Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: The reality of negotiation

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As was ever thus, the Twitter Machine erupted with fury and disingenuous outrage when health minister Patty Hajdu told reporters that she couldn’t guarantee that a national pharmacare programme would be in place at the end of the current parliament (for which we don’t know when that will be, as a hung parliament rarely lasts beyond two years.

“Some of that will be predicted by, predicated by, the responses of the provinces and territories,” said Hajdu, because *mind blown* healthcare is largely the domain of the provinces and any pharmacare system would have to be negotiated with them – in particular, a national formulary, which is going to be extremely complicated to ensure that existing plans don’t get left behind or that the new national plan isn’t worse off than any existing ones that it would replace.

What is especially irritating are all of the voices crying out that this just means the Liberals were lying on the campaign trail, which is false and ridiculous – Trudeau spent the campaign not overpromising on this file, but rather kept saying that it was contingent on negotiation with provinces, which is why their fiscal plan only called for a “down payment” on such a programme rather than the whole thing, but nevertheless, the promise was to go by the principles of the Hoskins Report, which they have bene doing thus far. The NDP, by contrast, insisted that this could be done by 2020, and whenever anyone brought up the fact that the provinces may object, the line was largely that why would anyone say no to federal dollars? It’s absurd, of course, because provinces are rightfully afraid that they would be stuck with an expensive programme to run if the federal government suddenly cut out transfers or funds to it because they suddenly had other priorities (which has happened in the past).

And to that end, we have a bunch of premiers who are balking at it, Quebec and Alberta want to be able to opt-out with compensation, and Ontario is instead insisting that the federal government pay for drugs to treat rare diseases – the most expensive kind, and the ones where costs are rapidly escalating. So of course they want the federal government to pay for them rather than to share the burden. It’s predictable, and for anyone to be shocked and appalled that the Liberals have to deal with this reality is really, really tiresome.

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Roundup: Fiscal update and actuarial context

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Finance minister Bill Morneau released his fall economic update yesterday, and it showed that while the economy was doing well – fairly strong growth, very strong job creation (November’s numbers notwithstanding) and wage growth – the deficit was going to get a lot bigger unexpectedly. The reason for it, however, was largely ignored by all of the commentariat, both media and partisan, because the kneejerk response in Canada about any finance story is about the size of the deficit, end of story. The real reason – that low interest rates had forced a hefty actuarial adjustment for government pension plans – was inconvenient for them to force a narrative onto, so they just ignored it and clutched their pearls some more, crying “The deficit! The deficit!” and the Conservatives continued to cheerlead a “made-in-Canada” recession by cherry-picking some very selective economic data that was to the exclusion of the broader trends, because narrative. Here’s economist Kevin Milligan to explain some more.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1206632527244300288

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I would add that while the Conservatives like to rail about how our unemployment figures compare poorly to other countries, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand because we don’t all measure unemployment the same way, and not all of our economies work the same way. Canada has had record low unemployment in recent months, to the point where economists say we are have been at what is essentially “full employment” – in a statistical sense, not to dismiss that there are regions where it’s still a problem, but essentially there’s not a lot of room for more job growth in the economy. But hey, why let reality get in the way of the narrative, right?

In terms of analysis, John Geddes delves into the notion of “endless deficits” and finds that, shockingly, it’s not a cut-and-tried issue, but the real issue is complacency. Certain bank economists think that because the shift in the deficit is on pension obligations, it could force the Bank of Canada to act sooner if there were an economic downturn. Heather Scoffield wonders what kinds of budget promises that Morneau will have to abandon given the bigger deficit figures if they don’t want to lose their debt-to-GDP anchor.

