June 2017 - Loonie Politics

Once again, a troubled industry is turning to the government for help. Tax dollars, they say, is the only way journalism can survive!

Is that so?

For years, the traditional print media industry in Canada has been going down a rabbit hole, with the disappearance of the cash cow that was the classified ads, the loss of captive readership and the shrinking of advertising revenues coming from both local and national businesses.

A short-term injection of cash will not make the newspaper industry sustainable and the government would be back to square one in a couple of years. The government should always be prudent before investing in any industry with no clear objectives or strategies on how to recoup that money.

After all, let's remember that when the auto industry required a bailout, taxpayers ended up taking at least a $3.5-billion loss on their investment. Now, of course, part of that was because the Harper Conservatives were eager to quickly balance the budget and were willing to impose short term pains rather than wait for long term gains.

Considering the recovery of the industry, the government would have been better off to keep their shares and use the ownership as leverage to force the automakers to invest in their Canadian plants, protect and create Canadian jobs while pushing for a shift towards better, cheaper green cars in order to meet the demand of eco-conscientious, but cash-strapped, consumers.

It was remarkably short-sighted to sell off those shares without at least recovering the full investment. For example, General Motors just announced record first-quarter earnings and revenue, and in Canada, the 2016 sales were significantly up: Chevrolet sales were the best since 2008. Buick had its best year in a decade. GMC posted its second-best sales year since 2000. And Cadillac had its best retail sales performance ever. Bonuses galore for GM executives, thank you taxpayers for saving our jobs a few years back.

But at least, the government can take solace since the industry did indeed recover because of the bailout, and that tax revenues from the increased sales and from the payroll somewhat compensated for the net loss.

It is hard to see such a scenario unfolding for the newspaper industry however. Why would newspapers suddenly start making money after a bailout? Indeed, the Public Policy Forum's report on the future of journalism and democracy does not pave the way towards a sustainable future for the industry. No structural change, no industry shift. It merely calls for amendments to the Income Tax Act and the Copyright Act to provide new streams of revenue not available to other sectors while calling on the CBC to do more of their work for them by providing additional local coverage and making it available to daily newspapers for free. That's half baked, so let's put that proposal in the oven for a bit longer:

There is something more important for a society than profitability. Canadians should have access to news and should be able to count on journalism to expose the truth and to protect our democratic way of life. It is an important public service, even if it has so far mostly been provided by the private sector.

But if the regular production of original reporting has become a money-losing business, we collectively need to think outside the box if we are to keep that vital service in place, especially when it comes to local content. Instead of asking the CBC to do it for them, this might actually mean saving newspapers as a public service while getting rid of the private, for-profit interests of the corporate press barons. So don't bail them out. Buy them out.

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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So here we are, one month into Andrew Scheer's tenure as leader of the CPC, and already the media and the Liberal establishment is licking their chops at the prospect of shoving him through a wood chipper if he has the temerity to take his plan to defund universities that limit freedom of speech to the voters in the next election.

I can hear their cries and passive aggressive sneers already. "There is no problem with freedom of speech on Canadian campuses!" "If we only cut universities blank cheques there wouldn't be a freedom of speech problem!" "Forcing people to speak a certain way so they don't hurt the feelings of others is just the civil and respectful thing to do!" "Climate change is to blame!" "Why don't you cut funding to *corporations* who limit freedom of speech, huh???"

Yes, Election 2019 is shaping up to be yet another round of everyone's favourite Canadian political game, "Don't Touch The Third Rail!" Except that, instead of just three rails, they seem to be multiplying exponentially, don't they?

Tolerance for uncomfortable truths is at an all time low, and while I hold out no sympathy for disgraced liberal icons like Jon Kay, Steve Ladurantaye, David Johnston and Andrew Potter who have been hoist on their own progressive petards, having to contend with a plague of aggrieved Canadians demanding a pound of flesh apiece in recompense for a perceived slight is severe enough punishment that I fail to see why the government had to take the additional step of officially criminalizing the act.

But no matter how dire the consequences, conservatives in Canada cannot afford to duck and cover this time, even though that's what they usually do when a debate takes an uncomfortable turn. This is on an entirely different and far more fundamental level than wearing the niqab during citizenship ceremonies, funding faith based schools or the vagaries of a carbon tax.

If conservatives in Canada are unwilling to plant their flag and possibly go down in flames on freedom of speech, then we really must ask ourselves what the point of being a conservative in Canada is, other than a club of people who don't like the Liberals and occasionally pick fights with one another because those are at least fights they can win.

