QP: New measures not mentioned in the Speech

The first Monday of the new Parliament, and the prime minister was present but Andrew Scheer was not. That left Leona Alleslev to lead off in French, and she lamented the reported job losses from last month, and demanded a new economic statement with new measures and a balanced budget. Justin Trudeau responded that the first thing they did in 2015 was cut taxes and they were doing so again, and they were supporting Canadians and the economy. Alleslev read the same question in English, and got the same response. Alleslev read more doom, saying that the country was on the verge of recession (reminder: Not according to the Bank of Canada), and Trudeau reminded her of the plan to invest in Canadians, which is what they would continue to do. Erin O’Toole was up next, demanding retaliation against China for the two detained Canadians, being the one-year anniversary of their captivity. Trudeau assured the House that they were continuing to engage the Chinese, and that he had spoken to President Xi directly. O’Toole then raised the protests in Hong Kong, and Trudeau spoke about their support for the one-country two-systems principles and reiterated their calls for de-escalation. Yves-François Blanchet asked about healthcare, and Trudeau responded in general platitudes about the system, and they went for a second round of the same. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in his new style of alternate French and English sentences, demanded that the upcoming tax cut be more targeted in order to use the savings to pay for national dental care, and Trudeau reminded him of how many people the tax cut would help. Singh demanded increased health transfers, to which Trudeau reminded him that they had worked with the provinces to target specific needs in the last parliament and they would continue to do so in this one.

Continue reading

Roundup: Gun control theatre

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).

Continue reading

Roundup: The OECD is watching

Because the Double-Hyphen Affair continues to roll along, the news yesterday was that the OECD is keeping an eye on the proceedings around the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, given that our anti-bribery rules are part of a concerted OECD effort to stamp out the practice, and much of the language in our laws – including the Criminal Code provisions around deferred prosecutions – contain OECD language. And lo, suddenly everyone was bemoaning this international attention, and it was a sign that we were all the more suspect, and so on. Err, except the OECD doesn’t have any regulatory jurisdiction over Canada, and they’re monitoring the processes ongoing already in Canada. You know, the ones that are examining the very issue. Almost as though the system is working.

On a related note, it was revealed that SNC-Lavalin signed a confidential deal with the government days after the Throne Speech in 2015, that allowed them to keep bidding on federal contracts while they would subject themselves to compliance monitoring for their ethical obligations, at their own expense. I’m not sure that we can consider this something nefarious, but certainly an acknowledgment that they were aware of their issues and were taking steps to deal with them in advance of any prosecution.

In today’s punditry on the matter, Matt Gurney suspects that the international attention will be harder for this government to shake off. Chantal Hébert details the coming crunch time for the main players in this whole Affair. Vicky Mochama writes that if we try to treat Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and Celina Caesar-Chavannes as paragons of virtue out of a sense of gender essentialism, that we diminish the action and rhetoric of women politicians.

Continue reading

Roundup: Asking the wrong questions about the rules

There was a piece on the CBC site this weekend that irked me, and I’m not sure it was just the problematic headline – why our ethic rules aren’t keeping politicians out of trouble. It’s a ridiculous construction on the face of it – you can have all the laws you want, and it won’t stop people from contravening them out of malice or ignorance. After all, the Criminal Code hasn’t eliminated crime, so why would an ethics regime miraculously end all ethics violations by public office holders?

While the piece quotes an academic who says that part of the problem is that the rules regime tells politicians how they can’t act, but not how they should act, so much of it is based on judgment calls, and not everyone has good judgment. But more to the point, in the two prominent situations that we’ve seen in recent months – the Trudeau report about his vacation with the Aga Khan, and the LeBlanc report about whether his wife’s cousin counted sufficiently as “family” under the definition of the Act, is that both of these situations were based on the judgement of the Ethics Commissioners rather than what was in the legislation. Mary Dawson took it upon herself to judge how someone defines their relationship with the Aga Khan (who is akin to the Pope of the Ismaili Muslim faith), while Mario Dion took what has been called an overly broad interpretation so that LeBlanc is forced to treat one of his wife’s sixty first cousins as close when all evidence points to them being mere acquaintances (and this after Dion has publicly come out to state that he wants to be seen as tough and not a lapdog). I’m not sure how any of these situations points to how the rules are stopping politicians from staying out of trouble when the trouble they’re in is based on a single person’s choice of how to interpret those rules, in some cases in defiance of common sense.

