Author: Jeff Jedras

A BCer in Ottawa: BrieflyNotBriefly, the deal with all that referendum talk last night

You could have been forgiven for tuning in to last night’s debate and being bewildered by the exchange between Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair about the threshold for accepting a yes vote in a sovereignty referendum. So, as briefly as possible, here’s what’s up with that.
• In the 1995 Quebec referendum, the No side eked out a bare win with 50.58 per cent of the vote. The question set by the Parti Quebecois government was widely considered confusing and unclear. There were rampant reports of voter fraud by the Yes side. A younger Tom Mulcair called for an inquiry. “This was an orchestrated, manipulated electoral fraud,” Mulcair said
• The Liberal government of Jean Chretien recruited Stephane Dion to cabinet and responded in two major ways. The first was a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada that asked the court to answer three questions: can the government of any province separate unilaterally, would that be allowed by international law, and in a  conflict between domestic and international law, which would take precedence?
• Nine of 10 justices ruled that unilateral succession is not legal, but the Government of Canada would have to negotiate with the provincial government if a clear will to separate was expressed by the populace. The court confirmed the Federal Government could decide if the question was fair or not, and it opted to not state the vote threshold necessary, simply requiring a “clear majority.”
• Chretien and Dion followed up the Court reference by introducing The Clarity Act, which formalized the terms under which a province could seek to separate in the future. It stated the Government of Canada would only open negotiations on separation following a clear majority staying a desire to do so on a clear question, and the Government of Canada would decide what is a clear question, and what is a clear majority following the results.
• The bill was popular in English Canada, scared by the near referendum loss and wanting, well, clarity. It was deeply unpopular in much of Quebec, obviously with sovereigntists, but also with the federalist political elite that favoured more of an appeasement approach.
OK, so that’s the background. But, you say, support for sovereignty is at all-time lows in Quebec, so why are we talking about this? Fair question. Here’s why.
• In 2005, NDP members passed the Sherbrooke Declaration as its official policy on a sovereignty referendum. It repudiated the Clarity Act, saying it is up to the legislative assembly alone to set the question and an NDP government will accept a vote of 50 per cent plus one. That position, which would require the Clarity Act to be repealed, went largely unnoticed and unchallenged as, at the time, the NDP wasn’t seen as a likely candidate for government.
• This position was regularly affirmed as official NDP over the next decade, including by Mulcair several times in the last few months, including in Quebec in June on the eve of Fête Nationale. And in 2013, NDP MP Craig Scott introduced a private member’s bill that sought to repeal the Clarity Act and legalize 50 plus one as the threshold for a sovereignty referendum. 
• So we’re talking about this because it is part of the NDP platform, because the NDP is talking about it, because the NDP wants a mandate to do this if they form a government, and because the polls show that’s a realistic proposition.
Alright, fair enough you say, but why are they both so eager to whack each other over it?
• Mulcair has a Quebec base to protect, and keeping it means keeping all those soft nationalist voters that abandoned the Bloc Quebecois. His position on the Clarity Act is decidedly in the mainstream in Quebec. Outside of what I’ll call the Dion federalists, most Quebecers agree with Mulcair and the NDP on this.
• Trudeau and the Liberals have always viewed themselves as the champions of a united Canada. And Trudeau’s position is very popular everywhere but Quebec. The Clarity Act just makes sense to most Canadians. And in Quebec, frankly, the Liberal vote has been limited for many years, and those Dion federalists are not an insubstantial voting block – Liberals increased their seat count there with Dion in 2008.
• Will this issue actually move votes though, in Quebec or anywhere else? Who can say. 
OK you say, I get it now, but I gotta ask, why didn’t the Court just spell out a number? And why wouldn’t Trudeau last night?
• The Court didn’t forget to set a number; it very deliberately decided to use the phrase clear majority. The NDP has contended 50 per cent + 1 is a clear majority. Liberals counter if the court meant a majority, they’d have said majority, but they said clear majority, and if 50+1 is a clear majority, what’s an unclear majority?
• A number wasn’t set because a clear majority depends on a number of factors. What was the turnout? Was there voter fraud that could put the margin in question, as Mulcair raised the warning about in 1995? What was the geographic distribution? These are just a few of the questions I’d want to consider in determining if it was a clear majority or not. And you can’t put a number on that in advance; it’s impossible and would be irresponsible. In short, to channel Chretien, a clear majority is a clear majority, and when you have a clear majority it will be clear.
Alright, enough, this is no longer a brief explanation you complain. But lastly, what about Harper? He stayed above the fray last night. Where is he on all this?
• As exasperated as the rest of us that the NDP has left us no choice but to be talking about this. But his position on the Clarity Act is clear and on the record: he supports it, and Reformers have often claimed the idea was stolen from their policy chief – one Stephen Harper.

