April 2017 - Page 2 of 2 - Loonie Politics

As BC families gathered to feast on Easter Ham and chocolate eggs, the less-than-a-week old election campaign was a likely topic of discussion. The election campaign has been unofficially underway for weeks in the province and voters have not made up their minds yet.

It has been over 20 years since the NDP won an election on the West Coast. Christy Clark is attempting to secure a fifth consecutive term for the Liberals. Only Wacky Bennett's Social Credit achieved this, winning 7 elections in a row in the 50s and 60s.

Just like in 2013, the NDP is ahead in the polls over the governing Liberals. Though in 2013 the NDP had a 20-point lead early on, this time around only a couple of points are separating the two main parties. Adrian Dix ended up squandering that lead, but can John Horgan succeed in putting an end to the Liberal reign? To win, Horgan will have to hold all the NDP seats and get at least another 10.

Christy Clark is playing the same card played by the BC Liberals over the past two decades: the opposition will kill jobs and jeopardize economic growth with higher taxes and deficits.

You see, the BC Liberals are a "free enterprise coalition", a coalition of liberals and conservatives designed to keep the NDP out of power. This coalition was first established in the 40s, when the Liberal and Conservative parties ran a joint slate to stop the ascension of the CCF. The coalition split before the 1952 election, but the CCF didn't benefit the Social Credit did. Over the next decades, voters slowly abandoned the Liberal and Conservative parties and the Socreds became the new right wing coalition; until its ultimate collapse and the resurgence of the BC Liberals.

If you were to take a peek inside their headquarters, you would find Senior Trudeau Liberals and Senior Harper Conservatives working hand-in-hand to defeat the NDP. Which is saying a lot about the true nature of the Federal Liberals, actually. But I digress.

John Horgan has a few things going for him. After 16 years in office, the Liberal government is more and more disconnected from the population. Voter fatigue is setting in. Scandals are piling up, notably surrounding the Liberals' fundraising practices which led the New York Times to label British Columbia the "Wild West" of political fundraising. The New Democrat caucus is united and the slate of candidates is cautiously optimistic.

Despite Premier Rachel Notley's decision to ban Alberta New Democrats from campaigning for their anti-Kinder Morgan pipeline BC cousins a decision that does not sit well with many New Democrats considering how many went to Alberta in 2015 to help her to victory Horgan says his campaign is fully staffed and that plenty of volunteers are showing up to canvass for his orange team.

To win, the NDP must prevent the rise of the Green Party. That is the key to victory. Green leader Andrew Weaver, the first Green Party MLA in British Columbia's history, is asking voters to give his party a chance. The Green Party is hovering just below the 20% threshold, one that would see many Greens sent to Victoria. The Greens are poised to make gains on Vancouver Island, at the expense of the NDP.

Dealing with the Greens is tricky for New Democrats. The Green brand is perceived positively by most British Columbians. New Democrat voters, and even activists, do not like direct attacks against the Greens. They are not the enemy, they are nice people, if slightly misguided.

Attacking the Greens on policy is difficult, because most people who consider voting Green are not doing it because of their stance on health care, education or job creation. On the environment, no matter how hard you try, you will not out-green the Green Party in people's mind even if you actually do on paper.

Can the NDP implement a strategic voting campaign and sway enough people to vote for them in order to oust Clark on May 9th? The data suggests that it is a possibility.

The most recent Mainstreet Poll shows that over half of the NDP voters have the Green Party as their second choice. And half of the Green voters have the NDP as their second choice. This means that almost a third of the BC electorate are potential Orange-Green switchers. If a majority of them go orange, John Horgan will lead a strong, stable, NDP majority government. But if a majority goes green, Premier Clark will remain Premier and the Liberals will be in power for a 5th consecutive mandate.

Photo Credit: The Tyee

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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My disappointment started as a dull buzz, an annoying thrum. It was Sunday morning, I was watching the centennial commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. As the minutes passed and the ceremony trundled on, my disappointment built a head of steam until it had the full locomotive roar of rage.

And in the days since, it's sat there, a stone of anger, weighing on me.

Perhaps I was expecting too much out of the day. A celebration of a grand tactical victory a century ago that led to little strategic gain in a war known best for the ghastly futility of its fighting is a hard thing to pull off. But even still, I expected something more than what we got. Something with weight, a dash of dignity.

There were some ominous signs right from the beginning. Warning signs that things weren't quite right.

