Tag Archives: Rachel Motley

Roundup: The verdict as reflection on the institution

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Now that they’ve had a couple of days to digest the events, we’ve got some weekend punditry on the Duffy verdict and What It All Means™ for the Senate as an institution, and well, some of it is really hard to swallow. Rick Anderson has eight thoughts about the expenses issue, and most of them are on the right track, except for number four, which is about the Board of Internal Economy (Commons) and Internal Economy Committee (Senate), and his belief that these bodies are too political to police parliamentarian expenses. The problem with this line of thinking is of course parliamentary privilege – parliament is self-governing. It needs to be. It cannot be brought under the heel of a bureaucracy, because if we can’t trust our parliamentarians to run their own affairs, then we might as well just hand power back to the Queen. Do they get it right all of the time? No, of course not, but this is a democracy and there is an accountability process, and yes, that includes for the Senate. Of course with the Senate, it is much more tied to public pressure, but that public pressure has forced the Senate to make any number of changes in the past few years (they had already started before the whole ClusterDuff affair started, but that certainly accelerated things). This is of course why I have trouble with Adam Dodek’s condemnations of the Senate post-verdict and his (frankly wrong) assertions that nothing has really changed, and his assertion that most senators treat the job as a part-time gig. I’ve known very few senators who feel that way, and most that I’ve met and been in contact with are just as engaged as MPs with their files – even more in many cases when those senators have causes that they are engaged with. The days of senators sitting on a number of corporate boards is drawing to a close as boards are professionalising and the need for a senator as a “prestige” appointment become less common. (I would add that I actually think it’s not a problem for senators to sit on a non-profit board as a way of constituency outreach). And then there’s Michael Den Tandt who retreats to the same old fears about these new independent senators being wholly unaccountable, as though something has materially changed from when they were all in party caucuses (which is false), and that somehow that caucus could keep them more in line (no, not really). Apparently Den Tandt has forgotten that the Senate has institutional independence for a reason, and his musing that the Conservatives should champion abolition by way of a referendum is frankly ridiculous – despite what people may think about a referendum being a tactic to pressure premiers, it returns to the same problem of using majoritarian tactics to pressure minority provinces into giving up their counter-balancing representation. I think I’ll leave this meme here for his edification.

Mean Girls Senate Abolition

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Roundup: The demise of Mulcair, part deux

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Plenty of more reactions to Mulcair’s demise and the party’s direction, so let’s get to it. Matt Gurney figures that the party is once again one of protest, while Jon Kay suggests that the party has outlived its usefulness with its embrace of the Leap Manifesto, and that Canada now effectively only has to parties. Gerry Caplan recalls the party’s hey days of 20 percent voter shares, and wonders if they can ever be taken seriously electorally. Andrew Coyne tries to look at the broader cause of Mulcair’s demise, while Jen Gerson says that Rachel Notley’s party that is getting things done is the one the federal party membership really threw under the bus, not Mulcair. David Reevley says the party can’t rebuild while “Zombie Tom” is still at the helm, while Emilie Taman insists that everything’s fine, that the Leap resolution gives the party a “path forward,” which I sincerely doubt. Colby Cosh takes the more existential take of the gradual demise of meaningful political parties writ large, and that if the NDP is but a shell then so is everyone else. He also takes on the notion that the political left is also largely meaningless anymore, which is something else to consider.

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Roundup: To Leap or to cleave?

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There are some interesting dynamics shaping up at the NDP convention in Edmonton, which is less about the current tensions over the leadership review vote that Thomas Mulcair will undergo on Sunday, but rather the fact that there appears to be a split developing between the Alberta NDP (and to some extent the New Brunswick arm of the party) and the federal party when it comes to debating the Leap Manifesto. Mulcair himself is in self-preservation mode as he talks about the Manifesto, and promises to live up to it if the membership decides on it, which seems to go back to his particular issues with authenticity because there is no sense of what he believes around it (though he once praised the policies of Margaret Thatcher, so perhaps one could extrapolate from there). Mulcair is now insisting that no, the Manifesto isn’t about shutting down the oil sands or forgoing pipelines, except it pretty much is, with the promise to decarbonise the economy by 2050 – as well as shutting down mining and other extractive industries and tearing up trade agreements under the rubric that they hurt local economies. Mulcair has retreated to the statement that the Manifesto doesn’t explicitly say to leave oil in the ground, but after musing to Peter Mansbridge that he would do everything in his power to go that route if it’s what the party decided, well, the damage has been done, as the Alberta party is distancing themselves, the province’s environment minister calling the federal party’s environmental plan a “betrayal,” and Rachel Notley took to the airwaves to tell Albertans explicitly that she is working to get a pipeline built. The Manifesto’s proponents, however, insist that this is necessary, and that a hard-left turn can win, and cite Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – never mind that neither has actually won an election, and likely never could given the personal dislike for them among even their own respective parties. (Seriously – Corbyn had a caucus enemies list drawn up). So will a hard-left turn save the party? It all depends on what they want to do, whether they want to return to being only about principle and the “conscience of parliament,” pushing the Liberals to do the right thing, or if they want power and the compromises that come with it. We’ll have to see what the membership decides, and whether Mulcair fits that vision.

