Tag Archives: CBSA

Roundup: Yet more trouble for Brazeau

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In case you thought that an investigation for Breach of Trust wasn’t bad enough, the RCMP are also digging into media allegations that Senator Patrick Brazeau has long used his father-in-law’s address on a Quebec reserve in order to get a preferential tax rate, even though he’s never lived there. Yeah, it’s not looking good at all…

While in Quebec City, Stephen Harper spoke about how the Energy East west-east pipeline will create energy security in Canada, but wouldn’t give job figures to contradict what President Obama has been saying about the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Roundup: Historical outrage and undermining the Court

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A new book claims that then-Chief Justice Bora Laskin kept political leaders informed as to the status of the patriation reference in the days of the patriation negotiations with London, and now the Quebec government is calling it an erosion of the legitimacy of the court and wants the Prime Minister to turn over all of the records from the period. PMO says no, and the Supreme Court said it’ll investigate the allegations. But seriously – trying to undermine a branch of government for narrow partisan gain? Way to go, guys. Slow clap. Martin Patriquin puts this into perspective with the rest of the Quebec perpetual outrage machine.

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Roundup: Loyalty and tight lids on issues

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On the continuing Mark Warawa “muzzling” drama, the appeal to the Procedure and House Affairs subcommittee on private members’ business met in camera yesterday, and we should find out their decision this morning. Warawa himself does his best to appear loyal to the PM, and doesn’t want to place the blame for this all on him. Aaron Wherry takes note of the circular logic that the NDP seem to employ when it comes to this debate – how it’s bad that the government muzzles, and yet they should absolutely keep the abortion debate under a tight lid. Bruce Cheadle looks back at caucus divisions over the abortion issue among the past governments of the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Chantal Hébert sees the possible seeds of a leadership challenge being sown in this Warawa drama. Andrew Coyne (quite rightly) points to the bigger questions of our parliamentary democracy that are at stake by the heavy hand of the leaders’ offices.

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Roundup: Carefully managed budget leaks

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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.

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QP: Peter Penashue, hardest working minister ever!

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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.

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QP: Sniping about Mulcair’s trip to Washington

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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.

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Roundup: Salary freezes vs casework

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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.

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Roundup: Unleash the Trudeau campaign!

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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.

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QP: Scripting the tainted meat debate

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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.

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Roundup: Backing an east-west pipeline

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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.

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