While the debate on the report recommending Senator Meredith be expelled was pending, Senate Question Period rolled around, with special guest star Citizenship and Immigration minister Ahmed Hussen in the hot seat. Senator Smith led off on the issue of Bill C-6, which seeks to repeal the provisions that would strip citizenship from those dual-nationals convicted of terrorism. Hussen starting off by remarking that this was an election promise, that they didn’t believe that the same crimes should have different outcomes based largely on where one’s parents came from, and additionally, revoking that citizenship would be tantamount to exporting terrorism, where they can return to hurt Canada abroad. He added that citizenship should not be used as a tool for punishment, which should be role of the justice system. On his supplemental, Smith mentioned two Canadians added to the US terror watch list, and Hussen reiterated that criminals should be dealt with using the justice system, and that it creates unequal treatment which devalues Canadian citizenship.
Tag Archives: IRB
Roundup: Nomination shenanigans?
It looks like there are some shenanigans in Liberal nomination races for a couple of those upcoming by-elections, and as many a pundit has been saying today, Liberals gonna Liberal. And you can pretty much chalk this up to one more great big disappointment between the lofty Liberal rhetoric about valuing open nominations and then doing shady things like they have with the nominations in both Saint-Laurent and with Markham-Thornhill.
Part of what doesn’t make sense from an optics perspective is the sudden rush to call the last two by-elections for the two most recently vacated seats. In both Ottawa-Vanier and the two Calgary seats, there has been plenty of lead-time and nominations happened with nary a peep, but in the last two, the sudden rush has meant problems. With Markham-Thornhill, they retroactively cut off membership sales, which is presumed to help the “chosen” candidate, former PMO staffer Mary Ng. Ng’s campaign says they lost hundreds of registered members too, but again, this is about optics. Meanwhile in Saint-Laurent, a current Montreal borough mayor was declared not to have passed the green-light committee but they refuse to say why, which is seen as clearing the path for “star candidate” Yolande James (though there is still one other candidate, so it’s not an acclamation). But while they may have reasons for not greenlighting said borough mayor, the fact that they refuse to say why is again a nightmare for optics when this is supposed to be the party of openness, transparency and open and fair nominations.
Is the @liberal_party showing favouritism & backing a star candidate to replace @honstephanedion in St.-Laurent @MartinPatriquin? #pnpcbc pic.twitter.com/XTUIKGXoV9
— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) February 28, 2017
Part of why this is such a disappointment is because we really need to push back from party leaders’ interference in nomination races if we want to restore the balance in our politics. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be safety mechanisms in the event of hijacked nominations (because there absolutely should be), but those mechanisms shouldn’t be the leader’s office. A strong grassroots is essential in our system, and with every time that the leaders and their offices interfere (because they feel emboldened to thanks to the bastardized system of leadership selection that we’ve come to adopt and go full-bore on at every single opportunity), we choke off the most fecund part of our democracy. Shenanigans and the apparently hypocrisy of proclaiming open nominations while appearing to play favourites undermines the bottom-up practice of politics, and it’s something we as Canadians need to push back against in every party.
Roundup: Application versus consultation
The head of the new Senate Appointment Advisory Board appeared at the Procedure and House Affairs committee yesterday, and has raised a few issues about this new process that are a bit troubling, which has to do with applications – rather, that there seems to be an emphasis on application rather than nominations arising out of consultations. In particular, the ability for people to apply for a seat on their own seems to be at odds with some of the design of the advisory process. Emmett Macfarlane notes that this wasn’t how he envisioned the process when he was asked to help design it, and that it not only overly bureaucratizes the process, but it sets it up for a particularly unsavoury sort to want to apply, which I concur with. Why is this important? Because we’ve only spent the past number of months watching the trial of a certain Mike Duffy, who was well known for wanting desperately to become a senator for decades, and how he viewed such an appointment as a “taskless thanks” which would also provide him with all manner of perquisites – and witness how he managed to monetize all of his relationships as a result of his appointment, as we’ve witnessed in testimony. We also lived though the bizarre spectacle that was Bert Brown, “elected” senator whose self-appointed crusade for Senate reform comprised largely of unsolicited meetings with provinces to convince them of his plan (on the Senate’s dime), and taking to the op-ed pages to basically call his detractors Nazis (I’m not sure how else you take it when he reminds you of his family’s military service in WWII as a rebuttal). Some of the best senators we’ve seen are those who never expected an appointment, and who never would have sought office on their own – people like Roméo Dallaire. It’s also why I’m not sold on the NDP fear that this process will just be elites nominating elites – a broad enough consultation will bring people of accomplishment and expertise in a wide variety of fields than just academia. But at the same time, the Senate should be a place that rewards experience and expertise rather than being a repository for randoms, given their role to scrutinise legislation and act as the country’s premier think tank. I have a hard time seeing how hot dog vendors can fulfil those roles, no matter how many people they interact with in a day.
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/695336557893431300
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/695341816439136261
It's almost like begging for another Mike Duffy… https://t.co/s3Nd9Z4amm
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 4, 2016
Roundup: On official birthdays
It should not be unexpected that on Victoria Day, you would get some usual trite releases by the Prime Minister and the Governor General about the importance of Canada’s relationship with the monarchy, and so on. We got them. What we also got was a bunch of ignorant backlash.
