EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL COVERAGE: EXEEXXCLCCLLUSIVVEE E ...

TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, NO. 1333 CANADA’S POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT NEWSWEEKLY MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016 $5.00

EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL COVERAGE: NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE

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NEWS BUDGET FEATURE JUSTICE

NEWS TRANSPARENCYNEWS LOBBYING

NEWS DUFFY TRIAL

Feds still haven’t moved on opening up secretive Commons Board of Internal Economy

Energy, tech sectors dominate list lobbying PM Trudeau

BY DEREK ABMA

The Parliamentary Budget Offi ce has judged the Liberal government’s fi scal direction as being sustainable with the predic-tion that it’s on track to wipe out the federal debt, within 50 years.

The PBO issued a new eco-nomic and fi scal outlook last week. It included the projection that the fi scal structure set up in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) fi rst budget, released March 22, puts the gov-ernment on track to completely wipe out the federal debt by the 2064-65 fi scal year. It said this

BY RACHEL AIELLO

The chair of the House com-mittee tasked with studying and possibly amending the government’s controversial assisted dying legisla-tion says it’s not something he would ever seek or help someone do.

“If you asked me person-ally if I would ever want to have physician-assisted suicide or want to help or assist one of my fam-ily members do that, the answer would be no,” Liberal MP Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Que.) told The Hill Times during an interview in his main fl oor Justice Building offi ce last week.

BY LAURA RYCKEWAERT

The Liberal government com-mitted to opening up meetings of the powerful and secretive House of Commons Board of Internal Economy during the 2015 campaign, but six months into its

BY DEREK ABMA

Organizations from the energy and technology sectors account for more than one-third of the lobbyists that have made contact with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau since he took power, according to the federal lobbyists registry.

Communications reports on the registry, as of last week, showed Mr. Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) has had contact with 28 different lobbying organizations

BY ABBAS RANA

The two-year legal ordeal for Sen. Mike Duffy, which ended in his exoneration on all 31 criminal charges last week, is a symptom of

the Senate’s vague administrative rules that are subject to multiple in-terpretations, says New Brunswick Independent Sen. John Wallace.

He said the Senate’s Internal Economy, Budgets and Admin-

istration Committee should get these rules clarifi ed as soon as possible because the stage remains set for Senators to make

Continued on page 6

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Continued on page 18Continued on page 20 Continued on page 7

House Justice Committee chair vows not to ‘impose’ personal views on assisted-dying law

Liberals’ fi scal direction ‘sustainable,’ debt could be gone, in 50 years: PBO

Duff y cleared on 31 criminal charges, reinstated as Senator, not guilty verdict reverberates on Parliament Hill, Senate administration

Senator Mike Duffy, pictured April 21 on his way into court in Ottawa, was cleared by Ontario Justice Charles Vaillan-court on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The Hill Times photograph by Cynthia Münster

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 20162FEATURE BUZZ

Next week, Liberal MP Bill Casey is hosting the kind of skin cancer clinic

that saved his life a decade ago.He recalled how in 2006 he attended a

skin cancer clinic organized on the Hill by Dona Cadman, a Conservative MP between 2008 and 2011 and wife of the late Indepen-dent MP Chuck Cadman who died of skin cancer in 2005.

“I just happened to go to it, almost by accident,” Mr. Casey said. “A committee ended early, the only time it ever ended early in 17 years. So, I had chance to go to it, so I went to it.”

Mr. Casey said the physician manning the clinic did a basic check of his head, hands, face, and neck. Just as Mr. Casey was about the leave, the doctor, who wasn’t busy, offered to do a more thorough check.

Sure enough, malignant melanoma was found in the middle of Mr. Casey’s back. He later had two operations that took care of it. Testing during that process also found he had prostate cancer, which he was also able to have treated.

“I’m here today because of early diag-nosis, and only because of early diagnosis at the clinic,” he said. “I’m grateful to Mrs. Cadman and, unfortunately, also to Chuck, because if he hadn’t have gone through those things, I would never have known.”

Mr. Casey will be assisted by House Speaker Geoff Regan in hosting the skin cancer clinic next Monday, May 2, from 3 to 6 p.m. at 216-N at Centre Block.

Liberal MP Lamoureux’s daughter elected in last week’s Manitoba election

Politics is becoming somewhat of a fam-ily business for the Lamoureux family.

Last week, Cindy Lamoureux, daughter of federal Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, was elected to the Manitoba legislature.

“It’s surreal for me; it’s absolutely surreal,” she told reporters on election night last Tues-day. “I’ve been dreaming about being a politi-cian since I was just a little girl. It was my fi rst run. I thought, you know, I got nothing to lose.”

Ms. Lamoureux is just 24 years old. Her past working experience includes jobs in the Senate, the Long Term & Continuing Care As-sociation of Manitoba, and Blockbuster Video.

She was one of only three Liberals elected in what ended up being a land-slide victory for the Conservatives led by Brian Pallister, which won 40 of 57 seats. The NDP, which had been in power for the last 17 years, won 14 seats. Premier Greg Selinger announced his resignation as NDP leader on election night last Tuesday.

Kevin Lamoureux has been an MP for the riding of Winnipeg North since 2010. He won a byelection that year, which was called after the seat was vacated by former NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis. He has been re-elected in each of the two general elections since then. He’s currently the parliamentary secretary for Gov-ernment House Leader Dominic LeBlanc.

House Affairs Committee to look into C-14 leaks

The House of Commons last week tasked its Procedure and House Affairs Committee to look into how details of assisted-dying legislation, Bill C-14, got into the hands of reporters.

House Speaker Geoff Regan said in the House last Tuesday that the leaks marked “a direct contravention of the House’s right to fi rst access.” He noted that “specifi c and detailed information contained in Bill C-14 was reported in a newspaper article and elsewhere in the media before the bill had been introduced in the House.”

The legislation was tabled April 14. However, a Globe and Mail article written by Laura Stone, published online on April 12, revealed certain aspects of the bill, such as that it would not allow for advanced consent to medically assisted dying for those suffer-ing from psychological conditions such as dementia or those people younger than 18.

The House verbally consented to a mo-tion from Conservative MP Andrew Scheer that the matter be referred to the House Affairs Committee.

“Whoever is responsible for this must understand that we are a parliamentary de-mocracy and that political decisions made by staff to try to frame the debate in the media are not acceptable when that infringes upon our rights and dignities,” Mr. Scheer said.

Trudeau: A face made for magazines

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contin-ues to be an international media darling, with his mug being featured prominently in the latest issues of GQ and Washington Life magazines.

Mr. Trudeau has an electronic “lost” cover for the May issue of GQ, for which the main theme is “The Most Stylish Men Alive 2016.”

The magazine explained that Mr. Trudeau isn’t included in a physical cover of the magazine, as fellow Canadians Ryan Reynolds and Drake are also featured in this issue and have their own real covers. It said “having a third Canuck cover would have ma-a-a-aybe been overkill.”

GQ states that Mr. Trudeau “has come a long way from being just a snowboard-ing John Mayer doppelgänger,” and that he “dresses better than any other world leader.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trudeau along with wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, U.S. President Barack Obama, and fi rst lady Michelle Obama appear on the cover of the April edition of Washington Life, which uses a picture from the state dinner held in Wash-ington, D.C., last month, with a headline the reads, “the 2016 A-List.” The theme is about those who are the most desirable to have as guests if you’re throwing a party in D.C.

Liberals win charity basketball game

The federal Liberals are really on a role lately; fi rst the election and now a basket-ball tournament.

The team comprised of Liberal MPs and staffers were victorious in the fi fth annual Parliamentary Charity Basketball Tourna-ment held Sunday, April 17, in Ottawa.

The Liberals, captained by MP Raj Gre-wal, defeated the Conservatives, led by MP David Sweet, in the fi nal. It was the Liber-als’ fi rst victory in this tournament, making them the 2016 CLK Raj-Richardsen Cup champions. The Conservatives have won three times and the NDP once.

The tournament also managed to raise a record $20,000 for Christie Lake Kids, which provides organized recreational op-portunities for disadvantaged kids.

“The tournament has grown gradu-ally each year, and it’s very satisfying to see how much fun people can have across partisan lines to help kids in need,” said Daniel Richardsen, a Finance Canada com-

munications strategist who, in his past life as a Conservative staffer, helped start this tournament with Shiv Raj, a former PMO staffer from the Harper days.

Nice weather comes, time to run on Hill

Efforts are underway to recruit partici-pants in the Running on the Hill program, which is slated to run every Monday between May 2 and June 20 during the noon hour.

The program will continue to be man-aged by Theresa Kavanagh, a staffer in the offi ce of NDP Whip Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, as it has for the last eight years.

MPs and House staffers of various intensity levels are sought. Ms. Kavanagh—a regular participant in marathons and other competi-tions—will lead the runners during these ses-sions. Renée Taylor, from the offi ce of NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson, will lead the walkers.

Those that participate are asked to make $30 donations to the Workplace Charitable Campaign by April 29, the proceeds for which go toward keeping children active. Those who want to join are asked to email Ms. Kava-nagh at [email protected], and be prepared to meet up for the fi rst session next Monday at 12:10 p.m. at the Centennial Flame.

Ontario Tory leader runs Boston Marathon

Patrick Brown, leader of the Ontario Pro-gressive Conservative Party, was among those who ran in the Boston Marathon last week.

The opposition leader for Ontario ran the marathon in four hours, 16 minutes, and three seconds, placing him 19,869th out of the 27,491 participants.

Mr. Brown, who has participated in more than a dozen marathons, told Orillia Today that he was not in optimal shape for the Boston run, having entered at the last minute in re-sponse to a request to participate in support of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

“I fi gured I had enough muscle memory from years past that I could do it without train-ing,” he was quoted as saying. “Runners are inherently competitive with themselves, and I think the lesson is training is important.”

Mr. Brown, who was a Conservative MP between 2006 and 2015, was not about use this as an excuse to be a couch potato for an extended period. Days later, he tweeted a picture of an early-morning hockey game he was involved in. “Best way to get over a marathon is shinny!” his post said.

Movie night pushed ahead ½ hour

Note, if you’re planning to go to Movie Night on the Hill (which is actually at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau) on Tuesday, May 3, it’s now slated to start at 7:30 p.m., not 7 p.m. as initially planned.

As we’ve already noted, the invite-only event is being hosted by Heritage Minis-ter Mélanie Joly and features the award-winning Canadian-Irish production Room, featuring a performance from Canadian child actor Jacob Tremblay.

[email protected] Hill Times

Hill skin cancer clinic saved Grit MP Casey’s life, it might save others

HEARD HILLONTHE

BY DEREK ABMA

Liberal MP Bill Casey, left, said the death Chuck Cadman, a former Conservative-turned Independent MP, inspired him to get tested for skin cancer years ago, and it saved his life. The Hill Times photographs by Jake Wright

Cindy Lamoureux, the daughter of Kevin Lamoureaux, was elected as a Liberal Manitoba MLA last week. Photograph courtesy of Cindy Lamoureux campaign

A story from Globe and Mail reporter Laura Stone broke details of Bill C-14 before it was tabled in the House. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

Justin Trudeau is featured prominently in the latest editions of GQ, left, and Washington Life magazine. Photographs courtesy of GQ and by Gina Cosentino

3THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016

FEATURE ATTAWAPISKAT

BY JEAN-LOUP DOUDARD

PARLIAMENT HILL—When NDP MP Charlie Angus was

fi rst elected in the Ontario riding of Timmins-James Bay in 2004, he pledged to visit all of its indigenous communities and First Nations.

Many of the communities hadn’t seen their MP in years, said Dale Tonelli, who works in Mr. An-gus’ constituency offi ce in Timmins.

More than a decade later, Mr. Angus is one of the most vocal advocates of indigenous rights in the House and the federal political face of the Attawapiskat suicide crisis that erupted two weeks ago.

Mr. Angus, who is the NDP’s critic for indigenous and northern affairs, fl ew to Attawapiskat last Monday with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Caro-lyn Bennett (Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont.) to meet with Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Bruce Shish-eesh and aboriginal youth.

Eleven people attempted to take their lives in the James Bay Cree community of 2,000 on April 9, prompting the First Nation to declare a state of emergency. There has been more than 100 sui-cide attempts on the reserve since the month of September, many including children.

Mr. Angus said youth are the key to the “large, structural change” that remote indigenous reserves need to solve the suicide crisis.

“I believe in the power of young people, and it’s my work as an MP to nurture young leaders,” he said.

After meeting with the At-tawapiskat chief and council, and facing questions and comments from youth, Ms. Bennett promised a new youth centre and the for-mation of a youth delegation that will travel to Ottawa to talk with

lawmakers about the challenges of living in remote northern reserves, something Mr. Angus actively pushed the week before.

“I don’t want it to be a photo op,” Mr. Angus said of last week’s trip. “It’s an opportunity to show them that they matter.”

While he approves of the latest government commitments, Mr. Angus said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Qué.), who’s also the minister of intergovern-mental affairs and youth, should un-lock more funds for mental health services in First Nations reserves.

“I think Canadians would not fault the prime minister if he changed the budget at this point,” Mr. Angus said last Tuesday. “He did it with Syria; he can do it here.”

Mr. Angus said he thinks the Liberals can do more.

“I don’t buy the bullshit that there’s a process,” said Mr. Angus last Thursday. “All you need is political will.”

Liberal MP Kamal Khera (Brampton West, Ont.), parliamen-tary secretary for Health Minister Jane Philpott (Markham-Stouffville, Ont.), pointed to the Liberal gov-ernment’s budget, which includes $8.4-billion to “improve the socio-economic conditions for indigenous peoples and their communities” when asked about providing new mental health funds by Mr. Angus in Question Period last Wednesday.

Despite the new First Nations funding, Mr. Angus has criticized the lack of new funding specifi cally ear-marked for mental-health services.

The rash of attempted suicides prompted Mr. Angus to call for an emergency debate on the ongoing suicide crisis two weeks ago. The House of Commons convened for an emotionally charged discussion on mental health services follow-ing a string of incidents in north-ern reserves in recent months.

The Attawapiskat suicide crisis is the latest in a community that has been plagued by fl ooding and sev-eral housing crises in recent years. Mr. Angus says he’s “lost count of the amount of states of emergency” that he’s seen in his riding. The First Nation has declared four states of emergency since 2006 over housing crises and extended periods of boil-water advisories.

“The previous housing crisis we had was completely unneces-sary,” Mr. Angus said to reporters last week. “We had people living in squalor, people living in tents.”

Mr. Angus criticized the for-mer Harper government’s “very defensive” attitude when dealing with the past crises, calling the Conservatives at the time “almost paranoid on those issues.”

Attawapiskat is not the only First Nation living in extremely poor conditions in the Timmins-James-Bay riding. The Kasheche-

wan Cree First Nation made national headlines last month when pictures of infants with virulent skin conditions went viral on social media.Thirty children were examined by Health Canada medical staff and the vast major-ity were diagnosed with eczema. There were also a few cases of scabies, impetigo, and psoriasis.

The skin conditions are fully treatable and the children are receiving the treatment they re-quire, said Christina Lazarova, a Health Canada spokeswoman.

Mr. Angus said Kashechewan, located where the Albany River meets James Bay, is still recovering from fl oods that forced the evacu-ation of the community last spring. He said he’s been involved “behind the scenes” since the evacuations. While he doesn’t conduct actual ne-gotiations with the government, he provides support to the band lead-ers in dealing with house repairs.

Mr. Angus said his proudest moment as an MP was the intro-duction of a motion in 2011 to im-prove funding and quality of First Nations education. The motion, which was unanimously adopted in 2012, stemmed from a move-ment led by Shannen Koostachin, an Attawapiskat youth who died in a car accident in 2010.

In 2014, Mr. Angus inaugurated a long-awaited elementary school in Attawapiskat to replace the

previous facility that was contami-nated by a toxic diesel fuel leak.

Mr. Tonelli said Mr. Angus doesn’t visit remote indigenous communities as much as he would like because of the prohibitive air-travel costs, although he’s been known to accom-pany Gilles Bisson, NDP MPP for the same area, and other provincial members on their way there.

Mr. Angus said he and his team rely on Facebook to inter-act with constituents in northern reserves.

“Everyday we do work on Face-book, we respond to constituents, we sort housing applications,” he said.

Mr. Tonelli said his staff regu-larly schedule all-day clinics in indigenous communities to process things like municipality fi les and issues with utilities. He said Mr. Angus travels a lot during constitu-ency weeks, but due to the size of his riding, he often chooses to stay in and work the phones instead.

“The drive between Timmins and Kirkland Lake is about two hours,” he said. “He can do 20 phone calls and help 20 people in that time instead of spending it on the road.”

Mr. Angus’ riding sprawls from the shores of the Hudson Bay to the Timiskaming district on the border with Quebec, an area roughly equivalent in land size to Guinea. He holds two con-stituency offi ces; one in Timmins and the other in Kirkland Lake.

Mr. Angus goes to his Kirkland Lake offi ce two to four times a month, said Felicia Scott, an Otta-wa-based staffer for Mr. Angus.

“He usually goes to the seniors’ home and brings his guitar and sings to residents,” she said.

Mr. Angus was once in a punk rock band with former MP Andrew Cash—before the two became politicians—called L’Étranger, and later in a more folk-oriented band called Grievous Angels that was nominated for two Junos.

Scott said Mr. Angus travels to communities such as Englehart, Earlton, and Temagami. He also visits the Matachewan First Nation, a Cree and Ojibway community 45 minutes west of Kirkland Lake.

“He makes sure to maintain a very strong relationship with First Nations,” said Mr. Tonelli.


Suicides, fl oods in First Nations, Angus tackles big problems in big Ontario riding More than a decade after being elected, Charlie Angus is one of the most vocal advocates of indigenous rights in the House of Commons.

wazuku.ca700-1 Rideau Street, Ottawa, ON K1N 8S7 Phone 613-294-2757 Email [email protected]

SMART STRATEGIES.REAL RESULTS.

NDP MP Charlie Angus, pictured April 19, arriving in Attiwapiskat with Attiwapiskat Chief Bruce Shisheesh. Photograph courtesy NDP MP Charlie Angus’ Facebook

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 20164NEWS ACCESS TO INFORMATION

BY LAURA RYCKEWAERT

Canada’s current access-to-information system presents

a “fundamental challenge” to democracy, was drafted by a po-litical culture that favours secrecy, and MPs should question this “inherent” secrecy as they con-sider changes to the Access to Information Act, Sean Holman, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, told the House committee reviewing the act last week.

“We have a cultural problem when it comes to secrecy, we have a structural problem when it comes to secrecy, and fi xing the Access to Information Act is only one part of addressing those prob-lems,” Mr. Holman, a former inves-tigative journalist and currently an assistant professor of journalism at Mount Royal University, told members of the House Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee last Tuesday, as part of its review of the law.

“More important than any of these recommendations is the need for government and members of this committee to be willing to challenge the assump-tion that secrecy is necessary for decision-making,” he said.

Addressing cabinet confi den-tiality exemptions under the act, he said “it seems passingly odd to me that the principal decision-making body in government is entirely secret.”

The committee has been con-ducting a statutory review of the Access to Information Act since Feb. 25. It’s the fi rst statutory review of this act since 1986, six years after it was fi rst created.

In February, Information and Privacy Commissioner Suzanne Lagault testifi ed before the com-mittee and published a report called ‘Striking the Right Bal-ance for Transparency,’ which included 85 recommendations to “modernize” the act, including calling for a “mandatory parlia-mentary review of the Act every fi ve years.”

The Access to Information Committee, chaired by Conser-vative MP Blaine Calkins (Red Deer-Lacombe, Alta.), will focus on its review of the act for the rest of the current parliamentary session—aside with dealing with the 2016-17 main estimates in early May—and is slated to issue a report in the fall.

The new Liberal government made a commitment to update the act as part of its 2015 campaign platform, including: “eliminating all fees,” except the initial $5 fi ling fee, for access-to-information requests; giving the informa-tion commissioner more powers including the power to “issue binding orders for disclosure”; undertaking “a full legislative review” of the act every fi ve years; and bringing the Prime Minister’s Offi ce, cabinet offi ces, “as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts” under the act.

Conservative MPs on the com-mittee last week repeatedly raised concern that the new government has already specifi ed changes to be made, which they said was predetermining the outcome of the committee’s review and rec-ommendations. In the 2016 fed-eral budget it also notes a “central website” will be created to allow Canadians to submit information requests to government institu-tions, with $12.9-million allocated to the Treasury Board Secretariat over fi ve years to create it.

On Tuesday, Mr. Holman testi-fi ed on behalf of the CAJ, along with Canadian Taxpayers’ Fed-eration’s federal director Aaron Wudrick, and Newfoundland and Labrador’s Information and Pri-vacy Commissioner Edward Ring, along with Sean Murray, director of special projects in the informa-tion commissioner’s offi ce.

Newfoundland recently adopted a revamped access-to-information system after years of “turbulence” and public outcry over the prov-ince’s original access to information regime created in 2008. The fi rst statutory review in Newfound-land took place in 2010, Mr. Ring

recalled, but it was a “very secretive” process and the resulting recom-mendations and “regressive bill” (Bill 29) led to a weeklong fi libuster in the legislature by opposition par-ties. After it was passed, the “relent-less public outcry” that followed led to another review in 2013, two years earlier than scheduled, he said.

That review resulted in 90 recommendations and a new bill, which came into force last year. Newfoundland’s new access-to-information system has since been lauded as “head and shoul-ders above” other jurisdictions in Canada, said Mr. Murray.

Mr. Holman told the committee that exemptions allowed under the current federal Access to Informa-tion Act and practices such as cabi-net confi dentiality “create an unac-ceptable zone of secrecy around government decision-making.”

He called for a reduction in the 75 exemptions, or “loopholes,” allowed under the act, including sections that permit the govern-ment to refuse to disclose some records for 20 years after they are created and on cabinet records (sections 21 and 69, respectively).

Mr. Holman also said: the infor-mation commissioner should be given expanded powers, including order-making power; public of-fi cials should be required to docu-ment decision-making, with penal-ties for not; that federal employees should be encouraged to freely communicate with media without political or media relations staff involvement; and that information, including cabinet briefi ng notes, should be proactively made public.

“Neither the public nor the me-dia should have to go on fi shing expeditions to fi nd out what their government is doing,” he said, later adding, “We have gone over-

board when it comes to exemp-tion and exclusions to freedom-of-information requests.”

Mr. Holman said less exemp-tions would also help decrease the long wait times faced by those who fi le access requests—a point of concern Mr. Wudrick raised—add-ing he’s been out of journalism for the last four years but still has an “outstanding request” in process at the provincial level.

“Information delayed is in-formation denied, especially in a political, democratic environment,” he said. “Today, even the most routine requests for information usually have to be fi ltered through communications departments.”

In exempting cabinet delibera-tions, Mr. Holman questioned just what is being protected.

“Are we protecting cabinet ministers from embarrassment? Are we protecting a fi ction that more than a dozen people in a room will always agree with one another?” he said.

After a Conservative MP raised a point about details of procure-ment deals or trade negotiations being released, Mr. Holman said: “Secrecy is for those people who cannot rightly explain the decisions and actions they are taking to the public. There should be no reason for secrecy … if government is actu-ally able to defend why it made the decision, if it made a good decision.”

He said measures to limit information “don’t just thwart the public’s right to know, they threaten our democracy.”

Mr. Holman also gave MPs a bit of a history lesson on the fed-eral access to information act in Canada, noting discussion ramped up in the 1960s, in part after the U.S. created its freedom of infor-mation system in 1966 which was

soon after used by Canadians, and also due to “the lack of power that individuals MPs experience under our system of government.”

But the access-to-information system that was created back in 1980 “conformed to” the idea that cabinet necessitated “a degree of built-in confi dentiality in govern-ment-decision making,” as argued by the Privy Council, and that such confi dentiality was necessary to ensure frank, full, and non-partisan advice from the civil service, said Mr. Holman. The system, therefore, was shaped “by a political culture and system that has always fa-voured secrecy over openness.”

