Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrive at a ceremony at the French embassy in Ottawa on Dec. 6, 2016.
POLITICS BRIEFING
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS MORNING
> A $1,500-a-ticket fundraiser with Justin Trudeau in Montreal this fall was marketed by Liberals as a "wonderful networking opportunity."
> Mr. Trudeau's polling honeymoon has stretched well past a year at this point, with average support of almost half of Canadians. Of course, before the next election rolls around, three opposition parties will have new leaders.
> The Prime Minister has missed more Question Periods than he's attended in his first year in office, a worse record than his predecessor, according to a Huffington Post count. The Opposition parties offered to move the time of Question Period so Mr. Trudeau can attend more often, but the Liberals declined.
> A year into office, many First Nations chiefs say they are not happy with the slow progress the Prime Minister has made on indigenous files. But Mr. Trudeau says not to be impatient. "The test of our relationship is not whether we'll always agree. The test of our relationship is whether we can still move forward, together."
> Asbestos is still by far the top on-the-job killer of Canadians, and groups are urging the federal government to finally ban it.
> Brian Mulroney says he's spoken to Donald Trump since he won the election and the president-elect is looking favourably on Canada.
> Finance Minister Bill Morneau says a small-business tax change that has infuriated many doctors is here to stay. "We are not treating physicians in any way different from other professionals or other small businesses. What we're saying is one small business is able to have one small-business deduction," he said.
> Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs filibustered a committee meeting to read letters to Immigration Minister John McCallum from constituents losing their jobs from the closing down of a citizenship case processing plant in Vegreville, Alta.
> Indigenous people and protesters opposing the Kinder Morgan pipeline don't have a veto over the project, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says.
> National security agencies have enough power already, Canada's privacy watchdogs are warning the government.
> And a long read on how Michael Bryant's views of the court system have changed now that he's spent some time in the trenches. The former Ontario attorney-general has been mostly out of the spotlight since a 2009 incident in his car that left a cyclist dead.
QUESTION PERIOD FUN
With the end of the parliamentary session nearly upon us, MPs are turning to Question Period to work on their stand-up acts. Here are some of the jokes that opposition members tossed at the minister yesterday about the government quiz site MyDemocracy.ca. (For an independent defence of the questions, read this.)
NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice: I applaud the thousands of Canadians who have mocked the survey's questions on social media. One question asks whether people prefer online voting or being chased by a horde of bloodthirsty clowns.
NDP MP Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, watching the Liberals' electoral reform process is like watching that bus in Montreal slowly sliding down the icy hill, mesmerizing disaster in slow motion.
Conservative MP Blake Richards: Mr. Speaker, when I was taking the minister's BuzzFeed, I mean democracy quiz, I learned two things: first that I am more of a Monica than a Rachel; and, as it turns out, the Liberals will only count the surveys that they want to count.
Conservative MP Scott Reid: Based on people's responses, the website groups them as a guardian, a challenger, a co-operator, a fossil, or a snowflake. I found out I am a unicorn. The shared values of unicorns include rainbows, sparkles, and ranked ballots. My question to the minister is this. Will she now share with Canadians the identities of the academics who advised the Liberals to model their survey on the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts?
WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT
Globe editorial board: "It is disturbing that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to be so cavalier about ongoing revelations of cash-for-access fundraising by the Liberal Party of Canada. The more we learn, the more Mr. Trudeau digs in his heels and insists he, his government and his party are doing nothing illegal – even as it is plain to any reasonable observer that the whole thing stinks."
Tony Keller (Globe and Mail): "Conservatives like [Preston] Manning, who want to put the environment at the centre of the party's economic thinking and economic analysis at the centre of its environmental thought, have surely got it right. Global warming is real, and the most efficient way to tackle it is to tax its cause: carbon emissions. ... But electoral politics, as Mr. Trump has just reminded every politician, can be a simple, visceral and tribal game. Conservatives who sound too much like Liberals risk raising the ire of their own core voters. And many an idea that flew in the seminar room turns out to lack the same aerodynamic properties during a campaign."
Gerald Caplan (Globe and Mail): "Suddenly, though it's news to me, moving from First Past the Post to a different voting system is a really, really fundamental value question for Canadians. Suddenly the House of Commons, entrusted to make decisions about life and death, war and peace, can't be trusted with the largely technical question of how votes are cast and counted."
Michael Den Tandt (National Post): "So, this is the question raised for progressives who gleefully joined in the flash-mobbing [of Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Sam Oosterhoff]: What part does a contrary opinion, civilly expressed, play in your understanding of pluralism and tolerance?"
Susan Delacourt (iPolitics): "There comes a time in every prime minister's tenure when Canadians stop measuring the new guy against the old government. We've probably reached that moment with Trudeau – time to stop wondering how this PM will change power, time to start asking how power is going to change him. If you're looking for the big political question of 2017, that's it, in a nutshell."
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Written by Chris Hannay. Edited by Steven Proceviat.