If there was any particular proof needed that things are indeed changing in the government, the way in which decisions are made is a pretty good place to start, as Susan Delacourt explores over in Policy Options. Gone are the days when all paths lead to the PMO, but rather individual ministers are empowered to make decisions, but at the same time, they are expected to consult with provincial and territorial counterparts. The civil service, having grown used to not being asked to draw up an array of options for shaping policy, is now a “fixer upper,” while the new dynamic makes it possible for anyone to contribute to policy discussions, meaning that the government can draw from a bigger pool of ideas. And the new buzzword of “deliverology” means that goals are being drawn up as tangible things that have knowable results, rather than just abstract dollar figures. (The “guru” of deliverology just met with cabinet at the Kananaskis retreat, where he said that the government has made good progress over the last six months). Commons committees are coming up with policy discussions of their own (not that they’re always going to be taken fully, as the assisted dying legislation shows). We have evidence that the Senate and their legislative agenda is being listened to, with examples like Senator Moore’s bill on restoring parliamentary authority over borrowing being adopted in the government’s budget, and Ralph Goodale talking about how they are considering his bill on CBSA oversight. So yes, it looks like the centre of power is less and less the PMO in this brave new world, which is probably not such a bad thing after all.
Tag Archives: Stephen Harper
Roundup: Enter Peter Harder
Those seven new independent senators are now sworn in and installed, and it seems the Conservative spared no time in trying to insist that they were all secretly Liberal partisans, particularly the new “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder. In response to questions during a restored non-ministerial Senate QP, Harder said that he was recommended for appointment by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, and that he had no communication from the government about it. He also claimed he didn’t intend to be partisan, but be a kind of bureaucratic presence who could field questions on behalf of the government, while relaying concerns to cabinet on occasion. Harder also said that the new practice of bringing ministers to the chamber to answer questions would continue, and be expanded to 40 minutes, which is not a bad thing. What I am a bit more concerned about is the fact that Harder is talking about making amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act to start formalizing some of these changes that Trudeau has imposed on the Senate, but I’m not seeing much in the way of collaborating this with the other efforts to modernise the Senate’s operations. That this would be a discussion around the cabinet table and not involve senators themselves, based on Harder’s statements, is concerning because it does seem like meddling in the way the Senate operates – something Trudeau has already been doing with little regard for the consequences – despite the fact that none of them are in the Senate, particularly under this new regime. I don’t want to go so far as to say that he’s meddling in the Senate’s privilege, but it’s getting close to the line in some cases. The Senate is the institutional memory of parliament, and is supposed to have a longevity for a reason, which is why Harder insisting that it’s not unusual for governments to tinker with the Act to reflect stylistic preferences rubs me the wrong way. I also have some sympathy for the concern that “government representative” is a fairly American term that’s not really reflected in our Westminster traditions (though perhaps Australia’s “Washminster” system may find a more analogous term. We’ll see what Harder starts implementing soon enough, but I do retain a sense of scepticism.
Roundup: An appointment panel is named
The government announced the composition of the permanent members of the Senate appointment advisory board, along with the ad hoc members of the three provincial members for the Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba seats that they plan to fill immediately. The federal members are headed by Huguette Labelle, a former senior civil servant and chancellor of Ottawa University, along with Indira Samarasekera, the former president of U of A who comes from a physical sciences background, and Daniel Jutras, a dean of law from McGill University. The provincial members have more varied backgrounds, including one Manitoba member who is a folk singer who also dabbles in pseudoscience around past lives, so oops there. They expect to make their first round of recommendations by the end of February – later than would have been hoped, but it’s only about three sitting weeks, so not too long to delay processes in the Senate, particularly as one of those first five appointments is to be the government’s new “coordinator” in the Senate (which remains a boneheaded suggestion if you ask me, considering that they will have no Senate experience whatsoever). And then come the complaints, mostly from the Conservatives (though the NDP did their share of tutting and shaking their heads about the “undemocratic” nature of the Senate). The problem with the complaints, largely coming out of Conservative Senate Leader Claude Carignan’s office, is that they’re grasping at straws – two of the academics were Trudeau Foundation scholars, so that obviously means they’re Liberals and can’t possibly be independent, right? No, seriously, that was Carignan’s argument. Also, that they were too elitist to pick “ordinary” Canadians to sit in the Senate, which actually isn’t their mandate. They are supposed to look for people with distinguished public service or who have some legislative experience. While I have my particular issues with the notion that the new Senators appointed through this process will all be independent (no, that’s not a guarantee, and nothing can stop them from joining whichever caucus they choose), there is this endemic chattering amongst Conservative senators that they’ll just all be Liberals by any other name, and as a result, they denounce the whole process. Never mind that the process by which some of those same senators got appointed was not particularly well run (the panic appointments of 2008 produced a number of senators of dubious merit), it makes their objections to this process to seem a bit precious. The other complaints – that because the appointment panel was not chosen by all-party consensus, that their deliberations are secret, that the short-lists are similarly kept secret, that the PM isn’t bound by the list – are all frankly out of step with the practice of Responsible Government and the constitution, and make no sense. Scott Reid’s complaint that it’s a process insulting to Albertans and their “elected” senators is also farcical considering the sham election process and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Senate reference case. And while there is plenty of things that could be criticised about the way this process is happening, the fact that the Conservatives are choosing the most ridiculous and specious arguments is a sign of that they’re not taking this seriously, which blunts the effectiveness of their role as official opposition.
