The Commons Board of Internal Economy met yesterday, briefly, but came to no resolutions about NDP satellite offices because an hour before the meeting, the NDP delivered more documents that the committee didn’t have time to consider. And meanwhile, Peter Julian put on a big dog and pony show about the “Kangaroo Court” that is the Board, and how they want it opened up, and so on. And that’s really where the whole narrative falls apart. This tactic of releasing more documents just before the meeting smacks to me of the same thing they tried when Mulcair was called before committee, where they produced untranslated documents – something they know won’t be distributed (and usually they are the first to complain, given their Quebec-heavy caucus). And then they want the doors thrown open, so that they can put on the same demonstration of obfuscation and bafflegab that Mulcair did at committee, where he not only talked around his answers, but made untrue allegations under the protection of parliamentary privilege (lest we forget the falsehoods about Conservatives co-locating party and MP offices), all the while every NDP staffer was on Twitter proclaiming that “this is what transparency looks like.” Indeed it was. That they rather transparently want to do the very same thing at Internal Economy makes it seem all the more reasonable for the other parties to say no. Thrown into this are their demands that the Auditor General audit everybody – in order to spread blame around – and demands that Internal Economy be blown up and replaced with a more open body (thus providing yet another ground for partisan showmanship, and depriving MPs and administration a place for full and frank discussion about administrative matters) all smacks of one thing – distraction sauce. Delicious, delicious distraction sauce. You’ll pardon me if I prefer my sauce on the side.
Tag Archives: Brandon-Souris
Roundup: Politics played with political documents
The partisan frothing at the mouth over Justin Trudeau’s hope and fear comments continues to roll along, with the NDP lashing out for its use – never mind that Jack Layton’s final letter was itself a political document and that the NDP have used it to make political hay. They also point to “Angry Mulcair” flyers that were sent out in Toronto Centre, though I’m not exactly sure that those quite added up to some of the same attacks that the NDP were using in both Toronto Centre and Bourassa – that Chrystia Freeland was not from there and shouldn’t be allowed to run (despite a caucus full of Quebec MPs who had never set foot in their ridings before being elected), or that Dubourg collected a severance allowance that Mulcair himself collected when he resigned as an MNA, not to mention the flyers with Dubourg, who is black, surrounded by bling, which one American expat commenter said would be considered a racist slur in the States. Make of this what you will. Pundit’s Guide considers the remarks a strategic over-reach that damages any prospect of cooperation between the two parties anytime soon.
Roundup: The AG has concerns
The Auditor General tabled his fall report yesterday morning, but unlike many a report in the past, it was pretty tame. He did kick the crap out of the audit process for the Safety Management System of our railways, and cast a withering eye on food recall systems, and emergency preparedness on First Nations reserves. He wasn’t particularly kind to the CBSA’s lapses in border security, he noted that farmers face a long wait for emergency assistance, and he was really, really unimpressed with the constant delays in implementing financial controls, but he wasn’t too tough on the shipbuilding contracts, and he generally praised CRA in dealing with tax evasion in Lichtenstein – but they need to be better prepared to deal with an increase in tax-haven cases. (Highlights here).
Roundup: By-election action!
And we have by-election results! The two easy races were Provencher, where the Conservatives held, and Bourassa, where the Liberals held, but things were tighter in Toronto Centre, where Liberal Chrystia Freeland ultimately won out. Brandon-Souris, however, was the biggest surprise, where the Liberals an Conservatives were neck-and-neck for most of the night, but ultimately, it was a victory for Conservative Larry Maguire, squeaking it out at the end by a couple of hundred votes. Pundits, start spinning your victories and losses now, but one thing that does seem pretty clear is that the Liberals do seem to be competitive again nationally, as they very nearly took Brandon-Souris and they even gained considerable ground in true-blue Conservative Provencher. Also, the nomination shenanigans clearly hurt the Conservatives in Brandon-Souris, while the current cloud of scandal around Harper probably didn’t help any. Anne Kingston gave some vignettes from Toronto Centre over the morning as ballots were cast. CBC posted four storylines from the by-elections to watch going in, while Laura Payton explains why the narrative of the Middle Class has dominated the race (hint: 93 percent of Canadians identify as “middle class”).
Roundup: Four by-elections today
At long last, it’s finally by-election day today! Hooray! Toronto Centre has been the centre of a debate on income inequality, while Brandon-Souris, a long-time Conservative stronghold, is being seen as a barometer of the Senate scandals, compounded by alleged shenanigans in the nomination race, which may be driving voters over to the Liberals. Susan Delacourt notices that Bob Rae sent out a letter to Liberal supporters that employed the language of shame-based get-out-the-vote campaigns, talking about names being on voter lists, which NDP MP Craig Scott accused of being coercive, though it has been a proven effective technique where it has been applied. Michael Den Tandt looks at the by-election narratives, and notes the ways in which both the Conservatives and NDP are doing Trudeau’s work, handing him lay-ups, and allowing him to straddle the centre. (He’s wrong that this is Trudeau’s first electoral test – that was in Labrador). Paul Wells is grumpy about the whole thing – and I can’t blame him.
