Tag Archives: Harassment

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: More knives for Scheer

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Even more knives have come out for Andrew Scheer – on a couple of different flanks. From the social conservatives, Scheer didn’t defend their interests strongly enough in the election and now they want him gone. This in the face of more moderate conservatives looking for him to join the twenty-first century on issues like support for LGBT rights. And then, on Power & Politics, Kory Teneycke – one-time director of communications to Stephen Harper and maestro behind Sun TV – said that Scheer should resign and if he wants his job back, to run for it again in a full-blown leadership contest. What was even more interesting in those comments was his contention that a leadership review is not enough because those are easily enough manipulated by those loyal to the current leader – and he’s right.

The problem, of course, is that so long as we continue to insist on running our leadership contests in this bastardized model, leaders will continue to claim democratic legitimacy to marginalize their caucus, ignore the grassroots, and not face any meaningful accountability, so it’s hard to see how the outcome of such a contest could be any different in the broader scheme of things. There are deep problems that need to be addressed in our parties, but nobody wants to actually say so.

Meanwhile, not only has Scheer fired his chief of staff and his director of communications, but Hamish Marshall, his campaign manager, has come to the end of his contract and it doesn’t sound like he’s interested in renewing it anytime soon. It remains to be seen if this kind of house-cleaning is enough bloodletting for the caucus that remains frustrated by their election loss, but it may not be given the knives that have been out for Scheer in a number of different directions.

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Roundup: Gun control theatre

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While there was suspicion that the announcement was timed as a pivot from the past two days of bad press – Liberals insisting that his has been planned for days – Justin Trudeau was in Toronto yesterday for a morning of meeting people on the streets before he announced his long-awaited additional gun control measures which are guaranteed to please nobody – a total ban on semi-automatic assault rifles (never mind that there’s no actual definition of an “assault rifle”) with a buy-back programme, and the ability for cities to make additional regulations around handguns (as in, allowing them to attempt to ban them), plus some additional offers around licensing and the ability to forbid the purchase of new weapons after certain red-flags. The measures are not enough for those who want a national handgun ban, too far for certain gun enthusiasts, and almost certainly going to be useless because the problem of illegal guns is that the vast majority of them are smuggled from the US, which these measures largely won’t address (I didn’t see any promise for more resources for CBSA in the backgrounder). In other words, it’s a political play, trying to balance the need to be seen to be doing more about gun control for big cities where it’s a problem, while not alienating their rural voters (again), while also being hemmed in by jurisdictional considerations (Doug Ford, for example, has said he won’t go along with any kind of handgun ban that would fall under provincial jurisdiction). Nevertheless, the symbolism of banning AR-15s is something they hope to capitalise on, while they castigate Andrew Scheer for his promise to relax some gun control regulations, so that may be enough for them in the election in any case.

https://twitter.com/CochraneCBC/status/1175047467265642497

Speaking of, Andrew Scheer was in Saint John, New Brunswick, to promise that a Conservative government would spend $1.5 billion to get provinces new MRI and CT machines in an effort to reduce wait times (structural issues? What structural issues?) – never mind again that it’s provincial jurisdiction and he may have a hard time getting them to actually spend dollars that he’s earmarked for said purchases. Scheer also clarified that oil and gas subsidies would not be part of those he plans to eliminate – try to look surprised, everyone!

Jagmeet Singh was in Windsor to talk up the party’s pharmacare plan, and answer yet more questions on the Blackface issue, citing that he didn’t want to be complicit in Trudeau’s public exoneration. (And yet, the media is demanding this kabuki theatre to play out).

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Roundup: Underlying concerns amidst good numbers

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It was hard to miss all of the talk about the job numbers yesterday – particularly as pretty much every Liberal minister, MP and candidate started sharing pre-generated memes about how great the economy is doing under this government (with the caveat that there’s still more work to do). This, like news of much higher than expected GDP growth, are good headlines with some underlying weakness being masked, and as economist Trevor Tombe explains, those good numbers are masking some very real problems in Alberta.

The issue of young men in that province is one that I’m not sure enough levels of government are paying sufficient attention to, as the Alberta government seems to think that all that’s needed is for the oil patch to revive and it’s problem solved, but with world oil prices depressed and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, that means the prospect for these young men – many of whom are under-educated because of the lure of high-paying oil patch jobs – are not going to be good in the shorter term. That’s additionally a problem when you have a government that feeds the people a diet of lies and snake oil to keep them angry at imaginary reasons why they’re being kept down (currently Justin Trudeau), because angry young men can be a dangerous thing if allowed to fester. And for the federal government’s part, I wonder just how much their retraining programming is penetrating given that jobs they could be retraining for couldn’t necessarily match the promised paydays of oil jobs in a boom – but that becomes a problem of waiting for the next boom (where the money will get pissed away, like it does every time no matter how often they promise that this time it will be different – really!).

