Stephen Blaney has confirmed that the government will table a bill next week to enhance CSIS’ powers to better combat terrorism, in order to enhance cooperation with our Five Eyes allies, and to enhance the anonymity for CSIS informants. Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled that those sources already have adequate protections, and the fact that the lawyer for Mohamed Harkat warns that the inability to cross-examine this kind of testimony is dangerous. Former Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier also warns that rushing into these kinds of changes could have longer-term human rights consequences. But terrorists!
Tag Archives: Supreme Court
Roundup: The SCC hears the assisted suicide case
The Supreme Court of Canada heard the arguments in the assisted suicide case yesterday, where the BC Civil Liberties Association’s disabled lawyer smashed the arguments of disability groups warning of a “slippery slope,” where the government put forward arguments in favour of a blanket ban that the Justices could scarcely believe, and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s lawyer made specious comparisons to capital punishment. In all, it was a fascinating day at the Court, and we’ll see what decision comes down in a few months’ time. Carissima Mathen gives her recap and analysis to Power Play here.
Roundup: Mulcair offers $15/day childcare
The NDP announced their national childcare plan, promising $15/day spaces across the country, with $5 billion over eight years intended to create 370,00 spaces by 2018-19, and one million spaces after the eight years, with the federal government paying 60 percent of the tab, the provinces 40 percent. The Liberals, of course, are pointing out that there would have been a similar programme a decade ago had the NDP not sided with the Conservatives to bring down the Martin government, as they had already done the hard part of negotiating deals with the provinces – something a hypothetical future NDP government would have to start over from scratch in a different fiscal reality. They also don’t think the maths work out in terms of per-space funds. The Conservatives are making doom sounds about the universal child benefit, which the NDP say they’re going to maintain, putting that much more of a hole in the fiscal picture. It’s not seen as a model that benefits all families, and there are better models of getting more women into the workforce using existing federal tax deductions that could be tweaked. Economist Stephen Gordon re-upped a previous post of his with regards to the problems with the Quebec model and how it tends to fail both vertical and horizontal equality tests, and also responds to some of the critics he’s heard from all yesterday.
My TL is full of people saying K-12 is free and universal, so why not daycare? Or post-secondary education? Here's why: (1/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
There is a public good argument for K-12: democracy benefits from a citizenry w basic literacy/numeracy and certain common knowledge (2/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
Outside of disadvantaged children, am unaware of any extra benefits daycare provides. (My reading of @kevinmilligan's point.) (3/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
PSE is specialised training, and gains largely captured by student. Public good argument is weak. (4/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
If you want to make daycare and/or PSE obligatory (WHY??) then you are free to use the K-12 analogy. Then make the case for it. (5/5)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
Roundup: Assisted suicide heads to the SCC
With the Supreme Court challenge to assisted suicide laws heading to the Supreme Court tomorrow, here’s a look at some of the other countries’ laws in that regard. Carissima Mathen gives us a primer on the assisted suicide case going before the Supreme Court this week.
Roundup: 28 instances, fewer charges
The RCMP say they have disrupted or intervened in 28 instances where people have been involved in high-risk travel, be it people returning after fighting with radicals abroad or when they plan on heading over. No word on how many people have had their passports revoked, and there have apparently been no new names added to the no-fly list, and there have been very few charges under anti-terror legislation. The government will likely try to use this low figure to say that we need even more anti-terror laws, and yet it makes one wonder about the actual scope of the problem. Andrew Coyne wonders about the threat that ISIS poses to Canada directly, and if people should be shrugging it all off. (Spoiler alert: no).
