Olivia Chow has garnered enough support to recall the Commons transport committee on Tuesday to hold emergency meetings on rail safety, although I’m still not sure what they’ll accomplish other than the feeling that they’re seen to be doing something, even though there are still very few facts on the table as to what actually happened in Lac-Mégantic. Meanwhile, the Transportation Safety Board tabled their annual report to Parliament, and lamented the lack of expediency by which Transport Canada implements their regulations, something Lisa Raitt is now calling on the department to do.
The Justice Department has completed its report on Cyberbullying and the Non-Consensual Distribution of Intimate Images, and finds that there are places where the Criminal Code could be modernised. Peter MacKay says that he’s going to study the report, which means that there could be some kind of new legislation related to it in the fall. Of course, what is also likely to be in that legislation are the same kinds of Internet surveillance that everyone balked at when Vic Toews said it was about hunting down child pornographers, only this time it’ll be wrapped up in images of Rehtaeh Parsons,
Despite John Ivison telling us that Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall plans to put forward Senate abolition legislation, Wall’s office denies it (to which Ivison maintains that Wall simply hasn’t told caucus yet). I’m glad that Wall has nothing better to do than engage in constitutional vandalism, though it makes me wonder what he’s trying to distract our attention away from. And yes, the other premiers are downplaying that this will come up at their retreat next week, given that they have other priorities to deal with. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal continues to call for a national referendum on the Senate, but with an eye that it’ll get people involved in reforming the Upper Chamber, and as much as I respect Segal, I suspect that he’s putting way too much faith in his fellow Canadians that such a plan would result in much in the way of intelligent discussion.
The Supreme Court handed down a decision around the test to be used by refugee adjudicators when it comes to claimants who may be complicit in war crimes. The Court agreed unanimously that guilt by association was not an acceptable test, and order the Immigration and Refugee Board to rehear the claim put before them, with this new test in mind.
The Davie shipyards in Quebec want the government to know that they’re totally ready to pick up the slack on shipbuilding contracts that the other yards can’t handle. You know, just in case.
US disclosure laws give us a look at the top salaries in the Canada Council for the Arts. Meanwhile, the five top-paid executives at the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, a Crown corporation, had their compensation top out at $16 million in 2013. This compensation isn’t coming from taxpayers, however, but from the returns of their pension plan investments.
Susan Delacourt writes about the real “enemies list” employed by the government, and in fact all political parties – their voter identification databases, which aren’t subject to the same privacy laws as other databases in the country.
And iPolitics gives you the satirical ministerial transition guide. For some reason, it seems to involve a lot of tears.