Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Roundup: An F-35 friendly new defence chief?

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The new Chief of Defence Staff has been named – Lieutenant General Tom Lawson, an RCAF officer with 37 years experience who is currently serving as the deputy commander of NORAD and has been a vocal proponent of the F-35 fighter acquisition. So immediately we have to wonder just what Harper is telegraphing in his choice of Lawson as CDS. Paul Wells notes that Lawson, like the outgoing Natynczyk, has a great deal of American experience, which is interesting.

The Corrections Investigator, Howard Sapers, is ringing the alarm over record prison populations and double bunking levels leading to increased violence. But wait – didn’t Vic Toews say that the prisoner population explosion didn’t happen and they’re going to close prisons because of it?

Apparently Stephen Harper “owns” the Arctic as a policy file. Um, okay, so he goes up for photo ops and to announce new National Parks every summer. But the fact that he hasn’t fulfilled any of his sovereignty-related promises, that food prices in the North continue to climb, and climate change remains pretty much a zero on his regular policy agenda, it doesn’t speak to highly for his commitment to the file that he “owns,” does it?

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Roundup: Paying back union sponsorships

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It appears that Elections Canada has forced the NDP to pay back $344,468 in union sponsorships for their conventions since 2003. This is the figure that Thomas Mulcair has been refusing to disclose to date, and which the Conservatives will use as more ammunition in the days and weeks to come.

Liberal MP Frank Valeriote stands by his campaign decisions with the robo-calls in his riding – but would simply have followed the CRTC rules of having the proper tags on the end had he known.

The Canadian Forces’ Arctic exercises last week offered us a glimpse of the secretive and mysterious JTF2 unit.

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Roundup: Fined for telecomm violations

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The CRTC has fined the Liberal riding association in Guelph for an improper robo-call during the last election, and Frank Valeriote, the MP, accepted the finding. Now, just to remind you – this was about a violation of the Telecommunications Act with an unidentified robo-call warning that the Conservative candidate might be pro-life. It was not a violation of the Elections Act. It has nothing to do with misleading voter to wrong polling stations, or anything like that. No matter how many equivalencies the Conservative partisans try to this to the other Guelph robo-calls and the mysterious “Pierre Poutine,” they would all be wrong.

Helena Guergis’ lawsuit against Stephen Harper and company has been tossed out – as well it should be. The Judge correctly asserted that the matter of her being in cabinet are a Crown Prerogative – because it is. And Crown Prerogatives are generally non-justiciable for a reason. Otherwise, people start doing silly things, like taking to the courts when they lose at politics, just like they start writing to the GG or the Queen. Oh, wait – they already do! But yeah, it’s not the court’s jurisdiction. If you have a problem with the way a government exercises its prerogative, then you vote them out in the next election. If people had a modicum of civic literacy, this kind of thing might be avoided. Guergis says she’s stating law school next week – hopefully she’ll learn this lesson, as well as what “frivolous lawsuit” means. She also says she wants to appeal, but good luck with that.

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Roundup: Exit the Deputy Speaker

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NDP MP and deputy Speaker Denise Savoie has announced her retirement for health reasons, and her letter mentioned that the travel demands of being a west coast MP was taking its toll. This means there is yet another by-election for the Prime Minister to call, likely this autumn. As for the role of Deputy Speaker, there’s no rule that says it has to go to an opposition party but should be someone whose linguistic proficiency is opposite that of the current Speaker, meaning it will likely have to be a Francophone as opposed to current Assistant Deputy Speaker Barry Devolin. As for who that might be, well, is a harder guess because I can’t think of any Francophone NDP MPs who have enough of an understanding of the rules and procedures as nearly all of them are still newbies, so maybe Mauril Bélanger from the Liberals, as he once expressed an interest in becoming Speaker? Wild guess, but it will be interesting to see who he ends up choosing.

From Nunavut, Stephen Harper announced funding for a new Arctic research station (after cutting an existing one, mind you), that the government was launching a new search for the lost vessels of the Franklin Expedition, and named Leona Aglukkaq to be the chair of the Arctic Council. Since she’s not really doing anything as Health Minister other than reminding everyone that nothing is her jurisdiction and ignoring the advice of expert panels, she’ll have plenty of time to memorise a whole new set of talking points to recite by rote.

