Tag Archives: Speaker Rota

QP: Return of the carbon price mendacity

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While the prime minister was away at an EV battery plan announcement in Quebec, his deputy off in Toronto, and other leaders were also absent. Chris d’Entrement was again in the big chair for the day, even though one would think they would rotate Alexandra Mendès in there as well. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, accused the prime minister of looking like “a clown” around the world, called Rota a “Liberal Speaker,” railed that it took him five days to say anything, and then repeated it in English in the same question. Karina Gould said that everyone agreed it was the Speaker who was responsible and he resigned. Poilievre then accused the prime minister of creating “the middle-class hungry” and demanded they cut the carbon price. Anita Anand stood up to wonder if the Conservatives would support their bill on cutting the GST on rentals and increasing competition. Poilievre then called out Atlantic Liberal MPs who say that they have concerns about the carbon price while at home but not while in Ottawa. Randy Boissonnault accused the Conservatives of looking to cut programmes and let the planet burn. Poilievre rambled about the supposed “NDP coalition” before demanding they vote for their Supply Day motion to cut the carbon price. Boissonnault repeated his same response about the Conservatives only looking to slash and burn. Poilievre then returned to French to call out the Bloc leader for voting to increase the carbon price (which is not entirely true). Pascale St-Onge insisted that what doesn’t make sense is a party that doesn’t have a climate plan.

Yves-François Blanchet got up and wondered why the Conservatives wouldn’t axe subsidies, before wondering why the prime minister still hasn’t called president Zelenskyy or Jewish leaders. Gould said that calls were made, and that the prime minister apologised to everyone harmed. Blanchet insisted that the headlines would have been different if the prime minister had apologised immediately (which would have given Rota cover), and Gould repeated that calls were made and apologies were made through diplomatic channels from the beginning.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he demanded that the government end all new fossil fuel projects and move the net-zero date up to 2045. St-Onge insisted that they have brought emissions down since 2018, and that they would do more. Boulerice the worried the chaos caused by changing insurers for civil servants, and Anita Anand insisted that they were working with the leadership and Canada Life to ensure the situation was rectified.

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Roundup: The Speaker election shapes up

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With the end of the sitting day last night, Anthony Rota was no longer the Speaker, and Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, the Dean of the House, became Speaker in his place, albeit temporarily. The too-clever-by-half motion that the House passed on Tuesday reads that he was “deemed elected” and is the Speaker to be “styled the Interim Speaker,” which means they’re trying to get around the Constitution for two days in order to run the election on Tuesday instead of today. As is joked, this means that Plamondon is entitled to a portrait (and a Scotch), but it remains mystifying why they couldn’t just swallow the two lost sitting days if they wanted to leave this until Tuesday (Monday is not a sitting day).

There are currently four declared candidates for the position—the Deputy Speaker, Chris d’Entrement, and the two Assistant Deputy Speakers, Alexandra Mendès and Carol Hughes, along with a surprise fourth entrant, Liberal MP Greg Fergus. d’Entrement has been somewhat acquitting himself in QP over the past couple of days, and seems to have been most vocal in the media, with some outlets ignoring Mendès completely, which they shouldn’t, considering that she came very close to defeating Rota last time. Fergus could be the spoiler this time for Mendès changes when it comes to getting enough votes from fellow Liberals, but it is a ranked ballot, so that could make things more interesting as the math works out. I also have it on good authority that Mendès would be interested in having a Speaker’s Port in addition to a Speaker’s Scotch (as she is Portuguese), and I would very much love to see that happen (as I am a port drinker and not a scotch drinker). I’ve also heard from colleagues to do drink scotch that Rota’s choice was a poor one, so his replacement ushers in hopefully a better one.

