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News Roundup for July 5, 2024
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PM Justin Trudeau's Canada

BurlOak said:
That seems to be old data. Warren Kinsella has 18. http://warrenkinsella.com/2019/05/m...als-and-the-inevitable-sinking-ship-metaphor/
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I really can't forgive Trudeau for leaving Andrew Leslie out of cabinet. That man is adored by our entire defence, intelligence and foreign policy apparatus. Won his riding from a Conservative incumbent by 30 points (largely because it was filled with military and public servants who know his reputation). And to be tossed aside like that, says a lot.

The amount of talent that Trudeau had should have made for the best governance in a century. And then he decided to send most of the folks who were qualified to the backbenches to meet his diversity quota.
 
KH, you seem to have an inside track on defence issues. What do you think of Sajjan?
 
pman said:
KH, you seem to have an inside track on defence issues. What do you think of Sajjan?
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I'm no great Insider. I've been lucky in my career to be involved in projects, operations and intelligence work. So I go off that insight and water cooler chatter.

Sajjan is a mixed bag. Lots of people were actually excited to have him as a minister when he first started out. Finally, someone who actually served and gets our troubles!

But lots have soured on him and don't see him as a great advocate for the military in as much as he is a great advocate for Trudeau at the department.

Specific examples. First there was the capability gap fiasco. The Chief of Air Staff and Chief of Defence Staff publicly contradicting the Minister in their testimony to Parliament. A gap nobody in the military saw, that the Minister cited, all in support of an effort to sole source the Super Hornet right after they criticized the Conservatives for trying to sole source the F-35 (after it became obvious that the F-35 would probably win any contest launched at the time). Then the VAdm Norman fiasco has simply left a lot of people in uniform with an absolutely bitter taste in their mouths. They destroyed the reputation of a stellar performer and unblemished record of service who had reached the pinnacle of a military career, all to cover up what is increasingly looking like corruption by Scott Brison. They then refused to provide the VAdm legal aid in an attempt to prevent him going to court. And in all that, Sajjan sided with the government over his previous comrades. Not a good look.

It's Canada. The defence portfolio is rarely the most important to Canadians. But most Canadians don't understand how massive DND is as an organization. The department employs over a quarter of the federal workforce and 9% of the public service specifically. It's ~6% of the federal budget. There's no bigger organization in Canada. And it's by far the largest entity in the federal government. The scale differences are hilarious. A manager at Health Canada might manage 2-5 employees. A manager at DND might manage 10-30 at the same pay grade. For this reason, a skilled administrator is essential.

My take.....I still think Sajjan's experience was valuable. Looking back though, this might have been the wrong portfolio for him. Leslie was far too controversial (wrote an infamous memo arguing that there were too many commanders and HQ staff, right before he retired and ran for office). Garneau would have been a fantastic fit.

Ps. The Mark Norman case might well blow up more than the SNC-Lavalin scandal. And Andrew Leslie is testifying for Norman against the government he's an MP for. This really seems to have not gotten the same coverage....
 
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kEiThZ said:
Ps. The Mark Norman case might well blow up more than the SNC-Lavalin scandal. And Andrew Leslie is testifying for Norman against the government he's an MP for. This really seems to have not gotten the same coverage....
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Well. Not yet.
 
And therefore no public disclosure of the relationship between Irving Shipbuilding and the Liberal Party.
 
kEiThZ said:
I really can't forgive Trudeau for leaving Andrew Leslie out of cabinet. That man is adored by our entire defence, intelligence and foreign policy apparatus.
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Adoration of the military should not be leverage for higher government positions. Are we a banana republic now, where candidates announce “I have the support of the generals”?

Leslie is about to testify against the government. Who’d what that guy in their cabinet?
 
At this point, it will be extremely hard to remove people who have had children in Canada since- and this will only serve to undermine people's trust in the immigration system. During this five-year wait, remember that these claimant's housing, medical, dental, and living costs must be paid for.


