NEWS U.S. ELECTION NEWS PHOENIX FIASCO

NEWS BANK OF CANADA

NEW COMMUNICATIONS MISSING WOMEN INQUIRY

NEWS MISSING & MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN INQUIRY

NEWS ELECTORAL REFORM

Trudeau government serious about a nation-to-nation relationship, changing governance of Canada

Bank of Canada bonuses skyrocket, senior offi cers rewarded for work on new three-year plan

Missing and murdered indigenous women’s inquiry needs to look forward, not just back, say advocates

House Electoral Reform Committee should stop burning daylight and come up with concrete alternatives, says NDP MP Cullen

BY DEREK ABMA

While pundits in the United States, including some in the Republican Party, are taking opportunities to warn about the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency, the Canadian government is not. And inter-national diplomacy experts say this is the right move.

Fen Osler Hampson, director of global security and politics for the Canadian-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), said no matter how unpalatable the idea of a Trump presidency might seem, the government of Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.), must recognize that it is a possibility.

BY RACHEL AIELLO

The two biggest federal public service unions say Public Services Minister Judy Foote has been inaccessible throughout the Phoenix fi asco pay system and that she’s being “disingenuous” about how much she knew about the issues facing the payroll program that has affected more than 80,000 public servants.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) told The Hill Times they have not been able to meet with Ms. Foote (Bonavista-Burin-Trinity, N.L.) for months. Combined, the unions rep-resent more than 225,000 federal employees.

BY DEREK ABMA

Senior offi cers at the Bank of Canada saw bonuses based on their 2015 perfor-mance jump more than 75 per cent from the previous year, according to fi gures ob-tained by The Hill Times.

Data gained through an access-to-in-formation request by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin, show that 39 out of the 65 se-nior offi cers at the country’s central bank earned a combined $653,710 in bonuses, paid out earlier this year based on work done in 2015.

OTTAWA—Commissions of inquiry usu-ally do two things: they notably make

recommendations about the issue at hand, but just as important is the dialogue that takes place through hearings and other communications during the lifetime of the commission.

BY CHRISTOPER GULY

As a national inquiry gets underway into the thousands of indigenous women who have been murdered or have gone missing over the last 30-some years, the Native Women’s As-

sociation of Canada (NWAC) says it hopes this process will help save lives and stop violence the future, but it also voiced concerns about the inquiry’s limited scope.

BY RACHEL AIELLO

As Elvis Presley famously sang, “it’s time for a little less conversation, a little more ac-tion,” and NDP MP Nathan Cullen says the House Special Committee on Electoral Reform should stop burning daylight and come up with concrete alternative voting systems to “hang in the window” for Canadians during the committee’s cross-country tour this fall.

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Canadian government right to keep quiet on Trump, say top experts

Unions criticize Foote’s performance on Phoenix fi asco, claim she’s ‘disingenuous’ on what she knew

TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, NO. 1360 CANADA’S POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT NEWSPAPER MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016 $5.00

EXCLUSIVE POLITICAL COVERAGE: NEWS, FEATURES, AND ANALYSIS INSIDE

HIKINGSHIRTLESSTRUDEAUCREATES A BUZZ P. 2

MEET ROOKIENDP MP DANIELBLAIKIE P. 6

MEL HURTINGDIES, CANADALOSES A LEGEND P. 10

ANDREW CARDOZO

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Status of Women Patty Hajdu pictured last week at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., taking part in the federal government’s ceremony to offi cially launch the Missing and Murdered Women Inquiry. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

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THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 20162FEATURE BUZZ

We may be living through Trudeauma-nia 2.0 right now, but there are still

opportunities to dig deeper into what the fi rst version was all about.

Trudeaumania, written by Paul Litt and published by UBC Press, is due out in October and explores the political phenom-enon that swept Canada in the late 1960s as Pierre Elliott Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party and then prime minister.

A press release promoting the book described what happened as a case of 1960s hippie culture meeting “ambitious Canadian nationalism and the collective excitement generated by the Centennial and Expo 67, with dramatic results.

“Canadians wanted to modernize their nation, differentiate it from the United States, and thwart the threat of Quebec separatism. And Trudeau became their means of doing so. The mania that swept the country was an exercise in national identity formation that would defi ne the values of Canadians for decades to come.”

An excerpt from the book indicated it was mostly fi nished just before Justin Trudeau became prime minister last year. Mr. Litt wrote, rather provocatively: “Those who’d seen the steely glint of authori-tarianism in the mania for Pierre Trudeau could now fear not just dictatorship, but hereditary dictatorship.”

GQ gushes over Trudeau’s style at Vancouver Pride

GQ magazine was impressed with threads Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sported at the Vancouver Pride Parade on July 31, prompting the publication to say he might be “the best dressed world leader” (and apologizing to U.S. President Barack Obama while saying it).

An entry on GQ’s website last week said that “while Trudeau certainly leans heavily on suited looks—he’s gotta look professional, after all—this weekend we got to see him in a more relaxed state while walking with his family in the Vancouver Pride Parade (‘cause he’s not a regular PM, he’s a cool one).”

Mr. Trudeau was wearing white jeans and a snug-fi tting, green, buttoned shirt. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, who joined her prime ministerial husband along with their kids, also looked pretty cool in a similarly coloured jumpsuit with a one-shoulder loop and fl are-bottomed pants.

Mr. Trudeau was the fi rst-ever sitting prime minister to walk in the Vancouver Pride Parade, much like he was for the Toronto Pride Parade earlier last month. The Hill Times has learned that he plans to be part of Montreal’s Pride Parade on Aug. 14, though he won’t make it to Ottawa’s on Aug. 21.

Meanwhile, a few media outlets were all a fl utter after a Peterborough, Ont., family bumped into a shirtless Mr. Trudeau and his family while exploring caves in Gatineau Park a few weeks ago. Alexander Godby, 13, got a selfi e with Mr. Trudeau that made the media rounds. Did we men-tion the prime minister was shirtless? As a result, New York Magazine’s Gabriella Pai-ella was inspired to write an online article last week headlined “Why Don’t I Ever Run Into Shirtless Justin Trudeau When Hiking.”

Local motorcyclist grateful to parliamentary security offi cer

A local motorcyclist was grateful for the help he received from a member of the Par-liamentary Protective Service after his bike was recently clipped by an STO Gatineau city bus along Wellington Street in Ottawa, just west of Parliament Hill.

Scott Rose said he was westbound on Wellington on the afternoon of July 26 when the bus hit the back of his bike, causing him to take a spill and tumble into the busy intersection of Wellington and Kent Street.

Mr. Rose said Const. Alex Lozano im-mediately jumped into action, stopping the traffi c around him and getting the motor-cycle out of the way. He said the STO bus did not stop, but Const. Lozano stopped the next STO bus so that driver could summon an inspector. Const. Lozano then stuck around and translated between Mr. Rose, who speaks only English, and the STO inspector, who was speaking only French.

“Without him there last week, I could have potentially been much more seriously injured and most defi nitely would not have known what to do after this hit-and-run accident,” Mr. Rose said.

Const. Lozano—who was off duty at the time and on his way home—said he was only doing what he hopes a bystander would do for him in a similar situation.

“It’s just one of those things where your conscience kicks in,” he said “How can you walk away from a wounded animal? It hap-pened right in front of me and I was wor-ried [Mr. Rose] was going to get dragged for blocks, because the bus that clipped him didn’t stop at all.”

Mr. Rose said he’s unaware if any charges or disciplinary action for the bus driver are pending.

Lawyers conference in Ottawa to end things on political note

The Canadian Bar Association is hold-ing a conference at the Westin Ottawa this week, and the fi nal day on Sunday, Aug. 14, holds the promise of featuring some juicy political content.

Don Bayne, the lawyer who success-fully defended Sen. Mike Duffy against 31 criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery, will be featured in an hour-long presentation entitled “Litigating in the court of public opinion.”

The session will also include Crown law-yer Jocelyn Speyer, who earlier this year was fi ghting an appeal in the infamous Sha-fi a family honour killings case in Kingston, Ont., for which a decision is still pending.

Following Mr. Bain and Ms. Speyer will be Judy Smith, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who specializes in crisis and repu-tation management for politicians, celebri-ties, and CEOs. She’s the inspiration for hit TV series Scandal.

Mr. Bayne’s and Ms. Speyer’s session starts at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday, and Ms. Smith is scheduled for 10:45 a.m. Policy Options editor-in-chief Jennifer Ditchburn, a former Canadian Press reporter, will moderate both discussions.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould will make a keynote address at this confer-ence on Friday, Aug. 12 at 8 a.m.

Former CTV journalist Gould passes away

Longtime journalist Tom Gould died late last month at the age of 84.

Mr. Gould, who succumbed to cancer at his home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. on July 21, is credited with shaping the CTV News people know today, having been vice-president of the network’s news divi-sion between 1968 and 1976, and helping create shows such as W5 and the recently cancelled Canada AM.

“In many ways, he created the CTV News we have now,” CTV political correspondent Craig Oliver told The Globe and Mail.

Mr. Gould started his journalism career with the Victoria Daily Times in the early 1950s. Later on that decade, he joined the Vancouver Sun, for which he served as its Ottawa correspondent.

He later reported for CBC, reporting from Ottawa and later as an international correspondent, before joining CTV.

Mr. Gould interviewed every Canadian prime minster from Louis St-Laurent to Brian Mulroney, and reported on key world events such as the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile Crisis, and former French president Charles de Gaulle’s controversial “Vive le Québec libre!” speech from Mon-treal in 1967.

He is survived by his wife Jodey Porter, son Thomas Gould, daughters Nancy Dery and Shannon Feldman, and six grandsons.

A celebration of Mr. Gould’s life is sched-uled for Sept. 24 at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake at 2 p.m.

Former Heart and Stroke lobbyist joins Grassroots

Chris Gray has left his position as senior manager of government relations and advocacy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation and is now a senior consultant with Grassroots Public Affairs.

Grassroots is based in the York Region, just north of Toronto, though Mr. Gray, a resi-dent of Carleton Place, Ont., is continuing to work out of the Ottawa area.

Mr. Gray has been named to The Hill Times’ Top 100 Lobbyists list for the past two consecutive years. He had been with the Heart and Stroke Foundation since 2012, and had previously spent seven years in different roles at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, the Heart and Stroke Foundation is advertising online for a new senior manager of government relations. The deadline for applications is Aug. 15.

Globe reporter shunned by Tootoo offi ce

Globe and Mail reporter Laura Stone isn’t getting much respect lately from the offi ce of Nunavut MP Hunter Tootoo.

Mr. Tootoo left his position as fi sheries minster and the Liberal caucus in May, with addiction issues cited. Ms. Stone and the Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief, Robert Fife, reported a few weeks about that part of Mr. Tootoo’s problems, along with drink-ing, was an “inappropriate relationship with a junior female staff member.”

The MP later acknowledged a “consen-sual but inappropriate relationship” in an interview CBC Nunavut.

Ms. Stone tweeted last week that Mr. Tootoo’s offi ce told her, “We will not [be] granting YOU any interviews or respond-ing to YOUR requests.”

dabma@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

New book on Trudeaumania due out in October

HEARD HILLONTHE

BY HILL TIMES STAFF

Considered an iconic Canadian photograph, Pierre Elliott Trudeau slides down a banister at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa during the Liberal leadership convention in 1968. Photograph by Ted Grant

Don Bayne, a lawyer who defended Sen. Mike Duffy, will speak at the upcoming CBA Legal Conference. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

Former CTV journalist Tom Gould passed away last month. Photograph courtesy of Parliamentary Press Gallery/Nancy Dery

Chris Gray is no longer with the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Photograph courtesy of Chris Gray

Globe reporter Laura Stone tweeted last week that she has been cut off by Hunter Tootoo’s offi ce. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

A shirtless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hiking in the Gatineau hills posed with Alexander Godby, and the rest is social media history. Photo-graph courtesy of Alexander Godbysss

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THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 20164NEWS CONSTITUTION

BY CHRISTOPHER GULY

Gov. Gen. David Johnston says many of Canada’s

unwritten constitutional conven-tions should be written down, giv-ing Democracy Watch a valuable ally in its long-running campaign to force the federal government to establish written rules that restrict prime ministerial powers, ranging from calling an election to proroguing Parliament.

“I think we do well by attempt-ing to write more of them without trying to establish a govern-ment of detailed rules,” he said in a recent interview. “We have a responsibility to try to make our systems of government more understandable to the public at large, especially to young people. We also have a duty to take some of the more controversial aspects of government, and where we can, articulate the principles on which those powers are based and make them clearer.”

“I would be very much in fa-vour of publicizing more of what is still unwritten but practised about the Canadian Constitution,” Mr. Johnston added.

Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher told The Hill Times that the Governor General’s sup-port for written constitutional conventions is “very signifi cant,” since he is a “key player” in the conventions.

“He’s essentially saying, ‘I don’t like the situation where I don’t have clear rules, and as a re-sult, it’s almost impossible for me to say no to whatever the prime minister wants me to do,’” said Mr. Conacher. “That the Governor General thinks this is something that should be done will hope-fully trigger the government and the opposition parties to make it happen.”

He added that Mr. Johnston’s comments would also renew Democracy Watch’s efforts to push for written conventions—a campaign the Ottawa-based group launched after a late 2012 Harris/Decima survey found that 84 percent of 2,013 Canadians polled want such clear rules.

Mr. Conacher also noted that if the all-party House Special Committee on Electoral Reform

recommends that Canada adopt a system of proportional repre-sentation—and the government accepts it—“we will likely have a minority government following the next election, so we better have those rules written down beforehand.”

Recent history illustrates the importance of putting consti-tutional conventions on paper, according to Mr. Conacher.

He said that despite the previous Conservative govern-ment’s amendment of the Canada Elections Act in 2007 to set fi xed general election dates on the third Monday in October every four years, former prime minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Heri-tage, Alta.) called a snap election a year later, in October 2008, and received then-governor general Michaëlle Jean’s approval to prorogue Parliament two months after to avoid a non-confi dence vote from the opposition Liberal and New Democratic parties that were determined to topple the To-ries and form a coalition minor-ity government. Ms. Jean again granted Mr. Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament in December 2009 and reconvene it following the Winter Olympics in Vancou-ver.

With the fi rst request, granted on Dec. 4, 2008, Ms. Jean placed two conditions: that Parliament would reconvene soon (it did, on Jan. 26, 2009) and that the govern-ment would deliver a budget, subject to a confi dence motion. It did that too, a day later, and re-ceived the support of the Liberals under their new leader, Michael Ignatieff.

However, Ms. Jean or any governor general would not likely have ignored Mr. Harper’s or any prime minister’s advice regard-ing election calls or prorogation requests, said Mr. Conacher. “We have not seen a governor general say no to a prime minister for decades, because there are no written rules to point to, that if a prime minister breaks them the governor general will say no. So governors general roll over and say yes.”

But they wouldn’t do so, he argued, if unwritten conventions related to prime ministerial pre-rogatives in recalling or prorogu-ing Parliament, calling an elec-tion, or even deciding what can be included in legislation, such as budget bills—which essentially are now informal practices ac-cepted over time—were codifi ed.

“Trudeau has said that he wants to change how the federal government operates to make it more fair and transparent,” said Mr. Conacher. “A great way to do that is to pass a law that adds the unwritten conventions as an

appendix to the Constitution, or at least pass a law that adds the conventions to the Parliament of Canada Act.”

The Supreme Court of Canada could then enforce those written rules, he added.

Mr. Conacher explained that amending the Constitution would not require provincial consensus since Sec. 44 of the 1982 Consti-tution Act allows Parliament to pass laws regarding the executive branch of the federal government, or the Senate and House of Com-mons.

However, constitutional schol-ar Peter Russell, who advised Ms. Jean on the 2008 prorogation request, believes that it would be “very foolish” and a “terrible idea” to either amend the Constitution or implement legislation to pub-lish administrative conventions that deal with how the govern-ment is organized and operates.

“It’s strictly a matter of setting them down in writing, and mak-ing them accessible to the public in very clear language,” explained Mr. Russell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto.

“All Westminster parliamen-tary democracies have not put in their formal constitutions basic rules about appointing prime ministers and forming cabinets. Once you do that, everything can go to the courts, and I don’t think we want the courts deciding if a Senator can sit in cabinet or whether the Governor General has to call an election.”

“We don’t want to judicialize this part of our Constitution. It would be crazy to do that.”

Instead, he favours Canada following the approach taken by New Zealand and later by the United Kingdom, whose govern-ments have each produced Cabi-net manuals.

New Zealand’s has published these guides, which are available on the web, over the last four de-cades. They serve as a “compendi-um of rules, principles and prac-tices of government based on the country’s laws and constitutional conventions,” according to a paper Prof. Russell wrote for a special, soon-to-be-published issue of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Constitutional Studies’s Constitu-tional Forum journal.

Meanwhile, the U.K. govern-ment published its manual in anticipation of a hung Parliament following the 2010 general elec-tion that did result in a Conserva-tive-Liberal Democrat coalition. Written by the executive branch of the British government, the document—also available on the internet—outlines “how the gov-ernment thinks it should use its legal powers in various contexts,” Mr. Russell writes.

Gov. Gen. Johnston said that Canada could also publish cabi-net manuals, covering “how we make law” and “the functioning of the machinery of government lodged in the Privy Council Of-fi ce.”

Prof. Russell pointed out that the PCO already maintains a two-volume handbook, running about 1,500 pages and called the Man-ual of Offi cial Procedure of the Government of Canada, which provides technical detail about past practices and precedents, but which is “almost unusable by the public.”

