The Director of CSIS has generously volunteered to assist Vic Toews in fixing his delayed Lawful Access bill. You can find the redacted letter here.
The federal government has announced that it will appeal the BC court ruling on assisted suicide.
What’s that? Federal bureaucrats weren’t impressed when John Duncan didn’t appear to understand the Attawapiskat file in public? You don’t say!
Now that he’s in Calgary for the Stampede, Thomas Mulcair says that they should open up access to the oil sands – but not with new pipelines. Um, okay, because the ones that exist have all that much excess capacity, apparently. (Hint: They don’t really). And he wants more east-west pipelines, but there really, really isn’t enough pipeline capacity there, and it’s way, way more expensive to build such an east-west pipeline than it is to build one to the refineries in Texas, or to the west coast to sell it to Asia. Oh, wait – we don’t want to refine oil in Texas, we want to do it in Canada, where we don’t have refinery capacity in the West, and it would cost billions of dollars to build upgraders and refineries (and would come with a major cost in terms of carbon footprint). And while Mulcair may want the shuttered Shell refinery in Montreal to process oil from the West, assuming they can get pipeline capacity to it, well, no word on how he’d convince them to go for it economically. So…yeah.
Mulcair also appears to be tone-deaf on the “white hatting” tradition of Calgary, for what it’s worth, seeing as he decided to wear a white hat to oppose Harper’s black hat. Seriously. The National Post’s Jen Gerson recounts Mulcair’s day here.
Vic Toews held a press conference yesterday to say that hey, that big explosion in prisoner populations didn’t happen, so here, let’s reallocate $1.48 billion from corrections back to the Finance Department’s fiscal framework. Except that Toews is being awfully disingenuous here. The provisions from Bill C-10? Most of them haven’t even come into force yet, and some of them won’t until oh, November. Add to that the time it will take the cases that the court sees after such rulings come into force to make their way through the system (since these laws aren’t retroactive), and then, two or three years down the road, we’ll see the effect. So one has to wonder – is Toews trying to manufacture a crisis in the corrections system? We know there is overcrowding and double bunking happening already, we know that there is a rise in prison violence, and we know that there is a time bomb on the way when it comes to that explosion in prison populations. And the endgame? Well, I suspect it may have to do with more private sector involvement in the penal system, as we’ve already heard they’re looking into. Something to consider anyway.
After those Enbridge hearings in the States, Thomas Mulcair says that we should pull the plug on the Northern Gateway pipeline entirely. BC Premier Christy Clark is putting Enbridge “on notice” about pipeline safety.
The Supreme Court heard arguments about the Etobicoke Centre election yesterday, and the crux seem to hang on whether “clerical errors” are enough to overturn votes and “disenfranchise” Canadians. But how many errors are too many and how many should we let slide before it becomes “fatal” to the integrity of the election? It’s actually a weighty issue to ponder, and they have reserved judgement. While it’s supposed to be handled expeditiously, the point was also made that the remedy – a by-election – is time-sensitive, and so one can hope that the Court will be swift in its ruling. (I offered some of my own thoughts as to the arguments here).
The NDP launched their own attack ads in response to those the Conservatives launched against Thomas Mulcair. The crux of the message: Harper created the recession, the deficit, and is now making cuts to the vulnerable. It’s all pretty much demonstrably untrue and contradictory, but since when were attack ads supposed to be entirely factual when the intent is to cast doubt on your opponent? James Moore was quick to respond via the Twitter Machine: “Hope is better than fear.” Touché.
Stephen Harper surprised everyone yesterday with a wee little cabinet shuffle – Julian Fantino is going to CIDA in Oda’s place, and Bernard Valcourt gets the associate deputy minister position for defence while retaining his ACOA portfolio and the Francophonie. Fantino is an…interesting choice, considering he’s spent his career being the guy who as getting tough on crime and now he’s being the face of Canada’s compassion and aid. As for Valcourt, he’s a Mulroney-era veteran who is moving a up the ladder a little bit, but considering how marginalised the military procurement file has become in the advent of the era of the procurement secretariat, it makes one wonder why they bothered to retain the portfolio. Also, interesting that Peter MacKay and John Duncan are staying put despite major gaffes of their own, and more evidence that Harper will refuse to make changes in order to avoid admitting that he made a mistake with his choices.
