As is the usual order of business these days, a carefully managed pre-budget “leak” was released yesterday in the form of a private letter to caucus – the “private” being a full wink-wink-nudge-nudge, of course. This is what we call building the narrative and managing the message. In said letter, Jim Flaherty signalled that his priorities will be skills training, infrastructure and “value-added” manufacturing jobs (never mind that “value added” is a misnomer term, as “value-added” is simply labour input + capital input). Maclean’s has produced a preview guide to the budget coming down this week. Michael Den Tandt believes it’s going to be a “stay the course” budget without any transformational change.
Tag Archives: CBSA
QP: Peter Penashue, hardest working minister ever!
Tuesday before Budget Day, and all leaders were in the House. Thomas Mulcair started off QP by reading off questions about cracking down on tax havens, but Stephen Harper was eager to continue needling him about his trip to Washington, and how he apparently undermined the economy. For this second supplemental, Mulcair read a pair of questions about reversals in fiscal policy, not that Harper let up on his attack against Mulcair’s position on Keystone XL. For his final question, Mulcair asked about Peter Penashue’s resignation, to which Harper assured him that Penashue did the right thing and that he was the best MP from Labrador in the history of ever. Bob Rae carried on that line of questioning — off the cuff and without scripts, mind you — not that Harper’s answer was any different.
QP: Sniping about Mulcair’s trip to Washington
Monday after a constituency week, and kicking off budget week, Members’ Statements were dominated by sniping back and forth over Thomas Mulcair’s trip to Washington last week. QP started off with Thomas Mulcair reading questions about the upcoming budget being full of “corporate giveaways for their buddies.” James Moore, the designated back-up PM du jour, read some good news talking points before he too accused Mulcair of “selling out” the country in Washington. On his second supplemental, Mulcair bizarrely accused the government of “listening to Tom Flanagan,” which Moore ignored in his response. Mulcair took all the slots in the leader’s round, moving onto Peter Penashue’s election expenses. Moore responded that Penashue took responsibility and stepped down. Leading off for the Liberals was leadership contender Joyce Murray, who kept on about the Penashue resignation. Moore repeated that Penashue took responsibility and stepped down, before adding a gratuitous “Where is the stolen $40 million?” For her final supplemental, Murray asked about the muzzling of scientists and federal archivists and librarians. Moore insisted that it simply was not the case, and said that the directive to staff was independent of government, and doesn’t bar them from speaking publicly.
Roundup: Salary freezes vs casework
MPs say they’re fine with continuing the freeze on their own salaries, but they don’t want their office budgets cut – and indeed, some want an increase – because their offices are busy doing front-line EI and immigration casework because of cuts to Service Canada. All of which is infuriating because MPs offices aren’t supposed to be doing this kind of work, and it’s something that should be addressed. It’s not only not your MP’s job to do this paperwork, but it starts blurring lines between the political offices and the civil service, which is a Very Bad Thing. This is how bribery and corruption happens, and we need to start putting those barriers between these offices and the civil service in before things get any worse.
The political loans bill is moving ahead, but the Liberals have concerns that it puts too much ability for banks to decide who should be able to run for office or not, seeing as they’ll be the primary entities able to make political loans once it passes. The NDP say they want to limit the same kinds of loans from previous Liberal leaderships – while their own last leadership contest features their own candidates taking out loans from private individuals. Imagine that.
Roundup: Unleash the Trudeau campaign!
So, Justin Trudeau is officially in the race, and he announced on his late brother’s birthday. And since we had six days of swooning leading up to the announcement, I expect six months of snark to follow. Aaron Wherry liveblogged the night’s events here.
Stephen Harper has announced that Justice Richard Wagner is his nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
In an interesting interview yesterday, Maher Arar says that he identifies with Omar Khadr and the treatment he was subjected to in Guantanamo Bay, feels that the confession and guilty plea was likely false given the psychological torture and the fact that someone in that situation would sign anything for a shred of hope of getting out, and he is willing to talk to him about his situation.
QP: Scripting the tainted meat debate
It being a Monday, Harper and half of the government front bench were absent from the House, leaving Thomas Mulcair to read his questions on tainted meat to the back-up PM du jour Peter MacKay, who in turn read back some fairly bland statements about how the minister was holding CFIA officials accountable. When Malcolm Allen asked about the self-regulation of food inspection, Pierre Lemieux pointed out that Allen made a bunch of since disproven claims last week. Bob Rae then got up and wanted to know when the Minister was informed and why it took two weeks to inform Canadians, but MacKay just repeated his assigned talking points.
