OBSERVER ob•serv•er
noun \əb-ˈzər-vər\
: a person who sees and notices someone or something
: a person who pays close attention to something
: a person who is present at something (such as a meeting) in order to watch and listen to what happens
an OBSERVER
Telford and Butts look on
as Trudeau delivers his opening remarks during the Meeting of First
Ministers in Ottawa on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean
Kilpatrick)
Former attorney general Peter MacKay told the Toronto Sun
this week that the police should be called in to investigate the
SNC-Lavalin affair, because someone may have obstructed justice.
“When I was prosecuting cases, if a politician had ever called me up, I would have put down the phone and called the police,” said MacKay, adding that we are in “uncharted waters.”
MacKay is right to warn about the danger of political intervention in
a prosecution—although it is likely premature to call in the cops—but
he is wrong to say that we are in uncharted waters.
When MacKay was a student at Acadia University, his father, Elmer,
then solicitor general in Brian Mulroney’s cabinet, was demoted to
revenue minister, just as Jody Wilson-Raybould was demoted to veterans
affairs.
I don’t want to pick on Elmer, who is, I hope, at 82 enjoying his
retirement in beautiful Pictou County, or on Peter, whose frequent
appearances as a media commentator offer useful insights. But the story
is a reminder that there is nothing new under the sun, and that the
waters we are in are actually pretty well charted.
The difference is that MacKay was demoted for making a politically awkward intervention in a prosecution, while Wilson-Raybould was demoted after refusing to make such an intervention.
The elder MacKay met with the RCMP commissioner to discuss the
Mounties’ investigation into New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield, a
colourful figure known to jet down to New York to disco at Studio 54.
The Mounties found marijuana in his luggage during a royal visit to
Fredericton, and were considering charging him.
MacKay’s meeting with the top Mountie didn’t violate any rules, but
it led to nasty questions in the House of Commons, with Liberal MP John
Nunziata pressing the government and calling for a public inquiry.
To put such questions to rest, Mulroney moved Elmer out of the job and everyone lived more or less happily ever after.
It is not clear that everyone will live as happily ever after in this
current case of a politically problematic intervention into a
prosecution, for political, not legal reasons.
In 1985, MacKay was found not to have violated any laws because he
didn’t apply pressure. He didn’t say to the commissioner, “Let Hatfield
off the hook or else!”
We do not yet know if someone said something like that to
Wilson-Raybould about SNC-Lavalin, but it is unlikely anyone would have
been stupid enough to do that.
We will likely eventually know the truth, thanks to an investigation
by the ethics commissioner, but it seems likeliest that Trudeau or his
people told Wilson-Raybould that there were good political reasons—jobs
and votes—to overrule the director of public prosecutions rather than
letting her prosecute SNC-Lavalin for bribing Libyan officials.
Laying out that case is sleazy but legal.
On the other hand, someone may have said: “Do you like your job? It
would be a shame if you lost it. You wouldn’t want to end up visiting
Legion halls all the time, would you? Justin needs a new veterans
affairs minister, you know. So, watch out. Pay attention to this file!”
Neither possibility can be summarily dismissed.
We know that the Liberals stealthily inserted a
clause into a budget bill that made this kind of agreement possible,
seemingly with a view to helping SNC-Lavalin, a company that made more
than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions to the Liberals, and we
know that Trudeau demoted Wilson-Raybould after she declined to cut the
firm a sweetheart deal, and replaced her with a Quebecer who would
presumably be more likely to give SNC-Lavalin what it wants.
Still, it’s hard to know what really happened, unless you are a
partisan, in which case it’s all crystal clear, depending on your
inclination, and Trudeau is either a blameless and virtuous leader being
hounded unfairly, or a profoundly corrupt leader finally revealed as
the poltroon that he is.
Until we learn the facts, we can tentatively conclude that some of
the smart people in the prime minister’s office are not as smart as they
think they are.
Wilson-Raybould was unhappy with the government’s failure to deliver on Indigenous issues, and she cast doubt on
the government’s commitment to reconciliation. The SNC-Lavalin matter
gave her a cudgel with which to strike the PMO, delivering a meaningful
blow for First Nations and writing her name in the history books.
Trudeau and his aides misjudged her badly by handing her the cudgel
and then giving her the opportunity to wield it by demoting her as they
did.
