For a second day in a row, a skeletal sitting of the Commons convened, and we were treated to a proper Question Period once again. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern in front of him, and read his concern that the government allegedly sat on the report from the Armed Forces on the conditions in long-term care facilities for nearly two weeks. Trudeau clarified that the full report was brought forward on Thursday, and they passed it along to Ontario the following day. Scheer changed to French to pass along that a second report was being prepared on the Quebec homes, and Trudeau reiterated that they received that report on Thursday and passed it along. Scheer worried about what happened between May 14th and Thursday, and Trudeau said that Thursday was when the Chief of Defence Staff passed it along. Scheer then brought up the question from this morning’s prime ministerial presser about Joyce Murray supporting a fundraiser to sue a journalist, and Trudeau said that the staffer who posted it was not working for them. Scheer tried to tie this to the Chinese government, and Trudeau repeated the previous response before he read some support for Hong Kong. Yves-François Blanchet was up next, and he railed about political parties accessing the wage subsidy, and Trudeau spoke about the aims of the programme to help workers retain their jobs. Blanchet tried again, and got the same response. Jagmeet Singh then got his turn, and he demanded federal action to end the privatization of long-term care, and Trudeau replied that they can’t tell the provinces what to do in their areas of jurisdiction but that the federal government would be there to support them. Singh made a paean for national leadership in French, and Trudeau again reiterated that they have to respect provincial jurisdiction.
Tag Archives: Federalism
Roundup: Dairy commissions and questions of jurisdiction
There were a couple of announcements for prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser yesterday – that Health Canada had approved a serological test that was critical to the work of the immunity task force; that some $1 billion in additional funds was being allocated to regional development agencies to help struggling businesses; and that the student benefits would be open for applications as of Friday. There were a lot of things that came up during the Q&A – demands from reporters for a budget or a fiscal update, for which Trudeau said that they couldn’t predict what was going to happen in a few weeks, so it didn’t make much sense to try to lay out a plan for the next twelve months. On the Canada-US border, it was strongly hinted that the current closure would continue for another month, but he wasn’t going to speculate past then. He talked about the need to work with provinces and municipalities as transit operators face a huge revenue shortfall. Regarding Norway’s sovereign wealth fund pulling its investments out of the oilsands, he remarked that it was clear that climate considerations were becoming a bigger feature in the investment landscape. He also promised to look into the issue of health researchers in the country facing layoffs because funding sources evaporated and they aren’t eligible for the federal wage subsidy because of a technicality.
And then it was off to the House of Commons, first for the in-person meeting of the Special Committee, which descended into farce fairly quickly and stayed there – Andrew Scheer railing about the revelations that potential fraud of the CERB isn’t being caught up-front, while his MPs both demand easier access to small business supports while clutching their pearls about the potential size of the deficit, apparently blind to the contradiction in their position. Meanwhile, Jagmeet Singh was demanding that the federal government swoop in and offer some kind of national guarantee around long-term care, giving Trudeau the chance to chide him about his disregard for provincial jurisdiction (and Trudeau was a little sharper on this than he often is).
The special committee eventually gave way to a proper emergency sitting of the Commons to pass the latest emergency bill, this time on increasing the borrowing limit of the dairy commission, while many a journalist mischaracterized this as “debating” said bill. There was no debate – it was pre-agreed to, and each party would give a couple of speeches that may or may not be related to the bill before they passed it at all stages for the Senate to adopt on Friday. At the beginning of this, however, Singh was back up with yet another motion, this time to call on the government to ensure that there was universal two-week paid sick leave – which is, once again, provincial jurisdiction. (The motion did not pass). I’m torn between trying to decide if Singh is genuinely clueless about what is and is not federal jurisdiction (a position bolstered by his promises in the election around things like local hospital decisions), or if he’s cynically trying to make it look like the federal government doesn’t care about these issues when they have no actual levers at their disposal to make any of these demands happen. Either way, federalism is a real thing, and trying to play it like it’s not is a real problem for the leader of a federal party.
Roundup: Agreeing on some wage top-ups
Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back to his daily presser yesterday, at the slightly earlier time slot to accommodate the “virtual” committee meeting that would come an hour later, and he had an announcement – that they were finalizing agreements with the provinces for wage top-ups for essential workers, to the tune of some $4 billion in federal dollars. But this is money going to the provinces to administer as they see fit, and to define essential in their own ways, because federalism. During the Q&A, Trudeau also had to annunciate that no, he doesn’t think that oil is “dead,” and that the sector needs to be an essential part of the transformation to a green economy (while Jason Kenney was having a performative meltdown about what Elizabeth May and Yves-François Blanchet said a day earlier).
