Roundup: Some strings attached

Prime minister Justin Trudeau wound up holding an irregular presser yesterday, mid-afternoon instead of late morning, and with a specific purpose in mind – to announce that the federal government had finally come to an agreement with the provinces over the Safe Restart Plan, now pegged at $19 billion rather than the $14 billion initially put on the table. What is noteworthy is that there were still federal strings attached for this money, though some premiers noted that the strings were not as tight as before. The money is to go toward municipalities, transit, contact tracing, personal protective equipment, childcare, and ten days of paid sick leave (so now Jagmeet Singh can pat himself on the back, even though this was BC premier John Horgan’s initiative), and is to last for the next six to eight months, at which point there will be a re-evaluation of where everyone is at. Trudeau also made it official that the Canada-US border will remain closed to non-essential travel until August 21st.

During the Q&A that followed, Trudeau expressed optimism around the vaccine candidate being held up by Chinese customs, and said that in spite of the Russian hacking story, it was important to work with everyone to develop a vaccine and that they were working to get the balance right. When asked if he would appear before committee as invited around the WE Imbroglio, that his House leadership team was looking at the possibilities, but that he also looked forward to taking questions in the Commons next week during the scheduled special sitting day. Chrystia Freeland was asked about what she knew regarding the WE Imbroglio, and she gave a fairly lengthy response about how everyone accepts responsibility for what happened, and apologized, saying that “clearly we made a mistake and we’re going to learn from it,” adding that everyone knew that the PM was connected to WE but didn’t know of his family’s specific financial arrangements, and then added that she still supported the PM and that it was a privilege to serve in his Cabinet. When asked if Quebec had no problems with the strings attached to the billions on the table, Freeland said that they agreed to it like everyone else, and that it was actually a Really Big Deal to get all thirteen provinces and territories to sign onto a deal that includes the municipalities and covered several ministries, saying that it showed that Canadians have understood that we need to work together in this time of crisis.

Shortly after the presser ended, Bardish Chagger and her officials appeared before the Finance committee to discuss the WE Imbroglio. Chagger insisted that nobody in PMO directed her to make an arrangement with WE, but she kept deferring to her officials, which…isn’t really how ministerial responsibility works. There was also talk about how WE had sent an unsolicited proposal to several ministers about a youth programme before this was announced, which WE later came out and said was a youth entrepreneurship programme which had nothing to do with what became the Service Grant programme. This having been said, the senior bureaucrat on the file said that they had three weeks to come up with a programme, and that WE fit the bill for its requirements, which is why they were recommended – and pointed out that potential conflicts are for public office holders to deal with, not bureaucrats (which is true). Up today, the Ethics Committee will begin their own examination into the Imbroglio, so we’ll see if that goes any better.

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Roundup: A curious case for declaratory legislation

A curious story showed up on the CBC website yesterday, wherein justice minister David Lametti stated that if it looked like pandemic delays were going to cause criminal trials to essentially “age out” of the court system as a result of the Jordan decision – meaning that once they reach a certain point, they are deemed to be stayed because they took too long and have become unconstitutional – that he would introduce legislation to “clarify” how the Supreme Court’s Jordan decision was to be clarified. It’s curious because it seems to be a bit of a made-up issue – the Jordan decision already stated that the 30-month timeline allowed for exceptional circumstances, and we can all agree that a global pandemic is by definition an exceptional circumstance. This isn’t to say that declaratory legislation isn’t a valid exercise, because it can be – but it just seems wholly unnecessary in this case, when there are other ways that the government could be better dealing with the criminal justice system and juries than worrying about the Jordan timelines.

In any event, here is defence lawyer Michael Spratt with some thoughts on the story:

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Roundup: A shock-and-awe number

The Conservatives are crowing about their membership numbers in the lead-up to their leadership vote, where some 269,000 Canadians are now eligible to vote – not that they all will, but it’s a shock-and-awe number that they say are bigger than any previous Conservative (or its predecessor parties’) leadership contest – though not quite as large as the Liberal contest that elected Justin Trudeau. And while on paper it’s great that there are so many people who have joined the party, this is one of those traps that have created so many of our problems in this country.

The original sin in Canadian politics was the Liberals’ decision in 1919 to move away from caucus selecting their new leader after Wilfrid Laurier’s death to a delegated convention. From then on, under the guise of being “more democratic,” they ensured that their leaders could henceforth not be held to account by the MPs of their caucus – nor the party, really, because “leadership reviews” are largely bogus exercises (sorry, Thomas Mulcair!). And what ends up happening is that when you have a big number like 260,000 party members, when the leader who winds up being selected in this manner gets into trouble, he or she tells their caucus “I have the democratic legitimacy of these 269,000 votes – the average riding has 75,000 electors. I have the bigger mandate.” It has been the way in which the centralization of power has been justified, and all of abuses of that power have followed.

