Roundup: Preparing to change gears

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Today may be the final day the Senate sits – we’ll see if the Liberals are able to tie-up the “union-busting” bill C-377 in procedure for longer than it has been illegitimately time-allocated for today. From that point on, with business out of the way, it looks like senators can spend the summer focusing on some of the more managerial aspects of what has been going on with them of late, being the Auditor General’s report and his recommendations, particularly with regards to the independent oversight committee. It’ll be a tricky thing to get right because the AG did not contemplate the issue of parliamentary supremacy, but you can be sure that there are a number of senators who won’t be silent about that particular issue. It will also be a summer of fending off smears and attacks from MPs trying to use the Senate as a punching bag in their bid to get re-elected – never mind that a few incidents of alleged misspending have nothing to do with the powers or legislative business of the Senate, or the fact that MPs are far more opaque about their own spending practices. To that end, Senate Speaker Housakos told Bob Fife over the weekend that he’s not going to take any lessons on accountability from MPs, and most especially Mulcair with his party’s $2.7 million satellite office issue. And that’s exactly it – MPs aren’t saints by virtue of having been elected, and it doesn’t mean that they are really held to account for those issues because they are rarely brought to light. Witness last week, when the Ottawa Citizen asked MPs about their residential claims, and only 20 out of some 300 actually bothered to respond. Oh, but it’s the Senate that has the problem and with the “entitlement” issue.

Good reads:

  • Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke said it’s “important” they use ISIS images and songs in campaign ads to contrast with the other parties, and said their campaigns are more “truthful” than the news. No, seriously. (Extended version here).
  • Jason Kenney says the final legal and diplomatic hurdles to get Canadian military trainers to Ukraine have been cleared, while other Canadian troops rotate through Poland.
  • There are questions as to whether the PMO is inappropriately deleting emails that should be kept for archival reasons.
  • There are questions about the ecological integrity of the proposed Mother Canada statue site – something Parks Canada is supposed to be conscious of.
  • Brent Rathgeber talks about his two years out of caucus.
  • Laura Payton’s final Travers Fellowship piece looks at what needs to happen after the maternal and child funding.

Odds and ends:

There was a deputy minister and senior bureaucrat shuffle announced on Friday.

It’s Changing of the Guard season again in Ottawa.

Here’s some video and photos of Lt-Gen Christine Whitecross assuming command as Chief of Military Personnel.

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