Transcript Season 4 Episode 36

Host: Tom Clark

Guest Interviews: Conservative campaign spokesman Kory Teneycke, U.S. co-chair for presidential debate commission Mike McCurry, Ottawa Citizen parliamentary bureau chief Mark Kennedy, The Canadian Press Ottawa bureau chief Heather Scoffield, Conservative MP Michael Chong

Location: Ottawa

On this Sunday, election debate turmoil: the Conservatives say no to the traditional TV debates. Is it time for Canada to have an Independent Debate Commission like our neighbours south of the border?

Plus, our journalist panel unpacks the politics of the week, including Jobs Minister Pierre Poilievre using your tax dollars to make promotional videos of himself.

Then, a bill to improve Parliament passed with all party support in the House seems poised to die with the Senate. Michael Chong is here to explain his disappointment.

It is Sunday, May 17^th and from the nation’s capital, I’m Tom Clark. And you are in The West Block.

Well, last week, the Conservative Party announced that it would not participate in the traditional election debates with a consortium of broadcasters which includes this network, Global Television. Instead, the party wants other proposals from other groups from which they, the Conservatives, will decide where and how they will debate.

Well, joining me now is Kory Teneycke, Principal Advisor to the Conservative Party and the former head of the former Sun News Network. Kory thanks very much for being here. What is, let’s just drill down, you don’t want to take part in the traditional consortium debates because why? What was wrong with the format that you didn’t like?

Kory Teneycke:

I don’t think it’s a process that has produced particularly good debates in the past.

Tom Clark:
Well, specifically, what didn’t you like about the format?

Kory Teneycke:

Well, I don’t think the objections that we raised were particularly the format of the debates in this cycle. I think that our desire was, as a result of the fact, we have a fixed election date on October 19^th, to have more debates. And, if we are going into a process where we would agree to more debates than the traditional two; one French and one English, what would the appropriate way be of deciding what to do. Our view was, to go a different direction than what the consortium wanted. Consortium proposed having four debates; two English and two French.

Tom Clark:

Well, I understand that but I’m trying to drill down as to what it was that you didn’t like about the consortium debates, specifically, when you looked at it and said we can’t do that.

Kory Teneycke:

Well, it’s three media outlets to the exclusion of all others and as you know, there are many credible media outlets and also other organizations in the—

Tom Clark:

Okay, so you’re saying it didn’t reach enough Canadians because it’s only three—

Kory Teneycke:

Yeah, what I was saying is that the debate process and the debates themselves are being put on by three media outlets and there are many more than three media outlets.

Tom Clark:

Yeah, okay. Let’s deal though with what some people might say is the real point of a debate and that is to reach as many Canadians as possible. The consortium debates from four networks by the way, reached 10 million Canadians—

Kory Teneycke:

Only three.

Tom Clark:

On the English debates and 4 million Canadians on the French debates. You think that’s not enough?

Kory Teneycke:

Well, I think you’re setting up a false argument there, Tom.

Tom Clark:

How so?

Kory Teneycke:

First of all, let me respond, it’s three companies: CBC, you know some people want to count them twice because they have a French language network, but its CBC, Global, and CTV.

Tom Clark:

But deal with the numbers Kory. Deal with the numbers. Ten million and four million for the French debates. You think that you can do better than that with what you’re trying to propose?

Kory Teneycke:

Well, Tom, like let’s take a step back from this.

Tom Clark:

Well, deal with that because I think that the viewers are interested.

Kory Teneycke:

Well, you asked the question and let me answer it.

Tom Clark:

Well, I hope you will.

Kory Teneycke:

There is nothing preventing CBC, CTV and Global from broadcasting someone else’s debate. If for instance, The Globe and Mail, who’ve publically announced that they would like to host a debate, if The Globe and Mail were to put on a debate, what is preventing CBC, CTV and Global from covering that debate?

Tom Clark:

So, is your bottom line, you will only participate in a debate where it is free and open for anybody to broadcast it, like the Maclean’s debate that is being broadcast on Rogers. You’re saying that Rogers has to make that available to everybody?

Kory Teneycke:

Ah, well I’ll let Rogers speak to the particulars about their debate proposal.