As Trudeau is a prince, born to power, she is a princess, daughter of hereditary Kwakiutl chief Bill Wilson,
a lawyer and national leader who negotiated with Trudeau’s father to
ensure Aboriginal rights were enshrined in the 1982 constitution. By
demoting her, Trudeau and his people humiliated her, seemingly to send a
message about who holds the reins in Ottawa: Trudeau, chief of staff
Katie Telford and principal secretary Gerald Butts, two advisors who
have more clout than any ministers.
It was an enormous miscalculation, and now Trudeau is locked in a
zero-sum game with a formidable opponent who has undercut his argument
that he is a feminist leader committed to reconciliation with indigenous
Canadians.
The Elmer MacKay-Richard Hatfield matter is now a forgotten footnote.
It did not profoundly damage the Mulroney government because MacKay
remained a cherished member of the clan.
Wilson-Raybould more closely resembles Lucien Bouchard, who led a key
part of Mulroney’s constituency away from him, ultimately ensuring his
government’s defeat.
This is rattling Liberals, and will put pressure on Trudeau to get
rid of Telford or Butts, who Liberal MPs resent for their historically
unusual centrality to his government.
Trudeau likely shouldn’t get rid of them, because he wouldn’t be
prime minister if it wasn’t for his unusually close working relationship
with them. But the situation requires a fall guy, some kind of signal
to Liberals and a tedious ongoing damage-control exercise that will
follow Trudeau like a bad smell into the election.
Bloggers note: a U N I T I V E Proposal for 2019 and beyond. ------------------------------------------------------
Gestational abortion laws are a trap
January 16, 2019
Why abortion pills have changed the future of pro-life activism in Canada by Marie-Claire Bissonnette
(Republished with permission of LifeSiteNews.com) Mifegymiso is the Canadian brand name for an abortion drug called
RU-486, which was brought into Canada in January of 2017 after approval
by Health Canada in 2015. Not yet two years since its introduction and
it has already begun to alter the entire landscape surrounding abortion
practices and attitudes in Canada.
The pro-life movement will struggle
to keep pace with these changes as they accelerate, and so I write this
as a warning and an injunction to all pro-life individuals and
organizations in Canada, who risk greater marginalization and even
irrelevance if they don’t reassess their strategy in light of this
evolving situation.
Chemical abortions are much less offensive to our sensibilities than
surgical abortions such as suction and aspiration, dilation and
curettage, saline abortion, and partial birth abortion. Whereas these
procedures expose their true murderous nature with the resulting
lifeless bodies of butchered or burned babies, Mifegymiso is portrayed
as a clean, convenient and easy abortion method, consisting of a
two-pill combination ingested by the mother, who then discards her
pregnancy at home, concealing her child’s visible humanity under a
toilet seat.
The first pill, Mifepristone, blocks the flow of
progesterone and starves the embryo to death. 24-48 hours later, the
second drug, Misoprostol, causes severe muscle contractions in the
uterus, relaxation of the cervix, and shedding of the endometrium.
Along
with much blood and other tissue, the baby is flushed down the toilet,
often denied even the dignity of being gazed upon by human eyes. What
the mother might see, had she the courage to look, would be her baby’s
tiny body in the pregnancy sac, with visible fingers and toes that can
be counted at Mifegymiso’s current off-label legal gestational limit of
ten weeks.
It’s no less heinous than any other form of abortion of course, but
the brutality is more easily ignored, and this is encouraged by the
media, who distort the truth, omitting several important facts about
Mifegymiso.
Leaving aside the obvious—that abortion is the killing of an
innocent human being—the first thing everyone should know, but what
most women will not be told, is that after the first pill, Mifepristone,
has been taken it is possible to reverse the effects and save the
baby’s life should the mother intake progesterone.
Second, Mifegymiso
can have serious side effects, which include nausea, vomiting, cramping,
fever, dizziness, hemorrhaging, loss of consciousness, salpingitis,
arrhythmia, bronchospasm, infection, septic shock, future infertility,
future ectopic pregnancies, and even death due to infection, blood loss,
or future ectopic pregnancy.
