Tag Archives: RCMP

Roundup: The knives and the Reform Act

Posted on by

The Conservatives are having their first post-election caucus meeting today, and there is talk that the discontent may be more serious than the public picture they’re letting on in public – not that that’s surprising. But all of the talk of forcing an early “leadership review” of Scheer rests – whether from the talk of the disaffected Conservatives, or in the public musings of Andrew Coyne and Stephen Maher to name a couple – haven’t made a very careful study of the Reform Act beyond its stated good intentions when the bill is actually garbage.

In fact, I think that relying on the Reform Act could insulate Scheer more readily than it could push him out, given that it has a relatively high threshold to trigger the caucus vote to ouster a leader, and that high threshold can be used to intimidate any would-be usurpers or those who would use the ability to hold their leader to account for his or her sins – in this case, a bad campaign based on lies, a platform that didn’t appeal to any of the target demographics or ridings that they needed to win, and the inability of said leader to articulate positions on socially conservative issues that would offer any kind of reassurance to those target demographics and regions. (And did I mention the campaign of lies?) That intimidation can make it harder for the caucus to make a clean break and get on with choosing a new leader.

This having been said, I want to push back on something that Conservative MP Chris Warkentin said on Power & Politics last night as it pertains to this Reform Act business, wherein he said that he didn’t agree with giving caucus that power because it somehow “disempowered” the grassroots (followed by the ritual motions of insisting that they are a “grassroots party” as though that were actually true). For a century now, political parties in Canada have flattered their grassroots members by pretending that letting them choose the leader is “democratic,” when all it does is obliterate accountability. It means that the leader can claim a false democratic legitimacy and centralize their power by marginalizing both the MPs in his or her caucus, and eventually marginalizing the grassroots because that power has been centralized and those grassroots become an increasingly irrelevant means of pretending to get policy advice. It’s simply become an exercise in the grassroots willingly turning over their agency and power to the very person who will undermine them, but hey, it’s “democratic.” This is the root of the problems that have developed in our system, and we can’t just keep pretending that they don’t exist because “grassroots parties” no longer resemble that.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A quasi-exit for May

Posted on by

The other, non-Senate big news on Parliament Hill yesterday was Elizabeth May’s decision to step down as Green Party leader – sort of. She said that she would stay on as the “parliamentary leader,” but give up the mantle of big-P Party leader, and that one of her appointed deputy leaders, Jo-Ann Roberts, would be interim leader until the party could have a leadership convention – next October. May fully intends to stay on as an MP and run again as an MP (and said that she would not run for Speaker this time, but would pursue it in the next Parliament).

This particular kind of leadership dynamic is part of what ails Canadian democracy right now – this notion that there should be year-long leadership races, and that someone who doesn’t have a seat in Parliament should be leading the party in any capacity. The fact that the leader is not selected by caucus alone is one of the biggest problems with our system – it has allowed leaders to centralize power and when they get into power, that centralization rests in the PMO. And with May stepping back, and new MPs Jenica Atwin and Paul Manly also eschewing running for the role, they will again be a party where their leader is outside of Parliament, and who may or may not run for a seat anytime a byelection comes around, and they will face some of the challenges that Jagmeet Singh became all too familiar with.

There needs to be a rebalancing of leadership roles in our system, and we need to keep the party leader’s focus back on parliament, with the rest of the leadership better handled by the Party president. But what the Greens are doing now is just perpetuating what is horribly wrong with our system.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how May left on her own terms, while Paul Wells sees the end of May’s leadership as a chance for her party to overhaul its message and its organizational abilities.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The big endorsement

Posted on by

All three leaders were in Quebec yesterday, being one of the most important battleground provinces when it comes to getting out the vote. Justin Trudeau started off his day in Montreal to again make the pitch that voters need a progressive government and not a progressive opposition, and saying that this was the “dirtiest” campaign ever because of things like disinformation. From there, he made several stops on the way to Sherbrooke. The big news in the afternoon, however, was a tweet from Barack Obama, giving an endorsement for Trudeau’s re-election, citing the need for a progressive voice on the world stage (and taking some of the wind out of the sails of the Conservative claim that Trudeau has been some kind of “embarrassment” on the world stage).

https://twitter.com/b_momani/status/1184550642225991685

Andrew Scheer started his day in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, then headed to Essex, where he promised higher penalties for ethics violations (possibly flirting with constitutional challenges of what constitutes an administrative monetary penalty versus a criminal sanction), and headed into Ontario, eventually making it to Hamilton, where he was in the riding of the Liberal incumbent who was at her mother’s funeral that day – to which Scheer insisted it was okay because he made a charitable donation. (We also found out that he switched the location he planned to make the stop, and the pub owner of the first location was brassed off because he spent $700 preparing food for the stop and putting more workers on staff).

