The capacity of our elected officials to continue to make themselves irrelevant has never seemed more pressing than it has over the course of this pandemic, where their insistence on avoiding proper sittings in Ottawa has meant that hundreds of billions of dollars in spending has been allowed to pass without scrutiny or even the merest hint of debate.  Instead of MPs doing their jobs, they have tasked the Auditor General with doing all of the due diligence with this spending once the horses have left the barn a situation that has piled work onto the AG's office without any additional resources being granted to do it.  And yet the demands continue.

The pattern continues to repeat itself as the Conservatives spend the weekend demanding that new AG Karen Hogan audit the outsourcing of the government's $900 million Canada Service Grant program to WE Charities, in spite of prime minister Justin Trudeau's insistence that it was the civil servants who decided that WE was the only organization capable of doing the job on the scale that was demanded of them.  While I'm not entirely buying the arguments that Trudeau's past involvement with the organization puts him into a conflict of interest, because there is absolutely no indication that this is the case, I am alarmed that this is one more case where MPs are simply demanding that the AG do their homework for them.

You would think that first course of action for MPs would be to use the tools at their disposal, such as working with the other opposition parties to call an emergency committee meeting so that they could call the relevant minister and deputy minister before them and demand that documentation on their recommendation around WE be produced, which they have the votes to do in a hung parliament, and if that didn't work, at the next sitting of the Commons they could put forward Order Paper questions to the same effect.  Alas, no it was to simply call in the AG.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, I was rather taken by a speech that Senator Peter Harder made with regard to the Estimates bill that was passed at the end of last week which did actually see some debate and scrutiny, because the Senate was actually bothered to do its work and hold regular sittings, albeit with a reduced complement, which was more than MPs could be bothered to do.  In his speech, Harder made the point that because we have since started tasking the AG with value-for-money audits, which has grown to be a problematic practice. "I would have the Auditor General auditing, as auditors do, the verification of the integrity of the numbers; and Parliament should do the auditing with respect to whether value for money has been achieved," Harder suggested, which sounds imminently sensible and like things should be run.

But MPs have been slowly abdicating their responsibilities over the course of decades, both as the Estimates process has become increasingly Byzantine and opaque, and as more and more independent officers of parliament are created sometimes justifiably out of a need for subject-matter expertise such as with privacy, but often because MPs have become unwilling to do their own homework.  Government neutered the scrutiny of the Estimates back in 1968, when they pushed through changes to the Standing Orders that if the Estimates had not passed by a certain date, they would be deemed to have passed so that nothing MPs did could slow them up for reasons either legitimate or political.  The processes got even more opaque, and different accounting systems began being used between the Estimates, and the Public Accounts, so that spending couldn't be tracked any longer but we haven't seen MPs complain or push back.

In his speech, Harder recalled "When I got to the Treasury Board 25 years ago, and went through my first supply process, I said to my staff, 'This reminds me of Brezhnev's Moscow.'  'What do you mean by that?'  'Well, workers pretended to work and managers pretended to pay them.'  So we pretend to give information to Parliament and they pretend to hold us to account."  It's a damning indictment of the state of Parliament that has not improved in those 25 years, and has probably gotten worse.

To be fair, the current Liberal government did try to make reforms to the Estimates to better align with the budget cycle currently the Estimates are determined before the Budget, so their spending is based on the previous year's cycle, and then during the Supplementary Estimates process are brought more into line with what is in this year's budget but a recalcitrant bureaucracy appeared to have fought that attempt, and after Scott Brison's retirement, the impetus to continue it seems to have fallen away, meaning that the process continues to be opaque, and MPs simply outsource any analysis to the Parliamentary Budget Officer and take his word for what is in the documents, while they rubber-stamp them like they just did with the latest round of Estimates last week.

While it was heartening to hear over the past couple of months, as the government was hastily designing and pushing out emergency programs for the pandemic, that they were actively listening to MPs and taking their concerns seriously, the fact of the matter is that this kind of focus-grouping is the easy work of being an MP.  The actual hard work, the core constitutional function around holding government to account by keeping control over the public purse, and ensuring that money is accounted for before it goes out the door, has become the afterthought so much so that the vast majority of MPs don't even know that it's their constitutional duty.  And because they don't know, and more to the point don't care, they are happy to keep offloading their work onto these unaccountable independent officers of parliament.  Between this abdication of their duties, and the surrender of their powers to their leaders because of how those leaders are chosen, it raises the question of why we bother to have MPs at all anymore.  Their roles are supposed to matter and it would be great if MPs actually realized that and performed them.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The release of the so-called "Fair Deal Panel" report last week has Alberta premier Jason Kenney moving swiftly to start implementing some of its recommendations, and in particular, laying the groundwork for a future referendum on the future of the equalization program not that such a referendum could actually do anything about it, because it's part of the Constitution, and a provincial referendum is not an amending formula.  Nevertheless, it is revealing in showing that this is not actually about "fairness" for Alberta because that is not and has never really been the goal of this project.  Rather, it is about fuelling the grievance culture that is being used to construct a collective identity for the province, and using the irrational anger that it generates for political ends most especially for Kenney to consolidate power.