Of course, if you ask the Maxime Bernier/libertarian crew whether they're willing to get over themselves and back Andrew Scheer in his fight to preserve something they allegedly believe in, you may get an answer, or they might be otherwise occupied using TheRebel as a forum to air their grievances against the leader.

And perhaps, since freedom of speech was originally a liberal (and Liberal) construct, the fight to preserve it is already a lost cause, since it can be retracted by the Liberals just as easily as it was conceived, and thus we have already accepted their terms.

And when Canada eventually joins the United States in failed statehood and becomes a cautionary tale to the world of what happens when you govern "from the heart out", maybe it would be better if what passes for conservatism in Canada just faded away, so that at least a plausible case could be made that whatever happens to our country, it wasn't the fault of "the corporations". Maybe the Liberals need to wear their failures as theirs and theirs alone.

Yes, there are many reasons to cede this last resort to the left. But, if for no other reason than I have to believe that it isn't all for nothing, I hold out hope that there is still a fight to be had and perhaps even won.

Written by Josh Lieblein

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As the back-and-forth over the budget implementation bill raged between the Senate and House of Commons last week, tempers flared over slights both real and imagined, but through it all, something unexpected happened that may have made Leader of the Government in the Senate err, "government representative" Peter Harder's position untenable going forward.

Backing up to last Wednesday, the House of Commons sent their message saying that they disagreed with the Senate's proposed amendment to delete the escalator clause on the excise tax on beer and wine (the reasons for which ranging from a dislike of new taxes period, to the principle by which an automatic escalator means that the government didn't have to come back to Parliament every year to increase taxes which amounted to a breach of the principle of no taxation without representation). There were two problems with it, however. The first was the boilerplate language in the rejection, insisting that it infringed upon the rights and privileges of the House something that the Senate was already terse about after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's statements in the days leading up to the vote that the Senate didn't have a right to amend money bills (when clearly they do under the constitution they simply can't initiate them). The other problem was that rejection of the Senate's proposed amendments were not spoken to by the Minister of Finance, nor debated in any way they were part of an omnibus motion that the Government House Leader, Bardish Chagger, moved as part of a housekeeping motion to ensure that the Commons rose for the summer that night.

The off-hand dismissal of the Senate's amendments was considered by many senators to be a slap in the face, and is part of that ham-fisted style of legislative management that Chagger has come to exemplify. And when the message was received by the Senate, Harder moved that they deal with the motion immediately something that he got pushback on because the normal course of the Senate is that things are dealt with the following day unless they get consent to do so. A vote was called with a one-hour bell, with the intention that if Harder got the go-ahead to deal with it right away, he would move a motion that the Senate not insist on its amendments, passing the budget bill so that it could go for royal assent (and MPs could go home for the summer without worrying about it).

During that hour, as senators filtered into the Chamber, there was a sour mood in the air at the manner in which the Commons responded to the Senate, and Senate Liberal leader Joseph Day began circulating a proposed amendment to Harder's motion, that he planned to move if the vote went ahead. Harder saw that he had a problem because he didn't want to deal with Day's amendment. Harder ended up voting against his own motion, along with all of the independent senators, and which pushed off debate on the Commons' rejection of the Senate amendments until the following day, buying Harder more time.

The various Senate groups began working on their own motion which would affirm the Senate's ability to amend any bill it likes given its constitutional powers to do so, and all groups were in on the discussion. The plan was for this to be an amendment to Harder's motion to let the budget pass the next day, but over the course of the discussions into the next morning, Harder had gotten wind of the plan and proposed a new motion that would add the new language that while the Senate was not going insist on their amendments, they would remind the Commons that the Senate has the right to amend bills. That the Leader of the Government would send this message to his own government was unprecedented, and is hugely problematic. (This motion passed, with the Conservatives dissenting as well they should as the Official Opposition).

This puts Harder into a particular bind. If he had been thinking things through properly, he should have allowed the other groups to put forward their amendment that he could have either voted against or abstained from voting owing to his responsibility to the government, let the amendment to his motion be added, and then vote for the amended motion in the end thereby giving himself some distance and political cover. But by trying to play the hero and insisting that this message to the Commons be part of his own motion, Harder created a particular break in his role as the Government Leader, as his thumbing his nose at the very government he represents is a very provocative action. It also exposes the government.

