A blustery Monday in Ottawa, and only one major leader was present in the Commons. Thomas Mulcair led off, decrying the insulting way in which the Finance Minister treated the premiers and the Prime Minister’s lack of attendance at their meeting. Paul Calandra stood up to give a bog standard talking point about how the PM meets with the premiers on a regular basis, so that was getting things off to a good start. Mulcair pushed about the PM shunning those meetings, but Calandra repeated his answer. Mulcair demanded to know why Harper sent out the finance minister to insult the premiers, and again, Calandra repeated the praising talking points about the relationship with the provinces. Rosane Doré Lefebvre was up next, asking about the lack of increased oversight for CSIS if they are to be given new powers. Stephen Blaney insisted that all activities will be under the review of SIRC, which is independent. Mulcair got back up and demanded to know why the minister considered oversight and the protection of rights “red tape.” Blaney continued to insist that SIRC would do the job. Ralph Goodale got up for the Liberals, and wanted the government to redirect the funds for income splitting and direct it to infrastructure instead. Jason Kenny insisted that theirs was the better plan, and how the Liberals just wanted to raise taxes. Goodale then turned back to the question of oversight for national security, and how Canada was the only Five Eyes country without parliamentary (or congressional) oversight, not Blaney was undeterred, praising their new appointments. Dominic LeBlanc followed up in French, and Blaney tried to claim that our system was the envy of the world.
Tag Archives: Supreme Court
Roundup: More security, no more oversight
The new anti-terrorism bill was unveiled today, but in the government’s singularly dickish fashion – sending journalists to a lock-up off the Hill where they couldn’t even see the bill for the first hour, while Harper made the announcement in a pre-campaign stop in a suburb of Toronto. While the bill would largely expand the powers of CSIS greatly, it lowers the legal thresholds for preventative arrest and peace bones, criminalising the “promotion” of terrorism, allowing CSIS to “disrupt” would-be terror activities, removing terrorist materials from the web, sealing court proceedings, and overhauling the national no-fly list. Oddly enough, nobody would say how any of these measures could have prevented the October 22nd shooting in Ottawa. What it doesn’t do is provide any new or additional oversight to the agency, unlike all of our allies (but hey, they finally filled one of the empty seats on SIRC yesterday, but it’s still not up to full strength and there’s no permanent chair. Yay oversight!). It’s a strange kind of obstinacy, and only serves to make it like the government has something to hide. And then of course there are the concerns from civil liberties groups and the Privacy Commissioner, which goes to the breadth of activities and again the lack of proper civilian oversight. Tyler Dawson writes that the need to criminalise that “promotion” of terrorism is an admission of being afraid of these terrorists.
Canada's privacy commissioner weighs in on anti-terror bill; takes aim at oversight. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/BSq6cR18RQ
— Dylan Robertson (@withfilesfrom) January 30, 2015
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/561220364957933569
Roundup: Two rulings and a report for the Mounties
The RCMP were in the centre of the spotlight yesterday, with two Supreme Court judgements and a fact-finding report on the Moncton shootings all having been released. Regarding the former, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the ban on RCMP from collectively bargaining was unconstitutional, which opens the door for them to form a recognised police association (though they seem to be shying away from a full-blown union). This ruling has further reaching consequences as it also resolved some of the problems in the existing jurisprudence around freedom of association, which has been in a fairly bad state for the past four years or so since a previous decision introduced a great deal of confusion into the law. The second decision related to a challenge of the government’s wage rollbacks imposed on the Force in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, but the RCMP lost that challenge because of the fairly narrow way in which it was constructed and argued. As for the Moncton report, much of it focuses on the lack of training and slow roll-out of new carbines, confusion among communications and problems related to body armour, many of which are problems that date back to the Mayerthorpe massacre of four Mounties. Where these two stories intersect, beyond the RCMP issue itself, is that police association members are saying that they could have addressed some of these problems and had timelines established as part of a collective bargaining process, which of course they don’t have.
Roundup: Some context around the defection
While Danielle Smith continues to declare victory as she defends her defection, insisting that the Wildrose had held two premiers to account and that they had managed to shift the PCs to their position under Prentice, there are one or two things worth noting. While I spoke to other day about the problems with calling this defection a “reunification” of conservatives in the province, I think there are a couple of other facts to consider that the pundit classes keep overlooking in their handwringing about the state of democracy in Alberta now that the official opposition has been decimated. The first is that even in a Westminster democracy, there are no guidelines about the strength of the opposition. We’ve even had cases (New Brunswick, I believe) where there were no opposition parties elected, and they had to find a way of including that balance. The other fact is that nowhere in the country is there an opposition so closely aligned ideologically with the government of the day, where you have a nominally right-wing government and an even more right-wing official opposition. That puts a whole lot of context into the unprecedented move of an official opposition leader crossing to join the government ranks, as there is less of a gap to actually cross.