First, there were the boots. Thousands of black combat boots, one pair for each of the 3,598 men who died during the battle, were placed around the memorial. They were touching, but oddly out of place. What were they doing there? Where did this tradition come from?

No matter, maybe they aren't a Canadian remembrance tradition, but there's no great harm done, I told myself. It didn't seem like the time to get upset over misappropriated symbols.

Then there were the Mounties, standing guard of the memorial. At first glance, of course the Mounties are there. They're a symbol of our Canadianness, known around the world, and all that. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what are civilian police doing standing at attention in front of a military moment? Why are they standing solemn guard over the monument's tomb? And why are they marching along behind real soldiers?

Sure, members of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, as the RCMP was known then, fought at the battle. But they didn't fight as Mounties, they fought as soldiers.* Bakers fought in the war too, but you didn't see them in their dress whites, marching with baguettes smartly on their shoulders.

From there, things descended into farce.

Interspersed between each speech would be some kind of multimedia production. An actor â€” Paul Gross needs to do something â€” would read from the diary of a soldier or nurse. Or there'd be some interpretive dance. Or maybe a maudlin pop song.

As the day progressed, the ceremony would see-saw wildly between speeches warning of the deadly consequence of war, and familiar Canadian artists preforming breathy melodrama while the TV camera cranes swooped over the crowd.

It was hard to square a speech with lines like this one, from Prince Charles: "Today it is hard to believe possible the horrors that unfolded here on the 9th of April, 1917. This was a battlefield of corpses. The terrifying roar of massed artillery filled the airâ€¦. Boot-deep mud rendered each step a struggle, amidst the deadly relentless hail of bullets."

Compared to this, later on, from pop-country singer Johnny Reid, singing his song Dedicated to You: "Everybody needs somebody to hold on to/And everything I've ever wanted I found in you/I know what I feel and I know that it's real/It's all for you."

I really can't describe the honest-to-god outrage I felt watching Reid wander in front of the memorial like it was an arena stage wailing away, while a guitar solo rips out over the PA. This is what they had immediately following the pipes and the Last Post. I'm sitting here replaying it now, and still can't believe it actually happened.

It's as if the organizers watched a few Remembrance Day ceremonies and decided what was really missing on such solemn occasions was a Junos showcase.

It felt like some half-mad extension of Canada Day, another chance to put on your red clothes and wave a Maple Leaf. Except in this version there'd be some grave talk of maiming along with a wreath laying shoehorned in.

All the reverence in the speeches, all the pleas to "remember them" and honour the memory of the dead, seemed so empty alongside the multimedia spectacle.

I watched all this Sunday because my great-grandfather was there a century ago, riding in the cavalry. It felt important to watch, to think of him and what it might have been like that day.

My grandmother watched, too. Her uncle Dave also fought at Vimy. I talked to her later that day to see what she thought. She told me about her uncle and how he put her up during high school. How one of her cousins gave up her bedroom, so my grandmother had a room to herself. How she remembered her uncle listening to "the bands" at night on his radio, but never the news.

I asked her what she thought of the ceremony, looking to validate my own dismay. She told me she thought it was quite good. "But," I asked not understanding, "what about all the singing?"

"Oh that?" she said. "I left the room for that."

***

* A company of Mounties would eventually be attached to the Canadian Expeditionary Force. But that wouldn't be until 1918, after the force was no longer needed to keep tabs on German- and Austrian-Canadiansâ€”"enemy aliens"â€”on the prairies.

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Over the past several weeks, we've watched filibusters, privilege debates and procedural gamesmanship pile up as the opposition parties continue to protest the government's plans to "modernize" the Standing Orders in a vain attempt to turn the House of Commons into a "21^st century workplace" as though it were an office job, like a law firm or PR agency, which it most emphatically is not. As is often the case with these sorts of things, we have been treated to all manner of apocalyptic language about how the government is trying to run roughshod over the opposition, and how this is an expression of Justin Trudeau's "admiration for the basic dictatorship of China" and his love of the Castro family, and how our very democratic rights are imperilled in Canada. The sky is falling around our ears.

Amidst these proclamations of doom are the assertions that this is all a ploy by the Prime Minister to get Fridays off, and that he's looking to avoid accountability in the House of Commons by only showing up one day a week. While these two examples that they are highlighting in order to create a visceral response with their voting public are weak at best the more problematic proposals are around things like scheduling motions and limiting committee speaking times these very opposition parties are acting in a completely hypocritical way around them.

