The crass politicking of Harper’s trip to Israel was laid bare yesterday with an incident at the Western Wall when Conservative MP Mark Adler was caught on tape haranguing a PMO staffer about getting past the security line to get a photo with Harper at the wall. “It’s the million dollar shot,” he complained, and reminded him of the re-election coming up. Adler, as it happens, has a large Jewish vote in his riding, and he narrowly took the long-held Liberal seat, so he has reason to be worried. But that said, it demonstrates just how much this trip is more about domestic politics than it is about an actual commitment to international engagement in the region. Speaking of those domestic politics, an anti-gay pastor is a member of the Harper delegation. Naturally. And then there’s the question of Canada’s position on the settlements, to which Harper said our position is well known – that we’re opposed to them – but refused to articulate it, saying instead that he wasn’t going to “single out” Israel for criticism.
Tag Archives: Ethics
Roundup: Trudeau’s mistakes and the sanctimonious reaction
Justin Trudeau admitted that a couple of errors were made in relation to travel claims that should have been charged to the Speaker’s Bureau he belongs to rather than his MP expenses, dating back to 2009 and 2010. He said that it was human error, repaid them by personal cheque, and said that had there been better disclosure rules – like his party has put into place – this would have been caught sooner. And then the partisan spin happened. The NDP tried to somehow wedge this into a kind of Nigel Wright scenario, which makes no sense whatsoever. There were also sanctimonious cries about how he swore he never used his MP expenses for his outside work – and it seems pretty clear that it was a mistake, where the claims were bundled incorrectly, but now we apparently can’t take his word for anything – gods help us if any of his denouncers have ever made a mistake before. Liberal partisans, meanwhile, note that the NDP are the most opaque about their own expenses, for what it’s worth. And for everyone who cries that it should be an MP’s job to speak publicly, I would ask where exactly in an MP’s job description is being a motivational speaker? It’s not. An MP’s job is to hold the government to account and to scrutinise the public accounts, though you’d be hard pressed to find an MP who actually does that these days – I can think of a mere handful. Trying to claim that their job is something else is one more reason why the state of parliament has become so abysmal.
Roundup: Trying to bury a helicopter announcement
Four-thirty on a Friday afternoon – the perfect time for a government press release that they want to bury. And lo and behold, on schedule comes the news that the government will be carrying on with the Sikorsky helicopter contract and begin decommissioning the Sea Kings next year. Err, except that those Sikorsky Cyclones won’t be fully operational until, oh, 2018 or so, and the current models that they expect our Forces to train on don’t have shielded electronics, meaning that a ship’s radar can knock them out. Oops. There was no explanation in the release as to how Sikorsky plans to get over this hurdle (as the shielding will add a lot more weight to the choppers), only that it would come at no extra cost – in fact, they already owe millions in late penalties for the ridiculous botched job that this whole procurement has already turned out to be. The best part of this drama, however? Diane Finley’s press secretary left the office immediately after sending the release, and nobody would give out his cell phone number, meaning that reporters couldn’t get a statement from the minister about this pretty big deal of a release. Because that’s the kind of professionalism we’ve come to expect from this government.
Roundup: Preston Manning’s misdirected concerns
In a frankly bizarre op-ed, Preston Manning tries to accuse the Press Gallery for lacking proper ethics because the Parliamentary Press Gallery guidelines don’t have a section on ethical guidelines in their handbook – err, except that each member is subject to their own employer’s code of ethics. Also, the Press Gallery is not a monolith, but simply a means of organising ourselves in order to have proper access to do our jobs on the Hill. That Manning tries to somehow equate this to the Senate scandals and Mike Duffy’s role therein lacks any cohesive logic and makes one wonder how this passed the comment editor’s gaze at the Globe and Mail. Does he think that the Gallery could have somehow stopped him before he was appointed? That his constant lobbying for a Senate seat should have been dealt with – as though anyone took it seriously and not as a kind of sad and frankly pathetic long-running joke? Susan Delacourt gives Manning a respectful reply and cautions him that what he’s demanding of the media will mean more access by the government – something the current government is not a big fan of.
Roundup: Strongly-worded letters toward progress
AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo is optimistic and sees progress after sending a strongly worded letter to Aboriginal Affairs minister Bernard Valcourt over the proposed First Nations Education Act, and Valcourt has been willing to consult further in order to get the bill right. (Strongly-worded letters – so very Canadian). Atleo nevertheless wants education funding boosted in the next budget, before the bill passes, which has been one of the sticking points of their negotiations.
Roundup: Speech From the Throne Day!
It’s time for the Speech From the Throne! Finally! Amidst all of the largely futile speculation – and the speculation about whether all of the consumer-focused hints are distracting us from something else – we also have learned that the government plans to give honorary citizenship to Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, which I’m guessing is an attempt at a consolation prize for the Nobel Peace Prize that she didn’t win. The Conservatives have put together an animated trailer for the Speech From the Throne, narrated by Shelly Glover, and done up in nothing but Conservative blue. Go targeted messaging, go! While the economy will no doubt be the prime focus, so many of the issues at play – such as pipelines and trade agreements – are actually out of the government’s hands. John Geddes points to the limitations of the consumer-driven focus that we are anticipating, while Michael Den Tandt points to the risks of such a move. Brent Rathgeber gives his wish list here. Kady O’Malley reminds us of the vigorous opposition that Pierre Poilievre had to an airline bill of rights the last time the NDP proposed it – oh, how things have changed. And yes, in case you were wondering, Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau are all invited to attend as sitting Senators – and that the motion to suspend Brazeau needs to be moved again because it’s a new session.