Meanwhile, the former Chief of Protocol was interviewed on Power & Politics last night, and unequivocally showed that everything Pierre Poilievre has been insisting over the past three days about the government vetting everyone in the building for a diplomatic event has been false. The government doesn’t vet the guests of the Speaker or MPs—only guests of the government, as it should be, because Parliament and the Speaker are independent of government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian officials say they destroyed 34 out of 44 drones launched by Russia overnight, whose main target was Odesa, and there have been no casualties. Meanwhile, they have also seen several hundred Wagner fighters returning to the fight in eastern Ukraine, but they don’t expect them to have much impact.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1707162952929866144

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QP: An apology, but apparently not the right apology

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The prime minister gave the media a warning that he would be offering a public apology in the House of Commons for Friday’s incident, as had been demanded over the past several days, as this was his first day back in the Chamber since it happened. Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entrement was back in the big chair, and he started off with a mild admonishment about some of the charged language used yesterday, but didn’t demand an apology for it. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and declared that it was the prime minister’s personal responsibility for inviting Zelenskyy to Parliament, and insisted that his office should have vetted everyone in the Chamber—which is absolutely absurd. Trudeau got up and read that he apologised sincerely for what happened on Friday, and that it was terrible that the person received applauses in the Chamber. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same misleading question, and Trudeau read the English version of the same apology script, but when he read that he apologised on behalf of everyone in the House, the Conservative benches objected to it not being on his behalf alone. Poilievre demanded to know if everyone was vetted by his office that day, and Trudeau rightfully stated that doing so would be a grievous violation of Parliament’s sacred privileges. Poilievre played outrage that this was some apparent violation, conflating security and political risk. Trudeau insisted that the facts were well known, and that this was entirely the outgoing Speaker’s responsibility, and that the opposition is misleading to score points. Poilievre again repeated the falsehood that PMO should have vetted everyone, and accused Trudeau of “hiding in his cottage” for three days. Trudeau stated that Poilievre has defended Parliament’s privileges before, and how he’s pretending that PMO should have some kind of oversight over the Speaker.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and asked if he has called Zelenskyy and if he has a strategy to combat Russian propaganda. Trudeau mouthed some pabulum about propaganda and defending Ukraine, but didn’t really answer the question. Blanchet took from the answer that he hadn’t called Zelenskyy and repeated the question. Trudeau said that they had sent several direct messages, before condemning Russia’s invasion.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he declared that “real damage” had been done by the incident on Friday, and wanted “concrete action” on cleaning up the mess. Trudeau recited that they stand with Ukraine, for as long as it takes. Singh repeated his same question in French, and Trudeau repeated his same response. 

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Roundup: Exit Rota, and the curious process for his replacement

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House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota announced his intention to resign yesterday, the effective date to be the end of sitting today, with the added caveat that he won’t preside over any further debates in the meantime (which is just as well considering how much of a hash that was on Monday). The timing of what comes next was somewhat up in the air—it would have sounded like the initial plan was for the election for Rota’s replacement would be on Thursday, but because that voting needs to be done in-person (it’s a secret ranked ballot—MPs can’t use their voting app for that), there were concerns about MPs who weren’t in town this week, and so on. That meant that the vote would have to be on Tuesday (because the Commons isn’t sitting on Monday), leaving two more days with no Speaker, and under the Constitution, they could not sit until they had a new one.

It was at this point that the House Leaders came up with a creative solution, that may be dubiously constitutional—they passed a motion by unanimous consent that declared that the Dean of the House, Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, is to be “deemed elected” and will act as interim Speaker until the election on Tuesday. Which is…interesting. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just swallow the loss of two sitting days (which could be a blessed relief considering how overheated things are right now over this whole debacle). There is also the question of Rota’s status once he has given up the office, and whether the Liberal caucus will want him back in their ranks considering what has happened, and the fact that the Conservatives would love nothing more than to call them all “Nazi sympathizers” or some other such epithet as a result. I’ve heard that Rota told a local radio station that he didn’t plan to run again in the next election, so perhaps he may need to consider getting an earlier start to those retirement plans.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are now pushing for some kind of committee study to “get to the bottom of what happened,” which is ridiculous because we know what happened—Rota didn’t do his job to politically vet his guest in the gallery. The notion that PMO should have vetted him is outrageous because it’s an assault on parliamentary sovereignty and the independence of the Speaker. It’s also little more than an attempt to set up yet another partisan circus where they can perform for the cameras, and gather a bunch more clips for future shitposts, because that’s what this parliament has become—little more than a clip factory. There’s nothing to study. We know what happened, and the fact that the Conservatives are deliberately conflating security screenings and political vetting is being done solely to score points, and they all know it. Hopefully the other opposition parties are smart enough not to fall for this (but I suspect they won’t be, because he have no serious MPs left).