Tom Clark:

Well no, but you’re saying what’s preventing them. I’m saying, is that one of your bottom lines that everybody has to be able to carry this?

Kory Teneycke:

No, if you were not a broadcaster and you don’t have the ability to distribute on television, I think having the debate open to all broadcasters is appropriate. If it is a broadcaster that has the ability to distribute to Canadians households, like for instance, the two that we did agree to, it’d be more typical to have a broadcaster—

Tom Clark:

You know what you haven’t dealt with, you said you were going to answer my question but you didn’t, about 10 million people who are able to see the consortium debate.

Kory Teneycke:

Well, they still are if broadcasters choose to put them on their airwaves. And let me say this—

Tom Clark:

No, but you’re saying you’re not going to show up for it, for the consortium debate, right?

Kory Teneycke:

No, we’re saying that we’re going to say goodbye to a process that has not worked particularly well, that is not particularly representative or in my view defensible in favour of a different approach.

Tom Clark:

Okay.

Kory Teneycke:

The more egalitarian approach.

Tom Clark:

I’ve run out of runway trying to get you to answer the 10 million dollar question but anyway, Kory thanks very much for being here. I appreciate your time.

Well, our neighbours south of the border established a non-partisan commission over 25 years ago to manage and set the rules for the presidential and the vice-presidential debates and joining me now from Washington, the co-chair of that commission, Mike McCurry, who you may also remember as the press secretary for President Bill Clinton. And Mr. McCurry, thanks very much for being here.

I described this commission as being independent, I know that it is jointly owned or controlled by both the Democrat and Republic party, but can you give me a brief sort of Commission 101 on what it is that the commission does with the debates.

Mike McCurry:

Well, growing out of our experiences and our debates, when it was no guarantee that presidential candidates would actually face each other after the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, we went through a period where we had a debate about the debates every four years and two studies came forward that said we really needed an independent commission and by the way, not sponsored by the two parties, totally independent of the two major political parties that would ensure that every four years, the American voters got to see the serious candidates for president who actually had a theoretical chance of getting elected. So the commission was established in 1987, took over our debates in 1988 and now, by and large have institutionalized a format in which Americans now expect to see their major candidates for president, Republican, Democrat, Independent, whoever is up there in the polls and being considered, to face each other every four years in the fall before our general election.

Tom Clark:

And, as you know, there’s quite a vigorous debate in this country about it, but under your system, is it even conceivable that one of the major contenders for the presidency would not show up for one of these debates?

Mike McCurry:

Well we passed a very important threshold in our most recent presidential election in 2012. First time an incumbent president, and usually an incumbent president is the one that wants to dilly dally about whether they’re going to debate or not, but Barack Obama very quickly accepted the format of the three debates that the commission that I chair proposed and that was the first time that that had happened, so we in effect had no debate about debates. We just had an acceptance that the candidates would show up, according to the schedule, the format with the moderators that had been picked by the commission and that they would hold forth. Now, you know, we’re doing everything we can to improve it. We don’t think we have got necessarily the best model because I think there are ways to improve it, but we are now you know, thinking about it looking ahead to 2016 how we will improve this format for our next presidential election next year.

Tom Clark:

Again, up here, there’s a movement to say that there should be a lot more sort of independent debates outside of any formalized structure, but looking strictly on your side of the border, what would be wrong with the idea of a sort of a debate free for all with others groups involved other than just through the commission?

Mike McCurry:

Well, interestingly, I have been on the campaign side of many presidential campaigns. I’m a Democrat so most of my candidates have been losing candidate, but you know, one of the things in a general election, you don’t want to have a lot of you know, unanticipated events develop. The problem with a free for all as you put it is, the candidates themselves might elect not to participate, they might start playing games about which debates they would do. In a multi-party format like in Canada, they might say we’ll only debate with this set of parties and not that set of parties so having an independent Commission that actually comes in and establishes something that puts a little more regular order into the process has been very useful to us. So, we have now, you know, I think more or less institutionalized these debates. We have a debate here in America right now about, you know what kind of criteria should apply to independent candidates who are not in the Republican Party of the Democrat Party to participate and we’ll work through those issues as we look ahead to next year. So, by no means, are we finished and establishing the way in which we do this and I think that’s probably will be the experience in Canada. It has to evolve over time.