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Roundup: The politics of parks

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As expected, Stephen Harper announced the creation of a new national park reserve in the Northwest Territories. (A national park reserve is like a national park, but with an Aboriginal land claim). But because this is also political, it seems that the borders were drawn in a way that reflects mining concerns in the area, while the Liberals call the creation of the new park hypocritical since the Conservatives are also cutting Parks Canada’s budget. While in the NWT, Harper also said that he wasn’t prepared to spend federal dollars to make the Mackenzie Valley pipeline a reality.

It looks like some 500 federal environmental assessments are being cut in BC, though many will still face a provincial review. I think we should probably also remember that some of these “assessments” were little more than paperwork exercises around best practices, so it may not be the Armageddon that some people would describe.

What’s that? The NDP used the memorials to Jack Layton to try and score political points? You don’t say!

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Roundup: One year post-Layton

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of Jack Layton’s death, and there will be a number of memorial events taking place. Olivia Chow reflects on her life without Layton, while the public remains in the dark about just what kind of cancer it was that he died of, which raises questions about the secrecy we allow political leaders when it comes to questions of their health during elections.

Elections Canada has updated its figures on robo-call complaints it’s investigating (1394 complaints in 234 ridings), but it won’t turn over its documents to the Federal Court for the Council of Canadians’ court challenge of the results in seven ridings. (And really, it’s about interfering with their own ongoing investigation, not a conspiracy).

Here’s a recounting of the NDP’s Potemkin committee hearing on the F-35s yesterday. We don’t actually have any standing defence policy that their procurement can be applied towards, and apparently they’re still in the early testing phases so we won’t even have a realistic idea about their capabilities for several more years.

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Roundup: Parks as environmental policy

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This may come as a surprise, but Stephen Harper is going to announce the creation of another park in the North during his tour. You know, like he’s done every other year. And hey, creating parks are a great way to look like you’re doing something for the environment when really you’re making no effort at all, right?

The federal government has announced they’re going to launch a 25-year renewal plan for Tunney’s Pasture (otherwise known as the Land of Exile during my former life working government contracts). I hope they have good luck with the contaminated sites there, and that hopefully unlike the Parliamentary precinct plans, 25 years won’t turn into 40.

Thomas Mulcair admits that he’s no Jack Layton, but that he learned a lot from his leadership style. Aaron Wherry has more tales of the creation of Layton’s final letter.

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Roundup: Detaining refugees versus the Charter

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Apparently an internal report at Citizenship and Immigration says that the government should consider detaining Roma refugees if the new changes to the Act don’t stem the tide of claimants. It’s a bit hard to see how that would be squared with the Charter, considering it would be arbitrary detention and racial profiling, no?

The National Energy Board is now demanding that report from the Enbridge spill in Michigan two years ago as part of the Northern Gateway review panel. Thomas Mulcair, meanwhile, considers the project dead, while still calling the oil sands an “important resource.” Okay then.

Despite Conservative promises that the whole F-35 purchase was going to be frozen and rethought, Lockheed Martin says there’s no change on their end and we appear to be going full steam ahead.

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Roundup: The political theatre of ankle monitors

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Despite a pilot project showing that they didn’t really work as well as they’d hoped, Corrections Canada is nevertheless going forward with rolling out more anklet monitors for parolees. But it’s the sense of security that someone is keeping an eye on these offenders that’s important – right? So long as they look like they’re doing something, no matter that what they’re actually doing isn’t working is what’s really important, no? That bit of political theatre is pretty much the hallmark of their justice agenda.

Michael Petrou at Maclean’s tries to sort out the business of whether or not we’re giving aid dollars to Syrian rebels. Meanwhile, Canadian Relief For Syrian are still trying to figure out what happened on the government’s end.

Andrew Mitrovica takes on Chuck Strahl’s responses about his new role as the chair of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, and pretty much calls him out for being a government lapdog and not someone who will be an effective watchdog of CSIS.

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Roundup: What Flaherty and his pals discuss

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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is off on his summer retreat with business and policy leaders, talking about finance stuff all candidly and off-the-record like. But just what are they talking about? Well, some rather intrepid ATIPing by the Globe and Mail shows that last year, they talked about things like raising the retirement age, lowering wages, anti-union “right-to-work” legislation and two-tier healthcare. You know, all kinds of imported American Republican ideology that’s served that country so well.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel concluded her visit to Canada. The take-away message: “Yay trade!” Duly noted.

What’s that? The government is likely under “enormous pressure” from the US to buy the F-35 fighters? You don’t say!

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