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If prime minister Scott Morrison wants a circuit-breaker for the gendered political turmoil besetting his precarious Coalition government, unilaterally declaring gender quotas for federal Coalition MPs would be a masterstroke.

Even Coalition voters on balance now support quotas for women (48% supporting and 43% against) according to the latest Essential poll, with net support among voters overall doubling from +6% in 2019 to +12% in this weeks poll.

Note, Im suggesting he should bring in gender quotas, not quotas for women. Benefits flow from diversity, not women. If three-quarters of Coalition MPs in Canberra were women instead of men as is the case today, gender quotas would rebalance things in the direction of men.

Changing the rhetoric from quotas for women to gender quotas makes it harder for troglodytes to block this sensible extension of the quota approach the Coalition routinely uses elsewhere for example, the longstanding quota ensuring the Nationals get a fair share of ministers on the frontbench.

Quota opponents could be further disarmed if the policy applied only to winnable seats as they open up in the future, making sitting members safe from change.

Morrison could also take up the shift evident internationally from 50/50 quotas to the more flexible 40/40/20 approach adopted, for example, by global law firms Baker MacKenzie in 2019 and Norton Rose Fulbright in 2020.

This 40% women, 40% men, with 20% open approach to leadership appointments not only gives organisations a bit of elbow room in achieving gender diversity but makes room for other kinds of diversity too.

The Male Champions of Change group of Australian business leaders advocated this in its 40:40:20 For Gender Balance report in 2019, aimed to help organisations reap the diversity dividend now clear in management research.

The report provides hard numbers on the superior results achieved by organisations not dominated by one gender. It shows how to overcome the problem of merit being defined by, and reinforcing, the status quo.

Crucially, this is a report endorsed by 255 leading Australian directors and chief executives, including Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn, Wesfarmers managing director Rob Scott and Golf Australia CEO James Sutherland to name a few.

There would be a fair degree of overlap between the Male Champions of Change group and the Coalitions donor list come election time. If gender quotas are good enough for them and their organisations, why not for the federal Coalition?

Finally, this is a change which can be picked up and announced right away. Morrison has an action deficit. Declaring the beginning of the gender quota era in the Coalition, using the Male Champions of Change report as his template, would show him actually doing something, not just dodging, delaying and announcing another process.

Stubbornness stands in the way of Morrison making this necessary and politically sensible move.

Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy last week noted the prime ministers practice of almost exclusively addressing men at risk of voting Labor in his public rhetoric. It is reminiscent of former US president Donald Trumps 2020 presidential election tactic. Trump lost.

As with Trump, its unlikely to be enough for Morrison to hold on to men at risk of voting Labor when he is at risk, because of his one-sided handling of the last few weeks, of losing an equal or bigger number of women who voted Liberal at the 2019 federal election.

Nor is it as though this is a new problem. The broad church Liberal party of which John Howard used to boast even as he worked to narrow it, is no more.

Instead of being Liberals, small l liberal moderates now sit as independents between government and opposition MPs on parliaments crossbench: Helen Haines (Indi), Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo) so far. Similar moderates are eyeing Wentworth, Hughes, Calare and Groom.

A contemporary Robert Menzies would do a strategic appreciation of the situation and realise he had to bring the small l liberals back into the tent before the cumulative seat loss became fatal.

Looking back on the formation of the Liberals in 1944, Menzies singled out two people for special praise. One was May Couchman, Victorian president of the Australian Womens National League whose members Menzies said did far more electoral work than most men. Over a six-month period, Couchman folded the League into the Liberal Partys Womens Section, significantly strengthening Menzies fledgeling political creation.

Morrison may be no Menzies but, as a former state party secretary and in 2019 victor in an apparently unwinnable federal election, he is not without some political smarts.

Putting his prime ministerial prestige on the line to get the Liberal partys state branches to adopt 40/40/20 gender quotas, and to urge the Nationals to do the same, is not just the right thing to do. It would be very smart politics too.

Chris Wallace is an associate professor at the 50/50 Foundation, Faculty of Business Government and Law, University of Canberra. She tweets at @c_s_wallace

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Bringing in gender quotas in the Liberal party is not just right it's smart politics too - The Guardian

Leader of the Government in the House of Commons Pablo Rodriguez responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2020.

PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press

The Liberals blocked a senior adviser to the Prime Minister from testifying about the WE Charity controversy on Monday and instead sent House Leader Pablo Rodriguez to answer questions about an affair that he told committee he had little involvement in.

The House of Commons passed a motion on Thursday calling for Rick Theis, the Prime Ministers director of policy and cabinet affairs, to appear at the ethics committee on Monday; for Amitpal Singh, the Deputy Prime Ministers policy adviser, to appear on Wednesday; and for Ben Chin, the Prime Ministers senior adviser, to appear on April 8.

We fundamentally disagree with the decision of the Opposition to use its powers to intimidate and mistreat staff members who work in political offices, Mr. Rodriguez told the committee Monday.

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Bloc Qubcois MP Rhal Fortin said the concept of ministerial responsibility should not prevent MPs from calling witnesses who can establish key facts, which he said Mr. Rodriguez was often unable to do on Monday.

Well, the facts, the only way to get them is to hear directly from the people who are implicated in this, Mr. Fortin said.

The Liberals voted against the House motion but it passed with the unanimous support of the four opposition parties. All three staff members are named in documents regarding the cancelled Canada Student Service Grant. The WE organization was awarded the contract to administer the $543.5-million grant program but the entire plan was tossed after it triggered the Prime Ministers third conflict of interest controversy in five years.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former finance Minister Bill Morneau both had family members with direct financial ties to WE Charity when cabinet awarded it the contract to administer the program through an uncompetitive process. Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Morneau later apologized for failing to recuse themselves from the decision.

The Liberals and senior civil servants say cabinet awarded the work to WE on the advice of the public service. The opposition has been pushing to verify that by hearing directly from political staff.

Mr. Rodriguez said the Liberal government would ignore the parliamentary order for the staff to appear. Similarly, the Liberals have decided to ignore calls for the Defence Ministers former chief of staff to testify at the defence committee.

Unelected political staff members are accountable to members of cabinet. And cabinet is accountable to Parliament, he told the committee, adding that the Conservatives subscribed to the same position when they were in government.

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The Liberals have inconsistently applied that policy, though, with Mr. Trudeaus chief of staff testifying at the finance committee just last year. And on March 8, a Liberal MP called for Ray Novak to testify at the defence committee based on his time in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Mr. Fortin asked Mr. Rodriguez to point him to the rules that allow the minister to contravene an order of the House of Commons, and said the committee should report the failed appearance of Mr. Theis to the House.

Its considered good form for the accountable minister to testify rather than staff, said Philippe Lagass, an associate professor at Carleton University who studies the Canadian government and the Westminster system. But he added theres nothing that prevents a committee from calling whomever they want.

There are no formal rules stating that political staff cant be called to testify before committee, he said.

Mr. Rodriguez said he spoke with Mr. Theis on Sunday and Monday to prepare for the committee meeting but was often unable to answer committee questions.

Asked whether Mr. Theis had been contacted by the RCMP or by an officer of Parliament, Mr. Rodriguez said not that I know of.

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Mr. Theis had a meeting on May 5 with WE Charity co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger and the organizations director of government and stakeholder relations, Sofia Marquez. That meeting fell on the same date that WE was able to retroactively claim expenses. Asked whether that was a coincidence, Mr. Rodriguez said it was only one conversation.

Conservative MP Jacques Gourde asked the minister why he showed up at committee if he couldnt provide more clarity.

NDP MP Charlie Angus said his efforts to get the final information to wrap up the committees study of the WE controversy have been met by an angry stonewall from the Liberals.

At a March 15 committee hearing, Craig Kielburger was asked to explain why he sent Mr. Chin a LinkedIn message on June 27 where he thanked him for helping shape our latest program with the govt.

Mr. Chin replied: Great to hear from you Craig. Lets get our young working!

Craig Kielburger said the message was sent by his assistant.

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The Conservatives said the messages appeared to contradict the governments claim that Liberal politicians and staffers were not involved in the decision to have the management of the proposed student volunteer program outsourced to the WE organization.

Similarly, last June, the National Post reported on a June 12 video conference call in which Marc Kielburger told WE staff about the organization running the student grant program.

