Remember those anti-pot ads that the government plans to run, which totally aren’t partisan and totally not about Justin Trudeau? Well, as it happens, they don’t show up in planning documents, and there’s no budget for new television advertising, especially for ones geared toward marijuana specifically. But remember – it’s totally not partisan. Really! And it looks like those doctors’ groups are starting to reconsider their participation, because they can see what’s going on.

After a meeting of an “ad hoc” cabinet committee on national security, Harper has decided to send two military cargo planes to Iraq to ferry weapons being delivered by our allies to the Kurdish forces fighting ISIS militants. We’re also sending a third plane full of “non-lethal” supplies for the military in Ukraine, apparently really getting good use of those planes we insisted on buying.

Statistics Canada released the right job numbers for July – up 42,000 jobs instead of 200. Oops. And yes, they’re “investigating” the error. Tamsin McMahon parses what it all means and the likely reasons for the errors here.

The Commissioner of Elections isn’t saying what the next moves will be in the case of the Guelph robocalls after the Sona verdict and the judge’s comments that he almost certainly didn’t act alone, and that Andrew Prescott’s testimony was largely to be disregarded.

The General in charge of Canadian Joint Operations Command says that the world could use some more diplomacy – something that it seems that Senator Dallaire also mentioned when he retired from the Senate. General Beare also talks about how the Canadian Forces were forced to transform post-9/11 because the world changed, and how it’s in the process of changing yet again with different threats than in the past.

The new “streamlined” and “efficient” Social Security Tribunal can’t manage its caseload, and it’s already created a massive backlog while it’s barely gotten off the ground. Well done, everyone!

The Alberta Federation of Labour says that the government sanctioned a large number of Temporary Foreign Workers being underpaid in 2013, under rules that were in place that year. Those rules were changed before the dramatic overhaul of the programme in June of this year.

People on Parliament Hill continue to keep editing Wikipedia pages, despite all of the attention it’s getting. And some of the edits, while not partisan in nature, are simply juvenile.

Kady O’Malley writes about the NDP’s summer of woes, while Mark Kennedy writes about the rebirth of the Liberals under Trudeau’s leadership, after they were considered the walking dead in the wake of the 2011 election.

Justin Trudeau’s former constituency assistant writes in the National Post that she was the one who sent him to that now infamous mosque in his riding, and she explains the thinking behind it, the fact that she didn’t have the information about its radicalism, and about Trudeau’s likely message about trying to make things work and integrating because Canada is too cold and isolating for too many months of the year for people not to get along. An interesting read in any case.

There are concerns that Senator Larry Campbell is in a conflict of interest because he’s helping a medial marijuana company get sorted in order to get a TSX designation in exchange for stock options. He’s not actually breaking Senate rules, and his position on marijuana legalisation has been well known for 20 years, so it’s not like it’s influencing it, plus he’s not lobbying Health Canada or the government. However, there are some concern trolls worried about the appearance of conflict, so it remains to be seen how this will play out.

A Winnipeg student wanted to learn more about the Usher of the Black Rod, wrote an essay on the job after research, and from the attention she got, the current Usher invited her for a private tour during her next visit to Ottawa, which happened this week.

And Sonya Bell and Jessie Willms offer 9 easy-to-follow rules for staying out of political trouble.

Vandals broke into Justin Trudeau’s home in Ottawa on Friday night, while his family slept (he was in Winnipeg at the time). Said vandals also left a threatening note that warned them to keep their doors locked – sitting atop a pile of items including kitchen knives, with several other knives arranged around the house. Oh, and apparently the designation for a public figure to get RCMP protection is up to the minister of public safety, and he’s being a bit evasive on the topic. It’s not only worrying that somebody would take this step, but that there are a whole chattering class out there who is either mocking Trudeau because his family was in danger, or who believe that this is all staged. Michael Den Tandt calls out the social media reaction on both sides – those who mocked Trudeau, and those who pin the blame on Harper, and the fact that none of the opposition parties stop their own partisans from demonizing Harper over social media either. It’s all part of the same poisoned ecosystem.

Sun News audience, folks https://t.co/x2PhDkCUBi cc @mdentandt #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ABgTtCwTqt

— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) August 17, 2014

Those three major doctors’ groups have pulled out of any plans to join the Health Canada “totally non-partisan” anti-pot ads because they cottoned onto the fact that it was a political football.

With both the Liberals holding their summer caucus retreat in Edmonton this week and the NDP there in a few more weeks, Joan Bryden talks to Stephen Carter about the opposition parties’ attempts to gain a foothold in that province beyond the single NDP seat they now have.

The Chair of the Transportation Safety Board is retiring after the final report on the Lac Mégantic disaster is tabled next week. She says she’s surprised by the amount of attention the incident generated, and that she’s optimistic that the government will take the recommendations positively and that we’ll see the needed changes to the system in the next couple of years.

The AFN is trying to decide what to do about BC Regional Chief Jody Wilson-Raybold, who is now a Liberal candidate and whose continued presence as regional chief could mean a conflict of interest, even though she intends to take a leave once electioneering starts happening in earnest.

The Canadian Forces’ plans to buy a fleet of unmanned aerial drones has been delayed because they can’t decide if they need one or two different kinds of fleets.

Manitoba continues to insist that Statistics Canada underestimated their population by 18,000, which could cost them $100 million in federal transfers. The federal government keeps telling them that it’s not the case.

The federal government was worried about a resurgence in Idle No More protests after the anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick.

Paul Wells interviews Justin Trudeau here, and while it’s nice to see a little more fleshing out of the policy bones and a maturity developing in his responses, there is a dangerous populist tone creeping in, especially about the whole “the middle class is struggling” narrative. Sure, there are segments of the middle class that are – particularly in certain regions of the country, and certain demographics – but for a party that keeps saying it’ll make policy on the basis of evidence, they’re relying an awful lot on feelings for this particular central plank.

Here’s an interesting long read about the First Nations in Northern BC, and about their opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline going through their territories.

Philippe Lagassé looks at some of the potential problems in the legal wording of the Ontario Court of Appeal decision on the Oath to the Queen.

And those “accidental MPs” from the last election are starting to face the decision of whether or not they want to run again in the next election. At least one has decided not to, so we’ll see how many others follow suit.

Well, the premiers have met and have spoken and they think the federal government should pony up some more money – try to act surprised, everyone! Not only that, but they’re trying to revive the term “fiscal imbalance,” because it seemed to work the last time. In particular, they want more money for health to deal with an aging population (despite being guaranteed increases for the next decade) and reliable infrastructure funding (which is a bit more of a legitimate gripe considering the way the government back-loaded the Building Canada Fund). There was some talk about trade and labour mobility agreements, but nothing earth shattering on the interprovincial trade barrier file. Christy Clark noted that the topic of the constitution was not up for discussion – not even to bring Quebec into the fold at long last. Getting in his two cents, New Brunswick premier David Alward (who may not be premier for much longer, as his province is in an election) took the opportunity to lash out at Justin Trudeau for his saying that they should put a hold on more fracking until more studies of its impacts can be done. Alward says that New Brunswick can’t wait because it needs the jobs now.

Ruh-roh! It seems that an “administrative error” sent the wrong version of a Conservative private member’s crime bill off to the Senate, which was then debated and sent to committee. It was a retired director general from Public Safety who noticed the discrepancy, and likely an error by the table officers – clerks in both Houses – but it’s unclear how the problem will be fixed procedurally. One presumes that a unanimous vote by the Senate as a whole would do it – that generally is the fix for everything – but it’s still embarrassing for the table staff, for the MP (who should have checked up on it as it’s his bill), and for Parliament as a whole.

Reuters is reporting that the Investor-State Dispute Settlement portion of the Canada-EU trade agreement may yet sink the whole deal, as environmental and consumer groups across Europe are agitating against its adoption, and that they have sympathetic ears given the rise of more nationalistic parties in the European Parliament.

With public health offices around the country in need of information that they can’t get from Statistics Canada any longer, thanks to the demise of the long-form census, more municipalities have to shell out to get that information on their own by other means. It’s almost like it was planned that way from the start.

Thanks to incoming FATCA requirements for US citizens to file US taxes no matter if they’ve never actually lived or worked in the country, there’s been an increase in people looking to renounce that citizenship. Well, now the American government has more than quadrupled the fee to do so, claiming “cost recovery,” though there seems to be some doubt that it costs that much for the minimal paperwork involved.

Two public servants had their personal information lost twice by the government – once during the loss of that student loan information, and again when a laptop was stolen from Environment Canada that had their personal information on it when the department was set to hire them. Oops.

The Public Service Integrity Commissioner is stepping down from his job early, citing “personal reasons.” Mario Dion had come out of retirement to take the job after the disaster that was the first Commissioner, Christiane Ouimet, imploded on the job.

Here’s a look at what an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women may entail.

The report into how Statistics Canada screwed up those July job numbers is out, and it says it was a case of human error, where staff wasn’t properly trained on new systems. The report makes five recommendations to avoid similar future situations.

Our CF-18s in Europe as part of the NATO response to the unfolding Ukraine situation are moving closer to the Russian border.

Two Canadian icebreakers have reached the North Pole, twenty years after the first time a Canadian icebreaker did so. They report a visit from Santa and played a hockey game.

The Wildrose Party in Alberta is distancing itself from robocalls made by Rob Anders’ new nomination campaign in Bow Valley, which featured the voice of the party’s former leader. This kind of disavowal can’t be good for his reputation.

Alheli Picazo finds some interesting commentary around the Peter MacKay gun t-shirt picture from those who orchestrated it.

Re: pic of MacKay wearing NFA shirt… Comments under original pic: "Crippled veteran card," eh? Classy. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/m9adHMrBRo

— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) August 28, 2014

Paul Wells writes about the visceral loathing that the Conservatives seem to have for Justin Trudeau.

