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Archive for the ‘Canadian Federal Politics’ Category

Recently the Prime Ministers Office has been engaging in some populist pandering as part of the ongoing Conservative  electoral tactic of ‘getting tough on crime’.  Last month the hubbub was over reports that convicted child killer Clifford Olson has been receiving his federal pension while he continues to serve his life sentence.

This week the garment rending continues, this time about the recently come to light fact that Graham James, a former hockey coach, received a pardon for his sexual assault convictions in 2007.

The news has sparked a tsunami of indignation across the country, from hockey parents to the Prime Minister’s Office.

A spokesman for Stephen Harper called it a “deeply troubling and gravely disturbing” development that demands an explanation from the parole board.

The problem here is with people’s conception of the word ‘pardon’, which can be thought of as ‘formal forgiveness’. If a pardon is issued before one is finished serving their sentence, eyebrows are often raised (the pardon that Gerald Ford issued to Richard Nixon comes to mind). This does not happen in Canada. From the Parole Board of Canada’s webpage:

A pardon allows people who were convicted of a criminal offence, but have completed their sentence and demonstrated they are law-abiding citizens, to have their criminal record kept separate and apart from other criminal records.

A pardon does not ‘erase’ one’s criminal record. The pardon process is a regular aspect of the Canadian justice system; Graham James, or any other criminal who has served out their sentence, is eligible to, and should, apply for one. One could certainly argue that the pardon process needs re-evaluation, but that is not what is happening here. The mechanics of our judicial process have unfolded as they were designed to do. The only thing that is “disturbing”, is the Conservatives willingness to exploit the 24 hour news cycle at any available opportunity to make political fodder.

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Following through with what his spokesperson indicated at the time of the prorogation of parliament,  Prime Minister Harper made five new appointments to the Senate this past Friday, bringing the Conservative Party to a total of 51 seats in the 105 member body. While that number does not represent an outright majority, holding a plurality in the chamber (much as the Conservatives do in the House) will manifest itself with a larger Conservative presence on reconstituted committees once parliament reconvenes, as well as greater sway of Senate’s agenda. Kady O’Malley has a nice rundown on each of the new senators here at the CBC’s Inside Politics blog.

Wasting no time in indicating how this new found power in the upper chamber will be wielded, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson held a press conference on Friday with two of the new senators. Much as they have since first forming a minority government in 2006, it appears the Conservatives will ride the perennially popular stance of being “tough on crime” as much as possible; all 5 new appointees shared the ‘tough’ credential, while Minister Nicholson made sure to colour the Opposition with dread “soft on crime” label. The minister even went so far as to imply that opposition parties, especially Liberal members of the senate, were actively preventing the administration of justice. The Globe and Mail was quick to note that:

In fact, of the 17 crime bills introduced by the federal Conservative government in the last session, only two were held up in the Senate for more than six months. Most died on the order paper when Mr. Harper prorogued Parliament in late December.

As a campaign stance, being “tough on crime” is one of the oldest plays in the book as it is a virtually an unassailable position; who could be said to be against improvements in public safety? But what does getting “tough” mean from a governing standpoint? So far, it seems to consist of widening the scope of, as well as lengthening mandatory minimum sentences. Much of the governments introduced crime legislation on this front has been amended through debate in the House (funny how a minority government will do that.) As has been noted by many others, this does not sit will with Mr. Harper. With the new arrangement of the Senate and most of the uncompleted work of Parliament ‘dying on the docket’ when it was prorogued, some bills are set to be reintroduced in the Senate in their original language when parliament reconvenes. With so much attention being heeded crime and public safety, it is worth taking a moment to take a look at crime levels as they currently stand in Canada:

From the ‘The Daily‘, a regular feature of the Stats Can webpage, here is the overall police reported crime rate, as well as the Crime Severity Index:

Declining Crime Rate: 1998-2008

And from the Juristat report ‘Homicide in Canada 2008′, the homicide rate per 100, 000 people from 1961-2008:

