Tag Archives: Parliamentary Precinct

Roundup: The House of Commons’ vaccine mandate

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The expected happened in a way that was a little unexpected – and perhaps a bit improper. The Board of Internal Economy apparently met (possibly virtually), and decided that as of November 22nd, there is a vaccine mandate for the parliamentary precinct, and that includes MPs, staffers, and contractors. It’s a bit of a cute way of imposing a vaccine mandate on MPs themselves, but it may not fly regarding the Chamber itself because of parliamentary privilege.

Mind you, a privilege argument won’t last long. While the decision to go the route of BoIE seems to be a bit of a dare – and Yves-François Blanchet seems to indicate that he’s of the opinion that this is a legitimate use of its powers (I wouldn’t be so sure), this could easily be challenged in the Chamber, but even if the Speaker determines that there is a prima facie case of privileges being infringed, the rest of the House can vote instead to dismiss it rather than send it to committee, or even if they do send it to committee, vote it down afterward. And they likely will, because all of the parties except for the Conservatives are in favour of the vaccine mandate, so it’ll pass one way or the other. Now the government can head off any challenge by introducing a motion in the Chamber on the first or second day to declare that MPs need to be fully vaccinated in order to be in the Chamber, and they can then vote it through and it’ll be fully legit, so if they’re smart, they’ll ensure that happens once there is a Speaker in place. (This will also likely happen in the Senate, but they are still in discussion in that Chamber, but one can likely assume a similar vaccine mandate will be in place with their own precinct areas and Chamber in a similar manner).

This leaves the question of hybrid sittings. The Conservatives and Bloc have been in favour of ending them, while the NDP have supported keeping it going. The Liberals haven’t officially said, but they have been pushing for this since before the pandemic, so you can bet that they’ll be fine with some form of hybrid ability going forward, which shouldn’t be allowed – the human cost of hybrid sittings when it comes to the toll it takes on the interpreters is frankly immoral to continue with. That will nevertheless by an ongoing conversation between the parties before any order to resume said sittings goes ahead in the first few days of the new parliament – but a rule should also be made that unvaccinated MPs shouldn’t be allowed to simply join by hybrid sitting instead. Parliament, whether in the Commons or the Senate, is an in-person job, and it’s an essential function of this country. The hybrid measures should only ever have been temporary and for the duration of that pandemic emergency, and now that we have vaccines, there is no longer a need for them.

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Roundup: O’Toole wants intervenor status

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Yesterday morning, Erin O’Toole declared that he would seek intervenor status at the Federal Court in the dispute between the House of Commons and the Public Health Agency of Canada over the disclosure of classified documents. Apparently, he believes that he has a “distinct perspective” on the underlying issues raised by the case, which is…a bit novel considering that his press release was a partisan document that was not about legal arguments but rather about political calculus.

As a reminder, the process was triggered because under the Canada Evidence Act – which Parliament passed – says that when requests for secret or confidential documents are made to a government entity like PHAC, they must notify the Attorney General, and that triggered a process by which said Attorney General sought clarity from the Federal Court – does the Canada Evidence Act and its limitations supersede or otherwise restrict Parliament’s privileges in demanding documents and the production of papers as they see fit, given that they are ostensibly the highest court in the land. Plenty of people have tried to make this a partisan issue – O’Toole most especially among them – rather than a process where everyone is following the law, and the law conflicts with Parliamentary privilege.

I half-suspect that in this case, the Federal Court may not grant O’Toole standing, given that he has pretty much stated that this is going to be an attempt at electoral grandstanding inside of a court room, which the Court would be hesitant to do. Beyond that, his statement in the press release doesn’t actually make sense – the request to present the documents will die when Parliament is dissolved, and the special committee that demanded the documents ceases to exist. Beyond that, if he forms government, he won’t need to release the documents because he’d be able to read them in secret, thus eliminating the possibility that releasing them might compromise our Five Eyes obligations, or inadvertently compromise a foreign intelligence source (though I am not convinced this is a national security or intelligence issue, but rather more likely one of an RCMP investigation into policy breaches). Not to mention, the documents were released, both in a redacted form to the committee, and in an unredacted form to NSICOP, and the Conservatives want someone else to do the redacting who doesn’t have national security experience. I have a hard time discerning just what “distinct perspective” he has other than scoring points, given that the Speaker will be exercising his role in protecting the privileges of the Commons, and he doesn’t need O’Toole’s help for that.