Instead, he would like the PCO to prepare an online manual in

which anyone could fi nd informa-tion about how Canada’s cabinet and parliamentary system of gov-ernment works, and, as he wrote in his paper, “how the executive intends to govern and how the public can expect it to govern.”

But before these non-en-forceable rules appear in print, there will have to be cross-party consensus as to what those guidelines should be, Mr. Russell added.

“Conventions only work when all the people who are supposed to be bound by them accept them,” he explained. “So the major par-ties—the Liberals, the Conserva-tives, and the NDP—will have to be in agreement, otherwise the conventions are useless.”

However, there is one matter that Prof. Russell said would be best addressed by a constitutional amendment rather than through convention.

Currently, there are no rules governing how soon after a feder-al election Parliament must be re-called. Only Sec. 5 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires that Parliament sit “at least once every 12 months.” Mr. Russell would like the government to use the amending formula under Sec. 44 of the Constitution to enact a rule requiring Parliament to reconvene within a fi xed period of time—somewhere between four and six weeks—following an election.

He explained that Canada would then join the rest of the “parliamentary world” where similar constitutional rules re-garding when parliaments meet post-election are already in place.

Mr. Russell and Carl Baar, a professor emeritus at Brock Uni-versity and an adjunct professor at York University, wrote a piece in The Globe and Mail on March 28, 2016, headlined “Why won’t the Liberals act on Harper’s over-reach on appointments?” In the opinion piece, the two argued in favour in “unwritten” principles or conventions “to ensure that offi -cial conduct is consistent with the

underlying spirit of our written Constitution.”

Declared the two: “One advan-tage of having unwritten conven-tions is that they can change and be adapted to new challenges to our constitutional order. How-ever a disadvantage is that when unexpected abuses of power occur, there is no easily identi-fi ed convention to apply. Thus, for example, there is a caretaker con-vention that requires government to act with restraint between the time Parliament is dissolved and the newly elected parliament meets. Restraint means carrying on with the day-to-day governing of the country but without taking new policy initiatives or making important appointments.

“The caretaker convention emerged in 1896 when Conser-vative prime minister Charles Tupper, after his defeat in the election but before the summon-ing of Parliament, presented the governor-general, Lord Aberdeen, with a long list of appointments. The governor-general refused to sign the more important appoint-ments, including those to the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada. When the House of Commons met after the election, the new prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, supported the governor-general’s refusal and no member of Parliament supported Tupper.”

Ultimately, it will be up to the prime minister to decide on how to deal with unwritten conven-tions. But public comments from the Governor General has likely moved the issue up the list for Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.), who would handle that fi le.

“The government is interested in continuing to explore options to increase the openness and transparency of government, including through enhancing public awareness of and trust in our democratic institutions,” said Byrne Furlong, Ms. Monsef’s leg-islative assistant, in an email.

The Hill Times

Canada’s unwritten constitutional conventions need to be written down, says GG ‘We have a responsibility to try to make our systems of government more understandable to the public at large,’ says Gov. Gen. David Johnston.

Gov. Gen. David Johnston said, ‘We also have a duty to take some of the more controversial aspects of government, and where we can, articulate the principles on which those powers are based and make them clearer.’ The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

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THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 20166ON THE HILL NDP MP DANIEL BLAIKIE

BY ALLY FOSTER

Daniel Blaikie is not your aver-age politician.

The 32-year-old is a philoso-pher-turned-electrician, who traded his steel-toed boots for a suit and tie and followed in the footsteps of his father in an attempt to take down the Harper government in his “corner of the country.”

Mr. Blaikie gives a deep, good-natured laugh when asked about his eclectic CV, admitting that he’s never been captivated by one interest, but that politics was “always a constant” in his life. Mr. Blaikie grew up the son of former veteran NDP MP Bill Blaikie, who won that same riding nine times over the course of a 30-year illustrious political career in the House. His father, who cam-paigned for him in the last elec-tion, taught him how the power of politics can change people’s lives for the better.

“I grew up in an area that for decades had an NDP MP,” he said, referring to Elmwood-Transcona, Man. “And those are the politics that I subscribe to, in terms of fi ghting for social, economic, and environmental justice.”

Bill Blaikie, who represented the party’s left and was a parlia-mentary reformer who fought for the power of the MP, was a mem-ber of the 1985 McGrath Com-mittee. A high-profi le member in the House, he ran unsuccessfully for the NDP leadership in 2003,

and fi nished second to Jack Lay-ton who made him deputy leader. In the House of Commons, he was a physically towering fi gure and in Question Period, his booming voice demanded attention.

Bill Blaikie left federal poli-tics after representing the riding from 1979 to 2008, and in 2011 Conservative Lawrence Toet won it—ending a nearly 30-year NDP run. Bill Blaikie, who was the dean of the House of Commons before he left federal politics, got elected provincially and represented the Winnipeg part of the riding from 2009 to 2011 and served as minister of conservation and government House leader.

Daniel Blaikie said once his father was out of public offi ce, he couldn’t stand along the sidelines and watch while Mr. Toet repre-sented his home riding, consid-ering he was a member “of the Harper majority government that, in my opinion, did awful things to the country that I just fundamen-tally disagreed with.”

Ultimately, “it was the Harper government that propelled me into politics,” he said in a phone inter-view with The Hill Times last week.

Mr. Blaikie, who lives with his wife Janelle and their young son Robert in Transcona, said he was confi dent he had both the intimate knowledge of the riding, as well as the political experience for the job, having watched his father masterfully maneouvre through politics for decades, and his sister, Rebecca Blaikie, work her way up to the position of the federal NDP’s party president.

He had also worked as an adviser to then-Manitoba cabinet minister Theresa Oswald, and held numerous political volunteer positions.

But he also has some relevant experience gained from what might initially seem like unre-lated career paths.

He said his master’s degree in philosophy from Concordia taught him how to mount a strong argument; how to maintain intellectual consistency in what he’s trying to accomplish, and what he believes in; and perhaps most practical of all, how to “rip through” a dense stack of docu-ments and pull out the key points.

His work as an electrician allowed him to get on the ground and see things from the perspec-tive of a trades person—a large contributing cohort to the Cana-

dian economy, he pointed out. Selling your physical labour is demanding work, and it’s diffi cult to appreciate it unless you’ve experienced it, he noted.

He said he also learned about project management, and the often-unnoticed human resource costs of say, holding an hour-long meeting with employees.

Armed with this knowledge, his love for his riding, and the confi dence of his family, Mr. Blai-kie began his campaign to take back the territory.

He noted that in the campaign leading up to the 2015 general election, “the main arena was the doorstep” as he said his opponent—incumbent Conservative Mr. Toet—was not open to public debates.

Not that Mr. Blaikie minded. In fact, he recalled that he was told throughout the campaign that he sometimes spent “too much time” at the door, often caught up de-bating the intricacies of a policy—philosophy student, ’member?

“I’m a bit of a policy wonk, so I’ve never been afraid to take the time that it takes to talk about details of a policy,” he said. In the end, he said the attention he paid to real issues that matter to constituents was what helped him secure the narrow—51-vote dif-ference—win in the last election.

When asked how much he thought his last name helped him in the race, he said it likely didn’t hurt, but that his lineage wasn’t made a focal part of the cam-paign, and in any case, “people were not prepared to write a blank cheque … they wanted to

see that I was up to the job.”He added, “I knew that I had

big shoes to fi ll, and that people would have a big expectations ... I was anxious to show people that they should be voting for me not based on that association. Yes, I came out of solid political tradition, but I’m here to carry it forward on my own steam.”

Now, after his fi rst session on Parliament Hill, he’s taken an active stance on some big issues and said he’s learned some lessons very quickly. There have even been rumblings that the rookie might be leadership-material.

Mr. Blaikie said there were some developments this spring that left him with mixed feelings of optimism and cynicism.

The fact that the Liberal government bowed to the NDP’s request for the Special Commit-tee on Electoral Reform to have proportional representation that refl ects the popular vote in the federal election was a sign of promise, he said.

However, he noted that goodwill shown by the Liberals was no-where to be found when the party “slammed through” Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Air Canada Pub-lic Participation Act, with “brutal use of time-allocation.”

He said it was an important piece of legislation that was irre-sponsibly rushed, and for reasons that are still unclear.

“That, to me, was a bit of a les-son in cynicism,” he said.

Looking forward to the fall session, he said he wants “to see the government get busy on getting a new and meaningful Canada Health Accord in place.” A huge stride would be the cre-ation of a national pharmacare program in Canada, he said.

This is going to be an issue the NDP really pushes on, he said.

He added that he would also like to see a new environmental review process for large proj-ects, and Canadian Pension Plan reforms that go further.

“Private pensions are disap-pearing or they are transferring over to defi ned contribution

systems that put all the risk on the employee,” he says, adding that the new CPP reforms don’t accomplish enough, and do not offer enough security to com-pensate for rapidly-disappearing defi ned-benefi t plans.

Going forward, Mr. Blai-kie said it’s hard to say what his career trajectory will look like—as his experience thus far indicates, his interests are varied. But in terms of being the most successful MP he can be, he said he tries to remember something he’s learned over the years while watching his father: “the most healthy relationship to have with politics is to see it as a form of service, and not as a career.”

The Hill Times

‘I knew I had big shoes to fi ll,’ Daniel Blaikie on winning the riding his father represented for nearly 30 years Rookie NDP MP Daniel Blaikie, who won the riding with 34.14 per cent of the vote in the last election, discusses his campaign to restore the NDP dynasty created by his father, the ups and downs in his fi rst session on the Hill, and what he was known for back in high school.

Seven things you probably didn’t know about Daniel Blaikie—until now

What were you known for in high school? I was the drum-mer in the jazz band.

Coffee or tea? Tea.

What’s the best trip you’ve ever taken? Scotland, with the Transcona and District Pipe Band, when I was 12.

If you could have any super-power, what would it be? The power of healing.

What’s your favourite fi ctional novel? The Hobbit

What’s your favourite non-fi c-tion read? Charles Taylor’s The Massey Lectures: The Malaise of Modernity.

What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment? Getting my red seal certifi cation in the electrical trade. It was a lot of hard work, and for someone who, before that, had spent a lot of time with books and wasn’t particularly handy, it really re-quired me to think in a new way. I’m really proud of that.

Daniel Blaikie, pictured top left, with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and NDP MP Erin Weir and Gord Johns on June 29 waiting for U.S. President Barack Obama in the House; playing the bagpipes; his dad Bill Blaikie campaigning for him in the last election; and with his wife Janelle and their son Robert in the riding. Photographs courtesy of Facebook

Pictured July 29, 2015, in Stadacona. ‘I was happy to introduce The Herald’s Sheldon Birnie to Charlee’s Restaurant.’ Photograph courtesy of Facebook

7THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

NEWS ELECTORAL REFORM

“I think we’re going to have to get to the place of defi ning, narrowing down what it is that we’re doing, otherwise, we’ll just sit in a general conversation about democracy, which, while interesting, doesn’t serve the task that we’ve been set,” Mr. Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.) told The Hill Times.

The House Special Committee on Electoral Reform is sched-uled to sit in Ottawa on Monday, Aug. 22, to continue hearing from academics and electoral reform experts, including Benoit Pelletier, former Quebec cabinet minister for intergovernmental affairs and the reform of democratic institutions, who now teaches law at the University of Ottawa, and Arend Lijphart, professor emeritus of political science from the University of California, who is considered one of the foremost experts on electoral reform and has written a number of books on democracy.

The committee is mandated to study viable alternate voting systems to replace Canada’s fi rst-past-the-post, or single-member plurality system in an effort to increase public confi dence, engagement, and accessibility in Canada’s electoral system. It’s also looking at mandatory voting and online voting.

MPs are studying preferential, or ranked, ballot; proportional representation; mixed-member

proportional representation; single-transferable vote system; proportional-preferential-person-alized; and mandatory or compul-sory voting.

The committee will also meet on Aug. 23, 29, 30, 31, and Sept. 1. to hear from more academics and experts.

Mr. Cullen said he will be put-ting a concrete proposal together in time for this upcoming con-densed session of witnesses. He noted that some of the expert wit-nesses have called on the commit-tee to put forth specifi c examples of alternative voting systems.

“You start to saw sawdust, you can only have people say the same things in different ways over and over until you get to a point of wanting something real. So let’s get to that real stage now. … People need to imagine what it is that a new system’s going to look like. Otherwise if we stay at 50,000 feet, it’s too philosophical for most Canadians.”

He said he’d like to see the witnesses across Canada be pro-vided a summary on the options the committee is considering, as well as a summary of what it has heard so far.

“It would just be disappoint-ing if we’re sitting in committee halls in Saskatoon or wherever and people are testifying and taking their time to explain MMP (mixed-member-proportional) or what Australia does, because we’ve heard from Australia; we’re good. What we need is your opin-ions. What we need is what’s go-ing to work best in all the regions in Canada,” said Mr. Cullen.

It’s unclear how much support there will be among other com-mittee members for Mr. Cullen’s idea of putting forward some vot-ing models.

“It might be a bit early to do any narrowing,” said Conservative MP and committee member Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, Ont.)

He said he hasn’t made up his mind on whether he’ll support Mr. Cullen’s motion and wants to hear his arguments and the goals of the motion put before the committee.

“I think it would still have some value to be out talking to Canadians about more loose op-tions and keeping at least some of the discussion about values and principles,” Liberal MP and committee member John Aldag (Cloverdale-Langley City, B.C.) told The Hill Times.

He said he’d still like to gather Canadians’ input on what should go into the design of whatever op-tions eventually get put forward, something he added is already happening through people follow-ing the hearings and commenting on social media using the com-mittee’s hashtag #ERRE.

The 12-member committee was formed in June and has until Dec. 1 to report back to the House with its recommendations on how to proceed with reforming Can-ada’s voting system. So far, it’s held 12 meetings and has heard from 24 witnesses about possible alternatives to the current federal fi rst-past-the-post electoral sys-tem, along with considerations such as electronic and mandatory voting.

“The committee members are learning a great deal very quickly. By the time we take this on the road, we’ll have a very good foundation in electoral systems,” said committee chair and Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-Saint-Louis, Que.), chair of the Special House Electoral Reform Committee.

So far, all MPs The Hill Times spoke with said the meetings have been productive and what they’ve heard has been helpful. There is hope among MPs that they will eventually reach a con-sensus on what to recommend, or at least on whether online or mandatory voting are viable.

“Starting as a supplement and not rushing into it as a be-all and end-all is likely to be the position that we’re all drifting towards,” Mr. Reid said of the committee’s position, adding that he thinks no real consensus can be reached until Canadians are consulted directly through a referendum.

It’s the fi rst time Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) has been a for-mal member of a House commit-tee, and she said it’s been a “very

intense process” but interesting. She said she’s looking forward to hearing from Mr. Lijphart on the benefi ts of proportional represen-tation voting systems, something she and Mr. Cullen said stands out as a reoccurring theme from witnesses.

Ms. May said she’s been tak-ing notes on all the witnesses and is reading up on them ahead of time if she hasn’t already read their work over the years. She said she’s given a book written by Peter Russell—one of the most recent witnesses—called Two Cheers for Minority Government as a gift to many Green Party candidates.

The committee has been man-dated to report back to Parliament by Dec. 1 and Democratic Institu-tions Minister Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.), though she is not bound by the committee’s recommendations.

Mr. Cullen said this is “disap-pointing,” and a “huge mistake for the credibility,” noting all the time the committee is spending over the summer and throughout the fall on this study.

“Either you trust it our you don’t. I feel like they’re hedging their bets right now … and they don’t need to. This is going to work.”

However, Mr. Scarpaleggia said it’s hard to “prejudge” how the government will take the recommendations given it will also be compiling the town hall info and the minister’s own con-sultations. For now, the chair is focused on getting the committee work done on time.

“The legitimacy of the recom-mendation will hang a great deal on how engaging the process has been, how transparent, how many Canadians felt they were engaged through this,” said Ms. May.

After this upcoming stretch of academic witnesses is complete, the committee will embark on the travelling portion of its work after Parliament resumes. Members will be in 17 different cities over a number of days as they hold meetings with “open mics” for audience participation during the meetings. It’s on hold until then because of the major parties’ cau-cus meetings between now and Parliament resuming.

According to meeting min-utes, the committee has asked the Board of Internal Economy for about $430,500 for travel to Regina, St-Pierre Jolys, Man., Winnipeg, Toronto, Quebec City, Joliette, Que., Whitehorse, Victoria, Vancouver, LeDuc, Alta., Yellowknife, Montreal, St. John’s, N.L., Halifax, Charlottetown, Fredericton, and Iqaluit, Nunavut.

“We’re trying to get a feel for how Canadians would like to see their system changed,” said Mr. Scarpaleggia, adding that in pick-ing these communities they hoped to get a mix of urban and rural perspectives.

As well, all MPs are set to hold town halls in their ridings on electoral reform and report back by Oct. 14.

Mr. Aldag had his fi rst town hall last week. He has plans to do at least two more. He said he found the biggest points of focus were on a referendum, why the system needs to be changed, and what the options are.

“It hasn’t been front of mind for a lot of Canadians and I think that we’re going to have to do a good job engaging people about why we’re considering this, why we’re going down this path, and really what scenarios could look like,” Mr. Aldag said.

Ms. May will take the time while the other caucus’ meet-ings are happening to hold her electoral reform town halls in her riding. During the last round of Ottawa hearings for the com-mittee, Ms. May held a town hall with Mr. Cullen in the capital that attracted a full turnout.

