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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized for a controversial vacation trip to Tofino, B.C., that began on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation last week.
At his first news conference today since returning from a break in the Vancouver Island community, Mr. Trudeau addressed the issue of the trip.
“Travelling on Sept. 30 was a mistake, and I regret it,” Mr. Trudeau said at the news conference, convened to discuss federal policy on mandatory vaccinations. “I was in error to choose to travel on that day.”
Asked by a journalist whether anyone encouraged him not to go, Mr. Trudeau replied, “How it happened is far less important than that it happened.”
Mr. Trudeau has faced sustained criticism from Indigenous leaders and opposition parties for making a decision to fly to Tofino on Thursday, which was the first time that the country formally honoured survivors of residential schools and those who died while attending the institutions.
The Prime Minister thanked Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir for taking his call over the weekend so he could apologize directly for not being there with her community on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. He said he plans to visit the Kamloops-area community soon.
Mr. Trudeau was asked about why his itinerary for the day had initially said that he would be in Ottawa before eventually being corrected to mention Tofino. “The itinerary said that I had private meetings and I had calls for a number of hours that day with survivors of Indian residential schools,” Mr. Trudeau said.
Parliamentary Reporter Kristy Kirkup reports here on Mr. Trudeau’s comments today.
The Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland also talked about plans that will see travellers boarding a flight from a Canadian airport, or taking a VIA Rail train, required to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test as of October 30.
Parliamentary reporter Marieke Walsh and senior parliamentary reporter Steven Chase report here on that part of today’s news conference.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
NDP HOLD CAUCUS MEETING – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh will tell the first meeting of the NDP caucus today that pursuing Indigenous rights – including access to clean drinking water – will be a key priority for the party in this Parliament. Also, the NDP has requested an official inquiry into what it calls “numerous and systemic failures of election officials” in last month’s federal election. Story here.
ERIN O’TOOLE TOUTS CAUCUS SUPPORT – Federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said on Tuesday he has enough support from his caucus to keep his job, even as his elected caucus members voted to give themselves the power to oust him as leader and one MP advocated for the party membership to hold a speedy vote on Mr. O’Toole’s future.
ECHAQUAN FAMILY ANNOUNCES LEGAL ACTION – Joyce Echaquan’s family said Tuesday it would launch legal action against the hospital where she died, hours after a Quebec coroner said a combination of “undeniable” systemic racism and health-care system failings contributed to her death.
CANADA TO FALL SHORT OF EMISSIONS GOALS: REPORT – Canada is on pace to fall well short of its emissions goals, according to a new government-funded report that says the country’s current strategies will reduce its greenhouse gas output by only 16 per cent, relative to 2005 levels, by 2030 – a far cry from the 40-per-cent cut that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised.
CORRECTION: Yesterday’s Politics Briefingnewsletter said Conservative incumbents Blake Desjarlais and James Cumming lost their seats in Edmonton, while fellow incumbent Jag Sahota lost in Calgary. In fact, Mr. Desjarlais is the NDP member who beat Conservative incumbent Kerry Diotte in Edmonton-Griesbach.
NEW JOHN IBBITSON BOOK
John Ibbitson, Ottawa-based writer-at-large for The Globe and Mail, has a new book in the works.
Doug Pepper, the publisher of Signal/McClelland & Stewart, has announced his company has acquired the world rights to The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada by Mr. Ibbitson.
The book, to be published in the fall of 2023, tells the story of the two prime ministers – John Diefenbaker, a Progressive Conservative, and Lester B. Pearson, a Liberal. A statement from the publisher notes the two were children of the Victorian era, who led Canada into the Atomic Age as prime ministers – fighting each other relentlessly, but together shaping the Canada we live in today.
“Several years ago I got it into my head that we needed to look again at the prime ministerships of John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson,” says Mr. Ibbitson, whose previous 10 books include a biography of former prime minister Stephen Harper.
“This has been a labour of love for me, so it’s wonderful that McClelland & Stewart will be bringing it out in two years under Doug Pepper’s guidance. This will be our fifth collaboration, and I couldn’t be happier.”