Third, the media’s claim that the pills
cost between $300 and $550 ignores the cost of the initial pregnancy
assessment and counselling with a physical exam, infection check, blood
test, and ultrasound; any further blood tests; and finally, follow-up
appointments, not to mention the on-average 1 in 20 chemical abortions
that will fail and thus be followed up with either a second chemical
abortion or a surgical abortion. (Overall success rates for Canadian
trials of Mifegymiso were between 92.9% and 97.3%).
The facts are that Mifegymiso is both dangerous to women and
expensive, but also that its effects are reversible within a limited
window. The media won’t report any of that, however, because chemical
abortions are just so convenient. (Also because the concept of
“pro-choice” apparently doesn’t extend to a woman’s choice to change her
mind.)
RU-486 was invented in 1980, since which time its use has become
widespread across Europe. This can give us a glimpse of the future of
abortion in Canada, where, as recently reported by the National Post,
Mifegymiso has already been prescribed more than 13,000 times.
According
to a public report by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, in
Scotland in 1992, one year after RU-486 was introduced, 16.4% of all
abortions were chemical. By 2016 that figure had risen to 83%. The
numbers are even more startling in Scandinavia. In Norway, 87% of all
abortions are chemical abortions; in Sweden, 92%; in Finland, 96%. This
is what we have to look forward to in Canada: a future where nearly all
abortions take place at home, discreetly, with a couple of pills.
Pro-life goals in light of chemical abortions
But it’s worth considering how an analysis such as this can hinder as
well as help the pro-life cause. Focusing on the side effects and the
public cost is ultimately beside the main point. The reduction of both
ought no less to be in the interests of the pro-abortion movement; these
should be areas of common ground between us and pro-abortion
organizations that are ostensibly committed to women’s health and value
to the taxpayer. It’s possible that, by highlighting these issues, I
could be furthering the pro-abortion cause.
If, in five years, the next
version of RU-486 is a fraction of the current cost and has no side
effects, will these arguments against the drug have helped to save any
preborn lives?
This brings me to two long-standing divisions within the pro-life
movement. The efficacy (to say nothing of the morality) of gestational
laws and graphic images is hotly debated, and although the two disputes
don’t directly map onto each other, they do cut across one another.
On
the one hand, gestational laws and graphic images might help to save
lives in certain circumstances, but on the other, they may also play
into the abortion industry’s hands simply because the sophisticated
pro-abort probably doesn’t like late-term abortions or bloody fetuses
either. The introduction of Mifegymiso puts an abrupt end to this whole
argument and the nays, as they say, have it. But this point may require
further unpacking.
Many pro-life campaigns use graphic images of dead babies,
post-abortion, to show the grisly, gory reality of surgical abortion.
It’s an obvious and bold tactic. Abortion is sickening, bloody and
shocking. Surely, by exposing this in public it will change minds.
Indeed it does. But that’s not all it does.
The pro-abortion movement,
conceivably, also might be opposed to the gore. It is not impossible
that there are some pro-abortion activists who may find surgical
abortion methods unpalatable and see such images as motivation to “clean
up” the procedures.
Supposing Canada responded by doing away with the
gruesome surgical abortion methods and then introduced what abortion
activists would bill as a clean, bloodless procedure that left no dead
baby’s body behind—a method that somehow vaporized or disintegrated the
child, painlessly and quickly?
With Mifegymiso, we aren’t far away from
this reality, in which gruesome images are far less powerful because
abortion is no longer visibly gruesome. And the abortion activists would
say, problem solved.
In the short term, if graphic images have helped a woman to rethink
her decision and choose to carry her child to term, they have done an
unquantifiable good. But in the long run, such images may also provoke
abortion activists to clean up the business of killing preborn babies so
as to take away the firepower of this useful pro-life tool.
Gestational laws – a trap
Canada’s lack of a law on abortion is staggering and leaves our
nation with fewer legal restrictions on abortion than any other
developed country in the world. The obvious response is that we need a
gestational law of some kind. But supposing we got one? What if the
government merely legislated what is already common practice and
introduced a law that makes abortions legal until 24 weeks?
Assuming
Canada takes its lead from Scandinavia, and Mifegymiso becomes the
abortion method of choice for over 90% of abortions, will a gestational
law make any difference at all? Consider the situation in Denmark. Denmark’s abortion law is quite
restrictive, relative to other Western countries. Abortions are legal
only up to twelve weeks; however, this is not an example of some
mysterious social conservatism, since Denmark is certainly one of the
most leftist countries in the world. (It was, for example, the first to
allow same-sex "marriage," and the first to legalize pornography.)
