Tag Archives: Rachel Notley

Roundup: The hand that feeds the Senate?

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Over at The Canadian Press, Joan Bryden wrote a wrap-up piece about the near-defeat of a few government bills in the Senate during the final days of the parliamentary sitting, but some of the piece has been rankling me, in part because of how it frames the state of play. So if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to pick it apart just a little, because I think it’s important to understand these things.

The lede is very awkward “In the final hours of Justin Trudeau’s four-year experiment with a less-partisan Senate, Independent senators came within a whisker of biting the hand that feeds them.” It’s a nonsense sentence that doesn’t make any sense – Trudeau’s experiment with a “less-partisan Senate” isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination, and there were no final hours to it – saying that it was the final hours of the parliamentary sitting or even session (since the chances of a prorogation and Speech from the Throne before the writs are drawn up in September are infinitesimal), or even the 42ndParliament would make sense, but not as written. I’m also really bothered by the notion of the “biting the hand that feeds them.” By feeding them, is it supposed to imply the person who appointed them, because that’s not the same thing. Is it supposed to imply that their posts continue at the beneficence of Trudeau, and that he could be rid of them at any point? Because that’s clearly not the case in the slightest (particularly constitutionally), but the phrasing implies the latter instead of the former, which is why it’s weird and misleading in all kinds of ways.

The rest of the piece is the usually bit of sniping between the leader of the Independent Senators Group, the Conservative whip, and the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, wherein Harder and the ISG insist that everything is fine, this is exactly what the Senate should be, and the Conservatives cry that the Independent senators are just Liberals by another name. The wrench in here is that Senator André Pratt calls the Conservatives out for supporting a government bill that more Independents opposed because they didn’t really want to set up a precedent for the Senate voting down government bills because when they form power next, there could be a real problem for them (though one has to say that the bill in question, C-83, was of very dubious constitutionality as it had court rulings against it before it was even law). As we approach the election, we can expect more of this sniping going on, particularly once the Independents start trying to agitate for continued independent Senate appointments to be an election issue – which is essentially an endorsement for Trudeau – and it could start to get very uncomfortable for all involved really quickly.

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Roundup: Kenney changes his tone

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In the wake of Jason Kenney’s win in the Alberta election, he took to the microphones yesterday to try and sound statesmanlike, immediately ratcheting down his rhetoric on a number of files including his “turn off the taps” pledge (which never made any business sense) and his demand that the Trans Mountain Expansion construction get underway – acknowledging realities that he never did on the campaign trail. Of course, he still plans to kill the province’s carbon tax (and lift their emissions cap) which sets up for constitutional battles that they are doomed to lose. As for Rachel Notley, she becomes yet another woman first minister who has failed to win a second election, keeping that established pattern going. And I would encourage you all to read Jen Gerson’s roundup of the whole election, and the lessons in the end – that you can’t hope to paint your opponents as bigots and win, and that you can’t run a campaign about lashing out against the world without consequences.

This having been said, a narrative started emerging over social media as soon as it became clear that Kenney was winning last night, which was conservatives across the country were insisting that the NDP’s campaign as solely “nasty” and full of “personal attacks” which was why they lost. Kenney himself, during his press conference yesterday, insisted that he had a “positive campaign” that the media somehow missed. I’m not sure what part of lies and snake oil promises are “positive,” nor am I convinced that pointing out racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia is a “personal attack.” In fact, it seems to point to this aggrieved sense that I’ve seen where the Conservatives in Ottawa will go to bat for avowed racists because their racism was being pointed out – that being called a racist is somehow worse than the actual racism being espoused. That’s a fairly troubling mindset, and yet we’re no doubt going to be seeing a lot more of it as Justin Trudeau makes a concerted effort to point out the winking and nudging to white nationalists that Andrew Scheer has engaged in.

