Tag Archives: Jason Kenney

Roundup: Middle Class™ is a state of mind

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I don’t really want to engage in a pile-on, but the fact that the new Minister of Middle Class™ Prosperity® was doing the media rounds and imploding on trying to offer a definition of just what is Middle Class™ was not a good start to her ministerial career – not to mention an indictment of the comms geniuses in the PMO who sent her out there unprepared. You would think that actually having a working definition of what is “middle class” would be an important thing to equip a minister with when you give her the portfolio – particularly when you wrap up an otherwise sober role of Associate Minister of Finance with this ridiculous title. And there are a couple of very serious points to make here – if you can’t actually define what “middle class” means, then you have no actual way of measuring your success in dealing with the perceived issues of income disparity – which this government has been using Middle Class™ as a code for without trying to sound like they’re engaging in class warfare. But as a branding exercise, when you rely on the fact that everyone thinks they’re “middle class” or about to be – particularly people who are well over what is actually middle class in this country – it’s one of those things that tends to flatter people, but becomes meaningless – essentially that Middle Class™ is a state of mind. Mona Fortier did, over the course of the day, transition from “it involves your kids being in hockey” to “there’s no one definition” because of regional variations and disparities, but it was a bit of a trial by fire, and hopefully a lesson that she – and the comms geniuses in PMO – will take to heart.

All of this talk of being Middle Class™ does bring me back to this scene from the early noughties UK sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme, where being Middle Class was a Thing.

Meanwhile, Chris Selley makes the very salient point that this government has moved the needle on poverty in this country, but the problems we’re facing aren’t with the Middle Class™, and perhaps they should put a focus on those areas instead.

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Roundup: It’s Cabinet Shuffle Day!

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We are now well into Cabinet leak territory, and right now the news is that Chrystia Freeland will indeed be moving – but we don’t know where. We do know that François-Philippe Champagne will replace her at Foreign Affairs, that Pablo Rodriguez will be the new Government House Leader (after we already heard that Steven Guilbeault will take over Canadian Heritage), plus Seamus O’Regan moving to Natural Resources, that Jonathan Wilkinson is taking over Environment and Catherine McKenna will take over Infrastructure. We’re also hearing from Quebec media that Jean-Yves Duclos will take over Treasury Board, and that Mélanie Joly is due for a promotion – but no hint as to what it means otherwise. Still no word on Public Safety, which is a huge portfolio that will need a very skilled hand to deal with in the absence of Ralph Goodale.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1196922355181924352

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Meanwhile, some of the other roles that Trudeau needs to decide who are not in Cabinet will include the whip, parliamentary secretaries, and considerations for committee chairs (though he won’t have the final say on those as they are ostensibly elected by the committees themselves, and it’s the whips who largely determine who will sit on which committee). Committees are especially important in a hung parliament, so this could mean big roles for those who didn’t make it into Cabinet.

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Roundup: Don’t bug the LG. Ever.

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In a move that is as brazen as it is utterly galling, Jason Kenney’s government legislated the province’s elections commissioner out of existence, after he levied tens of thousands of dollars in fines over the UCP leadership shenanigans. To make it all the more gob-smacking, Kenney and the minister in charge of the bill claimed that this wasn’t politically motivated, which earns a “Sure, Jan.” But even more appalling was the response from opposition leader Rachel Notley, for which I am about to suffer a rage-induced stroke.

https://twitter.com/Jantafrench/status/1196555704200351744

No. No, no, no, no, no. No. You DO NOT involve the lieutenant governor in this. She does not have discretion to accept or reject bills. She is not the “boss” of Jason Kenney. She cannot reject bills on the advice of the opposition, or her own recognizance for that matter. Her job is to accept the advice of the first minister who commands the confidence of the legislature, which Kenney does – even if the bill is unconstitutional. Her job is to act as a constitutional fire extinguisher, and we are a long way from there. Here’s Philippe Lagassé with more:

