Cell phone bills are the worst

A daily look inside Canadian politics and power.

Apr 10, 2023 View in browser   By Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Zi-Ann Lum Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Nick | Follow Politico Canada Thanks for reading Ottawa Playbook. I’m your host, Nick Taylor-Vaisey, with Zi-Ann Lum. Today, we bring you inside the meeting morass that makes Ottawa tick. Plus, a pile of MP expense disclosures tell the tale of late 2022. Also, the pandemic's impact on booze budgets. Off the top, we have a request. Do you have an insider friend or colleague whose birthday deserves a little Playbook real estate when the big day comes? We're on the lookout for staffers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, journalists, and anyone else who merits a mention — and may be too shy to tell us themselves. Drop us a line. We're all about celebrating spins 'round the sun. DRIVING THE DAY MEETING OR BUST — Ask any senior political staffer about the best way for ministers and deputy ministers to actually get things done in government, and you'll get the most Ottawa possible answer: "It depends." Most of them mention a variation of a regular meeting — often weekly, but not always — stuffed with bureaucrat-led briefings on two or three agreed-upon issues of the day. There is no single structure or style. Even the syntax varies by office. It's either MIN-DM or MIN/DM. Take your pick. — The chief's view: Playbook talked MIN-DMs with STEVIE O'BRIEN, a chief of staff to three federal Liberal ministers: BILL BLAIR, ANITA ANAND and FILOMENA TASSI. She served the same role under BILL MAURO at Queen's Park. O'Brien is now a senior adviser at McMillan Vantage and counsel at McMillan LLP, where she worked before a nine-year run as a political staffer. — The Coles Notes: A MIN-DM is often a 90-minute session that includes the two most obvious voices, and sometimes a coterie of political advisers and senior public servants. O'Brien also described a nesting doll of meetings that build to the main event. → The minister's staff might meet with public servants to hash out an agenda. Priorities can differ. "So there is a bit of a negotiation there," says O'Brien. Items are dropped or flipped around to match the minister's preference. A different senior ministerial staffer put a finer point on it. The most important part of the MIN-DM is who controls the agenda. Ministers have election platforms and mandate letters to implement, and political considerations to weave into priorities. Bureaucrats do not. → Political staff pre-brief the minister on issues that may arise. O'Brien aimed to have key materials in a briefing binder 48 hours before a MIN-DM. → Ministers and DMs might sit down for a "bilat," just the two of them, where they can speak frankly before letting everybody else into the room. O'Brien said the chief would join, too. → Every minute consumed by the bilat eats into the rest of the agenda, which typically covers only two or three topics. — Scheduling hell: "Extremely full" is how O'Brien described ministers' meeting-filled schedules. But there's a wildcard. "Votes really throw the whole thing off," says O'Brien. An unexpected House vote that conflicts with a MIN-DM might force a minister whose office is across the river in Gatineau to jump in a car and head to the Hill and back. The new-ish voting app has eased that time pressure, but hasn't eliminated it entirely. — 'Table dropped': The jargon for a document that a minister sees only when they enter a briefing. This is a worst-case scenario. Know someone who could use Ottawa Playbook? Direct them to this link. Five days a week, zero dollars. TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS — Deputy PM CHRYSTIA FREELAND is in Toronto for private meetings. THREE THINGS WE'RE WATCHING PARLIAMENTARY PRICE TAG — Playbook's inbox pinged with a quarterly reminder of how much MPs billed the taxpayer over a three-month period. The House of Commons website recently dropped figures for the third quarter of 2022–23. Finally, we get to learn how much dough our elected officials spent on cell phone data overages between October and December last year. (The answer is C$22,270.86, the smallest sum in at least a year — and on par with the C$24,550.61 spent in the same quarter a year prior. Liberal MP WAYNE LONG led the pack at C$633.73.) — Total expenses: Parliamentarians billed the people for C$38.6 million in salaries, travel, hospitality and contracts — almost C$8 million more than the same period a year earlier. — What they're reading: Tory MP SCOTT AITCHISON topped the list of paid subs with his balanced diet of the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Blacklock's Reporter. Labor Minister SEAMUS O'REGAN took second spot. He read the Washington Post and the Times — both the Hill Times and a certain New York paper. Third on the list? PIERRE POILIEVRE, who subscribed to Bloomberg, The Economist, The National Post and Medium. Tory MP TOM KMIEC, whose paid-up reading list includes The Line and Blacklock's, also expensed C$980 in access-to-information requests under the same category. — Surfing the net: The National Post reported in January that dozens of MPs were expensing their home internet during the pandemic, a perk on the wish list of legions of work-from-homers. The taxpayers' federation was predictably alarmed. Liberal MP HEDY FRY defended the line item at the time, but her party joined the Conservatives in putting a stop to it. The all-party board of internal economy that governs the House barred MPs from expensing home internet at a February meeting. But the change didn't take effect until March 31. 