Tag Archives: Syria

Roundup: About that two percent

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Part of the preoccupying discussion over the weekend has been comments that Donald Trump made regarding the two percent of GDP spending target as a NATO obligation, and his threats to be less responsive to the alliance unless countries pony up to that level. Never mind that it’s not an actual obligation (Article 5 – the notion that an attack on one member country is an attack on all – is the actual core of the alliance), it’s become a fixation, and that could be a problem for Canada, no matter the fact that we actually show up and do the heavy lifting. To translate heavy lifting, it means that we haven’t been afraid of doing the dirty work, and getting involved in the actual fighting, as with Afghanistan, in part because we have a system of government that allows the government of the day to authorise it without bogging it down in legislative votes or in coalition negotiations where the reluctance to put troops into harm’s way means that most NATO countries wind up deploying troops with very restrictive caveats as to what they can and can’t do, and deploying them to areas where they are less likely to see active combat. (This, incidentally, is generally another caution about PR governments, but I’m sure there are those who would say that this is a feature and not a bug. Those people would be overly idealistic). That heavy lifting should count for something beyond just spending levels.

Paul Wells walks us through some of the history of the two percent target, and why it’s a poor measure of results, as well as some theorizing about why Donald Trump is fixating on that target as much as he is. Likewise, NATO scholar Stephen Saideman engages in some two percent myth-busting here. And Philippe Lagassé offers some additional thoughts about those spending targets and what could be a better measure.

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Roundup: Tough on the mentally ill

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Yesterday, news came out that Vincent Li (now known as Will Baker) was given an absolute discharge; he of course was the man who beheaded someone on a Greyhound bus in 2008 while in the midst of a psychotic episode due to undiagnosed schizophrenia. He was later deemed not criminally responsible because, as stated, he was not in his right mind when the incident happened, and has since received treatment and is unlikely to reoffend. And predictably, social media lit up with outrage, particularly from the Conservatives who declared this an absolute travesty and an insult to the family of Li’s victim, Tim McLean, and how this “proved” that our justice system cared more about the rights of criminals than it did the victims. Rona Ambrose brought this up in QP a few days ago, when Li’s release was pending, and not once did she mention the fact that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was found not criminally responsible. (In his response, Justin Trudeau didn’t either, for the record).

But here’s the really galling part. Just days ago, Ambrose and many of these very same Conservatives were all over social media for #BellLetsTalk Day, talking about how important it is to take away the stigma of mental illness. And now here’s Li, who is as much a victim in this as McLean was because he was mentally ill, and the Conservatives are considering him to be an unrepentant murderer because of his mental illness.

So what is it? Are you serious about having adult conversations about mental illness, even when it’s inconvenient to your political agenda of being “tough on crime” (never mind that the courts established that he wasn’t criminally responsible because he was mentally ill)? Or are you going to insist that people who were mentally ill and have received treatment remain locked up in perpetuity, thus “proving” why people with mental illnesses should be stigmatized and marginalized from society? Because it’s one or the other. You’re all looking like a bunch of hypocrites right now, and like you were lying to the Canadian public when you wanted to #BellLetsTalk about mental illness.

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Roundup: CETA got signed

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Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland went to Brussels over the weekend to sign the Canada-EU trade deal (known as CETA), but this was the real signing, as opposed to the several signings staged by the Harper government at much earlier iterations of the process, which they wanted to use to show how pro-trade they were, and how much work they were doing on the trade file. And yes, they did get the ball rolling on CETA, as well as the TPP, and a number of trade deals with a bunch of small countries with tiny economies that do very little trade with Canada, and loudly proclaimed the number (as opposed to the worth of those signed deals). So there’s that. At the signing ceremony, Trudeau also downplayed the delays and praised the democratic way in which it all happened, essentially saying that it’s not a bad thing to raise questions and to have them answered, which is fairly gracious of him (and fits with the overall character of his government to date in acknowledging the challenge function of parliament and the media – though he may want to let his Senate leader, Peter Harder, know, as Harder rather arrogantly doesn’t believe that the Senate needs an official opposition).

Of course, now comes the hard part of implementation, which will doubtlessly have numerous stumbling blocks along the way, and we’ll likely need several reminders about why the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism isn’t actually an attack on sovereignty, and how the improvements that Freeland negotiated to the system are a net positive and will likely form a model for other such systems going forward. We’ll hear yet more cries from the NDP and other left-leaning critics about those concerns, but the deal is moving ahead.