Some of this will come up in the election – not just the lies that Kenney and company are pushing, but the NDP and Greens are trying to make some hay here, as both want to retrain these workers for the “green economy” in some vague way, while the Greens in particular think they could put them to work capping old orphan wells as both an environmental and job-creation measure, but it’s also one that is both expensive, and if the government just starts doing this on its own, it essentially lets the industry off the hook and demonstrates that the “polluter pays” principle is for naught. Add to that, the promises of green jobs retraining falls back to the issue of some of them waiting on the promises of the bigger paydays in a future oil boom, so there is no guarantee that green jobs will be attractive to this cohort. Nevertheless, it’s good that there are at least some ideas, and we should ensure that it’s something that does get discussed during the election.

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Roundup: These aren’t the bots you’re looking for

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The discussion of misinformation, “junk news,” and bots have been going around a lot, as have the notions of what journalists can and should be doing to fact-check these things. To that end, here’s a thread for thought from Justin Ling about how this can be working against us in the longer term:

And national security expert Stephanie Carvin adds a few thoughts of her own, to contextualize the problem:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424183185854464

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424186214158336

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https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1161424197408702465

Chris Selley. meanwhile, respectfully suggests that if the government is so worried about online misinformation, that they stop pushing it themselves with their own particular bits of spin and torque that plant the same kind of false notions and expectations in people’s minds – and he’s absolutely correct.

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Roundup: Alberta sends the wrong (price) signals

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It was Throne Speech day in Alberta, and sure enough, it contained an ambitious laundry list of upcoming legislation designed to undo much of what the NDP had put into place as a means of “restoring” the mythical Alberta Advantage. (Full speech here). Shortly thereafter, the promised Bill 1 to repeal the province’s carbon levy was introduced – pretty much guaranteeing that the federal carbon price will be imposed once the bill is enacted. It doesn’t repeal all of the carbon prices in the province, however – it merely shifts them to the largest polluters, which does nothing about the demand side of carbon consumption, and won’t shift consumer behaviours, nor will it do enough for those large emitters, because for all of Kenney’s talk about looking to protect the energy sector, he just shifted the bulk of the burden onto them. (It also won’t really help consumers because poorer households will be worse off now).

Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach to explain why Kenney’s repeal of the carbon price is handing a rhetorical victory to Ontario, and why the reliance on magical technology from the future to reduce emissions won’t happen if there aren’t proper price signals to spur its development.

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Roundup: The rot Chong won’t address

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Conservative MP Michael Chong took to Policy Options yesterday to decry that the unilateral expulsions of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus was indicative of a “deeper rot” in our parliamentary culture. His solution? Just make some amendments to his garbage legislation Reform Act to better enforce the called-for votes to implement at the beginning of each parliament, or to do away with the voting entirely (which was a compromise to make the bill palatable), and ensure that the measures in the bill are fully enforceable regardless. And I just can’t even.

Chong keeps insisting that his garbage bill was going to “rebalance” the power between MPs and party leaders, but it does nothing of the sort – much like this omnibus motion that Liberal MP Frank Bayliss is proposing to amend the Standing Orders (which Chong is a co-sponsor of). These kinds of measures don’t actually attack the root of the problems facing our parliament, and in the creation of new rules, they simply create avenues for unintended consequences that make things worse. (For more on the Bayliss motion and why it’s a problem, see my weekend column). The solution is not, and will never be, more rules. The solution is to do away with the rules that have made things progressively worse, and to start rolling back the changes that our MPs keep making in the vain hopes of improving their lot when all they need to do is assert the powers that they already have.

I fear I am getting repetitive about this point, but until people start listening, I will keep saying it – the biggest root cause of the problems in our system, particularly where it concerns the “balancing” of powers of MPs vis-à-vis the party leader, is the party leadership selection system. Unless caucus members can select the leader, any attempt made by them to remove the leader, garbage Reform Act or no, will be seen as illegitimate precisely because the current selection system insulates leaders with a false notion of “democratic legitimacy.” And Chong knows this, but keeps trying to burnish his garbage bill in the hopes that it will somehow shine. It’s not going to happen, and MPs telling themselves that the solution is more rules are simply deluding themselves. More rules got us in this situation. More rules keeps taking power away from MPs under the guise of “rebalancing” or “restoring” that power, and this cycle keeps repeating. It needs to stop, and it means MPs (and the pundit class of this country) need to stop believing this mythology. The only solution is caucus selection of leaders. Anything else is a mirage.

