Tag Archives: MIke Duffy

Roundup: Estimates still a mess

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The Main Estimates were released yesterday in advance of the budget, and if you don’t know why this is a bad thing that keeps happening, then you need a better understanding of why this is such a big deal in our parliamentary system. The Estimates are the way in which parliament authorizes the government to spend money, and they should be there for MPs to scrutinize before the money goes out the door. The problem is that we’ve divorced the estimates from the budget cycle, which means that they are now documents that reflect the status quo of the previous year rather than any new measures, and we have to wait for the Supplementary Estimates to be tabled later in the year. With the Main Estimates reduced to a formality, it’s reduced any study of the Supplementary Estimates to a kind of shrug and quick vote to pass, leaving the Senate to do any actual scrutiny, which is a problem. Why? It’s the job of MPs to hold government to account by controlling the public purse – hence the Estimates – and if they can’t do that, they can’t do their jobs. To make this worse, successive governments have allowed the accounting of the Estimates to become virtually unreadable, and when the Public Accounts are released a year later – which shows how that money was spent – they’re reported in a different accounting system, so you can’t really track if money was properly spent or not. It’s an abomination to how parliament is supposed to work (and yes, this is one of those things I talk about in The Unbroken Machine).

To their credit, the Liberals have vowed to fix this, and Scott Brison seems to be at least showing a bit of contrition and frustration that fixing this is taking so long. Part of this is bureaucratic, with departments not speeding up their processes. Part of this is political, where the Commons hasn’t amended the Standing Orders to allow the Estimates to be tabled by May 1st instead of March 1st so that it can follow the budget. But seriously – this is actually the most important job of MPs, and they have shown a complete disregard for this for years now. Their most fundamental duty is to control the public purse and the Estimates are the heart of that process, and they can’t be arsed to take them seriously. Watching them speed through Estimates votes without proper scrutiny happens more often than not, and we saw last year a case where they voted through a flawed version of the bill that the Senate caught and had to send back. It’s a disgrace, and while I applaud Brison for trying to make changes, the fact that the rest of the Commons can’t get on board is utterly shameful.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has a good look at the country’s fiscal picture in the lead up to the budget, while Paul Wells gets more hints about the budget, which looks to be a lot more wait-and-see given the unfolding Trumpocalypse south of the border.

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Roundup: Postcards for values

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Yesterday the National Post reported that the government is planning on sending a postcard to every household in the nation and asking them to head to a website to answer questions about their democratic values. Immediately the Twitter-verse went into full-snark mode, wondering why the government would do this rather than hold a referendum, and wondering at the cost of such an exercise, but there were a few phrases that struck me as I read it, and that goes back to the fact that they’re asking Canadians what values they’re looking for in their voting system as opposed to asking them to choose a system. Why does that matter? Because it basically allows the government to justify whatever decision they end up making by selling it as living up to the greatest number of the “values” they got feedback on. And when the committee report comes back a deadlock with several dissenting reports (as it inevitably will), the government will be further empowered to finally suffocate the whole ill-fated enterprise and list all of the ways the current system conforms to the majority of the “values” that they polled Canadians on, and lo, we shall never speak of this again. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, PEI had their plebiscite on electoral reform and with a stunningly low voter turnout of 36 percent even with several days of voting, lowering the age to 16, and giving people a myriad of options to vote including online, it came down to several preferential rounds where Mixed-Member Proportional won a very narrow 52 percent win. This again translated into two very different sets of reactions – elation from the PR crowd for whom this validates their crusading on the topic, never mind that the mandate for said system is really, really weak (between the low turnout and the fact that it took several drop-off rounds to get that bare majority vote), or the fact that the plebiscite was by definition non-binding and there is more than enough opportunity for the government to get out of it (and really, I’m not sure that such a low vote is mandate enough to make such an important change). The other reaction was a sense of somewhat smugness from proponents of a referendum on electoral reform at the federal level, basically telling their opponents (who insist that such a referendum would favour the status quo) that they’re wrong. But if you think about it, such a low turnout and the fact that MMP barely squeaked past may indeed be an indication that there was more of a desire for the status quo than is being acknowledged. Nevertheless, both groups are going to be insufferable for days to come.

https://twitter.com/katemckenna8/status/795799811345842176

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Roundup: Questions about ordered repayments

