Roundup: Backfiring Conservative traps

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Once again, Conservative operatives – and their friends at Sun News Network – have been too clever for their own good. While trying to get the Liberal candidate from Banff–Airdrie on tape saying something incriminating, a Conservative staffer recorded someone else talking smack about their childcare tax credits, and then tried to claim it was the candidate. This made the Twitter and Facebook rounds, Members’ Statements in the Commons, and even backbench suck-up questions about this “beer-and-popcorn” statement made by said candidate. Only, as it turned out, it was someone else who said it, and admitted to saying it, even after said candidate was mocked for denying that he said it, and how we have cabinet ministers with egg on their faces – though I have yet to see an apology for any of the insinuations or mocking made over social media. Given that Conservative – and Sun News Network – operatives have been trying this record-and-embarrass tactic a few times before (such as the nuanced explanation that retired General Leslie made on the situation in Gaza which they tried to spin completely to distortion), one has to wonder about the detrimental impact this will have on open political discourse in this country. Nobody wants candidates to turn into scripted robots, but these kinds of “gotcha” tactics are encouraging just that.

Good reads:

  • One of the NDP MPs who made the harassment allegations has spoken to Huffington Post about what happened to her, and the specific allegations against Massimo Pacetti. It looks like Justin Trueau is about to name a former judge or litigator to investigate the harassment allegations against the two suspended MPs, but it remains to be seen if the NDP MPs who made the allegations will cooperate.
  • It cost the government $2.9 million to split the Commissioner of Elections from Elections Canada and move him over to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
  • The PM announced $6 billion in new infrastructure spending over the next three years, but there are questions as to how much of this is actual new money.
  • The bill on modernizing the CSIS Act may have civil liberties concerns, but the minister won’t say if the Department of Justice gave it constitutional clearance, and the committee won’t let the Privacy Commissioner speak to it.
  • Loopholes in the Tax Free Savings Accounts legislation could mean that wealthy seniors could receive income-tested Old Age Security or Guaranteed Income Supplements payments intended for poor seniors.
  • A memo to raise the alert level was issued five days before the Ottawa shooting, which raises questions about whether additional protocols weren’t followed on the day it happened.
  • Stephen Gordon looks at the increase in the concentration of income in the one percent in Canada and tries to explain it, but finds few answers.
  • Jen Gerson analyses what happened in Alberta yesterday where two Wildrose MPs crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives. (Floor crossings to the government are a long and proud tradition in the one-party state of Alberta, and I remember a few during my time as a page in the legislature there).

Odds and ends:

While Peter MacKay joked that he might consider Irwin Cotler to be the next Supreme Court Justice from Quebec, Cotler is 74 and even if that wasn’t a factor said he wouldn’t do it anyway.