Tag Archives: Ministerial Accountability

Roundup: Brian Mulroney passes away

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News came down last evening that former prime minister Brian Mulroney had passed away after some health challenges.

The Star has a pretty good obituary here, as well as some of the reactions to his passing, and the CBC has a series of photos over the course of his life.

https://twitter.com/yfblanchet/status/1763346642294411713

Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, who was first elected as a PC MP in 1984 along with Mulroney, reflects on Mulroney.

In reaction, Susan Delacourt notes that it’s hard to imagine a Canada without the larger-than-life Mulroney given his lasting legacy, and also reflects on the political lessons that she learned in covering him during his time in office. Ian Brodie praises Mulroney for his strategic sense in global affairs at a time of great upheaval.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces are pushing hard against the front lines in the east and southeastern parts of Ukraine, which Ukraine has repelled, and they do keep shooting down Russian warplanes, downing another three on Thursday alone. Ukraine is using more domestically-manufactured military equipment, as they strive to move more toward self-sufficiency and away from faltering Western aid.

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Roundup: A resignation that won’t solve the problem

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A couple of days after everyone declared ministerial responsibility dead for Ontario housing minister Steve Clark’s refusal to resign over the Integrity Commissioner’s report and his own gross negligence and dereliction of his duties, Clark did resign, at 9 AM on Labour Day, pointing to an attempt to take the sting out of the messaging. Ford later announced changes to his Cabinet which would put Paul Calandra in the housing file, in addition to Calandra’s existing role as House Leader.

Ford, however, insists that the tainted process for those Greenbelt lands will carry on, and while he is promising a “review” of the process, he won’t do the one thing the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner have said, which was to cancel this process and start over. In fact, yesterday morning, Ford left open the possibility of reviewing all Greenbelt land and opening it up for development, which is unnecessary for housing needs—he hasn’t even implemented the recommendations of his government’s own housing task force, which explicitly stated they don’t need to develop those lands because there are fifty other things they should be doing instead.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1699015630316360078

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1699103206893056279

And that hasn’t been all. As this sordid affair continues to drip out, the identity “Mr. X” from the reports has been identified as a former mayor and developer who Ford has ties with, and his operation is practically stuffed with Batman villains. The jokes write themselves, but just make the corruption all the more hard to take.

My latest:

  • My weekend column looks at how ministerial responsibility changed in the age of message discipline, but how Doug Ford and Steve Clark can’t do the bare minimum.
  • At National Magazine, I look at the number of “secret trials” that we have seen come to light recently, and what could be behind them.
  • Also at National Magazine, I get some reaction to the Competition Tribunal’s cost award to the Bureau and the signals that they are sending by it.
  • My column points out just how inappropriate it is for premiers to write open letters to Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem, and how it corrodes our system.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian strikes damaged more grain warehouses at the Danube port of Izmail. Ukrainian forces say that they have taken more ground in both the eastern and southern fronts, as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited two front-line areas. Ukraine’s defence minister is being replaced by Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, who headed a privatization fund. Ukraine’s parliament passed an anti-graft law that contains a loophole, and many are urging Zelenskyy to veto it as a result. A parts shortage and a dispute over intellectual property rights is hobbling the ability to repair the Leopard 2 tanks we sent to Ukraine. And Ukrainian intercepts show Russian soldiers complaining about poor equipment and heavy losses.

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Roundup: Mendicino’s future in doubt

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The political future of Marco Mendicino is in the balance as the revelation has circulated that his office was aware of the potential transfer of serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security facility (designed to treat violent sex offenders) for months but didn’t inform him until it happened, made worse by the fact that the prime minister’s office was also informed, and they kicked it to Mendicino’s office to deal with. And by deal with, we’re not talking politically interfering with an arm’s length body, but at least doing something, whether it’s ordering a review or coming up with a communications plan to get ahead of it. But they didn’t.

There is a lot of talk about ministerial responsibility and accountability, and what that means in a situation like this. The assumption is always that every offence is a resigning offence, which is wrong, and Mendicino says that he’s taken “corrective action” in his office, but as the minister, the buck stops with him, and in this case, it’s a pattern of incompetence coming home to roost, and it’s not the first time, and he’s been a terrible communicator on a number of the files before him, to the point of framing things in a manner that could be construed as misleading, such as issue of “police advice” on the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Mendicino says he won’t resign, but it’s getting hard to see how “corrective action” in his office can be handled without a head rolling, or someone falling on their sword, and at this point, we are getting to the point where Mendicino should probably consider doing so in order to get ahead of things, and looking like he still has some principles left.

