It was very nearly a full house for QP, including all of the leaders. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, once again demanding an electoral reform referendum. Trudeau said that he did trust Canadians to discuss complex and nuanced issues, which was why he wanted an open consultative process. Ambrose switched to French to lament the current government’s understanding of the military and his choice in the Super Hornets. Trudeau in turn lamented the sorry state of the Forces left by his predecessors and their botched procurements. Ambrose asked again in English, and got the same answer. Denis Lebel was up next, decrying the lack of progress on a new softwood lumber agreement. Trudeau responded that the previous government neglected the file, focusing fruitlessly on pipelines that went nowhere. Lebel disputed Trudeau’s characterisation, but Trudeau insisted they immediately sought to restore positive relations with the Americans to better deal with these irritants. Thomas Mulcair was up for the NDP, and listed off the opposition to C-14, and Trudeau called the bill an “important step” but that it struck a balance with the protection of the vulnerable. Mulcair insisted it was as false choice, and accused the government of behaving exactly like their predecessors. Trudeau begged to differ, noting the Conservatives ignored the issue, and he praised the work to date. Mulcair demanded that the government at least take amendments from the Senate, and Trudeau said that he looked forward to what the “newly independent and less partisan” Senate would bring forward. Mulcair accused the bill of going against the Charter, and Trudeau reiterate the balance being struck.
Tag Archives: Lobbying
Roundup: Constitutional conventions are constitutional
There was another example of the shocking level of civic illiteracy in our elected officials yesterday as Green Party leader Elizabeth May again trotted out the canard that political parties aren’t in the constitution. She was making a perfectly good point of privilege around the way that independent MPs and those from not officially recognised parties are being adversely affected by rules changes that are being carried forward from the last parliament, and that’s fine, but she’s shockingly wrong about the constitutional status of parties. Why? Because while political parties are not literally in the Constitution Acts of 1867 or 1982, they are part of the grounding framework of our system of Responsible Government, which is in and of itself a constitutional convention – part of our unwritten constitutional inheritance from the United Kingdom. It shouldn’t need reminding but apparently it does because apparently nobody learns civics any longer, but constitutional conventions are constitutional. In fact, they are just as enforceable as elements of the written constitution. And lo and behold, the preamble to the 1867 Act is:
Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom
This is exactly where our Responsible Government framework lies. The UK has an unwritten constitution, and its constitutional conventions have stood the test of time, and this is precisely why May and others who follow her logic are dead wrong. Parties are at the heart of Responsible Government because it’s how a government gains and maintains confidence. The system simply cannot hold with hundreds of “loose fish” all vying for attention and reward. (If you try to bring up the party-less territorial governments, smack yourself upside the head because you simply cannot scale up a consensus model from 19 members in NWT or 22 in Nunavut to 338 in Ottawa. It is a complete impossibility). Does that mean that we don’t currently have problems with the powers accumulated by party leaders? No, we absolutely do, but that’s also because we tinkered with the system of selecting those leaders, presidentializing them with massive membership votes rather than caucus selection that keeps them accountable in the Responsible Government tradition. But parties are absolutely essential to the functioning of our parliamentary system, and the fact the written portions of our constitution are silent on that fact is indicative of absolutely nothing. If one relies solely on the written portions and not the constitutional conventions, they are wholly ignorant of our system of government, and need to be called out as such.
Roundup: An exit and a streamlining
In case you hadn’t heard, there are two national political policy conventions happening this weekend, both at the same time, so Kady O’Malley came up with a viewer’s guide to both events. Last night we heard from Stephen Harper in a pretty canned speech that was mostly the same talking points that were in his retrospective video, and he wants the party to look forward. The rest of the Conservative convention is to be dedicated to reinvigorating the party as opposed to giving it a complete overhaul, so say its attendees, but there is a push to get a better organization in place to engage youth in the country – something the party has not been good at doing, officially eschewing a youth wing – and the “draft Rona Ambrose” movement continues to try to get enough support to modify the party’s constitution to allow her to run (never mind that she’s stated repeatedly that she’s not interested in the job).