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Roundup: Fundraising fears

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It’s been a curious thing the last few days, watching in QP as the Conservatives are tearing their hair out over this Bill Morneau fundraiser in Halifax and raising the spectre of the wealthy contributing to politics, and calling Bill Morneau a millionaire like it’s a bad thing. As though suddenly the Conservative Party of Canada has become overrun by socialists or something. Really, it’s just their cheap populism run amok, trying to cast themselves as champions of ordinary Canadians (never mind that their policies disproportionately aided wealthier Canadians during their decade in power), and if they really were the champions of the working class, you would think the rest of their policies to date would be different (such as around labour unions or the Canada Pension Plan, or anything like that), but no. And if you think this is really a question about ethics or conflicts of interest, well, no, the Ethics Commissioner herself has stated that this fundraiser was above board, but hey, if they wanted to tighten the rules around fundraising, she’s been asking them to do that for years and after a decade in power, they wouldn’t do that either. So here we are, with a desperate attempt to frame perfectly above-board fundraising as “cash for access” and somehow comparable to the situation in Ontario, which it’s not. Meanwhile, Howard Anglin had a perfectly apropos tweet storm on this, so I’ll let him finish off here.

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QP: Tributes for Prentice

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Half of the leaders were present in the Commons today, and after some tributes for the late Jim Prentice from all parties and a moment of silence, QP got underway. Rona Ambrose, mini-lectern on desk, asked about the size of the deficit, which is more than had been promised. After a quick rebuke about making investments, Justin Trudeau gave a tribute to Prentice of his own. Ambrose was concerned that jobs were not being created and demanded that he stop spending and focus on jobs instead. Trudeau noted that the Conservative approach didn’t create growth, while he was cutting taxes for the middle class. Ambrose then mischaracterized a whole list of things as taxes before decrying the possibility of a Netflix tax. Trudeau repeated his response about cutting taxes on the middle class. Denis Lebel was up next, decrying the lack of a softwood lumber agreement and how it was hurting families. Trudeau responded with the list of ways they are helping families. Lebel doubled down on the softwood lumber agreement, and Trudeau agreed that they were concerned about the file, but the former government’s broken relationship with the Americans didn’t help. Peter Julian led off for the NDP, demanding money for home care while mischaracterizing the changes to health care escalators. Trudeau reminded him that the Harper approach to healthcare was to write a check and not ensure that the money was spent on healthcare. Julian demanded that the health transfer escalator remain at six percent for another year, but Trudeau was not responsive to his logic. Brigitte Sansoucy repeated both questions again in French, and got much the same response from Trudeau in French.

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Roundup: The outsider instinct

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Over in the National Post, Michael Den Tandt offers the theory that Donald Trump and his excesses have poisoned the well for other “outsider” candidates worldwide, and that his flash-over-substance style will make others take a second look. Citing the Conservative party leadership in Canada, Den Tandt supposes that this dooms a potential candidacy by Kevin O’Leary, just as Boris Johnson basically outsidered-himself out of the running to be prime minister in the UK – but I’m not sure that I buy the premise of the argument.

I think that there remains a hankering for outsider candidates despite Trump, and that that precisely because he’s poisoned the well that we’ll continue to see these kinds of players railing against the establishment. As is playing out in the Conservative leadership race here, we’ll see more candidates establish themselves as outsiders struggling against the party “elites” because that’s the narrative that has been blown wide open in recent years. (See: Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost). Den Tandt acknowledges that Tony Clement dropped out because he was unable to attract donors for being too conventional and too much an established politician, which I think is part of what blows his whole thesis out of the water. It wasn’t that Clement got in the race too soon, it’s that this notion of needing to find an “outsider” is a particularly strong influence in the zeitgeist right now, especially for conservatives who feel that the establishment has been letting them down, that it hasn’t gotten them where they need to be (witness how Harper’s incrementalism has largely been undone in a matter of months, if you don’t count the permanent fiscal chokehold that the GST cut has put into place). I think it’s why Leitch is taking the Ford Brothers/Nick Kouvalis route of yelling “gravy train,” and why Maxime Bernier is playing entirely against the rest of the party’s established policies and is getting attention for it. Everyone wants to play against the establishment and they are looking for the right way to do it. I don’t think we’ll have another Donald Trump – it would be hard to get that kind of unconstrained id and utter narcissism in a single package again – but I think there is absolutely going to be yet more people trying to find the right balance. I’m not sure it’ll be as successful in Canada as it might be in the States (particularly as our system is not really broken like theirs is), but the impulse to find that outsider is still pervasive, and it will be felt in the race here.

