Tag Archives: The Senate

Roundup: A reasoned amendment

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Something very usual happened in the Senate yesterday, in that Independent Senator Kim Pate decided to move a reasoned amendment to the government’s supply bill. A reasoned amendment is basically a procedural move to decline to give a bill second reading, meaning you don’t even agree with the bill in principle. This is a very rare move, and the fact that this is being used on a supply bill is a sign that this is a senator who is playing with fire.

You don’t mess around with supply bills. This is about money the government needs to operate, and if it fails, they can’t just keep funding government operations with special warrants. It’s going to be a giant headache of having to recreate the bill in a way that isn’t identical to the one that just passed (because you can’t pass two identical bills in the same session), go through the process again as the House is set to rise for the holidays (the Senate usually lags a few days later) is going to be a giant headache that is going to lose this senator any of the support she’s hoping to gain. Now, because the Senate isn’t a confidence chamber, defeating a money bill won’t make the government fall, but this is still a very bad precedent to try and set, or worse, given other newer senators ideas about how they should start operating.

There are plenty of objectionable aspects of this stunt of Pate’s – and yes, it is a stunt – but part of it is misunderstanding what that the supply bill is not about new pandemic aid programmes – it’s about keeping the civil service functioning. Her particular concern that 3.5 million people remain the poverty line is commendable, but Pate has been advocating for the government to implement a basic income for a while now, and a lot of people have been misled by the way in which the CERB was rolled out into thinking that this is a template for a basic income, which it’s not. And implementing a basic income – of which certain designs can be useful, but plenty which are not – is a complex affair if you talk to economists who have been working on the issue for years, not the least of which is that it’s going to require (wait for it…) negotiation with the provinces, because they deliver welfare programmes. And if Pate thinks that this kind of a stunt is going to force the government to suddenly implement one, she’s quite mistaken. I am forced to wonder who is giving her this kind of procedural advice, because she’s operating out of bounds, and asking for a world of procedural trouble. It’s fortunate that the Senate adjourned debate for the day shortly after she moved this motion so that others can regroup, but this is a worrying development for the “new” Senate.

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Roundup: A tough case for Beyak’s expulsion

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As the end of the fall sitting in Parliament approaches, the drama in the Senate is not abating as Independent senator Mary Jane McCallum has introduced a motion to have Senator Lynn Beyak expelled from the Chamber for her ongoing racism. There is a bit of procedural legitimacy to this: there hadn’t been a formal determination on whether or not to fully reinstate Beyak after her suspension order expired, and the debate on that was not concluded when prorogation happened. What is at play, however, is that the Senate’s ethics and conflict of interest committee had recommended that Beyak’s suspension be lifted because she did finally complete proper anti-racism training, removed the offending racist letters from her website and offered a more sincere apology to the institution. Senator Murray Sinclair publicly stated that he was willing to give her another chance at redemption. McCallum, it seems, is not.

This is going to be a very tricky to pull off, however – and would be a historic first. Normally when a senator gets into a lot of ethical trouble, they will resign so that they can preserve some sense of honour (along with their pension). Beyak, however, is unlikely to do the honourable thing, and will more than likely turn herself into some kind of free speech martyr, which is where much of the danger in McCallum’s approach lies. If this is handled ham-fistedly – as in “she’s a racist and shouldn’t be a senator” – then she is likely going to find a lot of defenders coming out of the woodwork from all sides, because they will feel that she has been a) denied procedural fairness, and b) will set a terrible precedent because as soon as one person can be expelled for their beliefs, then what belief will be on the chopping block next? Yes, racism is bad – but this is where people will start to look at slippery slopes, especially in this era of “cancel culture.” More to the point, the Ethics Officer said that she did everything that was asked of her, and the committee agreed, so trying to now argue for her suspension without an iron-clad case that she has breached the rules is going to be an uphill battle.

It’s important to remember why Senators have these kinds of protections, which is to preserve institutional independence. The Senate is one line of defence in parliament against a government with a majority of seats in the Commons who can ram through unconstitutional legislation by sheer numbers. The Senate has not only an absolute veto on everything short of constitutional amendments (for which they only have a six-month suspensive veto), but they have security of tenure so that they can’t be replaced should they stand in the way of a government trying to do something like pass an unconstitutional bill. The flip-side is that it makes problematic senators much harder to get rid of, which is generally why prime ministers should be very careful about who they appoint (which Stephen Harper very obviously was not). Yes, they can discipline their own – that comes with parliamentary privilege – but I have my doubts about McCallum’s case here. She is going to have do more than just call this institutional racism.

