The Health Committee Motion is not that big of a deal

I read the motion in question and the Terms of Reference for the Health Committee of the House of Commons and they align.  The motion does not demand the Committee to do anything it would normally not do.  That is why the Liberals decided not to make the motion a matter of confidence because it is not a confidence matter.

Everything in the motion could have been presented in whole or in part at the Committee itself and it would have decided on whether to proceed but the Conservatives decided to put it all in a House motion to generate some headlines.  Since that is usually what Opposition Parties do with Opposition days in the House that should surprise no one.

So the motion will be passed tomorrow and then it will be up to the Health Committee to actually action it.  That pretty much guarantees that this will disappear from the headlines for quite some time because the first order of business for the Committee will be figuring out how to implement the motion.  That will mean all sorts of procedural maneuvering by the various parties and I am certain that the media and Canadians will be hanging on every word uttered during those proceedings.  (Hint they won't be)  

Also keep in mind that the composition of the Health Committee will remain the same and it will be chaired by a Liberal.  That means the Liberals will form a coherent block while the Opposition Parties will be split and if the Opposition Parties try to push the Committee beyond its Terms of Reference the Chair can squash that effort without a vote.

The demands of the motion are largely routine.  Although an argument can be made about the timing of the demands there is nothing there that really stands out as being egregiously unreasonable.

We are already seeing some pushback on some of these demands.  The companies that were contracted to manufacture PPE in Canada have already made their concerns known and I believe they will not stop.  When it comes time to actually decide whether to invite representatives of these companies to the Committee the Conservatives may find that they no longer have the support of the other Opposition parties on the Committee to force the companies to appear.  Or at the very least a compromise may be reached to allow them to appear in camera and to have their testimony sealed to protect their property.  Of course, that would deny the Conservatives any opportunity to twist that testimony into another scandal.  You know, because the mail clerk, of a given company, is Justin Trudeau's third cousin, twice removed, so that was the reason that company received a contract.

With regard to the demand for documents the Committee can demand any documents they want but the timing of when they are delivered is usually determined through negotiations between the House of Commons staff and Departmental staff.  If the Opposition parties demand so many documents that it will take two or three weeks to produce them then that is how long it will take.  The motion stating that the Department has to produce them in "seven days" is grandstanding.  Further the Committee cannot overturn Cabinet Confidence so the documents will be the usual documents that are generated by Departments in the course of their work, which are boring.  Then again, the point is not to gain those documents but to complain yet again about not receiving the documents that the Conservatives believe exist that will incriminate the government.  They do not exist but that will not stop the Conservatives from claiming they do and that the government is covering them up.

I for one would love to see Dr. Tam being interrogated by the Conservative members of the Committee and the subsequent reaction of Conservatives at large to that interrogation.  I can think of nothing that would undermine the Conservatives among non-aligned voters more that that.  If it came down to who Canadians trusted more, Dr. Tam or Michelle Rempel Garner, I know who would come out on top by a large margin.  (Hint:  Dr. Tam)  Giving Dr. Tam three hours in which to explain how Public Health responded to the pandemic would not go well for the Conservatives, particularly since both the NDP and the Bloc would probably not be as confrontational as the Conservatives probably would and the Liberals would take the opportunity to allow Dr. Tam to highlight the success of the response.

The House of Commons motion that will be voted on tomorrow is not that big of a deal.  It was never a confidence motion and the only reason why some in the media actually indicated that it might be was to generate clicks.  The motion is only the beginning and how it all shakes out will be decided in the coming weeks by the Committee itself.  In all likelihood it will not all go the way the Conservatives hope.

If you are not prepared to fight a battle do not provoke one.

So another much hyped "confidence motion" was defeated in the House of Commons last night.

It all started when the Conservatives, cheered on by the other Opposition Parties, decided to put forward a motion to form a committee whose title, terms of reference and even composition was nothing the Liberals could accept.  They tried to claim it was nothing serious but even a cursory review of it revealed that it would have done serious damage to the government's ability to govern.  

So the government made passing of the motion a matter of confidence, stating that if it passed the Liberals would call an election.

Did the Opposition truly believe the government was going to give into their demands?  Do they really believe that they have the strength and the leverage to make them do so?

In the end it was the Opposition that backed down when the NDP contorted itself into a pretzel in order to justify not supporting the motion, even though they supported it when it was first presented.  Not that the other Opposition Parties showed any strength.  The verbal gymnastics of Mr. O'Toole to stave off an election were a study in doublespeak.  

