Tag Archives: Marci Ien

Roundup: Ministers don’t control committees

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In a bid to try and extend the Status of Women committee imbroglio story for another day, The Canadian Press tried to draw the Minister for Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien, into the fray to comment on what happened. Ien, who isn’t an idiot, refused, which was the right thing to do. Why? Because as a minister, she has no authority over committees, nor should she, because that’s how Parliament works.

Parliament exists to hold the government, meaning Cabinet, to account. Committees are tasked with holding ministers to account over specific subject matter areas, which is one of the reasons why ministers must come before their respective committees as part of the Estimates cycle (because one of the primary means by which Parliament holds the government to account is by controlling the public purse). Hence, the Status of Women committee is tasked with holding Ien to account for her department, and in fact, they should be doing a whole lot more of that accountability work because frankly, this government’s record on doing gender-based-analysis-plus (GBA+) is actually terrible, and most of the time consists of them just saying “GBA+” and not actually doing the work. A functioning committee would be addressing this, and even though Anita Vandenbeld wrote in her op-ed this week that the committee was functional and worked by consensus, this is a major issue that they have not been tackling like they should, not that this is a surprise. It is absolutely not Ien’s place to comment on what happened at that committee, and it would in fact be a major breach of decorum if she did.

It shouldn’t surprise me that a reporter couldn’t make this distinction for herself before writing the story, but honestly, this is basic parliamentarianism. It should be embarrassing for them to even make this basic error and not understanding the roles between ministers and committees, but this is also the state of political journalism, where actual knowledge of the system has become a rarity among those who are supposed to cover it.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb killed two when it hit a schoolyard in the Sumy region. Ukrainian forces have confirmed that they have breached Russia’s Kursk region, sending Russians into disarray and panic, and have launched a massive drone attack further into Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls this proof of Ukraine’s ability to surprise on the battlefield.

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1821336708916347359

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Roundup: No resignation from Rota, chaos ensues

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The fallout from Friday’s incident in the House of Commons where Speaker Anthony Rota recognised a Ukrainian veteran who had served with a Nazi-affiliated unit was a complete and utter gong show yesterday, as Rota did not offer his resignation as he should have, and the day simply spiralled out of control. Both the NDP and the Bloc have called for Rota to resign, and the Liberals have been doing this weird hinting that he needs to “really think about” whether he can maintain confidence, without just coming right out and saying he can’t, while only the Conservatives have been de facto rushing to his defence by trying to blame Justin Trudeau and the PMO for what happened, in a stunning display of bad faith and mendacity, while also apparently trying to shield an incompetent Speaker whom they want on the job because he’s so lenient with them. The prime minister did make a brief statement about how this was an “embarrassment,” but didn’t call on Rota to resign either.

Much of the bad faith arguing was a deliberate conflation from every single Conservative between security screening and political vetting. The 98-year-old veteran was not a security threat. All security screening was followed. What he was not subject to was political vetting, as the Speaker is not subject to the PMO, and his office submitted their guest list to the Parliamentary Protocol Office who doesn’t share the list with PMO, and which doesn’t to background checks or vetting for political embarrassment, because that’s frankly not their job. The fact that there is a reporting relationship between the Parliamentary Protective Service and the Minister of Public Safety also has nothing to do with political vetting, as it’s not their job, and they don’t (and couldn’t) do background checks on everyone who visits the Hill, because that would be insane. Nor should PMO be doing this, as has been the assertion from a great many people who should know better, which is again utterly ludicrous.

Compounding the mystifying behaviour yesterday was Government House Leader Karina Gould trying to move a motion to strike the mention of said individual from the record, but also to have the audio-visuals scrubbed as well, which is weirdly Stalinist behaviour. While I get the impulse to try and remove the taint of his visit from the record, and that Parliament has done this in committee when Conservative MP read the manifesto of a mass shooter into the record, this was nevertheless fairly gross and disturbing, and the Conservatives objected (which also turned into an absolute gong show as this went down, and Rota was, yet again, out of his depth in the Chair).

So while we await Rota’s resignation, which cannot happen soon enough, we’re seeing Russian propagandists having a field day with this. But should Rota finally do the right thing and resign, the session will need to suspend, possibly for a day or two, so that the election of a new Speaker can take place. The likely two candidates are Conservative Chris D’Entremont and Liberal Alexandra Mendès, currently the deputy and assistant deputy Speakers, and we’ll see how this ends up. But Rota has to resign, immediately.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia’s early-morning attack on Odessa Monday has killed four people and caused significant damage to infrastructure at their grain storage facilities. There were early morning attacks today against the grain port at Izmail. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials say that their attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in occupied Crimea last week killed 34 officers including the fleet commander.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1706193779940581503

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Roundup: New Zealand’s leadership selection

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New Zealand is about to have a new prime minister, and lo, it was a process that took a single day. Yes, it was an acclamation where only one person put his name forward (“to avoid disunity,”), but that is less of an issue because New Zealand is one of the last remaining parliaments where it’s decided by a vote held within the caucus among the MPs—the way that Westminster parliaments are supposed to work. And of course, it’s completely alien to how things have devolved in this country.

