LP_468x60
ontario news watch
on-the-record-468x60-white
and-another-thing-468x60

It's in the mid 20s in Texas this week, much warmer than snowy Edmonton.

But Jason Kenney, who is on an investment attraction junket to Houston and Dallas, isn't nearly as hot as he would be if had stayed home to face the music over the firing of the Alberta Election Commissioner.

The firing of Lorne Gibson, who has levied $210,000 in fines against UCP members embroiled in an investigation of irregularities in the 2017 party leadership race, has excited a political maelstrom in the province.

Bill 22, which does the deed, moving the commission's staff under the chief electoral officer while discharging Gibson, is expected to save $1 million over five years.  Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews argues this is not an abuse of power but rather "democracy in action" saving taxpayers' dollars.

But given that the commissioner's work picking apart possible issues with the UCP race is not complete and there are still court actions to be heard challenging the fines, the shake-up appears to relate more to political expediency than bean counting.

Opposition Leader Rachel Notley got herself turfed from the legislature on Tuesday to prove how seriously the issue should be taken.  She claimed the government house leader had "misled the house" about the bill, which she knows is a speedy ticket out of the chamber.

She told reporters:I "It reeks of corruption.  It reeks of the sort of entitlement and self-dealing the conservatives became known for … It's an abuse of power.  Pure and simple.  You can only wonder what it is the UCP is trying to hide from Albertans in these investigations." 

For Notley, inviting ejection from the house is an action not taken lightly.  She loves the theatre of question period and is happy to employ the dramatic elements of bluster and filibuster, but forcing the Speaker to banish her is drastic.

So too is her letter asking that if and when Bill 22 passes, the Lieutenant Governor refuse to give it assent.

The government has already announced closure on debate on Bill 22, no doubt hoping it can be dispensed with before Kenney returns to the legislature.

Given the breakneck pace of the government's agenda, Kenney is likely hoping the sting of the commissioner's firing will fade from the news cycle fairly quickly.

But this is not a routine expense scandal or partisan board firing.  The entire question of the way the UCP leadership campaign and vote was conducted has legs.  And the high handedness of thinking Gibson's ouster could be glossed over is a miscalculation.

The government's usual allies in the media are even flummoxed by this one. The Globe and Mail has opined against the bill in an editorial.  Talk show hosts are fielding calls from critics of the firing who profess to have voted UCP in the last election.

Notley is not apologizing for her comments in the house, but she is likely to find a way back into the legislature so she can confront Kenney directly on the issue when he does return from sunny Texas.

And what of Gibson himself?  He released a high minded response on Tuesday expressing his disappointment with the government decision to deep six the independent elections watchdog role.

"Inadequate enforcement of election rules can allow for inappropriate conduct to occur and that conduct can affect voter participation and election outcomes," he wrote.

The government argues that Gibson could be rehired by the chief electoral officer once commission staff have been brought under his wing.  UCP house leader Jason Nixon argued that "any investigations that the chief electoral officer and the election commission deem need to continue forward, will continue."

But critics dismiss the protestations, pointing out that the Chief Electoral Officer's own term ends in the spring.

The controversies bedevilling the UCP at the moment may fade before the next election three and a half years distant.  But the firing of Lorne Gibson has dealt a blow to the government.

If Gibson is in fact looking for a job after his severance runs out, perhaps the NDP could contemplate recruiting him as a candidate.  He could run in Calgary-Lougheed against incumbent MLA Jason Kenney.

Photo Credit: Calgary Herald

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.


What is there to say, really, about this new cabinet?

You could say there are a lot of familiar faces, not much has changed.  You could focus on Christya Freeland's move out of foreign affairs, and what that says about the focus of the government.  You could even talk about Catherine McKenna's departure from environment.

But, nah, not me.

Let's talk instead about two other ministers representing the farce and the menace present in this second, lesser iteration of Trudeau's government.

First, the farce.  They've decided to name a "minister of middle class prosperity," which I've put in quotes to assure you it is a real title for a real cabinet post.

What exactly is this minister responsible for?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  Making sure families are getting the right number of tax credits, ensuring highways are wide enough for their commute, cracking down on cable companies that put all the good channels in different packages, and offering rebates for those looking to add a second leaf-blower to their shed.  Or something like that, probably.

One of the problems with this government is the way it so easily slides into self-parody.  At some point, when you've spent four years jamming the words "middle-class" into every third sentence falling out of your gob, it probably seems perfectly natural to just create a whole minister for it.

I can't imagine what this specific minister will even do, when the entire thrust of the government's efforts is to pump up the prosperity of the ethereal middle class.  It's a joke of a post, with a title seemingly more built to be a messaging line from the PR hacks in the backroom than anything else.

So, congrats, I guess, to Mona Fortier.

Which brings us to the other minister of note.  Bill Blair is now the minister of public safety, and hoo boy does that suck for all of us.

Blair was once an undercover drug cop — a literal narc! — and now is at the head of the ministry in charge of CSIS and the RCMP.  Which is neat!  But more than a narc, he was also the head of the Toronto police when hundreds of people were rounded up at the G20, and never seemed all that fussed about trampling the rights of the people riot cops were rounding up with mass arrests.