I would also caution that we need to be careful about setting a regime that is too constrictive, because it becomes either a means of either becoming one of constant investigation for political score-settling, or a system where we have yet another Officer of Parliament who becomes the embodiment of “Mother, May I?” and we don’t let politicians exercise any judgment that we can hold them accountable for – and we can’t hold these commissioners to account for their judgment, even when it can be found to be dubious. (Also note that we also made the requirements for who can be Commissioner to be so restrictive that anyone qualified wouldn’t want the job, which is another problem in and of itself). The amount of energy we put into the penny ante “scandals” in Canadian politics, which are piddling in comparison to the kinds of gross violations that happen regularly in the US, or that did happen in the UK (moat cleaning, anyone?) makes you wonder about our preoccupations. Which isn’t to say that we should ignore them, but let’s treat them with the gravity that they deserve, and I’m not sure that any of the “scandals” we’ve seen in this parliament are worth the energy we’ve expended on lighting our hair on fire about them.

Continue reading

Roundup: Kenney gets some policy resolutions

Alberta’s United Conservative Party held their foundational policy convention in Red Deer this last weekend, featuring plenty of cameo appearance by federal Conservatives including Andrew Scheer, and you can bet that Justin Trudeau was a favoured target (along with the premier, Rachel Notley, of course). Jason Kenney vowed to make an enemy of the “green left,” to the point where he was vowing to fight things that are areas of federal jurisdiction, which is funny considering that he’s been baying at the moon about the federal government apparently not asserting their jurisdiction vigorously enough when it comes to pipelines getting built. Funny how that happens.

There was an interesting digression into conservative feminism as part of the weekend’s narratives, with an airing of grievances against the particular brand of feminism that Justin Trudeau preaches, and the allegations that it means that Trudeau is dictating their values to them (particularly when it comes to issues like abortion, where Trudeau follows the logic that women should have agency over their own bodies – shockingly). Rona Ambrose announced that she is leading a new non-profit group to help women get involved in the UCP, through fundraising, mentorship, logistics, and networking – things that are not seen as tokenism or quotas. Heather Forsyth, former minister under Ralph Klein and interim leader of the Wildrose Party, was less than impressed, referring to talk of barriers facing women in politics as “socialist crap.” Of course, Dr. Cristina Stasia reminded her that socialism has long been sexist and hostile to women in politics as it’s seen as a “man’s role.” So there’s that.

https://twitter.com/CristinaStasia/status/992949081776390144

A number of social conservative issues came up at the convention, and despite sitting MLAs encouraging the grassroots members to vote against them – things like requiring parents be told if their children attend a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting at school, or having parents sign-off on “medically invasive procedures” for minors (read: abortions), which the grassroots crackpots insist were about “parental rights.” Sure, Jan. And Kenney outright said afterward that he’ll take these under advisement but won’t be held to them, saying that they’re “poorly worded” and the like. Because he wants to win and not be another “Lake of fire” party like Wildrose was, which cost them at least one election. However, Kenney has courted enough social conservatives and empowered them enough that they decisively won several policy votes meaning that they’ll be difficult to ignore, no matter how hard he tries to play down those resolutions when it comes time to draft his election platform, given that he conspicuously stayed out of the policy development process in order to give members a freer hand. It’ll be an even bigger problem for him to ignore them now.

Continue reading

Roundup: BC causes Western alienation?

As a former Albertan, I often find myself unmoved by tales of “Western alienation” because they are so often based on lies that Albertans like to tell themselves – that they put the oil underground themselves, or that the National Energy Programme caused the global recession and crash in oil prices, or that their inability to properly run a provincial budget that doesn’t rely on resource revenues to paper over the problems with it is somehow the fault of others. And when I see people like Rona Ambrose concern trolling about how “Western alienation” is real and dangerous, I find myself even more unsympathetic because she and her former colleagues tend to go out of their way to foment these feelings in order to score temporary points against the government of the day. And then there’s this kind of nonsense that gets thrown in – that somehow BC is part of the cause of “Western alienation,” as though BC wasn’t also in the west.