And
where Denmark goes Canada tends to follow not far behind. I believe that
such an early gestational law is, in fact, the situation Canada would
eventually reach, even if we all were to abandon the pro-life agenda
entirely right now.
It’s tempting to think that a twelve-week limit
would be so much better than no law at all, that it would be a sort of
stepping stone, that the logical sequence of events will inevitably have
to go from no restrictions to some restrictions before a full ban can
be even contemplated. But this is a fallacious argument, as Mifegymiso
proves. For as we attempt to reduce legal limits, the abortion industry
is simultaneously working to provide abortions earlier. These two
efforts prove to go hand in hand.
Reducing the legal gestation limit for abortion doesn’t protect any
preborn children at all. Think about that for a moment. The only hope is
that some lucky fetuses might slip through the cracks by becoming too
old to be aborted; a gestational law still targets all preborn children
because all babies pass through the same stages of gestation. It merely
narrows the scope to target them when they’re young enough so that it’s
easier not to think of them as human beings.
The Nazis dehumanized the
Jews in order to make it easier to kill them. A gestational law does the
same.
A preborn child old enough to kick and to resemble a newborn baby
has the advantage of eliciting an emotional reaction, hence why
ultrasounds have been so effective in counseling women to choose life. A
younger baby doesn’t have this advantage. A first-trimester fetus is
tiny. It doesn’t look as “human”. It doesn’t feel pain. The abortion
that kills it appears less violent. It is, therefore, more vulnerable
than an older preborn child.
But hasn’t this always been the challenge
for the pro-life movement?
That it’s more difficult to defend preborn
babies than born babies because their human appearance is less obvious?
The same applies at each stage of gestation.
The younger the fetus, the
easier it is to deny its humanity. And some in the pro-life movement are
in danger of unwittingly contributing to this trend, which, in the long
run, will lead to little progress and possibly much damage.
Sure, Danish law requires women to make the decision at an earlier
stage, as does Mifegymiso, but with enough propaganda and encouragement,
that won’t prevent many women in such an affluent and educated country
from carrying out their decision to have their child killed, especially
if it involves nothing more than a couple of pills. (A further effect is
that many women rush into the decision to have the abortion, only to
regret it later.)
And once the law has entrenched itself, and passed
itself off as an acceptable and civilized alternative to the laws of
other countries, what chance is there of ever reforming it?
If, in our zeal to restrict abortion access, we are able to arrive at
the same kind of law that Denmark has, we will have done a great
disservice to the preborn, in strengthening the legal status quo by
bestowing upon it a perceived but false level of modesty and
reasonableness.
If the pro-abortion movement were to start pushing for a
twelve week limit, we might think they’d taken leave of their senses,
and begin celebrating such a remarkable development, but the ultimate
result would be a law that appears so eminently reasonable, and which
would carry such widespread support, that it would be all but impossible
to change.
We would have replaced an unacceptable situation where all
preborn babies are under threat, with an equally unacceptable situation
where only younger preborn babies are under threat (and therefore, still
all babies until they grow old enough), which merely marginalizes them
further and moves the issue further from people’s minds.
Our new law
would then, effectively, be targeting only the most helpless, minimizing
the emotional tug on many of those who might come to their defense. It
is a fact that of those countries with gestational laws, almost none
have budged from their original parameters; there is very little
evidence to support the claim that a gestational law can lead to greater
protection of preborn life. A gestational law prunes the weed of
abortion while nourishing its roots. It’s not a stepping stone. It's a
trap.
Pro-life tools becoming obsolete
But my chief point here is that Mifegymiso makes this whole argument a
waste of our time.
Already in Canada, over 90% of abortions take place
within the first trimester.
In Finland, 96% of all abortions (not
including the abortions from contraceptive use) not only take place
within the first trimester, but are performed with RU-486. When
Mifegymiso takes off, there won’t be any need for a legal gestational
limit because unwanted preborn babies won’t survive to the age of
protection. And there won’t be a need for the most graphic of images
because abortion will be carried out with chemicals and household
plumbing instead of knives and forceps.
