Tag Archives: Stéphane Dion

Roundup: Deficit is coming in lower than expected

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It is on or about day ninety-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces are claiming that they have captured a rail hub in Donestk, while they continue to pound Severodonetsk, with some 90 percent of the city’s buildings damaged. Ukrainians are calling for Western allies to deliver weapons faster, though there is talk that it looks like this aggressive push by Russia has depleted their arsenal.

The invasion is also not accidental in terms of location or timing—the eastern part of the country are a trove of natural gas and critical minerals, and when Russia invaded, it cut off Ukraine’s exploration of natural gas reserves in the Black Sea, which could have been used to help wean Europe off of Russian oil and gas. Because aren’t all wars really about resources?

Closer to home, the Fiscal Monitor was released, and the deficit figure is coming in much lower than anticipated, because in large part the economy is overheated which is generating a lot of revenue (and inflation does help in terms of collecting higher taxes on higher prices). But as Kevin Milligan points out, this means that the obsession by the Conservatives with the deficit is becoming really misplaced—the massive spending in 2020 to get us through the pandemic is behind us, and we’re not in that situation anymore. Not that facts matter—this is really an exercise in people’s feelings about the deficit, and the perceptions that are not grounded in facts.

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Roundup: Emergency Cabinet stalling

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After yesterday’s emergency Cabinet meeting, you might think that ministers would have something to say. They did – they stated that they remained 100 percent behind the construction of the pipeline, and then Jim Carr fled to catch a plane, and all other ministers similarly fled, with Bill Morneau dropping a few more hints before he had a later media availability in Toronto, where he said that they would be meeting with Rachel Notley today in order to further discuss options. Of course, why they couldn’t just say this at the time is part of the frustrating way in which this government chooses to communicate (though I keep reminding myself, and occasionally others, is that if this were the Harper years, we wouldn’t know there was a meeting, reporters would have been barred from the third floor where it happened, and ministers would flee down the back stairs so as to avoid media).

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Notley, meanwhile, says that her government is prepared to buy the pipeline outright if Kinder Morgan pulls out (and there is speculation that if Kinder Morgan fails to get the pipeline built, they could launch a NAFTA challenge against the government). John Horgan says that Notley’s threats to legislate the cut of oil to BC, forcing them to raise gasoline prices, would be “provocative” – something he says as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And to add another wrench into things, AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde finally broke his silence on the Trans Mountain issue, asserting that UNDRIP principles mean they need First Nations consent.

But amidst all of this, we get back to some basic problems, in that thus far, BC hasn’t actually done anything yet, so there’s nothing that the federal government can actually do other than make a bunch of symbolic statements. Demands that this be taken to the Supreme Court are left with the basic problems of just what we’re asking them to weigh in on – federal jurisdiction is settled law, and until BC actually comes up with their novel plans to skirt the constitution, we have no actual question for the Court to decide on (when it eventually does – it wouldn’t hear the reference until the fall at the earliest, and then likely take up to six more months to render their decision). I’m hard-pressed to call that a panacea to the problem, or to give Kinder Morgan the comfort they’re seeking.

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Good reads:

  • The Commons Public Safety committee will meet for sixty minutes at noon on Monday to hear from National Security Advisor Daniel Jean.
  • The Mexican ambassador says that while wages in Mexico are increasing, they won’t rise to the levels demanded by some NAFTA players immediately.
  • The big omnibus crime bill contains a clause that would allow police to submit court testimony in writing instead of in person, meaning defence can’t cross examine.
  • VADM Mark Norman had his first court appearance, and it’ll be a high bar for the Crown to prove breach of trust. Here is a guide to the cast of characters in this saga.
  • The government still doesn’t have a timeline for eliminating the gay blood donor ban (but they are compiling research for a move to a better risk-based system).
  • Tired of waiting for the government to fulfil its promise to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, Senator Kim Pate plans to table a bill to do just that.
  • A book by former Dion advisor Jocelyn Coulon insists that there was a frosty relationship between Trudeau and Dion, stemming Dion rebuffing Trudeau in 2006.
  • The Ethics Commissioner might open an investigation into Raj Grewal’s invitation on the India trip (but nobody has said how his private interests were furthered).
  • Stephen Harper tweeted congratulations to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who is anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. John Geddes delves deeper here.
  • In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Maxime Bernier expresses some sour grapes and says that Andrew Scheer won thanks to “fake Conservatives.”
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column takes on the issue of those illicit political donations by Conrad Black.
  • Susan Delacourt looks at Canadians’ growing distrust in Facebook.
  • Martin Patriquin notes the Liberal inability to own their pithy phrases when they backfire, preferring instead to shift to less sentimental talking points.
  • My column calls out the insistence that there are “simple questions” or simple answers to the Trans Mountain issue.

