Tag Archives: Fundraising

Roundup: Feeding the fear industry

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The Conservatives’ final Supply Day motion of the year, and they chose to use it to both demand that the government bring any returning ISIS fighters to Canada to justice, while simultaneously condemning them for the Omar Khadr settlement – you know, the issue that they were going to hammer the government hard on back in September which didn’t materialize.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/937735816637534208

As you can expect, the arguments were not terribly illuminating, and lacking in any particular nuance that the topic should merit, but that’s not exactly surprising. Still, some of the lines were particularly baffling in their ham-fistedness.

https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/937736388732125185

https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/937737513908744192

Amidst this, the CBC published a piece about Canada’s refusal to engage in extrajudicial killings of our own foreign fighters out of the country, asking lawyers whether Canadian law actually prevents it, which not unreasonably has been accused of creating a debate out of nothing.

https://twitter.com/cforcese/status/937745443894714379

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https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/937748142119731200

And this is really the key point. Treating issues like this one in a ham-fisted manner, whether it’s with a Supply Day motion designed to fail, or a debate created out of nothingness, is playing into the fear industry that we really should be trying to avoid. This is not the kind of nuanced debate that we should be having, which hurts everyone in the long run.

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QP: Turning attention to Lebouthillier

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With Justin Trudeau off in Beijing, along with several of his ministers, it appeared that Andrew Scheer decided he had better things to do, and left it up to Lisa Raitt to lead off QP instead. Raitt raised the ethical bar in Bill Morneau’s mandate letter, and with that having been failed by the fine for forgetting to declare the holding company that owned his villa, it was enough for him to resign. Dominic LeBlanc rose to respond, and dismissed the line of questioning as a weeks-long fishing expedition, and that Morneau had worked with the Ethics Commissioner. Raitt tried again, bringing in the fictional compliance requirements around Bill C-27, and LeBlanc dismissed the concerns, and pointed out that Raitt wished that the Conservatives had Morneau’s economic growth record. Raitt tried a third time, raising the share sales as though there was anything to question with them, and LeBlanc shrugged it off a third time. Alain Rayes took over in French, demanding to know about the share sales. LeBlanc reiterated his previous responses in French, and they went one more round of the same. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, concern trolling over Morneau having to meet with the Ethics Commissioner yet again over share sales, but LeBlanc reiterated that Morneau works with the Commissioner and takes her advice. After Caron tried again in English and got the same response, Alexandre Boulerice got up to decry the competence of the revenue minister regarding either the money hoped for from going after tax avoidance and disability tax credits for diabetics, but Diane Lebouthillier assured him that the restored disability advisory committee was getting to work. Boulerice tried again in French, and Lebouthillier responded that they were getting tough on tax avoidance.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/937764803363340289

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QP: A level of disgust

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While Justin Trudeau was present, which is rare for a Thursday, Andrew Scheer was off in Toronto to give a speech, meaning that we wouldn’t get a repeat of some of the back-and-forth we got yesterday. Pierre Poilievre led off, and, predictably, led off with the insider trading allegations — sorry, not allegations, “just questions.” Trudeau again noted that the opposition was “in a jam” because they made allegations on Monday that they wouldn’t repeat, which pretty much proved that they were baseless. Poilievre brought in that Global News report which intimated that Morneau’s father was similarly tipped off, and Trudeau noted that the Conservatives couldn’t attack on substance, so they went for smears instead. After another round of the same, Alain Rayes took over in French, adding the demand that Morneau should be fired, and Trudeau reiterated the problem that the opposition finds themselves in. Rayes gave it another shot, but Trudeau reiterated that this was a smear campaign because they couldn’t touch the government’s fiscal record. Guy Caron was up next, for the NDP, and he demanded that the PM set the record straight on when the shares were sold. Trudeau responded with some jabs about how far that party had fallen since the previous election and how ineffective they were when it came to economic growth in the previous parliament. Caron switched to English to insist that this was all a matter of perception. Trudeau reiterated that they were so desperate as to engage in fabrications that they won’t repeat out of the House. Caron tried again, and Trudeau praised Morneau’s hard work on the economy, and Caron tried another time in both English and French, but Trudeau’s response didn’t change, and remained just as pointed.

