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Day: March 6, 2018

In the 2015 campaign, the Liberals promised a great many things when it came to restoring the oversight of taxpayer dollars to Parliament after the Harper government weakened it, particularly when it comes to government borrowing.  And in their budget implementation bills, it actually seemed like this was a promise that they had actually kept.  As it turns out, they weaselled out of actually fulfilling that promise in the fine print of the bill.  So last week, Liberal Senate Leader Joseph Day introduced a bill that seeks to fix the problem once and for all, and that will force the government to live up to that promise.

First, a little background.  From the very origins of our parliamentary system with the Magna Carta in 1215, King John agreed that his government could not raise revenues through taxation without the consent of Parliament.  Since at least 1688, the King and his government couldn't borrow any funds without Parliament's consent.  As the system evolved in Canada, government borrowing was part of the Supply and Estimates process, and the borrowing was debated at the same time as the authority to spend the money that was being requested.

This was the case until 1975, when changes to the Supply and Estimates process were brought in to ostensibly deal with the increasing complexity of government finances (but in reality allowed government to steamroll through the Estimates with the "deemed" rule), but the compromise was that when a government ran a deficit, they needed to introduce a separate "borrowing bill" in Parliament in order to request permission to borrow a specified amount of money.  This became enshrined into section 43 of the Financial Administration Act, which stated that "no money shall be borrowed by or on behalf of Her Majesty…except as provided by or under…(an) Act of Parliament…"  And that meant at least one borrowing bill every year that allowed Parliament to scrutinize and debate the government's debt-management strategy, and to do what Parliament's ultimate purpose is to hold the government to account by means of controlling its supply of money.

This changed in 2007, when Stephen Harper's Conservative government slipped a tiny clause into the middle of a very large omnibus budget bill that amended the Financial Administration Act.  The new wording: Section 43.1 stating that "The Governor in Council may authorize the Minister to borrow money on behalf of Her Majesty in right of Canada."  In other words, Cabinet could take it upon itself to borrow any money it wanted without parliamentary scrutiny or oversight, and without a bill to authorize it.  Because why should Parliament matter?

The House of Commons didn't notice this change, but the Senate did only after the bill had already passed.  In the years since, Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray and Liberal Senator Wilfred Moore introduced bills to delete that clause and restore borrowing authority to Parliament, where it belongs.  And the Liberals in the House of Commons at the time were in support of this Ralph Goodale was signed on to be the sponsor of Moore's latest bill, which had the added heft of his being a former finance minister.

Fast-forward to 2015 and the general election.  In their campaign platform, under the heading of "Greater oversight of taxpayer dollars," the Liberal promise was this: "restoring the requirement ended by Stephen Harper that the government's borrowing plans receive Parliament's pre-approval."  And it sounded great, like they had listened to the concerns that Liberal senators had raised for the past several years.

But when the first 2017 budget implementation bill came to pass, their legislation was a little less than what was promised.  Rather than just doing the easiest thing, which was to delete that Conservative clause and restore borrowing authority to Parliament, the Liberals instead said that they would only need to go back to Parliament if the amount being borrowed would make the federal debt exceed $1.168 trillion.  Oh, and Cabinet only had to report back to Parliament about the money it has borrowed every three years starting in 2020 beyond the next scheduled general election.

In other words, the Liberal government weaselled out of their own promise, and gave themselves the out to keep borrowing without Parliament approving it so long as it was below that total debt threshold.  Senator Day estimates that it means that there is room for the government to borrow as much as $100 billion without any Parliamentary approval or oversight, nor does it have to report on its debt-management strategy.

Now, I get that the Liberals are a bit sensitive about the deficit after they decided to abandon their temporary-deficits-for-three-years promise (and not without reason, considering that there was about $70 billion in GDP missing from the Conservatives' Budget 2015 plans and the 2016 reality, which much of that additional spending that the Liberals made).  And I get that they've shifted their deficit anchor from a fully balanced budget target to one of a declining debt-to-GDP ratio (perhaps because the Conservatives' balanced budget was a paper exercise that was not truly balanced, and which booked a bunch of fictional savings like the Phoenix pay system, and the gong show known as Shared Services Canada).  But just because they don't want to have an uncomfortable discussion about those deficits doesn't mean that they should renege on their actual, clear promise to restore parliamentary borrowing authority.

Parliament's role in holding the government to account matters, and it especially matters when it comes to the public purse.  For too long, we have let those responsibilities slide in the name of expediency, which is why our Estimates cycle has become a pro forma exercise that doesn't serve accountability.  That MPs let the successive governments get away with changing the Public Accounts so that they don't match the Estimates was nothing less than a dereliction of duty.  And for the Harper government to do away with borrowing authority was a cynical undermining of our very parliamentary system.  The Liberals have thus far talked a good game about reforming the Estimates to be more transparent, and I will give them props for releasing a budget in advance of the Estimates this year so that they can actually match up for the first time in decades.  But their weaselling out of their promise on borrowing authority needs to be called out and fixed, and good on Senator Day for taking them to task on this.  Hopefully the rest of Parliament sees the light and passes his bill.