As for the Liberals, it’s not just a victory lap for them as they went from third place and from talks of their time being over and needing to merge with the NDP to forming a majority government. No, they’ve got a very serious debate on their hands as it relates to whether they adopt a new “streamlined” constitution or now, and by “streamlined,” it means more than just the actual streamlining of having 18 different constitutions, but it centralizes all of the power into the leader’s office and eliminates pretty much every accountability mechanism that exists in the party for the sake of becoming a party of Big Data. So while some streamlining is no doubt necessary, I’m not sure that this is the way that the party should be run. There is also a movement to have an emergency resolution debated to pressure the government into amending C-14 to make it more Carter decision compliant, but it appears that the party has quashed it.
Roundup: The demise of Mulcair, part deux
Plenty of more reactions to Mulcair’s demise and the party’s direction, so let’s get to it. Matt Gurney figures that the party is once again one of protest, while Jon Kay suggests that the party has outlived its usefulness with its embrace of the Leap Manifesto, and that Canada now effectively only has to parties. Gerry Caplan recalls the party’s hey days of 20 percent voter shares, and wonders if they can ever be taken seriously electorally. Andrew Coyne tries to look at the broader cause of Mulcair’s demise, while Jen Gerson says that Rachel Notley’s party that is getting things done is the one the federal party membership really threw under the bus, not Mulcair. David Reevley says the party can’t rebuild while “Zombie Tom” is still at the helm, while Emilie Taman insists that everything’s fine, that the Leap resolution gives the party a “path forward,” which I sincerely doubt. Colby Cosh takes the more existential take of the gradual demise of meaningful political parties writ large, and that if the NDP is but a shell then so is everyone else. He also takes on the notion that the political left is also largely meaningless anymore, which is something else to consider.
Tom Mulcair prepares for his caucus meeting on Wednesday. https://t.co/mcBwLop12b pic.twitter.com/rUxCzZPAhL
— David Reevely (@davidreevely) April 11, 2016
Roundup: To Leap or to cleave?
There are some interesting dynamics shaping up at the NDP convention in Edmonton, which is less about the current tensions over the leadership review vote that Thomas Mulcair will undergo on Sunday, but rather the fact that there appears to be a split developing between the Alberta NDP (and to some extent the New Brunswick arm of the party) and the federal party when it comes to debating the Leap Manifesto. Mulcair himself is in self-preservation mode as he talks about the Manifesto, and promises to live up to it if the membership decides on it, which seems to go back to his particular issues with authenticity because there is no sense of what he believes around it (though he once praised the policies of Margaret Thatcher, so perhaps one could extrapolate from there). Mulcair is now insisting that no, the Manifesto isn’t about shutting down the oil sands or forgoing pipelines, except it pretty much is, with the promise to decarbonise the economy by 2050 – as well as shutting down mining and other extractive industries and tearing up trade agreements under the rubric that they hurt local economies. Mulcair has retreated to the statement that the Manifesto doesn’t explicitly say to leave oil in the ground, but after musing to Peter Mansbridge that he would do everything in his power to go that route if it’s what the party decided, well, the damage has been done, as the Alberta party is distancing themselves, the province’s environment minister calling the federal party’s environmental plan a “betrayal,” and Rachel Notley took to the airwaves to tell Albertans explicitly that she is working to get a pipeline built. The Manifesto’s proponents, however, insist that this is necessary, and that a hard-left turn can win, and cite Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – never mind that neither has actually won an election, and likely never could given the personal dislike for them among even their own respective parties. (Seriously – Corbyn had a caucus enemies list drawn up). So will a hard-left turn save the party? It all depends on what they want to do, whether they want to return to being only about principle and the “conscience of parliament,” pushing the Liberals to do the right thing, or if they want power and the compromises that come with it. We’ll have to see what the membership decides, and whether Mulcair fits that vision.
Roundup: Smart, engaged, and too free for comfort
It’s not the first piece that raises these questions, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, but I am starting to become a bit weary of the constant think-pieces that considers it a terrible woe that Justin Trudeau is putting smart and accomplished people in the Senate without the yoke of party discipline to constrain them. And lo, Chris Waddell’s over on iPolitics raises many of these same questions, worried about the lack of a democratic mandate (hint: It’s something called Responsible Government) and being fuzzy on the way the Senate actually operates.
Do Canadians want a more activist Senate composed of people who, while accomplished, have no democratic mandate to act? Do we want to see anyone who was not elected to office regularly rejecting or amending legislation passed by elected representatives? If so, on what basis should they do that? Their personal opinions? The views of others? If so, whose views?