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Roundup: Unleashing the two-year markers

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With it being the two-year mark since the 2015 election, we’re going to start seeing a wave of thinkpieces and columns over the next few days (I suspect there will be a glut of weekend columns of dubious quality on the topic), but Paul Wells got things off to a good start yesterday with his piece on the matter. And he makes some pretty good points about how the complaints that this government hasn’t done anything are off the mark, because I do believe there are a number of things that we forget with our short attention spans, but there are also things that we don’t see obvious signs of, where the government has reformed a lot of the processes by which things get done – and this is a particularly big issue when it comes to trying to move the various Indigenous files forward. While it looks like there has been halting progress, people ignore that many of the problems are capacity-related, so if the government is moving to address those fundamental issues, it leads to better outcomes later than simply throwing money at problems only to make them worse in the long run – which happens all too often.

But Wells also acknowledges the bad, and just like with any government, there’s a lot of that too – the appointments process is a notable example, and Wells points to the bottleneck in the PMO, which goes along with the glut of rookie ministers (unavoidable with so few experienced MPs in caucus), and the problem with messaging. As I wrote about earlier this week, there is a real problem with the way this government shovels pabulum at everyone, but I’m not sure it’s any worse than under the previous government, when you were treated to non sequiturs rather than vague answers that resembled the topics you were asking about. And it’s this inability to have forthright communications that created much of this tax mess as well (but I will also lay some blame on bad and lazy reporting that was too quick to lean on opposition talking points as examples of accountability rather than reaching out to experts and then using that to push back against the tidal wave of misinformation that came out). And most especially the fact that this government was unwilling to actually fight back against the misinformation is why this mess of their own making has been compounded even more so.

“But it’s hard to be entirely saddened by Trudeau’s current discomfort, which if nothing else might shake his team out of the towering sanctimony that characterizes too much of its action and rhetoric,” Wells writes, and I fully agree. In fact, it’s the moments in the past couple of weeks where Trudeau and his ministers have dropped their pabulum-like talking points and been punchier and more authentic in their fighting back against their attackers that I’ve seen a spike in public responses to my own reporting of those instances. Hopefully they’re seeing that too, and it’ll prompt them to take more risks and to stop being so gods damned scripted. But this is also politics in 2017, and we’ve killed off spontaneity or the ability to debate, so I fear that my hopes for honest communications are doomed.

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Roundup: An involuntary nomination

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The outcome at the Status of Women committee was not unexpected, had as much sulking and grousing as was to be expected. In a public and not secret vote, the Liberals and NDP members of the committee rejected the Conservatives’ choice of Rachael Harder to chair the committee, and when the Liberals nominated Karen Vecchio in her place, Vecchio tried to back out but was overruled, and those same Liberal and Conservative members voted her in.

And then the bellyaching began. A sour press release was issued about how this was somehow about “bullying and intimidation” of some poor young woman (which is a ridiculous characterisation), but that they would accept the democratic will of the committee. And the pundit class took to Twitter to decry how bizarre it was that a woman was being forced to take the chair of a committee that she didn’t want. I’m not exactly sympathetic to these cries, because this is what happens when you try to pull a stunt for the sake of being a provocateur, as Scheer is trying to do, but you don’t have the votes to back it up. Oh, and then they tried to wedge this into the frame of it being a distraction from the tax proposals, when it shouldn’t need to be said that this was a distraction of the Conservatives’ own making, owing to their particular tactical ineptitude.

Meanwhile, Liberals took to tweeting about how this would have made Harder Andrew Scheer’s “spokesperson” on the committee, which is bizarre and wrong – the chair is the committee’s spokesperson. It’s baffling that they would try to spin it in this fashion. Then again, one shouldn’t be surpised given how badly this whole affair has been for people describing how things work in Parliament. And it shouldn’t surprise me, and yet here we are, that not one journalist writing about this story, nor any pundit commenting on it, remarked about the fact that it makes no sense to put your critic forward as committee chair. None. The chair’s role is to be neutral, to run the meeting, arbitrate rules disputes and to ensure that witnesses and questioners stay within their timelines. They’re not supposed to vote unless it’s to break a tie, which shouldn’t happen very often given the numbers at play. Why would you want your critic – your point person in holding the government and in particular that associated minister, to account – to be hobbled in this way on committee, is baffling. It’s utterly incomprehensible if you follow the basics of how parliament is supposed to work. And yet nobody saw fit to call Scheer out on this fact. These details matter.

