With Harper heading home from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bob Rae away elsewhere, it was up to Thomas Mulcair to be the sole leader in the leader’s round of questions. He began QP by reading a trio of questions on the tainted beef issue, his third question including a demand that Gerry Ritz resign. Ritz was up to speak each time – rather than another back-up PM du jour – but spoke about taking food safety seriously and science-based decision, but wouldn’t take the bait on the resignation demand. Malcolm Allen was up next to say that there aren’t enough meat inspectors in the system, to which Ritz replied that the Union said there were. Marc Garneau was up for the Liberals, first asking a pair of questions on reassurances around food safety, to which Ritz took the classy move of blaming previous Liberal cuts for the problems and to tout their government’s “reinvestments” in food safety. For his last question, Garneau asked about the issue of bullying, to which Rob Nicholson replied that the government was taking action, there were two Parliamentary committees studying the issue, as well as funding for RCMP and cyber-tips hotlines.
Tag Archives: China
Roundup: Extending the Nexen deliberations
The government has indicated they will be extending the consideration of the Nexen deal by another 30 days – though this is a fairly common occurrence. Expect the renewed calls for “public consultations” to begin when the House returns on Monday.
Apparently the federal government has been studying ways to change the provincial equalisation programme. Changes to things like the way hydro revenues are calculated could have a major impact on the equalisation that Quebec receives.
Not only have the Conservatives ramped up their advertising spending in an age of fiscal austerity, it seems that over the past five years, they’ve exceeded said advertising budgets by 37 percent. Fiscal discipline, everybody!
Lord and Smith Commission, Episode 12
My friend Destine and I have a new episode of the Lord and Smith Commission, where we talk about the “NDP carbon tax” talking points and other fictions during Members’ Statements, Rob Anders, and some of the national security questions that will dominate the House next week.
Roundup: Tremble before the almighty online petition!
In another blow against civic literacy in this country, someone has decided to start an online petition to have Rob Anders removed from office. No, really. I’d like to know exactly what mechanism, pray tell, can do this, because last I checked, we don’t really have a mechanism to unseat an MP. Now, if the residents of Calgary West were serious about unseating him, well, they could challenge his nomination and sign up enough new party members to ensure that he will no longer represent the party in the next election. But oh, that would require organisation, and effort, and well, we couldn’t possibly do that. Oh, and FYI, it will not only be an open nomination before the next election, but with the new electoral boundaries coming into place, Anders is going to have to choose which of the new ridings he’ll be running in, and anyone in that new riding can organise to challenge his nomination. You know, the way that things actually work in our system.
Roundup: Security warnings
The US House Intelligence Committee is warning that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is a threat to national security and wants Canada to “find other vendors,” even though Huawei is already doing work with companies like Telus and Bell here in Canada, and the report is apparently short on details. The Canadian government hints that Huawei won’t be allowed to bid on any secure government telecom network projects.
XL Foods says all of their problems are fixed and they should be able to reopen in a few days. But as Martin Patriquin notes, unless we start making some serious structural changes to the way we slaughter and process beef – by making it smaller scale – we can pretty much guarantee that this is going to happen again.
Hey, look – we’ve officially joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks! Let’s all begin a new round of supply management angst, everyone!
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.