Tag Archives: Patrick Brazeau

Roundup: The Senate should strangle Chong’s bill

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There has been a sudden flurry of concern regarding the state of Michael Chong’s Reform Act, currently in the Senate, because the bill is likely to die there. In fact, if there were any sense in the world, it would, but not before the pundit class starts wailing and gnashing their teeth about how terrible it is that the unelected Senate would defeat a wildly popular bill from the Commons. Of course, that’s immediately where my head hits the desk, because that’s exactly why we have the Senate we do – because sometimes MPs overwhelmingly vote in dumb things, and cooler heads in the Senate can talk them down and defeat them without fear of electoral repercussion. You know, sober second thought, the raison d’etre of the Upper Chamber. And let’s face it – the Reform Act is a spectacularly terrible bill that will undermine Responsible Government and our system of Westminster-style democracy pretty much permanently. And if you think the gong show that just happened with the leadership review in Manitoba was an exception, well, Chong’s bill would see to it that those become somewhat more the norm across the country. The bill will do nothing to “empower” MPs. It will do the opposite by disincentivising them from rebelling against their leaders, as has successfully overturned bad leaders in many instances (most recently Alison Redford comes to mind). What will empower MPs is for them to actually stiffen their spines and do their jobs, because they have all the power that they need already – a lesson that Senator Fraser reiterated in her speech against Chong’s bill. But contrary to Andrew Coyne’s assertion, the Conservative leadership in the Senate has been inclined to pass the bill, but there are a number of Conservative senators who have wised up to the fact that the bill is terrible and they would do well to kill it in one way or another. Other senators are keenly aware that even MPs who voted for the bill know it’s terrible but didn’t think they could be seen to vote against it, so they sent it to the Senate, where it could be killed there, and they could use it as political cover (and denounce those terrible, awfully, unelected and unaccountable senators for killing a bill that passed the Commons even though MPs knew it was terrible). The “pass it off to the other chamber” game is not a new phenomenon (second only to “let’s pass it off to the Supreme Court”), but it’s another sign of how spineless MPs have become. Not that Chong’s bill would do anything about that spinelessness, ironically. Instead, it looks like it will be up to the Senate to save MPs from themselves yet again, and MPs won’t learn their lessons about taking their responsibilities seriously.

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Roundup: Hiding behind the top brass

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It has not gone unnoticed that the government has not been putting themselves out in front of the release of the Deschamps Report into sexual misconduct in the military, and the opposition is rightly pointing out that there is such a thing as ministerial responsibility, which means that the minister needs to be out in front of this – but he’s not. He’s instead left it up to his parliamentary secretary to deliver some talking points that aren’t actually demonstrating responsibility, and worse yet, they’re almost self-congratulatory as the lines being delivered about how the Chief of Defence Staff ordered the report. Err, so what? The CDS is already pushing back on some of the recommendations by agreeing with eight of the ten “in principle” only, and there is still some level of denial at the top, where they describe that the endemic sexualised culture in the report as simply being the perception of those that Justice Deschamps interviewed. In other words, there needs to be more leadership at the top saying that no, you can’t just shrug this off and do a few things for show – you actually need to push and work at this until there is a genuine culture change. CBC Radio interviewed Major-General Christine Whitecross, who is heading up the response to the report, and she echoed some of that same reluctance, but she did relent on the point that the independent centres for reporting incidents was probably the way to go, but they want to study it some more, both in terms of what our allies have put into place in their own countries, and what resources are available here in Canada, and she is not dismissing it outright, which is at least something.

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Roundup: A damning report on military misconduct

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The Deschamps Report is now released, and as feared, it’s a black eye for the Canadian military. The report details a highly sexualised culture within the Forces, complete with sexist language, jokes, and unwanted advances leading to date rape and worse, making the Forces a hostile environment for not only women, but also GLBT individuals within the Forces. It was also stated that the more people went up the ranks, the more they became inured to the incidents, making superior officers unlikely to recognise it when it happens. Deschamps made ten recommendations, and the military only said they would accept two immediately, and the others “in principle,” including creating an exterior body that can receive complaints about harassment, which would be needed precisely because it’s outside of the structure of the Forces and won’t be somewhere that complainants would need to fear retaliation, and where they could be taken seriously. It needs to be pointed out that the government distanced themselves from this release – Jason Kenney was nowhere to be seen, even absent from Question Period despite the fact that he was in the Foyer giving a press conference not two hours earlier. (That the official opposition raised the report in a clumsy and scripted way is also concerning but I covered this ground in yesterday’s QP recap). A retired officer who is now a lawyer says that part of the problem is the military justice system, and it needs major reforms if it is to help end this culture. NDP MP Christine Moore, who served in the Forces, noted that she had faced this same kind of harassment the report details. And here’s a Q&A with more information about the report.

