Tag Archives: Syria

Roundup: An appointment panel is named

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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.

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Roundup: Fledgling government delays

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Delays seem to be the word of the day for the fledgling government – delays in getting the refugees here (but that’s happening), delays in getting committees up and running (thanks in no small part to NDP and Bloc wrangling) – though they did finally name the assisted dying committee members today, and it looks like there are now delays in getting the new Independent appointments committee for naming new senators up and running. This means that those promised five new “independent” senators won’t likely be chosen before Parliament comes back, nor will the new government “representative” be chosen from one of those five as intended. That could start being a problem for the government as they start looking to outline their agenda and figure out what they’re going to start sending over to the Senate in terms of legislation. Mind you, it’s not too late for the government to do the right thing and appoint an existing senator to the post (because it makes absolutely no sense to put someone with no Senate experience into the role – it really doesn’t), and then figure out how to keep the relationship as arm’s length as possible while still letting parliament function as it should, with government and opposition sides that help keep debate and accountability going. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, can We The Media please stop this whole “The Senate has traditionally been a partisan dumping ground” line? It’s a gross exaggeration of the truth, and it neglects the fact that a lot of eminently qualified people who weren’t just party hacks were appointed. Yes, some of them chose to behave a bit unfortunately once appointed because they thought they had do (particularly true of the way that Harper’s poor appointment process corrupted a generation of senators), but on the whole? We had some pretty great appointments on both sides for a lot of years. Stephen Harper and his PMO upsetting the balance should not be held up as the norm of the chamber’s history any more than the small number of senators with questionable expenses should be treated as a reflection on the vast majority who didn’t. But by all means, keep repeating the received wisdom (and in some cases mendacious gossip) about the Chamber and its denizens. It’s really helping us live up to our role of educating the public as to what goes on in Parliament.

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Roundup: Airfare obsessions

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Oh, the things we obsess over in this country – like the Prime Minister’s air travel. Perpetual source of media copy, as are the strange figures that get attached to it. As previously mentioned, Justin Trudeau and family went on vacation to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts-Nevis, and apparently rented a villa there (which they paid for out of pocket), and got a bit of tabloid attention, because why not? Also, apparently there was a bit of diplomacy as he met with the country’s prime minister and foreign minister, but that’s beside the point. The point is that while Trudeau has promised to reimburse the public purse for the equivalent of economy fares for the trip, the media continues to bring forward the dollar figure of $10,000 per flying hour to operate the Challenger jets, which the PM is obligated to take for security reasons. The problem with using that $10,000/flying hour figure is that it never places it in the context of it being a military aircraft, and it’s not just sitting around waiting to shuttle the PM around – they’re in use for other operations, and even when they’re not, they still get flown empty because those military pilots need to keep up flying hours aboard them. It’s a Thing, but nobody ever mentions it. Instead, when the PM wants to go somewhere on personal business, we drag up the $10,000/flying hours figure because we want a bit of cheap outrage, and if there’s anything that Canadian media loves, it’s cheap outrage. It is a little curious that Trudeau is reimbursing at the economy fare rate, but I guess we’ll see what that rate looks like once it’s repaid. While Paul Martin made it the practice to repay double the going business-class rate, Stephen Harper would occasionally reimburse it at what was alleged to be the lowest possible economy fare, though most of the time when reporters tried to find equivalent flights for what Harper repaid, well, it couldn’t be done. I would say that if anything, repaying less than the economy fare is almost more insulting than not repaying anything and saying “I’m Prime Minister, I can’t fly commercial, so deal with it” because it almost looks like you’re showing contempt than respecting the taxpayer (which is the born-again motto of the Conservative Party post-election). So really, we should suck it up (provided that the trips aren’t egregious) but I see little chance of that happening anytime soon.