Odds and ends:

An academic examination of Justin Trudeau’s Instagram feed shows not a single selfie among the image he’s crafted.

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Roundup: Those amended tax proposals

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Bill Morneau unveiled his latest tweaks to his tax change proposals in New Brunswick today, and it looks like a pretty serious attempt to continue to close the avenues for tax avoidance by means of using Canadian-Controlled Private Corporations, while at the same time trying not to completely dissuade the use of those corporations to help businesses save for rainy days or mat leaves, etcetera – in other words, that he’s taken the concerns seriously. So here are economists Lindsay Tedds and Kevin Milligan to break down the new proposals.

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Roundup: Wise asses and the Wise Owls

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The snickering and childish guffaws that accompanied the news that the Senate released a children’s book-style brochure about the Senate was predictable. Every single wise ass in the pundit sphere threw in their two cents, many of them in the tiresome form of children’s book verses of their own, detailing how sordid those awful owls really are, and aren’t we clever for subverting this book? Others decried the (meagre) expenses and time used to create such a brochure, never mind that these very same pundits kept wondering aloud why the Senate never promotes itself or its good works. And while a more grown-up brochure was also produced alongside it, nary a soul mentioned that one.

I will be the first to say that The Wise Owls is not without its flaws, particularly in how they allegorically depict how and why the Senate came about. It was not because the House of Commons wasn’t working, and it’s particularly disingenuous to suggest that was the case. The general audience brochure has a more accurate take on that history, but I will also add that one of the problems with that brochure is that it places the legislative role of the Senate above all others under the heading that “Senators are lawmakers.” The abuse of the term “lawmakers” in the Canadian context rankles me because it’s an Americanism owing to how their system works, while our parliamentarians in our system are about holding the government to account, and legislating they do is a by-product of that as opposed to their raison d’être.

Nevertheless, some of the reactions to the book have also been particularly problematic, from Elizabeth May complaining that it’s not good democratic education because it implies that those responsible for sober second thought are wiser than those who are elected, to journalists like Justin Ling, who complain that the message to children is that your elected officials can’t be trusted.

Putting aside the potential that this is petty jealousy – after all, it would seem to be the media’s job to keep telling people that our elected officials are not to be trusted – these complaints ignore the fact that the entire Westminster system is predicated on that very fact – that while it’s all well and good to have elected officials, we still need safeguards against the excesses of populism. It’s why we have a monarch who is a disinterested party that can hit the reset button in times of crisis. It’s why we have an upper chamber that is appointed and not pandering for votes and has the institutional independence to speak truth to power. It’s why our courts don’t rely on judges to tailor their verdicts with an eye toward keeping the public favour in order to seek re-election. The very foundation of our system is that sometimes elected officials need to be reined in, and not by yet more elected officials. It shouldn’t be scandalous that this very same message is what this book exposes children to.

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QP: Coming at Sajjan on two fronts

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While a gas leak evacuated buildings a couple of blocks from the Hill, QP got underway undaunted. Rona Ambrose led off, immediately boarding the sanctimony train with regards to the Harjit Sajjan apology, and Justin Trudeau reiterated that he continued to have full confidence in his Minister. Ambrose demanded Sajjan’s ouster, and Trudeau reiterated that he was proud of Sajjan, and listed numerous accomplishments. Ambrose demanded to know if Trudeau knew of Sajjan saying this in 2015, but Trudeau got around it. Ambrose ladled on some more sanctimony before demanding his ouster yet again, but Trudeau praised Sajjan’s contributions again. Ambrose then accused the government of not supporting the military, but Trudeau was unmoved. Thomas Mulcair was up next, decrying that there was no inquiry into the Afghan detainees issue. Trudeau said that Sajjan spoke with the Conflict of Interest Commissioner and she closed the file. Mulcair reiterated, saying that it wasn’t the question, but Trudeau repeated that the file was closed. Mulcair tried to sort out whether Sajjan knew nothing on that file or if he was an architect of Op Medusa, and Trudeau reiterated praise for Sajjan. Mulcair then moved onto the Parliamentary Budget Officer, accusing Trudeau of attacking him, and Trudeau disputed that, insisted they gave him more resources and more independence.

