One almost suspects that the Conservatives are worried about the Trudeau phenomenon in the upcoming by-elections as they continue to mount increasing attacks against him, whose relevance to reality slips further and further away. Today it was Peter MacKay suggesting that Justin Trudeau told schoolchildren that recreational drug use was okay and hay for legalising pot. Um, except that’s not what happened, but rather that at a school event he was asked about it, and Trudeau said that not only should children not use pot because their brains are still developing, but that right now the government’s approach was ineffective. Well done Conservative attack machine operating under MacKay’s name. Meanwhile in Toronto Centre, the NDP put out releases that decried how awful it was that Chrystia Freeland laid off all those journalists when she was at Reuters, but conveniently omitted the line from the story where the Reuters spokesperson specifically said the layoffs were not Freeland’s decision. Added to that, the NDP somehow intimated that they would protect media jobs by rewarding job creation with tax breaks. Erm, corporate taxes are not the woe that is facing the haemorrhaging media industry, and unless they plan to shut down the Internet and start subsidizing newspaper subscriptions, I’m not sure how exactly they’ll protect media jobs.
Tag Archives: Thomas Mulcair
QP: Harper hitting back
Both Harper and Mulcair were back in the House, and ready for another round. Mulcair began with giving Harper a chance to be “crystal clear” as to whether Nigel Wright resigned or was fired. Harper said that they agreed that his actions were improper which was why he was no longer working in the PMO. Mulcair pressed in French, but Harper dodged once again and repeated the answer in French. Mulcair asked how many cheques were issued to Duffy as “hush money,” which Harper called a false allegation and reminded him that parties help members with legal assistance. Mulcair wondered if a $90,000 payment was a valid legal expense, and Harper assured him that it was not a party expense, and that NDP MPs were also provided with “substantial legal assistance.” Mulcair wondered what was done by the law firm on behalf of the PM that was worth $13,000. Harper simply repeated the line about legal assistance, and further alleged that the NDP paid damages on Mulcair’s behalf in a lawsuit. With Justin Trudeau in Calgary to deliver a speech on energy, it was up to Ralph Goodale to lead off, and he asked when Harper first heard that his staff had counselled Duffy to lie. Paul Calandra got up in Harper’s stead and accused the Liberals of making victims of the three senators plus former senator Mac Harb. Goodale wondered why Harper took a weekend to decide that Wright needed to be fired after previously being called “honourable.” Calandra assured him that the PM was clear, and hey, pipelines! Goodale pressed one last time, and listed the many ethical lapses on Harper’s part. The Speaker warned him about veering into party business, but Calandra got up instead and regaled a parable about his children getting an allowance.
Roundup: Special rules to punish Justin Trudeau
Because they are never short of such ideas, the NDP held yet another press conference yesterday to announced new proposals to make Parliament “more accountable.” What that really was code for was “let’s try to punish some Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau.” You see, of their three proposals, the main one was to ban MPs and Senators from “double-dipping by banning payment for work that is part of their job as an MP or Senator.” Which is news to me because nowhere in any legal or constitutional text does it say that it’s part of a Parliamentarian’s job to be a motivational speaker. In fact, that’s the reason why certain MPs and Senators sign up to speaker’s bureaux – in order to do these kinds of gigs without having to expend their parliamentary resources on it, and because they’re not talking about matters that are related to their parliamentary duties, but usually their careers before they were in public life (Marc Garneau’s astronaut career, or Larry Smith’s football commissioner career for example), it makes sense not to treat it as part of their duties. Oh, but Justin Trudeau was able to make a successful living at this and still accepted speaking gigs after he got elected, therefore it must be awful and should be banned. Never mind that he almost always made money for the organisations that he was invited to speak at (with that one notable exception, where it was a case of organisational failure), or that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner cleared these gigs – this is strictly a case of cheap punitive politics. There can be cases made for the other two suggestions – banning parliamentarians from being on corporate boards (but family businesses are okay), and strengthening the powers of the aforementioned Commissioner – but they are less about scandals than perception. Parliamentarians have any corporate board work cleared by an ethics regime, and sure it could be strengthened, but there has yet to be a demonstrated case of any kind of influence peddling, and one suspects it’s simply a case of “corporations bad!” at work. And as for strengthening the role of the Commissioner, well, it seems to me that it’s the NDP who are in charge of the Commons Ethics committee and this has yet to make it onto the agenda when the review of her legislation is a year overdue. Perhaps if they made an effort to actually focus on that rather than play partisan silly buggers and constantly demanding investigations into the wrongdoing of individual MPs, then perhaps they might make progress on such a change.
Roundup: Evidence for Ambrose
On Power & Politics on Friday, Rona Ambrose asserted that there was “no evidence” that heroin-based therapy is effective for those heroin addicts for whom other treatments have proven ineffective. She repeated this several times. She was wrong, and Aaron Wherry points out why.
Thomas Mulcair went out of his way to repeat that he would not raise personal income taxes on the wealthy as part of his next campaign, despite that being one of the things that his star candidate, Linda McQuaig, continues to espouse. Because apparently people don’t pay for corporate tax increases either. Mulcair is also planning to unveil a new pan-Canadian energy policy sometime later in the fall.