Continue reading

A BCer in Ottawa: Confusing Canadians about coalitions to score political points

We hear a lot about coalitions these days, and it seems clear there’s a bit of confusion out there about what it means and just what the post-election options for cooperation are – confusion likely deliberately spread by the NDP.
I was canvassing in Scarborough the other day. It’s a riding that was Liberal for many years, until 2011 when the NDP took enough Liberal vote for the Conservatives to win with little growth in vote. And they’re trying hard for a repeat. I knocked on the door of a woman who told me she had voted Liberal all her life and really likes Justin Trudeau, but she’s thinking of voting NDP for the first time. Why? Well, she wants to get rid of Stephen Harper, and the NDP was at her door recently and told her that Trudeau doesn’t want a coalition to defeat Harper – he’d rather see Harper stay.
It’s an example of the NDP strategy across the country – try to solidify the anti-Harper vote (even in ridings where it would likely just help elect Conservatives) behind them by painting the Liberals as unwilling to cooperate to defeat Harper, or worse, to even prop him up instead of supporting the NDP. It’s a pretty disingenuous, not to mention dishonest, approach to take, but it may prove effective.

Like any good strategy, there’s at least a modicum of truth: yes, Trudeau has said no to a coalition. Consistently so, in fact. Unlike the NDP; Tom Mulcair’s position has flip-flopped too many times to count, usually tied to their position on the polls.

“N.O. The no is categorical, absolute, irrefutable and non-negotiable. It’s no. End of story. Full stop.”

Now that the polls show he could form a minority government that would need support from someone, his tune has changed. If you notice though, the word the NDP keeps using, and what Trudeau actually said no to, is coalition. And that’s the operative word.
What is a coalition? A governing coalition is a joint governing agreement where the two parties sit on the government side, and share cabinet ministers and a legislative agenda. Think the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats in the last UK parliament. We’ve never had a governing coalition in Canada before, and the word never really came up before 2011 when the Liberals and the NDP briefly tried to form one.

We may not have had coalition governments, but we’ve had minority governments. Many of them long lasting and extremely productive. Lester Pearson’s Liberal minorities brought us many of the progressive social policies Canadians cherish today. All without a coalition. David Peterson’s Ontario Liberal minority provides a great example. The NDP agreed to support a Liberal government for two years, in exchange for action on several specific NDP legislative priorities. The NDP didn’t sit with the government, and was free to vote as it wished on bills that weren’t matters of confidence.


Cooperation. That’s the word you don’t hear the NDP using today. Because Trudeau hasn’t said no to cooperation. That door is very much open, and so it should be. Should the NDP be in the position to form a minority government (which is frankly rather presumptuous at the moment) I could certainly see the Liberals agreeing to support a budget and throne speech in exchange for the inclusion and support of a number of key Liberal policy priorities. It would need to be negotiated, but the door is very much open.

And that is what the woman whose door I knocked on in Scarborough wanted: the door open to cooperation to defeat the Harper Conservatives. The NDP tried to confuse her with talk of coalitions; she was relieved to learn cooperation was definitely not off the table and she could still vote her conscience, instead of being bullied into a strategic vote that, in her riding, would not be very strategic at all.

