Government programmes that allow their Crown Corporations to lend money are growing without any parliamentary oversight, and certainly no statutory review once these programmes have been in place, whether it’s student loans or business development loans. Now, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is sounding the alarm, because it’s one more way in which parliamentarians have lost control over the public purse and have little ability to hold the government to account for any of these loans that they are giving out. Add to the fact that they have already lost the ability to hold the government o account for any borrowing that the government does – they took that bit of oversight away a couple of years ago as part of an omnibus budget bill, despite it being a fundamental part of our Westminster democratic traditions, and now any borrowing simply requires a nod from cabinet – hardly an effective check on government’s financial decisions. Further add to that the fact that the government has been putting out budgets with no numbers in it, and Estimates not attached to any budget so that there is no comparison or examination of what’s in it in a fiscal perspective, and it all adds up to parliamentarians not doing their jobs, and being able to control the purse strings of the government of the day, making Parliament a shadow version of itself. This should alarm everybody in this country because this is the parliament that you’ve elected not doing their jobs.
Tag Archives: The Queen
Roundup: Eight whole meetings
With the C-51 now before the Commons public safety committee, various kinds of shenanigans were played there, the NDP essentially launching a filibuster throughout the day in order to get more time to hear from witnesses, and they did get more time – about eight days, instead of three. They had proposed some 25 hearings, which included over a constituency week so that they could still meet the same deadline the government proposed, but they didn’t bite. It was also suggested that this may have been the government’s plan the whole time – give them a few more days and they’ll seem reasonable. Perhaps, but that didn’t seem to be the case if you listened to the Conservatives on the committee, who seemed to think that talk about rights was somehow an unreasonable thing. Online, people claiming to be from Anonymous are hoping an online campaign will force the government to back down on the bill, the way the government responded to backlash over Vic Toews’ lawful access bill, but I’m not sure they’ll have the same success, especially as the government is fairly confident that they can get the public to go along with the bill by holding the threat of terrorism over them – especially as new stories of people heading over to fight with ISIS become almost daily news at this point. The NDP tried to get in on the online campaign game and tried to get #StandWithRosane to trend – meaning their deputy critic Rosane Doré Lefebvre, leading the filibuster effort. Not surprisingly, it didn’t trend, for fairly obvious reasons, which makes one think that the NDP still hasn’t quite cracked the social media campaign that the election will supposedly be about. Perhaps we can call it a “hashtag fail,” as it were.
.@RosaneDL is fighting for our rights and freedoms right now. Join her. #StandWithRosane #NDP #cdnpoli #C51 pic.twitter.com/ifj82DBbR9
— NDP (@NDP) February 26, 2015
Roundup: Yes, governing is political
Your best political read of the weekend was a Twitter essay from Philippe Lagassé, so I’ll leave you to it.
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515068326457344
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515450780020736
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569515909972434945
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569516334192701440
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569516761273532418
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517336677507073
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517603938369536
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569517862274142209
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569518893456171008
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569530939325296641
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569531442990088193
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569532019685908480
https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/569532280991055872
Lagassé, who was part of the fighter jet replacement options analysis task force, reminded us then as reminds us now that we need to stop behaving like we should be in a technocracy, that there are political considerations and debates that need to be had, and that ministers decide things for which there is always a political calculation. This is not a bad thing, though we may disagree with the final decision. The great thing is that we can hold those who made the decisions to account – something you can’t really do in a technocracy, so can we please stop pretending that it’s the way our system is supposed to operate?
Roundup: Eminent Canadians push back
The anti-terror legislation again dominated the headlines yesterday, starting with a letter that four former Prime Ministers – Turner, Clark, Chrétien and Martin – along with 18 other eminent Canadians including five former Supreme Court justices, penned in the Globe and Mail about the need for better oversight of our national security agencies. You know, like the Martin government was trying to pass in 2004 before the Conservatives and NDP brought them down (and which Peter MacKay blatantly misconstrued in QP). What’s more baffling is that the government, by way of Jason Kenney, is now arguing that the bill doesn’t need more oversight because it gives more power to the courts to provide it. (Funnily enough, this is the same party who likes to moan about judicial activism). The problem with judicial oversight is that it also isn’t really oversight, and we have actual demonstrated cases where CSIS didn’t tell the truth when they went to the courts for a warrant. One of those cases is now waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court, because CSIS failed in their duty of candour. This is not a minor detail, but rather a gaping hole in the government’s argument. Oversight is a very important and necessary component, and it makes no sense that the government can keep ignoring it because it’s going to come around and bite them in the ass if they don’t get a handle on it, particularly when the bad things that happen come to light, and they always do, and we’ll have another Maher Arar-type situation.