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1196608180488482818

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I’m going to add an additional point about this being an appalling lack of basic civic literacy from the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the province, but it implicates the entire media ecosystem as a whole, particularly when they ignorantly act as though a vice-regal has discretion about things like government formation, as exemplified with the stories of the hung parliaments in BC and New Brunswick, and even when shows like Power & Politics wrongly said that Trudeau “asked permission” from Her Excellency, Julie Payette, to “form a government” when they were the incumbent and already had a government and didn’t need to form one, let alone the fact that her job is not to grant permission. But stories like that plant the idea in people’s minds that she or any other vice-regal has personal discretion and can decide who will or will not form a government and apparently allow or disallow legislation, much like the pervasive idea that you can write to the Queen and she’ll do something about whatever it is you’re complaining about. That’s not how the system works. This shouldn’t be rocket science, but apparently these very basics are not being understood by those who are supposed to know these things because it’s their jobs to.

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Roundup: The Cabinet dominoes

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With the days counting down until the Cabinet shuffle, the speculation is starting to get intense, and much of it is centred around the fate of Chrystia Freeland and whether Justin Trudeau will keep her in foreign affairs or move her to a more problem-solving domestic portfolio – particularly intergovernmental affairs, and capitalizing on her Alberta upbringing as the regional representative around the table (along with Jonathan Wilkinson as the Saskatchewan representative). One of the considerations is that nobody is quite sure who might take Freeland’s place in the foreign affairs portfolio, and the dominos go from there.

Another consideration is the fact that there will need to be some additional bench strength remaining for the committee chairs, as they will be a bigger battleground in a hung parliament than under a majority, given that the opposition will now hold the majority on them. That will essentially mean that amendments for bills will become a bigger consideration at the committee stage than they were in the previous parliament (to say nothing of what happens with amendments coming from the Senate, now that the Commons can insist on adopting them if the opposition all gangs up). There will be plenty of new dynamics that need to be managed – which is why the positions of House Leader and Whip will be all the more important in this new parliament.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield has been imagining mandate letters for incoming ministers, and those released over the weekend include the international trade minister, as well as the social development minister.

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Roundup: Singh thinks he has leverage

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Yesterday it was Jagmeet Singh’s turn have his one-on-one with prime minister Justin Trudeau in advance of the Cabinet shuffle and Throne Speech, and Singh came with his own list of priorities and demands – most of them as unrealistic as Andrew Scheer’s. And Singh’s insistence that he was open to voting against the Throne Speech, and that the party was ready to go to another election at any time, was simply precious. Unable to read the room, or calculate the seat maths, Singh apparently thinks he’s going to play kingmaker when there are more willing partners on the dance floor.

To that end, Singh was demanding immediate action on pharmacare, and pretending that Trudeau hasn’t been clear that he plans to implement the Hoskins Report, which called for a universal pharmacare system. The problem is that you can’t have “immediate action” on it, because it’s actually a very complex thing. You can’t actually just say “we’ll pay for all pharmaceuticals” because the costs would be extraordinary, and phasing it in with a single national formulary is actually incredibly challenging to do, especially across all provinces and territories, because they have different formularies currently and you run the risk of reducing people’s existing coverage (as what happened in Ontario when they briefly offered pharmacare for all young people in the province). It’s going to require careful negotiation with the provinces and stakeholders, and Singh’s constant refrain that this can happen immediately is fantasyland – just like his request that they also consider adding dental care in there.

As for some his other demands, the one about more “science-based” targets for emissions reductions is pure buzz-word. Science is not public policy, and you can’t just hand-wave and go “science” because it doesn’t work like that. Demanding the government abandon its judicial review of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision on compensation for Indigenous children in care? As a lawyer, you think he would be sensitive to the concerns of bad precedent – particularly if the Tribunal did exceed their statutory authority. Energy-efficient retrofits? Electrified transit? Green jobs? It’s like they haven’t paid much attention to the Liberal climate plan and what carbon pricing does to create market incentives. Electoral reform? Apparently he didn’t pay attention to the hot garbage report that the parliamentary committee released last parliament. His “super-wealth tax”? The one that would require the government to rewrite the entire tax code to make it conform to American concepts? I’m sure they’ll get right on that. Singh has no leverage, and yet he thinks the government should simply adopt the NDP platform or have the party’s support withheld. I’m sure the government will get right on that.

