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The work begins in earnest today for the Liberal minority government as the House of Commons opens for business after a lengthy winter break.

The first piece of major legislation is expected to be a bill to ratify the new North American free trade deal, as Canada is the now the only hold out on the trilateral pact.

The Liberals have asked the Opposition parties to help get it passed quickly, but the NDP and Bloc Quebecois are making no such guarantees, while the Conservatives say theyre hoping for further study of its implications.

The government is also sure to face a grilling over major issues that have developed in recent weeks.

Among them are relations with Iran and the status of an investigation into what killed at least 57 Canadians on a flight leaving Tehran earlier this month.

Looking ahead, the Liberal government is also expected to introduce legislation to ban military-style assault rifles and make whats sure to be a controversial decision on whether to allow a new oilsands project in Alberta to proceed.

The Liberals currently have 157 seats in the House of Commons, meaning they need the support of other parties in order to advance any of the bills on their agenda.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told his MPs that means the need to work hard to find common ground for the good of the country.

The Opposition Conservatives, who hold 121 seats, accuse the Liberals of planning to just buy the votes of the Bloc Quebecois and NDP.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says his party will oppose anything that raises taxes or damages the economy.

But with his party now in a leadership race, its unlikely the Conservatives will seek to bring down the minority Liberals in the short term.

READ MORE: Deputy prime minister asks Opposition not to delay new NAFTA deal

The Canadian Press

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NAFTA, gun bill Liberal priorities as House of Commons gets back to work - Coast Mountain News

What kind of deep-down qualities and values tend to separate liberals and conservatives?

New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (who, as usual, relies more heavily on scholars to delve into such issues than the usual pundits and politicians) takes a deep dive into that question in his weekly New York Times column, and the insights blew me away, including this one, from one of the many scholars included in the piece:

It is likely that rather less liberal democracy will ultimately make liberal democracy more secure.

The rise of Donald Trump, on a platform that included plenty of racism and nativism, led Edsall to pursue, with academics far removed from the more oft-quoted pundits on whom political reporters usually rely, this question:

What if the belief systems used to justify anti-immigrant policies and to justify race prejudice, for that matter hostility to outsiders, insularity, high sensitivity to external threat are as deeply ingrained in the American body politic as belief systems sympathetic to immigration and to racial equality openness, receptivity to new experiences, trust?

The answers he obtained were more nuanced than we hear from the usual talking heads on TV. Ill just give you one taste and then urge you to read the whole thing. Wrote Edsall:

Karen Stenner, a political psychologist and behavioral economist best known for predicting the riseof Trump-like figures under the kinds of conditions we now confront, responded to my emailed inquiries by noting the conflicting pressures at play:

I dont think I would agree that Trumpian conservative stands on immigration, race and homelessness are a more natural or default position. Communities with a good balance of people who seek out diversity, complexity, novelty, new and exciting experiences etc., and those who are disgusted by and averse to such things, avoid them, and tell others to do likewise, tend to thrive and prosper in human evolution.

Finding the right balance, Stenner said, is vital to both societal cohesion and human flourishing. But, she warned, we may have tipped the balance too far in favor of unconstrained diversity and complexity, pushing the boundary beyond many peoples capacity to tolerate it.

At this juncture, she argued, we need to tinker with that balance and get it right for everyone. So theres the paradox of our times: it is likely that rather less liberal democracy will ultimately make liberal democracy more secure.

Read the whole Edsall piece here.

See original here:
Thomas Edsall elicits nuanced insights into the core belief systems of liberals and conservatives - MinnPost

Historians will debate the reasons for the complacency that descended on the British in the first months of the 2020s. Had their government duped the nation into ignorant passivity? Were they really as stupid as they appeared to be? Nothing had been settled. The pain was yet to come. Yet they behaved as if they believed Boris Johnson when he said he could get Brexit done. And, as Im certain the historians of the future will say, believing Boris Johnson never ended well.

A few causes of our torpor appear obvious. The Conservatives won a handsome majority. Brexit bored the public rigid. The opposition was hopeless. Journalists werent doing their job. The prime minister was thus free to announce: Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us and focus on delivering a bright, exciting future, and not be met with derisive laughter.

Yet the delusions that follow are anything but obvious. As the clock chimes 11 on Friday night, we can, apparently, build high-speed rail lines, reinvigorate the north, bail out a regional airline and let a thousand bus services bloom. We can tear up our economic model without having the smallest idea what to put in its place.

