Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

Roundup: Not a Nordic friendship group

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The ouster of a UCP candidate in Alberta over his posing with members of the Soldiers of Odin, and then excusing it by saying that they’re polite, continues to reverberate as the provincial NDP are looking to make hay of it, and premier Rachel Notley pointing out (entirely correctly) that you can’t keep blowing into dog whistles and then looking surprised when these people show up. And even the other two candidates who posed and then disavowed knowledge of who they are isn’t entirely credible because these people showed up in badges and vests, looking not unlike motorcycle gang members, and that should have clued them in that maybe photos were a bad idea. And as a friend of mine pointed out, you can bet that if a group of drag queens showed up and wanted to pose with them, someone would have put a stop to that right away. And so here we are.

While casting the UCP as bigots is familiar political territory to tread, it’s not like there isn’t enough history to show that they need to be careful with their associations, and in showcasing the dangers of too much free speech in the political arena. Recall that it was the “lake of fire” comments from Wildrose candidates that sunk that party’s chances in a previous election, and when then-leader Danielle Smith didn’t come out to denounce the comments, it cost her and the party. And while the UCP’s spokesperson came out to give the denunciation, Kenney himself has been silent on this, which will risk his looking like either tacit endorsement or that he’s not taking white nationalism seriously enough. And while people say that nobody could accuse Kenney of such a thing, given his history of being the Minister of “Curry in a Hurry” and attending every buffet by an ethnocultural minority back when Stephen Harper gave him the citizenship portfolio, what that ignores is the fact that Kenney also played very cynical games with those newcomer communities, putting them against each other (particularly immigrant communities against refugee claimants), and focusing on those communities where he felt he could exploit their social conservatism for his benefit. That did get noticed in some of those communities, and it’s in part why the supposed shift in immigrant votes didn’t actually happen outside of a pervasive media myth that wasn’t born out in fact.

The point has been made that if we don’t want to ensure that all politicians and candidates are in bubbles that this sort of thing will keep happening – particularly if groups like these show up and events and pose with politicians in an attempt to legitimate themselves, and as Paul Wells pointed out on Power & Politics (at 46:20 on the video), there is a whole cottage industry of Conservatives who search for photos of questionable people who have posed with Trudeau and company doing the very same thing (recall Jaspal Atwal doing the very same thing, leading to the overwrought denunciations of the India trip). This is true, and it shows that there is fallibility in any kind of “vetting” of people who pose with photos – and the fact that “vetting” these things is less of an organized thing than people, including in the media, seem to think. But this being said, when the group looking to pose with you seeks legitimation, it’s incumbent on the politicians to denounce what they stand for, and if it keeps happening (like what is going on here) that the leader should say something – but it also should give pause to reflect on what it is they’re saying that is attracting these sorts. Just saying “we don’t agree with xenophobes” while playing the xenophobia tuba, like Maxime Bernier, can’t cut it either. We’re not fools, and shouldn’t be treated as though we are when things like this happen, and keep happening.

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Roundup: Yet more dubious suggestions hosted by the GRO

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Over on the Government Representative Office website, Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative” Senator Peter Harder has been hosting suggestions from former senators of late on how to “reform” the Senate. Because of course he has. And not all of the suggestions are particularly helpful, or good for the Senate in the long run. The latest example is from Senator Pierre De Bané, who was a senator for thirty years and an MP before that. De Bané seems to think that what the Senate needs more than anything is the independent oversight body that the Auditor General wants instituted before voluntarily neutering its powers by passing a motion to only use a suspensive veto. Because hey, if it’s good enough for the UK…

I’ve written numerous times that the notion of an independent oversight body risks the senate’s status as a self-governing parliamentary body. I would be okay with an audit committee that includes outside members but is still made up with a majority of senators in order to ensure that it remains in Senate control because it’s important that our parliamentary bodies retain self-governing status. Otherwise we might as well turn power back over to the Queen, because we obviously have no business governing ourselves. I’m also forever baffled by the notion that we should neuter the Senate’s ability to exercise hard power and defeat a bad government bill when necessary. It’s part of their necessary duties to hold government to account, and before you say that it’s good enough for the House of Lords, the Canadian Senate is a vastly different body than the Lords, with a very different history, and the Senate was never the primary legislative body as the Lords was for centuries. These are differences that can’t be papered over.

De Bané’s other suggestion is that the Senate start creating a series of special committees tailored to senators’ special interests to…do advocacy work, apparently. I’m not opposed to senators undertaking an advocacy role on issues that are of particular interest to them, I am less keen on the proliferation of special committees because I worry that it will draw the focus away from the actual legislative responsibilities of senators – especially in an environment with independent senators who are beholden to nobody and who aren’t able to be corralled into getting work done. We’re already having problems getting bills passed in a timely manner because the leadership within the Senate refuses to do things like negotiate with one another – now imagine that these senators are otherwise engaged with busywork of their own interest rather than with the boring work of scrutinising legislation or holding government to account. I do fear that creating an environment where personalized committees can proliferate will have a detrimental effect on the Senate overall, and I’m a bit surprised that a former senator doesn’t see this possibility.

