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It’s that time of year again, where opposition parties start getting antsy for new means by which they can embarrass the government, and the best way to do that in the dog days of summer is to hold “emergency” committee hearings. If they can get one of the other opposition parties on board, no matter how dubious or indeed ridiculous the premise, then the committee has to recall and a vote be held as to whether or not they’ll hold a full meeting or series of meetings on the subject of the “emergency.” Mercifully, we had very few of those meetings last summer because the Bloc and the NDP were not in the mood to play ball with the Conservatives, but this year, they are starting up once again, in part because of the incentives at play, which are to harvest clips for their social media channels. Gone are the days when committees actually did serious work—everything is now a performance for the cameras.

One of the most important things to note off the top is that the committees in play right now are all those who are chaired by Conservatives. Under the Standing Orders, several committees are automatically chaired by members of the official opposition, and they include the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee, Government Operations and Estimates, Public Accounts, and Status of Women. This is to ensure that for committees with a more pronounced role of scrutinizing the government, that the government’s chair on those committees can’t use their power and influence to sway the studies away from topics that might embarrass the government. Each of those committees are implicated in these summer clip-harvesting exercises, starting with the Ethics committee’s July 17th meeting to conjure up a supposed ethical breach by employment minister Randy Boissonnault where the Ethics Commissioner has already stated that one does not exist.

What garnered a lot of attention was the Status of Women committee meeting last week, where a couple of the witnesses walked out in tears after the meeting derailed, but much of the blame was put on Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld even though the whole exercise was a set-up from the beginning. The meeting was held under the auspices of “study of testimony related to the committee’s core mandate,” and no opposition party was given the ability to suggest witnesses, as is how things normally happen. And right off the start, these witnesses made their statements and had a round of questions from the Conservatives, before anyone else could object to the circumstances by which said meeting was convened. When she finally got a turn, Vandenbeld noted that they have done several studies already on gender-based violence, and pointed out that the Conservatives abused their position as chair in order to call this meeting in the way they had, which had the effect of playing on the trauma of the witnesses, before moving a motion that they would be better off considering the study on reproductive health that the committee has been sitting on since March 2022.

There is blame to go all around on this, starting with the Chair, Conservative MP Shelby Kramp-Newman, who abused her powers to summon witnesses without the input of any of the other members of the committee, and treating this like an emergency situation. She also sold a false bill of goods to those witnesses, which should be inexcusable. The intent by the Conservatives, as evidenced by a motion that Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri tried to move later in the meeting was to try and tie the Liberals to the (slight) increases in violent crime reported by Statistics Canada in their annual Crime Severity Index report, with the motion that “That the committee hold four more meetings on the impact of violent crime against women.” Clearly this was an attempt to try and catch the Liberals out and get clips of them badgering and hectoring the government about how they are the ones responsible for this increase in violent crime, but the Liberals weren’t about to play ball on that.

Nevertheless, Vandenbeld trying to move the committee back to the reproductive health motion, which is more specifically about ensuring national access to abortion across the country—because yes, there are plenty of places where access is not readily available because of the actions of provincial governments—came across as extremely crass. It’s no secret that the Liberals are trying to jam the Conservatives on the question of abortion rights, particularly given that they hope to capitalize on what happened with Roe v Wade in the US, and such a naked attempt at the committee when trying to avoid the Conservatives’ planned clip-harvesting dog-and-pony show saw not exactly sensitive to the witnesses, no matter that they were present under false pretenses. It’s a very real problem with committees these days that people wind up wasting their time coming in as witnesses only for the committee to devolve into procedural gamesmanship, and this was no different.

There is more of this to come. This week, the Public Accounts committee will be looking into the ArriveCan issue, but more specifically, the Auditor General’s report on it, because that’s the purpose of the Public Accounts committee, and I cannot fathom why this would merit an “emergency” summer meeting outside of the obvious example of this being solely about harvesting clips of Conservative MP Michael Barrett calling the government “corrupt,” and asking about RCMP investigations when that has nothing to do with the Auditor General’s findings—most especially because she didn’t make any findings related to the government in what happened. The week after, the Government Operations Committee is going to be looking into the purchase of the C$9 million Manhattan condo as the new residence for the Consul General in New York, for the sole purpose of performative hairshirt parsimony by all three opposition parties, even though this really isn’t something that this committee should be concerned with.