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Roundup: Not the cures for what ails the Commons

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The latest round of Barish Chagger versus the opposition House Leaders started up yet again yesterday, and while my thoughts will be out in my next Loonie Politics column (up later today), I figured I’d take the opportunity to respond to Andrew Coyne’s musings about this latest round.

To wit, of his seven proposed reforms, Coyne only gets about three of them right – re-empowering the Speaker with regard to doing things like splitting out omnibus bills, restoring the various party caucuses’ ability to choose their leaders rather than the party memberships, and to ban scripts from the House of Commons (while ripping out the desks and implementing benches instead, Westminster-style), and letting the cameras get wide shots and reactions while they’re at it – something I too would agree with.

But then Coyne starts veering off into problematic territory. Turning over control of prorogation to the House of Commons is a Very Bad Idea because it fundamentally undermines the point of prorogation, which is that it allows the government to control its own agenda. It’s not up to the Commons to decide when the government needs to come up with a new list of priorities, and giving them the power to determine when they can hit the reset button throws that relationship out of balance – not to mention the lack of logic in requiring a supermajority to prorogue when they can declare non-confidence with a simple majority. Likewise, limiting the use of confidence undermines the whole bloody system and is utterly boneheaded.

Halving the size of cabinet? While the current Ministry has far less fat than previous ones, I think this has more to do with Coyne’s personal bugaboos about Cabinet construction in Canada than it does the problem with not having enough backbenchers in this country that diminished hope for a cabinet post allows for greater independence. Insisting that ministers answer questions put to them rather than fobbing them off to a junior? It’s less of an issue now than it used to be, but while we could theoretically empower the Speaker to insist, I worry that this becomes open to abuse (not to mention the fact that their refusal to answer is fodder for We The Media in holding them to account).

Of course, Coyne caps it off with his biggest eye-roller of all – that proportional representation will be the cure for all of our parliamentary ills. It won’t be of course, and will simply create a host of new problems (the extent of which depends greatly on just how the proportional system is constructed), but we’ve had experience with minority parliaments before. It didn’t make MPs more cooperative – it simply entrenched positions even harder, which a state of permanent minority or coalition government is all the more likely to do. So while Coyne is on the right path on a few ideas, his problematic or outright dangerous ideas outweigh the good.

Kady O’Malley, meanwhile, goes through a point-by-point deconstruction of the complaints that Michelle Rempel made over Twitter on Sunday night with regard to what she felt the imposition of a weekly Prime Ministers Questions would do, particularly around the media cycle, and while I’m no real fan of imposing a PMQ here (precisely because the rest of our debating culture is so bastardized that it would just make these problems even worse), O’Malley makes some particularly good points about why the opposition shouldn’t be overplaying their hands on this one.

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Roundup: Troubling rumblings in civil-military relations

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There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about comments that Harjit Sajjan made in India that he was the architect of Operation Medusa in Afghanistan, before he later retracted and said that he was part of the team led by General Fraser. Part of why this has been mystifying for many is the fact that the error was made in his prepared remarks, which should have been caught but wasn’t, and now there are accusations of glory-seeking and trying to claim credit, which seems out of character for someone who seemed to rebuff the label of being “badass” when he was first appointed minister. I would say that the days it took for him to issue a proper apology are also mystifying, but this is politics, and nobody likes to admit error and there is likely a reflexive instinct there that needs to be dragged out. Because politics gonna politics, unfortunately.

What is more disturbing in this is the fact that you have both active and former military personnel calling for Sajjan’s resignation, which is a pretty big breach of civil-military relations. What I find even more disturbing is the fact that if you add this to the allegations that VADM Mark Norman was trying to make political decisions and using leaks to pressure the government to adopting his position on that procurement contract is that there may be a growing breach of the civil-military relationship in this country, and that is a Very Bad Thing.

