Day two of the Senate reference hearings at the Supreme Court saw submissions from the rest of the provinces and territories (minus the Yukon) – some of whom had appallingly bad arguments, which the Justices picked apart to their logical ends – as well as Francophone groups and a couple of senators. The Francophone groups, in particular those outside of Quebec, pointed out the Senate’s role in protecting linguistic minorities that wouldn’t stand up the same way during elections. Senator Serge Joyal, however, had the most eloquent of all submissions so far, and as someone who was in the room when they drafted the constitution in 1982 and who helped draft the amending formula to it, he provided some much needed perspective, as well as on the entrenchment of the system of constitutional monarchy and Responsible Government that included two chambers in 1982 (hence why there is no mechanism to abolish the Senate – because it was unthinkable). Paul Wells points out that regardless of the arguments made to date, there is pretty much no chance that the Senate could be abolished, and that the reforms couldn’t happen without a constitutional amendment. Senator Elaine McCoy weighs in after the first day’s submissions, and calls out the government’s reform plans as red herrings.
A publication ban was mostly lifted on the misleading Robocall case in Guelph, where we now find out that six witnesses say that Michael Sona bragged about making the misleading robocalls. Sona has previously disavowed this and insinuated that they were coached by party lawyer Arthur Hamilton for their testimonies. The investigator noted that Hamilton brought all six witnesses to him, and none of them objected to Hamilton’s presence during the interviews.
We’re adding a second C-17 to the DART team deployed to the Philippines to assist with the ravages of the typhoon. Medical supplies and a field hospital are on the way, and the government is talking about easing immigration restrictions for the families of those affected (but that does seem to be a famous last line by this point).
The federal government allowed some $10 billion in spending to lapse in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, most of it from Transport and National Defence. This fuels the fire of accusations of how the government is paying down the deficit with under-spending rather than outright cuts.
What’s that? Peter MacKay is ramping up the rhetoric that judges are failing to uphold the law after mandatory minimums were struck down? You don’t say!
Joe Oliver plans to push back against the European fuel quality directives, saying that there are flaws in which the way their study was conducted.
The government’s decision to block pharmaceutical heroin for clinical purposes is headed to the courts. Could this be Insite part two?
The planned new heavy icebreaker will cost twice as much to build as originally estimated, up to $1.3 billion from the $720 million estimated in 2008. Let’s also not forget that they won’t even start building it until 2018 because of a bottleneck at the assigned shipyard.
The Public Service Commission audited itself, found it needed improvement, and promised itself that it would do better. The exercise, apparently, provided valuable insight into the organisation, for what it’s worth.
Ruh-roh! Jason Kenney held a fundraiser in Scarborough – for his Calgary riding – and got a number of $1000 donations, and those same donors then donated another $1000 to Paul Calandra’s riding association, in violation of Elections Canada rules. No word if Kenney’s riding association is going to refund their ill-gotten gains.
The Prime Minister gets mail! 1.7 million items over the last fiscal year, of which 54,581 items were responded to. Some of those letters were people angry about the embattled Senators and demanding that they be removed without pay – as though the PM had that power. And lo and behold, he engineered a scheme to make that happen, damaging the Senate’s independence in the process. So, well done there!
BC may have five conditions before they’ll accept the Northern Gateway pipeline, but Ontario has announced that they’ll have six guiding principles for the assessment of the Energy East pipeline.
In both the Toronto Centre and Bourassa by-elections, the sniping between Liberals and NDP is getting pretty intense. There was also a story out about how Chrystia Freeland oversaw job losses during her time at Thompson Reuters – err, except the story also explicitly says that these job losses weren’t her decision, so why this is supposed to be news – other than her opponents trying to paint her – I’m not entirely sure.
And Senator Brazeau jokes over the Twitter Machine that he’s unemployed and ready for hire to talk about how things work in the PMO. At least, we think he was joking.