The simple fact is only the Liberals are actually ready to fight an election.  The Conservatives have spent the last year in a leadership race and not in election preparation.  The NDP is broke.  The Bloc has hit its high water mark in Quebec and the only direction it can go is down.  With that in mind why are the Opposition Parties pushing their luck?

If they believe that doing this, allowing them to frame it as the government trying to cover up some kind of scandal or some other silly excuse, will help them they have not observed very recent history.  From 2006 until 2008 the Harper government routinely made bills and motions confidence matters and the result was the Harper Conservatives increased their seat count.  They did it again between 2008 and 2011 and the result was a Conservative majority.  

The Conservatives and the media have to understand that the machinations of the various parties in the House of Commons does not resonate south of Laurier Avenue, even in normal times.  In COVID times that concern is even less.  So playing these silly games is pointless at best and counterproductive at worst.  Make no mistake, if an election happens in the near to medium-term the result will see the leaders of all of the major Opposition Parties relegated to the lecture circuit.

On a final note there is a possibility that another confidence vote will take place Monday.  Since the government survived on Wednesday it will probably survive on the following Monday.  The media and the Opposition Parties will howl with outrage but I will again point out that no one but politicos will care and even the reaction of some of them will be "Meh".

None of the Opposition Parties are in any position to successfully fight an election so their attempts at brinkmanship are not strategic.  They are pathetic.  They may just provoke the government enough to call an election, which would not be in the best interests of any of the Opposition Parties right now.  

Oh for an effective Opposition

I have never made it a secret that I am a Liberal supporter but that is because they are the only party that even comes close to meeting my requirements for governing.  It is not because I am particularly partisan.

I know that the best thing for Canada is for the government to be effectively opposed by the other parties.  They should be there to keep the government honest and to push the government to make better decisions and to develop better policies.  

Unfortunately none of the Opposition Parties are doing that.  In order for the Opposition Parties to effectively oppose the government they actually have to take positions on the issues and stick to them.  They have to be able to present cogent and coherent arguments against what the government is doing and make their own proposals on how they believe the government should address a given issue.

This has not happened in a long time.  The Liberals and the NDP were complete failures at it when Stephen Harper was in power, although Stephane Dion came close with his "Green Shift" plan before the 2008 election.  Canadians were not ready for that yet, which is one of the reason why Mr. Dion was unsuccessful but at least Mr. Dion actually made an effort to mount an effective opposition to the Harper government.  Some commentators like to point out that Mr. Mulcair was effective but they base that on his work during Question Period, which only happens for 45 minutes a day and only when the House is sitting.  For the rest of the time he was no more effective than Opposition leaders that came before him, or after him.  Mr. Trudeau was also ineffective as an Opposition leader although we can never know if that was because he was no good at that job or because he was busy rebuilding and renewing the Liberal Party.

As I have stated before in this space I remember when Opposition Parties were actually effective.  Both Ed Broadbent and Joe Clark were very effective against Pierre Trudeau, managing to push his government in directions that they would not have gone if they were not so effective.  And Ed Broadbent really shined when Pierre Trudeau had a minority government.  It was his efforts during that time that lead to the idea that the NDP can be the "kingmaker" in a minority government situation.  

The last effective Opposition leader was Preston Manning.  Once he left the effectiveness of the Opposition parties went into the toilet and that has been true ever since.  

Here is the funny part.  The Liberals are currently leading a minority government.  It is a golden opportunity for the Opposition parties to push the government in a direction they would like them to go.  If any of the them actually proposed policies and then pushed the government to adopt them it would probably lead to their partial adoption at least.  Unfortunately, Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Singh are no Clark and Broadbent.  They do not have the political smarts to actually take advantage of the current situation.  They have allowed themselves to become mired in "gotcha" politics and the belief that scandal mongering will put them on the government benches.  They are delusional for thinking so but there it is.

So what we end up with is a government that is effectively unopposed even though they are in a minority situation.  The government has pretty much been able to do what it wants without any real effective pushback from the Opposition parties.  This can be a recipe for disaster but so far the current government has shown a very high level of competence, especially during these trying times.  

I am not too upset by the situation because the Official Opposition party is the most regressive party we have seen at the Federal level in the whole history of Canada.  So, having any of their policy positions even being considered would be bad news for Canada.  As well, the NDP has not had a coherent position on any issue for a long time so any proposal they make would probably just do more harm than good because they do not think things through to determine any medium to long-term impacts their proposals might have.  And the Bloc is the Bloc, a party founded to break up Canada.  Although we cannot completely dismiss any proposal they make, without thoroughly examining it, in all likelihood most proposals they make would probably not be in the best interests of Canada.