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Roundup: We have a date for dissolution

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This is not a drill – the election call will be coming on Sunday, for an election date of September 20th – a thirty-six day campaign, which is the bare minimum and technically will take place entirely in the summer. But until that happens, you can expect a flurry of announcements later today – a child care agreement with Saskatchewan, probably a few more Senate appointments, possibly some more judges, and any other senior bureaucrats who need to be repositioned before the government goes into caretaker mode.

Of course, as this is taking place, case counts are once again starting to rise across the country, and we are officially at the start of a fourth wave – because of course we are. While we can expect to hear a lot of hand-wringing about this over the next week or so, I would expect that the bulk of rallies or events will be held outdoors over the course of the campaign, plus a lot more virtual events – after all, Erin O’Toole is renting out that studio space with its big screens to do just that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other leaders have similar plans that they have not yet unveiled.

Also, because this will drive me insane for the next week, the phrase “drop the writ” is completely wrong. There is no single writ, and it does not drop. Once the Governor General signs the proclamation to dissolve parliament, the Chief Electoral Officer will draw up 338 writs – one for each election being held (because remember, an election is not a single event – it’s 338 separate but simultaneous elections). So don’t use a wrong phrase, and save yourself a scolding from me.

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Roundup: Flirting with unconstitutional legislation

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The bill to mandate sexual assault training for judges was a bad idea from the start, when Rona Ambrose first tabled it years ago, and the current iteration that this government is putting forward is little better, especially now that MPs have decided they need to start amending it to add other things. While Ambrose’s initial bill was blatantly unconstitutional (that the Commons passed on a whim because of the political syllogism: Something needs to be done, this is something, therefore we must do this), and needed to be gutted in the Senate to make it acceptable, the current version was more or less acceptable (barring one or two possible issues), but it seems that MPs want to make it blatantly unconstitutional again.

Former Supreme Court of Canada executive legal officer Gib van Ert warned back in February that this bill would be an invitation to demand that judges take training in other areas than just sexual assault, and lo and behold, we are there, with demands for the “social context of systemic racism.”

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1321246603781570560

van Ert makes the point that if judges need to be seen as independent, then bills like this, where politicians appear to be giving them marching orders, is a bad look and will undermine the justice system. But since when to populist impulses consider the consequences of their actions? They don’t.

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Roundup: Stop proposing bad rule changes

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Sound the alarm, because MPs – and Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux in particular – are talking about changing the Standing Orders again. Lamoureux has apparently committed to bringing back Frank Baylis’ package of reforms, most of which were are either half-measures, or wrong-headed and will have unintended consequences that will simply make things worse. But as with anything, as soon as it’s been proposed, it becomes the politician syllogism – “Something must be done. This is something. Therefor we must do this.” Apparently, nobody learned a gods damned thing after Michael Chong’s garbage Reform Act, and we’re about to go through yet another attempted exercise that will wind up going badly. (I wrote about Baylis’ proposals last year).

There are a few things in the Lamoureux interview that I did want to highlight first, which is the talk about eliminating votes on Mondays and Fridays – that’s pretty much a given considering that they already don’t have votes on Fridays, barring exceptional circumstances like a vote-a-thon, and they rarely have them on Mondays either, and when they do, it’s usually in the evening, by which time most MPs should have arrived in Ottawa. I’m also going to give some major side-eye to MPs who complain that they could be doing more work in their ridings, because their jobs are in Ottawa. Their jobs are to hold the government to account by doing the work of things like scrutinizing the estimates, going through the Public Accounts, and studying legislation in committee. Their jobs are not actually about doing “casework” with constituents, most of which should be done by the civil service. An MP’s office is not supposed to be a Service Canada desk, and I wish that they would stop pretending that it was.

