Tag Archives: Julie Payette

Roundup: It’s the same government and words matter

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Concern for civic literacy in this country took another blow as numerous media outlets started reporting that prime minister Justin Trudeau was meeting with Governor General Julie Payette to “signal his intention to form government.” They took this obviously wrong line directly from the PMO press release, but let me reiterate that it is wrong. Worse, Power & Politics said that Trudeau went to Payette to ask permission to form a government, which is so wrong that it should make the walls bleed with anguish. Payette doesn’t give permission. Trudeau is already the prime minister and the election doesn’t change that. Government doesn’t change – it merely carries over into a new parliament. What Trudeau was really doing was meeting about his intentions for the upcoming parliament, including when he would like her to summon it – but this was not actually or accurately communicated to Canadians. And true, he could have theatrically resigned and got sworn in again, but that would be both counterproductive and dumb, but again, this is the language that we’re using to describe this routine bit of government business.

Shortly thereafter was news that Trudeau had tapped Canadian ambassador to France, Isabel Hudon, and Anne McLellan, for his “transition” to his “second term,” at which point my head exploded because there is nothing to transition, and we don’t have “terms” in Canada. He may be shuffling his Cabinet, and there may be shakeups in PMO or in their Machinery of Government shop, but it’s the same ministry. There is nothing to actually transition to or from. It’s just a Cabinet shuffle. And again, this was not accurately communicated nor explained to Canadians.

There are clear concepts in Westminster parliaments that are not being accurately described, either by the hapless fools in Trudeau’s PMO, or by any of the media bureaux, who should know better. We are inundated with Americana politically, and there are so many people – both politicians and journalists – who want to playact American politics in Canada because it’s “fun” or “sexy,” when we’re a different country with a very different system, and “borrowing” terms or concepts (or in the case of the NDP, entire election planks that don’t make sense) that don’t actually translate here don’t help anyone. Instead, they create confusion that bad actors exploit to their own purposes, who know that they won’t be corrected when they deliberately misconstrue things. This is a problem, and would that our media outlets could see that this is a problem that they have the power to fix – but they don’t, and here we are. Do better, everyone. Seriously.

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Roundup: Concern trolling and dual citizenship

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It was a quieter day on the campaign, and Justin Trudeau remained in Montreal to just hold a media availability rather than make any new announcements, and he reiterated the point from the debate on Wednesday that if his government would look to improve the medical assistance in dying legislation per the Quebec court decision. He also again defended using two campaign planes by pointing to the use of carbon offsets (never mind that this is a clear case of concern trolling by those who don’t actually care about climate change).

Andrew Scheer was in Kingsclear, New Brunswick, to promise an expansion of the volunteer firefighters tax credit (or “volunteer heroes,” as their press release stated because it was apparently written by a nine-year-old). He also finally stopped dancing around the abortion question to state – again – that he is personally “pro-life” but wouldn’t re-open the debate. Shortly thereafter, the story broke that Scheer holds dual-citizenship with the US, and within an hour stated that he had already started the process of revocation, but it remains exceedingly curious given that Scheer personally questioned Michëlle Jean’s dual-citizenship before she became Governor General, and the Conservative attacks on Stéphane Dion and Thomas Mulcair about their own dual-citizenships. Scheer also stated that he had never been asked about it which was why he never talked about it, which is unconvincing at best.

Jagmeet Singh headed to Toronto to hold another media availability to reiterate his same platform proposals.

And just to put another giant bomb in the election, a potential strike by school support workers could shutter schools in major school districts in Ontario by Monday, which could send the Ford government scrambling, and further cause blowback against Scheer as the lines between federal and provincial governments continue to blur.

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Roundup: Back to pledges

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While both the Liberals and Conservatives used Saturday as their “down” day on the campaign, Jagmeet Singh held a discussion in Toronto about precarious work, which essentially was just a repetition of his pharmacare and dental care plans aimed at those who don’t have benefits.

