Tag Archives: Thomas Mulcair

Roundup: Weak sauce mea culpa

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It only took a hundred days, but the NDP membership finally got some kind of a public mea culpa from leader Thomas Mulcair over the way the last election went down, and good news – he takes full responsibility for what happened! But much as Rebecca Blaikie’s interim report goes soft on what Mulcair did wrong, Mulcair’s own reckoning of events is still going pretty soft on things that happened as opposed to some of the myths that are being built up. Things like the balanced budget pledge, which Mulcair said overshadowed the “social democratic economic vision” where they thought they could squeeze all kinds of money out of corporate taxes, CEOs and tax havens, which any competent economist will remind you that you certainly can’t get the kind of money they’re talking from any of those sources. Mulcair goes soft on the observation that they lacked an over-arching narrative that could be easily communicated, when problem was less of a lack of an overall message, but a really poor message that they settled on, which was then badly communicated because, well, the message was poor to begin with. The message, of course, being “good, competent public administration,” and after Canadians had put up with a prime minister who had all of the pizzazz of dull wood varnish, Mulcair would show up to debates, smize like his life depended on it, and proceeded to look like someone on Valium because he was more intent on controlling his temper than he was in engaging with real ideas to present rather than some tired – and in come cases baffling – talking points. And this is what they sent up against most dynamic and charismatic political leader in over a generation. Couple this with some pretty disastrous policy rollouts – recall the initial release of their “costed platform” that didn’t actually have any breakdowns of numbers, but had some nonsense headings like “helping Canadians in need” that journalists rightly questioned, and when we did get numbers, they were based on some wrong assumptions. Campaigns matter, and both Mulcair and Blaikie have been downplaying that it was a poorly run campaign. Mulcair’s letter also contained some rather cryptic references to “overhauling the way caucus works,” but it’s vague, and isn’t owning up to their over-centralization that made the Conservatives’ centralisation efforts look elementary. That centralization has been carrying on to this day, which, when compared to the Liberals’ governing by cabinet rather than the leader’s office, and where their ministers are answering the bulk of their questions off-the-cuff and on their feet while the NDP (Mulcair included) have their scripts in front of them every time they rise in the Chamber, it looks stifling and controlling. So far, I’m not seeing much of a willingness to confront these truths so that they can do something to change them, which the party membership is going to have to weight when the leadership review comes in April.

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Roundup: Making adjustments on the fly

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Lots of developments in the Senate, so let’s get to it, shall we? Kady O’Malley looks into the ways that the Senate is going through the process of reshaping itself to fit the new reality that they find themselves in, and so far they’ve been doing it in a fair-minded way, tempering some the partisan excesses of the previous parliament while they start adjusting their rules around things like Question Period in the new scheme they’ve developed. I’m still a little hesitant, considering that they’re losing some of the pacing and ability to make exchanges that made Senate QP such a refreshing change from Commons QP, but we’ll see once they start working out the kinks. Meanwhile, the Senate is trying to adapt its Conflict of Interest committee to a reality where there are no “government” senators, and more debate about how to include the growing number of independent senators into that structure. We’ll see how the debate unfolds in the next week, but this is something they are cognisant about needing to tackle, just as they are with how to better accommodate independent MPs with committee selection as a whole. Also, the Senate Speaker has ruled that the lack of a Leader of the Government in the Senate does not constitute a prima facia breach of privilege, convinced by the argument that the lack of a government leader doesn’t affect the Senate’s core ability to review and amend legislation, and that the primary role of the chamber isn’t to hold government to account. I would probably argue that it may not be the primary role, but it is a role nevertheless, but perhaps I’m not qualified enough to say whether that still constitutes an actual breach of privilege, as opposed to just making the whole exercise damned inconvenient and leading to a great number of unintended consequences as they venture into this brave new world of unencumbered independence. At this stage, however, things are all still up in the air, and nothing has really crashed down yet, but it’s a bit yet. By the time that Parliament rises for the summer, we’ll see if all of those broken eggs wound up making a cake, or if we just wind up with a mess.