Throughout the rest of the day, both in the “virtual” committee and in the media rounds, the same thing kept being asked both with this wage top-up and the commercial rent assistance programme – why isn’t the federal government doing more? Or, why did they choose the restrictions they did (and a number of scurrilous allegations were lobbed along with that). The reality of the situation is that these are areas of provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government has few levers to offer. Trying to attach strings to federal dollars going to provinces is difficult at the best of times, and in a time of a global pandemic where everyone is making an effort to play nice, and where the government’s motto appears to be “we don’t want to fight over jurisdiction,” getting into a drag-out fight over tying strings to funds. And when it comes to the commercial rent subsidy, the ministers said on day one that the restrictions were because that was what the provinces would agree to – because it’s their jurisdiction. My frustration, however, is that the ministers won’t repeat that when they get asked for the eleventieth time. Rather, they stick to talking points about how concerned they are, and how they hope that landlords will take up the programme, and so on. Because even in a global pandemic, this government’s ability to be frank and forthright is nearly always subsumed by their inability to communicate their way out a wet paper bag, mouthing pabulum designed to sound soothing and happy. They’re making it worse for themselves, and they just can’t help it.
Roundup: Mourning a fallen helicopter crew
In light of the news of the downed military helicopter, prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser took on a different format – he was in the West Block today instead of outside of Rideau Cottage, and this time flanked by the minister of national defence, Harjit Sajjan, as well as Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, and the deputy minister of national defence, Jody Thomas. They largely laid out what information they had and their condolences for the families and colleagues of those dead and missing. During the Q&A, non-crash questions largely revolved around the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report earlier that morning on the projected size of the deficit given the various emergency measures, and given that so many of my media colleagues only have a certain number of pre-set narratives when it comes to the deficit, it went about as well as could be expected when Trudeau refused to bite.
On the subject of the deficit, here is a good thread from economist Trevor Tombe, as well as some additional thoughts from Kevin Milligan.
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255882692610027520
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255884110368669696
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255885291182669829
Roundup: Responsibility for re-opening
For his Monday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t have a lot of news – mostly talking about how the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy was now available for application, and that payments would be going out next week for businesses that are approved, and that they were working with the opposition on legislation for the new measures for students announced last week. And sure enough, later in the day, notice was given that the Commons would sit in some capacity on Wednesday, after their “special committee,” to pass said bill. (No word yet on whether the Senate gets recalled for Wednesday evening or Thursday morning). During the Q&A, Trudeau had to once again reiterate that he was loathe to enact the Emergencies Act, which people are still demanding that he do for some strange reason. He also stated once again the even though provinces may have different timelines when it comes to re-opening their economies (because, once again, each province has a different epidemiology), those provinces have rights and obligations around local measures, while the federal role was to provide guidelines that they should follow. Again, the notion that he should swoop in and take over their areas of jurisdiction remains a deeply frustrating one.
This jurisdictional howling will only get worse as both Ontario and Quebec unveiled their re-opening plans yesterday, Ontario starting with guideposts before they will move to next steps, while Quebec has decided that they will start opening some schools in two weeks, which has everyone alarmed that it’s too soon, and that they don’t understand the epidemiology of this disease, because it can and does affect children and they may actually be asymptomatic and become major spreaders. So that’s fun.
Meanwhile, the first “virtual” meeting of MPs in a Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic meets today, and everyone is going to call it a “historic first virtual sitting of Parliament,” and they’ll be wrong. Because it’s not a sitting of the Commons, it’s a special committee, that the Speaker will be chairing from a committee room in the West Block. And you can bet that Trudeau and others will pat themselves on the back for this, and “Because it’s 2020,” and that kind of noise, but it’s an absurdly unwieldy committee, and that’s it. Treat it with only that amount of reverence. (And look for my column on why this matters later today).
