| | | | |  | | By Nick Taylor-Vaisey | Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Nick | Follow Politico Canada Welcome to Ottawa Playbook. I'm your host, Nick Taylor-Vaisey. Today, another blunt assessment of toxic military culture that comes with strongly worded recommendations. Which kinda got in the way of what the PMO wants you to read about. Also, a celebration of vaginas and vulvas on Parliament Hill. Did someone forward Ottawa Playbook to you today? Are you ready to be a forwarder, not a forwardee? Click here to sign up to this free newsletter.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | NO SAFE ARBOUR — Yet another retired Supreme Court justice released a fresh round of recommendations meant to snuff out a toxic military culture that marginalizes women and virtually every demo outside of white men. MARIE DESCHAMPS published a report in 2015. MORRIS FISH took his turn last year. But something about LOUISE ARBOUR's effort hit different. This was a judge who pulled no punches after more than a year of poking and prodding civilian and military leaders who collectively form what's known as The Defense Team. — The quote of the day: "The women warriors are here to stay," wrote Arbour, whose independent external comprehensive review into sexual harassment and misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces produced a report that topped 400 pages and included 48 recommendations. "And they will stay on their terms, seeking the substantive equality to which they are entitled. Women should no longer feel like guests in the CAF, as a former senior female officer told me many felt." — Another quote: "One of the dangers of the model under which the CAF continues to operate is the high likelihood that some of its members are more at risk of harm, on a day to day basis, from their comrades than from the enemy. This must change." — The problem: Too many studies, and too much commitment to sweeping change without actual change. "The CAF leadership seems to have been incapable of examining which aspects of its culture have been the most deficient." Mostly, Arbour writes, recommendations wallow in PowerPoint presentations. "This formulaic, perfunctory method of operating is ill-suited to the present problem." — The solutions: Arbour said civilian authorities should handle all Criminal Code sexual offenses. Defense Minister ANITA ANAND already moved ongoing investigations of misconduct to the civilian side last year, following an interim report by Arbour. She floated the idea of sending cadets to civilian universities, not military colleges, to earn their degrees. At the very least, she says the military must address "long-standing culture concerns unique to the military college environment, including the continuing misogynistic and discriminatory environment and the ongoing incidence of sexual misconduct." Arbour also recommended the defense minister should "examine what efforts are being made to correct the over-representation of white men" in the ranks of senior officers, and set targets for the promotion of women. She said Anand should also be briefed directly on sexual misconduct allegations. — The response: Anand accepted the report in its entirety. She told reporters that 17 recommendations will be implemented in the near term, and all of them eventually. Her boss agrees. "I spoke with the prime minister and he, as well, agrees with all of Madame Arbour's recommendations," she said. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Foreign Minister MÉLANIE JOLY tells ANDY BLATCHFORD that Canada wants to better prepare its diplomats for an increasingly uncertain world. To that end, on Monday she announced a review exercise during a town hall with staffers from the foreign affairs department, known as Global Affairs Canada. The department has 12,000 employees and offices in 110 countries. "Crises used to be something that happened every once in a decade — but now they're happening every year," Joly told POLITICO in an interview Monday evening. "We need to keep up with these challenging times." Read Andy's story here.
| | | | DON'T MISS THE 2022 GREAT LAKES ECONOMIC FORUM: POLITICO is excited to be the exclusive media partner again at the Council of the Great Lakes Region's bi-national Great Lakes Economic Forum with co-hosts Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. This premier, intimate networking event, taking place June 26-28 in Chicago, brings together international, national and regional leaders from business, government, academia and the nonprofit sector each year. "Powering Forward" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect key decision-makers with thought leaders and agents of change to identify and advance solutions that will strengthen the region's competitiveness and sustainability in today's competitive climate of trade, innovation, investment, labor mobility and environmental performance. Register today. | | | | | WHAT THE PMO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT — Not a toxic military culture they've failed to repair after six-plus years in government, that's for sure. Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU walked up to a mic Monday afternoon flanked by Cabinet ministers and Liberal MPs and gun control advocates. Trudeau was there to freeze handgun sales, a key measure announced in a bill tabled Monday by Public Safety Minister MARCO MENDICINO. — The money quote: "It will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada," Trudeau said during a late afternoon press conference. "In other words, we're capping the market for handguns." — The rest of the bill: The Liberal government also aims to yank firearms licenses from perpetrators of domestic violence or criminal harassment, and a press release promised a "red flag" law that would allow judges to force gun owners "considered a danger to themselves or others" to surrender their firearms. The government will also separately mandate that long-gun magazines be altered to carry no more than five rounds. — The U.S. connection: The PM wasn't afraid to connect the dots between rising gun crime in Canada and horrifying gun violence stateside. "We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter," Trudeau said when asked if the legislation goes too far. — The reporters' gripe: It's now standard operating procedure for governments to table legislation and host a flashy press conference without anyone else in the room having read the text of the bill. Silly journalists. Pressers aren't for the press. They're for the clip, coming to a social media post targeted to a key demo near you. The flacks' strategy isn't rocket science. No text means reporters can't ask hard questions about the bill, leaving the feds free to craft the first draft of their preferred media narrative.
