News that the family of that Syrian boy who drowned off the coast of Turkey was trying to get to Canada and had been rejected touched off a political firestorm yesterday, and it wasn’t until hours later that some clarity was brought to the situation – that the sister of the boy’s father was in Canada and applying to sponsor her family, starting with her older brother, then the child’s father and his family (which included a wife and another son, all of whom were lost when their boat capsized). Chris Alexander made a show of “suspending his campaign” to come to Ottawa to meet with officials, but his campaign really wasn’t suspended – he just wasn’t door-knocking, and then he hid out from the media in the airport and ended up going out a back way in order to avoid them. Statements from the aunt in Vancouver and the government clarified some of the statements around the events with their refugee application, but much of the damage had already been done, and the government looks poorly for it – particularly because of the slow pace at which they are assisting refugees in the area, and padding their figures with those refugees from Iraq, and the fact that they appear to be cherry-picking those from religious and ethnic minorities. Harper hasn’t really helped, insisting that this is really about ISIS and saying that it’s more important that we carry on the fight against them – never mind that a) Assad and the Syrian government forces have killed more Syrians by far than ISIS or any other faction, and b) air strikes are not going to stop ISIS and the government knows it. He also insists that we’re one of the most generous countries in assisting refugees, but the numbers simply don’t show that. University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris shares some thoughts on the situation, while Scott Gilmore argues that we should take in twenty times the number of refugees being promised now, up to as many as 200,000, which we could pay for by cancelling a couple of boutique tax credits. Michael Petrou notes the real problem of the war in Syria.
Tag Archives: Peter Penashue
Roundup: In danger of losing the plot
As Nigel Wright’s testimony wrapped up in the Duffy trial yesterday, I am going to confess that I have pretty much lost the plot at this point. I’m having a hard time seeing what the point of Donald Bayne’s cross-examination was, and how anything Wright did somehow excused Duffy either claiming those expenses, or accepting the cheque in the end. Trying to establish a broad conspiracy that may or may not include the prime minister’s current chief of staff is salacious political gossip, which may or may not go to the prime minister’s judgement in the people he surrounds himself with, but for the life of me, I can’t see how this is relevant to the trial. Yes, people lied and covered up what happened – politically relevant, perhaps, but legally? I’m still having a hard time following where Bayne is going in this. Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry offers some ideas about what may constitute political scandal in the whole ClusterDuff affair – seeing as some are starting to express doubts that there is one – while Andrew Coyne expresses faux sympathy for Harper, who has been deceived by those closest to him for so long.
Roundup: Stacking the panel
The government has unveiled how they’re going to respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling on doctor-assisted dying, and it could not be any more spineless if they tried. Having first ignored the issue in Parliament for decades, they waited for the courts to tell them to do something, and by something, they decided to appoint a three-person panel to hold more consultations and come up with recommendations. In other words, outsourcing their response. But wait – it gets better. Two of the three members of this panel are opponents to doctor-assisted dying, and testified on the government’s behalf during the court cases. The third member, a former Quebec cabinet minister, is vested in the issue of provincial jurisdiction. In other words, the government has decided on the outcome they want, and stacked the panel in such a way as to deliver it. We shouldn’t be surprised by this response, considering how closely it mirrors what happened with the Bedford decision on prostitution. Rather than actually heed the decision and what it said about safety and security for sex workers, the government stacked their consultations in favour of opponents and religious institutions, dismissed as much expert testimony as they could in committee hearings, and drafted a bill that substantively does not change the situation for those sex workers when it comes to their safety, and will in fact just drive the industry further underground by criminalising buyers, and all the while touting that they were listening to the responses from their consultations. Watching them do the same with the assisted dying issue is proof positive that this is a government that refuses to make any hard decisions. (On a related note, here’s an interesting analysis of the Court’s decision in the case from Michael Plaxton and Carissima Mathen).
The government has announced their panel to deal with the Carter decision. #SCC #AssistedDying #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/n3KyOaKc3L
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) July 17, 2015
Roundup: Tales of internal audits
The issue that dominated Question Period and the headlines yesterday – that the PMO was trying to direct the Senate’s Internal Economy Committee to protect Duffy from internal audits – is one that needs a bit of a deep breath before we freak out about it. For starters, we need to be aware that Duffy and his lawyer are deliberately stoking this in order to direct the attention toward Harper and the PMO as their way of exculpating Duffy. Number two, that any “conspiracy” within the Senate to protect Duffy has largely been limited to a couple of players and not the chamber as a whole. In this case, it seems to be largely three key players – then-leader Marjory LeBreton, Harper loyalist Carolyn Stewart Olsen, and David Tkachuk. That Stewart Olsen might be doing Harper’s bidding is no surprise, and while Tkachuk should have known better than to take PMO direction, he has been playing his own power games within the Senate (including a few nasty leaks to the media designed to undermine people). The other thing that should be pointed out is that Senate administration – the Clerk and a senior staffer conducting an internal audit – were trying to point to the nebulous rules around residency and were getting pushback from Stewart Olsen and Tkachuk, and in Stewart Olsen’s case, the motives were likely self-interested given her own problematic residency situation at the time. That internal audit was not killed, in part because of legal action threatened by the Clerk, but it does point to the fact that while rules could be nebulous, the staff was trying to ensure that there was some due diligence, and Duffy would have been caught up in that exercise. That the PMO was trying to take the heat off of Duffy with a later external audit is concerning, but should be for the rest of the Senate. They have institutional independence for a reason, and they are betraying their role when they take that kind of direction. Of course, Harper created the situation where a number of senators would take direction by flooding the chamber with so many pliable rookies at once who wouldn’t hesitate to take orders. It’s one of the things that the late Speaker Nolin was trying to change – getting senators, particularly those in his own caucus, to take their roles more seriously. None of this should detract from the fact that Duffy still bears responsibility for his own actions, and that senators themselves should be telling the PMO to shove off. We shouldn’t let Duffy and his lawyer play us to confirm those facts.
