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The federal leader seems unaware of key issues. That can hardly give party supporters confidence in his abilities

In only a couple of minutes, Jagmeet Singh showed why he's not going to last in federal politics.

The federal NDP leader had an interview on CTV's Question Period with host Evan Solomon on Sunday.  Near the end of their discussion, Solomon asked him about a Jan. 9 Hill Times opinion piece written by Lu Shaye, China's ambassador to Canada.  The piece alleges the recent arrest of Huawei Technologies CFO Meng Wanzhou was related to "western egotism and white supremacy."

This is a tailor-made question.  Even if Singh hadn't seen this op-ed and/or heard this comment, there were many ways to shift the conversation.

China has a notoriously poor record when it comes to human rights, freedom of speech and free elections.  Canadians are detained in China, and there have been reports this has been going on for years.  Huawei's close ties with China's communist government has heightened concerns that its 5G network could infringe upon our nation's safety and security.

In addition, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said very little about the Huawei and detainee controversies.

Solomon's question was the equivalent of a softball.  What did Singh do with this big, fat pitch?

He whiffed at it.

"Sorry, who, uh, who accused who of white supremacy?"

That was the starting point of Singh's disastrous performance and it only got worse.

After the CTV host repeated the question with additional facts, the NDP leader bizarrely responded, "I don't know if there is any evidence of that suggestion," and proceeded to condemn U.S. President Donald Trump's relationship with China.

What did this question have to do with Trump?

Absolutely nothing.

"I know you're criticizing the Trump administration," Solomon said, "but China has detained two Canadians, I just wonder if you've got your eye on the ball here."

Singh, who was now completely flustered, said, "right … right, so with China's detention of Canadians that is deeply concerning.  We need to make sure that anyone being detained, it's being done in the appropriate manner, it's being done in the right manner, there is full due process, laws are being followed."

I'll spare you the rest of this torturous experience.  Suffice to say, Singh couldn't answer the question and had nothing to offer except blank stares and boilerplate language.

Hours after the interview was conducted, the NDP leader told the Toronto Star, "I didn't hear what he had said … and once given the question, I responded.  Yes, I was aware. … I expressed that there is a deep concern on the part of Canada for people being detained."

That's not even slightly believable.

If this had been the reason, Singh would have answered Solomon's question differently and/or complained to CTV immediately.  (To date, neither he nor his team have done so.)  Hence, this is nothing more than damage control and it's not mitigating the damage whatsoever.

Should we be surprised?

After all, Singh was caught with his pants down at a media scrum in the House of Commons last April.  He was asked whether NDP MPs were onside with his position in support of Bill C-71, the Liberal government's defence of gun control.  Some of his MPs, including Niki Ashton and Nathan Cullen, had voted to scrap the federal long-gun registry.

"Give me a moment," Singh said, then turned away from the cameras to NDP parliamentary leader Guy Caron, had a short conversation and returned with the statement, "So yes, right now our caucus is in support of this bill."

The real kicker?

He was in the House during the entire debate and should have known exactly where his own party stood!
That's the problem.  Singh is supposed to be fundamentally aware of these issues, and his staff is supposed to make him aware of potential media questions and issues of the day.  This is part of his job and he's failing miserably at it.

The NDP should be very embarrassed with their leader.  I wonder how many party supporters are privately hoping he loses next month's Burnaby South byelection and leaves the federal political scene altogether.

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

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.


Theresa May just made history.  Not, as some think, by suffering a record 432-202 Parliamentary drubbing over Brexit.  By remaining Prime Minister regardless.

With left-wing lunatic Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn putting forward a non-confidence motion, Tory MPs shuffled nervously back toward May, giving her a 325-306 consolation victory.  But at what cost to their Constitution?

Brexit is the issue for Theresa May.  It allowed her to clamber over the political corpse of her former boss David Cameron into 10 Downing St.  She repeatedly promised to deliver on it.  It's the biggest policy question facing Britain in at least a generation, far bigger than any budget or throne speech.  And she went down in the hottest flames in modern Parliamentary history.  What "confidence" can the House be supposed to have in her?