Canadian homicide rate: 1961-2008

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This afternoon will see announcements on two big news stories that are only mildly related. On the political front, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is set to appoint five new Conservative senators later today. In sporting news (and since it’s the Olympics there is some political aspect built in) Canada’s flag bearer for the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

While the reasons for the PM’s prorogation of parliament are myriad, and to a certain extent only known to himself and his inner circle of tactical geniuses, one reason that is clearly evident is the fact that parliament not being in session gives him the perfect opportunity to make some appointments to the senate. While not gaining an outright majority in the upper chamber, the conservatives will have a plurality of members, shifting the balance on key committees as well as their ability to affect the agenda.

The naming of the flag bearer is one that always tends to receive a lot of press. The fact that much attention is heeded the flag bearer itself becomes a story, as in the past many athletes have declined the honour as they thought it would serve as a distraction. As the media loves ‘curses’ there is even a supposed one that descends upon the chosen flag bearer. Of course reality shows that flag bearers have gone on to career performances in the games, suffered great disappointment and everything in between. All the athletes deserve plaudits for their life of dedication to sport, and I’m sure whoever is named as our representative to march in the opening ceremonies they will do an excellent job.

Tune to your regular news sources for updates on both these stories.

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The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament protest wends it's way to Victory Square (photo by Jess Sloss

January 23rd, 2010 saw thousands of people of all political stripes (as well as those lacking any stripes) from across the country come together in peaceful protest to demonstrate their displeasure with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newest habit of proroguing parliament when it is convenient for him and his government to do so. With excellent traffic co-ordination from the VPD some 2000+ (my estimate, may not reflect reality, awaiting more official crowd estimates) Vancouverites convened at the steps of Art Gallery and marched to Victory Square. There, demonstrators heard speeches delivered from representatives of Fair Vote Canada, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Council, the Sierra Club and a Conservative angered with his party leader’s crass tactical maneuvering. All of the speakers came at the issue from a slightly different angle, yet all made substantive and important points. As audio and video of the demonstration become available online I will highlight what was said in more detail here. The CAPP Facebook page is a good place to join in the discussion, view photos and some video clips of Saturday’s action.

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The other day while discussing the prorogation of parliament with my dad, an interesting point came up that is worth mentioning here. I was saying how depressing it can be paying heed to events as they unfold in the US, as right wing ‘conservative’ commentators have honed the act of endlessly spouting partisan vitriol into a science, whereas when reading comment threads on the CBC about a story such as Omar Khadr’s, how surprised and taken aback I am by the extremely base language that is rather prevalent. My dad was not surprised by this in the least. My differing reactions to the same kind of mindless commentary coming from both sides of the border highlight three worthwhile points.

First, Canadian social conservatives not only exist, but they make up a larger part of the populace than I know I instinctively feel is there. To make a generalization, Canadians tend to be shy and reserved with many of their personal viewpoints. In the States, abortion is a very visible, vocal and dividing issue. In Canada it just does not have the same power.

Second, socially conservative, right wing political factions in the US have truly earned the label ‘noise-machine’. Social conservatives in the States are vocal, well organized, well funded and extremely active in all levels of politics. As such, an entire cottage industry has formed to recycle talking points through an endless echo chamber that greatly increases the media attention given to what are often fringe opinions. The huge media saturation that these groups are able to attain inflate their perceived strength (which is not to say that they aren’t strong.)

The last thing I wanted to point out are some aspects of the US media that magnify the already over represented, vocal minority of social conservatives. Thankfully, Canadian reporters as a whole have not completely devolved into he said/she said, stenography ‘journalism’. The same can not be said for their US counterparts. And while Canadian journalists are bad for spending to much time on the ‘horse race’ aspects of politics, they do deliver policy analysis. The Villagers of D.C. however are in perpetual campaign coverage mode (did you know there’s less than 11 months until the midterm elections? Are the Dems in trouble? Stay tuned..) When that is the model used to deliver news, it is self serving to portray two competing sides as if they were in extremely close competition. It is mind numbing the extent that US news reports will feature blatant lies voiced by one side of an argument as a rebuttal to a perfectly reasonable and true claim. Readers are treated to both claims, yet sadly, truth distinctions are rarely made. You need to suggest that ‘death panels’ are going to be installed before many media outlets will even bother to think of doing a fact check.

