Tag Archives: National Security

QP: From solemn moment to clown show

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Following every party’s statements and a moment of silence for the anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique, things got underway in earnest. While the prime minister was absent, Chrystia Freeland was present. Candice Bergen led off, script on her mini-lectern, and she asked for an update on the government’s programmes to combat violence against women. Freeland highlighted the importance of the day, and spoke about the “unprecedented” investments in the budget, and then called on all women in the a House to rise for a moment to remember those women. Bergen then pivoted to the topic of inflation and wanted to know what was happening with the Bank of Canada’s inflation target, and Freeland assured her the decision was coming in due course. Bergen was not satisfied, and demanded action on rising prices—though she did not call for price controls. Freeland assured her that they understand the difference between fiscal and monetary policy, and have confidence in the Bank, and that they don’t disparage them like the Conservatives do. Alain Rayes took over in French, and demanded a “concrete plan” to tackle inflation. (Like price controls?) Freeland listed off global inflation figures in response. Rayes repeated his demand for a “concrete plan,” and Freeland responded with praise for the GDP growth and job numbers.

Claude DeBellefeuille also raised the anniversary of École Polytechnique and the current spate of gun violence in Montreal and demanded tougher gun control. Marco Mendicino assured her the are working together with different governments to ensure that everyone can live safely. DeBellefeuille accused the federal government of doing nothing, and Mendicino repeated his assurances and brought up his meetings last week with gun control advocates.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he raised the scourge of opioid deaths, and demanded decriminalisation of simple possession of drugs. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that they are working at several levels around things like safe supply and support for users, with more to be announced shortly. Gord Johns repeated the demand in English, and Carolyn Bennett repeated Duclos’ answer in English.

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Roundup: A newer, worse compromise

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The Speaker engaged in a bit of procedural housekeeping after Question Period yesterday, and ruled that the Board of Internal Economy’s vote on a vaccine mandate for MPs in the House of Commons was in fact a violation of MPs’ privileges—which most of us expected, because that’s pretty much what it was. It’s a moot point, however, because the motion passed that re-authorized hybrid sittings included the vaccine mandate for the Chamber, so there remains a vaccine mandate regardless of this outcome. It sounds like the Conservatives are satisfied with this ruling in that it doesn’t create a precedent for expanding the BoIE’s powers, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing in all.

At the same time, the government house leader proposed a compromise for the Winnipeg Lab documents, which had been floated before dissolution but is back on the table now—which is procedurally dumb because the committee that requested those documents is non-existent, as is the order to produce those documents. If said committee were reinstated and they vote on a new motion to produce documents, then the government should have floated this compromise then, but no, they’re going ahead with it unbidden, which is silly. This compromise would see the creation of a new committee that would be advised by a panel of three former senior judges who would vet materials—but again, this is stupid.

The compromise was the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. That was the point. It was the right venue for these documents to go to, and that’s where those documents were sent, before the Conservatives decided that theatre was more important (and the other two parties decided that embarrassing the government was also the point). All this is doing is muddying the waters even further, duplicating efforts, and making MPs even less trustworthy to Canadian security and intelligence services. Because our MPs are not interested in actual oversight or accountability—they are only interested in theatre, and that diminishes our Parliament for everyone.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1466554090452762626

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QP: What is your inflation position today?

