Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: The road to 2015

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From the NDP caucus meeting in St. John’s, Thomas Mulcair made a speech about their “positive, optimistic” future, and how the road to 2015 starts now. As part of that road, the party plans to target youth voters in the next election. Meanwhile, MPs have reaffirmed their belief that 50 percent-plus-one is enough for Quebec to separate, which has the Liberals sounding like they plan to put a motion on the Order Paper about support for the Clarity Act this fall.

The Liberals have formally announced the rules for their leadership contest, which kicks off in November. While We The Media wait to hear whether or not Justin Trudeau will run (who says the party needs teamwork and not a saviour), we’re now getting musings from Jim Karygiannis (aka “Jimmy K”) and Joyce Murray.

Pauline Marois referred to herself as “Head of State.” Um, no. That’s the Queen. You might be the province’s head of government (provided that you can maintain the confidence of the Chamber in a minority context), but you’re not the Head of State. Not even close.

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Roundup: The new Quebec landscape

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Now that she will be attempting to form a government in Quebec, Pauline Marois is vowing to toughen language laws and scrap the tuition hikes – but whether or not she’ll get enough support remains to be seen. And if she wants provincial control over EI, well, Diane Finley’s not keen to give up that power either. In the wake of the shooting at the PQ rally Tuesday night, the federal political leaders have all offered their condolences and condemnation. Paul Wells offers some perspective of previous incidents of violence ostensibly tied to the political debate in Montreal. Jean Charest has stepped down as the provincial Liberal party leader after a 28-year political career. Susan Delacourt remembers her encounters with him.

The shooting incident has several Liberal MPs recalling their own issues with security in the past.

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Roundup: A minority plus some insanity

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So, it’s looks like Pauline Marois is going to attempt to form a minority government in Quebec – assuming that she can get the confidence of the National Assembly. But hey, it was far from the wipe out of the Quebec Liberals that some were predicting, and it was fairly close in seat count – within four seats at writing time. (If you want to use the flawed metric of the popular vote, it was even closer, but again, it’s a flawed metric that isn’t actually measuring what you think it is). Jean Charest did lose his own seat, and we’ll see who runs to replace him as party leader once he steps down (which is likey to be announced soon). I’ve already heard rumours that MP Denis Coderre could be interested, for what it’s worth. Also, it’s worth noting that there is really no mandate for a new referendum – sovereignty is polling at an all-time low, and the mandate between the PQ and Quebec Solidaire is far less than the 40 percent that the previous PQ government felt would be necessary to even broach the topic. So, small favours. Stephen Harper, incidentally, is looking forward to working on their shared goals – like jobs and the economy.

And then things went crazy. Marois was pulled off-stage during her victory speech as apparently a man in a blue bathrobe entered the back of the theatre, shot two people and set a fire on his way out. He was quickly arrested and apparently shouted “Les anglais se réveillent” or “The English are rising” as he was loaded into the car. One person was shot and killed, another treated for shock, and the fire was quickly doused, and things were under control in short order. It was turned the tenor of the coverage around in a flash.

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Roundup: The Quebec decision

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There’s an election in Quebec today, and the pundit class are calling for a PQ victory, despite all of those usual caveats that we don’t trust polls, especially after what happened in the Alberta election. Curiously, the Quebec Liberals are calling for police investigations into what they call illegal robo-calls being made yesterday. Thomas Mulcair is downplaying the potential strife between his “federalist” Quebec caucus and a PQ government.

A plane hired by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) that was carrying a banner that read “Steven Harper Hates Us” in French, was grounded after the RCMP may have been a bit overzealous about it entering restricted airspace. PSAC and the pilot say that the RCMP were concerned the banner was “hate speech,” which the RCMP deny. Note that there weren’t any charges laid, and this “Stephen Harper hates me/us” campaign has been going on from PSAC for weeks now without any particular issue (other than it’s kind of infantile). Incidentally, PSAC has gone on to endorse the PQ in the Quebec election, which is kind of odd, considering that they represent federal public servants, but “they don’t take a position on sovereignty.” Note that back in 2006, then PSAC president and now “federalist” NDP MP Nycole Turmel also endorsed the Bloc.

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Roundup: Additional reporting powers requested

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Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson says that politicians are honest, but when the Act comes up for review she wants additional powers, especially when it comes to MPs reporting gifts.

What’s that? The government may be rigging sole-source contracts? You don’t say!

In light of Senator Fairbairn’s dementia and Rob Ford’s hospitalisation, we ask ourselves once again if we give Canadian politicians too much privacy, and where do we draw that line?

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Roundup: Hiding “Angry Tom”

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NDP leader Thomas Mulcair talks to PostMedia about the upcoming fall sitting, and promises more “proposition” on the way. Um, except that under our system of Responsible Government, that’s not his job. His job is to oppose. Not to legislate, not to propose laws, but to hold the government to account, and you do that by opposing things. Perhaps he needs to look that up. He also says that he’s pushing past the “Angry Tom” label. Um, you have seen Question Period right, when the Conservatives pick at him and he goes completely unhinged? He’s still got a ways to go before he puts “Angry Tom” behind him, and perhaps the progress he has made is because there hasn’t been QP for the past few months. Just a thought.

