With Harper in the House to play off against, Thomas Mulcair opened QP with a question on Nexen and the criteria for foreign takeovers, to which Harper assured him that the changes that were made to the Act ensured a rigorous process, and any decision would be in the best interest of the Canadian economy. Mulcair then asked a question that started with the leak of the Khadr transcripts, veered over to the shared embassy issue, and settled on asking why Harper wasn’t speaking at the UN General Assembly. Harper assured him that Canadian prime ministers don’t speak every year, but that the minister of Foreign Affairs would do a good job in his stead. For his final question, Mulcair went full-on with the Great British Menace™ that apparently going to swallow our foreign policy (because apparently the NDP are still trying to out-Bloc the Bloc to keep Quebec votes), but Harper’s answer didn’t really deviate. Paul Dewar took the remaining pair of slots, chastising Harper for not being at the General Assembly when he was even going to be in town for it, but Baird responded by singing the praises of Harper receiving the Statesman of the Year award. Bob Rae was up next, first asking about income inequality, per the Liberal opposition day motion (and do believe that I need to shake my head at this opposition day motion like I did the NDP’s – while it is substantive in its policy direction, but it doesn’t state why the government should be denied supply; just the opposite, it attempts to legislate from the opposition benches, which is not the role of the opposition, though as the third party, the Liberals are given a bit more leeway to do these kinds of manoeuvres, not that they should be). Harper responded that they take the issue seriously and listed a bunch of measures they’ve taken. When Rae asked why they voted against a motion to study income inequality (which did pass – just barely), Harper said they prefer action to study. For his final question, Rae wondered that because the government is making LGBT rights one of their foreign affairs priorities if they would also start funding major pride parades in Canada and attending them. Harper dodged and talked about advancing rights for everyone, and touted the creation of the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg.
Tag Archives: Abortion
Roundup: Takeovers and security threats
CSIS is sounding the alarm to business leaders around Chinese hackers and cyber-spies as the Nexen takeover bid continues to dominate the headlines. A former assistant director of CSIS says that we need to be aware that espionage these days is more about corporate interests and economic advantage – skewing the level playing field – than it is about government secrets, as it was during the Cold War.
Documents show that the government did study the possibility of private prisons, though Vic Toews has said that he’s dismissed the idea.
The second and final hour of debate on the private members’ motion to create a committee to study the legal definition of “human being” (aka the backdoor abortion debate) took place in the Commons and goes to a vote on Wednesday. And just a reminder that no, this is not an outright attempt to re-criminalise abortions, it’s a non-binding vote about creating a committee to come up with a non-binding report that can then get stuck on a shelf to collect dust because Stephen Harper does not want this issue to be resurrected, and he’s doing everything in his powers to kill it with fire. And for everyone who resumes to think that he should have disallowed the debate in the first place, well, the whole point of private members’ business is that it’s outside of the control of the party leader, the House leader, or the party whip, and any MPs who want the leaders to interfere *cough*Niki Ashton*cough* should really think about what it is they’re asking for, since it would mean curtailing what precious few freedoms backbenchers still possess.
Roundup: Fictional carbon taxes
The first day back in the Commons, and all anyone can talk about is whether or not the NDP was proposing a carbon tax. Which they weren’t. But hey, why not use this hysteria as a distraction from actual debate? Van Loan laid out what the plans were for the fall – new budget implementation bill, which will likely include changes to MP pensions, RCMP bill, more tough on crime measures – but the Lawful Access bill was notably absent. Amidst the whole Conservative/NDP carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade punch and counter-punch, economist Stephen Gordon lays out the economic differences between the two.
Oh noes! Government backbenchers are showing a bit of backbone and having independent thought. We The Media must immediately crush this by writing “IS STEPHEN HAPRER LOSING CONTROL OF HIS CAUCUS?” stories.
Roundup: The new Quebec landscape
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.
Roundup: Thrice lobbied
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.
Roundup: Up to 579 consecutive votes upcoming
While you’re enjoying your weekend, give pause for the poor clerks in the Commons spending their weekends preparing for report stage voting for the omnibus budget bill. You see, the Bloc has some 22 substantive amendments, Elizabeth May has some 330 amendments tabled, and of the 503 deletion amendments the Liberals submitted and the 506 that the NDP did, well, there’s a lot to go through. Peter Van Loan says that 579 of those don’t overlap, but we need to see how those amendments will be grouped together before the marathon of votes begins sometime next week.
There are new concerns around what happened in that senior’s residence poll in Etobicoke Centre in the last election, as a third version of events surfaces.
The CBC takes a look at the weakening of civilian oversight and the increasing influence of lobbyists with military procurement – especially when it comes to the F-35s.
Roundup: Just take the minister’s word
While the issue of missing regulations on EI changes dominates the debate in the Commons right now, it seems that department of Human Resources and Skills Development did conduct a focus group study on what it would take to encourage people from high-unemployment areas to those regions with better opportunities. The minister has tried to distance herself from this study and her comments have consistently been about finding work within one’s region, but without any regulations on offer, we are left to take her word for it.
Seeing as political parties and voter databases exist outside of privacy legislation in this country, you would expect that this might lead to problems. Well indeed it has, with the voters’ list being abused with fraudulent robo-calls, and people being added to databases after contacting their MPs on policy concerns or case files. Who would have guessed?
