1) MPs to face new political realities on their return to Ottawa

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Laura Osman, September 14, 2024

On Monday Parliamentarians will return to the familiar stone walls of West Block in Ottawa to find the political landscape has shifted significantly.

When they last gathered in the capital the Liberals knew their prospects were poor after languishing in the polls for more than a year, but they were secure in the knowledge the New Democrats would prevent them from toppling before they table the next budget, at least.

But the summer saw several seismic shifts that mean the government will now operate as a true minority that could fall to an election at any time.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh pulled out of a political pact with government just weeks ago, and already faces a challenge from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to vote non-confidence in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his governing party. 

The stakes are high for the NDP, whose electoral promise doesn’t appear to have improved drastically as a result of some of the legislation and programs they managed to extract from the Liberals as part of the deal, including a national dental-care plan and a pharmacare bill that’s currently making its way through the Senate.

The new dynamics open up new opportunities for the Bloc Québécois, whose leader Yves-François Blanchet has already signalled he’s willing to do business with the Liberals in exchange for his own list of demands that benefit Quebec.

The Bloc’s stipulations include the Liberals green lighting the party’s private member’s Bill C-319, which would bring pensions for seniors aged 65 to 74 to the same level as that paid to those aged 75 and over.

The Bloc need a royal recommendation from a government minister to OK the financial implications and get the bill through the House.

The Liberals meanwhile have said they eschew the political machinations opposition parties are hatching, and are focused instead on “delivering for Canadians.”

While the Liberals would no doubt prefer to work their key pieces of legislation through the House, including their pharmacare bill and controversial Online Harms Act, the other parties could make that progress difficult. 

Singh has started to offer much harsher critiques of the prime minister and his government since breaking faith with the Liberals, but party insiders have suggested he isn’t any more keen for an election than Trudeau at the moment. 

All parties will be tested Monday after MPs leave for the evening, when they’ll anxiously await the results of two crucial byelections.

The NDP and the Liberals are both trying to maintain strongholds as the political odds appear stacked against them. The results will set the tone in Parliament for the rest of the season. 

The NDP are trying to fend off Poilievre’s Conservatives in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood — Transcona and the Liberals are running a three-way race against the NDP and the Bloc in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. 

“I can’t wait for the conversations we’re having in (LaSalle — Émard — Verdun) this weekend, but also can’t wait to welcome Laura Palestini to Ottawa as of Monday,” Trudeau said, projecting positivity about the prospects of his Liberal candidate in the Montreal riding Friday.

Trudeau faced calls from Liberal party faithful to step aside as leader after his last byelection loss in Toronto — St. Paul’s in June. Those calls seemed to simmer down over the summer.

Though Liberal MPs were quick to deny that the race in Montreal is a referendum on his leadership when they retreated to Nanaimo last week to talk strategy, that is largely how the vote is being viewed elsewhere in Ottawa.

Singh could face similar scrutiny if he loses the long-held NDP seat in Winnipeg and fails to take the Montreal riding from the Liberals. 

The Conservatives are expected to meet in Ottawa this weekend to discuss their plan for the fall sitting, and how they can wedge their opponents into calling that sitting short. 

2) Meddling inquiry won’t publicly name parliamentarians suspected by spy watchdog

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Jim Bronskill, September 16, 2024

The head of a federal inquiry into foreign interference says she will not be publicly identifying parliamentarians suspected by a spy watchdog of meddling in Canadian affairs.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians raised eyebrows earlier this year with a public version of a secret report that said some parliamentarians were “semi-witting or witting” participants in the efforts of foreign states to meddle in Canadian politics. 

Although the NSICOP report didn’t name individuals, the blunt findings prompted a flurry of concern that members knowingly involved in interference might still be active in politics.

The commission of inquiry subsequently agreed to examine the findings.

As inquiry hearings resumed Monday, commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue indicated that she and her staff had identified and reviewed the intelligence reports referred to in both the classified and public versions of the NSICOP report. 

The commission then requested, and obtained, the information and intelligence forming the basis of these reports. It reviewed them and then requested, and obtained, further information and intelligence relevant to the events.

With all this information and intelligence, the commission proceeded to examine senior government officials and intelligence agencies behind closed doors, Hogue added. These witnesses will be heard again at open inquiry hearings.

But Hogue cautioned that the NSICOP report’s allegations are based on classified information, which means the inquiry can neither make them public, nor even disclose them to the people in question.

As a result, the commission of inquiry won’t be able to provide the individuals with a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves, she said.

“Canada is a state governed by the rule of law, which recognizes and protects the fundamental rights of every individual, including the right to fully defend oneself against charges and accusations,” Hogue said.

Procedural fairness entrenches a similar principle, she said.

In addition, the Inquiries Act expressly prohibits the commission from making an adverse finding against a person — in other words, a conclusion that will bring discredit on that person or tarnish their reputation — unless the person has been given notice and allowed full opportunity to be heard with respect to the claims, Hogue said.

However, she added, the commission plans to address the NSICOP allegations and make recommendations in the classified version of the inquiry’s final report.

“Some information cannot be revealed publicly without jeopardizing national security,” Hogue told the inquiry in French on Monday.

“That being said, I am confident that the information that will be disclosed will be sufficient to enable the public to understand the findings I will make, the conclusions I will draw and the recommendations I will propose.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and key government officials took part in the commission’s initial fact-finding hearings last spring on allegations of foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

Hogue’s interim report, released in early May, said foreign meddling by China did not affect the overall results of the two general elections.

