Tag Archives: PCO

Roundup: Wilson-Raybould’s recorded call

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Because we couldn’t go another weekend in the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair without another bombshell, we got one in the revelation that among the materials that Jody Wilson-Raybould turned over to the justice committee was a recording she made of a conversation she had with outgoing Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, which was quickly pointed out was in violation of the ethical obligations of lawyers (and no, this isn’t a situation of whether you’re wearing your Attorney General or Minister of Justice hat – it’s whether you’re a lawyer, and if you are, you are forbidden from surreptitiously recording a conversation). ETA:  This may have been overstating it, but there is an argument that Wernick could have been a client receiving advice, which is where it would violate the rules.

I did listen to the recording, and I had a few observations, but there are a few things I noticed that weren’t being talked about in any of the rush to find a smoking gun. For starter, there is a very performative element to the recording – she’s asking very leading questions, and fishing for quotes. I know this because I make my living having conversations with people on tape in order to get quotes for stories. And some of the formality of the language with which she speaks – there is a lot of spelling out of acronyms and relationships that read like a literary device we call an “As you know, Bob,” where you explain things in dialogue to someone who should know what you’re talking about. This conversation was rife with this kind of phrasing, so it looked very much like she wanted this for a purpose. She stated that, while she knows it was unethical, she did it because she was afraid the conversation would “inappropriate” and she didn’t have staff around to take notes. But there is an intent here that I’m curious about.

As for the content of the conversation, a few things stood out for me, which I haven’t seen being written about in the media, because they are focusing on the quotes that she specifically set up for them. First of all, Wernick’s tone seemed to me to be more of a friendly warning – the PM was looking for answers, but I didn’t get the sense that there were threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. Wernick made the point several times in the conversation that “He wants to understand more why the DPA route isn’t being used.” Repeatedly, Wernick is trying to get information about why the Director of Public Prosecution has rejected it, and each time, Wilson-Raybould tried to bring it back to “I’m uncomfortable with this, but I’m happy to talk to you,” and threats that these conversations were bordering on inappropriate. Wernick keeps insisting that they are trying to keep these conversations above-board, and that they’re not actually asking her to do anything, but they’re looking for information because they want to ensure that they’ve done their due diligence with regard to those jobs.

Regarding outside legal advice, Wernick said that he was concerned the PM would seek it himself, or if Wilson-Raybould felt it more appropriate, have it go through her, and former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin’s name is bandied about several times, which should make everyone feel a little gross, but we developed a political culture of “Mother, May I?” in this country when it comes to getting the blessing of the Supreme Court of Canada, either with its current or former members. Wilson-Raybould went on about public perceptions of interference if she overrode the DPP’s decision about granting the remediation agreement, which is fair (and she warned him that she was keeping receipts), and there was even an exchange where she’s talking about the prime minister and prosecutorial independence, and Wernick said “I don’t think he sees it like that,” to which Wilson-Raybould snapped back, “Then nobody’s explaining that to him, Michael.” (As an aside, one wonders if that was not her job). But again, Wernick kept circling back for an explanation – not direction – asking when the DPP related her decision to Wilson-Raybould, and specifically asking “Can they get her to explain?” Wilson-Raybould insisted that the Prime Minister’s office had the report since September, to which Wernick replied “That’s news to me.” And what I find fascinating is that Wernick keeps asking for explanations, and the media picked out the quotes about pressure. They were very much talking past one another,

There were the other documents she turned over, which included her reasons for resigning from Cabinet, and a couple of things leapt out at me from there – one being that with this release, she doesn’t think she has anything left to contribute to a formal process in looking into this. The other is that in her personal observations at the end, she goes on about looking forward “to a future where we truly do politics differently,” which could be hints about future political ambitions. (John Geddes has some more good parsing about parts of the Cabinet conversation around DPAs here).