The situation that Harder has created for himself is quite possibly untenable going forward, and makes things awkward for the government in the House of Commons. Which party there gets to raise this as an issue? The Conservative Senators were the ones trying to move amendments, and the NDP doesn't believe in the Senate period, and because Chagger's ham-fisted motion being voted in unanimously by all of the other parties, everyone wears the initial provocation.

If anything, this is one more mark in the column of how poor of an idea it was the whole time to have Harder acting as a supposed "independent" representing the government in the Senate (which is an oxymoron to be certain), rather than his being an actual cabinet minister like the Leader of the Government is supposed to be. This faux independence, combined with Harder's lack of experience with the rules of the Chamber, helped to create this mess. That this was almost certainly part of his quest to be seen as the leader of the "independent" Senate writ large, flexing his muscles in protecting its rights and privileges against the government, makes him unable to actually represent the government in a serious capacity going forward. More than that, it shows that Trudeau's attempted reform of the Chamber continues to have some fundamental flaws in its execution.

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A new Mainstreet poll is confirming that the traditional political axis revolving around constitutional battles is a thing of the past in Quebec. The battlefield is no longer about which country should Quebecers belong to. The rise of Quebec Solidaire and the continued strength of the Coalition Avenir QuÃ©bec are the phenomenon to watch as La Belle Province moves towards the October 1st, 2018 election.

Quebec Solidaire is now battling the PQ for third place. There is no question that the small left wing party has been trending upwards since the arrival of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. Mainstreet pegs QS at 18%, over 10 points higher than in the last provincial election and only 4 points behind the PQ. This latest surge in support comes after Nadeau-Dubois' victory in the Gouin by-election. GND is optimistic and ambitious and he is talking openly about becoming Premier of Quebec.

For that to happen, the QS trend upward would have to continue in a major way and start to create some movement outside of the Island of Montreal. The PQ would also have to collapse completely and even lose the support of "les Purs et Durs." That is a remote possibility, but there is no question that Jean-FranÃ§ois LisÃ©e is worried. From a highmark of 35% under previous leader Pierre-Karl PÃ©ladeau, the PQ has now fallen to 22%. You can sense that LisÃ©e is concerned he is trying different tactics to reinvent the PQ once again, like bringing in his very own Green Shift. Furthermore, while the PQ wants to defeat and replace the Liberals, the bulk of their attacks have been recently directed more towards Quebec Solidaire and FranÃ§ois Legault's CAQ,

FranÃ§ois Legault has been slowly but surely establishing himself as the main alternative to Philippe Couillard, while the PQ, now firmly in third place,with their eyes on QS in its rearview mirror. Still the third party in the National Assembly, the CAQ is rising in the polls and is now the preferred choice amongst francophone voters, the last LÃ©ger pegging its support at 31% support.

But Legault has a few problems to solve in order to consolidate the CAQ position as the main challenger to the governing Liberals.

On the ground, the organisation is weak. Of the 14 by-elections that were held since the last general election, the Caquistes saw their vote share drop in 10 of them. The CAQ membership has shrunk by half and now sits only at 11 000 members. Despite the polls, the CAQ is being out-fundraised significantly by the other three parties. If it weren't for the generous public financing formula, the CAQ wouldn't have anywhere near the means of its ambition. Irritated by Legault's statement that the PQ was no longer a concern and that his only opponents are Couillard's Liberals, Jean-FranÃ§ois LisÃ©e is reminding anyone about these problems any chance he gets.

Obviously, these are major concerns for the Caquiste strategists. Of the three main parties, they are the least organized. In the current landscape, which is basically still a close three-way race with less than 10 points between the front-running Liberals and the lagging PÃ©quistes, they know that they must have a better machine on the ground to give them extra seats. Hoping for a wave is simply not a sustainable option.

This is why Legault was less present in the National Assembly during the session that just ended. This is also why you won't see him in the most recent CAQ pre-election ad. Legault's team understands the need to build up his team, which starts by allowing other members of the party to be more visible and to make themselves known. In turn, this allows them to grow their own network of support and increase their own team-building capabilities.

A former CEO of Air Transat and one-time PQ ministre, Legault is not a flamboyant Leader. But he is serious and more and more consistent. While the government is facing a slumping economy and governance difficulties, namely in Transport and Health, Legault has scored some points and has managed to prevent his climb from being stopped by unprovoked errors. There has been some, like when Legault goofed on Boeing's chairman salary in the heat of the Bombardier debacle, or when he first defended the ethical lapses of deputy Claude Surprenant as "little errors" before excluding him from his caucus days later.