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Roundup: Upcoming Speaker election

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As you may be aware, the very first order of business in any new Parliament is the election of a Speaker, and today we have confirmation that the incumbent, Geoff Regan, is planning to run again for the role, as are the deputy and assistant deputy Speakers from the last parliament, Bruce Stanton, Carole Hughes and Anthony Rota, and one new face, Conservative MP Joël Godin. What is new in this Parliament is the plan to run the election by way of preferential ballot rather than successive rounds of voting, which is no doubt intended to speed up the process and reduce the use of hospitality suites between voting rounds as has happened in previous Parliaments. (ETA: Apparently I am mistaken and this is the second time they will have used a preferential ballot. My apologies). The speedier process will also allow them to have the Speech from the Throne on the same day, which is unusual in and of itself.

One of Regan’s main advantages in this race is experience, which is going to be a very important consideration in a hung parliament situation. And while many of us would love an assertive Speaker like the UK’s John Bercow (perhaps without the alleged bullying of House of Commons staff), who did a lot to protect the rights of MPs against the party leaders and the Cabinet, we have to remember that Canadian Speakers are hampered by the Standing Orders that limit their powers. Some of those rules may be changing – the Liberals pledged as part of their platform that they would like to see the Speaker do away with the speaking lists provided by the party whips and House leaders, which frees up the Speaker to pick MPs to speak and perhaps enforce some more discipline that way – but it’s only a half-measure so long as we still allow scripts and prepared speeches in the Commons. Nevertheless, if they go ahead with even the half-measure, that could be a bigger challenge for any Speaker to take on, so having one with some experience under his (or her) belt would be a beneficial thing.

Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column offers the guidebook on how the Speaker election will be run, as well as just what the job entails should any other MPs be considering the job.

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Roundup: Scheer’s risible demands

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Even before the day’s meetings got started, Justin Trudeau offered up a pre-emptive strike against Andrew Scheer’s demands by announcing that Parliament would be summoned on December 5th – immediately after his return from the NATO summit – where they would hold both the Speaker election and the Speech from the Throne on the same day (rather unusually, as they tend to be on subsequent days). When Scheer did meet with Trudeau, he came armed with seven demands, and immediately following that, Trudeau met with Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who also moaned that his own demands weren’t being capitulated to.

As for Scheer’s demands, a good many of them are simple non-starters, and others are simply laughable, but let’s walk through them, shall we?

  1. Keep Canada united and strong by launching a task force to study the establishment of a national energy corridor, which could bring Ontario and Quebec hydroelectricity to new markets, open up opportunities for Western Canadian oil and gas, and connect rural communities in Atlantic Canada and the North.
  2. Help Canadians get ahead by offering broad-based tax relief, providing a date for balancing the budget, and proceeding with fair tax-free maternity benefits.
  3. Restore ethics and accountability to government by introducing stronger penalties in the Conflict of Interest Act.
  4. Get the energy sector back to work by tabling a detailed plan, with concrete deadlines, to build the Trans Mountain expansion and repealing Bills C-48 and C-69.
  5. Take real action on the environment by drawing on policies from our Real Plan to Protect the Environment, such as the Green Patent Credit, the Canadian Clean brand, the Green Home Renovation Tax Credit, and ending raw sewage dumps.
  6. Immediately fund regional transit expansion in the GTA, starting with the Ontario Line and Yonge Extension.
  7. Reduce the paperwork burden on Quebecers by adopting a single tax return.

