Tag Archives: Jason Kenney

Roundup: COVID is not done with Parliament

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There was sad news over the weekend that Senator Josée Forest-Niesing passed away from COVID. Forest-Niesing had been recently discharged from hospital after being in for nearly a month after complications – while she was double-vaxxed, she suffered from an auto-immune lung condition that both made her extremely vulnerable, and the vaccines less effective, which is why we need more people to be vaccinated, so that it can’t spread to vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives announced that their MP Richard Lehoux tested positive (in spite of being fully vaxxed), which raises questions because Conservatives were all in town for caucus last week, and it’s very possible that this may have been a spreader event, as there are questions about the actual vaccination status of all Conservative MPs, (and I have some serious doubts about the veracity of some of the medical exemptions that are being claimed, especially as they are being claimed by those expressing anti-vax or vaccine-hesitant views).

The worst part of all of this is that this just gives the Liberals more ammunition to demand hybrid sittings, which need to end immediately, both for the health of our parliamentary democracy, as well as the health of our interpretation staff who are suffering injuries that we would not ask anyone else to endure so that MPs could stay at home while other essential workers have to be on the front lines – and Parliament is essential, and the government has been sending the absolute wrong signal in keeping MPs at home – the Liberals most especially if we have a repeat of last session, where Mark Gerretson would be the only MP in the Chamber and the rest of those benches were empty. There are ways to keep Parliament safe, especially now that everyone is doubly vaccinated (so they assure us) and can wear masks indoors at all times. It’s not difficult, and it keeps the business of the nation going. Let’s do this the right way.

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Roundup: Three Amigos without much outward progress

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Well, that was the Three Amigos summit, and it doesn’t sound like there was any outward progress on Canada’s biggest request, which is getting rid of that electric vehicle tax credit that would essentially crater Canada’s auto sector (and the nascent electric vehicle industry) in spite of decades of cross-border integration of our supply chains. But that progress may yet happen because the Canadian delegation was not solely focusing on the White House – where Biden was non-committal – but also engaging congressional leaders who have the real power in this situation, so there remains time to see if that credit will survive the tortuous and nonsensical budget bill process in their system.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have declared that Trudeau’s approach to relations with the American administration “isn’t working,” and I’m not quite sure what they’re really on about, because there is a massive power imbalance here, and we can’t forget that we are largely an afterthought to the Americans, who are far more concerned about their southern border than the northern one. Softwood lumber has been an irritant for decades, and I distinctly recall the sector was unhappy with the agreement that the Harper government signed (which has since expired). Buy American? Again, this happens under every administration, and is not unique to the current government. Measures targeting agricultural exports? Erm, some of us recall the problems with country-of-origin-labelling that the Conservatives couldn’t make any progress on. Action against pipelines? Seems to me that Harper didn’t have any luck there either, even after plastering Washington DC with billboards and posters declaring that Keystone XL was a “no brainer.” Yeah, that didn’t work.

So what exactly does Chong propose? Performative temper tantrums for the benefit of the media? That seems to be the Conservative demand for most files, but there were two former diplomats on Power & Politics last night who basically said that if you want progress with the American government, you need to do it behind closed doors and not be seen to be pinning someone down, because they don’t respond to that well at all. But we also need to remember that the Conservatives also seem to think that diplomacy is the cookie you get for good behaviour rather than how you deal with problems, so it’s not unsurprising that this demand for performance is how they think this needs to be dealt with.

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Roundup: O’Toole boots Batters at his peril

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The internal strife within the Conservative ranks is getting more pointed, as word came down yesterday that Erin O’Toole had lined up enough caucus members to force out any MP who signed Senator Denise Batters’ petition – thus weaponizing the (garbage) Reform Act to protect the leader rather than curb the leader’s powers – and with that threat in the open, O’Toole then kicked Batters out of caucus.