To be clear, there is nothing in the "Fair Deal" report that is about actual fairness that would imply that there was an attempt to contextualize the situation in Alberta with that of the rest of Canada, but that was never going to happen because it would show that Albertans are per capita the wealthiest province by far not to mention that they are the lowest taxed.  Complaints about equalization are framed in ways that don't actually reflect the reality of the situation, and calls for the province to press strenuously for the "removal of current constraints on the Fiscal Stabilization Program that prevent Albertans from receiving a $2.4 billion equalization rebate."

There is no such thing as an "equalization rebate," and there is no recognition that part of the constraints on the program are about a moral hazard it encourages provinces not to put all of their fiscal eggs in a single basket.  Alberta structured their provincial budgets to be resource-revenue heavy rather than in simply relying on consumption taxes like other provinces do, and when those revenues collapsed again  because this is not the first time they expect the federal government to bail them out for their poor fiscal decisions.  I'm not sure how this is "fair" to the rest of the country, or how Alberta making unsound judgments means that they are being treated "unfairly" to the tune of $2.4 billion, and yet they have falsely equated this with paying into equalization to create a bogus sense of expectation: We helped you out, so why aren't you helping us out which, to be clear, the federal government absolutely has been.  It's about fostering that sense of grievance, not about actual fairness.

The report makes other bizarre claims about "fairness" when it comes to claims that Alberta is under-represented in the House of Commons, which makes no particular sense given that their representation has grown in line with their population.  Do you know which province's representation hasn't grown in line with its population?  Ontario, which is short probably twenty seats from what it should have, and which Stephen Harper planned to short-change even further during the last redistribution until he got enough pushback and outcry.  The suggestion that the province "elect" senators is not only unconstitutional, but feeds into the pernicious myth that a "Triple E" Senate would somehow give Alberta a bigger say federally, rather than simply creating more backbenchers for the government in power.

The grievance construction in the complaints about the previous Bills C-48 and C-69 falsely claims that they are examples of federal overreach, but also plays into the myth that they are what is killing the oil and gas sector.  Do you know what has impacted the growth of the sector in the province more than anything?  The fact that the shale boom in the US drove prices down below what makes new oilsands projects profitable, followed by countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia trying to make those shale operations unprofitable by flooding the market with so much supply that prices collapsed.  Nothing the federal government has done has anything to do with these market forces, and in fact, their insistence on stricter environmental policies could actually attract investment from the very same European countries who are currently divesting.

Many of the recommendations, such as pulling out of the Canada Pension Plan or ending their RCMP police contract, have no real connection to the "fairness" of how the provinces is being treated by the federal government.  Nevertheless, they are predicated on the province holding referenda about these changes, and that is really what much of this boils down to using these referenda as a tool by which Kenney can consolidate power under the false guise of democracy.

The panel knew full well that these referenda wouldn't be meaningful, particularly one on equalization.  Instead, they claim that such a referendum would "morally obligate the federal government and other provinces to come to the table and negotiate the proposed amendment to the Constitution."  This is not only magical thinking, but it's about normalizing the use of these tools of so-called "direct democracy" as a tool for the premier to achieve his ends.

Those ends are about power.  Referendums oversimplify complex problems, presenting them in a one-sided or misleading manner, and when the executive of a government constructs a question in a certain way, and then interprets the response in a way that is convenient to their aims because there was no way that a question could be sufficiently clear on what it actually means they ultimately consolidate that power under the guise of responding to the "will of the people."

Put this into the context of Kenney's tactics of stoking anger by way of these manufactured grievances, thinking that he is clever enough to put out the fires he starts in order to look like a hero.  This tactic of using referenda are simply the next iteration of that tactic, trying to channel the anger he stokes into votes that are designed to allow him to amass even more power and claim popular support for it.  None of this is about "fairness" it's about power.

Photo Credit: Calgary Herald

Over the past couple of weeks, former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has been engaged in a campaign to rehabilitate her image, pressing the government on the issue of criminal justice reform and the elimination of most mandatory minimum sentences something that was supposed to be her job when she was justice minister, but something which never got finished.  In an intervention in the House of Commons, she made mention of this as a "red meat-issue," and in an op-ed for the Globe and Mail that she penned, which ran over the weekend, she blamed "the centre" meaning PMO for this important file not having been accomplished.  But something doesn't add up in this, which makes me wonder what she's not saying.

