NDP MPs have forced an emergency recall of the Commons finance committee in order to discuss the issue of CRA’s “aggressive” audits of charities. It’s slated to be behind closed doors, so we’ll see what comes of it, but the NDP’s revenue critic, Murray Rankin, says that the committee can provide a “safe space” for these charities to air their grievances about the costly and time consuming processes that they’re being subjected to. I’m not really sure what it will accomplish however, since the CRA is not going to say that they’re taking political direction for these audits, and the government is just going to say “they’re arm’s length, we don’t give them direction,” and the charities will moan about how hard done they are by the whole process. I’m honestly not sure how edifying such a process going to be, assuming that the Conservative MPs on the committee sign on to holding said hearings (which is doubtful). It’s also worth noting that the NDP made this recall notice while the Liberals are holding their summer caucus retreat in Edmonton, which they knew was taking place at the same time, leading one to wonder whether someone was trying to be cute about the whole thing rather than being respectful of another party’s processes and calling the meeting for another date.
Author Archives: Dale
Roundup: A threatening break-in
Vandals broke into Justin Trudeau’s home in Ottawa on Friday night, while his family slept (he was in Winnipeg at the time). Said vandals also left a threatening note that warned them to keep their doors locked – sitting atop a pile of items including kitchen knives, with several other knives arranged around the house. Oh, and apparently the designation for a public figure to get RCMP protection is up to the minister of public safety, and he’s being a bit evasive on the topic. It’s not only worrying that somebody would take this step, but that there are a whole chattering class out there who is either mocking Trudeau because his family was in danger, or who believe that this is all staged. Michael Den Tandt calls out the social media reaction on both sides – those who mocked Trudeau, and those who pin the blame on Harper, and the fact that none of the opposition parties stop their own partisans from demonizing Harper over social media either. It’s all part of the same poisoned ecosystem.
Sun News audience, folks https://t.co/x2PhDkCUBi cc @mdentandt #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ABgTtCwTqt
— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) August 17, 2014
Roundup: Totally not a partisan ad campaign
Remember those anti-pot ads that the government plans to run, which totally aren’t partisan and totally not about Justin Trudeau? Well, as it happens, they don’t show up in planning documents, and there’s no budget for new television advertising, especially for ones geared toward marijuana specifically. But remember – it’s totally not partisan. Really! And it looks like those doctors’ groups are starting to reconsider their participation, because they can see what’s going on.
Roundup: A guilty verdict for Sona
The verdict is in, and former Conservative staffer Michael Sona has been found guilty of aiding and abetting the fraudulent robocall scheme in Guelph in the last election – though the judge made it clear that Sona was not the only one involved, and cast a lot of doubt on the testimony of Andrew Prescott, who was given immunity in exchange for said testimony. All throughout the process, Sona had tweeted about the poor quality of the Elections Canada investigation, and the judge seemed to echo some of those sentiments, but nevertheless found Sona to bear some culpability. The Conservatives, meanwhile, insist that they ran a clean and ethical campaign, and that this is just a couple of bad apples – but as Michael Den Tandt notes, the number of bad apples are piling up on the watch of this prime minister, and that question of judgement which Harper claims to be an issue when it comes to Justin Trudeau can be laid as much at his feet as well. Sona won’t be sentenced until mid-October, and he sounds like he’s preparing for the worst – prison time. There remains the possibility for him to appeal, but the grounds for appeal are fairly narrow and they would have to prove that the judge erred, and they couldn’t introduce new evidence in the case, such as having Sona testify in his own defence, which he didn’t during the trial.
Roundup: Dubiously non-partisan advertising
The government is enlisting the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the College of Family Physicians to put their logos on a Government of Canada, non-partisan ad campaign designed to talk about the dangers of marijuana. Where this becomes problematic is because the Conservative party has been making a lot of hay attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their policy around marijuana decriminalization, and it starts to look like a partisan ad using the government and tax dollars as a shield. It’s bad optics, and even if the three medical associations want to sign on because they have genuine concerns with teenagers using pot (as well they should), the timing and the current environment does taint the whole exercise.
