Tag Archives: MIke Duffy

QP: Vintage Calandra

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With the King of Jordan in town, the PM was absent for QP, which is a rarity for a Wednesday. That Justin Trudeau was also absent was unusual and disappointing. Thomas Mulcair led off, asking about the constitutional requirements for Senate appointments, and why he thought Mike Duffy could be counted as a resident of PEI. Paul Calandra insisted that the NDP were trying to make a victim of Duffy, and it was his actions that were on trial. Mulcair pressed, bringing in Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, but Calandra brought up the NDP satellite offices. Mulcair accused the government of a cover-up of fraudulent expenses in the Senate — not sure that it was in bounds — but Calandra repeated his response. Mulcair invited Calandra to repeat the utterances outside — which he has, repeated — before asking about the “typical family” example in the budget. Kevin Sorenson decried that the NDP seems to think that anyone making under $60,000 per year is wealthy and needs to pay more taxes. For his last question, Mulcair brought up the Auditor General’s report on First Nation’s healthcare, and Rona Ambrose rose to assure him that action was being taken. Dominic LeBlanc led for the Liberals, returning to Duffy’s constitutional eligibility, to which Calandra repeated the “making a victim” line and then attacked the NDP. In another round in English, Paul Calandra brought in Mac Harb, and Scott Brison closed the round by asking about ad spending versus the Canada Summer Jobs programme. Pierre Poilievre insisted they were creating jobs with “tax cuts, training and trade.”

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Roundup: An implicit repudiation

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It was Auditor General day yesterday, and as usual, there were some stories that didn’t get a lot of attention, like CBSA’s computer systems, and some which are somewhat alarming, like the fact that twenty years later, Health Canada still doesn’t have a real plan to deal with superbugs, that there are some serious deficiencies when it comes to nursing stations with remote First Nations, or that the Royal Canadian Mint and the Office of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman had some spending issues. But the most interesting bits were in two chapters – one on tax expenditures, the other on the release of male offenders from corrections. In essence, both are repudiations of the way that this government has been managing things. Tax expenditures has a lot to do with the mass proliferation of those boutique tax credits that this government likes to throw around in order to target voters, but as the AG points out, it’s done with little scrutiny, and not enough information on them gets back to Parliamentarians to hold that spending to account. (Couple this with the report on Monday about the growth in tax complexity, and it should be a big red flag). As for offenders, too many low-risk offenders are not getting parole when they are eligible, and that makes reintegration harder, and recidivism more likely because they don’t get the monitoring that comes with parole. Add to that, the squeeze on programming resources within prisons and the removal of incentives to do the programming means that too many offenders are being released without having completed their rehabilitation programmes, which is also alarming. It’s also the direct fault of this government and their tough-on-crime policies what have made a virtue of trying to keep people in prisons longer, and then justifying it by saying that they won’t be on the streets to re-offend (never mind that in the vast majority of cases, keeping them in prison longer does more harm than good). And as the AG pointed out, it’s more costly to keep them in prison longer and without gradual release and programming, they get released with a higher chance to re-offend. In other words, we’re paying more to get poorer results because it’s easier to try and get votes by appealing to the sense of retribution rather than rehabilitation. Well done, guys. Slow clap.

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QP: Taking Paul Martin’s name in vain

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In the wake of the Auditor General’s report, and with all of the leaders present, it looked like we might have a decent Question Period for a change. One could hope, anyway. Thomas Mulcair led off, saying that the AG considered the government bad managers, particularly around tax expenditures. Stephen Harper disputed the interpretation of the report, said they would report more, and then slammed the NDP regarding their own high tax plans. Mulcair tied those into the budget and the “giveaways to the wealthy few,” and wondered if Harper thought he was Paul Martin. Harper hit back, saying that if he was Paul Martin, the NDP would be supporting him, before giving praise to his budget measures. Mulcair mumbled something else about Paul Martin before changing the topping to a declaration Mike Duffy may or may not have signed before he was appointed. Harper ignored the question, and praised the TFSA changes. Mulcair quipped “Mike who?” before asking about the appointment of Caroyln Stewart Olsen to the Senate, to which Harper insisted that the Duffy issues were before the court. Mulcair then brought up the Senate invoking privilege to block the release of an internal audit — something the PM has nothing to do with. Harper repeated the response about the matter being before the courts. Justin Trudeau was up next, asking about the money spent on advertising rather than on young entrepreneurs. Harper insisted that an entrepreneurial group was pleased with measures in the budget, and said that the Liberals would take them away. Trudeau repeated it in French, with the twist of job creation for youth, and Harper asserted that the Liberals hate benefits and tax cuts. For his final question, Trudeau accused Harper had changed with his decision to pour so much money into advertising. Harper listed things he claimed the Liberals opposed (but not really).