Roundup: Not an imminent threat
The heads of CSIS and the RCMP went to committee to say that while ISIS is not an imminent threat to Canada, we have to be vigilant about domestic terrorism threats. Well, sure. And then Stephen Blaney talked about arresting these people and throwing them behind bars, because you know, due process and stuff. Blaney also said that they won’t be implementing exit controls, because those belong to totalitarian countries – but they do share entry data with the Americans, which is a de facto exit control system because if one enters one country, they had to exit the other. But that’s not totalitarian. Incidentally, the government has also announced funding for a bunch of new studies on finding the root causes of domestic terrorism and radicalization. And here Pierre Poilievre assured us that the root cause of terrorism is terrorists.
QP: A break from the Iraq debate
With the debate on the Iraq deployment underway, QP was a break in the proceedings. Stephen Harper, however, was elsewhere, as was Justin Trudeau, who was off watching the Hillary Clinton speech down the road instead. Thomas Mulcair led off, asking for a national inquiry on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Kellie Leitch responded that they were already taking action rather than waiting for more reports. Mulcair changed topics and demanded to know why Canadian Forces personnel were being deployed to Iraq before a vote had been held. Rob Nicholson listed some of the forces they would be sending over. Mulcair decried the fact that the government would give tacit support to the Assad regime by getting permission before any air strikes in Syrian territory. Nicholson responded about the threat of ISIS in the region. Mulcair pressed and wondered about the Americans lowering their standards for certainty with air bombardment, giving Nicholson the opportunity to badger him about their support for taking down ISIS. Marc Garneau led for the Liberals, and asked about the humanitarian crises in Turkey and Jordan given the flood of refugees they have accepted, to which Christian Paradis assured him that Canada was sending millions of dollars in aid to those regions. Garneau returned to the question of air strikes within Syrian borders and under what conditions they would negotiate with Assad. Nicholson said that currently they would only make strikes in Iraq, and if that changed Syria might be included.
Roundup: Voices from the past
A number of has-been pro-life (and homophobic) former Liberal MPs sent out an open letter to Justin Trudeau decrying his decree that a woman’s right to choose is a Charter issue and not a matter of conscience. They decried it as “anti-democratic,” never mind the fact that this was the policy voted on by the party’s membership during the policy convention before Trudeau won the leadership. Oops. The pedigree of these former MPs is also worth mentioning, as several of them quit the party to join the Reform Party, while others left over the same-sex marriage issue. Not surprising, most Liberals simply shrugged off the whole thing, while Trudeau tweeted out a fairly decent comeback.
The days when old men get to decide what a woman does with her body are long gone. Times have changed for the better. #LPC defends rights.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 18, 2014
Roundup: Military assistance for Ukraine?
As you probably saw earlier, the President of Ukraine was in Ottawa, and beyond just giving a speech to Parliament, he’s also looking to expand on the $200 million loan arrangement, and wants more military assistance – not combat troops, but reconnaissance, as well as signals intelligence and satellites, and moving toward a free-trade agreement between our two countries.
Roundup: An emergency debate, such as it was
The Commons had their “emergency debate” on the situation in Iraq last night, using debate loosely, of course. After all, “debate” these days tends to largely mean reading monotonous speeches into the record that were all pre-written and don’t actually debate what has already been said. The NDP hammered away at demanding a vote on deployment, never mind that military deployment is a Crown prerogative and thus not subject to a vote, and in fact, shouldn’t be because it launders the prerogative and the accountability. But if Mulcair wants to give Harper political cover so that he can, in the future, say that the Commons decided on the matter and that they are culpable when things go wrong because there was a vote, well, it makes it kind of awkward for the opposition, no? It’s part of Responsible Government – the Commons has given the government the authority to govern, and if they don’t like it, then they can withdraw confidence. Voting to “make decisions” is not actually their role – accountability is. The NDP were also childishly mocking the Liberals for largely not being there for the debate – except that they only got two speaking slots the whole night, which they used near the beginning, and as we’ve established that it’s not a real debate, it does seem fairly pointless to have a bunch of people there to simply endure repetitive prepared speeches – and make no mistake, they are repetitive – with no real ability to respond or add to what’s been said. But this is the state of our parliament these days.