The quasi-American pseudo-presidential primary system that we’ve adopted in this country is corrosive to politics. It has hollowed out the political parties, and pretty much killed grassroots riding associations, because they no longer matter to the party. Memberships—paid or unpaid (as is the latest craze)—is about leadership selection, not sticking around to do the hard policy work, because the parties have centralized that and justify it using Big Data. It’s all about populating databases rather than ensuring you have a base of engaged partisans who act as a link between the community and the caucus in Parliament. The leader then turns the party into a personality cult while they wield almost absolute power because there are almost no checks on that remaining. At least with caucus selection, there is a direct line of accountability so that the caucus that chose the leader can remove said leader as well, which is one of the most important considerations.

Suffice to say, while one might have preferred that they at least had a vote between two candidates for the job, the fact that they have retained caucus selection is important, and Canada needs to return to the same system if we are to have any hope of fixing the damage to our system.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 332:

Russian forces claim that they took control of the town of Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut, which their mercenaries claimed to have taken already. And they’re still claiming they’ve taken Soledar, which Ukraine disputes. Meanwhile, the NATO meeting in Ramstein, Germany, ended without an agreement on sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, as Germany is the holdout and needs to authorize the use of their technology.

https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1616506280876642317

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Roundup: Rage-farming for rural Alberta paranoia

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In Alberta, Danielle Smith has finally unveiled more details for her proposed “Sovereignty Act,” and as you might expect, they’re a lot of bullshit, and most of it predicated on situations that will never, ever actually come to pass, like the federal government invoking the Emergencies Act to impose mask mandates. Of course, that’s not how the Emergencies Actworks, and she’s just rage-farming, ensuring that the rural Alberta party membership that she’s targeting, who are twitchy to begin with and who are consuming vast amounts of American media and conspiracy theories, are just being fed more materials to make them even more paranoid. It’s not surprising, but it’s also alarming that this has somehow become acceptable political discourse. Smith also insists she’s just doing “nation within a nation” assertion, like Quebec, which is not true, and I’m genuinely not sure if she is simply that clueless about how federalism and the constitution works, or if this is pure disinformation for the purposes of rage-farming and motiving the party base through anger and paranoia. Either way, it’s not good, and is a very real problem for the province and the country, because this kind of bullshit is also contagious.

 

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 196:

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant went off the grid yesterday after more Russian shelling in the region, until a fire could be put out. That means that they were relying on backup power to keep cooling systems operational, which gets us closer to a more dangerous place in terms of a potential meltdown that could have catastrophic consequences for that part of the world. The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to call for a demilitarized zone around the plant, but good luck getting Russia to play by the rules. As for the Ukrainian counterattack in the southern part of the country, officials have now confirmed that they have retaken at least two villages, though information remains largely locked down. Apparently, the counterattack is happening slowly in order to save on ammunition and casualties.

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Roundup: Unchecked officers want unchecked financing

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It is now on or about day sixty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and there has been a crackdown on “traitors” in the country who have been helping Russian forces, sometimes to their own regret later on. Some 400 people have bene detained in the Kharkiv region under anti-collaboration laws, and because of martial law, due process is not always being followed. Meanwhile, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife, Olena Zelenska, says the war has not changed her husband, but has revealed his determination to prevail, and that he’s someone you can rely on. Elsewhere in Europe, a pipeline between Greece and Bulgaria that was built over the pandemic is getting ready to come online, which will help relieve the situation of Russia cutting off gas to that country.

Closer to home, I read with interest this piece by Kathryn May about the various independent officers of Parliament trying to establish a funding mechanism for their offices that essentially bypasses government, in the name of “independence.” I am dubious, because as it stands, these officers already have no accountability, and their asking to remove what few mechanisms that either parliament or the government can rein them in is worrying. We have seen how New Brunswick’s particular independent officers are trying to organise the ability so that they can essentially write their own enabling legislation (the column I wrote on this is here), which one has little doubt that the ones in Ottawa are eying with particular interest because they will want to do the same, because “independence.”

As I note in the column, these officers have moved away from their intended goal of serving Parliament and expanding the investigative capacity of MPs and using their expertise to assist with legislation and government programmes, and have instead become external bodies that rely on public opinion to mount pressure on Cabinet to act. This diminishes Parliament rather than enhances it, and it’s one reason why I really do not think it’s wise to allow these officers to accumulate any more unchecked power—especially as they have entranced the media, who not only venerate them, but refuse to believe they can be at fault, which is again a problem because it means that what these officers say is repeated uncritically, no matter how problematic some of it is (looking at you most especially, PBO). We have a problem with our independent officers, but we refuse to admit it.