Today, I participated in a dry-run exercise with the #HoC IT team in preparation for the first virtual meeting of the new #COVI committee, which will take place tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/aAPvpLS0pc
— Speaker of the HoC (@HoCSpeaker) April 27, 2020
Roundup: Supplies, spin, and rent
Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was on the theme of medical supplies – signing agreements with three major medical suppliers in the country, MOUs signed with five other companies, and some 3000 other companies who have volunteered to help the government with those supplies in whatever way they can. Trudeau also noted that they have allocated an additional $2 billion for new personal protective equipment, largely by way of bulk-purchasing, and that more supplies would be arriving within days. As well, the government is tasking its next-generation manufacturing supercluster with scaling-up these kinds of producers to meet the domestic and global demand. Why this became a somewhat fraught issue is because there are places in the country where PPEs are being rationed, and Quebec stating that they were days away from running out – though Trudeau said that in some cases, it may be the medical providers who were rationing because they were trying to preserve supplies for an anticipated surge of cases.
[Here is another Q&A with infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, and a discussion on the current debate about masks.]
Meanwhile, the National Post hears from a bunch of government insiders who claim that the attempt to get the power of taxation without parliamentary approval was about trying to hold leverage of the big banks who have been reluctant to loosen lending requirements, which is an explanation that makes absolutely no sense, and makes me again repeat that there appears to be a cadre of jackasses in Morneau’s office who have been responsible for many of this government’s missteps and woes, and we shouldn’t trust them.
And while I’m on the subject of jackasses, I spent much of yesterday on the Twitter Machine trying to remind people that rent is provincial jurisdiction, so constantly hounding the federal government is a waste of time. This was met with numerous people who insisted that the federal government could invoke the Emergencies Act to claim that power. The mind boggles. Why in the hell would the federal government invoke the tool of last resort to intrude into landlord/tenant legislation when the provinces are perfectly capable of doing so on their own. It makes zero sense. Add to that the people crying out that the federal government should immediately give money to renters, as though there were a mechanism to do so. It’s taking the CRA three weeks to retool their systems to deliver the CERB, which is a pretty breakneck speed to ensure that the system can do what’s being asked of it and hopefully not fail doing it (because their computers are not magic, and you can’t just type “give everyone $2000” and expect it to happen. It’s impossible). And no, there is no analogous funding arrangement to healthcare or post-secondary, as others were trying to claim – those are funding envelopes to provincial governments that come with agreements. They don’t go to individuals, and they are not spending in provincial jurisdiction over the objection of any province. The number of people who seem to think otherwise is astounding.
https://t.co/BzzpuINAKk pic.twitter.com/QjqwurUqsy
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) March 31, 2020
Roundup: The big endorsement
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.
Manitoba’s former health minister weighs in: https://t.co/p3KFLPQZEu
— Dylan Robertson (@withfilesfrom) October 17, 2019
Roundup: Partisanship and thoughtlessness
There was an interesting piece out yesterday about a study that showed that those with strong partisan leanings were less likely to be able to correctly identify current events, and are likely using news to confirm their existing views rather than being well informed. It’s not too surprising in the current milieu, where partisanship it turning more toward tribalism as we are apparently trying to import America’s culture wars into Canada out of some misplaced sense of envy, however I worry that this will be the kind of study that will simply turn into an exercise in confirmation bias by all sides – partisans and supposed non-partisans alike.
Let us first recall that partisanship is not actually a bad thing – it’s fundamentally about a contest of ideas and values, which is a good thing in politics. While everyone likes to talk about “evidence-based policy” and doing what’s best for all, there are fundamental philosophical differences about what that may be – and that’s okay. That’s good for democracy! Let us also recall that party membership is of fundamental importance in our system of government, and it’s one that has been gradually been debased as leaders have grown too strong and have hollowed out their parties – in part because memberships have allowed it rather than jealously guarding their own powers. We need more people to be party members, because that’s where grassroots engagement happens. We should resist the temptation to turn this kind of a study into an excuse to debase this kind of engagement in the political process.
We should also note that a big part of the problem is a lack of media literacy – particularly as the study also points to people being unable to locate where how their partisan biases line up with media outlets (which is also not a surprise, because people will paint an outlet with bias if they don’t like a story that makes their team look bad). So long as people don’t have these media literacy skills, any partisanship gets conflated with their preference for their own “teams,” and that helps magnify the kinds of problems that this study points to. It’s a complex problem overall, but we can’t simply say “partisanship makes you stupid,” as will be the temptation. Partisanship on its own doesn’t make you stupid – but if it’s mixed with other kinds of ignorance, it adds fuel to the fire.
Roundup: Federal jurisdiction wins again
It should have been no surprise to anyone that the BC Court of Appeal rejected the province’s attempt to dictate the content of federally-regulated pipelines in a 5-0 decision. In other words, the province could not reject the transport of diluted bitumen through the Trans Mountain expansion by stealth, and in no uncertain terms. The province quickly announced that they would appeal this to the Supreme Court of Canada (though the 5-0 decision makes it more likely that they’ll simply say no thanks, and let the BCCA decision stand).