On Sunday, Andrew Scheer was up first in PEI to pledge more support for veterans, aiming to eliminate the backlog of cases within two years and promising a legislated “covenant” between the government and the military. Mind you, the problem with the backlog has been a lack of bodies within the department, and the current government has been on a hiring spree that has only now reached a point where they are able to make a dent in the backlog (as the number of veterans has been on the rise), so anything Scheer is promising there is basically just piggybacking on the work the current government has been doing to undo the cuts of the Harper years. And then there’s the broken trust with the veterans’ community to consider.

Justin Trudeau was in Brampton where he announced two items – one was a proposed increase of the basic personal deduction, which promises to be more progressive than the Conservatives’ “Universal tax cut” (see this thread from economist Kevin Milligan); the other was a plan to reduce mobile phone bills over the next four years through a combination of working with the companies, opening up the market to new entrants (where have we heard that before?) and leveraging the sale of 5G spectrum. (The NDP are grousing that this will be all talk while they have a plan to cap bills, but haven’t spelled out exactly what mechanism they hope to use to do so).

Jagmeet Singh was in Gatineau to promise to double government funding to climate change mitigation efforts in the wake of floods and other climate-related natural disasters.

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Roundup: More trouble in Rideau Hall

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The news out of Rideau Hall is rarely good these days, and yesterday, it was about high levels of harassment and job dissatisfaction being reported by the staff there. I’m not entirely surprised by this, given that most of the established and long-time staff abandoned it shortly after Julie Payette was named governor general, because she and her hand-picked secretary (who had no government or Crown-related experience) essentially made everyone’s lives miserable. This after it was revealed that Payette still refuses to move into Rideau Hall because she’s unhappy with the lack of privacy there, while she has decided to decamp to the Citadelle in Québec City – her other official residence – for the summer. (On that note, it’s probably the most use the Citadelle has had continuously in quite a while). All of this makes one wonder if she wasn’t told when she was offered the position that it’s a very public role and that living in an official residence would come with issues like staff being in the building at all hours. It seems odd that she wouldn’t have known this going into the job (and possibly a sign that Justin Trudeau and his office did a terrible job in either selecting her or preparing her).

Meanwhile, I remain concerned that we’ve heard nothing from the PMO about how they’re planning to replace the lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan following his untimely death this week, because the provincial government will be paralyzed until that is filled. If we had a functioning vice-regal appointments commission, there would have been more names from a short-list on record that could be drawn from fairly easily for a replacement, but now it’s an opaque box, and if there is another Judy Foote-like appointment in the works, that could be yet another self-inflicted wound for this government.

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Roundup: Proving the SCC’s point

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It was only a matter of time after Alberta premier Jason Kenney announced that he was reviving his province’s sham Senate “election” laws that the two so-called “elected” senators from the province started chiming in, and lo, Senator Tannas did just that on the Alberta Primetime politics show on Alberta’s CTV affiliates this week. During the hugely uncritical interview, Tannas proclaimed that getting an “endorsement” from the public gives him the right to speak up “more forcefully,” and that he and fellow “elected” Senator Black are “listened to differently” because they of their special status.

Let me remind you what the Supreme Court of Canada said when it comes to consultative elections – that it would give the Senate a popular mandate, which would change the constitutional architecture of the institution, and you can’t do that without a formal constitutional amendment. In other words, Tannas is proving the Supreme Court’s point – that his “election” (which was a sham, let’s be clear) confers upon him some kind of special authority, which is whole point. Now, Tannas did try to couch some of his criticisms for his nominally appointed colleagues from Alberta because he has to work with them, but amidst the myths about Bills C-48 and C-69 and the complete self-aggrandisement, there was virtually no pushback at Tannas about what the Supreme Court said, or the fact that the process that got him “elected” was a sham worthy of a People’s Republic.

There seems to be almost nobody pushing back against Kenney and his unconstitutional legislation and the sham that these “elections” really are. Why, here’s Don Braid with a lazy garbage take that lauds the farce that Kenney puts on because he’s swallowed the rhetoric about those bills whole, along with the fairytale nonsense about a “Triple E” senate and what it purports to do (never mind that the only thing it would do is create 105 new backbenchers with an overinflated sense of self). Repeat after me: Kenney is only doing this to invent a future grievance, while he lies about those two bills. It would be great if someone could be bothered to call him out on it.

