Tag Archives: Jean Chrétien

Roundup: Admitting defeat with 24 Sussex?

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There is a rumour circulating in Ottawa, put in print, that former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper are offering to lead a charitable exercise of collecting donations to renovate 24 Sussex in the hopes that this will finally depoliticise the whole affair, and the work can finally get done. It’s absolutely discouraging, however, because if it’s true, it’s a giant admission of defeat when it comes to the ability for political decision-making and frankly our ability to have…not even nice things, but useful, official things in this country.

This is supposed to be why we have the gods damned National Capital Commission to deal with the official residences, so that it takes it out of the hands of the government of the day, but even then, it doesn’t exactly work because if the government doesn’t give them the budget allocations to do the work, it doesn’t get done. And they got the allocations for necessary repairs at Harrington Lake, or doing routine work at other residences like Stornoway, but 24 Sussex keeps being punted, as they do yet more studies about what possible alternatives could be, each more wildly fantastic or implausible than the last (such as converting the National Research Council building on Sussex into a quasi-White House with residences and offices, which is absolutely bloody ridiculous), and with the RCMP security wish list driving up the costs every time.

It’s an official residence. It should have the capacity to host a couple of working dinners (not state dinners—that’s why we have Rideau Hall or the Sir John A Macdonald Building across from the West Block), but that’s about it. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but I do think it should retain period features (which in my estimation should mean restoring the original façade with the turret) because this is a heritage property and we are a city of a lot of neo-gothic architecture. But we shouldn’t need a fundraising drive if everyone behaved like adults, which unfortunately seems like too much to ask these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired five missiles at Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing four, and a drone strike early Saturday morning on Kharkiv killed six and injured at least ten. Russians claim that they have taken control of the village of Vodyane in the east, but Ukraine denies the Russian reports that they have reached the suburbs of Chasiv Yar, one of their strongholds in the east. Ukraine did stage a strike against Russia’s Morozovsk military airbase, destroying six Russian warplanes.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1776278198684201137

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Roundup: A “dull as hell” House

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Jean Chrétien gave an interview yesterday to mark the 30th anniversary of his election win to form government in 1993, and there’s one part in it that sticks out for me in particular, which was about his time in politics, pre-dating his becoming prime minister, which has to do with the use of television in the Chamber:

“When I became a member of Parliament, there was no TV… In the House of Commons, we had no television. In those days in the House of Commons, we didn’t have the right to read anything. We had to get up and speak. It was fun. Today, they all come with speeches prepared by kids in the office and it is dull as hell, rather than have a real debate like we had in those days.”

This is spot on. It wasn’t just the arrival of the cameras that changed things, it was the relaxation of the rules around prepared speeches. It used to be that you weren’t allowed them, with very limited exceptions—the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne, the budget, and if you needed some particular help with specific facts or figures or translation (because simultaneous interpretation was a later arrival into Parliament). When they relaxed the rule around prepared speeches, it meant MPs started reading speeches into the record; time limits started to mean that they didn’t just speak up to that twenty-minute mark, but they were expected to fill the time entirely, which again, makes for very bad prepared speeches. There’s no actual debate either—during “debate” on a bill, the period for “questions and comments” is usually reserved for recitations of established talking points, with no actual exchange. One question, one response is not actually debate. Without relying on prepared speeches, and actually being allowed to debate, it would have made for actual tension or frisson between them, and to force them to know their material.

The other thing with the arrival of television is how it changed the nature of Question Period. It became very much about trying to a) get on TV, and b) providing clips for the evening news, which is one reason why parties started to do things like asking the same question in English and in French, so that they could get clips for both news services. With the advent of social media, however, the incentives changed again, and it was about creating content for those social feeds, which could include bad behaviour to drive up engagement. This is where we’re at now. It’s not exciting, and like Chrétien says, it’s “dull has hell” because you’re just watching badly scripted performances meant entirely for the consumption of clips. Politics should not be about this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A civilian was killed in the Kherson region early Wednesday after Russians bombed the area. Russians are ignoring their losses and pressing on at Avdiivka, Debris from downed Russian drones downed power lines near a nuclear plan in the western part of the country, knocking out power for hundreds of people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine will strike back if Russia attacks their power grid again this weekend. Here is a look at some Ukrainian sappers who have returned to the job of de-mining after they lost limbs doing the work.

