In a meeting with Aboriginal leaders in advance of the full Premiers’ Meeting, most of this country’s premiers backed the call for a national inquiry on missing and murdered aboriginal women. The two premiers who were unable to attend, Alison Redford and Kathy Dunderdale, later expressed their support for the call. Of course, all that they can do is try to pressure the federal government into calling such an inquiry, but their declaration means little, unless BC wants to start their own provincial inquiry that other provinces would support. John Geddes previews the full slate of items for discussion here.
Tag Archives: Bob Rae
Roundup: Exit Ted Menzies, eventually
Minister of State for Finance Ted Menzies has announced that he won’t be running in 2015, and has taken him out of the running in the upcoming cabinet shuffle. With Vic Toews’ resignation said to be imminent (and I’ve heard this from caucus sources), this is likely the first of a number of such announcements to be made in the coming couple of weeks. It remains to be speculated if Menzies decision is a genuine desire to move on, of if this isn’t a face-saving exit with political capital intact if he was told that he wasn’t getting back in. Nevertheless, this fuels the shuffle speculation fire in the coming weeks.
Roundup: Divisions among Conservative senators
The union transparency bill has put real divisions in the Conservative senate caucus, and several of them are planning on voting against it, even more abstaining. These aren’t just the Red Tories either – one of Harper’s own appointees even spoke out against it yesterday, which is indicative that it’s a bigger problem for caucus unity, which is why Senator Marjory LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, has been cracking the whip so harshly. Of course, the independence of its members is the whole reason why the Senate exists as it does – to provide a better check on the elected MPs when they’re up to no good for populist reasons, and this very problematic bill fits those parameters. John Ivison recounts a somewhat heated meeting between one of the MPs in favour of the bill and Senator Segal, one of the opponents.
Roundup: Farewell to Bob Rae
In what was a surprise to pretty much everyone, Liberal MP Bob Rae announced his resignation yesterday morning, intending to spend more time as a negotiator for the First Nations in Northern Ontario as part of the development of the Ring of Fire region there. Personally, I find this incredibly distressing as it means we have now lost the best orator in the Commons, and one of the few remaining grown-ups when it comes to debate. This loss lowers the bar, as much as it pains me to say it. John Geddes tends to share this assessment, and especially takes not of Rae’s disappointment with how rote things have become in Parliament over the past number of decades. Aaron Wherry collects a number of videos of Rae’s speeches in the House for the past several years.
Roundup: Call in the Auditor General!
Today in ClusterDuff reverberations, we hear that the Government Leader in the Senate, Marjorie LeBreton, wants to call in the Auditor General to do a full comprehensive audit of Senators’ expenses, not just the systems and administration audit that he did in 2012. There have been concerns in the past that the AG, being an officer of parliament, would be in a kind of conflict auditing his own bosses, but we’ll see if those remain. LeBreton didn’t consult with the opposition about the motion, but the Liberals have since said sure – but audit the Commons’ expenses in as comprehensive manner as well. And the Government Whip, Gordon O’Connor, doesn’t sound like he’s too keen about that idea, pretending that the last AG audit into systems and administration on the House side was “comprehensive” (which it wasn’t). There are also questions as to whether the AG’s office is set to handle this kind of forensic audit, or if it wouldn’t be better to send it to an outside firm with that kind of expertise. Elsewhere, Senator Tkachuk says that they will be setting up a permanent audit subcommittee for the Senate, but they are still discussing whether or not it will have outside members (such as what Senator McCoy suggested, as they do in the House of Lords).
Roundup: Shrapnel from the Clusterduff
The shrapnel from the Clusterduff explosion continues to ricochet around the capital as Parliament resumes today. Over in the PMO, the latest casualty is the former special council and legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin (who actually left in April to return to teaching law), who drafted the agreement between Nigel Wright and Senator Mike Duffy. But Perrin and Wright assert that Harper wasn’t told – because, plausible deniability, I guess. While the Senate is going to be seized with the audit reports and the proposed new rules, now that they’ve had the week to look them over, the House is going to be some kind of fun, as the NDP bray about ethics and accountability, and Harper, well, heads to Peru and then a Pacific summit (that was all pre-arranged long before any of this broke, before any of you start getting any ideas about this foreign travel being a little too convenient). The NDP have decided to ride the ethics train and demand that the RCMP look into the Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy affair, because they’re apparently not content to let the Conservatives continue to self-immolate. They also seem to be oblivious to the obvious Conservative counter-offensive about Thomas Mulcair’s decades of curious silence about the attempted bribery that he declined in 1994. (I’ve been told that the Liberals will stay out of this in QP, since they are content to let said self-immolation continue unaided – we shall see). Harper is going to have an emergency caucus meeting in the morning before he heads off to Peru (though apparently nobody told Finance Committee, who are still slated to meet early). The opening portion of said meeting will be open to the media, but he won’t take any questions, which could be a long and uncomfortable silence for all the journalists travelling with him if he decides to sequester himself.
