Tag Archives: Jody Wilson-Raybould

Roundup: A few straw men and some rhetoric about immigration

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Andrew Scheer gave another one of his “economic vision” speeches yesterday, this time on the subject of immigration policy. And while it was all “yay economic immigrants,” there were still a few questionable pronouncements throughout. It should be pointed out that off the top, he made a big deal about how they don’t want racists or xenophobes in the party (in apparently contradiction to the succour they gave avowed racists when they thought they could use them to paint the Liberals as the “real” intolerant party), and invoked his belief that we’re all God’s children so nobody is inferior regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation, and if they didn’t like that, the door was that way. So there’s that.

As for the policies, they were not only deficient when it comes to detail, but there was some of his usual problems of straw man arguments and hollow promises. For example, he repeated his usual argument that privately sponsored refugees do better than government-sponsored ones, but nobody is disputing that, and nobody is arguing against private sponsorship, but there is a place for government sponsorship which has to do with the most vulnerable who need more timely relocation and who may not have private sponsorship lined up. And yet, it’s part of his dichotomy about private groups being better than government. He also vowed to stop irregular border crossings, and good luck with that, because it’s always going to happen, and unless he can also stop Donald Trump from threatening immigrants and refugees in his own country, it’s not going to stem the flow coming into Canada irregularly – it’ll just push them to more dangerous crossings. He also didn’t stop the usual rhetoric that pits immigrants against asylum seekers that this kind of vow just exacerbates, so that’s not exactly turning over a new leaf. He also promised that economic migrants would get their credentials recognised in Canada faster, but good luck with that because credentials recognition is a provincial responsibility, and the federal government has precious few levers there, and successive federal governments have tried to deal with this situation in the past and not had much success, ensuring that his promise is empty. But what was perhaps most frustrating was his talk about intake levels – and while he took a dig at Maxime Bernier for calling on them to be reduced, he also said that the level should change every year based on “Canada’s best interests,” which is a giant loophole for that same kind of talk about reducing levels for bogus reasons.

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Meanwhile, the IRB says they need more funding if they’re going to tackle the asylum claimant backlog (which again, they inherited from the Conservative government) rather than just stabilize growth, which is what they’re projecting currently – but the real kicker here is that they’re still relying on faxes and paper copies rather than emails or electronic files, because they can’t share information effectively with CBSA, which should boggle the mind. And this problem was identified a decade ago (as was pointed out by Liberal MP Alexandra Mendès at Public Accounts), and it’s still a problem. I’ve talked to immigration and refugee lawyers who say that it’s a huge frustration for them that until recently, they couldn’t even schedule hearings by email. The IRB say they’re seized with the issue, but cripes, this should be embarrassing.

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Roundup: Independence and admissions of political ignorance

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Somewhat unexpectedly, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott each announced that they would be running as independents in the next election, eschewing the Green Party (even after Elizabeth May said that she would even step aside as leader if Wilson-Raybould was interested in the job). Both of them made speeches that were variations of the same theme – that they want to “do politics differently,” that they were tired of parties, and wanted “non-partisan” ideas and to do things by “consensus” – all of which betrayed an ongoing naiveté and lack of understanding about Responsible Government and Westminster parliaments. Talking about “cooperation” and “non-partisan” ideas, or “consensus” sounds good, but it doesn’t understand how things actually get done. Partisanship when done properly (as in, not devolved into tribalism) is about having competing ideas – which is a good thing. Add to that, “consensus” may work in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut where you have small assemblies and a cultural predisposition to it, but it’s not the same in the House of Commons with 338 MPs – not to mention that consensus demolishes the ability to hold governments to account. When everyone is responsible, then no one is accountable. And sure, the pair might decry that there is “too much power in the centre,” but I’ve said time and again that the cause and solution of centralised power in our parliament is about the way in which we choose leaders, and done in a way that gives them an imaginary “democratic mandate” that they then abuse. Having more independent MPs won’t change that – assuming that they can get re-elected on their own. (Celina Caesar-Chavannes, incidentally, said that their speeches were “inspiring” and she too is now considering running again as an independent after previously saying she planned to bow out of elected political life).

