Tag Archives: Federalism

Roundup: Senators won’t be pushed around

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The Bloc Québécois are trying to sweeten their demand for their two private members’ bills to pass before October 29th, saying they will help end the current filibuster in the House of Commons if the government does. Couple of small problems there—one is that the Senate can’t speed passage of any private members’ bills, no matter how much MPs or even the government strongly encourages them to; and the second is that the government isn’t going to give a royal recommendation to their OAS bill, because they absolutely don’t want to set a precedent there.

Nevertheless, Mary Ng wrote a letter to Senator Peter Boehm, who chairs the committee studying the Supply Management bill, urging him to speed it along, and it was co-signed by a few MPs from different parties, no doubt to try and demonstrate that they all care about this. Boehm, rightly, responded by telling them to go pound sand. The committee estimates it’ll get to clause-by-clause of the bill in the first week of November, because that’s how long it’ll take, end of story. And let me reiterate once again—there is no mechanism in the Senate to fast-track private members’ bills, and that’s for very good reason. In fact, during the Harper years, they tried to rewrite the Senate rules to allow for it to happen—in part because they were moving some odious legislation through as private members’ bills instead of government bills for various reasons (including the fact that PMBs get very little study and are automatically time-allocated so they can’t really be filibustered), and enough senators pushed back on that attempt that it didn’t happen. Again, for good reason.

As for the Bloc’s frankly boneheaded suggestion that the prime minister needs to get on the phone to order senators “that he appointed” around undermines the entire institutional independence of the Upper Chamber. They are appointed in such a way as to make them largely immune to this kind of political pressure for very good reason, and this is proving that very point. By that logic, should the prime minister be phoning up judges that they appointed in order to pressure them to deciding cases in a particular way? How about the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? This extended tantrum they’re throwing is embarrassing for them, particularly when it began as a ham-fisted attempt at blackmail that it turns out they weren’t very good at.

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people, including a child, were killed in a Russian drone strike in Sumy. The UN estimates that the Ukrainian population has declined by ten million since the start of the invasion, a combination of people being displaced and war deaths. Ukraine has been targeting alcohol plants in Russia over the past several days. With news that North Korea is sending troops to fight with Russians, South Korea is now considering sending weapons to Ukraine.

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Roundup: A promise to waste millions of dollars

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There are a lot of stupid, performative things being said right now, particularly in those three provincial elections, but one of the dumbest yesterday was courtesy of incumbent New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs, who promised that if re-elected, he will mount a new legal challenge of the federal carbon levy. And to make that worse, several Conservative MPs picked that up and declared during Question Period that the challenge was already underway (it’s not), as though it were a devastating argument for their demands to “axe the tax” or to call an election.

Higgs’ promise is premised entirely on bullshit. There is no basis for him to mount a new challenge because nothing about the programme has changed since the Supreme Court of Canada already ruled that it’s constitutional and within the powers of the federal government, particularly because of the existential challenge that climate change poses to Canadians. The fact that the price is increasing or that we have been though a bout of higher inflation—which has already stabilised and returned to target, and for which the carbon levy did not actually cause any of said inflation because that’s not how inflation works—don’t change any of the legal bases or arguments around the levy. And because the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled, any lower court that Higgs tries to mount a new challenge in is going to tell him to go pound sand.

Higgs is essentially promising to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, because you know that when the courts tell him to go pound sand, they’ll also tell him to reimburse the legal costs of the federal government because they wasted everyone’s time and money in bringing such a frivolous suit in the first place. But there is a political calculus, particularly on the right, where they are prepared to waste millions of dollars in doomed legal challenges because they think that it’s good electoral calculus to show that you’re fighting. Federally, Conservatives have made this argument a number of times when the government didn’t pursue doomed appeals and just made changes, and no doubt Higgs figures that this will work the same way for him. But then again, I guess they’re not bothered by the cognitive dissonance of “we need to balance the budget” and “we need to waste millions of dollars on a doomed legal crusade,” because that might require introspection or self-awareness, both of which are in incredibly short supply in politics these days.

Pretty much all of #cdnpoli. It's really hard to be optimistic about any of it right now.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-01T14:21:44.377Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Six civilians were killed and more wounded when Russian artillery struck a bus stop in Kherson. Russian troops have also reached the centre of Vuhledar, a Ukrainian bastion in the strategic high ground of the Donbas region, which is significant because of where it borders and the supply routes it controls. Ukraine is also investigating an apparent shooting of sixteen POWS by Russian troops.