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Roundup: No, David Lametti isn’t threatening to tear up the constitution

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You may have noticed that the Conservatives engaged in a lot of rage-farming over the long weekend, sometimes to the point of flailing and reaching. There was one particular bad-faith episode (well, they’re all bad faith episodes) that was particularly egregious, and roped in several premiers, who were also engaged in their own bad faith. Late last week, justice minister David Lametti attended a special chiefs’ assembly of the Assembly of First Nations, and was asked about the Natural Resources Transfer Act of 1930, and how these treaty nations were not benefitting from them, and Lametti said he’d look at it, but acknowledged this would be controversial.

And how! Immediately, Danielle Smith, followed by Scott Moe and later Heather Stefanson insisted this was a plan to “tear up the constitution” and nationalise the control over natural resources, and before long, Pierre Poilievre got in on it, along with a chunk of his caucus who insisted this was some sinister federal plan. It’s not, and this is more bad faith bullshit (which, of course, the gods damned CBC just both-sidesed, because they still think you can both-sides bad faith).

It’s actually in the legislation that the federal government can give back land to the First Nations to honour treaty obligations, and that’s at the heart of this. It’s their land. The treaties are to share the wealth, and, well, we haven’t been. They have a legitimate point here and the government has an obligation to at least hear them out on this. Is that going to cause a fuss? Yeah, probably, because settler governments, particularly in provinces, particularly those who are dependent on resource revenues, are not going to want to share that wealth. But the time is coming, sooner or later, when these conversations need to be had, because economic reconciliation means more than just dangling bribes to affected First Nations when resource extraction projects happen on their lands. Not that bad faith actors like Danielle Smith, Scott Moe or Pierre Poilievre will acknowledge this reality.

Ukraine Dispatch:

In what seems to be a repeating story, Russian Wagner group mercenaries claim—again—that they control most of Bakhmut, while Ukrainian forces claim, again, that they are holding firm. Not far away in Avdiivka, it is estimated that some 1800 people are still living in the city as Russian forces pound it. There was a prisoner swap of about 200 Russians and Ukrainian soldiers on Monday. Ukraine also resumed electricity exports to Europe now that they are able to meet their domestic demand after Russia targeted their energy infrastructure late last year.

https://twitter.com/denys_shmyhal/status/1645857297955192848

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Roundup: Clear and concise, to counteract Poilievre

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Earlier this week, to accompany the release of their Monetary Policy Report, the Bank of Canada released a sixty-second clip over social media to explain their assessment of the state of the Canadian economy in plain language. And it was great.

This kind of communication is essential, especially now, for the Bank because of the level of noise and misinformation that is being promulgated, particularly by certain members of Parliament who have made it their mission to politicise the work of the Bank, as they spout facile talking points about the current state of inflation that have zero bearing on the actual causes. And if it’s not Pierre Poilievre, my reply column is full of chuckleheads who think they know better, and inflation truthers (which are the gods damned worst). So yes, this kind of clear, simple-to-digest communication is especially needed by the Bank, much like the Cases in Brief have become an essential form of communication from the Supreme Court of Canada. This is a great initiative from the Bank, and hopefully we’ll see more like it in the future.

On a related note, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge says that the current governor is on the right track with the economic recovery and where inflation is going, so if you needed an additional vote of confidence that they know what they’re doing, there you have it.

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Roundup: A desperate Kenney paints yet another false picture

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In the wake of the final report of the Committee on Un-Albertan Activities, Jason Kenney and his band of flying monkeys have been spending their time putting out blatantly false readings of what was in the nothingburger of a report. And more to the point, we’ve had a number of columnists from a certain newspaper chain write more of the kind of propaganda that Kenney has been spinning. To wit:

Of course, Kenney doesn’t have much left going for him. He’s had his bullshit referendum (final results coming Tuesday), his bogus Senate “election,” his inquisition has ended, his “Fair Deal Panel” has reported its load of nonsense, and Kenney’s own numbers, meanwhile, are in the dumps and if an election were held in Alberta right now, the NDP would win by a significant margin of seats. So, of course Kenney is going to retreat to his usual tactic of lying about things to make himself look like the hero in this. But man, it’s getting hard to take any of this seriously, even though we have to because he has a legion of followers who believe all of it and he’s riled them up and made them angry about all kinds of manufactured grievances. Hard to see how any of this will end in a way that won’t be bad for everyone.