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Roundup: The Senate invokes privilege

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In his attempt to cast the net far and wide in order to excuse Mike Duffy’s housing claims, it seems that Donald Bayne is trying to show that plenty of other senators were improperly claiming for Ottawa residences, and is trying to compel the release of an internal Senate audit conducted in 2012, where two Senators – retired Senator Zimmer and Senator Patterson – were found to have questionable claims which they later explained away. The Senate, however, is invoking privilege and refusing to turn it over, which is their constitutional right. They are under no obligation to help Duffy’s defence, after all, and as a legislative body they have the right to conduct their own affairs. And before anyone starts getting hysterical, remember that privilege is all about the independence of the institution, and keeping the courts out of parliament so that it can do its job without the constant threat of litigation during the legislative process. Likewise, Parliament doesn’t get involved in individual court cases because that would interfere with the independence of the courts. Otherwise, Bayne tried to bring up Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen yesterday who was part of the subcommittee that “sat in judgement” of Duffy when she was claiming her long-time Ottawa residence as secondary for two years while she was trying to sell it in order to fully move back to New Brunswick (this is the point where I mention that she shouldn’t have been appointed as a New Brunswick senator until she was fully moved back). Also, the Senate finance officer continued to be grilled, and continued to push back against Bayne, going so far as to read more than the passages he indicated in order to provide context, which the judge allowed her to do. Nicholas Köhler paints that sketch with his usual aplomb.

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QP: Assistance for Nepal

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As Mondays are the new Fridays, there were no major leaders in the Commons for QP, leaving the more unusual choice of Hélène Laverdière to lead off, asking about the humanitarian assistance for Nepal, and asked if the government would match donations as they have done with disasters past. Christian Paradis assured her that there was, and noted the $5 million fund they just announced. Megan Leslie was up next, and asked for a further update on assistance being provided to Canadians in the region. Paradis repeated his previous response, but didn’t tough on the actual questions. Leslie then turned to the budget, and the lack of action for climate change therein. Pierre Poilievre insisted that the NDP considered anyone making less than $60,000 per year are wealthy. Nathan Cullen then asked about tax breaks for the wealthy, to which Poilievre repeated the same answer. Cullen gave a rambling repeat of the question, and got the same answer. David McGuinty led off for the Liberals, asking about partisan advertising — not coincidentally, the subject of his opposition day motion. Poilievre insisted that they were informant families of tax decreases and benefits available to them. McGuinty pressed, wanting all government ads to be submitted to a third-party vetting. Poilievre instead plugged the benefits to parents who were not yet signed up to them. McGuinty then moved onto the lack of job creation figures from the budget, but this time Kevin Sorenson stood up to deliver the good news talking points on all the jobs the government allegedly created.

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Roundup: Enbridge and the Duffy pathology

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Over in the Ottawa Citizen, David Reevely has a wonderful little piece about the ways in which Mike Duffy conducted himself as a Senator – and that was to basically farm out work to friends, including a $7000 speech about “Why I am a Conservative.” Apparently a former journalist writing about his own political convictions was too much work, and so he fobbed it off on someone else, on the taxpayer’s dime. Reevely is right to point out an emptiness to the way that Duffy treated the job, but it misses another aspect to the pathology – that Duffy wanted to be a player. Certainly by spreading the largess around to those who he thought would be impressed by it is indicative of that. We’re seeing more of this desire to be a player as more things come out of his diaries, and one of the most eyebrow-raising examples were his meetings with Enbridge. As it happens, those meetings were unsolicited. Duffy was trying to ingratiate himself and so he made busywork about trying to get some action on the Keystone XL pipeline, having conversations that weren’t reported to the Lobbying Registry, and then reporting them to the PMO. Apparently it got to the point where Enbridge officials themselves complained to the PMO about it, in the hopes that they could call Duffy off. And really, there was no point to Duffy’s efforts – the PMO was onside with the pipeline, and Enbridge has had no issues with reporting their meetings. Oh, but Duffy wanted to be a player, to show that he mattered in the corridors of power – the reason why he’d been begging for an appointment to the Senate for decades, from successive prime ministers, both Liberal and Conservative, who had no time for him. The NDP, incidentally, want those Enbridge meetings investigated, but I’m not sure it’s really necessary because it certainly appears that there is nothing to investigate other than Duffy’s inflated sense of self, and while the NDP may think that it’s some kind of smoking gun on Harper, it’s far more about Duffy’s ego than it was about corruption from the centre.

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Roundup: Nolin’s passing a blow to the Senate

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The passing of Senate Speaker Pierre-Claude Nolin leaves the institution in a pretty vulnerable place. In light of the Duffy/Wallin/Brazeau affairs, Nolin was on a mission to bring some internal reform to the Chamber, both in terms of financial controls and the like, but also with ensuring that senators themselves were better educated as to their own roles. When Nolin was first named Speaker, he invited reporters to the Chamber for a Q&A, and before he took questions, he gave us a little talk, brandishing a copy of the Supreme Court reference decision on Senate reform, and made note of some key passages about the roles of a Senator. His message to his fellow senators was pretty frank – here are some things that you’re not doing, and we need to improve on that. Long-time readers of mine will know the root of some of these problems – not just a few poor appointments by the current Prime Minister, but the fact that appointments happened in large numbers. The Chamber works best absorbing one or two new members at a time, and they can find their feet and generally get on with feeling out their sense of institutional independence. When a fifth of the chamber is brought in all at once, they are more pliant and susceptible to control from the top, which is what happened. Nolin, always an independent thinker and someone not afraid to go against the current government, whose caucus he was a member of, wanted more of that from his fellow senators, and he probably would have done a lot to get them to a better place, institutionally speaking, if he’d had more time. Now, I’m not sure who will be able to take his place. The Speaker Pro Tempore (equivalent of the Deputy Speaker in the Commons) is not exactly an independent thinker, and is part of a cabal of players around the Senate Leader’s office, who in turn are supine to the PMO for a variety of reasons. That group is not going to continue Nolin’s work of trying to make the chamber a more independent place. We’ll have to see who the PM will ultimately choose, but Nolin has set a high bar that will be difficult to match. Elsewhere, here are some highlights of Nolin’s career. On Power Play, Mercedes Stephenson spoke to the man who appointed Nolin, Brian Mulroney (and a correction to Stephenson – Nolin was not elected to the Speaker position, as it’s a prime ministerial appointment. The praise for him was unanimous, however).