In fallout from this, Justin Trudeau put out a statement saying that he hadn’t been briefed on this conversation, and that he wished that Wilson-Raybould had come to him directly, but he’s taken responsibility for the loss of trust, announced next steps, and he wants to move forward (as a team). This while more Liberals in the caucus are getting restive and want Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott to be ousted, and they’re signing their names to it rather than whispering anonymously. With Wernick already on his way out, and Wilson-Raybould saying that there’s no more for her to tell, one supposes that Trudeau hopes this will finally put an end to things and he can move forward without showing any further contrition that his taking responsibility for the breakdown in trust, and that he can leave it up to his pabulum talking points going forward. I guess we’ll see how much is left to litigate in Question Period, but I guess we’ll see if there are any additional rabbits to be pulled out of hats now.

And then come the hot takes, and hottest of all is Andrew Coyne, who takes this as a complete vindication for Wilson-Raybould. Susan Delacourt sees some poetic parallels between Trudeau fighting for his political life right now, with that boxing match with Senator Brazeau some seven years ago this weekend. Chris Selley notes that the tape really won’t change anyone’s mind, but does give Wilson-Raybould props for not bowing to the status quo.

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Roundup: Trudeau begins his Big Reset

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Yesterday very much looked like the start of Justin Trudeau’s attempted Big Reset after the weeks of damage that the Double-Hyphen Affair has done to his reputation, starting with the appointment of Joyce Murray to Cabinet as the new Treasury Board president. Murray has been the parliamentary secretary for Treasury Board during the entire life of this government, has been pushing for a “greening of government” initiative within the department, and has a history of being someone who has gone offside with the rest of caucus on several occasions, thus her appointment could be seen as sending signals that Trudeau is open to disagreement. Following this was the announced retirement of Michael Wernick as Clerk of the Privy Council, citing that he couldn’t carry on in the role if he was no longer trusted by opposition parties on issues like his role around sounding the alarm regarding election interference. This doesn’t mean culpability for the Double-Hyphen Affair, but it is nevertheless part of the accountability process (and accountability, like democracy, is a process). Wernick will be replaced by Ian Shugart, who is currently the deputy minister of foreign affairs. (I’m also not convinced that this is the last of the staffing changes, and we may yet see more cleaning house in the PMO as a demonstration of doing something).

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Minutes later, during Question Period, Trudeau announced that former justice minister Anne McLellan was named as a special advisor to the prime minister to examine aspects of what happened in the Affair, particularly as it relates to the dual roles of Justice Minister and Attorney General, and whether it’s time to separate the two. (She also backed out of a fundraiser for the Liberal Judy Lamarsh fund – which aims to help more women run for office – after taking on the new role). And then, after QP, Trudeau gave a rousing speech about condemning hatred and calling out white supremacy, and made some pointed digs at Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier for their winking and nudging of white nationalists without condemning their messages. All of this is working to change the narrative – things are being put into place to fix what happened, the speech sets Trudeau on a different rhetorical tone than Scheer – and sets out a huge contrast between the two, especially after Scheer’s insipid speech that followed – so we’ll see if the Liberals can capitalise on this, but the fact that Trudeau explicitly said in the speech that this was exactly the time for politics could be the signal that he wants to fight an election on this issue.

But that may be harder to do, given that the Liberal members of the justice committee put out a letter saying that they weren’t inclined to call Jody Wilson-Raybould back to testify further, stating that they’d heard enough and wanted to get on with the report, and let the other processes carry on. I will say that at least they put out a letter with reasoning in it – they simply could have gone in camera today and emerged saying they were going to focus on writing the report, and saying nothing more. You know, like the Conservatives frequently did when they were in power. It doesn’t look good for the Liberals, and feeds the Conservative narrative that they’re hiding something, but they may simply be trying to move on as quickly as possible. (Of course, there is no smoking gun here, and it’s a matter of determining credibility and finding the line of where pressure is deemed “inappropriate,” so that makes for a harder sell to keep this going as long as possible).

The Senate, meanwhile, is debating the motion to start their own study on the issue, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m not sure that the Conservatives in the Senate will get the Independents onside, as their performance during the inaugural televised Senate Question Period had the ISG leader tweeting right away that it was all about partisan posturing, but stranger things have happened.