The assertion that ending Friday sittings are an extra day off is baffling to me, because if you dare suggest to an MP that a constituency week is a "break week" or gods forbid a "holiday," they will quickly rebuke you and rail about how hard they work in their ridings. And they do I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with a non-stop line-up of constituents asking me to help them with the problems they're having with the federal bureaucracy, or listening to their complaints (which likely are directed at another level of government), or needing to be at every community event and shopping mall opening to show their support. So why they're suggesting that the governing party would treat a non-sitting Friday as a "day off" is beyond me, because it's a talking point that backfires against them.

And then there are the complaints about QP. To start with, there is a pronounced historical amnesia about Stephen Harper's poor attendance record (toward the end of his time in government, you would be lucky if he'd show up one day a week and only answer the questions of other leaders, not including Elizabeth May), which they were always quick to defend with protestations about how busy he was prime ministering. Apparently, however, they've decided that Trudeau is not similarly busy prime ministering and is just swanning about taking selfies because that's the narrative they're trying to push, no matter how specious it really is. But their own party leaders (interim or otherwise) also can't be bothered to show up five days a week presumably because they're busy party leadering, which starts to make their concern trolling a bit suspicious.

This past Friday, we had an event which demonstrated why Friday sittings are necessary, which was the reaction to the US bombing in Syria in the wake of those chemical weapon attacks. Trudeau could very easily have simply put out a press release and left it at that, or if he felt really exercised, simply walked down to the microphone in the House of Commons Foyer to say his bit and then retreat to his office. But instead, he chose to attend Friday QP, make his statement in response to opposition questions on the subject, and answer other questions as he normally would on any given QP, and then have his minister use a ministerial statement spot after QP in order for opposition critics to give a chance to make statements in response. In other words, he was respecting Parliament as a place to speak to the nation.

What we did not see, however, were any of the other leaders, or in fact, very many opposition MPs, to respond to this unfolding situation. If you believed their apocalyptic rhetoric, you would think that they would be making a demonstration to show Canadians just how important Friday sittings were, and why any talk about cancelling them was unconscionable but they haven't been. Friday attendance by opposition MPs hasn't improved since they started this hue and cry, while I've actually seen more Liberal MPs in attendance. (Note that Government House Leader Bardish Chagger has also mused that they might turn Fridays into a full day instead of the current half-day so as to get more work done rather than simply redistributing Friday hours elsewhere in the week).

Similarly, if the opposition were so concerned about Question Period as being the time and place to hold the prime minister to account, you would think that they might make a greater effort to, well, actually hold him to account in QP. Instead, the constant line-up of faux outrage with no flow or follow-up, or actual debate when Trudeau responds in banalities, would seem to demonstrate that they're not really taking the accountability part seriously either. If they were, they might be pressing Trudeau or his ministers when they don't get proper responses, or engaging in some actual cut-and-thrust in the course of their questions.

Instead, nothing has changed. QP remains a wasteland of disjointed scripts designed to serve as a buffet of media clips, which serves no accountability function because it's not encouraging the public to tune in. Quite the opposite, in fact. If this is the opposition's way of demonstrating that the government is wrong to press for these "modernizations," they're not walking their own talk. Instead, Trudeau showing up on Friday, and taking all questions last Wednesday, is showing that he's savvy enough to beat them at their own PR game. If the opposition is looking to do their job and preserve the way our parliament works (more or less), then they'd better step up their game, because right now, they're well on the way to doing Trudeau and Chagger's dirty work for them.

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John Tory, the mayor of Toronto, bothers me. I think it's because he almost always, like a socially recalcitrant but well-meaning dad, takes three tries to do the woke thing, or maybe it's because he talks in circles even when answering the simplest of questions, but for whatever reason, I've never been his biggest fan.

Lately, Tory has been bugging me more than usual. Toronto has both a structural budget hole and a structural backlog on major infrastructure, particularly transit and housing. But Tory, operating in the post-Rob Ford paradigm of taxation timidity, categorically refuses to raise property taxes above the rate of inflation. To be fair, he campaigned on such a pledge.
But, ultimately, Toronto's finances are a perennial problem because its politicians refuse to bite the bullet and raise taxes; a tax increase at the rate of inflation isn't a raise so much as a cost-of-living adjustment.