The listless acceptance extends to those who believe that leaving the European Union is an act of monumental folly. Brexits inevitability, the possibility that we are in for another decade of rightwing rule, is leading opponents of the status quo to retreat into private life, as the defeated so often do. Perhaps they are almost grateful for the chance to concentrate on their friendships, family and love affairs: these are in the end what matter most to everyone except obsessives.

Arent you sick of an argument about a subject no one except a handful of zealots cared about before 2016?

On this reading, the country has not been wholly deceived by Johnson and his propagandists. The British are just exhausted. In a piece for the Parisian news magazine, LExpress, the French journalist and historian Agns Poirier interviewed psychiatrists dealing with voters who had looked on appalled as Britain made a disastrous choice. They were devastated, angry, depressed, betrayed and ashamed, as a psychological study of Remain supporters put it. Brexit allowed the old to enforce their worldview on the young and broke ties between the generations. My patients talk about the impossibility of mentioning the subject in family, to avoid clashes. In extreme cases, they have cut ties, Dr Ian Martin, a London psychiatrist, said a story I have heard several times myself.

Its not the fear that kills you but the hope, runs the cliche. And now all hope of a second referendum or a change of government has gone, a kind of liberation follows. You can just sigh, move on and patch up differences. What else is there to do?

Perhaps many will be relieved. Poirier repeats the echoingly grim phrase the French socialist Lon Blum used to describe the decision by France and Britain to allow Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference of 1938: a lche soulagement a cowardly relief. Selling out Czechoslovakia was shameful, but Blum, who had campaigned for peace, could tell himself that at least it avoided war in Europe. Do you feel a lche soulagement of your own? Arent you sick of an argument about a subject no one except a handful of zealots cared about before 2016?

The millions who think they can now avoid the bitterness of 2016-19 will find that it has just been postponed

Wouldnt it be more truly British to come together, let bygones be bygones, and make the best of it? I dont see how you can if you are one of the three million EU nationals in Britain or 1.5 million Britons in the EU who have seen their sense of who they are and where they belong torn to shreds. But if you face no immediate stresses, the temptation to walk away is seductive.

The Munich agreement did not avoid war, it merely postponed it for a year. Likewise, the millions who think they can now avoid the bitterness of 2016-19 will find that it, too, has just been postponed. You may not be interested in Brexit but Brexit is interested in you.

The hard break the government is proposing as the only way to leave the EU without following EU law will be a direct attack on the pharmaceutical, chemical, aerospace, food processing, farming, fishing and car industries. Businesses that rely on the frictionless movement of goods will suffer. The absence of regulatory checks and arguments about the source of components and applicable tax rates is essential for their health, just as the absence of border checks on perishable food is essential for fresh food and fish exports. Hundreds of thousands of jobs and everyones living standards are at stake. The Food and Drink Federation said last week that the Johnson administrations policies sounded like the death knell for frictionless trade with the EU and were likely to cause food prices to rise.

You can tell we are in a state that borders on the catatonic when Sajid Javid responded by telling the Financial Times that some businesses would indeed suffer. It was a welcome outbreak of honesty from a dishonest administration. But what an admission from a chancellor of the exchequer charged with protecting the economy.

As telling was the indifference with which his dereliction of duty was greeted. The liberal elite, the chattering classes, the remoaners, call them what you will, once worried about the fate of car workers. Every serious study of the consequences of Brexit has shown that it will hit the old manufacturing regions of the north-east, Wales and Midlands hardest. London will be all right, as London always is. Yet at the moment they need support, they will be met with indifference. They will hear educated voices say that they voted for Brexit in 2016 and then voted for Johnson in 2019. They were warned and chose not to listen.

I fear that the most damaging effect of the languid complacency that has infected the national mood is the collapse of any notion of solidarity. The most characteristic gesture of Brexit Britain will be a shrug of the shoulders.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

Excerpt from:
With Boris Johnson in control, the danger is that liberals will give up the fight - The Guardian

Liberals admit this much: executives at a powerful corporation may have done some bad thingsso bad, they led to criminal charges. Still, the powerful corporation is powerful, senior Liberals warn. If the justice system does not cut a deal, the corporation will make life difficult for Canada. With financial and political ties to Liberal higher-ups, the corporation could make life difficult for the party, too.

Some senior Liberals draw the inevitable conclusion: prosecutors must have made a mistake. The attorney general should intervene in the prosecution and give the corporation what it wants. That way, these Liberals say, Canada can get what it wants. And Liberalsthey do not saycan get what they want, as well.

Liberal partisans may be relieved to hear that this is not yet another summation of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. They wish to cease all mention of it. Its odd, then, that some party stalwarts seem bent on reenacting it.

