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President Joe Biden campaigned as a bipartisan deal-maker who had decisively beaten the socialists and police defunders in his own party and then promptly unveiled a series of proposals more to liberals' liking that were designed to be passed exclusively with Democratic votes.

Now, as Biden returns to a more bipartisan posture to notch a few wins that don't require reconciliation in the Senate, it remains to be seen how much goodwill this bought him on the Left. If progressives prove to be more recalcitrant than centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, it could deny Biden additional legislative accomplishments before the summer recess.

When it came to passing another stimulus bill at the start of his presidency, Biden held perfunctory talks with Senate Republicans on a possible bipartisan compromise. But the two sides were too far apart on the amount of total spending. The negotiations were quickly scuttled, and Congress proceeded to pass the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan without a single Republican vote.

Infrastructure appeared likely to follow a similar path. The White House and Senate Republicans were far apart on total package size. When new spending was factored in, the gulf only grew larger. Press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration would be a little more patient on this issue then Biden signaled not much more.

"We welcome ideas. But the rest of the world isn't waiting for us. Doing nothing is not an option," Biden said during a joint session of Congress. "We can't be so busy competing with each other that we forget the competition is with the rest of the world to win the 21st century."

Much as they derided the American Rescue Plan as mainly containing spending unrelated to the pandemic, unimpressed GOP lawmakers questioned Biden's definition of infrastructure. "Words have meaning," tweeted Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican. "We can't have a productive conversation if they keep redefining terms."

But it became clear there were infrastructure projects Republicans were willing to fund and that Senate Democrats had limited bites at the reconciliation apple. The two sides kept talking, even after White House negotiations with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, failed. The end result was a $1.2 trillion plan.

"We made serious compromises on both ends," Biden said outside the West Wing as he thanked each of the senators. "They have my word. I'll stick with what we've proposed, and they've given me their word as well." He later told reporters, "Mitt Romney's never broken his word with me."

That doesn't mean "Infrastructure Week" has finally come to a close, however. For many liberals, Biden's more than $2 trillion opening salvo was the compromise. Some were floating infrastructure and climate legislation totaling $10 trillion. To pass some of the liberal policy priorities that were part of their original infrastructure plans, Democrats are working on a separate bill they hope to also pass through reconciliation.

What liberals wish to avoid is the bipartisan bill passing and their preferred package getting killed in the Senate. To that end, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a commitment. "There ain't going to be no bipartisan bill unless we have the reconciliation bill," the California Democrat told reporters the same day Biden announced that his talks with Republicans and centrists in his own party had been fruitful.

Now liberals will have their chance to blow up infrastructure. The same could be true for the bipartisan police reform negotiations between Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, and Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. The pair had previously described the deadline for a compromise as "June or bust," but qualified immunity for police officers remains a major sticking point.

The "two-step" approach Biden is taking with infrastructure mirrors the strategy of his campaign. Biden promised bipartisanship to the suburban voters who turned sharply against former President Donald Trump, which proved decisive in the battleground states that delivered him the presidency. But he also needed the supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to turn out for him at a higher rate than they did for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So Biden left the door open to working with Sanders to achieve the "most progressive" administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Democrats are hoping to pass as much as possible this year because attention will then turn to defending their slender majorities in the midterm elections. Whether this two-step will prove as effective a dance in governing as it was in campaigning remains to be seen.

Original Location: Biden's two-step dance with liberals and centrists

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Biden's two-step dance with liberals and centrists - Denver Gazette

British Columbia Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy speaks during a news conference in Ottawa on April 25, 2019. McEvoy says he's considering launching an investigation into the use of facial recognition technology by the federal Liberals.

Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Facial recognition technology used by the governing Liberals to verify the identities of people voting in the partys candidate nomination elections may be investigated by privacy commissioners at the federal and provincial levels.