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I’ll have more to say on this later today, but it looks like  all of the tax cuts that Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty have enacted during their tenure (4 years in February!) have come home to roost. What prize have our fine feathered friends brought us? Why it’s nothing less than a forecast return to structural budgetary deficits. A brief historical view of Canada’s budgetary balance and debt in visual form:

*Figures from The Department of Finances Fiscal Reference Tables

What you’ll notice is that for the first half or so of this graph outlays were consistently higher than revenues, ie. we consistently had yearly deficits, hence that ballooning green area, which is the Accumulated Deficit (Debt). For many years we had deficits, so that debt line just kept going up and up. But then things changed. You can see that around 1997 revenues started to exceed outlays. We went from consistently having a deficit (a ‘structural deficit’) to having a surplus. We even used some of that surplus to pay down the debt (the green line going down.) If you’ve actually looked at the above graphic, one of the most important pieces of information is what is not on it, and that is any data from 2009. That’s the time period where all economic graphs you look at have a daunting cliff dive.(Update: I have replaced the original graph in this post with a more accurate one that also includes projections through 2014.) Now look at the most recent points for 2008-9. Revenues have been significantly down in this period. During this same time the government has enacted a series of ‘stimulative’ measures, something I happen to agree with, that equals higher expenditures in 2009 than what has been the trend. That means we are back in a deficit situation. And the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that is going to continue for at least the next four years. That does not jive with Mr. Harper and Flaherty’s assessment of having a balanced budget by that point in time. More to come. I have read that Mr. Flaherty believes that we will be returning to balanced budgets shortly (trying to find a source of this still) and that “the government says it won’t increase taxes or cut provincial transfers to balance the budget.” Clearly when we are facing structural budgetary shortfalls we should decide ahead of time against using one of the two possible mechanisms for fixing this situation. And for some inane reason, ever time I hear this reported on the choices are phrased as either there can be tax increases or cuts in spending. I’ll have to teach those Conservatives a lesson their mothers and fathers should have already taken care of; using both strategies.

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That’s what Justin Beach is suggesting over at his blog. Justin is a great writer who also happens to run a fantastic Canadian Music News blog, North by East West; I don’t know where he finds the time (NxEW does have a great pan-Canadian team). Justin doesn’t just provide insight and analysis in his postings, he’s usually also contributing ideas on actual ways to enact change. Just the other day he was noting that that Canadians are clearly frustrated with the continual tactical leveraging from Prime Minister Harper, and states:

[...]this seriously begs for electoral reform and Parliamentary reform. The current system is totally and completely broken and there is no sign that there will be another majority Government of any stripe for the foreseeable future and it comes at the worst possible time.

We have serious problems to fix.

As I’ve noted before I also believe that Parliamentary reform is in order, both for the House and Senate. Electoral reform should be a natural partner to that as well. That prompted me to ask in comments “Are there any functional tools that Canadians can employ to attempt to undertake some electoral and Parliamentary reform? Can these things only originate from the House itself?” Today Justin has a post up that begins to answer that oh so important question, what can be done?

[...]the broken Parliament has been an ongoing issue for me and many others. It’s not just the proroguing of Parliament. That’s just the most recent symptom of an ongoing disease. The uniting of the right combined with the fragmenting of everyone else (and Liberal infighting) have allowed 30% of the population to run the country.

There has been talk in the past about ‘uniting the left’ but that’s easier said than done [...] what about the Liberals and the Greens?

