Tag Archives: Deborah Coyne

Roundup: Eight whole meetings

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With the C-51 now before the Commons public safety committee, various kinds of shenanigans were played there, the NDP essentially launching a filibuster throughout the day in order to get more time to hear from witnesses, and they did get more time – about eight days, instead of three. They had proposed some 25 hearings, which included over a constituency week so that they could still meet the same deadline the government proposed, but they didn’t bite. It was also suggested that this may have been the government’s plan the whole time – give them a few more days and they’ll seem reasonable. Perhaps, but that didn’t seem to be the case if you listened to the Conservatives on the committee, who seemed to think that talk about rights was somehow an unreasonable thing. Online, people claiming to be from Anonymous are hoping an online campaign will force the government to back down on the bill, the way the government responded to backlash over Vic Toews’ lawful access bill, but I’m not sure they’ll have the same success, especially as the government is fairly confident that they can get the public to go along with the bill by holding the threat of terrorism over them – especially as new stories of people heading over to fight with ISIS become almost daily news at this point. The NDP tried to get in on the online campaign game and tried to get #StandWithRosane to trend – meaning their deputy critic Rosane Doré Lefebvre, leading the filibuster effort. Not surprisingly, it didn’t trend, for fairly obvious reasons, which makes one think that the NDP still hasn’t quite cracked the social media campaign that the election will supposedly be about. Perhaps we can call it a “hashtag fail,” as it were.

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Roundup: Leave it to (yet another) Officer

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Thomas Mulcair has written to the two other main party leaders about establishing a process to deal with MP-to-MP harassment, and proposes a clear definition in the Standing Orders, an independent Officer of Parliament to deal with complaints, training for MPs and staff, and to ensure that the process protects the rights of victims including to privacy. While some of this sounds reasonable on the surface, there are a few flags to my eye, some of it centred around the creation of yet another Officer, which gives the impression that this kind of thing is commonplace enough that you would need someone to deal with it full-time, rather than amending the mandate of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, for example, to deal with these kinds of issues as well. The proliferation of these Officers is actually a problem, and much like the NDP’s desire to blow up the Board of Internal Economy to create a new bureaucracy to deal with the administration of the Commons, it’s a problem that seeks to remove the self-governing powers from MPs. This is an issue that needs actual debate – if the message is that we can’t trust MPs to manage their own affairs, then what does that say about their ability to manage the country’s affairs? In a way it’s almost infantilizing them, and that should be concerning. Liberal colleagues say that they want the investigations taken care of quickly, and it was noted that there had been discussion of a harassment policy arising from a 2012 document by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and that members of all parties were to take it back to their caucuses to discuss the matter, but it hadn’t moved forward since. Paul Wells looks at these harassment allegations in the broader picture of the sad place that the capital finds itself in at the moment.

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Roundup: Nicholson doubles down

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The issue of retired General Andrew Leslie’s moving benefit payment continued on Monday, and perhaps even gained some steam as Rob Nicholson decided to double down on the partisanship, saying that it was indicative of a “Liberal sense of entitlement,” and claimed that Leslie was wrong when he said that he wasn’t aware of how much they totalled. Never mind that Leslie said that it was a private company that dealt with everything, and that the expenses were almost entirely due to real estate fees (which, on a million dollar house, would be close to that $72,000). Oh, and Nicholson also called it moving from “mansion to mansion,” which none of the photos really showed any house too mansion-like. The Auditor General assessed the programme from which he gained this benefit a few years ago, and that if Rob Nicholson wants to turn the blame to anyone, it may be the real estate companies that his department contracts out to. (Also, that if Nicholson thinks that every departing soldier who avails himself of the programme needs to do an independent assessment, he’s asking a lot of said veterans). Thirteen retired generals have made similar intra-city moves in the past few years, which may be prompting the review, but it would take away from the universality of the benefit. One former general used this benefit to move to the UAE – even though he was disgraced and tossed out for having sex with a subordinate. (This is the same former general currently in an Afghan jail over an issue with the private security company he works for). Andrew Cohen dissects the partisan tenor of the attack, and wonders why anyone would want to serve the public if this is the suspicion and abuse they are subjected to.