The government is tightening temporary foreign worker rules so that it will exclude exotic dancers, escorts and people who work in massage parlours, as they’re more “vulnerable to exploitation.” Of course, one suspects that this will just drive this all that much further underground and rather than have people documented so that they have access to some kind of assistance if they are being exploited, they’ll just be classified as “hostesses” or “servers” (provided they take a drink order) and it won’t actually have an effect on exploitation of human trafficking (assuming of course that we’re not just conflating human trafficking with the sex trade, as they are not the same thing).
Bev Oda, embattled cabinet minister and fan of limousines and nice hotels, has announced her resignation from both cabinet and the Commons, dated July 31st. The PMO release said that she’s leaving Parliament, which seems to preclude a Senate appointment, but never say never. Not surprisingly, NDP MP Charlie Angus was quick to crow about it. While the resignation was handled quietly, in the Harper Government™ style, we should also remember that Oda did do a few good things, like keep Canada’s commitments to the Global Fund when other countries weren’t, and not only that but ensured our contributions were sent in early.
Jason Kenney insists that there was no backtracking, just “clarification” on those refugee health benefits.
The government wants you to know there’s still no “iPod tax,” and no copyright levy on SD memory cards either.
It seems that the federal government has quietly backtracked on some of the changes it’s making to providing health care for refugees. In particular, ministerial instructions went up on the department website which said that government-assisted refugees would continue to receive benefits, which was not the case in the lead-up to the passage of the budget implementation bill. Of course, some of the rollbacks will continue, but they won’t be quite as draconian as previously announced.
The NDP want an explanation from the outgoing Commissioner of Elections as to why he stepped down in the middle of the robo-calls investigation (never mind that his plans had been in the works for months and months).
Before QP could get underway, the Governor General dropped by the Senate to give royal assent to a number of bills. Not only did the government bills on pooled registered pension plans and the refugee reform bill receive assent, but so did the private members bills on citizen arrests, the flag, an epilepsy awareness day, human trafficking and bring wine over provincial borders. In addition supply bills also got the nod, leaving just two government bills left on the docket for the Senate to pass before they rise, possibly by midnight tonight, likely tomorrow.
When QP finally did happen, Senator Chaput was first up with questions on the cuts to Parks Canada and how that was affecting Riel house in Manitoba, and in particular, interpretation at the site in both official languages. Senator LeBreton indicated that the plan for self-guided tours was actually better than before, because people could see the sites at their own pace rather than be rushed along by guides. When Chaput asked if she could be provided with a list of criteria for the decision to remove the guides, and LeBreton said that she would take it as notice. There was a bit more back-and-forth at this point about the importance of French for the Franco-Manitoban minority in the province, but unlike many a back-and-forth in the Commons, this one was pleasant and civil.
Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber complained publicly about Bev Oda’s expenses, the use of cabinet minister limousines. “Oh noes! Harper can’t control his caucus!” We The Media, decry, when really we should be saying, “Hey, look – backbench MPs are doing their job and holding the executive to account!” It also emphasises how much of a problem Oda has become for Harper, and that she will need to be shuffled – if not out of Cabinet (and likely to a Senate seat or other patronage appointment), then certainly a major demotion to something innocuous like National Revenue.
Senator Patrick Brazeau, the youngest Senator in the Upper Chamber, has the lousiest attendance record over the past year. In fact, he was four days away from being fined for it. (Note that Senators have attendance taken and can be fined after too many absences, as compared to MPs who self-report attendance, and those reports are not made public). So what did Brazeau do? Call the journalist who wrote the story a bitch (and did, eventually, apologise). Because that’s class. You can read the Storified Twitter Machine exchange here.
In a speech at Queen’s University, former senator Lowell Murray decries the fact that PMO and PCO – the political and the civil service sides of the Prime Minister’s staff – has become one and the same, and that’s detrimental to parliamentary democracy.
Remember how the government was going to offer cash rewards to employees who could make implementable money-saving solutions? Here’s how the process turned out – byzantine, bloated, inefficient, and no one getting any money in the end.
The Conservatives have finally launched a couple of weak sauce attack ads against Thomas Mulcair.
It was the Conservatives versus the Council of Canadians at the Federal Court yesterday arguing about those seven ridings the Council is fighting to get the election results overturned in.