Tag Archives: Iraq

Roundup: An indefensible communications strategy

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If you’ve been wondering what the Conservative communications strategy around the planned changes to private corporation taxation, then it’s your lucky day as VICE got a copy of the talking points and then fact-checked them. In short, it’s predicated on a combination of extreme cases, lies of omission, and misdirection – so pretty much what you’d expect if you’ve been paying attention these past few weeks.

All of this is being further exacerbated by a growing number of Liberal MPs who have become victim to their own government being unable to actually articulate what these changes really mean and who have come up with a communications strategy that is more interested in sloganeering than it is on correcting the active misinformation campaign that has been going on, and which isn’t actually fighting back against said misinformation through a series of pointed questions like “How exactly is income sprinkling the thing that’s spurring entrepreneurship/growth/investment?” like keeps being brought up, or “You read the proposal where reinvesting in the business isn’t being additionally taxed, right?” And while sure, there may be some issues with family farms when it comes to capital gains for passing it on from generation to generation, or with the potential compliance burden to ensuring that any of these ongoing measures are actually above-board, those aren’t what we’re hearing. Instead, it’s this nonsensical braying about how small business “deserves” these tax breaks for “risk” (false – risk was never why these differential tax breaks were introduced, but rather, a lower small business tax rate was introduced in 1972 because at the time, they had difficulty getting bank loans). Braying that nobody is pushing back against, and that’s part of the problem.

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Roundup: Appointment backlog woes

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The National Post has a really good piece looking into the current backlog of appointments and the effect it’s having on the functioning of government. It’s something that has been talked about a lot, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a good breakdown of those vacancies, and the effect that it’s having. It’s one of those subjects that sounds pretty easy to grumble about, but it’s also something that we should take a step back and realise that to a certain extent, the goals of reforming the appointments process has been laudable, and in many cases, overdue when it comes to increasing the level of diversity into these positions. Over the course of my reporting, a lot of civil society actors have praised the move (while still being concerned at the timeframe it took for getting the processes up and running) because they all know that the outcomes will inevitably be better over the longer term now that the bulk of positions aren’t simply being filled by straight white men.

That said, I also wanted to just put a bit of additional context around some of this backlog in saying that as much as the Conservatives are baying at the moon about some of these appointments right now, that they were no saints when it came to this sort of thing either, and reformed the appointment process for some of these positions themselves, creating massive backlogs in the process. The two that come to mind immediately are the Immigration and Refugee Board, where they took a functioning system and drove it to dysfunction when they changed that process to “de-politicise it” (with plenty of accusations that they just made the system easier to put their own cronies in) and turning a system where the optimal number of files was churning through into a massive backlog that they tried to blame their predecessors on (sound familiar?). The other was the Social Security Tribunal, which they completely revamped as part of their changes to the system overall, and I’m not sure it ever got fixed before they lost the election, only for the Liberals to turn around to reform the appointment process yet again. So yes, some of the backlogs are bad, but in some cases, ‘twas ever thus, and we should keep that in mind.

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Roundup: Charles and Camilla in Iqaluit

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Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, arrived in Canada, starting their tour in Iqaluit to talk about revitalising the Inuit language – project he has taken great interest in, and last year invited some Inuit delegates to Wales to hear about how they had success in revitalising the Welsh language there. While Charles’ official role in Canada is somewhat ambiguous now that we have a dubious succession law on the books (thanks to the previous government), he is nevertheless the heir to the Crown. The tour moves to Trenton and Prince Edward County in Ontario today, and Ottawa for Canada Day on Saturday.

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Roundup: PBO’s platform peril

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Now that the budget implementation bill has passed, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is in the midst of transforming into yet another unaccountable Officer of Parliament that will have a broad mandate and few checks on his actions, given that the government backed down on their attempts to limit the scope of his work. What they didn’t limit was the giving the PBO the mandate to cost election promises by other parties, despite his objections to doing so, and so now his office is being forced to figure out just how they’ll do it. The legislation does make it clear that he’s only to cost individual promises, not their whole campaign, but it’s going to be an enormous amount of work that will be used even more as a cudgel than his work already is, and we can expect an election period being filled with taunts of “See, the PBO says that your plans will cost more than you say and he’s independent,” with the unspoken “Nya, nya!” in there. Oh boy. Anyway, Jennifer Robson has a few more thoughts on the issue.

The bit about a common baseline is possibly important, given that economist Stephen Gordon has been trying to match Liberal election promises to the current budget framework and has found the task to be nigh impossible.

Enforcing common costing baselines may sound like a good idea, but it does make me nervous about campaigns devolving into accounting exercises at the expense of other considerations, including accountability, and that we’ll have repeats of 2008, when we had clear platform commitments shrugged off by reporters going “it’s just so complicated” when a) it wasn’t, and b) it reinforces this “math is hard” narrative that does nobody any favours. But maybe that’s just me.