The remaining 10% of Canadian abortions that occur after the
first-trimester likely consist mostly of terminations of once-wanted
children due to later-revealed health conditions, and of abortions for
women who may not have had ready access to abortion in their first
trimester. Mifegymiso will solve the problem of access and, even if
passed, any potential gestational legislation in Canada would almost
certainly grant exceptions for fetal abnormalities and disabilities, as
is the case in other states with gestational laws, ensuring the
continued legality of these abortions.
Even in Denmark, late-term
abortions are legal in cases of low income, rape or incest, expected
birth defects, and physical or mental health risks to the mother,
essentially covering nearly all reasons for late-term abortions.
Let's remember that the situation that’s existed in Canada for thirty
years is the result of political cowardice surrounding a hot-button
issue as much as anything else. Denmark’s situation is the result of an
actualized and considered anti-life ideology. Abortion isn’t a
hot-button issue there. It’s no wonder that such a liberal country has
greater restrictions on abortion. They know what they’re doing.
If
Canada were fully to embrace that ideology, we’d certainly have a law.
The fact that we don’t indicates that we’re not that far gone. With no
law, those of us in the pro-life movement have more weapons at our
disposal to make a rational as well as an emotional case to the
reasonable citizens of this country.
These weapons have included showing
that certain abortion methods are harmful to women, that abortion is
gruesome and bloody, that an absence of legal protection for the preborn
is a national travesty. I’m not arguing that these facts are
unimportant. Insofar as they are truths, they ought to be exposed.
But
we must not forget that they're peripheral to a more important truth,
and only useful insofar as they support that truth. With Mifegymiso,
however, all these tools are fast becoming obsolete.
Campaigning for an end to messy abortions will result in a no less
barbaric practice and campaigning for women's health and safety will
result in a practice that merely hurts women in a subtler way, perhaps
only psychologically. Campaigning for a gestational law will result in
an accompanying erroneous moral defensibility. In all cases, the
slaughter of the innocents continues.
Mifegymiso is a much more
formidable enemy than abortion methods of the past and whatever comes
next will be even more so. We don’t have the luxury to deviate from our
core purpose in order to make short-term gains.
But perhaps arguing
solely for a complete abortion ban remains too grand an objective and
some kind of incremental strategy is needed. If gestational laws are
irrelevant and graphic images no longer efficacious, what smaller, more
achievable goals are there that don’t play into the abortion industry’s
hands? No doubt those in the pro-life movement in Canada have many ideas
of where to direct our efforts. Here I will suggest two.
Incremental strategies
First, defund all abortions. The Canadian health care system is
increasingly expensive and public money must be directed towards
necessary health care. Canadian taxpayers ought not to be funding
elective procedures at all, especially those that constitute destruction
of human life.
Even believers in the right to abortion don’t
necessarily believe that abortion should be publicly funded. Second,
protect the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who
refuse to perform, prescribe or sell abortions and who won’t refer
patients to abortion providers. Is it unrealistic to set as a goal the
establishment of a chain of pro-life pharmacies or a public database of
pro-life doctors across the country once these conscience rights have
been secured and are respected?
These are achievable, reasonable, though by no means easy, goals,
which can be pursued alongside political advocacy and public education.
There are many others. There is nothing (adequate funding and
inter-organizational drama notwithstanding) stopping all Canadian
pro-life organizations from collaborating in order to accomplish them,
building public support and persuading courageous politicians to take
them on as policy objectives.
But whatever strategies in defense of the preborn are conceived, let
them take shape with a recognition of the new predicament facing the
preborn in Canada: a chemical holocaust administered from a prescription
pad and a final resting place in a mess of blood and excrement – better
known as Mifegymiso, “the World Health Organization’s gold standard of
medical abortion.”
Marie-Claire Bissonnette is Youth Coordinator for Campaign Life Coalition.
NO one was held accountable and we have a liberal(Trudeau) government for 4 years ....Canadians deserve better from its governance apparatus. (this is very upsetting) and Canadians were well put to sleep by the Voting time.