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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Watching the press coverage that greeted Prime Minister Trudeau's disastrous trip to India was like watching a dam explode.  Never in recent Canadian political history can I recall such a mad scramble among journalists to express such unified sentiments of mockery and condemnation.  The production of vicious, searing columns began to feel like a sort of arms race — who could say something worse than was said yesterday, and say it soonest?

What made the moment feel particularly unique was the closure it seemed to represent.  Every negative presumption or stereotype about the Trudeau administration was confirmed, and then some.  The incompetence, the juvenile obsession with image, the crass ethnic pandering, the creepy softness-bordering-on-outright-sympathy for terrorists, the brazen refusal to concede failure or admit fault.  Hard news stories now follow the editorials, with reporters documenting the trip's dire consequences for the prime minister's personal brand ("biggest hit since 2015") and poll standings ("would lose if election held tomorrow").

I'm a bit of a deviant from conservative orthodoxy in that I've never entirely bought into this idea that the Canadian media is deeply in the tank for Trudeau.  During the man's 2012-2013 rise to power, I was paid to keep tabs on the press, and what I witnessed was a great deal of skepticism and skewed glances towards this obviously preposterous figure with such unjustifiably high ambition.  It's important to remember that back in those days, it was an entrenched press narrative that the Liberal Party was on death's door, and the ascension of silly, unqualified Justin Trudeau as leader in the face of the cowardly abdication of responsibility among the party's statesmen was widely seen as a gimmicky act of desperation.

In the end, however, this indifference was ultimately compensated by the press's truly fanatic hostility to late-era Stephen Harper, coupled with their blasé attitude towards Thomas Mulcair.  Yet then, as now, what I find most notable about press coverage of the PM is how few voices are objectively for him, in a positivist sense.

It contrasts most noticeably with the press treatment of Barack Obama, who American liberal journalists genuinely respected and admired.  President Obama was a politician as much as any other, but he was also an indisputably thoughtful, cerebral man.  He was the inspiring product of an unusual life, and an autodidact of numerous skills — writing not insignificantly among them.  There was thus a certain cachet and respectability inherent in both liking him and being seen to like him.

Justin Trudeau, by contrast, has never been a comparably cool or compelling man.  He is a child of privilege and a product of the celebritification of politics, and has a mostly shallow image-driven appeal.  There's never been much evidence to suggest Trudeau has particularly deep motivations for being in politics, or has even thought very seriously about political questions.  He became famous because of his bloodline, as opposed to something like Barack Obama's 2004 convention speech.  He has little obvious appeal to Canada's intellectual set, and beyond elevating him as a symbol of Canadian contrast with Donald Trump's America, they seem to have little use for him.

It's true Trudeau has gained a second wind in recent years as a leading light in the new politics of political correctness, yet it's revealing that the most fawning press praise he receives on this front comes from international sources, the Rolling Stones of the world.  Despite good publicity internationally, the reaction back home has often found Trudeau on the receiving end of Canada's famed propensity for "tall poppy" resentment among its chattering classes.

Yet the chattering class doesn't want to see the dirty Conservatives win, either, of course, which necessitates a need to make the next year about Andrew Scheer in some way.  A strong anti-Scheer narrative can cancel out anti-Trudeau apathy, and rationalize media coverage that is effectively pro-Liberal, even if only through an implied process of elimination.  We see this happen constantly in this country: Conservative candidates, be they Stockwell Day, Danielle Smith, Tim Hudak, or whoever, flop, we are told, because they proved incapable of not being awful — which is always held as the bar a Tory politician must clear.  The Liberals are then framed as winning through a sort of default, which removes any real moral culpability from those who helped promote the whole "natural governing party" meme in the first place.

As 2019 draws closer, one expects to see more effort exerted to portray Scheer as weird or frightening, possibly because he is incapable of controlling the crazies in his party, or too eager to pander to the lunatic fringe — something we've already seen hints of with the contrived negative coverage of his handling of Senator Lynn Beyak, or the hiring of campaign manager Hamish Marshall.

It must be said, as well, that Trudeau's re-election may ultimately be framed as something of a "surprise," and in doing so expose some of the press' deeper systemic failings.  Many of the groups most loyal to Trudeau, such as young women and immigrants, are not terribly well represented in the Canadian press, particularly the commentariat side, which can result in a skewered sense of just how many Trudeau fans are really out there, and on what grounds they like him.  Despite receiving nearly 100% negative press coverage, for instance, 37% of Canadians are said to believe the PM's India trip was either neutral or positive (with a rather depressing 23% having no opinion), meaning a quite sizeable chunk of the Canadian public simply don't inhabit the same perceptual universe as blue-checkmark Twitter.

It certainly feels like Canadian politics has passed a significant milestone, and going forward I suspect it will be far more socially acceptable to find fault with Trudeau in progressive media circles than it was even a few months ago.  But the Canadian electorate is a big and complicated thing, and partisans of all sides must remain skeptical of drawing sweeping conclusions from those whose voices are simply the easiest ones to hear.

Written by J.J. McCullough

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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