Troubling news out of the Information Commissioner’s office, as Suzanne Legault says that the office is nearly broke, thanks to an increasing workload of 30 percent more complaints this year, plus budget cutbacks (and it will be even worse next year as the budget has to absorb staff salary increases). It makes one wonder about the state of court cases that the Commissioner is pursuing in the name of access to certain documents, and what it means to accepting or dealing with new complaints in a timely manner, especially if they are stretched to the breaking point as it is. Tony Clement, not surprisingly, had no comment about any of this, even though as Treasury Board president, he is the one who is supposed to ensure that there is Access to Information compliance in the civil service, which would make her far easier.
Tag Archives: Access to Information
Roundup: 28 instances, fewer charges
The RCMP say they have disrupted or intervened in 28 instances where people have been involved in high-risk travel, be it people returning after fighting with radicals abroad or when they plan on heading over. No word on how many people have had their passports revoked, and there have apparently been no new names added to the no-fly list, and there have been very few charges under anti-terror legislation. The government will likely try to use this low figure to say that we need even more anti-terror laws, and yet it makes one wonder about the actual scope of the problem. Andrew Coyne wonders about the threat that ISIS poses to Canada directly, and if people should be shrugging it all off. (Spoiler alert: no).
Roundup: Votes cast, commence the grumbling
As expected, the confidence vote on the government as it ordered a combat deployment to Iraq went ahead last night and passed with little trouble, and not without a great deal more political posturing on all sides. I’m not going to say we’re going to war, because that gives ISIS too much credit, but it does escalate Canada’s role in the region, though we’ll see how long any airstrikes will be effective for. The NDP are grumbling particularly about the door being opened to combat in Syria, while Liberal MP Irwin Cotler put out a release to state his reason for abstaining from the vote, which was eloquently stated when it comes to needing to engage in some form of combat against ISIS, but not agreeing with the way this government has gone about it. In the region, Matthew Fisher notes the logistical challenges that will mean it may not be until the end of the month before our CF-18s can begin making any airstrikes. Terry Milewski notes the divisions among those opposed to the combat mission, including former Liberal voices that want it to go ahead, while Michael Den Tandt looks at the way in which the Liberals were squeezed in this debate. Paul Wells goes back to the archives to find the ways in which the Liberals handled Iraq deployments in the past, and finds the curious ways in which history repeats itself.
QP: Iraq vs Environment Commissioner
The Iraq debate continued through the morning, counting down to tonight’s vote, and once again broke for QP — this time with all of the leaders present. Thomas Mulcair led things off by asking about civilian casualties by air strikes in the Middle East, and now that would create new recruits for ISIS. Harper responded that ISIS was spreading like a cancer in the region and were a direct threat to Canada. Mulcair noted that ISIS was reverting to guerrilla tactics, to which Harper reiterated that they were a direct threat. Mulcair noted the lack of clear objectives in Iraq, for which Harper referred to the objectives when he spoke to the House — degrading ISIS’ capabilities. Mulcair changed topics to the Environment Commissioner’s report and the lack of progress on reducing GHG emissions. Harper responded that emissions reduced while there has been economic growth. Mulcair retorted with outrage about Harper facing his children and grandchildren. Harper insisted that they were working toward a binding protocol that would prevent developed countries shifting their emissions to developing ones. Justin Trudeau was up next, noting the refugee crises in Turkey and Jordan, and asked about the resources we were providing to aid them. Harper assured him that they were providing aid, and that a military action did not preclude a humanitarian response. After a round of the same again in French, Trudeau also asked about the Environment Commissioner’s damning report — switching between French and English. Harper retorted that the Liberals had one of the worst records in the world.
Roundup: Back with a countdown
Parliament is back! Yay! Now let’s obsess about how everything is a pre-election narrative, start polling relentlessly, and speculate wildly about the mere possibility that there would be an early election call without any hint of a justification for there to be one! Oh man, aren’t fixed election dates and the year-long campaigning in advance of them just the bestest thing ever?
