Roundup: Constitutionally untenable declarations

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One of those tangential sub-plots in the whole ClusterDuff affair reared its head in the testimony of Ben Perrin yesterday, which is the issue of the test of residency for a senator. Given that the issue had blown up during Perrin’s time in PMO, thanks to Stephen Harper’s panic appointments in 2008 where he named senators to provinces where those individuals did not currently reside but rather had originated from, they found themselves in trouble when a certain Senator Duffy was found to have been treating his long-time Ottawa home as a secondary residence that he could claim per diems with while his summer cottage in PEI was being treated as a primary residence, never mind that he rarely spent any time there, none of it in the winter. Perrin’s advice was to come up with several indicators, but that ultimately it would be up to the Senate to come up with those indicators for themselves. Stephen Harper disagreed, and said that as far as he was concerned, they were resident if they owned $4000 in real property in said province – a position Perrin found to be constitutionally and legally untenable. But the constitutionally untenable has become Harper’s stock in trade, particularly where the Senate is concerned, first with his unconstitutional reform bills, to his present policy of not making any appointments in defiance of his constitutional obligation to do so. (And no, Thomas Mulcair is no better with is own promise not to appoint any senators either). And we also know from the Duffy documents that Harper blocked an attempt by the Senate to strike a committee that would deal with the residency issue once and for all – because Harper wanted to protect those improper appointments he made. The rather sad thing is that if hadn’t made those appointments in haste, he could have ensured that they had their ducks in a row before they got appointed, to show that they had enough proof of residency to pass a smell test. He didn’t, constitution be damned – or at least be subverted on bogus “plain reading” arguments that don’t hold water the moment you think critically about them. And yet We The Media aren’t driving this point home to the voters, that the constitution does and should matter. (Aaron Wherry delves more into the residency issue here).

On the campaign:

Good reads:

  • In the Duffy trial, former PMO lawyer Ben Perrin took the stand. (Cobb, Köhler, and O’Malley liveblog recap here).
  • Here’s a very interesting look at why making pledges to reduce “red tape” can end up being terrible policy.
  • Civil society groups are challenging the legislation that can strip a dual citizen of their Canadian citizenship if convicted of terrorism or treason.
  • Former PBO Kevin Page thinks the parties should talk more about infrastructure in the campaign (and to be fair, they have been – just not as much).
  • The Canadian Press took their Baloney Meter™ to Mulcair’s claim that police levels have dropped under this government (spoiler: rated “some baloney.”)
  • Andrew MacDougall explains the confrontation with the elderly gentleman who verbally abused reporters covering Stephen Harper.

Odds and ends:

Candidates are barred from campaigning in Nova Scotia hospitals after doctors complained following a Conservative stop in Truro.

Senator Meredith may have contravened conflict of interest codes by taking his business partner on a trip to Trinidad and Tobago.