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QP: Spiralling into a cavalcade of bullshit

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The prime minister was back from New York and in Question Period for his proto-PMQ day, and his deputy was then along with him, in advance of the confidence vote that was to happen right after. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and rattled off some slogans to demand an election. Justin Trudeau said that they only thing they have to offer are cuts and austerity, while the government was investing in Canadians and Quebeckers. Poilievre trotted out the lines about people in poverty already living in austerity, made claims about when he was “housing minister,” and demanded an election. Trudeau said that if Poilievre was so concerned about single mothers, he shouldn’t have voted against child care or the Child Benefit. Poilievre switched to English to rattle off his slogans again to preface the confidence vote. Trudeau dismissed this as a “clever little slogan” that disguises his self-interest rather than help for Canadians, before saying they would have an election “in the right time,” but the rest got drowned out by competing applause. Poilievre said that if he wants an election if he would call it today. Trudeau said that today, they would see that the House doesn’t have confidence in the leader of the opposition, before mouthing pabulum talking points. Poilievre again called for an election and made some swipes about politicians versus people deciding, while Trudeau rattled off the lines about eight out of ten families getting more back, before saying that Poilievre doesn’t understand science, math, or economics, and and that they can arrange briefings for him that won’t require a security clearance. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and asked if the government would agree to their demands on the OAS and Supply Management bills. Trudeau said that they have already shown a commitment to seniors and to protecting Supply Management. Blanchet again wanted assurances, but Trudeau took this as an opportunity to plug dental care, which the Bloc didn’t support.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and Jagmeet Singh complained that Trudeau wasn’t standing up to Danielle Smith on healthcare. Trudeau said that they stand up for universal healthcare, and that in those provinces, the NDP couldn’t stand up to conservatives in those provinces to protect healthcare. Singh demanded Trudeau use his powers to stop Smith (HOW?!), and Trudeau talked up their agreements to get accountability from provinces for the money that gets sent to them.

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Roundup: Angry over an invented grievance

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Two new Senate appointments were made over the weekend, both from Alberta, which naturally resulted in a mountain of utter bullshit, because neither were from the so-called “senators in waiting” that Alberta periodically “elects” as a stunt in order to invent a grievance against the federal government. There was also more of this nonsense hand-wringing that one of the two is a habitual Liberal donor and held roles as an organiser in the party in the past, but hasn’t for well over a decade. Nevertheless, clueless journalists and bad faith opposition members decry this as “partisan,” even though there is no actual Liberal caucus in the Senate for them to sit with, nor any Liberal whip to direct their votes (even though that has only ever really been illusory in the Senate).

The whole “Senate consultative elections” schtick in Alberta has only ever been a stunt—even when Stephen Harper appointed those who won them, because he was trying to make a point about reforming the Senate through the backdoor without actually doing constitutional changes. The logic of how they’re “just consultations” and that they are still appointed and don’t have any additional legitimacy within the Senate was laid bare during the Supreme Court hearings when Justice Cromwell asked the person making the argument “So why isn’t a consultative auction just as legitimate?” and they didn’t have an answer. But really, the whole thing was just to invent one more reason to make people mad at the federal government, at a time when there was a political impetus to stoke such regional divisions and resentments because that always helped them score political points, and lo, it’s still working for them decades later as they continue to get angry about something they just invented for the sole purpose of making them angry. It’s predictable, and it’s childish, and we should expect provincial governments like Alberta’s to behave like adults (but good luck with that these days).

Of course, where would we be without the conservative columnists in this country, making pronouncements about this without actually understanding a gods damned thing about it. “Not representative of Albertan thinking”? What exactly is “Albertan thinking?” If the insinuation is that their appointment is somehow illegitimate because they’re not conservatives, then I have news for you because the Senate is often a place where political outliers in a province can gain representation, such as Liberals in Alberta, particularly during the “bad old partisan days” where they may be shut out of the province electorally but could still have representation in the Senate and be present in caucus to provide that representation. That doesn’t happen anymore thanks to Trudeau’s short-sighted decision to boot all of the senators from his caucus, which is also why Ivison’s comments about Trudeau “renouncing” his reforms are such utter nonsense, because if Trudeau had renounced them, he would invite senators back into his caucus. He won’t (even though he should), but hey, Ivison needs to think of something from his perch in Costa Rica, and reinforcing a bullshit narrative is about the best it’s going to be.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was a bloody day in Ukraine as Russian missiles struck a military academy and a hospital, killing over fifty people and wounding more than 200. In the hours since, Russia has since launched missiles and drones against Kyiv and Lviv. This as children are returning to school, and in Kharkiv, those schools are now underground because of constant bombardment. Meanwhile, president Zelenskyy continues to call on Western countries who haven’t yet allowed their weapons to be used for long-range strikes inside Russia to not only allow them, but to supply further weapons so that Ukraine can make crucial hits. It also looks like a major government shake-up is on the way after a wave of resignations.