These committees are supposed to be doing serious work, but the fact that they now solely for the provenance of dog-and-pony shows for the benefit of the cameras is damaging to democracy. We need our MPs to take their jobs seriously, and simply harvesting clips for social media as if they were Millennial wannabe-influencers trying to juice their engagement numbers is not that. If we want to preserve our democracy from the authoritarian populism heading our way, we need to demand better from our MPs.

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.


Recent federal polling might remind those with long political memories of the January 23, 2006 election, that first brought Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada to power in Ottawa.

To indulge briefly in a few too many numbers, take the January 22, 2023 update for the 338Canada opinion poll projections.

In a 338-seat Canadian House of Commons it gives Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives 152 seats with 35% of the Canada-wide popular vote. The Trudeau Liberals are assigned 129 seats with 30% of the vote. (In the minor but still numerically important leagues the New Democrats are given 25 seats with  21%. And the Bloc Québécois has 30 with 7%.)

Going back almost exactly 17 years to the real-world Canadian federal election on January 23, 2006 (with a 308-seat House) the Harper Conservatives won 124 seats with 36% of the popular vote. The Liberals took 103 seats with 30%.  (The  New Democrats here won 29 seats with 18% and the Bloc 51 with 11%.)

In both cases — the real-world 2006 and the polling-based 2023 —  Conservatives won the most seats, but not enough for a majority government.

In 2006 a bare majority was 155 seats (170 in 2023) : Stephen Harper’s party had only 124. And the consequences 17 years ago arguably haunt the prospects for a federal election in 2023.

The January 23, 2006 “snap election” became inevitable when Jack Layton’s New Democrats finally joined the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois in seeking the end of Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government, in late November 2005.

Yet New Democrats could not be expected to keep a Stephen Harper Conservative minority government in office. (And in any case in 2006 Conservative and NDP seats combined were still not quite enough for even a bare majority.)

The Liberals could similarly hardly prop up a Conservative minority government. The reality of the House bequeathed by the Canadian people in late January 2006 inevitably pointed the Harper Conservatives towards Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québécois.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the consummate political strategist, may have been more prepared to work with M. Duceppe than some of his fellow Conservative MPs.

There was also nothing between Conservatives and Bloquistes in 2006 (or later) remotely like the formal supply and confidence agreement between Liberals and New Democrats in 2023.

Stephen Harper, however, did work with Gilles Duceppe after the 2006 election. The zenith of the resulting symbiosis arguably came on November 27, 2006, when the Canadian House of Commons voted on a motion advanced by Prime Minister Harper.

The motion read: “That this House recognize that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” It passed by an overwhelming majority of 266 to 16.

Going back (or ahead) to the January 22, 2023 update for the 338Canada opinion poll projections, if a Canadian federal election were held today, the Conservatives would once again win the most seats but not enough for a majority government.

As back in 2006, neither Liberals nor New Democrats could realistically be expected to support a Poilievre Conservative minority government. Once again to remain in office any length of time the Conservatives would have to work with the Bloc (now led by Yves-François Blanchet).

What price, some might ask, would the Bloc demand this time? What further motion on the Québécois nation in a united Canada might loom in the Ottawa political air? And would this be a good thing? (As the November 2006 motion arguably enough was — and still is today!)

Questions of this sort may have lingered at the back of some minds during Pierre Poilievre’s recent Quebec tour.

As for Jagmeet Singh’s pulling the plug on the Justin Trudeau Liberals, as Jack Layton did in 2006, the New Democrats are at a healthy 21% of the popular vote in the latest 338Canada projection (compared with 18% in 2006). The March 2022 Liberal-NDP supply and confidence agreement is arguably working for the NDP.

Moreover, for the Canadian people at large the Liberals and New Democrats together, even on 338Canada’s latest Conservative friendly numbers, also have a 51% majority of the Canadian popular vote — as well as a majority of seats bequeathed by the latest 2021 federal election.

Diverse observers who do remember 2006 in Canadian federal politics might see several good reasons why it should not and in any case cannot quite be repeated (or even rhymed) in 2023.

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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