Add MP Scott Reid to the list of people who apparently can’t grasp Responsible Government. #SenCA #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/7l0DVzOMjI
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 19, 2016
Roundup: Different approaches to transparency
The government announced yesterday that they would be halting compliance measures related to the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, and would restore the funds frozen to those 38 bands that had not reported yet. It was a move that First Nations applauded, while Conservatives and other small-c conservative types decried as making things less accountable. We also found out that the previous government was considering putting those non-compliant bands under third party management, which sounds fairly drastic. It’s not that First Nations are against being accountable – for the most part, they have indicated that they want to be, but that the previous government’s legislation was ham-fisted and in some cases unfair because it forced the reporting of revenue streams that didn’t come from taxpayers. In fact, they have long raised the notion of the creation of a First Nations Auditor General, but the Conservatives were never in favour of it. And to be sure, there are bands that do require a closer eye because in some First Nations, there are problems with nepotism and corruption, and it does need exposure. The question becomes what tools are best able to accomplish the goal that aren’t paternalistic or steeped in racist assumptions. It’s something that the current government is looking to engage with, and we’ll see where their consultations take them, but this will no doubt be part of their move to transform their relationship with Indigenous Canadians.
Roundup: Demanding a referendum
The issue of electoral reform has boiled over into what could be seen as the first major disagreement of the 42nd Parliament. The Conservatives have become quite vociferous in demanding that any change to the electoral system be put to a referendum – no doubt out of selfish considerations, knowing that most forms of alternative voting would be seen to disadvantage them, and secure in the knowledge that every time that such alternative ballots have been put to a vote either in Canada or the UK, that the existing First-Past-the-Post system ends up winning out. (Kelly McParland and the Maclean’s editorial are also in favour of a referendum). Even in Canadian polls on electoral reform, there remains a preference for a simple ballot that can deliver a stable government – something that most forms of alternative voting won’t deliver. While some pollsters have had fun with the numbers, trying to build models of what the election results would have delivered under different systems, the truth is that we can’t know what would have happened because there’s no guarantee that we would have had the same parties or configurations thereof in the election – particularly under a proportional representation system that encourages fringe parties, and given the country’s geographical, linguistic, and cultural diversity, a system that rewards smaller parties could very well fragment the “big tent” parties that currently exist. While people insist that we wouldn’t turn into Israel or Italy, the real worry is turning into Belgium, where the linguistic divisions in their PR system were so fragmented that they couldn’t form a workable government for over a year. While the government (and in particular Dominic LeBlanc) say they will engage in a broad consultative process and try to come to a consensus, I’m pretty sure that political consensus with the other parties won’t happen – the NDP favour one form of MMP, the Greens favour a PR system of some variety, and the Conservatives favour the status quo while the Liberals are more keen on ranked ballots, it’s hard to see how consensus will be built out of that. And at least LeBlanc concedes that consultations may show that the status quo ends up being preferable, and if there is an argument for that, it’s that our system right now allows you to throw the bums out – something that becomes all but impossible in PR systems where coalition partners get shuffled around but the central party remains in power for decades. It’s hard to see how that can in any way be preferable in a robust democracy.