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Roundup: Bringing in a general as a prop

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To finish out what was unofficially Vaccine Week™, prime minister Justin Trudeau announced that he had tasked Major General Dany Fortin, the country’s former NATO commander in Iraq, to head up the vaccine distribution response – because apparently, we have decided that if the Americans have a military response, we need one too. Also, Doug Ford went and hired former Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, at great expense to head up Ontario’s vaccine roll-out, so Trudeau apparently felt the need to compete there too.

Paul Wells correctly noted on Power & Politics yesterday that this is mostly theatre, because the real work is being done by anonymous bureaucrats in public health offices in each province, who do the work of immunization on a constant basis. Nevertheless, the impulse to follow the American lead is so strong in Canadian politics, even when it makes no sense. In particular, the Americans needed their military to coordinate vaccine roll-out because they don’t have anything that resembles centralised healthcare delivery in any way. It’s more of a need than we have here, but hey, it looks like we’re being super serious that we have generals coordinating this. And it’s not to say that there wasn’t already coordination between the Public Health Agency and the Canadian Forces for any logistics help they might provide, which could mean transport or medical personnel (because remember that our complement of doctors and nurses are already being overloaded with COVID hospitalisations), but it wasn’t going to be a big Thing with the military in charge. Now Trudeau has pulled that trigger, and I’m not sure exactly what value he hopes to add to the equation from it.

Trudeau also stated yesterday that he estimates that most Canadians will be vaccinated by September of next year, but of course, this remains a bit of a moving target based on the number of vaccines available. If another candidate becomes viable and goes into production, that could cut the time down as well (assuming no logistics bottlenecks along the way). But as with anything, it’s a bit of a moving target, and there are still too many unknown variables to say anything definitive, despite the constant demands to, but that’s where we are. We’ll see if this fixation continues next week, or if the fiscal update will become the prevailing narrative instead.

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Roundup: Goodbye, Bubble

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Farewell, Atlantic Bubble – we hardly knew you. With growing spread in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, both PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador decided to pull out of the Bubble, and impose quarantines for any arrivals on their respective islands, effectively bursting it (despite some saying that this is only “temporary.” There can be little doubt that much like every other province, even those within the Bubble started to get cocky, and some of the spread can be traced back to restaurants, which remain open in the region. It nevertheless demands that even with border measures, you can’t let your guard down when it comes to taking measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Further west, Alberta premier Jason Kenney remains MIA as the province posts higher raw numbers than Ontario, but a Cabinet meeting was being held yesterday afternoon that is supposed to result in new measures being announced this morning – but we’ll see if a real lockdown gets proposed, because given the math, they are now far beyond what a two-week “circuit-breaker” lockdown could achieve. Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is now self-isolating after a close contact, while Manitoba premier Brian Pallister insists he didn’t wait too long to take increased measures, and yet also insists that his province doesn’t have a backlog in contact tracing when facts show otherwise. So there’s that.

Meanwhile, we’re getting more MPs who can’t seem to grasp jurisdictional issues. The Conservatives are blaming the federal government for not doing things that were clearly the responsibility of premiers to do, while the NDP are demanding that Trudeau reach down into provincial jurisdiction and do something when premiers don’t, which isn’t how it works. It’s all becoming very tiresome, and exasperating, because there are things that they can legitimately criticize this government for, rather than flailing about and trying to blame him for things that he has no control over. But the current political reality is that truth and jurisdiction don’t matter in the face of the narrative they’re trying to spin.

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QP: Taking the Chinese menace seriously

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It was Tuesday, and all leaders were present for a change. Erin O’Toole led off, script on mini-lectern and he demanded that the government start imposing sanctions on China, given that this was the subject of their Supply Day motion that is being debated in the Commons during the rest of the day. Justin Trudeau picked up a script to read that we have a complex, multi-dimensional relationship with China, and that Canada speaks out for human rights. O’Toole worried about Chinese agents entering the country posing as students, to which Trudeau stated that security agencies do a good job, and that most of this work doesn’t show up in the newspaper. O’Toole mentioned Huawei before demanding more stringent measures to protect Canadians from Chinese agents, to which Trudeau led a list of measures that have been taken. O’Toole switched to French to demand that Huawei be banned from the 5G network, to which Trudeau read a script about the work they were doing to ensure safety. O’Toole then demanded a modernisation of the Official Languages Act, to which Trudeau insisted that they were concerned about the decline of French, which is why they committed to modernising the Act in the Throne Speech. Yves-François Blanchet was up for the Bloc, and he lamented a statement made by the heritage minister about freedom of expression, to which Trudeau assured him that they take it very seriously. Blanchet raised the concerns about “censorship” at Radio-Canada over what appears to have been a warning over a sketch that included Blackface, to which Trudeau reminded him that they don’t direct Radio-Canada. Jagmeet Singh was up next, and in French, he groused that his party’s motion on wealth and excess profit taxes was voted down, for which Trudeau reminded him that their first action as a government was to raise taxes on the one percent, and that the NDP voted against it. Singh tried again in English, naming the Weston family in particular, and Trudeau repeated his answer.