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Roundup: Attacking his own plan

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Andrew Scheer’s sudden denunciation of the planned clean fuel regulations got some reaction yesterday, partly from the government, and partly from economists who deal with this kind of thing for a living. Scheer’s labelling it a “secret fuel tax” is more than a little odd, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he’s proposing by removing the transparent federal carbon price and replacing it with more costly regulations, which would get passed onto consumers in a hidden way without any of the rebates that the current federal backstop programme provides – in other words, doing exactly what he’s accusing the Liberals of doing. The government noted that Scheer’s 4¢/litre figure are just a guess because the regulations haven’t been finalised yet (though some economists say it’s about right based on current projections), but again, it needs to be driven home that this is exactly the kind of thing that Scheer himself is proposing, but without the added “technology is magic” sheen attached.

To that end, here’s economist Andrew Leach’s mock open letter to Scheer.

Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield points out that this latest attack by Scheer risks boxing him in, and attacks his credibility on the climate file.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1148609609424429057

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Roundup: A line-by-line review

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If the tweets of Cabinet ministers are to be believed, Cabinet is currently seized with doing a line-by-line review of the amended Bill C-69 that was sent back to them from the Senate earlier this week. By all accounts, the current form of the bill is a complete dog’s breakfast that includes a number if contradictory clauses, because the Chamber of Sober Second Thought didn’t bother to actually do the work of reconciling them because members of the environment and energy committee were keen to placate Jason Kenney and to credulously believe the oil and gas industry lobbyists who insisted that the bill’s original form, while not perfect, would somehow doom all future projects in this country. And you would think that actually getting a bill in reasonable condition back to the Commons would be kind of important to a body like the Senate, for whom this is their raison d’être as a legislative chamber who preoccupies itself with reviewing legislation, but no, they decided instead to sent it back to the Commons as is rather than to take the blame that Kenney and company will lay on them as he continues to lie about the bill and consider it a rallying cry for the implacable anger of Albertans that he sold a bunch of snake oil to during the last provincial election.

In the midst of this, you have senators like Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith claiming that the Senate’s attempt to stop bills C-69 and C-48 are supposedly the last bastion of the provinces who are “under attack” by prime minister Justin Trudeau, which is hokum of the highest order. C-48 doesn’t landlock Alberta’s resources because the chances of a pipeline to the northern BC coast are virtually nonexistent given the Federal Court of Appeal decision on Northern Gateway’s failure, and the propaganda campaign against Bill C-69 is the completely divorced from reality, but hey – angry narratives to sustain. At the same time, Senator André Pratt is defending the Senate against accusations levelled from the likes of Andrew Coyne that they’re overreaching if they do kill C-48 (which they won’t), saying that they’re trying to do their job while being cognisant that they’re an appointed body. He’s not wrong, and it’s probably one of the better articulated pieces of late.

Meanwhile, the Conservative whip, Senator Don Plett, is denying that he’s stalling the UNDRIP bill, and he’s actually got procedure on his side for this one – the cancelled meeting would have been extraordinary, and there are reasons why the Senate doesn’t hold special committee meetings while the Chamber is sitting – which they are sitting later and later because they have so much business to get through because the Independent Senators can’t get their act together, and lo, we have the current Order Paper crisis that they are working their way through (though apparently not so urgently that they didn’t sit yesterday). Unfortunately, the media does love private members’ bills, and is focusing a lot of attention on them, no matter that most of them are actually bad bills that should probably die on the Order Paper (but people don’t like to hear that).

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Roundup: Amendments and dysfunction

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There is some movement on legislation in the Senate, with the amended fisheries bill heading back to the Commons, as is Bill C-69 on environmental assessments. This bill was passed on division (meaning no standing vote) and will let the government reject all of those amendments made at committee that were essentially written by oil and gas lobbyists, which nobody had the intestinal fortitude to want to actually debate, preferring the tactic championed by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, to let someone else do the heavy lifting. That way the government can defeat the bulk of those amendments in the Commons on a whipped vote, and then Harder can say “the elected Chamber has spoken” while patting himself on the back for the amendments that did pass – likely only the ones the government itself proposed.

The bigger drama is being reserved for C-48, the tanker ban bill, as the whole Senate voted to overturn the committee report that recommended it not go forward, which was pretty much how I expected it to go. Given the torqued, partisan report that emerged, the talk about the committee being dysfunctional are ringing pretty true, but I’m not going to blame the Conservatives for that because the Independents aren’t stepping up. The likely next steps for this bill are for amendments to be debated at third reading, the bulk of which are likely to be defeated, and then the Conservatives will play procedural games with the debate so that Harder is forced to invoke time allocation on a final vote for it, because the Conservatives have set up that situation for him.