Aaron Wherry adds his own musings about Jim Prentice’s term limits proposal after talking with Prentice about it, and agrees that it’s a terrible idea.

Andrew Leach responds to the critics of his piece on un-muzzling federal scientists, which is worth a read.

A Manitoba NDP MLA has been exposed as a particularly obnoxious partisan troll. Try to look surprised everyone!

And the premiers all posed like it was the Charlottetown Conference of 1864. Just because.

Canada’s Premiers recreating a great moment in history, on the steps of Government House #premiers2014 @PEI2014 pic.twitter.com/0ILdS5mVbf

— Government of PEI (@InfoPEI) August 28, 2014

At the final (for real this time) press conference of the premiers in PEI, they announced that everyone was on board for a national energy strategy. What that all means is up in the air, but it’s nice to know that everyone’s aboard – especially Quebec, who is also joining in with the other province to start bulk-buying their prescription drugs. BC and Saskatchewan made a side deal about wine and spirits between their provinces, while Alberta and Nova Scotia signed a labour mobility agreement around apprenticeships and credentials recognition (giving rise to the question of whether they’re making it easier for Nova Scotia to lose its young workers). Paul Wells writes about the changed tone of the meeting now that the PQ presence was gone, and both Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard both are secure in strong majority governments, while he also has conversations with four of those premiers. Andrew Coyne remains thoroughly unimpressed by the whole affair, and the inability of the premiers to make trade concessions while they demand money from Ottawa when they have the ability – and room – to raise their own taxes for what they need.

The government has announced plans to legislate to keep telecom companies from charging for paper copies of their bills, a move that the NDP are claiming victory for immediately, because they’re both playing the populist coin. It’s also curious that a “market forces” government is wielding the legislative hammer in this way.

The RCMP is putting in place a Countering Violent Extremism programme to help stop Canadians from being radicalized and heading off to places like Syria, and barring that, before some of them return to Canada after having been involved with extremist activities while abroad.

CFB Borden, north of Toronto, is slated to become a second federal data centre as part of the Shared Services consolidation programme, chosen for its secure location and proximity to existing power and telecommunications infrastructure.

Statistics Canada is exploring the notion of “virtual head counts” – essentially massive data mining – as a possible replacement of the traditional census. But if the complaint about the mandatory long-from census was that it was too intrusive, can you imagine the privacy implications of this kind of a programme? It would also mean constructing one very large new database that would be shared between the federal and provincial governments, and again, huge privacy implications there compared to our current dispersed records systems. Several European countries do it, but if that is this government’s goal, I don’t think it would consistent with the message they put out previously.

The government has passed some new regulations to restrict the RCMP’s ability to reclassify firearms that it feels should be restricted. It has been a summer of Conservatives tweeting pictures of themselves with guns at ranges and gun shows – almost like they feel they need to start burnishing that particular voter base.

Here’s a look at the humanitarian relief we’re sending to Iraq.

The outgoing Secretary General of NATO is calling on Canada to boost its defence spending as we enter into an era of more uncertainty. Of course, spending alone isn’t as good of a measure as how it’s spent, and considering how broken Canada’s procurement system is, more spending could still mean that we’d have a less-than-effective fighting force to contribute.

Stephen Harper has named former Senator Hugh Segal and former Scotiabank CEO Rick Waugh to head the Public Service Advisory Committee.

Julian Fantino pens a bizarre letter to the Windsor Star about Thomas Mulcair’s apparent lack of support for veterans, but he also ensures to get in a dig about Justin Trudeau and marijuana while he’s at it.

Kellie Leitch’s office accidentally sent out a version of her Labour Day message that talked about things like unpaid interns, before they sent a kill notice and an updated version that dropped the mention. Oops.

The Liberals and NDP have their candidates in place, and now there are two contenders for the Conservative nomination in the forthcoming Whitby–Oshawa by-election.

Economist Kevin Milligan looks at how a floating exchange rate like Canada’s changes the arguments for and against fiscal austerity.

Susan Delacourt goes full turnout nerd and demands mandatory voting, which the Liberals are quietly floating around as an idea in a caucus survey.

And Sonya Bell and Jessie Willms give a handy flowchart for reasons why the Prime Minister can’t call an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

As that NATO summit gets set to get underway in Wales, it looks like the face-saving final communiqué will state that the 2 percent of GDP on defence spending that they hope members will achieve will simply be “aspirational,” since it’s not going to happen with some members like Canada (which would essentially doubling our current defence budget). Stephen Saideman explores why it’s wrong for NATO to focus solely on the spending levels of member countries than it is on capabilities. It also sounds like NATO members are going to discuss making cyberwarfare as much of a threat to member nations as bombs, which is quite true of the modern era. It also sounds like the attention will be split between the threats posed by Russia and ISIS. Michael Den Tandt notes that while Harper keeps sounding tough, there is no escaping that the Canadian Forces are badly under-resourced – possibly as bad as the “Decade of Darkness” – and we can’t have it both ways of doing good work on the cheap. Katie Englehart has more on the broader context of the situation here.

@Murray_Brewster yep 1% of Canadian interoperable, reliable participation >> 2% plus Greece unreliable, sit at home effort

— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) September 3, 2014

The NDP are trying to ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to review the decision not to lay any charges against Nigel Wright in the whole ClusterDuff affair, but I’m not sure that’s really his job. It sounds a lot like another case of the opposition trying to get yet another non-partisan official to do their heavy lifting for them.

With an assisted suicide case coming before the Supreme Court this fall, government lawyers are prepared to argue for an absolute prohibition against the practice. You know, so that we can outsource it to jurisdictions that allow it rather than making any tough decisions on their own.

One company is looking for buy-in from the government in a bid to lay fibre optic cable along the Northwest Passage, to connect Japan to the UK’s networks, and along the way connect about half of the population of Canada’s Arctic, who currently rely on costly and unreliable satellite Internet connections. The government, however, doesn’t appear to be convinced.

Heath Canada has so far received some 1009 applications for companies looking to produce medical marijuana, and only two have been approved. Most were incomplete, withdrawn or rejected, but there are still some 300 other applications being evaluated.

Remember that Statistics Canada labour reporting problem last month? And how Tamsin McMahon at Maclean’s wrote up about the problems? Well, Statistics Canada bizarrely rewrote her post, and asked her to publish their version instead. So McMahon posted it as in track changes, so that you can see what they wanted her to post instead. It’s kind of crazy that they think a media outlet would go for such a tactic.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that they’re being audited by the CRA because of their left-wing bias and the “educational materials” they produce are one-sided. It is curious all around, but so long as they’re not endorsing candidates, we’ll see if CRA gives them a pass. (That said, they should start auditing churches too, as many of them have been known to endorse candidates).

The Canadian Rangers will finally be getting new bolt-action rifles by next summer to start replacing their WWII-era rifles that they currently use. We’ll see if these new ones are as rugged and able to handle the harsh northern climates without freezing up or jamming – the main reason they’re still using such classic rifles in the first place.

Speaking of the Arctic, we are getting hints of what the Americans would be interested in from Canada in terms of participation in ballistic missile defence, which would largely consist of multi-purpose sensors in the Arctic.

We all knew it was going to happen, and it has – Omar Khadr is launching a $20 million lawsuit against the government for the way they mishandled his file, and conspired with the Americans that resulted in his mistreatment. And given how arbitrarily this government has handled his file, it stands to reason that he’ll likely be in for a sizeable enough payday.

Economist Stephen Gordon tries to figure out just how the government is slaying the deficit, but because the government keeps changing the accounting rules every year, he can’t cross-compare any numbers, and it should be very concerning because it means that it makes it hard to hold the government to account for what they’re doing.

BTW, today's post http://t.co/m9npu4VbcZ should worry oppo strategists. They shouldn't be counting on lots of $$ lying around after #elxn15

— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) September 3, 2014

Gordon also has this to say of the alarming state of affairs at Statistics Canada:

Am suddenly realising @StatCan_eng will *never* push back national accounts (GDP etc) from 1981 to 1961. We've lost 20 years of econ history

— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) September 3, 2014

This is incredible. @StatCan_eng has *no plans* to release national accounts data before 1981 http://t.co/JQ4qWLqLNX

— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) September 3, 2014

The Dean Del Mastro trial finally resumed and got started on closing arguments, during which Del Mastro’s lawyer called the key Crown witness a liar. Apparently the issue of the backdated cheque was “largely irrelevant,” even though it would be a sign that he was trying to skirt election financing laws. Irrelevant indeed.

The Conservatives are trying to fundraise on the backs of the media once again, claiming that the “Ottawa media elite” are trying to build a grand narrative around Justin Trudeau. You’ll pardon me for asking, but “media elite”? It makes it sound like we’re fancy or rich and powerful, which last I checked, we’re not. But hey, apparently we make a good straw man…

Parliament Hill got its first green roof that was not of the oxidized cooper variety this week – a living green roof on the top of the new annex to the renamed Sir John A Macdonald building, which will house the new Parliamentary ballroom.

And CBC’s The National has a twenty-minute documentary on Chantal Hébert and Jean Lapierre’s new book on the day after the 1995 referendum, and it’s fascinating viewing.

The Senate, it turns out, passed a tough-on-crime private members’ bill that contained a gaping error in it, and they knew it had an error in it and passed it anyway – with observations attached about the errors. Why? Because said private member had become a parliamentary secretary, and sending it back to the House to fix the error would have basically killed it because its sponsor could no longer sponsor it. It seems to me that there should have been a fix for that – generally a unanimous vote in the Commons that someone else take it on, as has happened when an MP retires while their bill is in process – but more to the point, if the government was so enamoured with it, then they should have drawn up a government bill that fixed the errors and put it through the process, which likely would have been expedited since it had already had committee hearings in its previous form. But hey, let’s keep up this nonsense of backbenchers sucking up to the government with these nonsense bills, and let’s keep up this bawling that the Senate shouldn’t overturn flawed bills that passed the Commons because they’re not elected. It’s really helping our legislative process, clearly.

