One of the big things that emerged from the Duffy trial yesterday was a raft of new emails released from Nigel Wright, along with Wright’s testimony. While none of it was particularly damning to the prime minister, a number of pundits and journalists were baying over the Twitterverse and elsewhere that “this proves that the PMO is controlling the Senate! Where’s the independence?” and so on, I’m going to get everyone to take a deep breath and calm down. Yes, the PMO has been playing the Senate leadership – not the Senate itself – like its own private pawn. I’m not going to dispute that fact. But I am going to offer some context. First of all, Stephen Harper broke the Senate with his petulant refusal to make appointments from 2006 to 2008, and then made mass appointments, which damaged the chamber. (Refresher read here). He had a Senate leader who did his bidding without question, which is a problem. Because said Senate leader had so many newbie senators under her wing who did her bidding without question, it set up a power dynamic that allowed the PMO to exercise power levers that don’t actually exist. Wright complained about this lack of levers at times in his correspondence, and we also know that the Senate staff, including committee clerks, were pushing back against this PMO control, even to the point of threatening legal action. (And to that point, this BuzzFeed headline is wrong – they weren’t “rogue staffers,” they were Senate staffers instead of political ones). This makes it a problem of actors instead of institutions. As it is designed, the Senate is already a bastion of institutional independence – appointed Senators have absolutely nothing preventing them from speaking truth to power, because they are protected right up to a retirement age of 75, which in turn protects them from needing to curry favour with the PM to get a post-Senate appointment to a board or tribunal. The system is designed to ensure that they can be fully independent – the problem is that the current crop of Conservative senators has chosen not to be, whether it’s out of ignorance of their role, sentimentality for the prime minister who appointed them, or the fact that they sincerely believe he knows what’s best, so they’ll do what he asks. I can’t think of any way to tinker with the system to prevent that. As a rule, senators get better with age, and when a party leadership changes, they tend to get really independent in a hurry, but until that point, this remains a problem of political actors instead of institutions.
Tag Archives: Nominations
Roundup: So long, Eve Adams
Some six months after crossing the floor, Eve Adams’ time as a Liberal is at an end as she was defeated in her nomination race in Eglington-Lawrence. Marco Mendicino, a former federal Crown prosecutor who put away terrorists in the “Toronto 18” plot, handily won the riding, and will go on to face Joe Oliver in the upcoming election. Of course, now comes all of the pundits who will question whether Adams’ defeat will also damage Justin Trudeau, but I will say that I’m unconvinced by those arguments. While Scott Reid wrote in the Citizen on Friday that loyal Liberals should hold their noses and vote for Adams to avoid damaging their leader, I think that he entirely misread the situation. When Trudeau accepted Adams into caucus, the reaction was pretty muted. When he did it, it was to take a boot to the Conservatives, and to have Adams talk about how the Conservatives were no longer the party of the Progressive Conservatives (never mind that she never was one). It was about playing up that Red Tories had a home in the Liberal Party. But after that, she faded to the background. Instead of putting her up in QP the next day to great applause, Adams didn’t even show up in the House for days. When she did, she stuck to the background, wasn’t given slots in QP or during Members’ Statements, and was pretty much kept out of the limelight. Trudeau, for his part, stuck to his line of open nominations and didn’t endorse her. And when the process played out and Mendicino won, Trudeau’s hands were clean. Yes, he accepted her into caucus, but that was it. He let the grassroots decide without any interference, and that says a lot, in an age of a lot of bellyaching about the rougher edges of the open nomination process (and seriously, people, the people who have complained about being red-lighted have pretty much proven why that was the case). If anything, things played out in the very best light for Trudeau – he has a strong local candidate that won in a fair race, and he still got in a few punches at the Conservatives when Adams crossed the floor. I have a hard time seeing how this is a negative for him in any way. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed Canada collects your tweets in response to Mendicino’s win.
