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.
Tag Archives: Library and Archives
QP: Regarding the Commissioner’s testimony…
With caucus day, not only were the leaders all present and accounted for in the House, but so were most of the MPs, which set up for a boisterous day. Thomas Mulcair started off by asking about the grain rail bottleneck and the lack of compensation in the bill due to correct it. Stephen Harper mumbled some vague assurances that they were working with producers and would increase the volumes shipped. Mulcair moved onto the testimony of the Commissioner of Elections, who said that some investigations might be shut down because of a lack of compelled testimony. Harper insisted that the bill gives greater independence to the Commissioner, and took a dig at the NDP’s “branch offices” around the country. Mulcair took a few more digs about Conservative “election fraud” before reiterating about the ability for the Commissioner to compel testimony. Harper responded with yet another dig about branch offices. Mulcair asked the same again in French, and got the same answer in French. For his final question, Mulcair asked if Harper thought that Eve Adams should step down, to which Harper called Mulcair a hypocrite, and the Speaker duly cautioned him for unparliamentary language. Justin Trudeau was up next, and asked about the status of the electoral mission to Ukraine. Harper thanked him for his support, and said that there would be updates as they became available. Trudeau switched to a CIBC report on Canadians not saving enough and having too much debt. Harper retorted that Trudeau didn’t have an actual definition for middle class, and dismissed the question. For his final question, Trudeau asked a boilerplate question on the plight of the middle class in French, to which Harper gave a dig that Trudeau wouldn’t know if he was meeting with middle class Canadians or not.
Roundup: Mayrand’s concerns laid out
After a bout of procedural shenanigans and two separate time allocation votes in the Commons, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand spoke to the Commons Procedure and House Affairs committee, giving his assessment of the Fair Elections Act. He has a couple of major concerns – the lack of powers to compel testimony, the loss of the vouching system and the likelihood that it will disenfranchise voters, and inadequate paperwork filed by candidates who get their refunds nevertheless. He spoke about the privacy concerns over turning over the lists of who actually voted over to the parties, who have zero legislated privacy safeguards, and said that the fears of voter information cards to commit fraud is a lot of sound and fury over nothing as most of the errors recorded were procedural and not substantive. In case you couldn’t guess, Pierre Poilieve shrugged off most of the whole appearance, and tried to claim that Mayrand made a number of factual errors.
QP: In the shadow of a Quebec election call
With the election called in Quebec, which will no doubt consume the news cycle for the next six weeks, things carried on here in the Nation’s Capital unabated, despite the added media attention to Quebec MPs and any role that they’ll play. When QP got underway, Thomas Mulcair led off by asking whether Canada would be sending observers to Ukraine along with the Americans and others, to which Harper said that we were, as well as freezing some Russian assets and suspending more bilateral operations. Mulcair asked if Harper had reached out to the IMF, to which Harper said that they had. Mulcair changed topics, and asked about the consultations on the elections bill. Harper expressed his disappointment in the NDP’s opposition to the bill (err, kind of their job, you know). Mulcair said that the partisan tactics around the bill were unprecedented (um, not sure about that), to which Harper reminded him that they opposed the bill without reading it. For his last question, Mulcair asked about the lack of sanctions against Brad Butt for his “mis-speaking,” but Harper shrugged it off, saying that Butt had apologised of his own volition. Dominic LeBlanc led for the Liberals, and asked if elections observers would, be sent to Ukraine, and Baird indicated that we would be. LeBlanc turned to the decrease in funding from the Building Canada Fund, to which Denis Lebel insisted that the fund was $70 billion over ten years.
Roundup: Shenanigans and filibusters
It was a day of procedural shenanigans in the House, with the government trying to tie up the debate around the Brad Butt privilege issue, while in committee, the NDP were continuing their filibuster around the issue of holding cross-country hearings on the elections bill. In the end, closure came down and the Butt issue went to a vote, majority ruling not to send the matter to committee (most Conservatives insisting that his apology was enough and that he really didn’t mean to mislead the House – though nobody had explained how exactly that was the case), and the NDP got concessions on the elections bill at committee – more hearings would be held, but only in Ottawa, while the party decided to hold their own hearings across the country on their own.