Tom Clark:

Mike McCurry, I wish we had more time but a real pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for being here this morning.

Mike McCurry:

Great being with you and good luck.

Tom Clark:

Thanks, sir.

Tom Clark:

Coming up, why a bill to reform Parliament seems set to die in the Senate.

But first, we unpack the politics of promotional videos produced on the taxpayers’ dime.

Break

Pierre Poilievre: So we’re just out promoting the Child Care Benefit today. I just wanted to let you know about the enhanced Universal Child Care Benefit. Hey, I’m Pierre Poilievre, we believe that the real child care experts are mom and dad. Our prime minister is putting money…

Tom Clark:

Well not only were those videos produced by public servants on your dime but the team was called in on overtime on a Sunday to film all that. Joining me now to unpack the politics of all this and other major stories of this week: Mark Kennedy Parliamentary Bureau Chief for the Ottawa Citizen and joining us, Heather Scoffield the Bureau Chief for Canadian Press here in Ottawa. Welcome to you both.

Heather Scoffield:

Thanks.

Tom Clark:

So, Pierre Poilievre at the end of last week stands up and he says, “I’m not going to apologize for producing those videos on overtime.” Well, he didn’t get into the overtime business. What are we to make of this, I mean public money being used to produce essentially campaign commercials.

Heather Scoffield:

We’ve seen quite a bit of this lately. Mr. Poilievre is not the first person to do this, I mean there are other cabinet ministers but we also have the Prime Minister’s Office also making these 24/7 videos that they put out every week and that’s also on the public dime, meant to I guess ostensibly put forward his policies but it’s also quite you know, it blurs the line there between what is you know, explaining public policy and what is actually politicking in advance of an election. And, they keep getting themselves in a little bit of trouble with it, right? Like the you know, there are a lot of questions being asked not just about Mr. Poilievre’s video but also the prime minister’s own videos, they got themselves into trouble in Iraq just a couple of weeks ago filming things that they shouldn’t have been filming because these are not being done by—they’re being done by videographers but they’re not being done by let’s say, journalists who follow the rules and have—

Tom Clark:

Well, they also, the quality at times sort of looks like a hostage video from time to time.

Heather Scoffield:

Yeah.

Mark Kennedy:

Yeah, you know, I think the Tories, I think the Tories minimize this, the potential political damage to themselves at their own peril because at any time when a government is approaching 10 years in its couple of mandates, the last thing they need is the public perception that they are arrogant, that they are entitled and that they want to spend money, public money, taxpayers’ money to get themselves re-elected and that’s exactly what is happening with these videos. Which frankly, you know a lot of people would say they don’t even blur the line, they’re just out and out propaganda, they kind of stuff you’d see from Moscow. Now do they really want to go to the polls with Canadians saying to themselves they’re spending my dime and I’m a hardworking taxpayer, like Stephen Harper would describe me, to get themselves re-elected. To their own benefit, they might want to think about pulling back and apologizing.

Tom Clark:

Can you imagine though, if we wound back the clock a little bit to Opposition Leader Stephen Harper and Opposition Conservatives if the Liberals had been doing this, I mean they would have blown a gasket.

Mark Kennedy:

Absolutely.

Heather Scoffield:

Well, they did blow a gasket over the whole sponsorship scandal which was also you know, not—

Tom Clark:

Public money for you know—

Heather Scoffield:

Not exactly the same thing but public money you know, that was misspent on promoting the Liberal Party. So, we’re now seeing the Liberal Party come back at the Conservatives on this, you know during the hockey playoffs, we had the Conservative government’s Economic Action Plan ads and then we also had the Liberal ads saying do you really want your money spent on this kind of thing?

Mark Kennedy:

Politics is full of ironies and the irony here now in 2015, ten years after 2005, when Paul Martin was there, they went into that campaign, the Tories went into that campaign promising transparency and accountability. Those were the words they campaign on, that’s what Stephen Harper came to office promising and every government, when it gets long in the tooth, begins to look as though it’s way too comfortable. They do not want that right now. They need to guard against it. They really, really do.

Tom Clark:

There’s another thing that happened last week that I want to get your views on. The government in a sense wrote a law and then backdated it to material a change what could happen in this case, it was apparently or possibly protecting people from prosecution because they backdated a law. Somebody said, is that even legal? Mark?

