Buckingham Palace has written back someone who wrote to appeal to the Queen on Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s behalf. The message? That the Queen, by way of the GG, acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and cabinet, so go bug them. Which is the way it should be, seeing as we have Responsible Government and everything, and the fact that the Queen isn’t magic. And the Spence supporter who wrote her? Is going to write back to complain that his letter to Harper hasn’t been responded to yet, even though it’s only been days, and responses from PMO take something on the order of six months (given the constant deluge of mail they get daily). Oh, but I’m sure his letter was of such high priority that the PMO felt compelled to drop everything and ensure he jumped to the front of the response queue. And I’m quite sure that Buckingham Palace has nothing better to do than order the PMO to ensure that his letter is priority, because he’s special.
Tag Archives: CRTC
Roundup: The road to 2015
From the NDP caucus meeting in St. John’s, Thomas Mulcair made a speech about their “positive, optimistic” future, and how the road to 2015 starts now. As part of that road, the party plans to target youth voters in the next election. Meanwhile, MPs have reaffirmed their belief that 50 percent-plus-one is enough for Quebec to separate, which has the Liberals sounding like they plan to put a motion on the Order Paper about support for the Clarity Act this fall.
The Liberals have formally announced the rules for their leadership contest, which kicks off in November. While We The Media wait to hear whether or not Justin Trudeau will run (who says the party needs teamwork and not a saviour), we’re now getting musings from Jim Karygiannis (aka “Jimmy K”) and Joyce Murray.
Pauline Marois referred to herself as “Head of State.” Um, no. That’s the Queen. You might be the province’s head of government (provided that you can maintain the confidence of the Chamber in a minority context), but you’re not the Head of State. Not even close.
Roundup: Dispute or drawing board?
A government-sponsored review of the Auditor General’s findings on the F-35 procurement failure could be indicating that they’re trying to dispute his findings, rather than taking the procurement process back to the drawing board like they (sort of) promised to.
A Dalhousie professor believes that our current approach to immigration is simply snobbery that won’t help with the coming demographic crunch, but rather that we need more unskilled labourers who will be industrious and start businesses.
Documents show that Jack Layton’s state funeral cost some $368,000 – more than the state funerals of the previous two governors general, who are actually entitled to such events.
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: Up to 579 consecutive votes upcoming
While you’re enjoying your weekend, give pause for the poor clerks in the Commons spending their weekends preparing for report stage voting for the omnibus budget bill. You see, the Bloc has some 22 substantive amendments, Elizabeth May has some 330 amendments tabled, and of the 503 deletion amendments the Liberals submitted and the 506 that the NDP did, well, there’s a lot to go through. Peter Van Loan says that 579 of those don’t overlap, but we need to see how those amendments will be grouped together before the marathon of votes begins sometime next week.
There are new concerns around what happened in that senior’s residence poll in Etobicoke Centre in the last election, as a third version of events surfaces.
The CBC takes a look at the weakening of civilian oversight and the increasing influence of lobbyists with military procurement – especially when it comes to the F-35s.