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/1706822083127234564

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian drone strikes against Odessa have not only damaged warehouses, but also have suspended service of a ferry that runs between Ukraine and Romania. Ukrainian forces are claiming success around villages near Bakhmut. Russian state television claimed to show a video conference attended by that the Black Sea fleet commander that the Ukrainians say they killed.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1706716260627616064

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QP: More mendacity in the wake of Rota’s resignation

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At long last, and about 27 hours too late, Speaker Anthony Rota announced his intention to resign, but would make it official at the end of the sitting day tomorrow and that he would vacate the chair in the interim, leaving Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont to preside in his place.

The prime minister, meanwhile, was on his way to Toronto, as was his deputy, albeit for separate events. Every other leader was present, however.  Pierre Poilievre led off in French, noted f nation, and demanded that Trudeau take responsibility for not vetting all of the guests in the Chamber, which is an outrageous overreach, as PMO has no business doing so. Karina Gould noted that the Speaker is independent and that he took responsibility. Poilievre demanded to know why Justin Trudeau was hiding and not standing up for this, and got warned by the Deputy Speaker. Gould repeated that the Speaker resigned for his actions that he took alone. Poilievre switched to English to claim that the “Liberal Speaker” took the fall, and again claimed that PMO should have engaged in a massive overreach. Gould repeated that the Speaker took responsibility. Poilievre listed all of the things that Trudeau claims he’s not responsible for, like inflation, and claimed he didn’t take responsibility for things he did, to which Gould accused Poilievre of being irresponsible in politicising the issue. Poilievre made another dig at Trudeau’s absence, and demanded he take responsibility for this diplomatic embarrassment. The Deputy Speaker warned Poilievre again about pointing to absences, and Gould tried to turn the tables saying that she has barely heard a word of support for Ukraine from Poilievre, and there was much uproar and cries of shame.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he asked if the prime minster intended to apologise on behalf of Canada for Rota’s incident. Gould repeated that Rota took responsibility for his actions. Blanchet again demanded an apology, including one specifically to president Zelenskyy. Gould recited that as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, the incident hurt her personally, and that the Speaker did the right thing.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he lambasted the industry minister for summoning food producers to only stabilise and now lower prices (a sign that he doesn’t really know how inflation works), to which François-Philippe Champagne patted himself on the back for summoning those CEOs and those of the grocery oligopolies, and their bill on increasing competition. Singh then worried about people living in a campground in Halifax who can’t get any other housing and winter approaches, and blamed the prime minister. Sean Fraser said that Halifax is currently debating their rules to build more homes, and the government was pleased to work with them on that.

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Roundup: No resignation from Rota, chaos ensues

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The fallout from Friday’s incident in the House of Commons where Speaker Anthony Rota recognised a Ukrainian veteran who had served with a Nazi-affiliated unit was a complete and utter gong show yesterday, as Rota did not offer his resignation as he should have, and the day simply spiralled out of control. Both the NDP and the Bloc have called for Rota to resign, and the Liberals have been doing this weird hinting that he needs to “really think about” whether he can maintain confidence, without just coming right out and saying he can’t, while only the Conservatives have been de facto rushing to his defence by trying to blame Justin Trudeau and the PMO for what happened, in a stunning display of bad faith and mendacity, while also apparently trying to shield an incompetent Speaker whom they want on the job because he’s so lenient with them. The prime minister did make a brief statement about how this was an “embarrassment,” but didn’t call on Rota to resign either.