Mark Kennedy:

You know, in some ways its complex and other ways, it’s simple. We have an information commissioner coming up with a special report which essentially says the government is bringing in a new law, part of an omnibus bill to essentially allow the RCMP to evade criminal prosecution for something it should not have done. So, what’s the allegation? We have a government saying the police can break the law retroactively and then get away with it. Do we want to have a government going into a campaign with that allegation hanging over its head because once again, all it does is it leads to the perception that they think they can get away with anything because they’re in power.

Heather Scoffield:

It’s also, it is complicated though. It’s a hard story to tell and then you know, we’ve seen in the last couple of days, the Conservative response to it has been it’s we have to do this. It’s the gun registry, we’ve got to obliterate all remaining traces of that and then they’re making a virtue out of that.

Tom Clark:

Can I just interrupt for—I just want to interrupt for a second for the sake of people who haven’t been following the story minutely. It is about a request under the Access to Information Act, somebody wanted the details of the gun registry. The bill had not yet been passed by Parliament. It hadn’t been proclaimed at that point. The RCMP not only refused to give out the information but they destroyed the information. And you’re right Heather, the government said at the time, well the RCMP was just expressing the will of the majority Parliament.

Heather Scoffield:

Um-hum, but the problem is, that the Parliament hadn’t voted on that yet so the RCMP jumped the gun or pre-presumed that these laws would be passed and that they would apply retroactively and that’s quite a presumption to make.

Mark Kennedy:

And the information Commission is saying you know, this sets a real precedent. What happen, and again, she used the example, what happens if we have an election coming forward and there’s an example of electoral fraud? What is to stop a future from government from saying what happened in that campaign six months ago, you can ignore it because we’re now going to pass a law that says it doesn’t apply.

Heather Scoffield:

Yeah.

Tom Clark:

And, as always, you know governments might want to think that at some point they’re not going to be government and the other team is going to be government and look at the precedent that they’ve set for future governments and what they can get away with, in a sense.

Just in a couple of minutes that we’ve got left, at the end of the week, Canada decided that it was going to ignore what Stephen Harper said. Stephen Harper’s own government said, “Well we will match the United States for greenhouse gas emission targets.” Remember a few weeks ago he said, “We wouldn’t.” Well, now apparently we are. It seems to be an ambitious target: 30 per cent by 2030. Does this put to rest, at least during the campaign, the whole issue of the Conservatives not doing enough on climate change?

Heather Scoffield:

Not at all.

Mark Kennedy:

No. No.

Heather Scoffield:

Not at all, I mean I think just to clarify, I think they said a few weeks ago that they’re target would be different, not necessarily more or less ambitious but different from the United States, which it is.

Tom Clark:

I think by a per cent.

Heather Scoffield:

Yeah. I mean yeah, you’ve have to do some math there which we won’t risk right now. Um—

Mark Kennedy:

Our government is saying we take five years longer than the US is saying to various levels. And the issue here, I think, will be on the campaign trail, do you believe the Tories? Do they have credibility after the record of the last few years?

Heather Scoffield:

Right, because our less ambitious target, we’re not even anywhere close to getting that right now, so—

Tom Clark:

And that was 17 per cent by 2020.

Heather Scoffield:

Right.

Mark Kennedy:

Yeah.

Tom Clark:

And, we’ve already informed the United Nations that we’re not going to meet that goal.

Heather Scoffield:

I don’t see how we possibly can unless they start spending a gazillion dollars on public infrastructure. They’re spending some but we’d have to take some really, really dramatic steps in order to get even close to that target. And so to make it, I mean they’ve given themselves more time but they’ve given themselves also a steeper target and you know—so I think the question immediately becomes: do you have any credibility on this and how on earth are you going to do it if you haven’t really made a significant step already?

Mark Kennedy:

You know to step back—to borrow a phrase from someone else, our finance minister, Stephen Harper may have a grandchild by then, you know? And, I think you know where I’m going. The point is, 2030 is a long time from now and Canadians may ask themselves, how and I to know that the promise this government is making now, will actually be accomplished so far from now?

Tom Clark:

On that question, I will thank you very much for being here. Mark Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen, Heather Scoffield of the Canadian Press, thanks very much for your insights, I appreciate it.

