Tag Archives: TPP

Roundup: Provocation theatre

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I have been giving a good deal of thought to this whole situation with Rachael Harder and the Status of Women committee, and it wasn’t until Andrew Scheer went on CTV’s Your Morning yesterday to decry the “intolerance” of Liberal MPs for a “strong, competent, dynamic young woman” that it started to click. “The Liberals are trying to politicize this. I actually find it disgusting that the Liberals would treat a young, female Member of Parliament in this way, and it just shows the intolerance of the Liberal party,” Scheer went on to say, which is hilarious because he’s the one who made the very political move of putting his critic into the role of committee chair, which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter of the rules and to facilitate discussion, and who isn’t supposed to vote other than to break a tie.

It was then that I finally understood what was going on. Andrew Scheer is trying to be a Dollarama knock-off Ann Coulter/Milo Yiannopoulos provocateur.

The signs were all there, from his preoccupation with free speech on campus, to his appropriation of the kinds of alt-right language being used to weaponize free speech across North America, and this move with Harder fits that bill entirely. I’m pretty sure that Scheer knew exactly what he was doing when he put someone who was avowedly pro-life into the Status of Women portfolio as a poke in the eye to the Liberals (for whom there are still some unhealed wounds over Trudeau’s dictate that the party is a pro-choice, full-stop), and it was an even bigger deliberate provocation to try and put her into the chair position of that committee, no matter how inappropriate it was to put a critic into that role. Of course, this is Scheer, so his timing has been inept enough that he created his own distraction from the tax proposal issue that he has been all sound and fury over (then tried to blame the Liberals for creating the distraction). It was also his way of provoking another round of discussion about the abortion issue without his having to deliberately raise it – he just ensured that the Liberals and NDP would do it for him, and he could stand back and accuse them of “politicizing” the issue, and then getting Harder to play victim.

Of course, some of the pundit class is trying to brand this as the Liberals being “in contempt of Parliament” (which is a specific Thing, and this is not it – and when you point that out, the correction is “having contempt for Parliament.”) Which is ridiculous. Walking out on votes is as much a parliamentary tradition as filibusters and any other procedural protest. And when it’s being done because someone wants to play provocateur in order to virtue signal to a portion of their base that they want to solidify, it’s all the more eye-roll inducing.

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Roundup: Neglecting our Canadian Sovereign

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It was Victoria Day yesterday, which is a uniquely Canadian holiday that both celebrates the “mother” of Confederation, Queen Victoria, as well as acts as the official birthday of the Canadian monarch (no matter when their natural person’s birthday is). You might find it strange to find that in his message for Victoria Day, the Governor General didn’t reference the Queen of Canada at all, but rather the forthcoming Sapphire Jubilee and her being the first British monarch to achieve it.

Why does this matter? Because the Queen of Canada is a separate legal entity from the Queen of the United Kingdom, and because the holiday celebrated the Queen of Canada’s official birthday. Now, there were quibbles with my tweet pointing out the fact that the GG made the omission, but I maintain that the bigger point stands.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/866668446980984833

And Lagassé is correct in that – the emphasis is curious, and part of a troubling trend from the Canadian government, which has only exacerbated since the Liberals came to power.

While the Conservatives did a lot to bring some of the focus back to the Canadian monarchy after a couple of decades of neglect and the conscious effort to “Canadianize” a number of institutions by dropping their Royal monikers (like the Royal Canadian Navy being changed into “Maritime Command” for example, until the Conservatives restored its original name), they too did their own damage to the institution, primarily when they made the utterly boneheaded decision to pass legislation that when it came to changing the line of succession to include female heirs and those who are Catholics, they merely assented to British legislation rather than amending it in Canada. In other words, they turned what was control over our own Crown and Sovereign, and undid all of the progress we’ve made since the Statute of Westminster in 1931, when the Canadian Crown became separate from the UK Crown, and turned us essentially into Tuvalu when it comes to our relationship with the Crown, and thus far, the Courts have sided with the government when it comes to the challenges of this legislation, because the appreciation of the distinction and the role of the Canadian Crown remains largely ignorant to the vast majority of Canadian society, the judiciary included. (Incidentally, that was another bill that the Commons passed at all stages with no debate, and while it was debated in the Senate rather than veto it and tell the government that the proper way to change the law of succession is by way of constitutional amendment).