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Roundup: 10 grievances aired

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“It’s a new way to interview the prime minister!” CBC declared, as they promoted their latest gimmick – their “face-to-face” special with the prime minister, in which they selected ten Canadians from around the country to come to Ottawa, and each have a ten minute conversation with Justin Trudeau about whatever their issue is. I watched the one-hour special (not the individual interviews – sorry, but I try to have a life), and was underwhelmed. Why? Because it wasn’t actually interviewing the PM – it was ten people coming largely with a personal grievance to be aired.

While the CBC pats itself on the back about this little exercise, and good on them for trying it, I just felt like there actually wasn’t anything new here. That Trudeau agreed to do this wasn’t a surprise in the least – connecting with “ordinary Canadians” is his shtick. He spent the better part of the past three years doing just that. If the last guy agreed to do this – that would be news. Trudeau? Not so much. That it feeds into this toxic narrative that there is an “Ottawa bubble” that must be broken out of is also annoying, because it presumes that the higher-level discussions that happen here aren’t important or that they don’t matter to “ordinary Canadians” when everything that happens here does impact, whether they see it or not. And with these airing of grievances, what I saw demonstrated was an expectation from these “ordinary Canadians” that the prime minister must not only have facile solutions to complex problems – many of which are not even within his own jurisdiction – but that there was an expectation that he personally should be doing something for them, and for their personal situation. Is this the expectation that people have about the way that politics works? That there is some kind of entitlement that voters have for their problems to be solved if they complain to the people in office about them? Maybe this is a reflection of who the CBC chose for their ten people, and that it’s not more reflective of the broader population as a whole. Suffice to say, I came away from the whole thing feeling worse for having watched it, but then again, maybe I’m not the audience for these kinds of things.

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Roundup: The needed reforms to the Estimates

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Democratic reforms remain the topic of discussion on the Hill, following Dominc LeBlanc’s appearance at the Procedure and House Affairs committee on Thursday, and some of what he’s talking about is necessary – most importantly, reform to the Estimates process. The Liberals had promised during the election that they would reform the process so that the Estimates were a) readable, and b) resembled the Public Accounts, so that the latter could be used to check over the former. There is probably no greater reform that needs to happen than this, because it’s the job of MPs to hold government to account by means of controlling the public purse. The Estimates are how they plan to spend the money, and the Public Accounts are the accounting of how it was spent. When both are reported using different accounting methods, and with the Estimates currently being largely unreadable to the layperson, it makes that accountability nigh impossible to do. It’s no wonder that the process has largely devolved to voting them through at all stages with no actual discussion or scrutiny (as they did in December, only for the Senate to catch their mistakes when they ballsed it up in their haste). It’s also why MPs have been consistently fobbing off that homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Auditor General, and increasingly the Senate, while ministerial visits to committee to discuss the Estimates for their departments are spent answering questions on issues of the day rather than the Estimates they were there to talk about. Add to that, there’s the “deemed” rule, whereby Estimates are deemed to be agreed to and passed after a certain date, so MPs couldn’t even hold them up if they wanted to. It’s so entirely broken, which is why the Liberal promise to fix this system is so damned important. Of course, with the good comes the bad – talk of eliminating Friday sittings, possibly with longer days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to compensate (but what about the “family friendly” elimination of evening sittings so that MPs can have dinner with their families?), and assurances that they wouldn’t actually be getting Fridays off, but working in their constituencies. The problem there is that constituency work is not actually part of an MP’s job – the ombudsman role they play on behalf of their constituents’ interactions with the civil service has grown over the years until it’s metastasised into this beast now where there are stories that the immigration department won’t touch files until they are forwarded by the MP’s office (so far down the slippery slope to corruption it’s alarming), and MPs continue to spend their resources doing this work rather than their actual jobs of scrutinizing the Estimates or legislation. In other words, eliminating Friday sittings makes this problem worse, not better. LeBlanc also did agree that a proposal to ban applause in the Commons may be something else worth considering to help improve decorum, and I would agree that even more than the constant sanctimonious tut-tutting about heckling, applause and scripts are the bigger problems that should be tackled if we want to be serious about making changes to the way our MPs do business.

