As part of the pledge not to raise personal taxes should he form government, Thomas Mulcair has added one that he would never appoint a senator. Never mind that he would be constitutionally bound to do so as it’s a listed imperative in the text, or that the mounting number of absences would start to grind the legislative process to a slow halt, or the fact that once a future government does start making appointments again, it’ll create a further shock to the system that will cause more problems down the road. But hey, it’s easy to make facile promises without thinking about them, right? Paul Wells parses this promise as well as Mulcair’s other promises, like biannual first ministers meetings, to get a glimpse of what Mulcair’s emerging constitutional strategy might look like. Michael Den Tandt looks at Mulcair’s economic promises and pokes holes in the conceits that they can grow the economy and attract investment while increasing taxes on corporations, especially if all of our pension plans are dependent on those corporations turning a profit.
As part of the Royal Tour in PEI, Prince Charles spoke about how the birth of his grandson made his environmental activism all the more poignant, and then he toured a provincial park as part of it. (The best part was that upon seeing two kayaks in the river he remarked, “It’s mating season.”) Not that the stop in PEI wasn’t without a hiccup, as the concert honouring their arrival had a bad female impersonator (as I suspect it wasn’t an actual drag queen) give an impression of Her Majesty, to which Charles offered a slow clap, while Camilla gave an epic glare. Who thought that was going to go over well? (They say they cleared it with Clarence House, but maybe they just couldn’t tell how poorly the jokes would land). Charles and Camilla have now landed in Winnipeg for the final leg of the tour. Patricia Treble compares the royal tours undertaken by Charles and Camilla, and those of Will and Kate, and finds that Charles and Camilla on average work twice as hard on theirs.
While it should be no surprise that Paul Martin and Joe Clark say that Stephen Harper is in the wrong for picking a fight with the Chief Justice, an interview with Jean Chrétien’s former chief of staff pointed out that there was an instance in the past where Chief Justice Laskin lobbied against the appointment of Bertha Wilson to the Court, which was certainly not what Justice McLachlin did, and for which we need to keep in mind.
The government is apparently selling off silver pieces from the Parliamentary Dining Room at bargain prices, but won’t say why.
Maxime Bernier seems to think that a federal Liberal victory in 2015 would reignite the separatist cause in Quebec, though to be fair, he also blasted the nationalist cause in Quebec for nursing old grudges. He also annoyed the provincial Liberal finance minister by portraying Quebec as always begging Ottawa for more. So really, that went well.
Because apparently there was nothing better to do, Power & Politics continued to poke at the abortion story and got Jim Karygiannis to decry that the party’s new abortion policy – you know, which they voted on in 2012 at a policy convention and which the leader is enforcing – will hurt the party and alienate all of these religious groups and so on. But really – have we not milked this non-story long enough?
The Canada-China FIPA will be before the Federal Court of Appeal as a BC First Nation tries to challenge it based on a number of wild hypothetical situations.
New climate change research is showing that it is not happening in a uniform manner, but rather that it is taking place in pockets, meaning that more regional approaches to deal with it will be needed.
Senator Vern White has decided that now isn’t the time to run for the Commons after all. But it’s just a matter of timing more than anything else, he stresses.
Stephen Harper has named Senator Raynell Andreychuk and former Ontario premier Mike Harris as the leaders of our election monitoring mission to Ukraine. Andreychuk has a lot of experience in this field, and was a former judge and diplomat, it should be noted.
A Canadian terrorism expert says that Boko Haram’s days are numbered. And no, it has nothing to do with photos with hashtags on them.
And my column this week looks at the coming debate on Michael Chong’s Reform Act and offers some reminders as to why this won’t be a panacea for our democratic woes.