The chair of the women’s forum at the Canadian Bar Association calls Peter MacKay out for the real consequences for women in the profession as they are being overlooked for judicial appointments, and that there is a need for more data on appointments, while Thomas Muclair thinks that this is more proof to demand MacKay’s resignation. Former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler, however, does the due diligence and systematically dismantles MacKay’s assertions, from his statements that law schools aren’t playing their role, to the claim that women aren’t applying, and most especially the notion that there apparently aren’t enough women who can be appointed on the basis of merit. Cotler takes MacKay to school over the issue, and it’s great to see a fact-based takedown and not more of this open letter nonsense and weird blaming that has thus far taken place.
The government has quietly been speeding up the processing time for applications by Syrian refugees – possibly because of the pressure they’ve been under on the file. One of the priority groups for the government are gays and lesbian refugees in the region, as they face the greatest risk if they remain. There are calls that Canada should look to our past experience in resettling the “boat people” of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the Joe Clark government, but there is the added awareness that there is some hesitation because Syrians by and large tend to be Muslims, and there remains post-9/11 reservations.
The House of Commons will be undergoing some renovations over the summer, including replacing two of the stained glass windows, and trying to figure out how to squeeze 30 more desks into a room that is already full. (Hint: Now is the time to rip out the desks and put in benches). As well, the Ottawa Citizen has a really cool feature on the revival of the trade of stonemasonry in Canada, sparked in part by the West Block restoration.
Here is a closer look at the impacts of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Tsilhqot’in land title.
The government is retiring two of the Challenger jets, ostensibly for cost-savings. The problem is that four of the jets in their fleet were at the end of their services lives, can’t source new parts, and have such old avionics that they can’t be flown overseas. That two of those four are grounded permanently seems less to do with cost-savings than accepting reality.
Day five of the Dean Del Mastro trial, and we hear yet more evidence that Del Mastro was trying to invoice services to outside of the writ period to keep under the spending cap. Cross-examination of the key witness began, and the defence is trying to show that much of the expense was for the voter identification software that was sold to the riding association, thus skirting the cap. They are also trying to dispute the handling of email evidence to put its authenticity into question. Del Mastro is going to take the stand at some poing (where I fully expect he’ll turn on the waterworks, which has been his MO of late).
John Baird insists that the government isn’t soft-pedalling its efforts to free Mohamed Fahmy because of our ties to Israel. Apparently people who say that blame everything on the Jews.
The government didn’t secure the domain name “economicactionplan.ca” and it was snapped up instead by the group “Shit Harper Did.” There, they’ve posted some parody Economic Action Plan™ web ads, and they’re attempting to crowd fund enough money to get them to air.
And this summer marks the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference, one of the first stepping-stones to Confederation. It was an affair fuelled by large amounts of champagne, which was actually John A Macdonald’s favoured tipple (not Scotch, like everyone seems to think). Here are some key facts, and sketches of the players involved.