The Prime Ministers Office kindly called us and said, you know that announcement we just made? Would you be interested in helping us actually implement it?

Marc Kielburger later said he misspoke and that the call had come from a federal public servant.

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Excerpt from:
Liberals block senior staff from testifying on WE controversy - The Globe and Mail

The Trudeau Liberals are surging ahead of the Conservatives, with the governing party widening its lead as the national immunization campaign picks up, according to a new Abacus Data survey released Thursday.

The survey shared exclusively with The Hill Times suggested that 38 per cent of Canadians would back the Liberals, if an election were held now, enough to put them over the seats needed to recoup its majority status in Parliament, compared to 30 per cent who would tick off Conservative on the ballot. Thats up five points compared to the week before and the largest lead the Liberals have had over the official opposition since October 2020, according to the polling firms tracking data. The NDP, meanwhile, was at 17 per cent, down by two percentage points, while the Greens were at six per cent (also down by two).

It also suggested that the political conditions in seat-rich Ontario and Quebec were favourable to the Liberals, with the governing party holding a 16-point lead in the former at 44 per cent, while it has a seven-point advantage over the Bloc Qubcois in the latter province at 37 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives continued to enjoy the strongest support in the Prairies at around 50 per cent.

I think people are more optimistic about the vaccines, and when theyre going to be able to get one, said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, in a phone interview. We even see far more people think theyre going to get it by June than did even a few weeks ago. So that explains some of the improvement that the Liberals have seen and their vote.

Canada is on pace to receive at least 44 million COVID-19 vaccines doses by June, barring potential interruptions in deliveries. And while the Trudeau government is upbeat that the flow of vaccine deliveries will continue to ramp up, public health authorities have warned that Canada is in the midst of a race to vaccinate Canadians against the more contagious variants of concerns. The government has indicated Canadians eligible for the shot can expect to be fully vaccinated by the end of the summer.

At the same time, Mr. Coletto noted, with politics being about alternatives, the boost could also be linked to voters not being as enthusiastic about the Conservatives new leader.

Erin OToole has had a tough few weeks, coming out of a convention that should have given him a nice bounce and focus, he said.

Mr. OTooles (Durham, Ont.) ongoing push to cast his party as open to change and welcoming of left-leaning voters hit a snag at its policy convention after grassroots members voted down a proposal that included a recognition that climate change is real. Climate change, in the 2019 election, was consistently ranked among the top priorities driving voters considerations at the ballot box.

The Liberals lift didnt directly come at the expense of the Conservatives, whose support didnt shrink from the week before, but Abacus survey suggested that some voters perceptions of Mr. OToole have soured. In gauging respondents impressions of him, the survey suggested his popularity has dipped among left-leaning voters who may have been open to backing his party, along with those who occupy the centre and the right, since he won the leadership race last August.

The survey suggested that Mr. OToole only enjoyed a positive impression among 19 per cent of respondents, and that he registered the lowest rating since it started tracking his popularity. The biggest dips registered were among those who identify as left leaning (a drop of 15 points), compared to those at the centre (11 points) and on the right (14 points).

Thats the signal that something happened in between the two weeks of our survey that caused some people to say, Well, I liked him last week, but I dont really like this week, he said.

Mr. Coletto drew a direct link between the defeat of the proposal and the dip in his popularity as a likely explanation for the change. Its defeat suggested that Mr. OToole still has a ways to go in convincing some conservatives the party needs to be more aligned with the broader public on climate change.

Experience over the years shows that the voters tend to not like, or find appeal with, the leader and a party that doesnt seem united internally, he said. Its almost like Canadians are saying, Get your own house in order, before you ask us to give you the keys to the country.

Mr. Trudeau fared better on this metric as well. The prime minister had 39 per cent of respondents indicating they had a positive impression of him.

Pollster David Coletto says the Liberals lift didnt come directly at the expense of the Conservatives. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

The survey of 2,000 Canadians was conducted between March 25 and 30, amid growing concerns that Canada is already in, or at the brink of, a third wave of the pandemic.