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Roundup: Heckling the delicate flowers

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Oh, those poor delicate flowers that dwell in the House of Commons. Their poor nerves are so affected by all of the terrible heckling during Question Period that they all need to collapse on a divan, and get out the smelling salts, and blah, blah, blah. Samara just released a report on heckling, and wouldn’t you just know, everyone is aghast by all of the heckling that goes on. Why, it’s just terrible. But here’s the thing – every MP says they hate it, and insists that they don’t do it, except they do. They’ll even deny it when caught on camera. Heckling of course comes in a broad variety of taunts, jeers, and outright boorish behaviour, but really, sometimes it’s more instructive than what passes for debate. Yes, some heckling is sexist and boorish and should be called out, but not all heckling is sexist and boorish. And when there are complaints that women get heckled more, sometimes it’s because of how they’re reading scripts – one of the things about heckling is that it’s trying to knock people off of their talking points. Sometimes it’s clever and witty, and sometimes it’s not. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value in knocking people off of their message tracks. And if anyone thinks that simply having more women in the place would change that, well, the most vigorous (and indeed some of the best) hecklers in my experience have been the women. And honestly, I can’t think of anything more dreadful than a QP that lacks it. Why? Because we need an injection of theatre into the sitting day, lest we all develop narcolepsy. Has anyone who moans about heckling sat through the rest of the day’s debates? Probably not. I’ve learned more about some issues by the heckling than I have in the scripted responses by ministers. Can it be too vigorous at times? Sure. Can people take it too far? Of course, and it should be dealt with when that’s the case, but this constant pearl-clutching about it is ridiculous, disingenuous, and in most cases, hypocritical. I’d rather a commitment to improving the quality of heckling than to see its elimination, and we’d be better off for it.

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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: The consideration of anachronisms

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You know that I can’t resist a good Senate piece, and lo, University of Ottawa law professor Adam Dodek provides us with one, urging the government to move on what constitutional Senate reforms that are within its grasp – the things they can change without the provinces, namely property requirements, the net-worth requirement, and the use of “he” in the constitution. While the third seems blatantly obvious, one wonders whether there are other instances in the constitution, in either official language, where the gender defaults to male, and whether that would need to be updated at the same time. As for the property and net worth requirements, one has to ask what purpose changing them serves in the modern age. The $4000 figure in both real property and net worth has never been inflation adjusted, so the figures present little barrier to anyone actually qualifying in this day and age, as the way that they came to accommodation to allow Sister Peggy Butts to sit in the Senate are a good example. (Well, except for freelance journalists, in case anyone still harbours the illusion that I’m lobbying for a Senate seat). While Dodek posits that the requirements were part of an attempt to create a landed gentry in Canada that failed, my own reading of history has tended to an attempt to attract a more “serious” sort to the Upper Chamber, and let’s not forget that these were the days when there was a property requirement to exercise the franchise at all (and until the rules changed, women who owned property could actually vote, though almost none did). The property requirement does help to serve as a kind of shorthand for the primary residence question (except when monkeyed around to fit appointments into inappropriate areas for political considerations *cough*Mike Duffy*cough*), and in Quebec, it has the added significance of the historical senatorial divisions that marked minority enclaves that were to have designated representation. While those divisions have not been updated, one supposes that there is a debate to be had as to whether to update them to better reflect the modern Quebec, or to keep them as is in order to serve as a historical touchstone to remind us about the Senate’s role in giving voice to and protecting minority communities. Which leads us back to the question of why we want to undertake this exercise in the first place – is it necessary? I’m not seeing the pressing need for these changes, other than the usual “because it’s anachronistic” excuse. That’s the thing about a parliamentary system though – much of it is anachronistic, but that’s part of the beauty, because it is a direct touchstone to the evolution of our system, such as why the monarch is not allowed in the Commons. That the Senate has anachronistic property requirements that are no great barrier to membership demonstrates the evolution of our system in a very real way, and keeps parliament grounded. To do away with the harmless requirements for the sake of modernizing it risks losing that historical touchstone that is so absent from many things in politics these days, to our detriment.