But Legault didn't pay a heavy price for these mistakes. That's because Legault and his Caquiste caucus have been focussed on their messaging, steadily defending consumers, patients and taxpayers. They are on top of the most relevant files while the PQ has been distracted by Alliance negotiations and soul searching. It is now paying some dividends for the CAQ.

For Legault, CAQ Leader since 2011, the next election is probably his last kick at the can. He has been patient, he works hard, and he is more and more disciplined. If he fails to convince Quebecers to throw the Liberals out and replace them with the very first CAQ government, party and caucus members will be looking for a change. Nobody is organizing officially. But people around some MNAs, like ADQ veteran Eric Caire, House Leader FranÃ§ois Bonnardel and former TV personalities Nathalie Roy and FranÃ§ois Paradis, are already thinking about the next steps if Legault fails to become Premier after his third attempt.

Photo Credit: Montreal Gazette

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Ah, but what to make of this Liberal government?

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister, it seemed more than enough that his sunny ways existed. A welcome breath of fresh air from the dour utilitarian, the sentient economics textbook, he was replacing.

The promises seemed pretty solid, too.

Greater transparency, unmuzzled scientists, electoral reform, and on and on. These weren't promises made on pure policy grounds, either. They were explicitly set out as a rebuke to the governing style and substance of Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

The deal was pretty straightforward: Elect us, and we'll be different.

They've certainly kept the style half of their promises. Barely a day goes by without some cheery announcement from a minister or the big man himself that's heavy on the doe-eyed sentimentalism. It's getting to the point that I'm starting to wonder if this may be a key part of the emerging Trudeau legacy: lofty rhetoric unmoored from actual deeds.

Looking at this week's access to information legislation overhaul and the you'll see an example of the rhetoric far outpacing the action contained within the law.

As VICE features editor Justin Ling pointed out, the changes to the law don't really codify anything. The promise was that the Prime Minister's Office, and the offices of ministers, would be covered under the act. In theory, this would mean that a journalist, lawyer, or whoever would be able to make a formal request for documents from the PMO or cabinet office. Right now, those are all exempt from the law.

But, instead of just adding those offices under the access umbrella, the Liberal's did a nifty trick where they codified that those offices would release information through "proactive disclosure."

According to Ling's report, Treasury Board President Scott Brison told reporters, "We are fulfilling our mandate commitmentâ€”we are extending the Access to Information Act to ministers' offices and to the Prime Minister's Office for the first time ever."

And that, dear reader, is what's known as bullshit.

It gives the veneer of transparency, because here they are releasing documents out of their own generosity. Look how great they are, how proactive! But it's not hard to see how this system of self-directed openness could be subverted. Instead of being compelled by law to release things that they're asked to make public, they'd instead get to pick and choose what to publish.

In this case, the proposal is to release documents like question period talking points and the titlesâ€”not the full documents, mind, just the titlesâ€”of briefing notes to ministers.

The goods, the real grease that keeps the gears of government churning away, that stuff will still stay secret, still out of reach from you or I. The real advice and deliberation inside the executive will be left instead for historians to puzzle through decades down the road.

Now, credit where it's due. The government has set out on a reasonably ambitious course to tackling climate change. Getting a carbon tax set into law is not going to be an easy task, and they seem willing to follow though. And while legalized cannabis is likely going to turn into a puritan red-tape nightmare, it looks like that will happen, too.

But there seems to be an ever-widening gulf between the government's rhetoric and what it does. Trudeau campaigns on a platform of respect for Parliament and debate, then his government tries to rewrite the rules to limit debate as though Parliament was a nuisance standing in the way of progress.

In the same vein, the attempted appointment of Madeleine Meilleur to be the official languages commissioner was breathtaking for its gall. Here was a candidate deemed too partisan â€” by Meilleur's own admission! â€” for the Senate, but perfectly suitable as an independent officer of Parliament. Meilleur would have to withdraw herself from consideration, when it became clear to the government what was obvious to everyone else.

And let's not forget the big show of freeing scientists and other civil servants from the shackles of Harper's relentless message control, the government opted instead to add leg irons to the bureaucratic media kit. The only difference now is they're nice about this stuff.

As National Post reporter Tristin Hopper found out, simple factual questions can't be answered without the intervention of the media department. As an anonymous federal employee emailed him, "No problem â€” you have some interesting questions there that I hope I can discuss with you â€” but I'm not optimistic that they will. We're in a far more intense period of message control than we ever experienced under the Harper regime."

