.

It’s hard not to see that the Liberals’ capacity for self-harm knows no bounds, between these self-inflicted wounds and their inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag/manage an issue, means that they inevitably make it worse for themselves – which they did yet again today by essentially saying that the only thing that matters is that Trudeau was really concerned about the youth. Seriously? It is not only obvious that Trudeau seems to lack any sense of self-awareness, in part because he has grown up as a kind of celebrity, but it’s also combined by the fact that there clearly isn’t anyone in his office who will stand up to him and say that no, this maybe isn’t a good idea, and no, it’s going to come across well no matter how well-meaning it all is. I mean, the first couple of years in office, Trudeau dismantled any way for the party mechanism to push back against the leader and his office, and that was a fair bit more autonomous than what goes on in PMO. This being said, I will add that our ethics and conflict of interest regime in this country is ludicrous, and subject to the whims of successive Ethics Commissioners, who either read their mandates so narrowly that nothing was ever her problem, except when she took it upon herself to decide who is and is not a family friend of the Aga Khan (that being Mary Dawson), or her replacement, who has invented new statutory interpretation out of whole cloth on numerous occasions to baffling results. None of this excuses Trudeau’s constantly stepping on rakes – he should absolutely know better, but seems incapable of figuring that out.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how repetitive Trudeau’s ethical lapses are getting, and how every time he promises that he’s learned his lesson – until he does makes yet another blunder. Matt Gurney is baffled at PMO’s tone-deafness on this whole affair. Chris Selley, while boggled at Trudeau’s constant blunders, is even more incredulous at how Andrew Scheer keeps being so bad at responding while creating his own distractions.

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QP: Melting down over court challenges

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While the prime minister was off meeting with big city mayors before heading off to Ethiopia, Andrew Scheer was indeed present, and he led off and he read a bunch of complete lies about the supposed plan to “license” media, to which Steven Guilbeault, who reminded him that the panel recommendations specifically excluded news media and the government would not regulate news media. Scheer insisted that wasn’t good enough and the report somehow would impact free speech, and Guilbeault repeated his answer in English. Scheer tried again, and Guilbeault said that he would be happy to sit down with the opposition when they tabled a bill. Scheer then moved onto UNDRIP, and claimed it was an effective veto on energy projects, to which David Lametti said that they were moving ahead with legislation that would be co-developed with Indigenous people. Scheer tried to use the scare tactics of veto powers, and Lametti suggested that Scheer look at BC’s UNDRIP legislation and see that it is not a veto. Alain Therrien led off for the Bloc, and he railed about the Court Challenges Programme funding a challenge against Quebec’s “secularism” bill, for which Guilbeault said that the government doesn’t have any control over that funding, and that they Bloc should understand the notion of independence. Therrien asked if the government supported the challenge, to which Pablo Rodriguez said that the legislation is being challenged by Quebeckers and that the government was following with interest. Jagmeet Singh was up next for the NDP, and demanded changes to the federal bankruptcy laws to prioritise workers, to which Navdeep Bains said that they had made some commitments in the last budget. Singh then demanded to know how much had been spent on legal fees for the challenge around the First Nations compensation, to which David Lametti said that reports of legal fees are calculated according to a set formula.

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Roundup: The big endorsement

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All three leaders were in Quebec yesterday, being one of the most important battleground provinces when it comes to getting out the vote. Justin Trudeau started off his day in Montreal to again make the pitch that voters need a progressive government and not a progressive opposition, and saying that this was the “dirtiest” campaign ever because of things like disinformation. From there, he made several stops on the way to Sherbrooke. The big news in the afternoon, however, was a tweet from Barack Obama, giving an endorsement for Trudeau’s re-election, citing the need for a progressive voice on the world stage (and taking some of the wind out of the sails of the Conservative claim that Trudeau has been some kind of “embarrassment” on the world stage).

https://twitter.com/b_momani/status/1184550642225991685

Andrew Scheer started his day in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, then headed to Essex, where he promised higher penalties for ethics violations (possibly flirting with constitutional challenges of what constitutes an administrative monetary penalty versus a criminal sanction), and headed into Ontario, eventually making it to Hamilton, where he was in the riding of the Liberal incumbent who was at her mother’s funeral that day – to which Scheer insisted it was okay because he made a charitable donation. (We also found out that he switched the location he planned to make the stop, and the pub owner of the first location was brassed off because he spent $700 preparing food for the stop and putting more workers on staff).

As part of his Quebec tour, Jagmeet Singh was in Hudson, Quebec, the birthplace of Jack Layton, to make his pitch of trying to claim Layton’s legacy. Throughout the day, he started making more untenable promises, like reopening an emergency room in Winnipeg – something that is explicitly provincial jurisdiction, while hand-waving about “levers” he can use, which he actually has none – particularly not in the Canada Health Act. But hey, he wants people to “dream big,” and never mind the Constitution or the clear division of powers therein.