At the conclusion of the NATO summit in Wales, Canada has announced it will heed an American – and not NATO – call and provide some hundred Special Forces troops as military advisors in Iraq. But while other countries, like the US, would have their Special Forces in the field training Iraqi Special Forces, it sounds like ours will mostly be based in Baghdad doing intelligence work and command and control exercises, which seems like a terribly modest contribution for the level of rhetoric that Harper has levelled against ISIS. Also, the outgoing Secretary General of NATO said that they will stand with Ukraine – but stopped short of promising anything else, including military aid in the event of invasion. The NDP want a debate and a vote before sending any troops to Iraq, however a) they curiously don’t want any despite military commitments to the area around Ukraine, and b) a debate is fine, but a vote launders the prerogative and make it harder for the government to be held to account because it makes the entire Commons complicit in the decision to commit forces in the first place. Accountability is hard!

Here’s an interesting look at the recent use of staffers as provocateurs that the Conservatives have been employing, getting these young staffers to ask difficult questions at open forums and recording the results, which they then torque, as with John McKay and General Andrew Leslie. That these in some cases these are staffers from ministers’ offices makes it all the more a dubious practice, and it’s just going to have the inevitable result of ensuring that there is zero spontaneity or off-the-cuff honesty left in politics, and we’ll have nothing but canned talking points at all times. Well done, everyone.

Scotiabank’s economists are sceptical about the latest job numbers from Statistics Canada, saying there are too many coincidences and that the numbers shouldn’t be that volatile, and given last month’s data woes, it’s not that difficult to see why they are suspicious.

The government’s vaunted Victims Bill of Rights leaves out military personnel, which is a problem considering the number of sexual assaults that happen in that environment, and those victims won’t be able to access the same services or have the same rights as civilians. And no, the government won’t say why.

Another Ontario judge has ruled the mandatory victims’ surcharge to be unconstitutional. I can’t wait for these cases to start making their way through the appeals courts and wind up at the Supreme Court of Canada once and for all.

James Moore is looking for private sector help to create an index of interprovincial trade barriers, as he works to try to bring them down.

One of the financial backers of Mobilicity, which is currently in bankruptcy protection, is suing Industry Canada for basically not living up to their promise to help competition in the wireless sector thrive.

The Liberals want the public safety committee to conduct a study on the danger posed to Canada by radicalised individuals who return to the country after fighting abroad. They’re hoping to get this underway once the House comes back in a week.

It is expected that Stephen Harper will attend the festivities in Quebec City to mark the 200^th anniversary of the birth of George-Etienne Cartier, one of the principle Fathers of Confederation. Cartier was the leader of the Bleus in Lower Canada, and joined forces with John A. Macdonald to create the Conservatives, and later became a kind of co-premier and co-Prime Minister, helping to unite the linguistic and cultural dualities.

Here’s a look at the length of Harper’s tenure as Prime Minister, and how long before he overtakes the next one on the list.

Scott Reid makes some astute observations about the candidate nomination process in this country.

The NDP’s science critic, Kennedy Stewart, tries to take on Andrew Leach’s post about “muzzled” scientists, and proposes precisely what Leach warned against – that these scientists can speak to the media whenever they want when they disagree on government policy, even if it’s to spout their own opinion. Quite reasonably, Leach blows holes in the proposal.

In Maclean’s, Anne Kingston profiles finance minister Joe Oliver.

With all of those interviews he’s been doing this week, on the 30^th anniversary of his big election win, Brian Mulroney has some harsh words for Stephen Harper, especially with respect to the spat with the Chief Justice.

Aaron Wherry tries to dissect Brian Mulroney’s assertion that Thomas Mulcair is the best opposition leader since Diefenbaker (which I’m not so sure about, because I doubt that most opposition leaders post-Diefenbaker read their questions daily, or would start off QP everyday with a mini lectern on their desk).

Brian and Mila Mulroney are mourning the death of Joan Rivers, whom they considered a good friend.

And Sonya Bell and Jessie Willms ask which Justin is in over his head – Trudeau or Bieber?

The Senate is conducting pre-study hearings on Bill C-36 this week – seeing as the government wants it passed quickly and are doing everything possible aside from imposing actual closure to ram it through – and among the witnesses they’ll be hearing from is a male escort who has exclusively female clientele. You know, someone who will completely mess with the narratives that the government has been pushing with this bill about “protecting vulnerable women,” since the Senate tends to be good about that. I can imagine that the other sex workers will probably get a better hearing at the Senate committee than they did at the Commons justice committee, seeing as there is less of a vested interest in pushing the government agenda.

While the final details of the Canada-EU trade agreement are still being ironed out, Canada and the EU signed a separate agreement yesterday to enhance cooperation around law enforcement, organised crime, cybercrime, money laundering, research and energy security. So at least we’re seeing progress in some areas.

John Baird says not to worry about mission creep with our military advisors being deployed to Iraq. I’m slightly less reassured by certain opposition voices who seem to think that we can have a meaningful contribution while ensuring that such a volatile situation can be neatly constrained into a carefully defined box.

Russian jets buzzed HMCS Toronto while on patrol in the Black Sea, and now our defence minister is trying to talk tough about the “unnecessary provocation.”

It remains a mystery why the interprovincial trade barriers around wine in Ontario are so persistent.

The CRTC hearings into the state of the Canadian broadcast industry got underway, and online content distributors like Google (which own YouTube) and Netflix don’t want any regulation that would force them to pay into the Canadian Media Fund where they can’t benefit from it – which is a ridiculous argument because they can certainly use the fund to create original content, either as a Canadian Netflix original series, or a web series as there are Canadian media funds specifically set aside to help develop and promote.

Some public sector unions are alleging that the government is trying to push them into a strike so that they can have a narrative to fight against in the next election. The blatantly partisan tone being adopted by some of these unions (in particular PSAC’s “Harper hates me” campaign) is slightly unnerving considering that it seems to go against the role of the public service, which is all about providing neutral and unbiased advice to the government of the day.

What’s that? Skilled immigrants have trouble landing jobs? You don’t say!

Here’s an interesting look at why the August Statistics Canada job numbers are probably not wrong, despite what Scotiabank’s economists figure.

In case you were wondering why the government’s big plans on a deepwater port in Nunavut along with a jet-capable landing strip were dramatically scaled back, it seems that the costs escalated far beyond what the government was planning to spend, which is not unusual considering the costs in the North are quite high to begin with.

Residential school survivors in the James Bay area fought for the release of documents, only to find that they have largely been redacted upon release. Understandably, they are unimpressed.

It looks like the big search for the Franklin expedition going on in the North may have found an iron piece of one of the ships. I’m sure this will become exciting news for the government for some time to come.

The General in charge of Canadian Joint Operations Command is due to retire, but has been prevented from speaking to journalists on his way out. One wonder if it’s because the media managers suspected he would be too critical of the current state of spending within the Forces – a narrative that the government doesn’t want to contradict their outdated and currently dubious message that they re-capitalized the Forces when current spending levels are below those during Chrétien’s “decade of darkness.”

Laura Stone profiles the two Crown attorneys who will be prosecuting the case of Senator Duffy. (Note: My profile of Duffy’s lawyer will be the in the next issue of Canadian Lawyer).

Conservative MP Peter Goldring has announced that he won’t be running again next year, despite previously saying that he would be. The number of incumbent Conservatives not running again – particularly Reform-era ones – continues to climb.

Andrew Coyne is none too pleased about what the Scottish referendum vote could mean here in Canada.

And Will and Kate are expecting a second royal baby. Everybody freak out!

The government’s new ads about their Apprenticeship Loan Programme claims that there will be a shortage of “one million skilled tradesmen and women” over the next decade. The problem? Well, there’s just no labour data to support that claim, whether you go simply with skilled workers period – not just the trades – or any other sector really. And once again we find ourselves in the position where the government’s advertising is completely out of tune with reality, from promoting programmes that haven’t had parliamentary approval, which offer benefits that most people won’t get because they’re specific or the thresholds are low, or the benefits of which are highly overblown. But hey, we remember the excuse that this was all about trying to instil confidence in the economy and so on, right? Even the government admits that they need better labour market data, and they’ve started two new surveys to help provide it, but this is also what their cuts to Statistics Canada has wrought. But incomplete data is one thing – complete fabrications are another.

Good reads:

• Here are some more of the Maclean’s dispatches from Paris from Paul Wells and Nick Kozak, including Wells watching the far-right counter rally.
• Stephen Harper gave a reasonably non-partisan speech about Sir John A Macdonald on the occasion of his birthday while in Kingston yesterday, along with a couple of other former prime ministers.
• Murray Brewster looks at how the military has been routinely doing counter-intelligence work in the North.
• Andrew Leach has questions about that Nature study where the media reported that we’d need to leave 85 percent of the oil sands in the ground to halt climate change.
• Scott Reid considers how Harper’s incrementalism has changed how Canadians view government spending.
• It sounds like the government is ready to table new legislation to expand the powers of preventative arrest after the recent rash of terror attacks around the globe.

Odds and ends:

Jennifer Ditchburn looks at some of the new online outfits covering politics differently. I’m still not sure that Press Progress is actual “coverage” and not NDP propaganda, however.

On his Northern tour, Justin Trudeau says he’s not there to make promises but to listen, learn and engage.