[...]the Liberals have ‘the establishment’. They have infrastructure, money and names (and a party logo) that Canadians know [...]What the Liberals do not have is ideas.

[...]The Greens do not have ‘establishment’. Other than Elizabeth May people at large don’t know who they are [...] What they do have is street cred and ideas, lots of ideas. (see GreenParty.ca for examples.)

[...]In the last election the Liberals and the Greens did work together to a small extent. The Liberals did not run a candidate in Elizabeth May’s home riding and at one point and Elizabeth May at one point urged strategic voting to defeat the Conservatives. She also supported the idea of a Liberal/NDP coalition – so I think it’s safe to say that the door is open if Ignatieff has the courage to walk through it.

I like the idea on the merits, but am skeptical about the viability of this coming together; I suspect the Liberals will be inclined to stay in a holding pattern, railing against the Government when they can, holding off an election as long as possible and hope that circumstances such as bigger and continuing budgetary deficits eventually change electoral fortunes back to at least a Liberal Minority. I can appreciate where Liberals would take a stance like this from a strategic standpoint, but I do not respect it. Ideas being floated by people like Justin is at least a start on some change; we as a nation most certainly need it.

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Something that I’ve tended to think about the current tenure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is that although his government has pushed through (or tried to push through) much legislation that I personally disagree with (cuts to the CBC, cuts to arts funding, “tough on crime” legislation), by and large the government has been competent (there have been exceptions to this though too.) Being one who has never had much love for the media, Harper had made no public comments on his recent prorogation of the Canadian parliament until he recently deigned to sit down with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge for an interview:

At 5:24 into the piece, Mansbridge asks the PM about his decision to prorogue the current parliamentary session; in a very casual manner, and apparently doing his best to dissuade me of my belief in his government’s competency, Harper says “coming off an extraordinary year [2009][...]we want to take some time to recalibrate the government’s agenda, both on the economy and on some other matters.” What kind of government is not capable of evaluating what you’ve done in the past, realign goals for the future and govern at the same time? Not one worthy of governing in my opinion. Unfortunately this video clip cuts off without showing Harper’s comment that since the controversy about the transfer of Afghan detainee’s isn’t on Canadian’s radar at large it’s not something that his government is going to be concerned with. To see that as well as Mansbridge’s logical followup question “Just because it’s not an issue in polls, does that not make it important?” you can view the full clip here.

Something I find rather interesting is to compare our PM’s assertion that the government needs two months to ‘recalibrate’ and that they are focused on the economy, not silly little things like the rule of law and how we adhere to international treaties, with the constant criticism that President Obama faces in the US that he is not ‘focused’ enough for his decision to deal with the terrible legacies Bush left in the GWOT, healthcare, the economy, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan and whatever other issues an effective executive needs to deal with. The blogosphere in the States makes the easy analogy that one can walk and chew gum at the same time to illustrate that good governments needs to be multifaceted, as we are a multifaceted society. It’s a shame our PM either feels that is not the case, or crassly makes that case to defend his current politicking.

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The other day I was calling myself naive for thinking that perhaps the unsuccessful attempt to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight on Christmas day would not be overblown. Boy was I wrong. It did seem to me that the Canadian response was somewhat more measured as new security was only put into place for flights to the US. It may however be time to break out the ‘naive’ label again. Listening to the CBC News:World Report Podcast on my way into work this morning, I was disappointed to hear that Transportation Minister John Baird is set to make an announcement later on this afternoon about new security measures that will be put into place at Canadian airports. When I switched over to my radio, the top of the hour newscast featured a similar report.

