Politics

Politics Briefing: New mayors of Alberta's largest cities expected to continue on paths of predecessors – The Globe and Mail

Published

3 years ago

October 19, 2021

Hello,

Two of Canada’s largest cities are getting new mayors, with Jyoti Gondek set to become mayor of Calgary and Amarjeet Sohi mayor of Edmonton.

“Congratulations on your historic wins!,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today in a tweet, noting he was looking forward to working with them and other winners in Alberta’s municipal elections.

The two incoming mayors were elected Monday. Ms. Gondek will be Calgary’s first female mayor and Mr. Sohi the first person of colour to hold the position in Edmonton. They are also both first-generation Canadians with Punjabi heritage.

Ms. Gondek, who has been a city councillor, and Mr. Sohi a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, replace high-profile predecessors Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson respectively.

Both Mr. Nenshi and Mr. Iveson were key national voices on urban issues during their runs as mayors.

Here’s Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller with a Reporter’s Comment on the path ahead:

“[Ms. Gondek and Mr. Sohi] are taking power at a time of significant uncertainty in Alberta. The province’s economy is still suffering from a years-long downturn in the oil sector, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been more severe and more deadly in Alberta (and neighbouring Saskatchewan) than the rest of the country in the third and fourth waves. In Calgary, the hollowing out of the city’s downtown skyscrapers presents a particularly acute challenge for Ms. Gondek, as she looks to fill those offices while dealing with the impact to the city’s finances.

“In some ways, the election will continue both cities on the paths set by the previous mayors.

“The incoming mayors have far more in common with Mr. Nenshi and Mr. Iveson than their closest competitors, which in both cities were conservative candidates with reputations for stoking conflict and whose focus was largely on keeping taxes low and tackling public safety. Ms. Gondek and Mr. Sohi ran campaigns focusing on economy recovery but also tackling climate change and social issues such as mental health and addictions. They talked about fostering an economic recovery built on fairness and inclusiveness; Mr. Sohi used his victory speech to pledge to fight against racism and discrimination.”

Alberta Reporter Kelly Cryderman conducted exit interviews with both Mr. Nenshi and Mr. Iveson, accessible here.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

FREELAND ADVISED TO END WAGE SUBSIDY – A Canadian economist who has served as a social policy adviser to the federal government says Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland should ignore the business lobby’s advice to the contrary and shut down the federal wage subsidy.

TRUDEAU PUBLICLY REPRIMANDED – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was publicly reprimanded by the chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation after a ceremony in which he paid his first respects to missing children believed to be buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Story here.

HARPER TOUTS DEAL Former prime minister Stephen Harper says he remains proud to have negotiated a controversial $15-billion armoured vehicles deal with Saudi Arabia, as he prepares to attend an international investment conference in Riyadh as a guest of the desert kingdom.

CPC ELECTION REVIEW WILL CONSIDER PPC IMPACT – The former MP leading the review into the Conservatives’ election performance says it will examine how Tories lost votes to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.

SENATOR QUITS INDEPENDENT BLOC – Senator Marilou McPhedran has resigned from the largest bloc of independent senators, stating that she refused to participate in a closed-door hearing focused on whether she should be removed from the Independent Senators Group (ISG).

FORD UNDER FIRE – Ontario’s opposition leaders are criticizing Premier Doug Ford for a comment he made about immigrants. Meanwhile Mr. Ford says he stopped taking French lessons as a safety precaution during the pandemic but has promised to do everything he can to learn the language.

NO LAND-TITLE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, SAYS N.B. AG – Provincial employees in New Brunswick are being told to refrain from making First Nations land title acknowledgements. The province’s attorney general says the move was prompted by legal actions against the government involving Indigenous rights and land titles. From CBC. Story here.

NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR LEADER OUT – NTV News is reporting that Alison Coffin is stepping down as the NDP leader in Newfoundland and Labrador. The move comes after a party vote for a leadership review.