The portrait of the disgruntled public servant, beaten down by a
poisonous workplace culture and years of disregard under Stephen
Harper’s Conservative government is oft-painted — and, generally
speaking, pretty inaccurate, according to a research article published Dec. 17 in Public Personnel Management, an academic journal for human resource and public sector executives. While
job satisfaction among federal bureaucrats decreased slightly during
Harper’s time as prime minister, it remained “quite high” overall,
writes Jocelyn McGrandle, the article’s author and a PhD candidate at
Concordia University. McGrandle based her findings on data from the
federal government’s 2008, 2011 and 2014 Public Service Employee
Surveys.
“Over
the past five years in the Canadian political landscape, there have
been numerous calls for rejuvenating the federal public service due to
toxic work cultures and a general disrespect for public servants,”
McGrandle wrote. “Much of this was directed at the Conservative
government under Stephen Harper.”
So strong was this outrage that the Public Service Alliance of Canada rolled out an anti-Harper campaign prior to the 2015 federal election, McGrandle pointed out. Then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau also penned a letter to public servants promising a new era of trust and respect for the bureaucracy, if elected.
“2015
was such an interesting election with the public service very clearly
coming out, not in favour of a particular party, but certainly against
one party,” said McGrandle in an interview, when asked to explain her
desire to research this particular topic. “That was sort of my puzzle:
Is the public service that dissatisfied? Or is this a bit of political
posturing?”
Having analyzed the data, she’s inclined to believe the latter. “Much
of the lack of satisfaction seems to be mostly political rhetoric,”
McGrandle concludes in her article. While overall job satisfaction —
ranked by survey respondents in the public service on a five-point scale
— declined from an average of 4.14 to 4.05 between 2008 and 2014, “satisfaction, even at its lowest point in 2014, still remains relatively high.”
The
significance of this finding goes beyond debunking a popular political
mythology, according to McGrandle. It also underscores the importance of
surveys like the triennial PSE survey, which the government committed
to conducting more frequently starting in 2018.
“These
employee surveys … can be used to measure how public servants actually
feel, not how they are told they should feel during the course of an
election.”
Paul Wilson, an associate
professor in Carleton University’s political management program, says
he’s not surprised by the result of McGrandle’s research.
Not only does
it align with some of the findings of his own work on a related subject —
he co-authored a book chapter that
looked at the relationship between political staffers and public
servants under Harper — but it reflects what he witnessed firsthand
as director of policy in the prime minister’s office from 2009 to 2011.
While
certain personalities and departments in the public service may have
clashed with Harper’s government — it’s hard to forget the affectionate mobbing of newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by foreign affairs officials — Wilson said relations between both parties were “generally good.”
He’s
readily admits he’s far from an unbiased observer but offered his
account of a relationship about which many have speculated but few
experienced directly.
“One criticism I heard about prime minister Harper was that he didn’t listen to the public service.” In fact, said Wilson, Harper read every single memo that came his way, cover to cover.
“He
wanted advice from the public service, he carefully considered the
advice from the public service, and then he made a decision on things —
and sometimes he agreed, and sometimes he didn’t.”
“I think that
was a significant thing for the public service, to know that they could
always get information to the prime minister and that he would always
take it seriously.”
Wilson also noted that direct interactions
between the low- and mid-level bureaucrats who make up the majority of
the public service and their political leaders are limited.
“Most
public servants don’t interact with the political types — they don’t
meet the minister, they don’t meet the political staff … so most people
know the political side through what they read in the media and things
filtering down from people who are engaging directly.”
The extent
to which political leadership actually has an impact on job
satisfaction among public servants was not a relationship McGrandle was
able to investigate directly in her research for the article, as it
wasn’t asked about on the Public Service Employee Survey.
“I
think there’s certainly an argument for looking at that,” she said. “How
satisfied are public service employees, does it really have to do with
who is in power? And maybe their own political leanings, or just how
that party or leader happens to treat the public service?”
Public servants protest over problems with the Phoenix pay system
outside the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council on Oct. 12,
2017. Justin Tang /
THE CANADIAN PRESS Further, McGrandle wasn’t able to measure pre-Harper job
satisfaction as the question she used to measure the variable wasn’t
asked on the 2005 PSES. Nor has she had a chance to look at the results
of the 2017 PSES, the first conducted under the current Liberal
government.
“Maybe we saw a decrease or an increase under Justin Trudeau, I have no idea.”
