The Auditor General tabled his fall report yesterday morning, but unlike many a report in the past, it was pretty tame. He did kick the crap out of the audit process for the Safety Management System of our railways, and cast a withering eye on food recall systems, and emergency preparedness on First Nations reserves. He wasn’t particularly kind to the CBSA’s lapses in border security, he noted that farmers face a long wait for emergency assistance, and he was really, really unimpressed with the constant delays in implementing financial controls, but he wasn’t too tough on the shipbuilding contracts, and he generally praised CRA in dealing with tax evasion in Lichtenstein – but they need to be better prepared to deal with an increase in tax-haven cases. (Highlights here).
Tag Archives: Provencher
Roundup: By-election action!
And we have by-election results! The two easy races were Provencher, where the Conservatives held, and Bourassa, where the Liberals held, but things were tighter in Toronto Centre, where Liberal Chrystia Freeland ultimately won out. Brandon-Souris, however, was the biggest surprise, where the Liberals an Conservatives were neck-and-neck for most of the night, but ultimately, it was a victory for Conservative Larry Maguire, squeaking it out at the end by a couple of hundred votes. Pundits, start spinning your victories and losses now, but one thing that does seem pretty clear is that the Liberals do seem to be competitive again nationally, as they very nearly took Brandon-Souris and they even gained considerable ground in true-blue Conservative Provencher. Also, the nomination shenanigans clearly hurt the Conservatives in Brandon-Souris, while the current cloud of scandal around Harper probably didn’t help any. Anne Kingston gave some vignettes from Toronto Centre over the morning as ballots were cast. CBC posted four storylines from the by-elections to watch going in, while Laura Payton explains why the narrative of the Middle Class has dominated the race (hint: 93 percent of Canadians identify as “middle class”).
Roundup: Four by-elections today
At long last, it’s finally by-election day today! Hooray! Toronto Centre has been the centre of a debate on income inequality, while Brandon-Souris, a long-time Conservative stronghold, is being seen as a barometer of the Senate scandals, compounded by alleged shenanigans in the nomination race, which may be driving voters over to the Liberals. Susan Delacourt notices that Bob Rae sent out a letter to Liberal supporters that employed the language of shame-based get-out-the-vote campaigns, talking about names being on voter lists, which NDP MP Craig Scott accused of being coercive, though it has been a proven effective technique where it has been applied. Michael Den Tandt looks at the by-election narratives, and notes the ways in which both the Conservatives and NDP are doing Trudeau’s work, handing him lay-ups, and allowing him to straddle the centre. (He’s wrong that this is Trudeau’s first electoral test – that was in Labrador). Paul Wells is grumpy about the whole thing – and I can’t blame him.
Roundup: Wright’s animosity toward Duffy
As we continue to sort through the entrails of the RCMP affidavit on the ClusterDuff investigation, Kady O’Malley tries to make more sense of just what kind of information that Senator Irving Gerstein was trying to get from Deloitte about the status of the audits. Despite those early assertions that Nigel Wright was a great friend of Mike Duffy, which was why he helped him out, those RCMP documents show that there was no love lost between Wright and Duffy, and that Wright was beyond frustrated with Duffy and had reached the limits of his patience and was ready to simply communicate with Duffy lawyer-to-lawyer. I still remain somewhat suspicious that the Wright’s motivation to repay Duffy’s expenses was simply “noblesse oblige,” and that there may have been some other reason that we remain unaware of. The PMO, meanwhile, continues to sideline Wright and is intimating that he gave misleading information in one of the memos that was turned over to the RCMP. Here are a few more interesting tidbits about Wright that are revealed from the documents. Rosemary Barton talks to former Commons law clerk Rob Walsh about the possible charges, and what is likely to stick and what won’t. Glen McGregor looks at the curious way in which the RCMP investigator took the extraordinary steps of releasing the ITO to the public. Stephen Maher has a look at Senator Gerstein, Canada’s single best political fundraiser. John Ivison looks at the damage to Harper’s brand that the ClusterDuff affair is doing, the effect it’s having in the Brandon-Souris by-election, and the fact that there is talk now in the party of replacing him if things continue. Andrew Coyne tries to ascertain just what it is that Mike Duffy was doing as he continually changed his demands every time they came to some kind of agreement.
Roundup: By-election dates announced
Stephen Harper has finally called those four by-elections in Toronto Centre, Bourassa, Brandon-Souris and Provencher for November 25th. Toronto Centre NDP candidate Linda McQuaig has put out a YouTube video challenging Chrystia Freeland to a debate. Pundit’s Guide updates the lay of the land in the four ridings here.
Alison Crawford looks at five ways in which the impasse over Justice Nadon’s appointment to the Supreme Court can be resolved, including declaratory legislation, which is a novel approach that I hadn’t yet heard mentioned before.