Yes, Andrew, Democracy Is Under Attack In Canada

So, Andrew Coyne muses that Justin Trudeau should just step aside in the wake of a recent by-election defeat.  His reasoning?  Well - it's a bit of a jumble of deflection, redirection and obfuscation.  Oddly enough, he makes a far better summary of his reasoning in one post on X (FKA Twitter):

In his column, Cone opines as follows:  

But there is no equivalent in Canada to Mr. Trump’s attempts, by a combination of force and fraud, to overturn the results of a democratic election, or his threats to use the Justice Department to “go after” his political opponents, or his privately and publicly expressed desires to see some of them executed, or his efforts to intimidate officials in his several criminal trials and otherwise undermine the rule of law.

Is there no equivalent in Canada?  That's very much a matter of perspective.  Can we truly say that there is no Canadian equivalent to Trump's January 6 assault on Capitol Hill?  Not really - because only a year later the so-called "Freedom Convoy" would descend upon Ottawa not only with a demand that the Governor General dissolve Parliament and install the Convoy leadership as some kind of interim junta.  

Likewise, on the matter of going after political enemies, we cannot ignore Pierre Poilievre's recent hints that he would cheerfully invoke the Notwithstanding Clause (S33) of the Charter to insulate his laws from Charter scrutiny.  If you don't think this can be weaponized not only to realize his "tough on crime" agenda, but also to attack perceived and real political enemies, you aren't paying attention - because S33 is essentially a clause that puts Charter Rights in abeyance indefinitely.  Not only does that undermine the concept of "rule of law", but it creates an environment where the rule of law becomes arbitrary, and politicians can rewrite the rules pretty much at will. 

The politicization of nearly every public office – prosecutors, sheriffs, even judges elected on party political lines – has no equivalent here. 

I would ask if Mr. Coyne has been paying attention for the last decade.  Literally every appointment, every official action of the Trudeau government has been attacked and politicized - from committees and judicial appointments to things that have nothing to do with Trudeau himself.  We see a constant stream of invective directed at undermining Trudeau.  Here in Alberta, what is the first thing the UCP has done to attack the newly selected leader of the NDP?  Oh, they try to make him out as "Trudeau's Lackey".  

In fact, in my lifetime, I have never seen a Prime Minister subjected to such a constant stream of attacks - both legitimate and petty.  All of this has been clearly in the name of undermining Trudeau and making it as difficult as possible to govern.  

So it is more than a stretch for the Prime Minister to pretend that his own troubles are part of some worldwide trend to instability, or to insinuate that democracy is on the ballot in the next election. And if it were? If the Conservatives, or Mr. Poilievre, represented the same threat to democracy as Mr. Trump’s Republicans, or the same far-right philosophy as France’s Rassemblement National?

Here we come to the point where Mr. Coyne shows us exactly how wilfully blind he really is.  His position here ignores a whole bunch of facts and factors which are at play. 

As much as I would like to simply point at the Harper-led International Democrat Union (IDU) which really is a central piece of the worldwide movement towards fascism that we are seeing, it's not that simple here at home. 

First, there is a long-standing history of collaboration between conservatives in both Canada and the United States.  Canadian conservative politicians regularly attend major conservative political conventions like Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US; likewise they often attend US-based training at places like Morton Blackwell's "Leadership Institute" (LI).  There are a number of notable Canadian conservative politicians who have attended courses at LI - like Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and others.  Similarly, in Canada, we have the Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN) conference, and mysteriously US conservatives attend and speak at it.  

A significant number of Canadian conservative politicians have worked for campaigns in the US - most notably recently being Alberta's Devin Dreeshen who was active in Trump's 2016 campaign, but we can't ignore guys like Rob Anders whose political career starts with being a paid heckler for a Montana GOP candidate in the early 90s.  

All of this is to evidence that there is a long history of collaboration and sharing of ideas, people, and skills between US and Canadian conservatives.  So, it is no reach at all to observe that what is done by conservatives in the US almost always appears in Canada in some form or another. 