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the UNDRIP bill, particularly that the Senate didn’t vote to give the Aboriginal People’s committee permission to meet while the Chamber was sitting in order to discuss it – which isn’t actually a sinister plot. The Senate is set up so that the Chamber meets for only a few hours in the day and that committees don’t meet then, which also has major logistical considerations – they don’t have enough staff or interpreters to cover both, unlike the House of Commons. And to illustrate that, this thread by Chris Reed explains some of the procedural considerations of what happened. But also remember that in the midst of the Senate’s Order Paper crisis, nobody wants to take any responsibility and are content to blame the Conservatives for being “partisan.” They’re not the problem here.

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Roundup: Courting the tinfoil hat crowd

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Over the past few days, the Conservatives have been delving into tinfoil hat territory in their attempts to stir up panic and anger toward the UN compact on global migration, which Canada plans to sign next week in Morocco. According to the Conservatives, this non-binding political declaration will somehow erode Canadian sovereignty and be tantamount to “border erasure,” and that if you listen to the Twitter trolls picking up on Andrew Scheer and Michelle Rempel’s posts about this, it will make criticizing immigration a “hate crime.” All of which is complete and utter bullshit, and even Chris Alexander, one-time Harper-era immigration minister, calls this out as factually incorrect. And yet, the Conservatives plan to use their Supply Day today to force a vote on this very issue so that they can express performative shock and dismay when the Liberals vote it down.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1070071215384080389

While Justin Trudeau and Ahmed Hussen have quite rightly called the Conservatives out on this issue as repeating Rebel Media talking points, I have to see this as yet another example of Conservatives not only shamelessly lying to score points, but trying to dip their toe into extremist territory, and the belief that they can just “just enough” extremist language and talking points to try and stir up enough anger and paranoia that they think it will move their poll numbers, but no white supremacists or xenophobes please, “we believe in orderly immigration.” And of course, real life doesn’t work that way, and they wind up stirring up elements that they say they disavow, but continue to wink at because they think it’ll get some kind of benefit out of it.

The other theory raised about why the Conservatives are going full steam on this issue is because they’re trying to head off Maxime Bernier, who is also trolling on this particular bit of lunacy. Why they think this would be a good strategy, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s not as harmless as they might think it is, and that should be concerning to everyone.

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Roundup: Yet more dubious suggestions hosted by the GRO

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Over on the Government Representative Office website, Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” Senator Peter Harder has been hosting suggestions from former senators of late on how to “reform” the Senate. Because of course he has. And not all of the suggestions are particularly helpful, or good for the Senate in the long run. The latest example is from Senator Pierre De Bané, who was a senator for thirty years and an MP before that. De Bané seems to think that what the Senate needs more than anything is the independent oversight body that the Auditor General wants instituted before voluntarily neutering its powers by passing a motion to only use a suspensive veto. Because hey, if it’s good enough for the UK…

I’ve written numerous times that the notion of an independent oversight body risks the senate’s status as a self-governing parliamentary body. I would be okay with an audit committee that includes outside members but is still made up with a majority of senators in order to ensure that it remains in Senate control because it’s important that our parliamentary bodies retain self-governing status. Otherwise we might as well turn power back over to the Queen, because we obviously have no business governing ourselves. I’m also forever baffled by the notion that we should neuter the Senate’s ability to exercise hard power and defeat a bad government bill when necessary. It’s part of their necessary duties to hold government to account, and before you say that it’s good enough for the House of Lords, the Canadian Senate is a vastly different body than the Lords, with a very different history, and the Senate was never the primary legislative body as the Lords was for centuries. These are differences that can’t be papered over.

De Bané’s other suggestion is that the Senate start creating a series of special committees tailored to senators’ special interests to…do advocacy work, apparently. I’m not opposed to senators undertaking an advocacy role on issues that are of particular interest to them, I am less keen on the proliferation of special committees because I worry that it will draw the focus away from the actual legislative responsibilities of senators – especially in an environment with independent senators who are beholden to nobody and who aren’t able to be corralled into getting work done. We’re already having problems getting bills passed in a timely manner because the leadership within the Senate refuses to do things like negotiate with one another – now imagine that these senators are otherwise engaged with busywork of their own interest rather than with the boring work of scrutinising legislation or holding government to account. I do fear that creating an environment where personalized committees can proliferate will have a detrimental effect on the Senate overall, and I’m a bit surprised that a former senator doesn’t see this possibility.

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