While Rona Ambrose was still away, we had both the PM and NDP “interim” leader Thomas Mulcair present for the day. Denis Lebel led off, decrying federal interference with the provinces with the imposition of their carbon tax. Trudeau insisted that they were working with the provinces to move ahead with tackling emissions. Lebel switched to English to ask again, and got much the same answer, with Trudeau making a few more digs about the previous government not being willing to work with provinces. Lebel went another round in French before Ed Fast took over to ask the same question yet again in English, concern trolling about the three provincial environment ministers who walked out of the meeting with federal ministers. Trudeau largely repeated his points about working with the provinces to create a strong economy and a clean environment. Fast read out condemnation from those ministers, and Trudeau ensured him that their plan would create jobs. Thomas Mulcair was up next, decrying the endorsement of “Stephen Harper’s targets,” and lamented the too-low carbon price. Trudeau replied with his established points about showing leadership in creating jobs and protecting the environment. Mulcair asked again in French, got the same answer, and then moved onto concerns about the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in the wake of the Environment Commissioner’s report, to which Trudeau said they would follow up on the recommendations. For his final question, Mulcair demanded that the government agree to the NDP motion on a committee on arms sales, but Trudeau did not agree, and pointed to their adopting the small arms treaty.
Tag Archives: Healthcare
Roundup: Trudeau plays hardball
Yesterday was the day that Justin Trudeau decided to start playing hardball. Under the backdrop of the debate on ratification of the Paris Agreement on GHG emissions, he dropped the hammer on a minimum national carbon price, starting at $10 per tonne in 2018, rising to $50 per tonne by 2022, and provinces would keep the revenue with the intention that it be revenue neutral, so as not to ensure this is a federal “tax grab.” Any province that doesn’t comply will have the price imposed and the revenues returned to them. Stéphane Dion feels vindicated by this development, incidentally. Oh, and Trudeau probably isn’t going to meet with the premiers about their demands around the health transfer escalator either.
https://twitter.com/Geddes28/status/783000372730298370
Some of the provinces were immediately incensed. At the environment ministers’ meeting in Montreal, ministers from Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador walked out of the meeting, and true to his diva self, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall declared the “level of disrespect” to be “stunning” – never mind that Trudeau has been telegraphing this move ever since the Vancouver premier’s meeting. Alberta, incidentally, whose own plans surpass Trudeau’s, say that they won’t support it unless there’s a commitment for more pipelines, while Manitoba is non-committal for the moment. (Other provincial positions here).
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/783133654050541569
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/783134550151065600
Brad Wall, for his part, is threatening to take the government to court over carbon pricing, but it’s not likely to get anywhere.
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/783058718438981632
In terms of analysis, economist Trevor Tombe reminds us why pricing carbon is the most effective market mechanism to deal with climate change, while John Ivison says that Trudeau may have outsmarted his opponents, and Andrew Coyne notes the one-sidedness of any federal-provincial negotiations.
QP: Taking the provinces’ phone calls
While Justin Trudeau was not only present, having already participated in the debate of the day (a rarity for any PM these days), his leaders opposite were not. Rona Ambrose was off to the UK Conservative caucus in Birmingham, while Thomas Mulcair was elsewhere. Denis Lebel led off for the Conservatives, demanding a signed softwood lumber agreement before it was too late. Trudeau responded by reminding him that the previous government neglected the file while his government has been hard at work in negotiations. Lebel moved onto the healthcare transfers file, demanding the government respect provincial jurisdiction, but Trudeau shook it off, ensuring that they were working together. Lebel insisted that there was peace with the provinces when the Conservatives were in charge and why wouldn’t the federal government just let them be rather than meddle? Trudeau insisted that the provinces were much happier now that the federal government answered their phone calls. Ed Fast got up next to decry the “carbon tax grab” being shoved “down the throats” of Canadians. Trudeau hit back that the previous government ignored the file and made no progress, while his government was. Fast tried again, decrying it as an intrusion on provincial jurisdiction, but Trudeau reminded him that they were indeed respecting said jurisdiction. Robert Aubin led off for the NDP, lamenting the “Harper targets” for GHGs, and Trudeau noted that they had just tabled their plan, and soon all Canadians — not just 80 percent — would be in a carbon priced jurisdiction. Aubin went again another round, got the same answer, and Linda Duncan took over in English, decrying that the announced starting carbon price was too low to be effective. Trudeau noted they were simultaneously developing a strong economy while being environmentally sustainable. Duncan worried the government was abandoning the clean energy future, but Trudeau reiterated his answer a little more forcefully.