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Roundup: Some questionable justifications

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Yesterday, Jason Kenney went on a charm offensive to lay out the legal position on extending our bombing raids into Syria, most notably saying that we have authority under Article 51 of the UN Charter, with Iraq asking us to help them defend their borders while the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to. It’s pretty thin ice under international law, but if the Americans are doing it, apparently that’s good enough for this government. More dubious was Kenney saying that we’re acting in the “spirit of” Responsibility to Protect, to which Trudeau later made the point that one of the tenets of R2P is that you don’t make the situation worse, which could be the outcome if our bombing ISIS in Syria ends up solidifying Assad/ And what about Syrian air defences? Do we not need to coordinate with them so as to not get shot down? Kenney says there’s no ground radar in that part of the country, and that ISIS doesn’t have weapons capable enough of taking down our fighter jets. Kenney also made the claim that only the smart bombs that Canada and the US posses in the alliance are capable of doing the job, but experts are disputing that fact, pointing out that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also have the capability. In other words, this sounds like Kenney embellishing the truth again, which puts the veracity of his other statements into question as well. As for Harper, he started joking that we didn’t have to worry about ISIS’ lawyers taking us to court, when the bigger concern is actually other world leaders. You know, like Putin, for whom we are accusing of breaking international law for annexing the Crimea. Oh, wait a twisted little world it is.

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Roundup: Cases and questions on Iraq

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Stephen Harper gave his big speech about extending the Iraq mission into Syria yesterday morning, and not unsurprisingly, the opposition parties were not in favour of the motion, though they have slightly different reasons for it. The NDP, not surprisingly, reject the whole mission outright and went so far as to basically call Harper an ally of Bashar al-Assad, while the Liberals focused on principles they laid out not being met, and their past objections about the mission not being suitable for Canadian non-combat capabilities. There was also the difference of the NDP promising to pull our forces out right away if they form government, whereas the Liberals said that they wouldn’t because we’ve made commitments to our allies and they would ensure that we at least see those through. As for the legal justification, the Conservatives offered a couple of different ones during the day, which doesn’t help with the clarity. Here’s the statement Elizabeth May would have said if she hadn’t been denied permission to speak by the jackasses in the backbenches. Paul Wells parses the speeches a little more, and pays particular attention to Trudeau and his attempt to stay consistent. Michael Petrou gives some perspective sauce as someone who’s been in the region an on the front lines. Stephen Saideman has questions and comments about the motion, and David Pugliese tries to answer a few of the basic questions people may have. Philippe Lagassé examines the motion from the lens of a political convention (still likely designed to launder the decision) as opposed to an attempt to build a constitutional one.

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Roundup: Witnesses of dubious expertise

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As the hearings on C-51 resume, the government has come out swinging with what they consider to be a star witness – the sister of slain soldier Patrice Vincent, who of course thinks that the bill is necessary. The problem, of course, is that she really has no credentials other than being victim of a tragedy, and if you ask me, the government is pretty unseemly in exploiting her grief to push legislation that actual experts are not convinced about. It’s not the first time they’ve used this tactic, and it hasn’t always worked – remember Amanda Todd’s mother, who wasn’t ready to hand over civil liberties to try and halt the spectre of cyber-bulling. Not that it stopped Stephen Blaney from touting Louise Vincent over and over again in QP yesterday, and he’s likely to repeat her praise for the bill today and going forward whenever criticism is levelled at the bill. Other witnesses yesterday included former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who wants more oversight in the bill, and at least one other small-c conservative commentator, who has her own doubts about the bill, in case you were wondering if all of the opposition was coming from the “loony left.” Elsewhere, Conservative MP Michael Chong is now adding his voice to those who want more oversight, while the National Firearms Association, who have expressed a great deal of scepticism over the bill, has pulled out from testifying.