So, let's look at the last decade of conservative attacks on the government led by Justin Trudeau for a moment.  From 2008-2016, we watched as the GOP in the US did everything it could to obstruct President Obama.  It was stunning to watch as the GOP basically refused to cooperate with anything that the Democrats attempted to do whether it be legislation or matters like judicial appointments.  

What have we seen in Canada? Exactly all of the same strategies. Either attacking the Prime Minister and his government for any action taken or anything even remotely associated with Trudeau was open to attack.  As has been shown with the WE scandal, no matter how unfounded the attacks, they were persistent to the point of breaking the target - anything to erode the credibility of the government.  While there are clear differences in the particulars, the fundamental strategy is consistent - do anything you can to discredit the target. 

There's no doubt in my mind that the fact that the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) chose Justin Trudeau as their leader that the conservatives lost their collective minds.  The hatred of Pierre Trudeau in the modern day CPC is as ripe today as it was in 1980s Alberta in the wake of anger over the NEP. They just directed all of that anger straight at Justin Trudeau. So, when the government passed a new environmental assessment into law, it was immediately reframed as an attack on Alberta, and the first Convoy protest was assembled.  In many ways, it was the trial run not only for the 2022 Freedom Convoy, but also for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  Similar messaging, similar organizing techniques were used, and they were refined over time. 

More recently, we have seen the US GOP legislators implementing a vast array of legislation designed to attack transgender people and restrict their rights and ability to move through society.  Is there a parallel happening in Canada?  Absolutely there is.  We have several conservative Premiers who are implementing anti-transgender legislation, complete down to invoking the Notwithstanding Clause to insulate what is obviously a violation of fundamental rights from being challenged in the courts.  While the legislation in states like Florida or Texas is leagues more malevolent than even what Danielle Smith has proposed in Alberta, there is no doubt that the approach is basically figuring out how to impose similar legislation in Canada.  Conservative Premiers like Ford, Moe, and Smith have been more active in invoking S33 to insulate their legislation for some time.  The effect is predictable:  although people get outraged with the legislation initially, over time, they stop paying attention when it doesn't affect their lives directly.  

How does this connect to the Federal picture with Poilievre?  Let's pay some attention here.  Poilievre has already hinted that he is willing to invoke S33 to insulate legislation.  On top of that, he has also indicated that he doesn't think that trans youth should have access to puberty blockers and other medical interventions.  This is not an accident. 

I think it's also important to note here that conservative politicians have long histories of engaging in voter suppression strategies - and Poilievre's one piece of legislation was basically an attack on voting rights, and let's not ignore the history of the Harper era conservatives engaging in all sorts of shenanigans like redirecting voters to incorrect voting stations (Robocalls Scandal).  Where do you think those ideas are being imported from?  If you guessed the GOP, you're partly correct. 

It's easy to dismiss similarities between Trump and Poilievre as simply being "populism", not when it's clear that there are shared tactics and strategies. 

That's a lot of words to point out that Mr. Coyne is profoundly wrong when he suggests that the situation in Canada is not the same as that in the US.  In fact, the increasing alignment of the Trump aligned GOP and the CPC says otherwise.  

Mr. Coyne's Flaccid Critique

Andrew Coyne's latest column starts off with a clear enough statement of how the Harper Government has engaged in tactics which prevent the engines of parliament from holding those in power accountable.

Not only was the House of Commons conveniently shuttered, but neither the minister responsible, Lisa Raitt, nor any Canada Post executives were on hand to answer questions regarding this drastic reduction in public services. But then, in this they were only following the example set by the prime minister, who has for months avoided answering questions about the scandal that is slowly destroying his government.

Then he promptly does the usual dodge that we have seen from conservative apologists ever since Harper become the leader of the new Conservative Party:  turn around and try to blame other parties for the sad state of affairs in Ottawa these days.

Ottawa is increasingly a town in lockdown — as often as not with all-party support. MPs of all parties have resisted having their expenses either audited or disclosed. All parties agreed to a plan to compel Hill staffers to sign lifetime gag orders (though the bad publicity may force a rethink), just as all parties colluded this spring to prevent Mark Warawa and other MPs from speaking their mind in Parliament.  