Recession in Canada ended 2 years BEFORE the Harper 2011 majority. Economic record is 6 years of post-recession "troubled economic times"

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 11, 2015

How long can you run on, "things are barely better than awful, and we're on the verge of disaster, so please keep my hand on the rudder?"

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) January 11, 2015

It was wholly depressing the way in which the whole matter was rushed through. After the imposition of closure – not time allocation but actual closure – the government rammed through their motion to put all Hill security under the auspices of the RCMP without any safeguards to protect parliamentary privilege. After all, the RCMP reports to the government, and Parliament is there to hold government to account and therefore has privileges to protect that – the ability to have their own security being a part of that. Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger tried to amend the government’s motion to make it explicit that the Speakers of both chambers were the ultimate authorities, and the government said good idea – and then voted against it. And so it got pushed through, privilege be damned, with minimal debate and no committee study or expert testimony. The Senate, however, is putting up more of a fight, and the Liberals in that chamber have raised the privilege issue, and the Speaker there thinks there is merit to their concerns, and has suspended debate until he can rule on it. And this Speaker, incidentally, is far more aware of the issues of privilege and the role of Parliament and the Senate than his Commons counterpart seems to be, and he could very well rule the proposal out of order. One hopes so, and once again it seems that our hopes rest on the Senate doing its job, because the Commons isn’t doing theirs.

I don't know about you all, but I'm actually not willing to predict how Senator Nolin will rule. Senate speakers are tricky.

— kady o'malley (@kady) February 17, 2015

Good reads:

• The Parliamentary Budget Officer released his cost estimates for the mission to Iraq, and they’re higher than the figures Kenney put out. The PBO figures were lowballed for a number of reasons, which makes one wonder if they’re not hiding the numbers in other ledgers. DND also stonewalled access to information on this report.
• Kevin Milligan shows how the loss of the long-form census affected the Labour Force Survey put out by Statistics Canada.
• Jennifer Robson muses about the notion of loyalty for political staffers to their bosses.
• The Conservatives are downplaying the recent issue of Conservative mailings that had QR codes on them for party websites, and there could be a repayment demanded (but not to the same amount as the NDP mailings).
• Diane Finley thinks that too much socialism in Sweden has created a generation of people with no parenting skills. No, really.
• Elizabeth May remains convinced that C-51 will turn CSIS into a “secret police” – um, except that it doesn’t give them the power of arrest. Thomas Mulcair also thinks it’ll give CSIS the power to spy on the government’s political adversaries, which one suspects is stretching credulity.

Odds and ends:

The Commons public safety committee invited the RCMP Commissioner to show them the videotape made by the Ottawa shooter behind closed doors – though the NDP wants it to be public.

Justin Trudeau made an issue of the government cutting funds to vaccine promotion since 2006, as the country faces an increasing number of measles outbreaks.

Trudeau also, incidentally, opposes the government’s position on banning niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.

Her Majesty welcomes @LGLizDowdeswell to #BuckinghamPalace upon her appointment as Lieutenant Governor of #Ontario pic.twitter.com/ftpp1h1gnC

— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) February 17, 2015

Today I was delighted to represent the people of #Ontario during an audience with Her Majesty The Queen. pic.twitter.com/9bjvQka3GD

— Elizabeth Dowdeswell (@LGLizDowdeswell) February 17, 2015

A rare bit of public damage control was on display yesterday as CBC obtained a copy of the orders that the Chief of Defence Staff put out two months ago, which told the nascent task force being assembled to deal with the forthcoming report by former Justice Marie Deschamps on sexual assault and harassment in the Forces, to basically set aside some of the coming recommendations. At this point in the timeline, General Lawson would have seen a draft copy of Deschamps’ report, and he would have had a good idea what was in it for recommendations. Within hours of the CBC report going public, Lawson put out a lengthy press release stating that the Forces would act on all ten recommendations, including the creation of an independent centre for reporting assault or harassment. A few minutes later in Question Period, Jason Kenney also said that all ten recommendations would be acted upon as well. It does make one wonder when any change in these orders occurred, and why Lawson changed his mind – though one can imagine that either the final wording of Deschamps’ report, and how it was received by both the government and the general public, may have forced a realisation that there was a real appetite for cultural change out in the wider public, and that the old way of dealing with issues internally, particularly with its culture of misogyny, weren’t going to cut it any longer. Meanwhile, it should also be pointed out that the Canadian Forces appointed a female commander, Brigadier General Lise Bourgon, to head our forces in Iraq, and more women in high-profile commanding roles can only help in driving home the message that it’s not a macho boys’ club any longer.

Change of Command JTF-Iraq: BGen Lise Bourgon assumed command from BGen Dan Constable: http://t.co/4WnHzj09cB #RCAF pic.twitter.com/dKFYWjnNJY

— RCAF (@RCAF_ARC) May 13, 2015

Good reads:

• The government is using the latest omnibudget bill to retroactively change the Access to Information Act to protect the RCMP for not turning over any long gun registry information.
• The government denies that they trying to use the RCMP release of the Ottawa shooter video to bolster the case for C-51.
• It looks like the PMO won out in the war of wills with the military over giving more information on the mission to Iraq, which of course serves political ends.
• The Quebec National Assembly unanimously panned the NDP promise to create a ministry of urban affairs, since municipalities are a provincial jurisdiction.
• Mike Moffatt wonders if there is a problem with Statistics Canada’s job market data.
• Prince Charles’ correspondence with the government has been made public. He’s been concerned with things like agriculture and badgers. No, seriously.
• Over on Canadaland, I wrote about the way our evening political shows treated the Elizabeth May speech.

Odds and end:

Patrick Brown has now resigned is federal seat now that he won the provincial PC leadership in Ontario.

Four years after the government made a big deal of their “fairness at the pumps” law, no monetary fines have been collected.

The City of Ottawa is starting the process of formally opposing the Victims of Communism monument placement.

@kady Answer to NDP's qstn re Duffy's residency declaration upon appt to Senate can be found in s. 128, CA 1867. http://t.co/AXrXtSMSps

— Thomas Hall (@ThomasHall17) May 14, 2015

Section 128, CA 1867, says appointee to Senate must take Declaration of Qualification contained in Fifth Schedule.

— Thomas Hall (@ThomasHall17) May 14, 2015

By now, you’ve probably heard about that ostensibly pro-oilsands ad that proclaimed that lesbians are hot, and it’s better to use oil from Canada, where they’re considered hot, than from Saudi Arabia, where they would be executed, and it being accompanied by an image taken from Orange is the New Black. And his apology and attempts to walk back from how particularly boneheaded the whole idea was to begin with. (Seriously, his sputtering about what he considers to be “hot” is both hilarious and sad at the same time). As well, the fact that he didn’t use two men to make the same point is entirely because he was conscious that the same message wouldn’t have the same effect on his target audience (because let’s face it, the idea of guys kissing isn’t as titillating to the general public as the idea of two women). What hasn’t been really explored in all of this, however, is this increasing tendency toward pinkwashing, particularly from the political right, as an excuse for xenophobia.

Instead of pulling that Oil Sands porno ad, guy shoulda doubled-down with this. pic.twitter.com/SlnwkIlYNa

— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) July 26, 2016

If you’re not familiar with the term pinkwashing, it’s generally used to show how some modicum of LGBT rights is a contrast to the death sentence that can be associated with homosexuality in certain parts of the world, usually as a way of deflecting attention from other problems. A famous example is the way that Israel uses Tel Aviv Pride to deflect criticism of their other human rights problems, and there was a tonne of pinkwashing done in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando as a pretext to condemning so-called Islamist terrorism (never mind that the same people spouting this pinkwashing ignore their own homophobic records. Who cares if we want to take away their civil rights – we don’t want to execute them, is generally how the argument goes, as though that’s really the choice that the LGBT community wants to be faced with). And this lesbian ad isn’t even the first time that this argument has been used – the Erza Levant brainchild Ethical Oil tried similar arguments a couple of years ago to little avail.

Suffice to say, while the mainstream media did jump all over these ridiculous lesbian ads, the criticisms tended to focus on the surface images of photogenic actresses and the fact that it ignores that there are still problems in this country where the GBLT community is concerned, the fact that there was no discussion about pinkwashing was disappointing, because this increasing tendency (particularly from the alt-right and Trump supporters) to use the queer community as some kind of shield to justify their xenophobia is tiresome and needs to be called out for what it is. These ads provided a good opportunity to do so, but that opportunity was largely squandered.

Good reads:

• At the Electoral Reform committee, the opposition parties were particularly keen to hear from Stéphane Dion, who has some curious ideas about voting systems. (Liveblog here).
• The Elections Commissioner has sanctioned the Green Party for distributing “misleading” polls in advance of the election to try and sway voters.
• Our outgoing High Commissioner in London says that the Brexit vote means that a trade deal with the UK must be a priority.
• The government is keeping up with its Joint Strike Fighter programme payments, but all signs point to them dumping the F-35 from consideration.
• The planes flown by the Snowbirds were supposed to have been retired in 2010, and yet they’re talking about trying to extend the lifespan to 2030.
• StatsCan is floating the idea of having the government make all of its surveys mandatory by default.
• Jane Philpott says a broader look into the opioid crisis is needed if we’re to solve the public health crisis of overdoses.
• Susan Delacourt looks back at the election predictions one year ago this weekend.

Odds and ends:

Good news, everyone! The CD Howe Institute says that the 2015 recession wasn’t really a recession, because reasons!

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis penned an analysis piece for Policy Options that tried to explain why MPs vote in lockstep, and it’s just so precious you can barely stand it. Genuis dismisses the talk of heavy-handed PMO and whips offices, and after some lengthy discussion, concludes that it’s the human nature of conformity that’s at play. His mode of analysis was the voting record on C-14, the highly contentious medical assistance in dying bill.