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Roundup: Trying to play the tough guy

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Now that the Ethics Commissioner’s report is out in the open, the Conservatives are doing their best to try and capitalise on it – both with the coming Ethics Committee meeting (that is going to be shut down), and in Scheer trying to look tough on the issue. After calling on Liberals to essentially turn on Trudeau – something that would be far more effective if this were the era of caucus selection of leadership so that they could hold him to account – he also decided to take matters into his own hands at the National Acadian Day festivities in Dieppe, New Brunswick, earlier this week. When Trudeau spotted Scheer in the crowd, he came over to shake his hand, and, camera rolling, Scheer told him “You have to stop lying to Canadians. You need to come clean.” Trudeau, true to form, responded with a nonchalant “Oh, this is a good day today,” and went back to glad-handing with the crowd. Scheer has been trying to make the video go viral, but…he looks kind of awkward in it, like his attempt at being tough and in Trudeau’s face were essentially laughed off. I’m not sure how this bolsters Scheer’s case, but, well, he’s trying to convince his online audience of it.

There were also tongues waving and actual salivation over the revelation that the RCMP had been in touch with Jody Wilson-Raybould after the allegations first surfaced in the Globe and Mail back in February, but nothing has come of it since, and PMO assured the CBC that they had not been contacted by the RCMP. (I find it hard to believe anything will come of that either, given that there’s nothing they could charge them with – and no, this can’t possibly be obstruction of justice because a DPA is not getting off scot-free).

Meanwhile, a bunch of people are trying to be clever about Trudeau’s refusal to apologise for this situation by contrasting it with all of the various official apologies he’s made for historical injustices, as though there can be a actual equation of the two. Worth reading, however, is this thread from a legal analysis of the Ethics Commissioner’s report, and it pokes a number of holes in it, rendering it all the more problematic (which isn’t to say to say that there wasn’t any wrongdoing).

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QP: One last “PMQ”

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It promised to be the last big show of the 42nd Parliament, with all of the leaders present for one last time. Andrew Scheer led off in French, worrying about the start date for the Trans Mountain expansion, studiously ignoring the Federal court of Appeal decision that revoked the permit. Justin Trudeau reminded him that Stephen Harper didn’t get any pipelines to new markets, while he ensured they got proper buy-in from Indigenous communities. Scheer switched to English to repeat his disingenuous lines, and Trudeau repeated that the only way to build energy projects was to work in partner with Indigenous people. Scheer got increasingly breathy as he accused the government of trying to phase out the energy sector, to which Trudeau replied that the Conservatives won’t take yes for an answer, and that they were succeeding in what the Alberta energy sector had asked for. Scheer shouted about all the things he would do to build pipelines and said the prime minister couldn’t get things done, and Trudeau calmly replied that the Conservatives still don’t understand why they failed the economy for ten years. Scheer rose one last time to assure Trudeau that a “real plan for the environment” would come at five o’clock, before he switched to some scattershot condemnation about the Liberals protecting corporate interests, and Trudeau listed off all the things that Scheer didn’t get about the environment. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he demanded the government spend on green projects instead of pipelines, and Trudeau took up a script to list off all of the measures they have taken to help the environment. Singh, in English, declared that the TMX would generate no profits — which is news to everyone — and he decried the government not protecting the environment. Trudeau picked up the English version of the script to list the measures that they have taken. Singh flailed around about measures for the environment, and Trudeau reiterated his previous response without a script, before he put it back to Singh that there were Indigenous communities supported the project. Singh switched to French to worry about the project some more, and Trudeau raised the fact that the pipeline was more responsible than moving oil by rail.

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QP: Whacking and managing

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Monday on the Hill, and the prime minister was present, but Andrew Scheer was not. Candice Bergen led off, and she demanded to know why Adam Vaughan was not fired from his parliamentary secretary role for his tweet about “whacking” premier Ford. Justin Trudeau said he would get to the question in a minute, but wanted to first pay tribute to the late Auditor General, Michael Ferguson. Bergen said that there would be time for that during ministerial statements, then reiterated the question. Trudeau said that Vaughan had apologised and they were endeavouring to keep debate civil. Bergen tried again, and got the same response. Gérard Deltell was up next to offer his usual questions about the deficit, and Trudeau dutifully recited his memorised talking points about investing in the Middle Class™ over Conservative cuts. Deltell tried again, and Trudeau reminded him they cut taxes. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, and he demanded to know why oil and gas subsidies were not yet cut, and then railed about the Trans Mountain pipeline, repeating the misreading of the PBO report. Trudeau noted that they were honouring their commitment to cut those subsidies by 2025, and they were balancing the economy and the environment. Caron railed that the government wasn’t doing enough, and Trudeau rattled off the government’s many environmental measures. Murray Rankin took over in English to make the same environmental demand, and Trudeau reiterated his responses in English. Rankin tried again, and Trudeau lectured him that it was irresponsible not to get a proper price for oil while they needed to make investments in renewables. 

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