And now the hot takes – because everyone’s got one. Colby Cosh points out that this really wasn’t the Lougheed vs Klein fight that some people portrayed, and that the broader climate fight is in the works. Stephen Maher advises that Trudeau abandon his “sunny ways” (more than he already has) and start bare-knuckle brawling, adding that if Kenney lets his social conservatives loose, that could work to Trudeau’s advantage. Andrew Coyne notes Kenney’s adoption of a statesman-like tone in victory following “campaign exuberance,” and that Trudeau would be in a tough spot to not approve Trans Mountain if Kenney repeals the province’s environmental plan. David Moscrop wonders if the trends in Alberta are changing and whether its conservatism will hold for Kenney’s benefit. Tristin Hopper makes the salient point that the increasingly uncompromising nature of the environmental movement hardened Albertans against the NDP.

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Roundup: Drawing the wrong lessons

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At the time I’m writing this, it’s not looking too good for Rachel Notley and her NDP in the Alberta election (and sorry I couldn’t stay up late to track results, but StatsCan waits for no journalist). With that in mind, I wanted to just post a couple of thoughts about what this could bode – not just the immediate nonsense of Jason Kenney theatrically tabling a bill to repeal the province’s carbon tax (and immediately subjecting him to the federal backstop), or his threat to “turn off the taps” to BC when it comes to oil — something a court would strike down immediately because it’s utterly unconstitutional. Rather, I suspect that this will provide additional encouragement to Andrew Scheer to emulate Kenney’s tactics — fomenting anger, and selling people a steady diet of lies and snake oil, and hoping that he can find someone to blame when he’s unable to deliver on any of it should he get into power. Scheer’s problem will be that he doesn’t have another level of government he can cast too much blame upon, but that won’t dissuade him from the other tactics.

I also suspect that we’re going to get a renewed round of wailing and gnashing of teeth from “progressives” about how they couldn’t coalesce their votes around Notley and the NDP, and there will be all manner of blame being cast at the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals for splitting their vote (which is nonsense, of course, but we’ll hear it anyway).

Meanwhile, my column offers my personal loathing and dread about the way the election happened, and the problem with stoking anger and promising magic wands and snake oil.

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Roundup: A trio of justice issues

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There were three major law-related stories in the news yesterday, starting with the announcement that Supreme Court of Canada Justice Clement Gascon has opted to retire early, citing “personal and family reasons.” This was quickly followed by Justin Trudeau announcing that a replacement process would be launched, and would again be headed by Kim Campbell, while the Conservatives followed a few hours later with a demand that this process not go ahead until the leak from the previous process was investigated (though the Privacy Commissioner is already on that case). The thing to remember of course is that there is something of a deadline here, being the election, and it’s more than possible that the Conservatives want this delayed so that they have the possibility of naming the next judge if they should happen to form government in October. For what it’s worth.

The second story was that of the carbon tax reference at the Ontario Court of Appeal, which was live-streamed for the first time in its history. The province’s argument apparently is that if the federal government is allowed to impose a carbon tax, that they’ll start intruding into other areas of provincial jurisdiction, which is…dubious. And it sounds like the judges weren’t having much of that line of reasoning either.

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The third law story of the day was the revelation that the directive around civil litigation involving Indigenous people that Jody Wilson-Raybould instituted as one of her last acts as justice minister has been fiercely contested within the department because it many cases, it amounts to litigating badly and not actually getting the courts to resolve the legal questions that are at issue, which they argue doesn’t actually help reconciliation because you’re not dealing with underlying issues that require resolution. The piece also noted the frequent and direct political interference that Wilson-Raybould exerted on civil litigation (which she can do as Attorney General, unlike the arm’s length nature of criminal prosecutions), sometimes undermining the arguments that Crown attorneys were trying to advance in the middle of cases. It’s fascinating reading and yet more insight into what was going on with Wilson-Raybould in the lead up to her being shuffled.

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Roundup: Forcing a partial denunciation

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While Andrew Scheer was goading Justin Trudeau to carry on with his libel lawsuit against him, it seems that Trudeau did manage to get Andrew Scheer to do one thing that he has thus far avoided, which was an actual denunciation of white nationalism, and that he actually said those words rather than talking around them. He didn’t denounce Faith Goldy for appearing with him at that “convoy” rally, and he didn’t say anything about his cherry-picking of wilful blindness of the “Yellow Vest” contingent with their racist and whites supremacist messages at that rally, but it was a start. Baby steps. 