Roundup: The hinted appointment process
Programming note: I really have nothing to offer on the situation in Paris, so I’ll leave that to those better suited to comment, which is better for all involved.
Look up there – it’s the Senate bat-signal, with news that we may have an idea what the new appointment process is likely to look like. According to the Citizen:
- An independent advisory body will be created that is composed of Canadians who are people of “stature” and who have public credibility. It will consider people who would be good senators and then refer the names to the prime minister, who keeps the ultimate authority (in accordance with the Constitution) to make the appointments.
- There will be a public input component to the process, so that Canadians have a way of recommending themselves, or others, as future senators.
- There will be a consultative role for the provinces, given that Trudeau wants the Senate to regain credibility as a representative of the regions.
If you said that this looks a fair bit like the vice-regal appointments committee, you’d be right, not that the article stated that anywhere. In fact, it went to great lengths to talk about what the House of Lords Appointments Commission in the UK, and meanders to the boneheaded suggestion by Greg Sorbara that we get members of the Order of Canada to choose senators. Also, nowhere in the piece does it seem to acknowledge that the new Canadian process could let these new senators chosen by an independent process choose which Senate caucus they want to sit in or remain independent, with a full understanding of the additional pressures that independent senators actually face. So while it’s good to get some more hints on what we’re likely to see, it might be great if we had reporters who could actually uses useful Canadian comparisons, and who actually understood how the Senate operates rather than engaging in more of the pointless speculation about the supposed chaos that we’re supposed to see in there in the brave new era.
Roundup: Still no Senate decisions
Amidst all of the activity yesterday, one of the things we did learn was that the new Prime Minister has yet to decide what he plans to do with regards to the Senate. It did not go unnoticed on Wednesday that there was no Leader of the Government in the Senate named to cabinet, but as we found out, it’s because he simply hasn’t decided what he’s doing yet, and that’s the same with regards to the Speaker. It raises all kinds of questions about how things are going to be managed with regards to the Senate, and Government House Leader Dominic Leblanc has been named the person to be the liaison between the two chambers, as is fair. What concerns me, however, is that in all of the talk of making the Senate more independent, what isn’t being considered is how it will do its job in holding the government to account if there is nobody in the chamber for them to do so (not to mention that it really is a problem if there is no member of cabinet in the chamber to shepherd government bills through either, which the Conservatives have been fudging for the past year or so). Some senators have been musing about cancelling Senate Question Period altogether, or having it simply focus on asking questions of committee chairs, but that seems particularly short-sighted, considering that they tended to ask far better quality questions of the government as compared to the Commons. Yes, the last couple of government leaders were not exactly great at responding to questions, but neither were ministers down in the Commons, and that era is hopefully over. The loss of the accountability function would be a huge blow to our parliament as a whole, and I hope that the Liberal government is considering this problem. Meanwhile, John Pepall urges caution with appointing too many good-hearted experts to the Senate, as it may empower them to challenge the democratically elected government too often as is starting to happen over in the UK, with the Lords starting to push back against their own limits. Food for thought in that there are consequences even for well-intentioned acts.
Roundup: Moving on from Harper
So there we have it – the last hours of Harper’s time in government, and lo and behold, there were no last grasps for power, no refusals to resign, no attempts to make last-minute appointments, no craven behaviour of any kind. From all accounts, the exit has been gracious and orderly, but as befitting his time in office, he kept all of the big decisions behind closed doors because he didn’t want any clips of him resigning or visibly stepping down in any way. And hey, ten years later, we’re not a dictatorship, this isn’t a fascist state, there is no cult of personality that people are worshipping. We had free and fair elections, and instead of voter suppression (and conspiracy theorists insisting that they would try to stuff ballot boxes, or that the odd ballots that had ink blotches on them from the printing process), we had a dramatic upswing in voter turnout. All of those doomsayers and the hysterical who have been bombarding our Twitter feeds with the insistence that democracy was dead in Canada – all for naught. That Vapid Narcissist whose stunt as a Senate page was part of her somehow insisting that the previous election wasn’t free and fair either and that the results were somehow stolen or illegitimate and necessitating acts of civil disobedience – she’s been trying to take credit for the election result (and inexplicably, people are actually congratulating her) – but this has nothing to do with her. There was no evil Bond villain that needed to be vanquished. This was politics. Sure, it was nasty and dickish most of the time, but it was politics. Hopefully we can spend the next few years unclenching, but we all know that Trudeau Derangement Syndrome is as much of a thing as Harper Derangement Syndrome. Hopefully, however, the hyperbolic nonsense won’t be quite so awful and unhinged (but who are we kidding?).