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Roundup: Contemplating compromised committees

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As the summoning of the new Parliament draws ever closer, we’re seeing more stories about the procedural intricacies of the first few sitting days, and the coming confidence vote on or before the 10th because of the Supply cycle and the need to pass the Supplementary Estimates before that date. Fair enough – those can be expected to pass pretty handily because nobody is going to want to head right back to the polls (and I wouldn’t expect the Governor General to grant an immediate election either – the developing convention is waiting at least six months, providing there is another viable governing party, though that would be the real trick given the current seat maths).

This all having been said, there was something in this interview with Pablo Rodriguez, the new Government House Leader, which sticks in my craw, and that’s the talk about possibly undoing the rule changes that prevent parliamentary secretaries from being voting members on Commons committees, and I. Just. Cannot. Even.

While the chances of this happening are fairly slim, given that it would require opposition support and they are unlikely to get it, it’s still crazy-making. This reflex to go super political in a hung parliament is understandable but deeply frustrating because it undermines the whole raison d’être of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account, and committees are one very big piece of the accountability puzzle. Parliamentary secretaries should have no business even being near committees because it undermines their independence. It’s bad enough that under the previous parliament, they were still on the committee in a non-voting capacity, but it still allowed ministers’ offices to attempt to stage manage what went on (to varying degrees, depending on which committee it was). Having the parliamentary secretaries as voting members simply turns committees into the branch plants of ministers’ offices, and we saw this play out for the better part of a decade under Stephen Harper. Committees are not there to simply take orders from the minister and waste everyone’s time, and it would be hugely disappointing if the Liberals returned to that way of thinking simply because it’s a hung parliament. If we think that the only time to let Parliament function properly is if there’s a majority for the government, then it’s a sad state of affairs for our democracy.

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Roundup: Pride vs St. Patrick’s Day

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Andrew Scheer’s new deputy leader, Leona Alleslev, started off her new role with a bang this weekend by doing the media rounds, and when asked about Scheer’s continued refusal to attend Pride parades, Alleslev responded with “Have we asked anybody if they marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade?”

Oh no she better don’t!

Alleslev apologised several hours later, but by then you had a lot of Conservatives completely outraged that this was the kind of thing that was going to lose them the next election (and renewing the calls for Scheer’s resignation). While the point was made that she shouldn’t have needed to apologise because it was Scheer’s lines she was parroting, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone would have even for a second thought that there was an equivalence to the two. And Scheer’s own campaign communications director started a lengthy tweet thread to show all the various ways in which Scheer paid lip service to every religious and cultural event out there – except Pride, which is something that speaks volumes.

Alleslev also went on to insinuate that those who raised questions about Scheer’s leadership – and the numbers are growing, as are the profile of raising those questions – are somehow being “disloyal” to the party. And this irritates me, because this notion that parties are supposed to be personality cults for leaders is toxic and antithetical to how our system operates. The leader is not the party. The party is more than the person who leads it at any one moment, and it would be great if everyone could get on the same page about this because it’s kind of embarrassing for everyone who is carrying on otherwise.

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Roundup: Holding up a mythical threat

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The first day of the new Cabinet, and Justin Trudeau, along with Chrystia Freeland and Jim Carr, had their first meeting as a group with Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, who held up the now-former Bill C-69 as the source of much of the anger in Alberta, and his demands that it be changed. The problem here – and Nenshi acknowledged – is that the pre-existing system that Stephen Harper’s government put into place in 2012 did not work, and Nenshi could list projects being held up by it, which is all the more reason why his strident condemnation of the new assessment system is all the more baffling. Part of the problem here is that the bill – along with the now-former C-48 – have been used as scapegoats for the frustrated economic ambitions of the province. Never mind that C-48 was largely symbolic – there is no pipeline project that would head for the northwest coast of BC, nor is there going to be, and no, Northern Gateway is not going to make a comeback because the obstacles identified by the Federal Court of Appeal were almost certainly insurmountable. And C-69 is in no way a “no more pipelines” law.

