Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: Pilfered equipment and logistical nightmares

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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.

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Roundup: Undermining accountability with dollar figures

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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.

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Roundup: The Carney conundrum

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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.

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Roundup: “Safe” countries and harsher rules

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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.

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Senate QP: One last kick at the F-35s

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Admittedly I got to the Senate chamber late (and it was a bit of a miracle that I made it at all this morning), and when I made it, Question Period was already underway. After missing a question on a local Nova Scotia concerns from Senator Mercer, which Senator LeBreton took under advisement, I came in while Senator Dallaire was on his feet, asking about the government’s messaging on the issue of Syria, and Canada’s capacitor for peacekeeping operations considering the ongoing commitments in Afghanistan and the Canadian Forces currently “licking their wounds.” Senator LeBreton, answering for the government as is what happens in the Senate, responded with her usual derision and withering sarcasm, decrying that Dallaire — a decorated retired Lieutenant General — could “insult” the Forces by using the term “licking their wounds,” and then praised the work of John Baird as minister of foreign affairs.

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Roundup post: Retributive justice for mentally ill offenders

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The release of a mentally ill offender has the government reaching for yet another knee-jerk response to a high-profile case. James Moore went on TV yesterday to say that making laws on single cases is bad policy, but those cases expose flaws in the system, and said that the government wants to put in place changes that will put the victim “at the heart” of the justice system. Now, if you know anything about justice or the rule of law, this should be setting off the big red klaxon because some of the most important features of the justice system are that it a) be blind, and b) not be retributive. Putting the victim “at the heart” of the system debases those two central tenets. Yes, the public reacts with outrage when someone is released after they have been treated for an illness which caused them to do terrible things, because they believe that they haven’t suffered enough, and that they’re using insanity as a way to get off easily – never mind that mental illness is real and can have terrible effects, and that when treated the risk the person poses to the community is minimal at best, and never mind that said person is also being supervised in order to ensure that they remain being treated. And even when the government says they want “science” to determine these things, we don’t see them putting additional resources into treatment or prevention by means of early detection of mental illness. It remains reactive and now, they want to add an element of retribution.

The Commons finance committee has recommended that there be a royal commission on the tax system in order to modernise and streamline it. Or you know, they could do it themselves, being as they’re a gods damned parliamentary committee and all. But no, doing it themselves would be unseemly as it would be terribly partisan and all of that.

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Senate QP: What about that billion dollar penalty?

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With the Commons now risen for the season, the Senate is still hard at work, and they had plenty of questions for the government – especially in the wake of yesterday’s F-35 report being tabled. Liberal senators took it upon themselves to put questions on that report to the government, by way of Senator Marjorie LeBreton, the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Senator Cowan led off, quoting Andrew Coyne’s withering analysis on the F-35s, and he asked what it will take for the government to admit they misled Parliament. Senator LeBreton replied that the “ramblings” of Andrew Coyne mean little to her, and that the government’s assurances on the file have born out — which the Liberal benches found hilarious. She then quoted the false 42-year figure, saying they were the same as the twenty-year figure, and was completely attributable to the time frame. When Cowan pressed about Ambrose’s statements versus those of MacKay, LeBreton got a chance to recite the “no money has been spent” and “Seven-Point Plan™” talking points. Cowan wasn’t about to let go, and pressed on about a statement that MacKay made about how cancelling the F-35s would cost us a billion dollars, and what that actually entailed. LeBreton kept talking around it, despite several back-and-forths. Senator Wallin then stood up to ask a friendly supplemental question to take the heat off, and got LeBreton to quote some KPMG figures.

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Roundup: MPs head home while the F-35 storm rages on

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The House has risen, and the MPs are all headed back to their ridings. Not the Senate though – they’re still sitting, and I’ll be heading up their for Senate QP later today.

Okay, so now the big news from yesterday – the KPMG report on the F-35 procurement process. With a cost now pegged at $46 billion over 42 years, the government says that it’s officially pushing the reset button on the process – or is it? The former ADM of procurement at National Defence, Alan Williams, says that it’s meaningless unless the department redraws the Statement of Requirements to make stealth a “rated feature” with a point value rather than a pass/fail and it then goes for open tender. There’s also the problem of attrition and the additional costs of buying replacement aircraft, which is outside of the $9 billion procurement envelope being set. John Geddes rips apart Peter MacKay’s remorseless performance yesterday, and notes that the officials noted that it will be difficult to keep the aerospace contracts for supplying F-35 parts if we don’t end up going with that plane. John Ivison goes through the process and finds that if the Conservatives still end up going with the F-35s, it will look like incompetence. Andrew Coyne takes offence that the government continues to spin the numbers and calls bullshit – it’s not 42 years, but $46 million over 30 years, and that the government tacked on those extra 12 years to cover “development and acquisition,” which costs a few hundred million, but by making it look like a little over a billion dollars a year, the government is trying to make it look more palatable. Paul Wells notes the Conservatives’ tendency toward hubris when they should be listening to their critics, who do have a point. Of course, the US “fiscal cliff” may end up killing the F-35s as it would slash their defence spending.

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QP: Angry questions in advance of the KPMG report

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What was likely the final QP of the year was very nearly a full house in the Commons, and saw the arrival of the two new Conservative MPs who recently won the by-elections in Durham and Calgary Centre. Once Erin O’Toole and Joan Crockatt took their seats, Thomas Mulcair started off by reading off demands for amendments to the Investment Canada Act, and intimated that the Prime Minister is scaring off investment. Harper pointed out that the markets responded positively to the decision, and hit back about how the NDP would shut down the oil sands. Mulcair then switched tracks and went after the F-35s, to which Harper shrugged and said that the Auditor General’s report found some problems with cost assumptions, but they had this new process going forward. Bob Rae then got up, and took umbrage with Harper’s characterisation of the the Auditor General’s report, and got into a back-and-forth with Harper about what was in the report.

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Roundup: Witness protection without oversight

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The government introduced new witness protection legislation yesterday that the opposition sounds to largely be in favour of, though the proposal doesn’t include any provision for external review or oversight, which shouldn’t really be a surprise given this government’s apparent dislike of such things.

The PBO produced a report on public sector compensation for the sake of having baseline figures to use when looking at the impact of job cuts to government expenditures. And yes, he found some interesting figures about how its growth outpaced inflation and other levels of government. But all everyone will see is the “average $114K” figure, not think about what that includes or the range of salaries it encompasses, and will froth at the mouth about how horrible those bureaucrats are, and so on.

The Chief of Attawapiskat is engaging in a hunger strike in Ottawa to force a meeting with the Prime Minister about treaty obligations. The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs has offered to meet with her, but we’ll see what happens with that.

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