In hot takes, Andrew MacDougall assesses what kind of stars would need to line up for either Philpott or Wilson-Raybould to win as independents, with Éric Grenier crunching the numbers of past independent MP victories. Chantal Hébert considers the long-game implications for the decision to run as independents, and how it lines them up for future moves or influence if the next election results in a hung parliament. Paul Wells looks to both history and Jerry Macguire to look at the lessons that this whole quixotic independent run amounts to, and how the lessons for other MPs may just be the opposite of what Philpott and Wilson-Raybould intend.

Meanwhile in Alberta, the UCP’s House Leader wants to ban floor-crossing in the legislature, which is complete patent nonsense and an affront to our Westminster system of government. Our system is predicated on how we elect individual MPs/MLAs as individuals, not as party ciphers – no matter what your calculus is in the voting booth. That’s why we don’t elect party lists or the likes. If the UCP can’t understand that, for as much as they like to talk a big game about respecting democracy and traditions, then it shows how craven they really are. All this move does is demonstrate that they view their own party members to be drones for the leader, at which point you may as well replace them all with battle droids and be done with it.

A reminder to Philpott, Wilson-Raybould, and Nixon – all of you may want to read my book in order to get a proper grasp of how Westminster democracies actually work.

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Roundup: A six-point sham

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Over the weekend, Andrew Scheer went to Calgary to further outline his “economic vision,” which included a short-term six-party plan which…does nothing about the economy. Those six parts are to scrap the federal carbon price, repeal Bill C-69, repeal Bill C-48 and end any tanker ban in northern BC, establish timelines for project approvals, end the “foreign interference” in project approvals, and invoke the constitutional authority to build major projects. Do you see a pattern here?

To be clear, these six proposals are all, well, hot air. Ending the federal carbon price won’t get energy projects built – most oil and gas companies are in favour of it. Repealing Bill C-69 won’t help because the 2012 environmental assessment legislation the Conservatives put into place just wound up in litigation, and that will continue if he reverts to it. Ending the tanker ban won’t have any measurable impact because there are no pipelines in the area, no plans for any, and if he thinks he can revive Northern Gateway then he didn’t pay attention to the reasons why the Federal Court revoked its approval. Establishing timelines for approvals? Again, nice in theory, but without a framework behind it (like Bill C-69 would ostensibly provide), it will likely mean yet more litigation. That “foreign interference” in project approvals is largely the conspiracy theories that the conservative movement is clinging to (ignoring the foreign funds that go into their own thinktanks like the Fraser Institute). And that “constitutional authority” is not a magic wand, and would only sow confusion because any project that crosses a provincial boundary is already a federally regulated project, so there’s nothing to invoke. So Scheer’s “six point plan” should perhaps better be called a “six point sham.”

Meanwhile, here’s some further analysis of Scheer’s decision to back away from his pledge to eliminate the deficit in two years, whether it’s because of Liberal warnings of austerity, the unpopularity of Doug Ford’s cuts playing out in Ontario, or the desire to try and deprive the Liberals of their talking points. But it does also take the wind out of Scheer’s own rhetoric about the evils of deficits, particularly those that are small and sustainable like the ones we’re seeing right now.

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Roundup: Federal jurisdiction wins again

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It should have been no surprise to anyone that the BC Court of Appeal rejected the province’s attempt to dictate the content of federally-regulated pipelines in a 5-0 decision. In other words, the province could not reject the transport of diluted bitumen through the Trans Mountain expansion by stealth, and in no uncertain terms. The province quickly announced that they would appeal this to the Supreme Court of Canada (though the 5-0 decision makes it more likely that they’ll simply say no thanks, and let the BCCA decision stand).

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While Jason Kenney was quick to crow over the Twitter Machine about how this was great news for Alberta, it seems to me that it’s rather great news for the federal government, because it upholds that they continue to have jurisdiction over these pipelines, and lo, they didn’t need to do some song and dance to “declare” or “invoke” it – because Section 92(10)(c) isn’t a magic wand, and it was already federal jurisdiction in the first place because it crossed provincial boundaries. And just like with the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal decision on the carbon price reference, it again showed that yes, the federal government has jurisdiction. After all, Kenney kept saying that the federal government should invoke 92(10)(c) because there BC’s position on this case showed that there was apparently some confusion around jurisdiction. But there never was any confusion – BC was trying to be too cute by half, and it didn’t work for them.