Meanwhile, the current government hasn’t named a new Canadian Secretary to the Queen since the last one retired, and has been letting the republican bureaucrats in the Department of Canadian Heritage run roughshod over the relationship with the Royal Family. And because the vast majority of Canadians don’t know any better, we’re slowly killing our distinct Crown and turning ourselves back into a mere colony. So yeah, it does matter that the GG couldn’t get this very basic thing right, and we should be upset about it.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/866633514518753280

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Senate QP: Meandering trade talk

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While the tributes to Rona Ambrose carried on in the House of Commons, international trade minister François-Philippe Champagne was down the hall in the Senate Chamber, taking questions on his portfolio. Senator Smith led off, wondering about the state of the NAFTA discussion, and whether we were facing a “tweak” or a massive change. Champagne noted that he was supporting the minister of Foreign Affairs as part of a whole-of-government approach, and he would be meeting the new US Trade Representative this Friday at an APEC meeting. Smith asked about tax competitiveness with the Americans, with proposed US tax cuts, but Champagne said that they were looking to diversify, becoming a bridge between Pacific and Atlantic economies, discussions with India regarding a FIPA, and exploratory trade talks with China. Champagne also noted that NAFTA has been tweaked eleven times to date.

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QP: Coming at Sajjan on two fronts

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While a gas leak evacuated buildings a couple of blocks from the Hill, QP got underway undaunted. Rona Ambrose led off, immediately boarding the sanctimony train with regards to the Harjit Sajjan apology, and Justin Trudeau reiterated that he continued to have full confidence in his Minister. Ambrose demanded Sajjan’s ouster, and Trudeau reiterated that he was proud of Sajjan, and listed numerous accomplishments. Ambrose demanded to know if Trudeau knew of Sajjan saying this in 2015, but Trudeau got around it. Ambrose ladled on some more sanctimony before demanding his ouster yet again, but Trudeau praised Sajjan’s contributions again. Ambrose then accused the government of not supporting the military, but Trudeau was unmoved. Thomas Mulcair was up next, decrying that there was no inquiry into the Afghan detainees issue. Trudeau said that Sajjan spoke with the Conflict of Interest Commissioner and she closed the file. Mulcair reiterated, saying that it wasn’t the question, but Trudeau repeated that the file was closed. Mulcair tried to sort out whether Sajjan knew nothing on that file or if he was an architect of Op Medusa, and Trudeau reiterated praise for Sajjan. Mulcair then moved onto the Parliamentary Budget Officer, accusing Trudeau of attacking him, and Trudeau disputed that, insisted they gave him more resources and more independence.

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QP: Back to helicopter questions

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With the PM back from France, and business in the chamber was already hijacked by procedural shenanigans. Rona Ambrose led off, worrying that the PM had misled the House by saying that he had no choice by to take the private helicopter during his vacation to the Aga Khan’s island, to which Justin Trudeau deflected with his standard response that it was a personal vacation and he was happy to answer questions from the Ethics Commissioner. When Ambrose pressed, Trudeau added that he followed the RCMP’s advice regarding travel, but added nothing more, even on a third question, demanding clarification on the RCMP addition to the answer. Ambrose moved onto the question of Syria, demanding that sanctions be restored to Russia in a first step to remove Bashar Assad. Trudeau insisted that they were working broadly with the international community. When Ambrose pressed, Trudeau reminded her that the foreign minister was meeting with G7 counterparts on this very issue. Nathan Cullen and Karine Trudel returned to the helicopter issue, and Trudeau reiterated his same answer, in both official languages. Trudel then turned to the issue of court delays, and Trudeau responded with the same talking points that the justice minister gave yesterday, about working with a new process. Alistair MacGregor then demanded immediate marijuana decriminalization, and Trudeau reminded him that decriminalization does nothing to prevent it from getting into the hands of kids, or keeping profits out of the hands of the black market.