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Even though the prime minister was in town, he was not in Question Period, but his deputy was, so that was something. Erin O’Toole led off, script on his mini-lectern, and he worried about the news that the coming fiscal update would only have “limited information,” and worrying about them covering up spending. Chrystia Freeland stood up and recited O’Toole’s floundering position on whether inflation is a global problem or not. O’Toole retorted that she was the only politician to have been flagged on Twitter for misleading information, and demanded that she tell the Bank of Canada to get inflation under control. Freeland chided O’Toole for not realising that monetary policy is the role of the Bank, which is arm’s length from government. O’Toole started sputtering about small businesses suffering from inflation, and Freeland reminded him that their campaign documents promised even more government spending in the current fiscal year, and wondered what their position was today. O’Toole demanded to know then a budget would be balanced, and Freeland recited the Economist’s top-ten list of most expensive cities to live in, and noted that none were in Canada. O’Toole then switched to French to say that Quebeckers were tired of living paycheque to paycheque. Freeland repeated the same Economist list in response.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he worried that the prime minister didn’t raise softwood tariff while in Washington, and Freeland stated that while she could not match Therrien’s ability to play on words, but the file was important and they were continuing to defend the sector’s interest like they did for aluminium. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay demanded that the government insist on separate treatment for Quebec because their forestry rules are different, while Freeland assured him that they were defending sector.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he worried that the COVID rules were too confusing for travellers. Freeland said that they agreed that the fight against COVID was the most important issue for the country and vaccination was the way out, but noted that the current rules are a circuit-breaker to buy them time. Singh repeated the question in French, and repeated her response.

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Roundup: Incendiary headlines and endorsements

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There were a couple of items on the campaign trail that I wanted to mention. One is that a reporter asked Justin Trudeau about electoral reform today, for the first time since the election began, apparently, and he said that if there was consensus he’d consider re-opening it, but he remained in favour of ranked ballots. This was put under a headline of “Trudeau says he remains ‘open’ to electoral reform if Liberals re-elected,” and Twitter had a gods damned field day over it, and lo, the issue was re-litigated yet again, even though that headline didn’t really reflect his comments. (The CBC headline for the same Canadian Press wire story was more reflective of his comments). But writing up what he said isn’t incendiary and won’t make it look like he made a promise that he really didn’t make wouldn’t drive clicks now, would it?

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1439267428786221066

The other item of note was that two former military figures endorsed Erin O’Toole yesterday – retired Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, and retired General Rick Hillier. In both cases, it’s a bit icky because we generally don’t like to have the practice of military endorsements in Canada because our Forces are a far less partisan organisation, as well they should be. There are a couple of additional wrinkles here. With Norman, it has the ability of looking petty and score-settling because of the blame to go around the investigation that led to the charges of breach-of-trust with Norman (that were ultimately stayed). Hillier is also fairly dubious – not only because he is now tainted goods after the gong show of a vaccine rollout that he was in charge of in Ontario, but as a former Chief of Defence Staff, he should remain far more scrupulous in wading into partisan politics. This is not a trend that we want to encourage.

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Roundup: The “brother” meltdown

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Because we’re in an election and it ramps up the absolute stupidity across the board, we had another so-called “gaffe” that made a bunch of people performatively lose their minds, and I can’t even, you guys.

In a press conference about the situation in Afghanistan, Maryam Monsef, the minister responsible for the status of women and gender equality and a former refugee from Afghanistan, who fled when she was a child, made a direct address to the Taliban about letting people out of the country, and used the term “brothers.” And people lost their gods damned minds. She was asked about it and said that the context was cultural and she absolutely considers them to be terrorists, and yet the insinuation persists that, somehow, she was using the term as being sympathetic to a group that is diametrically opposed to everything she is about. WTF.

https://twitter.com/ChrisGNardi/status/1430565362265907205

And I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to suggest that there was a racist or Islamophobic undercurrent in the media even questioning that she was somehow trying to be sympathetic to the Taliban. Because seriously, you think that somehow Monsef personally, or the Trudeau government, is going to be “soft on terror,” or some other bullshit like this? Are these the tropes by which we will repeatedly fall back into, because we have learned nothing over the past twenty years? Apparently not, especially when it’s all being done to put on a show. It’s pretty gross, you guys. Do better.

