Tag Archives: CRTC

Roundup: Dispute or drawing board?

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A government-sponsored review of the Auditor General’s findings on the F-35 procurement failure could be indicating that they’re trying to dispute his findings, rather than taking the procurement process back to the drawing board like they (sort of) promised to.

A Dalhousie professor believes that our current approach to immigration is simply snobbery that won’t help with the coming demographic crunch, but rather that we need more unskilled labourers who will be industrious and start businesses.

Documents show that Jack Layton’s state funeral cost some $368,000 – more than the state funerals of the previous two governors general, who are actually entitled to such events.

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Roundup: Fined for telecomm violations

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The CRTC has fined the Liberal riding association in Guelph for an improper robo-call during the last election, and Frank Valeriote, the MP, accepted the finding. Now, just to remind you – this was about a violation of the Telecommunications Act with an unidentified robo-call warning that the Conservative candidate might be pro-life. It was not a violation of the Elections Act. It has nothing to do with misleading voter to wrong polling stations, or anything like that. No matter how many equivalencies the Conservative partisans try to this to the other Guelph robo-calls and the mysterious “Pierre Poutine,” they would all be wrong.

Helena Guergis’ lawsuit against Stephen Harper and company has been tossed out – as well it should be. The Judge correctly asserted that the matter of her being in cabinet are a Crown Prerogative – because it is. And Crown Prerogatives are generally non-justiciable for a reason. Otherwise, people start doing silly things, like taking to the courts when they lose at politics, just like they start writing to the GG or the Queen. Oh, wait – they already do! But yeah, it’s not the court’s jurisdiction. If you have a problem with the way a government exercises its prerogative, then you vote them out in the next election. If people had a modicum of civic literacy, this kind of thing might be avoided. Guergis says she’s stating law school next week – hopefully she’ll learn this lesson, as well as what “frivolous lawsuit” means. She also says she wants to appeal, but good luck with that.

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Roundup: Up to 579 consecutive votes upcoming

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While you’re enjoying your weekend, give pause for the poor clerks in the Commons spending their weekends preparing for report stage voting for the omnibus budget bill. You see, the Bloc has some 22 substantive amendments, Elizabeth May has some 330 amendments tabled, and of the 503 deletion amendments the Liberals submitted and the 506 that the NDP did, well, there’s a lot to go through. Peter Van Loan says that 579 of those don’t overlap, but we need to see how those amendments will be grouped together before the marathon of votes begins sometime next week.

There are new concerns around what happened in that senior’s residence poll in Etobicoke Centre in the last election, as a third version of events surfaces.

The CBC takes a look at the weakening of civilian oversight and the increasing influence of lobbyists with military procurement – especially when it comes to the F-35s.

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