In short, a) the democratic mandate comes from the constitution and our system of Responsible Government, where the government that holds the confidence of the Chamber can make such appointments and be responsible for making them; b) This fear that the Senate will suddenly start rejecting bills is nonsense. They’re aware of their role and the fact that they’re not elected, and they tend to exercise their powers with a little too much restraint if you ask me; c) They should do so on the basis of the constitution and whether it’s bad legislation. And yes, elected representatives do pass bad bills where Senators actually read them and find out that hey, it’s a bad bill and needs to be either amended, delayed, or outright stopped; d) Why does a party whip make the Senate rejecting or amending bills any more legitimate than if they do so on the basis of their lifetime of expertise in a given field or based on concerns that aren’t related to whether it’ll get them elected the next time around? Because seriously, that’s part of what “sober” in “sober second thought” means – having a more critical eye that isn’t just about trying to appease the public for short-term electoral gain when there could be bigger things at stake.
Senators don’t just review legislation. They can introduce bills as well — but without a party infrastructure to push such bills through the Senate and then get the attention of the Commons, how many of those bills will be debated in the House, let alone passed?
Yes, they can introduce bills, but they tend to introduce very few, and even fewer of them get very far because they are at the bottom of the list of the Senate’s priorities. And they can get into the Commons by the very same process they do right now – an MP sponsors it, and it goes through on the Order of Precedence. Party infrastructure has nothing to do with it (though the Conservatives did try some shenanigans by all signing up to sponsor Liberal Senate bills in the hopes of delaying and killing them, only to attach their names to bills that were never going anywhere and could backfire on said MPs in that it looked like they were putting their names behind things like stopping the seal hunt, which is political poison). Senate bills are considered Private Members’ Business. This isn’t rocket science.
Once appointed, senators can self-identify the issues they want to pursue in office. Simply by doing that, they make travel costs and expenses incurred in pursuit of those issues Senate business — expenses they can claim, in other words. But those issues are never earmarked by elected officials — so what makes them important enough to be paid for by taxpayers?
Despite the attention paid to Senators’ expenses of late, I’m not overly moved by this line of concern. Without electoral constituencies to concern themselves with, Senators adopt causes, and those causes usually wind up being reflected in committee studies, bills, and reports. And as we’ve found, from both Justice Binnie’s report and the Duffy trial, there are questions raised when Senators start claiming anything as “Senate business,” and yes, there is much more transparency now than there was before, and more rules and reporting yet to come.
Perhaps the fact that we lack answers to these questions of substance is the reason why the Trudeau government has passed just one bill through the Commons for Senate consideration in the five months since it was elected — legislation tabled last December giving it the authority to spend money.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is utterly specious. The government has only passed one bill because they’ve only introduced seven thus far, and are taking them one at a time. That bill was spending estimates, and it had to go through, and lo, the Senate found that the Commons ballsed it up by sending an incomplete bill to them, missing the actual spending schedules. You know, doing their job of oversight when MPs couldn’t be bothered as they passed it at all stages in the span of a few minutes. So if anything, it’s a sign that the Senate is necessary and doing their jobs. Can we please stop this insistence that the only way we want smart and engaged people to have a hand in the parliamentary process is if it’s under the whip? The Senate isn’t a confidence chamber. The pundit class should know these basic facts.
Roundup: Anticipating the road trip
With the First Ministers’ meeting now out of the way, attention is turning to Justin Trudeau’s trip to Washington DC next week, and what will happen there, and naturally, what it all means. At least five ministers will accompany him on the trip – though not necessarily to the state dinner, which is going to apparently be quite the event. Obama is apparently looking to Trudeau to be a partner for green initiatives, and indeed Trudeau will be hosted by an environmental group with a known anti-oilsands agenda (to the protests of Conservative MPs). Trudeau, for his part, is being introduced to the Americans first by appearing on 60 Minutes where he will be seen in a more serious light than his appearance in Vogue, and part of his message is that he wants Americans to be a little more outward looking and pay attention to other countries. Of course, the one topic that must not be spoken of is the presidential nomination process, for which Trudeau cannot (and indeed must not) make any kind of pronouncements on other than that he won’t comment on the internal politics of another country. Not that it won’t stop everyone from asking while he’s down there (because you know they all will, Canadian and American media alike), but he’s savvy enough of a politician not to say anything. Instead it’ll likely be a litany of platitudes about trade, trying to thin the border, and thanks for Canada’s renewed contribution in the conflict with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And the requisite celebrity questions and requests for selfies, of course.