53 MPs took advantage of the informal benefit between October and December, to the tune of C$16,686.83. The tally included 27 Conservatives, 18 Liberals, seven Bloquistes, and Indy MP KEVIN VUONG. (Liberal whip STEVE MACKINNON, who reportedly relayed the instruction that his caucus pay their own bills, expensed his October and November charges — but not December's.) — Most shreddy: Nobody sliced and diced more paper than the vacant office formerly occupied by Liberal MP SVEN SPENGEMANN. The folks in Mississauga–Lakeshore paid Shred-it a total of C$674.26 between June and November. Spengemann resigned in May. — Top renovator: Tory MP ZIAB ABOULTAIF billed C$50,000 in office renovations in the third quarter, enough for top spot. But Liberal MP WILSON MIAO tacked on tens of thousands to his year-long effort to spiff up the constit office. The rookie MP has dished out C$121,756.52 since the last election. FOLLOW THIS MAN — He retired from his watchdog role two years early in February due to "persistent health issues," but former ethics commissioner MARIO DION is still barking about government malfeasance from the outside. Dion joined Twitter the same month he stepped down. In late March, he flagged a change to the job description and salary in the posting for his permanent successor. The Post later reported on the C$110,000 wage cut. The ex-watchdog later took a shot at bureaucrats. "Full time equivalents increasing at an unprecedented rate," he tweeted in response to a Parliamentary Budget Officer report on the size of the public service. "I am not sure it is matched by quality services." And Dion trained his sights on Toronto, too. "Bureaucracies are so efficient at killing good things: business initiative, opportunities to socialize, taking fresh (?) air," he tweeted in response to a Toronto Star report on reduced outdoor patios in the city. — Request denied: Dion granted only one interview at the end of his term, chatting with the Post's CHRIS NARDI. He declined Playbook's request last week. Shortly after, a tweet: "My goal is not to attract a large contingent of followers but simply to contribute to awareness of conflict of interests issues." Dion dabbled in the anti-Trudeau conspiracy corner of social media. The PM spent Easter weekend in Montana. His haters speculated he was skiing at an exclusive resort. "I have a feeling we will hear more about this," tweeted Dion. We anticipate more saltiness. FLOOD WATCH — Seen the Rideau River recently? It's rushing past old city hall and over Rideau Falls into the Ottawa River. It's that time of year. On the heels of an ice storm that plagued the city's power grid with outages, the local conservation authority now has flood watches and warnings through much of the watershed. — More to come: The Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board isn't yet sounding the alarm about major flooding, but a recent bulletin warns the combo of warm temps and above-average snowpack in the river valley "could create possible flooding in low-lying areas" that are regularly flooded in the spring. Snow melt is only one factor in river levels. Weather conditions "that can only be known a few days in advance" — i.e. rain — also play a major role. Keep an eye on the sky. When Ottawa floods, it makes the news. PAPER TRAIL COVID DIPLOMACY — A memo landed on Public Safety Minister MARCO MENDICINO’s Feb. 20 illustrating how the department’s hob-nobbing diplomatic work at the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., has been shaped by the pandemic in recent years. The memo is a routine one. It showed the department’s embassy operations and maintenance had a C$23,000 budget in 2021-2022, which includes C$5,500 for hospitality, according to documents obtained by POLITICO through an access to information request. Alcohol, it read, is “an important option for the counsellor to be able to offer, as appropriate, to U.S. and international interlocutors as part of customary international diplomacy.” MICHAEL HOLMES is the current counsellor of Public Safety Canada posted to the embassy in Washington. — Booze spend: The memo shows the impact of Covid-19 measures on the department's diplomacy work, at least in terms of its hospitality spend. Two events were held in 2021-2022, totalling C$547.44 in expenses. For context, the memo noted hospitality expenses for 23 events in 2018-2019 