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Conservative-turned-independent Senator John Wallace is asking questions around the decision to withhold Senator Mike Duffy’s salary to repay inappropriate expenses that were uncovered as part of his court case, and in particular, whether the Internal Economy Committee’s three-member steering committee has been exceeding its authority in making decisions without the full committee signing off. The steering committee after all is supposed to be limited to some administrative matters, but in cases of “emergency,” they can do more. So was this an emergency? There is the argument that the decision was made over the summer when the full committee could not meet, and it was in accordance with rules laid out as part of the broader expenses issue and dispute resolution process, which Duffy did not avail himself of, his lawyer insisting that he was “fully exonerated” by the judge in his court case (which is not what the judge said, but rather that what he did simply didn’t meet the threshold of being criminal, and yes, there is a vast difference). With a case as high-profile as Duffy’s, the fact that inappropriate expenses have been flagged meant that the appearance of doing something about recovering those expenses was a very real consideration for the continued public legitimacy of the institution whose reputation has taken a beating, and letting Duffy get away with those inappropriate expenses would continue to damage the institution in the eyes of the public. But, that having been said, was this a decision that could or should have waited for the full committee to decide up on in the fall, and is this a case of procedural unfairness or worse, of a lack of any kind of due process, as has happened on more than one occasion as this whole expenses issue has reared its head? I’m not sure, but it does bear asking. I do think that something needed to be done to address the issue in a timely manner because the Senate has to rebuild its public image after senators like Duffy have done so much to muddy it, but whether what happened was right, well, that’s not a question I can answer.

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Roundup: A dying brand of politics

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As tributes to Jim Prentice continue to roll in, we see one in particular from Michael Den Tandt, who says that the particular blend of civility and competence that Prentice had is becoming a fading quality in politics, not only looking south of the border to the giant tire fire that they call their presidential election, but also toward the Conservative leadership race in this country. Why is it fading? Because that kind of politics isn’t selling to the angry populist wave that seems to have captured so many imaginations, and in that race, it’s less Maxime Bernier who is capturing that angry populism (despite his claiming the “Mad Max” label by being “mad” about so many government problems) than it is by Kellie Leitch and her campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis. And case in point, Leitch officially launched her campaign on the weekend (remember, it was just an exploration beforehand), and lo, was it full of angry populist rhetoric that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you actually listen to it. Leitch continues to insist that she’s not anti-immigrant – she just goes about completely mischaracterising this country’s immigration system (you know, which the government that she was a part of had an opportunity to apparently do something about over the last decade and apparently didn’t), and pits “good” immigrants against “bad” ones – which, to be fair, is something Jason Kenney got really good at over his time as the cultural outreach guy in the Conservative party. Suffice to say, here are Justin Ling’s tweet’s from Leitch’s launch, and if it sounds like her going down the angry populist checklist, it’s because that’s what it pretty much is – which lends a little more credence to what Den Tandt was saying about Prentice’s breed of politician fading away.

https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/787359199957245952

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Roundup: Modernization beyond cameras

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The Senate’s modernization committee came out with their first report yesterday that had 21 recommendations, almost all of which were fairly common-sense, but wouldn’t you know it, the only one that most media outlets glommed onto was the one about broadcasting Senate proceedings, never mind that it was pretty much always the plan to do so once they moved to the new chamber in 2018 (as it was too expensive in the current one given the maxed out infrastructure). Other recommendations that caught the mainstream attention were developing a mechanism to split up omnibus bills, giving a more proportional role for non-aligned senators on committees and coming up with a modified way of selecting the Senate Speaker (in a rubric that doesn’t require constitutional amendment) were also up there, while Kady also clocked the recommendation on ensuring that they recognise any group over nine senators that wants to organise themselves as a caucus or parliamentary group that can choose its own leader, and that those groups can have access to sufficient research dollars.

Less publicised were the number one recommendation of a mission statement for the Chamber to guide its activities in the Westminster tradition, finding ways to reorganise its Order Paper and Senate Question Period to not only formalise inviting ministers but also Officers of Parliament (but I’m less keen on reducing it to two days per week to give the “Government Representative” a break – if he wants the salary, he should keep up with the workload). The Independent Working Group says they’re mostly happy with these changes, but want more assurances of representation on key committees like Senate Rules and Internal Economy, where they need to have the actual power to break up the duopoly that currently exists between the established parties, which is fair.

What the report does not say is that parties should be eliminated, and in fact goes out to specifically say that the institution functions within the Westminster model, which includes government and opposition roles, and nothing in that report is intended to assume or advocate for the elimination of those roles, and that’s important. Opposition is important for the practice of accountability, and that’s something the Senate is very good at providing. There will be more reports and recommendations to come, and I’ll have more to say in the coming days, but I’m heartened to see that there is a commitment to preserving these key features, rather than to blow them up in the continued kneejerk allergy to partisanship that currently grips the imagination of would-be Senate reformers.