A poll today, from a notoriously unreliable pollster, says most Canadians favour a Liberal/NDP coalition. I don’t doubt the respondents said that, but I do doubt the difference was explained to them between coalition and cooperation. I believe a majority of Canadians want to see progressives cooperate to defeat Harper; I don’t think they care which of the “c” words gets us there.


Why no to a coalition?

Why do Liberals oppose a coalition? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I believe being the junior partner in a governing coalition with the NDP would be the death of the Liberal Party. The right flank of the party would flee in revulsion, into the hands of the Conservatives. And the other half of the party would come to the conclusion that they may as well just join the NDP since we’re in bed with them anyways. And frankly, while both the NDP and the Conservatives want to see the Liberals disappear and are working towards that end, the Conservatives certainly believe the math of a two-party state (putting aside the Greens and BQ for a moment) favours them. And I tend to agree.

Thankfully though, despite the misinformation the NDP is trying to spread, coalition is not the only option. Liberals are open to cooperating with them, even if they seem very determined to make it hard to do so.

Continue reading

A BCer in Ottawa: Haters were going to call Eglinton-Lawrence a loss for Trudeau no matter what

When the narrative is against you, events don’t matter — they’ll be twisted to suit the desired message no matter what. Such is the case these days with Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party, and Sunday’s nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence offers a compelling case study.

As you probably know, some months back former Conservative MP Eve Adams crossed the floor to join the Liberal caucus. Told she had to seek an open nomination, she opted to run in a riding where she had no roots — Eglinton-Lawrence — as there was already a Liberal candidate nominated at the time in her home riding. A local Liberal, Marco Mendicino, was already seeking the nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence. After a long delay and a heated race, Mendicino won on Sunday — by some reports handily.

As we waited for the results, I tweeted this:

I predict pundits have 2 columns ready. 1 Adams wins shows noms not open. 2 Adams loses shows Libs reject Trudeau. #cdnpoli #EgLaw

— Jeff Jedras (@jeffjedras) July 26, 2015

And as you can guess, with Mendicino’s win they went for option 2. It was entirely predictable. Heads the pundits win, tails Justin loses. Tim Harper’s column is representative of the spin across social media and pundit land this morning. Haters gonna hate, and they were going to hate either way.

Just for fun, let’s try to look at this logically. Fact is if Trudeau really wanted Adams as the candidate, she’d be the candidate. He’d either have appointed her or fixed the race to ensure she won. Mendicino would have had swathes of memberships mysteriously disallowed or disappeared. People would have been strongly encouraged to not support his campaign. There were plenty of levers they could have pulled. They pulled none of them. Besides leaving the nomination call to second-last in the GTA (Thornhill remains) no process or other levers were used to support the supposedly favoured candidate. And Mendicino had the support of past (interim) leader Bob Rae and a lot of active establishment Liberals who, if Adams was really the hard Trudeau choice, wouldn’t have gone near his campaign.

The argument for option 2 also relies on Adams being “Trudeau’s choice.” Let’s examine that logically too, shall we? The only way Trudeau could have headed off this damned either way scenario is if he hadn’t have let Adams cross the floor to the Liberal caucus. She was hardly a big get and her Liberal bonafides were questionable at best, but the opportunity to pick up an MP at Harper’s expense is hard to pass up. And if he’d blocked her he’d have taken flack for that too; don’t kid yourself.

So now that we accept she’s coming onboard, of course he has to have a press conference with her — only Prime Minister Harper is allowed to never talk to the press without consequence. And of course he is going to say positive things about her — what, is he going to say I don’t like her but welcome to our caucus? But he took pains to make clear that she would have to face an open nomination and he would pick no favourites. So all the “Trudeau’s choice” arguments are predicated on the fact he had a press conference to welcome a new MP to the caucus. It just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Of course, logic doesn’t help you when the gods of the narrative aren’t on your side. So be it. To quote a great philosopher, haters gonna hate. Liberals just need to shake it off. The pundits will move on to the next tortured story soon. And no narrative is forever — a year ago they’d decided the man walked on water.

Meanwhile, in Mendicino Liberals have a candidate with deep local roots and the Liberal grassroots behind him that is best positioned to take on and defeat Joe Oliver. And none of the rest matters.