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Roundup: Objections to the waiver

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At first it seemed like today was going to be the big day. Jody Wilson-Raybould had agreed to meet the justice committee to tell “her truth.” On his way into Cabinet, Justin Trudeau said he was “pleased” that she would be able to appear at committee. The committee agreed to give her the thirty minutes she requested off the top instead of the usual five or ten for an opening statement. Some MPs wanted to try and get the hearing moved from after QP to beforehand (never mind that it’s when all of the parties hold their caucus meetings) in order to be able to ask the PM any questions that might arise from the testimony. And then, surprising probably nobody who paid attention, Wilson-Raybould sent another letter to committee, expressing her “concerns” that the Order in Council that waived solicitor-client privilege wasn’t enough for her to tell the full story.

At this point, it’s starting to feel like a game – that Wilson-Raybould’s attempt to keep controlling the narrative is running out of runway, given that Michael Wernick called her out and Justin Trudeau went and waived solicitor-client privilege (unnecessarily, if you listen to some of the legal commentary out there), and now she’s trying to sow doubt that she’s still not completely free to speak, in order to keep up the narrative that she’s the victim or the hero, distracting from her poor record as justice minister. And it’s starting to feel like the more song and dance that she keeps putting up in order to keep from speaking, the less there is to what she has to say. But maybe I’m getting cynical after a decade on the Hill.

Meanwhile, former litigator Andrew Roman takes a deeper look into the portents of doom for SNC-Lavalin if they were subject to prosecution and even a ten-year ban from federal contracts, and finds them to be less dire than advertised, which makes any alleged wrongdoing by the government to protect them all the more baffling.

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Roundup: Getting Trudeau to committee

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The political theatre around the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair will again be back in full force today as the Conservatives are moving a Supply Day motion to have Justin Trudeau appear before committee to answer questions, which is procedurally awkward given that the Commons shouldn’t be dictating the business of committees, but that’s theatre for you. Of course, if Trudeau appeared, it would be doing so in order to answer for the conduct of his staff (given ministerial responsibility), but we’ll see if there is any appetite to make the committee process even more of a partisan gong show. (I’m guessing there won’t be, but stranger things have happened). Jody Wilson-Raybould is expected to be at committee either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on her schedule, but maybe she’ll treat this like she did a Senate committee summons and simply refuse to show up.

What revelations did we get over the weekend? That Wilson-Raybould needed to make her pitch to Trudeau directly last Tuesday morning before he would let her address Cabinet; that Wilson-Raybould is a prodigious note-taker, forcing PMO to review their own notes about meetings with her; and that hey, Cabinet ministers are friends outside of work and sometimes get together socially. Shocker!

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé goes through the various Canadian politics tropes that this whole affair has been playing into – and are being challenged by – and what people should take away from them as the situation has unfolded. He’s also got a couple of other words of wisdom to take away from Michael Wernick’s testimony about his concern that people are losing faith in the government.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1099709688478744577

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1099712261046689792

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1099713329050734592

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QP: Chagger has some new talking points

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Following an explosive morning at the justice committee, QP got underway without any of the major leaders in attendance. That left Lisa Raitt to lead off, asking if the prime minister asked David Lametti to leave the room when Wilson-Raybould addressed Cabinet on Tuesday. Lametti first accused Raitt of cherry-picking the testimony, and said that since Clerk of the Pricy Council, Michael Wernick, released him from Cabinet confidence he recused himself of his own volition. Raitt asked why Trudeau met with Wilson-Raybould after the Director of Public Prosecutions made a decision on SNC-Lavalin, to which Bardish Chagger read that it was confirmed verbally and in writing that Wilson-Raybould was not being directed on the file. Raitt went through the timeline, and accused Wernick of pressuring Wilson-Raybould, to which Chagger read out about Raitt’s own meetings with SNC-Lavalin. Alain Rayes took over and re-asked in French why Trudeau had the meeting with Wilson-Raybould, and Chagger read that they need to respect the independence of committees. Rayes tried again, and Chagger read out Wernick’s assurances that the kinds of discussions that Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould had were perfectly appropriate. Alexandre Boulerice led off for the NDP, and he demanded that Wilson-Raybould be allowed to speak, and Lametti assured him that the issue was complex but they too wanted to ensure she could speak. Boulerice asked if Trudeau’s meeting with Wilson-Raybould was to change her mind, and Chagger stood up to remind him that the NDP leader also met with SNC-Lavalin, and that the government respects the legal system. Nathan Cullen stood up to repeat the allegations in the Globe and Mail that Wilson-Raybould told Cabinet she was pressured, to which Chagger reminded him that committees are independent and should do their job. Cullen railed about the government not caring about employees and pensioners, to which Chagger praised the Ethics Commissioner and the government’s record.

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