| | For your radar | | A DESTRUCTIVE PMO — So KATHRYN MAY had the talker of the day in Policy Options. No reporter knows the politics of the public service better than May, who gave the deep-dive treatment to a new report from a pair of think tanks that features oodles of confidential candid commentary from senior bureaucrats all over Canada. The Institute on Governance and St. Francis Xavier University's Brian Mulroney Institute of Government recently dropped their "Top of Mind" report into how government does and doesn't work effectively — and May got PAUL TELLIER, the head of the public service when Mulroney was in power, on the phone to talk about it. — In brief: The think-tankers heard from "42 high-level public sector leaders from the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments." The senior execs who answered the call fretted about falling trust in public institutions, ineffective parliamentary committees and the decline of both in-house policy advice and "fearless" advice to politicians. — Tellier drops bombs: Now here's a lead quote from Tellier, the former PCO clerk. "The current government, with centralization of everything in the PMO, is in the process of destroying the public service … and the word 'destroying' is not too strong," he told May. His hits keep coming. "There is no way that if I was a Cabinet minister, I would allow a bunch of people in PMO to tell me how to do my work. And it's at every level, it's not only for junior ministers, the most senior ministers … It's for deputy ministers and departments." "So why, if you trust the minister and if you trust the advisors to the minister in his office and in the department, do you want six people in PMO to review a draft press release, or a tweet?" Sure, Tellier has worked outside of government for decades — but our bet is the former top dog at both CN and Bombardier has some current worker bees nodding along. — You want more candor? The think tanks published a grab-bag of quotable quotes from their respondents. Here's one that's a little all over the place but manages to pack a punch: "I think that accountability is a huge issue … I had a huge fight with PMO; they wanted an upfront payment for a project and it could have been an illegitimate act. He wanted me to blow the vote and … The increased pressure in centralization in PMO means bad decisions are being made because decisions are not being made. The Harper government was heavily criticized for that, but this government is not any better. ... We need accountability to either be with the ministers instead of ... accountability with ADMs with autonomic pressure. I do not think 25-year-olds in PMO are qualified to make the decisions they make." Somewhere deep in a Gatineau tower, that mouthful of a critique could be chewed on for months by a working group of a subcommittee of a minister-appointed task force compiling the terms of reference for a feasibility study into targeted public service modernization. Does Tellier have a point? Is he out to lunch? And is the above-quoted anonymous griper's beef with PMO youngsters justified? If you're a senior public servant who wants to discreetly share your biggest long-term concern with how government works, we're listening. Drop us a line: ottawaplaybook@politico.com.
| | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | 7:30 a.m. Conservative MP CATHAY WAGANTALL hosts this year's National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa. Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU is scheduled to attend. 8 a.m. Parliamentary budget officer YVES GIROUX will address the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. 9 a.m. GIROUX will release a new report "Supplementary Estimates (A) 2022-23." 10 a.m. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister CHRYSTIA FREELAND will attend Cabinet, which Trudeau will chair. They will both attend QP. 11 a.m. NDP Leader JAGMEET SINGH attends the ED BROADBENT Waterfront Park ground-breaking in Oshawa. 4 p.m. FREELAND will visit the Senate's national finance committee to answer questions about Bill C-8 and the budget implementation bill. | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | ASK US ANYTHING | | TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW — What are you hearing that you need Playbook to know? Send it all our way.
| | PERSPECTIVES | | VAGINA MONOLOGUE — Here's Liberal MP PAM DAMOFF in the House on Monday: Mr. Speaker, vaginas and vulvas are a source of strength, empowerment and pleasure, yet throughout our lives we have been taught that the terms "vulva" and "vagina" do not have a place in polite conversation. That is one more way the bodies of over half the world's population are stigmatized, sexualized and objectified. With the recent news in the United States regarding Roe v. Wade, conversations about sexual and reproductive health are more important than ever, and it starts here on Parliament Hill. We need to reclaim space in health research, politics, policy-making, and at the doctor's office to celebrate the power of vulvas and vaginas. It is 2022, and we should not be embarrassed or ashamed to talk about our bodies. Join me, the MPs for Winnipeg Centre, Saanich—Gulf Islands and Shefford, Senator McPhedran and Action Canada as we jointly host a celebration on May 31 to reclaim the conversation and celebrate vulvas and vaginas as powerful and important.