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Roundup: A policy without details, part eleventy

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Earlier this week, the Conservatives unveiled a new election policy, which was about removing the GST on home heating. For those of you who remember, this used to be an NDP policy that never went anywhere. It’s populist in that its economically illiterate and won’t help those who need it most, but gives a bigger break to the wealthy. But over the past couple of days, economists have been digging into just what this entails, so I figured I would showcase some of that discussion, to get a better sense of a promise that comes with few details about implementation. (Full thread here).

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Double-Hyphen Affair developments

There was a slightly unexpected development in the Double-Hyphen Affair yesterday when the Federal Court decision on SNC-Lavalin’s request for judicial review of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision not to offer them a deferred prosecution agreement was released, and to the surprise of nobody who has paid the slightest bit of attention, it was denied because this isn’t something that is reviewable by the courts. So that means the prosecution goes ahead, barring the Attorney General issuing a directive that would override the DPP’s decision. In related news, here’s a deeper look at just who SNC-Lavalin was consorting with abroad, and for all of his demands for Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Andrew Scheer says he won’t introduce any non-confidence motion. Hmmm…

And because the hot takes are still coming on this, Chris Selley wonders whether there will be utility to prosecuting a company if it takes four years to even decide whether to prosecute, during which time the company has undergone an ethics and compliance overhaul. Andrew Coyne wonders why any company would bother with the courts when they can lobby as effectively as SNC-Lavalin has (but perhaps it’s because SNC just plays that game better than anyone else). Martin Patriquin supposes that Trudeau may be playing this whole Affair that will benefit him in the long term. Colby Cosh (rightly) clocks the Liberals’ supposed commitment to internationalism also taking a beating in light of the Affair given that it is centred on SNC-Lavalin’s corrupt practices in Libya.

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Roundup: Trying to draw the line of appropriateness

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I think it’s fair to say that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony at the Commons justice committee was far more explosive than most of us anticipated. Several of us had anticipated to be something that was going to be sufficiently vague so that everyone could read they wanted into it, and we’d be no better off than before. Well, that didn’t happen. Right off the start, she detailed how she was inappropriately pressured by several senior staffers, and a four-month campaign to get her to change her mind on the question of SNC-Lavalin, and the line for her was when they tried to make the case that SNC-Lavalin packing up their headquarters for London either in the middle of the Quebec election or six months before a federal election would be bad news for everyone, and saying that the prime minister made the point that he’s a Montreal MP. She also stated that she didn’t feel the need to resign but would have if they overrode her and published a direction in the Canada Gazette to the Director of Public Prosecutions (no kidding), but toward the end, she did say that nothing illegal happened (despite the fact that the Conservatives have spent the past two weeks trying to make the case that criminal obstruction of justice happened). Oh, and she refused to say whether she still has confidence in the prime minister. (More highlights here). While the opposition questions were, well, less questions than assertions that they believed her version of events and for her to elaborate on just how pressured she felt (and they asked the same thing over, and over, and over, for the entire four-hour hearing), while the Liberals made a somewhat concerted effort to poke holes in where she drew the line of what was inappropriate, and of her loyalty to the prime minister as party leader. Also noteworthy was that very few of the MPs who were involved in questioning were regular members of the committee – the Liberals somewhat inappropriately pulling in a parliamentary secretary for finance, Jennifer O’Connell, along with Ruby Sahota, to be their lead questioners, while the Conservatives pulled in Lisa Raitt and Pierre Paul-Hus as their “heavy hitters.” (The NDP also brought in Charlie Angus and Nathan Cullen to delivery sanctimony in the later rounds, once regular committee member Murray Rankin, had asked his questions).

When it was all over, Andrew Scheer rushed to a microphone to declare that Justin Trudeau needed to resign and the RCMP needed to open up an investigation, immediately overplaying his hand. Jagmeet Singh in turn demanded a public inquiry, but then again, there is nothing that doesn’t demand a national public inquiry. And Trudeau? He came out and said that he completely disagrees with Wilson-Raybould’s characterization of things, that they never crossed a line, and went back to his line about standing up for jobs while respecting the rule of law.