https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/851863930599350274

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/851866993397575680

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Roundup: The spectre of a Leitch Party

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A rather remarkable exchange happened during Trudeau’s visit to Nunavut when he was pressed about his electoral reform promise. Trudeau responded to his questioner “Do you think Kellie Leitch should have her own party?” and laid out a realistic case where parties like that can hold enough seats to affect the balance of power in a parliament. His questioner was taken aback and “respectfully disagreed,” which isn’t surprising because the narrative we are always given when it comes to proportional representation is that it will give us nice left-wing coalition governments forever, which is certainly not the case, and we need to challenge that particular narrative more often, and to point to what’s happening in Europe right now. And to be honest, I’m glad that Trudeau is being a bit more forceful on this point about the potential rise of extreme parties and that such a system would be bad for Canada. Big tent parties have done a lot for this country, and have moderated a lot of regional tensions within them.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/829903477773971456

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/829906382396624896

Of course, Trudeau bringing up Leitch in such a manner could have unintended consequences of its own.

In a not unrelated note, Michelle Rempel was at an immigration conference in Montreal, and she noted her frustrations in bashing her head against her own party as much as she was with the Liberals that she is critiquing. And she made some very salient points in here about how we can’t pretend that we’re immune to populist rhetoric in this country, because we have a history of it bubbling up (hello 1993 election) and the sentiments still exist here where you have groups of disenfranchised people looking to blame Others. And this brings us back to why changing our electoral system to give incentives to these elements to form their own parties and try to win seats that they can use to leverage power is a very real and present danger. Add to that, there are concerns from experts in the field that the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the States is bubbling up here and fuelling a rise of racism in this country because it’s being seen as more socially acceptable.

So do we change our system to incentivise these voices to better organise and try to win themselves political leverage? Or do we do we maintain institutions and practices that have been successful in dispersing these elements because they know that there is no pathway to victory by pursuing it? It seems to me that it’s a fairly simple answer.

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Roundup: Asking for an electoral pony

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It was entirely expected to happened, and lo and behold, Nathan Cullen stepped in front of some microphones today to cherry-pick the results of the MyDemocracy survey to declare that it told him just what he wanted to hear. Or rather, the whole survey was a failure except for the one table that proved his point.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/824378237853769728

That single table was the index that said that Canadians want parties to work together. Obviously, that means proportional representation, right? Never mind the other responses that disprove that with Canadians saying that they want simple ballots and having single parties to hold to account when things go wrong – you know, things that are more hallmarks of a First-Past-the-Post system. Of course, PR advocates have a long history of hearing what they want to hear, like how our friends at Fair Vote Canada very creatively interpreted the Liberals’ platform promise about ending FPTP to “prove” that it obviously means a PR system and only a PR system. Because that’s what they wanted to hear. And then there was Cullen’s rhetoric around it. “The idea that the Liberals, having heard all this evidence in favour of proportional systems, would then turn their backs on that promise and try to bring in a ranked ballot, alternative vote system, would be the equivalent of nuclear war in politics,” he said. That’s right. Nuclear war. Cripes.

Here’s the thing about the whole “Canadians want parties to cooperate” thing. It’s like moms and apple pie. Of course people want parties to cooperate. That’s a no-brainer. The problem of course is that decisions need to be taken, and people need to be held to account for those decisions. Our system is very much built on accountability, because that’s really the whole point of parliament. It’s to hold the government to account for the decision that it makes. When parties cooperate to make decisions, it makes accountability harder because when everyone is accountable then nobody is accountable, which is a problem for our system of government. Add to that, under our system of Responsible Government, it requires competition between parties for that power to govern. The tension between government and opposition is crucial not only for the exchange of ideas, but to both ensure that there is accountability and a suitable replacement waiting in the wings if the government should lose confidence. You can’t do that if you’re all working together.

