Last week, Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca announced that if he was able to form a government after the provincial election in June, he would ban handguns almost immediately.
 
His pledge was rightly taken to task by Matt Gurney on TVO.org and Robyn Urback in the Globe and Mail.
 
The authors made two similar arguments.
 
First, banning (legal) handguns will not reduce gun crime very much because the overwhelming majority of handguns used in violent crimes are smuggled into Canada illegally from the United States.
 
So, when it comes to violent crime in Canada, legal handgun owners aren’t the problem.
 
Second, as Urback puts it, “Mr. Del Duca’s announcement is a crass political move that exploits the fears of those unfamiliar with Canada’s existing firearms laws to create a divisive wedge issue out of thin air” at a time when Ontarians have serious challenges to be thinking about, like the state of our health care system.
 
In Gurney’s words: “And after the past four years, it is absolutely inexplicable that the Liberals have seized on this as a splashy, hyped-up pre-election announcement. This is what they think the people of Ontario care about right now?”
 
I can’t disagree, but it seems to me that both authors are underselling how disappointing this policy proposal really is.
 
Surely, the Liberals are aware that the vast majority of gun deaths in Canada are suicides, most of which affect older men living in rural areas.
 
As a result, the serious progressive argument in favour of gun control has moved away from viewing gun violence in criminal terms and towards seeing it instead as a public health issue.
 
Here is how Queen’s University’s Dr. Michelle Cohen explained it in an Ottawa Citizen article in 2019:
 
“Suicide is often an impulsive act, and when a weapon as effective as a gun is available, the likelihood of completed suicide rises dramatically. Simply having a gun in the home increases the risk of death by suicide… Guns must be included in mental health policy if we are serious about reducing suicide deaths.”
 
She goes on to note the role of guns in gender-based violence, and their particular impact on rural and Indigenous women.
 
Based on my admittedly limited reading, I don’t think we have enough data yet to determine the best public health response to the proliferation of handguns in Ontario, but I’m sure that the Liberals’ proposal won’t get us closer to a solution.
 
What’s more, by framing gun control as a criminal issue, the Liberals have made it even harder to begin a genuinely productive conversation about an ever-increasing mental health crisis in Ontario that is in desperate need of new ideas.
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For recent peer-reviewed research on firearm deaths in Ontario, see this article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by David Gomez, Natasha Saunders, Brittany Greene, Robin Santiago, Najma Ahmed and Nancy N. Baxter. On some of the challenges with the federal Liberals’ gun policy, see this piece by Gurney.
 
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A couple of weeks ago, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion Carla Qualtrough announced a number of significant changes to Canada’s temporary foreign workers program.
 
The changes are meant to respond to the concerns of businesses like TBM Service Group, whose CEO, Val Ramanand, wrote about the organization’s challenges in a recent article in the Financial Post.
 
Ramanand’s cleaning company has job openings that “have been advertised widely across Canada but have gone unfilled.”
 
Meanwhile, there are workers from El Salvador ready and willing to take the jobs.
 
TBM Service Group has always treated such temporary foreign workers respectfully:
 
“We help them find housing and provide a two-year work permit, English-as-a-second-language courses, and a starting wage of $16.50 an hour on a full-time schedule, $1.50 higher than minimum wage.
 
We pay all our new workers’ travel costs and fees and sign a Spanish-language contract with them approved by El Salvador’s labour ministry. This contract outlines their rights as employees in Canada.”
 
Still, Ramanand identifies two problems.
 
For one, Ottawa has traditionally limited temporary foreign workers at companies like TBM to 10% of the total workforce, and TBM needs “to be able to fill 30% of our jobs with migrant workers to meet our capacity and focus on growth.”
 
Second, when the temporary visas expire, the workers have to return home and TBM must restart the recruitment process from scratch.
 
Ramanand would prefer that Ottawa “offer more of these workers a path to permanent residency while they are here, rather than forcing them to return home to reapply.”
 
Qualtrough has now relaxed a number of rules on the hiring of temporary foreign workers, which should meet Ramanand’s first concern. (She has also pledged to increase the scrutiny applied to employers of such workers to discourage exploitation.)
 
I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that she is doing much about the second issue.
 
Although I understand the minister’s action from a political point of view – the economy is operating at full employment, the jobs need to be filled immediately, and there aren’t enough willing Canadians to do them – it seems to me that her solution addresses the wrong problem.
 