Mr. Reid said he has a Google alert set for “town hall electoral reform” so he can read about how others are doing them to get ideas, because he didn’t fi nd the government’s tips helpful.

Mr. Cullen is booking his for early September and is intend-ing to focus the conversations on comparing proportional repre-sentational models versus “win-ner take all” systems, because he’s concerned the guidelines from Ms. Monsef on such meet-ings will only harvest philosophi-cal results.

raiello@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

House Electoral Reform Committee should stop burning daylight, come up with concrete alternatives, says NDP MP When the committee returns to Ottawa later this month, the NDP MP has plans to table a motion to create more concrete voting options for Canadians to consider.

Continued from page 1

Special Committee on Electoral Reform members Elizabeth May and Nathan Cullen speaking with witness Henry Milner, Université de Montréal chair of electoral studies, before a hearing on July 27, 2016. The Hill Times Photo by Jake Wright

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 20168

EDITORIAL HUNTER TOOTOO LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Publishers Anne Marie Creskey, Jim Creskey, Ross Dickson

General Manager, CFO Andrew Morrow

Hunter Tootoo, who went from rookie Liberal MP to Canada’s federal

minister of fi sheries and oceans last fall, suddenly resigned in May from cabinet and the Liberal caucus “to seek treat-ment of addiction issues.” The news was surprising. But something didn’t jive with the story at the time. The PMO said on May 31 that Mr. Tootoo had voluntarily resigned. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when questioned by reporters about it, avoided specifi cs and looked uncomfort-able. “This was [Tootoo’s] own choice after a very diffi cult situation,” he told reporters.

Mr. Tootoo then went into rehab for his alcohol addiction, but once he got out The Globe and Mail asked Mr. Tootoo about rumours of an innappropriate relation-ship with a staff member and reported on it. Mr. Tootoo evaded answering questions about the relationship, but didn’t deny it either.

“I know that there’s lots of rumours and allegations out there,” he told The Globe. “The fact of the matter is that I recognize that my issue was with alcohol, and there’s been some deeply personal and private issues that have haunted me, and unfortunately alcohol is a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma and I’ve been personally affected by those impacts.”

Last week, CBC News reported that Mr. Trudeau knew about Mr. Tootoo’s in-timate relationship with an offi ce staffer, but kept quiet to protect her identity. CBC News also reported that the PMO con-fi rmed that the prime minister and his top advisers decided not to disclose the de-tails to protect the identity of the woman.

The PMO conceded it last week only after Mr. Tootoo told CBC News more details.

“Hunter Tootoo acknowledged to the prime minister that he had been engaging in what was an inappropriate relation-ship in the workplace,” the PMO said in a statement to CBC News. “Mr. Tootoo informed the prime minister that he took full and sole responsibility for his inap-propriate workplace conduct.”

When his former Liberal caucus col-league, Grit MP Seamus O’Regan, who also went to rehab for alcoholism earlier this year, the prime minister tweeted his public support for him. The contrast in how the two were treated was stark, but it also now explains it.

Meanwhile, former Liberal MP Jack Anawak, who represented Nunavut from 1988 to 1997 and who ran unsuccess-fully in the last election for the NDP, said Mr. Tootoo should have set boundaries with his co-workers and that Mr. Tootoo handled the situation “poorly.” He’s right.

It’s unfortunate that Mr. Tootoo threw away a Cabinet position for an inappropri-ate relationship with a staff member, con-sidering that he could have been an effec-tive cabinet minister who wanted to bring a collaborative style of governing to the table. Mr. Tootoo said he’s ashamed and sorry for what he has done, but also said he won’t resign, despite the inappropriate relationship and despite that he won’t be allowed back in the Liberal caucus. He said he has a diffi cult path ahead and that he will face the challenges head on. All this to say, Mr. Tootoo needs to work hard to gain back the trust of his constituents again, but he also needs to be up front about what went on. So does the PMO.

Re: “Trudeau government should hold referendum on electoral reform,” by

Dale Dawson (The Hill Times, letter to the editor, p. 8, June 20). After the disastrous Brexit referendum held on June 24, Dale Dawson is well-advised to change his mind. In the referendum about whether to stay or leave the European Union, a major-ity in England voted to leave, creating an economic crisis for the United Kingdom. With Britain heavily dependent on the EU for trade and investment, the decision was wrong at best and self-defeating at worst.

The Brexit referendum was a clear example of why governments should never rely on referendums to decide complex po-litical issues. Referendums may end up only dividing the people as happened in Britain. Even many who voted for Brexit now regret their decision to leave. Also, in a representa-tive democracy, we elect governments to de-cide issues on our behalf and referendums are a way out of that responsibility.

Interim Conservative leader Rona Am-brose has been reported saying “there is no substitute for the direct democratic voice of a country’s citizens in determining the answer’s to critical questions about their own future.” After the self-defeating verdict by the citizens of England, she might do well to rethink about referendums. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to set up

an all-party parliamentary committee to reform the electoral system is the right one. The committee can fi nd an acceptable way to reform our fi rst-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system which allows parties to form a majority government while winning only 40 per cent of the votes.

The Conservatives like the current FPTP because it allows them to form the govern-ment by dividing the progressive votes between the Liberals and the NDP.

The Liberals can also win because of strategic voting as happened in the last election in which many NDP supporters moved to the Liberals to stop the Conserva-tives. The NDP and the Green Party prefer proportional representation because it will allow to win more seats. The Conservatives are opposed to it as they fear that, under PR, the Liberals and the NDP will form a coalition government, shutting them out of power permanently. They may reminded that in Germany, which follows some form of PR, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Party has formed a coalition government with centre-left Social Democratic Party.

We need electoral reform, but it should not be put to a referendum which will be self-defeating.

Mahmood ElahiOttawa, Ont.

The battle of Beaumont Hamel in France on July 1, 1916, was a battle fought by

the “Newfoundland” regiment and has noth-ing whatsoever to do with Canada.

In 1949, when our province joined Canada, all fi ve of the Newfoundland and Labrador military remembrance sites in Europe were passed over to the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs to main-tain in perpetuity on behalf of the citizens of our province in recognition of our his-tory as a nation in our own right.

The actions and sacrifi ces of the New-foundland regiment (later designated “the Royal Newfoundland Regiment” by the British government in 1918 and the only time in the history of the British military that the designation “royal” was given to a regiment during the war in which its sacrifi ces were being recognized) predate our history as Canadians and the memory of that history is the responsibility that was handed over to Canada in 1949.

Sad to say that the 100th anniversary of that battle and the total participation of the regiment in WWI from Gallipoli onward—and the role of many other men and women from our province who fought and died in a variety of other capacities during that horrendous war

was grievously marred by the actions of historically illiterate functionaries of the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs.

The decision by these bureaucrats to remove the fl ag of Newfoundland and Lab-rador; to deny a minister of our province the right to speak on our behalf; to omit the singing our our provincial anthem; to rel-egate Newfoundlanders and Labradorian to the background; and to have the gall, the temerity, to argue with our citizens when it was pointed out to them that this was a remembrance of our people by saying, insisting, that this was a Canadian event is insulting and inexcusable.

Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr should make it clear in the House of Com-mons that he apologizes to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador for deplor-able actions of functionaries in his depart-ment and ensure that in the future these bureaucrats are educated as to their proper role in staffi ng our national war memo-rial at Beaumont Hamel. Canada accepted this responsibility in 1949. Time does not diminish, does not lessen, the role Cana-dian functionaries should properly exercise when assigned to Beaumont Hamel.

James A. Winter St. John’s, Nfl d.

Tootoo needs to be up front, win back confi dence of constituents

Trudeau should not hold referendum on electoral reform, says letter-writer

People of Newfoundland and Labrador deserve an apology: Winter

Editor Kate MalloyDeputy Editor Mark BurgessOnline Editor, Power & Influence Editor Bea Vongdouangchanh

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9THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

COPPS’ CORNER OLYMPIC GAMES

OTTAWA—You can set your watch by it. The pre-Olympic

build-up of doom and gloom blan-kets the world media. Rio has not solved its Third World problems.

Surprise, surprise. For some reason, the arrival of the Olympic games was supposed to instantly obliterate the twin challenges of poverty and inequality that have existed for generations.

Who can forget the negative international coverage in advance of the 2004 Athens Summer Games? For months, we were

subjected to multiple reports of cost overruns and delays. It was even suggested the transportation system would not be ready.

Vancouver-Whistler’s 2010 Winter Games bid had the same negative build-up. A vocal, local anti-Olympic coalition monopo-lized the messaging leading up the opening ceremonies.

They said the whole thing was going to be a disaster, with ab-solutely no value in the political decision to host the games.

By the time that Olympic fl ame was extinguished, the naysayers were replaced by a col-lective national pride. Vancouver-Whistler turned out to be the best games ever for Canada, and to happen on home turf made the victories that much sweeter.

Brazilian Olympic offi cials must be wringing their hands in frustration. From the Zika virus to the threat of terror, the story of Rio thus far has been one of negativity and corruption.

The country has seen its share of negative politics in the past year, with allegations of corruption and questionable regime change dominating the news.

But for some reason, the Olympic movement is supposed to banish reality. Images of poverty in the favelas against a backdrop of Olympic opulence make for good copy. But they in no way refl ect the possibility for inspiration that is provided by the games.

Let’s be honest. Good news is usually not worth covering. Many more political watchers tuned in to the Trump train wreck last week because the Donald was shooting himself in his own foot. Had his campaign been going well, it probably would not have achieved the level of news satura-tion that the bad news generated?

The same holds true for Brazil.The Olympic prequel has shone

the light into some of the darkest corners of politics and poverty facing the country. One of the risks facing any host country is that the world is watching you. And you may not like what is seen.

But it is hard not to fl inch with the barrage of criticism from all sides that provided the backdrop for the Olympic games opening ceremony last Friday.

It is simply not reasonable for a developing country to fi x all social problems in anticipation of an event

that spans slightly more than two weeks. Olympic host applicants hope the bump their countries get from the games will reverberate for months and years to come.

The games should be seen as a long-term investment, not a short-term blip.

By focusing heavily on the negative aspects of a developing economy, pre-Game coverage may sour future host countries on the experience.

That would be a shame. The whole concept of the Olympic movement is to embrace the world, with all its riches and warts. If only wealthy countries are encouraged to apply, the Olympics run the risk of becom-ing just another fi rst-world exclu-sionary celebration.

If the price of admission were a country without slums, very few developing countries would even have an opportunity to apply for the games.

The good news is that starting this week, the athletes will have a chance to tell their stories.

Like clockwork again, the world will pay witness to tales of courage and determination, a celebration of the unfl inching

resilience of the human spirit.Even the fact that we have

Team Refugee is recognition that every human deserves a chance to be their very best, even those who do not have a country.

For the fi rst time, refugees will be part of the Olympic dream. Stories will lift the soul and encourage an-other generation of young people.

For one brief moment every couple of years, negativity is sus-pended and we witness the power of inspiration.

The favelas of Rio could be-come the backdrop for hope. The replacement of negative messag-ing with stories of inspiration will nurture a collective recognition that the human spirit is stronger when we work and play together.

Athletes who weren’t scared away by a mosquito will compete in Rio with all the power and con-centration they can muster.

Merely being an Olympian is an unprecedented honour.

For a brief moment, the Games will put Rio on top of the world.

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

The Hill Times

OAKVILLE, ONT.—If you believe pundits and journalists

(and who doesn’t?) the American Libertarian Party could have a role to play in deciding who wins this year’s U.S. presidential election.

As The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale recently put it, the Libertar-ian Party leader—former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson—has a “real chance, in this uncon-ventional year, to earn enough votes to affect whether it is Don-ald Trump or Hillary Clinton who takes the White House.”

In other words, since neither Trump nor Clinton are particular-ly popular, American voters might be tempted to “park” their votes in the Libertarian Party’s camp.

And that’s interesting since I suspect the average American voter wouldn’t have the slightest clue as to what libertarianism even means.

After all, it’s not exactly a popular political philosophy; nor is it a philosophy that lends itself to quick and easy defi nitions.

In fact, if I had to defi ne lib-ertarianism to somebody, I’d be tempted to use American come-dian Drew Carey’s line: “Libertar-ians are Republicans on drugs.”

Yes, that’s a joke, but Carey’s comment also accurately conveys an important point: libertarian-ism is a variant of conservatism, a kind of conservatism which exalts personal freedom -- as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, libertarians basically believe you

should be at liberty to do what-ever you please and that includes using recreational narcotics.

At any rate, as Dale noted, the US Libertarian Party, long considered a kooky fringe group, suddenly fi nds itself in the politi-cal limelight.

For someone like me, who has libertarian sympathies, this idea is appealing; it’d be nice to think that libertarianism is fi nally getting on the electoral map, that its ideas are penetrating into our political psyche.

Yet, my optimism is tempered since I realize that even if Ameri-cans do vote Libertarian out of default (and that’s still a massive “if”) it doesn’t mean libertarian ideas will suddenly become more popular.

I say that because the rigid ideological consistency libertar-ians show when defending indi-vidual freedom is like a barrier that separates them from both the mainstream right and left.

To show you what I mean imagine a conversation between a libertarian and a traditional conservative:

Libertarian: We should pro-mote free enterprise!

Conservative: Yes!Libertarian: We should slash

taxes!Conservative: Yes!Libertarian: We should legalize

cocaine!Conservative: Ye .... wait,

what? What are you, some kind of hippy? Get lost!

Now let’s imagine a conversa-

tion between a libertarian and a left wing progressive:

Libertarian: Gays should be allowed to marry!

Progressive: Absolutely agree!Libertarian: We should open

our borders and encourage more immigrants to come to Canada!

Progressive: Absolutely agree!Libertarian: People should

be allowed to carry concealed fi rearms!

Progressive: Help! I’m being accosted by a gun nut!

My point is, the problem for libertarians is that while people say they support personal liberty they don’t always take that sup-port to its logical conclusion.

If anything, the idea of suddenly unleashing an avalanche of indi-vidual liberty can frighten people.

This is why libertarian notions need to slowly seep into our political institutions in ideological dribs and drabs.

And that’s actually happening in Canada, at least to some degree.

Consider, for instance, when for-mer prime minister Stephen Harper scrapped the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, he did so in the name of protecting the individual freedom of Western grain farmers.

That’s certainly libertarianesque.More recently, our current

Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has pledged to legalize mari-juana, a plan that has a defi nite libertarian tinge.

So, Canadian libertarians are making gains in the fi elds of wheat and cannabis.

Hmmm, there’s got to be a Drew Carey joke in there somewhere.

Gerry Nicholls is a communi-cations consultant.

www.gerrynicholls.comThe Hill Times

For a brief moment, Olympic Games will put Rio on top of the world

The problem with libertarianism

For one brief moment every couple of years, negativity is suspended and we witness the power of inspiration.

So, Canadian libertarians are making gains in the fi elds of wheat and cannabis. Hmmm, there’s got to be a Drew Carey joke in there somewhere.

POST-PARTISAN PUNDIT LIBERTARIANISM

SHEILA COPPS

GERRY NICHOLLS

Hello sailor: More recently, our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has pledged to legalize marijuana, a plan that has a defi nite libertarian tinge. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201610INSIDE POLITICS MEL HURTIG

OTTAWA—Edmonton publisher Mel Hurtig, one of the lions of

Canadian nationalism and a true gentleman, died on Wednesday at 84. It is awful news, but it is con-spicuous in its timing. As the lurid pageant of the U.S. presidential election plays out, I don’t recall it ever being clearer than it has been this summer that whatever Cana-

da is, it ain’t the United States.Hurtig would not have been

reassured. Maintaining a clear line between the two countries was the work of his life, but he was not often reassured about Canada’s continued status as an independent country. His periodic warnings were often couched in urgent tones.

“Not only are we selling our country,” he wrote in this 2002 book The Vanishing Country: Is It Too Late to Save Canada?, “but much of the money foreigners use to buy up our industry, our resources, our wholesale and retail companies, our high-tech corporations—much of it is our own money. No other country, anywhere, would dream of allowing this to happen.”

The Vanishing Country was a kind of sequel to Hurtig’s 1991 book, The Betrayal of Canada, and a precursor to his 2008 book, The Truth About Canada. Its chapter titles include “What’s the Use of Even Having a Separate Country?” and “Turning the House of Commons Into a Mausoleum.”

In those days the Liberal gov-ernment of Jean Chrétien was often accused, including in my old paper the National Post, of wild antipathy toward Americans. Hurtig could not have disagreed more completely. By the measure that mattered to

him, U.S. investment in Canada, the Liberals were selling our national sovereignty as briskly as their Pro-gressive Conservative predecessors. He called Chrétien, Paul Martin, and John Manley the nation’s “pallbearers.” The word “traitors” appears often in his writing.

Of course, by the turn of the cen-tury, Hurtig’s fi nal falling-out with the Liberal Party was complete. He ran for the Liberals in Edmonton West in 1972, a year that perhaps marked the high-water point of eco-nomic nationalism in Canada.

The postwar boom in natu-ral resource exports had led to unprecedented prosperity. But the client base was hardly diversifi ed: Europe was shattered after the war, the United States dominant and hungry. U.S. investment in Canada grew steadily and fast. The Liberals, under Lester Pear-son and then Pierre Trudeau, were divided between a continentalist old guard that saw U.S. invest-ment as the key to prosperity, and a new faction that saw the Americans as a threat.

