Politics Briefing newsletter: Dion and McCallum to face committee as ambassadors

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CANADIAN POLITICS

Cabinet-ministers-turned-diplomats John McCallum and Stephane Dion will testify at a parliamentary committee in Ottawa this morning. Mr. Dion, who was foreign affairs minister until January, was given a rare double-posting as ambassador to Germany and envoy to the European Union. Initially Mr. Dion's role was to be a senior ambassador to the EU, but that position was downgraded after concerns in Brussels.

The Liberal government says a big push will be on to get legislation passed before the summer break. Liberal House Leader Bardish Chagger says the governing party will be limiting debate on bills as part of the rush.

All eyes were on Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan on the House's first day back after he embellished his role during Operation Medusa in Afghanistan. Mr. Sajjan apologized and said there were no excuses for his actions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he has full confidence in Mr. Sajjan and will not fire him.

The Veterans Affairs department is working to help a former soldier's case after The Globe reported on his harrowing tale.

Public servants at the Department of National Defence's new offices in Ottawa are being asked not to drink the water.

The Auditor-General is set to warn later this month about the risk of fraud at a defence procurement agency, CBC reports.

Senior officials from across the Pacific rim will gather in Toronto today and tomorrow to start discussions on the future of trade after the Trans Pacific Partnership. Delegates from every country except for the U.S., which backed out of the deal, will be in Canada. The Trudeau Liberals are determined to make trade with other countries across the Pacific a priority and have also explored a bilateral treaty with Japan.

Maxime Bernier and Kevin O'Leary raised more than $1-million each in three months of the Conservative leadership race. Kellie Leitch, Erin O'Toole and Andrew Scheer raised half that or less, and the other candidates' hauls dropped off from there.

And employees of the Senate have written a children's book to explain and justify the chamber's purpose. "I would feel better if the Owls kept an eye on the Council of Animals," a bear in the book says -- where the owls are senators and the animals are members of Parliament.

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on Harjit Sajjan: "Although his military record has plenty of legitimate distinction, his political value as a man of the Forces is radically diminished. In politics, he is a badass no more."

Rita Trichur (The Globe and Mail) on bank regulation: "Increasingly, Canadian regulators appear out of step with their international peers. If it weren't for foreign regulators, Canadians would know even less about our banks' compliance failures."

Frances Woolley (The Globe and Mail) on immigrants and the economy: "For Canada to use its immigrant advantage to change the terms of international trade, new Canadians need to be welcome in the country's corner offices, as well as its corner stores. Unfortunately, they're not. Repeatedly, studies have found that job applicants with Asian names are less likely to be called for an interview than applicants with Anglo-Canadian names – even if the Asian candidates have Canadian qualifications. Yet, as long as our corporations look like old Canada, we will continue to have the same old economic vulnerabilities. And that means if the elephant on our southern border decides to roll over in bed, we'll all get squished."

BRIEFING: CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP RULES

By John Ibbitson (@JohnIbbitson)

If you're a member of the Conservative Party of Canada and you live in Quebec, you are precious. But if you live in Alberta, you're chopped liver, which is why Stephen Harper once threw a chair across a room.

To explain:

The method of choosing the next Conservative leader is crazy complicated. Each voter will rank the candidates on the ballot: Candidate A is my first choice; B is my second choice; C is my third choice, and so on.

On May 27, a computer will hold several rounds of balloting. After the first round, the bottom-ranked candidate will be dropped from the ballot, and their second choices redistributed to the remaining candidates for the second round. This will repeat until one candidate has 50 per cent of the vote plus one, and wins. However, unlike old-fashioned conventions, with Candidate G marching across to hall to sit with Candidate R at a pivotal moment, this will all take place in an instant.

So first-ballot strength is important. Being everyone's second choice could be equally important. But there's a wrinkle.

Way back in 2003, when Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper and Progressive Conservative Leader Peter MacKay were negotiating the merger of the two parties, the biggest fight was over how to choose the leader. The Alliance used a one-member, one-vote ranked ballot; the PCs preferred equally weighted ridings, which ensured regional representation and would compensate for the PCs being the weaker party. Mr. Harper reluctantly agreed to adopt the PC system. When he tried to have the rules changed at a later convention, Mr. MacKay went to reporters and threatened to bolt from the party. Mr. Harper was so angry, he threw a chair across the room. But he backed down.

As a result, as well as having a ranked ballot, all ridings are equally weighted. If candidate A gets half the first choices in any given riding they get 50 of the 100 points awarded to that riding. If candidate B gets a quarter of the vote, they get 25 points, and so on.

What does that mean? Well, there are 260,681 Conservatives eligible to vote. You can find 59,631 of them in Alberta, which has 34 ridings. So that's an average of 1,754 members per riding.