Speaking of Kenney, he was apparently in Toronto having a meeting with the Globe and Mail’s editorial board yesterday, and said that investors looking at climate risk was “flavour of the month” and they should instead focus on all of those “ethical oil” considerations instead. The problem there is that climate risk isn’t flavour of the month – it’s an existential threat to our economy. The Bank of Canada realized this and now lists it as a major risk to the country’s economy. The insurance industry really knows it’s responsible for billions of additional dollars in their spending over the past couple of years alone, thanks to flash floods, major forest fires, and so on. And have those “ethical oil” lines ever worked on anyone? I didn’t think so. But expect more of them to be bombarded at us in the near future as his “war room” gets underway to wage their propaganda campaign in “defence” of the industry.

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Roundup: The Norman trial collapses

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As expected, Crown prosecutors announced yesterday that they were staying the breach of trust charges that had been laid against Vice Admiral Mark Norman regarding the leaks of cabinet confidences related to a shipbuilding project, and people who don’t pay attention to details decided that the timing was suspicious and spun a number of conspiracy theories, many of them around the fact that Andrew Leslie was due to “testify against” the government. (Reality check: Leslie agreed to be a character witness for Norman months ago, and PMO was fully aware and there were no indications that they tried to dissuade him from doing so). With that out of the way, Norman made a statement about bias and presumption of guilt by senior levels of government, and his lawyer, the formidable Marie Henein, threw shade at PMO – stating that while the prosecutors acted independently, she felt PMO was withholding documents for far too long in the process – and the suggestion is that some of the Harper-era documents were what eventually exonerated him (though the Crown attorneys said there was no one piece of evidence that was responsible). As this was happening, Harjit Sajjan announced on his way into caucus that the government would pay Norman’s legal expenses. Norman later met with the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, who said that with this out of the way, that Norman would be returning to duty soon, though we’ll see if it will be back as vice-chief of defence staff, as the role has since been filled by someone else. There are lingering questions – lots of them – about what happened here, but there aren’t likely to be many answers anytime soon given that the trial for the bureaucrat also charged with leaking information is coming up.

And great Cyllenian Hermes, were there a lot of hot takes on the end of the Norman trial today. Christie Blatchford described Norman’s ordeal, while Andrew Coyne has so many questions. Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney both point out that this could remove one controversy from Justin Trudeau’s plate before the election, but both point to the lasting reputational damage that this has helped to inflict on Trudeau.

I have a few comments of my own that nobody seems to have brought up – one of them is to point out that the RCMP unit that investigated the leak was apparently the same one who investigated Senator Mike Duffy, and so ballsed up that investigation that we all know how it ended. Perhaps we should question whether this investigative unit is very good at their jobs. The other thing that bothers me in this whole affair was less about the leak than it was about what appears to be a high-ranking military official who balked when Scott Brison, the Treasury Board president, put the process on pause so that they could examine the sole-source contract granted by the previous government (as is the official version of events). Remember that this contract was granted after the House of Commons rose for the summer (and before the election call), and when Senators raised it while they still sat, the government offered no clarity or details, so there was no proper scrutiny at the time. That matters. But whether Brison paused the process to examine it, or to possibly open it for tender, it shouldn’t have been for Norman to work his contacts to try and pressure the government to resume the process (as is the allegation), because that undermines the civilian control of our military. Nobody is talking about his angle, which I think needs a better airing in all of this.

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Roundup: Vetting judges? Oh noes!

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Yesterday the Globe and Mail had a story about how the current government will run potential judicial nominees through the Liberal party’s voter database as part of the vetting process, which was followed by an analysis of how many appointees were Liberal donors. This first came up weeks ago when yet another Jody Wilson-Raybould-related leak revealed that she was trying to “depoliticize” the appointment process by not providing certain information to PMO when she passed along recommendations, which is a problem – not that it was framed that way. This current story follows up on that, and has a few framing issues of its own. There are a few things to unpack in this, but first of all, I’ll let Adam Goldenberg point out a few issues with this analysis:

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With this in mind, I have a few thoughts of my own – first of all is that I think Goldenberg is correct in his reminder that vetting includes political vetting – and the party’s database (as Susan Delacourt noted on Power Play) contains more than who donated – they will collect all manner of information as part of their construction of voter profiles, so it makes sense that they would also run potential appointments through this. (The fact that parties don’t have stringent privacy rules around their databases is a discussion for another day). Why? Because the prime minister is ultimately politically accountable for all Governor-in-Council appointments, and that includes judges. And so long as the prime minister is politically accountable, I think it’s reasonable that his office does whatever vetting they deem necessary – and there’s nothing in here to indicate that they’re checking to ensure that they’re voting for Liberal partisans, which we need to keep in mind.