QP: Haze and incoherence
A slushy and wet day in Ottawa, and the PM was headed off to Montreal instead of being in QP. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern again on Andrew Scheer’s desk instead of her own, and complained about the incoherence of the current government’s messaging. Navdeep Bains got up to respond, pointing out that the previous government turned a surplus into a deficit and touted their own plan for creating jobs. Ambrose complained about the size of the deficit, to which Bains insisted that they have a plan to grow the economy and make it more productive. Ambrose then insisted that Trudeau was imposing a national carbon tax, and this time Catherine McKenna got up and quoted Suncor’s CEO and Preston Manning as fans of carbon pricing. Maxime Bernier was up next, and he complained of the broken promise around the size of the deficit. Marc Garneau responded to this question, stating that Conservative cuts in the current economic situation could push the country into recession. Bernier insisted that deeper debt would not create wealth, and Garneau read some talking points about the importance of their own plan. Charlie Angus led off for the NDP, who noted a suicide in Moose Factory in his riding, and wanted a plan to end the discrimination in funding. Jean-Yves Duclos responded to this one, and he said that federal and provincial partners were working together on the complex issues. Angus listed the health problems on reserves, demanding action yesterday, for which Duclos reiterate that they were working with First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis to provide inclusive and sustainable circumstances. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet asked the same again in French, got the same answer from Duclos in French, and for her final question, demanded action on proportional representation. Maryam Monsef stated that she looked forward to meaningful consultations.
QP: Flailing about the deficit
Fallout from the financial update was still front and centre, and Rona Ambrose was off the mark to insist that deficits meant higher taxes in the long run. Trudeau immediately went into his talking points about investment and growth. Ambrose tried to burnish her previous government’s fiscal record, and claimed that our world leadership was in jeopardy (if it even existed). Trudeau hit back that Canadians didn’t believe in the Conservative record. Ambrose demanded immediate action on pipelines to create jobs, but Trudeau insisted that the only way to get projects off the ground was to do it in an environmentally responsible way. Maxime Bernier was up next, and railed about the size of deficits, to which Bill Morneau, without notes and in French, responded with points about investing in the economy. When Bernier pressed, Morneau insisted that the Conservatives left them in a hole that meant they had to start further behind. Thomas Mulcair got up next, and insisted that there was no firm commitment for Bombardier to do maintenance in Canada. Trudeau praised the agreement and everything it offered. Mulcair asked again in English, bringing in the Aveos contract, but Trudeau insisted that they were supporting the aerospace industry. Mulcair turned to EI benefits, and demanded immediate reforms to hours and eligibility, and Trudeau agreed that they were making changes. Mulcair asked again in French, and got the same answer.
QP: Scattering instead of pressing
Bill Morneau’s fiscal update a couple of hours previous before touched off a partisan storm over social media, which was bound to carry over into QP. Rona Ambrose, mini-lectern on desk, led off by reading a question about the size of the deficit. Justin Trudeau reminded her that they ran a campaign on investing to promote growth. Ambrose demanded to know who would pay for it all, at which Trudeau retorted that that they were already paying for the previous ten years of poor growth. Ambrose tried to burnish the previous government’s record, but Trudeau accused them of creative accounting. Gerard Deltell demanded controlled public spending, for which Trudeau reiterated his response about fudged numbers. Deltell gave it one last kick, and got the same answer. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and demanded the government respect the rights of Aveos workers rather than amend Air Canada’s legislation. Trudeau responded that they were proud that the agreement with Bombardier would encourage investment in aerospace. Mulcair asked again in English, got largely the same answer, and then demanded reforms to the EI system. Trudeau reminded him that they promised to strengthen the system, and they were going to. Mulcair demanded a universal eligibility threshold as part of that reform, and Trudeau reiterated that they were making needed changes.
The Liberal retort today is that the Conservatives and NDP would make massive cuts to keep the budget balanced. #QP
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) February 22, 2016