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But that’s really where this all winds up, doesn’t it – the subjective line of what constituted “inappropriate” pressure. And this is where the utility of any kind of investigation will fail – the Commons committee certainly won’t be able to come up with a definition because of partisan interest (and no, the Senate would not really do any better, nor do they have the time to devote to their own study of this issue because they are facing a crisis on their Order Paper). The Ethics Commissioner doesn’t have the ambit to deal with this kind of situation. A public inquiry would be led by a former jurist, but this is not a legal question – it’s one of subjective ethical considerations. That’s why this isn’t some black-and-white issue with regard to being on Trudeau or Wilson-Raybould’s side, because there isn’t a clear line. Was the amount of pressure the PMO was putting on her inappropriate? Probably, if her version of events is to be believed (and the description of trying to get an eminent legal mind to provide a third party opinion they could use did stick in my craw, though you will recall that Stephen Harper did the same thing in his attempt to put Marc Nadon on the Supreme Court), but they will be quick to justify it with political considerations (which, let’s face it, are not insignificant for any party). I fully expect Trudeau and the Liberals to try and nuance the hell out of this in the coming days – once you give them the requisite 36 to 48 hours to finally stop stepping all over their message and come up with a coherent line – and there may be another resignation or two from the PMO, but it won’t be from Trudeau. When the committee inevitably recommends that the government split the role of minister of justice and Attorney General into two separate roles, I would imagine that Trudeau would be all over that as a demonstration of good faith, but remember that would require a legislative change, and we’ll see if there’s enough time for that to pass in the remaining weeks of this parliament, or if it becomes an electoral promise (from all parties) to tackle first thing in the next parliament. We’ll have to see.

In hot takes – and there were so, so many, Andrew Coyne calls it a full-out crisis for the PMO and Wilson-Raybould’s testimony to be “damning evidence”, while Chantal Hébert suspects that Trudeau will cling to the line that no laws were broken. Colby Cosh calls it the most compelling event in our Parliament in ages which doesn’t paint a pretty picture of “business as usual,” while Susan Delacourt says that this demonstration of the hard cynicism of power makes it difficult for Trudeau to run on “sunny ways” again this fall. There were a number of columnists that started writing Trudeau’s political obituary, but I frankly didn’t bother with them because seriously, we are a long way from that, particularly if Quebec takes the position that he was standing up for them and their jobs. Paul Wells pens a scorcher about pressure, partisanship, and the particular moral morass that the Liberals find themselves in after this whole affair.

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Roundup: Calling Wilson-Raybould’s bluff?

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We may be finally reaching the climax in the whole SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair, as Justin Trudeau formally waived solicitor-client privilege and Cabinet confidence when it comes to Jody Wilson-Raybould appearing at the justice committee in order to clear the air on the whole situation. The limitation is that she can’t reveal any information or communications about her and the Director of Public Prosecutions regarding SNC-Lavalin – but that’s not what’s at stake, so it shouldn’t be an issue (though the Conservatives spent all afternoon decrying that Trudeau wasn’t sufficiently unmuzzling her before they knew the terms of the waiver). Of course, as soon as Trudeau announced that there was no issue with her speaking at committee, Wilson-Raybould released a letter saying that she was still consulting with her attorney, but she really wanted to appear at committee, but she eventually does, she wants a full thirty-minutes uninterrupted off the top to tell her side of the story. In other words, she’s still trying to control the situation.

This having been said, it is starting to feel like Trudeau is calling Wilson-Raybould’s bluff, after Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick called her out at committee when he stated that there could be no privilege because no legal advice was given, and it was never discussed at Cabinet. Which makes me also wonder if Wilson-Raybould will overplay her hand given that she’s going to have to be very careful what she says if she wants to remain a Liberal for much longer. As for the committee, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives’ demand that the PM be ordered to appear before them, and they heard from legal experts on the Shawcross Doctrine.

