NDP plummets in Quebec, up three points

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 2:26 PM - 0 Comments

A cautionary tale about polling. La Presse is on fire this morning with news of horrible performance by the NDP in Quebec. A CROP poll has the party down to 29% in Quebec, its lead over the second-place party diminished from 14 points to 5 since December. This would seem to make my blog post from December germane again. The one about how the NDP, which has more than half of its caucus in Quebec, now has to pick a leader to “consolidate” a “hold” on Quebec that is becoming less and less of a hold.

But then I note that the December blog post was based on a Harris Decima poll that had the NDP at 26%. Three points lower than their current low-water mark in the CROP poll.  Continue…

The Quebec campaign

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 5:08 PM - 0 Comments

The text of a letter sent out today by Thomas Mulcair’s campaign.

Fellow New Democrats,

We only have 30 days left to take advantage of an historic opportunity to sign up new party members in Quebec. Since our unprecedented gains last May, Quebecers are eager to get involved in our party. We’ll never have an opportunity like this leadership race again.

The February 18th deadline to become a member–and vote in this spring’s leadership contest–is fast approaching. Our gains in Quebec were the lynchpin to becoming the government-in-waiting, and they’re the only way we can hope to defeat Stephen Harper in 2015.

This is our chance to make Quebec’s voice a permanent part of the NDP and make our strength in Quebec the foundation of an NDP majority government in 2015. Continue…

Harper’s French disconnection

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:10 PM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Peter White is about as conservative (and Conservative) as they come. He worked at Brian Mulroney’s side throughout the former prime minister’s nine-year tenure. In 2001, he turned his frustration with Jean Chrétien’s seemingly perpetual hold on power into a book, Gritlock, perhaps best described as a blueprint of how to neuter the then-powerful Liberal brand. In his free time, the former Hollinger Inc. executive has relentlessly pushed the Conservative brand in his native Quebec, both as a riding president and party organizer. And he’s sick of trying.

In a scathing open letter addressed to Canadians in general and the Conservative party in particular, White roundly criticizes the Conservative Party of Canada for ignoring francophones in general and Quebec in particular. “Today the voice of Quebec is virtually absent in Ottawa’s halls of power, or if present, it is a voice grown mighty small, and mighty easy to ignore,” White writes in the letter dated Jan. 12. “Since the election of May 2, 2011, many Quebec observers have concluded that Mr. Harper has consciously decided to ignore Quebec, now that he has convincingly demonstrated that he can win a majority without it.”

For some Conservatives outside the province, Stephen Harper might be forgiven for shunning Quebec. The Prime Minister has never been particularly popular in the province; he won a majority in last spring’s election thanks largely to a marked increase in support in Ontario and sustained support in the western provinces. In Quebec, meanwhile, the party lost five incumbent MPs (equalling half of its provincial caucus) and nearly a quarter of its popular vote. It marked the first time since the Conscription Crisis of 1917 that a government formed a majority with so little support from Quebec.

But while the rebalancing of power in favour of the West may seem natural for the Toronto-born, Alberta-bred populist, White says Harper’s Quebec brush-off will lead to a “de-Canadianization of Quebec,” in which Quebecers see less and less of themselves in the federal government—and turn (or return) instead to the Bloc Québécois. “Any competent demagogue—and there are several—could easily fan the tinder into flames by decrying the many petty slights inflicted on Quebec’s honour and pride at the hands of Ottawa since Mr. Harper has been Prime Minister.”

The sentiment is privately shared by a number of Quebec Conservatives, many of whom wouldn’t speak on the record about the party’s Quebec malaise. Some spoke of the lack of support from the party during the election, which has carried over into Harper’s first majority mandate. “To be successful, you need Conservative politicians regularly meeting with party activists, and in Quebec that isn’t happening,” says Bernard Côté, who served as adviser to former Conservative public works minister Michael Fortier. “I don’t know who is talking to who. Is it a lack of experience or desire? I don’t know.”

Contrary to the cliché that Quebec is a bastion of squishy leftists, a large swath of the province’s political landscape is receptive to small-c conservative ideals. Brian Mulroney twice swept Quebec largely by harnessing the conservative sensibilities of the province’s hinterland. In her 2007 book French Kiss, political columnist Chantal Hébert details how Harper made inroads in the province during the 2006 election campaign by appealing to those same sensibilities, and with a few highly symbolic gestures: recognizing the Québécois as a nation within Canada, and by beginning his speeches by speaking in French (a practice the Prime Minister continues to this day). An internal Bloc Québécois document written following that election noted, with barely hidden panic, how Harper resonated with “traditional, careful, old-stock French who … don’t see themselves in multi-ethnic Montreal.”