He did an interview with the Globe and Mail back in 2010, just after the protests turned to violence, and the police turned to detaining huge masses of people, that makes for enlightening reading.

Blair showed little sympathy or remorse for the many, many innocent people trapped by police for hours for no discernible crime.

"We were trying to strike a balance, as we have to in law, between the lawful rights of citizens to protest … now unfortunately they [protesters using the Black Bloc tactic]* turned their criminal intent away from the summit and they turned it on the people of Toronto," he said at the time.  Other than that limp acknowledgement to the rights of protestors, he seems to have little problem Toronto police rounding up masses of protestors and detaining the for long periods of time.  (In police jargon, this is known as "kettling.")

In 2015, Blair said: "We had a very, very truncated period of time in which to prepare.  There was very little time to train our officers and put them through various scenarios, but we did our best."

Ah yes, their best.  Of course, the police superintendent who gave the order for police to arrest people en masse was found guilty at a disciplinary hearing of unnecessary exercise of authority and discreditable conduct for breaching the rights of protestors.  He was given a formal reprimand and docked a hefty 10 days vacation.

But anyway, back to 2010, did Blair think there was going to be a loss of trust between the police and the public?  "Certainly, advocates for the anarchists are offended.  I can live with their offence," Blair told the Globe.

Because, you see, crushing a few bad apples is worth the suspension of rights for many multiples of other people.

He was also hugely resistant to the random carding of people on the street.  It wasn't until he was on his way out that he suspended the practice in Toronto.

And now this is the guy at the head of our country's national police and spying arms.  It's not what I would call ideal.

What he's shown is that, when things get a little messy and the pressure is on, Blair is willing to excuse police excesses and the trampling of rights in the name of law and order.

Whatever is in store for this government over the next few years, these two appointments don't bode particularly well.  They both show a lack of imagination, in different ways.  In the case of Fortier, it's a lack of shame at their interminable rhetoric.  In the case of Blair, it's an inability to imagine the former cop as anything but the minister in charge of all the cops.

I didn't have particularly high hopes for this government, but I'm surprised to find them dashed.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been.

***

*The Toronto Star's paraphrasing, not mine.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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.


I read Pat Sorbara's book in a single evening.

It is classic Pat; direct, clearly written, very organised and full of sensible advice.

Most of the coverage in the press to date has focused on her revelations about the inner workings of Premier Kathleen Wynne's government and the office politics that led to her ouster from the campaign team in 2018.

Perhaps because my tenure as a Liberal staffer overlapped with this period, this part of the book was less engaging to me than it might have been to the public at large.  Sure, I had a bit of rubbernecking to see who Pat went after, but I already knew the story, having been — if not in the room — in the same building as it was happening.

Instead, I gravitated to the earlier stories.

She writes about her early days campaigning and working in a constituency office in Guelph, and how it was the women who ran the show behind the scenes — organizing door-to-door canvassing, planning the events and managing the office — but it was the men who sat in the backrooms doing the "strategy".  Some things, it could be argued, never change.

As she moves her way up the political ladder, she demonstrates a tough shell and a focus on disciplined campaigns that brings her into David Peterson's premier's office as an all-round enforcer.  The former premier memorably instructs a staffer to "send in the bitch" when a struggling candidate needs a taskmaster; Pat writes that it was almost a compliment, to be recognised for her toughness as a "fixer".

Pat largely glosses over the disastrous 2011 federal election, when she was brought in to try to beef up former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's struggling enterprise.  Perhaps she figured the less said about that election, the better.

Still, she spares no punches when she does get to the Wynne years, laying bare the behind-the-scenes drama of the dying days of the last Ontario Liberal government.  Beyond a clash-of-personalities narrative, she seems to be making an inherent argument in favour of clear lines of responsibility, internal accountability and structure, which makes sense when you consider Pat instituted assigned seating that outlived her tenure at a weekly senior staff meeting, but is also a broader lesson regardless of one's views on the particular circumstances she narrates.

Her accounts of the Sudbury by-election scandal, where she was charged with an Elections Act infraction and went to court to defend her name, are griping.  It was never clear how she could reasonably stand accused of bribery given the actual evidence and back-and-forth inherent in politics.  But to hear from her perspective on how much the trial hurt her was certainly evocative.  She joked on the "Political Traction" podcast that she could have either sued the OPP or written this book.

What's most effective about the book is the advice she offers for young political staffers, with a series of some seventy lessons learnt throughout her career.  She advises young staff to find their area of expertise and be fearless in speaking out when they in fact have something to say (implicitly, and to keep quiet when they do not have something to say).

She particularly writes about being a woman in the backrooms, and how far our politics have come and how far we have yet to go.

More broadly, for many, political staff either operate in the extreme idealism of The West Wing or the almost comically villainous extreme of House of Cards.  Instead, in my experience, it's too often like Veep: a bunch of flawed people dealing with petty grievances and situations that feel overblown in retrospect.

And yet, as Pat details in her book, being a political staffer is also a noble profession, a chance to serve the public interest, to advance policy goals and to develop skills — multitasking, grace under pressure, quick thinking, the ability to plan and execute a conference on nothing but coffee and cigarettes — that will serve you well in life beyond politics.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

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.