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Roundup: Clarity is not an appeal

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With another court case involving First Nations children, you’d expect there to be a bunch of hue and cry, and there certainly has been, but I wonder how much of it is actually misplaced. In this case, the government is seeking clarity from the court on a couple of aspects of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision on applying Jordan’s Principle, which is not an appeal. I’ve seen all manner of people, from reporters to advocates on Twitter railing that the government is appealing the decision. Asking for clarity is not an appeal.

If you actually read the story, they have legitimate concerns about the restrictions around case conferencing and on timelines in the decision, both of which seem to be pretty fair concerns to have given that both ministers are medical doctors and have expertise in what these issues mean. And I fail to see how getting clarity is trying to find a loophole to get out of the decision – it doesn’t track with either the promises, the investments made, or the fact that the whole file is more complex than many of the advocates would let on. You can’t simply pour money into a system that doesn’t have the capacity to absorb it and distribute it effectively, and you can’t just wave a magic wand into a jurisdictional minefield like this particular decision addresses and expect that everything will always have the best outcome by sheer force of willpower, especially when there are areas that are unclear to players involved.

The fact that I’ve been a justice reporter for the past couple of years means that I’ve been exposed to a lot of the sensitivities involved in complex cases, and this certainly qualifies, despite what certain advocates and opposition MPs would have one believe. Outrage that the government is going to court isn’t necessarily warranted, and most of the time, it’s been pretty disingenuous, whether it’s on this case, or in assessing the damages in the Sixties Scoop class action, where again advocates, opposition MPs, and even reporters characterized it as an appeal when it wasn’t an appeal – it was the next stage in a process where they needed to determine damages on a case-by-case basis rather than simply mailing out cheques. Not every time the government goes to court is nefarious, and people need to calm down because there is a lot of crying wolf going on that’s helping nobody, most especially the people who these decisions are supposed to benefit.

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Roundup: Cullen’s plan to launder accountability

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The NDP used their Supply Day motion yesterday to call for a new process to vet nominations for Officers of Parliament using a newly created subcommittee of Procedure and House Affairs that would have one member from each recognized party to vet the nominees. And while you may think on the surface that this is innocuous, there are plenty of problems with this proposal that go to the core of our system of Responsible Government.

For starters, the original motion was absolutely a veto, despite Nathan Cullen’s protests, and that’s not entirely appropriate given our system. They negotiated an amendment to remove that section, but the Liberals decided they weren’t going to agree to the motion in any case, which is fine because the veto wasn’t the bigger problem.

The problem is that a committee like this will not actually bring other parties into the process to make it “non-partisan,” but rather, it will launder the government’s responsibility for the appointments so that it becomes impossible to hold them to account when things go wrong. Remember when the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, Christiane Ouimet, turned out to be a giant problem? Do you remember what the government said when it came up in QP? They said “We consulted and no one raised any objections then – not our problem,” which was untrue. Add this process in, and that “not our problem” becomes baked in. At least this government has enough of a shred of decency when it comes to our parliamentary system to not look to find a new solution to wash their hands of future accountability, because that’s all that this motion offers – aside from the ability for opposition parties to engage in shenanigans of their own on the nomination sub-committee. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that for many of these Officers, they serve Parliament as a whole, so a process that excludes senators becomes even more problematic for the functioning of our system.

To try and tie this to what happened with Madeleine Meilleur is a bit of a red herring – through the established process, it became clear to everyone (except maybe Mélanie Joly) that Meilleur simply wasn’t suited, most especially after she managed to alienate Anglophone Quebeckers – an extremely difficult thing to do, and yet she managed, and with the Senate lining up to vote against her appointment, it pretty much proves that the existing system worked.

No, this is about this farcical notion that people like Cullen keep pushing about how this is all about “making Parliament work.” It already works when the players involved do their jobs, and creating new processes creates added complications and unintended consequences, like the laundering of accountability, which nobody thinks about or raises as an issue because few people bother to learn how the system works. This Americanized suggestion is flash in the pan, trying to capitalize on what was clearly a blunder that the existing system nevertheless corrected. And if people had any good sense, they’d stop listening to Nathan Cullen’s attempts to “improve” our democracy.

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QP: At last, the exchange of quips

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On a rainy Tuesday in Ottawa, it was all hands on deck in the Commons, with all leaders present for a change. Andrew Scheer led off, noting the anniversary of D-Day, and turned it into a question on fighting ISIS. Trudeau noted the contributions that Canada was making to the fight. Scheer tried mocking Trudeau’s television interview responses about positive spaces in this fight, and Trudeau quipped back that Scheer must not be too busy as opposition leader if he was all caught up on his daytime TV. Scheer batted back that it was the only place he could find Trudeau over the past week, and then railed about new taxes on beer and wine. Trudeau responded that they cut taxes to the middle class. Scheer insisted that wasn’t true, and listed a number of penny ante issues like making Uber pay HST and carbon taxes (which are largely provincial), and Trudeau noted the difference in vision that his government offered. Scheer then veered into a question about the public sex offender registry, and Trudeau called Scheer out for politicising the wrong issues, and said that trying to insinuate the Liberals didn’t care about children and families was shameful. Up next was Thomas Mulcair, who brought up the Madeleine Meilleur nomination and stated that she confirmed in the Senate that she discussed the position with Gerald Butts and Katie Telford — which isn’t what she said. Trudeau reminded him of the open nomination process, and when Mulcair tried to insist that one f them were lying, Trudeau didn’t budge from his points. Mulcair then railed about Trudeau slamming the door on Quebec’s face on their request to discuss the constitution, and Trudeau said that he had other priorities. Mulcair gave it a second go, insisting this was a snub at Quebec alone, and Trudeau reminded him that he says the same thing in English and in French and had no interest in getting into a constitutional quagmire.

