The comments by former Auditor General Sheila Fraser are drawing some fire because Fraser is part of the advisory board to Elections Canada that Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand put together to help them on a number of issues facing the organisation and our country’s democratic processes in general. Pierre Poilievre and Tom Lukiwski seemed to assert that Fraser was speaking on behalf of Elections Canada, especially as she is being paid for this advisory work, which is really little more than trying to muddy the issue in order to try and defend his increasingly indefensible position. Meanwhile, Senator Hugh Segal, who is also on the same advisory board, thinks that both sides are going overboard and that everybody “needs to take a Valium.” Segal is looking for both sides to put some water in their wine, and for some amendments to come out of the process, which may ultimately wind up happening in the Senate, where Conservative senators are not all that keen on the bill in its current form.
Justin Trudeau made a rather dull interview with a Farsi-language outlet where he said that Harper plays foreign policy – such as Israel or Ukraine issues – for domestic benefit, and that Harper seems to have difficulty distinguishing between the Iranian people and the regime. But to hear the Conservatives hysterically tell the tale, Trudeau apparently said that he was moving away from support for Israel and is putting his support behind the Iranian regime, and some of them even made press releases out of their PMO-authored scripts. Because the torque machine wasn’t doing overtime enough before. One has to wonder if any apologies will be forthcoming for the gross distortions, but I sincerely doubt it.
Experts are conflicted about the Conservatives’ Victims Bill of Rights, some saying it’s a good step, others saying that it will raise expectations that won’t be met, and could backfire. Brent Rathgeber blogs that the bill doesn’t really live up to its name, and despite its few good parts, on the whole it opens up a whole new can of worms (such as with the spousal testimony provisions), and doesn’t address the real problems of our under-resourced court system.
National Defence insists that procurement is going a-okay, everything is shipshape, nothing to see here. I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing, and it kind of hurts a little.
John Geddes eviscerates Leona Aglukkaq’s claims of greenhouse gas reductions, all of which are fictional numbers based on this fantasy notion of what those emissions might have been if the Liberals had stayed in power. That number was a projection of what emissions might have been if no government had taken any reduction actions in 2005 (which the Liberals were actually doing), and most of the actual reductions have come from Ontario’s phasing out of coal-power generation, nothing to do with the federal government.
James Moore unveiled the Digital Canada 150 strategy last night, the title of which is a reminder that they are trying to link the Internet as being the connection our day as the railway was in 1867, as they paint themselves in sesquicentennial glory. The strategy involves a new Digital Privacy Act (and we’ll see how Orwellian that title is given the government’s continued attempts at trying to get at lawful access), and money for rural high-speed Internet.
On the Eve Adams/Dimitri Soudas file, Maclean’s looks deeper into Adams’ past, and her past misdeeds as a city councillor in Mississauga, and her naked ambition that hasn’t always made her a lot of friends. Stephen Maher writes that the pair were out-hustled in the founding of the new riding association, and that it all raises those familiar questions about Stephen Harper’s judgement. Andrew Coyne gleefully mocks Soudas’ claims that he did it all for love, and points out that these kinds of stories we’re seeing are showing that local riding associations aren’t in a mood to take the old top-down tactics that were once the norm.
Ed Fast has announced a six-day trade mission to China next month.
Laurie Hawn plans to introduce a Private Member’s Bill that will give veterans the right to access their own medical records – something they don’t currently have.
The Senate will soon start posting more information about committee travel, but there are concerns that doing it too fast and too frequently will wind up being disruptive, while other Senators are starting to grumble that the media is starting to dictate Senate operations.
What’s that? Fixed election dates not only are useless in a parliamentary system, but the concern for their need was really overblown and without any actual evidence? You don’t say!
Susan Delacourt is heartened by the recent show of a lack of tolerance for political bullying – albeit only within party ranks – but doesn’t expect it to last the closer we get to an election.
The Canadian Press looks into the personal gifts that Harper received from Vladimir Putin during various meetings and summits, seeing as tensions are now high between the two leaders.
And Defence Minister Rob Nicholson misheard a friendly softball question about military exercises at committee and started answering about physical exercise for soldiers before a staffer wrote a note to stop him.