Again and again on issues of transparency and good governance, the Liberals say the right things, then act in complete opposition to those. When faced with a situation where they could either open up the workings of the government to the public, or tighten their grip on the message, they opt to tighten their grip.

Through the sheer force of their positivity they've been able to skate past many of their broken promises and cynical compromises now that they hold the executive reins. But things can't go on like this forever.

A balloon can only hold so much hot air before it pops.

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You may have noticed more people than usual running around calling themselves socialists lately. The once-taboo term is becoming increasingly normalized, partially because of splashy politicians like Jeremey Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, partially because ours is a lazy, selfish age where many feel untethered from the adult responsibility of having sensible political opinions. A great many progressives, particularly young ones, have decided if they're going to be left they may as well be far-left, and if they're going to be far-left, they may as well call themselves socialists, with "socialism" understood to simply mean "far-left in an edgy way."

Yet what many voters on today's far left seem to actually desire is something closer to "Wynne-ism," the ideology animating Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, head of what's been dubbed "the most left wing regime in the country."

Wynne is not a deep thinker, which makes her well-suited for our time. Her core philosophy seems to simply comprise an uncomplicated belief that government possesses limitless capacity to make things better. This benevolence is delivered not through formal socialism â€” outright government control of industry and economic production (that would be too creative) â€” but merely ratcheting up the generosity of everything government already does.

Government pays its employees, so Wynnism says they should pay them more.

Government funds programs, so Wynnism says they should fund them more.

Government can force people to do nice things for others, so Wynnism says it should force them more.

Conservatives like to say "government can't create jobs" but this is hardly true â€” the government can obviously hire people to work for it. Wynne, who in the last provincial election countered Tory rival Tim Hudak's infamous pledge to fire 100,000 bureaucrats by bragging she might add "more" has indeed done so; the job creation rate for government work has dramatically outpaced the private sector under her reign.

Like any good workers, these people want to make more money, and Wynne's been happy to provide. The provinces' teachers and education workers received a four percent raise in April, while thousands of other provincial government employees got what the Toronto Star called a "surprising" 7.5 percent raise â€” "with no demands for concessions" â€” earlier this month. The number of Ontario government employees making more than $100,000 now totals over 123,000 people â€” the list has lengthened 727% since Wynne's party took power â€” and includes not just CEOs and presidents, but thousands of teachers, nurses, and middle managers.

That said, the two-million strong Ontario public sector is not overly large, and only represents about 15% of the provincial labour force (though their salaries do comprise a full half of all provincial program spending). But anyone outside this elite doesn't have to fret; Premier Wynne recently raised the private sector minimum wage to $15 an hour and decreed that private sector bosses must give their workers more paid sick days and longer vacations.

But what if you can't find a job in the first place? Never fear, Premier Wynne has announced plans to begin testing a "guaranteed income" program wherein the government will pay you a salary of "up to $16,989 per year" regardless of whether you work or not. For those who would prefer to hang out in university, she's also promised "free tuition for hundreds of thousands of Ontario students."

Ontario has generous public health insurance, but people still have to pay for prescription drugs. So Wynne says they're now "free" if you're under 24 (with presumably higher ages to come). Electricity from Wynne's mismanaged state-run power company has gotten pretty pricy, so Wynne says she'll lower everyones' bills by 25%.

Much of the above has been described by critics as "nakedly political," which is a way of saying Premier Wynne thinks it will help her get re-elected. Her numbers are awful right now but they were pretty bad in 2014 too, and her party actually gained seats in the fight against Hudak's Conservatives, who promised to shrink government and balance the budget.

Ontario conservatives have been banging on about balancing the budget because it's an obvious point of contrast between themselves and Premier Wynne, who's financed her generosity with money the province doesn't have, turning Ontario into the most indebted sub-national jurisdiction on earth. As interest payments consume more and more of the budget and lenders grow skeptical and stingy, this will eventually force a Greece-style reckoning of massive program cuts, layoffs, and tax hikes, but the philosophy of Wynnism says that sort of thinking is silly. What matters is what's happening now!

Kathleen Wynne only needs 38-point-something of the Ontario electorate to buy her approach to win another majority government. Recent history has shown this isn't a difficult coalition to cobble from youth, urbanites, government worker households, and others with aâ€¦ shall we say, uncurious attitude to where government money comes from.

Should she triumph, it will vindicate and validate the rule of a new ideology that, while not quite as sinister as socialism, will still inflict a tremendous price on those unserious enough to be captivated by its easy appeal.

