John Baird and Leona Aglukkaq made the announcement yesterday that said that we made our submission to the UN regarding our Arctic sea floor claims. Apparently we have claimed the North Pole – but we don’t yet have evidence to support that claim. Um, okay. And yet this is the same party who is standing up in the House to ridicule Justin Trudeau for saying that he was going to listen to the advice of scientists before he determines if we do indeed have a claim on the North Pole or not. Because politics.
Tag Archives: CSE
Roundup: No breached ethical walls
Auditors from Deloitte appeared before the Senate’s internal economy committee yesterday morning, and revealed a couple of things – that yes, senior Partner Michael Runia did try calling them, but they didn’t tell him anything, thus preserving their “ethical wall.” Also, their audit operated in a closed system and that there wasn’t any way for there to be any leaks of draft copies. But when the Liberals on the committee tried to move a motion for Runia to appear to explain himself, Conservatives on the committee blocked it, saying that they didn’t have the expertise to conduct an investigation parallel to the RCMP’s. Nor has there been any call for Senator Gerstein to appear to explain himself either. The Liberals will be moving a motion in the full Senate next week to give the committee the mandate to pursue these questions, but we’ll see if there is enough support. Kady O’Malley finds three key points from that testimony, and makes the relevant connections to the Wright testimony in the RCMP ITO. Incidentally, PMO has hired three different law firms to deal with the ClusterDuff file.
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: A mess of Harper’s own creation
All eyes will be on the Supreme Court this week as the Senate reference goes ahead. The fact that there will only be two sitting Quebec justices is a major bone of contention, and highlights the mess that the government made of the whole appointment process. A mess, it needs to be said again, they didn’t need to make. On the subject of the reference question, this piece looking at the abolition of Quebec’s Legislative Council is a neat bit of history, but actually has almost no use in terms of abolishing the Senate because the provinces aren’t federations. I’m not sure why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp, and yet they keep pointing to places like Nebraska, New Zealand and Sweden as places that don’t have upper chambers – never mind that they’re either unitary states or sub-national governments, and don’t have the same dual federalism concerns that Canada as a whole does, which is why we need a bicameral legislature.
Roundup: Kenney and Rajotte back Wright
More signs of independent thought emerge within the Conservative caucus, as Jason Kenney has proclaimed that he’s still going to defend Nigel Wright’s character while Harper has taken the route of demonizing him in the wake of the whole ClusterDuff affair. Later in the day, James Rajotte joined that chorus. That Kenney, a minister, has a message deviating from Harper’s, is the third minister now who has had a different message from the boss, which John Geddes points out, is a blow for the notion of cabinet solidarity, which is a pretty fundamental notion in Responsible Government as the executive needs to speak with one voice. I’m not sure what it all means yet, but it’s certainly interesting – especially on the eve of a party convention where unity in the face of adversity will no doubt be the message that they are trying to put forward.
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.
Roundup: Populist consumer-friendly proposals
As the Speech From the Throne gets closer, we’re starting to hear more about the populist consumer-friendly agenda that will be laid out in it. Not content with just cellphone bills and airlines, James Moore was on television on Sunday talking about things like cable channels, where they will break-up the packages that the cable companies offer in favour of a la carte channel selection. Which is great, except that the CRTC has already mandated that this will actually start to happen, and some cable companies have started to offer it as a way of trying to retain customers who are starting to cut their cable in lieu of other online options, so it’s not like the Conservatives are coming out of the blue on this one. But hey, anything to try and claim some populist credit. Of course it makes one wonder what supposed free market conservatives are doing promising tonnes of new regulations when they’re supposedly in favour of smaller government, but I think we all know that these aren’t really free market conservatives we’re dealing with anymore.
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: Yet another Duffy revelation
Oh, Mike Duffy. As soon as RCMP investigators started digging through his financial records, something else caught their eye – some $65,000 paid out to one of Duffy’s friends as a consultant for which the friend admits to doing little or no work. (Insert all of the wise-asses of the world joking about how that’s all a Senator does – and those wise-asses would be wrong, but I digress). But more curious is that the money that was paid out seems to also have vanished, because that friend is also on disability and couldn’t take the money without losing his benefits, and his wife and son, listed as president and director of his company, aren’t talking. Add to all of this is the look into Patrick Brazeau’s housing claims, for which his Gatineau neighbours thought he worked from home because he was there so often. They’re also investigating his tax filings, as he listed his address on his former father-in-law’s reserve even though he didn’t live there. Kady O’Malley’s search through the court affidavits and comparing them to the timeline turns up what she thinks may be references to those emails being turned over to the RCMP along with some redacted diaries.
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.