Stephen Harper has made the call – four by-elections will be held on June 30th, two in Alberta and two in Ontario. The fifth vacant riding, Whitby–Oshawa, former riding of Jim Flaherty, will remain open for the time being. That means that Fort McMurray–Athabasca and Macleod in Alberta, and Trinity–Spadina and Scarborough–Agincourt in the Greater Toronto Area are now officially in play. It also means that the two GTA ridings will be contesting the by-election in the middle of both a provincial and municipal election. It has also been suggested by the cynical among us that Harper intended to drive down voter participation by holding the by-elections the day before Canada Day. It remains to be seen in some of the more hotly contested ridings, and Justin Trudeau has spent the weekend in both Northern Alberta and Okotoks because of the two by-elections, hoping for a Liberal breakthrough in that province.
Tag Archives: Census
Roundup: Industrial espionage…or not
The Guardian writes that the Communications Security Establishment was involved in secret briefings to energy corporations, ostensibly to discuss threats to energy infrastructure, and they are tying this into the allegations that CSE was conducting industrial espionage on mining and energy in Brazil – even though the documents don’t show that. CSE did confirm that they meet with industry, but said that it has to do with protecting them against things like cyber-threats. There are even public records of such kinds of meetings here. It should also be noted that Canadian energy companies do have operations in countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, which have had problems with stability and there would be threats to our operations and workers there. These facts weren’t enough to dissuade Thomas Mulcair, who said that there was “clear evidence” of industrial espionage, though that would be news to anyone else. The CBC’s Julie Van Dusen tried to get answers from the head of CSE in a walking scrum yesterday, but he wasn’t deviating from his talking points. (And kudos to the camera operator who filmed said walking scrum while walking backwards at high speed). James Fitz-Morris has a possible explanation for why Canada might be spying on Brazil’s energy officials.
Roundup: Paradis’ abortion firestorm
Christian Paradis ignited a firestorm yesterday when he declared that our big push on preventing child brides would not include funds toward providing for safe abortions for victims – nor for victims of war rapes. Not that Paradis could even say it outright, but rather couched it in the terms that they would follow the pattern set out by the Muskoka Initiative on maternal and child health, where the government line was that they wouldn’t provide for abortion funding because other groups were doing it, and they would focus on things like “nutritious babies” (to employ a Bev Oda-ism). Of course, opposition parties are now up in arms, and guess who is applauding the move? Campaign Life Coalition, of course, who feels that “pro-abortion groups” are hijacking those kinds of horrible situations. No, seriously. Slow clap, everyone.
Roundup: We have a date
Word has been given – Parliament shall resume on October 16th. That means that about three-and-a-half weeks of sitting days will have been missed, as the week of the 14th was supposed to have been a constituency week owing to Thanksgiving. Also factor in that there is an APEC Summit in Indonesia the week before, so that also affected the timing of an October return. Mind you Harper could have simply prorogued and still returned on September 16th as planned, but what can you do? (Well, withdraw confidence in the government, if you really want to be technical about it).
Roundup: Outrage over the “Charter of Values”
The PQ government in Quebec unveiled the details of its proposed “Charter of Quebec Values,” to universal condemnation from the federal parties. It proposes to limit the religious accommodations made for public servants – in other words, you can wear a small cross or Star of David ring, but nothing larger or more obvious, and no, your boss doesn’t have to give you time off for religious holidays or a prayer space. Jason Kenney immediately promised that they would go to the courts to find the new law unconstitutional if Quebec presses ahead (though Quebec does have the option of using the Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter if they felt it necessary to do so). Oh, and because it shows you just how well they thought this through, they didn’t have an answer about whether people would still be swearing on Bibles in a court room. Oops. For a bit of history on how the party got to this point, it bears reminding that electing an urbane, metropolitan gay leader got them nowhere, so now they’re resorting to the more xenophobic end of the spectrum to try and make headway. John Geddes compares the way each of the federal parties reacted. Martin Patriquin looks at the history of backtracked proposals that Marois’ government has put forward to date, and predicts that this Charter won’t see the light of day in its current form.
Roundup: Digging into Wallin’s expenses
Now that journalists have had a couple of days to really dig into the Wallin audit, they’re starting to turn up all kinds of things. Like how she billed the Senate for some of her activities as Chancellor of Guelph University, while not charging the University as she ordinarily would have. Or how she charged the Senate to attend a couple of functions in her capacity as a director for Porter Airlines – even though it’s part of the director’s remuneration for the airline to pay those costs. Or that she was supposed to attend a function at a Toronto arts club that allegedly had to do with the Afghan mission and was cancelled at the last minute – and yet the arts club has not record of any of this. Glen McGregor even finds that some of her meetings may have constituted lobbying not registered with the Commissioner of Lobbying, because of loopholes in the rules. And then comes the news that Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau would all have been told that it was okay to bill some partisan activity to the Senate – so long as it was related to Senate business and not a fundraiser – as part of their two-day “boot camp” upon being appointed. Well then, one supposes that it’ll be a good thing that the Auditor General plans to audit all senators’ expenses, though it will need to be done in phases and an interim report may not even be ready for 18 months. Note that the Commons continues to resist bringing in the AG to look at their own books.