Written by J.J. McCullough

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Political leaders would have to work more closely with caucuses to ensure loyalty, and make certain the right policies were being implemented

TORONTO, Ont. /Troy Media/ U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's snap election on June 8 to get a bigger majority government during Brexit didn't pay off. May could pay the ultimate price and her fate should be a lesson to Canadian political parties.

May's Conservatives ended up with a minority government (318 out of 650 seats), and she hastily set up an arrangement with the 10-seat Democratic Unionist Party to stay in power.

Nevertheless, May's future remains on very shaky ground. After all she attempted to do, and failed to accomplish, her head could be on the political chopping block.

Why? The United Kingdom, like several other countries that use the Westminster parliamentary democracy system (i.e. Australia and New Zealand), conduct leadership reviews or spill motions.

Party leaders can be tossed out of their positions if they lose the confidence of their party caucuses. Although a snap leadership review is used very sparingly, it remains a powerful political tool in difficult and/or controversial situations.

For example, Australian prime minister Julia Gillard lost a 2013 Labour Party leadership spill 57-45 to her closest rival, former PM Kevin Rudd. This effectively ended her party leadership and she resigned as prime minister the next day.

Another Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, faced two Liberal Party leadership spill motions in 2015. He survived the first one in February (by a 61-39 vote), and then lost in September (by a 54-44 vote) to his nation's current leader, Malcolm Turnbull.

And, in the most pertinent example, U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher came up four votes short on the first ballot of a 1990 Conservative Party leadership challenge against Michael Heseltine. The legendary Iron Lady resigned in tears shortly thereafter.

Will May follow in the footsteps of her country's first (and only other) female prime minister? Time will tell.

Some countries using the Westminster system don't emphasize leadership reviews in particular, Canada.

Our country had a long-standing tradition of leadership reviews. Some fascinating political scenarios led to John Diefenbaker's collapse in 1966, Joe Clark's fall from grace in 1983, and nearly led to John Turner's downfall in 1986.

Yet, as Conservative MP (and former leadership candidate) Michael Chong pointed out in a Feb. 11, 2015, National Post op-ed, "MPs gave up that practice, influenced by the American system where voters elect a party leader and a president." This helped create a hybrid of a "presidential style of government on a Westminster parliamentary democracy" with an "[a]lmost absolute power for party leaders and little power for elected MPs."

Chong noted, "in other Westminster parliaments, when the leader is in question, MPs call on the leader to resign. â€¦ In Canada, when the leader is in question, MPs resign." He cited the 12 Canadian Alliance MPs who "resigned or were booted from" caucus during Stockwell Day's leadership, and the two MLAs who resigned from Alberta premier Alison Redford's caucus.

"Political self-immolation has become the final recourse for MPs in Canada who oppose powerful party leaders," wrote Chong, and it is "the final act of the powerless."

Did Canada ultimately make the right decision? In certain ways, no.

Reviving leadership reviews would inject an important democratic principle back into the Canadian political system. It's often a party caucus's best political ally: it can be called suddenly, immediately and without warning. If done effectively and correctly, there's little time for a leader (and their caucus allies) to react and prepare.

While these snap reviews wouldn't end leadership scuffles, they would surely stop them from happening on a regular basis.

Our political leaders would also have to listen and work more closely with their party caucuses to ensure loyalty. They would have to be constantly on their toes to make certain the right political ideas and policies are being implemented, too. If not, they would face the wrath of their party caucuses.

It's high time that they should in Canada, again.

Photo Credit: Montreal Gazette

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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The headlines everywhere are about how the "newly independent" Senate is suddenly obstructionist. It's a curious term considering that there is little evidence that they are actually holding up government legislation, nor have they outright defeated a single bill, but media narratives can be self-perpetuating, so maybe it behoves us to delve a little deeper into what is going on, so that we can sort out some of these rapidly metastasizing myths.

To begin with, amending bills are generally not actually being obstructionist. Yes, more bills are being amended now on the whole, but as a proportion of bills historically speaking, it's still on the low side. Amending bills is one of the primary functions of the Senate in its legislative capacity, and given that the government has accepted a number of those amendments would suggest that perhaps that those bills were indeed flawed the first time around.

But they didn't amend nearly as many bills under the Harper years, you might cry. Does that mean that the Trudeau government is drafting poorer-quality bills? The answer to that is no, because once Harper had a majority in the Senate, he used an illegitimate whip to ensure that his senators would pass bills unamended except in rare circumstances where they agreed that a legitimate error was made and had the opportunity to fix it as a government amendment. What you will find, however, is that a number of highly problematic (read: almost certainly unconstitutional) bills were passed, but that the Senate committees would end up attaching "observations" to the bills so that there was a record that the problems were identified, so that when that legislation was challenged before the courts and much of it was there was a record that Parliament did find problems, even if they didn't have the votes to amend it.