The other thing to consider is that he may be out of this job sooner than later, because the rumours of a Cabinet shuffle are pretty loud, and his name is at the top of the list as someone who isn’t performing well and needs to be out of their portfolio. (Also on that list are Omar Alghabra and Joyce Murray). We are at a point in the life of the government where they need a shake-up in order to try and throw off some of the fatigue that is weighing them down, and to get some new blood in some of their portfolios in order to get fresh perspectives. There’s also a major rotation of staff happening in a number of offices, which is also needed at this point. We’ll see if this situation accelerates Trudeau’s plans for when this shuffle is going to happen, which Mendicino could force by doing the honourable thing. (That said, it might mean that Bill Blair might be tasked with taking Public Safety back on, at least until a new minister can be appointed, and that wouldn’t be a good thing because he shouldn’t have that portfolio for very obvious reasons).

Ukraine Dispatch:

The Russian strikes against Odessa and Donetsk early Wednesday morning killed six and damaged dozens of homes. Ukraine’s counter-offensive is still testing Russian defences, largely in the south, as they have thus far only committed three of their twelve battalions to the operation so far.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1668981197693648898

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1668957867301302275

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1668878494762250241

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Roundup: Getting called out by your deputy minister

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This government’s problems with cleaning up the culture of sexual misconduct in the military continues to roll along, and the calls are definitely coming from inside the house. In the latest installment, the deputy minister of National Defence has taken to the radio waves to point out that the government didn’t make an effort to push the military on implementing the Deschamps Report, who wound up treating it like a kind of checklist that they could do the bare minimum with rather than actually implementing the systemic changes that it called for. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given everything we know, but the fact that the deputy minister is saying this is damning.

We also got another harrowing tale of harassment, and retribution when the civilian employee who was subjected to it complained. This isn’t a surprise given the culture, and as the piece points out, one of the reasons she was targeted is because she upset the status quo – which is part of why the military made a conscious effort not to really implement the Deschamps Report, because it called for systemic changes, and that is a definite upset of the status quo. That the government didn’t really recognize this or push back against it is an indictment.

Which brings me back to the key point – that the government, and in particular the minister, needs to wear this. The deputy minister called him out. That’s not good. And part of the problem is also that Sajjan was part of that culture, which is may explain why he was either blind to the problems, or was fine with not actually bothered that they weren’t upsetting the status quo. It’s one of the reasons why actual civilian control of the military is so important, and we haven’t had that under Sajjan. Regardless, this is his problem to wear, and he needs to take actual ministerial responsibility, and offer his resignation. There is no other option.

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Roundup: Telling them nothing of consequence

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Yesterday was the big day that the Commons defence committee had been waiting for – prime minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, had volunteered to testify about what she knew about the General Vance allegations, and the moment that she volunteered, opposition parties should have known that she wasn’t going to actually say anything of use to them. (And the fact that she volunteered after the government has been pushing the point for weeks that staffers shouldn’t be testifying because minsters are responsible under our constitutional framework is another problem, not the least of which is that they appear to have given up on being consistent).

And for nearly two hours, full of interruptions, points of order, and a whole lot of preening for the cameras by opposition MPs, Telford basically told them nothing of any consequence. She didn’t of the nature of the allegations, but she reached out to ensure that they weren’t a “safety issue” (i.e. assault as opposed to harassment). But in spite of her concerns, they didn’t learn any details, and on a broader picture, she often looks back in hindsight to wonder if she should have been pushing harder for transformational change in the military, or to look past Vance’s assurances that he was committed to doing that work. We should have expected that there wouldn’t be any sweeping new revelations going into this, and there weren’t. Of course, to the Conservatives, this “proves” that there is some kind of cover-up, but trying to go after Telford seems like a poor use of time when Harjit Sajjan is right there, waiting to be held to account for his numerous failings on this file. There needs to be some accountability on this, but the opposition just keeps flailing around performatively rather than being focused in holding the one person to account who needs it, and it’s not Telford.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt equates Telford to someone from the bomb squad in a movie, carefully dealing with possible explosives to ensure the PM doesn’t come to harm. Matt Gurney makes the salient point that it’s hard to fathom why Sajjan or Telford didn’t do more once they learned the PCO investigation was stalled (though I’m not really keen on Gurney trying to police Telford’s feminism).