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Roundup: Just the Speaker doing his job

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We got our first glimpse at the court documents related to the challenge of the House of Commons’ order demanding the production of secret documents related to the firing of the two scientists from the National Microbiology Lab. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, put in his submission that the case should be tossed because of Parliamentary privilege, and there was no explicit waiving of parliamentary privilege under the Canada Evidence Act, which is what the Public Health Agency is following in refusing to turn over unsecured documents. As a reminder, they have turned over the documents, both in redacted form to the committee that requested them, and in unredacted form to NSICOP, which has appropriate security clearances and safeguards, so it’s not like this is a blanket refusal to defy Parliament – it’s that they have their own obligations to follow. It’s also somewhat problematic that the committee wants the Commons’ Law Clerk to then redact the documents on his own, without appropriate training or context, so they ultimately claim they’re not looking for unredacted documents – only for someone else to do the redacting, at which point this is just becoming absurd.

The way this is being spun is also somewhat irritating – because this was a Canadian Press wire story, outlets who ran the piece sometimes did so with altered headlines that stated that it was the Liberals interfering with the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commons rather than the government, which is not really true. This isn’t a partisan issue – it’s different parts of the government acting according to the laws that Parliament passed. When the demands were made, PHAC was bound in legislation to inform the Attorney General, and while it is the same physical person as the minister of justice, under his Attorney General hat, he had obligations to follow the law and test these demands in Court.

The other commentary that is somewhat maddening is people pointing out that the Speaker is somehow going against his party in doing his job as Speaker in defending the Commons’ privileges. Again, this isn’t actually a partisan issue on either side (well, the Conservatives making these demands for the documents, with the support of the other opposition parties, are behaving in an extremely partisan manner and trying to embarrass the government, but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of what we’re discussing). Trying to make it a partisan issue when everyone is doing their jobs is just degrading the discourse and muddying the understanding of what is going on (which is what certain parties would like to happen because it makes it easier for them to lie about the state of play). We shouldn’t be doing their dirty work for them.

Programming Note: I’m taking the next week off (as much as I am able), because it’s probably my only opportunity in advance of the possible election, and I really don’t want to have to deal with election coverage while battling burnout. Take care, and I’ll see you on the far side of the long weekend.

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Roundup: Exit Jody Wilson-Raybould

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Jody Wilson-Raybould announced yesterday that she wasn’t going to be running again in the next election, but wasn’t leaving to “spend more time with family.” Rather, she planned to continue her work in other venues, but noticed that the House of Commons had become more toxic and ineffective, which is very true.

https://twitter.com/Puglaas/status/1413128438592933898

While I don’t think that Wilson-Raybould was a particularly great minister (and she has yet to answer for her pushing blatantly unconstitutional legislation through), she nevertheless had a particularly valuable viewpoint that made the House of Commons better for having her in it. Her singularly pushing back against the Bloc’s attempts to play politics around Quebec’s Bill 96 and the proposed constitutional changes and nationhood declarations was something we could certainly have used more of, not less.

This having been said, I think Wilson-Raybould, like Jane Philpott, were somewhat naïve about the nature of federal politics, and were sold some particularly bad advice about life as an independent MP, and more broadly about hung parliaments in general. There is a particular romance around them, particularly from a segment of the political science crowd, which has rosy visions of the 1960s and inter-party cooperation to get things done, when hung parliaments in recent decades have simply been nasty and highly partisan, and that contributed a lot to the toxicity and ineffectiveness of this parliamentary session. On top of that, Wilson-Raybould had broken the trust of her fellow MPs, and that no doubt further isolated her in an already fractious situation in the Chamber. It’s too bad that she couldn’t have contributed more, but her no longer being there is a diminution to the kinds of voices that we should be hearing more of.

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Roundup: The bravery of a hollow stand

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Over the weekend, The Canadian Press had an interview with out gay Conservative MP Eric Duncan, talking about his fight against the blood donation deferral period for men who have sex with men, while at the same time members of his own party have been fighting the bill to ban conversion therapy. And while it’s great that the Conservatives finally have an out gay MP (previously, their only out member was Senator Nancy Ruth, though they had ministers like John Baird were out in their private lives, but simply refused to acknowledge it in the media), and that their new leader professes to want to be more inclusive (apparently in spite of his own members), there is nevertheless something a bit off with the way this has all played out.