Roundup: A surprise trip to Iraq
John Baird quietly took a trip to Iraq along with is opposition critics, Paul Dewar and Marc Garneau, to meet with officials there and to pledge aid. James Cudmore looks at what Canada could contribute if we take the fight to ISIS, which could include special forces or aerial reconnaissance and support, but unlikely boots on the ground, as it’s politically unpalatable in an election year. Whatever we do, Harper has stated that it’ll be done on a tight budget because we really want to be cheap about fighting the kinds of grave threats that Harper is making them out to be.
Roundup: MacKay’s t-shirt choices
Peter MacKay’s judgement is once again being called into question after he showed up at a party fundraiser wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the National Firearms Association on it. He later said it was because he was showing support for an Afghan veteran, but one readily suspects that if an Afghan veteran asked him to wear a t-shirt with a pot leaf on it, say to show support for medical marijuana being used to treat an operational stress injury, I doubt MacKay would go for it. The NFA meanwhile declares that MacKay “believes in freedom!” by which they mean less restrictive gun laws. I’m not sure that MacKay’s explanation will quite get him out of declaring that tacit support.
Roundup: Harper’s silence on Fahmy
There were reverberations around the world as an Egyptian court sentenced three journalists to lengthy prison sentences, including Canadian Mohamed Fahmy for his work with Al Jazeera. While other world governments had their leaders or foreign ministers express condemnations or set up calls to the new Egyptian president, Canada’s response was kind of tepid, with Minster of State for consular affairs, Lynne Yelich, putting out a press release to express “disappointment.” Apparently we didn’t want to be too harsh so as to offend them. Fahmy’s brother tweeted out that he holds the government responsible for his brother rotting in jail because Harper couldn’t be bothered to make a public statement. It does make one wonder about why Harper couldn’t be bothered, considering the number of condemnation press releases that we already get in our inboxes. Is it because Harper has his own difficult relationship with the media? Who can say?
Roundup: Sweeping, questionable changes
The House and Senate have both risen for the summer, but as they did, Jason Kenney and Chris Alexander unveiled their massive overhaul of the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme. It proposes to try and make the programme harder to use, with ever-diminishing caps on the number of workers (who were a fraction of one percent of the total workforce in the country, incidentally) with the aim of getting more unemployed Canadians, as well as Aboriginals, new immigrants and people with disabilities into these low-wage jobs. But Kenney seemed tone deaf to some of the massive labour challenges in Alberta, to demographic issues, to incentivising labour mobility, to the problems of aging populations in rural regions that are depopulating, but most especially to the attitude change that needs to happen if they think that university graduates will think that low-wage jobs in the food service industry or even higher-wage jobs in processing jobs like meat packing are going to be the answer to their labour shortages. The NDP condemned the changes without actually reading them, and all of their objections were addressed, not that it mattered. The Liberals made some pretty salient comments about the implausible changes to inspections and the giant loophole going unaddressed through the youth labour exchange programme. The restaurant and small business associations are really unhappy with the changes, which hamstring their ability to find workers in tough markets. John Geddes starts picking out the flaws in Kenney’s case, including demographics and the notion that it’s likely that non-Canadians made for cheaper and more reliable hires. Andrew Coyne says that the changes are simply bad policy, which punishes the service sector where a government goes out of its way to prevent a manufacturing job from offshoring. Coyne notes that if Canadians don’t want to take these jobs, then they shouldn’t be artificially shoehorned into them, but rather to spend their efforts creating value elsewhere in the economy while those who do want those jobs should be made to be Canadians by using the TFW programme as a pathway to citizenship.
Roundup: A very big repayment demanded
The Commons Board of Internal Economy has ruled, and the NDP have been determined to owe some $1.17 million for those improper mailings, $36,000 of which is owed to the House of Commons, the rest they need to work out with Canada Post for the abuse of their Franking privileges. The NDP, of course, are spitting mad, calling it the work of a hyper-partisan kangaroo court, and declaring that they will seek judicial review of this decision in the Federal Court. This is also before there is any decision made about their “satellite offices,” which could mean that they will wind up owing even more money, and I’m sure there will be even more threats of lawsuits and judicial review, none of which serves anyone’s purposes, though the NDP’s status as paragons of virtue is certainly being tainted by all of this. If nothing else, they are now sounding very much like another party that got in trouble for being cute with the rules – unless you have forgotten about the whole “In & Out” affair.