“Nationalism has developed from a fringe cause espoused by a few dedicated eccentrics into a popular movement that’s drawn to its banner Canadians of di-verse backgrounds and disparate

sensibilities,” Christina McCall wrote in Maclean’s magazine in 1972. McCall assayed the govern-ment of Pierre Trudeau by that standard and found it wanting. Stuck in the old colonized mind-set. “To ask such people to defend Canada is to ask them to defend a country they’ve struggled for years to transcend.”

Peter C. Newman, a former editor of Maclean’s and of The Toronto Star, had formed the Com-mittee for an Independent Canada in 1970, with Pearson’s former fi nance minister Walter Gordon and others, including Hurtig. They got Trudeau to set up the Foreign Investment Review Agency, but it barely even slowed the tide of U.S. money into Canada.

When the Mulroney Conserva-tives succeeded the Trudeau Lib-erals, Hurtig and others formed a new group, the Council of Cana-dians. The biggest confrontation between continental and nation-alist visions was the 1988 free-trade election, with John Turner the unlikely standard-bearer for nationalism. But for Hurtig, the worst still lay ahead: Chrétien replaced Turner as Liberal leader,

and with Martin and Manley he transformed the Liberals into an unabashed party of free traders.

Hurtig formed a party of his own, the National Party, backed by serious private money, to contest the 1993 election. He got nowhere. The party didn’t last. Since then, a generation has risen in Canada believing—Hurtig would have said naively—that Canada can be open to the world and keep its indepen-dence. Justin Trudeau belongs to that generation. He has spent part of the summer courting Blackrock, the world’s largest investment manager, a $5-trillion juggernaut with its headquarters in New York City. Trudeau hopes some of that worldwide torrent of money can be diverted toward infrastructure projects in Canada.

Mel Hurtig would have warned him there’s always a cost. Hurtig has successors—Maude Barlow, David Orchard—but like him, they remain outsiders. History has chosen a different path for the country Hurtig so loved.

Paul Wells is a national affairs columnist for The Toronto Star. The column was released on Aug. 5.

The Hill Times

TORONTO—Since the late 1960s, we progressives have been trying

to get back what we once had.That’s not to say that we have

been incapable of winning in the interim, of course. Jean Chretien, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Justin Trudeau have shown that we can, when the circumstances are right, beat back conservatives. But if we are honest with ourselves, we should acknowledge that recessions and a fractured Right certainly didn’t hurt our chances.

For quite some time, in North America and Europe, the Right has been winning, and the Left has been doing the opposite. But back in the early 1960s, we had the better ideas. We knew what we had to say, and how to say it, too. That’s because we had the likes of Tony Schwartz.

Never heard of him? Many haven’t. He was an exceedingly modest man, and because he was agoraphobic, he rarely even left the brownstone where he lived and worked in Manhattan. He didn’t seek publicity; he shunned it. De-spite that, I caught up with him a few years before his death in 2008.

For a lot of us who work on pro-gressive campaigns, Tony Schwartz was a giant. Before many of us were even born—and long before far-Right snake oil purveyors and mendacious con men took control of the airwaves and the legisla-tures, driving discord and division, à la Trump—Tony Schwartz liter-ally transformed modern politics, and in just 60 seconds, too.

He did in just one minute what it takes other progressives lifetimes to learn. He created a symbol, one that endures nearly 50 years later. He connected with the hearts of minds of average people, using language that spoke to their values, and their identities and their lives. For progres-sives, he changed everything.

He did so on Sept. 7, 1964, when he conceived and produced a single Democratic Party TV spot which, among other things, won Lyndon Baines Johnson the presidency—a spot which radically revised the way in which advocacy and campaigns were thereafter done.

“Daisy,” as it is now universally known, is fi lmed in grainy black and white. It starts off with a little girl, about four or fi ve, standing in a fi eld. She has long, blond-ish hair, and she’s looking at a

fl ower—a daisy—as the commer-cial begins. Almost singing, she is counting as she plucks petals. “One, two, three, four, fi ve,” she says, quietly.

Abruptly, the girl stops and looks up, surprised. The mood changes. A man’s voice is suddenly heard, echoing and harsh and loud, and he’s counting, too. As he does so, the camera moves in on the lit-tle girl. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, fi ve, four,” he barks, and all that can be seen are the child’s eyes, which are now clearly afraid. “Three, two, one …” The shot moves into her iris, and suddenly there is an explosion: the screen is fi lled with a gritty image of an atomic bomb being detonated. The girl is gone. As the mushroom cloud reaches upward, fi lling the sky, another voice is heard: the voice of Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States, and the Democratic Party’s candidate.

“These are the stakes,” he says in his Texan twang, and without emotion. “To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark.” There’s a pause. “We must either love each other, or we must die.” The screen goes black, and a few words ap-pear in white: “VOTE FOR PRESI-DENT JOHNSON ON NOVEM-BER 3.” Then there’s another male voice: “Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”

“Daisy” ran only once as a paid TV ad, during Gregory Peck’s David and Bathsheba on

Monday Night at the Movies. An estimated 50 million Americans saw it. Even now, so many years later, it is incredibly powerful and dramatic. And, when the results were announced early on Nov. 4, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson won by a landslide. Barry Goldwater, meanwhile, barely won his home state, by less than one per cent. Out of fi fty states, the Republican nominee took only six. “Daisy,” most felt, had helped to demolish the conservatives’ campaign.

Why does Daisy matter, 52 years later? Why the history lesson?

Because Daisy’s hour has come around again. Because the stakes are too high, again. Just a few days ago, it was revealed that Donald Trump—like Barry Goldwater be-fore him—said this: “Somebody hits us, you wouldn’t fi ght back with a nuke?…If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

Progressives—Democrats, Liberals, New Democrats—now know that the 2016 presidential campaign is the one for all the marbles. They must win.

It’s time to rerun a Daisy-style campaign. And it’s time to utterly destroy Donald Trump—like Tony Schwartz destroyed Barry Goldwa-ter, more than a half-century ago.

The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

Warren Kinsella is a Toronto-based lawyer, author, and com-mentator. He has been a special assistant to prime minister Jean Chrétien.

The Hill Times

History has chosen different path for a country Hurtig so loved

Time to destroy Trump like Johnson did Goldwater more than 50 years ago

Mel Hurtig would have warned Justin Trudeau there’s always a cost. Hurtig has successors—Maude Barlow, David Orchard—but like him, they remain outsiders.

Progressives, Democrats, Liberals, New Democrats, now know that the 2016 presidential campaign is the one for all the marbles. They must win.

WARREN KINSELLA

THE WAR ROOM DONALD TRUMP

PAUL WELLS

Mel Hurtig, pictured in Ottawa in 2008 on book tour for The Truth About Canada. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

11THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

DIGITAL WORLD COPYRIGHT LAW

OTTAWA—The Canadian gov-ernment plans to review the

state of copyright law next year, but a recent government-com-missioned study indicates that fi ghting piracy is a low priority for rights holders, who prefer to focus their efforts on generating revenues from legitimate websites and services.

Piracy is likely to be a major issue in the 2017 review, with some groups sure to demand legislative reforms and increased resources for law enforcement initiatives. Canada enacted several anti-piracy measures in 2012, including creating a new rule that makes it easier for rights holders to sue websites or services that “enable” copyright infringement. The so-called enabler provision—the fi rst of its kind anywhere in the world—has been used to shut down Canadian-based piracy sites.

In recent years, some stake-holders have emphasized the benefi ts of a “follow-the-money” strategy that focuses on stopping piracy sites by disabling access to payment intermediaries, demot-ing the sites in search results, and reducing their online advertis-ing revenues. In response, the

Department of Canadian Heritage commissioned a major study by Circum Network Inc. last year on the follow-the-money approach and the views of Canadian busi-nesses. The study, which was obtained under the Access to Information Act, has not been publicly released.

Canadian Heritage sent letters to various stakeholders encouraging them to participate in the study, noting that it would help identify practices aimed at reducing or discouraging com-mercial-scale copyright infringe-ment. While the department advised that the study was not necessarily indicative of future policy directions, the contract with Circum specifi cally called for recommendations to assist in future work on copyright piracy deterrence.

The fi nal report includes few actual recommendations, how-ever. Circum found that follow-the-money strategies have at best a mixed record of success. The problems include diffi culty identifying commercial-scale copyright infringement websites (suspect sites often have both infringing and non-infringing

content) and the continuing popularity of online advertis-ing among major brands who have prioritized reaching large audiences over stopping piracy websites.

From a Canadian perspective, Circum did not fi nd much enthu-siasm among stakeholders for investing in anti-piracy activities. The study states that “Canadian representatives of rights holders consulted as part of this study tended not to give online piracy fi ghting a high priority. While they condemn unauthorized access to intellectual property and while some rights holders indicated actively reacting, they generally considered that their scarce resources are better invest-ed in other battles and counted on global organizations to pursue the fi ght.”

Circum also noted diverging interests among rights holders themselves, with composers, au-thors, performers, actors, produc-ers, publishers, and labels often adopting different approaches. Moreover, the study found that Canadian stakeholders seem far more interested in obtaining revenues from legitimate sources

using works or offering legal marketplace alternatives.

There was even disagreement among those rights holders that supported government action. While some wanted law enforce-ment to escalate the piracy issue, others preferred to focus primar-ily on education efforts.

None of this should be taken to mean that Canadian businesses (or Canadians for that matter) support piracy. The 2012 copyright law rightly focused on commer-cial-scale piracy by enacting new legislative tools that can be used to combat websites and services that profi t from the work of others without appropriate permission or authorization. Those reforms garnered widespread support.

However, the Circum study offers further evidence that for many creators, obscurity remains a far bigger threat than piracy. The message for the two ministers responsible for copyright—Cana-dian Heritage minister Mélanie Joly and Innovation, Science and Economic Development minister Navdeep Bains—is that with so much choice and competition, success is unlikely to come from yet another package of anti-piracy legal reforms. Instead, the study suggests that creators are ready to embrace the digital marketplace and would prefer to focus their en-ergies on developing convenient, well-priced, legal services.

Michael Geist holds the Cana-da Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the Univer-sity of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can be reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

The Hill Times

LONDON, ENGLAND—Great states hate to admit error, so

when they have to change course they generally try to disguise the fact. That’s why you may not have heard much about the way that the United States has changed course in Syria in the past three months.

You will recall how Washing-ton insisted for years that it was determined to see the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, and was at the same time working to destroy his mortal enemy, Islamic State— without, of course, committing any U.S. ground troops to Syria. You may also recall how the U.S. govern-ment regularly and vehemently condemned Russia’s military intervention in Syria last year.

Well, that’s all over now. On July 16, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian For-eign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Moscow and agreed to take “concrete steps” together in Syria. These included coordinating air strikes against both Islamic State and the Nusra Front, the two Islamist offspring of al-Qaeda that dominate the rebel forces in Syria.

Russia is the Assad regime’s main ally in the Syrian civil war. By agreeing to these coordinated “concrete steps” against Assad’s

main domestic enemies, Washing-ton is effectively conceding that it now wants him to survive. Assad, it has fi nally recognized, is the lesser evil compared to a take-over of all of Syria by the Islamist fanatics.

It has taken fi ve years to get here. The United States bombs Islamic State forces every day, but when IS troops advanced to seize Palmyra last year, no Ameri-can bombs fell on the vehicles that took the IS fi ghters across the desert to the historic city. That would have been “helping Assad”—and so the U.S. let Pal-myra be captured and trashed by the fanatics. (Assad’s troops took Palmyra back last March—with Russian air support.)

The Obama administration fell into this now obviously hope-less strategy back in the days of the “Arab Spring” in 2010-11. Like most people, Obama was convinced that the Assad regime would fall quickly, and that the government that replaced him would be better both for Ameri-can interests and for the Syrian people. It was, after all, a brutal and corrupt regime. It still is.

As the opposition fell increas-ingly into the hands of Islamist extremists in 2012-13, the pros-pect of a peaceful, democratic

successor regime vanished. But rather than biting the bullet and switching its support to Assad, the lesser evil, Washington em-barked on a forlorn attempt to build a “third force” that would de-feat both Assad and the Islamists. It spent billions on the project, but never produced a credible fi ghting force that could accom-plish that miracle.

Governments do not easily admit error, so right down to late last year Washington clung to the illusion that somehow or other it could avoid having to choose between Assad and the Islamists. Now it has accepted that necessity, and the deal with Lavrov clearly signals that the United States now wants Assad to survive.

It still won’t say that, of course, but bombing both Islamic State and the Nusra Front means that it will effectively be bombing the great majority of the Syrian rebels. There are still some non-Islamist rebels fi ghting Assad in the “Free Syrian Army,” but most elements of the FSA have been coerced into joining the Nusra Front in an unequal alliance called the “Army of Islam.”

The Nusra Front created this alliance specifi cally to ward off American bombs by wrapping non-Islamist groups around itself.

It worked for a while, although Russia was never fooled and has bombed them all without discrim-ination since it intervened militar-ily last September. Now the U.S. has signed up to bomb them too.

The Nusra Front’s leader, Abu Mohamed al-Julani, responded last week by breaking his organi-zation’s formal ties with al-Qaeda and changing its name, but that will not stop the bombs. The Nus-ra Front does not indulge in the spectacular acts of cruelty that are Islamic State’s trademark, but they both come out of al-Qaeda and in terms of ideology and goals they are practically identi-cal. Washington is not fooled.

The Obama administration has at least learned from its mistakes, and this de facto U.S.-Russian al-liance may actually have the pow-er to weaken the Islamist forces drastically and impose a real ceasefi re on everybody else. Syria will not be reunited under Assad or anybody else, but at least most of the killing would stop.

Unfortunately, if this approach does not deliver results in the next fi ve months it is likely to be abandoned. Hillary Clinton seems committed to going back to the old, discredited “third force” strategy if she wins the presi-dency in November, which would mean years more of killing. And If Trump wins…

Gwynne Dyer is an indepen-dent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

The Hill Times

Government-backed study fi nds piracy fi ght a low priority for Canadian rights holders

The U.S. and Russia agree on Syria

The Circum study offers further evidence that for many creators, obscurity remains a far bigger threat than piracy. The study suggests that creators are ready to embrace the digital marketplace and would prefer to focus their energies on developing convenient, well-priced, legal services.

The Obama administration has at least learned from its mistakes, and this de facto U.S.-Russian alliance may actually have the power to weaken the Islamist forces drastically and impose a real ceasefi re on everybody else. Syria will not be reunited under Assad or anybody else, but at least most of the killing would stop.

MICHAEL GEIST

GLOBAL AFFAIRS U.S. & RUSSIA

GWYNNE DYER

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201612OPINION CANADIAN CULTURE

In May, Heritage Minister Mé-lanie Joly announced a review

of Canadian cultural policy, one that would put laws, regulations, and funding mechanisms on the table for possible amendment or updating in response to the digital shift. This is a welcome initiative, and long overdue, but it inspires a bit of anxiety for those of us with livelihoods affected by those cultural policies, laws, regulations and mechanisms.

The fi rst step in the Canadian Heritage review was an online questionnaire, which began by asking respondents to declare as either a consumer of culture or a stakeholder. For anyone trying to make a living through cultural

work in Canada, that fi rst ques-tion was profoundly unsettling. I’m both a cultural consumer and a stakeholder in the policy frame-work underlying my industry. I can’t choose between those two realities as though picking a side for softball. Doing so implies my consumer self is somehow in a zero-sum competition with my creator self, and I just don’t think that way.

My consumer self is care-ful about cultural products. He knows just how much work goes into each and every work, and that the consumer price-point rarely if ever refl ects actual value. In other words, my inner con-sumer knows that the cultural economy must operate somehow other than simple supply and de-mand. Because of that, he thinks about how he consumes, and tries at all times to balance consump-tion, support, and responsibility. He understands that the culture/money ecosystem is about as delicate and vulnerable an envi-ronment as there is, especially in Canada, where domestic works must compete with a fl ood of foreign product benefi ting from vastly different scale. That’s not special pleading; it’s just reality.

We hear all the time about the digital shift and the disrup-

tion that rides with it. Uber is eating the cab industry’s lunch. Lunch itself is being disrupted by apps like Foodora or Ritual. Our consumer selves seem to love the advantages of these disruptions, but we can’t ignore that they often come with a heaping side plate of social upheaval.

Traditional cab industry play-ers and employees quite rightly feel ill-used by regulators, who are often tempted to throw up their hands at Uber’s slick, side-door entry into the car-hire mar-ketplace. Uber’s treatment of its drivers is also controversial: Are they employees or freelancers? Who pays their insurance? How much do they actually make, and does that compensate above and beyond wear and tear on the car?

Lunch-ordering apps are, on the surface, less troubling, but they’re attended by similar economical/ethical questions. How do food servers feel about privileging those app-generated walk-ins over those standing in line? What’s the actual pay like for those cyclists pedaling food all over our urban centres? A recent piece in The Atlantic by Robin Sloan expressed some dark thoughts about these apps “because the way they treat hu-mans is at best mildly depress-

ing and at worst burn-it-down dystopian.”

I believe as we travel further into the digital shift, we’ll spend a lot more time with our consumer and stakeholder selves bumping up against each other—not in zero-sum competition, but in a co-operative effort along the lines of the fair trade movement. Speed, convenience, low price—these are all attractive consumer benefi ts. But surely we know that if we don’t fi nd the right balance on the supply side, they’re short term benefi ts only.

I urge Joly and her advisers to take the long view as Canada’s cultural policy review moves forward. Fair trade culture, with a focus on sustainability and growth, should count at least as much as the raw consumerism in-spired by disruptive technologies. Canada’s cultural workers have proven ourselves to be remark-ably welcoming of and innovative with digital technology. Technol-ogy now needs to value our work properly. Policy will play a big role in making that happen.