Much of the bad faith arguing was a deliberate conflation from every single Conservative between security screening and political vetting. The 98-year-old veteran was not a security threat. All security screening was followed. What he was not subject to was political vetting, as the Speaker is not subject to the PMO, and his office submitted their guest list to the Parliamentary Protocol Office who doesn’t share the list with PMO, and which doesn’t to background checks or vetting for political embarrassment, because that’s frankly not their job. The fact that there is a reporting relationship between the Parliamentary Protective Service and the Minister of Public Safety also has nothing to do with political vetting, as it’s not their job, and they don’t (and couldn’t) do background checks on everyone who visits the Hill, because that would be insane. Nor should PMO be doing this, as has been the assertion from a great many people who should know better, which is again utterly ludicrous.

Compounding the mystifying behaviour yesterday was Government House Leader Karina Gould trying to move a motion to strike the mention of said individual from the record, but also to have the audio-visuals scrubbed as well, which is weirdly Stalinist behaviour. While I get the impulse to try and remove the taint of his visit from the record, and that Parliament has done this in committee when Conservative MP read the manifesto of a mass shooter into the record, this was nevertheless fairly gross and disturbing, and the Conservatives objected (which also turned into an absolute gong show as this went down, and Rota was, yet again, out of his depth in the Chair).

So while we await Rota’s resignation, which cannot happen soon enough, we’re seeing Russian propagandists having a field day with this. But should Rota finally do the right thing and resign, the session will need to suspend, possibly for a day or two, so that the election of a new Speaker can take place. The likely two candidates are Conservative Chris D’Entremont and Liberal Alexandra Mendès, currently the deputy and assistant deputy Speakers, and we’ll see how this ends up. But Rota has to resign, immediately.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia’s early-morning attack on Odessa Monday has killed four people and caused significant damage to infrastructure at their grain storage facilities. There were early morning attacks today against the grain port at Izmail. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials say that their attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in occupied Crimea last week killed 34 officers including the fleet commander.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1706193779940581503

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QP: The elephant in the Speaker’s Chair

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While the prime minister was in town, he was meeting with BC premier David Eby while QP was going on. It shouldn’t have been going on. The Speaker, Anthony Rota, should have resigned when the House opened at 11 AM, which should have triggered a new election for Speaker and suspend proceedings for the day. That didn’t happen. Pierre Poilievre started off in French, and gravely intoned about the news on Friday that the House of Commons gave a standing ovation to a former Nazi, and that this embarrassed Canada and handed propaganda to Russia, but insisted that only the prime minister was responsible and demanded he do so publicly. Karina Gould stood up to say that she was extremely disappointed with the situation and as a descendent of a Holocaust survivor, she was extremely disappointed, but Poilievre knows that the decision was the Speaker’s alone and that neither the government nor the Ukrainian delegation knew about it ahead of time. Poilievre switched to English and insisted that the question was for the prime minister—who was not in the room, but he wanted to play the game of pretending Trudeau is simply not answering—and demanded an apology to the PM for “vetting” the individual but letting him in anyway (which is not what happened). Gould stated that she found out only when the was introduced by the Speaker, and made a call not to politicise the issue. Poilievre insisted that because Trudeau is in Ottawa today, he needed to stand up and take responsibility for this, and apologise for it. Gould again said that she was personally very hurt by this and that this as not the government’s issue, and to not politicise it. Poilievre repeated his same demand for an apology for this diplomatic inside the, and got another plea not to policies this. Poilievre insisted that Canadians were tired of a government who blames everyone else for their failures, and wondered if the Speaker was being thrown under the bus this time. Gould insisted that everyone was caught off-guard.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and noted that the Russians are using this event for propaganda, and asked what the government would do to repair the damage from Friday’s incident. Gould repeated her line that this was very painful and asks everyone to work responsibly. Therrien repeated the demand to know what the government would do, and Gould repeated her same lines.