In
her article, McGrandle did identify a number of variables most likely
to have the largest impact on levels of job satisfaction among Canadian
federal public servants, from a list of personal characteristics (age,
gender, level of education, visible minority status), job
characteristics (job fit with skills, interests, levels of training and
opportunities for promotion), and organizational characteristics
(satisfaction with superiors and positive relationships with coworkers).
Exploring
this area is important for policy-makers, she reasoned, given the
potential link between improved job satisfaction, increases in
organizational performance, and lowered costs that can result from
absenteeism and employee turnover.
Wilson also pointed out that satisfied bureaucrats are an important recruitment tool.
“We
want to be able to recruit excellent people into the public service,
and if people feel that it’s a dead end, or that they aren’t listened
to, then who’s going to want to work there?”
McGrandle
found that the strongest determinant of job satisfaction was job fit
with the respondents’ interests. She hypothesized that “employees
reporting a higher level of job fit with interests will report higher
levels of job satisfaction,” and was proved correct.
The
second strongest determinant of job satisfaction was the respondents’
view of their relationship with their supervisor, followed by their
relationships with coworkers and job fit with their skills. Positive
views towards all three were associated with increased job satisfaction.
If
the public service were to act on these findings with the goal of
improving employee job satisfaction, McGrandle said, that could look
like ensuring an individual’s interests as well as their skills match
with the job they’re applying for during the hiring process, as well as
fostering healthy employee-employee and employee-superior relationships.
While
McGrandle said that overall, she was happy with the variables she was
able to examine in her research, she wasn’t able to investigate
specifically how salary might affect job satisfaction. She also noted
that it’s possible that short-term factors like Phoenix-induced
disruptions in pay could affect a public servant’s satisfaction with his
or her job, and influence the results of more recent PS employee
surveys.
Stories of eroding democracy loom large in the global press these days; the alleged culprits are usually flamboyant strongmen with open authoritarian objectives. But democracy can just as easily be weakened in progressive nations by its own purported saviors, through quiet, bureaucratic means.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government recentlypassedmore than 200 pages of dramatic changes to the way Canadian elections work. Among other things, the new rules will further restrain the degree that Canadians can exercise their constitutional rights to free political speech and activism. Such regulations were passed with the standard progressive smugness that heavily regulating political speech and activity in the name of fairness and equality is unambiguously virtuous. Righteous self-confidence, however, does not negate the practical consequences of this fundamentally illiberal exercise of state power.
Trudeau’sfinal billrepresents no improvement from thedraconian first draftintroduced inApril.According to the Democratic Institutions ministry, the new legislation seeks to ensure that “political actors” operate on a “fair and level playing field,” and will impose “reasonable limits” on their budgets. Translated to English, this means government has devised new ways to punish politically motivated groups of Canadians, be they environmentalists, social conservatives, business or labor leaders, minority rights’ activists or anything in between, who engage in activities such as advertising or “canvassing door-to-door, making telephone calls to electors and organizing rallies” without first conforming to Ottawa’s rules.
Canada’s formal “election period” is now capped at 50 days before election day, with the two months or so before comprising a novel “pre-election” period as well. During “pre-election” time — a concept that has no democratic rationale beyond government’s expansive appetite to control political activity — so-called third parties are treated with as much suspicion as during the tightly regulated elections themselves. Groups and individuals may not spend more than $700,000 on “partisan activities” and “partisan advertising” during this period, and must immediately register with the government after spending their first $500. Ottawa expects a full itemized list of all revenue and expenses incurred, including the date and place of every attempt to change a mind.
Thanks to these amendments and others, the Canada Elections Actis now impossibly long and frighteningly intimidating. Any Canadian who plans to exert any significant expense or effort in persuading his or her fellow citizens to vote one way or another in next year’s election should immediately retain a team of lawyers and accountants, as there is simply no other way to navigate the dense brush of legal weeds that now govern election-adjacent democratic participation in Canada. Rule-breakers can expect thousands of dollars in fines or even prison time.
Things will almost certainly get worse. The paradoxical dream of a perfectly controlled democracy that inspired Trudeau’sElections Modernization Act (and the many terrible prior election laws it builds upon) is a fundamentally authoritarian project forever finding fresh justification to further constrain citizens’ rights.