In related news, it was also found that the as part of the same consultations that led to the deferred prosecution agreements legislation, the government is also considering other changes to the integrity regime (as part of the two-year review that was part of said regime when it was implemented), which would empower an arm’s length officer in Public Procurement to offer more flexible debarrments to companies that have been found guilty of corporate malfeasance (such as SCN-Lavalin and the ten-year ban they could face), and which Carla Qualtrough says offers them more flexibility to deal with corporate bad behaviour. Meanwhile, a group of SNC-Lavalin shareholders are planning a class-action lawsuit against the company for not disclosing that they were denied a deferred prosecution for over  a month, while the lack of convictions for wrongdoing by the company’s former executives has people questioning whether the RCMP and the Crown prosecutors are up to the task of dealing with corporate crime.

In punditry, Susan Delacourt notices that while Wilson-Raybould is driving the Affair right now, it’s odd that it seems to be done absent leadership ambitions, which creates a different dynamic. Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column reviews the whole Affair to date to offer suggestions as to where Parliament could strengthen its accountability measures to prevent a future repeat occurrence. Professor Jonathan Malloy lays out why this whole Affair is not a classic political scandal by any measure (which is also why Scheer calling it “textbook corruption” is also very odd).

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Roundup: Getting Trudeau to committee

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The political theatre around the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair will again be back in full force today as the Conservatives are moving a Supply Day motion to have Justin Trudeau appear before committee to answer questions, which is procedurally awkward given that the Commons shouldn’t be dictating the business of committees, but that’s theatre for you. Of course, if Trudeau appeared, it would be doing so in order to answer for the conduct of his staff (given ministerial responsibility), but we’ll see if there is any appetite to make the committee process even more of a partisan gong show. (I’m guessing there won’t be, but stranger things have happened). Jody Wilson-Raybould is expected to be at committee either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on her schedule, but maybe she’ll treat this like she did a Senate committee summons and simply refuse to show up.

What revelations did we get over the weekend? That Wilson-Raybould needed to make her pitch to Trudeau directly last Tuesday morning before he would let her address Cabinet; that Wilson-Raybould is a prodigious note-taker, forcing PMO to review their own notes about meetings with her; and that hey, Cabinet ministers are friends outside of work and sometimes get together socially. Shocker!

Meanwhile, Philippe Lagassé goes through the various Canadian politics tropes that this whole affair has been playing into – and are being challenged by – and what people should take away from them as the situation has unfolded. He’s also got a couple of other words of wisdom to take away from Michael Wernick’s testimony about his concern that people are losing faith in the government.

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Roundup: Clashes made apparent

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I think we’re reaching that point in the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair that we get breathless about non sequiturs that don’t actually add to the piece, while pundits circle the same point fruitlessly. To wit, the Globe and Mail released a story last night that cited that Jody Wilson-Raybould was trying to “depoliticise” judicial appointments and was butting against the PMO along the way. But reading the piece, I’m having a hard time finding where the scandal is here. Reforming the judicial appointment process was an early priority of Wilson-Raybould’s, and sure, plenty of people I spoke to at the time said that it was necessary, but it wasn’t handled well, took way too long to get up and running, and more to the point, it took Wilson-Raybould over eight months to appoint the judicial affairs advisor to run this system, while vacancies mounted. The Globe article spoke to said advisor, whom Wilson-Raybould wanted to be “apolitical” and sure, that’s fine, as with not looking to consider a potential judicial appointment’s political history as a factor – also fairly expected in this day and age where their political donation history is the first thing opposition research digs up when the appointment is announced. But the story starts to fall apart when they describe the “clashes” that Wilson-Raybould started having with PMO over the amount of information she was giving them when recommending candidates. Remember that these appointments are Governor-in-Council, meaning that the Governor General names them on the advice of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, meaning that Cabinet is politically responsible for them. If information is being withheld from them that could affect their own vetting process once the recommendation has been made, that should be a problem because they are being held to account for the decisions that get made in their name – not the Justice Minister alone. So yeah, it wouldn’t be a surprise if PMO got rankled by this kind of behaviour from Wilson-Raybould, and I’m not sure that this puts her in the kind of best light that the Globe seems to think. In fact, as is pointed out below, it adds to the reasons as to why she was shuffled in the first place.