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Roundup: A promise to fight back against federal action

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Another day, more record-breaking COVID cases in this country. In Ontario, new modelling suggests that if we don’t get this under control that we’ll be seeing 6,500 new cases a day by mid-December, which should terrify everyone. And Doug Ford? Well, he called the reports that he ignored public health advice “inaccurate,” and “one doctor’s opinion,” and insisted that he’s trying to find a “balance.” Because the needs of businesses outweigh human lives.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1326965295941099521

In Alberta, where the pandemic is starting to overwhelm a couple of hospitals, Jason Kenney was back in isolation for the second time after another close-call with a positive COVID case (which he tested negative for) – because he’s totally taking it seriously. Kenney decided to “toughen” measures, which means that he…reduced hours in restaurants and bars, stopped indoor sports, and limited weddings and funerals. Because he still refuses to do a proper lockdown to get infections under control, and he refuses to do anything to inconvenience businesses. Hell, he’s still telling people to go out to restaurants and bars – just not as late, which also has the added effect of ensuring more people will be in these establishments during the compressed hours, which would seem to increase the chances of infection rather than decrease it. After all, Alberta’s public health insisted that people should socialize in a “structured setting” (i.e. restaurant or bar) instead of at home, so they’re really taking it seriously.

As for those who still insist on calling on the federal government to enact emergency legislation, Ford stated yesterday in no uncertain terms that he would not stand for it, and warned that other premiers would also fight back because they want to guard their own jurisdiction. So yeah, unilateral federal action would not fly (not that it really could under the terms of the Emergencies Act anyway), and we’d simply wind up in court over it. In other words, stop waiting for Trudeau to act (because he can’t) and pressure the premiers instead to quit worrying about businesses – especially since they have the power to help them out – and worry instead about the hundreds of deaths that are happening every week.

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Roundup: Ford ignored advice in favour of uncontrolled spread

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Surprising nobody, we find that Doug Ford rejected advice from his public health officials in releasing his colour-coded guidelines, because it’s all about business over human lives. And while there have been calls for a while to try and determine just who is giving him advice, this reinforces the point that these remain political decisions, and that it is Ford and his Cabinet who are the ones to be held to account for what has been happening with infections in Ontario. The fact that Ford put his “red line” figure so far above public health advice, to a level where you are literally dealing with uncontrolled spread rather than trying to stamp it out early, should tell everyone that he is not taking this seriously.

https://twitter.com/jyangstar/status/1326702217051729920

https://twitter.com/jyangstar/status/1326703779232755712

We’ve also been finding out things like Ford refusing to spend COVID funds on things like schools and long-term care homes, and have instead been sitting on the funds to pad the books – and we have the province’s Financial Accountability Officer confirming this. This should be no surprise. I mean, look at the autism programme, where Ford promised more money and then spent none of it, and the wait lists continued to grow and parents and families continue to suffer, and the long-term consequences of not getting early intervention therapies are going to balloon for years. But Ford doesn’t care. He cares about looking like he’s fiscally prudent because every gods damned pundit in this country still thinks it’s 1995 and will always be 1995 – and Ford desperately seeks their validation.

And this need for validation has been a big part of why we’re at the state we’re in here in Ontario. Because Ford didn’t go full-Trump early in the pandemic, or throw tantrums at Justin Trudeau, everyone suddenly started giving him praise. He sounded avuncular, and suddenly everyone assumed he was doing a good job when he wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the COVID money and delaying any meaningful action about, say, getting schools back up and running, or increasing lab capacity for testing, or the contact tracing abilities of public health units across the province. None of it. But people still showered him with praise for how well he was behaving, and for striking up an unlikely friendship with Chrystia Freeland. And yet here we are, where he and his Cabinet have repeatedly lied about what is going on with the pandemic, about their response, and even the direction of the case numbers. Hopefully this piece in the Star that clearly demonstrates that Ford rejected the advice in favour of waiting for uncontrolled spread (because gods forbid he close down businesses) will start to open people’s eyes, but my optimism for that is waning because of all of the other scandals and distractions that his government has created only serve to scatter the attention necessary to force his hand.