Canada is best served by a functioning and effective government being opposed by a functioning and effective Opposition.  We have been lucky that we have had the former for the last five years but we have not had the latter for more than two decades.  That has to change and the only way it is going to is for them to stop with the trivialities.  In the past five years the Trudeau government has left so many opportunities for the Opposition to effectively oppose them if they would have only had the forethought and attention span to identify those opportunities and develop coherent alternatives to them.  Unfortunately, I do not believe the current set of Opposition leaders have the wherewithal to make that happen and Canada is worse off for it. 

Government Life Spans and Scandals

Governments have life spans.  I have stated this before is this space.  What it means is after a time people just get sick of seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices from the people running the country.  It is inevitable and nothing can change that.

In Canada the typical life span for a government, both federal and provincial, is about eight years.  That does not mean that at the eight year mark a government will lose an election but it does mean that at about eight years a government is operating on borrowed time.  Alberta is a the exception, having lived under Conservative governments for most of the last 50+ years.  A whole whack of PHD candidates in Political Science could write dissertations to explain why Alberta voters seem to be political masochists.

Scandals do not change this timeline.  The Harper government had a scandal once every 18 months during their time in power but they still won three elections, losing after being in power nine years.  The Chretien/Martin Liberals had their share of scandals but they lasted 11 years before losing.  The McGuinty/Wynne government in Ontario also had their share of scandals but they lasted 15 years, although it should have been eleven but the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario pulled a Hudak in 2013 and allowed the Ontario Liberals to grab one more majority government term. 

I am certain that there are a large number of political observers in this country who have noticed this phenomena.  However, they could also be fooled by the fact that the last two changes of government have taken place during or immediately after scandals.  The Martin Liberals lost after the revelations of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal and the Harper Conservatives lost after the revelations of Senator Duffy's trial for taking bribes.  I believe that this might have fooled more than a few political commentators into focusing on the scandals instead of taking a look at the whole picture.

Canadians have proven over and over again that they do not get too worked up about scandals by their governments.  They just don't.  As long as they believe the government is generally competent in doing its job they can be very forgiving.  As well, I believe the COVID crisis has changed politics in this country.  Suddenly, the little things no longer seem to be registering with Canadians because they are too focused on the COVID virus and its impacts.

It is interesting that the SNC Lavalin controversy caused polls to move more than the WE controversy.  SNC was about the ins and outs of the legal independence of the Attorney General while WE was about money.  Most Canadians do not understand the intricacies of legal independence but all Canadians probably understand money.  So why did SNC move the polling dial but WE did not?  Simple answer is COVID of course.  That is not just the elephant in the room that is a whole herd of them and they are not happy.  So Canadians are rightly focused on it.

That has not stopped the Conservatives, the NDP and the media from focusing on a perceived scandal.  What they are trying to do is shorten the life span of the government.  Past history has demonstrated that they would probably not succeed in normal times and chances of success in the current abnormal times is probably even less.  

However, even if they had a chance of success they are going to have to find something more than SNC and WE.  First, because two controversies are not enough to cause Canadians to turn on their government.  The Harper government had gone through at least five of them before the 2011 election and they won that election handily.  Second, the scandals have to be more compelling than the two that they have been pursuing.  Both SNC and WE did not have the kind of oomph that would move the needle among the 10 to 12 percent of non-aligned voters in Canada, the very voters that decide elections.  The Sponsorship Scandal certainly did because it was truly a scandal.  Maybe the Senate Expense Scandal had an impact but I believe that was less about the details of the scandal itself and more about the fact the Duffy trial dominated the first three weeks of the 2015 election campaign and reminded those non-aligned Canadians of just why they had grown tired of the Harper government after nine years.

So the resurrection of WE will probably not have the impact the Conservatives, the NDP and the media would like it to have.  They have gone past flogging a dead horse to flogging its dried out old bones and Canadians have much more pressing issues to worry about.  They really need to find new material but it does not seem to be available and even if it was available it probably would not matter.  As in the past they are just going to have to wait for Canadians to organically grow tired of the Trudeau government, which we should see the first signs of in about three years.