John Degen is a novelist and poet. He is executive director of The Writers’ Union of Canada and chair of the International Authors’ Forum. @jkdegen

The Hill Times

EDMONTON—On the ques-tion of whether a referendum

is necessary in order to change the electoral system, expert and editorial are divided. Supporters of a federal referendum correctly suspect that the Liberal govern-ment, despite receiving a general mandate to change the electoral system in the 2015 election, lacks a specifi c mandate because it is inherently in a confl ict of interest and should not be blindly trusted to design the rules by which the House of Commons is elected. The Liberals’ belated decision to relinquish its majority on the Commons Committee on Elec-toral Reform, and its commitment to having a free vote in the House on the fi nal bill, go only part of the way toward alleviating this concern.

A free vote will still be based on the very distortion of repre-sentation that electoral reform is supposed to correct: for example, individual Liberal MPs will have 54 per cent of the seats on the strength of 39.5 per cent of the popular vote; and one Green MP will have 0.3 per cent of the votes cast despite representing 3.4 per cent of the electorate. Secondly, even if these problems could be addressed adequately so as to assure fairness between politi-

cal parties, there might still be a confl ict of interest, since politi-cians as a class will still frame the question and ultimately decide its answer, without due consid-eration of how much “non-Otta-washed” citizens may not wish to affi rm or support political parties as the primary organizations that mediate the popular will.

Opponents of the referendum have an equally impressive list of arguments. It is clear is that referendums polarize opinion instead of forging compromise, as both the Quebec referendum campaigns and the recent U.K. vote to leave the EU have shown. The value of representative democracy, on the other hand, is that it can examine all sides of an issue and fashion solutions that serve the interests of the major-ity while still being acceptable to minorities. The debate over Brexit showed how misinforma-tion and errors of fact (concern-ing Turkey’s membership and the savings for the NHS, for example) could not be corrected in time for the vote, with incalculable consequences for the future of the U.K. and of Europe. To those who think that governments in recent decades have established a binding constitutional convention requiring a referendum, there is a simple answer: it is doubtful that you are right, but you are free to recommend a Supreme Court reference or to take the matter to court yourself.

The ideal solution, therefore, is one that fully addresses the problems of legitimacy and con-fl ict of interest that a referendum is supposed to solve, while at the same time avoiding if possible all the problems of polarization and prevarication that a referendum is prone to create. Such sound de-liberation, suitably scrubbed of partisan self-interest, was the both the purpose and the effect of Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral

Reform in British Columbia and Ontario and the Citizens’ Commit-tee in Quebec.

Where the process went wrong in B.C. and Ontario was the ab-sence of government leadership with a general mandate. Legisla-tors (often evincing a decided lack of enthusiasm for systems other than the one that put them into offi ce) relied too little on democratic persuasion and too much on 60 per cent voter thresh-olds and infl exible “take-it-or leave-it” ground rules. As a result, the deliberative baby was thrown out with the political bath-water in the Ontario and British Colum-bia referendums.

Provinces are supposed to be the laboratories for policy. Applying the lessons learned from failed (or partially success-ful) provincial experiments to the current referendum debate, we should create a structure for institutional dialogue between a citizens’ committee on Electoral Reform and Parliament. Such a structure could force politicians to justify their rejection of or

amendments to, a citizens’ initia-tive, thereby improving the le-gitimacy and deliberative quality of the bill. The result would be to either reduce the perceived need for a referendum (if the process went well and a double major-ity of politicians and informed citizens could reach consensus) or to better prepare and inform the electorate if a referendum were needed to adjudicate a fun-damental disagreement between parliamentarians and citizens.

A citizens’ committee should therefore be struck to conduct parallel deliberations with the House of Commons. If the House of Commons and the citizens’ committee cannot agree, then that impasse can be resolved by a referendum. But if they can agree, then a referendum can safely be dispensed with.

Mark Crawford is an assistant professor of political science at Athabasca University in Edmon-ton, where he teaches courses in Canadian government and demo-cratic theory.

The Hill Times

Don’t pit consumers against artists in cultural policy review

A referendum if necessary, but not necessarily a referendum

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and her advisers to take the long view as Canada’s cultural policy review moves forward.

A citizens’ committee should be struck to conduct parallel deliberations with the House of Commons. If the House of Commons and the citizens’ committee cannot agree, then that impasse can be resolved by a referendum. But if they can agree, then a referendum can safely be dispensed with.

OPINION ELECTORAL REFORM

JOHN DEGEN

MARK CRAWFORD

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, pictured in this fi le photo testifying at House Electoral Reform Committee with PCO’s Isabelle Mondou. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

13THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

OPINION NUCLEAR WEAPONS

EDMONTON—What will it take to get the Canadian government to start fi ght-

ing for the elimination of nuclear weapons rather than against?

That question takes on a special poignancy as we observe another Hiro-shima Day—the 71st anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing that set off the nuclear age. There are 15,350 nuclear weapons still in existence, and the U.S. and Russia maintain 1,800 of these on high-alert status. The U.S., Russia, and China are aggressively pursuing a new generation of nuclear weapons. Former U.S. defence sec-retary William Perry has said, “The danger of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than during the Cold War.”

Finally, something is being done to try to ban these weapons that threaten the very existence of life on the planet. A diplo-matic process is underway in Geneva to kick-start negotiations in 2017 for a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimi-nation. A majority of countries in the world support this move—but not Canada.

The current process, a working group open to all states and operating under a UN mandate, has just produced a draft report calling for “urgent action” to deal with “the threat to humanity posed by the existence of nuclear weapons and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any detona-tion.” Thus, the draft report, which will be considered at a meeting August 5-19, called for “legal measures” to be taken to attain a world without nuclear weapons.

However, a minority of states consider that “such negotiations would be premature in light of the current international security environ-ment.” And they oppose a specifi c legal ban on nuclear weapons. Canada is one of these states, who are mostly NATO members.

The Canadian government submitted to the working group a paper that argued that nuclear weapons could not be declared il-legal because “the reality is that under cur-rent customary international law, the use and possession of nuclear weapons is not illegal.” It is hard to get one’s mind around this argument.

Canada is arguing that because there is no legal instrument banning nuclear weapons we can’t fi ll this legal gap by direct action. Instead, Canada says we can only take a series of steps, such as bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or a cut-off on the production of fi ssile materials.

This “step-by-step” approach has pre-vailed for four decades. Not only has it failed to achieve nuclear disarmament but it has led to the present nuclear crisis in which all the nuclear powers are justifying their

modernization programs by claiming that international tensions force them to do so.

The Canadian paper also argues that we can’t negotiate a ban without the participa-tion of the nuclear states in the negotia-tions. The nuclear states, however, are all boycotting the present Geneva process. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. Many states are so frustrated that they want to pursue on their own a ban on nuclear weapons in an effort to stigmatize any possession and at least open the door to later participation by the nuclear states in negotiations that would produce a legally binding nuclear weapons convention.

The Canadian government is trying to get away with a contradictory argument: we can’t develop a law against nuclear weapons because there is no law against nuclear weapons. The government is in contortions because it is sticking with NATO’s Strategic Concept, which calls nuclear weapons the “supreme guarantee” of security.

Has Canada really given into NATO’s spurious argument? I think it’s more likely that the political leadership of Canada has not yet addressed the fullness of the present nuclear weapons debate. Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion has shown no signs that he grasps the nuclear moral and political crisis.

Many Canadians are trying to wake up the government. The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has just issued a “Call to Action,” urging the government to sponsor a resolution at the UN this fall mandating negotiations for “a compre-hensive, legally binding Convention that prohibits nuclear weapons and requires their verifi able elimination.” Forty-four Canadian organizations have endorsed this call. Also, nearly 900 members of the Order of Canada have signed a similar request.

A legally binding convention with the participation of the nuclear states may be some distance off, but the Geneva working group report recognizes that work must start immediately on the development of a basic legal instrument with or without the participation of the nuclear-armed states.

Canada should put its weight behind this effort. When U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Kim Won-soo visited Ottawa recently, he said Canada, with a strong record in nuclear disarmament work in the past, could play a “bridging role” bringing the nuclear and non-nuclear states closer together on forming common policies.

Former Senator Douglas Roche is work-ing on a new book, Hope Not Fear: Build-ing Peace in a Fractured World.

The Hill Times

Canada should back effort to eliminate nuclear weapons Former U.S. defence secretary William Perry has said, ‘The danger of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than during the Cold War.’

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Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion has shown no signs that he grasps the nuclear moral and political crisis, write Douglas Roche. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201614INSIDE POLITICS GOVERNMENT CONSULTATIONS

OTTAWA—Canada must be a nation of innovators. “684 ideas for #CdnInnova-

tion,” Navdeep Bains, the federal minister for innovation, science and economic development, wrote on Twitter on Aug. 1. “Have you submitted yours yet?”

Bains added a link to the website for the federal government’s “Innovation Agenda,” which features a one-minute video as-suring visitors that, indeed, “Canada is a nation of innovators.”

Perhaps this is because they have had so much practice. By my count, Bains is the fourth industry minister (as people in his offi ce used to be called) to launch an inno-vation agenda since the turn of the century. Jean Chrétien’s minister Allan Rock had one. Stephen Harper sought to contrast with the Liberals by refusing to mention innovation. Then he appointed a panel on innovation, and then, noticing several years later that he was still prime minister, he appointed another.

Now we have another federal innovation agenda. With a panel. And a public consul-tation—one of 70 public consultations this eager new government has launched since

it came to offi ce nine months ago. That’s a seven with a zero at the end.

If you run into a Liberal this summer, you will probably not escape without being consulted about something. Bains’ colleague Catherine McKenna wants to know what #CANClimateAction you’re taking. Maryam Monsef, the minister for democratic institu-tions, hopes you’re #EngagedInER. (That’s “electoral reform.”) There are consultations on trade deals, on home mail delivery, on ap-pointments to high offi ce.

Unfortunately the number of consulta-tions may be outstripping the available sup-ply of Canadians with clever ideas.

A month ago, I wrote here that Monsef’s electoral reform consultation came with its own Twitter hashtag, #EngagedinER, which people were encouraged to use as they spread the word about their own local meetings, in garages or living rooms or church basements, around the theme of changes to Canada’s

electoral system. Back then, the hashtag had only been used six times.

I wondered whether I’d provoke an ava-lanche of #EngagedinER activity by putting that information in a prominent newspaper. I needn’t have worried. As of Aug. 2, the hashtag had been used 41 times, 26 of them from a single account (a woman in Guelph who seems genuinely excited about a chance to debate electoral reform). If spontaneous local electoral-reform meetings are popping up all over Canada in the dead of summer, I can fi nd no evidence of it.

Bains says he has received 684 ideas for #CdnInnovation. This looks like innova-tive counting. The government’s (fourth!) innovation website lists several dozen proposals submitted by earnest Canadians. Some ideas are repeated many times (start science and tech education earlier). Others are spectacularly off-brand (“Decrease im-migration volumes”).

But the only way I can get the num-ber of ideas to nearly 700 is to throw in another part of the website, which gathers social-media commentary from Twitter, Facebook and other platforms under the title, “What You’re Saying.”

I suppose it depends who “you” are. From Twitter, the website gathers input from such ordinary Canadians as: Bardish Chagger, the minister for small business; Kirsty Duncan, the minister for science; a public-relations staffer at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, which swims in lakes of provincial govern-ment funding; the federal Competition Bu-reau; and the Canadian embassy in Moscow.

Almost none of these “ideas” is an idea. They are mostly messages urging Canadi-ans to submit their ideas.

On all of YouTube, two videos use the suggested #CdnInnovation hashtag. Both were posted by Bains’ own department. On one of them, the CEO of Shopify says it would be great if computer science were taught more broadly in schools. This has the virtue of being probably true, not a new idea, and outside federal jurisdiction.

There’s no need to assume bad faith on the part of all these ministers. Listening is better than not listening. If even four useful ideas come up, that’s four useful ideas. I won’t claim it’ll have been worth the money. That will really depend on the ideas. But the instinct to ask Canadians is understandable.

Will the outcome be healthy? It de-pends. The ominous apathy greeting Mon-sef’s electoral reform process, in particular, is striking. She argues that a referendum would not reach as many Canadians as other consultation methods. Her preferred method is off to a shaky start. A few dozen meetings, attended by the usual suspects, will not be a revolution in democratic le-gitimacy. They could, instead, reveal a lack of public engagement that would endanger the entire electoral-reform project.

Paul Wells is a national affairs colum-nist for The Toronto Star. This column was released on Aug. 3.

The Hill Times

TORONTO—Now that the Republican and Democratic conventions are over and

Americans have nominated their candidates for the White House, we can watch how the presidential campaign unfolds between now and November. Yes, in Canada, the Con-servatives and the NDP are also in the pro-cess of selecting new leaders, but who cares?

This overwhelming interest in American politics by our media—conventional and so-cial—should at least raise questions and con-cerns about who we are and the often-men-tioned differences between “us” and “them.” Obviously, we don’t like guns to be sold on

shelves beside tomatoes and rapini, and we are very proud of our health-care system. These are differences, but is this enough to justify how different we say we are?

During the last two weeks, I have moni-tored international newscasts from Europe and other continents, and they have given extensive coverage to the U.S. party con-ventions. Still, nothing could be compared to what Canadian media have done.

Of course, Canada’s relationship with the United States is different from any other country because of thousands of kilometres of shared border, the integrated economies, trade, tourism, and much more.

For years we have been able to deal with United States despite the huge unbal-ance of economic power. The ingenuity of our institutions, the creativity of our entre-preneurs, and the hard work of all Canadi-ans allowed us to live close to the elephant without being squashed.

But lately, new technology, the fading of the borders, and the increasing demo-graphic osmosis affecting society on all continents are making very hard to say with sustainable credibility that we are dif-ferent from the Americans.

The events of the last two weeks should force us to at least ask some questions. We always had a particular interest towards American politics and presidential conven-tions, but that interest was mostly limited

to politicians or consulting business-es looking for ideas to replicate in Canada.

This time it’s different. It’s not just conven-tional media that has made American politics the most important topic, but also social media. This means that even average Canadians are very much into it. Talking to some non-political friends in recent days, the topic of the discussion was Trump or Clinton. They knew the names of American senators and politi-cal leaders, but they were not able to name one candidate for the Conservative or NDP leadership races in Canada. The most popular answer was, “Are they having a leadership?”

I understand that those Canadian lead-ership races are still many months away from being settled and don’t feature names like Trump or Clinton. But there is still room for concern. Why are names in the Canadian races not as well known? It it because the media is ignoring them or because we don’t have candidates who are as interesting?

If Canadians want more of American politics and events, should Canadian broadcasters simply replicate the Ameri-can news? If that’s the case, why watch CBC or CTV instead of CNN?

Visiting some friends over the last two weeks, their TV set was glued to CNN. Why? Because, they said, if you need some particular news, you go straight to the source. They have better guests and their coverage is slicker and faster.

I went home and I looked at the cover-age more carefully. It was when the news of plagiarism from the Melania Trump speech came out. I tuned into CNN and they were interviewing the blogger who fi rst noticed the similarities between Mrs. Trump’s speech and Michelle Obama’s. I switched on a Canadian network and they were interviewing a professor from an American university about the problem of plagiarism. I switched back to CNN and they were already back on the fl oor with another guest, while the interview with this American professor on the Canadian channel (by the way, why not interview a Canadian professor?) went on for many more minutes.

This is a subject that deserves more debates and it is important not to reach conclusions before getting all the necessary information. Still, we have to give an answer to the average Canadian viewer asking why we have to watch Canadian broadcasters if they give us cover-age of the same news provided by American networks, but only shabbier and boring?

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

The Hill Times

Cabinet hell-bent on your input

Canadians captivated by U.S. presidential race while ignoring domestic leadership contests

The instinct to ask Canadians is understandable. Will the outcome be healthy? It depends.

Average Canadians are well versed on current U.S. politics but struggle to name one candidate in either the Conservative or NDP leadership races in Canada.

OPINION CANADA & U.S. POLITICS

PAUL WELLS

ANGELO PERSICHILLI

By my count, Navdeep Bains is the fourth industry minister (as people in his offi ce used to be called) to launch an innovation agenda since the turn of the cen-tury, writes Paul Wells. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

15THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

NEW COMMUNICATIONS MISSING WOMEN INQUIRY

When it comes to indigenous issues, the dialogue part is huge. It starts with acknowledging the harm that was done and how the effects of that harm carries through today. Then it’s about acknowl-edging the affect that the past has on the present, and only when this dialogue has taken place, and the majority society has acknowledged the past suffi ciently, can we really talk about the solutions.

And here’s where indigenous Canada and non-indigenous Canada are so differ-ent, miles apart.

Some non-indigenous people may want to do a quick acknowledgement and move on to the solutions, and others just want to forget or even deny the past and move on.

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is really the fi rst government in our history that wants to do this right, that accepts that we need to hear, and listen, and acknowledge and feel the reality of the past.

This is the most fundamental transfor-mation in the way this country has been governed. It may appear to be simple politi-cal correctness to some, but it is deeper.

It is not only the right thing to do, but it is the constitutional thing to do. It was that part of our history that we have gener-ally ignored. The part that is about people being here when Europeans found their way here—as when they “founded” North America, like no one found it before them.

So governance in Canada is about a mod-ern Western government, run by a parliamen-tary system on the Westminster model—plus we have this new part—even though it’s really the oldest part: indigenous governance.