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One of Sajjan’s caucus colleagues, Mark Miller, who also served in Afghanistan, added his own defence of Sajjan:

One more thing: could we please stop with demanding resignations for everything? That’s not what ministerial responsibility means.

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QP: Happy clappy budget points

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With most of the benches filled, MPs were settling in after a constituency week, but Rona Ambrose was absent for some unknown reason. Denis Lebel led off, immediately railing about deficit and family tax credits being imperilled in the budget. Justin Trudeau responded with his well-worn talking points about lowering taxes for the middle class while raising them on the one percent. Lebel switched to English, noted the American promises to lower smaller business taxes, and demanded that Trudeau follow suit. Trudeau noted that they were working to grow the middle class, and gave the same points about tax cuts. Lebel worried about airports being privatized, for which Trudeau told him to wait for Wednesday’s budget. Candice Bergen was up next, worried that the government was ramming bills through and worried that they wanted to bully through changes to QP so that he only has to show up one day per week. Trudeau avoided answering, and praised their programme to date. Bergen moved onto plans to change the Commons calendar to four days per week, but Trudeau noted that they were happy to open a discussion on making Fridays a full day instead of half days “like the Conservatives seem to want,” which was a clever bit of evasion. Thomas Mulcair was up next, railing that the government didn’t have a mandate to privatize airports. Trudeau explained that the Infrastructure Bank was a way of leveraging global investment, but more details would have to wait for Wednesday’s budget. Mulcair asked again in French, and Trudeau retreated to talking points about growing the middle class. Mulcair moved onto funding First Nations child welfare funding, and Trudeau gave his usual lines about the historic investments to start the long work of reconciliation. Mulcair then demanded that stock options tax loopholes be closed, but Trudeau again returned to his middle class talking points.

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QP: KPMG and conspiracy theories

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With the benches mostly full, the Chamber was ready to begin the grand inquest of the nation. After a moment of silence for an RCMP officer who lost his life in a car accident in Quebec, Rona Ambrose led off, asking whether the PM had answered questions from the Ethics Commissioner on his Christmas holiday. Trudeau simply stated that he was happy to answer the Commissioner’s questions. Ambrose pressed on the accountability angle, and Trudeau expounded upon the responsibility to Canadians and openness and transparency, but that was all. Ambrose pivoted to the lack of judicial appointments affecting the criminal justice system, for which Trudeau noted the appointments have been made, and noted the new process that was ensuring that more women, visible minorities and Indigenous get appointed. Ed Fast was up next, back from recovering from a stroke, and he demanded the government’s figures on the costs of carbon pricing. Trudeau welcomed him back but chided him for not understanding the new economy. Fast brought up hydro rates in Ontario, but Trudeau was unmoved, taking shots at the previous government’s record. Thomas Mulcair was up next, demanding action on tax havens, and wondered when the budget was. Trudeau noted the commitment to tax fairness, by didn’t give the date. Mulcair railed about KPMG and different rules for the rich, and Trudeau reminded him that they were engaged on the file. Mulcair demanded criminal charges, and Trudeau again reminded him that the file was still being investigated. Mulcair worried about CRA-funded advertorials, for which Trudeau reminded him that they employ a broad range of ways to communicate to Canadians.

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Roundup: Worst instincts for second-choice votes

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As the Trumpocalypse serves up another “totally not just Muslims” travel ban south of the border, immigration references in the Conservative leadership race are certainly starting to pick up steam. Maxime Bernier started dropping not-so-coded references to “radical proponents of multiculturalism” who want to “forcibly change” the cultural character of the country (no, seriously), while Kellie Leitch offers up some of the questions her “values test” would include. Because you know, it’s totally not like people aren’t going to lie about the obvious answers or anything. Meanwhile, Deepak Obhrai says that statements like Leitch’s is creating an environment that could get immigrants killed, in case you worried that things aren’t getting dramatic. Oh, and to top it off, Andrew Scheer has a “survey” about terrorism that he wants people to weigh in on, and it’s about as well thought-out as you can expect.

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While John Ibbitson writes about how the Conservative leadership candidates’ anti-immigrant rhetoric is a path to oblivion for the party, I would also add this Twitter thread from Emmett Macfarlane, which offers up a reminder about how our immigration system in this country actually works, because facts should matter in these kinds of debates.

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