It’s not that Genuis doesn’t have some good – if somewhat infuriating points – in the piece, talking about how MPs are so busy with their constituency work that they just don’t have the time to sit down and study the legislation that they were elected to be considering. That one nearly made me blow a gasket, considering that constituency work isn’t actually part of an MP’s job description and its growing importance has come at the expense of their actual jobs of holding government to account. That Genuis uses it as an excuse for having MPs let the “experts” in their leaders’ offices tell them how to vote is utterly galling. I can see why they would use this excuse, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good one or one that we should let them get away with (but then again, almost nobody knows what an MP’s actual job description is, least of all the MPs themselves, and yes, that is a Very Big Problem. His better points, however, included that sometimes it’s good for local nominations to see that an MP will be willing to break ranks from time to time, but it’s a mixed bag when they also need to be seen to have a united front with the party. It is a tension that he doesn’t delve deeply enough into.

But so much of his thinking is flawed, in part because he relies on the data of votes on a single contentious bill rather than a broader sample, which would produce a more thoughtful discussion, and also because he ignores the other incentives for why MPs will vote in lock-step. For some parties, like the NDP, the need for solidarity in all things means a much more conformist voting pattern in all things, and there is an internal culture of bullying to keep MPs in line so as not to be unseemly with dissent. With government backbenchers, there is the hope that toeing the line enough will earn you a post in cabinet or as a parliamentary secretary, because the ratio of cabinet-to-backbench seats is still too low in Canada to encourage a culture of more independent backbenchers in safer seats willing to do their job of holding government to account. There is also the pressure – which We The Media shamefully perpetuate – that you don’t want to be seen as breaking ranks lest it reflect poorly on the leader (though this seems to be a bit less so under Trudeau who has been vocal about encouraging more free votes). There is no discussion about the blackmail of a leader that can withhold their signature from an MP’s nomination papers during the next election (or whatever the mechanism is post-Reform Act, because there is no actual clarity in law there any longer). So yes, while there is a human tendency to conformity, it is informed by a whole lot of other factors that Genuis ignores, and that taints his analysis to a pretty fatal degree.

This "humans naturally conform" arg is undercut by comparative evidence re *degree* of party discipline in Canada. https://t.co/444qlFhr8l

— Emmett Macfarlane (@EmmMacfarlane) September 16, 2016

@kblidook @EmmMacfarlane riding associations tell me they want team players and party loyalists. Clear incentives towards conformity

— Erin Tolley (@e_tolley) September 16, 2016

It's not just a "natural" human desire. Political system encourages, incentivizes and selects based on conformity https://t.co/bu36UYG757

— Erin Tolley (@e_tolley) September 16, 2016

Good reads:

• The Chief Statistician resigned yesterday in protest over the way that the Shared Services Canada gong show is hobbling Statistics Canada.
• Justin Trudeau is leading the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria replenishment conference in Montreal, pledging a 20 percent larger commitment.
• Apparently it’s an outrage that a minister of the Crown spent $178 on a Nexus pass, because we’re a bunch of gods damned rubes.
• Here’s a look at how the drive to get an Indigenous justice on the Supreme Court of Canada may mean reneging on the bilingualism pledge.
• It looks like we’ll be ratifying the Paris climate agreement before getting all of the provinces onside.
• While consensus doesn’t appear to be happening at electoral reform consultations, not many Conservatives are bothering to even hold town halls.
• Kellie Leitch spoke to Chatelaine, and insists that she’s not anti-Muslim.
• Here’s a profile of Leitch’s campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis.
• Peter Sankoff gives a deserved spanking to Parliament for not actually repealing struck-down clauses from the Criminal Code, which led to the Vader trial confusion.
• Kady O’Malley looks at the Ontario political finance reforms and compares them to how the federal rules developed.
• Susan Delacourt reflects on her summer series looking at new MPs, and on the balance between idealism and cynicism in politics.
• Andrew MacDougall diagnoses what’s wrong in the Conservative leadership, and the dance a future leader will have to keep the party together.
• John Ivison calls out the electoral reform consultations for the farce that they are.
• Emmett Macfarlane reminds us how votes work, why we don’t elect the prime minister, and why it’s not just semantics.

Odds and ends:

Here is the compressed timetable that the government is looking at for electoral reform (assuming it doesn’t get derailed).

As the by-election call date closes in, the Liberals have found their candidate for Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner.

Parliament resumes today, and it’s going to be the start of a heavy legislative agenda, as the government’s months of consultations start wrapping up and decisions get to start being made. And if you needed a reminder about everything on everyone’s plates, here’s a handy piece about the priorities and challenges for the three main parties this autumn, and Kady O’Malley’s list here too. That said, a Huffington Post article was circulating over the weekend that set my teeth on edge, “proving” that the spring session was the least-productive in decades.

Why this is a problematic measure is that it’s focusing solely on the number of bills passed over those ten months (really, only about five of which was when Parliament was sitting). It’s a purely quantitative analysis that says absolutely nothing about the context of what happened, or about the bigger picture of what the government accomplished. And really, I will be the first person to say that the decision to pull the plug on the Friday they did was about forcing the Senate to pass the assisted dying bill, when they were actually scheduled to sit for a couple of more days, during which time they could have passed two more bills that were ready to go, but they didn’t, and that does deserve mention, but that’s not in there at all. What we get are Conservatives cherry-picking trips and “photo ops” – because who needs multilateral engagement, am I right? – rather than on some of the additional hurdles that the session faced. One of the biggest hurdles was around that assisted dying bill, and the fact that the opposition parties demanded far more hours of debate at second reading than the bill deserved (remember, second reading is about the principle of the bill, not the specifics), and they got huffy when the government tried to push those additional (useless) hours of debate into late nights to keep the agenda going, and when they tried to bring in a procedural hammer to move bills through, the Opposition blew their tops and we wound up with The Elbowing and the subsequent fallout from that. Let me remind you that the Conservatives fully participated in the days of psychodrama that followed, and now they have the gall to say that the government didn’t get enough done? Seriously? They were equal participants in determining the Commons’ schedule of what took place (especially the demands for more second reading debate on that assisted dying bill), and I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that when they were in government, they sat on that bill and didn’t move it despite its deadline. So yes, I find this whole accusation to be the height of cheek, and the analysis should have included far more context around the events of the spring.

Good reads:

• The Global Fund replenishment conference in Montreal raised almost $13 billion to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, while Bono praised Canada’s role on the world stage.
• Catherine McKenna is moderating her language somewhat around emissions targets.
• Avi Lewis reiterates that he’s not interested in the NDP leadership, and is talking about the Leap Manifesto as though it could become its own party.
• Documents show that the dispute over Shared Services Canada that led to the Chief Statistician’s resignation has been brewing for months.
• Here’s a look at some of the difficulties facing ratification of CETA that Chrystia Freeland is off to Europe to try to solve.
• The previous government not making changes to the Citizenship Act retroactive meant that a bunch of people have lost their status due to an arcane rule.
• The small marginal parties gather to whine about the current system and hope for electoral reforms that give them seats.
• Rona Ambrose says that a peacekeeping mission is just about a UN security seat, and we should focus instead on “fighting terrorism,” as though it’s a military solution.
• General Vance says that our NATO mission in Latvia is taking shape.
• Paul Wells talks to the head of Joint Operations Command about the mission in Iraq, and notes his tone of caution.

Odds and ends:

While Justin Trudeau heads to the UN General Assembly, here’s a look at the difficulties that simultaneous interpreters there face.

Part of Prince William’s visit will include adding a new piece to BC’s Black Rod, which will be symbolic of reconciliation with the province’s Indigenous population.

The by-election date for Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner has been set for October 24^th.

Everyone’s back, and raring to go, and how I’ve missed them all! Well, okay, not everyone’s back — the PM and several of his ministers are off at the UN General Assembly (where Canada’s Back™), but these things happen.

Back in the House of Commons for #QP. pic.twitter.com/Gv9Q4i40Pd

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on desk, decrying tax increases along with a potential carbon tax and CPP increases. Bill Morneau stood up to lament the challenges facing Canadians, and noted the reduction in middle-class taxes and the Canadian Child Benefit. Ambrose gave the doom statistics, and Morneau reminded her that investments and not austerity were geared toward future growth. Ambrose changed tactics and sounded the alarm about a peacekeeping mission in sun-Saharan Africa. Harjit Sajjan reminded her that it was dangerous, and that was why he was doing the necessary homework beforehand. Ambrose worried that troops were being used as pawns on a political chessboard in a bid for a UN seat. Sajjan reminded her that it was not just about troops, but a whole-of-government approach to peace operations and stability. Ambrose switched to French to demand a debate and vote on a deployment. Sajjan said they welcomed a healthy debate, but did not commit to a vote (as is proper). Thomas Mulcair was up next, decrying the “cuts” (read: changed escalator) to health transfers. Jane Philpott said she was talking with the provinces, but didn’t commit to restoring the old escalator. Mulcair asked again in English, got the same answer, and then Mulcair demanded that the government vote in favour of nuclear disarmament at the UN this week. Sajjan said that the best way was a pragmatic step-by-step approach. Mulcair demanded GHG reduction targets, and Catherine McKenna said that they were being transparent in their approach.