The Trudeau government is serious about a nation-to-nation relationship with indigenous peoples. Apart from the nice-ness of it, it is what was enshrined in law in the Royal Proclamation by King George III, way back in 1763, and then reconfi rmed again in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Pierre Trudeau and the provincial premiers in 1982, but never fully put into effect by Trudeau or his succes-sors. Justin Trudeau and company were heading in the new/old direction, and it was the pivotal Tsilhqot’in court decision of June 2014 that reaffi rmed that indigenous title as set out in 1763, continues now and in perpetuity. This is also about the rela-tionship that the First Peoples have with the land and the profound belief that the land and the waters need to be protected and preserved for future generations.

It’s not about radical native leaders get-ting active and just stopping energy proj-ects for environmental reasons, it is about our laws. Remember the rule of law. Well, this is the rule of our laws. Just because none of us were taught about it in school doesn’t make it go away. It is still there. And if indigenous folks value the land dif-ferently, the rest of us are going to have to understand that.

If Trudeau achieves nothing else in his mandate, he will go down in history as fundamentally changing the governance of Canada, period. Not just the relationship between a few ministers and indigenous leaders, but how we, as a society, relate to our history and how we now recognize a fourth and very different order of govern-ment—indigenous governments.

That explains why it took three federal ministers: Indigenous Affairs Minister Car-olyn Bennett, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, and Status of Women Minister Patti Hajdu, with the help of countless government offi cials, and indigenous lead-ers and families almost nine months to get to the point of starting the inquiry because the pre-inquiry stage was just as important. It was important to get this right, including the terms of reference, the mandate, the re-sources, and, of course, the commissioners. And everyone is not fully happy with the terms. But we have a solid start with some details yet to be developed.

The problem, which was fi rst brought to our national consciousness by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), raises the alarm because more than 1,200 indigenous women and girls have gone missing or have been murdered. That’s 1,200. And no one noticed for years.

And that’s the core of the problem, the nub of the issue. We know some of them were murdered and that others just went missing, poof. They disappeared and au-thorities didn’t go looking for every one of them. There were too many fi les left unfi n-ished, closed, or not even opened.

This is colonialism when the major-ity society doesn’t take your tragedies seriously and when a colonized group can be so little valued. This is also racism and sexism.

The inquiry is about honouring all those women and girls and their surviving families, these Canadian women and girls. But it is also the most cruel and glaring metaphor for a relationship between the authorities and the First Peoples gone so terribly wrong.

And let’s not forget the policies of resi-dential schools so eloquently documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commis-sion chaired by Senator Murray Sinclair.There are also land rights. And the cultures and languages that are being lost. And huge under-employment. And high incar-ceration rates.

The commission, headed by British Co-lumbia Judge Marion Bullar, has two years and four months to report and a budget of $53.8-million. And if anyone thinks that’s a lot of money, this is the minimum price for such blatant inaction for so long. The rest of the price tag is being picked up by those who died and their families.

Dawn Lavell-Harvard, now president of the NWAC, had this to say, in part: “We welcome the leadership shown by the federal government today. After 11 years of NWAC listening to the families of the miss-ing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada, we are pleased that we now have a government who is prepared to listen and act.”

After 11 years of just not being on the radar, this painful national fact will get a good hearing. One can only hope that the wider Canadian society will be listening and that some good comes of it all.

Andrew Cardozo is president of the Pearson Centre and an adjunct professor at Carleton University.

The Hill Times

Trudeau government serious about a nation-to-nation relationship, changing governance of Canada The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is really the fi rst government in our history that wants to do this right, that accepts that we need to hear, and listen, and acknowledge and feel the reality of the past.

The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Alistair Bursey as Chair for 2016–2017.

A pharmacist-owner in Fredericton, NB, Alistair was elected Vice Chair of the CPhA Board of Directors in 2015 and is the New Brunswick Pharmacists’ Association (NBPA) representative on the Board. A member of the NBPA Board since 2009, Alistair served as NBPA President from 2011–2014. He has also served on various committees, including the Members Benefit Committee, and was the NBPA representative on the Operations Service Committee on Primary Care for the NB Department of Health.

With the goal of advancing the health and well-being of Canadians through excellence in pharmacist care, Alistair will be working with the Board of Directors to ensure the successful implementation of CPhA’s mission, vision and strategic plan. This will ensure a stronger and more united national voice for the pharmacist profession in Canada and chart a clear course for CPhA’s future, focused on the health of Canadians and the provision of world-class pharmacy leadership. As Chair of CPhA, Alistair is committed to ensuring that pharmacists are provided with the tools and supports they need to provide better health and better care to all Canadians, and better value to the health care system.

The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) is the uniting national voice of pharmacy and the pharmacist profession in Canada. As pharmacists undertake an enhanced role in the delivery of health care services, CPhA ensures that the profession is recognized as a national leader in health care, influencing the policies, programs, budgets and initiatives affecting the profession and the health of Canadians.

For more info, visit www.pharmacists.ca

Alistair BurseyB.Sc.(Hons), B.Sc.Pharm,

Chair of the Canadian Pharmacists Association

Continued from page 1

A woman, pictured Aug. 1 at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., tak-ing part in the federal government’s ceremony to offi cially launch the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201616NEWS MISSING & MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN INQUIRY

In a detailed analysis of the inquiry’s terms of reference, the NWAC said there is no mention of the justice system and that commissioners are to only “per-form their duties in such a way as to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigation or criminal proceeding.”

Among the several points the NWAC sent the federal government in early July that it wanted con-sidered in the development of the reference terms, was one directed to supporting families and survivors through the justice system, and addressing the “systemic issues” that have led to their sharing of stories of loss or of being violated.

NWAC president Dawn Lavell-Harvard said she hopes that once the commissioners begin their work, they might be able to build in some mechanism to enable families to pursue their cases through the justice system.

“Actionable recommendations from the inquiry are going to make a difference in the system that needs to be overhauled, and not just broad-based philosophical ide-als and examples of best practices,” said Ms. Lavell-Harvard.

The federal government’s an-nouncement on Aug. 3 about the fi ve commissioners who will lead the national inquiry and its terms of reference was hailed as “his-toric” by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett (Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont.), and one that highlights the urgency of examining “the underlying and deep, systemic challenge” of the racism, sexism, and “the sustained impact of colonialism” manifested in unspeakable violence against female aboriginal victims.

As many as 3,000 indigenous women and girls (or more than

double the RCMP’s numbers for the period, 1980 to 2012) have ei-ther been murdered or have gone missing, according to the Van-couver-based group, Walk4Jus-tice, which provides support for victims’ families.

The statistics represent, in the opening words of the inquiry’s terms of reference, “an ongoing national tragedy that must be brought to an end.”

Once B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton was arrested and found guilty, in 2006, on six counts of second-degree murder (although he confessed to killing 49 women), the police and Parliament took notice.

Ms. Lavell-Harvard said she hopes that the “weight of the commissioners” will lead to a “scrutinizing process” and result in families seeing more justice, rather than “simply sending fami-lies for another trip around the system that has failed us.”

Under the terms of reference, if commissioners have “reason-able grounds to believe that any information obtained in the course of the Inquiry may be used in the investigation or pros-ecution of an offence under the Criminal Code,” they can remit that information to law-enforce-ment offi cials.

Having indigenous women hold signifi cant roles in the process will carry “clout,” said Ms. Lavell-Harvard, a member of the Wik-wemikong First Nation in Ontario.

Chief commissioner Marion Buller, a former civil and criminal lawyer and member of Saskatche-wan’s Mistawasis First Nation, was appointed British Columbia’s fi rst female First Nations judge in 1994 and is a past president of Canada’s Indigenous Bar Association.

However, Ms. Lavell-Harvard said the outcome of the inquiry needs to extend beyond just ad-dressing past violence, and must lead to recommendations for ways to prevent it from happen-ing in the future.

“We need to expose and make necessary changes in policies, legislation, and the way our insti-tutions operate and treat indig-enous women and girls, who are being put in unsafe situations by the system,” she said.

Others have joined that call.Conservative indigenous affairs

critic Cathy McLeod (Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, B.C.) said her party supports the inquiry “as long as it remains focused on reducing

these horrifi c tragedies and achiev-ing measurable improvements in the day-to-day lives of indigenous women and girls.”

A former nurse who worked in rural indigenous communi-ties, Ms. McLeod said in a news release that she “too frequently witnessed fi rst-hand the pain and the violence against women and girls,” and that “there is a need to take action in a way that will make a real difference.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association said it hopes the inquiry will result in “concrete actions” to re-duce violence against indigenous women across the country. CINA president Lisa Bourque Bearskin, an associate professor of nursing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., called for a “thor-ough analysis of law enforcement and systemic deconstruction of the Indian Act to ensure a greater equity in protection services for indigenous women in Canada.”

“We have to look at supporting indigenous women and not crimi-nalizing them,” said Ms. Bourque Bearskin, a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Alberta.

As part of its terms of refer-ence, the inquiry’s mandate includes contributing to “public awareness about the causes of and solutions for ending vio-lence experienced by Indigenous women and girls in Canada.”

Ms. Lavell-Harvard said change must occur in law enforcement and child welfare, “two primary systems under pro-vincial jurisdiction that need to be overhauled and put under the microscope in terms of how they disadvantage, discriminate and put Indigenous women and girls in unsafe situations.”

She said that women and girls have been forced into the sex trade while they were in foster care in group homes or motels. “It’s a dif-fi cult conversation about something most people don’t ever have to know or look at, but we need to have it.”

However, the NWAC pointed out that the inquiry’s terms of

reference do not mention the role of the provinces and territories.

According to the association, indigenous children comprise six per cent of Canada’s population but account for nearly 33 per cent of the children in care across the country.

Incarceration rates for indig-enous women are disproportionately high too. In Kenora, a city of just under 16,000 residents in northwest-ern Ontario’s Lake of the Woods cot-tage country, 90 per cent of female inmates are indigenous women.

The NWAC wants to have a “signifi cant impact” in the inquiry through regional and issue-spe-cifi c advisory bodies the commis-sioners are authorized to estab-lish, said Ms. Lavell-Harvard, who is “cautiously optimistic” that the two-year-long process will reap positive results.

“We are well aware of the short-coming within the terms of refer-ence, but it’s time to roll up our

sleeves and make sure this inquiry gives us the answers we need and focuses on the bigger picture as we move forward,” she said.

“It’s going to depend on what commissioners make of their mandate. They have the power to structure the inquiry in such a way that will get hard answers, and shine a light on areas that need to be signifi cantly overhauled and improved, and on the way in which the system is failing women and putting them at risk.”

“If families, indigenous grassroots groups, and the Native Women’s Association have been easily ignored, a national com-mission of inquiry recommending that something needs to be inves-tigated will have the eyes of the nation on that investigation. We’re hoping that kind of scrutiny will lead to a different outcome.”

news@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

Missing, murdered indigenous women’s inquiry needs to look forward, not just back, say advocates The Native Women’s Association of Canada has raised concerns about the inquiry’s lack focus on the justice system and areas under provincial or territorial jurisdiction.

Continued from page 1

STATISTICS ON MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN, AND THE INQUIRY:

NATIONAL INQUIRY INTO MISSING MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN COMMISSIONERS’ SALARIES:

• In 2014 the RCMP identifi ed 1,181 indigenous women have gone missing or have been murdered.• Indigenous women make up four per cent of Canada’s female population, yet made up 16 per cent of all women murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012.• The commission has $53.86-million to spend over the two years it has to conduct the inquiry.

• In addition, $16.17-million is being allocated to create Family Information Liaison Units.• The commission is expected to present the government an interim report in fall 2017 and a fi nal report by Dec. 31, 2018. • During the pre-inquiry design phase of the national inquiry, the government received 4,100 online submissions and consulted around 2,000 people.

The salary ranges of the fi ve national inquiry commissioners were disclosed in the government’s orders-in-council the day they were appointed. In addition to their salaries, the commissioners will have travel expenses covered while serving in their capacities as commissioners.

Chief Commissioner Marion R. Buller: $230,800-$271,500 Commissioner Brian Eyolfson: $174,700-$205,500 Commissioner Marilyn Poitras: $174,700-$205,500 Commissioner Qajaq Robinson: $174,700-$205,500 Commissioner Michèle Audette: $174,70 -$205,500

Source: Privy Council Offi ce

From the left, Liberal MP Kamal Khera, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett, Status of Women Minister Patty Hadju, and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould announce details of the long-awaited inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women on Aug. 3. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

A woman pictured at the opening ceremony at last week’s launch of the Missing and Murdered Women’s Inquiry. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Source: Indigenous and Northern affairs

A year earlier, 27 out of what were then 68 senior offi cers earned a combined $369,726 in bonuses.

Asked about the sharp increase in per-formance pay for senior offi cers last year, Bank of Canada spokeswoman Josianne Ménard said in an email that “2015 was an exceptionally demanding year for the bank’s senior offi cers.”

She noted that last year marked the completion of the Bank of Canada’s previ-ous medium-term plan, which covered the years 2013 to 2015, and provides goals, themes, and challenges for the specifi ed period. Bank employees in 2015 also pre-pared the next medium-term plan covering 2016 to 2018, she said.

“As a result, a larger number of senior offi cers were recognized for their perfor-mance and received superior ratings,” Ms. Ménard said.

There are two levels of bonuses for se-nior offi cers at the Bank of Canada. Some receive an award equal to six per cent of their base pay, while others get 12 per cent. Ms. Ménard said in annual performance and salary reviews, those judged to have exceeded “most” expectations of their jobs get six per cent bonuses, while those who “fully” exceed expectations get 12 per cent.

For last year’s work, 29 out of the 39 senior offi cers getting bonuses received six per cent, while 10 earned the 12 per cent award. The year before, 24 out of the 27 getting bonuses got six per cent, and three got 12 per cent.

Bank of Canada data shows that there was $457,227 worth of bonus payments to senior offi cers as a result of work done in 2012, and that dipped to $343,886 for 2013.

Ms. Ménard said all Bank of Canada employees, except the governor and the

senior deputy governor, are eligible for performance bonuses. She said the bank’s guidelines indicate that the total number of employees receiving bonuses should not exceed 35 per cent of staff. She said between 20 to 25 per cent should fall into the category of exceeding “most” expecta-tions, which was raised last year from a range of 15 to 20 per cent. She added that the central bank looks to have between fi ve and 10 per cent of staff categorized as “fully” exceeding expectations.

The Bank of Canada Act stipulates that the governor’s and senior deputy governor’s salaries do not include any performance-based factors. Governor Stephen Poloz earns a salary within the range of $436,100 and $513,000 a year, while senior deputy gover-nor Carolyn Wilkins earns between $305,400 and $359,200, according to the Privy Council Offi ce’s orders-in-council database.

The Bank of Canada earns money from fees paid by fi nancial institutions for with-drawing bank notes, and from investments in government bonds and treasury bills. It says on its website that its revenue “greatly” exceeds its operating expenses, and it has averaged $1.7-billion in annual profi ts in recent years.

The central bank is a Crown corpora-tion that serves the role of controlling infl a-tion through interest rates, being a “lender of last resort” to ensure stability in the country’s fi nancial system, and being an adviser to the federal government on debt management.

While the bank operates independently from the government, the government appoints its board of directors and has a say in who becomes governor and senior deputy governor. The central bank says on its website that the fi nance minister has the prerogative of providing written directions to the central bank on monetary policy if there is a disagreement between the bank and government, though that has never happened.

The Treasury Board annually releases information about performance bonuses for executives in the public service. Data for the 2013-14 fi scal year was posted online on July 31, 2015. Kelly James, a

spokeswoman for the Treasury Board, said a publication date has not yet been deter-mined for posting the 2014-15 fi gures.

In 2013-14, a total of 5,576 public service executives received a combined $72.5-million in performance pay, of which $70.2-million was considered “risk” pay and $2.3-million was classifi ed as bonuses. A year earlier, 5,726 received a total of $71.8-million in performance pay.

The level of executive performance pay has been relatively stable in recent years, fl uctuating in the low- to mid-$70-million range since 2008-09. However, it saw signifi cant growth in the early years of the Harper government as it rose from $48.8-million in 2006-07 to $56.7-million in 2007-08 and then $70.7-million in 2008-09.

Kathy Brock, a professor of policy studies at Queen’s University, said performance pay can be an effective motivator for employees,

not just for the monetary value, but because it gives people positive reinforcement about the quality of the work they’re doing.

However, she added that there are drawbacks when it comes to using per-formance pay in the public service. For one, she said public-sector work processes are largely designed to provide workers with a degree of anonymity—in contrast to the politicians and other offi cials who serve as the public face for such organiza-tions—and rewarding particular individu-als within that structure is “at odds with the culture that they’re trying to create.”

She also said that public-sector work is becoming increasingly team oriented, and having a performance-pay system in place can create resentment among team mem-bers when some get it and others don’t.

dabma@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

17THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

NEWS BANK OF CANADA

THE NORTH

In this important and timely policy briefing on Canada’s North, The Hill Times takes a deep look at how climate change is transforming the Arctic and what it all means; we look into Irving Shipbuilding Inc.’s $2-million funding commitment with the Nunavut Arctic College;

we find out the latest on Transport Canada’s initiative to buy pilotless aerial drones for the North and the federal government’s move to improve surveillance of the Arctic; we dig into Canada’s plans to include the North Pole when it submits its Arctic continental shelf claim in 2018; we find out why Canada performs worst of North American governments in not living up to promises to protect their oceans; and we look into the Supreme Court’s hearing of an appeal against seismic testing in Arctic waters.