Roundup: Onward, One Party State
The One Party State known as Alberta has struck again, and consumed its own opposition. Floor-crossings to the government, the same government that has been in power for four decades, is a long-held tradition in that process, but never before has it been to this extent, in the history of confederation. Wildrose leader Danielle Smith resigned her position and took eight of her MLAs over the floor to join Premier Jim Prentice, and his revitalised Progressive Conservatives. The five remaining Wildrose MLAs will likely remain the official opposition (though there are rumours of another resignation on the way for health reasons), leaving five Liberal and four NDP MLAs to have some semblance of opposition, as shambolic as it is likely to be. Oh, and of those five Liberal MLAs, two of them will soon be jumping ship to run federally. So yeah – opposition? Who needs it? It’s amazing to witness this all-encompasing amorphous political culture in Alberta consume itself and its own best interests, and it’s galling to see Smith justify her decision as essentially declaring victory, that with Prentice in place there is a principled conservative at the helm that she can support, papering over some of the other inherent problems that were in her party, being the split between those who were able to be socially progressive as opposed to the regressive “Lake of Fire” crowd. Jen Gerson writes about Prentice setting himself up to be a generational premier, while Colby Cosh explores what it all means in the broader political culture of the province, and how the threat of falling oil prices may have pushed things forward.
Roundup: A surprising defection
The NDP have lost another MP, but this time the defection is very surprising. Sudbury MP Glenn Thibeault has decided to leave federal politics and run for the provincial Liberals in that riding. Thibeault said that it was a long decision making process, and that he felt the Liberals’ plans for the region were something he felt strongly about, but then he hinted to CBC Sudbury that he was not seeing eye-to-eye with the federal NDP, and that’s when the warning lights go off – especially because Thibeault was caucus chair until a couple of weeks ago. He wouldn’t elaborate on that fact when later asked about it on Power & Politics, but it is still a big klaxon that all is not as it seems in the NDP caucus. Remember this is the caucus that is always united and solidarity in all things. When cracks form below the surface, it’s always a bit of interesting Kremlinology, and while clues may be hard to come by as to what the divisions are, the fact that they are present does add more grains of salt to the constant assurances that the party has never been more united – a phrase they trot out every time they lose another MP.
Roundup: Just a communications problem
If you listen to the government and their spokespeople, the problems at Veterans Affairs don’t have to do with management or resources, but rather that they’re simply not communicating their programmes effectively to newer veterans. At least, that’s the argument that Conservative parliamentary secretary Erin O’Toole was trying to put forward on the weekend. O’Toole – who isn’t even the parliamentary secretary for veterans, but rather international trade – his status as a veteran, plus the ineptitude of both the minister and parliamentary secretary for veterans is why he’s being put forward on the file – was charged with trying to sell this message on The West Block last weekend, to much incredulity. And Tom Clark asked him point blank if that means that the answer is more money for advertising, no matter that they’ve already been spending more on advertising than they’ve saved on closing those veterans service centres around the country. I have a hard time seeing how this is at all a winning strategy because is smacks so much of victim blaming to those veterans who can’t get the help that they need and are entitled to.
Roundup: An ignored anniversary
A very important anniversary passed yesterday that concerns our history and development as a country, but you didn’t hear a single MP remark on it in the Commons yesterday. It was the anniversary of the Statute of Westminster, which not only gave Canada full control over its foreign affairs – one of the final pieces of sovereignty from the United Kingdom that had not yet been transferred to our control – but more crucially was one of the defining moments in the independence of the Canadian Crown. The Statute helped solidify the notion that the Crown is divisible, and henceforth the same monarch would wear separate Crowns for each of the realms that he or she ruled. That’s why the Queen of Canada, the Queen of the UK and the Queen of Australia are separate legal entities even though Elizabeth II wears each hat. It’s one of the most fundamental underpinnings of our sovereignty and constitutional architecture, but not a single MP could be bothered to mention it. Well done, everyone. Also of note: Royal historian Carolyn Harris uses the discussion around the DNA of Richard III to remind us that our current Queen reigns by an Act of Parliament, not by divine right, which is a worthwhile lesson when it comes to how the modern monarchy works.
https://twitter.com/onshi/status/542685207938084864
Roundup: Don’t sideline Canada Gazette
It’s not a sexy topic, but the fact that Parliament is giving itself the power to start making regulatory changes without publishing them in Canada Gazette is actually pretty worrying. It’s just regulations, right? Well, the issue is that by spreading out proposals, it makes it more difficult for proposed regulations to get proper consultation before they’re implemented. That’s a pretty big deal because so much of what constitutes our governance regime comes in the form of regulations that are empowered by legislation. That way, Parliament isn’t bogged down with niggling technical details that MPs have no expertise in determining, and allows them to focus on the “bigger picture,” while civil servants deal with the minutiae. The Governor in Council then gets to implement those regulations that the civil service comes up with, and Parliament can hold government to account for those regulations they implement. By not requiring everything to go through the Gazette, it makes the exercise of accountability that much harder, which is not how we should be operating in a system of Responsible Government.
Roundup: A registry that’s not a registry
To the utter delight of the Conservatives, the NDP have pledged to reinstate the long-gun registry, with Mulcair uttering the line that duck hunters would only need assault rifles if they were hunting pterodactyls. But wait – an NDP aide later took issue with the characterisation that the NDP want to reinstate the registry itself – they just want to be able to track every gun. Which…pretty much implies a registry, whether there are criminal sanctions applied to it or not, so well done with that bit of cognitive dissonance. And if memory serves, the Liberals needed to have the criminal sanctions if they wanted to make the registry fit under federal laws, as it would otherwise have been provincial jurisdiction, so that may be an additional hurdle. (In case it bears reminding, the Liberals have eschewed reviving the registry).