Roundup: Setting a new tone
The first day “on the job,” as it were, and Justin Trudeau was out to set a different tone from his predecessor from the get-go. While he and his cabinet won’t be sworn in until November 4th, the job of transition started today, but that didn’t stop Trudeau for being at the Metro station in his riding first thing to thank the voters there, and to pose for photos – something that Harper is pretty much loathe to do if it’s not in a controlled space. (One imagines that Trudeau’s RCMP detail is going to start freaking out really shortly). From Montreal, he flew back to Ottawa for a rally with supporters and local winning candidates (who pretty much swept the region here, with Pierre Poilievre’s riding being the sole exception), and then up to Parliament Hill to make some calls with international leaders including President Obama, where talk ranged from the ISIS mission to pipeline projects, with the message to the world being that “Canada is back.” Well, with a number of high-level international conferences coming up, Trudeau has high expectations being placed on him by those other world leaders. There is also a great sense of optimism with the premiers as well, so that looks like it could be a changing tone there as well. From there, Trudeau held a press conference in the National Press Theatre – something Stephen Harper hasn’t done since 2009, when he was trying to strike a deal with Michael Ignatieff not to topple his government over the summer (resulting in that Blue Ribbon panel on EI reform, which ended up collapsing thanks to the antics of Poilievre). He also walked there from the Hill as opposed to taking a motorcade. (Harper will take his motorcade across the street from 24 Sussex to Rideau Hall). Trudeau took questions for about 25 minutes – including follow-ups, and then promised that he would be back for more. It’s a completely different way of running things that most of the younger journalists on the Hill (myself included) aren’t used to. Not only that, but he promised that these would be regular appearances. It’s resetting the tone with the media, and it’s a hopeful signal that the tone really will start to change around here, and maybe we’ll start getting back to the way things used to be, before the dark times.
A pleasure to thank Montrealers for their support today. I'll be proud to represent Papineau as Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/qBDGFTyUXA
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 20, 2015
Readout of @POTUS' Call with Prime Minister-Designate Justin Trudeau of Canada pic.twitter.com/RodBCJVXU2
— Obama NSC- Archived (@NSC44) October 20, 2015
This is odd. There's a prime minister taking questions in the National Press Theatre with a journalist chairing. pic.twitter.com/lvvF677Tb8
— Terry Milewski (@CBCTerry) October 20, 2015
Roundup: Endorsing a unicorn
It was newspaper endorsement time yesterday, and it was a pretty baffling scene all around. Postmedia’s papers had a centrally-dictated series of endorsements for Harper – in spite of all of his myriad of woes and abuses – because economy. Never mind that I’ve written pieces talking to economics professors who’ve said that the Liberals are probably the better party when it comes to the markets because of the lacklustre performance of the Conservatives and their willingness to engage in protectionist behaviours and shut down foreign acquisitions and the like while preferring regulation to carbon pricing – but the management decision of the chain is this reflexive nonsense that the Conservatives are best for the economy. As if that weren’t enough, we got a baffling incompetent endorsement from the Globe and Mail that the Conservatives deserve re-election, but not Harper, so by all means elect them but he should step down immediately after. Because that will totally happen. It’s as incompetent as the time that there was an endorsement for a minority government – because Canadians can totally choose that option on their ballots. What’s also mystifying about the Globe endorsement is that it seems to be endorsing the Progressive Conservative party of yore rather than the modern party, which is neither progressive nor even really conservative, but rather is more of a right-flavoured populist party. It is also wholly the creation of Harper and shaped to his vision. He has so marginalised and pushed out the majority of leadership contenders that it becomes an exercise in futility to promote the party minus him because he is the glue holding the party together. And does the Globe have a successor in mind that they would prefer? Would they prefer an equally divisive figure like Jason Kenney instead? It’s sad that instead of engaging in a reasoned analysis, we got that instead. Way to go. Elsewhere, former Globe and Mail editor William Thorsell pens the editorial he would have written if he were still in the business, and Robert Hiltz offers some thoughts on the endorsement game.