Troubling news out of the Information Commissioner’s office, as Suzanne Legault says that the office is nearly broke, thanks to an increasing workload of 30 percent more complaints this year, plus budget cutbacks (and it will be even worse next year as the budget has to absorb staff salary increases). It makes one wonder about the state of court cases that the Commissioner is pursuing in the name of access to certain documents, and what it means to accepting or dealing with new complaints in a timely manner, especially if they are stretched to the breaking point as it is. Tony Clement, not surprisingly, had no comment about any of this, even though as Treasury Board president, he is the one who is supposed to ensure that there is Access to Information compliance in the civil service, which would make her far easier.
Tag Archives: Maple Crown
Roundup: Crowing over a very little
The NDP spent an inordinate amount of time crowing over social media yesterday about how they scored a “procedural coup” and “forced” a debate on the report of the special committee on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. The problem is that it’s not really true. Yes, they moved a concurrence motion during Routine Proceedings after QP on Friday, as is their right – but they didn’t surprise the government or catch them off-guard, as Romeo Saganash said during QP that they would be moving such a motion. Giving 20+ minutes notice is not “catching the government off-guard.” And when they forced a 30-minute vote and proceeded to this concurrence motion, the government voted with them and agreed to the debate, which again, puts the “forced” or “coup” narrative to the test. The report itself doesn’t recommend a national inquiry, seeing as it was a Conservative-dominated committee, and while the NDP wanted to highlight their dissenting report appended to it, it still gave the government side plenty of time to discuss their version of said report. So with these facts in mind, you will forgive me if I find the social media triumphalism a bit much.
Roundup: A threatening break-in
Vandals broke into Justin Trudeau’s home in Ottawa on Friday night, while his family slept (he was in Winnipeg at the time). Said vandals also left a threatening note that warned them to keep their doors locked – sitting atop a pile of items including kitchen knives, with several other knives arranged around the house. Oh, and apparently the designation for a public figure to get RCMP protection is up to the minister of public safety, and he’s being a bit evasive on the topic. It’s not only worrying that somebody would take this step, but that there are a whole chattering class out there who is either mocking Trudeau because his family was in danger, or who believe that this is all staged. Michael Den Tandt calls out the social media reaction on both sides – those who mocked Trudeau, and those who pin the blame on Harper, and the fact that none of the opposition parties stop their own partisans from demonizing Harper over social media either. It’s all part of the same poisoned ecosystem.
Sun News audience, folks https://t.co/x2PhDkCUBi cc @mdentandt #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ABgTtCwTqt
— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) August 17, 2014
Roundup: Victoria Day and the Canadian Crown
Given that yesterday was Victoria Day, here is a look at how it’s a particularly idiosyncratic Canadian holiday, which combines the celebration of the monarch who founded our country along with the official birthday of the reigning monarch, and has a history wrapped up in things like Empire Day, but remains uniquely Canadian all the same.
Roundup: Prince Charles, PC
Prince Charles and Camilla have landed in Halifax for the start of a four-day Royal Tour visiting Nova Scotia, PEI and Manitoba. Charles was sworn into Her Majesty’s Privy Council of Canada – which he will one day lead upon ascending to the throne – which is also a rare national honour to be bestowed upon him. Also on this visit will be the launch of Charles’ Campaign for Wool in Canada, which seeks to reacquaint people with the properties of the natural fibre for all sorts of purposes.
Roundup: Mulcair goes off on reporters
Today is the big day, as Thomas Mulcair goes before committee to defend his party’s use of “satellite” offices and staff doing supposedly “parliamentary” work in provinces where they don’t have MPs. And it could get really testy, given that Mulcair went off on reporters yesterday and was pretty much mansplaining to CTV’s Laurie Graham during caucus outs yesterday. CBC’s leak/counter-leak story is updated with more counter-leaks from House of Commons finance who did have a problem with people being in Montreal, but were still trying to figure out how to deal with it when everything blew up. But there was no problem and this is just the Board of Internal Economy being partisan! Oh, and in case you were wondering, he still plans on hiring someone to work out in Saskatchewan – just not co-locate them with party staffers. Okay then! The NDP also appear to be gearing up for a legal challenge if the committee decides to delve into the matter further, and have sought a legal opinion by the former Commons law clerk to back them up.
Roundup: Tutting and moralizing over the Senate
The National Post has an in-depth look at the issue of senators sitting on corporate boards, and it’s an interesting conversation but I’m not sure the tone of moralising really helps things. I think it needs to be more clearly acknowledged that until recently, most of these were “trophy appointments” on boards to give them prestige, and there was little real work involved. With recent changes in corporate governance, there is more of a due diligence model that is evolving with is becoming more onerous for senators to be involved with. And also with all due respect to Senator Hugh Segal, the work of the Senate is more than 80 or 90 days per year, given that most senators have a lot of committee work that extends beyond the sitting days of the chamber itself, as well as work on other projects that they are championing. I’m not sure that it’s as scandalous that the Senate rules are evolving to reflect these new realities, but we also need to be aware that in relative terms, most Senators don’t make a lot of money from being a Senator. It’s far less than an MP earns, and as has been stated many a time, most Senators take a pay cut upon appointment after an established career. I’m not sure that insisting they live lives of high-minded privation helps anyone. There were also arguments to be had that these kinds of directorships and activities were way by which Senators could still keep their feet in the “real world,” rather than to cloister themselves in the ivory tower that is the Red Chamber. As well, comparisons to the American Senate are not really applicable given the enormous differences between the two institutions, but they’re both called Senates, so it’s easy and lazy to try and cross-compare. So like I said – good conversation to have, but there are far more factors and context at play that should be recognized beyond the scope of this article.
Roundup: An amended Reform Act?
Conservative MP Michael Chong is introducing another reform bill today, which would approach his proposed reforms to leadership reviews from another angle, via the Parliament of Canada Act, rather than the Elections Act, especially to address concerns brought forward by his caucus. That said, it still doesn’t address the fundamental issues of leadership selection, and the consequences of maintaining our current system of membership selection rather than caucus selection, or what happens to the legitimacy of a sitting Prime Minister when a caucus orders a leadership review, which is kind of a big deal. I will also be interested to see if this version contains the provision for a provincial nominating officer instead of a riding one, but there remain other problems with the original Reform Act that Chong tabled, so we’ll see how many this new one corrects.
Roundup: Exit Chuck Strahl
Late Friday afternoon, Chuck Strahl resigned as Chair of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, not because he’d done anything wrong in his part-time lobbying for Enbridge to the provincial government, but because he didn’t want his activities to be a distraction for the government, which is fair.
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.