Roundup: The budget omnibus bill lands
The government tabled their first budget implementation bill yesterday – a 431-page omnibus bill that amends over 50 Acts, and a huge chunk of that being environmental legislation, like major changes to the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and repealing the Kyoto implementation law. Oh, and they’ve indicated that they want to put the rush on this one too. Because there’s nothing like actual scrutiny for bills that this government wants passed.
Stephen Woodworth’s motion to have a debate saw its first hour of debate, and was smacked down from all sides – even his own, when Conservative whip Gordon O’Connor savaged it and encouraged his own party to vote against it. (Niki Ashton then followed up by accusing the government of “Trojan Horse legislation,” obviously tone-deaf and unable to think on her feet considering the speech that immediately preceded hers). The chance that this non-binding motion will go anywhere are increasingly remote.
Bev Oda has repaid the cost of her limousine rides. Now we can sleep again at night. (Incidentally, Paul Wells looks at the two incidents together and sees the signs of Harper’s loosening discipline, and what it all means).
The Auditor General appeared at the Public Accounts committee yesterday, and lo and behold, there is a reason why he focused on the 36-year lifecycle costs of the F-35s, and that the department and government tried to sell 20-year costs is a problem. Meanwhile back in the House, Bob Rae continued to argue his point of privilege that the government not telling the truth with regards to these costs – in the face of all evidence – is a contempt of parliament. And he’s got a very good point.
And here is part two of the Huffington Post Canada’s excellent series on redrawing the electoral boundaries in this country, with the challenges faced by the “rurban” ridings in Saskatchewan, where in the previous exercise the commissions were told there was no such thing as an “urban interest” in the province (though the distortionary effect is also quite pronounced in Alberta as well), and the battles that went on in New Brunswick during the last redistribution.
QP: Accepting conclusions but not responsibility
On a day when the government released its first budget implementation bill – an omnibus monster of some 431 pages that amends some 50 Acts, and takes a huge axe to environmental legislation – there was not a question on this bill, or the environment to be found. Instead, Thomas Mulcair led off Question Period with a trio of questions about a possible future Afghan deployment, to which Harper assured him that any deployment would come before the House (see my discussion yesterday about Crown Prerogative and why it’s really a bad thing for Harper to do this), before Mulcair turned to the question of the Woodworth motion – otherwise known as the backdoor abortion debate. Harper assured him that he would be voting against it, but seeing as it’s private members’ business, he can’t do anything else about it, unfortunately. And that’s true. (I wrote a bit more about the issue and the mechanics here). Bob Rae then stood up to ask about the Auditor General’s report on the F-35s – if Harper accepts the report, how can the deputy ministers be writing to the AG to disagree with it, given our system of government? Harper assured him that they accepted the conclusion of the report and were acting on it. Rae then asked if Harper accepts the conclusions, does he not then take responsibility for what happened. Harper, however, wasn’t going to fall for this and instead insisted that wasn’t the conclusion of the AG, but they did accept the conclusion he did draw.
A few notes on the Woodworth motion
That backdoor motion to re-open the abortion debate happens Thursday afternoon, but before you get too worked up, let’s remember a few things:
1) This is a Private Members’ Motion, not a bill. These motions are possibly the most harmless and indeed meaningless items on the Order Paper. He wants to debate about having a debate, in a vote the House can then ignore if it so chooses. At most, a successful vote will push this off to a committee to debate. That’s all.
2) Even if it passes and they choose to send it for debate, the law he wants to challenge (about legal personhood requiring full birth) is actually legally sound. The jurisprudence and history behind it are nothing what Woodworth describes. It has nothing to do with medical science, no matter what he insists. So he’ll end up looking pretty foolish in the end once the law professors walk you through it.
3) Harper doesn’t want to open this debate, and he’s just been reminded about what happens when parties try. You saw what happened to the Wildrose – the electorate doesn’t really have a stomach for “social” issues like these, especially in unsettled economic times. Yes, he’ll have some stalwarts in his benches who want to make an issue out of it, but he’ll be applying some backroom pressure to ensure that this doesn’t advance any further than this debate (on a debate). He’s voting against it. It sounds like the cabinet will be whipped into voting against it (though he may have a few strategic absences as a result). He’s not stupid, and this isn’t really his “hidden agenda,” because guess what – that really doesn’t exist. Really.
4) No, Harper really can’t get Woodworth to withdraw the motion as the NDP have been insisting, because it’s Private Members’ Business. Yes, the Conservatives have abused it to try and get stuff passed on the sly (witness the long-gun registry bill in the last parliament), and the NDP seem to have a central office controlling their PMBs, but it’s still private members’ business. It’s one of the only independent outlets that MPs have for their private policy hobbyhorses. Do we really want to codify that MPs have zero independence any longer and that their party apparatus now controls all of their thoughts and actions? No, I didn’t think so either. So stop trying to insist that this is what should happen – especially other MPs calling for it.
5) It’s just a debate. It’s not a bill. It’s a debate. No matter how the contentious the issue, we shouldn’t be afraid of debate. This is, after all, a democracy.