The other aspect of his story that makes me a bit queasy is the implication that there is favour being shown to Liberal donors – and the math bears out a little bit that while seventy percent of appointees hadn’t donated to anyone, twenty-five percent of them donated to the Liberals, which is disproportionate to other parties. But we also need to remember a few things, the primary one being that we need to stop treating political donations as a bad thing. The donation limits in this country are quite small – you’re not going to bribe someone for $1200, let’s face it – and we donations are a form of engagement. Engagement is a good thing. The more we stigmatize past political donations – and those donations could be for a variety of reasons, such as an acquaintance running in a local campaign, or because they wanted the tax receipt – the more we send the message that engagement is bad, which is the very opposite of what we should be doing in a country where we already have abysmal levels of engagement, whether it’s taking out party memberships, donating, or volunteering (and yes, Samara Canada has done research on this). Pearl-clutching stories like this just reinforce this narrative, which is bad for democracy.

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Roundup: A trio of justice issues

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There were three major law-related stories in the news yesterday, starting with the announcement that Supreme Court of Canada Justice Clement Gascon has opted to retire early, citing “personal and family reasons.” This was quickly followed by Justin Trudeau announcing that a replacement process would be launched, and would again be headed by Kim Campbell, while the Conservatives followed a few hours later with a demand that this process not go ahead until the leak from the previous process was investigated (though the Privacy Commissioner is already on that case). The thing to remember of course is that there is something of a deadline here, being the election, and it’s more than possible that the Conservatives want this delayed so that they have the possibility of naming the next judge if they should happen to form government in October. For what it’s worth.

The second story was that of the carbon tax reference at the Ontario Court of Appeal, which was live-streamed for the first time in its history. The province’s argument apparently is that if the federal government is allowed to impose a carbon tax, that they’ll start intruding into other areas of provincial jurisdiction, which is…dubious. And it sounds like the judges weren’t having much of that line of reasoning either.

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The third law story of the day was the revelation that the directive around civil litigation involving Indigenous people that Jody Wilson-Raybould instituted as one of her last acts as justice minister has been fiercely contested within the department because it many cases, it amounts to litigating badly and not actually getting the courts to resolve the legal questions that are at issue, which they argue doesn’t actually help reconciliation because you’re not dealing with underlying issues that require resolution. The piece also noted the frequent and direct political interference that Wilson-Raybould exerted on civil litigation (which she can do as Attorney General, unlike the arm’s length nature of criminal prosecutions), sometimes undermining the arguments that Crown attorneys were trying to advance in the middle of cases. It’s fascinating reading and yet more insight into what was going on with Wilson-Raybould in the lead up to her being shuffled.

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Roundup: Missing the mark on encouraging participation

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The House of Commons’ status of women committee tabled a report this week that is about getting more women into politics? The problem? That all of its recommendations are focused on what the government can do, when it’s not their job. Rather, it’s the job of political parties, and only some of them take it seriously. Add to that, the one recommendation that people tend to focus on — that the federal government give some manner of financial compensation to parties who recruit more women candidates — is bad policy because it simply rewards parties for putting women candidates in unwinnable ridings and lets them claim their percentages. The Conservatives had their own dissenting report as well, which focused on their notion of women running on “merit” rather than quotas (because there’s apparently no tokenism in their party), and wanted more focus on women who bully and discourage other women in politics. (The NDP’s own dissent focused on some of the language of the recommendations, and more funding for women’s groups, childcare, and so on).