There are a few things about how this is all going down. First of all, the use of the Reform Act provisions to threaten other caucus members is a completely hypocritical action that would be utterly galling if it were not predictable. If only someone *cough* had warned everyone that this was a garbage piece of legislation that would only be used to insulate leaders and give them freer rein to be more autocratic and to threaten the MPs who get out of line, and literally put a target on the backs of anyone who openly stood against the leader as the Act’s provisions require. Imagine it being abused in exactly the way that someone *cough* warned was likely to happen, no matter what Michael Chong and every talking head pundit in this country gushed over. Funny that.

The other aspect of this is the fact that O’Toole kicking Batters out puts a stake in the party’s self-righteous moralising that they respect strong women and that Justin Trudeau hates them (citing Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes – but curiously omitting Chrystia Freeland from consideration). It’s even more curious that Senator Michael McDonald said virtually the same things about O’Toole that Batters did, and he didn’t face any sanction. In fact, this has clearly shown that O’Toole will tolerate the anti-vaxxers in his caucus but not someone who wanted the party’s grassroots membership to have a say in his leadership before August 2023 (at which time they would warn that there could be an election at any time so they couldn’t possibly change leaders then). And by kicking Batters out of caucus, she has nothing left to lose. She can join up with the Canadian Senators Group later today (the likeliest place for her to land) and carry on criticising O’Toole and calling on Conservative grassroots members to have their say about his leadership, and O’Toole can’t do anything about it. All of his leverage over her is now gone. If O’Toole thinks that this move solved any of his problems, he’s mistaken.

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Roundup: Senator Batters blindsides O’Toole

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There is much intrigue within the Conservative ranks, and it just got a lot more interesting. First thing yesterday morning was the story that Bert Chen, the member of the party’s national council who was suspended for circulating a petition to call for an early leadership review would be suspended indefinitely, rather than for just sixty days. But a short while later, another petition started circulating to call for a leadership review, and this one was one they couldn’t ignore – from Senator Denise Batters.

Batters laid out a fairly devastating line of attack in her video – noting that O’Toole is the one that is growing the “rift” in the party, and that he is responsible for the election loss because of what voters perceive to be his character flaw – that he is not trustworthy. “You can’t come back from that,” Batters stated. And as a senator, Batters has latitude to lead this petition drive on behalf of grassroots members that others don’t, given that she doesn’t have nomination papers that need the leader’s signature, and if O’Toole boots her from caucus, she will only get even more vocal from outside, and she has a parliamentary platform. There have been some talking heads who are insinuating that she is perhaps a catspaw for Peter MacKay, given that she supported him in the leadership, but I sincerely doubt that’s the case – as partisan as she can be, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s not a puppet for anyone. The party president tried to dismiss her petition, saying it goes against the party’s constitution, but the section he cited was only in relation to the leadership process, whereas she is initiating a party-wide referendum, which is different. (And again, Batters isn’t a fool, and she’s a lawyer who was once chief of staff to Saskatchewan’s minister of justice). Some talking heads have also stated that this goes against the process from the (garbage) Reform Act, but as a senator, Batters is excluded from the Act, and she is leading a grassroots movement, not one from caucus. It’s also being stated that this is just one part of a multi-stage movement within the party to call for this leadership review, so we’ll see where this develops, but O’Toole’s problems are not going away anytime soon.

Meanwhile, a parallel drama is playing out in Alberta, where more than a quarter of UCP constituency associations passed a special motion that will force an early leadership review of Jason Kenney than the April date he had managed to negotiate with his caucus earlier – and they also want an outside auditing firm to ensure the security of the voting system for this review, so that there isn’t a repeat of the alleged shenanigans that coloured the initial leadership vote that got Kenney into power in the first place (which are still part of an ongoing investigation last I checked). Things are not looking up for Kenney either, and he and O’Toole suddenly have a lot in common.