Just two months after the act was passed in 1980, a writer for The Toronto Star “quipped that the Access to Information Act loop-holes were so wide that a Good-year Blimp could fl oat through them without touching on either side,” recalled Mr. Holman.

Mr. Holman recalled that, three years later, the father of the act, former Conservative MP Gerald Baldwin, said it would “be a very sorry day when those obliged to make important decisions are so fearful of having their motives and their assumptions challenged that they will make such decisions on facts given orally.”

Mr. Holman added “however that sorry day is already upon us.”

In January, Canada’s informa-tion commissioners, from the federal and provincial govern-ments, jointly called for “respec-tive governments” to require public entities to document mat-ters related to deliberations and decisions, expressing concern over a trend towards “no records,” according to its news release.


CAJ urges MPs to reconsider ‘inherent’ secrecy in review of Access Act ‘Secrecy is for those people who cannot rightly explain the decisions and actions they are taking to the public,’ says Canadian Association of Journalists vice-president Sean Holman.

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault, pictured right, has put forward 85 recommendations to ‘modernize’ Canada’s access-to-information system. The Hill Times Photograph by Jake Wright

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THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 20166NEWS BUDGET

“indicates that the federal fi scal structure underlying budget 2016 is sustainable over the long term.”

Mostafa Askari, assistant parliamentary budget offi cer, told The Hill Times in an interview: “What is really important is not the annual changes in the defi cit. What’s important is what the situ-ation is over the long term, what’s the situation in terms of the debt, especially the debt-to-GDP ratio”

The PBO report’s validated the government’s assertion that it is on track to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio over the long term. The government said in the budget that this ratio would move from 32.5 per cent at the end of the cur-rent fi scal year to 30.9 per cent by 2020-21. That’s based on a federal debt the rises from a $648.7-billion to $732.5-billion over that time.

The PBO’s forecast is that the debt-to-GDP ratio will go from 31 per cent and the end of this fi scal year to 29.4 per cent in 2020-21. It

said the debt will hit $633.7-billion at the end of this fi scal year and rise to $703-billion by 2020-21.

The budgetary watchdog noted the government’s move in this year’s budget to cancel the previ-ous Conservative government’s plan to raise age eligibility for Old Age Security from 65 to 67. It said if the Liberal government had not done this, the federal debt could have been wiped out by 2057-58—seven years earlier than what the PBO currently forecasts. It said the previous government’s plan would have saved $11.2-billion in 2029-30, the fi rst year the higher eligibility age for Old Age Security was to be fully phased in.

Mr. Askari said it’s up to policy-makers to decide whether it would be better for the government to eliminate the debt earlier or keep old age benefi ts available for people as young as 65. But either way, he said the government is not creating a “major sustainability issue” by cancelling the phase-in of a higher eligibility age.

He noted that when the previ-ous Conservative government announced its plans for Old Age Security in 2012, based on the argument that it could “not afford” the system as is, the PBO issued a report saying that wasn’t true.

“The system was sustainable at the time—the fi scal struc-

ture—and without that change, would’ve remained sustainable,” Mr. Askari said.

Ian Lee, a professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Busi-ness, said it’s hard to know how to take a prediction about the federal debt being gone in 50 years, and he wondered whether it was done “tongue-in-cheek to kind of poke fun at the government.”

Mr. Lee said he tells his stu-dents that, “beyond three years, any forecast is a fairy tale. … This is not to put down the PBO, but the future is fundamentally unknowable. … We don’t know what oil prices will be in fi ve years, or 10 or 15. We don’t know what the immigration rate is going to be. We don’t know what interest rates are going to be. In other words, there are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of variables that all feed into the mix.”

He said the prediction of elimi-nating the debt within 50 years should be taken “with a giant bar-rel of salt; not a grain of salt, but a whole barrel of salt.”

Mr. Askari said the projection for a debt-free federal govern-ment in 50 years in based on the assumption that “nothing changes,” in the sense the program spend-ing and taxes, as they are set today, change only in proportion to nominal (includes infl ationary effects) gross domestic product.

He acknowledged this is not an airtight prediction, given that this would be like someone in the 1960s—when the internet and smartphones were unheard of, and the Cold War had no end in sight—trying to guess what government fi nances would look like today.

“These are not forecasts; these are scenarios,” Mr. Askari said. “These are what-if scenarios. … Nobody is going to say this is exactly what’s going to happen or this is a typical forecast. Certain-ly, there are issues. The economy fl uctuates. There are shocks to the economy, always, and things move up and down.

“But you do this kind of scenario to give a framework to policy-mak-ers. … Now, within that framework, you have to assess the risk, you have to assess the year-to-year changes, and see where the economy is going, where the fi scal situation is going.”

In this latest outlook, the PBO said that “the outlook for the global economy has deteriorated further,” since an outlook it issued in November. It projected 1.8 per cent growth in real (factoring out infl ationary effects) GDP this year and 2.5 per cent in 2017.

“Despite this weaker external outlook, PBO anticipates that the combination of fi scal measures in Budget 2016 and accommodative monetary policy will help bolster the Canadian economy,” said the PBO report.

As for its reference to monetary policy, the report said it expects the Bank of Canada to keep its bench-mark interest rate at 0.5 per cent until the latter part of 2017.

The PBO said in its report last week that its own projection of 1.8 per cent growth in GDP this year is down from its estimate of two per cent made in November, yet improved from the 1.2 per cent growth Statistics Canada has reported for 2015. The PBO’s forecast of 2.5 per cent growth in 2017 is ahead of its projection of 2.3 per cent made in November, and it attributes this to “federal fi scal measures [that will] boost domestic demand while monetary policy remains accommodative.”

The federal budget forecast less growth over the next two years; 1.4 per cent this year and 2.2 per cent next year.

The PBO said its economic projections are largely “in line” with those of private-sector econ-omists, for which the government made a downward adjustment of $40-billion in projected nominal GDP for “planning purposes” for each of the next fi ve years.

The report goes on to predict smaller defi cits in the com-ing years than the government has planned for. In 2016-17, for example, the PBO is predicting a defi cit of $20.5-billion compared to the government’s anticipated $29.4-billion shortfall.

The PBO said about $6-billion of this difference comes from not factoring in the downward $40-bil-lion adjustment the government made to private-sector forecasts. In addition, the PBO said it has eco-nomic growth expectations that are

more optimistic than what private-sector economists have predicted and it expects more revenue from Crown corporations than what is anticipated by the government.

The PBO said its expectations for defi cits over next fi ve years is, on average, $4.5-billion a year less than what the government laid out in its March 22 budget.

It also said the government likely had a small surplus of $700-million for the 2015-16 fi scal year ended this March, compared to the government’s projection of a defi cit of $5.4-billion. That would mean the government has ran two straight years of sur-pluses following its surplus of $1.9-billion in 2014-15.

Finance Canada is scheduled to release fi gures for last year’s fi scal balance by May 27, though this is subject to adjustments in the government’s fall update.

The PBO said the difference between what it and the govern-ment have projected for 2015-16 “is not inconsistent with uncer-tainty surrounding end-of-year adjustments, different economic and fi scal assumptions, and dif-ferent fi nancial information.”

Mr. Askari said most of the dif-ference between the government’s and the PBO’s fi scal forecasts comes down to the $40-billion adjustment the government has made to private-sector forecasts, which he called “excessive.”

“Looking at historical per-formances of private-sector forecasts, it does not justify the $40-billion adjustment,” he said.

In a previous report this month, the PBO said that, since 1994, private-sector forecasts attained by government have typically underestimated GDP by $10-billion in the fi rst year of a multi-year forecast and by $4-bil-lion in the second.

Addressing the PBO’s latest fi scal outlook, Finance Minister Bill Morneau (Toronto Centre, Ont.) told reporters last week: “I was pleased with their report. It con-fi rmed a number of things. For one, they talked about the challenges in global growth, which we’ve seen. It of course confi rms that our net debt-to-GDP can decline over time, which is important.”

He added: “Our perspective is that we’ve chosen a path of growth for the economy to plan for, to budget from, that will allow us to make investments that will grow the economy. And I was pleased that they acknowledged that the measures that we’ve put in our budget will in fact help to grow the economy for Canadians.”

As for the difference between the government’s and the PBO’s view on whether there was a sur-plus or defi cit last year, Mr. Mor-neau said: “Economists will come to different conclusions. We’ve taken a look at the challenges of global growth. We’ve taken a look at the volatility of markets around the world and made an estimate in terms of growth that we believe is a prudent estimate of growth.”


Carleton professor Ian Lee says this prediction should be taken ‘with a giant barrel of salt.’

Continued from page 1

BUDGET

OUTLOOK FOR THE BUDGETARY BALANCE

2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21PBO $700M -$20.5B -$24.2B -$18.9B -$14.8B -$12.4BBudget 2016 -$5.4B -$29.4B -$29.0B -$22.8B -$17.7B -$14.3BDifference $6.1B $8.9B $4.8B $3.9B $2.9B $1.9B

Assistant PBO Mostafa Askari, left, says the federal budget, as announced by Finance Minister Bill Morneau in March, sets the stage for the elimination of the federal debt within 50 years. The Hill Times photographs by Jake Wright

Liberals’ fi scal direction ‘sustainable,’ debt could be gone in 50 years: PBO


NEWS DUFFY TRIAL

inadvertent mistakes in fi ling their expenses, resulting in “cata-strophic consequences.”

“That has to be ground zero on all of this for Internal Economy and Senate leadership,” Sen. John Wallace said in an interview with The Hill Times. “Get the rules straightened out. Get them clari-fi ed. Do not leave Senators vulner-able to multiple interpretations.”

Sen. Wallace said Senate rules should be simple enough for Senators to understand, but some are not. For example, he said it’s still unclear to him what qualifi es as “Senate business” or “Parlia-mentary functions” when it comes to eligible expenses.

Sen. Wallace said that the wording used in Senate adminis-trative rules could be interpreted in different ways. He said the Senate has provided Senators with some examples to explain the rules, but it’s unclear what to do if a Senator is dealing with an issue that is not covered in those examples.

“In my view that’s not adequate,” said Sen. Wallace. “If you have a sit-uation that is covered by one of the specifi c item on the appendix, that’s fi ne; you can look at it. But that ap-pendix is based on the description the words that describe or defi ne what Parliamentary functions are,” said Sen. Wallace.

According to the Senate administrative rules, “ ‘Parliamen-tary functions’ means duties and activities related to the position of senator, wherever performed, and includes public and offi cial business and partisan matters, but does not include activities related to a) the election of a member of the House of Commons during an election under the Canada Elec-tions Act; or b) the private business interests of a Senator or a member of a Senator’s family or household.”

Sen. Wallace said that in this rule, “partisan matters” are not defi ned and could mean different things to different Senators. He acknowledged that since late 2012 when the Senate expenses issue became public, the Senate Inter-nal Economy has made progress to further explain the rules but more work needs to be done.

The vagueness of the Senate spending rules was one of the key root causes of the Senate spend-

ing issue that led to 31 criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery against Prince Edward Island Sen. Duffy. Last week, Judge Charles Vaillancourt exonerated him of all criminal charges related to his housing, travel, and offi ce expenses. After the court verdict, the Senate Law Clerk Michel Patrice in a press release announced the “reinstate-ment of Sen. Duffy as a member of the Senate in full standing with full salary and offi ce resources.”

Because of the Senate expense issue, three Conservative-turned-Independent Senators, including Sen. Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau were suspended from the Senate in 2013, and Mac Harb resigned from the Senate. Mr. Harb also paid back about $232,000. The RCMP has fi led criminal charges against Sen. Brazeau and Mr. Harb, but as of last week, no charges had been fi led against Sen. Wallin.

In June 2013, the Senate invited Auditor General Michael Ferguson to undertake a compre-hensive audit of all 116 Sena-tors’ expenses who served in the Senate between April 1, 2011, and March 2013. Mr. Ferguson fi led his fi nal report in June of last year, in which he red-fl agged the questionable expense claims of 30 Senators, totalling about $1-million. Of these 30 Senators, Mr. Ferguson referred the fi les of nine Senators to the RCMP. As of deadline last week, the RCMP had not announced if criminal charges would be laid against any of these nine Senators.

For the Senators who disagreed with the audit fi ndings, the Sen-ate’s Internal Economy Committee offered an independent arbitration process led by former Supreme Court judge Ian Binnie to give one fi nal chance to Senators to justify their claims. Of the 30 Senators, 14 chose to challenge Mr. Ferguson’s fi ndings and took their cases to Mr. Binnie. Mr. Ferguson fl agged $322,611 in alleged questionable claims for these 14 Senators.

After reviewing more informa-tion and speaking with these Sen-ators, Mr. Binnie upheld 55 per cent of Mr. Ferguson’s fi ndings. So, the total amount of money these 14 Senators were required to pay back was $177,898.14. All 30 Senators were given a month to pay the outstanding money back or face legal action, and last Friday was the deadline. All current and former Senators who took their cases to Mr. Binnie had paid back the outstanding amounts in time. Seven former Senators who did not take their case to Mr. Binnie had not paid back the $528,000 that they owe.

Sen. Duffy’s lawyer during his criminal trial, Donald Bayne, also said Senate spending rules are un-clear and should be clarifi ed.

“The Senate has to create clear rules, educate Senators on what they can and can’t do in the public interest,” Mr. Bayne told reporters outside the courthouse after Sen. Duffy was cleared.

“I’m sure all of you, like me, could make a good argument that some of the things that Senators are allowed to travel across the country for at considerable ex-pense, business class, may or may not pass the value-for-money test.”

Nova Scotia Liberal Sen. Jane Cordy, who is the deputy chair of the Internal Economy Com-mittee, said that the Senate rules are clear to her. She said if Sen. Wallace and other Senators are of the view that these rules should

be reviewed for more clarifi cation, the committee will take another look and ensure that all Sena-tors understand these rules. She said some of the spending rules that may not be specifi c enough are left that way to allow Senators to pursue a diverse array of issues that are important in their regions.

“We try to leave it open so that Senators are free to follow inter-ests of people within their regions or to follow specifi c interests that came about because of commit-tees that they are sitting on. Cer-tainly, I will bring that forward,” said Sen. Cordy.

Quebec Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos, chairman of the Internal Economy Committee,

told The Hill Times in January, that based on the recommenda-tion of Mr. Ferguson, his commit-tee will announce details in the “coming weeks” on establishing a new independent oversight plan to review and approve Sena-tors’ expenses that will make the Red Chamber “the model for all legislatures in Canada in terms of accountability, oversight, and disclosure.”

Sen. Cordy told The Hill Times last week that an Internal Economy Subcommittee is still working on fi nalizing this plan. She declined to say when will this oversight plan be announced.

[email protected] Hill times

Duffy ordeal shows need to clarify Senate rules: Wallace ‘Get the rules straightened out. Get them clarifi ed. Do not leave Senators vulnerable to multiple interpretations.’


Duffy cleared: Sen. Mike Duffy, pictured top, arriving at the courthouse in Ottawa on April 21; his lawyer Donald Bayne, pictured in this fi le photo; and Nigel Wright, above, former chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper appeared as a witness in the case against Sen. Duffy. The Hill Times photographs by Jake Wright and Cynthia Münster

Re: “Liberals have in some respects ‘lost ground on

fi scal transparency,’ says former PBO Page,” (The Hill Times, April 18, p. 1). Canada’s former parliamen-tary budget offi cer Kevin Page asks,”Is there a con-solidation plan at the end of these defi cits that will bring budgetary balance back into balance?” His concern is cor-rect within the assumptions of his model, but that model is based on the gold standard when governments could run out of gold and were limited in their expenditures.

The practical limit to

spending is the risk of infl a-tion, but since we have 1.4 million people unemployed and huge, unused produc-tion capacity, that risk is extremely low. The govern-ment should target real outcomes–full employment, good schools, and hospitals, combating climate change, and reducing income in-equality. As long as available resources can be mobilized to improve the lives of Cana-dians, government spending is benefi cial and the federal budget balance is irrelevant.

Larry KazdanVancouver, B.C.

Re: “’It’s been quite a learn-ing curve,’ rookie Grit MPs

want more House committee training, but veteran Liberal, opposition MPs say time’s up,” (The Hill Times, March 28, p. 1). It was with signifi cant interest that I read this article. I was an MLA in the Yukon government from 2002 until 2011 and was a cabinet minis-ter from 2005 until I retired, by choice, at the general election of 2011.

Since then, I have returned to school and am complet-ing a doctorate in education leadership at the University of Calgary. Part of my disserta-tion, which is examining the experience of being a minister of education in a Canadian jurisdiction, involves examin-ing how people learned the

role of minister responsible for education.

Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, in numerous speeches, has reminded us that one needs 30 hours of training to be a barista at Starbucks, but that one can become a lawmaker in Parliament without one hour of training. As a former member of a legislative as-sembly, I know that there is much more to the experience than simply following the standing orders or Marleau and Montpetit’s Parliamen-tary Practice. I wish all of the new parliamentarians the best of luck as they climb up their very steep learning curve.

Patrick RoubleWhitehorse, Yukon

Re: “Feds kill idea to erect Never Forgotten Na-

tional Memorial, sloppily,” (The Hill Times, March 28). So the ex-major general Lewis MacKenzie is all bent out of shape because Canadians rejected the stupid statue proposed for a national park.

You know, it’s a little disturbing to hear this kind of rant from a former mili-tary leader. We expect more from those to whom we have entrusted our safety and security.

I am a veteran myself

and the child of a soldier who died in the service in WWII. I have a right to speak up when appropriate about matters concerning veterans alive and dead. And I objected long and hard—and successfully—about this absurd plan to spend a whopping great sum of money, and deface a national asset because a few people thought a mammoth edifi ce would look cute staring out over the ocean towards Europe.

G. JonesOttawa, Ont.

Government should target real outcomes: Kazdan

Learning the ropes of House committees

Never Forgotten National Memorial was a dumb idea

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Canada’s clean technology industry, worth $12-billion annually to the Canadian economy, is now stalled

for the fi rst time in six years, according to Analytica Advisors’ 2016 Canadian clean technology industry report released last week. The comprehensive report says Canada’s clean technology industry, which created an additional 5,000 jobs in 2014, up from 50,000 the year before, needs much more support from all levels of gov-ernment and the private sector in order “to stimulate and help fi nance the deployment of commercialized clean technology innovation in order to succeed.” But the report says the clean technology industry revenues have been declining year over year since 2014. This isn’t good.

“Without the right support, the industry could lose an opportunity to play a key role in the global race to fi ght climate change and help Canada meet its 2020 Paris com-mitments. Canadian clean technology companies, many of which have benefi tted from federal and provincial government innovation policies and funding, also risk becoming takeover targets of foreign-owned businesses that could benefi t from that investment and the subse-quent economic growth,” states the report.

The report also states that clean technology exports are down. Canada’s clean technology goods exports had increased by $3-billion in the last 10 years, but Canada’s clean technology exports dropped from 14th in 2005 to 19th in 2014, among top global exporters.

Analytica Advisors’ president Céline Bak stated that the trend could be reversed if “governments put a price

on carbon, modernize regulation, update innovation policies, enable take up of clean technology in infra-structure and facilitate fi nancing for scale-up of the innovations they have encouraged.”

Declared Ms. Bak: “Canada should help clean technology advance to market scale. The absence of a positive business environment domestically will leave the industry vulnerable.”

Meanwhile, Analytica Advisors’ report shows the global market for clean technology has doubled from $500-billion to $1.1-trillion over the same time period. The report also shows that Canada is the world’s sec-ond largest “loser” of market share in the clean technol-ogy sector since 2005. Only Japan fares worse.

The new federal Liberal government has allocated $2-billion for a low-carbon economy fund to help pro-vincial and territorial governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It has also set aside $50-million over two years to invest in technology to reduce emissions and $62.5-million to invest in electric vehicles and other alternative fuels. But it has to do more and quickly.

Ms. Bak is right. Governments should be putting a price on carbon. The federal government, now led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, should modernize regu-lation. It should update innovation policies. It should enable the take up of clean technology in infrastruc-ture. And it should facilitate fi nancing for the innova-tions they have encouraged. The federal government needs to walk the walk.

It’s time for action on climate change, now


COPPS’ CORNER SEXISM IN CANADA

OTTAWA—Conservative Mem-ber of Parliament Michelle

Rempel’s op-ed piece last week garnered plenty of attention.

And that is a good thing.Any light shone in the dirty

dark corners of sexism and ha-rassment encourages change.

But there is a conundrum in the assumption that all sexism is individual.

Sexism thrives in an atmo-sphere of gender inequality. There is a reason baudy, sexist jokes usually erupt at men-only events.

That is where individuals who harbour sexist views feel most comfortable in expressing them.

But individuals don’t stomp out sexism. Societies do. That happens when laws on equality are strong enough to change the locker room mentality that some will never shake off.

While Rempel’s articulate piece on Parliament was getting lots of ink, another, more damag-ing report speaks to the depth of sexism outside the Hill.

According to a boardroom diversity study by Price, Water-house, Cooper published in The Globe and Mail, women account-ed for less than three per cent of incoming chief executive offi cers globally last year. In Canada and the United States, only one woman CEO was hired, even though the job turnover rate was the highest it had been since 2000.

In addition, PwC’s ’|The female millennial: A new era of talent” study where nearly 10,000 female millennial across all industries were surveyed, 43 per cent indicated an ongoing employer bias favouring men when it comes to promotions and 30 per cent identifi ed a bias favouring men around career devel-opment. The majority (71 per cent) also agreed that while organizations talk about diversity, they do not feel opportunities are equal for all.

According to PwC, the situ-ation has deteriorated since the last major survey fi ve years ago.

This empirical evidence of sexism in the workplace will only change with action. Government policies can mitigate or exacer-bate the problem.

In the case of boardroom sex-ism, something can be done. Sen-ator Céline Hervieux-Payette has introduced a private member’s bill to tackle the lack of diversity in corporate Canada. Her Boards of Directors Modernization Act would require the proportion of board members of either sex to be at least 40 per cent.

Without legislative changes, she predicts it will take 151 years to reach parity at the current rate.

Governments can play a posi-tive or negative role in society’s evolution.

Rempel was a vociferous sup-porter of the policies of former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Two of his fi rst acts in Parlia-ment actually contributed to the culture that promotes sexism.

First, he eliminated the gender lens from government analysis of public policy.

Second, he imposed a ban on a woman’s right to control her reproductive system by prohibit-ing international aid to projects that involved such choice.

One cannot visit the sins of Stephen Harper on another parliamentarian. His departure opens a vacuum that Rempel is interested in fi lling, and she will no doubt depart from the party line in multiple areas.

We have already seen the Con-servative Party, in the few shorts month in opposition; abandon a number of ill-conceived dictums of their previous leader. That is as it should be.

But the challenge with Rempel’s analysis is that sexism is not just an individualized problem. It is a collec-tive, societal, and global problem.

It is part of a culture that says, it is okay to bully women. It is

okay to infantilize them. It is okay to fondle them and make inappro-priate comments and rude jokes at their expense.

Sexism is not always overt. It can express itself in subtle ways. And that is why the decision to view public policy through a gender lens is crucial. Those who are seriously interested in stamping out sexism need to legislate a healthy public and private workplace for women and men. Solutions are not just individu-al. They are societal.

Collective Canadian solutions may be quite different from those in other parts of the world.

Four years ago, a Saudi Ara-bian business woman sought and received government approval to launch a 5,000-strong women-only business environment in the city of Hofuf.

The project was lauded as a solution to integrate women into

the workplace. In Canada, such a segregated work environment would be against the law.

So laws matter. They also refl ect society’s interpretation of what constitutes a bias-free workplace.

When Harper watered down government policies on gender, the country took a step back-wards.

His Conservative Party was the only one to refuse a challenge to set targets for the nomination of women election candidates.

Hopefully, in her potential leadership run, Rempel will be crafting ways for her party to join the conversation.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era Cabinet minister and a former deputy prime min-ister. She is a registered lobbyist today.

The Hill Times

OAKVILLE, ONT.—Global warming is doing more than

just eroding Arctic icecaps; it’s also apparently melting support for conservative political parties.

Or at least, this seems to be an emerging theory.