Ambrose demand a debate and vote on a peacekeeping mission. Sajjan commits to a debate but not a vote (as is proper). #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Apparently a changed escalator is a cut. #sigh #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Round two, and Denis Lebel reiterated Ambrose’s deficit question (Morneau: We are investing), and about the lack of a softwood lumber agreement (Lametti: We are engaged and are looking for a good deal, not any deal), Mark Strahl and Candice Bergen worried about a federal carbon tax (McKenna: We need a price on carbon to innovate and grow the economy). Romeo Saganash demanded equal funding for First Nations children (Bennett: We are restructuring the system), Charlie Angus demanded the government stop fighting emergency orthodontics benefits to First Nations children (Philpott: We have a benefits program and are working to improve it). Jason Kenney returned to laments about a federal carbon tax (McKenna: Most provinces already have a price on carbon, and you’re supposed to believe in free market economics), and David Anderson whined about PMO officials tweeting at Brad Wall (McKenna: All premiers stepped up with the PM in Vancouver). Hélène Laverdière asked about reports that Canadians knew about torture (Goodale: We are instituting the parliamentary oversight committee), and about the Streit Group arms exports to places like Libya (Goldsmith-Jones: We are looking into this).

It's perverse that opposition MPs demand a vote on a deployment as it hobbles their ability to hold government to account later. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Round three saw questions on a peacekeeping mission debate and vote, emission reductions targets, demands for an electoral reform referendum, the possible loss of an Atlantic Supreme Court justice (Wilson-Raybould: At least two on the short list will come from Atlantic Canada), the resignation of the Chief Statistician, why no vote on a peacekeeping mission, eliminating health user-fees, and Trudeau’s visit to a gender-segregated mosque (Hajdu: Here’s how feminism works).

Every vote already counts! Stop giving weight to this baseless credo, Mark Holland! #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Duclos takes a moment to welcome the new crop of pages. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Patty Hajdu just gave a lesson on intersectional feminism. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 19, 2016

Overall, it was a decent day in terms of decorum, questions and responses, but the trap of repetition was already in full force. The number of question on a fiction carbon tax was a bit tiresome considering that it’s both not a real thing (a national price on carbon depends on the provinces setting a price, not an additional federal tax), and there are far better ways to ask about such a national price without caricaturing it as a “job-killing carbon tax,” particularly when presented as an additional tax on top of BC’s current one. I was somewhat disappointed that Harjit Sajjan didn’t respond to the demands for a vote on a peacekeeping mission with a civics lesson on Crown prerogatives (but I may be hoping for too much there). Meanwhile, Mulcair’s broadly telegraphed attempt to brand the Liberals as the same as the Conservatives was ham-fisted and blustery, as opposed to making any credible connections.

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to Amarjeet Sohi for a tailored black suit with a pink shirt and tie, and to Pam Damoff for a black dress with white side panels that enhanced the silhouette. Style citations go out to MaryAnn Michychuk for a leopard print top with a dusky rose jacket, and to Mel Arnold for a grey suit with a dull green shirt and a grey patterned tie.

A group of East Coast lawyers has decided to launch a court challenge about the possibility that the government might appoint a new Supreme Court justice that is not from Atlantic Canada, and my head is already hitting the desk because while you can conceivably argue that the regional composition of the court may very well be a constitutional convention, by that very same argument, a constitutional convention is non-justiciable, so you can’t actually take it to court.

I realize recent jurisprudence on amendment clouds this issue (indeed, I edited a book on it) but COME ON. 2/2

— Emmett Macfarlane (@EmmMacfarlane) September 19, 2016

Of course, I didn't think "composition" meant "eligibility requirements" either, so…

— Emmett Macfarlane (@EmmMacfarlane) September 19, 2016

@EmmMacfarlane @ErinLCrandall To say nothing of it being premature to bring the application before a "non-conforming" appointment is made.

— Aniz Alani (@AnizAlani) September 19, 2016

So, to recap, until an appointment is actually made, the whole quixotic venture is premature. Constitutional conventions are politically enforceable but not legally, in part because we don’t actually want people to constantly take the government to court when they lose at politics (which already happens too much – and it’s almost as bad as writing to the Queen when you lose at politics). There was a court case not too long ago when Democracy Watch took the government to court because Stephen Harper went to the Governor General to call an early election despite the (useless) fixed-election date legislation having been enacted, and the courts dismissed it because prerogative powers are constitutional conventions (and while unwritten, are nevertheless still part of our constitutional framework).

And don’t get me wrong – I do think there is a very good case that the regional composition is a constitutional convention because it reflects the federalist principle that is necessary to give its decisions the political legitimacy necessary to be the arbiter of jurisdictional disputes in this country, and that is a pretty big consideration. But the courts are probably not the best place to solve this issue. Having the Atlantic premiers write the Justice Minister to warn her about breaching the convention is probably a better course of action, as would having backbench Liberal MPs from the region expressing their displeasure (though, for all we know, they may already be doing so behind closed doors in the caucus room). And a public campaign that lays out this argument (as opposed to just one centred around it being unfair or about maligning the political correctness of trying to find a new justice that better reflects certain diversity characteristics) wouldn’t hurt either. But this group of lawyers should know better than to try and make a non-justiciable issue justiciable.

Good reads:

• At the UN General Assembly, Justin Trudeau and John McCallum made a concerted effort to push back against anti-refugee sentiments, while McCallum said that 13 other countries are interested in a sponsorship system like ours.
• While Conservatives have been howling about planned CPP increases, it will take 40 years for those changes to roll out.
• The former Chief Statistician explains his resignation around the problems with Shared Services Canada, while SSC shows no signs of achieving their goals.
• Judy Foote said there was no going back when the switchover to the Phoenix pay system happened. The Auditor General will examine that debacle, unsurprisingly.
• The federal government is threatening to cut Quebec healthcare transfers so long as they charge user fees for services covered under the Canada Health Act.
• As expected, the Conservatives launched a privilege complaint, arguing that Jane Philpott misled them when she said she hadn’t rented any limos.
• Hunter Tootoo is apparently trying to get back into the Liberal caucus, but we’ll see if that ever happens at this point.
• Here’s a look at which MPs have been named and shamed by the Speaker, not that it says very much other than this is a Speaker willing to do so.
• Michael Petrou has a long read about Canada’s re-engaging with Iran, and what it means for those Canadians languishing in jails there.
• Colby Cosh reminds us about how felony murder came to be struck from the books in Canada.
• Stephen Gordon looks at the research on employment disincentives with minimum wage increases, and some of the unintended adverse effects.

Odds and ends:

Here’s an interview with Chief Justice Beverley McLachlan about her remaining years on the Court.

The nomination race in Stephen Harper’s old riding is starting to take shape.

When it comes time to move the House of Commons to the West Block, the Speaker’s chair won’t be going with it because it’s too big to move.

It feels like a while since I’ve had to go to bat for the existence of the Senate, so Robyn Urback’s column in the National Post yesterday was pretty much the bat-signal shining in the sky. To wit, Urback somewhat lazily trades on the established tropes of the Senate, and takes what was a joke on the part of Senator Nancy Ruth about airplane food (cold camembert and broken crackers was a joke, people! Senators are allowed to have a dry sense of humour, last I checked) to clutch her pearls about how terribly elitist and entitled our senators allegedly are (when really, the vast majority are very much not).

Urback’s big complaint however is that despite Justin Trudeau’s promises of change to the institution, giving it more independence is apparently all a sham. There are a few problems with this hypothesis, however, and most can pretty much be chalked up to the run-of-the-mill ignorance of the institution, its history, and its proper function in our parliamentary system. Her complaints that the rules that allowed Senator Mike Duffy to claim all of those expenses is wrong, because rules have tightened since, and the fact that he can still claim for his Ottawa residence is the reality that comes with what we are asking of Senators. The problem with Duffy is that he never should have been appointed as a senator for PEI, and he was shameless enough to claim the expenses for his Ottawa residence without actually making a legitimate point of having an actual full-time residence on the island and a small condo or apartment in Ottawa for when the Senate was in session. Complaints that the Senate Liberals are simply declared to be independents while still remaining partisans ignores the substance of how they have behaved in the time since Trudeau made the declaration, and the fact that they have been kicking the government just as hard, if not harder, than the Conservatives in the Senate since Trudeau came to power. This is not an insignificant thing. But then there is Urback’s ultimate complaint, revolving around a canard about who senators are accountable to.

An excellent point from @RobynUrback: https://t.co/Mn0FkDk7NU pic.twitter.com/sqBTzOnByo

— Scott Gilmore (@Scott_Gilmore) September 21, 2016

The Senate was never made to be accountable to parties or party leaders. The whole point of the institution, and the very reason it was constructed with the institutional independence that it has (non-renewable appointments to age 75 with extremely difficult conditions for removal) is so that the Senate can act on a check for a prime minister with a majority government, and they have numerous times since confederation. It needs to have the ability to tell truth to power without fear of reprisal, and that includes the power to kill bad bills – because they do get through the Commons more often than you’d like to think. They have never been accountable to a party or leader, and that’s a good thing. Sure, they can act in lockstep with a party out of sentimentality (or ignorance, if you look at the batches appointed post-2008), but this was never a formal check on their powers, nor should it be. If Urback or anyone else can tell me how you get an effective check on a majority prime minister any other way, I’m all ears, but the chamber has a purpose in the way it was constructed. Getting the vapours over a more formal independence is ignorant of the 149 years of history of the chamber and its operations.

Where Urback does have a point is in noting that the independent appointments board made their recommendations on the short-list without having conducted any interviews or face-to-face meetings. That is a problem that undermines the whole point of the appointment process, because it leaves the final vetting up to the PMO. One hopes that this will be corrected in the new permanent process that is being undertaken now, but there are still worrying signs about how that is being conducted. Self-nominations and people getting letters of recommendation seems like a poor way to get quality people who aren’t driven by ego and status, and we can hope that this isn’t all they’re replying on.