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Roundup: A (likely) electoral false alarm

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There were a few eyebrows raised in the Parliamentary Precinct yesterday when news came from the Procedure and House Affairs committee that the Chief Electoral Officer said that they intend to be ready for an election by the end of April, never mind that the fixed election date is October, and suddenly there was a renewed (but brief) round of election speculation fever (which was then suffocated by the Kavanagh hearings south of the border). Stéphane Perrault noted that they can basically run an election anytime under the previous contest’s rules, but they need lead time for future changes, which puts a clock on the current bill at committee if they want to have a chance for any of the changes to be implemented by next year’s election – and that assumes fairly swift passage in the Senate, which they may not get (particularly if the Conservatives are determined to slow passage of the bill down in committee as it stands).

Of course, I’m pretty sure that a spring election is not going to happen, simply because Trudeau’s agenda still has too many boxes without checkmarks – which is also why I suspect that we haven’t had a prorogation. And looking at how Trudeau has organised his agenda, so much of it has been backloaded to the final year, with plenty of spillover for him to ask for re-election in order to keep it going. (Things are also delayed, one suspects, because NAFTA talks have derailed things in the PMO, and sucked up much of the talent and brainpower. Suffice to say, I’m not taking any talk about an early election with any seriousness.

Meanwhile, more eyebrows were raised when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel claimed that she was being told to prepare for a fall election, which we’re 99 percent sure is just a new fundraising ploy, for what that’s worth.

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Roundup: Hung legislatures vs basic civics

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New Brunswick had an election on Monday night, and it resulted in a 22-21-3-3 hung legislature, and wouldn’t you just know it, there’s been some really awful reporting about it, because apparently people who report on politics in this country can’t be arsed to learn the basics of how Responsible Government works. Hence, we got reporters saying that people “don’t know who the premier is” – which is wrong, because it remains Brian Gallant as he hasn’t resigned – or that he would “get first crack to try and form a government” – he already has a government, but rather he will try to test the confidence of the Chamber – or another heinous offender was framing his meeting with the lieutenant governor as getting “permission” to test confidence, which is again wrong because the LG doesn’t grant permission. I’m also not crazy about framing the election as “inefficient votes” for the provincial Liberals because that implies that the popular vote is a real thing, when it’s a logical fallacy – it was not one election, but rather 49 separate elections that happened at the same time. This is basic civics, and yet our media is failing Canadians, so well done everyone.

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What makes this particular election result interesting is the fact that there are two “third-parties,” each with three seats – the Green Party, and an anti-bilingualism populist party – that will have to prop up either the incumbent Liberals or the PCs, who won one more seat (so far as we know – there are several recounts now underway). That means that the election of a Speaker will be crucial, and word has it that the government is making offers to PC winners to try and get one of them to take up the post. Of course, one particular quirk of New Brunswick is that, well, their Speakers tend to be fairly partisan. So that could make things doubly interesting for the way things will play out in the weeks and months to come.

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Meanwhile, Paul Wells accurately describes the dynamics of the post-election period and how the LG will discharge her role, which is not to give permission. Susan Delacourt tries to tease out the effect of populism on this election, but along the way grossly mischaracterises the LG as having “waded into” the results and giving Gallant “the right” to stay on as premier, when that’s not how it works, and it’s disappointing that these myths keep getting traction.

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QP: Competing moral indignation

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In ten years of covering Parliament Hill, I have never seen a prime minister attend Question Period four days in a row in a single week, and yet here we are today. Andrew Scheer, however, was absent. Pierre Poilievre led off, and claimed that Trudeau was pretending to be tough in NAFTA talks while giving Trump cheap oil and letting him get away with lowering taxes and taking Canadian jobs. Trudeau responded with some pabulum that they have seen high growth and record low unemployment. Poilievre went another two rounds of the same, getting more intense in his rhetoric, and Trudeau responding with greater bombast in return. John Brassard was up next, decrying that convicted murderer getting veterans’ benefits while not serving, to which Trudeau gave soaring rhetoric about veterans’ families serving with them, but not commenting on that case. Brassard demanded that benefits be stripped, and Trudeau accused them of stooping low to play politics and refusing to answer further. Guy Caron was up next for the NDP, decrying the millions spent by the Infrastructure Bank while not funding projects. Trudeau responded that they were investing in communities for the long-term, and accused the NDP of choosing the Conservative path of cuts to balance the budgets. Caron went a second round, and Trudeau reiterated the great things about infrastructure. Brigitte Sansoucy went for another round two rounds of the same question, got the same answer from Trudeau both times.

