Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: Memorising all of your lines

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Peter Penashue demonstrates that he’s memorised all of his lines when it comes to any question asked of him, no matter it actually is. Seriously, he’ll give you the same answer every single time. Shades of the repetitive Ed Miliband interview, and further proof that certain members of the Harper cabinet could be replaced by robots and nobody would be any the wiser. Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley looks into the donations to Penashue’s rather stagnant riding association.

Public Works is looking for an outside auditor to review the ongoing construction projects within the Parliamentary precinct, but nobody quite knows why.

There is another public spat brewing in the RCMP over the changes being made to the Force.

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Roundup: Appointing hypothetical politicians to the bench

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At a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association, Rob Nicholson said that they shouldn’t rule out giving judicial appointments to “hypothetical” sitting politicians. No, seriously. This amid continual rumours that they’re eventually one day maybe going to appoint Vic Toews to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Manitoba. He then proceeded to dodge a question about a call to review federal legal aid funding – you know, to make justice accessible to the public in an age where their government continues to make the Criminal Code increasingly complex and at times even nonsensical (if you compare mandatory minimum sentences).

Leona Aglukkaq wants the debate around healthcare to be based around facts and not rhetoric. Hahahahaha! *wipes eyes* Oh, that’s a good one. I’m guessing she’s never actually absorbed the talking points that she has so dutifully memorised.

Charlie Angus is complaining that the Director of Public Prosecutions won’t look into Dean Del Mastro’s electoral financing even though it’s not the DPP’s job, no matter that Angus would like it to be. Seriously, you can’t just invent job descriptions because you want them to do something.

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Roundup: Ironic elections observers?

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Jason Kenney announced that Canada will be sending 500 elections observes to Ukraine – including Ted Opitz. You know, the guy whose election the Supreme Court may very well be overturning within days. Does this count as irony?

Meanwhile, in the court case where the Council of Canadians is challenging seven other election results, the Conservative lawyers have asked for a $250,000 deposit on costs in case the challengers lose. The Council charges that the Conservatives are trying to drive up costs with obstruction and delay. As for that affidavit about voter suppression calls coming from that one call centre in Thunder Bay, the Conservatives produced an affidavit refuting it, saying that they only called supporters and in the ridings were there were actual polling station changes.

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Roundup: Selecting a window dressing panel

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The government has announced the selection panel for recommending the next Justice of the Supreme Court, comprised of three Conservatives, one NDP and one Liberal MP, and as it was pointed out, three lawyers, a PhD in sociology, and a farmer. The judge will have to be from Quebec, as that is the vacancy on the Court. Of course, this whole process is really just window dressing anyway as ultimately this is and always has been a crown prerogative of the Prime Minister anyway.

There are rumours that the government wants to create a permanent secretariat in Public Works to deal with military procurement issues, which everyone else seems to agree is just adding layers of needless bureaucracy without actually solving any of the problems. Meanwhile, the report on the F-35 procurement disaster is overdue according to the government’s timetable, and Public Works has had to put out yet another tender for an independent auditor. Because it never ends.

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Roundup: Harper’s lowered expectations

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Apparently Stephen Harper avoids First Ministers meetings in order to keep expectations low and appear to be over-performing. Good to know. And suddenly I’m reminded of these old MadTV sketches. Seems rather apropos.

The Canadian Forces wants to spend a billion dollars on armed drones. Considering their recent track record when it comes to procurement, and the fact that we still don’t actually have any kind of white paper or policy direction when it comes to what our Forces are supposed to be doing and what roles they’re supposed to be filling, um, perhaps we should get on that first, before we spend a billion-plus dollars on drones that we might not actually need, no? Just saying.

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Roundup: A possible northern route

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The premier of the Northwest Territories suggests that if the Northern Gateway pipeline doesn’t end up going through BC, then they can send it north, where it can be shipped to Asia from there. Err, except there isn’t exactly a port that can support oil tankers in existence, and it would be an additional infrastructure burden to contend with.