The other part that I’m getting increasingly irate with is the talk about developing a parallel chamber for the House of Commons, and dressing it up as “efficiency.” No. There is no reason for us to have one. It makes more sense in Westminster where they have 650 MPs, and there are fewer opportunities for them to have take-note debates on things in the main chamber, but we really don’t have either the need, or frankly the bodies to do it, because we already have enough of our MPs assigned to more than one committee outside of House Duty, so there are already not enough hours in the day for most of them. We also don’t need the hours for added “debate” on government bills – we need to reform how we’re structuring debate period. We don’t need additional time for private members’ business because it will only bottleneck in the Senate and die on the Order Paper anyway. There is zero rationale for it – but there is currently a romance with the notion, and so they keep proposing it. No. Stop it.

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Roundup: The “nice countries only” option

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In the wake of news that Saudi Arabia has, rather unsurprisingly, used Canadian-built LAVs against its own civilians, former Liberal cabinet minister Irwin Cotler is calling on the government to end arms sales to that country. Part of the problem here is that it means a lot of lost jobs in economically vulnerable areas of the country (where these jobs are really the only thing that is keeping that region from being devastated), and the fact that there seems to be this notion that we can only sell arms to nice countries. That notion came up in last night’s NDP leadership debate in Victoria, where the three participants all gave variations of “we should only sell to nice countries,” which is unrealistic. Stephanie Carvin made this point over Twitter a couple of days ago, and it deserves a second look.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/892030735296716802

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/892031138084122626

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/892036494092890112

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/892038040541171712

And that last point is the most salient – nobody wants to make hard choices, especially when it means lost jobs and economically devastating a region that each party covets (and make no mistake – all parties supported these jobs during the election, which makes it hard for them to be suddenly concerned about these sales to Saudi Arabia now, when they were all rooting for them when votes were on the line).

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Roundup: Freeland articulates her vision

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Foreign Affairs minister Chrystia Freeland gave her major foreign policy speech yesterday in the House of Commons, and the theme was basically that we can’t rely on the Americans anymore, so it’s time to step up more, and that includes hard power. That also means more spending on the military, some of which is there and waiting to actually be spent once we get some of our procurement issues sorted, but that particular speech is later today as the Defence Policy Review is finally unveiled. (And incidentally, on Friday, Marie-Claude Bibeau will unveil our feminist foreign aid policy). It was noted by a couple of people, chiefly among them Paul Wells, that we really should have a major foreign policy speech every year or so, and this is certainly a better indication of where the government’s thinking is at.

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/872099635107704832

This was not the case with the previous government, and it’s certainly worth noting. That this government actually uses the time allotted for statements by ministers is a good thing, as the constant eschewing of Parliament in favour of human backdrops in some alternate location was insulting.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Carvin offered some cogent analysis over Twitter, so here you go:

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872137661275934723

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872138106413166593

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872138388056551425

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872138744316534784

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872139113910194177

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872139424515149824

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872139675980443648

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872140002398003200

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/872140341067034624

You can also find Carvin’s thoughts in expanded form here. For some more analysis on the speech, read Paul Wells for some more context around the points Freeland made in the speech, Susan Delacourt on the jabs made at the Trumpocalypse, and Stephen Saideman for some more foreign and defence policy angles.

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Roundup: A ham-fisted trap for the Senate

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While Government Leader in the Senate – err, “Government Representative” Senator Peter Harder continues his tour of sympathetic media (the latest being the CBC), crying about how the Conservatives are holding government legislation “hostage” and how he needs to have the rules of the Senate changed, he and his team have been doing everything they can to destroy what collegiality exists with the Senate through ham-fisted procedural moves of their own.

