{"id":2200,"date":"2013-11-14T05:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T10:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/?p=2200"},"modified":"2013-11-14T00:26:12","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T05:26:12","slug":"roundup-appalling-arguments-about-federalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/2013\/11\/14\/roundup-appalling-arguments-about-federalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Roundup: Appalling arguments about federalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day two of the Senate reference hearings at the Supreme Court saw submissions<\/a> from the rest of the provinces and territories (minus the Yukon) \u2013 some of whom had appallingly bad arguments, which the Justices picked apart to their logical ends \u2013 as well as Francophone groups and a couple of senators. The Francophone groups, in particular those outside of Quebec, pointed out the Senate\u2019s role in protecting linguistic minorities that wouldn\u2019t stand up the same way during elections. Senator Serge Joyal, however, had the most eloquent of all submissions so far, and as someone who was in the room when they drafted the constitution in 1982 and who helped draft the amending formula to it, he provided some much needed perspective, as well as on the entrenchment of the system of constitutional monarchy and Responsible Government that included two chambers in 1982 (hence why there is no mechanism to abolish the Senate \u2013 because it was unthinkable). Paul Wells points out<\/a> that regardless of the arguments made to date, there is pretty much no chance that the Senate could be abolished, and that the reforms couldn\u2019t happen without a constitutional amendment. Senator Elaine McCoy weighs in after the first day\u2019s submissions, and calls out the government\u2019s reform plans as red herrings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A publication ban was mostly lifted on the misleading Robocall case in Guelph, where we now find out that six witnesses say that Michael Sona bragged<\/a> about making the misleading robocalls. Sona has previously disavowed this and insinuated that they were coached by party lawyer Arthur Hamilton for their testimonies. The investigator noted<\/a> that Hamilton brought all six witnesses to him, and none of them objected to Hamilton\u2019s presence during the interviews.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re adding a second C-17<\/a> to the DART team deployed to the Philippines to assist with the ravages of the typhoon. Medical supplies and a field hospital are on the way, and the government is talking about easing immigration restrictions for the families of those affected (but that does seem to be a famous last line by this point).<\/p>\n

The federal government allowed some $10 billion in spending<\/a> to lapse in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, most of it from Transport and National Defence. This fuels the fire of accusations of how the government is paying down the deficit with under-spending rather than outright cuts.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that? Peter MacKay is ramping up<\/a> the rhetoric that judges are failing to uphold the law after mandatory minimums were struck down? You don\u2019t say!<\/p>\n

Joe Oliver plans to push back<\/a> against the European fuel quality directives, saying that there are flaws in which the way their study was conducted.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s decision to block pharmaceutical heroin for clinical purposes is headed to the courts<\/a>. Could this be Insite part two?<\/p>\n

The planned new heavy icebreaker will cost twice as much<\/a> to build as originally estimated, up to $1.3 billion from the $720 million estimated in 2008. Let\u2019s also not forget that they won\u2019t even start building it until 2018 because of a bottleneck at the assigned shipyard.<\/p>\n

The Public Service Commission audited itself<\/a>, found it needed improvement, and promised itself that it would do better. The exercise, apparently, provided valuable insight into the organisation, for what it\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n

Ruh-roh! Jason Kenney held a fundraiser in Scarborough \u2013 for his Calgary riding \u2013 and got a number of $1000 donations, and those same donors then donated another $1000 to Paul Calandra\u2019s riding association, in violation<\/a> of Elections Canada rules. No word if Kenney\u2019s riding association is going to refund their ill-gotten gains.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister gets mail<\/a>! 1.7 million items over the last fiscal year, of which 54,581 items were responded to. Some of those letters were people angry about the embattled Senators and demanding<\/a> that they be removed without pay \u2013 as though the PM had that power. And lo and behold, he engineered a scheme to make that happen, damaging the Senate\u2019s independence in the process. So, well done there!<\/p>\n

BC may have five conditions before they\u2019ll accept the Northern Gateway pipeline, but Ontario has announced that they\u2019ll have six guiding principles<\/a> for the assessment of the Energy East pipeline.<\/p>\n

In both the Toronto Centre and Bourassa by-elections, the sniping<\/a> between Liberals and NDP is getting pretty intense. There was also a story out about how Chrystia Freeland oversaw job losses<\/a> during her time at Thompson Reuters \u2013 err, except the story also explicitly says that these job losses weren\u2019t her decision, so why this is supposed to be news \u2013 other than her opponents trying to paint her \u2013 I\u2019m not entirely sure.<\/p>\n

And Senator Brazeau jokes<\/a> over the Twitter Machine that he\u2019s unemployed and ready for hire to talk about how things work in the PMO. At least, we think he was joking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day two of the Senate reference hearings at the Supreme Court saw submissions from the rest of the provinces and territories (minus the Yukon) \u2013 some of whom had appallingly bad arguments, which the Justices picked apart to their logical … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[313,158,321,36,134,231,122,10,59,312,66],"class_list":["post-2200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roundup","tag-bourassa","tag-elections-canada","tag-energy-east","tag-fiscal-austerity","tag-jason-kenney","tag-patrick-brazeau","tag-procurement","tag-robocon","tag-supreme-court","tag-toronto-centre","tag-tough-on-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2jJFQ-zu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2201,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions\/2201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.routineproceedings.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}