There are only 16,483 Conservative members in Quebec, which has 78 ridings. So 211 members per riding. Each Quebec vote is eight times as important as each Alberta vote. Quebec MP Maxime Bernier is the front-runner in this campaign because, by all accounts, he is far ahead of the rest of the pack in that province.

Ontario has about 44 per cent of the total members, as opposed to 36 per cent of the seats. That's not wildly out of whack.

But though Prince Edward Island has only four seats, it also has only 1,088 members, or 272 voters per riding. Saskatchewan has more than three times as many seats (14) but more than 40 times as many voters (12,956). You can spend a lot of effort racking up a lot of votes in Saskatchewan to little relative effect.

Put it another way: The West and Ontario account for about 90 per cent of the Conservative Party's members. But a third of the party's actual vote is found in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Now you know why Stephen Harper threw that chair across the room.

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B.C. ELECTION

The major campaigns for the B.C. election are run by a collection of backroom players who are spending the month shaping and recalibrating messages, selecting tour stops, making sure their candidates put their best foot forward – and sometimes cleaning up when they put out the wrong foot. Reporters Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey take a look at the people running the campaign machinery behind the scenes. They include Laura Miller, who is scheduled to stand trial this fall on a criminal charge of breach of trust in Ontario in connection with the deletion of e-mails about the Ontario Liberals' costly decision to cancel two gas plants before the 2011 election.

One of those backroom dealers, Ms. Miller, was among the Liberal operators who publicly attacked a woman who confronted BC Liberal Leader Christy Clark at a grocery store last week. The encounter between Ms. Clark and Linda Higgins was captured by TV news crews and went viral on social media, spawning the #IAmLinda hashtag. Ms. Higgins said she has no connection to the NDP and was merely in the area for lunch when she saw Ms. Clark, but Ms. Miller and other senior Liberals took to Twitter to suggest Ms. Higgens was dispatched to the event by the New Democrats. The Liberals are refusing to comment further and aren't saying whether the party stands by Ms. Miller's claims.

B.C.'s first experiment with a value added tax, the harmonized sales tax, went down in defeat in a provincewide referendum and ended former premier Gordon Campbell's career. Now, the New Democrats are warning that the BC Liberals are secretly plotting to bring back the tax by another name. While Ms. Clark denies she's contemplating such a tax, she and her government left the door open to a VAT as an alternative to the Provincial Sales Tax for months.

Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on NDP Leader John Horgan: "Mr. Horgan, 57, is a good choice to be the defender of the average working stiff. His roots are blue-collar, as is his suburban Victoria riding. He has lived in the same modest home for 25 years with his wife, Ellie, whom he has been with for 38 years. His community has very much shaped the often feisty person we see in the legislature."

U.S. POLITICS

In the past few days, U.S. President Donald Trump has praised dictators, saying that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a "smart cookie" and inviting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House. Mr. Duterte has targeted his own citizens in an extrajudicial drug war and has also admitted to murdering suspects. A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a controversial referendum granted the latter sweeping new powers.

Mr. Trump is thinking about introducing legislation that would break up Wall Street's big banks. The revelations come from a Bloomberg interview in which he also said he was actively looking into the possibility of levying a gas tax to help fund infrastructure improvements. Both ideas are unpopular in the Republican-controlled Senate and House.

And after a series of illuminating interviews with the Associated Press and Reuters, Mr. Trump shared his thoughts on the U.S. Civil War in an interview with the Washington Examiner: "People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?" The question is one that prospective immigrants to the U.S. are asked on citizenship tests.

Joseph Stiglitz (The Globe and Mail) on globalization and the West: "Advocates of liberal market economies need to grasp that many reforms and technological advances may leave some groups – possibly large groups – worse off. In principle, these changes increase economic efficiency, enabling the winners to compensate the losers. But if the losers remain worse off, why should they support globalization and pro-market policies?"

Chris Giles (Financial Times) on the British economy ahead of the election: "We are stuck in the middle without low U.S. tax rates, without German public services and without even Italian productivity levels. Once, this compromise seemed to satisfy the public. That is no longer true. The public become angry with politicians who contemplate higher taxes, are furious that public services are under such pressure and become incandescent if anyone suggests productivity-enhancing reforms that involve building projects near their homes or foreigners improving the dynamism of the economy. Britain likes to look at the eurozone and laugh at its tendency to kick decisions into the long grass and stall necessary reforms. We need to get over ourselves."

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PLAYOFFS

The Toronto Raptors were optimistic that this year would be different. The Cleveland Cavaliers, coming off of eight days of rest, made sure in a Game 1 victory over Canada's team that things were business as usual.

In hockey, the Ottawa Senators head to New York to face the Rangers in Game 3 tonight. The Sens are up 2-0 in the series and could put the hosts in an insurmountable hole.

Written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa, Mayaz Alam in Toronto and James Keller in Vancouver.