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Roundup: Commence the negotiations

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We’re still talking NAFTA? Of course, we’re still talking NAFTA, as negotiations actually get underway today, so that’s exciting. If you need any more background (on top of what’s been said for the past several days) here’s a look at why Chrystia Freeland’s list of demands – especially around local procurement and labour mobility – might be a tough sell in the States, while the proposed chapters on gender and Indigenous issues are likely to be seen as simply expressions of the Trudeau government’s values. And while there aren’t any expectations that these negotiations will be easy, given that Trump is an Uncertainty Engine, trade experts are pointing out that Canada has more leverage than we think we do.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells had plenty to say about the past couple of days:

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897422434017697792

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897422919432888320

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897423348501807104

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https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897426057942454272

This particular observation strikes me as so utterly unsurprising. (Seriously, MPs – you can do better):

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897424893817610240

https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/897428762215809024

And one more, because seriously:

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/897469441721552897

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Roundup: Suspicions about political donations

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The Star has a story that shows how a recently appointed judge made donations to the Liberal Party in the past couple of years – $1800 worth over the two fiscal years, in part by attending a fundraising dinner. And after it lays out all of his donations, the story leaves us with this: “It is not unusual for judicial appointees to have made political donations, nor does it break any rules.” Which makes me wonder why they’re making a) an issue out of it, and b) framing the story in such a way that it gives the impression that he bought his appointment, because that’s exactly what the headline screams. Emmett Macfarlane sees an issue, but I’m having a hard time buying it.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/892368713848147970

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/892369069906825216

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/892369516889550848

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/892369907496738820

https://twitter.com/jameslhsprague/status/892386009727590400

Part of my issue is the fact that we’re already at a crisis point in this country when it comes to grassroots democratic engagement, and this current media demonization of any political fundraising hurts that. The more we demand that anyone who has made donations be excluded from jobs, the worse we make the political ecosystem as a whole. Sure, once they’ve been appointed they shouldn’t make further donations – that’s fair. But the fact that he didn’t even make the maximum allowable donation over those two years, and the fact that the amount he’s donated is a couple of billable hours for him, is hardly worth getting exercised over. This isn’t America – we don’t have big money buying candidates here, nor do we have the spectre of elected judges that are entirely interested in getting re-elected. And, might I remind you, the previous government appointed Vic Toews and most of Peter MacKay’s wedding party to the bench, which seems far bigger of an ethical breach. The current government has reformed the judicial advisory committees to broaden the scope of who they’re considering, and considering how slowly the process is going, it’s not believable that they’re simply going through the party donor rolls to find a match. And while Macfarlane insists that it’s not about the dollar amount, but the perception of bias, I am very bothered by the way in which stories like this are framed adds to that perception. It’s driving the perception, not the other way around, and that is a problem when it comes to trying to fix the actual things that are breaking down about our democracy.

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Roundup: An astronaut for GG?

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Despite some MPs are agitating for the next Governor General to be Indigenous, it looks like it’s going to be Julie Payette, former astronaut. Payette is a woman and francophone, which fulfils the Anglophone/Francophone alternation that has been the pattern since we started naming our own Governors General, and the government’s desire to have more women in top spots. That she’s not Indigenous will be criticised by some, but I suspect that it may actually avoid other headaches because I do wonder if an Indigenous GG may not find themselves in an inherent conflict of interest given the relationship with the Crown that Indigenous people have which is as sovereign people in a treaty relationship, and being the Queen’s representative has the possibility of being far more complicated once you dig into it. As well, there would likely be pressure on an Indigenous GG from other Indigenous communities to exert influence on the government, given that the understanding of Responsible Government and heeding the advice of the government of the day isn’t all that well understood, and would lead to a lot of disappointment. Meanwhile, here’s Philippe Lagassé on some other aspects of the GG that are worth thinking about.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885286674468614146