Jenny Kwan rose for the NDP, and she started with saying Friday’s incident never should have occurred, before worrying about housing and demanded  an acquisition fund to stop the loss of low-cost rentals to profiteering landlords. Sean Fraser says that the government needs to make investments in low-cost financing to build homes and to invest in affordable housing. Kwan insisted the government was not meeting the need. Fraser said that increasing the supply of market housing was not enough on its own, it still needs to happen as part of the solution.

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Roundup: Rota’s apology for his fatal mistake

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The warm glow of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to Parliament has given way to a bitter aftertaste as it turns out that the Ukrainian veteran that Speaker Anthony Rota introduced in his concluding remarks turned out not to have been either a Ukrainian-Canadian fighter or a Ukrainian partisan (as Rota’s introduction could fuzzily be construed as) but rather, was a volunteer for a Nazi-controlled unit, and it has turned into an absolute shitstorm of groups, particularly Jewish groups, being rightfully outraged, and partisan actors trying to use this to score points.

Rota released a statement of absolute, unequivocal apology, and I suspect that he will make a statement in the House of Commons first thing today, but it nevertheless casts a pall over him and his judgment, particularly because he has brought Parliament as a whole, and the government, into disrepute, and has quite possibly created an international incident over this where it feeds the interests of Russian propagandists who deride Zelenskyy and Ukraine as a whole as being some kind of Nazi stronghold. And I wish that I could say that this was atypical, but Rota has spent his time as Speaker largely being asleep at the wheel, and being a genial idiot who is more concerned with being everyone’s friend than he is in doing his job, which is tremendously unfortunately. And his trying to be everyone’s friend and being asleep at the wheel has brought us to this point here, and I have a hard time seeing how he has any choice in the matter here other than to announce his resignation on Monday morning, because his job is to protect Parliament, and he has done the opposite. There should be no walking back from this, no matter how well-intentioned he was, or how inadvertent the mistake.

Of course, the politics at play here have already spun all the way out of control, with Pierre Poilievre claiming that Trudeau met with said individual, while everyone else says that he hasn’t. People are insisting that Trudeau and the PMO should have known that this individual was invited, which I can’t see as possibly being the case if the Speaker, who is independent and does not run everything past PMO or PCO, had his own allotment of guest seats that he filled. I think that this will nevertheless obligate Trudeau to issue some kind of public apology, possibly in the Chamber, either before or after QP (assuming we have one if the Speaker resigns and they don’t have to suspend until a new permanent Speaker is chosen), and to offer a public assurance to Zelenskyy that he was unaware and that this situation is dealt with by Rota’s resignation. Unfortunately, this is going to play into so many propagandists’ narratives, and everyone is damaged by this.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian airstrikes killed two and wounded eight in the southern city of Kherson on Sunday, and early this morning, they launched a drone and missile attack against Odessa. New Western weapons are exacting a significant toll on Russian forces in the fighting near Bakhmut. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered two Polish volunteers awards on his return to Ukraine, as the two countries are in a major dispute over grain shipments. Here’s a look at an airport in Poland which serves not only as an arrival point for Ukrainians badly injured and in need of care, both civilian and military, as well as a transfer point for military equipment.

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Roundup: Johnston says no public inquiry

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It was David Johnston Day, as his first report was delivered, and he did not recommend a public inquiry for very good reasons—particularly that it could not be necessarily public given the nature of the information, and that it would be window dressing at this stage of the game, considering he had already done a lot of the heavy lifting, and planned to do public hearings as part of his final report. You can read the full report here, but here are the five key takeaways. There was plenty of scathing material in there, particularly to the system of information dissemination within government, but also to the way media stories torqued partial information into falsehoods (the Han Dong allegations were discredited in the report). There is a problem with information culture within government, and while this government has done a lot to fix some things, they are not adapting fast enough to the changing environment, and that is on them. (Check out some of the threads linked below as well).