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/591589139079892993

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Roundup: The Privacy Commissioner finally has his say

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Bill C-51 is now getting its review in the Senate, hearing from someone that the Commons didn’t – the Privacy Commissioner. What they got was an earful – there are some big problems with the information sharing provisions in the bill that would allow large amounts of personal information to be collected and shared between departments with little justification, and that his office would be swamped with work because of it. He’s also calling for oversight – like everyone else – and for the ability for different watchdogs to communicate with one another and coordinate their investigations in order to get a better picture of what these organisations are doing as they work together but their oversight remains siloed. Those other oversight bodies – SIRC and the CSE Commissioner – had much the same concerns when it comes to the ability to work together, and just keeping pace with the increasing scope and scale of operations. But will any of this have an effect? Maybe, as there are some Conservative senators who are concerned about these kinds of things and who may push back. But the government may bully through, and said senators may decide that this isn’t the hill they want to die on (which does happen), and they’ll let it go through. Suffice to say, the issue has not gone away.

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QP: Pierre Poilievre, de facto finance minister

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While it was only Thursday, only two leaders were present — Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May, with Stephen Harper off in Winnipeg and Justin Trudeau, well, elsewhere. After interminable members’ statements on how great/terrible the budget is, Mulcair finally got up to lead off, pointing out that the NDP had proposed the small business tax cut that was being gradually rolled out in the budget, and it was voted down, so why should Canadians believe the government about it now. Pierre Poilievre boasted about the low-tax plan in response. Mulcair returned to yesterday’s lead about the problems for their grandchildren that the TFSA increase would create, but Poilievre insisted that TFSAs were great. Mulcair then wondered about Jason Kenney and other Conservatives insisting that the contingency fund wasn’t being touched when it was, and wondered where the finance minister was — as Oliver was once again absent. Poilievre ignored it, and continued to praise TFSAs. Charlie Angus was up next, and returned to the issue of Mike Duffy’s residency regarding his appointment to the Senate, to which Paul Calandra insisted that the practice was clear, and that the NDP was trying to make a victim of Duffy, and oh, they owe for those satellite offices. Angus then asked about entries in Duffy’s diary about meetings on Enbridge that weren’t reported to the Lobbying Commissioner, to which repeated his answer. Marc Garneau led off for the Liberals, returning to the problems with the TFSA boost and its inherent inequality. Poilievre insisted that the Liberals would raise taxes. Ralph Goodale was up next, bringing up the changes to the OAS in relation to the TFSA changes. Poilievre insisted that seniors were taking full advantage of TFSAs, and another round gave just the same.

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Roundup: Of gaffes and grandchildren

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I think by this point we can pretty much acknowledge that Joe Oliver is not anyone’s best choice to communicate a message – he wasn’t as Natural Resources minister, with his “foreign-funded radicals” warnings about environmentalists, and certainly not as finance minister given his Tuesday night gaffe with CBC’s Amanda Lang. There, he said that any problems with raising the TFSA limit might not happen until 2080, and that he’d leave it for “Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s granddaughter to solve that problem.” Not only did he admit that there was a problem with it, but he decided it’s best to leave it to the next generation – not to mention his prediction that the Harper family will become some kind of dynastic rules of Canada – because we’ve seen so many of those. When opposition parties made hay of it, Harper came out to defend Oliver’s comments, but we have heard this warning before, from the PBO who drafted a report looking at the hole in future budgets that this kind of measure would create, and it’s not inconsiderable, so no, the question being put to Oliver by Lang was more than reasonable, and it would have been irresponsible for her not to ask it. In other post-budget news, here are the opposition positions on many of the pieces therein. There was mention in the budget about “expanding and modernising” the Honours system, but there are almost no details about what that means other than a new website. Pierre Poilievre said the money being given to the Ottawa police is for “fighting jihadis” – except it’s not, but rather for things like demonstrations or visits by foreign dignitaries. Oops. Mike Moffatt looks at the very optimistic budget projections on the price of oil. The budget nearly doubles what it gives to SIRC, but we’ll see if they’ll be expected to do more with it, given that they are already under-resourced. Paul Wells puts absolutely everybody to shame and writes about the budget as political document, and it’s so on point I want to weep.

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