QP: More ClusterDuff questions, more Paul Calandra obfuscation
With Stephen Harper off making an announcement in Lac Mégantic, we were guaranteed that it was going to be yet another episode of the Paul Calandra Show for QP today. Would he bring up his father’s pizza parlour? Would there be a homily about the lessons he teaches his daughters. Add to that, the only leader in the House was Thomas Mulcair, which promised to make for a rather lopsided day. When QP started, Mulcair returned to his former mode of solilioqusing, and wondered lengthily about why the Prime Minister couldn’t take responsibility. Paul Calandra got up and praised the leadership the Prime Minister showed in his conduct, and that the documents showed that he didn’t know. Mulcair brought up statements regarding the Prime Minister approving actions, thus implicating him in a cover-up. Calandra offered much the same in response. Mulcair then wondered why a senator would require the PM’s approval to repay his own expenses, but Calandra responded with the allegation that Mulcair sat on a bribery allegation for seventeen years. Mulcair wondered why nobody else lost their jobs if they were involved, but Calandra reiterated the alleged bribe story. Mulcair’s final question got cut off for unparliamentary language, and the Speaker moved on. Ralph Goodale was up for the Liberals, and asked about the “good to go” statement. Calandra shrugged it off and carried on battering at Mulcair. Goodale brought up the sentiments of this affair in the riding of Brandon in his follow-up, which gave Calandra an opening to batter the Liberals about a panoply of their ills. For his final question, Goodale brought up the interference in a Senate committee proceeding, but Calandra decided that returning to the days of the Sponsorship scandal was the way to go.
Roundup: Another underfunded procurement
As we await the Auditor General’s report, due next week, we hear that he is expected to report that the National Shipbuilding Programme doesn’t have enough money to fulfil its goals. Not that this should surprise us, as the constant delays and rising inflation have driven up the costs. Because this government has clearly done their bit for the procurement file every chance they get.
Roundup: Taking aim before the by-elections
One almost suspects that the Conservatives are worried about the Trudeau phenomenon in the upcoming by-elections as they continue to mount increasing attacks against him, whose relevance to reality slips further and further away. Today it was Peter MacKay suggesting that Justin Trudeau told schoolchildren that recreational drug use was okay and hay for legalising pot. Um, except that’s not what happened, but rather that at a school event he was asked about it, and Trudeau said that not only should children not use pot because their brains are still developing, but that right now the government’s approach was ineffective. Well done Conservative attack machine operating under MacKay’s name. Meanwhile in Toronto Centre, the NDP put out releases that decried how awful it was that Chrystia Freeland laid off all those journalists when she was at Reuters, but conveniently omitted the line from the story where the Reuters spokesperson specifically said the layoffs were not Freeland’s decision. Added to that, the NDP somehow intimated that they would protect media jobs by rewarding job creation with tax breaks. Erm, corporate taxes are not the woe that is facing the haemorrhaging media industry, and unless they plan to shut down the Internet and start subsidizing newspaper subscriptions, I’m not sure how exactly they’ll protect media jobs.
Roundup: By-election dates announced
Stephen Harper has finally called those four by-elections in Toronto Centre, Bourassa, Brandon-Souris and Provencher for November 25th. Toronto Centre NDP candidate Linda McQuaig has put out a YouTube video challenging Chrystia Freeland to a debate. Pundit’s Guide updates the lay of the land in the four ridings here.
Alison Crawford looks at five ways in which the impasse over Justice Nadon’s appointment to the Supreme Court can be resolved, including declaratory legislation, which is a novel approach that I hadn’t yet heard mentioned before.
Roundup: Special rules to punish Justin Trudeau
Because they are never short of such ideas, the NDP held yet another press conference yesterday to announced new proposals to make Parliament “more accountable.” What that really was code for was “let’s try to punish some Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau.” You see, of their three proposals, the main one was to ban MPs and Senators from “double-dipping by banning payment for work that is part of their job as an MP or Senator.” Which is news to me because nowhere in any legal or constitutional text does it say that it’s part of a Parliamentarian’s job to be a motivational speaker. In fact, that’s the reason why certain MPs and Senators sign up to speaker’s bureaux – in order to do these kinds of gigs without having to expend their parliamentary resources on it, and because they’re not talking about matters that are related to their parliamentary duties, but usually their careers before they were in public life (Marc Garneau’s astronaut career, or Larry Smith’s football commissioner career for example), it makes sense not to treat it as part of their duties. Oh, but Justin Trudeau was able to make a successful living at this and still accepted speaking gigs after he got elected, therefore it must be awful and should be banned. Never mind that he almost always made money for the organisations that he was invited to speak at (with that one notable exception, where it was a case of organisational failure), or that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner cleared these gigs – this is strictly a case of cheap punitive politics. There can be cases made for the other two suggestions – banning parliamentarians from being on corporate boards (but family businesses are okay), and strengthening the powers of the aforementioned Commissioner – but they are less about scandals than perception. Parliamentarians have any corporate board work cleared by an ethics regime, and sure it could be strengthened, but there has yet to be a demonstrated case of any kind of influence peddling, and one suspects it’s simply a case of “corporations bad!” at work. And as for strengthening the role of the Commissioner, well, it seems to me that it’s the NDP who are in charge of the Commons Ethics committee and this has yet to make it onto the agenda when the review of her legislation is a year overdue. Perhaps if they made an effort to actually focus on that rather than play partisan silly buggers and constantly demanding investigations into the wrongdoing of individual MPs, then perhaps they might make progress on such a change.