The bill in question is C-4, which is the stated repeal of anti-union bills passed by the Conservatives in the previous parliament, and naturally they would be putting up a fight, tooth-and-nail, to keep their old legislation. Not surprising, but also a doomed fight. The bill was on track to pass the Senate this week, when Harder’s deputy, Senator Bellemare, announced that they would be calling a vote on it before Thursday, claiming that they had the support of all senators to do so, when in fact they didn’t. Reminder: the bill was on track to pass, as the Conservatives had exhausted their abilities to delay it. By pulling this manoeuvre, Bellemare basically sabotaged the working relationship between the caucuses in order to maybe shave a day or two from the bill. Maybe. Rather than letting it go through, she (and by extension Harder) turn it into a fight over procedure and sour feelings. Why? So that they can turn around and whine some more to the media that the political caucuses in the Senate are not working with them and are being obstructionist, therefore “proving” that they need these proposed rule changes that Harder wants. Harder, meanwhile, gets to look like he’s the victim and just trying to be reasonable when he’s the one who hasn’t been negotiating with the other caucuses this whole time.

What gets me is just how obvious he’s being about it. Well, obvious to someone who knows what’s going on in the Senate, but most people don’t, and he’s keen to exploit the fact that the general public – and indeed most journalists – aren’t paying attention, and he can use that to his advantage. None of their actions make sense if they actually wanted a working relationship with other senators and to try and get those bills they’re suddenly so concerned with (despite the fact that they have done nothing so far to try and move them along), which makes it all the plainer to see that this latest effort has nothing to do with trying to get bills passed in the Senate, and more to do with changing the rules in order to advantage his position.

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Roundup: Staffers defend Canadian presidentialism

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Andrew Coyne’s column on reverting to a system of caucus selection of party leaders got a lot of pushback over the Twitter Machine on Saturday, and curiously, those most in favour of retaining our current bastardized system of membership-selection were those who currently or formerly worked in the PMO (as well as a couple of current leadership candidates who don’t currently have seats in the House of Commons, which isn’t surprising seeing as they’d be excluded from such an exercise and well, they have egos to stroke given their current leadership ambitions).

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/848202229727338498

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/848203776028811267

https://twitter.com/jec79/status/848185597516820480

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/848226392533860352

And this presidentialization creep is what really gets under my skin, because it’s those who benefit from unearned power – the people in the PMO (less kids in short pants these days than they were under the previous government) who are the most ardent defenders of the system, and using this faux democratic mandate of the 150,000 “supporters” of the party as justification. What none of them bring up is the fact that the PM is unaccountable to those members in any real sense, and certainly unaccountable to the caucus he leads, and that’s a very big problem. And no, a system like that proposed in Democratizing the Constitution of membership selection/caucus removal would never work in practice because unless the method of selection matches the method of removal, there is a legitimacy problem, not to mention this is what happened with both Greg Selinger in Manitoba and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and look at where both of them are today. It’s not pretty, and it’s bad for our Westminster system. Caucus selection is really the system we need to revert to if we want accountable leaders and empowered MPs who aren’t being cowed by centralized leaders and their staffers, and we won’t get that now, especially if those staffers are all over the Twitter Machine trying to defend their turf.

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Roundup: A bit of NDP Kremlinology

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On New Year’s Day, the leader of the provincial NDP in New Brunswick resigned and quit the party altogether, citing party infighting, and more curiously, took a few swipes at the federal party along the way.

Why is this interesting? Because the federal NDP are in the midst of a leadership race that will double as some soul-searching about the party’s direction. This while the leftist parties in the States saw the “success” of Bernie Sanders (and I use the term loosely but his followers are totally serious about it), and the selection and re-election of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, where there is a definite shift in tone that follwos these leaders. And with that in mind, we saw a series of tweets from former federal NDP (and prior to that, UK Labour) staffer Lauren Dobson-Hughes which helps to put the New Brunswick and general NPD dynamic into context.

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815620894991196160

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815621424786341893

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815622197062619136

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815622765520781312

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815623274608599040

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815623837442310145

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815624631038214144

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815625236204883968

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815626448618799104

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/815627188871561216

What Dobson-Hughes says here I think will have a lot of impact on the NDP leadership contest, and I think explains a little as to why the party wasn’t willing to give Thomas Mulcair another chance in his leadership review post-election. It’s also what the (eventual) leadership hopefuls will be navigating, so I don’t think this is the last of the internal power-struggles in the party that we’ve heard of. And while Cardy’s critics continue to grouse about him in the media, there are tensions at play that we should be cognisant of, and that will matter as the party goes forward.

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