Harper’s French kiss effectively ended in the 2008 election, however, after announcing his youth crime bill and a disastrous decision to cut $45 million in arts funding from the province. Some say Harper hasn’t yet recovered from the slight. “Since 2008, there’s been a feeling that because Quebec shunned the Conservative party, that the Conservative party was going to do the same,” Côté says.

One example: the Conservatives only held their Quebec campaign post-mortem four months after the election, and it was co-chaired by Conservative campaign strategist Jenni Byrne. “All I know is that she doesn’t speak French,” says Georgette St-Onge, the Conservative riding president in Joliette. (Asked for comment, a Conservative spokesperson said “we have a strong and committed team” in Quebec. Neither Conservative MP and Quebec lieutenant Christian Paradis or Quebec adviser André Bachand responded to interview requests.)

White says he has met “four or five times” with Harper over the last two years, including an extended meeting last April, and he usually prefaces his criticism of the Prime Minister with praise for the man who united Canada’s right. He says there are fairly simple solutions to Harper’s image problem in Quebec—“Get him on French television to talk only about hockey” is one of them—but “the fact that he doesn’t do any of this makes me come to the sad conclusion that he doesn’t give a damn,” White said in an interview with Maclean’s.

“His image here is the pits. I’ve had francophones say to me publicly that they think he’s got ears and a tail, and he eats babies. And these are conservatives. They can’t understand why Harper doesn’t fix his image. Everyone knows he doesn’t eat babies, but he does everything he can to make people think he does.”

It isn’t only national unity at stake, White says, noting how the NDP has usurped much of the province, and that the Liberal party is slowly rebuilding its brand here. “Re-securing Quebec would re-energize the Liberals’ Ontario base, and all of a sudden Mr. Harper’s studied (or otherwise) avoidance of Quebec will become a problem for him,” White writes in his letter. “In politics as in life, you deserve what you tolerate. And most Quebec Conservatives are fed up.”

*****

READ PETER WHITE’S OPEN LETTER:

Quebec to allow prison guards to wear headscarves

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 11:23 AM - 0 Comments

After reaching a deal that stemmed from a complaint made four years ago, the Quebec government has agreed to allow female prison guards to wear headscarves on the job, Postmedia News reports. The decision stems from an incident in 2007, when a woman quit her training to become a Quebec prison guard when she was forced to remove her hijab for safety reasons. She challenged the ban and filed a complaint with the human rights commission. The government has decided to enforce an “accommodation” instead of taking the issue all the way to the provincial human rights tribunal. The opposition remains critic of the decision, saying it is “completely unacceptable” to allow government workers to wear conspicuous religious symbols, especially in a jail where “the neutrality of the state should be obvious.” In order to comply with safety regulations, the hijab will have Velcro fasteners, and those who wish to wear it must make a formal request first.

Postmedia News

‘What the federal government campaigned on’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:05 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario is unimpressed.

Moments after Mr. Flaherty announced the new five-year funding commitment, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan issued a statement, accusing the federal government of reneging on a promise made during the election campaign to support health care … “All we were looking to do was implement what the federal government campaigned on – 6 per cent a year growth in the Canada Health Transfer for the duration of the next health accord,” he said. “Today they backed away from that.”

The Globe counts Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, PEI and Manitoba as standing, quite literally, in the general vicinity of the Ontario finance minister. Quebec is definitely displeased. Canadian Press counts Manitoba among the visibly angry.

Canada’s most dangerous cities: the good news

By Ken MacQueen, Patricia Treble and Alex Ballingall - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 5:58 AM - 0 Comments

Longest without a murder: Lévis, Que.