The problem is that we, meaning most citizens in every English-speaking country, no longer understand how Parliamentary self-government works.  We think we elect a Prime Minister to rule unchecked, and MPs to yak pointlessly between bouts of compulsory backing of the guy or gal wearing the same jersey as them.

I got quite the smackdown from Twitter trolls two months ago for objecting to the term "government" for the administration in a parliamentary system.  And to be fair, it is habitual to speak of cabinet as the capital-G "Government" as in "Her Majesty's Government," those persons now invariably drawn from the legislature who are entrusted with executing the laws made by the legislature.  But the entire "government" consists of three branches: legislative, executive and judicial.  And even the executive is far larger than just cabinet and frequently frustrates or ignores directives from above.

Former Labour firebrand Tony Benn, né Anthony Wedgewood Benn, once described the deflating experience of becoming a minister.  "All my life I had dreamed of being a cabinet member and having all that wonderful power and prestige.  I ran into my cabinet office and there were the levers of power.  I grabbed them and pulled.  Absolutely nothing happened.  They didn't seem to be connected to anything."  And in the background Sir Humphrey Appleby smirked complacently.

The same is true in the American system.  In his memoirs Nixon speaks of ordering increased surveillance flights after a North Korean provocation and discovering belatedly that the Department of Defence had instead canceled them.  But it's also true that Americans increasingly attribute to the President capacities, benign or demonic, he does not possess.

As my National Post colleague Colby Cosh recently wrote, warning us not to underestimate Donald Trump's political instincts, "The Constitution says that Congress shall control the federal purse, but the popular perception of American government is that the president is a sort of fierce primitive god who controls the economic weather and makes dams, bridges, armies, and walls appear."  Such confusion, dangerous even in a Congressional system, is far worse in a modern Parliamentary system where the checks and balances are in such grievous disrepair.

It is now difficult to recall that Parliament was created, and solidified in the centuries after Magna Carta, to give the populace control over the executive in defence of our rights.  Significant landmarks include: 1297 Edward I promises no taxation without representation; 1346 Commons sits separately; 1376 Commons chooses own Speaker; 1400 Parliament insists on redress of grievances before granting "supply", that is, money to the king; 1407 Commons asserts primacy over Lords on money bills because it represents those who must pay; 1414 Parliament forbids executive editing of legislation once passed.

Unfortunately, after the 18th-century crisis over growing executive power that triggered the American Revolution, Parliament gained such dominance over the other branches that the separation all but vanished in practice.  But with the one branch citizens did choose in firm control of those they did not, what could go wrong?

Well, from the late 19th century on ambitious men, and later women too, realized that whoever controlled Parliament controlled the machinery of government almost entirely.  So if they could secure executive office yet dominate legislators through party whips, a strong centralized extra-Parliamentary party organization including formal or informal vetoes on candidate nomination, and lucrative perks like junior ministers' posts to keep potentially restive backbenchers in line, they could rule essentially unchecked.  As they have, and do.

It seemed innocent especially because the new convention that ministers had to be sitting MPs meant these shiny new tin gods were all people we elected.  But while cabinet struggles to control the civil service to which parliament (at ministers' command) increasingly delegates quasi-legislative regulatory authority, parliament doesn't even struggle to control the executive any more.  Instead, confusing the executive branch with "the government" and thinking Parliament a quaint sideshow, we hold a referendum every four years on who shall wield largely arbitrary power.  (That courts are increasingly usurping legislative functions too is a subject for another day, and less pressing in Britain than here.)

Theresa May remaining in office illuminates the new situation with a harsh and unlovely glare.  As a practical matter I think she ought not to enjoy the confidence of the House, or the electorate, having half-on-purpose, half-stupidly backed her countrypersons into choosing between a bad Brexit and none at all.  But in a way the practicalities no longer matter.

What matters is that a vast majority of MPs clearly do not believe she can conduct affairs of state satisfactorily.  Many of her own party's MPs no longer think so while most others never did.  But the crucial divide here is not between the Red and Blue teams wherever seated.  It is between the legislative and executive branches.

