Tag Archives: Steven Fletcher

Roundup: Childcare and competing mistruths

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

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

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

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

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

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Roundup: Duffy v privilege

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As expected, the Ontario Superior Court dismissed Senator Mike Duffy’s attempt to sue the Senate for their disciplining him because the Senate is protected by parliamentary privilege. Privilege is what allows the Senate to be self-governing and as a body that is focused on holding government to account, it has complete institutional independence for very good reason – so that they can speak truth to power without fear of dismissal or reprisal. So imagine the utter gall of Duffy’s response to this ruling.

“The Charter of Rights applies to all Canadians, but the Court decision states that because of the centuries old concept of Parliamentary Privilege, the Charter doesn’t apply to Senators.” Oh dear me. No. You see, the only reason that Duffy still has a job in the Senate is because of parliamentary privilege. If he didn’t have the privilege afforded to him, he couldn’t have made the myriad of accusations about Stephen Harper and his operatives in the Senate Chamber on the eve of his suspension – not without fear of reprisal, particularly a lawsuit. That the Senate is self-governing and has institutional independence saved him from being summarily dismissed by the prime minister of the day when Duffy caused him a great deal of embarrassment. While I don’t dispute that Duffy was subjected to a flawed process that denied him the benefit of due process due to political expediency because, the fact that he received a suspension without pay that was eventually lifted, allowing him to resume his duties with full pay and serving enough time for his pension to kick in, means that he has pretty much escaped consequence for actions that he very likely would have been fired for in any other circumstance. That he then accuses the concept of privilege as stripping him of his Charter rights, when it has in fact protected him in every conceivable way, is utterly boggling.

Meanwhile, it seems clear that between this bit of self-pitying and the decision to pose with Senators Brazeau and Wallin while Brazeau tweeted that they “survived the unjustifiable bs [sic]” (since deleted), that there seems to be an insufficient amount of self-reflection at play, and that perhaps the three should continue to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves, because the public has not forgotten them.

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Roundup: A return to “bold” policy

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The federal NDP had their biannual policy convention over the weekend, and Jagmeet Singh’s leadership was “reaffirmed” when some 90 percent of delegates voted not to have a leadership review. So they’ll keep giving him a chance despite his intransigence in not running for a seat, apparently. And while they got a new party executive, and talked about how they need to do better when it comes to dealing with the harassment allegations in their own ranks that went ignored (particularly around Peter Stoffer), they also decided it was time to return to “bold” policy ideas after a fairly timid electoral platform the last time around. Not so bold, mind you, as to embrace the Leap Manifesto, which went unspoken during the convention despite rumours that it would rear its head once again, but rather, they went for things like universal pharmacare, dental care, and free tuition – you know, things that are the ambit of the provinces. Oh, and re-opening the constitution, as though that’s not going to be any small hurdle. (The free tuition debate, meanwhile, took over Economist Twitter over the weekend because the NDP’s adherents have a hard time understanding how a universal programme actually disproportionately benefits the wealthy rather than applying targeted benefits that would benefit those who are less well-off).

https://twitter.com/inklesspw/status/965304844369125376

Chantal Hébert, meanwhile, finds the same core message of the NDP unchanged despite the changing slogans. There is some disagreement about that.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/965588988487610368

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Roundup: Normalizing the system’s problems

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On Monday night, I got into a bit of a Twitter argument over the issue of Manitoba MLA Steven Fletcher (former of the federal Conservatives) and his ouster from provincial Progressive Conservative caucus because he was *gasp!* doing the actual job of a backbencher and trying to hold the government to account, never mind that he’s a member of the governing party. It’s what he’s supposed to do, and he got punished for it. Why I gave the first punch in said Twitter fight was because of the notion that Fletcher should have shut up and been a good team player, because politics.

https://twitter.com/davidmcla/status/899798702969237508

This devolved into a bit of tit-for-tat about which legislatures this occurs in, and despite providing Canadian examples, never mind the fact that this is actually the norm in the UK – the mother of our parliament – my dear opponent insisted that this is not the way things work in Canada.

https://twitter.com/davidmcla/status/900009073487171584

And this irritates me. A lot. Because it’s washing our hands of the problems that have slowly crept into our country’s parliament and legislatures, and normalizes the bastardisations that have occurred over the years, usually under the rubric of “modernisation,” or “making things more democratic.” And the laws of unintended consequences being what they are, things get worse instead of better, and we now have very powerful party leaders in this country that have no accountability – something that should be anathema to a Westminster system.

https://twitter.com/DavidMcLA/status/900004936783720449

Why should we be defending the current norms of party and leader-centred politics when it’s not the way our system is supposed to work, and in fact makes our system worse?

https://twitter.com/davidmcla/status/899817942669512707

We are in an age where message control and leader-centred politics has reduced elected members to drones. We have very nearly reached the point where we could just replace our MPs with battle droids who could do just as effective a job of reading canned speeches into the record and voting the way the whip orders. Is this really the system that we want to normalise and defend? Or would we rather have elected officials who can think for themselves and do the proper job of accountability that the Westminster system is built on. I know which one I’d prefer.

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