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Roundup post: No other orders of government

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The Conservatives put out a statement yesterday about a Statistics Canada report on dwelling units, and blamed the federal government for the lack of creation, never mind that the federal government isn’t actually responsible for housing, and has very few levers at their disposal, and the levers they do have they are pretty much maxed out in terms of what they’re able to do. But reading this particular statement, you wouldn’t know that we have provincial and municipal governments who are responsible for housing, and who have the policy levers to do something about it, whether it’s zoning, or density rules, or building codes, or direct financial levers. Thos are all at their disposal, but Pierre Poilievre would have you believe that none of those exist.

The sad irony of course is that the moment that the Conservatives next form government, they will immediately insist that these issues aren’t their problem, that the provinces should be dealing with this, and they will play stupid games with funding (which Paul Wells noted last week, Poilievre’s planned incentives are rounding errors for city budgets).

And yes, my reply column is full of chuds who insist that Trudeau created this situation with immigration, again ignoring the role that provinces played in demanding more arrivals to fill labour shortages while simultaneously doing nothing about housing or social services (their responsibilities), and that there is a counterfactual in terms of what would have happened to the economy in terms of inflation and controlling it if we hadn’t brought in as many new immigrants as we did. The answer is that things probably would have been a whole lot worse for us as a whole, and we can’t ignore that while trying to look for blame for the current situation.

Ukraine Dispatch

A top Ukrainian commander says that they now control as much as a thousand square kilometres of territory in Kursk, while Putin vows a “worthy response.” There are concerns by Ukraine’s state security service that Russia is trying to falsely accuse them of war crimes as part of the operation. Here is a good look at the Kursk operation, its goals and the future options that will need to be weighed in terms of what Ukraine does next.

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Roundup: Sophistry and the “Canadian Dream”

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A piece widely shared over the weekend in the Globe and Mail, titled “The Canadian dream is on life support,” was a curious bit of writing, as the Elder Pundits of this country treated it like a damning indictment of the current government. While Omer Aziz’s ultimate conclusions in the piece are correct—that the federal government needs to admit that things have gone wrong, throw out their old assumptions and pivot, and they need to throw away their talking points while they’re at it—his process of getting there was torturous, and full of outright sophistry.

One of the things that really stood out for me in the piece was just how shallow the analysis really was, particularly in the fact that it served as something of an apologia for the premiers. You wouldn’t know it from reading the piece, but while he levels much of his scorn at the federal government, many of the problems he described are the fault of provincial governments, even where he asserts that they are solely federal such as with immigration. His attention to things like international students were the fault of provincial governments—most especially Ontario and BC—who let their post-secondary institutions treat these international students like cash cows (because they cut funding to those institutions), and allowed the public-private partnership colleges that were largely fraudulent to flourish, again because these provincial governments weren’t doing their jobs, while the federal government was told to just trust them (and I’m not sure how the federal immigration department was supposed to be auditing these institutions in the first place). Likewise, provincial governments scream for temporary foreign workers, and the federal government has to operate on a certain level of trust that these provincial governments know their labour markets best. With his condemnation of the supposed laxity of our criminal justice system again ignores that policing and the administration of justice are provincial matters, but that is never mentioned. He even sides with Facebook on their cutting off of Canadian news and says that the Canadian government wasn’t nice enough to them. Come on.

There are things going wrong in this country, but many of them are complex, and have roots in decades of policy choices by federal and provincial governments that have taken us to this point, and it’s hard for any one government to unwind these structural problems. This kind of essay does a disservice by trying to be simplistic about the problems and solutions to those problems.

Ukraine Dispatch

A father and son were killed in a Russian missile strike on the Kyiv region on Sunday, while three civilians were killed in attacks on Kharkiv and Donetsk on Saturday. In the Kursk incursion, Russians claim that they are increasing security in the area (as videos of their troops surrending en masse flood social media), while president Zelenskyy says that this move puts pressure on Russia as the aggressor. There was a fire reported on the grounds of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, but the structure itself appears to be intact.