To start with, I’m puzzled as to how Scheer believes that his “national energy corridor” scheme is a national unity project. I mean, I get that he keeps insisting it’s “a win-win,” but if you stop and think about it for thirty seconds, they’re demanding that decades be spent on land negotiations and expropriations involving First Nations and provinces that may not be keen on them, for another decade to be spent building a pipeline that, by the time it’s completed, will be in the middle of massive global decarbonization. That’s some forward thinking. The broad-based tax relief that was in the Liberal platform was better targeted to low-income Canadians than in the Conservatives’, as was their proposal for tax-free maternity benefits; the date for a balanced budget is also somewhat mired in mid-nineties thinking, while the government has chosen a different fiscal anchor that allows them to take advantage of the low-interest rate environment to make investments in Canadians. The demand for a detailed plan with concrete deadlines for the TMX construction is farcical because any delays would be contingent upon the Federal Court’s hearing the concerns of those Indigenous groups who are challenging the most recent consultations, and that’s not something the government has any control over, but never mind that there is pipe going in the ground right now. The repeal of C-69 and C-48 are non-starters, and would do absolutely nothing to benefit the energy sector because the problem is the low world price of oil. Demanding that the government adopt the Conservative non-plan for the environment? Hilarious. Immediately funding the GTA transit expansions? How is it responsible to sign a blank cheque when there is no concrete plan on the table? Seriously, you claim to be the fiscally responsible party. And having Quebec adopt a single tax return? Yeah, if Quebec wants that, they can adopt the federal one. They made the choice for the current system. Is rudimentary critical thinking dead in politics?

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Roundup: Fair deal to direct anger

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Jason Kenney was determined to swallow much of the news cycle over the long-ish weekend (depending on where you were in the country), first by announcing on Friday that he had appointed a “fair deal” panel to look at ways in which Alberta can assert more independence – but many of those items don’t make any sense, especially as they will be more costly in the long run (or look particularly suspicious, like replacing the RCMP provincial policing contract with an Alberta Provincial Police when the RCMP is deep in investigating the UCP leadership contest corruption). In fact, the former chair of the province’s “Firewall” panel from 2003 says that this is just an exercise in blowing off steam that won’t amount to anything that they didn’t learn back then, which will be amplified over social media into promises that could never be fulfilled – which is a problem. Kenney then doubled down with a lengthy speech at the Manning Centre conference in Red Deer on Saturday, where most of these items were further listed.

This all having been said, I’m hearing from my friends and family in Alberta that Kenney’s cuts are already starting to affect them, and that anger may start to hurt him sooner than later. (Family examples: I have a nephew with special needs whose school aide’s hours are being slashed, and my brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter, and their training budget has just been decimated). I fully expect that Kenney is going to go hard on trying to direct the anger to Justin Trudeau and Ottawa in order to deflect the anger from his cuts, and you can bet that he’s going to go to absurd lengths to stoke it.

Meanwhile, here are some reality checks into the kinds of things that Kenney is proposing for his “Fair Deal” nonsense, whether it’s for the creation of their own provincial pension plan, or to collect federal taxes on their own.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1193379952961277952

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Roundup: Making demands with a smile

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Manitoba premier Brian Pallister was in Ottawa yesterday to meet with prime minister Justin Trudeau, and to try and offer some “friendly advice” about dealing with the whole “Western anger” situation. Pallister also penned an op-ed for the Globe and Mail that was full of said “advice,” most of which was pretty dubious, but in the aftermath of his meeting, he said a bunch of things like the country can unite around climate action if they set their partisan differences aside – in other words, if the federal government abandons their plans and just lets the provinces do whatever, adding that a carbon price “isn’t the only way” to fight climate change – technically true, but it’s proven the most effective mechanism and the only one which deals with the demand-side of the problem. (In subsequent interviews, Pallister also ignored that the point of the national price is to avoid provinces from undercutting one another, which you would think might be a big deal). Pallister also made some hand-waving gestures around a municipal handgun ban given the province’s problem with violent crime, but that’s already being panned locally.