Though the poll suggested that Liberals were the clear favourites to preside over a majority, the temptation of provoking parties into triggering an election may be dampened by concerns about the spread of more contagious, deadlier variants, which have been steadily driving up infection rates and ICU admissions of late.

Those concerns, the survey suggested, have gained resonance with the public; around 34 per cent, or one-in-three respondents, said theyve become more worried about the pandemic.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) has repeatedly brushed off suggestions that his party is eager to send voters to the polls in the spring, arguing that his focus is on ushering the vaccination campaign along. He told former CBC host Peter Mansbridge last week that the government already has a mandate to push forward with its upcoming budget and doesnt need to call an election.

If those favourable numbers for the Liberals continue to hold, the anticipated third wave is brought under control, and vaccinations continue uninterrupted over the weeks ahead, Mr. Coletto said there could be an opening for them to push for an election in May, perhaps not long after the budget is released. (The budget is expected April 19.)

It all depends on how bad this third wave really gets. And early indications are, its gonna get pretty bad, he added.

Mr. Coletto noted his polling firm has begun tracking voters enthusiasm for change since the last campaign. The data suggested that anger directed at the prime minister has subsided, he added, which means that it will be harder for opposition parties to mobilize and animate supporters.

In the 2019 election, Mr. Trudeau took a beating over a series of unforced errors, including his handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair and accusations that he interfered in that fraud and corruption case against the Quebec-based company to protect his political interests.

This appears to be an electorate that is going to be far more interested in hearing about what people are going to do, as opposed to attacking the incumbent for what they did, he said. And, I think, the pandemic has played a big part in that.

British Columbias political landscape appeared to be more competitive. The Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP were locked in a three-way race, with support for each hovering between 28 and 31 per cent.

With 338 seats in the House of Commons, the Liberals need to win at least 170 seats in the next election for a majority. It won 157 in 2019, and currently controls 154, while the Conservatives have 120. The balance of power has shifted between the Bloc Qubcois, which commands 32 seats, and the NDP, which has 24.

The Hill Times

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Trudeau Liberals surge ahead over Conservatives, as O'Toole's favourability dips across the spectrum, poll suggests - The Hill Times

OTTAWA The Trudeau Liberals are asking the public for views on reforming the key federal transparency law, which the government acknowledges is sorely outdated.

OTTAWA The Trudeau Liberals are asking the public for views on reforming the key federal transparency law, which the government acknowledges is sorely outdated.

The government says the ideas for improving the Access to Information Act, which has changed little since 1983, will help officials prepare a report for the Treasury Board president due early next year.

The review, announced last June, was greeted with skepticism by open-government proponents, who noted that numerous reports on reforming the access law have been ignored over the years.

The law allows people who pay $5 to ask for a range of federal documents, but it has been widely criticized as antiquated and poorly managed.

The government wants suggestions on the legislative framework, improving service and reducing delays, and opportunities to make information openly available without an access request.

People can submit views online at https://atiareview.ca/ or by emailing reviewingATIA.revisionLAI@tbs-sct.gc.ca if they do not want the submission to be made public.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 1, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Excerpt from:
Trudeau Liberals ask public for advice on updating Access to Information law - Coast Reporter

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The Communist Party of China is not interested in any win-win relationship with Canada or Canadians

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Its been an unshakable maxim in the various truisms put about over the years by the intellectually impoverished and ethically sketchy quarters of Canadas foreign policy establishment: China is our second largest trading partner, we have to engage with China, we cant ignore China, and we have no choice but to hitch Canadas economic wagon to the horse of Chinas booming, growing economy.

Youd never know it, especially if the surfeit of China-trade enthusiasts embedded in Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus circles have captured your attention, but its mostly rubbish. The traffic in these platitudes has secured a dizzying array of sinecures in corporate boardrooms and careers in politics and punditry and tenured posts in Beijing-friendly university faculties, but there is one lesson that any sensible person will draw from recent events. Its rubbish.

The Communist Party of China is not interested in any win-win relationship with Canada or Canadians. Xi Jinping will do things his way, and the Canadian custom of cowering and cringing and kowtowing will not change him, no matter what Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau appears to think when he says that bullies can change, and we just have to somehow pass the message to Xi that bullying people isnt nice.