I talked to a lot of environmental lawyers on both sides while C-69 was being debated, and the biggest source of unease on the proponent side was the uncertainty as to whether the legislated timelines would have the problem of issues stopping the clock – thus dragging out those timelines – much of which was alleviated when the draft regulations were released. Again, the talk about the carbon budget in the bill was clarified in the regulations, which also alleviated many of their concerns (and caused some on the environmental side ulcers). So while the government is now talking about tweaks to the regulations, that seems more than entirely appropriate for the reality of the situation, and their refusal to scrap the law is entirely rational and just.

The problem becomes fighting the narrative that has been created around this law, and the fact that it has grown into a mythological terror is what they will have to grapple with – and compounding this is the fact that this government has proven itself time and again to be utterly incompetent at communications. For as much as Catherine McKenna did some good work when she was the minister, she kept repeating the tired slogan of “the environment and the economy go together” and other nonsense talking points (and then insisting that she spoke like a regular person), which did nothing to counter the lies being promulgated by Jason Kenney, Andrew Scheer, and others, about what was actually in the legislation. And you can’t fight lies with canned talking points. I wish this government – and the communications geniuses in the PMO most especially – would get that through their heads, which is why trying to placate the anger when it’s being directed at the mythology and not the reality of this legislation is going to be an uphill battle.

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Roundup: Look at all the chimeric ministers

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With the usual bit of pomp and circumstance, the Cabinet has been shuffled in advance of Parliament being summoned. It is bigger by two bodies, there are seven new faces, a few new portfolios – and baffling ones at that – a few being folded back into their original ministries, and yes, gender parity was maintained throughout. The Cabinet committees are also getting a shuffle, which gives you a glimpse at what they see the focus will be, and spoiler alert, it’s very domestic and inward-looking – not much of a surprise in a hung parliament where there are few plaudits or seats to be won on foreign affairs files. It’s also no surprise that it’s Quebec and Ontario-heavy, and largely representing urban ridings, because that’s where the Liberals won their seats.

And thus, the biggest headline is of course that Chrystia Freeland has been moved from foreign affairs to intergovernmental affairs, but with the added heft of being named deputy prime minister – the first time this title has been employed since Paul Martin, and Freeland assures us that it’s going to come with some heft and not just be ceremonial. She’s also retaining the Canada-US file, so that there remains continuity and a steady hand on the tiller as the New NAFTA completes the ratification process. It also would seem to indicate that it gives her the ability to keep a number of fingers in a number of pies, but we’ll have to wait for her mandate letter to see what specifics it outlines, though the expectations that she will have to manage national unity in this somewhat fractious period is a tall order. Jonathan Wilkinson moving to environment has been matched with the expected talk about his upbringing and education in Saskatchewan, so as to show that he understands the prairies as he takes on the environment portfolio. Jim Carr is out of Cabinet officially, but he will remain on a Cabinet committee and be the prime minister’s “special representative” to the prairie provinces, which is supposed to be a less taxing role as he deals with cancer treatments (though I don’t see how that couldn’t be a recipe for high blood pressure, but maybe that’s just me). Two other ministers were demoted – Kirsty Duncan, who will become deputy House Leader, and Ginette Petitpas Taylor, who will become the deputy Whip – though it should be noted that both House Leader and Whip are of added importance in a hung parliament.

The opposition reaction was not unexpected, though I have to say the Conservatives’ talking point was far pissier than I would have guessed – none of the usual “we look forward to working together, but we’ll keep our eyes on you,” kind of thing – no, this was bitter, and spiteful in its tone and language. Even Jason Kenney was classier in his response (but we all know that lasts about five minutes). That’ll make for a fun next few years if they keep this up.