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Roundup: Fair Vote Canada’s shambolic release

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It’s not everyday that you get a completely unhinged press release in your inbox, but holy cow did Fair Vote Canada come out with a doozy yesterday. It’s hard to know where to start with such a work of “shambolic genius,” as Colby Cosh put it.

You see, according to the geniuses at Fair Vote Canada, they have cleverly parsed that when Trudeau pledged to “make every vote count” (a boneheaded statement because every vote already counts), he was referring to their slogan, and therefore he must really advocate for Proportional Representation, and because Trudeau has said he has no pre-conceived ideas about what the outcome of the consultations on electoral reform would be, he must really mean that he’s just trying to figure out which proportional representation system to use, because that’s what he’s signalled by using their slogan. Genius, I tell you. Genius!

But Wait… There’s More!™

While referring to Parliament as “the law factory” (Seriously? Seriously?!), they started invoking the Charter to claim that “equal treatment and equal benefit under the law” must mean that Canadian citizens are entitled to having their votes represented in direct proportion to the votes cast. Which is insane and ridiculous because that’s not how our system works at all, and is completely wrong when it comes to jurisprudence. You see, the Supreme Court of Canada has already rejected this line of reasoning, both in terms of the deviation of voting power (i.e. unequal riding sizes) for the purposes of better governance, but also with attempted challenges to the First-Past-The-Post system in the Quebec courts, which were roundly rejected and which the Supreme Court of Canada refused to grant leave to appeal. That means that as far as they’re concerned, the law is settled, and for Fair Vote Canada to try and advance this line of argument is futile and wrong. Because the law is settled. But considering that the whole basis for their advocacy of PR is rooted in sore loserism at the ballot box, it makes complete sense that they are also sore losers when it comes to the judicial system as well.

Moral of the story: Fair Vote Canada has long used falsehoods and logical fallacies to advance their case. This ridiculous and completely specious release is just one more in a dishonest string of arguments they’ve made and will continue to make as this debate heats up in the coming months.

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Roundup: Cullen pens a hot mess

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NDP MP Nathan Cullen penned an op-ed for National Newswatch over the weekend, and it’s a total hot mess. Hot. Mess. Where to begin, where to begin? Let’s start with the opening paragraph:

One of the recurring conversations I’ve had over the years, with folks of all political leanings, is the condition of our democracy and how our voting system doesn’t reflect their voices at the national level.

Demonstrably false, since what we vote for are who to fill individual seats. People who are elected to those seats are the reflection of the wishes of that riding. Ergo, our voting system actually is reflective of voices at the national level. The entire second paragraph is a gong show:

It’s not a new charge that the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system too often produces false majorities. Our current voting system is broken. Too many Canadians simply feel their vote does not count. Something is deeply wrong if our very voting system encourages people to tune out of our democratic process.

Nope, nope, nope, and nope. There is no such thing as a “false majority” because the popular vote is a logical fallacy. You can’t extend 338 separate and simultaneous elections, mash them together and come up with a figure when you don’t have the same number of parties running in all ridings, nor does it reflect the fact that we elect individual seats, not parties. The voting system is not broken – it accurately reflects that we elect individual seats in individual ridings. Canadians feel their vote doesn’t count because of sore loserism, and apparently votes only count when the person you voted for wins, which is childish and wrong. Our voting system does not encourage people to tune out of our democratic process – our appalling lack of civic literacy does. From there, Cullen goes on to defend his idea of a “proportional” Commons committee to consult on electoral reform, except it’s a) not proportional, b) it’s designed to play up his desire for proportional representation (if the committee can be proportional…) and c) it’s designed to game the process, while he professes new ways of doing things. From there, Cullen meanders into a defence of the NDP as “progressive opposition,” which sounds more defensive by the day as the Liberals continue to outflank the party on the left, and finally, the piece moves into a defence of Thomas Mulcair as party leader, with Cullen professing support – you know, to look like he’s not angling to replace him should Mulcair happen to fall well short of expectations at the upcoming leadership review vote. After all, the federal NDP have a culture of it being unseemly to not be in complete and total lockstep at all times when the cameras are on. So there you have it – a complete hot mess. What is that old journalistic expression? Get me rewrite.

https://twitter.com/jameslhsprague/status/699297692837666816

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