It has not gone unnoticed that the government has not been putting themselves out in front of the release of the Deschamps Report into sexual misconduct in the military, and the opposition is rightly pointing out that there is such a thing as ministerial responsibility, which means that the minister needs to be out in front of this – but he’s not. He’s instead left it up to his parliamentary secretary to deliver some talking points that aren’t actually demonstrating responsibility, and worse yet, they’re almost self-congratulatory as the lines being delivered about how the Chief of Defence Staff ordered the report. Err, so what? The CDS is already pushing back on some of the recommendations by agreeing with eight of the ten “in principle” only, and there is still some level of denial at the top, where they describe that the endemic sexualised culture in the report as simply being the perception of those that Justice Deschamps interviewed. In other words, there needs to be more leadership at the top saying that no, you can’t just shrug this off and do a few things for show – you actually need to push and work at this until there is a genuine culture change. CBC Radio interviewed Major-General Christine Whitecross, who is heading up the response to the report, and she echoed some of that same reluctance, but she did relent on the point that the independent centres for reporting incidents was probably the way to go, but they want to study it some more, both in terms of what our allies have put into place in their own countries, and what resources are available here in Canada, and she is not dismissing it outright, which is at least something.
Tag Archives: Supreme Court
Roundup: A damning report on military misconduct
The Deschamps Report is now released, and as feared, it’s a black eye for the Canadian military. The report details a highly sexualised culture within the Forces, complete with sexist language, jokes, and unwanted advances leading to date rape and worse, making the Forces a hostile environment for not only women, but also GLBT individuals within the Forces. It was also stated that the more people went up the ranks, the more they became inured to the incidents, making superior officers unlikely to recognise it when it happens. Deschamps made ten recommendations, and the military only said they would accept two immediately, and the others “in principle,” including creating an exterior body that can receive complaints about harassment, which would be needed precisely because it’s outside of the structure of the Forces and won’t be somewhere that complainants would need to fear retaliation, and where they could be taken seriously. It needs to be pointed out that the government distanced themselves from this release – Jason Kenney was nowhere to be seen, even absent from Question Period despite the fact that he was in the Foyer giving a press conference not two hours earlier. (That the official opposition raised the report in a clumsy and scripted way is also concerning but I covered this ground in yesterday’s QP recap). A retired officer who is now a lawyer says that part of the problem is the military justice system, and it needs major reforms if it is to help end this culture. NDP MP Christine Moore, who served in the Forces, noted that she had faced this same kind of harassment the report details. And here’s a Q&A with more information about the report.
'Culture of misogyny' report presser update: CDS Lawson just did it again: called on "Christine" instead of Maj.Gen. Whitecross. #cdnpoli
— Janyce McGregor (@janycemcgregor) April 30, 2015
Roundup: The Senate invokes privilege
In his attempt to cast the net far and wide in order to excuse Mike Duffy’s housing claims, it seems that Donald Bayne is trying to show that plenty of other senators were improperly claiming for Ottawa residences, and is trying to compel the release of an internal Senate audit conducted in 2012, where two Senators – retired Senator Zimmer and Senator Patterson – were found to have questionable claims which they later explained away. The Senate, however, is invoking privilege and refusing to turn it over, which is their constitutional right. They are under no obligation to help Duffy’s defence, after all, and as a legislative body they have the right to conduct their own affairs. And before anyone starts getting hysterical, remember that privilege is all about the independence of the institution, and keeping the courts out of parliament so that it can do its job without the constant threat of litigation during the legislative process. Likewise, Parliament doesn’t get involved in individual court cases because that would interfere with the independence of the courts. Otherwise, Bayne tried to bring up Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen yesterday who was part of the subcommittee that “sat in judgement” of Duffy when she was claiming her long-time Ottawa residence as secondary for two years while she was trying to sell it in order to fully move back to New Brunswick (this is the point where I mention that she shouldn’t have been appointed as a New Brunswick senator until she was fully moved back). Also, the Senate finance officer continued to be grilled, and continued to push back against Bayne, going so far as to read more than the passages he indicated in order to provide context, which the judge allowed her to do. Nicholas Köhler paints that sketch with his usual aplomb.
Not everything involving the assertion of parliamentary privilege is sinister, and rarely if ever is it the government of the day's call.