Roundup: Populist consumer-friendly proposals
As the Speech From the Throne gets closer, we’re starting to hear more about the populist consumer-friendly agenda that will be laid out in it. Not content with just cellphone bills and airlines, James Moore was on television on Sunday talking about things like cable channels, where they will break-up the packages that the cable companies offer in favour of a la carte channel selection. Which is great, except that the CRTC has already mandated that this will actually start to happen, and some cable companies have started to offer it as a way of trying to retain customers who are starting to cut their cable in lieu of other online options, so it’s not like the Conservatives are coming out of the blue on this one. But hey, anything to try and claim some populist credit. Of course it makes one wonder what supposed free market conservatives are doing promising tonnes of new regulations when they’re supposedly in favour of smaller government, but I think we all know that these aren’t really free market conservatives we’re dealing with anymore.
Roundup: Special rules to punish Justin Trudeau
Because they are never short of such ideas, the NDP held yet another press conference yesterday to announced new proposals to make Parliament “more accountable.” What that really was code for was “let’s try to punish some Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau.” You see, of their three proposals, the main one was to ban MPs and Senators from “double-dipping by banning payment for work that is part of their job as an MP or Senator.” Which is news to me because nowhere in any legal or constitutional text does it say that it’s part of a Parliamentarian’s job to be a motivational speaker. In fact, that’s the reason why certain MPs and Senators sign up to speaker’s bureaux – in order to do these kinds of gigs without having to expend their parliamentary resources on it, and because they’re not talking about matters that are related to their parliamentary duties, but usually their careers before they were in public life (Marc Garneau’s astronaut career, or Larry Smith’s football commissioner career for example), it makes sense not to treat it as part of their duties. Oh, but Justin Trudeau was able to make a successful living at this and still accepted speaking gigs after he got elected, therefore it must be awful and should be banned. Never mind that he almost always made money for the organisations that he was invited to speak at (with that one notable exception, where it was a case of organisational failure), or that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner cleared these gigs – this is strictly a case of cheap punitive politics. There can be cases made for the other two suggestions – banning parliamentarians from being on corporate boards (but family businesses are okay), and strengthening the powers of the aforementioned Commissioner – but they are less about scandals than perception. Parliamentarians have any corporate board work cleared by an ethics regime, and sure it could be strengthened, but there has yet to be a demonstrated case of any kind of influence peddling, and one suspects it’s simply a case of “corporations bad!” at work. And as for strengthening the role of the Commissioner, well, it seems to me that it’s the NDP who are in charge of the Commons Ethics committee and this has yet to make it onto the agenda when the review of her legislation is a year overdue. Perhaps if they made an effort to actually focus on that rather than play partisan silly buggers and constantly demanding investigations into the wrongdoing of individual MPs, then perhaps they might make progress on such a change.
Roundup: Paradis’ abortion firestorm
Christian Paradis ignited a firestorm yesterday when he declared that our big push on preventing child brides would not include funds toward providing for safe abortions for victims – nor for victims of war rapes. Not that Paradis could even say it outright, but rather couched it in the terms that they would follow the pattern set out by the Muskoka Initiative on maternal and child health, where the government line was that they wouldn’t provide for abortion funding because other groups were doing it, and they would focus on things like “nutritious babies” (to employ a Bev Oda-ism). Of course, opposition parties are now up in arms, and guess who is applauding the move? Campaign Life Coalition, of course, who feels that “pro-abortion groups” are hijacking those kinds of horrible situations. No, seriously. Slow clap, everyone.
Roundup: Abusing the PBO’s mandate
It’s official – MPs are now abusing the mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. A report was released from his office yesterday, which announced the costing of the Conservatives’ election promise to create a fitness tax credit for older adults once the budget was balanced. That’s right – MPs were getting him to check on an election promise that is years away from seeing the light – probably not until after the next election. Strange, but this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with independent budget forecasts or help in deciphering the supply cycle. In fact, this is little more than MPs fobbing off their homework to the PBO so that they can wrap themselves in his independent-and-therefore-credible analysis. Because math is hard! Is it any wonder that the government has become suspicious of the way in which the PBO has been operating, when opposition MPs are using it in such a way? It doesn’t matter that this particular report came from a Conservative MP either, because it’s still dealing with election promises rather than forecasts or the estimates and it still plays the independent-and-therefore-credible game. It also shouldn’t be a personal calculation service, as Galipeau was using the PBO in that manner before he “brought a recommendation” to Flaherty in advance of the budget – he has a caucus research bureau for these sorts of things. This is also an argument for not making the PBO an independent officer of parliament, because he would have no accountability to anyone at that point. When this kind of abuse by MPs for partisan gain becomes his modus operandi rather than the actual work he’s supposed to be doing then it’s hard to see how this won’t become a major problem for the way that our system of government functions.