This is an important step that people overlook the need for there to be a record so that when a court has to decide what the will of parliament was in passing a bill, and that is a consideration that comes up an awful lot when judges are asked to interpret laws, they need to know what the discussion was. It's also one of the reasons why the Senate has held additional hearings into bills that the House of Commons sped through the process, like the trans rights bill. Senators knew that the legislation would inevitably be challenged in the courts, so they made sure to hear from the bill's opponents so that there was a record that they'd heard the concerns and dismissed them. It wasn't about validating those points of view, nor was it about "obstructing" the swift passage the legislation. It was about ensuring that the process was followed properly because it matters when these things wind up before the courts.

The "obstructionist" narrative has recently been applied a great deal with the budget implementation bill, mysteriously given that the bill hadn't even been debated for three days when the headlines started saying that it was "stuck" in the Senate, or that they were "holding it up." There was a legitimate debate to be had about whether the Senate has the power to split bills deemed to be omnibus (and most budget implementation bills are omnibus by nature the debate tends to fall on whether it's an abuse of omnibus powers or not), and the fact that this motion came to the floor of the chamber suddenly had the country's pundit class reaching for their pearls, and possibly swooning onto a fainting couch. How dare they touch a budget bill! Err, except the very first bill of this parliament, being the Supplementary Estimates, a money bill, was sent to the Senate without crucial financial schedules and needed to be sent back, which was them catching the Commons' mistakes yet again. Like they're supposed to.

As for who is doing the "obstructing," the numerical breakdown has shown that it is largely the Conservatives in the chamber (not a surprise the opposition is supposed to oppose), as well as the Senate Liberals, who are not giving their ideological fellows a free ride when it comes to the legislation they're putting forward. But the Senate Liberal objections may have deeper meaning than most people see on the surface.

One of the ongoing issues with the Senate is the persistent concern that there is an attempt to abandon its Westminster character and to abolish the official opposition, so that you will eventually have a chamber that is either full of 100 "loose fish" at worst, or a handful of small interest groups that qualify under the new caucus rules at best, rather than partisan groupings. Not only would that be a very bad thing for accountability going forward, as ideological scrutiny is just as important as legislative scrutiny, but it weakens the Senate's overall functionality.

With so many new appointments that are in the "independent" category who, despite their enthusiasm to put their own stamp on legislation, remain very deferential to the government and the House of Commons, and it is the more veteran senators who are trying to ensure that the freedoms and privileges of the Senate are not lost in the rush to non-partisanship. That so many were appointed at once stresses the ability of the Senate to integrate them effectively, replaying the travesty of the 2008 mass-appointment under Harper that brought in a number of new senators who were told from day one that they were subject to the whip of the PMO something that was out of bounds. While the new senators aren't being told they are under a whip, they are instead in danger of being susceptible to more insidious attempts to weaken the Senate's independence and ability to hold the government to account. If any of the attempts to resist this undermining of the Senate is seen as obstruction, then maybe we need a better calibration of the issues that are at stake. It's not about the passage of a few bills it's about the health of a vital parliamentary institution going forward.

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The recently concluded CPC leadership race was a sustained upsurge of insanity that baffled the country's best satirists and comedians, befuddled journalists, and hopefully forced the party establishment to confront a few hard truths about who its members are, if only for a few blessed moments.

We need only look at the still-flaming wreckage of not a few presumptive front-runner campaigns that tried and failed to take advantage of the post-Harper vacuum and rudely drag the party in one direction or another.

The air was so full of conflicting polls, memes, talking points and prefabricated outrage that the only responsible thing to do was to throw your hands up in confusion, pop some popcorn and watch the show unfold.

Those who made predictions or attempted to control this madness only ended up looking foolish or found themselves stripped of their dignity against their will. I myself fell victim to this when with Kevin O'Leary still in the race at the time I claimed that Andrew Scheer had not a hope in hell of becoming leader. Two days later, O'Leary was out done in by the harsh response of the Canadian electorate and the party faithful. (In my defence, I did manage to correctly predict that being unable to connect with the rank-and-file would be O'Leary's biggest challenge.)