| | PAPER TRAIL | | A TEMPORARY FLOATING LAB — The Coast Guard wants to do science at sea, but there's a bit of an issue. The agency doesn't have the boat for the job, and it could resort to chartering an interim vessel while a shiny new one is being slowly assembled. — End of an era: The 59-year-old CCGS Hudson was decommissioned earlier this year after a starboard motor failure left the oldest vessel in the Coast Guard fleet "beyond economical repair." The Hudson lasted 10 prime ministers, sailed under the Canadian Red Ensign, and was first to circumnavigate the Americas. For all those years, the Hudson carried scientists across Canadian waters for oceanographic, geological and hydrographic surveys. They studied the impacts of climate change and, on occasion, carried out search and rescue operations. It wasn't exactly an untimely death. Hudson was patched together as recently as 2020. But its extended tenure still wasn't enough lead time for the shipyard that was paid to build a replacement. — Delays, delays, delays: Way back in 2008, the Harper government announced plans to replace the Hudson. Two years later, it was folded into the National Shipbuilding Strategy. Vancouver's Seaspan shipyard scored the contract. A federal projection from 2008-09 that aged very poorly expected delivery in 2012. In 2017, the feds tentatively pegged completion at 2020. The price tag, which was "under review," was C$144 million. Now, the new ship isn't expected until 2024 — scratch that, 2025 — at a revised cost of C$966.5 million. For the record, the actual construction of the ship started in the spring of 2021, 13 years after the project was officially born. The bureaucrat who penned the press release on the Hudson's decommissioning leaned into the passive aggression. "The vessel's permanent replacement, the yet to be named Offshore Oceanographic and Science Vessel, isn't expected to be delivered until 2025," they wrote. "The Canadian Coast Guard is working closely with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to evaluate the near and long term impacts on programming and developing a plan to mitigate these impacts." — Filling the gap: A new request for information is canvassing the industry for options. But even chartering a band-aid solution is a slow, lumbering process. The docs target next spring for a contract award date, with a ship in service … at some point. The Coast Guard wants a potential charter to be "ideally less than 20 years old" — a relative youngster in federal naval circles — capable of sleeping 22 scientists for 42 continuous days while sailing approximately 12,000 nautical miles. — Fast forward: Say the full-time replacement is commissioned by 2025. If its seaworthiness matches the Hudson's tenure, it'll be in the water until 2084 — just as your Playbook host celebrates his 99th birthday.
| | MEDIA ROOM | | — Top of POLITICO this morning: Fighting for survival in the shadow of Covid-19. — The Canadian Press reports: MARY NG under ethics probe over contract to firm co-founded by Liberal strategist. — Advice from DAVID MCLAUGHLIN, new president and CEO of the Institute on Governance: "Our public servants tally among the best in the world. They have a big stake in getting this right. Listening and learning from their front-line experiences with citizens and inside experiences with politicians would be smart." — The latest Herle Burly pod with RYAN JESPERSEN is a captivating listen on all things Alberta . About 45 minutes in, the Real Talk host muses on the possibility that Premier JASON KENNEY might not be going anywhere. — The Star's ALEX BOYD joins the This Matters pod to discuss vaccine passports. "Necessity or false sense of security? Freedom or inequality?" — Here's JOSH ROGIN in The Washington Post: "How the U.N. became a tool of China's genocide denial propaganda" — POLITICO's NAHAL TOOSI profiles the Biden administration's resident Putin hand, CIA Director WILLIAM BURNS.
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | Birthdays: HBD to the CBC's ROSEMARY BARTON. ROY MCMURTRY, former Ontario Chief Justice and Attorney General and Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, is 90! Also celebrating today: Liberal MP GREG FERGUS, businessman LEONARD ASPER, former NDP MP PIERRE-LUC DUSSEAULT, former broadcaster VICKI GABEREAU, former B.C. Attorney General SUZANNE ANTON and Terrebonne Mayor MATHIEU TRAVERSY. Movers and shakers: The Cannabis Council of Canada enlisted Ernst & Young's RAMI EL-CHEIKH and FRED O'RIORDAN 's services on the Hill. The weed lobby's goal: "enable the legal cannabis industry to be competitive against the illicit market and sustainable in the long-term." Targets: CRA, Finance and Health Canada. Spotted: AILISH CAMPBELL on the Caribou Trail in Kortrijk, Belgium. Finance Minister TRAVIS TOEWS: An official UCP leadership candidate as of Monday evening. (h/t DON BRAID) The application questionnaire filled out by CYNTHIA PETERSEN , a Superior Court justice appointed in 2017. (The Department of Justice posts these online from time to time, in no particular order.) Here's Petersen on occasional accusations that Canadian courts are "too interventionist" and sometimes even anti-democratic: "In my opinion, that criticism was premised on a lack of understanding about the proper function of the judiciary in a constitutional democracy. The Constitution effectively confers legitimacy on the exercise of legislative and executive state powers. That legitimacy is preserved and enhanced (not undermined) by an independent judiciary that enforces constitutional limitations on state powers."
