Former Prime Minister Joe Clark met with Chief Theresa Spence on Saturday, and says that Canada and the First Nations are headed in a “dangerous direction,” and is calling for direct and honest dialogue. Spence then met with Liberal and NDP MPs and Senators on Sunday, who described her as “quite weak” but nevertheless determined. Meanwhile, here is a look at the persistent and unsolvable problems with the Attawapiskat reserve.
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Roundup: Fobbing off responsibility onto the Speaker
Two former MPs and the former Commons law clerk are talking about bringing in some rules changes to empower the Speaker to bring more order to the Commons – and there we get into the decorum distraction yet again. The Speaker already has tremendous powers to expel members from the House, or to deny them the opportunity to speak if they misbehave, but they are rarely employed. Former Speaker Milliken didn’t want to expel anyone, lest they go running to the media in the Foyer and getting a bigger soapbox, or they could take off and travel or dine at House expense. His suggestion was penalties that would affect their privileges – such as docking their pay or expenses for the day, but he couldn’t get traction for that idea when he broached it previously. But whenever these discussions come up, there needs to be the awareness that the Speaker is just the referee and not omniscient – he or she can’t determine whether or not answers are deemed sufficient, or have a hand in committee business, or determine whether or not omnibus bills are out of order. For one, it puts too much power in one single individual, but for another, it further absolves MPs of their own responsibility to conduct themselves appropriately. They have tremendous powers to hold themselves and each other to account if they actually wanted to – but they don’t. Hell, it’s their job to hold government to account, and not the Speaker’s, so if the government makes huge omnibus bills, it’s the job of MPs from all sides to call the government out – not the Speaker’s. But no – they fob off the responsibility to someone else, preferably the Speaker, because he’s “neutral” and thus, more “authoritative,” never mind that it’s an intellectually and politically lazy construct. The NDP are great at this narrative right now, with Nathan Cullen holding press conferences vowing greater decorum and proposing all of these great powers to the Speaker to enforce it, and then half an hour later, during QP, his own caucus members are standing up and calling cabinet ministers names. Oh, but they’re just being funny, Cullen says, and if the Speaker doesn’t like that, then he can put an end to it. Sorry, no – if you want to preach decorum, then practice it. Meanwhile, let’s come up with more proposals to further treat MPs like a) children with no impulse control or b) drones whose only task is to recite speeches prepared for them by the leader’s office, and vote according to how said leader’s office demands. Because that’s the sign of a mature democracy.
Roundup: Late to the planning stages
Are we back? It feels like we’re back now.
Despite the fact that we should definitely be planning now for the 150th anniversary of Confederation celebrations that will happen in 2017, both the federal and many provincial governments remain rather mum on the subject, with the federal government barely giving handwavey signals that they are thinking about said anniversary, with things like the Museum of History announcement.
A report on the death of a Canadian soldier by Israeli forces was quietly removed from the DND website, a move that the soldier’s widow believes is a political move by the government meant to shield Israel from criticism.
As the US gets to work on its cyber-security issues, Canada will need to play a part given how integrated much of our infrastructure is.
Roundup: Page takes aim at the real problem of Parliament
iPolitics‘ Colin Horgan had a good talk with Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who breaks down some of the key concerns that his office has – that the political executive is now steamrolling budgets through without due diligence and telling MPs to trust them and check their work afterwards, when the Public Accounts come out, because the process is so convoluted. And he’s right – it is broken, but not only because the executive has gamed the system, but because MPs have decided to abdicate their responsibility to scrutinise the estimates because they have other priorities, like their eleventieth Private Members’ Bill that won’t see the light of day, or scoring political points in the scandal of the day, or pet hobby projects that yes, they may care about and may be important, but ultimately at the cost of their actual job of scrutiny. Add to that how they’re using their staff to shepherd through passports and immigration files rather than assisting them in the actual analysis work. Yes, the system needs to be fixed, but I will caution that the changes need to come from the ground up. Voters need to demand that their MPs do their due diligence, and MPs need to take that job seriously and not fob it off onto the PBO, as they have been doing, often under the rubric that his numbers can be trusted because he’s non-partial. Meanwhile, there is insufficient pushback – especially from the government backbenchers, who aren’t supposed to just parrot mindless slogans – and we wind up with a situation like we have today. At least Page is talking about the actual problem and laying the blame where it needs to be laid, rather than just pouting about the current government being mean (as so many others are doing).
Roundup: Sovereignty via subcontract
Buried in last week’s KPMG audit of the F-35 programme was the revelation that the government planned to contract out air-to-air refuelling of the jets, seeing as the systems we have in place are currently incompatible. When this was pointed out two years ago, the government said, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll adapt our systems.” By adapt, apparently they meant subcontract. And nothing says asserting sovereignty over our airspace than getting the Americans or some other private companies to do our air-to-air refuelling for us. Great job, guys!