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Roundup: The meltdown over NACI

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There was a collective meltdown yesterday as the National Advisory Committee on Immunization delivered its most recent recommendations, saying that they recommended that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine be deployed for those over 30 (even though the current supply in the country is currently on hold pending a review of its quality control), and then cited that mRNA vaccines remained their preferred candidates – and everyone lost their minds.

This is not really unexpected if you have been paying attention, where the chair of the committee in particular has said that because of the “safety signal” attached to AstraZeneca related to the particular blood clots (which are very serious – there is a reasonably high fatality rate related to them) that it would be preferable to get mRNA vaccines, but if someone could not wait for them, then they should get the first available vaccine, even if it’s AstraZeneca. In their minds, it’s about being transparent around the risk factors associated, and they’re right. It’s just that this makes it harder for governments and public health officials to carry on with message that the best vaccine is the first one you are offered. Both are correct, and NACI has a lot of nuance in their guidance that is difficult for people to parse effectively, which is a problem, but it’s a question of whether the problem is NACI’s in how they communicate their guidance, or a problem in particular with media who are supposed to be able to take complex issues and translate them to the public, and yet are not very good at it (often walking away from these releases citing that they are “more confused than before,” which they shouldn’t be if they paid attention). It especially isn’t helped when certain journalists, talking heads, and especially certain MPs conflate the very different roles that NACI and Health Canada have, and try to assert that they should always be “on the same page” when they have different roles. Health Canada determines the safety of the vaccines, NACI offers guidance on the best way to deploy them, factoring in the current local epidemiology and vaccine supplies – guidance which provinces can accept or reject. It’s also why that guidance is always changing – they are reacting to current circumstances rather than just offering a simple recommendation once and being done with it, which most people are not grasping. And they have operated pretty much invisibly for decades, because there hasn’t been the kind of public attention on new vaccines up until now, which is why I really dislike the calls by people to “disband NACI” after yesterday’s press conference.

I get that people want clear binaries, and simple instructions, but that’s not NACI’s job, really, and expecting them to change their way of communicating after decades is a difficult ask. There is a lot of nuance to this conversation, and I will point you to a couple of threads – from professor Philippe Lagassé here and here about this kind of advice and how it’s communicated to the public; as well, here is hematologist Menaka Pai, who talks through NACI’s advice and what it means.

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Roundup: Ending the defence committee study

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Something unexpected happened yesterday, in that the Defence committee voted to end the study on the allegations against General Jonathan Vance – the Liberals moving the motion, and the Bloc supporting it (which was the real surprise). Of course, ending the study comes with a number of different narratives. For the Conservatives and the NDP, this is all about the government trying to “cover up” what happened, because they won’t allow staffers to testify – nor should they. The concept of ministerial responsibility is inviolable in our constitutional framework, and the government should be fighting to maintain it, and yes, they have put the minister forward in this case several times, so that does matter. For the Liberals’ decision to move to end the study, it’s also at the request of some victims’ groups, who have stated that every past government is at fault, and that the committee is simply using the victims in order to score partisan points – and they are 100 percent correct in that assertion.

I do find it disturbing, however, that in most of the reporting on what has gone on, media have followed the opposition narrative that staffers are being “blocked” from appearing, and that the only time that ministerial responsibility is mentioned, it’s in quotes and being both-sidesed in terms of the government’s response. This is a real problem because it is undermining this fundamental principle in our democracy. This is something that should be explained, including why it’s wholly improper for the opposition to be demanding that this important principle be violated, and why when the Conservatives were in government, they repeatedly invoked the same principle as well to keep their staffers away from committee. Constitutional principles matter – they’re not just to be dismissed as a “process story” as so many journalists and editors are wont to do in this city, and it cheapens the discourse when this context is being left out of the stories, and when the government’s correct position is being spun as being improper.

Of course, if the government is going to claim ministerial responsibility, that doesn’t just mean Sajjan has to show up (which, to his credit, he did for six hours) – Sajjan has to actually take responsibility as well, and he hasn’t. And more to the point, Sajjan should fall on his sword for this, because he did drop the ball. He remained way too incurious about the allegations and whether an investigation was being carried out – which is not the same as involving himself in the investigation or meddling in it. It’s basic due diligence for someone who is responsible to Parliament for the armed forces and its leadership, and he failed in that due diligence. Sajjan has no choice but to resign over this, and it will be a giant sign that Justin Trudeau is not taking this seriously if he doesn’t insist on a resignation in short order.