The argument goes something like this: conservative politicians seem reluctant to seriously fi ght global warming and hence are perceived as being anti-green and anti-green politicians will have a hard time getting elected in this increasingly eco-conscious world.

The trend, after all, is for people to drive eco-friendly cars, to live in eco-friendly homes and, one assumes, to vote for eco-friendly politicians.

It’s all about saving the planet, right?

This is certainly a theme former Reform Party leader and prominent conservative, Preston Manning, has been driving home as of late.

Manning has argued that if conservative parties want to suc-ceed electorally in the future they must adopt tough pro-environ-ment policies.

And yes, he says that must in-clude embracing a policy conserva-tives instinctively hate: a carbon tax.

The way Manning sees it, green activism is actually in keep-ing with conservative ideals.

As he once told a media interviewer, “‘Conservation’ and ‘conservative’ come from the same root. You can’t demand more out of natural systems than you are prepared to put into sustaining them. And so I argue with conservatives, let’s extend the concept of living within our means fi nancially to living within our means ecologically.”

And Manning has won some converts.

Ontario Progressive Conserva-tive Party leader, Patrick Brown, for instance, recently committed his party to implementing a tax on carbon.

Sounding an awful lot like Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, Brown declared, “climate change is a fact. It is a threat. It is man-made. We have to do some-thing about it, and that some-thing includes putting a price on carbon.”

The problem with Brown turn-ing green, of course, is that many people in his own party would probably see his carbon tax idea as tantamount to ideological treason.

My point is, by championing a policy a lot of conservatives actively detest Brown could alienate his own supporters and it’s hard to win an election when your base isn’t happy.

Just ask (interim) NDP leader Thomas Mulcair.

Nor will Brown’s sudden embrace of greenness satisfy his opponents on the left.

In fact, shortly after Brown an-nounced his carbon tax idea, On-tario’s Liberal Environment and Climate Change Minister, Glenn Murray, took to Twitter to snarkily proclaim, “Climate change denier Patrick Brown discovers climate change.”

In other words, Brown’s sup-port of a carbon tax will gener-ate resentment on the right and mockery on the left.

This is clearly a political di-lemma which neither Brown nor Manning fully appreciates.

Luckily for them, I’m here to explain the proper way for con-servative politicians to go green.

First off, it should be under-stood from the get go that con-servatives can never “out-green” left-wing politicians.

It’s a losing battle.That’s not to say conserva-

tives should ignore environmental concerns, but they should avoid taking specifi c and controversial positions, such a carbon tax.

Instead, when it comes to proving their love of nature, conservative politicians should opt for feel-good vagueness over detailed substance.

For instance Patrick Brown should tape a TV ad that shows him standing in a pristine forest saying something like, “I love Ontario’s natural beauty and as Premier I will do everything in my power to keep it beautiful.”

And that’s it. That should be his environmental policy.

Sure that kind of ad won’t win over David Suzuki, but it’s prob-ably enough of a green-oriented message to soothe the concerns of your average voter.

And when it comes to the envi-ronment, that’s the best conserva-tive politicians can hope for.

Gerry Nicholls is a communi-cations consultant.

www.gerrynicholls.comThe Hill Times

Rempel shines light in dirty, dark corners of sexism

It’s not easy being a green Conservative

But there is a conundrum in the assumption that all sexism is individual. Sexism thrives in an atmosphere of gender inequality. There is a reason baudy, sexist jokes usually erupt at men-only events.

It’s a losing battle. That’s not to say conservatives should ignore environmental concerns, but they should avoid taking specifi c and controversial positions, such a carbon tax.

POST-PARTISAN PUNDIT ENVIRONMENT

GERRY NICHOLLS

SHEILA COPPS

The challenge with Conservative MP Michelle Rempel’s analysis is that sexism is not just an individualized problem.t is a collective, societal, and global problem, writes Sheila Copps. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201610THE WAR ROOM MEDIA & POLITICS

TORONTO—The media adviso-ry slipped silently into email

inboxes on Wednesday afternoon.Prime Minister Justin

Trudeau would be in New York from Wednesday to Friday to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change. While there, he would be speaking to some NYU students, and answering their questions.

Oh, and this: “The Prime Min-ister will train at Gleason’s Gym.”

“Media should arrive no later than 1 p.m. for accreditation,” it said. “Photo opportunity only.”

Gleason’s Gym is located in the lower Bronx, and it’s been around for nearly 80 years. Jake (The Bronx Bull) LaMotta, Mike Belloise, Phil Terranova and Jimmy Carter trained there. So did Carlos Ortiz, Roberto Duran, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, and a guy named Cassius Clay, who would become Muhammad Ali, readying himself to take on Sonny Liston. Movie stars go there, too, getting in shape to play boxers in the movies: Robert DeNiro, Wesley Snipes, Hilary Swank. It’s a famous place, and big names train there.

Justin Trudeau now, too. They’ll put his framed picture up on the walls along with the other notables after he heads back home, no doubt.

If you’re a boxer, and if you’re in New York, you’d want to train at Gleason’s Gym. It’s the St. Pe-ter’s Basilca of the fi ghter’s game, pretty much. Hopes and dreams and fears, played out on 20 square feet of canvas. It’s a chess game, using fi sts.

Anyway. Apologies. Writers get carried away with boxing, yes, because it’s such a perfect meta-phor for everything else, especially politics.

Justin Trudeau is keenly aware of that, of course. That’s why he called around for days, casting about for someone to fi ght with him back in March 2012. The match was supposed to be a fundraiser for a cause that—I wager—very few folks can remember. But, Holy God, they remember that fi ght.

That fi ght is what transformed Justin Trudeau. It transformed him from a relatively inoffensive

backbencher, representing the third party in a remote perch in the House of Commons—and it made him into a prime minister. The 2015 general election was a mere formality, after that.

The night of the fi ght, I was at the now-departed Sun News. I couldn’t watch it, because Trudeau was still a friend, then, and I was scared shitless he was going to get beaten up, and his political career would be over. I could see it on the faces of the Sun News stars like Ezra Levant, who were on hand to broadcast every minute of that fi ght. They wanted to see Trudeau, who they hated, humiliated. They wanted to see him ground into the canvas, a smear of blood and sweat.

But he won. He won. And, for the fi rst time, I saw alarm—and something approaching fear—on the faces of the Sun News folks. They knew the Canadian politics changed, that night, and not in a way that favoured their side of the debate.

So, yes. Boxing helped Justin Trudeau win. And Gleason’s Gym is where winners go to box. Got it.

But here was the highest offi ce in the land, issuing an offi cial-looking media statement beneath the Great Seal of Canada, no less, that “The prime minister will train at Gleason’s Gym.” No questions, just be there to take his picture. Don’t be late.

Some of us, sitting in the cheap seats outside the ring, have written about Justin Trudeau’s sheer mas-tery of image. In my view, there is no politician alive who is as adept

at visuals. Words equal informa-tion, but pictures equal power, and Justin Trudeau—grinning out at us on the cover of GQ, this week —knows that better than anyone.

But.But are you starting to feel,

like me, that this stuff is getting pushed a bit too far? That there is a danger, here, that he is dancing too close to the klieg lights, and is about to fall into the orchestra pit?

I was unsure, so I asked my bar-ber, Bruno. I haven’t seen him for a while, because he’s been in Italy.

Bruno has been cutting hair in and around Union Station for a half-century or so, you see. He’s as Liberal as it gets. He bleeds Liber-al red. And there he was, trimming away, his brow furrowed. “So, your friend,” he said, but I didn’t correct him. “Your friend did well in the election.”

“Yes, he did,” I said.“But the pictures, the…what do

you call them?”“The selfi es?”“Yes, the selfi es,” he said. “They

make him look too young. Not serious.”

Not serious.The Gleason’s Gym press

release hadn’t gone out, yet. But if it had, I might have quoted to Bruno—who has barbered the heads of many a hockey and basketball player, and not a few boxers, too—the following, from the Italian-American writer, Brian D’Amrosio. Here’s what D’Ambrosio said: “Boxing begins in illusion and ends in real blood and tears. That’s what makes it so beautiful.”

Justin Trudeau, Master of Illu-sion, take note.

The Hill Times

Trudeau shouldn’t fl y too close to the camera lights In my view, there is no politician alive who is as adept at visuals. Words equal information, but pictures equal power, and Justin Trudeau, grinning out at us on the cover of GQ, knows that better than anyone. But.

TORONTO—A few years ago when I was in Iqaluit, Nunavut,

I was looking at a map of the area when I noticed a strange street name: Road to Nowhere. I thought it was a joke but a resident ex-plained to me that the name meant exactly that, road to nowhere. She said the closest town with a few hundred people was hundreds of ki-

lometres away and it was not worth it to build a road to connect the two centres, so the road just stopped in the middle of nowhere.

I asked if the people living in the outer communities were receiv-ing assistance and if they had hos-pitals or other support services. I was told they had the daily necessi-ties and if there was an emergency, they’re airlifted to Iqaluit.

But on that day, I also under-stood the dramatic problems of our indigenous peoples would never be solved because the ap-proach of our politicians would lead to a “Road to Nowhere.”

I thought so until last week, when I read a statement from for-mer prime minister Jean Chrétien referring to the dramatic situation in the Attawapiskat reserve in northern Ontario: “There is no eco-nomic base there for having jobs and so on,” Chrétien told report-ers, stating that, “sometimes they have to move, like anybody else.”

“Relocation” is considered blasphemous when talking about our indigenous peoples because it stokes the tragic memories of the ill-conceived residential schools of the past. But Chrétien was not talking about forced relocation, he was talking about the need

to maybe consider moving “like anybody else,” voluntarily, and in order to solve a problem other-wise not solvable.

We have to be mindful of the mistakes of the past by trying not to make them again and, at the same time, we can’t be prisoners of the mistakes of the past by ignor-ing the problems of the present.

The problems with some of our indigenous communities are real and dramatic, but if we want to solve them, we need the courage to put all the facts on the table fi rst, and be ready to accept whatever the outcome is going to be. We need politicians, possibly not only former politicians, who stop listing the prob-lems and who are willing to fi nd the root causes to fi nd solutions.

We all know the problems. There are high suicide rates, high unemployment, poor infrastruc-ture, contaminated drinking water, and more.

But we don’t have all the infor-mation.

For example, do we know how many people we’re talking about? It looks like that there are 1.4 mil-lion aboriginal peoples in Canada. However, less than 700,000 live on reserves in dramatic condi-tions. They are scattered over an

immense territory, each with their own mostly independent organi-zation, but most of them living in worse than Third World conditions.

What have the governments done to solve the problem? A question impossible to an-swer. Can we do better? Of course we can. To start, we need a settle-ment to replace the pre-Confed-eration treaties signed but never respected, and a better account-ability system.

The question is, is there anybody among our leaders who understands what’s going on? They promote understanding, and I believe that Canadians are very good, tolerant, and fair people, who are ready to accept any proposal capable to solve the problem.

The question is whether there is anybody who has the power and the infl uence and who has a valid proposal other than rhetoric and demagogy. For example, to those asking for more money, can they tell us how much money we are already spending for indig-enous peoples in the reserves? Do we know if all the money is re-ally spent for the natives or does it take a “Road to Nowhere?” Can we stop asking for another inqui-ry to fi nd the problem knowing

that any inquiry will inevitably fi nish with another recommenda-tion for more money?

If, after centuries, thousands of speeches, inquiries, billions spent, and agreements signed but not respected, women still suffer, and young people still kill themselves, isn’t it time to think about sustain-able and implementable proposals to put an end to this tragedy?

After so many years, the fi rst time I’ve heard something coura-geous and intelligent was when Chrétien, very delicately, sug-gested that moving was one of the possible solutions. In the new era of globalization, demographic os-mosis and technological revolution, moving from one place to another to improve quality of life is not a sin. In fact, it is a good alternative to a “Road to Nowhere.”

Angelo Persichilli is free-lance journalist and a former citizenship judge for the Greater Toronto Area. He was also a director of communications to prime minister Stephen Harper and is the former political editor of Canadese, Canada’s Italian-language newspaper in Toronto.


Chrétien’s right, sometimes you have to move ‘Relocation’ is considered blasphemous when talking about our indigenous peoples because it stokes the tragic memories of the ill-conceived residential schools of the past.

OPINION INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

WARREN KINSELLA

Warren Kinsella says Justin Trudeau’s 2012 winning fundraiser boxing match against Sen. Patrick Brazeau, left, transformed him from a relatively inoffensive backbencher, representing the third party in a remote perch in the House of Commons—and it made him into a prime minister. The 2015 general election was a mere formality, after that. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

ANGELO PERSICHILLI


CANADA & THE 21ST CENTURY FINANCE MINISTER

OTTAWA—When it comes to physician-assisted dying,

should the beliefs of a health-care institution trump a Charter right of a suffering patient?

It shouldn’t, but we may ulti-mately get to that point.

That is only one result of the curiously timid legislation on as-sisted dying introduced last week by the Liberals.

It may forever be a mystery why a government that so loudly trumpeted respect for the charter

of rights, a government very early in a muscular majority mandate with political capital bulging from their pockets moved so tentatively on assisted dying.

A government that went big on refugees, purports to go big on climate change with a prime minister given to big, sweeping pronouncements instead went small in physician-assisted dying.

It created a void that is rapidly being fi lled by progressives who are understandably upset that the rights of those suffering griev-ously from mental illness, mature minors, or those who wish to pro-vide advance directives have not been respected in this legislation, providing two tiers of those who are eligible to die with dignity.

It also left enough holes in the legislation for conservative opponents, in this case, many of Canada’s churches, to exploit concerns from their perspective.

They arrived on Parliament Hill on the eve of debate on Bill C-14, intent on exploiting a weak-ness in the legislation that gives them much room to manoeuvre on their fl ank.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Catholic archbishop of Toronto, ar-gues that taxpayer-funded Catholic health institutions should maintain that public funding while refusing to follow the law of the land—as-sisting those who fi t the restrictive criteria for such death.

In Collins’s view, it would appear that the religious beliefs of the institution should trump the charter rights of patients suffering intolerably with death “reasonably foreseen.”

Collins sees no confl ict.No hospital, chronic-care

facility or hospice in this country is compelled to provide every medical procedure and service available in this country, he says.

He also rejects the notion that assisted dying now becomes a charter right. It is a legal right, Collins told me, but the “charter right” argument is a construct not supported by evidence, a notion put forward by a Commons-Sen-ate committee that veered “wildly” in directions unpalatable to Cana-dians, at least in Collins’s view.

There could have been no assisted-dying legislation intro-duced by any government of any political stripe that would have been backed by the Catholic Church in this country.

That parliamentary committee that so alarmed the Catholic Church provided a bold, progressive view of what could have been in this legisla-tion—which likely guaranteed much of it would be ignored, replaced by that most milquetoast of pledges to deliver a law that provides “balance” between competing views.

One should cringe when they hear about a law that claims to “balance” concerns on both sides.

More often than not, it merely infl ames both sides of the debate and satisfi es no one.

That committee recommended that health-care practitioners’ “freedom of conscience” should be respected, but it would have com-pelled an objecting practitioner “at a minimum” to provide an effective referral for a patient. It also recom-mended that Ottawa work with the provinces and territories to ensure all publicly funded health-care institutions provide medial assis-tance in dying.

Physicians in faith-based care institutions maintain their Charter Rights would be violated if they were forced to even refer a patient to a consenting physician.

They put forward a proposal in which an independent assessment team would deal with a patient who may be choosing assisted death. If the patient wished to go that route, the faith-based doctor would pass over all fi les but make no referral themselves.

It may satisfy health-care practitioners but needlessly heaps more hurdles in front of those who are dying and wish to have their pain alleviated.Collins said faith-based institu-tions receive public funding be-cause they provide much-needed services, but such nursing homes, hospitals, hospices or other fa-cilities should never be forced by government to provide services

that are contrary to their roles as “havens of hope” in this country.

Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka of Ot-tawa went further, when he sug-gested that demanding doctors terminate life or be complicit in that act would make the physi-cian “complicit in murder.’’

The legislation, of course, clearly spells out the opposite.

The church and its health-care providers may see a way out. But it puts institutions ahead of the rights of dying patients.

The blame for that rests with a government that gives the church the room to take that road.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer for The Toronto Star. This column was released on April 20.


Assisted-dying bill exploited by all sidesThe church and its health-care providers may see a way out. But it puts institutions ahead of the rights of dying patients. The blame for that rests with a government that gives the church the room to take that road.

INSIDE POLITICS BILL C-14

TIM HARPER

Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka of Ottawa went further, when he suggested that demanding doctors terminate life or be complicit in that act would make the physician ‘complicit in murder.’ The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

TORONTO—Nothing matters more to a fi nance minister

than his or her credibility. The public must have confi dence that the fi nance minister is delivering reliable and trustworthy pro-nouncements on the economy and the state of the public fi nances in budgets and other public state-ments. Once credibility is lost, it is diffi cult to win back.

This is why it is so hard to understand why Finance Minister Bill Morneau, in his fi rst budget, got off on the wrong foot. He withheld important fi scal infor-mation that was a normal part of past federal budgets and played a bit fast and loose with economic forecasts. It took the Parliamen-tary Budget Offi cer’s interven-tion to force Finance to produce missing data, and more pressure to force Finance to withdraw its bizarre requirement that the missing data be kept confi dential.

But the bigger concern is the impression left that the budget’s forecasted defi cits are deliber-ately exaggerated so that by the time of the next election, the Trudeau government can claim that its policies worked so well that the actual defi cits are much lower than it originally forecast. Fortunately, it is getting harder for governments to get away with this kind of thing, and one reason is the establishment of the Parliamentary Budget Offi ce. This doesn’t mean that the PBO’s fore-casts are always right and that Finance is always wrong. But it does mean that a second opinion is available.

In the last election campaign, the Liberals in their platform promised to strengthen the inde-pendence of the PBO. While the

Harper government had estab-lished the offi ce, it soon turned on its creation when the PBO started to do its job. It refused to supply information requested by the PBO, even forcing the PBO to go to court to obtain information, and accused the PBO of engaging in “partisan” activities because it cast doubt on federal initiatives. Now we need assurances that the Liberals will proceed with their promise to give more indepen-dence to the PBO.

When Paul Martin became fi -nance minister, to give more cred-ibility to his budgets, he based his fi scal projections not on Finance Canada’s economic forecasts which could be politically ma-nipulated to make a government’s fi scal numbers work, but on the consensus economic forecast of private sector economists where the government couldn’t easily play with the numbers. As the PBO pointed out, this introduced an element of independence—or credibility—in a government’s fi scal forecasts.

What Morneau did was to tamper with this process, playing politics with the private sector forecast. He reduced the private sector forecast of nominal GDP by $40-billion a year from 2016 to 2020. The effect was to artifi -cially raise the size of the defi cit by

$6-billion annually from 2016-17 to 2020-21. In other words, Morneau appeared to be building an artifi -cial cushion so that later he could claim that his government’s stellar performance in economic manage-ment had delivered smaller defi cits. Alternatively, the government could increase spending without adding to the defi cit, again because the cushion was there.

The PBO charged that Mor-neau’s adjustment to the private sector consensus forecast was “ex-cessive.” The difference is that the budget defi cit this year would be $29.4-billion this year, in Morneau’s budget forecast, but $20.5-billion in the PBO forecast. And next year PBO forecasts a defi cit of $24.2-bil-lion compared to $29.0-billion in Morneau’s budget.

The PBO and Finance also disagree on the growth; prospects for the economy and the contri-butions to economic growth and job creation resulting from the government’s fi scal stimulus—tax cuts, increased child benefi ts and infrastructure spending. Finance estimates that the stimulus will increase GDP growth by 0.5 per cent in 2016-17 and 1.0 per cent in 2017-18, and that the impact will translate into 100,000 jobs created or maintained by 2017-18. For its part, the PBO estimates the stimulus will raise GDP by 0.5 per

cent in 2017-18 and 0.8 per cent in 2017-18, with just an additional 60,000 jobs by 2017-18.

The economy will likely be a major issue in the next federal election, and there are signifi cant risks. World trade could be fl at so that Canada will get only mod-est lift from exports. Oil prices could show little upside. While Morneau’s budget assumes oil prices will rise from $40 this year to $63 in 2020, the PBO assumes they will rise from $39 to just $49. The PBO assumes the dollar will rise from 75.3 U.S. cents this year to 76 U.S. cents by 2020 while Morneau is assuming the dollar will go from 72.1 U.S. cents this year to 83.1 U.S. cents.

We don’t know if either will be right. Given the volatility of the global economy, and uncertainty of political changes in the U.K. Brexit referendum, the U.S. presi-dential and congressional races, ongoing unrest in the Middle East, the outlook for China’s economy and North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship, anything could happen.

This why Morneau’s public credibility is so important. Con-fi dence is an important factor in the state of the economy. Canadi-ans need a fi nance minister who they can trust to be above politics on the big questions. Morneau has got off to a poorer start than need be, whether because of his own misjudgment or the poor advice of others. The good news for him is that it’s not too late to establish credibility. The question is, will he?

David Crane can be reached at [email protected].

The Hill Times

Nothing matters more to a fi nance minister than credibility Bill Morneau has got off to a poorer start than need be, whether because of his own misjudgment or the poor advice of others. The good news for him is that it’s not too late to establish credibility. The question is, will he?

DAVID CRANE


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“While this is a profoundly sensitive issue, with deeply held personal beliefs on both sides of the argument, I can say I’m proud that our Conservative Members of Parlia-ment will be free to vote their conscience on this issue. Primary amongst the concerns Conservatives have with assisted suicide is

ensuring there are protections in place for those that need it most. It was our caucus that led the charge to ensure any legislation on this includes safeguards to protect the most vulnerable people in our society, and protect the conscience rights of physicians.

“We made recommendations that in-cluded stringent safeguards to protect those with mental health challenges, and made it clear that excluding minors from the bill was a must. Through this dissenting com-mittee report, we were successful in having these recommendations included in the bill we saw introduced last week. And that’s good news for our most vulnerable.”

“In considering this legislation we have to keep in mind that this bill is in response to a Supreme Court ruling which struck down the ban on assisted dying last year. So the fi rst question is: does this legislation prop-erly address the court’s decision?

“The Liberal’s restrictive approach in draft-ing this legislation has many advocates arguing that the bill falls short of the Carter decision. It’s

clear this might very well be the case. The best way to proceed would be for the Government to refer the legislation back to the Supreme Court in order to determine if it does indeed fall short, and to clarify what changes would be needed.

“As we study the bill moving forward, we will have to determine if the legislation ad-equately protects the vulnerable and addresses key issues that many have raised such as prac-titioners’ objections and advance directives.

“It’s diffi cult to determine how the vote will turn out now that all parties have con-fi rmed they will be proceeding with a free vote (Liberal cabinet aside), but on an issue as complex and deeply felt as this, Parliamentar-ians must work together, beyond partisan-ship, to ensure that this important legislation respects the Supreme Court ruling.”

“We are anxiously awaiting the fed-eral government’s assisted dying bill. Since the Supreme Court forced their hand with the Carter decision, the Harper and Trudeau governments have been dragging their feet and keeping us wait-ing for far too long. Unfortunately, Bill C-14 will not be the end of this story. The Trudeau government seems to want to hide

behind vague legislation that will spark protests and be referred back to the courts.

“The concept of ‘reasonably foreseeable natural death’ proposed in the bill is so vague that even the minister seems to be unclear as to what it means. Introducing such vague con-cepts is a means of ensuring that the matter is referred back to the courts, so that the courts are forced to make a determination after years of argument. The minister seems to lack politi-cal courage in this matter.

“The federal government would do well to follow Quebec’s approach in ad-dressing this matter. Through broad, trans-partisan consultation, and rigorous and courageous legislative work, Quebec was able to adopt clear legislation.”

“To be frank, the doctor-assisted dying legis-lation is a rather tepid response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carter. The Court was clear that Canadians who suffer intolerably from an incurable medical condition have a constitution-al right to a dignifi ed death, yet this bill appears to deny that right to far too many of us. The committee hearings on this bill will be essential

to getting it right, and the Greens are hopeful that the government will accept amendments.

