The battle for Omnibus Budget Bill 2: The Revenge is on. The Liberals have delivered three thousand amendments to the finance committee, in the full knowledge that there won’t be enough time to deal with them before it has to go back to the House, but in the hopes that procedurally, they’ll be able to deal with them there at report stage. The NDP proposed far, far fewer, but Peggy Nash says they’re more “substantive.” Elizabeth May is planning on tabling some 100 amendments of her own back in the House. Prepare for another vote-athon!
The CBC has obtained a draft copy of the government’s new foreign policy plans. Basically we want to do business with other countries at all costs, seeing as we’re being left behind. So remember the whole “we won’t sacrifice human rights on the altar of the almighty dollar” talk? Yeah, that’s now out the window.
Laura Payton delves further into those Elections Canada emails detailing the robo-call complaints in the days before the election. Elections Canada, meanwhile, is planning on public consultations around election communications – including robo-calling – in order to get a better gauge of the landscape, to suggest better fines and penalties for those who abuse them, and to see if privacy legislation needs to be extended to electoral lists.
The provinces wanted Leona Aglukkaq to use her ministerial authority to reject licensing of generic OxyContin, but true to form, Aglukkaq decided that none of this is federal responsibility, too bad for everyone else. John Geddes wonders why the government refuses to treat prescription drug abuse like they would other illicit drug abuse, despite the many requests and outright pleas to do so.
Peter Kent says that climate change is a clear and present danger. Which is why his government is putting their money into adaptation and mitigation, rather than prevention, which makes total economic sense.
Economist Stephen Gordon looks at the “one percent” and some of the reasons why their salaries got to be so high, but finds there are no easy answers as to why and what to do about it.
Aww, Peter Goldring thinks the Conservatives are trying to embarrass him because one of them made a Members’ Statement against drunk driving immediately after he gave a Members’ Statement of his own one day. No, seriously.
Justin Trudeau writes a column in favour of the CNOOC-Nexen deal (and the oil sands in general, where he will be visiting today). Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne gives some advice to the Liberals, and how they need to embrace their third-party status. Incidentally, and probably not too unsurprisingly, David McGuinty is giving the leadership a pass.
And here is your recap of last night’s political shows, featuring interviews with Alison Redford, Jim Prentice and Peter MacKay.