After The Globe and Mail reported on Wednesday that the Liberal Party of Canada is using the technology, the federal NDP asked Canadas Privacy Commissioner, Daniel Therrien, to launch a probe. Meanwhile, B.C.s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Michael McEvoy, said his office is now reviewing the Liberal Partys practices.

We are going to look into the matter ourselves and review it before drawing any conclusions, Mr. McEvoy told the Globe and Mail on Thursday. The main questions, he said, are whether the data has been appropriately collected, whether its been appropriately used, and whether the process was compliant with B.C. law.

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Federal political parties are exempt from federal privacy laws, which put safeguards on the collection and use of personal information. But their operations in British Columbia fall under provincial privacy laws.

The Liberal party said it is using the technology to verify identities in B.C. nomination races and in other races across the country.

The technology is controversial because it is seen as invasive. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) sent the Liberals a letter on Wednesday asking the party to cease and desist from using it. The association refers to facial recognition as facial fingerprinting, because its use is comparable to obtaining a fingerprint a biological pattern unique to every individual.

Civil liberties group urges Liberal Party to stop using facial recognition technology

The Liberal Party is using a version of the technology built by Jumio, a California-based company. Voters in Liberal nomination races are directed to a website, operated by Jumio. The website uses facial recognition to verify a picture of the front and back of each voters drivers licence against a selfie.

NDP MP Charlie Angus wrote a letter to Mr. Therrien on Thursday asking him to review the matter. The letter raises concerns that the Liberal Party did not adequately disclose that it is using facial recognition to verify identities. The partys website does not mention the technology by name. Instead, it refers to a secure automated ID verification portal.

Mr. Angus asked Mr. Therrien to address whether commercial third parties who are contracted by political parties enjoy blanket immunity from Canadas privacy laws.

It is troubling that Canadians may be unwillingly turning over facial data to an American-based company that may not be following Canadian laws, Mr. Angus wrote in the letter.

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The Liberal Party has said that verification information is deleted automatically and immediately, and not retained or stored. On Wednesday, Mr. McEvoy said the problem is that there is no way to verify if this is the case.

In an interview, Mr. Angus described using facial recognition to verify identities in a local nomination race as the nuclear option.

He said the federal political parties should not be exempt from privacy laws. As it stands, he said, all they have to do is pinky swear that theyre doing the right thing.

In an emailed statement on Thursday, Liberal spokesperson Matteo Rossi said the nomination process is in line with the partys privacy policy and public guidance from Mr. Therriens office.

Privacy commissions across Canada do vital work to help ensure that Canadians personal information is appropriately safeguarded, and we will always be pleased to engage with them about our commitment to doing the same, Mr. Rossi said.

Jumio did not provide a response to The Globes requests for information on Wednesday or Thursday. Its privacy policy describes the company as a data processor and not a data controller and says the company makes its services available to third parties for integration into those third parties websites, applications, and online services. The policy says that Jumio collects, uses, and discloses individual users information only as directed by these third parties.

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But the same policy says that Jumio may process certain individual users information in anonymized and/or aggregated form for its own purposes.

Representatives from the other major political parties have told The Globe they do not use facial recognition technology for any element of their partys work.

In its letter, the CCLA acknowledged that the type of technology the Liberal Party is using is likely less invasive than other forms of facial recognition because it compares one photo to a picture of an ID, rather than searching a database to find a matching face.

Mr. Rossi stressed on Thursday that voters who prefer not to submit to facial recognition can have their identities verified by other means. Its important to note that the party makes it clear that manual ID verification is always possible as an option for anyone who wants it, he said.

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Liberals face possible federal, provincial privacy probes for use of facial recognition technology - The Globe and Mail

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Sure, being poor in Canada is probably better than being poor in Syria. But is this any basis for a rational refugee policy?

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Though the idea of doubling the number of asylum seekers and refugees admitted to Canada, as the Liberals intend to do, may sound nice, it ignores the reality that many of them will face poor outcomes once they arrive, residing in homeless shelters and living off the largesse of the state.

