QP: Harper knew nothing

With the Clusterduff explosions still ringing in the air, and Harper on his way to Peru, it was a somewhat tense mood in the House as Question Period started. Thomas Mulcair began by reading a dig about Harper jetting off to Peru before demanding that the RCMP be called in and all papers be turned over. John Baird, the designated back-up PM du jour, read a carefully prepared script about how Harper didn’t know about the payment until last week, and that he made a strong statement about it that morning. Françoise Boivin tried another kick at the same questions, bringing up his iron-fisted control and micromanagement of his office to indicate that he had to be aware, but Baird told her that he’d already given a clear answer, and that perhaps she learn how to roll with QP (as opposed to sticking to her script). Justin Trudeau decried that the government had lost its moral compass, and asked the for the documents on the deal between Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy. Baird responded with the very same answer, that nobody knew anything. For his final question, Trudeau wanted an apology to Canadians over the whole affair, but Baird wasn’t about to provide one.

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Roundup: Shrapnel from the Clusterduff

The shrapnel from the Clusterduff explosion continues to ricochet around the capital as Parliament resumes today. Over in the PMO, the latest casualty is the former special council and legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin (who actually left in April to return to teaching law), who drafted the agreement between Nigel Wright and Senator Mike Duffy. But Perrin and Wright assert that Harper wasn’t told – because, plausible deniability, I guess. While the Senate is going to be seized with the audit reports and the proposed new rules, now that they’ve had the week to look them over, the House is going to be some kind of fun, as the NDP bray about ethics and accountability, and Harper, well, heads to Peru and then a Pacific summit (that was all pre-arranged long before any of this broke, before any of you start getting any ideas about this foreign travel being a little too convenient). The NDP have decided to ride the ethics train and demand that the RCMP look into the Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy affair, because they’re apparently not content to let the Conservatives continue to self-immolate. They also seem to be oblivious to the obvious Conservative counter-offensive about Thomas Mulcair’s decades of curious silence about the attempted bribery that he declined in 1994. (I’ve been told that the Liberals will stay out of this in QP, since they are content to let said self-immolation continue unaided – we shall see). Harper is going to have an emergency caucus meeting in the morning before he heads off to Peru (though apparently nobody told Finance Committee, who are still slated to meet early). The opening portion of said meeting will be open to the media, but he won’t take any questions, which could be a long and uncomfortable silence for all the journalists travelling with him if he decides to sequester himself.

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Roundup: Buh-bye Nigel Wright

It was a move that should have happened last week, but instead it was announced at eight-thirty Sunday morning – Nigel Wright, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, resigned over the whole writing-a-$90,000-cheque-to-Mike-Duffy thing. And then comes the waves of lament and apologists, crying that Wright was a good man who was doing his bit for public service (even though a job in the PMO is not public service – it is the opposite, in fact), though nobody seems to be asking themselves any of the critical questions about the actual wrongdoing. Taking Wright’s place will be Ray Novak, Harper’s principle secretary and a loyalist from his days in the Alliance Party, so one can expect a much more partisan tone returning to the PMO, which had softened under Wright. Not that Wright’s departure actually answers any of the questions about what actually happened between Wright and Duffy, which is kind of a big deal – as John Geddes, Paul Wells and Michael Den Tandt all write. Not that Harper will be answering questions – he’s off to Peru this week, and because each embattled Senator has resigned from their respective caucus, and Wright is also gone, the government line can be “everyone involved has now resigned, let’s just move on.” And thus becomes the government’s damage control strategy as the last few weeks of the sitting roll along before the summer recess. Oh, and the caucus is becoming restive too as this level of mismanagement starts to damage the brand of the “party of the Accountability Act.” Apparently there’s to be an emergency caucus meeting Tuesday morning before Harper flies out, and one can scarcely imagine the words that will be exchanged behind closed doors as these angry MPs line up at the mic.

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Roundup: Wallin recuses herself

As far as exits go, it was not inconspicuous, and delivered at that golden hour of five to six on the Friday before a long weekend. With the briefest of press releases, Senator Pamela Wallin announced that she has “recused herself” from Conservative caucus until the conclusion of the forensic audit into her travel expenses was complete – which she has been fully cooperative with, she was quick to point out. And word has it that this was not exactly a voluntary move either, but a pre-emptive move in advance of the audit being released that will show that she has to repay even more than the $40,000 she already has – and that said audit will be forwarded directly to the RCMP. More than that, however, her recusal is a necessary strategic move by the Prime Minister. Why? Because when Tuesday rolls around and the NDP stand up in Question Period to bray about how awful the Senate is and all of these scandal-plagued Senators need to be investigated by some outside body, Harper or his designated back-up PM du jour can stand up and say simply that these individuals are no longer in caucus, so it’s no longer their concern and they’ll let the Senate deal with it. And to a certain extent it’s correct that the Senate has to deal with this on their own and there’s nothing that the Commons or the cabinet can do about it, but Harper can’t wash his hands of this. Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau – they were all his appointments. And under our system of government, it means that he and he alone gets to wear this one, no matter what.

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Roundup: Untangling the clusterduff

It’s hard to know where to start with the constant revelations on the Senator Mike Duffy file yesterday, because they were coming pretty fast and furious, but the biggest news was that he “voluntarily” left caucus because he had become a distraction. One adds the quotation marks around “voluntary” because word is that the other members of the Conservative Senate caucus were signing a petition to have him ousted, so the writing may have been on the wall. He still wants back in, once everything is sorted and he is somehow vindicated, but considering how he and his lawyers refused to cooperate with the Deloitte auditors, and the fact that he was allegedly making that deal with Nigel Wright in order to make his expenses outrage go away, well, the desire to see his name cleared doesn’t seem to have been top of mind the past few months.

