An Ontario superior court judge has struck down provisions that prevent Canadian ex-pats from voting in federal elections, despite living abroad. Considering that we vote for local constituency MPs, and not parties or leaders, one does wonder how we will determine who these ex-pats will vote for, seeing as they don’t have a current riding for whom they are choosing an MP to represent them in. While some jurisdictions that allow expats to vote decide this on the basis of their last Canadian address, it does make one wonder about that kind of determination as riding boundaries change and you have more people voting at that address than are currently registered. Or maybe I’m letting reality and the rules of the way things work get in the way of more abstract feelings about democracy once again.
The Auditor General’s report is coming up this week, and will feature chapters on government relocation programmes for military and RMCP officers and their families, which is a contracting mess that has involved bid-rigging and other general unpleasantness, as well as the management of public sector pension plans.
The Privacy Commissioner has some legislative fixes she’d like to see in order to keep the government accountable for things like getting telecom records even under justifiable circumstances, but the government remains non-committal at best.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian Bar Association is deeply troubled by Stephen Harper’s little spat with the Chief Justice.
As we lead up to the National Day of Honour for the mission in Afghanistan, we see a story where DND backtracked on a promise to give a soldier with PTSD an extended release from the military, while another soldier with PTSD and her husband are being threatened with force by the military if they don’t vacate their rental housing on time. So much for their public relations campaign around helping soldiers suffering from PTSD.
James Cudmore looks at some of the factors that led up to Shawn Atleo’s resignation as National Chief of the AFN, from his pragmatic, incrementalist approach being different from that of many other First Nations, to the fact that the government’s preference to dealing with him alone despite the fact that his position was not as an actual head of government angered many other stakeholders.
The Liberals are looking to launch a radio ad that attacks Harper for appointing senators when he said he wouldn’t. Erm, except that it’s a constitutional obligation to make appointments – a Prime Minister is in violation of those duties when he or she refuses to make appointments. Yes, you can attack him about the fact that he’s made some spectacularly bad ones, or that he made an unconstitutional promise to begin with, but attacking him for simply making appointments is really bad form.
After certain people made a big ballyhoo of the line in the Kinder Morgan report on expanding the pipeline to the west coast and the economic impact analysis saying that there would be economic benefits to an oil spill (due to increased activity in the area), economist Andrew Leach reminds us why those kinds of analyses are terribly flawed to begin with, and the wrong way to look at project evaluation.
With the Senate question out of the way, and the misleading robocalls investigations essentially over, John Geddes looks at where the Conservatives will try to shift the focus back to the economy, while the Liberals try to move in on that territory.
Toronto city councillor Adam Vaughan has won the Liberal nomination in Trinity–Spadina, where he will face off against NDP candidate Joe Cressy. Or, at least he will whenever the by-election is called.
Vic Toews has formally donned his judicial robes for the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench.
Here are some photos from the Press Gallery Dinner on Saturday.
And yesterday was Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you…) and a few politicos tweeted. Justin Trudeau went the quote route, while Mulcair remembered lining up to watch it in ’77.