Given that earlier moral panic has already restrained candidate and party fundraising to thebare minimum, expect the 2019 election to trigger a fresh wave of government paranoia over all the corporate/union/industry/etc. money being “funneled” into third parties. Some future administration will then surely impose even tighter restraints on third-party spending and activity. Perhaps they’ll follow the lead of Ontario, where “pre-election” regulations now govern a preposteroussix months before voting day. Either way, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the long-term goal is the removal of “third parties” from Canada’s political conversation altogether.
At an increasingly fast clip, Canada is consolidating its status as a nation in which it is extremely difficult for average Canadians, acting either as individuals or through advocacy groups, to legally communicate ideas or stage events in or around elections. Though Trudeau is the latest perpetrator, the issue is not partisan. Parties on all sides demagogue equally about the scourge of inappropriately engaged Canadians spending too much of their own time and money on issues important to them.
Without any firmer foundation than speculative, self-interested theories about what hurts their ability to get elected, Canada’s political class has a vested interest in minimizing the political activism of others. Lawmakers, after all, are allowed to endlessly speechify and self-promote in their capacity as pieces of the government, and they jealously guard that perk. “Third parties” must therefore be portrayed as illegitimate competitors in the way unions and corporations already have. Aspersions must be cast on these outsiders, with their exercise of democratic rights portrayed as dangerous and subversive. The politician’s goal is to monopolize all conversation about policies and priorities, thereby making his or her own leadership seem indispensable.
The other beneficiary of all this is the media. Canadian election law doesnotconsider journalists as third parties, even though they’re employees of large corporations who spend a great deal of money influencing what voters think about politics. Perhaps this is because Ottawa has a different plan for them. The Trudeau government recentlyunveiled $595 million in fresh fundingto subsidize Canadian news outlets, and a corresponding government committee to identify instances of journalism worthy of subsidization.
These are the trend lines of Canadian democracy at present. A consolidation of influence for those who already have it, while ever-higher bureaucratic barriers are erected to curb the impact of everyone else. Healthy self-governance cannot be sustained with regressive priorities such as these.
Justin Trudeau’s newest adviser will take home more than $1,200 for each day he works in government, iPolitics has learned.
Serge Dupont, a former deputy clerk of the Privy Council Office (PCO), was named senior executive adviser to the prime minister in an order-in-councilpublishedon Dec. 6. The order fixed his salary at $1,250 to $1,470 per day.
An order-in-council is the legal tool formalizing an appointment made by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet, collectively known as the Governor in Council. The Governor General must sign the order for it to go into effect.
A spokesperson for the PCO told iPolitics that Dupont had been appointed on a “part-time basis” to help with the government’s response to an August ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal that quashed Ottawa’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Stéphane Shank said the former civil servant will support PCO with “policy coordination and oversight” of the response to ensure “coherence between officials across government.”
Dupont currently works as a senior adviser for international law firm Bennett Jones, in addition to serving as an executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. He recently concluded a term on the board of the Public Policy Forum (PPF), a non-profit think tank.
In October 2017, Dupont and PFF president Edward Greenspon wrote anopinion piecein the Globe and Mail calling for a complete “reset” of the review process for resource projects in order to restore the trust of Canadians. They said the review process needs to be more inclusive and transparent, and ensure “scientific rigour and good-faith discussions within a predictable, reasonable time frame.”
During his time in the public service, Dupont also served as the executive director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean on the International Monetary Fund, and as deputy minister for Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) from 2010 to 2014. He did not return email or phone messages by deadline on Monday, asking for more information about the appointment.
Dupont joined NRCan in 2008 as associate deputy minister, where he led the restructuring of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and advised on Canada’s nuclear sector, according to his public biography on the Bennett Joneswebsite. Before that, he spent seven years working at Finance Canada, including a stint as assistant deputy minister for finance-sector policy. He also spent three years in the mid-1990s as a finance counsellor at Canada’s mission in Paris.
With files from Kristen Smith
*This article has been updated to reflect that Serge Dupont will work out of the Privy Council Office, not the Prime Minister’s Office, and that his term on the board of the Public Policy Forum recently ended.
On October 19th 2015, Canadians chose Justin Trudeau to be Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister. The TrudeauMeter is a non-partisan collaborative citizen initiative that tracks his performance with regards to his electoral platform. https://trudeaumetre.polimeter.org
