With the budget coming out on Tuesday, hints are starting to get dropped all over the place. Things like plans to extend or boost rural high-speed Internet access, and some infrastructure and job-creation money. Michael Den Tandt points out that the Conservatives may try to use this budget to try to reclaim their hold on the suburban middle-class voter, now that Trudeau has become real competition for them in that demographic.
Tag Archives: Chief Electoral Officer
Roundup: Mayrand hits back
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand hit back against Pierre Poilievre’s slam against him that he is somehow wearing team jersey. Mayrand says the only jersey he is wearing are the black and white stripes – the referee – and the changes in the new Fair Elections Act will mean that he’s no longer on the ice. With time allocation on the elections bill looming, the NDP decided to spend the first half of the sitting day yesterday engaged in procedural warfare, trying to delay the debate on time allocation, with a series of votes that eventually delayed QP itself. With those hurdles now cleared, they are proposing a motion in Procedure and House Affairs committee that they travel around all regions of the country to consult with Canadians on the bill, though I have some concerns about some of the groups they want to hear from. After all, Fair Vote Canada is the largest voter suppression organisation in the country (who else goes around telling everyone that their vote doesn’t count?), and Democracy Watch is pretty much run by a crank that doesn’t have a clue about civic literacy. But hey, consultations!
QP: Late out of the gate
Votes at the end of a series of procedural tactics given the NDP’s opposition to time allocation on the elections bill delayed the start of QP today, and when it did get started, Thomas Mulcair was the only leader in the House — Harper off in Quebec City and Justin Trudeau in Montreal. Mulcair started off , somewhat surprisingly, with a question about the funding gap for children on First Nations reserves, and if it would be addressed in the budget. Bernard Valcourt said that funding would come with reform of the system, which has been ongoing. Mulcair moved onto the morning’s PBO report that said that public servants don’t take any more sick days than private sector employees. Tony Clement said that if one added paid and unpaid sick days, public servants were still higher than the private sector. Mulcair brought up elections bill and the fact that it gave a veto to testing new election measures to the Senate. Poilievre assured him that it was to ensure parliamentary approval for experiments, and when the NDP tried electronic voting at their convention, it didn’t work. New MP Emmanuel Dubourg led off for the Liberals, and asked about the cuts to the Building Canada infrastructure fund, and would the shortfall be restored in the budget. Kevin Sorensen waxed poetically about a brighter future for everyone in Canada. Ralph Goodale repeated the same in English, but this time Peter Braid answered, who assured him that investments in infrastructure tripled. For his final question, Goodale hammered on consumer debt levels, but Sorensen gave some “stay the course” talking points.
Roundup: MPs taking off for home
The House has risen for the break. MPs are going home after their caucus meetings this morning (well, except for the Liberals, who have their Xmas party later tonight). And it’s just as well, given how ridiculous things degenerated in QP yesterday.
The Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, was before the Commons Procedures and House Affairs committee yesterday to discuss the issue of Conservative MP James Bezan’s election filings being before the court, and whether he should be allowed to sit and vote in the Chamber until the matter has been dealt with. Things, however, apparently got a bit heated as Conservative MP Scott Reid criticised Mayrand for being “overly aggressive” and that it was inappropriate for him to notify the Speaker about Bezan’s dispute. Um, but if Bezan is in breach and sitting inappropriately, then the Speaker should know because the Act says that so long as the MP’s filings are not correct, he or she shouldn’t sit or vote as a member. Mayrand is doing his job, even if Reid doesn’t like it.
Roundup: Speech From the Throne Day!
It’s time for the Speech From the Throne! Finally! Amidst all of the largely futile speculation – and the speculation about whether all of the consumer-focused hints are distracting us from something else – we also have learned that the government plans to give honorary citizenship to Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, which I’m guessing is an attempt at a consolation prize for the Nobel Peace Prize that she didn’t win. The Conservatives have put together an animated trailer for the Speech From the Throne, narrated by Shelly Glover, and done up in nothing but Conservative blue. Go targeted messaging, go! While the economy will no doubt be the prime focus, so many of the issues at play – such as pipelines and trade agreements – are actually out of the government’s hands. John Geddes points to the limitations of the consumer-driven focus that we are anticipating, while Michael Den Tandt points to the risks of such a move. Brent Rathgeber gives his wish list here. Kady O’Malley reminds us of the vigorous opposition that Pierre Poilievre had to an airline bill of rights the last time the NDP proposed it – oh, how things have changed. And yes, in case you were wondering, Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau are all invited to attend as sitting Senators – and that the motion to suspend Brazeau needs to be moved again because it’s a new session.
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.
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: 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: Distancing themselves from Duffy
After a powerful QP in the House yesterday, it was an equally exciting evening in the Senate – in particular, the Board of Internal Economy, which was opened to the public for the first time. And it was amazing. While Senate QP was focused on Senator Tkachuk, who was badgered incessantly about his decision to go easy on Senator Mike Duffy in the audit report because he had paid back his expenses (though they didn’t know at the time that it was with funds from Nigel Wright), Tkachuk nevertheless took the chair at the committee. But while there was an expectation that the Conservatives might try to defend or justify their actions, it was almost the opposite. In fact, the Conservatives on that committee, most especially Senators Claude Carignan and Elizabeth Marshall – the Whip and a former Auditor General in Newfoundland – were systematically tearing down all of the various excuses that Duffy had made previously about how it was a temporary assistant who filed improper per diem claims and so on. In fact, the whole committee meeting opened with the Senate Clerk and the financial officers describing that once they started looking at Duffy’s per diem claims, there was a systematic pattern of his claiming per diems for days when he was not in Ottawa and not on Senate business. (It should be noted that the audit didn’t pick this up because it was looking at Duffy’s residence claims, and was checking whether he was in Ottawa or PEI, but when the media began looking at the dates in the audit as compared to campaign claims and other business, this pattern emerged). In fact, the pattern that also emerged was one where Duffy was not only claiming Senate expenses when he was campaigning – which is clearly against the rules – he was also being paid by the campaigns for his appearances, which is clearly “double dipping.”
Roundup: Back to answer questions – or not
The House is back today, and so is QP, but it remains to be seen if Stephen Harper will deign to make an appearance or not. He rarely shows up on a Monday unless he has travel or other duties later in the week. But when he does show up, whether it’s today or Tuesday, there will finally be an opportunity for him to start answering questions in the House about the whole Clusterduff affair. Meanwhile, Senator Marjorie Lebreton continues to insist that there wasn’t any document trail between Nigel Wright and Senator Mike Duffy, and that she doesn’t really run things in the Senate. That said, she is considering allowing the Internal Economy committee hearings into the Duffy audit to be held in public – were it to actually be her call as opposed to the committee’s – but it should be noted that any testimony made in public then falls under privilege. In other words, it can’t be used by police. Sure, it can guide them as to where to look and come up with their own evidence, but it is a consideration that should be made. Oh, and a former RCMP superintendent says that it certainly looks like there are grounds for criminal charges with the whole expenses issue, and that breach of trust – which is an indictable offence (and would be grounds for automatic dismissal from the Senate) is likely the route that the RMCP would take.