The Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics released their latest report yesterday, reviewing the Conflict of Interest Act, and it was, well, a doozy. This is one of those kinds of reports that was always going to be a problem because it’s so highly partisan, and the fact that the committee reflects a minority parliament made this even more so. Reading through it, it was quickly obvious that this was mostly an exercise in the Conservatives (and Bloc) looking to score points based on Mark Carney’s past, and trying to suggest a whole bunch of new rules that would essentially target him personally, which goes against pretty much every principle of good governance. Remember that bad facts make bad case law, and well, this is terrible all around.
It was also quite striking just who the majority on the committee was listening to, which was mostly “Democracy Watch’s” Duff Conacher, whose only credibility is that he branded himself a one-man watchdog who answers media requests, so he gets phoned all the time and provides quotes on too many stories. He’s also lost pretty much every court battle he’s ever waged, and thinks that he should be the only arbiter of parliamentary ethics in this country. They also listed to disgraced “journalist” Sam Cooper (who is so credulous he once believed that a clip from a Hong Kong film was secretly obtained proof of a Canadian official being compromised by Chinese agents), who pretty much was only there to back up Conacher. Experts who warned the majority that they were creating more problems than they were trying to solve were largely ignored, because they didn’t fit the narrative. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals had a nine-page dissent at the end of the report that called these kinds of things out, for all the good it will do.
Why? Because looking at the reporting of the report’s contents and recommendations, it was framed in such a way that the committee agreed to these points when in fact it was only the Conservative and Bloc members of the committee and not the Liberals, which then distorts the report because it makes it sound like it was more unanimous than it was. Mention of the Liberal dissent was waaaaaaay down in the copy, and doesn’t really spell out that this was the Conservatives and Bloc trying to use the committee to attack Carney and the Liberals, which is pretty relevant information when you’ve got a report of this nature. And while I don’t want to give the reporter on this piece a hard time, you can’t really consider what the main body of the report says as what the committee believed—only what the opposition members believed.
Ukraine Dispatch
The Russian strike on Dnipro early Thursday killed three people and injured another ten. Ukraine is boasting that their new interceptor drones can be controlled over thousands of kilometres.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney was in his home riding of Nepean to announce affordable housing plans with the City of Ottawa, that claim to be exceeding their initial goal for units.
- Carney hit back at the Americans for claiming trade irritants with Canada, saying that the real irritants are their tariffs in violation of their trade agreements.
- Carney also said he’s not happy with New Brunswick’s plan to toll certain highways, saying they will impede internal trade.
- Anita Anand says the focus on trade is not coming at the expense of foreign aid or human rights, and that she will restore the women, peace and security envoy.
- Tim Hodgson says that Indigenous groups can get an equity stake in a future pipeline using the Indigenous loan guarantee programme.
- Gregor Robertson says Liberal ridings aren’t getting preferential treatment after Marilyn Gladu suggested they were after she crossed the floor.
- Ahead of tabling its online harms legislation, the government has been warned that Roblox has become a haven for child predators and extremism recruiters.
- Minister Mandy Gull-Masty has not published a conflict-of-interest disclosure nearly a year into the job, raising questions about why she hasn’t.
- Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk will head to the International Space Station later this year, and conduct a number of health-related experiments.
- FINTRAC says that there has been a six-fold increase in extortion cases, and that some of them are domestic copycats of the international gangs trying to cash in.
- The RCMP have laid charges against a federal consultant for overbilling.
New ambassador to Washington Mark Wiseman was at the foreign affairs committee, where he spoke about moving past “bluster” with the Americans. - Experts in medically-assisted dying say the joint committee on MAID extension is going off the rails, with opponents favouring witnesses opposed to the practice.
- Pierre Poilievre is calling on Carney to appoint more Conservative senators to ensure that their voters are represented in that chamber.
- Poilievre publicly tasked two of his MPs with new issues—one on BC land claims (which is borderline racist), the other with Asia-Pacific trade.
- The president of CBC was at heritage committee, and that went about as well as can be expected with the Conservatives on the committee.
- Alberta launched a website to push its upcoming referendum questions, most of them geared toward scapegoating immigrants.
- Surprising nobody, the industrial carbon price remains one of the sticking points in the final agreement with Alberta.
- Steven Guilbeault pens an op-ed calling on the government to hold firm on certain climate commitments in its final agreement with Alberta.
Odds and ends:
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