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Roundup: Notwithstanding Ford

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It was a crazy day in the state of constitutional law yesterday, as an Ontario judge struck down Doug Ford’s bill to reduce the size of Toronto city council on some rather dubious grounds, and Doug Ford responded by insisting that he would invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to ensure it passed anyway, no matter that the issue by which he’s going to use the seldom-used provision on is of dubious merit, and has all of the appearances of enacting a political grudge (while all of the “reasonable” members of his Cabinet who were supposed to keep his worst impulses in check cheer him on). It’s a full-blown tire fire.

For starters, here’s a bit of context about just what the Notwithstanding Clause actually is, and some history of its use. But what is perhaps more alarming are the number of voices who are calling on the federal government to invoke the defunct constitutional provisions around disallowance as a way of thwarting Ford – and some of that has been fuelled by Toronto mayor John Tory meeting with prime minister Justin Trudeau last night. I can pretty much guarantee you that Trudeau, however, won’t touch the disallowance powers with a bargepole, because a) the powers are defunct for a reason (in that the issues that disallowance was used on are better dealt with through the courts), and b) it would stir up such a shitstorm of epic proportions that it would be difficult to contain the political damage, and I’m not sure that Trudeau is willing to expend that much political capital for something that is really not his political ambit, and he’s likely to win most of Toronto’s seats again regardless. But if you also look at the message that Trudeau’s minister of intergovernmental affairs, Dominic LeBlanc sent out, the not unsubtle language in there is that this is a fight for the political arena, and Ontario voters will have to deal with the mess that they created, which is pretty much how it should be. It’s not going to be easy if we’re having these kinds of issues three months in, but people shouldn’t expect another order of government to swoop in and save them. That’s not how democracy works.

Meanwhile, Emmett Macfarlane walks through what’s constitutionally dubious about the court ruling, while Andrew Coyne invokes some high dudgeon about use of the Notwithstanding Clause and Ford’s thuggish populist tactics. Chris Selley reminds us that so much of this episode is because Ford is all about chaos, and he brings more of it with these tactics. Susan Delacourt, rather chillingly, wonders which will be the next premier to decide that the Charter is inconvenient for their populist proposals. And University of Ottawa vice-dean of law Carissima Mathen both writes about why Ford’s comments are so offensive to our system of laws and governance, plus offers some more context about the Notwithstanding Clause in this video segment that you should watch.

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Roundup: Scheer’s milquetoast response

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While Maxime Bernier’s Twitter missives continue to roll along, accusing Indigenous communities of playing the victim card and making some pointed remarks about the dedication of a Winnipeg park to the founder of Pakistan (on the date of Pakistan’s national independence), the calls for his ouster have started to mount, particularly from the Liberal side of the aisle – which won’t do much. Within the Conservative ranks, Senator Salma Ataullahjan is calling Bernier out for his divisive rhetoric, and said she planned to talk to Andrew Scheer about how poorly this is playing within the Pakistani-Canadian community that she has been reaching out to for the party. Scheer finally did issue a statement on Wednesday evening, and it was about as milquetoast as you can imagine.

The fact that Scheer didn’t actually condemn Bernier’s statement, and the fact that he immediately engaged in both-sidesism to condemn identity politics “on the left and the right” seems to fit with the fact that this particular kind of shitposting by members of his party is not only tolerated, but is the modus operandi of their current communications strategy. The fact that Scheer is using the same language about identity politics that Bernier is using certainly makes it sound like he’s more than just winking to them about the kind of dog-whistling that they’re engaging in. Whether this is because Scheer is afraid of alienating Bernier’s base within the party, or because Scheer himself sees this kind of footsie with xenophobes as a way of trying to keep the more intolerant section of the base mollified remains to be seen. Still – his choice of language, and his refusal to actually deal with the substance of Bernier’s comments is deliberate and simply raises far more questions than it answers.

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Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert wonders why Bernier is bringing up this fight when it’s even gone dormant in the Quebec provincial election, and wonders if it’s a dare to Scheer to discipline him when he may be the more popular figure in the party. It’s a good question, and Bernier certainly seems to be aiming for a fight at the upcoming convention.

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Roundup: Mischief petitions

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There’s a nonsense e-petition circulating on the Parliamentary website about the PM’s groping allegation, and essentially calls for him to be removed from caucus because that’s what happened to other Liberals who faced allegations (not true), and then goes on about how he’s lost the confidence of citizens. It’s pure mischief, and the fact that Michelle Rempel is sponsoring it is pretty much proof of that, but that aside, I’m mystified how this passed the vetting that these kinds of petitions are supposed to get because it has nothing to do with a government issue but rather it’s phrased entirely about caucus management. It should be disqualified as such.