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Roundup: Sutcliffe gets a federal no

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With a bit of an apology to non-Ottawa residents, but our mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, is trying to blackmail the federal and provincial governments for more money, and insists that the city’s budget shortfall isn’t his fault. That’s a lie, and his low-tax austerity plan has bitten him in the ass, and he wants someone else to bail him out, but man, has he made some choices. There is plenty about the budget hole that is his fault, not the least of which is pandering to rural and suburban voters at the expense of downtown meaning that their property taxes stay low while downtown’s are high (under the rubric that multi-unit buildings put more strain on the system, rather than the cost of extending the system to ever-more-distant suburbs and exurbs). In fact, during the last city election, his main rival warned him that his plan had a massive budget hole in it and lo, they were proved right. Funny that.

Well, the federal government isn’t having any of it, and for good reason, not the least of which is that they are not in the mood to set the precedent that bailing out one city because of their poor choices, which will lead to every other city demanding the same, and no, the whole issue of payments for federal properties in lieu of property taxes are not justification. So, Sutcliffe is pretty much out of luck, because I’m pretty sure that Doug Ford is going to give him much the same response. Of course, this is likely just a PR move so that he can justify the tax increases that he should have instituted two years ago, but making the federal government your punching bag to justify doing your own job is pretty sad.

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of Ukraine downing all 27 drones Russia launched overnight Thursday, Russians bombed a shopping mall in Kostiantynivka in the Donestsk region, killing at least 14 people. The UN says that July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. Russia has declared a federal emergency as a result of the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk. Ukrainian forces also raided Russian forces on the Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea, and hit an airfield with their drone attack on the Lipetsk region.

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Roundup: Senate criticisms that miss the mark

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The Globe & Mail wrote an unnamed Editorial Board missive on Friday, about how the “Trudeau Senate” is not a better Senate overall. While long-time readers may not be surprised to know that I actually agree with this, I do not, however, endorse the thinking or methodology behind the Globe editorial, because it’s sloppy, lazy, and ultimately doesn’t understand the Senate and what it’s supposed to be, but that shouldn’t be a surprise given that the Elder Pundits have never actually understood the Senate or its function.

To wit: They start out with the concern trolling from that shoddy CBC article last week about how recent appointees to the Senate include former party donors, which I dismantled in my column last week, so I’m not going to repeat it here. Suffice to say, anyone who clutches their pearls at this misses the mark at the bigger danger of only appointing people completely divorced from politics. They misjudge what the rules changes recently passed mean (or that they were largely about changing the names of everything), and try to make them sound ominous when they don’t have a grasp on the internal dynamics. They raise the costs of the Senate, but compare it to a base year when the Senate was about twenty senators short, but they also seem to not understand that senators need to organise themselves internally, and that costs money for staff and infrastructure. And no, an “independent” senate should not be comprised of about 100 “loose fish” with a Speaker and a Government Leader, because that would be complete chaos.

The only genuine point they make is that the Senate is producing fewer substantive reports, which is true. And why? Because when there so many type-A people appointed who feel that they have earned this position because they applied for it (which again, is a Problem with how Trudeau’s process), the majority of them feel like they should be off doing their own projects, which has meant an absolute explosion in Senate public bills (which are their equivalent of private members’ bills), and you have a bunch of Senators doing things like commissioning polls, or trying to fly to international conferences and justifying it on their expenses (even when they were denied permission by Internal Economy) because they’re important Senators. Trudeau’s Senate is not a better Senate than the one he inherited—which had its problems!—but not for the reasons the Globe’s Elder Pundits imagine.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian missiles and drones struck the Kharkiv region, killing two and damaging energy facilities and rail infrastructure. Russia’s Black Sea Tuapse oil refinery was damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is again calling for long-range weapons to protect the country after another drone attack on Kyiv, the fifth in two weeks.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1814560384864412036

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Roundup: An incoherence of premiers

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The premiers have been meeting in Halifax, and they rode into town full of bluster and declaring that they had a message for Justin Trudeau, and that it was to stay in his lane (constitutionally speaking). But because these are provincial premiers in Canada, they couldn’t even keep a coherent agenda because even as they were arriving, Doug Ford had a grand idea about trying to focus on speeding up pharmaceutical drug approvals, which is explicitly a federal power. Meanwhile, Scott Moe is refusing to remit a perfectly legal federal levy, breaking federal law in the process, because that’s respecting jurisdictional boundaries. I mean, come on.