Seriously, Mr. Coyne?  Do you really think that Canadians have forgotten the ever so brilliant move of the Harper Government in its nascent years of publishing a manual for his MPs to disrupt parliamentary committees?  Or perhaps you think that we don't realize that Harper's MPs dominate the very committees and votes he is referring to?

Make no mistake, Mr. Coyne.  Parliament may have been in rough shape in 2006 when Harper took power.  He has since turned it into a shambles.  Harper has gone to unprecedented lengths to exert direct control over all aspects of Ottawa.  The cloak of secrecy that we are seeing today is very much the creation of one man:  Stephen Harper.

Past PMs may have violated some of the tenets of a Westminster Parliament, but none have abused its good name to such a degree.  Prime Ministers past have used prorogation to reset the legislative business of parliament when they have largely completed the work set out in the last Throne Speech.  Harper, on the other hand, has used that same tool to avoid being held accountable.  Harper is the only Prime Minister in Canadian history to be voted "In Contempt of Parliament" for his behaviour.

He has created omnibus bills to deliver a payload of Trojan Horse legislation which has little to do with the budget implementation, and then used closure to limit debate and ram this legislation through - unamended.  Under Harper, accepting an amendment to a bill is to admit error, and Harper will never admit to being wrong.  Perfectly legitimate amendments which would actually improve the quality of Harper's legislation have been rejected simply because they were proposed by another party.

Under Harper, Question Period has become a farce.  Past governments have been evasive in QP - Harper's approach is to simply fling verbal poo across the floor - often answering a question with talking points that have nothing to do with the question asked.

Let me be abundantly clear about this:  The responsibility and blame for the current sorry state of parliament in this nation rests at the feet of Stephen Harper.

Perhaps the grandest irony of all of this is that the Reform party that Harper comes from gained much of its support by promising to fix parliament and make it work once again as a democratic institution.  

Shorter Coyne On Senate Reform: Give All The Power To The PMO

In the wake of this week's Supreme Court Hearings on the Senate Reform consultation questions that the Harper Government posed last spring, the National Post's Andrew Coyne has postulated that the provinces shouldn't be part of the amending formula.

The government's lawyers have gamely maintained that much of tis short-term agenda for Senate reform - term limits, consultative elections and so on - could be pursued unilaterally.  At the other extreme, abolition, they submit, could be achieved under the Constitution's general amending formula:  seven provinces with 50% of the population. 

The consensus view is that the feds are out to lunch.  Almost no one supports them in their first position; and while three provinces agree that seven-and-fifty is sufficient for abolition, the rest insist that unanimity is required.   And if that is so, everyone seems to agree, it's not going to happen.

Mr. Coyne seems to think that this is an unreasonable burden for our illustrious PM to have to bear.

If every province's consent - and by province, of course, we mean premier - were required, then any one premier could stop it.  Thus each would have an incentive to demand the moon as the price of his consent.  The whole process would bog down in the same mire that sank Meech Lake and Charlottetown.

Suggest a national referendum as a solution and be prepared for the scorn that blows your way.  Meaningless!  No legal consequence!  Whatever the people might wish the Constitution requires the premiers' consent to amend it.  If the premiers don't want it - even if one premier doesn't want it - then it's not on.

Of course, Mr. Coyne is conveniently mischaracterizing what happened with the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords.

Meech Lake died in the Manitoba legislative assembly:

In Manitoba, however, things did not go as planned. With many First Nations protesters outside, the legislative assembly convened to approve the accord. Unanimous support was needed to bypass the necessary public consultation and Member of the Legislative Assembly Elijah Harper raised an eagle feather to mark his dissension. Harper opposed bypassing consultation because he did not believe First Nations had been adequately involved in the accord's process. 

Even though a legal route was found to give Manitoba more time (the deadline would be extended three months, with Quebec being able to re-approve the Accord), Clyde Wells and opposition leader Thomas Rideout agreed to cancel the planned free vote in the Newfoundland House of Assembly, because the outcome would have most likely been a refusal. The accord was officially dead.