The other part about insisting that “Canadians want parties to work together” is that it’s a wish that has about as much depth as people wanting a pony. It assumes that there are no trade-offs or downsides, and that you can simply ride or pet that pony at your leisure and not have to worry about feeding it, housing it, cleaning it, or shovelling out the barn. It’s far less glamourous, and sometimes ponies are mean, and they kick and bite. Sure, a voting system that you think will encourage parties to work together sounds like sunshine and rainbows, but it also means smaller parties holding larger ones hostage to try and gain outsized influence on decisions, and the inability for a government to speak with one voice, which is another one of those crucial things in our system that helps keep things accountable. So sure, people will answer on a survey that they want cooperation. It sounds like a wonderful thing. Reality of course is different, and people need to be very aware of that.

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Roundup: The “dangerous” Senate

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Remember last week when John Ivison had that ridiculous column about the Senate apparently becoming such a terrible beast that the finance minister was being forced to change his upcoming budget to placate them, and then Andrew Coyne got the vapours about it? Yeah, well, over in the Vancouver Sun, they found a couple of people for whom that Ivison column made them utterly hysterical that they made it the BC angle. And as much as I like Peter O’Neil, who wrote the piece, it was really terrible and didn’t appear to challenge any of these so-called experts at all, or even what Ivison wrote – it took Ivison as gospel and went to town with it, despite the fact that it was torqued and wrong.

The “experts” consulted were a former BC Liberal leader, a law professor, and a recycled quote from the current BC premier. Said former BC Liberal leader spins conspiracy theories that because BC only has six senators, it means that the other senators are going to sneakily start amending bills to funnel BC’s wealth eastward.

No, seriously. He actually said that.

The law professor? He asserts that, apparently based on the Ivison column, that the “half-reformed” Senate is emboldened to exercise its powers without correcting the institution’s “considerable faults,” which aren’t. Never mind that we haven’t actually seen much in the way of them being so “emboldened” other than the fact that they’ve found legitimate flaws in government legislation and insisted that it be either corrected or removed. You know, like they’re supposed to because that’s the whole raison d’etre of the institution. And Christy Clark? She simply asserts that the Senate doesn’t work now. Erm, except that it actually seems to be considering that they’ve catching flaws in government legislation and dealing with it. Seems to be working to me.

Part of the problem with the framing of the article as well is the fact that it is coming from this particular grievance-based claim that BC is underrepresented in the Senate because it only has six seats when Ontario and Quebec each have 24. The flaw in this argument is that it ignores the regional construction of the Senate – it is not designed for provincial representation, but rather regional blocks – Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and the West, with the territories and Newfoundland and Labrador each being additional regions unto themselves. The reason why it was designed with regional rather than provincial equality in mind was to provide a counterbalance to the representation-by-population of the House of Commons, and if you look at the populations of each regional bloc (Newfoundland & Labrador and the territories excepted), they are roughly analogous. That’s not a bad thing, but BC is acting a though the Senate was designed in another way, which it was not.

The problem with pieces like this one is that the important facts and context are left out. We are left with a few tantalizing quotes that crank the hysteria up to eleven, but there is no actual civic literacy to counter any of it, whether that’s out of ignorance or by design I can’t say. But it’s not edifying. It’s cartoonish, and in fact promotes an ugly cynicism about our institutions that creates bigger problems of perception that are not based on fact, and that’s a problem.

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Roundup: And the Tony for outrage goes to…