The government looks set to introduce a bill that will allow for private property on First Nations reserves. While some First Nations support this, others – including Shawn Atleo – are opposed, saying that it not only offends their communal approach to land ownership, and that it could lead to non-natives taking control of land on reserves.

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Roundup: James Moore gone rogue!

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Uh oh – someone better alert the PMO thought police! James Moore has apparently gone rogue and cast doubt on Enbridge and the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Isn’t that heretical? Won’t the Pipeline Inquisition now need to fetch the comfy chair? I guess we’ll see if he’s still a cabinet minister by end of day.

The Canadian Forces remains overwhelmingly white and male, as they are falling well short of their diverse recruiting targets.

Some 80 lawyers have written an open letter to cast doubt on Jason Kenney’s assertion that he did nothing to speed through Conrad Black’s visa application. The spearhead of this campaign says it’s hard to believe that he wasn’t involved, given the history of micro-managing by this government. For what it’s worth, I believe Kenney said that he didn’t want to hear about this particular file, but that doesn’t mean that some officious bureaucrats weren’t doing what they thought would please the minister in speeding it through of their own volition.

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Roundup: Missed non-binding deadlines

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The government is going to miss the six-month deadline the House gave it when it passed a non-binding motion about amending the Elections Act vis-à-vis robocalls. Hands up anyone who’s actually surprised. Meanwhile, other experts say that Elections Canada already has all of the tools they need, but their problem is actually enforcement, in that they’re not doing enough of it. Meanwhile, Kady O’Malley takes a look at that Paul Calandra fundraiser that people have been talking about, and breaks down what kind of money we’re talking about, and it’s more than some people would think.

In a similar vein, the Conflict of Interest Act is overdue for its five-year review, and given the committee calendar it likely won’t be reviewed until closer to the holidays. And hey, maybe they’ll think about doing more about the mandate of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, which is pretty limited and limiting.

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Roundup: Not exactly ‘off-the-shelf’

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So those army trucks that got cancelled at the last minute? It seems their costs escalated when DND kept adding in new capabilities to the “off-the-shelf” models, and the price tag went up. Just like with those Chinook helicopters, if you recall. But no, our procurement system isn’t broken.

Shawn Atleo has been re-elected as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He won on the third ballot, but the fact that nearly a third of the chiefs voted against him, he has some work ahead.

Aww, Julian Fantino thinks it’s “unfair” that the Toronto Star dares to go to Afghanistan and dares to print that our aid efforts haven’t lived up to expectations, because apparently that doesn’t fit his party’s narrative.

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Roundup: The politics of gun violence

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I believe Colin Horgan said it best, so I’ll start off by quoting him: “Yes, never miss a chance for partisan shots. With senseless human tragedy comes political opportunity! Well done, everybody.” He is, of course, referring to the release put out by the government in the wake of the shootings in Scarborough, to which the government gave two lines of condolences and twelve lines of partisan salesmanship about how the opposition needs to support their tough-on-crime agenda. Because we all know that if the mandatory minimums that already exist on the books didn’t prevent this, well, then we need even tougher penalties for deterrence! It also didn’t help that Vic Toews took shots at those judges who struck down the mandatory minimums as arbitrary and inappropriate in some cases – and it was both in the cases in which they were struck down. And then Julian Fantino is the one to sound reasonable? How did that happen? (And just to note that Liberal MP John McKay, whose riding the shooting happened in, was also eminently reasonable, while NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan, from the neighbouring riding, took to Power and Politics to suggest they talk to the critic another day. Oops).

The Federal Court shot down a challenge to the government’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol because, well, it’s actually the government’s right to do so. That’s the way executive powers work, even if you don’t agree with them – not that it seems to stop the civically illiterate from taking to the courts to try and change the foundations of parliamentary democracy on a whim because they lost a political battle.

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