One of the DJ’s made two observations that are relevant here; with all the billions of dollars spent on airport security since 9/11, this attempted attack was (at least partially) foiled by passengers. She also noted that we don’t employ such extreme security measures in other modes of mass transportation, citing the relative lack of security when taking a ferry between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. To my ear it sounded as if the announcer was speaking from a place of fear and wishing for more security. This however seems backwards to me and her observations illustrated that quite well. We don’t have extreme security measures except for air travel as human irrationalities trump clearer thinking when flight is involved. The first point leads me to the conclusion that no matter how much is spent on security it is impossible to prevent all highly motivated individuals from attempting to use airplanes as a way to sew terror. None of this is to say that we shouldn’t be vigilant in regards to air travel and not have any security, merely that a cost/benefit analysis of our security spending is needed and in my non-expert opinion we are already well past the point of diminishing returns on dollars spent.

Stay tuned to the CBC or your Canadian news outlet of choice for more information on what is actually going to change.

Update : By my reading of this news report it appears that the new security measures entail installing the ‘full body scanners’ that we have been hearing about lately at Canada’s major airports to randomly screen passengers, but only those travelling to the US. I don’t have a problem with my privacy being violated by them seeing me ‘naked’; the privacy commissioner’s office is placated on that front, so I am too. I do think that they are a waste of resources, but the US masters have mandated them from on high, so I don’t really what options we have. As we get more extreme with screening, the frequency with which we see false positives like this will go up. I don’t even want to think how much money in lost productivity this screw up over honey cost.

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Senate Chamber, Centre Block, Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (photo by Montrealais, used under Creative Commons Attribution and ShareAlike license)

In my haste to post on the prorogation of parliament, I completely forgot to mention one of the more tangible reasons for Mr. Harper to do so; Senate appointments. As I understand it, (mostly by way of Kady O’Malley) with parliament not in session, the Prime Minister will be able to appoint at least 5 new senators and possibly as many as 13 depending on his willingness to get out the old parliamentary playbook again. Five new Conservative senators would give them a plurality in the upper house (did you know that there are still 2 PC Senators?) along with more bargaining power on the allotment of Senate committee seats. If Harper invokes Section 26 of the Constitution Act (only previously successfully done by Brian Mulroney to allow passage of the bill that created the GST) then he could appoint 8 additional Senators to the 5 seats that are currently unoccupied, thus giving the Conservative Party an outright majority with 59 seats out of a total of 113 (there are 105 ‘regular’ seats with Section 26 allowing the temporary addition of 8 Senators, with attrition then being in effect until the Senate returns to the ‘normal’ level of 105 seats through retirements.)

This benefit is by far the most likely prize for the PM; shutting down the House to continued criticism on the handling of the transfer of  Afghan detainees and delivering a budget clean of opposition injections when Parliament reopens are ancillary bonuses to being able to get legislation that has cleared the House through the Senate unmarred by those lefty Liberals and NDP’ers (don’t forget the rump PC’ers!)

This puts me in an interesting position; while I don’t agree with the means that Harper is using, I can sympathize with the ends he is trying to reach. As one who spends far too much time enveloped in US politics, I have developed a healthy fear of an overly powerful Senate. Now obviously the two bodies are very different but as time goes by it increasingly seems that the Canadian Senate is also becoming a place for legislation passed by our elected representatives to go to die. My wikipedia tells me that “[...]as a matter of practice and custom, the Commons is by far the dominant chamber. Although the approval of both houses is necessary for legislation, the Senate rarely rejects bills passed by the directly elected Commons.” I need to do some more looking to qualify my feeling that the qualifier ‘rarely’ is becoming less appropriate as time goes by, but I certainly do feel that is the case. If any readers have info that supports or refutes that feeling it would be much appreciated. In my own humble (am I allowed to add considered?) opinion, Senate reform is something both the US and Canada need (the US much more so than Canada, but why shouldn’t we get ahead of a growing problem ourselves?)

