Punch and Judy

Friday March 3, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 3, 2023

Did foreigners interfere in Canada’s elections? Don’t expect politicians to sort it out

The best argument so far for an independent inquiry into foreign election interference in Canada has come from the least independent voices in this escalating furor — politicians and members of Parliament.

February 25, 2023

A hearing at a Commons committee on Wednesday vividly proved the point. National security discussions should come with a warning label — don’t try this at home. Or more accurately, don’t try this in the House.

It comes down simply to this: the question of whether foreign actors have been meddling in Canadian elections is simply too important to be litigated by the people who were players in those elections, with vested interests. That goes for all the political parties: the governing Liberals and their opposition rivals.

Opposition parties are in fact on side with the idea of some independent inquiry, though Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre also wants MPs to continue their Commons committee investigation, such as it is right now.

“We cannot allow this affair to simply go up in smoke with a secret private investigation, it must be public so that Canadians know exactly what is going on,” Poilievre told reporters on Wednesday. “We cannot shut those parliamentary inquiries down with a promise that in two years there will be some report on a public inquiry.”

But if Wednesday’s Commons hearings were any indication, Canadians aren’t going to get many answers from the political arena. Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser, Jody Thomas, explained as much during her testimony.

January 16, 2020

“We cannot talk about national security information in a public forum,” said Jody Thomas, who stared down this committee with the same, flat, no-nonsense tone she brought to last fall’s public inquiry into the “freedom convoy.” Thomas said at those hearings that she was one of the influential advisers saying yes to a declaration of emergency on the convoy last winter. On Wednesday, she made clear she’s one of the people on the inside arguing against a wide-open public inquiry.

A lot of the back and forth between MPs, Thomas and other senior security officials testifying on Wednesday proved the national security adviser’s point. MPs — who do come from political parties — were gamely trying to get the security people to say how much political parties were in the loop about possible election threats in 2019 and 2022.

Sorry, the politicians were told — that’s top secret. (Though the officials did manage to reveal that the RCMP is not investigating any of the allegations surfacing in the media of late, which is significant.)

The problem with politicians looking into political interference is that they’re not the ones who need to be reassured that Canadian elections are free and fair. It’s the voting public, and the news on that right now is not good.

November 24, 2020

An Angus Reid poll released this week showed that a disturbing two-thirds of Canadians believed that China either definitely or probably tried to influence the past two elections in Canada. An even more disturbing 42 per cent of past Conservative voters were inclined to believe the elections had been “stolen.” Sound familiar?

That means that the horse is already out of the barn on this one. Reassurances from the Liberal government will just feed the cynicism of non-Liberal voters, while opposition’s continuing attempts to cry foul could make those parties sound like they have an axe to grind — a pox on all their houses, in other words.

The opposition leaders are right to ask that their parties have a voice in determining the shape of any future inquiry. In the past, I’ve been told, no election-reform legislation proceeded without broad agreement between all the parties.

That may have been a myth, I haven’t tested that against the long historical record. But it seems the point is wise. On something as important as democracy and electoral legitimacy, you don’t want anyone saying that the ruling party put its thumb on the scale.

Trudeau continues to say that we have all the inquiries we need into electoral interference right now and they need to run their course. The current Commons committee hearings, with no offence to any of the MPs doing their questioning, is not going to be the final word — any more than the various parliamentary hearings into the convoy, which paled in comparison to Justice Paul Rouleau’s inquiry.

Trudeau’s next move should be to convene a meeting of all the opposition leaders, swear them to the highest levels of security clearance, and hammer out how they can get a grasp on this issue before the public gets any more cynical about the fairness of elections. That one gesture in itself would prove that the politicians are putting democracy over their partisan interests.

It would also, as a bonus, be enormously frustrating to whatever foreign actors are enjoying the current spectacle of Canadians questioning whether their democracy works. (The Toronto Star)

 

Thursday October 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 22, 2020

Canadians don’t need election melodrama

If not for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP and the three members of the Green caucus, Canada would be heading into a federal election today. We are not, and we should be thankful for that.

November 12, 2018

An election campaign, with the federal Parliament adjourned for campaigning, is the last thing the country wants, or needs. The second wave of this pandemic is sweeping across the nation. We need all hands on deck to manage the crisis, and no one needs to be distracted by an election campaign and everything that goes along with that.

But how did we get here? How did we end up on the brink of an election no one wants? 

There’s blame to be apportioned across the board, but the majority of it falls on the governing Liberals and Opposition Conservatives. They joined in a high stakes game of chicken that was not driven by anything other than partisan advantage. 

First, the Conservatives. They launched a motion on Opposition Day that called for establishing a new super-committee to investigate corruption, specifically the WE scandal. It would have had unprecedented power to call not only members of the government and civil service, but people such as friends and relatives. It could have compelled the release of private citizens’ financial records over a 12-year period. That is probably not even legal.

October 23, 2019

It was a massive overreach, especially considering Parliament already has multiple committees that can do that work. And given that this is a minority government, those committees are often dominated by opposition MPs, so the government doesn’t always get its way. 

Further, there is a central hypocrisy in what the Conservatives are saying. They want a committee specifically focused on government corruption, and they publicly declare they do not have confidence in the government. But they also say they don’t want an election. You cannot square that circle.

But the Liberals delivered a surprise — they chose a nuclear response to the Conservatives overreach, saying the motion amounted to a loss of confidence in the government, and therefore would trigger an election. They drew a line in the sand, and they dared opposition parties to cross.

October 28, 2016

There’s no doubt, from a political strategy perspective, that the government outplayed its opponents. But beyond that strategic victory, this brinksmanship isn’t a good look for anyone involved. The government is acting like it has a majority when it doesn’t. The Conservatives wanted to weaponize the committee process for partisan gain. Both were willing to force Canadians to endure an election campaign in a very dangerous time. For that, they should be ashamed.

Thankfully, Singh’s NDP sought middle ground. They proposed a committee that would oversee and investigate all spending and management during the pandemic, including in the WE affair. That is a reasonable mandate for a new committee. We don’t know what the Liberals agreed to in exchange for the NDP’s support against the Conservatives, but don’t be surprised if the end result of this drama fest is something like what the NDP proposed. 

So for now, this melodrama is over. Don’t be surprised when the next game of chicken breaks out, as happened frequently when Stephen Harper’s minority government was challenged repeatedly and dared opposition parties to trigger an election. 

That said, there was ample cynical political gamesmanship on display here. It’s wasn’t pretty. The Liberals and Conservatives should take a long look in the mirror and try to remember what Canadians are dealing with. That’s what matters, not an unnecessary election campaign. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)