This having been established, I have to say that I’m getting mighty tired of e-petition stories, because they’re not actually news. The fact that they’re hosted on the Parliament of Canada website makes them easy to search, so it’s cheap and easy filler content, but the fact that the story here didn’t contextualize the petition as not having anything to do with government business, and instead ginned it up with a headline that it was trying to force a “government response” to the allegation when it has nothing to do with government business, is actually on the irresponsible side. Yes, it’s salacious because it keeps the “groping” allegation story going, but there’s nothing actually there. It’s the equivalent of empty calories in news form. We should be doing better.

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Roundup: Extreme multiculturalism

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The fallout to Maxime Bernier’s latest Twitter missive on multiculturalism was more muted than one might have expected – no actual condemnation from Andrew Scheer, just a bland statement from his office that didn’t address Bernier’s words at all. And Erin O’Toole offered his own response which was basically just a reiteration that the various conservative parties in Canada’s history have had ethno-cultural firsts as a way of proving that they’re not all bigots or racists, but it missed the point that there was nevertheless a certain amount of tokenism in those firsts – that yes, they’ve got one of these different groups, but one is enough, thanks, and don’t talk to us about systemic barriers or discrimination. After all, these singular examples pulled up their bootstraps and made it – why can’t everyone else?

Bernier himself got huffy that he was described as saying he was against diversity – he insists he’s okay with some diversity, but not “extreme multiculturalism,” which is odd, because it’s like he missed the whole point of multiculturalism, which is about finding an effective way of integrating newcomers rather than alienating them further into ghettos. The fact that he doesn’t get that just adds fuel to the notion that this is all about winking to xenophobes and white nationalists, never mind the fact that it’s a nonsense proposition that there’s a Goldilocks zone of not too little, not too much, but just enough diversity that will magically keep Canada from disintegrating into some kind of ethnic hellhole. Never mind that the concern trolling about Liberal “identity politics” ignores the fact that in order to address systemic barriers facing women, sexual minorities, and people of colour, you actually to address what those barriers are, which is not about balkanizing – as Bernier seems to think.

Meanwhile, not every Conservative seems to be keen on Bernier’s pronouncements, but they seem concerned about how much influence he has among the base (somewhat mystifyingly). And with a convention coming up, we’ll see if these tensions spill out into the open.

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Roundup: Bernier’s dog whistles

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While we’re on the topic of bozo eruptions, we got another one from Maxime Bernier over Twitter on Sunday evening, railing about Justin Trudeau’s declaration that diversity is our strength. While I won’t reproduce all of Bernier’s feed, some of the commentary around it has been interesting, and in particular, just what kinds of dog whistles and language that Bernier employs in his language – and likely not a coincidence that this happened on a day of counter-protests to white supremacists in the United States. Also worth noting that his tweets were in rapid succession and in both official languages, which indicates that they were premeditated and not spur of the moment, and that does mean something as well.

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I might be willing to suspend enough disbelief around Bernier to suppose that he’s really not all that bright and that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing when he tweets stuff like this, but the people who surrounded him in his leadership campaign absolutely knew what they were doing when they tweeted things like red pill memes, and one presumes that they’re still in Bernier’s orbit. But Bernier has consistently demonstrated that he doesn’t have particularly adept political sensibilities (witness his ejection from shadow cabinet), and the fact that he went from going to Pride parades during his leadership campaign to insist that his libertarian values meant that he valued freedom over social conservatism, to becoming a Jordan Peterson convert who was paranoid about “enforced speech” and the bogus fears about being jailed for mis-gendering someone. But as is pointed out below, we are two weeks away from the Conservative policy convention, and it’s possible that this dog whistling is also about Bernier trying to gather support to oppose Scheer in some capacity or other.

Michelle Rempel also put out a tweet thread in response (which again, I’m not going to repeat), and some of the points she made seemed to be refuting Bernier, but at the same time, she makes her own coded appeals about planned migration and the language of pitting groups of newcomers against each other, in very Jason Kenney-esque ways.

Ultimately, however, we are back to the notion of where the adult supervision is with this party, and we recall the reasons why Harper put the party into communications lockdown – before they won in 2006, they went into lockdown because the 2004 election saw them lose because of precisely these kinds of bozo eruptions from the likes of Cheryl Gallant and others. And the strict message discipline seemed to work, but it causes as many problems as it solves (not to mention it’s terrible for democracy). But with this kind of tire fire over the past couple of weeks, you have to imagine that Scheer, whose own Twitter strategy is a lot of lies, obfuscation, narrative building and populist memes, is all for this kind of air war that he thinks will rile the base in ways that appear to have worked for both Trump and Ford. Maybe this kind of “shitposting” (as it is colloquially known) is the message discipline, in which case, we’re probably all doomed.

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