The last time anyone was murdered in this city of 137,000, which sits just across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, was 2002. That’s the longest stretch of any big metropolitan area. Fortunately, there are many other places in Canada where homicide detectives are also as underemployed as the proverbial Maytag repairman. Some 38 of Canada’s 100 largest cities—from Windsor, Ont. (pop. 221,000) to West Vancouver (pop. 50,000)—recorded a homicide-free year. Canada even has a homicide-free province. In 2010, Prince Edward Island recorded not a single murder among its 142, 000 residents, for the second year in a row. Continue…

The Bloc’s four on the floor

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Pike

Every weekday morning at 9 a.m. when the House of Commons is in session, the four remaining Bloc Québécois MPs venture from their offices scattered about Parliament Hill to room 577 of the Confederation Building for their daily caucus meeting. It is an inauspicious venue for a party that for nearly two decades held the majority of Quebec’s seats, not to mention a near monopoly of virtue over the province’s political mindset. The room is roughly 10 by 20 feet and painted a pale blue. Bloc MP André Bellavance secured it last June, and then outfitted it with a table, chairs and a television. Fellow Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, the longest-serving MP in the country, recently joked that the room is so small they can hardly get the door closed once everyone is inside.

On one crisp Tuesday morning in October, room 577 was abuzz with the news of Michael Moldaver, Stephen Harper’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Moldaver, an Ontario native, doesn’t speak French, and to the Bloc his appointment was another linguistic slight on the part of the Conservative government. A month earlier, Harper had appointed as his director of communications a newspaper columnist who doesn’t speak French, and had recently announced that Michael Ferguson, a unilingual anglophone, would be the next auditor general.

The reddest of red-meat issues, though, was the government’s plan to scrap the long gun registry. A majority of Quebecers support the registry, and in November the province’s national assembly passed a unanimous motion opposing its demise. Yet the Conservative government was pressing ahead regardless—and would scrap the registry database itself, ensuring no other government could ever take up the cause. The two dossiers went to Bloc MP Maria Mourani, who serves as the Bloc’s spokesperson on both public security and official languages. Registering firearms and protecting the French language are ancient Bloc Québécois warhorses, and prior to last spring’s federal election Mourani would have been the go-to face of Quebec’s perpetual opposition to all things Conservative and/or Canadian.

Continue…

François Legault to the rescue

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Snow/The Gazette

Long before he became Quebec’s would-be saviour, François Legault was a businessman who, in 1986, co-founded a popular Quebec-based charter airline. Having been obsessed with efficiency in the private sector, Legault was reportedly put off by the cumbersome process by which new political entities are registered in the province. So when it came time for him to turn his Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec, Legault’s right-leaning pseudo think tank, into a full-blown political party, he chose a novel way to make it legit.

Rather than having 100 candidates mail in their support of the party and wait for the province’s director-general of elections to authenticate everyone—a part of the law that can take upward of two months—Legault and 100 of his supporters marched into the election authority’s Quebec City offices themselves. It was an irresistible bit of political theatre, a jaunty example of participatory democracy you rarely see from the right flank of Canada’s political spectrum: Legault the Pied Piper, literally leading his supporters toward the supposed reinvention of Quebec’s political scene.

Yet if Legault’s approach was novel, the popularity of this formerly retired politician is anything but. Legault, who has ridden high in the polls for nearly a year, is the latest in a long line of federal and provincial leaders from Quebec who find themselves suddenly, and almost absurdly, popular. The next provincial election is as many as two years away; still, given his sustained perch at the top of the polls, it is safe to say that Legault has benefited from the politician-as-saviour phenomenon, one seemingly as Québécois as Bixi bikes, depanneurs and the adding of curd cheese to gravy and french fries.

Continue…

The real federalism problem with crime legislation

By Brendan van Niejenhuis - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 0 Comments

Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press

In November 1983, Elijah Askov and three others were charged in connection with a plot to extort money from a man who ran a business supplying exotic dancers to Ontario strip clubs. Their case was plagued by delays from the start; nearly three years after the men’s arrest, and two years after their preliminary hearing, Askov and his co-defendants had not yet had their day in court. The Supreme Court of Canada was eventually asked to interpret the Charter guarantee to “be tried within a reasonable time.” And in its then-controversial Askov decision, the Court put a stop to the proceedings, giving birth to the modern and frequently employed practice of throwing out criminal charges based on unreasonable delay.