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QP: More Meilleur, more problems

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While the PM was back in town, he chose to meet the civil service summer students instead of attending QP, meaning that Andrew Scheer’s big face-off was going to have to wait for next week. Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and read some condemnation about the government not voting in favour of an autism partnership. Jane Philpott noted that this was largely a provincial matter and then listed billions of dollars that were spent on programs. Scheer then moved onto a consular issue with a Canadian couple detained in China, and Chrystia Freeland noted her own concern with the case, and assured him that she has raised it at a high level and would meet with their daughter later today. Scheer switched to French to list some condemnation about Madeleine Meilleur’s nomination, including accusations that two of Joly’s staffers used to work for Meilleur. Joly reminded him that those in her office had no part in the selection process. Scheer switched to English to ask it again, and Joly reiterated her answer. Scheer tried again, and got the same answer. Thomas Mulcair was up next, tried to poke holes in the story that Meilleur did not have conversations about the appointment with Butts and Telford. Joly said that they did not have that conversation. Mulcair insisted then that Meilleur lied to Parliament, and demanded to know if Joly’s staff were consulted, and Joly reiterated that they were not part of the team. Mulcair returned to the supposed involvement of Butts and Telford, and Joly reiterated her previous answers. Mulcair’s final question spun up the torque on Butts’ supposed involvement, and Joly responded by listing Meilleur’s qualifications.

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QP: Not taking yes for an answer

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Scheer’s second day in the Commons as leader, and the PM was still in Italy. Even Speaker Regan was away, and it was Deputy Speaker Stanton in the chair instead. Scheer led off worrying about the TransMountain pipeline in the face of a potential NDP government in BC — never mind that the PM already told the press earlier that it was going ahead regardless. Jim Carr reiterated that same point in his reply, but Scheer was unconvinced, railing about how Northern Gateway was also approved at one point before it was cancelled (which isn’t exactly how things happened). Carr reiterated that the process for TransMountain was exhaustive, and had been approved. Scheer turned to the issue of the Infrastructure Bank, and Amarjeet Sohi insisted that the Bank was necessary to get private capital into infrastructure. Scheer insisted that the Bank was ripe for abuse and corruption, but Sohi reminded him that it would be accountable to Parliament. For his final question, Scheer concern trolled about the nomination of Madeleine Meilleur as Languages Commissioner, to which Mélanie Joly insisted that Meilleur was the most qualified candidate. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and asked about amendments to the PBO legislation. Bardish Chagger read a card about the committee’s important work and that they have accepted a number of their bills. Mulcair ripped into Chagger’s talking points, to which Chagger put down her comments to insist that they listened and have delivered on the amendments. Mulcair then turn to the Infrastructure Bank, wondering about the hands of BlackRock in it, and Sohi listed the great things they could help fund. Mulcair then accused the government of interfering in provincial jurisdiction with the Bank, but Sohi parried, noting it was just another funding option.

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QP: Scheer’s debut reading

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The day after the Conservative leadership results, the seating plan had changed to give front-row seats to most of the failed candidates, with Rona Ambrose to sit next to Scheer for the next few weeks. As well, the PM was still in Rome, and would not be here to spar with Scheer on his first sitting day in the new job. Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, and launched into a rant in French about how the previous Trudeau government hurt his generation, and asked a rhetorical question about why the government was hurting Canadians. Bill Morneau first offered congratulations to Scheer for his election, and then reminded him that the economy was on the rebound. Scheer switched to English by reading complaints about people being nickled and dimed, to which Morneau repeated his congratulations in English and the positive economic indicators. When Scheer read questions about hiked taxes, Morneau reminded him that the first thing they did was lower taxes for the middle class. Scheer then changed topics and read a question about one of the surveillance planes in Iraq being withdrawn. Harjit Sajjan noted that Canada increased their contributions, and that rebalancing forces was a constant exercise. Scheer repeated his question in French and got the same answer. Irene Mathyssen was up for the NDP, railing about the Infrastructure Bank as a source of user fees. Amarjeet Sohi assured her the Bank was there to invest in the Infrastructure deficit. Alexandre Boulerice asked again in French, and Sohi reminded him that the Bank would be accountable to Parliament. Boulerice then switched to the question of lifetime pensions for wounded veterans, to which Sajjan insisted that they still planned to implement the pension. Mathyssen asked again in English, and Sajjan repeated that further details would be released later in the year.

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