Jane Philpott takes exception to Lebel's characterisation of her handshake with her counterpart from Quebec as being "frosty." #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 3, 2016
Roundup: The new Senate hurdles
Just how MPs should deal with an increasingly independent – and assertive – Senate is the question posed by former MP Bryon Wilfert and his firm partner Paul Hillier, and it’s a question that I’m really not sure that Justin Trudeau adequate considered when he embarked on this path to modernization. While they note that no longer having senators in caucus limits the closed-door opportunity to hear and debate government proposals, I will state that they overplay the concern about the ability to whip those votes. There has never been any formal power to whip senators’ votes, but they relied primarily on sentimentality or affiliation, and sometimes senators went along, and sometimes they very much didn’t. That’s one of the reasons why there remains a bit of a taint around the post-2008 Harper appointees, because most of them came in being told that they could be whipped, and they behaved as though they could – up until fracture points around the contentious bill C-377, and then they rebelled against their Senate leadership (and it’s not a coincidence that Marjory LeBreton resigned as Government Leader shortly thereafter). They also point to the very real problem that with so many new MPs, and with the Liberal senators no longer in caucus, the personal relationships between parliamentarians that would normally exist no longer do, and that does start to exacerbate the problem of driving legislation through the Senate.
Where I see their proposed solution as being problematic is the suggestion that committee chairs be the new agents to set the legislative pace and of trying to build consensus. Why I think this is a problem is that the point of committees is to hold the government to account, which is why ministers are so frequently called to appear before them. If the chair is acting as the agent of the government, rather than of the committee itself, it creates something of a conflict in their roles. As well, many of the committee chairs are from the Conservatives (not that the Senate Liberals are the same party as the government, but there is an assumption of greater sympathy despite the fact that the relationship has been pretty testy to date). Trying to co-opt those chairs into being government agents to drive consensus would seem to be antithetical to the purposes of having an opposition, and its accountability functions. It also puts those chairs in the awkward position of having stakeholder groups trying to court them in order to get their support in rounding up senators to support the bills – groups that would also want to come before committee to plead their cases when the bills get to said committees, which again presents a bit of a conflict. If anything, I do think this highlights the value of having caucuses for organisational purposes, and arranging these meetings – and yes, the Independent Senators Group could possibly host these same kinds of stakeholder discussions without trying to come to an internal consensus, allowing their members to make their own minds up (and to date, they have operated on a rule that anyone trying to get support does so outside of their meeting room). It will continue to take getting used to, but it will continue to take some serious thought about what roles we’re asking people to take on within the chamber in order to get bills passed.
QP: A non-existent conflict
The b-team was out a little early today, as both Justin Trudeau and Rona Ambrose jetted off to Israel for the funeral of Shimon Peres, and Thomas Mulcair decided he had better things to do. Candice Bergen led off, mini-lectern on desk, conspiracy theorizing at the attendance of Dominic LeBlanc at an event in Toronto hosted by a law firm that does lobbying for the Irvings. LeBlanc stood up to tell the House that he was there to promote the Atlantic Growth Strategy. Bergen noted that he was the lead on litigation strategy for the government and that it was a conflict, but LeBlanc insisted that he cleared it in writing with the Ethics Commissioner. Bergen decried his lack of judgment, but LeBlanc continued to rebuff the allegation. Alain Rayes was up next, and decried the health negotiations with provinces and the possibility of strings being attached, and Jane Philpott noted that the health transfers were going up, and they went one more round of the same. Don Davies led off for the NDP, decrying the healthcare escalator (referring to them as “cuts” when the transfer continues to go up), and Philpott reminded that there is no cut. Davies went a second round, got the same answer, and then Brigitte Sansoucy took over in French on the very same topic. Philpott repeated her answers in English, reminding the NDP that they promised a balanced budget which they wouldn’t have been able to achieve without cuts, and then one more round again of the same.