Mark Kennedy:

Great being here.

Tom Clark:

Well, coming up after the break, we’ll talk to MP Michael Chong about his plea to his colleagues in the Senate.

Michael Chong: “If the bill is not passed into law before the end of June, it will die.”

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back. Well, two and a half months ago, after a lot of debate, amendment and compromise, Michael Chong’s bill to reform Parliament received overwhelming support in the House of Commons from all parties. But now, Chong is begging the Senate to pass the bill in the next few weeks because if they don’t, it dies.

Joining me now from Toronto is Conservative MP Michael Chong. Mr. Chong,x good to have you here. Have you got any hope that this bill is going to pass before Parliament rises?

Michael Chong:

I do, and I’m going to work right to the end. There remains five weeks in the sitting calendar for the Senate to pass the bill. That’s plenty of time. As you know Tom, Bill C-51, the government’s huge Anti-Terrorism bill just passed the House of Commons last week, Wednesday. It will be through the Senate in a matter of mere weeks so there’s no reason why the Senate can’t pass the Reform Act which is only six or seven pages by the end of June. The question isn’t whether or not there’s enough time, the question is whether or not the Senate has the will to pass the bill.

Tom Clark:

Yeah, and that’s a point because the Senate has said to us, look there’s nothing unusual about the length of time it’s taken to deal with this bill and besides which there’s nothing that the Senate can do to prioritize the bill, in other words, to move it up the list. Do you buy any of that?

Michael Chong:

No I don’t. The Senate’s had the bill since the beginning of March. It wasn’t until this week that they actually moved it past the first stage and adopted it at second reading to send it to the committee. They did little with this bill, if anything, in March and April, and it’s only since the public’s become aware of their stall and delay tactics that they’ve started to move on the bill.

Tom Clark:

Okay, so the Conservatives control the Senate, why are they doing this?

Michael Chong:

Well, it’s both Conservative and Liberal senators that are stalling the bill and there’s different reasons why they’re voicing their opposition. But at the end of the day, they have no grounds on which to either amend, stall or delay this bill. This is a bill about the democratic reform of the elected House of Commons. The unelected Senate has no business in delaying a Democratic Reform bill of the House of Commons.

Tom Clark:

But Michael, is there a sort of, in your mind, is there sort of a conspiracy to derail this bill by not passing it, letting it die and it just all goes away?

Michael Chong:

I don’t know what motivates certain senators to oppose this democratic reform bill. What I can say is that the concerns they voiced to me and publically to the media are unfounded. It’s based on either misunderstanding of our system of government or it’s based on frankly basely reasons. At the end of the day, our constitution sets up an elected House of Commons and a Senate and in respect of the way these two chambers govern themselves in our Parliament, they’re independent of each other. And on February 25^th, the elected House of Commons based on the feedback that elected MPs heard from Canadians, overwhelmingly passed this bill. And the Senate needs to respect the constitutional independence of the House of Commons. It needs to pass this bill before the end of June.

Tom Clark:

Yeah, and I’m wondering, in your mind, what are the political consequences of this bill dying, which is a very real possibility. Can it be brought back and more specifically, because of the support it received from all parties in the House, do you think that perhaps a future NDP government or a future Liberal government may bring it back? Is there any redemption for this bill if it dies?

Michael Chong:

I think there would be crisis of confidence in the Senate if the Senate were not to pass this bill before the end of June. You know, it’s no secret that the Senate’s reputation is at an all-time low because of the recent scandals. I think if the Senate were not to pass this bill before the end of June, it would further diminish the very legitimacy of the Senate in the eyes of Canadians and that would be a terrible thing. So, I think there would be a crisis if the Senate rejected a Democratic Reform bill of the elected House of Commons in the dying days of this Parliament. There’s plenty of time for the Senate to pass this bill. They need to get on with the job and they need to pass it before the end of June.

Tom Clark:

Michael Chong awfully good having you on the show this morning, thanks very much for being here.

Michael Chong:

Thanks for having me.

Tom Clark:

Well that’s our show for this week. Boy, nothing says Canada better than May 2-4 and remember, the long weekend ain’t over yet. Enjoy it and we’ll see you back here next Sunday. Have a great week.