Then again if they really want to focus on WE instead of trying to find another scandal to focus on or actually decide to become an effective opposition to the government and they want to do this during a global pandemic I would encourage them to do so.  The more they waste time on trivialities the better it is for the government.

The Petroleum Industry, A Victim of its own Success

Ten to fifteen years ago all of the talk around oil and gas was the notion of "peak oil".  That is, we had developed all of the oil fields we could develop so there was no way to add production to meet demand.  As a result, the price of oil would continue to rise pretty much forever.

Alot of companies and political jurisdictions made some big business and policy choices based on that notion and for a time they worked.  The price of oil did continue to rise to the point where even the Tar Sands in Alberta was able to make money without the perennial handouts from Governments.  Not that existing handouts were eliminated it was just new ones were not needed.

The problem was the notion of peak oil was wrong.  The rise in oil prices just made other ways of developing oil reserves economically viable and companies did just that.  Fracking comes to mind.  In fact, production rose so much that the US went from being a net importer of oil to being a net exporter of it.  As an aside, I knew when I read that little piece of news that Alberta was going to be in big trouble in the not too distant future.  The US is the biggest importer of Alberta Tar Sands oil and if they had so much of there own that they were exporting it demand for Tar Sands oil would dry up.

The other impact of those persistently high oil prices was making alternatives to oil economically viable.  Wind and solar became increasingly viable alternatives and investment in both climbed so that they could be improved, made more efficient and made even more economically viable.  As well, car companies started seeing that they could make money by manufacturing and selling motor vehicles that did not use a fossil fuel distillate to run an engine.  So those companies began to invest in that technology to make it more efficient and cost effective.

All of this went on for some time.  The number of barrels of oil produced each day climbed until there was a glut in the market.  The first victims of that glut was the Tar Sands.   At one point the price of Tar Sands oil was US$40 off of the benchmark price for oil and those few years where it was profitable to develop it became a memory.  Then people began to notice that the Chinese economy was slowing down, that demand for oil in the rest of the world had also fallen and that there was way more oil in the market than there were reliable customers for it.  The result was basis economics.  The price fell and then it collapsed in the panic selling that followed.

So that is where we sit right now.  Fracking has dropped off considerably because it is no longer profitable to develop oil reserves that way.  The price of Alberta Tar Sands oil is so low that Tar Sands companies are laying off employees at a prodigious rate, despite billions of dollars in "bail out" money from the Alberta government.   Wind and solar are still being developed at the same pace as before the collapse of oil prices and automotive companies are forging ahead with developing and selling electric and hybrid motor vehicles.

So there does not appear to be any end in sight for the low energy prices we have seen for the last couple of years.  Indeed, many are now saying that we have reached or even gone beyond "peak demand" and that oil prices are going to continue to fall in the long-term.  That is having some impacts.  Exxon is no longer on the Dow Jones, BP has indicated that they have stopped oil exploration and Teck Mines has shut down their efforts to build a new Tar Sands pit in Alberta.  

I am not so certain about the notion of peak demand.  They were wrong about peak oil so I do not trust their analysis in the other direction.  We will have to see what happens but I believe we will see energy prices recover in the coming years although not to the level they were just five years ago.  

What the last five years have proven to us is that the development and sale of petroleum products is subject to the same economic laws of supply and demand for which every other product and service are subject.  Many in the industry and in the governments that have fallen over themselves to support that industry appeared to have forgotten that fact and in some cases they have still not accepted it.  There is no mystery in the current restructuring that is currently brutalizing the petroleum industry and those whose livelihoods depend on it.  They are the inevitable victims of the runaway success that the petroleum industry experienced during the first 15 years of this century.

Donald Trump has COVID

I would not wish death on anybody under any circumstances.  However, considering Donald Trump's ongoing reaction to the COVID-19 virus it is hard not to believe that his contracting the virus is karma.  I hope that he fully recovers but not until sometime in late November.

There is some talk about how this will impact the election.  For that we are going to have to wait-and-see but there are several scenarios have been talked about.