Roundup: Backing an east-west pipeline
Thomas Mulcair is throwing his support behind an east-west pipeline for oil in this country, so that refineries in the East can process western crude. Which of course is all well and good, but because those pipelines can’t support bitumen, that means building upgraders in Alberta at billions of dollars in cost and a much higher carbon footprint, rather than using existing facilities if we increased our capacity in shipping said bitumen south (aka Keystone XL). It also means we won’t be getting world prices for said crude if we shipped it to Asia instead.
CBSA has to phase out its K9 unit because of budget cuts. You’d think that an effective means of sniffing out illicit drugs in a quick and efficient manner would be a good thing.
QP: Scary trade deficits!
Yesterday, everyone was up in arms about a fictional carbon tax. Today, it was that trade deficits sound scary. Thomas Mulcair started off QP by reading off a questions premised on the fact that when Harper took office there was a trade surplus (for which the Liberals applauded themselves), and now there was a trade deficit caused by an “artificially high dollar.” Harper shrugged and said that such a deficit existed for “complex reasons,” but hey, they didn’t want an NDP carbon tax! And after Mulcair hammered after the trade deficit, he then read off questions about unemployment, for which Harper touted his government’s job creation record and listed a number of programmes they implemented. Nowhere in this did anybody mention that we have a trade deficit largely because of weak global demand due to Eurozone uncertainty and slowing growth in the Chinese economy, coupled by a high dollar – but hey, the word “deficit” sounds bad, so we must capitalise on that rather than realising that a trade deficit isn’t actually what you think it is. Onward, Marc Garneau was up for the Liberals, asking about youth unemployment rather than the government trying to change the channel. Harper repeated his line about job creation. And when Garneau asked specific questions on making tax credits refundable and rolling back new payroll taxes? Harper answered with the accusation that the Liberals didn’t support their plans to lower taxes (which they loudly denied), and that the father of the carbon tax, Stéphane Dion, was sitting right behind him.
Roundup: Fined for telecomm violations
The CRTC has fined the Liberal riding association in Guelph for an improper robo-call during the last election, and Frank Valeriote, the MP, accepted the finding. Now, just to remind you – this was about a violation of the Telecommunications Act with an unidentified robo-call warning that the Conservative candidate might be pro-life. It was not a violation of the Elections Act. It has nothing to do with misleading voter to wrong polling stations, or anything like that. No matter how many equivalencies the Conservative partisans try to this to the other Guelph robo-calls and the mysterious “Pierre Poutine,” they would all be wrong.
Helena Guergis’ lawsuit against Stephen Harper and company has been tossed out – as well it should be. The Judge correctly asserted that the matter of her being in cabinet are a Crown Prerogative – because it is. And Crown Prerogatives are generally non-justiciable for a reason. Otherwise, people start doing silly things, like taking to the courts when they lose at politics, just like they start writing to the GG or the Queen. Oh, wait – they already do! But yeah, it’s not the court’s jurisdiction. If you have a problem with the way a government exercises its prerogative, then you vote them out in the next election. If people had a modicum of civic literacy, this kind of thing might be avoided. Guergis says she’s stating law school next week – hopefully she’ll learn this lesson, as well as what “frivolous lawsuit” means. She also says she wants to appeal, but good luck with that.
Roundup: Exit the Deputy Speaker
NDP MP and deputy Speaker Denise Savoie has announced her retirement for health reasons, and her letter mentioned that the travel demands of being a west coast MP was taking its toll. This means there is yet another by-election for the Prime Minister to call, likely this autumn. As for the role of Deputy Speaker, there’s no rule that says it has to go to an opposition party but should be someone whose linguistic proficiency is opposite that of the current Speaker, meaning it will likely have to be a Francophone as opposed to current Assistant Deputy Speaker Barry Devolin. As for who that might be, well, is a harder guess because I can’t think of any Francophone NDP MPs who have enough of an understanding of the rules and procedures as nearly all of them are still newbies, so maybe Mauril Bélanger from the Liberals, as he once expressed an interest in becoming Speaker? Wild guess, but it will be interesting to see who he ends up choosing.
From Nunavut, Stephen Harper announced funding for a new Arctic research station (after cutting an existing one, mind you), that the government was launching a new search for the lost vessels of the Franklin Expedition, and named Leona Aglukkaq to be the chair of the Arctic Council. Since she’s not really doing anything as Health Minister other than reminding everyone that nothing is her jurisdiction and ignoring the advice of expert panels, she’ll have plenty of time to memorise a whole new set of talking points to recite by rote.