Being released today is the new election reform act brought forward by the government which promises to reshape Elections Canada. And yes, the opposition is nervous. Already there are questions as to why Pierre Poilievre was selective in his answers to the House yesterday during QP when he said that he had met with the Chief Electoral Officer about the bill. That meeting, however, was before it was drafted, and not about the actual provision or language of the bill, which is kind of a big deal. One of the big questions about the bill is the provision that the new Commissioner of Elections be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions rather than the Chief Electoral Officer, and how that will affect his or her independence. Oh, and the most egregious part? That Poilievre is having his press conference to announce the bill before the technical briefing for reporters takes place. You know, so they won’t have time to read it or understand it before asking questions. Because that’s not a cynical move designed to frustrate the media and keep things as opaque as possible.
Tag Archives: Citizenship
Roundup: Budget date set
Jim Flaherty has announced that the budget will be delivered on February 11th, in the midst of the Olympics. Because remember that Canadians would be too distracted by the last Olympic games to even have Parliament sitting? Apparently that’s no longer a concern, and Flaherty is confident that Canadians can pay attention to both the games and the budget at the same time. Well, that and he apparently has a few measures that are important to pass sooner than later. John Geddes notes that Flaherty’s tone has changed lately to one of striking informality of late, where he seems to be freelancing some opinions and hinting that others may be to blame if there is added spending in the upcoming budget.
Roundup: Exit Chuck Strahl
Late Friday afternoon, Chuck Strahl resigned as Chair of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, not because he’d done anything wrong in his part-time lobbying for Enbridge to the provincial government, but because he didn’t want his activities to be a distraction for the government, which is fair.
Roundup: Heir to the Canadian throne
So there we have it – a future King of Canada has been born, and everyone’s delighted. No, seriously – everyone, though the NDP’s official statement of “warmest congratulations” was pretty lukewarm. And it was even more disappointing that the official Canadian Crown Twitter account was using the #BritishMonarchy hashtag rather than, you know, the Canadian Monarchy, which this baby is also heir to. Also, it seems that royal babies are good for business. Who knew?
Quebec’s attorney general has decided to weigh in on the challenge of the royal succession bill at the Quebec Superior Court, and he too believes that the provinces have a role in making such a change, as the constitution would otherwise indicate. The federal government says it will fight the challenge, since they would rather let political expedience trump the constitution.
Roundup: A feel-good committee for MPs
The NDP wants the Commons transport committee to meet over the summer to discuss rail safety and possibly hold a forum in Lac-Mégantic – you know, playing politics before the facts are known, drawing causal links but then quickly saying they’re not, and totally not trying to gain advantage from a tragedy. Yeah, it sounds like a brilliant idea, and one designed to simply make themselves look like they’re doing something about the tragedy. Fortunately, the Conservative chair of the committee seems to agree that such a move would be premature.
Roundup: Farewell to Bob Rae
In what was a surprise to pretty much everyone, Liberal MP Bob Rae announced his resignation yesterday morning, intending to spend more time as a negotiator for the First Nations in Northern Ontario as part of the development of the Ring of Fire region there. Personally, I find this incredibly distressing as it means we have now lost the best orator in the Commons, and one of the few remaining grown-ups when it comes to debate. This loss lowers the bar, as much as it pains me to say it. John Geddes tends to share this assessment, and especially takes not of Rae’s disappointment with how rote things have become in Parliament over the past number of decades. Aaron Wherry collects a number of videos of Rae’s speeches in the House for the past several years.