1. Mr. Trump will receive a sympathy bump that might allow him to eke out a victory.  While that is certainly a possibility I have a hard time seeing it happen because most of the time people feel sympathetic towards a person who is likeable and Mr. Trump is not that.  He has cultivated an image of being an unlikeable blowhard since he became famous.  If something like this would have happened to Al Gore or John McCain, during their runs for the White House, it might have put them over the top but I find it hard to believe anybody but those who already support him will feel sympathy for him.
2. Mr. Trump will beat this thing and come back even stronger.  This is related to the first point and it would be much more feasible if he was likeable.
3. This puts the final nail in the coffin of the Trump campaign for re-election.  It is the crucial last month of the campaign and if he is out of the picture for any length of time he will be toast.  This assertion has merit.  If he is unable to campaign for a significant amount of time in the last month then it would be hard to him to win.
4. Now that Mr. Pence will be more front and centre for the last weeks of the campaign Republican fortunes will improve because he is not as much of a lightning rod as Mr. Trump.  This one is silly because it assumes that Americans will somehow forget the last four years over the next four weeks.  As well, there is a reason why Mr. Pence was chosen as Mr. Trump's running mate.  He is about as charismatic as a turnip so there was never any risk of him overshadowing Mr. Trump.  In short, he was the perfect presidential running mate.  To think that him being put front and centre will change Republican fortunes is wishful.  Incidentally, Mr. Pence fits the mold of most VP candidates, unremarkable and dull.  The fact that Mr. Biden chose Ms. Harris does not receive enough attention because she is anything but unremarkable and dull.  Did he choose her because he is not expecting to complete his term? 
5. The election will be delayed.  That would be hard because US elections are a whole bunch of smaller elections, administered and controlled by each state.  I have a hard time believing that anybody would be able to convince all 50 governors to delay the elections.  And even if that were to happen how long would it be delayed.  Federal law indicates that Mr. Trump is President and Mr. Pence is VP until January 20.  On that date they no longer hold their respective offices and alot of work needs to be done between November 3 and January 20, regardless of who wins the election.  So a delay is probably not feasible even if some state governors would want to do it.  

I have seen some American commentators demanding that Mr. Biden suspend his campaign until Mr. Trump recovers, which he should certainly not do.  One of my pet peeves with progressive political parties is they have this sense that the should fight fair even when their conservative opponents are using every dirty trick in the book to win.  And if the nomination of Ms. Barrett to SCOTUS does not finally convince Democrats that the Republicans are playing the political game to win then I do not know what will.  

As well, Mr. Trump's condition is not a sudden and surprising condition.  This virus has been around for nine months and Mr. Trump has been downplaying it and suggesting silly cures for it during that entire period.  Hell, for crass political reasons Mr. Trump did not even take basic precautions against contracting the virus.  The way he was going it was probably only a matter of time before he caught the virus so no one should be surprised.  If this were a normal year, without a deadly virus stalking the globe then maybe there would be an argument for suspending the Democratic campaign until he recovered but this is not a normal year.  Mr. Trump failed to take all of the necessary precautions to prevent contracting a virus during a global pandemic and that has given the Democrats a potential gift.  They should take full advantage of it.

How all of this shakes out is still up in the air.  There are way too many variables for anybody to have a definitive answer.  We will have to wait and see.

Mr. O'Toole's First Month

A little over a month has gone by since Erin O'Toole won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and this is my initial assessment of his performance so far.

I realize that I am biased but I am not expecting much from him in the first month.  It takes time to learn any job and learning the job of Leader of the Official Opposition of Canada would have a particularly steep learning curve.

When he won the leadership I wrote a post indicating that if he wants to realize any success he is going to have to lead instead of follow.  That is, he is going go have to take risks and make tough choices between the interests of some of the single issue Conservatives that won him the leadership and the broader interests of the Conservative Party in winning over centrist voters.

So far he has not done that.  He refused to say whether systemic racism exists in Canada and just today he has come out against the current bill outlawing conversion therapy for the thinnest of reasons.  Both of these issues are important to Canadians and the majority of Canadians would acknowledge that racism is an issue that that conversion therapy is wrong.  So, both issues provided Mr. O'Toole with an opportunity to demonstrate he is the moderate he claims to be.  He failed to take either opportunity.  Or he could have at least faked it like Stephen Harper use to do.  

It has only been a month the longer he takes to make a stand against the social conservatives the more difficult it will be to do.  Eventually, he will not be able to do so and people will notice.

Otherwise, his leadership has been more of the same.  Piss on Justin Trudeau on a daily basis on twitter and come up with some really lame memes.  In short, the same strategy as Mr. Scheer.  If he thinks that will gain him more success than Mr. Scheer he if probably in for a great disappointment.

It has only been one month so it is unreasonable to have him turn things all of the way around but he has had enough time to begin putting his stamp on the CPC and there is no sign that he is doing that or even attempting to that.