Peter Penashue’s former official agent isn’t willing to take the blame for all of the campaign spending overruns and curious donations, but he does seem to admit that there were some mistakes made in any case.
European negotiators are in town to make a final push toward completing the Canada-EU Trade Agreement.
The Privy Council Office was also interested in monitoring ethnic media – but they don’t seem to have been concerned about how the minister or Prime Minister were perceived.
Tony Clement says he’s willing to go to court to insist that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is exceeding his mandate. Err, except that the PBO is trying to look at the Estimates, which is his mandate (and to be even more fair, he’s doing it so that MPs have data to hold the government to account, even though they’re passing off their work onto him). Good luck to Clement on this one.
The government is planning a new online portal for Access to Information requests next year.
The Canadian Forces have folded three operational commands into one – the Canadian Joint Operations Command, but it remains to be seen as to how much of a cost savings this will actually produce. Meanwhile, our special forces apparently have their eyes on wee little submarines.
The Chief Electoral Officer says he’ll recommend changes to the Elections Act in light of the whole robo-call mess. Campaigns are relying more and more on this kind of technology for voter outreach, and it looks like it might soon be reigned in.
Paul Wells picks apart the whole “Commonwealth super-embassies” speculation and takes note of the realities of diplomatic office sharing amongst European countries even with the UK in places. But what about the NDP Great British Menace™ talking point?
The low response rate to the voluntary household survey (ie – the replacement for the long-form census) is concerning to Statistics Canada, especially because the low-return rates are from rural and small towns, where that data is necessary for government planning.
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.
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.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page can’t get any information on government cuts, and feels the government is deliberately keeping people in the dark. Pat Martin says that the government should provide the PBO with the information so that MPs know what they’re voting on. Or, you know, MPs could compel the production of papers using the powers they already have and demand to know for themselves rather than involving a middleman like the PBO.
The NDP have agreed to wrap up the committee hearings into the Auditor General’s report on the F-35 procurement process because they heard from the witnesses they wanted to during their Potemkin committee hearing in the summer. You know, the one that’s not official, and not on the record? Good job.
Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed passed away last night at age 84, in the hospital that bears his name. Lougheed started the reign of the Progressive Conservatives in the province, which has kept on for more than 40 years. He was one of the premiers at the centre of the patriation of the constitution, and fought for provincial rights. Here are some statements from Stephen Harper, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and his ultimate political successor, premier Alison Redford.
Looking ahead to the return of Parliament next week, there will be another budget bill this autumn that promises to be pretty contentious as well.
Here is a good summary of the whole issue between the House of Commons and the Auditor General on that Access to Information issue.
In the wake of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, John Baird is calling for “swift justice.” (How does that fit in with the rule of law and a fair trial? Just wondering.) We’ll also be reviewing the security of our embassy in Tripoli. This Reuters report seems to indicate that the attack was planned, and not the work of an angry mob.
Julian Fantino wants you to donate to the West African hunger crisis relief funds as a way of thwarting terrorism.
On the case of the Commons blocking that Access to Information request, the Speaker’s office says they are duty-bound to protect the privileges of the House until such time as the House decides otherwise.
The House of Commons (as its own entity rather than its occupants) is taking the Auditor General to Federal Court to block an Access to Information request around his correspondence for his committee appearances. The House says this is about parliamentary privilege, and the AG says that privilege doesn’t extend to his office. Kady O’Malley delves further into this, but it does seem unlikely that the Courts could even weigh in on this, and there is also that wee little fact that Parliament is a court in and of itself. Both the PMO and the Liberals say that they’re willing to waive privilege in this case. It was later revealed that the NDP were the originators of said ATIP request, which just makes this all the more curious.
Iran has responded to our embassy closures, and calls it “unwise, uncivilised, and hostile.” Brian Stewart looks at some of the possible intelligence that may have prompted the pullout, and wonders if it wasn’t threats on Canadian soil that they were more concerned with. The ousted Iranian charé d’affairs insists that they did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, Thomas Mulcair seems to be distancing himself from some of Paul Dewar’s comments regarding the embassy closures.
Day two of the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax yesterday, and the topic was healthcare – specifically the report prepared by premiers Brad Wall and Robert Ghiz on common best practices, bulk buying certain pharmaceuticals, and such. (Hilariously, Leona Aglukkaq later insisted the federal government has played a leadership role in healthcare, which is especially funny when pretty much every single answer she gives in QP is about how nothing is her responsibility). As part of the day’s news, the premiers also invited Harper to sit down with them for their next meeting in November – to which Harper replied that he’ll totally get right on that. Really!
And no, the topic of pipelines was not omitted. Premiers like Ghiz and David Alward want an east-west pipeline so that refineries in the east can process bitumen from the west. Which is all well and good, but just remember that there is a heck of a lot more east-west distance in this country for a pipeline to cross (and possibly leak) than there is to go north-south to the pre-existing refineries in Texas, for example. And longer pipelines mean a lot more cost, since reversing the flow of the existing east-west pipeline won’t have that much capacity to grow as oil sands operations ramp up.