As for some of my own observations, I was struck by the need to name a new Quebec lieutenant, given that Trudeau used to say that they had a Quebec general (meaning him), so no need, and lo, did the Conservatives had meltdowns over it. Likewise, there was thought under the previous parliament that they would eliminate all of those regional development ministers and put them all under Navdeep Bains (whose ministry has rebranded again from Industry, to Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and is now Innovation, Science, and Industry), which kept a lot of the kinds of nepotism that was rampant in those regional development agencies at bay. Now Trudeau has hived off the economic development portfolio into its own ministry, to be headed by Mélanie Joly, but she’ll have six parliamentary secretaries – one for each development agency region, which feels like the whole attempt to break those bonds is backsliding. Science as a standalone portfolio was folded back into Bains’ domain, but the very specific project that Kirsty Duncan was tasked with when she was given the portfolio four years ago was completed, so it made a certain amount of sense. Democratic Institutions is gone, folded back into Privy Council Office and any of its functions Dominic LeBlanc will fulfill in his role as President of the Queen’s Privy Council (which is a role that is traditionally secondary to another portfolio). Trudeau continued to keep his Leader of the Government in the Senate out of Cabinet, which is a mistake, but why listen to me? (I’m also hearing rumours that Senator Peter Harder is on his way out of the job, so stay tuned). The fact that David Lametti got a new oath as minister of justice and Attorney General to reflect the recommendations of the McLellan Report was noteworthy. But overall, my biggest observation is that Trudeau is doubling down on the kinds of chimeric ministries that tend to straddle departments, which makes for difficult accountability and confusing lines of authority on files. The most egregious of the new portfolios was the “Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity,” which is a fairly bullshit title to attach to the fact that she’s also the Associate Minister of Finance, which should have been significant in the fact that it’s the closest we’ve been to a woman finance minister at the federal level, but dressing it up in this performative hand-waving about the Middle Class™ (which is not about an actual class but about feelings) is all the kinds of nonsense that keeps this government unable to communicate its way out of a wet paper bag, and it’s just so infuriating.

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In hot takes, Chantal Hébert sees the move of Freeland as the defining one of this shuffle, and notes that it could either be just what they need, or it could be a kamikaze mission for Freeland. Susan Delacourt sees the composition of the new Cabinet as one that corrects past mistakes and of taking on lessons learned. Robert Hiltz points to the two polarities of this Cabinet – the farce of the Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity, and the menace of putting Bill Blair in charge of public safety. Paul Wells makes the trenchant observation that carving up ministries across several ministers has the effect of creating multiple redundancies that will make more central control necessary – and I think he’s right about that. (Also, for fun, Maclean’s timed the hugs Trudeau gave his ministers, which didn’t compare to some from 2015).

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1197245638548869120

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Roundup: Scheer’s risible demands

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Even before the day’s meetings got started, Justin Trudeau offered up a pre-emptive strike against Andrew Scheer’s demands by announcing that Parliament would be summoned on December 5th – immediately after his return from the NATO summit – where they would hold both the Speaker election and the Speech from the Throne on the same day (rather unusually, as they tend to be on subsequent days). When Scheer did meet with Trudeau, he came armed with seven demands, and immediately following that, Trudeau met with Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who also moaned that his own demands weren’t being capitulated to.

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As for Scheer’s demands, a good many of them are simple non-starters, and others are simply laughable, but let’s walk through them, shall we?

  1. Keep Canada united and strong by launching a task force to study the establishment of a national energy corridor, which could bring Ontario and Quebec hydroelectricity to new markets, open up opportunities for Western Canadian oil and gas, and connect rural communities in Atlantic Canada and the North.
  2. Help Canadians get ahead by offering broad-based tax relief, providing a date for balancing the budget, and proceeding with fair tax-free maternity benefits.
  3. Restore ethics and accountability to government by introducing stronger penalties in the Conflict of Interest Act.
  4. Get the energy sector back to work by tabling a detailed plan, with concrete deadlines, to build the Trans Mountain expansion and repealing Bills C-48 and C-69.
  5. Take real action on the environment by drawing on policies from our Real Plan to Protect the Environment, such as the Green Patent Credit, the Canadian Clean brand, the Green Home Renovation Tax Credit, and ending raw sewage dumps.
  6. Immediately fund regional transit expansion in the GTA, starting with the Ontario Line and Yonge Extension.
  7. Reduce the paperwork burden on Quebecers by adopting a single tax return.