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I really didn’t want to have to write about this, but it managed to suck up all of the oxygen in the news cycle this weekend, and I feel compelled to once again say something that I really didn’t want to, but lately this seems to be my lot in life. I’m talking about the whole Trudeau/Castro statement, and how very tiresome that pile-on soon became. Forgetting of course that nobody’s hand are clean in the game of international diplomacy, and for some reason nobody is allowed to speak ill of the dead unless it’s Fidel Castro, Trudeau’s comments weren’t sufficiently scolding enough of his legacy – never mind that he has a personal family connection there, and he has to be pragmatic about relations as he walks the line between needing new markets with American protectionism on the rise and economic liberalisation slowly happening in that country. And when pressed, Trudeau made no bones about the fact that Castro was a dictator while still explaining making the statement that he did. Nevertheless, I will hasten to add that Trudeau’s statement has nothing on the leftist paeans being sung to Castro that I’m finding all over my Facebook timeline, praising his stand against Imperialism and how the love of his people protected him from CIA assassins, and so on. (And these are from the same kinds of people who considered Stephen Harper a dictator, so seriously, chill out). And then there was the digging up of statements that Stephen Harper had made after the deaths of the likes of the King of Saudi Arabia (“desired peace”) and Hugo Chavez, and lo, no outright condemnations in either of those statements. Should Trudeau have said something more? Probably. But I do get that he’s trying to walk a very fine line.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, people took to social media to bombard us with endlessly with the instantly tiresome meme of #Trudeaueulogies, while the whole of the Conservative leadership race decided that they too needed to take to social media to perform some outrage for us, demanding that Trudeau not go to the funeral, and beating at their breasts, wailing and gnashing their teeth about how terrible it was that he didn’t mention the executions or the persecution of gays, and it was like every single one of them was vying for a Tony award. And then they all emailed party members trying to crassly try to fundraise on this issue. Honestly, it’s just so tiresome because it’s just so transparently performative.

https://twitter.com/cfhorgan/status/802593401107611650

Meanwhile, John Geddes talks to a historian about the legacy of Pierre Trudeau and Castro with Canada-Cuba relations. Terry Glavin thinks that this proves that Trudeau is as vacuous as most people seem to think, while Charlie Gilles calls Trudeau’s statement “egregious whitewashing.”

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Roundup: Suck it up and fix 24 Sussex

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Since this is apparently my week for being cranky about stuff, I’ll turn my ire today on the various naysayers regarding renovations to 24 Sussex. And I’m going to say off the bat that they need to basically shut it and just fork out the money because guess what, we have obligations in this country to both official residences and heritage buildings, and we have to stop being so petty about it. What becomes clear in the more detailed breakdown of the options available that was posted in The Huffington Post was that a lot of these additional costs are not about the building, but rather they are about security. That’s part of why I find the demands that they have a residence that will be open to tourists to be boggling, because I’m not sure what purpose that serves. Of the other official residences, only Rideau Hall and the Citadel are partially open to the public, and even then in fairly controlled circumstances, and those are also working residences – something that 24 Sussex, Stornoway, the Farm and Harrington Lake are not. And why 24 Sussex should have the capacity for state dinners is also a bit baffling because the PM doesn’t host state dinners – the Governor General does. That’s his job as representative of our head of state (being the Queen). Can some official dinners be held at 24 Sussex? Sure. But not state dinners. I also find the fact that they’re even exploring the possibility of turning 24 Sussex into a working residence to be boggling, right up to including a $562 million option of abandoning 24 Sussex in favour of taking over the National Research Council’s headquarters at 100 Sussex and turning that into a Canadian White House with PMO offices on top of an official residence. Baffling, really.

So while the calls to bulldoze 24 Sussex return in force thanks to performative cheap outrage, and we clutch our pearls at the ongoing maintenance costs of the building being vacant while the property itself doesn’t increase in value, I say we stop trying to turn this into a tourist trap or working residence, which means not building an annex over the pool house to turn it into an apartment so the main house becomes something they don’t live in, and instead just focus on renovating the house itself and keeping it strictly as an official residence. And no, we can’t just bulldoze it because it is an important heritage property, and would still be even if it didn’t house prime ministers, but it does, so now we are obligated to deal with it the right way. In fact, I say we restore its façade to its original, pre-1950s features to better respect its heritage and history. Add to that, we should not only better empower the NCC to protect our official residences and heritage properties so as to let successive prime ministers (and opposition leaders and Speakers) know that it’s not up to their discretion when renovations need to be done to these properties, but we should also empower them to go after the previous inhabitants for negligence in allowing the property to decay this much. Maybe that will send a message.

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