PRIME MINISTER’S DAY

Private meetings in Ottawa. Also, the Prime Minister speaks with Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.

LEADERS

No public itineraries were issued by the offices of the other leaders.

PUBLIC OPINION

In Maclean’s, Philippe J. Fournier writes that an early look at the Ontario provincial election looming next year shows dramatically different numbers from 2018, but the PCs still benefiting from a divided opposition. Story here.

OPINION

The Globe and Mail Editorial Board on Justin Trudeau’s future as his government marks its sixth birthday: “All of which raises questions about Mr. Trudeau’s future. The improbable victory of 2015 would not have happened with anyone else at the helm, and in any event, after the Liberal debacle of 2011, almost no one wanted to lead. And Mr. Trudeau, who launched his career in politics not in a safe seat, but by running and winning in a Bloc Québécois riding, is still capable of being a formidable campaigner, as he – sometimes – demonstrated this year. It’s also hard to imagine another Liberal leader, an anglophone, winning 35 seats in Quebec.”

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on how democracy is at stake as incidents and threats of violence are levelled against elected officials: “What’s happening? I agree with former Conservative minister James Moore, who points to the decline of mediating forces in society such as religious faith, local community groups and other social adhesives. In the absence of such supports, for many people, “their sense of identity, their sense of purpose, their sense of justice, their religiosity, their livelihood is getting dumped into politics,” he told me. “And politics can’t handle the weight of that.” The arrival of social media amplified that polarization, creating a new but false sense of community: Other people online who echo your beliefs and amplify your voice, while drowning out any voices of reason and compromise.”

Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on how the Prairies are showing Canada what a COVID-19 disaster looks like: “The country’s two Prairie provinces have gone on to become consumed by an ugly public-health emergency. The provinces are responsible for the highest per-capita death rates from COVID-19 in the country, and it’s not even close. And there’s one major reason why: In their zeal to pander to noisy anti-lockdown folks in their provinces (and in their respective parties and parliamentary caucuses), the Premiers decided to ignore the many loud warnings about opening things up too quickly, and went all in. Not long after, the Delta variant arrived and found two provinces with tens of thousands of vulnerable people to infect.”

Parag Khanna (Contributed to the Globe and Mail) on why Canada is the best destination for those searching for the American dream: “Every March and April I get antsy e-mails and phone calls from friends in London, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore whose children have just been admitted to numerous fill-in-the-blank universities in America, Canada, Britain and elsewhere. After debating the merits of the schools and countries, they thank me and go back to fretting about their kids’ future. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a more frequent leaning toward sending their children to Canada. While American college graduates remain unsure what to do with their degrees, Canadian universities such as Waterloo have blended apprenticeships into their curricula as a requirement for graduation. This European-style vocational approach has proven very successful in adapting the work forces of Germany, Korea, and other advanced industrial economies to both global competition and technological automation.”

Send along your political questions and we will look at getting answers to run in this newsletter. It’s not possible to answer each one personally. Questions and answers will be edited for length and clarity.

Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop

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Politics

B.C. Conservatives, NDP both announce plans to help ease B.C. housing crisis

Published

9 hours ago

September 27, 2024

Anne Joseph

Both of the main candidates in British Columbia‘s election campaign pushed their own plans to solve parts of the housing crisis.

B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad told a news conference in Surrey that his government would end the multi-year permit delays and would get homes built at the speed and scale needed to address the housing crisis.

NDP Leader David Eby went to Cumberland on Vancouver Island to promote his party’s plan to fast-track factory-built homes.

Eby said pre-built homes would cut waste, reduce emissions, and advances in the industry mean the homes are “beautiful and high-quality.”

He said the process was “more like Lego” than normal construction.

“The idea is pretty straightforward. In a controlled factory environment, you can build faster, you can build with less waste and the homes that are built are more consistent and more efficient and it’s cheaper.”