Seeing as central registries and mandatory ID cards are not going to fly in this country, it looks like we’re stuck with the traditional mandatory short-form census. That said, it looks like they may need to add some new questions to capture missing data now that the long-form census is no more.

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Roundup: Dispute or drawing board?

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A government-sponsored review of the Auditor General’s findings on the F-35 procurement failure could be indicating that they’re trying to dispute his findings, rather than taking the procurement process back to the drawing board like they (sort of) promised to.

A Dalhousie professor believes that our current approach to immigration is simply snobbery that won’t help with the coming demographic crunch, but rather that we need more unskilled labourers who will be industrious and start businesses.

Documents show that Jack Layton’s state funeral cost some $368,000 – more than the state funerals of the previous two governors general, who are actually entitled to such events.

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The Rorschach Senate

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This past week, with not one but two Senate stories dominating the Canadian media coverage, we have been subjected to a number of intellectually lazy editorials about how these are somehow an indictment of the Senate as a whole, and that this should be a rallying cry for reform. No, seriously – somehow the May/December romance of one Senator, and the onset of dementia in another is somehow proof that appointing Senators is a problem. But it shouldn’t surprise me that any Senate story immediately becomes some kind of quasi-Rorschach test that the under-informed pundit class projects their pet theories on Senate reform onto.

Nevertheless, there was a pretty special level of cluelessness that pervaded Stephen Maher’s Thursday column (which somehow made it onto A1 of the Ottawa Citizen), whereby Maher somehow seemed to be indicating that elections magically prevent the onset of dementia, and that we would never have had Senator Brazeau calling a reporter a bitch over Twitter, or Senator Zimmer’s May/December romance if they needed to stand for election. No, really – that was his argument.

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Roundup: Thrice lobbied

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And now the Nigel Wright/Barrick Gold issue gets interesting, as a late disclosure shows that Barrick tried to lobby him on three separate occasions – despite his close personal ties to the owner’s family. I guess that now we’ll really see how narrowly the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner reads the Act before she likely declares it’s not her problem. And subsequently, how long before we hear yet another appeal from the Lobbying Commissioner to give her office some actual teeth.

The Senator Fairbairn “controversy” is now just getting ugly. National Post columnist Jonathan Kay printed the anonymous concerns of a Conservative Senator concern troll. Said concern troll is concerned that Senator Cowan has no authority over the Liberal caucus because he’s a Martin appointee and most of them are Chrétienites, and the Chrétienites wanted her kept in the Chamber. All of which is pretty ridiculous since there would be zero utility in keeping her vote going, and even more ridiculous is the part about how the PMO wants them to keep quiet, which is why said Conservative Senator wants to remain anonymous. Really, this reads like nothing more than a cowardly and ugly partisan attack that is hiding behind both anonymity and a woman with dementia, which needs to be called out for exactly what it is. It also demonstrates that this concern troll seems to labour under the impression that he’s to do the bidding of the leader’s office, which actually isn’t part of a Senator’s job description, but rather, they’re supposed to be independent, which is the half the point of why they’re appointed and not elected in the first place. They’re not supposed to take their marching order from the party leader’s office, and yet he seems to be assuming that they should be. I also find Senator LeBreton’s concerns of what might have happened if the numbers had been closer a bit rich, considering the Conservative majority in the Senate is quite secure, and that’s probably why Fairbairn was being eased out in the manner she was. Retired Senator Sharon Carstairs says that this is why Canada needs a dementia strategy, which we don’t have, and why the Senate needs more robust support systems. Here’s a speech that Fairbairn made on the topic of Alzheimer’s in 1999, with an awareness that she had a family history with it. And while we’re on the topic, can we please stop using this incident to mount up Senate “reform” hobbyhorses? It’s in poor taste, and in fact wrong to somehow equate any of these issues.

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Roundup: The Barrick connection

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There are questions as to whether Harper’s Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, is in violation of conflict of interest rules because he sat in on a couple of calls related to Barrick Gold Corp. when they were calling to discuss concerns about government policy on the Falkland Islands, where they have operations. Wright, who is close to Barrick’s founding families, apparently only sat in on the call, and didn’t participate in any way, nor does he has personal financial stake in it – but the conflict of interest rules apparently also apply to friends benefitting, so it looks like this is being referred to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who will doubtlessly narrowly read the rules, and declare it to be not her problem.

Here are five issues facing the incoming Chief of Defence Staff, Lt-Gen. Tom Lawson. Steve Saideman, the Patterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University, finds it curious that the government chose a CDS with no combat experience. Aaron Wherry collects some of his past quotes in praise of the F-35 and his use of “fifth generation” as though it were a term that had an objective meaning, as opposed to being a trademarked slogan.

The Ontario boundaries redistribution means at least a couple of new Ottawa ridings, including a new one in Nepean. Glen McGregor looks at the situation for Pierre Poilievre – take a relatively safe suburban Nepean seat, or an even safer rural Nepean-Carleton one?

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