Had lunch a few weeks ago with an Eminent Torontonian who said *three* people had asked him for letters of reference for Senate applications

— Paul Wells (@InklessPW) September 21, 2016

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau was back in the House and before the press, and laid out a few markers on topics like health care fees, pipelines, and climate change.
• Trudeau did insist that he won’t water down our “extremely high standards” for human rights in any extradition treaty with China.
• Today in cheap outrage, we continue to rail about the moving expenses that were within the rules, and now taxi spending that was in line with previous years.
• BC communities along the Kinder Morgan pipeline route are grousing that “social licence” doesn’t mean giving them a veto.
• The government is still deciding what to do with the amendments the Senate sent back to the Commons on the RCMP unionization bill back in June.
• The government looks to be willing to scrap the “safe country of origin” list for refugee claimants, as the new system isn’t working as it was intended to.
• General Vance is pushing back against the narrative that we would be doing peace operations missions solely to get a UN seat.
• Elections Canada’s latest report talks about the problems they experienced by a surprise early election call that signalled an extra-long writ period.
• The National Research Council lost a quarter of its scientists under the Conservatives.
• Here’s the tale of a town in Newfoundland trying to get paid out to relocate while some refuse, and how it’s reflective of the whole province’s problems.
• Brad Trost compared Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum with residential schools. No, seriously.
• Kady O’Malley recaps the latest batch of Order Paper Question releases.
• Andrew Coyne says that carbon pricing will never be politically saleable in a country that freaks out when the price of gas goes up by a nickel.
• Paul Wells takes note of the poor week the Liberals seem to be having on a number of fronts.

Odds and ends:

The former Chief Statistician has been invited to committee to talk about the gong show called Shared Services Canada.

The single-event sports betting bill was defeated. Aww.

Lisa Raitt has revealed that her husband has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

The Senate’s modernization committee came out with their first report yesterday that had 21 recommendations, almost all of which were fairly common-sense, but wouldn’t you know it, the only one that most media outlets glommed onto was the one about broadcasting Senate proceedings, never mind that it was pretty much always the plan to do so once they moved to the new chamber in 2018 (as it was too expensive in the current one given the maxed out infrastructure). Other recommendations that caught the mainstream attention were developing a mechanism to split up omnibus bills, giving a more proportional role for non-aligned senators on committees and coming up with a modified way of selecting the Senate Speaker (in a rubric that doesn’t require constitutional amendment) were also up there, while Kady also clocked the recommendation on ensuring that they recognise any group over nine senators that wants to organise themselves as a caucus or parliamentary group that can choose its own leader, and that those groups can have access to sufficient research dollars.

Less publicised were the number one recommendation of a mission statement for the Chamber to guide its activities in the Westminster tradition, finding ways to reorganise its Order Paper and Senate Question Period to not only formalise inviting ministers but also Officers of Parliament (but I’m less keen on reducing it to two days per week to give the “Government Representative” a break – if he wants the salary, he should keep up with the workload). The Independent Working Group says they’re mostly happy with these changes, but want more assurances of representation on key committees like Senate Rules and Internal Economy, where they need to have the actual power to break up the duopoly that currently exists between the established parties, which is fair.

What the report does not say is that parties should be eliminated, and in fact goes out to specifically say that the institution functions within the Westminster model, which includes government and opposition roles, and nothing in that report is intended to assume or advocate for the elimination of those roles, and that’s important. Opposition is important for the practice of accountability, and that’s something the Senate is very good at providing. There will be more reports and recommendations to come, and I’ll have more to say in the coming days, but I’m heartened to see that there is a commitment to preserving these key features, rather than to blow them up in the continued kneejerk allergy to partisanship that currently grips the imagination of would-be Senate reformers.

Good reads:

• In carbon pricing fallout, Nova Scotia says no to a carbon tax but they’re running figures on cap-and-trade, while Trudeau and Wall got snippy over Twitter.
• Jane Philpott has hinted broadly that any increases in health transfers will come with strings attached for things like home care and mental health.
• The NDP motion on a committee to oversee arms sales was voted down (and probably for the best because it sounded like an overreach of an MP’s job).
• John McCallum says they are sending a team to investigate how to help Yzidis in Iraq, and he will consider a moratorium on citizenship revocations with few appeals.
• Former Atlantic Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache is adding his concern to the possibility that there will be no Atlantic voice on the bench.
• The government’s bill to equalize cabinet ministers’ status and salaries (basically eliminating junior ministers) also lays the groundwork to expand its size.
• The new Chief Statistician is trying to strike a conciliatory tone with the gong show known as Shared Services Canada.
• The Commons public safety committee unanimously adopted a report about the need to address PTSD among first-responders across the country.
• BC has formally agreed to the CPP expansion after hesitating, and Trudeau promises legislation to make it happen soon.
• The Environment Commissioner warned about CNSC’s record keeping on inspections, as well as Parks Canada assessments and fish stock monitoring.
• Justin Trudeau attended a vigil for missing and murdered Indigenous women, and reminded them that things can’t change overnight.
• The Canadian Forces is reviewing its policies around protecting cadets after increasing complaints of sexual misconduct (especially during summer camp).
• The Senate is now formally garnishing Mike Duffy’s wages to recoup those illegitimate expenses aired in court.
• His rivals may mock him, but Maxime Bernier is sticking with his “Mad Max” image.
• Susan Delacourt suggests that it’s time for Trudeau to cut his losses on electoral reform, as it’s never going to get consensus in time to make the necessary changes.

Odds and ends:

Maclean’s has a conversation with economist Andrew Leach about yesterday’s carbon pricing announcement.

Spirited, direct conversation with @PremierBradWall today about clean growth & climate change. I look forward to our next one. pic.twitter.com/1epy3wNpue

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 4, 2016

During last elxn Trudeau said he would not impose carbon tax plan on provs. I supported that policy. Keep your word. pic.twitter.com/wOnKDudAfw

— Brad Wall (@PremierBradWall) October 4, 2016

Our plan to fight climate change – in cooperation with the provinces – has been clear since the start of the campaign. Here's the full clip: pic.twitter.com/O0Jg5OqEMN

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 4, 2016

News broke yesterday morning that rogue Liberal backbencher Nate Erskine-Smith had been reassigned from the public safety committee by the party whip, and immediately everyone was all “uh oh, this is totally because he spoke out against his party.” Yes, Erskine-Smith has been making all kinds of waves, talking about his disagreement with the approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, advocating for the decriminalisation of all illegal drugs to treat them as a public health as opposed to a criminal law issue, and most recently, prostrating himself before his electorate to decry his government’s decision to abandon electoral reform (and using the curious tactic of using language that both undermines his government’s legitimacy and advocates for a system that undermines the very agency he has as an MP to stand apart from his party, but whatever).

Liberal gov't: We will empower backbenchers!

Backbench MP: I disagree with my party on the following issues…

Liberal gov't: https://t.co/gaLOWlwq5v

— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) February 7, 2017

Of course, it also appears that none of those commenters from the peanut gallery actually bothered to read the story about why Erskine-Smith was yanked from the committee, and it had little to do with his outspokenness than the fact that he was overly naïve as a newbie MP if trying to make parliament a nicer place. In this case, he wanted to operate by consensus on the committee and tried to get the other parties onside for amending the bill on establishing a national security committee of parliamentarians. The problem was that in the process, he was manipulated by Tony Clement into deleting some of his government’s own provisions because, you know, consensus and working together! So yeah, painful lesson, and maybe he’ll learn to be a little less trusting the next time. I get that you want parliament to be a nicer place and politics to be done better, but if you’re not careful, your opponents will (metaphorically) shiv you because they have their own goals, and they don’t necessarily want to buy into your platform. And let’s not forget that the competition of ideas is part of what keeps our system vital and accountable.

Of course, the fact that the whip could take this step has the usual suspects up in arms about how too much power is in the hands of the leader (by way of the whip), and the standard calls about reforming committees were trotted out. The Liberal Party’s promises on committee reform – more resources, electing chairs by secret ballot, and ensuring parliamentary secretaries are no longer voting members – were pretty much accomplished, but Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong has his own reform ideas (try to look surprised), but reading them over, I have doubts. In particular, his plan to take away the power to assign MPs to committees and replacing it with a secret ballot process is dubious, in particular because a) I can’t imagine trying to count those ballots, b) it won’t solve the problems of MPs all trying to get onto the “sexier” committees while leaving some of the less exciting ones to be scrounging for members, c) critics – which the leader assigns – are on those committees, so for a party like the NDP, the secret balloting process would be useless, and d) this is a typical Chong suggestion of a solution in search of a problem. MPs like to bitch and moan about being assigned to committees they don’t like, but rarely actually ask for committee assignments, nor do they seem to have an appreciation that sometimes the party has to spread out their talent to places where it’s needed as opposed to where MPs want to go.

I’m also not keen on Chong’s plan to merge five committees to bring down the total number because there’s no actual need. We have 338 MPs and we don’t have a super-sized cabinet with a bloated parliamentary secretary brigade to match it, and in the previous parliament, they already reduced committees from 12 to 10 members apiece. There are enough MPs to go around, and merging the mandates of committees overloads them rather than letting them undertake studies of their own accord, which they should be doing. There’s no real crisis of overloading MPs with work right now (which was not always the case), so this particular suggestion seems gratuitous.

