With Parliament Hill still reeling from last night’s ClusterDuff bombshell, and all leaders were in the House, waiting for the big show. It got started with Mulcair asking if Harper threatened Duffy with expulsion on February 13th. Harper said that he didn’t threaten him with expulsion, but he did think the expenses were inappropriate and ordered them repaid or he’d be thrown out of caucus. Mulcair asked if Harper had said that it wasn’t about the rules, but the perception. Harper denied saying that, and gave another rousing defence of following the rules made before the entire expenses. Mulcair pushed, and asked if Wright was present for that discussion. Harper, getting punchy, said that it was a statement before the entire caucus, and did not order Wright to write the cheque, and because that action was wrong, Wright was no longer in his office. When Mulcair asked if Ray Novak was party to those discussions, Harper insisted that Novak was not one of the people that Wright named as being involved, and he obviously wasn’t involved as he never would have approved it. Justin Trudeau began by pointing out that leaders take responsibility, and named the people that Harper hired or appointed at the centre of the scandal. Harper rejected the premise, and hit back at Duffy, saying that since Duffy felt he hadn’t done anything wrong, it was why he was no longer in caucus. Trudeau demanded that Harper answer questions under oath around the affair, but Harper hit back, saying that Trudeau was too willing to let Senator Harb back into caucus (which is not exactly true).
Tag Archives: Budget 2013
Roundup: Duffy’s scorched earth policy
Well, that was…interesting. After Senator Carignan, the leader of the government in the Senate, spent over an hour laying out the case against Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau, and after a couple of other Senators from all sides expressed their reservations about this move and the lack of due process – let alone the setting of dubious precedents – the real bombshell dropped. Senator Duffy got up to speak to his defence, and he took the scorched earth approach, crying that he didn’t want to go along with this conspiracy “foisted” upon him, that he should have said no, that his livelihood was threatened, and that it all led back to Harper and the Senate leadership. If anything, it made it harder for Harper’s version of events to stand up to scrutiny, which the NDP spent the evening gleefully putting press release after press release about. It’s also going to make QP later today to be quite the show. Of course, what Duffy neglected to mention was his own wrongdoing. He protested that he hadn’t done anything wrong – which is not the case. Both the Deloitte audit and the subsequent RCMP investigation have shown that his residence is not, in fact, PEI, and that’s a constitutional requirement, no matter what LeBreton or Wright told him. A retired constitutional law professor from PEI says that Duffy never actually met the residency criteria, given that when the constitution says a Senator “shall be a resident of the province for which he is appointed,” and that shall means “must” in legal terms, Duffy’s qualification never was valid to begin with, which is how this whole sordid affair got started in the first place. While Duffy may be trying to play the victim, he is still under investigation, no matter that the cover-up has now become worse than the alleged crimes. The same with Brazeau, though there wasn’t really much cover-up there. We shouldn’t forget that, no matter the speeches they gave.
QP: The long-awaited showdown
As the minutes counted down before Question Period, Thomas Mulcair, without his usual mini-lectern on his desk, glared across the aisle, while Stephen Harper casually flipped through a briefing binder, and the Members’ Statements were going on around them. At the appointed hour, the Speaker called for Oral Questions, and the rumble began. Mulcair asked if the prime minister regretted any of his own actions in the ClusterDuff affair. Harper got up and said that he expected people to follow the rules, and if mistakes are made then they would have consequences. Mulcair asked if Harper was telling the truth on June 5th when he said that nobody else knew of the deal between Wright and Duffy. Harper said that Wright took full responsibility, and that he accepted that. Mulcair tried again, but got some economic boosterism in reply. Mulcair pushed, asking if anyone had even asked whether they knew the payment was wrong. Harper tried to veer the topic back to the economy, and when Mulcair, somewhat rhetorically asked if Canadians could trust Harper to tell the truth, but Harper tried to further insinuate that the NDP were against CETA, and that their position kept changing. For the Liberals, Justin Trudeau got up and threw a curve-ball, congratulating Harper and everyone who worked hard to get the EU trade agreement, and asked when the full text would be available. Harper accepted the plaudits, and said more details would be forthcoming. Trudeau segued to the fact that leaders took responsibility for when things when wrong as well as when things went right, and that he was responsible for the various appointments at the centre of the ClusterDuff affair. Harper responded that he was clear about people paying the price when rules aren’t followed.