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Roundup: Use your Australian comparisons wisely

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If it’s not the leadership omnishambles in the UK that’s holding our attention, it’s the indecisive election result in Australia. While that would be something in and of itself, we find ourselves with pundits eager to take some lessons from Australia, only to completely balls things up along the way. To wit, Kelly McParland writing in the National Post delivered this hot mess yesterday which manages to conflate every possible thing in Australian politics in order to prove a point – not necessarily a bad point – but went about it in entirely the wrong way. So, for Mr. McParland’s edification, let’s break it down a little.

First of all, the “six prime ministers in six years” has virtually nothing to do with the ranked ballots in Australia. The system of caucus selection of leaders there (which is how leaders should be chosen, as I’ve argued elsewhere numerous times) has gone to extremes, creating a culture of paranoia and betrayal. But that’s not the fault of the ranked ballots since it’s a different process. That parties will spill leaders shortly before an election in the hopes of having a more appealing leader is party politics enabled by the ability to have spills, rather than the ranked ballot effect. Conflating them is not helpful.

The ranked ballots themselves allow for more small parties to exist independent of “big tent” brokerage parties because ranked ballots discourage tactical voting – something McParland neglects to mention while returning to the Canadian canard that the Liberals only want ranked ballots because they think they’ll clean up by getting everyone’s second place votes. That has led to the need for the Australian Liberals (read: conservatives) to require a coalition partner to govern, which is a consideration to make if we want ranked ballots, but it is a giant conflation to mix this in with the stability of their system and leadership woes.

The problem of the Australian Senate is the bigger nub of the argument, but which gets lost in the rest of the McParland’s confusing mess. The Australian Senate is chosen by single-transferable proportional voting, and the system has been effectively gamed in the previous election so that a bunch of marginal players got seats and subsequently created a huge problem in their upper chamber, requiring more tinkering of the system to be forced through and the Prime Minister calling for double-dissolution (so that both chambers be elected at the same time – a rare occurrence usually reserved for political crises) in order to break the legislative deadlocks. Those tweaks appear to be causing even more problems with this election, but we may see how it all shakes out in a few weeks. (Note that these ballots tend to be the size of placemats, because of the way they’re structured with the enormous number of parties running). And while the problems with these marginal parties being given outsized powers of persuasion in the previous parliament are very valid points to make, it gets lost in the sea of conflations that plagued the rest of the piece.

So I get McParland’s point about electoral reform advocates needing to be careful what they wish for, and can even agree with it to a large extent, this was utterly the wrong way to go about it.

Meanwhile, here’s a primer about Australia’s lengthy counting process – so lengthy that their Senate preferential distribution process could take over a month. Closer to home, here are some of the ways in which the electoral reform committee plans to engage with Canadians.

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Roundup: A milestone Pride

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Though he had committed to it long before the shootings in Orlando, there was a particularly importance to the visibility that Canadian political leaders brought to Toronto Pride this year, and for the first time, a sitting Prime Minister marched, alongside an openly lesbian Ontario premier. For the first time, the Conservative party leaders, both federally and provincially marched, along with leadership candidates Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch, and Michael Chong (and Lisa Raitt, should she decide to throw her hat into the ring). Absent however was outgoing federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, which is unusual considering how the NDP generally pride themselves on being at Pride. And yes, Elizabeth May was there for her tenth year in a row as well. This year, being in the shadow of Orlando, was a reminder that yes, Pride is political, and the actions of Black Lives Matter Toronto added to that politicisation (make of their tactics what you will). That you had the entire political spectrum in Canada represented for the first time was a milestone worth noting.