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Roundup: Opposition day mischief

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Party leader for less than a week, and Justin Trudeau decides to get up to a little bit of (well-intentioned) mischief. When the Conservatives decided that Monday was going to be a Liberal opposition day, Trudeau and company decided to put it to good use – to debate a motion that would see the Standing Orders changed to that Members’ Statements would be put into a strict alphabetical rotation in order to guarantee that every single MP would get their turn to deliver one (note: this would not include ministers, as they get their own allotted time for statements after QP daily), and that the whip’s office couldn’t deny them that spot if they disagreed with the content of their statement. For the Liberals, it’s no big deal because it’s pretty much what they do already in their own caucus, but more importantly, if they can get the ten Conservative backbenchers who have now added their voices to Mark Warawa’s privilege motion about being muzzled with regards to those statements to add just a couple more MPs to their numbers, well, it could embarrass the government. Not that the government couldn’t conceivably whip such a vote – it is an opposition day motion and not private members’ business, after all – but it would make them look even more foolish in light of the privilege motion, and would increase the pressure that it faces from its own backbench. (Note: Yes, I will add my customary finger-wag that this is not an opposition day motion that demonstrates why the government should be denied supply, which is the point of opposition days in the supply cycle. And the Liberals, with their cudgel of the tariff increases, could very easily do a proper opposition day motion, but they didn’t).

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Coasting towards the finish line: the Liberal leadership showcase

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It was supposed to have been the grand climax of the six-month leadership process, the epic final presentations designed to wow the Liberal faithful who were registered to vote, and that last chance to gain the necessary second- and third-place support for the ranked ballot process. Instead, it was largely a parade of disappointment, campaigns out of steam and in some cases, visibly out of cash, and a confirmation that the race belonged to Trudeau without any shred of doubt.

After the tributes to Bob Rae, who apparently has been elevated to full leader status in hindsight, if you listened to what the presenters said, the presentations began, each candidate given a full twenty-five minutes to showcase themselves and their campaigns. That’s right – twenty-five minutes, which it quickly became apparent was an interminable length of time for most candidates.

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Roundup: Tariff changes and iPod taxes

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It was a game of partisan back-and-forth yesterday as Mike Moffatt of the Richard Ivey School of Business noticed that one of the tariff changes in the budget might mean an increase five percent increase in the cost of MP3 players and iPods. Might. But the NDP were immediately gleeful that the government that lambasted them with the notion of an “iPod tax” (after they wanted a levy on the very same MP3 players for the sake of content creators) might have egg on their face, and sent out press releases quoting Moffatt, which is not without irony considering how often Moffatt calls the NDP out on their economic illiteracy. And Flaherty wasn’t having any of it either, noting a general tariff exemption on devices that you plug into a computer – which would include an iPod. But the tariff tables are maddeningly complex, Moffatt points out, and it was likely an accident that nobody caught.

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The race for second place – the Montreal debate

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The final debate with the six remaining candidates walking into the workroom and seeing the message that David Bertschi left for them on the mirror in lipstick – just kidding! Only in a perfect universe would the Liberal leadership race play out like RuPaul’s Drag Race. No, instead, all six were on stage in Montreal, with a debate format of opening statements, three-person debates and a series of one-on-ones, before closing remarks. And because only six candidates remain and not nine, it allowed for slightly longer exchanges and for a somewhat more focused debate.

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The fight for second place: The Halifax debate

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The fourth and second last Liberal leadership debate took place at the Pier 21 Museum in Halifax. The big difference this time is that we had one candidate self-eliminate, being of course hot republican mess George Takach, who dropped out last week to support Justin Trudeau. That said, the bottom three were still the bottom three and should all have been eliminated by now if we were conducting this leadership race by the RuPaul’s Drag Race model that I’ve been advocating, and the middle tier would be in the make-or-break points in their bids for leadership. But alas, that is not the case.

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Roundup: Defibrillator populism

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Because no move is too crassly populist, Stephen Harper announced yesterday that he was unrolling a federal programme to put defibrillators in every hockey arena in the country – never mind that healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction. Because you can’t do something that’s not too feel-good for the hockey-and-Tim-Horton’s crowd that this government has targeted as the key to its continued political future. On a related note, here’s a look at how the overt Canadiana of the Tim Horton’s brand is preventing its expansion in the States from taking hold – without it, it’s just another donut shop.

Academics are reacting to the appointment of Dr. Andrew Bennett as our religious freedom ambassador, and it’s none too flattering – it seems that he doesn’t really have the academic credentials for the post, as his PhD is in politics, and he’s really more of a glorified civil servant than an expert in theology or religious issues. Ouch.

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Magic Bean Economics and tragicomedy: The Mississauga debate

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The third Liberal leadership debate was held today in Mississauga, and while the format was somewhat more successful than the previous debacle, it really did reinforce the candidate ranking that has emerged over the course of the debates. The one-on-one questions could have been better served if each exchange were another minute longer, and the moderate stepped in when they tried to talk about themselves in the form of a question. Because really, take the format seriously. The three-person debates worked quite well, and got the best traction of the debates to date.

Remaining in the bottom four were David Bertschi, George Takach, Martin Cauchon and Karen McCrimmon. If this contest were like RuPaul’s Drag Race, as it should be, then Bertschi and at least one other would have been eliminated by this point, but alas, they are still hanging around. And once again, they reminded us why they are in the bottom four.

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