Part of the backdrop for this was an exchange between Senator Leo Housakos and Chrystia Freeland at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, where Housakos said he didn’t see any white suprematist threat (which he later said was poorly worded), and Freeland laying down the law on it. 

Amidst this drama, the head of CSIS was appearing at a different Senate committee, this time to talk about Bill C-59, the national security bill, and he did state that the intelligence service was becoming more and more preoccupied with the threat of white nationalists and far-right extremists, even though religious extremism was still one of their largest focuses. It’s something that is of concern and we can’t ignore the winking and nudges that absolutely takes place, or especially the blind eyes that get turned, but we do seem to be having a conversation about it, so that’s probably a good start.

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Roundup: An important first report

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While everyone was focused on Jane Philpott’s attempt to claim that the provisions in the garbage Reform Act weren’t met as it regards her expulsion from caucus, a much more important event was taking place, which was the release of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians’ first public report. This is the first time that Canada has seen any kind of public oversight into our national security and intelligence services, and it was important to see. One of the things that they focused in on was the oversight of military intelligence operations, for which the military thanked them for their suggestions on improving governance, but balked at the proposal for a legislative framework.

Nevertheless, the expert in this stuff is Stephanie Carvin, so I will turn over the reactions to her (full thread starts here):

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Roundup: Traps and tantrums

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Budget Day was a giant production, for a variety of reasons yesterday, starting with the long-awaited showdown at the Commons justice committee. Given that the Liberal members had released that letter the night before, we knew that they were going to wrap it all up – without a report, I might add – and on their way in this morning, they handed to the media a copy of the motion they were planning to move to start a new study on hate crimes (because this increasingly seems like what the Liberals want to fight the next election on). Well, this caused the opposition to storm out because that motion was supposed to be in camera (and we all know how much they’ve respected the notion that committee business be handled in camera of late), and then they came back and had their meeting, and the committee (read: Liberal majority) decided to end the study of the Double-Hyphen Affair.

This set the Conservatives off, and they warned that they would ensure that the budget was going to be delayed, mark their words, and they set up all manner of procedural trickery in which to do so. Except that the Liberals outplayed them, tabled the document just before 4 PM, right before the vote was being called that was intending to delay the budget speech, and then Bill Morneau marched out to the Foyer to start talking to all of the assembled media outlets and get his message out, while the opposition stayed in the Chamber to carry on their procedural shenanigans, to the point where they essentially held themselves hostage. When Morneau was able to give his speech, well over an hour later, the Conservatives did ensure that he was drowned out with noise so that he couldn’t be heard and that no clips were able to be captured for news media, but given how Morneau was doing the media rounds and Scheer wasn’t – indeed, after the fact, when he and his caucus marched out to the Foyer, they denounced the budget as a distraction from the Double-Hyphen Affair, and had nary a substantive comment on it. (Jagmeet Singh, incidentally, had the usual NDP talking points about how it wasn’t enough, but couldn’t really respond when pressed about specifics or implementation of their vision). So, take it for what you will, I’m not sure how well the Conservatives came across in the end yesterday, especially as Scheer walked right into Trudeau’s very obvious trap that about the Conservatives not wanting to talk about the economy.

Speaking of the budget, it was far more stimulus-heavy than I would have expected, but then again, targeting both seniors and millennials, and going some distance in doing more for skills training, though their housing affordability measures were weak sauce and will likely do nothing about the supply side of the issue (especially as they keep the focus on buying a home rather than simply having affordable housing writ large).

With that in mind:

  • The deficit will grow this year before shrinking again, but there is no path back to balance in the immediate future. (Debt-to-GDP continues to decline).
  • Here are the highlights for five key demographics.
  • Here are 23 key measures in the budget.
  • There was the start of Pharmacare, beginning with the Canadian Drug Agency to facilitate bulk buying – next steps coming with the Hoskins report.
  • Municipalities got a chunk of new funding (with shots taken at premiers who are holding up infrastructure agreements).
  • There are more funds earmarked for Indigenous services, not only with water but also child and family services.
  • The budget also outlines a plan to start targeting stock options for taxation as another way of soaking the wealthy.
  • There is a plan to start taxing cannabis products by the potency of their THC.
  • The budget has money to help veterans transition to civilian life, but doesn’t seem to have anything to deal with the disability backlog.
  • There was a big commitment on rural broadband, but implementation details remain fuzzy.
  • Here are ten things that may slip under the radar.
  • Here’s a fact-check of Morneau’s speech (but the sources could have been better selected).

In budget hot takes, Chris Selley calls it the budget of a government that is no longer selling utopia – just buying votes, whereas Alan Freeman simply calls it a “do no harm” budget. John Geddes details the spending surprises in the document, while Andrew Coyne grouses about the how there seems to be more concern over the quantity of spending over the quality of it, given there is nothing in the budget about things like productivity. Heather Scoffield takes note of the Liberals’ attempt to frame the budget as a response to anxieties – economic or otherwise – that Canadians are feeling. Kevin Carmichael cautions that there budget leaves very little wiggle room for economic downturns, given how sluggish growth already is. Paul Wells notes the sprinkling of spending throughout the document, and the big bomb for political journalists in there. There are also worthwhile threads from economist Kevin Milligan here and here.

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Roundup: The OECD is watching

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Because the Double-Hyphen Affair continues to roll along, the news yesterday was that the OECD is keeping an eye on the proceedings around the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, given that our anti-bribery rules are part of a concerted OECD effort to stamp out the practice, and much of the language in our laws – including the Criminal Code provisions around deferred prosecutions – contain OECD language. And lo, suddenly everyone was bemoaning this international attention, and it was a sign that we were all the more suspect, and so on. Err, except the OECD doesn’t have any regulatory jurisdiction over Canada, and they’re monitoring the processes ongoing already in Canada. You know, the ones that are examining the very issue. Almost as though the system is working.

On a related note, it was revealed that SNC-Lavalin signed a confidential deal with the government days after the Throne Speech in 2015, that allowed them to keep bidding on federal contracts while they would subject themselves to compliance monitoring for their ethical obligations, at their own expense. I’m not sure that we can consider this something nefarious, but certainly an acknowledgment that they were aware of their issues and were taking steps to deal with them in advance of any prosecution.

In today’s punditry on the matter, Matt Gurney suspects that the international attention will be harder for this government to shake off. Chantal Hébert details the coming crunch time for the main players in this whole Affair. Vicky Mochama writes that if we try to treat Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and Celina Caesar-Chavannes as paragons of virtue out of a sense of gender essentialism, that we diminish the action and rhetoric of women politicians.

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Roundup: So concerned they’re going to data mine

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Because we couldn’t possibly have a weekend without trying to force developments in the Double-Hyphen Affair, Andrew Scheer called a press conference on Sunday to demand that Justin Trudeau let Jody Wilson-Raybould “speak the full truth” before the justice committee, which is set to meet again on Wednesday to consider next steps in what witnesses they want to hear from. The Conservatives in particular are keen to hear if Wilson-Raybould thinks that Trudeau lied. Scheer also launched a petition site so that Canadians can let Trudeau know that he should “let her speak.” Of course, it’s also about data-mining in advance of the next election, but that’s par for the course for them.

Of course, the consensus among lawyers and political operatives is that Wilson-Raybould has been free to speak all along, and the fact that Michael Wernick and Gerald Butts have spoken about the times in question – and have stated explicitly that there was no legal advice proffered on this issue so it can’t be a question of solicitor-client privilege. Add to that, she has always had the ability to use her parliamentary privilege to say whatever she wants in the House of Commons. So this concern that she can’t speak is a bit overblown – or perhaps should be considered as concern trolling. Regardless, the longer this issue goes on, the more it’s clear that it becomes an issue of who can be considered the more credible witness, because there is no right or wrong answer here. Partisans will each take their own lessons, and eventually we’ll move on, but maybe not until the Liberals stop stepping all over their own message, whenever that will be.

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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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