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1131972145507164160
While Jason Kenney was quick to crow over the Twitter Machine about how this was great news for Alberta, it seems to me that it’s rather great news for the federal government, because it upholds that they continue to have jurisdiction over these pipelines, and lo, they didn’t need to do some song and dance to “declare” or “invoke” it – because Section 92(10)(c) isn’t a magic wand, and it was already federal jurisdiction in the first place because it crossed provincial boundaries. And just like with the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal decision on the carbon price reference, it again showed that yes, the federal government has jurisdiction. After all, Kenney kept saying that the federal government should invoke 92(10)(c) because there BC’s position on this case showed that there was apparently some confusion around jurisdiction. But there never was any confusion – BC was trying to be too cute by half, and it didn’t work for them.
Speaking of Kenney, he was apparently in Toronto having a meeting with the Globe and Mail’s editorial board yesterday, and said that investors looking at climate risk was “flavour of the month” and they should instead focus on all of those “ethical oil” considerations instead. The problem there is that climate risk isn’t flavour of the month – it’s an existential threat to our economy. The Bank of Canada realized this and now lists it as a major risk to the country’s economy. The insurance industry really knows it’s responsible for billions of additional dollars in their spending over the past couple of years alone, thanks to flash floods, major forest fires, and so on. And have those “ethical oil” lines ever worked on anyone? I didn’t think so. But expect more of them to be bombarded at us in the near future as his “war room” gets underway to wage their propaganda campaign in “defence” of the industry.
@jkenney at G&M ed brd: Investor concerns about climate risk are "flavor of the month" and they should focus as much on labor rights, human rights and conventional enviro issues among OPEC dictatorships.
— Shawn McCarthy (@smccarthy55) May 24, 2019
Roundup: Beer still imprisoned
The Supreme Court of Canada delivered their ruling in the Comeaucase yesterday, which deals with the subject of interprovincial trade barriers – in particular, those around alcohol. While this case has been widely championed as “free the beer,” what we got came down to an exploration on the nature of federalism in this country – and many observers were keenly unimpressed as they chose to uphold those particular barriers.
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/986964159530057728
First of all, read this Q&A with University of Ottawa vice-dean of law Carissima Mathen about the decision, so that you get some sense of how the constitution operates here, and why the Court is loathe to interfere in something of this magnitude. It’s not just alcohol sales that could be affected – its knock-on effects include supply management schemes (which the Conservatives have yet to reconcile with their “free the beer!” sloganeering), public health prohibitions, environmental regulations, and so on. And more technically, the case that led up to this decision was a lower court judge making an interpretation of settled law that they felt wasn’t robust enough to justify overturning that jurisprudence – not enough had changed – and they upbraided said judge in the ruling. This is also something that can’t be taken trivially in the decision.
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/986988440163143681
https://twitter.com/kylekirkup/status/986968367205634048
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/987022846936473602
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/986988440163143681
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/987059335623618560
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/986971152353460224
And then there are the critics. University of Alberta law professor Malcolm Lavoie says the decision privileges some parts of the Constitution over the other, while John Ibbitson looks at what the knock-on effects could be and wonders if the result wasn’t for the best. Emmett Macfarlane is not sold on that, and feels that the Court feels too bound by old JCPC decisions that undermined the text of the constitution when they should instead be upholding it – that the intent of the Founding Fathers was indeed a centralized economic union. Some commentators think that the decision could legitimize Alberta’s bill to limit oil exports to BC, but frankly I think that analysis is beyond absurd. I do have to say that I have a degree of sympathy for the Court in not looking to overturn the entire federal order, because there would be monumental blowback. But it’s not like they said that it couldn’t be done – what it needs is the political will for the legislatures to come to an agreement on this, and there is a new internal free trade framework that is coming into place where there’s a better forum for having these discussions than we’ve had in 150 years of confederation. And I think that perhaps those who felt that the Court needed to do the work of the legislatures on this issue were doing so a bit inappropriately because we keep insisting that the Court do the hard work that the legislatures won’t, and perhaps this is another wake-up call that we need to do the actual work of making tough decisions in this country on our own.
https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/986991062584582144
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/986975038652821506
https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/986976381794861061
https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/986968227556179968
https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/987049703526187008