The Charlottetown Accord died in precisely the kind of mechanism that Coyne suggests going forward - a referendum.

What Coyne is really playing to is precisely the weakness that I argued earlier will prevent Harper from ever achieving meaningful parliamentary reform - his unwillingness to engage with the collective needs and interests of the premiers.  Ironically, both Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords did just that and at that level were successful enterprises.  Meech Lake died in large part on Elijah Harper's vote in the Manitoba Legislature, and in part because support for it collapsed in Newfoundland subsequently.

In fact, the Meech Lake accord's failure raises an additional point which Coyne is overlooking - that is the impact of constitutional amendments on First Nations peoples in Canada.

Constitutions aren’t supposed to be easy to amend. But when a Constitution cannot even be amended in obedience to the desires of the vast majority of its people, it is no longer the embodiment of their highest ideals of government. It is an impediment to them. It is less a basic law than a straitjacket. 

The problem isn’t so much the level of consent that is required, but whose. The Constitution is supposed to belong to the people. In fact it belongs to the premiers — a legacy of the patriation round. Before then it was unclear just whose consent was required. The British North America Act was silent on the matter: As an act of the British Parliament it was assumed that any amendments to it would be enacted by the same means.

This is where I get rather annoyed with Coyne, who is clearly playing a poorly thought-out bit of populist politics.  In fact, if he thought about it for even five minutes, he would realize why the amending formula in the Constitution is written as it is.  One of the issues in Canada is that our population is heavily concentrated in a couple of regions, potentially to the detriment of other regions.  The general amending formula is designed to ensure that the two most heavily populated provinces (Ontario and Quebec) cannot "gang up" on other provinces and create significant imbalances in power that would negatively impact smaller population centers like PEI, or Saskatchewan.

• 38. (1) An amendment to the Constitution of Canada may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada where so authorized by(a) resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons; and(b) resolutions of the legislative assemblies of at least two-thirds of the provinces that have, in the aggregate, according to the then latest general census, at least fifty per cent of the population of all the provinces.Marginal note:Majority of members 

  (2) An amendment made under subsection (1) that derogates from the legislative powers, the proprietary rights or any other rights or privileges of the legislature or government of a province shall require a resolution supported by a majority of the members of each of the Senate, the House of Commons and the legislative assemblies required under subsection (1).Marginal note:

  Expression of dissent(3) An amendment referred to in subsection (2) shall not have effect in a province the legislative assembly of which has expressed its dissent thereto by resolution supported by a majority of its members prior to the issue of the proclamation to which the amendment relates unless that legislative assembly, subsequently, by resolution supported by a majority of its members, revokes its dissent and authorizes the amendment.Marginal note:

  Revocation of dissent(4) A resolution of dissent made for the purposes of subsection (3) may be revoked at any time before or after the issue of the proclamation to which it relates.

This is difficult for Coyne, and for Harper, to swallow.  Not only does it require that the Federal Government engage with the provinces, but that it do so as peers of the provinces.  Referendums are a useful tool in making certain political decisions, but not necessarily all of them.  In the case of amending Canada's constitution, the prairie provinces have long argued that the interests of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are too readily suborned to the interests and desires of Quebec and Ontario when it comes to matters decided solely by representation by the will of "the majority population".  The amending formula of the Constitution is designed to ensure that regional interests are held in balance with those of the concentrated population.

In short, if Harper isn't willing to engage with all of the provinces in the spirit of political discourse and compromise, then chances are his much vaunted desires for Senate reform will come to naught.  Other Prime Ministers before him have managed to achieve political consensus among the provinces, I fail to see why this is suddenly "impossible".  Difficult, perhaps, but hardly impossible - just beyond Mr. Harper's willingness to attempt.

I for one would not want to see sole authority over this nation's constitution in the hands of Parliament alone - especially not this parliament or the current PM.  The risk of malignant dictatorship is far too great.