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Roundup: Poor, poor Mike Duffy

Poor Senator Mike Duffy. Poor, poor Senator Duffy. So poor, in fact, that he had Nigel Wright, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff write him a personal cheque for $90,000 to cover his housing allowance repayment. And how did the dear Senator repay Wright for his very generous gift? By bragging around town that Wright had done it, enough that those emails found their way to one of Duffy’s former journalist colleagues. Oh, and such a “gift” would also be against Sec. 17(1) of the Senate’s Conflict of Interest Code. Oops. (And apparently the Ethics Commissioner on the Commons side is now looking into Wright’s actions). Now, there is some ambiguity in those regulations, predicated on what constitutes a gift and just how close of a friendship the pair have – and that came as the bombshell later in the day. After an afternoon of Conservative talking heads peddling the story that the pair were very close, and that Wright helped Duffy out because he was concerned about his financial situation given his health and all, comes the revelation that Duffy tried to say that he got a loan from the Royal Bank and that Wright had no part in this, and more than that, insiders say that Duffy and Wright barely know one another. This despite PMO’s assurances to the contrary, although they tried to paint this in that altruistic light, while simultaneously trying to shift the attention to Senators Brazeau and Harb instead. They were also trying to peddle the line that Harper knew nothing about this – that his own chief of staff cut a cheque to make a noisy and embarrassing story go away, and yet the boss was kept in the dark? Yeah, that’s totally plausible. Tell me again how this is going to end well for any of the parties involved.

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QP: Clawbacks and disincentives

Thomas Mulcair led off QP by wondering if the Prime Minister was in agreement with Peter Van Loan’s characterisation the day before that EI was a disincentive for people to find work. Harper stuck to defending his record of job creation. Mulcair’s last question was the topic of his party’s opposition day motion on whether Harper would meet with the premiers. Harper said that he’d met or called premiers over 250 times. Peggy Nash was up next, and in light of Nexen’s shareholders agreeing to be bought out by CNOOC, wondered if the government was aware of CNOOC’s environmental and human rights record. Mike Lake responded by saying that the investment review process was sound and that the minister was taking a close look at this case. Denis Coderre was up for the Liberals, asking about those EI clawbacks. Diane Finley rose instead of Harper, despite it being the leaders’ round, and responded with the wise words “workers are better off when they work.” That’s, like, deep.

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Roundup: Framing the faux-debate

As the whole carbon tax faux-debate continues to rage unabated, it turns out that the Conservatives’ sector-by-sector regulatory approach has a lot of hidden costs to it. Bruce Cheadle delves into how the faux-debate is all about framing the issue, no matter how true or false it actually may be.

Changes to MP pensions may mean lifting the freeze on their salaries. The Liberals are demanding that the changes be in a separate bill, so that they can support it. Of course, the likely calculation is that the changes will be put into an otherwise unpalatable omnibus bill so that the Conservatives can accuse them of trying to protect their pensions.

Plans to allow American law enforcement agents to pursue suspects across land borders are “on hold” while they sort out legal issues.

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QP: Scary trade deficits!

Yesterday, everyone was up in arms about a fictional carbon tax. Today, it was that trade deficits sound scary. Thomas Mulcair started off QP by reading off a questions premised on the fact that when Harper took office there was a trade surplus (for which the Liberals applauded themselves), and now there was a trade deficit caused by an “artificially high dollar.” Harper shrugged and said that such a deficit existed for “complex reasons,” but hey, they didn’t want an NDP carbon tax! And after Mulcair hammered after the trade deficit, he then read off questions about unemployment, for which Harper touted his government’s job creation record and listed a number of programmes they implemented.  Nowhere in this did anybody mention that we have a trade deficit largely because of weak global demand due to Eurozone uncertainty and slowing growth in the Chinese economy, coupled by a high dollar – but hey, the word “deficit” sounds bad, so we must capitalise on that rather than realising that a trade deficit isn’t actually what you think it is. Onward, Marc Garneau was up for the Liberals, asking about youth unemployment rather than the government trying to change the channel. Harper repeated his line about job creation. And when Garneau asked specific questions on making tax credits refundable and rolling back new payroll taxes? Harper answered with the accusation that the Liberals didn’t support their plans to lower taxes (which they loudly denied), and that the father of the carbon tax, Stéphane Dion, was sitting right behind him.

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QP: First day of school

After an all-too predictable joking statement on the government legislating and end to the NHL lockout, and numerous Conservative statements on the fictional NDP “carbon tax,” Thomas Mulcair started off Question Period by citing things like the trade deficit while wondering if Harper would change his economic strategy. Harper spoke about the uncertain global economy, but gave no indication that he was willing to make any changes. Mulcair asked about the government cutting services during times of such high unemployment. Harper countered with the figure of three-quarters of a million net new jobs. Mulcair cited all of the instability in the European and American economies. Harper reminded him that Canada wasn’t the cause of that uncertainty, and hey, we’re the stable ones. Oh, Mulcair said, don’t get too caught up in “Fortress Canuck” when you should be protecting Canadian jobs. Better us than your tax hikes, Harper retorted, which was pretty much the same reply when Mulcair asked about whether or not he would meet with the premiers. Ralph Goodale was up for the Liberals, first asking about programmes to help young Canadians, to which Harper chided that while the NDP have bad ideas, at least they have some, unlike the Liberals. Goodale then asked a technical questions about financing cooperatives, but Harper ignored it and gave a rote talking point about the economy and lower taxes. Goodale closed off by asking about income inequality, to which Harper reminded him that they lowered the GST by two points for all Canadians.

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