That Askov didn’t mean an end to unreasonable delays makes it hard for the provinces to mount a credible case against the federal government as it proposes sweeping changes to the Criminal Code. The Conservatives’ controversial omnibus crime bill has sparked a flurry of attacks for its substance, including its introduction of American-style mandatory-minimum sentencing. Quebec, Ontario and now Newfoundland have also introduced a new ground of opposition—the impact the federal government’s “tough new measures” will have on provincial balance sheets. It’s not clear, though, why voters should believe Ottawa is doing anything worse than adding to a problem the provinces had a hand in creating. Continue…

It’s a great racket

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, November 11, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Mario Beauregard/CP

By appearances alone, Bernard Gauthier makes for a great villain. His nickname is Rambo, and though he came by it honestly enough—he served eight years in the Canadian military—it is fitting for a 200-plus-lb. man with a mohawk, an earring and a mouth that would mightily challenge even the most adept broadcast censor. A construction worker practically since he could pick up a hammer, Gauthier is arguably the most notorious and divisive union figure in Quebec today. He is a hero to the men he oversees as a representative with FTQ-Construction, while his critics, and there are many, see him as a thuggish throwback who rules fist-first over his territory.

“We are against violence, but honestly, telling a goddamn bastard that he’s a goddamn bastard feels good,” Gauthier told Maclean’s from his office in Sept-Îles recently. “It’s liberating. It takes out 50 per cent of the rage in your heart. And now you can’t do it. If you do, you’re accused of intimidation, tabarnac.”

Gauthier sees many bastards in his life these days, chief among them Jean Charest’s Liberal government, whose proposed law, Bill C-33, would remove the union movement’s power to dictate which members get to work on which job sites in the province. The practice, known as “hiring hall,” has long been a hallmark of labour codes across North America and Europe, and the Quebec government’s plan to strip it away has Gauthier furious. “We had a nice industry that was quiet, that was flourishing. It was going well, goddammit,” he spits. “Now they’re going to turn it all to s–t.”

Continue…

‘It’s important that we have our say’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 11:24 AM - 0 Comments

Laurin Liu goes back to school.

She shared an anecdote to show them “how people really aren’t used to seeing young people in politics.” On one of their first days of work in the House of Commons, an MP from another party tried to give one of her young NDP colleagues an envelope, thinking she was a messenger or a page.

So-so-so, so much for union solidarity in Quebec

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

Fanny Levesque/Canadian Press/Le Soleil

By appearances alone, Bernard Gauthier makes for a great villain. His nickname is Rambo, and though he came by it honestly enough—he served eight years in the Canadian military—it is fitting for 200-plus-pound man with a mohawk, an earring and a mouth that would mightily challenge even the most adept broadcast censor.

A construction worker practically since he could pick up a hammer, Gauthier is arguably the most notorious and divisive union figure in Quebec today. He is a hero to the men he oversees as a representative with the FTQ-Construction, the largest construction labour union federation in Quebec; his critics, and there are many, see him as a thuggish throwback who rules jealously and fist-first over his territory.“We are against violence, but honestly, telling a goddamn bastard that he’s a goddamn bastard feels good,” Gauthier told Maclean’s from his office in Sept-Îles recently. “It’s liberating. It takes out 50 per cent of the rage in your heart. And now you can’t do it. If you do, you’re accused of intimidation, tabarnac.”

Gauthier sees many bastards in his life these days, chief among them the members of Jean Charest’s Liberal government, whose proposed law, Bill C-33, would remove the union movement’s power to dictate which union members get to work on which job site in the province. Continue…

The negotiator

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 4:02 PM - 0 Comments

Romeo Saganash touts his history as a negotiator for Cree communities in Quebec.

“I can do this job and I think in Canada we need a better prime minister than we have right now,” he said.

“Our policies need to meet of course the economic objectives, but also the social and environmental objectives,” he said. The agreements he negotiated with hydro, forestry and other companies as deputy grand chief at the Grand Council of the Crees and as its director of Quebec relations and international affairs met those objectives, he said. ”I will try to bring nationally what I did locally in northern Quebec.”

Mr. Saganash also has some thoughts on foreign policy.

A changing of the guard at the NDP

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by Blair Gable

At ten to eight on a Wednesday morning, he is aboard one of Parliament Hill’s small green buses, on his way to the first meeting of the day, the weekly gathering of the NDP’s Quebec MPs. He is wearing a suit and he’s carrying a coffee and a Danish. Around him there are other men. Men in suits on the way to meetings of their own. Only they are all twice his age.

After this meeting there’s another meeting—the weekly gathering of the official Opposition caucus. Then a walk back to his office, down the Hill to the Justice Building beside the Supreme Court. Then back up the Hill for lunch with a reporter in Centre Block’s ornate restaurant. Then a meeting of the all-party arts caucus. Then question period. Then a meeting of the standing committee on public accounts to hear testimony from the interim auditor general. Then dinner at the NDP’s weekly pub night. Then a meeting of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association. Then back to the pub, where he won’t look particularly out of place among the hordes of young staff who quietly keep Ottawa running.