HOW TO BE A PRIME MINISTER
From Governing Canada, A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics by Michael Wernick (Published by On Point Press, an imprint of UBC Press)
This week, the Politics Briefing newsletter is featuring excerpts from Governing Canada, a new book by Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the privy council. Our focus is a key chapter, Advice to a Prime Minister. (Parliamentary reporter Kristy Kirkup reported on the project here.)
In today’s excerpt, Mr. Wernick makes the case for change in a prime minister’s inner circle:
“You will not be successful if you hang on to the same closed circle of close advisors and confidants for your whole time in office. There is an inevitable drift into a comfort zone and a form of groupthink that can create blind spots and put you at risk. Sometimes, sudden departures come along – perhaps due to a political crisis or a personal choice to leave – and you lose one of your core team. But you will tend to want to stay with the people that you started with for too long, especially if your government is doing well. If you are doing badly in the polls, you can expect your ministers and caucus members to start grumbling about those in your inner circle and perhaps starting to spin against them with journalists. It can be a precursor to grumbling about you.
“Succession planning is rarely done well in the political business, but try to pause at key points, perhaps during the summer recess of Parliament, and think about when would be the best time to swap out key players and who might be an option to bring in.”
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
Private meetings. The Prime Minister, joined by the Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, addresses Canadians on the COVID-19 situation and holds a media briefing.
LEADERS
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, holds a news conference in Ottawa and then attends the first NDP caucus meeting since the federal election.
No schedules issued for the other federal leaders.
OPINION
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail)on the question of whether other parties will follow the Conservative move to take power back from their leader: “While Conservatives at large ponder whether to ditch Erin O’Toole as leader or keep him, the party’s parliamentary caucus has just made a decision of much greater import: it has given itself the power to dismiss the leader – and thus transformed the office itself. Meeting for the first time since the election, the Conservatives held four votes, as all parties are required to do by the Reform Act, 2014. The votes are to decide whether to accept the four powers conferred upon party caucuses by the Act: the power to decide who sits in caucus, to choose a caucus chair, to remove the leader, and to choose an interim leader.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail)on the perils of Tories failing to learn from their past: “Nonetheless, there is only one path to power for Conservatives: marrying rural old Canada to immigrant, suburban new Canada. Mr. O’Toole gets that. His strategy was sound; he just failed to execute. There is no better education in politics than to lose an election. This is Mr. O’Toole’s opportunity to learn and to grow. But if the caucus and the party membership don’t give him that opportunity, if Mr. O’Toole becomes another Manion or Bracken or Clark or Scheer, then the Conservatives will deserve the fate that history says awaits them.”
Jo Ramsay (Contributor to The Globe and Mail)on the fixes Elections Canada needs to institute so outdated ballots don’t misguide voters: “An effective solution to inform voters of late-stage changes in an electoral race could be to place a large, accessible notice board outside of every polling station, displaying updates such as disavowed candidates or other ballot inaccuracies in real-time. Another initiative could be to provide clear and publicly accessible methods for groups of private citizens to advocate or trigger a local by-election in situations similar to Spadina-Fort York, where there is mass dissatisfaction with the elected candidate. Both of these proposed changes would serve to maintain faith in our electoral system and quell community frustrations in the event ballots cannot be updated.”
Josée Legault (Le Journal de Montreal)on the chilling report on Joyce Echaquan: “Here, as elsewhere in Canada, there is hope. Many Quebecers and Canadians are experiencing a sincere awakening of consciences about the plight of First Nations. Will their policymakers follow the same pace? It will have to be. The worst mistake would be to get stuck in a Manichean struggle that condemns us to go around in circles. Because those who reject the notion of systemic racism are not “racist” and those who claim to be so are not woke or “Québécophobes.”
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OTTAWA – Several federal political parties are expressing reservations about the prospect of fresh regulations to prevent foreign meddlers from tainting their candidate nomination processes.
Elections Canada has suggested possible changes to safeguard nominations, including barring non-citizens from helping choose candidates, requiring parties to publish contest rules and explicitly outlawing behaviour such as voting more than once.
However, representatives of the Bloc Québécois, Green Party and NDP have told a federal commission of inquiry into foreign interference that such changes may be unwelcome, difficult to implement or counterproductive.
The Canada Elections Act currently provides for limited regulation of federal nomination races and contestants.