As part of his Quebec tour, Jagmeet Singh was in Hudson, Quebec, the birthplace of Jack Layton, to make his pitch of trying to claim Layton’s legacy. Throughout the day, he started making more untenable promises, like reopening an emergency room in Winnipeg – something that is explicitly provincial jurisdiction, while hand-waving about “levers” he can use, which he actually has none – particularly not in the Canada Health Act. But hey, he wants people to “dream big,” and never mind the Constitution or the clear division of powers therein.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Secrecy and sticking with damaged goods

Posted on by

It’s (English) debate day, which means that it will be a low-key day as leaders are busy with debate prep. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer took the day off, while Justin Trudeau went to Plainfield, Ontario, to plant another tree, which I suspect will be the new go-to photo-op of the campaign. There, he accused Scheer of keeping his full platform and costs secret ahead of the debates, and compared him to Doug Ford given Ford’s lack of a platform during the Ontario election. During a later media availability, he said that he was sticking with the Cape Breton candidate despite his past racist and misogynist posts because he had apologised (which is the standard that most everyone has since adopted in this election).

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was campaigning at a farmer’s market in Ottawa with Ed Broadbent.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Liberal platform and a changing economic narrative

Posted on by

While Andrew Scheer took the day off of campaigning, and Jagmeet Sing was in Surrey to promise $100 million in new federal funding for gang prevention, Justin Trudeau was in Mississauga to unveil both the full platform (including costing) as well as a specific announcement around enriching student grants and deferring student loan repayments for longer, and from those who don’t make enough money or who have just had babies.

But the platform is the big news, and it’s probably unsurprising that most of the media questions involved the fact that it has given up promising a balanced budget in favour of the new fiscal anchor of a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, which the new plans continue to show, albeit at a slightly flatter trajectory than we have seen in recent years. That said, I think it bears pointing out that much of the rhetoric and narratives from media remain those stuck in the frames of the mid-1990s (see: headlines here, here, and here) when the debt situation was far more dire than it is today. We should be having a more robust conversation around current fiscal realities, and what the opportunity costs are for slavishly getting toward a balanced budget when there are way to invest with the fiscal room that the government has now – something they have pointed out (in their irritating way of not being able to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag). And it also means that we’re not calling bullshit when Scheer says things like today’s deficits are tomorrow’s tax increases (they’re not). While there are certain parts of the platform that I’ll elaborate more on in the coming days over other venues, here are some economists with some very good insight, plus threads from Lindsay Tedds and Jennifer Robson.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1178385323975270400

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1178386937209425920

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1178403847951093760

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1178385088104599554

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1178386395804717057

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1178386998438039556

Continue reading →

Roundup: Capitalizing on the climate strikes – or not

Posted on by

It was a slightly less ridiculous day on the election campaign for a change, and first up of the day was Jagmeet Singh was in Ladysmith, BC, to announce that he would spend $40 million to protect the coast line, which includes protecting salmon stocks and clearing derelict vessels, as well as cancelling Trans Mountain and stopping that tanker traffic. He then went to the climate strike march in Victoria.

In Montreal, in advance of the Climate Strike, Justin Trudeau met with Greta Thunberg before announcing that he would ensure that two billion trees would be planted over the next decade, which would also create 3500 seasonal jobs (and it includes urban forests), and it would be paid for by the profits of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Andrew Scheer went to Coquitlam, BC, to announce more infrastructure plans for roads and bridges, cancelling the Infrastructure Bank calling it a “boondoggle” (reminder: These kinds of things take time to get up and running, and they did more than the Conservatives’ P3 Canada in its entire existence). Of course, on a day where everyone else was focused on climate change because of the strikes and protests, Scheer was pushing for more traffic infrastructure, and had the utter gall to say that it would help reduce pollution because people wouldn’t be in traffic as long. This of course is completely wrong, because traffic fills the available volume – it would create more traffic, and higher emissions (and congestion would be just as bad within a short period of time).

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1177669904566292480

Continue reading →

Roundup: Trying to draw in the Supreme Court

Posted on by

If this election could get any stupider, it did yesterday. Justin Trudeau started the day off in Sudbury, and after arriving by canoe, he promised not only to further expand the areas of land and waters that are protected areas as part of ongoing roll-out of green policies in advance of today’s “climate strike” rally, Trudeau also promised an expansion of the “learn to camp” programme, including bursaries of up to $2000 for low-income families. As someone who hates camping, this is borderline offensive – but it’s also one of the whitest of white people policies in the book. (Seriously – ask a person of colour how they feel about camping). I get that the idea is that it promotes connecting people with nature and the importance of conservation, but this was probably one of the dumbest campaign promises to date.

Andrew Scheer was not much better. From Trudeau’s riding of Papineau in Montréal, Scheer tapped into the Trumpian “Lock Her Up!” mentality by promising not only a judicial inquiry into the Double-Hyphen Affair, but also to pass a cartoonishly named No More Cover-Ups Act, which would empower the RCMP to go directly to the Supreme Court of Canada for access to Cabinet documents – all of it predicated on the lie that the RCMP are investigating the PMO (they’re not) and that they can’t get access to documents (because the Clerk of the Privy Council said no to a fishing expedition). It’s all very gross and unseemly. Not only do we not demand that the police investigate our political rivals (this isn’t a banana republic, and if the Liberals lose, then they will have faced political consequences for the Affair), but politicising judicial inquiries is a Very Bad Thing. Dragging the Supreme Court into one’s political vendettas is even worse (and I have a column on that very topic coming out later today about that very issue).

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was in Campbell River, BC to reiterate his promise to build half a million housing units, but to also flesh out his promise for income supports of up to $5000 per year for low-income renters. But again, this is provincial jurisdiction so the rental income supports will have to be a carefully designed policy, while he has yet to explain how he’ll rapidly build all of this social housing when the cities where it’s most needed are very tight labour markets, which means there likely aren’t enough construction workers to do the job, and that will drive up the costs of building these units by a lot. (Singh also completely mischaracterised the output-based system on carbon pricing as part of his trying to downplay the current government’s record, because he’s doing politics differently).

Continue reading →

Roundup: Brownface bombshell

Posted on by

What felt like a few days of the campaign starting to get into more substantive issues and promises got derailed last night when Time Magazine published a piece that contained a photo showing Justin Trudeau in Brownface from 2001, when he was a teacher at a private school in Vancouver, and he dressed as Aladdin for an “Arabian Nights” gala. The campaign confirmed it was him, and a short while later, Trudeau addressed the reporters on his plane, took responsibility, admitted that he didn’t think it was racist at the time but understands that it is now, and that he was disappointed in himself – as well as the fact that he would talk to his kids in the morning about taking responsibility for actions (while he had been in the midst of contacting his racialized Cabinet ministers and one presumes caucus colleagues).

For opposition reaction, Jagmeet Singh spoke about the hurt this causes to people of colour and questioned Trudeau’s authenticity, while Andrew Scheer stated that the action was as racist in 2001 as it is in 2019, and that Trudeau isn’t fit to govern the country. (Reminder: Scheer has not apologised for his deeply homophobic comments in 2005, and just last summer his party was giving succour to racists as an attempt to score points against Trudeau who called out said racism). So we’ll see how much this dominates the news cycle for the next few days, and whether it hobbles Trudeau in any significant way.

Earlier in the day, Trudeau announced measures that would enhance CPP and OAS payments for those over 75 and widows, because they are more financially vulnerable, but also came under fire for not providing PBO costing for those measures – despite the fact that he said that would be released with the full platform. (More irritating was the fact that members of the media railed that Trudeau said that “portions” and not the full platform would be costed when the PBO doesn’t do full platform costings. All parties are just getting portions costed).

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1174379188125437952

Jagmeet Singh promised free dental care for households that make under $70,000 per year, and insisted it would be a “Day one” promise – and while he had a costing document, he didn’t have a plan for how exactly he was going to sell this to the provinces, whose jurisdiction this is, and who are unlikely to want to set up a very expensive new programme on their turf. Implementation matters.

Andrew Scheer spent the morning touting that his government would eliminate $1.5 billion in “corporate subsidies” every year – but promised to keep and beef up regional development agencies and to ensure they have regional ministers in them – a hotbed of pork-barrelling if history is any guide. More problematically, he didn’t exactly name what kinds of subsidies he would actually cut beyond a theoretical, and then produced a PBO document that basically said “You say you’ll cut this much, I guess we’ll take your word for it,” because they didn’t have details to cost out just what he planned to cut. While it’s likely these dollars exist and could be cut, it becomes politically dicey to do so in many cases, which is why previous promises to get rid of said subsidies never really pan out – constituencies need to be tended to.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1174383093152485378

https://twitter.com/twitscotty/status/1174319862803419136

Scheer also stated that he would “fast-track” any legal challenges to pipelines directly to the Supreme Court, which is a dumb idea and is only going to annoy the Court because if they’re the court of last resort, not a game of Mother, May I? Fobbing off tough political decisions to the court is not only cowardly, but it simply politicizes the courts and wastes their time when they have to tell politicians to sort it out themselves like grown-ups.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Sweetening the newborn benefits