Continue…

Six more seats

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 0 Comments

The NDP is standing by its demand that Quebec receive 24.35% of seats in the House of Commons.

The Harper government’s legislation gives Quebec 78 of 338 seats, or 23.1%. To get to the NDP’s preferred percentage, another six seats would have to be added to Quebec’s total. That would get the province 84 of 344 seats, or 24.41%.

‘A turning point’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Romeo Saganash restates his position on secession and recounts his life.

Saganash was ripped from the bosom of his nomadic Cree family near the remote northern Quebec village of Waswanipi and shipped to a residential school some 500 kilometres away in La Tuque. ”A very traumatic experience for anybody,” he recently told The Canadian Press.

In his own case, the experience was made immeasurably worse within six months of his arrival at the school, when the priest in charge called him and his siblings into his office to inform them that their father had died. In the next breath, Saganash recalls, the priest advised them: “We don’t have the budgets to send you there (for the funeral) so you’ll have to do your grieving here in the residential school. I still recall the scene when he gave us the bad news, we were sitting in front of the director, the priest. I still recall my brothers and sisters were crying and crying and crying and I was just there staring at him. That was, I think, a turning point for me.”

Don’t go building firewalls

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister responds to the complaints of Ontario and Quebec about his government’s crime policies.

Look, it’s – there’s constitutional responsibilities of all governments to enforce laws and protect people, and I’ve seen the data. I think the people of Ontario and Quebec expect that their government will work with the federal government to make sure we have safe streets and safe communities. 

Ontario and Quebec have been joined by Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

50-plus-what?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 4, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Romeo Saganash questions his party’s position on secession.

The Cree MP, who represents a vast northern Quebec riding, is doubtful the 50-per-cent-plus-one threshold is consistent with the Supreme Court’s 1998 opinion on the matter. ”I don’t know to what extent is that the proper interpretation of the Supreme Court’s opinion,” Saganash said Thursday in a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press. ”The Supreme Court said it has to be a clear response to a clear question.”

The NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration is available here.

The Commons: A salute to cognitive dissonance

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Shortly before the start of Question Period this afternoon, Conservative backbencher Patrick Brown rose to repeat his side’s line that the NDP is too “disunited” to govern. A moment later, Conservative backbencher Greg Rickford rose to lament that the NDP, in punishing two MPs who defied the party’s decision to whip a vote on the gun registry, was also too committed to enforcing unity.

Presumably this was Mr. Rickford’s way of protesting his own government’s decision to whip this week’s vote on asbestos exports. Hopefully his caucus leadership won’t too severely punish him for so bravely asserting the independence of individual MPs.

Immediately thereafter, the Speaker then called for oral questions and the official opposition sent up Joe Comartin, Mr. Comartin having apparently discovered an example of irony that he was eager to share with everyone. Continue…

Who pays the bill?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 10:03 AM - 0 Comments

Matching Quebec’s demand, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the Harper government should pick up the tab for its crime legislation. Peter Russell considers the possibilities.

More likely, added Russell, provinces objecting to the cost or content of the legislation will ignore certain aspects of it — trafficking or possession of small amounts of marijuana, for example. “They will say to police who are out looking, ‘If you get a call give it a low priority’,” he said. “I don’t think they would actually say, ‘We’re not going to enforce the law.’ They would say to the provincial police, ‘Give people who grow pot a low priority’. They can certainly do that. You just don’t put the resources into it. It’s a matter of discretion.”

Politically, Canada is headed into a situation where the provinces are shaping up as the official opposition, added Russell. “They are taking over that role,” he said, “and have a constitutional right to do so.”

The war on crime is now a fight about federalism

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec’s justice minister takes a stand, a Bloc MP goes even further.

Quebec will not absorb the additional costs associated with the crime bill the Conservative federal government has promised to pass within 100 sitting days of Parliament, the province’s justice minister told a Commons committee Tuesday … While Fournier didn’t go quite so far, Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani later suggested Quebec may simply choose not to enforce the legislation.

The alleged ‘honour killing’ that took the lives of three sisters

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, October 31, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Yahya, and son, Hamed, allegedly committed unspeakable horrors. According to the police, the couple, along with their son, murdered their three daughters and Shafia’s first wife, Rona Mohammad, by forcing their car into the locks at Kingston Mills, drowning the four of them in three metres of water—an apparent bid to restore the family’s honour. The daughters dishonoured the family, it would appear, for having the gall to dress up, wear makeup and flirt with boys. “May the devil s–t on their graves,” Mohammad Shafia later told his wife in a conversation secretly taped by police.