Roundup: A question of speaking fees
The desire to try and tarnish Justin Trudeau’s reputation took a somewhat bizarre twist yesterday as a New Brunswick charity decided to demand that Trudeau repay them for a speech they paid him for a year ago after the event they held flopped and they lost money. Odd that they asked nine months later, and that they are the party that wants to renege on a contract that they signed with the speaker’s bureau that Trudeau operates from, and that they seem to fail to understand that their failure to sell enough tickets to their event isn’t their own fault, but there you have it. (Also, as Scott Brison pointed out, they seemed thrilled by the event at the time). And never mind that this is all above board, that several other MPs and Senators also give speeches through the speaker’s bureau and that this has all been vetted by the Ethics Commissioner, and never mind the fact that Trudeau himself has been entirely above board and given an extremely high level of disclosure and transparency. These facts apparently don’t matter as the Conservatives have decided to characterise this as “millionaire” Trudeau “ripping-off charities.” And to make things all the more bizarre, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall decided to join the pile-on and both demanded that Trudeau return the same fee he was paid to speak at a literacy conference in Saskatchewan, and then insinuated that he used the funds to bankroll his leadership campaign (to which his office demanded an apology, citing that all of his campaign expenses were above board and cleared by Elections Canada – and Wall offered a non-apology in return). Funnily enough, that same literacy conference didn’t demand the money back and thought that Trudeau was worth every penny.
Roundup: MPs behaving like MPs
After much anticipation, the Speaker delivered his ruling on the whole Warawa privilege complaint. The verdict – no prima facia breach of privilege, but MPs need to grow up and behave like MPs. In other words, the lists the whips provide are just suggestions, and the Speaker can choose to ignore those lists if he sees fit, but that means that MPs need to want to participate in the debate, not simply assume that they have that spot and that he’ll wait for them to use it, or that someone else won’t be interested instead. Some MPs responded here and here, Aaron Wherry parses the meaning of the ruling, and John Ivison gives his own take of the ruling.
This all having been said, let me offer my own two cents – that this is a good first step, but that it really does fall on MPs to make the change they want to see. And unfortunately, because there is such a reliance on scripts, that we’re unlikely to see too much uptake on this invitation by the Speaker for MPs to behave like MPs. We’re going to see almost no uptake by the NDP, because in their need for uniformity, nobody wants to speak out be anything other than unanimous, as that would be unseemly. The Liberals already have far less of a firm hand on the whip, which means the real test of this change is going to come from the Conservative backbench – how many of them will want to do their actual jobs as an MP and hold the government to account rather than just suck up and support blindly, how many of them want to ask questions of substance during QP rather than deliver a fawning tribute or a thinly veiled attack on the opposition in the form of a question, and how many of them will want to eschew the “carbon tax” talking points and the likes while still ensuring that they have their say and are not being punished for not following those talking points. We will have to see how many of them are prepared to take that step and show that integrity and respect for parliamentary democracy.
Roundup post: Citizenship guide preview unveiled
The government is updating their citizenship guide, and while people are going to criticise it, I’m going to say that it’s a good thing that they actually devote a page to the fact that we’re a constitutional monarchy, and that they talk about the fact that Elizabeth II is the Queen of Canada. Not enough people realise what living in a constitutional monarchy means, even though it’s at the very heart of our political system. It would also be nice if we could stop acting horrified every time this government points out that basic fact because guess what – we’re a constitutional monarchy, and it’s actually a pretty good system. (It’s also too bad that the reporter in this story referred to Elizabeth II as the “Queen of England” – never mind that there hasn’t been a Queen of England since 1707). As well, they’ve done a pretty good job with the paragraph on the rights of gays and lesbians in this updated guide. Of course, it’s too bad that they’ve also included other bits of politicking with their references to human trafficking, polygamy and marriage fraud – current bugaboos of the government.
Roundup: The unravelling cases of Senators Wallin and Duffy
In the past couple of days of Senate revelations, we find that Senator Pamela Wallin has an Ontario health card and not a Saskatchewan one, which raises the question about her residency – no matter that she spent 168 days in Saskatchewan last year. Wallin also apparently repaid a substantial amount in expense claims before this whole audit business started, which is also interesting news. Senator Mike Duffy, meanwhile, could actually end up owing $90,000 plus interest on his living expense claims rather than the $42,000 that was cited over the weekend. Oops. Tim Harper looks at the sideshow that is Senator Duffy’s non-apology and smells a deal made to save his job. Senator Cowan says that repayment doesn’t answer the questions – especially not the ones about residency, which means he may not be up to protect Duffy – or Wallin and Patterson’s – seats. And those Senators who’ve been silent on their residency claims are now being called before the Senate Internal Economy committee to explain themselves. Terry Milewski goes through the entire housing claims allegations and fixes an appropriate amount of scorn on the idea that two ticky-boxes are “complex” on the forms.