Continue reading

A BCer in Ottawa: Today, it’s all about Eve (Adams)

Today it was all about Eve in Canadian politics (one should really Google that plot before referencing it though), even after a mini-cabinet shuffle that made Pierre Poilievre a senior minister of the crown. Pierre gives hope to mindless partisans everywhere that excess of loyalty can trump dearth of qualification and intelligence.

No, it was Mississauga MP Eve Adams crossing the floor to the Liberal Party, and announcing her intent to seek a Liberal nomination in the Greater Toronto area, that overshadowed even the news of Jason Kenney as Minister of Making ISIS an Election Issue.
I still remember where I was when I heard Belinda Stronach was joining the Paul Martin government. It was Election Day in B.C., and I was working for Elections BC as a deputy returning officer. A local news reporter, who knew me as a Federal Liberal, came in to vote and asked me if I’d heard the big news. I called for relief, exited the voting hall and he told me what had happened. After he convinced me he wasn’t making it up, my reply, basically, was shut the front door.

Let me say this: Eve Adams is no Belinda Stronach. I found her conduct concerning as a Conservative MP, from the nomination drama to campaign expenses; my views haven’t changed simply because she’s now sitting as a Liberal. How much of her decision is principle, and how much is convenience? I have no earthly idea. Yes, she wanted to run as a Conservative right up until she couldn’t. That doesn’t mean her decision was purely opportunistic; leaving your party can be like breaking up with a spouse. You can put up with a lot of crap trying to make it work; finally, there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back and enough is enough. Which isn’t to say there isn’t some opportunism here – she still wants to be an MP, and the Conservatives won’t have her.

We’re a big-tent party. I often disagree with fellow Liberals; that’s healthy. A number of NDPers have joined our caucus; we need to win votes from the Conservatives too if we’re to compete for government this fall. If Adams believes in Liberal values, including same sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose, then fine. Let her seek a Liberal nomination. And let it be a completely open nomination, with no special treatment from the leader’s office. If she can convince Liberals she shares our values and win a nomination, so be it. And if not, she had her chance in an open contest.

All parties will try to spin her decision. I think in reality it’s mixed for both sides. For the Liberals, one less CPC MP is a good thing for the Liberals and a bad thing for the Conservatives, and so is the narrative of progressive Conservatives leaving the Harper Party. On the flip side, Adams carries a great deal of baggage and this crossing looks more opportunistic than most. For the Conservatives, yes, they’re rid of a live wire that had become a distraction; their decision to bar her from running was soon to be public and messy – now it helps. On the other hand, she was still a parliamentary secretary, so how badly could they have thought of her and how seriously can we take their comments now? One less MP is one less MP. And for the NDP, once again someone is joining a party that’s not them and they’re left outside the news cycle looking in. Again. On the other hand, they may be glad to sit this one out.

On floor crossing in general, I’m not automatically opposed. I explained my feelings at length in this piece (Jeff Jedras: In defence of floor-crossing MPs), so I won’t repeat then at length here except to say each circumstance should be judged on its merits, and at the end of the day the electorate should hold the final judgement.

The questions today quickly turned to Adams’ partner Dimitri Soudas, a former national director of the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper loyalist. Two things here.

One, while rumours abounded, it appears that Soudas will not be joining the Liberal war room – his activities will be limited to serving as Adams’ sign chair. Of course, as any political veteran knows, that’s the best job to have – except in Sudbury in a winter byelection. He shouldn’t seek a senior position on the central Liberal campaign team, and he shouldn’t be offered one. While he may be full of Conservative secrets – and he may fight back if challenged – loyalty should still mean something, in spite of all that has happened here. While he supports his partner, spilling secrets is another matter. I can respect a person’s decision to change teams, but not to sell out the team they were loyal to just days ago. And it would be hard to trust such a person.

Two, I reject the suggestion that the questions about Soudas at the Adams presser this morning were sexist. He’s not just her partner. He’s a Harper confidante and former national director of the party privy to their electoral strategy. He lost his job trying to get her a nomination. Their relationship is very public, and that was their decision. His view on her decision was absolutely relevant, and the media would have been derelict in their duty to not have raised the issue. Lord knows we were all wondering the answer.