BE A PART OF IT.

PUBLICATION DATE: October 24, 2016

For more information or to reserve your government relations and public affairs advertising space, contact The Hill Times display advertising department at 613-688-8825.

BOOKING DEADLINE: October 19, 2016

Bank of Canada bonuses skyrocket, senior offi cers rewarded for work on new three-year plan Total payouts for senior offi cers increased to $653,710 from $369,726 in one year.

Continued from page 1

BY THE NUMBERS

PERFORMANCE BONUSES FOR SENIOR OFFICERS AT BANK OF CANADA BASED ON WORK PERFORMED IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS:

2015: $653,710 paid 39 employees received (29 got 6%/10 got 12%) 2014: $369,726 paid 27 employees received (24 got 6%/3 got 12%) 2013: $348,886 paid 26 employees received (23 got 6%/3 got 12%) 2013: $457,227 paid 35 employees received (31 got 6%/4 got 12%)

Source: Information retrieved by Ken Rubin though access-to-information request

There was a more than 75 per cent boost in performance pay for senior offi cers at the Bank of Canada, based on their work last year. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201618NEWS U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

“You don’t want to put yourself offside with the incoming govern-ment, whoever it may be,” he said. “That’s just prudent national self-interest, and it would be par-ticularly dumb to wade into U.S. electoral politics in this election, which looks like it’s going to be pretty closely fought.”

He added: “If you’re seen to be trying to infl uence the outcome of an election, that’s a very danger-ous game to be playing. … It can come back to haunt you if you back to wrong horse. … You’re going have to work with whoever gets elected, and you’re going to want to have the best possible relationship, and you’re going to have to work hard to build a relationship.”

Sarah Goldfeder, a lobbyist with Earnscliffe Strategy Group and former assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Canada, agreed that the Canadian government is wise to keep its opinion to itself about this current U.S. electoral contest between Republican Mr. Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“I think [Mr. Trudeau] has to stay neutral,” she said. “The reality of the situation is that whoever is elected president, that’s the per-son he has to work with. So, the easier he can make that transi-tion, the better off he is.”

Ms. Goldfeder said that that “foreign countries shouldn’t have a say on who the American president becomes.” She said even the post-electoral celebration over U.S. President Barack Obama’s victory among foreign govern-ments across the globe in 2008 was “jarring” for many Americans.

“As democracies, you don’t interfere with one another,” said Colin Robertson, a former diplomat and current fellow at the Global Affairs Institute, while adding there is room for national governments to speak out if they feel elections is being conducted in an illegitimate fashion.

Mr. Trump has made many statements during his efforts to become president that have been seen as showing intolerance of groups such as Muslims, Mexi-

cans, and women. Mr. Obama and others have expressed doubt about his basic competence to undertake the job of president of the United States.

Issues Mr. Trump has spoken out about that could have a direct effect on Canada include his mus-ings about taking the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and not au-tomatically defending other mem-bers in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if they have not lived up to their fi nancial obligations in the alliance.

“It’s possible for other world leaders to speak out against positions without speaking out against candidates,” Ms. Gold-feder said.

That’s also the path suggested by Mr. Robertson. “What we do in our policy statements is we make it clear that we strongly believe in freer trade and that we want to keep the Americans directly involved as the backbone of the western alliance, and you do these in response to questions without taking on Trump directly. … We try to avoid, as much as possible, making anything per-sonal.”

Conservative MP Gord Brown (Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Ont.), whose riding includes border crossings with New York state, said the government should talk about issues arising in this U.S. election campaign, but not the candidates involved.

“Canada should not involve themselves in the U.S. election any more than they should be involved in ours,” he said in an email. “However we should stand up on specifi c issues that are in our interest.”

When asked for comment on the U.S. presidential campaign last week, Cameron Ahmad, a spokesman for Mr. Trudeau, declined to specify his boss’s preference in the presidential race. He said comments the prime minster has already made on the U.S. election “still stand.”

During a town hall meeting organized by The Huffi ngton Post in March, Mr. Trudeau said: “I’m not going to pick a fi ght with Donald Trump right now. I’m not going to support him either, obvi-ously.”

Mr. Trudeau spoke more strongly during a Maclean’s town hall in December. When asked about Mr. Trump then, the prime minister said: “I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I stand fi rmly against the politics of division, the politics of fear, the politics of intolerance or hateful rhetoric.”

Some members of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet who could be most affected by Mr. Trump’s policies are also taking a neu-tral stand on this U.S. election campaign while defending agreements that Mr. Trump has threatened.

Jordan Owens, spokeswoman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan (Vancouver South, B.C.), said in an email: “We look forward to a productive working relation-ship with whoever is elected as the next president of the United States of America.”

She also touted Canada’s com-mitment to NATO. “All citizens of NATO member states are safer because of the alliance.”

Anne-Louise Chauvette, spokeswoman for International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.), said, “NAFTA is in the best interest of [Canada, the U.S., and Mexi-co], and we are focused on deep-ening our trading relationship.”

She also said Ms. Freeland would “work diligently with whomever is her counterpart after the U.S. election to promote North America’s economic inter-est.”

Mr. Hampson said whatever problems Canada anticipates would come from a Trump presi-dency, it would only be worse if Canada were to speak out against him and he then gets elected. Besides, Mr. Hampson said, the Canadian government would have next to no infl uence on U.S. voters by expressing a position.

Mr. Robertson said it’s reason-able to think that if someone the Canadian government publicly denounced won the U.S. presi-dency, it would sour relations between the two federal govern-ments.

“If you’re competing for a job and one of your colleagues dumps on you and you get the job, it’s not as if you’re going to look to him or her positively,” he said.

Mr. Goldfeder said, if anything, interference from another govern-ment into U.S. electoral affairs could have the opposite effect as intended.

“A sure-fi re way to ensure the base rallies around a candidate is

for a foreign leader to come out and endorse the other person,” she said. “It doesn’t suit the ends and it’s not a good means.”

Mr. Hampson said there’s a longstanding norm among demo-cratic countries not to interfere in each other’s elections. He differ-entiated elections from referen-dums on public policy, such as the recent “Brexit” vote in which Britons voted to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Leaders from Canada, the United States, and other countries were open about their preference that voters choose to remain in the EU.

“Referendums are not the same as an election,” he said. “[Government involvement in other countries’ elections] is seen as subverting democracy. De-mocracies, on matters of public policy, will express their opinions. But that’s different from actually becoming involved in the politi-cal process. I dare say Canadians would not look very favourable if, during the Canadian election, President Obama had been seen to be interfering and trying to sway the opinions of Canadian voters.”

Mr. Robertson said, even when it came to Brexit, there was some polls indicating the movement to take the U.K. out of the EU became more emboldened as a backlash to Mr. Obama’s involve-ment.

Ms. Goldfeder said two na-tional governments can overcome differences on policy in their relations, but it’s much harder to reconcile the relationship if a leader from one country es-sentially campaigned against the other during an election race.

Asked if there is ever any justifi cation for a government to speak out on candidates in an election happening in an-other country, Ms. Goldfeder said: “That’s a tricky one, because you think back to the 1930s and you think back to the world watching Adolf Hitler, and arguably there were diplomats in Germany and there were leaders in Europe who were very concerned with the rise of Adolf Hitler who didn’t really feel like there was a way for them

to express that. And there’s al-ways the question of, ‘What if?’ ”

She added that she was not drawing parallels between Mr. Trump and Mr. Hitler by using this example.

Mr. Hampson recalled when former Canadian ambassador the U.S., Raymond Chrétien—also the nephew to former prime minister Jean Chrétien—said during the 2000 presidential campaign that it would be better for Canada if Al Gore defeated eventual win-ner George W. Bush, though he added, “I don’t think we paid any kind of price for it.”

Mr. Robertson said he was present when Mr. Chrétien made those comments. He said the former ambassador was talking to bureaucrats and likely unaware there were reporters in the room. He added that Mr. Chrétien’s term as ambassador was almost over at the time, and if he remained in the position much longer, “it would have been very diffi cult for him to stay on with Bush winning.”

Mr. Hampson said it’s de-batable how bad Mr. Trump, as president, would be for Canada in comparison to Ms. Clinton. He noted that Ms. Clinton has also expressed misgivings about NAFTA and the yet-to-be ratifi ed Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) that includes Canada. He added that Mr. Trump has said he would approve the Keystone XL pipe-line, which Mr. Trudeau’s govern-ment has championed.

Besides, he added, what gets said in an election campaign and then done in government is often quite different.

Ms. Goldfeder added that, regardless of who becomes the U.S. president, decisions relating to alliances such as NAFTA and NATO go beyond just the presi-dent, with Congress also have a signifi cant say in such matters.

“The reality is that should Donald Trump become president, I think you’ll see a more active legislature,” she said. “And as you’ve already seen, the legis-lature in the United States can really hamper presidential desires on certain policies.”

dabma@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

Canadian government right to keep quiet on Trump: experts The government is being encouraged to speak out on issues that arise in the U.S. election campaign, but not the candidates.

Continued from page 1

Donald Trump, pictured at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Feb. 22, 2016. The Canadian government would be wise to stay out of the current U.S. presidential election campaign, say diplomacy experts. Photograph by Gage Skidmore

19THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

OPINION INTERNATIONAL AID

Global humanitarian need is on the rise. The UN estimates

that 125 million people need hu-manitarian relief and more than 60 million people are displaced from their homes. The Govern-ment of Canada’s international assistance review could not have come at a more critical time.

The Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, Marie-Claude Bibeau, has boldly asked the government of Canada to apply a “feminist lens” to the inter-

national assistance review. But what does that look like, in practice, in a humanitarian context?

Disasters do not discriminate, but ultimately due to structural gender inequalities kill more women than men, and affect women’s livelihoods hardest. Some 60 per cent of all maternal deaths take place in humanitarian settings and all forms of gender based violence against women and girls spike during disasters and confl ict. While women, girls, men, and boys all suffer in a crisis, due to deeprooted gender inequalities women and girls face greater obstacles in reaching their potential and leading safe, healthy, and dignifi ed lives.

However, women and girls are not vulnerable, passive recipi-ents of assistance. Women play critical roles in emergency situa-tions—leading relief and recovery efforts, and taking on increasing responsibilities inside and outside of the house. Emergencies spark shifts in gender dynamics within affected communities. They present a critical opportunity to invest and support women’s valuable contri-butions, while building more equi-table and self-reliant communities.

So how can we as the humani-tarian community change our narrative around women and girls in emergencies to one that is em-

powering and refl ective of their strengths and contributions?

As a fi rst step we need to listen. We need to involve women and girls in designing the services and activities of aid organizations, and systematically ask for feedback. Humanitarian programs that aren’t contextually and culturally appro-priate and based on a community’s understanding of its own needs are at best less effective and at worst can be harmful. Supporting gender equality requires that we don’t work exclusively with women and girls, but boys and men to change social norms and address the dif-ferent barriers that hinder their full participation in society and access to human rights.

Second, we need a more local-ized approach. Humanitarian actors must move beyond direct imple-mentation and work in partnership with local, women-led civil society groups—which are both closer to, and more trusted by, communities. Done right, humanitarian assistance can reinforce civil society and result in more balanced power dynamics.

Third, we need to fund the right programs. Applying a true “feminist lens” requires that the Government of Canada make it a strict require-ment that all humanitarian response programs it supports be under-pinned by strong gender analysis. All humanitarian funding allocations

should be assessed against the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Gender Marker tool to be, at mini-mum, “gender sensitive.”

A further fundamental chal-lenge in international assistance is the complex nature of crises related to protracted confl icts that in some cases span decades. Under these circumstances, the delivery of aid is precarious and danger-ous. Political objectives quickly subsume the humanitarian impera-tive and the military intervention is messaged together with the humanitarian operations. The intro-duction of counter-terror legislation adds another layer of complexity, further complicating the funding and delivery of humanitarian aid. This all threatens to undermine Canada’s efforts to effectively sup-port populations in danger.

The approach that humani-tarian actors use to address these complexities and chal-lenges is to engage in principled humanitarian action based on the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence—providing aid in response and proportionate to assessed needs; without discrimi-nation and favour to any party to the confl ict; and autonomous of any political, military, or other objective. This is not just a philo-sophical ambition to do the right

thing, but also has a very practi-cal dimension as the key tool to building “community accep-tance,” which enables negotiating humanitarian space and gaining access to the most vulnerable.

The Canadian humanitar-ian community, including the Government of Canada, must make a genuine commitment to counter the prevailing trend of the politicization of humanitarian aid with a clear voice advocating a commitment to the humanitar-ian principles and international humanitarian law. The overarch-ing objective is to ensure that humanitarian aid will not be a foreign policy nor confl ict man-agement tool and will be protect-ed by legislation to that end.

There is an urgent need to evolve and develop new ways of working to respond more ef-fectively to global crises that are stretching the international hu-manitarian system beyond capac-ity. The Government of Canada’s 2016 International Assistance Review presents a critical op-portunity to foster real change in the way humanitarian assistance is delivered, and recommit to the humanitarian principles, inter-national human rights and other frameworks for protecting the most vulnerable, and to create an enabling policy that puts gender equity for the most vulnerable women and girls at the centre.

Kevin Dunbar is Director of CARE Canada’s humanitarian assistance and emergency team. Bart Witteveen is Director of World Vision Canada’s humanitarian and emergency affairs team.

The Hill Times

Canada’s humanitarian action must be feminist and principled The Government of Canada’s 2016 International Assistance Review presents a critical opportunity to foster real change in the way humanitarian assistance is delivered.

In our Energy Policy Briefing, The Hill Times examines the latest on the proposed Pacific North West LNG pipeline in British Columbia and uncovers the behind-the-scenes politics. We explore how Canada can transition its entire energy infrastructure

to renewables by 2050 if it starts now. We take a good look at the International Renewable Energy Agency’s recent report on the renewable energy sector worldwide and what it means for Canada, and we offer up the latest on the Policy Horizons Canada report on Canada’s status as an “energy superpower.” We also review FedNor’s recent investment of $2.7-million to create a renewable-energy micro-grid development company aimed at providing energy solutions in remote First Nations communities.

BE A PART OF THIS IMPORTANT POLICY BRIEFING.

PUBLICATION DATE: August 15, 2016 BOOKING DEADLINE: August 10, 2016

For more information or to reserve your government relations and public affairs advertising space, contact The Hill Times

display advertising department at 613-688-8825.

Communicate with those most responsible for Canada’s public policy decisions.

BART WITTEVEEN, ANDKEVIN DUNBAR

THE HILL TIMES, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 201620

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Communicate with those most responsible for Canada’s public policy decisions.

In our Energy Policy Briefi ng, The Hill Times examines the latest on the proposed Pacifi c North West LNG pipeline in British Columbia and uncovers

the behind-the-scenes politics. We explore how Canada can transition its entire energy infrastructure to renewables by 2050 if it starts now. We take a good look at the International Renewable Energy Agency’s recent report on the renewable energy sector worldwide and what it means for Canada, and we offer up the latest on the Policy Horizons Canada report on Canada’s status as an “energy superpower.” We also review FedNor’s recent investment of $2.7-million to create a renewable-energy micro-grid development company aimed at providing energy solutions in remote First Nations communities.

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THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 201622NEWS PHOENIX FIASCO

“We’ve been relegated, if you will, to the deputy minister [Marie Lemay], but no lack of trying on our part,” said PIPSC president Debi Daviau.

PSAC national executive vice-president Chris Aylward said that back in June he was told the minister would meet with him, but that meeting has not yet been sched-uled.

“We’re dismayed with the minister’s involvement on this,” Mr. Aylward said.

Phoenix is the government’s new enterprise-wide payroll system that has left more than 80,000 of the federal govern-ment’s 300,000 employees with problems with their paycheques, most of whom won’t see their issues resolved for months. The government says it should be resolved by the end of October.

Ms. Foote has previously told The Hill Times she wants to fi x the problem as soon as possible, but has said that she was told the new computerized pay system was ready when it was not. “I was told things were ready to go. … People who have been work-ing on this since 2009 assured me we didn’t have to worry,” Ms. Foote told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on July 28.

Ms. Daviau said this claim was “disin-genuous” because PIPSC had written di-rectly to the minister expressing a number of concerns with Phoenix’s issues.

“The minister’s response to us express-ing our concerns in writing was to have us meet with the deputy minister so you would think that that would then result in the deputy minister bringing additional details to the minister,” said Ms. Daviau. “So I actually fi nd it diffi cult to believe that the minister was not aware that such broad concerns had been expressed about the readiness to move to the next phase. … It would appear that she is not present at all if she’s unaware of these concerns that were broadly voiced.”

The system was fi rst set to launch last July ahead of the election call, and then again in October, both times the depart-ment—specifi cally associate assistant deputy minister of accounting, banking and compensation Rosanna Di Paola, who had been its main point of contact—lis-tened and agreed with PSAC’s suggestion to wait, but attempts to halt it rolling out in February were unsuccessful, as were pleas from both PSAC and PIPSC (whose mem-bers at this point started to experience pay issues) in April when the remaining users were migrated over.

“Foote was appointed in [November], which was prior to the rollout of Phoenix. … She was the minister when it was rolled out and she could have slowed it down as we had requested. She could have listened to our warnings that were given that this simply is not going to work, and she chose not to do that,” said Mr. Aylward.

Ms. Lemay has only been in the deputy minister position since April 11. She told reporters two weeks ago that top bureau-crats responsible for the Phoenix pay system couldn’t recall if they had briefed Ms. Foote on the problems fl agged. As well, during the House Government Operations and Estimates Committee emergency meet-ing on Phoenix on July 28, department of-fi cials confi rmed there would have been no immediate consequence to holding off.