Roundup: Canada’s newest Supreme Court justice
Stephen Harper has nominated Federal Court Justice Marc Nadon as the newest member of the Supreme Court of Canada. This appointment solidifies the current gender imbalance on the bench, and there are questions as to whether it is really appropriate that Nadon, as a Federal Court justice, really should be a Quebec appointee considering that he is not currently a member of the Quebec Bar. There have been other concerns raised that while Nadon is an expert in maritime law, there is little call for such expertise on the Supreme Court, while there is a need for more expertise in administrative law. Add to that, the ad hoc committee of MPs set to quiz Nadon on his appointment was given a mere 48 hours to prepare (though most of those MPs would have been involved with the short-list selection process, so they would be familiar with his file, but there are yet more concerns that MPs who weren’t involved in that process should be the ones involved). It was also noted that Nadon was a dissenting opinion with regard to the Omar Khadr case with regards to attempts to order the government to have him repatriated, and the Supreme Court later agreed with him – for what it’s worth.
Roundup: Condemning Trudeau for the government’s own programme
The Conservatives are trying to push the narrative that the Liberals don’t have an economic agenda but just want to push pot. As “proof,” they point to the fact that Trudeau’s chief financial officer and senior advisor, Chuck Rifici, plans to open a medical marijuana operation in rural Ontario. You know, under a programme that the Conservatives designed and implemented. When this was pointed out to Blaney’s office, they simply responded with “The statement speaks for itself.” Um, okay. Never mind that the community getting this new operation – which is RCMP approved – will see jobs being created. You know, jobs that this government keeps talking about. And it’s a $1.3 billion industry that’s good for the economy! But – but, Justin Trudeau! (The cognitive dissonance – it burns!)
Roundup: Flaherty’s national regulator, take two
While the attempt to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers has been on the government’s agenda since 1867 (no, seriously), Jim Flaherty took yet another stab at creating a national securities regulator – despite being shut down by the Supreme Court the last time. This time, however, he’s not imposing a system from Ottawa – he’s working with provinces to create a “cooperative capital markets regulatory system,” that ensures that each level of government give up their own powers to this new body, and he’s got Ontario and BC signed on, meaning it has oversight over some 90 percent of industry in the country already. While most other provinces will likely come aboard in short order, Quebec and Alberta remain opposed for the time being. It will likely be discussed further this weekend at a federal-provincial finance ministers’ meeting. John Geddes looks at Flaherty’s journey to this point, while economist Stephen Gordon points out that our patchwork of regulations may not be our biggest problem – but a national regulator can’t hurt.
Roundup: Visits to the Langevin Block
Yesterday in Senate-related news, the visitor logs of the Langevin Block – which houses the PMO – shows the dates of visits by Senators Mike Duffy, David Tkachuk and Irving Gerstein in the days around the news of Duffy’s audit, and leading up to the $90,000 cheque from Nigel Wright. It helps to further establish the timeline of who met with whom, as the investigation continues. Elsewhere, the Auditor General met with the Internal Economy committee and its audit subcommittee to discuss his forthcoming audit of the institution and its membership. The AG said that the audit will be “comprehensive,” but people shouldn’t think that it means “forensic,” because that’s not what his office does, and they don’t have the staff or expertise to do those kinds of audits. (That’s in large part why they get contracted out to Deloitte). The Internal Economy committee is also looking at an overhaul of the Senate communications office, which has shown itself to be unable to handle the increase in media requests given recent events, and their mandate is nebulous with too many masters. Fortunately, there seems to be an appetite to change this.
Roundup: We have a date
Word has been given – Parliament shall resume on October 16th. That means that about three-and-a-half weeks of sitting days will have been missed, as the week of the 14th was supposed to have been a constituency week owing to Thanksgiving. Also factor in that there is an APEC Summit in Indonesia the week before, so that also affected the timing of an October return. Mind you Harper could have simply prorogued and still returned on September 16th as planned, but what can you do? (Well, withdraw confidence in the government, if you really want to be technical about it).
Roundup: Outrage over the “Charter of Values”
The PQ government in Quebec unveiled the details of its proposed “Charter of Quebec Values,” to universal condemnation from the federal parties. It proposes to limit the religious accommodations made for public servants – in other words, you can wear a small cross or Star of David ring, but nothing larger or more obvious, and no, your boss doesn’t have to give you time off for religious holidays or a prayer space. Jason Kenney immediately promised that they would go to the courts to find the new law unconstitutional if Quebec presses ahead (though Quebec does have the option of using the Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter if they felt it necessary to do so). Oh, and because it shows you just how well they thought this through, they didn’t have an answer about whether people would still be swearing on Bibles in a court room. Oops. For a bit of history on how the party got to this point, it bears reminding that electing an urbane, metropolitan gay leader got them nowhere, so now they’re resorting to the more xenophobic end of the spectrum to try and make headway. John Geddes compares the way each of the federal parties reacted. Martin Patriquin looks at the history of backtracked proposals that Marois’ government has put forward to date, and predicts that this Charter won’t see the light of day in its current form.