Since she no longer enjoys the confidence of a majority of legislators, or those who elected them, the plain fact is that May is no longer Prime Minister under the British Constitution.  And plainly it no longer matters so the British Constitution, as we have known it since at least the 18th century, has ceased to exist.

Ironically, one of the big concerns of Brexiteers all along was the collapse of Britain's traditional system of government.  What bitter irony that even MPs unable to stand her bungling of Brexit no longer care to understand how it was meant to work.

If May's crushing defeat over Brexit is not loss of confidence, what can the term even mean?  Nothing.  Thus the UK now has an elected head of government who does not require the confidence of legislators but, unlike the American president, can dictate budgets and make foreign policy without their advice or consent.

History has been made.  King George, welcome back.  Omnipotent and incompetent.

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.


 

If only one person in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet is to be made responsible for the concerns of rural Canadians, Bernadette Jordan (South Shore—St. Margaret's), his newly minted minister for rural economic development, is as good a choice as any.  She grew up in the village of Middle LaHave and currently lives in the village of West Dublin, both within the municipality of Lunenburg, total population 24,863.  She spent her pre-politics career as a fundraiser for the Health Services Foundation of the South Shore.  She is well aware of challenges in rural Canada that often go overlooked, particularly infrastructure and reliable internet access.  Plus, she raises the profile of the Liberals' Atlantic caucus not a minor matter now that longtime Kings—Hants MP Scott Brison is retiring.

For all of Jordan's qualifications for her new job, it's hard to shake the notion that it was created solely to keep up the Liberals' illusion of action.  The urban/rural divide in Canadian politics is stark, and the Conservatives have myriad opportunities to take back rural seats from the Liberals this fall.  That the governing party has refused to do what is necessary to help these parts of the country thrive is the most compelling message the Tories have available.  Jordan is now the lightning rod for rural resentment.

Both major parties have their own ways of throwing a bone to the demographics that give them the least love.  Where the Conservatives have tax credits and "community infrastructure" funding, the Liberals have national strategies, frameworks, agendas, task forces, and when they're really desperate new cabinet appointments.  We previously saw this approach in the summer of 2017, when the Indigenous Affairs portfolio was split into two.  However much it mattered then, as far as Indigenous advocates are concerned, it doesn't make up for the loss of Jody Wilson-Raybould, herself Kwakwaka'wakw Canadian, as Justice Minister.  It's the broadest and highest-profile portfolios Justice, Finance, Global Affairs, and National Defence in some years that give Canadians the clearest picture of what the government's direction will be and what its priorities are.

But there is still plenty of subtext in Jordan's appointment.  In selecting a Maritimer for this new department and naming internet access as her top agenda item, the Liberals have indicated that their focus will be on those parts of rural Canada where they feel most at ease.  This is partly due, of course, to the absence of a Liberal MP in any riding outside a major city in the Prairies, where the Liberals have their lowest support.  In the waning months of her first term in Parliament, Jordan will now be forced to explain to voters here why, say, pipeline construction is of less urgency to her government than broadband.  Not all of rural Canada shares the same economic needs, and Jordan, whose contribution to the pipeline debate has been just as indecisive and equivocating as those of any of her colleagues, offers little comfort for disgruntled Western voters.

Furthermore, this government has emphasized the need for rural connectivity before, with pathetic results.  A November 2018 report from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada castigated the government for offering funding programs to expand broadband and wireless access without a comprehensive strategy.  Their list of recommendations did not include kicking the problem to a new cabinet minister.  They made it clear that this is a problem for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains.  It's off his desk now, so he can spend more time trying to convince everyone, possibly including himself, that superclusters are the solution to our economic woes.  All that underserved communities are certain to get out of this arrangement is more delay and more neglect.

The economies of urban, suburban, and rural Canada alike should be matters of importance across all cabinet departments; none shouldn't require its very own.  In setting the latter of these aside for Jordan, the Liberals have shown how easily they can compartmentalize rural communities from the rest of Canada.  Bridging the divide, apparently, is no more essential for them than it is for Tories who have even less to say about urban issues.  But at least the Tories don't bother trying to convince us otherwise.

Photo Credit: The Globe & Mail

Written by Jess Morgan

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.