Possibly one of the most incoherent and possibly obtuse is BC Premier David Eby, trying to sound tough on the eve of an election, as he insists that he just wants the prime minister to sit down with the premiers and that it’s not about money—before complaining that BC isn’t getting their “fair share” of money, and that he wants to join Newfoundland and Labrador’s doomed court challenge around equalisation (because there’s nothing like pissing away millions of dollars to be performative rather than spending that money on fixing healthcare, starting with paying doctors and nurses better). Eby’s appearance on Power & Politics should have been embarrassing as he was being obtuse about his own positions, such as insisting the federal government is “imposing” programmes in their jurisdiction, using the school food programme as an example, and when it was pointed out that the programme is to literally give the province and existing programmes money, he prevaricated. Possibly the most telling was his exasperated “The federal government should just give us the money and not tell us how to spend it,” which is the real issue here. The federal government has been doing that for decades, and nothing is getting fixed while the federal government continues to get the blame. That’s why they’re putting strings on things, and having separate application processes for funding, because just giving money to the provinces isn’t working. When Eby says that working with Ottawa can feel like “beating our head against a wall,” how exactly does he think the federal government feels when the provinces keep saying they’ll spend the money to fix things and then don’t, putting it toward their bottom line or tax cuts instead while the initial problems persist? The absolute lack of any self-awareness on the part of the premiers is utterly infuriating if you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention. (Not to be outdone, Newfoundland and Labrador premier Andrew Furey came up with a cute slogan about how he wants to work with the feds, not for them, and kept repeating it on television while being specious in his complaints. Politics in 2024).

In other news out of Halifax, the premiers say they want to ensure they maintain trade ties with the US, regardless of who wins the next election (but good luck with that because one is a protectionist and the other is looking to apply tariffs to everyone). The northern territorial premiers say they want a greater focus on Arctic sovereignty, which has pretty much the government’s hook for their latest defence policy.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia and Ukraine are expected to exchange 90 prisoners of war today. Ukraine and a Czech ammunition maker signed an agreement to build a munitions factory in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is proposing legislation to strip honours from those found to be “traitors,” like certain pro-Kremlin businessmen.

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Roundup: Provinces learned they can underfund disaster management

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The House of Commons’ national defence committee tabled their report on disaster management earlier this week, and one of its recommendations is for a permanent civilian federal disaster management force that can be deployed for wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters—but they stopped short of recommending a Canadian FEMA, which may not be possible given that this is constitutionally largely an area of provincial jurisdiction, and would require some kind of provincial agreement to operate, and because this is Canada, the provinces would want some kind of say in its operations but wouldn’t want to pay for it, because of course.

One of the problems we’re dealing with as a country is that we’re dealing with the Canadian Forces being at their capacity and they are constantly being asked to deal with disaster management across the country because provincial capacity maxes out too soon. But why does provincial capacity max out? Because they keep cutting funds or under-investing, and creating these situations because they know that regardless of what happens, they can simply call up the federal government to ask them deploy the Canadian Forces, and even more to the point, that they can do it for free because the federal government won’t ask for reimbursement even though they are entitled to. And this has wound up teaching the premiers that there are pretty much no consequences for their under-investing or even cutting the funding for this kind of emergency management, so they are incentivized to rely on the Canadian Forces to do the work for them for free, and now we have reached the end of that being possible.

So, what is the solution? I am wary of the notion of building up a federal force because even if they can manage to get provincial agreements, staff it up (because you would be drawing from the same pool as the Canadian Forces, which has a recruitment and retention crisis), and even if they paid for all of it (which they shouldn’t), this will exacerbate the existing problem of provinces not funding or bolstering their existing forces that are their constitutional responsibility because there will still be a federal backstop. And if the federal government starts asking for reimbursement, either for the use of the Canadian Forces or this hypothetical future force, then the media will be aghast that the federal government is making the province pay in their time of need, completely ignoring that the provincial under-funding created the situation in the first place. We’re at a bit of a rock and hard place, because we have let federalism break down like this, and that’s not good for the country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian guided bombs struck the Eastern settlement of Selydove, killing two. Ukrainian forces captured a Russian “barn” tank that has been modified to protect against drone attacks. Ukraine launched a drone attack that struck three Russian oil refineries overnight.

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