“Several things must change. For starters, patients who request an assisted death when they have the legal capacity to do so must not be required to reconfi rm this request after they lose that capacity. It’s troubling that non-termi-nal medical conditions appear to be excluded from the regime, meaning that patients suffer-ing intolerable yet not fatal pain will be left to languish. It’s also unfair that mature teenagers are excluded from protections.

“Governments must be wary of trying to please interest groups and ‘strike a bal-ance’ when the result is infringing peoples’ Charter rights.”

“We recognize that, for all Canadians, medical assistance in dying is a diffi cult and deeply personal issue.

“Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously decided that Canadians who suffer intolerably have the right to request assistance to end their suffering. The Govern-ment of Canada respects that decision.

“After extensive consultations, the minister of health and the minister of justice worked to take an approach that would defend people’s

choices and freedoms in a way that would protect the most vulnerable, and support the personal convictions of health care providers.

“From this, our government proposed the legislation that would give dying Canadians—who are suffering intolerably from a serious medical condition—the choice of a medically assisted death. Access would only be available to those who are mentally competent adults, have a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability, and whose natural deaths have become reasonably foreseeable.

“For some, medical-assistance in dying will be troubling. For others, this legislation will not go far enough. We will continue to study the most controversial proposals, and look forward to engaging all Parliamentarians, as we develop a compassionate response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

“The Liberal government has tabled Bill C-14 on doctor-assisted dying. What do you think of this legislation? Will it pass?”

THE SPIN DOCTORS By Laura Ryckewaert

CORY HANN

Conservative strategist

RICCARDOFILIPPONE

NDP strategist

MATHIEU R. ST-AMAND

Bloc Québécois strategist

CAMILLELABCHUKGreen strategist

KATE PURCHASELiberal strategist


OPINION SENATE REFORM

OTTAWA—The subject of Senate reform has been with us since shortly after

Confederation with the main focus being the method of selection of Senators and, in recent years, the focus has been on the length of terms. In all this time, the only constitutional changes brought to the Senate have been ones that increased the number of Senators as Canada expanded. In 1965, by virtue of the Constitution Act, the retirement age became 75 years and the Constitution Act in 1982 provided a suspensive veto for the Senate over con-stitutional changes. Informal changes to the method of selection have been most successful in Alberta as Albertans elect Senators to a roster from which the prime minister may select a Senator-in-waiting and appoint her or him to the Senate. Pres-ently, Alberta elected Senator Doug Black who occupies an Alberta Senate seat.

During the time of the Harper govern-ment, nine separate pieces of legislation were advanced dealing with Senate reform with no success. These changes were aimed at limiting the length of tenure and changing the method of selection through election. The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Senate reference case ren-dered in April 2014 effectively ended all at-tempts by the Harper government to change the Senate by means of federal legislation. The court held that Ottawa cannot act alone to set term limits or change the method of appointment as such changes would require at least seven provinces, representing at least 50 per cent of the population section of the constitutional amending formula. Aboli-tion would require unanimity.

This led to three different approaches to the Senate being put before voters in the 2015 federal election. Prime minister Ste-phen Harper’s view was that he would not appoint any more Senators until the provinc-es came to their senses in support of Senate reform. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair used the impasse over reform and the Supreme Court decision to anchor the traditional NDP view of abolition. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, having expelled Liberal Senators from national caucus, came up with the proposal that potential Senate appointees would be nominated by an independent body which would be established by his government after the election. With the Trudeau victory in October we are now seeing the Trudeau proposal in action.

The criteria for the appointments were set out by the Minister of Democratic Insti-

tutions Maryam Monsef in early December of last year. Appointees are to have a re-cord of achievement, integrity, and under-stand the role of the Senate. The fourth one is that they be non-partisan and I suppose that is to help with being independent as Trudeau appointees are to be independent of political party affi liation. However, as former Senator and government leader in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton pointed out in a Hill Times article dated April 11, “any-one who has lived has partisan views, even if they are not active political partisans.”

Senator Irving Gerstei,n in his retire-ment speech in the Senate, also took issue with this criterion and advanced the proposition that the advisory panel “be free to recommend qualifi ed candidates regard-less of their party ties.” Both Gerstein and LeBreton argue that partisanship in the Senate has not been its major problem. However, as time goes on we will see how closely the lack of partisanship is followed as a base for appointment. Perhaps one can be an “independent partisan.”

We are now in a situation where the Trudeau theory of Senate reform has been put into practice with the appointment of seven Senators who sit as Indepen-dents and Senator Peter Harder as the government representative in the Senate. Throughout this mandate there will be more appointments and presumably more independent Senators. By the end of next year, the independents will outnumber the Liberals and by the end of 2017 there will be more independents than there are Conservative Senators. There is a certain inevitability to the march of the indepen-dents as during this parliament there will be at least 41 appointments made.

To date, whether one likes the process or not, those who regularly complain about the quality of Senate appointments have been silenced. It remains to be seen how the next 41 are to be judged, but this is a work in progress. Certainly the seven appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fi t in well with what could be considered to be the best appointments of the last 30 or so years.

The new Senators and those who follow during Trudeau’s mandate enter a Senate where change is underway. This past sum-mer, Senators Stephen Greene and Paul Massicotte put together a questionnaire sent to all Senators seeking ideas regard-ing reform which would provide Senators with more input into the functioning of the Senate. As a result of this initiative, a group of approximately 40 Senators met together over three days in October to exchange views regarding improvements that could be brought to the Senate. There is also a special committee of the Senate dealing with modernization whose work

should address the role of the Senate and how that role and the administration of the Senate can be improved.

With the move towards modernization and the appointment of Senators who do not identify with a political party, it is to be hoped that the important role the Senate has played in the study by committees of public policy issues and the improvement of legislation; sober second thought, will continue. At the time of Confederation, the Senate was to provide representation of the provinces or regions of Canada in the cen-tral Parliament. That role has been largely

supplanted by First Ministers Meetings and the strength of leadership in the provinces and territories. However the vitally impor-tant role the Senate plays in relation to the review and improvement of legislation and in committee by the study of policy issues cannot and should not be diminished.

In his fi rst speech in the Senate, Sena-tor Harder, as government representative posed the following question; “How can we modernize, adapt and strengthen the role of the Senate to meet the expecta-tions of Canadians in the 21st century?” A good part of the answer to that question will come from continuing and enhancing the legislative and public policy role of the Senate. In doing this, Harder believes that the Senate should not compete with the House of Commons but complement it.

In recent days two spaces on each Senate standing committee have now been designated for Senators who identify themselves as Independents. Sen. Harder’s request to the Senate Internal Economy Committee for additional funds to carry out his new role is still outstanding. How-ever, as was pointed out in an April 18 Hill Times editorial, it is incumbent on him to explain why the funds are needed and what they will be used for.

Leaving that issue aside, and while it is early days for this version of Senate reform, one may conclude that the reforms coming from the Greene-Massicotte meeting and those from the Senate Modernization Com-mittee as well as the Trudeau reforms should be given a chance to be considered, imple-mented, and evolve. The success of Senate reform is squarely in the hands of Senators.

Bruce Carson was senior advisor from 1995-2002 to the late Senator John Lynch-Staunton, opposition leader in the Sen-ate and senior adviser to prime minister Stephen Harper from 2006-09. He publishes a daily commentary on political issues: The Morning Brief. [email protected]

The Hill Times

Does the Trudeau version of Senate reform deserve support? One may conclude that the reforms coming from the Greene-Massicotte meeting and those from the Senate Modernization Committee as well as the Trudeau reforms should be given a chance to be considered, implemented and evolve. The success of Senate reform is squarely in the hands of Senators.

Register at mitacs.ca/en/events

Tuesday, May 11, 2016National Arts Centre, Ottawa

Join Mitacs and leaders from business, government, and academia as we examine strategies to effectively engage and employ our research innovators.

Forum: 1–4:30p.m. Reception: 4:30–6 p.m.

www.mitacs.ca

Harnessing Canada’s research advantage

TALENT FOR INNOVATION

BRUCE CARSON

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pictured in this fi le photo at a caucus meeting with his MPs. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201614ACCOUNTABILITY WHISTLEBLOWERS

OTTAWA—We are now about six months into the new Liberal government man-

date. It’s a good time to stop and take stock. From a whistleblowing viewpoint, has any-thing changed under the new regime?

There are some indicators of a positive change. In November 2015, scientists were reported to have been “unmuzzled.” We’ve also heard from public servants speaking off the record about a positive change in culture inside government; impartial ad-vice is again valued. The new government has also dropped several legal cases—for example, one in which the previous gov-ernment tried to silence Cindy Blackstock and her efforts to get fair funding for aboriginal education.

On the other hand, there are also negative indicators. While the Liberals promised to be open by default with information—and continue to reinforce this message—they have recently announced that reforms to the Access to Information Act will have to wait until 2018. This is a major disappointment for advocates. They believe that good recom-mendations for change already exist and simply have to be enacted. So why the wait? After 10 years of Conservative government, none of the skeletons in the closet will be-long to the Liberals. There are still signifi cant delays in obtaining information from depart-ments under the ATI. Some departments, such as Public Services and Procurement, have actually regressed since the change in government.

With respect to whistleblowers, the pic-ture looks as bleak as ever. Several remain locked in battle with the government, des-perately trying to get their jobs back. One is Sylvie Therrien, who blew the whistle on a system of quotas for employment insur-ance investigators. These quotas meant that investigators were being encouraged to reject EI claimants for the fl imsiest of rea-sons. Rejected claimants would then have to navigate a long and complicated system of appeals, a process that could take years. Therrien leaked information about the pol-icy to the press, and was publicly called a liar. When evidence emerged that she was telling the truth, ministers claimed they were merely “targets.” Therrien was fi red, and, of course, her claims for EI rejected.

While the public and opposition parties weren’t fooled, the Conservatives were suc-cessful in at least one respect: in her fi ght to get her job back, they have reframed the issue around her conduct, and not the fact that she was essentially ordered to reject claimants who should have been accepted. Her case is in front of the Public Service Labour Relations Board, but she faces an uphill battle.

With the change of government, Therrien hoped for relief. Promises were made before the election, after all. She had been called a hero by the Liberals. In January, however, she learned that this was not to be.

It is diffi cult to reconcile the positive tone of this still-young government with breaking its word with the reversal of its commitment and refusal to settle the mat-ter. Possibly an answer lies in taking into account the bureaucratic culture against which Therrien had to speak and the fact that the public servants advising the new government on the fi le probably had a direct hand in both the policy she objected to and the reprisals against her. Is the deci-sion based on advice from this quarter?

And perhaps this is the nub of the matter: how can any government change the prevailing culture and practices of an entrenched bureaucracy, particularly when members are implicated in question-able practices? We can easily imagine a scenario in which a senior executive tells the new minister, who knows no better, that Therrien was a rogue employee who had it completely wrong, that reinstating her or settling the case would set a bad precedent—and perhaps encourage others to copy her. There were, after all, alterna-tive avenues for Therrien to follow in the case of real wrongdoing, and if she was disagreeing with a policy, well, it isn’t her role to object.

On the latter point, there is some truth. Public servants should faithfully imple-ment legitimate policy no matter what their ethical stance. An offi cial who is person-ally against same-sex marriage must still

issue a marriage license to such a couple if the law says so. The opposite is also true. It is up to Parliament and the courts to strike down unjust laws and policies. A problem, however, emerges when the policy or practice is secret or causes direct and immediate harm. When there is no way for parliamentarians or the public to know a problem exists there is also no way for them to fi x it. And in her case, Ther-rien did not refuse to reject EI claimants: she refused to reject legitimate claimants and informed the public of a secret, highly unethical policy targeting vulnerable Cana-dians. This, surely, is the kind of thing the new government wants to stop.

The other possible answer, and one we hope is not the truth, is that Liberals have chosen power over honour. Having the power, they can do what they want, not what they promised to do.

As to the other avenues available to Therrien, there were really none. Inter-nal complaints such as this are typically investigated by someone considered safe, with an eye to making the matter go away. This is precisely what appeared to happen in Therrien’s case. As for the Offi ce of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner (OP-SIC), it rejected her complaint on the basis that the law under which it operates bars it from investigating. This excuse has worn thin, and the incredibly low rate of inves-tigations and fi ndings by the offi ce (11 in

10 years) suggest that it is a multi-million-dollar piece of window dressing.

No senior bureaucrats have ever been implicated, even when the circumstances of the wrongdoing cases might reasonably have invited questions about poor oversight or complicity. The scandal that led to the res-ignation of former commissioner Christiane Ouimet also pointed at serious problems in the offi ce which have not been addressed.

Let’s hope the new government and its ministers will take another look at Therrien’s case and treat objections from senior execu-tives with a certain amount of skepticism. Across government, many offi cials who implemented some of the former govern-ment’s less savoury policies remain in place. Sometimes they were so enthusiastic that they became part of the problem, as in the case of the campaign against Cindy Black-stock. Rather than worrying about a fl ood of whistleblowers, it would be more construc-tive to reform OPSIC and its mandate, and other internal reporting mechanisms, so that internal whistleblowing becomes safe and effective (and, perhaps, make external whistleblowing unnecessary). As for ending Therrien’s ordeal, it would simply send a message that things really have changed.

Allan Cutler is past president of Cana-dians for Accountability, a group formed to help whistleblowers, fi ght corruption, and an advocate for truth and transparency.

The Hill Times

Time to turn a new leaf with whistleblowers While the Liberals promised to be open by default with information and continue to reinforce this message they have recently announced that reforms to the Access to Information Act will have to wait until 2018.

ALLAN CUTLER

Allan Cutler says the new government, headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and its ministers should take another look at Sylvie Therrien’s case and treat objections from senior executives with a certain amount of skepticism. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright


OPINION TERRORISM

OTTAWA—Is it time for a blanket condemnation of all

future terrorist acts committed in the name of Islam, occurring anywhere in the world, to be fea-tured on the front page of every Muslim organization’s website? Or perhaps, every Muslim should

permanently pin an expression of horror and an accompanying plea of solidarity on their social media accounts.

Don’t misunderstand: the hor-ror, the pain, the solidarity—all of it is real and authentic.

But so is the frustration at the expectation that when criminals commit despicable acts of terror-ism under the pretext of religion, Muslims everywhere should say something to assure everyone that they don’t support those views.

Muslims worldwide have repeatedly and categorically denounced all violent extrem-ism and, in particular, the terror group Daesh. What’s more, Is-lamic scholars of all stripes have repudiated Daesh’s murderous ideology and have shown how its horrifi c acts have no justifi ca-tion or place in Islam. And many Muslims will continue to do so because if they don’t, some people will inevitably ask, “Why don’t they condemn what’s happening?”

Yet, as prominent American-Arab activist Linda Sarsour has said, to expect Muslims to de-nounce certain acts of terrorism every time they occur is itself big-oted. Caucasian men aren’t called on to answer for what white lone gunmen do in schools and movie theatres, what some Christian priests have done to children, or for what neo-Nazi groups preach.

Furthermore, the condemna-tions against Daesh and its ilk are most often expected follow-ing terrorism infl icted on western

nations. There are no expecta-tions of press releases denounc-ing Daesh attacks in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey or a myriad of other places when the victims are or are perceived to be primarily ‘brown’ or Muslim. And when the targets are brown but not Muslim, the news seems signifi cantly amplifi ed as with the horrifi c Easter Sunday attack in Lahore, Pakistan. We should all hurt when even one human life is stolen, no matter the victim’s identity.

What we seem to miss while seeking to understand these senseless acts of violence commit-ted in the name of any religion, or political ideology, is that this nihilistic hate is often based on supremacist attitudes.

Instead of constant condemna-tions of those who say they are fi ghting and killing in the name of Islam, we must universally con-demn those who paint the world in the false dichotomy of black and white, good and evil, or right and wrong.

Anyone who implicitly or ex-plicitly advocates the supremacy of a particular group over another should think twice about how this dehumanizes fellow human be-ings around the world.

We have to acknowledge that nationalism can also be used to create and bolster a sense of righ-teousness and dominance in the minds of some. That isn’t to say that being proud of one’s country, or fellow citizens, is blameworthy. But we should beware of how

nationalism may disconnect us from others in the world, or even within our own communities, and how it can be manipulated by agenda-driven interests and metastasize into something more sinister as we witnessed in Brus-sels with the unwelcome appear-ance of neo-Nazis at a recent weekend memorial.

Consider what fuels those who support such attitudes, including what fuels them to support the likes of Donald Trump. The head of the U.S.-based National Policy Institute and a white nationalist, Richard Spencer, told VICE News last December that “[Trump’s] basically saying that if you are a nation, then at some point you have to say, ‘There is an ‘Us,’ and there is a ‘Them.’ Who are we? Are we a nation? In that sense, I think it’s really great.”

Supremacist attitudes are dangerous, not least because they also make it harder to engage in meaningful discourse around the drivers of violence. Our best chance of fi ghting extremist ideology is to fi nd our common humanity and not simply rein-force false polarization within our societies. The doubling of hate crimes against Muslims over the past three years here in Canada speaks clearly to this.

Furthermore, law enforcement agencies have identifi ed right-wing extremism as a growing and signifi cant threat to public safety in North America. This means we must work even harder than

ever to challenge any and all supremacist attitudes which could potentially lead to harm. “Hu-manity should be our race. Love should be our religion” is an apt quote in times like these. Maybe that’s what we should be posting to our websites, and pinning to our social media pages.

Amira Elghawaby is the communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).

The Hill Times

OTTAWA—With one week still remaining in the Canadian

Radio-television and Telecommuni-cations Commission hearing focused on the state of internet access in Canada, the process has taken a sur-prising turn that ultimately cries out for leadership from Navdeep Bains, the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development.

CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais opened the hearing two

weeks ago with a warning: even if an ideal speed target could be identifi ed, there was no guaran-tee of regulatory action. Blais urged participants not to confuse “wants” with “needs,” a fram-ing that suggested the goal of the hearing was to identify the bare minimum internet service required by Canadians.

The remarks attracted immedi-ate headlines that the commission would not guarantee basic internet speeds. The CRTC insists that only comments on the public record count, but it is obvious that the commissioners pay close attention to media commentary and social media postings. Within hours of the fi rst media report, Blais jokingly told one communications law pro-fessor that his class might consider analyzing how his remarks were turned into those headlines. In fact, the fi xation with press coverage continued later in the week as Blais referenced “editorialists who never show up at our hearings but appar-ently have very strong views.”

The press and public coverage of the hearing—which unsurpris-ingly focused on the CRTC’s seeming reluctance to adopt am-bitious forward-looking targets for universal internet access—

may have led to an unexpected abrupt shift in tone and policy. Days after the “needs” and “wants” talk, Blais offered a second set of remarks, this time describing the vital importance of internet ac-cess as “self-evident” and charac-terizing the hearing as “a chance to create together a coherent national broadband strategy.”

The decision to change the focus of the hearing more than a year after submissions began may be un-usual, but the CRTC is right. Canada desperately needs a national digital strategy with universal, affordable broadband as its foundation. How-ever, whether the Commission is the right body to lead such a strategy is an entirely different matter.

A strategy focused on univer-sal, affordable access raises two key questions. First, what are the minimum targets for download and upload speeds? Second, who will pay for the creation of universally available networks that guarantee access at whatever target speed?

Some of the major telecom-munications companies have been urging the CRTC to adopt a “5 and 1” approach representing 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. They claim those speeds are suffi cient to allow for the use of many internet

applications including online video and internet telephony (though the ability for multiple people in a single household to use these ser-vices simultaneously is in doubt).

Yet a national broadband strategy must surely go beyond the bare minimum and the ap-plications of today. Multiple users, video-based education programs, tele-health, virtual community meetings, interactive entertain-ment, 3D printing, and numer-ous internet-enabled devices are more than just wants. They are the future of broadband for many Canadians and the reason why a country focused on innovation cannot be content with painfully slow, expensive Internet access.

A realistic target also requires realistic funding. The CRTC has a relatively small pot of money avail-able and it may be limited to shifting dollars from conventional telephone contributions to the internet. That approach is unlikely to yield the necessary investment to create a true 21st century digital infrastructure.

There is a role to play for Cana-da’s telecommunications regulator, but it cannot replace a long-overdue internet infrastructure commitment from the federal government. The Liberal government emphasized

infrastructure investment in its 2016 budget, but allocated relatively little to the digital side of the ledger. If anything is self-evident, it is that federal government leadership on broadband funding and policies that encourage greater competition is a need, not a want.

Michael Geist holds the Cana-da Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can be reached at [email protected] or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

The Hill Times

Supremacist attitudes are a universal enemy

Who should lead Canada’s national broadband strategy?

Law enforcement agencies have identifi ed right-wing extremism as a growing and signifi cant threat to public safety in North America. This means we must work even harder than ever to challenge any and all supremacist attitudes which could potentially lead to harm.

If anything is self-evident, it is that federal government leadership on broadband funding and policies that encourage greater competition is a need, not a want.

MICHAEL GEIST

AMIRA ELGHAWABY

DIGITAL WORLD BROADBAND STRATEGY

With one week still remaining in the Canadian Radio-television and Tele-communications Commission hearing focused on the state of internet access in Canada, the process has taken a surprising turn that ultimately cries out for leadership from Navdeep Bains, the minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development. The Hill Times photograph Jake Wright

Consider what fuels those who support such attitudes, including what fuels them to support the likes of Donald Trump. Photograph courtesy of Michael Vadon

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201616U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Department of State’s

annual human rights report (HRR) offi cially labelled Country Reports on Human Rights Practices is one of the few residues of the Jimmy Carter administration. U.S. Sec-retary of State John Kerry quietly noted its 40th anniversary during release on April 13.

The human rights report was touted as State’s fl agship pub-

lication for decades; however, in many respects, it has been overtaken by events. Continuing catastrophe in Syria/Iraq; North Korean and Iranian nuclear pro-grams; Ukraine; refugee swarms throughout Europe; the “Panama Papers”; and even the reality-show politics of U.S. presidential campaigning dominate the media.

Thus, while the human rights report was ready for its Congres-sionally mandated February release in February, the exact timing was contingent on Kerry’s availability; its “rollout” date is the secretary’s decision. This year, the human rights report release drifted past NCAA “March madness,” bloom-ing cherry blossoms, the beginning of spring, and the opening of the baseball season. Some substantive delay factors included the presiden-tial visit to Cuba and the U.S. effort to engage Moscow in restarting Syrian peace talks. Unsurprisingly, the HRR strongly criticized Russia and Cuba, perhaps not the most conducive background for high-profi le U.S. bilateral initiatives.

Nevertheless, the human rights report stands as a basic benchmark for global treatment of human rights. It covers almost 200 entities in 2.3 million words of analysis and assessment. A number of countries employ it as one element for deter-mining refugee claims validity.

In contrast to practice by previ-ous secretaries, Kerry devoted signifi cant time (14 minutes) to ad-dressing human rights abuses when releasing the human rights report.

He avoided the traditional “nam-ing and shaming” of a laundry list of abusers. Although urging action to resolve the ongoing confl ict in Syria, he specifi cally praised human rights progress in Tunisia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Burma, Vietnam, and Azerbaijan. He concluded with an extended passage fl atly denounc-ing torture (“The United States is opposed to the use of torture in any form at any time by any govern-ment or non-state actor.”)

Succeeding the secretary at the podium, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Thomas Malinowski, praised the same states touted by Kerry. He criticized China and Russia for “striking out” against their citizens (“disturbing but not surprising”) and ended by denouncing corrup-tion implicitly but not specifi cally a reference to the Panama Papers.

As is so often the case with hu-man rights, now a less prominent concern, the HRR’s release was a one-day, non-wonder. There was brief factual comment in AP, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. But no mention of Canada.

Specifi cally, the HRR’s Canada chapter shrank slightly to 9,341 words versus 9,700 words in 2014, refl ecting general instruction to diet the HRRs to the extent pos-sible. Such direction is challenging as impulses to add special inter-est’s “bells and whistles” are almost impossible to thwart. Consequent-ly, a section-by-section comparative review will reveal a heavy percent-

age of leaden “legacy language,” leavened by greater effort to avoid the passive tense. Such circum-stance refl ects that detailed instruc-tions emphasize close adherence to previous language—unless change is signifi cant. Drafters are not to reinvent wheels. Still there are “tweaks” refl ecting greater concern over “corruption” (thus greater at-tention to such in the text) and the addition of “intersex” to the previ-ous listing of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual” groups potentially subject to abuse due to sexual ori-entation and gender identity.