Roundup: Giving terrorists what they want
Because they’re totally not trying to use public service resources for electioneering purposes, it has been revealed that the Foreign Affairs minister Rob Nicholson wanted his department to produce a minimum of three media statements per week regarding the security threats posed by terrorism. While they would draw from events around the world, the statements would have been a steady stream delivered to media inboxes in the hopes of getting some kind of traction. Fortunately, the civil servants in the department realised this was ridiculous and pushed back, saying it wasn’t a priority for them to fulfil these requests, and good on them for doing so – it’s not their job to try and help the party build a narrative for their election campaign. And no doubt, we’ll likely hear a lot more about the security question from the Conservatives going forward, because it’s not like their economic record is doing them any favours right now. Of course, the irony in all of this is that it would appear to feed directly into the aims of terrorists, which is of course, to create fear. If the government is going to deliver nothing but a stream of statements saying “Ooh, terrorists! Be very afraid!” then doesn’t it mean that they’re letting the terrorists win? Even if they follow it up with the chest thumping about how awesome the government is by taking such a strong stand against them, etcetera, etcetera? I’m at a bit of a loss as to how this is a brilliant strategy in the bigger picture.
Roundup: Fill in the blanks
None of what happened with the Amherst branch of the Royal Canadian Legion announcement yesterday was out of the ordinary or unexpected, but it was one giant confirmation of what we are seeing daily in the debasement of our politics. Conservative MP Scott Armstrong mistakenly sent out a press release that still had all of the track changes, and it showed very clearly that it was a fill-in-the-blanks job. Because gods forbid an announcement was made that wasn’t pabulum. Pretty much all political speech has become this – checklists of talking points that need to be ticked off in whatever the context. Giving a members’ statement? Here are the talking points you need to say – or better yet, here’s the fill-in-the-blanks statement we’ll hand to you. Going on a panel show at 5 o’clock? Here are the lines you can deliver, and the slogans you need to recite. The funny thing is, I’ve met MPs who’ve gotten media training – which they paid for out of their own pockets – and they can do without all of this box-checking, blanks-filled-in pap that they would recite otherwise. But those MPs made the choice to not do what their fellows were doing, and proved they could speak on their own without sounding like a babbling idiot. But most MPs don’t take the time to learn how to speak in public, or in the media, or how to write a speech on their own. It’s mostly just a handful of veteran MPs who can do it these days, and that doesn’t bode well for the future seeing the number of incumbents who aren’t running again. Unless MPs start to do something about their own situation – or better yet, voters demand that they do – we’ll wind up with a parliament of MPs reading more of these scripts like robotic simpletons.
Roundup: Crossing the line with a golf shirt
The official date of the new child benefit cheques going out saw the Conservative government at its most ham-handed yesterday, starting with a “leaked” letter to caucus about just how historic this event was as the “single biggest one-time direct payment in Canadian history.” Funny, it seems to me that an actual conservative government would rather just lower taxes across the board rather than bribe people with their own money, but oh, wait – this is a right-flavoured populist government and not a real Conservative one. As ministers and MPs went around the country to tout the benefit, and social media sites were bombarded with blaring ads, some of which were branded as “Christmas in July,” Pierre Poilievre was the most egregious of all, hosting a press event in Halifax that was arranged by his department, and yet featured him wearing a Conservative-branded golf shirt, as though this were a partisan event, or that it was somehow the Conservatives doling out this largesse rather than the Government of Canada. It was utterly crass, and yet the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner decreed that no, it wasn’t actually in contravention of the rules, though one cannot deny that it was in poor taste and poor judgement. Mind you, this bit of vote-buying is going to blow a big hole in the government’s budget, given that growth projections are down and we are pretty much certainly back into a deficit position (not that the budget was actually balanced – simply papered over by raiding the contingency reserve and the EI fund). But then again, the NDP have declared that the child benefit would remain under their plan on top of their plans to have this universal childcare programme (well, years down the road at a great cost to the provinces) and the Liberals planning to revamp the whole system that will also cost at least an extra couple of billion more than this programme does. Watching this play out in the election while each touts fiscal responsibility will be an interesting exercise.
https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/623101132664127488
https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/623280296646057984
https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/623280700016472064
Roundup: A mixed pipeline message
There was confusion in the ranks yesterday as to just what the NDP position on the Energy East pipeline is. Recently they said that it was the “cornerstone” of their energy policy, and then comes an interview in L’Actualité where Mulcair is quoted as saying that he’s against it. And then Twitter went bananas. The NDP comms staff started rushing out transcripts and partial audio files to counter it, before their youth wing sent out a tweet cheering the opposition to said pipeline – only to have to delete it a few minutes later “for clarification.” Suffice to say, it did look a bit sloppy, and like he’s trying to give two separate messages to two different parts of the country – something that the party has certainly done before.
