Tag Archives: Kent Hehr

Roundup: The PBO’s dubious stamp of approval strikes again

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With less than two weeks to go in the campaign, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says he has returned 75 of 100 costing requests, but the Conservatives have not authorised release of any of theirs yet. The Liberals appear to have released most of theirs, and the NDP have only released two so far – but theirs are both fairly problematic.

Their first costing was for their pharmacare plan, basing it on Quebec’s 2016 formulary, and drawing their assumptions out from there for five years, and presumes that they could get a national plan up and running by next year using that formulary as an example. That’s a virtual impossibility, and a national formulary still needs to be negotiated (which the Canadian Drug Agency Transition Office is set up to coordinate once more provinces sign on), but hey, they got the PBO’s stamp of approval. Their costing for their wealth tax is also loaded with plenty of poor assumptions, has a huge uncertainty around a behavioural response – tax avoidance is a whack-a-mole problem – and most importantly, the base assumption is for a tax on “economic families,” when our tax system is built around individual filers. They would need to create a whole new tax system to capture this one percent of net wealth. And as Lindsay Tedds points out, there is no way this could be administered to get revenues for the current taxation year, but hey, the PBO put his stamp of approval on that one too.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1435346365228400643

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The notion that the PBO should do platform costing because he’s “neutral” is a poor move, because costing is an inherently political exercise. It requires implementation decisions that have huge effects on what is being projected, and those are decisions that he should be far away from.

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Roundup: Getting Trudeau to committee

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The political theatre around the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair will again be back in full force today as the Conservatives are moving a Supply Day motion to have Justin Trudeau appear before committee to answer questions, which is procedurally awkward given that the Commons shouldn’t be dictating the business of committees, but that’s theatre for you. Of course, if Trudeau appeared, it would be doing so in order to answer for the conduct of his staff (given ministerial responsibility), but we’ll see if there is any appetite to make the committee process even more of a partisan gong show. (I’m guessing there won’t be, but stranger things have happened). Jody Wilson-Raybould is expected to be at committee either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on her schedule, but maybe she’ll treat this like she did a Senate committee summons and simply refuse to show up.

What revelations did we get over the weekend? That Wilson-Raybould needed to make her pitch to Trudeau directly last Tuesday morning before he would let her address Cabinet; that Wilson-Raybould is a prodigious note-taker, forcing PMO to review their own notes about meetings with her; and that hey, Cabinet ministers are friends outside of work and sometimes get together socially. Shocker!

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé goes through the various Canadian politics tropes that this whole affair has been playing into – and are being challenged by – and what people should take away from them as the situation has unfolded. He’s also got a couple of other words of wisdom to take away from Michael Wernick’s testimony about his concern that people are losing faith in the government.

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Roundup: Forcing a narrative of hypocrisy

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The meltdowns over this “groping” allegation continue, and I keep coming back to the ways in which specious comparisons continue to be made with the situations of other MPs who’ve been investigated and/or been kicked out of caucus. The fact that said specious comparisons keep being made fuel the kinds of columns that keep coming out that declare Trudeau to be guilty of hypocrisy in how he’s treating this situation, when there is no actual comparison. Much of this I’ve outlined in my weekend column, but there are a couple of things to highlight that this Robyn Urback column sticks in my craw in particular with the comparisons to Pacetti/Andrews. For one, everything we’ve heard about the 18-year-old incident, from the corroborating editors, was that this was a brief touch, and was not sexual assault. Pacetti, by contrast, had sex with a fellow MP who felt that there was not explicit consent. Can you spot the difference there? Add to that, Urback falls back on the public outcry that the NDP made at the time that Trudeau “blindsided” the complainants by going public, which is part of the problem with someone from Toronto who has never been in Ottawa writing about things that she was not privy to at the time. Those of us who were around and who talked to people involved know that Thomas Mulcair had already called a press conference for that morning where he was going to declare that Trudeau had been warned that he had two MPs that had allegations of sexual misconduct against them in his ranks and he had done nothing about it – but Trudeau headed him off, and Mulcair was left without his thunder. It’s a nasty bit of business, but that was the background scenario, which makes it even more inappropriate for Urback and others to cry hypocrisy with what is going on with Trudeau in the here and now. I know that Urback thinks she’s making a good point, but she’s missing a truckload of context and history, which makes the column look terribly foolish if you’re someone who knows what went down in 2014.