Ms. Foote did not appear at that meet-ing, despite being in town. Liberal MPs on the committee blocked a motion inviting her to testify. Instead, Ms. Lemay, Ms. Di Paola, and associate deputy minister Gavin Liddy testifi ed.

“So where is the minister on this? The minister can say they’re doing everything humanly possible to fi x this, which is good, but her absence and her lack of visibility on this fi le is very upsetting and it’s not very encouraging at all,” Mr. Aylward said.

Ms. Daviau also appeared in a later panel at the emergency meeting, but sat through the offi cials’ testimony. She said she detected “protectionism” over the decisions made and is now questioning whether the department is capable or objective enough to evaluate what went wrong, as they have promised to do, in addition to having the auditor general look into the Phoenix rollout.

The government says the department underestimated how long it would take to train staff on the new Phoenix computer-ized pay system. In the process of transi-tioning to Phoenix, PSAC estimates the number of government pay advisers was reduced from 2,700 to around 300.

As well, at the time Phoenix went live, there was already a backlog of more than 40,000 fi les that had to be dealt with, which PSAC said it had also warned the govern-ment about. The new automated payroll program replaces a 40-year-old payment system for all government employees.

Last week, former federal Liberal public works minister Don Boudria told The Hill Times that when he was in cabinet he would receive a dozen oral briefi ngs some days, and with the number of fi les within the department, it would be impossible to keep the minister up to speed on every-thing.

“If you gave a one-minute briefi ng on every issue to the minister every day, the minister would never sleep,” he said, add-ing though that it’d be a different story if it was something kept from the minister intentionally.

The department’s timeline projects the bulk of pay issues won’t be resolved until Halloween. The top priority is dealing with those not getting paid at all. The govern-ment can now deal with those people with-in three days and they should be paid in the next pay period. The government says

it will take four to six weeks to address those who are leaving the government, on or about to go on maternity leave, or long-term disability leave. The government will deal with the bulk of public servants with issues like overpay, underpay, entitle-ment or extra duty pay on a sliding scale, depending on the issue, between the end of September and Oct. 31.

Despite the department’s promise to conduct weekly updates on the Phoenix system, a briefi ng was not held last week.

“I think what’s going wrong is a discon-nect between offi cials responsible for the implementation of Phoenix and the actual government who is making decisions, and so ill-informed decisions have been taken that are impossible to reverse and they are struggling with their resolution to these complex issues,” Ms. Daviau said.

The unions say its members are not get-ting their issues addressed any faster, and some are expanding. As an example, Mr. Aylward said there are members who are not getting paid, meaning neither are their benefi t premiums, resulting in lost medical coverage.

Ms. Daviau said the government seems committed to the problem, but PIPSC mem-bers are “fi nding it absolutely unacceptable and completely insuffi cient.” She says she’s started to hear about how the pay prob-lems have had a chilling effect on people’s spending, even among those without pay issues because they feel it could eventually be them, and this is trickling down to local economies, including Ottawa’s.

The Phoenix system was projected to save the government $67.2-million a year, but it’s costing the government between $15-mil-lion and $20-million to address the problem and it’s expected to increase as time goes on. In the week between the last two briefi ngs, an additional 589 cases of pay problems among workers were reported.

New last week, PIPSC has begun offer-ing assistance to students caught up in the pay fi asco. The students are non-unionized workers, meaning they don’t have the same support or backing as most public servants trying to get paid. The union says it will offer advice on how to pursue resolving Phoenix cases and refer critical cases to the government.

raiello@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

Unions criticize Foote’s performance throughout Phoenix fi asco, claim she’s ‘disingenuous’ on what she knew ‘She could have listened to our warnings that were given that this simply is not going to work, and she chose not to do that,’ says PSAC vice-president.

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Public Services and Procurement Minister Judy Foote, pictured in this fi le photo in Ottawa. The Hill Times Photo by Jake Wright

Sitting behind Ottawa Citizen reporter Kady O’Malley are, left to right, Public Services and Pro-curement Canada deputy minister Marie Lemay, associate deputy minister Gavin Liddy, and associ-ate assistant deputy minister of accounting, banking and compensation Rosanna Di Paola waiting to appear before the House Government Operations and Estimates Committee on July 28. The Hill Times Photo by Jake Wright

23THE HILL TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2016

OPINION U.S. POLITICS FEATURE EVENTS

OTTAWA—The months of electoral fore-play in the United States are mercifully

over. Now the conclusive work begins of deciding who will be on top for the next four years.

Largely overlooked during the yearlong winnowing of candidates is the compli-cated and indirect process through which a president is elected. On Nov 8, the odds are there will be a defi nite conclusion, but his-tory demonstrates it is not a certainty. Even the Italians have a more straightforward and even more predictable system.

Apart from the Clinton and Trump nominations, there are literally hundreds of others who will try to claim personal recognition or support for their ideas through the presidential election process. Already, there are third-party candidates on more than 20 state ballots, along with more than 100 independents and write-ins ranging from the Adams of the Free World Party to the Zutler of the U.S. Party.

The third-party candidates are a colour-ful lot, some with American or America in their label. And then there is a Peace and Freedom Party and shades of recent Cana-dian elections, a Reform Party. A Prohibi-tion Party continues to hope for a return to the dry days of the 1920 Constitutional Amendment and the Anti Saloon League. From the same period the Socialist Party U.S.A., the Socialist Workers Party, and the Workers World Party continue to promote “brotherhood” as the basis for progress.

The only one missing is Ralph Nader. Nader, the son of immigrants from Leba-non, was a perennial third-party candidate in fi ve elections, but at 82 he has retired to his Dupont Circle home where he can ful-minate over what he reads in the Congres-sional Record. His absence leaves a large gap in the quadrennial American debate.

But before we are consumed over the next three months by this paroxysm of democratic activity, there is a need to look deeper into the American electoral process. In doing so, there is more to see than a large exercise of democracy.

The largest and most dominant feature of the American electoral landscape is its stability. Americans do not move far from their traditional voting pattern of alternat-

ing periodically between the Republicans and the Democrats.

In the 17 presidential elections since 1948, the average popular vote difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates has been 8.1 per cent. During that period, Republicans won nine elec-tions while the Democrats won eight.

Narrowing those 46 postwar years to the elections from 1988 onwards, the percentage of difference has decreased a full three percentage points. The aver-age differential for those years is fi ve per cent, not much greater than the margin of error for such polls. During this period, the Republicans won three presidential (Bush 42nd and 43rd) elections while the Demo-crats won four (Clinton and Obama, two apiece). There are few signs that even with a Republican candidate from the outer reaches of American political traditions, this overriding dynamic will change.

But the popular vote does not tell the whole story. The founding fathers decided that individual citizens could not be trusted to directly elect presidents and vice-presidents, and provided for a state-based electoral college to make the fi nal deci-sions. Citizens directly elect members of the college pledged to specifi c candidates, and they in turn elect the two top offi ce holders in the land.

For the most part, the voting of the elec-toral college aligns with the popular votes, but on four occasions did not do so. The most recent was the Bush election of 2000 when the Democratic candidate Al Gore had a larger share of the popular vote. The Supreme Court affi rmed the result in favour of George W. Bush.

As the electorate becomes less fl exible, there is an increasing possibility of future disconnects between popular vote results and those of the electoral college. Some see both parties solidifying around the 45 per cent mark, with a plus or minus fi ve points as being the fl oat that can be infl uenced by the candidates and their campaigns.

The high unfavourable ratings of both candidates this year make forecasting this early in the campaign a foolhardy exercise. The post-convention “bumps” of fi ve per cent for both candidates illustrate an elec-torate that has yet to settle.

I was living in Washington for the 1980 campaign between incumbent Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, both in part outliers of the Washington-centric political system. Carter won in 1976 with a two per cent plurality over Ford. But in 1980, he lost to Reagan by 3.5 per cent.

The smallness of these numbers almost four decades ago are still characteristic of the American electoral system. The likelihood of a landslide victory for either Trump or Clinton, even with her historic candidacy, are not in the numbers.

Rather, it will be three months of large and vicious rhetoric that, in the end, will produce a small victory. The Americans have come to live with this uncertainty and the rest of us will have to as well.

Gar Pardy is retired from the foreign service and comments on issues of public policy from Ottawa.

The Hill Times

MONDAY, AUG. 8 Sport Minister in Rio—Minister of Sport Carla Qual-

trough is set to attend the 2016 Olympic Games from Aug 2-9 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Rio 2016 Olympic Games will take place from Aug. 5-21 and will include 10,500 athletes from 205 countries. Media contact in Rio (media only): Anna Gravelle, manager, communica-tions (PCH Western Region), 604-313-9287.

World Press Photo 16—Some of the best photojour-nalism in the world is on display at the The World Press Photo 16 exhibition at the Barney Danson Theatre at the Canadian War Museum, 1 Vimy Place, Ottawa until Aug. 17. Featuring 155 large-format photographs that depict everyday life and headline news from 2015. warmuseum.ca

Ship for World Youth Leaders Recruitment—This program will take 242 youth leaders from around the world on a three-month journey across the sea, including 11 Canadian youth between the ages of 18 and 30 and one national leader between the ages of 30 and 39. The voyage will depart in January 2017 aboard the Nippon Maru Japanese cruise ship and will include stops in Japan, Fiji, and New Zealand. The Canadian Ship for World Youth Alumni Association is organizing recruit-ment for Canadian delegates. The deadline for general participants is Sept. 1, and the deadline for the national leader is Aug. 15. The Embassy of Japan will be hosting an information session on Aug. 5, 5:30-6:30 p.m. 255 Sussex Dr., Ottawa. Reservation is required: https://ship-forworldyouthinfo.eventbrite.ca. More information about the program: http://swycanada.org/

TUESDAY, AUG. 9 World Social Forum 2016—Downtown Montreal

plays host to this gathering, which bills itself as the largest gathering of civil society in the world. More than 50,000 people will be present and 1,500 activites offered, according to organizers (both online and in person). $40. Until Aug. 14. https://fsm2016.org/en/

CBA Legal Conference—The Canadian Bar As-sociation hosts this conference Aug. 9-14 in Ottawa. All events where otherwise indicated will be held at the Westin Hotel. The president’s reception and dinner will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 6:30 p.m.-10 p.m. There will be a full day of meetings on Thursday, Aug. 11, including its council meeting, international initiatives committee meeting, a wellness AGM and board meeting, a young lawyers forum AGM at the Luxe Bistro, followed by dinner receptions at various downtown and Byward Market locations. On Friday, Aug. 11, there are more meetings and social events. On Saturday, Anand Ablack, VP content of LexisNexis Canada Inc., will discuss, ‘Where Should the Legal Industry Focus its Efforts to Foster Innovation?’ at 7:45 a.m.-8:45 a.m., followed by a discussion by Harley Fin-kelstein and Joe Frasca on, ‘Finding the Balance: Legal Integrity in Shopify’s Self-Proclaimed Get Sh*t Done Environment,’ 12 p.m.-1 p.m. On Sunday, Aug. 14, Policy Options editor-in-chief Jennifer Ditchburn will moderate ‘Litigating in the Court of Public Opinion,’ with Don Bayne and Jocelyn Speyer at 9:45 a.m.-10:45 a.m., followed by featured speaker Judy Smith 10:45-11:45 a.m. who will discuss ‘Dealing with Scan-dals: A Conversation with Crisis Management.’ Westin Hotel, 11 Colonel By Dr.

SUNDAY, AUG. 14 CBA Legal Conference—Sunday, Aug. 14, Policy

Options editor-in-chief Jennifer Ditchburn will moder-ate ‘Litigating in the Court of Public Opinion,’ with Don Bayne and Jocelyn Speyer at 9:45 a.m.-10:45 a.m., followed by featured speaker Judy Smith 10:45-11:45 a.m. who will discuss ‘Dealing with Scandals: A Con-versation with Crisis Management Expert Judy Smith and Westin Hotel, 11 Colonel By Dr.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 24 Hastings Plowing Match and Farm Show—Wednesday,

Aug. 24, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., 2431 Queensborough Rd., Queens-borough, Ont. Hastings-Lennox and Addington, Ont.

THURSDAY, AUG. 25 Liberal Caucus Retreat—The Liberals will hold a

two-day caucus retreat Aug. 25-26 in Saguenay, Que. For more information, please call Liberal Party media relations at media@liberal.ca or 613-627-2384.

SUNDAY, SEPT. 4G20 Leaders’ Summit—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

is expected to attend. Hangzhou, China. Sept. 4-5. For more information, call the PMO Press Offi ce at 613-957-5555.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 13 Conservative Caucus Retreat—The Conservatives

will hold a two-day summer caucus retreat Sept. 13-14 in Halifax. For more information, contact Cory Hann, director of communications, Conservative Party of Canada at coryhann@conservative.ca

NDP Caucus Retreat—The NDP are gathering Sept. 13 to 15 in Montreal. Please call the NDP Media Cen-tre at 613-222-2351 or ndpcom@parl.gc.ca

FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 Parliamentary Press Gallery Barbecue and Unveil-

ing—The Parliamentary Press Gallery will hold its annual barbecue mugging for full-time members only in the East Block Courtyard on Friday, Sept. 16, at 12 noon. The gallery will also unveil the members’ photo portrait to commemorate the gallery’s 150th anniversary. If it rains, the BBQ will be held in Room 237-C Centre Block.

Carleton University’s School of Journalism 70th Anniversary of Granting of Canada’s fi rst bachelor of journalism degrees—Women in Journalism Luncheon, featuring CBC’s Susan Ormiston, The Toronto Star’s Alyshah Hasham, Complex Media’s Anita Li, and CBC Ottawa’s Joanne Chianello. Sept. 16, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. River Building, Carleton University. Tickets are $25 per person, includes lunch.

Leap to Where? Elements of a Canadian Climate Policy That Could Be Both Feasible and Enough: Thomas Homer-Dixon—Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.), Carleton University, River Building Theatre (RB2200). Registration: carleton.ca/fpa For more information, call Cassie Hodgins, Carleton University, 613-520-2600 x 2995.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 Canadian Press/CBC Parliament Hill Open—Mont Cas-

cades Golf Club, Cantley, Que., (30 minutes from Ottawa), Saturday, Sept. 17. Tee times start at 11 a.m.; best-ball format, with prizes for fi rst place, second place and “most honest” scores, plus closest-to-the-pin and long drive prizes for both men and women. Sign up as a complete foursome or as a single or pair. Cost: $95, includes green fee, power cart and steak dinner. Email CP Ottawa’s James McCarten (james.mccarten@thecanadianpress.com) or the CBC’s Paul MacIn-nis (paul.macinnis@cbc.ca) for more information or to hold your space, or reach James at (613)231-8602 or (613)794-0848 and Paul at (613)288-6611 or (613)293-3494.

MONDAY, SEPT. 19 House Resumes Sitting—The House resumes sit-

ting on Sept. 19 at 11 a.m. after a 13-week break. The House adjourned June 17.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 20 Cabinet Meeting—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is

expected to hold a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 20 on the Hill. For more information, call the PMO Press Offi ce at (613) 957-5555.

2016 Canadian Inland Ports Conference—On Sept. 20-21, 2016, the Van Horne Institute will be hosting the 2016 Canadian Inland Ports Conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This conference will bring together leading experts from around the world to discuss inland ports and their importance to their local, provincial, and national economies. It will showcase fi ve of Canada’s Inland Ports located across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC; as well as major Canadian ports, airports, and stake-holders. Early bird registration before Aug. 22: $495. Registration after Aug. 22 $600. Please contact Bryndis Whitson at bwhitson@ucalgary.ca or 403-220-2114 for more information. http://www.vanhorneinstitute.com/event/2016-canadian-inland-ports-conference/

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21 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 media@liberal.ca 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 coryhann@conservative.ca

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 ndpcom@parl.gc.ca

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 subject line ‘Parliamentary Calendar’ to news@hilltimes.com by Wednesday at noon before the Monday paper or by Friday at noon for the Wednesday paper. We can’t guarantee inclusion of every event, but we will defi nitely do our best.

news@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times

Entrenched political affi liations in U.S. mean small proportion will be swayed by either side Some see both parties solidifying around the 45 per cent mark, with a plus or minus fi ve points as being the fl oat that can be infl uenced by the candidates and their campaigns.

World Social Forum happens in Montreal Aug. 9-14, more than 50,000 expected

Parliamentary Calendar

GAR PARDY

For more information or to reserve your government relations and public affairs advertising space, contact The Hill Times display

advertising department at 613-688-8825.

Communicate with those most responsible for Canada’s public policy decisions.

In this important defence policy briefi ng, The Hill Times looks into the

latest on where the government’s at on the F-35s and on the Saudi arms deal. We follow up on the current defence review and how Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan does not want to cut military personnel or major infrastructure. We look into how Eastern European NATO allies have been pressing Canada to deploy up to 1,000 soldiers into the region and concerns about Russian aggression. We look further into the outgoing head of the Navy’s comments on

Canada’s vulnerability and how Canada should invest in sensors to improve maritime surveillance and work more closely with the U.S. We also look into DND’s launch of energy effi ciency upgrades on seven military bases and we followup on Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance’s comments on how confl ict prevention is going to be a key job for Canada’s military and its allies in an uncertain world.

BE A PART OF THIS IMPORTANT POLICY BRIEFING.

PUBLICATION DATE: September 26, 2016

BOOKING DEADLINE: September 21, 2016

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