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Roundup: Limited federal options on Bill 21

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So, the fight over Bill 21 in Quebec is gaining some traction now that there have been real-world consequences, and a bunch of MPs (mostly Conservatives) who previously said nothing about it—and who previously supported odious things like “barbaric cultural practices tip lines” and “Canadian values tests”—are now speaking up and recanting previous positions. Which is good, but while everyone is hoping for some kind of federal response or action on the legislation, I’m not sure there is an actual avenue. Consider this from constitutional law professor Carissima Mathen:

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1469013986142298114

This is essentially what Justin Trudeau has been saying—he’s opposed to it, but this isn’t the time for the federal government to step in. That time will be when the fight reaches the Supreme Court of Canada, because then they have a legitimate avenue to be an intervenor in the case. Until then, they can say they oppose it—and they have much more so than other parties—but they’re also not making wild symbolic actions that won’t mean anything. And while both Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh say they are personally opposed (and Singh has a legitimate dog in this fight), Singh has been somewhat blank on actions a federal government could take, while O’Toole made it clear he wouldn’t interfere in any way because a) provincial jurisdiction, and b) he’s spent his entire leadership trying to suck up to François Legault and out-Bloc the Bloc, for all of the good it did him in the election. And there are demographic considerations that play into the political calculations as well:

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert, lays out the political calculations and options for Trudeau and O’Toole when it comes to challenging Bill 21. Paul Wells adds a boatload of more context to the situation both federally and in Quebec, and gives some sharper thoughts as to why the federal government has vanishingly few levers but nevertheless has options.

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Roundup: Demands to take action on transitory inflation

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Inflation was the word of the day again yesterday, as it was the monthly release of Statistics Canada’s Consumer Price Index, and lo, it was once again high – 4.7 percent, which it hasn’t been since February of 2003. But the factors behind it are largely global – energy demand versus supply on the market, the shortage of semiconductor chips that is driving up the cost of vehicles, and locally, labour shortages (much of it because of COVID) is driving up meat prices. Not that these factors matter much to Erin O’Toole.

Here’s the thing – there’s not a lot that the federal government can do about the causes of this current bout of inflation, which, let’s be clear, the Bank of Canada and the majority of analysts still believes is transitory given what’s driving it, so the last thing you want to do is overreact and create more problems in the economy. When it comes to food items, the rising costs of dairy are from supply management reflecting an increase in input costs; meat is being driven up by labour costs; other foods are impacted by droughts and supply chain issues. There’s very little that the federal government can actually do about this, not that it’s stopped O’Toole from demanding that something – anything – be done. But what is that anything? Price controls? Do we need to start practicing “Zap, you’re frozen!” again? Because it feels a lot like we’re heading back to that territory.

In the meantime, Kevin Carmichael puts the figures into context for what the Bank of Canada is likely to do about upcoming interest rate decisions. Mike Moffatt and Ken Boessenkool call on the Bank of Canada to give a clear explanation of what is happening with inflation, because otherwise the Bank will lose its credibility for allowing inflation to run hot when using their tools could do further economic damage if employed at this point. Heather Scoffield worries that the floods and washed-out roads and railways in BC will further drive inflation – though that fear may be somewhat misplaced, as the macroeconomic damage may be limited to a few days.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1461179942880694281

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1461181382302973954

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Roundup: Breakaway caucuses are more headaches for O’Toole

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Things in the Conservative caucus seem to be getting increasingly precarious, as a “small number” of MPs continue to remain unvaccinated, and others refuse to disclose even if they are vaccinated, which is going to be a problem for Erin O’Toole in two weeks when they need to show proof of vaccination to enter the parliamentary precinct, their offices, or reach the House of Commons.

As if this weren’t enough, you have more unofficial “breakaway” caucus groups forming – one of them calling themselves the “civil liberties caucus,” apparently headed by Marilyn Gladu, who are concerned with the loss of “medical privacy” over vaccine status; the other is allegedly rallying around fiscal and deficit issues (and I would be tremendously surprised if this isn’t a faction led by Pierre Poilievre). And for context, particular “caucus” groups are fairly normal, but they tend to be around things like friendship groups with other countries, or other soft parliamentary diplomacy. This is not it, and while Gladu insists that this isn’t about O’Toole’s leadership, but it’s hard not to see it that way – especially as he should have been clamping down on the anti-vax contingent in his caucus and party more broadly because there is still a pandemic going on, and pandering to a group that is heavily influenced by conspiracy theories is frankly insane.

Nevertheless, this is where we find ourselves. O’Toole continues to try and play both sides of the fence, saying he’s encouraging vaccination but won’t enforce it when people refuse for no good reason at all. The fact that the party has made itself beholden to its social conservative and more fringe base because they’re the ones who both fundraise and volunteer is a problem for the party over the long term, as the need to keep appeasing this base isn’t going away. That makes it harder for the rational, moderate Conservatives from having influence (witness the savaging they gave to Michael Chong in 2017, and Peter MacKay last year, even though MacKay wasn’t even a real Red Tory). So long as O’Toole refuses to put his foot down in the face of a global pandemic, he’s enabling more of the decline and that bodes very poorly for the future of the party, and Canadian political discourse.

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