Amidst this, a bunch of concern trolls freaked out that Trudeau went to Kent Hehr’s Stampede pancake breakfast and made a “strong show of support” for his only MP in the city, which is a fairly unavoidable thing for Trudeau to do. (For context, Hehr’s sexual harassment allegations were investigated, partially substantiated, and he made a public apology which was accepted by his complainant). I would be curious to see in the coming months just how “strong” Trudeau’s support for Hehr really is, particularly when it comes to his nomination, and I suspect there will be some backroom engineering of a contested nomination that Hehr may not survive.

Meanwhile, this incident has people fighting over who gets to call themselves “feminists,” and it’s just so tiresome, particularly because some of the players are trying to use the aforementioned specious comparisons to claim hypocrisy.

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Roundup: Curiously speedy swearing-in

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With the final vote in the Senate today on the cannabis bill, there have been a few interesting developments, starting with the fact that the government has been making appointments – there was one on Friday, and two more were announced yesterday, and what’s even more curious is how fast they are being sworn in. The two named yesterday will be sworn in today, while the one named Friday was sworn in Monday is already voting on amendments to C-45 despite not having been there for any of the debate or committee testimony. Normally when senators are named, there are a few weeks between their being named and being sworn-in so that they can get all of their affairs in order, which makes this curious, and like it’s looking like Trudeau has been making panicked appointments with the fate of C-45 in the air. And what’s even more curious is the fact that it’s not the Conservatives who are the problem, since they don’t have the numbers to defeat it, but it’s the independent senators who are no longer voting as a bloc but have swung different amendment votes in different ways.

https://twitter.com/JacquiDelaney/status/1004520578919817216

Of course, Conservatives are already promulgating the conspiracy theory that because the provincial nomination committees are largely vacant that these are all hand-picked by the PMO, but in truth, the PMO is sitting on over a hundred vetted names on the short-lists, and these new appointments are all coming off of those lists, where they’ve been languishing for months. So not a conspiracy – just poor management to the point of incompetence.

Meanwhile, some 40 amendments have been passed, with several more defeated, and the government engaged in a bit of deal-making to assuage the concerns of Indigenous senators who wanted to put in an amendment to delay implementation until more consultation with Indigenous communities had been done. The health and Indigenous services ministers instead offered a number of measures and funds to ensure there was access to production, and culturally-appropriate addictions treatment services. One Conservative senator accused those Indigenous senators of capitulation, before she was slapped back by Senator Murray Sinclair for her patronising tone. One could argue that this means that the government is listening to the concerns that are raised, so we’ll see how much follow-through there is.

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Roundup: Notley’s unconstitutional threats

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In Alberta, Rachel Notley’s NDP government had a Throne Speech yesterday that promised all manner of action to try to pressure BC’s NDP government when it comes to the Trans Mountain pipeline problem. Notley, however, decided to take some of Jason Kenney’s bluster and make it her own, promising the ability to block oil shipments to BC that they need for their domestic use. The problem? The Trans Mountain pipeline is regulated by the National Energy Board, meaning it’s federal jurisdiction, and that neither province can do anything to block it or affect what it carries. She’s also echoing the comments that the federal government needs to lean harder on BC, never mind that the NEB has quasi-judicial authority on the issue, and the fact that all BC has done to date is announce a study, or that the federal government has repeated “This pipeline will get built.” It’s a bunch of chest-thumping and borrowed demagoguery that ignores the historical context of what Peter Lougheed threatened in the 1980s, and is rank hypocrisy in that they’re threatening unconstitutional action to combat BC’s threatened unconstitutional action. It’s time for everyone to grow up.