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Roundup: Questionable speaking fees

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Following testimony at the Mike Duffy trial, Glen McGregor went back through the records of Duffy’s speaking engagements and what he was paid for them. Why? Because at trial, it came to light that he paid a speechwriter for a last-minute speech to one group, made a couple of tiny changes to it, paid for said speech through his “clearing fund” run by Gerald Donohue as though it were an expense related to his Senate duties, and then collected the $15,000 fee. Senate ethics guidelines state that they are not to collect speaking fees if it’s related to their Senate duties – and to be clear, there are plenty of parliamentarians in both Chambers for whom it’s entirely appropriate to have a Speaker’s bureau arrange and charge for speeches based on their previous experiences, because it’s not part of their parliamentary duties and it ensures that their expenses are covered and not charged to the taxpayer. Duffy, however, seems to have breached this particular rule, which could be yet another wrinkle in his attempt to prove his innocence, or to show that the “clearing fund” was only for legitimate parliamentary expenses. Meanwhile, looking back at the trial, we see recollections of his memorable phrases, and the petulance of his testimony.

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Roundup: Different approaches to transparency

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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.

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Roundup: The town hall performance

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Justin Trudeau had his townhall with Maclean’s yesterday (in partnership with fellow Rogers publications Chatelaine, L’Actualité and CityTV, of course), and it went very well, and was engaging (and the whole thing can be viewed here). There wasn’t a lot of news, per se, that came out of it, but Trudeau did spend some time explaining certain positions, such as why he thinks there is a better role for Canada in the Middle East that draws from our experience in Afghanistan than the bombing mission does, or why he made the decision to cut the tax bracket that he did (it winds up helping more people when examined in conjunction with the new child benefit program), and the whole issue of the federal minimum wage (it only helps such a small group of people, and wasn’t likely to move too many provincial governments). Oh, and he slammed the kinds of fear-mongering politics engaged in by politicians like Donald Trump as ignorant and irresponsible. John Geddes remarks about Trudeau’s effortless adoption of the role of Prime Minister, while Paul Wells offers his thoughts on the event as the moderator, and how Trudeau compares to Harper. Laura Payton notes the very politic way in which Trudeau responded to questions, and some of the lessons that he perhaps learned from Harper in that regard.

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Roundup: Tiresome cheap shots

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Oh, look – there’s the Senate bat-signal and oh, it’s because a couple of pundits have decided to be completely tiresome about it. I see. Up first is CBC’s Terry Milewski, who has once again decided to use Mike Duffy to paint the whole of the Senate with his disreputable brush. Never mind that the vast majority of senators don’t abuse the system, or that they have made vast improvements on financial controls and transparency (and remain far more transparent than the House of Commons in most respects), apparently the whole system is an unfixable morass because Duffy. Um, okay. And to cap it off, Milewski tries to make some wrong-headed point about representation in the Senate, ignoring that representation is along regional and not provincial lines, and no, Newfoundland is not part of the Maritimes and is a region unto itself, but hey, conflating its seats is fun and deliberately misleading! Apparently nobody has taken a basic civics or Canadian history course, because the whole point of why the Senate was constructed the way it was, was precisely because it wasn’t supposed to be representation-by-population. The Commons is, and the Senate had to rebalance the representation to keep Ontario from swamping the minority provinces. Oh, but those are “bizarre” and “absurd imbalances” apparently, because Milewski has decided that ignorance is the effective bully tactic. It’s a series of cheap shots that should be beneath the journalistic establishment, but alas no, it’s become par for the course these days. And then there’s Andrew Coyne, who decided to deliberately over-complicate the situation in the Senate in order to misconstrue what’s happening and sow confusion to make a point, that it’s not the kind of reforms that he would prefer (never mind that he’s never quite articulated why it’s preferable to have an elected Senate that would compete with the Commons, or to remove the Senate’s veto powers when they’re necessary to thwart a majority prime minister who is overstepping his or her bounds, other than the saying “democracy!” while hand-waving). But clearly, some clear-eyed critical thinking about our parliamentary institutions is a lot to ask, particularly when there are cheap points to be scored.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/676603993049690112

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Roundup: The Senate steps up