And I have to stress that this is a party issue, not a government issue. Parties are the ones who set the rules for their nomination contests, and are responsible for recruiting their own candidates, and even more to the point, these should be grassroots efforts rather than coming on high from party headquarters. That means mobilising party members at the ground level to find and recruit more women, and to convince them to run. The Liberals have had success with this — they instituted a programme of getting people to find women in their communities and then asking them several times to run, because they know the research that shows that while a man would likely accept on the first request, women can take something like seven times being asked before they will accept to run. Overcoming that socialised reluctance is a big part of it, and where the focus needs to lie — on top of the parties making their nomination rules more clear (and less reliant on the “unwritten rules” as have been spoken of), and ensuring that things like childcare are being taken care of so that women can do things like door-knock and and canvas. None of this is something that the government can take care of, but the party grassroots needs to be aware of and work toward implementing.

It’s not just rules — it’s an ecosystem. Part of that is civics education, because we don’t teach students about things like nomination races and why they matter, and how to get involved. That’s one of the most fundamental parts of our system, and we don’t teach it. How do we expect more young women to get involved if we don’t tell them how? This is where the focus needs to lie if we’re to make any lasting change.

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QP: Trudeau challenges an absent Scheer

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The prime minister was present for a miserable day in Ottawa, but Andrew Scheer was absent, despite his previous fist-shaking about the libel suit. That left Lisa Raitt to lead off, raising the lawsuit, and wondered when the action would commence. Justin Trudeau stood up, with notes in hand, and he noted that the leader of the opposition has a history of making false and misleading statements, which is why they put him on notice. Raitt tried again, and listed broken promises as falsehoods the prime minister spoke previously (pretty sure there’s a difference there), and again demanded the action to commence. Trudeau repeated his response, and Raitt noted that the ball was now in the prime minister’s court, and Trudeau noted that Scheer did not condemn white supremacists when asked directly to do so yesterday, and said he’d give him another chance to do so. Alain Rayes took over in French, and he too demanded the action commence, and Trudeau recited the French version of his points that Scheer misleads Canadians and treats it as a virtue. Rayes tried again, and Trudeau repeated in French that Scheer did not condemn white supremacists. Jagmeet Singh was up for the NDP, and he concern trolled that Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott were kicked out of caucus, and demanded a public inquiry. Trudeau stated that they tried for weeks to resolve the issue but in the end, the will of caucus was clear. Singh switched to French to demand an inquiry, and Trudeau spoke about the great things that his government was focused on. Singh switched to a question about reliable cellphone service and demanded that the government stand up to telecom companies and order them to lower costs, to which Trudeau reminded him that the minister of rural economic development was making coverage a priority. Singh then moved onto the lack of federal involvement in money laundering investigations in BC, to which Trudeau noted that he must not have read the budget because there were investments in doing just that. 

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Roundup: Trying to make a garbage bill relevant

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Over the past couple of weeks, Conservative MP Michael Chong has been trying to make “Fetch” happen – or rather, trying to make his Reform Act relevant again, first by taking to the Twitter Machine to outline the process outlined in the Act for ousting a party leader (as though the Liberals were seriously considering dumping Justin Trudeau), and later to insist that it laid out a process for expelling MPs from caucus. The problem? Well, there are several, but the most immediate one is that the Act requires each party to vote at the beginning of each parliament whether they will adhere to the provisions or not – and lo, none of the parties voted to. Not even Chong’s. It was always a garbage bill – I wrote a stack of columns on that very point at the time it was being debated – and it made things worse for parties, not better, and ironically would have made it even harder to remove a party leader by setting a public high bar that the pressure created by a handful of vocal dissidents or resignations would have done on its own. It also has no enforcement mechanisms, which the Speaker confirmed when Erin Weir tried to complain that it wasn’t being adhered to. But why did this garbage bill pass? Because it gave MPs a warm feeling that they were doing something to “fix” Parliament (and in the context of doing something about the “dictatorial” style of Stephen Harper under the mistaken belief that his caucus was searching for some way to get rid of him, which was never the case).  It had so neutered it in order to be palatable enough to vote on that it was a sham bill at best, but really it did actual harm to the system, but Chong was stubborn in determining that it should pass in its bastardized form rather than abandoning it for the steaming hot garbage bill that it was.

And now, with Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott’s ouster from caucus, Chong has been trying to make the rounds to claim that the move was illegal without a vote – err, except no party voted to adopt the provisions, which is pretty embarrassing. And yet he keeps trying to sell it to the public as though this were a done deal.

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