Instead of raising taxes to pay for the investments Tory insists the city needs, he's chased a few boutique taxes (a hotel tax, for instance) and belatedly championed a plan to toll Toronto-owned highways, until his request was turned down by all three parties at Queen's Park.
Tory's plan was essentially to insist that commuters from the 905 â€” Markham, Mississauga and other GTA cities â€” pay to use Toronto-owned highways. In principle, he had a point. But it did not sit well, to say the least, with commuters in the 905 region, who regularly have their own property taxes go up by 2-5%, plus capital levies, to pay for the growth the region is experiencing. In essence, then, Tory was looking to outsource his need for a tax rise onto the 905, even at a time when the 905 resident is likely facing greater tax increases than their neighbours in Toronto.

Tory was hugely miffed when Premier Wynne announced she would not support his request to toll highways. All three parties at Queen's Park are united in rejecting tolls, and polling suggests the Conservatives Tory once led are poised to form government, yet it's Wynne's government who is getting the Mayor's ire â€” that seems at least a slight case of misplaced anger, but fair enough.

Now, Tory clearly feels like the rug was pulled out from under him when his tolling proposal was disallowed. However, the Premier did pledge she would double the gas-tax transfer to cities, which will provide Toronto with roughly comparable value as to what tolling could generate, so Tory's fiscal issues are at least dealt with even if his need for autonomy is still bruised.

I don't want to re-litigate to toll or not to toll. What I do object to his Tory's passive-aggressive responses since.

For the past few weeks, Tory has been demanding the province's upcoming budget fund Toronto's priorities, again, particularly in housing and transit. In response, exacerbated provincial cabinet minister after exacerbated provincial cabinet minister has been left to respond with various riffs on the refrain: "we are", followed by a list of projects already in the works with provincial funding. This week, Tory praised the Trudeau government for their investments; the province pointed out in reply that they're glad the feds are back at the table but the province has been investing even when the Harper government was cutting back. It's the inter-governmental equivalent of talking past each other.

What bothers me here is that Tory is essentially going from wanting to tax the 905 to asking for a provincial bailout (something he decried as acting like a needy school boy earlier this year). In both cases, he was seeking to pass the buck.

But that's exactly my point: the mayor of Toronto has gone from wanting to tax 905 commuters to somewhat tersely demanding a provincial bailout, even while complaining about a lack of autonomy. Tory could have the autonomy he craves to let Canada's six-largest government budget for its own future â€” if he had the political courage to raise property taxes in line with neighbouring municipalities. Until he does, he'll be caught demanding more money even while complaining that it's a demeaning exercise.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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If you haven't heard much from Canadian politicians about the NHL's decision to stay out of the 2018 Winter Olympics, it's not because you've missed their reaction. It's because they don't really care.

Canada's Minister of Sport, Carla Qualtrough, did take to twitter after the decision was announced. But even then, it was not an angry rant, as they abound on the social media platform. She merely expressed her support for Hockey Canada to defend our gold medals despite the announcement, which was "disappointing." Conservative Leadership candidate Lisa Raitt denounced the minister for dealing with this issue with a tweet, by tweeting her displeasure. On twitter. Sigh.

When Qualtrough was pushed by the press gallery to say more, she stuck to talking points about Olympic heroes and supporting our athletes, before passing the puck back to the players, hoping that they would show up anyway, and to you, asking that you pressure the NHL and its teams.

In the Commons, only Quebec City Conservative MP GÃ©rard Deltell raised the issue, but not in Question Period as you would expect. During a debate on the Federal budget, Deltell told Liberal MP Wayne Long that he would like to know what he thought about the NHL's decision, but even then, he pointed out that it was not the issue being debated. Long could have used this setup for an easy one-timer, but instead skated away.

Only Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume has expressed a strong opinion about the decision, mostly laying the blame on the International Olympic Committee and its "current reputation", a position no doubt triggered by Labeaume's own dealings with the IOC regarding a possible Winter Olympics bid by la Vieille Capitale.

But don't our politicians want our best players to represent our beloved country, you ask? Well, yes, of course. But they also know you don't really care, either. And if you don't care, politicians won't care.

Because, as the NHL season is winding down, playoff fever is about to hit Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary. This, the NHL hopes, will cure your Olympics' blues. The Stanley Cup finals will be played in mid-June. Then summer will come and go, and by the time you put your mind back to hockey for next season, it will be too late to reverse the decision and allow players to go travel and compete in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Calendars will have been set, arenas booked, travel plans firmed up.