As Ramanand concedes at the end of his article, the real issue facing his company is that “There is a shortage of labour for these jobs in Canada at current wages.”
 
If you believe in a market-based economy, if a company can’t hire enough employees at “current wages” for jobs that clearly aren’t temporary – if they were, Ramanand’s complaint about the need to replace the workers who must return home when their visas expire would be moot – then the company should improve its compensation package.
 
If doing so isn’t economically feasible, then there is a problem with the business plan.
 
Allowing companies to hire workers from other countries at wages that Canadians apparently (based on their unwillingness to take the jobs) consider exploitative, and then denying them a path to citizenship, is shameful.
 
It also discourages these individuals – some of whom might eventually find another way to immigrate permanently – from integrating into Canadian society while they are here.
 
Far better, and in keeping with the prime minister’s claim that “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” would be to offer anyone who is hired into a fulltime position a transparent path to permanent residence.
 
What’s puzzling to me is that the government seems to recognize that an excess of temporary foreign workers is a bad idea.
 
Qualtrough’s press release notes that, with the new changes, such workers, which “made up less than 0.4% of the Canadian workforce [in 2020] … will continue to make up a small percentage of our workforce.”
 
So if you know that the temporary foreign workers program is a problem, and you’re planning massive increases to immigration anyways, why make such workers temporary at all?
 
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For one of many criticisms of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, see this older study from the CD Howe Institute. For something more academicky, try this article by Vivianne Landry et al.
 
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​Last week, the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s Wesley Wark published an article in The Globe and Mail calling on Ottawa to close the Russian embassy, recall the Canadian ambassador from Moscow, and reduce the staff at the Canadian embassy “to a small consular establishment.”
 
Wark finds it “repugnant” that Ottawa continues to maintain diplomatic relations with a country whose military is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
 
He also does not believe that the staff at the Canadian embassy in Moscow can do much of anything right now.
 
“There are no back channels to call into play,” he contends, “no helpful fixer role to be played.”
 
Moreover, whereas our EU allies have expelled over 230 Russian officials since Ukraine was attacked, Canada has not expelled any.
 
When reporters asked Prime Minister Trudeau about the idea, he noted that Russia would likely respond similarly, and he wasn’t sure whether “the symbolic gesture of excluding Russian diplomats from what they are doing in Canada is worth the cost of losing our diplomats in Moscow.”
 
As for Canadian officials in Russia being ineffective, the prime minister claimed they were “giving us feedback on what the Russian people are doing, connecting with civil society and understanding and supporting Canadians and others who happen to be in Russia at this time.”
 
I would make Trudeau's case somewhat differently:
 
Canadian interests are best served within an international system based upon transparent and predictable rules and laws.
 
We can’t compete when more powerful states make up the rules as they go along; we do better when we can plan ahead.
 
A sudden closure of the Russian embassy in Ottawa would undermine our commitment to a predictable diplomatic order.
 
If Russian aggression was the problem, why didn’t we order the embassy closed a month ago?
 
If Russian war crimes were the reason, why does Syria still have an embassy in Ottawa?
 
To me, the fact that our EU allies are reducing their missions in Moscow makes the case to stay the course even more compelling.
 
By remaining in Moscow, Canadian diplomats can augment the EU’s consular capacity should EU citizens in Russia become endangered.
 
Such capacity matters.

Recall just two years ago, when Iran shot down Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752, killing 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
 
Having shuttered our embassy in 2012, Ottawa’s response was slowed by the need to rely on Italy to coordinate on its behalf.
 
To his credit, Wark does call for Canada to maintain a bare-bones consular presence in Russia, but he seems to assume that Moscow will allow that to happen.
 
I’m not so sure.
 
Twice in the last five years, Canadian adversaries have reacted disproportionately to Ottawa’s diplomatic actions.
 
Consider Saudi Arabia’s over-the-top response to a Tweet from Global Affairs Canada in August 2018.
 
Or Chinese hostage diplomacy in the aftermath of Canada’s arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou in fulfillment of a US extradition request.
 
It seems to me that an order to close the Russian Embassy in Ottawa could just as easily lead Moscow to not only close ours right back, eliminating consular access for Canadians in need, but also take further steps to punish innocent Canadians arbitrarily.
 