Jason Kenney: anti-terror bill #C51 "doesn’t give new power to police or intelligence agencies but rather to judges" pic.twitter.com/fviUIo4J7Z
— Dylan Robertson (@withfilesfrom) February 19, 2015
Roundup: It wasn’t terrorism, but support our anti-terror bill
With the House back this week, we are likely to see debate resume on the new anti-terrorism bill – something that Peter MacKay was talking up over the weekend with regard to the alleged Halifax shooting plot, despite the assurances that the would-be shooters weren’t actually terrorists and were caught using existing tools. Through this, a former assistant director of CSIS says the tools are necessary because CSIS is built for the Cold War, and they really need these new tools to actively disrupt terrorist networks. Sure, that may be, but there remains the gaping flaw in terms of oversight, and another former CSIS agent spoke to the media, pointing out that without that oversight, we’ll see more cases where CSIS sanitizes their files before they hand them over to SIRC. As well, said agent warns that the provisions in the bill are likely to open up a whole area of secret jurisprudence which is alarming, and says that the Prime Minister making vaguely threatening statements like “tentacles of jihadism reaching us” could actually fan the flames and make things worse. So there’s that. Two professors who study national security laws weigh in on the bill, and while they see a few merits in it, they have a number of concerns and yes, the lack of oversight is one of the most alarming portions of it. And no, a judicial warrant is not a sufficient safeguard considering that we have documented cases where CSIS was found to have misled the very court it asked for a warrant from. That is a very big problem, and one that the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on sometime later this year.
Roundup: A funeral felt by the nation
In Hamilton, the three party leaders attended the funeral of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, the Prime Minister speaking and addressing Cirillo’s son. The city and large numbers of first responders turned out for the funeral, and lined the streets of the procession. The Queen also sent her condolences as the regiment’s Colonel-in-Chief.
Sad exchange of letters. pic.twitter.com/s57rI0qTI4
— Stephen Maher (@stphnmaher) October 28, 2014
US Secretary of State John Kerry was in town yesterday, where he paid tribute to Corporal Cirillo, before he and Baird spoke about last week’s shootings as terrorism, and he and Harper met to discuss topics such as Russia, Ukraine, and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Michael Petrou breaks down the meaning of the visit here.
Roundup: Returning to normal, cautiously
Things are slowly returning to normal here in the Nation’s Capital. After an impromptu ceremony with Harper and the Chief of Defence Staff at the War Memorial, ceremonial guards again keep vigil over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And later in the evening, the Hill once again opened to the public, with tours to resume on Monday. The police presence remains higher, but we are going about our business without hysteria. Corporal Cirillo’s body returned to Hamilton by way of the Highway of Heroes, where Canadians turned out in droves to line the overpasses to pay their respects as the convoy passed. Later in the evening, the RedBlacks game in Ottawa featured Harper and General Lawson in a ceremony to honour the two fallen soldiers this week. (And true to form, the RedBlacks lost again).
Roundup: Crowing over a very little
The NDP spent an inordinate amount of time crowing over social media yesterday about how they scored a “procedural coup” and “forced” a debate on the report of the special committee on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. The problem is that it’s not really true. Yes, they moved a concurrence motion during Routine Proceedings after QP on Friday, as is their right – but they didn’t surprise the government or catch them off-guard, as Romeo Saganash said during QP that they would be moving such a motion. Giving 20+ minutes notice is not “catching the government off-guard.” And when they forced a 30-minute vote and proceeded to this concurrence motion, the government voted with them and agreed to the debate, which again, puts the “forced” or “coup” narrative to the test. The report itself doesn’t recommend a national inquiry, seeing as it was a Conservative-dominated committee, and while the NDP wanted to highlight their dissenting report appended to it, it still gave the government side plenty of time to discuss their version of said report. So with these facts in mind, you will forgive me if I find the social media triumphalism a bit much.
Roundup: A threatening break-in
Vandals broke into Justin Trudeau’s home in Ottawa on Friday night, while his family slept (he was in Winnipeg at the time). Said vandals also left a threatening note that warned them to keep their doors locked – sitting atop a pile of items including kitchen knives, with several other knives arranged around the house. Oh, and apparently the designation for a public figure to get RCMP protection is up to the minister of public safety, and he’s being a bit evasive on the topic. It’s not only worrying that somebody would take this step, but that there are a whole chattering class out there who is either mocking Trudeau because his family was in danger, or who believe that this is all staged. Michael Den Tandt calls out the social media reaction on both sides – those who mocked Trudeau, and those who pin the blame on Harper, and the fact that none of the opposition parties stop their own partisans from demonizing Harper over social media either. It’s all part of the same poisoned ecosystem.
Sun News audience, folks https://t.co/x2PhDkCUBi cc @mdentandt #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ABgTtCwTqt
— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) August 17, 2014
Roundup: CRA takes exception
Things with the CRA seem to be taking a turn for the bizarre as they are getting into a fight with well-known charity Oxfam over the charity’s stated goal of trying to prevent poverty around the world. According to the CRA, that’s not an acceptable goal – they should only try to alleviate poverty, as preventing it might benefit people who are not already poor. Yeah, I’m still trying to figure that one out too. According to CRA, the courts haven’t found that that the risk of poverty is the same as actually being in need, so this splitting of hairs means that they can’t put “prevention” in their purpose statement. And it’s not like this is part of the supposed “crackdown” on charities either – this had to do with a regular process of renewing Oxfam’s non-profit status, but it has been noted that Jason Kenney singled them out earlier in the year over their opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Why the CRA would play petty politics for any minister – especially one that they don’t report to – sounds a little too odd, but this whole situation is just so strange that it will invite conspiracy theory.