Roundup: The demise of the honour system
The audits on Senators Duffy, Brazeau and Harb came out yesterday and found against all three, and while Duffy had pre-emptively repaid all of his expenses, Harb was ordered to pay some $51,482 and Brazeau some $48,744 (both figures include interest). No word on Brazeau’s reaction but Harb is not going down quietly. While he did resign from the Liberal caucus, he has also retained a very prominent lawyer to represent him as he challenges the findings. Because part of the audit also found that there was ambiguity in the rules, and those ambiguities are were Harb really fell into. There was also news that Senator Duffy had improperly charged per diems while he was in Florida on vacation – but he blamed that on a temporary assistant while his usual one was on maternity leave, and that he repaid those expenses immediately upon finding out the error. Meanwhile, the Liberal Senate leader, James Cowan, has said he does want to see if these results can be turned over to the RCMP, the Senate has also adopted new rules that spells the end of the “honour system” that the Senate previously operated under. The Senators that I’ve spoken to have no problem with this, but this isn’t over yet. Susan Delacourt muses about the public reaction to misspending rather than egregious behaviour like these three senators’ entitlements, lying to the House or contempt of parliament, and what kind of signal that sends.
QP: Scurrilous accusations of the Other Place
With the March For Life having left the lawn outside the Hill, and Mark Warawa having won his little victory by making a statement on female “gendercide” in the House, Question Period got started with Thomas Mulcair reading a question on whether the government would back the NDP’s opposition day motion on the improperly reported $3.1 billion in anti-terrorism funds. Harper got up and calmly reminded him that the Auditor General himself said the money was not misspent, and they will follow through on improving their reporting on the future. Mulcair then turned to the issue of the Senate audits and made a number of scurrilous accusations about the character of the Other Place. Harper said that the external auditors found ambiguities in the rules but that the Senate expected better of its members and they would be repaying the money owed. For his final question, Mulcair asked about a woman who was denied benefits while she received treatment for breast cancer while on maternity leave. Harper said that they recently changed the rules in order to ensure that these instances wouldn’t happen again. For the Liberals, Dominic LeBlanc asked about the government’s wasteful spending on ads and media monitoring instead of youth summer jobs. Diane Finley rose to take that question, and rejected the premise, and touted the launch of the Canada Summer Jobs programme. Ralph Goodale was up next, asking the same in English — and got the very same response. For his final question, Goodale asked about the demise of the long-form census, noting that some small towns were wiped out because of insufficient data. Christian Paradis responded with the red herring about a larger sample size ignoring the actual statistical invalidity of much of the data.
Roundup: Fun with the non-census numbers
It’s time for census National Household Survey data! So many things to talk about – starting with the reminder that the quality of this data is not as good as that of other years thanks to the fact that it isn’t as methodologically sound and full of sample bias, they’re now going to charge for the data that used to be free, and a few other facts about how it was collected. Here’s a look at the top line numbers. A lot of the data in this release was about religious demographics – more people without religion (now the second-highest group in the country), more Muslims as they are the fastest-growing religious group, and fewer people who listed “Jedi.” There was also a lot of data on Aboriginals, who were one of the fastest growing segments of the population, but they are also losing touch with their native languages, and more of them are growing up in foster care. Our immigrant population has surged, and we now have the highest percentage in the G8. Some small towns in the Conservative heartland were pretty much wiped out of the reporting because people simply did not reply. Economist Stephen Gordon is less than impressed by the quality of the data, and questions who will find it usable.
QP: Money in the banana stand
Wednesday, caucus day, and the benches were mostly full. Thomas Mulcair started off by reading a pair of questions about the improperly reported $3.1 billion in anti-terror funds, and showed just how with it he is by making an Arrested Development reference, asking if the money was in the banana stand. Harper ignored it and once again assured him that the Auditor General said that the money was not misspent. Mulcair then turned to the issue of Treasury Board taking an active hand in the collective bargaining of Crown Corporations. Harper reminded him that the government backstops these Crown Corporations, and with some of them in financial difficulty, they had an obligation to ensure that taxpayer’s money was being treated responsibly. For his final question, Mulcair brought up the demise of the mandatory long-form census, as the National Household Survey data was released today. Harper responded with congratulations to Statistics Canada for the data release and praise for how high quality the data was. Justin Trudeau was then up, and after paying mention to the long-form census, he turned to the question of those Economic Action Plan™ ads, and how each spot they run during the playoffs, it costs the same as 32 student summer jobs. Harper first repeated his congratulations to Statistics Canada, before he moved onto the necessity of informing Canadians of how well the economy is doing by way of those ads.