[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

The BC election is Saturday but the result probably won't be known until two weeks later when all the mail in ballots are counted.

[Oexmelin]

I'd be curious to hear the usual Canadian lawerly trio (BB, CC and Malthus (MM?)) on the new material on the judge nominating process (the Wilson-Raybould saga). The story dropped today in French on Radio-Canada with a full dossier. Some elements have been translated by Daniel Leblanc  for the CBC.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/judicial-appointment-trudeau-lametti-wilson-raybould-1.5767933

[crazy canuck]

I'd be curious to hear the usual Canadian lawerly trio (BB, CC and Malthus (MM?)) on the new material on the judge nominating process (the Wilson-Raybould saga). The story dropped today in French on Radio-Canada with a full dossier. Some elements have been translated by Daniel Leblanc  for the CBC.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/judicial-appointment-trudeau-lametti-wilson-raybould-1.5767933

You may recall that a couple years ago I posted about how frustrated the BC Chief Justice had become by the slow pace of appointments.  Every Monday he would apologize to litigants who could not start their trials because there were not enough judges and he would tell them that sufficient people had been vetted and were ready to be appointed and they should ask the minister why the appointments were not being made.   At the time I wrongly concluded it was a problem with the minister.  That error was made clear when she left government and under the new minister the low rate of appointments continued. 

One reasonable conclusion to draw is the PMO which, despite Trudeau's promises to the contrary, has become even more powerful during his time in office and is the source of the problem.

[crazy canuck]

This is the first election in BC under the election spending legislation which prohibits unions and business from contributing - ie the contributions must come from individuals.

The net effect is the amount of cash in our politics is down significantly.  Now that parties need to rely on individual contributions, our right wing party is the biggest loser, our left wing party is down a bit and the Greens are stable and maybe even up a bit - since they never did receive funding from business or unions.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-election-2020-campaign-donation-limits-analysis-1.5765772

[Barrister]

I'd be curious to hear the usual Canadian lawerly trio (BB, CC and Malthus (MM?)) on the new material on the judge nominating process (the Wilson-Raybould saga). The story dropped today in French on Radio-Canada with a full dossier. Some elements have been translated by Daniel Leblanc  for the CBC.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/judicial-appointment-trudeau-lametti-wilson-raybould-1.5767933

I'm hard-pressed to get too worked up over the issue.  Judicial appointments have long been politicizied, by all parties.

And in part it's for good reason.  The Liberal Party is well justified to appoint qualified justices with a small-l liberal values (and the same for the Conservative Party and small-c conservative values).  But obviously yes some appointments have been made to borderline-qualified candidates on the basis of naked partisanship.

This will be Provincial Court not federal, but still a useful example.  I think I mentioned a friend of mine from the Crown's office.  He worked in rural Alberta for 15 years or so, took a job in Edmonton, then was appointed a judge a few months later.  As happy as we were for him it was kind of puzzling - he had no particular reputation.  I spoke with him a little after his appointment - he described he had applied and been interviewed several years ago but then had heard nothing.

But I remembered when we worked together how my friend would volunteer for the provincial NDP during elections.  Now his appointment (made when the NDP was in power) made sense.  Now I'm not criticizing the appointment - I'm still very happy for my friend and he certainly wasn't unqualified, but there's no way politics wasn't a factor.

All of that being said however I simply don't know if what is being alleged here goes beyond the usual partisan influence.  For example I can't say if running proposed names by the President of the Liberal Party in Alberta is commonplace or a huge outrage.

Current AG Lametti's comments that politics plays no place in appointments is pure horseshit - as is confirmed by JWR (former AG).

Also worth noting that the source for the story left the justice minister's office last year in what was described as "not an amicable split".

[Barrister]

Singh says he won't give the Liberals an excuse for an election, signalling that the NDP will not support the Conservative motion.

[Josephus]

Singh says he won't give the Liberals an excuse for an election, signalling that the NDP will not support the Conservative motion.

Which is why it was a smart move on Trudeau's part to lay down the gauntlet. There's no way the NDP will go to an election now, and JT knows it.

[viper37]

This is the first election in BC under the election spending legislation which prohibits unions and business from contributing - ie the contributions must come from individuals.

The net effect is the amount of cash in our politics is down significantly.  Now that parties need to rely on individual contributions, our right wing party is the biggest loser, our left wing party is down a bit and the Greens are stable and maybe even up a bit - since they never did receive funding from business or unions.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-election-2020-campaign-donation-limits-analysis-1.5765772

And suddenly, lots of Exxon, Shell, Pacific future and Trans  Mountain employees found an interest in BC provincial politics?

Unions have other ways to contribute: manpower.  When they "ask" their members to "volunteer", they know better than to be busy with something else or have another political preference.

Seriously, it's a nice rule to have, but you still need to be careful, there are many, many, many ways where parties of interests can have undue influence under such a system too.

[crazy canuck]

There was already a law on the books which prohibited companies from contributing on behalf of or giving money to employees to contribute.  I doubt very much it happens now (just look at how much the over all dollar figures have dropped) but in years past there have been a couple of cases which were prosecuted.

[Barrister]

Politics in this country can be so profoundly stupid.

So there's this case of a part-time professor at University of Ottawa.  She used the n-word in class - apparently as an example of a word that has been reclaimed by the marginalized group it is being used against.  Predictably the students complained and social media rose up against the professor, causing her to be suspended.  Even worse was when some of the professor's colleagues wrote a letter in defence of the professor, those letter-writers were denounced too.

(And look, as an aside, I've been against "cancel culture" for awhile now and I think what happened was ridiculous)

But... despite this taking place in Ontario, all stripes of Quebec politicians are speaking out about this because the professor is French-Canadian.  And while they are speaking out in defence of free speech... they're also pointing to this as an example of prejudice against francophones. 

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-minister-wades-into-n-word-controversy-at-ottawa-university

[Oexmelin]

I wonder how long it will register for people to realize that a country with two official languages cannot have one political culture.

[Barrister]

I wonder how long it will register for people to realize that a country with two official languages cannot have one political culture.

I don't understand this post.

Clearly politics in Quebec are different than politics in the rest of Canada.

But what I am saying is stupid is taking a legit argument about use of offensive words in an academic setting vs academic freedom and freedom of speech, and then randomly mixing in anti-francophone prejudice.

[Malthus]

I wonder how long it will register for people to realize that a country with two official languages cannot have one political culture.

I don't understand this post.

Clearly politics in Quebec are different than politics in the rest of Canada.

But what I am saying is stupid is taking a legit argument about use of offensive words in an academic setting vs academic freedom and freedom of speech, and then randomly mixing in anti-francophone prejudice.

It's as if Viper was contagious. 

(Runs, hides, etc.)

[Oexmelin]

I wonder how long it will register for people to realize that a country with two official languages cannot have one political culture.

I don't understand this post.

Clearly politics in Quebec are different than politics in the rest of Canada.

But what I am saying is stupid is taking a legit argument about use of offensive words in an academic setting vs academic freedom and freedom of speech, and then randomly mixing in anti-francophone prejudice.

It's not stupid if that's has been a salient point reported in the media, if there is a clear linguistic division between professors who supported the lecturer and professors who abstained from such support or supported students, and if it's been an argument made by some of the students themselves (i.e., that it's because of a problem with francophones vs racism) or by some very active twitter firebrands. All of which may be incomprehensible if someone doesn't follow the French language media. I suppose stupidity may be ascribed to how media cycles are fed by twitter dynamics but that's hardly a unique feature to this particular debate.

[Grey Fox]

BB, I don't understand how this is an example of stupid politics?