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Roundup: Another of Kenney’s talking points blows up on him

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The Alberta government is facing yet another situation where reality butts up against their preferred victimhood narratives – this time around equalisation. You see, for the first time since the 1960s, they have received more in federal transfers than they paid in federal taxes, and we can thank Justin Trudeau’s benediction, not only in pandemic transfers, but in things like money that they sent to the province to remediate orphan wells as a job-creation (and environmental) programme – never mind that they never should have because it meant that private companies and the province were able to successful offload their environmental liabilities to the federal government after the Supreme Court of Canada specifically ruled that they couldn’t under existing bankruptcy laws.

Of course, this isn’t stopping Kenney or his government from trying to spin this to carry on their narrative. For example, the province’s finance minister is claiming that they are still being unfairly impacted because of their contributions on a per capita basis continue to outstrip their share of the population. Because they have the highest incomes in the country by far and we have a progressive federal income tax. This is yet more of the province’s outright disinformation on how equalisation works because they are trying to make people angry rather than properly telling them how the system works, because if people understood, they might not be able to summon some performative outrage about it, and that wouldn’t help Kenney and his agenda.

Because really, so much of how the province is spinning this is yet more distraction sauce from Kenney’s continued failures, and the thousands of unnecessary deaths on his watch, and as I have pointed out elsewhere, Kenney has only one tool in his toolbox, and that is anger. He’s losing yet one more argument that Alberta is being treated “unfairly,” so you can expect a lot more gaslighting and deception in the near future as Kenney and company will try to push back against reality.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1458600346398478337

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Roundup: Glover says she’s the premier

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It was quite a day in Manitoba yesterday as Heather Stefanson was sworn-in as the province’s first female premier, but the leadership drama isn’t over. Her challenger, former federal Cabinet minister Shelly Glover has not conceded defeat, and plans to challenge the leadership election in court, citing irregularities and reports that Stefanson’s scrutineers looked defeated at one point of the counting and then something allegedly mysterious happened to a ballot box…or something. I’m having a hard time keeping track of it. Regardless, Glover insists that she’s really the premier, not Stefanson.

One could be very pedantic here and note that Stefanson has been sworn in, so she’s premier regardless. Her immediate predecessor, Kelvin Goertzen, was not chosen in a leadership election by caucus as interim leader, and he was fully and legitimately premier, even if it was only for a few weeks (and yes, he’s going to get a portrait in the legislature to reflect that status). So no, Glover is not premier, and even if by some miracle she were declared party leader (which won’t happen – the courts won’t get involved in the inner workings of a political party), Stefanson is still premier and will be until she resigns or is dismissed.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1455671852647559168

But on a broader point, Glover has always been a very problematic politician, stridently repeating talking points in the face of logic and evidence, and getting combative when challenged on her bullshit, particularly as she seemed to lack the critical reasoning skills to think through her positions. And this attempted court challenge is her combativeness and willingness to believe illogical or contrary things playing out in the very way she demonstrated during her nine years in federal politics (two of which were as a minister). And Glover had her own run-ins with Elections Canada, and at one point Elections Canada asked the Speaker to suspend her because of financial irregularities during an election (which were later resolved with revised filings that Elections Canada accepted, Glover terming them an “honest mistake.”) One has to question her fitness to lead given her history and temperament, but I’m not a member of the party.

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Roundup: Mark Holland is optimistic

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New Government House Leader Mark Holland is brimming with optimism that the things that paralyzed the previous session of Parliament will be behind them post-election. It’s a nice idea, but I wonder just how it will actually play out. Yes, the Liberals have broken some of the deadlocks that plagued them (a fact that they didn’t articulate during the election, even when pressed on the subject), and they have a bit of leverage now in that none of the other parties can even contemplate another election anytime soon – the Conservatives are consumed with internal disputes over vaccine mandates and just when they plan to put Erin O’Toole to a leadership review, and the NDP are very broke having spent record amounts of money to gain themselves a single new seat, and the Bloc have no desire to go back to the polls, particularly since their play to be François Legault’s voice in Ottawa didn’t play well for them in the election. This will allow the Liberals to play some hardball and use confidence to their advantage for the time being.