In a place where a Pride parade really matters, one happened in Steinbach, Manitoba, after much pushback from the local political leaders, in a place where openly gay and lesbian people have literally been run out of town by harassment and bullying. Visibility is important, particularly in these smaller towns where ignorance and fear go hand-in-hand, making the need to be visible all the more important, lest nothing change.

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Roundup: Idle Brexit musings

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While everyone continues to talk Brexit over the weekend, and you have a curious number of Conservative MPs here in Canada almost irresponsibly tweeting gleefully over it, I am forced to wonder if they are not in fact trying to demonstrate enthusiasm for referenda in general, given their daily caterwauling for one on electoral reform in this country. That could be why their messages are so focused on the democratic result of it, as opposed to the substance of what the Brexit vote actually represented. But that’s just idle speculation, so take of it what you will.

Of course, talk of how referenda are terrible at determining issues of substance is also part of why that’s been on my mind, because I am leaning more to the side that the issue of electoral reform would require a referendum because of what it proposes to do, and I don’t trust that the government is going to get useful answers from a series of townhalls and a report from a committee whose composition has been gamed to look “fair” when the person doing the gaming has a specific goal and output in mind. Of course, an electoral reform referendum would be subject to its won particular brands of demagoguery, particularly considering that we have an appalling lack of civic literacy in Canada, and when nobody can accurately depict the current electoral system, we’re going to be subject to some propaganda on the change side of the referendum whose fictions will be as bald-faced as that which the Leave side promised in the Brexit campaign, not that it will matter to the casual voter because it plays into emotions about things that feel and sound “fair” without actually grasping the situation (which is a solution in search of a problem). The last referendum on electoral reform in Ontario largely failed because the government of the day was ambivalent, but the current federal government is not, and that worries me. So it’s something to consider.

Meanwhile, the meltdown happening in the UK’s Labour Party, with a problematic leader who refuses to resign in the face of a full-blown caucus revolt is another object lesson in why membership selection of party leaders is a terrible, terrible system because it gives those leaders an excuse to refuse to be held to account, citing a “democratic mandate” as Jeremy Corbyn is doing right now. And no, adopting the provisions in Michael Chong’s Reform Act where caucus can vote to remove a leader is not actually the solution because it entrenches that parties must elect leaders by way of their membership, and that disconnect between selection and removal creates enormous problems in terms of the legitimacy of the removal process. Accountability matters, and needs to be balanced with democracy. Membership selection of leaders does not provide the needed accountability, and the horrifying lesson of a leader who won’t be held to account is playing out right now and should give everyone pause about the system that we blazed the trail for in this country.

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Roundup: Duffy expenses redux

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Because it’s never over, the saga of Mike Duffy’s illegitimate expenses are back in the news as Senate Administration is demanding that he repay some $16,955 in expenses claimed improperly that were paid for using his third-party contract with Gerald Donohue. And, wouldn’t you know it, Duffy’s lawyer is raising a huge fuss saying that the judge in the trial already declared that these were okay – something senators dispute, saying that just because they were not deemed criminal it doesn’t mean that they were okay, particularly when these expenses were not allowable and that the third-party contract was used to go around the approval process. (Duffy’s lawyer, incidentally, is also hinting that they will demand back pay for the suspension, to the tune of $155,000). But this is where the particular nature of the Senate comes into play, which is that it’s a self-governing body that is protected by parliamentary privilege, and it needs to be in order to safeguard our democratic system. In governing its own affairs, it is allowed to enforce its own rules (which, it bears reminding, do and did exist no matter what Bayne tried to argue in trial). And it is also empowered to enforce its own discipline, which is what the suspensions were related to – not a determination of criminality or a reflection of it, but rather that Duffy (and Wallin and Brazeau) had brought disrepute onto the Chamber and an example needed to be made. Is it fair? Possibly not, but this is also politics. Bayne raised the straw man argument that the 29 other senators whose expenses were flagged by the Auditor General weren’t suspended, which is a ridiculous argument considering that a) Duffy was not part of that process at all; and b) they ensured that there was a resolution process that ended in repayment one way or the other, so nobody was seen to be escaping justice. I don’t think Bayne will find much truck in the courts if he wants to press the issue around Duffy’s suspension or the fact that they are demanding repayment for expenses that clearly were not allowed, but it seems that we may be subjected to more drama around this, possibly for years if they take the matter as far as the Supreme Court of Canada.

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