Meng Wanzhou, a citizen of a powerful state and an executive of a powerful corporation, Chinas Huawei Technologies, with close ties to the Chinese state, allegedly defrauded an American bank; prosecutors in the United States Department of Justicecharged her with fraud; Canada, honouring an extradition treaty with its neighbour and ally, arrested her the December before last. Having kidnapped two Canadians and banned various Canadian agricultural products, China has demonstrated that if Canadian courts do not let her go, it will make life difficult for Canada; having ties to senior Liberals, China could make life difficult for the party, too.

READ MORE:Chrtiens China and Trudeaus

These Liberals have concluded that the prosecution of Meng must be a mistake. The attorney general, they say, should intervene to forestall her prosecution and give China what it wants so that Canada can get what it wants. And certain Liberalsthey do not saycan get what they want, as well.

There are differences between the two cases. This time it is senior party members, not senior government officials, who are petitioning the attorney general to spare an alleged criminal from going to trialindeed, the Prime Minister, who led the attempted interference in the SNC-Lavalin affair, has reportedly decided the government will not intervene in Mengs extradition.

But there are similarities, as well. What does it say about the culture of the Liberal Party that such important party higher-ups as former prime minister Jean Chretien, his former chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg, his former finance andforeign affairs minister John Manleyall of whom now work for firms and businesses with close relationships with Chinese companies, including Huaweias well as his former defence minister John McCallumwho Trudeau dispatched to China as ambassadorare so confident they will get a hearing when they argue the government should capitulate to Chinas demands? What does it say about the Liberal Partys commitment to the rule of law that their arguments bear so many striking parallels to those made in defence of Justin Trudeaus capitulation to SNCs demands?

How many parallels? Consider:

Advising politicization

Once again, senior Liberals are demanding the attorney general take the virtually unprecedented step of interfering in a criminal case for political reasons, compromising the independence of the judicial system and undermining the rule of law.

With SNC, the Liberal government, in response to the companys persistent lobbying, pressured the attorney general to override the prosecutors decision and allow the corporation to avoid a criminal trial. With China, senior Liberals are urging the current attorney general to do much the same with respect to an extradition proceeding, exercising his ministerial prerogative to refuse to surrender Meng to U.S. authorities.

In both cases, the same precedent would be set: that those with political connections and financial leverage can keep their friends out of trouble.

Relativizing rule of law

Once again, senior Liberals are implying that the rule of law is a mere preference rather than a democratic necessity. Liberals painted the SNC scandal as a policy disputesome members of cabinet preferred the independence of criminal prosecutors, while others valued jobs.

With China, senior Liberals present Chinas hostage-taking as a cultural disputesome cultures prefer impartial justice, while others do not.

McCallum, for one, thinks Canada has more in common with China than the United States now; others advise Canadians to be more understanding of China. But when Goldenberg says it is essential to understand where the Chinese are coming from in seeing the extradition request as part of an American persecution campaign against the regime and Huawei, he more than understands the Chinesehe appears to agree with them. He writes, Obtaining [our hostages] freedom should have nothing to do with how we feel about China.

How we feel. There are no facts, only a rich mosaic of perceptions and emotions. Who are we to say that protecting an impartial judiciary is better than surrendering to a dictatorship that illegally kidnaps and tortures another countrys citizens as revenge for that country having honoured its treaty responsibilities?

Blaming the prosecution

Once again, senior Liberals have scapegoated prosecutors for fulfilling their professional dutytaking a criminal case to trial when in their judgment it should go to trial. With SNC, Liberals accused the director of public prosecutions of not having made the correct judgement, while expressing rather less concern about the corporations judgment in bribing members of a brutal regime.

With China, senior Liberals are implying American prosecutors are either supine or crooked. Ostensibly, they blame Trump for the criminal charges that led to the extradition request, which is partly why McCallum advised Chinese-language state-owned media that Meng has quite a strong case.

But the charges were brought by the United States Department of Justice. To claim, as they do, that the prosecution is politically motivated is to suggest that Department of Justice attorneys allowed their independence to be utterly compromised by Trumps administrationor if Trump is left out of it, that prosecutors took it upon themselves to compromise their impartiality by using Canada for political purposes.

Either way, when Manley says The U.S. created the mess we are in, or when Chretien calls the issue, a trap that was set to us, their logic dictates it is prosecutors who must in fact be substantially to blamenot the alleged fraudster, nor the controversial multinational that employs her, and not the dictatorship that seeks to protect them both by kidnapping Canadian citizens.