https://twitter.com/lazin_ryder/status/928078971832434689

It’s fine if Alberta wants to have its own particular regional character. That’s part of what makes Canada so great – that we have regional characters that are distinct and yet make up part of the whole of the country. And hey, we don’t always get along, because we do have different issues and priorities in a country as vast as ours. But I also find it a bit, well, rich, that a province that is as rich as Alberta’s – and it is the richest province my pretty much any measure – thinks that they’re hard done by as a result. But while they enjoy roads that are frequently paved, or infrastructure that isn’t crumbling around them, and whine that they’re so hard done by, my patience runs thin because they don’t seem to realise that not every province has it as good as theirs. And to top it off, their politicians tell even more lies about how equalization works in order to further drive these feelings of “alienation” for their own benefit. It’s shameless and we should be better than this, but who cares about trying to cause discord for the sake a few votes? It’s not like any of this “alienation” that they foment is dangerous, right? Oh, wait…

Continue reading

Roundup: The orgy of unforced errors

Word has gone out to Liberal MPs that there will be a mandatory caucus meeting first thing on Monday morning – a rarity given that mostly they wait until Wednesdays (especially as it makes it harder for those MPs who are from remote ridings to get there). The only thing that we know so far is that both Bill Morneau and the PM will be there, and the speculation is that it will outline the changes to their proposed tax changes based on consultations, but one can also assume that this is going to be about the ongoing self-harm that the government has been inflicting on itself over the various tax stories.

And what self-harm it’s been. On Friday, it was revealed that Bill Morneau forgot to declare that he also has interest in a company that owns a villa in France, and you can bet that the Conservatives took to this like a pack of dogs to fresh meat. This after the way that they refused to punch back against the gross distortions being promulgated about the proposed changes to the rules around Canadian-Controlled Private Corporations (CPCCs), or the refusal to provide real clarification around the CRA “folio” on certain employee discounts, preferring in each case to mouth the pabulum about fairness for the middle class. (Cute fact: the CRA “folio” has been up for months, was briefly discussed in the Commons finance committee last month, but only turned into a major crisis after a piece in the Globe and Mail. Because that’s now the Opposition Research Bureau, and it’s where the Conservatives take their daily outrage marching orders from, too lazy or incompetent to do their own research anymore).

And then there’s the added outrage over the fact that the government spent $221,000 on the cover of this year’s federal budget. Oh, how terrible and outrageous, and look at how plain the cover of Paul Martin’s budgets were, and then the Conservative chorus chimes in and makes these snide remarks about comparing the spending priorities between the two governments – completely ignoring the fact that they chose instead to spend even more thousands of dollars staging photo ops off of Parliament Hill to make announcements or give speeches where the Liberals will do it in the House of Commons, where they should be. Lindsay Tedds, mind you, offered up a sort of defence for why the Liberals may have chosen to go with this particular route on a budget design, which those in the throes of a paroxysm of cheap outrage, remain blinkered about.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/919036864740278272

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/919038038784720896

So I guess we’ll see what emerges from that caucus meeting. Will they emerge with some better means of communicating their plans that won’t just involve more pat phrases about the middle class, and would maybe let them engage in some actual, authentic conversations that will push back against some of the nonsense being thrown around? Or will Trudeau lay down the law on his restless backbench and double down on the talking points that blandly say nothing at all, while they continue to let the Conservatives set the narrative using their own particular brand of spin, misdirection, and distortion? I guess we’ll have to see.

Meanwhile, here’s Colby Cosh raining down hellfire on that $210,000 budget cover, Chantal Hébert on the fire that Bill Morneau is taking, Andrew MacDougall on the Liberal’s inability to communicate their changes, and Paul Wells sees the continued litany of unforced errors as putting the government in danger of alienating the middle class that it so vocally venerates.

Continue reading

QP: Energy East and Barbados

After the Energy East cancellation announcement this morning, you just knew that this would be the fodder for increasingly hysterical denunciations during QP today. Justin Trudeau was present, but Andrew Scheer was not, so it remained to be seen how this would play out.

Lisa Raitt led off instead, mini-lectern on desk, blaming the government for killing Energy East with their ideology. Justin Trudeau responded that it was a business decision, that the project was proposed when oil was $90/barrel and it’s now half that, but that his government had already approved three other pipelines. Raitt accused the government of playing to the interests of countries like Saudi Arabia, and Trudeau shrugged off that suggestion. Raitt then accused him of taking Atlantic Canada for granted with this cancellation. Trudeau countered that they had an Atlantic growth strategy and that it was the previous government that ignored them. Gérard Deltell then took over the condemnation of the loss of Energy East in French, and Trudeau reiterated that conditions have changed, also in French. Deltell then said that Trudeau was responsible for conditions changing, as though Trudeau controls the world price of oil, and Trudeau instead responded about the ways that they have been doing what the market has been asking for, including carbon pricing. Guy Caron was up next, pointing to the recent PBO report on fiscal sustainability, and demanded that healthcare be adequately funded for the provinces. Trudeau touted the investments that they made in mental health and home care. In English, Caron demanded a national strategy for seniors, to which Trudeau listed all of the measures that they have taken. Caron then changed topics to the Phoenix pay system, demanding a refund for it. Trudeau noted that they were working with the public service and the unions to fix the situation, and then there was another round of the same in French.