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In other related news, here is a deeper exploration of the apparent conflict between Wilson-Raybould and Carolyn Bennett over the Indigenous rights framework legislation that has been derailed, and Michael Wernick’s comments on it during his committee testimony. It also sounds like the top staffers in the PMO had conversations with Wilson-Raybould’s chief of staff over the SNC-Lavalin file, but they insist they were perfectly appropriate.

For context, here’s a look at how SNC-Lavalin didn’t get everything they were looking for in the deferred prosecution agreement legislation, particularly because it requires admission of liability. (SNC-Lavalin, incidentally, says they’re tired of being a “pucks in a political hockey game” and will defend themselves in court). This thread by lawyer Adam Goldenberg puts nuance around the idea that the legislation forbids economic considerations from being a factor in whether or not to grant a DPA – particularly given that it’s the whole point of DPAs in the first place. University of Ottawa law school dean Adam Dodek explains why the practice of combining the minister of justice and attorney general is an impossible task for a single person to properly take on.

In punditry, there was a flurry of thinkpieces decrying the tone of Michael Wernick’s testimony, from Colby Cosh, David Akin, David Moscrop, and Stephen Maher – none of which I found convincing, but what the hell. On the other side, Christie Blatchford thought Wernick was fantastic, for what it’s worth. Chantal Hébert, meanwhile, tries to take a step back to evaluate if the Liberals will be able to put any of this behind them anytime soon.

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Roundup: Wernick calls out Wilson-Raybould

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Thursday in the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould Affair was much more explosive, on a couple of fronts. First, the Globe and Mail reported that Jody Wilson-Raybould told Cabinet that she was improperly pressured, which raises some real questions as to who the Globe source is, and also raises the question as to why Wilson-Raybould didn’t resign in protest at the time. (It also said that SNC-Lavalin is threatening to relocate their headquarters to the UK, which would be the first company looking to move there in the midst of Brexit chaos). And then, after a forgettable appearance by David Lametti at the Commons justice committee, where he could not guarantee that the solicitor-client privilege issue would be solved by the time Wilson-Raybould appears at committee, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick let blew up the media cycle, not only with his very frank introductory comments, but also his belief that not only did any improper pressure not happen (going so far as to call the original Globe story false and “defamatory”), but that none of this should be covered by Solicitor-Client privilege because it was not discussed in Cabinet, and no legal advice was given. (Full text here).

Wernick’s comments were praised by some, criticised by others – particularly the Conservatives – with a lot of concern trolling going on about the perception that they were partisan (despite the fact that Wernick praised both the Harper government’s work as well as Trudeau’s). As John Geddes points out, the testimony also gave a glimpse as to how he interacts with power in this city, going so far as to leave an NAC gala to avoid being near SNC-Lavalin executives.

In related news, it looks like Wilson-Raybould didn’t renew her law licence in BC in 2016, which could mean that she’s not a practicing lawyer, which might also invalidate her claim to solicitor-client privilege. The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ also tests Trudeau’s assertion that waiving solicitor-client privilege may impact the other two ongoing court cases involving SNC-Lavalin.

In pundit reaction, Susan Delacourt lays out how Wernick’s testimony is a direct challenge to the version of events that the Globe and Wilson-Raybould’s silence has allowed to develop, which puts pressure on Wilson-Raybould to confirm or deny his testimony. Jen Gerson doesn’t see Butts’ resignation as solving any of the Liberals’ problems. Robert Hiltz says that more than anything, this whole affair puts a lie to the government’s promise of being “real change” in doing politics.

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Roundup: Committee performance

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Well, yesterday’s justice committee meeting was about as performatively partisan as could possibly be expected. The Liberals had their own counter-motion to propose, delivered by Randy Boissenault, who insisted that this was done independent of the government, but then behaved as though it was, especially when he began throwing around terms like “witch hunt.” (What did we say about this gang not managing to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag?) While the Conservatives wanted nine witnesses, the Liberals proposed three – though, the key crossover witness was the Clerk of the Privy Council – though the Liberals were open to others, though they wanted to have an in cameraplanning meeting for witnesses and timetable as is standard in any committee. The Conservatives railed that they didn’t want anything in camera, which is utterly galling if anyone recalled how they ran committees when they were in government and everything went in camera, all the time. Nathan Cullen proposed a compromise with three more witnesses, but the Liberals voted it down, and in the end, the Liberal motion won the day.