Canadian aboriginal peoples and the status and circumstances of Ca-nadian workers continue to receive the most extensive human rights record coverage. The legal efforts to address aboriginal territorial claims are numerically unchanged. Oddly, the human rights record dropped the status of Métis legal claim to recog-nition as “Indians”—an unfortunate omission given the recent Supreme Court decision affi rming such status for Métis.

Separately, the human rights record notes a record number of

anti-Semitic incidents while si-multaneously reporting a decline in hate crimes. There is no refer-ence to anti-Islamic crimes.

The once-prominent reporting of anglo-francophone language restrictions in Quebec and outside the province is no longer in-cluded.

And Canada’s restrictions on freedom of speech are noted, but not criticized (“The Supreme Court has ruled that the govern-ment may limit free speech in the name of goals such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony, or promoting gender equality”).

The HRR no longer ranks countries individually; however, Canadians can be confi dent that even casual reading places their country in the fi rst tier of those respecting human rights.

Recent polling reports Cana-dians’ high satisfaction with their society; the Human Rights Report endorses such satisfaction.

David Jones is former U.S. dip-lomat who lives in Arlington, Va.

The Hill Times

U.S. human rights report still an international benchmark The report stands as a basic benchmark for global treatment of human rights. It covers almost 200 entities in 2.3 million words of analysis and assessment. A number of countries employ it as one element for determining refugee claims validity.

OTTAWA—Last month, the new Liberal government tabled

its fi rst federal budget, promising billions in infrastructure spending to stimulate the Canadian economy and invest in our collective future. But what kind of Canada will we build going forward?

The answer to this question will largely depend on propos-als put forward by municipalities for things like transit. Provinces and territories will also make the case for federal cash to fund their infrastructure plans, some of which

may come in the form of new or refurbished jails and prisons. Examples of provincial and territo-rial penal infrastructure projects that are planned or currently being built include: new prisons slated to open later this year in Amos, Sept-Îles, and Sorel-Tracy, Que.; a new facility that will house intermittent prisoners serving sentences on the weekend in London, Ont.; a new replacement jail that will more than triple the capacity of the cur-rent Dauphin Correctional Centre in Manitoba; a new psychiatric facility that will feature a unit dedicated to imprisoning those in confl ict with the law diagnosed with mental health issues in North Battleford, Sask.; a new prison near Oliver, B.C.; a new unit at the North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife; and a new prison for women to replace an older institu-tion in Fort Smith, N.W.T.

Other provincial-territorial prison infrastructure projects include renovations at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth, the conversion of Brampton, Ontario’s Roy McMur-try Youth Centre into an adult fa-cility for women, as well as plans to renovate and expand the Baffi n Correctional Centre in Iqaluit.

These ventures may just be the tip of the prison expansion iceberg in Canada should other projects, including those put on hold due to budgetary constraints like the shelved replacement facility for Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s, N.L., be given an injection of federal cash to proceed ahead.

While prison expansion is touted as necessary to public safety, re-search indicates that imprisonment is a failure, and a very costly one at that. For instance, in 2014-2015 it cost Canadian provinces and terri-tories an average of $198.50 per day or $72,452.50 per year to imprison

one person. Not to be overlooked is the fact that in 2014-2015, 57 per cent of provincial-territorial prison-ers were awaiting judicial proceed-ings, not serving sentences.

Beyond the expensive ware-housing of the legally innocent, provincial-territorial prison ex-pansion is taking place at a time when awareness of the damage of colonization increases, yet the mass incarceration of indigenous peoples in Canada persists.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just mandated Justice Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould to oversee important tasks including

a review of the impacts, costs, and gaps arising from changes made to the penal system under the previous three Conservative administra-tions led by former prime minister Stephen Harper. She’s also tasked with exploring ways to decrease the indigenous prison population and developing reforms relating to bail and sentencing with her provincial-territorial counterparts. Given these commitments, it would only make sense for the federal government to not dedicate any of its infrastructure dollars towards human warehous-ing going forward.

Prison expansion diverts funds that could otherwise be used to address inequality in our com-munities and prevent social harm. In short, by refusing to allocate federal infrastructure funds to-wards expanding the capacity of the state to criminalize and pun-ish, we can build a Canada that’s more equitable and safer for all.

NOPE / National Opponents of Prison Expansion is a Criminaliza-tion and Punishment Education Project initiative led by Tenei-sha Green, Jasmine Hébert, Ana Kovacic, Maneesh Oberoi, Franky Yousry, and Justin Piché that advo-cates for an end to the construction of jails and prisons, and the reinvest-ment of justice resources towards community building. Justin Piché is an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa.

The Hill Times

Build communities, not more prisons Prison expansion diverts funds that could otherwise be used to address inequality in our communities and prevent social harm.

INFRASTRUCTURE PRISONS

DAVID JONES

JUSTIN PICHÉ

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just mandated Justice Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould to oversee important tasks including a review of the impacts, costs, and gaps arising from changes made to the penal system under the previous three Conservative administrations led by former prime minister Stephen Harper. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, pictured. In contrast to practice by previous secretaries, Mr. Kerry devoted signifi cant time to addressing human rights abuses when releasing the human rights report. He avoided the traditional ‘naming and shaming’ of a laundry list of abusers. Although urging action to resolve the ongoing confl ict in Syria, he specifi cally praised human rights progress in Tunisia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Burma, Vietnam, and Azerbaijan. Photograph courtesy of the U.S. Department of State

OTTAWA—Conservative MP Michelle Rempel’s article about

everyday sexism on the Hill in last week’s National Post is another sobering reminder of a male-dom-inated workplace in which women who occupy positions of power are met with varying degrees of hostil-ity and/or ignorance far too often. This is not unique to Parliament Hill. Gender-biased behaviour and cultural norms, which undermine or diminish women’s infl uence in traditionally male fora, are com-monplace and often quite resistant to change. And while it may be tempting to characterize the par-ticular brand of sexism we see on the Hill as unique, I am not sure it is.

Fundamentally, though, it’s about respect. This is why, in 2014, Equal Voice (EV) launched its Hill-focused campaign #RespectHer inviting male and female MPs to commit to a more constructive environment. Clearly, the fact that women MPs and female staff-ers are not always accorded this respect—especially at this juncture in Canada’s history—is disturbing indeed. Tens of thousands of Cana-

dians have legitimately elected the 88 women MPs in our national Par-liament to represent their interests in Ottawa. These MPs should not face an uphill battle to carry out the mandate they’ve been given by constituents because of antiquated notions of how women should look, speak or conduct themselves. Canadians expect far better com-portment by all MPs in the House.

But there is hope. Beyond the government’s appointment of a gender-balanced cabinet, a radical act—it seems—given that only fi ve countries in the world have under-taken to do it, Equal Voice has been encouraged by the appointment of a high proportion of female chiefs of staff to federal ministers. Rec-ognizing the key role these senior staff play in the life of a govern-ment, the gender diversity among this cohort is a step forward. We are cautiously optimistic that, along with more women in cabinet, it will contribute to a shift in the culture in the long term.

Another good sign is the cur-rent study at the House Affairs Committee which is examining the possibilities for more family friend-ly and inclusive measures. As one of the less high-profi le committees on the Hill, it is leading the ambi-tious task of dissecting 150 years of parliamentary tradition and fi nding new ways forward. There is no doubt that it’s a daunting task for all involved. There is the risk that the debate about options might become partisan, which would be unfortunate given that, regardless of party, women—and men—are already paying a high price for a gruelling schedule, long commutes and the heightened demands of constituents to be visible, engaged and responsive in the riding.

Expectations of MPs have changed since the early decades of Canada’s Parliament. In EV’s ap-pearance earlier last week, we pro-posed some measures that would enable MPs to fully optimize their performance. They include reduc-

ing the weekly commutes for MPs given the size of the country, fully leveraging technology, ensuring staff supports are suffi cient for the average MP—as well as making accommodations for MPs who are needed for critical phases of care-giving at the beginning and end of life. These points were not lost on Liberal MP and committee chair Larry Bagnell, MP for the Yukon who has a young family and whose weekly commute can be up to 28 hours.

Nor were they for NDP MP Christine Moore who recently ap-peared as a witness. Exceptional already for giving birth during the campaign and then going on to secure her seat for the New Demo-crats in Quebec (yes, Quebec), Moore is now navigating an institu-tion that is clearly not designed for the mother of a young child. Remarkably, the Parliament Hill daycare doesn’t accept children be-fore 18 months so Moore has been left to cobble together a piecemeal

set of care-giving arrangements, none of which are ideal.

Every Friday while Parliament is sitting, Moore makes the seven-plus hour drive back to her riding in northern Quebec, often alone and sometimes in bad weather. It’s no small feat, especially when you have a restless baby in tow, have just worked a gruelling week and—as a nursing mother—have likely not slept through the night for some time.

Moore is asking that MPs who give birth or become the primary care-giver to an infant be given the capacity to largely work out of the riding for the fi rst six months. The ability to work from the riding could also apply to MPs confronting the death of a parent, spouse or terminally ill child. Par-liamentary activity would have to be handled remotely through video-conferencing and poten-tially electronic voting, except perhaps for confi dence motions.

Both New Zealand Australia have introduced a form of proxy voting for these sorts of circum-stances. While it may be easy to dis-miss Moore’s challenges as unique to her, with a notable number of women (and men) under the age of 40 in this Parliament, it is likely to come up again. The question is—will Parliament be prepared? Without mechanisms to ensure that women at all life stages are welcome in this institution, the fear is that many will continue to take a pass on standing for federal offi ce.

Canadians are eager to vote for politicians with whom they can make a connection—and who can relate to the day-to-day struggles we all confront. Nothing humanizes a person like parenting and other forms of caregiving. Most Canadians vote on the strength of a political party’s vision for the future—and future generations. To ignore the particularities of those MPs who are confronted with intensive care-giving responsibilities is not just an insult to them, but their children, families and thousands of constitu-ents. It will be up to this Parliament to chart a different course. To suc-ceed, MPs need to show goodwill—and respect for what their colleagues are bringing to the job.

Nancy Peckford is with Equal Voice.

The Hill Times


EQUAL VOICE WOMEN IN POLITICS

It’s up to this Parliament to chart a different course for women NDP Christine Moore is asking that MPs who give birth or become the primary care-giver to an infant be given the capacity to largely work out of the riding for the fi rst six months.

NANCY PECKFORD

NUCLEAR POWER: THE CORE OF CANADA’S LOW CARBON FUTURE.

CNA HILL DAY

NDP MP Christine Moore, pictured in her Confederation Building offi ce with her baby Daphnée. Every Friday while Par-liament is sitting, Ms. Moore makes the seven-plus hour drive back to her riding in northern Quebec, often alone and sometimes in bad weather with her baby. The Hill Times photograph by Jean-Loup Doudard

mandate, there’s still no word on when or how this will happen.

The latest minutes released from the House management board are from a Dec. 10, 2015 meeting.

Former House law clerk Rob Walsh said it’s an “old question,” though the cam-paign commitment has “raised expecta-tions” that this will actually happen.

“There’s a general expectation in the public that they’re entitled to know what their representatives are doing when they spend public dollars, so it’s a moral right, if you like, or political expectation that this will not be hidden from them,” Mr. Walsh told The Hill Times last week.

He said the idea of opening up access to this board “been around a long time. The only difference now is you have a party that made a commitment in its campaign, and now it’s in government, so I think it’s raised expectations amongst those who think the board should open up its meet-ings, and we’ll have to just wait and see.”

Past controversy over the NDP’s use of Parliament-funded Householders (informa-tion pamphlets sent by MPs to constituents a few times a year) and its use of Parlia-

mentary funds for offi ces outside Ottawa was called a “sham process” by the NDP, said Mr. Walsh, but with Board of Internal Economy (BOIE) meetings and delibera-tions entirely in camera, “How was one to know whether there’s any merit to that accusation or not?”

The NDP was ultimately ordered by the board to repay millions of dollars to Parliament, but MPs and leader Tom Mul-cair (Outremont, Que.) spoke out strongly against the decision, repeatedly calling it partisan and the BOIE a “kangaroo court.”

That decision is now being challenged in court by the NDP, with two days of hear-ings scheduled starting Sept. 13. A shorter hearing on whether an affi davit fi led as ev-idence should be thrown out is scheduled for May 13. Previously, this challenge was suspended to try and fi nd an out-of-court settlement, but that was lifted following a request from the board’s lawyer last year after talks failed.

Mr. Walsh said opening up the BOIE doesn’t necessarily require legislation.

“There’s nothing in the Parliament of Canada Act that requires the board to meet behind closed doors,” he said. “The board itself could just decide they’re not going to meet behind closed doors anymore. But they would want to have consultations with the other parties, I think, and come to an agreement as to how much will be done in public.”

He noted legislative changes would be needed to make an open-door policy at the board mandatory in future Parliaments.

During the 2015 election, the Liberals committed to “end the secrecy surrounding

the Board of Internal Economy—the group responsible for regulating spending by Members of Parliament.”

“Except in rare cases requiring confi den-tiality, meetings of this group will be open to the public,” reads the party platform.

The BOIE is the governing body of the House of Commons and is responsible for deciding both fi nancial and administrative matters. It allocates and sets the budgets for MPs and House offi cers, sets the rules (bylaws and policies) around proper use of parliamentary funds, and decides whether those rules have been broken. In this role, MPs on the board oversee the House of Commons’ $463.6-million budget for 2016-17, as indicated in the main estimates.

The BOIE meets entirely in camera and is made up of members from all political par-ties in the House with least 12 sitting mem-bers, and refl ects the balance of seats in the Chamber. The board meets in Centre Block “approximately every second week when the House is sitting,” according to its website. But meeting frequency depends on how much business is before it, and so for this Parlia-ment it has met three times.

House Speaker Geoff Regan (Halifax West, N.S.) now chairs the Board, which includes Liberal Whip Andrew Leslie (Orléans, Ont.), Public Services Minister Judy Foote (Bonavista-Burin-Trinity, N.L.), Conservative Whip Gord Brown (Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Ont.), Conservative MP Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.), and NDP MP Peter Julian (New Westminster-Burnaby, B.C.).

The Senate expense scandal “contribut-ed to a broader public perception of want-ing more transparency in how public funds are spent, and it’s all part of that same broad interest in greater transparency, that there’s a sense that the Board of Internal Economy should conduct its meeting in open session,” said Mr. Walsh.

In 2013, during the last Parliament, the Procedure and House Affairs Committee launched a study to review the BOIE and consider opening it up to the public follow-ing an NDP motion. The resulting commit-tee report did not recommend opening up meetings, but it was a Conservative-dom-inated committee, and both the Liberals and the NDP fi led dissenting reports.

During the study, a number of differ-ent ways to open up BOIE meetings to the public were discussed, including looking at the U.K.’s Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority or the possibility of creating new BOIE subcommittees to dis-cuss sensitive topics.

Government House Leader Dominic LeB-lanc (Beauséjour, N.B.) was not available for an interview with The Hill Times last week. In response to emailed questions about the BOIE, his offi ce said the minister is “still working with his department” and will “make announcements in due course. As with every measure being considered by the House leader, he will discuss with caucus and opposition colleagues.”

“In the previous Parliament, the law clerk has given advice to members of the board that they would potentially be breaching the Parliament of Canada Act, contrary to [what] others may have suggested,” read the email in response to a note highlighting the argu-ment that there’s nothing in the act prevent-ing the BOIE from choosing itself to hold meetings in public.

In response to followup questions seeking more details and clarifi cation, Mr. LeBlanc’s offi ce said “at this time” it had “no additional comments.”

On Feb. 24, Mr. LeBlanc appeared before the Senate Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament Committee and indicated the government may seek to amend the BOIE along with other changes

requiring amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act, namely changes to strengthen the Parliamentary Budget Offi ce and legis-lative amendments related to the function-ing of the Senate, as part of one bill.

“Then we could pass effectively and effi ciently a piece of legislation that would meet the objectives of both [Chambers],” he said.

Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Brown are the “ap-pointed spokespeople” for the Board. Last week when The Hill Times called to request an interview with Mr. Brown, his offi ce at fi rst indicated he was not able to speak about the board and did not seem aware he had been appointed a spokesperson. He ultimately did not respond to the interview request.

The BOIE cites Standing Order 37(2)—which says simply that only designated spokespeople can respond to oral ques-tions about the board’s work during Ques-tion Period. The BOIE’s parliamentary web-site notes these spokespeople respond to both QP questions “and to enquiries from media.” The media section of the website, however, directs questions to the House Speaker’s director of communications, who does not sit in on board meeting. Since last Parliament, the board has specifi ed that only these spokespeople can discuss deci-sions of the board.

MPs often cite the board’s “oath of secrecy” in declining to even give opinions about board decisions, and in many cases when asked to give opinions on whether the BOIE should be opened up.

That oath of secrecy, which every board member has to swear and is included in the Parliament of Canada Act, “only relates to matters of security, employment, and staff relations, tenders and investigations in re-lations to a member of the House of Com-mons,” and to sharing documents related to Board business, as described in the act.

The BOIE meeting minutes are now posted online (since last Parliament), but they’re made public with months-long de-lays. For example, until March 11, the most recent meeting minutes available were from June 2015. Now, minutes from the Dec. 10, 2015 meeting are the most recently available. Those minutes indicate the BOIE made a decision to grant the Government House Leader a new, $100,000 annual bud-get, for example, among other things, but there’s no indication of the deliberations that led to this.

“They’re much too slow at posting the minutes, and the minutes ought to be more informative too,” said Mr. Walsh.

The Senate Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee, which has come under the public spotlight in recent years due to its decision-making role in the Senate expense scandal and resulting audits, has for years been more open to the public than its House counterpart. While it typically meets in camera, on occasion it holds public meetings—like most recently when it discussed the request from Senate Government Representative Peter Harder’s for an $800,000 budget. At times, it has also published transcripts of meetings.

Mr. Julian told The Hill Times last week that he had no indication of the government’s plans on opening up the BOIE, but welcomed action on the commitment. He said he’s “look-ing for more transparency” and said opening up the BOIE “means not only looking at cur-rent decisions but past decisions.”

“The important issue is for transpar-ency: how does the BOIE function? How are decisions taken? Are decisions taken in an equitable way towards all Members of Parliament and all political parties? Those are the kinds of questions I think people often ask,” he said.


THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201618NEWS BOARD OF INTERNAL ECONOMY

Feds still haven’t moved on opening up secretive Commons Board of Internal EconomyMeanwhile, the NDP’s court battle with the BOIE has resumed, with two days worth of hearings slated to begin on Sept. 13.

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OPINION TERRORISM

OTTAWA—In the wake of the horren-dous attacks in Brussels, there has

been a cascade of stories, op-ed pieces, and analyses of the event, ranging from why Belgian security services did not prevent it to whether more are on their way. Political scientists, sociologists, and even a few for-mer spies have weighed in, and the verdict is generally not kind to Belgium. Others have referred to the terrorist attacks as a watershed or a harbinger of worse to come. Are these dire prognoses correct?

We here in Canada are also asking ourselves whether what occurred at the airport and metro station could happen here and whether the government should raise the threat level or take other action. It may be illustrative to examine what went wrong in Belgium and ask whether we are in a different situation here.

First and foremost, many have called the attack a failure of intelligence. There is no question that there are challenges in sharing information across the EU and even within Belgium itself. Security intelligence and law enforcement agen-cies should do a better job of coordination, but this will be diffi cult in a union of 28 member states with wide ranging levels of experience and competence in counter terrorism. The story here in Canada is markedly better. Information sharing at the federal level, especially between CSIS and the RCMP is very good, and there are mechanisms to talk among federal, pro-vincial, territorial and municipal partners. Relationships can always improve, but we are working from a solid base.

The number of foreign fi ghters who have left to fi ght with terrorist groups like Islamic State from Belgium, France, the U.K., and

others in Western Europe is substantially larger than it is here. Belgium, for instance, has the highest per capita foreign fi ghter contingent in the world. Not that all of these jihadists will return to commit acts back home, but historically ten percent of return-ees do so. If this continues, Western Euro-pean security agencies are on the cusp of a very large problem. As CSIS and the RCMP have noted, our fi gures are much smaller and hence our problem is not as great.

Areas like Mollenbeek in Brussels are cauldrons of unrest, disenfranchisement, un-employment and alienation. While it should be stressed that there is no proven causal relationship between these factors and radi-calization, the presence of large numbers of disengaged citizens does present challenges. Those who do not see themselves part of Belgian society are less willing to cooperate with law enforcement to help identify po-tential terrorists. Belgium and other Western European countries need to take further action to address this chasm within their societies. Again, the situation in Canada is very different. All is not perfect, but our cities do not have the marginalized ghettoes where resentment may in some circumstances lead to violent radicalization.

Belgium has not put much investment into early intervention and counter radical-ization programming to stop this descent to violence before it begins. The Canadian gov-ernment is well ahead of the curve and the recent announcement of funding for counter radicalization and community engagement should be seen as a good start. In addition, cities like Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal have initiated their own efforts to address radicalization before it becomes violent.

Authorities in Brussels did not put enough security at major gathering places like airports and metro stations. This may

be true, but there is no easy solution. States could increase security exponentially ev-erywhere, but at what cost, both in terms of money and the kind of country we want to live in? You cannot secure every locale and once you crack down in one place, extrem-ists move on to the next. The situation is no different here in Canada. Are our citizens willing to accept metal detectors at train stations? Perhaps. Would they be as willing to do so at restaurants?

Some said that Belgium should have known something was in the planning stages and been more alert. The government threat level was already at high: how much higher could it go? Some have criticized the Trudeau government for not raising it here. Levels

are determined by intelligence, not by fear and reaction to what happens elsewhere. The fact that the level remains unchanged should serve as a reminder that we are relatively safe in Canada.

The Brussels attacks are a watershed and represent an existential threat to Europe. This is perhaps the most egregious overreaction and only serves as a propa-ganda coup for Islamic State. Even with the apparent uptick in attacks, terrorism remains a rare event and violent extrem-ism does not threaten our states in any meaningful way (unless we allow it to through our rash measures). That is espe-cially true here in Canada where we have had only six plots in the post 9/11 era and two deaths in that timespan.

So, could Brussels happen here? Abso-lutely. There is no way to ensure that no attacks will happen. We have to accept that while our security and law enforcement agencies are doing a very good job, they cannot stop all eventualities. Most plots will be foiled: a few will succeed. Terrorism is the new normal.

We need to ensure that CSIS, the RCMP and others have the resources necessary to fulfi ll their mandates. We should increase our efforts at the early intervention and counter radicalization stages and deter-mine what works at what doesn’t to nip extremism in the bud.

Most importantly, we as Canadians cannot give in to fear and suspicion. We have to reject the vitriol of Republican candidates like Donald Trump with his call for torture and Ted Cruz with his plan to patrol Muslim neighbourhoods. We have built a great country here and cannot let infrequent terrorism undermine that.

Phil Gurski worked for over 30 years as an intelligence analyst in Canada, including 15 at CSIS. He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West.

The Hill Times

Could Brussels happen in Canada? We need to ensure that CSIS, the RCMP and others have the resources necessary to fulfi ll their mandates. We should increase our efforts at the early intervention and counter radicalization stages and determine what works at what doesn’t to nip extremism in the bud.

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Brussels bombing suspects at the Brussels airport Najim Laachraoui, left, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, centre, and Mohamed Abrini, right, pictured that day March 22 when 32 people and three suicide bombers were killed, including the two on the left, and 300 people injured. Photograph courtesy of CCTV

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201620NEWS LOBBYING

since taking offi ce—a few of them on multiple occasions.

For example, oil-and-gas produc-er Suncor Energy had contact with Mr. Trudeau on Jan. 11, Feb. 4, and March 10, according to the reports.