To start with, I’m puzzled as to how Scheer believes that his “national energy corridor” scheme is a national unity project. I mean, I get that he keeps insisting it’s “a win-win,” but if you stop and think about it for thirty seconds, they’re demanding that decades be spent on land negotiations and expropriations involving First Nations and provinces that may not be keen on them, for another decade to be spent building a pipeline that, by the time it’s completed, will be in the middle of massive global decarbonization. That’s some forward thinking. The broad-based tax relief that was in the Liberal platform was better targeted to low-income Canadians than in the Conservatives’, as was their proposal for tax-free maternity benefits; the date for a balanced budget is also somewhat mired in mid-nineties thinking, while the government has chosen a different fiscal anchor that allows them to take advantage of the low-interest rate environment to make investments in Canadians. The demand for a detailed plan with concrete deadlines for the TMX construction is farcical because any delays would be contingent upon the Federal Court’s hearing the concerns of those Indigenous groups who are challenging the most recent consultations, and that’s not something the government has any control over, but never mind that there is pipe going in the ground right now. The repeal of C-69 and C-48 are non-starters, and would do absolutely nothing to benefit the energy sector because the problem is the low world price of oil. Demanding that the government adopt the Conservative non-plan for the environment? Hilarious. Immediately funding the GTA transit expansions? How is it responsible to sign a blank cheque when there is no concrete plan on the table? Seriously, you claim to be the fiscally responsible party. And having Quebec adopt a single tax return? Yeah, if Quebec wants that, they can adopt the federal one. They made the choice for the current system. Is rudimentary critical thinking dead in politics?

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Roundup: A quasi-exit for May

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The other, non-Senate big news on Parliament Hill yesterday was Elizabeth May’s decision to step down as Green Party leader – sort of. She said that she would stay on as the “parliamentary leader,” but give up the mantle of big-P Party leader, and that one of her appointed deputy leaders, Jo-Ann Roberts, would be interim leader until the party could have a leadership convention – next October. May fully intends to stay on as an MP and run again as an MP (and said that she would not run for Speaker this time, but would pursue it in the next Parliament).

This particular kind of leadership dynamic is part of what ails Canadian democracy right now – this notion that there should be year-long leadership races, and that someone who doesn’t have a seat in Parliament should be leading the party in any capacity. The fact that the leader is not selected by caucus alone is one of the biggest problems with our system – it has allowed leaders to centralize power and when they get into power, that centralization rests in the PMO. And with May stepping back, and new MPs Jenica Atwin and Paul Manly also eschewing running for the role, they will again be a party where their leader is outside of Parliament, and who may or may not run for a seat anytime a byelection comes around, and they will face some of the challenges that Jagmeet Singh became all too familiar with.

There needs to be a rebalancing of leadership roles in our system, and we need to keep the party leader’s focus back on parliament, with the rest of the leadership better handled by the Party president. But what the Greens are doing now is just perpetuating what is horribly wrong with our system.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how May left on her own terms, while Paul Wells sees the end of May’s leadership as a chance for her party to overhaul its message and its organizational abilities.

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Roundup: Profiles in courage

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After avoiding the media for over a week while questions about his personal positions on abortion and LGBT rights were being debated, Andrew Scheer called a press conference yesterday to say that Justin Trudeau was lacking in courage for not agreeing to the Maclean’s and Munk debates (well, he hasn’t agreed yet, but he also hasn’t said no). Mind you, the guy talking about courage and showing up has been avoiding the media for the past week, so that’s no small amount of irony. Oh, and he also accused the Liberals of trying to deflect from their record by dredging up Scheer’s statements on “divisive social issues.” That said, Scheer hewed strictly to talking points that continued to make cute distinctions between a hypothetical future Conservative government and backbenchers, and essentially said that they could put forward any bill they wanted and he wouldn’t stop them – only he wouldn’t say so in as many words. To that end, it’s also worth reminding people that as Speaker, Scheer went out of his way to ensure that anti-abortion MPs got speaking slots when the Conservative leadership was trying to keep them under wraps, so that might be a clue as to how he’d treat possible future private members’ bills.