"When I was in the government, and as a minister, I learned the term 'red meat' issues.  I understand these issues to be ones that challenge societal norms, that are not politically expedient to address because they can lose you votes, even though addressing them is morally right and a smart thing to do," Wilson-Raybould stated during her intervention on June 15^th.

"In the justice system, examples include mandatory minimum penalties, defunding police, and even investing in restorative justice.  Red-meat issues often become defining issues for society and for governments as the world changes," she continued, before asking the government to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, as they promised to in 2015.

In the Globe op-ed, Wilson-Raybould stated "even though I was told by some that the 'centre' did not want to hear it, I, along with others, again implored and pushed for bold criminal justice reform, including repealing [mandatory minimum penalties]," implying that someone in the PMO was trying to keep her from fulfilling the job that was handed to her in her mandate letter.  This makes no sense.

I have to wonder how much of this was really a process issue, given that Wilson-Raybould had been known to clash with other members of Cabinet particularly Carolyn Bennett on how to proceed on the Indigenous rights framework which the government eventually pulled after it was widely panned.  In the end, that framework was pulled and the government instead put its focus on the language rights legislation, as well as the Indigenous child welfare legislation, both of which eventually passed.  If Wilson-Raybould clashed over how to go about the rights framework, did she also clash with PMO or senior officials about how to go about criminal justice reform?

We also have to look at her record as justice minister more broadly, and the positions she staked out, which have proven to be problematic.  Right off the start, she was handed the Medical Assistance in Dying file, and she and Jane Philpott insisted on an extremely restrictive eligibility criteria which not only went against the consultations by government and a joint parliamentary committee, but also the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that gave rise to the legislation in the first place.  Those restrictions were struck down in the courts in Quebec, and the government is currently sitting on a bill to make the necessary changes.

On the genetic privacy bill, Wilson-Raybould took the position that the bill was ultra vires to the federal Criminal Code powers it used to outlaw said discrimination, despite convincing legal opinions to the contrary, and even though no province objected to the bill, she took it upon herself to phone up provincial attorneys general in order to beg them to oppose it, and Quebec finally did.  She also then convinced the prime minister to turn Cabinet against the bill over the will of the rest of the caucus and only Cabinet voted against the bill.  Afterward, Wilson-Raybould promised to refer it to the Supreme Court of Canada, but never did.  Quebec's government challenged the bill in Court, and it is currently awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada.

As part of the cannabis legalization package, Wilson-Raybould introduced random alcohol screening legislation that everyone warned her would be unconstitutional and would in fact make it easier for police to target Black, Indigenous, or other minorities as they had with carding, but she proceeded with the bill anyway, and it too is facing Charter challenges.

Another reform that Wilson-Raybould pushed through and then patted herself on the back for was the elimination of peremptory challenges in jury trials, after the high-profile Gerald Stanley case where it was alleged that Stanley's lawyers used the challenges to ensure an all-white jury in the case of the death of an Indigenous man a jury that later acquitted him.  Despite defence lawyers around the country saying that they use the challenges to ensure non-white representation on juries where an Indigenous person or other visible minority person is accused, Wilson-Raybould went ahead and eliminated them citing one case.  That too is now going before the Supreme Court of Canada.

To add to the list, she was extremely slow to appoint judges, in part because it took her over eight months to even appoint a judicial affairs advisor for her office, while she reportedly clashed with PMO over attempting to get a friend appointed as her chief of staff on numerous occasions.  There was also the revelation that she sat on a wrongful conviction file for months while the person languished in jail.  She couldn't manage her legislation after a much-ballyhooed bill about fully repealing laws that targeted gay men that was unveiled during Pride Month, it never advanced, and was later abandoned and folded into larger criminal justice bills on two separate occasions.  And on top of that, I was hearing constantly from my contacts in the legal field in the city, including people in the judiciary, that she was widely viewed as being incompetent.

It is with all of this in mind that I have trouble believing that Wilson-Raybould was being prevented from fulfilling her mandate of criminal justice reform including repealing mandatory minimum sentences.  It doesn't seem plausible that the very government that promised to repeal mandatory minimums and then prevent the justice minister from doing it because it's not politically expedient so many files this government has tackled haven't been expedient, but they've been doing it anyway.  My question instead is what exactly was she proposing that made people balk, in light of her record of legislating badly.  That would seem to me the more appropriate thing to ask, and maybe one day someone will tell us what really happened.

Photo Credit: CBC News