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Roundup: And now the lawsuits

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Because we can’t go a single day without yet more nonsense in the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair fallout, we had news yesterday that Andrew Scheer is being personally sued by prime minister Justin Trudeau for libel following press releases in which he intimated that Trudeau committed a crime and is attempting to cover it up. Scheer says bring it on, and make it fast. And then come the narratives – Conservatives say that the prime minister is trying to intimidate them, or bully them into silence, but at least with the lawsuit he’ll have to testify under oath. The Liberals are saying that this is just calling out Scheer’s lies and shows that they have consequences, and it demonstrates that Trudeau is willing to testify under oath as a result. And the pundit class wonders why they would want to continue to drag this out for months, if not years, as this drags on in the court system. (And for those of you who recall, Stephen Harper once planned to sue Stéphane Dion for libel over allegations made in the Chuck Cadman Affair, but he eventually dropped it after Dion was no longer Liberal leader). So, something for everyone, really.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1114959070136537088

Meanwhile, Wilson-Raybould says that all of the anonymous leaks are “trampling over” the confidences around the discussions she may or may not have had with the prime minister. Err, except her own side has been leaking stuff too, even if she insists it’s not her doing it. She also says that she has no desire to help Andrew Scheer win the next election, and doesn’t see herself as a floor-crosser but will operate as an independent Liberal for the time being.

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Roundup: Poking at polarization

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The new issue of Maclean’s is focused on political polarisation in Canada, with whole suite of stories and op-eds about the issue, starting with what is perceived to be the problems with the “left” (although this piece is more about the Liberals than the “left”) and the “right” in Canada, though I’m not sure how much relevance those particular classifications have any longer, as they’ve been so bastardised with a focus on populism that is either left or right flavoured (and lo, Anne Kingston makes that point here). And with polling showing that one in four hate their political opponents, and Trudeau especially, they made a point of trying to explore the divide.

Delving in further on the right, Andrew MacDougall looks at the Conservatives’ use of snark and shitposts to try and throw red meat to a base that stayed home in the last election, while Jen Gerson tries to equate the attempts made by Conservatives to tap into the current populist uptick as trying to tap a relief well to prevent a worse explosion – but they are playing a risky game that could infect their politics for a generation. On the other side, Andray Domise points to the “woke Olympics” and shifting social rules that alienate newcomers on the left, while Terry Glavin looks to the yellow vest protests in France (as opposed to Canada) as a sign that populism on the left is becoming indistinguishable from populism on the right.

But amidst this talk of polarisation, Paul Wells offers the piece that is probably most necessary – a reality-check as to the history of polarisation in this county, and how it’s always been there, in very blatant ways, and how we seem to be a country that is constantly battling amnesia as we clutch our pearls about losing our innocence. Not to say that some things haven’t changed, but it’s not like we’re wilting flowers being exposed to some new terrible new vitriol. (It’s like in Question Period, it’s the most behaved MPs have been in decades, possibly ever, and we’re still wringing our hands over it). That said, I think this was a good and timely package from Maclean’s, seeing as we’re entering into an election year and the nonsense on all sides is going to ratchet up to eleven really fast. Being clear-headed about where our politics are going is always a good thing.

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Roundup: Salaries are not cement

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As the debate over the proposed changes to the Parliament of Canada Act continues to roll along, some of us are struck by the fact that the whole framing of the debate continues to be utterly wrong – that the wrong headline on the Canadian Press piece about prime minister Justin Trudeau looking to “cement” the changes in order to make it harder for a future prime minister to roll them back is completely wrong, given that the PCA has nothing to do with the appointment process. And yet, here we are, once again debating the independent appointments commission, when the actual changes to the Act involve salaries for caucus leaders and some organisational issues. Virtually all of these have been extended to the Independent Senators Group, from committee chairs and assignments, to a role on the Internal Economy Committee, budget allocations for their leadership’s office (aka the “secretariat”), and so on. The only thing they can’t get currently, which they need changes to the PCA for is a higher salary for their leadership team. Fair enough, one might say, but considering that they eschew the label of a caucus, and the roles of both government and opposition, preferring to be neither fish nor fowl, it does make it a bit harder to justify that they should be on equal footing to them. In practice, they are very much a caucus, but this is what the changes they are asking for boil down to – it has nothing to do with “cementing” the changes to the institution, and it would be great if the pundits and journalists talking about this issue could grasp that basic fact.