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This, too, is rubbish, but theres rubbish and reckless, perilous delusion, and thats whats been at the core of the Trudeau governments approach to China ever since Team Trudeau was elected in 2015. Mostly, the premises that have served as the pretext for Trudeaus China policy. Its a policy that has been the basis of Trudeaus entire economic standpoint and worldview, formed and shaped while Canadas ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, was heading up former finance minister Bill Morneaus blue-ribbon economic advisory panel. And its just plain wrong.

For one thing, China is not Canadas second-largest trading partner. Two years ago, at the close of its first full year of implementation, the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement provided the enforceable ground rules of a two-way trade that added up to roughly $118 billion. Canadas trade with China amounted to $100 million last year, and there are no ground rules. One must do as one is told, as Canadas agricultural sector learned at a cost of $2 billion in punitive sanctions two years ago following the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.

It is a lesson Trudeau had not learned even by last May, when he foolishly banked on Beijing honouring an arrangement for CanSinos COVID-19 vaccine, which of course Xi blocked, for the simple reason that he could do so and get away with it. The Trudeau government didnt even tell Canadians about Xis duplicity until three months after Beijing had reneged on the deal.

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Canada is a trading nation, as they say. Nearly a third of Canadas gross domestic product derives from this countrys exports, and cross-border commerce with the U.S. dominates Canadas foreign trade accounts. Canada-U.S. trade was worth $525.8 billion in 2020: Canada exported $270.4 billion to the U.S., while the Americans exported $254.5 billion worth of goods and services to Canada.

Canada exported only $25.2 billion worth of stuff to China in 2020, which amounts to roughly four per cent of Canadas $683-billion exports of goods and services around the world. Four per cent, remember. Meanwhile, Canada imported $76.4 billion of stuff from China last year in a trade imbalance that has been growing steadily, to Chinas advantage, for several years. And China has been increasingly turning the trade screws on Canada.

Its all been wonderfully comforting to pretend that the agony endured by Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, held captive in Xis state-security gulag since Dec. 10, 2018, is merely a consequence of Canada getting caught up in the crossfire of a Chinese-American power struggle. And that if we could just find an excuse to let Meng jet off back to Shenzhen so as to evade the 13 charges of fraud the U.S. Justice Department has filed against her, everything would be fine again.

Everything will not be fine again. And standing around with our hands in our pockets will not change that. But for lack of either imagination or spine, or both, that is exactly what Team Trudeau is doing.

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Were not even taking trade action on imports that are already supposed to be banned in Canada. That should be the starting point, Michael Chong, the Conservative Opposition foreign-policy critic, told me the other day. Owing to his penchant for merely noticing out loud that Beijing is carrying out what amounts to a genocide against the Turkic Muslim minority Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Chong was listed in a tranche of sanctions Beijing announced last weekend, aimed at academics, politicians and activists across Europe and North America.

While Chong was the only Canadian individual named by Chinas foreign ministry, Beijings sanctions also aimed at the members of the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights, which mustered the impudence to use the word genocide to describe Beijings ruthless persecutions in Xinjiang.

Under the terms of the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement, the imports that Canada is already supposed to be banning include goods produced by slave labour in Xinjiang. But the Trudeau government isnt even interested to know, and appears to not want Canadians to know, that its measures to block the traffic in goods produced by forced labour arent working. Theyre not even rules, exactly.

Three weeks ago, the Liberals and the Bloc MPs on the Standing Committee on International Trade instead blocked a motion by Conservative MP Tracy Gray to look into the effectiveness of the measures the government claims it has adopted to ensure that goods like Xinjiang cotton, produced by forced labour, are not contaminating the supply chains of products marketed and sold in Canada.

We should be banning these products immediately, banning these products from entering Canada, Chong said. Instead, Ottawa relies on multinational import-export companies to police themselves. But at the end of the day its the federal governments responsibility. The buck stops at the federal government.

But were not barring any trade with China. Not even hoodies made from slave-picked cotton. After all, we have to engage with China, and we cant ignore China. We have no choice but to hitch Canadas economic wagon to the horse of Chinas booming, growing economy.

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Terry Glavin: Reckless delusion is at the core of the Trudeau Liberals' China policy - National Post