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/621781691946954752
https://twitter.com/aradwanski/status/621790674044776452
@kady @BeetonSteve @RosieBarton @NDPHoC_NPDCdC 🙂 pic.twitter.com/xIEVvFS7kb
— David Valentin (@davidvalentin) July 16, 2015
https://twitter.com/bruceanderson/status/621797933323841540
I haven't heard the whole interview. The bit NDP sent doesn't have those words. If there is a bit with those words, NDP is in big trouble.
— Stephen Maher (@stphnmaher) July 16, 2015
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/621808388113100800
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/621808715474317312
https://twitter.com/InklessPW/status/621809490409734144
OK, Mulcair's position on Energy East makes sense, but only if he's running for Leader of the Opposition.
cf @InklessPW's Fourth Rule.
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 17, 2015
How does "We oppose Energy East unless we approve of enviro eval process" translate into what the NDP would do as govt?
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) July 17, 2015
Roundup: Wai Young, Conservative fabulist
Yesterday it was revealed that Conservative MP Wai Young spoke at a church congregation to tell them that Harper was doing things in the same vein as Jesus, and used Bill C-51 as an example. Because Jesus was really concerned about giving inordinate powers to intelligence agencies without any kind of oversight, and about preventing terrorist attacks – oh, wait. No he wasn’t. While Young’s terrible theology sparked the usual ridicule over the Twitter Machine, it was her other statement that was perhaps most alarming, which was her claim that CSIS knew there was a bomb on the Air India flight 30 years ago, but were forbidden from sharing that information with the RCMP, and 400 people died as a result. Except no, none of that is true, they didn’t know and they could share information. Oops. Young later claimed that she “misspoke,” but that seems to be code amongst Conservative MPs for making stuff up. You know, like when that other Conservative backbencher apologised to the House for “misspeaking” when he claimed that he has directly witnessed people taking voter identification cards out of the recycling bin with the intention of casting fraudulent ballots. Turns out that one wasn’t true either. But hey, political fabulism is apparently okay so long as you apologise for “misspeaking” when you get caught. Truth and debating on the strength of your ideas doesn’t matter – no, you can just invent things out of whole cloth, repeat complete fabrications against your opponents (income splitting for seniors, anyone?) and say it often enough in the hopes that people will start believing it’s true (Hello, 2011 election). Why wouldn’t a backbencher like Young think it’s okay if this is the behaviour that she’s watching get rewarded by everyone else around her? It’s a sad indictment of the state of our political discourse.
Roundup: Not the safe space you’re looking for
Over in the National Post, Ashley Csanady found that the student council at the University of Waterloo has taken to abusing the concept of “safe spaces” to try and move their council meetings behind closed doors. Apparently student leaders have argued – with a straight face – that these closed-door meetings would foster a “safe environment, and less scrutiny results in better decision-making.” All of which is complete and utter nonsense because as political actors, they have obligations to transparency in order that they may be held to account. If they’re uncomfortable being challenged in public, then they shouldn’t run for office (which is an issue I have with people who run for office at any level of government, particularly federally – if you can’t so much as ask or answer a thirty-second question in QP without relying on a script and having your hand held, why are you there?) Now, there is a time and a place for closed-door meetings, and in camera discussions in grown-up politics, but it’s not all the time, and it’s not so that they can feel “safe.” Sometimes it takes a while to come up with suitable language when you’re putting together a report, and there is a case that some of the Board of Internal Economy’s decisions do happen better behind closed doors because some MPs can actually behave like adults when no one else is around, and I’m not sure it helps when they’re not using it as an excuse to play up the partisan drama for the cameras – again. (Also, BOIE deals with a lot of personnel issues that have legitimate privacy considerations). Yes, there has been an alarming trend in federal politics to move all considerations of committee business behind closed doors, likely because the Conservatives on the committee don’t want to be seen being irrationally partisan when they deny opposition motions, but they’re not using – or rather abusing – the notion of a safe space, or saying that they feel threatened by the exposure. Not wanting to look like jerks on TV is not a reason to meet in camera, and yet they do it anyway, and we the public should hold them to account for said behaviour. Hopefully the students at Waterloo will also see thought this charade, and vote this council out next year as well.