Blaming the attorney general

Once again, senior Liberals have extended the blame to the attorney general for not interfering in a prosecution. With SNC, the difficult and selfish former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was said to have erred in respecting the foundational principle of prosecutorial independence and refusing to intervene. With China, Manley says the former attorney general is on the hook for failing to exercise a bit of creative incompetence and somehow just miss [Meng]; Goldenberg claims it is now the current attorney generals duty to address whether there is a way to stop the extradition.

In both cases, Liberals have called on the attorney general to betray the principles of the justice system she or he is charged with protecting in submission to the threats of a bully.

Prioritizing legal loopholes

Once again, senior Liberals argue that such a radical departure from legal norms is justified by the mere existence of legal loopholes. With SNC, they noted the attorney general had the formal authority, in exceptional circumstances, to override a prosecutors decision to go to trial, and concluded that this authority trumped her obligations to impartial justice. With China, they note that the attorney general has the formal authority to end the extradition process, and conclude that this authority trumps the same obligation even when it means setting a precedent of putting Canadas justice system at the mercy of a rogue state.

Conflating partisan interests with Canadas

Once again, senior Liberals justify violating the norms of justice in a criminal case in the name of a supposedly larger public interest, though other, distinctly private interests arein fact at stake. With SNC, the companys threat of job losses was used as public justification for interference; Wilson-Raybould testified before a Commons committee that behind closed doors Trudeau cited his own political considerations as a rationale. With China, the regimes threats to Canadian citizens and farmers are invoked as justification for interference. No one has to mention party members political considerationsthe relationship of senior Liberals to Chinese interests is well-documented. In both cases, Liberals gloss over a potential conflict of interest that could jeopardize Canadas rule of law.

Advising the attorney general to politicize a criminal prosecution; suggesting the rule of law is a relative thing; attacking prosecutors for upholding the rule of law; attacking the attorney general for upholding prosecutorial independence; claiming legal loopholes trump democratic fundamentals; advocating for an outcome that could benefit their own interests but undermine the countrys. I admit, the Liberals have a point: it would be nice if everyone could finally stop talking about SNC-Lavalin.

See the article here:
The Liberal Party and the rule of law - Maclean's

In acolumnpublished at Law.com in December, one commentator argued that senators who refuse to be impartial should be disqualified from participating in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. A few days ago, an ethics lawyer from the George W. Bush administrationcalledSenate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) a perjurer for taking the oath to do impartial justice in the trial after saying he would not be an impartial juror. They might want to reconsider their position.

If these people really mean what they say, of course, any senator who has taken a position on the presidents guilt would have to bow out. In that case, say goodbye to Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.). On Monday, Jan. 13, shespokeon the Senate floor and stated, as a fact, that Trump pressured a foreign nation to interfere in our elections. Thats an almost word-for-word recitation of the first impeachment article, which states that Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government ...in the 2020 United States Presidential election.

Harris went on to say that it is unacceptable for a president to shake down a vulnerable foreign nation for personal or political benefit. This too echoes the first impeachment article, which claims that Trump used the power of his office to obtain an improper personal political benefit.

If publicly accusing a defendant of the specific offense for which he has been impeached, in virtually identical language as that impeachment, is not refusing to be impartial, what is? Harris, however, is far from alone.

Senator Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii), who had rejected the presumption of innocence during the confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, hassaidshe would vote to convict unless Trump could actually exonerate himself.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) says that the impeachment articles are supported by a wealth of undisputed facts. And Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) was even more direct, say that the case is clear: President Trump tried to trade away our national security for a personal political favor.

As if reading directly from the same talking points, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) says that President Trump put our national security at risk in order to obtain political favors. And Senator Christopher Murphy (D., Conn) insists that the bottom line is this: President Trump abused his authority by using taxpayer funded aid to pressure a foreign government to help him win re-election in 2020.

Senate minority leader Charles Schumer, (D., N.Y.) has similarly attacked McConnell, accusing him of refusing to be impartial. Yet, as CNN hasreported, leading up to President Bill Clintons impeachment trial, Schumer repeatedly said that the Senate is not like a jury box. Indeed, when running for the Senate in 1998, he asked people to vote for him precisely because he would be a vote to acquit Clinton.

Impartiality, anyone?

House Democrats rigged the rules to guarantee a pre-determined impeachment result. Now Senate Democrats are trying to rig the jury pool by trying to exclude senators not likely to convict. We all know how this is going to end. Try the impeachment and lets move on.

See the rest here:
Liberals Keep Using the Word Impartiality, but It May Not Mean What They Think - Heritage.org