Roundup: Harder’s arrogant dismissal
It is probably not without a certain amount of chutzpah that Senator Peter Harder went before the Senate’s modernisation committee yesterday, and not only lectured to them about what the Senate does, but offered his particular thoughts on how the institution should be reformed, and most of all, having the gall to suggest that there was nothing that could be learned from the House of Lords and their integration of crossbenchers. Harder, with his mere couple of months of experience, has taken it upon himself to declare that the Senate should comprise of the government representative (a creature which does not actually appear in convention, statute or logic) and independents who will loosely affiliate on an ad hoc basis – no government, no opposition, no parties, no partisanship.
Sen. Eggleton brings up the House of Lords and crossbenchers, but Sen. Harder doesn't think our Senate has any lessons to learn from them. !
— kady o'malley (@kady) September 28, 2016
"We have to develop our own culture of independence in the Senate," Harder says, but there's little to learn from the House of Lords.
— kady o'malley (@kady) September 28, 2016
"I'm not hostile to other models," Harder stresses — he's open to anything that wouldn't risk reverting to partisan Senate.
— kady o'malley (@kady) September 28, 2016
Give. Me. A. Break.
This declared allergy to partisanship in the upper chamber has reached the point of being utterly ridiculous. Parties exist for a reason. No one is arguing that the current power structure in the Senate needs to be broken apart and for independents to be given more power and resources, but blowing up parties is not the way to go, nor is assiduously screening nominees for any past hint of partisanship because there is nothing inherently wrong with partisanship. If Harder thinks that 105 individuals can sufficiently organise themselves for debates without any kind of structure – that his office doesn’t impose anyway – is lunacy. And it does concern me that Harder is making a bit of a power grab, especially considering that his office is already poised to start offering staffing services for the incoming batch of senators, which is not only unseemly but once again looks to bigfoot the work that the Independent Senators Group has been doing to come up with a bottom-up approach to organising unaligned senators in a manner consistent with the operation of the Chamber while working to give them caucus-like powers for committee assignments and with any luck, research dollars and support. But this isn’t the first time that Harder has attempted to bigfoot this nascent group, and I think that’s a very real problem. His attitude towards the modernisation committee – and in particular his arrogant dismissal of the crossbencher model (which the Independent Senate Group has been looking toward) – is a worrying sign.
Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne not only unhelpfully endorses the Segal-Kirby call for the Senate to limit its veto to a suspensive one (because hey, it’s not like we might need an option to stop a prime minister with a majority from passing really terrible legislation), but goes one step further and proposes that any bill in the Senate that has not been passed in six months is deemed to have passed, so that when they can’t procedurally speed through certain bills that get bottlenecked in committees (like any private member’s bill, many of which are objectively terrible), or when they demand more time and attention, they should just be passed anyway? Seriously? What a way to run a parliament.
QP: More shovels in the ground
Caucus day, and nearly a full house in the Commons as QP got underway. Rona Ambrose, mini-lectern on desk, was terribly concerned about 190 conditions attached to the Pacific Northwest LNG approval. Justin Trudeau reminded her that the last government’s cheerleading didn’t get them anywhere and they needed to do things differently. Ambrose demanded they get shovels in the ground, but Trudeau stuck to his points about sustainable development. Ambrose shifted gears and was concerned that the first round of deficit spending didn’t spend jobs, to which Trudeau praised the investments they were making in communities. Ambrose went for another round, and Trudeau insisted that the Conservatives didn’t learn the lessons of the last election, and they went one more round on the same question in French. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and he railed about the lack of consultation with local First Nations on the LNG project. Trudeau praised economic growth with environmental protection and they “folded in” the consultations. Mulcair decried that it was now impossible to meet GHG targets, to which Trudeau noted that they need to grow the economy while working to meet targets, so they are working with the provinces to do so. Mulcair wanted approval for their supply day motion for parliamentary oversight over arms sales, and Trudeau spoke instead about participating the arms trade treaty. Mulcair asked again in English, and got much the same answer.