On June 18, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced ambitious new targets for the number of protected persons refugees and asylum seekers who are given leave to reside in Canada while their cases are being decided and their families who will be admitted to Canada. The number will go up from 23,500 in 2020, to 45,000 in 2021 (Canada has admitted an average of 30,000 in recent years).

In making the announcement, Mendicino claimed that the success refugees see in Canada is a reason that Canadas light shines brightly. He added that, Weve seen refugees give back to their new communities and their countries, even during the pandemic.

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This stirring rhetoric from the minister is unfortunately not always matched by the reality on the ground. A number of recent studies document that a growing number of refugees and asylum seekers wind up homeless, increasing the burden on a system that is already stretched thin, and has only become worse throughout the pandemic.

According to 2019 data from the City of Toronto, 40 per cent of individuals living in the citys homeless shelters were refugees and asylum claimants. Among families staying in Toronto shelters, in 2018, the city noted that refugees and asylum claimants represented a staggering 80 per cent of the total. Similarly, a study of Ottawas homeless shelters in 2018 revealed that almost a quarter of those using the shelters were refugees or immigrants.

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While we do not have more recent data, a walk around the downtown core of any major Canadian city will tell you that the problem of homelessness has worsened. With shelters bursting at the seams, and many people refusing to live in such cramped conditions during a global pandemic, many have spilled out onto the sidewalks and into public parks.

There are sections of my Ottawa neighbourhood of ByWard Market, which is home to most of the citys shelters, where an average person simply cannot walk safely. Illegal tent cities have become commonplace.

Theres a serious disconnect between the Trudeau governments progressive rhetoric on admitting refugees and the reality that so many of them face after they arrive in Canada. The problem is made worse by the fact that, in addition to those who enter Canada through official channels, an increasing number of asylum seekers enter irregularly, most by crossing the land border with the United States.

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Asylum seekers have learned that they can bypass Canadas Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States which stipulates that asylum seekers will be turned back if they try to cross the border at official crossings by entering the country elsewhere along our long, undefended border.

Unlike permanent residents, who qualify based on their skills or are transitioning from study or work permits, refugees, almost by definition, are fleeing their home countries out of desperation and do not necessarily have the skills, education or means to support themselves once they arrive in Canada. And many of those who do have qualifications quickly learn that they are not recognized in Canada, thus requiring them to go through a costly and time-consuming certification process to ensure that they meet Canadian standards.

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It is striking that Canada admits more refugees than the United States, a country with a vastly larger population. In fact, Canada overtook the U.S. in 2018, when this country resettled 28,000 refugees, compared to 23,000 in the U.S. Part of this no doubt reflects the Trump administrations crackdown on admitting refugees, but it also speaks to the Trudeau governments ambition to accept a large number of them.

It is not a mark of virtue for a country to admit more refugees and asylum seekers than it can realistically resettle and offer a decent life to. Rather, it smacks of the cynicism of progressive rhetoric on the one hand and a much bleaker reality on the other.

Canada is not the only country to have suffered as a result of its government believing that it is participating in some sort of Olympic Games for resettling more refugees than everyone else. Germany learned this the hard way, when Chancellor Angela Merkels government admitted hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing turmoil in Syrian.

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In 2015, almost 500,000 people applied for asylum and a further 750,000 applied in 2016. Merkel was hailed internationally as a champion of the refugee cause, but her decision sowed deep divisions in Germany and in part fuelled the rise of the far right.

Migrants in Germany remain heavily dependent on state support and they are disproportionately involved in violent crime, according to government data. This is not surprising, since only about half of the migrants who have come to Germany since 2013 are employed, according to a 2020 study from the Institute for Employment Research.

Likewise, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus virtue signalling does no favours to the many refugees who arrive in Canada and find that without education, skills or income, life here is a new kind of hell and not what was promised in the brochures. Sure, being poor in Canada is probably better than being poor in Syria. But is this any basis for a rational refugee policy?