Roundup: Demands for a debate over Syria
As the speculation on an international response to alleged chemical weapon attacks in Syria intensify, there are questions about whether or not Parliament will be recalled to discuss the issue. And thus begins a teachable moment when it comes to the Crown prerogative of military deployment. You see, the ability to deploy the military is a Crown prerogative – meaning that the government can do it without the consent of the Commons – because it maintains a clear line of accountability. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, it means that the Commons can hold the government to account for the actions that were undertaken during its watch. But when parliaments vote on deployments, it means that they become collectively responsible, and by extension, nobody is responsible when things go wrong. As well, it breeds the culture of the caveats, which many European military units suffered under during Afghan deployments – because no parliament wants their men and women to really be put into harm’s way. Keeping deployments a Crown prerogative allows for that tough decision making to happen. (For more on this, read Philippe Lagassé’s study here). Stephen Harper has been trying to institute votes because it does just that – it launders the prerogative and the accountability. It also was handy for dividing the Liberals back during the days of the Afghan mission, but bad policy overall. Meanwhile, as people point to the UK parliament being recalled over the Syria issue, it bears reminding that their votes are non-binding in such matters, and as much as Thomas Mulcair may demand that Parliament discuss a deployment, demanding a binding vote is only playing into Harper’s hands.
Roundup: Denying consent for transparency
After QP yesterday, Justin Trudeau rose to seek unanimous consent for his four motions on greater transparency for parliament – MPs posting expenses, opening up Internal Economy, and calling in the Auditor General. None of them passed, and apparently it was the NDP who denied consent (though some reporters heard Conservatives dissent despite the party line being that they were in favour). What did pass was a motion from Nathan Cullen that would ban MPs from using their travel points to go to speaking gigs, as apparently the latest bout of Trudeau bashing is to assert that he apparently used his MP expenses to do speaking gigs, despite there not being any evidence to support this, and the fact that most speaking gigs include airfare as a standard part of the deal.
Roundup: A Liberal win in Labrador
The people of Labrador have spoken, and by a rather large margin have decided that Liberal Yvonne Jones should represent them in the House of Commons, rather than forgiving Peter Penashue and giving him another chance. The wisdom on the ground is that this was entirely a local race and had almost nothing to do with the national scene, Justin Trudeau’s leadership and whatnot. Penashue said he accomplished more in two years than any other MP anywhere, which is the kind of hyperbole we’ve come to expect from the guy who apparently did ALL THE THINGS for Labrador, and hence this defeat will be Labrador’s loss. The Conservative Party also issued a graceless statement which nevertheless tried to turn it into some kind of indictment of Trudeau’s leadership, claiming they lost twenty points since his leadership win (though no one has seemed to find any polls which had them over seventy percent), and claiming that majority governments don’t normally win by-elections (which is also not exactly true, considering how many they’ve won to date). Jones’ win means this is the first time that the Liberals have increased their seat count at the ballot box in over a decade (the only other time they’ve increased their count, of course, being when Lise St-Denis defected from the NDP).
Roundup: From omnibus to minibus
At long last, the budget implementation bill was tabled yesterday, and at around 125 pages, it’s far less of the omnibus bills that the government was so fond of last year. Not that it’s too unexpected, given that the budget itself was a pretty thin document, and so Flaherty’s joke is that this one is a “minibus.” It does have a number of measures including the tariff changes, the attempt to revive the National Securities Regulator, integrating CIDA into Foreign Affairs, and taking things like Winterlude and Canada Day back from the National Capital Commission.
Roundup: Everything’s coming up Vic Toews
Vic Toews is all over the news right now, and quite possibly all over Question Period later today. Yesterday morning Toews was on The West Block and basically said that the RCMP “communications protocol” was put into place so that he doesn’t get ambushed by opposition questions in the House after the parliamentarians who had those meetings bring up things they discussed. Aww, muffin! Access to information documents also show that Toews tried to limit the RCMP’s apology to the families of victims of serial killer Robert Pickton. The RCMP ended up rejecting said revisions, saying they came in too late, but it appears to be a case of overreach, and likely an attempt to forestall any attempts of legal action that an admission that the RCMP could have done more to stop Pickton is likely to generate.
QP: Reading off a condemnation
After what appeared to be a breakout of actual debate during the Orders of the Day relating to the NDP’s opposition day motion on climate change, no eruptions of MPs trying to catch the Speaker’s eye during Members’ Statements, and a moment of silence for workers killed on the job, it was time for QP. Tomas Mulcair started things off by reading a condemnation of Joe Oliver’s trip to Washington and his insulting of a climate scientist. James Moore, the designated back-up PM du jour, insisted that the NDP doesn’t understand economics, and that the government was fighting to create jobs. Mulcair then switched topics and read a question about the concerns the Conservative premier of New Brunswick has about the EI changes. Moore assured him that they were working with the premier as they were helping get people back to work. Yvon Godin then asked the same thing in French, turning puce with outrage as he read his script. Diane Finley responded with her stock assurances that they were helping Canadians get back to work. Bob Rae was up for the Liberals, and after making a reference to Harper’s admonition about “committing sociology,” he turned to the party’s topic of the week — youth unemployment. Moore assured him that they had created programmes to help youth and were addressing the problem. For his final question, Rae asked about the growing number of reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, to which Deepak Obhrai assured him that they were monitoring the situation, which they found unacceptable.