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Roundup: Gaming the system a second time

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So the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party’s nomination committee has allowed Patrick Brown to run for the leadership contest, despite the fact that he was kicked out of caucus (which also rescinded his nomination as a candidate in his riding), which is going to go super well for everyone involved, be it Brown claiming that he’s been vindicated from the allegations (he hasn’t), or the other candidates who are trying (and failing) to come up with new policy on the fly as they try to distance themselves from Brown’s campaign platform. But what gets me are all of the pundits saying “It’s up for the party members to decide,” which should provide nobody any comfort at all, because the reason the party is in the mess it’s in is because Brown knew how to game the system in order to win the leadership the first time. He has an effective ground game, and can mobilise enough of his “rented” members, likely in more effective distributions (given that this is a weighted, ranked ballot) than other, more urban-centric candidates can. He played the system once, and has all the means necessary to do it again. Saying that it’ll be up to the membership to decide is an invitation to further chaos. This is no longer a political party. It’s an empty vessel waiting for the right charismatic person to lead it to victory, which is a sad indictment. Also, does nobody else see it as a red flag that Brown’s on-again-off-again girlfriend is 16 years his junior and used to be his intern? Dating the intern should be a red flag, should it not? Especially when one of his accusers is a former staffer.

Meanwhile, here’s David Reevely previews the party’s civil war, while Andrew Coyne imagines Brown’s pitch to members as his running as the “unity candidate” in a party split because of him.

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Roundup: The Hehr question

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For the past few days, one of the same questions keeps being raised in light of everything that has gone on – with all of the resignations in light of sexual misconduct allegations, why is Kent Hehr still in caucus? I have to say that the policing of who is and is not in caucus by the pundit class is getting a bit crass, to say the least, the concern trolling over a lack of consistent practice is something that the commentariat should be trying to come to grips with, rather than exacerbating the situation with some blatant concern trolling.

Prior to this parliament, there was no process when it came to sexual harassment allegations against MPs. The process was explicitly that there was no process – MPs don’t fit under a workplace framework when dealing with one another, so the lack of process was to ensure that there was room for mediation between the parties involved, and things were dealt with quietly behind the scenes, so that there wouldn’t be partisan advantage taken of it. I can’t say how well it did or did not work, but things changed in 2014 with the Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti allegations. What changed was that Thomas Mulcair fully intended to make a partisan issue out of the allegation and had booked a press conference to denounce the MPs and Trudeau for not doing anything about the allegations that had been made directly to him. When Trudeau beat Mulcair to the punch and suspended the two MPs (who were later formally expelled), Mulcair had to instead shift tactics and accuse Trudeau of re-victimising the complainants, but those involved knew that Mulcair has readying his salvo and swift action needed to be taken. When the allegations about Darshan Kang surfaced (plus the allegation he offered to pay the complainant to keep it quiet), and were corroborated by those who had worked for him in provincial politics, Kang removed himself from caucus (and went on medical leave), but there’s been no indication that he was expelled by Trudeau.

When pressed about Hehr’s status, Trudeau noted yesterday that the party is trying to deal with things on a case-by-case basis, and there is a process in place now that didn’t exist before, and an investigation has been launched into Hehr’s activities. That Trudeau would try to respect the process put into place since the Andrews/Pacetti incident is likely a good thing, but this being politics, there is already partisan hay being made of this, with Erin O’Toole trying to paint this as Trudeau having changed his own rules. Because you know, why resist the urge to take partisan shots? And if Trudeau went around the process, you know that the question would be why he didn’t wait for the investigation – because damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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Roundup: Protected nominations and the suffocation of the grassroots

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Oh, Liberals. You’ve really gone and done it again, haven’t you? All of your grand talk about respecting parliament, and now you’ve decided that you’re going to go and protect the nominations of your incumbent MPs, so long as they meet a set of criteria that, while better than nothing, is not all that onerous. Never mind that four years ago, it was all about how open nominations were about community leaders devoted to community service, but now? Now it’s about ensuring that your MPs simply have a big enough war chest and participate in a bare minimum of door knocking over the course of a year. You’d think that with this list of requirements, ensuring that there still remains an actual nomination process wouldn’t be too difficult – after all, if the excuse is that they’re so busy in Ottawa that they can’t be also running for their old jobs, then ensuring that they’re still doing the work that would be associated with a nomination process seems like a pointless self-inflicted black eye, no?

I’m not going to re-litigate this too much, but I wrote about why protected nominations are a Bad Thing in Maclean’s last year, but it really boils down to one basic concept – accountability. The biggest reason to ensure that there are open nominations is to ensure that a riding can hold their incumbent to account without needing to vote for another party to do so. Protecting nominations removes more power from the grassroots party members and enshrines it in the leader’s office, which is exactly the opposite of what should be happening. (And yes, Trudeau has centralized a hell of a lot of power, especially after pushing through the changes to the party’s constitution). And by imposing those thresholds to ensure that the nomination is protected, it creates incentive for the incumbent MP to treat that riding association like a personal re-election machine, rather than a body that holds that MP to account at the riding level.