Roundup: Loyalty and tight lids on issues
On the continuing Mark Warawa “muzzling” drama, the appeal to the Procedure and House Affairs subcommittee on private members’ business met in camera yesterday, and we should find out their decision this morning. Warawa himself does his best to appear loyal to the PM, and doesn’t want to place the blame for this all on him. Aaron Wherry takes note of the circular logic that the NDP seem to employ when it comes to this debate – how it’s bad that the government muzzles, and yet they should absolutely keep the abortion debate under a tight lid. Bruce Cheadle looks back at caucus divisions over the abortion issue among the past governments of the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Chantal Hébert sees the possible seeds of a leadership challenge being sown in this Warawa drama. Andrew Coyne (quite rightly) points to the bigger questions of our parliamentary democracy that are at stake by the heavy hand of the leaders’ offices.
QP: The Bob Rae farewell tour
It was Bob Rae’s last QP as interim leader, while news of some kind of Conservative backbench revolt had fizzled out. With Thomas Mulcair still off in Labrador, it was up to Megan Leslie to lead off QP, asking about the tax increases in the budget. In response, Stephen Harper insisted that the NDP would raise taxes even more — apparently implicitly saying that the increases in the budget are okay in comparison. Charlie Angus was up next, bringing up the finding of the Ethics Commissioner with regard to the finding of Jay Hill. Tony Clement explained that they referred the matter to the Ethics Commissioner in the first place, and they strengthened the law in the first place. And then it was Bob Rae’s turn, for which he got an ovation by the entire House to mark the occasion. Rae hit out at the NDP and their disapproval of Keystone XL, and wondered why Harper wouldn’t lead a “Team Canada” delegation of supportive MPs and premiers to Washington in order to advocate for the pipeline. Harper said that they were already working hard, and that he wished he had such good ideas earlier.
Roundup: Fobbing off responsibility onto the Speaker
Two former MPs and the former Commons law clerk are talking about bringing in some rules changes to empower the Speaker to bring more order to the Commons – and there we get into the decorum distraction yet again. The Speaker already has tremendous powers to expel members from the House, or to deny them the opportunity to speak if they misbehave, but they are rarely employed. Former Speaker Milliken didn’t want to expel anyone, lest they go running to the media in the Foyer and getting a bigger soapbox, or they could take off and travel or dine at House expense. His suggestion was penalties that would affect their privileges – such as docking their pay or expenses for the day, but he couldn’t get traction for that idea when he broached it previously. But whenever these discussions come up, there needs to be the awareness that the Speaker is just the referee and not omniscient – he or she can’t determine whether or not answers are deemed sufficient, or have a hand in committee business, or determine whether or not omnibus bills are out of order. For one, it puts too much power in one single individual, but for another, it further absolves MPs of their own responsibility to conduct themselves appropriately. They have tremendous powers to hold themselves and each other to account if they actually wanted to – but they don’t. Hell, it’s their job to hold government to account, and not the Speaker’s, so if the government makes huge omnibus bills, it’s the job of MPs from all sides to call the government out – not the Speaker’s. But no – they fob off the responsibility to someone else, preferably the Speaker, because he’s “neutral” and thus, more “authoritative,” never mind that it’s an intellectually and politically lazy construct. The NDP are great at this narrative right now, with Nathan Cullen holding press conferences vowing greater decorum and proposing all of these great powers to the Speaker to enforce it, and then half an hour later, during QP, his own caucus members are standing up and calling cabinet ministers names. Oh, but they’re just being funny, Cullen says, and if the Speaker doesn’t like that, then he can put an end to it. Sorry, no – if you want to preach decorum, then practice it. Meanwhile, let’s come up with more proposals to further treat MPs like a) children with no impulse control or b) drones whose only task is to recite speeches prepared for them by the leader’s office, and vote according to how said leader’s office demands. Because that’s the sign of a mature democracy.
Roundup: Undermining accountability with dollar figures
The government has started attaching dollar figures to who much it costs to answer Order Paper questions – in this case, $1.2 million in a three-month period. Oh noes! Parliament costs money! And really, using this tactic of putting dollar figures on basic accountability is underhanded and violates the very premise of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account by means of controlling supply. To do that, Parliament needs facts and figures, quite simply. And making it seem like a costly imposition for Parliamentarians to exercise their most basic function is, in a word, despicable.
The federal and provincial finance minsters met at Meech Lake yesterday, and while they didn’t come to any consensus over boosting the CPP, they did agree to study it and come up with a report for their meeting in June.
Not that it’s any big surprise, but former assistant deputy minister of procurement at DND, Alan Williams, said the F-35 process as “corrupted” from the beginning, but the main question remains why the cabinet went along unquestioningly when the bureaucrats barrelled ahead with the sole-source contract. Meanwhile, the Americans are already looking at developing a “sixth generation” fighter jet by 2030.