It was her right not to answer, but the question was fair and had nothing to do with gender. Such charges of bias should be reserved for actual honest to goodness examples of sexism, not wielded as a convenient political shield.

And now, let’s get back to talking about Conservative failure on the economy. 

Continue reading

A BCer in Ottawa: Why I have no time for David Bertschi’s complaints

I’ve tried to hold my tongue through David Bertschi’s dramatic performances through the nomination process, but after his conduct at the Ottawa-Orleans nomination on the weekend, enough is enough.

I’m the first person to be up in arms with regards to nomination shenanigans or interference from the centre. I’m a supporter of open nominations – it was a key part of Deborah Coyne’s democratic reform platform during the leadership campaign, and I was glad to see Justin Trudeau adopt a similar position shortly after we released ours.

I think everyone – if they’re being honest with themselves anyway – knew that there would always be an asterix for open nominations when the pledge was reaffirmed by the leader for this nomination cycle. A certain threshold of rules would need to be met by all candidates seeking a nomination, from a commitment to Liberal values (see supporting the right to choose) to a background check, and so on.

For the former leadership candidates seeking a nomination (including from 2006) there were additional rules. I have some insight into this, as I managed Deborah’s leadership campaign. Those carrying leadership debt were required to submit a debt repayment plan and schedule, and report regularly on their progress to the party. They were informed that their greenlighting was provisional, and could be revoked at any time if they didn’t maintain satisfactory progress.

This applied to all leadership candidates carrying leadership debt from recent campaigns, from Coyne and Bertschi and George Takach, to caucus members like Marc Garneau and Hedy Fry. The rules were clear and known to all.

The rules were also clear during the leadership campaign with regards to the amount of debt campaigns were allowed to carry, both in loans and in accounts payable. A financial filing was due regularly to the party for compliance purposes and, if the levels were violated, a range of sanctions were available, up to and including expulsion from the leadership race. Again, the rules were clear and known to all.

And it appears to me that Mr. Bertschi was unable or unwilling to follow rules, whether during the leadership campaign or during the nomination process.

Bertschi withdrew from the leadership campaign in a flourish, after hemorrhaging staff and volunteers, just before he was facing sanction from the party and possible expulsion from the race for violating those debt limits – post-race filings with Elections Canada confirm his non-compliance. This after making a virtue of having promised a debt-free campaign.

Nevertheless, he was provisionally green-lit by the party to seek the nomination in Ottawa-Orleans. Like every other leadership candidate carrying debt, he had to submit and follow a repayment plan. And once again, he couldn’t follow the rules. And so he faced the consequences.

Now, the current underlying all of this, of course, is the party centre’s favoured candidate for Ottawa-Orleans, Andrew Leslie – the former general was acclaimed this weekend following Bertschi’s expulsion.

Let’s be frank. Did the powers that be want Leslie? Obviously. Were they going to use the levers available to them to help make that happen? Most definitely.

Here’s the thing, though: Bertschi made it easy on them. No shenanigans were necessary. By failing to comply with the clearly stated rules, rules which applied to all (and the others managed to comply with), Bertschi made it easy for the party to remove him from the race completely by the book. No shenanigans were necessary, as Bertschi was the author of his own demise.

I might still be able to muster a measure of sympathy for him – being denied a dream you’ve long worked for is incredibly difficult – were it not for the arrogance with which he has conducted himself through this process. Attacking other Liberals, threatening lawsuits, his supporters disrupting meetings, heckling, disrespecting the Canadian flag. Bertschi isn’t about the Liberal Party; he’s about David Bertschi. And I have no time for people like that.

If Bertschi had followed the rules, he would have challenged Leslie this past weekend, and who knows what would have happened. The party’s pick doesn’t always win – see Don Valley North. Superior organization will take the day. Instead, he was the author of his own demise, and seems determined to light the bridge aflame behind him.

Don’t let the door, etc.

Continue reading