Rustad said the Conservative Party of B.C. would redesign the approval process for home building, setting a six-month limit for rezoning and development permit and three months for a building permit.

“This means that we will significantly be able to improve the time frame it takes to actually get construction happening in this province, and we’ll be working with city halls across the province to be able to meet these timelines,” Rustad said.

If a clear yes or no isn’t issued by a city within that limit, the province would issue the permit, said a B.C. Conservative news release announcing the platform.

Rustad said the party would remove NDP taxes on housing, support transit-oriented communities, reform development cost charges and make taxes fair for homeowners.

“We have so much regulation that has been put in place associated with housing that it makes it really difficult for anybody to be able to actually get through and build things, not to mention the cost,” he said. “So we’ll amend the Local Government Act to prevent any home killing red tape that has been introduced by this government.”

The party’s statement also outlined their zoning plan, adding that it would work with BC Assessment “to make sure that current homeowners don’t get hit with higher tax bills based on future potential.”

The party statement said, if elected, a Conservative government would build new towns, saying B.C. is blessed with an abundance of land, but the NDP refuses to use it to end the housing shortage.

“We will identify land outside the Agricultural Land Reserve that has the potential to support beautiful new communities.”

A statement issued by the NDP on Friday said it would work with industry, municipalities and First Nations to create a provincewide framework for prefabricated homes so builders know what’s required in every community.

It said there would be a pre-approved set of designs to reduce the permitting process, and it would work to develop skills training needed to support prefabricated home construction.

The statement said Scandinavian countries had embraced factory-built homes, which “offer an alternative to the much slower, more costly process of building on-site.”

“By growing B.C.’s own factory-built home construction industry, everyone from multi-generational families to municipalities will be able to quickly build single homes, duplexes and triplexes on land they already own,” Eby said.

The party said legislation passed by the NDP government last year was a “game changer” for the factory-built home construction industry in the province, where there are currently 10 certified manufacturing plants.

Muchalat Construction Ltd. is one of them, and owner Tania Formosa said pre-approved structures speed up the building process considerably.

She said her company’s projects currently take 12 to 13 months to complete, from startup design to getting the house on site.

“If everything was in place and fast-tracked at the beginning and we were able to just fly along, it would probably take three months off the full schedule,” she said.

She said a main issue for modular manufacturers is that work gets stalled if they run into roadblocks with jurisdictions or BC Housing in the approval process.

“There’s no option for the manufacturer to start another project,” she said. “Having our products approved prior to the process would be amazing.”

She acknowledged the potential drawback of pre-approved designs creating a cookie-cutter look for some neighbourhoods.

“Unfortunately (what) happens in your jurisdiction, in your city, is it ends up looking a lot the same, but what are your priorities?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.

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Technology upgrades mean speedier results expected for B.C. provincial election

Published

1 day ago

September 26, 2024

Anne Joseph

British Columbians could find out who wins the provincial election on Oct. 19 in about the same time it took to start counting ballots in previous votes.

Andrew Watson, a spokesman for Elections BC, says new electronic vote tabulators mean officials hope to have half of the preliminary results for election night reported within about 30 minutes, and to be substantially complete within an hour of polls closing.

Watson says in previous general elections — where votes have been counted manually — they didn’t start the tallies until about 45 minutes after polls closed.

This will B.C.’s first general election using electronic tabulators after the system was tested in byelections in 2022 and 2023, and Watson says the changes will make the process both faster and more accessible.

Voters still mark their candidate on a paper ballot that will then be fed into the electronic counter, while networked laptops will be used to look up peoples’ names and cross them off the voters list.

One voting location in each riding will also offer various accessible voting methods for the first time, where residents will be able to listen to an audio recording of the candidates and make their selection using either large paddles or by blowing into or sucking on a straw.

The province’s three main party leaders are campaigning across B.C. today with NDP Leader David Eby in Chilliwack promising to double apprenticeships for skilled trades, Conservative Leader John Rustad in Prince George talking power generation, and Greens Leader Sonia Furstenau holding an announcement Thursday about mental health.