— kady o'malley (@kady) April 27, 2015
Roundup: Nolin’s passing a blow to the Senate
The passing of Senate Speaker Pierre-Claude Nolin leaves the institution in a pretty vulnerable place. In light of the Duffy/Wallin/Brazeau affairs, Nolin was on a mission to bring some internal reform to the Chamber, both in terms of financial controls and the like, but also with ensuring that senators themselves were better educated as to their own roles. When Nolin was first named Speaker, he invited reporters to the Chamber for a Q&A, and before he took questions, he gave us a little talk, brandishing a copy of the Supreme Court reference decision on Senate reform, and made note of some key passages about the roles of a Senator. His message to his fellow senators was pretty frank – here are some things that you’re not doing, and we need to improve on that. Long-time readers of mine will know the root of some of these problems – not just a few poor appointments by the current Prime Minister, but the fact that appointments happened in large numbers. The Chamber works best absorbing one or two new members at a time, and they can find their feet and generally get on with feeling out their sense of institutional independence. When a fifth of the chamber is brought in all at once, they are more pliant and susceptible to control from the top, which is what happened. Nolin, always an independent thinker and someone not afraid to go against the current government, whose caucus he was a member of, wanted more of that from his fellow senators, and he probably would have done a lot to get them to a better place, institutionally speaking, if he’d had more time. Now, I’m not sure who will be able to take his place. The Speaker Pro Tempore (equivalent of the Deputy Speaker in the Commons) is not exactly an independent thinker, and is part of a cabal of players around the Senate Leader’s office, who in turn are supine to the PMO for a variety of reasons. That group is not going to continue Nolin’s work of trying to make the chamber a more independent place. We’ll have to see who the PM will ultimately choose, but Nolin has set a high bar that will be difficult to match. Elsewhere, here are some highlights of Nolin’s career. On Power Play, Mercedes Stephenson spoke to the man who appointed Nolin, Brian Mulroney (and a correction to Stephenson – Nolin was not elected to the Speaker position, as it’s a prime ministerial appointment. The praise for him was unanimous, however).
https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/591589139079892993
Roundup: Of gaffes and grandchildren
I think by this point we can pretty much acknowledge that Joe Oliver is not anyone’s best choice to communicate a message – he wasn’t as Natural Resources minister, with his “foreign-funded radicals” warnings about environmentalists, and certainly not as finance minister given his Tuesday night gaffe with CBC’s Amanda Lang. There, he said that any problems with raising the TFSA limit might not happen until 2080, and that he’d leave it for “Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s granddaughter to solve that problem.” Not only did he admit that there was a problem with it, but he decided it’s best to leave it to the next generation – not to mention his prediction that the Harper family will become some kind of dynastic rules of Canada – because we’ve seen so many of those. When opposition parties made hay of it, Harper came out to defend Oliver’s comments, but we have heard this warning before, from the PBO who drafted a report looking at the hole in future budgets that this kind of measure would create, and it’s not inconsiderable, so no, the question being put to Oliver by Lang was more than reasonable, and it would have been irresponsible for her not to ask it. In other post-budget news, here are the opposition positions on many of the pieces therein. There was mention in the budget about “expanding and modernising” the Honours system, but there are almost no details about what that means other than a new website. Pierre Poilievre said the money being given to the Ottawa police is for “fighting jihadis” – except it’s not, but rather for things like demonstrations or visits by foreign dignitaries. Oops. Mike Moffatt looks at the very optimistic budget projections on the price of oil. The budget nearly doubles what it gives to SIRC, but we’ll see if they’ll be expected to do more with it, given that they are already under-resourced. Paul Wells puts absolutely everybody to shame and writes about the budget as political document, and it’s so on point I want to weep.
Roundup: Justin Trudeau and the division of powers
From the sounds of it, Justin Trudeau is apparently setting back the cause of federalism in Canada, as he is getting blamed for an increasing number of provincial woes. It’s been happening for a few weeks with some federal Conservatives like Parm Gill, who are agitating against the provincial Liberals’ new sex ed curriculum, but because Gill and others just refer to the programme as the Liberals’ – not specifying that it’s Kathleen Wynne’s government in Ontario – the implication is that they’re one and the same as Gill shills for federal votes on a provincial issue (that is being torqued by provincial Progressive Conservatives and others, one might add). Moving out east, Trudeau is being blamed for complicity in the provincial Liberals in Nova Scotia proposing to reform film and television tax credits in their provincial budget – apparently Trudeau not saying anything about that change, and a number of other provincial budgetary items, makes him complicit in the whole affair. (During his visit to Halifax yesterday, Trudeau did say he was supportive of arts and culture, but reminded them that he’s a Quebec MP and respects provincial jurisdictions). Yesterday took the cake, as the federal NDP put out a press release blasting Trudeau because the provincial Liberals in PEI remain, well, a little backward on the whole issue of funding abortions in that province. This isn’t the first time that the federal NDP have been trying to ride the provincial parties for their benefit, as they keep hauling out this study that shows that provincial NDP governments have better fiscal records than provincial Liberal or Conservative parties in order to somehow prove they’d be great economic managers – never mind that the various provincial parties are largely divorced from the federal ones (with a couple of minor exceptions in a couple of provinces) and that in many cases the only thing they share is a name, though the NDP like to claim that they’re all one party, federally and provincially. It also means that if you stretch that logic, that Thomas Mulcair is responsible for raising the HST in Manitoba, that province’s appalling state of child welfare cases, and the myriad of problems that the provincial NDP in Nova Scotia left behind when they were defeated (prompting the provincial Liberals to table the budget they just did). It’s actually pretty alarming that people don’t seem to understand the division of powers between the provinces and the federal government – particularly when it’s political parties fuelling this nonsense, and they really need to stop.