All of this is not to say that Russian diplomats in Canada should get a free pass. Rather, Ottawa should respond to any inappropriate Russian activity on a case-by-case basis.
 
So, by all means, order individual Russian representatives responsible for Tweeting out disinformation to go home, but do so because they violated Canadian policy “against manipulated, deceptively altered or fabricated media.”
 
Such a measured, transparent move would preserve our interest in a stable and predictable international order as well as Ottawa’s capacity to support Canadians (and others) in Russia as needed.
 
In sum, now is not the time to take unnecessary diplomatic risks so that we can feel better inside.
 
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On the disproportionate diplomatic responses that Canada has faced of late, see this thoughtful piece by the University of Ottawa’s Roland Paris.
 
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Last week, Canada’s former chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a case that focused on whether he had pressured a subordinate, Major Kellie Brennan, to lie to military police about their long-term sexual relationship.
 
As per his plea agreement, he was granted a conditional discharge:
 
In exchange for his full confession, the successful completion of a year of probation (including a communications ban with Brennan on issues other than care for the child they had together), the payment of child support, and 80 hours of community service, Vance will emerge from the ordeal without a criminal record.
 
According to reports from the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden noted that while Vance’s actions were “serious,” it appeared to him that “other than this, [he] was a man of good character.”
 
“I don’t feel it is necessary to burden you with a criminal conviction,” Wadden added, “because I feel that will allow you now to go on and to make further contributions to society.”
 
The following day, the Post’s Sabrina Maddeaux offered a scathing critique of the case’s outcome:
 
“The ongoing saga of retired general and ex-defence chief Jonathan Vance is a prime example of how our courts fail the vulnerable while tipping the scales of justice in favour of the wealthy, the decorated and the male.
 
… Vance was allowed to walk away from his sole criminal charge with what can’t even be described as a slap on the wrist. Rather, the presiding judge practically held his hand in solidarity.”
 
Although I understand Maddeaux’s reaction, I wonder whether one element of the outcome might be more complicated than she lets on.
 
Consider the sense of urgency evident in this excerpt from Major Brennan’s victim impact statement: “I don’t want him to have any power over me or the ability to influence me in my lifetime. I want to live free of fear of ever doing anything he tells me to do. I want to be free, heal, and keep my children safe, happy, and look to the future.”
 
The plea agreement seems to allow Major Brennan to begin her healing process sooner than would otherwise have been possible.
 
If she supported it, as Crown attorney Mark Holmes says she did, then I can see why the Crown might have chosen to close the case quickly, even if that meant agreeing to a lighter sentence than may have been possible otherwise.
 
On the other hand, I’m really struggling to understand Justice Wadden’s comments.
 
Presumably, he could have justified his decision to accept the plea by noting that both sides had agreed to it.
 
How could he not realize that his reflections on Vance’s character were, at the very least, remarkably insensitive – at a time when the cultural challenges facing the Canadian Armed Forces make such insensitivity inexcusable?
 
Back in 2017, Conservative MP Rona Ambrose introduced a private member’s bill which sought to compel any lawyer that wanted to become a judge to take a course in sexual assault law.
 
The bill was a response to Federal Court Justice Robin Camp’s conduct in a 2014 sexual assault trial, during which he asked the victim why she didn’t just keep her “knees together” to prevent the assault.
 
Ambrose’s bill died prior to the 2019 election, but was re-introduced as government legislation in February 2020. (I believed it died again last summer.)
 
The bill has always made me nervous.
 
As my former colleague at Massey College, Gib van Ert, has argued, taking responsibility for judicial training out of the hands of the arms-length Canadian Judicial Council risks politicizing the legal process and “undermining public confidence in our judges’ independence from government.”
 
The Vance case is forcing me to reconsider that view.
 
It’s been five years since Camp was forced to resign. The Canadian Judicial Council has had plenty of time to improve its education programs on its own yet, clearly, more still needs to be done.
 
I can only hope that members of the legal profession recognize how critical it is that they get this right, and soon.
 
If not, it will be hard to criticize Ottawa for stepping in.
 
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On culture and the Canadian Armed Forces, there are some good essays in Alistair Edgar, Rupinder Mangat, and Bessma Momani’s Strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces through Diversity and Inclusion.
 
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