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Roundup: Counter-radicalism and reality checks

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In the wake of the Aaron Driver near-miss last week, public safety minister Ralph Goodale is set to announce that the government is moving ahead with a counter-radicalization programme, but it looks like the details are still a little ways out. That said, Goodale has been pretty frank that our current counter-radicalisation programmes have little coherence and that’s what he aims to fix over the course of this year. And while we get the musings about what kind of leader Trudeau will be in the face of terrorism, we get his former foreign policy advisor Roland Paris reminding us of what he has done to date (which is not nothing, as his critics have stated). More importantly, however, we need to remind ourselves of the reality of the situation, and for that, I would turn your attention to Stephanie Carvin’s piece in this weekend’s Globe and Mail, which explains why counter-terrorism and counter-radicalism is not as easy as you might think, and provides a good reality check for the kinds of rhetoric out there, and why saying things like “connecting the dots” isn’t actually helpful to any kind of conversation around the subject.

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Roundup: Petty, unhelpful suggestions

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The fact that Mike Duffy’s expenses have reignited an old and frankly tiring debate on whether Senators should be able to claim for their legitimate work expenses, or whether it’s this particular shameless senator whose expenses, however legitimate, are forever tainted. We can look and see competing editorials from the likes of Robyn Urback, who is justifiably dubious about the whole thing given the history and cloud that remains around Duffy’s primary residence, and Kady O’Malley, who notes that Duffy’s current expense claims are entirely legit so we should stop begrudging them (while not forgiving past transgressions either). But of all the commentary that I’ve seen in the past week, the least helpful comes from within the Senate itself.

When asked about the whole Duffy ordeal, the Conservative Senate leader, Claude Carignan mused about how the Senate’s rules may still need to be updated, which I’m not quite sure how much more stringent they need to be at this point considering how much they’ve come in the past two years (and for years before that), and it sounds a lot like he’s trying to play along with the attempts at cheap public outrage over the whole thing, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that Duffy’s residency issue remains a problem from the manner in which Stephen Harper appointed him, and a Harper loyalist, Carignan is almost certainly loathe to criticise that decision. But it got worse. Carignan then basically dumped the problem into the lap of Senator Peter Harder, the “government representative” as though he were somehow able to do something about it. As Carignan, a former Government Leader himself should know, it’s not up to the Government Leader to shepherd rules changes considering that Senate Rules are the domain of the appropriately named Senate Rules committee, and that expenses are the domain of the Internal Economy Committee, and last I checked, Harder is not a member of either committee, nor does he have a caucus that has senators who sit on those committees. In other words, he has no senators that he can use to exert any kind of influence over in order to make those changes. With these facts in mind, I’m not sure why Carignan would suggest that rules changes need to be spearheaded by Harder except that it’s more petty politicking, trying to undermine his (already shaky) legitimacy, while looking to absolve himself of any responsibility event though Carignan controls the largest caucus in the Chamber. If we need to have a discussion about how the residency rules need to continue to evolve, then great, let’s do that. But to try and play this particular game about it is really beneath Carignan’s position and he should know better.

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Roundup: The wrong way to rein in the Senate

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Sometimes you read clueless columns, and sometimes the columns are so utterly clueless that you have to wonder how they ever got past an editor in the first place. The Globe and Mail featured one such yesterday morning from Campbell Clark, who asserted that it’s now Justin Trudeau’s fault that Mike Duffy is claiming expenses because cabinet ultimately has control over expenditures.

I. Can’t. Even.

The complete and rank civic illiteracy coming from a columnist in a national newspaper is galling, and looks a hell of a lot like he’s just making stuff up as he goes along. And no, I’m not chalking this up to a mid-August phoned-in column, because this isn’t the first time that he’s made this suggestion before, and it needs to stop. And it’s such an elementary part of civic literacy that Clark is apparently unable to grasp, which is that it’s the job of the legislature to hold the executive in check and not the other way around. In fact, it’s the job of the House of Commons to grant supply to the government for its operation and not the other way around. The Senate most especially exists to serve as a check on an executive that has a majority in the House of Commons. Neither the House of Commons nor the Senate are a government department – they don’t report to the Cabinet, nor does Cabinet control their expenditures because fundamentally they have institutional independence. Can you just imagine what would happen if Cabinet did control their purse strings? It would be nothing but a constant string of threats to cut of MPs’ or senators’ salaries or office budgets if they didn’t fall into line. That’s not how the system works, and Clark’s suggestion makes as much sense as giving cabinet the authority to go after judges’ salaries if they strike down that government’s laws. Add to that, Clark’s suggestion that the government should start clamping down on how much Senators can spend is so ludicrously boneheaded that it boggles the mind. You see, if MPs go after senators’ expenses, then senators will turn around and go after MPs’ expenses, and veto any budget until their independence is no longer being threatened. And why? For cheap optics? The Senate has a job to do, and democracy costs money. If Clark thinks that things work differently under our constitutional arrangement, then he is sadly mistaken, and he needs a remedial course in basic civics post haste because what he’s written is wholly and completely irresponsible. So no, it’s not Justin Trudeau’s government’s problem that Mike Duffy is claiming housing allowances, it’s Duffy’s problem (as we established yesterday). For anyone to claim otherwise doesn’t know or understand how our system operates.