Of course, the decision for NHL players to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi came only in July 2013. But unless the NHL is bluffing or the IOC blinks, it will be the first time the NHL has not participated in the Winter Olympics since 1994. And it is a shame, really. Some will argue, as one of my Twitter followers did, that we are better off with amateur players who appreciate being at the Olympics than overpaid NHL Players. Except NHL players do appreciate it. And this is exactly the point: the best players in the world are not being paid to play in the Olympics. It brings the spirit of the game back to its essence. Playing for pride. Playing for your teammates. Playing for your country. Playing for everyone back home.

Alas, if money is somewhat out of the equation for hockey players, it is at the crux of the issue for both the NHL and the International Olympic Committee. TV rights, advertising revenues, players' insurance, you name it.

The NHLPA reacted quite negatively to the news. But will players defy Gary Bettman's edict? Maybe some players will. Alex Ovechkin was very clear: "Somebody going to tell me 'don't go', I don't care. I just go." Will his Caps' teammate Evgeni Kuznetsov also represent Russia? "Of course, if Russia needs us. Of course." Most others, while critical, didn't commit to go.

Could 200 top NHL players follow Ovechkin and travel to Pyeongchang next February, despite the ban? While the European Federations might not be shy to suit up NHLers, it will definitely not be the case for Hockey Canada and USA Hockey, who are relying heavily on the NHL for funding. The NHL will not be afraid to crosscheck anyone who defies its decision: players, teams or NHLPA alike.

Which brings it back to you. The NHL has already shown it is taking Canadian fans for granted. Calgary Flames owner Ken King just made a passive-aggressive statement about moving the team out of town if a new arena isn't built. The League is expanding in Las Vegas, of all places, snubbing Quebec City, assuming (rightly) that fans there will still watch hockey even without a team. New York is big enough for two teams, but not Toronto, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Canadian TV rights are worth 400 million a year twice as much as US TV rights, for a tenth of the population. The NHL knows that Canadian arenas will remain full this spring. And next year. They, too, don't really care what you think. They know you will show up or tune in anyway. Who cares about the Olympics?

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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Even though I think his idea is completely ridiculous, I feel for Maclean's journalist Scott Gilmore, who went public with plans for a new centre-right party in light of ongoing shenanigans and alt-rightward drift that have been plaguing the federal leadership race.

The problem I have with Gilmore's idea to have a series of dinners across the country with conservatives who are just as embarrassed as he is to call themselves conservatives is the fact that the decision sprung from a feeling of shame rather than any genuine belief in any coherent political philosophy or coalescing around an issue.

To make matters worse, the thousands of Canadians that Gilmore has apparently identified have been standing around uncomfortably waiting for someone else to make the first move for years.

I don't trust such self conscious and diffident people to deal with the tough issues confronting Canada should they ever form government.

Still, I don't think Gilmore deserves the kind of accusations of disloyalty he is currently being tarred with on social media. I'm even willing to believe that he didn't do this to appease his wife, who just happens to be Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, or that this is some Trudeauvian plot to split the party.

That's because Gilmore has already made enough mistakes that we don't have to resort to conspiracy theory. He's not disloyal because he genuinely and naively thought this would be well received, and he's not a pawn in a plot because Trudeau's people are more skilled than this at dividing the party.

Here are the three most glaring errors I can see.

If You Twist My Armâ€¦.

Have you ever noticed how every time someone thinks about running for the leadership of a political party in Canada, they spend months refusing offers and denying the thought has even crossed their minds while an anonymous group of activists set up a website trying to "draft" them?

I used to roll my eyes at the notion of obviously ambitious and power-hungry politicians pretending that they had to be dragged with their fingernails digging into the floor to the party's leadership. Now, however, I realize the utility of this deception, because Canadians really, really don't trust self-promoters, or anyone who appears to be in it for themselves.

And this was Gilmore's first mistake. He put himself front and centre.

Unless your last name is Trudeau, or you are one of the lucky few Canadians to achieve international superstardom, you have no business presenting yourself as the solver of Canada's problems. That's why our most successful politicians barely tinkered with the machinery that keeps our country clunking along and couldn't be picked out of a lineup by most of the people who elected them.

Conservation of Matter

I like to tell conservatives from other lands, "If your definition of conservatism is: Never change anything, ever, for any reason, then Canada is the most conservative country in the world."