It comes as a health-care advocacy group wants to know where British Columbia politicians stand on six key issues ahead of an election it says will decide the future of public health in the province.

The BC Health Coalition wants improved care for seniors, universal access to essential medicine, better access to primary care, reduced surgery wait times, and sustainable working conditions for health-care workers.

It also wants pledges to protect funding for public health care, asking candidates to phase out contracts to profit-driven corporate providers that it says are draining funds from public services.

Ayendri Riddell, the coalition’s director of policy and campaigns, said in a statement that British Columbians need to know if parties will commit to solutions “beyond the political slogans” in campaigning for the Oct. 19 election.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

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Politics

How Many Votes Are Needed for a Vote of No Confidence in Canada?

Published

2 days ago

September 26, 2024

Harry Miller

In Canadian parliamentary democracy, a vote of no confidence (also known as a confidence motion) is a crucial mechanism that can force a sitting government to resign or call an election. It is typically initiated when the opposition, or even members of the ruling party, believe that the government has lost the support of the majority in the House of Commons.

What Is a Vote of No Confidence?

A vote of no confidence is essentially a test of whether the government, led by the prime minister, still commands the support of the majority of Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons. If the government loses such a vote, it is either required to resign or request the dissolution of Parliament, leading to a general election.

This process upholds one of the fundamental principles of Canadian democracy: the government must maintain the confidence of the elected House of Commons to govern. This rule ensures accountability and provides a check on the government’s power.

How Many Votes Are Needed for a No Confidence Motion?

In the Canadian House of Commons, there are 338 seats. To pass a vote of no confidence, a simple majority of MPs must vote in favor of the motion. This means that at least 170 MPs must vote in support of the motion to cause the government to lose confidence.

If the government holds a minority of seats, it is more vulnerable to such a vote. In this case, the opposition parties could band together to reach the 170 votes required for the no-confidence motion to succeed. In a majority government, the ruling party has more than half the seats, making it more difficult for a vote of no confidence to pass, unless there is significant dissent within the ruling party itself.

Types of Confidence Votes

Explicit Confidence Motions: These are motions specifically introduced to test whether the government still holds the confidence of the House. For example, the opposition might move a motion stating, “That this House has no confidence in the government.”
Implicit Confidence Motions: Some votes are automatically considered confidence motions, even if they are not explicitly labeled as such. The most common example is the approval of the federal budget. If a government loses a vote on its budget, it is seen as losing the confidence of the House.
Key Legislation: Occasionally, the government may declare certain pieces of legislation as confidence matters. This could be done to ensure the support of the ruling party and its allies, as a loss on such a bill would mean the collapse of the government.

What Happens If the Government Loses a Confidence Vote?

If a government loses a confidence vote in the House of Commons, two outcomes are possible:

Resignation and New Government Formation: The prime minister may resign, and the governor general can invite another leader, typically the leader of the opposition, to try to form a new government that can command the confidence of the House.
Dissolution of Parliament and General Election: The prime minister can request that the governor general dissolve Parliament, triggering a general election. This gives voters the opportunity to elect a new Parliament and government.

Historical Context of Confidence Votes in Canada

Canada has seen several instances of votes of no confidence, particularly during minority government situations. For example, in 2011, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper lost a vote of confidence over contempt of Parliament, which led to the dissolution of Parliament and the federal election.

Historically, most no-confidence votes are associated with budgetary issues or key pieces of legislation. They can be rare, especially in majority governments, as the ruling party usually has enough support to avoid defeat in the House of Commons.

To pass a vote of no confidence in Canada, at least 170 MPs out of 338 must vote in favor of the motion. This vote can lead to the government’s resignation or a general election, making it a powerful tool in ensuring that the government remains accountable to the elected representatives of the people. In the context of Canadian democracy, the vote of no confidence is a key safeguard of parliamentary oversight and political responsibility.