This having been said, I now wonder if the strategy for the Liberals isn’t to just bring social progressives and Red Tories to their side, but to try and goad Scheer into painting himself in enough of a corner with trying to assure Canadians that no, he would squelch any anti-abortion or anti-GLBT private members’ bills – really! – in the hopes that it would discourage the social conservatives in Scheer’s base into staying home, thus driving down their voter turnout. It would be novel if that’s what it was, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives put out a fundraising video yesterday featuring Stephen Harper, which is kind of ironic considering that they keep accusing the Liberals of dredging up Harper, only for them to do the very same thing. And with this in mind, I will often note that political parties these days have pretty much all hollowed themselves out into personality cults for their leaders, but with the Conservatives, they remain a personality cult for their former leader, Harper – that Scheer has had such a lack of personality or willpower to change the party to reflect him (though he did campaign on being Harper with a smile in the leadership, so that’s not too unsurprising). Nevertheless, bringing out the old leader in advance of the election is an odd bit of strategy that can’t speak too highly of the current leader.

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Roundup: Dubious studies on populism

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A study out of Simon Fraser University shows that a rising number of Canadians are only “moderately convinced” that we should be governed by a representative democracy – nearly 60 percent, which is up 15 percent since 2017. As well, 70 percent of those surveyed don’t feel that government officials care about the concerns of “ordinary Canadians,” along with rising support for populism and anti-immigrant sentiments. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to what is going on in the world, but let’s first of all get out of the way that these percentages are fairly shoddy reporting once you dig into the study, which finds that Canadians are still very much in favour of democracy, and that the representative democracy still figures better than the other alternatives (direct democracy, rule by experts, strong ruler, military rule), and much of the reporting on the anti-immigrant sentiment is fairly torqued.

To be clear, I have a great many concerns about the methodology of the study, which offers some fairly torqued binaries for participants to choose from and then tries to draw conclusions from that, leaving no room for the kind of nuance that many of these positions would seem to merit. As well, their definitions of populism are too clinical and don’t seem to really reflect some of the attitudes that those who respond to the sentiments, so I’m not sure how much utility this methodology actually has in a case like this (or in this other study which looks at pockets of “forgotten workers,” which at least admits there are no obvious answers to stemming the tide of this sentiment). Nevertheless, there is some interesting regional breakdowns in where certain attitudes are more prevalent than others, and which identified populist sentiments register more strongly in some regions over others.

This having been said, the questions on people feeling frustrated with how democracy works are pretty much why I do the work that I do, particularly with the book that I wrote, which is all about identifying where things are breaking down (reminder: It’s not structural, but rather the ways in which people are not using the system properly), and showcasing how it should be operated, which is with the participation of voters at the grassroots levels. But if we’re going to get back to that system, that requires a lot of people at those grassroots demanding their power back from the leaders’ offices, and that also means needing to get out of the thrall of the messianic leader complex that we keep falling into, going from one messiah to another once the current one loses their lustre (which I do believe also feeds into the populist sentiments, who also latch onto messianic leaders). This can’t just be people complaining about the quality of the leaders out there – it’s about how we feed the system. If we input garbage, we get garbage out of it, and this hasn’t connected in the brains of enough voters yet. One day, perhaps, it might, but we don’t appear to be there yet, and the torqued binaries of a survey like this don’t help us get any better of an understanding of what it will take for people to wise up and get serious about our democratic system.

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