It doesn't matter what you're proposing to change. It doesn't matter how minor or irrelevant the change is. Look at how the NDP gets into screaming matches over whether to remove the "New" from "New Democratic Party."

Once upon a time I and a few other enterprising young conservatives decided we were going to merge the two provincial conservative youth wings in Ontario into one, because none of us could figure out why we needed two. Unlike Gilmore, we took the additional step of a holding a referendum of Conservative youth in Ontario on the idea just so we could say we had the support of the youth members.

Even after the vote passed with a ridiculously high percentage somewhere in the 90% range if memory serves- we were astounded when a few youth members decided the merger had to be stopped at all costs once we got through drafting a joint constitution.

Our mistake was assuming that senior party members weren't going to drop everything to stop what seemed, at best, to be a formality. The passion, creativity and venom of our critics was astounding, and of course we were accused of disloyalty, being Liberals, losing the next election, destroying the conservative movement and worse.

Listen to Gilmore on CBC's The Current from this past Friday trying to defend his idea against two other party activists vehemently opposed to the idea and who are barely restraining themselves throughout. He seems utterly befuddled by the backlash. But if I and those other conservative youth did more homework than he did and still got put through the wringer, I have to ask- what did he expect?

The Future Is Now

When you look at Gilmore's website, you get the sense that he wants this party to be a community project where everyone contributes equally. He and his guests are going to sit down, have a couple of conversations over dinner, and see what develops.

OK. So let's assume that the best and brightest of Canada's conservative movement turn up, instead of a bunch of disaffected Red Tories who have had it up to here with these socially conservative yokels who keep messing things up. Assume they eventually get past ranting and raving about how everything is the fault of those OTHER guys. What then?

How many people with experience building a party from the ground up is he expecting to come to dinner? Are we going to get fundraisers, campaign managers, senators? People with relevant expertise? Are there any people with experience drafting a constitution, creating software for managing data, setting up bank accounts, and with proprietary access to the all important lists of people to call?

Does Gilmore expect that fiscally conservative, gay marriage supporting students who want pot legalized will suddenly acquire the expertise to compete with, much less defeat, hardened CPC full-timers?

Let me close by saying once again that I don't begrudge Gilmore his attempt. This leadership race is about settling- for the next couple of years at least what kind of party we actually want to have beyond the Stephen Harper Party. Everything that has happened is to be expected and, in any other place and time, would be a welcome if messy exercise in democracy without any frightened exclamations that the end of the CPC is nigh.

But we are Canadians, and we have been socialized to believe that difference of opinion inevitably leads to acrimony and disaster. So, more likely than not, conservatives in Canada will do what they do best and make their worst fears come true.

Written by Josh Lieblein

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In the face of bills meandering their way through the Upper Chamber, the Leader of the Government in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder, has put forward a series of proposals to ensure that bills get their sober second thought in a more streamlined and efficient manner. If this sounds familiar, it's because much of it eerily follows some of the proposals put forward by Government House Leader Bardish Chagger in her own discussion paper on how to "modernize" the House of Commons' own Standing Orders for the sake of predictability and efficiency.

As with Chagger's proposals demonstrating her dubious competence as House Leader to negotiate with other parties to get bills through in a reasonable amount of time (which is coupled with our increasingly debased parliamentary debating culture), this proposal by Harder looks an awful lot to those inside the institution as an admission of failure that he's unable to do his own job of shepherding the government's agenda, so now he wants to change the rules. In recent days, Harder has gone out of his way to insult senators who were appointed under previous processes, and in his paper, launches a broadside at the Conservatives forming the chamber's Official Opposition, accusing them of delaying for the sake of delay, and of undermining the credibility of their arguments through use of tactics.

Part of the problem, however, is that Harder hasn't been doing his job. I've spoken to a number of people in the Senate who say that on these very bills that he's now expressing grave concern that they've taken so long bills like C-6 on citizenship revocations, and Bill C-16 on trans rights Harder hasn't been trying to use his moral suasion as "government representative" to try and get the other caucuses to try and move them along. As well, he has yet to use the actual powers given to him as Government Leader (though he may style himself something else) to invoke time allocation on bills that he sees as critical to get passed in shorter periods of time. You would think that if they were that important, that he would be able to convince enough of the independents senators or the Senate Liberals to support such a motion go get these bills through, but he hasn't.

