Roundup: Voices from the past

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A number of has-been pro-life (and homophobic) former Liberal MPs sent out an open letter to Justin Trudeau decrying his decree that a woman’s right to choose is a Charter issue and not a matter of conscience. They decried it as “anti-democratic,” never mind the fact that this was the policy voted on by the party’s membership during the policy convention before Trudeau won the leadership. Oops. The pedigree of these former MPs is also worth mentioning, as several of them quit the party to join the Reform Party, while others left over the same-sex marriage issue. Not surprising, most Liberals simply shrugged off the whole thing, while Trudeau tweeted out a fairly decent comeback.

Incidentally, Trudeau also had an interview with Bloomberg, where he said that the current government is too focused on tax cuts when they should put more money into infrastructure, as well as reiterating the criticisms about the EI tax credit, and that he doesn’t have a problem with the Tim Horton’s takeover by Burger King because it means we are drawing foreign investment to Canada.

A report from the Mowat Centre showed that tax agreements signed with the federal government would mean that income splitting would negatively impact provincial tax revenues – to the tune of a billion dollars a year in Ontario alone. And no, Ontario’s finance minister is not happy.

Order Paper Questions reveal the cost of ministerial satellite offices has been climbed some 70 percent during what was supposed to be a time of austerity. The NDP immediately sent out a press release decrying the “hypocrisy” of it and bemoaning the Liberals and Conservatives ganging up on them in the Board of Internal Economy, apparently not registering the fact that the Office of the Leader of the Opposition is not in fact a ministerial office, nor should it be, and their grousing is entirely misplaced.

Another Order Paper Question reveals that federal departments and agencies have been seeking all manner of subscriber data from online sites, including dating sites like Plenty of Fish or Adam4Adam, and even Disney-run children’s website Club Penguin. And yes, experts will agree that it is an incoherent mess.

Despite all of their assurances that they’re going after tax fraud and offshore tax havens, the government is laying off another 361 auditors at the CRA. Never mind the actual evidence that putting more resources into auditing will recover losses several times over the money put into it – the austerity measures roll along.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development says that our coal-fired plant regulations would have a negligible effect on greenhouse gas emissions because they only apply to new plants, and end up being less robust than the new American regulations (though the American targets are pretty foggy as well).

Part of our negotiations with Ukraine has been on the energy file, and both Canada and the US are talking about trying to get that country off of Russian oil – though the broader question of Europe being dependent on Russian gas still remains. Neither Canada nor the US has the capacity to ship energy to Ukraine currently, but it may be a longer-term goal.

There are questions about who approved Mike Tyson’s visit to Canada, seeing as he would need special permission after his rape conviction in the States.

Here is the sordid tale of a seized bulldozer that the government sold for $5555, and then had to pay $65,000 to get it back in order to get back to the original owners, and it appears to be headed for the scrap yard regardless. These are the kinds of stories that just fuel cheap outrage machines like the CTF…

Apparently mega-union Unifor won’t give a blanket endorsement to the NDP in the next federal election, simply preferring to simply defeat the Conservatives. The NDP’s relationship with Unifor was already strained after the Ontario election when they didn’t exactly support the provincial NDP either, and the federal NDP’s “unionized” staffers decided to start shopping around for a new union instead.

It looks like Liberal MP Gerry Byrne is also ready to throw in the towel and run provincially – whenever that actually happens.

Colby Cosh takes a critical eye to the NDP’s federal minimum wage proposal, and notes that based on Statistics Canada data, it applies to 416 people. And yet this is a major policy plank, the effect of which is being misreported and misrepresented.

Adam Dodek praises the Order Paper Question, and in particular Irwin Cotler’s use thereof to get answers from the government on the Supreme Court appointment process, which has been the only successful avenue to get said answers to date.

And the first of our soon-to-be-build Arctic Patrol Vessels is to be named HMCS Harry DeWolf, after a Vice-Admiral from the Second World War. This will make the whole class known as the DeWolf-class, and the rest will be named for war heroes, much as the Americans do. (It is a change, after all, from our usual practice of naming our ships after cities).