Tag Archives: Office of Religious Freedoms

Roundup: Meet the new Religious Freedom ambassador

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The government has named Andrew Bennett, a former civil servant and current dean of a Christian college in Ottawa, as its new ambassador for the Office of Religious Freedom. We’ll now see what happens with this office – it’s small and its $5 million budget won’t go far, and there will be scrutiny to see if it prefers some religions over others, or if it speaks out against religious persecutions of women or gays and lesbians, or even atheists.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair went to Calgary to address the Chamber of Commerce there, and talked about making foreign investment criteria more transparent, and then talked doom about the Canada-China FIPA. Experts, however, have panned his apocalyptic reading of the agreement.

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Roundup: Exit John Duncan

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In a surprise four-thirty on the Friday before a constituency week announcement, Aboriginal affairs minister John Duncan resigned from cabinet yesterday. To be fair, I’ve been waiting for him to resign “for health reasons” for a while, but what was surprising that the reason for said resignation was that he wrote an improper letter to the Tax Court a couple of years ago as a character reference for a constituent, which of course he should not have, and it sounds like after the Flaherty/CRTC letter affair, cabinet ministers were asked to check their files for any other potential infractions and this turned up. James Moore has been given the file for the time being, but given its size and political sensitivity at the moment, it’s likely it’ll be handed off to someone else soon, though it likely won’t signal any major changes in cabinet. Harper won’t be doing a major shuffle for a while yet – the common consensus is late June, but I’ve heard from my own sources that it may not be until next year, when it’s a little closer to the election. John Ivison says that an “all-star” will need to take the file – but they’re few and far between in the Conservative ranks, and Baird, Harper’s usual Mr. Fix-it, likes his current job with Foreign Affairs.

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Roundup: Thirteen new demands

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The big news is that Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence will be ending her hunger action today, after it was reported that her own band council was issuing her an ultimatum to either end her hunger action or face removal as chief. But that wasn’t quite enough for Spence, who issued a thirteen-point resolution that needed to be met, and after speaking with Opposition leaders, got them to sign off on it – though I’m not exactly sure why. And so, there to be an “honouring ceremony” to end the hunger action held later today, plus a couple of press conferences – so I guess we’ll have to see what gets said. Meanwhile, the Manitoba chiefs have decided that they’ll stick with the AFN for now, but raise questions about the Assembly’s mandate – especially with regards to treaty negotiations. Jonathan Kay writes about how the AFN can no longer be all things to all First Nations in Canada.

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Roundup: Triple by-election day

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It’s by-election day in Calgary Centre, Durham, and Victoria! While Durham is expected to be a Conservative hold, and Victoria likely to stay NDP (though the Greens are really pushing for a second seat there), all eyes will be on Calgary Centre. Over the weekend, at the final debate, Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt was making bizarre statements, like only a government MP could help you if you lost your passport while in Mexico because they could go across the hall to the minister’s office – which is patently not true (especially since you would go to the nearest consulate for non-partisan, civil service assistance). But then again, Crockatt has made a campaign of saying terribly wrong things about our political system, so why should she change now? (Recall this particular post after one of her very wrong statements early in the campaign. Yeah, this is a problem).

In the wake of the Trudeau apology, Aaron Wherry digs up some great moments in regional politics history, like the “no more prime ministers from Quebec” ad that the Reform Party launched – and Harper defended. Peter Armstrong wonders if Alberta has become the new Quebec. In this clip, Paul Wells makes some additional observations of the context of the interview that Trudeau said the aforementioned comments. And yes, Conservative Party headquarters has a big binder full of controversial things that Harper has said in the past. One wonders if the Trudeau camp is now compiling their own, so as not to be surprised when the next impolitic quote is dredged up.

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Roundup: Adventures in Vladivostok

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While at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, over the weekend, Stephen Harper and Chinese president Hu Jintao witnessed the signing of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. Harper and Russian president Vladimir Putin also agreed to disagree on the issue of Syria. While at the summit, Harper also ratcheted up the rhetoric around Iran now that we’ve shuttered our embassy there.

It looks like the new Office of Religious Freedoms may have finally found its ambassador and could be set to open soon. Of course, it was also revealed that the Muslim panellists for their consultations were “not available,” which sounds terribly convenient when you’re trying to assure people that this won’t simply be an office devoted to Christian proselytising.

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Roundup: Selecting a window dressing panel

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The government has announced the selection panel for recommending the next Justice of the Supreme Court, comprised of three Conservatives, one NDP and one Liberal MP, and as it was pointed out, three lawyers, a PhD in sociology, and a farmer. The judge will have to be from Quebec, as that is the vacancy on the Court. Of course, this whole process is really just window dressing anyway as ultimately this is and always has been a crown prerogative of the Prime Minister anyway.

There are rumours that the government wants to create a permanent secretariat in Public Works to deal with military procurement issues, which everyone else seems to agree is just adding layers of needless bureaucracy without actually solving any of the problems. Meanwhile, the report on the F-35 procurement disaster is overdue according to the government’s timetable, and Public Works has had to put out yet another tender for an independent auditor. Because it never ends.

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Roundup: No lessons learnt with immigration backlog

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Because apparently the government hasn’t learned anything since the last time they tried to impose caps to solve the immigration backlog, the plans to simply legislate it away are likely to open the government up to more court challenges. Meanwhile, language testing is going to become mandatory for certain classes of immigrants, while the government looks to centralise immigrant settlement services.

Here’s a look at how this issue over F-35 costs could impact the way future military procurements are handled, and there are a lot of other procurements on the way. Here’s a look at the way in which military officials told MacKay that the F-35 was the “cheapest option” on the market for future fighter craft, despite the escalating costs. Former Assistant Deputy Minister Alan Williams continues to shred the government’s numbers, including the fact that they were actually planning to buy 79 jets, not 65 (remember those 14 replacement planes that Garneau mentioned yesterday morning? And it this is an example of contract splitting, that’s actually strictly prohibited). And Andrew Coyne takes MacKay to task, and breaks it down that this issue is ultimately not about planes, but about whether we live in a functioning parliamentary democracy, or even want to – which is what we all need to remember when we get bogged down in accounting issues.

About 5500 public service layoff notices were given yesterday, including a big number from Border Services, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and policy positions in Health Canada. Here’s a look at the cuts being made to the military, which includes virtually eliminating parts of our air defence.

The government released its greenhouse gas emissions report yesterday and wow, we’re already a third of the way to our 2020 goals! Err, except that we’ve actually increased slightly from 2009. And while there is a patchwork of provincial plans, we still have no federal plan, despite having been promised one for years, which means that they really had no role to play in any reductions that were made. (More detailed breakdown here, but possible paywall).

There is a good chance the election results in Etobicoke Centre could be overturned in an ongoing court challenge. This is also a warning as to some of the lax training by Elections Canada officials out there.

Conservative MP Bob Dechert touts how religious freedoms “trickle down” to other freedoms in society, rather than you know, focusing on human rights in general and that including religious freedom. Also not mentioned – how creating an office to focus specifically on religious freedoms gives the impression that Canada operates on a hierarchy of rights, privileging religion over other rights in its foreign policy.

Here’s a look at what the demise of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada means at a provincial context – in this case, Alberta.

Joe Clark talks about the Conservatives’ damage to our foreign policy here, with a few observations on the rise of the NDP.

And Bob Rae recalls the debates that brought about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 30 years ago.