Tag Archives: Stéphane Dion

Roundup: Blocking the Auditor General

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The House of Commons (as its own entity rather than its occupants) is taking the Auditor General to Federal Court to block an Access to Information request around his correspondence for his committee appearances. The House says this is about parliamentary privilege, and the AG says that privilege doesn’t extend to his office. Kady O’Malley delves further into this, but it does seem unlikely that the Courts could even weigh in on this, and there is also that wee little fact that Parliament is a court in and of itself. Both the PMO and the Liberals say that they’re willing to waive privilege in this case. It was later revealed that the NDP were the originators of said ATIP request, which just makes this all the more curious.

Iran has responded to our embassy closures, and calls it “unwise, uncivilised, and hostile.” Brian Stewart looks at some of the possible intelligence that may have prompted the pullout, and wonders if it wasn’t threats on Canadian soil that they were more concerned with. The ousted Iranian charé d’affairs insists that they did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, Thomas Mulcair seems to be distancing himself from some of Paul Dewar’s comments regarding the embassy closures.

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Roundup: Pipeline review deadline set

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The federal government has imposed a December 2013 deadline on the environmental panel review of the Northern Gateway pipeline. Which is all well and good, provided that the proponent – Enbridge – has their files together and doesn’t delay their own paperwork so that other respondents can get their reviews done in time, as has happened with other panels. In fact, the government should stipulate that Enbridge should face a penalty if it engages in such behaviour, for what it’s worth.

Rumours of Katimavik’s demise may be exaggerated. It seems that with the starvation of federal funds, they are picking up sponsorship from elsewhere for programming that they offer, and may be able to carry on in some capacity after all.

Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber continues to do his job as a backbench MP and hold the government to account, this time on the policy of Supply Management. More backbench MPs should follow his lead.

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Bernier can’t identify our Head of State

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Our nation’s lack of civic literacy truly has reached crisis proportions when ministers of the Crown can’t even identify the very basic parts of our system of government. I’ve written before about the public’s general lack of understanding of the Canadian monarchy, and our need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the monarchy is somehow “foreign” because the Queen doesn’t live in the country full-time. It’s an issue of education and awareness. I get it.

But when a minister of the Crown can’t even make this distinction, there is a problem. And a really big one at that.

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Roundup: Omnibudget off to committee

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The omnibus budget bill has passed Second Reading without any procedural trickery, and is off to committee for study, while it also begins pre-study in a number of different Senate committees. The NDP, however, are promising “novel” ways to engage the public on the issue. My question is why it’s taken them two weeks to start engaging the public.

The reaction to John Baird’s outburst in QP yesterday that they were shutting down the National Round Table on Environment and the Economy because they didn’t like their recommendations has largely been “told you so.” (Said outburst included a slip where he said a carbon tax would “kill Canadians” when he obviously meant “kill jobs.”) While some people say that everything Baird says is calculated, I’m not so sure – this had a bit more of a tone of mocking and an attempt to goad the Liberals that may have backfired, and I suspect that he may have been given a stern talking to by PMO, and will be reading his responses during his next turn as back-up PM.

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Wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations – Dion’s proposed electoral reform

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Last weekend, Stéphane Dion took to the pages of the National Post to suggest that Canada needs a new voting system. It’s not the first time such suggestions have been made, and it certainly won’t be the last, but that doesn’t make each new suggestion any better than the last, and Dion’s suggestion is certainly problematic.

Dion proposes that Canada adopt what he calls a “P3” voting system – proportional-preferential-personal. The theory is that there would be the same number of ridings, but super-sized to have three to five MPs per riding, which voters would select party preferences by means of preferential ballot, while at the same time choosing one of the candidates put forward by each party. The proposed method of counting is that first seats are apportioned according to the preferential ballot, and those seats are assigned by highest-ranking candidates for those parties.

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