The thing about Duncan’s apparent “bravery” with talking about the blood donor policy as a result of his own history with being rejected is that this is not something the government can actually do anything about because Canadian Blood Services and Héma Québec are arm’s length, and Health Canada’s regulatory role is outside of the minister’s purview. Yes, we can ask questions as to why the Liberals promised to end the ban if they couldn’t actually fulfil their promise, but for Duncan (and for that matter, the NDP) to try and hold the government to account for something that they can’t actually do is a problem. Likewise, they too would be making promises that either they can’t keep, or they are proposing a massive and troubling overreach where the government would wind up asserting jurisdiction, bigfooting those arm’s-length agencies, and setting precedents for bigfooting other arm’s-length bodies in the future, which is a very bad thing that we should be very concerned about.

As for the conversion therapy bill, there were no “common sense amendments” that would make it acceptable to the Conservatives without gutting the bill. The bill would not criminalize conversations between parents and children, or with pastors, and this constant fear that social conservatives have had for decades as LGBT+ rights have progressed has never come true, and yet they will keep banging on that drum. As for the refrain that certain senators are pushing that “the government had six years to do this” is disingenuous. There is only so much time in parliament and only so much capacity in government to get everything accomplished, and it’s not like we didn’t have anything else happening over these past six years (such as a crash in oil prices, the Donald Trump years, getting climate legislation passed, advancing the cause of Indigenous reconciliation, of when it comes to LGBT+ issues, getting trans rights enshrined in law – again to these same social conservative fears of criminalization). Governments can’t do everything at once, and these people know that. Don’t fall for the rhetoric.

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Roundup: Parliament versus itself

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Not unexpectedly, the Speaker of the House of Commons has declared that he’s going to fight “tooth and nail” for Parliament’s right to demand whatever documents they want – as well he should. But this is a very complex issue that becomes parliament fighting against itself, because of the obligations in places like the Canada Evidence Actthat triggered the process that the Attorney General had to undertake around those Public Health Agency documents related to the National Microbiology Lab firings.

With that in mind, here is some context as to what the Canada Evidence Act demands, and why this is not Justin Trudeau personally defying the will of parliament, but the government following its own laws.

For a further breakdown of the legal balancing act involved, and what the court process for this will look like, read through this thread (which was a little too long to simply post, but a couple of highlights are below).

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Roundup: Another 751 unmarked graves

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There was yet more sobering news yesterday, that as many as 751 unmarked graves were located near the former Marieval residential school in Saskatchewan. Aside from the sheer number, some ways in which this site differs from Kamloops is that not all of the graves will be of children, and that many had headstones, which the Catholic Church removed in the 1960s during a dispute – which is a criminal offence, and the local First Nations chief said that they are treating this like a crime scene. And non-Indigenous Canadians should brace themselves, because we’re going to hear about hundreds, perhaps thousands, more of these graves over the next few years as the work of locating them ramps up, making it impossible to ignore the true face of our country’s history.

In response to the announcement, prime minister Justin Trudeau stated that this is Canada’s responsibility to bear, which was met by the usual calls that this was not enough action. The government has already committed to funding these searches in accordance with the wishes of local First Nations communities, as not all of them want the same approach, and Marc Miller said that they are open to boosting the funding if the need is there. There are also calls for an independent inquiry into these sites, but that could be a complicated structure if it requires provinces to get involved (and it likely will), and we could find ourselves with a repeat of some of the problems faced by the MMIW inquiry if that is the case.

Of course, the government’s response was made all the more problematic because Carolyn Bennett sent a spiteful one-word text to Jody Wilson-Raybould, who then tweeted it out and declared it to be “racist and misogynistic,” listing the tropes that she felt it invoked. Bennett publicly apologised and stated that it was their “interpersonal dynamics” that got the better of her, by which she means that the pair pretty much cannot stand one another, which lines up with the stories of their fights in Cabinet. It doesn’t excuse it, and Bennett absolutely should know better (especially because Wilson-Raybould has demonstrated that she keeps receipts), but that hasn’t stopped this from eclipsing some of the coverage of the day, which should have focused on Marieval, and what the next steps need to be.

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