All the more disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that the three daughters had themselves reached out for help from Quebec’s children’s services, yet suffered the terrible fate nonetheless. Prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told the Kingston, Ont., courtroom recently that child protection workers had visited 17-year-old Sahar in the month before she and her sisters, Zainab, 19, and Geeti, 13, drowned along with the woman they called “auntie.”

The social worker determined that Sahar’s case was genuine, yet was forced to close the file after Sahar clammed up, Lacelle said. The reason for the teenager’s sudden silence: child welfare authorities are required by law to report anything the child says to the parents. “We can’t keep that from them,” says Gerald Savoie, a staff consultant at Montreal’s Batshaw Youth and Family Services. “We have to validate, and confront them with the information.”

Continue…

Minister overboard

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 28, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

The Conservatives are most anxious that everyone should know what an independent and impartial process was used to decide the recent competition for $33 billion in federal shipbuilding work. And by all accounts it was. Ministers were kept far away from the file. The task of assessing the competing bids, from shipyards in B.C., Halifax and Quebec, was left to a team of senior civil servants. A “fairness monitor” vouched for their handiwork, with the help of two outside auditors. And so on.

All of which would be a lot more impressive if a) it had not already been decided at the political level that no foreign shipyards would be allowed to compete, reserving the bidding to a handful of high-priced domestic yards, b) it had not similarly been decided in advance that the work would be divided between two yards, meaning two of the three bidders were guaranteed to win something, and c) one of the three, Quebec’s near-bankrupt Davie Yards, had not been shoehorned into the bidding at the last minute thanks to a political decision to extend the deadline. Indeed, it is hard to escape the impression that all this scrupulousness was based less on principle and more on protecting the government from the inevitable blowback from whichever province lost, naming no Quebecs.

But why quibble? It would be a stretch to say the best bid won, but at least the worst bid lost, which is a lot better than these things usually play out. Indeed, the process was such a success some have been moved to ask: why don’t we do this . . . all the time? If it is a good thing to keep politicians’ thumbs off the scales on a major shipbuilding contract, why is it not also a good thing to get the politics out of procurement generally? Not only would it spare the taxpayer needless expense, but it would spare the country the regional resentments, lobbying wars and suspicions of corruption that go with most such decisions.

Continue…

How was Ottawa to choose who would build its ships?

By John Geddes - Friday, October 28, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

CP/Andrew Vaughan

The situation could hardly be more packed with political danger. The federal government decides to award $33 billion of shipbuilding work to two shipyards, but there are three bidders. They hail from Nova Scotia, Quebec and British Columbia. Which of the three provinces, each with its own tradition of feeling grievously slighted by Ottawa, will be the big loser? Even when the stakes have been lower and the optics less harsh, the history of granting major federal contracts teaches a dismal lesson. “It’s always horrendous,” says André Juneau, director of Queen’s University’s Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, and a former senior federal bureaucrat who worked on many sensitive federal-provincial files.

But this time, improbably, not nearly so horrendous as usual. Last week’s anxiously awaited announcement was great for Halifax, which won the $25-billion deal to build warships, and very good for Vancouver, which scored $8 billion worth of work on coast guard and other non-combat vessels. Inevitably, that left some in Quebec complaining bitterly. The outcry, though, was oddly muted. “That’s competition for you,” said Yves-Thomas Dorval of the Conseil du patronat, Quebec’s main business lobby group. Elaborate measures taken by the federal Conservatives to make sure they couldn’t be plausibly accused of politically manipulating the outcome seemed to have succeeded in insulating them from the typical fallout.

That tactical victory came at a testing moment in federal-provincial relations. Looming questions about how the money is divided up in the federation threaten, as they have so often in Canadian history, to sour Ottawa’s relations with the provinces and heighten tensions between regions. The key issues involve renegotiating transfer-payment deals for health and equalization. Other touchy matters in play are Ottawa’s plans to redistribute seats in the House of Commons and create a national stock market regulator. The shipbuilding procurement is, in many respects, unique. But one lesson that could apply broadly is that taking elaborate steps to show that decisions aren’t tainted by favouritism pays valuable political dividends.

Continue…