Watchdog sees growing backlog in asylum cases as Conservatives pledge to fix refugee system
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Canada's caseload of asylum seekers faces a mounting backlog, with a processing system plagued by chronic delays and lax criminality checks, according to a new report from the federal spending watchdog.
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"We project that if the number of new asylum claimants remains steady at around 50,000 per year, the wait time for protection decisions will increase to five years by 2024 — more than double the current wait time," reads the report from interim Auditor General Sylvain Ricard, released Tuesday.
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The asylum claim report finds the government isn't keeping up with the surge in people crossing into Canada from the U.S. outside official border points, mostly at Roxham Road in Quebec. About 40,000 people have crossed illegally in the last two years.
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Overall, the asylum situation has worsened since 2012 reforms were brought in to accelerate the determination and removals process.

By the end of 2018, there were 71,380 claims waiting in the queue and the expected wait time for a decision had climbed to two years.
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It (the audit) reports that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) don't have quality assurance programs in place to ensure migrants' information is accurate and complete.

Auditors discovered files with illegible scans of identity documents and errors in some of the electronic information on asylum claims.
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The audit says inefficient practices — including gaps in information sharing, chronic postponements for hearings and the continued use of paper files to process claims — are to blame for the ballooning backlog.
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Admiral Beez said:
Adoration of the military should not be leverage for higher government positions. Are we a banana republic now, where candidates announce “I have the support of the generals”?
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Adoration of the military? No. Most people like the guy for his experience and leadership. I'd have the same opinion of people who performed just as highly in other professional fields.

You will note too, that I never suggested Leslie be put in charge of DND. I'd be actually opposed to that. But surely someone with that much military experience would have been good at a department in the national security domain. Public Safety, Border Security, Foreign Affairs, Fisheries and Oceans (with the Coast Guard under them), etc. Heck, given his administrative experience, he'd have been great at Treasury Board. There is literally no government department that deals with TB more than DND.

I don't get why in Canada, we have such an allergic reaction to retired senior military personnel taking up elected office. I wouldn't argue for it going as far as the US under this administration (with active duty personnel drafted to cabinet or a preference for generals over other more skilled public servants). But come on. Military service is far less prevalent in Canada. And those who reach the pinnacle of military service here are literally the only handful of folks in this country, with actual executive experience running large public sector organizations with thousands of personnel and billions of dollars. Not to mention actual policy formulation and diplomatic experience at that rank level. Why would you not put that experience to use?

Industry seems to have no such hangups. One general I worked for, just left for Amazon. Turns out executive experience managing aircraft maintenance (with its incredibly complex global logistics and legal liabilities) makes you well suited to leading large parts of multi-billion dollar companies. I would think deploying such experience in public service might also be a good thing.

To the assertion that employing them would classify us as "a banana republic". That's both laughable and offensive. People don't become banana republic authoritarians just because they put on a uniform. I've never met anyone in my military career who didn't have anything but a sincere belief in democracy and a healthy respect (and desire) for the subordination of the armed forces to civilian control. We are Canadians. Before we are military officers. And we are all acutely aware that we go back to being just citizens when the uniform comes off.

Admiral Beez said:
Leslie is about to testify against the government. Who’d what that guy in their cabinet?
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Somebody who values integrity. Not simply the moral flexibility to be very politically expedient.

Also, they are now dropping the case:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-norman-charges-to-be-dropped-1.5127220

I wonder why.....

This trial would have really shown what public servants are up against when politicians are determined to politically meddle in government operations. People forget what this trial was about. Norman was charged with breach of trust for effectively reassuring a contractor that a previously signed procurement was still on. And charged for allegedly sharing information (a charge he denies) that several politicians also possessed (and were more likely to leak). I, for one, wish it went to trial. And I bet it would have been fantastic to find out that several politicians probably used that insider knowledge too. Would have been awesome to see Scott Brison on the stand.
 
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I have no concerns with former high ranking military members, or any retired civil servant, seeking elected office or corporate executive positions. I do have a problem when the new corporate positions engage them with government contracts and procurement without an appropriate 'cooling off' period.

I suspect one of the reasons Leslie was passed over (besides the regional and gender balancing as mentioned) was that he developed a reputation for speaking truth to power, particularly in his NDHQ/command staffing analysis. That type of critical thinking is scary to political parties.
 
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