Continue reading

Roundup: Those “sexist” tax changes

Pushback on the proposed income tax changes increased in intensity, with the Canadian Medical Association launching broadsides at the policy under the rubric that it’s “sexist” and will drive doctors out of the country, while Conservatives have taken these arguments to social media, Lisa Raitt policing news aggregators and Kellie Leitch penning fundraising letters. Jane Philpott, addressing a CMA conference, assured them that they were operating under misinformation and that the goal of the changes was tax fairness – that those with spouses earning significantly less money or having adult children shouldn’t unfairly benefit from the existing system than those who don’t.

I did try to get some answers as to how this policy was “sexist,” because I’m not entirely convinced that these changes prevent people from using money in the corporation to finance parental leaves, never mind the fact that the previous government made a Very Big Deal about changing the EI system to allow self-employed people to contribute in order to finance maternity leaves – something that received very little uptake. And most of the stories that Raitt pointed to were anecdotal that didn’t point to where these policy changes were a problem – one example was a Facebook post where a dentist insisted that these current policies were what allowed her to keep up with male counterparts, which is an argument that makes no sense at all. They don’t prevent incorporation. They don’t prevent deductions of expenses or reinvestment in the business – it’s about not letting people use income sprinkling or splitting for the sole purposes of reducing their taxes. Not that it’s stopped the narratives that this hurts doctors or struggling small businesses.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/899703766282190848

And this is a salient point – in Ontario, the provincial government encouraged this kind of incorporation rather than increase what they’re paying doctors, so you can see why they’re upset that these tools are being taken away from them. Nevertheless, it also largely proves that their arguments are fairly disingenuous, especially when they insist that “it’s not about the money.” But with none of their other arguments actually panning out, it seems to be that’s exactly what it is, and it’s fine if they come out and just say it. But to put on this song and dance about how the changes are “sexist” and that it somehow disproves Trudeau’s feminism, and ignoring the stated purpose of the changes with regards to tax fairness, makes the excuses start to ring fairly hollow.

Continue reading

Roundup: The looming retirement of the Chief Justice

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin announced yesterday that she would be retiring on December 15th, a few months in advance of her mandatory retirement date, in order to give the government enough time to find a suitable replacement. Why that date is significant is because it will be at the end of the Court’s fall sitting, letting her use the next six months that she is able to clear off the files from her desk and work on any outstanding judgments rather than depart mid-sitting and the organizational chaos that would follow.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/874344373873508354

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/874344925613219845

The next steps are now an important consideration. The government will not only have to name a new Chief Justice, but a new judge from Western Canada (and likely BC given that’s where McLachlin was appointed from). And in order to keep gender balance on the court it will likely have to be a woman, and in accordance with this government’s push for diversity, it will likely be a person of colour, if not someone Indigenous (and let us not forget that said person must also be fluently bilingual, which is another self-imposed criteria that this government has made for itself). This may be easier to find in BC than it was in Atlantic Canada, mind you. And for Chief Justice? My money is on Justice Richard Wagner, whom I know many close the court have already tapped as being the successor if they had their druthers.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/874346587820089344

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/874346899305836544

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/874347634542116864

Of course, we’ll see if this government can get an appointment process back up and running within the six months. Experience has shown us that they seem to have difficulty with that, especially as there are still some sixty or so federally appointed judicial vacancies still remaining around the country, and a few of the Judicial Advisory Committees charged with finding candidates for said vacancies still not fully appointed either, which is a problem. Of course, they may be able to largely reconstitute the committee that oversaw the nomination of Justice Rowe, with Kim Campbell again in charge of the process, but I guess we’ll see how long that takes.

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/874350151728599040

For more reaction, here’s Emmett Macfarlane on As It Happens and in the Ottawa Citizen, and Carissima Mathen on Power Play.

Continue reading