https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1661045080705187842

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1661080153122848781

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/1661211717924188161

Johnston’s decision was necessarily a no-win scenario, and everyone is unhappy, but nobody has exactly explained how a public inquiry was going to restore trust in the democratic system—particularly as it comes under attack by bad faith actors who spent the day trying to discredit Johnston and his report (never mind that he did address the alleged conflicts and consulted with a former Supreme Court of Canada justice before accepting the job), and that no matter who would lead either the Special Rapporteur process or a theoretical public inquiry, there would be the same bad faith attacks because they don’t actually want to restore faith in the process. They want people to distrust because they cynically hope to leverage that in the next election. Pierre Poilievre in particular has refused to strike any kind of statesmanlike tone and refuses to be briefed because he knows that the moment he actually knows the intelligence and can’t talk about it, he can’t outright lie and make accusations with wild abandon, and that’s his entire shtick. But this is a fairly classic Canadian problem, where MPs don’t want to know the actual secret information, because then they’d have to stop talking, which they don’t want to do. Remember, ours is no longer a serious Parliament.

There is a conversation to be had about the role media is playing in undermining the faith in democracy, but you can rest assured there will be no self-reflection around it. Rather, there will be self-justification and rationalization, and sniping that Johnston expects us to take the intelligence he’s seen at face value, which is ironic considering that the media outlets reporting on these leaks are expecting us to do the very same thing, even though there are agendas at play within that reporting.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661050997936996356

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1661051520018706432

In pundit reaction, Justin Ling gives a fairly balanced summation of the report with some insightful commentary. Susan Delacourt is sceptical of Johnston’s assertion that politicians and media can play their parts in restoring faith in democracy. Andrew Coyne is unhappy with the notion that we are expected to just trust Johnston (ignoring the contradiction made above), and while he credits Johnston with inviting NSICOP and NSIRA to review his findings, the same secrecy problem remains. Matt Gurney despairs at the picture of incompetence the report paints.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Following his return to Ukraine after meetings at the G7 in Hiroshima, Japan, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visted marines on the front lines in the country’s east. Over the weekend, the Russians claimed they overran Bakhmut over the weekend, which Ukraine denies, particularly as they have been reclaiming territory surrounding it. Russians are also claiming Ukrainian “sabotage groups” are crossing the border into the Belgorod region, but it sounds like these may be disaffected Russians, as Ukrainans deny involvement. Russians later claim to have “crushed” these groups.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1660291196030271490

https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1660884230174560256

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Roundup: Demanding the Speaker to something he can’t

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The Liberals are no stranger to stunts, and the “poor me” stunts are some of the worst of all. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that MP Ya’ara Saks has written an open letter to the Speaker to demand apologies from Conservatives for sexist remarks, be it Michael Cooper in Committee or Rick Perkins telling Jean Yip that she deserves a participation ribbon. The problem? There’s nothing the Speaker can really do about it.

Saks didn’t cite any Standing Orders that were contravened, and the Speaker is bound to operate within the Standing Orders. Those are the rules by which he is refereeing. And for well over a generation now, the Canadian House of Commons has seen fit to effectively neuter the Speaker so that he (or she) doesn’t have much in the way of leeway in order to enforce, well, anything. Other Speakers in other Westminster parliaments have a lot more authority and latitude—Australia’s Speaker can even demand that governments answer the question when they are seen to be evasive (though this can sometimes stray into Speakers acting in potentially partisan ways). But ours? Nope—because MPs chose to have a ridiculously unempowered Speaker. The result? More of a gong show, more speaking lists, more canned speeches without any flow, and overall, an unserious Parliament, particularly in relation to our comparator countries.

And MPs could change this. But they don’t want to, so they won’t. And that is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that his country’s military chiefs are unanimous to keep defending Bakhmut, probably because they are grinding the Russian forces down there at a fairly alarming rate. Meanwhile, the Americans are accusing the Russians of downing one of their drones over the Black Sea, which Russia denies.

https://twitter.com/yermolenko_v/status/1635649300922245120

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