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Roundup: Religious Freedom office on the line

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In a month, Canada’s Religious Freedom ambassador’s first three-year term will expire, as will his office’s budget. He’s been making the rounds, once again, to talk about how much value there is in his office in helping our diplomats understand the religious points of view that dominate certain other countries, and uses that as the justification for his office. In a piece by the Citizen, there are a few other voices who say that he’s been doing a good job, and that he’s been available and accessible to talk about certain foreign policy issues, which is all well and good, but there does remain a certain discomfort around the very existence of the office and its raison d’etre. Part of that has to do with the suspicion that this was an office designed like its American counterpart to essentially be an office of Christian proselytising around the world – and to a certain extent, the press releases we did see out of that office seemed to weigh in particular to countries where there was a Christian minority in some level of persecution. But what the Citizen article misses is a more existential problem that the office faces, which is that its very existence creates a problem of perception in terms of a hierarchy of rights. The previous government in many statements it made in the Commons and elsewhere seemed to point to freedom of religion being a more fundamental building block to other rights and freedoms, which is fairly anathema to human rights academia. Back when the office was created, I spoke to a number of scholars who were sceptical because it introduced the notion that there was a hierarchy of rights, when all rights should be treated equally, lest they get their own departments within Global Affairs, and the jockeying for status, position and funding would take over. It remains to be seen what Stéphane Dion and the Liberal government thinks of the Office and whether they will be inclined to keep it around, or possibly absorb it into some other department within Global Affairs, of if they are persuaded by the argument of the perceptions of hierarchy.

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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: Caution on the veto

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The particular bugaboos of electoral reform and the role of the Senate have been colliding increasingly in the past number of days, as there have been threats coming that certain Conservative senators have been threatening to use their majority to vote down any legislation on changes to the electoral system unless there’s a referendum first. And then this particular op-ed in the Citizen by a Université de Montréal law professor urging them to do just that makes me want to just take a moment to talk it all through. First, a few things to keep in mind – the senator who went to the media about this threat was Don Plett, who is, well, singular on some issues. He’s broken ranks before, and is willing to stick to his guns on others, but I wouldn’t ever quote him as the voice of the Conservatives in the Senate, even though he is now the caucus whip. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Senate of Canada, being probably the most powerful Upper Chamber in the democratic world, does indeed have the power of unlimited veto – there is no overriding it if the Senate decides that they want something to die. It’s a power that they very rarely use, particularly when it comes to government bills – it’s kind of like the nuclear deterrent for legislation. No, they’d rather make amendments and send it back, with few exceptions. The reason it’s treated with such caution is that they know they don’t have the democratic mandate to exercise these powers except in rare circumstances. In those rare circumstances, they will do it because it’s their job to have a check on a majority government, and be empowered to speak truth to power, which is why they are afforded the kind of institutional independence that they have. So with this in mind, I will hold up a big caution sign when it comes to encouraging them to overturn any theoretical bill on electoral reform. This all dredges up memories of the Free Trade Agreement, and when the Senate held up that bill from the Mulroney government until it could be put to the people, seeing as this deal was hugely contentious at the time, and it was believed that it was going to be selling out our sovereignty to the Americans. The election was fought on this issue, Mulroney won, and the bill passed, and lo and behold, the sky didn’t fall. But while there was merit in putting that question to the people, it was part of the chain of events that started to polarise the Senate, which prior to 1984, was said to have operated on a much less partisan basis. Tit-for-tat games ramped up the partisanship there, until things became so bad that Mulroney exercised the emergency powers of appealing to the Queen to appoint an additional eight senators in order to get the GST passed. The Senate is currently in a vulnerable spot, and while I wouldn’t ask them not to do their jobs because they are in a period of intense scrutiny and this would get blown completely out of proportion by an ignorant pundit class and MPs with agendas harmful to the independence of the Senate – but it would hurt them. That’s why this discussion needs to be approached extremely cautiously, and rash actions scrupulously avoided at all costs.

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