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Roundup: Flirting with unconstitutional legislation

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The bill to mandate sexual assault training for judges was a bad idea from the start, when Rona Ambrose first tabled it years ago, and the current iteration that this government is putting forward is little better, especially now that MPs have decided they need to start amending it to add other things. While Ambrose’s initial bill was blatantly unconstitutional (that the Commons passed on a whim because of the political syllogism: Something needs to be done, this is something, therefore we must do this), and needed to be gutted in the Senate to make it acceptable, the current version was more or less acceptable (barring one or two possible issues), but it seems that MPs want to make it blatantly unconstitutional again.

Former Supreme Court of Canada executive legal officer Gib van Ert warned back in February that this bill would be an invitation to demand that judges take training in other areas than just sexual assault, and lo and behold, we are there, with demands for the “social context of systemic racism.”

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1321246603781570560

van Ert makes the point that if judges need to be seen as independent, then bills like this, where politicians appear to be giving them marching orders, is a bad look and will undermine the justice system. But since when to populist impulses consider the consequences of their actions? They don’t.

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Roundup: Special committee games

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The competing offers for special committees got even more crowded yesterday as the Liberals suggested their own possible special committee to examine pandemic spending, in a bid to jam both the Conservatives and NDP as they make their own offers. The Conservatives, you may recall, are employing a stunt to call for a special “anti-corruption committee,” as though the penny-ante bullshit that happens here were actual corruption that happens in other countries, and called explicitly for the purpose of decrying any lack of support for this committee idea as being in support of corruption. The NDP have their own proposal for a pandemic spending committee, but it was intended as a kind of super-committee to draw in not only the WE Imbroglio, but to revisit other non-scandals such as the Rob Silver affair (which the Ethics Commissioner declined to investigate), or the fact that one of the many pandemic procurement contracts went to a company whose owner is a former Liberal MP (whose departure was a bit huffy and drawn out at the time, one may recall).

The Liberal plan is to offer a “serious committee” to do “serious work,” which is a political gambit in and of itself – citing that if the other parties don’t agree to this particular committee (whose terms of reference one expects will be fairly narrowly circumscribed), then it proves that they are simply motivated by partisan gamesmanship rather than helping Canadians. And they’re not wrong – that’s exactly what both the Conservatives and NDP are looking for, at a point where they can only expect diminishing returns the longer that they drag on the WE Imbroglio (though, caveat, they do have a legitimate point in the Finance committee about producing the unredacted documents because that was the committee order that the government didn’t obey, and risks finding themselves in contempt of parliament over; the Ethics Committee demands are going outside of that committee’s mandate).

To add to the possible drama, the Liberals are also contemplating making the Conservatives’ upcoming Supply Day motion on their committee demand a confidence vote, which will wind up forcing the hands of one of the opposition parties into voting against it because nobody wants an election (and that could mean a number of Conservative MPs suddenly having “connectivity issues” and being unable to vote on the motion to ensure its demise). Of course, there is always the possibility of an accident – that seat counts weren’t done properly and the government could defeat itself, though that’s highly unlikely in the current circumstances. Nevertheless, this game-playing is where we’re at, seven months into the pandemic.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s “cancel culture” performance

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Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is making obligatory right-flavoured populist noises, decrying “cancel culture” because Queen’s University’s board voted to consider changing the name of their John A. Macdonald building, as is much the flavour of the day. It’s this juvenile, performative noise, but this is the kind of thing that O’Toole built his leadership around, without any critical thinking whatsoever, so here’s @moebius_strip to point out the sheer absurdity of it all.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316454539596234753

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316465701100552192

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316465838468198401

Meanwhile, there is consternation because the Library and Archives websites haven’t yet updated their biographies of prime ministers like Macdonald and Laurier to adequately convey that they had racist policies, and lo, cookie-cutter journalism gets the same four voices to decry this that appear in every other story. Never mind that Library and Archives says that they are doing consultations in order to do the work of reconciliation, and that there will be updated versions coming – it’s not good enough because this all needed to be done yesterday.

Part of the problem here, however, is that it will take time to get a properly nuanced version of history that both acknowledges their contributions to building the country while also acknowledging the racism of the era – particularly because it’s not simply black-and-white, and anyone who has read Macdonald’s biography will find it hard to simply pigeon-hole him as some kind of cartoon racist, which is certainly what some of the online dialogue would have us do. Yes, he’s a complex and problematic figure, but he was also a moderating influence, and his racist policies were actually the less-bad ones that were being demanded by a lot of voices of the era, which I doubt is going to be acknowledged to the satisfaction of his modern-day critics. It’s not a simple conversation, but that seems to be what is being demanded.

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