Roundup: The Commonwealth, Maldives and Brazil
Canada had quite a day on the foreign policy circuit. It started out with Harper declaring that he personally would be boycotting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka because of their human rights record and lack of improvement, and that he would send Baird’s Parliamentary Secretary, Deepak Obhrai, in his stead. He also intimated that he would review funding that Canada gives to the Commonwealth secretariat, which Senator Hugh Segal – our Commonwealth envoy – said was because of the ways in which the Secretariat was withholding reports of Sri Lanka’s abuses.
Roundup: Bringing back the euthanasia debate
Before his death by a brain tumour, famous Canadian microbiologist Dr. Donald Low recorded a video making a plea for assisted suicide laws in this country, but feared that we still don’t have the political maturity to handle such a conversation. The video was released yesterday to great play in the media, for what it was worth. Sadly, I fear Low was right after the last attempt at such a debate in Parliament, and it’s one of those issues that MPs are too afraid to touch and will inevitably fob off on the Supreme Court to give them a push before they do anything with it. Only one Conservative MP, Steven Fletcher – a quadriplegic – seems to want to have that discussion, and supports the notion, given his particular perspective.
Roundup: More humanitarian aid for Syria
At the end of the G20 conference in Russia, Canada is pledging another $45 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees, while Harper had more harsh words about Putin and the fact that it was unacceptable that he has a veto on Security Council taking action. But Harper also put distance to the notion that we’ll be making concessions on the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement, and said that “significant gaps” remain. Okay then. And then the biggest news of all – that Harper has basically asked Barak Obama to dictate what emissions regulations targets he wants us to set in order for the Keystone XL pipeline to be approved. It’s likely an attempt to get a firm set of numbers rather than the nebulous talk that we’re currently mired in, but so much for setting our own sovereign environmental goals and policies.
Roundup: Demands for a debate over Syria
As the speculation on an international response to alleged chemical weapon attacks in Syria intensify, there are questions about whether or not Parliament will be recalled to discuss the issue. And thus begins a teachable moment when it comes to the Crown prerogative of military deployment. You see, the ability to deploy the military is a Crown prerogative – meaning that the government can do it without the consent of the Commons – because it maintains a clear line of accountability. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, it means that the Commons can hold the government to account for the actions that were undertaken during its watch. But when parliaments vote on deployments, it means that they become collectively responsible, and by extension, nobody is responsible when things go wrong. As well, it breeds the culture of the caveats, which many European military units suffered under during Afghan deployments – because no parliament wants their men and women to really be put into harm’s way. Keeping deployments a Crown prerogative allows for that tough decision making to happen. (For more on this, read Philippe Lagassé’s study here). Stephen Harper has been trying to institute votes because it does just that – it launders the prerogative and the accountability. It also was handy for dividing the Liberals back during the days of the Afghan mission, but bad policy overall. Meanwhile, as people point to the UK parliament being recalled over the Syria issue, it bears reminding that their votes are non-binding in such matters, and as much as Thomas Mulcair may demand that Parliament discuss a deployment, demanding a binding vote is only playing into Harper’s hands.
Roundup: The premiers say no
As expected, the premiers unanimously rejected the Canada Jobs Grant programme as it is currently structured, not only because it was done without consultation and would demand a rollback of funds they’re currently receiving while demanding that they pony up more money. It also has to do with the fact that as is, it would largely benefit large companies to the detriment of smaller businesses who could use the training dollars, and it has little in the way of incentives for disadvantaged minority communities like First Nations to get training. Jason Kenney said that sure he’d meet with the premiers about the programme – but only to explain how great it is, which somehow I don’t think they’re going to be too keen on. Economist Stephen Gordon thinks the money should go directly to trainees by way of income, never mind the level of governments demanding control – especially as the problem of “skills shortages” are largely a non-existent crisis that would be sorted by offering higher wages. John Geddes reminisces about when “open federalism” was the buzzword of the Harper government, and look how well that’s turned out.
Roundup: Economic Action duds
Survey data shows that the Economic Action Plan™ ads are getting little traction with the public. In fact, of a sample size of 2003 Canadians, only three of them actually visited the website. And yet, the government was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to show these ads during the hockey play-offs – which totally seems like an efficient use of tax dollars, and an important way of getting messages across to the public. Shall we also go back to the tautology about them being necessary to show consumer confidence?
Roundup: Growing bureaucracy, unfunded multiculturalism
For all of his cost cutting, the public service has seen a rather rapid growth under Stephen Harper’s watch. Some of the biggest increases between 2006 and 2012 came in places like CBSA, the civilian staff at the RCMP and Correctional Services of Canada, but there were also increases in places like the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, if you can believe it. Mind you, I’m sure a lot of this growth has been in comms staff and “information technology,” but it still paints a picture.