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The title ‘Naive Me’ has so much breadth and depth that it would probably make for a good regular feature, but in this particular case I am referencing Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight on Christmas Day. After my initial sigh of relief that this was a failed attempt, resulting in no casualties, I feared the impending drum beat of how unsafe we are, how if this attack had been successful it would have been ‘devastating’ and of course, how all of it inevitably was the fault of President Barack Obama. Matt Yglesias had a post up that had a very cogent response to the attack which also illustrated the potential for misuse of the incident for partisan political gain:

Obviously, people shouldn’t be lighting anything on fire inside airplanes. That said, all the big Christmas airline incident really shows to me is how little punch our dread terrorist adversaries really pack. Once again, this seems like a pretty unserious plot. And even if you did manage to blow up an airplane in mid-air, that would be both a very serious crime and a great tragedy, but hardly a first-order national security threat.

And then there’s Peter King:

“This was the real deal,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. “This could have been devastating,” Mr. King said.

Ultimately, it does no favors to anyone to blow this sort of thing out of proportion. The United States could not, of course, be “devastated” by anything resembling this scheme. We ought to be clear on that fact. We want to send the message around the world that this sort of vile attempt to slaughter innocent people is not, at the end of the day, anything resembling a serious challenge to American power. It’s attempted murder, it’s wrong, we should try to stop it, but it’s really not much more than that.

Exactly. Rep. Pete King has demonstrated time and again that he is an unserious moron not deserving of the media platform his office gives him and Matt voiced a perfect response to his nonsense. The Canadian media seemed to report on the incident as it happened and it received no more attention than it deserved. I didn’t notice too much other trumped up hyperbolic speak on the ‘dread terrorists’ from the American media and usual suspects on the right, and very prematurely figured that perhaps the US had grown and matured, responding in a responsible manner to this criminal act.

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PM Harper outside Rideau Hall last year after his first request to prorogue parliament (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Amidst reflecting on the year gone by, looking forward to the coming one and forming resolutions that will more often than not be forgotten by February, the end of 2009 also brought the opportunity for Canadians to once again delve into relatively obscure parliamentary procedural processes as the Prime Minister (who executed a similar tactical play towards the end of 2008) called (literally!) for Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to prorogue the current parliamentary session; that is, end the session without actually dissolving parliament. When this tactic was performed at the end of 2008 (extra emphasis on ‘tactic’ as it is strictly crass politicking) the reasons were rather obvious; a pending confidence motion in the House that the Conservative government was not going to survive would have either triggered an election just months after the last one, or brought about a Liberal-NDP governing coalition. Neither of these options were acceptable to Mr. Harper, so he flexed some of the arcane powers of our parliamentary system through prorogation, saving his government through the lackadaisical holiday season, enabling him to deliver a budget when parliament reopened that focused on the output gap the country was enduring amidst the recession that we are just moving into recovery from (albeit a jobless recovery.)

Since the PM has once again decided to ask the GG to end the current session without dissolving parliament, (in much less dramatic fashion this time; in 2008 the news camera’s were on hand to watch Harper go “cap in hand” to Rideau Hall, but he is more battle hardened now and this time around simply called Ms. Jean to make his request for prorogation) it begs the question; to what end is he executing this parliamentary sleight of hand? I’m not aware of any positioning from the opposition that would indicate they are about to defeat the government. I’ve heard people speculating that the PM wants the House shutdown during the Vancouver games to avoid embarrassing dissent in the Commons, but this does not seem very plausible to me; I do not see any evidence other than that Canadian Members of Parliament overwhelmingly want the Games to be a success (and why shouldn’t they?)

CBC’s longtime political reporter Don Newman has an interesting take on the PM’s move that strikes me as more likely. He suggests that prorogation is Harper’s opening gambit in a ploy to gain an outright majority in the House of Commons:

Get ready for a spring election. That is phase two of Stephen Harper’s newest plan to try and secure a majority government. Phase one came this week, when for the second time in just over a year, he asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament and schedule a new session for March 3. [...] If Parliament returned as first planned on January 25, his administration would again be under fire over how much it knew about the torturing of Afghan detainees by the government in Kabul. He also knew that, with a budget to be delivered on March 4, all those previous weeks in the House of Commons would have been filled with opposition suggestions for what to put in it.

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