Not that Parliament has risen for the summer, the leaders can begin their summer tours in earnest, without having to take those inconvenient breaks to show up for the odd Question Period or a vote here or there. Because you know, they’re meeting with “real Canadians” as opposed to doing their actual jobs. And with by-elections happening a week away, both Trudeau and Mulcair are in Toronto today to campaign there, both of them drawing different lessons from the Ontario election, while the people who study these sorts of things aren’t necessarily sure that voters are committed to the same parties provincially and federally, and that they may be making a different calculation electorally.
Tag Archives: John Baird
Roundup: A blistering report
Word has it that House of Commons Administration has an independent report prepared on the NDP’s “satellite offices” that will be presented to the Board of Internal Economy, and that it’s going to be blistering. And because this is coming from Commons Administration and not any of the parties or committees, it’s going to be difficult for the NDP to blame this on partisanship or that they’re being ganged up on, which are their usual defences. Unless of course they’re going to claim that the Commons Administration is also out to get them…
Roundup: A not unexpected delay
Surprising pretty much nobody, President Barack Obama has delayed the Keystone XL decision until after the November midterm elections. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the PMO and in the premiers’ offices in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Roundup: An office to serve non-existent MPs
The NDP are trying to open yet another Hill branch office, but this time in Saskatchewan – where they don’t have any MPs. In other words, trying to claim that it’s for parliamentary work is utter bunk. And “outreach officer” is not a Hill staffer position, by the way. When they claim that they need to be in touch with all Canadians, that’s not the job of Hill staffers – that’s the role of the local riding associations. Their associations are supposed to be the interlocutors between the local communities and the parliamentary party and caucus, a model that is ever weakening in the age of instamembers for leadership votes, and power centralized in leaders’ offices. That the NDP are trying to knock down those barriers between party work and Hill work is another worrying trend about the level of centralization that they are employing.
Roundup: Exiting Afghanistan
The Canadian Army lowered the flag for the last time in Afghanistan, as our troops officially pull out of that country after our longest military engagement ever. Not that the job is really done, but we’re now turning it over to domestic security forces, as nascent as they are. Our ambassador says that Canada will remain engaged in the country and will help to rebuild their economy, and in particular their resource sector.
Roundup: Reactions to the Ukraine situation
The situation in Ukraine consumed much of the news this weekend, and Stephen Harper even took the unprecedented (for him) move of announcing an emergency cabinet meeting, and gave several media readouts over the weekend, which included news that we are recalling our ambassador from Moscow “for consultations” and that we have stopped our preparations for the G8 meeting in Sochi, as have the Americans and other allies. Of course, while the government put in travel advisories, it looks like the Paralympic games in Sochi plan to go ahead next week regardless, but I guess we’ll see. On Sunday, Baird ruled out the possibility of military intervention in the region, while experts felt that recalling the ambassador happened too soon, if only because this is a time for high-level diplomatic engagement. They also said that Canada has been largely reduced to making gestures, while others said that Canada needs to better re-engage with NATO allies. Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland is headed to Ukraine on her own to show solidarity and meet with both government and civil society leaders.
Roundup: Ridiculous paranoia and shameless misspeaking
The Fair Elections Act was back front and centre in the House yesterday, with the NDP’s opposition day motion to hold cross-country hearings on the bill. Aaron Wherry heard back from Pierre Poilievre on the problems with vouching, and from the former BC Chief Electoral Officer who wrote a report on said issue, who doesn’t think it should be eliminated by simply streamlined. There are concerns that the changes in the Act could prevent the Chief Electoral Officer from reporting to Parliament on the investigation into the fraudulent robocalls (Poilievre insists it won’t be the case). The provision that both chambers of Parliament would need to sign off on future online voting experiments is bringing out the paranoia that the Conservative-dominated Senate will kill all future attempts, out of spite or something (because the Senate has never been dominated by an opposition party before apparently – and seriously, grow up). And then, to top it all off, Conservative MP Brad Butt decided that no, he didn’t actually witness voter fraud by people taking discarded voter identification cards and then using them illicitly – he just “misspoke.” Multiple times. In the House and in committee. Oh, but now he considers the matter to be “closed,” so stop asking. Yes, apparently he is that shameless.
Roundup: Trudeau’s mistakes and the sanctimonious reaction
Justin Trudeau admitted that a couple of errors were made in relation to travel claims that should have been charged to the Speaker’s Bureau he belongs to rather than his MP expenses, dating back to 2009 and 2010. He said that it was human error, repaid them by personal cheque, and said that had there been better disclosure rules – like his party has put into place – this would have been caught sooner. And then the partisan spin happened. The NDP tried to somehow wedge this into a kind of Nigel Wright scenario, which makes no sense whatsoever. There were also sanctimonious cries about how he swore he never used his MP expenses for his outside work – and it seems pretty clear that it was a mistake, where the claims were bundled incorrectly, but now we apparently can’t take his word for anything – gods help us if any of his denouncers have ever made a mistake before. Liberal partisans, meanwhile, note that the NDP are the most opaque about their own expenses, for what it’s worth. And for everyone who cries that it should be an MP’s job to speak publicly, I would ask where exactly in an MP’s job description is being a motivational speaker? It’s not. An MP’s job is to hold the government to account and to scrutinise the public accounts, though you’d be hard pressed to find an MP who actually does that these days – I can think of a mere handful. Trying to claim that their job is something else is one more reason why the state of parliament has become so abysmal.
Roundup: Nobody panic, it’s just avian flu
H5N1 Avian Flu has claimed a life in Alberta – someone who contracted it while in China and started feeling ill on the plane ride home. Health officials are saying not to panic as it has so far resisted human-to-human transmission, and those closest to the affected person are being treated with Tamiflu, but the fact that this is going on while H1N1 is back in the news in Alberta, where ten people have died there from that particular virus is certainly causing some alarm.
Roundup: Skills mismatch or lack of data?
Despite the government’s talk about the “skills mismatch” that is affecting our jobs sector, there is no actual evidence to support this, says TD Economics. And a big part of the problem is that we don’t actually have good data to track these kinds of things, apparently, nor are we tracking underemployment figures either. It also doesn’t appear that there is a real demand for jobs in the resource extraction sector despite the government’s promises of yet more jobs there – but hey, without the data, they can claim whatever they like. Meanwhile, medical specialists not being able to find jobs upon graduation is another problem being recognised and hopes to be corrected with more data on the part of the Canadian Medical Association as they try to steer students to sectors facing more of a crunch in the near future.