Another reason why Harder seems not to be doing his job is that opposition majorities are not a new phenomenon in the Senate. In fact, they are a regular occurrence after a change in government, and yet, we have a history of Government Leaders who have been able to get legislation through the chamber despite an angry and more numerous caucus on the opposite side, with plenty of hard work and negotiation. They managed to make it work using the existing rules of the Senate, and yet Harder has not and as we've seen, indications seem to be that he hasn't even tried. For him to ask for the rules to change at this point seems premature at best, and suspect at worst.

In his paper, released on Friday, Harder cites several models that the Senate could consider rather than the status quo things like programming motions (as they do in the UK, while Chagger's proposal for the same has MPs are up in arms), uniform time limits after which bills are considered to be "deemed adopted" whether they were voted on or not (much as the Estimates are now in the House of Commons), setting completion dates for bills into the Rules of the Senate (as the Saskatchewan legislature employs), or his preferred model, the creation of a Senate Business Committee to schedule and manage the debates. There was a programming motion used around the debate on Bill C-14, with medically-assisted dying, but that was also in recognition of the fact that there was a Supreme Court of Canada-imposed deadline on the process, which senators were cognisant of. Most other bills that aren't of a fiscal nature don't face those kinds of time constraints.

Part of the problem with his Business Committee proposal is that it seems to misunderstand that the Senate is a deliberative body, and sometimes, deliberation takes time (which the proponents of the amendments to C-6 have certainly found). One of the reasons that we don't often see a lot of successive debate on bills is that the next speaker generally wants to take time to craft a response to the speech that was just delivered before responding to it, which is valid. As well, the current Rules of the Senate greatly empower individual senators and ensures that they have the right to speak to any issue it's one of the reasons why the entire Order Paper is read out on every sitting day, though generally caucuses will negotiate as to what business they plan to cover that day at the "scroll meeting" every morning. Harder's Business Committee proposal would be a step to curtailing those individual powers, which seems a bit antithetical to his other usual stance in that he's looking to blow up the Westminster model in the Senate and trying to do away with caucuses in general. It's also very problematic that his specific proposals that different committee decisions would require different thresholds to pass goes against the constitutional requirements that the Senate be able to operate by majority vote.

The fact that Harder is trying to push this issue of trying to better manage the Senate on his own terms is indicative that he's trying to grab power without having the votes to do so in the chamber, and that's a problem. As well, there should be no presumption that all bills must pass, because it's the Senate's constitutional role to stop bills that they deem a problem, nor should sober second thought be relegated to a timed exercise. The Senate has institutional independence, and Harder seems to have forgotten that fact in his bid to turn the chamber into a bureaucratic advisory body.

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On Friday the annual sunshine list of all of the public-sector employees making over $100,000 in Ontario was released. The list caused the usual feeding frenzy throughout media circles as they plucked the most interesting and high-paying of the lot.

However, what is more important than focusing on those few top execs paid over a million dollars is the overall monstrous and unsustainable size of the public sector today at large. Despite the thousands of Hydro One employees no longer disclosed on the list the past two years (since the Liberals began selling the profitable asset off), the number of public-sector employees on the sunshine list jumped from 115,431 in last year's list to 123,410 this year. And next year that number will undoubtedly rise even more drastically as wage freezes are lifted and the Liberals look to buy the continued allegiance of the glutinous public-sector unions and members.

Recently retired Canadian Press reporter Keith Leslie pointed out this bloating of public-sector salaries in a tweet: "22,311 Ontario public sector workers made $144K or more in 2016, equivalent to $100K in 1996 when 4,576 made first Sunshine list." It would also be fair to say that with many underlings now cracking into the list that the public sector has generally benefited from salary increases in the past two decades that far exceed that of the private sector or inflation.

In the most recent data (2011) from Statistics Canada I could find on the Ontario public sector, there were 1,330,805 people employed by the three levels of government and $74.4 billion spent on their wages and salaries. Since then, public sector employment has only increased, and I'd hazard a guess, ravenously eats up more of the province's revenues (I'll get back to the reader on the numbers if/when I find them).

But this should surprise no one. When public unions in Ontario spend 94 per cent of all third-party advertising in the last three elections ($15 million) primarily attacking the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, essentially playing kingmaker, the trend towards a more bloated government bureaucracy and exorbitant wages and salaries is the inevitable consequence.