Roundup: Harper’s restive senators
There is unrest in the Conservative Senate caucus, as they feel increasingly sandbagged and abandoned by their own party in the wake of the spending scandals of those four embattled Senators, three of which are Harper’s appointees. And while they may feel like there should at least be some mention to the Senate made in the Throne Speech – such a promise for new accountability measures or promises for reform measures in line with what the Supreme Court rules after their reference case – it’s unlikely to happen since the government has deliberately put distance between itself and the Senate as a whole. It’s not the wisest move ever made either, considering that their decision to keep the Leader of the Government in the Senate out of cabinet will come back to haunt them the moment they want to introduce a government bill in the Senate, as they are wont to do, only to find that there is no minister to shepherd it through. Oops. But it doesn’t help that Conservative senators are hearing tales about how when Claude Carignan was sworn into the Privy Council as part of his new job as Senate leader, that Harper simply told him “Good luck with that.” And Harper may soon find that there could be nothing more dangerous to his own government and agenda than a Senate caucus who that is tired of being pushed around and ignored, and indeed being dumped upon by their own party and the public at large, and they may decide to start flexing their muscles, to show that they do have a job to do – as with the “union transparency” bill that they gutted and sent back to the Commons.
Roundup: The commitment to transparency in the Commons
The Procedure and House Affairs held a rare emergency meeting yesterday to declare – unanimously – that they are committed to the ongoing study of ways to increase the transparency in the Commons, and voted to ensure that the House Leader commits to keeping said committee study going once Parliament resumes, and committed to a report on the topic by December 2nd. This allows the committee clerks to start to schedule hearings and lining up expert witnesses during the prorogation – a time when the committee is technically dissolved.
Roundup: Farewell to Bob Rae
In what was a surprise to pretty much everyone, Liberal MP Bob Rae announced his resignation yesterday morning, intending to spend more time as a negotiator for the First Nations in Northern Ontario as part of the development of the Ring of Fire region there. Personally, I find this incredibly distressing as it means we have now lost the best orator in the Commons, and one of the few remaining grown-ups when it comes to debate. This loss lowers the bar, as much as it pains me to say it. John Geddes tends to share this assessment, and especially takes not of Rae’s disappointment with how rote things have become in Parliament over the past number of decades. Aaron Wherry collects a number of videos of Rae’s speeches in the House for the past several years.
Roundup: Trudeau offers a refund
Justin Trudeau says that he’s going to “make it right” with that charity that wants him to repay his speaking fee after their event flopped – though the fact that they’d still be in the hole even if he repays the whole amount is indication that there are more significant problems with that charity. Trudeau says that he’s going to show leadership by working with any charity that feels that they didn’t get their money’s worth from him, and repay them if necessary because it’s the “right thing to do.” To which the Conservatives debuted a new attack line that “Justin Trudeau’s favourite cause is…Justin Trudeau.” Bravo, guys. The move does raise a few questions, such as whether he’s now obligated to pay back any charity that can’t get their own affairs in order when they book him for events, and why a speaking fee is any different from say a caterer or venue. Questions have also been raised about the Grace Foundation, who demanded the repayment, after it was discovered that they have been a recipient of several million dollars of government money that was spent almost entirely on staff and administration, and the connections of senior board members with the PMO, and whether those had anything to do with the demand for the money over nine months after the event, while the Liberal leadership campaign was well underway. Aaron Wherry looks at the issue of speaking fees – of which many a Conservative senator also charge – and whether banning parliamentarians from having an outside income will really be that great of an outcome in the long run.
Roundup: The RCMP officially get involved
The big news yesterday was that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, has suspended her probe into the Wright-Duffy affair as the RCMP have begun a formal investigation into the matter. And then the RCMP confirmed this fact. So it’s all getting very real, ladies and gentlemen. It’s now in the big leagues, though it further gives the Conservatives an out from commenting on matters (“as this is an ongoing police investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment” will be the new line in QP). On a not-unrelated note, Liberal Senator Joseph Day is starting a campaign to close that loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act that allows public office holders to accept “gifts” including cash from friends without reporting it. Day also noted that they tried to close this loophole back in 2006 when the Accountability Act was first being debated, but the Conservatives and NDP struck it down.