Others in the petroleum sector are also listed. The lobbyists’ registry shows Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Cenovus Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, and the Petroleum Ser-vices Association of Canada all had contact with Mr. Trudeau on Feb. 4, one of the three dates Suncor is also on the record as having contact with the prime minister.

The multiple points of contact Mr. Trudeau had with petroleum companies on Feb. 4 appear to be in relation to a roundtable discussion in Calgary that was held with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and representatives from the energy sector.

Suncor’s meetings with Mr. Trudeau are registered as dealing with climate and economic devel-opment on Jan. 11, industry on Feb. 4, and energy on March 10.

Asked for comment about its contact with the prime minister, Suncor spokeswoman Nicole Fisher said in an email: “With a new government in place, many of our conversations are introductory in nature. However, Suncor regu-larly works with elected offi cials and members of governments at all levels to provide information about our business and participate in discussions about our industry. As you can see in our registry, climate-change regulations and policy are top of mind for the organization.”

A consultant lobbyist, who asked not to be named, told The Hill Times it’s not unusual that, despite the tight competition for getting an audience with the prime minister, Suncor would have three communications reports for con-tact with the prime minister.

“In a world of $30 oil, a com-pany like Suncor probably laid off between 2,000 and 4,000 em-ployees in Alberta; that’s the kind of thing that the prime minister would listen to,” he said. “That doesn’t particularly surprise me.”

Suncor spokeswoman Erin Rees said the company’s workforce was reduced by 1,700 people last year.

The technology sector ac-counted for another fi ve reports, with Google Canada, Microsoft Canada, Xerox Canada, Ubisoft

Entertainment, and the Entertain-ment Software Association of Canada each fi ling one report for contact with Mr. Trudeau.

There were also several entries from parties with connections to the construction industry that fi led reports for contact with Mr. Trudeau. The International Union of Operating Engineers, the Cana-dian Construction Association, and Canada’s Building Trades Unions each have one communications report for Prime Minister Trudeau.

“I’m not surprised by it,” said the consultant lobbyist, regard-ing the makeup of organizations that have communicated with the prime minister. “Depending on how important any given issue is, the ultimate decider on any fi le—whether it’s Canadian heritage to international trade—is going to be the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. … In this case, it sounds like infrastruc-ture is what would be on their minds more than anything else.

“The other part of this equation is the prime minster and his offi ce are going to be the ones accepting the meetings. So, for all the people whose names appear in the reg-istry, think of all the people who tried to get a meeting who didn’t.”

There are four entities other than Suncor that have recorded more than one communication with Mr. Trudeau since he’s be-come prime minister.

One is a group called the “In-dian” Residential School Survivors, Products and Offspring. It’s shown to have been in contact with Mr. Trudeau four times—Feb. 5, 6, and 18, and March 8. Jason Ansom, the Lake Cowichan, B.C.-based con-sultant registered to lobby for this group, said in an interview with The Hill Times that these entries refl ect letters that have been sent Mr. Trudeau, though he has not received any responses.

“My understanding is I have to record every letter that I have,” Mr. Ansom said. “I mean, I could be wrong; this is the fi rst time I’m doing this.”

He said he’s only been a regis-tered lobbyist since December.

The lobbying commission’s website says it requires reports for “oral and arranged commu-nications with designated public offi cer holders.” Scott Thurlow, a lawyer and lobbyist with Temple Scott Associates, said this means in-person meetings, phone calls, and teleconferences are report-able, but not letters and emails.

Mr. Ansom’s group’s registra-tion says it’s looking to get amend-ments made to the Physical Activity and Sport Act, and federal policies toward sports for aboriginals and people with disabilities. Mr. Ansom said his organization wants recom-mendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission regard-ing sport to be refl ected in Canada’s offi cial sports policies. This would include more recognition and edu-

cation about aboriginal athletes, the promotion of physical activity and reducing barriers to participation in sports by First Nations people, stable funding to support traditional aboriginal sports, elite development programs for First Nations athletes, and anti-racism training in sporting programs.

A Quebec company called Conteneurs Experts S.D. had separate communications reports for Nov. 8 and 13, and also—be-fore Mr. Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister and just one day after winning the election—on Oct. 20. This company specializes in converting storage containers for other uses, such as housing.

Yves Ranger, a consultant lob-byist representing the company, said this contact was made in relation to the government’s plans for accepting Syrian refugees. Mr. Ranger said the communications reports were to document emails sent to Mr. Trudeau, of which he said there were no replies.

As well, the Canadian Cham-ber of Commerce and the Human Rights Watch have each had two communications with Mr. Trudeau since he has become prime minis-ter, according to the registry.

The unidentifi ed consultant lobbyist who talked to The Hill Times said he has not yet sought any meetings with Mr. Trudeau as prime minister, though managed to get three with Stephen Harper (Calgary Heritage, Alta.) when he was prime minister.

He said getting a meeting with the prime minister is an accom-plishment in itself for anyone involved in government relations.

“I would imagine he gets 500 requests a week, maybe more than that,” the lobbyist said. “I guess he’s probably going to be pretty judicious in the ones that he picks.”

He added that “these are the types of meetings that are the most important types of meetings. … I can’t imagine a meeting being more important, unless the Queen herself was here to give royal as-sent to a bill.”

The consultant lobbyist said keeping in contact with cabinet ministers and other offi cials is cru-cial for lobbyists hoping to advance their agenda, and if a meeting with the prime minster is accepted, it can be indicative that some of the other lobbying is paying off.

“If you’re getting a meeting with the prime minister, there’s a reason you’re getting the meeting, like they want to talk about some kind of announce-able, they want to gauge your ability to help them achieve something,” he said.

This person said, in his last meeting with Mr. Harper as prime minister, the minsters of fi nance, industry, and agriculture were also present. He said that in every meeting he’s had with the Mr. Harper when the last government was in power, other ministers, deputy ministers, or offi cials with “a very deep understanding of the issues in question” were present.

This consultant lobbyist added that whether a government-rela-tions person gets a meeting with the prime minister “depends mas-sively” on how important that per-son’s issue is to the prime minister.

Another lobbyist who declined to be identifi ed—this one from the not-for-profi t sector—said he has not yet tried to get any meet-ings with Mr. Trudeau as prime minister, but is hopeful for one down the road. He said one way to go about achieving this is to get

his group’s cause on the prime minster’s radar. He said arrang-ing photo opportunities with the prime minister around certain themes, such as when a day, week, or month is dedicated to a particu-lar cause, is one way to do this.

He added that personal con-nections between one’s organiza-tion and the PMO also help make a meeting with the prime minister more likely.

“If your organization has an alignment with some of those people, I think that defi nitely helps as well,” he said.

This organizational lobbyist also talked about the merits of “working the chain” before at-tempting to meet with the prime minister, alluding to meetings with “relevant ministers” and senior staff within the PMO.

He talked about having not been able to secure a meeting with Mr. Harper when the Conservative

government was in power. This lobbyist said his approach at that time was “little more by the book,” with letters and emails to the PMO employed as a main means of trying to secure a meeting. “It just didn’t work out,” he said.

This lobbyist added that it was harder to get meetings with Mr. Harper, with the previous govern-ment being “more prickly” toward lobbyists than the current one.

Data from the lobbyists regis-try shows that Mr. Harper, before losing offi ce, had contact with 11 different lobbying entities within the last year. Most involved just one communications report. How-ever, the records show Mr. Harper had two communications each with Canadian Exporters & Manu-facturers, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.


Energy, tech sectors dominate list lobbying Trudeau ‘I would imagine he gets 500 requests a week, maybe more than that,’ says one lobbyist about the prospect of meeting with the PM.


LOBBYING ACTIVITY

GROUPS THAT HAVE FILED COMMUNICATIONS REPORTS FOR CONTACT WITH PM TRUDEAU:

“Indian” Residential School Survivors, Products and OffspringSuncor EnergyConteneurs Experts S.D.Canadian Chamber of CommerceInternational Union of Operating EngineersCanadian Construction AssociationHuman Rights WatchCentre for Israel and Jewish AffairsMicrosoft CanadaHospital for Sick ChildrenUniversity of WaterlooScotiabankBusiness Council of CanadaImperial OilXerox CanadaPetroleum Services Association of CanadaShell CanadaCanadian Museums AssociationCanada’s Building Trades UnionsUniforCanadian Alliance of Student AssociationsGoogle CanadaEntertainment Software Association of CanadaCenovus EnergyCanadian Natural ResourcesRegional Municipality of YorkUbisoft EntertainmentConseil de la transformation alimentaire du QuébecSource: Lobbyists Registry

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has had contact from 28 different lobbying groups since taking offi ce, according to communications reports fi led on the federal lobbyists registry. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright


NEWS SENATE ADMINISTRATION

BY ABBAS RANA

The Senate’s former human resources di-rector Darshan Singh, who was fi red

“without cause” in early December and had contacted the RCMP on March 15 alleging “fraudulent activity” by senior manage-ment within the Senate, is cooperating with the Mounties and it will be up to them to decide if they want to start an offi cial investigation, says his lawyer.

“I can let you know that there’s infor-mation being shared with the RCMP and they’ll review that material and handle it as they deem fi t,” lawyer Paul Champ, representing Mr. Singh, said in an inter-view with The Hill Times, while declining to share specifi c details.

Jacqui Delaney, director of communi-cations to Quebec Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos, chair of the Senate Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee that oversees the overall Senate administration, declined a comment for this article. However, she provided an April 5 RCMP letter to The Hill Times stating that the RCMP has decided not to open up an investigation “at this time” into allegations of “fraudulent activity” because Mr. Singh contacted the RCMP on March 15 but did not meet with them to back up his claim.

“This letter is to advise you that we will not be conducting further review into this matter as the allegations you have made have not been substantiated, and you have not provided information of any form beyond your March 15, 2016 email,” Supt. Denis Desnoyers, from the RCMP’s nation-al division, said in a letter to Mr. Singh.

“Should you come with substantive information and/or documents, this matter may be reconsidered. Please consider this matter concluded at this time.”

In the letter sent out to Mr. Singh and, copied to Mr. Champ and Senate law clerk Michel Patrice, the RCMP wrote that after receiving Mr. Singh’s email, Sgt. Greg Hor-ton followed up with Mr. Singh for a meet-ing to discuss allegations. Sgt. Horton also left a message with Mr. Champ requesting a call from Mr. Singh or the lawyer but did not receive any response, the letter stated.

But Mr. Champ said that since the RCMP’s April 5 letter, his client has been in communication with the federal police force. He explained that the reason why Mr. Singh delayed meeting with the RCMP was be-cause information about his complaint to police had been leaked to the media.

“I was surprised and disappointed by it. We had communicated to the RCMP that we were concerned about the appar-ent leak of a complaint that Mr. Singh had made to the RCMP,” Mr. Champ said, referring to The Hill Times’ March 21 story that reported on Mr. Singh’s preliminary communication with the RCMP. “It had gotten into the hands of a media, it seemed, and we were concerned about that and therefore had delayed a meeting between the RCMP and Mr. Singh.”

Mr. Champ declined to offer any specif-ics as to the extent of his client’s coopera-tion so far. However, he said Mr. Singh will “cooperate fully” with the RCMP in providing the information and evidence to support his claim.

“Mr. Singh intends to cooperate fully with the RCMP to the extent necessary for their investigation,” said Mr. Champ.

An RCMP spokeswoman in an emailed response declined to comment on the status of Mr. Singh’s complaint. She said that the RCMP never discusses ongoing investigations.

“Generally, only in the event that an investigation results in the laying of criminal charges would the RCMP confi rm its investi-gation, the nature of any charges laid, and the identity of the individual(s) involved,” wrote RCMP spokeswoman Brigitte Mineault in an email to The Hill Times last week.

“Should the investigation not generate suffi cient evidence to support the laying of criminal charges, the RCMP would con-clude its fi le and, in most cases, advise the complainant privately of this result.”

Mr. Singh served for about two-and-a-half years as the HR director before he was fi red on Dec. 2. About a week before Mr. Singh was fi red, he had fi led a discrimination com-plaint against Nicole Proulx, the Senate’s chief corporate services offi cer and clerk of the Senate’s Internal Economy Committee. Ms. Proulx was Mr. Singh’s supervisor.

Mr. Champ told The Hill Times in January that there had been“friction” and “disagreements” about some of the Sen-ate’s administrative decisions, which had been going on for about a year, between Mr. Singh and the three top Senate execu-tives—Ms. Proulx, Mr. Patrice, and Senate Clerk Charles Robert. Mr. Singh’s termina-tion letter was signed by Mr. Robert.

After he was fi red, Mr. Singh’s lawyer wrote a detailed letter to all members of the Senate Internal Economy Committee and requested that his client be allowed to make his case before the committee. His request was denied.

Since the start of this case, Sen. Hou-sakos and the three top Senate executives have declined to comment on this case, arguing that this is an employment issue and they cannot comment because of Mr. Singh’s right to privacy and confi dentiality.

Sen. Housakos, who has been chair of the Internal Economy Committee since May, has questioned why Mr. Singh never brought any allegation of inappropriate activity to his attention. Without identifying any names, Mr. Champ has said that his client tried, but his superiors did not allow it. He also said that Mr. Singh submitted his concerns in writ-ing to his superiors and requested that this information be shared with Senators.

“The different issues that Darshan raised with Senate administration he did not raise

directly with the Senators because he was instructed not to, and with their chain of command within the Senate, it would be ba-sically insubordination for him to go directly to the Senators,” Mr. Champ said in March.

In February, Mr. Singh reached out to 10 Conservative, Liberal, and Independent Sena-tors with a request to sit down with them and share his concerns about the Senate adminis-tration, but never received any response.

Mr. Singh’s case is currently before the Public Service Labour Relations Board. Mr. Champ said that the Labour Relations Board had scheduled hearings for August, but the Senate did not accept those dates and now the board will offer new dates for hearings.


Former Senate HR director still talking to RCMP about alleged fraud: lawyer A letter from the RCMP earlier this month said the case had been closed due to a lack of evidence, but Mr. Singh’s lawyer says the process is back on track.

The offi ce of Sen. Leo Housakos has provided The Hill Times with an RCMP letter dated April 5 that says the Mounties have closed the case, for now, in which Darshan Singh, former Senate HR director, alleged ‘fraudulent activity’ but never provided any evidence for. Mr. Singh’s lawyer, Paul Champ, said last week his client is back in communica-tion with the RCMP. The Hill Times photo-graph by Jake Wright

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201622LEGISLATION BILL C-14

The space overlooks the front lawn and steps of the Supreme Court, which is a reminder of the job he’s got ahead of him.

“I don’t think I would ever do this, I don’t think I would ever want to be

involved in doing this, and I would do my utmost to convince anyone in my life to not do that and to cling to life. But that doesn’t mean that my views and how I would be-have in terms of my own life are ones that I want to impose on Canadians,” he said.

This confl ict is something the rookie Liberal MP will be thinking about as he sits at the head of the House Justice and Human Rights Committee table, steward-ing the new government’s most conten-tious bill to date, Bill C-14, legalizing physician-assisted dying.

He said despite his personal views, his job is to ensure Charter rights are respected and would never try to legally impose his moral compass on anyone else.

“Whether personally my views differ from the Supreme Court on the Charter right, this is a Charter right,” he said.

“Taking sides on the issue may not be the best way to shepherd this legislation through committee.”

Mr. Housefather said getting on the justice committee was his top pick.

He represents the riding once repre-sented by Pierre Elliott Trudeau and most recently by Irwin Cotler; Mount Royal, Que. He said it’s a riding of minority communities where Judaism is the predominant religion.

“When you represent a riding as diverse as that, you appreciate the Charter rights that set out universal values and universal rules that all Canadians have a right to expect that their government lives up to.”

Before entering the House of Commons, Mr. Housefather was a corporate lawyer with two law degrees and former mayor of Côte-Saint-Luc, Que. He’s also an award-winning swimmer.

The legislation—Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medi-cal assistance in dying)—if passed, would allow Canadians to access publicly-funded health care for assistance in dying if they are 18 years of age or older and considered mentally competent. To qualify, the law says these individuals must have an illness, disease, or disability, which they are suf-fering from intolerably, and that a “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable.”

The bill provides protections for doc-tors, nurses, pharmacists, and other inde-pendent aids to assist in administering a noxious substance to patients who qualify. The new law as proposed does not provide for patients to give advance directives and excludes those with psychiatric conditions, which the government promises to study further, as it will on the issue of wheth-er mature minors should have access.

Last week, the committee decided to be-gin studying Bill C-14 on Monday, May 2, whether or not the bill had passed second reading by then. After being introduced on April 14, the bill had its fi rst day of second reading debate in the House last Friday.

The committee is instructing wit-nesses to limit their testimony to suggested amendments to the text of the bill in order to avoid conversations about the broader issue, as covered by the Special Joint Com-mittee on Physician-Assisted Dying Com-mittee this winter. It is also asking submit-ted briefs not to exceed three pages.

In addition to their regular Tuesday and Thursday 8:45-10:45 a.m. meetings, the com-mittee will be adding meetings for Monday, May 2, and Wednesday, May 4, from 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in order to hear witness testi-mony. Members will then have until 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 5, to submit any proposed amendments to the committee clerk.

Then on Monday, May 9, and Wednes-day, May 11, meetings will be added to complete clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. If all goes as planned, this means around 17 hours of testimony, and the same for considering amendments, over eight meetings. Mr. Housefather esti-mated the committee will hear from three witnesses or so per hour, meaning the committee could hear from around 50 wit-nesses in the one week. Witness lists will be fi nalized early next week.

The committee agreed to a $39,600 budget for the study of the bill, which will cover meals for committee members and travel expenses for witnesses.

Despite the bill coming to the commit-tee after second reading, members don’t feel it is going to impede their ability to seek substantive amendments to the bill, and last week Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, N.B.) told reporters the government will consider “thoughtful amendments,” though he rein-forced the importance of getting a legisla-tive framework in place in time.

“I believe the role of a committee is to consider amendments. The committee mem-bers who are not members of the govern-ment … have an independent role to play to

Minister of Justice and At-torney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould (Vancouver Granville, B.C.) during press confer-

ence announcing Bill C-14 on April 14:“I have had experience, as

we all have, in sitting by loved ones, my grandmother as she approached the end of her life, my grandfather who suffered from Alzheimer’s for over 15 years before he passed away.

“This is my own personal experience and formulates my view on issues like this, but having said that, those are my views. And the views of every Canadian in this country are fundamentally important and need to be heard and need to be able to contribute towards this debate.”

Health Minister Jane Phil-pott (Markham Stouffville, Ont.) during press confer-ence announcing Bill C-14 on April 14:

“It’s a profound experi-ence to sit by the side of

people who slip away from life and I’ve ... had the experience of lis-tening to a heartbeat stop. That’s a pretty profound experience and ... underscores for me the importance of making sure that we get this right.

“Having said that as well, I think, on the other hand, of my young niece who suffers from a neuro-degenerative condi-tion who is nonverbal, a beautiful and bright young woman, but cannot commu-nicate to people. And many others like her are in a situation of vulnerability, and we have to think of how we can protect the most vulnerable among us, and societies are judged in the protection that they pro-vide for the most vulnerable people.”

Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.) in an interview with The Hill Times on April 14:

“I’d like time to refl ect on it, to be candid and I’d

like time to hear from oth-ers. … We have crossed the Rubicon, the Supreme Court has crossed the Rubicon, and they crossed it nine-to-nothing, so that is the law of the land whether I like it or whether I don’t, whether it treats life the way I would treat it as opposed to the way its now being treated.”

Former Conservative MP and recently elected Manitoba MLA Steven Fletcher testifying before the Special Joint Commit-tee on Physician-Assisted

Dying, Jan. 28:“I’m not in Parliament now,

but I’ve been in Parliament long enough to know that Ottawa could really screw this up by putting in too much red tape and by making assumptions about what people feel about life and what quality of life is.

“You cannot have a cookie-cutter solu-tion when you are dealing with individuals.

“The further you move away from the Carter decision, the more likely it is that you’re going to step into provincial jurisdic-tion. When you make that step, I predict you’ll go into constitutional darkness, never to be found again. That is just the reality.”


House Justice Committee chair vows not to ‘impose’ personal views on assisted-dying law Liberal MP Anthony Housefather says, despite his personal views, his job is to ensure Charter rights are respected.

VOX POPULI

CURRENT, FORMER MPS ON PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE


Members of the House Justice and Human Rights Committee, pictured top to bottom, left and right: Liberal Anthony Housefather, Conservative Ted Falk, New Democrat Murray Rankin, Liberal Chris Bittle, Conserva-tive Michael Cooper, Liberal Colin Fraser, Liberal Ahmed Hussen, Liberal Iqra Khalid, and Conservative Rob Nicholson. Photographs courtesy of House of Commons. Photographs courtesy of the House of Commons


LEGISLATION BILL C-14

listen to the witnesses and consider amend-ments. … I want to allow the members of my committee do the job they were elected to do,” said Mr. Housefather, adding that the committee will have the ability to present receivable amendments and deliver back to the House the best version of the bill.

He said there could be both substantive and technical amendments made to the bill.

“What I want is clarity. My role as chair is to ensure the law is clear. I think it gen-erally is; there’s some tweaks that could be made,” Mr. Housefather said.

This condensed timeline is a result of the impending deadline for the government to have a new law on the books. The Supreme Court gave the Liberals until June 6, which is when the existing law will expire.

Committee members The Hill Times spoke with said meeting the Supreme Court deadline is a top priority.

Conservative MP and member of the House Justice and Human Rights Commit-tee Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, Alta.) called it “untenable” to think about not having any protections in place.

He is the only rookie from his caucus on the committee, but was also a member of the special joint committee that studied physician-assisted dying earlier this session. Mr. Cooper is the Conservative deputy justice critic. Before being elected, he was a civil litigator.

“It is a privilege to have an opportunity to contribute to help shape legislation on an issue that is probably one of the most impor-tant social issues that Canada has faced in some time and certainly is going to be one of the most important issues that this Parlia-ment has to address,” said Mr. Cooper.

Mr. Cooper told The Hill Times he was pleased to have been placed on the justice committee and is coming prepared with amendments. He’d like to see conscience protections for health professionals and more protection for people with mental health challenges.

This week, he’s holding a town hall in his riding to hear from constituents on the bill and he said he’ll be brining their feed-back back with him to the committee.

The House committee taking fi rst look at this legislation is comprised of nine men and one woman, ranging from early 30s to mid-60s in age. Eight of the 10 members are lawyers, the exceptions being vice-chair Conservative MP Ted Falk (Provencher, Man.), who before entering federal politics in 2013 owned a construction company, and new Liberal MP and committee member Ron McKinnon (Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, B.C.), who was a business owner and political blogger. Both are married with children.

Mr. Falk told The Hill Times last week he won’t be supporting the legislation in its cur-rent form and would like to see Mr. Trudeau invoke a notwithstanding clause. Mr. Falk considers himself pro-life and will be push-ing to have a full spectrum of witnesses sug-gest amendments to “strengthen” the bill.

He said he’s had a lot of experience providing end-of-life care for both his par-ents and his wife Irene’s parents. “I think it’s important to emphasize that those are stages of life,” he said.

For fellow vice-chair NDP MP Murray Rankin (Victoria, B.C.) the issue is personal, but for a different reason. His former law partner Joseph Arvay was Kay Carter’s lawyer who argued successfully and got the unani-mous Supreme Court decision that banning physician-assisted dying is unconstitutional.

Mr. Rankin the NDP justice critic and was on the special joint committee with Mr. Cooper and was an expert in environmental and public law before becoming an MP in 2012.

“I have to say that, since I was elected, this has been the most diffi cult and per-sonally demanding, emotionally draining

exercise. I take very seriously my role.”As the committee embarks on its study,

Mr. Rankin said conscience rights will be on his mind, as will the proposition that former Conservative MP Steven Fletcher, who he said has “argued so passionately for such a right,” might not have access under the law as its proposed. “I feel the weight of responsibility, to be honest.”