| | HOUSE BUSINESS | | Keep up to House committee schedules here. Find Senate meeting schedules here. 9 a.m. It's clause-by-clause consideration day at the Senate's energy, the environment and natural resources committee as senators are slated to move through Bill S-5. 9:30 a.m. Finance department officials are being lined up to appear at the Senate national finance committee to aid senators' study of the budget implementation bill. 10 a.m. Auditor General KAREN HOGAN's four performance audit reports and two special examination reports of Crown corporations will be tabled in the House. Hogan will hold a press conference to discuss the latest audits at 11 a.m. 11 a.m. The House environment committee will consider a draft report on "Nuclear Waste Governance in Canada." 11 a.m. Gatineau Mayor FRANCE BÉLISLE and Ottawa City Councillor CATHERINE MCKENNEY are due to visit the House committee on procedure and house affairs. MPs are studying the potential expansion of federal jurisdiction for the parliamentary precinct to include stretches of Wellington Street and Sparks Street. 11 a.m. The House citizenship and immigration committee will hear from CAROLINE FOBES, the department's executive director and senior general counsel as a witness. Bill C-242 is on the agenda. 11 a.m. The House heritage committee will continue its study of Bill C-11 with witnesses TBA. 3:30 p.m. Conservative MP MICHAEL COOPER is a witness at the House justice and human rights committee as part of MPs' study of Bill S-206. 3:30 p.m. The House government operations and estimates committee will get a briefing from Canada Post officials before sliding in camera to talk "committee business." 3:30 p.m. The House committee on Indigenous and northern affairs will hear from the Native Women's Association of Canada on the Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) Program. 3:30 p.m. The House heritage committee continues its study of Bill C-11 with witnesses TBA. 4 p.m. Deputy PM FREELAND will visit the Senate's national finance committee to answer questions about Bill C-8 and the budget implementation bill. 6:30 p.m. The joint parliamentary committee on the declaration of emergency assembles for its third "committee business" meeting. 6:30 p.m. The house heritage committee holds its third meeting of the day on Bill C-11. Witnesses TBA. Behind closed doors: 11 a.m. The House environment committee meets in camera to review a draft report of its study on nuclear waste governance. — The Senate banking, trade and commerce committee will meet when the Red Chamber rises to consider a draft report regarding senators' study of provisions of the budget implementation bill. The House public accounts committee will meet to discuss a few reports on AG reports.
| | PROZONE | | If you're a POLITICO Pro subscriber, don't miss our latest policy newsletter by ANDY BLATCHFORD: Trudeau targets gun laws. Noted in Pro Canada PM: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada forecast that there would be a demand for 2.4 million passports in 2022. That number has since been revised to 4.2 million. "We did anticipate a big increase — a doubling of the number of passports," Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Minister KARINA GOULD told MPs on Monday. "Right now we're seeing a quadrupling of the number of passports that are in demand. And we're seeing them happen all at the same time." She told MPs 85 percent of current applications are from individuals seeking a passport for the first time. In news for POLITICO Pro subscribers:
— Austin pushing to effectively decriminalize abortion ahead of ruling on Roe.
— Why we can expect more hacking of politicians' phones.
— Acute hepatitis cases in kids getting more severe, WHO says.
— Allegations of industry influence rock mine safety commission.
| | TRIVIA | | Monday's answer: DAVID CROLL was Canada's first Jewish senator. Props to GUY SKIPWORTH, DOROTHY MCCABE, BEN ROTH, JOHNNY SHIELDS, ADAM MOSCOE, BRAM ABRAMSON, ANDREW SZENDE, JOHN ECKER, ROBERT MCDOUGALL, ROSS LECLAIR, MICHAEL SUNG, NANCI WAUGH, BOB GORDON, CULLY ROBINSON, DOUG RICE, HARRY MCKONE and BRYAN PASSIFIUME. Tuesday's question: The Confederation Bridge opened on this day in 1997 — its name selected from a shortlist that also included Northumberland Strait Bridge and Abegweit Crossing. Fast forward to 2022. Earlier this month, the P.E.I. Legislature passed a motion urging the federal government to change the name of the bridge. To what? Send your answers to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Have a petition you want signed? A cause you're promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness amongst this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Alejandra Waase to find out how: awaase@politico.com. Playbook wouldn't happen without Luiza Ch. Savage and editor Sue Allan. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | 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 | | | | |
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