Roundup: Abusing the Senate for partisan ends
The parade of people looking aghast at that Senate committee interim report continued yesterday, much of it with the usual cartoonish depictions of the Senate as a whole, never mind that this was a small group of Conservatives that made the recommendations in an interim report, and the Liberals on the committee explicitly dissented from it. Yes, the proposal is problematic and no doubt there are many in the Muslim community who are sceptical because it’s not a monolithic religion. Even those who are supportive in theory, because of the problem of foreign-trained imams that are more likely to come from radicalised schools, are wary of the current government and its mechanisms for dealing with it, though it has also been noted that the government already issues work permits for these imams, so perhaps that is a tool they could better use now. The report did mention what happens in Europe, but the language is vague, and what does happen in many European countries is providing funding for imam-training schools, with the intention of helping them learn about the language and culture of the country they’re heading to. Could this be what they mean? Maybe, but it’s still an interim report, so we won’t know until maybe December, assuming that the next parliament is actually constituted by then. So what to make of it? John Ivison posits that the report reads like a Conservative election platform, and I don’t think he’s wrong. This government has not been above abusing the Senate for its own ends before, and it looks like they’re doing it again. And yes, you’re going to look aghast at the suggestion that the Senate is partisan, never mind that it is and always has been – it’s usually just less partisan because Senators don’t need to campaign for re-election. It’s also in a difficult period right now because the majority of the Conservatives in the Senate were appointed in a manner that stressed the Chamber’s ability to absorb them, and that in turn led the Conservative leadership therein to further abuse the chamber by going heavy on the whip. It is a problem that may not be solved until Harper is no longer the party leader and this group no longer feels beholden to him. Until then, we should be critical, but let’s keep said criticism in perspective. The institution itself is not to be faulted because it currently has some problematic appointments and a Prime Minister that is keen to abuse it.
Senator Mitchell goes on the record for why the Liberals dissented from the committee report. #SenCA #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/x9hZPn0YS6
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) July 9, 2015
Roundup: A curious recommendation
The Senate’s national security and defence committee released an interim report yesterday on countering the terrorist threat in Canada. The report made some 23 recommendations, many of them critical of what the government has and has not yet done, such as making it a criminal offence to be part of a terrorist organization, or having a “no-visit” list to keep known ideological radicals out of the country. The one that got the most attention on Power & Politics and subsequently the Twitter Machine was recommendation 9, which suggests the government “work with the provinces and the Muslim communities to investigate the options that are available for the training and certification of Imams in Canada.” And then they were off about how this was criminalizing speech and thought, and how it was likely to be a Charter issue, but actually reading the report itself, the preceding section noted the problems of amateur prison proselytizers, and that members of the Muslim community were concerned about foreign-trained imams spreading extremist ideology, and noted that certification is already the case in Europe. Not much further down in the report is a reputable Calgary imam talking about how extremist ideology is being protected on campuses under the guise of “academic freedom.” In this context, the recommendation doesn’t seem nearly as extreme as it was presented, but hey, it’s not like that context made it into some of the articles (not that surprising, unfortunately). This having been said, there remain problems with the report, which is why the Liberal senators dissented from the report, looking for more counselling, early intervention, study of the roots of radicalization, and more importantly resources for RCMP that the government seems reluctant to do. Is it perfect work? No. Is it better than we’d get from the Commons? Yes. It’s also still an interim report, and more work will be done on it in the next parliament, so perhaps things will improve with it before the final version is issued. In the meantime, it’s not a bad thing that senators are actually talking about this issue without relying solely on slogans.