But in spite of this, I would not put it past any of the opposition parties to engage in some of the other shenanigans that got us the election, whether that is tying up the committees in interminable attempts at witch hunts, or drowning in document production requests – and that may yet still happen. The election did end some of that, but much of it could very easily be revived once the committees are back up and running (likely in the New Year).

“There was a very clear message sent to all parties that there’s an expectation that we work together, and I’m operating on the presumption that we will have all heard that message and that we all come ready to work and to collaborate in a constructive and positive way,” Holland told The Canadian Press.

I’m not sure that such a presumption is a good one to make. There was an expectation that all parties should work together during the pandemic, and while they did a bunch of backroom negotiations around emergency legislation – and kept any of the debates off-the-record – they stalled all other bills until the very end, when the NDP and Bloc realized they needed to start playing ball again. I’m not sure what the appetite for playing ball will be on most bills, or whether the political calculus will be to try and stymie the Liberals once again (which could lead to showdowns over confidence). I wish Holland all the luck in the world on this, but I suspect he may start losing the hair he has left because the current state of our parliamentary discourse is pretty toxic, and things like the Liberals’ desire to keep hybrid sittings going will only exacerbate that problem.

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Roundup: A notice of appeal before a pause

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It’s not wholly unexpected that the federal government filed the notice of appeal on the Federal Court decision around the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order around First Nations children. No sooner did all of the television news rush to get Cindy Blackstock on camera when another notice went out by the government – that they had reached an agreement to pause said litigation while they sit down with stakeholders in this court case, as well as with two other related class-action lawsuits, and hammer out a deal by December 1st.

There are a few thought around this. The first is that this should have been expected because the real crux of the issue if the Tribunal’s order rather than the compensation itself. The government has committed to spending the money – and there are billions of dollars at stake – but any tribunal that exceeds its statutory authority is something that any government, no matter the stripe, will want to challenge because they don’t want to set a precedent where the Tribunal continues to exceed its authority, and in this case, turns itself into some kind of roving commission of inquiry. (I wrote all about this issue previously here). The notice of appeal spells this out pretty clearly, and while one judge at the Federal Court may have disagreed, he’s certainly not the court of last instance (and frankly, I would rather hear from some of the judges on the Federal Court of Appeal when it comes to matters of administrative law – as with this Tribunal – than I would this particular judge). And while a number of self-righteous reporters demanded to know why the government couldn’t just pay the amount and sort out the issues later, I’m pretty sure that litigation doesn’t work that way.

My other thought is that it looks a lot like the notice of appeal was more out of a need for the government to keep their options open as the negotiations continue, particularly given that it was filed as late as it was, followed immediately by the press conference to explain what was taking place. Frankly I don’t buy the “they filed it at 4:30 on a Friday to bury it” because it wasn’t exactly buried when it dominated the politics shows and is the top story on every news site in the country. That’s not burying something, especially when they have a captive audience. This being said, I’m still don’t think that this government has communicated the issues very effectively (particularly the issue around the Tribunal exceeding its authority), and that’s compounded by the fact that the media writ-large has shown itself to be fairly incapable of writing a legal story with any nuance or complexity, and rely on both-sidesing it with a clear bias toward taking Blackstock’s word as the authority, and by conflating a number of different issues and completely blurring the timeline of the different orders from the Tribunal. This isn’t a black-and-white issue of taking kids to court – but you wouldn’t know it if you only paid attention to what gets reported.

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Roundup: O’Toole continues to sit on the vaccine fence with caucus

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Erin O’Toole continues to try and have his cake and eat it too when it comes to ensuring his MPs and senators are fully vaccinated in order to attend Parliamentary sittings. But in his desire to sit on the fence and play both sides, he may have inadvertently shown his hand. After the party’s big caucus meeting in Ottawa yesterday, O’Toole announced that caucus “agreed to respect and abide new rules which require Parliamentarians attending in the House of Commons and Senate to be vaccinated.” But he still planned to raise the point of privilege about the Board of Internal Economy decision, because of course.

But.