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Roundup: Kabuki theatre around the Elections Act changes

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There are days when the state of our parliament achieves the level of farce, and we appear to be having another of those moments. Minister Dominic LeBlanc sent a letter to opposition party leaders – which seems to be a more common occurrence the days – urging them to pass the bill that would allow for pandemic-related changes to the Canada Elections Act per the request of the Chief Electoral Officer. This bill was tabled back in December, and we have just exhausted the sitting weeks in March, and it still has not even made it to committee, in part because the Conservatives have spent weeks using procedural tactics to delay debate on most every piece of legislation on the Order Paper.

LeBlanc apparently mentioned the upcoming budget in the letter, because that is a confidence measure and this is a hung parliament, so it is possible that the government could face a non-confidence vote and trigger an election at pretty much any point. And so during what debate there has been on this bill, the opposition MPs keep saying that there’s no imminent election unless the Liberals plan on calling one, and the NDP are going so far as to say that they simply need to work together to avoid one. Essentially, they get to accuse the government of opportunism for trying to do their due diligence at the request of the Chief Electoral Officer, which is cute for everyone involved.

But here’s the real kicker that makes this all a farce – the bill has an implementation period of 90 days after royal assent. The House isn’t sitting for the next two weeks, and even if they managed to have a Second Reading vote, speed it through committee and rush it to the Senate, I don’t image that it could be passed both chambers before the 23rd of April at the earliest, and only then would that 90-day clock start. That means that the changes couldn’t be fully implemented until the very end of July, meaning that even if the budget were the crux by which the government could fall (those votes would likely happen sometime in early May), there is no way that these changes could pass before a spring election could be called (considering the usual writ period of about six weeks). Any party pushing for an election without these changes would be suicidal. The government really has no interest in calling an election (seriously, and I’ve spoken to ministers who lament the number of items they have on the Order Paper that they need to see passed), especially because we are now into a Third Wave of this pandemic and there is no possible way we can vaccinate our way out of it without a time machine, so all of this chest-thumping by parties (and pleading by bored pundits) is for naught. This is all a bunch of Kabuki theatre for the sake of scoring points. We are not a serious country.

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Senate QP: No commitment to getting answers

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It’s likely to be the last day of the Senate’s sitting for 2013, which also means the final QP of the year. There was a lengthy list of speakers for Senators’ Statements, a number of committee reports tabled, and finally, Question Period. Senator Hervieux-Payette led off, and asked about the allegations around Jim Love, the chair of the Royal Canadian Mint and his activities around offshore tax havens. She asked in particular for the government to launch an inquiry into Mr. Love and his activities. Senator Carignan, answering for the government, insisted that this was a private matter between two parties and they had no intention of taking part in legal proceedings, but hey, look at the tough stand they took against tax evaders. Unimpressed, Hervieux-Payette reminded him that they took the stand that those on the government payroll should be suspended if they were found to have financial irregularities, such as with Duffy and Wallin, and she brought up Love’s large travel costs. Carignan returned to the talking point about the government’s stand on tax evaders. Hervieux-Payette pointed out that there was no indication the overseas tax frauds were really before the courts, but Carignan insisted that the government was working hard to stop tax evasion. Senator Moore stood up for a supplemental, concerned about what Hervieux-Payette reported about Love’s $6000 flight between Toronto and Calgary, and that perhaps the minister responsible for the Mint report back to them on that. Carignan tried to evade and speak around the request. Moore made it once again, but Carignan simply fell back onto the talking point that they expect those who spend taxpayer funds to do so responsibly, and Moore kept getting up to demand a report to the Chamber on it, while Carignag kept repeating his talking point.

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Why the Senate Leader needs to be in cabinet

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The announced departure of Senator Marjory LeBreton from cabinet this morning has led not to furious speculation about her replacement, but rather about the PMO’s plans for the position itself. According to the government sources, Stephen Harper plans to eliminate the position of Leader of the Government in the Senate from cabinet going forward – apparently oblivious that this is a Very Big Problem.

You see, there is an actual reason why the position of Leader of the Government (LGS) in the Senate is a full Minister of the Crown. It’s not just because they felt they needed to give someone a limo and a driver, but rather, because of a little something called Ministerial Responsibility. And yes, this is an important foundational principle to our system of government.

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