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885289432747782144

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885290949588508672

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https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885296355324952576

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885297826862960640

While Paul Wells has a great piece about the message being sent with Payette’s appointment, Lagassé also makes a good point about how her appointment is being framed.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/885307090935451649

And this comment from Denise Donlon seems to sum up a lot of the sentiment I’ve seen:

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Roundup: Trudeau’s missing electoral reform link

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Apparently, we’re going to prosecute the demise of electoral reform yet again, after Justin Trudeau was asked about it in his end-of-sitting press conference yesterday. Trudeau, to his credit, was a bit more frank and earnest than he has been on this in the past, and laid out how he had always been in favour of ranked ballots because they eliminate the need for strategic voting, and the opposition was so solidly in their own camps – the NDP for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives for status quo with the added kicker of demanding a referendum – that Trudeau ended up pulling the plug, because he sees PR as bad for the country (he’s not wrong) and referendums even more problematic (again, their track records globally right now are not good).

Of course, everyone freaked out about this answer, and starting howling and frothing at the mouth about how much he’d betrayed them with this promise. Of course, per his promise he did draw up a committee and consult, but he pulled the plug before changing the system.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/879745237308059648

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/879754505297985536

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/879754815626252288

Part of the problem – aside from the fact that it was a stupid promise to begin with – was that the Liberals on the electoral reform committee didn’t make the case for ranked ballots, nor did they call any witnesses to put forward that position, and apparently disinvited the ones who had already been invited. Having listened to the eager faces on the committee, I’m not entirely convinced that this was simply a cynical ploy the whole time, but I do think a great deal of naïveté was at play, where they were trying to be open-minded – something none of the other parties could say, as they did their utmost to stack the process from the beginning, both with the torqued composition of the committee itself, to the selection of witnesses, to the so-called “consensus” in the report (which was hot garbage, let me reiterate).

The fact that the Liberals played coy about their Trudeau’s preference was certainly a problem. Maybe it’s because they were trying to avoid the myth going around that ranked ballots were “First-past-the-post on steroids,” a characterization based on the analysis of a single poll of second-choice votes of the 2015 election, which was neither authoritative, nor did it take into account the fact that it didn’t produce such a result in Australia, and yet this notion hovered in Canadian media for months. So the handling of this whole affair continues to mystify, but for the love of all the gods on Olympus, can we just bury it already?

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QP: Final accusations of the spring

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One what was almost certainly the final sitting day (for real!), and after a number of statements for National Aboriginal Day (to be renamed next year), QP was on. Andrew Scheer led off, worrying that the changes to national security laws will make things too difficult for CSIS to do their jobs, per the fears of a former director. Justin Trudeau assured him that they we getting the balance right of safety and protecting rights. Scheer worried that security was being watered down, and Trudeau reiterated that they were getting the balance right. Scheer then changed to the issue of taxes and demanded he listened to the Liberal senators and stop the escalator taxes on beer and wine, and Trudeau reminded him that they lowered taxes on the middle class. Scheer railed about how they were hiking taxes on ordinary people (and no, cancelling a bunch of tax credits does not equal raising taxes), and Trudeau reiterated his response. For his final question, Scheer spun up a hyperbolic rant about all of the awful things the government has done, and Trudeau responded with a list of accomplishments and promises kept. Thomas Mulcair was up next, accusing the government betraying their promises to Indigenous people, and Trudeau assured him that they were committed to reconciliation and the relationship. Mulcair accused the government of breaking their promises on Access to Information, and Trudeau hit back that the NDP were completely absent on the transparency file. Mulcair worried about the Infrastructure Bank and the spectre of user fees, and Trudeau reminded him that they were looking for new ways to invest in the things Canadians need. For his final question, Mulcair railed about fundraisers, and Trudeau said that they were raising the bar and were exhorting the opposition to do the same.

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