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Rupa Subramanya: Why are the Liberals doubling our refugee intake when so many of them end up on the streets? - National Post

South Australian Liberal MPs and voters have reacted angrily to National MPs trying to rewrite the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) in Federal Parliament.

The MDBP was legislated in 2012, with bipartisan support across the Commonwealth and basin states, to provide more water for the environment.

Nationals senators on Wednesday failed in their attempt to effectively rewrite the plan by introducing amendments to federal water legislationaimed atdelivering less environmental waterand preventing any further Commonwealth buybacks ofwater rights from irrigators.

Caren Martin is a third-generation farmer and runs a 200-hectare irrigated almond orchard in South Australia's Riverland region, which relies on flows from the River Murray.

Ms Martin, who is also the chair of the South Australian Murray Irrigators, said the move in Parliament hadcaused anxiety among irrigators.

"It just leads us into a world of uncertainty and we have to constantly adjust to deal with that political uncertainty," Ms Martin said.

"I don't appreciate it.It just puts further angst into people's lives."

The move has also caused upset amongLiberal voters.

ABC News

Gio, who did not provide his last name, grew up in the New South Wales Riverina region but now lives in Glen Osmond.

He said he would no longer vote for the Liberal Party.

"I'm a lifetime Liberal voter," he said.

"I've always accepted that you've got to take the Natswith the Libs, but I'm sorry,I'm not voting for the Liberals anymore.

"I don't know who I'm voting forbecause I don't know if I can vote for Labor, but it's just so disheartening and frustrating that this Coalition now is very one sided.

"There's so much selfish ambition in what's going on and I'm despondent."

South Australia's Water Minister, Liberal MP David Speirs, reiterated the concerns of votersand said his party absolutely rejected the proposed changes.

"I think federally, if the Coalition doesn't have a tight hold of the Murray-Darling Basin issueand doesn't show that much-needed leadership South Australians in seats like Boothby and Mayo will be turned off the federal Coalition when it comes to federal election time," Mr Speirs said.

"As a government, we've got to show leadership, we've got to continue to ensure that critical environmental water flows into South Australia for our environment, but also for our irrigators and economic viability as well."

With a federal reshuffle expected imminently, South Australian MPs and farmers are warning of the risks ofchanging the water portfolio.

Sources have told the ABC that Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has put her hand up for it, but Mr Speirs said that would not be inappropriate.

"Unfortunately Bridget McKenzie has particularly unusual views about the management of the South Australian reaches of the river," Mr Speirs said.

"Particularly her voodoo science around the Lower Lakes,I just find that out of step with the evidence that has been developed around the management of the Lower Lakes.

"She would flood them with seawater and that's a great concern."

Ms Martin said she wouldlike to see the portfolio stay with Senator McKenzie's colleague, Queensland Nationals MPKeith Pitt.

"He's outside the basin, he resides in Queensland so he doesn't come in with the 'protect-my-patch' sort of attitude that other ministers have had in the past," Ms Martin said.

"If they just keep their eye on the ball that we all want water security, we want this river to run and give good quality and reliable water supply to everybody, then we'll get there in the end."

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SA Liberals, locals frustrated by National Party bid to change Murray-Darling Basin Plan - ABC News

Speaker Anthony Rota in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 21, 2021. Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The Liberal government is taking the House of Commons Speaker to court, in an unprecedented move to prevent the release of uncensored documents to members of Parliament that offer insight into the firing of two scientists from Canadas top infectious-disease laboratory.

The government said in a court filing that the disclosure of this information could not only jeopardize national security but also, possibly, Canadas international relations.

The Attorney-Generals office filed an application in Federal Court on Monday requesting that information demanded by Speaker Anthony Rota on behalf of the House of Commons stay secret.