Roundup: Non-binding unanimous support
Supply day motions – also known as opposition day motions – can be tricky business, and unless the opposition party that moves it isn’t careful, they can wind up giving the government a free pass on supporting said motions without fear of consequence. Never mind that the point of supply day motions is to debate why the government should be denied supply (and hence confidence), these have largely turned into take-note debates on topics of the opposition’s choosing. These free pass motions happened with surprising regularity in the previous parliament, with the NDP frequently offering up mom-and-apple-pie motions that the Conservatives would obviously support the intent of, despite never having the intention to follow through with substantive action on, because hey, the motions are non-binding, and why not look like they support the idea of the motion? And lo and behold, the Conservatives offered up just such a motion around the Supreme Court of Canada, imploring the government to “respect the custom of regional representation” when making appointments to that court, “in particular, when replacing the retiring Justice Thomas Cromwell, who is Atlantic Canada’s representative on the Supreme Court.” While I will quibble with their use of “custom” as opposed to “constitutional convention” (which it really is at this point), this was one of those motions worded just loosely enough that the government could vote for it (and it did pass unanimously, as these kinds of motions often do), and should they go ahead and appoint a non-Atlantic justice to the court, they have room enough to turn around and give some kind of a nonsense excuse like “Oh, we felt that such-and-such diversity requirement was more needed at this point,” or “we felt that the Atlantic nominees were insufficiently bilingual,” or what have you. Or, as the talking points have been turning to, they will point to the number of Atlantic nominees on the short-list and said that they got equal opportunity and were not prejudiced against or some such, and make the merit argument. Suffice to say, there is more than enough wiggle room, and for a party that was so recently in government, the Conservative should have known better than to word a motion in a way that the government can support and later wiggle out of. This having been said, the government has been under enormous political pressure from the premiers regarding this Atlantic seat, so it is not inconceivable that this as a step in walking back from having the nominations being too open, but that remains to be seen.
QP: The Giorno angle
With all of the leaders in the Commons today, the hope was that the show would be a little less awful than it was yesterday. On the whole, it was. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk, reading a plea that the government approve the Pacific Northwest LNG project, and Justin Trudeau dissembles about the choice between the environment and the economy. Ambrose lamented that too many pipeline projects were languishing and getting people back to work. Trudeau reminded her that their pipeline plans didn’t work because they didn’t get community buy-in, added that the Conservative voted against middle-class tax cuts. Ambrose changed topics, concerned about discussions with China that included cyber-security regardless of how many times Chinese hackers attacked Canadian targets. Trudeau stated that previous discussions were always ad hoc, while these new high-level discussions provided a more permanent framework. Ambrose expressed confusion about any extradition talks with China, and Trudeau returned to the same response about high-level dialogue. Ambrose asked again in French, and got the same answer. Thomas Mulcair was up next, asking if the Great Bear rainforest was no place for a crude oil pipeline, but wondered if it would also be one for natural gas. Trudeau didn’t give a clear response, mentioning analyzing various projects. Mulcair then lamented the adoption of Harper-era healthcare “cuts” (note: it’s not a cut, because the funds are still increasing), but Trudeau shrugged it off with talk of consultation with the provinces. Mulcair went another round in French, got the same answer, and then Mulcair moved onto labour rights and demanded that the government support their anti-scab bill. Trudeau spoke about the need for a better collaborative approach.
QP: Sanctimony and escalators
With none of the leaders were present, Denis Lebel led off, railing about the non-existent negotiations for an extradition treaty with China. Harjit Sajjan responded that it was a high-level security and rule-of-law dialogue, which included talk of extradition. Lebel asked again in English, got the same response, then moved on to the moving expenses of one of Dion’s staff. Bardish Chagger noted that they were committed to changing the rules. Candice Bergen got up to deliver some unctuous sanctimony about moving expenses, but Chagger stuck to her prepared lines. Brigitte Sansoucy was up for the NDP, decrying the fact that the government won’t increase the healthcare transfer escalator. Jane Philpott said that they would be making investments in priority areas like home care and mental health care. Sansoucy went another round, got the same answer, before Don Davies went up to ask the same again in English. Philpott chided him that the NDP platform would have been hard pressed to use the old escalators and still balance the budget, then they went one more round of the same.
So a continued increase is a "cut." #logic #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 26, 2016
"Blah, blah, blah," David Christopherson yells during Philpott's response. #PartyOfDecorum #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 26, 2016