The other problem is that these kinds of memberships tend to be transactional for the duration of the leadership contest. A good many of these members won’t stick around and to the work of nominations or policy development, which is another reason why these shock-and-awe numbers wind up being hollow in the long run. We do need more people to take out party memberships in this country, but it has to be meaningful engagement, and a leadership contest is not that. It only serves to perpetuate the problems in our system.

 

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Roundup: An apology on the second attempt

It was prime minister Justin Trudeau’s first presser since the WE Imbroglio blew up over the revelations of his family being paid speakers for the charity, and there was a definite note of contrition this time. After hinting that the government would extend the wage subsidy until December with details coming later in the week, a mention of his call earlier in the morning with Donald Trump that touched on tariffs, Black Lives Matter, and China, and a promise on further updates on the Safe Restart Plan with the provinces to come later in the week, Trudeau turned to his mea culpa on the Imbroglio. “I made a mistake in not recusing myself from discussions, and I’m sincerely sorry about not having done that,” Trudeau said. He praised how the government got creative with designing programmes during the pandemic, and how they had worked with a range of partners to make it happen, but he was sorry that he didn’t remove himself from the discussions with WE, and that he was frustrated that youth would have to wait longer to do their party to serve because of the mistakes he made. (I would argue that WE’s plans raised a lot of red flags too, for what it’s worth). When asked if he would appear before committee to discuss what happened, Trudeau was non-committal, but in a hung parliament, he doesn’t have the votes to shield himself this time.

During the Q&A, he said that he pointed out to Trump about the disruptions to the aluminium supply chains and hoped that they wouldn’t see tariffs that would only slow down the economic recovery; he also mentioned that there were ongoing discussions around the border, but the rest of the time was spent reiterating, over and over, that he didn’t have the details on what his family members had been paid by WE and that he should have, and that he did seem to have some reflection that he needed to be careful on this file because of his past activity with the charity but that he didn’t go far enough and should have removed himself entirely from the conversation. Later in the day, Bill Morneau sent out his own apology for his own failure to recuse himself given his daughters’ activities with WE.

For what it’s worth, there seems to be some kind of learning curve because it only took the second try for Trudeau to give an apology rather than stick to talking points aimed at deflection until the conclusion of the Ethics Commissioner’s report, at which point there would be either an apology or admission of some kind of wrongdoing and a promise to do better next time. This time, we managed to skip weeks of such failed damage control, so that’s something, I guess.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt finds herself wanting when it comes to Trudeau’s explanation for how the whole thing went down, and hopes that he’s saving it for his discussion with the Ethics Commissioner. Matt Gurney gives credit where credit is due for Trudeau learning enough to make a rapid admission and apology rather than dragging things out for months. Paul Wells is unimpressed with the apology and wants a full accounting of what happened, particularly as it is increasingly evident that things were wrong with the WE contract outside of the apparent conflict of interest, and how those decisions were made need to be aired.

Good reads:

  • Ruh-roh! It looks like the federal government wasn’t enforcing the rules around temporary foreign workers, which allowed outbreaks to occur on farms.
  • Here is some number-crunching on the PM’s daily pressers in the first phase of the pandemic and lockdown, including on his choice of verbs and phrases.
  • The RCMP have charged a Quebec man with calling for Justin Trudeau’s death and the eradication of Muslims.
  • Former Liberal MPs who lost their seats in the last election are waiting to hear about nomination contests so they can be ready to run again.
  • Leona Alleslev has resigned as deputy leader of the Conservatives to more vocally back Peter MacKay, who says that no promises were made for her support.
  • Maclean’s has a profile of Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis.
  • Jason Kenney is accusing the federal government of preventing Apple from fixing the province’s contact tracing app, which requires iPhones to be unlocked to work.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at the options for calling prime minister Trudeau to committee to testify on the WE Imbroglio.
  • Heather Scoffield is frustrated by the vague answers being given on the extension and amendments to the wage subsidy programme.
  • Colby Cosh recounts how Alberta has abolished its last vestiges of prohibition, by allowing liquor sales in Mormon-centric towns that were still “dry.”

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I wrote about Friday’s Supreme Court decision on genetic privacy, and what the broader implications of the ruling are.

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Roundup: Calling the PM to committee

As the WE Imbroglio continues to roll along in the absence of much other news, there are a couple of new developments – one is that both Seamus O’Regan and Katie Telford, both of whom are subject to the Conflict of Interest Act, also have past histories of raising funds for the WE group of charities pre-government formation, which could complicate things as for whether or not they should have recused themselves from any decision-making over the Student Grants programme contract. The other is that the Conservative are proposing to summon prime minister Justin Trudeau before the finance committee to answer questions about the decision to grand that contract – with the added show of having him do so under oath (which is a bit of extraneous showboating – lying before committee would mean that he would face charges of contempt of parliament, and he has already sworn oaths of office which make demands to testify under oath at committee to be unnecessary). Suffice to say, summoning the prime minister to committee is more fraught than you may think, so here’s professor Philippe Lagassé with some perspective.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282376899512107008

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282377930405027840

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1282382362593067008

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