But back to Pallister’s op-ed, which was largely an exercise in blame-shifting and simple fiction. He blames the divisions on the federal government’s “economic, energy and environmental policies,” which is curious and convenient. Those policies? Bill C-69, which he blames for delays in a Manitoba flood mitigation project for which the new regime doesn’t apply. That project has been under the Harper 2012 assessment regime, which should be a clue as to why the federal government saw the need to make changes to it – not that it stops Pallister from repeating a bunch of the fictions that have been applied to the legislation by its opponents. He also counsels finishing the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is what the federal government is in the process of doing. Pipe is going in the ground. People beating their chests about it won’t make the process go any faster.

Pallister then goes on to complain about interprovincial trade barriers which is – wait for it – entirely in the hands of the provinces and not the federal government to lower. He makes mention of 34 exceptions which the federal government controls, but that’s 34 out of hundreds, and this government has set up a process to work with provinces to harmonize regulations that create barriers. They have been doing the heavy-lifting – more than the Harper government did – but it’s gone completely unacknowledged. That Pallister is shifting blame to the federal government is pretty rich when it’s the provinces who are the problem. His final “advice” for unity? Giving the provinces more money for healthcare. I’m not sure what that has to do with national unity or “healing the divisions,” but there you have it. It’s pretty clear that like Jason Kenney and Scott Moe, Pallister is trying to use the focus on this “anger” to try and leverage it to what he wants, and he won’t let the truth be a barrier for him. Just because he delivers the message with a smile doesn’t make the “advice” friendly.

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Roundup: Humble and concerned

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The Liberals had their post-election unofficial caucus meeting (technically true that it can’t be an actual caucus meeting as Parliament has not been summoned and only a handful of MPs have actually been sworn in yet), and the early results are that they need to be more “humble,” and address the concerns of Western Canada – somehow. Particularly because squaring the economy versus environment circle is harder in that part of the country (though really, the world price of oil is the bigger problem for them right now than any amount of environmental regulation could ever be). And like Scheer, there is this emphasis on the need for some kind of “listening tour” of the region, though I have my serious doubts about the utility of it given that the demands being made of the federal government are largely nonsensical, counter-productive, or non-starters (and many are being made intentionally so by the likes of Jason Kenney and Scott Moe because they want federal inaction on those specific items to be things they can get people angry about).

With this in mind, there were two interesting pieces out yesterday – one, a retrospective from Rosemary Barton about the recurring nature of Western anger, which has been around for decades and the fact that the Liberals have often been shut of the region in terms of seats, even worse than they are currently, and yet the country mas managed to survive. The other piece, from Jen Gerson, is a lengthy and exasperated piece that tries to shift some of the blame for the sentiments on the narratives that spring out of Central and Eastern Canada about Alberta, and how those contribute as much to Western alienation than anything else. And while Gerson makes some really good points in her piece, I did find it a bit one-sided in several respects, because it ignores some of the attitudes in the province that are just as off-putting to the rest of the country, from their smugness, their patronizing attitudes about how other regions facing unemployment should just decamp to the oilsands (which is ironic now that other regions are facing labour shortages but I don’t see a lot of Albertans eager to move there), their hostility towards Quebeckers (which many pundits raised as a factor in the return of the Bloc in this election), and this sense of entitlement that it was their hard work an ingenuity that put the oil under the ground rather than an accident of geology. And yes, I am an Albertan and I grew up with these attitudes as much as I did the feeling of being put upon by the rest of the country, or the grand mythologies we built up for ourselves about Pierre Trudeau and the National Energy Programme, and the conflation with the collapse of world oil prices that happened at that time.

Another of Gerson’s recurring themes is her insistence that Jason Kenney is simply trying to replicate Preston Manning’s attempt at channeling the province’s anger into a more productive course of action – forgetting that Manning’s Reform Party did serious damage to the institutions of Parliament, which have never recovered, or the fact that Kenney is not channeling those feelings in any productive way, but deliberately stoking anger through lies and snake oil promises for his own benefit. This needs to be identified and called out, and it needs to be done repeatedly and forcefully because Kenney will simply double down and bulldoze over anyone who challenges him over his bullshit – which makes it all the more important that it be challenged again and again. Giving him a pass because he says he’s a federalist and a patriot (while also sounding like a movie mobster running a protection racket) will only make it fester.

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