To be clear, this isn’t just a Liberal problem. The Conservatives also set a fairly high bar to challenge incumbent nominations, some of which we’ve seen in recent weeks, but that’s been accompanied by rumblings that some of these challenges have been stickhandled out of the leader’s office, which is even more distressing for grassroots democracy. The erosion of grassroots democracy is a very real crisis in our political system, but most people don’t understand what these changes mean, more content to chide the Liberals for broken promises about open nominations than be alarmed at what the bigger picture result is. It’s a pretty serious problem, and it’s bigger than just a broken promise.

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Roundup: Hehr out of cabinet

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In the hours that the drama around Patrick Brown was playing out, another accusation was levelled over Twitter, this time around Liberal cabinet minister Kent Hehr, which seems mostly to involve lewd suggestions he made to female staffers in private during his time as an MLA in Alberta. When news of that reached Davos, Justin Trudeau said he would follow-up and have an answer before they left the country. And just before the plane took off, we had our answer – Hehr had tendered his resignation from cabinet, and during his “leave of absence,” Kirsty Duncan would take over his responsibilities while an investigation was carried out. Hehr remains in caucus, no doubt pending the results of that investigation. Maclean’s spoke with Hehr’s accuser here.

Politically, it’s fraught for Trudeau given that both of his Calgary MPs – both of them veterans of the Alberta Liberal Party – have been taken down by allegations of sexual misconduct. And in a related story, the investigation promised into Kang’s actions has not contacted one of his accusers, however many months later, and that goes for both federal and provincial investigations.

Speaking of Brown, here’s a detailed look at how Wednesday night played out, and some further conversations with his accusers. One of Brown’s (former) deputy leaders called the incident a “hiccup,” and later had to apologize for it.

Meanwhile, Supriya Dwivedi talks about politics’ #metoo moment, and the fact that the Bro Code is breaking down, while Aaron Wherry talks about how #metoo has arrived on Parliament Hill. Chris Selley looks at the path ahead for the Ontario PC party in Brown’s demise, and it’s a messy path given the rules in the party’s constitution, with just four months to go before the election.

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Roundup: The existential threat to parliament nobody notices

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After stories about how some MPs – both Conservative and Liberal – used the Canada Summer Jobs programme to funnel those job grants to anti-abortion and anti-gay organisations, the government has made a few tweaks to the programme so that any organisation that is looking for grants needs to sign an affirmation that they will agree to comply with Charter values, as well as its underlying values including
“reproductive rights, and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.” And while that’s all well and good, they didn’t fix the glaring problem with this system – the fact that it’s MPs who are signing off on these grants.

No. Seriously, no.

This is antithetical to the whole point of Parliament. Parliament is about holding the government (meaning Cabinet) to account, and part of that is by controlling the public purse. MPs don’t give out money – they ensure that the government can only spend it wisely. By Service Canada sending lists of groups recommended to receive funding, and then having the MPs validate and recommending more or fewer jobs through the group, or whether to fund them at all, it goes beyond accountability and into disbursing funds which is not the role of an MP. At all.

And what really burns me is that nobody sees this. We have become so civically illiterate that a practice that is a direct existential challenge to a thousand years of parliamentary history doesn’t merit a single shrug. No, instead, it’s become part of this expectation that MPs should be “bringing home the bacon” to their ridings. It’s why MPs shouldn’t be making funding announcements for the government – that’s the role of Cabinet ministers (and I will allow parliamentary secretaries under protest because it’s hard for cabinet to be everywhere), but that’s it. Having MPs make announcements “on behalf of” ministers is a betrayal of the role that MPs play with respect to ministers, which is to hold them to account, even if they’re in the same party. This is cabinet co-opting MPs, and in the case of these job grants, laundering their accountability so that nobody can actually be held to account for when funding goes to groups that are contrary to the values of the government of the day. But nobody cares – not even the journalist who wrote the story about the changes.

If only someone had written a book about this kind of thing…

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