At the end of the G20 conference in Russia, Canada is pledging another $45 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees, while Harper had more harsh words about Putin and the fact that it was unacceptable that he has a veto on Security Council taking action. But Harper also put distance to the notion that we’ll be making concessions on the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement, and said that “significant gaps” remain. Okay then. And then the biggest news of all – that Harper has basically asked Barak Obama to dictate what emissions regulations targets he wants us to set in order for the Keystone XL pipeline to be approved. It’s likely an attempt to get a firm set of numbers rather than the nebulous talk that we’re currently mired in, but so much for setting our own sovereign environmental goals and policies.
The NDP’s request for an emergency meeting of the Procedure and House Affairs committee to study their proposals on increasing transparency in the Commons has been granted and MPs will meet on Sunday, for some reason.
Joan Bryden chats with Thomas Mulcair, as he starts hitting at Trudeau after five months of ignoring him and hoping he’d go away. Paul Wells has a snarktastic column about the Trudeau/pot thing, and the road to the next election.
The new PBO says that he and his predecessor are out of options when it comes to getting that budget cut data that Thomas Mulcair requested, but they continue to try “alternate remedies to the current impasse.” We’re not sure what that means, including a return to the Federal Court, but this is likely just round one.
The Canadian Press’ continued investigation of federal political donations by those caught up in the Quebec corruption sweeps finds that most of those donations went to the Liberals – but that wasn’t surprising given that they were in power for most of those years, and when they weren’t, some more donations went to the Conservatives, but not nearly as much (also because the new spending limits had come into place). Of course the NDP, who didn’t receive any of that money, demands to know if any of the companies who donated got contracts as a result.
Routine PCO “red-lighting” of hot files showed there was no paper trail on the whole Senate expenses thing – err, because the Senate is not a government department, hence wouldn’t generate a paper trail in the bureaucracy. I’m not sure why exactly people don’t understand this. Not only that, but it’s ridiculous to suggest there would be “tipping off” when the PM is the head of the government, so his own department letting him know what is going on is “tipping him off”? Really?
The Senate Ethics Officer has agreed to look into the relationship between Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenue and his now-former assistant, and his later attempts to secure a new position for her in the Senate bureaucracy after the relationship ended.
The RCMP and the Department of Finance have dropped their respective probes into whether or not there were any leaks of the 2013 budget. It seems that part of the determination was that the information was unlikely to have affected any markets.
And Susan Delacourt wonders if Harper’s legacy will be more about what he destroyed than what he built.