Wait, so the NDP are attacking Trudeau over the PEI Liberals? They know there are jurisdiction issues, right? pic.twitter.com/p3CGtIKYx0
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 15, 2015
Roundup: Legalism and homework monitors
Another day, another dissection of the rules of the Senate, this time with the revelation that nobody in Senate administration ensured that work got done when they paid out contractors that senators drew up. The defence maintained the legalistic hammering, to the point that lawyer Donald Bayne omitted one key phrase from the guidelines for Senators expenses: “Likewise, individual Senators must be conscious of the requirement to expend public monies prudently.” And really, that’s what’s at the heart of this trial – even if the rules themselves were loose, it doesn’t mean that it’s permission to go well beyond their intended use and purpose. It makes me wonder who should be checking in on the work of senators when they contract out services – should it be Senate Administration checking that speeches were written, and that research was conducted? Do they become the babysitters and homework monitors of the Senate? It’s a hard question to ask because you can only infantilise them so far before you start getting into problems. It’s even more problematic when senators’ policy work can take a wide variety of forms. This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be some form of oversight to ensure that there isn’t abuse, but we need to keep in mind that these aren’t civil servants or functionaries. They’re parliamentarians, with all of the attendant privileges that comes with that, and that means something. It’s also one of the reasons why pundits opining that this is really a “trial about the Senate” bothers me, and that these “entitled” senators have “free reign to spend public money,” which is obviously not true. Questions were raised, particularly about Wallin but also Duffy, and things were coming to light, though it there may have been the intent to take care of it more quietly. None of it excuses what Duffy did, and the fact that he appears to have deliberately misled Senate Administration with the contracts he drew up, as he certainly appears to have done with his various and sundry claims. Is it the Senate’s fault, or do we blame them to absolve him of the personal responsibility? That should be kept top of mind as the pundit class makes their pronouncements. The Senate didn’t make Duffy do anything – he made all of his choices himself. Meanwhile, the daily behind-the-scenes look notes Duffy’s exit strategy, and here’s a profile of the courtroom sketch artist.
Roundup: Minor changes on the way
First it was the Liberals offering their amendments to C-51 on Thursday, and yesterday it was the NDP. Monday we will get a laundry list from the Green Party, and now we hear that on Tuesday, the government will have amendments of their own, demonstrating that they’ve listened to at least a few of the criticisms on the bill, in particular removing the word “lawful” from demonstrations, and clarifying that CSIS won’t have arrest powers – changes that they hope will tone down the hysteria from activist groups who have been proclaiming that they would soon find themselves on terror watch-lists for dissenting against the government. Not so, the government insists – they want to keep the focus on the real terrorists. But they’re not doing anything more for oversight, and as far as they’re concerned, parliamentary oversight is a dead letter. What strikes me in all of this, however, is the way in which this is playing out like it did with amendments to the Fair Elections Act. Then, as with C-51, the government is making a few minor amendments that won’t have a very big impact on the bulk of the bill and its powers, but by at least proposing those small changes, they can turn around and look like they’ve been reasonable about listening to their critics. That way, they’ve barely put much water in their wine, but still try to come out looking like heroes, and letting politics once again triumph over good policy.
Roundup: A tacit plea of no contest
From all accounts, it was one of the worst press conferences in recent memory. Former Liberal MP Scott Andrews, currently an independent, said he’s not going to fight to rejoin the Liberal caucus, that he accepts what was in the executive summary of the investigation into the harassment allegations, but wouldn’t say anything more concrete about whether he feels he was guilty or innocent of the allegations. There were hints, however, that he is not contesting what has been in the media – that he followed an MP home, pushed her against the wall and groped her, stopped when she told him to but subsequently referred to her as a “cockteaser.” Talking about learning the lessons of “the importance of personal space” and his “jovial Newfoundland personality” seems to indicate that he’s tacitly admitted he’s done something. The fact that he said he’s laying down partisanship, however, does raise questions, but with no answers forthcoming, we will be left to speculate. Andrews said that he hasn’t decided if he’ll run again in the next election, but even as an independent it would be a long shot. Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, says he considers the matter closed, so unless someone starts leaking the contents of the investigator’s report, this is probably the last we’ll hear about it.
Roundup: The unspoken morale problem
As the results of the Senate audit draw closer, and senators are complaining anonymously about the way in which it’s being handled by the Auditor General’s office (and those that they’ve subcontracted to), what has been missing from the reporting is the blow to morale that has taken place in the institution. The constant air of suspicion, the questioning of expenses that should be no problem (like stamps for Xmas cards being sent to the States, or as the article describes, single phone calls and sandwiches) has made not only for some unhappy senators and staff, but it’s sucked the life out of the place, and their focus on the grown-up policy work of parliament – which we should expect from the Commons but don’t end up getting – is being completely sidetracked by the way this audit is being handled, and the time that it is consuming. It’s also to the point of invasive, where one senator mentioned that she had been asked for her personal journals by auditors. And the problem has become that because of the actions of those couple of bad apples – Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau, and Harb – that all senators are under a cloud of suspicion and are unable to push back without it looking like they have something to hide, rather than the fact that there is a genuine feeling like they are being abused by auditors who don’t understand the role of the Senate. One does have to wonder if there won’t be any long-term damage to what is going on, especially as blame is being laid on the institution, and not on the person who made appointments without due diligence.