Good reads:

• The government has relented and offered a $372 million interest-free repayable loan to Bombardier, which is far less than the $1 billion they were demanding.
• Not getting a bail-out? The news media.
• Chrystia Freeland is in Washington DC to meet with officials there, while Harjit Sajjan is hinting about new military spending following his meeting there.
• The Court Challenges Programme has now been restored.
• Karina Gould had her debut appearance before a hostile government operations committee with members still angry about the demise of electoral reform.
• Gould is also now having to eat her predecessor’s (and the party’s own) words and is now defending First-Past-the-Post, albeit tepidly.
• Rona Ambrose insists that they didn’t talk shop on that billionaire’s yacht. I guess that makes it okay then, err, except the part for deriding “billionaire lifestyles.”
• MPs on the health committee are going to study “violent pornography” as a public health issue. Slow clap, guys.
• John Geddes looks at data showing that Canadians have similar capacity for populist sentiment over immigrants, but less political incentive to mobilize it.
• The Government Operations Centre was monitoring MMIW rallies (as they were with Idle No More rallies back in the day).
• Statistics Canada is quietly studying proposals to eliminate the mandatory short-form census by 2026 using other government databases to get the data.
• Éric Grenier crunches the fundraising data to look at the Conservative leadership race and finds that Maxime Bernier could benefit from second-place votes.
• Neil Macdonald has breakfast with Lisa Raitt.
• Andrew Scheer is proposing tax-free maternity and parental leave benefits.
• Robert Hiltz wonders if the question isn’t who is the Canadian Donald Trump as opposed to whether the same constituency exists for one up here.
• Susan Delacourt wonders about survey data showing that Facebook is the second largest source of news in this country.
• My Loonie Politics column explores the parochial edge to the Conservative leadership candidates and wonders if O’Leary will change this.

Odds and ends:

Maclean’s profiles parliamentary watering hole Metropolitan in advance of budget day.

Liberal MP Ruby Sahota now leads her party’s Ontario caucus.

Note: My Loonie Politics columns are now paywalled. Use promo code Smith and a yearly subscription is $40 instead of $50.

Over at Loonie Politics, fellow columnist Jonathan Scott wonders if recall legislation might not be a good thing for ethical violations, and cites the examples of Senators Don Meredith, Lynn Beyak, and a York Region school trustee who used a racial slur against a Black parent. While I’m suspicious about recall legislation to begin with, two of the examples are completely inappropriate, while the third was an example of someone who resigned a few days later, making the need for such legislation unnecessary in the first place.

Recall legislation for senators is a bit boggling, first of all, because they weren’t elected to the position, and they have institutional independence so that they can speak truth to power and have the ability to stop a government with a majority precisely so that they can hit the brakes on runaway populism if need be. Recall legislation would be fed by that similar populist sentiment, which is a problem. I’m also baffled, frankly, how anyone could conceivably consider Meredith and Beyak in the same sentence. Meredith abused his position to sexually lure a minor, while Beyak said some stupid and odious things under the rubric of religious sentiment (i.e. at least some residential school survivors stayed Christians, so that apparently justifies everything). The two are not comparable, nor is Beyak’s example any kind of an ethical violation, nor am I convinced that it’s an offence worthy of resignation because at least there’s the possibility that she can learn more about why what she said was so wrong-headed. Sure, people are upset with it, while others are performing outrage over social media because that’s what we do these days, but trying to channel that sentiment into recall legislation raises all kinds of alarm bells because even if you had a fairly high bar or findings from an ethics officer to trigger these kinds of recall elections (and the suggested 2500 signatures of constituents is too low of an added bar), temporary performed outrage demanding action this instant would be constantly triggering these kinds of fights. If you think there are too many distractions in politics to the issues of the day, this would make it all the worse.

As for Meredith, while he is too shameless to resign of his own accord, the rest of the Senate is not likely to let this issue slide for too long. The only question is really how effectively they can implement a system of due process by which Meredith can plead his case before them and respect the rules of natural justice before they hold a vote to vacate his seat based on the findings of the Senate Ethics Officer. Demanding recall legislation after a story is only a couple of days old is the height of foolishness. The Senate doesn’t sit for another two weeks, which is time that frankly they’ll need to get their ducks in a row so that they don’t come back half-cocked and try and ham-fist the process like they did with Duffy/Wallin/Brazeau back in the day. Meredith will get his due, and we won’t need the threat of ridiculous legislation to try and keep politicians in line.

Good reads:

• The Senate is exploring options for expelling Senator Don Meredith now that the damning ethics report is out.
• StatsCan’s website was also shut down over the weekend because they identified a security vulnerability in its servers.
• Manitoba premier Brian Pallister says he’ll go it alone on opposing the healthcare accords (like he has been with the carbon pricing issue as well).
• RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson is looking for a six percent raise for Mounties to keep their salaries competitive; the government is offering far less.
• Here’s a look at why the government may be using gender-based analysis as part of the upcoming budget.
• The Canadian Forces will review all sexual assault complaints deemed “unfounded” going back to 2010.
• Liberal MP Scott Simms wants to expedite the Commons modernization process. (Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!)
• Members of the PM’s youth council want their work to be more transparent than it has been so far.
• Iqra Khalid talks about pressing on despite the death threats around M-103.
• There remain questions about how the Liberals handled the nominations in this most recent round of by-elections, and their green-light process overall.
• Lisa Raitt make the case for why it would be a good thing for the Conservatives to have a woman (and more specifically her) leading the party.
• There are rumours that Kevin O’Leary might run for a seat in Dufferin–Caledon to replace David Tilson, one of the oldest sitting MPs.
• Aaron Wherry notes how Jack Layton’s name was brought up, but not Thomas Mulcair’s, during Sunday’s NDP debate.
• Chantal Hébert contrasts the Conservative and NDP leadership contests to date.
• Kady O’Malley warns against changing the Commons’ rules to make things more “efficient.”
• Andrew Coyne (rightly) rails about the problem with perception-based policy-making.
• Chris Selley pours some perspective sauce on the polls saying Canadians favour values screening.

Odds and ends:

The head of CSIS is planning to step down in May, leaving yet another top vacancy for this government to (eventually) fill.

It was a bit odd, yesterday, watching NDP MP Erin Weir stand up before Question Period to offer congratulations to UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on his “success” during this week’s election, considering that Corbyn lost. Weir considered it an inspiration to their own leadership candidates, each of whom also offered variations thereof over social media. (Andrew Scheer, for the record, also tweeted encouragement to Theresa May for “strong stable leadership” – a veritable echo of Stephen Harper’s 2011 campaign slogan – only to see May’s fortunes crumble).

Erin Weir congratulations Jeremy Crobyn, praising the "success" of their "sister party" as an inspiration for their leadership contest. #HoC

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 9, 2017

Of course, this NDP praise of Corbyn ignores the context in which he “won” (by which we mean lost) this week, and that was that Labour’s share of the vote and seat count went up in spite of Corbyn’s leadership and not because of it. Why? Because he’s been an absolute disaster as a party leader, and an even bigger disaster as opposition leader, and in many instances couldn’t even be bothered to do his job in trying to hold the government to account on matters of supply – an appalling dereliction of duty. And this is without getting into Corbyn’s record of being a terrorist sympathizer, someone who took money from Iran’s propaganda networks and whose activist base has a disturbing tendency to anti-Semitism.

We too could be wracked with internal division and satisfied with second place!https://t.co/0ol3VGixKw

— Aaron Wherry (@AaronWherry) June 9, 2017

Nevertheless, this “success” of Corbyn’s (and by “success” we mean he lost), Twitter was full of mystifying smugness from hard left-wing types, insisting that it meant that Bernie Sanders would have won the general election (never mind that he couldn’t even win the primaries). Yes, the fact that Corbyn managed to motivate the youth vote is something that will need study in the weeks to come, I’m not sure that we can discount the fact that there is a certain naïveté with the youth response to his manifesto promises that was full of holes, and there was a youth response to Sanders as well, which some have attributed to the “authenticity” of his being a political survivor. Can this translate into a mass movement? I have my doubts.

The smugness around his “win” (which, was in fact a loss) however, is a bit reminiscent of the NDP in 2011 when they “won” Official Opposition, and were similarly smug beyond all comprehension about it (so much so that they were going out of their way to break traditions and conventions around things like office spaces in the Centre Block to rub the Liberals’ noses in it). That we’re seeing more of this smugness around a loss make a return is yet another curiosity that I’m not sure I will ever understand.

This all having been said, here’s Colby Cosh talking about what lessons the UK election may have for Canada, including the desire to export brand-Corbyn globally.

Good reads:

• The government unveiled their “feminist” foreign aid policy yesterday, but didn’t really include any new dollars with it, leaving the commitment in question.
• The government agreed to some but not all of the Senate amendments on Bill C-6 on citizenship revocations.
• The US treasury secretary was in town to talk trade with cabinet ministers yesterday.
• The terms of the Lobbying and Ethics Commissioners were extended until the end of the year because the government is having a hard time finding replacements.
• The government has tabled a bill that will allow Quebec to have the (outdated) long-gun registry data they’ve been demanding.
• DND bureaucrats tried to scuttle the deal to have Davie Shipyards convert a freighter for naval support operations use.
• Statistics Canada has been struggling with Shared Services Canada longer than it has been letting on, with website software a constant issue.
• Indigenous communities weren’t consulted about the planned new “Indigenous Centre” across from Parliament Hill, which has soured some of them on it.
• Until they were spanked by the Federal Court, CSIS was keeping all metadata captured on third parties that it obtained over the course of its operations.
• Public sector executives wonder when they’re getting raises, as the gap between them and unionized employees has narrowed so much that few want promotions.
• Here’s a look at Andrew Scheer’s political instincts, and how they might serve him as party leader.
• Chris Selley suggests that concerns over Scheer’s Catholicism are pure paranoia.
• Adnan Khan writes about the strengths of the defence policy review in bolstering what Canada does best in fields like Afghanistan.
• Chantal Hébert worries that Trudeau left young women cabinet ministers to become cannon fodder. (One could argue that they didn’t get special treatment).
• Susan Delacourt looks at how both prime ministers Trudeau have dealt with troublesome American presidents.

Odds and ends:

In the media frenzy post-UK election, Philippe Lagassé busts five myths that keep circulating at times like these.