Posted on by

It was another day of promises to families with young children, of course, and Justin Trudeau was out first this morning from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, to promise a more comprehensive package of benefits for the families of newborns – additional Canada Child Benefit payments, making maternity benefits actually tax free by removing the taxation at source as opposed to a non-refundable tax credit, and additional weeks of parental leave for adoptive parents. While most of the media stories didn’t really touch on it, the enhanced CCB payouts in the first month of a child’s life is approaching a basic minimum income for parents, as it doesn’t rely on EI benefits (which don’t apply for those who are self-employed or who weren’t working). While there are still a few questions about implementation (explained in this thread by Lindsay Tedds), most seem to agree that the Liberal plan is far more useful to parents than the one the Conservatives announced earlier.

Andrew Scheer was in Winnipeg, where he announced a promise to enhance the Registered Education Savings Plan benefits for those in lower income brackets, but it remains a fact that this is another promise that disproportionately benefits wealthier households, and does nothing for those who can’t afford to contribute to these RESPs. (Here’s a thread from Jennifer Robson on the efficacy of RESPs for low-income Canadians). Scheer also accused Trudeau of stealing his parental benefits idea and that he voted against it before and announced it now – but the Liberal plan is very different from the one Scheer proposed. (Here’s another thread from Robson comparing the Conservative and Liberal promises). Scheer also accused the Liberals of not being transparent about the costs of their promises, but Trudeau had already stated that a PBO-costing of them would becoming out once the whole platform is announced (which may provide a more holistic picture of their promises rather than them coming out piecemeal like the Conservatives are doing).

For Jagmeet Singh, he was in Ottawa to re-announce his party’s promise to build half a million new affordable housing units – but wouldn’t say how they would do it, which is kind of a big deal because the places where affordable housing is most acute are areas with either full employment or labour shortages, which is kind of a big deal if they want to get it built affordably.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Childcare and competing mistruths

Posted on by

It was a crazy-pants day on the campaign, so here we go. Justin Trudeau was out the door first today in Kitchener–Waterloo, with a pledge to create more before-and-after school care spaces for children, which will also involve the creation of a secretariat to do the negotiating with the provinces and lay the groundwork for a pan-Canadian childcare system (which won’t need to include Quebec, given that they already have their system). The pledge was also to reduce the fees parents are currently paying for before-and-after school care by ten percent, so we’ll see how that works out logistically and procedurally. There is an argument to be made here that ensuring this kind of care means more parents – and especially women (and Trudeau made this point in his announcement, showcasing that gender-based analysis was part of it) can re-enter and remain in the workforce. Given the state of our labour pool in this country – essentially at full employment – it is incumbent to ensure that we have the maximum rate of participation by women and minorities so that they can fill those labour shortages. (More thoughts on the announcement in this thread from Lindsay Tedds).

Jagmeet Singh’s big announcement in Longueuil, Quebec, was a “star candidate” – very loosely defined – who was a one-time provincial Green leader in Quebec who is now running for the NDP, against Pierre Nantel, the NDP MP who crossed to the Greens (and the riding is that the “star” very badly lost in many years ago). Apparently, there is now a tit-for-tat battle with the Greens as to who crossed the floor to whom, because that’s helpful.

Elizabeth May launched her party’s full platform, which they claim is “fully costed” – err, except that costing won’t be released for several days. Economists are already picking holes in the promises, particularly the promise for a guaranteed livable income (thread here).

Andrew Scheer was in Kelowna, BC, framing the election as the life you want being in reach or getting further out of reach, and after his tirades about Justin Trudeau and his laundry list of mistruths about the state of the deficit and the carbon price and he announced his plan to restore yet more tax credits, this time for children’s sports and arts programmes, and unlike under Harper, these tax credits would be refundable, so that even low-income families who don’t pay taxes will be able to benefit. When asked about how he could afford these plans, he said that his path to balance was over a five-year time period, and then he proffered a fantasy version of Energy East (who cares about economics), and claimed his climate plan was the only “real” one (verifiably untrue). Most unbelievable was that, when pressed about false statements that he and his candidates were making about Liberal plans, he went on a tirade about how Justin Trudeau lied, so it was fair for him to keep promulgating these false statements.

And then, suddenly, Scheer drops an allegation that Justin Trudeau had drinks with Faith Goldy and he wanted answers on that. The Liberals responded shortly thereafter with a blanket denial, but if this election is going to be fought over who was in the same room as Faith Goldy, it’s going to be a long five weeks.

Continue reading →