The Auditor General tabled his fall report yesterday morning, but unlike many a report in the past, it was pretty tame. He did kick the crap out of the audit process for the Safety Management System of our railways, and cast a withering eye on food recall systems, and emergency preparedness on First Nations reserves. He wasn’t particularly kind to the CBSA’s lapses in border security, he noted that farmers face a long wait for emergency assistance, and he was really, really unimpressed with the constant delays in implementing financial controls, but he wasn’t too tough on the shipbuilding contracts, and he generally praised CRA in dealing with tax evasion in Lichtenstein – but they need to be better prepared to deal with an increase in tax-haven cases. (Highlights here).
Pundit’s Guide dissects the by-election numbers, while Alison Crawford tries to explain some of the dynamics at play in each of the ridings. At the victory speech in Bourassa, Justin Trudeau used the line “hope is stronger than fear,” and said that the NDP is no longer the hopeful, optimistic party of Jack Layton, but the negative, dismissive party of Thomas Mulcair – which made NDP partisans completely apoplectic in outrage. Never mind that the “hope is stronger than fear” line was originally from Wilfrid Laurier, and not Layton, but whatever. Paul Wells gave a first-take last night and made a very apt observation – that if these were a “triumph” for Harper, then he can’t afford too many more. Michael Den Tandt says that the Conservatives and NDP need to stop kidding themselves, and realise that Trudeau obviously has something that’s working for him and they had best figure out what it is.
What’s that? Shoddy polling in provincial elections and federal by-elections may lead to polling being banned during elections? OH NOES! Whatever would we talk about instead of constantly saying, “We don’t really pay attention to polls but let’s spend the next twenty minutes talking about them anyway?” Do you think that we might actually get policy coverage? Perish the thought!
In ClusterDuff developments, the senior partner at Deloitte who Senator Gerstein was in contact with won’t be appearing at the Senate’s Internal Economy committee tomorrow. The Liberals also want Gerstein himself to appear, but Gerstein refuses to comment. The transcripts from the Internal Economy Committee meetings back in May have been released, and we can see the Conservatives pushing through the attempt to whitewash Duffy’s audit report being made, as well as Liberals on the committee finding the Deloitte conclusion that the rules around residency were unclear to be a “cop out.” A University of Ottawa law professor is launching complaints against Duffy’s lawyer as well as former PMO lawyer Benjamin Perrin. Andrew Coyne writes that believing Harper’s version of events requires a suspension of disbelief to an epic degree. Chris Selley similarly takes apart many of the competing versions of the tale that don’t make any sense as a coherent whole.
Shifting to the misleading robocalls in Guelph, a memo between the Elections Canada investigator and the Crown Prosecutor shows that said investigator used the Conservative party lawyer as a go-between with one of the witnesses on a second occasion. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
The Correctional Investigator also came out with a report yesterday that pointed to the disproportionate rise in Aboriginal and other visible minority inmates, and why the Correctional Service needs to implement more culturally sensitive programming, considering that most correctional officers treat black inmates all as gang members.
The Chairman of the Royal Canadian Mint is being accused of having set up a complex tax avoidance scheme for the descendents of former Prime Minister Arthur Meighen. No, seriously.
Aaron Wherry gives us a lengthy look at the state of Parliament as evidenced by the ClusterDuff ITO release, and in particular the PMO’s frustration that the Senate wasn’t designed to bend to the PMO’s whims, and quite accurately notes that the PMO’s control only extends as far as MPs or senators let it.
The Manitoba legislature passed a motion to launch consultations with the provinces to abolish the Senate, but it wasn’t unanimous, and this is little more than provincial NDP shenanigans who are riding on the mischief Brad Wall has started.
And someone set up this “Ask Paul Calandra” website, which is about as much fun as any Question Period recently could be.