Luckily for me, I do not derive my employment from the business of prediction and punditry, unlike the blinkered journalists who claimed to have missed entirely Scheer's momentum and the quiet efforts of social conservatives to elect him, and frustrated shame-based "entrepreneurs" like Scott Gilmore who thought the time was ripe to cash in on Red Tory discontent and embarrassment.

Being wrong now and again is not the cataclysmic and professionally disastrous event that these terminally insecure hacks believe it to be.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with a outpouring of insanity every now and then, especially from a party that had been consistently forced to self-censor itself all through the Harper decade, convinced that an errant tweet or slip of the tongue could and would rip the party apart.

And in this race, all of the various campaigns that ran on change of one sort or another, from Kellie Leitch to Michael Chong, fell victim one by one to this same hateful self-consciousness.

In some cases, the so-called professionals in charge fooled themselves into thinking their obsessively repeated "messages" would carry the day without actually putting in the legwork.

In others, internal politicking and attempts to save face snuffed out any actual momentum.

Still others felt they had something to prove, or had to regain something they lost in 2015.

But ultimately, all of these efforts fell short for the same reason they were conceived in a place of insecurity. Comparatively speaking, then, Andrew Scheer's dimpled determination makes him look like a Zen warrior.

But can Scheer remain as steady and unflappable as our Star Wars sock wearing, wedding-photobombing, yoga-posing, handstanding, selfie-taking Prime Minister under the withering assault of the Liberal forces?

It'll be hard to match the basedness of a man who can, without irony, claim that he is standing up for "Canadian Values" while Kellie Leitch is being pilloried for doing the same, but if anyone can do it, it's Scheer.

Written by Josh Lieblein

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Finally, the gloves are off. That's what most New Democrats who decided to watch last weekend's leadership debate in St. John's thought as they watched the contestants actually debate.

Because many were rightfully wondering if this debate was worth watching, considering what had happened during the first three debates and especially since the only one who seemed interested in sparring, Pat Stogran, had abandoned his quest for the NDP crown. If they didn't tune in though, they missed a good one.

From the start, Guy Caron showed that he was ready to rumble. He used his opening statement to challenge all of his opponents on a specific point. He challenged Angus to explain how being pragmatic over being aspirational was going to win over Canadians, he pointed out that Singh was late to the race and had yet to commit to run federally, win or lose. Caron singled out Ashton's lack of specifics regarding solutions to tackle precarious work and he wondered where Peter Julian would get the $100 billion for his free tuition and social housing plan.

It took some time for the other candidates to get warmed up, but they eventually did. One of the most interesting points in the debate happened when Charlie Angus picked up where Caron left off and asked Jagmeet Singh if he was with the Federal Party for the long run, if he was going to run federally no matter what. Singh danced around the issue, stating that as a New Democrat, he was already working to elect New Democrats at all levels and jurisdictions. Faced with this non-answer, Angus pushed back and Singh lost his cool, wagging his finger at Charlie, reminding him that it was "not his turn."

Angus also went after Ashton on the practicality of her proposal regarding free tuition, especially considering it is a provincial jurisdiction. Neither her nor Julian could really explain how free tuition would work.

There was a deep, thoughtful exchange which policy geeks thoroughly enjoyed when Ashton went after Caron's signature policy on basic income, pointing out that it had also been proposed by right-wing politicians like Kathleen Wynne. Caron defended his proposal fairly well, with a detailed explanation of his model and its advantages over other basic income plans. Caron didn't leave it there, he immediately counter-attacked, once again wondering where were Ashton's specifics on policies to fight poverty.

Finally, Niki Ashton and Peter Julian went really hard after Singh on the Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, demanding his position here and now. Singh dodged and deferred, saying he needed more time to consult with stakeholders and with Notley's Alberta government and Horgan's soon-to-be government. Singh was able to buy some time by using some Mulcair-like language about balancing environment and economical interests of both provinces, but his lack of position will be hard to sustain in the long run.

Pipeline politics is clearly the most explosive issue of the leadership race. The BC and Alberta wings are at odds and it offers an immediate, bold contrast with Justin Trudeau, a contrast that Julian and Ashton are clearly eager to establish.

Kudos to party officials, who decided to change the format in order to allow more exchanges and brought in a new segment dubbed "Question Period" to let candidates ask questions of their own. The candidates were a bit tentative at times and they still agreed on a lot of things, but there is no question that there has been a shift in the tone of the race. The silly season might have started on Parliament Hill, but New Democrats are now digging into very serious business. Differences and contrasts will now be the order of the day. That's a good thing.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Month: June 2017

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