It seems that he tripped himself up in French, and spelled out that the plan was for those who “participate in person,” which is a pretty big loophole for the holdouts in the caucus. And yet, O’Toole and his caucus continue to oppose hybrid sittings (as well they should), so anyone who doesn’t show up shouldn’t be allowed to participate virtually either – unless this is yet another case of having his cake and eating it too. “They can’t show up, but they have the option of hybrid, so I guess we’ll allow them to participate that way!” with a show of feigned helplessness to the situation. And we still don’t know how many MPs or senators this affects (though the Senate has not yet issued its own vaccine mandate yet), so it could be three or four, or it could be twelve or fifteen, especially as there appear to be vaccinated MPs who refuse to disclose the fact because they don’t want to appear to their anti-vax constituents like they sold out. So this is where O’Toole finds himself. It’s still a losing battle because any privilege complaint will be voted down by everyone else in the Chamber, even if they try to drag it out until the New Year. And all the while, O’Toole continues to look like he’s pandering to the party’s worst elements rather than standing up to them and demonstrating actual leadership.

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Roundup: A refreshed Cabinet for a new parliament

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So, that was the big Cabinet shuffle. It was extensive, and we saw three ministers dropped entirely (not the first time), a few promotions, a few demotions, and a lot more hybrid and chimeric ministries which will make governance a challenge to say the least. Nevertheless, here we are. Some observations:

  • This was not a new Cabinet or ministry – this was just a shuffle. It’s also not a third term or mandate, because we don’t have those in Canada – it’s the third parliament that the current ministry has spanned.
  • Marc Garneau’s exclusion from Cabinet has fuelled rumours he’s about to become ambassador to France. My presumption is that Bardish Chagger’s exclusion is because she is going to be the new Whip, as the old Whip and his deputy are now in Cabinet. Jim Carr’s departure may be health-related.
  • After Trudeau had rather bravely centralized all of the economic development agencies under one roof and didn’t have them beholden to local ministers and the corrupting influence that offers, he has relented and re-established the practice of regional economic development ministers again, and undone the work of trying to clean up the mess they create.
  • The most important portfolios – finance, defence, foreign affairs – are now all held by women. Anita Anand is the second woman defence minister in Canadian history (the first being Kim Campbell), and her background as a law professor specializing in governance can only help in a role where there has been a crisis in civilian oversight. As foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly will have to deal with the tensions between the US and China (and our general lack of a coherent foreign policy).
  • Splitting up Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a good and necessary thing; giving Bill Blair emergency preparedness and not public safety is an even better thing because Blair was essentially at risk of capture in the role as a former police chief (with a questionable record around actions of the Toronto Police during the G20 to boot).
  • There are nine new faces in this configuration of Cabinet, and more diversity – the first Black woman since Jean Augustine, the first out lesbian minister, and the queerest Cabinet in Canadian history.
  • Putting Steven Guilbeault in environment may yet be a huge disaster given how badly he mismanaged Bill C-10, but Jonathan Wilkinson in natural resources will likely mean a steadier hand on some of those files where the two overlap.
  • Carving off an associate health minister portfolio for Carolyn Bennett to deal with addictions and mental health is a bit of a throwback to when she was the first minister of state for the newly-created Public Health Agency of Canada, back in the Paul Martin era. Jean-Yves Duclos in health – an economist who did a lot of work on poverty reduction – means he’s not going to be fooled by provinces trying to get more money out of the federal government that they plan to spend elsewhere.
  • Trudeau says he plans to lead the Liberals in the next election, but I’m not sure I believe him, and of course he’d say that now. He wouldn’t actually say he plans to leave until it comes time to do so, lest he turn himself into a lame duck without any moral authority to get anything done.

And now, the talking heads. Aaron Wherry hears from a Senior Liberal Source™ that the message of this Cabinet is the need for urgent delivery of promises. Heather Scoffield makes note of the activists leading the environment and housing files. Jason Markusoff highlights the squirming that Jason Kenney and others are doing now that Steven Guilbeault is the environment minister. Althia Raj sees some attempted legacy-building in Trudeau’s choices.

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