Roundup: Referring the file to Elections Canada
It probably wasn’t unexpected, but the Board of Internal Economy has ruled that the NDP has broken the rules with their “satellite offices,” and wants Commons administration to figure out how much they need to repay for those staffers, most of whom are either working from home or out of Thomas Mulcair’s constituency office. Not only that, but the Board has also mentioned turning over the file to Elections Canada, because of concerns that those staff were not on “leave of absence” when it came to the by-election in Bourassa, where they already spent right up to the limit and this could put them over it. The excuse was that they were using banked overtime and whatnot, but again the rules around in-kind donations would also be triggered here. The NDP, predictably, tried to douse distraction sauce all over it by shouting “kangaroo court!” over and over, and demanding that the Auditor General be brought in to look at everyone’s expenses (um, he’s not your babysitter, guys), so that they can try to spread blame all around. They also kept insisting that the salaries were approved by Commons administration, though the Speaker’s office disputes this with the timeline they published (and it’s fascinating reading). We’ll see if they try to contest this in court as well, but it’s not looking good for them at this point.
Roundup: Another hit of distraction sauce
The NDP are set to crack open that bottle of distraction sauce as the Board of Internal Economy sits today to discuss the issue of “satellite offices.” The distraction – that they want the meeting open to the public (so that they can showboat and obstruct, like they did when Thomas Mulcair went before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee while calling it “transparency”) and when their wish is denied, they can rail to the media about how terrible the state of affairs is, and how it’s all a conviction by a “kangaroo court” that’s all just partisans being mean to them because they’re just so awesome, and all of that. The goal, of course, is to try and lose the substance of the story around their satellite offices amidst all of the other noise that they’re generating around it. Because that’s how you maturely handle a misspending issue in Canadian politics.
Roundup: Simultaneous praise and condemnation
In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, Justin Trudeau gave a somewhat confusing response to what he would do around the First Nations accountability legislation that has made the salaries of chiefs and band councils public. While on the one hand he said it was a good thing that the questionably high payments to certain chiefs were aired, he nevertheless said the law should be scrapped, but that same information be made available to band members so that they could make their own decisions. I’m not sure that it’s just enough to say that the government is trying to force their opponents to be more open and transparent – being First Nations and unions – while their own top political staff salaries remain secret (which isn’t really true because salary ranges are public). If he really were concerned with open and transparent government, he could have others – like top political staff – disclose their salaries to the same levels as the “opponents” of the government. It just seems like trying to hard to paint the current government as bad guys (I know, I know – politics) when in the same breath he praised the results of the same legislation.
Roundup: Adams withdraws
The announcement came at 10 PM on the Friday before a long weekend – in other words, trying to bury it. That announcement? That Conservative MP Eve Adams is bowing out of the Oakville North–Burlington nomination race in order to “focus on her health,” as she hasn’t been following her doctor’s orders about slowing down to focus on recovering from the concussion she received earlier in the year. Or at least, that’s the official excuse, but one has to wonder if it was because she found out that she was about to be disqualified after the shenanigans that she and her opponent accused one another of in the acrimonious nomination race. No word if she plans to run in her current riding (where speculation was she didn’t want to run again because she would be back up against a popular former Liberal MP who wouldn’t be impeded by the Orange Wave this time), or if this is her quietly bowing out of federal politics after 2015 entirely.
Roundup: Hacker concerns and delays
The National Research Council had concerns about their IT security before the hack attack happened, and some of those concerns delayed their move to join Shared Services Canada. What the article doesn’t mention is that NRC also has a lot of legacy computer systems that wouldn’t integrate easily, and that was part of the concern with amalgamation. That said, amalgamation creates its own security risks because everything is in one place, so a well-placed hack there would have far broader implications than the current “federated” model, where individual systems can be isolated. Meanwhile, the Privacy Commissioner’s officer has confirmed that the attack breached a system that contained personal information, and they’re still assessing the damage.