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Roundup: The shameless Duff

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Senator Mike Duffy is back in the news again, once again claiming his housing allowance for his long-time residence in Ottawa, because of course he is. There are a couple of problems here, but the first one is the way in which the story is being reported.

“Hasn’t the Senate tightened its rules?” is usually the first plaintive wail that we hear, and yes, they did. They have put rules in place around what constitutes proof of a primary residence in the province that a senator represents, and those rules include things like driver’s licence, health card, CRA tax assessment – things that Duffy didn’t have when he was first appointed and yet started claiming his housing allowance for the residence he lived in for years already. Duffy has since acquired the necessary documentation to “prove” that his primary residence is PEI. It’s also problematic to start devising a formula for how many hours one has to spend in their primary and secondary residence because it is generally a qualitative and not a quantitative measure, complicated by the work that senators do, and in some cases, there are senators who can’t travel back to their primary residences because of health concerns and are essentially forced to spend more time in Ottawa than they would otherwise. They may yet assign some kind of hour or day measure, but my understanding is that there is not one at the moment.

The bigger problem here is not the rules or the Senate itself (and for the love of all the gods on Olympus, I wish that my journalistic colleagues would stop treating this issue as a problem of the institution than its actors), but rather that Duffy himself is completely and utterly without shame. If he had any shame or decency, he wouldn’t keep claiming for his Ottawa residence, because he would know that it’s what got the whole issue rolling in the first place. But no – he is entitled to his entitlements, and has taken the fact that he was not convicted of criminal fraud and breach of trust as validation rather than the fact that he was nevertheless condemned for his behaviour while recognizing that it didn’t quite meet the test of being criminal. And that’s why this is really a Mike Duffy problem and not a Senate problem. He never should have been appointed as a PEI senator, and yet here we are.

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Roundup: The lobbyist’s Senate speculation

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Courtesy of the Hill Times comes a hot mess of an article that speculates that the new independent Senate is going to have a much more active policy role upfront in the future, which…I’m not so sure about. The thesis of this former MP-turned-lobbyist is that the Trudeau gang knows exactly what they got into with their Senate reform plan (err, I’m really, really dubious about that based on what I’ve seen to date), and the loss of top-down Senate management means that Senators need to be brought into the legislative process from the conceptual stage rather than in their current role as revising and amending. Okay, so while his point that no government can take the Senate for granted anymore is true to a certain extent, most governments have paid a price when they did and found that the Senate wasn’t willing to put up with it. And it’s this particular passage that really makes my skin crawl:

Mr. Jordan said that with new dynamics in the Red Chamber, Senators could prove to be a useful ally of opposition parties and lobbyists, especially in majority governments when governing parties can pass any legislation they wish in the House of Commons. So, if an opposition party or a lobby group wants to stop the government from doing anything, their best bet would be to reach out to Senators.

“You could now go to the Senate and rally support,” Mr. Jordan said. “Make your case.”

It feels a little too much like Jordan, a lobbyist himself, is licking his chops at the prospect. It also undermines the role of the Senate as a kind of constitutional safeguard, who has the power of unlimited veto and of institutional independence to say no to a prime minister with a majority when there is no other option to stop an unconstitutional bill, not to become a partisan competition with the Commons. In fact, the Supreme Court reference stated explicitly that it was not the role of the Senate to be that competitor, and yet this is what Jordan both envisions and says that Trudeau must have known when he started making his push for a more independent upper chamber. (Again, I have my doubts). Turning the Senate into the tool of the opposition and lobbyist allies is antithetical to its nature and its purpose, and for him to start putting this kind of nonsense out there is not helpful, whether as a point of speculation or as a meditation on where senate reform is headed. And if anything, it proves that Trudeau didn’t know what can of worms he opened when he kicked his senators out of caucus, but here we are.

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