Liberal MP and member of the commit-tee Chris Bittle (St. Catharines, Ont.) was a civil litigator and a former community health centre chair before being elected for the fi rst time this past election. He said it’s going to be fascinating to be part of Canadian history in this way, but he is feeling the pressure.

“I, like all Canadians, have seen family members go through serious illness,” he told The Hill Times, adding that will be something likely all committee members come to the table with.

However, he said they need to put that aside and make sure the legal require-ments are met. Going in, Mr. Bittle said he is supportive of the bill but wants to hear from constitutional experts to make sure Bill C-14 will hold up.

The other members of the committee are rookie Liberal MPs Colin Fraser (West Nova, N.S.); Ahmed Hussen (York South-Weston, Ont.); Iqra Khalid (Mississauga–Erin Mills, Ont.); and veteran Conservative MP Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls, Ont.), his party’s justice critic.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Af-fairs Committee is conducting a pre-study on the bill to help speed things along when it gets passed into the Senate. Bill C-14 was referred to the committee on April 20, but the committee has not yet held a public meeting for this study. It’s expected that will begin the week of May 2. Ontario Con-

servative Senator Bob Runciman chairs this committee and British Columbia Lib-eral Senator Mobina Jaffer is vice-chair.

The day the bill was introduced, Con-servative Sen. Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie, who co-chaired the special Joint House and Senate Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying, told The Hill Times he was con-cerned about the possibility of Senators who are unhappy with the current ver-sion of the bill amending it in the Senate, forcing it to be sent back to the House, and making it near impossible to pass before the deadline.

If the House committee completes its work on time, it could be back in the House for third-reading debate sometime dur-ing the week of May 16, giving the Senate about two weeks to pass it.


‘This has been the most diffi cult, personally demanding, emotionally draining excercise’

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24 THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016

Q&A ANNE MCCLELLAN

FEATURE

‘Public policy doesn’t stop at the Rideau Canal’

BY KATE MALLOY

OTTAWA—The Donner Prize, now also known as “the Giller

for public policy wonks,” is con-sidered the most prestigious book prize in Canadian public policy. Just ask Anne McLellan, chair of the Donner Prize jury, who’s pretty pumped about the best books this year.

“The Donner Prize shortlist confi rms that public policy doesn’t stop at the Rideau Canal. These are books that should be read by all policy-makers. These are books that should matter to all Canadi-ans,” said Ms. McLellan, a former cabinet minister in Jean Chrétien’s government, who heads the jury that includes McGill University’s Jean-Marie Dufour, economist Peter George, Senate Government Representative Peter Harder, and the International Journal’s Jen-nifer A. Jeffs. The jury selected fi ve fi nalists from 86 entries. The award, in its 18th year, rewards excellence and innovation in public-policy writing in Canada.

The $50,000 prize goes to the winning author of the best public-policy book of the year. This year’s fi nalists are: Marq de Vil-liers’ Back to the Well: Rethinking the Future of Water (Goose Lane Editions); Robert Lacroix and Louis Maheu’s Les Grandes Uni-versités de Recherche (Les Press-es de l’Université de Montréal)/Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World, translated by Paul Klassen (McGill-Queen’s University Press); David Mul-roney’s Middle Power, Middle Kingdom: What Canadians Need to Know about China in the 21st Century (Allen Lane/Penguin Canada); Greg Poezler and Ken S. Coates’ From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Nation: A Road Map for All Canadians (UBC Press); and Donald J. Savoie What Is Gov-ernment Good At?: A Canadian Answer (McGill-Queen’s Univer-sity Press). The winner will be announced on April 27 in Toronto at The Carlu.

The Donner Prize is the most prestigious prize in Canadian public policy and is now known as “the Giller for public-policy wonks.” Why is the Donner Prize important?

“The Donner Prize is impor-tant because public policy is important. Public policy, good or bad, impacts all Canadians. Since 1998, we have shortlisted 94 books and will soon recognize an 18th winner. The public-policy issues that these authors spend months, if not years, researching and analyzing, are issues with signifi cant implications for this country, and often for the world. The authors are Canadians who have identifi ed real public-policy challenges and who offer innova-tive, thought-provoking, and, at times, controversial solutions. By celebrating the best books in public policy, the Donner Prize brings attention to issues of criti-cal importance to Canadians and public-policy makers.”

Why are this year’s fi ve nominees the best of the best?

“This year, we received 86 books to adjudicate, and these fi ve nominees represent the best of public-policy writing. Each deals with a timely public-policy concern or issue and all offer insightful recommendations for future action.”

How tough is it to pick the fi nal winning book?

“It is hard. As a jury, we spend many hours and meetings, indi-vidually and together, deliberat-ing over the book submissions. We come up with a shortlist and then have vigorous debate over who the winner should be. While we, as the jury, must choose a winner, these are fi ve books that Canadians should read.”

Can you talk a little bit about each nominee, just to give read-ers a taste of what each book is about, starting with Back to the Well: Rethinking the Future of Water, by Marq de Villiers (Goose Lane Editions)?

“Marq de Villiers’ book provides a solid introduction to understand-ing our relationship with water. Most Canadians already know that Canada has one-fi fth of the world’s freshwater, but they don’t know what that means. Back to the Well begins by stripping away long-held assumptions about the global water crisis, starting with the as-sertion that there is no such thing as a global water crisis, but rather thousands of overlapping regional crises. De Villiers then provides 13

wide-ranging and innovative policy prescriptions for these crises, from enlisting the private sector to prioritizing water thrift. This is an accessible guide to a complex topic, that has global reach and implications.”

Les Grandes Universités de Recherche: Institutions auto-nomes dans un envrionmenent concurrentiel (Les Presses de l’Université de Montreal)/ Lead-ing Research Universities in a Competitive World, by Robert Lacroix and Louis Maheu, trans-lated by Paul Klassen (McGill-Queen’s University Press)?

“This book, written by two seasoned Université de Mon-tréal professors, looks at what is needed to build and sustain world-class research universities. Robert Lacroix and Louis Maheu examine the various factors that affect and shape outstanding research universities, comparing these institutions in a number of countries, including Canada. They argue that research universities need to fi nd equilibrium between state regulation and academic autonomy, which is itself located at the intersection between bold university leadership, imaginative government policies, and sup-port from the private sector. The authors conclude that if Canada wants to remain competitive glob-ally, it must foster competitive research universities, which in turn produce the PhDs required to drive an innovative and cre-ative society.”

Middle Power, Middle Kingdom: What Canadians Need to Know about China in the 21st Century, by David Mulroney (Allen Lane/Penguin Canada)?

“With Middle Power, Middle Kingdom, author David Mulroney looks at the impact of China’s relentless rise on our economic prosperity, health and well-being and security. Making the case for more ‘China competence’ amongst Canadians, this former Canadian ambassador to China argues that we must neither demonize China nor assume that it is like us. He calls for a more sophisticated foreign policy approach to China, while painting a picture of an often demoralized and uncertain foreign service.”

From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Na-tion: A Road Map for All Canadi-ans, by Greg Poelzer and Ken S. Coates (UBC Press)?

“Less than six months ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Com-mission released its fi nal report,

providing 94 recommendations on how Canada can begin the reconciliation process with indig-enous Canadians. With this timely book, Poelzer and Coates provide important context for understand-ing the history, policies, cul-tural assumptions, and divergent opinions that underpin Canada’s complicated history as a ‘treaty nation.’ Advocating for ‘equality of opportunity’ for Indigenous Cana-dians, the authors share innova-tive, albeit controversial, ideas for how Canada and Canadians—in-digenous and non-indigenous—can work together toward greater social, political, and economic equality, eventually culminating in sustainable reconciliation.”

What is Government Good At?: A Canadian Answer, by Donald J. Savoie (McGill-Queen’s Univer-sity Press)?

“Donald Savoie’s newest book begins with a simple, but fundamental question: what is it that the public sector can do better than others? In answering it, Savoie acknowledges that the public sector is grappling with serious challenges today, but in order to adequately address those challenges, he contends that we require a more vigorous analysis as to what government is actually good at. Answering that question requires him to consider what government is not good at; not surprisingly, it is a long list. In his conclusion, Savoie concedes that the machinery of government is not optimally designed for today’s complex policy environment and demanding transparency require-ments.”

How many total books does the Donner Foundation receive and how do you come up with fi ve best books in the end? How does that process work?

“This year, we received 86

books. I’m proud to work along-side some experienced and thoughtful public-policy experts. We begin evaluating the books in December of each year. My colleagues selfl essly spend many hours from then until March, reading dozens of public policy books on a wide range of topics and writing reviews. We discuss, and defend, the various books that stood out to us individu-ally. Eventually, we start to align around a number of books. It is a challenging process, because there are many good public-policy books produced in this country every year and we want to do them justice. As to how that process ends, you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to fi nd out!”

Do these books infl uence federal public policy?

“We hope so! One of the reasons the Donner Prize mat-ters is because it celebrates, and brings to broader public atten-tion, a range of books that look at diverse and timely topics. That timeliness means that these books are exploring issues that keep politicians and policy-makers up at night. These are the books that we, as a jury, think policy-makers and other engaged Canadians should be reading right now. I would also mention that it isn’t just federal public policy with which these books deal. In this country, we have four orders of government—federal, provincial, municipal, and indigenous—and they have different responsibili-ties, constituencies and priorities. Every year, the Donner Prize shortlist confi rms that public policy doesn’t stop at the Rideau Canal. These are books that should be read by all policy-mak-ers. These are books that should matter to all Canadians.”


Anne McClellan talks about this year’s Donner Prize shortlist and this week’s event in Toronto, also known as the ‘Giller for public-policy wonks.’

Anne McClellan, head of the Donner Prize jury, says ‘One of the reasons the Donner Prize matters is because it celebrates, and brings to broader public attention, a range of books that look at diverse and timely topics. That timeliness means that these books are exploring issues that keep politicians and policymakers up at night.’ The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

Back to the Well: Rethinking the Future of Water, by Marq de Villers, Goose Lane Editions, 378 pp., $32.95.

Middle Power, Middle Kingdom: What Canadians Need to Know about China in the 21st Century, by David Mulroney, Allen Lane/Penguin Canada, $32.

From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Nation: A Road Map for All Canadians, by Greg Poelzer & Ken S. Coates, UBC Press, 366 pp., $32.95.

Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World, by Robert Lacroix & Louis Maheu, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 308 pp., $49.95.

What Is Government Good At?: A Canadian Answer, by Donald J. Savoie, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 388 pp., $34.95.


HILL CLIMBERS POLITICAL STAFFERS

A number of new staff recently joined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s offi ce

in the Langevin Block, including Hilary Leftick as an adviser to Mr. Trudeau’s role as youth minister and Dave Sommer as the offi ce’s digital creative lead, among others.

Ms. Leftick is a former executive pro-ducer of POP Montréal, an international music festival in the city, and was director of volunteer mobilization for the Liberal Party’s 2015 campaign. She’s been lauded for revamping the way the party reached out to, engaged with, and trained volun-teers by campaign co-chair and now PMO chief of staff Katie Telford and principal secretary Gerald Butts, as reported by Huffi ngton Post Canada last fall.

Mr. Sommer was director of cre-ative and content for the Liberal Party before and during the 2015 campaign, starting back in March 2014, according to his LinkedIn profi le. He helped conceive, write, and fi eld-produce “digital video advertisements,” among other tasks. He’s also a former senior producer with the Sun News Network in Toronto, starting in December 2011 (a few months after the network launched) until February 2014.

Before that, Mr. Sommer worked for CTV, starting in 2003 as a writer, and producer for CTV News and later for CTV Creative Agency. He’s also worked for 940 News Radio, and for fi ve months in 2000, interned at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at NBC Studios.

Amreet Kaur is now helping with media relations in the PMO. She was most recently working as a community relations adviser in the Ontario Liberal caucus’ re-search bureau at Queen’s Park, and before that was MPP liaison and public appoint-ments aide to Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

According to her LinkedIn profi le, she started at Queen’s Park in September 2010 as a policy and research intern to the minister of labour, and has also been an offi ce man-ager and scheduler to Ontario Citizenship and Immigration Minister Michael Chan.

She attended the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus as part of Erindale College, studying an undergrad in political science, during which time she was direc-tor of the university’s women’s centre.

James MacMillan is now a writer in the PMO, and Jeevan Singh has also recently joined the offi ce as a correspondence writer. Mr. Singh was recently working as a real estate agent for Keller Williams Realty Inc. in Ottawa.

Olivia Pineau has joined the PMO as an assistant to both Ms. Telford and Mr. Butts. Until recently, she was also work-ing on Queen’s Park as a special assistant for operations to Ontario’s Health and

Long-Term Care Minister Eric Hoskins, and spent two months last summer as an intern to Ontario Labour Minister Kevin Flynn. She’s also previously interned in the Ontario Liberal caucus service bureau at Queen’s Park (but left just before Ms. Kaur started, based on LinkedIn).

During the 2015 election, she was a campaign volunteer in York Centre, Ont., and Davenport, Ont., both in Toronto, and volunteered on nomination day for now-Liberal MP Bill Blair in Scarborough Centre, Ont. She’s been involved with the Ontario Young Liberals, volunteered on Mr. Trudeau’s 2013 leadership campaign as a campus and youth organizer, and was president of the Queen’s University Liberal Association during her time as the school, where she studied an undergrad in political science.

Samantha Khalil is executive assistant to both Ms. Telford and Mr. Butts.

Finally, Tasha Ismail is now a special assistant for appointments in the PMO. Yet another former Queen’s Park staffer, Ms. Ismail was most recently a policy adviser to Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Zimmer.

There are many former Queen’s Park staffers now working for the new Liberal government, in ministerial offi ces and in the PMO, meaning much experience and expertise has been poached from the of-fi ces of the Ontario Liberal government of late.

From October 2014 until July 2015, Ms. Ismail was MPP liaison and operations aide to the Ontario Labour Minister, mean-ing she may be familiar with Ms. Pineau from her time as an intern in that offi ce. Before that, she was executive assistant to Nova Scotia’s Liberal Justice Minister Diana Whalen (who is also the province’s deputy premier) for a year, starting in November 2013.

Ms. Ismail is a former senior manager of political operations and outreach in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe region for the Liberal Party of Canada, and has also previously briefl y served as an EA to a fed-eral Liberal MP, according to her LinkedIn profi le. Now in the PMO, she works under director of appointments Mary Ng.

Meanwhile, over in the Liberal Research Bureau (the LRB)—which is overseen by managing director Brett Thalmann—Tahiya Bakht is a special assistant for Ontario affairs. She also previously worked on Queen’s Park, most recently as an offi ce manager to the Ontario Energy Minister, but before that in the Ontario Liberal cau-cus’ research offi ce as a special assistant, after starting off in the summer of 2014 as an intern (meaning she’s likely familiar with Ms. Kaur in the PMO). She graduated from McMaster University in 2014.

Before that, during the summer of 2013, she interned in the operations division of Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s offi ce. In the summer of 2012 she interned for then Ontario Training, Colleges and Universities Minister Glen Murray.

Also now working in the LRB is Kazim Habib, a special assistant for operations and outreach. He was a youth organizer for the Liberal Party in Ontario ahead of and during the 2015 election, and previ-

ously worked as an intern on now Liberal MP Adam Vaughan’s 2014 by-election race, which saw him elected as an MP for the fi rst time in Trinity-Spadina, Ont.

He was elected co-president of the Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill Young Liberals in September 2014, at which time he also joined the executive of the Young Liberals of Canada’s University of Water-loo branch, where he studied a bachelor in arts (political science) and business, with a specialization in global governance. He also became vice president of communi-cations at the Waterloo Political Science Student Association that month—a busy one, according to his LinkedIn profi le.

Teneycke now a consultant, registered lobbyist

Since late last year, many politicos have been wondering what former Conserva-tive Party campaign spokesperson Kory Teneycke has been up to post-election, and Hill Climbers fi nally has an answer: he’s working as a consultant at his own public affairs fi rm, Coriolis Public Affairs Inc., and was recently hired to serve for a time as a registered lobbyist for Grain Growers of Canada.

A former communications director to then prime-minister Stephen Harper, Mr. Teneycke left the Hill in 2009 and later helped launch the Sun News Network in 2011. The network came to an end in February 2015. Mr. Teneycke served as a campaign spokesperson for the Conser-vative Party’s 2015 campaign. He’s also previously been executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, and back in 2007 was hired as director of the Conservative Party’s parliamentary research bureau, dubbed the Conservative Resource Group (CRG).

Based on Industry Canada corporation fi lings, Mr. Teneycke fi rst registered Corio-lis Public Affairs as a Canadian corpora-tion on April 21, 2015, a few months after the Sun News Network closed, with an Ottawa address and himself listed as the company’s sole principal and consultant.

In recent weeks, offi cially starting April 14, Mr. Tenecyke became the registered lob-byist for Grain Growers of Canada, while the company is in the process of hiring a new executive director (who typically is the registered government lobbyist for this group). While a new executive director had not yet been hired as of fi ling deadline last week, it was expected a new one would be announced shortly—at that point, Mr. Teneycke would no longer by a lobbyist for Grain Growers of Canada.

Until then, and since April 14, Mr. Tene-cyke is the organization’s lobbyist.

“He has been great at helping us out,” said Gary Stanford, president of Grain Growers of Canada, in an email response to Hill Climbers.

That said, he’s set up to lobby the gov-ernment—including the Prime Minister’s Offi ce and departments like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Environment Canada, Global Affairs Canada, and Health Canada (which includes the respective minister’s offi ces)—on agriculture, the bud-get, economic development, and research and development, including specifi cally on advocating for the ratifi cation of the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership and the Grain Transpor-tation Act, among other things.

He is also registered to lobby on behalf of PGW Defense Technologies.

Mr. Teneycke did not respond to a call from Hill Climbers at the number listed for his public affairs fi rm.

Former Grain Growers executive director joins Conservative OLO

Grain Growers of Canada’s former executive director, Brian Rogers, is now working in the offi ce of interim offi cial opposition leader Rona Ambrose, the Con-servative MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland, Alta., and is overseeing Question Period preparations as QP director in the OLO. In this role, he works closely with QP adviser Mike MacDonell.

Located at 131 Queen St. in downtown Ottawa, the Conservative OLO is run by chief of staff Gary Keller, aided by deputy chief of staff David McArthur. The offi ce has been allocated a $4,4-million budget by Parliament for the 2016-17 year.

In other staffi ng news, Bradley Davey, who was a senior caucus liaison in the Conservative parliamentary research bu-reau (dubbed the Conservative Resources Group, or the CRG) last Parliament, has stayed on the Hill to work for the Conser-vative offi cial opposition in the same role.

Also working in the CRG is Grant Ding-wall as an opposition researcher. He also previously worked in the offi ce last Parlia-ment, most recently as a researcher for special projects in the CRG, and as a video specialist in the offi ce before that. He’s also previously spent roughly a year working as a special assistant to former Ontario Pro-gressive Conservative MPP Rob Milligan. A Carleton University grad, he served for a time as president of the Campus Conserva-tives group.

Mr. Dingwall started working in the Conservative research bureau while still a student as an operations offi cer and later junior video specialist. Back in 2013, he was one of the Conservative Party interns identifi ed as staging a “protest” behind Mr. Trudeau while he held a news confer-ence by the Centennial Flame on Parlia-ment Hill. One other intern identifi ed as a fake “protestor,” Stav Nitka, also still works on the Hill as a committees coordinator in the Conservative Whip’s Offi ce.


New PMO staffers, including youth adviser, digital creative lead

HILL CLIMBERSBY LAURA RYCKEWAERT

Former Conservative campaign spokesperson Kory Teneycke is a now a consultant and recently a registered lobbyist for Grain Growers of Canada.

Amreet Kaur is now doing media relations work in the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn

Tahiya Bakht is a special assistant for Ontario affairs in the LRB. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn

Former Conservative campaign spokesperson Kory Tenecyke is now working as a consultant with his own fi rm, Coriolis Public Affairs. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

Tasha Ismail is helping out with public appointments in the PMO. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201626HILL LIFE PARTIES

PARTY CENTRALB Y R A C H E L A I E L L O

Harper book wins, wine fl ows at

Politics and the Pen Last Wednesday in a packed ballroom

in downtown Ottawa, Stephen Harper was the subject of thunderous applause for the fi rst time in many months as The Globe and Mail journalist John Ibbitson was announced as the winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Stephen Harper.

The 16th annual Politics and the Pen Gala returned to the Château Laurier to support the Writers’ Trust, Canadian authors, and Canadi-an politics, and it was a glamorous, good time.

The evening began with a cocktail recep-tion where parliamentarians mingled with Canadian authors, Hill journalists, strate-gists, lobbyists, bureaucrats and staffers. Servers circled the room offering canapés including tuna and tomatillo type salsa on toast, a cone of bison tartare, cucumber roll sushi, and falafel and trays of sparkling champagne, and white and red wine.

For many, the evening was a reunion. For others, it was a place to chat arms-down about anything and everything.

One lobbyist cynically remarked to Party Central that a bomb could go off in the room and the world would be a better place. But CBC’s Peter Mansbridge was in the room, which left Party Central with the philosophi-cal question of: if a major incident happened involving some of Canada’s highest-profi le peo-ple and he wasn’t there to report on it, did it really happen?

Once the lights fl ickered, House Speaker Geoff Regan took to the stage to usher attendees into the main ballroom for the meat and potatoes of the evening. Guests slowly made their way to their tables and made introductions to their seatmates before MCs Catherine Clark and Ben Mulroney took to the stage. The two had perfectly quaffed hair and took command of the room, looking downright prime ministerial. Or at least that’s the joke they made, each announcing they’d be running for party leadership posi-tions—Ms. Clark for the Conservatives and Mr. Mulroney for the NDP. The joke went on, as they announced some of their poli-cies, throwing jokes out about pipelines, balanced budgets, and the Leap Manifes-to—or as Mr. Mulroney called it, the NDP’s version of assisted dying.

There was a humorous video starring again Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner and Global News’ Tom Clark. They were in search of a good ambassador for Atlantic Canada and had auditions for the gig that included Liberal MP Gudie Hutchings singing with her caucus mate Sean Fraser on the bagpipes, and NDP MP Daniel Blaikie doing a jig, with the help of a stunt-double. Then a ringer was brought in to audition: Jean Chrétien, who promised

his work of diplomacy would include giving Republican front-runner Donald Trump the Shawinigan handshake.

Then it was time for dinner, which Party Central thought was a hit: a salmon niçosie to start, followed by a spinach and quail ballotine and duck confi t barley risotto, and a delicious raspberry macaroon to cap it off. Like the Canadian books packed into the gift bags, it’s nice to try something new and each plate was something I’d never seen served at the Château before, which, as a social columnist, is refreshing.

Once plates were cleared, it was time to announce the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize winner. But fi rst, the crowd took a moment of silence for author, broadcaster and politician Jean Lapierre, who died in a plane crash last month. Then, each author got a video tribute and it was time to open the envelope an-nouncing Mr. Ibbitson’s big win, prompting a lobbyist and former Tory staffer at Party Central’s table to exclaim that it felt good “to cheer for the boss again,” to which a Conser-vative MP replied it “might be the last time.”

Then the crowd fi ltered out and down the hall to Zoé’s lounge for one of a few after-parties. And, as it always does, the party went on well into the night.

The guest list was stacked for this hot ticket. And to save reciting the names of half the phone-book north of the Queensway, Party Central will just say about half the cabi-

net and at least 40 MPs from all sides were in attendance, with similar numbers from the Parliamentary Press Gallery, 50 or so authors, and a good chunk of The Hill Times’ list of the Top 100 Lobbyists.

Among some of the notable and somewhat rare attendees at these kinds of events was a chunk of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s PMO, including director of communications Kate Purchase, director of issues management Zita Astravas, and deputy chief of staff Jeremy Broadhurst.

Top public servants in the room included deputy minister of Health Simon Kennedy and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick. From the Ontario political scene was former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty and current special adviser to government Peter Donolo.

Ottawa city councillor and author Jody Mitic; AFN National Chief Perry Bel-legarde; and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz were there also.

After getting the taste of being dressed to the nines and bumping shoulders with fellow Hillites, by the end of the evening, Party Cen-tral was overhearing a lot of anticipation for the June 4, 150th anniversary Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner. Get your dates!