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The legal challenge against a ruling of the House stunned opposition MPs, who were notified about the court application late Wednesday afternoon. An order of the House backed by a majority of MPs last Thursday called on the Public Health Agency to produce records it has been withholding from a Commons committee for months.

Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government, saying House of Commons law clerk Philippe Dufresne will prepare a legal defence.

The Speakers Office will defend the rights of the House. That is something I take very seriously, Mr. Rota said. The legal system does not have any jurisdiction over the operations of the House. We are our own jurisdiction. That is something we will fight tooth and nail to protect and we will continue to do that.

Conservative House Leader Grard Deltell said he was taken aback that the Trudeau government would go to the federal court to challenge parliamentary privilege.

If the government does not respect the orders of the House of Commons, why should Canadians respect laws voted upon by the House of Commons? he said.

In the court filing, the government said the disclosure of the unredacted information would be injurious to international relations or national defence or national security.

Mr. Dufresne told MPs before a Commons committee Wednesday that to his knowledge the Canadian government has never before gone to court to try to elude an order of the House to produce documents.

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He said the House has exclusive authority when it comes to matters that fall under parliamentary privilege.

Justice Minister and Attorney-General David Lametti distanced himself from the court proceeding, saying officials in his department evoked a section of the Canada Evidence Act that is often used in national-security matters to keep sensitive information tightly under wraps.

As Attorney-General that decision has been delegated to department officials as is the normal course, so it is not going to be a decision that is partisan in any way, he said. I will never play politics with national security.

For months, opposition MPs have been seeking unredacted records from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), that explain why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The two scientists lost their security clearances, and the RCMP was called into investigate, in July, 2019. They were dismissed in January.

More than 250 pages of records have been withheld in their entirety and hundreds of others have been partly censored before being provided to MPs. They also relate to the March, 2019 transfer of deadly virus samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was overseen by Dr. Qiu.

On Monday, PHAC President Iain Stewart was called before the Commons and admonished by the Speaker for his repeated refusal to provide the requested records to MPs on the special committee on Canada-China relations, including information on the transfer of Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan facility.

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MPs had put in safeguards that would require the Commons law clerk to review the documents and redact information that could harm national security or a criminal investigation before making them public.

However, Mr. Stewart notified the Attorney-Generals office on Sunday night that sensitive or potentially injurious information could be disclosed if he obeyed the order of the House of Commons.

Former House of Commons law clerk Rob Walsh said the Federal Court should deny the Trudeau governments request.

If the court is cognizant of parliamentary privilege, which is not always the case then the governments application wont succeed, he said. This is House business; its not the courts place to interfere.

He said the government may try to argue that there is a committee created by statute the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) which has clearance to read confidential documents. NSICOP, however, is not a committee of Parliament and is under the control of the Prime Ministers Office.

The answer back to that of course is that statutory committees do not take priority over the rights of the House.

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Mr. Rota was expected to rule on a motion on Wednesday to instruct the Commons sergeant-at-arms to search PHAC offices and seize unredacted documents.

However, the Speaker told MPs that he needed more time to provide a thoughtful ruling as the House adjourned for the summer break. If an election is called before Parliament resumes sitting on Sept. 20, Mr. Rota said it would be up to the next Speaker to decide whether to proceed with the ruling.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Question Period Wednesday that he was willing to work with opposition parties to find a compromise. On Monday, Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said the government was prepared to allow the Commons law clerk to examine hundreds of censored documents under oversight from national-security officials.

Mr. Rodriguez also suggested MPs could also use a process followed in 2010, when the Harper government allowed a group of MPs and a panel of arbiters to determine what information could be made available to the Commons about the Canadian militarys transfer of Taliban prisoners.

The government previously said it would only turn over unredacted documents to NSICOP, which does not report to the House. Mr. Trudeau has the power to prevent the committee from releasing information to the public.

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Liberals take House Speaker to court to block release of unredacted records about fired scientists - The Globe and Mail