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In their very first piece of legislation passed, the House of Commons ballsed it up. Quite badly, in fact. In rushing through a supply bill, they didn’t include a necessary schedule for where the money that was being authorised would be spent, which is a pretty big deal. And so, when it reached the Senate, this was caught and the bill had to be sent back before the Senate could deal with it and pass it so that it could get Royal Assent and everyone could go home for the holidays. The Senate, however, was not amused. This is not the first time that defective bills have made it to the Senate, be it when they sent an earlier unamended version down the hall, or when their due diligence wasn’t done and they had to make some kind of excuses to get the Senate to pass it anyway with the promise of adding a clause in a future bill to retroactively fix it. And the patience of the Senate is wearing thin. In the words of Speaker Furey:

“While it is not our place to look into the functioning of the House of Commons, I am appalled that we received a defective bill. If it is the wish of the house, I would be prepared to write to my counterpart in the House of Commons to seek his assurance that this will not happen again.”

Liberal Senator Terry Mercer was even less forgiving and deservedly so:

“It galls me, Mr. Speaker, that they talk about an administrative error. That’s passing the error off onto the staff. I’m sorry; the Members of Parliament voted on this; it is their fault and they alone take the blame… To give us this BS about administrative error, passing the buck off to someone in the administration of the House of Commons, doesn’t wash with me, and it shouldn’t wash with anybody, and it shouldn’t wash with Canadians. I want this to be notice to the Minister of Finance and to our colleagues in the other place that this place will not put up with this anymore.”

Senator Fraser suggested that the Commons needs to examine their system and perhaps even apologise to the Senate, while other Senators noted that this is government legislation and not a private member’s bill, and that perhaps the Senate should not always be as patient and perhaps rise without granting Royal Assent in the future. Part of the root of this is that that the Senate, yet again, did its job while the Commons didn’t. In their haste to get this passed so that MPs can leave, MPs spent a grand total of fifteen minutes on the Supply bill, including Committee of the Whole. That’s right – fifteen minutes to examine and authorise the spending of money by the government. The Senate Finance Committee held three days of pre-study on the bill so that they would know what the issues were, and lo and behold, when the bill arrived in defective form, they could spot it immediately. And as noted before, this keeps happening with increasing frequency. And yet, when we send MPs to Ottawa to “be our representatives,” we seem to forget that they have a job to do – to scrutinize bills, and most especially spending, and they’re not doing it. They leave it to others to do, be it the Auditor General, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or the Senate – all while bitching and moaning about how terrible the Senate is even though the Senate is actually doing their jobs when MPs aren’t. And the next time I hear someone give me the line about how the Senate has no function in a modern democracy, I can give them yet another object lesson about how the Commons is the real dysfunctional chamber in our democracy. I’ll repeat Speaker Furey’s admonition – it’s appalling. Shape up, MPs. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

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Roundup: Demanding a referendum

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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.

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QP: The scattershot attack

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The week slowly drawing to a close, more desks started to empty out in the Chamber, but hey, Justin Trudeau was there for a fourth day in a row — I’m not sure that ever happened under Harper, ever. Rona Ambrose led off, lectern still on desk, and she read a question in French about the size of the deficit. Trudeau rose and stated that they had pledged to be open and honest about budget figures, and they would reduce the net debt-to-GDP ratio. Ambrose then accused the government of doing nothing for the plight of Albertans with dropping oil prices. Trudeau reminded her that the previous government did nothing for them. Ambrose changed topics again, and trolled for support for their opposition day motion to maintain the CF-18 bombing mission. Trudeau reminded her that the Americans were just happy with the Canadian position, and that he was even just invited for a state dinner at the White House, something Harper never got. Denis Lebel was up next, and asked the same question to get the same answer. Lebel then asked why Trudeau thought that the 1982 patriation was a good template for electoral reform, but Trudeau reminded him of the promises made during the election.Thomas Mulcair was up next and noted the RCMP Commissioner’s admission that there were racists in his force and asked what the government was doing about it. Trudeau lamented it, but basically said that it was up to the RCMP to deal with their members. Mulcair asked about boil water advisories on First Nations reserves, to which Trudeau noted they were working with those First Nations. Mulcair changed topics again to Canada Post, and got the very same response he got the past three days. Mulcair gave one last change of topic, asking about which refugees where getting health funding for refugees, which Trudeau said they would be doing.

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