The Hill Times

Canada 2020’s Don Newman and Politics and the Pen co-chair Elizabeth Gray-Smith.

The 16th Annual Politics and the Pen gala went down in Ottawa on April 20.

Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr and NDP MP Charlie Angus.

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer and his wife Jill.

Winner of the $25,000 prize John Ibbitson.

Writers’ Trust publicist Becky Toyne.

The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin and his daughter Kristina.

Vicki Heyman, Conservative MP Lisa Raitt, and U.S. Ambassador Bruce Heyman

Liberal MPs Rodger Cuzner and Judy Foote.

AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde.

CTV’s Glen McGregor and Maple Leaf Strategies’ Phil von Finckenstein.

Award fi nalist author Andrew Nikiforuk and his wife, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

Hosts of the evening, Catherine Clark and Ben Mulroney.

The Globe and Mail’s Campbell Clark and John Ibbiston, Maclean’s mag’s John Geddes, and award fi nalist author Greg Donaghy.

The Hill Times’ Ally Foster, Rachel Aiello, and Kate Malloy, with consultant Stephen Hendrie.

Rogers’ Heidi Bonnell and the NAC’s Rosemary Thompson.

The Hill Times photographs by Jake Wright

and Matthew Usherwood

Politics and the Pen co-chair Patrick Kennedy and House Speaker Geoff Regan having a bit of fun.


HILL LIFE PARTIES

CBC’s Joanne Chianello and Robyn Bresnahan.

PMO staffer Brittney Kerr and former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty.

Clerk of the PCO Michael Wernick and PMJT’s director of issues management Zita Astravas.

Policy Director to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Robert Asselin.

Design consultant Kelly Mounce and Jane Kennedy.

Envrionment Minister Catherine McKenna.

Last year’s winner Joseph Heath with author Denise Chong.

The Globe and Mail’s Robyn Doolittle and former PBO Kevin Page.

CBC’s The National host Peter Mansbridge.

PMJT’s Director of Communications Kate Purchase and her husband Perry Tsergas.

Earnscliffe’s Velma McColl and CTV’s Don Martin.

Douglas Knight, chair of the Writers’ Trust.

i2 Ideas & Issues Advertising’s Jane Kennedy and the PM’s deputy chief of staff Jeremy Broadhurst.

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz.

House Speaker Geoff Regan and Politics & the Pen co-chair Maureen Boyd.

Politics & the Pen co-chairs Patrick Kennedy and Dan Madar.

iPolitics’ reporter and author Janice Dickson.

The Globe and Mail’s Bob Fife and government representative in the Senate Peter Harder.

Former NDP MP Megan Leslie. Award fi nalist author Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

Heymans host Shaughnessy Cohen nominees night before in Rockcliff e

The Hill Times photographs by Jake

Wright and Matthew Usherwood

Politics and the Pen hosts stacked guestlist

The fi nalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen prize for the best political book of the year: Greg Donaghy, Andrew Nikiforuk, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, John Ibbitson, and Norman Hillmer.

The Hill Times’ editor Kate Malloy and U.S. Ambassador Bruce Heyman.

Chair of the Writers’ Trust Douglas Knight.

Writers’ Trust’s Katrina Afonso, Bluesky’s Elizabeth Gray-Smith, and Writers’ Trust’s Becky Toyne.

Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault and Jane Kennedy.

Vicki Heyman and columnist and professor Andrew Cohen.

The crowd at the American ambassador’s residence April 19.

The Château Laurier was packed with politicos and top authors on April 20.


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MAY 107:30-9:00 AM

OTTAWA MARRIOTT HOTEL

EVENTS

WOMENIN

FINANCEPRESENTED BY:

PRESENTED BY:

On May 10 join Hill Times Events as we explore what it will take to encourage greater participation of women in fi nance. Opening remarks will be delivered by the Minister of

Small Business and Tourism Ms. Bardish Chagger, MP (Waterloo, Ont.).

This session will explore why there has been a decline in women-owned small to medium sized enterprises, the percentage of women serving on corporate boards and

the importance for teaching fi nancial literacy to women and girls.

There is no charge to attend for Hill Times subscribers and $20.00 for non-subscribers. Advance registration is required.

hilltimes.com/events/WIF.html

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 25, 201630FEATURE EVENTS

MONDAY, APRIL 25 House Sitting—The House is on a break this week,

but it returns May 2 for three weeks and will every weekday until May 20, it breaks for one week, and returns again on May 30. It’s scheduled to sit for four weeks until Thursday, June 23, when it breaks for the summer.

TUESDAY, APRIL 26Cabinet Meeting—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

is expected to hold a Cabinet meeting today in Ottawa. For more information, call the PMO Press Offi ce at 613-957-5555.

Carleton University to Host Seminar to Celebrate Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s 125th Birth Anniversary—Hosted by Carleton University president Roseann O’Reilly Runte and India High Commissioner to Canada Vishnu Prakash. 9 a.m.-4 p.m., second fl oor atrium, River Building, Carleton University, Ottawa. RSVP to [email protected]

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27Donner Canadian Foundation Award Ceremony—The

18th anniversary of the Donner Prize to reward excellence and innovation in public policy writing by Canadians for 2015-2016, will be held on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 6 p.m. at The Carlu, 444 Younge St. Invitation only.

THURSDAY, APRIL 28Conservative MP Tom Kmiec Fundraiser: Trudeau

2.0: How Conservatives Must Respond—Cocktail and private dinner with Conservative MP Tom Kmiec, April 28, cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m. and dinner at 6:30 p.m. The Polish Canadian Cultural Centre, 3015 15 Street NE, Calgary, Alta. Special guest speaker: Conser-vative MP Jason Kenney, $100. Tickets online at http://tomkmiec.ca/april28

MONDAY, MAY 2 House Sitting—The House returns May 2 for three

weeks and will every weekday until May 20, it breaks for one week, and returns again on May 30. It’s sched-uled to sit for four weeks until Thursday, June 23, when it breaks for the summer.

Melanoma Monday Skin Cancer Screening Clinic and Reception—House Speaker Geoff Regan, Liberal MP Bill Casey, and the Canadian Dermatology Associa-tion will be hosting a skin cancer screening clinic and reception on Monday, May 2, 2016 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in 216-N, Centre Block. For more information visit dermatology.ca or email [email protected].

Reclaiming the Blue Helmet: Canada’s Role in Peacekeeping and UN Accountability—The Human Rights Research and Education Centre presents a dis-tinguished panel (Stephen Lewis, Peggy Mason, Mario Joseph & Beatrice Lindstrom) discussing account-ability and other challenges facing UN Peacekeeping and how a re-engaged Canada can show leadership in addressing them. Opening remarks by Allan Rock. More info: http://cdp-hrc.uottawa.ca/ Fauteux Hall, FTX147 (University of Ottawa, 57 Louis Pasteur). May 2, 5-7pm. Free.

Electoral Reform in 2016—NDP MP Nathan Cullen and Conservative MP Scott Reid will talk about electoral reform in 2016. Hear what the NDP and Conservative critics have to say about keeping the Liberal government accountable as their voting reform initiative goes forward. Let’s build a politically legitimate reform that works for all parties and all Canadians. Fair Vote Canada local chapter AGM; open to public; free admission. Tom Brown Arena, 141 Bayview Road. Doors open 6:30 pm, AGM business 7 p.m.-8 p.m.; speakers 8 p.m.

TUESDAY, MAY 3 Cabinet Meeting—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

is expected to hold a Cabinet meeting today in Ottawa. For more information, call the PMO Press Offi ce at 613-957-5555.

Auditor General to Table Spring Reports—Audi-tor General Michael Ferguson will release the spring reports on May 3. The reports will cover: venture capital action plan; detecting and preventing fraud in the citi-zenship program; the governor in council appointments process in administration tribunals; drug benefi ts and Veterans Affairs Canada; Canadian Army Reserve-National Defence; and a special examinations of PPP Canada Inc. and Via Rail Canada Inc. There will be a media lockup 6 a.m.-9:45 a.m., Offi ce of the Auditor General of Canada, 240 Sparks St., followed by a news conference at 11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. at the National Press Theatre, 150 Wellington St., Ottawa.

18th Annual World Press Freedom Day Awards Luncheon—At the Chateau Laurier Ballroom at 11:30 a.m. Keynote speaker will be Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner. The CCWPF Press Freedom Award will go to a Canadian journalist who has made an outstanding contribution to press freedom or freedom of expression, or suffered in their name in the past year. Celebrate the work of cartoonists from around the world in the 16th Annual Editorial Cartoon Contest. Tickets are $65 or $120 for two, $480 for a table of eight.

Nestlé Canada Parliamentary Reception—All parlia-mentarians are invited to join Nestlé Canada’s business leaders from across the country to celebrate 150 years of Nestlé ‘Good Food, Good Life’. May 3, 5:30 p.m.-8 p.m., Daly’s Restaurant, The Westin Ottawa Hotel. RSVP to Laura Seguin [email protected] or call 613-235-1400.

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Pub-lishers of Canada (SOCAN)—Invites all parliamentar-ians and staff to come celebrate Canadian music talent at a reception and special live performances by Karim Ouellet and Sam Roberts on May 3 in the Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room 160-S in Centre Block from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The event will showcase music performances from English and French top-chart art-ists. RSVP by April 29 to [email protected]

Movie Night on the Hill—Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will host along with Telefi lm Canada, her fi rst Move Night on the Hill on May 3, the Canadian Screen and Oscar Award winner, Room. 7 p.m., Canadian Museum of History, 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, Que.

CPAWS Talks: Nature Needs Half—An exciting evening that blends science and art, featuring keynote speaker international award-winning conservationist and visionary Harvey Locke and nature rap artist Baba Brinkman, as we explore the importance of large-landscape conservation and why Nature Needs Half. Monday, May 2, 7 p.m.– 9:30 p.m. at the Library and Archives Canada Auditorium. The evening will also include local Ottawa/Gatineau artists, door prizes, and a silent auction! Come bid on an evening at Cirque du Soleil, outdoor gear from MEC, a night at the Wakefi eld Mill and so much more! Tickets: www.cpaws.org

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4 Liberal Caucus Meeting—The Liberals will meet in

Room 237-C Centre Block on Parliament Hill. For more information, please call Liberal Party media relations at [email protected] or 613-627-2384.

Conservative Caucus Meeting—The Conservatives will meet for their national caucus meeting. For more information, contact Cory Hann, director of commu-nications, Conservative Party of Canada at [email protected]

NDP Caucus Meeting—The NDP caucus will meet from 9:15 a.m.-11 a.m. in Room 112-N Centre Block, on Wednesday. Please call the NDP Media Centre at 613-222-2351 or [email protected]

The Canadian International Council (CIC) National Capital Branch: An Evening with Lord David Owen on Why the UK Should Leave the European Union—David Owen is one of the UK’s most distinguished political fi gures and public intellectuals. He is a former U.K. foreign secretary and EU peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia. It is a signifi cant development in the cur-rent U.K. referendum campaign that he has decided his country should leave the EU. June 23 is the date of the referendum, and Lord Owen has dramatically entered the debate with a new book Europe Restruc-tured, Vote to Leave. May 4, 5 p.m. (registration and cash bar); 6 p.m. (presentation begins), Rideau Room, Sheraton Hotel, 150 Albert Street, Ottawa, [email protected] or 613-903-4011

TUESDAY, MAY 10CCSA Hosting Communications Services Recep-

tion—The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA), which represents 120 independent and entrepreneurial cable, telephone and internet companies, is hosting a reception in the Commonwealth Room in Centre Block,

May 10, from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. All Senators, Members of Parliament and staff are invited to attend and better fa-miliarize themselves with our nation’s communications service providers. For more information or to RSVP, please contact Cynthia Waldmeier at 613-233-8906 or [email protected].

Canada at the World Humanitarian Summit: Op-portunities for Leadership & Legacy—The Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), the Canadian Association of International Development Pro-fessionals (CAIDP), and the School of International De-velopment and Global Studies (SIDGS) are co-hosting a public event at the Library & Archives (395 Wellington St.), May 10, 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m. The event includes a humanitarian expert panel, a political response panel, networking reception, and a humanitarian fair. The event is free and open to the public –register on Event-brite. For more information please contact Sara Thaw ([email protected]).

The Canadian Dental Association’s (CDA) Days on the Hill—May 10 and 11. CDA’s Days on the Hill connects leaders from Canada’s 21,000 dentists with parliamentar-ians to discuss important issues pertaining to oral health. The CDA is the national voice for dentistry in Canada and is dedicated to the promotion of optimal oral health for Canadians. For further information, please contact Bonnie Kirkwood at [email protected]

An Evening with the Canadian Dental Associa-tion—The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) invites you to its annual Parliamentary reception for friends of the dental profession, parliamentarians, and staff on Tuesday May 10th at 5:30 p.m. at the Métropoli-tain restaurant. Refreshments will be provided. To RSVP, please contact Bonnie Kirkwood at [email protected]

It’s movie night on the Hill, May 3, showing Room

Parliamentary Calendar

Continued on page 31


FEATURE EVENTS

TUESDAY, MAY 10Launch of the Rio Tinto Award for Indigenous Stu-

dents—A reception co-hosted by Rio Tinto, Canada’s largest mining and metals business, and Indspire, an indigenous-led charity that invests in the education of indigenous people, celebrating the launch of the Rio Tinto Award for Indigenous Students. The reception is a chance for parliamentarians and industry stakeholders to meet and mingle with indigenous fi nancial award recipients in order to learn their experiences and celebrate indigenous education in Canada. Alfredo Barrios, chief executive of Rio Tinto Aluminum; Roberta Jamieson, president and CEO of Indspire; Indspire fi nancial award recipients; MPs and Senators; industry stakeholders, May 10, 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Drawing Room, Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel, 1 Rideau St. Ottawa.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11 Liberal Caucus Meeting—The Liberals will meet in

Room 237-C Centre Block on Parliament Hill. For more information, please call Liberal Party media relations at [email protected] or 613-627-2384.

Conservative Caucus Meeting—The Conservatives will meet for their national caucus meeting. For more informa-tion, contact Cory Hann, director of communications, Conservative Party of Canada at [email protected]

NDP Caucus Meeting—The NDP caucus will meet from 9:15 a.m.-11 a.m. in Room 112-N Centre Block, on Wednesday. Please call the NDP Media Centre at 613-222-2351 or [email protected]

Canadian Rail Summit 2016—Canadian Rail Summit 2016, Canada’s leading rail event. Explore cutting-edge products and services from 50 tradeshow exhibitors, and choose from a wide variety of technical and conference sessions on key industry issues such as competitiveness, safety and emerging technologies. Register at www.rail-can.ca/crs2016 and for more information, contact Janet Greene at 613-564-8109 [email protected] or Lynn Raby at 613-237-3888 or [email protected]

Fit for purpose? CSO Transformation for Agenda 2030—The Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) is hosting its annual conference on May 11 and May 12 at the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health. The 2016 CCIC annual conference seeks to raise the profi le of the Canadian international development and humanitarian assistance sector and its important work. This landmark event brings together stakeholders from international development and hu-manitarian civil society organizations (CSOs), key government offi cials, relevant policy makers and academics from Canada and abroad. ‘Fit for purpose: CSO transformation for Agenda 2030’ will examine the challenges and opportunities facing CSOs in this new era of global development cooperation. For more info see: www.ccic.ca. Follow #intlcoopdays on Twitter.

Talent for Innovation: Harnessing Canada’s Re-search Advantage—Join Mitacs and leaders from busi-ness, government, and academia to examine strategies to effectively engage and employ research innovators. Tuesday, May 11, National Arts Centre, Ottawa. Forum: 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m., and reception 4:30 p.m.-6 p.m.

THURSDAY, MAY 12 Polytechnics Canada Annual Policy Conference—

This year’s conference theme is “Learning that Works: Polytechnic Education.” Speakers include disruptive innovation expert Michael Horn, best-selling higher ed-ucation author Jeff Selingo and ESDC deputy minister Ian Shugart. The conference will be held on May 12th and 13th, 2016 at Humber College in Toronto, Ont. For more information visit polytechnicscanada.ca.

Ottawa Branch Monarchist League of Canada Celebrates Queen’s 90th Birthday—Senator Serge Joyal will deliver an address ‘Canada’s Constitutional Mon-archy: Honougin a Lifetime of Service by Her Majesty,

Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. NAC director of communications Rosemary Thompson will emcee. The event is sold out.

TUESDAY, MAY 17 Travers Debates—Maclean’s iconoclastic humourist

Scott Feschuk, journalist Katie Simpson, and Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner and NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau are all going to be on the same stage May 17, at the NAC. Register at www.traversdebates.ca

Merit Canada Reception—Métropolitain Brasserie & Restaurant, 700 Sussex Dr., May 17, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. RSVP to [email protected]

The Forest Sector: Contributing to Climate Change Solutions—The Forest Products Association of Canada and FPInnovations will be holding a reception on Wednesday, May 18 to showcase how the forest prod-ucts industry is using clean tech and innovation to pave the way to a low-carbon economy. The event, which will include leaders from industry and government, will be held at the Rideau Club, 99 Bank St., Ottawa, between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. For more information, please contact [email protected]

THURSDAY, MAY 26Liberal Biennial Convention—The federal Liberals

will hold their convention in Winnipeg, Man., Thursday, May 26, to Sunday, May 29, 2016.

Conservative Convention—The federal Conserva-tives will hold their convention in Vancouver, B.C., May 26 to May 29, 2016.

SATURDAY, JUNE 4 Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner—It’s the

150th Anniversary of the Press Gallery at its Annual Gallery Dinner, Saturday, June 4, 5:30 p.m., Canadian Museum of History, River View Salon. The dinner will be held in the Grand Hall at 7 p.m. Dress: cocktail elegant (black tie optional). For press gallery members and guests only.

TUESDAY, JUNE 7Registration Now Open CIPMM’s 27th Annual

National Workshop—June 7-8, 2016. The workshop fee is $875 plus HST and includes access to all key-note and breakout sessions. More than 400 delegates from PWGSC, ESD, DND, HC, RCMP, CSEC, DFATD, DFO, TBS, NRCan, IC, AAND, CIC, and LAC. Senior government offi cials from the lead departments and agencies will be at the networking reception. There will be exhibitors, subject matter experts represent-ing both the public and private sectors. Please contact CIPMM Secretariat at [email protected] or at 613-725-0980.

MAY 2017 Conservative Party Leadership Convention—The Con-

servatives will elect their next leader on May 27, 2017, Dan Nowlan, chair of the party’s leadership election organizing committee announced last week. The party is urging Conservative Party members to buy memberships or renew them in order to vote. For more information, con-tact Cory Hann, director of communications, Conservative Party of Canada, at 613-697-5614.

The Parliamentary Calendar is a free listing. Send in your political, cultural, or governmental event in a paragraph with all the relevant details under the sub-ject line ‘Parliamentary Calendar’ to [email protected] by Wednesday at noon before the Monday paper. Or fax it to 613-232-9055. We can’t guarantee inclu-sion of every event, but we will defi nitely do our best.


PRESENTED BY WITH THE SUPPORT OF PRODUCED BY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ASSOCIATE SPONSORSMAJOR SPONSOR MEDIA PARTNER

CELEBRATING CANADA’S HIGHEST HONOUR IN THE PERFORMING ARTS

NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE

Enjoy the red carpet reception, the spectacular tribute show with

surprise performers, and the champagne after party!

Cocktails and Canapés Gala Tribute Performance

Champagne, Desserts, Dancing

TICKETS NOW ON SALE

SATURDAY, JUNE 11TH

@govgpaa #ggawards

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CONGRATULATIONS, MICHAEL BUBLÉ, 2016 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S PERFORMING ARTS AWARD LAUREATE

“For me, music was always of massive importance. It just seemed to be woven into the fabric of my life.”

- Michael Bublé, singer and entertainer

Travers Debates happens May 17 in Ottawa

Parliamentary Calendar


Movie Night on the Hill—Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, pictured with comedian Rick Mercer, will host her fi rst Movie Night on Hill along with Telefi lm Canada, the Canadian Screen and Oscar Award winner, Room. May 3, 7 p.m., Canadian Museum of History, 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, Que. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

hilltimes.com/events

On April 21, Hill Times Events hosted a sold-out panel discussion on Global Food Security and Climate Change. Gillian Barth, president and CEO of CARE Canada, presented a new report from the Food Security Policy Group. Following, the distinguished panel commented on how Canada can contribute to global food security.

EVENT SUMMARY

PANEL REMARKSPaul

Hagerman, director, public policy,

Canadian Foodgrains Bank

Small-scale farmers feed most of the world, yet are among the most hungry. And they are feeling the worst impacts of climate change. For the poorest farmers, help must come from public investment in agricultural research, in infrastructure like irrigation, roads and markets, in farm organizations, and in tools to reduce risks, from weather and from uncertain land tenure. Canada said that it’s back. That it wants to be a global leader in addressing climate change and refocus development assistance on the poorest and most vulnerable. We can do that. We can be a world leader in reducing poverty and hunger. But we need to put money behind our rhetoric. It’s time for Canada to reinvest in agriculture and food security.

Josianne Gauthier, director, in-Canada programmes, Development and Peace

Support to small family farmers and their agro-

ecological practices represents one of the most viable solutions to addressing the current climate crisis and feeding the world. It is inconceivable that small family farmers feed 70% of the population, yet most live in poverty and suffer from hunger, which is made all the worse by climate change. Women are particularly marginalized despite

in closing the gender gap alone, could lift 100-150 million people out of hunger. By investing in small family farmers, especially women, Canada can act and respond responsibly both to climate change and food security in the world. Funding should be directed towards: Sustainable agro-ecological practices: supporting movements that defend land rights; ensuring access to seeds; promoting organic practices; etc. Reinforcing and developing the local market: respecting local production; fair trade policies, support for infrastructure that eases access to local markets; etc. Empowering women farmers: giving access to equal training and farming implements; right to land titles; etc.

Renaud de Plaen, program leader, Agriculture and Food Security

Program, IDRCCanada’s International

Development Research Centre addresses food security in developing countries by funding applied research in agriculture and nutrition. The thematic

“Agenda for Food Security and Resilience”, in particular the focus on smallholders, women and youth, resilience of local production systems and nutrition, resonate with IDRC’s own efforts to tackle the multiple dimensions of food security: Food availability - by increasing productivity of underutilized species, more nutritious and resistant crops, reducing postharvest losses. Food accessibility – by increasing market access, adopting value chain approaches, improving income for small holder farmers. Nutrition - by promoting food

more balanced diets. Research is essential to develop, test, and scale-up innovations, inform policy and improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.

Dennis Prouse, vice-president, government affairs, CropLife CanadaIt is important to know

what success looks like, and to celebrate it wherever

we can. We have made tremendous progress in food security and the battle against starvation and malnutrition over the last number of years. The world population has almost doubled, yet we have cut hunger by more than half in the process. The green revolution is what did that – modern agriculture. For all the progress that we have made, the world population is going to 9 billion by 2050. We are going to need a massive increase in global agriculture product yet again in order to feed the world. Both the public and private sectors are looking ahead to deliver solutions for drought resistance, saline tolerance, new pest pressures, improved input usage, increased vitamin content in food and elimination of key allergens. Addressing food security, like any successful effort, is going to be a multipronged team venture. It is going to require governments, NGOs and the private sector, all working together. It’s going to require infrastructure,

science based regulation, and rules based trade. It won’t be easy, but it IS possible.

& Climate ChangeGLOBAL FOOD SECURITY

EVENTS

Gillian Barth, president and CEO, CARE CanadaThey may only work small plots of land, but smallholder farmers hold the answer to developing sustainable food solutions to feed a

prices and climate change. Empowering these farmers is critical if Canada wants to be at the forefront of helping feed a hungry planet. Canada’s food security strategy and renewed approach to international assistance can build on momentum already found in the Paris

Agreement on Climate Change, the Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Canada today faces a unique opportunity to show that it is back, to play its part in combatting climate change and to help the most vulnerable people. Investing in the world’s smallholder farmers is the best way to start.

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