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Roundup: A poor excuse for a culture war

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Apparently we’re calling it a “culture war” now, this little fracas going on about the niqab and the Prime Minister decreeing what a woman can and cannot where, and when they can and cannot wear it. Face-coverings, for example – bad at citizenship ceremonies where a woman’s identity has already been determined and she’s completed all of the steps for citizenship, but okay in the civil service (or so says Tony Clement). Both of the opposition leaders are trying to press the narrative that Harper is “fostering intolerance” with his particular decrees, along with the way that he has singled out Muslims with references to mosques in his statements on countering terrorism. The NDP and the Conservatives are trying to cast Trudeau’s speech on Monday as over the top, and accusing him of bringing up the Holocaust when he in fact didn’t – only the immigration policy at the time as it dealt with Jews, and that was as an example of places that the country has failed in the past. For his part, Harper insists that the “overwhelming majority” of Canadians agree with him about niqabs – except that’s the thing about minorities, and why we shouldn’t subject them to the whims of the majority. It’s one of the hallmarks of a liberal democracy, as Harper should well know. Trudeau also tried to play his own rhetorical games, saying that Harper accused the Muslim faith of being anti-woman, when he was referring to the culture that insists that women wear niqabs. (Harper, incidentally, doesn’t seem to be pressing Saudi Arabia, where this cultural practice originates, on their misogyny). So really, everyone is playing political games here, and that’s as surprising as finding out that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Paul Wells notes, however, that it’s the first time in that the Liberals have given a Liberal argument in years – since the last three leaders, in fact. So while we are getting some discussion on an issue like this, I’m not convinced that this really qualifies as “culture war” territory, at least not like we’re seeing south of the border.

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Roundup: Mandating bilingual tweets

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The Official Languages Commissioner has decreed that cabinet ministers should tweet in both official languages, which seems like a fairly concerning decree when you look at how some of those ministers are using the Twitter Machine to engage in some actual dialogue with actual Canadians (and some journalists too) about issues, without it all being canned statements and talking points. The caveat to the Commissioner’s statement is that they must use both official languages when communicating “objectives, initiatives, decisions and measures taken or proposed by a ministry or the government.” In other words, those canned links to press releases. The thing is, those are already being tweeted out by the official department accounts, whereas the ministers tweeting – at least for the good ones – are more “personal” and less filtered. Those are where the value in Twitter lies, and if the objective is to simply turn ministerial Twitter accounts to official releases, then what’s the point? I think this may be an instance where the Commissioner needs to perhaps re-evaluate social media and the engagement that happens over it.

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Roundup: More security, no more oversight

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The new anti-terrorism bill was unveiled today, but in the government’s singularly dickish fashion – sending journalists to a lock-up off the Hill where they couldn’t even see the bill for the first hour, while Harper made the announcement in a pre-campaign stop in a suburb of Toronto. While the bill would largely expand the powers of CSIS greatly, it lowers the legal thresholds for preventative arrest and peace bones, criminalising the “promotion” of terrorism, allowing CSIS to “disrupt” would-be terror activities, removing terrorist materials from the web, sealing court proceedings, and overhauling the national no-fly list. Oddly enough, nobody would say how any of these measures could have prevented the October 22nd shooting in Ottawa. What it doesn’t do is provide any new or additional oversight to the agency, unlike all of our allies (but hey, they finally filled one of the empty seats on SIRC yesterday, but it’s still not up to full strength and there’s no permanent chair. Yay oversight!). It’s a strange kind of obstinacy, and only serves to make it like the government has something to hide. And then of course there are the concerns from civil liberties groups and the Privacy Commissioner, which goes to the breadth of activities and again the lack of proper civilian oversight. Tyler Dawson writes that the need to criminalise that “promotion” of terrorism is an admission of being afraid of these terrorists.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/561220364957933569

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Roundup: Income splitting – sort of

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As expected, Stephen Harper announced a scaled back version of his income splitting proposal, but structured as a tax credit and not actual income splitting, paired it with a number of other measures like increasing the universal child benefit payments, and childcare tax credits so as to try to blunt the criticisms that income splitting mostly benefits the most wealthy of families and doesn’t benefit those who need it most – single parent families and those of lower incomes. Jennifer Robson takes the proposal apart, and notes the real winners are lawyers and tax professionals. Economist Stephen Gordon adds a few notes, which need to be said.

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