With that in mind, Colby Cosh penned a fairly (deservedly) harsh piece about the changes to the Upper Chamber, and the fact that Trudeau is creating a Frankenstein’s monster that has more to do with his trying to absolve himself of his responsibility for the Chamber than anything. And Cosh is absolutely right – this has been about Trudeau washing his hands of any whiff of scandal in the Upper Chamber since he became leader, consequences be damned. And there have been real consequences – Trudeau centralised power within his caucus because he got rid of the voices with the most experience who could push back against him without consequences (it’s not like he can threaten not to sign their nomination papers), and got rid of the bulk of his party’s institutional memory in one fell swoop. He’s also losing his ability to get his legislation through the Chamber because he named someone inept as his “representative” (who should be a full-fledged Cabinet minister in order to ensure proper lines of accountability) who refuses to negotiate timelines on bills in the manner in which the Senate operates.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1074845188210622465

This having been said, I will again reiterate that what we should strive for is for the ISG to become like the crossbenchers in the Lords, but that depends on a strong enough Liberal and Conservative contingent to provide balance, and this prime minister has no interest in that, preferring to continue with this experiment in Frankenstein’s Monster until he gets burned by it. And while I’m sure that there will come a reckoning, that the ISG will fracture, and eventually some of its members will drift to an established caucus, it may be some time before that happens and sanity starts to prevail in the Chamber. I just wouldn’t count on this prime minister to provide any of it.

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Roundup: A new NAFTA

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Apparently, we have a NAFTA deal. Or “USMCA,” as Trump wants to call it, because that’s so much better. After a weekend of negotiations and a 10 PM emergency Cabinet meeting last night, everything was The “senior sources” are saying that dairy access will be around what was negotiated for the original TPP (or maybe a little more) along with eliminating the “Class 7” pricing, but we managed to keep the cultural exemptions and dispute resolution mechanisms, so that’s something. What we apparently didn’t get were any new guarantees around those steel and aluminium tariffs, so that’s less of a good thing. More details are due to be announced this morning, for what it’s worth.

And now for the Conservative shitposts to begin, and Michelle Rempel has offered us a taste of what’s to come. Because remember, they’re the “grown-ups” in the room.

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Roundup: A (likely) electoral false alarm

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There were a few eyebrows raised in the Parliamentary Precinct yesterday when news came from the Procedure and House Affairs committee that the Chief Electoral Officer said that they intend to be ready for an election by the end of April, never mind that the fixed election date is October, and suddenly there was a renewed (but brief) round of election speculation fever (which was then suffocated by the Kavanagh hearings south of the border). Stéphane Perrault noted that they can basically run an election anytime under the previous contest’s rules, but they need lead time for future changes, which puts a clock on the current bill at committee if they want to have a chance for any of the changes to be implemented by next year’s election – and that assumes fairly swift passage in the Senate, which they may not get (particularly if the Conservatives are determined to slow passage of the bill down in committee as it stands).

Of course, I’m pretty sure that a spring election is not going to happen, simply because Trudeau’s agenda still has too many boxes without checkmarks – which is also why I suspect that we haven’t had a prorogation. And looking at how Trudeau has organised his agenda, so much of it has been backloaded to the final year, with plenty of spillover for him to ask for re-election in order to keep it going. (Things are also delayed, one suspects, because NAFTA talks have derailed things in the PMO, and sucked up much of the talent and brainpower. Suffice to say, I’m not taking any talk about an early election with any seriousness.

Meanwhile, more eyebrows were raised when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel claimed that she was being told to prepare for a fall election, which we’re 99 percent sure is just a new fundraising ploy, for what that’s worth.

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