And now this unsustainable trend is leading to its inevitable conclusion. The province of Ontario has a debt of about $317 billion and is the most indebted sub-sovereign borrower in the world, yet the Wynne government still thinks we can afford to spend another $130 billion in transportation projects. Then there's the scheme to sell off Hydro One to make a quick buck to artificially balance the books just before an election, only to have no real solution to stay out of red ink in subsequent years, especially after selling off another revenue-generating asset and increasing the debt load by re-amortizing debt on hydro projects for temporary relief.

So when King Midas can no longer pretend there's not a looming tsunami of debt about to crash down on the province do you think average Ontarians are going to still grind their teeth once a year at a lunchroom supervisor making $111,949.67? Do you really think that job will remain when reality sets in?

Perhaps it's time public-sector employees stopped asking what more their province can do for them, but rather what they can do for their province. More likely than not however, their greed will end up with many of them jobless and pension-less as the ponzi schemes unravel.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

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The Quebec Liberal government tabled its budget last week and it quickly became evident that it was a political masterpiece in communications and cynicism. After three long years of cuts and austerity, the Quebec government is back! There is still one budget to go before the 2018 election, but clearly, the Quebec Liberals have turned the pre-election corner. Couillard's plan rests partly on economic growth, which has turned out as it was projected in 2014. If growth remains stable, expect even more goodies in the next budget, a few months before the next election.

But let's be crystal clear: If the PLQ now has surpluses and can reinvest and sell this budget as the "return of hope", it is only because of major previous cuts to public services when they took hope away. One has to admire the planning that went into it, looking at the election cycle, to cut deeply first in order to be able to build up a chest of pre-election goodies.

Coming less than a week after the stationary exercise bike that was the Federal Liberal's budget, the timing couldn't have been better. The contrast between the two budgets is certainly helping Philippe Couillard and his government.

While Justin Trudeau's government has lost control of the deficit with very little to show for it in terms of jobs, actual infrastructure projects, help for middle class families or increases in support for the front-line services they rely on, the Quebec government is increasing social investments, especially in health and education; implementing tax cuts and getting rid of some user fees while balancing the books.

Of course, this is only possible because Quebec's public services have been starved for the past three years. Premier Couillard likes to say that the Liberals "literally saved Quebec", ignoring of course that it was the Liberals who were drowning the people in the first place.

By gutting the capacity of the state to deliver services and help people, the Quebec Liberals have simply set the stage to implement its greater vision, one where the private sector takes more and more room. One key example is the 2.2 billion dollars Quebec will invest in the Caisse de DÃ©pÃ´t's RÃ©seau Ã‰lectrique MÃ©tropolitain. The REM, as it is known, is a 67-kilometre electric, driverless train system that will link Montreal's airport and train station to the north and south shore. Instead of investing that money in the four underfunded public transit agencies already in place (count them four: the STM, AMT, STL and RTL), the government is going all-in with this P3 project.

Yet, while cynical, the plan is being executed quite well. Will it be enough for Quebec voters to forget all the major problems, scandals and mismanagement? The aftermath of the Charbonneau commission on corruption? The major breakdowns in the health care system under the chaotic performance of Health Minister GaÃ©tan Barette? The Minister of Education's ejectable seat, with five different ministers since the last election? The increased fees for childcare despite the previous election's rhetoric? The completely disorganized mess during the biggest snow storm of the year that left hundreds stranded all night on Highway 13? The answer is possibly.

Because meanwhile, facing Couillard's Liberals, is a divided opposition. The right-wing Coalition Avenir QuÃ©bec is not lifting off the ground: even its Leader FranÃ§ois Legault admits that the party's organisation is lagging. At this point, Legault is mostly putting his hopes on people wanting change and being (slightly) more popular than LisÃ©e to ride a wave to power.

Meanwhile, the separatists are divided amongst three camps. While Jean-FranÃ§ois LisÃ©e trumpets that the Parti QuÃ©bÃ©cois is still the Admiral Ship of the Soverignty Fleet, the PQ is taking hits from the surrounding flotilla. Starboard, it is being shelled by the radical Option Nationale, because of LisÃ©e's decision to postpone a referendum until after 2022. Port side, the PQ is being torpedoed by the leftist Quebec Solidaire and the arrival of media darling Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, taking such a hit that the PQ won't even run against QS' new star recruit. To complicate matters, there is the possibility of a reborn Quebec NDP running candidates in 2018.

Under these circumstances, if an election had been held before the tabling of the budget, chances are Couillard would have formed another government, albeit probably a minority. Things are looking even better for him now.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post