The Supreme Court handed down a split 4-2-1 decision on witnesses wearing niquabs – basically saying sure, but only some of the time, and here’s some guidelines to think about. Emmett Macfarlane examines the split and comes down on Team Abella – the single dissent that said while we’d like to see more of a person’s face than less, on the whole it’s not as big of a deal as it would be to have people to choose to not testify at all.
Roundup: The GG and the Chief
Despite Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s demand that the Governor General be part of a meeting with the Prime Minister as a condition of ending her hunger strike, His Excellency has said that it’s not his place to meet with her over political issues, and will defer until given political instruction to do so – which is how things work under Responsible Government, in case anyone has any doubts.
Jason Kenney plans to re-launch the federal skilled workers immigration programme by May, which he hopes to keep more foreign-trained doctors and engineers from driving cabs (never mind that the biggest holdup to credential recognition is provincial regulatory bodies).
As was promised, the government has moved to eliminate gun show regulations – not that they were ever actually implemented in the first place.
Roundup: Pilfered equipment and logistical nightmares
Some 400 containers of military equipment remain in Afghanistan, much of which has been pilfered after the land route to the port in Karachi was closed. But hey, it was all non-sensitive equipment, so this logistical nightmare remains the most cost-effective route, etcetera. Meanwhile, our Sea King helicopter replacements won’t be ready this year or next. I’m quite sure that by the time we do get them, they’ll be free given the amount of penalties that Sikorsky will have racked up by that point.
Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike continues, and she demands a meeting with Harper and/or the Governor General and not the minister.
Economist Stephen Gordon shows why we won’t have effective climate policy in this country anytime soon – nobody wants to pay for it. And the research of climate groups proves it.
Roundup: Undermining accountability with dollar figures
The government has started attaching dollar figures to who much it costs to answer Order Paper questions – in this case, $1.2 million in a three-month period. Oh noes! Parliament costs money! And really, using this tactic of putting dollar figures on basic accountability is underhanded and violates the very premise of Parliament, which is to hold the government to account by means of controlling supply. To do that, Parliament needs facts and figures, quite simply. And making it seem like a costly imposition for Parliamentarians to exercise their most basic function is, in a word, despicable.
The federal and provincial finance minsters met at Meech Lake yesterday, and while they didn’t come to any consensus over boosting the CPP, they did agree to study it and come up with a report for their meeting in June.
Not that it’s any big surprise, but former assistant deputy minister of procurement at DND, Alan Williams, said the F-35 process as “corrupted” from the beginning, but the main question remains why the cabinet went along unquestioningly when the bureaucrats barrelled ahead with the sole-source contract. Meanwhile, the Americans are already looking at developing a “sixth generation” fighter jet by 2030.
Roundup: The Carney conundrum
The Globe and Mail wrote a story that tried to paint a picture of how Liberals were wooing Mark Carney, and that while he spoke at an exclusive event in Nova Scotia, he spent a few days at Scott Brison’s house with his family. And *gasp!* they both talked about income inequality at one time! Nobody else ever talks about income inequality – never! They must have been in cahoots about getting Carney to run for the party leadership! Never mind that they have a lot of similarities in experience and circles that they both travel in. The problem is that the story is largely sourced by unnamed “officials” and is dependent upon one particular organizer who was trying to get Carney to run and who may have simply been spinning a fabulation that Carney was actually entertaining a bid while he tried to get an organization behind him that was based on a false understanding of how the leadership ballot process was being run. It’s a bunch of random information being strung together with a bunch of supposition that something might have been discussed, because nobody wants to talk about it. And from a journalistic perspective, it reads a lot like rumour being reported as fact – especially with almost nobody going on the record to confirm or deny anything.
Whether the events in the story are true or not is no longer the issue, however. Economist Stephen Gordon worries about the irreparable harm that the Carney story does for the office of the Governor of the Bank of Canada, simply so that some “senior Liberal sources” could try and find some imagined gain.
Roundup: “Safe” countries and harsher rules
Jason Kenney released his list of “safe” countries of origin for refugee claimants, where claimants from those countries will be subject to an expedited process (which critics charge is an inadequate time to prepare a case), and no access to appeal. Included on the list are countries like Hungary and Latvia, where Roma populations have been targeted by far-right groups (and despite Kenney’s repeated claims to the contrary, they can’t actually seek asylum in other EU nations), but Mexico has not been (yet), to which Kenney says they are still deciding because of the security situation in that country. (Maclean’s has an interesting article about refugee claimants from Mexico who were targeted in that country because they were wealthy).
The Supreme Court upheld anti-terror legislation when weighted against other Charter rights.
As part of Leona Aglukkaq’s mandate to get Health Canada out of the business of doing anything at all, the department is now getting out of the medical marijuana business and turning it all over to approved commercial growers, which may make it easier to get, but also way more expensive, which is a problem for people on fixed incomes because they can’t work as a result of the conditions for which they are using said medical marijuana.