The report said while outcomes in a small number of ridings may have been affected by interference, this cannot be said with certainty.

In the second part of the commission’s factual phase, the public hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.

The hearings, scheduled to continue through Oct. 16, will be somewhat broad in scope, examining democratic institutions and the experiences of diaspora communities.

Trudeau, members of his inner circle and senior security officials are slated to make a return appearance at the inquiry this fall.

Beginning Oct. 21, the commission will then hold a week of policy consultations, including a series of roundtable discussions featuring experts, to help Hogue develop recommendations.

Her final report is due by the end of the year.

3) Fed intervention in labour disputes could set dangerous precedent: labour experts

Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Rosa Saba, September 16, 2024

In an era of increased strike activity and union power, labour experts say it’s not surprising to see more calls for government intervention in certain sectors like transportation.

What’s new, experts say, is the fact that the government isn’t jumping to enact back-to-work legislation. 

Instead, the federal labour minister has recently directed the Canada Industrial Labour Board to intervene in major disputes — though the government was spared the choice of stepping in over a potential strike at Air Canada after a tentative deal was reached on Sunday. 

Brock University labour professor Larry Savage says that for decades, companies in federally regulated sectors such as airlines, railways and ports essentially relied on government intervention through back-to-work legislation to end or avoid work stoppages. 

“While this helped to avert protracted strikes, it also undermined free and fair collective bargaining. It eroded trust between management and the union over the long term, and it created deep-seated resentment in the workplace,” he argued. 

Barry Eidlin calls such intervention a “Canadian tradition.”

“Canadian governments, both federal and provincial, have been amongst the most trigger-happy governments … when it comes to back-to-work legislation,” said Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University.  

Savage said the use of back-to-work legislation peaked in the 1980s, but its decline since then had less to do with government policy than the fact strikes became less common as unions’ bargaining power softened. 

But since the Supreme Court upheld the right to strike in 2015, Savage says the government appears more reluctant to use back-to-work legislation. 

Eidlin agrees.

“The bar for infringing on the right to strike by adopting back-to-work legislation got a lot higher,” he said. 

However, the experts say the federal government appears to have found a workaround.

In August, Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. locked out more than 9,000 workers — but federal labour minister Steve MacKinnon soon stepped in, asking the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order them to return and order binding arbitration, which it did. 

The move by the government — using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code — is “highly controversial,” said Savage. 

Section 107 of the code says the minister “may do such things as to the minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences and to those ends the minister may refer any question to the board or direct the board to do such things as the minister deems necessary.”

“The reason why it’s a concerning workaround is because there’s no Parliamentary debate. There’s no vote in the House of Commons,” Savage said. 

Not long after the rail work stoppage, the government was called upon to intervene in the looming strike by Air Canada pilots. The airline said that a government directive for binding arbitration would be needed if it couldn’t reach a deal ahead of the strike. 

However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government would only intervene if it became clear a negotiated agreement wasn’t possible. 

“I know every time there’s a strike, people say, ‘Oh, you’ll get the government to come in and fix it.’ We’re not going to do that,” said Trudeau on Friday.

The airline and the union representing its pilots reached a tentative deal on Sunday.

Though Air Canada was asking for the same treatment as the rail companies, Eidlin said the Liberals appeared to recognize that would have been an unpopular move politically.

Since the rail dispute, the NDP ripped up its agreement to support the minority Liberals, and Eidlin thinks the government’s intervention was one of the reasons for the decision.

“That really left them with this minority government that’s much more fragile. And so I think they have a much more delicate balancing act politically,” he said. 

Section 107 was never intended as a way for governments to bypass Parliament and end strikes “simply by sending an email” to the labour board, said David J. Doorey, a professor of labour and employment law at York University, in an email.

For the Liberals today, Doorey said using Section 107 to end the rail work stoppage was much simpler than back-to-work legislation — in part because Parliament was not sitting, but also because the Liberals hold a minority government and support for back-to-work legislation from the Conservatives and the NDP would be far from guaranteed. 

Eidlin is concerned that the government’s use of binding arbitration to end the rail work stoppage could set a precedent similar to what decades of back-to-work legislation did: removing the employer’s incentive to reach a deal in bargaining.

“This has a corrosive effect on collective bargaining,” he said. 

The Teamsters union representing railworkers is challenging the government’s move. 

The breadth of the government’s power under Section 107 is “something that the courts are going to have to decide,” Eidlin said. 

If the courts rule in the government’s favour, the status quo could essentially return to the way it was before 2015, he said.

But Doorey believes the labour minister’s directive to the board to end the rail stoppage will be found to have violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The rail stoppage wasn’t the first time the federal government used these powers during a recent labour dispute.

When workers at B.C. ports went on strike last summer, then-federal labour minister Seamus O’Regan used the section to direct the board to determine whether a negotiated resolution was possible, and if not, to either impose a new agreement or impose final binding arbitration. 

The last few years have really been a litmus test for that 2015 change, Eidlin said, as workers are increasingly unwilling to settle for sub-par collective agreements and employers “still have that back-to-work reflex.” 

With an uptick in strike activity, “of course, there will be more interest in government intervention in labour disputes as a result,” said Savage. 

4) Series of Articles on Conservatives’ non-confidence motion: