Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Keystone XL silence

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Thomas Mulcair is in Washington DC, and while he didn’t actively lobby against the Keystone XL pipeline down there, he did argue that it would cost some 40,000 Canadian jobs (though I’m not sure where that number might have come from). Joe Oliver, meanwhile, thinks that Mulcair is being hypocritical by remaining silent, since he and his party have already made their position on the pipeline clear (and I’m sure that he would like to hit back at the NDP for lobbying against Canada’s interests if that were the case).

They’ve been in government for seven years, but Peter MacKay still insists that the problems in replacing our fleet of search and rescue planes isn’t the fault of the defence department – despite all evidence to the contrary, with allegations of rigged bid processes (once again).

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QP: Trolling for support for abolition

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It was a lovely Wednesday in the Nation’s Capital, the sun out, the snow melting. It being caucus day, the benches were almost full, and the energy level was high. Thomas Mulcair started off by reading a pair of questions designed to troll for support for his Senate abolition motion, but Harper wasn’t going to take the bait, and said that he favoured electing Senators because everybody knows that the provinces won’t agree to abolition. For his final supplemental, Mulcair turned to the issue of EI training funds, which Harper assured him that they were consulting widely on. Chris Charlton picked up on the same topic, to which Ted Menzies got to deliver the points about consultation and how training was helping with the economy. For the Liberals, Bob Rae asked about unemployment figures comparing between October 2008 and today, and whether the budget would address that. Harper didn’t really respond, but simply said that the Liberals voted against their job creating measures. Rae turned to the unilateral decision to reclaim the EI training fund, to which Harper said such a move would go against Rae’s assertion that they weren’t doing anything about the unemployed. For his final question, Rae asked why there hasn’t been an inquiry into security breaches like the Dr. Arthur Porter and Jeffrey Delisle, to which Harper gave the usual non-answer about Porter’s time at SIRC being unrelated to the allegations against him.

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QP: Getting Harper on the record, scattershot style

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With all leaders on deck on a lovely Tuesday afternoon in the Nation’s Capital, QP got underway with Thomas Mulcair reading a question on why John Duncan was dropped from cabinet over an improper letter, but not Jim Flaherty. Harper responded that in Flaherty’s case, it was an administrative error. Mulcair moved on to the topic of EI “quotas,” to which Harper insisted that they were merely performance audit. Mulcair then moved onto the “scandals” in the Senate, to which Harper somehow turned it into a paean for an elected Senate — not that it would actually address the current issues. For his final question, Mulcair demanded that Harper stay away from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka, and Harper started off by carrying on his elected Senate paean before saying that he would not attend the meeting. For the Liberals, Bob Rae asked about the house calls that EI recipients are receiving as part of the effort to stamp out fraud. Harper responded by saying that EI was paid into by honest Canadians and they want to ensure that the money is there for honest recipients. For his final question, Rae asked about the Estimates tabled yesterday and the increase in advertising budgets while front-line services are being cut. Harper insisted that said front-line services were not being cut.

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Roundup: Mulcair’s PMB on the PBO

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It seems that Thomas Mulcair will be putting forward a Private Member’s Bill after all – relating to strengthening the mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Of course, Peggy Nash already has a similar bill tabled, so Mulcair’s will either have to be significantly different in order to meet the rules, or Nash will have to either withdraw hers or transfer it over to Mulcair (possibly by means of unanimous consent). They say that Mulcair’s will be different enough, but we’ll have to see what the committee in charge of these things says.

Well this is very interesting. It seems that the government approved two different sets of messages around its environmental reforms – one for First Nations, and another for industry, and no, they haven’t explained why there is that difference yet.

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Roundup: Apparently successful pipeline lobbying

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Access to Information documents have shown that the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association was pushing for the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act that went through in the fall omnibudget bill. They note, however, that the provisions strengthen the environmental protections because they’re all under one review now, rather than spread out.

Service Canada employees around the country have made random house calls to EI recipients to personally invite them to EI interviews – a move that is being called “intimidation.” I suspect this will be conflated and rolled into the false “bad guys” quote and make the rounds during QP next week.

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Roundup: Meet the new Religious Freedom ambassador

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The government has named Andrew Bennett, a former civil servant and current dean of a Christian college in Ottawa, as its new ambassador for the Office of Religious Freedom. We’ll now see what happens with this office – it’s small and its $5 million budget won’t go far, and there will be scrutiny to see if it prefers some religions over others, or if it speaks out against religious persecutions of women or gays and lesbians, or even atheists.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair went to Calgary to address the Chamber of Commerce there, and talked about making foreign investment criteria more transparent, and then talked doom about the Canada-China FIPA. Experts, however, have panned his apocalyptic reading of the agreement.

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Roundup: Vacuous yet patriotic ads

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Oh, focus group testing. Once again you pull through in calling out the government’s somewhat Orwellian-named “Responsible Resource Development” ads as being light on substance but hey, they’re uplifting and patriotic. Just the way the government likes them to be. These ads come as part of tweaks being made in advance of the government putting out another $9 million worth of them in the coming months. Meanwhile, remember that promised federal-provincial oilsands monitoring regime? A year later, still nothing in place. But at least they intend to have a “world class system,” which is what counts – right?

Vote attendance figures for the Commons are now published, with the best attendance (the Government House Leader and Whips respectively), and worst (NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who was on leave to deal with his alcoholism). Mind you, this is not actual attendance figures, because those aren’t made public (unlike the Senate).

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Roundup: Exit John Duncan

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In a surprise four-thirty on the Friday before a constituency week announcement, Aboriginal affairs minister John Duncan resigned from cabinet yesterday. To be fair, I’ve been waiting for him to resign “for health reasons” for a while, but what was surprising that the reason for said resignation was that he wrote an improper letter to the Tax Court a couple of years ago as a character reference for a constituent, which of course he should not have, and it sounds like after the Flaherty/CRTC letter affair, cabinet ministers were asked to check their files for any other potential infractions and this turned up. James Moore has been given the file for the time being, but given its size and political sensitivity at the moment, it’s likely it’ll be handed off to someone else soon, though it likely won’t signal any major changes in cabinet. Harper won’t be doing a major shuffle for a while yet – the common consensus is late June, but I’ve heard from my own sources that it may not be until next year, when it’s a little closer to the election. John Ivison says that an “all-star” will need to take the file – but they’re few and far between in the Conservative ranks, and Baird, Harper’s usual Mr. Fix-it, likes his current job with Foreign Affairs.

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QP: No love for Senator Wallin

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Valentine’s Day in the Commons is usually a wasteland of bad puns and lame jokes. Today we we mostly spared the indignity, barring a couple of lame Members’ Statements, and the very final question in QP. Thomas Mulcair led off by reading questions about Senator Wallin’s travel expenses — torqued so that they were counted over 27 months to make them sound especially damning — to which Harper reminded him that Western NDP MPs had similar travel expenses. For his final supplemental, Mulcair read a question about the “moral outrage” of unequal funding in First Nations for education. Harper rejected the premise of the question, and assured him of the measures they were taking. Niki Ashton was up next, asking why there was no national inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women, to which Kerry-Lynne Findlay assured her that they were working with provincial and territorial governments and were responding to the needs of victims. Ralph Goodale picked up on the topic of the Human Rights Watch report on RCMP abuses in those Northern BC communities. Vic Toews said that there is the Commission for Public Complaints about the RCMP to deal with such complaints. Dominic LeBlanc was up last to repeat the question in French, not that Vic Toews responded in kind.

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QP: Bombast and rejected characterisations

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With all party leaders back in the House today, things got started with Thomas Mulcair reading a screed about the “corruption” in the Senate, to which Harper rejected the categorisation and noted how quickly they responded to the allegations. Mulcair moved onto the “fraud” of the Saskatchewan push-polls, earning him a warning from the Speaker about QP being for government business, not party business, but Harper responded anyway, talking about how everyone had a right to give input to the electoral boundaries process. For his final question, Mulcair asked about job creation, giving Harper a chance to tout his record. Peggy Nash was up next, asking about long-term unemployment and changes to EI, for which Jim Flaherty gave a rundown of their job creation numbers with a tone of exasperation. Bob Rae was up next for the Liberals, and taking up the theme of Bell’s Let’s Talk day about mental health, and wondered why recommendations by the Mental Health Commission. Harper reminded him that they set up the commission, and that they were looking to their recommendations going forward. For his final question, Rae asked about a parliamentary inquiry into murdered and missing Aboriginal women, but Harper

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