Today, Laureen & I join Cdns to officially celebrate the birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. http://t.co/kDokPviYF8
— Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) May 18, 2015
The GG wishes us a happy Victoria Day, and Her Majesty a happy official birthday in Canada. #MapleCrown pic.twitter.com/4rSTzN8PRk
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 18, 2015
Immediately a bunch of geniuses started to tweet back that it was celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday, not Queen Elizabeth’s, and that Harper was an idiot, and so on. Err, except that those people were the ones in the wrong because since 1957, it was decided that the Official Birthday of the Canadian Sovereign would be Victoria Day, not the April birthday of the current Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II, nor the same official birthday as the Queen of the United Kingdom, which is in June. It’s like we have our own monarchy or something! Also, it has to do with the distinction between the legal person of the Queen of the Canada, and her natural person.
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/600350515633979393
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/600350878269313025
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/600354856294047744
Suffice to say, it’s a pretty sad statement as to the current state of civic literacy in Canada that this basic celebration of our Head of State has been completely lost to your average person. Granted, the PM’s tweet could have been better phrased, such as “official birthday” instead of “officially celebrate,” but still, the point stands. It’s time to take this basic education more seriously, Canada. Yesterday was pretty embarrassing.
https://twitter.com/lopinformation/status/600334009944645633
Roundup: Challenging the empty seats
A Vancouver lawyer has decided to launch a constitutional challenge about the fact that the Prime Minister has refused to fill the 16 vacant seats that are currently in the Senate, and it’s about time. In some provinces, half of their allotted seats are vacant, which has a real impact on their representation, all because Harper is both smarting from his string of poor appointments in 2008 when he elevated Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau to the chamber, but also because he’s petulant and is pouting after the Supreme Court gave him and his reform proposals a black eye (and with very good reason). And because of the pace at which justice unfortunately moves in this country, this challenge may not even be heard until after the next election happens, and a new government may be in place that will actually make appointments – imagine that! But either way, it would ne nice to get some kind of jurisprudence on the record, so that if other future prime ministers decide to be cute and not make appointments, there will be some common law in existence to show how it’s a constitutional obligation and not an option.
Roundup: A registry that’s not a registry
To the utter delight of the Conservatives, the NDP have pledged to reinstate the long-gun registry, with Mulcair uttering the line that duck hunters would only need assault rifles if they were hunting pterodactyls. But wait – an NDP aide later took issue with the characterisation that the NDP want to reinstate the registry itself – they just want to be able to track every gun. Which…pretty much implies a registry, whether there are criminal sanctions applied to it or not, so well done with that bit of cognitive dissonance. And if memory serves, the Liberals needed to have the criminal sanctions if they wanted to make the registry fit under federal laws, as it would otherwise have been provincial jurisdiction, so that may be an additional hurdle. (In case it bears reminding, the Liberals have eschewed reviving the registry).
QP: Attacking a provincial government
As the NDP’s budget filibuster – for lack of a better term – continues, it was little surprise that Thomas Mulcair decided to start off today’s Question Period by reading off a trio of questions about the budget and jobs, careful to mention the Aveos job losses and forthcoming public sector cuts. As Harper was off in Washington for a “Three Amigos” meeting, we were instead treated to Peter Van Loan as designated replacement PM for the day, who touted the focus on job creation and economic growth in the budget, and that the NDP’s plan for higher taxes would kill those jobs. Peter Julian got up to ask about the public service cuts, to which Jim Flaherty replied that Julian should read all about the job creation hiring credit within the budget. Bob Rae stood up to ask a pair of questions about why Flaherty thought it was acceptable to attack the province of Ontario’s finances, but Van Loan did not answer, but simply kept trying to assert that Rae was a terrible premier back in his day. For his final question, Rae asked about the “special allowance” given to retired Prime Ministers, but Van Loan insisted that the budget was clear that MP pensions would be brought into line with those of the private sector.
Round two kicked off with Robert Chisholm calling the budget “mean-spirited” (Flaherty: Look at the long-term growth projections!), Wayne Marston and Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe asking about OAS pensions and downloading costs to the provinces (Leitch: We’re acting responsibly!), Libby Davies asked about the so-called cuts to health transfers (Aglukkaq: We’re not cutting transfers), and Hélène LeBlanc asked about the changes coming to the National Research Council (Paradis: We’ve doubled some research funds!). Marc Garneau and Justin Trudeau asked about the suggestions by Conservative MPs of incompetence at Elections Canada at the Procedure and House Affairs committee last week, and about their budget cuts (Uppal: We supported the motion in the House; Van Loan: They assured us they have all the resources they need), and John McKay asking about the forthcoming Auditor General’s report on the F-35s (Fantino: Wait for the report). Matthew Kellway and Christine Moore asked about the F-35 process (Fantino: We need replacement planes), and Jack Harris and Ryan Cleary asked about that search and rescue failure in Labrador (McKay: The Canadian Forces tries to respond to these requests).
Round three saw questions on the Northern Gateway Pipeline approval process, killing the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat, the environmental cuts in the budget (Kent: The budget proves how committed we are to the environment! Yes, indeed it does), Bell planning to double payphone rates to a dollar per call, the letter to Peter MacKay written by a former search and rescue technician about the impact of the changes, unilingual Anglophone IRB judges (Dykstra: Do you want us to fire the unilingual francophone ones in Quebec too?), cuts to the Council of Welfare, and environmental assessments with future airport construction.
Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Jonathan Genest-Jourdain for his grey suit with a white shirt a somewhat whimsical purple tie, and to Lisa Raitt for her tailored black leather jacket with a striped white collared shirt. Style citations go out to Maxime Bernier for a black suit with a yellow shirt and pocket square, with a red tie, and to Linda Duncan for a creation that appeared to be patchwork, but I can’t much describe it beyond that. Glance askance over to Christine Moore, whose love of shiny metallic ensembles was demonstrated today by a top that was comprised entirely of silver sequins.
And in case you missed it, this little rhyme from Liberal MP Roger Cuzner had everyone in the House laughing before QP got started.