At this, everyone is filled with sanctimonious outrage. Why isn’t Jody Wilson-Raybould testifying? Well, because she says she can’t say anything, so calling her to say that she can’t say anything is a waste of everyone’s time, and oh, right – she can’t be compelled to testify because she’s a sitting MP. As for those key PMO staffers like Katie Telford and Gerald Butts, well, they still might, but I am also a bit unsure how their appearance would fit into the rubric of ministerial responsibility (though good luck getting the PM to testify). The Conservatives, however, are gleefully shitposting about the “Liberal coverup” because this is exactly what they wanted, gathering as many clips of Pierre Poilievre doing his usual schtick that will be all over their social media channels. Because that’s the game these days.

If you need to catch up with everything that’s happened to date, Kady O’Malley has a timeline here for you. Chrystia Freeland went on the radio to talk about handling pressure on files and bringing matters up with the PM, which is an interesting but subtle rebuke of what is being alleged about what Wilson-Raybould did or didn’t do. Here’s a rundown of what the Quebec media has been saying on the issue, and it’s a very different conversation than English Canada is having, focused on protecting SNC-Lavalin. Speaking of SNC-Lavalin, one of its former executives wants the bribery and fraud charges thrown out over court delays. (Yeah, don’t think that’ll happen). Incidentally, SNC-Lavalin never came up during debate or testimony on implementing the deferred prosecution agreements, for what that’s worth.

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert says that Trudeau risks isolating himself if he continues to try to undermine Wilson-Raybould in public, while Stephen Maher enumerates the miscalculations in demoting Wilson-Raynould in the first place, and says that someone in Trudeau’s inner circle should pay the price for it. Chris Selley has a very salient look at how Trudeau’s focus on identity politics symbolism has backfired on him as all of Wilson-Raybould’s critics for her failure as justice minister are now singing her praises because she’s an Indigenous woman, not because she was good at her job.

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Roundup: Modest changes suggested

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When its release was announced, I approached it with trepidation – based on the discussions to date, it was bound to be a horror show. Surprisingly, however, the report on how to make the House of Commons more “family friendly” was less ambitious than it could have been – so far, at least. There were many issues left unresolved for the future, and I’m sure that they plan to address some of those issues in a future report, which could indeed be that report that I’m dreading. Overall, however, they decided against the four-day workweek, and haven’t done anything particularly ridiculous like electronic voting or Skyping into committee meetings. Recommendations did include:

  • Maintaining the motion to keep most votes after QP, but not changing the Standing Orders so as to keep flexibility in the system
  • Not holding votes after Thursday QP so as to let MPs be flexible with travel arrangements
  • Moving the date up for deciding on next year’s calendar for better planning
  • Having House Administration provide flexible childcare options at the Members’ own hourly cost
  • Letting MPs’ families have access to their calendars
  • Better flexibility with the shuttle bus service on the Hill
  • Looking at amending the travel point system with regard to families.

While the worst of the previously discussed options were not recommended going forward, and some of the more nonsensical issues like decorum in the Chamber (which has to do with family friendliness how?) had no recommendations, I still think that some of these recommendations have problems. In particular, demanding that House Administration provide childcare options is an issue because uncertainty of usage is costly – do you have childcare workers essentially on standby? How does that work for them, exactly? As well, I find the demand that the Commons provide this service to be a bit rich because these MPs should be able to find solutions on their own. After all, they make $170,000 base salary per year – they can afford to find their own childcare options, whether it’s a nanny or whatnot. The recommendation around travel points is also a little unsettling because it amounts to reducing the transparency around travel so as not to discourage family members from travelling to Ottawa by opening themselves up to criticism. While I do think that we have a problem with petty, cheap outrage when it comes to reporting on MPs’ expenses, I also think that we should use the opportunity to have a discussion with Canadians about the effect of travel on MPs and their families rather than just shaming them without any pushback. After all, we should address these issues rather than just letting the cheap outrage narrative carry the day.

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