Roundup: A small shuffle

The practical fallout from Jody Wilson-Raybould’s resignation played out with a minor Cabinet shuffle yesterday morning, but rather than simply picking another backbencher to slot into the veterans affairs portfolio, Justin Trudeau moved Lawrence MacAulay from agriculture to put him in veterans, moved Marie-Claude Bibeau from international development to agriculture, and gave the international development portfolio to Maryam Monsef in addition to her status of women portfolio. There are a couple of calculations here – MacAulay held the veterans file over twenty years ago, so he’s not completely new, and he’s someone who is running again and has held his seat forever, so he looks like a steady hand in the department (and as a bonus, the department headquarters is in Charlottetown, and he’s a PEI MP). Bibeau, meanwhile, gets the distinction of being the country’s first woman agriculture minister, but she herself pointed out that she’s from a rural Quebec riding with a lot of dairy farmers, and she knows their issues well, and that’s a constituency that this government is keen to placate after concessions made in TPP and New NAFTA. And Monsef? She’s got a track record of good work in the portfolio’s she’s held, and can handle the added responsibility, as well as it reinforce the whole “feminist foreign policy” line of the government (not that you’d know it from how they’re funding it, but whatever).

In other SNC-Lavalin/Wilson Raybould Affair news, the opposition parties demanded that Parliament be recalled next week to keep this issue going, but Trudeau refused (and it’s worth remembering that the justice committee will still be meeting over the constituency weeks). Former Conservative and NDP Attorneys General have also written to the RCMP to demand an investigation (no political interference here), while former Liberal ones say there’s no clear criminal case. New Attorney General David Lametti says he wasn’t aware that Wilson-Raybould had already made the decision on the SNC-Lavalin file when he took over the portfolio, and that he’s still getting all of the facts on the situation.

For context, here’s a profile of Wilson-Raybould’s former chief of staff, Jessica Prince. Here’s a look at whether the Ethics Commissioner can really look into the whole matter. Here’s a look at the government’s reconciliation agenda in the lens of Wilson-Raybould’s demotion and resignation, and why her Indigenous world-view may have informed her decision not to go ahead with insisting on a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin. Here’s a look back at the measures the Conservatives put in 13 years ago to separate the role of the Crown Prosecutor from the Department of Justice, creating the Public Prosecution Service, which was one of their measures when they rode in on the white horse of accountability. In light of Michael Wernick’s testimony, here’s a look back reforms Brian Mulroney made to the role of Clerk of the Privy Council, which may create untenable contradictions in his role. Here are five possible scenarios for the future of SNC-Lavalin if the trial goes ahead, which includes decamping for the UK, or a foreign takeover.

And for pundit comment, Chantal Hébert has four questions about the ongoing situation. Andrew Coyne is not convinced it’s time for a prime ministerial resignation or an RCMP investigation, but that a rethink of our governing culture nevertheless is what will ultimately be needed. My weekend column contemplates the damage to Brand Trudeau™ after the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair.

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Roundup: Salaries are not cement

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.

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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: Deficits vs spending choices

It was the autumn fiscal update yesterday, and it should be no surprise that the deficits are going to continue for foreseeable future. It was also notable for the measures that were implemented to compete with the US corporate tax cuts without making similar cuts in Canada, and these were measures that were designed to keep businesses investing in growth rather than simply offering share buybacks or dividends, as we’ve seen in the US. These targeted measures included immediate write-offs of new machinery and equipment, certain clean-energy equipment, and writing off some assets more quickly than before, with the calculated marginal effective tax rate of these measures apparently besting the US’ rates. So there’s that. There were also some tax credits for digital subscriptions in media, and a $600 million fund to offset the cost of hiring staff as part of that. There were also measures around removing internal trade barriers (yet again) and improving supports for businesses looking to export. On top of that, it also noted that the Trans Mountain Pipeline has earned the government $70 million since it bought the pipeline, and is on track to earn it some $200 million per year.

The deficit issue is one that we’ll continue to hear about, and it’s probably more complex than just a “deficits bad” kind of debate to have. On the one hand, the Liberals took government at a time when the books were $70 billion worse off than initially advertised (not to mention the Conservative “surplus” booked a bunch of false savings) so the 2015 promises met a different reality. On the other hand, they are spending any revenue growth rather than paying down the deficit faster, insisting (not incorrectly) that a declining debt-to-GDP figure is a more important measure, and we should remember that the deficits are really quite modest in comparison to the size of our economy. But they are making spending choices, and we should judge them on that. Here’s Kevin Milligan with some more context and analysis:

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John Geddes offers his summary of the update, while Andrew Coyne pans the government’s propensity to spend any new revenues it gets rather, meaning that their deficits continue to be by choice rather than necessity. Kevin Carmichael says that in spite of the deficit problems, the most audacious part of the update was the plan to tackle the overhaul of federal regulation. Susan Delacourt notes the difference in tone between the federal fiscal update and that in Ontario last week.

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Senate QP: MacAulay reminds us he’s a farmer

After a raucous Question Period in the Other Place, has it was a much more sedate affair in the Red Chamber as agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay arrived to answer questions. Senator Larry Smith started off in French, asking about the cultivation of marijuana and land use, and what steps would be taken to avoid the diversion food land for large-scale outdoor grow ops. MacAulay first regaled us with tales about prohibition, and then noted that the bill was under the jurisdiction of the ministers of justice and health, but he was also concerned about the use of land, and eventually said he would assure senators that he would do anything he could to ensure that land would remain for farm use. Smith asked if he offered any advice to Health Canada officials on the use of outdoor growth, but MacAulay didn’t really offer any kind of assurance.

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Senate QP: Rambling along

While the Commons has risen for the summer, the Senate continues to sit and still had ministerial Question Period this week, with special guest star agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay. Senator Carignan started off, asking about internal trade barriers and what he was doing to bring them down. MacAulay started off by joking that it’s always an aspiration of members of the Commons to wind up in the Senate, before he launched into a lament for those barriers and an invitation for ideas about how to bring them down.

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