For instance, only contestants who accept $1,000 in contributions or incur $1,000 in expenses have to file a financial return. In addition, the act does not include specific obligations concerning candidacy, voting, counting or results reporting other than the identity of the successful nominee.
A report released in June by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians expressed concern about how easily foreign actors can take advantage of loopholes and vulnerabilities to support preferred candidates.
Lucy Watson, national director of the NDP, told the inquiry Thursday she had concerns about the way in which new legislation would interact with the internal decision-making of the party.
“We are very proud of the fact that our members play such a significant role in shaping the internal policies and procedures and infrastructure of the party, and I would not want to see that lost,” she said.
“There are guidelines, there are best practices that we would welcome, but if we were to talk about legal requirements and legislation, that’s something I would have to take away and put further thought into, and have discussions with folks who are integral to the party’s governance.”
In an August interview with the commission of inquiry, Bloc Québécois executive director Mathieu Desquilbet said the party would be opposed to any external body monitoring nomination and leadership contest rules.
A summary tabled Thursday says Desquilbet expressed doubts about the appropriateness of requiring nomination candidates to file a full financial report with Elections Canada, saying the agency’s existing regulatory framework and the Bloc’s internal rules on the matter are sufficient.
Green Party representatives Jon Irwin and Robin Marty told the inquiry in an August interview it would not be realistic for an external body, like Elections Canada, to administer nomination or leadership contests as the resources required would exceed the federal agency’s capacity.
A summary of the interview says Irwin and Marty “also did not believe that rules violations could effectively be investigated by an external body like the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.”
“The types of complaints that get raised during nomination contests can be highly personal, politically driven, and could overwhelm an external body.”
Marty, national campaign director for the party, told the inquiry Thursday that more reporting requirements would also place an administrative burden on volunteers and riding workers.
In addition, he said that disclosing the vote tally of a nomination contest could actually help foreign meddlers by flagging the precise number of ballots needed for a candidate to be chosen.
Irwin, interim executive director of the Greens, said the ideal tactic for a foreign country would be working to get someone in a “position of power” within a Canadian political party.
He said “the bad guys are always a step ahead” when it comes to meddling in the Canadian political process.
In May, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service at the time, said it was very clear from the design of popular social media app TikTok that data gleaned from its users is available to the Chinese government.
A December 2022 CSIS memo tabled at the inquiry Thursday said TikTok “has the potential to be exploited” by Beijing to “bolster its influence and power overseas, including in Canada.”
Asked about the app, Marty told the inquiry the Greens would benefit from more “direction and guidance,” given the party’s lack of resources to address such things.
Representatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties are slated to appear at the inquiry Friday, while chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault is to testify at a later date.
After her party representatives appeared Thursday, Green Leader Elizabeth May told reporters it was important for all party leaders to work together to come up with acceptable rules.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A look at David Coon, leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick:
Born: Oct. 28, 1956.
Early years: Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, he spent about three decades as an environmental advocate.
Education: A trained biologist, he graduated with a bachelor of science from McGill University in Montreal in 1978.
Family: He and his wife Janice Harvey have two daughters, Caroline and Laura.
Before politics: Worked as an environmental educator, organizer, activist and manager for 33 years, mainly with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.
Politics: Joined the Green Party of Canada in May 2006 and was elected leader of the New Brunswick Green Party in September 2012. Won a seat in the legislature in 2014 — a first for the province’s Greens.
Quote: “It was despicable. He’s clearly decided to take the low road in this campaign, to adopt some Trump-lite fearmongering.” — David Coon on Sept. 12, 2024, reacting to Blaine Higgs’s claim that the federal government had decided to send 4,600 asylum seekers to New Brunswick.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A look at Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.
Born: March 1, 1954.
Early years: The son of a customs officer, he grew up in Forest City, N.B., near the Canada-U.S. border.
Education: Graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.
Family: Married his high-school sweetheart, Marcia, and settled in Saint John, N.B., where they had four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.
Before politics: Hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from university and was eventually promoted to director of distribution. Worked for 33 years at the company.
Politics: Elected to the legislature in 2010 and later served as finance minister under former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward. Elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.
Quote: “I’ve always felt parents should play the main role in raising children. No one is denying gender diversity is real. But we need to figure out how to manage it.” — Blaine Higgs in a year-end interview in 2023, explaining changes to school policies about gender identity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