cost the department C$7,717.02. That year’s total alcohol expenses totalled C$838.84. The February memo, signed by PATRICK AMYOT, chief financial officer and assistant deputy minister of the Corporate Management Branch, recommended Mendicino approve a “blanket hospitality authority of up to C$5,500 for fiscal year 2022-2023” for the department to host events at the embassy. It included alcohol as an allowable expenditure, which Mendicino’s office confirmed was approved. MEDIA ROOM — From our POLITICO colleagues across the pond: Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron in an exclusive interview on the flight home from a state visit to China. — From POLITICO Magazine: The Cold War mystery the U.S. military can’t afford to forge t — Via the New York Times: "A pro-Russian hacking group may have targeted Canada’s energy infrastructure" (h/t KEVIN NEWMAN's LinkedIn share) — Politics profs LORI TURNBULL and ALEX MARLAND give the Canadian Press their two cents about ministerial responsibility. PENNY COLLENETTE chimes in: "Ministers, not staff, are elected, therefore ministers should be held accountable. However, if unelected staff are given excessive decision making power, then yes, ministerial responsibility ( and staff accountability) must be re-examined." — On April 14, it will be 10 years since JUSTIN TRUDEAU became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Writes ALEX BALLINGALL: “What happens next may well define this Liberal prime minister’s place in Canadian history, not to mention his party’s place in federal politics, after a decade in which he has already left his indelible, Trudeau-esque mark.” — ICYMI over the weekend, here’s the Globe: Internal documents reveal how much consultants shaped the National Gallery PROZONE For POLITICO Pro subscribers, our latest policy newsletter from ZI-ANN LUM: Big sky thinking on critical minerals. In other news for Pro subscribers: — POLITICO Pro Q&A with Saskatchewan Energy Minister Jim Reiter . — ‘Something is going to go boom’: IMF chief warns of a more fragile global economy. — Delayed piece of EV tax credit guidance leaves industry in limbo. — Covid hurt kids’ mental health. The worst may be yet to come. — China rips into 'abusive' U.S. trade measures at WTO. PLAYBOOKERS Birthdays: HBD to Sen. PAMELA WALLIN, 70 today. Spotted: A pair of columns on 24 Sussex — via JEN GERSON and PAUL WELLS — after the most recent talker on a dead rat infestation at the taxpayer-funded home. Conservative Party d-comm, tweeting an Easter lockdown joke that got the bubble talking. Swedish curler NIKLAS EDIN, telling CBC sports reporter DEVIN HEROUX about his practice sessions at an Ottawa curling club. Edin threw an instantly legendary "spinner" at last week's world curling championships in the nation's capital. Curling nerds called it the greatest shot of all time. The rink where he tested it out? The same Rideau Curling Club where SOPHIE GRÉGOIRE TRUDEAU and JILL BIDEN recently hung out. Toronto mayoral contenders GIL PENALOSA and MITZIE HUNTER, endorsing a ranked ballot for the upcoming byelection. (They were responding to an ED KEENAN Star column on Chicago's runoff system.) Movers and shakers: BABY SAMAD scores an audience with PM Trudeau. (It's all about who you know: Samad's parents are former MPs MARYAM MONSEF and MATT DECOURCEY.) Media mentions: In case you missed it, the Globe's MARSHA MCLEOD is leaving the paper — and the Hill. McLeod is heading to the Winnipeg Free Press for a gig as an investigative reporter. Got a document to share? A birthday coming up? Send it all our way. On the Hill Parliament returns April 17. — Find the latest House committee meetings here. — Keep track of Senate committees here. TRIVIA Thursday’s answer: Senator ÉRIC FOREST was mayor of Rimouski from 2005 to 2016. Props to GERMAINE MALABRE, ROBERT MCDOUGALL, KEVIN BOSCH and BOB GORDON.  A belated nod to STEVE PAIKIN, HÉLÈNE CHEVALIER, RYAN HAMILTON, BRIAN GILBERTSON and SHEILA GERVAIS. Monday's question: Name the sitting senator who wrote The Comfort of Cats. Send your answer to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Playbook wouldn’t happen without: Luiza Ch. Savage, Sue Allan and David Cohen. Want to grab the attention of movers and shakers on Parliament Hill? Want your brand in front of a key audience of Ottawa influencers? Playbook can help. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: jshapiro@politico.com.   Follow us on Twitter Nick Taylor-Vaisey @TaylorVaisey Sue Allan @susan_allan Maura Forrest @MauraForrest Zi-Ann Lum @ziannlum POLITICO Canada @politicoottawa   Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook  |  Playbook PM  |  California Playbook  |  Florida Playbook  |  Illinois Playbook  |  Massachusetts Playbook  |  New Jersey Playbook  |  New York Playbook  |  Ottawa Playbook  |  Brussels Playbook  |  London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters Follow us

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Please click here and follow the steps to unsubscribe.